The New Calvinists

In October 2017, I wrote a post called The New Puritans about the destruction of a statue of Athena by the unwashed barbarians of ISIS. This was based on my belief that modern Islamists are exactly the same as the ignorant zealots who did so much to undermine the later Roman Empire. It is also my firm belief that the modern West is not based on so-called ‘Judeo-Christian’ values but on the rational inheritance of Classical Greece and Rome.

Developing this theme, I would argue that today’s Brahmin ‘left’ are the Calvinists of our times.

FYI – the subtitle for this post comes from John Lennon’s song Working Class Hero. And remember, the ruling class, the Establishment, really do hate and despise you.

John Calvin was a sixteenth-century theologian and contemporary of Martin Luther. Luther and his followers in the Reformation believed in the concept of grace – that all that was necessary to be saved was to have faith in Jesus Christ. In contrast, Calvin developed the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God and predestination – that God had already chosen who was to be saved. This is similar to the Arabic phrase Inshallah which means ‘God willing’; in both Calvinism and Islam nothing happens by chance and God has already decided everything in advance. Anyone who studied Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible at school will know about the religious elite that dominated colonial New England were convinced that they were ‘the Elect’ of God and of their own rectitude. Tell me this doesn’t remind you of the sneering classes who dominate politics, the media and culture in the modern West.

I got the phrase “the Brahmin left” from David Goodhart’s new book Head Hand Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century (I have put the word ‘left’ in inverted commas because I do not consider these people to be left-wing but more akin to a religious cult). Goodhart makes the distinction between Head work (eg: IT consultants, bankers), Hand work (bricklayers, lorry drivers) and Heart work (nurses, nursery school teachers). He argues that over the past couple of generations, Western society has become dominated by a “cognitive elite” in Head jobs. And it is not just about money but esteem – all the status in the West is about Head jobs and Hand and Heart jobs are looked down on, sometimes actively despised.

‘Twas ever thus. My late grandfather (died 1971) was an engineer, a lifelong trade unionist and, according to my mother, a borderline Communist. Apparently he used to rail against Harold Wilson in the 1960s for not being left-wing enough; Christ only knows what he would make of the Widow Twanky in charge of the Labour Party today. The point is that he used to be outraged by the contempt with which he was treated by management and office staff because he wore a boiler suit and got his hands dirty. This was a man who had completed a five-year engineering apprenticeship and was actually involved in the real business of the companies he worked for rather than sitting in an office all day playing with pieces of paper.

A confession. I am an archetypal Head worker who succeeded in the education system. But education in England and in Australia has increasingly forced all pupils into a single academic pathway that is probably only suitable for about a third of them. I won the prize for the best academic results at the very ordinary state school I attended in the early 1980s and I gained nine O Levels. By the end of the 1990s, as a teacher in London, children of average or even below average ability were being forced to study ten GCSEs. In Australia, a new, highly academic curriculum has been introduced that effectively excludes more than half the students; this is a real problem in the industrial town where I live as it is crying out for skilled tradespeople.

Goodhart’s “cognitive elite” appear to believe that they are living in Plato’s epistocracy (rule by the wise) but are in fact more of a kakistocracy (rule by the least fit). It is interesting how many on the so-called ‘left’ want to be ruled by experts – the sort of experts who brought you the invasion of Iraq, the financial crash of 2008-9 and the endless austerity of the past ten years. And Plato’s Republic used to be considered a rather right-wing idea, even proto-fascist, rather than left-wing. A bit like supporting the brutal capitalists of the neoliberal European Union has become a ‘left-wing’ position. Ho hum.

This worship of experts by the smug Brahmin ‘left’ has increasingly moved many questions away from democratic scrutiny. An obvious example is interest rates. It was that well-known far right ideologue Gordon Brown who made the Bank of England independent. And by removing so many areas from the democratic arena, aren’t you encouraging opponents of, say, neoliberal economics and inflation-targeting to oppose the whole system in the West not individual polices? What we need is not less democracy but more.

As well as more democracy, what the modern West needs is more diversity. Not the sort of diversity of skin colour, sex or sexuality favoured by our neoliberal overlords but diversity of life experience. Wouldn’t it be better if more MPs had worked in Hand or heart jobs rather than coming off a conveyor belt of private school, PPE at Oxford and the party bureaucracy? A whole squadron of pigs just flew past as I wrote those words.

In recent years, particularly since the twin ‘shocks’ of Brexit and Trump in 2016, the word ‘populism’ has been used as a pejorative. In Latin, the ‘populus’ are the people (‘demos’ in Greek). Do our lords and masters really prefer to be ruled by the ‘optimates,’ ‘the best’ (pfft) instead? And who are ‘the best’ anyway? Lawyers? Give me a break. Lawyers are a prime example of Head workers. Their job, simply put, is to talk. And, frankly, much talk by lawyers is garbage – deliberate, mendacious garbage. Tony Blair, Emily Thornberry, David Lammy, Keir Starmer – all lawyers, all arrogant elitists, all full of garbage. To them I would simply say: can you fix a toilet? Service an engine? Fit a solar energy system? Help an old person wash with dignity? Teach a child to read? No? So why should you and your ilk rule in place of the sort of people who do real jobs in the real world?