Ezra Pound: The Marxist Anti-Semitic Zionist?

Abstract

Tim Redman would judge Pound's relation to Italian Fascism after a full and fair consideration of the facts (8). Not only is his work seriously flawed by over-documentation at the expense of ideological analysis and by omission of incriminating facts, it lacks a theoretical grasp of fascist ideology and therefore cannot fully demonstrate Pound's espousal of Italian Fascism. Redman commits many errors of ideological interpretation while repeating the apologetics of earlier Pound critics, so that Pound is again detoxified. Although Redman deplores the additional segregation of Pound's poetry from his life and politics (1, 3, 4), he largely ignores The Cantos, thus suggesting falsely that Pound's politics s marginal to the poem.Redman insists that Pound, as a left-fascist, is sympathetic toward the working and imbued with a corporatist or democratic rather than statist socialism. He cites Pound's apparent affinities with Guild Socialism, syndicalism and left-wing fascists who hoped that Mussolini would empower Italian Fascist workers' or syndicates (156, 157, 160, 161). Ever seeking a with Marxism (273), Redman's Pound is an anti-capitalist and pro-Leninist who saw World War II as a class war against usury (216). Actually, Pound favors neither socialist democracy nor the proletarian ownership or control of the means of production. He detests trade unions as plunder associations and frequently denounces socialism (Selected Prose 211). Although Redman stresses Guild Socialism's influence on Pound, his own evidence suggests that Pound favors monetary reform rather than the industrial democracy sought by the Guild Socialists and the fascist left. Apparently Pound never protests that Mussolini, in denying political and economic power to fascist labor organizations, had reneged on his promise of a genuine corporate state. Pound also seems to accept Mussolini's prohibition of strikes, his policy of compulsory arbitration by the state (usually deciding in favor of employers), his restriction of labor's rights of association, Ns limitation of workers' political representation to state-controlled organizations and his unequal segregation of employers and workers in separate corporations. Even Redman seems to acknowledge, however extenuatingly, that by the middle 1920s Mussolini had largely abandoned socialism, that he exploited Italian labor and that he frustrated left fascists (173).What was the sympathy Pound always felt for Marxism (273)? Redman cites scattered Marxist references in Pound's writings of the 1930s to argue for his political eclecticism (73, 109), thus implying that he is M, full-fledged fascist. For the same purpose Redman claims that Lenin belongs in Pound's pantheon (73). In reality, Pound's praise of Lenin indicates admiration not for Bolshevism but for the leadership principle which, unlike Bolshevism, is central to Italian Fascism. By the 1930s Pound regarded Communism, deprived of Lenin, as a bog Atrophy of the Leninists, I 227). Nor is Lenin in Pound's pantheon, for Pound distrusted Bolshevism and Marxism even in the 1920s. Like Major C.H. Douglas, Pound advanced Social Credit's financial reforms as a bulwark against Marxist-Bolshevist proletarian dictatorship and, in his radio broadcasts, condemned Communism as a barbaric, Jewish-inspired attack on private property.Pound's ideology rendered impossible any rapprochement with Marxism. Far from being an historical materialist (22), he believes that economic health depends on will and intelligence. Such idealism partly explains Pound's attraction fascism, which was an idealistic and voluntaristic reaction to leftist materialism and historical determinism (Sternhell xvi, 21, 25, 28, 67, 212, 213-65, 270-71, 284-85). Nor does Pound regard warfare as inevitable, for in his view capitalism is fundamentally healthy. Like A.R. Orage, Silvio Gesell, Hitler and many fascists, Pound attacks loan capital--not capitalism per se--as the true cause of hostility between workers and capitalists, whom Pound (like other fascists) conjoins in the category of producer (Ezra Pound Speaking 195). …