A perennial
problem in Burroughs' studies is what did he believe? Was he a racist?
Was he an anti-Semite? Was he an irredeemable bigot? Shall we just say
he was not of a contemporary Liberal frame of mind. If you listen to Richard
Slotkin author of Gunfighter Nation and a professor at Case Western
Reserve at the time he wrote his book a couple decades ago, Edgar Rice
Burroughs was an evil man responsible for all the evil in the US from 1912
to the present. Slotkin even sees him responsible for the My Lai massacre
of Viet Nam.
Himself a Communist Slotkin can overlook all the crimes of the Soviet
Union in which tens of millions were exterminated to find the ultimate
evil in the killing of a few dozen people in Viet Nam.
Slotkin, who rampages through his history disparaging any non-Liberal
writers as atavistic bigots firmly attaches Burroughs’ name to two scholars,
Madison Grant and his Passing Of The Great Race of 1916 and Lothrop
Stoddard and his historical studies of the twenties. He considers the two
hardly less evil than Burroughs. To someone less excitable, perhaps, or
less Liberal, the two writers have written responsible and astute studies.
I certainly think they have.
When I first read Slotkin I rejected the notion that Burroughs had been
influenced by either. Ten years on I have to retract that opinion. It is
now clear that Burroughs read both while being heavily influenced by Lothrop
Stoddard, especially his 1922 volume, The Revolt Against Civilization.
While the studies of both Grant and Stoddard would at best supplement Burroughs
already developed opinions The Revolt can easily be seen as a template
for Burroughs' writing after he read it. While the study complemented his
own developed social and political opinions I am sure that Stoddard’s explication
of the history provided Burroughs with many new facts. Based on its opinions
that appeared in ERB’s novels I would place the reading somewhere about
1926 or 1927.
Contrary to what some admirers want to make him ERB was what today would
be considered a very conservative man, today’s Liberals would be anathema
to him. He was decidedly anti-Communist, a Eugenicist, while not bigoted
he was not a Negrophile or Semitophile. He was essentially a man with a
social and historical outlook that was formed before 1900, a pre-immigration
outlook formed while the Indian wars were still in progress. In short he
was a man of his times.
Thomas Dixon Jr. to whom he is often compared was one of the most successful
writers of the period who carefully examined both the Civil War and Reconstruction
as well as the growing Socialist/Communist movement. He was not a bigot
as he is always construed but a man of his own people. Burroughs was influenced
by his work and thought well of him. He did not abhor him. ERB read many
of Dixon’s novels and admired the movie based on his books, The Birth
Of A Nation. He sympathized with Henry Ford in his struggle for the
welfare of America and read the Dearborn Independent, Ford’s newspaper.
In short, Burroughs was a stand up guy.
Now, what evidence is there he read The Revolt Against Civilization:
The Menace Of The Underman? Let’s begin with this quote, p. 34 et seq.
Down to that time the exact nature of
the life process remained a mystery. The mystery has now been cleared up.
The researches of [August] Weisman and other modern biologists have revealed
the fact that all living beings are due to a continuous stream of germ
plasm which has existed ever since life first appeared on earth and which
will continue to exist as long as any life remains. This germ-plasm consists
of minute germ cells which have the power of developing into human living
beings. All human beings spring from the union of a male sperm-cell and
a female egg-cell. Right here, however, occurs the basic feature of the
life process. The new individual consists, from the start, of two sorts
of plasm. Almost the whole of him is body plasm - the ever multiplying
cells which differentiate into the organs of the body. But he also contains
germ- plasm. At his very conception a tiny bit of the life stuff from which
he springs is set aside or carefully isolated from the body-plasm, and
forms a course of development entirely its own. In fact, the germ-plasm
is not really part of the individual; he is merely its bearer, destined
to pass it on to other bearers of the life chain.
Now all this was not only unknown but even unsuspected
down to a short time ago. Its discovery was in fact dependent upon modern
scientific methods. Certainly, it was not likely to suggest itself to even
the most philosophic mind. Thus, down to a generation ago, the life stuff
was supposed to be a product of the body, not differing essentially in
character from other body products. This assumption had two important consequences.
In the first place, it tended to obscure the very concept of heredity,
and led men to think of environment as virtually all important; in the
second place, even where the importance of heredity was dimly perceived
the role of the individual was misunderstood, and he was conceived as a
creator rather than a mere transmitter. This was the reason for the false
theory of “the inheritance of acquired characteristics,” formulated by
Lamarck and upheld by most scientists until almost the end of the nineteenth
century. Of course, Lamarckianism was merely a modification of the traditional
‘environmentalist’ attitude: it admitted that heredity possessed some importance,
but it maintained environment as the basic feature.
Now there you have the argument of God in Tarzan And The Lion Man
of 1933 nearly word for word. I think it unlikely that ERB actually read
Weisman who published following 1900 and who ERB may never have heard of,
so his source was in all probability Stoddard.
Stoddard’s presentation nicely straddles the change of consciousness
from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. It sounds a trifle naïve
to our ears but was cutting edge at the time. Weisman’s theories were a
big step in the direction of the discovery of DNA a short 26 years after
Stoddard’s study.
It is important though to remember that more than fifty percent of the
US population today rejects the concept of evolution while being more Lamarckian
in outlook than might be supposed. We are as a whole not quite as advanced
as we think we are.
As a quick affirmation of the influence of Stoddard on ERB on pages
95-96 he gives an account of the famous Jukes family of degenerates that
appeared in ERB's 1932 novelette, Pirate Blood.
Stoddard was well aware of what was happening historically and presently
and one can see that he passed that understanding on to ERB. Almost as
though writing today, on page 237 Stoddard writes:
Stressful transition is the key-note
of our times. Unless all signs be faulty, we stand at one of those momentous
crises in history when mankind moves from one well-marked epoch to another
of widely different character.
Extremely prescient observation in 1922 while his study has been borne
out in detail. The chapter titles give a clear outline of the contents:
1. The Burden Of Civilization
2. The Iron Law Of Equality
3. The Nemesis Of The Inferior
4. The Lure Of The Primitive
5. The Ground Swell Of Revolt
6. The Rebellion Of The Underman
7. The War Against Chaos
8. Neo-Aristocracy
As can be easily seen novelists such as Rider Haggard, ERB, Edgar Wallace
as well as many others from 1890 to the 20s were grappling with the problems
indicated by the chapter titles.
The natural tendency in humans is to be rather lax in mental activity.
Precision calls for an active mentality and concentration. Not everyone
is capable of this, yet, beginning in the nineteenth century such mental
qualities were increasingly necessary. Such disciplines as Chemistry and
Physics didn’t allow for personal vagaries or individual style. One couldn’t
bend the disciplines to one’s own desires, precise measurements were necessary
requiring mental concentration. A little bit off and who knows what might
happen. In a way then the Overman and Underman were created. Either you
could or you couldn’t and if you couldn’t you slipped beneath -- an Underman.
Higher civilization was impossible for you.
Burroughs addressed this problem continually. In his character Tarzan
he resolved the problem giving his creation a split personality, in a loin
cloth he was one man, in a tuxedo he was another. Two separate gorillas
in one and always a beast. In real life society split into two possibilities
-- the Over and Underman.
Worse still scientific methods were able to measure the ineffable, the
unseen. In chemistry sub-tiny atoms were able to be detected and their
sub-miniscule weights actually measured. Measurement is the bane of the
Underman. A Mole contains 6,022 x 10 to the 23rd power of atoms, an incredible
incomprehensible number that still might weigh 12 grams or less. Astonishing.
Beyond the comprehension hence belief of the Underman. As the process can’t
be seen it can’t be believed.
In human intelligence the Englishman Francis Galton began to devise
measuring devices of intelligence in 1865 shortly after Darwin announced
Evolution in 1859. Thus uncertainty about mental capacity was eliminated.
As Stoddard calls it, The Iron Law Of Inferiority. Biology and measuring
excluded something like eighty-five percent of the population from the
ranks of the most intelligent. Without that high measurement of intelligence
85% of the population was automatically excluded from the possibility of
higher attainment while at the same time being prejudged.
Big strapping fellows, all man, were relegated to manual labor while
wimps like perhaps, John D. Rockefeller, became billionaires. Not right,
the big strapping fellows said, but not measuring up in intelligence, which
they couldn’t see, they were condemned to the shovel for life.
Intelligence measuring tests were improved between 1865 and 1920 although
not as accurate as could be desired. Men entering the armed forces in WWI
were an excellent testing group. Of 1,700,000 tested intelligence levels
were fairly accurately determined. It was then discovered that only four
and a half percent were very bright with another seven or eight percent
bright, while the huge bulk were C+ to C- descending from there.
One imagines Burroughs read this with extreme thoughtfulness.
So, now as the bulk of the good things were going to those who could
do, what were those who couldn’t do about it? The great issue since 1789
has been equality; the Underman demanded equality as a first condition.
He could organize. He could sabotage. He could rage. And that is what the
Underman has done.
The Communist Party was formed. And what was their chief demand? Equality.
Absolute equality. As they couldn’t rise to a natural equality then the
only other feasible solution was to bring the Superior intelligences down
to their level. Thus they raged against that great equalizer, education.
Screw science, screw physics, screw chemistry, screw biology. Who needed
what you couldn’t see and that especially included intelligence measuring?
One of ERB's bete noires was the I.W.W. -- The Industrial Workers Of
The World, syndicalists. Imagine his reaction when he read this:
Quote:
Viewed in the abstract, technical sense,
Syndicalism does not seem to present any specially startling innovations.
It is when we examine the Syndicalists’ animating spirit, their general
philosophy of life, and the manner which they propose to obtain their ends,
that we realize we are in the presence of an ominous novelty, -- the mature
philosophy of the Under Man. This philosophy of the Under-Man is today
called Bolshevism. Before the Russian Revolution it was known as Syndicalism.
But Bolshevism and Syndicalism are basically one and the same thing. Soviet
Russia has really invented nothing. It is merely practicing what others
had been preaching for years -- with such adaptation as normally attend
the putting of theory into practice.
Syndicalism, as an organized movement, is primarily
the work of two Frenchmen, Fernand Pelloutier and Georges Sorel. Of course,
just as there were Socialists before Marx, so there were Syndicalists before
Sorel. Syndicalism’s intellectual progenitor was Proudhon, who in his writings
had closely sketched out the Syndicalist theory. As for Syndicalism’s savage,
violent, uncompromising spirit, it is clearly Anarchist in origin., drawing
its inspiration not only from Proudhon but also from Bakunin, [Johann]
Most, and all the rest of that furious company of revolt.
“Revolt!” This is the essence of Syndicalism:
a revolt, not merely against modern society but against Marxian Socialism
as well. And the revolt was well timed. When, at the very end of the nineteenth
century, Georges Sorel lifted the red banner of Syndicalism, the hour awaited
the man. The proletarian world was full of discordant and disillusionment
at the long dormant Marxian philosophy. Half a century had passed since
Marx first preached his gospel, and the revolutionary millennium was nowhere
in sight. Society had not become a world of billionaires and beggars. The
great capitalists had not swallowed all. The middle classes still survived
and prospered. Worst of all, from the revolutionary viewpoint, the upper
grades of the working classes had prospered, too. The skilled workers were,
in fact, becoming an aristocracy of labor. They were acquiring property
and thus growing capitalistic; they were raising their living standards
and thus growing bourgeois. Society seemed endowed with a strange vitality!
It was even reforming many of the abuses which Marx had pronounced incurable.
When, then, was the proletariat to inherit the earth?
The Proletariat! That was the key word. The van,
and even the main body of society, might be fairly on the march, but behind
lagged a rear guard. Here, were, first of all, the lower working class
strata -- the "manual" laborers in the narrower sense, relatively ill paid
and often grievously exploited. Behind these again came a motley crew,
the rejects and misfits of society. “Casuals” and “unemployables”, “down-and-outs”
and declasses, victims of social evils, victims of bad heredity and their
own vices, paupers, defectives, degenerates, and criminals -- they were
all there. They were there for many reasons, but they were all miserable,
and they were all bound together by a certain solidarity -- a sullen hatred
of the civilization from which they had little to hope. To these people
evolutionary, “reformist” socialism was cold comfort. Then came the Syndicalists
promising, not evolution but revolution; not in the dim future but the
here and now; not a bloodless “taking over” by “the workers” hypothetically
stretched to include virtually the whole community, but the bloody “dictatorship”
of The Proletariat in its narrow revolutionary sense.
Here, at last, was living hope -- hope, and the
prospect of revenge! Is it then strange that a few short years should have
seen revolutionary Socialists, Anarchists, all the anti-social forces of
the whole world grouped under the banner of Georges Sorel? For a time they
went under different names syndicalists in France, Bolshevists in Russia,
I.W.W.s in America but in reality they formed one army, enlisted in a single
war.
Now, what was this war? It was, first of all,
a war for the conquest of Socialism as a preliminary to the conquest of
society. Everywhere the orthodox Socialist parties were fiercely assailed.
And these Socialist assaults were formidable, because the orthodox Socialists
possessed no moral line of defense. Their arms were palsied by the virus
of their revolutionary tradition. For however evolutionary and non-militant
the Socialists might have been in practice, in theory they had remained
revolutionary their ethics continuing to be those of the “class war”, the
destruction of the “possessing classes” and the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
The American economist, Carver, will describe
the ethics of socialism in the following lines: “Marxian Socialism has
nothing in common with idealistic Socialism. It rests not on persuasion,
but on force. It does not profess to believe, as did the old idealists,
that if socialism be lifted up it will draw all men to it. In fact, it
has no ideals; it is materialistic and militant. Being materialistic and
atheistic, it makes no use of such terms as right and justice, unless it
be to quiet the consciences of those who still harbor such superstitions.
It insists that these terms are mere conventionalities; the concepts mere
bugaboos invented by the ruling caste to keep the masses under control.
Except in a conventional sense, from this crude materialistic view there
is neither a right or wrong, justice nor injustice, good or bad. Until
people who still believe in such silly notions divest their minds of them
they will never understand the first principles of Marxian socialism.
“Who creates our ideas of right and wrong?” asks
the Socialist. “The ruling class. Why? To insure their domination over
the masses by depriving them of the power to think for themselves. We,
the proletarians, when we get into power, will dominate the situation;
we shall be the ruling class; we shall determine who is right and wrong.
Do you ask us if what we propose is just? What do you mean by justice?
Do you ask if it is right? What do you mean by right? It will be good for
us. That is all that right and justice ever did or ever can mean!
People ask what Burroughs believed? Was he a racist? Was he an anti-Semite?
Well, Burroughs' beliefs can be extrapolated from the above quote as well
as Stoddard’s whole book. If Burroughs could have expressed himself concisely
he would have written The Revolt Against Civilization. You don’t
have to look any further.
There could be no more ardent anti-Communist, anti-Socialist, anti-IWW
than ERB. The book was published five years after the Russian Revolution,
a mere three years after the narrow quelling of the Communist disturbances
of 1919 while in 1922 the Harding administration was putting the finishing
touches on the suppression of that Communist revolution in the US. Make
no mistake, the crimes of 1919 were part of an American Bolshevik revolution.
Things would not return to what Harding called normalcy but it would be
a reasonable facsimile that would endure until the engineered great crash
of 1929 opening the way for the Communist revolution of FDR in the US.
These were perilous times ERB was living in no less than those of today.
One can’t be sure when Burroughs read Revolt but many of the same
themes almost in quotation were employed in his 1926 novel The Moon
Maid. And from the Moon Maid he went to the more sophisticated
approaches of his great political novels from Tarzan At The Earth’s
Core to Tarzan And The Lion Man.
As Stoddard thinks the Underman breeds at a very fast rate while the
Overman limits his family the obvious consequence is that people of intelligence
decrease rapidly in relation to the Underman. Of course Stoddard has all
kinds of tables and charts to prove his point. As this was published in
1922 the results are heavily skewed to prove the English are the top of
the heap; a result not uncongenial to Burroughs' sensibilities.
One imagines that as of induction time in 1917-18 a great many of the
recent immigrants at least had underdeveloped English language skills that
affected the results but at this point it no longer matters; the general
idea has been proved sound.
As we have a war between the Underman and the Overman and make no mistake,
as far as Sorel and the Syndicalist/Bolshevik ideology goes it is a war
to the knife, it may be asked what Stoddard’s formula for the Overman’s
success might be.
This returns us to the Underman’s great fear that science, that is objective
analysis supported by an array of facts will condemn him to the virtual
condition of servitude. It might be surmised that this is an intolerable
but inescapable conclusion unless education and science are destroyed reducing
the more intelligent to the masses.
Stoddard then relying on Darwinian and Weismanian evolution and the
notion of Eugenics introduced by Francis Galston resolves the problem by
ending the reproduction of the ‘defective’ classes, that is, forced sterilization.
Forced sterilization was actually employed. It is interesting that he never
brings in the issue of race thus on the surface his book is neither racist
for anti-Semitic. However as the book assumes that the superior intelligences
are English or Nordic the text qualifies as anti-Semitic in Jewish eyes
and hence has been placed on the Jewish Index Of Forbidden Literature.
One may be horrified at the Eugenic solution to the intelligence problem
but one must be equally horrified at the Underman solution to their Overman
problem. Liquidation is more horrifying than sterilization and Liquidation
was employed by the Underman in Russia and will be employed again if they
can consolidate their gains in the US and Europe today.
The problem is that while being founded in reality it is impossible
in execution. The human mind is too subjective to be trusted with such
a great responsibility. Many statues were placed on the books commanding
forced sterilization and many such were executed.
Schools classes were organized based on supposed mental aptitudes. How
objectively I will demonstrate by my own example. Until Jr. High in my
home town schools did not systematically differentiate based on mental
capacity, however at the end of the ninth grade just before I.Q. testing
in the tenth there were three options, Trade School for those deemed not
of academic ability, in other words destined for the labor force, and once
in high school a division between business, that is white collar, and college
prep. This was still a process of self-selection thus I signed up for high
school, however someone changed my papers to trade school.
Thus when I showed for classes at high school, I was told I was enrolled
at trade school. Now, this was the fight of my life, and for it. I was
told I was in trade school and to get out. I said I wasn’t leaving and
sat down where I waited for four days for the situation to resolve itself.
My argument was that the law required that I be given an education and
it wouldn’t be at trade school. Whatever the behind the scenes machinations
were I was reluctantly allowed to enter but they then insisted it would
be business level while I demanded college prep. With an unexplained prescience
I was told that I would never go to college so I should be in business.
Nevertheless I won that struggle too.
I am sure that if enforced sterilization had been possible at the time
I would have been compelled to undergo it.
Now, here’s the kicker. Came time for I.Q. tests and I placed in the
upper four percent. I have no idea what the reaction to that was although
my critics had to tone down their act. So human passions invalidated the
whole Eugenic idea.
In other words there is no equable solution to this terrible human dilemma.
In that sense the solution offered by Aldus Huxley in his famous comic
novel Brave New World is of some interest. In Huxley's story he
enlists science, chemistry, to produce different levels of mental competence.
The zygote is nurtured in test tubes while at certain levels of development
certain chemicals are introduced limiting the development of the fetus.
Thus the labor problem is solved by creating classes only capable of menial
tasks. The upper classes are bred like race horses to various degrees of
excellence. Huxley was tongue in cheek to be sure but, actually the only
solution to this otherwise insoluble problem.
Stoddard didn’t introduce any ideas to which Burroughs wasn’t already
familiar and in agreement. At best Stoddard’s superb research and explication
clarified ERB’s understanding for him. I don’t know how familiar he was
with Georges Sorel. Today Sorel is unknown except to specialists although
I am beginning to see his name pop up so with the Communist regime of Barack
Obama perhaps the way is being prepared for Sorel’s extreme measures of
exterminating the Overman.
At any rate I have come to the opinion that Richard Slotkin is correct
in thinking the Burroughs had read and was in accord with both Madison
Grant and Lothrop Stoddard. However Slotkin evaluates their work through
the distortion of his own Communistic lens which is only valid to those
of his point of view.
His view does not make Burroughs a racist or anti-Semite. It makes him
an objective and accurate observer and analyst of the situation of his
time. As indicated above Burroughs absorbed Stoddard’s information, that
point of view and used it to create his wonderful works of the late twenties
and first half of the thirties. If one bears Stoddard’s book in mind while
reading those novels it will make them make great sense while presenting
his view of the political and social situation
Of course the novels are not confined solely to dealing with these issues;
Burroughs had a much more far ranging mind, both subjectively and objectively.
Stoddard’s The Revolt Against Civilization is a major study as
relevant today as the day it was written. The last ninety years have only
borne out his theses. The Revolt Against Civilization is well worth
a read, perhaps two. At any rate you will have an accurate idea of Burroughs’
social and political beliefs.
Theodore
Lothrop Stoddard (June 29, 1883 – May 1, 1950)
was an American historian, journalist, racial anthropologist, eugenicist
and political theorist.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRIMARY RACES
Stoddard's analysis divided world politics and situations
in to
"white," "yellow," "black," "Amerindian," and
"brown" peoples and their interactions.
The
Revolt Against Civilization eText
Warning
from the Past
