In an influential paper from 1988, the sociologist James S. Coleman promotes a new sociological concept: “social capital”. Going beyond theories of disembodied norms and marginal utility-seeking–both constituting important streaks, respectively in the fields of sociology and economy, at this time–he puts emphasis on the importance of relationships. An individual doesn’t live only as an individual: he or she is constantly enmeshed into one or several social organisms. Like a corporation, a fraternity, a country, an informal group of friends, as well as relations with other individuals endowed with various roles–parents, brothers and sisters, relatives, teachers, advisers, bosses and so on.

Before formulating a theoretical definition of what “social capital” is, Coleman gives various examples of it. Two of them will be quoted here: readers used to ponder recent history and news events should find them especially interesting. The first example is the New York diamond market:

Wholesale diamond markets exhibit a property that to an outsider is remarkable. In the process of negotiating a sale, a merchant will hand over to another merchant a bag of stones for the latter to examine in private at his leisure, with no formal insurance that the latter will not substitute one or more inferior stones or a paste replica. The merchandise may be worth thousands, or hundreds of thousand, of dollars. Such free exchange of stones for inspection is important to the functioning of this market. In its absence, the market would operate in a much more cumbersome, much less efficient fashion.

Inspection shows certain attributes of the social structure. A given merchant community is ordinarily very close, both in the frequency of interaction and in ethnic and family ties. The wholesale diamond market in New York City, for example is Jewish, with a high degree of intermarriage, living in the same community in Brooklyn, and going to the same synagogues. It is essentially a closed community.

As Kevin Macdonald showed (see for example Separation and its Discontents, p.198), emancipated Jews in nineteenth-century Europe were good at taking over various markets, especially in Germany and central Europe. While maintaining a standard bourgeois appearance (sometimes by changing their names and officially converting to Christianity), they kept intermarrying, making business with other Jews, and maintaining an inner Jewish consciousness. Non-Jews resented them for their commercial aggressiveness, their proneness to take over markets as diverse as garment-making or banking (see Culture of Critique, pp.268-9). Indeed, anti-Semitism was very weak in eighteenth-century Europe, as most Jews were confined in ghettos and endowed with limited opportunities to influence the existing social order. Anti-Semitism grew as a reaction to Jewish cohesion and aggressiveness, as well as the hypocrisy necessary for maintaining a double face–average bourgeois on the one side, member of a close-knit community on the other. We find the same pattern in fifteenth-century Spain, which tried to assimilate Jews by turning them into Christians: they openly accepted Christianity, went to the church, and showed external signs of belonging to the average community, but maintained traditional practices inwardly, including intermarriage, business ties, and identity consciousness.

Jews have been successful at maintaining a cohesive group identity over many countries and across a large timespan. They remained solid and upwardly mobile even while facing intense anti-Semitism. On the negative side, they appeared aggressive and selfish to regular White merchants and businessmen. On the brighter side, they succeeded in part because of their mutual trust, shared identity consciousness, and a set of traditions they strictly observed. Rather than becoming equal citizens, sharing with everyone the same status of God’s individual creatures, members of the universal flock, they maintained a distinct identity endowed with resources helping them to thrive, both as businessmen and members of a tribe.

Another example Coleman gives shows a practice found in Asian families in the United States:

In one public school district in the United States where texts for school use were purchased by children’s families, school authorities were puzzled to discover that a number of families of Asian immigrants purchased two copies of each textbook needed by the child. Investigation revealed that the family purchased the second copy for the mother to study in order to help her child do well in school. Here is a case in which the human capital of the parents, at least as measured traditionally by years of schooling, is low, but the social capital in the family available for the child’s education is extremely high.

Both Jewish and Asian communities have shown peculiarly efficient at maintaining a high level of social capital. They sometimes did so at the expense of individuals’ freedom, at such a high level that it would make any average White person chuckle. Asian communities are especially famous at producing successful children. However, Jewish communities have proven the most enduring, even promoting endogamous eugenic practices able to increase average intelligence among children by promoting the most intelligent Jews through rabbinate and larger reproducing opportunities.

A Road to Imperium?

A pervasive myth among “Righters”, especially the Alt Right, is the notion of Imperium. Stemming from Roman roots, this notion is appealing: as Francis Parker Yockey wrote, it denotes a “strong and manly Idea of the Age of Absolute Politics: Authority, Discipline, Faith, Responsibility, Duty, Ethical Socialism, Fertility, Order, State, Hierarchy–the creation of the Empire of the West.” Imperium is about overcoming ourselves, forming a lighthouse and an example for the whole world, developing our potential in an openly aristocratic spirit. The Imperium myth tends to be associated with a philosophy of history and a strong emotional bond to the European soil–albeit some “Righters” have reworked it to turn the Imperium into a more pragmatic, realistic idea.

Saying that the Imperium is a “myth” doesn’t mean discarding it as a postmodern leftist would do. People need myths, people need beliefs, and we on the right are no exception. Reworking the Imperium idea means tailoring it in the most efficient possible way. Yockey started his book with an image: civilizations, vast sets of men, developing, traveling, expanding over the centuries. He visualized those streams and invited the reader to imagine them as well. With Yockey’s version of Imperium, we tend to look at things and people from an overhang point of view. It is easy to fancy ourselves as having an almighty view, able to decode the whole history, imagining the Kali-Yuga today, the Apocalypse tomorrow, and a shining White empire after tomorrow.

The Imperium is a sublime idea, a great ideal. It is enthralling, inspiring, motivating. It gives us a sense of aesthetics and a touch of identity. However, the set of ideas commonly referred to by “Imperium” is also very far from our daily, practical lives. During the second half of the last century, many people on the Right had it in mind: and what did they do? Some of them theorized, some others tried classical politics, many others did nothing but dream, write, rant, attack each other, and finally getting out of the anthill. A blog like Fdesouche was one of the most successful news sites available in French when the National Front passed to the second round of the 2002 French presidential elections. Millions of people through the whole Europe are at least sympathizers to what the media labels “far Right.” But how does that translate in real power? When I was younger, I was fascinated by the impressive dreams and myths stemming from the Right. I loved the epic, the sublime, the “Europe of a thousand flags.” And I have been severely disappointed by the gap between the epic discourses, openly proclaimed ambitions and myths on the one side, and sociological reality on the other. Small groups eager to fleece other small groups, marginal people endlessly scorned by the media, university and mainstream politics but still proud of their activism whereas their results are scarce, not to forget an indefinite number of Internet warriors talking endlessly about current events but having absolutely no project nor real power besides blogging and Facebook communication.

Theorizing about White identity and interests is undoubtedly important. Mastering PC Judo makes one abler to communicate and play ideological games. However, spending our lives writing on the Internet, evolving in small marginal groups or begging for respectability as members of Conservatism Inc. is not going to make us emperors of anything, even of our own lives. Unless we want to remain on the margins all our lives, spoiling our high potential, we cannot be a bunch of loose guys who complain about an increasingly alien world without proper alternatives or projects. For becoming ourselves again–maybe more than “ourselves”–we have to spot what works among others and use it for ourselves. Sublime idea(l)s can be inspiring, motivating, fulfilling. They succeed among us because they match with our tastes, our hopes, and they answer our needs for identity and greatness. However, such ideals are far away from our daily lives, nor do they endow us with genuine influence. Instead of procrastinating or losing our time begging for respectability, ranting on the Internet, or even theorizing with no concrete aim in mind, we should focus on small steps and intermediate objectives. We may never get to a world Imperium as Yockey dreamed of, but if we make ourselves able to constitute an efficient “us”, the “us” with medium-to-high IQ and identity consciousness, it will already be a huge success.

Small Steps: Building Capital

With the fulfilling and motivating ideal of Imperium in the back of our minds, let’s move our outlooks to a closer level of reality: capital. Jews and Asians may or may not have impressive ideals and a heightened, sublime taste as we do, but they tend to care about the successes of their children and relatives. Jews in particular care about what is good for them–them as an us, endowed with a shared identity consciousness. They don’t care only about ideals or identities, even if those clearly matter for them, but also about the capital they have.

Coleman’s notion of social capital comes along with other types of capitals. It can be said that there are four types of capitals, each type being more or less fungible with–convertible into–other types:

1. The financial capital: Basically, money, financial obligations, company shares, and so on.

2. The physical capital: Real estate, places where one can work, equipment, supplies, any tangible material.

3. The human capital: Knowledge one possesses, know-how, skills, expertise, willingness to work. One’s erudition, proficiency in one or several fields, foreign languages mastery and even game–mastery of seduction–can be included in this category. When you are doing self-improvement, you are primarily working on your own human capital.

4. The social capital: In Coleman’s own words, relations between social actors allowing for fruitful “obligations and expectation”, “trustworthiness [in] the social environment”, “information-flow capability of the social structure”, and “norms accompanied by sanctions.”

Many of us are familiar with the concept of self-improvement. Many of uswent, or still go to, seduction websites to learn about game. Many started working out or learned new languages. And many of us, if not all of us, became aware quite young of how alien we were from the politically correct discourse. Struggling to go beyond powerless alienation, whether by reading Ludwig Von Mises or Julius Evola, was a way to improve our knowledge of how things work and what is going on. Every reader here probably has a first-hand experience of what increasing his own human capital consists of.

What about social capital? A wide comprehensive study by sociologist Robert D. Putnam has shown that ethnic diversity tends to lower quality of life, happiness and confidence in one’s political efficacy. Diversity is also correlated with a decrease in trust both between different ethnic groups and within ethnic groups, as well as a reduced number of close friends and confidants. The majority of European people living in Western countries are witnessing its social capital crumbling. Now recall that social capital is valuable as a condition for increasing all other types of capital. As we have seen with the Jewish diamond buyers and sellers, a high rate of trustworthiness allows members of a shared identity to act, barter, and cooperate with each other with light constraints. Belonging to a close-knit network, they don’t need costly insurances. They succeed, whereas we tend to mistrust our own neighbors, political leaders, lobbies, and mainstream media. We feel more alien to the world around us than the sixty-eighters ever did. We know that many hostile identities and “tribes” are creeping around, looking for people to shame or sue, steering the norms of respectability, and many of us feel quite powerless and isolated facing them. Besides, how could we not feel alien and excluded from an official discourse that permits no room for defending our rights and White identity?

Loners tend to be more vulnerable and weaker than organized groups. We can reap human capital by going our own ways at an individual level though. Nonetheless, it is clear that we will always be disadvantaged compared to members of a high social capital community. Friends for going out with and discussing are cool, but how worth is the social capital they provide compared with corporate lawyers?

The Internet is a blessing for ethnically conscious Whites. Marginalized by the official discourse, shamed and persecuted if we dare to voice what we think and know, we can meet other conscious Whites and share information quite easily. We can buy books like Herrnstein’s and Murray’s The Bell Curve, Philip Rushton’s Race, Evolution and Behavior, Kevin MacDonald’s trilogy about Judaism, and plenty of other books. (Heck, as a guy taught humanities, I got my first evolutionary psychology “class” by buying Steven Pinker’s How The Mind Works and efficient life lessons with Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power. Thanks Amazon!) It is also easy to find out websites such as VDare and the Occidental Observer. Internet allows us to create our own relationships and set up new social capital all around the world. Here, in Radix comments sections, one can meet American guys as well as English, Swedish, French, and expatriates living all over the world. Bypassing the norms and laws of our own countries, we can meet virtually and build relationships as conscious Whites.

There is undoubtedly social capital going through our information and exchanges. But is that sufficient? Debate over current events or exchanging views is interesting, but it is not enough. We could do much better. Maybe Jewish investment bankers don’t have a higher IQ than we do, but they undoubtedly enjoy much more social capital. We have to do more than talking here, writing there, spreading information over there.

What could we do? Well, plenty of things. Keep in mind a proximate aim, the building of social capital among conscious Whites. It is about fostering White consciousness, as well as making our financial, physical and human capital grow. Creating fellowships, networking, cooperating with other people for jobs, encouraging our fellows to go out gaming girls or practicing a new language or mastering a new skill, setting up camps… If you are good at sports, why not coach a weaker fellow and help him becoming strong and confident? Maybe, eventually, you will get drunk in a remote club, find yourself surrounded by threatening thugs, and have your life saved by the once weaker fellow. We could set up our own kind of private CouchSurfing. Or our own sport clubs. It has already been done officiously in at least one place where some fellows managed to create an association and use a public space, set aside for them two times per week, for boxing training. (Of course it was never officially written that the association was de facto a White brotherhood.) Setting up businesses and employing our fellows could be interesting, too. We would also be much better off if we had our own lawyers, school teachers, university scholars, and physicians.

In France, the comedian and activist Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala was banned from the mainstream media in 2004 after mocking an Israeli colonist on TV. Already famous and skillful, Dieudonné managed to keep his career going by making a one-man show after one-man show. Running in elections, networking with Iran to get money for making a movie, Dieudonné also teamed up with the dissident Alain Soral. Both of them were able to create their own group and own cultural features, such as the quenelle gesture. Dieudonné is popular among a lot of people, especially the young, Muslims, and anyone with a critical outlook on Jewish influence. Currently, Dieudonné and his pals are on their way to create their own private insurance. A petition, intended as a market analysis, has already received more than 110,000 signatures. Dieudonné recently traveled to Tunisia to get first-hand help from professional insurers and sharpen his financial know-how.

Communitarian Innovators

Throughout history, Europeans have shown a peculiar propensity for innovation. Many of us are individualistic, endowed with a libertarian streak. We should use that force to overcome our own weaknesses, exploring new solutions, using serendipity—without cumbering with petty disputes or sinking into a fatal isolation. Why should we remain scattered individuals working in various systems that are more or less alien, more or less welcoming, but never ours? We should at least build professional projects and network efficiently. Living all over the world, we may already consider ourselves as a latent diaspora.

Of course we don’t need to turn into Jews for doing so. Nonetheless, we should start looking at them with a more positive outlook. Not as allies or natural superiors, as some of them undoubtedly fancy themselves to be, but as people who succeed and from where we can draw insight. A Jewish classical text, the Pirkei Avot (“Saying of the Fathers, I, 14), says: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Today, we have to remake an us. If we are not for ourselves, no one else will be. Our proximate aim should focus on building social capital. Fulfilling this condition, we will expand our horizons far beyond marginalized discourses and increase our financial, physical, and human capital. Rather than clinging to territories we can’t defend, making official parties with a negligible influence, or talking on the Internet, we should turn into a discrete but powerful and identity-conscious diaspora. Increasing our social capital is a necessary condition for escaping from this ostracized space called the “far right,” turn our loose relationships into efficient networks and have hope for building an Imperium.