Totalitarianism
The respective legacies of the American, French and
European revolutions have shaped democratic development on
a global scale, directly or indirectly. The American
revolution attained limited advance and similar, mildly
progressive reforms were later established in the UK
selectively abstracted from among the demands of Chartist
common sense (e.g. excluding the right to bear arms) and
granted with the benefit of hindsight by wily liberal
conservatism once British radical teeth had been
successfully drawn. Premised by its failure to properly
grasp and incorporate the achievements of American
radicalism in regard to common sense the main legacy of the
French revolution has been the proposition that force
should be used pre-emptively or offensively, that is to say
beyond the defensive parameters of common sense and natural
law, to resolve conflict between what a factional elite
decide are the ideals of social progress, and the given
viewpoint of the ignorant masses. This revolutionary tenet
was first alluded to by Machiavelli, practised by Cromwell,
theorised vaguely by Rousseau, and given its first clear
expression in regard to democracy by Babeuf.
Democracy in general was for Babeuf a noble goal, but
'democracy according to the French revolution' in which a
vanguard would exercise dictatorial powers until
reactionary forces had been completely defeated was a
practical necessity when confronted by a monarchy resolved
to oppose the transition to government by consent. In this
way the failings of French radicalism in matters of
constitutional reform and the excessive use of force
associated with this approach began to be theorised as
somehow inevitable and, indeed, historically necessary.
Accordingly in Europe English philosophical realism,
despite the efforts of British working class leaders such
as Paine and Hodgskin, took second place to the vague but
seemingly more revolutionary inclinations of Rousseau and,
with the onset of Marxist influence, German Idealism turned
on its head. Blanqui's commonsensical invocation of
elective dictatorship as a tactical device was overtaken by
Marx's much more historically grand concept of a
'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' denoting a fairly
indefinite stage of economic determinist development in
which men could be forced to be free over a much more
prolonged period. Such conclusions however were based on
false premises in regard to the status and lessons of both
the American and French revolutions. Guizot, despite Marx's
objections, was almost certainly more correct in his
appraisal in this regard: the chief difference between
French and Anglo-American radicalism was not that the
former was of greater general significance, but rather that
the latter had shown greater skill in achieving its
objectives.
English philosophical realism, sortition and
correspondingly democracy itself were consequently never
fully understood by European intellectuals at any stage in
the development of socialist thought. After the defeat of
1848 radical extremism, certainly in its most obscurantist,
German form, threw out the democratic baby it had never
understood with the masonically polluted Anglo-American
bathwater: dialectics are superior to common sense, and
democracy, Engels confidently concluded, is a 'chimera.'
Dictatorship, that is to say, tyranny, was now to be the
strategic aim of the working class, not 'bourgeois
democracy.' Throughout the nineteenth century such inverted
reasoning continued to permeate leftist ideology in Europe,
more especially in Russia, but also entering the American
body politic after Lincoln's murder and the transfer of the
First International to the United States.
Common sense, extremism and opportunism intermingled
unevenly in this process, interspersed with the
debilitating effects of long terms of imprisonment,
exemplified by that of Blanqui. Lenin established the
organisational principles of Bolshevism which in their
authentic form comprise probably the most optimal
combination of aristocratic and democratic principles
possible for a revolutionary movement. Nevertheless
eventually, succumbing to the self selecting temptation to
exercise state censorship of Lenin's unflattering character
references during the Bolshevik leadership succession of
1924, totalitarianism emerged as the dominant trend on the
Left, assuming complete hegemony in 1943, with closure of
the Comintern formalising de jure what de facto had already
taken place - the takeover of the communist party by its
conspiratorial wing. This literally sealed the
antidemocratic, dogmatic fate of radical militancy in the
twentieth century, because freedom of criticism on the Left
as a determinant of policy and leadership selection
effectively ceased from this point.
As President Bush has noted, the self selecting nature of
leadership through a revolutionary vanguard has comprised a
general organisational feature of totalitarianism in both
its communist and islamobolshevik forms. Actually, as shown
above, it has also comprised a more discreet organisational
feature of representative democracy, especially when given
a helping masonic handshake. Nevertheless the
overwhelmingly self selecting nature of totalitarian
leadership is of course the least acceptable form of
aristocracy, which, unmoderated by democratic power, has a
greater natural affinity with heredity aristocracy than the
natural aristocracy of virtue and talent Jefferson had
upheld as a necessary component of government by consent
(or indeed, Lenin's advanced workers). For these reasons
hereditary factors now exert discernible influence in
leadership selection on the Left, both in disguised ways,
such as in the democracies, and with unabashed clarity, as
in North Korea.
These are the basic preconditions and course of events
which help explain why conservatism and radicalism swapped
greatcoats on a general basis in regard to the nature and
purpose of the relation between democracy and aristocracy,
and why their respective standpoints on fundamental
questions of human rights became inverted during the
century following the American revolution. The ideology of
European socialism is presupposed by the errors of
radicalism in this regard. Equipped with a narrow and
misconceived understanding of the relation between common
sense and democracy leftism adopted an accordingly narrow
and misconceived programme of reform based on one
macroeconomic option alone - an untested, idealised
socioeconomic hypothesis that social ownership of the means
of production would be more efficient than private
ownership.
This economic determinist hypothesis was thereafter
invested with a status of certainty which it did not merit
according to the most basic principles of scientific
method. The self evident truths of common sense in regard
to democracy do not, as shown, include socialism, or at
least socialism understood in its European meaning, which
is itself presupposed by a failure to understand democracy
comprehensively and to properly distinguish those truths
which are self evident to common sense from those which,
through experiment, can be derived from them.
This is accordingly also the essential background to the
fact that modern democracy has been locked in a state of
rigid, chronic factional polarisation between left and
right for generations. Having conceded the narrow
parameters of representative government to appease the
demand for universal suffrage, liberal conservatism has, in
the greatest of all historical ironies, increasingly
adopted a posture in defence of the right to free speech
against radical extremism, and at the same time linked this
defence to the single macroeconomic option of capitalism.
Increasingly self selecting leftist leaders have peddled
theory immune from and in defiance of the judgement of
common sense and the experimental principle of progress
through trial and error, and on these fraudulent
ideological grounds largely narrowed the radical platform
of reform to a single macroeconomic option as ordained by
European historicist method within, at best, a factionally
suborned representative system.
The evolution of European radical strategy from the errors
and confusion of the French revolutionary experience to the
dogmas of economic determinism (in both its reformist
guise, as advocated by Blanc, and its revolutionary guise,
as advocated by Marx) and totalitarianism was subject to
various twists and turns, in which attempts to resist or
correct this descent were made. Hodgskin recognised in 1825
the possible need to take account of market forces in
radical strategy, and in this way his followers dissented
from Owen's tendency to minimise this consideration;
Blanqui rejected grand theory and attempts to write utopian
blueprints for the future socialist society and emphasised
instead the ongoing nature of democratic process in that
regard; Tkachev flatly opposed Marxism and attempted to
develop a more commonsensical approach based on a
combination of Rousseau and Huxley's evolutionary theory.
Lenin's insights in regard to party organisation sought to
elevate the role of common sense understanding and
judgement in both theory and strategy.
A century ago radicalism despite its weaknesses and errors
was still concerned with issues of truth, open debate and
honest convictions and could have eventually corrected the
mistaken assumptions of economic determinism and the French
revolutionary tradition. Totalitarianism, which dates on a
practical basis from 1924, has closed off most of these
possibilities. The chief impediment to democratic progress
today is that its heirs in both the west and the communist
states are conjointly set on an essentially opportunist
project of forcing men to be free. In this regard Lenin's
point that the main enemy is not the 'bourgeoisie' but
opportunism remains just as valid. Totalitarian careerism
is presupposed by the willingness of leftist advocates to
act along the line of least resistance, which is determined
by parameters of party dogma which preclude freedom of
criticism. Given that economic determinism has proved
wanting in practice, their chief concern must therefore
incline to the priority that they remain in control and as
immune as possible from criticism. To do this they are
committed to upholding an essentially purely Machiavellian
strategy aimed, openly or by stealth, at the partial, or if
necessary total abolition of free speech to contain or
destroy opposition to their rule. All means can be employed
to this purpose, including wearing the slave power
greatcoat in regard to the right to bear arms, and
plagiarism.
These considerations comprise much of the background
against which Winston Churchill made his 1946 Iron Curtain
address, claiming, correctly and without the slightest
trace of sarcasm, that against the totalitarian rule of
compact oligarchies and political police 'we must never
cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of
freedom and the rights of man which are the joint
inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through
Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial
by jury, and the English common law find their most famous
expression in the American Declaration of Independence. All
this means that the people of any country have the right,
and should have the power by constitutional action, by free
unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or
change the character or form of government under which they
dwell; that freedom of speech and thought should reign;
that courts of justice, independent of the executive,
unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have
received the broad assent of large majorities or are
consecrated by time and custom. Here are the title deeds of
freedom which should lie in every cottage home. Here is the
message of the British and American peoples to mankind.'
Eighty three Labour MPs, among them James Callaghan,
attempted to pass a motion of censure against this speech,
an initiative which remains probably the most important
expression of the seemingly improbable but nevertheless
undeniable swapping of left and right greatcoats that came
about in the century following the American revolution.
These considerations determine the present state of affairs
in political life, with the proviso that radical extremism
has developed greatly increased skills and power in
usurping the established parameters of representative
government by deployment of what Churchill recognised to be
its fifth column forces. The tactics of stealth, supported
by the vast potential for deconstructive intrigue,
disruption and intimidation at the disposal of totalitarian
state power, are far more developed than in previous eras,
so much so that it can now be conjectured that conservatism
may be unable to preserve democratic freedoms against the
encroachments of leftist strategy.
This is the context in which political participation in the
west is falling to crisis levels and in which the 'Third
Way,' graced with the participating patronage of at least
one member of the Rothschild dynasty (Lynn Forester), was
adopted as the chief platform of electoral policy for the
Left on a world scale.
Duplicity, spin, infiltration and black propaganda assumed
central significance in leftist strategy long ago, such
that the narrow parameters of party politics can no longer
provide a reliable vehicle for the expression of honestly
held political convictions. Whether David Cameron is a
genuine conservative or some sort of 'Pol Pot' cannot be
known, but it is clear that hegemony can be established not
merely by the popularity of any given set of policies, but
also by the absence of any coherent alternative. This is
the context in which no UK political party is prepared to
properly defend the right to a secret ballot. Unimaginative
tactics which play fast and loose with the integrity of the
electoral system, including the use of postal ballots on
demand, are rooted ultimately in totalitarian factional
subversion of democratic process within the Left, reducing
it to a merely cosmetic affair aimed at disguising what is
in effect a process of self selection by those in power of
fellow sycophants. This tends to engender incompetence: it
is therefore unsurprising that electoral strategists who
derive their powers from such process should be tempted to
rely on fraudulent methods to succeed.