Why the West will refuse to fight Citizens won't sacrifice themselves

The internal proletariat is not a Marxist term (both Marx and Toynbee took the word “proletariat” from the Roman proletarii, the name of the poorest class of urban dweller). In Toynbee’s model, developed in his 12-volume Study of History, it denotes a group of citizens who live inside an empire, but for various structural reasons no longer benefit from it — and so are unlikely to rush to its defence. This is, after all, what happened in Rome: as the empire began to fall on hard times and the decline of the slavery-based economy started to bite, a mix of high taxes and painful labour shortages conspired to make Roman citizenship feel more like a yoke and less like a privilege. Once the barbarians came, many were disinclined to put up much resistance; and why would they?

A more obvious example can be found in the annals of the Aztec empire, which had subjugated a large number of peoples and tribes. When Hernán Cortés overthrew it, he did so by leading a coalition of disgruntled subjects for whom Aztec rule had few upsides. In other words, his army was made up of internal proletarians: people who lost more than they gained from the continuation of empire, even though they were formally part of it in the first place.

Why, more than 500 years later, is any of this relevant? Consider for a moment the recent vote on foreign aid in the US house of representatives. This caused quite a lot of bitterness on the American Right, and for quite good reason: the speaker, Mike Johnson, violated his own party’s rules in order to pass a foreign aid bill with the help of the Democrats, even though more than half of his own party was opposed to it.

Many, let’s not forget, believe America is heading for bankruptcy. The deficit is massive, the national debt is exploding, and underneath it all lies the underreported but truly eye-watering figure of $175 billion, which is what the US Treasury projects it will need to actually fund its social safety net. And what is America’s political class doing in the face of this looming fiscal disaster? They are quite literally borrowing money to send to Ukraine and Israel instead — a move that, in the corporate world, would be considered asset stripping. Ordinary American voters are no doubt starting to feel what the put-upon Romans did: the empire is no longer working for them.

Previously, such measures would have been justified with bromides about freedom and democracy, but such rhetoric no longer commands the same authority. Americans, just like Westerners in general, are checking out and refusing to do their “duty” towards rulers who have seemingly abandoned any notion of giving them anything in return. The centuries come and go, but these basic social dynamics are as true now as they were in the ancient world: the less valuable citizenship becomes, the less people are willing to stand up and fight for it.

What makes this situation so intractable today is that our political elites have more or less made themselves immune to the negative consequences of their own policies. They neither apologise for mistakes nor accept responsibility for them. To take just one example: the war against Ukraine was supposed to be won quickly, and those who warned about the negative economic consequences of introducing sanctions were ridiculed and marginalised. More than two years later, those measures are wreaking havoc on ordinary people, and yet there is seemingly no contrition whatsoever from those who got it wrong — just more calls for the plebians to sacrifice more.

Of course, to say that this is somehow a unique aspect of the Ukraine war is far from the truth: the war in Iraq, which cost the United States massive amounts of blood, sweat and treasure, is now widely recognised to have been based on lies and misinformation, and yet few were punished. It was the same story after the great financial crisis of 2008. Lack of accountability is at this point endemic.

Thus, we find ourselves in a situation that has much in the way of historical precedent: an insulated, out-of-touch ruling class protected from the ill effects of its own policies, and a general population that is sullenly withdrawing from public service and both mentally and physically “checking out”. Because it’s happened so often before, what happens next is not a great mystery: at some point, yet another crisis will roll along, one that the elites will simply not be able to manage without the active support of the people they rule over, only to find that said support doesn’t arrive. The terrible revolutionary years that Mexico suffered after the botched election of 1910 is one example of where this dynamic can eventually lead.

In another dramatic example of this dynamic playing itself out, Alexis de Toqueville took to the podium in early 1848 to warn his fellow Frenchmen that they were all “sleeping on a volcano”. Even as obvious revolutionary activity had ceased, the way in which bitterness, dissatisfaction and loss of faith in king Louis Philippe I had spread all across French society was, in de Toqueville’s mind, a sign that things could explode at any moment. And half a year later, they did: not just in France but across the majority of Europe.

Of course, trying to predict the specific crisis that will tip things over the edge is always a fool’s errand — in his case, de Toqueville could hardly know that some fairly insignificant political banquets would be the thing that ended up setting France on fire — but once the tinder is stacked to the ceiling, all it takes is a spark. Today, just as during de Toqueville’s time, many people still take some comfort in pointing out that people, however dissatisfied they may be, are still “just” grumbling about it over the kitchen table. But that sense of safety is illusory at best.

Survivors of tsunamis point out that before the wave actually hits, the water dramatically pulls back and recedes from the shore. And when that happens, one doesn’t have long to run away. For human societies entering periods of chaos, history shows a fairly similar dynamic: an increasing number of citizens choose to retreat. They stop serving and caring; they become sullen, uncooperative and uninterested in coming to society’s aid. This is not a problem of morals, nor a situation that is helped by blaming the young. Instead, the withdrawal of the people, just like the withdrawal of the shoreline, is a sign that a tsunami is approaching.

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Malcom Kyeyune is a freelance writer living in Uppsala, Sweden

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