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Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 18 Aug 2015 08:45:09 -0400
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Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]>
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Alan G Isaac <[log in to unmask]>
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I find it odd to try to determine what Russell was saying by
investigating Monk instead of Russell.

As is clear from the essay's title, "The Ancestry of Fascism", Russell
is concerned with fascism.  Not Wittgenstein or Keynes.  It is not
like Russell is too shy to name his targets.

Russell is (rather presciently, by the way) concerned with the rise of
fascist ideology.  In contrast to what your Monk quote suggests,
he does not give a monocausal explanation.  He attributes the rise
of fascism to "economic and political circumstances" in synergy
with "a revolt against reasoning".  Hume was not part of the revolt
against reason, but he undermined dearly held metaphysical aspirations.
If you want to say the Russell traced the revolt against reason to a
philosopher in this essay, one might stretch to Kant (but not Hume).
"Kant was determined to believe in God, immortality, the moral law, and so on,
but perceived that Hume's philosophy had made this all difficult."
(By the way, *here* you might make a link to Wittgenstein.)
But the real villain in the piece is Fichte.  (Yes, Fichte comes first in
Monk's eventual list of "ancestors of fascism".)

Yet Russell's real target is those who would settle arguments
by force rather than by persuasion, and here he finds something new
in fascism.  "The irrationalists of our time aim, not at salvation,
but at power."  And he does not simply find some philosophers to
blame.  "There are at most times all sorts of doctrines being preached by
all sorts of prophets, but those which become popular must make some
special appeal to the moods produced by the circumstances of the times."
And ultimately he finds that the mood of the times derives from the
limited scope modern society offers to "able and powerful men whose
interests are opposed to those of the community at large, and who,
therefore, can best retain their influence by promoting various
kinds of hysteria ... Until the deep conflicts of nations and classes
which infect our world have been resolved, it is hardly to be expected
that mankind will return to a rational habit of mind".

In conclusion, in  "The Ancestry of Fascism" Russell's complaints are
not against Keynes or Wittgenstein. Not even implicitly.  This is
clear when Russell's words are read in the context of the times
(and in the context of the essay).

Cheers,
Alan Isaac

PS While it is tangential to this conversation, I just have to quote
the following, brilliantly prescient paragraph from the article:
"I have spoken of the industrialists and militarists who support
Fascism as sane, but their sanity is only comparative. Thyssen
believes that, by means of the Nazi movement, he can both kill
Socialism and immensely increase his market. There seems,
however, no more reason to think him right than there was to
think that his predecessors were right in 1914. It is necessary for
him to stir up German selfconfidence and nationalist feeling to a
dangerous degree, and unsuccessful war is the most probable
outcome. Even great initial successes would not bring ultimate
victory; now, as twenty years ago, the German Government
forgets America."



-----Rob Tye quoted Monk:
> Instead,
> perhaps rather bizarrely, he [Russell] traced the 'revolt against reason' to the
> scepticism of the eighteenth-century British empiricist, David Hume. In
> demonstrating that 'induction is a habit without logical foundation',
> Russell claims, Hume had shown that 'science, along with theology, should be
> relegated to the limbo of delusive hopes and irrational convictions'

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