From Science and Sanity, Introduction to the 2nd Edition (1941) by Alfred Korzybski
[ abridged ]
Hitler was born into Austrian bureaucracy. The older Schicklgruber wanted his son also to become a Hapsburg bureaucrat. Schicklgruber, Jr. had a natural repulsion for them, and so deliberately boycotted any education, to disqualify himself. This lack of education ostracized him from the class of so-called 'intelligentsia', to which a Hapsburg bureaucrat eventually belonged. Through living necessities he had to become a plain labour hand, yet he was also not acceptable to the plain workers, who are generally sane.When he joined the German army with its orderly efficiency, etc., he found an ideal for himself as an escape from Hapsburg decadence. [But] he was too much of an Austrian not to utilize to the limit the Hapsburg methods. Ultimately through this combination of methods he 'out-Prussianed' the Prussians, whose particular arrogant methods were never approved and often disliked throughout the world and even in Germany.
It may become clearer why I speak of a dying, aristotelian, two-valued system by giving examples of how this type of evaluation is at the foundation of present day confusions and terrors. Thus, for instance, the Nazi militant delusion of 'chosen people' gives us an excellent illustration of a two-valued, 'either-or' orientation. The two-valued twisting of 'real neutrality' is another significant example. This distortion has kept the 'neutrals' in terrors, disorganizing their national and political life to the point of collapse. The Nazi two-valued evalutaion of 'neutrality' was : either be 'really neutral' and endorse and fight for the Nazis, or be 'not really neutral' and not help them. * * *
Comment A few years later a similar situation occurred when dealing with the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks had claimed the �right� to establish �friendly governments� in the countries they had (with the signal help of the Allies) liberated-invaded. That would have at least meant, governments unopposed to the �world revolution� which had ever been the key article of faith within the Kremlin. — (WPT).When analysed from a non-aristotelian point of view, such orientations appear pathologically twisted. Yet they produced results, as history shows. It is not accidental that some years ago Hitler in one of his speeches took a definite stand for the prevailing aristotelianism, two-valued orientations, etc., and against modern science, which naturally develops in a non-aristotelian direction.
Dr. Irving J. Lee in his article [of] December, 1940 formulates a fundamental contrast between the types of �rhetorics� of Aristotle* and Hitler, and the non-aristotelian type of communication (etc).
* "Nothing against Aristotle" himself. The problem was with the "rhetorics" by his various followers. This had already been noticed earlier by Avicenna, (probably by Roger Bacon but I'm not sure), by Francis Bacon, by Jeremy Bentham, etc. While Aristotle spoke about things, his followers would have argued about his words.
One needs not look far for examples : should anybody try to draw you into arguments over this very question, the 'discussion' would tend to become 'aristotelian' in the unwanted sense. — (WPT).( pages lxi - lxiv )
Comment The �non-aristotelian' formulations by Korzybski et al had been (especially after 1950) sabotaged by that old rogue Bertrand Russell and a band his followers. Necessarily connected are any irregularities within the history of the Theory of Types ; almost certainly so the 2nd (botched) translation ca. 1959 of Wittgenstein�s Tractatus (which work had already been once sabotaged by Russell on the occasion of its original English translation ca. 1922). — (WPT).
From As We Go Marching by John T. Flynn, 1944
[ excerpts ]
Hitler began his career as a political leader in 1919.A national assembly had met at Weimar in February and framed a republican constitution. The Socialists had twice as many in the convention as any other party, but they did not control the assembly. They did, however, impart a socialist tinge to that document. They elected a socialist, Friedrich Ebert, as President. In the midst of this Kurt Eisner, socialist Bavarian Premier, was assassinated by a nationalist officer, a Soviet government was proclaimed in Bavaria and put down by the Free Corps, the constitution was accepted by all of Germany, and a socialist, Bauer, was named Chancellor of the republic. The Red terror was frightening. Bela Kun headed a Red government in Hungary, the communists were organizing, plotting, threatening everywhere. Munich was ablaze with agitation. Unemployment was widespread, food scarce, prices high. Little groups of all shades of opinion were meeting in beer halls and haranguing listeners on street corners. The Free Corps — volunteer roving bands of soldiers under adventurers of various sorts — were numerous, combining military and political ambitions. At this point Hitler began. Stationed just outside Munich with his regiment, he was assigned to collect information about several of these groups. He ended by joining one of them. It consisted of a handful of men who met in a little beer hall and called themselves the German Workers' party. The first seeds of this agitation were planted by an organization known as the Association for the Promotion of Peace. Thus sponsored, a branch was formed in Munich in 1918 by a locksmith named Anton Drexler. It did not go far, and on January 5, 1919, while communists in Berlin were rioting to overthrow the Ebert provisional government, Drexler reorganized his group into the German Workers' party. The chief figures in this diminutive movement were Drexler, an engineer named Gottfried Feder, a professor named Dr. Johannes Dingfelder, a journalist named Karl Harrer, and a young reporter named Hermann Esser. Hitler was the sixth man to become a member.
* * *
In Mein Kampf he confesses that he had rather liked social democracy. "The fact that it finally endeavored to raise the standard of living of the working class — in those days my innocent mind was foolish enough to believe this — seemed to speak rather in its favor."1 But it is clear that he did not associate Marxism and socialism and really knew little of either. His mind was preoccupied with the reconstruction of the German army.
1 Mein Kampf, Reynal & Hitchcock American translation, 1940.
In time the German Workers' party decided to change its name to the National Socialist German workers' party. New and more capable converts to the party began to arrive — men like Roehm, Gregor Strasser, Hess, Julius Streicher, Rosenberg, Goering and Goebbels. Strasser, Roehm, and Streicher were socialists. Goebbels had a pet peeve — the war profiteers. Goering was a pure adventurer and nationalist. Hence for a while the party kept to its socialist trend. But Hitler was not too pleased with this. He offered his definition of the word "socialist" as used in the party's name. "Whoever, he said in Mein Kampf, "is prepared to make the national cause his own to such an extent that he knows no higher ideal than the welfare of the nation, whoever in addition has understood our great national anthem (etc) — that man is called a socialist. * * *
* * *
In 1923 he was jailed for his part in his ill-starred beer-hall Putsch.
The word "socialist" in the party name made it possible for many old social democrats to transfer their allegiance to Hitler. But now the Social Democrats were no longer exercising so large a share in the government. * * *
Big business finally moved over to his side. But it was the last convert. Fritz Thyssen made up his mind to back Hitler. He came to this conclusion when the Young Plan was before the country. It is interesting to find him classifying national socialism, filled as it was with old socialists like Strasser, Kock, and Streicher, as a party of the Right. Thyssen advanced money to buy the Brown House — the Nazi headquarters — and later contributed a million marks to the party. He introduced Hitler to the entire body of Rhenish-Westphalian industrialists. * * *
New York : Doubleday, Doran, 1944, pages 127 - 133, abridged.
From The Sovereign Individual vs. Communism and Fascism by Whitney H. Slocomb, 1951
The basic tenet of Socialism is that the government should own the tools of production — industry. To the Socialist, land and money have no importance. If pressed, most Socialists will say
(1) That no one will own land, and
(2) That land will be owned by everyone, and
(3) That machines will produce so much that there will be a plenty for everyone, and
(4) That no one will have to work, and
(5) That production by push buttons will be so interesting that there will be no scarcity of volunteer workers to push the buttons ; all of which is probably the bait that attracts people to Socialism. However, Socialists forget the fact
(1) That the machinery of today has no such push-button perfection, and
(2) That some one has to have the knowledge and skill and training to build machines and to repair them, and
(3) That some one must labor or scratch the ground in order to, at least, produce the raw materials for the machines, and
(4) That, somewhere along the line, hard labor is required to tend all machinery, and
(5) That, in want and scarcity, the greed of want and poverty stands in the way of cooperation and mutual trust and plenty.To retain freedom, we must keep politics and economics and religion separate. Conversely, if the government will come to own industry, that industry will have to have a political manager or, at best, a coordinator of activities. Obviously also, his job will be political as well as economic. He thus will be a political employer and, as such, a dictator or king or ruler or tyrant. In such a union of politics and economics, his power, because of its political nature, will be dictatorial, monarchial and absolute. In other words, as long as political authority stays separate from economic and religious authorities, we are likely to retain a maximum of freedom to choose our own destiny — a maximum of freedom to do as we please [as we would?].1 With a union of economic and political authority, it is likely that religious authority also will be seized by the economic � political authority — by this employer � president. Then, instead of being enslaved to an economic boss for eight hours per day, we will be told what to do, and when to do it twenty-four hours per day. Not only that, we will also be told what to think (politically) and what to feel (religiously) twenty four hours per day. In the past three thousand years, precedents and experience should have taught us that, when political and economic and religious authorities become united, the result has been literal slavery. It is certain that
(1) Power tends to breed a greed for more power, and that
(2) A rift in the equality of men or a division of unity into a duality of ruler and ruled, tend to breed a greater rift in the unity or equality of men through the mechanism of defence on the part of both ruler and ruled.1 Mr. Aleister Crowley of Do What Thou Wilt (straight translation from the French by F. Rabelais) had once pointed out that doing �what thou wilt� did not mean �as you please� — but rather implied a certain purpose of the individual, which, if exactly understood or acted upon by himself, will entail his living a happy and productive life in accordance with his own native proclivities. In other words, one�s �will� and one�s �pleasure� were distinguished — though such-termed qualities will often co-exist. Compare the thelematic will to (do) something and the passive pleasure with something.
(The import of those terms does overlap ; but the distinction applies to the fundamentals. Compare Jeremy Bentham's 'happiness principle' connected with pleasure. He had abandoned the term 'utilitarian' as giving 'a vague idea' by the way but his followers had failed to notice the fact.) — (WPT)Today, the government borrows money to buy the land it needs. Today, both land and money are as yet privately owned by individuals, and industry is a private prerogative of individuals. As yet, except to regulate industry, the government takes no part in industry and, outside the CONFISCATION of wealth in the form of taxes to support itself, borrows all the money it needs from private money owners (as a result of the fact that privately owned gold is still money). While the government originally owned all land, IT HAD NO USE FOR LAND AND KEPT NO LAND, UNTIL IT ALL BECAME PRE � EMPTED BY THE VERY PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT GOVERNMENT INTO ACTIVITY AMONGST THEMSELVES. Therefore, all land, today, must be bought or leased by the government from land owners. And, the usual [practice is for the government to borrow the money it needs to buy the land it needs, and thus to increase the national debt to the money owners. To this may be added the fact that
(1) When the government wants to fight a war, most of the money with which to do it is borrowed from the money owners (mostly as a bank-credit for money, however), and
(2) When industry itself wants to build a public project for its own benefit, the government becomes involved in debt by borrowing the required amount of money from the money owners.The national debt gives money owners a political power. This debt contracted by the government, gives the money owners a great political power in the affairs of government. It gives them a political alliance with government in addition to the alliance that they have with industry through the fact that industry is forced to borrow from these money owners, a capital debt of money which both
(1) Is used(A) To buy land and
(B) To build a factory and
(C) To buy raw materials and
(D) To establish the business or industry, and,
(2) Through the existence of stocks and bonds of this capital debt, provide the collateral necessary to originate the bank � credit money that is necessary to keep full the industry�s channel of the functional cycle of money.The national debt is permanent. This national debt, instead of being retired as soon as possible in order to relieve the taxpayers the burden of paying interest on it, is preserved indefinitely, because
(1) The evidences of that debt (government BONDS) must be used to supplement the gold that is deposited in the Treasury in exchange for CURRENCY ; and because this
(2) CURRENCY supplements the gold and bank � credit money which, in turn, is lent to industry and forms a CAPITAL DEBT of industry ; and because
(3) This CAPITAL DEBT of industry cannot be retired, because the stocks and bonds of this capital debt is the collateral that originates and preserves BANK-CREDIT MONEY ; and because
(4) This BANK-CREDIT MONEY(A) Keeps full the channel of the FUNCTIONAL CYCLE of money
(B) Privately attempts to guarantee the social credit of the individual, in addition to guaranteeing his private credit.
(5) This FUNCTIONAL CYCLE of money has developed as our system of voluntarily cooperative, assembly � line �like, mass production has developed,
so that(1) Industry is owned by the lenders of the money which forms the capital debt of industry, because the shares of stock of an industry are
(A) Evidences of the ownership of an industrial corporation and
(B) Evidences of lent money and
(C) A form of capital that, returning an income of interest to its owners, may be used as collateral for borrowed money, and
(2) When the ever-increasing national debt will become great enough, the nation also will come to be virtually owned by the money (gold) owners-renters.Money owners are the active rulers of this country. (1) With money-owners owning and controlling industry, and
(2) With industry needing money(A) To fill the channel of the functional cycle of money, and
(B) To act as(a) A medium of exchange for, and
(b) Evidences of credit (a social credit) for the things being manufacture by industry, and
(3) With these same money owners having a great political power due to(A) The fact of the national debt of money that is borrowed from them, and
(B) The fact that bonds of the national debt are, practically speaking, evidences of the ownership of the corporation of government, in the same manner that the stocks of an industry are also evidences of the ownership of that industry, as well as being evidences of borrowed money (theoretical gold), money owners
have an aggressive, active, growing, dominant, economic � political, power � to � employ � eight � hours � per � day, power � to � enslave � twenty �four � hours � per � day power that must be attended to constantly, or be lost.Land owners have a passive power to enslave. Then,
(1) Because land is needed by industry, and
(2) Because practically all land is pre-empted and a great part of it is held out of use, and
(3) Because land is thus made falsely scarce, and
(4) Because this false scarcity of land has given it a price, and
(5) Because this price has caused industry to borrow the money to buy all the land it needs, and
(6) Because this borrowing money to buy land has caused the value of all the land used by industry to be included in the capital debt of industry (thus increasing the economic-political power of money owners), and
(7) Because all the raw produce used by industry(A) Comes from the land that is
(B) Controlled by a few owners who thus
(C) Make it falsely scarce and to
(D) Have a price which
(E) Must be paid before a new industry can be inaugurated, land owners ALSO have an economic-political power that is impregnable and equal to the economic-political power of the money-owners — theoretical gold owners. However, this political power of the land owners, in relation to the power of the money owners, is relatively passive, because the payment of land rent takes precedence over every other debt. Land owners get their income of rents whether or not they work, and whether or not they have any skill in the handling of money ; while money owners have to devote time to, and be skilled in the handling of money in order to get their incomes of money rents and interest. Money owners act as a buffer between the masses of the people and the security of the land owners. It is this security of land owners which allows them to become idle, parasitic aristocracy.Land owners would become our active rulers in place of the money owners, if we pulled the political teeth of the money owners. However, if we were to pull the political and economic teeth of the money owners without also pulling the economic � political � predatory teeth of the land owners, the land owners would be dragged out into lime light and forced to become active rulers in defence against the masses of the people, in place of the money owners. Then, as savers of money only, with
(1) No more political power, and with
(2) Only a remaining economic power to guarantee only the private credit of industry, and with
(3) No more power to attempt to guarantee the social credit with the private credit arising from their ownership of gold, and with
(4) No more power to create the vicious circles involving prosperity-depression cycles, THE MONEY OWNERS WOULD BECOME ALLIED WITH THE MASSES OF THE PEOPLE. But, the masses of the people would become actively ruled by the land barons in place of the money owners, through their power to collect rents for the privilege of living on the earth, in the same manner that the peasants of the middle ages were ruled by the land baron in his castle on the hill before the development of the money power, except that, today, we would have a system of organized mass-production, superimposed upon a medieval system of land holding, ruled and controlled by a land baron, whether or not he will live in a castle on the hill as did his medieval prototype. As we shall see later, because Hitler almost drew the teeth of the money owners before he finally sold out the Socialist Cause to the land owners of Germany, this was the picture of Germany in the hey-day of Hitler.Los Angeles : Whitney Hl. Slocomb, LL.D., 1951, pages 6 - 9.
Flynn, John T. (John Thomas), 1882-1964. Title(s) As we go marching, by John T. Flynn. Publisher Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, Doran and co., inc., 1944. Paging viii, 272 p. 21 cm. Notes "First edition." Bibliography: p. 259-263.Rauschning, Hermann, 1887- Title ... The voice of destruction. By arrangement with Alliance book corporation Publisher New York, Putnam [c1940] Description viii, 295 p. 22 cm Note London edition (T. Butterworth, ltd., 1939) has title: Hitler speaks Subject Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945
Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945. Title Mein kampf, by Adolf Hitler. The first complete and unexpurgated edition published in the English language. Publisher New York city, Stackpole sons [1939] Description 669 p. 23 1/2cm. Note Preface signed: Ludwig Lore. "The translation in this volume, the first unexpurgated version in English, has been made from the two-volume first edition of Mein Kampf, the first volume of which was publiched in 1925, the second in 1927."--p. 10. Language English
Note : Ludwig Lore from Germany was an "old socialist", Whittaker Chambers described him in some detail in Witness (Random House, 1952). This man was also known to the Soviet agent Hede Massig — whichever of her numerous names she had used at the time. (One of his earliest contacts in the US, later Lenin's co-conspirator in 1917 etc., was one Alexandra "whats-her-real-name" Kolontai.)
This book was published in the US near the times of the Stalin/Hitler alliance ; the sabotage within the USA soon ensued by the Communist Party USA in agreement and in possible close alliance with the German Bund. The Communist "stole the show" from the Bund, anyway (J. Spolansky, The Communist Trail in America) — who reportedly had proved no match for them in the techniques of subversion.
There had been strikes and "peace" demonstrations — until the Stalin/Hitler deal went sour and the latter attacked the former in June 1941.
Make no mistake the reader ; there was heavy combat over England and in other places in Europe ; at the very times the Communist Party USA were sabotaging this country hand-in-hand with the Hitlerites, so that the US would not help England etc. too much and, more probably, to pave the ways and to prepare the grounds in the New World for some Komisars, which had ever been the avowed aim of the marxist-leninists. ("War is only an accelerator", Lenin himself was quoted by Trotzky himself in the 1930's.)
If the Hitler/Stalin deal did not go sour the situation could have led to the Soviet (or their then-allied Nazi) takeover of the USA. (If you do not believe me read the Communist propaganda, but you must read what the Reds were actually saying and not some university professors' interpretations.)
On this part of history the marxist-leninist propagandists had always lied ; and I do not know about any German authors — who, it seems, would have no particular reasons to mention this episode or to dwell on it.
(WPT)Ludecke, Kurt Georg Wilhelm, 1890- Title(s) I knew Hitler. Publisher N. Y., Scribner, 1938. Paging 814 p. illus., ports. 22 cm. Notes Reprint. Originally published: New York : Scribner's, 1937. Includes index.
Heiden, Konrad, 1901-1966. Title(s) Hitler; a biography [by] Konrad Heiden. Publisher New York, A. A. Knopf, 1936. Paging 390 p. illus. 23 cm. Notes "Translated from the German by Winifred Ray." "First American edition."
Olden, Rudolf, 1885-1940 Title ... Hitler; translated by Walter Ettinghausen Publisher New York, Covici, Friede [c1936] Description 394 p. 23 cm Note "Sources"; p. 375-377
Drexler, Anton. Title Mein politisches Erwachen : aus dem Tagebuch eines deutschen sozialistischen Arbeiters / von Anton Drexler. Edition 4. Aufl. Publisher M�nchen : Deutscher Volksverlag, c1923. Description 70 p. ; 22 cm. Language German
[ University of California ]Drexler, Anton, pseud. [ ? ] Title Mein politisches Erwachen; aus dem Tagebuch eines deutschen sozialistischen Arbeiters. [Microform] Von Anton Drexler ... Imprint M�nchen: E. Boepple, 1920. Edition 2. ed. Descript 40 p. 8vo. Note Microfilm. New York, N.Y.: New York Public Library, 19--.