…
WHY THE WORST GET ON TOP
No doubt American or English
‘fascist’ system would greatly differ from the Italian or German models; no
doubt, if the transition were effected without violence, we might expect to get
a better type of leader. Yet this does not mean that our fascist system would
in the end prove very different or much intolerable than its prototypes. There
are strong reasons for believing that the worst features of the totalitarian
systems are phenomena which totalitarianism is certain sooner or later to
produce.
Just as the democratic statesman
who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative
or either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the
totalitarian leader would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary
morals and failure. It is for this reason that the unscrupulous are likely to
be more successful in the society tending toward totalitarianism. Who does not
see this has not yet grasped the full width of the gulf which separates
totalitarianism from the essentially individualist Western civilization.
The totalitarian leader must
collect around him a group which is prepared voluntarily to submit to that
discipline they are to impose by force upon the rest of the people. That
socialism can be put into practice only by methods of which most socialists
disapprove is, of course, a lesson learned by many socialist reformers in the
past. The old socialist parties were inhibited by their democratic ideals; they
did not possess the ruthlessness required for the performance of their chosen
task. It is characteristic that both in Germany
and in Italy
the success of fascism was preceded by the refusal of the socialist parties to
take over responsibilities of government. They were unwilling wholeheartedly to
employ the methods to which they had pointed the way. They still hoped for the
miracle of a majority’s agreeing on a particular plan for the organization of
the whole society. Others had already learned the lesson that in the planned
society the question can no longer be on what do a majority of people agree,
but what the largest single group is whose members agree sufficiently to make
unified direction of all affairs possible.
There are three main reasons why
such a numerous group, with fairly similar views, is not likely to be formed by
the best, but rather by the worst elements in any society.
First, the higher the education
and intelligence of individuals become, the more their tastes and views are
differentiated. If we wish to find a high degree of uniformity in outlook, we
have to descend to the regions of the lower moral and intellectual standards;
it merely means that the largest group of people whose values are very similar
are the people with low standards.
Second, since this group is not
large enough to give sufficient weight to the leader’s endeavours, he will have
to increase their members by converting more to the same simple creed. He must
gain the support of docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of
their own, but are ready to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only
drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently. It will be those
whose vague and imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed and whose passions
and emotions are readily aroused who will thus swell the ranks of the
totalitarian party.
Third, to weld together a closely
coherent body of supporters, the leader must appeal to a common human weakness.
It seems to be easier for people to agree on a negative program – on the heated
of the enemy, on the envy of the better off – than on any positive task.
The contrast between ‘we’ and
‘they’ is consequently always employed by those who seek the allegiance of huge
masses. The enemy may be internal, like the ‘Jew’ in Germany
or the ‘kulak’ in Russia ,
or maybe external. In any case, this technique has the great advantage of
leaving the leader grater freedom of action than would any positive program.
Advancement within totalitarian
group or party depends largely on a willingness to do immoral things. The
principle that the end justifies the means, which in individual ethics is
regarded as the denial of all morals, in collectivist ethics becomes
necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent
collectivist must not be prepared to do if serves ‘the good of the whole’,
because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done.
Once you admit that the
individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called
society or nation, most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us,
follow of necessity. From the collectivist standpoint intolerance and brutal
suppression of dissent, deception and spying, the complete disregard of the
life and happiness of the individuals are essential and unavoidable. Acts which
revolts all our feelings, such as a shooting of hostages or the killing of the
old and sick, are treated as mere matters of expediency; the compulsory
uprooting and transportation of hundreds of thousands becomes an instrument of
policy approved by almost everybody except the victims.
To be useful assistant in the
running a totalitarian state, therefore, a man must be prepared to break every
moral rule he has ever known if this seems necessary to achieve the end set for
him. In the totalitarian machine there will be special opportunities for the
ruthless and unscrupulous. Neither the Gestapo nor the administration of
concentration camp, nor the Ministry of Propaganda nor the SA and the SS (or
their Russian counterparts) are suitable places for the exercise of
humanitarian feelings. Yet it is through such positions that the road to the
highest positions in the totalitarian state leads.
A distinguished American economist,
Professor Frank H. Knight, correctly notes that the authorities of a collective
state ‘would have to do these things whether they wanted or not: and the
probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the
possession and exercise of power is on a level with a probability that an
extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping master in a slave
plantation’.
A further point should be made
here: collectivism means end of truth. To make a totalitarian system function
efficiently it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the
ends selected by those in control; it is essential that the people should come
to regard these ends as their own. This is brought about by propaganda and by
complete control of all sources of information.
The most effective way of making
people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them
that they are really the same as those they always held, but which were not
properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to
this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of
totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial
observer, and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate, as this
perversion of language.
The worst sufferer in this respect
is the word ‘liberty’. It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as
elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said that wherever liberty as we know it,
has been destroyed, this has be done in the name of some new freedom promised
to the same people. Even among us, we have planners who promise us a
‘collective freedom’, which is misleading as anything said by totalitarian
politicians. ‘Collective freedom’ is not freedom of the members of society, but
the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society that which he pleases.
This is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme.
It is not difficult to deprive
the great majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an
inclination to criticize must also be silenced. Public criticism or even an
expression of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken support of
the regime. As Sidney and Beatrice Webb report of the position in every Russian
enterprise: “Whilst the work is in progress, any public expression of doubt
that the plan will be successful is an act of disloyalty and even of treachery
because of its possible effect on the will and efforts of the rest of the
staff”.
Control extends even to subjects
which seem to have no political significance. The theory of relativity, for
instance, has been opposed as a ‘Semitic attack on the foundation of Christian
and Nordic physics’ and because it is ‘in conflict with dialectical materialism
and Marxist dogma’. Every activity must
derive its justification from conscious social purpose. There must be no
spontaneous, unguided activity, because it might produce results which cannot
be foreseen and for which the plan does not provide.
The principle extends even to
games and amusements. I leave it to the reader to guess where it was that chess
players were officially exhorted that ‘we must finish once and for all with the
neutrality of chess. We must condemn once and for all the formula chess for the
sake of the chess’.
Perhaps the most alarming fact is
that contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once
the totalitarian system is established, but can be found everywhere among those
who have embraced a collectivist faith. The worst oppression is condoned if it
is committed in the name of socialism. Intolerance of opposing ideas is openly
extolled. The tragedy of collectivist thought is that while it starts out to
make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason.
There is one aspect of the change
the moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which provides
special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less
in esteem in Britain and America are precisely those on which Anglo-Saxons
justly prided themselves and in which they were generally recognized to excel.
These virtues were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and
local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity,
non-interference with one’s neighbour and tolerance of the different, and a
healthy suspicion of power and authority.
Almost all the traditions and
institutions which have moulded the national character of the whole moral
climate in England and America are
those which progress of collectivism and its centralistic tendencies are
progressively destroying.
PLANNING vs. THE RULE OF LAW
Nothing distinguishes more
clearly a free country from a country under arbitrary government than the
observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law.
…
(THE ROAD TO SERFDOM – The “Reader’s Digest“ condensed version,
April 1945 edition)
No comments:
Post a Comment