From Page 146 to 148 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer, describes how practical men of action are needed to take over the reins of government from fanatics to preserve the newly installed dispensation. I quote Hoffer and then comment on his content.
Hoffer (H after this): “ XVII
The Practical Men of Action
A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of action.”
My response: Noe that practical men of action is Hoffer’s technical phrase defining the politicians and administrators that consolidate and preserve the revolution once it is the new government and social order.
H: “It is usually an advantage to a movement, and perhaps prerequisite for its endurance, that these roles should be played by different men succeeding each other as conditions require. When the same person or persons (or the same type of person) leads a movement from its inception to maturity, it usually ends in disaster. The Fascist and Nazi movements were without a successive change in leadership, and both ended in disaster. It was Hitler’s fanaticism, his inability to settle down and play the role of a practical man of action, which brought ruin to his movement. Had Hitler died in the middle 1930s, there is little doubt that a man of action of the type of Goering would have succeeded to leadership and the movement would have survived. There is of course the possibility of a change in character. A man of words might change into a genuine fanatic or into a practical man of action. Yet the evidence points that such metamorphoses are temporary, and that sooner or later there is a reversion to the original type. Trotsky was essentially a man of words—vain, brilliant, and an individualist to the core. The cataclysmic collapse of an Empire and Lenin’s overpowering will brought him into the camp of the fanatics. In the civil war he displayed unequaled talents as an organizer and general. But the moment the strain relaxed at the end of the civil war, he was a man of words again, without ruthlessness and dark suspicions, putting his trust in words rather than in relentless force, and allowed himself to be pushed aside by the crafty fanatic Stalin.
Stalin himself is a combination of fanatic and man of action, with the fanatic tinge predominating. His disastrous blunders—the senseless liquidation of the kulaks and their offspring, the terror of the purges, the pact with Hitler, the clumsy meddling with the creative work of writers, artists and scientists—are the blunders of a fanatic. There is small chance that the Russians will taste the joys of the present while Stalin, the fanatic, is in power.
Hitler, too, was a fanatic, and his fanaticism vitiated his remarkable achievements as a man of action.
There are, of course, rare leaders such as Lincoln, Gandhi, even F.D.R., Churchill and Nehru. They do not hesitate to harness man’s hungers and fears to weld a following a make it zealous unto death in the service of a holy cause; but unlike a Hitler, a Stalin, or even a Luther or Calvin, they are not tempted to use the slime of frustrated souls as mortar to build a new world. The self-confidence of these rare leaders is derived from and blended with their faith in humanity, for they know that no one can be honorable unless he honors mankind.
114
The man of action saves the movement from the suicidal dissensions and the recklessness of fanatics. But his appearance usually marks the end of the dynamic phase of the movement. The war with the present is over. The genuine man of action is intent not on renovating the world but on possessing it. Whereas the life breath of the dynamic phase was protest and a desire for drastic change, the final phase is chiefly preoccupied with administering and perpetuating the power won.
With the appearance of the man of action the explosive vigor of the movement is embalmed and sealed in sanctified institutions. A religious movement crystallizes in a hierarchy and a ritual; a revolutionary movement, in organs of vigilance and administration; a nationalist movement, in governmental and patriotic institutions. The establishment of a church makes the end of the revivalist spirit; the organs of triumphant revolution liquidate the revolutionary mentality and technique; the governmental institutions of a new or revived nation put an end to chauvinistic belligerence. The institutions freeze a pattern of united action. The members of the institutionalized collective body are expected to act as one man, yet they must represent a loose aggregation rather than a spontaneous coalescence. They must be unified only through their unquestioning loyalty to the institutions. Spontaneity is suspect, and duty is prized above devotion.”
No comments:
Post a Comment