276
PARTISAN REVIEW
What we have been calling lack of entailment, the
Dearborn Indepen–
dent
calls "'get' instead of 'make.''' In this remarkable bit of analysis,
the "Jewish Idea" of
get
becomes a mysterious tactic that the Jews use
to insinuate themselves into positions of prominence. Notice again
that the areas that the editors of the
Dearborn Independent
think the
Jews are most interested in are the banking system and the labor
movement. Like Pound's financiers, the Jews are pictured as hatching
insidious plots and using financial trickery as one of their principal
weapons. The manipulation of credit is an essential ingredient in
Ford's conception of the Jewish plot. It is the mechanism that forces
the idea of
get
on the working class.
It
is a supreme irony that Henry Ford, as one of the pioneers of
mass production which contributes to the alienation of the worker
from his product, should blame the Jews for that alienation. The
erroneous notion that the Jewish Law has no moral content is a
purposeful if not a conscious misunderstanding.
It
enables the Jew to
become a convenient screen upon which the fascist can project his bad
dreams. Ezra Pound is no exception to this phenomenon.
Major Douglas, Pound's mentor in economics, also indulges in
explanations of social and economic woes as the result of the plot–
hatching of "the hidden hands of finance." Douglas's statements on
credit and finance are more moderate than Pound's, but that is the only
difference. Douglas provided the analysis for Pound's more hysterical
pronouncements. Although Douglas claims to be a democrat, like the
fascist he identifies his enemies as the banks and the unions, finance
capital and the organized working class:
With the Trust and Joint:Stock Banking System came agreements
restricting price-competition, and with that came the apotheosis of
Trade Unionism, forced
to
meet the situation by methods identical
in principal, leading in both cases direct
to
sabotage.
Pound's economic theory hinges on a distinction between capital
and property: "My bust by Gaudier is my property. Nobody is expected
to
do anything about it. My bond of the X and Y railroad is capital.
Somebody is supposed to earn at least 60 dollars a year and pay it
to
me
because I own such a bond." To Pound, property means control over
things and capital means control over men. In
Anti-Diihring,
Engels
predicted that such a distinction would lead to saying: "the capitalist
mode of production is quite good and can remain, but the capitalist
mode of distribution is no good and must be abolished." Pound
accommodates Engels exactly when he says:
