“Thus is born Nihilism, the abysmal hatred of the proletarian of higher form of every sort, of culture as its essence, of society as its upholder and historical product. That anyone should have “form,” master it, feel comfortable with it, whereas the common person feels fettered by it and unable to move freely under it; that tact, taste, a sense for tradition, should be things that belong to highly cultivated beings by inheritance; that there are circles in which a sense of duty and renunciation are not absurd, but lend distinction: all this fills the Nihilist with a dull fury which in earlier times crept away into corners and there foamed at the mouth in the manner of Thersites, but is now widely diffused in the white nations as an actual world-outlook. For the Age has itself become vulgar, and most people have no idea to what extent they are themselves tainted. The bad manners of all parliaments, the general tendency to connive at a rather shady business transaction if it promises to bring in money without work, jazz and Negro dances as the spiritual outlet in all circles of society, women painted like prostitutes, the efforts of writers to win popularity by ridiculing in their novels and plays the correctness of well-bred people, and the bad taste shown even by the nobility and old princely families in throwing off every kind of social restraint and time-honoured custom: all of these go to prove that it is now the vulgar mob that gives the tone.But while one half of the world smiles at the well-bred forms and ancient customs, because it no longer regards them as inherently imperative and does not suspect that it is a question of “to be, or not to be,” the other half is unchaining the hatred that burns to destroy, the envy of everything that is not available to all, that is prominent and must be pulled down. Not only tradition and custom, but every kind of refinement – beauty, grace, taste in dress, easy good manners, elegance of speech, control of one’s limbs, education and self-discipline – irritate the vulgar soul till its blood boils. A finely formed face, the light and dainty step of a slim foot on the pavement, are contradictions of democracy. The preference of otium cum dignitate to boxing matches and six-day races, the appreciation of fine arts and poetry, even the delight in a well-kept garden of flowers and rare fruits are things to be burnt, smashed, or stamped out. Culture, because of its superiority, is the enemy. Its creations cannot be understood or inwardly assimilated; because they are not available for all they must be annihilated.
Such is the trend of Nihilism. It occurs to no one to educate the masses to the level of true culture – that would be too much trouble, and possibly certain postulates for it are absent. On the contrary, the structure of society is to be levelled down to the standard of the populace. General equality is to reign, everything is to be equally vulgar. The same way of getting money and the same pleasures to spend it on: panem et circenses – no more is wanted, no more would be understood. Superiority, manners, taste, and every description of inward rank are crimes. Ethical, religious, national ideas, marriage for the sake of children, the family, State authority: all these are old-fashioned and reactionary. The picture of the streets of Moscow shows the goal, but let no one suppose that it is a spirit from Moscow that has conquered here. Bolshevism’s home is Western Europe, and has been so ever since the English materialist world-view, which dominated the circles where Voltaire and Rousseau moved as docile pupils, found effective expression in Jacobinism on the Continent. The democracy of the nineteenth century already amounted to Bolshevism: it lacked only the courage of its logical conclusions. It is only a step from the Bastille and the equality-demanding guillotine to the ideals and street-fighting of 1848, the year of the Communist Manifesto, and only a second step from there to the fall of Western Tsarism. Bolshevism does not menace us, it governs us. Its idea of equality is to equate the people and the mob, its liberty consists in breaking loose from the Culture and its society.
***
This revolution does not commence with the materialistic Socialism of the nineteenth century, still less with the Bolshevism of 1917. It has been “in permanence” (to borrow one of its current phrases) since the middle of the eighteenth century. It was then that Rational criticism, proudly named the philosophy of Enlightenment, [14] began to turn its attention from the theological systems of Christianity and the traditional world-philosophy of the scholars – which was nothing more than theology without the will to system – to the facts of actuality, the State, society, and finally the evolved forms of economics. It commenced by depriving the concepts of nation, right, government, of their historical content, and interpreting the difference of rich and poor quite materialistically as a moral contrast, which was insisted upon by the agitators rather than honestly believed. At this point “Political Economy” came in, a materialistic science – founded about 1770 by Adam Smith in association with Hartley, Priestley, Mandeville, and Bentham – that had the presumption to regard men as appurtenances of the economic situation [15] and to “explain” history in the light of prices, markets, and goods.
To it we owe the conception of work, not as the content of life and calling, but as the commodity in which the worker trades. [16] The whole history of the formative passions and the creative characters of strong personalities and races is ignored – the will, focused on commanding and ruling, on power and booty; the inventive urge, hatred, revenge, pride in personal strength and its successes; and equally, on the other side, jealousy, laziness, the poisonous emotions of the inferior. And there remain nothing but the “laws” of money and prices, which find expression in statistics and graphs.
All the better were the professional demagogues, who had learnt nothing but speech-making and pamphlet-writing, able to see the value of these works as a source for first-rate catchwords with which to stir up the masses. In England disturbances began in 1762 with the case of Wilkes, who was condemned for insulting the Government in the press, and thereupon elected again and again to the House of Commons. At meetings and in systematic riots the war-cry was: “Wilkes and Liberty,” rioting for the cause of freedom of the press, universal suffrage, and even a republic. In that period Marat had written, in England and for Englishmen, The Chains of Slavery (1774). The revolt of the American colonies in 1776 and their proclamation of the universal rights of man and the Republic, their trees of liberty and associations were in reality the outcome of English movements during these years. [19] From 1779 onward there arose the clubs and secret societies which spread over the whole country, aimed at revolution, and from 1790, headed by Fox and Sheridan, sent congratulatory addresses, letters, and advice to the Convention and the Jacobins. Had not the reigning English plutocracy been far more vigorous than the cowardly court of Versailles, revolution would have broken out in London earlier than in Paris. [20] The Paris clubs, particularly the Feuillants and Jacobins, were nothing but copies of the English in their programs, their organization of branches all over France, and the form of their agitation; while the English in turn translated “citoyen,” the French form of address between members, into “citizen” and the newly-coined “citizeness,” and adopted, further, the phrase, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” and the designation “tyrants” for kings.
Since then, and even in our own time, this remains the form which preparation for revolution takes. It was in those days that there arose the “universal” demand for freedom of the press and of public meetings as a means thereto – the central demand of political Liberalism, the desire to be free from the ethical restrictions of the old Culture. Yet the demand was anything but universal; it was only called so by the ranters and writers who lived by it and sought to further private aims through this freedom. But the older society itself, obsessed as it was by esprit, the “educated” classes corresponding to the philistines of the nineteenth century – that is, the very victims of this freedom – exalted it into an ideal which stood above any criticism of its background. Today, when both the hopes of the eighteenth and the results of the twentieth century lie before us, we may be permitted to discuss it.
Freedom from what, for what? Who financed the press and the agitation? Who gained by it? These liberties have shown themselves everywhere in their true light: as a means to be used by Nihilism in levelling society, and by the underworld in inoculating the masses of the great cities with the particular opinion – it has none of its own – which promises the best result for its aims. [21] This is why these liberties, of which universal suffrage is one, are checked, suppressed, and completely inverted, once they have done their work and given the power into the hands of their exploiters. It was so in Jacobin France in 1793, in Bolshevist Russia, and in Germany’s trade-union Republic of 1918. When were there more suppressions of newspapers, in 1820 or in 1920? Liberty has always been the liberty of those who wish to obtain the power, not to abolish it.
This active Liberalism progresses from Jacobinism to Bolshevism logically. These are not in opposition of thought and will, but are the Early and the Late form, the beginning and the end, of one single movement. It began about 1770 with sentimental “social-political” tendencies: the structure of society according to class and rank was to be destroyed; and there was to be a “Return to Nature,” to the uniformity of the herd. The place of class was to be taken by that which has no class: money and intelligence, counting-house and lecturer’s chair, arithmeticians and clerks; in place of form-ordered existence, life without form, manners, obligations, respect. It was only about 1840 that this “social-political” tendency passed into an “economic-political” one.
The scapegoats are now no longer the aristocrats, but the possessors, from peasant to entrepreneur. The disciples of the movement are promised, not equal rights, but the privilege of the unpropertied; not freedom for all, but the dictatorship of the city proletariat, the “workers.” But this represents no change of a world outlook – which was, and still is, materialistic and utilitarian – but solely a change in revolutionary methods. The professional demagogues now mobilize a different section of the nation for class war. At first, about 1770, peasants and craftsman were approached with some hesitation, both in England and France. The cahiers of small-town and country deputies in 1789, which were supposed to represent the “Cry of the Nation,” were composed by professional ranters [22] and were not understood at all by the greater part of the electorate. These classes were too deeply rooted in tradition to be unconditionally available as means and weapons. Without the mob from the eastern suburbs – the fists of the capital, always handy – the Reign of Terror in Paris would have been impossible.
It is not true that the problem was one of economic necessities. Rates and taxes were sovereign rights. Universal suffrage was intended as a blow against the structure of society. Hence the failure of the Convention: peasantry and craftsmen were no reliable following for professional demagogues. They possessed a native sense of respect and self-respect. They had too much instinct and too little town-intelligence. They were industrious and had learnt something; besides, they wished to leave the farm or the workshop to their sons. No permanent effect could be made upon them by programs and catchwords.
IrelandFirst
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire