The Plight of the Recently Wealthy

The Plight of the Recently Wealthy

They are the target of barely concealed jealousy. They're used as punch lines in crude humor and as pawns in acts of mass brutality. This group represents the newly wealthy. Perhaps the field of psychology would be better suited to address these issues, but so would economics. They are seen as symbols of psychopathy and sociopathy by many.

The rise of the newly rich is not unprecedented. They're a part of life in every era. You can think of them as the upstarts the people who want to topple the current elite and replace it with their own version. You may certainly categorize the "newly rich" based on how they relate to the more firmly established "old rich." Every culture has its elite, old-school members of society. In most cases, higher social status was associated with higher levels of wealth. Property owners were the only people who could vote until the turn of the century. 

It didn't matter how unprepared the children of the land gentry were for their newfound military and political roles; they were given those jobs anyhow. In this case, the uneven distribution of economic gains might be attributed to the insiders' mentality and the privileged access they enjoy ("old boys' network," to use a well-known British word). Furthermore, the advantages of the ruling classes were maintained by this unequal allocation of resources.

This unity collapsed only after money was no longer tied to the land. An elite society based on land, which is a finite and nonrenewable resource, is itself finite and nonrenewable. However, money might be duplicated, moved around, swapped out, added to, subtracted from, made, and lost. To use a tired cliche, it was genuinely democratic. It was clear that the aristocracy was on the decline as the meritocracy rose to power. 

Making money required intelligence, courage, good fortune, and vision, not birth or marriage into a wealthy family. The new elite married into the old one because money is the great equalizer. The boundaries between racial groups and blood types merged. The nobility of blood and heritage was overthrown by the aristocracy of capital (and, later, of entrepreneurship), to which anybody who met the necessary criteria might be admitted. This may have been a sad time for some people. For some, a victorious one.

Three options were available to the New Rich: subversion, revolution, or emulation. Envy, feelings of inferiority, and anger over unfair treatment and humiliation underlie all three responses.

Some of the new rich opted to disrupt the status quo. These people saw this as a natural, slow, and "historically sanctioned" progression. The subversive factor was the shifting of wealth (and the power it brings) from one privileged group to another. To legitimize and contextualize the historical process, a shift in ideology (to meritocracy and democracy, or to "mass democracy," as Mr. Gasset would have phrased it) was necessary. The "justice" of the tectonic change was demonstrated by the success of the new elite, both collectively and individually. The new elite's tastes, inclinations, attitudes, aspirations, and worldview were reflected in the adjustments made to social structures and norms. Capitalism is characterized by this attitude: it is incremental, cautious, and accommodating, but it is also inexorable and widespread. 

The New Rich essentially invented the Capitalist Religion, with all its attendant temples (shopping centers and financial institutions), clergy (bankers, financiers, and bureaucrats), and rituals. It had several purposes, including giving order and significance to events that could otherwise be seen as chaotic or dangerous. Use as an ideology (in the Althusserian sense) (hiding the discordant, disagreeable, and ugly while accentuating the concordant, conformist, and appealing). in order to give them a sense of direction, keep them from feeling empty, inspire them to be true to the cause, and so on.

The second group of New Rich (called "Nomenclature" in some parts of the world) decided to remove the previous ruling class by violent means. 

Most of the time, this was accomplished through the use of raw power disguised as contradictory philosophy. The goal was to take over the ruling elite's financial and political holdings as soon as possible. An attempt at more equitably dividing up property and income was publicly stated as a goal. But the truth was quite different: the new elite, a select few, reaped the vast majority of the benefits. Essentially, one hermetic elite was surgically removed and replaced with another. Except for the names and faces, nothing changed.The part of the ideology that focused on the historical process and the part that detailed the strategies that could be used to ease the movement of capital and promote redistribution have diverged into two distinct camps. 

The first was predetermined, permanent, and irrevocable (therefore not particularly pragmatic), whereas the second was a nearly bare-faced plan for stealing from others. This poisonous seed of dishonesty was present in Communism and the Eastern European (and, to a lesser degree, Central European) forms of socialism. Fascism did as well. It's hardly surprising that these two related ideas clashed in the early part of the twentieth century. Each advocated for the unchecked and unfettered redistribution of wealth from one ruling class to another. Few of the spoils made it to the proletariat.

Finally, we can learn from others by imitating their practices. The newly rich who embraced it sought to adopt the beliefs, norms, and practices of their forebears in order to feel more at home in their newfound wealth. They all carried on the same conversations, dressed similarly, shopped for the same status symbols, and even had the same diet. Overall, they resembled poor facsimiles of the originals. They grew much more pious and affluent than the Pope himself. Their speech became hyperbolic, their social associations were governed by impossibly strict norms of propriety and conduct, and their motions and mannerisms became exaggerated. Similar to the psychological outcomes of similar events, patricide and matricide ensued. The newly rich rose up against the authority of an aging social group. To be like the people they admired, they had to butcher them. Because they were unable to achieve their lifelong goals, the newly rich resorted to aggressive, violent, and abusive behavior. These converts reacted to the leaders of their new faith with the fury and conviction usually reserved for genuine but disillusioned adherents.

Some commonalities exist among the new rich, regardless of their chosen mode of inheritance. Psychologists agree that money can replace love. People amass it to make up for their shortcomings and hurts from the past. They place a high value on the quantity and accessibility of their financial resources. They act like kids again and engage in toy play (with fancy cars, watches, and laptops). They engage in an archetypal struggle over possessions, territory, and status worthy of the theories of Jungian analysis. It's possible this is the most vital insight of all: the New Rich are immature people with lofty adult goals. 

After growing up without parental affection or material comforts, people often seek solace in material wealth and the things it can buy. And children being what they are, they can be harsh and callous and unable to control their impulses and wants. Indeed, in many developing nations (emerging markets), they represent the only kind of entrepreneurship available. There, a cancerous, pathological variety of crony capitalism was spawned. These immature New Rich will eventually become tomorrow's Old Rich, and a new class will emerge as the New Rich of the future. As inadequate and meager as it may be, it's the only chance the developing world has.

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