> Of course that sort of thing was endemic in the higher circles of
> English society in the early 20th century. E.g., Keynes: "I do not
> mean that Russian Communism alters, or even seeks to alter, human
> nature, that it makes Jews less avaricious or Russians less
> extravagant than they were before."
And Marx (though, unlike Keynes and more conistent with the social ontological idea of "internal relations", Marx did not make the avariciousness with which he identified the "Jewish religion" biological; he made a similar claim about Protestantism):
"What, in itself, was the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism.
"The monotheism of the Jew, therefore, is in reality the polytheism of the many needs, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory an object of divine law. Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society, and as such appears in pure form as soon as civil society has fully given birth to the political state. The god of practical need and self-interest is money.
"Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/>
"Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of 'revolutionary', of 'practical-critical', activity." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm>
Keynes, however, made use of Churchill to illustrate the "imbecility" of ''the stupid and callous militarist".
In Essays in Biography, he calls Churchill’s The World Crisis, 1916-18,
“in its final impression on the reader, a tractate against war—more effective than the work of a pacifist could be, a demonstration from one who loves the game, not only of the imbecility of its aims and of its methods, but, more than this, that the imbecility is not an accidental quality of the particular players, but is inherent in its spirit and its rules." (Collected Writings, vol. X, p. 52)
Here and elsewhere he explains the “imbecility” as due in part to “the comparative exemption from criticism which the military hierarchy affords to the high command.”
“The explanation of the incompetence with which wars are always conducted on both sides may be found in the comparative exemption from criticism which the military hierarchy affords to the high command. I have no excessive admiration for politicians, but, brought up as they are in the very breath of criticism, how much superior they are to the soldiers!" (Collected Writings, vol. XXI, p. 246)
Ted