ferkiss, victor_ezra pound and american fascism

8/8/2019 Ferkiss, Victor_Ezra Pound and American Fascism

1/25

EZRAPOUND AND AMERICANFASCISMVICTOR . FERKISSMontana State University

ZRA POUND,who today is confinedin St. Elizabeth'sHospitalfor the insane in Washington, D. C., is without doubt the singlemost influential poet and literary critic that America has producedduring the current century. Pound was also a convinced fascistwhose broadcasts from Mussolini's Italy during World War II re-sulted in his indictment for treason by an American grand jury in1945.1The three facets of Ezra Pound's career-as poet, as critic andliterary midwife, and as political thinker-have a generic relation-ship to one another. Even the public at large recognizes that arelationship exists between Pound, the author of complex, avant-garde poetry, and Pound, the inspirer and counselor of a wholeliterary generation; even the specialist is but little aware of theintimate relationship which exists between Pound's aesthetic prin-ciples and his political principles. Pound's ideas about society areinseparable from his ideas about art; they developed together, andboth are correlatedwith his largerworld view and the whole patternof his life.Although Pound's political views are unsystematic and obscurelystated and in later years took the form of polemics with paranoidovertones, they cannot be regarded primarily as a case study forpsychiatrists. Not only did they have a profound influence on thesubject matter and form of his poetry, but (and more important forthe student of political ideas) they closely parallel those of otherpersons who, together with Pound, are commonly called AmericanFascists.

The problem thus arises of whether the use of the term "Ameri-can Fascist" is intellectually justifiable in this or any other case. Iwould assert that the use of this term is justifiable inasmuch as anumber of American political theorists and demagogues Poundamong them -espouse sets of beliefs which have more in commonwith one another and with Europeanfascism than they do with any

1Pound was subsequently declared insane and unfit to stand trial, a judg-ment questioned by at least one prominent psychiatrist. Newsweek, XXXIV,No. 26 (December 26, 1949), 35.(173]


2/25

174 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS [Vol. 17other broad area of political thought. The principal exponents ofthis creed were, besides Pound, the late Huey Long, Father CharlesE. Coughlin, Gerald L. K. Smith, and, to a limited extent, LawrenceDennis.

American fascism had its roots in American populism; it pur-sued the same ends and even used many of the same slogans. Bothdespaired of achieving a just society under the joined banners ofliberalism and capitalism. The attacks on finance capitalism, thehatred of social democracy and socialism, the belief that represen-tative democracyis a mask for rule by a predatory economic pluto-cracy, and that a strong executive is essential for the creation andpreservation of a middle-class society composed of small independentlandowners, suspicion of freedom of the press and civil liberties gen-erally as the shields and instrumentalities of the plutocracy, ultra-nationalism, anti-Semitism (both latent and active), and, finally, apeculiar interpretationof history which sees in events a working-outof a dialectic which opposes the financier and the producer thesepopulist beliefs and attitudes form the core of Pound's philosophy,just as they provide the basis of American fascism generally. In de-veloping these beliefs Pound followed a path from populist nostalgiato support of world fascism parallel to that followed by a numberof other American fascist ideologues.

Unlike many other political philosophies, fascism in America, aselsewhere, was the outgrowth of the accumulation and synthesis ofa variety of ad hoc judgmentsoccasionedby specific problems.Thusit is useful to know something about the circumstancesof Pound'sintellectual career before engaging in a systematic examination ofhis political thought.

Pound grew up in the frontier town of Hailey, Idaho. His fatherwas an active champion of the cause of "money reform."2 "Moneyreform" provided the lodestone for Pound'spolitical and social judg-ments throughout his life. After pursuingadvanced academic studyin Romance languages in the United States and abroad, Pound en-tered upon a career as a college instructor at Wabash (Indiana)College, which was cut short when he was released from his post for

2The frontispiece of Pound's pamphlet Social Credit: An Impact (London:Stanley Nott, Ltd., 1935) is a picture of scrip printed by his father for local-use in place of specie, which was in notoriously short supply throughout theWest during the Populist period.


3/25

1955] POUND AND AMERICAN FASCISM 175being "too European"and "unconventional."3 Following this frustrating experience,Pound went back to Europe, which then becamehis permanent home.

First in England, then in France, Pound served as correspondentand talent scout for Poetry magazine. In addition to carrying onhis own writing, Pound supplied inspiration, encouragement, andguidance for many importantliterary careers, including that of T. S.Eliot. Nonetheless, Pound continued to be interested in social andparticularlymonetary reform. As early as 1912, Pound was writingregularlyfor a Guild Socialist weekly, A. R. Orage'sNew Age,4 andwas an active supporter of the English Social Credit movement.Later, in 1927, Pound moved to Italy and eventually abandonedSocial Credit for Fascism5 - no sharp break, as the later history ofthe Social Credit movement was to prove.6In Italy Pound carried on a crusade in behalf of fascism as thebest instrument for accomplishingneeded social reforms by writingfor Sir Oswald Mosley's journals in Britain7 and, later, by broad-casting for Radio Roma.8 During the Allied occupation of Italy,Pound was seized by American troops,9 returned to the UnitedStates for trial, and committedto St. Elizabeth's.It was while he was confined in an American prison camp inItaly that Pound wrote the Pisan Cantos,'0 the final section of hisepic poem, The Cantos."1 The Cantos provide, both in their form

'Charles Norman, The Case of Ezra Pound (New York: The Bodley Press,1948), p. 18.4Peter Russell (ed.), An Examination of Ezra Pound: A Collection ofEssays edited by Peter Russell (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1950), Intro-duction, p. 12.'He gives his reasons in "A Social Creditor Serves Notice," Fascist QuarterlyII (1936), 492-499.'See C. B. Macpherson, "The Political Theory of Social Credit," TheCanadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XIV, No. 3 (August,1949), 378-393, for analysis of Douglas' development, and Doris French,"What's Happening to Social Credit?" The Canadian Forum, XXVI, No. 312(January, 1947), 223-224 and J. R. Mallory, "The Prophet in Politics, WilliamAberhart," ibid., XXX, No. 362 (March, 1951), 274-276 for the later historyof the Canadian movement.'Pound had early expressed reservations about the capacity of the Britishmovement in Social Credit, op. cit., p. 28, but he later adopted a more favor-able attitude toward the movement. See especially "The 'Criterion' Passes,"British Union Quarterly III (April-June, 1939), 60-72.8Current Biography, 1942 (New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1942), p. 674.'The New York Times, May 6, 1945, p. 12."(New York: New Directions, 1948)."(New York: New Directions, 1948).


4/25

176 THE JOURNALOF POLITICS [Vol. 17and their substance, an elaborate statement of Pound's social andaesthetic philosophy. When, in 1946, a special committee of theLibrary of Congress decided to award Ezra Pound the BollingenPrize for The Pisan Cantos, they arouseda storm of angry argumentpro and con, and the result was the productionof an extensive litera-ture on the relation of the artist to politics, a subject outside thescope of this article.12 Our concern is with Ezra Pound's conceptionof what constitutes the good life and the reasons he chose fascismas the means necessary and desirable for achieving that life.

POUND'SBASIC PHILOSOPHY:ITS RELATIONSHIPTO HIS POETRYAND ECONOMICS

Ezra Pound believed that only fascism could adequately solvethe world's economic problems and bring an end to economic injus-tice. For Pound economic injustice is the source of all social ills,since economicsare for him the very foundation of life. Usury is forPound the one great all-encompassingevil - the subject at once ofhis political polemics and his poetry. Nor is he moved to condemnusury merely because of the economic suffering it causes others.He hates it as he does because it destroys all civilization, all culture,and the artist himself. It has destroyed the AmericanRepublic, andunless halted by fascism it will destroy human civilization.Before discussing Pound's economic philosophy in detail, it isimportant to understandits relation to his metaphysics, or what hesubstitutes for a metaphysics, since for Pound both economics andpoetry should alike be subject to one basic principle the avoidanceof abstractions: metaphysics is the death of art and of life. Poundis essentially an imagist, seeking to catch and convey beauty andmeaning through sense appearances. All that which is not senseappearanceis meaningless,and the contemplationof abstractionshasevil consequences. Ultimate reality, if indeed such a thing exists, is

12The most important polemics and commentaries are Norman, op. cit.;Robert Hillyer, "Treason's Strange Fruit: The Case of Ezra Pound and theBollingen Award," The Saturday Review of Literature, XXXII (June 11, 1949),9-11 and "Poetry's New Priesthood," ibid., June 18, 1949, pp. 7-9; The CaseAgainst the Saturday Review of Literature, The Fellows of the Library ofCongress and Others (Chicago: Poetry, 1949) and Peter Viereck, "Pure Poetry,Impure Politics, and Ezra Pound," Commentary, XI (1951), 340-46 andDream and Responsibility (Washington: The University Press of Washington,1953).


5/25

1955] POUND AND AMERICAN FASCISM 177of no interest to us. Immediae apperception is superior to ratiocina-tion. "We think because we do not know."''3 Pound's greataesthetic "discovery," the Chinese ideogram, colored both his poetryand his philosophy. For Pound, the ideogram is the ideal form ofrepresentative symbol because it is the picture of a thing;'4 it is notan abstraction. Chinese society was an ideogram culture (and thusable to produce the non-metaphysical wisdom of Confucius), a goodsociety - one which avoided the dominanceof usury.

Usury is evil because it bends economic life away from realitieslike wheat and iron and labor toward abstractions such as interest,credit, and capital. Its prevalence in a society means the destructionof all art and all human decency, the end of history and religion.'5Usury corrodes the taste of the masses and classes alike so thatthey cannot respond to such fundamental realities as labor, birth,death, and art.'6

With Usurano picture is made to endure nor to live withbut it is made to sell and sell quicklywith usura, sin against nature,is thy bread ever more of stale ragsis thy bread dry as paper . . .17Usury is closely linked by Pound with what a sympathetic critichas called the "very sterilities and avoidances" which drove Poundto Italy. The poet must-"because he is a poet - take a dark viewof capitalistic democracy" says this interpreter of Pound.'8 Usuryis the enemy of poetry because it favors the use of cloudy language

throughout society. If men used language clearly, they would under-stand the true nature of usury.'9 Thus the romantic poet favorsusury because he beclouds language.20 The same thing happens in

"3AVisiting Card (London: Peter Russell, Ltd., 1952), p. 20."4Harold H. Watts, Ezra Pound and the Cantos (London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1952), p. 36.15"The power of putrefaction aims at the obfuscation of history; it seeks todestroy not one but every religion, by destroying the symbols, by leading offinto theoretical argument." A Visiting Card, op. cit., p. 18."Watts, op. cit., pp. 30-31.7Canto 45."Watts, op. cit., p. 14.19"Usury . .. is antithetic to discrimination by the senses. . . . The money-changer only thrives on ignorance." Culture (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions,1949), p. 282.20Watts, op. cit., pp. 15-16.


6/25

178 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS [Vol. 17painting, another of Pound's principal interests. In a typically ve-hement letter he says: "I can tell the bank-rate and component oftolerance for usury in any epoch by the quality of line in painting.Baroque, etc., era of usury becoming tolerated."2'

Pound held that the poet must fight, as he claimedhe had alwaysfought, to rescue language and learning from the usury-endoweduniversities and to restore precision and beauty to poetry. This isthe poet's most important task in the battle against abstractions.Pound saw in Mussolini an ally in the fight against the usurersand saw the Fascist economists as working toward an appreciationof economic realities and the destruction of the rule of the interna-tional banker. This is the basis of the alliance between poetry andpolitics. As Watts puts it, Pound believed that "the labour of Mus-solini was the equivalent, on the political stage, of his own on thestage provided by language."22It has been indicated above that Pound is time-bound and earth-bound in philosophy and ethics. He hates alike both the transcend-ent and the metaphysical. His ideal is the stable society, where allis quiet, orderedbeauty, as in a Japanese poem. This is the ideal towhich all must conform, and it is an ideal basic to Pound's thought., commentator writes: "The Myth of The Cantos is that of the4table society, the good society, which has been and which, if onlymen will let themselves be guided by the sacred exemplars, can beagain."23 The great exemplarsof the stable society are ConfucianChina and Colonial America,but they were destroyed because "sta-bility has two enemies besides its own natural tendency to decay.One is the activity of the moneylender,the taxgatherer,the banker,the great financial combine; the other is the other-worldliness likeTaoism in China - which treats life as a vain dream."24

The subject of The Cantos is the good societies and their decay.The Cantos are composed of alternating descriptions of the goodand beautiful life in anti-usuriouseras and the evil and ugliness ofmodernlife. This is the one great dichotomy for Pound; all else hehas to say is a variation on this theme. China and Colonial Amer-ica are not the sole exemDlarsof the stable society. Many other

2"Letters to Carlo Izzo, January 8, 1938, quoted in D. D. Paige (ed.), TheLetters of Ezra Pound 1907-1941 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1950),p. 303.22Watts, op. cit., p. 18.28G. S. Fraser, "Pound: Masks, Myth, Man," in Russell, op. cit., pp. 179-80.24Ibid., p. 178.


7/25

1955] POUND AND AMERICAN FASCISM 179leaders have fought the good fight - seventeenth century Sienna,Tuscany under Leopold, and St. Ambrose come in for their share ofglorification by Pound. But the past is past. It is the job of thepoet to seek out examples of the good society in his own time. ForPound there were two such, the Catholic Church and the ItalianFascist State.25

Pound's attitude toward the Catholic Church is a curiously am-bivalent one somewhat resemblingthat of Charles Maurras. He doesnot accept Christianity as true and insists that Christ was sociallyirresponsible.26 The Church has exalted his enemy Aquinas andcondemned his idol Scotus Erigina; therefore its official philosophyis basically wrong. It is as a human society that Pound respects theChurch, as a society which admits of beauty and seeks justice onearth: ". . . There is more civilization lying around unused in thecrannies, zenanas, interstices of that dusty and baroque fabric thanin all other institutions of the occident."27

Pound is especially fond of the Catholicism of Italy, where hefeels it has been transformed by the old Mediterranean paganismand is suffused with beauty and joie de vivre. This sympathy paral-lels his rejection of the United States on aesthetic grounds, as isillustrated by his statement, "We will have to join the Monsignoriagainst Babbitt."28Yet it is not merely on aesthetic grounds that Pound admiresCatholicism. He holds that it has to a great extent kept faith withthe canonist doctrines on usury and other questions of social justice.He commends to his friends QuadragesimoAnno and the other Papalsocial encyclicals,and the 1940 Manifesto of the Americanhierarchyon social questions.29 "The Protestant centuries," he maintains,"twisted all morality out of shape. 'Moral' was narrowed down to

25Watts, op. cit., p. 17.26"Any more than there is a sense of social order in the teachings of theirresponsible protagonist of the New Testament. The Anschauung of an indi-vidual of, or among, a dominated race, however admirable from some aspects,is not the Anschauung of a man who has held responsible office." Culture,op. cit., p. 38. This bears an interesting resemblance to some remarks of MaxWeber in his essay "Politics As a Vocation"; see H. H. Gerth and C. WrightMills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1946), p. 120 ca.27Culture, op. cit., p. 77.28Ibic., p. 155.29Ibid., p. 76. Letter to Henry Swabey, March 7, 1940, in Paige (ed.), oh.cit., p. 339.


8/25

180 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS [Vol. 17application to carnal relations. Thus acting as usurers' red her-ring."30Pound, however, retains a major quarrel with Christianity ingeneral and Catholicism in particular their Hebraic origin. He be-lieves that most of the acceptable Christian ideas are derived fromthe Stoics.31 We shall later discuss Pound's anti-Semitism in itsmore virulent and topical form, closely tied to political problems.Here, however, is its source-in Pound's fear and hatred of thetranscendent. Not a single ethical idea now honored, Pound says,pursuing his theme, is drawn from the Jewish tradition. "All theJew part of the Bible is black evil."32Though basically a nominalist, Pound is also a voluntarist ratherthan a rationalist, another important element in preparing the wayfor his approach to fascism. Since will is basic, faith is exalted abovereason. "Who," Pound asks, "has received honours by puttingargumentation where before there had been faith?"33 This was themistake made by most of the medieval theologians.34 Values areembodied in and transmitted through physical sense objects, notintellectual constructs. "Tradition inheres in the image of the gods,and gets lost in dogmatic definitions. History is recorded in monu-ments, and that is why they get destroyed."135From this exaltationof tradition over criticism it is a short step to the acceptance ofcurbs on discussion. "The good" for Pound is, apparently, self-evident. One's task is to seek, understand, and accept, not to con-struct de novo or analyze. True human virtue lies in the acceptanceof the good embodied in the concrete rather than in transcendentalends, the pursuit of which, Pound holds, leads to social irresponsi-bility and the destruction of the concrete good.

POUND'S ECONOMIC PHILISOPHY

Economics, and the question of social credit in particular, arePound's major interest in social philosophy; yet it is here that he ismost obscure. The reason is not merely the complexity inherent in30Culture, p. cit., p. 256."1Letterto Ronald Duncan, March 14, 1940, in Paige (ed.), op. cit., p. 341.32Letter to Henry Swabey, May 9, 1940, quoted ibid., p. 345.33AVisitingCard, op. cit., p. 19."Ibid., p. 23."5lbid.,p. 24.


9/25

1955] POUNDANDAMERICANASCISM 181the subject of money and the obscurity of previous works on thissubject. It is rather the result of a consciously adopted techniquewhich is even more in evidence in his poetry than in his prose.For Pound knowledge comes through the senses, and so appar-ently do generalizations,by means presumablyof some process akinto intuition. We grasp relationshipsbest by seeing objects in juxta-position; yet there is no way the mind can form generalized con-cepts capable of expressing these relationships. The Cantos gainwhat effectiveness they have by simply presenting descriptions oflife in various societies in associations of contrast or comparison.The reader himself must see the relationships and conceptualizethem for himself. His task is analogous to that of the user of theChineseideogram. In neither case are any abstract words employed:all abstract relationshipsare shown by combiningpictures. Pound'suse of this imagismis not confined to his poetry. His other writingsutilize the same device; its purpose is to force the reader to see thepoint, rather than to explain it to him.36 The result is an erraticstyle, striking but often repellent, which is the cause of much of thedisdain for and the ignoring of Pound's social writings.The Critique of Capitalism. What is the subject of Pound's ob-scurely phrased polemics? Usury, of course. But what exactly doeshe mean by this term? Why does he hold usury to be evil, and whatremedy does he proffer? The answer to these questions forms thecorpus of Pound's economics, while the belief that anyone who at-tacks the problem of usury as Pound conceives it is on the side ofvirtue is the basis of his politics. Usury for Pound is usury in theclassical canonist sense.37 It is the taking of interest charges forlending money. The taking of interest implies, in the classical view,that money is fecund, a proposition which this view denies. Sincemoney is not productive, interest charges are pure robbery. Pounddoes in certain cases, however, distinguish between productive and

36Critics have held that this method has proved self-defeating. Watts be-lieves that language cannot be used as paint can. He holds that nominalismmakes communication impossible and Pound's attempt to communicate failslargely because his method cannot transmit his concepts without creation of anew abstraction which, in order to be simple enough to be seen throughimages, is oversimplified. In The Cantos, of course, this oversimplification isthe division of mankind into the usurious and the anti-usurious. "Only Pound'shatred is single; and it is as simplifying of reality as is the central tenet of aradically idealistic system." Watts, op. cit., p. 125.87"And usury is a vice, a crime, condemned by all religions and every an-cient moralist." Gold and Work (London: Peter Russell, Ltd., 1951), p. 12.


10/25


11/25

1955 POUND AND AMERICAN FASCISM 183property."43 It is identical with liberalism in making men the ser-vants of money and economic abstractions. "The. only difference isone of economic detail."44This, of course, is a common formulation of American fascismand is allied with the fascist concept of the world Jewish plot, ofwhich both Communism and banking are tentacles. Communism'sfailure to discriminate between capitalistic and private property isin itself sufficient to cause its rejection by Pound, but he also saysin denunciation of Communism: "Men not as yet at sufficientlyhigh mental level to considersoberly the requirementsof a monetarysystem are unfit to administer even . . . a chicken run."45 In addi-tion, Communismmust be rejected because of its egalitarianism. Itis fundamentally destructive of human excellence, and not even fitfor the higher mammals.46Social Credit. Pound's positive recommendations n the field ofeconomics are based on the teachings of Major C. H. Douglas andSilvio Gesell.47 The central idea is simple. The state must step inand take over the credit function, thus breaking the power of usuryat its source. "The state HAS credit, and does not need to rent itfrom banks. .."48 ". . . 'The provision of the correct quantity ofmoney shd. be the first and most importantduty of the State' . . ."49

"3America,Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War (London: PeterRussell, Ltd., 1951), p. 15. A movement which cannot distinguish betweencapital and property is "blind." Culture, op. cit., p. 191.44Ibid.45Ibid., pp. 191-92.4"Ibid.47"My efforts . . have been directed towards establishing a correlationbetween Fascist economics and the economics of canon law (i.e., Catholic andmedieval economics) on the one hand, and, on the other, Major Douglas'Social Credit proposals together with those of Gesell, known as the 'NaturalEconomic Order'. . . ." America, Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War,p. 16. For a critical study of Douglas' economics see Margaret Myers, Mone-tary Proposals for Social Reform (New York: Columbia University Press,1940), pp. 106-46 and of Gesell, ibid., pp. 26-70.4"Social Credit: An Impact, op. cit., p. 21.49Culture, op. cit., p. 46. The quotation is from Frederick Soddy, who, saysPound, "here represents the summit of modern ethics as applicable in orderedsociety." Soddy was an English chemist, winner of a Nobel Prize, who becamean active writer on social credit. Some of his work appeared in the UnitedStates, including a series of articles written for Social Justice. See that pe-riodical, V (January 24, 1938), 6; I (NS) (February 28, 1938), 17; etc. OnSoddy's ideas see also Myers, op cit., pp. 71-105.


12/25

184 THE JOURNALOF POLITICS [Vol. 17"The basis of credit is the abundanceof nature, plus ... the respon-sibility of the people."50Pound believed that social credit was the panacea for all ofmankind's economic ills but was vague about how this panaceawould work in the case of such problems as taxation. "Work mon-ey" based not on gold nor on bankers' "fountain-pen money"51will apparently eliminate taxation as such, at least any taxation forrevenue purposes. The state will be able to pay for the goods andservices it needs by issuing new money as new collateral in theform of production is created in the economy.52 Discussion of thepractical problems involved in correlatingthe transfer of goods andthe transferof work money and the details of their interrelationshipare best left to the economists;53 suffice it here to note how Pound'smonomania and negative approachblind him to the complexities ofeconomictheory.The problem for Pound is not alone one of getting rid of therobbery of interest but also one of securing stability and a justprice, another canonist preoccupation. It is in the interest of theworker to have a just price free from monopolistic manipulation.54The United States government could at any time fix a just price,Pound holds, because it has the constitutional right to determine thevalue of money.55 He assumes that control over the amount ofmoney in circulation, if geared to the production of goods, meansstability of prices and wages and hence the end of unjust speculativegains made by those with great economic power. This formulationof the problem ignores the fact that doing away with speculativegains is only a minor part of the problem of creating a just price.Stability also means that a particular ratio between wages and

"0Culture,op. cit., p. 237."1Theterm "fountain-pen money" is used by Pound in an article, "Intellec-tual Money," in the British Union Quarterly, I (1937), 27. He apparentlypicked it up from its probable originator, Father Coughlin, whom he creditedwith resembling the Italian Fascist leader Rossoni in being a man "stirred bythe infamy of the bleeders and the sloth and pusillanimity of the hirelings"and with having done much to educate the American people on the moneyproblem. Culture, op. cit., pp. 246-247, 302.52Jefferson and/or Mussolini (London: Stanley Nott, Ltd., 1935), p. 81."3Seefor example Joseph E. Reeve, Monetary Reform Movements: A Sur-vey of Recent Plans and Panaceas (Washington: American Council on PublicAffairs, 1943)."An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States (London:Peter Russell, Ltd., 1950), pp. 8, 14."What is Money For? (London: Peter Russell, Ltd., 1951), pp. 5-6.


13/25

1955] POUND AND AMERICAN FASCISM 185prices must be established for each of the different segments of thecommunity, and determiningwhat this ratio shall be is the neme-sis of all "just price" advocates. (Is the butcher worth more thanthe carpenter? The carpenter more than the college professor?How much more?) Nevertheless Pound says:

Social justice demands equal advantages for all.The advantage of work-money mainly derives from one fact alone:work cannot be monopolized. And this is the very reason for the bit-ter opposition, for the uproar of protest, natural and artificial, whichissues from the ranks of the gombeen-men, whether they be exotic orindigenous.56Pound believes that the economic problem is one not of produc-tion but of distribution. "The world's producingplant can produce

everything the world needs. There is not the faintest reason todoubt this."57 Only capitalism has prevented us from seeing thatthis is the case. Malthus is rejected as "a son of the usurers."58

Once the state controls credit, something can be done about dis-tribution. And this, for Pound, is a problem merely of getting thegoods which have been produced distributed, not of equalizing dis-tribution. Hitler and Mussolini, Pound felt, were successful in get-ting goods distributed; that this distribution was not on a "demo-cratic" or egalitarian basis was for him an irrelevant objection.59The liberal economy must go. Gesell's ideas can function just as

.well in a controlled economy as in the free economy he believed in,Pound says.60 The best way of controlling the economy is throughthe medium of the corporate state. "It is this generation's job todo what was left undone by the early democrats. The guild system,endowing the people by occupation and vocation with corporatepowers, gives them means to protect themselves for all time fromthe money power."'6' Thus ran the road Pound followed to fascism.An institutionalized mechanism for enforcing the just price isnecessary, Pound argues against the Distributists.62 Above all astrong state is needed to fight the usurers, the "Gombeen Men."It has been suggested that Pound would accept any sort of state as

"8Goldand Work, op. cit., p. 11.57A B C of Economics (London: Faber and Faber, 1933), p. 15.58"Banks Are a Blessing," British Union Quarterly III (1939), 51.59What is Money For?, op. cit., p. 7.80America, Roosevelt, and the Causes of the Present War, op. cit., p. 17."1What s Money For?, op. cit., pp. 11.82Ibid., p. 6.


14/25

186 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS [Vol. 17long as it fulfilled this function. Pound himself has said in Mosley'sintellectual journal: "I AM FOR ANY PARTY THAT WILLPERMIT ME TO FIGHT ECONOMIC ILLITERACY."63

Yet it appears that for Pound fascism is the only force capableof doing the job that needs to be done. Pound rejects Communismand holds that liberal democracyis worthless as long as it continuesits association with finance capitalism. His acceptance of fascismas the only viable alternative is based on his analysis of history.

POUND'S INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY

The broad resemblances between the dialectical edifice con-structed by Pound and the other Americanfascists and that createdby the Marxists are striking. In both cases we have an economictheory based largely on historical analysis, a basically economicconception of historical causation, and a political theory notable forits vagueness and lack of detail, which is based on a rejection ofthe dominant economic philosophy and its attendant governmentalforms. The most important ideological difference between Marxismand American fascism is that, for the fascists, change is primarilya matter of will, not of historical necessity.Pound's detailed critique of liberal democracy is similar to thatof Lawrence Dennis in that it sees rapaciouscapitalists dominatingthe governmentand making a mockery of the liberal tenets of free-dom of speech, press, and the like. His main divergence fromDennis is the emphasiswhich, along with Father Coughlinand HueyLong, he places on the role of finance capitalism as a direct causeof war. For Pound, democracy is a sham.

It's so much waste of time to speak of this or that "democracy."The real government was, and is, to be found behind the scenes. The"democratic" system works as follows. Two or more parties, all underorders from the usurocracy, appear before the public. As a matter ofform, and to reassure the simpletons, some honest men and one ortwo independent idealists are allowed to do a little clean work aslong as they don't touch the various rackets. The biggest rackets arethose of finance and monopolization, including the monopolization ofmoney itself, both within the nation and in combination with thevarious foreign currencies.64

"3"IntellectualMoney," op. cit., 32."4America,Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War, op. cit., p. 17.


15/25

1955] POUND AND AMERICAN FASCISM 187The usurerscompletely control the organs of public opinion.

It must be understood that the whole of the current taste inliterature and the entire journalistic system are controlled by the in-ternational usurocracy, which aims at preserving intact the public'signorance of the usurocratic system and its workings.Liberalism conceals its baneful economics under two pretexts: thefreedom of the spoken and written word, and the freedom of the in-dividual, protected, in theory, by trial in open court, guaranteed bythe formula of habeas corpus. Enquire in India, or in England, towhat extent these pretexts are respected. Ask any American jour-nalist what freedom of expression is left him by the big advertisers.65

Even the universities are dominated by the power of the usurers."Universitytextbooks, throughoutthe whole of the century of usury,known as the nineteenth, were written to maintain the dominationof usury and to keep the professors in their chairs."66How do the usurers secure their domination of the society? AsMax Wykes-Joyce, a disciple of Pound, puts it: ". . . if the gov-ernment declines to be governed, the Central Bank, by manipulatingthe bankers' deposits, can vary the whole economic pattern of theState in any way that it desires."67 This corruption spreads;money talks, and advertising and endowmentsprostitute the organsof public opinion. The aim is control of the world and the despoli-ation of its peoples. Usurers involve nations in wars for their ownends. "Usurers create wars to create debts, so that they can extortthe interest and rake in the profits resulting from changes in thevalue of monetary units."68 Usurocracy "makeswars in succession.It makes them according to a preestablished plan. . .."69 Poundidentifies all types of war profits, all evil of every sort, with usu-ry.70 This is the thread on which mankind's destiny is strung."History, as seen by a Monetary Economist, is a continuous strug-gle between producersand non-producers,and those who try to make

8"Gold and Work, op. cit., p. 8."8America,Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War, op. cit, p. 13."7SeeMax Wykes-Joyce, "Some Considerations Arising from Ezra Pound'sConception of the Bank," in Russell, op. cit., pp. 224-225."8Goldand Work, op. cit., pp. 6-7."9Ibid.,p. 5.70"You seen a lot, and unpleasant; but WHY WAS IT? Because somesodomitical usurer wanted to SELL the godamn blankets, and airplanes. AsI am trying to indicate in my poem. . . ." Letter to Ernest Hemingway, No-vember 28, 1936. Paige (ed.), op. cit., p. 283.


16/25

188 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS [Vol. 17a living by inserting a false system of bookkeepingbetween the pro-ducers and their just recompense."'7'While the struggle between the producersof real wealth and themoney-lendershas, like Marx's class struggle,been going on through-out history,72 with victories first on one side, then on the other, itsmodern form is unique and is the result of the rise of world-widefinancial and industrial capitalism. Knowledge of this continuingstruggle is particularly useful in gaining an understanding of thehistory of the last few hundred years; it explains the downfall ofthe Americanrepublic,World War II, and why it is the duty of theAmericanpatriot, to support the arms of Fascism.73History entered upon its modem phase in 1694 with the foun-dation of the Bank of England, which Pound terms a "feloniouscombination" and a "gang of usurers."74 This bank attempted tokeep the American colonists under its thumb by draining off allspecie into the British Isles and suppressing the attempts of thecolonists to issue paper money for their own needs. The Americansrebelled against this tyranny, and that rebellion was the root causeof the AmericanRevolution.75 Jefferson76 and Adams both under-stood and attempted to deal with the problem,but their efforts were

"'An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States, op. cit.,p. 6.72This even enters into literary history. Writes Pound: "You can not writeor understand any history, and you can not write or understand any serioushistory of contemporary customs in such a form as the Goncourt and Flaubertnovels, if you persist in staving off all inquiry into the most vital phenomena;that is, into the nature and source of the 'carrier,' of the agent and imple-ment of transference. A total culture such as that of Adams and Jeffersondid not evade such investigation. And the histories of literature which passover their treatment of economic problems are merely a shell and a sham."Ezra Pound, "The Jefferson-Adams Correspondence," The North AmericanReview, 244, No. 2 (Winter, 1937-38), 322-323.73"The war in which brave men are being killed and wounded, our ownwar here and now, began-or rather the phase which we are now fightingbegan-in 1694, with the foundation of the Bank of England." A VisitingCard, p. 9. The prevalence of a monetary interpretation of history in Ameri-can Populism is noted in Reeve, op. cit., pp. 130, 193-94. However, the ap-propriateness of this kind of thinking for preparing the mind for the acceptanceof fascism has not been developed by the commentators."4Gold and Work, op. cit., p. 4."5America,Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War, op. cit., p. 5."8Jefferson realized "that 'liberty' would be a mockery without financialliberty" and knew that "a currency unburdened by usury was essential to areal democracy," says Pound. "The Jefferson-Adams Correspondence," op. cit.,321-322.


17/25

1955] POUND AND AMERICAN FASCISM 189fruitless and the usurers, led by the Jew, Alexander Hamilton, wonthe day.77 The assumption of state debts (the "betrayal" of therevolution78) together with the creation of a national banking sys-tem which was not under political control, marked the turning point.In the United States, a gallant fight against the banking interestswas led by Andrew Jackson and the unsung hero of the "real" Amer-ica, Martin Van Buren, celebrated in Canto XXXVII. Rather thanallow victory to go to the young republic, and seeing that the newwage slavery made the old chattel slavery obsolete,79 the Europeanbankers, led by the iniquitous Rothschilds, caused the Civil War inthe United States. Despite Lincoln'svaliant attempts to defeat themthroughthe issuanceof greenbacks,the usurers gained control of ourcurrency in 1863.80 Lincoln continued restive, however, until hewas assassinated, probably at the behest of the usurers.81

After Lincoln's death the real power in the United States passedfrom the hands of the official government into those of the Roth-schilds and others of their evil combine. The democratic system per-ished. From that time on it has been useless to speak of the UnitLdStates as an autonomous entity.82Since then our politics, despite abortive revolts by Bryan andthe Populists, have completely degenerated. The "infamous" Wil-son83 led us into World War I for the bankers' sake. Harding,

Coolidge, and Hoover were nonentities, and Franklin D. Roosevelt,.despite some early promise, showed himself to be a pliant tool ofthe usurocracy. Save for a few independent giants like Henry Ford,the usurers control American economic life.84 They also ruleAmericanpolitical life; except for a few books, and heroes like theelder Lindbergh and Coughlin, no resistance is offered to theirtyranny.85

"Hamilton, we are told, was probably a Jew. America, Roosevelt and theCauses of the Present War, op. cit., p. 9; Jefferson and/or Mussolini, op. cit.,p. 20.78America,Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War, op. cit., p. 9.79America,Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War, op. cit., p. 12.80A Visiting Card, op. cit., p. 10.81America, Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War, op. cit., p. 11.82Ibid., p. 17.83A B C of Economics, op. cit., p. 53."An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States, op. cit.,p. 14.85Among the books used by Pound are Claude G. Bowers' Jefferson andHamilton: The Struggle for Democracy In America (Boston: Houghton MifflinCompany, 1926), Martin Van Buren's Autobiography (Washington: United


18/25

190 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS [Vol. 17But in Europe there is hope. Fascism and National Socialism

have arisen and freed their national economies from the control ofthe international bankers by basing the economy on real wealthrather than on abstractions. The Rome-Berlin Axis is the first seri-ous attack on the usurocracy since Lincoln.86 The fascists arecompleting the work of the American Revolution. Mussolini's ob-jectives are those of Thomas Jefferson. This is why the interna-tional bankers who control the so-called democraciesmake war onthe fascist powers. "This war is part of the secular war betweenusurers and peasants, between the usurocracy and whomever doesan honest day's work with his own brains or hands."87

POUND'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHYIt is not difficult to see why Pound, viewing history in thisfashion, endorsed fascism as a world force. Yet a question stillremains. What did he understand to be the essence of fascism?

To what extent is it a necessary means for getting rid of usury?What elements of fascism are of universal application and can serveas lessons for the United States? What changes would Poundmake in American political institutions, and what changes in itssocial life?

Pound was so money-centered that he never answered thesequestions directly. Originally he claimed not to be interested inquestions of political regime, but as time went on he advocated anever greater degree of fascism for the United States. It seems cer-tain that, by the end of his public career, Pound would have beenproud to serve as poet laureate to a regime headed by a Joe Mc-Williams, Father Coughlin, or Gerald L. K. Smith. A more or lesschronologicalsummary of Pound's political dicta follows. In it onefinds little change, only a seemingly inevitable logical progressionfrom the less explicit to the more explicit, and from a feeling thatthe necessary reforms can be effected within a democratic frame-work to a conviction that liberal democracy must be replaced byfascist distatorship.States Government Printing Office, 1920; ed., John C. Fitzgerald), and HenryAdams' History of the United States of America (New York: Charles Scrib-ner's Sons, 1889-91; 9 vols.).8America, Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War, op. cit., p. 12.87Ibid.,p. 5.


19/25

1955] POUND AND AMERICAN FASCISM 191In Pound's writing there is a distinction, often merely implicit,

between the American Republic, a form of government structuredby the Constitution and informedby the aristocraticand anti-usuryideals of the founding fathers, and Americandemocracy; that is, theUnited States as it actually exists in the twentieth century, char-acterized by economic oppression,political corruption,and intellec-tual and cultural stagnation. In his political writing Pound tendsto identify the spirit of the American republic with the spirit offascism, and to blame a shadowy villain called "liberalism" (a termwhich, for Pound, includes private banking, egalitarianism, controlof communicationmedia by the usurers, and the like) for the cur-rent state of affairs in the United States. The problem is to purifyAmerican democracy by returning to the ideals of the Americanrepublic, ideals which in Pound's view are most explicitly expoundedin the twentieth century in the fascist ideology. A purified democ-racy, Pound says, could attain the good life by doing away withusury and might be as satisfactory a regime as a dictatorship.88However, it appears that the characteristics of this purified de-mocracy strongly resemble those of a dictatorship. Pound's basicpolitical premise is that "a good government is one that operatesaccordingto the best that is known and thought. And the best gov-ernmentis that which translates the best thought most speedily intoaction."89Pound called himself a Jeffersonian Republican.90 In an earlystatement he maintained that fascism was not possible in Americasince the nation had no Mussolini. Besides he did not consider fas-cism essential for attaining the ends he sought. ". . . The Ameri-can system de jure is probably quite good enough, if there wereonly 500 men with guts and the sense to USE it. ..".91 A de-mocracy run by clean, decent men can create a society based on"strength through joy," the necessary basis of any civil society, aswell as can a dictatorship.92 The American form of government"as INTENDED" is as good a system as any, but "no govt. cango on forever if it allows the worst men in it to govern and if it lendsitself repeatedly to flagrant injustice."93 The spread of fascism

88Culture, op. cit., p. 173.89Jefferson and/or Mussolini, op. cit., p. 91.90A B C of Economics, op. cit., p. 53.91Jefferson and/or Mussolini, op. cit., p. 98.92Culture, op. cit., p. 157.93Letter to Langston Hughes, June 18, 1932. Paige, op. cit., p. 241.


20/25

192 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS [Vol. 17"would not need parades, nor hysterical Hitlerian yawping."94 Pro-fascists must analyze and consider "what elements can be used ineither England or America, the general sanity and not the localaccidentals, not the advisibilities of particular time and place butthe permanent elements of sane and responsible government."95As time passed, however, Pound became less sanguine about thepossibility of purifying Americawithout going all the way in copyingthe governmentalforms of the Axis powers. He could not visualizefascism in the United States except after "years of training,"96but,in the meantime, "every sane act you commit is committed in hom-age to Mussolini and Hitler. You follow Mussolini and Hitlerin every constructive act of your government."97 The implicationof this last statement is clear. The United States must follow theexampleof Hitler and Mussolini fully in order to arriveat the whol-ly good society.

Pound's admiration for both Jefferson and Mussolini issues inhis attempt to equate them. Jefferson was an eighteenth centuryMussolini. Jefferson "governed with a limited suffrage, and bymeans of conversation with his more intelligent friends. Or ratherhe guided a limited electorate by what he wrote and said more orless privately."98 In other words, governmentmust be the monop-oly of an elite.99 An elite is a necessity. Only in a one-party state,such as existed de facto in Jefferson's time, is anything worthwhileaccomplished.'00

Common parlance might identify one-party rule with tyranny.Pound, however, on occasion, denounces despotism and its fruits.'0'

94Jefferson and/or Mussolini, op. cit., pp. 127-28.95Ibid.96Current Biography, 1942, op. cit., p. 674.9"Radio broadcast of May 26, 1942, quoted in Norman, op. cit., p. 40.98Jefferson and/or Mussolini, op. cit., p. 15.99Pound does not go into detail on the nature of the elite, although at onepoint he divides nations into four elements: the "constructive" element, the"credulous," the "producers," and the "dregs." Culture, op. cit., pp. 348-49.Pound's hatred of capitalist democracy is linked with his attitude toward ex-cellence by Watts, op. cit., p. 11. Regarding the party and the ruling classessee also Pound's brief remarks in "Demarcations," British Union Quarterly I(1937), 40.1""'I offer the hypothesis that: When a single mind is sufficiently ahead ofthe mass a one-party system is bound to occur as actuality whatever the de-tails of form in administration. . One might speculate as to how far anyconstructive activity CAN occur save under a de facto one-party system."Jefferson and/or Mussolini, op. cit., p. 125.01.Note his attack on despotism in Canto XXXIII and that he is thereinattacking substantive actions rather than political institutions.


21/25

1955] POUND AND AMERICAN FASCISM 193He approvessome actions decided upon and carriedout in a despoticmanner because he approves of the results which they are designedto achieve. Yet the fact that for Pound fascism is a means, not anend, makes him no less a fascist and may even make him a moretypical one, particularly among American fascists. However, thedesire of the human mind for consistency is so great that creedswhich begin life as specific answers to particular problems, if theylast for any length of time, tend to develop)into relatively wellarticulated and unified dogmatisms. And Pound, accepting fascistsolutions in given instances, easily and almost inevitably shifted toglorifying fascism as a total way of life.

Allied to Pound's exaltation of the rule of the elite is his notionof excellence. Although he has been compared by his disciples toJohn Taylor of Caroline'02 in his attacks on the usurpationof dem-ocratic functions by the plutocracy, Pound is no egalitarian.103Jefferson and the other founding fathers did not merely form a sin-gle party (despite labels), but, according to Pound, they also werethe rulers of a de facto corporatestate.'04 Pound considers parlia-ments obsolete in comparisonwith the institutions of the corporatestate.'05 Actually, rule by a totalitarian party involves more realresponsibility in government than does constitutionalism,he writes."A leader who is not supported by legal machinery is more boundby the general will of his party than an elected official who has

"02ByHenry Swabey in "Towards an A. B. C. of History," in Russell, op.cit., p. 197.03"'It is against human nature and against good sense that the diligentshould work for the parasite. No ideal of justice covers any such state of af-fairs. And the rabidist Douglasite never proposed that a national dividendshould provide equal income for diligent and inventful men on the one hand,and for sodden and slothful shirkers on the other."The dividend properly understood is a MINIMUM dividend on the com-mon heritage." "Intellectual Money," op. cit., p. 29.Also note Pound's "For Practical Purposes" in Dynamic America V (Sep-tember 1937), 21.'04"The democratic system was betrayed. According to Adams, Jefferson,Madison, and Washington, it rested on two main principles of administration,local and organic. The basis was roughly geographical, but it also representeddifferent ways of life, different interests, agrarian, fisheries, etc. The delegatesof the thirteen colonies formed, more or less, a chamber of corporations." AVisiting Card, op. cit., p. 15.05"'The corporate state has invented a representative body that shouldfunction in the age of correlated machinery better than the old representationby agricultural districts." Social Credit: An Impact, op. cit., pp. 8-9.


22/25

194 THE JOURNALOF POLITICS [Vol. 17legal forms to fall back on."'06 The question of what sanctions areavailable for enforcing accountability and penalizing breaches ofresponsibility is not discussed.

Hand in hand with the rejection of egalitarianismgoes a rejec-tion of liberal freedoms. These freedomsmust be abrogatedbecausethey are the vehicle of selfish interests.'07 The liberals are evilbecause they corrupt freedom. Therefore in order to protect andpromote the commongood, freedommust be destroyed forever. Thistype of reasoning is common among American fascists and, thoughoften a propagandist'strick, is not wholly disingenuous. It reflects aconception of freedom as instrumental. Freedom for "X" is badbecause "X" is bad and therefore wrong; freedom for "Y" is goodbecause "Y" is good and therefore right. Pound is not so bemused,however,as to pretend,as some fascists do, that freedomfor the goodalone is the only true freedom. He simply ends by defending thesuppressionof ideas as a general principle because of his belief thatmany ideas are wrong and that in particular instances the suppres-sion of these ideas may be necessary.'08

There is in Pound, as in American fascism generally, no directexaltation of the state as such. Rather there is the proposal ofmeasures and institutions which if adopted would create the samesituation in practice as that which would result from the implemen-tation of an ideological exaltation of the state. "The state exists forthe individual, but in our time the individual who does not deemhis own acts and thoughts in certain ways and degreesup and downas to their use to the state (that is the universitas, the congeries ofhumans grouped in the state) is an inferior individual, 109 Poundsaid at one time. But later he achieved a position of typical fascistpseudo-mysticism. "A thousand candles together blaze with intensebrightness. No one candle's light damages another's. So is theliberty of the individual in the ideal and fascist state.""10 He evenchided Mussolini for not being totalitarian enough."' Critics havenoted that Pound, like all fascists of talent, assumes that he will be

'06Jefferson and/or Mussolini, op. cit., p. 110.'07As he Duce has pithily remarked: "'Where the Press is "free" it merelyserves special interests.'" Quoted ibid., p. 41.'08Culture, op. cit., p. 317.'091bid., p. 190."0A Visiting Card, op. cit., p. 7.'11Culture, op. cit., p. 309. Also see John Drummond, "The Italian Back-ground of The Cantos" in Russell, op. cit., p. 116.


23/25


24/25

196 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS [Vol. 17Pound hated New York City. This passion was a strong, though

often inexplicit note in American fascism, closely linked with anti-Semitism. On his visit to the United States in 1939 Pound said thathe would hurry through the "undesirable"atmosphereof New York,"so I won't be smothered"and strike out for the American hinter-land.121

* * *

Pound's social and political philosophy is dominated and in-formed by the notion that monetary reform is the only thing neces-sary for the creation of the good society and that liberal governmentis a facade behind which the all-pervading money power rules. Thesebeliefs are, in large measure,a restatementof the old populist creed.But a despair of ever restoring monetary freedom through consti-tutional democratic means has meant the addition to the populistcredo of an advocacy of the suppressionof democracyand the insti-tution of an authoritariancorporatestate as the sole suitable meansto economic reform.Were Pound alone in this expansion, or (if you will) perversionof populism, his work would be of little interest. Save for a fewEnglish esthetes,L22 his political beliefs have few devotees today.However, the principleson which his philosophyis based also under-lie the speeches and writings of such popular agitators of the nine-teen thirties as Father Coughlin, Gerald L. K. Smith, and, to alesser extent, Huey Long, to name only the most prominent ofAmerican fascist demagogues. Parallels to many of Pound's ideas

"'The New York Times, April 21, 1939, p. 18.122Peter Russell, Ltd., of London has, since the end of the war, been pub-lishing translations and reprints of Pound's political pamphlets. The primaryjustification for this undertaking has been that these pamphlets are of use inunderstanding Pound's poetry, but many of his admirers have accepted hispolitical opinions at face value, as noted in the Viereck essay cited above.


25/25

1955] POUND AND AMERICAN FASCISM 197are to be found in the writings of pro-fascist intellectuals like Law-rence Dennis123 and Seward Collins.'24Significantly, most of the old Populist strongholdsand the politi-cal leaders bred of them were bitter-end isolationists and carriedtheir nationalism to the point of receptivity to economic apologiasfor the fascist powers not unlike those used by Pound. Much evi-dence can be adduced to support the contention that, had certainnationalist mass agitations of the pre-PearlHarbor years, such as theAmericaFirst Committee,developed into full-fledgedpolitical move-ments, much of their economicdoctrinewould have been drawnfromthe ideas of leaders like Father Coughlin and Gerald L. K. Smith,just as much of their membershipwas drawnfrom among the follow-ers of these men.

Ezra Pound's political philosophy is clearly in the mainstreamofthis abortive Americanfascism of the thirties, and it thereforeholdsan interest for the historian of political ideas which the failure ofthat movement to come to fruition does not destroy.

'23Economist and publicist, publisher of The Weekly Foreign Letter (NewYork: 1938-1942), and author of several books, of which The Coming Ameri-can Fascism (New York: Harper and Bros., 1936), and The Dynamics ofWar and Revolution (New York: The Weekly Foreign Letter, 1940) are themost significant.124Publisher of The American Review (New York, 1933-37). His position.and that of the magazine are best exemplified in his article, "The Revival ofMonarchy," The American Review, I (April-October, 1933), 245, and "TheAmerican Review's First Year," The American Review, III (April-October,1934), 118-28. On Collins' political associations see John Roy Carlson, Under

Cover (New York: Books, Inc., 1943), pp. 199-202.

ferkiss, victor_ezra pound and american fascism

Documents