Adolf
KLISZEWICZ
Political journalist,
engineer, political writer, Catholic historiographer, regular contributor
to the Jesuit Przegl¹d
Powszechny, author of Œredniowiecze
a teraŸniejszoœæ. Charakterystyka dwóch œwiatopogl¹dów
("Middle Ages and
the Present. An Outline of Two Worldviews", 1927), Prze³om wspó³czesny jako prze³om œwiatopogl¹du
("Contemporary Tranformation
as a Transformation of Outlook", 1934), and Ku
czemu zmierza dzisiejszy œwiat? ("Where Is the Present World
Headed?", 1935), published by the Jesuit presses. On the basis of
the correspondence between Kliszewicz and the editors of Przegl¹d Powszechny it is impossible to establish the dates of
his birth and death, we only know that in 1926 he lived in Sosnowiec,
and between 1927 and 1932 in Tarnowskie Góry, where he taught at
a mining school, closed down in 1933.
The selected fragments
are from Wspó³czesny
kryzys pañstwowoœci ("Contemporary Crisis of Statehood"), originally
published by Przegl¹d
Powszechny: Cracow 1929, pp. 117-135 and 149-153.
Socialism, starting from the premise that individual rights violated by
the present world-wide economic system must be defended, consistently
arrives at the negation of all rights of the individual - both reasonable
and unreasonable - and at the idea of a universalism resting on
the dictatorship of the international proletariat. In the ideas
of the eighteenth century and of the French Revolution we find the
abstract rights of man and abstract universalism taking the form
of a vague brotherhood of the peoples, not based on any rational
foundations. In socialism, however, we see individual rights specified
- that every individual has the right to partake equally of earthly
goods - and a new universalism taking a definite shape - humanity
unified by force and governed by a despotic group emerging from
the proletariat. The abstract unity of autonomous individuals, who
in reality are connected only by economic bonds, is inexorably transformed
into a forced, external unity. Humanity, as a numerical aggregate
of such individuals guided only by their egoism, becomes a collectivity,
swallowing the individual in the name of his purported rights, i.e.
of his material interests.
Consistent socialism, that is bolshevism, pursues this goal quite openly,
but initially the authors of socialism offered to the individual
a phantom of a brave new life within a socialist-democratic system,
founded and raised on the principles of reason alone. In its cult
of reason, in its blind faith that the rational element in man is
able to generate of itself new, ever more splendid forms of life,
in all of this socialism is a faithful advocate and imitator of
ideas from the eighteenth century. It is therefore characterized
above all by a boundless and naive faith in the power of science,
which eventually will allow the broad masses to take advantage of
the luxuries now available only to very few. Then, also in the name
of reason, the socialist doctrine liberates the human individual
from all ancient constraints, supposedly forced by the old social
arrangement: the bonds of religion, nationality, marriage, and family.
Socialism regards emancipation from all these natural allegiances
as a basic right of the individual in the socialist system.
The individual is not to be bound by anything, since reason has freed humanity
from every dependence on the requirements of an illusory extrasensory
world; homeland and nationality may have value and meaning only
for the bourgeoisie, which owes them its comfortable life. Marriage,
finally, is to serve only the satisfaction of sexual desire; so
conceived, it becomes a contract with a time clause between a man
and a woman, modeled on commercial contracts. All these allegiances
are necessary attributes of the capitalist system, but in the collectivist
system these bonds will loosen and then spontaneously vanish, and
their disappearance will mean emancipation and happiness for the
individual. [...]
Thus we can see that the socialist doctrine, which since the mid-nineteenth
century gradually pervades the minds of so-called enlightened workers
and a part of the intelligentsia. We can see that this doctrine,
intent on bringing happiness to all, is gradually stripping man
of all natural feelings and aims at transforming him into a creature
whose life will be reduced to economic and sexual interests. Therefore,
the socialist doctrine constitutes another stage of the theoretical
and practical process, initiated very distinctly by the eighteenth
century, of dissolving all spiritual and moral values; it constitutes
a further step towards worldwide spiritual homogenization, which
had already assumed a definite shape in the liberal doctrine. [...]
As we know, socialism not only waged a deadly war against the bourgeoisie,
but it also adopted the theoretical position that the battle between
the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will continue to constitute
the driving force of history, the axis around which events in the
international domain will turn. Therefore, all other antagonisms,
especially nationalistic ones, will have to give precedence to class
antagonisms. The socialist ideology claims that the battle between
the bourgeoisie and the proletariat must have a revolutionary character
and must result in the victory and triumph of the proletariat.
Socialism conceives individual rights in a purely materialist way, principally
as the right to an equal share of the use of earthly goods, and
then as the right to the unrestricted satisfaction of natural appetites.
However, there remains the sphere of those individual rights that
were proposed by the democratic doctrine independently of the idea
of class struggle. They are political rights, meant to eliminate
in principle the element of oppression and coercion from the life
of the state. At the moment socialism regards these rights as compatible
with its program, but it adapts them to the idea of class struggle
along the lines of the following ideology: the bourgeois state is
based on coercion, it is essentially identical with the apparatus
of coercion, placed in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the royal
power allied with it. Therefore, all possible means must be used
to wrest power from these hands. Given the imbalance of power, for
the time being the way forward towards this goal must be through
democratic parliamentarism, and therefore socialism writes on its
banners the cause of parliamentary government based on the principle
of equal and universal franchise. This is how socialism usually
conceives individual rights. As for the idea of socialist universalism,
it rests on the conception of a worldwide solidarity of the proletariat,
as a class, which is everywhere struggling for its own emancipation.
As we can therefore see and as we have already noted, socialist
universalism does not have any positive and constructive features,
only negative and destructive ones. While bourgeois universalism
is founded mostly on the common economic interests of humankind
as a whole, socialist universalism invokes only the interests of
the lowest, most disadvantaged social class, whose victory is purported
to bring about a triumph of universalism, general happiness, paradise
on earth.
But this lowest social class, i.e. the proletariat, which is incidentally
no different in this respect from any other class, does not represent
a social group endowed with any distinct, well-defined spiritual
characteristics, with any distinct values, but is a random grouping
of people held together by common material interests. Particular
subsections of this group are bound together by such things as ethnicity,
religion, language, and tradition, as was recently shown during
the world war. Therefore if the leaders of the proletariat create
a universalistic ideology based on class, one should perceive this
ideology as a conscious or subconscious attempt at loosening and
undoing all social bonds by means of a delusory universalism. For
the idea of the emancipation of the proletariat, as a volatile,
nondescript entity, cannot be the principal goal for socialist leaders.
It cannot constitute the foundation for a real universalism, such
as was once offered by the idea of the Roman State; this idea can
only become a perfect weapon for destroying the present forms of
society and state. [...]
Abstract individual rights, championed by the eighteenth century and the
French Revolution, which later became the foundation of modern democracies,
but ultimately led only to plutocracy, these rights no longer exist
for bolshevism. This is due above all to bolshevism's struggle against
capitalism, now based on the democratic system, and secondly to
the fact that bolshevism is now unambiguously and forcefully asserting
an evolutionary-materialist outlook. This outlook argues that the
human individual does not in fact possess any independent and separate
being, that it is only a short-lived wave on the ocean of the universe,
destined to fade without a trace. It logically follows that such
an ephemeral creature cannot possess any authentic rights, and it
must become a slave of humankind, which, as a collective entity,
does seem to be endowed with immortal being, at least until the
ultimate destruction of the globe. [...]
If bolshevism puts the cause of individual rights on its banners, it is
only to lure supporters to its fold; but once the existing social
system is brought down, bolshevism rejects all individual rights
as cumbersome rubbish, and the individual is placed in the chains
of total bondage. This is what happened in Russia, and this is what
must come about wherever bolshevism prevails. For this system puts
a definite end to the fiction of individual rights which are not
founded upon the Christian vision of the world and are therefore
not conditioned by the presence of a corresponding ethics and of
obligations tied to rights. Instead, bolshevism aims at transforming
the loose heap of sand formed by contemporary societies - based
neither on God's law, nor on established coercion and constraint
- into a heap firmly kept under the heel of the new rulers, emerging
from the communist party. Bolshevism makes an ultimate break with
all the eighteenth century abstractions. In contrast to them, aims
at basing life on practical foundations, on the general leveling
of individuals and on unsanctioned coercion; it aims at arranging
social life on foundations corresponding to the dissolution of spiritual
and moral values in the contemporary world.
Although bolshevism, following eighteenth-century precepts, does hold up
universalist causes, and although it is an international movement
par excellence, these causes have nothing
to do with the abstract cause of the brotherhood of nations preached
by the eighteenth century. Bolshevism usually champions the struggle
of the oppressed Eastern peoples against Western oppressors, allegedly
in the name of the right of self-determination of the Asian nations.
Yet these causes are as false as the cause of individual rights,
and serve only to unleash racial strife, meant to precipitate the
process of decomposition of the degenerate contemporary European
societies. This process is to be followed by the triumph of a universalism
based on a mechanical unification of humanity under the rule of
the tyrannical power that emerged from the Comintern.