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Prologue to Obedience & Disobedience



Most of the world blamed the Great War on Germany, and Germany, in turn, blamed the war on most of the world, giving Great Britain the lion's share of the blame. In the end the loser was found guilty by the winners and was held accountable for the damage. Abstract thinkers wondered, What caused the war? Whatever its cause, people waged it. Since the Reich was an abstract entity and impersonal generalities are difficult to pin down, accusing fingers were pointed at real people, not only at powerful persons but at ordinary Germans as well. However, since the typical prejudices before the war were still in place, we are not surprised at the broad generalization drawn from the personal particulars: ordinary Germans were stereotyped as typical authoritarian members of an obedient mass inspired to mass murder by Prussian militarists, power-hungry politicians, perverse professors, and greedy capitalists. Very little was said about the hundreds of thousands of Germans who demonstrated against the war in 1914 or about those who fled the country or evaded military service. In any event, majorities everywhere are naturally inclined and cultivated to obedience. For example, notwithstanding the permissive culture of the United States, one day Germans may behold its majority of 2003 and say, "What a dumb and rude hollow-headed herd those Americans were, to be stampeded into war by an oxymoronic moron and his militarist minions!" That observation would probably be followed by a description of the peculiar customs of Americans, their rude discourse, their coarse eating and drinking habits, their crude mating rituals and so on.



Those of us who know a disobedient German or two and have read the wild and romantic stories of German writers as well as the metaphysical musings of Germany's subjective philosophers, not to mention certain communist agitators, are not inclined to believe that all Germans were obedient imperialists before the Great War. As for the stereotypical German, say, the typical Berliner, we might turn to old travel books and articles for a cursory sketch.



Obedient Berliners



Robert Haven Schauffler (1879-1964), took his postgraduate studies at the University of Berlin after graduating from Princeton. Schauffler was an author, poet, magazine editor, and musician. He was keenly interested in the German Romantics: he wrote biographies of Schumann, Brahms and Beethoven. He also wrote a travel book, Romantic Germany. I came across the second chapter, entitled 'The City of the Emperors', while going through the December 1908 issue of The Century Magazine. Schauffler says Berlin must not be excluded from his romantic account, not because it is romantic but because it is an unromantic city whose "architecture has as much color as a squadron of battleships... The city fairly bristles with weapons and ferocity. Its statues when they are not mounted warriors with swords, or of standing warriors with spears, represent Samson laying about him with the jaw-bone of an ass, or hounds rending a stag." After the emperor whizzes by at his own speed and soldiers scramble to salute his passing, Schauffler wonders whether or not modern, militant Berlin, with its zest for art, science and diplomacy is the embodiment of the Hohenzollern royal character. He repeats the Frenchman's saying, that Prussia was born from a cannon-ball, as an eagle is born from an egg.



Despite the drab first impression Schauffler provides, due in part to the gloomy weather, he is charmed by the Berlin: "I have never been able to account for its strange charm, its emotional appeal, as one accounts for the lure of other places. Reason has declared it one of the least charming cities, and yet we are enticed." He attends more to the architecture than the people. After reading his descriptions and looking at the pictures provided by Karl O'Lynch von Town, we are somewhat charmed too, and we might like to visit the city. We cannot see the Berlin as it was then, but we can grieve for it, and perhaps the reconstruction will cheer us up. As for typical Berliners in those days, be forewarned: other Germans are not like that, so do not pack your bags right away and leave the country. He repeats the old story about the Thuringian woman who was asked if she had visited Berlin: "No, I have never been abroad."



Schauffler is a courteous critic. Since people tend to remember the last thing said, he disposes of the offensive characteristics first. The typical Berliner is outwardly cold and prudish. Europe's history would be quite different without Prussian aggressiveness. The Berliner knows it all, there is nothing new to him, he instinctively interrupts every fresh subject raised to put in the last word on it, and does so cuttingly. He reminds us of Faust,Goethe's sneering, caustic, telling villain. He attacks anything; for instance, he says a man with a large mouth can whisper in his own ear. Furthermore, the Berliner is his own worst critic, yet, given his superiority, he thinks he is beyond criticism from anyone else. Finally, he quotes Naumann's discouraging disparagement; but I will not follow suit - I may want to make friends with a few Berliners one day.



On the other hand, your typical Berliner might be the best friend you ever had if only you would take a few years to make the friendship. You will discover that he is an upright person, does his duty, is efficient, public-spirited, and benevolent - he might be one of the forty-four thousand citizens who serve the public administration without pay, probably a gifted and talented man, and maybe one of the foremost Berliners. He may seem to be over-governed, but that is to his advantage after a few years. He is fiercely independent; that is why he loves his masters, as examples of independence, and the reason for the occasional existence of "friction" between leader and led and self-adoration and self-criticism. Berliners have an earnest desire for culture, producing few first-ranked artists but many prominent scholars and philosophers - the others try to make walking encyclopedias out of themselves.



Samuel G. Blythe's amusing travel article entitled 'Berlin and its Burghers', in the June 1908 edition of Everybody's Magazine, provides further insights into the Berliner persona. Blythe (1868-1947) was a well-known American journalist and feature writer, editor-in-chief of the Buffalo Inquirer, and world-traveler. Let's begin at the end, with his concluding paragraph:





"They are essentially a solemn people. Notwithstanding their music, their cafes, their late hours, their social functions, and the rest, they take their pleasure seriously and formally, and do their work in the same way. They have an overplus of government. Each man lives his life according to the plans and specifications furnished by his superiors. He does what he is expected to do and rarely does what he is not expected to do. He is expected, first of all, to keep Berlin clean and orderly and to invest his savings in commercial enterprise. He does all that methodically, and that is the reason for the great, busy, industrial city; that is the "why" of Berlin.



Blythe says Berliners and the rest of the German people "are the most governed people on earth. They like it and howl for more," expecting the authorities to tell them what to do in every situation. If we are to believe the author, the favorite word of Germans is "Verboten!" There is a time to do everything, including playing the piano and beating the rugs. And the obedience person is quite comfortable once settled into the routine, but those who do not observe the rules are in for considerable trouble. "Every Berliner does exactly what he is expected to do, and you must do the same." As for the municipal authorities, they are not locally elected officials. The mayor is a professional mayor: he was brought to Berlin because he was a good mayor elsewhere. The police "are very important, very self-sufficient, and inclined to be brutal, but they keep the city in good order." Every resident of Berlin "is a number" and is under surveillance; for a small fee - seven cents at the time - the police will tell you where someone lives.



"When a German makes a mistake, there is no living it down. Therefore, the German of the mass never does anything on his own initiative. He is afraid. It might be wrong. He lives by a strict scale, exists by quarter inches, publicly and formally. In his mind, he is reckless and revolutionary. He talks - in a safe place - and writes - for safe mediums, but he rarely acts. If he does act, the police turn out and club him to a pulp...."



Blythe may have missed the great demonstration for manhood suffrage that took place throughout Germany on January 10, 1908. The proletariat wanted direct representation in the lower house of Prussia's parliament, then subject to a property franchise: 15% of the male population chose 85% of the delegates. A suffrage resolution was introduced in the House. Prince Bulow argued against it on the grounds that it was incompatible with the welfare of the state. A large majority rejected the resolution. A couple of days later, Socialists demonstrated in Berlin, clashing with the police - many people were injured. More demonstrations took place on January 21. On January 22, Bulow, in a Reichstag speech, warned working men "not to allow themselves to be diverted from the path of law and order or to sacrifice themselves for the sake of party fanatics and agitators." German journalists charged Bulow with hypocrisy, pointing out that in January of 1907 the Imperial Chancellor had himself encouraged agitation by addressing a midnight procession assembled in front of his house to congratulate him on the election returns. Even the Emperor had addressed the crowds from a balcony of the Royal Castle. In retrospect, we wish Blythe had interviewed the great agitator, Rosa Luxemberg, while he was in town - no doubt her perspective would deepen our current understanding of typical Berliners.



Blythe does say Berlin's criminal justice system had an effective way of dealing with repeat offenders - at least in misdemeanor cases. The convicted criminals were instructed to go home, clean up their affairs, then turn themselves in to serve a life sentence. It seems most of them left town instead and were never seen again. Incidentally, a drunkard could draw a life sentence: almost everyone drank plenty of beer or wine, but drunkards, people who cannot control their inebriation, were not at all appreciated. The custom was for the whole family to sit down at a table in a giant beer-hall and to drink solemnly until two or four the morning - Blythe allegedly wrote elsewhere that this late-night drinking was encouraged by the Kaiser in order to promote tourism. Of course certain beer-hall rules of etiquette applied. Food at the beer-hall was cheap - the profit was in the beer. We should not conclude, however, that Germans drink more beer than wine and coffee - the opposite is true. As for the quality of the food: "Your German does not care for fancy food. He wants 'grub.' Eating to him is a sacred ceremony, not to be trifled with nor slighted. When he eats, he wants to eat, to masticate, to get a realizing sense that he is communing with something that has substance in it."



To complement the disciplined life, our travel writer tells us that German men loved to don uniforms in those days - a mere hunting jacket would do in a pinch. Moreover, the army is on view everywhere. Berlin men have an erect, soldierly gait. The ideal handsome man has close-cropped hair, upturned mustache, and a face crisscrossed with scars from duels during his university days - cuts are cultivated into prodigious scars by the judicious rubbing of salt into the wounds. Do not imagine him smoking a pipe and musing on metaphysics: gentlemen prefer cigars and smoke lots of them. Now the Kaiser, who speeds about the city in one of a flock of white automobiles, is the very sublimation of authority and the model of male beauty. The pedestrian had better get out of his way. Indeed, you are at fault even if a mere cab runs you down: you will be arrested for obstructing traffic. One man, whose son fell of a platform onto a train track and was killed, was sued because his son obstructed traffic.



According to Blythe, the streets of Berlin are "miraculously clean." Nor does the stroller see many signs of poverty. The average Berliner "gets small wages and lives in a small way." Yes, there are a few rich men, but they do not show off their wealth. Blythe's view of Berliners was written before the war. No doubt people were amused by it at the time, and some readers might have said to themselves, "Well, that does not sound like such a bad life at all. Follow the rules and live a dignified and modestly comfortable life. Having a few beers in the evening with one's family is better than hanging out in seedy bars like a thief in the night." But let's get down to politics:



"The underlying sentiment of the people is expressed in the Socialist Democratic party, which is composed of three millions of voters and governed absolutely by a few men. To offset this, the Government has experimented and is experimenting with a sort of monarchical socialism. Certain sections of the people flare up at times, but they do not get anywhere, for they are promptly clubbed back to where they belong."



National Socialism



The German social security programs installed by Bismark in the 1880s to win workers away from socialism served as the progressive model for the world. A conservative and liberal alliance - aristocratic (Junker) agrarians, industrialists, military officers, high public officials, university professors - was opposed by the Catholic and Socialist parties. Bismark had not anticipated the rapid rise of the Catholic and Socialist parties, which he referred to as "fiends" (enemies) of the conservative Reich. He made compromises in order to forestall revolution. As a consequence, although the Socialists were reluctant to admit it, the material circumstances of the working class had improved considerably - incidentally, Lloyd George heard about the admirable social security scheme that provided Germans with modest pensions, accident insurance, and national medical benefits; in 1908 he visited Germany to study the program, returned to England, and used what he had learned to institute what we now know as the modern welfare state. Now the unification of Germany and its material progress had resulted in population growth and a self-conscious proletariat. A socialist revolution was forestalled not only by the liberal reforms but by an aggressive emphasis on foreign policy: more living space and power over the world's economy was wanted to satisfy national demands for full employment. Socialism addressed the distribution problems within the Fatherland while nationalism organized the competition with other nations without. Therefore National Socialism. The German power elite were chauvinists who believed that might makes right and therefore adopted an amoral doctrine - World Power Politick - expressed most clearly by Professor Max Weber, who believed in it to his last day. The German chauvinists believed their precious young state was hemmed in or encircled - they could see no way out of the box except to become the central power of Europe as well as the savior of the world.



Blythe's obedient yet comfortable Berliner seems to have characteristics peculiar to his type, but like majorities everywhere, he appears to be the victim of a power-hungry elite. Surely no nation, with the possible exception of the United States, could survive for long if its children were educated to disobedience and contempt for authority. After Bismark took over, we hear the German was educated to almost blind obedience and conformity; he may be a fool, but it seems he is hardly to blame for doing what he is supposed to do. Karl Ludwig Krause wrote a book about his experiences in Germany, What is the German Nation Dying For? (1918).



"Nationalism in Germany is of highly aristocratic lineage and its connections exceedingly respectable. Monarchism and militarism are its parents, bureaucracy its brother.... The public schools are the halls where honor is done the German princes.... The 'fatherland sentiment' has now been properly planted in the children's minds. A citizen brought up in this way is capable of anything. He is the dupe of any fraud provided it has 'fatherland' trimmings.... The government, therefore, had nothing to fear from the serious criticism of its own people.... The government doesn't need criticism... it is infallible.... The ardent efforts in the interest of the monarchy find support in a peculiar servile trait in the German character. A German is impressed by arrogance provided it is sufficiently brazen. A German would rather obey than think for himself and shoulder responsibility. It was this blind faith in authority that made it possible for the German nation to be caught up suddenly in a war of which it had not dreamed a week before."



Krause places most of the blame for the war on the Prussian aristocratic class and their autocratic emperor, the "last representative of the Hohensollern monarcy" - William II - who, along with the agrarians and industrialists, stand to profit by war, and who want the whole world at their feet. But he does not spare the socialist leaders. He is angered by the fact that the Democratic Socialist party in the Reichstag voted in favor of the war on Russia and France, purportedly in "defense of the fatherland", although Germany was in fact the aggressor. He believed the masses would have sided with the socialist representatives if only the leaders had taken a stand against the war - we note here that, after 1912, the German Socialist Democratic party constituted the largest single party in the Reich, garnering 34.6% of the vote and 110 seats in the last imperial election. Krause believed the German imperialists would not have dared to defy the laboring people.



Disobedient Berliners



As a matter of fact, in the last days of July 1914, mass anti-war demonstrations took place throughout Germany - and they were not the first anti-war demonstrations in Germany - they fell short of the huge demonstrations that took place in 1911 in response to the second Morroco crisis. On July 28, 1914, a demonstration in Berlin attracted 100,000 people, prompting the police to ban further demonstrations. By July 31 there had been 288 anti-war demonstrations in 163 cities and towns, involving nearly a million people. Such protests contradict the stereotypical view that Germans were authoritarian sheep. But the government did not feel threatened: the demonstrations, on the whole, were tolerated, and even the Kaiser was praised by a newspaper as a friend of peace. But when Russia's mobilization became evident, the pacific democratic socialists converted to defensive national socialism and proceeded to collaborate with the militant power elite.



Rosa Luxemburg, whom Hannah Arendt calls a revolutionary heroine, was the most notable representative of those left-wing socialists who clung to what was once the major plank of the orthodox socialist party: international pacifism. The international socialists found the cause of war in those greedy capitalists who preside over private capitalism, the very structure of evil. Rosa was a Polish economist and communist agitator. She believed that the strong German socialist party would be the salvation of international socialism; after obtaining her doctorate degree in Zurich, she entered into a marriage of convenience with a German citizen and, in 1899, moved to Berlin where she agitated and taught economics at the Social Democratic Party school. Berliners were astonished to encounter a woman who had a doctorate degree; her lectures on economy, which were histories of economics, were quite popular. She poked fun at the ambiguous and absurd obfuscations of professional economists, then got down to the brass tacks, which, of course, held down a carpet of communist propaganda. Her democratic spirit still makes up for the communist line - it appears monotonous today, yet inspired millions of people in its time.



Rosa's bloody image, reinforced by a photograph of her corpse after it was fished out of the river, has been revised by historians. She has been called 'Bloody' Rosa, but the record indicates that she advocated agitation instead of terrorism - she said that bomb-throwing had no more effect on government than killing a gnat. The capitalist government would be overthrown by the people once they were educated to the truth about capitalism. And she opposed the Marx-Trotsky line on dictatorship: she insisted on a dictatorship by the educated proletariat at large, and not of the proletariat by a party elite. Her view reminds us of the seemingly oxymoronic label, 'anarcho-communism', used by Emma Goldman and comrades - we might speculate that Rosa used the term 'democracy' instead of 'anarchy' because she had reserved 'anarchy' to denote the essence of neo-Darwinian capitalism and international warfare. Incidentally, Rosa was not a cold-hearted political bird: her prison letters reveal a woman who loved birds and plants as much as a humanitarian revolution - she was dismayed that flora and fauna, just like the Native American culture, were being extinguished. Neither did she want to be cast as a brazen feminist: she objected to being a 'token woman.' As for our present subject, we might objected that Rosa was not a typical Berliner, but who was? Perhaps our search for the stereotypical Berliner is a wild-goose chase. When we examine the characteristics of specific, concrete individuals, they vary from the stereotypical views. Suffice it to say that, if typical Berliners exist, Rosa was a representative member of a typical crowd of disobedient Berliners.



Since the agitation Rosa recommended in lieu of immediate violence was actually a careful preparation for the armed overthrow of national governments at the propitious moment, say, during war, she was not, strictly speaking, a pacifist. The socialist revolution would be a revolution to end all wars. However, the revisionist socialists sacrificed the immediate realization of their internationalist ideal in hopes of preserving their national means, the socialist parties within the nations, which would presumably be able to gradually help along the inevitable rise of the proletariat and the achievement of international peace. Yet Rosa held to the internationalist line to the bitter end. During the revolutionary period at the end of the war, she and her colleague, Karl Liebknecht, had a price on their heads; they were taken into custody by the government and brutally murdered. After the outbreak of the war, Rosa, along with Karl Liebknecht and Clara Zetkin, had formed a faction within the Social Democratic Party in Berlin called the Sparticists. When the pacific socialists split off from the Social Democratic Party, the Sparticists went along, then became the Sparticist League in 1918 - one of the founding groups of the German Communist Party. A study of the activities and sacrifices made by the thousands of Germans associated with the revolutionary movements does not leave us with the impression that Berliners are by nature a passive, obedient herd, at least not the socialists among them, as paradoxical as that might seem. But let's return to the outbreak of the Great War:



Austria's ultimatum to Serbia on July 23, 1914 excluded any possibility of its acceptance, hence war was the foregone conclusion. A few days later, Rosa appeared at a great rally in Brussels against the impending war. Juares, the great French socialist, spoke as eloquently as usual - he would be murdered shortly thereafter. The workers were optimistic, believing war could be averted, or, if not, that they would still have their international socialist organization for moral support. Rosa stood up to speak, looked into the faces of the workers, but said nothing, sat down, and put her face in her hands. Time and time again the crowd pleaded with her to speak, but she sorrowfully demurred. Paul Frolich (Rosa Luxemburg, ideas in action explains:



"From the lessons of history, and especially from the experience of the Russo-Japanese War, she was familiar with the blinding and bewildering effects that nationalism had on the popular masses at the beginning of a war.... This explains why she looked so searchingly into the mass of people in that hall, people who turned to the International with hope and faith. Could she speak to these people? Could she tell them the awful truth, destroy their faith and produce a panic? This she could not bring herself to do - for both psychological and political reasons. Yet it would have been just as impossible for her to compromise with a lie, to feign optimism, to strengthen futile hopes among the masses, to deceive them. She therefore remained silent."



Rosa saw many years of work going down the drain, and, for the first time, the strong-woman of the socialist revolution was depressed and discouraged, but she soon became outraged. In February 1915 she wound up in prison yet again, wherein she proceeded to compose her thoughts and commit them to writing. Her writing was secreted out of prison and eventually published as the revolutionary booklet, The Junius Pamphlet - after Lucius Junius Brutus, the legendary republican leader who overthrew the Roman monarchy. A few excerpts are enough to evoke the mood she was in:



"Particularly in the fight against militarism and the war the position taken by the German Social Democracy has always been decisive. 'We Germans cannot accept that,' was usually sufficient to determine the orientation of the International. Blindly confident, it submitted to the leadership of the much admired, mighty German Social Democracy. It was the pride of every Socialist, the horror of the ruling classes of all countries."



"And what happened to Germany when the great historical crisis came? The deepest fall, the mightiest cataclysm. Nowhere was the organization of the proletariat made so completely subservient to imperialism. No where was the press so thoroughly gagged, public opinion so completely choked off; nowhere was the political and industrial class struggle of the working class so completely abandoned as in Germany."



"War is methodical, organized, gigantic murder. But in normal human beings this systematic murder is possible only when a state of intoxication and been previously created. This has always been the tried and proven method of those who make war. Bestiality of action must find a commensurate bestiality of thought and senses. The latter must prepare and accompany the former."



"Mass murder has become a monotonous.... Gone is the first mad delirium.... The show is over. The curtain has fallen on trains filled with reservists, as they pull out among the joyous cries of enthusiastic maidens.... Into the disillusioned atmosphere of pale daylight there rings a different chorus; the hoarse croak of the hawks and hyenas of the battle field.... Business is flourishing upon the ruins... Shamed, dishonoured, wading in blood and dripping with filth, thus capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the roles of peace and righteousness, of order, of philosophy, of ethics - as a roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as a pestilential breath devastating culture and humanity - so it appears in all its hideous nakedness. And in the midst of this orgy a world tragedy has occurred: the capitulation of the Social Democracy...."





Conclusion



Private capitalism is still standing a century later, but its form has been modified during the course of its struggles with socialism. Capital is much more broadly socialized today albeit into seemingly private hands. Individual shareholders still have little control over the large corporation. An interlocked power elite control the economy. There is some circulation between the economic classes, but moving into the highest bracket is mostly a matter of luck whether by accident of birth into fortune or by meritorious action. Consumers, however, indirectly own the means of production, for they may boycott a business and shut production down rendering the means of production worthless - therefore regressives condemn the boycott as a perverse, immoral course of action. Likewise, voters in the United States have in their hands the power to realize radical reforms and even to revise the foundational constitution of the state. But they will not do so. The majority of any population, unless made desperate, are not inclined to radical changes.



The United States is prosperous country. So was Germany prior to the Great War - in terms of industrial production, it had moved into second place. Now America thinks its democracy makes it safe, and it wants to make the world safe for democracy by leading the New World Order movement. That movement was in part inspired by President Wilson, who was at first reluctant to lead the United States into war, but he did so, and the policies he developed are sometimes referred to as Wilsonian Internationalism. Today we admire ourselves in the mirror and praise our democratic reflection as our democratic military-industrial complex is making the world safe for our democracy. Since we rarely exercise the tremendous democratic power we do have, we rarely take time to consider the kind of democracy the world is being made safe for. If we did so, we might discover it is a sham, or a travesty of democracy. Or 'democracy' may be just a label co-opted by neo-liberal corporate movement, led by an elite who are not elected; who are not responsible to their employees; who are barely responsible to the public; who demand even less governmental interference; who run their corporations like armies, and so on. To make matters worse, although every democratic worker is said to have a duty to work, none have the right to work. And that is what the president means when he says we will make the world safe for democracy, when he wants to wage war on evil leaders in order to liberate the peoples of the world from their leaders. And today we hear from the lips of the militarists who support that movement and who are constantly sounding the alarm that war is imminent and that more funds are need to wage it, some of the same arguments made by the German militarists prior to the Great War. That gives us some of us due cause to pause and reconsider the nature of our democracy, and to wonder if it is not a danger to world peace instead of the world's savior, and to look into the mirror when we ask who is the most dangerous animal in the world.



Germany once insisted its superior culture would save the world, and we know the consequences. Now the United States, led by president whose bellicosity has made him a caricature of a typical kaiser or fuhrer, wants to lead an international alliance into war against Iraq. The United States has no incontrovertible proof that Iraq attacked the U.S. homeland; but that is beside the point, for, long before the terrorists attacks, the continuation of the war on Iraq was the underlying plank of the presidential candidate's election campaign. We should wonder, Is not this a continuation of the mistakes? For Saddam Hussein and Osama binLaden were in part created by and supported by the United States as part of its effort to make world safe for democracy. And now the Germans are dragging their feet. They do not want to march off to war against a nation that has not attacked their fatherland. Can we blame the stereotypical German for his reluctance? Should we bully him into cooperating? On the other hand, do we not need more Berliners in our country to do what a Berliner does best, criticize his own kind?