Enemies of Society
The history of the ancient world, says Paul Johnson in his masterly and provocative Enemies of Society (Atheneum Publishers, 122 E. 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10017, 278 pages, $9.95) is to a large extent a history of lost opportunities. The Greek and Roman civilizations trembled on the verge of significant take-offs, but, even as every other previous civilization since the original “Neolithic breakthrough,” they lost momentum and fell back. Does it have to be that way always? Mr. Johnson, a former editor of the English weekly, The New Statesman, thinks not. But in his opinion it will take a reaffirmation of moral absolutes, including an additional “new and secular” Ten Commandments, to rescue the modern take-off (which began in seventeenth-century Britain) from the connivings of the groups which, for shorthand purposes, he calls the Fascist Left.
Mr. Johnson begins his book by doing his own Gibbon. But his version of the famous “decline and fall” of Rome is more subtle than the earlier attempts at explanation. It was not the decline of Roman law that signaled the end of the empire, it was an over-proliferation of laws. The earlier Roman rule, he says, was not free in that it accepted the principle of “one man, one vote.” It was “free in the more fundamental sense as understood by Thomas Hobbes, when he wrote: ‘The freedom of the subject is the absence of laws.’” This is equivalent to saying that laws should be few, clear and simple.
When the laws are clear and the distinctions between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God are understood by everybody, energy is free to flow. The early Roman Republic was committed to a liberal economic process presided over by a “night-watchman state.” The political power was exercised by elite minorities who saw no reason to interfere with freedom of movement and of trade or with an accompanying freedom of communication, speech, occupation and religion.
Citizen or Slave
The flaw in all this is that if you weren’t a Roman citizen, you could be a slave. This was an inheritance from the Greek world. The more that territory changed hands as the legions marched and countermarched, the more people were “plunged . . . into the servile cauldron.” Dynamism was lost. With plenty of muscle power provided by the slaves, no need was perceived for technological experiment. When an inventor devised a new way of dragging marble to the Capitol, the Emperor Vespasian paid the man off but refused to make use of the idea. The poor, said Vespasian, must be allowed to earn a pittance.
The Romans developed a taste for small-scale but expensive luxury goods from the East. Exports could pay for the luxuries up to a point. But once the provinces had learned to make pottery and textiles and grow their own grain and grapes, the balance of trade swung heavily in favor of the East. Gold taken by the Romans from conquered peoples flowed to India, the “sink of the metals.” It did not come back—recycling had not been discovered. So inflation accompanied the rise of the Caesars. The laws proliferated in the vain attempt to contain the inflation. Taxation destroyed the middle classes. Under Diocletian there were only the upper classes, the honestiores, and the lower group, the humiliores, or “everyone else.” Diocletian promulgated universal price-fixing “under penalty of death.” It was unworkable. With populations falling and the cities deserted, the barbarians from outside the empire soon had an obviously superior culture.
The Dark Ages
The Dark Ages were based on feudalism, but the feudal serf was not quite a slave. He sold part of his time to his lord for protection, which implied a contract. Northern Europe climbed out of darkness by its technological inventiveness. The collar-type harness and the selective breeding of larger horses enabled it to develop long-distance land transport. The iron stirrup came under the Carolingians, enabling the armored knight to manage himself and his horse as a unit. The heavy iron plow changed the whole landscape as new fields were brought into production. The Romans had never developed the geared water-mill, but mills became a commonplace for making hemp, “fulling” cloth and running iron works in the years before the thirteenth century. Populations grew, only to fall into the “Malthusian trap” with the Black Death. But the plague raised the price of labor, and the serfs took to the towns. A new class grew up to mediate between the honestiores and the humiliores.
The modern take-off took place in England partly because the British made the best possible use of resources in exporting surplus populations to America. The open world frontiers controverted Malthus. But it was the superior British law of property, which gave certainty to the enterpriser, that really encouraged the inventiveness that put the industrial revolution into high gear.
Mr. Johnson calls liberal capitalism the “permanent miracle.” But then he hedges. To keep the “permanent miracle” going, he says, we must deal with a “syndrome of symptoms” which take the form of “ecological eschatology.” Eschatology is the doctrine of “last things.”
The Four Last Things, according to the ecological eschatologists, are to be the poisoning of the air, the exhaustion of the soil, the final consumption of our planet’s resources, and eventual mass starvation.
A Self-Cleansing Universe
Mr. Johnson believes this is all nonsense. He can cite chapter and verse. The universe is a “self-cleansing mechanism.” Man can do violence to his environment, but an average-size hurricane releases the energy of 100,000 H-bombs. We have survived thousands of hurricanes. The ten million tons of man-made pollutants in the atmosphere must be set against the 1,600 million tons of methane gas emitted by natural swamps every year. Carbon monoxide is produced by cars, but in insignificant amounts when compared to the carbon monoxide produced by nature.
The madness of the doomsayers is compounded by people who misuse the language and by professors who engage in their own form of academic Newspeak. The Marxists make use of the confusion to promote their own ends. And the theorists of “modern black racism,” such as Franz Fanon, preach doomsday “for whites only” in their campaign to substitute the exploited blacks for the white Marxist working class as the true proletariat.
To save the situation Mr. Johnson calls on the “bourgeoisie” to reassert its own values. Among the “ten secular” commandments that must be added to Mosaic law is the “moral axiom” that democracy is the “least evil” form of government. Laws must guarantee property. And words must be used accurately and in good faith.
Mr. Johnson has, of course, declared war on most of our intellectual classes. But the truth is on his side, and his enemies—Marx, Freud, Marcuse, Fanon, the Club of Rome, and so forth—will surely not prevail.
THIS NATION SHALL ENDURE by Ezra Taft Benson
(Deseret Book Company, P.O. Box 659, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110, 1977) 152 pages.
Reviewed by Melvin D. Barger
Although obviously written for the membership of The Church of Latter-day Saints, This Nation Shall Endure is a reassuring book for Americans of other faiths. It carries some disturbing commentary about the erosion of values that has been robbing us of vitality and purpose. At the same time, however, it expresses complete confidence that we will eventually rediscover this nation’s spiritual foundations. The book is a powerful statement of Mr. Benson’s religious convictions, and it also reflects his patriotism and his beliefs in the free market, private property, and limited government.
Ezra Taft Benson attained national prominence as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture during the Eisenhower Administration, and more recently he became President of the Council of Twelve, the ranking apostle of his Church. A descendant of one of the original Mormon pioneers who made the historic trek to the Salt Lake Valley with Brigham Young in 1847, Mr. Benson has had a distinguished career as an educator and as a prime mover in farm organizations. He speaks as one who has deep roots in the Mormon traditions and long experience with the economic concerns of Western farmers and ranchers. He also espouses the individualism and self-reliance of farm-bred Americans without endorsing the populist contradictions that have transformed many farmers into Federal dependents.
In Mr. Benson’s view, the United States didn’t just happen and the successful bid for Independence was not, as some argue, only the result of good fortune, help from the French, and ineptitude by the British generals. No, this nation was directly created by God, and has been blessed above all nations in accordance with Biblical promises. The Declaration of Independence is a “spiritual manifesto, declaring not for this nation alone, but for all nations, the source of man’s rights.” As for the U.S. Constitution, it is workable only with a righteous people, and Mr. Benson quotes this statement from the first John Adams: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
To anybody who is familiar with the early persecution of the Mormons and the tragic deaths of Joseph Smith and his brother by mob violence in 1844, it is indeed ironic that Mormon leaders such as Mr. Benson are today the most patriotic of Americans. The great Mormon migration to Utah in the late 1840s was actually a flight to another country, and for years afterwards there were real differences and even armed conflict between the Mormons and the Federal government. Mr. Benson does not touch on these problems, but he does offer a stirring defense of American freedom and democracy.
Mr. Benson argues that the current threats to American freedom come from the external menace of the Soviet Union and internal moral decay. If anything, the latter is the more serious problem, because a morally decadent people lack both the will and the strength to resist a powerful foreign aggressor: “America’s foundation is spiritual. Without the moral base to our system, we are no better off than other nations that are now sunk into oblivion. If we are to remain under heaven’s benign protection and care, we must return to those principles which have brought us our peace, liberty, and prosperity. . . . Our problems today are essentially problems of the spirit.”
Will we make that necessary return to faith? Mr. Benson believes that we will and he ends on an optimistic note, quoting abundantly from Mormon writings and Biblical prophecies. He views restoration of faith as an essential part of the Divine plan, and he terms the United States the Lord’s base of operations in these last days. “This nation will endure,” he states. “It may cost blood, but it is God-ordained for a glorious purpose. We must never forget that the gospel message we bear to the world is to go forth to the world from this nation, and that gospel message can prosper only in an atmosphere of freedom. We must maintain and strengthen our freedom in this blessed land.”
For non-Mormon readers with strong Christian beliefs, Mr. Benson’s book seems conciliatory and gracious toward other religions. For religious skeptics who still follow libertarian principles, the book is a helpful guide to the political and social views of the Church’s current leader. For anybody who is concerned about this country’s future, Mr. Benson’s book is a welcome change from the religious doomsday literature that has been flooding the market. This nation does deserve to endure, despite its many faults and sins.
