German Historicism and American Pragmatism are very different philosophies, but they have some similar results

German “Historicism” (whether of the “right”, Hegel, or the “left” Karl Marx) and American “Pragmatism” (Charles Pierce, William James, John Dewey….) are very different philosophies (very different indeed) – but they have some things in common which lead to some similar results. They both deny objective and universal truth – the Ralph Cudworth or Thomas Reid thinking of “We hold these truths to be self evident….” of the American Declaration of Independence and the philosophy of the Bill of Rights. Made most obvious by the Ninth Amendment – indeed the Bill of Right is clearly compiled in the wrong order, the Ninth Amendment should be the First Amendment and the Tenth Amendment should be the Second Amendment – read it and it should be obvious to you.

German Historicism holds that different “truths” apply to different “historical periods” and to different “races” and “classes” – perhaps the only answer that such a relativist philosophy deserves is the one that such men as Erik Brown, “Mad Jack” Churchill and Audie Murphy gave it. But there are books that refute it, for example Carl Menger’s “The Errors of Historicism” (1883 – specifically on the German “Historical School” of economics and its denial of the universal and objective laws of economic truth), “Human Action” by Ludwig Von Mises, and “The Poverty of Historicism” by Karl Popper.

It is interesting to note that both the economists Carl Menger and Ludwig Von Mises and the philosopher (and, I must stress, very much NOT an Austrian School economist) Karl Popper were German language thinkers largely educated outside the German university system – the universities of the Hapsburg Empire did not reject the idea (to be found in Aristotle and others) that there are universal laws of truth (in human affairs – including morality) and that it was the goal of reason to find these universal and objective laws and apply them in practical life. Whatever its terrible faults the Roman Catholic Church (which dominated the intellectual life of the old Hapsburg Empire) did NOT submit to relativism – they did not forget that the word “Catholic” means “universal”, denying that different laws of morality apply to different “historical periods” or to different “classes” or “races”. An anti relativist position that traditional Christianity shares with traditional Judaism, in spite of the persecution of Jews by some Catholics, Judaism being based upon objective morality and Free Will, moral agency – indeed Spinoza was rejected by mainstream Jewish believers because, it was alleged, he rejected Free Will rejecting human moral personhood as well as the moral personhood of God Himself. To a Jewish believer, and to a traditional Christian (indeed to decent atheists also), Martin Luther’s philosophical work “The Bondage of the Will” (which makes “here I stand – I can do no other” NOT a statement of moral conscience, but a statement that means “Mr Luther, and everyone else, is a robot – just carrying out pre programmed instructions”) is actually more offensive than his diatribes against the Jews (from which Mr Hitler loved to quite – and fully in context). To libel people, in this case Jews, with various false charges, and to suggest that they be robbed and murdered is bad – but to deny human personhood itself is much worse. And one certainly does not have to be be a believer to believe in moral personhood – as the great “Commentator” on Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias showed in his “On Fate”.

American Pragmatism also rejects the idea of universal and objective laws of truth – “the right is the only the expedient in our way of thinking” (William James) may be out of context (the context allegedly makes the statement less evil than it sounds), but it actually it sums up how Pragmatism was normally understood by most of its followers (not just its enemies). Far from being a “development” of the Scottish-American Common Sense School (broadly Thomas Reid to James McCosh) Pragmatism was a radical rejection of it, and everything that was based upon it – such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. One might as well pretend (as some absurd books do) that David Hume was a mainstream part of the “Scottish Enlightenment” – when he was actually the arch critic (opponent) of it – for those interested in what the mainstream Scottish Enlightenment was about read the works of such thinkers as Thomas Reid. Or that Thomas Hobbes was a supporter of moral agency (free will), objective morality, and the moral duty to come to the aid of other people who are unjustly attacked, even if to come to their defence will lead to one’s own death – when he was actually totally alien to all this, as Ralph Cudworth took great pains to point out in his refutation of Thomas Hobbes. The central idea of the moral tradition – to use human reason to find universal laws of moral truth and to use our free will (moral agency – the “I” personhood) to act in a good way (against our base desires to do evil – in the moral struggle between good and evil that each of us is engaged in every day) is NOT what Hobbes and Hume are about.

To turn specifically to economics… both German Historicism (of both “left” and “right”) rejected universal laws of truth in economics (as it rejected universal laws of truth in everything else) – everything is relative to the “historical stage” and to “race” and “class”. And American Pragmatism is the same on this matter – it also rejects universal and objective laws of truth in economics.

To both the Historicist and the Pragmatist – if a government or Revolutionary Movement (for some of these people reject “the state” as traditionally understood) does not deliver X and (according to their doctrines) it was the correct time (historical stage0 to deliver X then it was because of some TREACHERY (either Class Treachery or Race Treachery) – the leaders did not will X hard enough. And any failure by the state or a political movement can be “fixed” – for example, to American Pragmatists, the idea that Obamacare is against the universal and objective principles of economic law is meaningless (because there are no such principles) if the political leaders will medical care for all hard enough it will arrive, and if there is some flaw in the scheme it can be “fixed”. The endless calls to “fix” Obamacare are really calls for the state to deliver something that violates the basic laws of political economy (for example the calls for lower costs for something that covers more, rather than less, medical conditions) – and only “make sense” to people who believe that the basic laws of political economy do not exist.

The ultimate expression of both Historicism and Pragmatism was probably Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Movement – much better read than Adolf Hitler and much flexible than “Lenin” (although Mussolini had been senior to “Lenin” in the international Marxist movement) – Benito Mussolini took the various Historicist and Pragmatist thinkers of his day (and the British Fabian and other thinkers also) and blended them together to produce his Fascist movement. For example, Mussolini would have understood BOTH sides at Alexandria Virginia in the recent fighting (the “Alt Right” and the “Anti Fascist” Marxists) and could have blended into EITHER side at will – given speeches that either side would have supported, indeed cheered wildly. Did Mussolini really believe in any of it? To him that would have been a silly question – as there was no such thing as objective truth any more than there was any such thing as objective morality, ideas were just about how to gain POWER and he took “the right is only the expedient in our way of thinking” quite literally, just as he did the idea of the “myth” in Sorel, a radial development of the idea of the “noble lie” in Plato.

The promises of such political movements violate the basic and universal laws of economics? These movements deny such laws (or the laws of objective and universal morality) even exist – so that does not bother them.

For example, how many United States Senators believe (really believe) in such laws of economics? Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee out of a 100? Any more? Perhaps one or two more – but not many more than that. The same is true of the British House of Commons.

We live in an age where the basic ideas of the Historicists and Pragmatists (in the sense of their denial of economic laws as limits on what politics can provide to people) dominate modern thought (including the thought of many establishment “economists”) – in truth we live in a Fascist Age, both among open Fascists (such as the people who went marching through the University of Virginia at night with lighted torches chanting “Blood and Soil” – the very Nazi movement their grandfathers fought to destroy) and among the Marxist Frankfurt School (“Politically Correct”, “Diversity”, “Critical Theory”…) “anti Fascists” also.