Nationalism and Culture (94 page)

The real Reformation with its intellectual and social changes, its secularizations and state-making, the Peasant War, the English Revolution, the Thirty Years' War, the American War of Independence, [important] less on account of its actual occurrences than of its intellectual processes and ideas, by which it exerted the strongest influence on what now follows: the great French Revolution.

Like Proudhon and, after him, Bakunin, Pi y Margall and Kropotkin, so also Landauer saw in all the revolts and revolutions which from 1789 up to this day have periodically set the various countries in Europe aflame only the working out of the same revolutionary process. This realization confirmed his conviction that the Era of Revolution is not past, but that we are still in the midst of a process of tremendous social change the end of which cannot yet be foreseen. The compelling logic of this point of view is undeniable. One who accepts it cannot help regarding the latest events of the period, the World War, the social movements of the time, the revolutions in Central Europe and especially in Russia, the changes in the capitalistic economic order, and all the social and political changes in Europe since the War, as separate manifestations of the same great revolutionary process. For four hundred years it has again and again stirred up the whole social life of the European peoples, its remote effects are today clearly observable even in other parts of the earth.

The process will not end until a real adjustment is made between the personal objectives of the individual and the general social conditions of life 5 a sort of synthesis of personal freedom with social justice by the communal action of all—such as shall again give content to society and lay the foundation for a new community. External compulsion will no longer be needed, because this community will have found its inner balance through guarding the interests of all, and will leave no room for the struggle for political and economic power. Only then can the Era of Revolution end, giving way to a social culture in which a new phase of the evolution of mankind will find expression.

Only when we interpret history in this spirit do we arrive at a proper recognition of the common features which in any particular epoch reveal themselves in similar movements in all countries of the same cultural circle. In every great period in history there is primarily noticeable the kind of thinking which springs from the social conditions of the age and which reacts upon these to alter them. In comparison with the general problems which occupy the thoughts of men in any particular period the so-called "national ambitions" (to which, moreover, men have to be artificially trained), have scarcely any significance. They only serve to cloud men's vision of the real cultural processes and even for a longer or shorter time to hinder these in their natural development. Only in their inner connections do the historical events of an epoch become under-

standable to usj and an artificially created national ideology, whose proponents seek to see every country and every people only in that light which best serves their separate purposes, can lead to no conclusions about those connections. For, finally, the whole national history of a people is always merely the history of a particular state, never the history of its culture, which always bears the imprint of the period. Our division of European folk life into the history of individual nations may be necessitated by the existence of modern state organizations, but it is not therefore the less misleading. Such divisions merely create artificial frontiers which in reality do not exist and which frequently distort the whole aspect of a period so completely that the beholder misses all its interrelations.

Let us for a moment take into account what profound and decisive influences particular social phenomena of a universal scope have had on the general character of whole epochs. The spread of Christianity has left its unmistakable imprint on the whole intellectual life of the European peoples. Similarly, modern capitalism has during the last two hundred years fundamentally changed all social institutions, and not alone material conditions; it has also given an unmistakable special character to all the intellectual effort of this period. Of the powerful influence of particular conceptions of life and the universe on the thought of the peoples belonging to the European-American cultural circle we have already spoken.

Is not the present crisis in the whole capitalistic world the most conclusive proof of the inner connections of the epoch which are equally effective in all countries? Let us not delude ourselves: This is no purely economic crisis; it is the crisis of present-day society, the crisis of modern thought, which urges to a reconstruction of our whole mental and spiritual life, not merely to an adjustment of our economy. It is the beginning of the great Twilight of the Gods. Out of the whirling chaos of old and new ideas there will gradually evolve a new enlightenment which will change the whole intellectual field of view of men and reveal to them in a new light the essential relation between man and society. For a great revolution of the spirit is needed to change men's relations to the things of material life and to inspire them to action in a new direction.

First of all we must learn to face things directly, to be no longer content to view the phenomena of social life through the spectacles of philosophic hypothesis or to, explain them by any kind of artificially constructed historical concept. The theory of evolution which at one time fundamentally revolutionized anji transformed the whole thought of our cultural circle has today become largely a hindrance to our action. We have busied ourselves too long and too exclusively with the causes and transitions of social phenomena until the phenomena themselves have become strange to us and of secondary importance—secondary in the

sense that the immediate effect of things demands from us greater interest than do the causes from which they sprang. We have proved ourselves for many decades to be clever analysts of capitalistic society, but we have lost m.eanwhile the capacity to renew social life and to disclose to mankind new horizons for its activity. Our thought has lost the ethical content which has its roots in the communal spirit and is too closely tied to purely technical adjustments. We have even gone so far as actually to regard ethical considerations as a weakness, and have persuaded ourselves that they have no influence on the social behavior of men. What this leads to we see today with frightful clarity.

With many the theory of evolution assumes the form of a fatalistic conception of social development, leading them to regard even the most revolting phenomena of the age as the result of unalterable evolutionary processes in which man cannot arbitrarily interfere. This belief in the inevitability and determinism of all events must estrange men from their natural sense of right and wrong and blunt their understanding of the ethical significance of events.^ We play today with the dangerous thought that the ubiquitously intruding fascism is a necessary final phase of capitalism, which at last prepares the way for Socialism.^ By such thoughts we not only cripple all resistance to arbitrary and brutal force, but we also justify indirectly the perpetrators of these abominations by regarding them as the executors of historical necessity, whose deeds lie, so to speak, beyond good and evil. It matters little whether this is done consciously

^ Just one instance out of many of how this works out: When in 1899 the Conservative government of England made war on the South African Boer republics and after a long, murderous struggle finally annexed them, everybody knew that this robber raid was only to secure the undisturbed possession of the Transvaal gold mines. Wilhelm Liebknecht, however, at that time, next to August Bebel, the most noted leader of the German Socialist party and editor of Vorwarts^ attempted to condone the deed by explaining to his readers that here was an instance of political necessity which had to be faced. For, just as in economic evolution there is the tendency for capital to concentrate in fewer hands and for the small capitalist to be swallowed by the large, so likewise in political evolution it is inevitable that the small states should be absorbed by the great. With such explanations, based at best on pure assumption, we becloud men's perception of the monstrosity of the events themselves and make them insensitive to all the dictates of humanity.

^ Shortly before Hitler's accession to power this view was so widespread among the adherents of the Communist Party in Germany that the editors of the Rote Fahne felt is necessary to take a stand against this dangerous trend, although this view was only the logical consequence of the tactic^ which the German Communists had pursued from year to year. The fact that Hitler was able to seize powei without any resistance from the Socialist and Communist workers is the best illustration of that fatalistic way of thinking that crippled the will of the masses and plunged Germany into the abyss. They had played long with the idea of the inevitability of the dictatorship and at last the dictatorship was here—only it had come from a different direction from what they had expected.

or unconsciously. In reality the brutal acts of violent men and the monstrous crimes now bemg perpetrated in Germany—and everywhere where fascism has attained a foothold without arousing the slightest protest from the so-called "democratic" governments—have nothing to do with social evolution. We are here dealing simply with the mania for power of small minorities which have known how to exploit a given situation to their own profit.

Having grown accustomed to regard all the defects of present-day society as results of the capitalist economic order, men have forgotten that by such attempts at explanation the facts themselves are not changed. So completely have they forgotten this that even those parties which professedly work towards a complete change of present conditions know of nothing better to do than to settle down in the existing order, and by their methods they have given it new strength. This failure of the socialist parties has destroyed many hopes and made the masses despair of socialism, which they hold responsible for the defeat of the socialist organizations J just as men today hold the social concept of liberalism responsible for the failure of the liberal parties. In reality, it only proves that a movement which looks toward a complete transformation and renewal of social life will never come nearer this goal, may even be compelled to swing farther and farther from its initial purpose, if it attempts to gain a foothold in the old institutions of the present governmental order so that it may in its turn control the political machine. For the machine, because of the way it is built, can work only in a given direction, no matter who pulls its levers. Neither the objectives of socialism nor the aspirations of liberalism have thus far been realized: either their realization has not been seriously attempted or it has again and again been led by the influence of certain forces into wrong channels. And yet the whole evolution of our economic and political conditions shows us today more clearly than ever how right those efforts were and what a dangerous abyss we approached when we trusted to following the "path of evolution" instead of setting ourselves in time to ward off that approaching danger which today threatens us on every side.

One fact must have become clear today to all men seeking fuller enlightenment: The present Giant State and modern economic monopoly have grown into terrible scourges of mankind and lead with ever increasing speed toward a condition, which must inevitably end in the most brutal barbarism. It is the madness of this system that to its supporters the machine has become, so to speak, a symbol, and has led them to make all human activity conform to the soulless operation of an apparatus. This happens today everywhere: in economics, in politics, in public education, in law and in all other spheres. The living spirit has thus been shut in the cage of dead ideas, and men have been led to believe that all life

is nothing more than an automatic, jerky motion of the moving chain of events. Only from such a mental state could come that heartless egoism which strides over corpses to satisfy its greed and that unchecked power lust which plays with the fate of millions as if they were dead rows of figures and not creatures of flesh and blood. This condition is also the cause of the slavish submission which brings its victims to accept every degradation of their human dignity in dull indifference and without resistance.

The monstrosities of the capitalist system have now assumed a character which must open the eyes of the blindest. The capitalist world contains today millions of unemployed who, together with their families equal the population of a great state. And while these people exist in a gruesome condition of permanent misery, frequently not knowing how to satisfy life's most elementary needs, in many countries there are being destroyed at the government's instigation enormous quantities of commodities because the purchasing power of the masses is too small.^ If our age could still differentiate between right and wrong, this despicable contempt of all humanity would arouse the social consciousness of men and compel them to take action against such horrors. But we merely register the facts and in most cases do not even sense the cruel meaning of the great human tragedy daily enacted before our eyes.

When the first indications of the present economic crisis were observable in Europe a search for new ways and means was not even considered. Men merely tried to "lower the costs of production" by a thorough "rationalization of industry" without giving the slightest thought to what inevitable consequences such a dangerous experiment would have for the working population. In Germany, even the trade unions supported this disastrous plan of the great industrialists in its entirety by trying to persuade the workers that only thus could the crisis be ended. And the workers at first believed it—until they felt on their own bodies that they had been deceived and plunged into still deeper misery. Then it was again shown how little regard the powerful capitalists have for human

^ In America four million bales of cotton are being destroyed by order of the authorities by leaving every third row in the plantations unpicked. In Canada they are burning enormous stores of wheat for which there is no market. Brazil destroyed in October, 1932, over 102 million sacks of coffee, and in Argentina they are burning dried meat. In Alaska 400,000 cases of salmon were destroyed, and in New York the authorities had to halt the pollution of streams where fishes were dying from the great quantities of dumped milk. In Australia over a million sheep were killed and buried to prevent "over-production." Great catches of herring were returned to the sea because no buyers appeared. Even in so poverty-stricken a land as Germany great stores of cucumbers and other vegetables rot every year, or are used as manure, because no customers can be found for them. And this is but a short extract from a long list. Its mute accusation cannot easily be misunderstood.