Freedom and Domination: A Historical Critique of Civilization (Princeton Legacy Library, 579)

749 Pages·1981·12.543 MB·English

by  Alexander Rüstow

FREEDOM
AND
DOMINATION

Alexander Riistow
FREEDOM
AND
DOMINATION
A Historical Critique of Civilization
Abbreviated Translation from the German by
SALVATOR ATTANASIO
Edited, and with an Introduction, by
Rusrow
DANKWART A.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Copyright © 1980 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be
found on the last page of this book
This book has been composed in VIP Century
Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books
are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are
chosen for strength and durability
Printed in the United States of America by Princeton
University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
From the German: Ortsbestimmung der Gegenwart, 3 vols.
(Erlenbach-Zurich and Stuttgart: Eugen Rentsch Verlag, © 1950, 1952,
1957)
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION by Dankwart A. Rustow ix
ALEXANDER RuSTOW (1885-1963): A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH by
Dankwart A. Rustow xiii
AuTHOR's FoREWORD (1949) xxiii
INTRODUCTION 3
1. The Widening of Our Historical Horizon 3
2. The Significance ofEthnography for the Science of History 4
3. The History of the Superstratification Hypothesis 5
PART ONE THE ORIGINS OF DOMINATION
CHAPTER 1 The Rise of High Cultures 11
1. The Law of the Culture Pyramid 11
2. The Rise of Nomadism 13
3. The Rise of the Peasantry 17
4. Early Superstratifications and Early Superincumbencies 19
a. Hunters over Cultivators 19
b. Herdsmen over Planters 20
c. Herdsmen over Peasants 23
5. War Chariot and Riding Horse 24
6. Superstratification of Equid Herdsmen over Peasants 28
CHAPTER 2 Structural Elements of High Cultures as
Conditioned by Superstratification and Feudalism 35
1. The Social Structure of Superincumbency 35
2. Antinomies and Bipolarity of the Power Structure 41
3. Society instead of Community 44
4. Sadism and Masochism 47
5. The State Originating in Superincumbency 49
6. Priesthood and Theology 52
7. Feudalization of Life and Feeling 57
8. Feudalization of the Family 60
9. Feudalization of Self-Consciousness 61
10. Superincumbency and Asceticism 62
11. Chosen Peoples 65
12. Racial Pride 67
13. Feudal Distribution of Property and Income 71
14. Feudal Monopoly of Learning 73
15. Feudal Authority over Men 75
vi CONTENTS
16. Rural and Urban Nobility: Manorial Property and Landed Property 82
17. Feudalization ofEconomic Ideology 85
18. Imperialism 90
19. Obstruction to Expansion and Decay of Expansion 95
CHAPTER 3 Transfeudal Motive Forces of High Cultures 97
1. Tendency toward Community 97
2. Tendency toward Democratization 98
3. Tendency toward Expansion 100
4. Tendency toward Monarchy 101
5. Egalitarian Tendencies 106
6. Tendency toward Regularity 108
7. Tendency toward Legal Order 109
8. Tendency toward Plutocracy 111
9. Tendency toward Government by Taxation 117
10. Tendency toward Bureaucratization 118
11. Tendency toward a Popular Army 122
12. Tendency toward Urbanization 123
13. Objectification, Rationalization, Secularization 125
PART TWO THE PATH OF FREEDOM
CHAPTER 1 Freedom versus U nfreedom 131
1. Breakthrough to Intellectual Freedom 131
2. Pre-Hellenic Peoples 133
3. Crete 134
4. Mycenae 138
5. Dorian Migration 141
6. Ionian Migration 143
7. From Aristocracy to Plutocracy 144
8. Rise of the Polis 147
9. The Greek Landscape 154
10. Ionian Religion and Art 156
11. Ionian World View and Science 161
12. The Catastrophe of 546-545 B.C. 167
a. Orpheus 167
b. Lycurgus 171
c. Anaximander 173
13. Athens: Rise, Greatness, and Fall 177
14. Intellectual Reaction 198
15. Hellenism 211
16. Rome and the Roman Empire 218
17. "Decline of the Ancient World": Barbarization of the West,
Byzantinization of the East 225
18. Christianity, the Church, and the Middle Ages 234
19. Gothic and Renaissance 256
20. Reformation and Counter Reformation 267
21. Baroque: State and Economy, Art and Science of Absolutism 287
a. The Absolutist State 287
CONTENTS vii
b. Colonial Superstratification and Slavery 292
c. Art during the Age ofA bsolutism 294
d. The Science ofA bsolutism 297
22. Against Intellectual Bondage: Enlightenment 301
23. Against Political Bondage: Revolution 326
24. Setback: Romanticism and Restoration 343
PART THREE DOMINATION VERSUS FREEDOM
INTRODUCTION: Separation of Understanding and Feeling 371
CHAPTER 1 Rationalist Tendencies 373
1. Rationalism 373
2. Pragmatism, Behaviorism, Materialism 383
3. Mastery of Nature and Its Consequences 390
4. Technocracy and Planned Economy 394
5. Technical Progress 396
6. Egalite 415
7. Isolation of the Individual 425
8. Mass Society 445
9. Capitalist Degeneration of the Economy 454
10. Pluralistic Degeneration of the Political Process 463
11. Depletion of the Cultural Heritage 471
12. Nihilism and the Revolution oflrrationalism 473
CHAPTER 2 Irrationalist Countertendencies 479
1. Conservative Reaction 480
2. Individualism 487
3. Reverence and Its Exaggeration 492
4. Jugendbewegung (Youth Movement) 504
5. The Intellectual Derivation of Totalitarianism from Absolutism 510
6. Nationalism 523
7. Martial Enthusiasm 533
8. Karl Marx and Communism 537
a. Marx as Utopian and Prophet 537
b. Marx as Founder ofH istorical Sociology 540
c. Marx as Economist 546
d. Marx as Power Politician 548
e. The Theological Character of Marx's Total System 552
9. Democratic Socialism 558
10. Bolshevism 564
11. Fascism 584
12. National Socialism 587
i. THE ANTECEDENTS 587
a. From Charlemagne to William II 587
b. The Treaty of Versailles and Foreign Policy 613
c. The Weimar Constitution and Domestic Policy 618
d. Final Steps in the Seizure of Power and the Debit Account of
Feudalism 624
viii CONTENTS
ii. THE DRIVING FORCES 626
a. Hunger for Social Integration and Longing for New Loyalties 626
b. Sadomasochism 630
c. Nationalism 630
d. Specialization 637
e. Militarism 638
f Imperialism 639
g. Anti-Semitism 640
h. Glorification of Violence 643
i. "Socialism" 644
j. Thought Police and Ideological Protectionism 644
k. Demagogy 646
l. Catilinarianism 650
CHAPTER 3 Conclusions 659
NoTES 677
INDEX 707
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
The following text represents a severely condensed translation of
Alexander Riistow's Ortsbestimmung der Gegenwart, which ap
peared in three volumes in 1950, 1952, and 1957, a revised edition of
the second volume appearing shortly after the author's death in
1963. Salvator Attanasio, with rare erudition and tireless dedica
tion, undertook the translation of the complete text from the Ger
man. Sheri Tierney assisted me in the laborious task of condensa
tion. D. K. Moore's critical reading resulted in many invaluable
suggestions in the final process of editing. The text as it appears here
was freely revised by the editor, who must bear the final responsibil
ity for any inadvertent departures from the original.
The three volumes of the original amount to 1,780 pages, ofwhich
1,240 are text and the remainder, in smaller type, notes. To com
press this material into a single volume, virtually all footnotes have
been omitted except those that document quotations. This, I am
aware, involves a serious distortion of Alexander Riistow's erudite
style. Footnotes to him served as guideposts as he crossed andre
crossed the conventional boundaries of scholarly disciplines; as an
occasion for celebrating those qui ante nos nostra dixerunt-that is,
as a modest disclaimer of originality but also as a way of firmly em
bedding his own thinking in more than two thousand years of West
ern intellectual tradition; and as a means of expanding, elaborating,
or embroidering the ideas in the text. The only apology that can be
made for omitting this scholarly substructure from this English
version is that, in this case, omission is not suppression. The notes
range freely over literature and quotations in German, Greek,
Latin, French, English, and occasionally Italian and Spanish, and
over the many scholarly disciplines from ethnography to classical
philology, from military history to dynamic psychology, whose
boundaries the author felt compelled to cross. Readers in a position
to do justice to this wealth of the footnotes, therefore, stand in no
need of translation and should refer directly to the German-polyglot
text.
But the text above the footnotes, too, has had to be condensed, by
approximately one-half. Most of the appendixes that are inserted