A Critical Examination of Bhikkhu Bodhi's Critical Examination of Ñanavra Thera’ s “A Note on Paticcasamuppada”

INTRODUCTION

It is good to notice that Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi is very independent intellectually, and he doesn't hesitate to criticise even the Lord Buddha and Suttas:

Here what he writes in the commentary to Brahmajala DN 1:

Just as a fisherman casting his net over a small pond can be sure that all fish of a certain size will be caught within the net, so, the Buddha declares, whatever thinkers speculate about the past or the future can with certainty be found within the net of his teaching.

Whether the sutta, in its present form, really does succeed in matching this claim is difficult to assess. On reflection it seems that many views from the history of philosophy and theology can be called to mind which resist being neatly classified into the scheme the sutta sets up, while other views can be found which agree in their basic credo with those cited in the sutta but appear to spring from causes other than the limited number that the sutta states they can all be ultimately traced to. Some of these will be noted when we turn to a separate discussion of the individual views.

While some scholars may admire such intellectual independence, average Tathagata's discipline will rather attribute it to lack of knowledge of the Four Noble Truths which knowledge include in itself recognition that "ultimately the number of views" spring from indeed very limited number of causes, namely one: sakkāyadiṭṭhi.

“As to the various views that arise in the world, householder, ‘The world is eternal’ …—these as well as the sixty-two speculative views mentioned in the Brahmajāla: when there is personality view, these views come to be; when there is no identity view, these views do not come to be.”
SN 41: 3

Generally Lord Buddha was quite sceptical about intellectual independence of his disciples, and discourage it:

“Bhikkhus, for a faithful disciple who is intent on fathoming the Teacher’s Dispensation, it is natural that he conduct himself thus: ‘The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple; the Blessed One knows, I do not know.’"
MN 70

So what it is, that Venerable Bodhi, doesn't know? In his Critical Examination, Venerable Bodhi admits that he doesn't understand suffering:

An unbiased and complete survey of the Nikāyas, however, would reveal that the problem of dukkha to which the Buddha’ s Teaching is addressed is not primarily existential anxiety , nor even the distorted sense of self of which such anxiety may be symptomatic. The primary problem of dukkha with which the Buddha is concerned, in its most comprehensive and fundamental dimensions, is the problem of our bondage to samsāra—the round of repeated birth, aging, and death.

An unbiased and complete survey of the Nikāyas, however, reveals that "the distorted sense of self" is precisely the very problem of dukkha, not understood by the puthujjana.

“This world, Kaccāna, is for the most part shackled by engagement, clinging, and adherence. But this one [with right view] does not become engaged and cling through that engagement and clinging, mental standpoint, adherence, underlying tendency; he does not take a stand about ‘my self.’ He has no perplexity or doubt that what arises is only suffering arising, what ceases is only suffering ceasing. His knowledge about this is independent of others. It is in this way, Kaccāna, that there is right view. SN 12: 15

Since Bhikkhu Bodhi so openly admits here his lack of understanding what constitutes suffering in Dhamma, our Critical Examination could stop here. It is so, because it is not scholarly paper, and the only aim of it is to encourage reader to develop faith in Venerable Nanavira's writings. However let's us point out one more obvious contradiction of Dhamma, in Bhikkhu Bodhi's "examination".

Bhikkhu Bodhi:

While the two triads are expressed in Páli by the same three compounds—kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra—Ven. Ñánavīra overlooks a fact of prime importance for determining their meaning: namely , that in the Suttas the contexts in which the two triads appear are always kept rigorously separate. The definition of the three sankhārā found in the Cúllavedalla Sutta, and elsewhere in the Canon (at S IV 293), does not occur in the context of PS nor in a context that even touches on PS. This particular definition of the three types of sankhārā—kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra—always occurs in the course of a discussion on the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling (saññávedayita-nirodha). It is intended to prepare the way for an explanation of the order in which the three types of saòkhárá cease when a monk enters the attainment of cessation.

Do we understand Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi properly? Is he really trying to teach us that cessation of sankharas isn't related to dependent arising? Even if so, there is no reason why we should not prefer Suttas, which indeed teach us that there is strictly relationship between stilling of all sankharas and the cessation of dependent arising.

It is hard for such a generation to see this truth, that is to say, specific conditionality, dependent arising. And it is hard to see this truth, that is to say, stilling of all sankhaeas, relinquishing of the essentials of existence, exhaustion of craving, fading of lust, cessation, Nibbāna.MN 26

Or even more direct affirmation of strict relationship between the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling and nibbana or cessation of dependent arising:

But the Blessed One has said: “Whatever is felt is included in suffering.” Now with reference to what was this stated by the Blessed One?’”

“Good, good, bhikkhu! These three feelings have been spoken of by me: pleasant feeling, painful feeling, neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling. These three feelings have been spoken of by me. And I have also said: ‘Whatever is felt is included in suffering.’ That has been stated by me with reference to the impermanence of sankharas. That has been stated by me with reference to sankharas being subject to destruction … to sankharas being subject to vanishing … to sankharas being subject to fading away … to sankharas being subject to cessation … to sankharas being subject to change.

“Then, bhikkhu, I have also taught the successive cessation of sankharas. For one who has attained the first jhāna, speech has ceased. For one who has attained the second jhāna, thought and examination have ceased. For one who has attained the third jhāna, rapture has ceased. For one who has attained the fourth jhāna, in-breathing and out-breathing have ceased. For one who has attained the base of the infinity of space, the perception of form has ceased. For one who has attained the base of the infinity of consciousness, the perception pertaining to the base of the infinity of space has ceased. For one who has attained the base of nothingness, the perception pertaining to the base of the infinity of consciousness has ceased. For one who has attained the base of neither-perception-nor-nonperception, the perception pertaining to the base of nothingness has ceased. For one who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, perception and feeling have ceased. For a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed, lust has ceased, hatred has ceased, delusion has ceased.
“Then, bhikkhu, I have also taught the successive subsiding of sankharas.

So much for Bhikkhu Bodhi's understanding of Dhamma. Unfortunately in the case of sankharas, Bhikkhu Bodhi fails even on the level of objective scholarship. In his commentary to MN 9 he writes about kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra:

In the context of the doctrine of dependent origination, formations (sankhārā) are wholesome and unwholesome volitions, or, in short, kamma. The bodily formation is volition that is expressed through the body, the verbal formation volition that is expressed by speech, and the mental formation volition that remains internal without coming to bodily or verbal expression.

But he does so without giving the Pali names of these sankharas, so the reader is likely to be measled taking venerable translator opinion which contradicts Sutta definition of these sankharas as valid, reliable and trustworthy. Bhikkhu Bodhi thinks, that he is wiser than Suttas, and refuses to follow simple logic that if kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra appear in the context of the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling and as well in the context of dependent arising it must mean that there is a vital connection between these two subjects. But as a scholar he should at least to provide the Pali names of these sankharas, so reader can think for himself.

In his commentary to SN 12 : 2 Bhikkhu Bodhi writes

This triad of saṅkhārā should not be confused with the triad discussed at 41:6 (IV 293,14-28, also at MN I 301,17-29). I have added “volitional” to the present set to distinguish them from the other, though the Pāli terms are identical. The latter triad is always introduced in relation to the cessation of perception and feeling and is never brought into connection with dependent origination.

So Pali terms are identical and the cessation of perception and feeling  is never brought into connection with dependent origination. And this triad of saṅkhārā should not be confused with the triad discussed at 41:6 (IV 293,14-28, also at MN I 301,17-29).

But who is confused here?

It looks like Bhikkhu Bodhi in his eagerness to criticise what he doesn't understand, has forgotten that Pali scholarship has some specific qualityies absent in other forms of scholarship:

“Bhikkhus, there was once a foolish Magadhan cowherd who, in the last month of the rainy season, in the autumn, without examining the near shore or the further shore of the river Ganges, drove his cattle across to the other shore in the Videhan country at a place that had no ford. Then the cattle bunched together in mid-stream in the river Ganges, and they met with calamity and disaster. Why was that? Because that foolish Magadhan cowherd, in the last month of the rainy season, in the autumn, without examining the near shore or the further shore of the river Ganges, drove his cattle across to the other shore in the Videhan country at a place that had no ford.

“So too, bhikkhus, as to those recluses and brahmins who are unskilled in this world and the other world, unskilled in Māra’s realm and what is outside Māra’s realm, unskilled in the realm of Death and what is outside the realm of Death—it will lead to the harm and suffering for a long time of those who think they should listen to them and place faith in them". MN 34

Seniority in Dhamma

When the Blessed One had stayed at Vesālī as long as he chose, he set out to wander by stages to Sāvatthī. Now on that occasion the followers of the bhikkhus belonging to a certain clique of six went ahead of the Sangha of bhikkhus headed by the Buddha, and they took over lodgings and beds thus: “This will be for our preceptors, this will be for our teachers, this will be for us.” When the venerable Sāriputta arrived after the Sangha of bhikkhus headed by the Buddha, the lodgings and beds had all been taken over. Finding no bed, he went and sat down at the root of a tree. When the night was ending and it was near dawn, the Blessed One got up, and he coughed. The venerable Sāriputta also coughed.

“Who is there?”

“It is I, Sāriputta, Blessed One.”

“Why are you sitting there, Sāriputta?”

Then the venerable Sāriputta told what had happened. The Blessed One made this the reason to call the bhikkhus together, and he asked them if it was true. They said that it was. He administered a rebuke: “Bhikkhus, this does not rouse faith in the faithless or increase faith in the faithful; rather it keeps the faithless without faith and harms some of the faithful.”

After he had administered the rebuke and given a talk on the Dhamma, he addressed the bhikkhus thus: “Bhikkhus, who is worthy of the best seat, the best water, the best almsfood?”

Some bhikkhus said that it was one gone forth from a warrior-noble family; others that it was one gone forth from a brahman family … from a householder family; others that it was one who specialized in recitation of Discourses, in recitation of the Discipline, who preached the Dhamma … who had obtained the first meditation … the second meditation … the third meditation … the fourth meditation … that it was a stream-enterer … a once-returner … a non-returner … an accomplished Arahant … that it was one who had the three true knowledges; still others said that it was one who had the six kinds of direct knowledge. Then the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus:

“Once, bhikkhus, somewhere in the Himalayas there was a huge banyan tree, under which three companions lived. They were a partridge, a monkey and an elephant. They were often rude and disrespectful, and they lived without consideration for one another. They thought: ‘If only we could find out which of us is the oldest,  then we could honour, respect, revere and venerate him and follow his advice.’

“The partridge and the monkey asked the elephant: ‘How far back can you remember?’

“ ‘When I was a calf, I used to walk over this banyan tree so that it passed between my legs and its topmost branch scratched my stomach.’

“Then the partridge and the elephant asked the monkey: ‘How far back can you remember?’

“ ‘When I was a baby, I used to sit on the ground and nibble the topmost shoots of this banyan tree.’

“Then the monkey and the elephant asked the partridge: ‘How far back can you remember?’

“ ‘In a certain place there was a big banyan tree. I ate one of its seeds and voided it in this place, and this banyan tree grew from that seed. So I am older than you.’

“Then the monkey and the elephant said to the partridge: ‘You are older than us. We will honour, respect, revere and venerate you and follow your advice.’ After that the partridge made the monkey and the elephant undertake the five precepts of virtue, and he undertook them himself. And they were courteous and respectful to one another and lived with mutual consideration. On the dissolution of the body, after death, they appeared in a happy destination, in the heavenly world. So that came to be called ‘the partridge’s holy life.’

Those that reverence an elder
Are reckoned skillful in the Dhamma,
For they have both praise here and now
And a happy destiny beyond.

“Now, bhikkhus, these animals could be courteous and respectful to each other and live with mutual consideration. Try and copy them. That you should be rude and disrespectful and live without mutual consideration under a Dhamma and Discipline as well proclaimed as this, does not rouse faith in the faithless or increase faith in the faithful; rather it keeps the faithless without faith and harms some of the faithful.” Vin. Cv. 6:5
**

Nanavira Thera:

The difficulty with the Venerable Objector is that we have to live with him, whereas you don’t. We are obliged to pay him respect on account of his seniority, and this is quite as it should be; but it tends to be accepted as a homage to his superior wisdom, which is a debatable inference. The consequence is, however, that if his wisdom is questioned, even by implication, it is immediately interpreted as disrespect.

We try to discover our personal ideas in the Canon because there is nothing else we can do

A few days ago I received from you a letter containing Mr. G.’s comments on the Notes on Dhamma. I have been through it with some care (though unfortunately I do not read Sanskrit), and it is obvious that he has taken considerable trouble about preparing them. He clearly has a considerable wealth of learning at his command, and seems to be quite familiar with the Pali texts, from which he quotes freely. At the same time, however, it is evident to me that the differences between his point of view and mine go too deep to be removed simply by a discussion of the various points he has raised. In order to explain my meaning I should have to make use of arguments that he would probably feel inclined to dispute, and the difficulties would thus merely be shifted from one place to another. But I have the impression that he is well satisfied that his position is the right one, and I do not think it would serve any useful purpose for me to call it in question.

In his letter he remarks that I explain too inductively, that I tend to look for my ideas in the Canon instead of deducing from the passages what they mean. This criticism, however, supposes that we are, in fact, able to approach the Canon with a perfectly virgin mind, equipped only with a knowledge of Pali and a sound training in logic.

But this is precisely what we cannot do. Each of us, at every moment, has the whole of his past behind him; and it is in the light of his past (or his background or his presuppositions) that he interprets what is now presented to him and gives it its meaning. Without such a background nothing would ever appear to us with any meaning at all—a spoken or written word would remain a pure presentation, a bare sound or mark without significance. But, unfortunately, each of us has a different past; and, in consequence, each of us approaches the Canon with a set of presuppositions that is different in various ways from everybody else’s*. And the further consequence is that each of us understands the Canon in a different sense. We try to discover our personal ideas in the Canon because there is nothing else we can do. It is the only way we have, in the first place, of understanding the Canon.

Later, of course, our understanding of the Canon comes to modify our ideas; and thus, by a circular process, our later understanding of the Canon is better than, or at least different from, our earlier understanding, and there is the possibility of eventually arriving at the right understanding of the ariyapuggala. Certainly we can, to some extent, deduce from the Canon its meaning; but unless we first introduced our own ideas we should never find that the Canon had any meaning to be deduced.

For each person, then, the Canon means something different according to his different background. And this applies not only to our understanding of particular passages, but also to what we understand by the Buddhadhamma as a whole.

(i) We may all agree that certain passages were spoken by the Buddha himself and that they represent the true Teaching. But when we come to ask one another what we understand by these passages and by the words they contain we often find a profound disagreement that is by no means settled simply by reference to other Sutta passages. (He and I are evidently agreed—to take a case in point—that the Sāvaka Sutta¹ represents the Teaching of the Buddha. But whereas I understand it as indicating that only one out of eight kinds of feeling is kammavipāka, he brings forward an argument to justify its interpretation in a quite contrary sense—that all eight kinds are kamma-vipāka. And though I entirely disagree with his interpretation, I very much doubt whether I should be able to produce a Sutta passage to convince him of—as I see it—his mistake. And this for the simple reason that he will inevitably interpret whatever passage I may produce according to his ideas. We may agree on the text, but we shall disagree on the interpretation.) (ii) Since everybody already has his own ideas (vague or precise) of what constitutes happiness, he will naturally look to the Buddha (that is, if he has placed his saddhā in the Buddha) to supply that happiness, and he will interpret the Dhamma as a whole in just that sense. Later, of course, he may find that the Dhamma cannot be taken in the sense that he wishes, and he will then either change his ideas or else abandon the Dhamma for some other teaching. But, in any case, there is no reason at all for supposing that two people (unless they have both ceased to be puthujjana) will be agreed on what it is, precisely, that the Buddha teaches. (So, in the present case, I do not find that Mr. G.’s view of the Dhamma—so far as I can grasp it—has any very great resemblance to mine; and that difference evidently reflects the difference in our respective backgrounds against which we interpret the Dhamma. He may (perhaps) say that he reads and understands the Suttas without any reference to a background, and (if so) I have no wish to argue the point; but I know that, for my part, I never come without a background (in a sense I am my background) when I consider the texts, even though that background is now very different from what it was when I first looked at a Sutta.

And if he disagrees with what I am saying, that disagreement will itself be reflected in the way each of us understands the nature of the Dhamma.) Probably he is not much concerned to understand the mode of thinking that refuses a horizontal (or temporal) interpretation of patticca-samuppāda and requires instead a vertical (or simultaneous) view; but if it should so happen that he is interested, then he could read—if his studies leave him time—either Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit or Sartre’s L ’Être et le Néant. It must be made clear, however, that these works are in no way a substitute for the Canon and, further, that the philosophies of these thinkers, when considered in detail, are open to criti-cism in several respects. It is their manner of thinking that is instruc-tive. (In this connexion, Mr. G. might note that by the term ‘reflexion’ I mean paccavekkhana, not pariyatti.)2

* Presentation/ my representation of the object

But suppose I want to think about something like ‘the British Constitution’. I cannot simply produce an imaginary picture ‘looking like’ the British Constitution, because the B.C. does not ‘look like’ anything. What happens is that, over the years, I have built up a complex image, partly visual, partly verbal, and perhaps also with elements from other senses; and this complex image has an internal structure that corresponds to that of the B.C., at least in so far as I have correctly understood it. If, in my studies of the British Constitution I have consulted faulty authorities, or omitted part of it, these faults or omissions will be represented in this complex image. Whenever I wish to think about the B.C. (or even whenever anybody mentions it) this complex image comes to my mind, and it is with reference to it that I (for example) answer questions about the B.C. This complex image is a concept—it is my concept of the B.C. With luck, it may correspond fairly closely with the original thing, but most probably it is a very misleading representation. (Note that, since the essence of the concept is in the structure of the complex image, and not in the individual images that make up the complex image, it is quite possible to have a number of different complex images, but all with the same structure, to represent the real state of affairs in question. Here, the concept remains the same, though the image is different. Thus, in the world of art, it is possible to express the same idea either in music or in painting.) Now all conceptual thinking is abstract; that is to say, the thought or concept is entirely divorced from reality, it is removed from existence and is (in Kierkegaard’s

phrase) sub specie æterni. Concrete thinking, on the other hand, thinks the object while the object is present, and this, in the strict sense of the words, is reflexion or mindfulness. One is mindful of what one is doing, of what one is seeing, while one is actu-ally doing (or seeing) it. This, naturally, is very much more difficult than abstract thinking; but it has a very obvious advantage: if one is thinking (or being mindful) of something while it is actually present, no mistake is possible, and one is directly in touch with reality; but in abstract thinking there is every chance of a mistake, since, as I pointed out above, the concepts with which we think are composite affairs, built up of an arbitrary lot of individual experiences (books, conver-sations, past observations, and so on).

What Huxley is getting at, then, is simply this. As a result of our education, our books, radios, cinemas, televisions, and so on, we tend to build up artificial concepts of what life is, and these concepts are grossly misleading and are no satisfactory guide at all to real life.

(How many people, especially in the West, derive all their ideas about love from the cinema or T.V .—no wonder they run into difficulties when they begin to meet it as it is in reality!) Huxley is advocating a training in mindfulness (or awareness), satisampajañña—in thinking about life as it is actually taking place—instead of (or, at least, as well as) the present training in purely abstract thinking. In this way, so he maintains—and of course he is quite right—, people will be better fitted for dealing with life as it really is.

***
kama vipaka

Nanavira Thera:

In my early days in Ceylon I myself was something of a ‘tidy-chart’ maker, and I hoped and believed that it was possible to include all that the Suttas said in a single system—preferably portrayed diagrammatically on one very large sheet of paper. In those innocent days—which however did not last very long—I believed that the Commentaries knew what they were talking about. And I had the idea that everything that happened to me was vipāka and everything that I did about it (my reaction, that is, to the vipāka) was fresh kamma, which in turn produced fresh vipāka, and so on ad inf. And this is as tidy as anyone could wish.

Then I came across the Sutta that I transcribe below. This, as you will see, was enough to shatter my illusions, and it came as a bit of a shock (though also as a bit of a relief). In due course after asking people about it and getting no satisfactory explanation, I decided that my ‘tidy idea’ could be true only in a general sense, and that, in any case, it could not possibly be of any vital importance in the essential part of the Dhamma. Since then I have stopped thinking about it.

Once the Auspicious One was staying near Rājagaha, at the Squirrel’s feeding-ground in the Bamboo Grove. Now at that time the Wanderer Sīvaka of the top knot approached the Auspicious One. Having approached, he exchanged courtesies and, having done so, sat down at one side.

Sitting at one side the Wanderer Sīvaka of the top knot said this to the Auspicious One:
—There are some recluses and divines, Master Gotama, of such a belief, of such a view: ‘Whatever this individual experiences, be it pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, all that is due to former actions.’ Herein what does Master Gotama say?

—Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (1) with bile as their source. That can be known by oneself, Sīvaka, how some feelings arise here with bile as their source; and that is reckoned by the world as truth, Sīvaka, how some feelings arise here with bile as their source. Therein, Sīvaka, the recluses and divines who are of such a belief, of such a view: ‘Whatever this individual experiences, be it pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, all that is due to former actions’, they both go beyond what is known by themselves and go beyond what is reckoned as truth in the world.
Therefore I say that these recluses and divines are in the wrong.

Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (2) with phlegm as their source….
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (3) with wind as their source….
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (4) due to confluence of humours….
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (5) born from seasonal change….
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (6) born from improper care….
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (7) due to exertion….
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (8) born from the ripening of action…. Therefore I say that these recluses and divines are in the wrong.
Vedanā Samy . 21: iv,229-31

Nanavira Thera 

The Slave Trade in the Congo Basin

 

Contents

WITH STANLEY

NATIVE LIFE

THE EFFECT OF SLAVERY

THE VILLAGE CHIEFS

MODES OF TORTURE

HOW THE NATIVES ARE ENSLAVED

IN THE SLAVE SHED

CANNIBALISM

LOCAL SLAVE-MARKETS

IN THE FAR INTERIOR

SOME BARBAROUS CUSTOMS

SUPPRESSION OF SLAVERY

EFFECT OF LIBERATION
WITH STANLEY

The heart of Africa is being rapidly depopulated in consequence of the enormous death-roll caused by the barbarous slave-trade. It is not merely the bondage which slavery implies that should appeal to the sympathies of the civilized world; it is the bloodshed, cruelty, and misery which it involves.

During my residence in Central Africa I was repeatedly traveling about in the villages along the Congo River and its almost unknown affluents, and in every new village I was confronted by fresh evidences of the horrible nature of this evil. I did not seek to witness the sufferings attendant upon this traffic in humanity, but cruelties of all kinds are so general that the mere passing visits which I paid brought me in constant contact with them.

It is not alone by the Arabs that slave-raiding is carried on throughout Central Africa. With respect to slavery in the Congo Free State, the western limit of the slave-raiding operations of the Arabs is the Aruwhimi River, just below Stanley Falls, but intertribal slavery exists from this point throughout the State to the Atlantic Ocean. During my six years’ residence on the Congo River I saw but little of the Arabs, and therefore in this article I am detailing only my experiences bearing upon the subject of slavery among the natives themselves.

I first went to the Congo in 1883, and traveled without delay into the interior. Arriving at Stanley Pool, I received orders from my chief, Mr. Henry M. Stanley, to accompany him up river on his little boat the En Avant. Stanley at that time was engaged in establishing a few posts at important and strategic points along the upper river. Lukolela, eight hundred miles in the interior, was one decided upon, and I had the honor of being selected by him as chief of this post. As no white man had ever lived there before, I had a great deal of work in establishing myself. The position selected for our settlement was a dense forest, and until now it had been more familiar with the trumpeting of elephants and the cry of the leopard than with human beings. At first the natives rather objected to my remaining at all, and stated their objections to Stanley. Said they:

“We have promised to allow you to put a white man here, but we have been talking the matter over, and we have concluded it would be better to put your white man somewhere else. We, the assembled chiefs, have held a council, and have come to the conclusion that it is not desirable to have such a terrible creature in the district.”

Stanley said:

“Why, what is there in him that you object to? You have never seen him.”

(I had not yet landed, being at that time very sick and unable to leave the boat.)

They said:

“No, we have not seen him, but we have heard about him.”

Stanley then said:

“What have you heard about him?”

They replied:

“He is half a lion, and half a buffalo; has one eye in the middle of his forehead, and is armed with sharp, jagged teeth; and is continually slaughtering and devouring human beings. Is this so?”

Stanley answered them,

“I did not know that he was such a terrible creature; but I will call him, and let you judge for yourselves.”

Upon my appearing this illusion was immediately dispelled, as, after suffering several days from an acute sickness, I really did not look very formidable or bloodthirsty.

Here I lived for twenty months, the only white man, so that I had every opportunity of studying native character and customs.

NATIVE LIFE

In order to place before the reader a picture of savage life untouched by civilization, I could hardly do better than lightly sketch a typical village at Lukolela as I have intimately known it. The whole district contains about three thousand people, the land occupied by them extending along the bank for two miles, the villages being dotted through this distance in clusters of fifty or sixty houses. The houses are built on each side of one long street or in open squares. They are roofed with either palm leaves or grass, the walls being composed of split bamboo. Some of these dwellings contain two or three compartments, with only one entrance; while others are long structures, divided up into ten or twelve rooms, each with its own entrance from the outside. At the back of these dwellings are large plantations of banana trees; while above them tower the stately palm trees, covering street and hut with their friendly shade.

It is in the cool of the early morning that the greater part of the business of the village is transacted. Most of the women repair, soon after six, to their plantations, where they work until noon, a few of them remaining in the village to attend to culinary and other domestic matters. Large earthen pots, containing fish, banana, or manioc, are boiling over wood fires, around which cluster the young boys and girls and the few old men and women enjoying the heat until the warm rays of the morning sun appear. Meanwhile the fishermen gather up their traps, arm themselves, and paddle off to their fishing grounds; the hunters take their spears or bows and arrows and start off to pick up tracks of their game; the village blacksmith starts his fire; the adze of the carpenter is heard busily at work; fishing and game nets are unrolled and damages examined; and the medicine man is busy gesticulating with his charms. As the sun rises the scene becomes more and more animated; the warmth of the fire is discarded, and every department of industry becomes full of life — the whole scene rendered cheerful by the happy faces and merry laughter of the little ones as they scamper here and there engaged in their games.

At noon the overpowering heat of the tropical sun compels a cessation of work, and a lazy quietude prevails everywhere. Then all the shady nooks of the village are filled with groups who either sleep, engage in conversation, or pass their time in hairdressing or in attending to some other toilet matter which native etiquette demands, such as shaving off eyebrows or pulling out eyelashes — an operation which is also extended to all hairs on the face except those on the chin, which are plaited in the form of a rat’s tail. The closer the finger nails are cut, the more fashionable is it thought. At the finger ends the nails are cut down to the quick, and any one posing as either beau or belle always has some of the finger and toe nails pared entirely off.

The midday meal is now eaten, the whole village assuming an air of calmness, broken only by the occasional bursts of boisterous mirth from groups engaged in discussing the merits of the native wine.

All mankind have the same weakness in requiring at times drink stronger than water. Nature has provided the African with the juice of the palm tree, a most palatable beverage, resembling when fresh a very strong lemon soda, but intoxicating in its effects. It is obtained in the following way: the villagers in charge of this particular industry  climb the tree, trim away some of the leaves, and then bore three or four holes, about half an inch in diameter, at the base of the frond, to the heart of the tree. From each of these holes will flow each day about half a pint of juice, a small gourd being first placed to receive it. The contents of these gourds are collected every morning. This beverage is called by the natives malafu, and is well known to all European travelers as palm wine.

Between three and four o’clock the village again resumes its air of activity, which is kept up until sundown. In this region, being close to the equator, the sun sets at six o’clock. All tools are put away, and work is suspended. The fires are again lighted, mats are brought out and spread about, and the principal meal of the day is eaten; after which the natives gather around the fire again and talk over the events of the day and the plans for the future. The young people repair to the open places and indulge in their native dances until midnight.

This dancing at night is a sight to be remembered. The performers arrange themselves in circles and dance in time to the beating of the drums, which is their only accompaniment, and occasionally break out into native songs. The surrounding tropical scenery stands outlined in bold relief, the nearer trees occasionally catching the lurid light of the fires, which also strikes on the gleaming bodies of the dancers, making a violent contrast of light and shade, the whole scene being rendered impressive by the wild but harmonious music.

At midnight, when all the villagers have retired to their huts, stillness reigns, broken only at times by the weird call of a strange bird, the cry of a prowling leopard or some other wild animal, and the varied sounds of tropical insects.

THE EFFECT OF SLAVERY

This is a fair picture of the life carried on from day to day in a hundred Congo villages, and but for the existence of slavery it would continue undisturbed from one year’s end to another. It is the presence of the slave in the village that brutalizes the otherwise harmless and peaceful community. It is the baneful influence that gives one man the power of life and death over the wretch he has purchased that impels the savage instinct to spill in executions and ceremonies the life-blood of the man, woman, or child he has obtained — perhaps in exchange for a few brass rods or two or three yards of Manchester cloth. Here at Lukolela, for instance, I had hardly settled down in my encampment when I was introduced to one of those horrible scenes of bloodshed which take place frequently in all the villages along the Congo, and which will be enacted so long as the life of a slave is counted as naught, and the spilling of his blood of as little account as that of a goat or a fowl.

In this particular instance the mother of a chief having died, it was decided, as usual, to celebrate the event with an execution. At the earliest streak of dawn the slow, measured beat of a big drum announces to all what is to take place, and warns the poor slave who is to be the victim that his end is nigh. It is very evident that something unusual is about to happen, and that the day is to be given up to some ceremony. The natives gather in groups and begin studiously to arrange their toilets, don their gayest loin-cloths, and ornament their legs and arms with bright metal bangles, all the time indulging in wild gesticulations and savage laughter as they discuss the coming event. Having taken a hasty meal, they produce from their houses all available musical instruments. The drums are wildly beaten as groups of men, women, and children form themselves in circles and excitedly perform dances, consisting of violent contortions of the limbs, accompanied with savage singing and with repeated blasts of the war horns, each dancer trying to outdo his fellow in violence of movement and strength of lung.

About noon, from sheer exhaustion, combined with the heat of the sun, they are compelled to cease; when large jars of palm wine are produced, and a general bout of intoxication begins, increasing their excitement and showing up their savage nature in striking colors. The poor slave, who all this time has been lying in the corner of some hut, shackled hand and foot and closely watched, suffering the agony and suspense which this wild tumult suggests to him, is now carried to some prominent part of the village, there to be surrounded and to receive the jeers and scoffs of the drunken mob of savages. The executioner’s assistants, having selected a suitable place for the ceremony, procure a block of wood about a foot square. The slave is then placed on this, in a sitting posture; his legs are stretched out straight in front of him; the body is strapped to a stake reaching up the back to the shoulders. On each side stakes are placed under the armpits as props, to which the arms are firmly bound; other lashings are made to posts driven into the ground near the ankles and knees.

A pole is now planted about ten feet in front of the victim, from the top of which is suspended, by a number of strings a bamboo ring. The pole is bent over like a fishing-rod, and the ring fastened round the slave’s neck, which is kept rigid and stiff by the tension. During this preparation the dances are resumed, now rendered savage and brutal in the extreme by the drunken condition of the people. One group of dancers surround the victim and indulge in drunken mimicry of the contortions of face which the pain caused by this cruel torture forces him to show. But he has no sympathy to expect from this merciless horde.

Presently in the distance approaches a company of two lines of young people, each holding a stem of the palm tree, so that an arch is formed between them, under which the executioner is escorted. The whole procession moves with a slow but dancing gait. Upon arriving near the doomed slave all dancing, singing, and drumming cease, and the drunken mob take their places to witness the last act of the drama.

An unearthly silence succeeds. The executioner wears a cap composed of black cocks’ feathers; his face and neck are blackened with charcoal, except the eyes, the lids of which are painted with white chalk. The hands and arms to the elbow, and feet and legs to the knee, are also blackened. His legs are adorned profusely with broad metal anklets, and around his waist are strung wild-cat skins. As he performs a wild dance around his victim, every now and then making a feint with his knife, a murmur of admiration arises from the assembled crowd. He then approaches and makes a thin chalk mark on the neck of the fated man. After two or three passes of his knife to get the right swing, he delivers the fatal blow, and with one stroke of his keen-edged weapon severs the head from the body.

The sight of blood brings to a climax the frenzy of the natives: some of them savagely puncture the quivering trunk with their spears, others hack at it with their knives, while the remainder engage in a ghastly struggle for the possession of the head, which has been jerked into the air by the released tension of the sapling. As each man obtains the trophy, and is pursued by the drunken rabble, the hideous tumult becomes deafening; they smear one another’s faces with blood, and fights always spring up as a result, when knives and spears are freely used. The reason for their anxiety to possess the head is this: the man who can retain that head against all comers until sundown will receive a present for his bravery from the head man of the village. It is by such means that they test the brave of the village, and they will say with admiration, speaking of a local hero,

“He is a brave man; he has retained two heads until sundown.”

When the taste for blood has been to a certain extent satisfied, they again resume their singing and dancing while another victim is prepared, when the same ghastly exhibition is repeated. Sometimes as many as twenty slaves will be slaughtered in one day. The dancing and general drunken uproar is continued until midnight, when once more absolute silence ensues, in utter contrast to the hideous tumult of the day.

I had frequently heard the natives boast of the skill of their executioners, but I doubted their ability to decapitate a man with one blow of the soft metal knives they use. I imagined they would be compelled to hack the head from the body. When I witnessed this sickening spectacle I was alone, unarmed, and absolutely powerless to interfere. But the mute agony of this poor black martyr, who was to die for no crime, but simply because he was a slave, — whose every piteous movement was mocked by frenzieds avages, and whose very death throes gave the signal for the unrestrained outburst of a hideous carnival of drunken savagery, — appealed so strongly to my sense of duty that I decided upon preventing by force any repetition of this scene. I made my resolution known to an assembly of the principal chiefs, and although several attempts were made, no actual executions took place during the remainder of my stay in this district.

THE VILLAGE CHIEFS

A few words are necessary to define the position of the village chiefs as the most important factors in African savage life; especially as in one way or another they are intimately connected with the worst features of the slave system, and are responsible for nearly all the atrocities practiced on the slave.

The so-called chiefs are the head men of a village, and they rank according to the number of their warriors. The title of chieftain is not hereditary, but is gained by one member of a tribe proving his superiority to his fellows. The most influential chief in a village has necessarily the greatest number of fighting men, and these are principally slaves, as the allegiance of a free man can never be depended upon. A chief’s idea of wealth is — slaves. Any kinds of money he may have he will convert into slaves upon the first opportunity. Polygamy is general throughout Central Africa, and a chief buys as many female slaves as he can afford, and will also marry free women — which is, after all, only another form of purchase.

MODES OF TORTURE

All tribes I have known have an idea of immortality. They believe that death leads but to another life, to be continued under the same conditions as the life they are now leading; and a chief thinks that if when he enters into this new existence that if he is accompanied by a sufficient following of slaves he will be entitled to the same rank in the next world as he holds in this. From this belief emanates one of their most barbarous customs — the ceremony of human sacrifices upon the death of any one of importance. Upon the decease of a chief, a certain number of his slaves are selected to be sacrificed, that their spirits may accompany him to the next world. Should this chief possess thirty men and twenty women, seven or eight of the former and six or seven of the latter will suffer death. The men are decapitated, and the women are strangled. When a woman is to be sacrificed she is adorned with bright metal bangles, her toilet is carefully attended to, her hair is neatly plaited, and bright-colored cloths are wrapped around her. Her hands are then pinioned behind, and her neck is passed through a noose of cord; the long end of the cord is led over the branch of the nearest tree, and is drawn taut at a given signal; and while the body is swinging in mid-air its convulsive movements are imitated with savage gusto by the spectators. It often happens that a little child also becomes a victim to this horrible ceremony, by being placed in the grave alive, as a pillow for the dead chief. These executions are still perpetrated in all the villages of the Upper Congo.

But the life of the slave is not only forfeited at the death of the chief of the tribe in which fate has cast his lot. Let us suppose that the tribe he is owned by has been maintaining an internecine warfare with another tribe in the same district. For some reason it is deemed politic by the chief to bring the feud to an end, and a meeting is arranged with his rival. At the conclusion of the interview, in order that the treaty of peace may be solemnly ratified, blood must be spilled.

A slave is therefore selected, and the mode of torture preceding his death will vary in different districts. In the Ubangi River district the slave is suspended head downwards from the branch of a tree, and there left to die. But even more horrible is the fate of such a one at Chumbiri, Bolobo, or the large villages around Irebu, where the expiatory victim is actually buried alive with only the head left above the ground. All his bones have first been crushed or broken, and in speechless agony he waits for death. He is usually thus buried at the junction of two highways, or by the side of some well-trodden pathway leading from the village; and of all the numerous villagers who pass to and fro, not one, even if he felt a momentary pang of pity, would dare either to alleviate or to end his misery, for this is forbidden under the severest penalties.

HOW THE NATIVES ARE ENSLAVED

The varying fortunes of tribal warfare furnish the markets with slaves whose cicatrization marks show them to be members of widely differing families and distant villages. But there are some tribes, and these the most inoffensive and the most peaceful, whose weakness places them at all times at the mercy of their more powerful neighbors. Without exception the most persecuted race in the dominions of the Congo Free State are the Balolo tribes, inhabiting the country through which the Malinga, Lupuri, Lulungu, and Ikelemba rivers flow. I may here mention the the prefix “Ba” in the language of these people implies the plural; for instance, Lolo would mean one Lolo — Ba-lolo signifying Lolo people. These people are naturally mild and inoffensive. Their small, unprotected villages are constantly attacked by the powerful roving tribes of the Lufembé and Ngombé. These two tribes are voracious cannibals. They surround the Lolo villages at night, and at the first signs of dawn pounce down upon the unsuspecting Balolo, killing all the men who resist and catching all the rest. They then select the stronger portion of their captives, and shackle them hand and foot to prevent their escape. The remainder they kill, distributing the flesh among themselves.

As a rule, after such a raid they form a small encampment; they light their fires, seize all the bananas in the village, and gorge upon the human flesh. They then march over to one of the numerous slave-markets on the river, where they exchange the captives with the slave-traders of the Lulungu River for beads, cloth, brass wire, and other trinkets. The slave-traders pack the slaves into their canoes and take them down to the villages on the Lulungu River where the more important markets are held. Masankusu, situated at the junction of the Lupuri and Malinga tributaries, is by far the most important slave-trading center. The people of Masankusu buy their slaves from the Lufembé and Ngombé raiders, and sell them to the Lulungu natives and traders from down river. The slaves are exhibited for sale at Masankusu in long sheds, or rather under simple grass roofs supported on bare poles. It is heartrending to see the inmates of one of these slave-sheds. They are huddled together like so many animals.

IN THE SLAVE SHED

The accompanying pictures, from sketches which I took at Masankusu, will give some idea of the suffering which is endured by captives in numberless slave-markets. (Note: These illustrations are reproduced in Kurt Saxon’s book ROOT ROT. See details at the end of this article.) They are hobbled with roughly hewn logs which chafe their limbs to open sores; sometimes a whole tree presses its weight on their bodies while their necks are penned into the natural prong formed by its branching limbs. Others sit from day to day with their legs and arms maintained in a fixed position by rudely constructed stocks, and each slave is secured to the roof-posts by a cord knotted to a cane ring which either encircles his neck or is intertwined with his woolly hair. Many die of pure starvation, as the owners give them barely enough food to exist upon, and even that they grudge them. These hungry creatures form indeed a truly pitiable sight. After suffering this captivity for a short time they become mere skeletons. All ages, of both sexes, are to be seen: mothers with their babes; young men and women; boys and girls; and even babies who cannot yet walk, and whose mothers have died of starvation, or perhaps been killed by the Lufembé. One seldom sees either old men or old women; they are all killed in the raids: their marketable value being very small, no trouble is taken with them.

Witnessing groups of these poor, helpless wretches, with their emaciated forms and sunken eyes, their faces a very picture of sadness, it is not difficult to perceive the intense grief that they are inwardly suffering; but they know too well it is of no use to appeal for sympathy to their merciless masters, who have been accustomed from childhood to witness acts of cruelty and brutality, so that to satisfy their insatiable greed they will commit themselves, or permit to be committed, any atrocity, however great. Even the pitiable sight of one of these slave-sheds does not half represent the misery caused by this traffic — homes broken up, mothers separated from their babies, husbands from wives, and brothers from sisters. When last at Masankusu I saw a slave woman who had with her one child, whose starved little body she was clutching to her shrunken breast. I was attracted by her sad face, which betokened great suffering. I asked her the cause of it, and she told me in a low, sobbing voice the following tale:

“I was living with my husband and three children in an inland village, a few miles from here. My husband was a hunter. Ten days ago the Lufembé attacked our settlement; my husband defended himself, but was overpowered and speared to death with several of the other villagers. I was brought here with my three children, two of whom have already been purchased by the traders. I shall never see them any more. Perhaps they will kill them on the death of some chief, or perhaps kill them for food. My remaining child, you see, is ill, dying from starvation; they give us nothing to eat. I expect even this one will be taken from me today, as the chief, fearing lest it should die and become a total loss, has offered it for a very small price. As for myself,” said she, “they will sell me to one of the neighboring tribes, to toil in the plantations, and when I become old and unfit for work I shall be killed.”

There were certainly five hundred slaves exposed for sale in this one village alone. Large canoes were constantly arriving from down river, with merchandise of all kinds with which they purchased these slaves. A large trade is carried on between the Ubangi and Lulungu rivers. The people inhabiting the mouth of the Ubangi buy the Balolo slaves at Masankusu and the other markets. They then take them up the Ubangi River and exchange them with the natives there for ivory. These natives buy their slaves solely for food. Having purchased slaves they feed them on ripe bananas, fish, and oil, and when they get them into good condition, they kill them. Hundreds of the Balolo slaves are taken into the river and disposed of in this way each month. A great many other slaves are sold to the large villages on the Congo, to supply victims for the execution ceremonies.

Much life is lost in the capturing of slaves, and during their captivity many succumb to starvation. Of the remainder, numbers are sold to become victims to cannibalism and human sacrifice ceremonies. There are few indeed who are allowed to live and prosper.

CANNIBALISM

Cannibalism exists among all the peoples on the Upper Congo east of 16 E. longitude, and is prevalent to an even greater extent among the people inhabiting the banks of the numerous affluents. During a two months’ voyage on the Ubangi River I was constantly brought into contact with cannibalism. The natives there pride themselves upon the number of skulls they possess, denoting the number of victims they have been able to obtain. I saw one native hut, around which was built a raised platform of clay a foot wide, on which were placed rows of human skulls , forming a ghastly picture, but one of which the chief was very proud, as he signified by the admiring way he drew my attention to the sight. Bunches of twenty and thirty skulls were hung about in prominent positions in the village. I asked one young chief, who was certainly not more than twenty-five years old, how many men he had eaten in his village, and he answered me thirty. He was greatly astonished at the horror I expressed at his answer. In one village again, as I had bought a tusk of ivory, the natives thought perhaps I might buy skulls, and several armfuls were brought down to my boat within a few minutes.

I found trading somewhat difficult on this river, as the standard of value on the Ubangi was human life — human flesh. I have been asked on several occasions to barter a man for a tusk of ivory, and I remember that at one village the natives urged me to leave one of my boat’s crew in exchange for a goat. “Meat for meat,” they said. I was repeatedly invited, too, to help them fight some of the neighboring tribes. They said:

“You can take the ivory, and we will take the meat”

— meaning, of course, the human beings who might be killed in the fight. The more unfriendly of them would frequently threaten that they would eat us, and I have no doubt they would have done so had we not been strong enough to take care of ourselves.

During my first visit to the upper waters of the Malinga River cannibalism was brought to my notice in a ghastly manner. One night I heard a woman’s piercing shriek, followed by a stifled, gurgling moan; then boisterous laughter, when all again became silent. In the morning I was horrified to see a native offering for sale to my men a piece of human flesh, the skin of which bore the tribal tattoo mark of the Balolo. I afterwards learned that the cry we had heard at night was from a female slave whose throat had been cut. I was absent from this village of Malinga for ten days. On my return I inquired if any further bloodshed had taken place, and was informed that five other women had been killed.

While in the Ruki River at the beginning of this year, I was furnished with another proof of the horrible fate of the slaves. At Esengé, a village near which I stopped to cut wood for my steamer, I heard ominous beating of drums and outbreaks of excited mirth. I was informed by one of the natives from the village that an execution was taking place. To my inquiry whether they were in the habit of eating human flesh, he replied:

“We eat the body entirely.”

I further asked what they did with the head.

“Eat it,” he replied; “but first we put it in the fire to singe the hair off.”

There is a small river situated between the Ruki and the Lulungu, called the Ikelemba. At its mouth it is not more than 140 yards wide. Its waters are navigable for 140 miles, and it flows through the land of the Balolo. In proportion to its size it supplies more slaves than any other river. By looking on the map it will be seen that the Ikelemba, Ruki, and Lulungu run parallel to one another. The large slave-raiding tribes inhabit the land between these rivers, and bring their slaves to the nearest market, whether on the Ikelemba, Ruki, or Lulungu.

LOCAL SLAVE-MARKETS

There are clearings at intervals all along the banks of the Ikelemba, where on certain days are held small local markets for the exchange of slaves. As one travels up stream small settlements are passed more and more frequently, and fifty miles from the mouth all the country on the left side of the river is thickly populated. It is noticeable that the villages are all on the left side of the river, the opposite side being infested by marauding and roving tribes who would raid any settlement made on their banks. All the slaves from this river are Balolo, a tribe which is easily recognizable by the exaggerated tattoo marked on the forehead, side of the temples, and chin.

During my ten-days’ visit to this river I met dozens of canoes belonging to the country at the mouth of the Ruki River and the Bakuté district, whose owners had come up and bought slaves, and were returning with their purchases. When traveling from place to place on the river the slaves are, for convenience, relieved of the weight of the heavy shackles. The traders always carry, hanging from the sheaths of their knives, light handcuffs, formed of cord and cane.

The slave when purchased is packed on the floor of the canoe in a crouching posture with his hands bound in front of him by means of these handcuffs. During the voyage he is carefully guarded by the crew of standing paddlers; and when the canoe is tied to the bank at night the further precaution is taken of changing the position in which the hands are bound and pinioning them behind his back, to prevent him from endeavoring to free himself by gnawing through the strands. To make any attempt at escape quite impossible, his wrist is bound to that of one of his sleeping masters, who would be aroused at his slightest movement.

In one canoe which I noticed particularly there were five traders, and their freight of miserable humanity consisted of thirteen emaciated Balolo slaves, men, women, and little children, all showing unmistakably by their sunken eyes and meager bodies the starvation and the cruelty to which they had been subjected. These slaves are taken down to the large villages at the mouth of the Ruki, where they are sold in exchange for ivory to the people in the Ruki or the Ubangi district, the men to be used as warriors, and the women as wives; but compared with the numbers who suffer from the persecution of the slave-raiders, few indeed ever live to attain a secure position of even the humblest kind in a village.

The wretched state of these Balolo has always saddened me, as intellectually they are a grade higher than the tribes surrounding them; and it is really owing to the gentler fiber of their natures, and their peaceful, trusting disposition, that they easily fall a prey to the degraded and savage hordes in their district. They have artistic taste and mechanical ingenuity, and make exquisitely woven shields and curiously shaped and decorated spears and knives. They are exceedingly intelligent, faithful, and, when properly officered, brave.

IN THE FAR INTERIOR

For many months I traveled on the Upper Congo and its affluents and had on several occasions to defend myself against the hostility of the natives. My crew consisted of fifteen men, the greater part of whom were Balolo, and I was never deceived by them. When first I engaged them they came into my hands in the rough. They were savages, some of them cannibals; but they are of a very malleable nature, and with a policy of firmness and fair play I was able to convert them into devoted and faithful servants.

As evidence of what can be done by gaining the confidence of the natives, through a policy of firmness and fairness, I think I may safely quote my experience at the Equator Station. I remained there for nearly a year, with only one Zanzibari soldier; all the rest of my people were natives I had engaged from the neighboring villages. I was surrounded on all sides by powerful people, who, had they wished, could easily have overcome me and pillaged my post. But not the slightest act of hostility or of an unfriendly nature was ever attempted, and I felt just as secure among them as I do in the city of London or New York. It is true the natives had nothing to gain by molesting me, and they were intelligent enough to perceive that fact. In reality, my presence was, to a great extent, beneficial to their interests. I had cloth, beads, looking-glasses, spoons, cups, and trinkets, and these I exchanged with them; every now and then I would organize a little hunt after elephants or hippopotami; and as my part in the consumption of either of these animals was a very small one, most of the meat I gave away to the natives.

My life during my stay at the Equator Station was a pleasant one. The people were of a happy and gay disposition; all were friendly and talkative. They would sit for hours and listen most attentively to my tales of Europe, and their intelligent questions proved them to be possessed of keen understanding. There is no more attentive audience in the whole world than a group of African savages, if you can speak their language and make yourself understood. When I was tired of talking to them, I would ask them questions concerning their manners, customs, and traditions. As I was much impressed by their cruelty, I always made a point of expressing my abhorrence of it, and have even told them that one day I should strike a blow for the slave. My audience on such occasions consisted principally of slaves, and these poor wretches were always much gratified to hear my friendly opinions towards themselves. My arguments, I could see, often appealed strongly to the chiefs themselves, as I asked them:

“Why do you kill these people? Do you think they have no feeling because they are slaves? How would you like to see your own child torn away from you and sold into slavery, to satisfy the cravings of cannibalism, or to be executed?”

They even said, some of them, at the time, that they would not hold any more executions. These executions did take place, but in a secret manner, and all news of them was kept from my ears until some time afterwards, when I learned of them from my own men. But I would have been unable to prevent the carrying out of such a ceremony with the force I had at my disposal in a single Zanzibari soldier!

SOME BARBAROUS CUSTOMS

I remember one execution which took place, the details of which I learned afterwards. It was to celebrate the death of a chief who had been drowned while on a trading expedition. As soon as the news of his death was brought to the village, several of his slaves were tied hand and foot and lashed down into the bottom of a canoe. The canoe was then towed out to the middle of the river at night; holes were bored in it, and it was allowed to sink with its human freight. When we are able to prohibit the terrible loss of life which the children of today are compelled constantly to witness, more humane feelings may develop themselves, and surrounded by healthy influences they will, unspoiled by at least open exhibitions of cruelty, grow into a far nobler generation.

Natives suffering at the hands of the slave traders have repeatedly asked me to help them. At Malinga, where human flesh was offered me for sale, the assembled chiefs voted me several tusks of ivory if I would live among them and defend them against the Lufembé, and enable them to resist the persecutions they were exposed to from the neighboring tribes, who were continually making raids into their districts, capturing their people. They said:

“We are being starved to death. We can make no plantations, because when our women visit them they are caught, killed, and eaten by the crafty Lufembé, who are constantly prowling around and taking away any stragglers they may see.”

One old chief, Isekiaka, told me that already from time to time twelve of his women had been stolen from him, and several of his children. Indeed, so wretched is the condition of the people on the upper reaches of the Malinga that numbers of them have been driven by the Lufembé from their plantations on the mainland, and are actually compelled to live on the river in miserable huts, the floors of which are supported on piles. From these dwellings they suspend their nets, and as the river is full of fish, they subsist almost entirely on the produce of their hauls. This has given rise to a curious state of things; for, as the Lufembé grow only manioc, and have more roots than are sufficient for the tribe, they are only too glad to exchange these for fish caught by their victims. And so when a market is held an armed truce is declared, and Lufembé and Malinga mingle together and barter, with their products held in one hand and a drawn knife ready in the other.

It can be readily imagined that the incessant persecution which the natives are suffering renders them cruel and remorseless. Throughout the regions of the Malinga they become so brutalized by hunger that they eat their own dead, and the appearance of one of their villages always denotes abject misery and starvation. I have repeatedly seen young children eating the root of the banana tree, vainly endeavoring to obtain some kind of nourishment from its succulence. That they are able to exist at all is a mystery. Every living object they are able to obtain is accepted as food; different kinds of flies, caterpillars, and crickets are all eaten by these people.

When one has lived for some time in Central Africa, one comes to understand the little impression that acts of the most atrocious and wanton cruelty make on the savage mind. Surrounded from childhood by scenes of bloodshed and torture, their holidays and great ceremonies marked by massacres of slaves, the mildest and most sensitive nature becomes brutalized and callous; and if this is so with the free, what must be the effect upon the slave, torn when a child from its mother, perhaps at the age of two years, and even in its infancy compelled to suffer privation. If indeed the child runs the gauntlet of cannibalism and execution ceremonies, it can hardly be expected that he will sympathize with any suffering.

The people on the lower art of the Upper Congo seldom practice slave-raiding. It is only when we come to the Bakuté district that we are brought much in contact with it. The large villages around Stanley Pool, — Chumbiri, Bolobo, Lukolela, Butunu, Ngombé, Busindi, Irebu, — Lake Mantumba, and the Ubangi River all rely principally upon the Balolo tribes for their slaves. All these villages except Stanley Pool are daily making human sacrifices, either in connection with the death of some chief or for some other ceremonial reason. Any kind of commerce transacted in this part of Africa only increases the bloodshed, because the native’s ambition is to get as many slaves as possible around him; and when he sells a tusk of ivory or any other article he devotes nearly all of the cloth, brass wire, and beads which he obtains in exchange to the purchase of fresh slaves. So that he is surrounded by numerous women and warriors during his lifetime, and has his importance signalized at his death by the execution of about half the number of his people.

SUPPRESSION OF SLAVERY

I frequently talked with these people, and explained to them the iniquity of slavery; but they argued:

“We have a great deal of hard work in our trading expeditions to obtain these slaves; why should we leave them all behind us for others who have not worked? We have bought them, they are our slaves, and we have a right to do what we like with them.”

The ceremony of execution, with its attendant brutality, ought to be, and can be, stopped. The bloodshed is even greater today than when Stanley first saw these people in 1877; the reason being, as I have before mentioned, that contact with white men has made them richer, and has enabled them to obtain more slaves. The great powers of the civilized world are not discussing the antislavery movement, and if such discussions should result in some united action directed towards the suppression of the trade in the interior, there are a few peculiar features which might be turned to advantage.

First, and most important, this traffic is not complicated by religious fanaticism of any kind.

Second. These people are disunited; every village of fifty or sixty houses is independent of its neighbor, and small family wars are continually taking place.

Third. There is nothing so convincing to the African savage as physical superiority.

Now all these points are in favor of the antislavery movement.

The absence of religious fanaticism, the disunited condition of the natives, and their acknowledgment of physical superiority ought to be taken advantage of, and always borne in mind when plans for the suppression of the slave-trade and its attendant barbarism are projected. In my opinion, it will be some years before the slave-trade carried on by the Arabs can be successfully grappled with, but there is no reason why any delay should occur in striking a blow at the intertribal trade.

The Congo Free State has moved a step in the right direction by establishing near Stanley Falls an entrenched camp, with the object of forming a barrier to keep the Arabs, with their Manyema banditti, east of that position. Every country in the world should support the State to effect this object,as it will play a most important part in the history of Central Africa. When Stanley left Wadelai the Mahdists were already there. If these hordes join with those at Stanley Falls, it will require most strenuous efforts to save the whole Congo Basin from their devastations. While we are still able to keep the Arabs east of the Falls, no time should be lost in eradicating the existing bloodshed west of that point. It is a big work, but it is a duty which the civilized world owes to the helpless slave. Although black, and a savage, still he is a human being. It should always be remembered that the suppression of slavery in Africa does not mean merely striking the fetters from the limbs of the slave; its end is not only the substitution of paid for forced labor, but also the relief of enslaved humanity throughout all these regions from a life of unspeakable horror, from tortures that only the savage African can invent, and from a certain and violent death.

From Banana Point to Stanley Pool slavery does exist, but of such a mild character that when operations are actually begun Stanley Pool should be the starting point. If half a dozen fast boats were placed on the river at Stanley Pool, each armed with twenty black soldiers, officered by two or three Europeans who had proved by their past services that they were capable of dealing with the question, and if such a force had the recognition of the civilized powers and was allowed to strike a blow at the evil, thousands of human lives would be saved.

These boats would be continually moving about the river, and those in command would begin by making a careful study of local politics. They would have to convince the natives of their determination to stop these diabolical ceremonies of bloodshed. The natives should be warned that any villages which in the future were guilty of carrying out such ceremonies would be most severely punished. Some of the better disposed native chiefs would have to be brought over to the side of the white man. Spies should be engaged all over the district, so that a boat on arriving would immediately hear of any execution that was about to take place or that had taken place; and I would suggest that any village which still continued these acts of cruelty, after having been fairly and fully warned, should be attacked, and a severe example made of the principal offenders. A few such punishments would soon have a most salutary effect.

These operations I should recommend to be carried on between Stanley Pool and the Falls. Posts should also be established in commanding positions to control the mouths of the slave-raiding rivers. Each point should be supplied with a boat such as I have recommended for the lower river. Other stations should be established in the center of the slave-raiding district. Slaves at the time in the markets might be redeemed and placed in some settlement, where they could be trained as soldiers or learn some useful craft. I have, whenever it was possible, purchased the redemption of slaves, and on the completion of such purchase have always taken the precaution to place in the freedman’s hand a paper to the effect that he had been redeemed by me from slavery, and that the expedition I represented would make a specified payment per month while he remained in its service.

EFFECT OF LIBERATION

It was curious to observe the different effects that the announcement of such a redemption had on slaves freed so unexpectedly. As a rule, the bewildered man would go from one to another of my boat’s crew, asking all sorts of questions as to the meaning of the ceremony. What was to be his fate? Was he to be exchanged for ivory? or was he to be eaten? And it would take some time and patience to explain to him, after his first surprise was over, the full import of the paper I had placed in his possession. Others, more intelligent, would immediately understand the good fortune that had befallen them; and it was strange to see the startling change in the expression of their countenances, which a moment before betokened nothing but unresisting acquiescence in their miserable destiny, and to note their inert and weary bodies, which seemed at once to become erect and vigorous when released from the degrading fetters.

After having bought all the slaves which were exposed for sale, warning should be given that any attempt to purchase human beings for slavery would be the signal for war, and that the purchasers would be severely punished.

The most important part of the movement is to convince the slaves of our earnestness and sincerity. I feel confident that should operations be carried on in the way thus suggested most satisfactory results would ensue.

The reason for the native villages being disunited is, that there seldom exists a chief strong enough to form a combination. This weakness should be taken advantage of, and capable white men might, through their personal influence, unite the tribes under their leadership. Sooner or later the Arabs at Stanley Falls will have to be battled with. At present they remain there, not because the white men will not allow them to come lower down, but because they are in the center of such a rich field, and they know that by coming down the river they must rely entirely on their canoes, as roads in the interior are few and far between, owing to the swampy nature of the land. They would also have the populous and warlike districts of Upoto, Mobeka, and Bangala to fight against, which would not be so easily overcome as the small scattered hamlets around Stanley Falls, which at present they are continually persecuting.

All the natives on the Upper Congo, quite up to the limits at present reached by the Arabs, should be controlled as much a possible by Europeans. They should be combined together under Europeans, so that when the time arrives that the Arabs decide to move west they would be met at their frontiers by a barrier of well-armed and resolute natives.

The slave-trade of today is almost entirely confined to Africa. The slaves are caught and disposed of in that continent, and the number of those who are shipped to Turkey and other parts are indeed few compared with the enormous traffic carried on in the interior. We have the authority of Stanley and Livingstone and other explorers concerning the iniquity existing in the eastern portion of Equatorial Africa.

In India we have an example of what determination and resolution can accomplish; as the inhuman ceremonies of the suttee, car of Juggernaut, infanticide, and the secret society of the Thugs have all been suppressed by the British Government. The opportunities for reaching the center of Africa are yearly improving. Since Stanley first exposed to the world’s gaze, in 1877, the blood-stained history of the Dark Continent, rapid strides have been made in opening up that country. The work for Africa’s welfare so determinedly pursued by Livingstone has been most nobly carried on by Stanley, and the rapid progress which is at present taking place is due entirely to Stanley’s efforts. A great obstacle has always existed between the outside world and Central Africa, in the stretch of unnavigable water between Matadi and Stanley Pool. The railway now being constructed will overcome this difficulty.

E. J. Glave.

This article was originally published in

The Century Magazine  —  April, 1890.

Gottfried Feder on a German state built on national and socialist foundations

Gottfried Feder on a German state built on national and socialist foundations[1]

The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation
Gottfried Feder

Translated and with a Preface by Alexander Jacob

Sanctuary Press, 2019

Gottfried Feder was  born in 1883 in Würzburg and studied engineering at the Technical Universities in Munich, Berlin and Zurich. After the completion of his studies, he set up a construction company in 1908 under the aegis of Ackermann and Co. and undertook several projects in Bulgaria. From 1917 onwards he taught himself economics and political economy, and in late 1918, not long after the proclamation of the Weimar Republic by Philipp Scheidemann in November of that year, Feder wrote a manifesto on usury[2] and sent it to the Kurt Eisner government, though he obtained no response. The Treaty of Versailles signed in June 1919 which determined Germany as solely responsible for the war and liable to reparations caused Feder to fear that Germany was now firmly in the hands of the international financiers. In September of that year, Feder established a militant league (Kampfbund) with a program of ending interest slavery and nationalising the state bank. His anti-capitalism was bound also to racialism insofar as the international financiers were considered to be mostly Jews.

Feder’s nationalist efforts drew him into a close alliance with the anti-Communist activist Anton Drexler (1884-1942) and Dietrich Eckart (1868-1923), the editor of the anti-Semitic journal Auf gut deutsch and later, of the National Socialist organ, Völkischer Beobachter. The three together formed, in January 1919, the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (DAP).[3] Adolf Hitler joined the DAP in late September 1919 and soon emerged as the leader of the party, which he renamed the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP). Hitler had, even before his joining the party, attended Feder’s lectures on economic subjects and wrote later in his Mein Kampf (1925/6):

For the first time in my life I heard a discussion which dealt with the principles of stock-exchange capital and capital which was used for loan activities. …The absolute separation of stock-exchange capital from the economic life of the nation would make it possible to oppose the process of internationalization in German business without at the same time attacking capital as such, for to do this would jeopardize the foundations of our national independence. I clearly saw what was developing in Germany and I realized then that the stiffest fight we would have to wage would not be against the enemy nations but against international capital.[4]

In the Foreword to the original 1923 edition of Feder’s work, Der deutsche Staat, Hitler wrote that in this work the National Socialist movement had indeed acquired its “catechism”.

In 1920, Hitler, along with Feder and Drexler, composed the ’25-point Programme’ of the NSDAP. This programme rejected the Treaty of Versailles and called for a reunification of German peoples along with an exclusion of aliens, especially Jews, from national life. In February 1920, Hitler held a rally in which he presented the programme to the German people. Later, in 1927, Feder published a comprehensive version of the programme entitled Das Programm der NSDAP and seine weltanschaulichen Grundlagen.[5] In 1923, Feder offered a further elaboration of his national economic views in the present work, Der deutsche Staat auf nationaler und sozialer Grundlage, which was re-issued in 1932 in the “Nationalsozialistische Bibliothek” series[6]

Feder took part in Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch against the Bavarian government in 1923 but was only fined 50 marks for unlawful assumption of authority since he had acted, for a day, as the new “finance minister”. In 1924, he was elected a representative to the parliament. In parliament, he demanded the confiscation of Jewish property and the freezing of interest-rates. which were key elements of the anti-capitalist programme of the party. In 1926 Hitler entrusted Feder with the editorial direction of a series of books on National Socialist ideology under the title “Nationalsozialistische Bibliothek” (National Socialist Library). In 1931, Feder was appointed chairman of the economic council of the NSDAP. But gradually, under pressure from big industrialists like Gustav Krupp, Fritz Thyssen and Emil Kirdorf, Hitler decided to distance himself from Feder’s socialist ideas.[7] With Hitler’s strategic alliance with big industrialists and capital, even foreign capital, for his intended war on Bolshevism, Feder lost most of his influence on the party, since foreign banks especially would not have supported Feder’s plans for a nationalised interest-free banking system. The loss of interest in Feder’s economic policies among the party members is evidenced in Hans Reupke’s book Der Nationalsozialismus und die Wirtschaft (!931), where the author stated that it was no longer necessary to deal with the “breaking of interest slavery” in “the extreme form in which it first emerged”.[8]

Thus, when Hitler assumed power in 1933, Feder was not named Economics Minister but rather only State Secretary in the Economics Ministry. However, in 1933 Feder published a collection of his essays entitled Kampf gegen die Hochfinanz as well as a book on the Jews called Die Juden. In 1934, the influential banker Hjalmar Schact was made Economics Minister since his contacts with the big industrialists made him more useful to Hitler in his rearmament aims than Feder with his stark anti-capitalist doctrines. Feder’s subordination to Hjalmar Schacht was indeed a concrete sign of his fall from grace.  After the Knight of the Long Knives in 1934, when left-wing nationalists like Gregor Strasser were assassinated, Feder withdrew from the government. In 1936, he was given a new job as professor at the Technical University in Berlin which he maintained until his death in 1941.

*   *   *

Feder’s Deutsche Staat is indeed one of the most important treatises on National Socialist economics.[9] However, it has a precedent in the Austro-Hungarian Bohemian German, Rudolf Jung’s work, Der Nationale Sozialismus (1919). Rudolf Jung (1882-1945) was a civil engineer from Jihlava (in the current Czech Republic and former Austro-Hungarian Empire) who joined the Bohemian Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (DAP) in 1909. The DAP was founded in 1903 in Aussig (now Ústí nad Labem in the Czech Republic) by Germans threatened by the increasing Jewish and Czech influence in the empire. It was renamed Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiter Partei (DNSAP) in 1918. Jung’s work Der Nationale Sozialismus: seine Grundlagen, sein Werdegang und seine Ziele (1919) was intended as a German nationalist answer to Marx’s Das Kapital.[10] The work is divided into two parts, the first dealing with ‘The Foundations of National Socialism’ and the second with ‘The Development and Goals of National Socialism’. Jung’s nationalism focusses on social and economic questions and, exactly like Feder, Jung stresses the difference between income derived from real work and that arising from interest.[11] His strong socialist and anti-Jewish viewpoint is  evident throughout this work:

All non-socialist parties are based in the main on “individualism”, i.e. the demand for the greatest possible freedom and lack of constraint of the individual. Economically it is expressed in Manchester liberalism and, further, in Mammonism. The ruthless ruler who is tormented by no pang of conscience is the goal, the weaker man falls thereby under the wheels. Now, since the Jew is the most ruthless, he can fare best thereby. Thus all non-socialist anti-Jewish orientations unwillingly support the rise of Jewry to world-rulership.[12]

Further, democracy itself is the vehicle of Jewish international capitalism:

If we were to sum up, we might say that the entire international democracy whose alleged ideals the major press and parties represent and on whose flag they swear, is nothing but the political crystallisation of the Jewish spirit and, in the final analysis, serves no other goal but the establishment of the world-rule of Jewry.[13]

Another writer who contributed to the exact identification of the Jewish constitution of international high finance was Heinrich Pudor (1865-1943), who also wrote under the pseudonym Heinrich Scham (the German translation of the Latin “pudor”). Pudor was a vegetarian and naturist who, from 1912, published several anti-Semitic pamphlets and books including an extensive series on the international connections between the various Jewish high financiers.[14] Feder refers sympathetically to Pudor in the present work. However, Pudor’s magazine Swastika was banned in 1933 by the National Socialists for its criticisms of the National Socialist leadership and the regime’s surprising toleration of Jews. Further, five issues of the series on Jewish high finance were banned including no.13, Neues über Br. Roosevelt und seine jüdischen und Kommunistischen Verbindungen (News about Brother Roosevelt and His Communist Connections) and no. 49, Judendãmmerung. “Juden unerwünscht” Keine jüdischen Rechtsanwälte mehr. Ende der Judenfinanz in Deutschland ((Judendãmmerung. “Jews Unwanted.” No more Jewish lawyers. End of Jewish finance in Germany). The pamphlets were banned on account of what a state official, Raymund Schmidt, described as Pudor’s “no longer opportune polemical methods” which were indeed exploited by the English for the purpose of counter-propaganda.[15]

*   *   *

Feder’s treatise on national economy, like Rudolf Jung’s, is remarkable for its strong moral foundation and its formulation of National Socialism as a movement for social justice as well as for national regeneration. Unlike capitalism with its “soul-destroying materialistic spirit of egoism and avarice with all its concomitant corrupting manifestations in all fields of our public, economic and cultural life” (p.31)[16] and unlike Marxism, which insists that everything should belong to the One, which might be either the State or Mammon controlling it, National Socialism wishes to revert to the mediaeval and Prussian dictum of “suum cuique”, ‘to each his own’, whereby each person will earn as much as he deserves according to his performance of work, with the fullest possible responsibility, as a duty. Economically, this moral doctrine is translated into the doctrine of serving “the public interest” before self-interest. Not profitability but fulfilment of demand is the National Socialistic basis of the economy.

Unlike Marxism, National Socialism will not prohibit private property but respect it as the privilege of the creative and productive Aryan man. On the other hand, the mobile Jewish mind has no deep connection with the land but rather exploits the production and property of the natives financially through all sorts of legal claims, bonds and mortgages, whereby “property” is turned into a profitable “possession” (p.14). In order to counter these avaricious strategies of the Jews, the National Socialist state will enforce limitations on the right to property, personal or commercial, so that in all cases the welfare of the whole, the nation, rather than of individuals will be first served. In Feder’s discussion of the party’s programme in Part II, we note that, since the social policy is “the welfare of the whole”, the financial policy of the National Socialist state is accordingly directed against those financial powers who tend to develop “a state within the state” (p.29). As he puts it:

In the last and deepest analysis, it is a matter of the battle of two worldviews that are expressed through two fundamentally different intellectual structures — the productive and creative spirit and the mobile avaricious spirit. The creative spirit rooted in the soil and yet again overcoming the world in metaphysical experience finds its principal representatives in Aryan man — the avaricious, rootless commercial and materialistic spirit directed purely to the this-worldly finds its principal representative in the Jew (p. 31).

The strength of Germany before the war was due to its unity under Bismarck and its efficient industrial sector. This advantage was undermined by the dependence of the economy on the credit system of the banks and “the inventors and bearers of the modern credit system” are the Jews (p. 36). The mediaeval system of credit was based on the belief (“credo”) of the creditor that his money could be used to greater economic advantage by the debtor whereby the debtor, if successful in his enterprise, may return a share of his profits in gratitude to the creditor. Standardised interest, on the other hand, was forbidden by the Church as usury (p. 45). Feder advocates a return to the conception of money as a token of “performed work” or of a product so that money cannot, independently of any work, be hoarded for the purpose of being lent out later at interest.

Feder further points out that it is the stock-market that lies at the basis of the alienation of capital from work:

Anonymisation — the depersonalisation of our economy through the stock-marketable form of the public limited company — has to a certain degree separated capital from work, the shareholder knows in the rarest instances something of his factory, he has only the one-sided interest in the profitability of his money when he has invested it in the form of shares (p.36)

Apart from the indifference of the shareholder to the quality of the goods produced by the company in which he invests, the market in general has diverted production from its legitimate task of fulfilling real needs to that of stirring up — through the Jewish market-crier’s technique of advertising — artificial needs among the public that will bring in greater profits. This fundamental transformation of national economics has been supported in academic circles by Jewish scholars who restrict their economic analyses to descriptions of the current economic system rather than investigating its social and political legitimacy. This sort of intellectual subversion is further continued by the Jewish intelligentsia in the fields of art, entertainment and the press.

The major source of the current distress of Germany is indeed the interest owed to large loan capital. The burden of interest has indebted entire nations to international high finance and forced them to become interest-collectors for the latter which they do by taxing the working people ever harder. Feder calls this false economic process an “international fraud” (p. 53). The power of international finance has however grown so great that it was able to encircle Germany as soon as it perceived that its currency was rising in strength and independence. Once they succeeded in militarily defeating Germany, the international financial powers then enforced further enormous debt burdens on it through the Treaty of Versailles. Feder therefore proposes the cancellation of the payment of the interest on these debts to the Allies (p. 97). Indeed, the remedy to the interest burdens of all nations to international finance is the legal abolition of interest (p. 94). And this is simultaneously the solution to the Jewish question itself:

The solution of the interest problem is the solution of the Jewish question. The solution of the interest problem in the sense of our explanations is the breaking of the Jewish world-rule, because it smashes the power of world Jewry — its financial power.

The fullest representation of the socio-economic interests of a nation should be the state, and its industries should be models of efficiency and commercial success. One example of such an industry in Germany is indeed the transport industry and especially the German railways. Unlike Bolshevism, which seeks to control all production, the National Socialist state will, through the establishment of storage and distribution cooperatives under state supervision (p. 917), remove only the avaricious interference of private commerce between production and consumption. As the means of exchange necessary for the exchange of goods, money will be under the control of the state through a nationalised state bank.

Instead of borrowing money from private banks, the state should, in the case of all large public works projects, finance the latter though the issuance of interest-free notes of its own. The Reichsbank’s sovereignty of issuing notes must be regained through nationalisation (p. 72). Freed of interest-burdens to banks, the state will ultimately be able to operate in a mostly tax-free manner (Ch. 22, ‘The state without taxes’). Taxes will be restricted to the coverage of non-productive tasks such as the administration of justice, the police system, medical and educational systems, if the commercial enterprises of the state such as the railways, post and telegraph, mining and forestry do not present surpluses wherewith to pay for these tasks (p. 92). International transactions should be conducted through a clearing system rather like that of the international postal union “without the international finance benefiting two or three times in all these simple mercantile operations and becoming big and fat at the cost of the productive nations” (p. 77).

But the state must be powerful if it is to effect any reforms. Unfortunately, the Weimar Republic has abjectly accepted the monstrous burden of guilt after the war with the result that “the members of the Chosen People can, on these reparations, forever lead a glamorous work-free life in all the countries of the world at the cost of German work.” (p. 19). The crisis faced by Germany after the war was facilitated by parliamentarianism and Mammonism. The “great democratic lie of the capacity of the people for self-government” is to be combated along with the real capitalistic rulers of democracies. Marxism likewise is a sham socialist system that employs the dissatisfaction of those exploited by Mammonism for the benefit of the “handlers for international capital” in order to “divert from themselves the hatred of the exploited” (p. 25).

The majority of the principal Marxists as well as Mammonists are Jews, and so “The Jewish question is becoming a world-question on whose solution the welfare and woe of the nations will be dependent” (p. 26). The solution of this question cannot be through violence since “indeed one cannot kill the plague bacillus individually, one can only eradicate it by cutting off its life necessities from it” (p. 26). A suggestion of what might be done to reduce their ill-earned gains is contained in point 17 of the party’s programme which envisages creation of legal possibilities of confiscating if necessary land that was acquired in an illegal way or not administered according to the viewpoint of the welfare of the people. This is directed thus mainly against the Jewish land speculation companies. (p. 47)

Further, removal of Jews from all public positions will cause no difficulty to the nation since “the real vitally important productive activity in industry and agriculture, in the professions and administration, is almost entirely free of Jews” (p. 38). Concomitant with the removal of Jews from the “national body” is the enforcement of new citizenship laws whereby the citizenship rights will be “acquired” by the citizens and not merely granted to them. Thus only those who pledge themselves to the German community and culture and do not continue an adherence to another nation can obtain these rights (p. 39).

The National Socialist state will be a strong state that includes all the German tribes, and its power will be concentrated in a strong leader, or autocrat, who embodies “the highest responsibility” (p. 22)[17] since the German people have traditionally wanted a strong leader, and monarchs are not always to be relied upon. The leader of the National Socialist state, on the other hand, is not envisaged as a permanent ruler but one chosen only for the re-establishment of order and the prosperity of a debilitated nation. After he has accomplished his goals, he may step aside to let other rulers take his place under the constitution. Indeed, the National Socialist state may be characterised as a constitutional autocracy (p. 31). The constitutional aspect of the state will be used especially to ensure an effective labour law and social insurance (p. 23). Obviously, in a German national state, no members of foreign races can assume the leadership of state affairs (p. 22).

Feder is aware of the adverse reaction of the international financiers to such autarkic measures, but he believes that a transformation of interest-bearing bonds into interest-free bank assets or postal cheque accounts (p. 96) whereby foreign creditors can be paid will avert the wrath of the latter. He also suggests that boycotts can be overcome through transactions with neutral countries. As for military action, he believes that it is not likely to be pursued by the foreign creditor nations since

if the German people saw the French or Jewish tax collector sitting in every tax- and pension office, and if the best cows were taken from the stalls of the farmers by these foreign oppressors — then the anger and indignation would perhaps become soon so strong that one night would sweep the foreign spectre away with a bloody broom and free Germany. (p. 97)

*   *   *

We see that, in spite of the lucidity of his economic doctrines, Feder rather underestimated the unforgiving nature of the Mammon that he was striving against. In keeping with Feder’s doctrines, the Nationalist Socialist state officially cancelled the war debt to the Allied nations and sought, from 1933 on, to combat the cumulative deflation by the creation of money and work.[18] Work was created by increasing public works activity, such as notably the building of superhighways, and other construction and agricultural projects. These projects were financed, as Feder had recommended, by the issuance of government bills.[19] The production of armaments especially was spurred by the use of the so-called ‘Mefo’ bills — named after Schacht’s Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft (Mefo), which served as a government holding company.[20] These bills were used by government contractors for payment of their needs and were valid as a form of currency. As Overy notes, as a result of these economic strategies, “the banks increasingly became mere intermediaries, holding government stock and helping in the job of keeping bills circulating in the way that the government wanted.”[21] Tax levels were simultaneously reduced for farmers, small businesses and heavy industry through the “remission of taxes already paid”.[22] However, Hitler was also dependent in his ambitious rearmament plans on foreign finance, which certainly would not have accepted Feder’s insistence on an abolition of interest.[23]

The National Socialist economy was an increasingly state-controlled one that sought to avoid inflation by controlling prices and wages and foreign trade. Autarkic restrictions on imports were offset by bilateral barter agreements. Whether the war that began two years after the 1937 edition of Feder’s work was, as Feder’s view of the role of international finance in the first World War would suggest, another effort to punish Germany’s financial independence under National Socialism or whether it was indeed secretly willed by the international financiers for their own geopolitical ends, the increasing losses suffered by Germany in the course of it certainly provoked Hitler into attempting to “sweep the foreign spectre away with a bloody broom”, as Feder had predicted.

But neither Feder nor Hitler may have foreseen the severity of the revenge — more cruel since more lasting than that after the First World War — that the international Jewish interests would take on Germany after its defeat in 1945. While Feder hoped that other nations of the world will also eventually follow the German example and  “mankind, freed of the Jewish oppression, will experience an age of unprecedented prosperity — and, above all, Germany — the heart of the world”, the opposite of that indeed has occurred, since most of Europe has been turned into “a slave, fellaheen, bondman and servant of the all-Jewish world-power” (p. 35). And the heart of Germany itself, drained by a tyrannical psychological control of its population, has virtually stopped beating.

[1] This article is taken from the Preface to my edition of Gottfried Feder, The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation, Sanctuary Press, 2019.

[2] Manifest zur Brechung des Zinsknechtschaft des Geldes, Diessen vor München: Joseph C. Huber, 1919; cf. The Manifesto for the Breaking of the Financial Slavery to Interest, tr. Alexander Jacob, History Review Press, 2012; Sanctuary Press, 2019.

[3] Another major early member was Karl Harrer (1890-1926), who joined the party in March of 1919. Harrer, like Drexler, was a member of the occultist Thule society in Munich, which was an off-shoot of the Germanen Order founded in 1912 by Theodor Fritsch. Eckart too was influenced by the doctrines of the Thule society.

[4] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, tr. James Murphy, London: Hurst and Blackett, 1939, pp.168,171.

[5] This work was translated by E.T.S. Dugdale as The Programme of the NSDAP and its general conceptions, Munich, 1932.

[6] I have for my translation used the 1932 edition, vol.35 of the “Nationalsozialistische Bibliothek” series.

[7] For the part played by big industries in Hitler’s rise to power see G. Hallgarten, “Adolf Hitler and German heavy industry 1931-1933”, Journal of Economic History, 12 (1952).

[8] H. Reupke, Der Nationalsozialismus und die Wirtschaft, Berlin, 1931, pp.29ff.

[9] The closest to National Socialist economics is the Social Credit movement founded in Britain by C.H. Douglas (1879-1952), whose work Economic Democracy was published in 1920 (see F. Hutchison and B. Burkitt, The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism, London: Routledge, 1997). Douglas influenced Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the thirties (see Kerry Bolton, “Breaking the bondage of interest, part 2”, Counter-Currents, August 11, 2011, http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/08/breaking-the-bondage-of-interesta-right-answer-to-usury-part-2/

[10] It was on his suggestion that Hitler changed the name of the German branch of the DAP in 1920 to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP).

[11] Feder’s manifesto on interest-slavery was interestingly published in the same year as Jung’s work on National Socialism.

[12] Rudolf Jung, Der Nationale Sozialismus, Munich, 1922, p.187f.

[13] Ibid., 53f.

[14] The pamphlets that he self-published (in Leipzig) in this series, “Die internationalen verwandtschaftlichen Beziehungen der jüdischen Hochfinanz” (The international kindred relationships of Jewish high finance’), between 1933 and 1940 present short historical accounts of the different branches of Jewry in various countries of Europe as well as in America. For instance, the first pamphlet is on Das Haus Rothschild, numbers two to four on Ginsberg und Günsberg und Asher Ginzberg, five to eight on Jakob Schiff und die Warburgs und das New Yorker Bankhaus Kuhn, Loeb & Co., nine to ten on Amsterdamer und Oppenheimer Juden, eleven on Französische Finanzjuden, twelve on Tschechoslowakische Finanzjuden, fourteen on Rumänische Finanzjuden, fifteen on Lessing und Moses Mendelssohn und das Bankhaus Mendelssohn & Co., seventeen on Polnische Finanzjuden, eighteen on Schwedische Finanzjuden, nineteen on Holländische und belgische Finanzjuden, twenty on Frankfurter Finanzjuden und die I.G. Farben, twenty-one to twenty-three on Englische Finanzjuden, thirty-four to thirty-eight and forty-three to forty-four on Tshechische Finanzjuden and thirty-nine to forty-two on Ungarische Finanzjuden. In addition, he published, in Halle, a similar work on Amerikanische Finanzjuden (1936).

[15] “nicht mehr zeitgemäßen Kampfmethoden, die sogar von den Engländern in jüngster Zeit zum Zwecke der Gegenpropaganda ausgeschlachtet wurden” (see Gerd Simon, “Chronologie, Pudor, Heinrich“, http://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de/gerd.simon/ChrPudor.pdf, p.19f.)

[16] All page-references are to my edition.

[17] The “Führer principle” was championed also by Rudolf Jung in his Nationale Sozialismus, p.177f.

[18] See G. Senft, “Anti-Kapitalismus von Rechts? – Eine Abrechnung mit Gottfried Feders ‘Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft’”, Zeitschrift für Sozialökonomie, 106 (1995), pp.18-32.

[19] According to Henry Liu: “through an independent monetary policy of sovereign credit and a full-employment public-works program, the Third Reich was able to turn a bankrupt Germany, stripped of overseas colonies it could exploit, into the strongest economy in Europe within four years, even before armament spending began” (Henry C.K. Liu, “Nazism and the German economic miracle,” Asia Times Online, 24 May 2005, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE24Dj01.html).

[20] Hitler’s eagerness to rearm Germany is not surprising in the light of the eastern expansionist and anti-Bolshevist foreign political aims outlined by him already in Mein Kampf, Vol.II, Ch.14.

[21] R.J. Overy, The Nazi Economic Recovery 1932-1938, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.43.

[22] Ibid., p.38.

[23]See the web-log by “Scanners”, “Gottfried Feder und das zinslose Geld”, http://www.utopia.de/blog/umweltpolitik/gottfried-feder-und-das-zinslose.The western financial powers may have partly supported Hitler’s effort to check the westward spread of Bolshevism. For American involvement in National Socialist finance, for example, see Anthony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the rise of Hitler, Sudbury: Bloomfield Books, 1976.

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