Category Archives: George Orwell

The Science of Evil

Michael Rectenwald's Review of "Political Ponerology"

“Political Ponerology” is the title of a book on the science of evil, written by Polish author Andrew M. Łobaczewski and first published in 1984 (!). US academic Michael Rectenwald has read it and written a review on mises.org. He starts by saying:

This strange and provocative book argues that totalitarianism is the result of the extension of psychopathology from a group of psychopaths to the entire body politic, including its political and economic systems. 

He goes on to say:

Łobaczewski made the bold claim that he’d uncovered “the general laws of the origin of evil.” If true, the book was on par with Newton’s Principia in the physical sciences, while being of greater practical importance. And he approached this domain from the disciplinary perspective of psychology. Such an “individualist” methodology had been dismissed as mere “psychologism” in my own and many other fields of the humanities and social sciences. Łobaczewski’s insistence to focus on individual psychological disorders to understand the unfolding of “macrosocial evil” seemed mistaken to me initially, but this approach accords well with Joseph Schumpeter’s methodological individualism, which became a hallmark of the Austrian school. My assumption had always been that one needed to study political ideology and economics and that political ideology and economic theory explained nearly everything one needed to know about how and why totalitarian evil comes about.

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Lovely People

A short graphic novel about bunnies living in a social credit system

~Note from the artist/author: In 2020 I gave my life into the hands of Jesus and it pressed my [sic!] to stop being a coward and create this comic. The comic is meant to illustrate, in an easy to comprehend way, how social credit systems function so that more people can be mentally prepared. It’s written from a Christian worldview (as a fresh convert at the time) but is made for both Christians and non-Christians. Hopefully it gives you something. ~

It basically is a lighter version of George Orwell’s “1984”. It took me about 30 minutes to read.

Here it is.

Orwell foresaw our cultural chaos

Due to "the break-up of laissez-faire capitalism and of the liberal-Christian culture"

Long before he wrote his famous dystopian and prophetic novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, George Orwell knew exactly which way the wind was blowing. In his essay “Inside the Whale” (published 11th March 1940), which is mainly a review of Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer”, he writes, among many other clever observations:

“What is quite obviously happening, war or no war, is the break-up of laissez-faire capitalism and of the liberal-Christian culture.”

Interestingly, in the same year, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, one of the most clear-sighted thinkers of the 20th century, and one of the most staunch defenders of laissez-faire capitalism, wrote in his autobiography (quote found here):

“Occasionally I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and show the way for policy. Constantly I have been looking for evidence of a change in ideology. But…I have come to realize that my theories explain the degeneration of a great civilization; they do not prevent it. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.”

Both, of course, were right. It remains to us, the people living through the horrors they saw coming, to change course.

Von Mises’ writings didn’t bear fruit politically in his lifetime. And, although his ideas now have a strong and dedicated following, still don’t bear any fruit. Despite the fact that his followers predicted the financial crisis of 2008/9, while other economists laughed at them.

Maybe the reason for this fruitlessness can be found in Orwell’s above quote. Maybe laissez-faire capitalism and the “liberal-Christian” culture stand and fall together. Maybe they are two sides of the same coin. Maybe the one cannot be revived without the other. Maybe, as long as they don’t realise that they need each other, they are both doomed to live in the shadows. And, until a sufficient amount of people realise this connection, and act upon it, the whole world is destined to live through a new dark age.