> --- On Wed, 7/1/09, Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:>
>
>> Part of the anticapitalist intelligensia since the
>> Industrial Revolution has
>> always had a soft spot for the peasantry and a particular
>> contempt for the
>> bourgeoisie in the cities, including those most like
>> themselves. They have
>> idealized rather than lamented "the idiocy of rural life",
>> and identified
>> the cities with capitalism and liberal individualism. Where
>> you stand on the
>> recent elections turns, IMO, on whether you primarily view
>> the Islamic
>> regime and Ahmadinejad government as representing rural
>> backwardness at it's
>> worst - superstitious, ignorant, patriarchal,
>> authoritarian, and cruel - or
>> as representing traditional "populist" values, and as being
>> on the front
>> line against US imperialism. It has combined all of these
>> elements.
>>
>
[WS:] An excellent point, indeed. Similar reactions could be observed
toward the murderous regime of Pol Pot and his ruralist utopia, and also Mao
Tse tung and his lip service to the rural way of life.
MG: Yes, and even in advanced capitalist countries, there is still a divide separating the major urban centres which support liberal and social democratic parties from the surrounding suburban and rural hinterlands which have historically provided a (diminishing) base for the conservative parties. Look at the electoral map in the US, for example. Bush and the neocons' conspicuous embrace and articulation of white redneck culture alienated non-whites and liberal intellectuals in the more cosmopolitan cities as much or more as did their disasterous foreign and domestic policies.
[WS:]Barrington Moore coined the term "catonism" to denote the lip service to "peasant values and way of life threatened by modern decadence" paid by the most reactionary elements of society (landowners) in times of systemic transformation or modernization of the economy..."catonist" sentiments by anti-capitalist intelligentsia is more difficult to understand...I can think of two possible explanations. One is based on the 'social origins' of the intelligentsia or its part...The other explanation is based on the notion of the intelligentsia as producers of intellectual commodity for the market. If the supply of such producers increases (e.g. as a result of access to higher education) , this will likely result in an increase of competition among these producers. In a highly competitive environment, such producers will likely use marketing gimmicks used by producers of any other commodity - such as niche seeking. However, since most niches are already "claimed" by some producers, the trick is to break into a niche by delegitimating other producers occupying that niche and establishing oneself as a chief supplier of the intellectual commodity demanded in that niche.
MG: Good point about fierce competition in the marketplace of ideas in the conditions of surplus you describe, to which the left is not immune. The nostalgia for rural society and the simple, communal, pastoral life it was seen to represent predates mass education, however, and seems to me to have been essentially a reaction to the growth of industry and cities, seen as the habitat of rapacious and unscrupulous capitalists and their commercial values. This attitude was especially pronounced among young hippies, anarchists, and third worldists in the 60's, and remains a thread on the contemporary left. Romantic aesthetes and anticapitalist intellectuals on the right have also recoiled from urban slums teeming with vagrants, immigrants, crime, and disease, and "cosmopolitan" radicals taking aim at the patriotic and religious traditions and institutions of the host culture.