What wealth and aristocracy should mean

“What do you consider to be the greatest blessing you have reaped from your wealth?

“…the great blessing of riches, I do not say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally; and when he departs to the world below he is not in any apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men.”

– Plato: The Republic

Common experience, at least in our times, would suggest quite the opposite. The very rich, far from being content with their riches, seem caught in a perpetual frenzy to acquire more. The discontent of the very rich in our society would seem to stem from this cause. They are always on the look-out for more.

Among other evils, this has distorted the spirit of enterprise in our society. Honest investment, productive labour and the spirit of hard work are not looked upon as virtues worth aspiring to. The smart young man is considered to be the one who can make a fast buck, through shady deals or by exploiting connections in the power structure.

But this is a digression. In the passage from The Republic quoted above, it is Socrates asking Cephalus whether his wealth is acquired or inherited. And Cephalus says that the basis of his wealth is inheritance. Socrates goes on to ask the next question (noted above), to which Cephalus gives the above answer.

In Cephalus’s view, therefore, inherited wealth is a great advantage for it enables you to avoid fraud and other related evils. And by putting you in a position where you owe no man anything, it helps bring you peace of mind.

There was a time, and not too long ago either, when the leading lights of the political class in our country regularly used to sell off bits of their patrimony to stay in politics. How different from today when politics has become an avenue for making money, not losing it. The laidback style of the decade after Partition has given way to a more ruthless approach in which the amassing of wealth, through fair means or foul (but mainly foul), is considered an essential, nay inescapable, part of politics.

Where money is spent to get into politics and then any position attained is used as a lever to make more money, it is scarcely surprising if standards of public conduct take a nose dive and practices once frowned upon become the norm.

Nor is this state of affairs confined to the political class. The culture of acquisition cuts across administrative compartments, some of our biggest money-grubbers being mandarins and imposing figures in uniform.

Which is not to say that our people don’t give. They do indeed, as generosity towards the less favoured, and hospitality in general, is part of our psyche and culture. But this is probably true of society at large, not of the elite in positions of authority and privilege. Those least in a position to give, give wholeheartedly. Those favoured by fortune are either self-centred or past masters at deceit and fraud. As a result, the concept of public service on the part of our privileged classes is virtually non-existent.

This is a morbid line of thought and is prompted by the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. He came from a rich family (Joe Kennedy, the patriarch of the clan, having made his fortune through whisky smuggling during the US’s short-lived rendezvous with prohibition) which became famous and powerful when John F. Kennedy was elected as president. Compared to John and Robert (both tragically assassinated), Edward seemed not particularly gifted. But once elected to the Senate, he made his mark there. So much so that at his death he is being hailed as one of the most influential, even seminal, senators of the last century.

Along the way he had to cope with personal tragedy: the 1969 drowning of a girlfriend who was with him after a party at Chappaquiddick — Mary Jo Kopechne — an event which sank any hope he may have had of running for president. The memory of this incident clung to him always but as he made a career for himself in the Senate, championing liberal causes and speaking out for the less favoured, that memory receded.

Incidentally, he was among the minority in the Senate which opposed the Iraq war. The best speech against the rush to war in Iraq was perhaps delivered by Senator Robert Byrd (while writing these lines I have watched portions of it on YouTube…it is a remarkably prescient speech well worth watching, and pondering over). But Ted Kennedy also stood unequivocally against that march of folly whose consequences the US is likely to live with for some time. To no one’s surprise, he was an early supporter of Barack Obama.

Perhaps as a mark of his Irish heritage, Ted Kennedy was a heavy drinker. In the tragedies befalling his family he had much to forget and much to grieve over. He could have drowned himself in drink (as his wife nearly did). He could have made a career for himself as a playboy. There was a strong playboy streak in the Kennedy clan — John F. Kennedy’s serial affairs of a kind to make Bill Clinton’s adventures in the same league look like Sunday school escapades. But he devoted himself to public service and rose above his afflictions. A famous name is an advantage but it can also be a heavy cross to bear.

This doesn’t mean that privilege automatically leads to public service in the US. The Bushes are as privileged as the Kennedys and look what a disaster for the US and the world the younger Bush has been. All the same, there is a tradition of altruism and public service amongst America’s rich and famous which is well worth emulating. Of course, there has been no shortage of ‘robber barons’ in America’s past and corporate America remains as rapacious as ever. But greatness of empire does not come from rapacity alone. There is more to the American kaleidoscope than that.

The other event which has touched this reference to Plato is Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah and Partition. I haven’t read it but shall when I get my hands on it. But what I find striking, even more than the furore it has caused in India, is the fact that Jaswant Singh, an active politician, holding a senior position in the BJP (from which, to the party’s loss, he has been expelled) should have found the time, among his other activities, to research his book and then write it.

This is how it should be: politicians being not just politicians but also men of letters. What infuses politics with life and gives it a broad sweep — or the thing we call vision –comes from poetry (in the broadest sense of the word) and literature. If politicians are to rise above the level of common scum, they must live to higher ideals.

At the same time, citizens could do well to remember that politics should not be left to a tiny elite. It should be everyone’s business. As Pericles said of Athens (Thucydides quoting him as saying this), “…we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business: we say that he has no business here at all.”

Alexander, as Plutarch informs us, always with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow, Caesar writing his Commentaries even when campaigning in Gaul, Marcus Aurelius penning his meditations even when fighting what Rome called the Barbarians, Napoleon speed-reading and throwing the books he would read out of his carriage window as he sped across Europe (especially when in the throes of his infatuation with Marie Walewska…this beguiling image provided by Emil Ludwig in his less biography and more hagiography of Napoleon), Stalin, one of history’s great autodidacts, reading books at night even as he fought Hitler’s armies: this is the ideal for the man of affairs to aspire to, in war or peace.

This is why Jaswant Singh’s book is so welcome because quite apart from what it says, it is a reminder of the politician’s obligation, if he is to be true to his calling, to cultivate the arts and the muses.