The Urgent Question for Men and Women: How Do We Want to Affect People? -- Part 3 (continued)

EDWARD GREEN COMPOSER, MUSIC EDUCATOR / NEW YORK CITY

The Urgent Question for Men and Women: How Do We Want to Affect People?

BY EDWARD GREEN Part 3 V. The Suppression of Good Will

It is plain, both from the book I am quoting and from other historical sources--his speeches, and his Mein Kampf--that Hitler judged people the way I had once judged a woman: not by who they were, by how important they made him. And he was ruthless with anyone who questioned his importance. All through the 1920's in Bavaria, he had his political enemies murdered while the right-wing judiciary and police looked the other way. And once he became Chancellor of Germany in l933--not through an election, but through a backroom deal brokered by wealthy people convinced he would defend their economic superiority--he continued to murder. As Eli Siegel said, once we suppress our good will, "there is no limit to how merciless we can be."

Hitler's anti-semitism, plainly, was an important element in his popularity. But there was a second element in his astonishing rise to power, and nowhere outside of Aesthetic Realism have I seen it described straight: he hated the very idea of economic equality, and dedicated his life to destroying it. Hitler took the new economics going on in Russia--where the land and resources were owned by all the people--as a personal insult. The philosophy behind this new economics he described as:

[a] doctrine [which] denies the aristocratic principle of Nature, and sets mass and dead weight of numbers in place of the eternal privilege of strength and power. This is raw contempt for people--seeing millions of other men and women as nothing but "dead weights." And Hitler was not alone in this contempt--it was the very basis of industry not only in Germany, but in England, France, and the United States. The profit motive, I have learned from Aesthetic Realism, is, at its core, ill will--the feeling that other people exist to serve and make money for you. "Fascism," said Eli Siegel in a 1970 lecture: is an attempt to see that capitalism functions, by getting rid of its enemies. Fascism is the desire to kill good will if it is a fight between good will and our ego. Studying for this seminar, I had a chilling memory. As a teenager the game I loved most to play with friends was the board game "Stalingrad"--a detailed reconstruction of the war between Hitler and the Russian people. Either side could win. And I remember with shame, I preferred to play the Nazi side.

Certainly, as a young Jewish boy, I knew what Hitler had done. I was frightened of him; I knew about the gas chambers, the ovens; I knew about Auschwitz. But I see now, Hitler also fascinated me, and for a terrible, but logical reason--he embodied, in a near-ultimate degree, a desire I also had: to have the world and other people bend to one's will. It is not accidental that at this same time, though I was young, I was also a fervent supporter of the Vietnam War--the most terrible international ill will America has ever had. In our desire to impose the profit system on people who didn't want it, the Vietnamese, we were very much like the army which, in June, l941, invaded Russia at Hitler's command.

VI. A Different Purpose

In l938, Sergei Eisenstein began to work on a film he passionately hoped would prepare the Russian people for the coming Nazi onslaught. He said he wanted "every Russian man, woman and child to meet [this] war...with a sense of optimism." This was a beautiful purpose: a desire to have a greatly good effect on people; on history itself. And it was the purpose, also, of his composer, the great Sergei Prokofiev. The film they created together was Alexander Nevsky .

I play now music from the climax of this film--the "Battle on the Ice." Set in the 13th century, the story is based on an actual happening: the victory, in 1242, by the Russian people over an earlier invading German army--the Teutonic Knights.

Prokofiev is brave as he depicts evil. There are sinister, short melodies in the low brass--metallic and cramped; and there are angry, edgy, unyielding rhythms in the strings. That hard unyieldingness corresponds closely to a description Mr. Siegel gave in the 500th issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known , entitled "Towards Stalingrad Day:"

Fascism is the ego made iron....What [Hitler] found [at Stalingrad] is that good is also powerful. Good also has its metal and its speed. Here is some of the finest music of our century--great as art; great also as ethics. As we begin, the Teutonic Knights are advancing; but soon the Russians counterattack--and there is a new sound in the brass. We hear, breaking through the confusion of battle and the angry shouts of the Teutonic soldiers, a bright trumpet melody--confident and joyful. Prokofiev's orchestra is saying: "Yes! Good also has its metal and its speed." [Music Example 2: From "Battle on the Ice"-- with a fade down and up in the middle]

"A large purpose of Aesthetic Realism," wrote Eli Siegel in the Preface to Self and World , "is to have a person make up his mind as to the value for him of contempt and respect." I love him for that grand, beautiful purpose. In Aesthetic Realism, at last, there is the education people have longed for, needed all through history. Our purpose is to like the world, and have a good effect on people. It is what we are born for; and the one way to be honest, kind and strong.

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