The political catastrophe that engulfed Europe in the twentieth century, in the form of wars, civil wars and revolutions, involved battles of ideologies and ideas that went back to the French Revolution, at the very start of modern politics. These battles were already prevalent in the nineteenth century as the struggles between liberal democrats, socialists and nationalists played themselves out. But they did not become as ferocious and destructive as they would after the First World War and its aftermath during most of the twentieth century. For it was then that extremist tendencies in these ideological contexts prevailed, and led to liberal democratic capitalism, to Bolshevik socialism and to Fascist and Nazi nationalism. These three proceeded to enter into an ideological battle to the death that ravaged Europe along with much of Asia.
Nothing like this outcome was in the offing or could conceivably have been expected during the nineteenth century when the three dominant ideological movements arose, following the end of the Napoleonic wars and the failed Metternichian attempt to restore the Ancien Regime in France and elsewhere in Europe. During this repressive political climate, liberal democrats fought for universal suffrage, socialists fought for social justice, and nationalists for national self-determination. The latter were particularly active in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe where the unification of Germany and Italy was at stake and the independence of Greece, Poland and Hungary from the Ottoman, Czarist and Habsburg empires was being violently contested. Socialism at this stage was still in its infancy, though the workers had already made a political showing during the June days of the 1848 Revolution in France. But gradually their numbers grew during the course of the nineteenth century in most of the countries of Europe, so by the end of the century socialism had developed into a major political force to challenge liberalism and nationalism.
Each of these three movements arose out of ideas that emerged during the course of the French Revolution. Each took up one of the three key terms of the revolutionary slogan: liberty, equality, fraternity and emphasized it at the expense of the other two. For the liberal democrats it was liberty that took priority, and by that they meant primarily the freedoms and rights of the individual, particularly market freedom in line with laissez-faire capitalism. For the socialists what mattered most was equality, and their main aim was to overcome class differences as these arose out of the disparities of wealth due to the unequal distribution of private property. For the nationalists, fraternity was uppermost, and by this they understood the brotherhood of all the sons of the fatherland as determined by their shared language, culture, historical
Hence, during the course of the nineteenth century there were continuing tactical alliances between leaders and parties representing the three ideological movements that stood on opposite sides in a triangular contest. Some of these marriages of convenience seem bizarre to us now, going by twentieth century assumptions. But at that stage they were not as far apart as they were subsequently to become. Thus, for example, during the 1848 revolution in France, the liberal bourgeoisie sided with the nationalist Bonapartists and voted for Louis Bonaparte for president, much to Marx’s astonishment.1 He was equally disconcerted, when in the newly unified German Reich, the leader of his own Social Democratic party, Ferdinand Lassalle, struck a deal with the Iron Chancellor Bismarck. Such apparent incongruities in tactical relations attested to the fact that the three ideological movements gradually learned to live with each other and to adjust to each other, which explains how they came to coexist down to 1914.
As parliamentary democratic government based on wide suffrage became a feature in all European countries – including Russia, though to a much more limited extent – so parties representing all three political movements became prominent in these parliaments. This frequently led to vociferous altercations during debates, which were so disconcerting to the aristocratic conservatives, but it also meant that through political wrangles and manoeuvres these opposed ideologies were assuming complementary roles in relation to each other. In their very opposition they were in fact collaborating. Even the most radical of them, the Marxist Social Democratic party in Germany, had lost its fervour and revolutionary élan and accepted that the workers’ demands could be best attained through the ballot box. The fact that socialist parties throughout Europe voted in August 1914 to pass the budgets for war in their respective countries is proof enough of how far they had become integrated.
All that changed after the terrible war, particularly in the internal politics of the losing powers, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy (it was on the winning side but had lost much both in manpower and territory in the disastrous defeats towards the end). It was in these countries that the lurch towards
Elsewhere in Europe, following attempts at Bolshevik inspired uprisings, the extreme nationalists reacted in a similar way. In Italy an extreme form of nationalism, calling itself Fascism, led by Mussolini usurped the liberal government with the connivance of the monarchy, Church and army, which were responding to bourgeois fears of Red revolution. In Hungary and Austria there were Bolshevik attempts to seize power which were rapidly defeated by nationalist forces. This also occurred in Germany, except that there an elected Social Democratic government put down the Bolshevik Spartacist revolt. Liberal democratic government ensued for the duration of the Weimar Republic, until Hitler was voted into power.
From then on, the die was cast for a major war in Europe between the countries governed according to the three ideological tendencies: the liberal democratic, the extreme nationalist and the extreme socialist. What had been a kind of cohabitation up to the First World War became a deadly confrontation after it. In the approach to war the three major parties changed sides in a game of musical chairs. At first the West European democracies condoned and appeased Hitler and the Nazis as a bulwark against Stalin and the Communists. Then Hitler and Stalin entered into a pact against the democracies led by Britain and France. Then with the defeat of France and Hitler’s attack on Russia, Churchill and Stalin came to terms, soon to be joined by Roosevelt when America entered the war. Once Hitler was beaten a new battle called the Cold War began between the two victorious partners, principally America and Russia.
After the war America assumed pre-eminence over a devastated Western Europe, which could only rebuild itself with help. Hence, it was its version of liberal democracy as untrammelled free market capitalism that displaced the more welfare-state oriented governments of the social democratic parties that had come to rule many of the European countries immediately after the war. America, in accordance with its founding principles, stressed liberty above equality and knew nothing of socialism or of fraternity in its European form as nationalism, except for its own version as exceptionalism and manifest destiny. And even though the Preamble to the Constitution declares that “all men are created equal” the main emphasis falls on the next sentence: “and endowed
Thus, from its very foundation American democracy was premised on liberalism and unrestrained capitalism. Equality simply meant equality before the law and equality of opportunity, and even that was impossible to attain for blacks in view of the peculiar institution of slavery in the Southern states till the Civil War, and segregation after it till the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. For whites there was equality of opportunity, but in a purely formal sense that access to elected office was open for everyone and all had an equal chance to succeed on the open market. And, indeed, there were opportunities for all, though the rags to riches myth was only true for select individuals. Apart from that, a kind of rough and ready frontiersman spirit of camaraderie, free of class distinction prevailed in America even long after the frontier had closed. Otherwise, every other type of inequality was tolerated and accepted in America, such as privileged access to the best education for the rich and those from establishment families. It is true that during the prosperous period after the Second World War the degree of inequality of wealth lessened; but since the liberalization of market policies in the 1980s it has widened again and now stands at what it had been before the First World War.
Due to this prevailing American liberal ideology neither a European-style socialism nor any kind of nationalist conservatism had any chance of attracting a following in America; except perhaps briefly and fitfully among the Northern Progressivist or the Southern Agrarians respectively, neither of which succeeded in establishing itself. The reason for this lies in the totally different social structure of America as compared to Europe, for there was no established class hierarchy based on an order of estates. As industrialization grew, there did develop a proletariat of workers, but these were not keen to engage in class conflict. They went on strike only to improve their working conditions and raise their wages, namely, they engaged in trade union battles with the capitalist owners, whom they had no intention of usurping or expropriating. Hence the two-party system of Democrats and Republicans, the successors to the original Whigs and Tories, prevailed and continues till this day. Both promoted variants of liberal democratic capitalism, for there was no other political ideology at play.
After the Second World War and the devastation of Europe, it seemed as if America was the sole surviving refuge of Western civilization. Many hoped that the torch of freedom and culture would be passed on across the Atlantic, especially in view of the large numbers of illustrious refugees who carried their European learning and cultivation with them to this new land dedicated to democracy. And for a short while it seemed that this would indeed come to
What has gone right is easy to specify. America has been an exemplary triumph for the Forces of Modernity. American capitalism has been an extraordinary economic success and surpasses that of any other country. The conditions for that achievement were very propitious in America, a sparsely populated continent with all conceivable natural resources. Given Yankee entrepreneurial ingenuity, a product of its Protestant background, the pioneering spirit of its frontiersmen, and an unlimited supply of labour power from the migrant masses of Europe – all the conditions were there for every kind of capitalistic development in agriculture and industry. American capitalism took off after the Civil War and except occasionally, as during the Great Depression, has not faltered since; though it has repeatedly changed its character, and now mostly functions on a global scale through its multinational corporations, media industries and financial investments.
American government has been highly conducive to capitalist development, and is itself a remarkable institution. From its origin it was a model constitutional arrangement that preceded any in Europe. It embodies a combination of division of powers and separation of powers: division between state and federal authorities with their different jurisdictions and responsibilities, and a separation at every level between legislative, executive and judicial functions. This prevents any concentration of power in any one institution as a system of checks and balances operates. America has never been threatened with dictatorship, and most probably never will be, and even though oligarchic tendencies have eaten into and corrupted its democracy, nevertheless, at the highest level it is still responsive to the popular will, as the election of Obama to the presidency demonstrated.
As for science and technology in America, that story is much more complicated. Ever since Benjamin Franklin, Americans have been active in both domains. However, in the nineteenth century their technical inventiveness far surpassed their scientific achievement. Science was then backward in America because it depended on the universities which were mainly teaching colleges not geared to scientific research. This only began to change towards the end of the nineteenth century when the American elite universities, starting with Johns Hopkins, developed doctoral research programs in science modelled on the best German universities. Since that point, science in America has advanced by leaps and bounds in close cooperation with European developments. Thanks to Hitler’s gift of so many of the most outstanding European
Technology has always been America’s forte thanks to the encouragement it received from an ever-growing market, from industrial production, and from the infrastructure developments required to tame a newly settled continent. The American patenting system and its intellectual property safeguards have meant that inventors could set themselves up as entrepreneurs and reap the full benefit of their ingenuity. This became particularly important when whole new industries were being set up towards the end of the nineteenth century, such as the electrical, automobile and aeronautical enterprises, food processing plants and mass production in general. The battles over patents between Edison and Tesla and subsequently between the Edison and Westinghouse electricity conglomerates attest to the keen competition that was so conducive to technological development. Edison’s laboratory, a veritable factory for inventions, had no parallel in Europe at the time; and from it flowed a huge range of new devices that revolutionized all kinds of activities above all those in media and entertainment and so made the Cultural Industry possible.
America began to surpass Europe in most respects after the First World War, and after the Second World War it reached its acme, largely because Europe had come to its nadir. America’s golden age was the period from the turn of the century till around the late 1960s; since then, it has been declining. Europe has caught up, and now China has risen and is challenging it economically and technologically. Since that period the whole quality and tenor of American social life has been coarsening. As we shall see, inequality of wealth has reached staggering proportions not seen since before the First World War. With such disproportionate differences in wealth come unequal access to quality higher education and constantly declining standards of education at lower levels. The public school system is no longer fulfilling its function and is now graduating masses of students who are uncultured and illiterate in every but the crudest sense.
Illiteracy of a cultural kind is pervading the youth of America, addicted as they have become to their own “youth culture” of drugs, sex and rock-and-roll which started in the 1960s with the so-called sexual revolution and has persisted ever since. At the same time, the mass media and its allied advertising industry have had a devastating effect on quality standards in all cultural respects. This has been further amplified with the arrival of information technology and its social media and other communication devices. America is now beginning to approach the kind of society that Aldous Huxley prophetically anticipated during the 1930s, when he wrote his dystopian masterpiece Brave New World.
What this kind of society amounts to will be the subject of our analysis and critique in the subsequent parts of this book. However, in the next two chapters we shall not be much concerned with America, only with Europe. We return to the French Revolutionary triad of liberty, equality, fraternity, and concentrate on equality in the next chapter and fraternity in the one after that. Our main aim is to show how and why the pursuit of equality and fraternity, namely, Socialism and Nationalism, proved so culturally rewarding in the nineteenth century but had such devastating consequences in the twentieth century after the First World War. For this was when Socialism took the extreme form of Bolshevism, and Nationalism morphed into Fascism and Nazism. The clash between them that then ensued sealed the fate of Europe and along with it that of Western civilization in general, for America could not carry the civilizational burden alone.