From: Connecticut Committee of Correspondence
(Committees of Correspondence were early revolutionary cells, specially organized for revolutionary reeducation, for the manipulation of opinion, so as to lay the groundwork of resistance to the globe’s greatest imperialist power, the British Empire. “Sam Adams was the promoter of the first local committees on November 2, 1772, and within three months Governor Hutchinson reported that there were more than eighty such committees in Massachusetts.” See page 217, “Committees of Correspondence,” Concise Dictionary of American History, Editor, Wayne Andrews.)[1]
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Seeds of Fascism
By Mark Albertson
Benito Mussolini is credited with introducing to the world the first Fascist state, in Italy, October 1922. The preface for same occurred many years before. Especially true when one understands that Fascism is another form of authoritarian rule seeing to the control of the masses by the few. For the concentration of power is the pursuit of Man. Ideology, be it secular or religious, is merely a tool to gain control of the benighted masses. For much of history, two of the greatest banes of human rights, political rights and civil rights has been royalty and religion. In the modern era, it has proven to be Capitalism. For Fascism, in the end, is a draconian view of Capitalism.
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of modern Industrial-Finance Capitalism, a protracted and cataclysmic alteration of power structures commenced. Beginning in Britain, then filtering across the Channel into France and finally into the German states, people were moving from the land to the cities to labor in the sprouting new pastures of production, factories. A transformation which bore witness to the unfolding decline of royalty and nobility. Political power was shifting from the landed gentry to that of the fledgling bourgeoisie on its way to becoming the ruling capitalist class.
Societies will change, economies will change, governments will change. Inherited wealth was being overtaken by earned wealth. Political power, then was flowing from the Rural to the Urban, following centuries of dominance by the former.
War, too, will change. With more factories, comes more weapons. Technology funded by Man’s secular religion, Capitalism, fueled innovation to the extent that with each new mark of weaponry, the result was an ever-greater harvest of humanity. Industrial War, then became Total War, . . . Levee en Masse[2], the conscription of entire populations and economies for war. Total War or, War Capitalism.
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In the face of the industrial revolution appeared a myriad of isms to which Man was attempting to improve his lot with the demise of Feudalism and Serfdom. The Age of Reason/Enlightenment saw many questioning the levers of power that had kept them in bondage for centuries. Potential antidotes to autocracy were Liberalism, Democracy, Republicanism, Secularism, Socialism, Nationalism, Parliamentarianism, . . . Then came what some historians have labeled as the Atlantic Revolutions, starting in Britain, followed by the American colonies and finally the French Revolution. While the philosophers pushed for change with goose quill and ink, revolutionaries and the masses exercised their preferences with powder and ball.
Centuries of pent up frustrations announced the impending demise of regal power and religious restraint. Liberal thought based on contending ideals jockeyed for position. Burgeoning nationalisms eroded the foundations for loyalty to the crown and will foster changes in borders and implement cast systems of superiors and inferiors among the human condition.
Despite the evolving demise of the landed aristocracies, the tinseled aristocrats sought to replace them, and replace them they would. Imperialism was no longer the basis of royal power as opposed to that of the bottom line. For the Great Game for resources and strategic position was still being played. Man’s penchant for dominance and greed at the expense of his fellow man continued unabated. And since this was so, new methods to govern, command and control the Common Herd came forth in this evolving era of capitalist economy.
To control the Common Man various schemes of restraint and regimentation were contrived. Those considered the American Founders, who were in reality Enlightened Authoritarians, consulted history and many philosophers and settled on an elective Republic based on a Triad of Government with its system of Checks and Balances. Through which the masses could take part in government through their representatives and senators they had duly elected. Power was to be placed in the Legislative Branch by which the people could exercise their power, but in limited fashion. A wise policy since many of the masses are too incompetent to rule in an orderly fashion.
Indeed, Thomas Hobbes, when he wrote his treatise on government, Leviathan, noted “a restless desire for power by all men. So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power that ceases only in death.”[3] Hobbes, then, distrusted human nature. Indeed, Man cannot be trusted to do the right thing every time, he has a tendency to be self-serving, greedy and has a well-documented history of usurping his fellow man, consigning his fellow man to bondage, make war on his fellow man and when it pleases him for whatever justifications he may conjure, exterminate fellow members of his species. He went on . . .
“ . . . Competition for riches, honor, command or other power, inclined to contention, enmity, and war: because the way of one competitor, to the attaining of his desire, is to kill, subdue, supplant, or repel the other. Particularly, competition of praise, inclines to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead; to these ascribing more than due, that they may obscure the glory of the other.”[4]
James Madison, too, godfather of the United States Constitution, had a patented distrust of human nature. For as he noted in Federalist No. 51:
“But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.
“But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would necessary. In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”[5]
Certainly an issue into the framing of a functioning system of representative government was in dealing with the intricacies of class structures. Note Alexander Hamilton: “All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, then the mass of the people. . . . The people are turbulent and changing and seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct and permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.”[6]
But there is a caveat here: And that is the appetites for power by the rich and wellborn. And since the Founders were wedded to an American Republic based on the ownership of land, the warning framed by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu bears serious contemplation and consideration: “It is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist. In an extensive republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too considerable to be placed in any single subject; he has interests of his own; he soon begins to think that he may be happy and glorious, by oppressing his fellow-citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country.
“In an extensive republic the public good is sacrificed to a thousand private views; it is subordinate to exceptions and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is more within reach of every citizen; abuses have less extent, and of course are less protected.”[7]
John Adams, then, countered that the poisonous threat posed by a collusion of the well-born in a land-based republic was by insuring the availability of land to the landless, broadening the base of the electorate. “Power always follows property. Men in general, in every society, who are wholly destitute of property, are also too little acquainted with public affairs for a right judgement, and too dependent upon other men to have a will of their own. They talk and they vote as they are directed by some man of property, who has attached their minds to his interest.
“A balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtues is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society, to make a division of land into small quantities. . . . If the multitude is possessed of landed estates, the multitude will have the balance of power, and in that case the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue and interest of the multitude in all acts of government.”[8]
But then again, does the mass understand the obligation of citizenship in a republic based on the ownership of land? In his “A Citizen in America,” Connecticut’s Noah Webster lends much assistance: “But the origin of the American Republic is distinguished by peculiar circumstances. Other nations have been driven together by fear and necessity—their governments have generally been the result of a single man’s observations, or the offspring of particular interests. In the formation of our Constitution, the wisdom of all the ages is collected—the legislators of antiquity are consulted—as well as the opinions and interests of the millions, who are concerned. In short, it is an empire of reason.
“In the formation of such a government, it is not only the right, but the indispensable duty of every citizen to examine the principles of it, to compare them with the principles of other governments, with a constant eye to our particular situation and circumstances, and thus endeavor to foresee the future operations of our own system, and its effects upon human happiness.
“Convinced of this truth, I have no apology to offer from the following remarks, but an earnest desire to be useful to my country.
“In attending to the proposed Federal Constitution, the first thing that presents itself to our consideration, is the division of the legislative into two branches. This article has so many advocates in America, that it needs not any vindication.—But it has its opponents, among whom are some respectable characters, especially in Pennsylvania; for which reason, I will state some of the arguments and facts which incline me to favor the proposed division.
“On the first view of men in society, we should suppose that no man would be bound by a law to which he had not given his consent. Such would be our first idea of political obligation. But experience, from time immemorial, has proved it to be impossible to unite opinions of all the members of a community, in every case; and hence the doctrine, that the opinions of a majority must give law to the whole State; a doctrine as universally received, as any intuitive truth.
“Another idea that naturally presents itself to our minds, on a slight consideration of the subject, is, that in a perfect government, all the members of a society should be present, and each give his suffrage in acts of legislation, by which he is to be bound. This is impracticable in all large states; and even, were it not, it is very questionable whether it would be the best mode of legislation. It was however practiced in the free states of antiquity; and was the cause of innumerable evils. To avoid these evils, the moderns have invented the doctrine of representation, which seems to be the perfection of human government.”[9]
Webster’s definition of Consent of the Governed is indeed powerful; but, only if the people understand its magnitude, as well as being cognitive of it being the cornerstone of their power in the American system of Checks and Balances. And since it is obvious that in present day America a benighted voting public seems to have little, if any conception of this collective political strength, they would rather rally round the tedious and tiresome empty platitudes exercised for many years by career politicians—Democrats and Republicans—who seem to have little regard for their constituents as opposed seeing to the demands of their corporate paymasters.
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With his Philosophy of Right, Georg Hegel will not only influence those from the left, but also the right. To which with his analysis of, The State, he writes: “The state is the actuality of the ethical idea. It is ethical mind qua the substantial will manifest and revealed to itself, knowing and thinking itself, accomplishing what it knows and in so far as it knows it. The state exists immediately in custom, immediately in individual self-consciousness, knowledge and activity, while self-consciousness in virtue of the sentiment towards the state finds in the state, as its essence and the end and product, of its activity, its substantive freedom.
“The state is absolutely rational inasmuch as it is the actuality of the substantial will which it possesses in the particular self-consciousness once that consciousness has been raised to consciousness of its universality. This substantial unity is an absolute unmoved end in itself, in which freedom comes into its supreme right. On the other hand this final end has supreme right against the individual. Whose supreme duty is to be a member of the state.”
But Hegel implies that the state is an individual and even when allied with other powers, maintain its individuality. “But the state is an individual, and individuality essentially implies negation. Hence even if a number of states make themselves into a family, this group as an individual must engender an opposite and create an enemy. As a result of war, nations are strengthened, but people involved in civil strife in war also acquire peace at home through making wars abroad. To be sure, war produces insecurity of property, but this insecurity of things is nothing but their transience—which is inevitable. We hear plenty of sermons from the pulpit about insecurity, vanity and instability of temporal things, but everyone thinks, however much he is moved by what he hears, that he at least will be able to retain his own. But if this insecurity now comes on the scene in the form of hussars with shining sabers and they actualize in real earnest what the preachers have said, then the moving and edifying discourses which foretold all these events turn into curses against the invader. Be that as it may, the fact remains that wars occur when the necessity of the case requires. The seeds burgeon once more, and harangues are silenced by the solemn cycles of history. . . . “[10]
Hegel was a philosopher who saw his field of study through the eyes of history. His views on the dialectical will appeal to the Marxists. His view along the lines of ‘War is Change, Peace is Stagnation,” will appeal to both those on the Left and the Right. For war has been Man’s locomotive of change. For instance, . . .
Scientific Socialists such as Marx and Engels, wrote in the bible of Communism, as they were influenced by Hegel, “In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within exiting society, up to the point where the war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.”[11] The result was to be the withering away of the bourgeois class until the entire population was that of the proletariat or classless society. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat the result. This form of so-called Democracy subsumes the individual into the Liberty of the State. Individual Liberty is second to the liberty of the state. Again note Hegel.
But here, too, Hegel appeals to the right. In particular, Benito Mussolini and his Corporate Fascist State. Here, Mussolini’s version of central control of the working class is through corporations. Mussolini, then, is pro-Capitalist as opposed to the anti-Capitalist approach of doctrinaire Marxists.
Within Mussolini’s Charter of the Worker, April 1927, is, “Corporations constitute the unitary organization of all the forces of production and integrally represent their interests. In virtue of this integral representation, since the interests of production are the interests of the nation, the corporations are recognized by law, as State organs.
“The corporate State considers that private enterprise is the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation.”[12]
Like the Marx-Engels approach of subsuming the individual into a system of “Managed Democracy,” Mussolini’s approach seeks to erase individualism thus: “. . . Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State . . . Thus the Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing, outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.”[13]
The myriad of isms unleashed by the Age of Reason/Enlightenment which held much promise for broadening the rights and liberties of the individual will eventually become marginalized, corralled and even subsumed within the basic organizational structure utilized by Man, the herd instinct, a society. The question is who, in the end will control same. Note Wilford Trotter, “Whether he is alone or in company, a hermit philosopher or a mere unit of the mob, his responses will bear the same stamp of being regulated by the existence and influence of his fellows.”[14]
Adolf Hitler seemed to know how to mold the masses to move in the direction he chose them to go: “The function of propaganda does no lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses’ attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision.
“The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real. The process necessary, the necessity correct, etc., . . . All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. . . .
“The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. . . .”[15]
Endnotes
[1] See page 217, “Committees of Correspondence,” Concise Dictionary of American History, editor, Wayne Andrews.
[2] In the face of the threat posed to the Revolution by the monarchs of Europe, on August 23, 1793, in accordance with Lazare Carnot’s idea of Levee en Masse, the Committee of Public Safety enacted an organization of the nation unparalleled in French history:
“All unmarried men from eighteen to twenty-five years of age were to be drafted into battalions under banners reading: “Le peuple francais debout contre les tyrants!” (The French people standing up against the tyrants!).
“Soon Paris was transformed into a throbbing arsenal. The gardens of the Tuilreries and the Luxumbourg were covered with shops producing, among other materiel, some 650 muskets a day. Unemployment vanished. Privately owned weapons, metal, surplus clothing, were requisitioned, thousands of mills were taken over. Capital as well as labor was conscripted, a loan of a billion livres was squeezed from the well-to-do. Contractors were told what to produce, prices were fixed by the government. Overnight, France became a totalitarian state. Copper, iron, saltpeter, potash, soda, sulfur, formerly dependent in part on imports, had now to be found in, taken from, the soil of a France blockaded on every frontier and at every port. Luckily the great chemist Lavoisier (soon to be guillotined) had in 1775 improved the quality, and increased the production, of gunpowder, the French armies had better gunpowder than their enemies. Scientists like, Monge, Berthollet, and Fourcroy were called upon to find supplies of needed materials, or to invent substitutes; they were at the head of their fields at the time, and served their country well.” See pages 63 and 64, Chapter IV, “The Convention, September 21, 1792-October 26, 1795,”The Age of Napoleon, by Will and Ariel Durant.
[3] See page 64, Chapter XI, “Of the Difference of Manners,” Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes.
[4] See page 64, Thomas Hobbes.
[5] See page 349, Federalist No. 51, by James Madison, February 6, 1788, The Federalist, by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.
[6] See page 51, THREE, Inventing a Nation, by Gore Vidal.
[7] See page 56, 16, Distinctive Properties of a Republic, Chapter 2, Book VIII, “Of the Corruption of the Principles of the Three Governments,” The Spirit of the Laws, by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montequieu.
[8] See pages 51 and 52, Gore Vidal.
[9] See pages 129 and 130, “A Citizen in America” [Noah Webster], The Debate on the Constitution, Part One. The Library of America, 1993.
[10] See page 80, “The State, and “Additions,” page 149, The Philosophy of Right, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
[11] See page 49, I. “Bourgeoisie and Proletarians,” The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
[12] See page 130, “Charter of Labor, April 27, 1927,” Mussolini and Italian Fascism, by S. William Halperin.
[13] See pages 146 and 147, S. William Halperin.
[14] See page 99, “Speculations on the Human Mind in 1915,” Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, By Wilford Trotter.
[15] See pages 179 and 180, Chapter VI, “War Propaganda,” Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.
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