Read Nationalism and Culture Online
Authors: Rudolf Rocker
Tags: #General, #History, #Sociology, #Social Science, #Political Science, #Political Ideologies, #Culture, #Multicultural Education, #Nationalism and nationality, #Education, #Nationalism, #Nationalism & Patriotism
Nationalism and Culture (22 page)
tion, for the exploitation of colonial lands, for the mining of precious metals and much else. Thus it came to pass that for a long time industry could not keep pace with the mighty foreign development commencing for England after the civil war of 1642. Even in 1688 the value of imported products was £7,120,000. while exports amounted to only £4,-310,000—a relationship characteristic of the conditions prevailing at the time. Not until 1689 did the new parliament that resulted from the revolution of the preceding year put a curb on the royal power and take decisive steps to end once and for all the monopoly peddling of the court and the arbitrary restriction of industry and trade. From that time dates the mighty development of English social and economic life, so greatly furthered by a whole line of epoch-making inventions, such as cast-steel, the mechanical loom, the steam engine, and so on. But all this was possible only after the last remnant of absolutism had finally been buried and the fetters it had put on industry had been broken. Just as later in France, so also in England, this development of affairs overshadowed the revolution.
However, such a development was possible only where the rule of the absolute state had not completely crippled the vital forces of the people nor by a senseless policy destroyed every prospect for the further development of industry, as, for instance, had been done in Spain. In a previous chapter it has been shown how ruthless despotism, by the cruel expulsion of the Moors and Jews, had robbed Spain of its best artisans and agriculturalists. By the brutal suppression of communal freedom the economic decline of the country was still more enhanced. Blinded by the golden flood streaming into the land from Peru and Mexico, the monarchs gave no value whatever to the development, or even the maintenance, of industry. True, Charles I had attempted to further Spanish wool and silk industries by prohibition of imports and regulation of production, but his successors had no understanding of such matters. The position which Spain had attained as a world power also gave it first place in world commerce, but it played the part of a middleman who only provided the necessary commercial connections between the industrial countries and the users of their products. Even its own colonies were not permitted to establish trade enterprises without the intervention of the mother country.
Added to this was the fatal agrarian policy of the absolutist state, which had freed the nobility and the clergy of all land taxes, so that the whole burden of the impost had to be borne by the small farmers. The great landed proprietors united into the so-called "Mesta" an association which made a profession of robbing the peasants and compelled incredible concessions from the government. Under the rule of the Arabs there had existed in Andalusia a class of small farmers, and the land was one of the most productive territories in Europe. But now it had actually
come to pass that five noble owners held all the land of the whole province, cultivated primitively by the work of landless serfs, and to a large extent used as pasture for sheep. In this manner the cultivation of grains continually declined, and in spite of the importation of precious metals the rural population sank into the deepest poverty.
The continual wars swallowed immense sums, and when, after the revolt of the Netherlands and the destruction of the Armada in 1588 by the English and the Dutch, Spain's sea power was broken and its monopoly of world commerce went over to the victors, the country was so frightfully exhausted that no revival was possible. Its industry was almost completely destroyed, its land laid waste. The great majority of its inhabitants were living in pitiful misery, completely under the dominance of the church, whose representatives in the year 1700 made up nearly one thirtieth of the population, consuming the people's substance. Between 1500 and 1700 the land lost nearly one-half of its previous population. When Philip II assumed his father's heritage, Spain was regarded as the richest land in Europe, although it already contained the germs of its decline. At the end of the long reign of this cruel and fanatical despot it retained merely the shadow of its former greatness. And when Philip, to cover the enormous deficit of the state budget, instituted the notorious alcavala, a state tax which compelled every inhabitant to deliver 10 percent of any profits to the government, the realm was wholly given over to destruction. All attempts of later rulers to curb the evil were vain, although here and there they could record a few temporary successes. The consequences of this catastrophic decline are even today everywhere observable in Spain.
In Germany, the creation of a great national state with unified administration, coinage and regulation of finances was inhibited for manifold reasons. The dynasty of the Hapsburgs had with premeditation worked toward the creation of such a state, but it had never been able to subjugate the nobility and the small princes of the land as the monarchy had succeeded in doing in France after a long struggle. In fact, in Germany the princes managed to confirm their territorial powers ever more strongly and to foil successfully all plans for the erection of any centralized power. Nor had they compunctions about betraying emperor and realm at every favorable opportunity to unite themselves with the most dangerous enemies in other countries, when this was useful to their special interests. National limitations were wholly foreign to them, and the internal discord in German industry was very favorable to their ambitions.
Doubtless the Hapsburgs were concerned about safeguarding their special dynastic aims, but most of them lacked greatness and political vision. As a result, they frequently sacrificed their plans for unification to small temporary successes without being clearly aware of what they were doing. This was most clearly apparent when Wallenstein, after
four years of war, in the treaty of Liibeck obligated the Danes not to Interfere in German affairs. Then was offered the most favorable opportunity, also the last one, for a successful attempt at the erection of a centralized power with the emperor at its head. In fact, the victorious Wallenstein had visions of a goal similar to that which Richelieu at that time strove to obtain for France and gloriously achieved.
But Ferdinand II, influenced by shortsighted counselors, knew of nothing better than to follow the treaty of peace, which had virtually given all North Germany into his hands, with the Edict of Restitution of 1629, which commanded the return of all church and monastic property confiscated since the treaty of Passau. Such an ordinance naturally had an explosive effect. It aroused the whole Protestant population of the country against the emperor and his counselors—most of all, the Protestant princes, who never dreamed of returning their acquired church property. And this happened just at the time when the conquest-hungry king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, had already made all preparations for his incursion into Pomerania.
The Protestant princes were thus concerned about very earthly matters, for whose ideological embellishment Luther's doctrines proved very suitable. After the bloody suppression of the German peasants in the year 1525.^ the Reformation could no longer be dangerous to them. But even the "religious conviction" of the powerful opponents of Protestantism was no more genuine. For them, too, it was in the first place a question of power and economic interest—for all the rest they cared very little. It caused Richelieu, who was then guiding the interests of the French monarchy, no qualms of conscience to encourage Gustavus Adolphus to fight against the emperor, the Catholic Church and the Catholic League, although he was himself a cardinal, a prince of the Catholic Church. He was simply concerned to prevent the creation of a German national state, thus freeing the French monarchy from an inconvenient neighbor. Quite as little had Gustavus Adolphus the interests of the German Protestants at heart. He had his own dynastic interests and the interests of the Swedish state in view and cared only for these. For the Sultan, as well as for the then-reigning Pope Urban VIII, the Swedish king's Protestantism was no reason for their withdrawal of expressed good will, as long as he was combating the House of Hapsburg, the thorn in the flesh of both of them for political reasons.
After the Thirty Years' War, from whose devastating consequences Germany had hardly recovered after two centuries, every prospect for the foundation of a German unified state completely vanished. For all that, the course of political development there was similar to that in most of the other European states. The separate territorial states, more especially the larger ones, like Austria, Brandenburg-Prussia, Saxony,
Bavaria, strove to imitate the monarchies of the West in their inner structure and to make their economic-political plans effective within their own borders. Of course their rulers could not think of playing the same part as their great neighbors in the west—the economic lag of the German countries and the terrible wounds the long war had inflicted on the whole land did not permit it. So they were frequently compelled to put themselves under the protection of existing great states.
As the disastrous war had robbed Germany of almost two-thirds of its population and laid waste enormous sections of the land, the separate states had to be principally concerned about population j for with the increase of the inhabitants the power of the state grows. So taxes were imposed upon unmarried women, and even polygamy was flirted with, in order to put the country on its feet again. Most of all, they strove to build up agriculture, whereby the home policy of most of the German states received an impulse toward feudalism, which in the absolute states to the west had been more and more forced into the background by increasing mercantilism.
At the same time the larger German states pursued the policy of transforming their lands into self-contained economic territories. To this end the commercial prerogatives of the cities were abrogated, and every trade was subjected to a special ordinance. Thus, above all, they strove for the development of trade and manufactures by commercial treaties, prohibition of imports and exports, protective tariffs, premiums for exports, and so on, to put fresh money into the state treasuries. Thus, William I of Prussia, in his political testament, strongly urged his successor to concern himself about the success of manufactures, assuring him that he would thereby increase his revenues and put his country into a flourishing condition.
But while, on the one hand, the speculations of the smaller rulers for the increase of their revenues helped to further the few manufactures of their countries to a certain degree, on the other hand, the whole flood of senseless ordinances made certain that industry could not really develop, but must for hundreds of years remain fettered by these old legal forms. It is, therefore, a complete misconception of historical fact to maintain that production was furthered by the rising of the nationalist states of Europe and especially that their existence provided the conditions necessary for the development of industry. The very contrary is true. The absolutist national state artificially inhibited and hindered for centuries the development of economic institutions in every country. Its barbarous wars, which wasted many parts of Europe and furthered rapine, caused the best achievements of industrial technique to be forgotten, often to be replaced by antiquated, laborious methods. Senseless ordinances killed the spirit of economy, destroyed all free incentive and all creative activity.
without which a development of industry and economic reforms is quite unthinkable.
The present time affords the best possible illustration of such action. Right now, when a crisis of unheard-of extent has smitten the whole capitalist world and is pushing all nations equally toward the abyss, the structure of the nationalist state proves an insurmountable obstacle to relieving this frightful condition or even temporarily suppressing its evils. National selfishness has thus far blocked every earnest attempt at reciprocal understanding and has constantly striven to make capital out of its neighbors' needs. Even the most pronounced advocates of the capitalist order recognize more and more the fatality of this condition. But "national considerations" tie their hands and condemn to sterility in advance every proposal and every attempt at solution from whatever source they may come.
THE HUMANISTS AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT. MAN AS THE MEASURE OF THINGS. THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL RIGHTS. THE NATURAL RIGHTS OF THE CYNICS AND STOICS TILL ZENO. NATURAL RIGHT AND ABSOLUTISM. THE TIME OF THE SOCIAL UTOPIAS. THOMAS MORE AND FRANCOIS RABELAIS. THE MONARCHOMACHI. LANGUET'S VINDICIAE CONTRA TYRANSOS. THE DUTCH PROTECTIVE LEAGUE. JESUITISM AND TEMPORAL POWER. FRANCISCO SUAREZ AND THE "DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS." JUAN DE MARIANA AND THE DOCTRINE OF TYRANNICIDE. LA BOETIE CONCERNING VOLUNTARY SERFDOM. GEORGE BUCHANAN AND THE DOCTRINE OF "THE PEOPLES WILL." THOMAS HOBBES' THEORY OF THE STATE. THE LEVIATHAN. INDEPENDENTS AND PRESBYTERIANS. JOHN MILTON AND PURITANISM. THE DOCTRINE OF JOHN LOCKE CONCERNING PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT. INFLUENCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL RIGHTS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL LAW.
THE Renaissance, with its strong pa^n__tendency, reawakened men's interest in earthly affairs and again turned their minds to questions which had scarcely been discussed since the decline of the ancient civilization. The great historical significance of the rising humanism lay in the fact that its leaders broke away from the spiritual bondage and the dead formalistic r ubbis h of scholasticism. They again made man and his social environment the center of their speculation, instead of losing themselves in the maze of sterile theological concepts, as the leaders of victorious Protestantism had done in the northern lands. Humanism was no popular movement, but an intellectual trend, which affected almost all European countries and furnished the basis of a new concept of life. That later, even this stream sanded up and became a matter of dry as dust closet-learning, as it gradually lost its relation to real life, does not negate its original purpose.
Interest in the natural phenomena of life again directed men's attention to the social groupings of people, and thus the old ideas of natural rights were revivified. While the ever encroaching absolutism strove to confirm its power by the doctrine of the divine right of kings, the whole-
