Lady Chatterley’s Hater

PLUTOCRACY DEVOURS HEARTS AND MINDS, NOT JUST JUSTICE:

Abstract: “Plutocracy” is not just the rule of wealth. It is the rule of Pluto. As Jesus Christ himself pointed out. 

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:23-24. Jesus does not explain why. To try to understand that, an example, however fictional, may help.  

The 1955 French film Lady Chatterley’s Lover, is first about her husband, and then, secondarily,  how she reacts to his plutocratic madness. Lady Chatterley finally rejects his occupation of her mind with plutocratic poison.

Indeed, Lord Chatterley, her husband, under his polished and dignified mien, teased out by externalities, reveals himself to be a most determined Hater. He relentlessly struggles, from the depth of his wheelchair, with boars, coal, miners, the ecology, his determination to keep plutocracy established, and finally his progressively enlightened wife (who reveres her husband in the beginning, but finds out, in the fullness of facts, that he is evil personified, and then does several things about it.)  

That the British economic establishment revolved psychologically around  the exploitation doctrine, and cold hatred against the working class, is the most disturbing message of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

These are not just pretty words. The central bank of the USA (the “Fed”) conspired with the British central bank (the “Bank of England”) to make a very loose expansion of the monetary base during the 1920s. The idea was to give lots of money to plutocrats, so that their Lordships would have lots of money to do lots of things with (fall a forest, dig a new mine in the case of Chatterley). This (gravely) erroneous idea has been masquerading as “economic stimulus” in the last few decades, with increasing vigor.

That policy of showering the rich with money led directly to a considerable heating of the economy, and thus the Great Depression.  That policy is called nowadays “Quantitative Easing“, and is the main economic policy since 1996 (when the indicators were as bad as in 1929). Greenspan, under the Intern in Chief Clinton, decided to do the opposite of what the Fed did in 1929.

However to turn left where a mad man turned right does not make one any less crazy. In the 1930s, president Roosevelt switched instead to a command economy targetting jobs, which went on steroids in 1942, to feed the war machine.

Lady Chatterley’s anti-plutocratic message did not escape astute Anglo-Saxon censors. This is why the book, and a French film about it, were banned in Britain and the USA until the 1960s. Of little acts of censorships like that, here, there, and everywhere, is constructed the great admiration of the Anglo-Saxon middle class, or what’s left of it, for Reagan, Thatcher, wealth in general, and the filthy rich they call: “philanthropists“.   

Chatterley does not claim to be a philanthropist. But he feels himself to be crucial in the sense that he provides work for the working class. Contemporary American philanthropists  are the exact opposite sort; they extract power away from government, hence the People and the working class. Recently it came to the fore that the greatest “philanthropists” of them all, Bill Gates was a Trojan Horse for the American Monsanto to sell dangerous products to Africans; French media talked about it, and the French government is prosecuting Monsanto. However, there was not a peep in the USA about that. From what one could see on TV, it looked as if Obama has put Lady Gates in charge of education!

The Steve Job widow, who, with her husband, never paid a cent for the billions of dollars of Apple stock he, and she, got through the years as CEO of Apple was staying next to the first Lady at the State of the Union speech. No doubt she gave plenty of that money of her political friends. When you have billions, you can fork over a few millions for your friend the president, if that’s the only “tax” you will ever pay.

Yet truth is hard to repress. Short of putting civilization in full reverse, as the Christian Roman emperors did after 310 CE. That of course brought a near collapse of civilization, and several civil wars with the atheist Franks, until these noble savages for the north took control of the miserable Greco-Roman theocratic fascists.  

Jesus said plutocrats are hopeless. Lady Chatterley points out to something seriously worse. Plutocrats are mad. It’s as simple as that. Truth shall make simple. They are mad in the sense that their mental condition is so unbalanced relative to normal psychology that it deserves this qualificative. The plutocratic condition is not natural to man. Neither to perpetrator, nor victim. Man was born, and evolved, free. For millions of years. But now the plutocrats have come, to rule over lesser beings.

Indeed, plutocrats can control countries, or even empires, for centuries. The entire twentieth century was a case in point. Plutocrats deliberately engineered World War One (the French and German socialist parties considered this obvious in 1914, they should refresh their memories).  

Then plutocrats deliberately engineered the Nazification of Germany, the fascization of Italy and Spain,  and the Great Depression. Now, since 2008, plutocrats are engineering a Greater Depression. That so far, has been highly profitable to them. In the USA, plutocrats do not even bother anymore to hide their control of politics. The president can spend entire days, days after days, going around with his huge plane and personal army, as beggar in chief, going from plutocrats to plutocrats, and they make him checks of the order of the median family income, and all Americans watched that as cows do watch trains. Unconcerned for the most part.

Where does plutocratic madness comes from? Well, there is a psychobiological component, and then there is a historical component. History is not on our side, and the deep nature of Homo makes it all worse.

What we have now is a dictatorship of the financial actors, immensely leveraged, backed up by the mightiest politicians who they feed like pigeons. One can only presume that those actors, like Lord Chatterley, are just as they appear, namely completely mad. The way the leadership deals with the energy problem is a case in point.

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WHY WAS “LADY CHATTERLEY” CENSORED?

I generally prefer to feed philosophy with hard facts, such as those provided by science or history. The small philosophical  fry out there stick to literature, greater philosophers, to the world. Wisdom ought to rise from reality, not the gossip of literary criticism.  Moreover, individuals basking in the global cultural inheritance have to do triage among stories, worldwide. It’s more illuminative, as a child, to learn about Japan’s famous “40 Ronins” than about Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The former shows better how crazy cultures can become.

Yet, Lady Chatterley Lover (LCL) is most enlightening for students of the present plutocratic mind, a matter of survival for all. Feudal Japan is not as directly relevant. I will cover here not just LCL, but also its cover-up, aspects of the censorship against the LCL story.

Lady Chatterley Lover gives a detailed example of the baseness of the plutocratic mind. While showing how it is the backbone of the Anglo-Saxon socio-economy.

The books makes plain that the Anglo-Saxon economical system holds that the exploitation principle if the highest principle there is. It is the meta organizer of the entire society. Worth is established by exploiting people, the ecology, the underground, and even by exploiting one’s own humanity, with unrelenting thoroughness. And if people die on the way, it is only power for the course. Anything else is a weakening of what passes for civilization in the exploiting mood, the highest mood there is.

It’s easier to multitask with a movie for 90 minutes than to converge both eyes on pages for hours about how mediocre people do mediocre things. So I watched the 1955 French movie version, of Lady Chatterley. That movie was fiercely banned in the good old USA to protect American chicken from the terribly contagious disease of European ideas. (Warning: there is a more recent French movie on LLC, devoid of any content. Apparently French movie makers thought better in the 1950s than the 2000s!) 

On the face of it, the Lady Chatterley’s Lover’s story is not much to talk about.

1) Lord Chatterley is paralyzed from the waist down in World War One. He takes it like a champ, as behooves his superior class.

2) His young and beautiful wife Constance welcomes him back, makes him feel very comfortable, and accommodates herself of the situation, which, in particular, means she becomes a babysitter to him, and will have no child. She has perfectly adapted to the situation.

3) A deadly accident, caused to adventurous method to find more coal, occurs in his Lordship’s coal mine. His Lordship overhears some of his miners regretting that he did not die down there.

4) Lord Chatterley informs his wife that his employees behave that way, because he has no heir. If he did have a heir, the miners would know that one other Chatterley would rise: the Chatterley is dead, Long Live the Chatterley. Only then would the miners’ desire to change the order of things be hopeless.

5) Thus, deduces Lord Chatterley, he needs an heir. Apparently,  clamping down on the working class seems to be a notion central to his heart. He orders his wife to make what is necessary with some gentleman, say in Venice.

6) Lady Chatterley misunderstands her instructions, and sleeps with the game warden, who belongs to the lower class. He was an officer in the war, having risen from the rank (that means he is not of the class real officers are from, those who, from their class background, went to the correct schools, and came out officers; instead his prowess in combat allowed him to rise above his class).

7) Scandal: the entire village speaks of it, the Lady is pregnant from the game warden. Lord Chatterley fires the warden. 

8) After a bout of rage, Lord Chatterley is more determined than ever to have his way: “Never mind, I will make that son into a Chatterley! I will do what it takes!” (He is so sure of himself, he takes for granted that a son is coming.)

9) Lady Chatterley coldly and definitively states a matter of fact:”No you will not, because you will never see him!”

10) She leaves with her lower class lover, arm to arm, down the coal city’s main street.

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LET THE PEOPLE BE MORAL, SO LEADERS CAN EXPLOIT THEM BETTER:

The 1955 French movie was banned in the USA. The American People has to be protected against dangerous French subversion. Always. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court.  

The book itself had been written by a British gentleman, Lawrence, and published in Italy in 1928. The publisher Penguin Books found itself in court after trying to publish it in Great Britain in 1960. British censors claimed to be revolted by two short words, somewhere inside. American censors claimed the French movie advocated adultery

Several notorious adulterers had been president of the USA just before that. Maybe they watched too many French movies?  American plutocrats would jump in bed with all pretty teenagers coming within reach. As president JFK did exactly that at the White House, just as his dad did before at home.

At second sight, it’s not hilarious, but clearly a pattern of deception.

As the Washington Post puts it: “Why do we need more salacious details about Kennedy’s sex life? Beyond the prurience, it once again raises legitimate questions about the character of our leaders. “If presidents represent the best of America, then there’s quite a gap between that and their behavior,” historian Robert Dallek [ a Kennedy specialist] told us Monday. “Presidents — all of them — hide things.”

Well, what they hide is rather major, namely that there are two moral systems; one for the little people, and another for plutocrats and their agents. Thus at the slaughter house, there is a moral system for cattle, and one for management.

This was pointed earlier by Nietzsche. Nietzsche explained that Christianity was a “slave morality“, excellent at enchaining the masses. The masters followed a different, higher moral system, Beyond Good and Evil, the moral system of the Lords, the cult of the Will to Power.   

Instead of dwelling in Nietzsche’s literary sources, all the way back to ancient Greece, I have put that in the proper historical context. That of the empire of the Franks. The Imperium Francorum rose, precisely, because it was anti-Christian. Precisely because it followed a higher moral system than Christianity. Nietzsche is just a small vague commentary on what was the empire of the West practiced for centuries (Imperium Romanum, Pars Occidentalis).

That was demonstrated when the self described “Europeans” nationalized the Catholic Church, so they would distribute the church’s riches to the largest professional army since the best days of Rome. At the time, the best professional soldiers were family men, and those families had to be taken care of, at home. Hence the hefty salaries. That army was used to annihilate the superstitious, rabid Syrian Caliphate and its Berber allies.

“Within days of her arrival, the beautiful young blonde was invited to join the president for an afternoon swim — and later that day, lost her virginity to him in the first lady’s bedroom…” I heard the ex-19 year old description of what happened, and she said the president used “force“, but with great expertise. In other words, he raped her. Oh there were drugs too, and enforced sex acts under watchful presidential supervision, with aides.

Now, of course, this is all very quaint as plutocrats can screw the entire world, making the poor pay taxes for the rich until they die off.

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TOO MUCH WILL TO POWER BRINGS MADNESS:

In the French 1955 movie, the raciest scene is of the two lovers fully dressed, kissing, standing up. Nothing worse than in “Gone With The Wind”. American censors claimed the movie glorified adultery, but what was truly glorified was truth about the masters of Britain:

a) Lord Chatterley is driven by the Will to Power to a ridiculous extent: he has to give the signal to kill a boar at bay, however inconvenient it is to bring him by car, put him in his wheel chair, and give him the French horn to sound off. Only then can the boar die.

b) Chatterley ravages a forest that he himself loved as a child because he wants to build a “forest of steel” inside which a new mine will grow down to make him even richer, as his Lady observes contemptuously. But, she adds, it will not make him more potent where it really counts. (In the heart, and somewhere else.)

c) His motivation for having a child is first to put the workers back in place, and then somehow extends the Chatterley rule, apparently that sheer greed for power ought to rule the universe.

Do people have children for power? No doubt that was a motivation, through prehistoric and Neolithic culture. A European peasant would get more land if he had more children capable of working the field (in the communal agricultural system of the Middle Ages). But it was not the only motivation in taking care of a child. However, Chatterley talks only as if having a young man his son to crack down on the workers was his only motivation.

The problem with being only under the control of the will to power is that it is only a fraction of what ought to drive a fully balanced mind, as evolution meant it to be. Look for example to the god of Abraham: although rabidly devoured by the will to power, he has other motivations too. The Qur’an reminds us every few lines that “Allah is wise, merciful“.

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THE WILL TO SURVIVE, AND THE WILL TO DESTROY BOTH DOMINATE THE WILL TO POWER:

That, by the way, is Nietzsche’s classic mistake. Nietzsche claimed the “Will To Power” ruled, but, truly, the prime motivation of human beings, in an extremely dangerous world, was not so much power (over others, or the universe) as it was the sheer will to survive. That the will to survive, not the will to power, dominates, is rendered obvious by evolution as survival of the fittest, and is, no doubt, the reason why  Nietzsche detested Darwin.

Another aspect of the established order which is decried: Lord Chatterley’s paternalistic sexism, which, in the end, is rendered impotent by Lady Chatterley superbly elevated point of view: she knows love moves the heavens, and greed and evil move only hell. And that’s fine with her: after all, she chose heavens.

Here is another way in which Nietzsche’s Will To Power is limited. To exert power, one needs an object to exert it onto. However Homo’s will To Vice, includes an outright Will To Destruction. A time honored atavism. I must acknowledge that the god of Abraham understood this perfectly well.  And it is made blatant in the homicidal and submission rage pervading the Old, New and Quranic testaments.

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HOW DID THE SITUATION CHANGE IN A CENTURY? SEXISM HAS DIMINISHED & TECHNOLOGY HAS IMPROVED:

We are nearly a century after Lady Chatterley’s Lover was written, and one can compare what happened versus what was decried then. The feminine condition has enormously improved: now women vote, work much more in high value jobs, and are much more independent.

So little need to fret about “The Second Sex“. There is much progress to still make, but at least momentum is pointing in the right direction.

Also there is no doubt that the average lives of average people has improved considerably. Most of that is attributable to progress in science and technology. The rest has to do with the welfare state, and the fact that the world war of 1914-1945, after killing more than 5% of the world population (120 million dead, at least), is still perceived as a great warning… And the Light Side won the war. Moreover, differently from 1919, the victors, stayed in control of world military might, nuclear weapons, and the United Nations Security Council. Nobody doubt the resolve and might of France, Britain and the USA (in this order!), when united.

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HOWEVER THE ENERGY SITUATION IS GETTING HOPELESS:

The economic background of the LCL book was the slow death of the coal industry. At the time, coal was still, by far, the most important energy source, although oil usage was rising quickly for transportation. 

Oil was an important factor in World War Two: Hitler wanted Polish, Romanian and Caucasian oil for his armies (as it was he had to do much of the war on synthetic oil, according to processes developed secretly by an alliance of American and German plutocrats).

The intervention of the foremost democracies, France and Britain, derailed Hitler’s plans: he was forced into a war he could not win.

Japan, submitted to an American oil embargo, decided to grab Indonesian oil, and that required to neutralize the U.S. Pacific fleet (or so the stupid Japanese command thought; in truth, the USA had no intent to go to war in 1942!)

Nowadays, fossil fuels are the number one energy source. However, we are well passed Peak Cheap Oil. Crude oil is reaching 120 dollars a barrel, even though there is no war, although the world economy is in recession. 

[See: http://hawaiinewsdaily.com/2012/01/peak-cheap-oil-passed/]

Ten of the last eleven world recessions were preceded by an oil price spike. At this point , the USA and the EU import for one billion dollar a day of oil. Chronically high fossil fuels guarantee a chronic recession (aka “depression”). Why? Because the economy is ultimately an energy processing machine.  

A really growing economy corresponds to a growing efficient energy usage. The easiest way to augment that is to augment overall energy usage, but one cannot do this anymore if there is no more energy to use. Worse, said energy is going down, both in absolute value (because no more oil is found, and fracking is a flash in the pan) and relatively (because of the rise of the ex-Third World). In any case, if we do not develop more energy source, or augment efficiency, the economy will simply not grow anymore. But as the population is growing, this means an indefinite depression.  Indeed, we cannot switch to a new energy source as happened in the time of Lord Chatterley from coal to oil… because we have no replacement (as a new cheap energy, although solar is coming in fast for the south).  

Conservation, energy austerity, can help. Yet European efforts in that direction are undermined by the rest of the world, led by the USA. See the USA leading an anti-European coalition joined by Russia and China, to prevent Europe to tax air travel’s fossil fuels (those, so far, go tax free).

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PLUTOCRACY HAS MUTATED INTO AN EXTREMELY MALIGNANT CANCER:

The plutocratic situation, if anything, has deteriorated considerably since 1928. Plutocracy, the Dark Side,  caused two Great Depressions, and major wars (including World War II). The second great depression, the Greater Depression, is unfolding, because the (conservative) governments of the West have entrusted those who caused the crisis, the plutocratic financiers, with even more power. Some of the decreases of GDP are comparable to the 1930s. After 5 years of recession, Greece is expected to be down 40% in GDP soon. In the USA, in a scenario reminiscent of the fall of the USSR, lifespan is decreasing.

Meanwhile the president is rising a billion from his friends the plutocrats, to further his glory and government. Many Roman emperors did exactly the same before him; rising considerable sums among plutocratic friends, socializing together, all this to further imperial rule.

Giant amounts of money (“monetary base”) have been wasted replenishing the plutocrats who sucked dried the banks they managed. They were wasted, because no strings were attached. In the USA money manipulators (hedge fund managers) meet constantly with politicians and lawmakers to conspire together. This sort of information can be gleaned from reading the famous “anti-capitalist” newspaper, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. 

Overall, plutocracy is stronger than ever. Lord Chatterley’s mind is an ode to Pluto. However he puts his capital at work in the service of the People. It’s tough love, mixed with contempt, but he views himself as a Roman style general, with the right of life and death on his troops. Ultimately, he provides his troops with livelihood, as he points out. 

The hedge fund managers and big bankers are not like that. They don’t claim to bring jobs. Silicon Valley Titans have found tricks to pay no taxes whatsoever. Then Obama comes visit them, kiss them on the cheek, sleep at their home, and they give him enormous amounts of money (but tiny relative to the taxes they would have to pay, if they paid taxes). I saw two years olds give 38,500 dollars to the president. Yes, that’s not far from the median family income in the USA. These two year olds do not possess nobility titles yet, but it’s just the same.

Nowadays, the connections between finance and economy has been broken, so the situation is worse than under Lord Chatterley. Nowadays, the biggest banks (including the likes of Goldman Sachs, which are truly only banks, or conspiracy outfits, for the hyper wealthy) get free money from the American and European central banks.  

The result is that the economy has stopped growing just when efforts ought to be redoubled, because the energy utilizing machine which is the world economy is getting strangled, and poisoned by fossil fuels.

An immediately deployable replacements exist in parts: solar energy produced locally. Producing energy locally is key, as huge losses occur in transportation, and various inefficiencies (losses are, overall around an astounding 90%, worldwide!). Tide and current machines, wind, and electricity producing pastures are the way out. Especially when efficient, ubiquitous energy storage is invented. All these would bring millions of local jobs, in the European Union alone. And, a fortiori the USA.

However the first thing needed is the deconstruction of the nasty mood which rules so far, the mood of plutocracy. As long as the plutocrats rule, no significant positive change will happen, because plutocrats thrive in hell (hence their names).

In the times of Lord Chatterley, not enough was done in a timely manner by the thinking class (OK, some of that was all too close to plutocracy!). All too much of the British and American upper classes were pro-Nazi. Their ideologies of class and privilege had a lot in common with Nazism, indeed. American, English, and of course German plutocrats collaborated to put in power fascist regimes all over. From Lenin and Stalin’s to Mussolini’s, Franco’s and Hitler’s. (As Lenin himself observed.)

Intelligent observations are key. Here is one: As long as there are more plutocrats than there are representatives of the democracy, the former will be able to buy, or otherwise capture, the latter.  

Everything will be all right, if people become aware enough, soon enough, that Wall Street and its ilk have occupied their minds, so as to trample on the human condition, with a desire of utmost destruction.  However incredible that may sound, this is what plutocracy is all about. Those who don’t want to understand that, will be condemned to repeat history, just worse. Way worse.

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Patrice Ayme

Tags: Coal, Dark Side, Lady Chatterley Lover