by: Tani Jantsang
OH, but what if Arthur Desmond wrote Might is Right?
Tani Jantsang
There is no certainty as to who the author, Ragnar Redbeard, was though a strong case has been made for Jack London being the real Redbeard.
The most likely OTHER candidate is a man named Arthur Desmond who was red-bearded, red-haired and whose poetry was very similar to that written by Redbeard. Born in New Zealand of an Irish father and an English mother, his actual date of birth is unknown, 1842 and 1859 being two of the years given.
Now listen to this - it only confirms my Jack London analysis using Doc's text:
While in New Zealand, Desmond stood as a radical candidate for parliament, organized
trade unions, championed the ideas of Henry George, supported the Maori leader Te Kooti,
and edited a radical paper called The Tribune. He'd have had to champion the Maori AGAINST
the ruling class Anglos! In case you don't know it, "radical" means what came
to be called "RED," Social Revolutionary type. It was a very common word used
for this back then.
In 1892 Desmond left New Zealand for Sydney, Australia. Here he continued his political activities, edited Hard Cash and The Standard Bearer, wrote poetry which influenced the famous Australian poet, Henry Lawson, joined the Labor Party, and associated with radical personalities like John Dwyer who had known Marx and Bakunin; that's Karl Marx. His activities are notably Hard Left Socialistic during this period.
Rumors: he left Australia in 1895, taking with him the unpublished manuscript of Might is Right; he published Redbeard's Review in London; he lived in Chicago where he co-authored a book called Rival Caesars with Will H. Dilg (using the pseudonym "Desmond Dilg"); he edited the Lion's Paw under the name of Richard Thurland. His date of death is not certain. One version has him dying in Palestine in 1918 "while on service with General Allenby's troops," another version claims he died in 1926, again in Palestine. On the other hand, some say he had been running a bookshop in Chicago as late as 1927. And there are also weird stories such as that he was really Ambrose Bierce and was shot during the Mexican Revolution. The fact is, there is no definite evidence that Redbeard and Desmond were the same individual....
Some say that if Desmond was Redbeard, then his views must have undergone a drastic change toward the end of his stay in Australia. Might Is Right doesn't seem like a manifesto of a political radical intent on the "emancipation of the workers." Oh no? OH YES IT IS! You can't use an analysis based on PRESENT DAY behavior of "liberals" and not at all on the REAL revolutionaries who behaved very differently.
If you cannot conceive of any contemporary saviors of the working classes recommending Might is Right as required reading, (even though it is claimed that it influenced some of the early Wobblies), then note this: key word "CONTEMPORARY." The proletariat movement was one of BRUTE force and violent revolutionary take over - and subsequent purges! This is something modern day pseudo-Marxists prefer to have amnesia about.
And if it has no appeal for those sentimental "Centralized Government do-gooders" who profess care and love for ALL of mankind, then note that they are the MODERN DAY, so-called "left wing," sick with self-castrating liberalism, and in deep self-denial about, as Lenin would say it: "What Needs To Be Done."
Redbeard sets the theme of his book in a note: "All Else Is Error." "The natural world is a world of war; the natural man is a warrior; the natural law is tooth and claw. All else is error. A condition of combat everywhere exists. We are born into perpetual conflict. It is our inheritance even as it was the inheritance of previous generations. The 'condition of combat' may be disguised with the holy phrases of St. Francis, or the soft, deceitful doctrines of a Kropotkin or a Tolstoy, but it cannot eventually be evaded by any human being...it rules all things...and it decides all who imagine policemanized populations, internationally regulated tranquility, and State organized industrialism so joyful, blessed and divine."
Doc LaVey chose to put in something about the traditions of the past and how they become stifling NOW. Things must CHANGE. This was all very true for revolutionary minded people back when Desmond lived - but it was NOT true for people in the 1950's and 1960's living in the USA at all. FAR FROM IT! Those were the GOOD DAYS, life was a wonder to be lived!
In this war of each against all (Pure Hobbes rubbish) there are only a small number of victors. They alone conquer power and riches though it is not THEY who actually DO the conquering; it is their obeying yes-sir mentality soldiers who do it FOR them! And if the soldiers shoot their own generals and execute their Kings? That's revolution.
He goes on to say that this is because "The great mass of men who inhabit the world of today have no initiative, no originality or independence of thought, but are mere subjective individualities, who never had the slightest voice in fashioning the ideas that they formally revere." The "average man...is a born thrall habituated from childhood to be governed by others." That's exactly what Lenin said - which is why the masses had to have a centralized revolutionary government to GUIDE them. He said that the majority of the common people, the workers and serfs, can never become free since they have no TIME to even THINK OF freedom. Felix Dzerzhinsky also wrote of this situation. He also agreed that a Centralized Revolutionary Government had to lead these masses and TEACH THEM!
Although Redbeard claims to scorn moral codes, stating that "all arbitrary codes of right and wrong are insolent invasions of personal liberty" and that greatness lies "in being beyond and above all moral measurements," he is, still, a whopper of a moralist! He makes plain his antagonism to Judeo-Christian morality, but his whole approach is shot through with the perennial Christian moral desire to redeem the human race from "evil." For him, what is "natural" is "right" and the further human beings get away from "Nature," the further they depart from "right." The question is how Redbeard would square his belief that "every breathing being" is a differentiated ego with his demand that all these differentiated egos accept the COMMON goal of being "natural"-as he defines it. If you are unique, then what it is in your "nature to be" will not be the same as what it is in the "nature of other individuals to be." Indeed, what is natural" for you may well be "unnatural" for others, and a collision unavoidable. Redbeard's interpretation of "social Darwinism" clearly allows for this, but his morality of Nature equally clearly negates it.
In fact, this contradiction is starkly illustrated by Redbeard himself when he talks about his PURELY CHRISTIAN IDEAS OF sexual relations between men and women. On the same page he proclaims that "moral principles...are artificial human enactments, but not necessarily natural, honest or true. Moral codes are the black terror of all dastards," and then goes on to state that "readers must distinctly understand that sexual morality is nowise condemned in these pages." WHY NOT? This is because "women are frail beings at the best of times...they must be held in thorough subjection" for "woe unto the Race if ever these lovable creatures should break loose from mastership, and become the rulers or equals of Man." He follows this warning with a denunciation of "sexual degeneracy," "promiscuity," and other "evils," in a language redolent of the SAME EXACT Christian morality he IMAGINES he's so against! HA! "If our modern Sodoms," he writes, "were all razed to the ground, how Nature in all her perennial purity would rejoice exultantly!" Substitute "God" for "Nature" and what religious moralist would object? NONE.
Redbeard's dualistic and laughable view of "the nature" of women" is in no way consistent either. In one paragraph of his chapter on "Love, Women and War" he repeats his opinion of women as being "incapable of self-mastership...mere babies in worldly concerns" (that's because Christian Patriarchy tried to keep them that way!), but in the next paragraph writes that "when their passions are stirred women have performed deeds of heroism (and terror) that even a man with nerves of steel would hesitate at...They have led armies and been criminals of the darkest dye." DARKest? a PURELY Christian mind-set, thoroughly ingrained. Adam is good, bright, clean and white. Eve is filthy and dark and dangerous: but sexy too. In claiming that women are destined to be "subjects" and at the same time are capable of being "rulers," Redbeard effectively destroys his own case for male superiority and, what is more, seems oblivious of the fact that he is doing it! Which proves MY point and Doc's too about people being BORN Satanic: all Christians are oblivious of their dualism and their contradictions. They are MORONS. Redbeard's view of women, the dualist view, is IDENTICAL to that put forth by the Malleus Malificarum. The "good ones" are frail and helpless; but the "evil ones" are 100 times more dangerous and cunning than any males. Christian dualism all over again. They can never escape this sickness.
Redbeard is also a racist but his racism undermines the logic of his "philosophy of power." He writes of the capitalist that he can 'do as he likes with his own,' as long as he has the power. He may own the earth...if he wants to, and he may buy or sell men and nations if he feels inclined to or thinks it profitable. There is in Nature no limit to his energies or ambitions. All that is needed is power equal to his energies or ambitions. All that is needed is power equal to the design. But the same principles may be acted upon by any other man or association of men, and in the conflict that ensues fitness is proved--absolutely and without doubt. The 'rights of the rich' are what they can maintain and the 'rights of the poor' are not less. No bounds are set to the accumulation of property, and none whatever to its re-distribution." If, "all that is needed" for the survival of the fittest is "power equal to the design" and "the same principles may be acted upon by any other man or association of men," this must logically apply to all human beings. If I can do as I like with my own as long as I have the power, then it does not matter what race or color I am for I have shown that I am the powerful one. Redbeard's racism, like his sexism, is completely inconsistent with his own "philosophy of power" since he can only defend it by using COLLECTIVIST notions that deny his individualist premise that there are no "rights" outside the "might" of the individual.
Might Is Right is a work flawed by major contradictions. Like the Christian bible it can be used as a source for the most incompatible views.
Copyright 1999-2004 by Tani Jantsang