It's been a while since I've read anything about Romanian society written by a foreigner, for that I thank you. However, I think you are missing a crucial part of the puzzle, namely the turn of century and interwar Romanian society. Since this became something of a specialty for me the past couple years, I will try to raise a defense from there.
By the end of the 19th century, the urban middle class of Romania consisted of "de-nobilised" aristocracy, yes, but you are very wrong when saying that was all or even most of it. Romania also had a "professional" middle-class that has its roots in the great urbanization of 18th century, and eventually goes back to the petty nobility and the courts of boyars in the pre-modern period. In 1930 Bucharest, most of the population was made up of these 2 classes + peasants that having now been given property are sending their children to the cities either to join the professional or working middle class, and the minority was made up by the merchants and foreigners.
Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest in 1907 as the son of a Moldavian army Captain from a family that has been "middle-class" for more than 100 years. Of course, this only applied to large and middle sized cities, the majority of the country being peasants. This is the organic middle class of Romania, not the peasants made urbanites that make up post-Socialist Romania, and it still exists in Romania, even though it is the minority in the cities.
As for the peasants mentality of this Socialist middle class, I'm not going to say that you're wrong. But you speak badly about it, you only understand this mentality in its degenerated form and with prejudice against rural life. A lot of these flourishes when addressing someone comes from a martial, patriarchal, honor bound society, which Romania was for most of its history; some of it comes from the etiquette of boyars estates, who spent most of the time in their country manors among the peasants. Frivolous spending is also the virtue of generosity and contempt of money. Also a lot of it is conditioned by Socialist trauma, when our parents often lacked basic necessities.
The place that struck me as being offensive from you was this:
"Since the stranger cannot be trusted, there can be no good-faith contribution to public goods and no compromise between your interests and his."
I leave this note from J.H. Zucker, early 18th century German physician at the Russian court:
"The Romanian peasent is skeptical and disobedient [...], but when he is convinced his master is worthy, he is happy <to have a master>; then, he is more obedient than even the German peasant."
I have more I want to share about the development of civic mentality of Romania, especially as it's Western "pasoptist" form was decomposing in interwar Romania and faced either an organic-national reformation (anti-middle class, pro aristocracy and peasants) by the Legionaries or a Bolshevik reformation by the Communists.
'It's been a while since I've read anything about Romanian society written by a foreigner, for that I thank you.'
Formy part I thank you for reading and for commenting so thoughtfully; I appreciate it.
'Romania also had a "professional" middle-class that has its roots in the great urbanization of 18th century, and eventually goes back to the petty nobility and the courts of boyars in the pre-modern period...'
I don't think I said otherwise. The point (the thesis, if I may be so immodest as to call it such) of this stack is that North Sea patterns of class development and historical periodisation do not 'map' at all well onto patterns *broadly* observable in Romania, and that these differences have meaningful consequences in the present. There are of course exceptions at the margins.
'...and the minority was made up by the merchants and foreigners.'
Exactly so: the merchants were a minority within the middle class, and most of the merchants were foreigners (cf. Jews in Iasi etc); the native middle class that emerged during the Russian administration and The Regat were mostly soldiers, bureaucrats etc (see above).
'This is the organic middle class of Romania, not the peasants made urbanites that make up post-Socialist Romania, and it still exists in Romania, even though it is the minority in the cities.'
Sure--I probably could have noted this fact. But it doesn't really affect the central argument: that Romania has a different kind and quantity of middle class people from those found in the West (esp England).
'Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest in 1907 as the son of a Moldavian army Captain from a family that has been "middle-class" for more than 100 years. Of course, this only applied to large and middle sized cities, the majority of the country being peasants. This is the organic middle class of Romania, not the peasants made urbanites that make up post-Socialist Romania, and it still exists in Romania, even though it is the minority in the cities.'
Eliade was middle class--but he was of the *military* middle class, not a native commercial middle class.
'...you speak badly about it, you only understand this mentality in its degenerated form and with prejudice against rural life.'
I write about what I observe as an Anglo; muh stack isn't intended to be objective, impartial, detached or rigorous in tone. I have no prejudice against rural life or people per se. I agree that what I see is much degraded--but that is what I see, so that is how I describe it.
'A lot of these flourishes when addressing someone comes from a martial, patriarchal, honor bound society, which Romania was for most of its history; some of it comes from the etiquette of boyars estates, who spent most of the time in their country manors among the peasants.'
I think this is more or less what I said above--no?
Frivolous spending is also the virtue of generosity and contempt of money. Also a lot of it is conditioned by Socialist trauma, when our parents often lacked basic necessities.
Yes indeed--perhaps I could have made this clearer.
'The place that struck me as being offensive...'
I'm sorry you were offended. Do you think that I was *mistaken* though?
'I leave this note from J.H. Zucker, early 18th century German physician at the Russian court:
"The Romanian peasent is skeptical and disobedient [...], but when he is convinced his master is worthy, he is happy <to have a master>; then, he is more obedient than even the German peasant."'
I'm sure things in the early 18th century were more or less as Herr Zucker described them.
'I have more I want to share about the development of civic mentality of Romania, especially as it's Western "pasoptist" form was decomposing in interwar Romania and faced either an organic-national reformation (anti-middle class, pro aristocracy and peasants) by the Legionaries or a Bolshevik reformation by the Communists.'
Please do; I would be v interested in reading what you have to say.
My main point is that by the start of 20th century, a certain middle-class had already formed in the modern sense, with its own characteristic profile (a different one than that of England, but it had its own civic principles and outline as the French one) and as seen by statistics from interwar period, many were already being born into it (40% of Bucharest let's say). This should satisfy your psycho-biological framework for the development of a real middle-class. That was my point with Eliade: him and his peers were born into a genetic middle class (with origins in petty nobility and upper strata of peasants), which had been selected for its own trait package for more than 100-200 years, and which was not merchant in nature like the English kind, but you can't deny that a mass civic psychology existed and corresponded to budding middle-class behavioural phenotype.
In other words, we could *begin* to speak of a dominant middle-class behavioural phenotype in that period, and if was not unfortunately derailed and supplanted by Socialist efforts maybe we could now have described it in the same formal way you described the English middle-class. When foreigners read your post, they will believe that a middle-class forming process didn't actually exist until after WW2, which is just prima facia wrong and will misinform an audience with no special case knowledge.
>I think this is more or less what I said above--no?
It is not at all. You explain it by the level of "trust" in a society. First of all, Romanian rural life was never low-trust, not in any way this notion is defined. One can speak of a skepticism in the Romanian peasant, but not of low levels of societal trust. If you've ever spoken to an older person that was born into rural agrarian life, or read any novel from the late 19th century, you will see that rural life was extremely communal and high-trust, in part out of the fact that until very late in history, all land in the village was held in common (no private property, the elders of the village distributed "a part" to a young man when he started his family), partly out of the necessity of winter and the fact that until 1830, most peasant men were shepherds who spent half the year away from the village. Another piece of evidence that I will summon to defend this point is the "laws of the land", the common-sense societal rules that Romanian peasants lived by for centuries before it was officially codified in late 17th century. These "laws" include, among others, the strict laws of hospitality towards a stranger (you are never allowed to deny a stranger at your door), certain obligations to help village members in winter, the framework for the commercial activity of the village (which was highly organised in the Middle Ages - and isn't this Fukuyama's definition of trust after all?). I think your characterization of Romanian rural people as "quietly but extremely distrusting of strangers" is dead wrong and goes against the internal historical record and the observation of foreign travelers (who often remarked the high-trust nature and care given to strangers by Romanian villagers - Michelet said that a random peasant woman he met "fed and clothed me better than she did her own son"). Needless to say, your explanation for courtly manners as a social technology born of low trust is nonsense in my opinion.
>I'm sorry you were offended. Do you think that I was *mistaken* though?
You are right and wrong at the same time. What you say about the petty competitiveness, the loud pride, the lack of civil sense in so many words is true, but you don't seem to understand its cause correctly. In other words, you seem to think it's an extension of the low-trust and premodern mindset of Romanian peaseant-become-bourgeoise in modern world, when it's rather more a result of the hardships experienced in the 80s and the total collapse of any civic ideal in the 90s (you seem to forget that our society collapsed within their lifetimes...). This behavioral phenotype is something recent for Romanians, and didn't exist in the peaseant-become-bourgeoise of interwar or early-socialist times, who was often described as docile and subservient provided he respected his "master" (the reason why I quoted that foreign traveler), generous and kind to strangers (often derided by the urbanites - "he's still acting as if he is still in a village). What you noticed is a degeneration caused by poverty and social chaos, a degeneration I'm not going to refute but a natural profile it is not. This has been a huge topic in Romanian society for at least a decade since the bourgeois Romanian is moving further and further away from his urban peasant ancestor and towards a "European" civic mentality.
'My main point is that by the start of 20th century, a certain middle-class had already formed in the modern sense, with its own characteristic profile (a different one than that of England, but it had its own civic principles and outline as the French one) and as seen by statistics from interwar period, many were already being born into it (40% of Bucharest let's say). This should satisfy your psycho-biological framework for the development of a real middle-class...selected for its own trait package for more than 100-200 years, and which was not merchant in nature like the English kind, but you can't deny that a mass civic psychology existed and corresponded to budding middle-class behavioural phenotype.'
oh ok I see. But again: what I'm saying is that the pre-war Romanian middle class was much thinner and of a fundamentally different type from the English, which by the early 20th century had been under selection for at least six or seven hundred years. I'm a respector of the Cochrane-Harpending claim that biological trait selection can occur much more rapidly than Gould etc make out, but I doubt that 100-200 years is long enough.
'This behavioral phenotype is something recent for Romanians, and didn't exist in the peaseant-become-bourgeoise of interwar or early-socialist times, who was often described as docile and subservient provided he respected his "master" (the reason why I quoted that foreign traveler)'
There are also 20th century, pre-WWI descriptions of peasants as habitually dissembling, secretive and evasive. I recognise these traits in Romanians today.
What about instances in which the peasant didn’t esteem his landlord? There must have been many. I would guess--it’s only a guess--that demands for rents, the conversion of land to a commodity, the rise of the rural money economy etc which occurred as the boyars became agrarian capitalists instead of an aristocracy of arms would have led to endemic distrust between landlord and tenant. The same testimonies of peasants relayed by pre-WW I travellers that I mentioned above indicate that this was the case.
It's possible that these traits were erased between the wars by propagation of the civic mentality of the native middle class in Bucharest and elsewhere and that they then became recrudescent as a result of communism--and of the post-communist free market, which I think has been very and unfortunately psychologically influential. But I doubt it. I think they were always there and have undergone reinforcement and diffusion (via social and cultural levelling) in the last 80 years or so.
'In other words, we could *begin* to speak of a dominant middle-class behavioural phenotype in that period, and if was not unfortunately derailed and supplanted by Socialist efforts maybe we could now have described it in the same formal way you described the English middle-class, .'
Perhaps; but that's not what happened in reality, is it? On that I think we agree.
‘What you say about the petty competitiveness, the loud pride, the lack of civil sense in so many words is true...the total collapse of any civic ideal in the 90s (you seem to forget that our society collapsed within their lifetimes...).’
I have not forgotten. These sorts of behaviours are typical of the parvenu in a free market economy; I also think that they can be attributed to the influence of the Gypsies, which was limited by communism but has been growing since.
'When foreigners read your post, they will believe that a middle-class forming process didn't actually exist until after WW2, which is just prima facia wrong and will misinform an audience with no special case knowledge.'
It would be wrong if I had said it. In fact I said that there was a (thin) pre-war middle class that was destroyed and replaced under communism. It's all there to read for anybody who cares to do so.
You appear to believe that I am attacking Romania, thus your need to ‘defend’ it. Here's the thing though: I'm talking about *differences* here, historically and in the present, not which traits are better and which are worse. I have my own preferences *for some purposes*, admittedly conditioned by the fact that I’m an Anglo, but that's not the same as making a judgement as to their fitness for a nation at all times and in all circumstances.
The middle class is an Anglo-American creation, mostly American to be honest because Britan is much more class stratified than the US. I think the observation of a missing middle class applies to almost all Eastern European countries that were retarted by communism.
'The middle class is an Anglo-American creation, mostly American to be honest because Britan is much more class stratified than the US.'
You don't think countries other than Britain and the USA have middle classes?
'I think the observation of a missing middle class applies to almost all Eastern European countries that were retarted by communism.'
I guess it depends what you mean by retarded. Communism can't be the reason the native middle class was so 'thin' in the centuries preceding. The de-nobilised middle class of the interwar years seems to have been more or less annhilated by communism, but it also gave rise to a new occupational middle class.
I suspect other E European countries are similar to Romania in the matter at hand, yes. But in these cases again I doubt communism is the only cause of a 'missing' middle class.
I think that Eastern European countries, didn't have a true middle class in the way the US has(had because it's slowly disappearing) instead they had what you above called a occupational middle class, a professional middle class of doctors, teachers, etc. mostly civil servants that goes back to the 19th century on the Russian model, one that was much applied to Romania. After all there is a big street in Bucharest named Kiselev.
"de-nobilised" WTF? But 'de-noblised' had gender-affirming care vibes...
Anyway I trust you understood I meant members (there it is AGAIN sorry) of the boyar caste who formed the 19th c. middle class.
Yes there must have been a bureaucratic/professional middle class during the phase of the Organic Statute and under the Regat. But again--it was not numerous enough, it came too late and in any case it probably wasn't associated with a 'middle-class trait package', so that a middle-class behavioural phenotype never became the norm in Romania.
I like this paradigm a lot for its wide applicability. I’m not familiar with Romanian society, but know a bit about Russia and can see parallels to the things you are describing, like the linguistic shades of politeness/familiarity, the impulsiveness (sometimes with touching generosity), and lack of English formality where you say “oh do drop in for tea sometime” but don’t mean a word of it. The name escapes me, but there was an English aristocrat who wrote a famous series of letters to his son on the classics, manners, and worldly wisdom, and in it he talked about the “rude (as in primitive but warm and kissy) manners of a country squire” that have since been bred out of the English as you said. Considering how differently people on either side of the Hajnal line reacted to, ahem, recent events, one cannot help but await further instalments with eager anticipation.
Yes HBD works very well both as a heuristic and in specific comparative cases. It *can* have a 'just-so story' quality if applied uncritically, since population differences are not always due only to gene-culture coevolution, and I abhor those who use it in the service of proposing 'immigration reform' under which founder populations would still be replaced--but by high- instead of low-IQ foreigners.
Certainly I think it has been underapplied in trying to understand differences among native European populations and societies. My observations of people from E and SE European countries I know less well than Romania suggest that much of what I have said about Romanians might apply also to them. Russia, as you mention, might be one; also Greece, ex Yugolslavia, Bulgaria, southern Italy...
I think you misunderstand mass consumption in Eastern Europe. As a British person (like myself), you assume that this is merely people showing off, nothing more, nothing less. This is (of course) part of it. I actually agree that there is more of a drive towards conspicious consumption there than in Britain. But it is also because people of equivalent social status in Romania are simply spending much less money on:
(a) mortgages (which, while not cheap in Romania, are truly absurdly expensive in Britain; even the top decile of families in Britain are effectively permanently broke until they have paid off their mortgage in their mid-50s, massively reducing any conspicuous consumption)
(b) private education (of course, this is a choice, but consumes a massive chunk of a post-tax upper-middle class income; unlike in most of Eastern Europe, where the best schools are free)
(c) much higher taxes; and, in particular, much more *progressive* taxation (nb. the flat tax found in many countries in Eastern Europe)
To be clear, Eastern European countries are still much poorer than Western European countries, and convergence can be overstated (though it has clearly been enough to start somewhat stemming the tide of mass emigration). But despite this, I think this is enough to tilt consumption habits, especially of the upper-middle class, in a certain direction.
My view is that people in Britain, if material conditions were changed, would have very different consumption habits.
PS: At some point, I will be writing a blog about the 'Hajnal Line' for Pimlico, which I think is badly misused by most of the online right
Conspicuous consumption was not really the main point of this piece; in fact I don't recall mentioning consumer behaviour at all. I discussed Romanians' relatively high time preference, but that is not manifested only (or even mainly) in habits of consumption.
Another thing: this substack is not intended to be *scientific*. I'm just throwing around observations, impressions and ideas.
With that self-protective little caveat out of the way...
I suppose what *underlies* what you have written is disagreement with my evopsych-derived argument that low time-preference, frugality etc. are middle-class (Anglo) traits. Your counter appears to be that it's not temporally remote, evolutionarily evolved Anglo middle-class traits but rather the extremely high cost of living in Britain *at present* which causes the English to spend (relatively) less on inessential consumption than do Romanians.
It may well be the case that Romanians are spending more in this direction than the English; I'm not English, and I don’t know the stats, so I can't really (dis)agree. But I’d say a couple of things in reply that you may wish to consider.
(1) Romanians (as you know) are in general much poorer than the English. But you might *not* know that essentials have become extremely expensive here, relative to income; indeed, many food items are more expensive here than in Britain *in absolute terms*. Poorer people (the rural or retired for example) can barely afford groceries and to keep the lights on from week to week.
Those who are more comfortable (i.e. the urban middle class) are struggling in much the same way as are the English middle class. Property has about doubled in ‘value’ in the last few years, such that small middle class families often sleep three to a room (parents and child under 10). Yet Romanians of all classes persist in, for instance, buying enormous quantities of food--which they know full well is surplus to requirements--and throwing half of it out.
(2) Although there are some very good government schools, the best private schools are just as expensive in absolute terms as their British equivalents.
(3) The rate of interest on home loans here is about six per cent. How that compares to the situation in Britain I don’t know.
(4) ‘convergence can be overstated (though it has clearly been enough to start somewhat stemming the tide of mass emigration’
So the story goes—but ‘push-away’ factors such as Brexit and disillusionment with extreme Western social liberalism have also rather cooled things off. Also, while wages have risen hugely in some sectors (esp. medicine), in many others they have barely kept up with inflation.
(5) ‘At some point, I will be writing a blog about the 'Hajnal Line' for Pimlico, which I think is badly misused by most of the online right’
I hope you don’t count me among the misusers of the Hajnal Line and related concepts (or as a right-winger--heaven forfend!), though I fear that you do. Either way, I look forward to reading your piece on the subject. Just out of interest (I’m not asking that you give too much away), how do you think it is misused?
It's been a while since I've read anything about Romanian society written by a foreigner, for that I thank you. However, I think you are missing a crucial part of the puzzle, namely the turn of century and interwar Romanian society. Since this became something of a specialty for me the past couple years, I will try to raise a defense from there.
By the end of the 19th century, the urban middle class of Romania consisted of "de-nobilised" aristocracy, yes, but you are very wrong when saying that was all or even most of it. Romania also had a "professional" middle-class that has its roots in the great urbanization of 18th century, and eventually goes back to the petty nobility and the courts of boyars in the pre-modern period. In 1930 Bucharest, most of the population was made up of these 2 classes + peasants that having now been given property are sending their children to the cities either to join the professional or working middle class, and the minority was made up by the merchants and foreigners.
Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest in 1907 as the son of a Moldavian army Captain from a family that has been "middle-class" for more than 100 years. Of course, this only applied to large and middle sized cities, the majority of the country being peasants. This is the organic middle class of Romania, not the peasants made urbanites that make up post-Socialist Romania, and it still exists in Romania, even though it is the minority in the cities.
As for the peasants mentality of this Socialist middle class, I'm not going to say that you're wrong. But you speak badly about it, you only understand this mentality in its degenerated form and with prejudice against rural life. A lot of these flourishes when addressing someone comes from a martial, patriarchal, honor bound society, which Romania was for most of its history; some of it comes from the etiquette of boyars estates, who spent most of the time in their country manors among the peasants. Frivolous spending is also the virtue of generosity and contempt of money. Also a lot of it is conditioned by Socialist trauma, when our parents often lacked basic necessities.
The place that struck me as being offensive from you was this:
"Since the stranger cannot be trusted, there can be no good-faith contribution to public goods and no compromise between your interests and his."
I leave this note from J.H. Zucker, early 18th century German physician at the Russian court:
"The Romanian peasent is skeptical and disobedient [...], but when he is convinced his master is worthy, he is happy <to have a master>; then, he is more obedient than even the German peasant."
I have more I want to share about the development of civic mentality of Romania, especially as it's Western "pasoptist" form was decomposing in interwar Romania and faced either an organic-national reformation (anti-middle class, pro aristocracy and peasants) by the Legionaries or a Bolshevik reformation by the Communists.
'It's been a while since I've read anything about Romanian society written by a foreigner, for that I thank you.'
Formy part I thank you for reading and for commenting so thoughtfully; I appreciate it.
'Romania also had a "professional" middle-class that has its roots in the great urbanization of 18th century, and eventually goes back to the petty nobility and the courts of boyars in the pre-modern period...'
I don't think I said otherwise. The point (the thesis, if I may be so immodest as to call it such) of this stack is that North Sea patterns of class development and historical periodisation do not 'map' at all well onto patterns *broadly* observable in Romania, and that these differences have meaningful consequences in the present. There are of course exceptions at the margins.
'...and the minority was made up by the merchants and foreigners.'
Exactly so: the merchants were a minority within the middle class, and most of the merchants were foreigners (cf. Jews in Iasi etc); the native middle class that emerged during the Russian administration and The Regat were mostly soldiers, bureaucrats etc (see above).
'This is the organic middle class of Romania, not the peasants made urbanites that make up post-Socialist Romania, and it still exists in Romania, even though it is the minority in the cities.'
Sure--I probably could have noted this fact. But it doesn't really affect the central argument: that Romania has a different kind and quantity of middle class people from those found in the West (esp England).
'Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest in 1907 as the son of a Moldavian army Captain from a family that has been "middle-class" for more than 100 years. Of course, this only applied to large and middle sized cities, the majority of the country being peasants. This is the organic middle class of Romania, not the peasants made urbanites that make up post-Socialist Romania, and it still exists in Romania, even though it is the minority in the cities.'
Eliade was middle class--but he was of the *military* middle class, not a native commercial middle class.
'...you speak badly about it, you only understand this mentality in its degenerated form and with prejudice against rural life.'
I write about what I observe as an Anglo; muh stack isn't intended to be objective, impartial, detached or rigorous in tone. I have no prejudice against rural life or people per se. I agree that what I see is much degraded--but that is what I see, so that is how I describe it.
'A lot of these flourishes when addressing someone comes from a martial, patriarchal, honor bound society, which Romania was for most of its history; some of it comes from the etiquette of boyars estates, who spent most of the time in their country manors among the peasants.'
I think this is more or less what I said above--no?
Frivolous spending is also the virtue of generosity and contempt of money. Also a lot of it is conditioned by Socialist trauma, when our parents often lacked basic necessities.
Yes indeed--perhaps I could have made this clearer.
'The place that struck me as being offensive...'
I'm sorry you were offended. Do you think that I was *mistaken* though?
'I leave this note from J.H. Zucker, early 18th century German physician at the Russian court:
"The Romanian peasent is skeptical and disobedient [...], but when he is convinced his master is worthy, he is happy <to have a master>; then, he is more obedient than even the German peasant."'
I'm sure things in the early 18th century were more or less as Herr Zucker described them.
'I have more I want to share about the development of civic mentality of Romania, especially as it's Western "pasoptist" form was decomposing in interwar Romania and faced either an organic-national reformation (anti-middle class, pro aristocracy and peasants) by the Legionaries or a Bolshevik reformation by the Communists.'
Please do; I would be v interested in reading what you have to say.
My main point is that by the start of 20th century, a certain middle-class had already formed in the modern sense, with its own characteristic profile (a different one than that of England, but it had its own civic principles and outline as the French one) and as seen by statistics from interwar period, many were already being born into it (40% of Bucharest let's say). This should satisfy your psycho-biological framework for the development of a real middle-class. That was my point with Eliade: him and his peers were born into a genetic middle class (with origins in petty nobility and upper strata of peasants), which had been selected for its own trait package for more than 100-200 years, and which was not merchant in nature like the English kind, but you can't deny that a mass civic psychology existed and corresponded to budding middle-class behavioural phenotype.
In other words, we could *begin* to speak of a dominant middle-class behavioural phenotype in that period, and if was not unfortunately derailed and supplanted by Socialist efforts maybe we could now have described it in the same formal way you described the English middle-class. When foreigners read your post, they will believe that a middle-class forming process didn't actually exist until after WW2, which is just prima facia wrong and will misinform an audience with no special case knowledge.
>I think this is more or less what I said above--no?
It is not at all. You explain it by the level of "trust" in a society. First of all, Romanian rural life was never low-trust, not in any way this notion is defined. One can speak of a skepticism in the Romanian peasant, but not of low levels of societal trust. If you've ever spoken to an older person that was born into rural agrarian life, or read any novel from the late 19th century, you will see that rural life was extremely communal and high-trust, in part out of the fact that until very late in history, all land in the village was held in common (no private property, the elders of the village distributed "a part" to a young man when he started his family), partly out of the necessity of winter and the fact that until 1830, most peasant men were shepherds who spent half the year away from the village. Another piece of evidence that I will summon to defend this point is the "laws of the land", the common-sense societal rules that Romanian peasants lived by for centuries before it was officially codified in late 17th century. These "laws" include, among others, the strict laws of hospitality towards a stranger (you are never allowed to deny a stranger at your door), certain obligations to help village members in winter, the framework for the commercial activity of the village (which was highly organised in the Middle Ages - and isn't this Fukuyama's definition of trust after all?). I think your characterization of Romanian rural people as "quietly but extremely distrusting of strangers" is dead wrong and goes against the internal historical record and the observation of foreign travelers (who often remarked the high-trust nature and care given to strangers by Romanian villagers - Michelet said that a random peasant woman he met "fed and clothed me better than she did her own son"). Needless to say, your explanation for courtly manners as a social technology born of low trust is nonsense in my opinion.
>I'm sorry you were offended. Do you think that I was *mistaken* though?
You are right and wrong at the same time. What you say about the petty competitiveness, the loud pride, the lack of civil sense in so many words is true, but you don't seem to understand its cause correctly. In other words, you seem to think it's an extension of the low-trust and premodern mindset of Romanian peaseant-become-bourgeoise in modern world, when it's rather more a result of the hardships experienced in the 80s and the total collapse of any civic ideal in the 90s (you seem to forget that our society collapsed within their lifetimes...). This behavioral phenotype is something recent for Romanians, and didn't exist in the peaseant-become-bourgeoise of interwar or early-socialist times, who was often described as docile and subservient provided he respected his "master" (the reason why I quoted that foreign traveler), generous and kind to strangers (often derided by the urbanites - "he's still acting as if he is still in a village). What you noticed is a degeneration caused by poverty and social chaos, a degeneration I'm not going to refute but a natural profile it is not. This has been a huge topic in Romanian society for at least a decade since the bourgeois Romanian is moving further and further away from his urban peasant ancestor and towards a "European" civic mentality.
'My main point is that by the start of 20th century, a certain middle-class had already formed in the modern sense, with its own characteristic profile (a different one than that of England, but it had its own civic principles and outline as the French one) and as seen by statistics from interwar period, many were already being born into it (40% of Bucharest let's say). This should satisfy your psycho-biological framework for the development of a real middle-class...selected for its own trait package for more than 100-200 years, and which was not merchant in nature like the English kind, but you can't deny that a mass civic psychology existed and corresponded to budding middle-class behavioural phenotype.'
oh ok I see. But again: what I'm saying is that the pre-war Romanian middle class was much thinner and of a fundamentally different type from the English, which by the early 20th century had been under selection for at least six or seven hundred years. I'm a respector of the Cochrane-Harpending claim that biological trait selection can occur much more rapidly than Gould etc make out, but I doubt that 100-200 years is long enough.
'This behavioral phenotype is something recent for Romanians, and didn't exist in the peaseant-become-bourgeoise of interwar or early-socialist times, who was often described as docile and subservient provided he respected his "master" (the reason why I quoted that foreign traveler)'
There are also 20th century, pre-WWI descriptions of peasants as habitually dissembling, secretive and evasive. I recognise these traits in Romanians today.
What about instances in which the peasant didn’t esteem his landlord? There must have been many. I would guess--it’s only a guess--that demands for rents, the conversion of land to a commodity, the rise of the rural money economy etc which occurred as the boyars became agrarian capitalists instead of an aristocracy of arms would have led to endemic distrust between landlord and tenant. The same testimonies of peasants relayed by pre-WW I travellers that I mentioned above indicate that this was the case.
It's possible that these traits were erased between the wars by propagation of the civic mentality of the native middle class in Bucharest and elsewhere and that they then became recrudescent as a result of communism--and of the post-communist free market, which I think has been very and unfortunately psychologically influential. But I doubt it. I think they were always there and have undergone reinforcement and diffusion (via social and cultural levelling) in the last 80 years or so.
'In other words, we could *begin* to speak of a dominant middle-class behavioural phenotype in that period, and if was not unfortunately derailed and supplanted by Socialist efforts maybe we could now have described it in the same formal way you described the English middle-class, .'
Perhaps; but that's not what happened in reality, is it? On that I think we agree.
‘What you say about the petty competitiveness, the loud pride, the lack of civil sense in so many words is true...the total collapse of any civic ideal in the 90s (you seem to forget that our society collapsed within their lifetimes...).’
I have not forgotten. These sorts of behaviours are typical of the parvenu in a free market economy; I also think that they can be attributed to the influence of the Gypsies, which was limited by communism but has been growing since.
'When foreigners read your post, they will believe that a middle-class forming process didn't actually exist until after WW2, which is just prima facia wrong and will misinform an audience with no special case knowledge.'
It would be wrong if I had said it. In fact I said that there was a (thin) pre-war middle class that was destroyed and replaced under communism. It's all there to read for anybody who cares to do so.
You appear to believe that I am attacking Romania, thus your need to ‘defend’ it. Here's the thing though: I'm talking about *differences* here, historically and in the present, not which traits are better and which are worse. I have my own preferences *for some purposes*, admittedly conditioned by the fact that I’m an Anglo, but that's not the same as making a judgement as to their fitness for a nation at all times and in all circumstances.
The middle class is an Anglo-American creation, mostly American to be honest because Britan is much more class stratified than the US. I think the observation of a missing middle class applies to almost all Eastern European countries that were retarted by communism.
'The middle class is an Anglo-American creation, mostly American to be honest because Britan is much more class stratified than the US.'
You don't think countries other than Britain and the USA have middle classes?
'I think the observation of a missing middle class applies to almost all Eastern European countries that were retarted by communism.'
I guess it depends what you mean by retarded. Communism can't be the reason the native middle class was so 'thin' in the centuries preceding. The de-nobilised middle class of the interwar years seems to have been more or less annhilated by communism, but it also gave rise to a new occupational middle class.
I suspect other E European countries are similar to Romania in the matter at hand, yes. But in these cases again I doubt communism is the only cause of a 'missing' middle class.
I think that Eastern European countries, didn't have a true middle class in the way the US has(had because it's slowly disappearing) instead they had what you above called a occupational middle class, a professional middle class of doctors, teachers, etc. mostly civil servants that goes back to the 19th century on the Russian model, one that was much applied to Romania. After all there is a big street in Bucharest named Kiselev.
"de-nobilised" WTF? But 'de-noblised' had gender-affirming care vibes...
Anyway I trust you understood I meant members (there it is AGAIN sorry) of the boyar caste who formed the 19th c. middle class.
Yes there must have been a bureaucratic/professional middle class during the phase of the Organic Statute and under the Regat. But again--it was not numerous enough, it came too late and in any case it probably wasn't associated with a 'middle-class trait package', so that a middle-class behavioural phenotype never became the norm in Romania.
Gotta say the Romanian wife was an unexpected but delightful curveball.
She sure was...
I mean is...
I like this paradigm a lot for its wide applicability. I’m not familiar with Romanian society, but know a bit about Russia and can see parallels to the things you are describing, like the linguistic shades of politeness/familiarity, the impulsiveness (sometimes with touching generosity), and lack of English formality where you say “oh do drop in for tea sometime” but don’t mean a word of it. The name escapes me, but there was an English aristocrat who wrote a famous series of letters to his son on the classics, manners, and worldly wisdom, and in it he talked about the “rude (as in primitive but warm and kissy) manners of a country squire” that have since been bred out of the English as you said. Considering how differently people on either side of the Hajnal line reacted to, ahem, recent events, one cannot help but await further instalments with eager anticipation.
Yes HBD works very well both as a heuristic and in specific comparative cases. It *can* have a 'just-so story' quality if applied uncritically, since population differences are not always due only to gene-culture coevolution, and I abhor those who use it in the service of proposing 'immigration reform' under which founder populations would still be replaced--but by high- instead of low-IQ foreigners.
Certainly I think it has been underapplied in trying to understand differences among native European populations and societies. My observations of people from E and SE European countries I know less well than Romania suggest that much of what I have said about Romanians might apply also to them. Russia, as you mention, might be one; also Greece, ex Yugolslavia, Bulgaria, southern Italy...
THERE IS MUCH WORK TO BE DONE
I think you misunderstand mass consumption in Eastern Europe. As a British person (like myself), you assume that this is merely people showing off, nothing more, nothing less. This is (of course) part of it. I actually agree that there is more of a drive towards conspicious consumption there than in Britain. But it is also because people of equivalent social status in Romania are simply spending much less money on:
(a) mortgages (which, while not cheap in Romania, are truly absurdly expensive in Britain; even the top decile of families in Britain are effectively permanently broke until they have paid off their mortgage in their mid-50s, massively reducing any conspicuous consumption)
(b) private education (of course, this is a choice, but consumes a massive chunk of a post-tax upper-middle class income; unlike in most of Eastern Europe, where the best schools are free)
(c) much higher taxes; and, in particular, much more *progressive* taxation (nb. the flat tax found in many countries in Eastern Europe)
To be clear, Eastern European countries are still much poorer than Western European countries, and convergence can be overstated (though it has clearly been enough to start somewhat stemming the tide of mass emigration). But despite this, I think this is enough to tilt consumption habits, especially of the upper-middle class, in a certain direction.
My view is that people in Britain, if material conditions were changed, would have very different consumption habits.
PS: At some point, I will be writing a blog about the 'Hajnal Line' for Pimlico, which I think is badly misused by most of the online right
-Nigel Forrester, Editor-in-chief
I appreciate your taking the trouble to comment.
Conspicuous consumption was not really the main point of this piece; in fact I don't recall mentioning consumer behaviour at all. I discussed Romanians' relatively high time preference, but that is not manifested only (or even mainly) in habits of consumption.
Another thing: this substack is not intended to be *scientific*. I'm just throwing around observations, impressions and ideas.
With that self-protective little caveat out of the way...
I suppose what *underlies* what you have written is disagreement with my evopsych-derived argument that low time-preference, frugality etc. are middle-class (Anglo) traits. Your counter appears to be that it's not temporally remote, evolutionarily evolved Anglo middle-class traits but rather the extremely high cost of living in Britain *at present* which causes the English to spend (relatively) less on inessential consumption than do Romanians.
It may well be the case that Romanians are spending more in this direction than the English; I'm not English, and I don’t know the stats, so I can't really (dis)agree. But I’d say a couple of things in reply that you may wish to consider.
(1) Romanians (as you know) are in general much poorer than the English. But you might *not* know that essentials have become extremely expensive here, relative to income; indeed, many food items are more expensive here than in Britain *in absolute terms*. Poorer people (the rural or retired for example) can barely afford groceries and to keep the lights on from week to week.
Those who are more comfortable (i.e. the urban middle class) are struggling in much the same way as are the English middle class. Property has about doubled in ‘value’ in the last few years, such that small middle class families often sleep three to a room (parents and child under 10). Yet Romanians of all classes persist in, for instance, buying enormous quantities of food--which they know full well is surplus to requirements--and throwing half of it out.
(2) Although there are some very good government schools, the best private schools are just as expensive in absolute terms as their British equivalents.
(3) The rate of interest on home loans here is about six per cent. How that compares to the situation in Britain I don’t know.
(4) ‘convergence can be overstated (though it has clearly been enough to start somewhat stemming the tide of mass emigration’
So the story goes—but ‘push-away’ factors such as Brexit and disillusionment with extreme Western social liberalism have also rather cooled things off. Also, while wages have risen hugely in some sectors (esp. medicine), in many others they have barely kept up with inflation.
(5) ‘At some point, I will be writing a blog about the 'Hajnal Line' for Pimlico, which I think is badly misused by most of the online right’
I hope you don’t count me among the misusers of the Hajnal Line and related concepts (or as a right-winger--heaven forfend!), though I fear that you do. Either way, I look forward to reading your piece on the subject. Just out of interest (I’m not asking that you give too much away), how do you think it is misused?