Nationalism and Culture (3 page)

After the end of the war Rocker returned to Germany, where he carried on his work until Hitler's seizure of power made him once more a fugitive. He escaped with the manuscript of this book and practically nothing else. His personal belongings were seized. His private papers and correspondence and the greater part of his library of some five thousand volumes were confiscated and probably burned. For three years now he has been a man without a country.

So much for the personal background of our book.

And here it will perhaps not be out of place to remind the English-speaking public, accustomed to a much narrower meaning, that in general Rocker uses the word "socialism" in the broad sense which it commonly has on the Continent to cover all proposals for a society in which production and distribution are carried on and controlled for the benefit of all. This includes not only Marxist and other socialist programs in which collective ownership and control are administered by a central authority, the state, but also the various anarchist and syndicalist schemes which reject central authority on principle. Either specific qualifying words or the obvious implication of the context will always show when the author is referring to some particular Socialist school or program.

Rudolf Rocker's Nationalism and Culture is a work sui generis. It is at once a scholarly survey, and analysis of human culture and human institutions throughout the range of known history and an eloquent, poetical, often almost passionate expression of the feeling of the writer about all of the content of the realm he surveys.

Rocker is a scholar of very unusual attainments, as all will discern from his book. He is an intellectual of keen insight and tremendous power

of logical analysis. He is a competent dialectician. Somewhat unusually for one thus endowed he is also an imaginative, poetic, emotional being, incapable of indifferent attitudes, passionately participant, at least in spirit, in every struggle in which he sees imperiled those human values which he regards as precious. This, too, all will probably discern from his book, because it is this above all which permeates and vivifies the book and sets it apart decisively from all mere works of pedantry, however conscientious and scholarly. That Rocker is also a literary artist of very high rank is not so readily discerned perhaps from this translation, but no translation could entirely conceal it.

In his social thinking Rocker takes off from the teachings of Peter Kropotkin, but on the basis of these teachings he has constructed a philosophy that is essentially his own. In conversation, and for the most part in his lectures, Rocker reveals himself as highly realistic and practical; the slightly exaggerated hopefulness that breathes from his printed pages is not so prominent. When he writes, the poet in him sometimes insists on guiding the pen. But the poet guides it pleasingly and well, and though he may on occasion for a moment forget the realities, he never disputes them.

It is hardly necessary to say that Nationalism and Culture is not a handbook of Rocker's philosophy. It is, of course, just his analysis and evaluation of the material treated: an analysis and evaluation, naturally, in the light of his philosophy.

The contrast between Rocker's conception of man, his history, his culture, and his institutions and such conceptions as underlie the economic determinism of Marx, the mystic destiny of Spengler, the almost mathematical patterning of Pareto, and so on, will be recognized, of course, by every reader.

Having recognized that the contrast exists the reader may at first feel impatient to find that it is nowhere explicitly defined in the book and that he is unable to state for himself in just what, on the whole, it consists. A moment's analysis will dispel the impatience: Rocker has made it his guiding principle to take man as given and, taking him as given, he finds him altogether too complex and incalculable to be formulated at all— unless it be a formula to say that he is complex and incalculable.

And the standard of value, the test that he applies to cultures, institutions, social forms, is that they shall leave to this incalculable complexity the utmost possible freedom—the utmost opportunity to be complex and incalculable. His indictment of authority is that it seeks always and inevitably to make man simple and calculable, seeks, to make sure that he will always do the expected thing at the expected time; and so must also decree that he may do only certain sorts of things at all.

It will be recognized also that Rocker has not always been completely objective in his conception of man, has not always succeeded in taking man quite as he is given (or at any rate as he seems to the translator and probably to some others to be given) but has sometimes had in mind a man of finer sensibility, of loftier character, of profounder and more sympathetic social feeling than—to employ what Rocker calls a loan-translation from the German—the cross-sectional man of whom any society is chiefly composed. That is. Rocker sometimes projects into the world he is evaluating an ideal he has set for himself and fails to recognize it as a projected thing. When he does this he does only what every writer on man and his ways has done, and must do. And he does it chiefly in some of his more rhapsodic finales when the scholar has finished with the topic under discussion and the poet for the moment seizes the pen. Moreover, Rocker's project-man is still always the complex, incalculable human being who is for him the man given j he is never the over-simplified, easily formulated semi-robot of thinkers like Marx and Pareto, a construct-man about whom can be built a system. And when this project-man does appear in Rocker's work his presence is never allowed to vitiate the factual accuracy of the description, and he in no way alters the standard of value—the test is still that both he and the Durchschnittsmensch shall have a field in which to be as complex and incalculable as they severally are.

And all who have been so unconventional as to read this preface before reading the book, or so conscientiously thorough-going as to read it at all, are reminded that it contains, not Rudolf Rocker's analysis and estimate of his book, but the translator's; and if to any of them the estimate seems incorrect or the analysis inadequate, it may be because they are incorrect and inadequate; it may be—the translator believes it more likely to be— because Nationalism and Culture is not only a masterpiece of scholarly analysis and an important contribution to social philosophy but also a work of art, and therefore, like every work of art, in great degree plastic to the moods and purposes of the reader.

RAY E. CHASE Los Angeles^ March 1937.

THE WILL TO POWER AS A HISTORICAL FACTOR. SCIENCE AND HISTORICAL CONCEPTS. THE INSUFFICIENCY OF ECONOMIC MATERIALISM. THE LAWS OF PHYSICAL LIFE AND "THE PHYSICS OF SOCIETY." THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION. THE EXPEDITIONS OF ALEXANDER. THE CRUSADES. PAPISM AND HERESY. POWER AS A HINDRANCE AND OBSTRUCTION TO ECONOMIC EVOLUTION. THE FATALISM OF "HISTORIC NECESSITIES" AND OF THE "HISTORIC MISSION." ECONOMIC POSITION AND SOCIAL ACTIVITY OF THE BOURGEOISIE. SOCIALISM AND SOCIALISTS. PSYCHIC PRESUPPOSITIONS OF ALL CHANGES IN HISTORY. WAR AND ECONOMY. MONOPOLY AND AUTOCRACY. STATE CAPITALISM.

THE DEEPER we trace the political influences in history, the more are we convinced that the "will to power" has up to now been one of the strongest motives in the development of human social forms. The idea that all political and social events are but the result of given economic conditions and can be explained by them cannot endure careful consideration. That economic conditions and the special forms of social production have played a part in the evolution of humanity everyone knows who has been seriously trying to reach the foundations of social phenomena. This fact was well known before Marx set out to explain it in his manner. A whole line of eminent F rench s ocialists Jike Saint-Simon^ Considerant, X^ouis Blanc, Proudh onand many others had pointed to it in their writ-ingsT^nd^it is knowiTTEat Marx reached socialism by the study of these very writings. Furthermore, the recognition of the influence and significance of economic conditions on the structure of social life lies in the very nature of socialism.

It is not the confirmation of this historical and philosophical concept which is most striking in the Marxist formula, but the positive form in which the concept is expressed and the kind of thinking on which Marx based it. One sees distinctly the influence of Hegd^ whose disciple Marx had^ ^been. None but the "philosopher of the Absolute," the inventor of "historical necessities" and "historic missions" could have imparted to him such self-assurance of judgment. Only Hegel could have inspired in him the belief that he had reached the foundation of the "laws of social physics," according to which every social phenomenon must be regarded

as a deterministic manifestation of the naturally necessary course of events. In fact, Marx's successors have compared "economic materialism" with the discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler, and no less a person than Engels himself made the assertion that, with this interpretation of history, socialism had become a science.

It is the fundamental error of this theory that it puts the causes of social phenomena on a par with the causes of mechanistic events in nature. Science concerns itself exclusively with the phenomena which are displayed in the great frame which we call Nature, which are consequently limited by space and time and amenable to the calculations of human thought. For the realm of nature is a world of inner connections and mechanical necessities where every event occurs according to the laws of cause and effect. In this world there js no accident. Any arbitrary act is unthinkable. For this reason science deals only witli strict facts j any single fact which runs contrary to previous experiments and does not harmonize with the theory can overthrow the most keenly reasoned doctrine.

In the world of metaphysical thought the practical statement that the exception proves the rule may have validity, but in science never. Although the forms nature produces are of infinite variety, every one of them is subject to the same unalterable laws. Every movement in the cosmos occurs according to strict, inexorable rules, just as does the physical existence of every creature on earth. The laws of our physical existence are not subject to the whims of human will. They are an integral part of our being and our existence would be unthinkable without them. We are born, absorb nourishment, discard the waste material, move, procreate and approach dissolution without being able to change any part of the process. Necessities eventuate here which transcend our will. Man can make the forces of nature subservient to his ends, to a certain extent he can guide their operation into definite courses, but he cannot stop them. It is just as impossible to sidetrack the separate events which condition our physical existence. We can refine the external accompanying phenomena and frequently adjust them to our will, but the events themselves we cannot exclude from our lives. We are not compelled to consume our food in the shape which nature offers it to us or to lie down to rest in the first convenient place, but we cannot keep from eating or sleeping, lest our physical existence should come to a sudden end. In this world of inexorable necessities there is no room for human determination.

It was this very manifestation of an iron law in the eternal course of cosmic and physical events which gave many a keen brain the idea that the events of human social life were subject to the same iron necessity and could consequently be calculated and explained by scientific methods. Most historical theories have root in this erroneous concept, which could find a place in man's mind only because he put the laws of physical being

on a par with the aims and ends of men, which can only be regarded as results of their thinking.

We do not deny that in history, also, there are inner connections which, even as in nature, can be traced to cause and effect. But in social events it is always a matter of a causality of human aims and ends, in nature always of a causality of physical necessity. The latter occur without any contribution on our partj the former are but manifestations of our will. Religious ideas, ethical concepts, customs, habits, traditions, legal opinions, political organizations, institutions of property, forms of production, and so on, are not necessary implications of our physical being, but purely results of our desire for the achievement of preconceived ends. Every idea of purpose is a matter of belief which eludes scientific calculation. In the realm of physical events only the must counts. In the realm of belief there is only probability:
None
may be sOj but^t does not have to be so. — n

Every process which arises from our physical being and is related to it, is an event which lies outside of our volition. Every social process, however, arises from human intentions and human goal-setting and occurs within the limits of our volition. Consequently, it is not subject to the^ concept of natural necessity.

There is no necessity for a Flathead Indian woman to press the head of her newborn child between two boards to give it the desired form. It is but a custom which finds its explanation in the beliefs of men. Whether men practice polygamy, monogamy or celibacy is a question of Jiuman^purposiyenes^ has nothing in common with the laws of physical events and their necessities. Every legal opinion is a matter of belief, not conditioned by any physical necessity whatsoever. Whether a man is a Mohammedan, a Jew, a Christian or a worshiper of Satan has not the slightest connection with his physical existence. Man can live in any economic relationship, can adapt himself to any form of political life, without affecting in the slightest the laws to which his physical being is subject. A sudden cessation of gravitation would be unthinkable in its results. A sudden cessation of our bodily functions is tantamount to death. But the physical existence of man would not have suffered the slightest loss if he had never heard of the Code of Hammurabi, of the Pythagorean theorem or the materialistic interpretation of history.