The French Revolution is directly responsible for the creating the soil in which the managerial society grew. The Cult of Reason alone proves this.
The initial flowering of the managerial society came through Napoleon, who formally started it. Since Napoleon, it has only accelerated, consumed more minds, and over the last fifty to seventy years has changed character into what I call the Expertocracy.
The Expertocracy is the managerial society—the rule of managers as described by inter alia James Burnham and Sam Francis—but imbued thoroughly with the false spirit of scientism, and with a greater emphasis on Equality, another gift of the French Revolution. The scientism creates Experts.
From Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon: A Life (my emphasis):
Napoleon instinctively understood that if France was to function efficiently in the modern world, she needed a standardized system of law and justice, uniform weights and measures, a fully functioning internal market and a centralized education system, one that would allowed talented adolescents from all backgrounds to enter careers according to merit rather than birth…
…The new code [Napoléon] helped cement national unity, not least because it was based on the principles of freedom and contract. It confirmed the end of ancient class privileges, and…of ecclesiastical control over any aspect of French civil society…
The Code Napoléon simplified the 14,000 decrees and laws that had been passed by the various revolutionary governments since 1789, an the 42 different regional codes that twere in force, into a single unified body of law applicable to all citizens… [p. 275-277]
It’s all there, is it not? The hunger for top-down control of all things, where rules are designed by Experts (savants, then), and mandated for indigenous populants. All the richness of local custom wiped away in the desire for absolute unity. Which we nowadays, following a trend to name all things by their opposite, call “multiculturalism”.
The purging of the transcendence, the evisceration of custom and Tradition by replacing them with contract and tests, the beginnings of scientism. A code or system of measurement that all must use can scarcely be called a “principle of freedom”. It is the very opposite. Yet these are the very words we would now use.
That “modern world” bit was invented in the writer’s mind, who looked back from his present and saw what has happened as inevitable. As perhaps it was. But these anachronisms must be purged when writing or thinking about history. The worldwide nature of the Expertocracy was not in the minds of all rulers in 1800, as it is in ours now.
And it is in your mind, right now. You are thinking “How could we possibly function if every state was allowed its own system of laws and of weights and measures! I like and we need the convenience of mandated uniformity.” Only you’ll stop short of saying “mandated uniformity”, because you desire and willingly follow dictates from above. You scarcely feel the pressure. You only chafe at new mandates, until they become familiar enough to become “obvious”.
The transformation from managerial society to Expertocracy occurred sometime after World War II, driven by the then tremendous successes of science. Managers ran the government in America under FDR. Experts run the government today under, or rather around, Biden. I take this to be so obvious as to need no argument, but if you need one, or rather two, I’ll give them to you: coronadoom and “climate change.”
Those two usurpations of power are not the whole of the Expertocracy, of course. The control goes much farther and deeper, and must go farther still. Having a society designed and controlled by Experts makes all non-uniformities stick out and appear more prominent and important than they would otherwise be.
This was obvious to the Club of Rome founders even as early as the 1970s.
In this 1973 report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the founders of the Club of Rome advocate the "need" for individual nations to surrender their national sovereignty to unelected globalist bodies, in order to solve the "problems" of overpopulation, industrial growth… pic.twitter.com/u7M4PXjWAm
— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) May 6, 2023
Alexander King, Director of the World Bank, is asked about how to stop the “climate change” of the day. He said, in effect, this could only be done by lessening the sovereignty of nations. He didn’t mean this in a cackling-rubbing-hands-together kind of way. He was sincere. He could not—it was impossible for him, as it is to our rulers now—envision any other way than by imposing Expert-created rules.
The scientism is right there, reeking. For that computer output showing the world would fall to “climate change” unless Expert-created “solutions” were imposed was only saying what it was told to say. All models only say what they are told to say.
But none of these rulers could see that. Scientism blinds you to the true nature of science.
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It’s true, the French revolutiin brought all that and the Napoleon code was that dreamer’s device. The voluntarist megalomaniac used to lament that, through interpretation, the code would be altered (!)…. But the ideological bases come from Francis Bacon, Descartes, Adam Smith, Kant, Comte, Marx. Scientists in an eminent degree, destroyers of philosophy, impetus for the re-immersion of man in the cosmos, gnostic dreamers, and people who confuse science and technics and who coudn’t see the point of existence beyond “science”….. That way of thinking in the hands of people like Napoleon and lesser social engeneers: the recipe for the current triumphs of HUMANITY….
Indubitably. The middle and upper middle staff of the Power Pyramid are often true believers. But somewhere at the peak there’s got to be a boardroom full of cackling hand rubbers; can you believe what we made them do? —hein! hein! hein! Even if the peak boardroom is only occupied by Satan himself. It’s clearly a big joke, and the joke’s on us.
That clip from Aussie Tv 1973 is a hoot. The spellcraft is so cheesy. But then computers were fairly new and people vaguely thought they were omniscient and those cryptic lines of code look oracular, especially when served up by some pig-tailed blond bon-bon in a white lab coat. Amazing, the stupid stuff we fell for. And pretty funny, too.
Hagfish,
Your last is your best comment yet. Deep and mysterious.
But the model was emitted from Australia’s largest computer. Like a sort of digital fart.
The French campaign in Egypt … was Napoleon Bonaparte … proclaimed to … establish scientific enterprise in the region.
It is from here that experts took over to give everything an expertified cause, and so the pyramid builders had to have been worshipping some unlocatable sungod.
Come on Briggs we all know you’ve got it in for Napoleon because he invaded
Italy and deposed Pius VI and then played three card Monty with the body.
Thanks Briggs— I’m trying to pare my thought down to where it disappears altogether.
Hag, You’ll then reach the state of Tenure.
Well, it’s known that once the Republic was established, it was able to mobilize society on a level the royalists could only dream of. And then the Republic smothered just about all the competition on the continent. So if you wanted to self-rule, you either had to mobilize your people as hard as the Republic did or perish. And royalists can’t mobilize society at that level, as stated. It took a century for this to play out, but eventually feudalism went extinct as it was unable to compete. Then came the communists and showed everyone how you ACTUALLY mobilize society.
Really, it’s the same thing with states. Once the state got invented in what is today northern Iraq, it spread out because only another state could resist a state. Once an unstated society got into contact with a state, it could either allow itself to be incorporated into that state or it could invent its own state to push the other state out. Either way, you are now stated and can’t shake it off (because the process repeats on the interface between your new state and non-stated societies that were your neighbors prior to you coming into contact with the state). It’s like crystalization. Once started in an appropriate medium, it carries on spontaneously.
A tragedy of life perhaps?
I’ve lived within sixty miles of Los Angeles most of my life. I remember the late 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Anyone who isn’t old enough to remember those decades really has no idea what serious air pollution is like. Even compared to the 1980s, the air here is extraordinarily clean today. The Australian graph showing pollution skyrocketing after 1980 into a vertical line is ludicrous. Practically the opposite has taken place in this region of the world, and probably most other parts of the Western world.
Even Napoleon’s control did not help in the First World War. Different areas of France could not communicate with other parts of the French Army – they all spoke in different languages. Santonge could not understand Normandy, Normandy could not understand Brittans (In fact no one could understand Brittans – except Brittans).
After WW1 a great push was made to teach all French people to speak French, but many of the older country people can (and do) still speak the local dialect. When I write ‘Local’ I do mean ‘Local’. My French Lady-friend was born only 40km from my village, but she cannot understand the dialect spoken in my village.
Strangely the revival of local dialects is being encouraged in education.
JohnM, you remind me of the book by Graham Robb, The Discovery of France. Very interesting. That does not happen further south, in the Peninsula; although there are of course dialects and different languages, you are capable of understanding something of what the other says, excluding Basque, which is not an indo-european language after all.
I think the mistake is to try to build so large a state, such as France, Russia or the US. China has been at it for longer than anyone else, and India only manages through conquest, which is the basis for the present situation. The EIC unified through conquest and the indian elites kept it. It is not colonialism today, only before. The colour of the skin changes the reality on the ground.
However, Afghanistan has managed to resist without a real state. Perhaps we should learn something from them?
> However, Afghanistan has managed to resist without a real state. Perhaps we should learn something from them?
Yes, Afghanistan is a mountaneous labyrinth that is basically impassable. You can’t force the inhabitants to do something because you can’t reach them. They are able to run rebellions because you can’t hunt the rebels down. If we’re going to learn anything from Afghanis it’s that moving to the mountains where you’re hard to reach hampers the ability of the state to reach you – since you’re in a place that’s hard to reach. Really, it’s the same anywhere remote (New Guinea, Amazon).
And just as with Napoleon, the Russians will be there to ruin the path forward towards Total Expurt Globalism. That’s why they’ve gotta go. A couple hundred million bucks worth of Patriot Expurt missiles going up in smoke is a minor setback. Sadly, the Rus also have the own Managerial Expurts who can’t help but want to show off that they can be hip & western too!
I am afraid that all we are seeing is just misdirection or the settling of scores and the allocations of spots in the new system or order, call it as you like it. This war in the Ukraine is benefiting no one – except the old tribe, to which Porochenko and Zelensky, Blinken, Nuland, and many others belong – and is wiping out an entire generation of Ukranians. More is at stake than meets the eye. Even the conduct of war is apparent nonsense.
Napoleon was the first sovereign to grant the Messias-Deniers citizenship because he sought their support in the Pale of the Settlement when he invaded Russia.
On his way back to Paris, after the battle of Jena, he stopped in Strasbourg and the city fathers told him the Messias-Deniers had already turned on their fellow Frenchman and were exploiting them financially.
Wadda shock..
As E. Michael Jones has noted;
One hundred years after the French Revolution, the editors of Civiltà Cattolica, the official voice of the Vatican on political affairs, came to a startling conclusion: any country which turns away from laws based on the teaching of the Catholic Church and God’s eternal law will end up being ruled by Jews.”
He didn’t mention that less than fiddy years after Civilta Cattolica predicted doom for the Messias-Deniers because of their actions, Hitler was made Chancellor.
There are innumerable men proposing innumerable “fixes”to the problem in America but they will never be addressed, saying nothing about being solved, because Fear of there Jews is ever ancient ever new.
America could (it won’t ) adopt there Catholic Church’s principle of dealing with Jews, Sicut Judeis non, and prohibit any harm directed at the Jews while also disempowering them – they can not hold any office – because they had no right to kill our essentially Christian culture.
Jews are blind and goyim in America re waking up to their deviltry and there will be a great and violent price to pay for their perfidy.
Who is warning them?
Certainly not Trump or DeSantis
…And this is just what, in a more or less perfect manner, has been done in the past; this is what, for a century, the Hebrews have tried to abolish; but this is also what, sooner or later, willingly or unwillingly, will have to be restored, and perhaps the Hebrews themselves will be constrained to ask that it be restored. For the predominance to which today’s revolutionary law has helped them is digging an abyss under their feet, whose depth corresponds to the height to which they have risen. And at the first burst of the storm they are provoking by their very predominance at present, they will suffer such an enormous ruin, heralding an event as unequaled in their history as their modern audacity is also unequaled and with which they have trampled the nations that have madly exalted them.
On January 30, 1930, German President Paul Von Hindenburg named Adolph Hitler Chancellor – only forty years after the official Catholic Church’s media organ, La Civilta Cattolica, issued its ominous warning.
What could delay the Advent of The AntiChrist? If the formerly Christian countries of the West had done what The Holy See had then advised, then his advent might have been delayed.
But, now?
?
There is no chance in Hell that such a political decision could be taken today – least of all by Our Pope and Our Cross living in the Holy City of Rome.
There is no way out of this dilemma; and, that being so, one must be prepared for the very worst to come because it is approaching with ever-increasing speed.
Dear Briggs. I wish you good fortune in al that you do. You are a good man – and that is a very dangerous sort of man to be.
God be with you.
Adios.
The richness of local custom made France hungry. The rules designed by experts made it, within years, the powerhouse of Europe. If you want to get rid of scientism with its partisanship, start from the way you think of history.
Oh, you know what was the inspiration for the French transformation? China, the world’s most prosperous country.
Oh: but it was “prosperous” because it parasitized on others, who gave it tributes, it was a barbaric despotism that plundered and exploited?
Well, obviously the 18th century Europeans, including the staunch monarchists, would have begged to differ. Likewise our contemporaries Michael Hudson, and the sinologist Michael Puett.
Of course, we agree that small is beautiful, and that we suffer horribly from the current centralization of power. Those things are true as well. It’s just that no one has figured out a grand unified and simple theory of how society works best.