Letters from Vienna #128
A Tale of two Germans
“Men think first of the lives they lead and the things they see; and not, among the things they see, of the extraordinary sights, but of the sights which meet them in their daily rounds” Milton Mayer once told us. “The lives of my nine friends and even of the tenth, the teacher were lightened and brightened by National Socialism as they knew it. And they look back at it now nine of them, certainly as the best time of their lives; for what are men’s lives? There were jobs and job security, summer camps for the children and the Hitler Jugend to keep them off the streets. What does a mother want to know? She wants to know where her children are, and with whom, and what they are doing. In those days she knew or thought she did; what difference does it make? So, things went better at home, and when things go better at home, and on the job, what more does a husband and father want to know?”
“The best time of their lives. There were wonderful ten-dollar holiday trips for the family in the “Strength through Joy” program, to Norway in the summer and Spain in the winter, for people who had never dreamed of a real holiday trip at home or abroad. And in Kronenberg “nobody” (nobody my friends knew) went cold, nobody went hungry, nobody went ill and uncared for. For whom do men know? They know people of their own neighborhood, of their own station and occupation, of their own political (or nonpolitical) views, of their own religion and race. All the blessings of the New Order, advertised everywhere, reached everybody.”[1]
George Bailey on the other hand tells us of another kind of German entirely: John Luhr, “the game warden of McNeil Island (Puget Sound). Luhr was a widower whose three sons had left to begin families of their own. He lived alone in a two-story wooden frame house that he had built himself. It was a finished, professional piece of work. It had a long, spacious front porch overlooking the straits, or “narrows” as we called them, between the island and the mainland, and a smaller back porch. Luhr had built a “mill” and harnessed a stream, by means of a wooden viaduct at least a hundred yards long, to turn a lathe and generate electricity for the house. He made his own furniture…In fact, Luhr had achieved autarky…”[2]
The Good Life
Although it might seem fiction or even ridiculous for many (in the Seventies this was a theme for a comedy series in England, “The Good Life”[3]) it is in fact possible to “live off the grid”.[4] And it’s possible to choose between whether one lives in a Fascist Society, such as the example presented by Milton Mayer, or as a free human being, such as the example presented by George Bailey. Indeed, many, in this age of the “Bullshit Job” in which “we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations,”[5] increasing numbers of people seem to be turning away from the conventional paradigm. More people, as the film: “Zeit für Utopien”[6] shows, are trying to become part of the solution rather than the problem.
“Zeit für Utopien” shows how it’s possible for community supported agriculture to supply much of our needs (see letter #96) and how a whole factory can emancipate itself from its erstwhile owners. The documentary shows, above all else, that practical anarchism (as opposed to the nonsensical variety) can actually work. And by anarchism one must know the true definition: “a political theory advocating the abolition of hierarchical government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.”
Tolstoy (1828-1910)
One of the most important anarchist tracts was written in 1905 by Tolstoy (1828-1910): “The End of the Age, An Essay on the Approaching Revolution”.
“The fundamental cause of the impending revolution” he wrote “is a religious one…Among various nations, even before the Christian teaching, there was expressed and proclaimed a supreme religious law, common to all mankind and consisting in this, that men for their welfare should live not each for himself, but each for the good of all, for mutual service (Buddha, Isiah, Confucius. Laotze, the Stoics). The law was proclaimed, and those who knew it could not see all its truth and beneficence. But custom, founded not upon mutual service but on violence had penetrated to such an extent into all institutions and habits that, whilst people recognized the beneficence of the law of mutual service, they continued to live according to the laws of violence, justifying this by the necessity of threats and retribution. It seemed to them that without threats, and without returning evil for evil, social life was impossible.”
“With extraordinary clarity the Christian teaching showed that the reason was the false idea about the lawfulness and the necessity of coercion for retribution. Having demonstrated from various sides the unlawfulness and harmfulness of retribution it showed that the greatest calamities of men proceeded from acts of violence which under the excuse of retribution are committed by some men upon others. The Christian teaching demonstrated not only the injustice but the harmfulness of vengeance, it showed that the only means of deliverance from violence is the submissive and peaceful endurance of it.”
“The essence of Christianity, owing to its incomplete acceptance, became more and more concealed, and Christian nations at last attained the position in which they are now, namely the transformation of Christian nations into inimical camps giving all their powers to arming themselves against each other, and ready at any moment to devour each other; and they have reached the position that they not only arm themselves against each other, but have also armed and are arming against themselves the non-Christian nations who hate them and have risen against them; and above all they have reached the complete repudiation not only of Christianity but of any higher law in life whatsoever.”[7]
For Tolstoy the State was merely a form of “superstition”, a prejudice and bad habit and everything that prevented one from living in a free community on the land was simply a form of slavery. This doesn’t mean that one has to abolish all forms of property, as occurred in some kibbutzs in Israel, with disagreeable consequences, but the experience of the CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) show that it’s not absolutely necessary to own land.
Anders
Günther Anders (see letter #127) wrote:
“1. The higher the efficiency of the technical apparatus, the lower is that of the masses.
2. The higher the efficiency of the technical apparatus, the greater the power of individuals who are able to set the enormous apparatus in motion through solo whims, called “political decisions”. This means: millions of people or the entirety of humanity may perish as a whole. We not only live in an age of monstrous masses...but in an age of monstrous solitaires. In concrete terms: the president of a state, in his capacity as supreme “warlord”, floating alone somewhere high above the sea of clouds, could give the decisive “go ahead” signal, which would promptly trigger the Last Judgment... In other words: the large-scale technology is disastrous not only because it…objectifies us humans and puts millions of us out of work; but also because it can stifle resistance and protest and make individuals omnipotent.”[8]
Reluctant as I am to concede to Heidegger (who was after all a Nazi) anything at all: in this respect he was right: technology has become not merely a hindrance to happiness but a threat to the very existence of humanity.
All one can do is quote Auden:
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
[1] pp. 48-49 They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer
[2] p.5 Germans, George Bailey
[3] “Tom Good quits the rat race, and with wife Barbara turns the garden of their Surbiton house into a smallholding. Their neighbours, snobbish Margo Leadbetter and her conventional husband Jerry, feel variously amused, offended and impressed.”
[5] p.10 Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber
[7] pp.24-26 Government is Violence, Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism, Tolstoy
[8] pp. xxxi-xxxii Hiroshima ist überall, Günther Anders