Andrew Lobaczewski - Political Ponerology - A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

such time as human reason manages to localize it as something

subordinate, which is not descriptive of the essence of phe-

nomenon.

Moral and religious values, as well as a nation’s centuries-

old cultural heritage, furnish most societies with support for the

long road of both individual and collective searching through

the jungle of strange phenomena. This apperceptive capacity

possessed by people within the framework of the natural world

view contains a deficiency which hides the nucleus of the phe-

nomenon for many years. Under such conditions, both instinct

and feelings, and the resulting basic intelligence, play instru-

mental roles, stimulating man to make selections which are to a

great extent subconscious.

Under the conditions created by imposed pathocratic rule in

particular, where the described psychological deficiencies are

decisive in joining the activities of such a system, our natural

human instinctive substratum is an instrumental factor in join-

ing the opposition.

Similarly, the environmental, economic, and ideological

motivations which influenced the formation of an individual

personality, including those political attitudes which were as-

sumed earlier, play the role of modifying factors, though they

are not as enduring in time. The activity of these latter factors,

albeit relatively clear with relation to individuals, disappear

within the statistical approach and diminish through the years

of pathocratic rule. The decisions and the choices made for the

side of the society of normal people are once again finally de-

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NORMAL PEOPLE UNDER PATHOCRATIC RULE

cided by factors usually inherited by biological means, and thus

not the product of the person’s option, and predominantly in

subconscious processes.

Man’s general intelligence, especially his intellectual level,

plays a relatively limited role in this process of selecting a path

of action, as expressed by statistically significant but low corre-

lation (-0.16). The higher a person’s general level of talent , the

harder it usually is for him to reconcile himself with this differ-

ent reality and to find a modus vivendi within it.

At the same time, there are gifted and talented people who

join the pathocracy, and harsh words of contempt for the sys-

tem can be heard on the part of simple, uneducated people.

Only those people with the highest degree of intelligence,

which, as mentioned, does not accompany psychopathies, are

unable to find meaning to life within such a system.106 They are

sometimes able to take advantage of their superior mentality in

order to find exceptional ways in which to be useful to others.

Wasting the best talents spells eventual catastrophe for any

social system.

Since those factors subject to the laws of genetics prove de-

cisive, society becomes divided, by means of criteria not

known before, into the adherents of the new rule, the new mid-

dle class mentioned above, and the majority opposition. Since

the properties which cause this new division appear in more or

less equal proportions within any old social group or level, this

new division cuts right through the traditional layers of society.

If we treat the former stratification, whose formation was deci-

sively influenced by the talent factor, as horizontal, the new

one should be referred to as vertical. The most instrumental

factor in the latter is good basic intelligence which, as we al-

ready know, is widely distributed throughout all social groups.

Even those people who were the object of social injustice in

the former system and then bestowed with another system,

which allegedly protected them, slowly start criticizing the

latter. Even though they were forced to join the pathocratic

party, most of the former prewar Communists in the author’s

106 Historically, pathocracies target the intelligentsia for elimination first. As

!obaczewski points out, this wasting of the best minds and talents eventually

leads to catastrophe. [Editor’s note.]

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

239

homeland later gradually became critical, using the most em-

phatic of language. They were first to deny that the ruling sys-

tem was Communist in nature, persuasively pointing out the

actual differences between the ideology and reality. They tried

to inform their comrades in still independent countries of this

by letters. Worried about this “treason”, these comrades trans-

mitted such letters to their local party in those other countries,

from where these were returned to the security police of the

country of origin. The authors of the letters paid with their lives

or with years of prison; no other social group was finally sub-

jected to such stringent police surveillance as were they.

Regardless of whatever our evaluation of Communist ideol-

ogy or the parties might be, we are presumably justified in

believing that the old Communists were quite competent to

distinguish what was and what was not in accordance with their

ideology and beliefs. Their highly emphatic statements on the

subject, quite popular among Poland’s old Communists circles,

are impressive or even persuasive.107 Because of the operational

language used therein, however, we must designate them as

overly moralizing interpretations not in keeping with the char-

acter of this work. At the same time, we must admit that the

majority of Poland’s prewar Communists were not psycho-

paths.

From the point of view of economics and reality, any sys-

tem wherein most of the property and workplaces are state

owned de jure and de facto is state capitalism and not Commu-

nism. Such a system exhibits the traits of a primitive nine-

teenth-century capitalist exploiter who had an insufficient grasp

of his role in society and of how his interests were linked to his

workers’ welfare. Workers are very much aware of these traits,

especially if they have collected a certain amount of knowledge

in connection with their political activities.

A reasonable socialist aiming to replace capitalism with

some system in conformity with his idea, which would be

based on worker participation in the administration of the work

place and the profits , will reject such a system as the “worst

variety of capitalism”. After all, concentrating capital and rul-

107 “A hoard of sons of bitches who climbed up to the feeding trough upon

the backs of the working class.”

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NORMAL PEOPLE UNDER PATHOCRATIC RULE

ership in one place always leads to degeneration. Capital must

be subject to the authority of fairness. Eliminating such a de-

generate form of capitalism should thus be a priority task for

any socialist. Nonetheless, such reasoning by means of social

and economic categories obviously misses the crux of the mat-

ter.

The experience of history teaches us that any attempt to re-

alize the Communist idea by way of revolutionary means,

whether violent or underhanded, leads to a skewing of this

process in the direction of anachronic and pathological forms

whose essence and contents remain inaccessible to minds util-

izing the concepts of the natural world view. Evolution con-

structs and transforms faster than revolution, and without such

tragic complications.

One of the first discoveries made by a society of normal