Nationalism and Culture (80 page)

If formerly free contract was the great slogan of the political economists, who saw in the "free play of forces" the necessary operation of an iron economic law, today these already antiquated forms are more and more yielding the field to the strategy of collective capitalistic organizations which undertake to eliminate contract entirely by setting up national and international trusts in order to achieve uniform control of prices. If formerly the mutual competition of private owners in industry and trade took care that entrepreneurs and merchants should not be able to raise their prices to quite too high a level, today the promoters of the great economic cartels are in a position easily to suppress all private competition and in the thoroughness of their control to prescribe prices to consumers. Corporations like the Internationale Rohstahlgemeinschaft and a hundred others show clearly the course of this development. Together with the ancient private capitalism, vanishes also its catchword of laissez-faire, to make way for the economic dictatorship of modern collective capitalism. No, our present economic system has not a single national vein in its

bodyj just as little as the economic systems of the past, as economics in general.

What is said here of modern industrial capitalism is true also of trade and bank capital. Its administrators and beneficiaries feel themselves everywhere safe in the saddle. They conspire to bring on wage wars and organize revolutions j they provide modern politics with the necessary slogans with which to conceal behind the veil of misleading ideas the cruel and insatiable greed of small minorities. By means of a venal and thoroughly mendacious press they modify and shape "public opinion," and with cold cynicism disregard every mandate of humanity and of social morality. In a word, they make personal profit the starting point of every discussion and are always ready to sacrifice to this Moloch the weal and woe of mankind.

Whenever innocent souls catch the scent of deep political reasons or of national hatred there is open to them no recourse except to the conspiracies instigated by the pirates of finance. They exploit everything: political and economic rivalries, national hostilities, diplomatic traditions and religious antagonisms. In all the wars of the last quarter-century one finds the hand of high finance. The conquest of Egypt and the Transvaal, the annexation of Tripoli, the occupation of Morocco, the partition of Persia, the carnage in Manchuria, and the international blood-bath in China on the occasion of the Boxer uprising, the Japanese wars—everywhere one stumbles upon the big banks. . . . The hundreds of thousands of men that the war will cost— what does that matter to finance? The mind of the financier is concerned with columns of figures which balance. The rest is none of his afiFair; he does not even possess imagination enough to include human lives in his calculation.^

Capitalism is everywhere the same in its objectives j likewise, in the selection of its means. Its devastating effects on the intellectual and emotional life of men are also everywhere the same. Its practical operation in all parts of the earth leads to the same results and imprints on men a peculiar stamp which had not been known before. If one follows these phenomena with a watchful eye one cannot avoid the conclusion that our modern economic system is the symbol of a definite epoch and in no way the result of special national exertions. The forces of every nation have had a part in bringing about this condition. If one wishes really to grasp its inner nature, the one must dive into the intellectual and material assumptions of the capitalistic epoch; but it would be a vain task to try to judge the economic foundations of this and of all past social epochs from a so-called national point of view.

This is just the reason why the so-called "economic nationalism" of

^ P. Kropotkin, La science moiefney
etc.
Paris, J913, p. 294.

which there is so much talk today, and which has cast its spell over even outspoken socialists, is so hopelessly highflown. From the fact that the old national economic entities are today being more and more completely crushed by the world economy of the international trusts and cartels men have rather prematurely drawn the conclusion that all economy is to be transformed and reconstructed on the basis of the special endowments and capabilities resident in each people because of their national peculiarities. Thus, one regards operations in the coal industry and its different branches and the proceeding of fiber-stuffs as occupations which are best suited to the national industrial instincts of Englishmen, while one says of the Germans that they are best fitted for the potash industry, lithography, the chemical trade and optics. Thus, it is believed that to each people can be assigned a special industrial activity which best fits his national endowment, and that in this way a reorganization of the whole economic life can be arrived at.

In reality, these ideas are merely a new edition of similar lines of thought which once played an important role in the works of the old English economists. Then, too, it was thought necessary to establish that Nature herself had destined certain peoples for industry and others for agriculture. This illusion long ago went into the discard, and its latest ideological recoinage will be accorded no better end. Men as individuals can be subjected to industrial speciali2^tion; whole peoples and nations, never. This and similar lines of thought suffer from the same defect that is found in the foundation of every collective concept. A man may very well, because of certain inborn characteristics and capabilities, belong among the chemists, the farmers, the painters or the philosophers j but a people as a whole never permits itself to be subjected to an abstract assumption, because every one of its members exhibits peculiar inclinations and requirements, which become apparent in the rich manifoldness of their undertakings. This very many-sidedness, in which natural endowments, capacities and inclinations mutually supplement one another, constitutes the genuine essence of every community. Who overlooks this has no understanding whatever of the organic structure of the community.

What has been said here about the economic side of social culture applies also to the political forms of social life. These also can be judged and valued only as products of definite epochs, never as typical manifestations of any kind of national ideology whatever. It would be a futile undertaking to examine all past forms of the state in the light of their national character and content. In this field also, we have to do with a social development which gradually penetrated to every part of the European culture circle, and just for this reason was connected with no specific national norm. Even the most decided supporters of "national thought" cannot deny that the transition from the "state with subjects"

to the "national constitutional state" occurred in all Europe under the same social assumptions and often in quite similar forms.

The absolute monarchy, which almost everywhere in Europe preceded the present constitutional state, was originally just as intimately interwoven with the ancient feudal economy as was, later, the parliamentary system with the economic order of private capital; and as the latter was confined by no national boundaries, so also the parliamentary form of government served not merely a particular nation, but all the so-called "culture nations" as the political frame for their social activities. Even the manifestations of decay of the parliamentary system, which one can observe everywhere today, reveal themselves in every country in similar forms. However much Mussolini might insist that modern fascism was a purely Italian product which could not be imitated by any other nation, the history of the last ten years has already shown how arrogant and baseless the claim was. Fascism also—regardless of its exaggerated nationalistic ideology—is merely a product of the spirit of our time, born of a definite situation and nourished by it. The general economic, political and social status which arose in consequence of the World War led in all countries to similar efforts; which is merely evidence that even the most extreme nationalism is, in the final view, to be regarded as a tendency of the time which develops under specific social conditions and which in no way embodies the special "national spirit" of a particular people.

The modern politician is, in every country with a parliamentary government, determined by the same norm and pursues everywhere the same aims. He is a type which is found in every modern state and is shaped by the peculiarities of his profession. Attached to his party, to whose "will" he gives expression, he is always striving to make its opinion the dominant one and to defend its special interests as general interests. If he rises slightly above the average intellectual level of the usual party leader he knows quite well that the alleged will of his party is merely the will of a small minority which gives direction to the party and determines its practical activity. Always to hold the party firmly in hand and so to guide its adherents that each believes he is guided by his own will is one of the characteristic manifestations of the modern party system.

The nature of political parties, upon which every parliamentary government rests, is in every country the same. Everywhere the party is distinguished from other human organizations by its endeavor to attain to power. It has the conquest of the state inscribed on its banner. Its whole organizational structure imitates that of the state; and just as the government is constantly guided by reasons of state, the party is guided always by considerations of its special reasons of party. An action, or an idea, is for its adherents good or bad, just or unjust, not because it agrees with the personal judgment and convictions of the individual, but

because it is advantageous or disadvantageous to the undertakings of the party, furthers its ends or is a hindrance to them. And here the voluntary discipline which the party imposes upon its adherents proves itself, as a rule more effective than the menace of the law, because servitude on principle is always deeper rooted than that which is imposed on men by external force.

So long as a party has not attained the public influence for which it strives it stands in opposition to the existing government. But an opposition is such a necessary institution for the parliamentary system of government that if it did not exist one would have to invent it, as Napoleon III once cynically remarked. If the party becomes stronger, so that the heads of the state must reckon with its influence, they make to it all sorts of concessions and under some conditions invite its leaders into the government. But the very existence of political parties and their influence in public life contradicts most strikingly the illusion of an alleged "national consciousness" j for it shows only too clearly how hopelessly divided and shattered the artificial structure of the nation is.

Now, as regards parliamentary government as such, there are, indeed, in the individual countries certain differences, which, however, are to be regarded merely as formal deviations and not at all as essential differences. Everywhere the parliamentary machine operates by the same methods and with the same routine. The discussions in the legislative bodies serve, in a measure, merely as theatrical exhibitions for the public and have not at all the purpose of convincing opponents or weakening their convictions. The position of the so-called "representatives of the people" in the vote upon the various questions which come Up for debate is determined in advance in the separate party caucuses, and not even the eloquence of a Demosthenes would be able to change it. If the parliament would merely confine itself to voting and abstain from all public discussion of the separate proposals, the results would not differ by a hair. The oratorical exhibitions are, by and large, merely a necessary adjunct to keep up appearances. This is the same in France as it is in England and America, and it would be a waste of time to try to discover special national features in the practical procedure of the separate parliaments.

The whole development in Europe up to the modern constitutional state has proceeded everywhere in more or less similar form for the same reasons, since conditions underlay it which were effective not merely for a particular nation but forced themselves with the same irresistible logic upon all the peoples of the continent, however much the supporters of the old regime might struggle against them. Perhaps temporary differences can be discovered, for the great transformation did not take place in all the countries at the same time, but its manifestations were everywhere alike and were fostered by the same causes. Furthermore, this is

proved also by the rise and spread of the so-called mercantile theories which exerted such a decisive influence upon the internal and external policies of the absolutist states of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These theories found famous advocates in every country in Europe: in France, Bodin, Montcretien, de Watteville, Sully, Melon, Forbonnais and others; in England, Raleigh, Mun, Child, Temple, and so on; in Italy, Galiani, Genovesi and their successors; in Spain, Ustariz and Ulloa; in Holland, Hugo Grotius and Pieter de Groot; in Austria and Germany, Becker, Hrneck, Seckendorff, Justi, Siissmilch,. Sonnenfels and many others. Here, too, we are dealing with a general intellectual drift which arose from the social status of Europe.

The more the absolutist state operated in the different countries as an unsurmountable obstacle to any further social development, the more clearly the destructiveness of its political-economic tendencies were revealed, the more unequivocally apparent became, in course of time, the striving for political reconstruction and new understandings of economic theory. The insane extravagance of the courts in the midst of starving peoples, the shameless prodigality of the favorites and mistresses, the collapse of agriculture because of the feudal privileges and a monstrous system of taxation, the threat of state bankruptcy, the unrest of the peasants who were hardly regarded as human by the privileged orders, the destruction of all moral ties, and the heartless indifference in those striking words of Pompadour which have achieved such pitiful fame, "Apres nous le deluge!^' —all this could but prepare the way for the overthrow of the old regime and lead to new views of life. Whether this occurred from within, as in Holland, England and France, or was effected from without, as in Germany, Austria and Poland, is of little importance.