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Knowledge Without Wisdom
© 2001 by Paul Bond
03 | Post World
War I
Evils which are
patiently endured and which make them seem inevitable become
intolerable once the idea of escape from them is suggested. — Alexis
de Tocqueville
After the horrors of World War I, the 1920s seemed to augur a
long era of international stability, liberal constitutionalism, and
economic prosperity — but serious diplomatic, political, and
economic problems remained unsolved. The Great Depression of the
1930s brought these problems to the fore and helped create an
environment in which militaristic authoritarianism flourished.
The 1920s
Between 1920 and 1929, an uneasy peace developed as strong
nations rubbed shoulders and borders vied for economic superiority
through commerce and trade. National sovereignty was in full cry as
each nation flexed its economic muscle to demonstrate strength and
prosperity. In the United States, it was the “Gatsby” era during
which people danced the Charleston and consumed the hard liquor of
prohibition.
The parties for the elite of society attained levels of luxury
and degeneracy, fueling the fires of envy and enmity among the
struggling working classes. During this period, small fortunes were
won and lost trading shares and other instruments of financial
manipulation on stock markets worldwide. It was during this era of
absolute opulence that materialism really took hold and spread its
tentacles throughout Western society. This party atmosphere, enjoyed
by revelers of the rich and famous, continued unabated until 1929.
With a greatly overheated New York stock market, Wall Street and
other powerful bankers decided all at once the party should end.
What ensued would become known as the Great Depression. At this
defining moment, the world would see the new players of the next era
emerge. They would be Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt
(1882-1945), and Joseph Stalin (1879-1915) on one hand, and Adolf
Hitler, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), and Hirohito (1901-1989) on
the other.
The future allies made up a strange combination of bedfellows
represented by Churchill and Roosevelt, from so-called Western
democracies, and Stalin, from Soviet Russia, which by now was soaked
in the blood-purging of dissidents from the revolution. Trade was
the game then, as it had always been, and the great powers of
Europe, Japan, and America were all keen to gain the superior
position which would feed the materialistic bent of their
consumer-hungry populations. Soviet Russia had a different agenda:
The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx had been modified and fashioned
to the modern Soviet mindset, which demanded that all nations and
their people bow to the "superior" philosophy of communism.
History eloquently records that whenever a void appears in the
social or religious structure of evolving civilization, there always
appears a dictator or dictators fueled by power and greed who will
readily fill these voids. And so we view the circumstances prevalent
between World War I and World War II as being ideal for the clouds
of destruction and carnage to once again gather.
International agreements reached during the 1920s appeared to
portend future peace. The Washington Conference in 1921 and 1922
fixed the ratio of capital ships among the powers and declared open
and equal access to China. The Locarno Pact (1925) and the
Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) presented the prospect of arbitration as
an alternative to force in Europe. Meanwhile, the League of Nations,
which had been established in 1919, provided procedures designed to
isolate any would-be aggressor and promote disarmament. The United
States did not join the League.
Despite the portents for peace, Italy, Germany, and Japan
remained dissatisfied nations in which dangerous tendencies toward
bellicose nationalism threatened constitutional government and world
order.
In Italy, which had obtained little for its efforts on the
victorious side in World War I, internal disorder combined with
diplomatic frustration to overturn in 1922 the fragile,
shallow-rooted parliamentary system in favor of the Fascist movement
of Benito Mussolini. Harboring territorial ambitions, Mussolini
established a corporate state founded on chauvinistic nationalism.
The harsh terms imposed on Germany at the end of World War I by
the Versailles Treaty were deeply resented in that nation. The
democratic Weimar Republic, as a product of German defeat, bore the
onus of association with the treaty. Antidemocratic and violently
nationalistic right-wing organizations and even private armies, such
as the virulently anti-Semitic storm troopers of Adolf Hitler,
flourished immediately after the war.
Like Italy, Japan had been on the winning side in World War I.
Many Japanese were also dissatisfied with their country’s
international status, believing that Japan should be the dominant
power in East Asia. This view was particularly common among military
officers participating in a revival of nationalism incorporating
Shinto, emperor worship, and glorification of warrior virtues.
Although Japan had a liberal, pro-Western government during the
1920s, the military remained influential. From about 1927,
nationalistic military officers began appearing in cabinet posts and
pressing for a more aggressive China policy.
Depression and Frustration
Optimism thrived during the prosperity of the 1920s, but it was a
prosperity flawed by, among other things, over-extension of credit
and inadequate worker purchasing power. When economic well-being
gave way to depression in 1929, the shock discredited constitutional
government in those nations lacking a strong liberal tradition and
already bedeviled by frustrated nationalists. Leaders complained in
Germany, Italy, and Japan that their nations did not have fair
access to raw materials, markets, and capital investment areas, all
of which were necessary for their economic health. They argued that
their nations were the victims of economic warfare with its
protective tariffs, managed currencies, and cutthroat competition,
and that they had been left behind in the race for economic
self-sufficiency and a favorable balance of trade. They made it
plain that they would fight, if necessary, for a better economic
status.
Because they felt that democracy had failed, the people of those
countries looked with increasing favor on antidemocratic elements
that glorified war as the means of national salvation. In Italy,
Mussolini’s cries that Italians needed both colonies and glory
struck a responsive chord. In Germany, Hitler’s National Socialists
gained power in 1933. Meanwhile, Japanese militarists won a
preponderant influence in the inner circle of their government.
The Great Depression
The depression of the 1930s shook capitalism to its foundations
and shaped the public attitudes of people for generations. The shock
was so great because it contradicted long-held beliefs in the
unlimited possibilities of expansion. The depression made the
Western world ripe for revolution as every political faction in
society looked frantically for a cure. Finding a cure without
determining the causes, however, was difficult. In fact, no
economist has ever thoroughly explained why the disaster of 1929 to
1932 came about.
One of the most notable attempts to explain this disaster was
made by John Kenneth Galbraith in his book The Great Crash, 1929,
published in 1955. He pointed to five significant factors: 1. An
extremely unequal distribution of incomes limited the consumer goods
market. Most people were not making enough money to buy the goods
they manufactured. 2. There was an enormous amount of fraud and
corruption in big business and in the marketing of stocks and bonds.
The prosperity of Wall Street consisted largely of paper that was
not backed up by real wealth. 3. The banking structure, made up
of too many banks, had acted foolishly in making loans. When bad
times came, the loans could not be called in, and many people lost
their savings as a result. 4. Foreign nations that had borrowed
money from the United States could not repay their loans. This,
coupled with high American trade barriers, damaged their economies
because they could not send their exports to the United States at a
profit. 5. The amount of information on the operation of the
whole economy was much less adequate than it is today. People, even
experts, were not as able to spot trends in industrial output,
investment, consumer buying, and other factors that are now studied
closely.
What Happened
On October 24, 1929, the complete collapse of the stock market
began; about 13 million shares of stock were sold. Tuesday, October
29, known ever since as Black Tuesday, extended the damage; more
than 16 million shares were sold. The value of most shares fell
sharply, precipitating financial ruin and a state of panic.
There had been financial panics before, and there have been some
since, but never did a collapse in the market have such a
devastating and long-term effect. Like a snowball rolling downhill,
it gathered momentum and swept away the whole economy before it.
Businesses closed, putting millions out of work. Banks failed by the
hundreds. Wages for those still fortunate enough to have work fell
precipitously. The value of money decreased as the demand for goods
declined.
Most of the agricultural segment of the economy had been in
serious trouble for years. With the arrival of the depression, it
was nearly eliminated altogether, and the drought that created the
1930s Great Plains Dust Bowl compounded the damage.
Government itself was sorely pressed for income at all levels as tax
revenues fell, and government at that time was much more limited in
its ability to respond to economic crises than it is today.
The international structure of world trade collapsed, and each
nation sought to protect its own industrial base by imposing high
tariffs on imported goods. This only made matters worse.
By the fall of 1931, the international gold standard had
collapsed, further damaging any hope for the recovery of trade. This
started a series of currency devaluations in several countries,
because these nations realized that a devalued currency posed at
least a temporary advantage in the struggle to find markets for
their goods.
The economic depression that beset the United States and other
countries in the 1930s was unique in its magnitude and its
consequences. At the depth of the depression, in 1933, one American
worker in every four was out of a job. In other countries,
unemployment ranged between 15 percent and 25 percent of the labor
force. The great industrial slump continued throughout the 1930s,
shaking the foundations of Western capitalism.
Economic Aspects
President Calvin Coolidge had said during the long prosperity of
the 1920s that “the business of America is business.” Despite the
seeming business prosperity of the 1920s, however, there were
serious economic weak spots, a chief one being depression in the
agricultural sector. Also depressed were such industries as coal
mining, railroads, and textiles. Throughout the 1920s, U.S. banks
had failed, an average of six hundred a year, as had thousands of
other business firms. By 1928, the construction boom was over. The
spectacular rise in prices on the stock market from 1924 to 1929
bore little relation to actual economic conditions. In fact, the
boom in the stock market and in real estate, along with the
expansion in credit (created, in part, by low-paid workers buying on
credit) and high profits for a few industries, concealed basic
problems. Thus, the U.S. stock-market crash that occurred in October
1929, with huge losses, was not the fundamental cause of the Great
Depression — although the crash sparked and certainly marked the
beginning of the most traumatic economic period of modern times.
By 1930, the slump was apparent, but few people expected it to
persist; previous financial panics and depressions had
reversed in a year or two. The usual forces of economic expansion
had vanished, however. Technology had eliminated more industrial
jobs than it had created; the supply of goods continued to exceed
demand; the world market system was basically unsound. The high
tariffs of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act (1930) intensified the
downturn. As business failures increased, unemployment soared, and
people with dwindling incomes nonetheless had to pay their
creditors, it was apparent that the United States was in the grip of
economic breakdown. Most European countries were hit even harder,
because they had not yet fully recovered from the ravages of World
War I.
The deepening depression essentially coincided with the term in
office of President Herbert Hoover. The stark statistics scarcely
convey the distress of the millions who lost jobs, savings, and
homes. From 1930 to 1933, industrial stocks lost 80 percent of their
value. In the four years from 1929 to 1932, approximately 11,000
U.S. banks failed (44 percent of the 1929 total), and about $2
billion in deposits evaporated. The gross national product (GNP),
which for years had grown at an average annual rate of 3.5 percent,
declined at a rate of over 10 percent annually, on average, from
1929 to 1932. Agricultural distress was intense: farm prices fell by
53 percent from 1929 to 1932.
President Hoover opposed government intervention to ease the
mounting economic distress. His one major action, creation in 1932
of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money to ailing
corporations, was seen as inadequate. Thus, Hoover lost the 1932
election to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Conquest of Ethiopia
Italy had unsuccessfully attempted to conquer Ethiopia in 1896.
Mussolini, seeking easy foreign victories to galvanize his country,
attempted to avenge that still-rankling defeat by sending forces
into Ethiopia from Italian Eritrea on October 3, 1935. Another
thrust came from Italian Somaliland. Throwing mechanized troops
against untrained and poorly armed Ethiopians, the Italians
completed the conquest in 1936. With Eritrea and Italian Somaliland,
Ethiopia was organized as Italian East Africa. Although the League
of Nations imposed an embargo against Italy, it failed to include a
vital item, oil, thereby discrediting itself again.
Spanish Civil War
July 1936 began the Spanish Civil War, a conflict between Spain’s
liberal-leftist republican coalition government and rightists led by
General Francisco Franco. The war soon brought international
repercussions. Hitler and Mussolini sent planes, troops, and
supplies to Franco, while Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin gave
military equipment to the republicans. The United States adhered to
a policy of strict neutrality, and Britain and France, anxious to
prevent a general war, forbade the shipment of war material to the
republic. Thousands of anti-fascist volunteers from Britain and the
United States went to Spain, however, to serve with the republicans
and were organized with Soviet Comintern aid.
Cooperation between Germany and Italy in Spain helped cement the
vague Rome-Berlin Axis, an understanding that they had concluded in
1936. Franco’s victory in 1939 strengthened Hitler’s and Mussolini’s
position in the Mediterranean. In 1936, the Japanese concluded the
Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany, and a year later Italy joined;
this grouping prefigured the later alliance structure of the general
war.
Renewal of Japanese
Aggression
A Chinese-Japanese military clash on July 7, 1937 at the
Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing (Peking) provided the pretext for an
all-out Japanese campaign of conquest in China. By 1939, Japan
controlled populous eastern China.
Reacting to events in China, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt
spoke in October 1937 of the need to “quarantine the aggressors.” A
strong negative response to this call indicated the wide extent of
isolationist sentiment in the United States. Not until 1940 did
Japanese expansionism begin to draw the attention of the American
public.
Anschluss with Austria
Proclaiming the unity of the German people, Hitler from 1934
sought Anschluss (union) between Germany and his native Austria. In
February 1938, he forced Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg,
under threat of invasion, to admit Nazis into his cabinet. On March
12, 1938, Hitler invaded Austria and incorporated it into his Third
Reich.
Czechoslovakia and
Appeasement
Almost immediately afterward, the Nazi regime began agitating on
behalf of the Sudeten Germans who lived in pockets of western
Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland, claiming that they were a
persecuted minority. The Czech government made numerous concessions
to the Sudeten Germans, but in September 1938, Hitler demanded the
immediate cession of the Sudetenland to Germany. On September 29 and
30, Britain and France (Czechoslovakia’s ally) agreed at the Munich
Conference to yield to Hitler, who promised to make no further
territorial demands in Europe. Czechoslovakia was excluded from
participation at Munich. Unlike Austria, Czechoslovakia was
democratic, and its president, Eduard Benes, was prepared to resist
Hitler, but the two western European democracies insisted on
submission.
British prime minister Neville Chamberlain hailed the Munich
agreement as bringing “peace in our time.” In March 1939, however,
Hitler destroyed what remained of Czechoslovakia by occupying
Bohemia-Moravia and making Slovakia a German protectorate. He also
took Memel from Lithuania and began threatening the Polish Corridor,
a narrow strip of land that separated East Prussia from the rest of
Germany. In the meantime, Italy occupied and annexed Albania in
April 1939.
End of Appeasement
The Western powers could no longer avoid acknowledging that
Hitler’s promises were worthless and that his territorial ambitions
were not restricted to German-speaking areas but might, indeed, be
limitless. Desperately, Britain and France began to prepare military
resistance to Nazi expansionism. In the spring of 1939, they both
guaranteed Poland against German aggression. They also sought to
begin negotiations with the USSR, whose earlier efforts to form an
anti-Axis coalition they had rebuffed.
Stalin, however, had become convinced that Britain and France
were conspiring to help throw the full weight of German strength
against the USSR. Therefore, despite their bitterly antagonistic
ideologies, he sought an accommodation with Hitler. On August 23,
1939, Germany and the USSR signed the ten-year Nazi-Soviet Pact of
nonaggression. A secret protocol provided for the division of Poland
and the Baltic states between the signatories.
For a delighted Hitler, the treaty meant that he would not have
to fight a war on two fronts because Stalin was giving him the way
to move against Poland. Britain and France would be without major
allies as they belatedly prepared to defend that beleaguered
country.
World War II commenced as a localized conflict in eastern Europe
and expanded until it merged with a confrontation in the Far East to
form a global war of immense proportions. The war began in Europe on
September 1, 1939, when Germany attacked Poland, and ended on
September 2, 1945, with the formal surrender of Japan aboard the
U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Involving most of the world’s
major powers as belligerents, it also included many smaller states
on both sides and had a great impact on neutral nations. The
victorious Allies included Great Britain and the Commonwealth,
France, the United States, the USSR, and China. The losing side
comprised Germany, Italy, and Japan, as well as smaller nations. The
opponents clashed in two major areas: Europe, including the coast of
North Africa and the North Atlantic; and Asia, including the Central
and Southwest Pacific, China, Burma, and Japan. The belligerents
fought over the central issue of Axis expansion, which was halted at
the cost of many millions of military and civilian casualties.
The Democracies on the Eve
of Aggression
The major democratic powers — the United States, Great Britain,
and France — were not prepared to cope with the challenges to peace
posed by the dissatisfied nations. They accepted the international
order established by the Versailles Treaty but were unwilling to
defend it. Many in the democracies were disillusioned by World War
I. The idealistic goals of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson had not
been achieved, and it seemed to some that the war had been promoted
by war profiteers and deceptive propaganda. The Versailles Treaty
was widely regarded as unfair to Germany. Furthermore, the enormous
casualties of World War I had aroused pacifist sentiment. Finally,
while the depression spurred dissatisfied nations toward
expansionism, it turned the democracies inward as they became
preoccupied with reviving their economies. Hoping to avert another
war, the United States adopted neutrality laws, the British sought
to appease the dictatorial regimes, and the French tried to secure
themselves behind a network of alliances and the defensive fortress
of the Maginot Line.
The Road to War
Territorial aggrandizement by Japan in China, by Fascist Italy in
Ethiopia, and by Nazi Germany in central and eastern Europe brought
the world to war. The League of Nations failed to take decisive
action to curb armaments or stem aggression. The Western powers long
pursued policies of neutrality and appeasement until it became clear
that the expansionist nations would not rest content with their
gains.
Hitler Rearms Germany
German chancellor Adolf Hitler abandoned the efforts of his
predecessors to ease the provisions of the Versailles Treaty through
a policy of reconciliation with the World War I victors. Instead, he
unilaterally tore up the treaty. Hitler took Germany out of the
League in 1933 and began a massive program to build up the German
army, navy, and air force. In March 1935, he restored universal
military service. The democracies did not react, and Britain even
concluded a naval agreement with Germany in 1935 that permitted
greater German naval strength than that allowed by the Versailles
Treaty. In 1936, Hitler sent troops into the demilitarized
Rhineland.
Hitler’s virulent racism gave rise to a cruel system of
anti-Semitism. The Nuremberg Laws of September 1935, which deprived
Jews of most civil rights, were supplemented by other measures
designed to rid Germany of Jews. These measures were to culminate in
a policy of deliberate extermination during World War II, taking the
lives of approximately millions of European Jews. More immediately,
however, a concerted state program of ending unemployment with
public works projects and a restoration of business confidence
produced remarkable economic recovery in Germany. Joseph
Goebbels’ efficient propaganda ministry controlled the media to
ensure that Hitler would be viewed as a genius and Nazi Germany as
the best of all possible worlds. Given this combination of coercion,
achievement, and thought control, it is perhaps not surprising there
was little resistance, aside from limited opposition from some
elements in the churches and the army.
The New Deal
In the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt was swept to power
under the socially inspired plan aptly named the “New Deal.”
His plan was for the U.S. government to spend its way out of the
Great Depression and post the debt to the future.
The depression brought a deflation not only of incomes but of
hope. In his first inaugural address in March 1933, President
Roosevelt declared “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
But although his New Deal grappled with economic problems throughout
his first two terms, it had no consistent policy.
Roosevelt was a leader imbued with knowledge but totally lacking
wisdom. He understood class occupies a central place in the analysis
of capitalism by socialists. Capitalism is a society that forms
itself into exploiting classes, and members of the working class
are, in this view, both the particular victims of capitalism and the
basis for opposition to it and for its final overthrow. There has
been in socialism an assumption both that desired changes will come
about as a result of the rise to power and influence of the working
class and that the empowering of the working class is itself a
desirable component of socialism.
At first, Roosevelt tried to stimulate the economy through the
National Recovery Administration (NRA), charged with
establishing minimum wages and codes of fair competition. It was
based on the idea of spreading work and reducing unfair competitive
practices by means of cooperation in industry, so as to stabilize
production and prevent the price slashing that had begun after 1929.
This approach was abandoned after the Supreme Court declared the NRA
unconstitutional in Schecter Poultry Corporation v. United States
(1935).
Roosevelt’s second administration gave more emphasis to public
works and other government expenditures as a means of
stimulating the economy, but it did not pursue this approach
vigorously enough to achieve full economic recovery. At the end of
the 1930s, unemployment was estimated at 17.2 percent. Other
innovations of the Roosevelt administrations had long-lasting
effects, both economically and politically. To aid people who could
find no work, the New Deal extended federal relief on a vast scale.
The Civilian Conservation Corps took young men off the streets and
sent them out to plant forests and drain swamps. The government
refinanced about one-fifth of farm mortgages through the Farm Credit
Administration and about one-sixth of home mortgages through the
Home Owners Loan Corporation. The Works Progress Administration
employed an average of over two million people in occupations
ranging from laborers to musicians and writers. The Public Works
Administration spent about four billion on the construction of
highways and public buildings in the years 1933 to 1939.
The depression years saw an explosion of union organizing. One
cannot fully understand the rise in union membership between 1935
and 1937 without the perspective of the Depression of the 1930s and
the New Deal policies put into place during President Roosevelt’s
first administration. The Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, which had
limited the power of the federal courts to issue injunctions to stop
peaceful strikes, was followed in 1933 by the National Industrial
Recovery Act, whose famous section 7(a) established workers’ “right
to organize and bargain collectively through representation of their
own choosing.”
Although the legislation was struck down by the Supreme Court in
1935, the same language was embodied in the National Labor Relations
Act, or Wagner Act, of 1935. Besides the legal status it conferred
on unions, the act granted workers the right to strike. It also
established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to conduct
elections among employees wishing to organize a union. Part of the
New Deal legislation, it clearly established workers’ rights to form
unions without interference from employers.
New industrial unions came into existence through the efforts of
organizers led by John L. Lewis (1880-1969), Walter Reuther
(1907-1970), Philip Murray (1886-1952), and others; in 1937 they won
contracts in the steel and auto industries. Total union membership
rose from about three million in 1932 to over ten million by 1941.
Political and Cultural
Effects
The expanded role of the federal government came to be accepted
by most Americans by the end of the 1930s. Even Republicans who had
bitterly opposed the New Deal shifted their stance. Wendell Willkie
(1892-1944), the Republican presidential nominee in 1940, declared
he could not oppose reforms such as the regulation of the securities
markets and the utility holding companies, the legal recognition of
unions, or Social Security and unemployment allowances. What
bothered him and other critics, however, was the extension of the
federal bureaucracy.
The depression caused much questioning of inherited economic and
political ideas. Senator Huey P. Long (1893-1935) of Louisiana found
a national following for his Share the Wealth program. The socialist
writer Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) was nearly elected governor of
California in 1934 with a similar program for redistributing the
state’s wealth. Many writers and other intellectuals swung even
further left, concluding that capitalism was on its way out; they
were drawn to the Communist party by what they supposed were the
accomplishments of the USSR.
In other countries, the depression had even more profound
effects. As world trade fell off, countries turned to nationalist
economic policies that only exacerbated their difficulties. In
politics, the depression strengthened the extremes of right and
left, helping Adolf Hitler to power in Germany and swelling
left-wing movements in other European countries. The depression was
thus a time of massive insecurity among peoples and governments,
contributing to the tensions that produced World War II. Ironically,
however, the massive military expenditures for that war provided the
economic stimulus that finally ended the depression.
This socialization of America would have dire consequences for
immediate generations; moreover, it would set in place a social
framework that would hold sway over the politics and policies of
future generations. These social policies would eventually bankrupt
the American economy.
The ambivalence between workers’ power directly exercised — which
could be seen as an expression of liberty — and power exercised
through the state —which could threaten to be a form of paternalism
— was evident in the proposals of nineteenth-century French
socialist Louis Blanc (1811-1882). He advocated replacement of
individual capitalist production by social work shops, which the
state would initially fund and administer, but should develop into
self-managing communal enterprises. In France also, Georges Sorel
(1847-1922) argued for workers’ power through unions, a form of
syndicalism aiming at a general strike which would overthrow
capitalism and inaugurate a workers’ regime. In the United Kingdom,
a non-insurrectionary version of workers’ power exercised from the
point of production was elaborated in guild socialism. This sought
to combine a rediscovered satisfaction in work with both
decentralized producers’ power and an overall coordinating and
regulating task for a reconstituted state. Various forms of workers’
control continued to attract socialists throughout the twentieth
century.
Fascism
Fascism was an authoritarian political movement that developed in
Italy and other European countries after 1919 as a reaction against
the political and social changes brought about by World War I and
the spread of socialism and communism. Its name was derived from the
fasces, an ancient Roman symbol of authority consisting of a bundle
of rods and an ax.
Italian fascism was founded in Milan on March 23, 1919, by Benito
Mussolini, a former revolutionary socialist leader. His followers,
mostly war veterans, were organized along paramilitary lines and
wore black shirts as uniforms. The early Fascist program was a
mixture of left- and right-wing ideas that emphasized intense
nationalism, productivism, antisocialism, elitism, and the need for
a strong leader.
Formed in response to a society reeling from economic hardship
and searching for a leader to provide a more comfortable existence,
fascism was a synthesis of organic Nationalism and anti-Marxist
Socialism, a revolutionary movement based on a rejection of
liberalism, democracy, and Marxism — these ideologies were regarded
simply as different aspects of the same materialist evil. It was
this revolt against materialism which, from the beginning of the
century, allowed a convergence of anti-liberal and anti-elitist
nationalism and a variety of socialism, which while rejecting
Marxism, remained revolutionary. Its opposition to historical
materialism made it the natural ally of radical nationalism.
Mussolini’s oratorical skills, the postwar economic crisis, a
widespread lack of confidence in the traditional political system,
and a growing fear of socialism all helped the Fascist party to grow
to three hundred thousand registered members by 1921. In that year,
it elected thirty-five members to parliament. Mussolini became prime
minister in October 1922 following the “march on Rome” and three
years of bloody violence. In 1926, he seized total power as dictator
and ruled Italy until July 1943, when he was deposed. A puppet
fascist regime with Mussolini at its head nominally controlled
northern Italy under the Germans until Mussolini's execution by
partisans in 1945. A neo-fascist party, the Italian Social
Movement, was founded after World War II, but its influence was
small.
The Philosophy of Fascism
Fascist ideology, largely the work of the neo-idealist
philosopher Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944), emphasized the
subordination of the individual to a “totalitarian” state that
was to control all aspects of national life. Violence as a creative
force was an important aspect of the fascist philosophy. A special
feature of Italian fascism was the attempt to eliminate the class
struggle from history through nationalism and the corporate state.
Mussolini organized the economy and all “producers” — from
peasants and factory workers to intellectuals and industrialists —
into twenty-two corporations as a means of improving productivity
and avoiding industrial disputes. Contrary to the regime’s
propaganda claims, however, the totalitarian state functioned
poorly. Mussolini had to compromise with big business, the monarchy,
and the Roman Catholic church. The Italian economy experienced no
appreciable growth. The corporate state was never fully implemented,
and the expansionist, militaristic nature of fascism contributed to
imperialist adventures in Ethiopia and the Balkans and ultimately to
World War II.
The intellectual roots of fascism can be traced back to
voluntaristic philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860),
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), and Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941)
and to Social Darwinism, with its emphasis on the survival of the
fittest. Its immediate roots, however, were in certain irrational,
socialist, and nationalist tendencies of the turn of the century
that combined in a protest against the liberal bourgeois ideas then
holding sway in Western Europe. Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938),
Georges Sorel, and Maurice Barres (1862-1923) were particularly
influential.
European Fascism
Closely related to Italian fascism was German National Socialism,
or Nazism, under Adolf Hitler. It won wide support among the
unemployed, the impoverished middle class, and industrialists who
feared socialism and communism. In Spain, the Falange Española
(Spanish Phalanx), inspired by Mussolini’s doctrines, was founded in
1933 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903-1936). During the Spanish
Civil War, the Falange was reorganized as the Falange Española
Tradiciónalista by General Francisco Franco (1892-1975), who made it
the official party of his regime. Of less importance were the
Fascist movements in France and the British Union of Fascists under
Sir Oswald Mosley.
Fascist movements sprang up in many other European countries
during the 1930s, including Romania, Belgium, Austria, and the
Netherlands. Fascist groups rose to power in many of the countries
under German occupation during World War II. In France, the Vichy
Government of Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856-1951) was strongly
influenced by the Action Française, a movement that shared many
ideas with fascism. The collaborationist Quisling government in
occupied Norway also espoused a fascist-like ideology. The defeat of
Italy and Germany in the war, however, spelled the end of fascism as
an effective, internationally appealing mass movement.
Although national socialism was the most spectacular, and in some
respects the most successful, of all forms of fascism, it was
intellectually less sophisticated and less interesting than French
or Italian fascism. Its political success lay in its ability to
synthesize often contradictory elements into a doctrine with
universal appeal — “socialism” for the working class,
anti-bolshevism for the employers, nationalism for traditional
conservatists, and anti-Semitism for all who looked for a scapegoat
on whom to pin the blame for the loss of World War I and the
economic disasters of the 1920s.
Nazism
In Germany, there appeared Adolf Hitler, an Austrian-born fascist
who, having studied The Communist Manifesto, determined he
would embark on a quest for a totalitarian state in Germany first,
then conquer the rest of the world. His plan was simple. Using the
distress and despair of the Great Depression, which had impacted
heavily on the working classes of Germany, he would herald in the
Nazi Party as the Third Reich.
The ideology of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party
(NSDAP), better known as the Nazi Party, was formed in 1919, and
under Hitler it ruled Germany between 1933 and 1945. National
socialism essentially combined two doctrines: the fascist belief
that national unity could best be secured by an all-encompassing
state directed by a party with one supreme leader embodying the
national will; and the racist belief in the superiority of the Aryan
peoples, implying other races might justifiably be subjugated or
eliminated entirely.
Nazism had intellectual pretensions, but they came a poor second
to an enthusiasm for brute force and the cult of the leader. It and
socialism meant little more than states’ rights transcending those
of private owners. Its appeal to the masses was hardly more than an
excuse to destroy the secondary organizations of liberal society,
trade unions in particular, and to arouse the population for war.
Its embodiment in the febrile genius of Hitler is not by accident,
for it was his political opportunism and his galvanizing energy that
allowed the Nazis to gain support and fill the void created by
despair and desperation of the German people. These economic and
social voids always suck into themselves, like a huge vacuum
cleaner, the populist dictators.
After a checkered beginning, the party gathered strength rapidly
in the 1930s until it was able to prevent its opponents from forming
a majority in the Reichstag, or lower house of the parliament.
Hitler became chancellor and dictator in 1933. Although some tenets
of Nazism, such as nationalism and anti-Semitism, had existed
earlier in German history, the Nazi ideology as a whole was a
product of the beliefs of Hitler, articulated in his book Mein
Kampf.
Nazism somewhat resembled fascism, which preceded it in Italy. It
spawned several small Nazi parties in the occupied countries,
Britain, and the United States. Nazism had several elements:
• A belief (with a theoretical and pseudoscientific basis in the
works of the Comte de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain,
and Alfred Rosenberg) in an Aryan German race superior to all others
and destined to rule, together with a violent hatred of Jews that
led to the establishment of concentration camps and to the
Holocaust. • An extreme nationalism that called for the complete
unification of all German-speaking peoples. This led to the
occupation of Austria, a German-speaking country, and of
Czechoslovakia, which had a large German minority. • A belief in
some form of state socialism, although the left-leaning members of
the party were purged in 1934. • A private army, called the SS (Schutzstaffel).
• A youth cult that emphasized sports and paramilitary outdoor
activities. • The massive use of propaganda, masterminded by
Joseph Goebbels. • The submission of all decisions to the
supreme leader Adolf Hitler and the glorification of strength and
discipline.
It is one of the great tragedies of modern history that Germany’s
first encounter with democratic government was associated with
defeat and misery. The Social Democrats, accepting the support of
the army in order to maintain order, suppressed several Communist
revolts, including those in Berlin and Bavaria. Early in 1919, a
freely elected constituent assembly met in Weimar to write a
constitution giving direct governing power to the Reichstag. SPD
leader Friedrich Ebert (1871-1925) was named president of the new
Weimar Republic, and Philipp Scheidemann (1865-1939) formed a
coalition government of the SPD, the Center party, and a liberal
group. This government soon resigned rather than sign the Treaty of
Versailles, the vindictive settlement imposed by the Paris Peace
Conference. Germany, however, really had no choice. In June 1919,
the Weimar Assembly voted to comply with the treaty, which deprived
Germany of large amounts of land, people, and natural resources and
forced it to pay enormous reparations.
The attempt to root parliamentary democracy in Germany was beset
from the beginning by grave problems. There were so many political
parties (at least six major and many more minor ones) it was hard to
form stable coalitions for effective government. Militant minorities
— the Communists on the far left and monarchists and racists on the
opposite extreme — sometimes resorted to force in efforts to
overturn the republic. Notable among these efforts was the Munich
Putsch of 1923, in which the tiny National Socialist party led by
Adolf Hitler made a somewhat farcical attempt to seize power in
Bavaria. The continuing unrest made the national government even
more dependent on the basically conservative army.
The year 1923 was one of major crisis. The payment of
reparations, in both cash and kind, had placed an enormous strain on
a country already bankrupted by more than four years of war. As
inflation mounted, Germany had suspended payment in 1922, provoking
the French to occupy the Ruhr area in January 1923. Workers in Ruhr
mines and factories resisted by striking, but such resistance
contributed to inflation, which brought on economic collapse. The
situation was saved in November 1923 when the ablest of Germany’s
republican politicians, Gustav Stresemann (1878-1929), introduced a
new currency and improved Germany’s relations with the Western
nations, paving the way for foreign loans and a more reasonable
schedule of reparations payments.
During the later 1920s, therefore, the German economy revived,
and politics settled down. Also, during those years, a remarkable
avant-garde culture blossomed in Germany, extending from the epic
theater of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), to the Bauhaus school of
functional art and architecture, to the relativity physics of Albert
Einstein (1879-1955), and to the existential philosophy of Martin
Heidegger (1889-1976).
However, this new Germany was cut down in its infancy by the
onset of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Nazi seizure of
power. Depression conditions once more radicalized politics and so
divided the parties in the Reichstag that parliamentary government
became all but impossible. >From 1930 on, government functioned by
emergency decree. The Communists profited briefly from this
radicalization, but the main beneficiary was Hitler's National
Socialist, or Nazi, party, which had the twin attractions of
appearing to offer radical solutions to economic problems while
upholding patriotic values. By 1932, it was the largest party in the
Reichstag. The following year, President Paul von Hindenburg
(1847-1976) appointed Hitler chancellor after allowing himself to be
convinced by generals and right-wing politicians that only the Nazi
leader could restore order in Germany and that he could be
controlled.
Nazi Dictatorship
Most Germans who supported Hitler during his rise to power did so
out of desperation, scarcely knowing what he planned to do. They
received much more than they had bargained for. After
half-persuading, half-coercing the Reichstag to grant him absolute
power, Hitler lost no time in founding a totalitarian state, known
unofficially as the Third Reich, supposedly in the tradition of the
Holy Roman Empire and the unified German Empire set up by Bismarck.
When confronted by demands from Storm Trooper (SA) leader Ernst
Roehm (1887-1934) and others for a second revolution that would make
good on Nazi claims to socialist ideals, Hitler purged Roehm and his
associates on the weekend of June 30, 1934. Four years later, he
forced out two of the top generals on trumped-up charges in order to
assure himself of full control of the expanding German armed forces.
Thanks to a ruthless secret police (the Gestapo) and a concentration
camp system under the direction of SS leader Heinrich Himmler
(1900-1945), known enemies of Nazism were put away and potential
ones terrorized.
The March of Marxism
So here we see the Marxist-inspired Communist Manifesto filtering
through the mindset of 1930s Western societies, as shown by the
strengthening power of union blackmailing techniques and the
intellectual weakness of the authors of legislation, the lawyers,
and the elected who are the actual legislators, the politicians.
Meanwhile, the masses lived in relative ignorance and apathy to the
wider and more influencing picture. At this point, the United
States, through Roosevelt, was experimenting with the dangerous
doctrine of socialism as derived from The Communist Manifesto. This
experimentation, rooted during this period, would continue on ad
infinitum through the balance of the twentieth century.
During this fermenting period of world history, we consistently
detect the subtle influence of Marxist thinking and the debilitating
philosophy of “individualism,” which Marx’s method seeks to create
as a weapon against the enemy — capitalism.
The Communist Manifesto, which was intended as a platform
statement for a small international workers’ party, the Communist
League, was published during the revolutions of 1848. The brief work
sketches Marx’s evolving philosophy of “scientific socialism,” a
philosophy he fully expounded in Das Kapital. From its opening line,
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggle,” to its famous closing, “Workers of the world
unite!” the Manifesto retains its compelling force for Marxists even
today.
In addition to the Manifesto and dozens of newspaper and magazine
articles, Karl Marx authored the following gems:
• 1841: On the difference between the natural philosophy of right
economic and philosophic manuscripts • 1844: On the Jewish
question, The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts • 1845: The Holy Family • 1846: The
German Ideology • 1847: The Poverty of Philosophy • 1848:
The Communist Manifesto • 1850: Class Struggles in France •
1852: The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. • 1853: Revelations
of the Communist trial at Cologne • 1859: A contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy • 1865: Wages, Price, Profit •
1871: The Civil War in France • 1867: Capital Volume I •
1883: Capital Volume II • 1893: Capital Volume III
So we see that, apart from The Communist Manifesto, Marx was a
prolific writer of socialist-inspired works. These works permeated
the societies of this post-war era and have done so effectively ever
since. The vast majority of students and teachers who have studied
these works have a burning desire for social justice burning so
brightly that they are simply seduced into believing that these
philosophies of secular humanism were the answer to their longings.
No sooner had these unwise citizens read and digested these
socialist philosophies, than they began to aspire to the “utopia”
they promised, only to be deluded and disappointed along the way.
Not, however, before the damage had been wrought on the society of
their passion. Academics, scientists, religionists, politicians, and
a vast majority of the masses were not only seduced by these unwise
experiments in social justice, but fervently believed they were
right. Such was and still is their delusion.
As history has so eloquently demonstrated, no amount of socialism
will bring about these social justice changes. They must be earned
by successive generations of men and women through a sincere desire
to compete and do better through hard work and the soul-building
virtues of discipline, determination, and dedication. There were
never meant to be any shortcuts and none have emerged. Civilization
and equality are evolving phenomena not achievable by brute force or
blackmail. The eventual emergence of the middle class in Western
society was an important piece of the scaffolding, as it provides a
stepping stone effect for successive generations to acquire and pass
on property, the essential ingredient to social equity. During this
post-war period, great strides were made in achieving the early
stages of a civilized society. Lurking in the shadows of the West ,
however, was the taxation regime of the Marxist theory. At the
same time, in Russia, outright communism was being practiced in all
of its bloody excesses.
This era was the consolidation of both mindsets. On the one hand
was the ideal of normal evolution through the establishment and
progress of the middle classes shepherded by capitalism. On the
other hand was the ideal of socialism spawned by the writings of
Karl Marx and being experimented with by a cross-section of the
intelligentsia and working classes of this era. The opposing forces
were lining up for a long battle that will continue to rage into the
closing chapters of this manuscript and the twentieth century.
The following is a surprising list of Marxist followers who
emerged during this and subsequent eras.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Lózaro Cárdenas (1895-1970)
Fidel Castro (1926-) Marc Chagall (1887-1985) Charles
Chaplin (1889-1977) Marie Curie (1867-1934) Charles Darwin
(1809-1882) Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) Diego Rivera
(1886-1957) Albert Einstein (1879-1955) William Faulkner
(1897-1962) Sigmond Freud (1856-1939) George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950) Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948) Maksim Gorki
(1868-1936) Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Ho Chi Minh
(1890-1969) Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) John XXIII (1881-1963)
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Karel Capek (1890-1938) Charles Le Corbusier (1887-1965)
Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961) André
Malraux (1901-1976) Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976) Henri Matisse
(1869-1954) Gamal Nasser (1918-1970) Oscar Niemeyer (1907-)
George Orwell (1903-1950) José Ortega Y Gasset (1883-1955)
Pasolini Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Ivan Pavlov
(1849-1936) Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Marcel Proust
(1871-1922) Romain Roland (1866-1944) Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905-1980) Dimitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) Josef Stalin
(1879-1953) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Thomas Mann
(1875-1955) Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980) Lev Nikolayevic
Tolstoy (1828-1910) Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) Emiliano Zapata
(1877-1919)
There would be many more as this century of experimentation and
flirtation with new philosophies evolved. Many contemporary
so-called democratic socialists of the latter part of the century
have learned their particular brand of socialism from students who
learned theirs from Marx. And so the weed spreads unobserved and
unrecognized by innocent and unsuspecting minds. Of course, these
minds would argue, so what? Social justice is our goal. Who cares
who the author was?
A most interesting study of how Marx continues to influence
history is to be found in trade unionism. This grouping together of
workers, the “proletariat,” was, of course, a vital and necessary
platform of The Communist Manifesto. Marx’s economic theories made
no immediate impact on the workers’ movement or on other thinkers,
except after his death in 1883. This is true of his theories
on value and surplus value, accumulation, exploitation,
pauperization, crisis and appropriation, class struggle, and
revolution. But by the end of the 19th century, several such
theories were being hotly discussed within the workers’ movement,
while others were gradually accepted as absolutely valid.
We must remember that the Manifesto was a direct appeal to all
workers to unite into Unions of Workers and to fight a long, ongoing
battle with the enemy, the Capitalists. Of course, Marx’s Manifesto
arose out of the squalid practice of worker exploitation. Yet, Marx
himself was the son of a wealthy family, his father a well-to-do
lawyer. Marx would later study law at Bonn University. He never had
a paying job in his life, preferring instead to live off of a meager
family endowment. From Bonne he went to Berlin, where he finished
his studies. Returning to Bonne, he tried teaching, but his
reputation did not serve his purpose. In Berlin, he turned to
atheism and became a subversive.
The number of his books and review articles that were actually
printed are very few; comrade Marx’s style was not terribly clear,
and so, very few were able to grasp his daring and complex ideas.
From excellent data accumulated, so very few of the union leaders
have ever read the Manifesto and practically none of the members
over the century, preferring to follow the doctrine though blind
faith. It has only been the elitists of academia who have attempted
to decipher the complexities of Marx’s mindset. These academics,
through the use of freewill, either rejected out of hand the
philosophy or became drunk with the individualistic and secular
potential, becoming disciples of the “faith.” The virus spread
rapidly in this way, as university after university fell prey
to the converted. Later on, this effect would be witnessed in
primary and secondary schools worldwide, as through the growing
power of unionism, the virus was carried and passed on from teacher
to teacher and teacher to student.
So as we survey this period of the twentieth century, we clearly
see the coalescing effects of Marxism as it would impinge on future
generations worldwide. It was not until 1917, with Lenin’s victory
in Russia, that the works of Marx were heard of throughout the free
world, and studied and discussed and put into practice by hundreds
and thousands of millions of people.
Britain, Germany, Italy, most of the rest of Europe, the United
States of America. the Pacific, South America were all beginning to
fall under its domination as the Manifesto and its message filtered
through the civilized world, carried wholeheartedly by the oppressed
and bitter rank and file of the workers and their unions. All the
while, capitalism and capitalists did what they always did — they
simply continued to accumulate wealth by exploiting the workers and
the weak. The theme of the strong oppressing the weak in society is,
of course, unbroken in our long history. We will explore the
solutions in a later chapter.
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