(continued from previous post)

Spengler writes;
>
>     "As the English kingship became in the nineteenth century, so
>parliments
>will become in the twentieth, a solemn and empty pageantry. As then sceptre
>and crown, so now peoples' rights are paraded for the multitude, and all
>the
>more punctiliously the less they really signify - it was for this reason
>that the cautious Augustus never let pass an opportunity of emphasizing old
>and venerated customs of Roman freedom. But the power is migrating even
>to-day, and correspondingly elections are degenerating for us into the
>farce
>that they were in Rome.

There are important differences.  In Rome, a huge portion of the population
was enslaved.  The possibility of women holding political office, or being
able to vote was hopelessly remote.  There may be a similar degeneration
today, but it is of a different order.  Yes, degneration is possible, and
Western civillization could lapse into some variety of Caesarism.  My
objection to Spencer (and Pound, and Froebenius) is that they either want
this to happen, or they feel it is inevitable.


>Money organizes the process in the interests of
>those who possess it,(1.) and election affairs become a preconcerted game
>that is staged as popular self-determination. If election was originally
>REVOLUTION IN LEGITIMATE FORMS, it has exhausted those forms, and what
>takes
>place is that mankind "elects" its Destiny again by the primitive methods
>of
>bloody violence when the politics of money become intolerable.

Let us concede that Spengler was largely right for his own time, and close
to being right for our time about this:  Elections are "staged."   But what
is the solution?  Should we:  Wait for the inevitable Caesar, which Spengler
says is the necessary next step in our "Faustian development" from Spring to
Summer, to the Autumn and the Winter of our Western culture?  That's an
inept form of pessimism which hastens the coming of dictatorship.


>     Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has
>destroyed intellect. But, just because the illusion that actuality can
>allow
>itself to be improved by the ideas of any Zeno or Marx has fled away;
>because men have learned that in the realm of reality one power-will CAN BE
>OVERTHROWN ONLY BY ANOTHER (for that is the great human experience of
>Contending States periods); there wakes at last a deep yearning for all old
>and worthy tradition that still lingers alive . . .

When political philosophers talk about "yearning" of this sort we know we
are in trouble.  What does yearning have to do with political justice?  ONE
power WILL be overthrown by another.  All this talk of destiny and despair.
"the illusion that actuality can ALLOW itself to be improved . . . "  So
human beings cannot improve anything?   Actuality allows itself to be
improved??!!!  Is this some sort of "actuality" fetishism, where everything
which is real has power EXCEPT HUMAN BEINGS?

This kind of despair is self-fulfilling.  Spengler just wants us to wait and
let some power "improve" things without any effort on the part of the
citizens.  If he and many others had thrown their lot in with those who were
genuinely trying to democratize society, things might have been different.

>Men are tired to disgust of
>money-economy. They hope for salvation from somewhere or other, for some
>real thing of honour and chivalry, of inward nobility, of unselfishness and
>duty. And now dawns the time when the form-filled powers of the blood,
>which
>the rationalism of the Megalopolis has suppressed, reawaken in the depths.
>Everything in the order of dynastic tradition and old nobility that has
>saved itself up for the future, everything that there is of high
>money-distaining ethic, everthing that is intrinsically sound . . .

All this talk of "dynastic tradition" and "nobility" should sicken every
American and enlightend European.  Like Ruskin, Spengler wants to go back to
the high middle ages.  Like Carlyle, he wants a hero to worship.  This is
one of the worst forms of illusion.  The only long term check on corruption
is a system which distributes power.


>in Frederick the Great's words, the SERVANT - the hard-working,
>self-sacrificing, caring SERVANT - of the State, all that I have described
>elsewhere in one word as Socialism in contrast to Capitalism - all this
>becomes suddenly the focus of immense life-forces. Caesarism GROWS on the
>soil of Democracy, but its roots thread deeply into the underground of
>blood
>tradition."

And the last thing we want is Caesarism, is it not?  Whether it is disguised
as socialism, or "national" socialism, or whether it is the rise of the all
conquering hero, who like Mussolini we know is always possessed of "right
reason" (as Pound put it).

>
>     And to this he appended the following footnote:
>
>     (1.) "Herein lies the secret of why all radical (i.e. poor) parties
>necessarily become the tools of the money-powers, the Equites, the Bourse.
>Theoretically their enemy is capital, but practically they attack, not the
>Bourse, but Tradition on behalf of the Bourse. This is as true to-day as it
>was for the Gracchan age, and in all countries. Fifty per cent of
>mass-leaders are procurable by money, office, or opportunities to 'come in
>on the ground-floor,' and with them they bring their whole party."
>

And from this we may conclude that fifty per cent ARE NOT PROCURABLE by
money.  And therein only our lies our hope, and with them our active
encouragement should go.  NOT with the Caesars.


>      I see Pound as a poor player caught in this political evolution , now
>taking the part of democracy now taking  the part of Caesarism, unaware of
>his own destiny in the mean time.

When did he take the part of democracy?  I here this again and again,  When
does he support democracy?  Where?  If you want to cite Adams and Jefferson,
then I need a quote.  A quote where democracy is endorsed, that is, as you
say A GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE.   Lincoln
said that, but I think Pound thought very poorly  of Lincoln, on the whole.


>     I have said before that from my vantage point I think that the jury is
>still out, but Spengler's criticism is hard to refute regardless of how
>much
>we wish to defend our system or rationalize its shortcomigs. We will see
>how coming generations view them.

It is not that I wish to refute Spengler's criticism; it is no different
than Mussolini's or Gentile's critique, as far as I can tell.  The SOLUTION
of these gentelmen is what  I oppose.

History if full of glorious exemplary struggles, which are not based on the
worship of the strongman, or the curtailment of democracy by a LEADER.  Such
struggles being with radical critiques, and go on toward solutions which
REDISTRIBUTE power and wealth.  I speak of the Paris Commune of 1871 (not as
interpreted by Marx or Lenin or Mao), of the early anarcho-syndicalist
phases of the Russian Revolution, before Lenin could quash all creativity,
of the Spanish Republic and the syndicalist movement (as depicted by Orwell
in Homage to Catalonia, and the recent film "Land and Freedom"), all
movements toward economic democracy, workers control, workers ownership, and
workers self-management of industry --- WHEN IT IS GENUINELY DEMOCRATIC.
And now we have the anti-globalist movement, the most hopeful sign since the
protest movements of the late 60's.   Talk to these young people, who
participate in anti-sweatshop struggles, in anti-WTO World Bank and IMF
struggles in Seattle, in Washington DC, and this week in France, in support
of Jose Bove, who went on trial this last weekend.

Visit www.indymedia.org   (the Independent Media Center) if want some hope
and some optimism about the possibilites of de-centralized power,
cooperative information production, and international networking.


Fraternal salutations,

Wei
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