Even if NF may indeed ultimately trace its historical origins to ethnically organized gangsterism in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries, it did not long remain that way. The methods, practices, and ethos of gangsterism may have formed the structural core of its organization but its spread throughout society and thus its inclusion of more and more members went much beyond the early gangs and thugs and took on a pragmatic structure and ideology that cared more for efficiency, profit, and societal control by any means and through whatever types of people necessary. The organizational structure became wide open to talent from all walks of life. All that was required was obedience to the faction's wishes and desires, aims and methods. And where inclusion was not possible, human frailty did the job just as well; extortion, bribery, blackmail are time-honored traditions for getting what one wants. In this, the Borgias can serve as an historical example for some of the more extreme methods of the modern neopatrimonial faction.
The faction does not necessarily control all the means and forces of production or occupy each and every point of power and influence in society but they control enough of them; but, to repeat, what is most crucial and necessary are not the control of things but of people. It is the readiness of people in positions not only of great power, but of temporary useful strategic convenience to commit carefully hidden unlawful acts that is of paramount importance to the effective functioning of the system as a whole. Indeed, organized people power is key. Technology and wealth are surely helpful, but nevertheless secondary in this scheme of control.
We can only guess at the number of actual participants in Neopatrimonial Factionalism. The East German Stasi and its web of informants comprised by some estimates 2% of the population or perhaps considerably more, the Romanian Securitate numbered 1 million, 6.5% of Chinese are Communist Party Members; as one can see from these statistics it doesn't take a large number of well organized and disciplined people to control and, if necessary, intimidate a much larger society of people. The key factors in control are a high level of discipline and organization and a willingness to use violence when deemed necessary; if just 7% of the American population were members of a hypothetical factional neopatrimonial system that would make a not-inconsiderable total of about 23 million; more than enough, especially if strategically placed, to control the general outlines and rhythms of social life.
The inherently deep pessimism of this view of life is that whether under the name of Mosca's and Pareto's circulation of elites, or Michels' Iron law of Oligarchy, or Mills' Power Elite or factional neopatrimonialism, the organization of a network of preferential power and opportunity will remain the main feature of all modern societies whatever their ideology as long as human nature remains what it is. There is no political revolution or societal upheaval or gradual reformism of any kind that can substantially dissuade people from surreptitiously organizing themselves for mutual advantage and self-protection. It is the logical outcome of both modern development, historical circumstances, and basic psychological and material needs. Factional neopatrimonialism is a society-wide phenomenon that will effect, if not always completely direct, all of our lives for the foreseeable future.
Indeed, the supposed existence of the Totalitarian Republic is a curious phantom-like amalgam of select democratic principles contradicted by totalitarian organization and practices. It is the inevitable outcome of two strands of modern history--the rise of human-rights' ideology and the concomitant rise of sophisticated totalitarian methods of societal control. It is a dynamic contradiction that holds in its hands the daily lives and destinies of many of the world's people.
The idea/concept presented here of the "faction" is not to be misinterpreted as a newer version of Marx's Bourgeoisie or Mills' Power Elite, although it contains aspects of both. To be sure, the "faction" contains within it extremely wealthy and politically powerful people but not only; it also consists of people of the lowliest extremes of status, power, and wealth. For NF to comprehensively work, patrons need clients just as much as clients need patrons.
The faction should not be considered identical with the leading institutions of society. They do not control every member of every institution, nor do they need to. Neopatrimonial factionalism is based on partial control, more specifically functional control. For this they only need what I call a functional majority to control an institution. This is not the same as an arithmetic majority. A functional majority in this case means that the faction controls key top positions in the institution while at the same time controlling specific middle and lower levels of the organization as well. Once again, the faction is neither class based, nor the promulgator of a specific ideology, unless of course you view the acquisition of power as an ideology and not a natural and thus necessary result of human nature. The functionality of power is what is of interest to the faction, not numbers, not ideologies. How many people in what functions are necessary to wield power? If the faction can be said to have a motto it would most certainly be: The Right Person in the Right Place.
The "faction" comprises all classes and all ideologies, from communist to conservative. This is because people of all classes and thus professions are very useful under certain circumstances while ideology only serves as a convenient veil to cover the real interests, methods, and motives of the faction. If the realization of factional interests coincide with the general interest, so be it; but such an outcome is often only a by-product of more specific factional political and economic aims. However, since a substantial fraction of factional members come from the working and non-professional classes, the faction has an inherent collective bias in bettering these "lower-class" members' life situation through a combination of legislation, media influence, career and economic opportunities and education. In a sense therefore, the faction can be seen as a specific instance of a kind of surreptitious labor union that has the political power to resort to totalitarian tactics and methods, particularly through their de-facto control of the security and police forces but not only.
The technological dominance of the faction affords them with the greatest scope for totalitarian action. Surveillance and other technologies greatly aid where specific goals of either general or individual manipulation are concerned. Having an assortment of hackers, software engineers, and other specialists within the faction are of an obvious benefit here. But technology, by itself, would be useless if it was not embedded within a legal, political, economic factional net of influence and control. Once again to drive home a point, faction is not dependent on any one technology, but on the people who control, develop, implement, and manipulate those technologies whatever they may be. Of course, the more powerful and penetrating the technology, the more powerful and penetrating the faction. Thus, NF does not reign solely or even primarily through technology, but is certainly helped by it.
Nowhere does Neopatrimonial Factionalism show itself more as a totalitarian system of governance and control than in its determination of what constitutes an "exception". Here, an exception is meant as an active suspension of not only the spirit of democratic rule but its procedures, rules, regulations, and laws. A good general example of this is the much vaunted formal separation of power between the branches of American government. If it is true that NF strategically inhabits and thus is in de-facto control of all the branches of government, then what we have is not separation but a carefully orchestrated functional collusion between the branches. This would explain the oftentimes "carnival" nature of the fabricated disputes (the Clinton and Trump "impeachments" come to mind here) that often arise between the "separate" branches and "competing" parties. It is above all a question of the manufacture of spectacle rather than a competitive discourse of existential political seriousness. The members of the "branches" of government dance a dance of figurative power, but are mutually informed of their desired direction; they are collectively, after all, the principle music makers and thus the theme, melody, and general score of government has been decided well in advance. The same could be said of seemingly impossibly complex designs such as markets. Supremely organized human coordination is able to reduce the ostensibly complex. The influence and control of a set of organized people blurs not only institutional lines but gives an underlying order to the seeming public experience of "chaos" "impersonal algorithms" and "unforeseeable black-swan events". Market chaos, rogue machine algorithms, and devastating black swans are convenient stories that hide the truth of organized power. The story that something is "out of control" hides the reality that it is in fact very much in control.
In a world controlled by Neopatrimonial Factionalism there is both stability and stagnation. Stability in the sense that political consensus is sought for projects and plans both near and far; and stagnation from the very same source. In this factional system political participation whether in the form of mass demonstrations, media campaigns, or other forms of ostensibly public pressure has a chance only if it dovetails with the long-term goals of faction. If it does not, it will be slowly but surely diffused, dispersed and ultimately forgotten. Marginalization is one of the effective social tools of faction. Either de-facto if not de-jure oblivion awaits for societal elements that seem overly destabilizing; either that or some form of disarming co-optation usually through the harmless commercialization of their ideas or their careful recruitment into the ruling institutions.
Modern society is made up of machines and people. People control the machines. Who controls the people and decides when an "exception" of rules, regulations, laws, and the spirit of justice and democracy is to take place controls and directs that society.
Historically, how did the criminal class origins of Neopatrimonial Factionalism launder themselves and come in from the cold? Quite simply their formula was time, children, education. The time for one generation to pass on the knowledge of the old ways of power, organization, and cohesion but now mediated through education opening the doors to the professions and through them the institutions. The children and grandchildren of those who were once professional gangsters have gone on to become politicians, film makers, doctors, lawyers, judges, policemen, pop-stars and every other conceivable line of work.
As Daniel Bell once put it, the once-primitive criminal world has undergone full "Embourgeoisement". Like the rest of America, the gangster families moved up in social rank through the traditional move of advancement afforded by a good education. In this, they embodied the American dream as it is commonly believed. However, their "natural" rise through society did not, by any means, signify that they abandoned their traditional ties, habits, and lessons concerning the organization, maintenance, and control of power; on the contrary their new-found social, educational, professional status made it that much easier. The functional solidarity of the faction was/is maintained between and within the institutions; it is their ultimate strength and they have no intention of ever letting go.
Yet when all is said and done the faction does possess an ideology of sorts, which closely resembles a certain important strand of modern liberal belief. Since the historical origins of the faction lay with ethnic minorities (the Irish, Italians, Jews, and African Americans for example) who were, initially, excluded from participation in various aspects of society and its institutions, the members of the faction never forgot this psychologically searing aspect of their hardscrabble origins in the violent, multi-ethnic cauldron that was the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this way, they retained and developed a bias towards the "opening of all talents to all careers". Their opportunities dramatically increased with the arrival of the sixties in which they became champions of the civil-rights movements concerning all minorities. Their goal was for ethnic identity to become a background issue and for it never again to take the bigoted foreground of violent intolerance and the denial of equal opportunity. This ideological viewpoint of the faction was backed up with the fomenting of action on several ethnic fronts, in particular: African-American, Jewish, Italian (Sicilian), Hispanic, and even Irish. Over time the concern for equal opportunities for all ethnic groups developed into an interest in women's rights, gay rights, and even animal rights. In this then, the faction is part and parcel of overall American ideological development. Indeed, the faction was in large part responsible for the significant progress in this area. Yet, before we congratulate them on their farsighted benevolence, we should understand how this ideology of civil rights dovetails with their organizational goals. The faction grew out of the multi-ethnic reality of an urban America; their strength lies, in no small part, with their ability to use and recruit talent from the total mosaic of American life. It is therefore in their interest to maintain as much organizational cohesion as possible and the ideology and practice of multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multiple identity politics helps to provide the cement for such a cohesion. The faction is a reflection of the variegated reality of the social life of the United States; thus, it too, must believe and practice the politics of the colorblind. For whatever they ultimately are, the factionalists are not racists and or bigots. If they were, they would not be able to effectively rule and influence the daily life of the polity in which they find themselves.
In the Republic, Socrates talks about thieves needing a modicum of justice if they wish to take any concerted and effective action; so it is with our faction; there are clear rules and they must be obeyed. A sort of rough justice along the lines of "I wash your back and you wash mine" applies. Draconian sanctions are applied when the rules are broken.
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