Alfred A. Knopf of New York published in 1928 a serviceable (even if lazily, mindlessly and mightily distracting litteral) English translation by Charles Francis Atkinson; it is available of Archive.org:
Oswald Spengler,
The
Decline of the West, vol. 2, Perspectives of World-History. Authorized translation with notes by
Charles Francis Atkinson. New York, 1928.
pp. 460–462
The press as a Faustian distance-tactic
Now, whereas the Classical, and supremely the Forum of Rome, drew the mass of
the people together as a visible body in order to compel it to make that use of
its rights which was desired of it, the “contemporary” English-American politics
have created through the press a force-field of world-wide intellectual
and financial tensions in which every individual unconsciously takes up the
place allotted to him, so that he must think, will, and act as a ruling
personality somewhere or other in the distance thinks fit. This is dynamics
against statics, Faustian against Apollinian world-feeling, the passion of the
third dimension against the pure sensible present. Man does not speak to man;³
the press and its associate, the electrical news-service, keep the
waking-consciousness of whole peoples and continents under a deafening drum-fire
of theses, catchwords, standpoints, scenes, feelings, day by day and year by
year, so that every Ego becomes a mere function of a monstrous intellectual
Something. Money does not pass, politically, from one hand to the other. It does
not turn itself into cards and wine. It is turned into force, and its
quantity determines the intensity of its working influence.
³ Radio broadcasting has now emerged to enable the leader to make personal conquests of the million, and no one can foretell the changes in political tactic that may ensue therefrom. — Tr.
Gunpowder and printing belong together — both discovered at the culmination of the Gothic, both arising out of Germanic technical thought — as the two grand means of Faustian distance-tactics. The Reformation in the beginning of the Late period witnessed the first flysheets and the first field-guns, the French Revolution in the beginning of the Civilization witnessed the first tempest of pamphlets of the autumn of 1788 and the first mass-fire of artillery at Valmy. But with this the printed word, produced in vast quantity and distributed over enormous areas, became an uncanny weapon in the hands of him who knew how to use it. In France it was still in 1788 a matter of expressing private convictions, but England was already past that, and deliberately seeking to produce impressions on the reader. The war of articles, flysheets, spurioiis memoirs, that was waged from London on French soil against Napoleon is the first great example. The scattered sheets of the Age of Enlightenment transformed themselves into “the Press” — a term of most significant anonymity. Now the press campaign appears as the prolongation — or the preparation — of war by other means, and in the course of the nineteenth century the strategy of outpost fights, feints, surprises, assaults, is developed to such a degree that a war may be lost ere the first shot is fired — because the Press has won it meantime.
To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object’s sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed. The liberal bourgeois mind is proud of the abolition of censorship, the last restraint, while the dictator of the press — Northcliffe! — keeps the slave-gang of his readers under the whip of his leading articles, telegrams, and pictures. Democracy has by its newspaper completely expelled the book from the mental life of the people. The book-world, with its profusion of standpoints that compelled thought to select and criticize, is now a real possession only for a few. The people reads the one paper, “its” paper, which forces itself through the front doors by millions daily, spellbinds the intellect from morning to night, drives the book into oblivion by its more engaging layout, and if one or another specimen of a book does emerge into visibility, forestalls and eliminates its possible effects by “reviewing” it.
³ Radio broadcasting has now emerged to enable the leader to make personal conquests of the million, and no one can foretell the changes in political tactic that may ensue therefrom. — Tr.
Gunpowder and printing belong together — both discovered at the culmination of the Gothic, both arising out of Germanic technical thought — as the two grand means of Faustian distance-tactics. The Reformation in the beginning of the Late period witnessed the first flysheets and the first field-guns, the French Revolution in the beginning of the Civilization witnessed the first tempest of pamphlets of the autumn of 1788 and the first mass-fire of artillery at Valmy. But with this the printed word, produced in vast quantity and distributed over enormous areas, became an uncanny weapon in the hands of him who knew how to use it. In France it was still in 1788 a matter of expressing private convictions, but England was already past that, and deliberately seeking to produce impressions on the reader. The war of articles, flysheets, spurioiis memoirs, that was waged from London on French soil against Napoleon is the first great example. The scattered sheets of the Age of Enlightenment transformed themselves into “the Press” — a term of most significant anonymity. Now the press campaign appears as the prolongation — or the preparation — of war by other means, and in the course of the nineteenth century the strategy of outpost fights, feints, surprises, assaults, is developed to such a degree that a war may be lost ere the first shot is fired — because the Press has won it meantime.
To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object’s sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed. The liberal bourgeois mind is proud of the abolition of censorship, the last restraint, while the dictator of the press — Northcliffe! — keeps the slave-gang of his readers under the whip of his leading articles, telegrams, and pictures. Democracy has by its newspaper completely expelled the book from the mental life of the people. The book-world, with its profusion of standpoints that compelled thought to select and criticize, is now a real possession only for a few. The people reads the one paper, “its” paper, which forces itself through the front doors by millions daily, spellbinds the intellect from morning to night, drives the book into oblivion by its more engaging layout, and if one or another specimen of a book does emerge into visibility, forestalls and eliminates its possible effects by “reviewing” it.
The truth is what the Press wills
What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.
A forlorn little drop may settle somewhere and collect grounds on which to
determine “the truth” — but what it obtains is just its truth. The
other, the public truth of the moment, which alone matters for effects and
successes in the fact-world, is to-day a product of the Press. What the Press
wills, is true. Its commanders evoke, transform, interchange truths. Three weeks
of press work, and the truth is acknowledged by everybody.¹ Its bases are
irrefutable for just so long as money is available to maintain them intact. The
Classical rhetoric, too, was designed for effect and not content — as
Shakespeare brilliantly demonstrates in Antony’s funeral oration — but it did
limit itself to the bodily audience and the moment. What the dynamism of our
Press wants is permanent effectiveness. It must keep men’s minds
continuously under its influence. Its arguments are overthrown as soon as the
advantage of financial power passes over to the counter-arguments and brings
these still oftener to men’s eyes and ears. At that moment the needle of public
opinion swings round to the stronger pole. Everybody convinces himself at once
of the new truth, and regards himself awakened out of error.
¹ The most striking example of this for future generations will be the “War-guilt” question, which is the question — who possesses the power, through control of press and cable in all parts of the world, to establish in world-opinion that truth which he needs for his political ends and to maintain it for so long as he needs it? An altogether different question (which only in Germany is confused with the first) is the purely scientific one — to whose interest was it that an event about which there was already a whole literature should occur in the summer of 1914 in particular?
With the political press is bound up the need of universal school-education, which in the Classical world was completely lacking. In this demand there is an element — quite unconscious — of desiring to shepherd the masses, as the object of party politics, into the newspaper’s power-area. The idealist of the early democracy regarded popular education, without arrière pensée, as enlightenment pure and simple, and even to-day one finds here and there weak heads that become enthusiastic on the Freedom of the Press — but it is precisely this that smooths the path for the coming Cæsars of the world-press. Those who have learnt to read succumb to their power, and the visionary self-determination of Late democracy issues in a thorough-going determination of the people by the powers whom the printed word obeys.
¹ The most striking example of this for future generations will be the “War-guilt” question, which is the question — who possesses the power, through control of press and cable in all parts of the world, to establish in world-opinion that truth which he needs for his political ends and to maintain it for so long as he needs it? An altogether different question (which only in Germany is confused with the first) is the purely scientific one — to whose interest was it that an event about which there was already a whole literature should occur in the summer of 1914 in particular?
With the political press is bound up the need of universal school-education, which in the Classical world was completely lacking. In this demand there is an element — quite unconscious — of desiring to shepherd the masses, as the object of party politics, into the newspaper’s power-area. The idealist of the early democracy regarded popular education, without arrière pensée, as enlightenment pure and simple, and even to-day one finds here and there weak heads that become enthusiastic on the Freedom of the Press — but it is precisely this that smooths the path for the coming Cæsars of the world-press. Those who have learnt to read succumb to their power, and the visionary self-determination of Late democracy issues in a thorough-going determination of the people by the powers whom the printed word obeys.
pp. 462–465
In the contests of to-day tactics consists in depriving the opponent of this
weapon. In the unsophisticated infancy of its power the newspaper suffered from
official censorship which the champions of tradition wielded in self-defence,
and the bourgeoisie cried out that the freedom of the spirit was in danger. Now
the multitude placidly goes its way; it has definitively won for itself this
freedom. But in the background, unseen, the new forces are fighting one another
by buying the press. Without the reader’s observing it, the paper, and
himself with it, changes masters.¹ Here also money triumphs and forces the
free spirits into its service. No tamer has his animals more under his power.
Unleash the people as reader-mass and it will storm through the streets and hurl
itself upon the target indicated, terrifying and breaking windows; a hint to the
press-staff and it will become quiet and go home. The Press to-day is an army
with carefully organized arms and branches, with journalists as officers, and
readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and
war-aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither
knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the
rôle that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought
cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares,
but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this
is what he feels as his liberty.
¹ In preparation for the World War the press of whole countries was brought financially under the command of London and Paris, and the peoples belonging to them reduced to an unqualified intellectual slavery. The more democratic the inner form of a nation is, the more readily and completely it succumbs to this danger. This is the style of the twentieth century. To-day a democrat of the old school would demand, not freedom for the press, but freedom from the press; but meantime the leaders have changed themselves into parvenus who have to secure their postion vis-à-vis the masses.
And the other side of this belated freedom — it is permitted to everyone to say what he pleases, but the Press is free to take notice of what he says or not. It can condemn any “truth” to death simply by not undertaking its communication to the world — a terrible censorship of silence, which is all the more potent in that the masses of newspaper readers are absolutely unaware that it exists.¹ Here, as ever in the birth-pangs of Cæsarism, emerges a trait of the buried springtime.² The arc of happening is about to close on itself. Just as in the concrete and steel buildings the expression-will of early Gothic once more bursts forth, but cold, controlled, and Civilized, so the iron will of the Gothic Church to power over souls reappears as — the “freedom of democracy.” The age of the “book” is flanked on either hand by that of the sermon and that of the newspaper. Books are a personal expression, sermon and newspaper obey an impersonal purpose. The years of Scholasticism afford the only example in world-history of an intellectual discipline that was applied universally and permitted no writing, no speech, no thought to come forth that contradicted the willed unity. This is spiritual dynamics. Classical, Indian, or Chinese mankind would have been horrified at this spectacle. But the same things recur, and as a necessary result of the European-American liberalism — “the despotism of freedom against tyranny,” as Robespierre put it. In lieu of stake and faggots there is the great silence. The dictature of party leaders supports itself upon that of the Press. The competitors strive by means of money to detach readers — nay, peoples — en masse from the hostile allegiance and to bring them under their own mind-training. And all that they learn in this mind-training, is what it is considered that they should know — a higher will puts together the picture of their world for them. There is no need now, as there was for Baroque princes, to impose military-service liability on the subject — one whips their souls with articles, telegrams, and pictures (Northcliffe!) until they clamour for weapons and force their leaders into a conflict to which they willed to be forced.
¹ The great Burning of the Books in China (p. 433) was innocuous by comparison.
² P. 434–
This is the end of Democracy. If in the world of truths it is proof that decides all, in that of facts it is success. Success means that one being triumphs over the others. Life has won through, and the dreams of the world-improvers have turned out to be but the tools of master-natures. In the Late Democracy, race bursts forth and either makes ideals its slaves or throws them scornfully into the pit. It was so, too, in Egyptian Thebes, in Rome, in China — but in no other Civilization has the will-to-power manifested itself in so inexorable a form as in this of ours. The thought, and consequently the action, of the mass are kept under iron pressure — for which reason, and for which reason only, men are permitted to be readers and voters — that is, in a dual slavery — while the parties become the obedient retinues of a few, and the shadow of coming Cæsarism already touches them. As the English kingship became in the nineteenth century, so parliaments will become in the twentieth, a solemn and empty pageantry. As then sceptre and crown, so now peoples’ rights are paraded for the multitude, and all the more punctiliously the less they really signify — it was for this reason that the cautious Augustus never let pass an opportunity of emphasizing old and venerated customs of Roman freedom. But the power is migrating even to-day, and correspondingly elections are degenerating for us into the farce that they were in Rome. Money organizes the process in the interests of those who possess it,¹ and election affairs become a preconcerted game that is staged as popular self-determination. If election was originally revolution in legitimate forms,² it has exhausted those forms, and what takes place is that mankind “elects” its Destiny again by the primitive methods of bloody violence when the politics of money become intolerable.
¹ Herein lies the secret of why all radical (i e., poor) parties necessarily become the tools of the money-powers, the Equites, the Bourse. Theoretically their enemy is capital, but practically they attack, not the Bourse, but Tradition on behalf of the Bourse. This is as true of to-day as it was for the Gracchan age, and in all countries. Fifty per cent of mass-leaders are procurable by money, office, or opportunities to “come in on the ground-floor,” and with them they bring their whole party.
² p. 415–
¹ In preparation for the World War the press of whole countries was brought financially under the command of London and Paris, and the peoples belonging to them reduced to an unqualified intellectual slavery. The more democratic the inner form of a nation is, the more readily and completely it succumbs to this danger. This is the style of the twentieth century. To-day a democrat of the old school would demand, not freedom for the press, but freedom from the press; but meantime the leaders have changed themselves into parvenus who have to secure their postion vis-à-vis the masses.
And the other side of this belated freedom — it is permitted to everyone to say what he pleases, but the Press is free to take notice of what he says or not. It can condemn any “truth” to death simply by not undertaking its communication to the world — a terrible censorship of silence, which is all the more potent in that the masses of newspaper readers are absolutely unaware that it exists.¹ Here, as ever in the birth-pangs of Cæsarism, emerges a trait of the buried springtime.² The arc of happening is about to close on itself. Just as in the concrete and steel buildings the expression-will of early Gothic once more bursts forth, but cold, controlled, and Civilized, so the iron will of the Gothic Church to power over souls reappears as — the “freedom of democracy.” The age of the “book” is flanked on either hand by that of the sermon and that of the newspaper. Books are a personal expression, sermon and newspaper obey an impersonal purpose. The years of Scholasticism afford the only example in world-history of an intellectual discipline that was applied universally and permitted no writing, no speech, no thought to come forth that contradicted the willed unity. This is spiritual dynamics. Classical, Indian, or Chinese mankind would have been horrified at this spectacle. But the same things recur, and as a necessary result of the European-American liberalism — “the despotism of freedom against tyranny,” as Robespierre put it. In lieu of stake and faggots there is the great silence. The dictature of party leaders supports itself upon that of the Press. The competitors strive by means of money to detach readers — nay, peoples — en masse from the hostile allegiance and to bring them under their own mind-training. And all that they learn in this mind-training, is what it is considered that they should know — a higher will puts together the picture of their world for them. There is no need now, as there was for Baroque princes, to impose military-service liability on the subject — one whips their souls with articles, telegrams, and pictures (Northcliffe!) until they clamour for weapons and force their leaders into a conflict to which they willed to be forced.
¹ The great Burning of the Books in China (p. 433) was innocuous by comparison.
² P. 434–
This is the end of Democracy. If in the world of truths it is proof that decides all, in that of facts it is success. Success means that one being triumphs over the others. Life has won through, and the dreams of the world-improvers have turned out to be but the tools of master-natures. In the Late Democracy, race bursts forth and either makes ideals its slaves or throws them scornfully into the pit. It was so, too, in Egyptian Thebes, in Rome, in China — but in no other Civilization has the will-to-power manifested itself in so inexorable a form as in this of ours. The thought, and consequently the action, of the mass are kept under iron pressure — for which reason, and for which reason only, men are permitted to be readers and voters — that is, in a dual slavery — while the parties become the obedient retinues of a few, and the shadow of coming Cæsarism already touches them. As the English kingship became in the nineteenth century, so parliaments will become in the twentieth, a solemn and empty pageantry. As then sceptre and crown, so now peoples’ rights are paraded for the multitude, and all the more punctiliously the less they really signify — it was for this reason that the cautious Augustus never let pass an opportunity of emphasizing old and venerated customs of Roman freedom. But the power is migrating even to-day, and correspondingly elections are degenerating for us into the farce that they were in Rome. Money organizes the process in the interests of those who possess it,¹ and election affairs become a preconcerted game that is staged as popular self-determination. If election was originally revolution in legitimate forms,² it has exhausted those forms, and what takes place is that mankind “elects” its Destiny again by the primitive methods of bloody violence when the politics of money become intolerable.
¹ Herein lies the secret of why all radical (i e., poor) parties necessarily become the tools of the money-powers, the Equites, the Bourse. Theoretically their enemy is capital, but practically they attack, not the Bourse, but Tradition on behalf of the Bourse. This is as true of to-day as it was for the Gracchan age, and in all countries. Fifty per cent of mass-leaders are procurable by money, office, or opportunities to “come in on the ground-floor,” and with them they bring their whole party.
² p. 415–
Money, the destroyer of both intellect and democracy
Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed
intellect. But, just because the illusion that actuality can allow itself to be
improved by the ideas of any Zeno or Marx has fled away; because men have
learned that in the realm of reality one power-will can be overthrown only
by another (for that is the great human experience of Contending States
periods); there wakes at last a deep yearning for all old and worthy tradition
that still lingers alive. Men are tired to disgust of money-economy. They hope
for salvation from somewhere or other, for some real thing of honour and
chivalry, of inward nobility, of unselfishness and duty. And now dawns the time
when the form-filled powers of the blood, which the rationalism of the
Megalopolis has suppressed, reawaken in the depths. Everything in the order of
dynastic tradition and old nobility that has saved itself up for the future,
everything that there is of high money-disdaining ethic, everything that is
intrinsically sound enough to be, in Frederick the Great’s words, the
servant — the hard-working, self-sacrificing, caring servant —
of the State, all that I have described elsewhere in one word as Socialism in
contrast to Capitalism³ — all this becomes suddenly the focus of immense
life-forces. Cæsarism grows on the soil of Democracy, but its roots
thread deeply into the underground of blood tradition. The Classical Cæsar
derived his power from the Tribunate, and his dignity and therewith his
permanency from his being the Princeps. Here too the soul of old Gothic wakens
anew. The spirit of the knightly orders overpowers plunderous Vikingism. The
mighty ones of the future may possess the earth as their private property — for
the great political form of the Culture is irremediably in ruin — but it matters
not, for, formless and limitless as their power may be, it has a task. And this
task is the unwearying care for this world as it is, which is the very opposite
of the interestedness of the money-power age, and demands high honour and
conscientiousness. But for this very reason there now sets in the final battle
between Democracy and Cæsarism, between the leading forces of dictatorial
money-economics and the purely political will-to-order of the Cæsars.
And in order to understand this final battle between Economics and
Politics, in which the latter reconquers its realm, we must now
turn our glance upon the physiognomy of economic history.
³ See Preussentum und Sozialismus, p. 41, et seq.
³ See Preussentum und Sozialismus, p. 41, et seq.
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