Comments by "Voryn Rosethorn" (@vorynrosethorn903) on "Why Oswald Mosley turned to Fascism" video.

  1. A few things, the social and political situation in Britain was a great deal more complicated. Revisionists like yourself have been putting a great deal of work into disproving stereotypes about the middle ages and feudalism, disease was the great killer not living conditions, things got worse from the 1600's onwards due to colder weather and a large population, the average person became a lot poorer and life was harsher but feudalism no longer existed in Britain and the common man was not a peasant or anything close to one. Most people in the countryside worked for wealthy farmers or yeomen, not the aristocracy and the farmer labourer was into the Victorian period allied with the country nobility, these nobles would create busy work during times of want, lead community life and often formed the leadership of campaigns by the labourers in pay disputes with the farm owners who employed most of them. A Social History of Victorian Britain by F. M. L. Thompson is a good book on exactly that, I also unfortunately don't know of any newer comprehensive books on the subject. The corn laws were meant to keep money within Britain and crush competition from overseas, they were successful in this, once they were repealed the market was flooded with American grains, which while a positive for the population was damaging to Britain as a whole by enriching America. I'm sure I don't need to tell you who this came back to bite Britain over the next century. It might be nice to take a utopian approach but in the game of Empires the enemies weakness is your strength, it might be nice to say that wealth has increased the world over but that is only a good thing if the world is yours or you have received it in a greater proportion to anyone else, otherwise you will become more vulnerable to war and misfortune and others will have more incentive to start them on terms against you. This is incidentally why the opium wars were justified.
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  2. It should also be noted that the aristocrats were the first class the new elite destroyed, the introduction of inheritance tax had a massive impact on the particularities of the nation. This was visible in terms of the destruction of many ancient estates and their buildings. But this also deprived much of they country of the leaders of localised social organisation, either destroying this organisation, setting them into decline or replacing them with 'charitable ' versions lead by managers and funded by the state or state aligned corporations. Village life was not spontaneous it was coordinated by local priests, gentlemen and women and needed funding, a disproportionate amount of which came from local notables. Likewise it had been the tradition for at least 400 years that women especially would learn domestic skills as maids during their teenaged years, state enforced education made this uneconomical and the destruction of noble estates meant that the role no longer held any social prestige, the filtering of culture, fashion and often actual physical goods (such as the high fashion of a decade or two ago, work clothes and fabrics or leftover food and ingredients) ceased. From this time onwards women would become mere economic units in the same way as men and all of this vacuum would become centralised into the state.
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  3. You need to read the managerial revolution by James Burnham, Orwell was ahead of you on understanding the nature of the elite I'm afraid.
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