The nasty side of my leftism

Only vermin seek to harm the weak

As long-time readers of this blog will know, I’m markedly left-wing in my approach to politics.

I would like to think that my politics are motivated by compassion, and sometimes they are, but also sometimes there is cruelty to my politics. I don’t like this side of myself, but it is what is.

Let me explain with an example. In the US there is a long-running debate over the minimum wage. This debate is normally framed in terms of whether a higher minimum wage would be better for the poor. However there has always been a strain of conservatism- usually hidden in official pronouncements, but quite visible in Twitter threads etc.- that holds that the real problem with raising the minimum wage is that low skilled workers simply don’t deserve to be paid that much- especially if it comes at the expense of those with higher skills, but even if it doesn’t. These are often the same people that yell at and insult waiters.

My visceral response to this is partly disgust at how callous it is, but there’s another feeling I have as well, contempt. To my mind what these people are doing is engaging in a status competition with minimum wage workers. They don’t want minimum wage workers to get more, because they feel that reflects poorly, vis a vis their relative desert.

And the cruel, sneering part of me finds it absolutely contemptible that anyone would set as their competition in life minimum wage workers. What glory could there possibly be in aiming to cleanly exceed a minimum wage worker? What kind of slug would hinge their reputation on such a paltry form of financial success. That’s your long term plan for glory? A kitchen renovation that they have not? Will they sing your praises in a hundred years because you had a beach house and your waiter didn’t? Will epics be written about your SUV?

Again, I’m not proud of this. Fortunately, this contempt doesn’t extend to the minimum wage workers themselves- since they might be reaching for glory in domains other than the financial, and besides of which, they aren’t being nasty to anyone. Still the little dictators trying to stamp down the floor make my blood sing scornful laughter.

Pharmakos

Wikipedia explains the tradition of the Pharmakos as follows:

A slave, a cripple, or a criminal was chosen and expelled from the community at times of disaster (famine, invasion or plague) or at times of calendrical crisis. It was believed that this would bring about purification. On the first day of the Thargelia, a festival of Apollo at Athens, two men, the Pharmakoi, were led out as if to be sacrificed as an expiation.

(Remember that it is very plausible that a large majority of those regarded as ugly or criminal were poor. Certainly beauty and the aristocracy were conflated in ancient Greece, and poverty and criminality have always been associated)

It also mentions a bunch of interpretations of the ritual:

Walter Burkert and René Girard have written influential modern interpretations of the pharmakos rite. Burkert shows that humans were sacrificed or expelled after being fed well, and, according to some sources, their ashes were scattered to the ocean. This was a purification ritual, a form of societal catharsis. Girard likewise discusses the connection between catharsis, sacrifice, and purification. Some scholars have connected the practice of ostracism, in which a prominent politician was exiled from Athens after a vote using pottery pieces, with the pharmakos custom. However, the ostracism exile was only for a fixed time, as opposed to the finality of the pharmakos execution or expulsion.

As the kids say, there’s a lot to unpack here. A low member of the community becomes the scapegoat, then is excreted, but before that excretion is raised to a sacral state. A lot has been written about the concepts of purification, divinity, ostracism, scapegoating etc. involved. The archaic parallel with the figure of Christ in the Christian mythology is obvious (moreover it is said that Christ will be ugly in the book of Isaiah and the early church held as much).

But what most discussions never emphasize to my satisfaction is that the pharmakos ritual is not merely an assertion about the boundaries of “the community” as an undifferentiated mass, but is an assertion of ongoing status and class hierarchies in the community. At least to a degree, what is being asserted is material and social hierarchies. The ritual communicates:

1. That slaves, criminals and the ugly are marginal and can be cast out at any time. The fortunate tell themselves the lie that they don’t need the less fortunate.

2. That a slave, criminal or ugly person who “gets above their station” by being honored (e.g. through feasting) is a paradox that cannot exist in the community long, but must then be cast out.

Some have admired the ancient Greeks for their assertion of the right of the weak to trample the strong, but when I look at this ritual, I don’t see the rule of the strong. I see weakness, and a paranoid fear that the lower classes will see that weakness.

I think there’s a continuation of something like this pharmakos ritual today. People want the spectacle of “bad” (i.e. unsuccessful) people suffering, placed into a kind of internal exile (homelessness or economic precarity).

But that always makes me laugh because: The truly strong contend against the strong, not against the weak.

A bit more ancient Greece to bring the pharmakos metaphor out. My very first lesson at university was on ancient Greece. Our tutor sat us down and talked about everything from our University’s motto to the Godfather in order to bring out some themes about the Homeric period. But the thing that always stuck with me was when he told the class:

People think that the strong take things from the weak. In reality, only weak pretenders to strength do this. The truly strong assert their strength by giving to those weaker than themselves, not taking.

So I try, always, to think in terms of charity and love, but when the dark half of me rears itself, it also often wants to give charitably but for a very different reason. Maybe you can see why my vicious nature thinks even worse of those who want to bully and crush minimum wage workers than my virtuous side does.