Sociopathy and revolution

Olavo de Carvalho
Dirio do Comrcio, October 23, 2006
Modern social science, with all its presumption and arrogance, has failed to bring forth
any discovery that ever approached, in accuracy and explanatory power, the indu
doctrine of the four castes, whereof the Marxist conception of class struggle is but a
remote and caricatural imitation, hence deriving whatever impression of truthfulness
that it may ma!e upon the foolish mind of the university "intellectual proletariat#$
%or anyone who has ta!en the trouble to ma!e a little study of the indu explanation of
the historical process, it is impossible, on observing the se&uence of power structures
that succeed one another throughout 'estern history, not to notice that it exactly repeats
the transition from the rule of brahmanas to that of kshatriyas, from this to the rule of
vaishyas, and from this to the misrule of shudras and the confusion of pariahs which
foreshadows either the end of society or the return to the initial order#
ere ( shall briefly summari)e that doctrine, not as it stands in its pure original
formulation, but in my adaptation of it, in courses and lectures delivered since *+,0,
intended to ma!e it more flexible as an explanatory instrument of more recent historico-
cultural processes#
.he brahmanas are the intellectual caste, intent on the search of spiritual !nowledge and
on the construction of a social order that more or less reflects "the will of /od$0the
laws determining the entire structure of reality#
.he kshatriyas are the warriors and aristocrats, who over the structure of reality place
the glorification of their own dynastic traditions and the expansion of their military
power#
.he vaishyas are the bourgeois and merchants# (n everything they see! profit and
economic efficiency, which they illusorily ta!e as an actual power, ignoring the military
and spiritual bases of society and in the end being swiftly destroyed by the shudras#
.hese are the "proletarians,$ in the 1oman sense of the term# (ncapable of governing
themselves, they matter only because of the power of the many, because of the
&uantitative extension of the "offspring#$
.he brahmanas fall because of their difficulty in remaining faithful to their original
spiritual intuition, entropically crumbled into ever more insoluble and violent doctrinal
disputes of a stifling artificiality#
.he rise of aristocratic power, with the formation of modern nation states, started
directly out of the need to appease religious conflicts by means of an external, political-
military force#
.he kshatriya government falls because the aristocratic-military establishment is
essentially an expansionist and centrali)ing power, which must rely on an ever-growing
bureaucracy whose officials it cannot !eep up providing indefinitely, therefore having to
collect them from among the most talented members of both lower castes, who are to be
given necessary training for the exercise of their new functions in the administration, in
the 2udiciary, in the foreign service, etc# ence the origin of the modern "intelligentsia,$
as a byproduct of an educational system designed to shape officials for the state3 once
the state bureaucracy is consolidated as a means of social ascent, candidates for it are
always in greater number than the positions available, while, at the same time,
schooling, itself an instrument of selection, must necessarily reach much more students
than those to whom it can secure positions in the civil service# .he bureaucracy with
which the kshatriya state controls society thus becomes a time bomb# On the one hand,
it goes without saying that the bureaucratic intelligentsia soon lays hold of the effective
control of the state, dreaming of sha!ing off its shoulders the yo!e of an increasingly
idle and costly aristocratic caste# On the other hand, there is the throng of those re2ected#
.heir ambitions were aroused by schooling, frustrated by 2ob selection# .hey ma!e up
the contingent of what ( have called "potential bureaucracy$0the growing army of
those individuals with some training but no role# .heir only possible place in society is
within the state, but the state has no room for them# .hey are the revolutionary class par
excellence, the leading character in the adventure of modern times# 4efore long they
will be dreaming of a state that is molded to their needs# 5ntil they manage to create it,
they busy themselves with endlessly chattering about all matters, thus spreading their
rancor and their frustrations throughout society and, above all, adorning themselves
with the prestige of the ancient brahmanas, of whom they constitute the inverted
caricature# .he "intellectuals$ are the lay clergy of the 1evolution# (f you have ever
heard of 6., the 4ra)ilian 'or!ers7 6arty, you !now what ( am tal!ing about# %urther on
( shall come bac! to it#
On the other hand, the aristocratic state causes much expense and cannot sustain itself
indefinitely with the resources from a traditional and artless agrarian economy8 the
economic expansion re&uires the mobili)ation of specific s!ills which are those of the
vaishyas# 4an!ers and industrialists furnish the state with a new economic basis, by
regimenting shudra manpower in proportions never dreamed of before and by replacing
the ancient agrarian economy with modern capitalism#
(t is at this moment0and under this aspect only0that the difference between two
systems of ownership of the means of production becomes historically determinative,
creating a peculiar situation which 9arl Marx will misleadingly pro2ect on the whole
course of history# 4ut it is also clear that the rise of capitalism, in itself, presents no ris!
to the aristocratic class, which easily adapts to the new ways of amassing riches and, by
means of marriages and the award of titles of nobility, integrates into its ran!s the new
rich who ascended without ancestral nobility, sine nobilitate :s. nob. for short, hence the
term "snob$;# .o this adaptation there corresponds, politically, the transition from the
absolute monarchical state to the modern parliamentary monarchy, a process that does
not have to be violent or traumatic, this being the case only in %rance because the
excessive growth of state bureaucracy had fatally occasioned an even greater growth of
the "potential bureaucracy$ and had turned into sheer revolutionary rancor the frustrated
ambitions of the intelligentsia# .his very intelligentsia is what brought about the
revolution# .here was not a single capitalist among the revolutionary leaders, and the
bourgeoisie, as was seen in <ngland, never needed any revolution to climb the social
scale up to a status to which it was insistently invited by the aristocracy itself# .he
concept of "bourgeois revolution$ is one of the greatest frauds in the history of the
social sciences# .he elements in the potential bureaucracy, in turn, cannot be defined
economically# .heir only common trait was the education which distinguished them
from the masses# .hey came from all classes0the peasantry, the old clergy, the petty
bourgeoisie, the impoverished sectors of the aristocracy itself# .heirs was not a unity of
origin, but of social station and ambitions# .he true formula of their unity lay in the
future3 in the image of the perfect state, invested with all the virtues which they
themselves thought to embody# =iving off a self-glorifying fantasy, a psychological
compensation for their vexatious social position, it is no wonder that they conceived of
themselves as inheritors of the intellectual authority of the brahmanas but also imagined
that they were the natural successors to the Church as spo!esmen and !eepers of the
poor and oppressed, namely the shudras# <verywhere they spea! on behalf of "science,$
but also of "social 2ustice#$ .hey imagine that they embody at the same time the highest
spiritual authority and the downtrodden rights of the lowest caste# 4ut 2ust as there was
no bourgeois in the vanguard of the "bourgeois revolution,$ there shall be no
proletarians among the leaders of the "proletarian revolution#$ .he entire revolutionary
sociology is an ideological fraud destined to cover up the power of the "intellectuals#$
.hese are not a caste# .hey are an interface accidentally born of the cancerous
swelling of the bureaucracy, and for this very reason they will fght to make
it grow even more wherever they have acquired the means to do so.
.hey are, strictly spea!ing, pariahs0a confused, deluded mixture of fragments from the
speech of the various castes# .hey are the pseudo-caste, with neither function nor axis,
sociopathic by birth and calling#
.he rise of the capitalist bourgeoisie is not a revolutionary process# (t is a long,
complicated process of absortion and adaptation# %rench capitalism was born wea!ly
and has remained stunted because of the 1evolution, which came along with the
bureaucratic expansion and has continued to live off it until today, in a nation that is the
paradise par excellence of "intellectuals#$ Capitalism rather developed in <ngland,
where the aristocracy smoothly adapted to their new capitalist functions, and in
>merica, where, the presence of the aristocracy of blood being sparse, that same
capitalist bourgeoisie invested itself with the heroic-aristocratic ethos, generating a new
kshatriya caste# ( must observe in passing that this transfiguration of the >merican
bourgeoisie into aristocracy0the most important and vigorous phenomenon in modern
history0would never have been possible without that profound Christian impregnation
of the new class which rendered it, in contrast to the farce of the "intellectualls,$ the
partial, distant, but authentic heir to the brahmana authority#
(n the indu doctrine there is never a shudra government# .he shudras are, by
definition, the ruled and not the rulers# > guy may have been born a shudra, but on
ascending to positions of importance he is already an "intellectual$ :if =ula continued to
be a lathe operator, he would be 2ust a lathe operator;# 'hat there can be is the
government of intellectuals passing themselves off as the shudra vanguard and, of
course, oppressing the shudra more than ever to ma!e them form the economic basis of
a boundlessly expansive state bureaucracy#
<conomically, the shudra government, or socialism, has verbal existence only# (n *+2*
=udwig von Mises thoroughly demonstrated that the completely nationali)ed economy
is infeasible and that therefore every self-styled socialist regime would never be more
than a capitalism disguised under the iron armor of state bureaucracy# istory has not
ceased to prove him right ever since#
%rom this brief exposition it is possible to draw some conclusions that historical
experience abundantly proves3
*# 'herever state bureaucracy becomes the predominant way of social ascent, as in
eighteenth-century %rance or in nineteenth-century 1ussia, the potential bureaucracy
tends to grow indefinitely and become a generator of revolutionary pressures# Many
modern nations alleviate these pressures by creating an indefinite number of cultural
and academic sinecures in order to integrate and somehow "officiali)e$ the potential
bureaucracy, but, on the one hand, this is a very expensive palliative, one that can only
be afforded by a powerful capitalism, which precisely presupposes that the revolution
be aborted in time8 on the other hand, the members of the officiali)ed potential
bureaucracy may for a while be satisfied with their new roles in capitalist society, but
social ascent itself will eventually ma!e them even more presumptuous and arrogant#
.his explains why it is precisely in those countries where intellectuals have the best
living conditions that they are the most resentful enemies of the society which fosters
and flatters them while, by compensation, they are unable or perhaps unwilling to deal
this society the final blow, confining themselves to constituting a permanent structural
corrosive agent which on the whole is neutrali)ed by technical progress and capitalist
growth#
2# 'here a potential bureaucracy as yet not perfectly officiali)ed holds in possession a
political party as its main vehicle of social integration, this party, which it ta!es to be the
embodiment at the same time of the supreme intellectual authority and of the rights of
every real or imagined victim of social in2ustice, will necessarily place itself above the
laws and institutions, arrogating to itself every right and every virtue and
ac!nowledging no higher 2udgment than its own#
3# <very hope of integrating this party into the normal democratic process will be
repeatedly frustrated, for it will never construe its participation in this process but as a
temporary concession0in itself repulsive0to those conditions which preclude the
attainment of its goals#
?# .he con&uest of total power will always be the goal and the single raison d7@tre of
this party, which will attempt all sorts of coup d7Atat and at the same time will regard as
a coup d7Atat any attempt, however timid and limited, to prevent it from reaching its
goals# <xamples of it abound in 4ra)il# .he latest one is that in which the leaders of the
ruling party openly preach violent resistance to its possible election defeat, while
literally denouncing as a "coup d7Atat$ the simple 2ournalistic disclosure of the money
that they used in a dirty tric! against their opponent#
B# Cince the primordial function of the revolutionary party, beneath the most diverse
ideological pretexts, is exactly to create a bureaucratic state to serve its own members, it
is normal and inevitable that this party, once invested with state power, should regard
the state as property of its own, using it for ends of its own without finding the least
immorality in it# .he potential bureaucracy is sociopathic by birth and by definition8 and
its form of government, as soon as there are conditions for it to be established, is and
will always be organi)ed sociopathy#
6# .he affinity between the revolutionary party and common banditism is something
more than a temporary con2unction of interests# %rom the perspective of the potential
bureaucracy, the only evil in the world is that it does not have absolute power, is that
there is a society that transcends it and obeys it not# <very other evil, if it wea!ens this
society and facilitates the con&uest of total power by the revolutionary party, is a good#
.he solipsistic self-idolatry of the gang boss and that of the revolutionary leader are one
and the same, with the slight difference that there is a little bit of intellectual refinement
in favor of the latter# (t is ridiculous to say that a party li!e 6. "has turned$ into a gang
of delin&uents# (t is a born delin&uent#
D# .he insistence of opponents on pretending that this party can honorably participate in
the normal political process will always lead to conditions of "asymmetrical warfare,$
in which one side will have all the duties, and the other all the rights#
E
6C0.hose who have had the misfortune of being members by birth of the potential
bureaucracy cannot pursue but three courses of life3 :*; integrate into the revolutionary
sham and brag everywhere that they are benefactors of man!ind, :2; fall into
marginality, mental illness, self-destruction, or banditism, :3; understand their historical
situation and struggle to escape from an essentially grotes&ue social condition and to
ac&uire through study and spiritual self-discipline the dignity of the true status of
brahmana, which implies renouncing all political power and every psychosocial benefit
of participating in the revolutionary intelligentsia# <conomically, to ma!e a livelihood
from intellectual activity outside the revolutionary scheme of mutual protection is a
formidable challenge#
.he challenge to those who were born vaishyas is to resist the siren song of revolution
and to impose capitalism as a morally superior way of life# .his is impossible without
the cultivation of the kshatriya discipline and without the acceptance of the heroic
burdens of a new noble caste, which implies the absorption, even if slight, of the
brahmana legacy# .he struggle in the modern world is between vaishyas and the
potential bureaucrats0that is, between those who feed the state and those who feed
upon it# (f the former let themselves be hypnoti)ed by revolutionary culture, they are
finished, and with them the shudras as well, who lose their status of free wor!ers and
become slaves of the Communist bureaucracy#
Translated by Alessandro Cota and Bruno Mori