Fredy Perlman Archive
Written: 1961.
Source: Text from RevoltLib.com.
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
[1] Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha (translation by J. M. Cohen)
[2] The Tevipest.
[3] Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, p. 213.
[4] Quoted in R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, p. 74. and p. 90
[5] Quoted in George H. Sabine, Political Theory, p. 361.
[6] See Sabine, History, p 490f.
[7] This, and the following quotations, are from Thomas More, Utopia First Book.
[8] This, and the following, quotations are from Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (translation by Luigi Ricci, revised by E.R.P. Vincent).
[9] This, and the next two quotations, from More, Utopia.
[10] Quoted in Sabine, p. 492.
[11] Quoted i n Ibid., p. 491.
[12] Babeuf quoted this statement of the French philosopher Mably to his executioners; quoted in Edmund Wilson, To The Finland Station; A Study in the Writing and Acting of History, p.75.
[13] Paraphrased in Wilson, op. cit., p. 75.
[14] Paraphrased in Ibid., p. 74.
[15] Quoted in Sabine, History, p. 494.
[16] Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare.
[17] Twelfth Night.
[18] Quoted in Wilson, op. cit., p. 72.
[19] Quoted in Ibid., p. 77.
[20] Declaration of Independence.
[21] More, Utopia.
[22] Babeuf; quoted in Wilson, To The Finland Station, p. 75.
[23] John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia, An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States (1950 edition of Yale University Press, New Haven), p. 62, Hereafter cited as “‘Inquiry.”
[24] Charles A. Beard, An Fxonomic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, first published in 1913 (I have used the edition published by The Macmillan Company in 1954), hereafter cited as “Constitution and Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, first published in 1915 (1 have used the edition published by The Macmillan Company in 1952), hereafter cited as Jeffersonian Democracy.”
[25] James Madison; quoted by Beard in Constitution, p. 15.
[26] John Adams; quoted by Beard in Jeffersonian Democracy, p 303.
[27] Quoted in Ibid., p. 320.
[28] Quoted in Ibid.
[29] Quoted in Ibid., p. 306 and p. 304.
[30] John Taylor, Inquiry, p. 284.
[31] Ibid., p. 504.
[32] Adams; quoted by Beard in Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 304.
[33] Taylor, Inquiry, p. 65.
[34] More, Utopia.
[35] Madison; quoted by Beard in Constitution, p. 15.
[36] John Adams; quoted by Beard in Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 321.
[37] Adams; quoted in Ibid., p. 304–305.
[38] Taylor, Inquiry, p. 243.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, p. 87.
[41] Ibid., p. 89.
[42] Taylor, Inquiry, p. 245.
[43] Ibid., p. 62.
[44] Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, p. 30.
[45] Ibid., p. 15.
[46] Ibid., p. 67–68.
[47] See Beard, Constitution, p. 35.
[48] From the Introduction to The Constitution of the United States (edited with notes and charts by William H. Barnes), Barnes and Noble, Inc., New York, 1951.
[49] Charles Beard, Constitution, p. 324.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid., p. 144.
[52] Alexander Hamilton; quoted in Ibid., p. 199.
[53] Quoted in Heard, Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 288.
[54] Alexander Hamilton; quoted in Ibid.
[55] See Beard’s Economic Interpretation of the Cotistitution for a detailed catalog of the interests, wealth, and views of the members of the Philadelphia Convention.
[56] Ibid., p. 324.
[57] The Massachusetts Gazette of October 26, 1787; quoted in Ibid., p. 302.
[58] John Marshall, in Life of Washington-, quoted in Ibid. d. 299
[59] Beard, Ibid., p. 325.
[60] Ibid., p. 37.
[61] Beard, Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 122.
[62] John Taylor; quoted by Beard in Ibid., p. 202.
[63] Taylor; quoted in Ibid., p. 200.
[64] Congressman Jackson of Georgia, Annals of Congress Vol II- Quoted hv Beard in Ibid., p. 148–9. ’M y
[65] John Taylor, Inquiry, p. 68.
[66] Jefferson to Washington, September 2, 1792; quoted by Beard in Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 110.
[67] Quoted in Ibid., p. 111.
[68] Quoted in Ibid., p. 153.
[69] Jackson of Georgia; quoted in Ibid., p. 137.
[70] Quoted in Ibid., p. 211, footnote.
[71] John D. Hicks, A Short History of American Democracy, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1946, p. 132–3.
[72] John Taylor, Inquiry, p. 65–6.
[73] Beard, Jeffersoniati Democracy, p. 323.
[74] Ibid., p. 415, footnote. Beard points out, however, that Jefferson’s pronouncements did not always have the virtue of consistency, as on another occasion Jefferson endorsed John Adams’ Defense of the American Constitutions.
[75] Taylor has also been called “the most fruitful of Republican intellects.” Both tides are mentioned by Roy Franklin Nichols in his Introduction to the Yale University Press edition of Taylor’s Inquiry. (Incidentally, for those readers who are interested in correlating the page references I give in the Inquiry with those cited by Beard, it will be indispensable to know that Beard quoted from the original edition of Taylor’s work, whereas I contented myself with a more recent edition, published by Yale University Press, New Haven, in 1950. The edition Beard used has 636 pages, whereas the one I used has only 562 pages, which include a 29 page Introduction by Nichols, a professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.)
[76] Taylor, Inquiry, pp. 68–9.
[77] Ibid., pp. 82–3.
[78] Ibid., pp. 59–60.
[79] Ibid., p. 73.
[80] Ibid., p. 66.
[81] Ibid.
[82] Ibid., p. 67.
[83] Ibid., pp. 67–8.
[84] Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, p. 23.
[85] Ibid., pp. 29–30.
[86] Jefferson to Dupont de Nemours, December 1801; quoted in Beard, Jeffersonian Democracy, pp. 436–7.
[87] Tbomas Jefferson on Democracy, pp. 69–70.
[88] Ibid., p. 100.
[89] Ibid., p. 47
[90] Taylor, p. 278.
[91] Cited previously, p. 40; the next four quotations were also previously ateA
[92] Beard, Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 267.
[93] Alexander Hamilton; quoted in Ibid., p. 406.
[94] Hamilton; quoted in Ibid.
[95] Hamilton; quoted in Ibid., pp. 406–7.
[96] Hamilton was murdered by Burr in 1804, in a duel that arose from a later issue. Even later, Burr tried to make certain western territories independent of the United States government. The attempt failed.
[97] Jefferson; quoted previously, p, 40.
[98] Taylor, Inquiry; quoted previously, pp. 39–40,
[99] Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, p. 30.
[100] John Adams; quoted by Beard in Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 320.
[101] Taylor, Inquiry, p. 68.
[102] George Sabine, A History of Political Theory, p. 491.
[103] Winstanley; quoted in Ibid., p. 492.
[104] Quoted in Ibid., p. 361.
[105] Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, pp. 79–80; next quotation from p. 68.
[106] John Taylor, Inquiry, p. 244.
[107] Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, p. 47.
[108] Taylor, Inquiry, pp. 268–9.
[109] Babeuf; paraphrased by Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station, p.74.
[110] Taylor, Inquiry, p. 59.
[111] Ibid., p. 255. ’
[112] Ibid., p. 67.
[113] Lewis Mumford, The Transformation of Man.
[114] Taylor, Inquiry, p. 269.
[115] Quoted by Taylor in Ibid., p. 254.
[116] C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, p. 95.
[117] Theodore Dreiser, The Financier.
[118] Quoted in Monthly Rrjiew, August 1959.
[119] J. Raymond Walsh, ‘The Storm Signals are FlvingfMombh Revmo June 1953.
[120] William Appleman Williams, Tht Trtgtdy of Ammon Diplomacy p. 103
[121] Quoted from AJl Berle, Jr., Tkt Twentieth Cenatry Capitalist Rrvlm- in Monthly fctwnr, January 1956.
[122] Mills, Tht Po^erElitt, p. 275.
[123] Quoted by Han ey O’Connor in The Empire tfOiL pp. 229–30.
[124] From the Declaration of Independence.
[125] Foreword to O’Connors The Empire of Oil
[126] In The Empire of Oil.
[127] Ibid., p. 99f.
[128] Ibid., p. 98.
[129] Ibid., pp. 89f.
[130] Mills, The Paver Elite, p. 122.
[131] O’Connor, The Empire of Oil, p. 73.
[132] Ibid., p. 227.
[133] Ibid.
[134] Mills, The Power Elite, p. 149.
[135] O’Connor, The Empire of Oil, p. 3.
[136] Ibid., p. 21.
[137] Mills, The Power Elite, p. 124–5.
[138] C. Wright Mills, White Collar, pp. 336–7.
[139] J.K. Galbraith, American Capitalism-, quoted by Paul Baran in The Political Economy of Growth.
[140] Mills, White Collar, p. 35.
[141] O’Connor, The Empire of Oil, p. 57.
[142] Mills, The Power Elite, p. Ill, footnote.
[143] Song of the Society of Equals, sung in French cafes in days of betrayal; quoted by Edmund Wilson in To The Finland Station, p.72.
[144] At the time of writing, Cuba was on the way toward the realization of a program of agrarian reform, universal education, creative participation—a program which failed in the United States, and which is analyzed more fully in this chapter, in the context of United States experience. Those readers who are interested in seeing interpretations of the Cuban revolution which diverge from the accounts given in the United States “free press” are urged to study the following analyzes:
Paul A. Baran, “Reflections on the Cuban Revolution,” A Monthly Review Press pamphlet.
Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy, Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution.<
C. Wright Mills, Listen Yankee.<br> James O’Connor, “The Classless Revolution,” in The Second Coming magazine, July 1961.
J.P. Morray, “Cuba and Communism,” Monthly Review, July-August, 1961. The entire issue is devoted to articles on Cuba.
Jean-Paul Sartre on Cuba.
[145] New York Times, April 18, 1961.
[146] Thomas More, Utopia.
[147] Alexander Hamilton; quoted by Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, pp. 406–7.
[148] Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, p. 44.
[149] Ibid., p. 45.
[150] Maryland Journal of March 21, 1788; quoted by Beard in Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, pp. 317–18.
[151] Patrick Henry; quoted in Ibid., p. 319.
[152] John Marshall, quoted in Ibid., p. 299.
[153] Quoted in Ibid.
[154] Quoted in Ibid., p. 298.
[155] Beard, Ibid., pp. 251–2.
[156] Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, p. 47.
[157] Ibid., p. 67.
[158] Hamilton; quoted by Beard in Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 286.
[159] Chief Justice John Marshall in 1819; quoted Ibid., p. 299. On that page, Beard puts both quotations of Justice Marshall side by side, the one about the narrow margin by which the Constitution was ratified, and the one about the “government of the people.”
[160] John Taylor, Inquiry, p. 67.
[161] Ibid., p. 59.
[162] Ibid., p. 255.
[163] Thomas Jefferson.
[164] Taylor, Inquiry, p. 62.
[165] Hamilton; quoted in Beard, Constitution, p. 199.
[166] Taylor, Inquiry, p. 255.
[167] C. Wright Mills; quoted previously on p. 60.
[168] William A. Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy p. 105.
[169] A.A. Berle, Jr.; quoted previously on p. 64.
[170] C. Wright Mills; quoted previously on p. 71.
[171] Thomas More.
[172] John Taylor, Inquiry, p. 66.
[173] Ibid., p. 67.
[174] Thomas More.
[175] Taylor, Inquiry, pp. 62–3.
[176] C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, p. 317–18.
[177] Thomas Jefferson.
[178] Gerrard Winstanley.
[179] Mills, The Power Elite, pp. 317–18.
[180] Clay Fulks, “Capitalism Seeks Sanctuary,” Monthly Review, August 1950.
[181] Harvey O’Connor, The Empire of Oil, p. 141.
[182] See O’Connor, p. 139ff.
[183] From H.G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon-, the passage was quoted by Arnold Toynbee in A Study of History, Vol. Ill, Part IE, the chapter entitled “Insect Societies and Human Utopias.”
[184] Declaration of Independence.
[185] Article I, Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
[186] Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, p. 95.
[187] Jefferson.
[188] Declaration of Independence.
[189] Alexander Hamilton.
[190] This and subsequent quotations are taken from Leo Huberman’s article “A Free Press? Free for Whom? John Swinton’s Famous Reply,” New York Daily Compass, May 5, 1952.
[191] John Swinton, in Huberman’s article.
[192] Leo Marx, “Notes on the Culture of the New Capitalism,” Monthly Rmiew, July-August issue, 1959.
[193] Declaration of Independence.
[194] New York Herald Tribune, January 9, 1948; quoted in Frontespiece, and again in Foreword, of O’Connor’s The Empire of Oil.
[195] O’Connor, The Empire of Oil, p. 137.
[196] Ibid., p. 147.
[197] Annual Report (nineteen hundred sixty) of the Tea Council of Annual the U.S.A., Inc. This “report” is probably untypical; it is probably more restrained and “humane” because its Board of Directors is made up of 6 Asians and 6 Americans, and because it is concerned, not with one particular industry, but with the entire cartel. Interested readers will doubtless find far more blatant illustrations of the minds of manipulators, if they care to devote time and patience to the study of the advertizers reports of the oil companies, steel companies, aluminum, automobile, fruit companies, and so on. A vast study could be made. Such a study would show Adolf Hitler to have been a mere child, a rank amateur, in the techniques of mass manipulation.
[198] Ibid.
[199] Leo Marx, loc. cit.
[200] New York Times, June 4, 1957.
[201] New York Times, October 18, 1960.
[202] New York Times, April 22, 1961; story by Tad Szulc.
[203] New York Times, April 26, 1961; story entitled:
“C.I.A. HELD CHIEFS OF CUBAN REBELS Miro Cardona Among Exiles Kept Incommunicado as Landings Were Made.”
Miro Cardona was supposed to he the leader of the invasion as well as president of the “Cuban Revolutionary Council.”
[204] The CBS (Columbia Broadcasting Company) radio station early revealed the source of the reports on the Cuban invasion—but other radio stations, as well as almost all newspapers, continued to the end to give readers the advertising firm’s “news” without telling readers the source of the “news.”
[205] New York Times, April 22, 1961; story by Tad Szulc. Incidentally, some persons clever with initials devised for the. C.I.A. the tide “Cuban Invasion Association.”
[206] New York Times, April 22; Szulc Story.
[207] New York Times, April 22, 1961; story by Max Frankel.
[208] Ibid\ Max Frankel.
[209] John Taylor, Inquiry, p. 68.
[210] C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, p. 253.
[211] Harvey O’Connor, The Empire of Oil, p. 195.
[212] Mills, The Power Elite, p. 324.
[213] Lewis Mumford, The Transformations of Man.
[214] Ibid.
[215] Karl Marx; quoted by Paul Baran in “The Commitment of the Intellectual,” Monthly Review, May 1961.
[216] In The Need for Roots.
[217] C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, p. 9.
[218] Ibid., p. 11.
[219] Jean-Paul Sartre, “Materialism and Revolution,” Politics, July-Aueust 1947 (translation by Ralph Manheim).
[220] Satirist of the Constitution, in Maryland Journal of 1788; quoted in Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States-, quoted above p. 80.
[221] George Bernard Shaw; quoted in Monthly Review, August 1949.
[222] From Franz Kafka’s Parables-, quoted in Walter Kaufinann, Existentialism from Dostoyevskv to Sartre.
[223] A.A. Berle, Jr.; quoted above, p. 64.
[224] Edward Hyams in the New Statesman of March 18, 1959; quoted in Monthly Review for July-August, 1959.
[225] See New York Times, March 5,1961; front page stories on official estimates of unemployment.
[226] “Review of the Month,” Monthly Rniew, April 1961.
[227] Ibid.
[228] Business Week, May 17, 1952; quoted by Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, p. 1 OOf.
[229] Quoted above, p. 80.
[230] New York Times, June 4, 1957; quoted above p. 115.
[231] Quoted by Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, p. 57.
[232] Quoted in Ibid., p.59, footnote.
[233] John Swinton; quoted above p. 108.
[234] Those who own shares number 6.5 million, according to the Brookings Institute estimate quoted by Baran and cited above. This and the subsequent percentage estimates are my own, however; and the figures can be larger, or smaller, depending upon the statistitian’s tastes and political convictions. The only point, however the figures are revised, is that the number of shareholders in America who own a large number of shares is not very large.
[235] Figures cited by Leo Huberman, “The Distribution of Income,” Monthly Review, July-August 1959.
[236] Quoted by Huberman in same article.
[237] Alexander L. Crosby, editor of The Housing Yearbook in a memorandum quoted by Fluberman in same article.
[238] Representative John M. Slack, Jr.; quoted by Huberman in same article.
[239] Percival Goodman, “Gloomy Glass and the Betrayal of the Bauhaus, ’ The Second Conning magazine, July 1961.
[240] Robert J ungk, Tomorrow is Already Here: Scenes from a Man-Made World.
[241] Quoted in “Review of the Month,” Monthly Review, April 1959.
[242] Massachusetts Gazette-, quoted above p. 27–28.
[243] Harrison Brown, James Bonner, John Weir: The Next Hundred \ears, p. 10.
[244] J.D. Bernal, World Without War, p. 143.
[245] Ibid.
[246] “Review of the Month,” Monthly Review, November 1960.
[247] Business Week, January 3, 1959; quoted in Monthly Review, November 1960.
[248] Quoted in Monthly Review, July-August 1959.
[249] Wall Street “Journal, June 28, 1960; quoted in Scott Nearing’s column, Monthly Review, September 1960.
[250] Wall Street Journal, March 25, 1958; quoted in Nearing’s “World Events” column, Monthly Review, May 1958.
[251] Quoted by William A. Williams in The Tradgey of American Diplomacy, pp. 49f.
[252] Woodrow Wilson; quoted in Ibid.
[253] Quoted in Ibid.
[254] ED. Roosevelt; quoted in Ibid., p. 130.
[255] Williams, Ibid., pp. 128–9.
[256] Quoted in editorial in The Nation, May 27, 1961.
[257] Alexander Hamilton; quoted by Charles Beard, Constitution, p. 183.
[258] Business Week, October 10, 1959; quoted in Monthly Review, November 1959.
[259] Congressman Jackson of Georgia; quoted by Beard in Jeffersonian Democracy, quoted above p. 30–31.
[260] Quoted above, p. 146.
[261] John Taylor, Iquiry, quoted above, p.35.
[262] New York Times, September 25, 1959.
[263] John Adams; quoted by Beard in Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 306.
[264] Taylor, Inquiry, p. 504.
[265] Ibid., p.63.
[266] John Adams; quoted by Beard in Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 320.
[267] Taylor, Inquiry, p. 492.
[268] Ibid., p. 503.
[269] Ibid., pp. 505–06.
[270] Ibid., pp. 58–9.
[271] Robert Hutchins, in an address on receiving the Sidney Hillman Award for Meritorious Public Service on January 21, 1959; quoted in Monthly Review, March 1959, back-cover notes.
[272] Paul A. Baran, “Marxism and Psychoanalysis,” Monthly Review, October 1959.
[273] N.S. Lehrman, “The Conflict Within Psychoanalysis,” Monthly Review, February 1960.
[274] Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd, p. 21.
[275] Mark Van Dorcn’s description of Caliban in his Shakespeare, p. 283.
[276] Roderick Seidenberg, Posthistoric Man.
[277] Ibid.
[278] Paul Baran, article cited in note 60.
[279] Ibid.
[280] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “Notes from the Underground” (Translation by David Magarshack).
[281] Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, pp 65–6.
[282] From J ustice Black’s dissent in Communist Party v. SACB; quoted in I.F. Stone’s Weekly, June 12, 1961.
[283] See Frank Donner, “HUAC: The Dossier Keepers,” for a documented account of the elaborate “files” on “dangerous citizens” kept by the House Unamerican Activities Committee; Studies on the Left, Vol. II, No. 1, 1961.
{1} This chapter is heavily indebted to Professor Beard’s monumental studies, published half a century’ ago, considered classics by scholars, yet shamefully ignored. Comparable studies of the American revolution’s aftermath had not been made by an American since John Taylor’s Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States, which was contemporary’ to the events described. However, if my conclusions as to the far-reaching implications of the events are erroneous or overstated, Beard should not be blamed, since that careful scholar took infinite pain to understate the implications of his findings. Though Beard lucidly uncovered the nature of the period, which had been hidden for a century beneath a thick veil of pious apologetics, perhaps it was Taylor, though so close to events, who more truly grasped the historical importance as well as the tragic character of the period.
{2} “...even at the height of finance capitalism the bankers functioned more as troubleshooters for the corporate system than as outsiders who moved in and took over—or changed—the economic system. It remained a corporate system …
From the dine of the Panic of 1873, which signaled die death of the old individualistic entrepreneur, the corporation was the key institution of the American economic system.” William A. Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, p. 105.
{3} ‘Personal property. (F.P.)
{4} In the rest of this chapter, I will confine myself to an analysis of equality, education, and communication. The degree of participation in the affairs of the corporate society will be analyzed in the following chapter, on the “Corporate Dispensation.”
{5} Unless he sits on the Board of Directors.
{6} Hungary and Eastern Germany did not emerge from popular social revolutions, but from what Marxists call “palace revolutions.” In both cases, unpopular regimes were imposed on them by the Soviet Union after the defeat of Nazism in 1945. In both regions, Nazism was the most popular and the most desired social system. That they are both unstable, there is no doubt, but they cannot be used as examples of societies that emerged from social revolutions, and a thorough study of their instabilities and problems is out of place in this book, which tries to confine itself to the instabilities and problems, foreign and domestic, of corporate capitalism.
{7} ‘I use the words “radical” and “rebel” to describe those who affirm human life, community, participation. In a recent American usage, the term “radicals of die right” has been used to describe reactionary and neo-fascist groups.
If this usage is accepted, I will have to be content to substitute “radicals of the left” for radicals. I would suggest, however, that clarity and precision in communication can better be served by a more conventional usage, namely by calling the “radicals of the left” radicals, and the “radicals of the right reactionaries.