WEBVTT NOTE They Saw it Coming: The 19th-Century Libertarian Critique of Fascism 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000 To speak of a 19th century libertarian critique of fascism might seem anachronistic, since fascism is generally understood as a 20th century phenomenon. 2 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:17.000 But it did not spring from nothing, and the libertarians of the 19th century saw it in the making. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:26.000 Fascism differs from its close cousins, communism on the one hand, and aristocratic conservatism on the other, in several important ways. 4 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:29.000 Let's begin with its difference from communism. 5 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:35.920 First, where communism seeks to substitute the state for private ownership, fascism seeks 6 00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:41.960 to incorporate or co-opt private ownership into the state apparatus through public-private 7 00:00:41.960 --> 00:00:42.960 partnership. 8 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:48.480 Thus, fascism tends to be more tempting than communism to wealthy interests, who may see 9 00:00:48.480 --> 00:00:52.880 it as a way to insulate their economic power from competition through forced cartelization 10 00:00:52.880 --> 00:00:55.320 and other corporatist stratagems. 11 00:00:55.320 --> 00:01:10.320 Second, where communist ideology tends to be cosmopolitan and internationalist, fascist ideology tends to be chauvinistically nationalist, stressing a particularist allegiance to one's country, culture or ethnicity. 12 00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:19.320 Along with this goes a suspicion of rationalism, a preference for economic autarky, and a view of life as one of inevitable but glorious struggle. 13 00:01:19.320 --> 00:01:32.320 Fascism also tends to cultivate a folksy, or folkish, man of the people, pragmatism over principles, hard overhead, pay no attention to those pointy-headed intellectuals' rhetorical style. 14 00:01:32.320 --> 00:01:36.320 These contrasts with communism should not be overstated, of course. 15 00:01:36.320 --> 00:01:44.320 Communist governments cannot afford to suppress private ownership entirely, since doing so leads swiftly to economic collapse. 16 00:01:44.320 --> 00:01:55.320 Moreover, however internationalist and cosmopolitan communist regimes may be in theory, they tend to be just as chauvinistically nationalist in practice as their fascist cousins. 17 00:01:55.320 --> 00:02:01.320 On the other hand, fascist regimes are sometimes perfectly willing to pay lip service to liberal universalism. 18 00:02:01.320 --> 00:02:07.320 All the same, there is a difference in emphasis and in strategy between fascism and communism here. 19 00:02:07.320 --> 00:02:22.320 When faced with existing institutions that threaten the power of the state, be they corporations, churches, the family, tradition, the communist impulse is by and large to abolish them, while the fascist impulse is by and large to absorb them. 20 00:02:22.320 --> 00:02:30.320 Power structures external to the state are potential rivals to the state's own power, and so states always have some reason to seek their abolition. 21 00:02:30.320 --> 00:02:33.320 Communism gives that tendency full rein. 22 00:02:33.320 --> 00:02:38.320 But power structures external to the state are also potential allies of the state, 23 00:02:38.320 --> 00:02:44.320 particularly if they serve to encourage habits of subordination and regimentation in the populace. 24 00:02:44.320 --> 00:02:48.320 And so the potential always exists for a mutually beneficial partnership. 25 00:02:48.320 --> 00:02:51.320 Herein lies the fascist strategy. 26 00:02:51.320 --> 00:02:56.320 The respects in which fascism differs from communism might seem to align it rather more closely 27 00:02:56.320 --> 00:02:59.320 with the traditional aristocratic conservatism of the Ancien Regime, 28 00:02:59.320 --> 00:03:07.320 which is likewise particularist, corporatist, mercantilist, nationalist, militarist, patriarchal, anti-rationalist. 29 00:03:07.320 --> 00:03:14.320 But fascism differs from old-style conservatism in embracing an ideal of industrial progress directed by managerial technocrats 30 00:03:14.320 --> 00:03:21.320 as well as in adopting a populist stance of championing the little guy against elites. Remember the folksiness. 31 00:03:21.320 --> 00:03:27.320 If fascism's technocratic tendencies appear to conflict with its anti-rationalist tendencies, 32 00:03:27.320 --> 00:03:34.840 Well, in the words of proto-fascist Miller-Fundenbrook, we must be strong enough to live in contradictions. 33 00:03:34.840 --> 00:03:39.160 Some of the differences between fascism and the older conservatism may be due to the advances 34 00:03:39.160 --> 00:03:42.120 won by their common foes, the liberals. 35 00:03:42.120 --> 00:03:46.480 The progress of liberalism and of industry had the effect of shifting wealth, at least 36 00:03:46.480 --> 00:03:51.520 in part, from the traditional aristocracy to new private hands, thus creating new private 37 00:03:51.520 --> 00:03:55.320 interest groups with the ability to operate as political entrepreneurs. 38 00:03:55.320 --> 00:04:02.320 Hence, perhaps, the tendency toward the emergence of a plutocratic class nominally outside the traditional state apparatus. 39 00:04:02.320 --> 00:04:09.320 Likewise, the progress of democracy meant that plutocracy could hope to triumph only by donning populist guise. 40 00:04:09.320 --> 00:04:15.320 Hence, the paradox of an elitist movement marching forward under the banner of anti-elitism. 41 00:04:15.320 --> 00:04:23.320 A prime example in US history, as we just heard from Walter, being anti-trust laws and other allegedly anti-big business legislation 42 00:04:23.320 --> 00:04:28.320 and the population being vigorously lobbied for by big business itself. 43 00:04:28.320 --> 00:04:32.320 Hence, fascism's odd fusion of privilege and folksiness. 44 00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:38.320 I might call it a movement that thinks like Halliburton and talks like George W. Bush. 45 00:04:38.320 --> 00:04:44.320 The partnership between the official state apparatus and the nominally private beneficiaries of state power 46 00:04:44.320 --> 00:04:49.320 was a familiar theme for 19th century libertarians like Frederic Bastiat and Gustave de Molinari 47 00:04:49.320 --> 00:04:58.320 ended and radicalized Adam Smith's critique of mercantilist protectionism as a scheme for benefiting concentrated business interests at the expense of the general public. 48 00:04:58.320 --> 00:05:09.320 In Molinari's words, businesses asked the government to safeguard their monopolies by the same methods that it had put into effect for protecting its own. 49 00:05:09.320 --> 00:05:16.320 Libertarian sociologists like Charles Comte and Charles Du Noyé had developed an entire pre-Marxian theory of class conflict, 50 00:05:16.320 --> 00:05:25.320 according to which the key to the position of the ruling class is not, contra Marx, access to the means of production, but rather access to political power. 51 00:05:25.320 --> 00:05:33.320 When Marx called the French government a joint stock company for the exploitation of France's national wealth on behalf of the bourgeois elite 52 00:05:33.320 --> 00:05:38.320 and at the expense of production and commerce, he was only echoing what libertarians had been saying for decades. 53 00:05:38.320 --> 00:05:44.320 Herbert Spencer likewise complained of the influence of railway autocrats in American politics, 54 00:05:44.320 --> 00:05:50.320 overriding the rights of shareholders and dominating over courts of justice and state governments. 55 00:05:50.320 --> 00:05:56.320 Lysander Spooner denounced the financial and banking elite, writing as follows, 56 00:05:56.320 --> 00:06:26.320 Among savages, mere physical strength on the part of one man may enable him to rob, enslave, or kill another man, but with so-called civilized peoples, by whom soldiers in any requisite number and other instrumentalities of war in any requisite amount can always be had for money, the question of war, and consequently the question of power, is little else than a mere question of money. As a necessary consequence, those who stand ready to furnish the money are the real rulers. 57 00:06:26.320 --> 00:06:32.320 The real rulers, the emperors and kings and parliaments, are anything but the real rulers of their respective countries. 58 00:06:32.320 --> 00:06:41.320 They are little or nothing else than mere tools employed by the wealthy to rob, enslave, and if need be, murder those who have less wealth or none at all. 59 00:06:41.320 --> 00:06:48.320 The so-called sovereigns in these different governments are simply the heads or chiefs of different bands of robbers and murderers. 60 00:06:48.320 --> 00:06:54.320 And these heads or chiefs are dependent upon the lenders of blood money for the means to carry on their robberies and murders. 61 00:06:54.320 --> 00:06:59.320 They could not sustain themselves a moment but for the loans made to them by these blood money loan mongers. 62 00:06:59.320 --> 00:07:05.320 In addition to paying the interest on their bonds, they perhaps grant to the holders of them great monopolies in banking, 63 00:07:05.320 --> 00:07:08.320 like the banks of England, of France and of Vienna, 64 00:07:08.320 --> 00:07:15.320 with the agreement that these banks shall furnish money whenever in sudden emergencies it may be necessary to shoot down more of their people. 65 00:07:15.320 --> 00:07:23.320 Perhaps also by means of tariffs on competing imports, they give great monopolies to certain branches of industry in which these lenders of blood money are engaged. 66 00:07:23.320 --> 00:07:46.320 As this quotation from Spooner shows, 19th century libertarians also saw a connection between plutocracy and militarism, and sharply criticized what today would be called the military-industrial complex. 67 00:07:46.320 --> 00:07:50.700 Spencer, for example, railed against the military aid and state conferred privileges enjoyed 68 00:07:50.700 --> 00:07:55.320 with East India Company, which enabled it, he says, to commit deeds of blood and rapin 69 00:07:55.320 --> 00:07:59.660 in India where the police authorities league with wealthy scamps to allow the machinery 70 00:07:59.660 --> 00:08:03.000 of the law to be used for purposes of extortion. 71 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:07.600 Such abuses, Spencer noted, were mainly due to the carrying on of state management and 72 00:08:07.600 --> 00:08:11.400 with the help of state funds and state force. 73 00:08:11.400 --> 00:08:15.120 Had the military might of the British Empire not been placed at the disposal of the company's 74 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:16.120 He says, 75 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:20.120 Their defenseless state would have compelled them to behave differently. 76 00:08:20.120 --> 00:08:23.720 They would have necessity of turn their attention wholly to the development of commerce and 77 00:08:23.720 --> 00:08:26.760 conducted themselves peaceably. 78 00:08:26.760 --> 00:08:31.720 Writing in the mid-1800s, Spencer complained especially of the grievous salt monopoly, 79 00:08:31.720 --> 00:08:34.880 which would of course become the chief catalyst for the Indian independence movement nearly 80 00:08:34.880 --> 00:08:37.240 a century later. 81 00:08:37.240 --> 00:08:40.400 But who, Spencer wrote, are the gainers? 82 00:08:40.400 --> 00:08:42.920 The monopolists. 83 00:08:42.920 --> 00:08:47.120 These are their pockets in the shape of salaries to civil and military officers, dividends 84 00:08:47.120 --> 00:08:52.200 of profits, etc., has gone a large part of the enormous revenue of the East India Company. 85 00:08:52.200 --> 00:08:56.080 The rich owners of colonial property must have protection, as well as their brethren, 86 00:08:56.080 --> 00:08:58.180 the landowners of England. 87 00:08:58.180 --> 00:09:02.600 The one their prohibitive duties, the other their corn laws, and the resources of the 88 00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:07.820 poor, starved, overburdened people must be still further drained to augment the overflowing 89 00:09:07.820 --> 00:09:11.400 wealth of the rulers." 90 00:09:11.400 --> 00:09:17.120 Because plutocracy, these libertarian writers thought, drives militarism, but they also 91 00:09:17.120 --> 00:09:20.320 held that militarism drives plutocracy. 92 00:09:20.320 --> 00:09:25.340 Thus the American Spencerian William Graham Sumner argued, quote, militarism, expansion 93 00:09:25.340 --> 00:09:28.400 and imperialism will all favor plutocracy. 94 00:09:28.400 --> 00:09:33.560 In the first place, war and expansion will favor jobbery, both in the dependence and at 95 00:09:33.560 --> 00:09:34.560 home. 96 00:09:34.560 --> 00:09:35.560 Jobbery, a wonderful word for rent-seeking. 97 00:09:35.560 --> 00:09:39.780 In the second place, they will take away the attention of the people from what the plutocrats 98 00:09:39.780 --> 00:09:48.780 In the third place, they will cause large expenditures of the people's money, the return for which will not go into the Treasury, but into the hands of a few schemers. 99 00:09:48.780 --> 00:09:53.780 In the fourth place, they will call for a large public debt and taxes. 100 00:09:53.780 --> 00:10:03.780 And these things especially tend to make men unequal, because any social burdens bear more heavily on the weak than on the strong, and so make the weak weaker and the strong stronger." 101 00:10:03.780 --> 00:10:22.780 While the influence of private wealth and government was not exactly anything new, 19th century libertarians tended to think it had been given a new impetus by the rise of democracy and its inevitable accompaniment to interest group politics, what the French liberals called ulcerous government. 102 00:10:22.780 --> 00:10:36.780 A number of libertarians argue that representative democracy leads to a struggle for political influence among competing special interest groups, and unsurprisingly, it's the wealthier and more concentrated interests that tend to win out. 103 00:10:36.780 --> 00:10:46.780 Sumner, for example, maintained that democracy, far from being, as is usually supposed, the arch-enemy of plutocracy, is actually plutocracy's crucial enabler. 104 00:10:46.780 --> 00:11:06.780 From Sumner, the methods and machinery of democratic, republican self-government, caucuses, primaries, committees, conventions, lend themselves perhaps more easily than other political methods and machinery to the uses of selfish cliques which seek political influence for interested purposes. 105 00:11:06.780 --> 00:11:14.780 By the way, for Sumner on this, I highly recommend Scott Trask's article in the recent Journal of the Britannian Studies. 106 00:11:14.780 --> 00:11:28.780 But on this point, writers like Sumner were simply developing the implications of James Madison's remark in The Federalist, that the extreme mutability to which representative governments are liable is likely to work to the benefit of a wealthy minority. 107 00:11:28.780 --> 00:11:51.780 It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read or so incoherent that they cannot be understood, if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. 108 00:11:51.780 --> 00:11:57.780 Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, 109 00:11:57.780 --> 00:12:03.780 enterprising and moneyed few over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people. 110 00:12:03.780 --> 00:12:09.780 Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, 111 00:12:09.780 --> 00:12:14.780 presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences, 112 00:12:14.780 --> 00:12:20.780 a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. 113 00:12:20.780 --> 00:12:27.780 This is a state of things in which it may be said, with some truth, that laws are made for the few, not the many." 114 00:12:27.780 --> 00:12:36.780 And Maddison Histerne was drawing on the ancient Athenian argument that electoral systems are actually oligarchic rather than democratic. 115 00:12:36.780 --> 00:12:44.780 In the 19th century both libertarians and Marxists were complaining about the power of wealthy elites. 116 00:12:44.780 --> 00:12:49.780 But they disagreed on the remedy, because they disagreed on the origin of the problem. 117 00:12:49.780 --> 00:12:53.780 For the Marxists, plutocracy was a product of the market. 118 00:12:53.780 --> 00:13:01.780 The ruling class emerged through commerce and only subsequently seized control of the state in order to consolidate its already established hegemony. 119 00:13:01.780 --> 00:13:07.780 Marx himself was ambivalent on this question, but Engels solidified the orthodox Marxist position. 120 00:13:07.780 --> 00:13:11.780 Hence, for the Marxists, it was the market that needed to be suppressed. 121 00:13:11.780 --> 00:13:17.780 This is the origin of the left-wing view that fascism is simply a manifestation of free market capitalism. 122 00:13:17.780 --> 00:13:27.780 For the libertarians, by contrast, a ruling class depends for its power on the power of the state, and so is the latter that needed to be suppressed. 123 00:13:27.780 --> 00:13:34.780 The libertarians did not, however, make the mistake of supposing that state power by itself was the sole problem. 124 00:13:34.780 --> 00:13:46.780 Since rulers are generally outnumbered by those they rule, these thinkers saw that state power itself cannot survive except through popular acceptance, which the state lacks the power to compel. 125 00:13:46.780 --> 00:13:57.780 In Spencer's words, in the case of a government representing a dominant class, the very existence of a class monopolizing all power is due to certain sentiments in the community. 126 00:13:57.780 --> 00:14:00.780 Likewise, Chaljun Waiye writes, 127 00:14:00.780 --> 00:14:07.780 The first mistake, and to my mind the most serious, is not sufficiently seeing difficulties where they are, 128 00:14:07.780 --> 00:14:10.780 not recognizing them except in governments. 129 00:14:10.780 --> 00:14:14.780 Since it is indeed there that the greatest obstacles ordinarily make themselves felt, 130 00:14:14.780 --> 00:14:20.780 it is assumed that that is where they exist, and that alone is where one endeavors to attack them. 131 00:14:20.780 --> 00:14:24.780 One is unwilling to see that nations are the material from which governments are made, 132 00:14:24.780 --> 00:14:28.780 that is from their bosom that governments emerge." 133 00:14:28.780 --> 00:14:32.780 Or again, as American anarchist Edwin Walker pointedly asked, 134 00:14:32.780 --> 00:14:36.780 if statism were the cause of all social evil, what on earth could be the cause of statism? 135 00:14:36.780 --> 00:14:40.780 19th century libertarians then 136 00:14:40.780 --> 00:14:44.780 tended to be radical or dialectical thinkers in Chris Kibera's sense. 137 00:14:44.780 --> 00:14:48.780 They viewed state power as part of an interlocking system of mutually reinforcing 138 00:14:48.780 --> 00:14:52.780 social practices and structures, and were intensely interested in the institutional 139 00:14:52.780 --> 00:15:10.780 It is in their analysis of these accompaniments that we see them grappling with the specifically fascist aspects of statist culture. 140 00:15:10.780 --> 00:15:19.780 Writers like Du Noyer, Spencer and Molinari saw a close connection between statism and militarism because, in their view, the state originated in war. 141 00:15:19.780 --> 00:15:35.780 Tribes that succeeded in fending off invaders became increasingly dependent on their warrior class, while tribes that failed to fend off invaders became the subjects of the enemy tribe's warrior class, and in either case the warrior class was thereby positioned to become a ruling class. 142 00:15:35.780 --> 00:15:48.780 Dunwaye and Spencer also saw a reciprocal relationship between statism and militarism on the one hand and patriarchy on the other, since they regarded the rule of men over women as the original class division from which all later ones grew. 143 00:15:48.780 --> 00:15:56.780 They would thus not have been surprised to see fascist movements glorifying military conquest on the one hand and the patriarchal family on the other. 144 00:15:56.780 --> 00:16:05.780 They would also not have been surprised to notice that fascism takes its name from the fascis, the Roman symbol of an axe and a bundle of rods. 145 00:16:05.780 --> 00:16:10.780 A bundle of rods by itself indicated that an official had the power to inflict corporal punishment. 146 00:16:10.780 --> 00:16:15.780 Adding an axe to the bundle of rods implied the power to inflict death as well. 147 00:16:15.780 --> 00:16:21.780 Bastiat regarded the prevailing reverence for ancient Rome as a pernicious cultural influence. 148 00:16:21.780 --> 00:16:23.780 He wrote as follows, 149 00:16:25.780 --> 00:16:27.780 What was Roman patriotism? 150 00:16:27.780 --> 00:16:33.780 Hatred of foreigners, the destruction of all civilization, the stifling of all progress, 151 00:16:33.780 --> 00:16:39.780 the scourging of the world with fire and sword, the chaining of women, children and old men to triumphal chariots. 152 00:16:39.780 --> 00:16:42.780 This was glory. This was virtue. 153 00:16:42.780 --> 00:16:49.660 The lesson has not been lost, and it is from Rome, undoubtedly, that this adage still comes 154 00:16:49.660 --> 00:16:50.660 to us. 155 00:16:50.660 --> 00:16:56.520 One nation's loss is another nation's gain, an adage that still governs the world. 156 00:16:56.520 --> 00:17:01.900 To acquire an idea of Roman morality, imagine in the heart of Paris, an organization of 157 00:17:01.900 --> 00:17:07.300 men who hate to work, determined to satisfy their wants by deceit and force, and consequently 158 00:17:07.300 --> 00:17:09.940 at war with society. 159 00:17:09.940 --> 00:17:14.320 Such as a certain moral code and even some solid virtues, will soon manifest themselves 160 00:17:14.320 --> 00:17:21.160 in such an organization, courage, perseverance, self-control, prudence, discipline, constancy 161 00:17:21.160 --> 00:17:26.980 and misfortune, deep secrecy, punctilio, devotion to the community. 162 00:17:26.980 --> 00:17:31.780 Such undoubtedly will be the virtues that necessity and prevailing opinion would develop 163 00:17:31.780 --> 00:17:33.740 among these brigands. 164 00:17:33.740 --> 00:17:38.520 Such were the virtues of the buccaneers, such were those of the Romans. 165 00:17:38.520 --> 00:17:43.160 It may be said in regard to the latter that the grandeur of their enterprise and the immensity 166 00:17:43.160 --> 00:17:48.620 of their success has thrown so glorious a veil over their crimes as to transform the 167 00:17:48.620 --> 00:17:51.120 crimes into virtues. 168 00:17:51.120 --> 00:17:53.520 This is precisely why that school is so pernicious. 169 00:17:53.520 --> 00:18:02.080 It is not abject vice, it is vice crowned with splendor that seduces men's souls." 170 00:18:02.080 --> 00:18:06.960 Rome incidentally was another culture in which plutocracy triumphed by adopting a democratic 171 00:18:06.960 --> 00:18:36.960 Spenser was convinced that Western culture in his day was entering a retrograde phase, a phase he called rebarbarization, in which the values of industrial society, the society of voluntary cooperation and mutual benefit, were yielding once more to the older values of militant society, of hierarchy, regimentation, aggressive impulses, anti-intellectuality, and a zero-sum view of human existence. 172 00:18:36.960 --> 00:18:48.960 There is now evidence of rebarbarization not only in official military policy, but also in cultural developments, as for example in the increasing militarization of the church, or the recrudescence of what he called the religion of enmity. 173 00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:51.960 Spencer was distressed to observe that, quote, 174 00:18:51.960 --> 00:18:58.460 In the church services, held on the occasion of the departure of troops for South Africa, 175 00:18:58.460 --> 00:19:06.460 he was talking about the Boer War, certain hymns are used in a manner which substitutes for the spiritual enemy, the human enemy. 176 00:19:06.460 --> 00:19:13.460 Thus for a generation past, under cover of the forms of a religion which preaches peace, love and forgiveness, 177 00:19:13.460 --> 00:19:17.960 there has been a perpetual shouting of the words war and blood, fire and battle, 178 00:19:17.960 --> 00:19:21.960 and a Continual Exercise of the Antagonistic Feelings. 179 00:19:21.960 --> 00:19:29.960 Another cultural development that Spencer identified as a symptom of rebarbarization was the rise of professional sports. 180 00:19:29.960 --> 00:19:31.960 In Spencer's words, 181 00:19:31.960 --> 00:19:38.960 Naturally, along with exaltation of brute force in its armed form, showing how widely the trait of coerciveness, 182 00:19:38.960 --> 00:19:43.960 which is the essential element in militancy, has pervaded the nation, 183 00:19:43.960 --> 00:19:48.960 There has gone a cultivation of skilled physical force under the form of athleticism. 184 00:19:48.960 --> 00:19:57.960 The word is quite modern for the reason that a generation ago, the facts to be embraced under it were not sufficiently numerous and conspicuous to call for a word. 185 00:19:57.960 --> 00:20:09.960 In my early days, sports, so called, were almost exclusively represented by one weekly paper, Bell's Life in London, found, I am told, in the haunts of rowdies and in taverns of a low class. 186 00:20:09.960 --> 00:20:15.960 Since then, the growth has been such that the acquirement of skill in leading games has become an absorbing occupation. 187 00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:23.960 Meanwhile, to satisfy the demand journalism has been developing, so that besides sundry daily and weekly papers devoted wholly to sports, 188 00:20:23.960 --> 00:20:32.960 the ordinary daily and weekly papers give reports of events in all localities, and not infrequently a daily paper has a whole page devoted to sports. 189 00:20:32.960 --> 00:20:41.040 While bodily superiority is coming to the front, mental superiority is retreating into 190 00:20:41.040 --> 00:20:42.040 the background. 191 00:20:42.040 --> 00:20:46.840 Thus, various changes point back to those medieval days when courage and bodily power 192 00:20:46.840 --> 00:20:50.200 were the sole qualifications of the ruling classes. 193 00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:55.920 While such culture as existed was confined to priests and the inmates of monasteries." 194 00:20:55.920 --> 00:21:03.120 I suspect Spencer would not enjoy chanting war eagle in the Auburn stadium. 195 00:21:03.120 --> 00:21:08.980 Such symptoms of militarization and barbarization in the arena of culture proceeded in tandem 196 00:21:08.980 --> 00:21:13.840 with analogous changes in government, including a shift in power from civilian to military 197 00:21:13.840 --> 00:21:19.200 authority and within the civilian government from parliamentary to executive authority. 198 00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:24.920 In 1881, Spencer referred to the measures then being taken in Germany, quote, for extending 199 00:21:24.920 --> 00:21:28.620 Directly and Indirectly, The Control Over Popular Life 200 00:21:28.620 --> 00:21:35.560 On the one hand, there are the laws which up to the middle of last year, 1880, 224 socialist 201 00:21:35.560 --> 00:21:42.760 societies have been closed, 180 periodicals suppressed, 317 books forbidden. 202 00:21:42.760 --> 00:21:47.320 On the other hand may be named Prince Bismarck's scheme for re-establishing guilds, bodies 203 00:21:47.320 --> 00:21:52.400 which by their regulations coerce the members, and his scheme of state insurance. 204 00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:56.920 In all which changes, we see progress toward the replacing of civil organization by military 205 00:21:56.920 --> 00:22:01.760 organization, towards the strengthening of restraints over the individual and regulation 206 00:22:01.760 --> 00:22:06.680 of his life in greater detail." 207 00:22:06.680 --> 00:22:10.240 Anne Spencer saw England beginning to follow in Germany's footsteps. 208 00:22:10.240 --> 00:22:14.960 He noted with alarm, quote, a manifest extension of the militant spirit and discipline among 209 00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:20.600 the police, who, wearing helmet-shaped hats, beginning to carry revolvers, and looking 210 00:22:20.600 --> 00:22:24.180 The 211 00:22:24.180 --> 00:22:27.620 Civilians 212 00:22:27.620 --> 00:22:28.620 and he objected to 213 00:22:28.620 --> 00:22:34.140 the increasing assimilation of the volunteer forces to the regular army, now going to the 214 00:22:34.140 --> 00:22:40.480 extent of proposing to make the volunteer forces available abroad, so that instead of defensive 215 00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:46.500 action for which they were created, they can be used for offensive action. 216 00:22:46.500 --> 00:22:52.500 A few years later, on the other side of the Atlantic, Voltaire and Déclair noted analogous developments in America. 217 00:22:52.500 --> 00:22:58.500 Quote, Our fathers thought they had guarded against the standing army for providing for the voluntary militia. 218 00:22:58.500 --> 00:23:06.500 In our day we have lived to see this militia declared part of the regular military force of the United States and subject to the same demands as the regulars. 219 00:23:06.500 --> 00:23:12.500 Within another generation we shall probably see its members in the regular pay of the general government. End quote. 220 00:23:12.500 --> 00:23:30.500 At the time of the Spanish-American War, Sumner was writing of the conquest of the United States by Spain, meaning that the United States, while victorious over Spain on the battlefield, was succumbing ideologically to the imperialist ideas that Spain had traditionally represented. 221 00:23:30.500 --> 00:23:40.500 And E. L. Godkin, the editor of The Nation, at that time a classical liberal periodical, wrote despairingly in 1900 of the eclipse of liberalism. 222 00:23:40.500 --> 00:23:57.500 Quote, nationalism in the sense of national greed has supplanted liberalism by making the aggrandizement of a particular nation a higher end than the welfare of mankind, it has sophisticated the moral sense of Christendom. 223 00:23:57.500 --> 00:24:03.500 This is the old sense of the word sophisticated, made sophisticated not made fancy. 224 00:24:03.500 --> 00:24:11.500 We hear no more of natural rights, but of inferior races, whose part it is to submit to the government of those whom God has made the superiors. 225 00:24:11.500 --> 00:24:20.500 The old fallacy of divine right has once more asserted its ruinous power, and before it is again repudiated, there must be international struggles on a terrific scale. 226 00:24:20.500 --> 00:24:25.500 At home, all criticism on the foreign policy of our rulers is denounced as unpatriotic. 227 00:24:25.500 --> 00:24:29.500 They must not be changed, for the national policy must be continuous. 228 00:24:29.500 --> 00:24:35.500 Abroad, the rulers of every country must hasten to every scene of international plunder that they may secure their share. 229 00:24:35.500 --> 00:24:41.500 To succeed in these predatory expeditions, the restraints on parliamentary government must be cast aside." 230 00:24:41.500 --> 00:24:50.500 In short, the 19th century libertarians observed the rise of the various tendencies that would come together to make fascism. 231 00:24:50.500 --> 00:24:58.500 Militarism, Corporatism, Regimentation, Nationalist Chauvinism, Plutocracy and Populist Guise, 232 00:24:58.500 --> 00:25:05.500 the call for strong leaders and national greatness, the glorification of conflict over commerce and of brute force over intellect, 233 00:25:05.500 --> 00:25:08.500 and they bitterly opposed the whole package. 234 00:25:08.500 --> 00:25:14.500 And although they ultimately lost that battle, their fallen banner is ours to pick up. 235 00:25:14.500 --> 00:25:21.500 Let me give Sumner the last word. He's writing once again of the Spanish-American War. 236 00:25:44.500 --> 00:25:48.700 For a public which our fathers formed was a glorious dream which demands more than a 237 00:25:48.700 --> 00:25:52.460 word of respect and affection before it passes away. 238 00:25:52.460 --> 00:25:56.560 Their idea was that they would never allow any of the old social and political abuses 239 00:25:56.560 --> 00:25:58.960 of the old world to grow up here. 240 00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:03.140 There were to be no armies except a militia, which would have no functions for those of 241 00:26:03.140 --> 00:26:04.700 police. 242 00:26:04.700 --> 00:26:11.080 They would have no court and no pomp, no orders, ribbons, decorations or titles. 243 00:26:11.080 --> 00:26:12.940 They would have no public debt. 244 00:26:12.940 --> 00:26:16.460 There was to be no grand diplomacy. 245 00:26:16.460 --> 00:26:20.580 No reason of state to cost the life and happiness of citizens. 246 00:26:20.580 --> 00:26:25.580 Our fathers would have an economical government, even if grand people called it a parsimonious 247 00:26:25.580 --> 00:26:26.580 one. 248 00:26:26.580 --> 00:26:31.260 And taxes should be no greater than were absolutely necessary to pay for such a government. 249 00:26:31.260 --> 00:26:34.820 The citizen was to keep all the rest of his earnings and use them as he thought best for 250 00:26:34.820 --> 00:26:37.860 the happiness of himself and his family. 251 00:26:37.860 --> 00:26:42.940 He was, above all, to be ensured peace and quiet, while he pursued his honest industry 252 00:26:42.940 --> 00:26:44.880 and obeyed the laws. 253 00:26:44.880 --> 00:26:49.800 No adventurous policies of conquest or ambition would ever be undertaken by a free, democratic 254 00:26:49.800 --> 00:26:50.800 republic. 255 00:26:50.800 --> 00:26:54.960 Therefore, the citizen here would never be forced to leave his family or to give his 256 00:26:54.960 --> 00:26:59.760 sons to shed blood for glory and to leave widows and orphans in misery for nothing. 257 00:26:59.760 --> 00:27:05.320 It is by virtue of these ideals that we have been isolated, isolated in a position which 258 00:27:05.320 --> 00:27:12.320 And yet there are people who are boasting of their patriotism because they say that we have taken our place now amongst the nations of the earth by virtue of this war.