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O segundo governo Trump tenta ser o governo das tarifas. Um trumpista mais erudito poderia argumentar que a fase inicial da história dos Estados Unidos se confunde com a história das tarifas; afinal, o Sul dos EUA era dirigido por fazendeiros adeptos do livre comércio enquanto o Norte defendia tarifas para proteger a indústria nascente da concorrência inglesa. Como os EUA se tornaram uma potência por causa do Norte e não por causa do Sul, já dá para ver que a Era Lochner (que precedeu a crise de 1929) e a desregulamentação neoliberal de Reagan engendrada em parceria com Thatcher são desvios da rota que levaram os EUA ao sucesso. No entanto, a propaganda liberal, muito ajudada pelo anticomunismo, conseguiu representar o livre comércio como essencial à identidade mesma dos EUA.

Por isso, vale meditar sobre as palavras do economista Friedrich List (1789 – 1846), um dos maiores defensores do “sistema americano” ou “sistema nacional de economia política”, que administrava tarifas para proteger a economia interna: “eu chamaria a atenção das pessoas nestes Estados Unidos que se baseiam no celebrado sistema de Adam Smith, que tomassem cuidado para não morrerem de um belo ideal. De fato, senhor, soaria quase como sarcasmo se, em eras vindouras, um historiador comemorasse o declínio deste país nos seguintes termos: ‘Eles foram um grande povo e estavam em todos os sentidos no caminho certo para se tornarem o primeiro de toda a Terra; mas enfraqueceram e morreram acreditando na infalibilidade – não de um Papa, nem de um Rei –, mas de dois livros importados, um escrito por um escocês [Adam Smith] e o outro, por um francês [Jean-Baptiste Say] – livros cujas falhas de conteúdo foram, pouco tempo depois, reconhecida por cada indivíduo’.” (Esboço de economia política americana, Carta 1)

Em primeiro lugar, o que chama a atenção no século XXI é alguém chamar o livre comércio, ou o liberalismo econômico, de utopia. Isso se deve ao fato de que o liberalismo econômico é apresentado ao público como as leis férreas da ciência que têm que ser aplicadas, sob pena de graves consequências. Essa estratégia nada tem de nova: quando Chesterton era vivo, já se queixava desse expediente. Tanto o malthusianismo quanto o darwinismo social apresentam suas trágicas políticas públicas como necessárias. Desses dois, o darwinismo social tem uma relação indissociável com o liberalismo econômico.

Não obstante, lendo List, notamos que Adam Smith e demais defensores do livre comércio pensam um mundo sem guerras, no qual ninguém tem que ter medo de ficar desabastecido por questões políticas. Por exemplo: em 1827, apenas 51 anos depois da independência, congressistas americanos adeptos de Adam Smith “asseveraram bastante seriamente que seria melhor importar pólvora da Inglaterra, se este material pudesse ser comprado mais barato por lá do que ser aqui fabricado. Eu me pergunto por que não propuseram queimar os nossos vasos de guerra, já que seria mais econômico contratar, em tempo de guerra, navios e marinheiros da Inglaterra” (Carta 2). Guerra é o de menos. Os adeptos do livre comércio consideram um mundo no qual não existem nem guerras econômicas.

A seguir, devemos considerar que cientificismo, utopismo e liberalismo político andam de mãos dadas. Vejamos bem: com o liberalismo político, entende-se que a fé é uma verdade subjetiva que deve ficar de fora da esfera pública. Não obstante, é necessário um terreno comum para os cidadãos adeptos de diversas confissões poderem viver em sociedade. Quem aparece no lugar da religião como portadora do conhecimento objetivo e universal é a ciência. Assim, é evidente que a ciência, ao se tornar a sede de tanto poder, acaba sendo instrumentalizada e corrompida. Nasce o cientificismo, a crença na capacidade da ciência de determinar todas as questões políticas e sociais.

Historicamente, cientificismo, utopismo e laicismo (que é uma componente indispensável do liberalismo político) andaram de mãos dadas: há os precedentes do saint-simonismo, do positivismo, socialismo, comunismo. Assim, faz perfeito sentido que um país adepto do liberalismo político acabe caindo no cientificismo. A diferença do cientificismo liberal para os demais cientificismos é que no liberalismo não se destaca a figura do planejador. Em vez disso, existe uma harmonia espontânea que só o liberal imbuído do espírito científico consegue captar, de modo que suas críticas se voltam contra aqueles que interferem na dita ordem natural (impondo barreiras comerciais, por exemplo). Enquanto os cientificistas históricos costumam ser intervencionistas, que clamam por um técnico que ponha ordem no galinheiro, os cientificistas liberais são anti-intervencionistas e defendem que o galinheiro está sempre na mais perfeita ordem até alguém mexer com ele.

Ora, se a ciência constitui o denominador comum num regime político, é de fundamental importância criar um fundo público para a ciência que a impeça de ser cooptada por agentes privados. Na obra de List, não encontramos essa preocupação: ao contrário, ele segue a filosofia americana, já presente na Constituição, segundo a qual o congresso deverá proteger a propriedade intelectual dos inventores. Para List, essa proteção faz com que as invenções se propaguem pela indústria, em vez de serem perdidas com a morte do inventor. Isso pode ser verdade, mas a ausência de uma política pública de conhecimento fez com que o conhecimento fosse privatizado e a doutrina do livre comércio, por ele tão criticada, se tornasse uma verdade científica praticamente incontestável.

O fato de Trump ter recuperado as tarifas e transformado-as em mais um instrumento do xerife do mundo liberal, sem se importar com as necessidades internas da economia, mostra como os EUA não souberam cuidar do patrimônio intelectual.

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The second Trump administration is trying to be the government of tariffs. A more erudite Trumpist might argue that the early stages of United States history are intertwined with the history of tariffs; after all, the U.S. South was run by farmers who favored free trade, while the North defended tariffs to protect its nascent industry from English competition. Since the U.S. became a superpower because of the North and not because of the South, it’s clear that the Lochner era (which preceded the 1929 crisis) and Reagan’s neoliberal deregulation, conceived in partnership with Thatcher, are deviations from the path that led the U.S. to success. However, liberal propaganda, greatly aided by anti-communism, managed to portray free trade as essential to the very identity of the U.S.

Therefore, it is worth reflecting on the words of the economist Friedrich List (1789 – 1846), one of the greatest defenders of the “American system” or “national system of political economy,” which administered tariffs to protect the domestic economy: “I would admonish the people of these U. S. who rely on the celebrated system of Smith, to take care not to die of a beau ideal. Indeed, sir, it would sound almost like sarcasm, if in after ages an historian should commemorate the decline of this country in the following terms: ‘They were a great people, they were in every respect in the way to become the first people on earth, but they became weak and died – trusting in the infallibility of two books imported into the country; one from Scotland [Adam Smith], the other from France [Jean-Baptiste Say]; books, the general failure of which was shortly afterwards acknowledged by every individual.’ ” (Outlines of American Political Economy, Letter 1)

First of all, what is striking in the 21st century is someone calling free trade, or economic liberalism, a utopia. This is due to the fact that economic liberalism is presented to the public as the ironclad laws of science that must be applied, under penalty of serious consequences. This strategy is nothing new: when Chesterton was alive, he already complained about this expedient. Both Malthusianism and social Darwinism present their tragic public policies as necessary. Of these two, social Darwinism has an inseparable relationship with economic liberalism.

Nevertheless, reading List, we note that Adam Smith and other defenders of free trade envision a world without wars, in which no one has to fear running out of supplies due to political issues. For example: in 1827, just 51 years after independence, American congressmen who were followers of Adam Smith “asserted quite seriously that it would be better to import gunpowder from England, if it could be bought cheaper there than manufactured here. I wonder why they did not propose to burn our men of war, because it would be better economy, to hire, in time of war, ships and sailors in England.” (Letter 2). War is the least of it. Proponents of free trade envision a world in which there are no economic wars.

Next, we must consider that scientism, utopianism, and political liberalism go hand in hand. Let’s see: with political liberalism, it is understood that faith is a subjective truth that should remain outside the public sphere. Nevertheless, common ground is necessary for citizens of different faiths to be able to live in society. Science appears in place of religion as the bearer of objective and universal knowledge. Thus, it is evident that science, by becoming the seat of so much power, ends up being instrumentalized and corrupted. Scientism is born, the belief in the capacity of science to determine all political and social issues.

Historically, scientism, utopianism, and secularism (which is an indispensable component of political liberalism) have gone hand in hand: there are precedents of Saint-Simonism, positivism, socialism, and communism. Thus, it makes perfect sense that a country that adheres to political liberalism ends up falling into scientism. The difference between liberal scientism and other forms of scientism is that in liberalism, the figure of the planner is not highlighted. Instead, there is a spontaneous harmony that only the liberal imbued with the scientific spirit can grasp, so that their criticisms are directed against those who interfere with the so-called natural order (imposing trade barriers, for example). While historical followers of scientism tend to be interventionists, clamoring for a technician to bring order to the chaos, liberal followers od scientism are anti-interventionists and argue that the things is always in perfect order until someone interferes.

Now, if science constitutes the common denominator in a political regime, it is of fundamental importance to create a public fund for science that prevents it from being co-opted by private agents. In List’s work, we do not find this concern: on the contrary, he follows the American philosophy, already present in the Constitution, according to which Congress should protect the intellectual property of inventors. For List, this protection causes inventions to spread through industry, instead of being lost with the death of the inventor. This may be true, but the absence of a public knowledge policy has led to the privatization of knowledge, and the doctrine of free trade, which he criticized so much, has become practically an indisputable scientific truth.

The fact that Trump reinstated the tariffs and transformed them into yet another instrument of the liberal world’s sheriff, without regard for the needs of the domestic economy, shows how the U.S. has failed to protect its intellectual heritage.

The Dutch, after trying to make artificial selection better than natural selection, created an environment very conducive to the most notorious cause of congenital deformities.

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Since the advent of Darwinism, humanity has lived a paradoxical relationship with nature: on the one hand, we have learned to see ourselves as animals whose behavior can be explained by the struggle for survival; on the other, we have tacitly recognized our rationality and continue to try to surpass nature.

This learning (that our behavior has its ultimate causes in the struggle for survival) is the opposite of Christianity and brings its own complications. After all, if theologians had to invent theodicy to explain how God allows evil, the practical man engendered by Darwinism will have to invent a thousand sociobiological schemes to explain the origin of altruistic and virtuous behavior. If the world is a competition for survival, goodness becomes difficult to explain. Theologians had the problem of evil, Darwinists have the problem of good.

The choice of Darwinism as the key to explaining human behavior is so counterintuitive that it must be admitted as ideological. The best case to illustrate this is perhaps that of Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, the amateur archaeologist who discovered cave art in the late 19^th century. He set out to study the paintings of oxen discovered by his nine-year-old daughter on the ceiling of the Altamira Cave, but he died as a charlatan, because the scientific establishment, which was Darwinist, considered it impossible for cavemen to have artistic gifts. As a true ideology, Darwinism prescribed the facts, and the evidence was denied for as long as possible.

Surpassing nature in the Darwinian way

In the Christian worldview, the surpassing of nature was attained through moral and intellectual achievements, which are human differentials that place us at the top of creation. Today, however, man seeks to surpass nature by doing a better job of natural selection than she did.

The manipulation of nature is older than history, since man learned to domesticate animal and plant species before he learned to write. But it was not a question of surpassing nature for the sake of surpassing nature: it was in view of the convenience of man himself. With the advancement of technology, man was able to alter nature for the most superfluous reasons: to make a flower with more petals, a fruit without seeds, a docile dog. These changes have an anthropocentric character, since the flower aims to please the human eye; the fruit, the human palate; the dog, to be a friend to children. It is not a question of competition with nature, but of old-fashioned domestication.

In the 19^th century, however, the English-speaking elites began to want to domesticate man himself, with Darwinism in their minds. The science of eugenics was supposed to create better men than the process of natural selection. But better for whom or for what? To this day, eugenics has tried to present itself as anthropocentric, as if it were about making man healthy. However, eugenics, in theory, prevents the birth of sick people and promotes the birth of healthy people; it has nothing to do with making existing people healthy.

In the eye of the storm, the English writer G. K. Chesterton realized what was at stake: the management of the reproduction of the people by the capitalist elite. Instead of reducing profits by increasing wages and improving the living conditions of the workers, the capitalists intended to make them have fewer children, and for these children to be healthy enough to be useful workers. The logic of breeding purebred dogs (which were used for hunting, or sniffing, or protecting, etc.) applied to human procreation. Nazi Germany, which went further in the racial control of  population, caused the liberal paternity of eugenics to be forgotten.

A new liberal eugenics

However, nowadays we are remembering very well the affinity of eugenics with liberalism. Assisted reproduction has ceased to be just a expedient used by couples with fertility problems and has become an industry of producing babies on demand – to the point that a single man can order one and, with the help of an international agency, circumvent laws to legally become the father of a motherless child. Everything is for sale: eggs, sperm, a poor woman’s risky pregnancy.

In this case, you don’t have to be as shrewd as Chesterton to see the purpose of eugenics: it is to give parents what, in their own judgment, is the best child that money can buy. Once, a man and a woman would get married, have sex, and have a variety of children. One child would be more beautiful than the other; one would be more intelligent, and sometimes a disabled child would be born. Now, parents no longer need to convince their children that there are no favorites, because the clinic, by screening the genetics of the embryos, guarantees that only the favorites will be born.

In the Netherlands, a predictable problem

The curious thing is that, without a partner of the opposite sex, the freedom to choose the best possible child is increased, since the client can choose a gamete donor who, according to his or her whims, has the best possible genetics. Since there are more non-rich people than rich, that there are more heterosexuals than homosexuals, and that sperm is cheaper than eggs, we can say that the typical person who is free to buy a customized child is the middle-class woman who prioritized her career, did not get pregnant by a boyfriend, was unable to get (or stay) married and wants to have a child at any cost, before becoming sterile (in fact, the egg market takes advantage of this fear by selling egg freezing services and accepting eggs themselves as a part of payment – but that is another issue).

Can we imagine that this woman would come to the company determined to choose a short man to be the father of her children? Many short men get married and become fathers, but I doubt that many short men have their sperm selected by clients of fertility clinics. So, it is absolutely not difficult to imagine what sperm donor clients have in mind when they enter such a clinic: handsome, tall, athletic, full of IQ and diplomas. If they include information about artistic or musical sensibilities, they will certainly be desired too.

Let’s just say that it will not be a surprise if almost all women select the same donor from the menu. Our own face is very personal; nevertheless, women undergo plastic surgery and all end up with the same face, which varies according to fashion. No matter how much we talk about customization: what capitalism promotes is uniformity. Everyone wants the same consumer object; and, when the consumer object is a child, all mothers will have the same fashionable item in mind. Of course they will want the same sperm donor, and the market has no reason to deny it.

Thus, in the most advanced country in the world in terms of liberal agendas, the Netherlands, “a medical calamity” in the fertility industry has come to light: according to The Guardian, clinics have allowed at least 85 sperm donors to have more than 25 children. The number 25 is important because the Netherlands had a law in 1992 setting this number as the limit, and in 2018 the limit was reduced to two. The legislation aims to prevent incest.

Well, even in rural areas in the last century, 25 is a lot of children – just from that alone it was clear that there were favorite donors and, therefore, market pressure. Ultimately, the Dutch, after trying to make artificial selection better than natural selection, created an environment very conducive to the most notorious cause of congenital deformities: incest.

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Desde o advento do darwinismo, a humanidade vive uma relação paradoxal com a natureza: por um lado, aprendemos a nos enxergar como animais cujo comportamento pode ser explicado pela luta pela sobrevivência; por outro, reconhecemos tacitamente nossa racionalidade e seguimos tentando superar a natureza.

Esse aprendizado (de que nosso comportamento tem suas causas últimas na luta pela sobrevivência) é o contrário do cristianismo e traz suas próprias complicações. Afinal, se teólogos tiveram de inventar a teodiceia para explicar como Deus permite o mal, o homem prático engendrado pelo darwinismo terá de inventar mil esquemas sociobiológicos para explicar a origem do comportamento altruísta e virtuoso. Se o mundo é uma competição pela sobrevivência, a bondade torna-se difícil de explicar. Os teólogos tinham o problema do mal, os darwinistas têm o problema do bem.

A escolha do darwinismo como chave explicativa do comportamento humano é tão contraintuitiva que deve ser admitida como ideológica. O melhor caso que para ilustrar isso talvez seja o de Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, o arqueólogo amador que descobriu a arte rupestre no final do século XIX. Ele tratou de estudar as pinturas de boi descobertas por sua filhinha de nove anos no teto da Caverna de Altamira, mas morreu como um charlatão, porque o establishment científico, darwinista, considerava impossível que o homem das cavernas tivesse dotes artísticos. Como verdadeira ideologia, o darwinismo prescreveu os fatos, e as provas foram negadas pelo máximo de tempo possível.

Superar a natureza à maneira darwinista

Na cosmovisão cristã a superação da natureza se dava por meio de realizações morais e intelectuais, que são diferenciais humanos que o colocam no topo da criação. Atualmente, porém, o homem pretende superar a natureza fazendo um trabalho de seleção natural melhor o que dela.

A manipulação da natureza é mais antiga que a História, pois o homem aprendeu a domesticar espécies animais e vegetais antes de aprender a escrever. No entanto, não se tratava de uma superação da natureza pela superação da natureza: tinha-se em vista a conveniência do próprio homem. Com o avanço da técnica, o homem pôde alterar a natureza pelos motivos mais supérfluos: fazer uma flor com mais pétalas, uma fruta sem caroços, um cão dócil. São alterações com um caráter antropocêntrico, pois a flor visa a agradar as vistas humanas; a fruta, o paladar humano; o cão, ser amigo das crianças. Não se trata de uma competição com a natureza, mas da velha domesticação.

No século XIX, porém, as elites anglófonas começaram a querer domesticar o próprio homem, tendo em vistas o darwinismo. A ciência da eugenia deveria criar homens melhores do que o processo de seleção natural. Mas melhores para quem ou para quê? Até hoje a eugenia pretende se apresentar como antropocêntrica, como se se tratasse de dar saúde ao homem. Não obstante, a eugenia em tese impede o nascimento de pessoas doentes e promove o nascimento de pessoas sadias; nada tem a ver com dar saúde às pessoas que existem.

No olho do furacão, o escritor inglês G. K. Chesterton percebeu o que estava em causa: o gerenciamento da reprodução do povo pela elite capitalista. Em vez de reduzir o lucro aumentando salários e dar condições de vida ao operariado, os capitalistas pretendiam fazer com que tivessem menos filhos, e que esses filhos fossem saudáveis o bastante para serem trabalhadores úteis. A lógica da criação de cães de raça (que serviam para caçar, ou farejar, ou proteger etc.) se aplicava à procriação humana. A Alemanha Nazista, que foi mais longe no controle racial da população, fez com que a paternidade liberal da eugenia fosse esquecida.

Uma nova eugenia liberal

Os dias atuais, porém, estamos relembrando muito bem a afinidade da eugenia com o liberalismo. A reprodução assistida deixou de ser apenas um expediente usado por casais com problemas de fertilidade e se tornou uma indústria de produção de bebês sob encomenda – a tal ponto que um homem solteiro pode encomendar um e, com a ajuda de uma agência internacional, driblar leis para se tornar legalmente pai de uma criança sem mãe. Tudo está à venda: os óvulos, os espermatozoides, a gravidez arriscada de uma mulher pobre.

Nesse caso, não é preciso ser sagaz como Chesterton para ver qual é a finalidade da eugenia: dar aos pais aquele que, a seu próprio juízo, é o melhor filho que o dinheiro pode comprar. Antes, um homem e uma mulher casavam, faziam sexo e tinham uma variedade de filhos. Um mais bonito do que outro; um mais inteligente do que outro e, às vezes, um deficiente. Agora os pais já não precisam mais convencer os filhos de que não há favoritos, pois a clínica, avaliando a genética dos embriões, garante que apenas os favoritos irão nascer.

Na Holanda, um problema previsível

O engraçado é que, sem um cônjuge do sexo oposto, a liberdade para escolher o melhor filho possível é ampliada, já que o cliente pode escolher um doador de gametas que, segundo os seus caprichos, tem a melhor genética possível. Como há mais não-ricos do que ricos, há mais heterossexuais do que homossexuais e esperma é mais barato do que óvulo, podemos dizer que a típica pessoa livre para comprar um filho customizado é a mulher de classe média que priorizou a carreira, não engravidou de um namorado, não conseguiu casar (ou permanecer casada) e quer ter um filho de qualquer jeito, antes de ficar estéril (aliás, o mercado de óvulos aproveita esse temor oferecendo congelamento de óvulos pago com parte dos óvulos – mas essa é outra história).

Acaso podemos imaginar que essa mulher chegue à empresa determinada a escolher um baixinho para ser o pai dos seus filhos? Muitos baixinhos se casam e são pais, mas duvido que muitos baixinhos tenham seu esperma selecionado por clientes de clínicas de fertilização. Assim, não é nada difícil imaginar que doador de esperma as clientes têm em mente quando entram em tal clínica: bonito, alto, atlético, cheio do QI e dos diplomas. Se constar a informação de que tem sensibilidade artística ou musical, certamente fará sucesso também.

Digamos então que não será uma surpresa se quase todas as mulheres selecionarem o mesmo doador no cardápio. A nossa cara é personalíssima; não obstante, as mulheres fazem cirurgias plásticas e ficam todas com a mesma cara, que varia segundo a moda. Ora, por mais que se fale em customização, o que o capitalismo promove é uniformização. Todos querem um mesmo objeto de consumo; e, quando o objeto de consumo é um filho, todas as mães vão ter o mesmo artigo da moda em vista. É claro que vão querer o mesmo doador de esperma, e que o mercado não tem motivos para negar.

Assim, no país mais avançado em pautas liberais do mundo, a Holanda, veio à tona “uma calamidade médica” na indústria da fertilidade: segundo The Guardian, as clínicas permitiram que pelo menos 85 doadores de esperma tivessem mais de 25 filhos. O número 25 é importante porque a Holanda tinha uma lei em 1992 fixando esse número como o limite, e em 2018 o limite caiu para dois. A legislação tem o objetivo de impedir o incesto.

Bom, até mesmo na zona rural do século passado, 25 é filho pra burro – só por aí já dava para ver que havia doadores prediletos e, portanto, pressão de mercado. Ao fim e ao cabo, os holandeses, após pretenderem fazer uma seleção artificial melhor do que a natural, criaram um ambiente muito propício para a mais notória causa de deformidades congênitas: o incesto.

If Darwinism does not explain human morality, it does explain the morality of humans who believe in Darwinism.

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A question that occurred to me when writing the last article is: Is it possible, within the framework of Western culture, to defend freedom while denying Christianity? After all, in our culture we have, as opposing interpretative keys, the religious principle of creation and the scientific principle of natural selection.

On the Christian side, we have that God created man endowed with free will: man does such and such a thing with a moral content because he is free. On the Darwinist side, man is the viable result of an atrocious process of natural selection. Thus, it will be necessary to explain human action based on this process. This is not impossible, because, as we have seen, morality is necessary even in a society of thieves. However, if morality is nothing but the result of a process of natural selection, it is very difficult to say that a man is free. When a bird builds its nest, this is an act resulting from natural selection – and it is not a free act, since the bird is not rational and could not act otherwise.

It does not follow that we need to oppose evolution to creationism. Just like flat-earthers, creationism is a pseudoscience created by biblical literalists. But if not every Christian is a creationist, every militant defender of evolution is a militant defender of atheism. Now, the evolutionary mechanism discovered by Darwin evidently does not prove the non-existence of God, since one can say that God created the world with creatures that evolve. In general, the most intelligent atheists agree that it is not possible to prove the non-existence of God, which is why they prefer to discuss the burden of proof. After all, it is possible to say that God created the world with creatures that evolve; and it is possible to say that there is a teapot orbiting the sun between the Earth and Mars. Proving it is another story.

In the end of the day, Darwinism consists of an explanation of life through laws that are intrinsic to matter. This explanation goes back to Epicureanism, for which all that exists are atoms and movement. From the incessant movement of matter, ordered bodies emerge; and, once the order is disturbed, the body perishes and the atoms continue to move. Thus, it is not appropriate to ask why an animal is well-made, because, if it were not “well-made”, it would perish. Darwin gathered material and showed that this Epicurean process, which implies the destruction of the unviable, is capable of explaining life, contrary to the idea of ​​a static Creation. But Darwin was a son of the England of his time.

Modernity rediscovered many Greco-Roman philosophical currents that the Church had thrown into the proverbial dustbin of History. One current was Epicureanism; another, Pythagorean thought, for which Number is the principle of everything. Galileo appropriated this principle and translated it into the idea that God wrote the book of nature in mathematical language. Later, the person who appropriated this translation from Galileo was Newton, a kind of Protestant mystic dedicated to (among other things) the literal exegesis of the Bible. He was followed by a whole school of thought, articulated in the Boyle Lectures, which would pave the way for creationism. Thus, if we believe that Galileo, Newton and Darwin are right, then we believe that the Creator is versed in mathematics and that there is no Creator!

If in the times of Galileo and Newton (16th to 18th centuries) mathematical laws were seen as proof of a Creator versed in mathematics, but in the times of Darwin and the Darwinists (19th centuries to the present), evolutionary laws serve to prove that there is no creation, then it is reasonable to conclude that what changed was the mentality of the time. In modernity, scientists believed in God; in postmodernity, scientists believed in atheism. That is why they gave different treatments to ancient principles rediscovered in different eras.

It seems, then, that it is convenient for a physicist to reason like a biblical literalist, and it is convenient for a biologist to reason like an atheist. Darwin did not nullify Galilean or Newtonian physics, and the widespread acceptance of Father Lemaître’s cosmological assumption did not dethrone Darwin from biology. Science advances based on the most disparate assumptions. And these are all assumptions with a moral nature, and the black sheep among them is Darwinism. (Some say, however, that determinism is a secular Calvinism, because of predestination, which also brings philosophical complications to the notion of freedom. Even if this seems absolutely correct to me, there is still a huge difference between a Puritan morality and a morality inspired by Darwinism.)

At least since Lucretius, Epicureanism has had a forceful moral message. In short, all life is chaotic, the gods do not care about mortals, religion is born from ignorance of causes and is the source of unreasonable fears, such as the fear of death. Anyone who wants to learn more about Epicureanism and the history of its rediscovery can read The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011), by Professor Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard. The book won the National Book Award and even the Pulitzer. And the book is a tremendous piece of propaganda that, while telling the story of Poggio Bracciolini, sings the eternal virtues of Epicureanism and repeats Protestant clichés against the “Dark Ages” (although the author is Jewish). The fact that this book has had such a successful institutional reception is an indication that the elites of the English-speaking world are so committed to Darwinism that they actively defend its very roots, that are Epicureanism.

Let us finally return to the initial point. If Darwinism does not explain human morality, it does explain the morality of humans who believe in Darwinism. Since man is not expected to act like an animal different from the rest, then it is accepted, for example, that males copulate with as many females as they can, and that females copulate with any male who has resources. There is even a science of “evolutionary psychology” that is very effective in explaining cads and sluts, but of dubious success in explaining decent men and women. A billionaire believes that the right thing to do is to impregnate as many women as possible, preferably through in vitro fertilization with selected embryos, in order to gift humanity with his wonderful DNA.

Since human life is a material phenomenon, all of his agonies become pathologies. The man, a clump of cells, then goes to the psychiatrist to resolve them, and the psychiatrist will prescribe medications that supposedly correct the chemical imbalances that caused the agony. And since health is nothing more than the norm, it is no wonder that people want to build identities on top of illnesses (autism, ADHD…). Because illness, the deviation from the norm, is the possible difference and the possible freedom.

See Part I for how RAND and its creed “systems analysis” was created and how Albert Wohlstetter would ultimately become the kingpin of RAND.

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: the Fabian Society

For us to understand what ultimately made Albert Wohlstetter the man he became we must first start with the story of Bertrand Russell. And for this, we must begin with the Fabian Society.

The Fabian Society was founded on January 4^th, 1884 in London as an offshoot of The Fellowship of the New Life, which in turn was founded just one year earlier by Scottish philosopher Thomas Davidson. The Fellowship advocated pacifism, vegetarianism and simple living, under the influence of Leo Tolstoy’s ideas. (1) Some of its members also wanted to become politically involved in transforming society which led to the formation of the Fabian Society.

One of the nine founding members of the Fabian Society was Frank Podmore, who was also an influential member of the Society for Psychical Research.

Alfred Russell Wallace, William Crookes, F.W.H. Myers and renown psychologist William James’ work on mediums, telepathy and materializations led to the founding of the Society of Psychical Research, the Theosophical Society and their American branches.

Alfred Russell Wallace was a close associate of T.H. Huxley (Darwin’s bulldog) and co-founded the theory of natural selection alongside Charles Darwin.

The Fabian Society was extremely influenced by the ideas of Darwinism. Much of what they supported in terms of ideologies and philosophies was for the purpose of advancing Darwinism and saw Karl Marx’s newly published system as the perfect vehicle to carry Darwin’s logic into a controlling ideology to organize the masses.

Karl Marx himself was very much drawn to the ideas of Darwin, including two explicit references to Darwin and evolution in the second edition of Das Kapital. (2)

Marx would write in a letter that:

“Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.”

In a book review of the first volume of Das Kapital, Engels wrote that Marx was “simply striving to establish the same gradual process of transformation demonstrated by Darwin in natural history as a law in the social field.” (3)

The Fabian Society would define itself as a socialist movement, influenced by Karl Marx and the Marxist Social Democratic Federation soon founding England’s Labour Party in 1900. The party’s constitution was written by Fabian Society leader Sidney Webb and borrowed heavily from the founding documents of the Fabian Society.

Immediately upon its inception, the society featured such prominent eugenicists such as George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Huxley’s protégé H.G. Wells, Arthur Balfour, founder of Geopolitics Halford Mackinder and Bertrand Russell.

Prominent Theosophist Annie Besant would also become a member of the Fabian Society upon its inception, and was the leading speaker for both the Fabian Society and the Marxist Social Democratic Federation.

At the core of the Fabian Society were Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who would also help co-found the London School of Economics (LSE), with Rothschild funding, to propagate the Fabian Society outlook in 1895.

Harold Laski, one of Britain’s most influential intellectual spokesmen for Marxism, would become a Fabian Society member, a professor at the LSE (1926-1950), and a chairman of the British Labour Party (1945-1946).

Bertrand Russell would teach social democracy at LSE from 1895-1896 and from 1937-1938 lectured on the science of power. On the official site of LSE, Russell is credited as “one of the spiritual and financial founders of LSE…[whose] involvement in the early life of the School helped to define its ethos.”

The Coefficients club was also set up by Sidney and Beatrice Webb and included among its membership H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell, as well as Leo Amery, Harold Laski, Halford Mackinder (who was Director of the LSE from 1903-1908), Alfred Milner and Clinton Edward Dawkins (the three times great uncle to the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins).

The name “Fabian” is derived from the Roman General Quintus Fabius, known as the Cunctator from his strategy of delaying his attacks against the invading Carthaginians until the right moment, and who’s fame is founded on having beaten Hannibal by never engaging in direct combat.

In the founding Fabian document it is written: “For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless.”

Fabians would advocate the strategy of permeation, whereby you affect the change you want to see by slowly permeating all levels of society’s controlling structures. Once you have permeated sufficiently you can strike collectively and essentially take over from within. It would be a technique that the Trotskyists would become notorious for, such as with the French Turn.

As Matthew Ehret wrote in his “Origins of the Deep State”:

“The Fabian society program focused on broad social welfare programs such as universal health care, mass education, and better working conditions which were designed to attract the disenfranchised masses. Under the Fabian program, such programs held no substance in reality, as the true means to justify their creation was banned…[that is]…true scientific and technological progress…

This ruse was thus designed to merely bring the will of the lower classes under the deeper influence of a ruling oligarchy via the promise of ‘democratic socialism’ and a naïvely utopian ‘end of history’ ideal…The controllers of Fabian Socialism are not, nor have they ever been ‘democratic socialists’…”

At its heart, Fabianism was merely fascism with a “scientific” socialist face.

Matthew Ehret writes:

“The Round Table movement served as the intellectual center of the international operations to regain control of the British Empire and took on several incarnations over the 20th century. It worked in tandem with the Coefficients Club, the Fabian Society, and the Rhodes Trust, all of whom witnessed members moving in and out of each others ranks.”

Historian Carrol Quigley, wrote of this cabal in his posthumously published “Anglo-American Establishment”:

“This organization [the Round Table]…has been the most powerful single influence in All Souls, Balliol, and New Colleges at Oxford for more than a generation…it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it.”

H.G. Wells was chairman of the League of Free Nations Association and published his call for “world peace” in his book “The Idea of a League of Nations” published in 1919.

The purpose was again to lure people in with glorious promises of a “social democracy” while in fact weakening nation states such that they would be unable to resists the coming of a new world empire.

H.G. Wells would publish “The New World Order” in 1940, and was no doubt the guiding influence on Julian Huxley’s outlook when he wrote the manifesto for UNESCO.

Bertrand Russell’s “Proposed Roads to Freedom”

In 1918, Russell publishes “Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism”. Here are some relevant quotes:

“My own opinion – which I may as well indicate at the outset – is that pure Anarchism, though it should be the ultimate ideal, to which society should continually approximate, is for the present impossible…On the other hand, both Marxian Socialism and Syndicalism, in spite of many drawbacks, seem to me calculated to give rise to a happier and better world than that in which we live. I do not, however, regard either of them as the best practicable system…The best practicable system, to my mind, is that of Guild Socialism, which concedes what is valid both in the claims of the State Socialists and in the Syndicalist fear of the State by adopting a system of federalism among trades for reasons similar to those which have recommended federalism among nations.”

“The terrorist campaign in which such men as Ravachol were active practically came to an end in 1894. After that time, under the influence of Pelloutier, the better sort of Anarchists found a less harmful outlet by advocating Revolutionary Syndicalism in the Trade Unions and Bourse de Travail.”

“In England Marx has never had many followers. Socialism here has been inspired in the main by the Fabians…What remained was State Socialism and a doctrine of ‘permeation.’ Civil servants were to be permeated with the realization that Socialism would enormously increase their power. Trade Unions were to be permeated with the belief that the day for purely industrial action was pasts, and that they must look to Government (inspired secretly by sympathetic civil servants) to bring about, bit by bit, such parts of the Socialist programme as were not likely to rouse much hostility in the rich. The Independent Labour Party…was largely inspired at first by the ideas of the Fabians…It aimed always at cooperation with the industrial organizations of wage-earners, and chiefly through its efforts, the Labour Party was formed in 1900 out of a combination of the Trade Unions and the political Socialists. To this party, since 1909, all the important Unions have belonged, but in spite of the fact that its strength is derived from Trade Unions, it has stood always for political rather than industrial action.”

“Anarchism, which avoids the dangers of State Socialism, has dangers and difficulties of its own…Nevertheless it remains an ideal to which we should wish to approach as nearly as possible, and which, in some distant age, we hope may be reached completely…The system we have advocated is a form of Guild Socialism, leaning more, perhaps, towards Anarchism than the official Guildsman would wholly approve. It is in the matters that politicians usually ignore – science and art, human relations, and the joy of life – that Anarchism is strongest… ”

In his “Proposed Roads to Freedom” Russell makes it clear that he is most sympathetic to the philosophy of Mikhail Bakunin and Prince Kropotkin, who were both involved with the Mounte Verità society, a sister branch to the Theosophists (refer here for the relevance of this).

Interestingly, Russell’s proposed roads to freedom, that is, socialism, anarchism and syndicalism all lead to the same destination point…the League of Nations.

Russell writes:

“If the peace of the world is ever to become secure, I believe there will have to be, along with other changes, a development of the idea which inspires the project of a League of Nations.”

Thus, Russell is all for minimising the power of the State until we can reach the “ideal,” in the form of a world empire.

The Unity of Science: Radical Positivists, Eugenicists, and Anarchists Unite

The Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricism was a group of philosophers and scientists who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna. The Vienna Circle’s influence on 20th-century philosophy, especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy, is immense up to the present day.

The philosophical position of the Vienna Circle was called logical empiricism (aka: logical positivism). It was greatly influenced by such members as Ernst Mach, David Hilbert, and Bertrand Russell. The Vienna Circle was committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment and its aim was to make philosophy “scientific” with the help of modern logic.

This was very much along the line of what David Hilbert (member of the Vienna Circle) had called for at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1900, whereby Hilbert put forth the thesis that all scientific knowledge should be reduced to the form of mathematical “logic.” Thus, all “scientific” knowledge would henceforth be solely deducible from mathematical models.

In 1900, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead (who taught Russell) set forth to achieve Hilbert’s challenge which resulted in the three volume “Principia Mathematica” published thirteen years later. The Principia would be the new Bible in many ways for generations of analytical philosophers and logical positivists.

Continuing along these lines, the Unity of Science Movement was organized in the late 1930s by former members of the Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricists, such as Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, and new members such as Ernest Nagel. The greatest aim being to create an encyclopedia that would establish how the unity of sciences should proceed, bringing together intellectuals to establish a fortress against the chaotic terrain of politics, which was extremely adverse to the “ideals” of a scientific way of life. All contributors to this process agreed that the progress of science should eventually create a “scientific world-conception,” helping to build (or control) a big picture of what science means.

“Encyclopedia and Unified Science” would be published by the movement with this aim. The first edition came out in 1938 and was co-written by Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris, John Dewey, Niels Bohr and Bertrand Russell.

Interestingly, science fiction was considered just as important as the logic of science to this world-conception.

Though H.G. Wells was not an official member of this movement, we should keep in mind that he was always committed to the same goals as Russell. Wells was not only a world famous writer of science fiction, but was also working on his own new secular Bible series in three books designed to unite all forms of knowledge. (4)

Among this trilogy is “The Science of Life” co-written with Julian Huxley, and meant to give a popular account of all major aspects of biology as known in the 1920s. It is credited with introducing modern ecological concepts and emphasised the importance of behaviourism and Jungian psychology (Jung was a member of the Mounte Verità society).

It also promoted Eugenics.

Julian Huxley, Vice President (1937-1944) and President of the British Eugenics Society (1959-1962) was the one to coin the term “transhumanism.” Julian was also the first director-general of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1946, to which he wrote its mandate “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy.”

Norbert Wiener was taught by Bertrand Russell at Cambridge and by David Hilbert at the University of Göttingen. He would go on to found “cybernetics.”

John Dewey, a member of the Unity of Sciences movement, would greatly dictate and shape a global educational reform, which was promoted by UNESCO, and has immense influence to this day.

It was clear that along with a world government, you would need a world-conception of what is regarded or approved of as “scientific,” all else would be thrown into the dust bin and would be considered unfit to shape policy. This was enforced by the construct of a global education system to implement the “right” sort of ideas and forbid the “wrong” sort.

Russell would put it forth most succinctly in his “The Scientific Outlook” (1931):

“The scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researchers of psycho-analysis, behaviorism and biochemistry will be brought into play… all the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called “cooperative” i.e.: to do exactly what every body else is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished will be scientifically trained out of them.”

In 1953, Russell would update this creepy piece of work and make it even creepier, writing:

“It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment… This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

If you think that sounds awfully similar to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” it is because it is, in fact Russell was contemplating charging Aldous with plagiarism.

Albert’s Radical Days

Albert Wohlstetter started at City College of New York (CCNY) in 1931. It was here that he would be mentored by Morris Raphael Cohen, a professor of philosophy and mathematics and a Russian émigré with a nihilist background.

In the 1930s, City College had developed a reputation as the “proletarian Harvard,” and this was very much due to Cohen, who started a Marx Circle at CCNY. This Marx Circle met regularly at the Henry Street Settlement House, which had been established by followers of the Fabian Society.

The Henry Street Settlement House was purchased by Jacob Schiff in 1895, likely through Rothschild funding (recall Rothschild also funded the London School of Economics which was started by the leading Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb). By the 1930s the settlement house was being used for classrooms and residences. Schiff was a financier who went on to receive the Medal of the Rising Sun from Japan in exchange for providing $200 million for the Japan-Russo war and then went on to pour millions into the Bolsheviks that overturned Czarist Russia in 1917.

While a Professor of Philosophy at CCNY (1912-1938), Morris Raphael Cohen came under the influence of philosopher Thomas Davidson, founder of the Fellowship of the New Life from which the Fabian Society arose in 1884. Cohen’s “Marx Circle” continued within Davidson’s enterprise. Cohen also studied under William James, co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research (connections to the Theosophists), while at Harvard University.

Cohen was also strongly influenced by Bertrand Russell, who in turn held Cohen in high regard. Cohen would write in his autobiography “A Dreamer’s Journey”:

“It was the study of Russell’s Principia Mathematic which I began soon after I was appointed to teach mathematics at City College in 1902, that finally liberated me…Russell came closer to being my philosophical god than any one before or since…”

Cohen would also mentor Ernest Nagel and Sidney Hook at CCNY. All of these men were close mentors/friends to Albert Wohlstetter. Hook would become a leader of the Marxist faction at CCNY.

Nagel cowrote “An Introduction to Logic and the Scientific Method” with Morris Raphael Cohen, in 1934.

Ernest Nagel, one of the founders of the Unity of Science Movement, earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1931 and went on to spend his academic career there, becoming the first John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at the University in 1955.

Upon graduating from City College in 1934, at the age of twenty- one, Albert enrolled at Columbia Law School. Albert abandoned law school, after a year, for a graduate program in mathematics. He wrote his MA thesis under the supervision of Ernest Nagel and under the watchful eye of his friend, the philosopher and mathematical logician Willard Van Orman Quine. (5)

Alfred North Whitehead was Willard Van Orman Quine’s thesis supervisor for his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1932. It was Whitehead who introduced Quine to Bertrand Russell which began their correspondence.

Morton White was another one of Ernest Nagel’s doctoral students, and a close friend of Albert (6) who would join the Fieldites (a Trotskyist splinter group) along with Albert.

It should be clear thus far that, Albert was heavily under the influence of the Unity of Science movement thinkers, with Fabian Society overlap, since his days at City College New York.

During Albert’s time as a student at Columbia University (1934-1939), he would become very close friends with militant philosopher and Trotskyist Sidney Hook and found a mentor in Columbia’s highly respected Art Historian and Trotskyist intellectual Meyer Schapiro. (7)

The reader should be aware that Sidney Hook is credited as having converted James Burnham (who, like Hook, was also a professor in philosophy at the New York University) to Trotskyism, acknowledged by Burnham himself in his autobiography. In 1933, along with Sidney Hook, Burnham helped to organize the socialist organization, the American Workers Party (AWP).

In 1934, Trotskyists in the Communist League of America (CLA) did a French turn on the American Workers Party (AWP), in a move that elevated the AWP’s James Burnham into the role of a Trotsky lieutenant and chief adviser.

Sidney Hook earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, under the supervision of John Dewey. It was at Columbia that Hook began the project that was to occupy him throughout the 1930s, of seeking a synthesis between Karl Marx’s “dialectical materialism” and Dewey’s pragmatism.

In the late 1930s, Hook assisted Trotsky in his efforts to clear his name in a special Commission of Inquiry headed by John Dewey, otherwise known as the Dewey Commission.

The Dewey Commission was initiated on March 1937 by the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky. The commission proclaimed that it had cleared Trotsky of all charges made during the Moscow Trials (8) and made the claim that Stalin had framed Trotsky.

This Commission was a pseudo-judicial process set up by American Trotskyists and its sympathizers. It had no power of subpoena, nor official imprimatur from any government.

Thus, we find a very clear overlap between the Unity of Science Movement and the Trotskyists.

Albert would co-write at least one article with Morton White an article for the “Partisan Review” (9) which was a very influential Marxist magazine that had become more Trotskyist in its leaning. This was due to a new cast of editors, including Dwight Macdonald.

Dwight Macdonald is another close friend of Albert. (10)

Albert would actually join a communist group called the Fieldites, also known as the League for a Revolutionary Workers Party (LRWP), a splinter group from the “official” Trotskyists. In the case of the Fieldites, they had a reputation of having an even more aggressive stance against Stalin’s Soviet Union than the typical Trotskyists. So even more militant.

Interestingly, the founder of the Fieldites was Max Gould (his pseudonym was B.J. Field) a former Wall Street petroleum analyst and graduate from Columbia University. Field had been personally close to Trotsky (11) in the early 1930s and was one of the leaders of the CLA during the heated 1934 period before he was expelled. It was at this point that Field founded the LRWP in May 1934.

The LRWP soon found itself under investigation by the FBI for subversive activities.

Thus, one very big question that comes to mind is, if Wohlstetter was a card carrying member of the LRWP (12), how did he manage top security clearance as a leading nuclear strategist for the RAND Corporation during the McCarthyite era and to which the House Committee on Un-American Activities acted as a standing committee from 1945-1975?

Even Herman Kahn, another prominent RAND nuclear strategist had his security clearance temporarily removed due to his wife’s affiliation with a communist group. So why was Albert’s past never brought up?

Alex Abella offers a possible explanation for this in his “Soldiers of Reason,” where he writes:

“…the records of the group [LRWP] were lost when Field, moving files surreptitiously from an office in a horse-drawn lorry—this was 1934, after all—became involved in an accident at a busy intersection after his horse died. Afraid that he would be charged with the accident and that his radical activities would land him in an even greater jam. Field fled the scene, leaving all the files, publications, and membership rolls to be disposed of by New York City sanitation.”

It is this rather dubious story that is used to explain how all records of the LRWP were lost, never to be found again, and how Albert was very conveniently given a fresh start.

So yes, if we are going to be “fair” with Albert, he was never a faithful Trotskyist, but then again, who ever was? The entire group was notorious for infighting, factions, splintering and permeation tactics, with a long list of renunciations. The importance is rather on what were all these groupings, notably the Fabians, Unity of Science Movement and the Trotskyist all working towards, since it was no coincidence that they were always revolving in each other’s orbits.

Albert was steeped in Marxist doctrine in tandem with the ideologies from the Unity of Science Movement by a network of socialist philosophers that spans three generations, and thus it is absurd to claim that this was all just a coincidence or a “brief” phase of radical experimentation on Albert’s part.

Renunciations, switching titles and mock conversions were all part of the game.

A Road to Damascus? Trotskyists “Convert” to Radical Positivism

James Burnham would remain a “Trotskyist intellectual” from 1934 to 1940. Before this, James Burnham graduated from Princeton, followed by Balliol College, Oxford University (recall Carroll Quigley’s quote on Balliol’s connection to the Round Table and the Fabian Society) before becoming a professor in philosophy at the New York University where he met Sidney Hook and was converted to Trotskyism.

In February 1940, Burnham renounced both Trotsky and Marxism altogether, writing “Science and Style: A Reply to Comrade Trotsky,” explaining his reasons for this and why from now on he would be a follower of Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead and the new Encyclopedia of Unified Science:

“Do you wish me to prepare a reading list, Comrade Trotsky? It would be long, ranging from the work of the brilliant mathematicians and logicians of the middle of the last century to one climax in the monumental Principia Mathematica of Russell and Whitehead (the historic turning point in modern logic), and then spreading out in many directions – one of the most fruitful represented by the scientists, mathematicians and logicians now cooperating in the new Encyclopedia of Unified Science.”

In 1941, Burnham would publish “The Managerial Revolution” which was a sort of guidebook to Fabian Society thinking at the time of how the world was to be ruled. In fact, Burnham was of the viewpoint that this vision had already won (for more on this refer here).

In his “The Managerial Revolution,” Burnham echoes the Fabian Society methodology and Russell’s “The Scientific Outlook,” writing:

“Nevertheless, it may still turn out that the new form of economy will be called ‘socialist.’ In those nations – Russia and Germany – which have advanced furthest toward the new [managerial] economy, ‘socialism’ or ‘national socialism’ is the term ordinarily used. The motivation for this terminology is not, naturally, the wish for scientific clarity but just the opposite. The word ‘socialism’ is used for ideological purposes in order to manipulate the favourable mass emotions attached to the historic socialist ideal of a free, classless, and international society and to hide the fact that the managerial economy is in actuality the basis for a new kind of exploiting, class society.”

Although Albert would never make such a dramatic public declaration as did fellow technocrat Burnham, it is clear where he ultimately pledged his allegiance by his promotion of systems analysis (part of the trifecta of information theory and cybernetics) behind everything he did at the RAND corporation. (For more on this story refer to Part 1 of this series)

Burnham would go on to work for the OSS, followed by the CIA and would become “the real intellectual founder of the neoconservative movement and the originally proselytizer, in America, of the theory of totalitarianism.”

This helps us to understand why so many of Alfred Wohlstetter’s acolytes were prominent neoconservatives, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.

RAND, under the guidance of Albert Wohlstetter, would gain the power to execute the mission of the Fabian Society. The Hannibal moment of victory had come with their entry into the JFK administration as McNamara’s Whiz Kids, who would not only “manage” the Vietnam War, but all wars that ensued under the American flag.

With entry into the government, they now had access to influencing all national policy including housing, healthcare, and education. Their permeation had become absolute.

Albert and Roberta would continue living in Laurel Canyon (a center of the counterculture movement), promoting an image of Albert as the ever-loving and patient teacher to an endless stream of doting students who would see him as a father figure, rather than for what he truly was, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Notes

(1) Colin Spencer (1996), The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism, Fourth Estate, pg. 283.
(2) I. Bernard Cohen (1985), Revolution in Science, Harvard University Press, p. 345.
(3) Ibid.
(4) The three books to H.G. Wells’ self-declared “new Bible” were: “The Outline of History” (1919), “The Science of Life” (1929), and “The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind” (1932)
(5) Ron Robin (2016), “The Cold War They Made: The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter,” Harvard University Press, p. 40.
(6) Ibid, p. 38.
(7) Ibid, p. 40.
(8) The Moscow Trials occurred between 1936-1938 and concluded that Trotskyist cells were at the heart of a fifth column operation within Russia which were committed to overthrowing Stalin and bringing Russia into a pro-Fascist program.
(9) Wohlstetter, Albert; White, Morton Gabriel (Fall 1939). “Who Are the Friends of Semantics?”. Partisan Review. 6 (5): 50–57.
(10) Wreszin, Michael (1994). A Rebel In Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight Macdonald. New York: HarperCollins. p. 113.
(11) Ron Robin (2016), “The Cold War They Made: The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter,” Harvard University Press, p. 45.
(12) Alex Abella (2008), “Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire,” Harcourt Books, p. 76.

[Part 3 will go over Albert’s role in shaping the RAND/Whiz Kids management of the Vietnam War, and his relationship to Team B, the false dichotomy of Kissinger vs Brzezinski, and the Trilateral Commission.]