Antisemitism: Part One of the Origins of Totalitarianism
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31 In 1910, on the other hand, the Colonial Secretary B. Dernburg had to resign because he had antagonized the colonial planters by protecting the natives. See Mary E. Townsend, Rise and Fall of Germany’s Colonial Empire, New York, 1930, and P. Leutwein, Kampfe um Afrika, Luebeck, 1936.
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32 In the words of Leon Cayla, former Governor General of Madagascar and friend of Petain.
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33 For this and the following compare chapter ii.
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34 It is interesting that all early observers of imperialist developments stress this Jewish element very strongly while it hardly plays any role in more recent literature. Especially noteworthy, because very reliable in observation and very honest in analysis, is J. A. Hobson’s development in this respect. In the first essay which he wrote on the subject, “Capitalism and Imperialism in South Africa” (in Contemporary Review, 1900), he said: “Most of (the financiers) were Jews, for the Jews are par excellence the international financiers, and, though English-speaking, most of them are of continental origin.... They went there (Transvaal) for money, and those who came early and made most have commonly withdrawn their persons, leaving their economic fangs in the carcass of their prey. They fastened on the Rand ...as they are prepared to fasten upon any other spot upon the globe.... Primarily, they are financial speculators taking their gains not out of the genuine fruits of industry, even the industry of others, but out of construction, promotion and financial manipulation of companies.” In Hobson’s later study Imperialism, however, the Jews are not even mentioned; it had become obvious in the meantime that their influence and role had been temporary and somewhat superficial.
For the role of Jewish financiers in South Africa, see chapter vii.
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35 All quotes in the following if not annotated are from the Leviathan.
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36 The coincidence of this identification with the totalitarian pretense of having abolished the contradictions between individual and public interests is significant enough (see chapter xii). However, one should not overlook the fact that Hobbes wanted most of all to protect private interests by pretending that, rightly understood, they were the interests of the body politic as well, while on the contrary totalitarian regimes proclaim the nonexistence of privacy.
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37 The elevation of chance to the position of final arbiter over the whole of life was to reach its full development in the nineteenth century. With it came a new genre of literature, the novel, and the decline of the drama. For the drama became meaningless in a world without action, while the novel could deal adequately with the destinies of human beings who were either the victims of necessity or the favorites of luck. Balzac showed the full range of the new genre and even presented human passions as man’s fate, containing neither virtue nor vice, neither reason nor free will. Only the novel in its full maturity, having interpreted and re-interpreted the entire scale of human matters, could preach the new gospel of infatuation with one’s own fate that has played such a great role among nineteenth-century intellectuals. By means of such infatuation the artist and intellectual tried to draw a line between themselves and the philistines, to protect themselves against the inhumanity of good or bad luck, and they developed all the gifts of modern sensitivity—for suffering, for understanding, for playing a prescribed role—which are so desperately needed by human dignity, which demands of a man that he at least be a willing victim if nothing else.
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38 The presently popular liberal notion of a World Government is based, like all liberal notions of political power, on the same concept of individuals submitting to a central authority which “overawes them all,” except that nations are now taking the place of individuals. The World Government is to overcome and eliminate authentic politics, that is, different peoples getting along with each other in the full force of their power.
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39 Walter Benjamin, “Über den Begriff der Geschichte,” Institut fur Sozlalforschung, New York, 1942, mimeographed.—The imperialists themselves were quite aware of the implications of their concept of progress. Said the very representative author from the Civil Services in India who wrote under the pseudonym A. Carthill: “One must always feel sorry for those persons who are crushed by the triumphal car of progress” (op. cit., p. 209).
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40 “The Services offer the cleanest and most natural support to an aggressive foreign policy; expansion of the empire appeals powerfully to the aristocracy and the professional classes by offering new and ever-growing fields for the honorable and profitable employment of their sons” (J. A. Hobson, “Capitalism and Imperialism in South Africa,” op. cit.). It was “above all ...patriotic professors and publicists regardless of political affiliation and unmindful of personal economic interest” who sponsored “the outward imperialistic thrusts of the ’70ies and early ’80ies” (Hayes, op. cit., p. 220).
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41 For this and the following see J. A. Hobson, Imperialism, who as early as 1905 gave a masterly analysis of the driving economic forces and motives as well as of some of its political implications. When, in 1938, his early study was republished, Hobson could rightly state in his introduction to an unchanged text that his book was real proof “that the chief perils and disturbances ...of today ...were all latent and discernible in the world of a generation ago....”
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42 The obvious connection between the severe crises in the sixties in England and the seventies on the Continent and imperialism is mentioned in Hayes, op. cit., in a footnote only (on p. 219), and in Schuyler, op. cit., who believes that “a revival of interest in emigration was an important factor in the beginnings of the imperial movement” and that this interest had been caused by “a serious depression in British trade and industry” toward the close of the sixties (p. 280). Schuyler also describes at some length the strong “anti-imperial sentiment of the mid-Victorian era.” Unfortunately, Schuyler makes no differentiation between the Commonwealth and the Empire proper, although the discussion of pre-imperialist material might easily have suggested such a differentiation.
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43 Rosa Luxemburg, Die Akkumulation des Kapitals, Berlin, 1923, p. 273.
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44 Rudolf Hilferding, Das Finanzkapital, Wien, 1910, p. 401, mentions—but does not analyze the implications of—the fact that imperialism “suddenly uses again the methods of the original accumulation of capitalistic wealth.”
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45 According to Rosa Luxemburg’s brilliant insight into the political structure of imperialism (op. cit., pp. 273 ff., pp. 361 ff.), the “historical process of the accumulation of capital depends in all its aspects upon the existence of noncapitalist social strata,” so that “imperialism is the political expression of the accumulation of capital in its competition for the possession of the remainders of the noncapitalistic world.” This essential dependence of capitalism upon a noncapitalistic world lies at the basis of all other aspects of imperialism, which then may be explained as the results of oversaving and maldistribution (Hobson, op. cit.), as the result of overproduction and the consequent need for new markets (Lenin, Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism, 1917), as the result of an undersupply of raw material (Hayes, op. cit.), or as capital export in order to equalize the national profit rate (Hilferding, op. cit.).
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46 According to Hilferding, op. cit., p. 409, note, the British income from foreign investment increased ninefold while national income doubled from 1865 to 1898. He assumes a similar though probably less marked increase for German and Fr
ench foreign investments.
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47 For France see George Lachapelle, Les Finances de la Troisième République, Paris, 1937, and D. W. Brogan, The Development of Modern France, New York, 1941. For Germany, compare the interesting contemporary testimonies like Max Wirth, Geschichte der Handelskrisen, 1873, chapter 15, and A. Schaeffle, “Der ‘grosse Boersenkrach’ des Jahres 1873” in Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 1874, Band 30.
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48 J. A. Hobson, “Capitalism and Imperialism,” op. cit.
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49 See Hilferding, op. cit., p. 406. “Hence the cry for strong state power by all capitalists with vested interests in foreign countries.... Exported capital feels safest when the state power of its own country rules the new domain completely....Its profits should be guaranteed by the state if possible. Thus, exportation of capital favors an imperialist policy.” P. 423: “It is a matter of course that the attitude of the bourgeoisie toward the state undergoes a complete change when the political power of the state becomes a competitive instrument for the finance capital in the world market. The bourgeoisie had been hostile to the state in its fight against economic mercantilism and political absolutism.... Theoretically at least, economic life was to be completely free of state intervention; the state was to confine itself politically to the safeguarding of security and the establishment of civil equality.” P. 426: “However, the desire for an expansionist policy causes a revolutionary change in the mentality of the bourgeoisie. It ceases to be pacifist and humanist.” P. 470: “Socially, expansion is a vital condition for the preservation of capitalist society; economically, it is the condition for the preservation of, and temporary increase in, the profit rate.”
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50 These motives were especially outspoken in German imperialism. Among the first activities of the Alldeutsche Verband (founded in 1891) were efforts to prevent German emigrants from changing their citizenship, and the first imperialist speech of William II, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Reich, contained the following typical passage: “The German Empire has become a World Empire. Thousands of our compatriots live everywhere, in distant parts of the earth.... Gentlemen, it is your solemn duty to help me unite this greater German Empire with our native country.” Compare also J. A. Froude’s statement in note 10.
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51 E. H. Damce, The Victorian Illusion, London, 1928, p. 164: “Africa, which had been included neither in the itinerary of Saxondom nor in the professional philosophers of imperial history, became the culture-bed of British imperialism.”
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52 Quoted from Millin, op. cit.
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53 “The liberals, and not the Right of Parliament, were the supporters of the naval policy.” Alfred von Tirpitz, Erinnerungen, 1919. See also Daniel Frymann (pseud, for Heinrich Class), (Wenn ich der Kaiser wär, 1912: “The true imperial party is the National Liberal Party.” Frymann, a prominent German chauvinist during the first World War, even adds with respect to the conservatives: “The aloofness of conservative milieus with regard to race doctrines is also worthy of note.”
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54 Hobson, op. cit., p. 61.
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55 Hobson, op. cit., was the first to recognize both the fundamental opposition of imperialism and nationalism and the tendency of nationalism to become imperialist. He called imperialism a perversion of nationalism “in which nations ...transform the wholesome stimulative rivalry of various national types into the cut-throat struggle of competing empires” (p. 9.).
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56 See chapter viii.
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57 Hobson, op. cit., pp. 146 ff.—“There can be no doubt that the power of the Cabinet as against the House of Commons has grown steadily and rapidly and it appears to be still growing,” noticed Bryce in 1901, in Studies in History and Jurisprudence, 1901, I, 177. For the working of the Front Bench system see also Hilaire Belloc and Cecil Chesterton, The Party System, London, 1911.
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58 Lord Curzon at the unveiling of Lord Cromer’s memorial tablet. See Lawrence J. Zetland, Lord Cromer, 1932, p. 362.
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59 Sir Hesketh Bell, op. cit., Part I, p. 300.
The same sentiment prevailed in the Dutch colonial services. “The highest task, the task without precedent is that which awaits the East Indian Civil Service official ...it should be considered as the highest honor to serve in its ranks..., the select body which fulfills the mission of Holland overseas,” See De Kat Angelino, Colonial Policy, Chicago, 1931, II, 129.
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60 The President of the German “Kolonialverein,” Hohenlohe-Langenburg, in 1884. See Mary E. Townsend, Origin of Modern German Colonialism. 1871–1885, 1921.
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1 During the German-Russian pact, Nazi propaganda stopped all attacks on “Bolshevism” but never gave up the race-line.
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2 “Lettres de Alexis de Tocqueville et de Arthur de Gobineau,” in Revue des Deux Monties, 1907, Tome 199, Letter of November 17, 1853.
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3 The best historical account of race-thinking in the pattern of a “history of ideas” is Erich Voegelin, Rasse und Staat, Tuebingen, 1933.
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4 For the host of nineteenth-century conflicting opinions see Carlton J. H. Hayes, A Generation of Materialism, New York, 1941, pp. 111–122.
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5 “Huxley neglected scientific research of his own from the ’70’s onward, so busy was he in the role of ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ barking and biting at theologians” (Hayes, op. cit., p. 126). Ernst Haeckel’s passion for popularizing scientific results which was at least as strong as his passion for science itself, has been stressed recently by an applauding Nazi writer, H. Bruecher, “Ernst Haeckel, Ein Wegbereiter biologischen Staatsdenkens.” In Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, 1935, Heft 69.
Two rather extreme examples may be quoted to show what scientists are capable of. Both were scholars of good standing, writing during World War I. The German historian of art, Josef Strzygowski, in his Altai, Iran und Völkerwanderung (Leipzig, 1917) discovered the Nordic race to be composed of Germans, Ukrainians, Armenians, Persians, Hungarians, Bulgars and Turks (pp. 306–307). The Society of Medicine of Paris not only published a report on the discovery of “polychesia” (excessive defecation) and “bromidrosis” (body odor) in the German race, but proposed urinalysis for the detection of German spies; German urine was “found” to contain 20 per cent non-uric nitrogen as against 15 per cent for other races. See Jacques Barzun, Race, New York. 1937, p. 239.
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6 This quid pro quo was partly the result of the zeal of students who wanted to put down every single instance in which race has been mentioned. Thereby they mistook relatively harmless authors, for whom explanation by race was a possible and sometimes fascinating opinion, for full-fledged racists. Such opinions, in themselves harmless, were advanced by the early anthropologists as starting points of their investigations. A typical instance is the naive hypothesis of Paul Broca, noted French anthropologist of the middle of the last century, who assumed that “the brain has something to do with race and the measured shape of the skull is the best way to get at the contents of the brain” (quoted after Jacques Barzun, op. cit., p. 162). It is obvious that this assertion, without the support of a conception of the nature of man, is simply ridiculous.
As for the philologists of the early nineteenth century, whose concept of “Aryanism” has seduced almost every student of ra
cism to count them among the propagandists or even inventors of race-thinking, they are as innocent as innocent can be. When they overstepped the limits of pure research it was because they wanted to include in the same cultural brotherhood as many nations as possible. In the words of Ernest Seilliere, La Philosophie de l’lmpérialisme, 4 vols., 1903–1906: “There was a kind of intoxication: modern civilization believed it had recovered its pedigree ...and an organism was born which embraced in one and the same fraternity all nations whose language showed some affinity with Sanskrit.” (Preface, Tome I, p. xxxv.) In other words, these men were still in the humanistic tradition of the eighteenth century and shared its enthusiasm about strange people and exotic cultures.
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7 François Hotman, French sixteenth-century author of Frunco-Callia, is sometimes held to be a forerunner of eighteenth-century racial doctrines, as by Ernest Seillière, op. cit. Against this misconception, Théophile Simar has rightly protested: “Hotman appears, not as an apologist for the Teutons, but as the defender of the people which was oppressed by the monarchy” (Etude Critique sur la Formation de la doctrine des Races au 18e et son expansion au 19e siècle, Bruxelles, 1922, p. 20).
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8 Histoire de l’Ancien Gouvernement de la France, 1727, Tome I, p. 33.
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9 That the Comte Boulainvilliers’ history was meant as a political weapon against the Tiers Etat was stated by Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, 1748, XXX, chap. x.
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