Kevin Williamson: The Division of Labor Is the Meaning of Life

I’ve been a harsh critic of Kevin Williamson.

As a disaffected White populist and nationalist, he really rubbed me the wrong way with the whole the White working class deserves to die because it won’t get up and move thing. It struck me as one of the coldest lolbertarian takes I had ever seen on National Review.

As a resident of the Alabama Black Belt, which is one of the poorest parts of the United States, I am particularly well rooted in my area. My family has lived in Southeast Alabama since the 1830s when my paternal ancestor came here from North Carolina during the Alabama Fever. We only moved up here from the Wiregrass to the Black Belt though during Reconstruction to work on a railroad.

Cultural geography was my gateway to Southern Nationalism:

This excellent map is from Colin Woodard’s excellent book American Nations. I wish everyone who runs for president would read it to get more insight into the dysfunction of our government. It seemed to be a better key to the 2016 election than the 538 statistical model.

I’m a Southerner.

I would much rather not pick up and move to live in some miserable city like Atlanta, Houston or Los Angeles. I would much rather live out my life here in this area. My family is here. My roots are in this area which has sunk into poverty since around the time of the abolition of slavery.

This long take on the history of capitalism is one of Kevin Williamson’s better articles:

“I would like you to entertain, for a moment, an idea that might sound a little eccentric, or maybe as plain and obvious as a thing can be. It is this:

The division of labor is the meaning of life.

I do not mean this metaphorically or analogically, but literally.

Life begins with the cell, and the cell is defined by a minimum of specialization: membrane, cytoplasm, and (usually) nucleus.

What makes a cell a living cell is a matter of some slight imprecision: Most living cells reproduce, but some (such as neurons) do not; most cells have nuclei and DNA, but mature red blood cells do not; etc. But the generally shared characteristics of living cells all depend upon the division of labor within the cell: order, sensitivity to stimuli, growth and reproduction, maintenance of homeostasis, and metabolism.

The cell is defined by the division of labor among the organelles and other cellular constituents. That gets us to the single-celled organism. Next comes division of labor among cells rather than within them. When cells begin to divide labor among themselves, they form tissues and organs, which in turn divide labor to produce organ systems and, ultimately, complex organisms. …

We have seen this kind of disruptive capitalism before. Historians call it “the Renaissance,” though the writers of history have reached no consensus about what that term means, when the period it describes began or ended, or what its principal qualities are.

Historians date the fall of the Roman Empire to September 4, 476 anno Domini, when Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor, the teen-aged Romulus Augustulus. But if you had asked a Roman citizen about the fall of the empire a day or a week or a year later, he’d have been perplexed.

He wouldn’t know the empire had fallen. …”

Social arrangements, status relations, and economic relations were, under feudalism, almost entirely unified, and the relevant relationships were intensely personal. There was no nationalism, and there were no real nation-states. There were lords and vassals, lieges and feudatories, barons and serfs. And though the kings, nobility, and Church might have their differences in this or that political matter, they all made their living the same way: from the land.

What they had was a stable division of labor, meaning a largely stable mode of life.

Until it was disrupted. …”

Bravo.

What happens to human beings though when the working class has become obsolete?

About Hunter Wallace 12392 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

8 Comments

  1. “This excellent map is from Colin Woodard’s excellent book American Nations. I wish everyone who runs for president would read it to get more insight into the dysfunction of our government. It seemed to be a better key to the 2016 election than the 538 statistical model.”

    I can vouch for this book too. I can tell how a politician will behave based on the culture he came up and succeeded in, or the places he represents.

    New Netherland/New York:
    Founded by money grubbing, corporatist, globalist, multi-racial tolerant, financed by moneyed Jewish traders from the day of its founding. The reason the New Netherland colony was so easily taken by the British, is because its masters were such penny pinchers, it failed to grow,

    Yankee/Left Coast:
    Founded by religious extremists/outcasts, who imposed their values on others using violence, torture, witch burning, and social engineering. They don’t believe in God any more, but they remain religious fanatics. Political Correctness is their Religion!

    Midlands:
    Founded by pacifist Quakers who didn’t mind if other religious groups migrated to their lands. They stuck to their non-violent principles even when it meant throwing their fellow Whites under a bus during Indian attacks. They don’t believe in God any more, but they haven’t changed either. They have a new word religion called Libertarianism. Easy going, pacifist, open borders, throw your fellow Whites under a bus.

    • The colonial governor of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, unsuccessfully tried to keep the jews out of his colony. Now there is a jewish-led movement underway to have his name and likeness removed from the city’s history.

  2. I think Hunter skimmed the first half of the Williamson article, and didn’t read the read of it. I wish I’d done the same. It regresses to the Williamson mean, snarking against anti-semites, anti-globalists and anyone who hasn’t gotten with the Progressive/Capitalist program.

    He actually makes the argument that we live in much better times than 100 years ago because Calvin Coolidge’s son died from a blister on his toe. Seriously.

    It’s really, in the end, just a nicer, sanitized version of the “working class whites deserve to die” article. What a dick.

  3. We are not, nor will we EVER be, obsolete, in the natural order of this world. We may create a temporary paradigm in which we seem to be less integral, but those things are NOT self-perpetuating as is the NATURAL ORDER created by GOD, (..whatever you concieve him to be,) so eventually it will ALWAYS come back to God, man, and the land we live and work and eat from.
    A man’s best insurance in these troubled times is a calm head willing to quietly learn, hands willing to work, and a heart determined with love for our own folk to hold fast what we still have and make sure our children and grandchildren have a chance to live and exist in a homeland free of the rottenness we’ve allowed to creep in the door.
    A.I. and robotics are temporary paradigms.
    So was the industrial revolution..in the long term. I know thats a stretch for many minds, but I personally believe that soon in the course of time, ALL this will fall before the next age begins. The man and family that can survive and LIVE ( not just exist..) in this reset world will carry the human gene pool forward while our invetions rust away.
    “Lo, God hath made man upright, but he has sought out many INVENTIONS.” -Ecclesiastes

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