WHO MAKES HISTORY?

The decisive role of the masses in history has been emphasized, frequently, totally out of proportion, by a great number of philosophers, and an even greater number of philosophies. (I trust to be forgiven this little hyperbole as soon as the intent of my paradox has been clarified, which is to suggest that certain schools of thought, especially in the field of social activism, contain no philosophers within their ranks.)

My own Soviet background has put the works of one particular philosopher, and one among the greatest, I dare say, into sharp focus. Not that I have ever been a Marxist myself, but Soviet preoccupation with Karl Marx had made his figure quite conspicuous in my eyes (unfortunately, as my ‘counterbalancing’ reaction to Soviet propaganda, I used to underestimate the historical and philosophical significance of Marxism in the wide variety of its aspects, and only now, completely removed from the Soviet society, having plunged into the cold waters of my new life (waters that had felt so deceptively warm from a distance!) I can give it its due (which, again, is the subject of my several other entries, articles, and, perhaps, a whole book, or one of the main sections of my booklet Capitalism And Christianity).

In this case, now, I do not particularly agree with Marx, but I am grateful to him for bringing up this subject, and thus setting up the parameters of a most instructive debate. So, who makes history?

In my judgment, it is not the masses who make history, changing its course in most radical ways, but their populist leaders, their ‘führers,’ who hit upon the most effective way of taking control of the masses. In this sense, the revolutionary significance of Marxism is not in discovering some new objective laws, governing the evolution of human society, but in providing a marvelous how-to guide to aspiring revolutionary minds.

In this regard, what would then be the proper role of the masses in history? No one has put it better than my indispensable Nietzsche in his On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, Section 9:

“History from the standpoint of the masses? The masses seem to me worthy of notice in three respects only: first, as blurred copies of great men, produced on bad paper with worn plates, further, as resistance to the great, and finally, as the tools of the great; beyond that, may the devil and statistics take them!”

...Curiously, it was precisely in the role of the tools of great men that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin saw the masses. Hence, his doctrine of the Party as the leader of the masses. It goes without saying that the Party itself cannot function without a tightly centralized chain of command, that is, without its own leader, and Lenin naturally saw himself as that leader…

…They say that the Leader Principle was invented by the Russia-born German Graf Hermann von Keyserling (1880-1946), who gave it to Hitler. I say that this principle may have been preexistent since the dawn of history, but Lenin must have passed it on to the honorable Graf…

No further comment needs to be made after such a salvo of powerful pronouncements, except to say Amen to them all, and to my whole History section as well. At least, until the next time when I shall revisit it for the purpose of accretion and/or revision.