Ernst Jünger's The Glass Bees

Ernst Jünger's The Glass Bees

Matthew Gordon

(From Synthesis)

& http://www.wermodandwermod.com

Ernst Jünger
Louise Bogan & Elizabeth Mayer (transl.)
The Glass Bees
New York Review Books, 2000

THE Glass Bees is an introspective novel about a quiet but dignified cavalry officer called Richard. Unable to adjust to life after war and needing money, he applies for a security job at the headquarters of the mysterious oligarch Zapparoni. Confronted with mechanical and psychological trials, the dream becomes a nightmare, and Richard is forced to contemplate his place in the modern world and the nature of reality itself.

Although philosophical and lyrical, this book is nonetheless a tense page-turner with all the qualities of great sci-fi drama. The poetic imagery is highly expressive, but there are times when the sentences are clumsy and over-long, the meaning of a passage can be lost over a seemingly unnecessary paragraph break. Whether this is down to Jünger's original German or the fault of translation I couldn't possibly say. Nonetheless Ernst Jünger stands among the most lucid and skilful of continental modern writers.

Jünger's vision of the future isn't the ultra-Jacobin "boot stamping on a human face" of Nineteen-Eighty-Four - it is a subtler, more Western dystopia. Jünger is amazingly prescient in this, although he is rarely given credit for it; he predicts that the media and entertainment will rule the psyches of men, that miniaturisation and hyperreal gratification will become our new Faustian obsession and that for all the wonders and benefits of technology it is ultimately dehumanising and alienating. The new world won't be ruled by crude and brutal tyrants like Hitler, Stalin or Kim Jong Ill, but by benevolent and private businessmen, like Rupert Murdoch. We won’t be dominated by the authoritarian father-ego of Freud, but by the hedonistic-pervert of Lacan. Jünger anticipates the theory of hyperreality formulated by Baudrillard, and it is interesting that this book was published before theories on post-modernism and deconstruction became vogue.

Faced with this less than perfect future, Jünger's doesn't try to incite revolution or political struggle – his message remains the same throughout his work – but to inspire individual autonomy. Despite all outward constraints, uprightedness and self-reliance is real freedom. Jünger depicts a superficial and spiritually bankrupt future, but if he is to be believed, the potential for man to be his true self is always the same.

Wahhabism, China, Mass Immigration: Lothrop Stoddard Rediscovered

Wahhabism, China, Mass Immigration: Lothrop Stoddard Rediscovered

Robert Locke

Ex: http://www.wermodandwermod.com

Everyone accepts that it’s OK to read great thinkers of the past, like Aristotle, Hobbes, or Marx, who believed in things-slavery, absolutism, communism-that we abjure today.

But strangely, when it comes to the great racial thinkers of the past, this rule is suspended. So complete has been their effacement by the liberal establishment, so far beyond the pale of legitimate opinion have they been pushed, that it’s almost unnecessary to repress them anymore.

But in their day these men were best-selling authors and respected scholars. They produced some serious thinking on race that I have recently been trying to rediscover. The first of my rediscoveries: Lothrop Stoddard.

Stoddard (1883-1950) was no marginal figure. He came from a distinguished New England family, had a PhD in history from Harvard, and wrote 14 well-respected books. A lifelong Unitarian and Republican, Stoddard was also a member of the American Historical Association, the American Political Science Association, and the Academy of Political Science.

As with most thinkers, not everything he said can be endorsed. What he wrote, mainly in the 1920’s and '30’s, reflects the snobberies of that time-for example, the old WASP preference for (surprise, surprise) Northern Europeans over Southern or Eastern ones. I accept this attitude as a natural preference for one’s own kind but must dismiss it if it’s proposed to inform serious politics in this country today. But, since Stoddard also wrote of the dangers of internecine jealousies undermining the unity of whites, I can forgive him.

Stoddard was not, as liberal critics like to tar all race-conscious thinkers, a Nazi or anything like it. In fact, he wrote a book critical of Nazi Germany entitled Into the Darkness, and he saw, years before the Nazis became significant, the essential falsehood of their core racial myth:

Indeed the national-imperialists presently seized upon race teachings, and prostituted them to their own ends. A notable example of this is the extreme Pan-German propaganda of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and his fellows. Chamberlain makes two cardinal assumptions: he conceives modern Germany as racially purely Nordic; and he regards all Nordics outside the German linguistic-cultural group as either unconscious or renegade Teutons who must at all costs be brought into the German fold. To anyone who understands the scientific realities of race, the monstrous absurdity of these assumptions is instantly apparent. The fact is that modern Germany, far from being purely Nordic, is mainly Alpine in race. Nordic blood preponderates only in the northwest, and is merely veneered over the rest of Germany, especially in the upper classes... To let Teuton propaganda gull us into thinking of Germany as the Nordic fatherland is both a danger and an absurdity. (The Rising Tide of Color p .202)

This is the only place I know where Nazi ideology is refuted on its own terms.

Let’s look at some key passages from Stoddard’s magnum opus of 1920, The Rising Tide of Color. The first passage that really got my attention was his warning (in 1920!) that an obscure variety of Islam called Wahhabism was destined to be a major source of trouble for the Western World:

The brown world, like the Yellow world, is today in acute reaction against white supremacy... The great dynamic of this brown reaction is the Mohammedan Revival...

Islam’s warlike vigor has impressed men’s minds ever since the far-off days when its pristine fervor bore the Fiery Crescent from France to China. But with the passing cycles this fervor waned, and a century ago Islam seemed plunged in the stupor of senile decay. .. Yet at this darkest hour a voice came crying from out the vast Arabian desert, the cradle of Islam, calling the Faithful to better things. This puritan reformer was the famous Abd-el-Wahab, and his followers, known as Wahabis, soon spread the length and breadth of the Mohammedan world, purging Islam of its sloth and rekindling the fervor of its olden days. Thus began the great Mohammedan Revival.

That revival, like all truly great regenerative movements, had its political as well as its spiritual side. One of the first things which struck the reformers was the political weakness of the Moslem World and its increasing subjection to the Christian West... The result in Islam was a fusing of religion and patriotism into a ‘sacred union’ for the combined spiritual regeneration and political emancipation of the Moslem World...

No more zealous Moslems are to be found in all the ranks of Islam than those who have sojourned longest in Europe and acquired the most intimate knowledge of its sciences and ways. Mohammedans are keenly alive to the ever-shifting uncertainties and divisions that distract the Christianity of today, and of the woeful instability of modern European institutions.” (p.56)

Here Stoddard lays bare all the things we are missing today in the analysis of these questions-a grasp of the broad sweep of history beyond anything within the reach of the neocon imagination; honesty about the reality that a Nietzschean racial will-to-power lies in the background of Western relations with the Moslem world; a prescient recognition of the key fact about these fanatics that puzzles the globalist consensus-that they are not seduced by our society on contact, like East German teenagers guzzling their first Coca-Colas.

Stoddard wrote more about Islam in his book The New World of Islam. His ability to see things from an adversary’s point of view is remarkable, and gives the lie to the myth that only people indoctrinated in multicultural sensitivity can do this. (In fact, of course, multicultural ideology tends to produce the opposite effect, as it teaches that “we’re all the same” and forbids honesty about the core Hobbesian fact of relations between peoples: they are often enemies.)

Another contemporary problem whose racial aspect is taboo to discuss is cheap Oriental labor. Stoddard wrote:

Assuredly the cheapness of Chinese labor is something to make a factory owner’s mouth water... With an ocean of such labor power to draw on, China would appear to be on the eve of a manufacturing development that will act like a continental upheaval in changing the trade map of the world. (p.244)

Stoddard also foresaw the Third World unarmed invasion scenario made famous in Jean Raspail’s novel The Camp of the Saintsdecades before it began to become visible:

And let not Europe, the white brood-land, the heart of the white world, think itself immune. In the last analysis, the self-same peril menaces it too. This has long been recognized by far-sighted men. For many years economists and sociologists have discussed the possibility of Asiatic immigration into Europe. Low as wages and living standards are in many European countries, they are yet far higher than in the congested East, while the rapid progress of social betterment throughout Europe must further widen the gap and make the white continent seem a more and more desirable haven for the swarming, black-haired bread-seekers of China, India and Japan...We shall not be destroyed, perhaps, by the sudden onrush of invaders, as Rome was overwhelmed by northern hordes; we shall be gradually subdued and absorbed. (p. 289)

Stoddard wrote about one factor in the racial conflict of our time that tends to be ignored by Americans: the fact that the white race used to feel a sense of solidarity before World War I. The collapse of this sense of solidarity was one key to the unraveling of the white world’s instinct for racial self-preservation:

Thus white solidarity, while unquestionably weakened, was still a weighty factor down to August 1914. But the first shots of Armageddon saw white solidarity literally blown from the muzzles of the guns. An explosion of internecine hatred burst forth more intense and general than any ever known before... Before Armageddon there thus existed a genuine moral repugnance against settling domestic differences by calling in the alien without the gates. The Great War, however, sent all such scruples promptly into the discard. (p.208)

World War II, which Stoddard foresaw, was just the apotheosis of this process, complete with one state mythology that defined Jews, Russians and Poles as outside the pale of white civilization and another that denied the value of race altogether in favor of an economic mythology.

Finally, I would like to quote a succinct passage that can only trigger a shock of recognition:

Our present condition is the result of following the leadership of idealists and philanthropic doctrinaires, aided and abetted by the perfectly understandable demand of our captains of industry for cheap labor.” (p. xxxi) [not online]

How little has changed in 83 years!

I have the curious sense that since the melting of the geopolitical ice of the Cold War, which froze human relations into an artificial pattern for 44 years, history has not only not stopped but is in some ways going backwards-and that all these issues from earlier times are once again becoming live.

We have much to learn by revisiting the racial thinkers of the past-even if we do not always agree with them.

Source: VDARE, 21 Feb 2004.

 

You can get the stunning 2011 editions of Lothrop Stoddard's The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-Man (1922) and The French Revolution in San Domingo (1914) from our online book shop.

Guillaume Faye: Sex and Deviance

Sex and Deviance is at once a raging critique of the values underpinning contemporary Western societies and a down-to-earth, pragmatic vision of the future. Guillaume Faye is meticulous in his analysis of the points at which Western societies have deviated from their golden mean, thus having triggered the tidal wave of social ills that they are facing and can expect to face. Faye identifies at the centre of this vortex the matter of sex and sexuality, and with this proffers an answer to the perennial question: What is the glue that holds societies together?

Faye’s penetrating assault on the specious thinking of ideologues is certain to rattle the convictions of those from across the spectrum. Much more than just a socio-political exposition, this book is an invitation to shed old ways of thinking and to begin new, hard-headed discussion over the most pertinent issues of this century.

To order the book (19 £):

http://www.arktos.com/guillaume-faye-sex-and-deviance-softcover.html

 

Introduction

1. Funeral Dirge for the Family
The Disappearance of the Lasting Couple
Fragility of Unions Based on Romantic Love
The Politisation of Love: Symptom of Neo-Totalitarianism
Love is Not a Gift, but a Calculation
The Decline of the Duty to Continue the Lineage
Supremacy of the Anti-Familial Ideology
Consequences of the Deterioration of the Monogamous Couple
The Destruction of the Bourgeois Family Results in Chaos
Polyamory, Polygamy, Polyfidelity: Toward Involution
Spoiled Child, Sick Child

 

 

2. The Sacralisation of Homosexuality
Homophile Ideology and the ‘Struggle against Homophobia’
The Pathology of Homosexual Discourse and the Homosexual Mentality
The Egoism, Egotism, and Superficiality of ‘Gay Culture’
Proselytising the Gay Religion
Psychopathology and Fraud of the Male Homosexual Couple
The Psychology of Homosexuality
The Real Aim of the Fight against Homophobia
Are Gays Really...Gay?
The Innocence of Lesbians: Female Homosexuality
Are We All Bisexual?
The Delirium of Homoparentality
Homophobia among ‘Youths’
Gender Theory: The Latest Whim of Homosexualist and Feminist Ideology

3. Males and Females: Complex Differences
Woman’s Deep Psychology and Archetypical Representations
Questions about the Dependence and Submission of Women
Questions on Male Superiority and the ‘Dominant Male’
Effeminisation and Devirilisation of Society
Different Ways the Sex Act Is Perceived Between Men and Women
The Rising Power of Women Today
Women’s Revenge and the Possible Reversal of Sexual Polarity
The Unisex Utopia
The Dialectics of Double Domination
Love, Money, and Interest

4. Feminist Schizophrenia
The Insurmountable Contradictions of Feminism
The Two Feminisms: Sane and Insane
The Androgynous Utopia
The Dogma of ‘Parity’
Feminism and Careerism
The Feminisation of Values

5. The Farce of Sexual Liberation
An Ideology of Puritans
The False Promises of Sexual Liberation
The Illusion of Virtual Encounters

6. Sex and Perversions
Sexual Obsession and Sexual Impoverishment
Asexuals and the Extinction of Desire: Fruits of Hypersexualism
Immodesty as Anti-Eroticism
The Sexual Destructuration of Adolescents
Rapes, Sex Crimes, and Judicial Laxity
The Explosion in Sexual Violence by Minors
Violence and Sexism at School
Minors Having Abortions
Female Victims of Violence: Organised Dishonesty
The Suffering of Women in Immigrant Neighbourhoods
To Be a Homophobe is Prohibited; To Be a Paedophile is Permissible

7. Ineradicable Prostitution
Prostitution and Polytheistic Cults
Explosion and Polymorphism of Prostitution
Barter Prostitution
Regulating Prostitution

8. Sex and Origin
The Pressure for ‘Mixed’ Couples and Unions
The Race-Mixing Imperative, Soft Genocide, and Preparing the Way for Ethnic Chaos
Miscegenation as Official State Doctrine
Different Sexualities
Sexual Violence and Sexual Racism
Sexual Ethnomasochism and Divirlisation
Birthrates and Ethnic Origin

9. Islam and Sex
The Contradiction of Sexual Permissiveness in the Face of Islam
Macho Nervous Schizophrenia
Misogyny and Gynophobia

10. Christianity and Sex
The Canonical Sexual Morality of the Church
Failure of the Sexual and Conjugal Morality of the Church
Christian Sex-Phobia Has Provoked Sex-Mania by way of Reaction
From Sexual Sin to the Sin of Racism

11. Sex, Biotechnology, and Biopolitics
Improbable Human Nature
Biotechnology and Evolution
Rearguard Actions Against Biotechnology
What the Future May Have in Store

Conclusion
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Appendix E
Appendix F
Appendix G
Index

Guillaume Faye was one of the principal members of the famed French New Right organisation GRECE in the 1970s and '80s. After departing in 1986 due to his disagreement with its strategy, he had a successful career on French television and radio before returning to the stage of political philosophy as a powerful alternative voice with the publication of Archeofuturism. Since then he has continued to challenge the status quo within the Right in his writings, earning him both the admiration and disdain of his colleagues. Arktos has also published English translations of his books Archeofuturism (2010), Why We Fight (2011), and The Convergence of Catastrophes (2012).

Theodore Lothrop Stoddard

Remembering Theodore Lothrop Stoddard (29 June 1883 - 1 May 1950)

Alex Kurtagic

Ex: http://www.wermodandwermod.com

American historian, journalist, anthropologist, and eugenicist Theodore Lothrop Stoddard was born 131 years ago today. A popular author and journalist until World War II, he was the author of 18 books, most published by a prestigious New York Publisher, Charles Scribner, including, The French Revolution in San Domingo (1914) and The Revolt Against Civilization (1922), of which we published new, annotated editions in 2011.

Stoddard was the archetypical product of ivy-league education in the old United States. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, studied law at Boston University, and obtained a PhD in history from Harvard University, later published as the aforementioned book on San Domingo (Haiti).

Stoddard was closely associated with Madison Grant's circle of eugenicists and immigration restrictionists during the early part of the 20th century. His work, like that of his colleagues, is controversial today, and books like The Rising Tide of Colour (1920) set forth theses which would be rejected out of hand by present-day policy makers, even though said theses, if at times expressed in a language we would no longer use, have proven broadly correct, with the collapse of the European empires, the demographic trends of the past fifty years in Europe and North America due to mass immigration, the rise of Japan, and the rise of Islam as a threat to the West due to regious fanaticism. He also predicted a second world war and a war between Japan and the United States. Indeed, in his day, Stoddard's influence was significant, to the point of being alluded to in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. As is typical of American writers, then and now, and from all sides of the American political spectrum, Stoddard was accutely focused on human races, their characteristics, their relative status, and the conflicts of interests arising between them. As a representative of the old WASP establishment in his country, he was also preoccupied its continuity.

But, while socially conservative, he was in every other sense a progressive liberal, strange as that may seem today: for him, eugenics was about improving the efficiency of human society—an aspiration well in keeping with the ideals of the Progressive Age in America, which was all about efficiency, wholesomeness, and purification (something not unrelated to Protestant ideals), and well in keeping with today's progressives, even if their approach is very different. Indeed, eugenics at this time (which was a generation or more before it fell into disrepute) was seen by its proponents as humane, and American writers made their case in terms of 'the right to be well born', and so forth. Today, this seems inconceivable, but let us think about this for a moment: is not pre-natal screening, and the option to abort a defective fetus, in effect congenial with eugenics, even if restricted to the welfare of individuals? And, given what we now know about epigenetics, would not efforts to improve the overall health of the population also congenial with eugenics? In future, it is likely parents will have the option to eliminate, initially by pre-natal prevention and later by means of therapy, congenital diseases and deformity through gene deactivation, replacement, or correction. While the cattle-breeding methods of the early eugenicists seem shocking to us—and it must be said, these methods were degrading, in that humans were treated like animals or livestock—so were some of the methods used in early medicine, before better ways were found to deal with injury and disease. Today's surgical methods may in future seem like butchery.

The change in attitudes towards eugenics, and the scientific progress that has taken place since it was in vogue, has obscured the fact that its proponents were progressives. They truly wanted a better world, a more peaceful and civilised world. And in Stoddard's case this is even reflected in his analysis of foreign affairs. As a pacifist, for example, he was against intense nationalisms and called for fairer policy towards European colonial subjects. He had expertise in Islam and on affairs in the Islamic world, and was, for a time, a Eastern correspondent. In his writing he proved sympathetic towards the concerns of the peoples of these regions.

Unfortunately for Stoddard, his investigation of conditions in Germany in the Winter of 1939 - 194o, which resulted in the book Into the Darkness: Nazi Germany Today, proved disastrous for his career. As a journalistic exercise, it made perfect sense: it was topical and controversial. In the heat of the war, however, his theories came to be seen as too closely aligned with those of the National Socialists. By the time he died in 1950, his passing went unnoticed.

I am told that Stoddard wrote an autobiography, which has never been published. Rumour has it that efforts have been made to get ahold of the manuscript, but that his son has consistently denied access to it. This is pity no matter the reasons, because such an autobiography is of historical interest, and could yield new insights into the time period and the individuals in Stoddard's circle, which had links to the highest levels of the American political establishment.

Bibliography:

The French Revolution in San Domingo, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914.

Present-day Europe, its National States of Mind, The Century Co., 1917.

Stakes of the War, with Glenn Frank, The Century Co., 1918.[20]

The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921 [1st Pub. 1920]. ISBN 4-87187-849-X

The New World of Islam, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922 [1st Pub. 1921].

The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922.

Racial Realities in Europe, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924.

Social Classes in Post-War Europe. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925.

Scientific Humanism. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926.

Re-forging America: The Story of Our Nationhood. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927.

The Story of Youth. New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1928.
Luck, Your Silent Partner. New York: H. Liveright, 1929.

Master of Manhattan, the life of Richard Croker. Londton: Longmans, Green and Co., 1931.

Europe and Our Money, The Macmillan Co., 1932

Lonely America. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, and Co., 1932.

Clashing Tides of Color. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935.

A Caravan Tour to Ireland and Canada, World Caravan Guild, 1938.

Into the Darkness: Nazi Germany Today, Duell, Sloan & Pearce, Inc., 1940.

 

Abd al-Karim Kassem, père de la souveraineté irakienne

Erich Körner-Lakatos :

Abd al-Karim Kassem, père de la souveraineté irakienne

A Bagdad en l’année 1914 nait le fils du marchand de peaux Kassem : son père lui donne le prénom d’Abd al-Karim. On ne connaît pas exactement sa date de naissance car, à l’époque, dans l’Empire ottoman, on ne les relevait qu’une fois par an. Son curriculum, en revanche, est bien connu : à 17 ans, le jeune garçon entre à l’Académie militaire ; en 1941, il entre en formation pour être breveté d’état-major.

Dans l’armée irakienne, il y a des remous : les cercles patriotiques estiment que l’Irak doit se ranger du côté de l’Axe Rome-Berlin pour abattre le joug que les Anglais font peser sur le pays. Dans la nuit du 2 avril 1941, les officiers nationalistes se soulèvent. Parmi eux, un jeune major, Abd al-Karim Kassem. La réaction des Britanniques ne se fait pas attendre. Dès le 17 avril, des unités venues d’Inde débarquant à Bassorah, au total 20.000 hommes. Les Irakiens répliquent : leur 3^ème Division encercle le 30 avril la base britannique d’Habbaniya, située à l’ouest de Bagdad.

Une unité de l’armée de l’air allemande, l’Haifisch-Geschwader (l’escadron du requin) décolle d’Athyènes, forte de neuf Messerschmitt 110, et met le cap sur l’Irak, flanquée de quelques bombardiers Heinkel 111. A partir de l’aérodrome de Mossoul, les Me110 amorcent leurs missions, abattent quatre appareils ennemis et en détruisent autant au sol. L’aide italienne est plutôt symbolique. Des appareils de transport apportent 18 tonnes d’armes et de munitions. Ils sont accompagnés d’une douzaine de chasseurs Fiat CR-42 qui, après quelques missions, retournent à leur base de Rhodes. En quelques courtes semaines, les Anglais matent l’insurrection irakienne.

En février 1958, la Jordanie et l’Irak constitue la « Fédération arabe », qui doit disposer d’une armée commune, en réponse à la constitution de la RAU (République Arabe Unie), avec l’Egypte et la Syrie. Mais cette dernière quittera la RAU dès 1961 parce que Nasser a confié tous les postes importants à des Egyptiens, ne parvenant pas, à cause de cette maladresse, à effacer le souvenir d’une rivalité immémoriale, celle des diadoques qui se sont jadis partagé l’Empire d’Alexandre : l’Egypte aux Ptolémée de la vallée du Nil, la Syrie aux Séleucides.

Dans la cadre de la « Fédération arabe » irako-jordanienne, le Roi d’Irak ordonne en juillet de déplacer des unités irakiennes sur le Jourdain. C’est l’initiative qui permet de concrétiser un coup d’Etat préparé depuis longtemps à l’instigation d’Abd al-Karim, devenu général et commandant d’une brigade d’infanterie.

Le coup d’Etat du 14 juillet 1958 réussit. Le Roi Fayçal II est tué. Kassem proclame la république, se nomme lui-même premier ministre et ministre de la défense nationale. La nouvelle république irakienne dénonce les accords instituant la « Fédération arabe » avec la Jordanie et signe un traité d’assistance avec la RAU de Nasser.

Kassem fait proclamer ensuite une loi de réforme agraire qui limite la grande propriété terrienne. Au bout de neuf mois de consolidation du nouveau régime, Kassem ose un pas en avant décisif : il déclare le 24 mars 1959 que l’Irak rejette le « Traité de Bagdad » qui avait institué un pacte militaire pro-occidental (avec la Turquie, l’Iran et le Pakistan). Les unités britanniques sont alors contraintes de quitter l’Irak. La population se réjouit que l’objectif tant recherché soit enfin atteint : l’Irak est devenu un Etat pleinement souverain.

L’Egypte nassérienne comptait beaucoup d’amis en Irak, où les cercles panarabes souhaitaient voir l’Irak faire partie de la RAU. Mais Kassem ne veut pas remplacer les maîtres de Londres par de nouveaux maîtres venus d’Egypte.  Ses adversaires panarabes s’avèreront toutefois les plus forts.

A cinq heures du matin, le 8 février 1963, des appareils Mig survolent avec vacarme et en rase-mottes le centre de Bagdad, criblent la résidence de Kassem de missiles. Les chars manoeuvrent dans les rues. La garde présidentielle, composée de 600 parachutistes, livre un combat acharné contre les putschistes. En vain. Abd al-Karim Kassem est tué le lendemain d’une rafale de mitraillette.

Erich Körner-Lakatos.

(article paru dans « zur Zeit », Vienne, n°45/2014 ; http://www.zurzeit.at ).

La Chine face au dollar

par Jean-Paul Baquiast

Ex: http://www.europesolidaire.eu

 

A la mi-décembre, le président du Nicaragua Daniel Ortega et le milliardaire hong kongais Wang Jing, à la tête du Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Investment (HKND), créé à cette fin, ont inauguré un chantier qui devrait occuper 50.000 ouvriers d'ici à 2020 et coûter plus de 50 milliards de dollars. Il s'agit d'un canal à grand débit destiné à concurrencer celui de Panama.

Le projet, dont la gestion est confiée à HKND pour une centaine d'années, prévoit également la construction de deux ports, d'un aéroport, d'un complexe touristique, d'un oléoduc et d'une voie ferroviaire qui relierait elle aussi les deux océans...1)

Sans faire officiellement partie du Brics, le Nicaragua est en bons termes avec ses membres, notamment la Chine, le Venezuela, le Brésil et la Russie. La participation, directe ou indirecte (via Hong-Kong) de la Chine au financement est généralement considérée comme une première concrétisation des intentions affichées lors des derniers sommets de cet organisme visant à la mise en oeuvre de grands projets de développement et d'infrastructures communs. Cependant l'Etat vénézuélien annonce conserver une part majoritaire dans le financement du projet.

On peut s'interroger cependant sur les ressources dont l'Etat disposerait en propre pour ce faire. Clairement, la participation chinoise s'inscrit dans les nombreux programmes dans lesquels la Chine investit en Amérique centrale et latine. L'objectif est tout autant politique qu'économique. Il s'agit de disputer aux Etats-Unis le monopole qu'ils se sont assuré depuis deux siècles, en application de la doctrine de Monroe, dans cette partie du monde. Dans l'immédiat, Washington n'aura guère de moyens politiques pour réagir, sauf à provoquer un changement de régime à la suite d'un coup d'état qu'il aurait organisé.

Cependant le projet de canal suscite de nombreuses oppositions: d'abord parce que le tracé du canal passe par la plus grande réserve d'eau douce d'Amérique latine, le lac Cocibolca. Ensuite parce qu'il conduirait à déplacer près de 30.000 paysans et peuples locaux qui vivent sur les terres où il sera percé. Ces craintes pour l'environnement et la population sont parfaitement fondées. Mais elles sont relayées par divers ONG d'obédience américaine, ce qui leur enlève une part de crédibilité. Les entrepreneurs américains redoutent en effet l'arrivée de nombreuses entreprises chinoises dans une zone qu'ils considéraient jusque-là comme une chasse gardée. Le Nicaragua et la Chine n'ont aucune raison de continuer à leur concéder ce monopole.

Au delà de toutes considérations géopolitiques, les environnementalistes réalistes savent que de toutes façons, dans le monde actuel soumis à des compétitions plus vives que jamais entre pouvoirs politiques, économiques, financiers, ce canal se fera, quelles que soient les destructions imposées à la nature et aux population. Il s'agira d'une destruction de plus s'ajoutant à celles s'étendant sur toute la planète, en Amazonie, en Afrique, au Canada, dans les régions côtières maritimes censées recéler du pétrole. Les perspectives de désastres globaux en résultant ont été souvent évoquées, sur le climat, la biodiversité, les équilibres géologiques. Inutile d'en reprendre la liste ici. Mais on peut être quasi certain que ces perspectives se réaliseront d'ici 20 à 50 ans.

Les investissements chinois dans le monde.

Concernant la montée en puissance de la Chine, il faut bien voir que ce projet de canal ne sera qu'un petit élément s'ajoutant aux investissements en cours et prévus le long du vaste programme chinois dit de la Nouvelle Route de la Soie. Un article du journaliste brésilien Pepe Escobar vient d'en faire le résumé. Certes l'auteur est complètement engagé en soutien des efforts du BRICS à l'assaut des positions traditionnelles détenues par les Etats-Unis et leurs alliés européens. Mais on peut retenir les éléments fournis par l'article comme indicatifs d'une tendance incontestable. L'auteur y reprend l'argument chinois selon lequel les investissements de l'Empire du Milieu seront du type gagnant-gagnant, tant pour la Chine que pour les pays traversés. 2)

Encore faudrait-il que ces derniers aient les ressources nécessaires pour investir. Aujourd'hui, comme la Banque centrale européenne, sous une pression principalement américaine, refuse aux Etats de le faire, et comme les industriels européens se voit empêcher d'accompagner les investissements chinois et russes, du fait de bilans fortement déficitaires, la Nouvelle Route de la Soie risque de se transformer en une prise en main accrue des économies européennes par la concurrence chinoise. Les résultats en seraient désastreux pour ce qui reste d'autonomie de l'Europe, déjà enfermée dans le statut quasi-colonial imposé par Washington.

D'où viennent les capacités d'investissement de la Chine ?

La Chine détient près de 1 200 milliards de dollars de bons du Trésor américain. En effet, ces dernières années, grâce notamment à des salaires bas, elle a pu beaucoup exporter sur le marché international en dollars, alors que sa population achetait peu. Elle a donc accumulé des excédents commerciaux. Cette situation change un peu en ce moment, du fait d'une augmentation de la consommation intérieure et de la concurrence sur les marchés extérieurs de pays asiatiques à coûts salariaux encore plus bas. Mais elle reste une tendance forte de l'économie chinoise. Que faisait-elle ces dernières années de ses économies? Elle les prêtait massivement aux Etats-Unis en achetant des bons du trésor américain. Aujourd'hui ces réserves en dollars, tant qu'elles dureront, lui permettront de financer des investissements stratégiques dans le monde entier

Mais d'où viennent les capacités d'investissement des Etats-Unis?

Dans le même temps en effet que la Chine économisait, les Etats-Unis dépensaient largement au dessus de leurs revenus, dans le cadre notamment des opérations militaires et interventions extérieures. Pour couvrir ces dépenses, la Banque fédérale américaine (Fed) émettait sur le marché international des sommes largement supérieures, sous forme de bons du trésor (emprunts d'Etat). La Fed s'en est servi pour prêter des sommes considérables aux principales banques américaines, Morgan Stanley, City Group. Merril Lynch, Bank of America Corporation, etc. Les dettes de ces banques auprès de la Fed atteignent aujourd'hui plus de 10.000 milliards de dollars. Les banques disposent certes en contrepartie de milliards de dollars d'actif, mais insuffisamment pour couvrir leur dette auprès de la Fed en cas de nouvelle crise financière.

Ces actifs eux-mêmes ne sont évidemment pas sans valeur. Ils correspondent à des investissements financés dans l'économie réelle par les banques. Mais en cas de crise boursière, ils perdent une grande partie de leur valeur marchande. Les grandes banques se trouvent donc en situation de fragilité. Lors des crises précédentes, elles se sont tournées vers la Fed pour être secourues. La Fed a fait face à la demande en empruntant à l'extérieur, notamment en vendant des bons du trésor. Mais ceci n'a pas suffit pour rétablir les comptes extérieurs de l'Amérique, en ramenant la dette extérieure à des niveaux supportables. Bien que le dollar soit resté dominant sur les marchés financiers, du fait que les investisseurs internationaux manifestaient une grande confiance à l'égard de l'Amérique, il n'était pas possible d'espérer qu'en cas d'augmentation excessive de la dette il ne se dévalue pas, mettant en péril les banques mais aussi les préteurs extérieurs ayant acheté des bons du trésor américains.

Ce scénario catastrophe est celui qui menace tous les Etats, lorsqu'ils accumulent une dette excessive. Mais, du fait de la suprématie mondiale du pouvoir américain, celui-ci a pu jusqu'ici s'affranchir de cette obligation d'équilibre. La Fed a fait fonctionner la planche à billet, si l'on peut dire, dans le cadre des opérations dites de quantitative easing ou assouplissement quantitatif qui se sont succédées ces dernières années. Dans le cadre de cette politique, la Banque Centrale se met à acheter des bons du trésor (ce qui revient à prêter à l'État) ainsi que d'autres titres financiers . Elle met donc de l'argent en circulation dans l'économie . Ceci augmente les réserves du secteur bancaire, lui permettant en cas de crise et donc de manque de liquidités des banques, à accorder à nouveau des prêts. Lors de la crise dite des subprimes, les banques  n'avaient pas pu le faire par manque de réserve.

Et l'Europe ? Elle est ligotée.

Il s'agit d'un avantage exorbitant du droit commun dont les Etats-Unis se sont attribué le privilège du fait de leur position dominante. Ni la banque de Russie ni celle de Pékin ne peuvent le faire. Quant à la BCE, elle est autorisée depuis le 18 septembre à consentir des prêts aux banques de la zone euro, dans le cadre d'opérations dite « targeted long-term refinancing operations », ou TLTRO. Ceci devrait inciter les banques à augmenter leurs volumes de prêts aux entreprises., face à la crise de croissance affectant l'Europe. Les sommes considérées sont cependant faibles au regard de celles mentionnées plus haut, quelques centaines de milliards d'euros sur plusieurs années.

De plus et surtout, la BCE n'a pas été autorisée à prêter aux Etats, de peur que ceux-ci ne cherchent plus à réduire leur dette. Le but est louable, en ce qui concerne les dépenses de fonctionnement. Mais il est extrêmement paralysant dans le domaine des investissements productifs publics ou aidés par des fonds publics. Ni les entreprises ni les Etats ne peuvent ainsi procéder à des investissements de long terme productifs. Au plan international, seuls les Etats soutenus par leurs banques centrales peuvent le faire, en Chine, en Russie, mais également aux Etats-Unis.

Que vont faire les Etats-Unis face à la Chine ?

Revenons aux projets chinois visant à investir l'équivalent de trillions de dollars actuels tout au long de la Nouvelle Route de la soie, évoquée ci-dessus. Dans un premier temps, la Chine n'aura pas de difficultés à les financer, soit en vendant ses réserves en dollars, soit le cas échéant en créant des yuans dans le cadre de procédures d'assouplissement quantitatifs. La position progressivement dominante de la Chine, désormais considérée comme la première puissance économique du monde, lui permettra de faire accepter ces yuans au sein du Brics, comme aussi par les Etats européens. Quant au dollar, il perdra une partie de sa valeur et la Fed ne pourra pas continuer à créer aussi facilement du dollar dans le cadre d'assouplissement quantitatifs, car cette création diminuerait encore la valeur de sa monnaie. Ceci a fortiori si la Chine, comme elle aurait du le faire depuis longtemps, cessait d'acheter des bons du trésor américain.

Ces perspectives incitent de plus en plus d'experts à prévoir que, face à la Chine, l'Amérique sera obligée de renoncer à laisser le dollar fluctuer. Ce serait assez vite la fin du dollar-roi. Des prévisions plus pessimistes font valoir que ceci ne suffisant pas, l'Amérique sera conduite à généraliser encore davantage de politiques d'agression militaire. La Chine pourrait ainsi en être à son tour victime.

Notes

1) Cf http://www.pancanal.com/esp/plan/documentos/canal-de-nicaragua/canal-x-nicaragua.pdf

2) Pablo Escobar Go west young Han http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-171214.html
Traduction française http://www.vineyardsaker.fr/2014/12/23/loeil-itinerant-vers-louest-jeune-han/

L’Iran, il y a cinquante ans

Erich Körner-Lakatos :

L’Iran, il y a cinquante ans

Le 5 octobre 1964, six chefs de tribu sont exécutés dans la ville iranienne de Shiraz parce qu’ils ont saboté la réforme agraire de l’Empereur Mohammed Reza Pahlevi qui, à partir du 15 septembre 1965 portera le titre d’Aryamehr, de « Soleil des Aryens ». Cette réforme agraire, appelée « révolution blanche », consiste à déposséder largement les latifundistes iraniens qui, dorénavant, ne pourront plus considérer comme leur plus d’un seul village. Les possessions féodales seront redistribuées aux paysans qui travaillent véritablement la terre. Le processus enclenché par la « révolution blanche » fait qu’à la fin de l’été 1964, 9570 villages ont été redistribués à 333.186 familles paysannes, ce qui équivaut à une population de 1.665.930 âmes. Le Shah a ainsi éliminé la caste entière des latifundistes. C’est là un événement qui laisse tous les penseurs marxistes perplexes qui véhiculent l’idée (fausse) que les grands propriétaires exploiteurs étaient le soutien de la monarchie iranienne. Le Shah de la dynastie Pahlevi était très populaire auprès du petit paysannat. Les mollahs chiites partisans de Khomeini, eux, haïssent le monarque, parce que leur influence est liée à celle des latifundistes évincés. Khomeini présentera la note au régime monarchique en 1979 et chassera le Shah et sa famille. Un an plus tard, le Roi des rois s’éteint en exil.

(article paru dans « zur Zeit », Vienne, n°45/2014 ; http://www.zurzeit.at ).

2200 architectes et ingénieurs détruisent le rapport « officiel » sur le 11 septembre 2001

Plus de 2200 architectes et ingénieurs détruisent le rapport « officiel » de la Commission sur le 11 septembre 2001

Auteur : Sandra Véringa

Ex: http://zejournal.mobi

Le 11 septembre 2001 est devenu un assemblage de mots plus ou moins confus et l'un des sujets les plus populaires de cette dernière décennie, à la fois sur et hors internet. Un sujet qui est devenu si populaire et qui a transformé tellement de gens que les sondages indiquent que plus de 50% de gens ne croient pas à la version officielle diffusée par le gouvernement américain concernant le « rapport de la Commission du 11 septembre 2001 ».

Pendant longtemps, les gens ont été ridiculisés pour avoir remis en cause la soi-disant version officielle, ils ont été catalogués comme théoriciens du complot, anti-américains, fous et on leur attribuait des noms péjoratifs. Mais est-il sensé de mettre ces personnes dans de telles catégories compte tenu de tous les éléments de preuve qui existent pour indiquer que l'histoire officielle n'est pas vraie ? Il ne s'agit pas de théories de grande envergure qu'on peut parfois trouver sur des sites Internet, mais de preuves scientifiques solides réelles.

Enfin quelques médias de grandes distribution

Pendant des années, personne dans les médias de grande distribution n'aurait osé toucher à l'histoire de « la vérité du 11 septembre 2001 » et présenter les faits qu'ils ont pu faire valoir. Peut-être qu'ils ont reçu l'ordre de ne pas le faire étant donné que c'était un sujet délicat. Peut-être qu'ils n'ont pas senti qu'il y avait une validité ou simplement estimaient qu'il n'y avait pas de « retour » sur les faits qui indiquent que l'histoire officielle est obsolète.

Quoi qu'il en soit, nous voyons à présent les nouvelles des médias de grande distribution comme un sujet qui est enfin exposé, et cela pourrait tout changer dans notre monde. Beaucoup ont déjà un pressentiment sur la vérité du 11 septembre 2001, mais si cela devenait de notoriété publique cela changerait la perception des gens sur la guerre, le terrorisme, les gouvernements et les médias de grande distribution.

Lors d'une interview sur C-SPAN, le fondateur Richard Gage des ingénieurs et architectes du 11 septembre 2001 Truth parle de l'effondrement irréfutable contrôlé du bâtiment 7. Ce que Richard présente est de la science simple et des évaluations rigoureuses.

« Richard Gage, AIA, est un architecte qui réside à San Francisco Bay Area, il est membre de l'American Institute of Architects, et le fondateur et PDG de Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth ( AE911Truth.org ).

Une organisation éducative, 501(c) 3, qui représente plus de 2200 architectes et ingénieurs agréés et diplômés qui ont signé une pétition appelant à une nouvelle enquête indépendante, avec le pouvoir d'assignation complète, concernant la destruction des Twin Towers et du World Trade Center Building 7 le 11 septembre 2001. Plus de 17 000 signataires parmi lesquels figurent de nombreux scientifiques, avocats, des citoyens responsables formés aux États-Unis et à l'étranger et autres. Ils citent des preuves accablantes d'une démolition explosive contrôlée. »

Plusieurs experts évoquent une démolition contrôlée

La vidéo ci-dessous est un extrait de 15 minutes du documentaire AE911Truth, qui résoud le mystère du WTC 7. Plusieurs experts à travers le monde remettent en question l'histoire officielle du World Trade Center 7.

Architects & Engineers - Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 - AE911Truth.org

Conclusion

Il est temps de s'interroger sur le monde dans lequel nous vivons.

Si la vérité à propos du 9/11 devient enfin une connaissance commune, cela pourrait être la porte pour un changement radical mais extrêmement positif dans notre monde. Je pense que nous sommes sur le point de connaître la vérité sur le 11 septembre.

- Source : Sandra Véringa

Otto von Bismarck’s Epistle to Angela Merkel

Dmitriy SEDOV

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

…Angela, you know, I have always been against ladies’ presence in public affairs and I have not changed my viewpoint so far. Twice I had luck in my life. Firstly, I used to live in the days when ladies were absolutely not allowed to German’s politics. Secondly, I was born on the April Fools’ Day to become a diplomat.

So, Frau Bundeskanzlerin, I have been watching you rule the country from my family vault and now my patience is lost. You have to listen to what I’ll tell you from my estate in Friedrichsruh. It’s a pity you have never come here to visit my grave and ask my advice. Looks I did right ordering grenadiers to give Poles a rough ride and have no mercy because hardly anybody else in Europe deserved thrashing more than them. Yes, you got it right, I mean your grandfather, a Pole by origin. He inherited the national traits of his tribe and made you inherit them too.

Now I’d like to make you remember the rules I introduced for German diplomats century and a half ago. Breaching them boded trouble for the nation. This is the first rule, Angela:

«Stupidity is a gift of God that should not be used».

To put it bluntly, a stateswoman should not be more stupid than her fellow citizens. The most serious form of stupidity is to believe that you are smarter than them. Just look around and answer the question – how many Germans support your alliance with Anglo-Saxons? How many Germans approve your attacks on Russia? Are you sure you see the difference between a big political game and a woman’s intrigue?

Let me remind you the second rule of German politics so that you would not mix these things up: 

«The only sound basis for a large state is its egoism and not romanticism».

Where is the state egoism in your policy? Is it your commitment to closer relations with the US President? It’s a hope against hope. Whatever you sacrifice to please Obama, it will bring bad luck to Germans. Americans have a reason to stir up trouble in Europe, why help them? Do not forget that the third rule of German politics says:

«Whatever is at rest should not be set in motion. A government must not waver once it has chosen its course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward».

Germany has once chosen Ostpolitik and that was the best choice. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union you fell victim to greed. You wanted Russia to be pushed out further and further. Now you and Americans are turning Europe into a military camp.

Germany put on soldier’s boots and stepped on the Serbian ground. You forgot what I said: 

«The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier»,

«One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans».

You spend billions of Euros on Kosovo. The first thing I would do being in your shoes is to hang those Albanian murderers that you made come to power. There is nothing to expect from them but low tricks and plundering. 

Finally, you messed with the Russians having forgotten the main secret of German politics:

«Make a good treaty with Russia».

You should read my memoirs and learn by heart what I said many years ago:

«Never fight against Russians. Your every cunning will be responded by their unpredictable stupidity»,

«This inviolable state of the Russian nation is strong in its climate, its spaces and limitations of the needs».

You should also take into account, Angela, that a Russian harnesses his horse slowly but drives fast. Putin’s patience has its limits. If he starts to act you’ll be in a deep trouble. You collude with Anglo-Saxons. Nothing could be more stupid.

These guys turn a blind eye on the fact that the Yeltsin’s Russia is gone. A new Russia has appeared headed by Putin. It’s not weak and pliant any more. Today’s Russia is strong again and ready to stand up for itself. You should realize who you deal with. Read once again what I wrote:

«Do not expect that once taking advantage of Russia's weakness, you will receive dividends forever. Russians always come for their money. And when they come – do not rely on agreement signed by you, you are supposed to justify. They are not worth the paper it is written. Therefore, with the Russian is to play fair or do not play».

Angela, perhaps you opted to provoke Russians into getting mired in Ukraine because you remember my words that in order to deprive Russia of its power, you need to separate it from Ukraine? Come on, you cannot formulate a concrete goal if it is based on a mere speculation! Many European politicians say that without Bavaria Germany will become a weedy castrate, but nobody is going to try it, no matter how many idiots are dreaming of secession from Germany there.

You follow Anglo-Saxons who don’t think about depriving Russia of its imperial status. They want to destroy it. Do you really believe Germany would benefit if there were no Russia in Europe? Do you really believe this baloney about European values and common interests? Remember I was rebuked for keeping away from forming coalitions. A French newspaper wrote that I suffered from nightmares because of prospects for Germany to become part of a coalition. True, I was afraid of coalitions because I could not sleep at nights fearful that my partners steal my possessions. I was also accused of creating a secret fund to bribe the press and calling journalists «moral poisoners of wells». You know what I think about them. «Journalist is a person who has mistaken his calling». They persecute people because of their complex of inferiority. I bribed them to make German wells safe for drinking. These guys have already poisoned German minds, as well as yours, I’m afraid.

Finally, I’ll say the following.

No need to take seriously those diplomatic dumbbells trying to reshape the world so that it would look like a Christmas tree in a Prussian military barrack. Believe me, the world doesn’t want to be reshaped, and there is no need to do it. Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable - the art of the next best no matter how abhorrent it may seem to be. In Russia I learned the word «nichego!» («it is nothing») used when they face really hard times. This word connotes with great wisdom and patience - the qualities you should acquire, Frau Federal Chancellor, and that would be my last advice to you.

Sincerely,

Prince Otto von Bismarck 

Study of Sombart – Varsanyi

A Study of Werner Sombart’s Writings by Nicholas A. Varsanyi (PDF – 8.4 MB):

A Study of Werner Sombart’s Writings

Varsanyi, Nicholas A. A Study of Werner Sombart’s Writings. Ph.D. Thesis, Montreal, McGill University, 1963. File originally retrieved from: <http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=115298&local_base=GEN01-MCG02 >.

 

Ex: http://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com

Marche Sainte-Geneviève

Uncle Sams Griff nach Asien

 

Bernhard Tomaschitz

Der Drache wehrt sich

Uncle Sams Griff nach Asien

200 Seiten,
kartoniert, 16,00 euro

Kurztext:

In Europa nur wenig bemerkt wird die Tatsache, daß in Zentral- und Südostasien längst ein „Großes Spiel“ der Weltmächte stattfindet. Während sich die USA diese rohstoffreichen und strategisch wichtigen Regionen ihrer Einflußzone zur Schwächung Chinas und Rußlands einverleiben wollen, kontern Moskau und Peking mit der Stärkung der Schanghaier Organisation für Zusammenarbeit und greifen den US-Dollar als Weltleitwährung an. Und die USA tun das, was sie am besten können: Sie entfalten – um angeblich „Freiheit“ und „Demokratie“ zu verbreiten – subversive Tätigkeiten, stiften zu Aufständen an, Verbünden sich mit Islamisten und errichten in Ostasien ein Raketenabwehrsystem, welches angeblich gegen Nordkorea, tatsächlich aber gegen das aufstrebende China gerichtet ist.

Mit profunder Sachkenntnis analysiert Bernhard Tomaschitz die hinter diesem Wettlauf der Mächte stehenden geopolitischen Fragen, zeigt die Mittel und Wege auf, wie die USA sich Zentralasien ihrer Einflußsphäre einverleiben und China eindämmen wollen und welches krakenartige Netzwerk an angeblich „unabhängigen“ Stiftungen dabei zum Einsatz kommt.

Bestellungen:

http://www.buchdienst-hohenrain.de/Buchberater-2014-2015/Tomaschitz-Bernhard-Der-Drache-wehrt-sich.html

Center Parcs: économie sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’âme

Center Parcs: économie sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’âme

par Claude Bourrinet

Boulevard Voltaire cliquez ici

Hitler, paraît-il, rêvait de transformer la France en jardin. Le libéralisme mondialisé, en apparence moins ambitieux, préfère la métamorphoser en Center Parcs. Le chômage massif n’est pas pour rien dans l’avilissement du peuple français. Non seulement parce que l’être humain, socialisé, a besoin de travailler pour éprouver ses capacités, manifester sa dignité, mais aussi parce que la raréfaction de l’emploi est devenue un argument d’autorité pour imposer ce qui s’apparente de plus en plus à une dégradation de la civilisation, au sens où l’entendait Edgar Morin en 1997. Dans un entretien paru en 2008, il revient sur cette notion : « Il s’agit de solidariser les rapports humains, régénérer les campagnes, ressourcer, convivialiser, moraliser… »

La multiplication des paradis artificiels, pour ainsi dire en bulle, piètres succédanés à la misère économique, sociale et humaine, généralisée par une société sinistre, est-elle en mesure de raviver les campagnes, de créer de la convivialité, de « solidariser » la société ?

Éric Zemmour note, dans Le Suicide français, combien régnait, durant les Trente Glorieuses, tant chez les gaullistes que chez les communistes, une vision héroïque et ascétique du travailleur, pour qui certaines valeurs (le courage, la fidélité, la fierté, l’intelligence du métier) n’étaient pas encore dissoutes par l’hédonisme contemporain, ou tout simplement par l’éradication de l’industrie française.

De fait, le Grand Remplacement a commencé à cette époque, qui connaît l’exode des paysans vers la ville, phénomène civilisationnel dont l’on n’a pas mesuré toute l’importance. C’est tout un art de vivre, d’exister ensemble, de respecter la terre, la nature, les traditions, qui a été anéanti. Depuis, la campagne n’est plus qu’un espace d’exploitation et une nostalgie. De même, la désindustrialisation de notre pays, la destruction de ses grandes réalisations d’après-guerre, sous les coup de la mondialisation, ou du fait de cette pompe aspirante qu’est la délocalisation, ont provoqué sous-emploi ou bien substitution du métier par le « service ». Le prolétariat s’est transformé en masse flexible d’agents commerciaux, de nettoyeurs, de domestiques, de recrutés précaires, de petites mains corvéables, de mendiants à mi-temps. On ne reprochera pas aux habitants de petits villages d’accueillir avec espoir ces Center Parcs (l’emploi sans scrupule du Néerlandais est, en soi, tout un programme). La déréliction a des raisons que la raison doit accepter. « L’homme est un animal qui s’habitue à tout », écrit Dostoïevski dans Souvenirs de la maison des morts.

Mais nous devons bien réfléchir à ce qui est en train de se produire dans notre vieux pays. Il ne s’agit pas seulement du saccage de notre trésor naturel, mais du ravage causé dans l’esprit du peuple français, réduit à n’être plus que le serviteur du tourisme de masse.

Éloge du consumérisme de Noël

Éloge du consumérisme de Noël: contre Natacha Polony

par Guillaume Faye

Ex: http://www.gfaye.com

Les agapes de Noël  sont régulièrement  l’occasion de condamnations aussi vertueuses qu’hypocrites sur la débauche de consommation. Elles sont le prétexte à des considérations superficielles contre la ”société de consommation”, le ”libéralisme”, l’ ”argent”, le” capitalisme”, etc. Et cela, souvent au nom d’une vision aussi ignorante du fonctionnement de l’économie que de la ferveur religieuse.

À titre d’exemple, je cite ici deux textes, l’un de l’excellente Natacha Polony, (« Grande braderie de Noël » ), qui, une fois n’est pas coutume, n’est vraiment pas inspirée ; et l’autre, de la romancière Solange Bied-Charreton, ( « A-t-on perdu l’esprit de Noël ? » ) (1) qui s’indigne de la sécularisation de Noël par le consumérisme. Deux analyses aussi emblématiques l’une que l’autre d’un état d’esprit habile à manier les clichés les plus lourdement idéologiques et les plus déconnectés de la réalité. 

Critique des idées fausses 

Natacha Polony s’est fait un nom dans la défense, souvent talentueuse, des traditions, des enracinements, dans la dénonciation de l’effondrement de l’Éducation nationale ; mais aussi dans la défense de l’agriculture traditionnelle et familiale contre l’agriculture et l’élevage industriels (elle a raison) mais son romantisme terrien a quelque chose de fabriqué, de faux, d’urbain. Tout comme sa critique puritaine des festivités de Noël.

  « Ces fêtes de Noël qui sont devenues la mise en scène gargantuesque du règne de la consommation sur nos existences », écrit-elle. L’excès même de la formule l’affaiblit. Nous serions «gavés de biens ». Trop riches en somme, ramollis comme les Romains de la décadence ? Elle fustige avec hypocrisie un « libéralisme » qui serait pire que le communisme (alors que les libéraux n’ont pas voix au chapitre dans ce pays) et aussi « les ardeurs de l’enrichissement personnel », comme s’il s’agissait d’un péché. Alors que la France crève d’assistanat, de fuite des cerveaux et des entrepreneurs, de fiscalisme confiscatoire, de sous-travail, ces intellectuels inconscients se dressent contre le goût de l’enrichissement privé qui est le  moteur de la prospérité, de la créativité et du dynamisme d’une nation, comme l’a démontré Schumpeter. 

Elle estime, dans une formule pompeuse que « ce qui constitue le phénomène majeur de ce début du XXIe siècle est l’extension du marché à l’ensemble des domaines de l’expérience humaine ». Ah bon ? Dans une société française collectiviste et corporatiste où 57% du PIB échappe au marché pour se reporter sur les redistributions, l’assistanat, les aides et les dépenses publiques ? Où l’emploi marchand ne cesse de reculer au profit de l’emploi fonctionnarisé ou aidé qui frôle les 6 millions d’agents ? Natacha Polony, comme tous les intellectuels parisiens, formule de grands principes globalement fondés sur l’ignorance et l’idéologie. Dans un pays où le collectivisme, le réglementarisme et l’étatisation (même de la Santé) ne cessent de progresser, ce genre de formule laisse pantois.  C’est au contraire le rétrécissement du marché qui est la règle dans la société française. Et nos idéologues nous disent, désignant un chat : « observez ce chien ».

Fustigeant le « Divin Marché », elle vilipende la timide Loi Macron comme le symbole d’un libéralisme débridé, alors que c’est un pet de nonne : « le libéralisme de la loi Macron qui porte atteinte à l’indépendance de la France au nom d’une petite logique comptable qui va à l’encontre de l’idée même de République ». Elle fait allusion à la vente aux Chinois d’une partie du capital de l’aéroport de Toulouse-Blagnac, sans comprendre une seconde que la cause de cette vente n’est pas le libéralisme mais… le socialisme fiscal : pour survivre, cette entreprise avait besoin d’apport en capital. Or, les investisseurs français, assommés de taxes et d’impôts, ne peuvent pas suivre. C’est le collectivisme socialiste qui pousse à brader le patrimoine national, pas le libéralisme qui, au contraire, permet la prospérité et les marges nettes des investisseurs nationaux ! Brader le patrimoine national, les ”bijoux de famille” au nom des besoins de financement et d’endettement ? C’est la conséquence perverse du socialisme. C’est lui qui aboutit à la cession patrimoniale par l’État et, paradoxalement, pas le capitalisme libéral !   

Natacha Polony, reprenant une sociologie de bazar soixante-huitarde déplore en ces termes fantasmés la ”marchandisation” de nos existences : « tout dans les actions des individus relève de la recherche  de rentabilité et de performance ». Hélas, c’est l’inverse ! « La vie individuelle, se lamente-t-elle, se gère comme un budget ». On est sidéré par la déconnection de tels clichés. Nous vivons, au contraire, en France, dans une société où l’idéal de performance, de responsabilité économique individuelle, d’entrepreneuriat, de récompense du mérite est abrogé au profit de l’assistanat et du corporatisme – notamment syndical. Comment Natacha Polony, qui est tout de même très intelligente, peut-elle se méprendre à ce point ? La réponse est claire : l’intellectualisme aveugle et abêtit parce qu’il remplace le bon sens et l’observation par l’idéologie paresseuse. D’origine marxiste, même à droite.

Mais revenons à nos moutons avec cette autre charge contre le consumérisme de Noël, issue de la romancière Solange Bied-Charreton (1) (« A-t-on perdu l’esprit de Noël ? »). Elle aussi se lance dans des considérations de sociologie de comptoir : « Noël est devenu cette grande fête de la matière, de la richesse et de la dépense » Comme si cela empêchait la spiritualité… Donc, vive la pauvreté, le dénuement, le dépouillement, comme idéaux sociaux ? Elle fustige, dans un anti-matérialisme convenu « l’envoûtement affiché pour le luxe, pour les plaisirs du ventre, cette compulsion consommatoire » ; en même temps, elle se moque, dégoûtée, de la débauche « de chocolats industriels, de mauvais champagne, de sapins abattus à la chaine (2), de fourrures synthétiques, de jouets et de bonbons ».  Elle, a sans doute les moyens de s’offrir du bon champagne et du chocolat de pâtissier… Bref, le petit peuple serait malvenu de faire des réveillons chaleureux et de s’offrir des cadeaux de Noël ; il ferait mieux de se recueillir et de se coucher tôt.

La romancière poursuit en se scandalisant de cette « profusion délétère », de la « féérie fétichiste de la marchandise », multipliant les formules de la langue de bois gauchisante : « l’histoire de l’Occident des deux derniers siècles est celle de l’avènement du capitalisme comme « fait social total » (Marcel Mauss). L’esprit du Noël capitaliste infuse l’idée selon laquelle le bonheur réside dans la consommation. Rite religieux d’une économie qui ne sait plus quoi faire de sa surproduction ». Âneries économiques ; nullités sociologiques hors-observations ; clichés snobs , généralisations, formules toutes faites, rhétorique qui remplace la réflexion. Relier cela au combat contre les crèches des laïcards (islamophiles par ailleurs) est stupide ; elle confond deux problèmes distincts. On croirait entendre un pasteur calviniste ou un curé janséniste du XVIIe siècle : « l’immortalité est un moindre mal, Dieu existe et châtie. Mais c’est un monde sans Dieu qui désormais entend diffuser cet ”esprit de Noël” ». Degré zéro de l’analyse. Dans un autre article  (« Un chant de Noël pour les vaches, pour la terre et pour les hommes ») (3) Natacha Polony réitère son aversion pour « la débauche d’achats et de l’orgie de nourriture ». Elle passera donc le réveillon de Noël à manger quelques dattes et des fèves arrosées d’eau minérale.

Le puritanisme hypocrite

 Les clichés contre le marché, le consumérisme, l’argent, qui fédèrent toute la classe intellectuelle française de droite comme de gauche,  relèvent d’une puissante hypocrisie. Ils témoignent aussi d’une ignorance profonde du fonctionnement de notre société comme de l’histoire. Le spiritualisme et la ferveur religieuse populaire n’ont jamais été synonymes – sauf chez des minorités monacales ascétiques ou des sectes – d’austérité et de dépouillement, mais, bien au contraire, de profusion festive et conviviale. Prenons le christianisme : si le Christ a chassé les ”marchands du Temple”, c’est parce qu’ils commerçaient dans un lieu inapproprié, mais il n’a jamais condamné les débordantes Noces de Cana. Et que pensent nos nouveaux Cathares de la ville de Lourdes, dont toute la prospérité, commerçante, hôtelière, touristique, dépend du culte marial ? Est-ce une profanation ? Les sommes colossales dépensées par l’Église dans la Chapelle Sixtine ou les cathédrales sont-elles condamnables ?

La vision myope selon laquelle notre société est beaucoup plus mercantile et obsédée par l’argent que les sociétés traditionnelles est totalement fausse. Une preuve éclatante en est fournie par le fait incontournable que, de la plus haute Antiquité jusqu’à la Révolution, la noblesse ne se définissait pas seulement par les qualités militaires mais surtout par la richesse, condition de son acquisition. À Rome, les noblesses équestre et sénatoriale étaient strictement fondées sur la fortune financière et foncière, selon un barème précis. Et de l’Athènes de Périclès jusqu’à la France de Louis Philippe, le vote était censitaire, c’est-à-dire fondé sur la capacité fiscale. 

Dans les délires anti-consuméristes de Natacha Polony, on retrouve cette idée de frustrés que Noël n’est pas une fête, que tout ce qui est ”matériel” est mal. Comme si le recueillement était antinomique de la fête ; comme si la spiritualité était antinomique du principe de plaisir. Les marchés de Noël seraient ”impurs”, parce qu’ils inciteraient à la consommation et parce qu’ils seraient des ”marchés” ? On n’est pas très éloigné d’une dérive mentale puritaine partagée par les Talibans et autres djihadistes…   Beaucoup plus intelligente, et proche du réel, est la réflexion de l’écrivain Denis Tillinac (Noël envers et contre tout, in Valeurs Actuelles, 18/12/2014) qui associe étroitement la magie religieuse (culturelle et cultuelle à la fois) de la Nativité à la convivialité des agapes des cadeaux et du banquet familial du réveillon. 

On ressent un malaise devant ces plaintes sur la ”surconsommation” de Noël. Comment peut-on s’indigner que les commerces fassent du chiffre d’affaire à Noël alors que cela crée des emplois et fournit du travail ? Un éleveur de volailles du Gers ou un ostréiculteur charentais n’apprécieraient certainement pas des propos incitant à ne pas trop ”consommer” pour cette période de fin d’année. Un grand nombre de PME et de TPE – qui portent à bout de bras une économie plombée par le parasitisme fiscal de l’État Providence, font une partie indispensable de leur chiffre d’affaires à Noël – et au premier de l’An. C’est mal ?

Dans toutes ces critiques du matérialisme marchand, on repère évidemment une gigantesque hypocrisie puisqu’elles proviennent d’urbains nantis. Il faut avoir l’esprit hémiplégique, pour penser que le plaisir de consommer, de faire la fête, d’échanger des cadeaux au moment de Noël est contraire à la spiritualité et à la tradition de la Nativité. Fêter Noël sans agapes, c’est absurde. Ces lamentations sur la ”profanation” de Noël par la fête relève d’une incapacité à penser ensemble le sacré et le profane, à envisager une célébration familiale et cultuelle avec ces composants naturels que sont l’abondance et la dépense. Faut-il rejeter aussi les repas de noces ? Et la tradition des cadeaux baptismaux en or et en argent ? Le dépouillement et l’ascèse (dans plusieurs religions) relèvent d’un idéal monacal, d’une exception.

Le marché conçu comme péché

 Le grand paradoxe des sociétés marchandes et libérales, non étatistes, non collectivistes, c’est qu’elles sont moins individualistes, moins égoïstes et plus solidaires, plus organiques que les régimes de l’État Providence, « puissance tutélaire » selon Tocqueville, qui substitue aux solidarités familiales et autres l’assistanat public. Voilà une idée à creuser. La mentalité marxiste, qui imprègne sourdement nos élites, est d’ailleurs fondée sur un type d’économie anti-marchande qui reprend subrepticement l’idée du Capital de Marx : en revenir à une société de troc programmé, archaïque et pré-monétaire, mais aussi surplombée par un Big Brother redistributeur et égalisateur. C’est cette utopie qui a fourvoyé et foudroyé l’URSS et le monde communiste. Et dont la tentation est toujours vivante, infectieuse, dans l’État français. 

 Sociologiquement, – et économiquement – l’idée de dictature du marché et de la consommation ne correspond pas à ce qu’on observe dans la société française. Certes, oui, sur le plan quantitatif, on consomme plus qu’en 1900. Partout dans le monde. Mais – et c’est ce qui importe – la part de la consommation marchande et des revenus marchands dans la société française ne cesse, tendanciellement, de décliner, depuis 40 ans, au profit d’une part de la redistribution et d’autre part du salariat fonctionnarisé. En termes techniques, on assiste donc à une socialisation de la demande par assistanat et à une étatisation de l’offre. Avec, en corrélation, une augmentation du chômage et une stagnation à la baisse du niveau de vie.  Ce sont les faits, indépendants des discours idéologiques.

Bien sûr, comme me l’écrit l’économiste Marc Rousset, il ne s’agit pas de défendre ici « l’idolâtrie de l’hédonisme consumériste déraciné de provenance américaine », formule qui demanderait d’ailleurs une analyse critique, dans la mesure où le déracinement ethnique et l’hédonisme semblent plus présents sociologiquement en Europe de l’Ouest qu’aux USA… Le consumérisme matérialiste est partout présent, comme le goût des richesses, dans toutes les sociétés et civilisations depuis l’Antiquité. Il ne signifie absolument pas l’abolition des autres valeurs. Natacha Polony (avec tant d’autres intellectuels de la bourgeoisie urbaine) succombe à la vieille idéologie hypocrite du XVIIIe siècle du ”Bon sauvage”, reprise par les hippies californiens, les écolos anti-croissance, qui s’inspire d’ailleurs de très vieux idéaux religieux ascétiques (mal compris au demeurant), selon laquelle la consommation, la richesse, le marché, l’argent, la dépense, l’échange, la production matérielle, le commerce  sont méprisables, impurs pour tout dire.

 L’idée selon laquelle le bonheur n’est pas matériel, n’est pas lié à la richesse et à l’argent (même la santé dépend de l’argent) est biaisée et découle d’une réflexion de nantis. Cela relève du ”je hais les riches et la finance” de l’apparatchik privilégié qui occupe l’Élysée et qui touchera une retraite d’élu cumulard en or massif, et dont le patrimoine personnel est bien bétonné. L’idéal de la ”pauvreté salvatrice” est bien plus dévastatrice que celui de l’enrichissement  forcené.

 Ce qui est scandaleux, ce n’est pas que Noël et le Nouvel An donnent lieu à un pic de consommation, c’est que les bobos parisiens intellectuels – qui y participent largement – crachent dans la soupe. On ne peut pas à la fois réclamer l’augmentation du pouvoir d’achat, déplorer le chômage et la pauvreté et  s’indigner du consumérisme qui, qu’on le veuille ou non, fait tourner l’économie. De plus, déplorer que la jeunesse soit polluée par l’addiction aux smartphones est une position intéressante, mais il semble beaucoup plus grave et significatif qu’elle soit décérébrée et déracinée par une Éducation nationale qui n’apprend plus les fondamentaux (lire, écrire, compter) ni l’Histoire et l’identité nationales. Le mal ne vient donc pas du ”consumérisme”, du ”capitalisme”, du ”libéralisme”, mais d’une idéologie d’État – d’essence socialo-communiste– qui  déconstruit les consciences et corrompt les comportements.

De plus, il est complètement idiot de dire qu’une économie prospère de marché et de consumérisme est une idolâtrie du ”divin marché” et détruirait les autres valeurs.  Avec une sorte d’ascétisme chrétien fabriqué, Natacha Polony et tant d’autres, défendent donc des valeurs de pauvreté, d’indigence, de mépris du luxe ? Cette posture d’intellectuels anti consuméristes qui vont, comme tout le monde, faire leurs courses dans les supermarchés, prennent les lignes aériennes en classe affaire et les TGV en première classe, sont accrocs aux réseaux sociaux et aux achats en ligne, a quelque chose d’insincère, d’insupportable, d’insignifiant.

Opérons maintenant un retournement des préjugés. Une société fondée sur le gain, l’enrichissement, la consommation, la sphère privée du marché, la production concurrentielle développe des valeurs telles que : l’effort individuel, le travail, la créativité, l’épargne, la compétition, la responsabilité, la créativité. Une société fondée sur le collectivisme, le fiscalisme, la redistribution, l’assistanat (fausse solidarité), le fonctionnariat pléthorique, bref une société socialiste comme la nôtre, produit des contre-valeurs telles que : irresponsabilité, égoïsme, corporatisme, déracinement.

Nous ne vivons pas du tout dans une ”société marchande” mais dans une société objectivement collectiviste. Une société où l’honnête citoyen qui veut monter une entreprise individuelle est harcelé par des fonctionnaires qui travaillent quatre fois moins que lui et qui lui prélèvent 70% de ce qu’il gagne. Une société où des petits retraités du secteur privé relégués dans les zones périphériques sont abandonnés, au profit des privilégies du système ou des immigrés illégaux.

Conclusion.

Plutôt que de protester contre le consumérisme de Noël, mieux vaudrait s’intéresser à l’islamisation galopante, aux offensives – tout à fait nouvelles– contre les crèches de Noël dans les Mairies, orchestrées par les réseaux de gauche. Au delà des crèches et du catholicisme est visée l’identité ancestrale du peuple français. 

Il y a quelque chose de malsain dans cette formule méprisante de Natacha Polony que je répète : « ces fêtes de Noël qui sont devenues la mise en scène gargantuesque du règne de la consommation sur nos existences ». Eh bien, oui. Noël, comme son prolongement du premier de l’An, qui sont en réalité la reprise syncrétique des anciennes fêtes païennes du solstice d’hiver, sont le règne gargantuesque de la fête, de la consommation, du plaisir, de la bonne chère, des cadeaux, du partage, de l’ivresse et des rires. Y voir le Mal relève d’un dérangement mental, d’une frustration, d’une conception inquiétante de la vie en société. Passeport pour le malheur.

D’ailleurs, le symbole de la crèche où l’enfant Jésus naît dans une pauvre étable, mis dans une mangeoire, dans le dénuement, associe l’arrivée des Rois mages porteurs de richesses et de luxe. Afin de sortir, précisément la Sainte Famille de son dénuement. Suivons Aristote, adepte du mésotès (ou ”juste milieu”) : de même que le courage est la juste voie entre la lâcheté et la témérité, de même, l’abondance est la juste voie entre la débauche et la pauvreté.   

Notes:

(1) In Le Figaro,  respectivement 13 et 16/12/2014.

(2) Erreur et ignorance : les sapins commerciaux de Noël ne proviennent nullement de l’abattage de zones forestières vierges mais d’élevages de pépiniéristes qui contribuent, au contraire, à la santé de la filière bois… et des forêts.

(3) Le Figaro, 20/12/2014.

Piratage de Sony, Opération false flag parfaite?

par Jean Paul Baquiast

Ex: http://www.europesolidaire.eu

Les opérations sous fausse bannière (ou false flag) sont des actions menées avec utilisation des marques de reconnaissance de l'ennemi, dans le cadre d'opérations clandestines.

C'est à peu de choses près ce qui semble s'être passé il y a quelques jours, Un piratage de Sony, menée par des hackers prétendument situés en Corée du Nord, ou pilotés par ce pays, ont donné à Barack Obama et à la toute puissante National Security Agency et services rattachés, l'occasion de déclarations offensives à l'encontre de la dite Corée du Nord. Washington a refusé l'enquête internationale demandée par le régime de King Jong Un. Il a au contraire menacé ce dernier de mesures de représailles « appropriées ».

Ces représailles n'ont pas tardé. Le 22 décembre, la Corée du Nord a perdu la totalité de ses connections à Internet pendant plusieurs heures, après de longues périodes d'instabilité. La Maison Blanche a plaidé l'innocence, attribuant ce phénomène à des hackers incontrôlés. Mais les spécialistes de l'Internet, aux Etats-Unis mêmes, comme le montre l'article du WSWS, ne cachent pas qu'une opération de cette ampleur n'aurait pas pu être engagée sans l'appui de services très spéciaux, c'est-à-dire bien outillés.

Les naïfs diront que la Corée du Nord n'a eu que ce qu'elle méritait. Il ne fallait pas commencer, en attaquant Sony. On ne s'en prend pas à l'Empire américain sans retours de bâtons. Mais un peu d'attention montre que l'attaque contre Sony était très probablement une opération false flag menée par les services américains. Dans quel but? Faire peur à la Corée du Nord, sans doute, mais l'objectif aurait été un peu limité. Derrière l'opération, il fallait montrer à la Chine considérée comme l'ennemi majeur en Asie, que les services américains pouvaient monter des actions de cyber-terrorisme capables de faire beaucoup de mal. A tort ou à raison, la Chine dans ces derniers mois avait été accusée de mener de telles actions, sans d'ailleurs de preuves bien évidentes. Dans l'immédiat, ce sont les Américains qui font valoir à la Chine leur suprématie en ce domaine.

La démonstration s'adresse aussi à tous ceux, adversaires ou « alliés » qui prétendraient mieux contrôler leurs accès à l'Internet, lequel a toujours été et doit rester sous le contrôle de Washington. Que la Russie, le Brésil ou les pays européens se le tiennent pour dit.

Quant à la NSA et à la CIA, elles verront leurs moyens déjà constamment renforcés depuis quelques années être encore augmentés, comme il vient d'être décidé en réponse à l'attentat prétendu de la Corée du Nord. De plus, l'affaire permettra à Obama de signer la nouvelle Loi de Défense pour 2015, dont les journalistes n'ont eu guère eu de temps pour commenter les dispositions.

Comme le montrent les sources citées dans les deux articles ci-dessous, une partie de l'opinion technologique américaine a bien compris tout ce qui précède. Mais ces gens qui font honneur à la presse libre n'ont aucune influence politique sérieuse.

Références

* Stephane Trano, dans Marianne:  Obama veut défendre la liberté d'expression tandis que la chasse aux lanceurs d'alerte fait rage

http://www.marianne.net/obj-washington/Obama-veut-defendre-la-liberte-d-expression-tandis-que-la-chasse-aux-lanceurs-d-alerte-fait-rage_a162.html

WSWS North Korea's Internet connections cut off

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12/23/nkor-d23.html

 

Fabrice Hadjadj, que fue ateo y nihilista, defiende la familia

Publica sus tesis «ultrasexistas» en «¿Qué es una familia?».

Fabrice Hadjadj, que fue ateo y nihilista, defiende la familia cristiana por «salvaje y anárquica»

Ex: http://culturatransversal.wordpress.com

por Rodolfo Casadei

Fabrice Hadjadj, que fue ateo y nihilista, defiende la familia cristiana por ser “salvaje, anárquica y prehistórica”. De familia judía de izquierda radical, él era ateo y nihilista… hasta que empezó a leer la Biblia para burlarse de ella… y encontró una gran sabiduría.

Hoy Fabrice Hadjadj expone sus tesis que llama “ultrasexistas” sobre la unión entre hombre y mujer, el sentido divino del nacimiento, el ser padres, madres e hijos, como en esta entrevista en Tempi.it.

El segundo tiempo del Sínodo extraordinario sobre la familia se jugará entre el 4 y el 25 de octubre del año que viene, cuando el argumento será retomado por el Sínodo ordinario con el título “La vocación y la misión de la familia en la Iglesia y en el mundo contemporáneo”.

Y visto como ha ido la primera parte del partido, será mejor entrenarse aún más y prepararse para que cada uno dé la propia contribución al juego de equipo.

Muy útil a este propósito puede revelarse la lectura seria de Qu’est-ce qu’une famille? (¿Qué es una familia?, ndt), el último libro escrito por Fabrice Hadjadj, pensador católico francés y director de la Fundación Anthropos en Lausanne (Suiza).

Autor siempre genial, sorprendente y provocador, como se deduce también esta vez por el subtítulo, que suena así: Suivi de la Transcendance en culottes et autres propos ultra-sexistes, es decir “resultado de la Trascendencia en las bragas y otras propuestas ultrasexistas”.

Para Hadjadj la familia es, a nivel humano, lo que a nivel cósmico es el agua para Tales de Mileto o el aire para Anaximandro: el principio anterior a todo el resto, el fundamento que no puede ser explicado precisamente porque es un fundamento.

Sólo se puede tomar constancia de él, comprobando que lo que le da forma es la diferencia sexual que se manifiesta como atracción entre el hombre y la mujer.

La familia es, ante todo, naturaleza, pero siempre ordenada y bajo la responsabilidad de la cultura.

Porque el nacer, propio de cada forma natural, en los humanos está siempre rodeado de un “hacer nacer”. Y del hacer nacer de la matrona a la mayéutica de Sócrates (no es casualidad que fuera hijo de una matrona), que ayuda a hacer nacer la verdad que está dentro de cada hombre, el paso es breve y necesario.

En el libro, del que se espera en breve una traducción en italiano, Hadjadj individua principalmente tres enemigos de la familia en las sociedades occidentales: las últimas tecnologías electrónicas, la transformación de la procreación en producción ingenieril de seres humanos y las derivas falocéntricas (justamente así) de la mayor parte de los feminismos de hoy.

Tempi lo ha entrevistado sobre estos temas (aquí en italiano).

Rodolfo Casadei – Su libro ha salido en la vigilia del Sínodo de los obispos sobre la familia. ¿Le parece que los trabajos y el documento final del Sínodo reflejan algunas de sus preocupaciones?

Fabrice Hadjadj – El problema de un Sínodo es que tiene que hablar para la Iglesia universal, mientras las situaciones que la familia vive pueden ser muy distintas de un país al otro, incluso radicalmente opuestas.

En lo que a mí concierne, se trata de pensar lo que sucede a la familia en las sociedades post-industriales marcadas por la economía liberal. La Relatio Synodi, en su diagnóstico, se queda satisfecha con evocar una vez más el «individualismo» y el «hedonismo», mientras que los debates se han cristalizado alrededor de la cuestión de los «divorciados vueltos a casar» o sobre la bendición a las personas homosexuales.

De este modo me parece que falta totalmente lo que es, de manera absoluta, propio de nuestra época; es decir, la revolución antropológica que se está llevando a cabo con la transición de la familia a la empresa y del nacimiento a la fabricación – o si se prefiere, de la concepción oscura en el vientre de una madre a la concepción transparente en el espíritu del ingeniero…

La familia ha sido atacada en el plano ideológico desde los inicios del cristianismo. Por ejemplo, por los gnósticos. Pero hoy el ataque es más radical: éste no proviene tanto de la ideología como del dispositivo tecnológico. Ya no es una cuestión de teoría, sino de práctica, de medios eficaces para producir, fuera de las relaciones sexuales, individuos más adecuados, con mejores prestaciones.

RC - Usted opone la mesa de madera, alrededor de la que se reúne la familia, con la tableta electrónica, que separa y aísla a los miembros y su conclusión es que la tecnología ha colapsado la familia y estamos asistiendo a su «destrucción tecnológica». ¿Estamos ante el enemigo más grande de la familia?

FH - ¿Cuál es el lugar dónde se teje el tejido familiar? ¿Cuál es el lugar dónde las generaciones se encuentran, conversan, a veces pelean y, sin embargo, a través del acto muy primitivo de comer juntas, siguen compartiendo y estando en comunión? Tradicionalmente este lugar es la mesa. Sin embargo, hoy es cada vez más frecuente que cada uno de nosotros coma delante de la puerta de la nevera para poder volver lo más rápidamente posible a la propia pantalla individual.

Ya no se trata ni siquiera de individualismo, sino de «dividualismo», porque en esa pantalla uno abre más de una ventana y se divide, se fragmenta, se dispersa, pierde su rostro para convertirse en una multitud de «perfiles», pierde su filiación para tener un «prefijo».

La mesa implica reunirse dentro de una transmisión genealógica y carnal. La tableta implica la disgregación dentro de una diversión tecnológica y desencarnada. Por otra parte, la innovación tecnológica permite que lo que es más reciente sea mejor de lo que es más antiguo y, por lo tanto, destruye el carácter venerable de lo que es antiguo y de la experiencia.

Si la mesa desaparece es también porque el adolescente se convierte en el cabeza de familia: es él quien sabe manejar mejor los últimos artilugios electrónicos y ni el abuelo ni el padre tienen nada que enseñarle.

RC - Usted escribe, de una manera muy provocadora, que si de verdad pensamos que todo lo que necesitan nuestros hijos es amor y educación, entonces no sólo una pareja de personas del mismo sexo puede cubrir esta necesidad, también lo puede hacer un orfanato de calidad. Si lo esencial es el amor y la educación, no está dicho que una familia sea necesariamente el lugar mejor para un niño. Entonces, ¿por qué la familia padre-madre merece ser privilegiada?

FH – Es la cuestión planteada en Un Mundo Feliz de Aldous Huxley: si tenéis un hijo por la vía sexual es sencillamente porque os habéis ido a la cama con una mujer. Esto no ofrece garantías sobre vuestras cualidades reproductivas ni sobre vuestras competencias como educadores. He aquí por qué sería mejor, para el bienestar del nuevo ser creado, ser puesto a punto dentro de una incubadora y educado por especialistas. Esta argumentación es muy fuerte.

Mientras los cristianos sigan definiendo la familia como el lugar de la educación y del amor, ellos no la contradirán, sino que más bien darán armas a sus adversarios para que puedan concluir que dos hombres capaces de afecto y especializados en pedagogía son mucho más adecuados que un padre y una madre. Pero el problema es que sigue siendo el primado de lo tecnológico sobre lo genealógico lo que preside esta idea y nos empuja a sustituir a la madre con la matriz y al padre con el experto.

Detrás de todo esto está el error de buscar el bien del niño y de no considerar ya su ser. Ahora bien, el ser del niño es ser el hijo o la hija de un hombre y de una mujer, a través de la unión sexual. A través de esta unión, el niño llega como una sobreabundancia de amor: no es el producto de un fantasma ni el resultado de un proyecto, sino una persona que surge, singular, inalcanzable, que supera nuestros planes.

En lo que respecta al padre, del simple hecho que ha transmitido la vida recibe una autoridad sin competencia y esto es mucho mejor que cualquier competencia profesional. Porque el padre está allí, sobre todo, para manifestar al niño el hecho de que existir es bueno, mientras que los expertos sin competencia están allí para mostrar que lo bueno es llegar, tener éxito. Y además, su autoridad sin competencia lo empuja a reconocer delante del niño que él no es el Padre absoluto y, por lo tanto, a dirigirse junto a su hijo hacia ese Padre del cual cada paternidad toma su nombre.

RC - Usted cita como la otra causa de la destrucción de la familia el rechazo del nacimiento como nacimiento, es decir, como algo natural e imprevisto. Quien es favorable a la tecnologización del nacimiento dice que es necesario vigilar para que las biotecnologías se utilicen de una manera ventajosa para el niño que debe nacer, pero que a pesar de todo estas técnicas son buenas. ¿Qué les respondería?

FH – Si las biotecnologías se utilizan para acompañar o restaurar una fertilidad natural, soy favorable a las mismas: es el sentido mismo de la medicina. Pero si consisten en hacernos entrar en una producción artificial ya no se trata de medicina, sino de ingeniería. Lo que sucede entonces es que el niño se convierte en un derecho que es reivindicado, dejando de ser un don del cual uno se siente indigno. A partir de esto, ustedes pueden imaginar las influencias que sufrirá.

Pero lo más grave está en otro hecho, en lo que yo llamaría la confusión entre novedad e innovación. Si el nuevo nacido renueva el mundo, es porque él de alguna manera nace prehistórico: no hay diferencias fundamentales entre el bebé italiano de hoy y el del hombre de las cavernas. Sigue siendo un pequeño primitivo, un pequeño salvaje que desembarca en la familia y que trae consigo un inicio absoluto, la promesa renovada de la aurora.

Si en un futuro medimos el nacimiento con el metro de la innovación, si se fabrican principalmente bebés trashumanos, estos serán ancianos antes de nacer porque volverán a proponer la lógica del progreso y, por consiguiente, también de la fatal obsolescencia de los objetos técnicos. Corresponderán a los objetivos de quien los encarga, a las expectativas de su sociedad.

Nos encontramos frente a una inversión de las fórmulas del Credo: se quiere un ser que haya «nacido del siglo antes que todos los padres, creado y no engendrado».

RC - Usted escribe: «Gracias a la tecnología la dominación fálica está asegurada principalmente por mujeres histéricas producto de hombres castrados». ¿Qué quiere decir?

FH – Lo propio de lo femenino, en la maternidad, es acoger dentro de sí un proceso oscuro, el de la vida que se dona por sí misma. Crear úteros artificiales puede parecer una emancipación de la mujer, pero en realidad es una confiscación de los poderes que le son más propios.

Por una parte se consigue que la mujer, al no ser ya madre, se convierta en una empleada o una ama (como si fuera una liberación); por la otra, que el proceso oscuro se convierta en un procedimiento técnico transparente, el de un trabajo externo y controlado, que es a lo que se limita la operación del hombre, que no tiene un útero y fabrica con sus propias manos.

He aquí que nos encontramos frente a la paradoja de la mayor parte de los feminismos: no son más que un machismo de la mujer, una reivindicación de la igualdad pero sobre la escala de valores masculinos, un querer una promoción en pleno acuerdo con la visión fálica del mundo.

Porque la fecundación y la gestación in vitro son cuanto más próximo hay a un dominio fálico de la fecundidad: no necesitar de lo femenino y hacer entrar la procreación en el juego de la fabricación, de la transparencia y de la competición.

Ya he hablado de una inversión del Credo; en este caso podría hablar de una Contra-Anunciación. En la Anunciación evangélica, María acepta un embarazo que la supera dos veces, desde el punto de vista natural y desde el punto de vista sobrenatural. En la Contra-Anunciación tecnológica, la mujer rechaza cualquier embarazo y exige que la procreación sea una planificación integral, que ya no la supere, sino que se introduzca en su proyecto de carrera.

RC – Usted está de acuerdo con Chesterton en que la familia es la «institución anárquica por excelencia». ¿Qué significa? Actualmente, la familia sigue estando acusada de autoritarismo o de residuo de la época del poder patriarcal.

FH – La familia es una institución anárquica en el sentido que es anterior al Estado, al derecho y al mercado. Depende de la naturaleza antes de ser ordenada por la cultura, porque naturalmente el hombre nace de la unión de un hombre y de una mujer. En pocas palabras, tiene su fundamento en nuestra ropa interior. Es algo animal – el macho y la hembra – y al mismo tiempo nosotros creemos que esta animalidad es muy espiritual, de una espiritualidad divina, escrita en la carne: «Dios creó al hombre a su imagen, varón y mujer los creó».

Hay algo que es donado, y no construido. Tanto que también el patriarca, como se ve en la Biblia, está siempre sorprendido y asimismo exasperado por sus hijos. Piensen en la historia de Jacob. Piensen en José, el padre de Jesús. No se puede decir, ciertamente, que tienen la situación bajo control.

La autoridad del padre se transforma en autoritarismo cuando finge tener todo bajo control y ser perfectamente competente. Pero como he dicho antes, su verdadera y más profunda autoridad está en el reconocer que no está a la altura y que está obligado a dirigirse al Padre eterno.

(Traducción de Helena Faccia Serrano, Alcalá de Henares)

Fuente: Religión Digital

Lawrence Dennis & a “Frontier Thesis” for American Capitalism

Lawrence Dennis & a “Frontier Thesis” for American Capitalism

 

By Keith Stimely 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

Editor’s Note:

Lawrence Dennis (December 25, 1893–August 20, 1977) was one of America’s most original Right-wing critics of liberalism, capitalism, imperialism, and the Cold War. Interestingly enough, he was part black, a fact that was known to his many Right-wing admirers. In commemoration of Dennis’ birthday, and as a Christmas gift to our readers, we are reprinting Keith Stimely’s excellent introduction to his life and ideas.    

Best known at the height of his writing career in the 1930s as “America’s leading fascist” and also as a strenuous opponent of American intervention in World War II, Lawrence Dennis was an economist and political theorist whose writings on the decline of capitalism and its international social and political implications received wide and serious attention in the 1930s and early 1940s. In fact, Dennis was much more than an apologist for fascism or a conservative isolationist, and in some of his ideas he could be viewed as a precursor as well as a contemporary of such better-known thinkers as John Maynard Keynes, Adolf A. Berle, Jr., James Burnham, Max Nomad, Charles A. Beard, and George Orwell. There is something of each of these thinkers in Dennis, and if because they and Dennis all published their ideas at roughly the same time, there arises any question of his intellectual “borrowing”[1] from them, it might be well to point out just who preceded whom.

Dennis’s initial formal statement of his ideas in 1932, in his book Is Capitalism Doomed?,[2] was almost exactly contemporaneous with Berle’s published statements of his concept of propertyless power[3] and Nomad’s notion of the inevitable entrenchment of a power-driven bureaucratic elite even in “workers’“ movements and societies proclaiming an end to all elitisms.[3] Dennis’s book appeared some ten years before Burnham’s work arguing for the theory of a new managerial elite replacing old business and even governmental elites,[5] and longer than that before Orwell’s depiction of psychological and actual preparation for international conflicts perpetually designed to serve domestic political ends.[6] Dennis published two years before Charles Beard made his case for America’s rejection of overseas investments with their inevitable political ties and his prescription for what would amount to “regional autarchy” for the nation’s economy,[7] and four years before Keynes’s final, published formulation, in his “General Theory” of 1936, of his rejection of the supposition of classical economics that the business cycle will always self-correct and his prescription for government stimulation when it does not.[8] Historian James J. Martin has remarked that all one has to do to find evidence of very many “Keynesian” ideas floating around American intellectual circles years before the General Theory is look at issues of the Harvard Business Review of the late 1920s. Keynes’s and “Keynesian” influences—if gradual—on theory and policy in the liberal-democratic states have always been recognized; much less treated has been the question of his influence on the fascist states, or the consideration and adoption by them of policies that bore strong similarities in their essences to what we would regard as “Keynesianism.” Martin has been responsible for bringing to general public attention the fact that Keynes wrote a special foreword for a translated edition of the General Theory which appeared in National Socialist Germany in 1936; see “J. M. Keynes’s Famous [sic: this is Martin’s dig] Foreword to the 1936 German Edition of the ‘General Theory’,” pp. 197-205 in Martin, Revisionist Viewpoints: Essays in a Dissident Historical Tradition (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles Publisher, 1971; 1977).

Dennis himself was sufficiently honest in referencing the basic influences on his thought: the historian Frederick Jackson Turner, the sociologists Vilfredo Pareto and Robert Michels, the philosopher of history Oswald Spengler, the economists Thorstein Veblen and Werner Sombart. Out of his familiarity with these thinkers and his own experiences in the 1920s as a U.S. diplomatic service officer and an international banking functionary, he fashioned by the mid-1930s a synthetic view of economics, politics, society, and history that was striking at least in its sheer brilliance and clarity and which both liberal and conservative commentators of the time recognized as such, whether they agreed with it or not.

Dennis became even more provocative after he began actually prescribing possible political solutions to the problems of depression and war. Although the American and British left initially hailed Dennis as a leading expositor of capitalist senescence,[9] they became increasingly wary of him (though still giving his ideas wide play) when he turned in the mid-thirties to fascism and began to advocate for the United States a corporatist, collectivist state in which business enterprise, though retaining its basic forms and privately owned character, would have been obliged as necessary to knuckle under to the programmatic and channelizing demands of a “folk unity” state. Aside from the “dark” similarities between such a system and regimes of the time in Germany and Italy, this was too little for the left and too much for the right. New Dealers in particular were furious when Dennis blithely stated that trends toward such a political-economic system were already well under way in the Roosevelt regime, even in the absence of such blunt advocacy for them as he was wont to make.[10] Eventually Dr. New Deal himself in the guise of Franklin Roosevelt would have Dennis prosecuted under the Smith Act for “sedition,” and the economist joined 29 other assorted non-interventionists, of widely varying political hues and mindsets, in the dock for the “mass sedition trial” of 1944. Dennis was the principal among the defendants in consistently making a fool out of the prosecutor, and after a mistrial caused by the death of the judge, to the accompaniment of increasing skepticism about the whole business even within the pro-administration press, the government dropped its case.[11] By that time establishment opinion-formers had dropped Dennis, whose ideas were deemed beyond the pale. The man who once wrote for the Nation, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, the Annals of the American Academy, Saturday Review, and Current History, whose speeches and participation in roundtable forums were covered by the New York Times, and whose books were given reasoned hearings by such luminaries as Max Lerner, Matthew Josephson, Louis M. Hacker, John Chamberlain, Dwight MacDonald, D. W. Brogan, William L. Langer, Waldemar Gurian, Francis Coker, Norman Thomas, Owen Lattimore, and William Z. Foster, was denied any further access to or treatment in “respectable” forums (or even in the “unrespectable” forums of the left, which reached a vast audience of thoroughly establishment intellectuals) and so had recourse to self-publication for most of the rest of his productive years.[12]

Dennis spent those years—a good quarter-century—vigorously opposing the cold war and any view of Soviet Russia as carrying a special “sin” that had to be wiped out, just as he had opposed American entry into World War II and any view of the fascist nations as unique repositories of “sin.” In both cases his positions arose less from ideological affinities than from his hard-core realism: his caution was against “the bloody futility of frustrating the strong.” He also continued to state his view that American capitalism, having lost its essential “dynamic,” including its necessary “frontier,” could not solve its endemic twentieth century problems—underconsumption and mass unemployment—without recourse to war or “permanent mobilization” for it. Sneering at all “classical,” “Austrian,” or “monetarist” solutions to capitalist crisis, he proclaimed—as one who had been among America’s foremost “pre-Keynes Keynesians”—that Keynesian-style government intervention in some form and to some degree or other was here to stay and was not a bad thing, provided that it focused inward, on the solution of the nation’s internal problems, and not outward, to “solution” by foreign war.

Ultimately Dennis believed that “economic laws”—whether those proclaimed by classical economists or Marxists—must and would inevitably follow political mandates, not vice-versa. In a modern age in which traditional capitalism was obsolete, socialism was not at all going to be what its utopian founding theorists had in mind, and the sheer power-wield of elites operating in nationalistic contexts through discreet psychological and cultural appeals was the decisive factor in shaping economic relationships. Toward the end of his life Dennis coined the term “operational”—as opposed to idealistic or wishful—to describe not so much what but how to think correctly about world problems, including economics, and he called himself an “operational thinker.”

That he had once called himself a “fascist,” however, has informed almost all the approaches to his thought up to the present. Always monumentally unconcerned with what most people, including fellow intellectuals, thought of him, Dennis in the 1930s frankly advocated a variant of a system that then seemed to be “working”—as American capitalism and liberal democracy, unable to pull themselves up out of the Depression, just were not. That the label of “fascist” (which, in its conventional use in America as a term of invective, has gone a long way toward meaning absolutely nothing from meaning absolutely anything) has stuck is in part although by no means exclusively the fault of Dennis himself. It is a label that has stood as a major roadblock on the way to serious considerations of the full range of his ideas, on their plain merits, from the perspective of history since they were first advanced. “America’s No. 1 intellectual fascist,” “Brain-truster for the forces of appeasement,” “the intellectual leader and principal advisor of the fascist groups”[13]—these were the epithets by which Dennis came to be identified, and is still in large part identified. But even in them there can be seen a nuance that not only applies to but was actually formulated just for him—“intellectual,” “brain-truster,” “advisor.” Even the shrillest critics could not bludgeon Lawrence Dennis into the prefabricated stereotypes as a native-fascist Bundist, Silver Shirt, or Christian Mobilizer. And even in recognizing Dennis as a genuine fascist intellectual, his critics also differentiated him further. Unlike most “philosophers of fascism,” who tended to restrict any consideration of economic issues to situational analyses, Dennis did not ignore economics in the construction and exposition of his larger, broadly historical, world view. Rather, his appreciation of fascism derived in good part from his initial economic orientation in approaching problems of politics and society, specifically in his critique of capitalist historical development in America.

A summary and analysis of that critique and of Dennis’s career are long overdue, as is a critical consideration of some of the historiographical and other scholarly treatments of Dennis that have appeared since the climax of his career. It was just around the time of his retirement from writing around 1970 that a younger generation of scholars began to study his thought and to bring him to the attentions of yet others for whom he was either a completely unknown quantity or just the smart guy of “the 1930s native-fascists.” Whereas older considerations of Dennis, coming from old-line liberals, focused on his political fascism, the newer studies, coming after the development of a “New Left” historiography critical of American interventionism abroad and from writers inclined toward or interested in anti-“consensus” intellectual history, have tended to concentrate on his consistency in opposing both American involvement in World War II and in the cold war. There has been no study devoted to his economic views; the most thorough treatments of these have been in reviews of his first three books as they appeared in the span of years between 1932 and 1941. The following purely expository treatment of Dennis’s leading economic idea—his “frontier thesis” for American capitalism—makes no claim of thoroughness either in itself or in placing his economic thought within the context of his broader views. It will serve as an introduction to all the basics of these, however.

The Man and a Theme[14]

Dennis was born in 1893 in Atlanta, Georgia, of moderately well-to-do parents. He attended Philips Exeter Academy from 1913 to 1915 and proceeded to Harvard University. His studies interrupted by American entry into the First World War, he volunteered and received his officer’s commission through attendance at the novel Plattsburg officer training camps in Plattsburg, New York, in 1915 and 1917 and subsequently served in France as a lieutenant of infantry with a headquarters regiment. For several years after demobilization he wandered around Europe playing foreign exchange markets “on a shoe string,” then returned to America to finish his studies at Harvard, graduating in 1920.

Dennis entered the U.S. diplomatic service and worked as American chargé d’affaires in Romania and then Honduras. He was sent to Nicaragua as chargé in 1926 and remained there throughout the Sandino revolution and the American military intervention. It was Dennis who, under State Department orders, sent the cablegram “requesting” the intervention of U.S. Marines in Nicaragua. He never favored the intervention and after publicly criticizing it in June 1927, resigned from the diplomatic service. He went to work in Peru as a representative of the international banking firm of J. & W. Seligman & Co., advising it on Peruvian and other South American loans. In this capacity he came increasingly to be wary of, and finally unalterably opposed to, loans for private or public purposes made without tightly-held strings attached or any loans to countries whose perpetually unfavorable balances of commodity trade made repayment a dubious proposition. He advised against weighty loans that were in fact made and on which the debtors in fact defaulted. In 1932, two years after resigning from Seligman to retire to his Becket, Massachusetts, farm to pursue a career as writer, lecturer, and investment analyst, he was a prominent witness before the Johnson Committee of the U.S. Senate investigating international lending practices and the default of overseas loans. By that time he was well under way to establishing himself in American intellectual circles as a sharp critic of investment banking practices and of an entire capitalist system which had evidently brought on—and so far could not solve—American and then worldwide depression. Articles in leading journals paved the way for the systematic, in-depth exposition of the viewpoint that he espoused for the rest of his life.

Dennis’s career as a thinker in the 1930s and 1940s was roughly divided into three phases, each represented by a book. In Is Capitalism Doomed? of 1932 he provided his basic critique of traditional capitalist business enterprise and pointed out the necessity of government planning. Chief among the abuses of private capitalist “leadership” was the grotesque over-extension of credit, internally in agriculture and industry and externally in foreign loans and trade (loans being made only to allow the paying-off of earlier loans, the same process then occurring with these later loans; trade actually being paid for only by the loans of the trader). Not far behind in iniquity was the refusal of capitalists to spend, preferring to hoard, the real incomes that accrued to them while millions were unemployed for want of investment spending. Not yet ready to state what, if anything, could or should take the place of this outdated business order and the liberal-democratic state which allowed it (the two necessarily went hand-in-hand, in his estimation), Dennis contented himself with providing “suggestions of moderation or restraint”—specifically, high taxation on the wealthy (preferably toward job-creating public works projects), high tariffs, and high government spending to keep up employment in a self-sufficient or autarchic national economy—which might prolong and render American capitalism’s “dying years” more pleasant. By 1936 and The Coming American Fascism[15] Dennis was ready to be even more specific both in diagnosis and prescriptive remedy. With the Depression still unrelieved six years after it had started and three years after inauguration of the Roosevelt “planless” revolution,[16] Dennis foresaw the system’s final collapse and offered only the alternatives of fascism or communism to replace it. He frankly favored the former, not only because it seemed to be proven by example in certain countries of Europe, but because the latter alternative would mean a disastrous “wipe-out” of valuable business technicians—as opposed to their co-option and enlistment in national service by a fascist state. Dennis did provide, at length, his description of what “one man’s desirable fascism” would be like—but he stressed that any successful fascist movement in America would doubtless not call itself that and in fact would most probably arise in the guise of anti-fascism, perhaps even in the crusading call for a war against fascism.

In The Dynamics of War and Revolution[17] of 1940, Dennis particularly explored this last theme as part of an overall treatment linking his ideas to the tempestuous international scene of the time. He predicted eventual American involvement in the European war as the only way for American capitalism finally to get out of its Depression, and as representing a desperate effort by the stagnated “Have” plutocrat countries (America and Britain) to stifle the rising economic as well as political challenges of the dynamic “Have-not” socialist countries (Germany, Italy, and Russia). His blithe identification of the Hitler and Mussolini regimes with the “socialist” camp tended to cause great upset in communist or other leftist reviewers of the book.

But the liberal states’ war to end fascism, with its necessary mobilization of business resources under governmental direction and backed only by government financing, all accompanied by massive doses of governmental propaganda to the democratic herds, would result only in an increasing impingement of “fascist” trends upon the political and business structures of those very states, and even—especially—in winning there could be no return to a laissez-faire whose era had passed. Dennis hoped that the state mobilization of the economy that he saw as inevitable, and which he favored on principle, could be directed inward to reform, public works, and ultimate national economic self-sufficiency. Were it to be directed outward in another big foreign crusade ostensibly to end “sin” in the world, it would probably continue to follow that course so lucrative for keeping up production, maintaining high employment, and staving off deflation, and more “sin” would assuredly be found to crusade and spend against after the dispatch of “original sin.” Thus, even before American intervention in the war (right during the Phony War, in fact), and with no real clues as to its outcome or even the final line-up of adversaries, Dennis was hinting at a postwar cold war for America.

He supplemented his book-writing activities of the 1930s and early 1940s with regular contributions to H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury, where many of the ideas of The Coming American Fascism and The Dynamics of War and Revolution were originally advanced, lectures and debates, consulting in economics for E. A. Pierce & Co., and editing and writing his own newsletter, The Weekly Foreign Letter, which ran from 1938 to 1942. After the “sedition” episode and a lengthy book about it, A Trial on Trial (co-authored with lawyer Maximilian St. George), he started another newsletter, The Appeal to Reason, which ran for more than twenty years, despite a circulation that never exceeded 500 subscribers (who included former President Herbert Hoover, Senator Burton K. Wheeler, General Robert E. Wood, General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Amos Pinchot, Colonel Truman Smith, and Bruce Barton).[18] Dennis also served as an investment advisor to General Wood and made him a lot of money. Dividing his time after the war between his Massachusetts farm and the Harvard Club in New York City, he confined his social life largely to a small circle of friends and colleagues, which included revisionist historians Harry Elmer Barnes, Charles Callan Tansill, and James J. Martin, political scientist Frederick L. Schuman (his neighbor in Massachusetts—and political opposite-number; also his in-law), writer and former “sedition” co-defendant Georqe Sylvester Viereck, and publicist H. Keith Thompson. His last book, Operational Thinking for Survival, appeared in 1969. Although the basics of the manuscript had been completed in the late 1950s, the book lay fallow for want of a publisher.[19] In it he hewed to his basic convictions as expressed 30 years before; he claimed vindication by the course of postwar events, made the extended case for “operational” (“or ‘rational’”) thinking, described the futility, waste, and danger of a cold war that was both a result of and a constant prop for moralistic stupidity, and found time to blast neo-classical critics of the “New Economics” of which he had been one of the earliest, if most unusual, exponents. Shortly after the book’s appearance, he suffered an incapacitating stroke and remained only sporadically active until his death in 1977.

Dennis’s most systematic and developed presentation of his fully matured ideas on the decline of capitalism appeared in The Dynamics of War and Revolution. In Part II, “The End of the Capitalist Revolution,” consisting of five chapters, he laid out his “autopsy” of the American—in microcosm, the Western World’s—capitalist dynamic. Capitalism, Dennis argued, must ever expand or die. The impulse, the driving dynamic, behind expansion is the eternal quest for markets (of need, not just luxury), a quest that is actually a desperate race against the threat of a linear process of overproduction, causing underconsumption, causing cutbacks in production, causing unemployment, causing loss of purchasing power, causing loss of investment incentives—all leading to stagnation and, finally, bust. Busts may be followed by booms only when real market expansion takes place. But such expansion can occur only when a perpetual, ever-receding “frontier” is present. The frontier can be a literal, geographical frontier (far from, contiguous to, or even within a nation), or the “frontier of scarcity” provided by a growing consumer population, or the “frontiers” provided by other nations or regions whose markets can be seized without excessive political or military risk. The three centuries of the “Capitalist Revolution,” roughly from 1600-1900, satisfied the need of capitalism in all these areas and provided its dynamic power. The discovery of a vast New World provided Europe’s literal frontier for expansion of its markets (and its population), as well as sources of materials for production and distribution (mercantile considerations were in fact the single most significant impulse behind the drive for colonization); within that New World, both before and after it was constituted as a new nation, the westward frontier provided the same engine of dynamism for the base population—especially in the lure of free land. All over the globe European imperialisms found markets “for the taking” in lands which could not stand up to European military technics or trading attraction; America also expanded its national and market frontiers through “easy wars of conquest”—against Mexico, against Spain in contests of rival imperialisms, in interventions and “presences” all over its southern watches and even in the far Pacific; the new technics of industrialization and transportation came along at the perfect moment to exploit the situations of these expanding market-frontiers, and all these developments were accompanied by an overall burst in population growth such as the world in its recorded history had never before experienced.

Thus the “Capitalist Revolution” was successful because of specific, historically conditioned reasons. But according to the theoretical apologists for capitalism, the success was not historically conditioned, and there was no reason why it could not continue indefinitely and the revolution remain permanently, even if it were erratic in its equilibrium: Busts would always be followed by booms in a self-correcting business cycle. Once stagnation or bust were reached, new consumer demands would before long “force” investment and production to rise again (and thus employment, purchasing power, more investment, and so on). The proponents of classic capitalism were continuing to assert this right down through the depths of the 1930s Depression. For Dennis, these rosy theorists were wrong and had been proven wrong by an American (and out of it, a world) economic cataclysm which had not been seen before and after which things would never be the same again. The theorists were basing their prescriptions and predictions on the historical record of the business-cycle through the 300 years of capitalist dynamism, as if universal or timeless “laws” of business-development could be deduced from that alone. In fact, by their concentration on the “waves” of the business cycle in this limited time-period and historically unique situation they were missing the tide. The great tide was the fact that the “Capitalist Revolution” was finally over because the frontier—all the “frontiers”—existed no more.

The literal American frontier—which had provided the essential stimulus of “the profits of free lands” (both as lure and, crucially, as escape)—ceased to exist about 1890. Linking this in with British imperialism, which had reached its apogee at about the same time (“the frontier was to Americans what the empire was to the British”[20]), Dennis held that the processes of expansion and acquisition, not the actual holding, constituted the mechanism that gave capitalism its dynamic; the former fueled capitalist development, the latter inevitably invited stagnation:

Empire is a process of expansion by conquest, not just the place so acquired. . . . The socially important fact about an empire is getting it, and, about a frontier, getting rid of it. The two processes amount to the same thing . . . so far as empire is concerned, it is the growth, not the existence, the getting, not the keeping, that is historically significant and socially dynamic. A nation grows great by winning an empire. It cannot remain great merely by keeping one. Indeed, once it stops growing it will start decaying . . . . Mankind is destined to live by toil and struggle, not by absentee ownership . . . . What we now call capitalism, democracy and Americanism was simply the nineteenth century formula of empire building as it worked in this country. Here the process was often called pioneering; its locus, the frontier . . . . Now that empire building along the lines of the nineteenth century formula is over, both for the British and ourselves, capitalism and democracy are over as we knew them in that past era. . . . Unlike the Have-nots, we shall not expand because we are land hungry. Hunger is dynamic. In the twentieth century, unlike the nineteenth, no profit is to be made out of increasing available supplies of raw materials and foodstuffs. Profit making is dynamic. But, to be dynamic it has first to be possible. The conditions creating this possibility are the primary dynamisms of capitalism.[21]

The conditions that imparted success to capitalism were gone with the frontier, and for Dennis the central idea of historian Frederick Jackson Turner, which he quoted approvingly—”The existence of free land, its continuous recession and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development”[22]—explained in particular the character of American economic development, just as the “world frontier” with its “free” (or easily-acquired) land for European nations explained broad capitalist development. But the end of capitalism could also be explained. The end of the literal frontier for America and the capitalist world was paralleled by the end of the industrial revolution, the decline in the rate of population growth, and the end of further possibilities of “easy wars of conquest.”

The industrial revolution—the effect of technological change—had worn down, and there could be no hope that industrialism or technics could always exist, through evolutionary refinements of better techniques and types of production and more and different appeals to the marketplace, to “reinvigorate” or “save” capitalism when necessary. Industrialism had worn down because it was never a dynamic of itself, but could be dynamic only in the era of the frontier and of rapid population growth. (“Today, so far as stimulating business expansion is concerned, industrial changes are no more dynamic than changing cross ties or steel rails on a railroad. . . . As for entirely new products, they now tend to replace old products and to result in no net increase in consumption or production.”[23]) The essence of the industrial revolution was change specifically within the context of growth or continuous expansion, which means that it could only have been a transient phase whenever and wherever it occurred. This “series of events in time and place” constituted a very real revolution, perfectly following the mercantilist one and necessary to the realization of the overall capitalist one—but it could remain revolutionary only so long as it was expansive.

It might be expansive in perpetuity if “Say’s Law”—production as necessarily creating the purchasing power to pay for what is produced—was correct. It was not correct, because its essential corollary, the doctrine of “consumer sovereignty” holding that goods and services are produced for a profit in response to consumer needs and demands, was “100 percent false. Producer demand, not consumer demand, is sovereign.” Here Dennis turned on its head one of the fundamental tenets of capitalist theory:

The producers decide what, when and how much to produce, including the volume of construction and producer goods activity such as new plants, office buildings, etc. In other words, volume and rate of reinvestment of profits and savings determine swings in consumer demand. Producers and investors determine swings in the volume and velocity of the flow of consumer purchasing power. Booms are made by producer and investor optimism and ended by producer and investor pessimism. Consumer needs and desires have no more to do with the up- and downswings than sunspots. When producers decide to curtail production, consumer purchasing power declines and thus arise good reasons to cut production and employment and wages still further. The process is reversed by a change in producer and investor psychology. The producer decisions, as every one knows, are governed mainly by changes in expectations of profit.[24]

The end of the frontier—even just catching sight of the end before it was reached—changed the expectations of the “sovereign producers.” That is, it changed their willingness to risk investment. The chief characteristic of American business organization, as it resulted from the industrial revolution taking place in a dynamic frontier-context, was monopoly—about which, incidentally, “there is more hypocrisy . . . than any other subject in the whole field of economics.”[25] The industrial revolution and the frontier created monopolies in almost every new industry. At the beginning and through the halcyon days of the revolution, the monopolistic entities, existent or in process of formation, were the very ones that were most committed to and enthusiastic about investment and risk, and against hoarding or minimal-risk investments or operations. By the end, they were tending to be hoarders or “safe operators” who would expand vertically or horizontally, often both, in organization and control but not in actual new market risk and production—because market frontiers were no longer expanding. This caused gradual stagnation and, when combined with the run of “artificial” expansion of the 1920s, finally Depression. The short-lived boomlets since 1929—those of 1933, of late-1936/early-1937, mid-1938, and late-1939—only provided more evidence that industrial expansion was over as an upholder or as a rescuer of capitalism; they were caused by fears of inflation, not at all by expectations of profits from industrial expansion. Such expectations as could cause real boomlets, not to mention a real end to the Depression, could occur only in a recognized “frontier” situation. Dennis considered at length, and rejected wholesale, the argument (“if it is to be dignified by that name”) that even with the end of the geographical frontier and thus of a physically expanding market base, there nevertheless existed and would always exist a limitless “frontier” of unsatisfied human wants and needs and discoveries which would provide all the incentives and opportunities to keep capitalism going. This argument, as “Say’s Law” and its corollary, assumed that “consumer desire instead of producer greed” was the dynamic of capitalism. But the key was in fact “producer greed”–and although that might happen to satisfy human wants and needs, even in great volume, in the course of the quest for private gain, such a result

. . . was purely an incidental and, in no sense a dynamic or causative factor in these processes. As long as supplies of land, labor and natural resources becoming available for exploitation were rapidly increasing, there was a constant shortage of capital, machinery, housing, transportation facilities and means of subsistence for the workers. This shortage constituted a real industrial frontier. It was a frontier of need, not luxury. Capitalism needs a frontier of scarcity which will keep interest rates high and profit margins wide. It cannot flourish on a frontier of industrial abundance in which interest rates would drop to zero and incentives to private investment would virtually disappear.[26]

One “frontier of scarcity” that was necessary to a successful capitalism was simply the existence of more and more bodies that needed food and goods. This “frontier” might last forever if population increase could be guaranteed in perpetuity. It couldn’t. Reviewing the census statistics from the first national census in 1790 through that of 1930, Dennis saw that, while the American population increased at dramatic rates throughout the nineteenth century, from roughly the end of the century on the rate of growth (though not simple growth) had been decreasing dramatically. The apogee of population growth, then, had been reached with the passing of the frontier. If the rate continued to decline, and Dennis assumed that it would without significant interruptions,[27] the consequences would be enormous for American capitalism—more so than they already were. For capitalism, here as in all other areas, needed growth:

First among the functions of population growth is that of creating a perpetual scarcity of bare necessities, so necessary for a healthy capitalism or socialism. This scarcity furnishes incentives for the leaders and compulsions for the led. This scarcity now affects only the Have-not countries; hence they alone are dynamic today. Capitalism in America was dynamic while world population increase assured food scarcity. Now that we have food abundance, capitalism is no longer dynamic. Hence the unemployed go hungry because we now lack scarcity. This explanation may sound paradoxical. Well, so is the situation in which farmers languish for buyers of their food and the jobless languish for food. . . . The nineteenth century way of averting the evil of abundance was to have large families. The twentieth century way, now that we have small families, is to have large-scale unemployment and two world wars in one generation. Given the ideology of democracy and capitalism making thrift a virtue and given the shrinking size of families, it is hard to see any way of coping with abundance other than unemployment and war. And given our culture pattern, it is hard to see how we can operate society without the compulsions of a scarcity which a high birth rate, unemployment or war alone can maintain for us in a sufficient degree under our system.[28]

Capitalism “in its era,” product of peculiar historical circumstances that combined to create a 300-year revolution, was insatiable in its thirst for markets precisely because its new productive and distributive power eventually sated the market’s thirst for products. But arrival at the ultimate point of satiation could be and was postponed, and the other factor that allowed for this, besides an expanding frontier and an expanding population to settle that frontier, was the expansion of markets through “easy wars of conquest”; these could guarantee the “scarcities of need” required to hold off stagnation or get out of depression. Wars, of course, had always been God’s gift to capitalism in stimulating production and soaking up unemployment; they thus provided more immediate benefits as well as their longer-term benefits in creating markets. But there was more to the war-imperative of capitalism than simple economic drives. In fact, “easy wars of conquest” fulfilled the needs not only of private capitalism but of public democracy. Capitalism would not have been what it was without democracy, and vice-versa. American democracy was founded on the twin pillars of a mercantile plutocracy and an agricultural slavocracy. The defeat of the latter in civil war meant only meant its absorption into a new industrial wage-ocracy. This wage-ocracy, called “mass employment,” was dependent for its very existence on the expansion of markets—that is, on the reality of frontiers; it naturally made this dependence felt in its political pressures. And the American democratic faith that was instilled into the mass-employed and employers alike was essentially faith in a perpetual land boom. By its national policies of settlement, of incentives for investment, of trade, and of war, the democracy could “keep the faith.” The democracy also had its own, more purely political, reasons, most nakedly seen in its war policies, for keeping it. While capitalism needed wars for foreign markets, land-grabs, and immediate productive stimuli, democracy needed wars for a social unity and stability at home that capitalism itself tended to disallow or disrupt:

In any brief review of the dynamic function of easy wars in the successful rise of capitalism and democracy it would be a serious omission not to call attention to the fact that nationalistic wars tempered the anarchy and contradictions of private competition. Both war and religion necessarily impose collective unity. Their practice unites large numbers of people in interests and feeling. Private competition, on the contrary, must always tend to destroy social unity. . . . An entire community can practice competition in an orderly way only in war or in competition with an outside community. Thus, in war-time, each warring community operates internally on the basis of cooperation and externally on the basis of competition. In this way there is order within and anarchy without. It is obviously an inevitable condition of any society of sovereign nations that it be characterized by anarchy. Multiple sovereignties are merely a synonym for anarchy. International anarchy is a corollary of national sovereignty. That numerous company of idealists and theorists who profess to wish to substitute in the international sphere the rule of law for the rule of anarchy while at the same time preserving national sovereignty is composed of persons who are either singularly obtuse or intellectually dishonest. Anyone who does not understand that, under the rule of law, there can be but one sovereign, not several, does not understand the meaning either of law or sovereignty.

But, although war has been throughout history a force for anarchy as among nations, it has been a force for social cohesion and order as within nations. Between chronic international anarchy and national order there is no necessary contradiction. The fact is that capitalistic democracies have needed the centripetal force of foreign warfare to offset the centrifugal force of private competition. . . . Individualism, or the disuniting force of private competition, has made this [traditional] need of foreign war all the greater. The free play of individual or minority group self-interest tends to make any community go to pieces. The counter forces of unification necessary for social order under capitalism have had to be largely generated by the continuous waging of easy and successful foreign wars.[29]

The problem now, in the twentieth century, was that the “easy wars” had gone the way of the frontier land boom and the frontier-filling population boom; their era was over.

With gusto, Dennis presented tabulations of the wars and military interventions of the three great capitalist democracies in the century and a half up to and including the 1920s. His summaries of these tabulations were meant to lend weight to his premises and conclusions—and to make the reader pause upon hearing any such phrase as “the peace-loving democracies.” England: “54 wars, lasting 102 years, or 68 per cent of the time.” France: “53 wars lasting 99 years, or 66 per cent of the time.” America: “In 158 years there was warfare practically all of the time.”[30]

The end of the era of “easy wars,” which came with the gobbling of the remaining easy marks on the world chessboard, completed the processes ending the “Capitalist Revolution.” The four great props of American capitalist democracy had finally all been knocked out: the frontier, industrialism-as-revolution, population growth, easy wars.

Without these props could American capitalist democracy survive? Dennis said that it could not, and he offered four possibilities as to what would happen to it:

(1) It could proceed in the old ways and under the old assumptions, perpetuating stagnation, massive unemployment, utter failure in every economic realm, and finally calling forth anarchistic chaos.

(2) It could succumb to an underclass proletarian revolution led by its own overclass of disaffected bourgeois out-elites, wiping out all forms of capitalism, and a lot of capitalists, in instituting the dictatorship of the intellectuals.

(3) It could be subsumed into an overall nationalistic, corporatist, and ethically collectivist state which would assume authoritarian directional control over, though not outright ownership of, much of the business apparatus and engage in necessary redistribution and reprioritization to end overproduction and unemployment, specifically via massive internal pyramid-building and social projects; this would be “socialism” in fact—whether its proponents or opponents wished to call it “fascism.”

(4) It could seek to prolong itself by the expedient “out” of war—which, now that there were no more “easy wars” to be had, would have to be a “hard” war, a really big show, the very staging of which, however, would necessitate to some significant degree the organizational and political steps mentioned in course number three.

Dennis favored the third course for America, but he saw the fourth as most likely. In late 1939 and early 1940, as he wrote, it was beginning to be put into effect. The new style of “hard” war had already been seen in the First World War, which originated in part in the clash of rival capitalist imperialisms. After that war, however, the emergence of revolutionary “socialist” regimes—whether Communist, Fascist, or Nazi—in the nations that walked out of the settlement of the war with status as Have-not countries brought forth a new possibility: that the next big war would not be one of clashing capitalisms, but a gang-up of the capitalist democracies (all in the same Depression boat, after all) against the “socialist” nations. That these “socialist” powers had their own grievances against the post-World War I democratic-imposed order, and were sufficiently dynamic and aggressive to do something about them, ensured that they could be held up to the democratic masses and democratic assemblies as violators of international “order” and “peace,” even of “civilization” itself; there would be no lack of “causes” of such a war, or rationales for it. The Have-not powers were dynamic indeed—as only nations unsated could be—and were not just redrawing European (and, in the case of Italy, colonial) borders, but smashing capitalism in Europe: reorganizing whole systems, redistributing wealth and authority, gaining autarchy and taking their nations out of the capitalistic “international systems” of trade and money. All this dynamism was in the name of nationalistic folk unities, “socialisms” in fact whatever the name, which had no further use for the subordination of national wills and destinies to private business or other interests.[31]

This is how Dennis saw the big war-in-the-making as of 1940, when Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini formed a vague (but no less significant for that) “socialist” camp, against which stood the plutocratic capitalist democracies of Europe, with the biggest plutocratic capitalist democracy of all waiting in the wings fairly chafing to get in just as soon as that could be arranged. It would be another crusade, sold to the American herd in its favorite terms of world morality, but really a way for the Old Order at home—the order of a spent capitalism and a desperate democracy—to salvage itself by fighting the new revolution abroad:

The new revolution everywhere stands for redistribution and reorganization in line with the technological imperatives of the machine age. The cause of the Allies is that of counterrevolution. It upholds the status quo and opposes redistribution according to the indications of need, capacity for efficient utilization of resources and social convenience. It seeks to reverse in Europe the dominant trends, technological and political, of the past century and, more particularly, of the past two or three decades. The democracies have displayed their inability to utilize their resources in a way to end unemployment. But they now propose a crusade in the name of moral absolutes to prevent world-wide redistribution of raw materials and economic opportunities. The real issue before America may be stated as being one of achieving redistribution at home or fighting it abroad. The plutocracy that opposes redistribution at home is all for fighting it abroad. And the underprivileged masses who need redistribution in America are dumb enough to die fighting to prevent it abroad. The probabilities are that we shall have to come to the solution of the domestic problem of distribution through a futile crusade to prevent redistribution abroad. If it so happens, it will prove the final nail in the coffin of democracy in this country. And it should call for a terrible postwar vengeance on those responsible for this great tragedy of the American people.[32]

Regardless of whether they gained victory in the coming crusade or not and regardless of whether the victors took vengeance on the vanquished afterwards, American capitalism and its democracy were going to emerge from the struggle changed. The booms of war, and the war booms, were really the last tolls of the bell for the “Capitalist Revolution,” the 300-year product of frontiers that had been reached. The revolution that would follow might come by direction or indirection, be sudden or evolutionary—encompass at once or gradually all the changes in politico-social organization and direction that Dennis, for one, found desirable, or not. But definitely a revolution was in the making, and historians would eventually understand the outcome of this war, like its genesis, as differing profoundly from those of other wars when capitalism was in its prime. The post-capitalist era—no matter that many and even important vestiges of capitalism might remain for a long time yet—had arrived, and it would entail tremendous changes, in the realm of economics specifically, but extending into many other realms as well. It would and could mean, above all, the obliteration of the distinctions between public and private. For Lawrence Dennis, this was not undesirable or dangerous of itself –so long as it amounted to a melding basically in favor of the interests of the public. The specter against which he warned and fought by his words, and after the war saw as happening in fact, was that of this new reality being joined, out of the desperate efforts of capitalist democracy to prolong itself, by obliteration of the distinctions between the national and the international, and ultimately between war and peace. Could American capitalism, after a Second World War, really afford real peace? Could it face “honestly”—or, indeed, with any hope of success—such huge postwar problems as deflationary debt reduction, flooding of the available labor market, loss of political unity at home, of a “them” abroad, saturation of the home markets, massive reconversion of industry, and many others? Or would it continue to side-step its endemic problems via the classic “out” of war—even war that was not really war in the old sense (but not peace in any sense either)? A “cold” war would make up what it lacked in compressed intensity by occasional flashes of action around the globe, a global military spread-eagle in constant preparation for real conflict, a global political and economic presence as excuses for such conflict, and a very long life—perhaps limitlessly long.

Charles A. Beard, sardonically and bitterly describing in 1948 the practical consequences of the Roosevelt-Truman foreign policies as those policies became a “consensus” through the vaunted spirit of “bipartisanship,” said that America was now engaged in the pursuit of “perpetual war for perpetual peace.”[33] Dennis agreed with that, and would use the phrase (which gained wide currency as the title of a revisionist study of Roosevelt diplomacy) himself occasionally. Had it been up to him to coin it, he might have put it this way: perpetual war to stimulate production, soak up unemployment, create markets, and rally ‘round the people. Or, more briefly: perpetual war as substitute for the lost capitalist frontier.

Some Appraisals of Dennis

It took about a decade after World War II for Dennis to be considered once again in intellectual rather than polemical terms relating to the issues of the war. In considering radical political currents in his 1955 book American Political Thought,[34] political scientist Alan Pendleton Grimes treated “American Fascism: Lawrence Dennis” as an ideology and its spokesman called forth by the Depression. Grimes focused on Dennis’s identification of capitalism with democracy not only in historical parallel but in contemporary reality. Unlike the populist and progressive reformers, who tended to see capitalism (at least the “bad” capitalism practiced by the robber barons and trust spinners and holding-company pyramiders) as conflicting with or even antithetical to democracy, Dennis held that they went hand-in-hand. As an elitist, he wished to smash both, not reform either. In Grimes’s view, the major burden of Dennis’s fascist criticism actually fell not upon democracy but upon laissez-faire capitalism; democracy was criticized because it permitted the follies of capitalism, of private business leadership. The motivations of this business leadership, being purely selfish and directed toward the satisfaction of greed, were bound to conflict with the normal requirements of social development and order. With the passing of the frontier and opportunities for a kind of social-spiritual growth alongside business growth, the inherent conflict between society and business came out into the open and would have to be resolved one way or another. The era of the frontier, of America’s “militant nationalism” that allowed for a mass spiritual and non-commercial, even communitarian, impulse in expansionism to exist alongside mere business greed, had given way to mass atomism in a society now totally dominated by business greed (and made to suffer for business stupidity). Laissez-faire economic liberalism in theory and political democracy as it was put into practice were not equipped to handle the situation; therefore they had to be replaced.

Grimes considers Dennis’s critique of capitalist-democratic society to resemble Thomas Hobbes’s view of the state of nature: a war of all against all, of parts against parts and the whole. The laissez-faire system by which the state, the supposed guarantor of the public good, did not intervene in these struggles—or intervened occasionally only because some interest group had temporarily succeeded in gaining leverage within the state to the disadvantage of other groups—was plainly irrational. Moreover, this state-sanctioned chaos was carried on under an ethical umbrella of the highest fraud and hypocrisy, namely that of the legal system. This system promised “a government of laws and not of men.” For Dennis, this notion was pure fiction. Belief in it led to false hopes that “the peoples’ will” could ever be expressed through it and ignored the fact that the interpretation and administration of laws, not laws themselves, were what counted. At any time “the law” would and could mean only just what those elites in control of its application wanted it to mean. In America, and throughout American history, the elites in power were generally the capitalists and their partisans; the “independent” judiciary in a government of “separation of powers” was a myth. Also mythical was the notion of “freedom” as existing within the law—freedom, that is, as the natural condition in the absence of governmental restraint. Force and coercion were omnipresent, and it made little difference to those coerced whether force was applied by the government or by the “free” market. If, for instance, a person seeking work found no jobs as a result of decisions by private capitalists, then he was as coerced into unemployment as if there were a law against employment. Grimes quotes Dennis: “The much vaunted freedom of modern capitalism is largely a matter of the freedom of property owners from social responsibility for the consequences of their economic decisions.”

Grimes devoted about the last half of his sub-chapter on Dennis to discussing his more purely politico-philosophical ideas on elite rule, outside any economic context. That Grimes began his consideration of Dennis with the capitalist-democratic linkage demonstrates his awareness of the importance of economics in the genesis of his subject’s thought. His 1955 treatment represented the first step on the way to taking Dennis as seriously as book reviewers had once done, before the advent of war and “sedition.”

Grimes’s fellow political scientist David Spitz, in the considerable sub-chapter on Dennis in his Patterns of Anti-Democratic-Thought,[35] also took his subject seriously. But Spitz made no mention whatever of the anti-capitalist element in Dennis’s political thought and concentrated instead on his general theory of “The Elite as Power.” This exclusion is not to be criticized, since Spitz’s book deals only with political theory. But his criticisms of Dennis would have been more nearly complete if they had treated the real-world practical underpinnings, as Dennis saw and interpreted them, of that theory. Dennis’s views of economics and his economic analysis lay in the category, and to treat Dennis’s theory of the elite without discussing his extended critique of a real, historical elite-in-power—America’s capitalist elite—is to deny the analysis a significant part of its rationale. Spitz, at any rate and after a lengthy study of Dennis’s political theory, rejects it even though he grants the possible truth of its premise, that elites always rule. They may, says Spitz, but Dennis was wrong in supposing that this is necessarily incompatible with democracy, that the elite must always be an irresponsible elite.

For Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., writing in 1960, Lawrence Dennis “brought to the advocacy of fascism powers of intelligence and style which always threatened to bring him (but never quite succeeded) into the main tent.” Schlesinger devoted five pages to Dennis in the third volume of his The Age of Roosevelt, in a chapter on “The Theology of Ferment” that discusses various radical stirrings and personalities, left and right, thrown into some prominence during the Depression.[36] After considering the “literary fascists” Seward Collins and Ezra Pound, who were “figures in a sideshow, without significance in American politics,” Schlesinger turned to Dennis as the one fascist thinker who did possess real potential significance. Obviously admiring and noting Dennis’s Is Capitalism Doomed? as a “closely argued” attack on investment banking policies, Schlesinger nevertheless found beneath Dennis’s pose of cold realism notes of “romantic desperation,”[37] and he quoted a lengthy statement of Dennis from an unidentified private letter: “I am prepared to take my medicine in the bread line, the foreign legion, or with a pistol shot in the mouth. . . . I should like nothing better than to be a leader or a follower of a Hitler who would crush and destroy many now in power. It is my turn of fate now to suffer. It may some day be theirs.”[38]

Turning to The Coming American Fascism, Schlesinger noted the ease with which Dennis assumed that a variety of fascism could come to power and be successful in the United States: big business organization as well as the ingrained docility, standardization, and regimentation of the American people, who were already the world’s biggest suckers for advertising, propaganda of all kinds, and press and radio domination, made no other country “better prepared for political and social standardization.” As for their traditions of and a supposed passion for “freedom,” 90 per cent of the American people had no grasp “whatever” even of what their own ideological system was supposed to be all about. Therefore, according to Dennis, “A fascist dictatorship can be set up by a demagogue in the name of all the catchwords of the present system.”[39] Schlesinger went into some detail about the various particulars of Dennis’s vision of a fascist America. As to what and who could realize that vision and make the revolution, he considered the importance of Dennis’s idea of “the elite.” Here Schlesinger noted that Dennis was sometimes vague, sometimes contradictory, about just who constituted the fascist “elite” or, precisely, the latent fascist “out-elite” that desired power.[40] But there was little doubt as to the constitution of the particular societal group or class on whose behalf the elite would be working: the revolutionary dynamic would come from the “frustrated elite of the lower middle classes” who were threatened with being “declassed.”[41] Schlesinger took Dennis at his word when the latter said that he harbored no personal political ambitions, but he saw in him (and supposed that Dennis saw in himself) the qualities of a Goebbels, of a very smart brain-trust man who could serve a real fascist demagogue in justifying a revolution:

His style was clever, glib, and trenchant. His analysis cut through sentimental idealism with healthy effect. He tried to shift attention from words and symbols to the realities of power. His ‘realistic’ writing, for all its flashing and vulgar quality, had an analytic sharpness which made it more arresting than any of the conservative and most of the liberal political thought of the day.[42]

But a truly influential fascist demagogue never developed in America (Huey Long, for whom Dennis expressed admiration as “. . . smarter than Hitler, but he needs a good braintrust,”[43] might have become one), and Dennis was left to conjure intellectual rationales for an American fascism that existed more in the world of myth and wish. “Goebbels, after all, had a government to transform dreams into reality, and Dennis, only the Harvard Club,” Schlesinger wrote.[44] As for the existing reality of American fascist activists, who were of the mentality to agree with him without necessarily being able to comprehend him, Dennis had “progressively to lower his sights” in order to reach them. Seeing himself as “the sophisticated spokesman of a revolutionary elite in a technological epoch,” Dennis, like Seward Collins, found to his chagrin that the “elite which was to save civilization eventually turned out to be a collection of stumblebums and psychopaths, united primarily by an obsessive fear of an imaginary Jewish conspiracy. What began as an intimation of the apocalypse ended as squalid farce.”[45]

In his 1967 memoir Infidel in the Temple,[46] journalist and commentator Matthew Josephson reflected for a few pages on his acquaintanceship with Dennis in the 1930s. Josephson was already familiar with Dennis’s testimony in the 1932 Senate banking investigations and his arguments in Is Capitalism Doomed?, and having heard that Dennis was one of a number of pro-fascist intellectuals who regarded Huey Long as the potential Duce of an American fascism, he sought Dennis out in the Harvard Club for an interview, which his memoir largely sticks to recounting. “Trenchant in speech and as vivacious as I had been led to expect,” Dennis launched into a candid and freewheeling discussion of his beliefs and their origins. Quoting Dennis (apparently from notes), Josephson lays out some gems of provocation:

I have a very low opinion of bankers. If only they weren’t so smug, so full of their pieties! . . . business can’t recover; we are going over a cliff into a terrible inflation, in one year. . . . But Mrs. Roosevelt, Miss Perkins, and the other New Deal advisors look on the U.S.A. as an interesting settlement-house proposition with which intellectual ladies and college professors can divert themselves at the public expense! The New Deal is only a huge muddle—and yet the old trading class, the bankers, the merchants, the politicians, and labor leaders are still in the saddle. . . . It just can’t go on. I tell you, the future is to the extremists. . .   But here [the communists] haven’t a ghost of a chance. The working class—bah! The proletariat rise? Not on your life—it isn’t in the beast. The American worker won’t even fight for his class. What this country needs is a radical movement that talks American. Our workers not only don’t ‘get’ Marx, they can’t even lift him.[47]

Dennis—as recalled by Josephson–goes on: only the frustrated middle classes will fight for power; the moneyed people, ultimately facing the perceived threat of socialism or communism, will finally come around in support of fascism as the only alternative: “After all, fascism calls for a nationalist revolution that leaves property owners in the same social status as before, though it forbids them to do entirely as they please with their property. Then, instead of destroying existent skills as would a communist rising, the corporative state would preserve the elite of experts and managers, the people who understand production and can keep the system running.”[48]

As frankly as he advocated fascism, however, Dennis would have no truck with brawling native-fascists of the “shirt”-movement level, nor with religious bigotry or race hatred, in which he was plainly not interested. Rather, he considered his mission as purely one of education and propagandizing to the frustrated middle class out-elite, which will be the real vehicle for American fascism.

On the subject of Huey Long, Dennis noted that “Long reads my stuff” and had asked his help in writing a book on the redistribution of wealth. As Josephson also recounted, after they had finished their conversation, as Dennis was leaving the Harvard Club, he was accosted by an elderly member who exclaimed, “Yes, we all have to stand together and fight for the liberties won by our forefathers who developed the frontier!” Dennis’s polite but brusque reply was, “Remember Mr.——, the frontier is finished; liberty is a dead issue.”[49]

Josephson concluded at the time, and was of the same mind in 1967, that Dennis was brilliant but flawed in his obsession with issues of pure power and manipulation: “An odd and clever fellow was Dennis, but with great gaps on the human side.”[50]

Justus D. Doenecke, a historian of American isolationism and right-wing movements, broke the exclusion of Dennis from consideration in scholarly literature with his 1972 article on Dennis as a “cold war revisionist.”[52] Interested in how the pre-Pearl Harbor isolationists reacted—in different ways—to the cold war, Doenecke concluded that Dennis was a prime example of an isolationist who was consistent in his opposition to American involvements abroad; only Dennis, through his weekly, The Appeal to Reason, “offered a scathing attack upon the entire range of American Cold War policy.”[52]

Doenecke gave careful attention to Dennis’s economic ideas as central to the development of his later positions. After reviewing the arguments of Is Capitalism Doomed?, The Coming American Fascism, and The Dynamics of War and Revolution as to the rise, fall, and inevitable replacement of capitalism by a collectivist political structure, Doenecke noted the similarity at first glance of these to the Marxist critique of capitalism. Yet “the thrust of Dennis’s logic was far from Marxist; there were strong differences.”[53] For one, his “socialism” was not at all utopian, and saw no possibility for a truly “classless” society ever: there would always be leaders and led, and contests would only be over which elites would rule, not whether elites would rule. Under “socialism,” the proletariat would never rule itself but would have to be led by a managerial elite of technicians and experts.[54] (Doenecke might have noted here Dennis’s brand of egalitarianism: his “socialism” would guarantee that anyone with the requisite ability, no matter from what “class,” might join this “managerial elite” without traditional economic or social interferences standing in the way.)

Dennis further dissented from Marx and Marxism in rejecting the notions that the entire capitalist old order of business enterprise should be overthrown in violent revolution and that even if a “world socialist” order should entirely and universally displace capitalism, universal peace would result: “socialist” nations would inevitably fight among themselves, just as capitalist nations do. In Dennis’s critique of the cold war, which stressed the futility of America’s grasp after hegemony in both the world economic marketplace and the marketplace of ideas Doenecke found an early precursor of “New Left” revisionist historians William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, and Lloyd C. Gardner. Dennis also anticipated the “Red Fascism” thesis of other historians, noting the ease with which “Everything [the interventionist Establishment] said against Hitler can be repeated against Stalin and Russia.”[55]

The first issue of The Appeal to Reason appeared the same week as Churchill’s Fulton, Missouri, “iron curtain” speech; right then Dennis was warning that further American intervention in the world, this time to stop communist sin instead of fascist sin, would result only in the spread of communism—and the intensification of the very domestic “statism” that the conservative cold warriors deplored. At a time—Mao Tse-tung’s march to power in China—when conservatives were seeing communism as a world monolith directed from Moscow, Dennis predicted that rifts would develop in any concert of communist nations, the most important being in the Far East, where existed “nearly a billion people who could never be made puppets of the Slavs, even though they all turn communist.”

Dennis stressed the importance of economic “open door” concerns in the formulation and implementation of the Truman Doctrine, which was designed in part, in the Middle East, to protect Standard Oil interests. Overall, the doctrine served America (which refused to import as much as she exported) as a substitute for the huge foreign loans that Wall Street made in the 1920s in its market-expansion thrusts. “We shall have,” wrote Dennis in 1947, “a limitless market for American farm products, manufactures, and cannon fodder.”[56]

Doenecke continued with an exposition—taken mainly from issues of The Appeal to Reason—of Dennis’s lines on the further development of the cold war, the domestic red-hunting hysteria (he was against it, and held that “Any spy dumb enough to get caught by our F.B.I. is a good riddance for the reds”[57]), the emergence of the Third World as a force in global affairs, and the signs of a gradual “convergence” of both the capitalist U.S.A. and communist Russia (both becoming technocratic, managerial welfare states with planned economies and controlled currencies). With the Vietnam debacle, America’s time had finally come after a “long and brilliant record of success” in empire-building; it was “the beginning of the end of American intervention and overseas imperialism.” Dennis saw his own long record of warnings and observations unfortunately vindicated—by the disastrous turns for America in the world at large.

Dennis’s early and ongoing critique of the cold war demonstrated the consistency of his economic thought from its earliest expositions. He saw the cold war as propping up a capitalism that continued to decline; massive foreign aid, a massive and permanent scale of military production, and a space race were the substitutes that American capitalism concocted to replace the lost frontier. The inflation attendant to all this, whether at higher or lower rates, prevented another crash, and all the activity and spending kept unemployment at acceptable levels. And there was no such thing as significant overproduction in a global cold war, with its “limitless” needs for products both commercial—as allures for prospective “allies”—and military, if those allures didn’t work. The cold war was therefore functional for America—but at a terrific cost and risk. The professed international moral aims of the struggle would not be achieved, and the survival of civilization or of life itself was what was at stake in the great big game.[58]

Rounding off his treatment, Doenecke remarked on many points of prescience and diagnostic acuity in Dennis’s critique. He did criticize other points—notably, Dennis’s persistent faith in a managerial elite as fit to replace the old capitalist/democratic politicians’ elite. Dennis’s analysis “possessed a double-edged sword. The very bureaucratic elite which, in his eyes, should muffle the crusading ardor of the warriors could also be the repository of the mindless dogmatism he so often mourned in the masses. If anything, he overstressed the reasonableness of the new managerial system . . .”[59]) Ultimately, Doenecke was interested in Dennis’s place in intellectual history, and here he saw Dennis as a man before his time, a prophet still basically unrecognized: “He caught the relationship between frontiers and markets at least twenty years before the ‘Wisconsin School’ of diplomatic history was born.”[60] But Dennis’s post-World War II political and intellectual exile may well have contributed to the sharpness of his exposition: cranking out a mimeographed newsletter from his garage, subject to no advertising or editorial or academic pressures whatever, he could say what he pleased. Since that time more people, whether directly influenced by him or not, have been pleased to say it.

Historian Ronald Radosh paralleled much of Doenecke’s approach in the first of two chapters devoted to Dennis in his Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism[61] (The other “prophets” are Charles A. Beard, Oswald Garrison Villard, Robert A. Taft, and John T. Flynn.) The first chapter covers Dennis as “America’s Dissident Fascist” and reviews his 1930s and early 1940s positions and what happened to him during the war from taking them; the treatment of the sedition trial is more thorough than in any others’ discussions of Dennis. Noteworthy also in this regard was Radosh’s consideration at length of the reaction to Dennis’s mature anti-capitalism (as expressed in The Dynamics of War and Revolution) by American communist intellectuals, who took him very seriously indeed. These, while arguing that Dennis’s prescribed fascism would only amount to reactionary state capitalism and repression of the workers, nevertheless could find a lot of truth in his critique of old-style liberal capitalism and the follies of democracy; Dennis’s criticisms were deemed unanswerable by conventional liberalism or conservatism.

Radosh’s second chapter on Dennis considers him as “Laissez-Faire Critic of the Cold War.” There is a problem with that heading, which comes out in the chapter: Radosh states that Dennis after World War II “returned” to laissez-faire economic theory and developed a “persistent laissez-fairism.”[62] The problem with this is that it isn’t true—certainly not in the sense of the accepted understanding of laissez-faire, which is apparently just the sense Radosh means. He quotes only one statement (from an issue of The Appeal to Reason) directly to justify this statement: Dennis hearkens to an age when “the dissenters, the rebels and the nonconformists” for reasons of “religious or intellectual self-expression, freedom and independence” shared the capitalist dynamic with the men of pure greed. Out of this and a few other statements (where Dennis described the current military-industrial complex, which he was very much against, as “socialist” or “totalitarian socialist”), Radosh tries to build a case that Dennis not only gave up fascism but turned into a classical economic liberal.[63] The truth is that Lawrence Dennis turned into a classical economic liberal about to the same extent that Ludwig von Mises turned into a Marxist. Had Radosh accomplished a thorough reading of Operational Thinking for Survival, Dennis’s 1969 summa that capped his postwar thinking (Radosh mentions this book only once, in a footnote on the next-to-last page of his chapter) he would have thought at least twice about presenting any picture of a “laissez-faire” Dennis. (Particularly he might have absorbed Dennis’s appendix chapter, “Is the ‘New Economics’ a Success or a Failure?,” wherein laissez-fairists are politely ridiculed.) Dennis’s newsletter statement of admiration for the old-fashioned, small-scale entrepreneurial capitalism of “the dissenters, the rebels and the nonconformists,” to which Radosh qives so much weight as signifying an intellectual turn-around, is actually nothing new or remarkable at all in the body of Dennis’s thought. Dennis was saying the same sort of thing—about the “spiritual” or non-economic components of economic and other activity during the heyday of the “Capitalist Revolution” in America—when he was pleasing leftists with his early slashing attacks on American business enterprise, and later when he was proclaiming his fascism. Radosh would have done well to consider, as Alan Pendleton Grimes did twenty years earlier, the discreet dichotomy Dennis had always made between “independent” entrepenurial capitalism and “big” or monopolistic business: the former could be driven by all sorts of motives (such as those Dennis named in the statement quoted by Radosh), the latter was likely to be driven by pure private greed—but in America’s frontier era the drives of both could and did complement each other, combining to fulfill a broad social purpose in developing and defining the young national consciousness and shaping the nation’s physical order of affairs as well. Dennis’s point was that with the passing of the frontier such a condition no longer held; the social/spiritual dynamism of American “frontier men” pursuing personal or national glory had been replaced by an all-pervasive business dynamism pursuing only bottom-lines. There was no replacement for the frontier, and the era of laissez-faire as socially and nationally utilitarian and beneficial was gone and not going to come back.

Thus Radosh, in stating that Dennis “returned” in his thought to laissez-faire and became a laissez-fairist, not only fundamentally misread Dennis’s position (an error he could easily have avoided by examining Dennis’s last book) but goes wrong also on the notion of “return” both with respect to Dennis personally (he couldn’t “return” to a position he’d never in fact held) and with respect to the larger analysis: Dennis’s very point, an abiding one that informed his works from the first to the last, was that to the laissez-faire era for America there could be no return.

Radosh similarly misread the statements of Dennis as to the “socialist” character of the American military-industrial economy in the cold war.[64] He seems to take it that here Dennis was criticizing and deploring this “socialism” itself, rather than merely: (a) criticizing the roots and uses of this development in worldwide interventionism, and (b) exposing the fraud and hypocrisy of a system that still claimed it was “free enterprise,” but was actually going “socialist” in order to—fight and contain socialism! Dennis had a taste for ironic expression in his writing, often amounting to sarcasm, and one of his favorite argumentative devices in challenging opponents was to measure up and consider their actions, or the results of their policies, not on his but on their own professed terms, finding these wanting on precisely those terms—even antithetical to those terms. This is what he did in treating a cold war American big business and political establishment that boomed its devotion to the American free-enterprise way while doing its best, in the cause of a world struggle against opponents of that way, to side-step it at home in enjoyment of a perpetual business-government subsidized partnership. The exposure of hypocrisy and the deploring of its internationalist ends were the points of Dennis’s attack on this “socialism,” which was not an attack on “socialism” or government-business partnership per se, a subtlety which seems to have escaped Radosh.

Radosh therefore fails in his attempt to revise Dennis into a born-again laissez-fairist, a revision that would entail the considerable job of proving that Dennis could throw over a main tenet of decades of his thought rather lightly and apparently without even realizing that he was doing so. It would also entail explaining how it could be that other recent commentators on Dennis, including Justus Doenecke—in Radosh’s words, the one who has “led the way in the re-evaluation of Lawrence Dennis”[65]—somehow missed this side of their subject entirely.

Yet aside from the failure of its thesis, Radosh’s chapter is not bad at all. In fact the thesis, even though appearing in the chapter title, is not really central to much of the presentation, which is the most extensive purely expository discussion yet of Dennis’s criticisms of the cold war. Radosh’s problem lies just in his too-quick readiness to label Dennis “as” something in familiar ideological terms—and the problem, in fact, is not peculiar in this book to the treatment of Dennis.[66] At any rate, and in judgments with which there can be no quarrel, Radosh ultimately finds Dennis “our earliest and most consistent critic of the Cold War,” and the one who, years before William Appleman Williams,[67] first took the Turnerian “frontier thesis” and applied it to the relationships between politics, ideology, and economics in analyzing America’s new activist role in world affairs.

* * *

Justus Doenecke wrote in 1972 that “a full-length biography is very much needed” of Lawrence Dennis.[68] In 2001 that is still true, and the really notable thing about the monographical treatments of Dennis that have appeared since 1972, by Doenecke himself and others, is that they remain so few for one who made a considerable intellectual and political impact in his time, reflected in the printed record of that time. Even on the small scale of a monograph, there has been no attempt yet at an equal, synthetic treatment of all of Dennis’s lines of thought, toward the end of a unified, summary appraisal; instead there have been treatments devoted to particular areas. His economic thought has tended to be obscured in these treatments. Certainly any biographer of Dennis would have to be well-versed in economics and economic history, in order both to understand and to criticize his subject’s ideas.

It is indeed past time for a major critique of all those ideas. Dennis covered a great deal of ground in his prolific and variegated career as an intellectual observer of his time, a period of tremendous political, social, and economic disruption and change in this country and the world. His record was a long and interesting one: State Department official in the thick of an early “Third World” revolution, banking official at the onset of economic collapse, Depression critic of capitalism, proponent of fascism, opponent of World War II intervention, key figure in one of the major civil liberties and freedom-of-speech legal cases of our time, analyst of the cold war and of the “new style” of American big-business/big-government partnership. Nor was his role merely as an observer and critic. His political impact is undeniable, even if it was mainly limited to the period of the New Deal and the New Deal’s war and even if it was not because of his impact on policy but on what could be called “anti-policy” that he was held up by policy makers and supporters of the New Deal as an adversary against whose potential influence the public had to be warned, and finally as an actual danger who had, if possible, to be silenced by law. It is as just such an “anti-” figure that he is mainly remembered when he is remembered at all. This is probably appropriate, because Lawrence Dennis never won.

That at least some of what he had to say might nevertheless have warranted serious consideration by policy makers has been a possibility openly admitted by scholars only rather recently. Still, all those who have considered him over the years, whether polemical opponents of the 1930s and ’40s or detached scholars of the 1970s and later, have shared an appreciation of him to this degree: America in the twentieth century had no more articulate and challenging an opponent of liberalism, political and economic, than Lawrence Dennis. What makes him all the more intriguing is that his challenge was to liberalism both in its older “classical” form as well as in its modern guise—that is, a challenge to both the alternately reigning conservatism and liberalism of his and our time.

Notes

1. James Burnham has actually been targeted most conspicuously as one who engaged in heavy “intellectual borrowing”–of the unattributed kind. Political scientist David Spitz has convincingly demonstrated Burnham’s intellectual indebtedness to Lawrence Dennis’s prior published writings both in key concepts and even phraseology. See David Spitz, Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thought, (rev. ed.; New York: Free Press, 1965), p. 300, n. 17, and pp. 308-309, n. 36, the latter presenting a concept-by-concept and page-by-page comparison. Max Nomad in Aspects of Revolt, p. 15, n. 3, claimed that Burnham took the idea of the “managerial revolution” from the discussions of turn-of-the-century Polish revolutionist Waclaw Machajski’s ideas in Nomad’s 1932 Rebels and Renegades and 1939 Apostles of Revolution; Burnham was “an author who gave no credit to his predecessors. He was a teacher of ethics.” Bruno Rizzi and others accused Burnham of having plagiarized from Rizzi’s (as “Bruno R.”) La Bureaucratisation du Monde (Paris: privately published, 1939), a work that figured importantly in the Trotskyite doctrinal controversies of 1939-40, in order to write The Managerial Revolution; see Adam Westoby, “Introduction,” pp. 23-26, in Bruno Rizzi, The Bureaucratization of the World (New York: Free Press, 1985). [See also Samuel Francis, James Burnham (London: Claridge Press, 1999), 26-27, for refutation of the charges of plagiarism by Burnham—SF.]

2. Lawrence Dennis, Is Capitalism Doomed? A Challenge to Economic Leadership (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932).

3. The most systematic exposition is in Adolf A. Berle, Power Without Property: A New Development in American Political Economy (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959), but the idea was heralded in Berle’s famous work with Gardiner C. Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (New York: Macmillan, 1933), and finally refined in Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969). Dennis and Berle could by no means agree on much other than that control in corporations was rapidly passing from entrepreneur-owners to technician-managers; see Berle’s “cheerleader” approach to American business enterprise in The Twentieth Century Capitalist Revolution (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1954) and The American Economic Republic (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965) and compare with Dennis’s “coroner” approach in all his works.

4. Max Nomad, Rebels and Renegades (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1968; first published 1932), Apostles of Revolution (New York: Collier Books, 1961; first published 1939), Aspects of Revolt (New York: Bookman Associates, 1959), and Political Heretics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963).

5. James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution (New York: John Day, 1941) coined a phrase. He provided a summary statement in “The Theory of the Managerial Revolution,” Partisan Review, VIII (1941), pp. 181-97; early surfacings of the theory as it arose out of Burnham’s polemical doctrinal battles in the Trotskyite Fourth International were in his “Science and Style: A Reply to Comrade Trotsky” (1940) and “Letter of Resignation of James Burnham from the Workers Party” (1940), both in Leon Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1976). A balanced study of Burnham’s entire range of thought is Samuel T. Francis, Power and History: The Political Thought of James Burnham (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984). For a historical and analytical overview of the business applications of the concept associated with Burnham’s name, see Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).

6. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1949) and Animal Farm (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1946) present these contentions in the form of novels. Interesting in the present context is Orwell’s view of Burnham, given in “James Burnham and ‘The Managerial Revolution’” and “Burnham’s View of the Contemporary World Struggle,” both in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds., The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. IV: In Front of Your Nose, 1945-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), pp. 160-81 and 313-26. A brilliant relation of Orwell’s war-for-domestic-consumption theme to the real world of the 1950s is Harry Elmer Barnes, “How ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ Trends Threaten American Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity,” written in 1953 but published for the first time 27 years later in Barnes, Revisionism: A Key to Peace, and Other Essays (San Francisco: Cato Institute, 1980, Cato Paper No. 121), pp. 137-76.

7. Beard’s formal statements of these views appeared in two books he wrote in collaboration with George H.E. Smith, The Idea of National Interest (New York: Macmillan, 1934) and The Open Door at Home (New York: Macmillan, 1934). They resurfaced with vigor in his Giddy Minds and Foreign Quarrels (New York: Macmillan, 1939) and A Foreign Policy for America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940).

8. Keynes’s grand statement, of course, is his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (London: Macmillan, 1936), in which he propounded at full length his umbrella-idea of aggregate production. An earlier version of his critique of classical economics is in his pamphlet, The End of Laissez Faire (London: Hogarth Press, 1926). The literature on Keynes is vast. Good starting-points are Robert Lekachman, The Age of Keynes (New York: Random House, 1966) and, ed., Keynes’ General Theory: Reports of Three Decades (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964).

9. Norman Thomas, reviewing Dennis’s Is Capitalism Doomed? in World Tomorrow, XV (June, 1932), 186, wrote, “Nowhere have I ever seen a more slashing attack upon the bankers’ notion of international finance. From a socialist point of view Mr. Dennis overlooks or seems to overlook factors of great importance, but the factors that he does examine he deals with most trenchantly . . . In spite of this criticism I want heartily to recommend Mr. Dennis’s book. The convinced socialist will find more ammunition in it than in most radical books.” British Marxist John Strachey, referring to the same book in his The Coming Struggle for Power (New York: Modern Library, 1935), pp. 158-59, called Dennis “admirably realistic when he is showing the fatal contradictions inherent in large-scale capitalism . . . [he] has written a far more penetrating analysis of the crises [of capitalism] than has been achieved by any professional capitalist economist.” Dennis wrote a largely favorable review of Strachey’s book when it first appeared; see Lawrence Dennis, “A Communistic Strachey,” Nation, March 8, 1933, pp. 264-65.

10. President Roosevelt, in his January 6, 1941 State of the Union speech to Congress, made a point of mentioning those who not only “with soundinq brass” but with “a tinkling bell” preached “the ism of appeasement.” The prior month he had unleashed Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to blast, by name, those constituting the “group of appeasers in the making.” Ickes announced in his speech at Columbia University on December 17, 1940 that Lawrence Dennis was “the brains of American Fascism.” This drew an acid public reply from Dennis: “The reality in America which comes nearest to Fascism is Mr. Ickes and the reality which comes next nearest is Mr. Roosevelt’s third term. I wrote a book about The Coming American Fascism and predicted that it would come through a war against Fascism. I have since repeatedly said that Mr. Roosevelt and his New Deal were the only significant Fascist trends in America. I have never belonged to or been connected with any movement or organization of a political character in my entire life.” See “‘The Ism of Appeasement’: Roosevelt Brands Foes of His Foreign Policy,” Life, January 20, 1941, pp. 26-27, and “M.K. Hart Demands That Ickes Recant; Lawrence Dennis Challenges Right to Attack Appeasers’ Character and Motives,” New York Times, December 19, 1940, 22.

11. Dennis and lawyer Maximilian St. George weighed in against the trial in their A Trial on Trial: The Great Sedition Trial of 1944 (Chicago: National Civil Rights Committee, 1946), a 503-page autopsy of one of the weirder federal prosecution cases in this country’s history. A belated apologia for the trial and final attempt to convict the defendants, this time in the less evidentiarily-stringent court of public opinion, was offered by chief prosecutor O. John Rogge in The Official German Report (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961), a most interesting title for a book that was neither “Official” nor “German” nor a “Report.” In the meantime Rogge had, a bare five years after his “mass sedition” extravaganza, offered Our Vanishing Civil Liberties (New York: Gaer Books, 1949), in which he expressed the most aggrieved and shocked concern over any such thing as governmental character assassination of dissidents and political show-trials for them; at the time he was acting as defense counsel for members of the Communist Party U.S.A. on trial for Smith Act violations. Those who were not overawed with Rogge’s record of consistency as an upholder of civil liberties and freedom of speech could and did point to him as epitomizing a new species in American intellectual life: the “totalitarian liberal,” who was perfectly capable of doing a 180° ethical flip-flop without any consciousness of having ruffled a principle. A particularly glaring flip-flop of the “totalitarian liberals” was from ardent support of (or acquiescence in) World War II efforts to shut up, lock up, or blacklist non-interventionists for whom the labels “seditionist” or “appeaser” were handy general smears, to ardent opposition to Cold War efforts to shut up, lock up, or blacklist accused communists—thus, ironically, making themselves susceptible to McCarthyite charges of “traitor” and “appeaser.” An interesting, somewhat gloating, analysis of this phenomenon was provided by historian Harry Elmer Barnes in his booklet The Chickens of the Interventionist Liberals Have Come Home to Roost: The Bitter Fruits of Globaloney (privately published, n.p., n.d [1954]). More recently, historian Leo Ribuffo has coined the term “Brown Scare” to suggest that the road to the “Red Scare” of the late 1940s and early 1950s was paved in part by liberals themselves in consequence of their prewar and wartime behavior. See his “Fascists, Nazis, and the American Mind: Perceptions and Preconceptions,” America Quarterly, XXVI, 4 (October 1974), 417-32, and The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the-Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983).

12. An idea of the freeze-out of Dennis from establishment channels of discussion after World War II may be had by comparing the lists of reviews of his prewar books with those of his postwar books, in the bibliography at the end of this essay. The Book Review Index, the Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals 1886-1974, and the Combined Retrospective Index to Book Reviews in Humanities Journals 1802-1974 list a grand total of zero reviews of A Trial on Trial, and one review of Dennis’ last book, Operational Thinking for Survival (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles Publisher, 1969). James J. Martin, the director of Ralph Myles Publisher, has confirmed to this writer that, although some 100 free review copies of Operational Thinking were sent out upon publication, only one review ever appeared—by Dennis’s old friend and ideological combatant Frederick L. Schuman, “Reflections of a Pragmatist,” Nation, December 8, 1969, 641-42.

13. “America’s No. 1 . . . ” and “Brain-truster . . .”: Life, January 20, 1941, 26-27. “The intellectual leader . . .”: Arthur S. Link and William B. Catton, American Epoch: A History of the United States, 1921-1945 (4th ed.; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), II, 18.

14. Biographical details are taken from the portrait of Dennis in Maxine Block, ed., Current Biography 1941 (New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1941), pp. 218-20, and from recollections of two of Dennis’s long-time friends, H. Keith Thompson and James J. Martin, given in conversations with this writer.

15. Lawrence Dennis, The Coming American Fascism (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936).

16. For Dennis’s early appraisal of the New Deal as basically directionless, see “The Planless Roosevelt Revolution,” American Mercury, XXXII (May 1934), 1-11.

17. Lawrence Dennis, The Dynamics of War and Revolution (New York: Weekly Foreign Letter, 1940), hereafter cited as Dennis, Dynamics. This book was scheduled to be published by Dennis’s regular publishers, Harper & Brothers, which had already printed it up and begun binding when, with the domestic intellectual repercussions of the fall of France in June 1940, the house got cold feet and backed out. Dennis then bought up the stock and issued the book under the imprint of his newsletter. This writer has seen, by courtesy of James J. Martin, one of the extremely rare copies of the book carrying the original Harper & Brothers imprint on binding and dust-jacket.

18. Justus D. Doenecke, “Lawrence Dennis: Revisionist of the Cold War,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, LV, 4 (Summer 1972), p. 277, n. 11, citing Dennis to Doenecke, January 27, 1971, givves these names as subscribers.

19. The author has, by courtesy of James J. Martin, examined the correspondence file between Dennis and Ralph Myles Publishers, whence this information comes.

20. Dennis, Dynamics, 67.

21. Ibid., 68-69.

22. Ibid., 71, quoting Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” delivered at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago in 1893.

23. Dennis, Dynamics, 60.

24. Ibid., 64.

25. Ibid., 61. Dennis was at his sardonic best in describing the essence of this hypocrisy: “Now if there is anything an orthodox economist abhors, it is monopoly. The economists spend most of their time trying to prove that monopoly is bad for business and businessmen spend most of their time trying to achieve monopoly or failing in business because they are unsuccessful in achieving it.”

26. Ibid., 77.

27. Confronted with the post-World War II population boom in America and throughout the world, Dennis would modify his emphasis if not his thesis; cf. Dennis, Dynamics, ch. 6, esp. pp. 88-101, with Operational Thinking for Survival, ch. 7, esp. pp. 47-58. In the former work he had not really considered “Third World” population trends; in the latter he did, and saw this part of the world as gaining in a potentially powerful dynamism from its procreative proclivities—while relative to it, in this respect, America and the West continued to decline.

28. Dennis, Dynamics, 94-95.

29. Ibid., 122-23.

30. Ibid., 104-108.

31. Dennis provided a concise, punchy statement of his view as to the “dynamic” and “revolutionary” qualities of the German-Italian-Russian “socialist” axis in his contribution, “The Party-State and the Elite,” pp. 39-41, to the symposium, “Who Owns the Future?” in the Nation, January 11, 1941, 36-44; the other contributors were Frederick L. Schuman and Max Lerner. This remarkable trialogue, which holds its interest and remains relevant to the discussion of principles of international relations even today, represented the last time any such dissident “fascist” views as Dennis’s would be granted a lengthy hearing in a major American intellectual journal.

32. Dennis, Dynamics, 216.

33. Beard used these words in his last conversation with his revisionist colleague Harry Elmer Barnes. See Barnes, ed., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and its Aftermath (Caldwell, Id.: Caxton Printers, 1953), p. viii.

34. Alan Pendleton Grimes, American Political Thought (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1955), 415-28.

35. Spitz, Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thought, 88-123.

36. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. III: The Politics of Upheaval (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), pp. 74-78.

37. Ibid., 74. Schlesinger is correct in noting a certain “romantic” element in Dennis’s thinking and expression. This cannot obscure, however, Dennis’s essential character as an analyst who repeatedly emphasized and demonstrated the rational, cool, realistic, and empirical as ways to approach problems under consideration. He may have “succumbed” to romantic flights on occasion, and his prose was never dull, but considering the body of his work there is little use in disputing the appellation given him by Boston publisher Porter Sargent: “that incorruptible realist.” By contrast, the other principal figure of American intellectual fascism, Francis Parker Yockey, 1917-1960, author of Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics (New York: The Truth Seeker, 1962), was a mystical romantic-of-romantics who tended not to argue a case, as Dennis did, but to state it and dispense with justification. Both men—they apparently never met—were highly intelligent and educated, wrote works of undeniably vast learning, and were greatly influenced by Spengler. But their approaches to the same problems of history and society were markedly different in many key respects. Yockey was certainly the more “typically fascist.” A detailed comparison of their approaches would make an interesting study.

38. Ibid., 75.

39. Ibid., 76.

40. Ibid., 76-77.

41. Ibid., 77-78.

42. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 78.

43. Ibid., 77.

44. Ibid., 78.

45. Ibid.

46. Matthew Josephson, Infidel in the Temple: A Memoir of the Nineteen-Thirties (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 318-24.

47. Ibid., 320-21.

48. Ibid., 323.

49. Ibid., 324.

50. Ibid.

51. See Justin D. Doenecke, “Lawrence Dennis: Revisionist of the Cold War,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, LV, 4 (Summer 1972), 275-86, and also two other articles by the same author: “Lawrence Dennis: The Continuity of Isolationism,” Libertarian Analysis, I, 1 (Winter 1970), 38-65, and “The Isolationist as Collectivist: Lawrence Dennis and the Coming of World War II,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, III, 2 (Summer 1979), 191-207. There is also some discussion of Dennis in Doenecke’s Not to the Swift: The Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1979). That Dennis has been a figure of interest in libertarian intellectual circles is interesting, given that he was, to put it mildly, no libertarian. Such interest appears to derive principally from his record of anti-interventionism in matters of foreign affairs; there may also be something appealing in his basic iconoclasm. [For a more recent libertarian isolationist treatment of Dennis, see Justin Raimondo, “Tale of a ‘Seditionist’: The Story of Lawrence Dennis,” Chronicles, XXIV (May, 2000), 19-22.—SF]

52. Doenecke, Wisconsin Magazine of History, 275.

53. Ibid., 276.

54. Ibid., 276-77.

55. Ibid., 277-78.

56. Ibid., 278-79.

57. Ibid., 283.

58. Ibid., 285.

59. Ibid., 286.

60. Ibid.

61. Ronald Radosh, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975), 275-322.

62. Ibid., 299.

63. Ibid., 299-300.

64. See Ibid., 300, e.g.

65. Ibid., p. 281, n. 15.

66. Ibid., 283; Radosh’s book makes a tremendous contribution toward the explication and understanding of early anti-“consensus” views of the cold war and has deservedly attained the status of a minor classic. But there is something of a “Five Characters in Search of a Thesis” aspect to it—immediately noticeable in the title and sub-title themselves: the prophets were on the “right” and were “conservative” critics. Those designations might apply with little question to Robert A. Taft and John T. Flynn—but to Charles A. Beard, Oswald Garrison Villard, and Lawrence Dennis? The latter three would probably have a chuckle about it, and the last might threaten suit for slander, too.

67. See William Appleman Williams, “The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy,” in History as a Way of Learning (New York: New Viewpoints, 1974), pp. 137-57.

68. Justus D. Doenecke, The Literature of Isolationism: A Guide to Non-Interventionist Scholarship, 1930-1972 (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles Publisher, 1972), p. 40.

Source: The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1 (2001).

 

 

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Orbán gegen die Multikulti-Seuche

Ex: http://www.gegenargument.at

Der ungarische Regierungschef macht sich einmal mehr bei den Einwanderungsfetischisten keine Freunde. Wenig überraschend werden seine kritischen Worte zur Einwanderungspolitik in den EU-Staaten medial überhaupt nicht transportiert. Orbán kämpft gegen das Regime des Multikulturalismus und für ein Europa der Nationalstaaten. Was sollten die Zeitgeist-Schreibstuben schon großartig berichten? Der ihnen verhasste Viktor Orbán ist in ihren Augen schon viel zu lange an der Macht, außerdem sitzt er ein bisschen zu fest im Sattel. Warnende Rufe der Journalisten, wonach sich das Orbán’sche Denkmuster der eigenständigen Nationen und Völker noch schneller als es ohnehin bereits geschieht, ausbreite, erklären auch, weshalb dessen jüngste Aussagen keinen Widerhall in den Tageszeitungen finden.

Orbáns Kampfansage

Am 25. August 2014 hielt der Chef der ungarischen Regierung seine jährliche Ansprache vor den ungarischen Botschaftern in Budapest. Darin bestärkte er das, was er bereits beim EU-Gipfel in Ypern (Belgien) Ende Juni 2014 in eine gemeinsame Erklärung der Regierungschefs als Passus verankert wissen wollte, nämlich, dass die Einwanderung „falsch“ und EUropa aufgefordert sei, das Konzept Immigration „abzuschaffen“. Politische Reaktionen? Fehlanzeige!

Er gab den europäischen Kollegen zu verstehen, dass er klar gegen eine „zentrale, liberale Einwanderungspolitik“ in der EU auftreten werde. Orbán stellte fest, dass die „derzeitige liberale Einwanderungspolitik, die als moralisch gerechtfertigt und unvermeidlich dargestellt wird, heuchlerisch“ sei, griff damit Gutmenschen und Kapitalisten frontal an, und entfachte so eine Grundsatzdebatte.

In den Zeitungen und den einzelnen Parlamenten wird fortwährend genau das gepredigt, wogegen Orbán entschieden einschreitet: die nie enden wollende und als gottgegeben hingestellte Zuwanderung bei gleichzeitiger Aufgabe der eigenen, organischen Festigung und Stärkung des Volksbestandes.

Demographische Probleme selbst lösen!

Voller Überzeugung gibt Orbán zu verstehen, dass „Einwanderung keine Lösung für die demographischen Probleme in Europa“ darstelle und „die Geschichte gezeigt hat, dass nur die Nationen überleben, die sich biologisch selbst erhalten können“. Diese Worte lassen nichts an Klarheit vermissen; ungewöhnlich für einen Regierungschef.

Umso erfreulicher, dass er als Teil der Konservativen im europäischen Parlament (gemeinsam mit der CDU und der ÖVP) prononciert für Familie und Christentum auftritt. Davon können sich die deutschen Ableger gerne eine Scheibe abschneiden, die nur allzu gerne mit den Grünen und anderen progressiven Ungeistern gemeinsame Sache machen.

Feige Medien pakttreu mit den Bevölkerungsumwandlern

Das Ignorieren von Orbáns Aussagen in den Medien ist im Lichte der vergangenen EU-Wahl zu betrachten. Die seit Jahrzehnten in EUropa wütende Ideologie des Multikulturalismus hat Länder wie England oder Deutschland in multiethnische Mischpochen verwandelt. Eigentlich beheimatete Völker werden zusehends auch gewaltsam verdrängt, weswegen immer mehr Menschen gegen dieses Unrecht aufbegehren.

Rechte heimat- und volkstreue Parteien sind am Vormarsch. Genau das ist den Systemmedien freilich ein Dorn im Auge, haben sie sich doch gänzlich dem Multikulti-Diktat verschrieben. Zuwiderhandlung wird normalerweise mit bissigen Zeilen geahndet. Politisch-korrekte Maßregelungen gehen jedoch bei Volk und Leser immer öfter nach hinten los, weswegen der typische Agentur-Knecht – wie im vorliegenden Fall – einfach nur kleinmütig schweigt.

Derechos humanos como desvalor

Alberto Buela

Derechos humanos como desvalor

Alberto Buela y Silvio Maresca conductores de Disenso, retomaron el tema del programa Nº32 sobre "La desgracia de ser heterosexual" profundizando sobre los derechos humanos y su desvalorización.

Le yuan et la roupie soutiendront le rouble

Auteur : Konstantin Garibov

Ex: http://zejournal.mobi

Le gouvernement indien élabore un scénario du renoncement à l'utilisation du dollar et de l'euro dans les régements avec la Russie. Il est prévu d'utiliser très prochainement les roubles et les roupies dans les échanges commerciaux entre la Russie et l'Inde.

Les exportateurs indiens insistent sur cette solution. « Nous n'avons pas de temps pour une longue attente : la chute du rouble nuit aux exportations indiennes car les règlements se font en dollars ». C'est ce qu'a déclaré Adjai Sakhaï, directeur général de la Fédération des exportateurs indiens (FIEO). « Tous les règlements commerciaux peuvent être effectués en roupies », - affirme Adjai Sakhaï.

Les businessmen chinois proposent la même chose – de passer aux règlements en yuans. Andrei Ostrovski, expert de l'Institut de l'Extrême-Orient, croit que l'essentiel, ce n'est pas le rouble, mais la Russie.

« Les deux pays ont intérêt à développer les liens économiques et commerciaux avec elle. Il est de plus en plus difficile de le faire avec le dollar. Le cours du rouble a chuté. Alors, pour la Chine et pour l'Inde, les exportations deviennent problématiques. La Russie a intérêt à exporter, non à importer. Alors, l'Inde et la Chine ont du mal à poursuivre les exportations en Russie. Lorsque le cours du rouble baisse, il vaut mieux travailler avec la roupie et le yuan, puisque dans le cas des règlements en une autre monnaie, les exportateurs des produits en Russie subissent de grosses pertes. Cela amène à la majoration des prix de 10-15. »

Les propositions de renoncer aux dollars et euros dans les règlements avec la Russie ont été faites bien avant la chute du rouble. Les exportateurs indiens avaient des problèmes à cause de la baisse de demande de leurs produits aux Etats-Unis, de la récession industrielle au Japon et de la crise en Europe. Les exportateurs chinois connaissent, eux aussi, une baisse de demande sur les marchés étrangers. Alors, l'Inde et la Chine sont prêtes à soutenir le rouble, mais non sans intérêt pour elles-mêmes, croit Alexandre Salitski, l'expert de l'Institut IMEMO de l'Académie des Sciences de Russie.

« Ici, tout est assez simple. Les deux pays orientaux ont un intérêt à ce que leurs monnaies aient un statut international, régional. Les accords avec la Russie, y compris dans le cadre du BRICS, visent l'utilisation des monnaies nationales des trois pays dans les règlements entre les partenaires. A mesure que dans ces pays, certains secteurs de l'économie deviennent compétitifs à l'échelle globale, il est logique de passer à ce niveau dans les règlements. Seulement, ce n'est pas si simple et cela demande du temps. »

Le chef du Centre des études orientales de l'Académie diplomatique du MAE de Russie Andrei Volodine est certain que le renoncement au dollar dans les règlements est une tendance qui gagne du terrain.

Dans ce cas, le mécanisme est simple. Si les échanges commerciaux entre les économies émergeantes deviennent plus importants qu'avec les pays industrialisés, le dollar n'est plus nécessaire dans les règlements. Ce processus est lancé, il va croissant car plusieurs économies émergeantes souffrent à cause de l'utilisation de la monnaie américaine dans les règlements. Les accords de swap, c'est le premier moyen de passer aux règlements en monnaies nationales. L'Inde, la Chine, le Brésil commencent à les pratiquer.

Il y a un point important : malgré la chute du rouble, la Chine n'a pas demandé de corriger l'accod avec la Russie sur le swap yuan-rouble.

- Source : Konstantin Garibov

Walter Flex: Le pèlerin entre deux mondes

Walter Flex: Le pèlerin entre deux mondes

 

Un livre épuisé à télécharger!

 

Par une nuit de tempête sur le front de Lorraine en 1914, un étudiant, volontaire de guerre, griffonne les premiers vers de ce qui va devenir un des plus fameux chants d'Europe : "Les oies sauvages…" (devenu par les vicissitudes de l'histoire hymne du feu 1er REP). C'est également le début d'un des ouvrages allemands les plus populaires de la Première Guerre mondiale.

 

Dans le havresac des soldats, ce journal de guerre côtoie Nietzsche, Schopenhauer ou Löns. C'est que Le pèlerin entre deux mondes est un hymne passionné à l'esprit des Wandervögel (Oiseaux migrateurs), mouvement de jeunesse qui associe retour à la nature et sagesse... Que la guerre, puisqu'elle s'est imposée, serve de révélateur à cet art de vivre, annonce d'une nouvelle communauté qui doit émerger dans l'avenir.

 

Les appels presque mystiques au soleil et à l'esprit des forêts, la tendresse et la poésie qui baignent le récit de Walter Flex, les évocations d'un christianisme viril et d'un paganisme compatissant, l'absence de haine pour l'adversaire, le cri des oies sauvages deviennent autant d'échos des aspirations profondes du peuple. Contre les pesanteurs et les mensonges d'une société individualiste et mercantile, l'esprit Wandervogel développe une pédagogie de la libération et du respect (« Rester pur et devenir mûr »).

 

Dans l'édition française parue en 1996 aux éd. du Porte-Glaive, la présentation et la traduction de Philippe Marcq restituent sobrement la lumineuse poésie du texte original. L'introduction de Robert Steuckers, quant à elle, évoque parfaitement l'œuvre et le contexte spirituel d'un auteur inconnu en France et oublié en Allemagne.

Télécharger ici

Préface de Robert Steuckers:

http://robertsteuckers.blogspot.be/2011/12/walter-flex.html

L’identité contre les robots

La technique, comme la science, ne pense pas.

 

par Claude Bourrinet

Ex: http://www.bvoltaire.fr

La technique, comme la science, ne pense pas, nous apprend Heidegger. Encore que la bêtise ne soit pas en soi bête, comme nous verrons. Toujours est-il que Susan Schneider, professeur de philosophie de l’université du Connecticut, à la suite de plusieurs experts de la recherche astronomique, affirme que les extraterrestres sont assurément des robots, non des êtres biologiques. Le cerveau mou et peu fiable est, à terme, obsolète. Le "Brave New World" sera donc robotique. Cette prédiction se fonde sur le calcul de probabilité, lui-même induit par l’hypothèse que le progrès est le seul mode opératoire de la vie. En effet, de la cellule à l’homme, on s’oriente nécessairement vers une sophistication et un accès intégral à l’artifice, ce qui conduit à une métamorphose du biologique en synthétique.

On ne sait si Mme Schneider se réjouit de cette fatalité. Le mythe faustien, qui régit notre ère techno-scientiste, nous a appris que le désir d’immortalité et de jeunesse éternelle hante notre esprit. L’autre mythe de notre modernité, celui du progrès, dont on sait qu’il prit son essor dès la fin du XVIIe siècle, est, selon Baudelaire, une idée de paresseux. En tout cas, il nie toute liberté, et dénote un manque total d’imagination anthropologique.

Telle n’est pas la réaction du professeur Stephen Hawking, qui craint cette évolution : « Une fois que les hommes auraient développé l’intelligence artificielle, celle-ci décollerait seule, et se redéfinirait de plus en plus vite », avance-t-il. « Les humains, limités par une lente évolution biologique, ne pourraient pas rivaliser et seraient dépassés. » Georges Bernanos, déjà, dès 1947, nous avait mis en garde, dans sa fameuse France contre les robots , contre la déshumanisation inhérente au triomphe des machines. Mieux vaut être imparfait, limité, voire vicieux, que d’être conformé par l’excellence éradicatrice de la technique. La liberté absolue du mécanique est l’esclavage sans rémission du vivant. N’importe quelle bête est plus libre qu’un automate, même si elle dépend des nécessités de la nature. Mais les Cassandre ont de l’avenir !

Pourtant, Heidegger associe notre pensée à notre être, et singulièrement au langage, qui est ce qui est le plus proche de notre âme, le vivant en parole, le verbe qui fait un monde. Il faut un être qui dise ce monde pour qu’il existe. Le règne de la machine, c’est l’abolition du monde, du lieu où l’on devient soi-même.

Ulysse, dans la merveilleuse épopée d’Homère, illustre de façon émouvante cette vérité : plutôt que de céder à la tentation d’immortalité proposée par Circé, il préfère son Ithaque, si pauvre que seules les chèvres y peuvent paître, mais qui est sa demeure, le lieu de sa naissance, là où résident son père, sa femme, son enfant, un monde riche d’humanité.

Kerry Bolton’s Perón & Perónism

Kerry Bolton’s Perón & Perónism

By Eugène Montsalvat 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

Kerry Bolton
Perón and Perónism
London: Black House Publishing, 2014

Perón and Perónism is an excellent resource on the political thought of Argentina’s three-time president Juan Domingo Perón. It places him firmly among the elite ranks of Third Position thinkers. His doctrine of Justicalism and his geopolitical agenda of resistance to both American and Soviet domination of Latin America have demonstrated enduring relevance. Influenced by Aristotle’s conception of man as a social being and the social teachings of the Catholic Church, Perón proved to be an insightful political philosopher, developing a unique interpretation of National Syndicalism that guided his Justicalist Party. While his career was marked by turmoil, he pursued an agenda of the social justice, seeking the empowerment of the nation’s working classes as a necessary step towards the spiritual transformation of the country. Perón’s example stands as a beacon to those who seek the liberation of man from the bondage of materialism, and the liberation of the nation from foreign domination.

Juan Domingo Perón was born on the 8th of October 1895 and graduated from the Colegio Militar, entering the military as a sublieutenant. He later attended the Escuela Superior de Guerra, and became a professor of military history at the War College. His mission to Europe in 1939 proved to be a formative experience on his political consciousness. He was inspired by Mussolini’s rejection of both American capitalism and Soviet communism, stating that, “When faced with a world divided by two imperialisms, the Italians responded: we are on neither side. We represent a third position between Soviet socialism and Yankee imperialism.” Perón became a member of the Group of United Officers (GOU) that overthrew in the Argentine government in 1943.

The GOU was menaced by American pressure due to Argentina’s neutrality in the Second World War and its pro-Axis government. An attempt to buy arms from Germany resulted in American ships being sent to patrol near the mouth of the River Plate and the refusal of American banks to transfer Argentine funds. In response Argentina severed relations with the Axis, but that did not prevent an American embargo.

Within the GOU government, Perón eventually became Vice President, Minister of War, Secretary of Labor and Social Reform, and head of the Post-War Council. He became known as a champion of labor, supporting unionization, social security, and paid vacations, meeting populist radio actress Eva Duarte, his second wife, in the process. However, Perón’s success attracted suspicion from others in the government and General Eduardo Avales forced him to resign his posts and had him imprisoned on October 10th 1945.

However, the forced resignation and imprisonment of Perón triggered a fateful sequence of events that were eventually commemorated in Justicalist ideology on “Loyalty Day.” In response to Perón’s imprisonment, Eva Duarte rallied his supporters in labor, and the CGT labor union declared a general strike. Workers mobbed the labor department in support of the profit-sharing law Perón sponsored. They ran the police gauntlet to flood the plaza in front of the presidential palace. Perón was released and declared his candidacy for the presidency before throngs of supporters from the blacony of the presidential palace on October 17th, now celebrated as “Loyalty Day” by Perónists.

The 1946 election was essentially a struggle between Perón and the US-backed oligarchy of Argentina. Perónist posters asked “Braden or Perón?,” referencing the American ambassador Spruille Braden. The United States attempted to demonize Perón, accusing him of collaboration with the Axis in the Second World War and claiming that Perón planned to institute a totalitarian state, with tactics reminiscent of latter days attempts to paint any leader who doesn’t toe the American line as a rogue who hates freedom. The document summarizing America’s vendetta against Perón was adopted by the anti-Perón Unión Democrática, which comprised both oligarchs and some communist elements. The willingness of the opposition to act as lapdogs for Yankee imperialism only strengthened Perón’s support and he won the election of February 24th 1946.

Perón’s base of support came from the working classes, nicknamed descamisados, the shirtless. The doctrine that drew their support, Justicialism, is a type of National Syndicalism, devoted to the achievement of social justice within the context of the nation as an organic social unit. Perónist constitutional thinker Arturo Sampay defined social justice as “that which orders the interrelationships of social groups, professional groups, and classes with individual obligations, moving everyone to give to other in participation in the general welfare.”

The achievement of social justice would necessitate the elimination of artificial distinctions in society, such as economic classes and political parties. Instead every sector of society would be organized into its own syndicate, essentially the equivalent of the medieval guilds that were destroyed in the French Revolution. Perón saw in the guilds of the past an alternative to the capitalist system of wage labor, providing a social dimension to labor. The worker was a craftsman, integrated into the wider world, instead of a mere cog for the capitalists. Perón saw capitalism as the exploitation of producers by the owners of the means of production:

Capitalism refines and generalizes the system of wages throughout the production area, or the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy. This gives birth to new economic and social classes. For one the holders of the means of production – machinery, art, tools, workshops, that is – the capitalist bourgeoisie; on the other hand, employees or the proletariat to deliver the first fruits of their creative efforts.

Man thus becomes a number, without the union corporation, without professional privileges, without the protection and representation of his Estate. The political party establishes the non-functional structure that serves the bourgeoisie in power.

Justicialism sought to undo this distortion of the natural order caused by capitalism. To achieve this, Perón gave a special position to labor unions as leading actors, seeing them as the basis for the syndicates he envisioned to represent each function in society. He sought to transform enterprises into cooperatives where profits where shared between all the producers. Their governing bodies would be the syndicates, who served the national interest, rather than capitalists who served profit alone. Private property would still exist under Justicalism, but it would be distributed so as to encourage production, the ownership of property yoked to the greater good of the nation. He stated that every Argentine should have his own property, yet he believed that factories and businesses should belong to those who work in them. Industries crucial to the maintenance of national sovereignty and economic independence like banking and mining would belong to the state, in order to prevent foreign capitalists from seizing the vitals of the Argentine nation. Perón’s government nationalized the banks, the railways, the airlines, the port of Buenos Aires, and he established the state run oil and gas industry. Much like the Catholic social doctrine of Distributism, Justicialism did not seek to eliminate private property but to give each man what was necessary to produce for the greater good of society.

For Perón work would become an ideal higher than mere bread-winning. It is a spiritual calling that links the achievements of an individual to the achievements of the past and his people. It is a tool of individual and social growth. Work should be mandatory, with everyone striving to contribute, however at the same time the dignity of the worker must be enshrined by law. As such the government enacted a “Workers’ Bill of Rights.” It affirmed the right to a fair wage, unionization, education, safe working conditions, healthcare, adequate healthcare and housing, and social security. However, unlike modern social democrats who see the welfare state as simply providing for man’s materialistic needs, Perón saw it as step towards the spiritual development of the people.

Citing Aristotle’s belief that man was a social being who actualized himself through participation in society, he saw eliminating material hardships as the first step in developing the virtue of the people. Through communal organization the ideal of a better humanity could be reached. In a further tribute the classical ideals of communal self-improvement, Perón emphasized the importance of physical exercise, stating that:

the educated man must have developed to being harmonious and balanced in both his intelligence and his soul and his body. . . . We want intelligence to be in the service of a good soul and a strong man. In this we are not inventing anything, we are going back to the Greeks who were able to establish that perfect balance in their men in the most glorious period of its history.

Through sports the youth would develop civic virtue, training men for a life of service. One of the administrations involved in implementing this task was the Fundación Eva Perón.

The Fundación Eva Perón was a social aid agency named for Juan Domingo’s wife, Eva, who played a leading role in it. Established in 1948, its goals included giving scholarships and training to the poor, constructing housing, schools, hospitals, and other public buildings, and engaging in work for the common good. Eva Perón termed this Social Aid, a form of collective self help, explicitly rejecting the idea of charity, saying:

The donations, which I receive every day, sent into the Fund by workmen, prove that the poor are those who are ready to do the most to help the poor. That is why I have always been opposed to charity. Charity satisfies the person who dispenses it. Social Aid satisfies the people themselves, inasmuch as they make it effective. Charity is degrading while Social Aid ennobles. Give us Social Aid, because it implies something fair and just. Out with charity!

Among the successful Social Aid projects of the Fundación Eva Perón were the training of nurses, the establishment of large hospitals termed policlincs, the establishment of mobile health care trains, and the construction of homes for the elderly, students, and children.

Given the active and outspoken role Eva Perón played in the Justicalist movement, one would think she would be embraced as a feminist icon. However, Evita herself disdained such characterizations and affirmed the necessity of differing roles for the sexes. She said:

Every day thousands of women forsake the feminine camp and begin to live like men. They work like them. They prefer, like them, the street to the home. They substitute for men everywhere. Is this “feminism”? I think, rather, that is must be the “masculinization” of our sex.

And I wonder if all this change has solved our problem? But no, all the old ills continue rampant, and new ones too, appear. The number of women who look down upon the occupation of homemaking increases every day. And yet that is what we are born for. We feel we are born for the home, and home is too great a burden for our shoulders. Then we give up the home . . . go out to find a solution . . . feel that the answer lies in obtaining economic independence and working somewhere. But does that makes us equal to men? No! We are not like them! We feel the need of giving rather than receiving. Can’t we work for anything else than earning wages like men?

The Justicialist creed of social justice supported the family as the basis of society. Juan Perón stated, “Man is created in the image and likeness of God. But this transcendent unity is by nature a social being: born of a family, man and woman, as the first basic social group and the parents provide essential care, without which man cannot survive. This develops within a broader community that was forming along centuries and, therefore, provides the imprint of a civilization and a historical culture. It develops into productive, cultural, professional and other intermediate communities.” In providing social welfare Perón was not replacing the family with the state, but ensuring that a man could afford to feed his family, to maintain their well-being so as to encourage their social development within the nation. By tending this seed of the nation, Justicialism would ensure the growth of virtue among the citizens.

A further part of Perón’s social agenda was the destruction of usury. Perón held that the creation of money should serve a social purpose, not profit the bankers. His government nationalized the banks. Perónist Arturo Sampay said, “Whoever gives the orders on credit and the expansion or contraction of the money supply, controls the development of the country.” As a basic principle of national sovereignty the nation cannot be indebted to private bankers or foreign investors. If a bank is foreign owned or invested in foreign trade, it serves the interests of the foreigners, not the country. Perón termed the banks sepoys, referring to Indian troops who served British imperialism. Perón’s government used the National Mortgage Bank to provide money for public housing at low interest rates, which allow many people to own homes, leading to a more the equitable distribution of property. Perón believed that the money supply should not be manipulated by bankers for profit, but increased or decreased at a rate tied to the work done by the members of the nation. Money was not tied to vague financial mechanisms, but real labor and production. Perón wrote:

But in the domestic, social economy our doctrine states that the currency is a public service that increases or decreases, is valued or devalued in direct proportion to the wealth produced by the work of the Nation.

Money is for us one effective support of real wealth that is created by labor. That is, the value of gold is based on our work as Argentines. It is not valued at weight, as in other currencies based on gold, but by the amount of welfare that can be funded by working men. Neither the dollar or gold are absolute values, and happily we broke in time with all the dogmas of capitalism and we have no reason to repent. It happens, however, as to those who accept willingly or unwillingly the orders or suggestions of capitalism, that the fate of their currencies is tied to what is minted or printed in the Metropolis, encrypting all the wealth of a country circulating with strong currencies, but without producing anything other than currency trade or speculation. We despise, perhaps a bit, the value of hard currencies and choose to create instead the currency of work. Maybe this is a little harder than what you earn speculating, but there are fewer variables in the global money game.

Gentleman, in terms of “social economy,” it is necessary to establish definitely: The only currency that applies to us is the real work and production that are born on the job.

Perón’s rejection of international monetary conventions attracted the enmity of the foreign powers intent on using Argentina’s wealth for their own gain. Argentina explicitly rejected the International Monetary Fund. In foreign trade, instead of pursuing exchanges through currency Argentina sought to swap foreign commodities for their commodities, directly bartering goods instead of money. Perón’s refusal to abide by the demands the United States’ global plutocracy drew America’s ire. In 1948 the US excluded Argentine exports from the Marshall Plan zone. Attempts to resolve their differences where stymied by Congress’ refusal to accept the role of the Argentina Institute for the Promotion of Trade (IAPI), which sold Argentine commodities on the international market and subsidized their national production. This autarchic economic planning mechanism flew in the face of America’s pursuit of globalization. If Argentina refused to give dollars, instead seeking to barter goods, the US demanded that they give concessions to American companies, allowing foreign industry to compete with national ones Perón was devoted to developing. America’s assault on Argentina’s economy was a grievous blow to the Perón government, and he began his second term in 1952 with a $500 million trade deficit. That year saw meat shortages and power failures, and while the economy recovered somewhat from 1953 to 1955, the stage was set for the downfall of the regime. In 1955, after a failed coup attempt on September 3rd, a successful coup attempt was launched by the Navy on the 16th. Perón left for Paraguay on the 20th and eventually settled in Spain. The fall of Perón’s government led to the sale of national assets to US corporations, by 1962 production had dropped, the trade deficit had massively increased, and the price of of food increased by 750%.

 

 

While his attempts to resist Yankee domination failed and led to the end of his second term, Perón attempted to develop a geopolitical doctrine that would prevent Latin America from falling prey to the predations of the US. He proposed a formation of a geopolitical bloc to resist the Superpowers intent on controlling Latin America, effectively making him an advocate of the multi-polar world envisioned by Russian geopolitical theorist Alexander Dugin fifty years later. In 1951 he articulated his goal:

The sign of the Southern Cross can be the symbol of triumph of the numina of the America of the Southern Hemisphere. Neither Argentina, nor Brazil, nor Chile can, by themselves, dream of the economic unity indispensable to face a destiny of greatness. United, however, they form a most formidable unit, astride the two oceans of modern civilization. Thus Latin-American unity could be attempted from here, with a multifaceted operative base and unstoppable initial drive.

On this basis, the South American Confederation can be built northward, joining in that union all the peoples of Latin roots. How? It can come easily, if we are really set to do it.

We know that these ideas will not please the imperialists who divide and conquer. United we will be unconquerable; separate defenseless. If we are not equal to our mission, men and nations will suffer the fate of the mediocre. Fortune will offer us her hand. May God wish we know to take hold of it. Every man and every nation has its hour of destiny. This is the hour of the Latin people.

Perón made overtures to the governments of Brazil and Chile to pursue regional cooperation. In 1953, Chile’s president Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, a friend of Perón, signed an agreement with Argentina to reduce tariffs, facilitate bilateral trade, and establish a joint council on relations between the two nations. Similarly, he pursued integration with Brazil, led by the corporatist Getulio Vargas. While Vargas had been supported in the presidential election by Argentina, he was constrained by pro-American forces in Brazil’s government and a general reliance on American trade. Any chance of integration faded with the suicide of Vargas in the face of an impending revolt.

Perón’s geopolitical relations also extended to Europeans who sought to break free from the American domination that had descended upon the continent in the wake of the Second World War. Like Latin America, Europe had been subjected to Yankee imperialism. Perón met several times with Oswald Mosley, the former leader of the British Union of Fascists, who advocated the formation of an integrated European bloc to reject American and Soviet domination after the World War II, analogous to the Latin American continental unity that Perón supported. Mosley visited Argentina in 1950 and his views may have shaped the development Perón’s geopolitical vision. From exile Perón wrote to Mosley, “I see now we have friends in common whom I greatly value, something which makes me reciprocate even more your expressions of solidarity . . . I offer my best wishes and a warm embrace.”

Among the mutual friends of Mosley and Perón was Jean Thiriart, whom he met through German commando Otto Skorzeny. Like Mosley, Thiriart advocated the formation of a unified Europe to combat American imperialism, though on a more militant level. He saw Latin America, which had been engaged in struggles against American domination for far longer than Europe as an ally to his cause. Perón responded positively to Thiriart’s ideas writing, “A united Europe would count a population of nearly 500 million, The South American continent already has more than 250 million. Such blocs would be respected and effectively oppose the enslavement to imperialism which is the lot of a weak and divided country.” Thus a fundamental alliance between Third World Third Positionism and European Third Positionism existed.

From exile in 1972, Perón addressed the situation of the Third World, decrying the social and ecological destruction wrought by international capitalism. He made several recommendations in that speech regarding the necessary steps they must take to ensure social justice in their nations:

• We protect our natural resources tooth and nail from the voracity of the international monopolies that seek to feed a nonsensical type of industrialization and development in high tech sectors with market-driven economies. You cannot cause a massive increase in food production in the Third World without parallel development of industries. So each gram of raw material taken away today equates in the Third World countries with kilos of food that will not be produced tomorrow.
• Halting the exodus of our natural resources will be to no avail if we cling to methods of development advocated by those same monopolies, that mean the denial of the rational use of our resources.
• In defense of their interests, countries should aim at regional integration and joint action.
• Do not forget that the basic problem of most Third World countries is the absence of genuine social justice and popular participation in the conduct of public affairs. Without social justice the Third World will not be able to face the agonizingly difficult decades ahead.

Among the Third World countries that Perón took an interest in was Qaddafi’s Libya. When Perón returned to power a delegation was sent to Libya and various agreements on cooperation were signed. These included deals on scientific and economic cooperation between the two countries, cultural exchange, and the establishment of a Libyan-Argentine Bank for investment. Geopoliticallly Qaddafi’s belief in Arab unity aligned with Perón’s views on the creation of blocs to resist imperialism. Like Perón’s Justicialism, Qaddafi pursued an autarkic economic policy he termed “Arab socialism” aimed at the spiritual development of the nation. Qaddafi’s government outlasted Perón and he pursued aligned with Latin American resistors to American imperialism. His government was particularly close to Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.

Hugo Chávez, the late leader of Venezuela explicitly declared, “I am really a Perónist. I identify with this man and his thought, who asked that our countries are no longer factories of imperialism.” Chávez revived Perón’s dream of a geopolitical bloc to challenge American domination with his Bolivarian Revolution, creating the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of our America (ALBA). As of this writing ALBA contains eleven member countries, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Grenada, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Venezuela. This bloc represents a collection of nations who reject American neo-liberalism and support social welfare and mutual economic aid. Given Chávez’s depiction as a thorn in the side of the American establishment, we can say that Perónist ideals represent a very real challenge to the American New World Order today.

While exile provided Perón with an opportunity to expand his geopolitical contacts and develop his philosophical vision, the election of Héctor Cámpora, a Perónist, who provided the opportunity for Perón to return and run for president, led to a third term as President of Argentina. However, in Perón’s absence, major rifts had developed in the Justicialist movement. The tension between left and right wing factions would eventually develop into open violence. The leftist factions eventually formed a radical guerrilla group, the Montoneros. Perónist guerrilla warfare had an early supporter in John William Cooke, a Perónist who eventually fled to Cuba. His influence eventually opened a way for Marxists to infiltrate the movement. Perón himself was strongly anti-communist, stating that “the victim of both communism and capitalism is the people.” Perón believed that communism and capitalism were part of an “international synarchy” against the people stating “The problem is to free the country and remain free. That is, we must confront the international synarchy of communism, capitalism, Freemasonry, and the Catholic Church, operated from the United Nations. All of these forces act on the world through thousands of agencies.” More right wing factions represented by the CGT claimed that “international synarchy” was attacking their leaders.

On the day of Perón’s return the conflict between left and right turned into open bloodshed at Ezeiza airport. Armed supporters from both tendencies had gathered and a shot rang out. The leftists returned fire, targeting those on the overpass podium. 500 Montoneros stormed the podium but were eventually routed by security forces. Overall 13 people were killed. Perón’s plane was diverted to ensure his safety.

Perón appointed staunch anti-communist José Rega as an intermediary to the left-wing Perónist Youth, signaling his opposition to their cause. Representatives of the Perónist Youth were removed from the Supreme Council of the Justicialist Party, and he instructed CGT leader José Rucci to purge the labor movement of Marxists. Two days after Perón’s election on September 23rd 1973, Rucci, his closest ally and likely political heir, was assassinated by Montoneros. The loss of his likely successor negatively impacted Perón’s already feeble health.

On the 19th of January 1974 the Marxist People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) attacked the Azul army base. Perón believed they had been aided by Governor Oscar Bidegain, who had bused armed Leftists into Ezeiza. At a May Day rally Perón declared that the young left radicals were dishonoring the founders of the party, upon which the leftists walked out of the rally. Perón attempted to rally the people one last time, making a speech on a freezing day in June. His failing health declined steeply and he died on July 1st.

Following his death, his widow and vice-president Isabel took office. However, the Montoneros declared a full insurrection on the 6th of September. Moreover, economic conditions rapidly spun out of control, leading to a CGT general strike, combined with an escalating rebellion by the left. The Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, led by Rega, waged a bloody counter-revolutionary struggle. National production slowed to a crawl and inflation soared. In 1976, Isabel was overthrown by the army.

The ouster of Isabel Perón did not spell the end of Perónism, however. Currently Justicialist Party member Cristina Kirchner is the president of Argentina, succeeding her late husband, Nestor Kirchner. While she has received some criticism from more traditional Perónists, she has attempted to repudiate the polices of neo-liberalism. In 2012 a bill was introduced to ensure that the Central Bank acted in the interest of social equity. Moreover, Perónist movements outside the Kirchner regime enjoy a great deal of support. Outside of Argentina, the late Hugo Chávez lead the Perón-influenced Bolivarian Revolution, as previously mentioned. It appears, that after years of struggle and heartbreak, Perónism is once again leading Latin America’s resistance to US neo-liberal imperialism.

Kerry Bolton’s book should become essential reading for all of those who wish to see how a mass movement can be built from the ground up to challenge superpowers. It places Perón in his rightful place as one of the great Third Position thinkers, rallying the workers against communism and capitalism for the spiritual growth of the nation. It will not be lengthy digressions on IQ and philosophy that challenge the American liberal empire, but showing the common man the way to a higher life, against the forces of greed and materialism. Perónism represents a true creed of social justice, one of service to society. If there is to be any real progress for the New Right, they must embrace the shirtless ones who toil for their nation as Perón did.

 

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