Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

456 / ANARCHISM
nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of
dependence has been greatly strengthened, fo r a truly free man does not like to play
the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his
inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own
judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action. Constant tutelage of our acting
and thinking has made us weak and irresponsible; hence, the continued cry fo r
the strong man who is to put an end to our distress. This call fo r a dictator is not a
sign of strength, but a proof of inner lack of assurance and of weakness , even though
those who utter it earnestly try to give themselves the appearance of resolution.
What man most lacks he most desires. When one feels himself weak he seeks salvation
from another's strength; when one is cowardly or too timid to move one's own
hands fo r the fo rging of one's fa te, one entrusts it to another ...
Every class that has thus fa r attained to power has felt the need of stamping
their rulership with the mark of the unalterable and predestined, till at last this becomes
an inner certainty fo r the ruling castes themselves.
They regard themselves as the chosen ones and think that they recognize in themselves
externally the marks of men of privilege. Thus arose in Spain the belief in the
sangre azul, the "blue blood" of the nobility, which is first mentioned in the medieval
chronicles of Castile. Today they appeal to the blood of the "noble race" which allegedly
has been called to mle over all the peoples of the world. It is the old idea of power, this
time disguised as race. Thus one of the best known defenders of the modem race idea
declares with noble self·assurance: "All Nordic culture is power culture; all Nordic talent
is talent for matters of power, for matters of enterprise and world making, whether in the
materiai or in the spiritual realm, in the state, in art, in research."
All advocates of the race doctrine have been and are the associates and defenders
of evelY political and social reaction, advocates of the power principle in its most
brutal fo rm ... ln this respect the representatives of the modern race theory differ in
not the slightest degree from their predecessors except that they are more soulless,
outspoken and brutal, and therefore more dangerous at a time when the spiritual in
people is crippled and their emotions have grown callous and dull because of the war
and its horrible after effects. People of the brand of Ammon, Gunther, Hauser and
Rosenberg, are in all their undertakings ruthless and hidebound reactionaries. What
that leads to, the Third Reich of Hitler, Goering and Goebbels shows us realistically.
When Gunther, in his Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes speaks of a "gradation in rank
of the Germans according to their blood" his concept is thoroughly that of a slave
people who are arranged in a definite order of ranks that reminds us of the castes of