10 Oct 2013 03:43:32
This is, at times, a hugely depressing book, and not least among its depressing features are the notes of self-pity from the super-rich themselves. On the second page of the introduction we read of Robert Kenny, "a Boston psychologist who specializes in counseling the super-elite" (American spellings throughout, which perhaps also accounts for her repeated use of the phrase "the hoi polloi", which should be used correctly or not at all). By Kenny's own testimony, the tissues in his consulting room are regularly moistened by the tears of the staggeringly wealthy as they fret about their wealth.
I wanted to read more about him, but he disappears from the text; instead we hear quite a lot of interesting stuff about the history of super-elitism, its causes and such reversals or checks and balances as exist or existed to shift power back into the hands of the middle classes. (It says something, incidentally, about the state of politics these days that the idea of helping the lower classes has more or less vanished from popular political discourse.) So we learn about the decline of Venice, once the greatest city on Earth, but which became the decaying museum it largely is these days from the 17th and 18th centuries on, thanks (says Freeland) to the Libro d'Oro, the Book of Gold, which permanently defined which families were entitled to be in the nobility, and therefore the oligarchy. This is apparently a sure-fire way to engineer your own downfall, the seeds of capitalism's self-destruction of which Marx spoke.
Freeland, I should point out, is no Marxist, and although conceding to him one or two minor points, she is still very much of the opinion that capitalism is "the best prosperity-creating system humanity has come up with so far", as she has said in the financial blog she writes for Reuters.
The bad thing about that is that she will not countenance any kind of socialism (let alone, as I occasionally do in my darker moments, fantasise about the gutters of Mayfair running red with the blood of the plutocrats). The good thing is that she knows how to speak to and about the situation without the red mist descending. It also means she is listened to by these people, and they talk to her unguardedly.
There might be hope, insofar that there are people even at the upper echelons of the system who at least pay lip service to the idea of serving the wider community. Counter that with the despair that a cold-eyed analysis of the situation brings and you may come away with the notion that the day of the western middle class is over, however much Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, wrings his hands about it. (And for every Schmidt there are a dozen plutocrats who are genuinely baffled that there is even such a thing as welfare, let alone a welfare society.) We should learn from the chilling example of scribes, who started out as the most valued of employees, only to become, even before Dickens mentioned Bob Cratchit, miserably exploitable drudges.
So, sadly, a very necessary book. That Freeland is probably not going to be your best political friend should not put you off. It will also make you laugh in a very bitter way when you recall the slogan of the recent Tory conference: "for hard-working people".
