As part of my subscriptions to journals and magazines I receive Foreign Affairs which is published bi-monthly by the “Council on Foreign Relations.” This is a private nonprofit nonpartisan organization and represents this country’s most influential foreign policy “thinktank.” As such it has also been attacked as a cabal which is out to destroy the United States in favor of a one world government, single currency and economic policy, controlled by a hidden, small, unelected oligarchy. Although anyone can submit an article to the journal only those which come from, what the editors assume to be, authoritative sources are published. As everything else they are not free from bias by the contributors. Nevertheless, since I am curious and like to entertain all viewpoints before making up my mind on a given issue and since it does represent the Zeitgeist among the professionals who shape our present, and thereby the future, it is a valuable resource. After initial semi-retirement I often went to the Marriott library of the University and looked up old issues of the 1930s and 1940s in order to see how events of which I had been an eyewitness in Austria were reported here and found them fairly accurate.

Two weeks ago came the January/February issue which was devoted to the 90^th anniversary of the magazine and is a rather hefty tome of 208 pages. Its theme was, “The Clash of Ideas. The ideological battles that made the modern world–and will shape the future.” It was gratifying to see that the emphasis was on “ideas” rather than Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union Huntington had agreed with Fukuyama’s thesis that Hegel’s “End of History” was about to make its debut.  Liberal democracy had emerged triumphant over all its foes in the 20th century and Huntington wrote that ideologies had become obsolete. In his opinion the problem the world faced now was cultural and more specifically the battle lines were drawn between the West and the Muslim world. As a result of this notion we have seen during the past two decades the seamless replacement of “Islamofascism” for Communism, which allows for the perpetuation of wars. But ideologies are not obsolete, because the mental concepts of leading people drive their actions, and if these are supported, for whatever reason, by a large segment of the people in their respective countries, history is made. The anniversary issue gives us a glimpse of how foreign leaders of the epoch making 1920’s to the 1940’s were portrayed.

Since the issue is, as mentioned, large I shall limit myself to portions of the chapter, “How We Got Here” and one contemporary article. In the Preface “Making Modernity Work” the editor, Gideon Rose, wrote: “The basic question of modernity has been how to reconcile capitalism and mass democracy, and since the postwar order came up with a good answer, it has managed to weather all subsequent challenges.” Rose admits that fault lines exist, as evidenced by the current serious economic problems brought about by “reckless and predatory financial practices.” But he also reminds us that in view of the “far greater obstacles that have been overcome in the past, optimism would seem the better long-term bet.” This may be true, but when one listens to the Republican debates as they are shown on our TV screens and the, I must say partly vicious, denunciations of President Obama’s policies which must be reversed at all cost, one can be forgiven for harboring some serious concerns about the immediate future.

The articles in the mentioned chapter could not be printed in full but are excerpts, nevertheless they do provide valuable insights and I shall largely let the authors speak for themselves through extensive quotes. The first one entitled “Lenin and Mussolini,” by Harold Laski (Professor in the London School of Economic and Political Science), was published in September 1923. Some key sections are:   

“It is common to both movements that their power is built upon the force they can command. It is common to them, also, that they have rigorously suppressed all opposition to themselves and dismissed as unimportant the forms of constitutionalism.… For Lenin, the state is in fact a method of protecting the owners of property; and the true division of men is into those who do not own possessions other than their power to labor. The life of the state is an eternal struggle between them. They have no interests in common.… The method he advocates…a dictatorship of iron rigor is to consolidate the new regime until the period of transition has been effectively bridged.…

The Italian movement is different in origin, but its ultimate spirit is in no-wise different. Leninism has been the dictatorship of a party, Fascism is a dictatorship of a man.… Liberty, for him, is the parent of anarchy if it implies hostility from opponents and the proof of disloyalty, involving expulsion from the party, if it comes from his declared supporters.”

In view of the basic similarity of the systems which differed only in the ruthlessness with which their goals were pursued, Laski wondered why Lenin had received international disdain, including an allied invasion of his country, while Mussolini “has been the subject of wide-spread enthusiasm.” He concluded that this difference “is the outcome of their antithetic attitudes to property.” It is noteworthy that Laski spoke of Lenin in the past, although the latter died only in January of the following year. He was, however, already disabled by a stroke and no longer in charge of the government.

          The next article, written by Victor Chernov (Russian Social-Revolutionary writer; Minister of Agriculture in the Kerensky Government) and published in March 1924, entitled “Lenin,” can be regarded as a summation of this man’s character and achievements.            

“Lenin was a great man. He was not merely the greatest man in his party; he was its uncrowned king, and deservedly. He was its head, its will, I should even say he was its heart were it not that both the man and the party implied in themselves heartlessness as a duty.… Nothing to him was worse than sentimentality, a name he was ready to apply to all moral and ethical considerations in politics.… Lenin would undoubtedly have reversed this dictum [war is continuation of policy by other means] and said that politics is the continuation of war under another guise…and as politics is war the rules of war [murder of the enemy is valor, robbery is requisition, deceit is tactics etc.] constitute its principles.… His power lay in the extraordinary, absolute lucidity … of his propositions. He followed his logic unflinchingly even to an absurd conclusion and left nothing diffuse and unexplained unless it were necessary to do so for tactical purposes.… Ideas were made as concrete and simple as possible. This was most evident in Lenin’s rhetoric. … He never rose too high above its [he audience’s] level, nor did he ever omit to descend to it at just the necessary moment, in order not to break the continuity of the hypnosis which dominated the will of his flock; and more than any one he realized that a mob is like a horse that wants to be firmly bestrode and spurred, that wants to feel the hand of a master.… His love of the proletariat was the same despotic, exacting and merciless love with which, centuries ago, Torquemada burned people for their salvation.”

After Lenin’s death a power struggle ensued between Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky believed that the Soviet revolution could not last unless the model was exported world-wide. Stalin opted for the nationalist solution of “socialism in one country” first. Russia had been defeated twice within a span of 15 years and this had to be prevented in the future, regardless of cost. It could, however, only be achieved by rapid industrialization of the entire country. Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP), which was instituted in 1921 and had allowed a limited return of private property, especially for the peasants, was abandoned. The peasants were “collectivized” and resistance punished with death or expulsion to the Gulag archipelago. That this policy led to massive starvation and millions of deaths was for Stalin simply the price that had to be paid to secure the country against the enemies from abroad. The article on “Stalin’s Power” published by Paul Scheffer (former Moscow correspondent for the Berliner Tagblatt and at the time of writing stationed in Washington) in July 1930 described the character of the man.

“Stalin is not a man who appeals to the sympathy of crowds or stirs their imaginations. He is not an electric person. Let us be more blunt: he is frankly unattractive, and all the more so since he knows he is, and shows by his demeanor that he does not care.… You feel at once that he is dangerous. … What worried Lenin in Stalin’s case was the latter’s secret, slinking, anonymous expansion of personal power in the party and his preference for the backstairs to more conspicuous routes. The tactics which Stalin was later to use with such success against Trotsky, first to silence him and then to reduce him to complete helplessness, he used against Lenin, the moment the latter fell sick.… Stalin is the dictator of dictators. Only he prefers not to look the part. He is not Mussolini. Yet he has one trait in common with Mussolini–an extraordinary suppleness and pliancy–and he demonstrates it under a more difficult test.… He understood, without shirking any responsibilities that active socialism and private initiative were incompatible in the same economic area, and he acted resolutely on the perception that the only salvation for the Soviet power lay in the ruthless socialization of the entire country, irrespective of the immediate consequences.… His success is closely bound up with his perceptions of these factors. At the same time his success seems to be inseparably bound up with Lenin’s characterization of him: ‘crude and narrowminded.’”

The change of small individual farms to the large collectives was, however, only the beginning. For Soviet society to succeed repression by the government was not sufficient; a complete mental change of the citizen’s role in the relation to the state had to be achieved. This effort was described in “Making the Collective Man in Soviet Russia” and published in January 1932 by William Henry Chamberlin (Soviet correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor).

“The individual human personality is fighting a losing battle against heavy odds in Russia today.… What is perhaps not generally realized is that man himself is the first and most important objective of Soviet planning and that the tendency to replace man, the individual, by collective man, the product of social groups and forces, is one of the most important and interesting currents in Soviet life.… From the cradle to the grave the life and thought of the Soviet citizen are mapped out for him so far as external influences can be mobilized to achieve this end.… From the Young Pioneers [entry at age 8] it is a natural upward step to the Union of Communist Youth with a membership of more than four million young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three. Here the clay of human personality that has been given preliminary shape in the Pioneer stage is subjected to further and more vigorous psychologic kneading.… The tremendous pressure of “obshestvennost,” which might be loosely translated as organized public opinion, does not slacken when the Soviet citizen grows out of Communist Youth age and takes up his regular work in life.…When the Soviet citizen picks up a newspaper, no matter which one it may be … he gets precisely the same picture of political and economic events.… The radio, which is entirely under state or public control, broadcasts a vast amount of political agitation and economic exposition.… Even concerts are often accompanied by short explanatory lectures in which the class origin of the composer is analyzed and his music is discussed as reflecting both his origin, whatever it may be, and the general historical problems of his time. … So the individual personality is attacked from every side by forces which are all controlled from a common center and which are in accordance with a prearranged plan to remake the traditional human individualist into a collective man, a citizen of the future communist society.”

Stalin was, however, not the only one who pursued this goal he had a counterpart in Italy. Giovanni Gentile, “philosopher and member of the Italian Senate; Minister of Public Instruction in the first Cabinet of Premier Mussolini,” discussed “The Philosophic Basis of Fascism” in January of 1928.

“In the definition of Fascism, the first point to grasp is the comprehensive, or as Fascists say, the ‘totalitarian’ scope of its doctrine, which concerns itself not only with political organization and political tendency, but with the whole will and thought and feeling of the nation. …Fascism is not a philosophy. Much less is it a religion.… Mussolini himself has boasted that he is a tempista, that his real pride is ‘good timing.’ He makes decisions and acts on them at the precise moment when all the conditions and considerations which make them feasible and opportune are properly matured.… For Fascism the state is a wholly spiritual creation. It is a national State, because, from the Fascist point of view, the nation itself is a creation of the mind and is not a material presupposition, is not a datum of nature.… The Fascist State … is a people’s state and, as such, the democratic State par excellence.… Hence the need of the Party, and of all the instruments of propaganda and education which Fascism uses to make the thought and will of the Duce the thought and will of the masses. Hence the enormous task which Fascism sets itself in trying to bring the whole mass of the people, beginning with the little children, inside the fold of the Party.… The Fascist conception of liberty merits passing notice.… Freedom can exist only within the State, and the State means authority.… Fascism has its own solution to the paradox of liberty and authority. The authority of the State is absolute. It does not compromise, it does not bargain, it does not surrender any portion of its field to other moral or religious principles which may interfere with the individual conscience.… The Fascist corporative State supplies a representative system more sincere and more in touch with realities than any other previously devised and is therefore freer than the old liberal State.”

For space considerations I gave only the essence of Signore Gentile’s article but what comes through loud and clear is that the State, as personified by Mussolini, brooks no dissent and just as in the Soviet Union a new “Uomo Italiano” has to be created starting with little children. We can also see here the first beginning of what later became the “People’s Democracies,” as sponsored by the Soviet Union after WWII.

          Emphasis now shifted to the gathering storm in Germany as described by Erich Koch Weser, “former Minister of Justice if the German Republic, recently leader of the Democratic Party.” His article was entitled “Radical Forces in Germany,” and published in April 1931. It deals with the economic catastrophe which had overtaken Germany at the time and its insights should not go unheeded, especially in the current economic crisis.

          “Economic depression and political radicalism go hand in hand. When economic distress reaches a certain point, the individual citizen no longer uses his political power to save the public weal, but only to help himself. His ideal of political liberty pales before his ideal of economic equality. Once this sentiment has eaten its way into the hearts of the majority of the nation, any political system is doomed to failure. It is useless to tell the embittered masses that their political and economic rulers are not responsible for their misfortunes.… Intelligent and orderly as the German people are, patiently as they have borne the sufferings of war and inflation, they are in danger of falling into this reckless state of mind.… Here is a population, well-equipped from the point of health and intellect, which in general is forced to be satisfied with an income barely sufficient for a minimum existence. One-eighth of those who are able and eager to work are unable to find any opportunity to do so. And those who are employed see no possibility of little by little rising to positions where their abilities will have fuller scope. Above all–and this is perhaps the worst aspect of the situation–not only are great numbers of persons forced to abandon any hope of advancement themselves but they must also relinquish the idea of giving their children an adequate education and thus opening up a way for them to better their situation.”

By the following year conditions had deteriorated further which prompted the previously quoted Paul Scheffer to write “Hitler: Phenomenon and Portent” in April of 1932. In the article he described the mood and background of the people who attended Hitler’s speeches.

          “Hitler is the most successful orator that Germany has ever possessed….  It is an interesting and a stirring experience to listen to Hitler–his bitterest enemies have often fallen under his spell….  The predominant element in the picture [audience at Hitler’s speeches] is what is so aptly described in Germany as the ‘declassed’ middle class: creatures visibly down at the heel, spiritually crushed in the struggle with everyday reality, distraught under a perpetual worry about the indispensable necessaries of life….  They are all people who have had conceptions of life, and conceptions of their personal rôles in life, with which their present situation stands in violent contrast….  Fundamentally it is a question of the hard times which have settled over Germany ever since the war. Great fortunes have come into being, though they are probably more apparent than real. Meantime … [for] the middle classes, which used to be Germany’s backbone, the standard of living is far below the pre-war level. Since 1929 it has sunk to unprecedented depths….  The effects of the capitalist system also weigh down upon them. They hate the ‘plutocrats.’ Their battle cry is what they call the ‘Jewish financial tyranny’….  Hitler’s idea is to give the people a common meeting ground of convictions which abolish all distinctions and in which all share….  Hitler can lay hold on them in their innermost sensibilities when he raises his cry for unity, promises them the ‘respect’ of the world as the fruit of unity…”   

The next article, by Hamilton Fish Armstrong (editor of Foreign Affairs) published in July 1933, describes the beginnings of Hitler’s totalitarian dictatorship. Although I lived at the center of these events and my socio-political memories extend to February 1934 I had never seen in the American literature the clear line which led from Marx through Lenin to Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. In America Hitler is seen in isolation as a “megalomanic madman who wanted to rule the world.” Yet, all of the mentioned four dictators had, whether they admitted it or not, Karl Marx as their Godfather and they were all cut from the same cloth. One does not associate Hitler with Marx because he presented himself as the antithesis but he personified National Socialism and the social anti-capitalistic aspects did result from the writings of Marx and Engels. The same goes for Mussolini. It is remarkable to what extent their two lives paralleled each other and I might write an article, on another occasion, which provides a comparison.

The ideal the four dictators aspired to in their own way were Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” and his “Antichrist.” Regardless of nationality they subscribed to the same basic ideology that human society has to be totally transformed. The individual citizens of a given nation would have to realize that they are only cogs of a vast machine. This can be the State or the Party which will see that their needs, as perceived by the operators of that machine, are met according to Marx’s dictum: “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.” Under these circumstances absolute obedience by the individual is the norm. Anyone who disagrees is either insane or a traitor and must be dealt with accordingly. But it must also be admitted that the idea of the totalitarian state would never have taken root without the devastations of the preceding war and the resulting treaties which were regarded as unfair even by the victorious Italians. To the material losses one needs to add the psychological impact which had demonstrated that human life was cheap because millions were killed on the battlefields and additional millions died from disease and starvation. The German word for battle, Schlacht, is actually more descriptive and accurate because it denotes “slaughter.”

I shall return to the fundamental question about the role of the individual in the state and capitalism vs. socialism in another installment and stay for now with the most important issue of war and peace. It is dealt with in the previously mentioned article about current events in Foreign Affairs. The article is by Mathew Koenig (Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations) and entitled, “Time to Attack Iran. Why a strike is the least bad option.” He believes that “Iran’s rapid nuclear development will ultimately force the United States to choose between a conventional conflict and a possible nuclear war.” But are these really the only options? Is there not a third one which removes Iran’s perceived need for a nuclear shield to protect itself from an increasingly belligerent America because the latter feels obligated to defend Israel? There is only one Republican candidate for the presidency, Ron Paul MD, who has the courage to say this in public and he has no chance to be nominated, let alone elected.

When one looks at the remaining four Republican candidates for office one cannot but feel apprehension. Apart from Ron Paul who has Christian values, but doesn’t speak of them, the other three, who tout their Christianity, have no problem with advocating war. When in one of the debates Ron Paul said that it might be time to consider extending the golden rule to our foreign policy, some members of the audience booed. When the moderator then asked the Mormon Mitt Romney what we should do with our enemies the answer “Kill ‘em!” rang out, and the two Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum heartily agreed. This is serious and it gets worse. In last Thursday’s debate a gentleman in the audience who identified himself by name and as a “Palestinian American Republican,” asked how a given candidate would help the Palestinians in case he were to become president. Romney, as the would-be frontrunner immediately began to lecture the poor man that the impasse in the peace talks is the fault of the Palestinians. The Israelis would be happy with a two-state solution the moment the Palestinians gave up terrorist attacks, as well as the right to return to their previous domiciles, and assure Israel of the right to exist as a Jewish state. Gingrich concurred and added that on his first day in office he would sign an order that the American embassy be transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Santorum also chimed in and in addition lectured us on the danger of jihadists coming to Cuba, Venezuela and Central America.

That the suggested embassy transfer would immediately inflame the Muslim world, create thousands of new Jihadists and make further conflict inevitable seems not to have occurred to these gentlemen. There are alternatives to war and our politicians could learn something from sailboat racers. There exists a set of international rules we have to abide by and in order to win you don’t ram your competitor’s boat but you use tactics within the rules. One of the most effective, for a given situation, is to literally take the wind out of his sails. This is what should and could be done. The forces which prevent us from following this path will be discussed in the next installment as well as other pertinent articles from Foreign Affairs.