Leftism

Notes

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Chapter I

On the dangers of standardisation see Josiah Royce in Race Questions, p. 74 cited by Ralph Henry Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic Thought: An Intellectual History since 1815 (New York: The Ronald Press, 1940), pp. 275-276.

Chapter II

The criticism of the one-man-one-vote principle is naturally almost universal. See also Rosalind Murray (Mrs. Arnold Toynbee), The Good Pagan’s Failure (New York: Longmans, Green, 1939), pp. 137-139: Sir Henry Maine in R. Sellars, The Next Step in Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1916), p. 216: John Adams, Letter to James Madison, June 17, 1817, in The Selected Writings of John and Quincy Adams, A. Koch and W. Peden, eds. (New York: Knopf, 1946), p. 202: Jacob Burckhardt, op. cit. p. 200: Charles Péguy, Pensées (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), pp. 21-22: Gabriel Marcel, “Considérations sur l’égalité,” Etudes Carmélitaines, vol. 24-2, pp. 164-165: Letters from Albert Jay Nock (Caldwell: Caxton Printers, 1949), p. 176: D. H. Lawrence as quoted by Witter Bynner, Journey with Genius (New York: John Day, 1951), p. 226: Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, La società e il suo fine, Carlo Brocca, ed. (Milan: Edizioni di Uomo, 1945), pp. 45-46. Recently the attacks of Professor Max Horkheimer against the principle of majority rule (coming from a former supporter of the New Left) created in Europe a minor sensation. Cf. his Zur Kritik der instrumenteilen Vernunft (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1967), p. 38.

At present Laborite Great Britain in the humble service of democratism (and a number of African States) is boycotting and blockading Rhodesia because that country, rejecting the democratic one-man-one-vote system, adopted a timocratic (and by no means “racist”) electoral law. It is true that the Rhodesian parliament is elected by a minority but so is the Swiss Diet. Of the entire Swiss population (residing in the country) about 29 percent (before female suffrage on the federal level was introduced two years ago) had the right to vote and between 19 and 20 percent actually vote. Yet nobody so far has thought of organizing an economic warfare against Switzerland, with the possible exception of Stalin in 1945.

Chapter III

The thesis that all democracy is in practice always oligarchy has also been defended by Enrique Gil y Robles in his Tratado de Derecho Politico según les principios de la filosofia y el derecho cristianos (Salamanca: Imprenta Salmaticense, 1902), vol. 2, pp. 882ff. This professor of Salamanca University was the father of Don José Maria Gil Robles, founder of the CEDA and Prime Minister of Spain in 1934.

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Similar if not identical concepts also prevailed in Hispanic South America. Cf. F. Javier de Ayala, Ideas politicas de Juan de Solórzano (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1946), pp. 194-195, 203.

Therefore, a free market economy and free trade might fare better in monarchies—hence the political conservatism of the Physiocrats. Cf. Roberto Michels, Introduzione alla storia delle dottrine economiche e politiche (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1932), pp. 15ff.

Did Christ speak about a camel or a rope being unable to pass through the eye of a needle? Not only in Greek but also in Hebrew the words for camel and rope are very similar. The kamilos (rope) interpretation is found for the first time in Origen’s scholion of Wettstein. Cf. also Georg Aicher, “Kamel und Nadelöhr,” Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen (Münster: Aschendorf, 1908), vol. 1, No. 5.

Nietzsche saw all this very clearly when he wrote about “that German monk Luther” who went to Rome and hated the Renaissance. Cf. his Der Antichrist no. 61.

Friedrich Heiler saw in Luther’s antipaganism one of the main roots for the reformer’s stand against the Catholic faith. Cf. F. Heiler, “Luthers Bedeutung für die christliche Kirche,” in Luther in ökumenischer Sicht, A. v. Martin, ed. (Stuttgart: Fromann, 1929), pp. 167-168. Compare also with J. A. Möhler, Symbolik (Mainz: Kupferberg, 1832), pp. 49ff. and Konrad Algermissen, Konfessionskunde (Celle: Giesel, 1959), p. 514.

Chapter VI

Yet the stand taken by the other great late Scholastic, Suárez, was of a rather different character. It has rightly been said that “in the Suárezian doctrine any form of government other than direct democracy becomes substitutional—a consequence palpably opposed to the whole political doctrine of Aristotle and St. Thomas. Cf. Charles N. R. McCoy, “Note on the Origin of Political Authority,” The Thomist, vol. 16, No. 1 (January 1953), pp. 80-81. Compare also with Gabriel Browe O. P. The Origin of Political Authority (Dublin: Clonmore and Reynolds, 1955), p. 94.

Efforts to “monopolize” democracy have been ridiculed by Maritain in his younger years. He called them “indiscutablement une sanglante absurdité.” Cf. his Trois Réformateurs (Paris: Plon 1925), p. 198.

Chapter VII

Nor was it true that the countryside lived in misery. Serfdom survived only in a few isolated spots in the Bourbonnais and in the Jura. The last remnants of serfdom had been abolished by the King in his domains in 1779. About half of the area of France was in the possession of smallholders. (Cf. P. Gaxotte, op. cit. pp. 37-38.) Foreign trade, four times greater than in 1700, reached a value of over a billion francs in 1786, a record until 1848 (Ibid., pp. 32-33). De Tocqueville comments on this in “L’Ancien Régime” (Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, p. 223).

Cudzych królow gromić a grozić swojemu!

Menace foreign kings, but resist your own!

Cf. Pierre Gaxotte, op. cit., p. 84. “The perfect type of a liberal who is always afraid to be taken to be a reactionary.” The suicidal tendency of certain aristocrats is well illustrated by the common action of Count Michael Károlyi and (Lord Bertrand) Russell to get the Hungarian Communist Rákosi released from jail (February 1935). He was actually exchanged in 1940. After World War II Rákosi established in Hungary the grimmest Communist tyranny. Cf. The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1914-1944 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), pp. 314-315.

Chapter VIII

Nor, to be sure, were the Puritans in America true apostles of liberty. They wanted their own freedom but granted none to others. They executed Quakers repeatedly and established a political-social-ecclesiastical monolith reminiscent of the Genevan order. Catholic Maryland and Pennsylvania and not Massachusetts spearheaded religious liberty in North America.

On “Monasticism” cf. also my essay “El monasticismo,” Revista de Occidente (Madrid), vol. 3 (2nd series), no. 32, pp. 178-201 and “Der Monastizismus,” Civitas (Lucerne), vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 321-335. Actually, as Monsignor Otto Mauer said, today the Counsels of Perfection are imposed on the majority of the population. (Ida F. Görres, op. cit., p. 152) Yet the real danger of all “monasticisms” lies in the fact that especially in the realm of economics all efforts to expect a moral level, substantially higher than the one actually existing, must provoke a wave of coercions and lies. Cf. Wilhelm Röpke, Jenseits von Angebot und Nachfrage, (Erlenback-Zürich: Eugen Rentsch, 1958), p. 165.

The pioneer of Positivism in Brazil was Benjamin Constant Botelho de Magalhaes. About him cf. João Camillo de Oliveira Torres, O Positivismo no Brasil (Petrópolis: Editôra Vozes Limitada, 1943). Also passim in the magistral work of this Brazilian monarchist scholar A Democracia Coroada, Teoria Politica do Império do Brazil (Petrópolis: Editora Vozes Limitada, 1965).

Chapter IX

In this connection it should be noted that Marx’ criticism of the Hegelian philosophy (from which he borrowed liberally, if one-sidedly) is to a large extent based on the “romanticized” version of Heine’s Hegelian concepts. Cf. Ernst Kux, op. cit., p. 32.

If we look for a more extreme but still just formulation of the difference between free enterprise and socialism-communism, then we can say with Wilhelm Röpke that the final sanction in the former is the bailiff and in the latter the hangman. Cf. his Die Gesellschaftskrisis der Gegenwart (Erlenbach-Zürich: Eugen Rentsch, 1948), p. 147. This brilliant book of the late neo-Liberal thinker is still as timely as when it came out for the first time in 1942.

The nature of most tax systems in the Western world is demagogical rather than economical: there is the pressure exercised by the Socialist parties and the general belief that a radical redistribution of wealth would not only remove objects of envy (which it would), but also would improve the living standards of the lower classes (which it would not). Questions of this sort can only be answered by studying all-round statistics with paper and pencil. Were we (taking Alexander Pauper’s statistics into consideration) to confiscate the total income of every Austrian earning more than 1,000 dollars a month after taxation and hand to every Austrian every day his equal share of this, he could get 1.7 U. S. cents a day. Were we to have made in 1956 a somewhat similar regulation in Germany by confiscating everybody’s income above $250.00 a month, every German would have gotten from that jackpot a nickel a day! Cf. Ludwig Reiners Verdienen wir zu wenig? (Baden-Baden: Lutzey, 1957), p. 4. Reviewing the income structure of the United States we see that in 1960 the gross national income was about 100 billion dollars; of this wages and salaries account for about 65 billion, other payments for 10 billion, benefits for 5 billion, self-employed incomes for almost 12 billion (farms for 3.1 billion), the total unearned income moved around 6 percent and Americans of all walks of life shared in this. Cf. The National Industrial Conference, The Economic Almanack 1962 (New York), p. 115. Roughly the same picture emerges from Italy when we study the full page advertisement of the “Confederazione Generale dell’Industria Italiana,” Communication no. 2. in Gente, voi. 8, no. 48. (November 26, 1964). It shows the balance sheets of the thirteen biggest Italian companies. In 1963 these companies paid 44.5 billion lire in dividends but 526 billion lire for labor. Other sums went for taxes and reinvestments. These companies employ 258,000 people but have just over half-a-million shareholders. (Two of the companies paid no dividends.) If, for instance, there are really 5,000 millionaires in Mexico (in pesos of 8 cents, well understood) then the total egalitarian distribution of their wealth would give each Mexican the sum of eighteen U. S. dollars once and for all. Yet Mexico is one of the richest nations in the Latin-American community. Radical “social reforms” further south would have an even lesser effect. It is worthwhile to note that Europe’s leading Catholic sociologist, Father O.von Nell-Breuning, S.J., not at all noted for rightist leanings, has strongly denounced the idea that the masses can be made wealthier by expropriating the rich. (This, he insists, is equally true of the “underdeveloped nations.”) Cf. his “Kritischer Rückblick auf Quadragesimo Anno,” Zur Debatte (Munich, April 1972), vol. 2, no. 4, p. 3.

Chapter X

Analogous observations had been made about the Spaniards. Elie Faure thought that the Inquisition for them must have been a necessary evil, an “iron belt for this undisciplined people.” (Cf. his essay “L’âme espagnole,” La Grande Revue, vol. 33, no. 12, December 1929, p. 195.) It has been my thesis for a long time that the anarchical and “absolutistic” drives of the Catholic and of the Eastern Church nations make parliamentary democracy in the long run impossible because the latter must rest on a basic conformity. Ideally the various political parties (everywhere) should only be ins and outs. Vide the chapter “The Political Temper of Catholic Nations” in Liberty or Equality, pp. 179ff., Freiheit oder Gleichheit? pp. 285ff. The individualism and absolutism of the non-post-Reformatory nations results automatically in a variety of ideologically incompatible parties and factions without a common denominator. This speedily ruins a democratic republic while it is still bearable in a (constitutional) monarchy where the monarch has definitely the last word and acts as a unifying force. Hence the abortive effort of America and Britain (with their great uniformity and readiness to compromise in the field of political thought) to make the countries of the “Old Church” safe for democracy. This George Washington and Alexander Hamilton knew very well indeed, witness the passage of Washington’s Farewell Address, drafted by Hamilton, in which the great President spoke about the dangers of a strong and violent party spirit leading finally to “the absolute power of an Individual” who, as “the chief of some prevailing faction,” will turn “his disposition to the purpose of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.” Washington concluded this passage with the words, “There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the Administration of the Government and serve to keep alive the Spirit of Liberty. . . . This within certain limits is probably true—and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of a popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.” Cf. The Washington Papers, Saul K. Padover, ed. (New York: Harper, 1955), p. 317. For Hamilton’s draft cf. The Basic Ideas of Alexander Hamilton, R. B. Morris, ed., pp. 387-388.

If we compare the agrarian situation of Russia with that of Britain we see that in the 1870s 5207 proprietors of more than 1000 acres owned over 18 million acres or 55 percent of the surface of Britain. Cf. Brockhaus Lexikon, 14th edition, 1898, Vol. 8, p. 493.

The history of the agrarian problem in Southern Italy is characterized by repeated agrarian reforms—under the Bourbons, under Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, under the Bourbon restoration and under the Fascists—and by a renewed concentration after redistribution. Absentee landlords became more numerous when a new urban class started to buy up land. Cf. Vincenzo Ricchioni, Le leggi eversive della feudalità e la storia delle quotizzazioni demaniali nel mezzogiorono (Istituto editoriale del mezzogiorno, n.p.n.d.), pp. 3-4: Romualdo Trifone, Feudi e Demani nell’ Italia meridionale (same publishing house), pp. 12-13.

Lenin’s mother was a Lutheran German-Russian, daughter of a Dr. Blank, a physician and fairly wealthy landowner. According to Stefan Possony, Lenin, The Compulsory Revolutionary (Chicago: Regnery, 1964), p. 3, Alexander Dimitriyevitch Blank also belonged to the nobility. From childhood on, Lenin spoke German very fluently with his mother and aunt. Interestingly enough, the Bolshaya Sovyetskaya Entsiklopediya (1956), Vol. 44, p. 216, has half a column about Lenin’s mother but does not give her maiden name. She died in 1916 and it is admitted even in Communist circles that this very distinguished-looking lady did not share her sons’ political views.

Alexander, the eldest, a member of the terroristic Narodnaya Volya, had been executed because of his participation in an abortive attempt to assassinate Alexander III, but Vladimir Ilyitch was a prize pupil in an academy for young noblemen and earned a gold medal. His wife, by the way, was the Socialist daughter of an officer also belonging to the nobility, and he married her in an Orthodox church. Yet while many Soviet artists painted moving scenes from Lenin’s life (as, for instance, his dramatic parting from his “unconverted” mother), nobody so far portrayed his wedding with crowns held over the heads of bride and groom.

Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov, who used the pen name Lenin (but never called himself “Nikolai”), was born in Simbirsk, today called Ulyanovsk. This was also the birthplace of Gontcharov who in his novels described the inane life of the Russian gentry, and of Kerensky who went to the gimnaziya where Lenin’s father was principal. Lenin, born in 1870, died in 1924, while Kerensky, born in 1881, died in the early 1970s in the United States.

Fanya Kaplan, who tried to assassinate Lenin, was also Jewish. So was Judas Mironovitch Stern, who tried to kill the German diplomat von Twardowski in Moscow. Stern considered German aid to the Bolsheviks as fatal for Russia. On Fanya Kaplan cf. Stefan Possony, op. cit. p. 289, and Louis Fischer, The Life of Lenin (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 599.

Chapter XI

7 Cf. Dr. Paul Tóth-Szabó, A cseh-huszita mozgalmak és uralom története Magyarországon (Budapest: Hornyánszky, 1917), p. 50.

Chapter XII

The anti-Jewish Czech riots in Prague are mentioned by Hermann Münch in Böhmische Tragödie (Braunschweig: Westermann, 1950); and H. Münch, “Panslawismus und Alldeutschtum” Neues Abendland (Munich, July 1950), Vol. 5. No. 7, p. 278. German-speaking Jews in 1945 were forced by the Czechs to exchange their Star of David (enforced by the Nazis) for a Swastika which now became de rigeur for the Sudeten-Germans. Yet while these Jews were “racially Semites” in Nazi eyes, they were now “ethnically German” from a Czech viewpoint—the tragicomedies of an identitarian age!

Vide also Andrew Gladding Whiteside’s analysis of early National Socialism: “Austrian National Socialism was in essence a radical democratic movement: its official programs and propaganda emphasized social and economic equality, popular sovereignty, opposition to traditional authority, and radical changes in the existing order. Its appeal was to the poor, to the workers in ill-paid jobs, to the underdogs. National Socialism’s first political program had been based on the Linz program, whose principles had by 1900 been accepted by all Austrian German democratic parties” (The Linz program refers to the Social Democratic program). Cf. A. G. Whiteside, Austrian National Socialism (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), p. 112.

Joseph Pfitzner was executed in Prague after World War II; Rudolf Jung, who played such a fatal role in the origins of National Socialism, died of starvation in Prague’s Pankrac prison. Cf. Dokuments zur Austreibung der Sudetendeutschen, Dr. Wilhelm Turnwald, ed, published by the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft zur Wahrung sudetendeutscher Interessen,” 1951, p. 50. (Document No. 15) Goebbels called Jung “a fine head. With him one can collaborate.” Cf. Das Tagebuch von Joseph Goebbels, 1925-1926, Helmut Heiber, ed. (Stuttgart: Deutscher Verlagsanstalt, 1960) p. 64.

In Aussig, after the retreat of the German armies, there took place the biggest spontaneous massacre of Germans in history. At least four times as many Germans were killed here by a Czech mob as Czechs by the SS in Lidice. Cf. Londynské Listy (London), Vol. 2, No. 14, July 15, 1948. Decent Czechs (like the publishers and editors of the aforementioned paper) condemned such beastly horrors.

You are many thousand people behind me,
And you are I and I am You.
I have never lived a thought
Which has not trembled in your hearts.
And if I form words, I do not know a single one
Which is not fused with your will.

There we have the volonté générale of Rousseau embodied in a single person—identity made flesh.

(German text)

Ihr seid viel tausend hinter mir
und ihr seid ich und ich bin ihr.
Ich habe keinen Gedanken gelebt,
Der nicht in euren Herzen gebebt.
Und forme ich Worte, so weiss ich keine,
die nicht mit euren Wollen eins.

The Bavarian Prime Minister in November 1923, August von Kahr, was murdered in the Reichsmordwoche (1934), a pure act of revenge against an old man who opposed Hitler as much as Cardinal von Faulhaber did. Men such as Prime Minister von Kahr and General von Lossow are indirectly referred to in the lines of the party hymn, the Horst Wessel Lied: “Comrades who have been killed by the Red Front and Reaction are marching invisibly in our ranks.”

Yet in all fairness it must be said that there were German Lutherans and Calvinists who not only sentimentally, but also “theologically” opposed Nazism, and organized in the Bekenntniskirche (“Professing Church”) opposed the Brown creed no less than the “German Christians,” the traitors within the Evangelical Church. It is important to note, however, that these resisters had almost always a “neo-orthodox,” a conservative or fundamentalist background. The betrayal of Christian values and tenets was rife in the ranks of the modernists and relativists.

Catholics have supported the Fascists, the Pétain regime, Chancellor Dollfuss, or General Franco. There were and there still are Catholic Socialists. There were also Catholics who thought that they could “square” their religion with the milder forms of National Socialism, but there exists no Catholic-Nazi “literature” on this subject.

Papen in his own memoirs—Der Wahrheit eine Gasse (Munich: Paul List, 1952)—tries to whitewash himself but the account of the events leading to the fateful January 30, 1933 is basically correct.

Leopold Schwarzschild, a German liberal refugee, warned Americans during the last war about their misconceptions relating to Nazism: “The master-race idea did not originate in the ruling class but was wedded to the democratic tendencies of the period . . . readiness to accept such ideas showed up first in the “people” . . . . It is wrong also to ascribe the growth of the Nazi movement preponderately to the money of the wealthy Hitlerites . . . . The democratic process was not falsified. It actually worked in Hitler’s favor.” Cf. his “Six Delusions about Germany,” New York Times Magazine, October 1, 1944. And socialism worked in the same direction, engendering “semifascist” views. It was socialism, not “Prussianism” that Germany had in common with Russia and Italy. This was strongly emphasized by Friedrich A. von Hayek in his The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), pp. 8-9.

The famous Nazi slogan Blut und Boden (blood and soil) stems from the German Social Democrat August Winnig. Cf. his Das Reich als Republik 1918-1928 (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cottao, 1928), p. 3. Here one should not forget that both Marx and Engels were highly enthusiastic about Bismarck, convinced that he really was doing their work. Cf. Marx-Engels Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Series III, Vol. 4, p. 358.