Beyond Marxism: The Faith and Works of Hendrik de Man

287 Pages·1966·3.858 MB·English

by  Peter Dodge (auth.)

BEYOND MARXISM:
THE F AITH AND WORKS OF
HENDRIK DE MAN
HENDRIK DE MAN
BEYOND MARXISM:
THE FAITH AND WORKS OF
HENDRIK DE MAN
by
PETER DODGE
•
MARTINUS NIJHOFF I THE HAGUE I 1966
ISBN 978-94-015-0015-9 ISBN 978-94-015-0476-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-0476-8
Copyright I966 by Martinus Nijho/f, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1966
FOREWORD
To recall all those who have contributed to the genesis of the present
work involves pleasant reminiscence. The grey skies of Belgium come
to mind with the acknowledgment that without the aid of two United
States Government (Fulbright) Grants the study would have been
stillborn. Both Dorothy Deflandre, Executive Officer of the U.S.
Educational Foundation in Belgium, and Henri Janne, then Director
of the Institut de Sociologie Solvay, used their official powers to facilitate
the process of research. Another scene, equally impressed upon the
memory - the placid setting of Amsterdam's Keizersgracht - arises with
therecollectionofthe courtesy of the Internationaal Instituut voor Soci
ale Geschiedenis, whose director, the late A. J. C. Rüter, kindly granted
me access to the de Man archives. I take pleasure also in acknowledging
financial support from the Research Foundation of the State University
of New York, whereby I could investigate further materials later made
available at the Archives Generales du Royaume in Brussels.
To the various individuals in the Low Countries, France, Switzerland,
and the United States whom I subjected to interviews I must extend
my deepest gratitude; their numbers are so many that I hope they will
forgive my resort to bibliographical annotation for individual ac
knowledgment. But for understandable reasons I must single out the
various members of the de Man family - M. and Mme. Yves Lecocq,
M. and Mme. Gust de Muynck, and M. and Mme. J an de Man - for their
many contributions to an inquiry that could not but seem impertinent.
To them, more than to anyone else, pertains the usual caveat: the
opinions and interpretations found herein are indeed truly original, in
that they generally have been held by no one else - and would be
repudiated prima facie by practically every one of my respondents. But
if I have succeeded in alienating my audience, I have gratified myself,
in that I believe I have arrived at an interpretation that does justice to
VI FOREWORD
my responsibility to history, even if the attempt to deal dispassionately
and compassionately with a figure of such notoriety as the subject of
this book will inevitably involve the author in charges of bias. I t is truly
regrettable that the historical significance of de Man's work has been
obliterated by the sensational events of his later career; and if the
present volume achieves only the effect of making it possible to consider
his ideological innovations in their own right, it will have served a
useful purpose. Of course this is not to suggest that the ideology was
irrelevant to the later course of events - but in examining this rela
tionship the present study is led to explore those circumstances that gave
rise not only to de Man's outstanding role in the twenties and thirties
as a socialist critic of Marxism but also to his desperate and ultimately
disastrous attempt, in the face of the apocalyptic menace of the late
thirties and early forties, to galvanize an adequate response from a
torpid sodal reality. By means of such an approach it becomes possible to
distinguish the psychological from the logical level of inquiry, and
thereby to reintate de Man's contribution to an important tradition of
social and political analysis.
In preparing at Harvard University the doctoral dissertation that
forms the foundation for the present book I received the benefit of
Donald McKay's warm solicitude until his guidance was cut short by
death. H. Stuart Hughes was good enough to take over the burdens
involved in bringing that work to completion.
To make the record complete, it should be noted that certain sections
of chapters four and five have appeared earlier in the International
Review 01 Social History (v. In, part 3,1958) under the title of "Volun
taristic Socialism: An Examination of the Implications of Hendrik de
Man's Ideology." The bibliography represents an extensive revision and
amplification of what has appeared as Hendrik de Man: Gesamt-Bibli
ographie (VillingenjSchwarzwald: Ring-Verlag, 1962), compiled by J.
and E. de Man. The reader should also understand that, with the
exception of most passages from the Psychology 01 Socialism, all
quotations are in my translation or in de Man's own English; and that
titles cited without author always refer to de Man's writings.
I thank my wife Renata for undertaking the tedious, intricate, and,
indeed, thankless task of preparing the index.
CONTENTS
Foreword. v
1. Rebel .. 1
2. Onlooker. 21
3. Participant. 38
4. Ideologue - TheCritique . 65
5. Ideologue - The Positive Formu1ation . 90
6. Politician. . . 124
7. Knight-Errant . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Appendices
A. Le Plan du Travail. . . . . 232
B. "Les Theses de Pontigny". . 237
C. Programme du I9 iuin I940 . 240
D. The Official Accusation . . 241
E. Exchange of Letters Between de Man and Mussolini. 244
F. Summary of Political Reforms Urged by de Man in 1939. 247
Bibliography
Primary. . 248
Secondary. 264
Index. 273
CHAPTER I
REBEL
In later years filled with the turbulence and desperation of the twentieth
century, Hendrik de Man was fond of recalling the secure and serene
round of existence that had characterized the bourgeois environment
of his childhood. Born 17 November 1885 in Antwerp, he received his
first impressions from the stable, well-ordered world that his prosperous
and cultured Flemish family enjoyed in the placid confidence of the
era of the Pax Britannica and in the bland optimism of those carried to
ever increasing well-being by the commercial and industrial affluence
of Belgium. The technological innovations that underlay this pros
perity had hardly penetrated to the domestic scene, and the de Mans
practiced a traditionalistic and leisurely way of life infused with a sense
of the values appropriate to their station. Every Thursday afternoon
was set aside for the weekly marketing (for which bills were presented
annually); other afternoons were dominated by social gatherings of
French-speaking and Flemish-speaking circ1es; every Sunday was
marked by a three-hour family feast worthy of Jordrens. In accordance
with this style of life it was necessary and proper to maintain servants,
who were assimilated to the patriarchal structure of the family. The
universe of warm personal relations was extended outward through
habitual and intimate contact with the many relatives in the Antwerp
area, carried to such an extent that Robert, the younger son in the de
Man family, was actually surrendered to a maternal aunt after she had
tragically lost her own children. It was this background of stability,
candor, and trust that formed the baseline by which the children in the
de Man family were to judge the world.1
1 The material for the following biographical sketch has been drawn principally from the
three versions of his autobiography that de Man published: Apres Coup: Memoires (Brussels
Paris, 1941); Cavalier seul: Quarante-cinq annees ae socialisme europeen (Geneva, 1948); and
Gegen den Strom: Memoiren eines europäischen Sozialisten (Stuttgart, 1953). The same environ
ment is reflected in Yvonne de Man's Ons Dagelijks Brooa: De wedefwaaraigheden van een huis
!I10UW van Antwerpen tot Manhattan (Brussels, 1953).
2 REBEL
The distinctive character of Hendrik, the eldest child and the stam
houder, was greatly influenced by the relationship with his father. The
de Mans had not occupied the assured place in Antwerp society that
was characteristic of the maternal side of Hendrik's family, but on the
contrary were socially mobile. Although his grandfather had been a
butcher by occupation, his father Adolf de Man had aristocratic pre
tentions, revived with force upon the birth of a son who might fulfill
his ambitions, frustrated by a slight physical disability, to make a
career in an exclusive cavalry regiment. The father's own position as
an executive in a shipping company was honorable enough, but suffered
by comparison to those of his brother and brother-in-Iaw, both of
whom were army officers. Discontent with his civilian status was
solaced by an increased emphasis upon the subjective qualities of
aristocracy, and the eIder son was to bear his entire life the imprint of
a semi-military upbringing, evident in all his conduct but finding its
clearest expression in the paradox that the later pacifist was avowedly
to find the military role that he assumed in both World Wars the one
most congenial to his personality.
In accordance with the expectations of a military career and in view
of his robust nature, Hendrik experienced a much more exacting
regime than his younger brother. lee cold baths first thing in the
morning in an unheated room were regarded as obligatory for the body
and the character, and so deepIy was the training ingrained that it was
not until after several decades of independence that it occurred to him
that he did not have to undergo this jarring experience every morning.
More significantly, the father used every opportunity to impress upon
his son the corollaries of noblesse oblige: unwavering truthfulness, the
8acredness of the promise given, the necessity of disciplined conduct,
and above all the obligation to help the weaker and less fortunate than
oneself. In instilling these virtues the father had no hesitation in
resorting to physical punishment, but the system was so effective that
800n the slightest hint of his father's disapproval was enough to make
the young 'Rik cringe with shame.
Another of the father's characteristics by which the son was to be
marked throughout his life was an intense conviction of the indis
pensability of communion with nature for the preservation of the
physical and moral balance of the individual. His father was unusual
in being a member of the Iocal athletic club, which was inspired by the
model of the Turnverein, and both father and son were to par
ticipate widely and intensely in such sports as hunting, skiing,
REBEL 3
swimming, fencing, riding, mountain-dimbing, and fishing. In his teens
the son was to venture forth from the Campine landscape where the
family summered to roam in true Wandervogel fashion over much of the
territory of western Europe, carefully avoiding all of those man-made
monuments noted by Baedeker. And when he became a Minister in the
Belgian government in later years he refused, to the consternation of
his fellow-politicians, to give up his weekly regimen of horseback
riding every morning, fencing several evenings a week, and trout fishing
on weekends.
The stamp of his severe but devoted father was apparent not only
in this passion for the outdoor life but surely lay behind such traits as
the scorn that familiarities invariably inspired in the son and the inner
security and conviction of worth that enabled him to spurn the ex
ternals of success and to cultivate an indifference to material sur
roundings. From the same source surely arose also the conviction of
duty that demanded a career of service to a cause and a sense of
integrity that in enshrining candor viewed conventional dissimulation
- above all when there was the suspicion that it might disguise self
interest - as the cardinal sin.
But Hendrik was not only a de Man; he received as full an inherit
ance from the maternal side of the family, not only through his mother
Josephine but notably through constant participation in the activities
shared by the families of his mother's three sisters. The van Beers' were a
leading family in Antwerp, having served in the administration and
government of the city for generations; their position had recently
been made notable by the leadership in the Flemish cultural movement
of Hendrik's grandfather, the poet Jan van Beers, whose daughters
preserved in their dosely allied households the intellectual and artistic
atmosphere of their upbringing, generally dominated by the Flemish
cultural predilection for the visual arts. (Josephine de Man's interests
were by exception musical.) Hendrik's dosest unde, Paul Buschmann,
by profession a printer of art books, enjoyed the honor of being the
official printer to the Plantin Museum, and was also an amateur painter
in his own right. He spent many of his weekends instructing his young
nephew in the skills of the exact reproduction of the treasures of the
past. In their frequent tramps through the environs of Antwerp they
discussed the historical significance of various buildings testifying to the
paramount position of the Flemish capital in the glorious past, and also
ventured on the polderland in search of the conditions that had given
rise to the characteristic qualities of the painting of the Low Countries.