What Marxism was to the society of Economic Man, Calvinism was to that of Intellectual Man: the final, messianic exaggeration of i...ts creed. In both, the belief in the attainment of freedom and equality could only be maintained by sacrificing actual freedom. The doctrine of determination through predestination in Calvinism is parallel to that of determination through the class situation in Marxism. Both abolished actual freedom in existing society to maintain the belief in the reality and imminence of freedom in the coming society. And both collapsed as orders when it was proved that the only society which they could realize was an unfree society.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying ...some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.... They think that they have pacified ...Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As survivals from an archaic order, serfdom and slavery had common conflicts with a modern world of nineteenth century capitalism ...and simultaneously faced crises that ended with abolition of the two systems. But they faced their mid-century crises in very different ways.... Southern slaveholders developed a far more cohesive world and much more power over it than did the noblemen in their world. By mid-century slavery was flourishing as never before, and serfdom was staggering toward bankruptcy. The aggressive vitality of the planter aristocrats in defense of their society and their spirited commitment to slavery as a way of life contrasted sharply with the submissiveness and withering support of serfdom on the part of the Russian nobility.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »