Progressivism is the opium of the privileged

The upper-middle class has suddenly found itself among the proles and it’s turned to political radicalism to salve its pain.

It is easy enough to simply dismiss progressivism as yet another iteration of Marxism. This is not entirely inaccurate, in that progressivism does share certain sentiments with Marxism. But the two are very much not the same thing, nor do they share much of a common origin.

Marxism’s origins lie almost entirely in the intelligentsia. The foundations of progressivism, by contrast, are largely religious—in particular, the tenets of universalist Protestant Christianity. This is likely why progressivism, unlike Marxism, does not place a great deal of emphasis on economics. Certainly, progressives tend to be economically egalitarian. They generally do express solidarity with the poor and favor redistributionist policies of one sort or another. But this is not their primary obsession.

Progressivism’s primary obsession, to the extent it can be fully described, is far more abstract and ambitious. It is a kind of vague belief in the need and capacity to perfect the human soul.

In this, progressivism is quite alien to Marxism. Marx probably did not believe in the soul and he unquestionably considered it largely irrelevant. To the extent that he dealt with the issue at all, it was not in a divine context and he spent no particular time contemplating the problem of evil. He did not ask how a good God could create an imperfect world since he did not believe in God. He believed the world’s imperfections and the suffering they cause are the result of specific, historically determined economic structures. Once those structures are smashed by revolution and remade along communist lines, the world would be essentially perfected and suffering would be greatly if not entirely alleviated.

Progressivism is quite a different animal. While progressives do denounce economic structures they consider unjust, the economics themselves are of little interest to them. They are concerned with injustice itself, not its causes. This is a religious view, and thus not particularly relevant to the Marxist.

Indeed, while Marx believed that all human phenomena are simply expressions of an underlying economic system, progressivism holds precisely the opposite. Progressives believe that economic systems are expressions of the souls of individual human beings. If a system is unjust, it is because those who built and rule it are unjust. They suffer from some malady of the soul like hate, greed, lust for power, racism, homo/transphobia, etc. If the system is to be made just, the unjust who built and rule it must repent, mend their ways, and make restitution. By doing so, they will, as the prophet put it, “cease to do evil, learn to do good.”

Thus, progressivism, like the Christianity from which it emerged, is in the business of saving souls. Though it would not use such terms, it believes in man’s sinful nature. Once the catechism is accepted, however, the sinner is born again and can live a new and virtuous life.

Of course, progressivism has long since amputated the specifically religious trappings of these ideas. For example, it has no interest in most of Christianity’s strict rules of behavior, especially in the realm of sexuality. But Christianity’s understanding of the process of redemption has remained. Also, to a certain extent, have the ethics of the beatitudes, such as “blessed are the meek” and “woe unto those who are rich.” In effect, progressivism has transmuted Christian religious principles into secular political loyalties.

Marx would likely have disapproved of this. However, his views on religion were not as dismissive as many of his critics claim. In his famous comment on the subject, he wrote, “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

It should be clear from this that, contrary to popular misconceptions, Marx did not use the term “opium of the people” to claim that religion is used to intoxicate the oppressed in order to induce their submission. He believed that religion, however untrue its claims about the physical and spiritual worlds might be, is a way to remain human in an inhuman world.

It is unlikely that any progressive could fully accept this. By and large, progressivism does not view the world as inhuman. In fact, its environmentalist wing believes that more or less the entire planet is human or at least a sentient organism. Progressives tend to believe that, since the world is a human one, the problems of the world can only be solved if human beings are solved. That is, if human beings can be purified and redeemed by proper instruction.

As in many religions, however, this instruction tends to become coercion in fairly short order. Universalist creeds, unfortunately, rarely know how to deal with people who do not consider the creed universal. Once people begin to think for themselves, trouble starts. Moreover, universalism always serves the majority over the minority. Something is only universal, after all, if everyone believes it. This means that, at the very least, the dissenting minority will be massively outnumbered.

As a result, universalists are almost inevitably oppressive to a greater or lesser degree. Progressives are no exception.

Progressivism is perhaps closest to Marxism in this regard. They both tend to favor “direct action” over gentle persuasion. Neither is averse to political violence. They usually regard themselves as trapped in a desperate struggle that is largely a product of their own imaginations. Generally speaking, they are intolerant and bigoted. Both hold that one can use “any means necessary” in a just cause, though progressives tend to prefer that others actually use them.

This last point is an important one. Progressives are good agitators and good moralizers, but they are not very good foot soldiers. When law-breaking or violence has to be done, they want others to do it: Antifa thugs, Muslim antisemites, anarchist radicals, and so on. While he may despise his own society, something in the progressive still wants to “get ahead” in it. Indeed, many progressives are quite accomplished in their fields and often fairly affluent. Those who are not rarely remain progressives; they set off in more violent directions.

The reason for this is that however much it may obfuscate the fact, progressivism is a movement of the privileged upper-middle class. Its upward mobility, contempt for the lower orders, distaste for outright criminality, moral arrogance, assumption that privilege is a divine right, general desire not to have to work for anything, complete indifference to where the money is going to come from, and sense of entitlement to power and influence are all quintessentially upper-middle class. Progressivism’s alleged loathing for privilege is ultimately its loathing of itself.

It is also more than that, because if progressivism is indeed a religious movement that has replaced religion with politics—and there is every reason to think it is—then that religion may well serve the purpose that Marx incisively described. It may be that progressivism is the opium of the privileged.

II.

This prompts the question: Why would the privileged need opium? One imagines that many do not, since a large number of upper-middle-class people are not progressives. Nonetheless, even non-progressives find their opium because, to some extent, we all need it. Often, life is unpleasant and the world is not a good world. Suffering is universal and Marx was wrong to think that this could be substantially changed by revolution. Even the wealthiest and luckiest eventually sicken and die or at least know that they will someday. Something must be found to alleviate the inevitable anguish.

A great many people turn to literal opiates and some toward other forms of decadence: Sex, money, luxury, fine food and drink, conspicuous consumption, etc. It is a world full of opium and people willing to sell it for the right price. It is not particularly difficult to find unhealthy ways to enjoy oneself.

There are also forms of decadence that are not usually seen as forms of decadence, such as fanatical religion or the embrace of a particular cause to the point of self-abnegation. A society with a Christian history may admire fervent devotion to a creed more than an essentially Epicurean society would do, but such devotion is still opium. It is an expression of suffering and the need for at least temporary relief.

Given their wealth and privilege, it is difficult at first to see the upper-middle class as a suffering class. Nonetheless, American society has arranged itself over the last half-century or so to make them exactly that.

First, it is expensive to be privileged. The upper-middle class is a materialist and acquisitive class. It wants to own things and things cost money. Today, such things are increasingly out of reach. Owning a home, let alone a large and luxurious one, is becoming increasingly difficult even for relatively affluent Americans. America’s paucity of social services like socialized medicine means that Americans must expend more money on necessities than their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere. Perhaps most daunting, unlike in more stratified countries, upper-middle-class status is not hereditary. It must be earned anew by every generation.

This sets the upper-middle class on the road toward constant existential anxiety. They must strive for decades, accumulate massive debt, and spend a lifetime in arrears in order to secure their class standing. Then their children must do it all over again.

This is largely because their class standing depends almost entirely on the higher education industry. Without at least a bachelor’s degree, this class believes, one’s life is essentially ruined. This is by no means untrue, though it is increasingly becoming so. Nonetheless, it is the first article of faith for the upper-middle class and they will do almost anything to acquire this ticket of entry and maintenance.

Moreover, the upper-middle class believes—and they are not wrong—that the more rarified the institution from which such a degree is acquired, the more secure one’s class status will be. This places them at the mercy of a rapacious, corrupt industry that engages in horrendous price gouging and predatory lending. The most prestigious institutions of higher learning, though they are mostly coasting on centuries of accumulated prestige, are by far the most expensive. The price of admission is so high that without the accumulation of a lifetime of debt, they are beyond the reach of even the upper-middle class.

The effect of this is particularly extreme on young people. I am old enough to remember when people were convinced that the US was soon to be overtaken by Japan. As a result, there was much talk of the Japanese educational system. It was emphasized that it was essentially make-or-break. At the end of high school, it was said, all Japanese take standardized tests, the results of which determine their future path in life. Thus, students drive themselves mad attempting to do well on these tests and, if they do badly, often kill themselves.

This system was presented as something very foreign and in many ways contemptible. It was a case of strange people doing strange things in a strange way. In fact, however, the system under which we were all living at the time was more or less the same. The SATs acted as or were presented as precisely the same brutal gamut. To fail them was to be ruined unto death. As a result, enormous amounts of time that could have been devoted to genuine and useful study were spent preparing for the SATs in hopes of somehow “gaming” or beating the system. That this might be a sign of collective derangement occurred to no one.

The madness did not end with the SATs. More or less everything was geared toward the goal of getting into a “good school.” Students piled on advanced placement courses, sports for which they had no talent, extracurricular activities of highly dubious value, and other useless endeavors—all very profitable for those who ran them—out of the fear that, if they did not do so, they’d “end up working at MacDonald’s.” For all the opprobrium directed at the Japanese system, its American counterpart was far more demanding, cruel, exploitative, and wasteful.

Then, if one was lucky enough to get into a “good school” certain to guarantee a “good job,” one had to find a way to pay for it. Since American higher education is ruinously expensive, this meant accumulating enormous amounts of debt. This, it was said with great confidence, would later be paid off with the high-paying, high-status jobs that a degree from a “good school” would provide.

This academic blood sport might have been tolerable if it had actually worked but, for the most part, it didn’t. The “good jobs” rarely materialized, the debt took years to pay off and, at the same time, housing and living costs rose. Nor did the education industry’s price gouging cease. Despite the overall decline in the upper-middle class’s purchasing power, college and university tuitions have continued to skyrocket, and the debt industry has been happy to step in with ever more usurious loans to pay for them.

The result is that, while they maintain a facade of prosperity, the upper-middle class is now almost entirely without assets of any kind. Everything they appear to own is in hock, which means it is owned by other people. Thus, the upper-middle class is perennially under the power of others. Their class status and material goods—their entire lives—can be withdrawn at any moment. Should an economic crisis or some other misfortune arise, collapse is certain. Given that life is often little more than a series of crises, such an event is all but inevitable. It can often be weathered, but only at the cost of even further debt. Everything, in effect, is mortgaged. It is, as Celine put it, death on the installment plan.

What this means is that, at least in the United States, the ethos of the upper-middle class has become that of the lower-middle class. For the entire history of modern capitalism, the lower-middle class has lived in perpetual and constant fear of ruin. Anxiety over the possible collapse of a small business or similar endeavors means that the lower-middle class lives like the ancient farmers of Egypt, always hoping that—by the grace of the gods—the Nile will flood again on time. If it does not, famine ensues.

The upper-middle class now finds itself in precisely the same predicament, but they have nowhere else to turn. Marx’s opium is unavailable to them because they are an essentially Epicurean and certainly very secular class. To the extent that they think about religion at all, they consider it a needless formality at best and contemptible bigotry at worst. Thus, they cannot access the “sigh of the oppressed creature.” The upper-middle class turned to things for consolation, but if ruin comes, if the Nile does not flood, there are no more things. They are all alone, human in an inhuman world.

This has fostered a culture of intense unhappiness and violent resentment, especially among the young. As early as 1996, Chuck Palahniuk captured it brilliantly in his novel Fight Club, in which the psychotic protagonist declares, “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” The upper-middle class young are convinced that the whole thing is a rigged game and they are no longer interested in playing it. They are not entirely wrong.

Such are the secret discontents of life and death on the installment plan. It was once the province of the lower classes, but it has now become all but universal except for the small percentage of Americans who are fantastically rich. While they may not admit it even to themselves, the upper-middle class is well aware of their desperation. They cannot help but search for remedies. Given the death of religion among them, another opium must be found—an opium of the privileged.

III.

Several forms of such opium have emerged in recent decades. New Age practices have become a pale substitute for religion. So have various hobbies and pastimes, such as the fetishization of nature in hiking culture. A few are lucky enough to join the higher education industry and eke out a living as minor academics. Technology and the tech industry, with its soaring transhumanist and space travel fantasies, is a potent intoxicant. So is simply disappearing into video games and becoming one with the internet.

Nonetheless, one of the most potent of all the opiates has proven to be progressive politics. It is worth asking why.

Progressivism, like all movements of the left, is essentially a politics of discontent. It is deeply unsatisfied with the world as it is and demands change. This change may be specific or simply a vague admonition, but the desire and the need for it is felt as a kind of existential desperation. Progressives believe that not only do they need change but that without change, they cannot live.

This should not be dismissed as the whining of ingrates and malcontents. There is reason enough to be discontented with the world as it is and change is not by definition a bad thing. Revolution and reform have been constants throughout human history and without them, Western civilization would not exist. Moreover, such upheavals have always been driven by familiar socioeconomic discontents—such as massive inequality of wealth and pervasive debt—and it should be no surprise that they have returned. Indeed, they never left.

Nonetheless, contrary to the claims of the progressives, change is not by definition a good thing either. In the wrong hands, it can be catastrophic. Indeed, the last two centuries are strewn with the bodies of those who paid the price for change. It is more than prudent to regard those who advocate such change, especially radical change, with some measure of suspicion.

Unfortunately, progressives cannot accept this. Their desire for change is ultimately not moral. They feel it like hunger and sexual desire. An ancient Latin saying states, “Do not stand in the way of a hungry man.” Progressives feel themselves to be starving and there is little they will not do to get what they consider an existential necessity.

Moreover, progressives not only need change, they cannot conceive of why anyone would oppose it. They believe that human history itself is the history of progress toward a more just society. Thus, all change is progress and must be inherently good. Those who oppose change are, at best, on the “wrong side of history.” This leads inevitably to the delegitimization and demonization of political opponents and, ultimately, the attempt to remove them completely from the public discourse.

To the deeply discontented, progressivism’s uncompromising stance in favor of change and its willingness to resort to extraordinary means to achieve it are immensely attractive. By becoming progressives, the upper-middle class no longer feel helpless. Instead, they feel they have finally found a political movement that lacks the weakness and scruples that have allowed the enemies of progress to seize and maintain power. Thus, the change they desperately need is now possible.

This also gives them a sense of empowerment. Now they do not just desire change but are helping to make it happen. They are in control of their own destiny. For their entire lives, they have done what they were told to do. Promised everything, they ran the upper-middle class gamut only to be left with nothing. Now they have a chance to take what was unjustly denied them. This is powerful, intoxicating opium.

Moreover, even the privileged harbor class resentments. Perhaps the most essential value of the upper-middle class is property ownership. They expect, at the very least, to own a large family home, several cars, various means of entertainment, and even a few gratuitous luxuries. If such property is not forthcoming, discontent quickly hardens into hatred.

Hence the progressives’ loathing of the “1%.” This is not simply a buzzword. It constitutes an entire worldview that asserts a small group of people have, mostly by foul means, acquired so much property that nothing is left for the upper-middle class. As a result, for the first time in generations, the upper-middle class has been reduced to a class of tenants.

This view is, in many ways, quite accurate. Of course, unlike the medieval serfs, the upper-middle class does not live in grinding poverty and has retained its political rights. Nonetheless, they are now wholly dependent on a renter class over which they can exercise almost no influence. This is a very modern kind of serfdom, but it is a kind of serfdom nonetheless.

Given this, it is not surprising that the cries of “tax the rich” and, more pointedly, “eat the rich” have become quite popular among progressives. To them, this is not a call for expropriation but for just compensation. Much like a post-feudal society whose former serfs demand land reform, progressives want property relations to be readjusted so they can receive what they feel they have earned.

Ironically, this in and of itself betrays progressivism’s class origins. While it favors redistribution of private property, progressivism nonetheless clearly considers the idea of property sacrosanct. A genuine Marxist or socialist—along with working-class or poor people who own nothing and cannot hope to own anything—does not regard property as sacred and sometimes rejects it entirely. They do not want a more egalitarian distribution of property but universal collective ownership. This is much farther than progressives are willing to go, for obvious reasons. It is entirely against their class interests.

In fact, the type of redistribution demanded by progressives, if successful, would effectively return the United States to the economy of the 1950s. At that time, the GI Bill sent millions to college for free, home ownership became the norm for the entire middle class, and taxes on the wealthy were at confiscatory rates. This is painfully ironic, because the 1950s may be the era progressives most despise. Perhaps beneath the progressives’ desire for change lies a secret nostalgia, a hazy opium dream they do not acknowledge even to themselves.

Progressivism’s most powerful opium, however, may be more sordid: self-regard. The upper-middle class has always viewed itself as a superior class, but this conviction has been badly shaken by the economic upheavals of the last two decades. Thus, they are a class searching for moral restoration. They want to retrieve the belief, acknowledged by all, that they do not just rule but should rule.

Of course, we all want to think well of ourselves. For millennia, millions have thrown away lives of happiness and plenty to embrace an intense asceticism that allows them to feel that they are superior people. This strange neurosis is known as sainthood. It is one of the more bizarre aspects of human nature, but for obvious reasons, it is intensely seductive.

Today, progressive politics is one of the quickest ways to achieve sainthood. Moreover, progressivism offers all the self-regard of sainthood without the onerous requirements. Becoming a progressive does not require one to change one’s behavior or conform to strict ethical codes of personal, familial, and sexual behavior. One need not renounce all worldly goods and take to the desert in a hair shirt. One certainly need not flagellate oneself, unless that is something you enjoy as a consenting adult. All one has to do is adopt a series of prescribed opinions. Nothing more is required.

This gives progressives perhaps the greatest opium of all: the right to judge. By becoming a saint on the cheap, progressives can not just disdain but criminalize anyone who holds an unprescribed, let alone proscribed opinion. Even when they look to the beam in their own eye, it is to become what Albert Camus described as the “judge-penitent”; the man who says, “The more I accuse myself, the more I have the right to judge you.” For many, one of the most attractive aspects of sainthood is the privilege of condemning others. Nothing kills pain more effectively than inflicting it.

IV.

If progressivism is the opium of the privileged, we must ask what happens when the opium stops working.

It is very unlikely that the upper-middle class will find itself soothed by progressivism forever. Progressivism may enjoy more political power in the future, but it is very unlikely that it will ever become a consensus movement. It will always struggle in alliance with more moderate factions. This means it can only hope to enact its policies imperfectly at best. Ironically, this means that as progressivism becomes more politically successful, it will become less effective as an opiate. In a democracy, power means compromise. Compromise, for the believer, means discontent.

In this sense, political radicalism in general is like opium. It soothes for a time, but progressively higher doses are soon required. The deeper the addiction, the more powerful the drug must become.

This is probably why radicalism compounds over time. For example, progressives enjoyed immense political success during the New Deal era but could not reconcile themselves to that success. They quickly adopted the goals of the Great Society and then, when they achieved that, the violent utopianism of the New Left. Similarly, the gay rights movement achieved its great dream of same-sex marriage and social acceptance but quickly turned to the new crusade of normalizing transgenderism. Neither of these movements seems to have considered the potential costs of their increasing radicalism. It appears that this particular law of diminishing returns is not avoidable. It is in the nature of the opium itself.

The upper-middle class may wean itself off the drug. If economic and social reforms are undertaken that restore the upper-middle class to their former status, they may well settle back into the pursuit of plenty. Politics and certainly radical politics might fall by the wayside.

However, there are forces at work that could prevent this. In fact, they could make the predicament of the upper-middle class exponentially worse.

In particular, there is reason to think that the artificial intelligence revolution and similar technological advances may ultimately render the upper-middle class irrelevant. All jobs requiring human labor will be done by the working and lower-middle classes, while everything else will be done by computers and robots. The middle-tier professional jobs the upper-middle class relies on could well disappear. No one will hire someone to write a legal brief when AI can do it a thousand times faster for free. The future may be divided into proles, androids, and the tech barons presiding over it all. If the upper-middle class survives, it will be in a state of enforced idleness.

If this occurs, then the political repercussions could be immense. The upper-middle class may turn to far more potent opium, perhaps newly synthesized. One might be a new form of Luddism that demonizes the technology that has destroyed the upper-middle class’s way of life. We may see unemployable former lawyers and professors of gender studies going about the land smashing robots and unleashing computer viruses on the unsuspecting.

At the same time, more extreme parties of the left could seize the moment. A revival of classic communism or anarchism is not impossible. Or, a completely reimagined form of ultra-egalitarianism could emerge and, for all we know, has already emerged. A Ted Talk gone unnoticed today may spark a revolution 50 years from now.

Another possibility is an extreme right-wing form of upper-middle-class discontent. It is hardly unprecedented for socialists to suddenly become fascists or fascists to become socialists. Some atheists convert to Islam and vice-versa. Moreover, when faced with total socioeconomic ruin, people and classes often look to a dictator to restore their former privileges. At other times, they simply want to vent their rage through the kind of violence encouraged by fascistic movements. Most likely, however, a new right-wing movement—such as the neo-reactionaries—will rise from within the tech industry.

None of this would be unprecedented and none of it bodes well for the future of progressivism. The unspoken truth of the history of radicalism is that the most revolutionary class has always been the upper-middle class. The working and lower-middle classes are too concerned with survival and advancement to bother with revolution. The upper class and the aristocracy are largely content with their lot. It is the upper-middle class that both want more and fear having less. As such, they are a class that suffers and seeks remedy for that suffering. Thanks to the economic upheavals of the last 20 years, they have now suffered enough to turn to a form of political opium of a decidedly potent kind. If history is any guide, however, the patient may not recover.