یکشنبه ۲۵ شهریور ۰۳ | ۱۴:۰۴ ۶ بازديد
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murderers. No liberal has ever called this into question. What distinguishes liberal
from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity
of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental
estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power. The great danger
threatening domestic policy from the side of Fascism lies in its complete faith in the
decisive power of violence. In order to assure success, one must be imbued with the
will to victory and always proceed violently. This is its highest principle. What
happens, however, when one's opponent, similarly animated by the will to be
victorious, acts just as violently? The result must be a battle, a civil war. The
ultimate victor to emerge from such conflicts will be the faction strongest in
number. In the long run, a minority—even if it is composed of the most capable and
energetic—cannot succeed in resisting the majority. The decisive question,
therefore, always remains: How does one obtain a majority for one's own party?
This, however, is a purely intellectual matter. It is a victory that can be won only
with the weapons of the intellect, never by force. The suppression of all opposition
by sheer violence is a most unsuitable way to win adherents to one's cause. Resort
to naked force—that is, without justification in terms of intellectual arguments
accepted by public opinion—merely gains new friends for those whom one is
thereby trying to combat. In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always
prevails.
Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at the infamies
committed by the socialists and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of
wide circles. But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has
paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the
masses. For Fascism does nothing to combat it except to suppress socialist ideas
and to persecute the people who spread them. If it wanted really to combat
socialism, it would have to oppose it with ideas. There is, however, only one idea
that can be effectively opposed to socialism, viz., that of liberalism.
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It has often been said that nothing furthers a cause more than creating, martyrs for
it. This is only approximately correct. What strengthens the cause of the persecuted
faction is not the martyrdom of its adherents, but the fact that they are being
attacked by force, and not by intellectual weapons. Repression by brute force is
always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the
intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the
fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its
downfall. The victory of Fascism in a number of countries is only an episode in the
long series of struggles over the problem of property. The next episode will be the
victory of Communism. The ultimate outcome of the struggle, however, will not be
decided by arms, but by ideas. It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that
press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom
the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis,
turn the scales.
So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is
on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to
an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no
further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic
development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together
in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief
that one's own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force
alone.
It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the
establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their
intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that
Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its
policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could
promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as
something more would be a fatal error.
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11. The Limits of Governmental Activity
As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely
and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private
property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A
government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to
infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of
course, be altogether bad.
Still, as Jacob Burckhardt says, power is evil in itself, no matter who exercises it.
It tends to corrupt those who wield it and leads to abuse. Not only absolute
sovereigns and aristocrats, but the masses also, in whose hands democracy entrusts
the supreme power of government, are only too easily inclined to excesses.
In the United States, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages are
prohibited. Other countries do not go so far, but nearly everywhere some
restrictions are imposed on the sale of opium, cocaine, and similar narcotics. It is
universally deemed one of the tasks of legislation and government to protect the
individual from himself. Even those who otherwise generally have misgivings
about extending the area of governmental activity consider it quite proper that the
freedom of the individual should be curtailed in this respect, and they think that only
a benighted doctrinairism could oppose such prohibitions. Indeed, so general is the
acceptance of this kind of interference by the authorities in the life of the individual
that those who, are opposed to liberalism on principle are prone to base their
argument on the ostensibly undisputed acknowledgment of the necessity of such
prohibitions and to draw from it the conclusion that complete freedom is an evil and
that some measure of restriction must be imposed upon the freedom of the
individual by the governmental authorities in their capacity as guardians of his
welfare. The question cannot be whether the authorities ought to impose restrictions
upon the freedom of the individual, but only how far they ought to go in this respect.
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No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The
question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm
results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an
established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of
life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must
therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the
authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is
it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is
really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it
might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous
than alcoholism and morphinism.
Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is
pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question
cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism,
etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of
citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority,
it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine,
cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be
valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the state generally
prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they
are injurious? In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further
than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few
men know how to be temperate in their *******ual life, and it seems especially difficult
for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirely to indulge in such
pleasures or, at least, do so in moderation. Should not the state intervene here too?
More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil
literature. Should a press pandering to the lowest instincts of man be allowed to
corrupt the soul? Should not the exhibition of *******graphic pictures, of obscene
plays, in short, of all allurements to immorality, be prohibited? And is not the
dissemination of false sociological doctrines just as injurious to men and nations?
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Should men be permitted to incite others to civil war and to wars against foreign
countries? And should scurrilous lampoons and blasphemous diatribes be allowed
to undermine respect for God and the Church?
We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not
interfere in any questions touching on the individual's mode of life, we end by
regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal
freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community,
bound to obey the dictates of the majority. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the
ways in which such powers could be abused by malevolent persons in authority.
The wielding, of powers of this kind even by men imbued with the best of intentions
must needs reduce the world to a graveyard of the spirit. All mankind's progress has
been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate
from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the
others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate
to the minority what it is to think, to read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once
and for all.
Let no one object that the struggle against morphinism and the struggle against
"evil" literature are two quite different things. The only difference between them is
that some of the same people who favor the prohibition of the former will not agree
to the prohibition of the latter. In the United States, the Methodists and
Fundamentalists, right after the passage of the law prohibiting the manufacture and
sale of alcoholic beverages, took up the struggle for the suppression of the theory of
evolution, and they have already succeeded in ousting Darwinism from the schools
in a number of states. In Soviet Russia, every free expression of opinion is
suppressed. Whether or not permission is granted for a book to be published
depends on the discretion of a number of uneducated and uncultivated fanatics who
have been placed in charge of the arm of the government empowered to concern
itself with such matters.
The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon
as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such
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prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how
deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them. It will require
many long years of self-education until the subject can turn himself into the citizen.
A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise
than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as
something does not please him, of calling for the police.
12. Tolerance
Liberalism limits its concern entirely and exclusively to earthly life and earthly
endeavor. The kingdom of religion, on the other hand, is not of this world. Thus,
liberalism and religion could both exist side by side without their spheres' touching.
That they should have reached the point of collision was not the fault of liberalism.
It did not transgress its proper sphere; it did not intrude into the domain of religious
faith or of metaphysical doctrine. Nevertheless, it encountered the church as a
political power claiming the right to regulate according to its judgment
not only the relationship of man to the world to come, but also the affairs of this
world. It was at this point that the battle lines had to be drawn.
So overwhelming was the victory won by liberalism in this conflict that the
church had to give up, once and for all, claims that it had vigorously maintained for
thousands of years. The burning of heretics, inquisitorial persecutions, religious
wars these today belong to history. No one can understand any longer how quiet
people, who practiced their devotions as they believed right within the four walls of
their own home, could have been dragged before courts, incarcerated, martyred, and
burned. But even if no more stakes are kindled ad majorem Dei gloriam, a great
deal of intolerance still persists.
Liberalism, however, must be intolerant of every kind of intolerance. If one
considers the peaceful cooperation of all men as the goal of social evolution, one
cannot permit the peace to be disturbed by priests and fanatics. Liberalism
proclaims tolerance for every religious faith and every metaphysical belief, not out
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of indifference for these "higher" things, but from the conviction that the assurance
of peace within society must take precedence over everything and everyone. And
because it demands toleration of all opinions and all churches and sects, it must
recall them all to their proper bounds whenever they venture intolerantly beyond
them. In a social order based on peaceful cooperation, there is no room for the
claim of the churches to monopolize the instruction and education of the young.
Everything that their supporters accord them of their own free will may and must be
granted to the churches; nothing, may be permitted to them in respect to persons
who want to have nothing to do with them.
It is difficult to understand how these principles of liberalism could make enemies
among the communicants of the various faiths. If they make it impossible for a
church to make converts by force, whether its own or that placed at its disposal by
the state, on the other hand they also protect that church against coercive
proselytization by other churches and sects. What liberalism takes from the church
with one hand it gives back again with the other. Even religious zealots must
concede that liberalism takes nothing from faith of what belongs to its proper
sphere.
To be sure, the churches and sects that, where they have the upper hand, cannot
do enough in their persecution of dissenters, also demand, where they find
themselves in the minority, tolerance at least for themselves. However, this demand
for tolerance has nothing whatever in common with the liberal demand for
tolerance. Liberalism demands tolerance as a matter of principle, not from
opportunism. It demands toleration even of obviously nonsensical teachings, absurd
forms of heterodoxy, and childishly silly superstitions. It demands toleration for
doctrines and opinions that it deems detrimental and ruinous to society and even for
movements that it indefatigably combats. For what impels liberalism to demand and
accord toleration is not consideration for the content of the doctrine to be tolerated,
but the knowledge that only tolerance can create and preserve the condition of social
peace without which humanity must relapse into the barbarism and penury of
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centuries long past.
Against what is stupid, nonsensical, erroneous, and evil, liberalism fights with the
weapons of the mind, and not with brute force and repression.
13. The State and Antisocial Conduct
The state is the apparatus of compulsion and coercion. This holds not only for the
"night-watchman" state, but just as much for every other, and most of all for the
socialist state. Everything that the state is capable of doing it does by compulsion
and the application of force. To suppress conduct dangerous to the existence of the
social order is the sum and substance of state activity; to this is added, in a socialist
community, control over the means of production.
The sober logic of the Romans expressed this fact symbolically by adopting the
axe and the bundle of rods as the emblem of the state. Abstruse mysticism, calling
itself philosophy, has done as much as possible in modern times to obscure the truth
of the matter. For Schelling, the state is the direct and visible image of absolute life,
a phase in the revelation of the Absolute or World Soul. It exists only for its own
sake, and its activity is directed exclusively to the maintenance of both the substance
and the form of its existence. For Hegel, Absolute Reason reveals itself in the state,
and Objective Spirit realizes itself in it. It is ethical mind developed into an organic
reality—reality and the ethical idea as the revealed substantial will intelligible to
itself. The epigones of idealist philosophy outdid even their masters in their
deification of the state. To be sure, one comes no closer to the truth if, in reaction to
these and similar doctrines, one calls the state, with Nietzsche, the coldest of all cold
monsters. The state is neither cold nor warm, for it is an abstract concept in whose
name living men—the organs of the state, the government—act. All state activity is
human action, an evil inflicted by men on men. The goal—the preservation of
society—justifies the action of the organs of the state, but the evils inflicted are not
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felt as any less evil by those who suffer under them.
The evil that a man inflicts on his fellow man injures both—not only the one to
whom it is done, but also the one who does it. Nothing corrupts a man so much as
being an arm of the law and making men suffer. The lot of the subject is anxiety, a
spirit of servility and fawning adulation; but the pharisaical self-righteousness,
conceit, and arrogance of the master are no better.
Liberalism seeks to take the sting out of the relationship of the government
official to the citizen. In doing so, of course, it does not follow in the footsteps of
those romantics who defend the antisocial behavior of the lawbreaker and condemn
not only judges and policemen, but also the social order as such. Liberalism neither
wishes to nor can deny that the coercive power of the state and the lawful
punishment of criminals are institutions that society could never, under any
circumstances, do without. However, the liberal believes that the purpose of
punishment is solely to rule out, as far as possible, behavior dangerous to society.
Punishment should not be vindictive or retaliatory. The criminal has incurred the
penalties of the law, but not the hate and sadism of the judge, the policeman, and the
ever lynch-thirsty mob.
What is most mischievous about the coercive power that justifies itself in the
name of the "state" is that, because it is always of necessity ultimately sustained by
the consent of the majority, it directs its attack against germinating innovations.
Human society cannot do without the apparatus of the state, but the whole of
mankind's progress has had to be achieved against the resistance and opposition of
the state and its power of coercion. No wonder that all who have had something
new to offer humanity have had nothing good to say of the state or its laws
Incorrigible etatist mystics and state-worshippers may hold this against them;
liberals will understand their position even if they cannot approve it. Yet every
liberal must oppose this understandable aversion to everything that pertains to jailers
and policemen when it is carried to the point of such overweening self-esteem as to
proclaim the right of the individual to rebel against the state. Violent resistanc
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