Though (ostensibly) adjacent ”postliberal” groups have begun popping up recently, I consider the political theorist Curtis Yarvin to be the closest to our position. This should be of little surprise, given his ‘Formalist Manifesto’ is the direct forefather of Chris Bond’s Neoabsolutism which makes up part of the Postliberal project; and together with being a continuing influential figure within the relevant scenes, I consider him an advanced narrative marker who’s good to keep tabs on.
Something he’s recently put forward is that any stable regime must “contain and control all three forms of political power: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy”. Monarchy, we can take to mean that power is always conserved and that there must always be a Center, a Central Authority from which Imperatives flow; Democracy we can take to mean the moral feedback loop between the Center and the Periphery that an Occupant of the Center must keep open and morally keep in mind when issuing Imperatives, in order to remain the demonstrated Occupant of the Center.
However, what can we take Aristocracy to mean? Regarding China, he writes:
The Chinese system of government has one great weakness: it does not know how to be cool. It does not have, and cannot create, anything like a true cultural aristocracy. For example, China does not have a bohemian artistic and intellectual elite.
Unfortunately, this predicts that in the long run China will fall victim to Western political fashions, and be destroyed. It is impossible to suppress the phenomenon of aristocracy, but especially impossible when contagion from a foreign aristocracy cannot be suppressed. For instance, by sending its best students to Western colleges, China is putting itself at great cultural risk.
The fundamental cause of this risk is China’s lack of indigenous cultural aristocracies that can compete, in the game of high fashion, against the West. For instance, there are almost no Chinese fashions that spread to the West—Japan and even Korea are far ahead in this race—but even in Japan and Korea, most transmission is the other way.
Modern China exists because Mao created a dictatorship so strong that, when Deng inherited it, he found it could contain the economic aristocracy of capitalism. It was okay to get rich in China; the Party was strong, and rich men did not threaten it. The USSR was never strong enough to tolerate the imperium in imperio of capitalism—the secondary statelike structures of private businesses—so it died for economic reasons.
But politically containing a cultural aristocracy, without suppressing it (thus creating a dangerous vacuum) is an even harder problem.
The Genealogy of Aristocracy
The Aristocracy lies somewhere between the Center and the Periphery and given how he talks about them as elites that emerge from various disciplines, let’s start from that notion. Applying Originary Thinking to the Aristocracy, going as far back as the classical feudal Aristocracy, the Aristocracies established during the dark- and medieval age for the most part arose from the land that was delegated to the companions of triumphant kings. They were first and foremost landowners who, in order to increase the value and wealth of their respective domains, cultured the land, which in the beginning primarily meant farming. So, they were in part farmers, and in part managers or local governors of the lands they were entitled with; though another important aspect to the feudal aristocrats were their responsibility in recruiting, training, and arming the soldiery. So, it can be surmised that the classical feudal Aristocracy were characterized by the disciplines of agriculture, governance/administration, and war (which then downstream directly touches upon the disciplines of production, learning, knowledge retention, training, logistics, husbandry, etc.).
From their wealth they were able to become patrons of the arts, which gave way to a renaissance within music, painting, literature, theater, architecture, clothing, as well as patrons of the sciences like construction/production/manufacturing, astronomy, metallurgy, etc.
The question then becomes, do the highest excelling members of these various disciplinary spaces become aristocrats? Would highly influential musicians like Mozart, Beethoven, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, or Michael Jackson be considered aristocrats? Or would the managers of those, e.g. the record companies, be better characterized as aristocrats? What about the sciences? Has Anthony Fauci functionally become a modern day aristocrat due to the pandemic?
I think the safe assumption is that various disciplines have different ceilings or potential for creating aristocrats themselves, where, say, the discipline of economics (or more specifically, business) offers more potential at creating aristocrats, and any musician, inventor, craftsman, etc. are better served by combining their discipline of choice with that of business (e.g. creating a record label company) in order to be able to ascend to that level. And that ceiling or potential likely also has to do with disciplinary spaces that the Occupant of the Center chooses to emphasize, to keep “nearest” to himself – e.g. the disciplinary spaces of the feudal aristocrats (i.e. farming, management/administration, war) were closer to the King than the disciplinary spaces of teaching, logistics, husbandry, etc. in the societal construction of disciplinary spaces in feudal society. Whereas today, other disciplines are certainly in closer proximity to the center (e.g. economics, business).
Below is an imagined constellation of how disciplinary spaces would’ve been structured in feudal society, and today. The nearer a disciplinary space is to the center, the more potential it has to produce aristocrats:
This constellation of disciplinary spaces in feudal society is what gave rise to the stereotypical aristocrat of the dark- and medieval ages. Differing societies during the same period gave rise to other elites, due to differing constellations in the disciplinary spaces to the centers of their respective societies, namely the Patricians of the Italian republics:
The privileging of trade gave rise to the wealthy merchants of the Italian republics who became known as the Patricians, who in practice were the aristocrats of their respective societies. By virtue of being small coastal trading cities, agriculture as a disciplinary space would’ve been much farther downstream, with naval disciplinary spaces becoming more privileged, aiding in facilitating trade. One thing I noted during my research was that in Venice, judicial courts were not even a thing, and in its stead, Patricians would serve as dispute arbiters in rotation, meaning that law as a discipline was downstream from business as a disciplinary space.
The modern-day aristocrats moreso resemble that of Italian Patricians than classical feudal aristocrats, with a heavy emphasis in economics (particularly finance), though arguably intelligence and media are also now two major disciplines in close proximity to the center.
So, while certain disciplines are favored by (or are in closer proximity to) the Center, and are therefore more likely to give rise to elites than disciplines more distal to the Center, these more distal disciplines to the Center still include and produce people that excel at what they do. One thing Curtis Yarvin’s model doesn’t include are priests, or the priestly caste – And this is especially where the excelling members of these distal disciplinary spaces end up. These technocratic specialists who, in theory ought to be unbiased agents lending their specialist expertise for the public good and well-being, have in large parts become the narrators of power through their ostensibly expert knowledge of their subjects, which is what’s happened to the likes of say, Anthony Fauci. However, the priests being (ideally) the narrators of the Center to the broader periphery is already well-established within Generative Anthropology and Postliberal theory, so I won’t focus on them and will get back on the topic of aristocrats instead.
The Role of the Aristocracy
Within Postliberal theory, in short, the Center issues Imperatives, the Priesthood narrate these Imperatives, and the Periphery carries these Imperatives out (or at least sends feedback toward the Center regarding issues in obeying the Imperatives). However, what is the Aristocracy’s role? Going back to Curtis Yarvin he fortunately has an attractive answer, which was the impetus for writing this article:
The Chinese system of government has one great weakness: it does not know how to be cool (...) The fundamental cause of this risk is China’s lack of indigenous cultural aristocracies that can compete, in the game of high fashion, against the West. For instance, there are almost no Chinese fashions that spread to the West—Japan and even Korea are far ahead in this race—but even in Japan and Korea, most transmission is the other way.
Summa summarum, the Aristocracy creates fashion. Or, translated into Generative Anthropology, the Aristocracy reinforce the mimetic attractiveness of the Imperatives from the Center, and presents the Ostensives that the Imperatives stem from in a way that make the Imperatives seem warranted and “correct”. Or in other words, they are the gatekeepers of the aesthetic, and produce culture by patronizing and elevating those who advance and adhere to the right aesthetic. That is to say, the Priesthood provides technical assistance to the Center, and the Aristocracy are caretakers of the actual socialization of what’s being elaborated on and is generating inquiry.
And it’s through making these cultural products aesthetically attractive that elites expand their Periphery that listens – and adheres – to the Imperatives issued by the Center they are in orbit of. In marketing terms, the aristocrats are responsible for the image or brand(s) of everything within that Center-Priesthood-Aristocracy-Periphery scene. Alex Hochuli of Damagemag had an excellent article on how American Idealism had colonized the minds of particularly Europeans and most of the world, where, even though they’re not a de jure part of America, the American Empire occupy our minds, virtually inescapably, e.g. replacing the native moral history with the promoted moral history of the US, and in practice forming America’s 51st state (hence the name of the blog).
Current Aristocratic fashions
And it surprises no one that American culture dominates in a lot of areas. In this section I’m going to list disciplinary cultural products of various Aristocracies, to get a sense of how Aristocracies create and promote culture for the benefit of the entire scene they’re part of. Here are some examples:
America:
Entertainment - With an unending tidal wave of movies, games, shows, music, etc. as well as the services or platforms to enjoy them on.
Science - Being the home of the world’s most prestigious scientific institutions like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, MIT, UCLA, and many more, with only few prestigious competitors abroad like Oxford or Cambridge.
Economics – One of the early successful cultural exports that enabled America to dominate the world was its economic system, and even though it is getting challenged in recent years, neoliberalism is for now still the system that reigns supreme. This particular disciplinary space has been good at absorbing and elevating people from the Periphery into the Priesthood, with notable foreign promoters getting absorbed like Joseph Schumpeter, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, and even Karl Marx to some extent. While most famous for breaking through the communist bloc, I think neoliberal economics as a true cultural export is best exemplified with Margaret Thatcher, where it was finally able to break the hold of the local Aristocracy’s cultural product within economics.
Products & technology – Though the physical products are in large parts made in China now, American products and technology has for a long time been seen as innovative and stylish, and where notably able, has a reputation to combine both in a perfect blend. However, when it comes to digital goods American services and tech reign virtually unchallenged, accentuating American proclivity to capitalize on innovation and put their cultural stamp all over them before anyone else get the chance.
Philosophy – In line with the Damagemag article above, America has produced a lot of conceptual products and categories (which I have all lumped together as “philosophy"); liberalism, human rights, environmentalism, feminism, consumerism, objectivism, LGTBQ+, equal rights, and much more, that now reign almost unchallenged in the minds of most of the world. Even conceptual products that didn’t originate in America have been absorbed and become American cultural products.
One could keep listing examples of American cultural products for an eternity. However, I want to take this time and go into the cultural products of other countries for a moment and take a peek at how other Aristocracies attempt at making cultural products that are aesthetically attractive.
Japan:
Technology – Technological products from Japan are known as some of the most sophisticated and reliable technological products one can get.
Entertainment – While Japanese video games are known for hitting the mark and rarely misstep, it’s particularly Japanese animation that has taken the world by storm, even surpassing US animated products.
Korea:
Technology – Korean technological products have earned a similar reputation to Japanese as being sophisticated and reliable.
Entertainment – While Korean movies, series, and dramas have become more and more well-regarded, it’s particularly music that’s a successful cultural export with K-pop targeting both a Korean and international audience (in contrast to J-pop that’s mostly targeting the Japanese audience). E-sports have also become an increasingly successful cultural product, the question is whether a Korean Aristocracy will really attempt at going all-out with it, also entering mainstream consciousness.
France:
Appearance – France has for a long time been dominated by the aesthetic of ‘romance’, everything from its language to its manners and customers, to its clothes, its perfumes, make-up, apparel, etc. are all dominated by the notion that it's romantic. While the French language has fallen out of favor, it still sets the standards for what’s considered ‘gentlemanly’ and ‘ladylike’, and its vanity products have a high status that only few outside companies can match, especially its female vanity products.
Philosophy – French deconstructionist and postmodern philosophies have left, and continues to leave, a deep imprint on the world; even through Generative Anthropology today, which is the direct successor to René Girard and drawing inspiration from Jacques Derrida, being one of the main pillars of the Postliberal project (not to forget Bertrand de Jouvenel, who inspired Curtis Yarvin to write his Formalist Manifesto, who in turn inspired Chris Bond to found Neoabsolutism).
Germany:
Products – If there’s one thing Germany is known for, it’s its high-quality product, where their expensive (but not technologically very innovate) products reign on the global market. I.e. cars, household appliances, healthcare appliances, heavy machinery, as well various forms of infrastructure.
Philosophy – German philosophy has been very influential, boasting numerous greats like Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Spengler, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Gebser, Marx, Freud, and many more, as well as the various schools of economics that were also prevalent in the early 20th century. However, this is an example of an area where ground has been ceded since the 2nd world war, where the local Aristocracy stopped patronizing and pushing its own philosophical, economical, or sociological cultural products, and deferred to the Americans and French. It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean there aren’t still German philosophers (Habermas and Sloterdijk come to mind), but it’s not really pushed as a cultural product by their Aristocracy anymore.
Italy:
Food – The judge is still out for whether Italy will achieve world domination through this route, however there’s no doubt the Aristocracy tied to Italy (I say that given parts went to America but still adhered to the Italian Center for a long time) has been able to push their cuisine out on the plates of most of the world’s citizens, with food that comes across appealing through a manifold of aesthetic avenues, e.g. it looks and smells nice, it’s exotic, it’s romantic, and it’s commonly easy to make, and the ingredients are typically cheap and “just around” as well.
History – Almost all peoples, countries, and civilizations have an interesting history when you dive into it. However, few have as broadly appealing a history as Italy, where in particular the ideas and aesthetics of various periods of the Roman empire all appeal to different people still today. And if the Roman empire doesn’t interest you, Christianity and the Pope are the second big draw to Italian history. I considered adding “religion” as it’s own cultural discipline to Italy, but like philosophy to Germany, religion is more of a “has been” cultural product of Italy.
Law – This is an interesting one as it could’ve also just gone under the discipline of history. However, whereas many Roman disciplines have been completely overtaken and outcompeted by others, the Roman disciplinary space of law still dominate to this day. While there have obviously been additions and changes, what the Romans did with the disciplinary space of law was so impactful that it’s still in use today, largely intact. That’s not to say that it’s the current Italian Aristocracy pushing it today, but what the Romans did was so useful to subsequent dominant Centers that the disciplinary space of Law has needed little change since Roman times. Only the English common law system has even neared itself as being a competitive system of law.
Britain:
Philosophy and economics – There’s no doubt that British philosophers have been highly influential in the past – John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, John Maynard Keynes, and many more. However, since Thatcher surrendered Britain to American domination one final time, this area has also been completely overtaken by the Americans.
Sports – As I see it, this is the only disciplinary space that Britain still offers as a cultural product, with football (soccer) being the most popular sport in the world, followed by cricket as the second, field hockey as the third, tennis as the fifth, table tennis as the seventh, rugby as the ninth, and golf as the tenth most popular. In contrast, American sports include basketball as the fourth most popular, volleyball as the sixth most popular, baseball as the eighth most popular, and American football on a shared ninth place with rugby. As cultural products, sports have never been internationally too successful for the Americans, with things like Nascar never really making it out whereas Formula 1 is a worldwide phenomenon in motor sports, and the French Le Mans out-prestiging the otherwise historically important Daytona racetrack.
Scandinavia:
Governance and society – While the Scandinavian region boasts relatively few cultural products that it’s able to promote internationally, its governance and society has become a target for the rest of the world to achieve, which to different people mean a multitude of things – Whether it’s in general prosperity, equality, welfare system, happiness, peacefulness, high tolerance, societal cohesion, etc. And while there’s no doubt that the social democracy of particularly Scandinavia (and really all of Europe) was internally a countermeasure to avoid total domination by the Americans, the question is whether the current international promotion comes from local Aristocracies, or whether it’s actually a section of the American Aristocracy that’s promoting it for their own purpose. Personally, I lean towards the latter.
This was a non-exhaustive look at various countries and its Aristocracies, and the cultural products that they create and promote in order advance the Center-Aristocracy-Priesthood-Periphery scene they’re a part of. And while a large part lies in creating an image/brand(s), there also has to be something to it; i.e., the German Aristocracy can’t brand their products as high quality, if there’s not a something to it. Or, as Donald Trump famously said in the Art of the Deal:
You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.
So, part of doing this is in part how the scene promotes itself toward other spheres (expanding one’s own scene at the expense of others), however it’s also in part how the scene understands itself, i.e., also patronizing and promoting whatever is outwardly claimed, inwardly. Remember that the Aristocracy foremost duty (i.e. it’s most fundamental Imperative) lies in making the Imperatives/Ostensives of the Center aesthetically appealing, which is firstly an endogenous process that has to reach the far corners (alright, maybe just most) of its own dominion, before spreading outwards.
The Absence of Aristocracy
Circling back to Curtis Yarvin's article, he talks about how China’s lack of Aristocracy is preventing it from effectively expanding its reach due to having virtually no cultural products that are appealing outside its scene. This would also explain why China receives pushback on virtually everything they do now, as they have nothing that seems appealing about listening and adhering to its Imperatives/Ostensives, making it an uphill battle for China to garner sympathies for its causes (expanding its own Center-Aristocracy-Priesthood-Periphery scene). China’s technology and physical products are perceived as copies and imitations of the cultural products and achievements of others, and as shoddy low-quality imitations at that. The same goes for their entertainment that’s boring and uninspired, and also trying to imitate the aesthetics of either Japanese or Korean cultural products. And the lack of cultural products is also most likely why there’s only a paper-thin understanding inside China of who they are or should be, which in the best cases amounts to “study hard, do well in school, get a high paying job, work hard…” and that’s largely as far as it goes. Either way, China seems unable to make themselves appealing, and as Curtis Yarvin points out, that puts them at great cultural risk.
One thing I also want to note, is how during the pandemic, the importance of Taiwan for its microchip manufacturing capabilities, and the importance of Malaysia for its semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, has really come to the foreground due to the supply chain issues. And I just thought it’s curious given their importance to the world economy, how they too have no image or brand associated with them, which also suggest they have a lack of Aristocracy that creates and pushes cultural products out, despite the vital role they play in modern technology.
Conclusion
Having analyzed Curtis Yarvin model through the lens of Postliberal theory, it’s been found that it’s possible to reconcile and make his model integrate with Postliberal theory. While the two of the three parts of the model, Monarchy and Democracy, have already been elaborated upon plenty within Postliberal theory, the notion of Aristocracy has been so far been neglected, which this article has then explored and attempted to elaborate on using Postliberal theory, particularly through Generative Anthropology. After inferring from Curtis Yarvin’s writings that the Aristocracy’s main role lies in being the warden of the aesthetic and to ensure the mimetic attractiveness of the entire Center-Priesthood-Aristocracy-Periphery scene that they’re a part of, creating a sort of common image or brand(s) that the entire scene can take advantage of and benefit from. However, the most important function of doing this is first to make it inwardly appealing to listen- and adhere to the Imperatives of the Center, and only after that using these cultural products to expand to Center’s influence and reach outward into other scenes (siphoning off other Center-Aristocracy-Priesthood-Periphery scenes at their margin). Consequently, a non-exhaustive list of examples was drafted to get a sense of the scale and scope of cultural products possible.
It’s also important to note that, in the same vein our model had discounted the Aristocracy, Curtis Yarvin’s model discounts the Priesthood, which he should consider for the elaborative strength of his own model. Without further ado, I’d like to present the revised model for the chain-of-command:
The Center issues Imperatives — The Aristocracy makes the Imperatives/Ostensives appealing — The Priesthood narrate these Imperatives to their own disciplinary spaces — The Periphery attempts at carrying these Imperatives out, and if issues arise, sends feedback back toward the Center regarding the issues in carrying the Imperatives out.
And below is a model that goes into a higher resolution of one particular chain-of-command, where it’s more clearly illustrated that the Aristocracy are the “upper echelons” of disciplinary spaces proximally very close to the Center, whereas the Priesthood are the “upper echelons” of disciplinary spaces more proximally distal to the Center, who aren’t important, productive, or empowered enough to be able to carry a full on Aristocracy themselves, with its individually outstanding members only ever being priests who may at best become advisors to the Center or Aristocracy. That’s not to say they aren’t of importance, they’re crucial to keeping the disciplinary space aligned with, and loyal to, the Center.
Written by SamgyeopsalChonsa, edited by Uberover
The last couple diagrams are pretty neat. Depth into world-wide analysis was a nice touch as well. The more pervasive cultural artifacts and manufacturing techniques we see throughout older cultures really are heavily juxtoposed with modernities varied approaches.
It reminds me of when Gans talks about verbals and the imperative. Where we really don't get this true delineation between agent, command and object until the declarative mode. A lot of disciplinarian narrative and language seems to stem as a "waiting" place holder between the actual, relative aesthetics/commands provided by aristocratic agents. Maybe most of this "radicalism" the media talks about is just a tribal extension of un-creative, lousy aristocratic imperatives.
nAnyways, good article. I enjoyed reading it.
A lot to think about here.