Rasp
Senior Editor
[From: The Odinist, no. 38 (1978)]
FOLK ECONOMICS
What is the best economic system for Western man? How can our Folk most effectively promote its own interests in the ownership, productions, distribution and utilization of material wealth?
Many of our kinfolk have a ready answer. Reacting against the obvious failures and excesses of Marxist collectivism, these stalwarts hurriedly point to 'free enterprise' as the ultimate solution to our socio-economic dilemmas. The means of production and distribution of goods and services, they opine, must be in private hands, in service to the needs of the individual, subject only to the fluctuations of the free market and never under social or state control.
But is capitalism (for which 'free enterprise', 'Laissez-faire', 'individualism', 'free society', etc. are merely euphemisms) really the answer? Does capitalism embody our values and folkways? Are capitalist ideas and institutions in fact genuine reflections of our Folk Soul?
An irrefutable reply to these querries has been provided by the great German economist Werner Sombart in his classic work, "The Jews and Modern Capitalism". Sombart’s study, originally published in 1913, details the development of various capitalist notions, processes and constructs from their beginnings in the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, and correlates this to the arrival and proliferation of the Jewish element in Europe. His conclusion is unequivocal and truly revolutionary in its implications - Capitalism is Jewish! In Sombart's own words: "... modern capitalism is nothing more or less than an expression of the Jewish spirit ...".
Sombart masterfully describes the inter-relationship between capitalism and the triad of rationalism, Judaism and liberalism, explaining how the Jews wielded 'new' ideas and economic practices to secure for themselves a place in European society. All of these theoretical and institutional concoctions, Sombart concludes, are peculiarly Jewish manifestations which 'are rooted in the blood of the race.'
Of singular relevance is the essence of the capitalistic blight which stifled the emerging European medieval economic order and which is detailed by Sombart in a crucial passage:
'Throughout the centuries the Jews championed the cause of individual liberty in economic activities against the dominating views of the time. The individual was not to be hampered by regulations of any sort, neither as to the extent of his production nor as to the strict division between one calling and another; he was to be allowed to carve out a position for himself at will, and be able to defend it against all comers. He should have the right to push forward at the expense of others, if he were so able; and the weapons in the struggle were to be cleverness, astuteness, artfulness; in economic competition there should be no other consideration but that of overstepping the law; finally, all economic activities should be regulated by the individual alone in the way he thinks best to obtain the most efficient results. In other words, the idea of free-trade and of free competition was here to the fore; the idea of economic rationalism; in short, the modern economic outlook, in the shaping of which Jews have had a great, if not a decisive influence. And why? It was they who introduced the new ideas into a world organized on a totally different basis.' (p. 153)
Surely a matchless description of what we've come to call 'free enterprise'!
But what was this 'world organized on a totally different basis'? Sombart does discuss various aspects of the medieval economic system in his book, but outside of the obscure works of some nearly forgotten scholars (e.g., Thierry, Luchaire, Sismondi, Carl Hegel, and especially Kropotkin) the whole story of the marvelous European co-operativist order overthrown by alien subversion and organized greed has yet to be told to enlighten our Folk today.
This economic order grew out of the folkways of the many tribes — Scandinavians, Teutons, Celts, Slavs, etc. - which swept across Europe in the early centuries of the Christian Era, overrunning the crumbling, decadent Roman Empire. In their wake our 'barbarian' ancestors established village communities in which the land was owned, farmed and otherwise developed in common by the village families for the good of the community as a whole. From this social practice there developed between the 5th and 14th centuries a complex and interdependent system of guilds and brotherhoods, free cities and village communes, organized along occupational and territorial lines respectively, which engaged in mutual aid in meeting economic and social needs. Production, goods, services and prices were controlled collectively by producers and community authorities for the common welfare in fulfilment of ethical and religious imperatives. Although the focal point of this system was the group, or collective (the primary economic impetus stemming from the producers' co-operative communities), the individual was not only not robbed of his incentive but actually provided with, the material and psychological environment conducive to the creative flowering of the personality - as is demonstrated by the fact that much great art and many scientific discoveries flowed from the co-operativistic free cities. The proper perspective on individual and collective responsibilities was attained, and as a result harmony, stability and justice reigned in a progressive economy.
Unfortunately, antagonistic forces, both external and internal, sealed the fact of the evolving co-operativist order. Power-hungry lords of the decaying feudal system carried out intrigue and aggression against the bases of co-operativism. A more deadly assault, however, was mounted by forces nurtured by nascent capitalism, personified by the up-and-coming royalist-statists who garnered overwhelming power by virtue of their alliance with the Christian Church and, more importantly, with the proto-capitalist financiers, merchants and purveyors. Internally, the infectious spread of capitalistic concepts (as discussed by Sombart) undermined co-operativism so that the economic focus gradually switched from the collective/communitarian to the individualistic/competitive; that is, economic decisions which had been the prerogative of community-minded, mutualistic collectivities became subject to the narrow-minded, arbitrary whims of selfish individuals and cliques.
The ancient alliance between ruthless oligarchs and culture-distorting aliens has culminated today in the phenomenon of international state-supported monopoly capitalism. This cancerous capitalist colosses has contaminated all areas of Western life in a horrendous campaign of all sorts of degenerative activities, with the aim of sustaining a ruling class of unparalleled vileness. Thus have the economies of Western nations become concessions of the giant corporations and international banks, which manipulate governments and parties at all levels to ensure a favourable climate for continued legalized thievery and condoned corruption. - International money-power also uses its political clout in maintaining its efforts to concoct a compliant society of mindless, rootless 'consumers', in fulfilment of the muddled but well subsidized and publicized dreams of crackpot liberals and would-be 'social engineers'. On the cultural scene, our traditional Western culture has been suppressed or defiled; international capitalism now packages and sells a substitute product designed to reinforce its own sickly, soul-corroding pseudo-values. In keeping its multi-faceted juggernaut going, however, capitalism has inflicted immense, possibly irreparable damage on Nature's eco-system, upsetting in mere decades delicate but essential patterns, balances and harmonies eons in the making.
Equally damaging, and perhaps in the long run even more pernicious, has been the impact of capitalist misrule of the Western Soul. The deliberately imposed 'grab-a-dollar' mentality, the infused obsession with 'progress', and the cultivation of 'me-first!' lifestyles have all produced a pervasive malaise of alienation.
Natural human relationships have been disrupted as Western man has become estranged from society, from his work, from his kinsmen, and from himself. Lost in a commercialistic desert bereft of spiritual sustenance, a contrived world held together only by mass conditioning and propaganda, Aryan man, his sense of self-respect and self-awareness under continuous attack, subconsciously rebels, rejecting the System even as he falls more deeply under its spell. Senseless crime and violence, drug abuse, alcoholism, mental illness, and sexual anarchy are but a few of the reactions against an artificial society incompatible with the innermost essence of Western man. He simply cannot survive in a System which chokes his folk-psyche in trying to turn him into a buying-consuming machine; he cannot endure for long a societal chaos that warps his individual and social nature; he must break out of it, or die!
One fact of paramount importance emerging from the consideration of the Folk's prolonged debacle is that many of our most serious difficulties are due primarily to faulty economic values and procedures. It was precisely this realization that was manifest in the revolt against capitalist injustices sparked by the great socialist founders of the 19th century. Fourier, Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Sorel, Bakunin and Kropotkin, among others, all actively sought radical solutions to the problems of capitalist exploitation and dehumanization; solutions involving common ownership, collective cooperative labour and social solidarity leading to the reconstruction of the reality and feeling of community which had been destroyed by capitalism's relentless growth.
Unfortunately, despite their good intentions and many sound observations, the early socialist crusaders did not have a complete or accurate understanding of the racial-biological components of man and society; as a result they espoused programs that wholly or in part were often contrived, utopian, or simply erroneous. An even greater tragedy was the usurpation of socialist ideas by the Marxists, who in adding their international modifications, fabricated a false but powerfully influential revolutionary dogma, which ever since has been touted as THE alternative to capitalism.
But Marxism in both theory and practice has shown itself to be philosophically, scientifically and morally bankrupt. Marxist vagaries such as historical materialism and equalitarian-environmentalism have been exploded by modern social science. And how credible an option is a self-styled 'workers movement' which had as its founder a part-time stock-market speculator, which first came to power with financial aid from international bankers, and which in its Soviet version has been kept alive through massive infusions of western capitalist aid? Moreover, the fetish for limitless economic growth via super-industrialization, mono-agricultural techniques and urban gigantism, the robotization of the work force, cultural degradation, equality propaganda and crass materialism all afflicting most contemporary Marxist societies are tending to make them indistinguishable from their capitalist counterparts.
No egocentric notions or rationalistic theories will deliver Western man from his present plight. His only salvation lies in re-structuring his economic life according to the innate impulses of his collective folk consciousness. Simply stated, this means that in economics (as in all other areas) the interests of the Folk as a whole must be served before the interests of any individual, class or group. The natural, economic order of co-operativism, which evolved in Europe as an expression of the Folk Will until disrupted by alien ideas and the treasonous megalomania of our own leadership stratum, must be reconstituted and adapted to the requirements of modern living. A new sense of community instilled in our Folk through an awakening racial consciousness must be bolstered by appropriate economic forms. The pillars of the emerging folk-community must be social ownership of resources, community-based direction of production to ensure sensible planning and a reasonable distribution of socially necessary goods and services.
These policies can become living, effective principles only within an overall framework of decentralization, whereby the unimaginative 'red tape' inflexibility of bureaucratic statism, as well as depersonalizing bigness, would be eliminated. The current role of man as a cog in a vast, soulless social machine, with his creativity stifled by meaningless jobs and his uniqueness nullified by empty existence in sprawling> anonymous cities or suburbs, must give way to the liberation of the personality through purposeful work in and for relevant, animated population groups. In concrete terms this means the rebuilding and revitalization of neighbourhoods, villages, towns, and scaled-down cities to promote their interaction with workers' and artisans' guilds, industries and other enterprises [owned and managed by the workers in conjunction with local, state or national government,] farming communes and co-ops. Administration of the economy would thus involve the working people themselves, active in social organisms at many different levels - ushering in true Folk-democracy. Concomitantly, local self-sufficiency would be encouraged at all times for all communities.
Folkish co-operativism would not pre-empt all forms of private property or private enterprise. The small business, the independent craft or service, the family farm, and various other small-scale local operations would certainly have a significant place in the Folk economy. But since all private property and enterprise ultimately have social functions, they must be regarded as social trusts, subject to community supervision.
Folk economics by its very nature must grow organically, spawning those structures and processes responsive to the specific needs of widely divergent regions, countries and nationalities. The general trend, however, must be towards the ecologically responsible application of science and technology to bring about an economy in service to the strengthening of folkish awareness, the all-round development of the individual personality, the unimpeded flourishing of the Western genius, and the unceasing improvement of the Folk.
Folk economics begins with each of us, when we strive to live, insofar as possible, apart from the mercenary madness and mores of the multi-national capitalist tumult.
There is no 'perfect system' which magically will produce perfect people and a trouble-free world. At least none has so far been invented. But Folk economics does show the way to a better system, a better way of life, a better world.
[P.W.]
FOLK ECONOMICS
What is the best economic system for Western man? How can our Folk most effectively promote its own interests in the ownership, productions, distribution and utilization of material wealth?
Many of our kinfolk have a ready answer. Reacting against the obvious failures and excesses of Marxist collectivism, these stalwarts hurriedly point to 'free enterprise' as the ultimate solution to our socio-economic dilemmas. The means of production and distribution of goods and services, they opine, must be in private hands, in service to the needs of the individual, subject only to the fluctuations of the free market and never under social or state control.
But is capitalism (for which 'free enterprise', 'Laissez-faire', 'individualism', 'free society', etc. are merely euphemisms) really the answer? Does capitalism embody our values and folkways? Are capitalist ideas and institutions in fact genuine reflections of our Folk Soul?
An irrefutable reply to these querries has been provided by the great German economist Werner Sombart in his classic work, "The Jews and Modern Capitalism". Sombart’s study, originally published in 1913, details the development of various capitalist notions, processes and constructs from their beginnings in the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, and correlates this to the arrival and proliferation of the Jewish element in Europe. His conclusion is unequivocal and truly revolutionary in its implications - Capitalism is Jewish! In Sombart's own words: "... modern capitalism is nothing more or less than an expression of the Jewish spirit ...".
Sombart masterfully describes the inter-relationship between capitalism and the triad of rationalism, Judaism and liberalism, explaining how the Jews wielded 'new' ideas and economic practices to secure for themselves a place in European society. All of these theoretical and institutional concoctions, Sombart concludes, are peculiarly Jewish manifestations which 'are rooted in the blood of the race.'
Of singular relevance is the essence of the capitalistic blight which stifled the emerging European medieval economic order and which is detailed by Sombart in a crucial passage:
'Throughout the centuries the Jews championed the cause of individual liberty in economic activities against the dominating views of the time. The individual was not to be hampered by regulations of any sort, neither as to the extent of his production nor as to the strict division between one calling and another; he was to be allowed to carve out a position for himself at will, and be able to defend it against all comers. He should have the right to push forward at the expense of others, if he were so able; and the weapons in the struggle were to be cleverness, astuteness, artfulness; in economic competition there should be no other consideration but that of overstepping the law; finally, all economic activities should be regulated by the individual alone in the way he thinks best to obtain the most efficient results. In other words, the idea of free-trade and of free competition was here to the fore; the idea of economic rationalism; in short, the modern economic outlook, in the shaping of which Jews have had a great, if not a decisive influence. And why? It was they who introduced the new ideas into a world organized on a totally different basis.' (p. 153)
Surely a matchless description of what we've come to call 'free enterprise'!
But what was this 'world organized on a totally different basis'? Sombart does discuss various aspects of the medieval economic system in his book, but outside of the obscure works of some nearly forgotten scholars (e.g., Thierry, Luchaire, Sismondi, Carl Hegel, and especially Kropotkin) the whole story of the marvelous European co-operativist order overthrown by alien subversion and organized greed has yet to be told to enlighten our Folk today.
This economic order grew out of the folkways of the many tribes — Scandinavians, Teutons, Celts, Slavs, etc. - which swept across Europe in the early centuries of the Christian Era, overrunning the crumbling, decadent Roman Empire. In their wake our 'barbarian' ancestors established village communities in which the land was owned, farmed and otherwise developed in common by the village families for the good of the community as a whole. From this social practice there developed between the 5th and 14th centuries a complex and interdependent system of guilds and brotherhoods, free cities and village communes, organized along occupational and territorial lines respectively, which engaged in mutual aid in meeting economic and social needs. Production, goods, services and prices were controlled collectively by producers and community authorities for the common welfare in fulfilment of ethical and religious imperatives. Although the focal point of this system was the group, or collective (the primary economic impetus stemming from the producers' co-operative communities), the individual was not only not robbed of his incentive but actually provided with, the material and psychological environment conducive to the creative flowering of the personality - as is demonstrated by the fact that much great art and many scientific discoveries flowed from the co-operativistic free cities. The proper perspective on individual and collective responsibilities was attained, and as a result harmony, stability and justice reigned in a progressive economy.
Unfortunately, antagonistic forces, both external and internal, sealed the fact of the evolving co-operativist order. Power-hungry lords of the decaying feudal system carried out intrigue and aggression against the bases of co-operativism. A more deadly assault, however, was mounted by forces nurtured by nascent capitalism, personified by the up-and-coming royalist-statists who garnered overwhelming power by virtue of their alliance with the Christian Church and, more importantly, with the proto-capitalist financiers, merchants and purveyors. Internally, the infectious spread of capitalistic concepts (as discussed by Sombart) undermined co-operativism so that the economic focus gradually switched from the collective/communitarian to the individualistic/competitive; that is, economic decisions which had been the prerogative of community-minded, mutualistic collectivities became subject to the narrow-minded, arbitrary whims of selfish individuals and cliques.
The ancient alliance between ruthless oligarchs and culture-distorting aliens has culminated today in the phenomenon of international state-supported monopoly capitalism. This cancerous capitalist colosses has contaminated all areas of Western life in a horrendous campaign of all sorts of degenerative activities, with the aim of sustaining a ruling class of unparalleled vileness. Thus have the economies of Western nations become concessions of the giant corporations and international banks, which manipulate governments and parties at all levels to ensure a favourable climate for continued legalized thievery and condoned corruption. - International money-power also uses its political clout in maintaining its efforts to concoct a compliant society of mindless, rootless 'consumers', in fulfilment of the muddled but well subsidized and publicized dreams of crackpot liberals and would-be 'social engineers'. On the cultural scene, our traditional Western culture has been suppressed or defiled; international capitalism now packages and sells a substitute product designed to reinforce its own sickly, soul-corroding pseudo-values. In keeping its multi-faceted juggernaut going, however, capitalism has inflicted immense, possibly irreparable damage on Nature's eco-system, upsetting in mere decades delicate but essential patterns, balances and harmonies eons in the making.
Equally damaging, and perhaps in the long run even more pernicious, has been the impact of capitalist misrule of the Western Soul. The deliberately imposed 'grab-a-dollar' mentality, the infused obsession with 'progress', and the cultivation of 'me-first!' lifestyles have all produced a pervasive malaise of alienation.
Natural human relationships have been disrupted as Western man has become estranged from society, from his work, from his kinsmen, and from himself. Lost in a commercialistic desert bereft of spiritual sustenance, a contrived world held together only by mass conditioning and propaganda, Aryan man, his sense of self-respect and self-awareness under continuous attack, subconsciously rebels, rejecting the System even as he falls more deeply under its spell. Senseless crime and violence, drug abuse, alcoholism, mental illness, and sexual anarchy are but a few of the reactions against an artificial society incompatible with the innermost essence of Western man. He simply cannot survive in a System which chokes his folk-psyche in trying to turn him into a buying-consuming machine; he cannot endure for long a societal chaos that warps his individual and social nature; he must break out of it, or die!
One fact of paramount importance emerging from the consideration of the Folk's prolonged debacle is that many of our most serious difficulties are due primarily to faulty economic values and procedures. It was precisely this realization that was manifest in the revolt against capitalist injustices sparked by the great socialist founders of the 19th century. Fourier, Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Sorel, Bakunin and Kropotkin, among others, all actively sought radical solutions to the problems of capitalist exploitation and dehumanization; solutions involving common ownership, collective cooperative labour and social solidarity leading to the reconstruction of the reality and feeling of community which had been destroyed by capitalism's relentless growth.
Unfortunately, despite their good intentions and many sound observations, the early socialist crusaders did not have a complete or accurate understanding of the racial-biological components of man and society; as a result they espoused programs that wholly or in part were often contrived, utopian, or simply erroneous. An even greater tragedy was the usurpation of socialist ideas by the Marxists, who in adding their international modifications, fabricated a false but powerfully influential revolutionary dogma, which ever since has been touted as THE alternative to capitalism.
But Marxism in both theory and practice has shown itself to be philosophically, scientifically and morally bankrupt. Marxist vagaries such as historical materialism and equalitarian-environmentalism have been exploded by modern social science. And how credible an option is a self-styled 'workers movement' which had as its founder a part-time stock-market speculator, which first came to power with financial aid from international bankers, and which in its Soviet version has been kept alive through massive infusions of western capitalist aid? Moreover, the fetish for limitless economic growth via super-industrialization, mono-agricultural techniques and urban gigantism, the robotization of the work force, cultural degradation, equality propaganda and crass materialism all afflicting most contemporary Marxist societies are tending to make them indistinguishable from their capitalist counterparts.
No egocentric notions or rationalistic theories will deliver Western man from his present plight. His only salvation lies in re-structuring his economic life according to the innate impulses of his collective folk consciousness. Simply stated, this means that in economics (as in all other areas) the interests of the Folk as a whole must be served before the interests of any individual, class or group. The natural, economic order of co-operativism, which evolved in Europe as an expression of the Folk Will until disrupted by alien ideas and the treasonous megalomania of our own leadership stratum, must be reconstituted and adapted to the requirements of modern living. A new sense of community instilled in our Folk through an awakening racial consciousness must be bolstered by appropriate economic forms. The pillars of the emerging folk-community must be social ownership of resources, community-based direction of production to ensure sensible planning and a reasonable distribution of socially necessary goods and services.
These policies can become living, effective principles only within an overall framework of decentralization, whereby the unimaginative 'red tape' inflexibility of bureaucratic statism, as well as depersonalizing bigness, would be eliminated. The current role of man as a cog in a vast, soulless social machine, with his creativity stifled by meaningless jobs and his uniqueness nullified by empty existence in sprawling> anonymous cities or suburbs, must give way to the liberation of the personality through purposeful work in and for relevant, animated population groups. In concrete terms this means the rebuilding and revitalization of neighbourhoods, villages, towns, and scaled-down cities to promote their interaction with workers' and artisans' guilds, industries and other enterprises [owned and managed by the workers in conjunction with local, state or national government,] farming communes and co-ops. Administration of the economy would thus involve the working people themselves, active in social organisms at many different levels - ushering in true Folk-democracy. Concomitantly, local self-sufficiency would be encouraged at all times for all communities.
Folkish co-operativism would not pre-empt all forms of private property or private enterprise. The small business, the independent craft or service, the family farm, and various other small-scale local operations would certainly have a significant place in the Folk economy. But since all private property and enterprise ultimately have social functions, they must be regarded as social trusts, subject to community supervision.
Folk economics by its very nature must grow organically, spawning those structures and processes responsive to the specific needs of widely divergent regions, countries and nationalities. The general trend, however, must be towards the ecologically responsible application of science and technology to bring about an economy in service to the strengthening of folkish awareness, the all-round development of the individual personality, the unimpeded flourishing of the Western genius, and the unceasing improvement of the Folk.
Folk economics begins with each of us, when we strive to live, insofar as possible, apart from the mercenary madness and mores of the multi-national capitalist tumult.
There is no 'perfect system' which magically will produce perfect people and a trouble-free world. At least none has so far been invented. But Folk economics does show the way to a better system, a better way of life, a better world.
[P.W.]