Nationalism and Culture

This work was originally intended for a German circle of readers. It was to have appeared in Berlin in the autumn of 1933, but the frightful catastrophe which happened in Germany—and which today threatens ever more and more to grow into a world catastrophe—put an abrupt end there to all free discussion of social problems. That a work like this could not appear in present-day Germany will be understood by everyone who is even superficially acquainted with political and social conditions in the so-called "Third Reich" j for thejine of thought which is giv _en_£Kpr£SsiQn in these pages is in sharpest oppos it^n to all the_theoretical^^sumptiQi]S-tT iafun d erlie the j dearoFThe^^totalitarj anjtate."

DnThe other~hand, the developrnents of the past four years in my native country have given the world a lesson not easily misunderstood, which has confirmed in minutest detail everything that is foretold in the book. The insane attempt to attune every expression of the intellectual and social life of a people to the beat of a political machine and to stretch all human thought and action on the Procrustean bed of a pattern prescribed by the state had inevitably to lea3 to IHe^lintefnal collapse of all intellectual culture j for this is unthinkable without complete freedom of expression.

The degrading of literature in Hitler's Germany, the basing of science on a dreary race-fatalism which believes it possible to replace all ethical principles by ethnological concepts, the ruin of the theater, the misleading of public opinion, the muzzling of the press and of every other organ for the free display of sentiment among the people, the brutalizing of the public administration of justice under pressure from an unintelligent party fanaticism, the ruthless suppression of the entire labor movement, the medieval "Jew hunt," the meddling of the state in the most intimate relations of the sexes, the total abolition of freedom of conscience both religious and political, the unmentionable cruelty of the concentration camps, the political murders for reasons of state, the expulsion from their native country of its most valuable intellectual elements, the spiritual poisoning of youth by a state-conducted propaganda of hate and intolerance, the constant appeal to the basest instincts of the herd through an unscrupulous demagoguery for which the end sanctifies any means, the

Vlll PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

Standing threat to the peace of the world of a military system developed to the extreme peak and of an intrinsically hypocritical policy calculated for the deception of friend and foe alike, respecting neither the principles of justice nor confirmed treaties—these are the inevitable results of a system in which the state is everything and man is nothing.

Let us not deceive ourselves j this latest reaction, which under existing economic and political conditions is constantly gaining ground, is not just one of those periodical phenomena which occur occasionally in the history of every country. It is not reaction directed merely against discontented sections of the population or against certain social movements and currents of thought. It is reaction as a principle, reaction against culture in general, reaction against all the social and intellectual achievements of the past two hundred years, reaction which threatens to smother all freedom of thought, reaction to whose leaders the most brutal force has become the measure of everything. It is relapse into a new barbarism to which all the presumptions of a higher social culture are alien, and whose representatives do reverence to the fanatical belief that all decisions in national and international life are to be reached only by means of the sword.

A senseless nationalism which fundamentally ignores all the natural ties of the communal cultural circle has developed into the political religion of this latest tyranny in the guise of the totalitarian state. It values human personality only as it may be of use to the apparatus of political power. The consequence of this absurd idea is the mechanizing of the general social life. The individual becomes merely a wheel or a cog in an all-leveling state machine which has become an end in itself and whose directors tolerate no private right nor any opinion which is not in unconditional agreement with the principles of the state. The concept of heresy, a concept derived from the darkest periods of human history, is today carried over into the political realm and finds expression in the fanatical persecution of everyone who is unwilling to surrender to the new political religion and has not lost respect for human dignity and freedom of thought and action.

It is fatal self-delusion to believe that such phenomena can manifest themselves only in particular countries which are adapted to them by the peculiar national characteristics of their population. This superstitious belief in the collective intellectual and spiritual endowment of peoples, races and classes has already been productive of much mischief and blocks for us any deeper insight into the unfolding of social phenomena. Where a close relationship exists among the different human groups belonging to the same circle of culture, ideas and movements are not restricted, of course, within the political boundaries of separate states but come to prevail wherever they are favored by the economic and social conditions of life. And these conditions are found today in every country where the influence

of our modern civilization is felt, even if the extent of this influence is not everywhere the same.

The disastrous development of our present economic system, which led to a tremendous piling up of social wealth in the hands of small privileged minorities and to the continued impoverishment of the great masses of the people, smoothed the way for the present day social and political reaction and favored it in every way. It sacrificed the general interest of mankind to the private interest of individuals and thus systematically undermined the natural relations between man and man. Our modern economic system has resolved the social organism into its separate components, dulled the social feeling of the individual and hindered his free development. Internally, it has split society in every country into hostile classes, and externally has divided the common cultural circle into hostile nations which confront one another filled with hate and, by their uninterrupted conflicts, continually shatter the very foundations of social communal life.

It is silly to hold the "doctrine of the class struggle" responsible for this state of affairs so long as no one moves a finger to supplant the economic assumptions which underlie this doctrine and to guide social development into other paths. A system which in every utterance of its life is ready to sacrifice the welfare of large sections of the people or of the entire nation to the selfish economic interests of small minorities must of necessity loosen all social ties and lead to a continuous warfare of each against all.

To him who closes his mind to this view the great problems that our time has set us must remain forever unintelligible. To him there remains merely brute force as a last recourse to keep on its feet a system which was long ago condemned by the course of events.

We have forgotten that industry is not an end in itself but only a means to assure to man his material subsistence and make available to him the blessings of a higher intellectual culture. Where industry is everything and man is nothing, there begins the domain of a ruthless economic despotism which is no less disastrous in its operation than is any political despotism. The two despotisms mutually strengthen each other and are fed from the same source. The economic dictatorship of monopoly and the political dictatorship of th^Jota litarian s tate arise from the same asociaF^mJeavors, whose~^irectors audaciously try to subordinate the innumerable expressions of social life to the mechanical tempo of the machine and to force organic life into lifeless forms.

So long as we lack the courage to look this danger in the face and to set ourselves against a development of affairs which is driving us irrevocably toward social catastrophe, the best of constitutions are of no avail and the legally guaranteed rights of citizens lose their original meaning.

It wa s this , ^hich Daniel Webste rj iad in mind when he said: "The freest, government^^not lon g endure when the tendency of the law is to create a rapid accumulation of proper ty in the hands oia-fcw:>-and tQ_render the masses poor and dependent."

"Smcethen the economic development of society has taken on forms that have far surpassed men's worst fears and that today constitute a danger whose extent is hardly to be measured. This development, and the constantly growing power of an unintelligent political bureaucracy that regiments and supervises the life of man from the cradle to the grave, have systematically suppressed the solidaric collaboration of men and the feeling of personal freedom and have in every way supported the threat to human culture from the tyranny of the totalitarian state.

The recent World War and its frightful consequences (which are themselves only the results of the struggles for economic and political power within the existing social system) have greatly accelerated this process of intellectual disfranchisement and anesthetizing of social feeling. The call for a dictator who shall put an end to all the troubles of the time is merely the result of this spiritual and intellectual degeneration of a humanity that is bleeding from a thousand wounds, a humanity that has lost its confidence in itself and so expects from the strength of another what it cannot attain by the cooperation of its own forces.