Patriarchalism

( Originally Published 1919 )

THE most vigorous and persistent race in Europe is the Jewish, which has forced its God and its domestic institutions upon the subtler and more distracted peoples. There is no Jewish Empire unless the world, through the Rothschilds, the Sassoons, the Cassels, the Speyers, be regarded as such and no Jewish hegemony. Rather do the Jews desire that which they cannot achieve, absorption into the other races and a share in that beauty which those races pursue. The Jews are weary, it seems, of the curse upon Ahasuerus. They buy the treasures of Greece and Rome, but they cannot buy the civilising principle. Nowhere can they take root, nowhere can they draw sustenance from humanity as other races do who build and destroy and build again. The Jew clings to his God and his family, and dares not look beyond them. He amasses riches to the glory of his God and the splendour of his family, but remains a captive in Babylon. He cannot desert the patriarchal principle. His world is a pyramid built up to Jehovah, and the father or patriarch, as the nearest to Jehovah, is invested with authority. It may be that the Jews, having a strong social sense, cling to this arrangement, none other being yet forthcoming, and it may be that to it they owe the advantages they enjoy in the greedy scramble which is accepted as life in Europe; but it is certain that they also owe to it their unalterable squalor and their hunger for beauty. With a mournful envy they regard the adventurousness of other races, but their traditions are too strong for them, and they remain Jews, when their de-sire is to be Europeans. A pathetic desire this, for there are as yet no Europeans, no European tradition, only a turbulent and rather hectic attempt to assert that there is one. The Jew in his financial outlook is European, but in other matters he accepts outwardly the tradition of the community to which he is attached, while inwardly he remains solemnly faithful to Jehovah truly religious, because religion is his life, justifying even such plunder as he indulges in as being done at the expense of the irreligious.

Religion consists in a man's belief, not in what he believes. The Jew believes in his family and his God, and therefore has a direct aim set for his activities. In what does the modem European believe? Goethe, Wagner, Beethoven have urged him to believe in Europe, but their insistence has been in vain. The Jews have given Europe a certain financial structure, but there their contribution ends, because the Europeans cannot yet be European. Unlike the Jews, they are in the mass unaware of and insensible to the beauty that Europe has created. Wars of religion, giving place to wars of patriotism, have robbed them of their capacity for brotherhood, so that even socialism is in the different countries tainted with nationalism. The wars of Europe have given the Jews the opportunity, which they have not been slow to use, of building up the financial structure which has enabled the Europeans, in spite of their distractions, to dominate the earth ; but that domination stops short at finance, because the Jews have nothing else to contribute, their God and their conception of the family being rejected in favour of a wider individualism, and the principle of spiritual equality growing in acceptance with the gradual emancipation of women. The result is, that while the Jews are in a position to dominate Europe, they have not the mentality necessary, and can only manipulate Europe's and the world's finances. That is an essential, but at the same time a subordinate, element in government, and it is forced into undue pre-dominance by this unfortunate impasse. Jewish finance and in all its operations it reveals its origin pulls in one direction, the evolution of Europe in another. The Jews perhaps more than any other people know the meaning of the social contract, but their interpretation is contrary to the sense in which it is desired by other men. The Jews by their tradition are driven to use their control of finance to establish patriarchalism, while the Europeans de-sire their society to promote liberty; and the two aims are incompatible. As Europe must live, the inhabitants of the unhappy Continent are constrained to accept a patriarchal financial system, impressing itself on all their activities, which are directed to the abolition of patriarchalism. There can be no doubt which of these two forces will in the long run win, but until the Europeans become European it will be a very long run.

This conflict is very much deeper than that between Capital and Labour, which indeed arises out of it. In Great Britain, like so much else, it is, or has been, covered up, as the British' owe a great deal of their ascendancy to their skill in confusing issues, and also to their having assimilated the Jewish financial system as a powerful aid and natural ally of their own patriarchal system of land tenure. The result has been that, during the stress of the war, the slowly built up attempts at democracy have given way and a patriarchal form of government has been established, although the enthusiasm of the people has been for liberty and democracy. Now, patriarchalism can only persist by the imposition of discipline. In old days that was obtained through a religion promising rewards or threatening punishment hereafter; but, science having destroyed the efficacy of religion, discipline can now only be imposed by conscription or enforced obedience to a power that has no authority. The existing form of government depends upon conscription, which will therefore remain until the existing form of government is altered, and that cannot be until the financial system is changed.

Masses of men in revolt rarely know precisely against what they are in rebellion. They are roused partly by their physical discomfort, but more by the gnawing discontent of their own helplessness. The pugnacity of man is in the long run directed against his own shadow.

In the European countries the prevalent anti-Semitism is not altogether directed by Catholic prejudice. It is to a great extent an instinctive revolt against the Jewish financial system, and as that has its centre in Lon-don they cannot attain it and are exasperated by their own futility; and the more easily, therefore, is their animosity diverted into the service of nationalism, by which since the French Revolution patriarchal institutions have been able to preserve themselves until, through all the shocks and alarms of war, they have crystallised out into High Finance, whose operations are verily those of a God of Battles, and bear a terrible resemblance to the actions of Jehovah as recorded in the Old Testament. But the funds manipulated by High Finance are composed of the doles extracted from the labours of the workers of the world, who, as education spreads among them, want to know why they should be enslaved by their work. They are enslaved because the power they create is in accordance with ideas which that power has rendered inadequate, ideas which, moreover, have been proved to be false by the world's brain workers. However, as the machinery of government was evolved from those ideas and the machinery remains unaltered, the ideas remain unchanged. No reform is ever effected until the machinery by which an abuse or an anachronism is maintained breaks down, and those reformers who look for a sudden enlightened upheaval as the result of their eloquence are doomed to disappointment. Society is a matter of machinery, and is beneficial or injurious to humanity in accordance with the ideas by which that machinery is controlled. Patriarchal ideas were all very well when they were in accordance with humanity's aspiration for a Heaven beyond the grave, but since humanity's aspiration is for liberty this side death, the ideas governing the machinery of society must be brought into harmony with it. The idea in an old man's head cannot be altered, and this is a matter for youth alive to, and thrilling with, the new consciousness that has come into humanity. The old men cling to High Finance and its patriarchalism, and cannot understand the meaning of the young men and their demand for change. To the old men High Finance has been an end in itself, like all things patriarchal, while the young men demand that it shall be a means to the gradual fulfilment of their aspiration. The old men are astonished: they have toiled and schemed and planned and plotted, and have woven a web from whose embrace the young men are intent upon escaping. The old men say: "You must produce more"; the young men say: "It is useless to produce anything until the tyranny of High Finance is broken." At this point in the argument the old men lose their tempers, because they have been unaware of any tyranny, and they cannot realise that the young men are speaking not only for their generation but also for the soul of humanity. The tragedy through which they have passed has made them prophetic. In them sounds again the prophecy voiced by Walt Whitman after the American tragedy of the last century. They demand that human society shall be based sob idly upon the earth, and the right of all men to extract sufficient food from it, and no longer be kept perilously dependent upon a hypothesis, for patriarchalism is no more. It rests entirely upon the ill founded assumption that a man in power is ex officio hallowed with authority from above. If we have learned anything from science, it is that natural forces are more subtle than the human mind can possibly conceive, and that if there be a divine will it operates through the will of all species and all living things. Before this was or could be realised, the human capacity for illusion being what it is, patriarchalism was a sufficiently rough-and-ready means of introducing order into the affairs of communities; but as these grew from hundreds into thousands, and from thousands into millions, the means have lost their efficacy. The power created by enormous populations could no longer be left unchecked in the hands of the obvious persons, and accordingly committees were appointed to control them, though still no means was found to restrain the centralisation of power. Vast empires grew, and with them the control of millions of lives passed into the hands of a few men; but as power increased authority waned, and for the lack of it power passed from the ruling castes to the classes who lent them the money with which to rule, so that government in the modern world has become a matter of usury. There is a class which lends, and a class which works to pay the interest on money lent, and there is a small class of professional money-lenders who take a large commission on all loans, and it is with these that power rests. Now, while the working class deals for the most part in cash transactions, the others live by credit, and, as every one knows from his own experience, credit is a far more supple instrument of currency than cash. The working classes of the world have no credit, and are therefore at the mercy of those classes who have it; and these classes use it patriarchally that is to say, tyrannically for the aggrandisement which is a legacy from Jehovah, whose instructions to Abraham have remained the guiding principle in human affairs in spite of all protest from reformers and religious teachers and non-conformist sects. The aggrandisement which the poor have been denied in their own lives they have been suffered to enjoy as members now of a Church, now of a nation, but always they have had to pay very dearly for it, until at last they are in the mood to pay no more.

With this mood the young men of to-day are in entire sympathy, while the old wen cannot understand it, throw up their hands, and imagine that the universe is crashing about their ears. What is crashing is the system of usury upon which society has too long depended, and with it go the usurers, whose power of granting or withholding credit must in the future be administered with authority, if only to put it at its lowest to check the waste, peculation and corruption without which those who cherish patriarchal power cannot maintain it. Even more than upon the waste incurred in armaments does such power depend upon waste in bribery, multiplication of offices, contracting and sub-contracting, political manipulation, and administrative duplication, by which a ruling caste can maintain its inaccessibility to criticism and democratic pressure. As the basis of the ruling caste in modern communities has changed from a birth to a money qualification, and as with that change the old patriarchal sanction has disappeared, parliamentary institutions have become a bulwark between the ruling caste and the proletariat, and, so easy has it become, in the absence of any sanction, to manipulate those institutions, that the extension of the franchise serves but to strengthen the bulwark.

Suppose, for a moment, that, as seems probable, a revolution takes place in Great Britain, as the result of which the joint-stock company system becomes obsolete and industries are nationalised. The ruling caste of shareholders will be replaced by a ruling caste of officials, who will not, be easily distinguishable from the persons they have supplanted. A government dominated by Trade Union machinery would not be very different from a government dominated by capitalistic machinery, except in so far as the system of delegation is an advance on representation. There would still remain the patriarchal idea that people must do as they are told to do, and that governments exist for the purpose of giving orders and are inherently disciplinary. Hence the curious theory which prevails in Great Britain that a government cannot say "Yes" or "No" with-out reference to a commission, which shall, after due deliberation, report; and hence, too, the equally curious necessity for talking one language in the constituencies, another in the House of Commons. The notion is that a government being given power must use it, wisely or unwisely, or appear weak; whereas, in truth, the desire of plain men is that governments shall govern as little as possible. The nationalisation of industries does not mean that they shall be conducted by government departments, but that government departments shall be trustees to see that they are economically administered, with a due regard for what is financially possible and for the best interests of all concerned. The humble workers in industries like mining, the railways, and the docks appeal to government for nationalisation because without a trustee they have found themselves in a hopeless position. The patriarchalism of Private Enterprise could not give them the wealth it promised, and they ask that the system shall be amended.

If a man works hard as a producer and at the end of a week finds that he has not been able to supply his needs as a consumer, he knows perfectly well, without any theory of economics, that there is waste somewhere, and he wants it corrected. As an individual he can do nothing, but in combination with the other workers in his trade, all in the same plight, he can become articulate; and if his grievance re-mains unheard, he can withhold his labour until it is considered and if possible redressed. At the other end of the scale, if a man did precious little for a year and at the end of that time found himself richer by many thousands of pounds, he would, if he had a living conscience, recognise that he was profiting by economic injustice, and he would associate his strange case with the complaints reaching him from all sides. He would agree that here was a case for the modification of law by equity. He might even, if his conscience was very acute, realise that he was living under a system that made him in all innocence an offender against humanity. On the other hand, if he had no conscience, he would tell himself that the workers depended for their pittance upon the profitable investment of his thousands, write to his stockbroker, purchase shares in an oil-field or a palm-oil region, and expect the proletariat to be enthusiastic over, even to lay down their lives for, the extension and development of the Empire. . . . What the workers realise, and what the capitalist does not see, is that the last of the patriarchs, those who dominated the nineteenth century, were in an unnecessary hurry, that they put an intolerable strain upon their machinery and the men who tended it, and that, at last, they forced young men out to defend a system that had collapsed. The patriarchal or capitalistic system has not been broken by the European War. It had become antiquated a decade be-fore that. Its knell was written by George Gissing in the 'nineties. The great Russians surveyed European civilisation with foreboding, knowing full well that their own people could never enter it until it had shaken off its patriarchal character. The Russians, ready to break through the evils of feudalism and serfdom, could not accept the slavery of industrialism with its triumph of mediocrity. The moral foundations of Europe had to be broken up before a revolutionary spirit could stir again in its civilisation. To avert the coming of the new age the patriarchs made war. They have brought on a premature birth, and plunged Europe into the throes of revolution before it was due, in the hope that their traditions may gain a new lease of life from the resulting confusion. It is the method of jealousy, and patriarchal institutions derive their power, and also their stability, from the smouldering passion of the jealousy with which the old regard the young. That endures from generation to generation, and ever the young of heart labour to overtake it and stamp it out; but it smoulders on beneath the surface, flares up, and destroys in a moment what years have gone to make, raises impassable barriers of heat, which yet are passed, though too much is spent in the effort; so that what is done falls far short of the dream. Old men in their jealousy contrive that the ways of life shall be so intricate that by the time a man has achieved the position and the experience to enable him to give the best that is in him, he too shall be worn and bitter and fearful of the young men coming after him. That is the beginning of patriarchalism, and Jehovah is made in the likeness of an old man whose thoughts and deeds spring from jealousy.

Two thousand years ago this time-hallowed jealousy was corrected by the saying, "God is love," and those two thousand years have been spent in a bloody anguish in the attempt to wrest the powers of the earth from the God of Jealousy for the God of Love. Jealousy in that anguish has been sweated out of the individual into the family, out of the family into the nation, and out of the nations into—what? Into rival Leagues of Nations, or is it shaken off for ever? . . . Russia has repudiated the patriarchs. It remains to be seen whether Labour in industrial civilisation will be strong enough to follow that example. Russia has had in Tolstoi, Dostoieffsky and Tschekov great preachers of love. The Western World has had Whitman, Gissing, Mark Rutherford, Romain Rolland, and, above all, César Franck. These, surely, are enough to give the inspiration that is needed in the crucial trial between jealousy and love, between evil and good, between the spirit that takes and gives nothing and the spirit that takes in giving. The last stronghold of that patriarchalism which grows out of jealousy is, by the irony which makes life even at its most tragic so charming, Great Britain, the "home of free-dom." It is in Great Britain, the only-begetter of industrialism, that battle is joined, and it is in Great Britain that the battle will be won.