Summary: America’s social structure changes slowly and unnoticed, taking us to a future with the class system of the past. Jane Austin would understand this New America, and her books might even describe our children’s lives. Unless we take back the reins of America.
Contents
- Back to the future for New America.
- Conclusions.
- How rich was Mr. Darcy?
- For More Information.
- Choices for Elizabeth in the 21st century: working poor or mistress?
(1) Back to the future for America
A common objection in the comments to descriptions of social change is that “this is nothing new”. Quite so, new things are extraordinarily rare in human society (e.g., nukes). History is much like the meals in my home: although the inventory in our well-stocked kitchen seldom change, the meals vary due to the ingredients used, their relative proportions, and their preparation.
Society’s vary in a similar way, with the wide variation in societies resulting from the basic human stock combined and prepared in different ways. This allows us to draw comparisons with the past to better predict the effects of our society’s evolution.
Last week I described one such change: how the increased concentration of wealth had created an aristocracy in America, a national class with stronger ties to each other than the elites of their communities. This class then use their increased power to restructure our social institutions to more closely reflect the shape of this New America, subjecting local institutions to centralized control — turning grassroots leaders into functionaries.
Our economic structure regresses to that of the Gilded Age (e.g., crushed unions, shrinking middle class, precarious prosperity of blue collar workers). Similarly the social structure of New America’s aristocracy and gentry echos that of Georgian England, in which marriage customs further concentrated wealth, and social divisions widened to match those of wealth.
To see a possible future from these trends read this excerpt from “Why Darcy would not have married Elizabeth Bennet” a review by Linda Colley of The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England
“As Vickery points out … just as Jane Austen does, that the lesser gentry, urban professionals, successful manufacturers, even the superior ‘trades’, regularly appeared at the same social events, met each other on the commissions of peace, and intermarried. … {their} menfolk played a vital part in local administration, as Justices of the Peace, as militia officers, sometimes as deputy lieutenants. National government, however, was a different matter….
“{Her} prime gentry heroine …is shown moving among a wide array of lesser landed, trading and professional acquaintances. But she was ‘not on visiting terms with noble families, not even with the holders of lesser titles’. Yet it was precisely this more exalted sector which commanded the majority of Parliamentary seats, places at court, positions in the Cabinet.
“It was this split in function within the landed classes that helped to nourish Christopher Wyvill’s economical reform movement in the 1770s … Here, as on other occasions, lesser gentry combined with mercantile dissidents in a critique of the 18th-century state because, at the centre, the former were conscious of not being synonymous with the governing class.
“… this point was fully understood by Austen. She took it for granted that her contemporaries would appreciate (as late 20th-century readers sometimes do not) the extent to which Pride and Prejudice was a deliberate essay in fantasy. An Eliza Bennet, fetching daughter of a small country gentleman, niece to a Cheapside attorney, might well be invited to a one-off county ball given by a Mr Bingley with a rented house and £5000 per annum. But a Mr Darcy with an inherited landed estate of £10,000 per annum would have been most unlikely to seek her hand for a dance, much less for marriage. Indeed, real-life Darcys would scarcely have wasted their precious bachelor youth on rural Hertfordshire. London, with its indulgences, its political life and its marriage market offering more eligible future wives even than Miss Bingley, would have been the automatic draw.”
These classes were broken over several generations by economic changes created by the industrial revolution. Unfortunately the phases of the current technological revolution appear to be having the reverse effect, further concentrating wealth and power. For details see The coming big inequality. Was Marx just early? and How do we respond to the Robot Revolution?
On another day we’ll discuss another aspect of New America’s class-based structure: no longer equal justice for all, but separate systems of High, Middle, and Low justice. That’s already here, although not yet codified. Perhaps soon the Supreme Court will rule this was the Founder’s original intent.
(2) Conclusion
We need not be victims or passive objects of these changes. Standing together, organized and thinking, we can harness these social, economic, political, and technological forces to build a better Republic. It requires only will and work, risking much to gain more.
(3) How rich was Mr. Darcy?
According to “The Economics of Jane Austin“, in 1803 there were 287 Peers, who had an average income of 8,000 pounds per year. Mr. Darcy, who was not a peer, had an income of 10 thousand pounds per year. The first census of Britain in 1801 counted a population of 10.5 million. Mr. Darcy was one of the 0.1%.
(4) For More Information
I strongly recommend watching the BBC miniseries version
For the big picture see all posts about Inequality and Social Mobility. What to do about it? See America – how can we stop the quiet coup now in progress. You can start with Ugly truths about income inequality in America, which no politician dares to say, and Glimpses of the New America being born now,
(5) 21st century choices for Miss Bennet: working poor or mistress?
If you don’t like Mr Darcy, Wal-Mart is hiring. This gives the poor Elizabeth’s of today much the same choices Miss Bennet had in 1810. The more things change, the more they stay the same — if we let them.
