This is a brilliant, though typical, instance of how an intellectual can so intellectualize something toward its then obviously becoming a rather gross absurdity of the highest order; he was and remains, in at least the opinion of some, an overrated thinker. But, going directly back to the important matter, what about constitutional rights?

Constitutionally speaking, those rights explicitly listed in the US Constitution, meaning inclusive of the first Ten Amendments, called the Bill of Rights, are the enumerated and catalogued civil liberties of the citizens of this country. Thus, for instance, the First Amendment includes “the right of the people peaceably to assemble…” But, rationally speaking, all stated civil liberties become and remain impossible to actually exercise (remain merely theoretical in nature) unless they do exist with allied civil rights.

For each civil liberty, therefore, there must then exist a cognate and reciprocal civil right that empirically and functionally enables the free exercise of that civil liberty. One interestingly sees that such politically complementary functionality must logically occur if freedom and liberty are to be genuinely maintained, not just abstractly assumed or merely posited through a legal positivism of some kind.

If the civil right of freedom of association did not exist, then any supposed freedom of assembly would be purely theoretical and not factual as to being politically a concrete reality. Why? It is empirically, existentially, and politically impossible to assemble, for instance, without necessarily associating in the very act of doing or attempting the assembling. Picture a simple and appropriate classroom exercise for students in a civics or government class.

Tell one student to go to the back of the room, tell another to go to the doorway, and tell yet another to, perhaps, stand up at the front of the same room. Then, give the announcement that these three people, at the count of three, are to then assemble – but must not ever associate with one another in this same process of freely assembling together. Of course, it cannot be done.

None of the students would be able to so physically meet with, associate with, the others. And, about this cited matter, Nisbet was, thus, simply being intellectually idiotic, which was his neoconservative privilege. What is the greater meaning, however, of this plain yet fairly evocative illustration?

Freedom of assembly must, of logical and political necessity, be completely united with the freedom of association; this is so that both can then requisitely create, therefore, the needed composite situation of assembling and associating, as the civil liberty cited can be exercised through the civil right that supports its proper and legal, constitutional, existence.
In notable historical support of this assertion, e.g., the Constitution of the formerly (or, is it presently?) existing Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (AKA Russia) had among the greatest listing of constitutional civil liberties in it of any modern state; but, a Soviet citizen, especially under Stalin, could have been easily killed, in fact, for trying to effectuate any civil right for the proposed sake of attaining the actual exercise of a Soviet, constitutional, civil liberty. Q. E. D.

If the Obama Administration, for instance, should obnoxiously help push through the Democratic Party-controlled US Congress some version of the Orwellian-named “Fairness Doctrine” for talk radio, the above discussion may not, however, prove to be just so airily theoretical. Freedom of speech is truly wonderful- if one is permitted to hear it.
Under the suitably unctuous guise of, thus, promoting some supposed fairness, there comes into being, sooner or later, public censorship of the most effective and insidious kind, the censorship of silence; it will be then effectively sustained, by the government, in the ironic name of aiding an interpretation of assumed “fairness” done on behalf of the American (or, is it Soviet?) people. Political opposition, once loud and large on the radio, will be increasingly deflected and dulled, modified and milked, through the creative absence of speech, as maintained by quotas, “balance,” or other such interesting Machiavellian devices.

Paper guarantees of rights, it can be noted, are meaningless; this is whenever the free exercise of those rights are or become so constrained, restricted, or qualified as to be then practically unobtainable, in the real world of men and events. And, this can be still said, in all fairness, to the highly important subject now at hand. In any event, freedom (whether interpreted through civil liberties or civil rights) isn’t free.

Caste, Class, and Social Estate: Explanations

A caste-based society means that people are thought to be naturally born into their social condition based upon their accident of birth and having pre-assigned social roles; thus, rich Brahmans, to simply an illustration, beget only other Brahmans; everyone is automatically or by custom expected to forever remain only within their birth caste, including the pariahs and, slightly above them, the untouchables, as with the famous case-in-point of India [now with its first lunar probe, of course].

Although wealth is a clear feature, however, an impoverished Brahmin still retains his caste importance regardless. [Note: For the sake of extreme brevity, various detailed exceptional circumstances within these three cited types will not, however, be covered since they are not part of the norm considered as such.]

A class-based society assumes some or, perhaps, much regular fluidity of the normally wide range of classes, so that entrance into or out of one class is held to be possible and, sometimes, even greatly encouraged. With increasing money, people can usually rise from one class to another and, with a decrease of money, can also, therefore, fall from a higher into a lower strata; birth status alone is not supposed to be relevant and there are usually no pre-assigned social roles.

Within the broad class structure, the radical bourgeoisie, though mostly found among the really wealthy people and not being of the supposed “middle classes,” have been the most successful. Status, as a feature, almost always depends upon the income level or wealth of the person in question, with exceptions, e.g., for such people as clergy who may take vows of poverty.

A society of social estates would most likely be that of, e.g., Medieval Europe with its three basic divisions as to the composition of the social order: clergy, aristocracy, and commoners; all were thought to have pre-assigned social roles as to their proper and permanent functions in society, usually reduced to a more ancient dividing up of traditional roles into priest, soldier, and peasant.

There was some possible social fluidity in that, for instance, a peasant’s son could end up becoming a powerful bishop or pope; but, generally speaking, each person was normally expected to want to stay within his social estate nor was this ranking destroyed even by the possible impoverishment of a noble personage; the ranking remained, though actual status evaluations may not always hold in empirical practice as compared to pure theory.

But, what does all of the above have to do with social-class analysis thinking? In the Western world, since, for instance, the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, all modernizing and modern societies have tended, increasingly, to become class-based societies; this includes, regardless of propaganda to the contrary, Communist societies of the 20th century and later.

Rightwing Social-Class Analysis: Vindicated

To take a discordant example, Robert Nisbet, a deceased, neoconservative sociologist of about a generation ago, had said that because Marxist class analysis was all wrong, then, therefore, there could be no genuine existence of class- analysis considerations to be made. Nisbet, who had defined his peculiar brand of conservatism as demanding that abortion be favored by all true conservatives, committed the error in logic known as the fallacy of composition.

He further defined America, moreover, as being, in fact, a completely classless society; this was because, basically, of there being no native aristocracy and an assumed absolute fluidity of what would normally be seen as class positions up and down the entire social strata to be observed; yet, the discussion presented here will reasonably dispute and readily refute such a contention as the denying of the possibility of there being in existence, a class-based society in this nation.

His incorrect ratiocination was that entirely all such societal criticism could only be, by supposed definition, of the Marxian or Marxist-Leninist persuasion, then its complete invalidation as ideological nonsense, thus, makes any other and, moreover, all other analyses of such a nature totally intellectually bankrupt and worthless as such.

This then is the point being completely denied emphatically by the thinking of the traditionalist right, which ought not to be ever confused with American conservatism since, as C.N.R. McCoy and others had quite rigorously demonstrated, the latter is actually just a kind of Liberalism in disguise.

Long before Marx was even born, however, many thinkers on the political right had, in fact, created the social-class analysis mode of thought as a truly valid philosophical and political consideration concerning societal and related reality. Some history is needed for the requisite extrapolation and expostulation. As an example, Fray Juan de Mariana, back in the late 16th and early 17th century, had noted carefully how the insurgent bourgeoisie, with their rising money power, eagerly wished to have their way by displacing the older sense of a society composed of social estates.

Equally, he had rightly defended medieval-style decentralization against the centralizing and, thus, power-hungry attitudes of the aspiring nation-states of Europe whose monarchies were often supported, e.g., by the bourgeois elements usually against the interests of the aristocracy and/or clergy.

People would find it hard to believe today; but, often the bourgeoisie, the higher level of commoners, would even fight for the privilege of being taxed, so that they could get some political ascendency under a monarchy rather than to remain situationally voiceless within the realm; they sought to share in the political power that was being gained increasingly by the monarchs of those rising nation-states.

As Nathaniel Weyl, in his research on this subject, and others have properly noted, Marx heavily borrowed and adapted his social-class analysis directly from rightwing authors he had read but, ultimately speaking in ideological terms, had then claimed all such “Marxist” thinking as being really originated by him alone; of course, he deliberately had warped, distorted and twisted such cognition to fit and shape his Procrustean points of view about social classes by illegitimately inverting the Hegelian dialectic.

Therefore, there has been and remains a perfectly valid and enduring, rightwing social-class analysis, contrary to Nisbet and others, which can be still actually applied to American society or any other major social reality, country, in the entire world. And, this critical thinking has many important and illuminating consequences.

The power structure in America, regardless of events such as Obama’s election, remains what the predominant majority is in terms of its being the upper-class, WASP, and mainly hereditary hierarchy seen in such existing groups as, e.g., the Society of the Cincinnati, New Jersey Proprietors, and other such elite associations going back to the Colonial Era.

However, few Americans, in general, even know about the existence of the Society of the Cincinnati whose membership included none other than George Washington and others of the Revolutionary War Era leadership who wanted a continuing, private, and exclusive institution to permanently secure their attained heritage and, of course, domestic power in America.

The same number, as above, of relatively few people in this country would also be aware of the New Jersey Proprietors going back to when the colony was once divided into an East Jersey and West Jersey; the Proprietors wanted and still want to ensure that their property and related rights and privileges would be always perpetuated into the far future. Such WASP groups jealously guard their continuing existences and influence, as is to be logically expected, that extends far and wide beyond the immediate exclusive membership and its many secured privileges and advantages.

Thus, national and statewide elections, for instance, are just so much window dressing to amuse the bemused masses and middle-class constituencies who think that they are, supposedly, in charge of the republic and its affairs. Actually, the power structure only permits certain people at certain times to do various things that are allowed or permitted for them to do as long as they are, ultimately, functionally obedient to their masters.

A clever charade is conducted for benefit of public show. Thus, the deluded people are lead to believe, for instance, that it was really with the very best of liberal-left intentions that civil-rights legislation, affirmative action, forced busing, racial engineering, sex/gender equity, homosexual liberation, etc. was pushed through in the mid to late 20th century.

In essence, however, nothing could be further from the actual truth. The assumed beautiful image of an America so warmly dedicated to increasing equality and justice, ideological radicalization, hides the actual ugly reality. What really had occurred, in fact, that few, if any, historians are willing to ever honestly write about?

Surge of the White Ethnics: Cleverly Crushed

In the late 19th and, especially, in the early 20th century, the Eugenics Movement, supported by such prominent people as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, etc., sought many various ways and means to justify “scientifically” their racism. Consequently, eugenics legislation, in America and Europe, for instance, widely aided in the forced sterilization of those “defective” people deemed simply unfit to breed.

The ideological arrival of Nazism, fortunately, had ended up making eugenics (or, at least, the term) almost forever both morally disreputable and rightly detestable, though advanced countries still today widely practice abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, which are, in fact, disgustingly sanctioned – encouragingly, they would say – by all truly progressive eugenicists, of course.

During the 1910s, 1920s, and into the 1930s at the latest, it was fundamentally realized by the upper-class, WASP power structure that the ethnic White people, especially Roman Catholics, who had immigrated to this country in the 19th and early 20th centuries, were going, through their many descendants, to compete successfully with the elites in social, economic, and political ways; this pertains mainly to the efforts to reach the top 5% of the social pyramid (that, of course, exists in all advanced societies in the entire world, as to this so noted predominant social structuring).

Too many of these “disgusting” and “vile” ethnics, it was felt, would logically end up soon having too great an access to the possible chances to exercise real power, in this nation, for generations to come. Something, from the point of view of the elites, had to be realistically done to stop this from ever happening; and, therefore, through the observed social-class analysis rendered, the elites succeeded to a truly advanced degree of both notable and, moreover, highly sustainable success.

The second overt act in this broad and interrelated drama was the creation of the immigration laws and regulations of the 1920s followed, later, by the then much-radicalized immigration legislation of the 1960s. In addition, moreover, other and much more effective barriers to admittance, to the top of the social pyramid, had to be artfully raised against the ethnic “trash,” meaning their children, grandchildren, etc.

This was to be rather skillfully done, in a clearly Machiavellian manner, by using non-Whites and women as the ideological means of easily blocking any possible large-scale insurgency and cognate, attempted, grand-scale socioeconomic and political ascendancy in America by the White ethnics, predominantly meaning the men; admittance, therefore, to that crucial top 5% of actual power-holder positions would be, increasingly, denied hypocritically to the vast majority of these scorned and despised ethnics.

This has been done through the aforementioned use of civil-rights legislation, affirmative action, forced busing, racial engineering, sex/gender equity, homosexual liberation, etc. to help divide and conquer Americans by, first, pitting them against each other and then against the non-Whites; second, these seemingly selfless and humanitarian or altruistic actions, by supposedly benevolent and well intentioned moderates, liberals, and leftists, have had the intended result of successfully holding back and down any possible rise of the vast bulk of ethnic White males to positions of top power.

The Unjust Realty behind the Radicalization of American Society and Culture

Some White ethnics, usually women, have succeeded, of course, but only to the extent that they can functionally obey the limitations and restrictions set upon them, meaning to play, in effect, their assigned roles as suitable token successes, in the true form of tokenism, that exists in this country. It can be said, nonetheless, that, yes, some of those ideologically committed to the radicalization agenda had and have idealistic motives; but, the point actually being critically made ought not to be here simply obscured.

The upper-class, WASP power structure had orchestrated what had occurred, in all of its main, important essentials and cognate aspects, from beginning to end, which is part of the hidden history of 20th century America not to be found in any (mainstream) textbooks at schools, colleges or universities. But, no conspiracy theory is ever being advanced here, simply an acknowledgement that people in power will act on behalf of their own self-interests, at least most the time and, sometimes, more so, if felt to be needed.

In sociological language, it can be usefully stated, there is the interesting and critical distinction between what is called the “manifest” reality as to what can be readily observed on the surface versus the “latent” reality of what actually is the case in practice that is not (or is only rarely easily) seen below the surface.

What is seen so very obviously on the exposed face is the manifest result of the counterculture of the 1960s being transformed into today’s mainstream culture, along with claims to civil-rights improvements; the latent situation, however, is the rather harsh reality that the power structure has contrived, successfully, to help insure its iniquitous power to vilely exist and still, moreover, thrive through the political institutionalization of massive injustice against ethnic White males.

Condemnation of Radical Bourgeois Power

And, this rotten aspect of latent reality will, in fact, necessarily intensify under an Obama Administration dedicated to affirming the existent power structure of this country, though, of course, supposedly representing its opposite as part of the aforementioned charade. So, what is ultimately being considered? The radical bourgeoisie, which really is part and parcel of the ideological composition of the elites running the nation as such, have been denounced by the traditionalist right long before any modern leftists had appeared, as starting in the late 18th century.

Bourgeois power and its economistic value system were despised and rejected by those who adhere to traditional rightwing thought because of the simultaneous rejection of both Liberalism and Leftism as clearly and unmistakably bourgeois ideologies. What is rejected includes both the old or classical Liberalism, now known as Libertarianism (individualism), as well as the new Liberalism of Socialism (collectivism) by whatever name. The two extremes of individualism and collectivism, Capitalism and Communism, are, thus, completely detested as being both highly immoral and intellectually inadequate at a minimum.

The masses, e.g., are not ever the ones who think up and theorize about revolutions; radical bourgeois swine such as was Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. claim to support the proletarians for supposedly working-class revolutionary reasons; but, all such totally phony attempts at workers utopias end up with Communist Party elites, parts of the new power structure, running the actual State establishments. There is, therefore, no ideologically supposed “withering away of the State” as Marx, the utopian socialist, had stupidly dreamed it would somehow or someday occur.

All modern, industrialized, advanced societies must necessarily exist as class-based societies whenever a spoils system exists, as it does, e.g., in America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and elsewhere; and, this is why, in fact, Capitalism and Communism are the two sides of the same coin of modernity, meaning the worship of secular-oriented power on earth dedicated to the materialistic/naturalistic and nihilistic point of view, which is, decidedly, only anthropocentric, not theocentric in outlook.

The secularization of all of reality, thought, art, culture, etc. is the common goal of modernity, which ought not to be confused with talk about the modern age itself, commencing in about, say, the 16th century. Modernity, rightly comprehended as such, encompasses not a chronological aspect but, instead, the clearly nominalistic ideologies that fully support it: Communism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Nazism, Fascism, Anarchism, Feminism, Capitalism, Socialism, etc. The bourgeoisie, of course, has been, as Marx himself noted in The Communist Manifesto no less, the principal class, the primary beneficiary, that has significantly promoted and grandly benefited most from both the cause and course of modernity.

But, the precise understanding of the bourgeoisie ought not to be ever simplistically confused and confounded with a basic middle-class or the middling classes as such within any society; with the decline and eventual defeat of the aristocratic orders of society, the radical elements of the bourgeoisie, as during the French Revolutions, Russian Revolution, etc. sought to take power into their own hands; these are what, thus, definitionally exist as the radical bourgeoisie who end up running countries, not really just the plain or common understanding of a middle class being within a given population of a country.

But, among other things, the bourgeois radicals are not without their own sense of “religion.” The worship of Wall Street, after all, is a vital part of religious practice for the money power that thinks it has, therefore, earned the absolute right to exercise rulership; this is historically because of its economic power over a nation, not by tradition, military prowess, custom, or other older reasons, for achieving and sustaining political dominion.

The various adherents of modernity and modernity’s efforts self-justify their own legitimacy to themselves and, thus, toward any possible opposition; as, for instance, one of, e.g., modern democracy’s contemporary, prominent cheerleaders, Francis Fukuyama, would logically agree.

Conclusion: Bourgeois Power Triumphant

And, this is a significant part of the rightist social-class analysis, seen in the past, now, and in the future, that exists according to the thinking of the traditionalist right in permanent philosophical opposition, e.g., to the Liberalism represented by American conservatism and neoconservatism (read for the latter: neosocialism).

Therefore, in conclusion, America is not, in fact, a classless society (and never will be such) but, rather, a manifestly class-based society run by the (radical) bourgeoisie and always, let it be known, for their main benefit, not for the middle classes, the working class, or, need it be said, the poor.