1. A common theme among open free market liberals (let’s stop calling them “conservatives” please) is that rising standards of living bring greater political freedom. This is an illusion.
2. Remember that much of the material prosperity which the market provides is tied to the rise of the technical, the rise of the machine and machine thinking, systems thinking.
3. As technical, machine and systems thinking, that is “scientific management,” is applied across society in both the private and public sectors, this is instantiated by means of growing bureaucracy everywhere in both the private and public sectors.
4. With the increase in economic power comes hand in hand with an increase in technical power. As the ability to wield power increases in the economic realm, it also increases at the same time the state’s ability to wield power against the citizenry.
5. With economic prosperity always comes a loss of power in the citizenry relative to the state.
6. “All theories to the effect that a rising standard of living will end in democratization and the limitation of the state are illusory, for there has never been any case of an effective diminution of the use of power.”
Jacques Ellul, The Political Illusion.
Jacques Ellul, The Political Illusion.
7. The implications of this for the political project of the right to free itself from the oppressive nature of the left will necessarily result in a dramatic loss of standard of living.
8. If one truly wishes to resist the left, then one must be willing to resist the rewards of the technical system built by and sustaining the liberal political project.
9. Further reading: apokekrummenain.substack.com
10. On the liberal nature of the technical system: apokekrummenain.substack.com
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