by
Karl Polanyi
I. FASCIST ANTI-INDIVIDUALISM
The common complaint
that Fascism has not produced a comprehensive philosophic system
of its own is not altogether fair to Professor Othmar Spann
of Vienna. Half a decade before the corporative principle can
be said to have emerged in Italian Fascist politics he made
this idea the basis of a new theory of the State. In the subsequent
years he amplified this theory into a philosophy of the human
universe, and dealt, in detail, with politics, economics, sociology
as well as general methodology, ontology, and metaphysics. But
that feature of his system which makes it peculiarly relevant
to our enquiry is neither its priority nor its comprehensiveness.
It is the manner in which its author laid down as its basis
the idea which in one form or another has become the guiding
principle of all Fascist schools of thought of whatever description:
the idea of anti-individualism. [1]
After having first
broadly established this fact, we will enquire more closely
into its less obvious implications.
Spann, the prophet
of counter-revolution, starts on his career amid the middle-class
ruin and despair of 1919. It is his belief we have come to the
eleventh hour. We must make our choice between two world systems:
Individualism and Universalism. [2]
Unless we accept
the latter, we cannot escape the fatal consequences of the
former. For Bolshevism is but the extension of the individualist
doctrine
of the natural rights of man from the political sphere to
the economic. Far
from being the opposite of Individualism it is its consistent
fulfilment.
In spite of Hegel, Spann contends, Marx remained thoroughly
individualist.
In his theory of the State he is individualistic to the point
of anarchist
Utopianism. "That in Marxism the 'State dies off' is
the outcome of its
inherent Individualism which regards society as being, essentially,
lack of
domination of human beings by human beings, a 'free association'
of
individuals." The Socialist ideal is definitely the "Statefree"
society.
Historically, it is by way of Democracy and Liberalism that
Individualism
leads to Bolshevism. The "barbaric, brutal, and bloody"
rule of Liberal
Capitalism, as Spann himself terms it, prepares the way for
a Socialist
organisation of economic life, a transition for which representative
Democracy supplies the political machinery. Once we allow
the universalist
principle of medieval society to be finally destroyed by the
individualistic virus, no other outcome is possible.
The distinctive feature
of Spann's system is the manner in which he attempts to locate
this virus. Individualism is with him not a principle confined
to social philosophy--it is a formal method of analysis. Basically
it is responsible for the vicious causational approach to natural
phenomena in modern science, and thus, ultimately, for the atomistic
Individualism in terms of which we have, to our undoing, come
to conceive of society. Spann's "Universalism" [3]
professes to be the counter-method to this inclusive concept
of Individualism.
The deep conviction
of the individualistic nature of the forces working for
Socialism to-day pervades Fascism in all its forms. Ernst
Krieck, the
leading German pedagogue, thus contrasts the National-Socialist
revolution
with the two stages of Individualism embodied in the last
centuries of
Western European development on the one hand, and Socialism
on the other:
from the time of the Renaissance, he says, "the People,
the State, Society,
Economic Life, were regarded as a mere sum of autonomous individuals.
...
With Marxism the dialectic move to collectivity supervenes.
In Socialism
the sum ranks higher than the component parts; this is due
to a coercive
mechanism which lies, however, preformed in representative
mass Democracy."
Individualism,
he asserts, is thus not overcome in Socialism; there is only
a shifting of the centre of gravity. In short: Socialism is
preformed in
Democracy. For Socialism is but Individualism with a different
emphasis.
There is the same insistence amongst Italian Fascists on the
individualist
and Liberal origins of Socialism. Take Mussolini himself:
"Free-Masonry,
Liberalism, Democracy, and Socialism are the enemy."
Or the Catholic
Fascist, Malaparte: "It is originally Anglo-Saxon civilisation
which has
recently triumphed in democratic Liberalism and Socialism."
Finally, the
reactionary aristocrat, the Baron Julius Evola: "The
Reformation supplanted
Hierarchy by the spiritual priesthood of the Believers, which
threw off the
shackles of authority, made everybody his own judge and the
equal of his
fellow. This is the starting-point of 'Socialist' decay in
Europe."
But an identical attitude is apparent also in political National-Socialism.
To quote Hitler: "Western democracy is the forerunner
of Marxism, which
would be entirely unthinkable without it." Similarly,
Rosenberg: "Democratic
and Marxian
movements take their stand on the happiness of the Individual."
And Gottfried Feder's semi-official commentary to the Party
Programme
curtly speaks of "Capitalism and its Marxian and bourgeois
satellites"--a
syncopated form of speech which hides under its apparent paradox
a
tactically well-considered amalgamation of Individualism and
Socialism.
This unanimity is impressive. For a generation or two, Socialism
has been
assailed by its critics as the enemy of the idea of human
personality.
Although sensitive
minds like Oscar Wilde discovered the fallacy, it
remained a favourite charge with the writers of the day; that
Bolshevism is
the end of personality is almost a standing phrase in middle-class
literature. Fascism disclaims all solidarity with this facile
school of
criticism. It is too deadly serious in its will to destroy
Socialism to
afford to use as its weapons charges so misdirected as to
be ineffectual.
It has fixed upon a true one. Socialism is the heir to Individualism.
It is
the economic system under which the substance of Individualism
can alone be
preserved in the modern world. Hence the efforts to produce
a systematic
body of knowledge that could provide a background to a distinctively
Fascist, i.e. radically anti-individualist, philosophy. It
is under this
heading that most of the work of psychologists like Prinzhorn,
ethnologists
like Baümler, Blüher, and Wirth, philosophers of
history like Spengler, are
relevant to our problem. It would be safe to say that the
invisible
border-line dividing Fascism from all other shades and variants
of
reactionary anti-Socialism, consists precisely in this irreducible
and
extreme opposition to Individualism. No spiritual ancestry
of this idea,
however august, is safe from the ruthless onslaught of the
Fascist, and
invariably he will found his attack on the charge that Individualism
is
responsible for Bolshevism.The new State-supported religious
movements in Germany, whether based on racial or tribal or
only national and super-patriotic tenets, turn against
Individualism even when they do not profess to have discovered
a complete dispensation
from ethics. Thus, Friedrich Gogarten Politische Ethik, the
non-nationalist trend of which was very far from foreshadowing
the
subsequent rôle of its writer in the German Christian
Movement, was aimed
at redefining social ethics in a pointedly anti-individualistic
sense. No
wonder that even the Catholic Church, which of all Christian
persuasions is
known to be least inclined to overstress the individualist
elements in its
teachings, complains of the unchristian leanings in Fascism
predominantly
on the grounds of the lack of appreciation in Fascism for
the human
individual as such.
The German Faith
Movement, lastly, is free from all the embarrassing ambiguities
inherent in the German Christian position. It is German, not
Christian. It prides itself on its choice between these self-styled
alternatives. It can thus proceed to proclaim the fundamental
inequality of human beings in the name of religion. Thus the
ultimate aim is reached. For obviously the democratic implications
of Individualism spring from the affirmation of the equality
of individuals as individuals. [4]
This is the Individualism on which Democracy is based, and
on the
destruction of which Fascism is bent. It is the Individualism
of the
Gospels. We are back to our starting-point again. We noted
Spann's
insistence that Democracy is the institutional link between
Socialism and
Individualism. This singles out representative Democracy as
the point of
attack for Fascism. It is of signal importance to realise
that the
underlying political belief is solidly founded in fact.
In Central Europe,
if not in the whole of Europe, universal suffrage
increased enormously the impact of the industrial working
class on economic
and social legislation, and, whenever a major crisis arose,
Parliaments
elected on
a popular vote invariably tended towards Socialist solutions.
The steady
progress of the Socialist Movement, once representative Democracy
is
allowed to stand, is the dominating historical experience
of the Continent
in the post-war period. It is the main source of the conviction
on the
Continent that, if only the authority of representative institutions
is
left unimpaired, Socialism must come. Thus, if Socialism is
not to be,
democracy must go. This is the raison d'être
of the Fascist movements in
Europe. Antiindividualism is but the rationalisation of this
political
outlook.
But the anti-individualist
formula meets also the practical requirements of
this movement most adequately. By denouncing Socialism and
Capitalism alike as the common offspring of Individualism,
it enables Fascism to pose before
the masses as the sworn enemy of both. The popular resentment
against
Liberal Capitalism is thus turned most effectively against
Socialism
without any reflection on Capitalism in its non-Liberal, i.e.
corporative,
forms. Though unconsciously performed, the trick is highly
ingenious. First
Liberalism is identified with Capitalism; then Liberalism
is made to walk
the plank; but Capitalism is no worse for the dip, and continues
its
existence unscathed under a new alias.
NOTES
[1]
"Moral decay in Liberalism, cultural paralysis through
Democracy, and final degradation by Socialism," are then
inevitable.
[2]
The meaning of this term with Spann has nothing in common with
its accepted use as current with the Christian Churches to-day.
[3]
The term Universalism is generic; the specific term given by
Spann to his philosophy is "Totalitarianism" (Ganzheitslehre).
[4]
Wilhelm Stapel, in his "Theology of Nationalism" (as
the subtitle of Der Christliche Staatsmann runs), proves
an almost injudiciously frank despiser of ethics, which, as
he propounds, "are indebted for their existence merely
to the sentimentality of those who are not yet capable of surrendering
illusions." Even Ernst Krieck contends, in his handbook
on Education, that "we cannot allow any imperative ethics
to lay down for us the values and laws upon which we should
act."
Go forward to
the next section: II.
ATHEIST AND CHRISTIAN INDIVIDUALISM
