http://alternativeright.com/blog/2013/5/31/fascism-viewed-from-the-right-by-julius-evola
The more I read of the European anti-liberals, the more I believe that England between 1688 and 1914 was the high point of civilisation. It may be no disgrace that this high point was followed by a sudden and possibly irretrievable collapse. It is the nature of human things to be transient. But reading any of these people only makes me more grateful that I was born an Englishman, and in at least the afterglow of what my nation achieved. I certainly think one Victorian railway bridge shows better use of our reason than whole volumes of windy philosophy in the various dialects of foreignese. SIG
Discover more from The Libertarian Alliance
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
England was already failing by 1914, from a liberal perspective. 1914 is simply a visible station on the road to Hell. The ninteenth century, the rise of big government and the reform movements had already initiated and, in many cases already implemented, ruin.
Take, for instance, 1855. That was when the Reformers decided to prohibit trading on sundays. It caused riots in Hyde Park, because sunday was the only day that the poor could do their shopping. But the Reformers wanted them in church instead, and only in church, so shopping had to be banned.
That wasn’t much of a high point of civilisation now, was it?
Liberal England was already dead by 1914; the new society of mass compliance had already been implemented. The Great War simply proved that. It proved that millions would go to war, and be blown to bits, and die, because the State said so. It proved that the government already had the power and will to arbitrarily take over whatever elements of industry and the economy it so desired, and nobody would complain. It proved that an Englishman would tolerate the government arbitrarily closing his pub, and watering his beer. It proved that Englishmen would tolerate being ruled by an evil psychopath like Lloyd George.
1914 is far too late. We were already anglo-socialists by then.
It takes time for rot at the top to be communicated throughout the whole of a country. As late as 1914, it was still possible for most people to ignore the State in the great majority of their dealings. Bear in mind that the beginning of this period was often no more than potentially liberal.
I’d vote for 1688-1788, myself. Everything went to pot pretty much straight after that.
Not if they wanted to go shopping on sunday, or send a telegram they couldn’t 🙂
By then, however, married women could own property, and the Catholics weren’t persecuted. No age is perfect, but must be judged on balance.
I think any age that would allow Lloyd George anywhere near public office has to be condemned, on balance.
“The Great War simply proved that. It proved that millions would go to war, and be blown to bits, and die, because the State said so. ”
With my limited knowledge of the subject I think most young men went willingly to war. They weren’t co-erced. And, as with all wars, they thought they would be home by Christmas. I have also heard it said that a hundred years ago a man could live without ever having any dealings with the State, other than the Post Office. And my accountant tells me that a man would be allocated threee different tax inspectors; one for his rental income, one for earned income and one for his investments, as it was not considered proper for one tax iinspector to know all of a man’s business. Ah, those were the days!
With my limited knowledge of the subject I think most young men went willingly to war.
That’s the point. They’d been trained to believe that the State was what mattered, and they were mere transient, expendable atoms of it.
They weren’t co-erced
Brainwashed people rarely are. You simply have to look at it this way; no rational man would have stayed in France beyond the first devastation of the BEF.
I have also heard it said that a hundred years ago a man could live without ever having any dealings with the State, other than the Post Office
It depends on what you wanted to do; as in my example above, the State had already decided to stop you shopping on sunday. The State was already growing. As with anything that grows, it is always smaller in the past. As an interesting cultural artifact, here’s a favourite essay of mine, by GK Chesterton-
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Eugenics.html
He began it before the War, completed it after the War, and it describes the encroachment of the State, initially with Eugenics-oriented legislation but you can see him describing the general lifestyle controls already being implemented a century ago, as they happened so to speak. By a century ago, the institutional systems and ruling class mindset we struggle against now were already in place and had, I would argue, been themselves growing for nigh a century. Since, particularly, the 1830s when the Great Reform Act unfettered the Parliament.
And my accountant tells me that a man would be allocated threee different tax inspectors; one for his rental income, one for earned income and one for his investments, as it was not considered proper for one tax iinspector to know all of a man’s business. Ah, those were the days!
As late as the 1980s it was still considered improper for government departments to share confidential information, in order to preserve our privacy and trust. That was swept away at first, tentatively, by the Tories and then, grandly, by Tony Blair’s “joined up government”. We live under Progressivism, and thus there is always less of it the further back you go. In “it’s a free country” terms, Britain was freer under, say, Attlee than Thatcher, and under Thatcher than Blair. And under Blair than Cameron. The State always grows, the laws always increase, the freedom always reduces. That’s “progress”.
It does seem that the period from around 1840 to 1914 was one where talented people, however humble their background, had tremendous opportunities. Perhaps IK Brunel’s father Marc is a better illustration of this than IK himself, but to me, the story of Joseph Paxton’s rise from a gardeners assistant to his later, well-deserved, fane and fortune, is a salutary reminder that social mobility is not merely a 20th century phenomena.
Since the advent of internet radio I have discovered a myriad of unknown but immensely talented composers who simply do not exist in the BBC’s nihilist world. I am struck by the fact that they nearly all seem to have been born in the 1870’s or 1880’s. As were many other great achievers, ranging from Einstein to Hitler. Something in the planets, perhaps?
What are your radio stations? I mostly listen to various Czech stations. They have an obvious bias to the Central European composers. Also, I like high bitrates.
You tend to get clusters of people in certain fields, as generational networks form. Rothbard has noticed for instance that a huge proportion of the women who founded America’s social worker State (e.g. Jane Addams) were born within a year either side of 1860. Or, most of the greats of the pop music era were born in the early 40s, during the war (this one, as a fan of rock and pop interests me. It is considered a “Boomer” thing, but most of the great musicians who founded t were War Babies, not Boomers).
Judgeing countries by their anti liberal writers is rather unfair – after all the United Kingdom had plenty of anti liberal writers of its own, and nations such as France had plenty of liberal writers in the 19th century (often better libertarians than the main British writers of the day).
As for emprical reality – a mixed picture, some things getting worse and some things getting better.
Overall the state does not start to increas is size til about 1870 (1874 is the low point for national taxation as a percentage of the economy – it is a easy date to remember as it is the date Winston Churchill was born), a lot of the country sets up Education Boards soon after 1870 (the Forster Act – although Kettering doed not) and (as already stated) national taxation (as well as local taxation) starts to increase as a proportion of the economy after 1874.
Regulations?
Well the Married Women’s Property Act come in 1870 – which is a good thing (at least I think so), but in 1875 there are two terrible massures that should be noted.
Disraeli’s government decided that about forty different functions should be undertaken by local councils WHETHER LOCAL RATEPAYERS WANT THE COUNCILS TO DO THEM OR NOT (so much for local autonomy), and in the same year unions are put above the law. Not only “peaceful picketing” (whoever came up with that term must have forgotten that a picket line is a military term), but imunit from most civil action (the courts tried to fight back against the insanity of the 1875 Act – but it was put beyond legal dispute by the “liberal” Act of 1906 – which essentially signed the long term death warrent for British industry.).
As for other countries….. I will only mention one, France.
France was indeed more statist that Britain in many ways (conscription, government control of churches, and on and on) , but it was actually LESS statist in many ways.
For example, there was no right to welfare in France (which there was in England and Walesd from the time of the first Elizabeth) – even in Scotland (the last major area of the United Kingdom to hold out against a complusory Poor Law (tell that to a modern Scot – they simply will not believe you) a right to support by taxation was in the Act of 1845 – in France no such rights existed till the 1890s.
In education also – education was de facto compulsory in England, Wales and Scotland (and, I believe, Ireland) before it was in France.
Of course (like Scotland) the free market elements in French history are either forgotten today or are regarded by the population as a shameful dark age from which the were rescued by compassionate (and philosophical) social reforms.
The Liberal School of French economics (must better than British economics in its day) is as forgotten In France as Frank Fetter is in the United States.
On Ian’s point……
Radical Protestanism has indeed been,in part, allied with statism since the time of Thomas Cromwell.
If Thomas Cromwell not been killed England might have “enjoyed” a modern administrative state (covering, or trying to cover, all aspects of human life) as far back as the 16th century – such a country could not have had an industrial revolution and would serve no function (other than as a terrible warning that tyranny leads to a vast increase in the very poverty which is used as a excuse for tyranny).
Even in the time of the first Elizabeth England almost became a Puritan country (with bans on virutally everything) but this movement was defeated (by the hidden hand of the Queen herself – working through influence in Parliament, no powerless figure head monarch in those days).
It almost happened again in the 17th century (and Cromwell was not the wworst of the Puritans – indeed many of them considered him a weak hearted moderate, corrupted by a tolerant nature).
However this is a very one sided picture.
Many Protestants did great things IN FAVOUR of freedom.
The Scots may have been a pain in the …… but men like Buchanan were very learned and worked out reasoned defences of the rights of people against Kings a cenury or more before John Locke did.
In England both Milton and Cromwell himself opposed the right of any church (Catholic or Protestant) to force people to accept its doctrines – their must be CHOICE in religion (although, like the Elizabeth, Cromwell ddid not really include Roman Catholics in his toleration – but, again like Elizabeth, more for national security reasons than theological reasons – Catholics were considere loyal to hostile powers).
We should also consider the pro freedom work of John Wesley, and Wilberforce, and Rev Chalmers in Glasgow, and the “voluntarist” tradition of the Leeds Mercury people and…..
It is a very mixed picture – not a simple one of radical Protestans all being like Praise God Bare Bones, out to ban Christmas and outlaw wedding rings.
Although Ian is quite correct with how some (not all) radical Protestants over several generations from worshipping God to worshipping the State 0 and tried (and are still trying) to build Heaven on Earth via state action.
However, as Sean Gabb noted, Europe has many antiliberals with fantasy visions of what the state can achieve. And they need no Puritan religious basis (or inheritance) for their fantasies.