Just what
Nebraska
was hoping for.
Ezra-Pound-Speaking
BUT he omitted it.
And I don't 'spose he listens in to Rome radio.
So somebody better tell him.
Twenty years ago Stalin was talkin' about self-criticisms within the proletarian parties, their education and instruction on the basis of their own mistakes. The proletariat, wrote Mr. Stalin, can not retain power if it does not possess adequate educated administrative cadres, ready for and capable of organizing the administration of the country. It's the question of the advance with seven-league strides to raise the cultural level that gives one pause. Instead of educatin' and teachin' the party true revolutionary tactics from a study of its own mistakes, we find a studied evasion of thorny questions, which are glossed over and veiled. "Left wing communism, and infantile discord," the words are not mine, but Lenin's.
Mr. Stalin said in regard to slogans and resolutions that it was enough to recall the history of the famous watchword "war against war," to realize the utter falsity and rottenness of the political processes of these parties which veil, etc. There really seems to have been little doubt as to Stalin's direction in 1922. His mind appears to have been remarkably clear.
The main query to be raised at this moment, when Mr. Stalin is undoubtedly as victorious INSIDE the U. S. and Britain, as U. S. particular interests are being in absorbing the flesh pots of Empire, (British empire first), the main query is as to the nature and direction of the evolution of revolution in the United States. I know it is exceedingly difficult to get a general idea into, let us say, Co. McCormick's head or Hamilton Fish's. Do we move toward REVOLUTION, as from man toward the amoeba, or do we move, or even desire to move toward an integration of the individual AS component of the general social scene?
? Do we want to be taken to pieces, separated into spare parts, quite spare and utterly separable, at the rate say of 30 million a shot, functioning at a lower level, or do we wish to maintain that complexity to which the human organism BIOLOGICALLY, BI/O/LOG/ICALLy has evolved during millennia, or however it did evolve?
Does the infantile disorder recognize that the homestead works better, or even might in certain conditions work better, function better than the kolkhoz? That is a superficial query. If the homestead displays a higher mechanical efficiency than the kolkhoz, how far should it be opposed? Can it be opposed as a matter of principle? In short, how protean is materialism anyway? Can it take on so new an aspect? Are the cadres gettin' educated seven-leagued enough for the circumstance? And after all, is a theory about the mutability of materialism any more binding than a signed contract?
I 'spect if the Colonel, Col. McCormick, is listening, or if anyone is kind enough to stenograph this discourse, the Col. is by now about all bawled up. Mebbe he is trying to ride on a party that just AIN'T guided by an advanced theory. What can one do with a country in which NEITHER party is literate? All this should hook onto S. Welles' pieties about economic aggression. But I am at the end of my time.
#102 (June 26, 1943) U. S. (C65) MATERIALISM
An idea is colored by what it is dipped in. Take for example the more or less Teutonic idea of materialism. Marx and Engels get to foolin' 'round with Hegel's philosophy, or something, and evolve or devolve what is called Marxian materialism, and it gets toted off into Russia. And after 25 years, what do we have? We have these howlin' Slavs: gone off on a purely metaphysical, typically Russian crusade. As crazy as any excess of the middle ages. Utterly OB/liv/i/ous of the material facts. That is to say, I suppose anyone will admit that the German workman is
? MATERIALLY better off than the Russian opposite number. Materially speakin', the factory reforms proposed by Robert Owen and the ideas of Hobhouse that Marx so approved of in fact all the British aims that caused Marx to write his Xth chapter Best chapter in Das Kapital so far as I am concerned. Well all that AIM, to get the workin' man decently fed, and clothed, and housed, and given decent livin conditions and hours of labor has we believe gone further in Germany than in Russia. Despite labels and programs.
I have heard it said that Germany has gone communist but nobody can accuse Europe of havin' gone RUSSIAN, or Germany of havin' gone Russian. Marx looked at England, and thought about Germany, and something got set loose in Russia into which country inspection has long been denied. For years nobody was supposed to LOOK at what actually happened. It was all metaphysical. Nice programs and dire results. And Russians certainly in ignorance of living conditions of working men elsewhere. What causes that? Maybe it is the material nature of the slavic animal or of the Tartar fanatic.
However look back at some of the words in the program Materialism: what does it mean? Are you for it? Are you for WHATEVER it means? Or do you on occasion like to know what you mean, or what you are shouting for? Are you a materialist WHATEVER it means, or are you a materialist only on condition that it means something in particular, something rather than something else?
George Santayana calls himself a materialist. It rather shocked old William James. Ole William told young George, he was younger at that stage of world history, that his, Santayana's philosophy was organized rottenness. I can not agree with fuzzy old James. It appears to me that George Santayana rather agrees with Thomas Aquinas. I mean the materialist Santayana ends up by writin' a book called The Realm of Spirit. I occasionally plunge into the work to calm my heated mind. I mean when I am not up to Confucius and Mencius. And Thomas
? Aquinas says somewhere that the soul is the first ACT of an organic body. Well, I ask George Santayana what THAT means. And he says entelechy, which seems to me to be dodgin' behind a Greek word. But anyhow, a materialist definition of the soul seems to be that it is the first act, or first action, or first condition of an organic body. Don't ASK me. I am merely trying to show how far the word or idea materialist can be stretched by people who play with abstractions. Marx's theory of value always seemed to me metaphysical.
But to get down to brass material tacks. Does a Marxian materialist prefer human conditions for labor to inhuman conditions? Do the actual material advances in the conditions of German working men count for anything in a material universe? Or does the Marxian materialist prefer the Russian enwarped and metaphysical state, wherein no one has a room of her own?
I think it matters. I think it is a question of administration, material administration. I am all for local control. The principle of local control has made some advances during the past weeks. I mean on paper, and in the aerial discussion. On paper, or in the air, the comintern has declared for local control or administration. But is that material or metaphysical? I think it matters very much WHO administers. I think the future of any party, communist or other, in the U. S. A. depends very greatly on the men, on the personality of the men who CONTROL it. I am all for responsibility, personal responsibility. I fail to see what PRINCIPLE of materialism or metaphysicality has to do with the machine gunning of three year old kids. I fail to see where the invasion of one country by another hitches up to the program of any set of idealists, whether Moscovite or Democratic, i. e. , plutocratic. Does the dissolution of the Comintern mean that Moscow proposes that every nation should be administered by members OF that nation or race? That would be an interesting line of inquiry. The suppression for all material and practical purposes of nearly all South American government seems rather out of
? line, with this dissolution of international aspirations on the part of the comintern.
The nipping, not in the bud, but in the decayed and gangrenous remnants on London's usurocratic grasp on large parts of most continents is of course a spectacular play against the economic oppression (past tense of economic aggression) of the London plutocracy. That might be all to the good, if the U. S. hadn't decayed into something very like, or possibly worse than the British methods of the late 18th century, impression of seamen included. But in the oedeniatous decomposition of the U. S. plutocracy and usurocracy, what assurance has anyone, or what assurance is anyone in the U. S. trying to get, that the New Steal in the U. S. A. will be under local control?
There is really so much to say that I find it difficult to divide it up into ten minute samples. Are you heading for a RUSSIAN control of the U. S. , the U. S. of A. , or the U. S. of Europe? What assurance is anyone in the U. S. trying to obtain that Kansas and Illinois will be controlled in ANY way by denizens of those geographic parts of the American union?
Yes, I know, people are being sent out FROM the U. S. to take over control in ex-Persia, now labeled Iran, etc. and vast tracts of the ex- British oppressed dominions are fallin' under Wall St. control. But what is it MATERIALLY to the folks who have mortgaged their farms to the Milk Trust?
#103 (June 29, 1943) U. S. (C67) COMMUNIST MILLIONAIRES
Is Mr. Roosevelt a Communist? Is Mr. Lehman a Communist? Is Mr. Morgenthau a Communist, is Mr. Bullitt, or Sir V. Sassoon, and if not why not? And what becomes of their millions, what becomes of their private fortunes when Communism takes over control of the U. S. A. ? And if not, why not? And is the American Communist Party, now freed
? from the apron strings of the comintern, is the American Communist Party governed by Wall Street? And if not, WHY not? And if not, why this continual export of capital to places abroad?
And then there come these proposals, these money proposals, these starvation proposals, these restriction proposals. Of course any scheme to take control of the nation's money, to take the control of ANY nation's money away from that nation and vest it in Mr. Lehman or any other private shyster, or gang of shysters, resident either at home or abroad, is a booby trap. Such a trap was sprung on the gullible American people in 1863. And they have never recovered, not really. Not in 1943, such a booby trap can not be sprung on the outer world without at least someone in the said outer world's being made aware of it.
Even that Skinner of Rabbits, Prof. Keynes or Lord Keynes, the British proletarian specialist, has smelt the dead fish in the proposal for unitas, as the continent can smell the dead eels in Mr. Keynes' banker or bunk/ or, what will you. And this question of who CONTROLS the central; of who wingles the wangles is of importance. There is no need to transport the problem onto the international checkerboard. When the people of Nebraska lost control of its money, i. e. , when Congress ceased to function constitutionally, and every state ceased to have a voice in the control of the national currency, that was a booby trap.
The nation did not react effectively. There were some voices uplifted in protest. When I was a boy, when your fathers were children, there were still voices uplifted in protest. But why suppose the whole world is as naive as the U. S. was at the end of the American Civil War? The bank game is simple, it is run on what are called classic lines. It is run on what Lord Keynes, the British proletarian specialist, used to call the lines of ORTHODOX economics. Meaning that the bankers collect 60% interest on the actual money, or that they collect interest on 90% of everyone's money, which they create out of thin air, wild phantasy, and a few bits of engraven paper.
? OH, that they vary the currency, the purchasing power of money. When the bankers have money, it is of very great value, you have to pay for it thru the nose. But when you get a bit of it, its value evaporates. The game is as old as Aaron, it was denounced in the time of Thucydides. "Banish your dotage, banish usury/that makes the Senate ugly," remarked the stage character, Alcibiades, in Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, Act. III, scene 5. Shakespeare is not my favorite author, but he occasionally bangs a nail on the head. That side of Shakespeare's dramatic writings is NOT given due prominence. It is not what gets large poster publicity. For decades the public in England and America has been FAR more interested in the private lives of the actors, of Henry, Irving and in Ellen Terry. "I come to bury" Caesar and all the rest of it, "not to praise him. "
Well let's be MATERIAL, since you are lined up with the materialists. Let's see where we are, ideologically. Or in other words let's see what cards have been put on the table. Mr. Stalin says LOCAL control. That is to say, he says he disbands something or other, and the local communist parties must run their own local shows without daily orders from Moscow. Up comes Mrs. Trotsky, widdy Trotsky, and says that means SHE is to run the world revolution from Mexico City.
Just what Nebraska was hoping for. World communism governed from Mexico city. But was that JUST what Stalin meant by his maneuver? Has Mr. Welles joined the local communist party? Not officially. But he put a few cards on the table (the joker face down amongst 'em). Some rash bohunk said Sumner had COINED, coined mind you, the phrase "economic aggression. " But what does Sumner mean by aggression? Let's not rake up everybody's past skeletons. Even Sumner admitted that the U. S. had aggressed. Let's look at his program, or as that is pretty vague, let's ask for a definition.
WHO according to Sumner's bright plans for tomorrow, WHO is to DUMP what on WHOM? And is the fellow that has to take what he don't want going to be forced to pay for it in money controlled by a gang
? of shysters in Washington, in Wall Street or in Mexico? And who, according to Sumner, is to be allowed to get what? And who is to be allowed to GROW what they want to eat in their own garden? That would seem to be one whale of a question. Aye, aye, sir, very like a whale or an octopus.
The agricultural districts hardly ever start wars. Lack of food may start people roving. It may in the last analysis provoke nomadic migrations. BUT people living in abundant farmland very seldom start out to raid someone else's bare fields. And then this problem of bilaterality. This question of justice having two sides. Where does Sumner get THAT subject? How much local control does Sumner allow to the local communist party or to the LOCAL party of any kind?
Europe seems rather inclined to have a bit of local control. It seems to me the seven league advance, which Lenin advocated toward the cultural attitudes, might rather include this idea of local control. Especially as Stalin understands Senator Vandenburg and Mr. Welles so much better than they understand Mr. Stalin. Mebbe that is because he was so much more moral. I mean in his earlier writings. Why, 20 years ago Stalin was writin' about foreign imperialism "devoid of all moral authority and deservedly hated by the oppressed and exploited masses of India. " I suspect the local parties in Washington are as ignorant of Stalin's past life, as they are of Europe, of European life during the past 20 years.
#104 (July 3, 1943) U. S. (C68) COLORING
Ideas are colored by what they are dipped in. There was a young Chinaman the other day, nearly accusin' me of havin' invented Confucius. He had been UNeducated by contact with half-baked occidental ideas. Lost his own cultural heritage, didn't think Confucius was so modern, that was because he hadn't read him, of course. Mencius
? was also accused of having brightened up Confucius, but he knew better. He knew he hadn't.
Formerly, when Kung died, the disciples after staying together three years, packed their baggage and returned to their homes, but Tzu Kung went back and built a house on the altar ground, and lived there alone for three years. And the disciples thought Yew Jo might serve as teacher, but Tzu said:
Washed in the waters of Kiang and Han, bleached in the autumn sun. After that, no. There is nothing to add. Nothing to add to that whiteness.
Mebbe the difference between the Greek flash in the pan, and the Chinese persistence is due to Kung's having got the answer. Mencius following and enforcing it. Whereas in Greece, Socrates gunned 'round. As Aristotle says: "Socrates was the first to see that thought hinges on definitions. " But Aristotle had to put the guesses in order. He didn't take Socrates or any of the other Greek philosophers as a solid basis. And spent a lot of time talking about abstractions. Tho' he did say that the general statement must be based on a lot of concrete data. And he did study the different constitutions of states, i. e. , different political systems, and regulations. All that of course OUGHT to be the basis of senatorial training, of congressional training. And it drags me a bit away from the simple text I meant to enforce, or suggest. When I said ideas are tinged by what they are dipped in, I was thinkin' of widdy Trotsky. Down there in Mexico, speakin' evil of Stalin, in fact blamin' Joe for the war, and saying she was to fix it all up, and conduct the world revolution. Now we all like revolution, except when we are settin' too easy. And a considerable revolution has occurred during most of our lifetimes. Though Senator Vandenberg mayn't have heard of it YET.
Mr. Marx, Charlie, went to England, went there at a time when England had a sort of a lead over less favored nations. And he heard about
? Hobhouse. And I reckon about Mr. Owen, Robert Owen. And he wanted to start something in Germany, but the ideas got switched off onto Russia, a less favored country. A backward country, full of Tartars and Muscovites, and Cossaks and Nomads. And the result has been in many ways UNsatisfactory. In fact Owen's ideas about factory reform, etc. have gone a lot further in Germany, under the Fu? hrer, whose writing you probably haven't read. In fact you and Vandenburg and these sachems probably haven't read EITHER Stalin, OR Hitler, or Mussolini. So you decide to take over an old shirt of Lenin's, at least that passage about training a staff of administrators, and you send a lot of unbreached kids down to the University of Virginia to learn how to administer. Which is looney. I mean if you think a kindergarten can administer its parents, or infants officiate over adults.
The idea takes color from what it is dipped in. The idea of treating work men like human beings, favored by Robert Owen, etc. has progressed in Germany. I reckon for model factory conditions, etc. you would have to go to Germany NOW, thought the Burgomaister of Worgl, [who] had Henry Ford's life or ghosted autobiography on his bookshelf. But for the Senator's information, before he gives way to nostalgia for a lost era, and consents to puttin' up a stooge, or pseudo General Grant, to initiate a new era of pillage and public scandal. I mean by having a man, or wanting a president who knows NOTHING about public administration, but covers the graft by a military aureole, more or less.
Let the Senator READ a little Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. Of course you can GET Stalin for 10 cents in America, and you probably can NOT get the works of the Axis leaders. Or if so, I suspect they would not be in authoritative translations.
Well now, what in Stalin's Foundations of Leninism? And where was the error, if error? Was it in program or was it something that happened later, in petrification of program? Or in Russian inability to act on exotic ideas; and the general drop or droop or subsidence of the exotic ideas
? into the mire of Slavic chaos (with condiments: oh yes, with condiments, according to some unkindly critics)?
But supposin' the widdy Trotsky DOES drag the program OUT of the Slavic ambiance, out of Russia, into the American hemisphere? Already AT it in fact, get a humanitarian coloring. Not having been able to shoot Mr. Stalin, Mrs. Trotsky now decides war is wicked, or at least an error. The kindly U. S. A. , Y. M. C. A. circumjacence coloring Mrs. Trotsky's susceptible mind. What would American communism finally come to? Where would it land? Or for the matter of that, where would the British episcopal Lambeth Palace, curates and mitre brand of communism finally end? What effect would the British dislike of the nosey parker have on Weishaupt's latch for universal and close range espionage, every brother spyin' and telling on everyone else?
Is Mrs. Trotsky ready to color, or to paint up to the point of seeing the homestead as something more germane to the American temperament than the kolckhoz or factory farm? That would be something to ask her. Since you are head in' for communism, lickety split, hell for leather, or mebbe hell with a shortage of leather, certainly with a shortage of pigskin and Japanese cherry trees.
And in conclusion where does she stand or SET on the matter of economic aggression? On the matter of dumping? On the matter of those seven league strides toward a higher cultural level than Lenin wanted to shove onto the Muscovites?
And the desired self-criticism inside the party? Has the American Communist Party yet opened up to the self-critics from the inside? Probably Will, or rather Kumrad William Williams was a bit pessimistic on that subject, when I was last admitted to his acquaintance. Certainly Messrs. Churchill and Roosevelt do seem to represent pretty much all that is worst in the plutocracy. So widdy Trotsky may git a run for her money.
? #105, FCC Transcript (July 4, 1943) U. K. (C57) [TITLE UNKNOWN]
Reports to the Congress Commission, reports to the MacMillan Commission protesting against the ruin of China and India by Churchill's return to gold.
You would not listen, you would not listen, nothing would make you take the faintest trace of a half possible interest in Hitler's warnings, in Major Douglas' warnings, in the writers of McNair Wilson, Professor Stoddard-- --. Those were the symbols.
A fine symbol, a holy synod, a rock on which such as Lamb-- --, of ample-- --upheld for their church. When I mention Mr. Morgenthau to you, you turn off the radio, the subject is so disagreeable. Mr. Morgenthau is returning to gold so that-- --as soon as he possibly can.
That is, as soon as it will mean the highest possible profits on monies lent to humanity, on the debts made by the war which is to be used according to ritual to control the currency after the war, the world currency return. No small-- --by mere manipulations by kikes of the money of your little empire or of the American continent, but the world currency is to be stabilized and you are old with 3 jockies in livery.
And that livery will not include coat and pants. You will go out in your underwear. It will be the livery of the new-- --, of the new-- --against which the prices of wheat and clothing will fluctuate.
I'll say they will fluctuate, but the money will remain fixed and-- --and there will be no boys on the board of directors. Shop dressing, window dressing has prevailed up to the present. There always have been a few Lord (Windrums and Dindrums) on the board of directors to bamboozle the soft hearted public.
? Oh, but the new money will not be measured by labor. The Morgenthau prices will most certainly not take into account the value of labor. The price of foodstuffs, fuel and clothing in Morgenthaudia, the new Soviet Paradise, will most certainly not be regulated so that the working man, nor the office worker can feed, clothe and house his family on the fruits of his labor, or by wearing a clean shirt to the office in the hope of getting good marks.
Lord, love you, no, the money is going to be stable. There'll be plenty of men out of work, millions and millions on the dole and of the dole so that the labor market may remain open. If there is any uncommunist district left where the worker is not slave of the plebe, where he is not conscripted to do sixteen hours a day in the factory or fifteen in the mines for the Soviets, for the Soviet Order, for the sacred Christian community of the Seligmans of the all holy, trinitarian no-God republican Paradise of the lenders of non-money at a somewhat higher return than is now asked by the-- --, fifty percent.
Let us not look for help from democracies because there just won't be any democracies in that sense of the word. The war was made for the sake of doles, you were told that; it was made to make debts, it was made to impose the gold standard.
In other words you were the-- --end; you were told and the gullible in Europe believed that the British working man sided with England because he got a share in the profits; he profited by the misery of India and of China; that his working conditions were better; that he could buy more copies of -- --, see more pictures, read more-- --news printed on more pieces of paper, see more Hollywood products and then his poor benighted brother the Hindu. -- --
Now this poor brown underling who after the return to the gold standard paid two bushels where he before that had to pay one bushel and one in honor of the Queen. Well, now next time it might be that the receiving
? end will be over in [Goonland? ], over in [Cleveland? ], over in the new Roseman Paradise where blooms the-- --in the new stabilized unity, with no non-Jews on the board of control, with no English control whatsoever, though a few British names may appear as representatives of the Canadian people so-called, and a few London agents of the golden Republic of Soviets may fly back and forth to see that the rent is paid promptly.
But at any rate you can now go to sleep again. You've been told what the war's about. You've been told what Rabbi Wise and Mr. Wiseman, your [Sasson? ] are having a war for.
It is inconvenient: well, you've got used to it now and, when it's over, everything will be just as it was before. No, not quite as it was before, you won't have to worry about any novelties, there'll be no innovations. You'll not have to readjust yourselves to horrible novelties that threaten you from abroad. The money will be stabilized. You will have returned to sound money.
Perhaps you will be able to get some employment but that isn't necessary; you're used to not being busy so that will not disturb you. You will not have to think about anything. That will be a comfort to your penury. You never did like to think about anything. And the war will be over. That is, there will be a few-- --interruptions before the next one gets going and you will have killed off some women and children and you'll feel proud of being conservative.
You will be told that the-- --based on gold brought you prosperity. You will be told that it's really for England's benefit that her money should be controlled from abroad. I'll repeat that,-- --. It'll relieve England of all that bookkeeping, trust Mr. Morgenthau to look after all your accounting; it is much simpler.
? Mr. Keynes will explain. He will have had his little fling in the drawing room; he will have uttered the minority murmur and said that it will not quite be the millenium promise, by the prophet Isaiah. But that after all the old system of economics, the orthodox system, was the basis of Cambridge and that you have at least preserved the ideals that he stood for, and, of course, prices of foodstuffs will fluctuate, so someone can still make a little money by speculation, a little more money by speculation than they could by productive labor, which is, of course, another aim of the war.
#106 (July 6, 1943) U. S. (C69) CREDIT: LEGALITY
John Adams won the American Revolution as a law case before the peculiarly venal and squalid government of England at that time had recourse to arms.
The 1770's were possibly imbued with a much more sensitive and active sense of legality than can be found today in the Anglo-Jewish countries.
We saw the United States flooded with quite squalid ballyhoo, telling the simps that they can make more in the army than in civil life. A level of baseness in some of these articles quite such as to turn the stomach of what was once considered the plain honest man, but will today be counted an hyper-sensitive by Hollywood standards.
Besides the offers of high pay for the army, such as appeared before America had OPENLY entered the war, are probably out-of-date by now. I am merely contrasting the venality of this purely mercenary disposition with the Italian state of mind or that of our American forebears.
?
Twenty years ago Stalin was talkin' about self-criticisms within the proletarian parties, their education and instruction on the basis of their own mistakes. The proletariat, wrote Mr. Stalin, can not retain power if it does not possess adequate educated administrative cadres, ready for and capable of organizing the administration of the country. It's the question of the advance with seven-league strides to raise the cultural level that gives one pause. Instead of educatin' and teachin' the party true revolutionary tactics from a study of its own mistakes, we find a studied evasion of thorny questions, which are glossed over and veiled. "Left wing communism, and infantile discord," the words are not mine, but Lenin's.
Mr. Stalin said in regard to slogans and resolutions that it was enough to recall the history of the famous watchword "war against war," to realize the utter falsity and rottenness of the political processes of these parties which veil, etc. There really seems to have been little doubt as to Stalin's direction in 1922. His mind appears to have been remarkably clear.
The main query to be raised at this moment, when Mr. Stalin is undoubtedly as victorious INSIDE the U. S. and Britain, as U. S. particular interests are being in absorbing the flesh pots of Empire, (British empire first), the main query is as to the nature and direction of the evolution of revolution in the United States. I know it is exceedingly difficult to get a general idea into, let us say, Co. McCormick's head or Hamilton Fish's. Do we move toward REVOLUTION, as from man toward the amoeba, or do we move, or even desire to move toward an integration of the individual AS component of the general social scene?
? Do we want to be taken to pieces, separated into spare parts, quite spare and utterly separable, at the rate say of 30 million a shot, functioning at a lower level, or do we wish to maintain that complexity to which the human organism BIOLOGICALLY, BI/O/LOG/ICALLy has evolved during millennia, or however it did evolve?
Does the infantile disorder recognize that the homestead works better, or even might in certain conditions work better, function better than the kolkhoz? That is a superficial query. If the homestead displays a higher mechanical efficiency than the kolkhoz, how far should it be opposed? Can it be opposed as a matter of principle? In short, how protean is materialism anyway? Can it take on so new an aspect? Are the cadres gettin' educated seven-leagued enough for the circumstance? And after all, is a theory about the mutability of materialism any more binding than a signed contract?
I 'spect if the Colonel, Col. McCormick, is listening, or if anyone is kind enough to stenograph this discourse, the Col. is by now about all bawled up. Mebbe he is trying to ride on a party that just AIN'T guided by an advanced theory. What can one do with a country in which NEITHER party is literate? All this should hook onto S. Welles' pieties about economic aggression. But I am at the end of my time.
#102 (June 26, 1943) U. S. (C65) MATERIALISM
An idea is colored by what it is dipped in. Take for example the more or less Teutonic idea of materialism. Marx and Engels get to foolin' 'round with Hegel's philosophy, or something, and evolve or devolve what is called Marxian materialism, and it gets toted off into Russia. And after 25 years, what do we have? We have these howlin' Slavs: gone off on a purely metaphysical, typically Russian crusade. As crazy as any excess of the middle ages. Utterly OB/liv/i/ous of the material facts. That is to say, I suppose anyone will admit that the German workman is
? MATERIALLY better off than the Russian opposite number. Materially speakin', the factory reforms proposed by Robert Owen and the ideas of Hobhouse that Marx so approved of in fact all the British aims that caused Marx to write his Xth chapter Best chapter in Das Kapital so far as I am concerned. Well all that AIM, to get the workin' man decently fed, and clothed, and housed, and given decent livin conditions and hours of labor has we believe gone further in Germany than in Russia. Despite labels and programs.
I have heard it said that Germany has gone communist but nobody can accuse Europe of havin' gone RUSSIAN, or Germany of havin' gone Russian. Marx looked at England, and thought about Germany, and something got set loose in Russia into which country inspection has long been denied. For years nobody was supposed to LOOK at what actually happened. It was all metaphysical. Nice programs and dire results. And Russians certainly in ignorance of living conditions of working men elsewhere. What causes that? Maybe it is the material nature of the slavic animal or of the Tartar fanatic.
However look back at some of the words in the program Materialism: what does it mean? Are you for it? Are you for WHATEVER it means? Or do you on occasion like to know what you mean, or what you are shouting for? Are you a materialist WHATEVER it means, or are you a materialist only on condition that it means something in particular, something rather than something else?
George Santayana calls himself a materialist. It rather shocked old William James. Ole William told young George, he was younger at that stage of world history, that his, Santayana's philosophy was organized rottenness. I can not agree with fuzzy old James. It appears to me that George Santayana rather agrees with Thomas Aquinas. I mean the materialist Santayana ends up by writin' a book called The Realm of Spirit. I occasionally plunge into the work to calm my heated mind. I mean when I am not up to Confucius and Mencius. And Thomas
? Aquinas says somewhere that the soul is the first ACT of an organic body. Well, I ask George Santayana what THAT means. And he says entelechy, which seems to me to be dodgin' behind a Greek word. But anyhow, a materialist definition of the soul seems to be that it is the first act, or first action, or first condition of an organic body. Don't ASK me. I am merely trying to show how far the word or idea materialist can be stretched by people who play with abstractions. Marx's theory of value always seemed to me metaphysical.
But to get down to brass material tacks. Does a Marxian materialist prefer human conditions for labor to inhuman conditions? Do the actual material advances in the conditions of German working men count for anything in a material universe? Or does the Marxian materialist prefer the Russian enwarped and metaphysical state, wherein no one has a room of her own?
I think it matters. I think it is a question of administration, material administration. I am all for local control. The principle of local control has made some advances during the past weeks. I mean on paper, and in the aerial discussion. On paper, or in the air, the comintern has declared for local control or administration. But is that material or metaphysical? I think it matters very much WHO administers. I think the future of any party, communist or other, in the U. S. A. depends very greatly on the men, on the personality of the men who CONTROL it. I am all for responsibility, personal responsibility. I fail to see what PRINCIPLE of materialism or metaphysicality has to do with the machine gunning of three year old kids. I fail to see where the invasion of one country by another hitches up to the program of any set of idealists, whether Moscovite or Democratic, i. e. , plutocratic. Does the dissolution of the Comintern mean that Moscow proposes that every nation should be administered by members OF that nation or race? That would be an interesting line of inquiry. The suppression for all material and practical purposes of nearly all South American government seems rather out of
? line, with this dissolution of international aspirations on the part of the comintern.
The nipping, not in the bud, but in the decayed and gangrenous remnants on London's usurocratic grasp on large parts of most continents is of course a spectacular play against the economic oppression (past tense of economic aggression) of the London plutocracy. That might be all to the good, if the U. S. hadn't decayed into something very like, or possibly worse than the British methods of the late 18th century, impression of seamen included. But in the oedeniatous decomposition of the U. S. plutocracy and usurocracy, what assurance has anyone, or what assurance is anyone in the U. S. trying to get, that the New Steal in the U. S. A. will be under local control?
There is really so much to say that I find it difficult to divide it up into ten minute samples. Are you heading for a RUSSIAN control of the U. S. , the U. S. of A. , or the U. S. of Europe? What assurance is anyone in the U. S. trying to obtain that Kansas and Illinois will be controlled in ANY way by denizens of those geographic parts of the American union?
Yes, I know, people are being sent out FROM the U. S. to take over control in ex-Persia, now labeled Iran, etc. and vast tracts of the ex- British oppressed dominions are fallin' under Wall St. control. But what is it MATERIALLY to the folks who have mortgaged their farms to the Milk Trust?
#103 (June 29, 1943) U. S. (C67) COMMUNIST MILLIONAIRES
Is Mr. Roosevelt a Communist? Is Mr. Lehman a Communist? Is Mr. Morgenthau a Communist, is Mr. Bullitt, or Sir V. Sassoon, and if not why not? And what becomes of their millions, what becomes of their private fortunes when Communism takes over control of the U. S. A. ? And if not, why not? And is the American Communist Party, now freed
? from the apron strings of the comintern, is the American Communist Party governed by Wall Street? And if not, WHY not? And if not, why this continual export of capital to places abroad?
And then there come these proposals, these money proposals, these starvation proposals, these restriction proposals. Of course any scheme to take control of the nation's money, to take the control of ANY nation's money away from that nation and vest it in Mr. Lehman or any other private shyster, or gang of shysters, resident either at home or abroad, is a booby trap. Such a trap was sprung on the gullible American people in 1863. And they have never recovered, not really. Not in 1943, such a booby trap can not be sprung on the outer world without at least someone in the said outer world's being made aware of it.
Even that Skinner of Rabbits, Prof. Keynes or Lord Keynes, the British proletarian specialist, has smelt the dead fish in the proposal for unitas, as the continent can smell the dead eels in Mr. Keynes' banker or bunk/ or, what will you. And this question of who CONTROLS the central; of who wingles the wangles is of importance. There is no need to transport the problem onto the international checkerboard. When the people of Nebraska lost control of its money, i. e. , when Congress ceased to function constitutionally, and every state ceased to have a voice in the control of the national currency, that was a booby trap.
The nation did not react effectively. There were some voices uplifted in protest. When I was a boy, when your fathers were children, there were still voices uplifted in protest. But why suppose the whole world is as naive as the U. S. was at the end of the American Civil War? The bank game is simple, it is run on what are called classic lines. It is run on what Lord Keynes, the British proletarian specialist, used to call the lines of ORTHODOX economics. Meaning that the bankers collect 60% interest on the actual money, or that they collect interest on 90% of everyone's money, which they create out of thin air, wild phantasy, and a few bits of engraven paper.
? OH, that they vary the currency, the purchasing power of money. When the bankers have money, it is of very great value, you have to pay for it thru the nose. But when you get a bit of it, its value evaporates. The game is as old as Aaron, it was denounced in the time of Thucydides. "Banish your dotage, banish usury/that makes the Senate ugly," remarked the stage character, Alcibiades, in Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, Act. III, scene 5. Shakespeare is not my favorite author, but he occasionally bangs a nail on the head. That side of Shakespeare's dramatic writings is NOT given due prominence. It is not what gets large poster publicity. For decades the public in England and America has been FAR more interested in the private lives of the actors, of Henry, Irving and in Ellen Terry. "I come to bury" Caesar and all the rest of it, "not to praise him. "
Well let's be MATERIAL, since you are lined up with the materialists. Let's see where we are, ideologically. Or in other words let's see what cards have been put on the table. Mr. Stalin says LOCAL control. That is to say, he says he disbands something or other, and the local communist parties must run their own local shows without daily orders from Moscow. Up comes Mrs. Trotsky, widdy Trotsky, and says that means SHE is to run the world revolution from Mexico City.
Just what Nebraska was hoping for. World communism governed from Mexico city. But was that JUST what Stalin meant by his maneuver? Has Mr. Welles joined the local communist party? Not officially. But he put a few cards on the table (the joker face down amongst 'em). Some rash bohunk said Sumner had COINED, coined mind you, the phrase "economic aggression. " But what does Sumner mean by aggression? Let's not rake up everybody's past skeletons. Even Sumner admitted that the U. S. had aggressed. Let's look at his program, or as that is pretty vague, let's ask for a definition.
WHO according to Sumner's bright plans for tomorrow, WHO is to DUMP what on WHOM? And is the fellow that has to take what he don't want going to be forced to pay for it in money controlled by a gang
? of shysters in Washington, in Wall Street or in Mexico? And who, according to Sumner, is to be allowed to get what? And who is to be allowed to GROW what they want to eat in their own garden? That would seem to be one whale of a question. Aye, aye, sir, very like a whale or an octopus.
The agricultural districts hardly ever start wars. Lack of food may start people roving. It may in the last analysis provoke nomadic migrations. BUT people living in abundant farmland very seldom start out to raid someone else's bare fields. And then this problem of bilaterality. This question of justice having two sides. Where does Sumner get THAT subject? How much local control does Sumner allow to the local communist party or to the LOCAL party of any kind?
Europe seems rather inclined to have a bit of local control. It seems to me the seven league advance, which Lenin advocated toward the cultural attitudes, might rather include this idea of local control. Especially as Stalin understands Senator Vandenburg and Mr. Welles so much better than they understand Mr. Stalin. Mebbe that is because he was so much more moral. I mean in his earlier writings. Why, 20 years ago Stalin was writin' about foreign imperialism "devoid of all moral authority and deservedly hated by the oppressed and exploited masses of India. " I suspect the local parties in Washington are as ignorant of Stalin's past life, as they are of Europe, of European life during the past 20 years.
#104 (July 3, 1943) U. S. (C68) COLORING
Ideas are colored by what they are dipped in. There was a young Chinaman the other day, nearly accusin' me of havin' invented Confucius. He had been UNeducated by contact with half-baked occidental ideas. Lost his own cultural heritage, didn't think Confucius was so modern, that was because he hadn't read him, of course. Mencius
? was also accused of having brightened up Confucius, but he knew better. He knew he hadn't.
Formerly, when Kung died, the disciples after staying together three years, packed their baggage and returned to their homes, but Tzu Kung went back and built a house on the altar ground, and lived there alone for three years. And the disciples thought Yew Jo might serve as teacher, but Tzu said:
Washed in the waters of Kiang and Han, bleached in the autumn sun. After that, no. There is nothing to add. Nothing to add to that whiteness.
Mebbe the difference between the Greek flash in the pan, and the Chinese persistence is due to Kung's having got the answer. Mencius following and enforcing it. Whereas in Greece, Socrates gunned 'round. As Aristotle says: "Socrates was the first to see that thought hinges on definitions. " But Aristotle had to put the guesses in order. He didn't take Socrates or any of the other Greek philosophers as a solid basis. And spent a lot of time talking about abstractions. Tho' he did say that the general statement must be based on a lot of concrete data. And he did study the different constitutions of states, i. e. , different political systems, and regulations. All that of course OUGHT to be the basis of senatorial training, of congressional training. And it drags me a bit away from the simple text I meant to enforce, or suggest. When I said ideas are tinged by what they are dipped in, I was thinkin' of widdy Trotsky. Down there in Mexico, speakin' evil of Stalin, in fact blamin' Joe for the war, and saying she was to fix it all up, and conduct the world revolution. Now we all like revolution, except when we are settin' too easy. And a considerable revolution has occurred during most of our lifetimes. Though Senator Vandenberg mayn't have heard of it YET.
Mr. Marx, Charlie, went to England, went there at a time when England had a sort of a lead over less favored nations. And he heard about
? Hobhouse. And I reckon about Mr. Owen, Robert Owen. And he wanted to start something in Germany, but the ideas got switched off onto Russia, a less favored country. A backward country, full of Tartars and Muscovites, and Cossaks and Nomads. And the result has been in many ways UNsatisfactory. In fact Owen's ideas about factory reform, etc. have gone a lot further in Germany, under the Fu? hrer, whose writing you probably haven't read. In fact you and Vandenburg and these sachems probably haven't read EITHER Stalin, OR Hitler, or Mussolini. So you decide to take over an old shirt of Lenin's, at least that passage about training a staff of administrators, and you send a lot of unbreached kids down to the University of Virginia to learn how to administer. Which is looney. I mean if you think a kindergarten can administer its parents, or infants officiate over adults.
The idea takes color from what it is dipped in. The idea of treating work men like human beings, favored by Robert Owen, etc. has progressed in Germany. I reckon for model factory conditions, etc. you would have to go to Germany NOW, thought the Burgomaister of Worgl, [who] had Henry Ford's life or ghosted autobiography on his bookshelf. But for the Senator's information, before he gives way to nostalgia for a lost era, and consents to puttin' up a stooge, or pseudo General Grant, to initiate a new era of pillage and public scandal. I mean by having a man, or wanting a president who knows NOTHING about public administration, but covers the graft by a military aureole, more or less.
Let the Senator READ a little Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. Of course you can GET Stalin for 10 cents in America, and you probably can NOT get the works of the Axis leaders. Or if so, I suspect they would not be in authoritative translations.
Well now, what in Stalin's Foundations of Leninism? And where was the error, if error? Was it in program or was it something that happened later, in petrification of program? Or in Russian inability to act on exotic ideas; and the general drop or droop or subsidence of the exotic ideas
? into the mire of Slavic chaos (with condiments: oh yes, with condiments, according to some unkindly critics)?
But supposin' the widdy Trotsky DOES drag the program OUT of the Slavic ambiance, out of Russia, into the American hemisphere? Already AT it in fact, get a humanitarian coloring. Not having been able to shoot Mr. Stalin, Mrs. Trotsky now decides war is wicked, or at least an error. The kindly U. S. A. , Y. M. C. A. circumjacence coloring Mrs. Trotsky's susceptible mind. What would American communism finally come to? Where would it land? Or for the matter of that, where would the British episcopal Lambeth Palace, curates and mitre brand of communism finally end? What effect would the British dislike of the nosey parker have on Weishaupt's latch for universal and close range espionage, every brother spyin' and telling on everyone else?
Is Mrs. Trotsky ready to color, or to paint up to the point of seeing the homestead as something more germane to the American temperament than the kolckhoz or factory farm? That would be something to ask her. Since you are head in' for communism, lickety split, hell for leather, or mebbe hell with a shortage of leather, certainly with a shortage of pigskin and Japanese cherry trees.
And in conclusion where does she stand or SET on the matter of economic aggression? On the matter of dumping? On the matter of those seven league strides toward a higher cultural level than Lenin wanted to shove onto the Muscovites?
And the desired self-criticism inside the party? Has the American Communist Party yet opened up to the self-critics from the inside? Probably Will, or rather Kumrad William Williams was a bit pessimistic on that subject, when I was last admitted to his acquaintance. Certainly Messrs. Churchill and Roosevelt do seem to represent pretty much all that is worst in the plutocracy. So widdy Trotsky may git a run for her money.
? #105, FCC Transcript (July 4, 1943) U. K. (C57) [TITLE UNKNOWN]
Reports to the Congress Commission, reports to the MacMillan Commission protesting against the ruin of China and India by Churchill's return to gold.
You would not listen, you would not listen, nothing would make you take the faintest trace of a half possible interest in Hitler's warnings, in Major Douglas' warnings, in the writers of McNair Wilson, Professor Stoddard-- --. Those were the symbols.
A fine symbol, a holy synod, a rock on which such as Lamb-- --, of ample-- --upheld for their church. When I mention Mr. Morgenthau to you, you turn off the radio, the subject is so disagreeable. Mr. Morgenthau is returning to gold so that-- --as soon as he possibly can.
That is, as soon as it will mean the highest possible profits on monies lent to humanity, on the debts made by the war which is to be used according to ritual to control the currency after the war, the world currency return. No small-- --by mere manipulations by kikes of the money of your little empire or of the American continent, but the world currency is to be stabilized and you are old with 3 jockies in livery.
And that livery will not include coat and pants. You will go out in your underwear. It will be the livery of the new-- --, of the new-- --against which the prices of wheat and clothing will fluctuate.
I'll say they will fluctuate, but the money will remain fixed and-- --and there will be no boys on the board of directors. Shop dressing, window dressing has prevailed up to the present. There always have been a few Lord (Windrums and Dindrums) on the board of directors to bamboozle the soft hearted public.
? Oh, but the new money will not be measured by labor. The Morgenthau prices will most certainly not take into account the value of labor. The price of foodstuffs, fuel and clothing in Morgenthaudia, the new Soviet Paradise, will most certainly not be regulated so that the working man, nor the office worker can feed, clothe and house his family on the fruits of his labor, or by wearing a clean shirt to the office in the hope of getting good marks.
Lord, love you, no, the money is going to be stable. There'll be plenty of men out of work, millions and millions on the dole and of the dole so that the labor market may remain open. If there is any uncommunist district left where the worker is not slave of the plebe, where he is not conscripted to do sixteen hours a day in the factory or fifteen in the mines for the Soviets, for the Soviet Order, for the sacred Christian community of the Seligmans of the all holy, trinitarian no-God republican Paradise of the lenders of non-money at a somewhat higher return than is now asked by the-- --, fifty percent.
Let us not look for help from democracies because there just won't be any democracies in that sense of the word. The war was made for the sake of doles, you were told that; it was made to make debts, it was made to impose the gold standard.
In other words you were the-- --end; you were told and the gullible in Europe believed that the British working man sided with England because he got a share in the profits; he profited by the misery of India and of China; that his working conditions were better; that he could buy more copies of -- --, see more pictures, read more-- --news printed on more pieces of paper, see more Hollywood products and then his poor benighted brother the Hindu. -- --
Now this poor brown underling who after the return to the gold standard paid two bushels where he before that had to pay one bushel and one in honor of the Queen. Well, now next time it might be that the receiving
? end will be over in [Goonland? ], over in [Cleveland? ], over in the new Roseman Paradise where blooms the-- --in the new stabilized unity, with no non-Jews on the board of control, with no English control whatsoever, though a few British names may appear as representatives of the Canadian people so-called, and a few London agents of the golden Republic of Soviets may fly back and forth to see that the rent is paid promptly.
But at any rate you can now go to sleep again. You've been told what the war's about. You've been told what Rabbi Wise and Mr. Wiseman, your [Sasson? ] are having a war for.
It is inconvenient: well, you've got used to it now and, when it's over, everything will be just as it was before. No, not quite as it was before, you won't have to worry about any novelties, there'll be no innovations. You'll not have to readjust yourselves to horrible novelties that threaten you from abroad. The money will be stabilized. You will have returned to sound money.
Perhaps you will be able to get some employment but that isn't necessary; you're used to not being busy so that will not disturb you. You will not have to think about anything. That will be a comfort to your penury. You never did like to think about anything. And the war will be over. That is, there will be a few-- --interruptions before the next one gets going and you will have killed off some women and children and you'll feel proud of being conservative.
You will be told that the-- --based on gold brought you prosperity. You will be told that it's really for England's benefit that her money should be controlled from abroad. I'll repeat that,-- --. It'll relieve England of all that bookkeeping, trust Mr. Morgenthau to look after all your accounting; it is much simpler.
? Mr. Keynes will explain. He will have had his little fling in the drawing room; he will have uttered the minority murmur and said that it will not quite be the millenium promise, by the prophet Isaiah. But that after all the old system of economics, the orthodox system, was the basis of Cambridge and that you have at least preserved the ideals that he stood for, and, of course, prices of foodstuffs will fluctuate, so someone can still make a little money by speculation, a little more money by speculation than they could by productive labor, which is, of course, another aim of the war.
#106 (July 6, 1943) U. S. (C69) CREDIT: LEGALITY
John Adams won the American Revolution as a law case before the peculiarly venal and squalid government of England at that time had recourse to arms.
The 1770's were possibly imbued with a much more sensitive and active sense of legality than can be found today in the Anglo-Jewish countries.
We saw the United States flooded with quite squalid ballyhoo, telling the simps that they can make more in the army than in civil life. A level of baseness in some of these articles quite such as to turn the stomach of what was once considered the plain honest man, but will today be counted an hyper-sensitive by Hollywood standards.
Besides the offers of high pay for the army, such as appeared before America had OPENLY entered the war, are probably out-of-date by now. I am merely contrasting the venality of this purely mercenary disposition with the Italian state of mind or that of our American forebears.
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