Aristocratic Property and the Resentful

Oswald Spengler's 'The Hour of Decision' Series - Part 9

In last week’s entry on Spengler’s The Hour of Decision, I introduced Spengler’s understanding of the aristocracy. The aristocracy is responsible for upholding the high culture. It has innate capabilities that enable it to do so, and it enforces a society-wide understanding of rank, nobility, and honor. Those who are less capable, either because of laziness or lack of ability, are resentful towards the aristocracy because of its higher station in the social order. These people, whom Spengler describes as the vulgar, mobilize the masses against the aristocracy. This, of course, has the effect of eroding virtue, nobility, and honor, but it also has the effect of destroying the aristocratic idea of property, which is indispensable for a properly functioning high culture.

Property ownership is a cultural phenomenon, and property is a mark of distinction, according to Spengler. Property here is not defined in the narrow Austrian sense as simple ownership. Property, in the sense that Spengler describes it, is that which is gained over many generations through long and hard work. The desire for and possession of great wealth of this kind is an aristocratic trait. It is a generous form of property ownership, not a miserly one. This kind of property is resented by the Bolshevik hordes because not only is it owned privately, but because it marks some kind of distinction and is tied to land, blood, and culture. This kind of property is not tied to monetary value, it "consists of things and is not merely invested in them like 'fortune'" (page 54). Property, to Spengler, has a deeper meaning. The property becomes tied up with the life, soul, existence, and being of the property owner. Spengler says:

Not much is needed: a small well-preserved homestead, a worthy craft reputably practised, a tiny garden bearing evidence of cultivation by loving hands, a miner's spotless home, a few books or reproductions of classical art. The point is that these objects should be transformed into a personal world, should bear the stamp of the owner's personality. True possessions are soul, and only through that soul Culture. To estimate them by their money value is, however you look at it, either an incomprehension or a desecration. To divide them after the owner's death is a sort of murder. (Page 54)

Wealth, viewed as purely monetary assets, accounted for and totaled, versus wealth in the sense that Spengler describes it, is one of the differences between Culture and Civilization. Money is not wealth, but money is worshipped for its own sake both in Bolshevism and Americanism, Spengler observed. Money can be possessed quickly and disposed of painlessly relative to true property. The "rich" find the benefit of this money in their display of it. Its value is its spectacle, whether through gregarious consumption or public shows of charity.

The cultured ones know how to make much out of little and know how to enjoy the things that they have because they are connected to these things more deeply. They do not merely possess the art because they want to display its cost. They possess it because there is some amount of love and connection. They possess it because it evokes some feeling from them. There is beauty that it puts out into the soul of its owner who, when viewing it, not only consumes it but makes it into a part of themselves. This attitude towards ownership stands in stark opposition to that of the rappers and influencers who like to show off their possessions on social media. There has never been a better example of what Spengler is describing in human history than these people.

Spengler says "High culture is inseparably bound up with luxury and wealth" (page 55). There must be an environment of spiritually charged things that can be enjoyed and connected with for any sort of artistic achievement to come about. There must be wealth as a fertile training ground for great minds to spring up, and for inventors and artists to exercise their talents. They do not have to be wealthy themselves, but there must be a space for them to go to produce. In a beggarly society, there are no means for great art to come about - who are the great novelists and painters of the Soviet Union? Solzhenitsyn is the only one that comes to mind, but he is the accidental byproduct of abuse by the Soviet regime and one that Spengler did not get the privilege of reading.

The wealth necessary for creation cannot be defined in absolute terms. One could even perhaps be poor in means but have a richness of creativity that is allowed to flourish by the culture that they inhabit. This possibility will quickly fade away when there is too much concern made for money alone, and resentment towards the rich as well as an inability to accept a humble life sets in. Spengler also notes, “Loud praise of poverty is precisely as suspicious as scorn of riches; it is a cloak for anger at one's own inability to put an end to it" (page 56). It is good to be humble in your station in life. It is not good to be both poor and prideful.

In the Bolshevik Revolution, the Communists advocated that everything with monetary value should be shared. If it cannot be shared, it should be destroyed. They highlighted distinctions between the rich and the poor, but they saw these distinctions as a matter of degree, rather than kind. Their utopian program did not take into account the facts of history. No utopian program does. That is why they lead to so much violence, and ultimately collapse. In addition, the resentment of both the Bolsheviks and the modern-day socialists of all stripes towards “the rich” is completely contrary to a healthy culture’s goals of human flourishing and achievement.