The Predicament of the Newly Rich

They are the physical object of thinly disguised envy. They are the natural stuffs of vulgar gags and the targets of popular aggression. They are the Newly Rich. Perhaps they should be dealt with more than appropriately within the academic subject of psychology, but then economic science in a subdivision of psychology. To many, they stand for a psychiatry or a sociopathology.

The Newly Rich are not a new phenomenon. Every generation have them. They are the upstarts, those who seek to sabotage the existent elite, to replace it and, ultimately to fall in it. Indeed, the Newly Rich can be classified in conformity with their dealings with the well-entrenched Old Rich. Every society have its veteran, venerable and aristocratical societal classes. In most cases, there was a strong correlativity between wealthiness and societal standing. Until the beginning of this century, only property proprietors could vote and thus take part in the political process. The land gentry secured military and political places for its off spring, no matter how sick equipt they were to deal with the duties push upon them. The privileged access and the insiders outlook ("old male children network" to utilize a celebrated British expression) made certain that economical benefits were not distribute evenly. This skewed distribution, in turn, served to perpetuate the advantages of the opinion classes.

Only when wealthiness was detached from the land, was this solidarity broken. Land – beingness a scarce, non-reproducible resource – fostered a scarce, non-reproducible societal elite. Money, on the other hand, could be multiplied, replicated, redistributed, reshuffled, made and lost. It was democratic in the truest sense of a word, otherwise worn thin. With meritocracy in the ascendance, nobility was in descent. People made money because they were clever, daring, fortunate, illusionist – but not because they were born to the right household or married into one. Money, the top of societal equalizers, wedded the old elite. Blood amalgamated and societal social classes were thus blurred. The nobility of capital (and, later, of entrepreneurship) – to which anyone with the right makings could belong – trounced the nobility of blood and heritage. For some, this was a sad moment. For others, a triumphant one.

The New Rich chose 1 of three paths: subversion, revolution and emulation. All three manners of reaction were the consequences of envy, a sense of lower status and rage at being discriminated against and humiliated.

Some New Rich chose to sabotage the existent order. This was perceived by them to be an inevitable, gradual, slow and "historically sanctioned" process. The transfer of wealthiness (and the powerfulness associated with it) from one elite to another constituted the revolutionist element. The ideological displacement (to meritocracy and democracy or to mass- democracy as yttrium Gasset would have got set it) served to warrant the historical procedure and set it in context. The successes of the new elite, as a class, and of its members, individually, served to turn out the "justice" behind the tectonic shift. Sociable establishments and mores were adapted to reflect the preferences, inclinations, values, ends and worldview of the new elite. This attack – infinitesimal, graduated, cautious, all accommodating but also grim and all pervading – qualifies Capitalism. The Capitalist Religion, with its temples (shopping promenades and banks), clergy (bankers, financiers, bureaucrats) and rites – was created by the New Rich. It had multiple aims: to bestow some Godhead or historical importance and significance upon procedures which might have got otherwise been perceived as helter-skelter or threatening. To function as an political orientation in the Althusserian sense (hiding the discordant, the disagreeable and the ugly while accentuating the concordant, conformist and appealing). To supply a historical procedure framework, to forestall feelings of purposelessness and vacuity, to actuate its disciples and to perpetuate itself and so on.

The second type of New Rich (also known as "Nomenclature" in certain parts of the world) chose to violently and irreversibly uproot and then eliminate the old elite. This was usually done by usage of beastly military unit coated with a thin layer of incongruent ideology. The purpose was to immediately come into the wealthiness and powerfulness accumulated by generations of elitist rule. There was a declared purpose of an equalitarian redistribution of wealthiness and assets. But world was different: a small grouping – the new elite – scooped up most of the spoils. It amounted to a surgical substitution of one hermetic elite by another. Nothing changed, just the personal identities. A funny duality have formed between the portion of the ideology, which dealt with the historical procedure – and the other part, which elucidated the methods to be employed to ease the transfer of wealthiness and its redistribution. While the first was deterministic, long-term and irreversible (and, therefore, not very pragmatic) – the second was an almost undisguised formula for pillage and robbery of other people' property. Communism and the Eastern European (and, to a lesser extent, the Central European) versions of Socialism suffered from this built-in toxicant seed of deceit. So did Fascism. It is no wonderment that these two sister political orientations fought it out in the first one-half of the twentieth century. Both prescribed the unabashed, unmitigated, unrestrained, forced transfer of wealthiness from one elite to another. The labor enjoyed almost none of the loot.

The 3rd manner was that of emulation. The Newly Rich, who chose to follow it, tried to absorb the worldview, the values and the behavior patterns of their predecessors. They walked the same, talked the same, clothed themselves in the same fashion, bought the same status symbols, ate the same food. In general, they looked as pale imitations of the existent thing. In the process, they became more than than Catholic than the Pope, more Old Rich than the Old Rich. They exaggerated gestures and mannerisms, they transformed refined and delicate fine art to kitsch, their address became hyperbole, their societal associations dictated by ridiculously stiff codifications of properness and conduct. As in similar psychological situations, patricide and matricide followed. The Newly Rich rebelled against what they perceived to be the dictatorship of a dying class. They butchered their physical objects of emulation – sometimes, physically. Realizing their inability to be what they always aspired to be, the Newly Rich switched from defeat and lasting humiliation to aggression, force and abuse. These new converts turned against the laminitises of their newly establish faith with the rage and strong belief reserved to true but disappointed believers.

Regardless of the method of heritage adopted by the New Rich, all of them share some common characteristics. Psychologists cognize that money is a love substitute. People collect it as a manner to counterbalance themselves for past aches and deficiencies. They attach great emotional significance to the amount and handiness of their money. They regress: they play with playthings (fancy cars, watches, laptops). They struggle over property, district and privileges in a Jungian archetypal manner. Perhaps this is the most of import lesson of all: the New Rich are children, aspiring to go adults. Having been deprived of love and ownerships in their childhood – they bend to money and to what it can purchase as a (albeit poor because never fulfilling) substitute. And as children are – they can be cruel, insensitive, not able to detain the satisfaction of their urges and desires. In many states (the emerging markets) they are the lone capitalists to be found. There, they spun off a malignant, pathological, word form of buddy capitalism. As clip passes, these immature New Rich will go tomorrow's Old Rich and a new social class will emerge, the New Rich of the future. This is the lone hope – however inadequate and meagre – that developing states have.