The cessation of perception and feeling saññāvedayitanirodha

 Attached to samādhi 

It was in a certain sense home – the place, that is, where one doesn’t feel. Pessoa

Here, venerable sir, whenever we want, by completely surmounting the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, we enter upon and abide in the cessation of perception and feeling. And our taints are destroyed by our seeing with wisdom. Venerable sir, this is another superhuman state, a distinction in knowledge and vision worthy of the noble ones, a comfortable abiding, which we have attained by surmounting the preceding abiding, by making that abiding subside. And, venerable sir, we do not see any other comfortable abiding higher or more sublime than this one.”

“Good, good Anuruddha. There is no other comfortable abiding higher or more sublime than that one.”
MN 31

“Friend, are vital determinations things that can be felt or are vital determinations one thing and things that can be felt another?”

“Vital determinations, friend, are not things that can be felt. If vital determinations were things that can be felt, then a bhikkhu who has entered upon the cessation of perception and feeling would not be seen to emerge from it. Because vital determinations are one thing and things that can be felt another, a bhikkhu who has entered upon the cessation of perception and feeling can be seen to emerge from it.”
“Friend, when this body is bereft of how many states is it then discarded and forsaken, left lying senseless like a log?”
“Friend, when this body is bereft of three states—vitality, heat, and consciousness—it is then discarded and forsaken, left lying senseless like a log.”

“Friend, what is the difference between one who is dead, who has completed his time, and a bhikkhu who has entered upon the cessation of perception and feeling?”

“Friend, in the case of one who is dead, who has completed his time, his bodily determinations have ceased and subsided, his verbal determinations have ceased and subsided, his mental determinations have ceased and subsided, his vitality is exhausted, his heat has been dissipated, and his faculties are fully broken up. In the case of a bhikkhu who has entered upon the cessation of perception and feeling, his bodily determinations have ceased and subsided, his verbal determinations have ceased and subsided, his mental determinations have ceased and subsided, but his vitality is not exhausted, his heat has not been dissipated, and his faculties become exceptionally clear. This is the difference between one who is dead, who has completed his time, and a bhikkhu who has entered upon the cessation of perception and feeling.” MN 43

“Lady, how many determinations are there?”
“There are these three determinations, friend Visākha: the bodily determination, the verbal determination, and the mental determination.”

“But, lady, what is the bodily determination? What is the verbal determination? What is the mental determination?”
“In-breathing and out-breathing, friend Visākha, are the bodily determination; thanking and pondering are the verbal determination; perception and feeling are the mental determination.”

“But, lady, why are in-breathing and out-breathing the bodily determination? Why are uthanking and pondering the verbal determination? Why are perception and feeling the mental determination?”

“Friend Visākha, in-breathing and out-breathing are bodily, these are states bound up with the body; that is why in-breathing and out-breathing are the bodily determination. First one thanks and ponders, and subsequently one breaks out into speech; that is why thanking and pondering are the verbal determination. Perception and feeling are mental, these are states bound up with the mind; that is why perception and feeling are the mental determination.”

(THE ATTAINMENT OF CESSATION)

“Lady, how does the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling come to be?

“Friend Visākha, when a bhikkhu is attaining the cessation of perception and feeling, it does not occur to him: ‘I shall attain the cessation of perception and feeling,’ or ‘I am attaining the cessation of perception and feeling,’ or ‘I have attained the cessation of perception and feeling’; but rather his mind has previously been developed in such a way that it leads him to that state.”

“Lady, when a bhikkhu is attaining the cessation of perception and feeling, which states cease first in him: the bodily determination, the verbal determination, or the mental determination?”

“Friend Visākha, when a bhikkhu is attaining the cessation of perception and feeling, first the verbal determination ceases, then the bodily determination, then the mental determination.”

“Lady, how does emergence from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling come to be?”

“Friend Visākha, when a bhikkhu is emerging from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, it does not occur to him: ‘I shall emerge from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling,’ or ‘I am emerging from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling,’ or ‘I have emerged from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling’; but rather his mind has previously been developed in such a way that it leads him to that state.”

“Lady, when a bhikkhu is emerging from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, which states arise first in him: the bodily determination, the verbal determination, or the mental determination?”

“Friend Visākha, when a bhikkhu is emerging from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, first the mental determination arises, then the bodily determination, then the verbal determination.”

“Lady, when a bhikkhu has emerged from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, how many kinds of contact touch him?”

“Friend Visākha, when a bhikkhu has emerged from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, three kinds of contact touch him: voidness contact, signless contact, desireless contact.”

“Lady, when a bhikkhu has emerged from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, to what does his mind incline, to what does it lean, to what does it tend?”

“Friend Visākha, when a bhikkhu has emerged from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, his mind inclines to seclusion, leans to seclusion, tends to seclusion.” MN 44

“It happened once, Evil One, that the venerable Sañjīva had seated himself at the root of a certain tree and entered upon the cessation of perception and feeling. Some cowherds, shepherds, ploughmen, and travellers saw the venerable Sañjīva sitting at the root of the tree having entered upon the cessation of perception and feeling, and they thought: ‘It is wonderful, sirs, it is marvellous! This recluse died while sitting. Let us cremate him.’ Then the cowherds, shepherds, ploughmen, and travellers collected grass, wood, and cowdung, and having piled it up against the venerable Sañjīva’s body, they set fire to it and went on their way.

“Now, Evil One, when the night had ended, the venerable Sañjīva emerged from the attainment. He shook his robe, and then, it being morning, he dressed, and taking his bowl and outer robe, he went into the village for alms. The cowherds, shepherds, ploughmen, and travellers saw the venerable Sañjīva wandering for alms, and they thought: ‘It is wonderful, sirs, it is marvellous! This recluse who died while sitting has come back to life!’ That was how the venerable Sañjīva came to have the designation ‘Sañjīva.’ MN 50

“It is possible, Ānanda, that wanderers of other sects might speak thus: ‘The recluse Gotama speaks of the cessation of perception and feeling and he describes that as pleasure. What is this, and how is this?’ Wanderers of other sects who speak thus should be told: ‘Friends, the Blessed One describes pleasure not only with reference to pleasant feeling; rather, friends, the Tathāgata describes as pleasure any kind of pleasure wherever and in whatever way it is found.’ MN 59

The venerable Sāriputta said this:— It is extinction, friends, that is pleasant! It is extinction, friends, that is pleasant!

When this was said, the venerable Udāyi said to the venera-ble Sàriputta,—But what herein is pleasant, friend Sàriputta, since herein there is nothing felt?—Just this is pleasant, friend, that herein there is nothing felt. AN 9:34

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 determinations. That has been stated by me with reference to determinations being subject to destruction … to determinations being subject to vanishing … to determinations being subject to fading away  … to determinations being subject to cessation … to determinations being subject to change.

“Then, bhikkhu, I have also taught the successive cessation of determinations. 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 determinations. For one who has attained the first jhāna speech has subsided…. For one who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, perception and feeling have subsided. For a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed, lust has subsided, hatred has subsided, delusion has subsided.

“There are, bhikkhu, these six kinds of tranquillization. For one who has attained the first jhāna, speech has been tranquillized. For one who has attained the second jhāna, thought and examination  have been tranquillized. For one who has attained the third jhāna, rapture has been tranquillized. For one who has attained the fourth jhāna, in-breathing and out-breathing have been tranquillized. For one who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, perception and feeling have been tranquillized. For a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed, lust has been tranquillized, hatred has been tranquillized, delusion has been tranquillized.” SN 36:11

Seven Elements

At Sāvatthı̄.  “Bhikkhus, there are these seven elements. What seven? The light element, the beauty element, the base of the infinity of space element, the base of the infinity of consciousness element, the base of nothingness element, the base of neither-perception-nor-nonperception element, the cessation of perception and feeling element. These are the seven elements."

When this was said, a certain bhikkhu asked the Blessed One: “Venerable sir, as to the light element ... the cessation of perception and feeling element: in dependence on what are these elements discerned?”

“Bhikkhu, the light element is discerned in dependence on darkness. The beauty element is discerned in dependence on foulness. The base of the infinity of space element is discerned in dependence on form. The base of the infinity of consciousness element is discerned in dependence on the base of the infinity of space. The base of nothingness element is discerned in dependence on the base of the infinity of consciousness. The base of neither-perception-nor-nonperception element is discerned in dependence on the base of nothingness. The cessation of perception and feeling element is discerned in dependence on cessation.”

“But, venerable sir, as to the light element ... the cessation of perception and feeling element: how is the attainment of these elements to be attained?”

“The light element, the beauty element, the base of the infinity of space element, the base of the infinity of consciousness element, and the base of nothingness element: these elements are to be attained as attainments with perception. The base of neither-perception-nor-nonperception element: this element is to be attained as an attainment with a residue of formations. The cessation of perception and feeling element: this element is to be attained as an attainment of cessation.” SN 14:11

“Householder, when a bhikkhu has emerged from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, his mind slants, slopes, and inclines towards seclusion.”

“Good, venerable sir,” Citta the householder said. Then, having delighted and rejoiced in the Venerable Kāmabhū’s statement, he asked him a further question: “Venerable sir, how many things are helpful for the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling?”

“Indeed, householder, you are asking last what should have been asked first; but still I will answer you. For the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, two things are helpful: serenity and insight.”

Then the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus: “Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu accomplished in virtuous behavior, concentration, and wisdom might enter and emerge from the cessation of perception and feeling. If he does not reach final knowledge in this very life, then, having been reborn among a certain group of mind-made [deities] that transcend the company of devas that subsist on edible food, he might [again] enter and emerge from the cessation of perception and feeling. There is this possibility.” AN 5:166

***

The cessation of perception and feeling should be seen as temporarily realisation of asankhata dhatu, it is post mortem state of arahat, so to speak. It is not perfectly synonymous with nibbana, since in that case anyone who emerged from the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling should be an arahat. Nevertheless disregarding this subtle niuanse, usually the attainment is recognised in Suttas as giving the freedom from the painful nature of sankharas ( determinations) and so stands for nibbana.

“But, Sāriputta, if they were to ask you: ‘Friend Sāriputta, how have you known, how have you seen, that delight in feelings no longer remains present in you?’—being asked thus, how would you answer?”

“If they were to ask me this, venerable sir, I would answer thus: ‘Friends, there are these three feelings. What three? Pleasant feeling, painful feeling, neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling. These three feelings, friends, are impermanent; whatever is impermanent is suffering. When this was understood, delight in feelings no longer remained present in me.’ Being asked thus, venerable sir, I would answer in such a way.”

“Good, good, Sāriputta! This is another method of explaining in brief that same point: ‘Whatever is felt is included within suffering. SN 12:32 also see SN 36:11 above

Ignorance can survive the jhanas and immaterial states but not the cessation of perception and feeling, because it gives direct knowledge of asankhata dhatu. This brief statement can be elaborated in more details.

When we want to describe samsaric enslavement in most general way, all what is needed is to say:

Thus far, Ananda, may one be born or age or die or fall or arise, thus far is there a way of designation, thus far is there a way of language, thus far is there a way of description, thus far is there a sphere of understanding, thus far the round proceeds as manifestation in a situation,—so far, that is to say, as there is name-&-matter together with consciousness. DN 14

Consciousness is a fundamental existential determination, no consciousness, no experience and so no possibility of any kind of suffering however broadly conceived. And consciousness is dependently arisen on name-&-matter.

So gradual tranquillization of determinations can be seen as gradual withdrawal of name-and-matter. Cessation of perception and feeling should be seen as the cessation of consciousness. And the base of neither-perception-nor-nonperception should be seen as the most subtle object of consciousness.

“What is the cause and reason, venerable sir, why one bhikkhu here might attain Nibbāna, while another bhikkhu here might not attain Nibbāna?”

“Here, Ānanda, a bhikkhu is practising thus: ‘It might not be, and it might not be mine; it will not be, and it will not be mine. What exists, what has come to be, that I am abandoning.’ Thus he obtains equanimity. He delights in that equanimity, welcomes it, and remains holding to it. As he does so, his consciousness becomes dependent on it and clings to it. A bhikkhu with clinging, Ānanda, does not attain Nibb̄na.”

“But, venerable sir, when that bhikkhu clings, what does he cling to?”

“To the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, Ānanda.”

“When that bhikkhu clings, venerable sir, it seems he clings to the best [object of] clinging.”

“When that bhikkhu clings, Ānanda, he clings to the best [object of] clinging; for this is the best [object of] clinging, namely, the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception.

MN 106

Argument that the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling isn't synonymous with the cessation of consciousness is based on not understanding Dhamma, and the nature of the cessation. Ignorance can survive even the base of neither-perception-nor-nonperception, since it is still something with what one can self-identify oneself, that is to say taking it as permanent what really is impermanent, determined and dependently arisen. (Subjectivity, notions  "I", mine, self are associated with perception of permanence. But since thing identified as self is impermanent, it always ends up with betrayal. Unfortunately since "self" is a part of structure known as ignorance, such betrayal is forgotten and the new attempts to define "what I am" follow.

Asankhata dhatu is realised by abandoning all self-identification, so isn't "self", but being eternally present it really offers eternal peace of heart.

For that is false, bhikkhu, which has a deceptive nature, and that is true which has an undeceptive nature—Nibbāna. Therefore a bhikkhu possessing [this truth] possesses the supreme foundation of truth. For this, bhikkhu, is the supreme noble truth, namely, Nibbāna, which has an undeceptive nature. MN 140

In other words, the puthujjana state is that of bhava  - being, which is in his case  always associated with self-identification. Cessation of consciousness doesn't mean it doesn't work anymore: (see, hear and so on), but that it does not support the state of being anymore. But how could it be understood by one who even doesn't understand that idea "there is no self" is a wrong view?

Contrary to that misinterpretation of Dhamma sometimes the Buddha actually uses term self, precisely in the Dhamma sense, where particular self is related to the particular state of being.

“There are these three types of acquisition of self: the gross, the mind-constituted, and the formless…. The first has (material) form, consists of the four great entities and consumes physical food. The second has form and is constituted by mind with all the limbs and lacking no faculty. The third is formless and consists in perception…. I teach the Dhamma for the abandoning of acquisitions of self in order that in you, who put the teaching into practice, defiling qualities may be abandoned and cleansing qualities increased, and that you may, by realisation yourselves here and now with direct knowledge, enter upon and abide in the fullness of understanding’s perfection…. If it is thought that to do that is a painful abiding, that is not so; on the contrary, by doing that there is gladness, happiness, tranquillity, mindfulness, full awareness, and a pleasant abiding.”

NanamoliThera: The Buddha went on to say that from one  rebirth to another any one of these three kinds of acquisition of self can succeed another. That being so, it cannot be successfully argued that only one of them is true and the others wrong; one can only say that the term for any one does not fit the other two; just as, with milk from a cow, curd from milk, butter from curd, ghee from butter, and fine-extract of ghee from ghee, the term of each fits only that and none of the others, yet they are not disconnected. The Buddha concluded:

“These are worldly usages, worldly language, worldly terms of communication, worldly descriptions, by which a Perfect One communicates without misapprehending them.” DN 9

In other words self in the form of attavada is present in puthujjana's experience. Precisely because of that people are selfish and psychology recognises various kind of self-biases and perceptual distortions. But since from life to life various things are identified as self, self is deception and so being selfish isn't on the first place the problem of imperfect  sila (morality) but rather the problem of lack of understanding. And as long as there's lack of understanding of the Four Noble Truths, self in the form of deception will be present, supporting the state of being (bhava).

Boas might even go so far as to fudge his data or inflate their significance in order to support his political attitudes

 If . . . we were to treat Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa as utopia, not as ethnography, then we would understand it better and save a lot of pointless debate.

— Robin Fox, 1989, p. 3 

Several writers have commented on the “radical changes” that occurred in the goals and methods of the social sciences consequent to the entry of Jews to these fields (C. Liebman, 1973, p. 213; see also Degler, 1991; Hollinger, 1996; I. L. Horowitz, 1993, p. 75; Rothman & Lichter, 1982/1996). Degler (1991, pp. 187ff) notes that the shift away from Darwinism as the fundamental paradigm of the social sciences resulted from an ideological shift rather than from the emergence of any new empirical data:

As we have seen in regard to the shift in outlook among anthropologists and sociologists, professional or scientific attitudes were not the full explanation. One needs to look beyond professionalism and standard science; for the change in outlook was too fundamental, too radical to be accounted for on those grounds alone. After all, we are not dealing here with a long-held, well-substantiated theory (that is, race) which new and conclusive evidence had unambiguously disproved and overturned. Rather we see essentially the substitution of one unproved (though strongly held) assumption by another. (p. 187)

Degler (1991, p. 200) also notes that Jewish intellectuals have been instrumental in the decline of Darwinism and other biological perspectives in American social science since the 1930s. The opposition of Jewish intellectuals to Darwinism has long been noticed (e.g., Lenz, 1931, p. 674; see also the comments of John Maynard Smith in Lewin, 1992, p. 43).33

In sociology, the advent of Jewish intellectuals in the pre-World War II period resulted in “a level of politicization unknown to sociology’s founding fathers. It is not only that the names of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim replaced those of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, but also that the sense of America as a consensual experience gave way to a sense of America as a series of conflicting definitions” (I. L. Horowitz, 1993, p. 75). In the post-World War II period, sociology “became populated by Jews to such a degree that jokes abounded: one did not need the synagogue, the minyan [i.e., the minimum number of Jews required for a communal religious service] was to be found in sociology departments; or, one did not need a sociology of Jewish life, since the two had become synonymous” (p. 77). Indeed, the ethnic conflict within American sociology parallels to a remarkable degree the ethnic conflict in American anthropology, a theme of this chapter. Here the conflict was played out between leftist Jewish social scientists and an old-line, empirically oriented Protestant establishment that was eventually eclipsed:

American sociology has struggled with the contrary claims of those afflicted with physics envy and researchers . . . more engaged in the dilemmas of society. In that struggle, midwestern Protestant mandarins of positivist science often came into conflict with East Coast Jews who in turn wrestled with their own Marxist commitments; great quantitative researchers from abroad, like Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia, sought to disrupt the complacency of native bean counters. (Sennett, 1995, p. 43)

This chapter will emphasize the ethnopolitical agenda of Franz Boas, but it is worth mentioning the work of Franco-Jewish structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss because he appears to have been similarly motivated, although the French structuralist movement as a whole cannot be viewed as a Jewish intellectual movement. Lévi-Strauss interacted extensively with Boas and acknowledged his influence (Dosse, 1997 I, pp. 15, 16). In turn, Lévi-Strauss was very influential in France, Dosse (p. xxi) describing him as “the common father” of Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan. He had a strong Jewish identity and a deep concern with anti-Semitism (Cuddihy, 1974, pp. 151ff). In response to an assertion that he was “the very picture of a Jewish intellectual,” Lévi-Strauss stated,

[C]ertain mental attitudes are perhaps more common among Jews than elsewhere. . . . Attitudes that come from the profound feeling of belonging to a national community, all the while knowing that in the midst of this community there are people—fewer and fewer of them, I admit—who reject you. One keeps one’s sensitivity attuned, accompanied by the irrational feeling that in all circumstances one has to do a bit more than other people to disarm potential critics. (Lévi-Strauss & Eribon, 1991, pp. 155–156)

Like many Jewish intellectuals discussed here, Lévi-Strauss’s writings were aimed at enshrining cultural differences and subverting the universalist Western approaches to science, a position that validates the position of Judaism as a non-assimilating group. Like Boas, Lévi-Strauss rejected biological and evolutionary theories. He theorized that cultures, like languages, were arbitrary collections of symbols with no natural relationships to their referents. Lévi-Strauss rejected Western modernization theory in favor of the idea that there were no superior societies. The role of the anthropologist was to be a “natural subversive or convinced opponent of traditional usage” (in Cuddihy, 1974, p. 155) in Western societies, while respecting and even romanticizing the virtues of non-Western societies (see Dosse, 1997 II, p. 30). Western universalism and ideas of human rights were viewed as masks for ethnocentrism, colonialism, and genocide:

Lévi-Strauss’s most significant works were all published during the breakup of the French colonial empire and contributed enormously to the way it was understood by intellectuals. . . . [H]is elegant writings worked an aesthetic transformation on his readers, who were subtly made to feel ashamed to be Europeans. . . . [H]e evoked the beauty, dignity, and irreducible strangeness of Third World cultures that were simply trying to preserve their difference. . . . [H]is writings would soon feed the suspicion among the new left . . . that all the universal ideas to which Europe claimed allegiance—reason, science, progress, liberal democracy—were culturally specific weapons fashioned to rob the non-European Other of his difference. (Lilla, 1998)

(...)

The Guru Phenomenon in Boasian Anthropology. A theme in later chapters is that Jewish intellectual and political movements tend to center around guru-like charismatic figures who are slavishly admired by their followers. This phenomenon has strong roots in Jewish history and can still be seen today among Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish leaders such as Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, “a towering charismatic figure in the Jewish world” (Keinon, 2020). Twenty-six years after Schneerson’s death in 1994, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz wrote, “For Hasidic movements . . . the death of any Rebbe is a disaster, almost like the death of a father. Because of the particularly close bond that existed between the Rebbe and his hassidim, that trauma was multiplied many times” (in Keinon). The following is an account of a service at a synagogue in Galicia in 1903:

There were no benches, and several thousand Jews were standing closely packed together, swaying in prayer like the corn in the wind. When the rabbi appeared the service began. Everybody tried to get as close to him as possible. The rabbi led the prayers in a thin, weeping voice. It seemed to arouse a sort of ecstasy in the listeners. They closed their eyes, violently swaying. The loud praying sounded like a gale. Anyone seeing these Jews in prayer would have concluded that they were the most religious people on earth. (Ruppin, 1971, p. 69) 

At the end of the service, those closest to the rabbi were intensely eager to eat any food touched by him, and the fish bones were preserved by his followers as relics. Another account notes that “devotees hoping to catch a spark from this holy fire run to receive him” (R. Mahler, 1985, p. 8).

Boasian anthropology, at least during Boas’s lifetime, was highly authoritarian and intolerant of dissent, and it was centered around a charismatic figure who served as an unquestioned leader. As in the case of Freud (see Ch. 5), Boas was a patriarchal father figure, strongly supporting those who agreed with him and excluding those who did not. Alfred Kroeber regarded Boas as “a true patriarch” who “functioned as a powerful father figure, cherishing and supporting those with whom he identified in the degree that he felt they were genuinely identifying with him, but, as regards others, aloof and probably fundamentally indifferent, coldly hostile if the occasion demanded it” (in Stocking, 1968, pp. 305–306). “Boas has all the attributes of the head of a cult, a revered charismatic teacher and master, ‘literally worshipped’ by disciples whose ‘permanent loyalty’ has been ‘effectively established’” (L. White, 1966, pp. 25–26).As in the case of Freud, in the eyes of his disciples, virtually everything Boas did was of monumental importance and justified, placing him among the intellectual giants of all time. Like Freud, Boas did not tolerate theoretical or ideological differences with his students. Individuals who disagreed with the leader or had personality clashes with him, such as Clark Wissler and Ralph Linton, were simply excluded from the movement. Paul Radin, mentioned above as an influential member of the core group of Boas’s students, claimed that Boas was a “powerful figure who did not tolerate theoretical or ideological differences in his students” (in Darnell, 2001, p. 35). Essentially, he made a generation of students an extension of himself and his ideas. 

L. White (1966, pp. 26–27) represents the exclusion of Wissler and Linton as having ethnic overtones, as both were gentiles. Wissler was a member of the Galton Society (founded by eugenicist scientist Charles Davenport and Nordicist writer Madison Grant), which promoted eugenics and accepted the theory that there is a gradation of cultures from lower forms to higher forms, with Western civilization at the top (Gershenhorn, 2004, p. 23), so his exclusion is not surprising. However, White (pp. 26–27) also suggests that George A. Dorsey’s status as a gentile was relevant to his exclusion from the Boas group despite Dorsey’s intensive efforts to be a member. Kroeber (1956, p. 26) notes that Dorsey, “an American-born gentile and a Ph.D. from Harvard, tried to gain admittance to the select group but failed.” (It should be noted that the very idea of a “select group” in a supposedly scientific enterprise contradicts the entire idea of a science; see Ch. 7). As an aspect of this exclusionary authoritarianism, Boas was instrumental in completely suppressing evolutionary theory in anthropology (D. Freeman, 1990, p. 197). Group solidarity within the Boasians has also drawn this comment from anthropologist Regna Darnell (2001, p. 35): they “shared a heady sense of solidarity, viewing themselves as rewriting the history of anthropology, creating a professionally respectable and scientifically rigorous discipline whose practitioners were loyal to a common enterprise”—a testament to a sense of group commitment that is antithetical to scientific research (see Ch. 7). 

Boas as Pseudoscientist. Boas was the quintessential skeptic and an ardent defender of methodological rigor when it came to theories of cultural evolution and genetic influences on individual differences, yet “the burden of proof rested lightly upon Boas’s own shoulders” (L. White, 1966, p. 12). Although Boas (like Freud; see Ch. 5) made his conjectures in a very dogmatic manner, his “historical reconstructions are inferences, guesses, and unsupported assertions [ranging] from the possible to the preposterous. Almost none is verifiable” (p. 13). An unrelenting foe of generalization and theory construction (such as the cultural gradation theory that previously dominated anthropology), Boas nevertheless completely accepted the “absolute generalization at which [Margaret] Mead had arrived after probing for a few months into adolescent behavior on Samoa,” even though Mead’s results were contrary to previous research in the area (D. Freeman, 1983, p. 291). Moreover, Boas uncritically allowed Ruth Benedict to distort his own data on the Kwakiutl (see Torrey, 1992, p. 83).

This suggests that Boas might even go so far as to fudge his data or inflate their significance in order to support his political attitudes. Boas’s famous study purporting to show that skull shape changed as a result of immigration from Europe to America was a very effective propaganda weapon in the cause of the anti-racialists and against those who wanted to restrict immigration. As noted in Chapter 1, Boas was greatly motivated by the immigration issue. Indeed, it was likely intended as propaganda and has been highly successful in that regard, having been “cited innumerable times by writers of textbooks and anyone wishing to make the point that the cranium is plastic” (Sparks & Jantz, 2003, p. 334). Boas was far more concerned with showing that the cranial measurements of Eastern European Jews had altered toward the American (i.e., northwest European) type than showing similar results among Italians, writing in 1909, “The composition of the Italian types in the schools proved to be so complex that no safe inference could be drawn in regard to the stability of the type” (in Sparks & Jantz, p. 334). Quite possibly this emphasis on showing the malleability of Jewish skulls reflected Boas’s ethnic affinity to this group as well as the fact that Eastern European Jews were seen as particularly unassimilable at the time (see Ch. 8). 

Based on their reanalysis of Boas’s data, physical anthropologists Corey Sparks and Richard Jantz (2002) do not accuse Boas of scientific fraud, but they do find that his data do not show any significant environmental effects on cranial form as a result of immigration. Moreover, Boas made inflated claims about the results: very minor changes in cranial index were described as changes of “type” so that Boas was claiming that within one generation immigrants developed the long-headed type characteristic of northwest Europeans (Sparks & Jantz, 2003, p. 334). As Sparks and Jantz (2003) note, several modern studies show that cranial shape is under strong genetic influence, including a study showing that, while both American Blacks and Whites have altered their cranial measurements over the last 150 years, these changes have occurred in parallel and have not resulted in convergence. Their reanalysis of Boas’s data indicated that no more than one percent of the variation between groups could be ascribed to the environmental effects of immigration, with the remainder due to variation between ethnic groups. 

Sparks and Jantz (2003, p. 335) also claim that Boas may well have been motivated by a desire to end racialist views in anthropology:

While Boas [like Herskovits] never stated explicitly that he had based any conclusions on anything but the data themselves, it is obvious that he had a personal agenda in the displacement of the eugenics movement in the United States. In order to do this, any differences observed between European- and U.S.-born individuals will be used to its fullest extent to prove his point.

Conclusion

The entire Boasian enterprise may thus be characterized as a highly authoritarian political movement centered around a charismatic leader. The results were extraordinarily successful: “The profession as a whole was united within a single national organization of academically oriented anthropologists. By and large, they shared a common understanding of the fundamental significance of the historically conditioned variety of human cultures in the determination of human behavior” (Stocking, 1968, p. 296). Research on racial differences ceased, and the profession completely excluded eugenicists and racial theorists like Madison Grant and Charles Davenport.

By the mid-1930s the Boasian view of the cultural determination of human behavior had a strong influence on social scientists generally (Stocking, 1968, p. 300). The followers of Boas also eventually became some of the most influential academic supporters of another Jewish-dominated movement, psychoanalysis (see Ch. 5). Marvin Harris (1968, p. 431) notes that psychoanalysis was adopted by the Boasian school because of its utility as a critique of Euro-American culture, and, indeed, as we shall see in later chapters, psychoanalysis is an ideal vehicle of cultural critique. In the hands of the Boasian school, psychoanalysis was completely stripped of its evolutionary associations, and there was a much greater accommodation to the importance of cultural variables (p. 433).35

Cultural critique was also an important aspect of the Boasian school. Stocking (1989, pp. 215–216) shows that several prominent Boasians, including Robert Lowie and Edward Sapir, were involved in the cultural criticism of the 1920s, which centered around the perception of American culture as overly homogeneous, hypocritical, and emotionally and aesthetically repressive (especially with regard to sexuality). Central to this program was creating ethnographies of idyllic cultures that were free of the negatively perceived traits that were attributed to Western culture. Among these Boasians, cultural criticism crystallized as an ideology of “romantic primitivism” in which certain non-Western cultures epitomized the approved characteristics Western societies should emulate.

Cultural criticism was a central feature of the two most well-known Boasian ethnographies, Coming of Age in Samoa and Patterns of Culture. These works are not only offered as critiques of Western civilization, but often systematically misrepresent key issues related to evolutionary perspectives on human behavior. For example, Benedict’s Zuni were described as being free of war, homicide, and concern with accumulation of wealth. Children were not disciplined. Sex was casual, with little concern for virginity, sexual possessiveness, or paternity confidence. Contemporary Western societies are, of course, the opposite of these idyllic paradises, and Benedict suggests that we should study such cultures in order “to pass judgment on the dominant traits of our own civilization” (Benedict, 1934, p. 179). Mead’s similar portrayal of the Samoans ignored her own evidence contrary to her thesis (Orans, 1996, p. 155). Negatively perceived behaviors of Mead’s Samoans, such as rape and concern for virginity, were attributed to Western influence (Stocking, 1989, p. 245).

Both of these ethnographic accounts have been subjected to devastating criticisms. The picture of these societies that has emerged is far more compatible with evolutionary expectations than the societies depicted by Benedict and Mead (see Caton, 1990; D. Freeman, 1983; Orans, 1996; Stocking, 1989). In the controversy surrounding Mead’s work, some defenders of Mead have pointed to possible negative political implications of the demythologization of her work (see, e.g., the summary in Caton, pp. 226–227). 

Indeed, one consequence of the triumph of the Boasians was that there was almost no research on warfare and violence among the peoples studied by anthropologists (Keegan, 1993, pp. 90–94). Warfare and warriors were ignored, and cultures were perceived as consisting merely of myth-makers and gift-givers. (Orans, 1996, p. 120 shows that Mead systematically ignored cases of competition, violence, rape, and revolution in her account of Samoa.) Only five articles on the anthropology of warfare appeared during the 1950s. Revealingly, when Harry Holbert Turney-High published his volume Primitive War in 1949 documenting the universality of warfare and its oftentimes awesome savagery, the book was completely ignored by the anthropological profession—another example of the exclusionary tactics used against dissenters among the Boasians and characteristic of the other intellectual movements reviewed in this volume as well. Turney-High’s massive data on non-Western peoples conflicted with the image of them favored by a highly politicized profession whose members simply excluded these data entirely from intellectual discourse. The result was a “pacified past” (Keeley, 1996, pp. 163ff) and an “attitude of self-reproach” (p. 179) in which the behavior of primitive peoples was bowdlerized while the behavior of European peoples was not only excoriated as uniquely evil but also as responsible for all extant examples of warfare among primitive peoples. From this perspective, it is only the fundamental inadequacy of European culture that prevents an idyllic world free from between-group conflict. Of course, these trends have been exacerbated in recent decades far beyond anything envisioned by Benedict or Mead.The reality, of course, is far different. Warfare was and remains a recurrent phenomenon among pre-state societies; indeed, evolutionary biologist Richard Alexander (1979) and others have argued that warfare was a critical force in human evolution, selecting for greater intelligence and a suite of other human characteristics. Surveys indicate over 90 percent of societies engage in warfare, the great majority engaging in military activities at least once per year (Keeley, 1996, pp. 27–32). Moreover, “whenever modern humans appear on the scene, definitive evidence of homicidal violence becomes more common, given a sufficient sample of burials” (p. 37). Because of its frequency and the seriousness of its consequences, primitive warfare was more deadly than civilized warfare. Most adult males in primitive and prehistoric societies engaged in warfare and “saw combat repeatedly in a lifetime” (p. 174).

The Culture of Critique

An Evolutionary Analysis of JewishInvolvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements

Kevin MacDonald

Examples of Sound Fiat Money

 

In this chapter, we will review some historical examples of the use of sound fiat money not backed by precious metals. The pattern that arises is always the same. When true sound fiat money is used, the economy works efficiently and there is no inflation. However, if the government starts issuing more fiat money than there is backing (a commodity or, more generally, human labour) for it, then inflation sets in and the economy gets into trouble. This last phenomenon usually has its origin in wars for which the government needs more money than actually exists.

Spartan Iron Money

For the first example let’s look way back to the foundation of the ancient Spartan way of life originated by its king Lycurgus in 800 BC.

Lycurgus had travelled widely, visiting India, Spain, Libya and the island of Crete. When he returned to Sparta, he took control of the government and established a constitution based on the Cretan model. He took several measures aimed at cleaning up a corrupt society “whose wealth had centred upon a very few”, according to Plutarch.

Lycurgus began with a decree that outlawed all gold and silver coinage and declared that all Spartan coins must be made of iron. He let the coin units be of low value and heavy so they were difficult to store and transport. He had the hot iron doused with vinegar to make the metal weak and fragile.

Lycurgus’ money was a sound fiat money because the total amount of money in circulation was regulated by law and the value of the symbols serving as money, called Pelanors, depended on limiting the number in circulation.

This monetary system seems to have worked well for three and a half centuries. It was abandoned around 415 BC, after Sparta started a series of campaigns to conquest foreign territories and captured large amounts of gold and silver.

The following quote is from Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, Lycurgus chapter, and gives his reason for the end of this money system.

“For five hundred years, Sparta kept the laws of Lycurgus and was the strongest and most famous city in Greece. But eventually gold and silver were allowed in, and along with them came all of the evils spawned by the love of money. Lysander must take the blame, because he brought home rich spoils from the wars. Although not corrupt himself, Lysander infected Sparta with greed and luxury, and thus subverted the laws of Lycurgus.”

Rome Bronze Nomisma

When Numa Pompilius (716-762 BC), Rome’s second King, came to power most of the gold and silver that he could use as money was stored away in eastern temple establishments. However, copper was abundant and would be much easier to obtain.

Numa came from Rome’s Sabine territory and considered himself a descendant of the Spartans. He was renowned for his high intelligence. He reasoned that if he would institutionalize bronze - an alloy composed of mainly copper, some tin and a bit of lead - as money, the ability of the eastern temples or merchants to control or disrupt Rome’s money would be greatly reduced.

Thus, Numa formulated an ingenious plan. He would decree that gold and silver would merely be commodities in his kingdom. They could be traded as unmarked coins or bars, but the real money would be bronze.

This bronze money was clearly a fiat token money. It was called nummi or nomisma at a later point in Numa’s reign. Because his name was so close to nummi, some historians think Numa was named after his monetary innovations rather than the money being named after him.

The following quote from Alexander del Mar[6] describes what the Romans had to do in his opinion for the system to function properly or, in our terminology, for the money to be sound fiat money.

“Therefore, the means necessary to secure and maintain such a money were for the State to monopolize the copper mines, restrict the commerce in copper, strike copper pieces of high artistic merit in order to defeat counterfeiting, stamp them with the mark of the State, render them the sole legal tenders for the payment of domestic contracts, taxes, fines and debts, limit their emission until their value (from universal demand for them and their comparative scarcity) rose to more than that of the metal of which they were composed, and maintain such restriction and over-valuation as the permanent policy of the State. For foreign trade or diplomacy, a supply of gold and silver, coined and uncoined, could be kept in the treasury.”

The system worked well, first domestically and then internationally, until the Punic wars with Carthage.

China: The First Fiat Paper Money

China is not only credited with having invented paper but it is also generally recognized to have been the first country in the world to use fiat paper money.

The inspiration for China’s paper money actually came from the “white deerskin” money (bai lu pi bi) issued under the reign of Emperor Wu (141-87 BC) of the Han Dynasty, and the “flying money” (fei qian) of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). These were bills of exchange that were traded in private exchanging booths (jufang or jifupu), and in official exchange houses (bianqianwu). In addition to that, textile fabric was also common as a means of payment, as it was part of the tax system. True paper money became a major form of currency during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) with the issuance of the Jiao Zi and Qian Yin, and paper currency then continued under the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) which issued the Hui Zi and Guan Zi.

In ancient China they used iron coins that were circular with a rectangular hole in the middle. Several coins could be strung together in a rope. Merchants soon realized that these strings of coins were too heavy to carry around. It was much more convenient to leave the coins with a trustworthy person and carry a receipt instead. The money could be regained using this receipt. This gave rise to the first fiat paper money, the Jiao Zi.

The Jiao Zi was first issued in 1023 together by 16 merchant princes by order of the Song prefect, Xue Tian, at Chengdu, in the Sichuan Province. This fiat paper money was a piece of paper printed with houses, trees, men and cipher to avoid counterfeiting, and it was sound because it was redeemable in coins. It worked well as long as it remained sound, i.e. backed by an appropriate amount of coins. However, there was eventually a point in time in which the state started issuing more paper money than was covered by coins and prices began to increase.

For this reason, Emperor Huizong (1100-1125) decided in 1105 to replace the Jiao Zi notes by a new fiat paper currency, the Qian Yin. This new paper money, and the subsequent ones, had also problems with inflation because they were not truly sound money[7].

The Tally Sticks

Tally sticks initially served in England as record keeping devices, from at least the twelfth century. But the English tally system originated with King Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, who ascended to the throne in 1100 AD. At that time, taxes were paid directly with goods and services produced by the people. According to the new innovative system, payment was recorded with a piece of wood that had been notched and split in half lengthwise. One half was kept by the treasury and the other by the recipient. Payment could be confirmed by matching the two halves to make sure they “tallied.” Given that no stick splits in an even manner and the notches tallying the sums were cut right through both pieces of wood, counterfeiting was virtually impossible.

Tally sticks were in use for 726 years. They were accepted as legal proof in medieval courts and the Napoleonic Code of 1804 still makes reference to the tally stick in Article 1333.

They were used by the government not only as receipts for the payment of taxes but to pay soldiers for their service, farmers for their wheat, and labourers for their labour. At tax time, tallies were accepted by the treasurer in payment of taxes.

It wasn’t long before the value of tally sticks in circulation far exceeded gold and silver money. It is estimated that by the end of the seventeenth century the tallies in circulation had a value of about fourteen million pounds, yet the coined metals at the time never exceeded a half million pounds in value. By 1694 the tally sticks evolved into being represented by paper bills and by 1697 they circulated interchangeably as money with banknotes and bank bills.

Tally sticks were a sound fiat money system for the following reasons.

1.  They were really bills of exchange, but they were interest free. They were backed by goods and services that did not exist at the time of issue, but would be produced in a short time when taxes were paid. Thus, they could be used like money because they had the King’s approval.

2.  They were virtually impossible to counterfeit.

3.  They could not be produced in unlimited amounts. The number of tallies made would be limited by the estimated production of the people. When the tallies were turned in for taxes, they were retired from the system and new ones had to be created. There could only be an increase in tally sticks if there was a corresponding increase in anticipated production. In this way, inflation was avoided.

Tally sticks are an example of how the government can increase the money supply using sound fiat money when there is no sufficient gold or silver to issue the necessary coins for a prosperous commerce.

Colonial Scrip

The thirteen American Colonies had trouble with England, the home country, over money from the beginning. This is primarily due to the fact that England wanted the colonists to send raw materials back home, but not to trade with each other. In addition, English laws forbade sending coinage to America, while at the same time the Colonies were short of it because they lacked an indigenous supply of gold or silver from which to mint coins. The scant coinage that found its way to the Colonies came from pirates or trade with the Spanish West Indies.

During the period 1632-1692, many agricultural products were legally declared to be money. However, everybody wanted to pay with the least desirable commodities and this caused inefficiencies. Another problem was seen when Virginia and Maryland made tobacco a legal tender in 1633. There was a bumper crop in 1639 and one half of the crop had to be burned to avoid inflation. After some other unsuccessful experiments with different forms of money, the West’s first fiat paper money was issued by Massachusetts in 1690 to pay for a military expedition during King William’s War. They printed paper bills from copper plates, which were called bills of credit.

The way they were used was that the colonial government first issued bills of credit to pay goods and services and later accepted these bills as payment of taxes, at which time they were retired from circulation.

Soon, other colonial governments followed suit and issued their own bills of credit to serve as a convenient medium of exchange. When they issued too many bills or failed to tax them out of circulation, inflation resulted. This happened especially in New England and the southern Colonies. Pennsylvania, however, controlled the amount of currency in circulation and it remains a prime example in history as a successful fiat paper monetary system. Pennsylvania’s fiat paper currency, secured by land, was reported to have generally maintained its value against gold from 1723 until the Revolution broke out in 1775. During this period there was little or no inflation.

Explaining in 1763 to Bank of England directors his ideas on why the colonies were so prosperous, Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying:

“That is simple. In the Colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay no one”

After Benjamin Franklin gave explanations on the true cause of the prosperity of the Colonies, the Parliament exacted laws forbidding the use of paper money as payment of taxes. This decision brought so many drawbacks and so much poverty to the people in the colonies that it is seen by many as the main cause of the Revolution. The suppression of the Colonial paper money was a much more important factor for the general uprising than the Tea and Stamp Act.

The Greenbacks

Before the Civil War in the United States, the only money issued by the government was gold and silver coins, and only such coins (“specie”) were legal tender.

Paper currency in the form of banknotes was issued by privately owned banks, and these notes were redeemable for specie at the bank’s office. They were not legal tender, however, and they had value only if the bank was capable of redeeming them. If a bank failed, its notes became worthless.

When the war broke out, neither side had the supplies of gold and silver coin necessary to wage such a challenge.

The Lincoln Administration sought loans from major banks, mostly in New York City. The banks demanded very high interest rates of 24 to 36 percent. Lincoln was outraged, refused to borrow on such terms, and called for other solutions.

The following passage appears in a letter from President Abraham Lincoln to Colonel William F. Elkins.[8] It gives some insight into the feelings that the President may have had with regard to the money powers, as he called them.

“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.”

The solution found by the Lincoln Administration was to bypass the bankers by issuing fiat paper money to pay for the war expenses. A legal tender law was passed on February 25, 1862. Congress at first authorized the Treasury to issue $150 million of so called Greenbacks, with a total of $450 million being put into circulation as the war continued. The Greenbacks were legal tender for all debts public and private, except duties on import and interest on the public debt, which were payable in coin. They were receivable in payment of all loans made to the U.S.

A letter written by President Lincoln to Colonel E D Taylor, considered the father of the Greenbacks, can be found in the Appendix to this book.

The Greenbacks were very difficult to counterfeit because they used a proprietary green chromium tint invented by a Canadian, Dr. Thomas Sterry Hunt, to combat photo duplication. The notes got their name from this “green” ink on their “back”. The name did not come from the Lincoln Administration but from the ordinary people, who started calling them Greenbacks.

As regards inflation during the Civil War, the American historian J. G. Randall wrote that “The threat of inflation was more effectively curbed during the Civil War than during the First World War.” Also, the American economist John K. Galbraith observed:

“It is remarkable that without rationing, price controls, or central banking, Chase (the Secretary of the Treasury at the time) could have managed the federal economy so well during the Civil War.”

The fact that the Greenbacks were not legal tender for duties on import and interest on the public debt may have been an important negative factor against the currency. In reference to this, the American financial historian Davis R. Dewey wrote:

“Hence it has been argued that the Greenback circulation issued in 1862 might have kept at par with gold if it, too, had been made receivable for all payments to the Government.”

After the war and the assassination of Lincoln, there was a concerted attack of various social groups led by the bankers against the Greenbacks until they were retired from circulation.

The German MEFO Bills

The MEFO bills were a financial instrument created by the National Socialist Government of Germany in 1933 to allow for the activation of the economy, which lay in shambles.

When Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30th, 1933, there were six and a half million people unemployed, there was no gold, and the country was in ruins. To make matters worse, astronomically high war reparations had still to be paid to the victors of World War One.

If the country was to have some economic independence, it could not loan from international banks because this would increase the financial burden even more. Thus, some new monetary device had to be found to get out of the dilemma.

Hitler describes in his book Mein Kampf that he once attended a small meeting in which Gottfried Feder’s monetary views made a deep impression on him. According to Feder (1883-1941), a former construction engineer turned economist, the money supply should be created and controlled by the state through a nationalized central bank rather than by privately owned banks, to whom interest would have to be paid.

Since Feder’s ideas were in principle too innovative and risky, Hitler decided to appoint Hjalmar Schacht, a well-known and experienced German banker at the time, as head of the Reichsbank to carry out a somewhat attenuated version of the monetary reform proposed by Feder.

After denouncing the Treaty of Versailles because the other countries had not met their obligations, the government decided that Germany would create its own sound fiat money, free of debt, through an extensive program of repairs in housing, factories and machines, and through the construction of autobahns.

Hjalmar Schacht himself describes the process in his book The Magic of Money:[9]

“The system worked in the following way: a company with a paid-up capital of one million Marks was formed. A quarter of the capital was subscribed by each of the four firms Siemens, A. G. Gutehoffnungshütte, Rheinstahl and Krupps. Suppliers who fulfilled state orders drew up bills of exchange for their goods, and these bills were accepted by the company. This company was given the registered title of Metallforschungsgesellschaft (Metal Research Company, ‘MEFO’ for short), and for this reason the bills drawn on it were called MEFO bills. The Reich guaranteed all obligations entered into by MEFO, and thus also guaranteed the MEFO bills in full. In essence all the Reichsbank’s formal requirements were met by this scheme. It was a question of financing the delivery of goods; MEFO bills were therefore commodity bills. ...

The Reichsbank declared itself ready to prolong the bills, which true to the form laid down were drawn on three months’ credit, to a maximum of five years if so required, and this point was new and unusual. Each bill could thus be extended by a further three months, nineteen times running. This was necessary, because the planned economic reconstruction could not be accomplished in three months, but would take a number of years. By and large such extensions by themselves were nothing new with the Reichsbank; it was quite common to prolong agricultural bills, but an extension over five years, together with a firm declaration that such extensions would be granted, that was most unusual. One other aspect was even more unusual. The Reichsbank undertook to accept all MEFO bills at all times, irrespective of their size, number, and due date, and change them into money. The bills were discounted at a uniform rate of four per cent. By these means the MEFO bills were almost given the character of money, and interest-carrying money at that. Banks, savings banks, and firms could hold them in their safes exactly as if they were cash. Over and above this they proved to be the best of all interest-bearing liquid investments, in contrast to long-dated securities. In all, MEFO bill credit transactions took place over a period of four years, and had by 1938 reached a total volume of twelve billion Marks.”

The Reichsbank officials were entrusted with the task of examining all bills to ensure that they were issued only against deliveries of goods, and not for any other purposes. Bills which did not meet this requirement were rejected. Thus, the MEFO bills acted like sound fiat money and were non-inflationary because they were backed by human labour.

The following words are part of a speech given by Hitler on February 20th, 1938, in which he addresses the question of the role of money in Germany at the time. (A more extensive part of this speech is given in English in the Appendix to this book.)

“It will also be our task in the future to warn the German people against all kinds of illusions. The worst illusion is to think that one can enjoy something in life that has not been previously created and produced.

It will also be our duty in the future to make clear to all German people, in the city as well as in the land, that the value of their labour is and should always be equal to their salary.

That is, the countryman can only receive for his products what the man in the city has previously produced, and the man in the city can only get what the countryman has previously obtained from his land, and all of them can only make interchanges while they are producing, and money can only play an intermediary role in this process.

Money cannot have an intrinsic value. Each new Mark that is paid in Germany presupposes an additional human labour valued one Mark. Otherwise, this Mark is an empty piece of paper that has no purchasing power.

We want however our Reichsmark to be an honourable banknote, an honourable receipt for the result of an equally honourable human labour.

This is the only real and authentic backing of a currency. In this way we have made it possible, without gold and foreign currencies, to keep the value of the German Mark stable, and we have also kept our savings stable, in times in which those countries that were swimming in gold and foreign currencies had to devalue their currencies.”

After two years of using this sound fiat money, unemployment had almost disappeared and in five years Germany was the greatest economic power in the European continent. The situation in Germany during the period 1933-1939 should be compared with that of the United States during the same period, which were mired in a depression and only got out of it when the events of World War Two forced them to mobilize the economy for the war effort.

Some historians have maintained that the economic success of Germany in the years 1933-1939 was primarily due to defence spending. However, the following table shows that this is not the case.

YearDefence Expenditure RMNational Inco

me

1933/341.9 billion4%

1934/351.9 billion4%

1935/364.0 billion7%

1936/375.8 billion9%

1937/388.2 billion11%

1938/3918.4 billion22%

The Hidden Tyranny Of Our Money

What Most Economists Don’t Know

And Few Wish To Tell

Víctor Gómez-Enríquez

On Ernst Jünger

 Conservative Revolutionary

Junger’s writings about the war quickly earned him the status of a celebrity during the Weimar period. Battle as Inner Experience contained the prescient suggestion that the young men who had

experienced the greatest war the world had yet to see at that point could never be successfully re-integrated into the old bourgeoisie order from which they came. For these fighters, the war had been a spiritual experience. Having endured so much only to see their side lose on such seemingly humiliating terms, the veterans of the war were aliens to the rationalistic, anti-militarist, liberal republic that emerged in 1918 at the close of the war. Junger was at his parents’ home recovering from war wounds during the time of the attempted coup by the leftist workers’ and soldiers’ councils and subsequent suppression of these by the Freikorps. He experimented with psychoactive drugs such as cocaine and opium during this time, something that he would continue to do much later in life. Upon recovery, he went back into active duty in the much diminished German army. Junger’s earliest works, such as In Storms of Steel, were published during this time and he also wrote for military journals on the more technical and specialized aspects of combat and military technology. Interestingly, Junger attributed Germany’s defeat in the war simply to poor leadership, both military and civilian, and rejected the “stab in the back” legend that consoled less keen veterans.

After leaving the army in 1923, Junger continued to write; producing a novella about a soldier during the war titled Sturm, and also began to study the philosophy of Oswald Spengler. His first work as a philosopher of nationalism appeared in the Nazi paper Volkischer Beobachter in September, 1923. Critiquing the failed Marxist revolution of 1918, Junger argued that the leftist coup failed because of its lacking of fresh ideas. It was simply a regurgitation of the egalitarian outlook of the French Revolution. The revolutionary left appealed only to the material wants of the German people in Junger’s views. A successful revolution would have to be much more than that. It would have to appeal to their spiritual or “folkish” instincts as well. Over the next few years Junger studied the natural sciences at the University of Leipzig and in 1925, at age thirty, he married nineteen-year-old Gretha von Jeinsen. Around this time, he also became a full-time political writer. Junger was hostile to Weimar democracy and its commercial bourgeoisie society. His emerging political ideal was one of an elite warrior caste that stood above petty partisan politics and the middle class obsession with material acquisition. Junger became involved with the the Stahlhelm, a right-wing veterans group, and was a contributor to its paper, Die Standardite.

He associated himself with the younger, more militant members of the organization who favored an uncompromised nationalist revolution and eschewed the parliamentary system. Junger’s weekly column in Die Standardite disseminated his nationalist ideology to his less educated readers. Junger’s views at this point were a mixture of Spengler, Social Darwinism, and the traditionalist philosophy of the French rightist Maurice Barrès, opposition to the internationalism of the left that had seemingly been discredited by the events of 1914, irrationalism and anti-parliamentarianism. He took a favorable view of the working class and praised the Nazis’ efforts to win proletarian sympathies. Junger also argued that a nationalist outlook need not be attached to one particular form of government, even suggesting that a liberal monarchy would be inferior to a nationalist republic.[37]

In an essay for Die Standardite titled “The Machine,” Junger argued that the principal struggle was not between social classes or political parties but between man and technology. He was not anti-technological in a Luddite sense, but regarded the technological apparatus of modernity to have achieved a position of superiority over mankind which needed to be reversed. He was concerned that the mechanized efficiency of modern life produced a corrosive effect on the human spirit. Junger considered the Nazis’ glorification of peasant life to be antiquated. Ever the realist, he believed the world of the rural people to be in a state of irreversible decline. Instead, Junger espoused a “metropolitan nationalism” centered on the urban working class. Nationalism was the antidote to the anti-particularist materialism of the Marxists who, in Junger’s views, simply mirrored the liberals in their efforts to reduce the individual to a component of a mechanized mass society. The humanitarian rhetoric of the left Junger dismissed as the hypocritical cant of power-seekers feigning benevolence. He began to pin his hopes for a nationalist revolution on the younger veterans who comprised much of the urban working class.

In 1926, Junger became editor of Arminius, which also featured the writings of Nazi leaders like Alfred Rosenberg and Joseph Goebbels. In 1927, he contributed his final article to the Nazi paper, calling for a new definition of the “worker,” one not rooted in Marxist ideology but the idea of the worker as a civilian counterpart to the soldier who struggles fervently for the nationalist ideal. Junger and Hitler had exchanged copies of their respective writings and a scheduled meeting between the two was canceled due to a change in Hitler’s itinerary. Junger respected Hitler’s abilities as an orator, but came to feel he lacked the ability to become a true leader. He also found Nazi ideology to be intellectually shallow, many of the Nazi movement’s leaders to be talentless and was displeased by the vulgarity, crassly opportunistic and overly theatrical aspects of Nazi public rallies. Always an elitist, Junger considered the Nazis’ pandering to the common people to be debased. As he became more skeptical of the Nazis, Junger began writing for a wider circle of readers beyond that of the militant nationalist right-wing. His works began to appear in the Jewish liberal Leopold Schwarzchild’s Das Tagebuch and the “national-Bolshevik” Ernst Niekisch’s Widerstand.Junger began to assemble around himself an elite corps of bohemian, eccentric intellectuals who would meet regularly on Friday evenings. This group included some of the most interesting personalities of the Weimar period. Among them were the Freikorps veteran Ernst von Salomon, Otto von Strasser, who with his brother Gregor led a leftist anti-Hitler faction of the Nazi movement, the national-Bolshevik Niekisch, the Jewish anarchist Erich Muhsam who had figured prominently in the early phase of the failed leftist revolution of 1918, the American writer Thomas Wolfe and the expressionist writer Arnolt Bronnen. Many among this group espoused a type of revolutionary socialism based on nationalism rather than class, disdaining the Nazis’ opportunistic outreach efforts to the middle class. Some, like Niekisch, favored an alliance between Germany and Soviet Russia against the liberal-capitalist powers of the West. Occasionally, Joseph Goebbels would turn up at these meetings hoping to convert the group, particularly Junger himself, whose war writings he had admired, to the Nazi cause. These efforts by the Nazi propaganda master proved unsuccessful. Junger regarded Goebbels as a shallow ideologue who spoke in platitudes even in private conversation.[38]

The final break between Ernst Junger and the NSDAP occurred in September 1929. Junger published an article in Schwarzchild’s Tagebuch attacking and ridiculing the Nazis as sell outs for having reinvented themselves as a parliamentary party. He also dismissed their racism and anti-Semitism as ridiculous, stating that according to the Nazis a nationalist is simply someone who “eats three Jews for breakfast.” He condemned the Nazis for pandering to the liberal middle class and reactionary traditional conservatives “with lengthy tirades against the decline in morals, against abortion, strikes, lockouts, and the reduction of police and military forces.” Goebbels responded by attacking Junger in the Nazi press, accusing him being motivated by personal literary ambition, and insisting this had caused him “to vilify the national socialist movement, probably so as to make himself popular in his new kosher surroundings” and dismissing Junger’s attacks by proclaiming the Nazis did not “debate with renegades who abuse us in the smutty press of Jewish traitors.”[39]Junger on the Jewish Question

Junger held complicated views on the question of German Jews. He considered anti-Semitism of the type espoused by Hitler to be crude and reactionary. Yet his own version of nationalism required a level of homogeneity that was difficult to reconcile with the sub national status of Germany Jewry. Junger suggested that Jews should assimilate and pledge their loyalty to Germany once and for all. Yet he expressed admiration for Orthodox Judaism and indifference to Zionism. Junger maintained personal friendships with Jews and wrote for a Jewish owned publication. During this time his Jewish publisher Schwarzchild published an article examining Junger’s views on the Jews of Germany. Schwarzchild insisted that Junger was nothing like his Nazi rivals on the far right. Junger’s nationalism was based on an aristocratic warrior ethos, while Hitler’s was more comparable to the criminal underworld. Hitler’s men were “plebian alley scum”. However, Schwarzchild also characterized Junger’s rendition of nationalism as motivated by little more than a fervent rejection of bourgeoisie society and lacking in attention to political realities and serious economic questions.[40]

The Worker

Other than In Storms of Steel, Junger’s The Worker: Mastery and Form was his most influential work from the Weimar era. Junger would later distance himself from this work, published in 1932, and it was reprinted in the 1950s only after Junger was prompted to do so by Martin Heidegger.

In The Worker, Junger outlines his vision of a future state ordered as a technocracy based on workers and soldiers led by warrior elite. Workers are no longer simply components of an industrial machine, whether capitalist or communist, but have become a kind of civilian-soldier operating as an economic warrior. Just as the soldier glories in his accomplishments in battle, so does the worker glory in the achievements expressed through his work. Junger predicted that continued technological advancements would render the worker/capitalist dichotomy obsolete. He also incorporated the political philosophy of his friend Carl Schmitt into his worldview. As Schmitt saw international relations as a Hobbesian battle between rival powers, Junger believed each state would eventually adopt a system not unlike what he described in The Worker. Each state would maintain its own technocratic order with the workers and soldiers of each country playing essentially the same role on behalf of their respective nations. International affairs would be a crucible where the will to power of the different nations would be tested.

Junger’s vision contains a certain amount of prescience. The general trend in politics at the time was a movement towards the kind of technocratic state Junger described. These took on many varied forms including German National Socialism, Italian Fascism, Soviet Communism, the growing welfare states of Western Europe and America’s New Deal. Coming on the eve of World War Two, Junger’s prediction of a global Hobbesian struggle between national collectives possessing previously unimagined levels of technological sophistication also seems rather prophetic. Junger once again attacked the bourgeoisie as anachronistic. Its values of material luxury and safety he regarded as unfit for the violent world of the future.[41]

The National Socialist Era

By the time Hitler came to power in 1933, Junger’s war writings had become commonly used in high schools and universities as examples of wartime literature, and Junger enjoyed success within the context of German popular culture as well. Excerpts of Junger’s works were featured in military journals. The Nazis tried to co-opt his semi-celebrity status, but he was uncooperative. Junger was appointed to the Nazified German Academy of Poetry, but declined the position. When the Nazi Party’s paper published some of his work in 1934, Junger wrote a letter of protest. The Nazi regime, despite its best efforts to capitalize on his reputation, viewed Junger with suspicion. His past association with the national-Bolshevik Ersnt Niekisch, the Jewish anarchist Erich Muhsam and the anti-Hitler Nazi Otto

von Strasser, all of whom were either eventually killed or exiled by the Third Reich, led the Nazis to regard Junger as a potential subversive. On several occasions, Junger received visits from the Gestapo in search of some of his former friends. During the early years of the Nazi regime, Junger was in the fortunate economic position of being able to afford to travel outside of Germany. He journeyed to Norway, Brazil, Greece and Morocco during this time, and published several works based on his travels.[42]

Junger’s most significant work from the Nazi period is the novel On the Marble Cliffs. The book is an allegorical attack on the Hitler regime. It was written in 1939, the same year that Junger re-entered the German army. The book describes a mysterious villain that threatens a community, a sinister warlord called the “Head Ranger”. This character is never featured in the plot of the novel, but maintains a foreboding presence that is universal (much like “Big Brother” in George Orwell’s 1984). Another character in the novel, “Braquemart”, is described as having physical characteristics remarkably similar to those of Goebbels. The book sold fourteen thousand copies during its first two weeks in publication. Swiss reviewers immediately recognized the allegorical references to the Nazi state in the novel. The Nazi Party’s organ, Volkische Beobachter, stated that Ernst Jünger was flirting with a bullet to the head. Goebbels urged Hitler to ban the book, but Hitler refused, probably not wanting to show his hand. Indeed, Hitler gave orders that Junger not be harmed.[43]Junger was stationed in France for most of the Second World War. Once again, he kept diaries of the experience. Once again, he expressed concern that he might not get to see any action before the war was over. While Junger did not have the opportunity to experience the level of danger and daredevil heroics he had during the Great War, he did receive yet another medal, the Iron Cross, for retrieving the body of a dead corporal while under heavy fire. Junger also published some of his war diaries during this time. However, the German government took a dim view of these, viewing them as too sympathetic to the occupied French. Junger’s duties included censorship of the mail coming into France from German civilians. He took a rather liberal approach to this responsibility and simply disposed of incriminating documents rather than turning them over for investigation. In doing so, he probably saved lives. He also encountered members of France’s literary and cultural elite, among them the actor Louis Ferdinand Celine, a raving anti-Semite and pro-Vichyite who suggested Hitler’s harsh measures against the Jews had not been heavy handed enough. As rumors of the Nazi extermination programs began to spread, Junger wrote in his diary that the mechanization of the human spirit of the type he had written about in the past had apparently generated a higher level of human depravity. When he saw three young French-Jewish girls wearing the yellow stars required by the Nazis, he wrote that he felt embarrassed to be in the Nazi army. In July of 1942, Junger observed the mass arrest of French Jews, the beginning of implementation of the “Final Solution.” He described the scene as follows:

“Parents were first separated from their children, so there was wailing to be heard in the streets. At no moment may I forget that I am surrounded by the unfortunate, by those suffering to the very depths, else what sort of person, what sort of officer would I be? The uniform obliges one to grant protection wherever it goes. Of course one has the impression that one must also, like Don Quixote, take on millions.”[44]An entry into Junger’s diary from October 16, 1943 suggests that an unnamed army officer had told Junger about the use of crematoria and poison gas to murder Jews en masse. Rumors of plots against Hitler circulated among the officers with whom Junger maintained contact. His son, Ernst, was arrested after an informant claimed he had spoken critically of Hitler. Ernst Junger was imprisoned for three months then placed in a penal battalion where he was killed in action in Italy. On July 20, 1944 an unsuccessful assassination attempt was carried out against Hitler. It is still disputed as to whether or not Junger knew of the plot or had a role in its planning. Among those arrested for their role in the attempt on Hitler’s life were members of Junger’s immediate circle of associates and superior officers within the German army. Junger was dishonorably discharged shortly afterward.[45]

Following the close of the Second World War, Junger came under suspicion from the Allied occupational authorities because of his far right-wing nationalist and militarist past. He refused to cooperate with the Allies De-Nazification programs and was barred from publishing for four years. He would go on to live another half century, producing many more literary works, becoming a close friend of Albert Hoffman, the inventor of the hallucinogen LSD, with which he experimented. In a 1977 novel, Eumeswil, he took his tendency towards viewing the world around him with detachment to a newer, more clearly articulated level with his invention of the concept of the “Anarch”. This idea, heavily influenced by the writings of the early nineteenth century German philosopher Max Stirner, championed the solitary individual who remains true to himself within the context of whatever external circumstances happen to be present.

Some sample quotations from this work illustrate the philosophy and worldview of the elderly Junger quite well:

“For the anarch, if he remains free of being ruled, whether by sovereign or society, this does not mean he refuses to serve in any way. In general, he serves no worse than anyone else, and sometimes even better, if he likes the game. He only holds back from the pledge, the sacrifice, the ultimate devotion ... I serve in the Casbah; if, while doing this, I die for the Condor, it would be an accident, perhaps even an obliging gesture, but nothing more.”

“The egalitarian mania of demagogues is even more dangerous than the brutality of men in gallooned coats. For the anarch, this remains theoretical, because he avoids both sides. Anyone who has been oppressed can get back on his feet if the oppression did not cost him his life. A man who has been equalized is physically and morally ruined. Anyone who is different is not equal; that is one of the reasons why the Jews are so often targeted.”

“The anarch, recognizing no government, but not indulging in paradisal dreams as the anarchist does, is, for that very reason, a neutral observer.”

“Opposition is collaboration.”

“A basic theme for the anarch is how man, left to his own devices, can defy superior force - whether state, society or the elements - by making use of their rules without submitting to them.”

“... malcontents... prowl through the institutions eternally dissatisfied, always disappointed. Connected with this is their love of cellars and rooftops, exile and prisons, and also banishment, on which they actually pride themselves. When the structure finally caves in they are the first to be killed in the collapse. Why do they not know that the world remains inalterable in change? Because they never find their way down to its real depth, their own. That is the sole place of essence, safety. And so they do themselves in.”

“The anarch may not be spared prisons - as one fluke of existence among others. He will then find the fault in himself.”

“We are touching one a ... distinction between anarch and anarchist; the relation to authority, to legislative power. The anarchist is their mortal enemy, while the anarch refuses to acknowledge them. He seeks neither to gain hold of them, nor to topple them, nor to alter them - their impact bypasses him. He must resign himself only to the whirlwinds they generate.”

“The anarch is no individualist, either. He wishes to present himself neither as a Great Man nor as a Free Spirit. His own measure is enough for him; freedom is not his goal; it is his property. He does not come on as foe or reformer: one can get along nicely with him in shacks or in palaces. Life is too short and too beautiful to sacrifice for ideas, although contamination is not always avoidable. But hats off to the martyrs.”

“We can expect as little from society as from the state. Salvation lies in the individual.”[46]

Beyond the End of History: Rejecting the Washington Consensus

Keith Preston

TAVISTOCK BEATLES?

 

Eleanor Rigby

Ah, look at all the lonely people!
Ah, look at all the lonely people!

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,
Lives in a dream.
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door,
Who is it for?

All the lonely people,
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear,
No one comes near.
Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there,
What does he care?

All the lonely people,
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?

Ah, look at all the lonely people!
Ah, look at all the lonely people!

Eleanor Rigby, died in the church and was buried along with her name,
Nobody came.
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave,
No one was saved.

All the lonely people,
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?
**
Nowhere Man

He's a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his Nowhere plans for nobody.
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man please listen,
You don't know what you're missing,
Nowhere Man, the world is at your command.
La, la, la, la,
He's as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man can you see me at all?
Nowhere Man don't worry,
Take your time, don't hurry,
Leave it all till somebody else,
Lends you a hand.
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere Man please listen,
You don't know what you're missing,
Nowhere Man, the world is at your command.
La, la, la, la,
He's a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his Nowhere plans for nobody.
Making all his Nowhere plans for nobody.
Making all his Nowhere plans for nobody.
***

Hey, Hey, We’re the Beatles
Guest Post by Patrick O’Carroll

NOTE FROM JAMES PERLOFF—When I was a freshman at Colby College (1969-70), a friend in my dorm called me to his room. He had a lot of sound equipment. He played one of the Beatles’ albums backward. You could pretty distinctly hear a voice repeating “Paul is dead.” This was something of a rumor in those days, but we had no way to check into it (no Internet then). In my 2013 book Truth Is a Lonely Warrior, I briefly wrote (based mostly on Dr. John Coleman’s work) about the Beatles having most of their music written for them by the Tavistock Institute and how so many of the “screaming girls” had been hired. Then, about two weeks ago, my friend Patrick O’Carroll sent me an email. Drawing largely on the work of Mike Williams, it fleshed out many details of how the Beatles were orchestrated, and affirmed the 1966 death of the original Paul McCartney. I thought it was significant, and asked  Patrick if I could publish it as a guest post. (For younger readers who might not get the title of Patrick’s post, it lampoons the song “Hey, Hey, We’re the Monkees.” The Monkees were an artificially created rock band who were notorious for neither writing their songs nor playing the instruments on their pop hits.)  Patrick can be reached at tequila.mockingbird@gmx.ch, and Mike Williams’ website is http://sageofquay.com/.
For those who would like to see how things were comparably falsified in the American music scene during the sixties and seventies, I recommend Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon by the late Dave McGowan, who demonstrated the orchestrated success of many bands, and their surprising connections to U.S. military and intelligence services.

From the article:

The purpose of the TAVISTOCK BEATLES was to exacerbate the “generation gap” that the Frankfurt School of Cultural Marxism had already launched in the USA, Britain and Continental Europe in the 1950s. The traditional Christian family was to become “old hat.” Their idea was that “old” yet healthy ideas must be presented to the next generation as “square,” like starting a family or living as people had lived for centuries. Any “old fogies” who opposed Tavistock’s Cultural Marxism would then be ridiculed as “fuddy-duddies” or “no longer with it.” This continued until 2020 with every new wave trend that came after the TAVISTOCK BEATLES repeating the same pattern. That also explains why Tavistock and British intelligence were willing to pay a fortune to manufacture the TAVISTOCK BEATLES, to pay for airtime in the world’s Tell-Lie-Vision networks, and to even report on the wholly manufactured, artificial Tavistock opinions, slogans and statements pronounced by the band’s members, or on press conferences they gave, and to pay inordinate regard to these as the “official opinions of youth,” although totally made-up. It was the most unparalleled Psychological Operation (PSYOP) ever seen.

https://jamesperloff.net/hey-hey-were-the-beatles/