I don't know that this recommenda- tion is wholly useless even in addressing a great part of the
American
public.
Pound-Jefferson-and-or-Mussolini
?
JEFFERSON AND/OR
MUSSOLINI
L'IDEA STATALE FASCISM AS I HAVE SEEN IT
BY
EZRA POUND
Volitionist Economics
? . APRIL I 9 35, . ANNO XIII, FINALL Y . A FOREWORD
THE BODY OF THIS MS. WAS WRITTEN AND LEFT MY HANDS IN FEBRUARY I9H? 40 PUBLISHERS HAVE REFUSED IT. NO TYPESCRIPT OF MINE HAS BEEN READ BY SO MANY PEOPLE OR BROUGHT ME A MORE INTERESTING CORRESPONDENCE. IT IS HERE PRINTED VERBATIM, UNALTERED. I HAD NOT SEEN THE MS. FROM THE TIME IT LEFT RAPALLO TILL IT RETURNED ltERB WITH THE GALLEY PROOF. IT IS PRINTED . AS RECORD OF WHAT I SAW IN FEBRUARY I933? THE SEPTEMBER PREFACE (I9H) INDICA TED A FLUTTER OF HOPE, THA T HAS GROWN STEADILY MORE FLUTTERY AND LESS HOPEFUL.
E. P. , RAP. ALLO, APRIL, XIII.
First published bv Stanley Nott Ltd.
? NOTHING IS WITHOUT EFFIOENT CAUSE
LETTER SENT AUTUMN, 1934, BY EZRA POUND TO EDITOR OF THE CRITERION, LONDON
I
O N E element of the Duce's gamut is the continual gentle diatribe against ail that is " anti-storico," all that is against his- toric process.
Obviously a padiamentary system which is in Italy an exotic, a XIXth century fad, imported aJ hoc, for temporal reason, a doctrinaires' game in North Italy, a diplomatic accident in the South, is not in the blood and bone of Italians.
Vittorio Emanuele had reasons, and even necessities of state pushing him to it, at least as top dressing.
What it signified Je facto in? Turin, is best exemplified by the specific occasion on which a Piedmontese parliament refused to sign on the dotted line of a treaty. Victor told the people to elect another that would.
The system went into effect in Naples to avoid technical. terms in a treaty with Austria.
Given a little time and leisure (XII years) Mussolini emerges with a scheme for ascert~ining the will of the people that will be at least in intention more efficient than elected politicians, divided by geographical d~stricts. He wants a council where et~ery leinJ of man will be represented by some bloke of his own profession, by sonie deputy who . has identical interests and a direct knowledge of the needs and temptations of a given pro- fession.
MuS80lini has never asked nations with a different historical fibre ~o adopt the cupolas and gables of fascism. Put him in England and he would drive his roots back into the Witanagemot as firmly as I>ouglas.
The blackest lie in autumn (1934) propaganda is the lie of re-employment, considered as possible.
Even the technocrats years ago, showed that re-employment at anything like the old hours per day is impossible.
Human decency demands the division of work among a great number of people, rather than having it piled onto a few.
The e~~nomist is faced with a progressively diminishing need of human labour.
If they are honest one wonders why the London Gesellites ? should be touting re-employment in their Sunday propaganda.
Gesell had a very clear brain wave, and offered that rarest v
? VI
JEFFERSON
of all possible things an innovation in economics. It is sur- prising to find his more vocal disciples still clinging to what should be a \'ery dead superstition.
We do not <:ontinue to hoist water with a bucket from the garden or vill;age well, after we have laid on m~ern plumbing. The atrophy which conceals this fact from economic and
political organizations is not one which I can explain.
There is printed proof of its existence, and I therefore suppose
a cause for it exists.
Similar phenomenon presented by a professor from London's
renowned School of Economics: the bloke went to France but was unable to decipher the inscription on the Chamber of Com- merce coinage.
So I suppose his students still remain sheltered from the dis- tressin' fact that France has two kinds of money, one for home use and one good both at home and abroad.
This topic is curiously unwelcome to members of the London Chamber of Commerce, for reasons which remain (at least to the present author) obscure.
The ends obtainable by adumbration or suffocation of facts arc hardlv the ends of scie,ncc however much thev mav con- tribute to. the hazards of politics. ? ?
To the scientist facts are desirable, the scientist wants as many as possible, he wants to know what's what and what of it,. He doesn't necessarily want to use all known data in a given instant of time, but neither does he wish to. proceed on the
assumption that what is not, is; or vice versa.
It is not from our biologists, or chemists that we hear the
admonition: "Don't give him an idea, he has one. " Perhaps this is why so many nice people still think economics is not, and won't soon be a science.
II
I list another curious case, that of a skilled accountant, con- \'ersant with algebra, who has by that latter exercise somewhat dimmed his sense of causality.
You can transpose terms in an algebraic equation whereas you can not by analogy transpose the different parts of a bridge.
We need, we some of us painfully need, a pooling of all these available knowlcdges; of all the rigidly zoned rare fruit of particular kinds of experience. I want all this accountant's knowledge, or as much of it as I can get under my beret.
I recognize brother Warburg's acuteness when he observes or repeats that silver is mainly a by-product of other metallic pro- duction. When he tells. me that the man who buys a plough
? and/or MUSSOLINI \"II
commits the same act as the buyer of mortgages, I pity the pore lonely banker.
Ill
Trade Balance: a hoax whereby the government concealing a huge part of the national income assures the people the nation has spent more than it's got.
"Control of credit and control of the news are concentric," writes Chas. Furguson. A book I wrote in Feb. 1933 is still unprinted. I console myself with the fact that Van Buren wrote his memoirs in the 186o's and they got into print only in 19z0. Control of credit seems in that case to have delayed quite a lot of news about bank method.
On Oct. 6th of the year current (anno XII) between 4- P. M. and 4--30 Mussolini speaking very clearly four or five words . at a time, with a pause, quite a long pause, between phrases, to let it sink in, told 4-0 million Italians together with auditors in the U. S. A. and" the Argentine that the problem of production was solved, and that thev could now turn their minds . to dis- tribution. ? ?
It is just as well that such statements should have reached the general public.
Distribution is effected by means of small bits of paper, many of those bearing one, two and three numerals are for convenience sake carefully engraved, and are (apart from series number) exact replicas of each other as far as human skill can encompass.
Other bits are part printed and partly filled in: by hand.
The science of distribution will progress in measure as people give more attention to these bits of paper, what they are, how they come there, and who governs their creation and transit.
I fail most lamentably at ten ana five year intervals precisely when. I attempt to say something of major interest or importance. Trifles or ideas of third or second line, I can always offer in manner acceptable to my editors. The book I wr~te in Feb.
1933 continues to fall out of date, to recede as its statements are verified by events.
By Oct. '6, ? 1934- we find Mussolini putting the dots on the "i's. " ?
That is to say, finding the unassailable formula, the exact equation for what had been sketchy and impressionistic and exaggerated in Thos. Jefferson's time and expression.
By last April Quirino Capaccioli 1 had already got to a vision of the day when the state could sit back and do nothing. Which sounds again, rather like Jefferson.
1 c~,. ,; Sullo Stalo CorporatitHJ Fasdsta (Fircnzc Sublimtnto Graf. Com? mtrti3lc, Vi3 Cimariua to. Lire S).
? ? ? ? VIII JEFFERSON
I OCT. 6TH OBIT I
Dead, at 4-i4 in the Piazza del Duomo, Milano~ anno XII. Scarcity Economics died;
Scarcity Economics bei. ng that congeries of theories based on an earlier state of human productive capacity. Lest the Duce's Italian have been translated only into set formal phrases it might be well to look at his meaning, and to remember that for XII years the Duce has kept his word whereas it is almost impossible to find a pub~ic man in any other country, European or Ameri- can whose promises are worth yesterday's newspaper.
Lat~oro Garantito, that means that no man in Italy is to have any anxiety about finding a job.
Le Possibi/ita tiel/a ri&hezza, is plural, "science has multiplied the means of producing plenty, and science prodded on by the will of the State should solve the other probem, that of dis- tributing the abundance, and putting an end to the brutal para- dox of grinding poverty amid plenty. "
T h e will o f some states, personified by freshwater p_rofessors or fattened bureaucracies might offer a fairly lean hQpe, but in this case the Stato is sufficiently re-inforced by the human fact of the Duce, who has defined the state as the spirit of the people.
"The indifferent have never made history. "
End of poverty in the Italian peninsula. Distribution is ef- fected by little pieces of paper.
The Duce did not call on his hearers for either more knowl- edge or more intelligence, he asked for "energie e r10/onta" (both in the plural).
"Self-discipline not only of entrepreneurs but of workmen," with a correction of all that is vague and impressionistic in Jeffer- son's phrasing "equality in respect to work and to the nation. Difference only in the grade and fullness of individual respon?
sibility. "
Thus plugging the leak left in all democratic pronounce-
ments.
The more one examines the Milan Speech the. more one is
reminded of Brancusi, the stone blocks from which no error emerges, from whatever angle one look at them.
Lily-Iiver'd letterati might very well exercise their perception of style on this oration.
Just payment, and Ia casa Jecorosa, that means to say ade- quate wages (or perhaps salario doesn't rule out the more recent proposals for distributing exchangeable paper). Decorosa means more than a house fit to live in, it means a house fit to look at.
The Duce who never tries to put in a wedge butt end for?
? and/or MUSSOLINI ix
ward, began this campaign some months ago with the mild state- ment that in So years every peasant should have a house of this kind, or rather he said then ''clean and decent. "
I don't the least think he expects to take So years at it, but he is not given to overstatement.
He must know already what means of distribution exist. Mere plenty is too easy, and the equation of "silk hat and Bradford millionaire " too unpleasant. Purist economists who see the problem as mere algebra, mere bookkeeping, or even mere engineering, will continue to see Italy in a fog. The idea of "nation," the heap big magic of evoking the Urbs Augusta, the Latin numen is too far from 19th century prose, from Sam
Smiles, ? from finance in general. It is possible the Capo del Governo wants to go slow enough so as not to see, in his old age, an Italy full of fat peasants gone rotten and a bourgeoisie stinking over the peninsula as Flaubert saw them stinking through Paris. All this is poesy and has no place in a critical epistle.
This statement will irritate a number of doctrinaire readers, and I hope to continue the process until they can show me at least one other country in which any honest economic legislation occurs, and in which any or. either of the plans for a decent monetary system show any signs of leaving the somewhat airy
'leld of suggestion and taking on legal and concrete existence.
The Criterion. London, January, 1935?
SEPTEMBER PREFACE
T H I S book was written in February (anno XI) when almost nobody "s:1w Roose\? clt coming. " Certainly no letter reached me from America showing any sign of the break. I enquired. A very well-known American editor (call him Ole H. ) replied: "A weak sister. "
Only when I got to Paris in June could I find a trace of anyone's having foreseen. Hickok of the Brooklyn Eagle had had only one tip before March: "Young Vanderbilt" had passed through Paris. He had worked in the Roosevelt campaign and reported that "people didn't know what was coming. " Roose- \clt ? was alive, had political talent, read, knew. Vanderbilt and another chap were out West reporting local opinion, "never succeeded in reporting anything R. didn't already know. Must
have read their reports. Would send in word from say Seattle
EzRA PouND.
? X SEPTEMBER PREFACE
and get reply: 'Don't that contradict what you wrote on the q. th from Des Moines. ' R's habit to lie in bed in the morning with papers spread all over the bed, makes as good a desk as
? ? ? etc. ? ? . "
Certain men have died and I am heartily glad of it, certain
men still live whose death would contribute to my pleasure or at least to a certain mental satisfaction, I mean, such as when the street watering-cart sluices oiF a certain amount of debris;" a few others do, thank hca\? cn, appear less frequently in the papers whose abysmal policies, distortions and perfidies have done their utmost to retard the race.
Recommending the book to a British public I could say, read it in relation to what has happened since 4th March, 1933, ? in the U. S. A. and you may get some faint inkling of what to expect from our country. I don't know that this recommenda- tion is wholly useless even in addressing a great part of the American public. Many of them have apparently never heard of stamp-script; of Wocrgl, of C. H. Douglas, though several new reviews seem busy trying to. tell them.
Many of them, perhaps one might say most of 'em have been \? cry much surpri>d by-i\. tr. Roosc\? elt, and it might do them no harm to try to "place" F. D. R. in relatiCJ! I to contemporary phenomena in other countries.
EzRA PouND.
Kutc: As I write this 18th September, anno XI, there is NO American daily paper contemporary with the F. D. Roosc\? clt administration, there arc se\? eral papers faC! ourab! e to the adminis- tration, but that is not the same thing.
I don't know that this recommenda- tion is wholly useless even in addressing a great part of the American public. Many of them have apparently never heard of stamp-script; of Wocrgl, of C. H. Douglas, though several new reviews seem busy trying to. tell them.
Many of them, perhaps one might say most of 'em have been \? cry much surpri>d by-i\. tr. Roosc\? elt, and it might do them no harm to try to "place" F. D. R. in relatiCJ! I to contemporary phenomena in other countries.
EzRA PouND.
Kutc: As I write this 18th September, anno XI, there is NO American daily paper contemporary with the F. D. Roosc\? clt administration, there arc se\? eral papers faC! ourab! e to the adminis- tration, but that is not the same thing. There are a couple of weekly and quarterly publications showing some adumbration ofcontcm- porary thought, there is a projected weekly said to be about to be going to be affected by an ex-member of the "brain trust," * there arc lots of old-time bright snappy practical go-getting jour- nalists still worrying about idee1 fixes of their grandfathers' time and wholly unconscious of what is occurring about them, or if not unconscious merely muddled and incomprchcnding. I have never quarrelled with people when their deductions ha\'C been based on fact, I have quarreled when they were based on igno- rance, and my only arguments for z5 years ha\'e been the drag- ging up of facts, either of literature or of history. Journalism as I sec it is history of to-day, and literature is journalism that Jtay1 news.
A. D. 1933 ? ToDAY. Edited by Raymond Moley.
? l
JEFFERSON AND/OR MUSSOLINI
THEfundamental likenesses between these two men are probably greater than their differences. I am not diddling about with a paradox. The top dressing could hardly be more different, everything on the surface is different. The verbal manifestations or at least the more greatly advertised verbal mani- festations undoubtedly differ to a very great degree.
" The best government is that which governs least," remarked Mr. Jefferson. I don't propose to limit my analysis to what T om Jefferson said. I don't propose to limit my analysis to what Tom Jefferson recommended in aparticular time andplace. I am concerned with what he actually did, with the way his mind worked both when faced with a particular problem in a particular geography, and
when faced with the unending problem of CHANGE.
If Mussolini had tried to fool himself into finding or into trying to find the identical solution for Italy 19. 22. -1932. that Jefferson found for America 1776-182. 6, there would have been no fascist decennio.
There is probably no . language simple enough and clear enough to explain this, to make this clear to the American extreme left and to the American liberal. I mean to say that the left is completely,
II
? 1 2 JEFFERSON
I mean completely, absolutely, utterly, and possibly incurably, ignorant of Jefferson ~d nearly ignorant of the structure of American government, both de jure' and de facto. . ?
They understand nothing of this subject because they have no desire to understand it, and practically all political parties are swallowed up in the desire for mutual ignorance of their reciprocal difference.
Jefferson's writings are published in ten volumes but I know of no cheap popular edition of selected and significant passages. Van Buren's autobiography was kept in manuscript up till 1920, not, I imagine, because of a vile conspiracy of bogey-men bankers but simply because the professors of history and economics were too lazy and too ignorant to under- stand its importance. The final hundred pages would have saved America twenty years' trouble had they been printed in 1900. Instead of which our daddies had General Grant. And we have ourselves been spectators, disgusted in the main, o f the undignified procession: Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. ?
The heritage of Jefferson, Quincy Adams', old John Adams, Jackson, Van Buren is HERE, NOW in the Italian peninsula at the beginning of fascist second decennia, not in Massachusetts or Delaware.
To understand this we must have at least a rudi- mentary knowledge of the first fifty years of United States history AND some first-hand knowledge of Italy 1922-;3 or 1915-;3, or still better some knowledge of 16o years of American democracy and of Italy' for as long as you like.
The man least likely, I mean the man in all Europe or in all America least likely, to be surprised
? andfor MUSSOLINI x5
. at my . opening proposition is Benito Mussolini himself.
The popular pictures or caricatures of Jefferson are forgotten. Mr. Ludwig has done a, shall we say, popular picture of the Duce, or shall we say a picture that has been widely distributed. Mr. Ludwig saw in Mussolini exactly what one would expect Mr. Ludwig to see. It is a wonder he didn't ask the Capo del Govemo how much he paid for his neckties. I once knew a traveller in smokers' novelties, very very like Mr. Ludwig in mind and manner. I dare say he also would have been dis- tressed by the Duce, for I cannot at the moment recall (amid all the photos and all the cinema news- reels) I cannot recall any photo of the Duce smoking a fat cigar.
I think Emil would have been just as happy talking to ? Lloyd George or Woodrow, or to those who have afflicted our era and by whom our public
. affai~ have been messed up.
I have myself seen several statesmen, mostly
ignorant and, if not ignorant, either shallow OI shifty; all engaged in passing the buck, or in avoid- ing the question, i. e. ANY question whatsoever.
? II
JEFFERSON
JEFFERSON participated in one revolution, he " informed it " both in the sense of shaping it froni the inside and of educating it.
He tried to educate another. It wasn't technic- ally and officially his business as American Ambas- sador to France, but being Jefferson he couldn't exactly help himself. While fat Louis was. chewing apples at Versailles, Lafayette and Co. kept running down to Tom's lodgings to find out how they ought to behave, and how one should have a French revolution. The royal bed or whatever they called it was toppled over and T. J. went back to the States. He was the recognized opposition for twelve years while Hamilton and his pals were engaged in betraying the people, betraying them honestly, sincerely with a firm conviction that it was their duty to make the thirteen colonies into the closest possible imitation of Britain.
The handiest guide to this period is Woodward's
Washington, Image and Man.
After that, Jefferson governed our forefathers for twenty-four_ years, and you might almost say he governed for forty-eight. There was the slight cross-current of Quincy Adams, but there was the intensively Jeffersonian drive of Van Buren.
When I say twenty-four years I count Jefferson's 14
? JEFFERSON and/or MUSSOUNI x,
eight years as President and the sixteen wherein he govemed more or less through deputies, Madison and Monroe.
" The best government is that which governs least. " Shallow interpretation puts all the emphasis on the adverb " least" and slides gaily over the verb "to govern. "
? Apart from conversation and persiflage, h(>w did Jefferson govern? What did he really do? Through what mechanisms did he act?
He governed with a limited suffrage, and by means of conversation with his more intelligent friends~ Or rather he guided a limited electorate by what he wrote and said more or less privately.
He canalized American thought by means of his verbal manifestations, and in these manifestations he appeared at times to exaggerate.
The exaggeration had an aim and a scope, tem- porary and immediate. No man in history had ever done more and done it with less violence or with less needless expenditure of energy.
Given the obvious " weakness " of the American colonies AND geography, he committed the greatest single territorial conquest or acquist that either you or I can at. the moment recall. Get out a ruler and see whether Clive by means of cheating and bribing traitors to commit treachery on the actual field of battle mopped up anything larger, irrespective even of the moral stabilities, and lasting contentment.
Yes, there are differences. There always ARE . differences. The exact historical parallel doesn't exist. There is opportunism and opportunism. The
word has a bad meaning because in a world of &fetternichs, and Talleyrands it means doing the
other guy the minute you get the chance.
There is also the opportunism of the artist, who
? t6 JEFFERSON andfor MUSSOUNI
has a definite aim, and creates out of the materials present. The greater the artist the more permanent his creation. And this is a matter of WILL.
It is also a matter of the DIRECTION OF THE WILL. And if the reader will blow the fog off his brain and think for a few minutes or a few stray half-hours he will find this phrase brings us ultimately both to Confucius and Dante.
? III DIRECTIO VOLUNT A TIS
T H E whole of the Divina Commedia is a study of the " directio voluntatis " (direction of the will). I mean in its basal sense.
Dante uses an unfortunate terminology. He says that his poem is written in four senses, the literal, the allegorical, the anagogical and the moral. This is as bad as Major Douglas' algebra.
The literal? Oh, well, that's all right. Allegory is very old-fashioned. Anagogical? Hell's bells, " nobody " knows what THA T is. And as for the
? " moral "?
Wedescendfromthepilgrim"farvers. " Amoral
man in New York or Boston is one who objects to anyone else's committing adultery.
I am a flat-chested highbrow. I can "cure" the whole trouble simply by criticism of style. Oh, can I? Yes. I have been saying so for some time.
At any rate if you translate a ? medi:eval Latin word by a modern New England word having the same letters (all but the final e) and having 'em in the same order, you do NOT convey Dante's t;neaning to the reader, and the reader arrives at the conclusion that? Dante was either a prig or a bore. ? .
To cut the cackle, you can have an OPPOR- TUNIST who is RIGHT, that is who has certain
17
? 18 JEFFERSON
convictions and who drives them through circum- stance, or batters and forms circumstance ? with them.
The academic ass exists in a vacuum with a congeries of dead fixed ideas, or with a congeries of fixed ideas which may be " good " and not quite dead, or rather which MIGHT be useful were they brought to focus on something. ?
The word intellect stinks in the normal Americo- English nostril. Even the word intelligence has come to be unsatisfactory.
Let us deny that real intelligence exists until it comes into action.
A man in desperate circumstances, let us say, Remy de Gourmont in pre-war France might get to the point of thinking that an idea is spoiled by being brought into action, but Gourmont also got to the point of cursing intelligence altogether, vide his remarks on the lamb. (Chevaux de Diomede).
He then got round to defining intellect as the fumbling about in the attempt to create instinct, or at any rate on the road towards instinct. And his word instinct came to mean merely PERFECT and complete intelligence with a limited scope applied to recurrent conditions (vide his chapters on insects in La Physique de I'Amour).
The flying ant or wasp or whatever it was that I saw cut up a spider at Excideu_il may have been acting by instinct, but it was not acting by reason of the stupidity of instinct. It was acting with remark- ably full and perfect knowledge which did not have to be chewed out in a New Republic article or avoided in a London Times leader.
When a human being has an analogous com- pleteness of knowledge, or intelligence carried into
? .
a third or fourth dimension, capable of dealing with NEW circumstances, we call it genius.
This arouses any amount of inferiority complex. Coolidge never aroused ANY inferiority complex. Neither did Harding or Hoover.
Jefferson was one genit1s and Mussolini is another. I am not putting in all the steps of my argument but that don't mean to say they aren't there.
Jefferson guided a governing class. A limited number of the public had the franchise. So far as the first sixty or more years of United States history are concerned there was no need for Jefferson even to imagine a time when the more intelligent members of the public would be too stupid or too lazy to exercise their wit in the discharge of their "duty. "
I mean to say T. J. had a feeling of responsibility and he knew other men who had it, it didn't occur to him that this type of man would die out.
John Adams believed in heredity. Jefferson left no sons. Adams left the only line o ( descendants who have steadily and without a break felt their responsibility and persistently participated in Ameri- cangovernment throughout its x6o years.
In one case hereditary privilege would have been use! ess and in the other it hasn't been necessary.
Adanis lived to see an " aristocracy of stock- jobbers and land-jobbers " in action and predicted them . " into time immemorial " (which phrase an ingenious grammarian can by great ingenuity cata- logue and give a name to, by counting in a string of ellipses).
Old John teased Tom about his hyperboles, so he is1fair game for us in this instance.
As to the ratio of property to responsibility, Ben Franklin remarked that some of the worst rascals he had known had been some of the richest.
and/or MUSSOLINI 19
? zo JEFFERSON andfor MUSSOLINI
This concept has long since faded from American government and almost from the minds of the people. Hamilton didn't believe it, or at any rate both his Hebrew blood and his Scotch blood coursed violently toward the contrary view.
? IV
THEmodem American cheap sneers at demo- cracy and at some of Jefferson's slogans are based on the assumption that Jefferson's . ideas were idees
fixes.
Attacks on Jefferson's sincerity made during his lifetime were made by the same type of idiot, on precisely the opposite tack. I mean becau'Se they weren't ideuftxes, and because Jefferson was incap- able of just that form of stupidity.
A n idee fixe is a dead, set, stiff, varnished " idea " existing in a vacuum.
The ideas of genius, or of " men of intelligence" are ? organic and germinal, the " seed " of the scriptures.
You put one of these ideas somewhere, i. e. some- where in a definite space and time, and something begins to happen.
"All men are hom free and equal. "
Cheers, bands, band wagons, John stops licking the squire's boots, from the Atlantic strip of the British American colonies to the great port of Marseilles there is a record off-sloughing of inferior-
. ity complex.
The drivelling imbecility of the British and
French .
MUSSOLINI
L'IDEA STATALE FASCISM AS I HAVE SEEN IT
BY
EZRA POUND
Volitionist Economics
? . APRIL I 9 35, . ANNO XIII, FINALL Y . A FOREWORD
THE BODY OF THIS MS. WAS WRITTEN AND LEFT MY HANDS IN FEBRUARY I9H? 40 PUBLISHERS HAVE REFUSED IT. NO TYPESCRIPT OF MINE HAS BEEN READ BY SO MANY PEOPLE OR BROUGHT ME A MORE INTERESTING CORRESPONDENCE. IT IS HERE PRINTED VERBATIM, UNALTERED. I HAD NOT SEEN THE MS. FROM THE TIME IT LEFT RAPALLO TILL IT RETURNED ltERB WITH THE GALLEY PROOF. IT IS PRINTED . AS RECORD OF WHAT I SAW IN FEBRUARY I933? THE SEPTEMBER PREFACE (I9H) INDICA TED A FLUTTER OF HOPE, THA T HAS GROWN STEADILY MORE FLUTTERY AND LESS HOPEFUL.
E. P. , RAP. ALLO, APRIL, XIII.
First published bv Stanley Nott Ltd.
? NOTHING IS WITHOUT EFFIOENT CAUSE
LETTER SENT AUTUMN, 1934, BY EZRA POUND TO EDITOR OF THE CRITERION, LONDON
I
O N E element of the Duce's gamut is the continual gentle diatribe against ail that is " anti-storico," all that is against his- toric process.
Obviously a padiamentary system which is in Italy an exotic, a XIXth century fad, imported aJ hoc, for temporal reason, a doctrinaires' game in North Italy, a diplomatic accident in the South, is not in the blood and bone of Italians.
Vittorio Emanuele had reasons, and even necessities of state pushing him to it, at least as top dressing.
What it signified Je facto in? Turin, is best exemplified by the specific occasion on which a Piedmontese parliament refused to sign on the dotted line of a treaty. Victor told the people to elect another that would.
The system went into effect in Naples to avoid technical. terms in a treaty with Austria.
Given a little time and leisure (XII years) Mussolini emerges with a scheme for ascert~ining the will of the people that will be at least in intention more efficient than elected politicians, divided by geographical d~stricts. He wants a council where et~ery leinJ of man will be represented by some bloke of his own profession, by sonie deputy who . has identical interests and a direct knowledge of the needs and temptations of a given pro- fession.
MuS80lini has never asked nations with a different historical fibre ~o adopt the cupolas and gables of fascism. Put him in England and he would drive his roots back into the Witanagemot as firmly as I>ouglas.
The blackest lie in autumn (1934) propaganda is the lie of re-employment, considered as possible.
Even the technocrats years ago, showed that re-employment at anything like the old hours per day is impossible.
Human decency demands the division of work among a great number of people, rather than having it piled onto a few.
The e~~nomist is faced with a progressively diminishing need of human labour.
If they are honest one wonders why the London Gesellites ? should be touting re-employment in their Sunday propaganda.
Gesell had a very clear brain wave, and offered that rarest v
? VI
JEFFERSON
of all possible things an innovation in economics. It is sur- prising to find his more vocal disciples still clinging to what should be a \'ery dead superstition.
We do not <:ontinue to hoist water with a bucket from the garden or vill;age well, after we have laid on m~ern plumbing. The atrophy which conceals this fact from economic and
political organizations is not one which I can explain.
There is printed proof of its existence, and I therefore suppose
a cause for it exists.
Similar phenomenon presented by a professor from London's
renowned School of Economics: the bloke went to France but was unable to decipher the inscription on the Chamber of Com- merce coinage.
So I suppose his students still remain sheltered from the dis- tressin' fact that France has two kinds of money, one for home use and one good both at home and abroad.
This topic is curiously unwelcome to members of the London Chamber of Commerce, for reasons which remain (at least to the present author) obscure.
The ends obtainable by adumbration or suffocation of facts arc hardlv the ends of scie,ncc however much thev mav con- tribute to. the hazards of politics. ? ?
To the scientist facts are desirable, the scientist wants as many as possible, he wants to know what's what and what of it,. He doesn't necessarily want to use all known data in a given instant of time, but neither does he wish to. proceed on the
assumption that what is not, is; or vice versa.
It is not from our biologists, or chemists that we hear the
admonition: "Don't give him an idea, he has one. " Perhaps this is why so many nice people still think economics is not, and won't soon be a science.
II
I list another curious case, that of a skilled accountant, con- \'ersant with algebra, who has by that latter exercise somewhat dimmed his sense of causality.
You can transpose terms in an algebraic equation whereas you can not by analogy transpose the different parts of a bridge.
We need, we some of us painfully need, a pooling of all these available knowlcdges; of all the rigidly zoned rare fruit of particular kinds of experience. I want all this accountant's knowledge, or as much of it as I can get under my beret.
I recognize brother Warburg's acuteness when he observes or repeats that silver is mainly a by-product of other metallic pro- duction. When he tells. me that the man who buys a plough
? and/or MUSSOLINI \"II
commits the same act as the buyer of mortgages, I pity the pore lonely banker.
Ill
Trade Balance: a hoax whereby the government concealing a huge part of the national income assures the people the nation has spent more than it's got.
"Control of credit and control of the news are concentric," writes Chas. Furguson. A book I wrote in Feb. 1933 is still unprinted. I console myself with the fact that Van Buren wrote his memoirs in the 186o's and they got into print only in 19z0. Control of credit seems in that case to have delayed quite a lot of news about bank method.
On Oct. 6th of the year current (anno XII) between 4- P. M. and 4--30 Mussolini speaking very clearly four or five words . at a time, with a pause, quite a long pause, between phrases, to let it sink in, told 4-0 million Italians together with auditors in the U. S. A. and" the Argentine that the problem of production was solved, and that thev could now turn their minds . to dis- tribution. ? ?
It is just as well that such statements should have reached the general public.
Distribution is effected by means of small bits of paper, many of those bearing one, two and three numerals are for convenience sake carefully engraved, and are (apart from series number) exact replicas of each other as far as human skill can encompass.
Other bits are part printed and partly filled in: by hand.
The science of distribution will progress in measure as people give more attention to these bits of paper, what they are, how they come there, and who governs their creation and transit.
I fail most lamentably at ten ana five year intervals precisely when. I attempt to say something of major interest or importance. Trifles or ideas of third or second line, I can always offer in manner acceptable to my editors. The book I wr~te in Feb.
1933 continues to fall out of date, to recede as its statements are verified by events.
By Oct. '6, ? 1934- we find Mussolini putting the dots on the "i's. " ?
That is to say, finding the unassailable formula, the exact equation for what had been sketchy and impressionistic and exaggerated in Thos. Jefferson's time and expression.
By last April Quirino Capaccioli 1 had already got to a vision of the day when the state could sit back and do nothing. Which sounds again, rather like Jefferson.
1 c~,. ,; Sullo Stalo CorporatitHJ Fasdsta (Fircnzc Sublimtnto Graf. Com? mtrti3lc, Vi3 Cimariua to. Lire S).
? ? ? ? VIII JEFFERSON
I OCT. 6TH OBIT I
Dead, at 4-i4 in the Piazza del Duomo, Milano~ anno XII. Scarcity Economics died;
Scarcity Economics bei. ng that congeries of theories based on an earlier state of human productive capacity. Lest the Duce's Italian have been translated only into set formal phrases it might be well to look at his meaning, and to remember that for XII years the Duce has kept his word whereas it is almost impossible to find a pub~ic man in any other country, European or Ameri- can whose promises are worth yesterday's newspaper.
Lat~oro Garantito, that means that no man in Italy is to have any anxiety about finding a job.
Le Possibi/ita tiel/a ri&hezza, is plural, "science has multiplied the means of producing plenty, and science prodded on by the will of the State should solve the other probem, that of dis- tributing the abundance, and putting an end to the brutal para- dox of grinding poverty amid plenty. "
T h e will o f some states, personified by freshwater p_rofessors or fattened bureaucracies might offer a fairly lean hQpe, but in this case the Stato is sufficiently re-inforced by the human fact of the Duce, who has defined the state as the spirit of the people.
"The indifferent have never made history. "
End of poverty in the Italian peninsula. Distribution is ef- fected by little pieces of paper.
The Duce did not call on his hearers for either more knowl- edge or more intelligence, he asked for "energie e r10/onta" (both in the plural).
"Self-discipline not only of entrepreneurs but of workmen," with a correction of all that is vague and impressionistic in Jeffer- son's phrasing "equality in respect to work and to the nation. Difference only in the grade and fullness of individual respon?
sibility. "
Thus plugging the leak left in all democratic pronounce-
ments.
The more one examines the Milan Speech the. more one is
reminded of Brancusi, the stone blocks from which no error emerges, from whatever angle one look at them.
Lily-Iiver'd letterati might very well exercise their perception of style on this oration.
Just payment, and Ia casa Jecorosa, that means to say ade- quate wages (or perhaps salario doesn't rule out the more recent proposals for distributing exchangeable paper). Decorosa means more than a house fit to live in, it means a house fit to look at.
The Duce who never tries to put in a wedge butt end for?
? and/or MUSSOLINI ix
ward, began this campaign some months ago with the mild state- ment that in So years every peasant should have a house of this kind, or rather he said then ''clean and decent. "
I don't the least think he expects to take So years at it, but he is not given to overstatement.
He must know already what means of distribution exist. Mere plenty is too easy, and the equation of "silk hat and Bradford millionaire " too unpleasant. Purist economists who see the problem as mere algebra, mere bookkeeping, or even mere engineering, will continue to see Italy in a fog. The idea of "nation," the heap big magic of evoking the Urbs Augusta, the Latin numen is too far from 19th century prose, from Sam
Smiles, ? from finance in general. It is possible the Capo del Governo wants to go slow enough so as not to see, in his old age, an Italy full of fat peasants gone rotten and a bourgeoisie stinking over the peninsula as Flaubert saw them stinking through Paris. All this is poesy and has no place in a critical epistle.
This statement will irritate a number of doctrinaire readers, and I hope to continue the process until they can show me at least one other country in which any honest economic legislation occurs, and in which any or. either of the plans for a decent monetary system show any signs of leaving the somewhat airy
'leld of suggestion and taking on legal and concrete existence.
The Criterion. London, January, 1935?
SEPTEMBER PREFACE
T H I S book was written in February (anno XI) when almost nobody "s:1w Roose\? clt coming. " Certainly no letter reached me from America showing any sign of the break. I enquired. A very well-known American editor (call him Ole H. ) replied: "A weak sister. "
Only when I got to Paris in June could I find a trace of anyone's having foreseen. Hickok of the Brooklyn Eagle had had only one tip before March: "Young Vanderbilt" had passed through Paris. He had worked in the Roosevelt campaign and reported that "people didn't know what was coming. " Roose- \clt ? was alive, had political talent, read, knew. Vanderbilt and another chap were out West reporting local opinion, "never succeeded in reporting anything R. didn't already know. Must
have read their reports. Would send in word from say Seattle
EzRA PouND.
? X SEPTEMBER PREFACE
and get reply: 'Don't that contradict what you wrote on the q. th from Des Moines. ' R's habit to lie in bed in the morning with papers spread all over the bed, makes as good a desk as
? ? ? etc. ? ? . "
Certain men have died and I am heartily glad of it, certain
men still live whose death would contribute to my pleasure or at least to a certain mental satisfaction, I mean, such as when the street watering-cart sluices oiF a certain amount of debris;" a few others do, thank hca\? cn, appear less frequently in the papers whose abysmal policies, distortions and perfidies have done their utmost to retard the race.
Recommending the book to a British public I could say, read it in relation to what has happened since 4th March, 1933, ? in the U. S. A. and you may get some faint inkling of what to expect from our country. I don't know that this recommenda- tion is wholly useless even in addressing a great part of the American public. Many of them have apparently never heard of stamp-script; of Wocrgl, of C. H. Douglas, though several new reviews seem busy trying to. tell them.
Many of them, perhaps one might say most of 'em have been \? cry much surpri>d by-i\. tr. Roosc\? elt, and it might do them no harm to try to "place" F. D. R. in relatiCJ! I to contemporary phenomena in other countries.
EzRA PouND.
Kutc: As I write this 18th September, anno XI, there is NO American daily paper contemporary with the F. D. Roosc\? clt administration, there arc se\? eral papers faC! ourab! e to the adminis- tration, but that is not the same thing.
I don't know that this recommenda- tion is wholly useless even in addressing a great part of the American public. Many of them have apparently never heard of stamp-script; of Wocrgl, of C. H. Douglas, though several new reviews seem busy trying to. tell them.
Many of them, perhaps one might say most of 'em have been \? cry much surpri>d by-i\. tr. Roosc\? elt, and it might do them no harm to try to "place" F. D. R. in relatiCJ! I to contemporary phenomena in other countries.
EzRA PouND.
Kutc: As I write this 18th September, anno XI, there is NO American daily paper contemporary with the F. D. Roosc\? clt administration, there arc se\? eral papers faC! ourab! e to the adminis- tration, but that is not the same thing. There are a couple of weekly and quarterly publications showing some adumbration ofcontcm- porary thought, there is a projected weekly said to be about to be going to be affected by an ex-member of the "brain trust," * there arc lots of old-time bright snappy practical go-getting jour- nalists still worrying about idee1 fixes of their grandfathers' time and wholly unconscious of what is occurring about them, or if not unconscious merely muddled and incomprchcnding. I have never quarrelled with people when their deductions ha\'C been based on fact, I have quarreled when they were based on igno- rance, and my only arguments for z5 years ha\'e been the drag- ging up of facts, either of literature or of history. Journalism as I sec it is history of to-day, and literature is journalism that Jtay1 news.
A. D. 1933 ? ToDAY. Edited by Raymond Moley.
? l
JEFFERSON AND/OR MUSSOLINI
THEfundamental likenesses between these two men are probably greater than their differences. I am not diddling about with a paradox. The top dressing could hardly be more different, everything on the surface is different. The verbal manifestations or at least the more greatly advertised verbal mani- festations undoubtedly differ to a very great degree.
" The best government is that which governs least," remarked Mr. Jefferson. I don't propose to limit my analysis to what T om Jefferson said. I don't propose to limit my analysis to what Tom Jefferson recommended in aparticular time andplace. I am concerned with what he actually did, with the way his mind worked both when faced with a particular problem in a particular geography, and
when faced with the unending problem of CHANGE.
If Mussolini had tried to fool himself into finding or into trying to find the identical solution for Italy 19. 22. -1932. that Jefferson found for America 1776-182. 6, there would have been no fascist decennio.
There is probably no . language simple enough and clear enough to explain this, to make this clear to the American extreme left and to the American liberal. I mean to say that the left is completely,
II
? 1 2 JEFFERSON
I mean completely, absolutely, utterly, and possibly incurably, ignorant of Jefferson ~d nearly ignorant of the structure of American government, both de jure' and de facto. . ?
They understand nothing of this subject because they have no desire to understand it, and practically all political parties are swallowed up in the desire for mutual ignorance of their reciprocal difference.
Jefferson's writings are published in ten volumes but I know of no cheap popular edition of selected and significant passages. Van Buren's autobiography was kept in manuscript up till 1920, not, I imagine, because of a vile conspiracy of bogey-men bankers but simply because the professors of history and economics were too lazy and too ignorant to under- stand its importance. The final hundred pages would have saved America twenty years' trouble had they been printed in 1900. Instead of which our daddies had General Grant. And we have ourselves been spectators, disgusted in the main, o f the undignified procession: Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. ?
The heritage of Jefferson, Quincy Adams', old John Adams, Jackson, Van Buren is HERE, NOW in the Italian peninsula at the beginning of fascist second decennia, not in Massachusetts or Delaware.
To understand this we must have at least a rudi- mentary knowledge of the first fifty years of United States history AND some first-hand knowledge of Italy 1922-;3 or 1915-;3, or still better some knowledge of 16o years of American democracy and of Italy' for as long as you like.
The man least likely, I mean the man in all Europe or in all America least likely, to be surprised
? andfor MUSSOLINI x5
. at my . opening proposition is Benito Mussolini himself.
The popular pictures or caricatures of Jefferson are forgotten. Mr. Ludwig has done a, shall we say, popular picture of the Duce, or shall we say a picture that has been widely distributed. Mr. Ludwig saw in Mussolini exactly what one would expect Mr. Ludwig to see. It is a wonder he didn't ask the Capo del Govemo how much he paid for his neckties. I once knew a traveller in smokers' novelties, very very like Mr. Ludwig in mind and manner. I dare say he also would have been dis- tressed by the Duce, for I cannot at the moment recall (amid all the photos and all the cinema news- reels) I cannot recall any photo of the Duce smoking a fat cigar.
I think Emil would have been just as happy talking to ? Lloyd George or Woodrow, or to those who have afflicted our era and by whom our public
. affai~ have been messed up.
I have myself seen several statesmen, mostly
ignorant and, if not ignorant, either shallow OI shifty; all engaged in passing the buck, or in avoid- ing the question, i. e. ANY question whatsoever.
? II
JEFFERSON
JEFFERSON participated in one revolution, he " informed it " both in the sense of shaping it froni the inside and of educating it.
He tried to educate another. It wasn't technic- ally and officially his business as American Ambas- sador to France, but being Jefferson he couldn't exactly help himself. While fat Louis was. chewing apples at Versailles, Lafayette and Co. kept running down to Tom's lodgings to find out how they ought to behave, and how one should have a French revolution. The royal bed or whatever they called it was toppled over and T. J. went back to the States. He was the recognized opposition for twelve years while Hamilton and his pals were engaged in betraying the people, betraying them honestly, sincerely with a firm conviction that it was their duty to make the thirteen colonies into the closest possible imitation of Britain.
The handiest guide to this period is Woodward's
Washington, Image and Man.
After that, Jefferson governed our forefathers for twenty-four_ years, and you might almost say he governed for forty-eight. There was the slight cross-current of Quincy Adams, but there was the intensively Jeffersonian drive of Van Buren.
When I say twenty-four years I count Jefferson's 14
? JEFFERSON and/or MUSSOUNI x,
eight years as President and the sixteen wherein he govemed more or less through deputies, Madison and Monroe.
" The best government is that which governs least. " Shallow interpretation puts all the emphasis on the adverb " least" and slides gaily over the verb "to govern. "
? Apart from conversation and persiflage, h(>w did Jefferson govern? What did he really do? Through what mechanisms did he act?
He governed with a limited suffrage, and by means of conversation with his more intelligent friends~ Or rather he guided a limited electorate by what he wrote and said more or less privately.
He canalized American thought by means of his verbal manifestations, and in these manifestations he appeared at times to exaggerate.
The exaggeration had an aim and a scope, tem- porary and immediate. No man in history had ever done more and done it with less violence or with less needless expenditure of energy.
Given the obvious " weakness " of the American colonies AND geography, he committed the greatest single territorial conquest or acquist that either you or I can at. the moment recall. Get out a ruler and see whether Clive by means of cheating and bribing traitors to commit treachery on the actual field of battle mopped up anything larger, irrespective even of the moral stabilities, and lasting contentment.
Yes, there are differences. There always ARE . differences. The exact historical parallel doesn't exist. There is opportunism and opportunism. The
word has a bad meaning because in a world of &fetternichs, and Talleyrands it means doing the
other guy the minute you get the chance.
There is also the opportunism of the artist, who
? t6 JEFFERSON andfor MUSSOUNI
has a definite aim, and creates out of the materials present. The greater the artist the more permanent his creation. And this is a matter of WILL.
It is also a matter of the DIRECTION OF THE WILL. And if the reader will blow the fog off his brain and think for a few minutes or a few stray half-hours he will find this phrase brings us ultimately both to Confucius and Dante.
? III DIRECTIO VOLUNT A TIS
T H E whole of the Divina Commedia is a study of the " directio voluntatis " (direction of the will). I mean in its basal sense.
Dante uses an unfortunate terminology. He says that his poem is written in four senses, the literal, the allegorical, the anagogical and the moral. This is as bad as Major Douglas' algebra.
The literal? Oh, well, that's all right. Allegory is very old-fashioned. Anagogical? Hell's bells, " nobody " knows what THA T is. And as for the
? " moral "?
Wedescendfromthepilgrim"farvers. " Amoral
man in New York or Boston is one who objects to anyone else's committing adultery.
I am a flat-chested highbrow. I can "cure" the whole trouble simply by criticism of style. Oh, can I? Yes. I have been saying so for some time.
At any rate if you translate a ? medi:eval Latin word by a modern New England word having the same letters (all but the final e) and having 'em in the same order, you do NOT convey Dante's t;neaning to the reader, and the reader arrives at the conclusion that? Dante was either a prig or a bore. ? .
To cut the cackle, you can have an OPPOR- TUNIST who is RIGHT, that is who has certain
17
? 18 JEFFERSON
convictions and who drives them through circum- stance, or batters and forms circumstance ? with them.
The academic ass exists in a vacuum with a congeries of dead fixed ideas, or with a congeries of fixed ideas which may be " good " and not quite dead, or rather which MIGHT be useful were they brought to focus on something. ?
The word intellect stinks in the normal Americo- English nostril. Even the word intelligence has come to be unsatisfactory.
Let us deny that real intelligence exists until it comes into action.
A man in desperate circumstances, let us say, Remy de Gourmont in pre-war France might get to the point of thinking that an idea is spoiled by being brought into action, but Gourmont also got to the point of cursing intelligence altogether, vide his remarks on the lamb. (Chevaux de Diomede).
He then got round to defining intellect as the fumbling about in the attempt to create instinct, or at any rate on the road towards instinct. And his word instinct came to mean merely PERFECT and complete intelligence with a limited scope applied to recurrent conditions (vide his chapters on insects in La Physique de I'Amour).
The flying ant or wasp or whatever it was that I saw cut up a spider at Excideu_il may have been acting by instinct, but it was not acting by reason of the stupidity of instinct. It was acting with remark- ably full and perfect knowledge which did not have to be chewed out in a New Republic article or avoided in a London Times leader.
When a human being has an analogous com- pleteness of knowledge, or intelligence carried into
? .
a third or fourth dimension, capable of dealing with NEW circumstances, we call it genius.
This arouses any amount of inferiority complex. Coolidge never aroused ANY inferiority complex. Neither did Harding or Hoover.
Jefferson was one genit1s and Mussolini is another. I am not putting in all the steps of my argument but that don't mean to say they aren't there.
Jefferson guided a governing class. A limited number of the public had the franchise. So far as the first sixty or more years of United States history are concerned there was no need for Jefferson even to imagine a time when the more intelligent members of the public would be too stupid or too lazy to exercise their wit in the discharge of their "duty. "
I mean to say T. J. had a feeling of responsibility and he knew other men who had it, it didn't occur to him that this type of man would die out.
John Adams believed in heredity. Jefferson left no sons. Adams left the only line o ( descendants who have steadily and without a break felt their responsibility and persistently participated in Ameri- cangovernment throughout its x6o years.
In one case hereditary privilege would have been use! ess and in the other it hasn't been necessary.
Adanis lived to see an " aristocracy of stock- jobbers and land-jobbers " in action and predicted them . " into time immemorial " (which phrase an ingenious grammarian can by great ingenuity cata- logue and give a name to, by counting in a string of ellipses).
Old John teased Tom about his hyperboles, so he is1fair game for us in this instance.
As to the ratio of property to responsibility, Ben Franklin remarked that some of the worst rascals he had known had been some of the richest.
and/or MUSSOLINI 19
? zo JEFFERSON andfor MUSSOLINI
This concept has long since faded from American government and almost from the minds of the people. Hamilton didn't believe it, or at any rate both his Hebrew blood and his Scotch blood coursed violently toward the contrary view.
? IV
THEmodem American cheap sneers at demo- cracy and at some of Jefferson's slogans are based on the assumption that Jefferson's . ideas were idees
fixes.
Attacks on Jefferson's sincerity made during his lifetime were made by the same type of idiot, on precisely the opposite tack. I mean becau'Se they weren't ideuftxes, and because Jefferson was incap- able of just that form of stupidity.
A n idee fixe is a dead, set, stiff, varnished " idea " existing in a vacuum.
The ideas of genius, or of " men of intelligence" are ? organic and germinal, the " seed " of the scriptures.
You put one of these ideas somewhere, i. e. some- where in a definite space and time, and something begins to happen.
"All men are hom free and equal. "
Cheers, bands, band wagons, John stops licking the squire's boots, from the Atlantic strip of the British American colonies to the great port of Marseilles there is a record off-sloughing of inferior-
. ity complex.
The drivelling imbecility of the British and
French .
