Realpolitik vs. Real People

Recent world events have brought remarkable promise, for the hope of peace, in a region where crushing violence has been the norm for centuries.  It has been achieved by actors on the great stage, using common people as pawns, in their quest for domination.  The signing of the Gaza peace plan was described by one publication as “a brutal lesson in realpolitik.”

Realpolitik is the pragmatic approach, valuing practical and material factors while ignoring ethical questions or abstract ideals.  The term was first used in Germany in 1853.  Niccolo Machiavelli and Henry Kissinger are its standard bearers, but the world today is rife with alpha strongmen practitioners. 

“The Great Man Theory” was developed in the same era as realpolitik.  The Scottish man of letters, Thomas Carlyle, developed the idea, in 1840, arguing that history is the impact of highly influential individuals – men – of superior intellect, heroic courage, strong leadership even divinely inspired:

“Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.“

Realpolitik is, essentially then, the effect and the Great Man the cause of much of world history.  And so these alpha males build monuments to themselves – arches or obelisks or pyramids or ballrooms – to reassure us by the monuments’ material presence, of the superior level of their being, of their vast accomplishments.  Immense is the energy and treasury spent to remind us (or actually to reassure themselves), but history teaches that the common people, in fact, can get the last laugh.  

Barre, Vermont is known as the “Granite Center of the World.”  In the early 1800s vast granite deposits were found, which brought immigrants flooding into the Capital Region of the Green Mountain State.  “Barre Gray” granite is sought worldwide for its grain, texture and superior weather resistance.  It is estimated that one-third of all monuments in the United States are made from granite quarried in Barre.  

Italian stone masons emigrated en masse to Vermont and these dark hair, dark-skinned people were among the lowest of the social register, the Venezuelans of their day.  But their work was of the highest quality, and so when John D. Rockefeller – an alpha of American industry – began making plans for his family’s burial sites, his mausoleums and obelisks were crafted by the Italians of Barre.  John D was buried beneath a 70’ tall obelisk, the tallest in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, from the largest single piece of granite ever quarried in America, carved by the lowly Italian stone masons. 

The locals tell the story of how those craftsmen tricked the old man, using superb granite on their work-for-hire while keeping the superior stone for themselves, their night job, handcrafting their own tombstones.  Hope Cemetery – called the “Uffizi of Necropolises” – in Barre is famous for the quality of its tombstones, 75% of which were designed by the occupants of the graves.  

One might find comfort that when John D. Rockefeller, and those of his social strata, lay upon their death bed, mighty proud of their own accomplishments, self-certain of their immortality, it was the unnamed stone masons of Barre who saw clearly the vanity and sham of their monumentality.  

The world today seems to run on realpolitik but let us hold hope that it is we the real people who hold the key to a brighter future.  A fact laid bare in Barre, Vermont. 

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Credit goes to Professor Nate of White River Junction, Vermont who shared the tale of Barre Italians. Thank you, Nate.