“As above, so below.” – The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
The time frame this entry covers brings us back to Walter Lippman. A former student of William James, Lippmann was a progressive who, with two others, founded The New Republic in 1913. In 1917 he wrote an article promoting1 US entry in “The Great War” against Germany. The author listed one of the reasons as the (February) Russian Revolution, writing as if it created a new ally against Germany rather than having largely been caused by the conflict2. The article speaks out against the sinking of “neutral” “merchant” ships, when the US ship that was sunk was carrying armaments to use against Germany. It accuses Germany’s “doctrine of competitive nationalism,” as if it was the only nation in that conflict that had demonstrated this doctrine. Lastly, it criticizes Germany’s “economic exploitation of the Turkish empire” as if the US and England were innocent of any similar exploitation of other peoples — According to this article, England and the US were on the side of “peace,” despite that William James’ works (especially as described in Part 6 of this series,) and the policies of these two countries, seem to perfectly express the concept of “competitive nationalism” and “economic exploitation”.
After thus misinforming his readers to convince them to support the war, then working for US intelligence against Germany, Lippmann wrote the book that inspired this series. Then, in 1925, he published The Phantom Public. According to the Wikipedia summary, the book …
… expresses [Lippmann’s] lack of faith in the democratic system by arguing that the public exists merely as an illusion, myth, and inevitably a phantom. As Carl Bybee wrote, "For Lippmann the public was a theoretical fiction and government was primarily an administrative problem to be solved as efficiently as possible, so that people could get on with their own individualistic pursuits." (Scholarly citation omitted.)
In 1927, prominent intellectual at the time, John Dewey, published the book, The Public and Its Problems in response. As I wrote earlier, Dewey was a friend3 of William James and fellow member of the Metaphysical Club. Through James’ influence – especially through his book, Principles of Psychology – Dewey was one of the four first proponents of functional psychology at the University of Chicago. Although it provided some insights into the subject, this school turned American psychology away from introspection, which, before then, had been the primary focus of the study. He was widely respected and influential, but instead of challenging Lippmann on the blatant propaganda that exposed the agenda of his attacks on democracy in favor of “laissez-faire” economics, Dewey tepidly apologized for democracy — asserting, for instance, that “[t]he most we can ask of the state, judging from states which have so far existed, is that it put up with [the production of new ideas] by private individuals without undue meddling.” Dewey’s work merely added to the labyrinth that James and his colleagues put up for the challenging and the scrupulous. This labyrinth steered progressives toward the focus on “woke diversity” – and toward the pseudo-scientific jargon – for which many of them have come to be known.
Since we’re on the topic of pseudoscience, from the winter semester of 1919/1920 into the mid-30’s, libertarian (“Austrian School”) hero Ludwig von Mises held his Privatseminars (the seminars that4, along with Lippmann’s The Good Society, would inspire The Mont Pèlerin Society.) Here, von Mises condemned socialism on economic grounds. He then served as economic adviser to the Chancellor of the Austrofascist (1934-1938) government. In 1940, John D. Rockefeller paid for his immigration to the United States.
The Great Depression undermined the laissez-faire economic theories of these seminars, an undermining (and its response) that deserve their own entry, so I’ll stop here.
Mad Magazine, 1977 issue, lower strip, third panel.
Too small to read, but, from what I remember from my teens, the caption is:
“‘Desegregation’ and ‘forced busing’ are really the same thing, but written to make the other side look bad.” Image from Etsy.
1 The World Conflict in Its Relation To American Democracy
2 In fact, the War was the main cause of the second revolution later that year.
3 I can’t find a clear and direct reference to this friendship on either of their Wikipedia pages, but found a collection of their correspondence here.
4 The link goes to an imdb2 message board thread. If you click “find [on page]”, then type “Privatseminars,” you should find it; the message is dated May 5, 2018 at 9:48am. – Viola
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