Newly Poor

 

One of the ironic things that occurs when reads Eric Hoffer is that he comes up with insights, likely true, that seem counter-intuitive—here is one such instance from Pages 25, 26 and 27 of his book, The True Believer:  “ V ----------The Poor

 

                                                       The New Poor

                                                            20

 

Not all who are poor are frustrated. Some of the poor stagnating in the slums of the cities are smug in their decay. They shudder at the thought of life outside their familiar cesspool. Even the respectable poor, when their poverty is of long standing, remain inert. They are awed by the immutability of the order of things. It takes a cataclysm—an invasion, a plague or some other communal disaster—to open their eyes to the transitoriness of the ‘ eternal order.’”

 

My response: A Marxist might assume that the poor are always discontented, frustrated, willing and eager to revolt and overthrow their exploiters, but that is not the case. Serfs endured feudal conditions in Europe for hundreds of years. Humans are naturally fatalistic, lazy, inert and profoundly conservative. If their social order is strong and intact, though unjust, their sense of meaning and belonging is powerful, and their fate may seem immutable to them.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “It is usually those whose poverty is relatively recent, the ‘new poor,’ who throb with the ferment of frustration. The memory of better things is fire in their veins. They are the disinherited and dispossessed who respond to every rising mass movement. It was the new poor in seventeenth century England who ensured the success of the Puritan Revolution. During the movement of enclosure (see Section 5) thousands of landlords drove off their tenants and turned their fields into pastures. ‘Strong, active peasants, enamored of the soil that nurtured them, were transformed into wageworkers or sturdy beggars; . . . city streets were filled with paupers.’ It was this mass of the dispossessed who furnished the recruits for Cromwell’s new-model army.

 

In Germany and Italy the new poor coming from a ruined middle class formed the chief support of the Nazi and Fascist revolutions. The potential revolutionaries in present-day England are not the workers but the disinherited civil servants and businessmen. This class has a vivid memory of affluence and dominion and is not likely to reconcile itself to straitened conditions and political impotence.

 

There have been of late, both here and in other countries, enormous periodic increases in a new type of new poor, and their appearance undoubtedly has contributed to the rise and spread of contemporary mass movements. Until recently the new poor came mainly from the propertied classes, whether in cities or on the land, but lately, and perhaps for the first time in history, the plain workingman appears in this role.

 

So long as those who did the world’s work lived on a level of bare subsistence, they were looked upon and felt themselves as the traditionally poor. They felt poor in good times and in bad. Depressions, however severe, were not seen as aberrations or enormities. But with the wide diffusion of a high standard of living, depressions and the unemployment they bring assumed a new aspect. The present-day workingman in the Western world feels unemployment as a degradation. He sees himself disinherited and injured by an unjust order of things, and is willing to listen to those who call for a new deal.

 

 

                                              The Abjectly Poor

 

                                                          21

 

The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. The goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph; and every windfall a miracle. What need could they have for ‘an inspiring individual goal which would give meaning and dignity to their lives?’ They are immune to the appeal of a mass movement. Angelica Balabanoff describes the effect of abject poverty on the revolutionary ardor of famous radicals who flocked to Moscow in the early days of the Bolshevik revolution. ‘Here I saw men and women who had lived all their lives for ideas, who had voluntarily renounced material advantages, liberty, happiness, and family affection for the realization of their ideals—completely absorbed by the problem of hunger and cold.

 

Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams. One of the reasons for the unrebelliousness of the masses in China is the inordinate effort required there to scrape together the means of the scantiest existence. The intensified struggle fore existence ‘is a static rather than a dynamic influence.’”

 

My response: Hoffer seems solid in describing the unwillingness of the abject poor to agitate or find a mass movement attractive. Their sense of purpose is so powerful and complete, that they do not go from being discontented to disaffected and frustrated, attracted to passing change movements.

 

H on Pages 27 and 28: “                 22

 

Misery does not automatically generate discontent, nor is the intensity of the discontent directly proportionate to the degree of misery.

 

Discontent is likely to be highest when misery is bearable, when conditions have so improved that an ideal state seems almost within reach. A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed. De Tocqueville in his researches into the state of society in France before the revolution was struck by the discovery that ‘in no one of the periods which have followed the Revolution of 1789 has the national prosperity of France augmented more rapidly than it did in the twenty years preceding that event. He is forced to conclude that ‘the French found their position the more intolerable the better it became.’ In both France and Russia the land-hungry peasants owned almost exactly one-third of the agricultural land at the outbreak of the revolution, and most of the land was acquired during the generation or two preceding the revolution. It is not the actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt. A popular upheaval in Russia is hardly likely before the people get a real taste of the good life. The most dangerous moment for the regime of the Politburo will be when a considerable improvement in the economic conditions of the Russian masses has been achieved and the iron totalitarian rule somewhat relaxed. It is of interest that the assassination, in December, 1934, of Stalin’s close friend Kirov happened not long after Stalin had announced the successful end of the first Five-Year Plan and the beginning of a new, prosperous, joyous era.

 

The intensity of discontent seems to be in inverse proportion to the distance from the objective fervently desired. This is true whether we move toward our goal or away from it. It is true both of those who have just come within sight of the promised land, and of the disinherited who are still within sight of it; both of the about-to-be rich, free, etcetera, and the new poor and those recently enslaved.”

 

My response: Hoffer is alerting us to the fact that people are electrified to seek change and a new way once they have experienced or knew before some improvement, luxury, or liberty. The better they are treated while still oppressed, exploited, tyrannized, and enslaved is the psychological state of anxiousness and alienation—they are neither so entrenched at the bottom that improvement seems not be a prospect to fight for, or they are they are recently in reduced state of privilege, so they agitate and are receptive to change agents and their movement.

 

When one thinks that America by 1970, with the new civil rights gains for minorities, they colorblind society had been reached, but the CRT crowd could not see it, and clamored for ant-racialism the core tenets of DEI woke hegemony now in control at most American public and private institutions. Suffering for the masses becomes intolerable because revolting is linked less to seeking redress from suffering than the masses have had a slight introduction into change, and they are now hopeful that future change can occur for them, and that incentivizes them to want more change, more improvement in their lives.