In the class of authors who are most likely to be completely unknown to non Anglo-Saxon members of this forum, Anthony M. Ludovici, who, in the aftermath of WW2, fell into an obscurity from which counter-currents tried to bring him out in the 2000s (https://www.counter-currents.com/2018/01/remembering-anthony-m-ludovici-7/), deserves very special mention and attention.
Since I stated in all good faith and after some research that none of Marshall McLuhan’s books had been translated, I have been disabused by M. van den Heide who has referred me to https://www.amazon.fr/Marshall-McLuhan/e/B004N8S43K/ref=dp_byline_cont_book₁ (most of his books were actualy translated into Italian; see https://www.ibs.it/libri/autori/Marshall%20McLuhan).
Now, I am positively certain that none of Ludovici’s 40 books or so have been translated. His bibiography is available, as well as most of his texts, at.
The preface to « Lysistrata, Or Woman's Future and Future Woman [To-day and To-morrow] » has been chosen to introduce his writings to a French audience at https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2018/02/28/anthony-m-ludovici : with an introductory essay on his conservative stand on democracy and science, Liberalism and consumerism, Socialism and Marxism, Christianity, Judaism, and feminism, multiculturalism and multiracialism,
All these ideologies had already been critically examined by various authors, most of whom specialised, so to speak.
Racialists, with the exception of the politologist and eugenist L. Stoddard, focused on racial matters and issues pertaining to race, such as coloured immigration. Criticism of democracy, that was more or less implicit in them, was axiomatic in Carl Schmitt, Spengler and in Heidegger. From those philosophers and politologists both Liberalism and Marxism received due critical attention, while, with the exception of Stapel and Möller van den Bruck, Edgar Jung and Niekisch (Stefan Breuer, « Anatomie de la Révolution conservatrice », 1996), race and the Jewish question were only touched upon incidentally or epistolarily. The belief in the utility of technology for improving human societies was strongly criticised as a symtpom of decay and decadence by the so-called « Conservative Revolution », without any of its proponents being able to see the close connexion between the emancipation of woman and technicism, that is, as defined by Ortega y Gasset (« Rebellion of the Masses, 1932, p. 56), the rise of industrialism and the intensification of scientific experiment, while Friedrich G. Junger, while recognising that « [t]echnical progress [...] favors the emancipation of woman in order to absorb her as a worker in its organization… », went astray in stating that it « not only robs her of her womanly power, it also impairs her in her deepest purpose » ( « The Falure of Technology », 1946)..
Twenty- years earlier, Ludovici had stated, more accurately : « … a certain number of women begun to think that conception without congress would be a god-send, but a scientific technique, which realizes this desideratum, has also been brought to ever greater efficiency. Artificial impregnation — the scientific aid again ! — is now a thoroughly familiar operation, frequently performed ; and, if the present tendencies continue, and the body- despising values culminate in their extreme logical consequence — the elimination of the body — there can be no doubt that it will become ever more and more customary » (« Lysistrata », p. 51. Regarding the need, referred to here, of modern people to use a variety of artificial aids in order to remedy their various deficiencies, it will have escaped nobody’s attention that it can be considered as the early stage of what was to be known much later as transhumanism).
Ten years or so after Spengler had predicted the decilne of the West, the cultural anthropologist J. D. Unwin, in « Sex and Culture » (1934), foresaw its fall, for a reason that had however not been seen, or taken into account, by the German philosopher : feminisation. It was not until « Metaphysics of Sex » that Evola tackled the issue of feminism, a poor relative of the critique of the « western » world. As for Christianity as an ideology, leaving aside Evola, Chamberlain, and Rosenberg, it was more than relatively spared by major conservative or reactionary thinkers in the Interwar period ; some of them were even believers.
On the other hand, Ludovici, in that very period, dedicated, if not a book, at least whole chapters, to the systematic examination of all these issues, which, for most of them, he re-examined after WW2, in an attempt to deepen, enhance and further strengthen his earlier analysis.
Almost all his books starts where the previous one ended. The preface to « A Defence of Aristocracy. A Text Book for Tories » (1915) begins with these words : « In three books published during the last five years [« Who is to be Master of the World? An Introduction to the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche », 1909 ; « Nietzsche: His Life and Works », 1910 ; « Nietzsche and Art », 1911] the subject of Aristocracy has already formed a no insignificant part of my theme, and in my last book it occupied a position so prominent that most of the criticism directed against that work concerned itself with my treatment of the aristocratic standpoint in Art. Much of this criticism, however, seemed to be provoked by the fact that I had not gone to the pains of defining exhaustively precisely what I meant by the true aristocrat and by true aristocracy in their relation to a people, and in the present work it has been my object not only to do this, and thus to reply to my more hostile critics, but also to offer a practical solution of modern problems which is more fundamental and more feasible than the solution offered by either Democracy or Socialism. » The first sentences of « A Defence of Conservatism. A Further Text-Book for Tories » (1927) return to the scope of two of his four previous works : « In my Defence of Aristocracy [1915] I endeavoured to state the case for aristocratic government against popular or democratic control. In my False Assumptions of Democracy [1921 I attempted to show the speciousness of the philosophy behind democratic ideas and the liberal attitude in general. And, in the present work my object has been to reveal Conservatism not only as a policy of preservation, but of discernment in change. Both in my criticism of Conservatism in the past, and in my outline of a Conservative philosophy of the future, I have argued from the standpoint that true Conservatism should preserve not only by the obstructive principle of "no change", which may at times amount to stagnation and mere negativism, but also by the progressive and positive principle of refusing to introduce anything new, except when it is capable of permanence, that is to say when it is consistent with the eternal laws either of nature or of human nature. »
The continuity of topics discussed through six decades and almost fifty books, and the invariability of the positions taken, make this work an exceptionnally organic one.
Is his definition of Conservatism, that was given above, not reminiscent of another author’s ?
Indeed, the reference is to Evola, one of the very few Conservatives in a sea of reactionnaries. There are perhaps more points of contact between Evola and Ludovici than between the former and any other like-minded author. Some of these have been highlighted at.
In "Narcisismo femminile e complesso d’inferiorità", published originally in ‘Roma’ in January 1951 and later appended to « Metafisica del sesso », the former stated : « Feminism originated in Anglo-Saxon countries for reasons that are of a non-social nature, but are intrinsic and deep, since it stems from a disavowal of the unsophisticated feminine nature and from the inhibition of woman’s normal sexual life », which are to be ascribed to « the Protestant Puritan education and a false concept of morality and "respectability" » The very same factors are invoked in « Enemies of Women: The Origins in Outline of Anglo-Saxon Feminism » (1948), in which the bedrock of feminism is traced back to the teachings of Socrates. Basically, these are the ones that are held responsible, even before Christian morality, for the degeneration of the White man and the decay of his culture.
« Everybody knows that Socrates made an unfortunate choice when he married Xanthippe. In plain English, like many a man before and after him, his marriage was a failure. According to traditional reports, his wife would scold him and then drench him with water, and once she actually tore off his coat in the market-place in full view of the crowd.
Now, any ordinary man, in like circumstances, would simply have shrugged his shoulders and admitted that he had shown bad taste, had, in fact, "fallen into the soup" and must make the best of it. Not so Socrates. Where his own self-esteem was concerned, he was a genius at making the inferior appear the superior plight, and he had the astounding effrontery to try to persuade his friends that he ha deliberately chosen a shrew for his moral edification. Thus he told Antisthenes that he had chosen Xanthippe so that her bad temper might make him more easily put up with all sorts and conditions of men. He had also the shamelessness to try to make his acquaintances believe that, just as horsemen prefer spirited horses, because having mastered these they easily cope with the rest, so he had chosen Xanthippe.
More fools his friends to be taken in by such rubbish?
Yes; but it is significant that Socrates made these attempts to deceive them in order to save his self-esteem, and it lends a colourable warrant to my interpretation of the motives that actuated him in opposing and ultimately defeating the belief in the oneness of man.
Naturally his five new positions [(a) The Duality of Man, i.e. his two-sided existence. The one side being his body and the other his soul or mind ; (b) The soul's independence of the body ; (c) The soul's superiority to the body ; (d) The worthlessness and despicableness of the body ; (e) The immortality of the soul.] were not immediately accepted by the ancient world. They were long resisted by the best remnants of the Greek people. Among the most formidable of these was his spiritual grandchild, Aristotle, who continued to insist, when judging a man's worth, on the inseparability of his visible and invisible aspects.
But there were too many in the world whom the Socratic teaching pleased and flattered and, in the end, it became the dominant doctrine of the White Man. For it made things so easy. No speechifying, no protestations of faith, no airs or graces, could alter the shape of your nose, or modify your height, or make your eyes beautiful, or make you in any way superior in body to the way you had been made. Even Jesus himself hinted that it was impossible for a man by taking thought to add one cubit to his stature.
If you were inferior bodily, however, you could, along Socratic lines, always greatly enhance your prestige by posing as a person with a superior soul, and, by making certain professions of faith, adopting airs of piety and purity, and claiming high falutin' interests, pass as a very superior person. In short, Socrates gave the chance of a second innings on the moral side, if your initial innings on the bodily side had been a failure.
No wonder Socrates ultimately prevailed.
Thus, for over two thousand years, the Socratic doctrine has been part of our atmosphere, soaking into our blood and bones; so much so that, today, even those who have never heard of Socrates — the charwoman, the postman and the coal-heaver — all speak on these matters of man's s visible and invisible aspects as if they had sat at his feet.
Now the Feminists of all times — whether in Hellenistic Greece or in Renaissance or 17th century Europe, naturally seized with alacrity upon the arguments Socrates offered them. For, if the body was negligible, if bodily differences did not matter, if the soul alone counted, the visible or physical differences between man and woman were also negligible. Indeed, the more one behaved as if there were no difference between man and woman, the purer one was, because the less one was considering the despicable body.
Thus the equality of the sexes was established with ease and, on the basis of similar reasoning, continues to be established with ease to this day. Even the necessary correlation of peculiar bodily or anatomical parts with certain corresponding mental characteristics — a correlation which would seem to be obvious and constant in nature, and on the basis of which the sexes would have to be classed as different mentally as they were different physically — was easily denied on the principle of the Socratic negligibility of the body, and perfect equality was assumed because, presumably, no sex-differentiated parts could be proved of the invisible aspects of human beings » (p. 5-6, p. 12-15)« … the two thousand years of body-contempt and body-neglect have led us to a loftier spirituality, the very grossness of modern life, the very besottedness of the modern mind, and the very system of government in the modern world, Democracy, which is materialism in politics (estimating the value of an idea or policy by measuring the body-weight behind it, not by measuring the authority, ability, or competence behind it) », (Lysistrata, p. 28) and have led him to the plainest biological, not to say zoological, racism, from which considerations pertaining to what Evola called racism of the second degree are not excluded. Of course, the term « soul » is never used.
The depth of the oblivion into which he has fallen is commensurate with his overarching vision.On a biographical note, like Evola, he never took "Education" seriously, did not have a degree, nor did he bother to get one. He was a small landowner from 1941 to 1959, in Suffolk, and was self-sufficient. « He died in 1971 in Ipswich, England, at the age of 89, bequeathing about £70,000 — over $630,000 in today's inflated money — to the University of Edinburgh for research into miscegenation. The results would surely have interested advocates of the melting pot and segregation alike. Edinburgh, however, refused the money for this purpose and, with the acquiescence of Ludovici's executors, diverted one-third of it to study Huntington's chorea. True, the disease is hereditary. But, then, so are the effects of miscegenation.» (http://www.anthonymludovici.com/instaur.htm)
It should be noted that the recent revival of interest in this author was not initially due to Counter-Currents Publishing, but to the efforts of John V. Day, who edited an anthology of excerpts from Ludovici’s many interesting books, entitled The Lost Philosopher: The Best of Anthony M. Ludovici (Educational Translation and Scholarship Foundation, 2003), which was favorably reviewed by A. de Benoist. Incidentally, Day was also the author of the massive and informative scholarly study Indo-European Origins: The Anthropological Evidence, one of the very few related to race that have cited some of J. Evola’s works.
While Ludovici’s works contain much more good than bad, and are certainly unjustly ignored, he is not quite on the same level as Evola, being heavily influenced by a certain scientism and evolutionism.
Thank you for setting the record straight. Counter-Currents still has to be credited for serving as an echo chamber for Day, as well as for publishing Ludovici’s auto-biography (« Confessions of an Anti-Feminist: the Autobiography of Anthony M. Ludovici », 2013).
Indeed, Ludovici was influenced by evolutionnism, while believing in involution («The laws of evolution [...] cover millions of cases of retrograde metamorphosis, or change consisting of the loss of complex qualities or members for the purpose of survival. And in all these cases of retrograde metamorphosis, instead of the identity of the individual becoming extended, it is actually diminished or reduced.Development is, therefore, really the exception rather than the rule », « The False Assumptions of Democracy », p. 33) and by scientism, while being most critical of technicism and the notion of progress (« Man is instinctively conservative in the sense that probably millions of years of experience have taught him that a stable environment is the best for peace of mind, present and future security, automatism of action (that action which requires least thought), and a ready command of material and artificial circumstances. It is the genial innovator, or the lunatic, who disturbs peace of mind by introducing an unaccustomed and unaccountable element into life. It is the dislocation of economic conditions that makes the present and future doubtful. It is the repeated introduction of new instruments, new weapons, new methods, and needs for fresh adaptations, that makes automatism impossible. And it is the complication of life by novel contributions to life's interests and duties that makes a ready command of circumstances difficult. » (« A Defence of Conservatism », p. 1-2. The emphasis is ours).
Attention: Starting December 14, 2019 Yahoo
Groups will no longer host user created content on its sites. New
content can no longer be uploaded after October 28, 2019.
Sending/Receiving email functionality is not going away, you can
continue to communicate via any email client with your group members. Learn More
evola_as_he_is@{{emailDomain}}