The Fascist Virus

Text in English to type

[1] About the turn of the century some imaginative writers indulged in what were felt to be gloomy forebodings in regard to the future of our civilisation. Their prophecies {oeniered} on the fate of the working ____ which would be enslaved, and deprived of the attributes of common human equality. H. G. Wells inverted utopias were haunted by the spectre of labouring population reduced to sub-human level, and in Jack London's awful visions of the people {crused} under the iron wheel of big business the crudities of physical torture were combined with the abominations of psychological emasculation. A great religious mind had developed the same theme before. Dostojevski, in a small master piece, argued that the demand for an 'impossible freedom' …

Chapter 1. Market Economy is born

[2] Edmund Burke was the first among modern statesmen to be fascinated by the philosophy of the market. He was quick to discover in it an other argument in favour of his innate conservatism. His politics were anti-democratic also by economic conviction. Briefed by commercial corporations of Liverpool and Manchester, he held the laws of the market to be the laws of God. Interference with the market was an unnatural act that would work its own defeat. Compulsory equalisation of income would merely produce misery, want, wretchedness nd beggary, consequently, there should be allowed no increase in the number of voters in England. No wonder that the paper currencies of the New England colonies tend to be worthless, having been issued by popular governments. Of Connecticut and Rhode Island he wrote with horror: 'By the charters of these colonies the exorbitant power which was given to the proprietary governments to single men, was here vested, and I apprehend much more dangerously, in the whole body of the people. It is all purposes a more democracy'. Since poverty of the masses was a law of nature, the people should be denied the deceptive privilege of applying rainous remedies to their economic ills.

Even devoted friends of the labouring classes believed that the popular vote would destroy the new economy and all its achievements. A Robert Owen opposed the extension of the franchise to the masses. A Godwin declared himself an enemy of the revolution. In principle, they agreed with Malthus and Ricardo that no politics but education alone could meet the needs of the situation.

[4] The Chartist decade theory …

Adam Smith Jeremy Bentham

[5] Macaulay [6] [7] [8]

[13] Speenhamland …

[16] Owen's description of his workers. Harriet Martineau. Engels and Manchester. The 1883 Report. …

Chapter 2. Man versus Market

It is easy to get used to the sound of words, and eventually, forget their meanings. …

Text Informations

Reference:
Original Publication: 1940-1944?
KPA: 18/08 (x p.)
Other Languages:

Lge	Name
DE	“Der faschistische Virus”
FR	« La liberté et la technique »