Oswald Mosley - The Alternative

Chapter 1 - The Failure of Britain and of Europe

THE worst were ever united; the best were ever divided. That has been the tragedy of Modern Europe which has brought her youth to death; her culture to the dust; her happiness to ruin; her material prosperity to destruction, and her spiritual life to a jeopardy which threatens with eternal night the sunlit heights of the European mind. It is no small moment in the history of man when darkness descends on three millennia of human culture. We stand in front of a potential tragedy without equal in the known annals of time. Small the mind, weak the will and doomed the spirit that cannot rise to such a challenge. The origin of disaster contains a fatal simplicity. It is easy to discern the cause, which is division and war. The family of Europe has been divided and destroyed by internecine conflict exactly as the related communities of Early Greece were rent by the clash of the City States, until even the radiance of Hellas was extinguished. In each case, the communion of blood failed to follow the law of nature to a sacred brotherhood; it served merely to inflame the jealousies and hatreds with which discordant personalities enhanced the fierce collision of rival ideologies. With fatal recurrence History confronts us now with the same classic tragedy on a far larger scale. When the best are divided, no one can benefit except the worst. The division of the classic world could only entail the final triumph of the Barbarian. The division of Europe today brings the victory of the two-headed Barbarian of the Modern Age, who can be named - Mob and Money. Communism and Finance are the only beneficiaries from the destruction of Europe. The first now rules nearly half the Continent in public, and the latter rules the other half in private.

The sense, in which the two terms - Mob and Money - are here used, must be defined. Mob is not a term of abuse for the people, as it was on the lips of reaction. In fact, many of those who employed such terms, are clearly included in our definition of Mob, and the great majority of the objects of their contumely are excluded from it. In this definition, Mob is divided from the true mass of the people by a vertical and not by a horizontal separation. Mob may include the occupant of castle or of cottage and may exclude either. It is not a question of wealth or of that artificiality which is now called social class, but of fundamental values. Do the roots still grip and grow in the deep, strong soil of European tradition and culture, so that an ever finer growth of human achievement may evolve to adorn a world which owes nearly all to that inspiration? On the other hand, are they torn from that sure fastness by the febrile winds of envy and hatred for all fine endeavour toward higher forms, until the infection of the Orient can sap their vital life and reduce all to that dull uniformity in which, alone, it can bear the harsh light of comparison. The latter fate may befall alike the occupant of slum or of palace; on that day the victim adheres to the values of Mob.

For the beginning of Mob is disintegration; only at a later stage does integration occur into the positive evil of Communism. Before that can happen the abiding values of the European must be undermined and destroyed; and a rich man can contribute more to that process by a spiritual adherence to Mob, in a silliness of attitude and frivolity of life, than any poor man will effect by a bitter agitation, which at least contains a dynamism toward better things. The fool, who has mistaken duties for privileges, soon passes: but the seed he has sown remains, and the harvest of destruction is reaped by the ultimate nullity of Communism.

In the beginning, Mob is a question not of class but of values: only in the end, do the scattered fragments of a broken society cohere into an organised disaster. The term must, therefore, in two phases, comprise both the dissolution of decadence and the sinister coherence of Communism. Not until the character of the West is broken can the values of the Orient triumph.

It is sometimes denied that Communism is an Oriental creed, but this objection can scarcely be sustained in face of two indisputable facts; the first that it was invented by a Jew; the second that, after a century of existence, it has flourished in no European country except Russia. In generations of agitation it has not come near to victory in any Western country except in moments of collapse; and, even then, the will to survival of Western Man has so far always exerted itself in time. Communism is the answer of the East, not of the West, to current chaos, and it can only succeed in traversing all values of European life after Mob has done its work by destroying their foundations.

Money, too, as we shall later observe, plays a complementary part in that catastrophe. By Money, however, we do not mean the reward which energy and ability has secured; although this definition approximates closely to the opinion of what is called the "Left." Money, in this modern sense, is neither wage earned by the worker, nor the deserved profit of the productive individual; they both serve the community in the increase of wealth, and a subsequent apportionment of the proceeds, according to effort and merit, would be a relatively easy matter in an Organic State. Money is rather the force which exploits, and, ultimately, destroys them both through the operations of speculative finance. The interests of the producer, whether employer, manager or worker, stand in sharp opposition to the interests of the speculator; it is the vast operations of the latter within the powerful organisation of International Finance which we here designate as "Money." That force stands against the producer, whether by hand or brain, and even against the true interests of every national or continental banking system which serves industry and not speculation. Money and Mob thrive together as the evil twins of chaos. They could not so flourish if any real power of Government existed. They are essentially anarchic forces and can only possess such power in the absence of effective Government.

The key question of the time is why the interest of the people as a whole is subject to these influences, and why the will of the people to better things is never implemented. Why is it that Mob and Money now laugh and dance on all the higher aspirations to which they have sacrificed so much: why is it that their long striving towards a finer civilisation, through many forms, always meets at last the great Negation? For, Mob and Money only prevail when every higher expression of the people's will is denied: they are triumphant only when no real Government exists which can implement that will. In brief, the present situation only arises, because in time of Peace it is impossible to get things done in England. The fact of this frustration is now obvious: our first task is to examine the reasons for it. For this purpose, it is necessary to search beneath the division and frustration of this age for those root historic causes which have inhibited the desire of the British people for a finer life, and have wrecked Europe. We shall find that the basic cause of that dual frustration is the same. It is the spirit of denial which is present in most nations, from various historic causes, but finds strongest expression in the ruling class of Great Britain by reason of circumstances which were particularly favourable to its growth.The great negation, which springs from those conditions, has thwarted the British people and divided Europe. It becomes a menace to world survival in an age which requires the Union of the Europeans; and their persistent progress toward a higher civilisation, as a condition of the continuance of mankind. So, in the first part of this book I ask the British people to examine the deep causes of that bitter frustration which has long oppressed their prosperity and happiness, and now menaces the future existence of humanity.