Against the Tide

IV

End of an Era?*

The more the day’s political and economic events crowd one upon another, the more is it essential to grasp the wider and deeper context of these disquieting developments. Let us forget for a moment about Hitler and Hugenberg, about East Aid, lard duties, and injunctions, and let us ask ourselves: Where do we stand? Whither are we going?

Many of our contemporaries will answer that we are standing at one of history’s great turning points. In view of the last few years’ events, it does indeed require the serenity of a philosopher to avoid being influenced by the “end of an era” catchword. But it should help us to keep our calm if we reflect that every period of slump has its ideological superstructure just as every period of boom, and that the very individuals who during the boom cannot believe that good business will ever come to an end are often the ones who now, in the slump, cannot see how we shall ever get out of our troubles. The inflation euphoria of the boom is matched by the deflation hysteria of the slump; there can be no doubt about it. In the past, too, people used to say that no earlier crisis was ever so severe and obstinate as the one at hand; sometimes they were right, and as often they were not. It cannot be gainsaid that the present world crisis outranges all standards of the past. But it is equally uncontestable that the world war, which is ultimately at the source of all the trouble, in its turn overshadowed everything that came before it, and that the last period of credit expansion and investment boom was equally unprecedented. There are no objective, no material, grounds for supposing that the current world crisis heralds the decline of the existing economic and social order and the dawn of a new historical era.

But this is cold comfort. The current world crisis could never have grown to such proportions, nor proved as stubborn, if it had not been for the many forces long at work to undermine the intellectual and moral foundations of our social system and thereby eventually to cause the collapse of the economic system indissoulubly connected with the social system as a whole. Notwithstanding all the harshness and imperfections of our economic system, which cry out for reform, it is a miracle of technology and organization; but it is condemned to waste away if its three cardinal conditions—reason, peace, and freedom—are no longer even thought desirable by the masses ruthlessly reaching for power. We merely need to recall that the international liquidity crisis of 1931, which was the beginning of the real catastrophe, was unleashed by the German Reichstag elections of September, 1930, an event, that is, which world opinion interpreted as the signal heralding the collapse of the intellectual and political foundations of the Central European economic system. Since then, the National Socialists’ unrelenting drive for internal political power has never allowed the Central European economy to come to rest, and the destruction of the economy thus caused is not mitigated by describing this ruthless struggle for power as “ethnic idealism,” “Germany’s awakening,” or “the purification of the German soul,” and by blaming the defenders of our social system for the economic crisis. The masses simply cannot be mobilized against reason, peace, and freedom without eventually landing in economic catastrophe. It is not possible to want to run back into the virgin forests of Germania, to preach mass stupidity, and to unleash a storm of destructive and unruly emotions at a time when the machinery of mass supply has become so complicated that it makes increasingly higher claims on people’s intelligence and discipline. Catastrophe is unavoidable if people get more and more stupid and barbarous, while the economy’s technology and organization become more and more refined.

This is exactly the situation in which we are now, and that is the immense danger that threatens us. If this process of intellectual and political dissolution goes on, there is indeed no hope left, neither for our social system as a whole, nor for our economic system, and the fate of an historic era is sealed. But this is not a destiny to which we have to submit helplessly; it is not a social catastrophe with the inescapability of an earthquake. History is not a predetermined, mechanical course of events, but ultimately the result of everything that men think, want, and feel. There is a possibility that the sad old spectacle of the decline of a prosperous civilization is being re-enacted with us, but this possibility should not paralyze the forces of resistance, but call them forth in irresistible strength. If, against all expectations, this possibility does become reality, let us hope that no one will need to reproach himself with having been lukewarm, lazy, and cowardly in the hour of utmost danger, with having been an obfuscated worshipper of the childish twaddle of the day!

THE REVOLT AGAINST WESTERN CIVILIZATION

If we are to do battle in the way the times require, we must first grasp what is really going on behind the curtain of day-today politics. Well, what is going on is nothing less than a mass revolt against reason, freedom, humanity, and against the written and unwritten millennial rules that enable a highly differentiated human community to exist without degrading individuals into slaves of the state. We had forgotten, and now have to learn again, that to be civilized simply means that society again and again musters the strength and the will to keep clear of the two poles of barbarism, of anarchy, and the barrack square. To perform this feat, men must be inspired by certain ideals of community life, they must have learned to dominate their instincts by reason, they must have the unshakeable conviction that every human being has the same claim for respect of his humanity, and they must have a sense of the infinite value of the individual’s personality and of the inviolability of its spirit. All these conditions, as well we know, are on the wane, at least in Germany. A great political movement can count on the acclaim of broad classes of the population when it tramples the ideal of personal freedom underfoot, and one of its leaders was bold enough not long ago to describe freedom as something “inhuman.” A nation marching to the steady beat of a military parade is the new ideal; a state slavery more Asiatic than German is naively and cheerfully extolled under the scientific-sounding name of “total state.” Humaneness is thrown on the scrap heap, and its place has been taken by brutalization and ruffianism such as would have made even our Germanic forebearers blush with shame.

Up and down the countryside today, all the old ideals have become the butt of universal contempt and execration because they are “liberal.” But while it is amusing to see what a caricature ignorance has made of those ideals of community life that we call liberal, the caricature that malice has made of them is outrageous. It seems that every political mass movement needs certain tangible opponents against whom the masses can be stirred to hatred, certain cockshies at which everyone is encouraged to let fly to his heart’s content. Favorite figures of this kind are “freemasons” in Italy, “Jews” in Germany, “Marxists,” “hereditary enemies” of all kinds, and, above all, “liberals.” The cockshy-labeled liberal that the German illiberals have manufactured for themselves hardly needs to be specifically described: a dry pedant, ankle-deep in the asphalt of metropolitan streets, without faith of any kind and without any ideal higher than making money, a man of dissolute mentality and way of life, a professional traitor to his country, unprincipled, incapable of enthusiasm, a nineteenth-century mummy. And liberalism generally is equated with the nineteenth century, to which every conceivable abomination is attributed. The fact that the bulk of Goethe’s work belongs to that century seems to create no difficulties. All the same, the embarrassment with which the anniversary of his death was celebrated throughout Germany last year was proof of the fact that, try as one would, he was not to be claimed for the cause of illiberalism but most decidedly stands on the other side.

WHAT IS LIBERALISM?

If it amuses people to describe as liberalism all sorts of unappealing and eminently perishable features of the nineteenth century, one could let that pass, if it were not that the term is pre-empted for something much wider and more lasting, and that the misuse of the term is a means of attacking the imperishable through the perishable. Today’s rebellion against liberalism is not a mere rebellion against perishable ideals and modes of thought of the nineteenth century, but one against the ultimate and imperishable foundations of that unique flowering in the history of mankind that we call Western civilization. But then, what’s in a name? If anyone feels that the word “liberalism” is too discredited by associations and can no longer carry the precious cargo stowed in its holds, he is at liberty to save the cargo by transhipping it to some other word. “Civilism” or “Westernism” are not very felicitous neologisms, but they may serve the purpose. What is much more important is that we should be clear in our minds as to what constitutes the precious cargo itself.

First of all, we must realize that liberalism, in the broad and profound sense in which alone the word is here used, is not an invention of the nineteenth century and is not to be equated with that century’s political or economic liberalism. Liberalism is at least two thousand years older. It signifies a cultural energy center that has been operative in all periods of the flowering of Western civilization and drew its sustenance from the thought of the best men of all times, however much our uncultural age may forget it. The manifestations of this energy center are of great variety, but it seems to me they can all be reduced to three basic elements, as follows.

1. The idea of freedom, of liberty, which gave liberalism its name. “A splendid word for who would understand it right!” But how little is gained by the word alone is shown by the fact that every movement that rebels against any situation whatever invariably talks of freedom, even if its aims are poles apart from everything we call liberal. Think only of the use of the word “freedom” in the vocabulary of National Socialism. Whether a movement talks of freedom depends in the first place only upon whether or not it has already come to power. The decisive question is whether it talks of it afterward and acts accordingly. Everything, therefore, depends on the use to be made of freedom, on the positive content it is to be given. What matters is not to be “free from something,” but “free for something.” The essence of liberalism is that it strives for liberation from old authority not in order to replace it with new authority, new suppression, and new intolerance, but in order to liberate the individual from external authority, suppression, and intolerance and thus to give him a chance of free development. The liberal program is this: tolerance, freedom of thought, opinion and the press, fair play, discussion. It is in this demand and in the historically proven power of giving effect to it that lies the immense civilizing mission of liberalism, for there can be no genuine civilization without that “civil liberty,” as defined by John Stuart Mill in his immortal essay “On Liberty,” of which every line is now as burningly topical as it ever was.

To question the absolute value of this liberty is to question the ultimate foundation of Western civilization, no less than the very air without which Europeans cannot breathe. The mere circumstance that many among the so-called educated élite of today assail the inviolability of this principle or even merely suggest that it is open to discussion proves how shifting the foundations of our civilization have become. The conviction that true creative power can prosper only in liberty and not in the graveyard silence of prescribed opinions, that without intellectual individuality society and the state must eventually wither, that man has a right to protection against arbitrary power and the abuse of power, that the crushing of every divergence of opinion and of any individual cast of mind must eventually lead to a boredom in which the nation’s intellectual life is stifled, which lacks the happiness of laughter, every sign of humor, and the spice of life, and in which nothing flourishes but the brutish earnestness of the fanatic—that conviction, and nothing else, constitutes the liberal’s much-maligned and much-misunderstood individualism. Most illiberals take it for an expression of smug materialism. They are often the self-same, prize philistines who think it so wonderful of Italian fascism that it has made the trains run on time, swept some of the beggars off the streets, drained marshes, and generally done quite a bit for external order and material progress. Could any materialism be cruder than this? It is not sheer perversity to fling the accusation of materialism at the liberal who thinks punctual trains are too high a price for the loss of freedom? Let everyone stop to think how philistine and materialistic an attitude lies behind the widespread German overestimation of things “going smoothly” and of external order and stop to think also whether a certain measure of relaxation in external order may not be the price that has to be paid for the infinitely valuable preservation of an individual sphere.1 The French or Austrian “sloppiness” has a thoroughly positive reverse side, and no doubt the ancient Romans equally regarded the Greeks as decidedly “un-Prussian.” It is impossible to overestimate the danger to European civilization that consists in our being overwhelmed by the sergeant-major’s ideal of the faultless march-past and the soundless rifle drill. But, naturally, such a state of smooth external order and the forcible exclusion of any disturbing dissonance is the paradise of the smug, of the materialists, of the “bourgeois.”

This liberal program has found its reflection in the most varied fields of public life. Presumably, few of those who decry liberalism are aware of the decisive part it has played in laying the foundations of our modern society. Liberalism recognized that there must be a generally accepted and unbreakable rule of law in order to protect individuals from arbitrary power and thereby, in the last analysis, society from the barbarism of lawlessness and “inner” anarchy. We sense how shaky this rule of law has become today, and this gives us a measure of how far we have already departed from the liberal program and come closer to barbarism. All the most important principles of our criminal law—“nulla poena sine lege” (“no one may be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the regular court of law”), no “lettres de cachet” but public arraignment and trial proceedings, the institution of a public prosecutor and of counsel for the defense, and many others— originate in liberal ideas, as cannot be emphasized too forcefully in this context. But it equally needs to be stressed that these liberal achievements are already largely a thing of the past in such pronouncedly illiberal countries as Russia, Italy, and Yugoslavia. The right to legal action against the agents of the state is another institution that should be mentioned here. But these examples should be enough to make my meaning clear.

On the other hand, it is a misconception to believe that economic freedom is, as a matter of course, part and parcel of liberalism in the comprehensive sense here under discussion. It cannot be denied that the claim for economic freedom is close to the heart of the liberal and closely connected with liberalism, but in fact experience has taught us that economic freedom is perfectly compatible with an illiberal system of society. Italy is well endowed with economic freedom and advocates the liberation of world trade from customs barriers. On the other hand, the example of England shows how a country can remain the paragon of liberalism even if it infringes the principles of economic freedom at many a point. Of course, there are limits. An illiberal country may conceivably practice economic freedom, but there can be no question of a liberal country’s making a principle of economic unfreedom, especially in questions of foreign trade. The complete economic and social bondage that socialism would necessarily introduce seems altogether incompatible with the principles of liberalism. Liberalism and private property are probably inseparable, and hence the future prospects of liberalism no doubt depend on whether we succeed in broadening the sphere of economic and social freedom within our economic system and in diminishing the “proletariat” by augmenting the property-owning class. But this, in turn, presupposes the fullest development of our production potential, and that cannot be achieved otherwise than by an individualist economic order.

Finally, there is political liberty, to be distinguished both from civil and from economic liberty. Political liberty is a natural ingredient of liberalism, since, in resisting authority imposed from without as well as arbitrary power, liberalism inevitably demands political self-determination. Ultimately, the liberal idea merges into the democratic idea, although this gives rise to possibilities of serious conflict, about which more will be said later.

2. Intimately connected with the idea of liberty is the idea of reason. The chorus of its mockers and despisers has become steadily louder, perhaps because they have in mind such “reasonable” things as a marriage of convenience and imagine that liberalism is out to reduce everything to reason. Reason is suspected of making a man philistine, pedantic, and hard-hearted. Who can fail to agree with those who rebel against it? Dulce est desipere in loco. No lad in fine fettle wants to have anything to do with the sensible staidness of the boy who is top of his class, nor with the horrifying sobriety and utilitarianism of those who can consider sex only in terms of population policy and eugenics, the mountains in terms of electricity generation, and the birds in terms of the good or harm they do. No one wants to have anything to do with that inferno of progress and utilitarianism that Aldous Huxley conjures up in Brave New World. But there is another inferno to which we are much closer, that of brutish unreason and wretched barbarism.

But, of course, the liberal idea of reason is something very different from this ridiculous caricature. It means the emancipation of the mind from any heteronomous authority, the absolute pursuit of truth, and the rejection of every obscurantism, myth, and bias of any kind. It rests on a mental attitude of the nobility of which our modern mystagogues have no inkling. For it also demands that we should deceive neither ourselves nor others and strive for that intellectual integrity that is the very opposite of the humbug so popular today, of the rank jungle of thought and style. Discipline of thought and style instead of the indiscipline staring at us in every line of illiberal literature, truthfulness instead of obscurantism, clarity instead of hysteria, the advancement of knowledge instead of sensationalism for the masses, logic instead of wallowing in moods and emotions—that is the program. It is only the liberal ideal of the use of Reason in the service of truth that has engendered science—science that we cannot imagine as absent from Western civilization and that alone has liberated Europe from the stupor and wretchedness of barbarism. To have created the foundations of science is the greatest, the millennial, contribution of the Greeks to Western civilization. Science was born, no doubt, at the very moment when Thales first had the courage to think without preconceived ideas about the world and what it is, in essence, made of. Science is a liberal invention and as such is in great danger today. Anyone who rejects liberalism must jettison science as well and return to the stupor of the mythological age. There is no way of closing our ears to the trumpets that today in Germany blare out the signal for this retreat into a new darkness. A good many of our scholars blow the same tune for all they are worth, even though science stands or falls by Reason, and this tragicomic spectacle would be really funny if it did not have such extraordinarily grave consequences. Rarely in history has a group of people been so busy helping to saw off the branch on which they sit. For the rest, it is a striking fact, which needs some explanation, that German professors are so prominent in today’s mass revolt against liberalism and thereby against the breath of life of Western civilization.

The cultural heritage of antiquity was, as we all know, buried by that distressing process that we call the decline of antiquity. One of the essential characteristics of that decline was that the sun of Reason once more disappeared below the horizon. What we call the modern age is really nothing else but the rediscovery of Reason. The beginnings go back to the thirteenth century, when Marsilius of Padua deduced democracy and pacifism by reasoning, and when in England Roger Bacon declared war on “undue regard for authority, routine, popular prejudice and a false conceit of our own wisdom.” But it was not until the flowering of the Italian Renaissance that there began the great movement of emancipation that continued well into the nineteenth century and went from strength to strength. Renaissance and humanism, reformation and Anglo-Saxon nonconformism, English rationalism and French enlightenment, political and economic liberalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the classical philosophy and poetry of Germany—all these are essential stages of this secular process of liberation. Pascal, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Voltaire, Goethe, and many others are the stars that rose to illuminate the darkness.

Science prospered and, without this being its purpose, created the foundations upon which rest the technical machinery of modern mass production—but how long will it continue to do so? Mankind awakened and rubbed the sleep from its eyes; it acquired consciousness and began to reflect and to look to Reason as the incorruptible arbiter. Institutions and processes that had hitherto been taken by the mass of the people as God-given and ordained by destiny now became the subject of rational criticism. War, formerly regarded as a scourge of God, was now examined to see how it could be restricted, and modern pacifism emerged as a mass movement. Economy and society were recognized as the work of man and thus became subject to rational investigation, a change to which economics, sociology, and political science owe their origins. Authority was no longer submitted to as God-given; philosophers debated its origin and justification and thus caused the idea of democracy to germinate. Critical reason probed the difference between rich and poor and examined private property, and thus the trunk of liberal rationalism eventually sprouted the bough of socialism. Everything was lifted into consciousness, not only in the case of a few leading personalities—that would have been nothing new—but in the broadest strata of the population. Even irrationalism, mysticism, and romanticism were forced to make use of language, and what had been a matter of naive spontaneity thus became one of alert awareness and literary reflection. Even the illiberal re-enthronement of violence is accompanied by theories; Fascism and Hitlerism look to Georges Sorel as their spiritual forerunner and Bolshevism to Karl Marx. The present time furnishes us with what is probably the sole historical example of barbarism that is not a spontaneous outbreak and practice, but the conscious elaboration of a literary program. It all goes to show that however hard we try, we cannot escape being intellectually alert.

Liberal rationalism leads by a direct way to economic liberalism, or at least, to that minimum program of economic liberalism that demands that no decision of economic policy be taken before the underlying relationships have been examined, down to their ultimate implications, rationally and without any emotional obscurantism, nor before all the pros and cons have been conscientiously weighed, including the question of possible repercussions contrary to the desired aim. If tariffs are introduced, it must be done only in full awareness of the implied loss of productivity and national wealth and may not be justified in terms of the sluggish emotional approach of economic nationalism that cannot see or, for reasons of mental inertia or vested interests, does not wish to see that the reasons customarily advanced for protective tariffs are unworthy of a thinking human being. Thanks to this minimum program, economic liberalism in effect coincides with economics, which likewise is not out to propound any economic policy aims, but would be betraying itself if it were to budge an inch from the rational examination of economic relationships. It should not be forgotten that economics as a science has its origin in rational criticism of the naively unscientific government practices of mercantilism.

3. Resting on the ideas of liberty and reason, finally, the third of the basic elements of liberalism is the idea of humanity. This means the unquestioned and absolute respect for every individual’s human dignity, the rejection of the pessimistic doctrine of mankind’s original sin, the profound conviction that man must never be degraded into an object, and the rejection of oppression of any kind, be it of individuals, classes, races, or nations; it means tolerance, protection, and respect for minorities. The genealogy of this idea cannot be traced here,2 but certainly its origin, too, must be sought in pre-Christian antiquity, and its philosophic home was mainly in the Greek and Roman Stoa. Too few of us are aware that the humanizing of slavery in the West was essentially the achievement of pre-Christian humanity. Christianity (especially Catholicism and Calvinism, the position of the Lutheran church being less clear in this respect), natural law, and eighteenth-century philosophy are the subsequent milestones of this development. The abolition of torture and cruel, physical punishment are some of the results that, for the time being, we still take for granted. The idea of humanity is seen in all its full significance when conceived as the rejection of the principle of violence in favor of the principle of reason. Violence is relegated to the very bottom of the scale of values; its use is admitted only as a last resort and with the utmost reluctance. This, ultimately, is the essence of civilization. “Negotiations, standards of behavior, courtesy, considerations, justice, reason! What were they all invented for? Why all this fuss? Well, all this makes up the conceptual content of the word civilization, which displays its origin in the concept of civ is, the citizen, and it serves to make possible the civitas, the community, people living together. Anyone is as uncivilized and barbaric as he is inconsiderate toward his neighbor.” This is how Ortega y Gasset puts it in his challenging book The Revolt of the Masses, and he hits the nail on the head.

The same principle of peace is ultimately served also by liberal democracy insofar as it incorporates in the highest degree men’s determination to live together in communities. By tolerating opposition and offering every opposition party the chance of gaining a majority over the ruling group and thus replacing it in power, liberal democracy creates a safety valve that makes revolution redundant. This highest form of social organization naturally presupposes that all groups are willing loyally to apply the rules of the game, which means that their attitude corresponds to the liberal philosophy. Opinion and counter-opinion must be given free play; everything must be geared to “discussion” and “negotiation.” This is where the institution of parliament finds its place. What it signifies, and how far even the worst parliament is superior to the dark room of an authoritarian régime under the sway of uncontrolled forces, is something the Germans will have to learn the hard way, and we can only hope that by then it will still be possible to regain political liberty without violation of the principle of peace. “Discussion” serves the principle of peace and with it the idea of humanity, but it presupposes the ideas of liberty and reason. Discussion is possible only where opinions may be expressed in complete freedom, but even then only on condition that both sides accept reason as the common denominator of all opinions. Where reason clashes with inarticulate, emotional intent, there can be no discussion. As a result, people hysterically shout down each other and eventually bash one another on the head. Thus, contempt of reason leads to contempt of man and humanity, to intolerance, violence, bellicism, and destructive action. Goethe knew what he was doing when he let the devil exult: “Reason and Knowledge only thou despise, The highest strength in man that lies! Let but the Lying Spirit bind thee, and I shall have thee fast and sure.”* And thus we have arrived at the devil’s own present day.

THE TRIUMPH OF ILLIBERALISM

If we measure the present by the yardstick of the liberal program, we see at once without further explanation how far we have already sunk into illiberal barbarism. The spirit of the barbarians, which the Western peoples thought they had tamed by centuries of struggle, is abroad again and threatens to destroy the civilizing work of all these centuries. The tide of nihilism, which Nietzsche foresaw, has been rising and already engulfs us up to the neck. In terms of the three basic elements of liberalism, the destruction wrought by illiberalism to date can be described as follows.

1. The idea of liberty has been replaced by a renewed will to subjection of the personality and a longing for state slavery. Thus, the first element of illiberalism is servilism. Men are gripped by a desire to be told what to do and to be ordered about, to the point almost of masochism. The state has become the subject of unparalleled idolatry, and it remains idolatry however much Protestant theologians may try to deduce it from the will of God. With giant tentacles the modern state encompasses all spheres of private life and society, strangles individuality, and eventually drains society of its vital sap. More deadly than all the despotisms of the past, and more inescapable, looms the “total state” of the future, and the servile illiberal, it would seem, can hardly wait to kiss its whip. The modern state’s technical instruments of power have become so annihilating that any revolution from below is condemned to failure from the outset, and the only possible salvation lies in a coup d’état from above. The machinery of administration and police has been perfected to the point where the omnipotence of the state has virtually no limits any more except self-imposed ones, and the illiberal state is not inclined to accept any. The breakdown of prohibition in the United States and the current spread of smuggling are comforting proof that there still are some natural limits to state power, but they certainly have been moved out very far. I use the word “comforting” deliberately and without the slightest cynical intention, for in all truth there is no greater danger to the continuation of our civilization than the modern state’s total claim to power, which, in the event of its becoming reality, is bound eventually to wither all intellectual life and thereby to block the state’s own last source of energy. Servilism is followed by nihilism.

Closely connected with servilism is our era’s nationalism. The more emphasis is laid on the state, and the more every individual becomes a serving member of the state mechanism, the more pronounced becomes the frontier dividing one state and nation from all others. This is in blatant contrast with liberalism, whose three basic ideas inevitably generate a feeling of inner bonds with other nations as well as the conviction that if a nation seals itself off from others internally or externally, it is acting against all the traditions to which we are bound by the development of Western civilization. And when national isolation eventually combines with blind hatred of everything foreign, when servilism combines with brutalism, then hardly anything is left to divide mankind from naked cannibalism. This kind of nationalism has, of course, nothing in common with the natural feeling and inclination of solidarity that we call love of our country, but such as it is, it is destructive of culture, as must be clear to anyone who stops to think that what we call national culture has been created only in constant interaction with European civilization as a whole, whose roots reach down to Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. In the course of the centuries, cultural dependence has steadily grown rather than diminished, and this is why the leading spirits of all nations have never felt national frontiers to be as confining as today. Cultural nationalism leads as inescapably to provincial Babbittry as economic nationalism leads to material impoverishment and political nationalism to war.

2. Against the idea of reason the illiberals have set up irrationalism. The success of the counteroffensive of unreason against reason is well known to anyone in the least familiar with the political and intellectual trends of the present. “Myth,” “voice of the people,” “primordial soul,” “blood,” “Reich”—these are some of the words from the vocabulary of the modern illiberal jargon that every self-important ass thinks he has to throw around. Confusion is preferred to clarity, obscurity to light, excitement and sensationalism to logic and proof. Stupidity and stupor are being inculcated in a way that beggars description and must cause us to fear the worst for the future of the society falling prey to them.

3. The humanitarian idea of the liberal, finally, has its counterpart in the illiberal’s brutalism. The situation this has led us into today needs no description. The beast of prey in man is extolled with unexampled cynicism (Spengler), and with equal cynicism every immoral and brutal act is justified by the sanctity of the political end. The liberal principle of “live and let live” is opposed by the illiberal “die and let die.” We should not fruitlessly bewail this but conclude soberly that a nation that yields to brutalism thereby excludes itself from the community of Western civilization.

THE REVOLT OF THE MASSES

Servilism, irrationalism, and brutalism—that is the program of today’s arrogantly strutting illiberalism. Having looked upon this Medusa’s head, we are doubly crushed on hearing what the movement pretends to stand for. It speaks, we are told, in the name of “inwardness,” “idealism,” “order,” and, above all, in the name of youth! It could be taken as a grim joke, were it not that we know only too well how honest and sincere most people are about it. They do not know that in the name of youth they are drawing up a program which, instead of leaving the past behind and pointing to the future, is going to turn the wheel of world history back at least several centuries. They do not know that they are the champions of a barbarism into which mankind has once before relapsed in the course of its history. For liberalism is younger than illiberalism, which has become so fossilized that it ill suits our illiberal youth so arrogantly to treat liberalism as senile.

Illiberalism as such, therefore, is nothing new, but a much used disk. What is new is that this revolt against civilization is at the same time a revolt of the masses under the leadership of those so-called educated individuals whom Ortega y Gasset exposed as the typical mass man—a special merit of his above-mentioned book, which altogether says everything that is worth saying on this point. Ortega y Gasset showed, too, that the advance of the masses is a main cause of illiberalism. Almost by definition, mass man is intolerant and disinclined to enter into discussion, follows his heart more than his head, and has little more than a disdainful smile for the idea of humanity. This mass man, who exists especially among the lower-middle classes and, paradoxically, among the intellectuals, is now about to seize power. We all know the symptoms of his domination, which are in all essentials identical with those of the ruling illiberalism: hot air, slogans and a confused stutter, glorification of “direct action,” violence in dealing with all those of different opinion, rabble-rousing in every sphere, empty rhetoric, and deceitful stage effects. Mass man is not used to thinking for himself; he likes to let others do his thinking for him. That would not matter much if the readymade ideas he consumes were those of the best in the land, but unfortunately they are simply the ideas of those who are most skillful in pandering to mass moods and emotions. And the mass is about to trample down the garden of European civilization, ruthlessly and uncomprehendingly. No conservative could be more deeply convinced than the liberal that the mass can never be constructive, but only destructive, and that the tyranny of the masses is the worst there is, because it is by nature incapable of even a glimmer of understanding for individuality. When liberalism advocates democracy, it can therefore do so only on condition that democracy is hedged in by such limitations and safeguards as will prevent liberalism’s being devoured by democracy. “The limitation, therefore, of the power of government over individuals loses none of its importance when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest party therein.” (John Stuart Mill.) This is the purpose of all those uncomprehendingly much-maligned institutions of liberal democracy, the meaning and origin of which are so widely forgotten. Mass man fights against liberal democracy in order to replace it by illiberal democracy. His model is not Pericles, but Cleon, the predecessor of all nationalistic philistines. He reviles the French Revolution without knowing that he is an epigone of Robespierre. At all times the Cleons and the Robespierres have been the curse of mankind.

* Lecture delivered at Frankfurt am Main, February 8, 1933.

1 See the striking remarks on this point by Hermann Keyserling, in Das Spektrum Europas (Heidelberg, 1928).

2 There is much about this in the works of Ernst Troeltsch.

* Translation by Bayard Taylor (London, Ward Lock, 1911).—Ed.