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Synthetic Syntheses
Sam Francis's most enduring, as well as trenchant,
political insight may have been his perception of what he caustically
described as "the unique achievement of the political genius of the
modern era." Francis dubbed this "anarcho-tyranny"-"a kind of Hegelian
synthesis of two opposites," he explained, in which the failure of the
state to enforce protective law is coupled with the enforcement of
oppressive law by the state to tyrannical ends. Under anarcho-tyranny,
the underclass-rampaging blacks, illegal aliens invading from south of
the border-is by and large tolerated or ignored in its behavior, while
the law-abiding middle classes and that part of the upper class that
is not directly incorporated into the ruling elite is criminalized
through unfair taxation, social engineering, anti-gun legislation,
"hate crime" statutes, and other forms of legislative and judicial
harassment. Anarcho-tyranny is the strategy by which a
dictatorially-minded ruling class exploits the lower orders for the
purpose of grinding the middling majority between upper and nether
millstones. Its primary and essential aim is the concentration of
political and economic control exclusively in the hands of the
governing elite and its apparatchiks-exactly in the manner, and to the
same purpose, that the Communist Party gained absolute control of the
Soviet Union in the 1920s. Anarcho-tyranny is about the consolidation
and expansion of raw power, not the realization of an
ideological vision-just as American capitalism in its postmodern form
is concerned, not with the patriotic aim of maximizing the position of
the United States internationally, or the ideological one of spreading
democratic capitalism throughout the world, but rather the creation of
a wealth-generating dynamo destined to be, not solely the wonder, but
the central defining reality, of the universe.
Anarcho-tyranny is paralled by a twin synthesis
whose aim is indeed ideological, and to which power, being
instrumental, is secondary. This synthesis might be called
libertine-Puritanism, or Puritan-libertinism: the "creative"
juxtaposition of unbridled sexuality with a bluenose condemnation of
liquor, tobacco, rich food, red meat, overweight, physical unfitness,
blood sports, guns, traditional male behavior (other than extramarital
sex), combined with an energetic enthusiasm for genetic engineering
and cloning. Libertine-Puritanism is both eager for and demanding of
power, as a means for realizing its vision of the new moral order,
detached from traditional morality founded in religious law, it quite
rightly recognizes as the prerequisite for the creation of the New Man
fit to dwell in a recreated-and strictly regimented--world. Toward its
achievement, the ethic of entirely unregimented freedom-below-the-belt
is an invaluable and indeed indispensable tool. As for the end itself,
which is nothing less than the creation of Heaven on Earth in which
all mankind will be as physically perfect as show animals and
long-lived as gods, power is handy as well. In Brave New World,
Huxley cedes the future more to libertine-Puritanism than to anarcho-tyranny.
(There is plenty of soft tyranny in his New World, but no anarchy of
the political sort at all; the same is true of Orwell's dystopia,
though in all other respects Huxley's prophetic vision differed from,
and was truer than, that of 1984.) In the post-Christian West,
it may be that the pseudo-religious aspect of libertine-Puritanism
makes it more dangerous-because more seductive-than anarcho-tyranny,
at least in the long run. From the vantage point of the United States
of America in the year 2005, a tax rebellion or a popular movement
against underclass crime and illegal immigration seems a good deal
more likely than a crusade to outlaw divorce, or the destruction of
embryos for stem-cell research, does.
Synthesis in politics, as in philosophy, is very
often a sign that someone is attempting to get away with dishonesty
for a purpose, or purposes, best known to himself. Mixed, or
republican, government is not the result of a "synthesis" of democracy
and monarchy, or totalitarianism and anarchy; any more than
Unitarianism is a "synthesis" of Judaism and Christianity. Usually,
the dishonesty in attempting to reconcile contradictions amounts to
trying to have one big thing both ways, for ends as dishonest and
self-serving as the means. All too often, moreover, syntheses are
constructed from the modern passion for "creativity," a word that
itself developed within the Marxist context. As Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) has written, "Creativity means that
in a universe that in itself is meaningless and came into existence
through blind evolution, man can creatively fashion a better world."
("It may be," he adds, "that in such visions a cry for freedom is to
be heard, a cry that in a world totally in control of technology
becomes a cry for help.") Finally, contradictory combinations
unnaturally induced, in human affairs as in nature, have a way of
producing catastrophic results--as was demonstrated sixty years ago
last July, on the Jornada del Muerto in southern New Mexico at a place
called Trinity.
Those who do not work with God in history end up
working against him. This appears to be an historical (as well as
theological) axiom that admits, to my knowledge, of absolutely no
exception. Man bends toward transcendence as a plant grows toward the
sun. And if he will not achieve transcendence through God, he is
impelled to attempt to achieve it through himself. This has been the
modern project, lasting already for half a millenium at least, and
showing few signs at present of abating, but rather the opposite. Man
is impelled also by the desire for achievement-paradoxically achieved
through work, which is the curse of Adam. And he is never content with
achievement solely, but desires and works to perfect that achievement
as well. Anarcho-tyranny and libertine-Puritanism both strive to
accomplish tyranny. But the tyranny they envision is not the tyranny
of the present, just as the economic system envisioned by Wall Street,
London City, Frankfurt, and Shanghai is not the present-day system,
but the radically-almost unimaginably-enchanced one of tomorrow. In
modern parlance and understanding, "changed," of course, means
"improved." (Detroit works to build something superior, in efficiency
and everything else, to last year's Ford.) Financiers today are at
work to construct an economy that quite simply will not be of this
world, which is to say our world--the world in which we live
today. Similary, the architects of anarcho-tyranny are hard at work
planning a tyranny that is not of this world, while
libertine-Puritanism has in mind a people that are not of this world
and, finally, a world that is not of this world.
Superficially, it might appear that anarcho-tyranny
and libertine-Puritanism have divergent, actually opposed, ends. What
the two share, however, is a principal means toward those ends. And it
is at that point, concerning this matter of means, that anarcho-tyranny
and libertine-Puritanism intersect, libertinism being only another
word for sexual anarchy ( the sole anarchic expression to command
popular enthusiasm in the middle-class suburbs and the ghettos).
Libertinism.anarchy.chaos -- an ancient word,
charged with Grecian nobility, force, and truth:
Keep order in space,
And order in time,
For disorder is chaos,
And chaos is crime.
For the England in which this bit of anonymous
verse was written, chaos was the greatest evil imaginable-quite
literally, the work of the Devil. For the would-be synthesizers, it is
simply the step in planning at which the creative destruction
necessary to the fulfillment of their ambitions occurs. Out of
confusion, destruction, chaos a new world will be built, constructed
and consecrated to their own specifications and their particular
purposes.
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public flame nor private dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! Thy dread empire Chaos is restor'd,
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all.
If all goes according to plan, the curtain will
remain down only for so long as is necessary for the dismantlement of
the original set and the construction of its replacement to be
accomplished. And when the curtain rises again, it will be the hand of
the Tyrant-not the Anarch--that lifts it. If the world breaks toward
chaos at present, chaos is unlikely to prove long-lasting. Insofar as
the world, meaning the Western world, ever was "free," the age of
freedom is rapidly reaching its end. Tyranny, it seems, is set to
increase; anarchy to decrease-after, like St. John the Baptist, it has
fulfilled its purpose, which is to prepare the way for tyranny by
making tyranny nearly inevitable.
Orwell warned that, when words lose their meaning,
men lose their freedom. In these days, however, the misuse and abuse
of language, though significant, is not the chief weapon of advancing
tyranny. Propaganda is rife-in fact, it is everything, or nearly
so-but the main danger is not really Newspeak. It is conceptual
structures, not word structures. Intellectuals create historical
syntheses, not active people-who, in so far as these syntheses amount
to an accurate description of the world, simply act them out. That is
not to say that certain of these people are unaware of what they are
up to, where they are going, and where they intend to take the world,
if they can. As a general rule, a society in contradiction of itself
to the degree that ours is, and at the elevated social and political
levels at which fundamental contradictions are recognizable, is not
just a troubled society, it is a society in which trouble is being
actively contemplated. And so is also a devious and deceitful
society-one based on lies, in which lying has become its modus
vivendi in its internal as well as in its external relations.
Worst, it lies to itself about its own nature-what it is today, and
what it has in mind to become tomorrow.
Societies, nations, like individuals, whose chief
subject of conversation is themselves, are usually and rightly
suspect. And what they have to say about themselves is never to be
trusted, it being a pretty certain rule of thumb that what they say
of themselves is the exact opposite of the truth about them.
Protected (as they think) by the collective "we" from the appearance
and charge of egotism, societies are far more shameless in conferring
lavish praise on themselves than individuals typically are-on those
occasions, that is, when individuals are speaking for themselves,
individually. It is rare to hear a person describe himself
forthrightly as "compassionate" or "loving," though I once heard a man
declare, to my discomfort, that he was "pious." (The truly odd thing
in this instance is, I'd have felt compelled to agree with him, if
asked directly for my corroberation.) But a compassionate society does
not make the abortion of its children a sacrament nor a loving one
offer no-fault divorce or divorce-on-demand, anymore than a Christian
society legalizes adultery and sodomy and makes Madonna a millionaire.
Similarly, a "free" society does not promote the growth of tyranny at
the highest levels, nor a "country of laws" tolerate anarchy at the
lowest ones. (Only a schizoid, or, as we have seen, dishonest country
is comfortable with a synthesis of the two.) "Decent" societies do not
encourage libertinism either from philosophical conviction or for
reasons of political advantage, while "free" and "democratic" ones do
not agitate for the totalitarian regimentation demanded by a
Puritananical regime that would have appalled historical Puritanism by
its antiseptic plasticity as much as by its sexual license and
godlessness. As for democracy-democratic nations do not assume
responsibility for whipping authoritarian societies into some sort of
weird approximation of themselves, a thing none of the great empires
of history presumed-or cared-to do.
Organic development, not Hegelian synthesis, is
what characterizes free societies, true societies, real
societies, as distinguished from incoherent ersatz ones, such as the
United States has grown into over the past century and a half. If
anarcho-tyranny and libertine-Puritanism make no sense, that is
because the nation that developed them fails to make sense, as well. |
