To generalize about the state of mind of a nation or a civilization is difficult . . .
The thing I’ve been worrying about is the constant claim being loudly made — especially on social media and particularly by right-wing politicians such as Matthew Goodwin — that Britain/Europe/Liberal Democracy is committing civilizational suicide by allowing — in no particular order — mass immigration of non-white and non-Christian people (this is the horrific, racist “Great Replacement” theory), the erosion of traditional Christian-based cultural values and a disconnect between “the people” and globalist elites.
Depressingly, and worryingly, these arguments really do feel as if they are making significant headway at the moment in British, European and North American culture, and they are causing lots of people to talk about this time being analogous to the 1930s which, of course, saw the rise of Fascism and Nazism.
Broadly speaking, I think this resonance with the 1930s is real, and it was this resonance that, I am sure, finally served to bring Michael Roberts’ preface back into my mind so forcibly this morning. There might be much I could say about this but, here, I simply reproduce Roberts’ words without any further comment because I am powerfully struck by how so many of the topics it touches upon can be found in many op-eds across the political spectrum being written today. It makes me wonder whether in the 80 years since the ending of the Second World War anything truly significant has changed in our culture. I fear not. As Pete Seeger caused us to ask: “Oh, When will [we] ever learn?”
PREFACE from “The Recovery of the West” (Faber and Faber Limited, London, 1941)
by Michael Roberts
To generalize about the state of mind of a nation or a civilization is difficult. At all times there are intricate currents and counter-currents, and a tide that is receding at one point may be advancing at another. It is with a proper sense of these intricacies that I say that during the past twenty years or more there has been, especially among the young, a strong feeling that Western civilization is in decay, that its institutions are antiquated and corrupt, and that nothing short of a cataclysmic revolution can restore it to health. To say all this to people engaged in desperate war may well seem disheartening and depressing; but if the pessimistic arguments are sound, it is useless to ignore them, and if they are false, they deserve to be refuted. The purpose of this book is to examine the apparent symptoms of decay, and to ask to what extent they are really marks of decadence, to what extent they are inseparable from our industrial civilization, and to what extent they spring from errors that can be corrected. To prevent misunderstanding, I may say at once that when I came to survey the evidence, I found the symptoms at once more widespread and less ominous than I expected.
The book was planned, and its main conclusions reached, some time before the outbreak of the present war; and although the events of the past eighteen months have delayed and interrupted the writing, they have neither revealed any new facts nor suggested any new arguments. War is a solvent and a social catalyst: it accelerates inevitable changes, and compels us to recognize weaknesses that could be more easily ignored in time of peace; but it initiates nothing new. Indeed, the belief that the Western democracies were in decline, and that democracy is a weak and suicidal form of government, was itself one of the causes of the war. To the German Nazi and the Italian Fascist, it seemed obvious that France and Britain, as well as the lesser democracies and probably the United States, were already in decay. Their birth-rates were rapidly declining, they showed no readiness to grapple with the economic problems of the age, their missionary zeal for liberty, equality and social justice had evaporated into sectarian selfishness, and they were unwilling to defend their own material interests. Nor was this view confined to the totalitarian States: the best that one American commentator could find to say for the democracies in 1938 was that Britain probably had just one more great war left in her. To many well-informed Germans it must have seemed that war was a safe gamble: one had only to shake the tree, and the fruit would fall; and even if the first attempt were unsuccessful, it would only be necessary to wait a few more years for the apples to ripen.
Since the collapse of France, it has become impossible for anyone to maintain that the disease is an illusion, a mere fad of a few critics and philosophers. If we look beneath the surface we find the signs of weakness not only in Great Britain and in France, but also in America and in the totalitarian countries themselves. In its blundering and brutal way, the Nazi revolution was an attempt to deal with the problem — an attempt only partially and temporarily successful, and successful at an appalling price. The methods of our own society are different, and there is no reason to be pessimistic. If we look deep enough, we find the disease already correcting itself, the toxin generating the anti-toxin; and in the long run the slower and more thorough method may prove the better.
But it is useless to discuss the prospects of recovery if at the back of one’s mind there is the feeling that the white races are steadily moving towards extinction; and for that reason I have given up the first chapter of this book to a discussion of the birth-rate. To those readers who dislike statistics, I must apologize for interposing this preliminary hurdle between them and the main body of the book. I make no extravagant claims for the relation that I have traced (on pp. 23 and 24) between population and real wages; but any relation of this kind is a useful reminder that we cannot predict the future growth of population by considering population statistics alone; and once we get rid of the notion of some mysterious and irresistible force driving the birth-rate lower and lower it becomes possible to consider the future with an open mind.
The first chapter is therefore necessary to my main purpose, which is to discuss the signs of moral and intellectual decay. The loss of social confidence and alertness in recent times has been bound up with the rapid growth of a mass-mentality that looks for passive amusement and avoids responsibility; and on a different intellectual level it has been connected with doctrines that attack first religion, then morality and art, in the name of progress and exact knowledge, and in so doing destroy any sense of the value and purpose of life. I have tried to deal with these matters in order, first describing the symptoms in our political, moral, and intellectual life, then trying to find some of the errors in our way of thought, and finally, while bearing in mind our political and economic difficulties (with which I am not directly concerned), attempting to describe an outlook that would be more realistic and more healthy. Some of the conclusions about authority, responsibility, and religion, to which I find myself forced, may be unwelcome to those who are accustomed to think of themselves as progressive — though perhaps less unwelcome than they would have been a year or two ago — but I hope that such readers will at least agree that something more than an ambitious programme of social reform is needed if our society is permanently to regain its confidence and energy.
In time of war, and in the years of reconstruction that will follow the war, the forces of disintegration are likely to be concealed, unless they are already overwhelming. But although a great emergency calls up reserves of energy, and helps to revive old loyalties and half-forgotten certainties, it does not cure the disease itself. In the years that follow, the problems of sophisticated doubt, of exaggerated hope and cynical or baffled disillusion, will reappear, and they will be intensified by the demands of soldiers, sailors, air-men, and factory-workers who will once again want relaxation from tension and responsibility. At such a time, questions that are now remote and theoretical will be practical and urgent, and it may be easier to deal with them if we give them some of our attention now.
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