12. The Peasant Mentality
or, Out of Sight, Out of Mind
“Where there is no vision, the people perish…”
– Book of Proverbs, 29:18
Messenger: “The peasants are revolting!”
King: “You can say that again.”
– The Wizard of Id Book 3
The peasantry, the masses, the commoners, the multitude, the lower class: these are the majority of any society. They are the ones who gather the bounty of the earth, work in the factories, build what is required, serve where needed – that is, they produce the elemental necessities upon which the structure of society is raised (and would collapse without). How they go about this varies in accordance with their time and place; hunter-gatherers forage in their habitat, farmers till the soil, workers labor in their industry, and so it is that the habitat, the soil, or the industry becomes all-important for each, as the support for their way of life.
But whatever way of life they follow, one characteristic is shared by all the common people: that most of their attention is fixed on what is immediately about them – with little for whatever might lie beyond, and that little mostly devoted to diversions and esoteric beliefs. After all, this is natural, for the business of life concentrates attention on its most urgent requirements (after which diversions are welcome). In fact, for the hunter-gatherers who constituted the entire population of the world for many tens of thousands of years, this attention to the immediate was simply a fact of life rather than a problem, for the immediate society around them was their whole society. But then, as the size of society soared with the advent of agriculture and industry, facts beyond the immediate – a need for technical knowledge, and for management of relations between unfamiliar individuals, organized groups, and other societies – became essential to the very existence of society. Such facts were attended to by certain persons, who came to follow occupations of specialized skill, who accumulated wealth, and who advanced themselves to positions of power, where they directed the enforcement of civil order, the organization of the economy, the making of war … and also aggrandized themselves. In other words, such individuals became elites.
So, then and now, the common people occupy themselves with the immediate demands of making a living, raising a family, and dealing with afflictions and vicissitudes as they come. The intricacies of politics, of administration, of high finance, of organized religion, of diplomacy and warfare are all left to elites, who have (or are supposed to have) expertise in such things. Thus, given the lack of attention to whatever lies beyond the immediate (which could be described as a lack of vision), one might say that the peasant range of vision does not extend beyond the end of the nose. Any notions that may have been gained of more distant matters are often rudimentary, vague, mistaken, or influenced by indoctrination by elites. Given such lack of vision, the condition of the masses therefore becomes one of blind ignorance, in regard to facts beyond the immediate business of life.
Voluminous evidence exists for this condition of blind ignorance, and it certainly applies to the United States, which has a relatively high level of education compared to less developed areas of the world. In a survey conducted in 2024 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 35 percent of Americans could not name the three branches of their national government, while 50 percent could name no more than one of the specific rights granted by the first amendment of the Constitution (and 21 percent could name none at all) – in other words, a large portion of the population did not have even the most elementary knowledge of the political system that governs them. But beyond this elementary domain, when crucial issues of the day become concerned, the situation is even worse.
In a survey conducted in August 2003 by the Washington Post, almost half a year after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, 69 percent of the respondents said that they believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Al Qaeda attacks on America on September 11, 2001 – even though no real evidence was ever presented to support this assertion, and in fact Hussein and Al Qaeda were mortal enemies. A survey conducted by Time magazine and CNN around the same time revealed that 63 percent of those polled thought the U.S. was right in invading Iraq. But could they find it on a map? Perhaps not. In December 2015, Public Policy Polling asked registered voters “Would you support or oppose bombing Agrabah?” 30 percent of Republicans favored bombing (41 percent of Trump supporters), while 13 per were opposed (9 percent of Trump supporters). On the other hand, 19 percent of Democrats supported the bombing, while 36 percent were opposed. The only problem with all this was that Agrabah was an entirely fictional country, featured in the Disney move Aladdin. Thus around half of registered voters had a definite opinion about American foreign policy, pro or con, toward a nation about which they could obviously know nothing whatsoever, since it did not actually exist. (And who knows what opinions non-voters might have had…)
Hermann Goering was interviewed by Gustave Gilbert at Nuremberg in 1946. In Gilbert’s book Nuremberg Diary, Goering is quoted as follows:
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
The concept described above, of leading blind ignorance to war (called the “Goering Principle” in the earlier essay The Face of Power) clearly has dire implications, that were actually seen in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the earlier intervention in the Vietnam War, with Donald Trump even now being permitted to make war against Iran at his own pleasure. And as for the idea that only Congress can declare war, it must once more be pointed out that in spite of various military actions taken by the United States, the last time war was actually declared by Congress was December 1941…
Of course, a typical response to the reality of blind ignorance is a call for “education” of the masses. But advocates of such a program assume that the education in question will be their idea of education, and even more importantly, they assume that the masses actually want education. No doubt almost all of those who could not name the three branches of the American national government were exposed to such knowledge in school … but did they care? The Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries from the Marxist tradition believed that the advent of widespread literacy – necessary for transforming illiterate peasants into competent industrial workers – would also contribute to class consciousness among the new phenomenon of the proletariat, who had no ownership of the means of production (unlike traditional peasants, who had least had rights to the land). These revolutionaries of course took control of the press in the particular circumstances where they came to power; however, they failed to consider that owners of the press elsewhere, in the West and the rest of the world, could use literacy and publishing for their own purposes. As Oswald Spengler put it in The Decline of the West (Volume II, Chapter XII, The State: Philosophy of Politics):
“With the political press is bound up the need of universal school-education, which in the Classical world was completely lacking. In this demand there is an element – quite unconscious – of desiring to shepherd the masses, as the object of party politics, into the newspaper’s power-area. The idealist of the early democracy regarded popular education, without arriere pensee, as enlightenment pure and simple, and even today one finds here and there weak heads that become enthusiastic on the Freedom of the Press – but it is precisely this that smooths the path for the coming Caesars of the world-press. Those who have learnt to read succumb to their power, and the visionary self-determination of the Late democracy becomes a thorough-going determination of the people by the powers whom the printed word obeys.”
As an illustration of Spengler’s observation we have the aforementioned opinion of the masses, that Saddam Hussein was somehow behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Certain members of the Bush administration proclaimed this possibility, to gain support for the Iraq invasion (without any reliable evidence), and the press then broadcast these claims to the people, who, in their desire to fix blame on someone, readily accepted the premise that it must be the fault of bad guy Hussein. Then too, the press also publicized the claims of the government regarding the existence of Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction (without attempting to actually investigate or even question such claims), leading to the grotesque situation in which members of the Bush administration, when appearing on television talk shows, would present newspaper reports as evidence supporting their assertions – whereas the reports in the newspapers had been planted by themselves, as “unnamed sources”…
And so, led in his blind ignorance to this end or that, the newly literate peasant remains simply … a peasant.
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An objection to the description of the majority of the people as effectively “peasants” or “the working class” might be that they are, instead, “middle class” (at least in the West). But are they actually “middle class”? Was this true even in the period from the end of the Second World War to the 1970s, when inequality in the United States had bottomed out?
Historically, the middle class occupied a position between the traditional peasantry and the ruling class, where it carried out specialized functions peculiar to it – serving as professionals (doctors, lawyers, architects, and so on), substantial merchants, clerics, scholars, military officers, and the mid-level officials and administrators who oversaw those of the lower class, mediating their relationship to their rulers. Members of the middle class were generally much wealthier than the peasantry; indeed, they were generally acknowledged as gentry, and usually had servants.
This description of the historical middle class does not apply to the bulk of what is now termed “middle class” (though perhaps it still fits, to some extent, the “upper middle class”). Factory and service workers simply do not carry out the functions of the traditional, true middle class. On the basis of a sufficient income, in an era when incomes were more equal – and with continual affirmations of their supposed position from the established order (and their own aspirations) – a majority of the people came to believe that they were middle class, when in fact they might have been better described as pseudo-middle class. Thus the trend since the 1970s, which has seen rising inequality and a growing division between “haves” and “have nots”, might be regarded as a reversion to the mean, with the pseudo-middle class gradually reverting to its historical status as the peasant or lower class.
Such reversion of class was perhaps inevitable, given the blind ignorance of the masses, which rendered them vulnerable to the ideological claims of elites who exploited social controversies over race, religious beliefs, and traditional roles (“divide and conquer”), and promoted neoliberal ideals of unlimited “free trade”, “deregulation”, and “free markets”. The process was also assisted by the natural desire of the peasant to be left alone to pursue the business of life (particularly in the United States, with its pioneer heritage). Unfortunately, however, the peasant has never been left alone in all of history – not by raiders from the steppes, the lord on the hill, invading armies, repressive regimes, or grasping oligarchs. In fact, peasants do not even leave themselves alone, for in pre-industrial times the growth of their population often outran growth in agricultural production, dooming them to poverty and famine; while in the present, demands for “more” (of an unsustainable way of life) only accelerate exploitation of limited resources, and drive ever increasing pollution and degradation of air, land, and oceans. The desire to be left alone – on their plot of farmland, in the “security” of their job, on their suburban lot, in their employment as a “contractor” or “gig worker” – will always work against any solidarity of the masses, necessary for obtaining a better lot for themselves as a whole. Under extraordinary conditions, such as the Great Depression and Second World War in the United States, the lack of solidarity and “class consciousness” might be temporarily overcome; but when these conditions cease, a reversion to the mean eventually commences.
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A reversion of the pseudo-middle class to the lower class tends to produce effects beyond a rearrangement of the classes, however. Under the stress of slowly deteriorating living conditions (as people learn they will be worse off than their parents), a lack of effective leadership (as elites pursue only their own ambitions for money and power), and perhaps even a decay in the outlook of society itself (the decline of the West), many people, in their blind ignorance, begin to confuse real threats to their well being (which they do not fully understand) with a supposed threat coming from the other – the “other” being someone of different (and thus alien) race, language, religion, national origin, or customs. Something must be causing all the trouble, no doubt some kind of enemy, and the first thing that comes to certain minds, always alert for enemies, is the other. An earlier essay, titled The Dreams of Ideology, described the “know-nothing mentality” as an emphatic expression of tribal identity, based on instinctive animosity toward the “other”. For the other, being alien to the tribe, must constitute a real or potential threat, to be treated with suspicion or outright hostility. So it is that, under the pressure of difficulties, blind ignorance may produce know-nothing hostility; or, in other words, under stress, the peasant mentality may tend to degenerate into the know-nothing mentality. And as also described in The Dreams of Ideology, the organized political expression of the know-nothing mentality becomes fascism.
An example of the degeneration of the peasant mentality to that of the know-nothing may be seen in the support given to the ascent of Donald Trump. He first gained real political prominence with his characterization of Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and criminals, attracting know-nothings who became the hard core of his supporters. This hard core continues to applaud the treatment of immigrant “others” as criminals, to be “cleansed” from society by any and all means, including arbitrary, cruel, and even murderous policies. Further satisfaction is provided by the summary extermination of the crews of small boats transporting contraband drugs. Of course, not all those supporting Trump are know-nothings; any major political movement is coalition of various interests, and Trump’s includes those desiring lower taxes, a return to “greatness”, conservative social policies, and “retribution” against liberal elites. Indeed, a rational case can certainly be made for limiting immigration. But know-nothings who gain satisfaction from unhinged and arbitrary policies constitute the central core of Trump’s support, and he always plays to them.
An analytical explanation for the increasing degeneration of the peasant to know-nothing mentality, and the resulting political instability, may be found in the demographic structural theory developed by Jack Goldstone and Peter Turchin. According to this theory, the stress affecting the peasant or working class in American society originates from labor oversupply, caused by factors such as deindustrialization and high rates of immigration, which in turn results in a falling share of wages for workers as a portion of economic production. Elites, on the other hand, gain a greater share of economic production through profits, rents, and asset appreciation, which is a draw for newcomers to enter their ranks; but this growth in their numbers eventually results in elite overproduction, causing increasingly bitter competition and conflict between them. “Losers” in elite competition may then become disaffected “counter-elites”, who may seize on unrest among the masses to lead an insurrection or revolution.
So in the end, if the peasants are indeed “revolting”, it is perhaps a result of the failure of elite leadership to address the stresses besetting them – which, in turn, is due to the blindness of elites.
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Sources
Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, by Jack A. Goldstone, published 1991. The foundational work of demographic structural theory in its quantitative analysis of history.
Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History, by Peter Turchin, published 2016. Examines history with mathematical modeling, correlated with empirical observation; and applies to the United States, in particular, a demographic structural analysis updated for a modern industrial society.
End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, by Peter Turchin, published 2023. A work largely directed at a general audience that warns of the increasing danger of social and political disaffection.
The Decline of the West: Sketch of a Morphology of World History, by Oswald Spengler; Volume One: Form and Actuality originally published 1918, revised edition 1923; Volume Two: Perspectives of World-History published 1922; English translation and notes by Charles Francis Atkinson, Volume One published 1926, Volume Two 1928.
Nuremberg Diary, by Gustave Gilbert, first edition published 1947, second expanded edition published 1961. A first hand account of interviews of former leaders of the Third Reich during the Nuremberg trials of 1945-46.
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A Personal Afterword
For my own part, I would say I am of the lower orders, but in certain respects am like the elite. I live in a modest example of “manufactured housing” (the successor to mobile homes) in an area of sub-mediocre economic development, do almost all my local shopping at Walmart (never having set foot in a Whole Foods market), drive an automobile over 30 years old, and have an annual income that is usually below the Federal poverty level. On the other hand, I own my home outright (thus paying no mortgage or rent), was the recipient of an inheritance providing retirement funds that were substantial for me (though would have been laughable to a member of the upper middle class), possess a Bachelor’s degree (gained in an era when education costs were relatively affordable), and have always had an unaccountable desire for acquiring knowledge. In other words, it could be said that I’m an oddball peasant (revolting or not), who keeps getting “funny ideas”.