THE RISE OF THEOCRATIC CENTRISM
Just as
philosophy, fiction, and poetry are three branches of literature corresponding,
one could argue, to three parallel spectra; and sculpture, painting, and
drawing are three branches of art likewise corresponding to three parallel
spectra; and ballet, the symphony, and the concerto are three branches of
classical music whose correspondence to three parallel spectra is no less
evident, so authoritarianism, parliamentarianism, and totalitarianism are three
branches of politics, as different from each other as any of the above-named
branches but, nevertheless, related by a common family tie, so to speak, to
political evolution. To return to our
spectrum analogy, one could speak of authoritarianism as autocratic,
parliamentarianism as democratic, and totalitarianism as theocratic,
indicative, in their different ways, of a progression from the Father to the
Holy Spirit via the Son. Politics and
religion are not entirely separate, as might at first appear to be the case,
but are really two aspects of the same thing, politics being the practical
application of a religious premise, the ordering of human society according to
the criteria of religious precedent.
Thus in its first, or royalist, stage of
evolution, politics is autocratic, reflecting the 'divine order' of the Creator
and His 'fallen angels', establishing on earth an equivalent to the
galactic-world-order, in which the monarch functions as the human equivalent of
the central star of the Galaxy and thereby rules over both a nobility,
corresponding to peripheral stars, and a populace, corresponding to planets,
who are enslaved to monarch and nobility alike, owing allegiance to both,
though particularly to the feudal baron, lord, or whatever, who directly rules
over them and thus holds them within a solar system-like integrity. He comes in-between the peasantry and their
monarch, free to rule the former as he thinks fit but owing direct allegiance
to the latter, who rules by 'divine right', the personification on earth of the
Creator, less truly divine, in any objectively omega-oriented (free-electron)
sense, than archdiabolic, a more powerful ruler than
the myriads of nobles who only correspond to minor stars, devil equivalents vis-ŕ-vis
a demonic populace.
We see this same so-called 'divine order'
at work in trees, where a trunk, corresponding to central star/monarch, is
served by the branches, corresponding to peripheral stars/nobility, which in
turn are served by the leaves, those planet/peasant equivalents which have no
option but to slave for their differently-constituted masters, providing them
with the nourishment they require to survive.
A pedant could argue as to the exact solar/noble status of any given
branch in the overall feudal hierarchy of a tree, but we need not go into such
trifling details here! Suffice it to say
that most of the larger branches would be equivalent to high-ranking nobles
such as dukes and princes, most of the smaller ones, or those not immediately
stemming from the trunk, equivalent to low-ranking nobles such as viscounts and
barons. The eventual grading of nobles
along more complex and variegated lines was a development presupposing a higher
degree of civilization ... commensurate with a more advanced age, as the
monarch moved out of his castle into a palace, and the lesser royals and/or
nobility in general moved from their forts, or small castles, into country
houses, or small palaces. In a strictly
pagan society, this wouldn't have been possible or, indeed, credible. But with the rise of the Christian
bourgeoisie and the development of parliamentarianism at the expense of
authoritarianism, the status of the feudal classes was irrevocably changed, so
their freedom to rule in an autocratic manner was curbed, the monarchy in due
course becoming subject to greater constitutional constraint.
The emergence of parliamentarianism as a
compromise, in effect, between authoritarianism and totalitarianism, the Father
and the Holy Ghost, marked a shift from pseudo-pagan to properly Christian
criteria, as democracy, in large measure derived from Protestant teachings as
to human equality, supplanted autocracy, and the age of dualism, necessarily
hostile to autocratic Roman Catholicism, was ushered in, placing due emphasis
on compromise between disparate (in the main) bourgeois interests, and
upholding the ethic of self-enrichment through hard work. Indeed, democracy was quintessentially
ethical, concerned with the general good, usually interpreted in a commercial
or utilitarian way, and thus was committed to human freedom, freedom, above
all, from autocratic tyranny in order to pursue the Good rather than remain
enslaved, as with feudal societies, to the Strong, whether natural or 'divine'.
Inevitably, democracy gave rise to
industry and furthered the growth of urbanization, which, at first, was highly
ugly. Centred in the ethics of equality
and a faith in the ability of human effort to overcome natural obstacles, it necessarily
favoured the artificial, one might even say the transcendental; though the
theory and practical implementation of Christian teachings weren't always
consonant, the industrious bourgeois rarely averse to putting practice above
theory, private enrichment before the general good, and to an extent that the
former tended to eclipse the latter, making for a society where the toiling
masses, far from sharing in the general wealth, were exploited and oppressed by
their industrial masters to a degree not far short of the exploitation and
oppression experienced by peasants in the age of feudal enslavement.
The bourgeoisie may have acknowledged a
transcendental perspective, relative to Protestantism, but they remained firmly
rooted in the mundane and were, to a degree, sympathetic towards feudal precedent. There was no moral rebirth with them, no
clean break with the past, since capitalism is ever a mode of industrial
feudalism, an artificial as opposed to a natural form of exploitation. Just as Christ acknowledged the Father, so
parliamentarians acknowledge royals, democracy being a kind of diluted
autocracy, the bourgeoisie sharing power with the aristocracy, as symbolized by
the distinction in England between the House of Commons and the House of Lords,
the bourgeoisie themselves divisible between capitalist and socialist
interests, not to mention different shades of capitalism, as in the heyday of
Tory/Liberal confrontation in Victorian times.
As in Christ, so in parliamentarianism, everything must be divided,
divisible, and divisive! Compromise is
taken for the norm and, indeed, transformed into an ideal, not simply regarded
as the best way of dealing with divisions but considered sacrosanct in itself -
valid for all time!
Well, those who, as Bolshevik-styled
communists, signify an extension of democracy into absolute channels ... don't
think so, even though they pertain to the democratic spectrum and are
themselves materialists, concerned with the ethical application to society of a
proletarian humanism based on the teachings of Karl Marx, whose Communism is to
pseudo-democracy what Protestantism was to democracy proper - namely the
theoretical foundation for political action, Marx following on behind Christ as
the Anti-Christ, state socialism no less anti-democratic, in the bourgeois
atomic sense, than capitalism was pro-democratic, the means, one feels, to the
overthrow of liberal democracy.
Yet not, on that account, the means to
Transcendentalism, which appertains to the third and highest spectrum, the
theocratic spectrum, as one that would seem to have played only a very
secondary role throughout the age of parliamentarianism, theoretical influence
notwithstanding, and only began to take an independent line with the rise of
Fascism, an ideology biased towards Roman Catholicism but revolutionary and
independent enough to signify, in the person of the Leader, a crude
approximation to the Second Coming, the basis of a genuinely theocratic society
in which religion becomes absolute, if on terms diametrically antithetical to
the absolutism of its inception in various degrees and kinds of
Creator-worship. Does not the leader of
a fascist state personify divinity on terms the converse of the God-Kings of
pagan antiquity?
Certainly, one would be hard-pressed to deny
the divine status of the Leader in a fascist society, even if, in the
late-stage petty-bourgeois context to which we are of course alluding, this
status is less than a truly objective intimation of the Holy Ghost and more
like a representation of the Father, given its quasi-autocratic
implications. But fascism and royalism are really antithetical, and if sovereignty is
vested in the Monarch in an autocratic society, the ruler equivalent to the
Father there, then it is most assuredly vested in the Leader in a theocratic
society, who becomes the personification of the Holy Spirit, the leading
embodiment of truth, an intimation of ultimate divinity. Only in a democratic society is sovereignty
vested in the People, who are entitled to elect representatives to parliament
who govern and/or serve on their behalf.
In
Early in the twentieth century, however, a
further, even more radical example of the same kind of revolution occurred in
Russia and, bearing in mind the progress of history towards an absolute age, it
resulted in the eventual emergence of a People’s republic, necessarily
proletarian in character and therefore beyond the bourgeois compromise of the
French Revolution. Beyond a Soviet-type
revolution history cannot go on the middle, or democratic, spectrum,
pseudo-democracy being the ultimate form of democracy, where sovereignty is
vested in the proletariat and a sort of dictatorial democracy ... of the
proletariat ... prevails, the antithetical equivalent to the democratic
dictatorship of the Cromwellian revolution. The only way forward after this is Fascism
and its ideological successor in Social Transcendentalism, but this pertains to
the top, or theocratic, spectrum and can only be hostile towards republicans of
whatever degree, as sovereignty is vested in the Leader, who becomes dictator
to the masses, a no-less absolute figure than the autocratic monarch of
royalist times, because equivalent to God.
Thus a totalitarian society is inevitably
anti-republican and anti-democratic, the Leader alone responsible for
determining the course of evolution, and thereby leading from above, pulling
the masses after him towards the post-Human Millennium, that stage in time when
man will have been completely overcome and only the Supermen prevail, in the
guise of brain collectivizations artificially
supported and sustained, though not without human supervision and assistance
from qualified technicians. Only in the
second phase of this post-Human Millennium, when the old brain has been
surgically removed from each Superman, would such technicians become
superfluous, as the truly classless, free society of the Superbeings,
or new-brain collectivizations, hypermeditated
towards transcendence and thus the attainment of pure spirit (free electrons)
to the post-Millennial Beyond.
All this is, of course, pertinent to
Social Transcendentalism and therefore to the ideology propounded by the
closest approximation on earth to the Second Coming. If Fascism was petty bourgeois in character,
the crude beginnings of a theocratic society, then Social Transcendentalism is
proletarian and, hence, absolute, the more objective ideology of the Second
Coming for a post-democratic age, an age when real progress towards the
post-Human Millennium can be made, as Social Transcendentalism strives to
extend the top spectrum towards a theocratic absolutism, and thereby paves the
way for universal civilization.
Pertaining to the tail-end of the middle
spectrum, Communism simply isn't qualified to further progress towards the
post-Human Millennium. Its concept of Millenniumism is necessarily subjective, envisaging not the
supersession of men by post-human life forms, but a
kind of global equalitarian society based on the ethics of proletarian
humanism. In short, it lacks a capacity
for truth, being an extension of ethics beyond bourgeois relativity to a kind
of proletarian absolutism germane to People’s democracy. But such a relatively absolute phase of democracy
cannot stretch into a genuinely proletarian age. There is only one way forward, and that is
through Social Transcendentalism. For it is only the last stretch of the top spectrum which is truly
absolute in character. The age of
People’s republics, no less than that of bourgeois republics, will soon be a
thing of the past. Tomorrow belongs to
us!
London 1979–84 (Revised 2012)
