Julius EvolaTraditionalist Visionary |
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Two Errors of DemocracyWe like to think that political officials act in the best interest of the country, and that their decisions reflect long-term planning. But as Hans-Hermann Hoppe and others have pointed out, an elected official does not own what he (or she) manages; unlike a dynastic monarch, an elected official is a custodian or caretaker of the land. A rational king will attempt to preserve the long-term “capital value” of his property, while the elected official has no such motivation. It is for this reason that politicians in the United States and elsewhere plunder the resources of the nation and then quietly slip out of office when their terms of office are complete. They do not “represent” anyone but themselves. One only has to go to a public park to see how the citizens treat property that does not belong to them.
But the above is not an endorsement of capitalism. Ayn Rand and her followers made the equally egregious error of turning capitalism into an ethos. “Rational self-interest” may be rational, but it is hardly ethical. The man who is Tradition-directed knows that the economy can never be the foundation on which the State rests and operates. In Tillie Olsen’s novel Yonnondio, set in the Great Depression, we find a struggling family living near a coal mine in Wyoming. The father works in the mine, which is described as something sub-human—a kind of primordial monster that devours workers. Later in the book, the family is forced to move to the city (Omaha), where the father finds work in the slaughterhouse. Unlike the mine, the slaughterhouse is not sub-human, it is inhuman—a kind of horrific machine. While the father works, his children scavenge in the city dump, and the mother cans fruit to keep them fed through the winter. In the closing scene, the family sits zombie-like in front of their new radio.
No land, no culture, no direction, no future. Distracted by our technology, which alone feels progress, we sit and wait. For Olsen, the solution was socialism, and for Hoppe, the solution is unfettered capitalism. Evola is equally dismissive of both—they offer no solutions. The Tradition-directed man does not accept enforced mediocrity, nor does he want the trinkets of a materialistic age; he climbs the mountain that towers over the mines.
01 02 08 - 08:01
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