A Companion to Ezra Pound's Economics 9783959483810, 9783959487153

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A COMPANION TO EZRA POUND’S ECONOMICS

ELEMENTA ŒCONOMICA

Edited by Ivo De Gennaro Sergiusz Kazmierski Ralf Lüfter Robert Simon

V olume 2

Verlag Traugott Bautz

The series Elementa Œconomica gathers sources and studies from philosophy and poetry, art and science, which contribute in different ways to a new determination of economics. While this economics is still to be delineated, it provisionally understands itself as a knowledge of the whole of sense - relations of human existence ( namely, oikos ), and as a knowledge of the element which bestows and allots this whole ( namely, nomos ). This knowledge does not align itself with modern, methodical economics, merely providing it with an ex post epistemological foundation or an ex post functional normativity. Rather, it initiates a transformed economic thinking, whose scope is a dimension, called hospitableness, from which present - day economics, a science barely open to the future, is increasingly excluded. Hospitable, here, means: hosting in a friendly manner what is own and what is foreign, in such a way that both find themselves gathered in the Same, while, in such likeness, the difference of their respective constitutive traits is more clearly spared.

Bibliographische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie. Detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet abrufbar unter http://dnb.d-nb.de. Dieser Band wurde publiziert mit Mitteln der Freien Universität Bozen

Elementa Œconomica 2 Verlag Traugott Bautz 99734 Nordhausen, 2019 ISBN 978-3-95948-381-0

A COMPANION TO EZRA POUND’S ECONOMICS

Edited by Ralf Lüfter Roxana Preda

Verlag Traugott Bautz Nordhausen 2019

CONTENTS Foreword

IX Introduction

Ralf Lüfter Economics out of Ethics

3

Ezra Pound – The Economist A. David Moody Economics and the Economy of The Cantos

13

Sebastian Berger Towards a Poetic Economics: Studies in Ezra Pound’s „Poetry with a Hammer“

37

Leon Surette Pound: Economic Guru Bill Freind From the Oikos to the Cosmos: The Anti - Economics of Ezra Pound

VIII

67 89

Constitutive Aspects of Ezra Pound’s Economics Alex Pestell The Bank of England and the „Crime / Ov two Centuries“ Roxana Preda Gold and / or Humaneness: Pound’s Vision of Civilisation in Canto 97

115 137

Peter Liebregts Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics

161

Mark Byron The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium

183

Alec Marsh Pound’s Agrarian Bent: Physiocracy and the Ideological Origins of the Wheat in Our Bread Party

207

Mark Steven Ezra Pound and Mr Marx, Karl

235

Kristin Grogan Ezra Pound an the Anarchist Economics of Silvio Gesell

255

Guy Stevenson „Money and how it gets the way“: Ezra Pound, Henry Miller and the Economic Process of the 1930s

275

Abbreviations

299

IX

FOREWORD The aim of the anthology is to question the poetic dimension of Pound’s economics and to render it accessible for the study and understanding of economics as such. As A. David Moody argues in his exemplary contribution, when Pound affirmed that poets ought to occupy themselves with economic matters, he meant “that they should do so as poets, that is, in their poetry”. A first step towards the realization of what Pound claimed to be a genuine poetic responsibility and an ineluctable artistic obligation is to take a constitutive stance within the realm of economic issues, suspending the common practice of building on consolidated concepts and models that are taken for granted, and applied uncritically to what is assumed to be economic reality. Therefore, the poetic dimension of Pound’s economic thinking, generating the groundwork for a new approach to economics, is discussed in the contributions to this anthology. Furthermore, Pound’s work is remembered as a contribution to economics in its own right. For the present Pound’s economics is forgotten – not in that it is not discussed but in that the discussion about it, carried out by economists as well as by other scholars, is first and foremost based on the said consolidated concepts and models. It then seems to be incomprehensible, unintelligible, hermetic, incongruent, heretical. For that reason its original trait, its source character, remains concealed for now. The editors are grateful to Carina Bussolera for her assistance in editing the contributions collected here. The Free University of Bozen - Bolzano has provided funds for the publication of this volume. The Ezra Pound Research Centre at the Academy of German-Italian Studies Meran-Merano facilitated research activities.

XI

INTRODUCTION

ECONOMICS OUT OF ETHICS Ralf Lüfter This Thing, that hath a code and not a core, Hath set acquaintance where might be affections, And nothing now Disturbeth his reflection. 1 It is hard to stand firm in the middle  ( III/59 ) It is symptomatic of the way in which economics is viewed today that the last economic crisis – often referred to as the worst crisis the world has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s 2 – was, first and foremost, interpreted as a financial crisis which dates from a „supreme mortgage crisis that involved bank failures, credit crunches, private defaults and massive layoffs“ 3. Consequently, as a matter of course, the diagnosis of the crisis – as well as all feasible remedies for it – is to be expected from experts in financial economics or from experts in the banking world, or, in general, from experts in economic science. It is not at all expected from poets. Hence, it is under the premise of this kind of understanding that Pound’s interest in economics as well as his diagnosis of the presuppositions that inform modern economic thinking are not taken seriously. They are considered, at best, as interesting and well - intended, but as eventually missing the point. Therefore, in respect of the intended way out of the economic crisis, Pound is considered to be extraneous to what is at stake, and poetry as such is not considered to be of any help. On the other hand, the said premise, against the backdrop of which all these considerations appear to be plausible, is itself constitutive of an ailing understanding of economics. In fact, „in 1 Pound, Personæ, p. 60. 2 Cf. Cora [et al.], The Global Economic Crisis, p. 4. 3 Das ( ed. ), Handbook of Research on Globalization, Investment and Growth – Implications of Confidence and Governance, p. 412.

3

Ralf Lüfter the light of the global economic crisis of the past years, economic science has been challenged not only regarding its capacity for anticipating contingent economic events and responding to them efficiently, but in its very manner of grasping, and, consequently, acting upon, economic phenomena in the first place. In the most general terms, mainstream economic theory is said to suffer from a reductive approach to reality“ 4. In the preface to the Italian translation of ABC of Economics Mary de Rachewiltz recollects the very same situation, saying that Pound’s insistence on economics passed as a scandal and was considered no more than the heretical misconception of an economic crank, while his untouchable mastery as a poet was blanked out. L’insistenza sull’economia fece scandalo. Un poeta doveva occuparsi di poesia e basta. Con l’intento, forse di depistare i curiosi e di non essere infastiditi, gli esperti accusarono Pound di confusione, di fascismo. Oggi si propende a dire che Pound si è occupato di economia come poeta. Questo è vero. Come economista poteva essere un eretico, un moralista. Come poeta resta sempre un Maestro. 5 Ezra Pound’s insistence on economics was perceived as a transgression, while the true character of the scandal remained unseen then and still remains so. So does the source character of poetry with regard to economics. In fact, the scope of most „efforts to draw on economic thinking that do not belong to the domain of economic theory as it has developed since the 18th century, undertaken both by economists and by scholars of other disciplines, is substantially limited by the fact that these efforts take for granted and uncritically apply consolidated categories and mind - sets of economics. As a consequence, [poetical sources] inevitably appear as merely tentative approaches to grasping economic issues; on the other hand, a number of [poetical sources], which offer fundamental insights for economic understanding and act4 Project description for the research proposal Mining Economic Knowledge from Non - Economic Sources [Project Coordinator: Ivo De Gennaro]. Proposal accepted for funding by the Free University of Bozen - Bolzano in 2014. The Proposal constitutes a basic document for the establishment of the book series Elementa Œconomica within which the volume ad hand is published. 5 Mary de Rachewiltz, Prefazione, in: Pound, L’ ABC dell’economia e altri scritti, p. 7.

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Economics out of Ethics ing, but escape the narrow definition of what economics as we know it considers to be pertinent to economics, are disregarded altogether“ 6. The reliability of poetical research in economics has not yet earned the respect offered in Pound’s economic thinking, which provides a contribution to the study of economic phenomena in its own right. Reading Pound’s poetry in this sense means to contribute to the unearthing of a forgotten chapter of economics, whereby the scope of economic knowledge may be widened beyond the borders of both a contingent canon of authoritative writings and consolidated concepts that are taken for granted, i. e. applied uncritically to any discourse in the field of economic theory. In fact the unquestioning adoption of concepts shaped and determined the understanding of modern economic science in such a way that promising sources of economic knowledge, including the philosophical and literary tradition, continue to lie idle. Coming back to what Mary de Rachewiltz wrote in the preface to the Italian translation of ABC of Economics we may observe the following: “To transgress” means “to go beyond”, “to step over”. We may ask ourselves: From where to where? Disregarding what? In view of what? Questions like this become fertile only in the very moment in which Pound’s so called transgression is no longer seen as an onerous disturbance, but as a unique opportunity to rethink economics as such, and therefore to overcome accustomed concepts that are themselves the basis of an economy that may be, not yet again, but to this day still is, in crisis. A crisis that is not the mere outcome of financial crudities and flaws in decision - making by institutions like banking houses, but the manifestation of what can be called an epochal incident, i. e. an incident that occurs as a process of actualization – namely: as the process of actualization of modern economic rationality that involves an overall loss of sense. Maybe we have to think in this direction when we want to see to what extent Pound’s economic thinking may be considered as a necessary transgression that goes beyond and steps over the conditions of a global crisis which first and foremost needs to be diagnosed in its epochal dimension. “Epoch” here does not denote any “span of time” or “period of time” or any “duration between two moments in time“, but it has to be 6 Project description for the research proposal Mining Economic Knowledge from Non - Economic Sources [Project Coordinator: Ivo De Gennaro].

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Ralf Lüfter understood in its original sense derived from the Greek word ἐποχή – that literally spoken, means retention, suspension. What retains itself and thus remains suspended in such a way that our thinking is consistently attracted and tempted by it – what retains itself and thus remains suspended in such a way that its suspension constitutes the pensum, i. e. that is what has to be pondered over in the first place, i. e. what has to be thought about and what therefore remains the constant source of any genuine research. Since antiquity this source has been called „truth“. In other words, „truth“ is the always renewed, the always attracting and tempting source of any thinking that presents itself throughout its suspension as the pensum, claiming attempts to say it in philosophy as well as in science, claiming attempts to say it in poetry as well as in other arts. The Latin word „pensum“ includes what is weighed up in the sense of what has to be pondered over, of what has to be thought about. Something that has to be pondered over presents itself as something that is still un - decided. Something that has to be thought about presents itself as something that is still un - thought. What is, in this sense, un - decided and un - thought and therefore suspended, brings itself into the presence of an immediate reference to the claim for a critical judgment, in order to be decided, in order to be thought. On the other hand we are in crisis when such a critical judgement is missing, i. e. when we don’t know if something is what it seems to be or if it is not, if we don’t know if something is right or wrong, if we don’t know if something is fair or unfair – generally speaking, when we aren’t able to adopt an adequate stance within the element of truth, and consequently, if we are not up to making a sufficiently critical judgment about the true nature of what is, for instance, economics, about the true nature of related phenomena. On more than one occasion Pound argued that our epoch is in exactly such a situation with regard to economic phenomena. In his writing The Individual in his Milieu Pound says: The history of money is yet to be written. ( SP 273 ) The money - changer only thrives on ignorance. ( GK 281 ) The understanding of economic phenomena is the first step towards a critical judgment about their nature and consequently towards an adequate stance within the dimension of economics as such. As a matter of

6

Economics out of Ethics fact one of the main aims of Pound’s work in this field was to prepare such a critical judgment considering those phenomena that lay at the core of economics, like money, credit, usury, property, distribution etc. In the above - mentioned preface to the Italian translation of ABC of Economics Mary de Rachewiltz says something about the way in which the poet himself prepared the conditions that allow for a critical judgment: Gli mancavano le parole, i termini, e volle risalire quasi alle origini del linguaggio economico per trovarle. 7 Pound was at a loss for the words, for the terms, and as a poet he aimed to return to the origins of economic language, in order to find their sense. Here we have a first sign of what has to be borne in mind when we aim to understand Pound’s economic thinking, when we consider the necessary transgression from the uncritical adoption of economic concepts to a critical judgment about their nature. Pound was a poet. And as a poet he was an economist. Very seldom are we prepared to become aware of the necessary and insoluble nexus between poetry and economics that was cut off with the emergence of the methodological sciences. 8 Pound’s work offers one of the very few instances that bear witness to this nexus, in as far as here, genuine economic knowledge is derived from poetry. Today’s widely unquestioning adoption of economic concepts, as Pound perceived it in his diagnosis of our epoch, goes with rather sloppy language, determining not only our present notion of economic sciences, but beyond that, determining economic sciences’ understanding of what is and how it is. Now, as long as we accept economic science – together with technology – as the leading forms of knowledge of our epoch, its understanding of all phenomena is fundamentally constitutive of our orientation in the globalized world. It is very difficult to make people understand the impersonal indignation that the decay of writing can cause men who understand what it implies, and the end whereto it leads. It is 7 Mary de Rachewiltz, Prefazione, in: Pound, L’  ABC dell’economia e altri scritti, p. 7. 8 Cf. De Gennaro [et al.] ( ed. ), Wirtliche Ökonomie, p. IX.

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Ralf Lüfter almost impossible to express any degree of such indignation without being called ‘embittered’, or something of that sort. Nevertheless the statesman cannot govern, the scientist cannot participate his discoveries, men cannot agree on wise action without language, and all their deeds and conditions are affected by the defects or virtues of idiom. A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in process of losing grip on its empire and on itself. ( ABCR 34 ) The said sloppiness does not occur by chance, but it is, according to Pound, associated with a peculiar form of ignorance, i. e. a form of ignorance that is characteristic of our epoch and therefore also of the emerging crisis within in it. In this regard Pound gives many examples in his writings. At a certain point of his radio speeches Pound says: My generation was brought up ham ignorant of economics. […] Every page our generation read was over shadowed by usury. ( RSWWII 40 ) Now, it is quite clear that the said ignorance is not just a general unknowingness concerning economics and economic phenomena, and that it has to be uncoupled from the mere access to and availability of information about the ruling factors that determine the optimization of the production, the allocation and the consumption of goods – and it has furthermore to be uncoupled from the mere access to information about the underlying market laws that make these factors cohere. Economic science was not born yesterday and seminal works about Economics were published long before Pound formed his view on it. Ignorance […] is not a natural phenomenon; it is brought about artificially. […] What is more, it has been patiently and carefully built up. ( SP 348 ) What Pound points out is a matter of principle according to which this specific and anything but accidental form of ignorance shows up. It arises according to an originating force that overshadows all our relations: relations to things as well as relations to others and relations to ourselves. insofar as it is in its light that all - thing are seen in the first

8

Economics out of Ethics place. The name of the light of our days is usury, i. e. the overall excess of „usura“, i. e. the overall excess of an inclination towards the realization of a process that is „contra naturam“ ( XLV/230 ). To ignore something means: “to overlook it”, “to disregard it”, “to miss what claims to be known in the first place”. This is to say that our epoch overlooks and disregards what economics is in the first place by missing its true nature and accepting its subjugation to usura. Whereas beyond the dominance of usura and our common definitions, economics may be known in a more original sense as knowledge of the whole of sense - relations of human existence ( namely, oikos ), and as knowledge of the element which bestows and allots this whole ( namely, nomos ) 9. This definition springs from the original meaning of the words oikos and nomos, offering a wider understanding of what the word economics indicates. When usura takes the place of the element that bestows and allots the whole of sense - relations of human existence, on the one hand we remain excluded from a sufficiently clear understanding of the true nature of economics and we are brought up, as Pound states, „ham ignorant” ( RSWWII 40 ) of it, on the other hand we remain at a loss for a form of knowledge that is able to understand economics as such, i. e. that is able to sustain the whole of the sense - relations of human existence insofar as it is ignorant of its originally bestowing and allotting element. The reading of Canto XLV suggests that usura is first and foremost the subjugation of this element. In other words, this subjugation is a form of originating which is characteristic of usura, and therefore what arises is never the whole of sense - relations for human existence but sheer senselessness that turns out to be the inhuman phiz of the modern economic crisis as we roughly outlined it. With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting that design might cover their face […]

9 Cf. http://elementaoeconomica.org/index-eng.html ( 07.02.2019 )

9

Ralf Lüfter with usura the line groweth thick with usura no clear demarcation and no man can find site for his dwelling

( XLV/230 )

The original meaning of the Greek word ἦθος is “habitual residence”, “abode”, “dimension of sojourn” and therefore intimately related to what Pound addresses in the verse “and no man can find site for his dwelling” ( XLV/230 ). Consequently ethics is, in the first place, not seen as knowledge about a system of moral rules derived from underlying values and supposed to orient human action in a given action context, but, it is understood in the strictest sense of the word – namely as a form of knowledge that shapes an understanding of man’s dwelling on earth under the sky in the world, i. e. a form of knowledge able to sustain the building of the whole of sense - relations for man’s dwelling. “At behest of usura” ( XLV/230 ) the above - introduced notion of ignorance holds sway and consequently from then on no economics, originating from a more fundamental understanding of man’s dwelling, will emerge. Economics is then subjugated ab initio and therefore the element that bestows and allots the whole of sense - relations of human existence is no longer sufficiently sustained. It is ignored in such a way that no man can find site for his dwelling. In this sense, and not just in a moral sense, usura is essentially unethical. Accordingly Pound says: You cannot make good economics out of bad ethics. ( SP 282 ) In Canto XLV usura is defined by “contra naturam” ( XLV/230 ). This leads to the tentative conclusion what is here indicated as “site for man’s dwelling” ( XLV/230 ) answers to the name of “nature”. When nature is the original and originating force that orients the whole of sense - relations for human existence, we can suppose that the word “contra” indicates the above - mentioned subjugation that occurs “at behest of usura” ( XLV/230 ), “with usura” ( XLV/230 ), i. e. that occurs as usura contra naturam. Usura is in itself an unoriginal originating force, insofar as the said subjugation gives rise to the disintegration of the whole of sense - relations, commanding all human actions and giving rise not to a human world but to an in - human un - world. And thus it is in itself

10

Economics out of Ethics un - original, i. e. without any relation to the allotting and bestowing element of the whole of sense - relations. In such an un - world human beings cannot exist and therefore they do not appear as human beings. Corpses are set to banquet At behest of usura

( XLV/230 )

Corpses, not human beings. Sterility, not fertility. Sheer impotence in the presence of a richness that is in itself and out of itself originally gratuitous and as such the source of any true world. Usura is the unproductive consumption of a richness characteristic of the whole of sense - relations entrusted to the care of man so as to build site for his dwelling. Canto XLV recalls many of the ways in which man is called to take care of the said whole of sense - relations: house construction, art of masonry, painting, sculpture, the art of weaving, craftsmanship, trade, agriculture, the art of love and so forth. In contrast nature can be seen in the light of production and productivity, where as a matter of fact nature means neither the mere sum of so called natural things, nor the correlative togetherness of such things. Nature is first and foremost the inexhaustible source of all the above - mentioned ways of taking care destined for men. That is why, with regard to the human being, “contra naturam” ( XLV/230 ) indicates the impossibility of taking care of the whole of sense - relations and thus indicates the continued prevention of each of the human ways of taking care from coming to its own end, i. e. from being accomplished. Accordingly “contra naturam” ( XLV/230 ) means at the same time: no true house construction, no true art of masonry, no true painting, no true sculpture, no true art of weaving, no true craftsmanship, no true trade, no true agriculture, no true art of love. Usura occurs as the continued subjugation of the true nature of all of them, i. e. as the continued subjugation of their original possibility; i. e. the first and ultimate possibility of any kind of true human production. What is indicated here remains largely insufficient. It is the mere endeavour to touch upon some points in order to consider the panorama of one central aspect of Pound’s economic thinking that leads us to the necessity of transgressing economic concepts that are taken

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Ralf Lüfter for granted but are apparently in crisis. One the one hand this means, perhaps, to understand Pound’s efforts, while on the other hand this means, not less significantly, to aim at a sound understanding of economics in its present crisis.

Works cited Ivo De Gennaro, Sergisuz Kazmierski, and Ralf Lüfter ( ed. ), Wirtliche Ökonomie. Philosophische und dichterische Quellen, Band 1.1, Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz, 2013. Michael Dylan Cora and Alan Castle, The Global Economic Crisis, [n.p.]: GreatSpace, 2016. Ramesh Chandra Das ( ed. ), Handbook of Research on Globalization, Investment and Growth – Implications of Confidence and Governance, Hershey PA: Information Science Reference, 2015. Mary de Rachewiltz, Prefazione, in: Ezra Pound, ABC dell’economia e altri scritti, ed. Giorgio Lunghini, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2009, p. 7 - 10. Ezra Pound, The Cantos, New York: New Directions, 1998. —, ABC dell’economia e altri scritti, ed. Giorgio Lunghini, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2009. —, ABC of Economics, London: Faber & Faber, 1933. —, ABC of Reading, New York: New Directions, 2010. —, Ezra Pound Speaking: Radio Speeches of World War II, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978. —, Gold and Work, in: Selected Prose. 1909 - 1965, New York: New Directions, 1975. —, Guide to Kulchur, London: Faber & Faber, 1937. —, Individual in his Milieu, in: Selected Prose. 1909 - 1965, New York: New Directions, 1972. —, Personæ. Collected shorter Poems, London: Faber and Faber, 1972. —, The Cantos of Ezra Pound, New York: New Directions, 1998.

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EZRA POUND – THE ECONOMIST

ECONOMICS AND THE ECONOMY OF THE CANTOS  1 A. David Moody Oui, ma chère, je suis, entre autres choses, économiste. Ezra Pound, Letter to Gabrielle Buffet [ 1938 ] When Pound affirmed in Guide to Kulchur that “poets ought to ‘occupy themselves with these matters’, namely credit, the nature of money, monetary issue etc.” 2, he surely meant that they should do so as poets, that is, in their poetry . And since Pound himself was, before all else, and beyond all else, a poet, then surely, as his readers and critics, we should look to his poetry for the most developed expression of his mind even on such matters as “credit, the nature of money, monetary issue etc.”. But that is not how it is. Most criticism of his thinking about economics attends only to his prose writings; and if it does look into The Cantos it invariably assimilates them to the prose, taking from them just the sections or snippets touching on his economic ideas, while ignoring the fact that in The Cantos that material is treated in a quite different manner and to a radically different effect. To ignore the way in which his poetry differs from his prose is comparable to missing the difference between Dante’s De Monarchia and his Divine Comedy . Pound always maintained the clearest distinction between the use of prose and the use of poetry . “[ T ]he root difference between the two arts of literature”, he noted in his study of Henry James ( 1918 ), is that “Most good prose arises, perhaps, from an instinct of negation; is the detailed, convincing analysis … of something which one wants to eliminate”. In clear contrast, “Most good poetry asserts something to be worthwhile” — it “is the assertion of a positive, i.e. of desire, and endures for a longer period” ( LE 324 ). In 1927, in a letter accepting The Dial’s annual award, he wrote, “my prose is mostly stop - gap; attempts 1 A revised version of a paper originally published in Ezra Pound e l’economia, a cura di Luca Gallesi, Milano: Edizioni Ares, 2001, pp. 73 - 110. 2 Pound, Guide to Kulchur, p. 249. Ezra Pound referenced hereafter as EP.

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A. David Moody to deal with transient states of murkn imbecility or ignorance”. 3 His prose might teach what needed to be known, for example, that the state has credit and does not need to borrow from private banks to finance its public works. Or it might move to action, as Pound tried in his prose to provoke action against usury . But prose could not do the work of enduring art. “Doceat, moveat”, the teaching and the moving to action, “should be fused in the delectet in any great work of art” – “delectet” meaning here not simply delight but an intellectual love of what is held in the mind. Without that the teaching and the moving to action “belong to action and as action they pass in time, with the day or the hour contingent”. 4 Pound was not unaware of his own susceptibility to being deflected from art into agitation and propaganda. Already in 1928 he was contrasting himself with William Carlos Williams in this respect. “I cannot ... observe the nation befouled by Volsteads and Bryans, without anger; I cannot see liberties that have lasted for a century thrown away for nothing … without indignation.” And because of this, he recognised, Williams had “no small advantage” over him, as author, in that he could see such things without feeling driven to immediate action. Williams would meditate upon them “in full and at leisure”, and while Pound would “want to kill at once”, Williams would be observing “an ineluctable process of nature” or “a condition of mind” – that is, he would act as an artist should, meditate and contemplate, and not be goaded into the “ultra - artistic or non - artistic activity” that Pound himself was prone to. 5 Pound did have his reasons. “[ I ]n this age of usury,” he wrote in 1936, “a serious writer ... will want to write of fundamentals, [ but ] he will recognise … that some things need to be cleared up or stated AT ONCE even if things of more durable interest have to wait”. 6 So we find him, in his prose dealing with economics, hammering on “root ideas” 7, as in [ Social Credit: ] An Impact:

3 EP to James S. Watson Jr., 20 Oct. 1927, in: Pound, Thayer, Watson and The Dial, ed. Walter Sutton, p. 324. 4 EP, We Have Had No Battles But We Have All Joined In And Made Roads ( PE 49 - 50 ). 5 EP, Dr Williams Position ( LE 391 - 2 ). 6 EP, More on ‘Economic Democracy’, p. 51. 7 EP, Debabelization and Ogden, p. 410.

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Economics and the Economy of The Cantos The knowledge of true coining, the principles of honest issue of money have been known, over and over again, and forgotten. It is our generation’s job so to hammer a few simple truths into the human consciousness that no Meyer Anselm can efface them. Certain facts must stand in the common tongue. These root facts must go to the people, they must go into the one everlasting repository, the mind of the people. They must go into the folk - lore, into men’s proverbs. 8 At the same time it was imperative to get “a few clear and simple ideas into the few powerful public leaders who really desire the good of the people”. 9 The need was to have the root ideas go into action. But Pound was haunted by the Sinn Fein leader’s comment on Douglas’s ideas: “Can’t move ’em with a cold thing like economics”. 10 Hammering away at the root facts and the root ideas might teach sane economics, but something more was needed to move people to action. They must be motivated, they must have the will to act: The science of economics will not get very far until it grants the existence of will as a component; i.e. will toward order, will toward ‘justice’ or fairness, desire for civilization, amenities included. The intensity of that will is definitely a component in any solution. ( ABCE 38 ) It was precisely in order “to base a system on will, not on intellect” that Pound wrote his ABC of Economics, and he regarded this “volitionist” emphasis as his original contribution to the science. “Dante accepts the definition of ‘rectitude’ as ‘direction of the will’,” he noted in 1934, and went on, “So far as I know I am the first writer to formulate an

8 EP, An Impact, in: Impact: Essays on Ignorance and the Decline of American Civilization, ed. Noel Stock, p. 144. 9 EP, American Notes, p. 245. 10 See EP, ABC of Economics, p. 35; EP, Jefferson and/or Mussolini, p. 27; Cantos XIX/85, LXXVIII/501, XCVII/698, CIII/755.

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A. David Moody economic system … from that point.” 11 It meant that his “volitionist economics” would be “an heretical movement”. 12 What would make it heretical, as against the current of orthodox economics, was precisely his introducing as a component, indeed as an essential motive, the desire and the will to achieve social justice and the amenities of civilization. That was to bring in values other than strictly economic values, with the clear implication that these other, ethical, values should direct and govern the economy . Such values are established and active in laws and in the common law, in the customs and traditions of societies, and in their religious beliefs and practices. Pound would look for them in the Confucian classics, in the market regulations of Byzantium, in the founding of the Monte dei Paschi bank of Siena, and of course in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. He wanted instances of ethics in action to show how the desire for civilized order and justice had been, and could again be, an effective organising principle in societies. By his own account Pound’s prose was not the right instrument for drawing “the mind of the people”, and the minds of “the few powerful public leaders who really desire the good of the people”, to delight in and to follow those positive examples of ethics in action. His prose was good for setting out ideas and for exposing and attacking error. But the work of engaging the complete intelligence in thinking, and meditating, and realizing, a possible just society was one for poetry .

II Good poetry, in Pound’s mind, has a common root with good government, in that the essence of both is the right direction of the will. This is the governing axiom in Jefferson and/or Mussolini where his exemplary legislators, Confucius, Jefferson, Mussolini, are perceived as artists, and where Dante is perceived as a legislator. Their common task is to create, in the mind and thence in practice, a well - ordered society . So far as I am concerned with Pound’s economic ideas in The Cantos I take it for granted that those ideas, as ideas, are those which are to be 11 EP, The Acid Test, p. 23. 12 EP, Personalia, p. 442.

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Economics and the Economy of The Cantos found in his ABC of Economics and other prose. And of course the prose and the poem have in common the conviction that the fundamental problem of economics is the direction of the will. Where then is the difference? When we begin to look into those cantos in which economics is a primary concern we find at once a difference in method. Instead of the few clear and simple “root ideas” being hammered away at as if they were all we needed to know, we find that the economic material is always being set in relation to other themes, and usually in relation to the themes of nature and of art. 13 Even in the “With Usura” canto, canto XLV, we find theme and counter - theme. If the devastation wrought by usura is the theme, yet the productions of nature and craft and art stand as counter - theme: With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well - fitting that design might cover their face

( XLV/229 )

In those lines what usura prevents is nevertheless present to the mind. In the overall effect of the canto the denunciation of the harms done by usury is strongly counterbalanced by the positive feelings, for the mountain wheat and the sheep’s wool, for the stone - cutter’s art and the spinner’s cunning, for the young bride and her bridegroom. The difference from what goes on in Pound’s polemical prose could not be more marked. Here there is no incitement to immediate action; and ( most remarkable of all given that it was published in 1937 ) no automatic association of usury with Jews, no anti - Semitism. Instead the powerful denunciation is controlled by the mind’s dwelling at the same time on what it loves. Theme and counter - theme—neither cancels out the other. The effects of usury are dominant in time, but the feeling for a better order of things, and the vision of that order, persist against it. Canto XLV does not stand alone. It has behind it the demonstration in the preceding three cantos of the benefits of the non - usurious 13 “Nature”, it should be borne in mind, is an all - comprehending and complex term; and “art”, for Pound, can comprehend the art of government.

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A. David Moody Monte dei Paschi bank of Siena – that bank being founded upon “the true base of credit, that is, the abundance of nature | with the whole folk behind it” ( LII/257 ); and with the intent that it should lend its money “to whomso can best USE IT ... to the good of their houses, to benefit of their business | as of weaving, the wool trade, the silk trade” ( XLII/210 ). Then canto XLVI develops the “CONTRA NATURAM” theme of canto XLV, in images of the social blight and corruption following the setting up for private usurious profit of the Bank of England in 1694, and of the banking system of the United States. And against that, canto LXVII celebrates and develops a conscious awareness of humanity’s primal relation with the generative process of nature, a relation which should direct us to live and to work in harmony with the abundance of nature. Taken together, the twenty - one cantos in the two decades XXXI - XLI and XLII - LI constitute a carefully constructed and graduated account, first, of banking in specific times and places, and of the perennial war between usury and the public interest; and second, of the enduring awareness in art and religion of what most makes life worthwhile. The unmistakeable implication is that it is this latter which fires and directs the will to govern responsibly in the public interest. To read the Usura canto within this network of interactions is to discover Pound’s war on usury in a new perspective, and to see it in proportion to his other concerns. It is to appreciate also that in The Cantos the war against usury is inseparable from, and subordinate to, the will to construct an enlightened social order based on “the abundance of nature”. Cantos LII - LXI amount to an extensive examination of how that idea, which sets ethical principle at the core of economic practice, was applied in China through the course of its long history . The Confucian scholars who wrote that history showed the empire flourishing under rulers who observed the processes of nature and distributed its abundance equitably among the whole people; but under rulers who did not observe the laws of nature, or who let private interests come before the common good, the empire fell apart and the people suffered. The next decad, cantos LXII - LXXI, present John Adams shaping and directing the American Revolution “in the minds of the people” by his unswerving commitment to the ideals of liberty and equality, and by his legal and diplomatic skills. His engagement in the economy of the nascent United States extends from overseeing his own farm, through

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Economics and the Economy of The Cantos an appreciation of how improvements in agriculture and in the useful arts and manufactures will assist the independence of the nation, to negotiating loans and treaties to secure and guarantee its independence. There is of course a counter - force, the banking system set up by Hamilton on the model of the Bank of England, a system which enabled private fund - holders to profit from the public credit while creating public debt. And the public spirit of the revolution was betrayed, in Adams’s own view, by the greed for private profit. Yet the idea of a society whose government and economy should be directed by the principles of liberty and equality for all had been realised so effectively by Adams that it was then firmly established and active in the mind of America. Pound’s treatment of this history is devoted not only to showing how that came about, but at the same time to reinforcing and activating the idea in the minds of his readers. As readers we must reckon with the way in which materials are organised in The Cantos. “They say they are chosen at random”, Pound observed in an interview with Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1968, “but that’s not the way it is. It’s music. Musical themes that find each other out [ temi musicali che si ritrovano ]”. 14 Another remark in that interview is to the point. The Confucian universe, he said, is “a series of tensions”, and that phrase, “a series of tensions”, is an apt description of the universe of The Cantos. It directs attention upon what is happening in the relations between things, in the relations and the interactions of the images and motifs and themes, rather than just upon things in themselves. Pound had found a theoretical basis for this in Ernest Fenollosa’s account of The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, which he edited and published in 1919. Fenollosa had observed that the meaning of characters in Chinese script could be generated by the interactions of apparently unrelated components. “Relations”, Fenollosa wrote, meaning dynamic interactions, “are more real and more important than the things they relate”. 15 It is a special kind of meaning that is generated in this way, a meaning that is not so much received as discovered by the reader. Perhaps it should be thought of as a method for energizing the mind to see the presented world in an original light. 14 Anderson, Breaking the Silence: The Interview of Vanni Ronsisvalle and Pier Paolo Pasolini with Ezra Pound in 1968, pp. 338, 332. 15 Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra Pound, p. 22.

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A. David Moody Canto LXXIV will serve as an example of how Pound’s economics are musicked in The Cantos. It is a demanding sample because on first reading, and indeed after many readings, the canto can appear to be merely rambling and formless – but that’s not the way it is. The first thing to be remarked is that, whereas in Pound’s prose writings in the ’30’s and ’40’s his economic concerns are nearly always dominant, and whereas it seemed to the guards and the psychiatrists in the Pisan detention camp that he would talk of nothing else, in this first of the Pisan Cantos those concerns are introduced only after three other themes have been stated. First there is the theme of tragic endings – Mussolini’s end, and the end of the peasant’s and Pound’s own dream of his founding a just republic in Italy . The second theme, in response to the first, affirms the endless process of nature as a basis for the continuing effort to achieve a just order. And the third theme affirms the part to be played in that effort by enlightened artists, by those who conceive and transmit the precise definitions which shape right action, whether in mosaics or the Constitution of the United States. The matter of monetary issue and usurious lending comes in then, upon a harshly discordant note – “but a snotty barbarian ignorant of T’ang history need not deceive one | nor Charlie Sung’s money on loan from anonimo” ( LXXIV/446 ). These and the following lines introduce the theme of “the economic war”, a war waged, we will be told in canto LXXVIII, to crush Mussolini – ( hence, in part, the defeat of the dream ). There is a progression to be noted in this fifteen - line passage from the association of money with usurious lending to the association of money with “need”. “Need” as the proper measure of money emerges as the keynote. The ideas there, as ideas, are familiar from Pound’s prose writings; but something more is going on than a simple restatement of them. Instead of being told what to think the reader is being involved in a process of sense - making, a process requiring rather energetic dissociations and discriminations along with a swift perception of relations. That is to say that the reader is being actively involved in the canto’s own dynamic economy, an economy embracing more than economics. The economic theme is not heard again until about line 150 ( LXXIV/449 ), and when it recurs it comes in a passage in which light and enlightenments predominate. There is “the green light” of sunlight on the vestments of the priest bowed at the altar; and there is Erigena’s

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Economics and the Economy of The Cantos Christian Platonist belief that “all things that are are lights”. There is the light of heaven manifest again as active intelligence in the first emperors of ancient China: the paraclete that was present in Yao, the precision in Shun the compassionate in Yu the guider of waters

( LXXIV/449 )

In the midst of these lights we hear the motif of economic justice, this time from the ancient Jewish tradition ( noticed affirmatively, without prejudice ) – “to redeem Zion with justice | sd/ Isaiah,” i.e. not with burnt offerings; and King David sang in Psalm 15 that he shall abide with the Lord who “putteth not out his money to usury .” Thus the paraclete was present also in Isaiah and David. Another such light is noted a few lines later – “and the fleet at Salamis made with money lent by the state to the shipwrights”, i.e. “the state can lend money”. Far from being thrown in at random, the economic motifs are integrated with the light motifs by evident harmonies of sense and feeling – it is a clear example of themes finding each other out. Their negative counter - motifs are also woven into the passage. The heresy - hunters, “soi distantly looking for Manichaeans”, were aiming to put out Erigena’s light; and then there are those who seek private profit and never invest their money “inside the country to raise standard of living ¦ but always abroad to increase the profits of usurers”, especially by gun sales. These will be termed “distinctions in clarity” ( LXXXIV/559 ), meaning ethical distinctions. Thus the arms industry, for all its economic value, falls at the opposite end of the scale of values from the cultivating of natural abundance by the Chinese emperor plowing “in the sacred field” and the empress unwinding the silk worms. The economic theme comes in from time to time in a variety of motifs and connections in the following pages, notably in the passage where the poet situates himself among the prisoners “in Circe’s swine - sty” and perceives the D. T. C and its inmates as products of the usurers’ war ( LXXIV/456 - 7 ). John Adams’s declaration that “every bank of discount is downright iniquity | robbing the public for private individual’s gain”, is associated with the blind lust that puts men in

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A. David Moody Circe’s power – the greed which will flow downward as “poison, veleno ¦ in all the veins of the commonweal | if on high”. And here, at the exact mid - point and pivot of the canto, and at its darkest moment, the question is posed: “if on the forge at Predappio?”. That is as much as to ask, was Mussolini infected at birth with that poison, and was the whole Fascist Risorgimento therefore infected? The response is once again to invoke nature and art, this time in the form of “Upward”, a resister, and his seal “Sitalkas” – i.e. a precise definition of the life - force in the grain. 16 That abrupt shift from the theme of destructive greed to that of constructive intelligence is a recurrent pattern within canto LXXIV, and the canto as a whole is constructed on that pattern. It has four main divisions or movement, plus a coda. The dominant theme in the first movement ( up to “looked on Mt Taishan” ( LXXIV/452 ) ), is the light from heaven expressed in constructive intelligence. In the second movement ( up to “with a name to come” ( LXXIV/459 ) ), usura threatens to dominate. The short third movement, beginning at “Is downright iniquity said J. Adams” ( LXXIV/459 ) and continuing to “all of which leads to the death - cells” ( LXXIV/461 ), is then wholly given over to the economic war. Here motifs previously heard in the canto are repeated and developed, and new material is introduced, notably the episode concerning the mayor of Wőrgl. No resolution is proposed – in its own terms the economic war is perennial, without end. But the final movement begins with an abrupt turn from “the death cells” to “each in the name of its god” ( LXXIV/461 ), and goes on to develop a quite complex meditation upon the nature and powers of human arts. Within this meditation these lines stand out in clear affirmation: and that certain images be formed in the mind to remain there formato locho Arachne me porta fortuna to remain there, resurgent ΕΙΚΟΝΕΣ

16 See Moody, Pound’s Allen Upward, pp. 55 - 70.

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Economics and the Economy of The Cantos and still in Trastavere for the deification of emperors and the medallions to forge Achaia

( LXXIV/466 - 7 )

What is being affirmed here is the power of art “to forge Achaia” – of art, not economics, and not agitprop either. Indeed the economic theme is scarcely heard in this final movement. In Pound’s war on usura, in his effort to rebuild the just city, the science of economics has been subsumed into and superseded by art, and by his own art. It is art, rather than Douglas’s and Gesell’s economic ideas, that is here opposed to usury – art that creates an image of the desired form of life in the mind to remain there as a potent force. As an illustration, Pound featured earlier in the canto the Soninke legend of Wagadu, a city which fell and was rebuilt time after time, undone by vanity, then by falsehood, by greed, and finally by dissension; and each time it was rebuilt from the image in the mind and the longing for it of her children.

III What we find in canto LXXIV – and this is the case throughout The Cantos – is that Pound’s real economy is the economy of art, and specifically the economy of his poem. But what is this economy, and in what way is it “volitionist”? In the simplest sense of course Pound’s own will to order is everywhere at work in the interweaving and working out of his themes. The “rose in the steel dust” is of his making. But while we can discern what he is driving at, in his summoning up of resurgent icons to counter the poisoning of the dream of a just society, the deeper question is, what exactly is he driven by? And then, how exactly is the reader’s will being mobilized and directed? There are a number of related points to be established here as an approach to those questions. The first is that the economy in which The Cantos engage the reader is an economy of mind, or, more precisely, an economy of the mind in words. More precisely still, it is an economy concerned to profit from “the cultural heritage” ( Douglas’s

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A. David Moody phrase ) accessible through its languages and traditions. The second point is that its enemy, therefore, is not usura, not directly usura, but ignorance; and with ignorance, abuleia or knowing what needs to be done but lacking the will to do it. So the volition required of the reader in this economy is the will to know what we need to know to live well in our universe, together with the will to carry that knowledge into action. And thirdly, given that this is an economy of mind, by action here we must mean mental action, or we must mean that before and as the necessary condition of any other sort of constructive action. An exemplar might be William Blake singing his Jerusalem into existence among England’s “dark Satanic mills”: I will not cease from Mental Fight … Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green & pleasant Land.

( Milton, 1804 )

In Jefferson and / or Mussolini it is the mental action of both men that Pound emphasises. Thus Jefferson governed “by what he wrote and said more or less privately ... He canalized American thought by means of his verbal manifestations” ( J/M 15 ). And Mussolini belonged with “the lovers of ¦ order” ( J/M 128 ), meaning τò καλόν, the well ordered, because Pound saw him, in 1933, as an efficient intelligence. That makes us ask rather sharply, what exactly did Pound mean by an efficient intelligence, what order of intelligence is it that goes into action efficiently? An answer can be found in Jefferson and / or Mussolini, in ideogrammic form, and I want to unpack this ideogram in some detail because it offers a way of describing the mental economy of The Cantos. Its components are indicated by some rather cryptic references to Confucius and Dante and Remy de Gourmont in a discussion in which “will” and “intelligence” become identified with each other ( J/M 15 - 19 ). A later chapter indicates that in naming Confucius Pound is referring the reader to the Ta Hio or Great Digest ( J/M 112 ). In Pound’s translation that work consists of a set of axioms concerning the kind of intelligence which is the root of good government ( Con 27 - 35 ). It comes, we are told, from seeking “precise verbal definitions” of “the tones given off by the heart”. Put another way, it comes from sincere

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Economics and the Economy of The Cantos self - knowledge, but also from “watching with affection the way people grow”, and from extending to the utmost one’s knowledge of the ways of nature and of the heavens. More, “the completion of knowledge is rooted in sorting things into organic categories”. What is meant by “organic categories” is not explained, but I take it to mean sorting things out according to their natures as discerned by the heart as it watches “with affection the way people grow”. Intelligence here is a process, a way of knowing. Our modern sciences, such as economics, privilege “objective” knowledge and seek power over their objects. The Confucian text is concerned rather with the inner states of the subject, the individual knower, and with a process of knowing which is effectively a growing into harmony within oneself, with other people, and with the universe. Good order in the state, we are told, is rooted in the well - ordered individual who, having first established order in himself, next sets his own house in order, then sets up good government in his own locality, and so on until “that light which comes from looking straight into the heart and then acting” is clarified and diffused “throughout the empire”. This implies a will - to - order which is not a will - to - power. The desired order is already there, latently there, in the nature of things and in human nature; and the Confucian aim is to grow into accord with that natural order and to make it new. And all this is liable to make a modern economist impatient to get back to his real world of statistics and markets. The second component of the ideogram of efficient intelligence is given when Pound follows up the statement that art, and in particular the art of government, “is a matter of will” and “also a matter of the direction of the will”, with the remark that “The whole of the Divina Commedia is a study of the “directio voluntatis” ( J/M 16, 17 ). But the whole Divina Commedia was evidently too much to explicate there and then. He might have given a relevant gist, as he did in Guide to Kulchur, by observing how Dante honours Aristotle, when he sees him in Limbo, as maestro di color che sanno ( master of those who know ), but then uses intendo for the angels, who by their understanding of the divine love which moves all things, give motion to their particular sphere of heaven. 17 Dante has it spelt out in that canto of the Paradiso that good order in individuals and in society comes from first understanding and then 17 GK 315, 317; Inferno IV, 131; Paradiso VIII, 37.

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A. David Moody seeking the perfection of the god - given nature of every creature. This would have the will of the good governor directed by the intellectual love of persons and things – an idea not so far from the Confucian ideal. However, in Jefferson and / or Mussolini Pound does not go into that. He veers off from the difficulty of conveying Dante’s meaning to give us instead Remy de Gourmont’s idea of intelligence. He prefaces this by asserting that “real intelligence” does not exist “until it comes into action”. There is “The academic ass ... with a congeries of fixed ideas … which might be useful were they brought to focus on something”; as against “an opportunist who is right, that is who has certain convictions and who drives them through circumstance, or who batters and forms circumstance with them” ( J/M 17 - 18 ). We are moving into a very different realm of discourse from those of Confucius and Dante. De Gourmont found his model for efficient intelligence in instinct, and Pound refers us to the “chapters on insects” in his Natural Philosophy of Love. There we find, in the chapter headed “Instinct”, first the observation that “Useful acts habitually repeated may become invincible, like veritable instinctive movements”; and then the generalisation, that instinct is “a partial crystallisation of intelligence”. The “genius”, de Gourmont writes, which enables a particular insect, the sphex, to paralyze with three perfectly placed stabs the cricket which is to feed its larvae, “is only the sum of intellectual acquisitions slowly crystallised in the species”. And the motive for “this transformation of intelligence into instinct”, de Gourmont concludes, “is the principle of utility; intellectual acts which are useful for the preservation of the species, are the only ones which pass into instinct”. 18 In Pound’s reading, de Gourmont’s “word instinct came to mean merely perfect and complete intelligence with a limited scope applied to recurrent conditions” ( J/M 18 - 19 ). It is within this field of ideas that Pound asserts that “The ideas of genius, or of ‘men of intelligence’” – meaning men such as Jefferson and Mussolini – are “seed” ideas, “organic and germinal” ( J/M 21 ). He cites “all men are born free and equal” as such a seed idea, an idea in which the accumulated intelligence of a society has crystallised, and to which all instinctively assent, and which has become in consequence an active principle in the conduct of that society . The ideogram is composed then of the Confucian idea of being 18 Gourmont, The Natural Philosophy of Love, pp. 153 - 6.

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Economics and the Economy of The Cantos in harmony with the universe, plus Dante’s variant idea of directio voluntatis, plus de Gourmont’s idea of instinctive genius. When all three ideas are held together in the mind they give us Pound’s idea of efficient intelligence, or the will to order. They give us also an idea of the form of intelligence and will to order at work in The Cantos – and thence of the mental action in which the reader is engaged as co - maker. To read The Cantos as they demand to be read is to be engaged in an extended series of intellectual acts, each act requiring some specific particle of knowledge and some understanding of its nature; and requiring further that that particle be first dissociated from others pressing upon it, and then appropriately associated with them – this being done upon the basis of the aesthetic and ethical discriminations that are in play . In this activity the particles, which are, in themselves, more or less inert fragments of the cultural heritage, become charged with the energy of the intelligence making out their significance and their relations; and being so charged they form a tensile pattern. And as the pattern of iron filings is caused by the magnet aligning their positively and negatively charged poles, so the tensile pattern of particles in The Cantos arises from their being positively or negatively charged by the discriminating intelligence. At its simplest there is the positive that makes for a life in harmony with nature; and there is the negative of self - centred greed contra naturam. By this process of the discriminating and pattern - making intelligence, “carried on until perception is habit” ( GK 145 ), the cultural heritage in the poem is brought into an intelligible order, an order directed by will in Pound’s complex sense. It would be an order in which the series of acts of knowing and discriminating had accumulated and crystallised into a “new forma mentis ... an active pattern that sets things in motion”. 19 But what, finally, drives the will in this process? To answer this I would apply to The Cantos specifically what Jean - Michel Rabaté wrote concerning Pound’s economics in general, that “they aim at ‘moving’ man by self - discovery of his vital interests, his entire position, the axis of his being”. 20 Our vital interests, among them social justice and the amenities of civilization, are as much the basis and the motive of the 19 EP, ‘We Have Had No Battles But We Have All Joined In And Made Roads’ ( PE 51 ). 20 Rabaté, Language, Sexuality and Ideology in Ezra Pound’s Cantos, p. 199. Rabaté’s account of the economics of The Cantos is profoundly illuminating.

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A. David Moody economy of The Cantos as they are of Pound’s economic thought. They go beyond those catered for by the material economy with which the science of economics concerns itself. There is a need for food, to take one basic necessity; but with that there is the need also for a consciousness of its profound significance – of its being a life - sustaining product of “the abundance of nature”, and of the responsible cultivation and distribution of that abundance; and beyond that there is the consciousness of the cosmic scope of “nature”, and of our place and part in it. In canto CVI we read, “The strength of men is in grain”. That is from the Kuan Tzu, an early Chinese work which taught the primacy and the principles of agriculture, and which became a major source of Confucian thought – hence “How to govern is from the time of Kuan Chung”. But while “This Tzu could guide you in some things”, the enlightenment of the Eleusinian mystery rites of Demeter and Persephone is beyond its scope. The Confucian “is the outer or public doctrine”, Pound wrote, but “we must keep an inner doctrine ( of light )”. 21 Light in all its manifestations is a major motif throughout the cantos, summed up in “All things that are are lights”. In this canto the divine light is from Eleusis and is manifest in “the gold light of wheat surging upward | ungathered”; in “Gold light, in veined phylotaxis” – that is, in the determined arrangement of leaves; in monarch butterflies, “king - wings in migration”; in the flowers of asphodel, marsh - marigold and gorse. These images of fertile light touch on the mystery which was never to be spoken of by the initiates at Eleusis, and which is recalled here in the association of Circe with Persephone, Circe having initiated Odysseus into the sacred rites of the life process and sent him on his way to consult Tiresias. 22 The emphasis now is on perceiving the light of life in its immediate manifestations, that perceiving being itself a participation in the action of light, “God’s eye art ’ou”. Luigi, a pedlar who used to call on Pound and Olga Rudge at Sant’ Ambrogio, is such a participant according to his lights: “Luigi in hill paths | chews wheat at sunrise, | that grain, his communion” ( CIV/761 ); and again, “Luigi in the hill path | this is grain rite” ( CVI/773 ). 23 21 EP to Denis Goacher, 11 October [ ? 1955 ], in: Pound, Letters to Denis Goacher, Fragments Folder, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. 22 See Cantos I, XXXIX and XLVII. 23 Olga Rudge had recorded in a diary in 1943 Luigi’s saying, “[ if he ] had a dozen corn stalks, he would eat one grain a day as ‘communion’ – the sun rose every day & Christ rose

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Economics and the Economy of The Cantos The economy of The Cantos comprehends the full range of human needs, from the basic material necessities, through the need for social justice and equity, to the need for moments ( at least ) of contemplative understanding of our universe. It is a “totalitarian” economy, in the sense that it aims to co - ordinate the totality of our vital interests. And it is ecological in its recognition that everything in our biosphere is interactive and interdependent, and that in this perspective the fundamental measure of value for everything from mollusc to mind is not money but quality of life. It would develop the science of economics, which is currently preoccupied with managing corporate capitalism’s drive to monetise the whole world, into the art of making “Cosmos” ( CXVI/815 ) – a word to make one think of Alexander von Humboldt 24, and of Buckminster Fuller 25, and not of our currently orthodox economists. The ideas Pound took from Douglas or Gesell or whomever are instrumental but they are not of the essence of this art. What The Cantos offer is not an economic blueprint, but a way of being intelligently active cells and citizens in the total process of being.

* A note in April 2016. It is pertinent to note, given our current socio - economic predicament, that the ground of Pound’s economic thinking is always a concern for the equal rights of all members of society to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. The “aim” of a democratic government, as he formulated it in 1935, should be “to distribute the purchasing power of the nation so that both social and economic justice shd/ be attainable in degree not heretofore known, to give every human being … his share in the inheritance of humanity .” 26 In 1920 he recommended Douglas’ every day on the altar, & the body of Jesus in the communion was the corn”. – Conover, Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound, pp. 147 - 8. 24 Cf. “Out of von Humboldt: Agassiz, Del Mar and Frobenius” ( LXXXIX/618 ), and “A disc of light over von Humboldt” ( XCVII/694 ). 25 For the connection between Pound and Fuller see Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet, III: The Tragic Years 1939 - 1972, pp. 511 - 13. 26 Letter to James Crate Larkin, 8 April 1935, in: Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence,

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A. David Moody Economic Democracy as “a new and definite force in economic thought” because it was “directed toward a more humane standard of life”; 27 and because it was “extremely difficult to find a flaw in [ his ] doctrine on the basis of ethics or equity” – unlike most economic treatises it did not “neglect human values”. 28 He would have backed Senator Huey Long for the presidency because he maintained in the time of the Great Depression the founding principle that “all the people should share in the land’s abundance”, that there should be “a just and equal distribution of wealth” to ensure “for every child a fair chance for life, liberty and happiness”. 29 That was the basis of his association of Mussolini with Jefferson: If you don’t believe that Jefferson was actuated by a ( in the strict quaker sense ) “concern” for the good of the people, you will quibble, perhaps over details, perhaps over the same details that worried his old friend John Adams. If you don’t believe that Mussolini is driven by a vast and deep “concern” or will for the welfare of Italy, not Italy as a bureaucracy, or Italy as a state machinery stuck up on top of the people, but for Italy organic, composed of the last ploughman and the last girl in the oliv - yards, then you will have a great deal of trouble about the un - Jeffersonian details of his surfaces.

( J/M 34 )

And Mussolini’s state fell when it lost touch with “lo spirito del popolo”, the spirit of the people. 30 In contrast, Chinese civilization endured so long as it followed the Confucius of The Analects: “He and his interloc1933 - 1940, ed. and annotated by Preda, p. 146. 27 EP, Review of Economic Democracy by Major C. H. Douglas, p. 41. 28 EP, Probari ratio, a review of Economic Democracy by Major C. H. Douglas, p. 445. 29 See Huey, God bless him, an unpublished article intended for New Democracy, [ August 1935 ], printed as Appendix D in Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet, II: The Epic Years 1921 - 1939, pp. 325 - 7; quotations from Senator Huey P. Long’s Letter: The Share Our Wealth Principles, as extracted in Ezra Pound: Poet, II: The Epic Years 1921 - 1939, p. 152. 30 See Pound’s letter to Olivia Rossetti Agresti, [ answered by her 18 June 1948 ] ( ICNTY 14 ).

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Economics and the Economy of The Cantos utors live in a responsible world, they think for the whole social order”, their thought is “impregnated with a feeling for the whole people” ( GK 29 ). This consistent concern for “the whole social order” should inform our understanding of Pound’s statement that money is “the pivot of all social action” 31 – the word “social” needs to be given its full ethical weight in considering his thinking about money . That is especially to the purpose now that our democracies are subjected to the anti - democratic and anti - social dictatorship of privatised money brought on by the massive transfer into private hands of what Pound insisted should be the common wealth. The headline for today reads: “ultra - rich are opting out of society while controlling it”. 32 The 2008 banking crisis, and its resolution in a regime of “austerity”, have made it unmistakeably clear that Capitalism’s free market system “has shrugged off any responsibility for democracy and society in the exclusive pursuit of short - term profit maximisation”. 33 And the conclusion drawn is that “The reckless greed of the few harms the future of the many”. 34 As the evidence for that harm piles up, and concern grows for the devastation of society and the planet wrought by rampant greed, inequity and inequality, there are economists and others calling for a new, socially responsible, economics – an economics such as Pound was calling for in the Depression of the 1930s. Yanis Varoufakis is one of these, but his experience as Greek finance minister is a reality - check. When he was attempting to renegotiate the extremely “austere” economic programme imposed upon Greece by the IMF, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank, as he was mandated to do by the democratically expressed will of the Greek people, he was told “categorically”, by Dr Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, that “Elections cannot be allowed to change an economic programme of a member state”. That, Varoufakis wrote, “should send shivers up the spine of every democrat.” Another finance minister advised him, “Yanis, you must understand that no country can be sovereign today”. 35

31 EP, Communications … I. Money, p. 12. 32 The Guardian ( London ), 11 April 2016. 33 Beck, Professor of Sociology in Munich and at the London School of Economics, The Guardian, 10 April 2008. 34 Hutton, The Observer ( London ), 27 January 2008. 35 Yanis Varoufakis, Why we must save the EU, in: The Guardian, 5 April 2016, p. 26.

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A. David Moody Works cited David Anderson, Breaking the Silence: The Interview of Vanni Ronsisvalle and Pier Paolo Pasolini with Ezra Pound in 1968, in: Paideuma 10.2 ( 1981 ), pp. 331 - 45. Anne Conover, Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra Pound, San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1969. Remy de Gourmont, The Natural Philosophy of Love, trans. with a Postscript by Ezra Pound, London: The Casanova Society, 1926, pp. 153 - 6. A. David Moody, Pound’s Allen Upward, in: Paideuma 4.1 ( 1975 ), pp. 55 - 70. –––, Ezra Pound: Poet, II: The Epic Years 1921 - 1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014 –––, Ezra Pound: Poet, III: The Tragic Years 1939 - 1972, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Ezra Pound, Review of Economic Democracy by Major C. H. Douglas, in: Little Review VI.11 ( April 1920 ), pp. 39 - 42. –––, Probari ratio, a review signed J.L. of Economic Democracy by Major C. H. Douglas, in: Athenaeum XCIV.4692 ( 2 April 1920 ), p. 445. ––– , ABC of Economics, London: Faber & Faber, 1933. –––, Personalia, in: New English Weekly II.19 ( 23 February 1933 ), pp. 442 - 3. –––, The Acid Test, in: Biosophical Review, New York, IV.2 ( Winter 1934/1935 ), pp. 22 - 30. –––, Jefferson and/or Mussolini, London: Stanley Nott, 1935. –––, Debabelization and Ogden, in: New English Weekly VI.20 ( 28 February 1935 ), pp. 410 - 1. –––, American Notes, in: New English Weekly VII.13 ( 11 July 1935 ), pp. 245 - 6.

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Economics and the Economy of The Cantos –––, Huey, God bless him, an unpublished article intended for New Democracy, [ August 1935 ], printed as Appendix D in A. David Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet, II: The Epic Years 1921 - 1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 325 - 7. –––, More on ‘Economic Democracy’, in: New English Weekly IX.3 ( 30 April 1936 ), pp. 51 - 2. –––, Polite Essays, London: Faber & Faber, 1937. –––, Guide to Kulchur, London: Faber & Faber, 1938. –––, Communications. … I. Money, in: Townsman, II.6 ( April 1939 ), p. 12. –––, Confucius. The Great Digest & Unwobbling Pivot, London: Peter Owen Limited, 1952. –––, Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot, London: Faber & Faber, 1954. –––, Impact: Essays on Ignorance and the Decline of American Civilization, ed. Noel Stock, Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960. –––, Pound, Thayer, Watson and The Dial, ed. Walter Sutton, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. –––, The Cantos of Ezra Pound, New York: New Directions, 1998. –––, “I cease Not to Yowl”. Ezra Pound’s Letters to Olivia Rossetti Agresti, ed. by Demetres P. Trytphonopoulos and Leon Surette, Urabana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. –––, Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence, 1933 - 1940, ed. and annotated by Roxana Preda, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2007. Jean - Michel Rabaté, Language, Sexuality and Ideology in Ezra Pound’s Cantos, London: Macmillan, 1986.

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TOWARDS A POETIC ECONOMICS  : STUDIES IN EZRA POUND’S “POETRY WITH A HAMMER” Sebastian Berger Introduction The term “poetic economics” came to my mind a few years ago whilst working on the inspirational friendship between the German poet Ernst Wiechert and the economist K. William Kapp. 1 This was a case study on how poetry affects economics, a situation relatively less explored than the influence economic conditions exert on art and artists. My research for the present article revealed, however, that “poetic economics” is not a new term at all and has been used to characterize the epic The Cantos by Ezra Pound who considered Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare to be “poet economists”. 2 Being a poem that includes history, The Cantos deal with money, which Pound believed to shape history . It is true that Pound’s poetry was influenced by the prevailing economic conditions, such as unemployment, economic depression, economic hardship of artists, as well as the economic works of Major Douglas. Yet, he sought to ameliorate the economy and economics through poetic intellection, and his fight against an economy enslaved to bankers is as topical as ever in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. Within economics, the importance of the “poetry of experience” was acknowledged by John Stuart Mill, who, prior to Pound, embarked on the search for fundamental values and the correct form of empiricism to accompany the analytical intellect and to link the various ways of knowing. 3

1 Cf. Berger, Poetic Economics ( 2015 ). 2 Cf. Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound, p. 344. 3 Cf. Langbaum, The Poetry of Experience, pp. 8 - 9; Hesse ( Ed. ), New Approaches to Ezra Pound, pp. 39 - 40.

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Sebastian Berger The influence of poetry and art on economics is also evident in works of outstanding importance, such as Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom 4 that underpins his neoliberal diatribe against state intervention with a reference to the work of the romantic poet Novalis and the case of John M. Keynes who was affiliated with the Bloomsbury set. 5 Against this background, my interest in poetic economics seems less quixotic. However, what really pointed me in this direction are fundamental concerns about economic knowledge and reasoning that also reverberate in the philosophy of economics literature. Consider for instance that philosophers of economics decry a state of economics that is thoroughly mathematized ( algorithmic knowledge ), mechanistic ( economy as cyborg ), and commercialized ( money - driven ). 6 One proposal has been to save human freedom from these totalitarian tendencies of modernist economists by infusing its knowledge culture with the ways of knowing of society, that is poetry, story - telling, rhetoric, hermeneutics 7 and experiential knowledge ( techné ) 8. Furthermore, it has been evidenced that before economists learn an “adult” way of doing science there are significant psychological obstacles that can only be overcome through a poetic - hermeneutic mode of reasoning. 9 Among these obstacles are unconsciously introjected ( hero ) images imbued with extreme and unbalanced meanings, the inability to deal with cognitive dissonance, rationalization, fear, shadow complexes and their projection onto others, leading to the repression of heterodox economic ideas. Consequently, what fuels my interest in Ezra Pound’s poetic economics is the fundamental question how to re - root economics and the economy into what may be loosely called the art of human being in society 10 that fosters creativity and imagination, nurtures human wisdom and the care for the Self, and values truth over money with a view to deliberate socio - ecological goals. Given my background in 4 Hayek, The Road to Serfdom ( 1944 ), p. 9. 5 It would be an interesting future research project to trace the influence of poetry and poets on theory formation in economics. 6 Marglin, The Dismal Science, Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste and Machine Dreams. 7 McCloskey, Storytelling in Economics, p. 5. 8 Cf. Marglin, The Dismal Science. 9 Cf. Berger, Social Costs ( 2016 ). 10 See Fromm, The Art of Being, and Kapp, Towards a Science of Man in Society .

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Towards a Poetic Economics economics, I have chosen to explore studies in the Rock Drill sequence of The Cantos of Ezra Pound, as these seem particularly well suited for this purpose. Poetr y with a Hammer: its Social Purpose and Dangers The Rock Drill sequence of The Cantos harbors, according to Pound, the “main thesis” of his poetic economics and refers to Sir Jacob Epstein’s sculpture “The Rock Drill” ( 1913 - 14 ). 11 The latter is described by Epstein in the following way: I made and mounted a machine - like robot, visored, menacing, and carrying within itself its progeny, protectively ensconced. Here is the armed, sinister figure of today and tomorrow. No humanity, only the terrible Frankenstein’s monster we have made ourselves into … 12 Yet, during WWI Epstein “discarded the drill, dismembered the figure and cut it in half, leaving a one - armed torso which was then cast, initially in gun metal and ultimately in bronze”. 13 In this light, the title of Pound’s poem requires some clarification. In what sense does the poet identify with the rock drill? Pound explains that he chose the title “to imply the necessary resistance in getting a certain main thesis across – hammering” 14. In his commentary on Pound, Wilson finds that the notions of “hammering” or “drilling away” are adequate only to the extent that these cantos go over old ground, or that they are about the “getting back into” and “picking up” of The Cantos which Pound had not worked on for seven years. 15 “The Rock Drill” torso in metal from Epstein’s sculpture also makes a conspicuous appearance on the jacket illustration of Machine Dreams 16 written by one of the leading contemporary philosophers of econom11 Pound in Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, pp. 183 - 4. 12 Epstein in Stephens, The Rock Drill. 13 Stephens, The Rock Drill. 14 Pound in Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, pp. 183 - 4. 15 Ibid. 16 Mirowski, Machine Dreams – Economics becomes a Cyborg Science ( 2002 ).

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Sebastian Berger ics. Mirowski argues that in the shared vision of this “broad church of ‘neoclassicism’” 17 the market is mechanical in a physical sense of the term. 18 These economists seek a “scientific economics” due to their fascination by machines, which are now the computer, or cyborg. 19 The history of the computer, in fact, shows that Adam Smith’s description of the division of labor ( one of the lynchpins of every neoclassical economics textbook ) was the crucial inspiration for the “manufacture of logarithms” 20, that “human thought is susceptible to principles of rational organization” and that “mental labor can be economized by the aid of machinery,” i.e. “the reduction of thought to mechanism” 21. Following Stephens’s above interpretation of Epstein’s turning the original sculpture into a torso, Mirowski might be saying that his book is about emasculating the masculine aggression of what is “perhaps inaccurately but conventionally dubbed ‘neoclassical’ [mainstream economics]” 22. If this is correct, neoclassical economic ideas are the “machine - like robots” Epstein sought to portray with “The Rock Drill” and which Mirowski would like to see dismantled into a torso. Another interpretation against the background of the history of torsos in the early 20th century would see the torso as a kind of aspirational Self of neoclassical economists who perceive the still imperfect, undeveloped, lacking, and fragmented status of their being as a kind of proto - mechanism, which they want to transcend towards a super - cyborg. This would be the cyborg version of Rilke’s aspirational poem “you must change your life” inspired by the beauty of Rodin’s Apollo torso in stone. 23 With this in mind, the main thesis of Pound’s poetic rock drilling can be interpreted in such a way that it is the “machine dreams” of economists that have to be dismantled. This kind of rock drilling is a danger – but to whom? Pound saw his dismissal from a teaching position at Wabash College as proof that “no serious artist can thrive in the puritanical and materialist environment

17 Ibid., p. 8 n. 5. 18 Ibid., p. 7. 19 Ibid., p. 9. 20 Ibid., p. 32. 21 Ibid., p. 34. 22 Ibid., p. 8. 23 Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life – On Anthropotechnics, pp. 19 - 28.

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Towards a Poetic Economics of the United States.” 24 Upon his arrest in 1945, he stated his conviction that “If a man isn’t willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good, or he’s no good” 25. Pound understood his rock drilling as serving art and society at the same time. Abandoning the l’art pour l’art of his earlier years 26 he criticized modern artists for their escapist responses to the pressures of the age, for either giving up or taking refuge in a hedonistic aestheticism. For example, his character mask Mauberley ( 1920 ) fails because he drifts into psychic isolation and solipsism, receiving beauty passively without returning it to the world and abnegating the poetic quest. 27 While Pound saw correctly that ideas need sponsors and promulgators, his efforts to find them amongst artists, publishers, journal editors, and high ranking politicians did not succeed in bringing about a poetic economy during his lifetime. These lessons on the dangers of drilling for a poetic economy have also been learned by heterodox economists who are being persecuted to this day . 28 Discussion It seems that Pound turned his poetic rock drill against the cyborg rock drill, which may be interpreted as a Nietzschean negation of the negation, which is a yes - saying to life furthering forces. Pound’s poetic “hammering” is also reminiscent of Nietzsche’s “philosophizing with a hammer” that touches societies idols like a “tuning fork” and leads to a “revaluation of all values” 29. Indeed, “( Nietzschean? ) […] Strong Methodology“ has been recommended as a standard for economists: “[a] modicum of disciplinary distance [is necessary] [..] [for] true originality springs from reconfiguring the boundaries of thought, provoking the shock of the new [such as Smith, Marx, Edgeworth, Veblen, Keynes, Georgescu - Roegen] […] the Strong Methodologist realigns the vectors 24 Pound in Witemeyer, Early Poetry 1908 - 1920; p.45. 25 Pound in Hesse, New Approaches to Ezra Pound, p. 34. 26 Cf. Nicholls, Ezra Pound: Politics, Economics, and Writing, p. 5; Witemeyer, Early Poetry 1908 - 1920, p. 43. 27 Witemeyer, Early Poetry 1908 - 1920, p. 55. 28 Cf. Lee, History of Heterodox Economics. 29 Kaufmann, Nietzsche, pp. 112 - 3.

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Sebastian Berger of influence to foster a different vision of what economics could entail […] [and] doggedly fashion[s] contentious meta - narratives of the world according to … [his discipline] […]” 30. The meta - narrative of cyborg economics encapsulates the challenge: “[can we be] really sure that our individuality is not an illusion” and what “makes you really you”? 31 This leads Mirowksi to formulate what is perhaps the fundamental task for poetic economists, that is, to find an answer to the question: “what is a machine that a living being might know it; and what is a [human being], that it can be comprehended by a machine?” 32 Nietzsche’s insights are pertinent for this question of what makes humans truly human, bearing important implications for the distinction between a cyborg and a poetic economy . For, “intelligence does not distinguish man from all other animals […] skills, crafts, and techniques can only raise us to the level of super - chimpanzees […] if a technician [or cyborg - economist] is only a super - ape, the same cannot be said of Plato. Some pursuits are supra - animalistic, and the man who engages in them is a truly human being and has a unique worth. The artist, saint, and philosopher are representatives of true humanity and culture”. 33 While all men are animals, Nietzsche searched for what could be called “no - longer - animals.” He looked for the differences between man and man, which are more important than those between men and animals. For Nietzsche, the highest pursuits of man are to be found in art, religion and philosophy, all of which require a significant dose of non - conformity viewed as a precondition for the realization of the Self, the transfiguration of physis, and the “rising into the heaven of true humanity” 34. According to Nietzsche, the artist, the saint and the philosopher are the supreme triad of humanity . Employing their passions in spiritual pursuits turns them into the most nearly perfect of men. 35 Among philosophers, Nietzsche admired Socrates as the perfect master of his passions, among artists, Goethe. 36 Against this background, he asked

30 Mirowski, Machine Dreams, pp. 53 - 4. 31 Ibid., p. 13. 32 Ibid., p. 27. 33 Nietzsche in Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 175. 34 Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 176. 35 Ibid., pp. 280 - 1. 36 Ibid., p. 281.

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Towards a Poetic Economics whether “art is even a necessary corollary and supplement of science?” 37 and replied that the “‘sublime metaphysical delusion’ of Socrates is that very instinct which leads science ever again to its own limits – at which it must necessarily give way to art” 38. 39 Nietzsche envisioned a synthesis of art and philosophy: what is needed is “an artistic Socrates” 40. 41 Reading Pound’s poetic economics through a Nietzschean lens is not unprecedented in the literature. 42 For instance, Hyde identifies an attempt at balancing the Dionysian ( creative ) and Apollonian ( ordering ) aspects in Pound’s works. And indeed, it would not be misguided to say that poetic economics is partly about balancing the creative aspirations and immaterial needs of human beings with the pursuit of material necessities or needs. It would also not be wrong to simply say that economic science needs the creative ( artistic/poetic ) element to make progress. Yet, I venture another Nietzschean reading of Pound that is infused with Mirowski’s hint at a “Nietzschean” strong methodology as gold standard for economics. The aim is to let the full potential of Pound’s poetic economics come into the open for economic methodology . This endeavor provides criteria to distinguish poetic economics as a uniquely human quest from cyborg economics, thus meeting the challenge identified above by Mirowski. That is, the “supra - animalistic” character of poetic economics is qualitatively different ( uniquely humane ) from a cyborg economics. In this light, Pound’s poetry with a hammer additionally emphasizes an important aspect of strong methodology that Mirowski does not emphasize. That is, the strong meth37 Nietzsche in Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 394. 38 Ibid. 39 Friedrich Hölderlin had answered this question in the same way in is novel Hyperion ( Hölderlin 1956, p. 489 ). He had “returned to the Greeks” before Nietzsche and Pound ( on this point see e.g. Hesse, New Approaches; Sullivan, Ezra Pound and the Classics ) and was credited by none less than Martin Heidegger for having elucidated the task of poetry most pertinently ( Heidegger, Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung ). Significantly, the poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who became the role model for Nietzsche’s Dionysus, ( cf. Kaufmann, Nietzsche ) achieved highest laurels in various experimental sciences with his “natural - humane” method ( Böhler ( ed. ), Goethe – Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft, p. 304; Virchow, Goethe als Naturforscher ). 40 Nietzsche in Kaufmann, Nietzsche, p. 395. 41 Compare Immanuel Kant’s view that the artistic “genius” is of such another order of originality that the scientific “genius” of an Isaac Newton is only good learning and the application of rules ( Kant in Dudley, Kant – Key Concepts, p. 169 ). 42 Hesse, New Approaches to Ezra Pound, p. 28; Hyde, The Gift, p. 220.

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Sebastian Berger odology implied by poetic economics is not just about “originality,” “reconfiguration,” “shock,” “non - conformity,” or “contentiousness.” It is also about crafting a poetic vortex powerful enough to initiate an economic metamorphosis to a qualitatively higher state ( verticality ), that is, the paradise evoked by Rock Drill. According to the Nietzschean lens chosen above, this is the “transfiguration of physis,” the “realization of the Self,” and “the heaven of humanity” through a synthesis of poetry and economics ( art and science ). The poet economist thus becomes the new hero archetype and aspirational Self. This view finds support in Nicholls who sees Pound as seeking to free the mind from its enslavement to the material forces of history in order to ameliorate materiality and to redeem economic necessity ( including money ). 43 Consequently, it is possible to say that Pound’s poetic economics is a case of what Peter Sloterdijk dubbed Nietzschean “anthropotechnics,” which, generally speaking, consist in exercises in transcendence and verticality . 44 According to Sloterdijk, the poet’s work of art provides a non - enslaving experience of rank differences that does not embody the intention to confine us but has a powerless superiority that affects all observers. Its authority touches the innermost not - yet and creates a vertical tension. Poetry and art are part of a practicing life involving exercises and training. Yet, Sloterdijk does not seem to emphasize the special kind of verticality that makes poetry uniquely humane as opposed to cybernetics. Thus, it might be helpful to view poetic economics as part of a unique art of human being in society 45and appreciate its similarities with hermeneutic economics that defines success in terms of the depth of understanding and the finest articulation of what it is to be human 46. 47

43 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, pp. 42, 57, 60. 44 Cf. Sloterdijk ( 2013 ). 45 Cf. Fromm, The Art of Being. 46 Berger, Economics and Hermeneutics, p. 215. 47 Hermeneutics has also been identified as the philosophical foundation of institutional economics ( Mirowski, 2014 ). See also the proposal by Kapp for a “science of human being in society” that was inspired by philosophical anthropology ( Kapp, Towards a Science of Man in Society )

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Towards a Poetic Economics To Kalon – Market Place ‖ Order – To Kalon What was the ground and main thesis that Rock Drill tried to hammer home? Following Nicholls, the major shaping force of these cantos is Pound’s conception of fetishized money . 48 That is, he waged the eternal war against usury by means of a language that is untainted by materialist philosophy . 49 Rock Drill thus reiterates the main image of the first 30 cantos, which portray the market place as the epitome of contemporary society 50and hell as a “bad bank” 51: it is “full of usurers squeezing crab - lice […] obstructers of distribution” ( XIV/63 ). The usurer’s money lust has the power to subvert the social order by breaking down man’s organic relationship to the community in which he lives: “The usurer will destroy every social order, every decency, every beauty”. 52 Canto XLV deals with usury as the sign of the Fall in the modern economy that makes exchange value take precedence over all other values: “no picture is made to endure nor to live with / but is made to sell and sell quickly”. 53 Late in life, however, Pound modified his view slightly in that he now considered avarice rather than usury as the root of the problem. 54 Rock Drill also builds on cantos XXXI - LI that interpret history economically and trace the effects of the economy on art and beauty . 55 According to Espey, it is possible to sum up the main thesis of The Cantos and thus also of the Rock Drill as beauty being violated by the market mechanism, a thesis Pound first states in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: 56

48 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 139. 49 Ibid., p. 194. 50 Ibid., p. 30. 51 Albright, Early Cantos I - XLI, p. 78. 52 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 152. 53 Ibid., p. 53. 54 Pound in Hyde, The Gift, p. 275. 55 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 57. 56 Espey, The Inheritance of To Kalon, p. 319 - 330.

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Sebastian Berger We see to kalon Decreed in the market place  57 This is to say, Pound viewed the contemporary era as one of tawdry cheapness that demands prettified images of itself, endlessly replicated for the mass market. He criticized that the market place turns beauty into something mechanical. 58 This cyborg trait of the market economy eclipses the light from Eleusis, which Pound considered essential for a poetic economy . 59 Consistent with the early cantos Rock Drill adopts a psychology of money rooted in excremental images following Sigmund Freud. 60 Prudential calculation, money lust and quantitative rationality paralyze the productive mobility of the human mind. Economic surplus mutates into fecal surplus of barren intellectual life. Qualitative differences are obliterated by the uniformity of the “dung flow.” The leveling effect of money destroys the social hierarchy of distinction and its homogenizing capacity reduces quality to quantity . 61 Tracing these psychological characteristics of the usurer also in the way of thinking of economists, Pound highlighted the “willful stupidity of economists” 62 who defend illogical arguments with the proclamation “I am an orthodox economist”. 63 For Pound, most professional economists were nothing but apologists of the status quo of banker capitalism 64 and he dedicated more than a dozen cantos to either exposure or ridicule of business men, bankers and economists. 65 According to Surette, he made a “bold attempt to portray evil in terms of the dismal science […]” 66. Pound also poetically decried the power of vested interests which he encountered in the publishing industry that prevents the circulation of economic ideas that are critical of mainstream economics and banker 57 Pound, Personae 187. Quoted in Espey, The Inheritance of To Kalon, p. 328. 58 Witemeyer, Early Poetry 1908 - 1920, p. 55. 59 For the significance of this “light not of sun” in Pound’s work see e.g. Surette, A Light from Eleusis. 60 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 151. 61 Ibid., p. 33. 62 Surette, A Light from Eleusis, p. 85. 63 Ibid.; Redman, Pound’s Politics and Economics, p. 253. 64 Surette, A Light from Eleusis, p. 88. 65 Ibid., p. 93. 66 Ibid., p. 79.

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Towards a Poetic Economics capitalism. 67 His recommendation to teach Alexander Del Mar’s history of monetary crimes at a liberal arts college in the US was ignored 68 and he surmised that colleges and universities don’t teach such material due to the pressure of usurocracy 69. Pound’s solution grew out of the recognition that the health of social order and the flourishing of art were interdependent. 70 A poetic economics was the device of mental liberation from vulgar pragmatism, debased materialism ( “tawdry cheapness” ), money lust, and the financiers. 71 His social purpose was the evocation and a calling forth of the individual as the lover of order induced by and for the sake of beauty . 72 Order to kalon  73 According to Wilson, this will to order is largely based on Confucius’s philosophy, which reflects a will to inner human development. 74 This will to order negates the will to profit: 75 “the science of economics will not get very far until it grants the existence of will as a component; i.e. will toward order, toward ‘justice’ or fairness, desire for civilization, amenities included”. 76 Pound’s will to order is, according to Nicholls, the peer of reason that makes desire and virtue the driving forces of a perception that reveals latent order and value. 77 He aimed to fuse the techné ( experiential, practical knowledge ) of language with the natural world to form a bulwark of beauty against money 78and the manipulation of nature: “I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of 67 Redman, Pound’s Politics and Economics, p. 253. 68 Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound, p. 359. 69 Stock, Poet in Exile, p. 201. 70 Witemeyer, Early Poetry 1908 - 1920, p. 54. 71 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 5. 72 Espey, The Inheritance of To Kalon, p. 329. 73 Pound, ibid. 74 Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, p. 105. 75 Ibid., p. 112. 76 Ibid., p. 108. 77 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 66. 78 Ibid., p. 153.

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Sebastian Berger brutality – the principle of order vs. the split atom”. 79 The formula and principle of order was to emerge from a close observation of nature and the order of the created world. According to Nicholls, Pound did not see a contradiction between nature and intelligence, such that natural and social orders are not opposites. 80 According to Wilson, Pound was not a “nature poet,” but nature was essential to his poetry where images of nature symbolized divine intervention and numinosity, that is, magic moments of metamorphosis: “Learn from the green world what can be thy place/ in scaled inventions or true artistry” ( LXXXI/541 ). 81 Poetic intellection looks closely to the open and developing movements of nature and operates in a mobile and metamorphic way . 82 For example, Pound found morality to be a formal principle of nature: “All men have a mind which cannot bear to see the suffering of others” 83. He also considered poetic intellection as a way to avoid the coerciveness and vehemence of rhetoric, which he associates with closure and the scatological visions afforded by the modern economy . 84 Pound’s understanding of the poetic way of thinking - out thoughts is akin to scientific imagination or intuition that leaps the gap between observed regularities and stating a universal connection. These speculative leaps of poetic intellection are fueled by the energy of desire. 85 Discussion Pound’s insights on psychology, intellection, and will have not lost their relevance for economics: avarice in conjunction with prudential calculation and the quantifying rationality of the market mechanism paralyze the productive, mobile and metamorphic mobility of the mind, lead to a barren intellectual life, extinguish social hierarchies, obliterate qualitative differences, and debase beauty . Today, it is mostly impossible to assign heterodox economics textbooks in economics classes at 79 Pound in Nadel, Cambridge Companion, p. 11. 80 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 74. 81 Pound in Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, p. 205. 82 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 15. 83 Ibid., p. 118. 84 Ibid., p. 34. 85 Ibid., p. 69; cf. Hesse, New Approaches to Ezra Pound.

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Towards a Poetic Economics the university level. The links between the economic ideas of leading economists and their paid positions on the boards of banks and insurance companies have been evidenced. 86 Interestingly, these links are often not publicly acknowledged and subject to a culture of secrecy . The acquisition of funding through bidding for “third party money” has become the primary “research activity” of many academic economists. The slow and disinterested development of novel ideas and crafting of visions, which in many cases can take years or decades with highly uncertain outcomes, is systemically discouraged. Mirowski detects a will to ignorance in the contemporary economics profession, which denies experts to be seat of knowledge. Instead, the market as cyborg is the considered the seat of knowledge such that only those economic ideas, for which there is market demand are deemed correct. This is dubbed “agnotology” and considered to be neoliberalism’s fundamental epistemological challenge. However, it seems difficult to distinguish this will to ignorance from the will to profit as both negate Pound’s will to order, enslave beauty to the market mechanism, and undermine human wisdom. 87 According to Hyde, it is one of Pound’s key insights that the will to order is a needed ingredient for a poetic economy because the power of beauty alone is insufficient to bring it about. 88 Pound’s will to order for the sake of beauty clearly locates the seat of knowledge within the human being. The truth of beauty is here juxtaposed to the truth of market mechanics. Pound’s insights on the links between beauty, learning from nature, and morals recalls Kant’s aesthetics, in which the characteristics of beauty ( in nature and art ) parallel those of moral judgment: beauty is a symbol of the morally good. 89 The task for the poet economist is thus not to subordinate nature to poetic ends but to obtain poetry from and through it. This seems to support Friedrich Schiller’s premonition that the goal is to nurture and develop the human potential to become a beautiful soul as a gift of humankind. 90 The goal of teaching poet economists would thus be to create harmony between their senses and reason, and to refine their taste and appreciation 86 Cf. Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste. 87 Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, pp. 108 - 112. 88 Cf. Hyde, The Gift. 89 Dudley, Immanuel Kant, pp. 167 - 8. 90 Schiller in Virchow, Goethe als Naturforscher, pp. 25; 38 - 9.

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Sebastian Berger for beauty . Concretely, this could mean that poetic economists have to be trained in a new humanist ethics and in crafting social controls for the economic system that prevent social cost and the unnecessary human suffering they imply . Additionally, Pound’s rejection of rhetoric highlights important problems of exclusively relying on this mode of knowing into economics. 91 Poetr y and Economy: Distance and Polarization Pound’s key distinction for poetic economics is between the economy as “the inferior thing ready for instant consumption” and poetry as “the fine thing held in the mind.” The economy is conceptualized as the sphere of material needs and their satisfaction through consumption and production in a monetary exchange economy . Importantly, this distinction is not to be confused with moralism, but is the expression of an “untraversable distance” and “fundamental polarization” between monetary values and poetic intellection. The latter is the poet’s grasp of totality, 92 which cannot be absorbed into a system of accumulation and exchange. Pound contrasted the poet who is as “open as nature,” “energetic” and “light - footed” with the closed personality of e.g. the banker who is hording means of exchange and acquisitive. He also distinguished a “digestive man” from a “dynamic man” whose energy enables him to release and harness latent values ( energies ) without diminishing or exhausting them. Hyde argues that Pound considered works of art as permanent goods that do not perish: “they are always in use and never consumed, or they are […] not destroyed by consumption” 93. Pound’s abstractive potentialities of image and rhythm evoke an “enhanced sense of aesthetic distance” that creates a space for aesthetic values that are free from economic values. This differs from the replicative abstraction of mechanical reproduction in the industrial and money - using market economy . Pound’s poetry purposefully reserves meaning to a place slightly out of reach, for as soon as their content can be touched 91 For such a proposal see McCloskey, The Genealogy of Postmodernism. 92 For Goethe’s similar emphasis on the importance of totality in the poetic perception see Böhler ( ed. ), Goethe – Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. 93 Pound in Hyde, The Gift, p. 262.

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Towards a Poetic Economics they become part of economic exchange, consumption, and reproduction that abolish aesthetic distance. Aesthetic distance is viewed as a place of constructive activity where an energy or force is translated into poetic economic visions. 94 Pound attempts to release a poetic psychology that transforms the diminished cultural life of the modern economy through a metamorphosis of thoughts contaminated by materialist values of prudence and calculation. He does so by embodying poetry in rhythm, which makes provision for a liberating intellectual activity, whose content cannot be completely consumed, mechanically reproduced, or turned into commodities. 95 Cantos XXXI - LI evoke objects and activities that resist transmutation into commodities. Pound’s poetic economy separates poetic use value from monetary exchange value to create a space of freedom. The aesthetic values created by the poetic production generate potential energy, that is, a kind of nutrition impulse that has use value. 96 Looking for tones and values uncontaminated by materialism, Pound employs rhythmic constructions that cut a shape in time, a moment of vision in intermediate zone between space and time, allowing contemplation. Such moments construct interiors, which the restless movement of commodities cannot create. 97 Pound’s distinction between basic needs and higher visionary insights implies a hierarchy and dialectic of sacred and profane values. 98 In Pound’s poetic economy, time is circular and all ages are contemporaneous. 99 According to Bell, Pound mounts a resistance against the debasement of human life through time based on mechanical efficiency, which changes the time - scale that measures work and the nature of work. For, the time human beings are granted on Earth is perverted when labor costs are valued by the time for the work’s accomplishment ( timed labor ) and not by the measure of work involved ( task oriented time ), which is governed by what needs to be done at a specific moment. 100 Cantos XLVII - XLIX speak about work leashed to the rhythm of nature, that is, work determined by task ( organic time ) not by horol94 For this section see Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, pp. 24 - 30 ) 95 Ibid., pp. 12, 14. 96 Ibid., p. 57. 97 Ibid., p. 37. 98 Ibid., p. 59. 99 Cf. Hesse, New Approaches to Ezra Pound. 100 Bell, Middle Cantos XLII - LXXI.

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Sebastian Berger ogy ( mechanical time ). 101 Pound harbors a deep antipathy against industrial time ruled by the clock because it leads to acceleration ( output per time ) and compression. Bell likens Pound’s understanding of time to Heidegger’s understanding of Being and Time. 102 Accordingly, the remedy against husbandry of time is release through the Pre - Socratic myth - value of Being. Pound wants to spatialize Time via Being, detect the permanent within process and detect solutions of other eras. Usury takes Time ever further away from observed necessity . The models for a poetic economy are to be derived from Sienese banking, Confucian China, and revolutionary America: 103 Canto XLV resurrects these alternative traditions because their thought and life occurred before the economic marketability had been turned into a virtue and necessity . Bell argues that Pound yokes these different eras together in his construction of a cultural elite against ( cyborg ) economies that lead to war, the manipulation of finance, and the ascendency of market - economic temper in place of the poetic - economic instinct. 104 Discussion The distinction between the economic as “digestive, material, monetary, consumptive, diminishing, exhaustible” and the poetic as “dynamic, fine thing in the mind, in aesthetic distance” lies at the heart of Pound’s poetic economics. He develops a model of poetic productivity that has social use value. The product is the creation of interiors in Time that are uniquely humane because they are free from economic values. These interiors release latent values and energies as nutritional impulses for a poetic psychology . Pound’s insight that poetic intellection harnesses energies and values that are not subject to the law of diminishing returns shows the way towards an eternal reservoir of energy and value that is crucial for nurturing an art of human beings that avoids an overuse of natural resources. These poetic spaces and interiors, as well as inexhaustible values and energies are a precondition 101 Ibid., p. 103. 102 Ibid., p. 104. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid., p. 106.

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Towards a Poetic Economics for the nurturing of human wisdom, the care for the Self, and the free deliberation of socio - ecological means and ends in a poetic economy . In this way, poetic intellection raises the economy to a uniquely human level, that is, “supra - animalistic.” Importantly, poetic productivity must not to be confused with laziness simply because it does not result in the manufacture of a commodity and a profit. In fact, poetic economics turns the notion of productivity on its head through a revaluation of values and recalls the ancient Greek understanding of the “banausoi” who do not value creative and contemplative leisure time, and can never have enough money . 105 The need for creating breathing space for poetic intellection is also recognized by academics who argue in favor of slowing down academia. 106 The negative impact of fast science on the quality of research has been documented in detail as well. 107 Arguing for poetic intellection raises awareness about a variety of losses associated with current trends in the cyborg economy that reduce knowledge to impersonal, amoral, algorithmic information for the sake of economic values. 108 A Vor tex for Ver ticality: where Poetic Economic Ima ges a scend The Rock Drill sequence is, according to Wilson, “a vortex of linguistic and conceptual fragments” which points to past infamies and highlights ancient splendor, the lyricism of which sympathetic critics praise as “some of the most perfect poetry of the century” 109. Pound defines a vortex as an image from which and through which and into which ideas are constantly rushing. Wilson reformulates this definition slightly to preserve the distinction between image and vortex, defining a vortex 105 Cf. Finley, The Ancient Economy . 106 Cf. Berg / Sieber, The Slow Professor. 107 Cf. Mirowski, Science Mart. 108 For losses arising from reducing knowledge to information see Nik Kah and Mirowski, The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information; for losses arising from reducing techne to algorithmic knowledge see Marglin, The Dismal Science; for losses arising from reducing dialectical reasoning to arithmomorphic reasoning see Georgescu - Roegen, Methods in Economic Science; for losses arising from the cyborg psychology see Berger, Social Costs. 109 Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, p. 184.

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Sebastian Berger as a conduit for ideas, a dynamic center of simultaneity and change with ebb and flow of images. He relates this to phanopoeia, that is, the visual qualities of poetry, which involves the casting of images upon the visual imagination ( the mind’s retina ). 110 According to Witemeyer, a vortex may be considered a swirl of creative energy within the artists’ psyche. 111 Pound’s working definition of an image was an “intellectual - emotional complex in time” that yields a sense of sudden liberation, that is, freedom from time and space limits and sudden growth. He emphasized the numinous significance of images in the tradition of Neo - Platonism, that is, its belief in the transcendental origin and the visionary resonance of eidolons that present themselves to the poet’s dreaming and waking mind. 112 According to Wilson, the concept of a “complex” was derived from Freudian psychology where it signifies a cluster of ideas and feelings. In this light, an image is a conceptual cluster that is intellectual in that it is open to rational scrutiny and emotional in that it is appealing to emotions and attitudes. 113 Likewise, Nicholls refers to the psychological origins of the term “complex” and sees it as embodying the notion of a unified sensibility that exerts influence on the behavior of the conscious stream and action. 114 Pound considered images and vortices to be entelechies of their yet to be completed being, akin to the seeds of nature. Images are understood as seeds for movement, inner impulses for a tree, akin to Dante’s view of words as the seeds of activity . According to Hyde, Pound’s “spiritual economy of imagination” fends off a usurious economy that has lost its life to theoretical abstraction. 115 Yet, for Pound, poetry is not about fiction but experiential and empirical facts that the poet translates into language. Pound adopted Aristotle’s emphasis on the importance of techne ( practical knowledge ), that is, empirical facts and experience in the creation of knowledge. 116 Techne counters the abstract and theoretical approach to knowledge 117 that is synonymous with cyborg economics. In support, 110 Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, pp. 97 - 99. 111 Witemeyer, Early Poetry 1908 - 1920, p. 52. 112 Ibid., pp. 48 - 52. 113 Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, p. 95. 114 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 14. 115 Hyde, The Gift, p. 267. 116 Ibid, pp. 72, 91; Hesse, New Approaches to Ezra Pound, p. 231. 117 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, pp. 109 - 10.

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Towards a Poetic Economics Pound summons Chung Yung’s insights that he who defines his words with precision will perfect himself and the process of this perfection is the process of nature. Rectification is understood as applying to natural and linguistic order and leads via introspection to the revelation of fundamental, essential principles. 118 Thus, it seems safe to say that Pound adopted primarily the Platonic - Plotinian theory of the poet as seer, sorcerer, and visionary whose function is to communicate truths rather than to charm the listeners. 119 The Rock Drill cantos evoke a sense of being lifted from hidden depths and the darkest recesses of the Self. 120 This is consistent with Pound’s romantic notion of the poet as visionary and sorcerer whose beautiful creation of saving images from pre -  capitalist ages triggers a metamorphosis that allows humankind to change instantaneously with a poem. 121 Pound’s insights on the process of liberation via a vortex of beautiful images full of light and the power for ascension is key to his poetic economics. This vortex has been described as an Odyssean voyage from the Dantean hell of avarice to the light of paradise, both of which are, according to Pound, real psychological states and not an artificial belief. 122 For example, Canto XV enables an escape from hell via the power of light that resists mud and diarrhea, 123 which is, according to Albright reflective of pagan ideals: “I belief that a light from Eleusis persisted through the middle ages and set beauty to the song of Provence and of Italy”. 124 The light from Eleusis is thus kindled by the vortex of The Cantos, triggering a poetic economic metamorphosis. 125 Discussion The importance of Aristotle’s conception of the techne, that is, of experiential or practical knowledge of language ( words ) for economic 118 Ibid., pp. 173 - 4. 119 For this distinction see Bays, The Orphic Vision, pp. 17 - 8. 120 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 204. 121 Cf. Hesse, New Approaches to Ezra Pound. 122 Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, p. 204. 123 Albright, Early Cantos I - XLI, p. 78. 124 Pound, ibid., p. 88. 125 Cf. Surette, A Light from Eleusis; Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, pp. 205 - 7.

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Sebastian Berger knowledge has been underpinned by notable economists, such as Stephen Marglin ( 2009 ) and Nicholas Georgescu - Roegen ( 1966; 1979 ). Pound’s insights into the workings of images as seeds of activity and self - perfection are topical as the lack of imagination on the Left has resulted in the dominance of the Market - cyborg image. 126 Similar to Pound’s “walking dead” 127, Mirowski identifies zombie ideas that brainwash and destabilize the Self of young economists. 128 According to Mirowski, images play a major role in the development of economics and the economy and he proposes a “vortex model of the sociology of science” as the common denominator of all societies. 129 This model portrays the circular cumulative causation between images of nature and society, enabling and limiting the constitution of power: the way that social and natural images are interlinked and the manner in which belief in one reinforces belief in the other. Theories of the physical world are shaped by the social relations within the culture which generates them, and these are used in turn to express in reified format the essence of that culture’s ideal of order. This ideal of order consequently moulds the expression of social concepts and classifications, eventually transforming the original notions of mastery and control in the social sphere. The circuit is completed by the persistent projection of anthropomorphic concepts to ‘Nature’, and the intended demonstration of the efficacy and legitimacy of structures in the social sphere through its purported success in the mastery of personified nature. […] The discipline of economics in the western world has always been caught in the thrall of the contemporaneous western understanding of the physical world […] the idealized image of the method of natural science has played the predominant role in shaping the image of the economic actor in economic theory . 130

126 Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, p. 16. 127 Pound in Hyde, The Gift, p. 230. 128 Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, p. 18. 129 Cf. Mirowski, The Philosophical Foundations of Institutional Economics. 130 Ibid., pp. 79 - 81.

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Towards a Poetic Economics Mirowski argues that humans make ideas but not as they please because these have a “nasty way” of wending their way through time and society . 131 His work suggests that the contemporary economic vortex is driven by the image of “Market - as - cyborg.” Similar to Pound, Mirowski locates the social actors in the “bankster - economist” complex. Despite the fact that Pound seems to have been somewhat dismissive of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic approach, 132 Rock Drill is reflective of the Neoplatonist ideal of working with images. Thus it is not surprising that vorticism is compatible with insights of Neoplatonist archetypal psychology that identifies unconsciously introjected hero images and aspirational Selves that govern economic theory formation. 133 The Pound / Mirowski version of vorticism teaches the importance of crafting poetic images that induce an economic metamorphosis and an awareness of how cyborg images militate against this process. Pound’s insights urge us to teach students of economics the importance of creativity, imagination, working with images, the creation of beautiful vortices of intellectual signs, the close observance of nature, and the techne of language within a poetic totality of vision. Today, some of these insights are taken up, for example, in the contemporary project of the Alanus Hochschule to “think economics differently” in the tradition of Rudolf Steiner who assigned a primary role to creativity and the formation of the whole human person in the creation of economic value. 134 Poetic Money for a Poetic Economy Pound’s quest of re - conceptualizing money is, according to Nicholls, the major shaping force of the Rock Drill sequence, 135 which aims at changing the way money is instituted in society . He does so based on Aristotle’s economic wisdom that money is “nomisma,” that is, a mere convention that can be altered or rendered useless at will, while at the 131 Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, p. 13. 132 Cf. Hyde, The Gift. 133 Cf. Berger, Social Costs. 134 Cf. Rehn, Rudolf Steiner. 135 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, pp. 138 - 9.

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Sebastian Berger same time seeing in it a sign of the effective authority of the state that serves to protect social order. 136 Pound wants money to serve people rather than banks by liberating society from the false conception of money as commodity with intrinsic value. The Monte dei Paschi Bank ( Canto XLV ) is held up as the image of fiscal solidity and certainty based on the deployment of produce from the region. Its income is guaranteed from grazing, that is, the natural order. This is contrasted to the Bank of England’s method of creating money out of nothing that replaced “real wealth” as the stable base of the economy, promoting usury and speculation. 137 According to Bell, Pound resuscitates the ideal of a “sound bank” as a basis for a sound society . “Sound banking” observes the seasonal time - work rhythms, making nature the true base of credit. Its natural solidity is based on pastures that fund the bank, such that money is an instrument of productive activity as opposed to usury or speculation. 138 This is conceptualized as a relationship of responsibility and union of money, nature, and people. Money is lent at little cost to those who can best use it productively, including artists who are to be organized in guilds. 139 Several commentators regard Pound’s ideas as being “populist” since they favor a pastoral economy 140 and harbor a deeply engrained hostility to financial wealth and its associated philistinism: 141 “There is a fight on. Yes, between humanity at lare and one of the most ignoble oligarchies the world has suffered [bankers]”. 142 The label “reactionary” has also been used 143 and Pound’s allegiance to authoritarian political structures has been noted in this context. 144 Likewise, Redman demonstrates in detail the similarities with American Populism, emphasizing the support Pound’s father and grandfather gave to this political movement. However, Redman admits that populist positions do not exhaustively describe Pound’s poetic economics, which also includes 136 Ibid., pp. 146, 149. 137 Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, pp. 176 - 8; Bell, Middle Cantos XLII - LXXI, p. 100. 138 Ibid., pp. 92, 95 - 6, 99. 139 Ibid., p. 92; Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, pp. 89. 140 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 202. 141 Ibid., p. 24. 142 Pound, ibid., p. 54. 143 Ibid., p. 52. 144 Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, p. 106.

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Towards a Poetic Economics the public control of money ( money as public good ) and anti - usury and anti - plutocracy politics. 145 Similarly, Bell argues that Pound’s ideas are not merely populist, as he also adopts liberal positions that attack the plutocracy of corrupt corporations and politicians. 146 Finally, Wilson argues that overall Pound’s poetic economics should be viewed as rather non - partisan due to his eclectic allegiances, praise and criticism of a range of authors. 147 Discussion What is missing from these previous assessments of Pound’s poetic money economy is a link to contemporary economics discourse and the notion of a poetic economy developed above as part of a larger art of being in society . As noted above, Pound viewed money as a certificate of work done ( “work money” ) by “dynamic men” for and within a community such that work serves as measure of price and money has the status of a sign 148 akin to writing. 149 These ideas are crucial for a poetic economy, in which artistic creation is as valued as a productive activity with the above mentioned social use values that contribute to the art of being in society described above. Hyde’s interpretation provides support for this view as he views Pound’s main motivation as providing productive artists with a stable source of income, so that they are no longer forced to violate beauty in the market for money . 150 In Pound’s poetic economy, artists and poets get access to currency for quality work that has been performed. 151 It remains unclear whether the State pays them directly or whether they receive credit from sound community banks 145 Redman, Pound’s Politics and Economics, p. 263. On this point see also Nadel, Cambridge Companion, p. 19. 146 Bell, Middle Cantos XLII - LXXI, p. 100. 147 Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, p. 112. 148 Bell, Middle Cantos XLII - LXXI, p. 100. In the light of this, Redman’s claim that Pound’s theory is “proto - monetarist” due to its adoption of a Gesellian quantity theory of money is somewhat misleading due to monetarism’s commodity theory of money that is at odd with Pound’s sign - theory of money ( Redman, Pound’s Politics and Economics, p. 257 ) 149 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 210 - 16. 150 Hyde, The Gift, pp. 234 - 7. 151 Ibid., p. 264.

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Sebastian Berger based on the ( guild’s? ) guarantee of income for their works of art. The public control of money creation and its seigniorage are Poundian proposals for monetary reform that resonate in Ecological Economics. 152 The proposal of ecological economists to organize the economy around not just material but immaterial human needs ( such as developing artistic capabilities ) that do not necessitate market commodities and thus less resource depletion might have won Pound’s support. His coupling the economy and credit to the viable service rate of funds of biotic natural resources ( the “Bank of the Grassland” for a pastoral economy 153 ) seems made to order for an era that is facing dwindling natural resources and tries to avoid further environmental disruption. This idea resonates with the ecological economics interpretation of the property theory of money that emphasizes the need to adapt the costs of credit to the viable rate of resource utilization. 154 Yet, Pound fought tooth and nail against what he perceived as “scarcity economics” and held fast to the idea of the nature’s abundance, 155 which seems to be at odds with the entropy law perspective of Ecological Economics. Pound’s understanding of money as “certificate of work” is similar to the “certificate of contribution” hypothesis of the neo - Chartalist theory of money, which defines money as an institution. 156 Paralleling post - modern themes in economics, Pound compares and contrasts the signs of money and speech to emphasize the need for a techne of money that is linked to nature and work to keep it from becoming too abstract and an arbitrary sign. 157 Pound’s critique of money creation by central banks is, however, at odds with neo - Chartalism, which is predicated on central bank money creation. Yet, this money creation intends to boost aggregate demand through an employer of last resort policy with a view to create green jobs. 158 This goal might have won Pound’s support due to his single defect theory, according to which under - con-

152 Cf. Daly / Farley, Ecological Economics. 153 See Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 75. 154 Cf. Steppacher, Property and Mineral Resources. 155 Hyde, The Gift, p. 246. 156 Cf. Semenova, Velblen’s Cumulative Causation. 157 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 190. 158 Cf. Wray, Understanding Modern Money; Forstater, Addressing the Critical Issues Surrounding the Environment, Workplace and Employment.

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Towards a Poetic Economics sumption caused by restrictive lending practices of banks 159 leads to war, economic crises, and the submission of beauty to money . It would have been interesting to hear what Pound would have had to say about heavy modern consumerism, the rise of the credit card industry, exploding household debt, and even the negative interest rates European banks now charge savers on positive balances. It seems that these work in the same direction as Gesell’s stamp script money . The latter found Pound’s support because money loses its value if it is not spent, 160 reducing usury and hording while enticing job - creating demand. Perhaps Pound would argue that the consumer - debt - driven economy only makes the relatively poor poorer and that it reduces creativity to acts of consumption, stymying creative productivity . Yet, Pound’s critique of money creation ex nihilo seems topical in a time when central banks create money to support zombie banks instead of people. The arbitrary creation of new forms of money for speculation through creative manipulation of collateral by shadow banks 161 would have found a major critic in Pound. Works cited Daniel Albright, Early Cantos I - XLI, in: The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, ed. Ira B. Nadel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 59 - 91. Gwendolyn M. Bays, The Orphic Vision of Nerval, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud, in: Comparative Literature Studies 4.1.2 ( 1967 ), pp. 17 - 26. Ian Bell, Middle Cantos XLII - LXXI, in: The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, ed. Ira B. Nadel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 92 - 108.

159 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 53. 160 See the notion of “vegetable money,” “transient money,” “shrinking money” in Hyde, The Gift, p. 263. 161 Cf. Gabor / Ban, Banking on Bonds.

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Sebastian Berger Maggie Berg / Barbara K. Sieber, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. Sebastian Berger, Social Costs and the Psychology of Neoclassical Economics, in: Claudius Gräbner / Torsten Heinrich / Henning Schwardt ( eds. ), Policy Implications of Recent Advances in Evolutionary and Institutional Economics, London / New York: Routledge, 2016. –––, Poetic economics and experiential knowledge: How the economist K. William Kapp was inspired by the poet Ernst Wiechert, in: Journal of Economic Issues, 49.3 ( 2015 ), pp. 730 - 748.  Lawrence Berger, Economics and Hermeneutics, in: Economics and Philosophy 5.2 ( 1989 ), pp. 209 - 234. Michael Böhler ( ed. ), Johann Wolfgang Goethe – Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft ( Auswahl ), Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co, 2003. Herman Daly / Joshua Farley, Ecological Economics, Washington D.C.: Island Press, 2010. Will Dudley ( ed. ), Immanuel Kant – Key Concepts ( A Philosophical Introduction ), University Publishing Online, 2016. John Espey, The Inheritance of To Kalon, in: New Approaches to Ezra Pound – A Co - ordinated Investigation of Pound’s Poetry and Ideas, ed. Eva Hesse, London: Faber and Faber, 1969, pp. 319 - 330. Moses I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, London: Hogarth, 1985. Mathew Forstater, Green Jobs: Addressing the Critical Issues Surrounding the Environment, Workplace and Employment, in: International Journal of Environment, Workplace and Employment 1.1 ( 2004 ), pp. 53 - 61. Erich Fromm, The Art of Being, New York: Open Road Media, 2013.

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Towards a Poetic Economics Daniela Gabor / Cornel Ban, Banking on Bonds: The New Links between States and Markets, in: Journal of Common Market Studies 54.3 ( 2016 ), pp. 617 - 635. Nicholas Georgescu - Roegen, Analytical Economics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. –––, Methods in Economic Science, in: Journal of Economic Issues 13.2 ( 1979 ), pp. 317 - 328. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1944. Martin Heidegger, Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung, München: Albert Langen - Georg Müller, 1937. Eva Hesse ( ed. ), New Approaches to Ezra Pound – A Co - ordinated Investigation of Pound’s Poetry and Ideas, London: Faber and Faber, 1969. Miranda Hickman, Vorticism, in: Ezra Pound in Context, ed. Ira B. Nadel, Cambridge Books Online, 2016, pp. 285 - 297. Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion, in: Sämtliche Werke, ed. Paul Stapf, Berlin / Darmstadt: Deutsche Buchgemeinschaft, 1956. Lewis Hyde, The Gift – How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, Edinburgh: Canongate Books, Ltd, 2012. K. William Kapp, Towards a Science of Man in Society – A Positive Approach to the Integration of Social Knowledge, The Hague: Martin Nijhouse, 1961. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche – Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist ( Revised and Enlarged Edition ), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. Robert Langbaum, The Poetry of Experience – The Dramatic Monologue in Modern Literary Tradition, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1957. Frederic S. Lee, The History of Heterodox Economics in the 20th Century, London / New York: Routledge, 2011.

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Sebastian Berger Stephen Marglin, The Dismal Science – How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Deidre McCloskey, The Genealogy of Postmodernism: An Economist’s Guide, in: Postmodernism, Economics, and Knowledge, ed. Stephen Cullenberg / Jack Amariglio / David F. Ruccio, London / New York: Routledge, 2001. Donald N. McCloskey, Storytelling in Economics, in: Economics and Hermeneutics, ed. Don Lavoie, London / New York: Routledge, 2014, pp.59 - 73. Philip Mirowski, Machine Dreams – Economics becomes a Cyborg Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. –––, Science Mart – The Privatization of American Science, Cambridge ( MA ): Harvard University Press, 2011. –––, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste – How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown, New York, NY: Verso, 2013. –––, The Philosophical Foundations of Institutional Economics, in: Economics and Hermeneutics, ed. Don Lavoie. London / New York: Routledge, 2014. Philip Mirowski / Edward Nik - Khah, The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: The History of Information in Modern Economics, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Ira B. Nadel ( ed. ), The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Peter Nicholls, Ezra Pound: Politics, Economics, and Writing – A Study of The Cantos, London: MacMillan, 1984. Ezra Pound, Personae. The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound, ed. Lea Baechler / Walton Litz, New York: New Directions, 1991. –––, The Cantos, New York: New Directions, 1998. Götz E. Rehn ( ed. ), Rudolf Steiner: Wirtschaft – Ideen zur Neugestaltung, Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 2011.

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Towards a Poetic Economics Tim Redman, Pound’s politics and economics, in: The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, ed. Ira B. Nadel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 249 - 263. Alla Semenova, Veblen’s Cumulative Causation and the Origins of Money in Mesopotamia, in: The Foundations of Non - Equilibrium Economics – The Principle of Circular and Cumulative Causation, ed. Sebastian Berger, London / New York: Routledge, 2009. Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life – On Anthropotechnics, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013. Chris Stephens, The Rock Drill, 2011. Online 20/11/15 http://www.tate. org.uk/context - comment/blogs/story - jacob - epsteins - rock - drill Rolf Steppacher, Property and Mineral Resources, in: Property Economics – Property Rights, Creditor’s Money and the Foundations of the Economy, Marburg: Metropolis, 2008. Noel Stock, Poet in Exile – Ezra Pound, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1964. –––, The Life of Ezra Pound, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1970. John P. Sullivan, Ezra Pound and the Classics, in: New Approaches to Ezra Pound – A Co - ordinated Investigation of Pound’s Poetry and Ideas, ed. Eva Hesse, London: Faber and Faber, 1969, pp. 215 - 241. Leon Surette, A Light from Eleusis – A Study of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979. Rudolf Virchow, Goethe als Naturforscher und in besonderer Beziehung auf Schiller, Berlin: Verlag von August Hirschwald, 1962. Hugh Witemeyer, Early Poetry 1908 - 1920, in: The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, ed. Ira B. Nadel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 43 - 58.

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Sebastian Berger Peter Wilson, A Preface to Ezra Pound, London: Longman, 1997. L. Randall Wray, Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment and Price Stability, Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 2006.

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POUND : ECONOMIC GURU  1 Leon Surette “BUT I am all agin’ abstraction. Got to begin somewhere. I got a poetic I. E. concrete mind. Prefer something one cd/ shoot to a nebulous and anonymous ambience. Ezra Pound to Arthur Kitson, 30 Nov. 1933 From the late 1920s into the 1950s Ezra Pound devoted enormous amounts of time and energy to the promulgation of the “new” economics of Major Douglas and Silvio Gesell. He pursued this task with single - minded and selfless devotion, believing that the security, prosperity, and well - being of the world could only be achieved if the economic theories he had adopted gained general acceptance. His effort to educate the world in economics was at the expense of his poetry and other aesthetic activities. Not only did it leave him relatively little time and energy for poetry, it also distorted and, I believe, damaged his epic of the modern age, The Cantos.

1 Revised from Ezra Pound: Economic Guru, invited paper for „Ezra Pound educatore“, conference held by Associazione Ricerche e Studi, Milan, Italy, Jan. 17 - 19, 1997. Published as Pound: ‘guru’ economico in: Ezra Pound Educatore, a cura di Luca Gallesi. Milano: Terzlaria, 1998, pp. 107 - 27. In the 18 years since that have passed since I read this paper, there have been a number of studies focusing on Pound’s economic views. The most important and substantial of these is Roxana Preda’s edition, Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence 1933 - 1940. ( Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2007 ). Many of the letters cited here from archives can be found in this edition. Alec March’s Money and Modernity: Pound, Williams, and the Spirit of Jefferson ( Tuscaloosa and London: U of Alabama P, 1998 ) is contemporaneous with this article. Marsh’s discussion of Pound’s economics is found mostly in pages 81 - 94. He is primarily concerned to demonstrate Social Credit’s compatibility with Jeffersonian democracy, and does not examine the correspondence discussed here. Marsh’s later biography of Pound, Ezra Pound ( London: Reaction Books, 2011 ) makes only brief mention of Pound’s economics. Meghnad Desi’s The Route of all Evil: The Political Economy of Ezra Pound ( London: Faber & Faber, 2006 ) comes to a similar assessment of the confusion of Pound’s economic views as is presented here through a much more detailed analysis of them. He does not examine any of the correspondence I discuss here.

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Leon Surette In the following pages I will examine specific exchanges between Pound and interlocutors whom he sought to convert to his economic theories. In so doing we will notice features of Pound’s pedagogical technique which can profitably be compared to his general views on the nature of knowledge, learning, and understanding. Unfortunately, in order to understand these exchanges, we will be obliged to come to some understanding of the economic issues raised. To begin with, it must be understood that standard or orthodox economic theory was neither uniform nor static during the years of Pound’s economic evangelism. The two economists who are most identified with the change in orthodoxy are Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes. But so far as Pound was concerned, the Keynesian revolution never took place. He continued to lump Keynes with Pigou, oblivious to Pigou’s hostility to Keynes’ reform of economics – a reform that incorporated many of Douglas’s insights. 2 Fisher was more to his taste, for Fisher endorsed Gesell’s Scrip Money or Schwundgeld ( “Shrinking Money” ). But Fisher’s failure to accept Social Credit principles earned him Pound’s disapproval. In contrast, Pound forgave Mussolini every failure to embrace either Social Credit or Gesell, and even Mussolini’s neglect to restructure the Italian government along the lines of the corporatist state that Mussolini had invented. Pound’s career as a populariser or propagandist reveals a temperament open to new ideas and new perceptions, but one unable to abandon or modify ideas or perceptions once adopted. This trait made his efforts to educate the world through his journalistic activities even more difficult than it intrinsically was, since the ideas he wished to promulgate were often at loggerheads with one another. In particular Gesell and Douglas represented mutually incompatible economic theories. And neither of them fitted the economic policies of Mussolini’s Italy . This impossibility of incorporating disparate ideas into a single framework made Pound’s self - appointed role as an economic guru quite impossible. No doubt his success in playing the role of guru and facilitator within the aesthetic field encouraged him to believe that he 2 According to Joan Robinson, Pigou’s review of Keynes’ General Theory in Economica ( May 1936 ) was “harsh and intemperate in tone and, as he afterwards admitted, incorrect in logic” ( Robinson, Economic Philosophy, p. 76 ).

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Pound: Economic Guru could do the same in the field of economics and politics. If there is any aspect of Pound’s career on which there is universal assent, it is that he was generous, energetic, and efficient as a discoverer, promoter, and mentor of literary talent. Eliot’s famous generous acknowledgment of Pound as „il miglior fabbro“ in the preface to The Waste Land acknowledged not only Pound’s role in the genesis of that poem, but also as encourager and facilitator in Eliot’s career. He did the same and more for literally scores of writers throughout his career, rarely turning down a request for advice from “les jeunes” as he called those who sought his advice and encouragement. Pound’s patience, consideration, generosity, and diplomacy in exchanges with literary peers and neophytes alike is in stark contrast with his impatience, shrillness, impetuosity, and abusiveness in exchanges with peers and superiors in the field of economics. Even his public pronouncements in the two fields contrast – though not so sharply . ABC of Reading is disjointet and cryptically heuristic, where one might expect clear, progressive exposition and exemplification in a work so titled. But one is accustomed to granting genius such license. The anecdote about Agassiz, the biology student and the fish justifies an heuristic technique which is rather like a koan. 3 The student is obliged to come to understanding by a difficult route on the grounds that true understanding involves what ( after Thomas Kuhn ) we have come to call a “paradigm shift.” The revelation must come all at once, as in a satori, or not at all. Pound registers his own conversion to Social Credit as just such a satori in Canto XXXIX, where he follows an exposition of Douglas’ ABC theorem with the comment: and the light became so bright and so blindin‘ in this layer of paradise that the mind of man was bewildered. ( XXXIX/190 ). However, no one else with whom Pound came into contact seemed able to experience a similar revelation when exposed to a Poundian articulation of Social Credit economics. 3 ABCR, pp. 17 - 18. Louis Agassiz, famous Harvard biologist gave a graduate student a sunfish to describe. Agassiz repeatedly rejected the proffered descriptions “until at the end of three weeks the fish was in an advanced state of decomposition, but the student knew something about it.”

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Leon Surette The opening page of ABC of Economics ( 1933 ) is doubtless intended to be a clear statement of fundamentals. But it is no such thing. Instead it is an impatient badgering of his readers. For example, his “preliminary clearance of the ground” begins with a kind of accusation: I beg the reader not to seek implications. When I express a belief I will say so. When I am trying to prove something, I will say so. At the start I am attempting merely to get the reader to distinguish between certain things, for the sake of his own mental clarity, before he attempts to solve anything. These are the words of someone very much on the defensive. When he comes to “clear the ground,” his definition of “property” and “capital” are quite opaque. He tells us that capital “implies a sort of claim on others, a sort of right to make others work. Property does not.” He goes on to explain that his “bust by Gaudier” is his property, but his “bond of the X and Y ailroad is capital.” The difference, he explains, is that the second yields income, while the former does not: “Somebody is supposed to earn at least 60 dollars a year and pay it to me because I own such a bond” ( SP 232 ). The distinction is important to him, because he wants to preserve private property, while attacking what he understands to be capital. But it makes no sense as economics. The bust by Gaudier does not bear interest but it has certainly accrued capital gains, while his railroad bonds have the same cash value ( in unstable currency ) at maturity as they did when bought them. His notion that only interest bearing paper is capital, is just wrong. In addition he leaves shares out of account, not to mention direct ownership of an enterprise by its operator. My point is not just that Pound was incompetent in economics, but that he was incompetent as a teacher and propagandist for Social Credit. Indeed, the lack of accuracy and perspicuity in his introductory definition scarcely matters, because it is not relevant to the following exposition and argument in ABC of Economics, which focus on the Social Credit belief that modern technology has rendered the old supposition of inescapable scarcity obsolete: Sane engineers and wise men tell us that the question of production is solved. The world‘s producing plant can produce

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Pound: Economic Guru everything the world needs. There is not the faintest reason to doubt this ( ABCE 234 ). More than eighty years later this perception is still not widely accepted as true, though it certainly is true – at least for the industrialized world. Despite our immense productive capacity, poverty, undernourishment, poor housing, treatable disease, and public debt persist. Pound’s moral outrage at this situation was, in my view, entirely justified. However, moral outrage does not automatically produce understanding and wisdom. In 1933 it was received opinion that the business cycle was caused by “overproduction.” Franklin D. Roosevelt so identified the problem in a speech given before his election as president in 1933: Our recent experiences with speculation have distorted the perspective of many minds. ... What had been lacking was the kind of planning which would prevent and not stimulate overproduction. ... It is natural that the scrapping of industries, and even institutions which seemed the bulwarks of our strength, bewildered even those who had heretofore been able to find in past history practical suggestions for present action. 4 Social Crediters were not bewildered; they were outraged. They recognised that the problem was not overproduction but underconsumption. In this they agreed with all the earlier and contemporaneous non - Marxist critiques of capitalism – Ruskin, Proudhon, Arthur Kitson, and Gesell. Pound quite sensibly repeats this point in his ABC of Economics: “Probably the only economic problem needing emergency solution in our time is the problem of distribution. There are enough goods, there is superabundant capacity to produce goods in superabundance. Why should anyone starve?” ( ABCE 234 ). His solution was to shorten the working day to 5 hours, thus spreading the work and the attendant wages more widely, thereby addressing the problem of poverty: “I admit it is not the whole answer; but it would go a long way to keep credit distributed among a great part of the population ( of any country whatsoever ), and thereby to keep goods, 4 Roosevelt, Looking Forward, pp. 9 - 10.

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Leon Surette necessities, luxuries, comforts, distributed and in circulation” ( ABCE 236 ). This is a reasonable and humane suggestion, and would no doubt have gone some way to alleviate suffering during the depression, but it fails to address the problem of inadequate purchasing power, because Pound neglects to make the crucial suggestion that the hourly wage be increased so that the workers received the same – or nearly the same – wage for five hours as they had been receiving for the standard eight or nine hours. Only an increase in the aggregate wage package would address the problem of underconsumption. Douglas’ idea was to address the problem of underconsumption by expanding the money supply through a direct distribution of money to individuals. He called this distribution, the National Dividend. Gesell ( and Fisher ) addressed it by increasing both the supply and the rate of circulation of money with Schwundgeld ( “Shrinking Money” ) or Scrip Money . Pound’s shortened work day does not address underconsumption at all. All it could possibly achieve would be a broader distribution of inadequate purchasing power – a socially redeeming attribute, but not a solution in accordance with the Social Credit underconsumptionist analysis. His exposition begins to wander all over the map, introducing the virtues of small, neighbourhood stores and shops over larger and fewer ones, and in the next paragraph he sings the praises of his grandfather’s “factive” personality ( ABCE 239 ). At this point he notices that he is wandering, and attempts to justify it by an appeal to the “ideogrammic method:” “Very well, I am not proceeding according to Aristotelian logic but according to the ideogrammic method of first heaping together the necessary components of thought” ( ABCE 239 ). But this characterization of the ideogrammic method is a travesty of what we find in The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: “Chinese notation is something much more than arbitrary symbols. It is based upon a vivid shorthand picture of the operations of nature. 5 Several pages later, he turns to the question of currency, which he defines as “the certificate of work done” ( ABCE 240 ), and in the context of his discussion of money, he now belatedly reveals that he believes that one could maintain the pay packet for four hours at the same level it had been for eight hours, though ( confusingly ) he sings 5 Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, p. 8.

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Pound: Economic Guru the praises of leisure over wealth instead of the need for an expansion of purchasing power: “I know, not from theory but from practice, that you can live infinitely better with a very little money and a lot of spare time, than with more money and less time. Time is not money, but it is almost everything else.” He suggests that the worker would probably be willing to take a reduction in wages in exchange for increased leisure time and security of employment. While this observation is no doubt true, and was in fact being acted upon in the 1990s, the scheme fails to address the problem of underconsumption. Frustratingly, he goes on to explain ( now applying Social Credit theory ) that no reduction in pay packet would be necessary because the “wage” is measured in currency, and the money supply can be expanded at will: “There are various credit schemes which could take care of the problem of leaving the figure 10 on the bit of paper, even though the day‘s work were cut in half ” ( ABCE 241 ). Pound’s exposition can only leave the casual reader befuddled. As a Social Crediter and underconsumptionist, he ought to be arguing that purchasing power must be increased because there is a structural incapacity of modern industrial economies to consume their entire production. Instead he argues for a reduction in the day’s hours of work so as to create more leisure, and adds, almost as an aside, that individual wages could be maintained if it were so desired. Underconsumptionists see the increase in aggregate purchasing power as the sine quae non of economic reform. Pound’s proposed reduction in hours of work would achieve that increase only if the larger number of workers received a larger aggregate wage. But he initially omits that feature altogether, and subsequently introduces it as an option. It must be admitted, then, that on economic questions Pound had some of the attributes of a crank: notably his failure to present a reasoned and coherent argument to support his conclusions, and his impatience with those who resisted those conclusions. However, he was unlike a crank in his openness to new ideas and perceptions. Unfortunately, he would adopt new ideas, perceptions, and projects without abandoning old ones, even though they might well be incompatible with one another – or even contradictory . This was the case with his Social Credit, Fascist, and Gesellite projects – which were mutually

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Leon Surette incompatible, and all of which were in conflict with his aesthetic project as an internationalist modernist. Pound himself has provided us with an account of crankish thought that, alas, fits his own case only too well: The loss of a sense of measure is unlucky . The component of error in an idea shows in its working out. And before that demonstration occurs an idea does not go into action, this is because of some inherent defect in the idea ( vide the whole story of cranks from the dawn of all human records ). ... The thinking man does not insist on conserving the first plan of an engine or an invention. Cranks do. Cf. The general incompetence of economic theorists ( GK 188 - 9 ) His correspondence with the American historian, W. E. Woodward clearly displays these tensions. He first wrote to Woodward in January of 1933 after reading Woodard’s George Washington: The Image and The Man, and shortly sent Woodward the still unpublished Jefferson and˘/ or Mussolini. Woodward read it, and despite his rejection of most of Pound’s views recommended it to Stanley Knott, who subsequently published it ( in 1935 ). Having got Woodward’s ear, Pound bombarded him with Social Credit and Gesellite literature. In a letter of March 4, 1934, he enclosed Points, a manifesto he had published in New Democracy ( 25 Aug. 1933 ). Points is a good summary of what Pound thought could and should be done, and that he hoped Roosevelt would do if elected. After a brief preamble he lists four points which combine the Social Credit policies of a national dividend, the abolition of taxes, and administered prices together with Gesell’s Schwundgeld: 1. The value of the country be assumed sufficient to pay at once: 5 dollars per week, dividend to every adult 3 dollars per week per first child 2 dollars per week for second child. nothing for any more children.

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Pound: Economic Guru ( The real value of the nation is vastly greater, but so long as the initial trial estimate does not exceed the real value, it doesn‘t matter whether we start by assuming say 12% or 20% or any other % of that value. ) 2. All government payments to be made in stamp scrip. stamp to value of 1% to be affixed monthly . 3. All taxes to be radically cut, say 50% to start with, & being gradually eliminated altogether. 4. Prices to be FIXED temporarily where they now are, and gradually to be reduced as per C. H. Douglas‘s computation system. The first, third and fourth proposals conform to Social Credit policy . They are designed to guarantee that the nation consumes its entire production on a year by year basis so that there would be no surpluses that had to be exported or wasted in armaments. ( Douglas believed that if exports and armament expenditures were abolished the funds “saved” could be redistributed to the nation’s citizens. ) The national dividend, accompanied by administered prices, would ensure that everyone received a share ( somewhat above subsistence ) of the national wealth whether they worked or not. But it is not at all clear what role Gesell’s Stamp Scrip ( proposal number 2 ) would play in the Douglas system. As a bearer of negative interest it is designed to eliminate hoarding, and as a self - liquidating currency, it permits an expansion of the money supply without exerting inflationary pressure. But the national dividend fulfills the first function in the Douglas scheme, and regulated prices fulfill the second. As far as hoarding is concerned, Douglas did not think it would be a problem since, except for a prudent reserve, he expected the nation to consume its entire product each year. There can be no hoarding if there is no surplus. Pound attempts to explain the rationale behind these proposals in typically combative notes: Notes: The abolition of taxes follows Douglas‘s dividend. It also follows stamp scrip.

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Leon Surette ( This latter is RECOGNIZED TO BE SOUND, by men in high position. Just as one receives personal assurance that the President UNDERSTANDS that the WHOLE people must be able to BUY what the WHOLE people produce ... though to date the President has not yet publicly said so. ) Roosevelt did come close to saying as much in his inaugural address, which, however, contrasts strongly with his earlier speech on the evils of overproduction: our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty, and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply . Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind‘s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. 6 Given such remarks, it is not surprising that Pound thought he could convert Roosevelt to Social Credit policies. Of course, in the event, Roosevelt left the banks pretty much alone, even rejecting the less radical advice which Irving Fisher offered. And although the New Deal departed from the paralysis of quantity theory by expanding the money supply, it did so through deficit financing and public works. Roosevelt did not give transfers directly to individuals on the model of Douglas’s National Dividend or even throug welfare and unemployment payments – as is the practice in many countries today . Nor, of course, did he nationalize the banks as Douglas proposed. Oddly, Pound registers an hostility toward payments to the unemployed in Points. His objection is grounded on moral and not economic 6 Roosevelt, Looking Forward, pp. 262 - 3.

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Pound: Economic Guru considerations, since relief payments would help – however meagerly – to repair the shortage of purchasing power: As for the British Dole and American ‘relief ’ DAMN both of them. They degrade the recipient. The man who wants the dole is no good. The man who don’t want it is insulted if forced to receive it. It is opium in that it is not necessary, and can only be approved by the recipient‘s being deceived into belief that it is the only means of relief. This expression of a healthy respect for the work ethic is rather surprising from one who led a rather bohemian life style. And it is totally out of keeping with the Social Credit perception that there is not enough work to go around in a modern industrial society . The National Dividend differs from other transfers to individuals such as relief or unemployment insurance only in being universal. In both cases individuals receive unearned income – just like the wealthy in an unreformed capitalist system, only in smaller amounts. In the letter to Woodward 7 Pound issued a challenge that Roosevelt adopt the National Dividend on the grounds that it is in accord with Roosevelt’s own analysis of the difficulty, and would achieve his objective of restored prosperity: After Roosevelt’s speech on March 4th [that is, his inaugural address of 1933, cited above] the issue is clear, and I shd. think, unavoidable: Why shouldn‘t the increase in purchasing power ( which Roosevelt demands, and admits to be necessary ) be distributed per capita to the citizens, instead of being ‘allocated’ by special favour to banks or to groups of ‘employers’? The enormous source of the government‘s credit lies in the nation‘s real profits, that is, the excess of what it produces ( or can produce ) over what it consumes. This is the meaning of ‘Economic Democracy’ [a Douglas book title] IS THAT CLEAR? Does anyone dare stand up and answer it? 7 Pound, Letters to W. E. Woodward, New York Public Library . All subsequent citations of letters between Pound and Woodward are from this archive.

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Leon Surette There is no suggestion of a political agenda in this scheme, and only the mildest suggestion of bad faith on the part of governments. His motivation appears to be entirely humanitarian. And even though the recommendations mix two different solutions, they are not so different from the suggestions for “reflation” or expansion of the money supply that Irving Fisher made in both Stable Money, and Stamp Scrip, and which became standard practice in the wake of the Keynesian reformation of economic orthodoxy . As a member of Roosevelt’s Business Advisory Committee, Woodward was in a position to exert some influence. However, he was orthodox in economic matters, and therefore unlikely to endorse the analyses of Douglas, Gesell, or even Fisher. 8 Woodward gave Douglas a careful hearing. Not only did he read Douglas’s 1924 book, Social Credit, but he reread it after hearing Douglas speak in New York. He wrote to Pound on May 25 that he was disappointed: “I have just read his book again, and 204 pages out of 212 are devoted to sophomoric essays on the money system, production and consumption, etc. etc.” Nor was he more favourably impressed with Pound’s scheme: In the United States there are about sixty million adults. Suppose you paid a national dividend to each of them of $10 a month; that would mean $600.000.000 the first month, and so on, and so on. By the end of the year you would have prices sky high because of inflation. I know that Douglas says prices would not rise, as they would be controlled, but you can just bet one hundred to one that they would rise. With that universal and unrestrained inflation the dollar would not be worth ten cents at the end of two years. Pound offered no response to this criticism, though his standard defence was included in Points – that so long as the issue of credit did not exceed the nation’s capacity to deliver goods and services, no inflation would ensue. And in fairness to Pound, we should note that he had proposed $5.00 per adult, not the $10.00 Woodward postulates. And it 8 We should remember that today’s orthodoxy is monetarism and not equilibrium theory as it was in 1934, nor is Keynesianism, which supplanted equilibrium theory for a while, orthodox any longer.

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Pound: Economic Guru has to be remembered that if all of the able and willing adults were employed, they would no doubt have been earning an average of perhaps $100 per month in 1934, representing $4 billion per month ( assuming a 2/3rds participation of adults in the labour force ). The problem was that many who wished to work, could not find employment. An infusion of a sum of $300 million per month, such as Pound proposed, would have stimulated the economy, and represented only 14% of total wages at full employment, and thus would have been inflationary only if unemployment were less than 14%.. But such a perception had to wait upon Keynes’ General Theory, still two years in the future, for a theoretical modeling that economists could accept. While attending his talk, Woodward had sent up a question to Douglas, asking how he would put his plan into action. But Douglas just evaded it: “Then he started to talk about steam engines, and reminded me very much of Howard Scott [the founder of Technocracy], who will begin to talk about Technocracy and wind up with reducing diets.” Later in the letter, he concedes that the Douglas’ scheme could work, but argues that it is incompatible with the maintenance of a capitalist, free enterprise system – something that neither Douglas nor Pound would admit: It seems to me that Major Douglas’ Social Credit plan could be carried out only in connection with the national ownership of land, buildings, factories, farms, stores, and so on. Then it would be easy enough to work it – also easy enough to keep down inflation, because when paper money would be issued under those conditions it would be spent with some Government concern and would be called into the Treasury and destroyed. Pound does not respond to this observation, an important criticism of the Douglas scheme. He believed that if the state took over all banking functions, and issued dividends ( which would be equivalent, he believed, to bank profits ), no other changes would be necessary in capitalist democracies. Despite the concession that such a scheme might work in a socialist state, Woodward can find nothing to admire in Douglas’ outline of a plan for Scotland, designed to show how Social Credit could work in practice:

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Leon Surette Well, it doesn‘t show anything of the kind. Within the last hour I have read it four or five times and I must say it is an absurd, muddled statement. I don‘t believe that there is a person living who can make sense of it. In one part of it, it would seem that the plan is based on taking over all industrial undertakings, but on the next page he says that it will be clearly understood there would be no interference with existing ownership. Pound makes no defense of Douglas, but simply disassociates himself from him, implying that Douglas’ errors are matters of expression or detail, and that in any case, he ( Pound ) is labouring to correct them: If Doug flops it is all the more reason we shouldn’t. Seems to me it wd/ be damn waste of time treating Doug’s first tongue - tied attempt to get out of engineering into book writing, as if it were a sort of Koran and me a hidjibidji [sic] expounding the arcane meaning of what he was possibly trying to say . JOB is to find the RIGHT idea, and its clearest possible formulation ... I am fighting with Orage and Douglas the whole time ANYhow. I am very glad to have yr/ letter which I shall use in attempt to shake ‚em into greater clarity of statement. ( Letter of June 5, 1934 ) While it was true that Pound was constantly at odds with other Social Crediters, his disagreements with them are not the same as Woodward’s. Indeed Woodward’s criticisms applied to the project Pound outlined in Points, as well as to the pure Douglas scheme. Pound defended Douglas much more vigorously in a letter of the next day to Senators Borah and Cutting ( 7 June 1934 ): I have just had a seven page letter from W. E. Woodward complaining that Douglas ( C. H. ) Didn’t answer his question ETC. The whole of W.E.W.’s muddle arising from his not having grasped the possibility of a FIXED price, let alone of “compensated or adjusted or just” price. If a man as intelligent as Woodward, as near to the works, hasn’t SEEN that yet, there must be “countless millions” needing primary instruction. ( L/BC 133 )

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Pound: Economic Guru Pound must not have had much confidence in this riposte, or he would have offered it to Woodward. It is certainly true – indeed tautological – that if prices remained fixed, an increase in the money supply would not cause inflation, but experience shows that in a market economy administered prices cause a decline in the supply of goods on offer and/ or a black market at unregulated prices. In short, price fixing by the state is incompatible with the free market economy that Douglas and Pound both believed Social Credit policies would rescue from the socialist challenge. Woodward predicts that Social Credit will be a dead an issue in the United States within a year, as Technocracy already was, and in closing, responds to Pound’s persistent insinuation that Social Credit’s failure to catch on could be attributed to the implacable opposition of a conspiracy of bankers and/or Jews: In your last letter you say, “Have you any idea of the mental or financial obstacle that prevents discussion of scrip and dividend?” Why, yes; I can tell it to you in one sentence. There is nothing at all to talk about. There is no proposition of any kind made. Even Major Douglas himself says he will leave it to us to formulate a plan. That being the case, all that Major Douglas has to deliver is a lot of generalized talk about the function of money . 9 Like so many other of Pound’s efforts to convert correspondents to his views, the Woodward escapade ended in disaster. But Pound was oblivious to criticism, and proof against rejection. An exchange with Odon Por six years later than the one with Woodward illustrates even more emphatically Pound’s inability to adjust his exposition so as to reach an audience. 10 9 Although somewhat too sweeping, this is, I think, a fair criticism of Douglas and Social Credit, and one which Keynes levels just two years later in The General Theory . Keynes there concedes that “The strength of Major Douglas’ advocacy has, of course, largely depended on orthodoxy having no valid reply to much of his destructive criticism.” But, in corroboration of Woodward’s assessment, he added, “On the other hand, the detail of his diagnosis ... includes much mere mystification” ( Keynes, The General Theory, pp. 370 - 1 ). 10 Odon Por was a Hungarian who had written for The New Age during the First World War, and was now resident in Italy . Like Pound, he earned a precarious living by his pen,

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Leon Surette Por thought that Fascism might well be captured by Social Credit economic reforms, and began a vigorous propaganda campaign in hopes of bringing that about. It was in pursuit of this goal that he approached Pound in 1934. As Tim Redman has shown, they became a two - man propaganda machine for Social Credit reform within Fascism. 11 However Por was constantly complaining to Pound of the opacity of his economic prose, and begged him to try to be clearer. He frequently observed that even he could not understand what Pound was getting at. Pound did not ignore Por’s complaints, but he was quite unable to make an appropriate adjustment. One instance is revealing. Por wrote to Pound ( 2 June 1940 ) passing on a complaint from Camillio Pellizzi, a professor of Italian at the University of London: “Pellizi says he cant do anything with the dope you sent him. Write [illegible] a clear article people can understand – without consulting an Enciclopedia.” 12 Pound was incensed, and replied ( 4 June ,1940 ): Nuts/ you ass!! Pel/ asks me to write down my IDEAS. I send a syllabus or catalogue, and ask which PART of the subject he thinks can be useful. A clear article “people” can understand!! WHAT people? I am not a kindergarten department. A “CULTURA” is made up of various elements. A curriculum is ordinarily DIVIDED into various subjects. BUT in a CULand was a Social Crediter. He was not a poet, but a free lance economic journalist. On Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922, Por rushed into print with Fascism, a book that portrayed Fascism as an empty vessel: „Fascism, we repeat, although it has theories is not a system; this is one of the reasons of its success. Theories arise out of acts and not acts out of theories, and Fascism moulds itself, day by day, by means of daily action and experience.“ ( p. 170 ) This assessment is pretty well what Mussolini said himself “All doctrines aim at directing the activities of men towards a given objective; but these activities in their turn react on the doctrine, modifying and adjusting it to new needs, or outstripping it. A doctrine must therefore be a vital act and not a verbal display . Hence the pragmatic strain in Fascism, its will to power, its will to live, its attitude toward violence, and its value” ( Mussolini, Fascism, p. 26 ). 11 Redman believes that it was Por who led Pound to imagine that Mussolini’s Fascism and Social Credit were compatible ( Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, p. 160 ). Redman may very well be correct on that; however, Por contacted Pound after he had written Jefferson and / or Mussolini, so we cannot credit him with generating Pound’s enthusiasm for the Italian dictator. 12 Pound / Por, Correspondence, Beinecke collection.

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Pound: Economic Guru TURE these subjects have some relation to each other, in fact they all emerge from a basic philosophy; which causes modifications, or rather the life pushed out the dead parts or the decayed precedent condition. Of course IF the universities are NOT expected to change their bunk, it merely means that they, and the schools are NOT OF the present culture. So far as Pound is concerned, he is misunderstood because he is far “ahead “of everyone else. Such a response was almost canonical with the modernists when their avant garde artworks were misunderstood. Pound’s commitment to the “ideogrammic method” left him with no recourse when misunderstood, other than to repeat more emphatically what he had already written. It is this difficulty that informs his complaint: “No mutt understands ANYTHING till he has been told it ten times in SIX different forms” ( 12 July [1940] ). His claim is always that the failure is in his reader, not himself. Once his audience has re - invented itself along his lines, they will understand – or so Pound believed. To put it another way, he can be understood only entire, not piecemeal. This holistic approach to communication is one he shares with postmodernism, which also maintains that things cannot be understood analytically or piece - meal, but only all - of - a - piece or holistically . Pound’s “culture” or “paideuma” – Social Credit economics, a modernist aesthetic, and a fascist politics – has to be swallowed whole or not at all. Pound attributes his reader’s failure to embrace his economics to insufficient exposure to the whole package, or – when that explanation has worn thin – to stupidity or venality . As a result Pound inevitably becomes impatient with those who find the pill too large or too bitter to swallow. He seemed to be incapable of seeing how disjointed and cryptic his prose frequently was. When Por asked him to revise a piece he had written so as to make it clearer, he exploded: WOT, my deah Odon, I NEVER seem able to get into YOUR damnblock IS that I have NO bloody means of knowing WHAT the hell you or other readers consider obscure. ... It all looks simple to me and if some blighter dont know that cat spells CAT, or dog DOG How am I to tell WHICH words of three letters are incompre-

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Leon Surette hensible. You appear to understand PARTS of my writing, but how the kesl [sic] can I tell WHICH parts, if no one ever picks out a particular part and asks: what thehelldoyou [sic] mean? 13 ( 23 July, 1940 ) It is not unusual for exceptionally able people to be blocked when attempting to explain to less gifted interlocutors what seems transparent to them, but opaque to their interlocutor. Resourceful teachers will vary techniques and approaches in an effort to get their message across. Even though passionately devoted to persuading others to adopt his view of things, when he was not understood Pound could only shout, bluster, repeat, wax sarcastic, or throw up his hands in exasperation and despair at the thickheadedness of his interlocutor. Perhaps the most trenchant criticism of this tendency in Pound comes from the pen of George Santayana, whom Pound first approached in 1937, in an attempt to recruit him for a publishing scheme. In an attempt to bring Santayana around to his view of things, Pound sent him a copy of Fenollosa’s, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, 14 which encapsulates the “ideogrammic method.” Fenollosa believed that knowledge arises “actively” from the juxtaposition of particulars, rather than in the Aristotelian or analytic method in which to know something means to bring a particular under a general, for example, “This object is an APPLE.” The ideogrammaticist, in contrast, would merely place a bunch of apples together confident that the observer would intuit the concept, APPLE. After perusing the Fenollosa essay, Santayana wrote a trenchant criticism of Fenollosa’s epistemlogy: Dear E. P. This mustn‘t go on for ever, but I have a word to say, in the direction of fathoming your potential philosophy . When is a thing not static? When it jumps or when it makes you jump? Evidently the latter in the case of Chinese ideograms, 13 Tim Redman ( 1991, p. 203 ) cites part of this passage. However, his reading of Pound’s rhetorical failure is not the same as mine. He attributes it to a “semantic schizophrenia,” a condition that I do not believe is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM ) of the American Psychiatric Assocation. 14 McCormick, George Santayana, p. 403.

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Pound: Economic Guru you being your thoughts. And these jumps are to particulars, not regressive to general terms. Classifications are not poetry . I grant that, but think that classifications may be important practically; e.g., poisons: how much? what number? ... ... When you ask for jumps to other particulars, you don‘t mean ( I suppose ) any other particulars, although your tendency to jump is so irresistible that the bond between the particulars jumped to is not always apparent. It is a mental grab - bag. A latent classification or a latent genetic connection would seem to be required, if utter miscellaneousness is to be avoided. 15 Fenollosa’s epistemology is a mildly mystical, and overtly pantheistic doctrine, and as such is immune to Santayana’s strictures. The relevant passage in Chinese Written Character is the following: The whole delicate substance of speech is built upon substrata of metaphor. Abstract terms, pressed by etymology, reveal their ancient roots still embedded in direct action. But the primitive metaphors do not spring from arbitrary subjective processes. They are possible only because they follow objective lines of relations in nature herself. Relations are more real and more important than the things which they relate. The forces which produce the branch - angles of an oak lay potent in the acorn ... Nature furnishes her own clues. Had the world not been full of homologies sympathies, and identities, thought would have been starved and language chained to the obvious. There would have been no bridge whereby to cross from the minor truth of the seen to the major truth of the unseen. 16 Such an epistemology puts a tremendous stress upon self - evidence, and virtually excludes any recourse to reasoned argument. Disagreement can arise only from the willful or involuntary blindness of one party . One can teach within this epistemology only as a guru or Zen master, providing the student with koans that produce either blank in15 Jan. 20, 1940. Cited by McCormick, George Santayana, pp. 403 - 4. 16 Fenollosa, Chinese Written Character, pp. 22 - 3.

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Leon Surette comprehension or a satori. Pound’s economic evangelism falls between the technique of the remote, laconic guru, and the passionate, voluble persuader. The in - between position combines opacity with passion, producing – alas – more heat than light. Works cited Ernest Fenollosa [1920], The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra Pound, San Francisco: City Lights Books, n.d. Irving Fisher, assisted by Hans R. L. Cohrssen & Herbert W. Fisher, Stamp Scrip, New York: Adelphi, 1933. –––, assisted by Hans R. L. Cohrssen, Stable Money: A History of the Movement, New York: Adelphi, 1934. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, London: Macmillan, 1936. John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography, New York: Paragon House, 1988. Benito Mussolini, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome: Ardita Publishers, 1935. Odon Por, Fascism, trans. E. Townshend, London: The Labour Publishing Co., 1923a. Ezra Pound [1934], The ABC of Reading, New York: New Directions, 1960. –––, [1938], Guide to Kulchur, New York: New Directions, 1952. –––, Ezra Pound: Selected Prose 1909 - 1965, ed. William Cookson, New York: New Directions, 1973. –––, Letters to Woodward, in: Paideuma 15 ( Spring 1986 ), pp. 105 - 120. –––, The Cantos of Ezra Pound, New York: New Directions, 1995. Tim Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1991.

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Pound: Economic Guru Joan Robinson [1962], Economic Philosophy, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Looking Forward, New York: John Day, 1933. E. P. Walkiewicz / Hugh Witemeyer ( eds. ), Ezra Pound and Senator Bronson Cutting, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.

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FROM THE OIKOS TO THE COSMOS : THE ANTI - ECONOMICS OF EZRA POUND Bill Freind Few ideas or issues occupied more of Ezra Pound’s attention than political economy . Perhaps the first explicit economic reference appears in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 1 which was published in 1920. By the mid - 1930’s, Pound was obsessed with money and credit, firing off letters to the editor, pamphlets, articles, and book reviews in an attempt to spread the economic ideas that would recur throughout The Cantos until the final fragments. Despite this prominence, some critics have downplayed the significance of Pound’s economic theories. Paul Morrison, for example, argues that “Pound’s economics never progressed beyond a concern with issues of monetary distribution and representation, the ‘poetics’ of money, and the ‘poetics’ became entangled in anti - Semitism, the tropological fantasy of a Jewish conspiracy” 2. Perhaps the reason that some have been tempted to dismiss his economics is because the thought seems relatively uncomplicated, and in fact Pound once said “BAD economics are complicated. Good economics are simple” 3. But before writing off his monetary theory, it’s worth remembering Pound’s 1 In Mauberley, Pound writes: Died some, pro patria, non dulce non et decor ... walked eye - deep in hell believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy; usury age - old and age - thick and liars in public places. ( Personae 188 ) Some of the early love poems which Pound modeled on the troubadours utilize usury as a trope, although in a different sense than the term would later acquire. For an interesting discussion of this, see Casillo, Troubadour Love and Usury in Ezra Pound’s Writings. 2 Morrison, The Poetics of Fascism, p. 9. 3 Pound in Chase, The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, p. 67.

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Bill Freind warning that “[n]o intelligent man will be content to treat economics merely as economics, and probably no writer could write anything of interest in so doing” ( SP 280 ). I would argue that it is helpful and even necessary to see Pound’s economics neither as merely political nor as emanations of his anti - Semitism, but instead as a symptom of much larger themes in Pound’s work and thought. Pound’s economics come into a very different light when viewed through Georges Bataille’s model of the “general economy”, which attempts to explain disciplines ranging from geophysics to political economy by way of a meta - economy rooted in the movement of energy through the universe, and which seeks to account for the irrational exuberance of art, religion, and sexuality, aspects of human existence which he felt had been excluded from the rationalist perspectives of both Marxism and capitalism. Using this model, I suggest that Pound’s obsession with interest rates and currency is in fact an aspect of a much broader economy that operates in The Cantos, one that encompasses his political, economic, and sexual beliefs. As the early cantos show, the heart of this economy is an irrational and destructive sexuality that is both related and opposed to the most obvious economic and political influences, such as the rational circulation of money and credit as articulated by C. H. Douglas, as well as the calm and ordered social structures of Confucius. The “Natural Economy” Alec Marsh has demonstrated the affinities between the agrarian economics of Thomas Jefferson and those of Pound, demonstrating that Jefferson’s belief that all wealth derives from nature in general and agriculture in particular ( a notion which Jefferson inherits from the Physiocrats and which is carried on in various nineteenth and early twentieth century popular movements ) is central to Pound’s thought. However, while Pound repeatedly utilizes natural metaphors and analogies in his discussions of political economy, it is important to note that these are in fact some of the oldest tropes in economics. The Oeconomica erroneously attributed to Aristotle 4, one of the earliest extant tracts dealing with the subject, offers an excellent example of this “natural economy .” 4 For a brief discussion of a possible authorship, cf. Introduction to Oeconomica, p.323 - 325.

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos In Book One, pseudo - Aristotle appears to be using the word “economics” in what we would now call the etymological sense: it is an ordering of the oikos, or household, and the text offers advice on how to select a good wife and how to handle slaves. In Book Two, Aristotle moves beyond the household and to the nation, documenting the strategies used by various rulers to raise money for the state and maintain the loyalty of soldiers, priests, and nobles. Nonetheless, the text is largely devoid of any discussion of the system we now call economics except for one anomalous paragraph in Book One: In regard to property, the first care is that which comes naturally . Now in the course of nature the art of agriculture is prior, and next come those arts which extract the products of the earth, mining and the like. Agriculture ranks first because of its justice; for it does not take anything away from men, either with their consent, as do retail trading and the mercenary arts, or against their will, as do the warlike arts ( Aristotle 1343a 25 - 30 ). Pseudo - Aristotle shows agriculture as a “natural” process distinct from trade; the cycles of growth and harvest are opposed to the “unjust” and “artificial” motions of both the market and the battlefield. Agriculture is original, while trade is debased, a fall from an ideal state. The obvious echoes of an Edenic lost paradise demonstrate how implausible this idea was even in Aristotle’s time: many farmers would have sold their produce, thus making it a trading art, as the author was no doubt well aware. The fact that he chooses to overlook this indicates that the natural economy is essentially mythic: like Eden, it is an ideal that has been lost because of the venality of humanity . Despite its clearly mythical status, the trope of the “natural economy” persisted for two and a half millennia, appearing in writers and thinkers as diverse as Ovid and Marx. 5 5 Aristotle contrasts the harvest of fruits, vegetables, and grains with the extraction of metals from the earth, suggesting the latter is inextricably tied with war and injustice. Ovid echoes this in the Metamorphoses, claiming that greed is one of the central problems of the Iron Age: ... the ground Free, once, to everyone, like air and sunshine,

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Bill Freind In many ways, Bataille utilizes the myth of the natural economy, although he turns that economy on its head. While the natural economy is characterized by an essential harmoniousness, Bataille sees profitless waste – what he calls “expenditure” – as perhaps the central force in the universe. These ideas are first developed in his 1933 essay “The Notion of Expenditure,” in which Bataille argues that human activity is divided into two parts. The first is the struggle for that which provides the minimum for existence, such as food, clothing, and shelter. The second is what Bataille calls unproductive expenditure, and he offers an interesting range of examples: “luxury, mourning, war, cults, the construction of sumptuary monuments, games, spectacles, arts, perverse sexual activity ( i. e., deflected from genital finality )” 6. What links these very different activities is that they have no end beyond themselves, and that they emphasize not acquisition but loss. Bataille argues that this loss, or expenditure, is the principle which drives human activity: Human life, distinct from juridical existence, existing as it does on a globe isolated in celestial space, from night to day and from one country to another – human life cannot in any way be limited to the closed systems assigned to it by reasonable conceptions. The immense travail of recklessness, discharge, and upheaval that constitutes life could be expressed by stating that life starts with the deficit of these systems; at least what it allows in the way of order and reserve has meaning only from the moment when the ordered and reserved forces liberate and lose themselves for ends that cannot be subordinated to any thing one can account for. It is only by such insubordination Was stepped off by surveyors ( I, 134 - 136 ) ...all that precious metal, The root of all evil. They found the guilt of iron And gold, more guilty still. And War came forth That uses both to fight with ( I, 140 - 143 ) Marx uses a similar, if more satirical version of the myth, which manages to metaphorically link the god of the underworld, excrement, and the grail: “soon after its birth, modern society [European Christendom] pulled Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth and greeted gold as its Holy Grail” ( Capital 1, pp. 132 - 33 ). 6 Bataille, The Notion of Expenditure, p. 118.

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos – even if it is impoverished – that the human race ceases to be isolated in the unconditional splendour of material things. 7 The “order” of Bataille’s economy is not the harmonious cycles of agriculture, but “[t]he immense travail of recklessness, discharge, and upheaval that constitutes life.” This is essentially an inversion of the standard understanding of economics; while that discipline inevitably concentrates on the generation and acquisition of wealth through the ( supposedly ) rational and orderly circulation of goods, services, and money, Bataille’s economy – or, more accurately, anti - economy – expends wealth in an irrational and destructive release. While the author of the Oeconomica emphasizes the justice of subsistence agriculture, which produces food and therefore life, Bataille’s economy is predicated on a loss that cannot be restrained by laws, reason, or any other factor. In The Accursed Share, Bataille greatly extends this theory, attempting to show that the entire universe operates according to the principle of expenditure. Growth, reproduction and even eating are described as forms of waste, and all human activity, including economic exchange, parallel this flow of energy through the cosmos: At first sight, it is easy to recognize in the economy – in the production and use of wealth – a particular aspect of terrestrial activity regarded as a cosmic phenomenon. A movement is produced on the surface of the globe that results from the circulation of energy at this point in the universe ... Beyond our immediate ends, man’s activity in fact pursues the useless and infinite fulfillment of the universe. 8 Bataille here takes Aristotle to the limit: his general economy, of which political economy is merely a part, is an attempt to reconcile human existence with the principles of waste that govern the universe. A field of study which began with the oikos has now expanded to the cosmos. At first glance, Bataille and Pound would seem to make an unlikely pairing but the two men share a surprising number of similarities. Both 7 Ibid., p. 128. 8 Bataille, The Accursed Share I, pp. 20 - 21.

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Bill Freind showed an early interest in money . Pound’s father worked at the US Mint in Philadelphia, and as a young boy Pound sometimes visited his father’s workplace, occasions that were important enough to be recorded in Indiscretions 9. Likewise, some of Bataille’s first published writings were on numismatics. 10 Both were fascinated by secret societies and demonstrated a strong interest in medieval and mystical Christianity, although neither man was a Christian. 11 Reading The Cantos – and especially A Draft of XXX Cantos – through Bataille’s general economy serves two purposes. First, it shows that Pound’s economic thought is in fact inseparable from many of the central ideas and themes in his work. For instance, many of his concerns and interests are figured in the same tropes of circulation he would use in his economic writings. Pound was incensed by the imposition of passports during the First World War and complained about it repeatedly . In one letter to Senator Bronson Cutting, he writes “I think I have done all that could be expected of me re/ the passport imbecility . The god damned spirit of obstruction came in with Woodie Wilsi’s [i.e, President Woodrow Wilson’s] rough necks” ( L / BC 50 ) 12. Just as usury impedes the flow of purchasing power by concentrating it in the hands of too few people, passports restrict the free and natural circulation of people between countries. Likewise, his extraordinary correspondence is itself a kind of circulation: Pound was promoting ( or disparaging ) ideas, introducing people, and trying to foster and promote artistic and political movements around the globe. Hugh Witemeyer and E. P. Walkiewicz suggest that “Pound’s notion of circulation is best summarized in Ruskin’s famous pronouncement, ‘There is no wealth but life,”’ adding that anything that impedes this circulation is “an enemy of life to be abjured and reformed or damned 9 Pound, Indescretions, p. 47. 10 Stoekl, Introduction, p. X. 11 Bataille, however, had been devout as a young man and actually entered the seminary for a time. 12 Far from being a temporary annoyance, Pound would later remember the imposition of passports as a crucial event in his political awareness. In 1956, D. G. Bridson, a Social Creditor Pound knew from before the war, went to St. Elizabeths Hospital, where Pound had been institutionalized to record Pound reading the Cantos. At one point, Pound went into an impromptu monologue which was supposed to list the things that pushed him to attack the Roosevelt administration in the radio broadcasts, and he suggested that the first step was the American passport office in Paris in 1919 ( Carpenter, A Serious Character, p. 824 ).

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos and removed” ( L / BC 83 - 4 ). In fact, it seems that Pound may have been attracted to the economics of C. H. Douglas and Silvio Gesell because they coincided with notions of circulation he had already developed. The second, and more important reason for reading Pound through Bataille is that it shows another kind of economy – or, more precisely, an anti - economy – at work in The Cantos, one that is both related and opposed to the rational economics of Douglas and Gesell. This anti - economy is implicit in the political disorder and purposeless violence in The Cantos, and especially in A Draft of XXX Cantos, which are often overshadowed by Pound’s authoritarianism. To some degree, this disorder and violence stems from his interest in anarchism, which, as Allan Antliff has shown, developed when Pound met Dora Marsden, who was deeply influenced by Max Stirner’s individualist anarchism. Antliff has noted that anarchist references appear frequently in Pound’s writing for The New Freewoman and The Egoist, both of which Marsden edited. 13 The deep skepticism toward political power that A Draft of XXX Cantos shows is also consonant with the general economy of The Cantos. In fact, this quasi - anarchist sensibility appears in the earliest cantos. In a long poem filled with ostensibly illustrious leaders, the first ruler mentioned is a failure: Pentheus, the Theban king who refuses to honor Bacchus and is torn apart by Maenads. Pentheus does not actually appear in Canto II; instead, he is addressed by Acoetes who unsuccessfully attempts to convince the king to honor Bacchus. Consequently, this is peculiar, because in some ways Pentheus is the type of rational and almost Confucian leader Pound might be expected to celebrate. As Pentheus sees the citizens of Thebes surrendering to the rites of Bacchus, he says Children of Mars, have you all gone crazy? ... Blood of the dragon’s teeth, you’re possessed! ... You, who were never dismayed by the threatening swords of the foe on the march or his blaring trumpets, are now being worsted by screaming women, bibulous frenzy, lewd and lecherous hordes and the futile banging of drums!

( Ovid Met. 3.531 - 537 )

13 See Antliff, Ezra Pound, Man Ray, and Vorticism in America, 1914 - 1917.

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Bill Freind Pentheus recognizes that Bacchus presents a fundamental threat to the order of Thebes by undermining their military strength, inverting gender relations, and promoting disorder with drunken, sexual revelry . However, A. David Moody suggests that in The Cantos Bacchus / Dionysos is actually a god of order: As a son of Zeus Dionysos was associated with the divine light which is at once the light of life and the light of intelligence; and he was held to generate both the myriad forms of living beings and their powers to sense things and to make sense of their experience. He would figure then as the cause of our responsiveness to light and of the intelligence that is developed from seeing; thence of its power of orderly visualization, and of its further power of original thought. 14 Because Pentheus is literally dismembered by his spellbound mother and aunt, it seems somewhat bizarre to suggest the Maenads are animated by “the light of life and the light of intelligence,” and, as I will show, the rest of A Draft of XXX Cantos explicitly works against that reading. While Ovid suggests that Pentheus is punished for his refusal to accept the irrational force of Dionysus, Euripides presents a different account: in The Bacchae, Pentheus sees the Maenads as dedicated less to Dionysus than to Aphrodite, and he’s most concerned by their unfettered sexuality: They tell me, in the midst of each group of revellers stands a bowl full of wine; and the women go creeping off this way and that to lonely places and there give themselves to lecherous men, under the excuse that they are Maenad priestesses; though in their ritual Aphrodite comes before Bacchus

14 Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet. Vol. I, p. 12.

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( Eur. Bacchae 188 )

From the Oikos to the Cosmos Although Pentheus appears to be at least partially mistaken in his belief that the Maenads venerate Aphrodite more than Bacchus, the first canto clearly shows that the goddess is the divinity who is opposed to political order throughout the entirety of The Cantos, and who is central to Pound’s general economy . A Draft of XXX Cantos is filled with characters, many of whom are rulers, who are slain by Aphrodite. Canto IV includes a reference to the story of Itys, who was killed by his mother, Procne, and fed to her husband, Tereus, in revenge for the latter’s rape of Procne’s sister Philomela. That is immediately followed by the story of the troubadour Cabestan ( Guillems de Cabestanh ), the lover of Seremonda who was the wife of Ramon of Castel Rossillon: “It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish.” “It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish? “No other taste shall change this.” And she went toward the window, the slim white stone bar Making a double arch; Firm even fingers held to the firm pale stone; Swung for a moment, and the wind out of Rhodez Caught in the full of her sleeve. ... the swallows crying: ‘Tis. ‘Tis. Ytis!

( IV/13 - 14 )

Huw Grange explains that Raimon had been impressed by Cabestan’s talents as a troubadour and hired him to be his wife’s donçel, or squire. However, Raimon’s real intent was that Cabestan could dedicate “his songs to her, to the glory of Raimon’s wife” 15, but more importantly to Raimon’s own glory . For Raimon, troubadour song is nothing but a “stylized pretence, a social game that allows him to bask in his own glory and that of his beautiful wife, while conceding a few kudos to the lowly troubadour at the same time” 16 Not surprisingly, this led to an actual affair and 15 Grange spells the king’s name “Raimon” instead of “Ramon.” 16 Grange, Guilhem de Cabestanh’s Eaten Heart, p. 94.

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Bill Freind when Raimon discovered his wife Seremonda’s infidelity, he had Cabestan killed, and ( in an echo of the story of Tereus and Procne ) secretly fed her her lover’s heart. I want to emphasize a less obvious subject rhyme: in these stories, sexual desire leads to the elimination of the political powers of both Tereus and Raimon. Tereus is turned into a hoopoe, a bird with a tuft of feathers on its head reasembling a crown, which parodies the temporal power he no longer has. Grange suggests that Raimon is devastated by his wife’s affair “not because he has lost his wife, but because he has lost a male companion and fears he will lose prestige in the homosocial order” 17. Like Tereus, Raimon ultimately loses all of his power: King Anfos ( Alphonso II of Aragon ) defeats and imprisons him for the rest of his life, while also giving Ramon’s lands to the families of Seremonda and Cabestan. 18 These stories also present a subject rhyme with Pentheus, whose literal dismemberment serves as a dramatic representation of the loss of his temporal power. In these instances, Pound celebrates an irrational, destructive and anarchic sexuality that is more powerful and more worthy of celebration than the nominally rational power of any temporal leader. Pound continues with that theme, listing a number of instances in which anarchic sexuality is opposed to political order, and / or leads to the deaths of the lovers. He mentions the troubadour Pieire de Maensac who “had De Tierci’s wife and with the war they made: /  Troy in Auvergnat” ( V / 18 ). In a subject rhyme with the story of Cabestan, the troubadour Peire de Maensac seduced the wife of the nobleman Bernart de Tierci and fled with her to the castle of the Dalfi d’Alvernha. I count sixteen people who are killed in one way or another by love or sexual desire in the first eight cantos; that number does not include de Tierci’s siege of the castle of Dalfi d’Alvernha or the sack of Troy, which, combined, would have killed hundreds or thousands more. It’s important to note that Pound is not merely contrasting the ecstatic and irrational aspects of sexual love with the rational and acquisitive nature of political order, since the lovers themselves are often murdered or horrifically brutalized. Instead, he presents less an economy than an anti - economy . As Jacques Derrida notes, “[a]mong its irreducible predicates or semantic values, 17 Ibid., p. 96. 18 Ibid., pp. 103 - 4. As Huw Grange notes, the act of retribution is obviously an invention, since Alfonso II actually died sixteen years before Cabestan.

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos economy no doubt includes the values of law ( nomos ) and of home ( oikos, home, property, family, the hearth, the fire indoors )” 19. In The Cantos, Aphrodite is opposed to the nomos: sexual desire both violates the legal bonds of marriage and results in the loss of power or death of the ruler, who is the embodiment of the law. More importantly, sexual desire obliterates the oikos, as the literal and metaphorical houses of these rulers are destroyed, the families are broken up, Troy is reduced to rubble, Itys is eaten, Seremonda leaps to her death. It’s certainly no coincidence that the troubadours were itinerant bards who left home and ( intentionally or not ) destroyed the homes of others. Aphrodite stands in the place of both the law and the home; just as Bataille’s general economy moves from the oikos to the cosmos, Pound’s anti - economy eliminates the oikos in favor of the divine power of sexual desire. This sexual love is a form of expenditure, and it is central to the anti - economy of the Cantos. In The Accursed Share, Bataille suggests that “love joins the lovers only in order to spend, to go from pleasure to pleasure, from delight to delight: theirs is a society of consumption, as against the State, which is a society of acquisition” 20. In the first eight cantos, Pound goes further than Bataille: the lovers’ “society of consumption” is indeed against the State; however, they themselves are often metaphorically consumed by their desires, while the troubadour Cabestan is quite literally ( if unknowingly ) consumed by his lover Seremonda. Perhaps an even more apposite quote from Bataille is this: “[t]he desire of the senses is the desire, if not to destroy oneself, at least to be consumed and to lose oneself without reservation” 21. The sexual economy of the early Cantos is predicated on an expenditure so extreme that it usually results in self - annihilation. Malatesta and the Rejection of Glor y Since the first seven cantos depict leaders whose powers are threatened by the literal or metaphorical powers of Dionysos and Aprhrodite, the Malatesta Cantos ( VIII - XI ) assume a signal importance, since they present the first leader whom Pound treats at length in The Cantos: Si19 Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, p. 6. 20 Bataille, The Accursed Share II & III, p. 163. 21 Ibid., p. 113.

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Bill Freind gismundo Malatesta ( 1417 - 1468 ), the Lord of Rimini and condottiere, or mercenary warlord. Malatesta seems like the antithesis of a Confucian leader, since he had a series of very public affairs, may have murdered two wives, allegedly planned to kill Pope Paul II, and was a thoroughly untrustworthy condottiere who routinely switched sides and swindled his benefactors, and. I would argue that while the Malatesta Cantos downplay those aspects of his life, they nonetheless repeatedly undermine his status as a political or military hero. That’s because the Malatesta Cantos present a political economy of expenditure: while the historical Malatesta was no doubt motivated by a desire for glory and political power, Pound’s Malatesta seems much more ambivalent. The Malatesta Cantos highlight Sigismundo’s frequent and seemingly inexplicable reversals of allegiances and outright betrayals of his nominal allies or patrons, as well as the defeats that seem to spring almost inevitably from those actions. The form of those cantos also suggest that Malatesta both courts and rejects political power and its attendant glory . In their relentless non - narrativity and the overwhelming barrage of obscure historical events and figures, those cantos constitute a kind of anti - hagiography: Pound’s Malatesta often ( but not always ) seems determined not to acquire power but to expend it. Given that, it’s no coincidence that one of the first instances of economic exchanges in The Cantos is an example of economic expenditure. Canto VIII, the first Malatesta canto, opens with a letter from Malatesta to Giovanni de Medici noting that the “Maestro di pentore” ( probably Piero della Francesca ) is unable to begin work on the paintings for the Tempio Malatestiano, a quasi - pagan church that operated as both a tribute to and ( perhaps ) a mausoleum for Isotta degli Atti, his mistress and, later, wife: But I want it to be quite clear, that until the chapels are ready I will arrange for him to paint something else So that both he and I shall Get as much enjoyment as possible from it, And in order that he may enter my service And also because you write me that he needs cash, I want to arrange with him to give him so much per year And to assure him that he will get the sum agreed on. [...]

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos And for this I mean to make due provision, So that he can work as he likes, Or waste his time as he likes ( affatigandose per suo piacere o no non gli manchera la provixione mai ) never lacking provision

( VIII / 29 )

This begins as a fairly straightforward example of artistic patronage: the Maestro di pentore can’t yet work on the paintings for which he was contracted because the chapels aren’t ready, so Malatesta at first says he will arrange for the painter to start on another project. Next, Malatesta proposes a yearly stipend in a kind of exchange in which the painter gets money, and Malatesta gets the “enjoyment” that comes from the painter’s works. ( A more skeptical reader might wonder if Malatesta also thought of the renown that would come from owning della Francesca’s works, but Pound doesn’t seem to acknowledge that possibility ). However, the final sentence moves this relation from exchange to expenditure, as Malatesta offers his patronage whether or not the painter actually creates any work at all. This presents a notable contrast to Ramon of Rossilon, who hires Cabestan to write poems that will increase his reputation and glory . It also anticipates the extraordinarily tendentious discussion of Pound’s grandfather, Thaddeus Coleman Pound, in Guide to Kulchur: I have never believed that my grandfather put a bit of railway across Wisconsin simply or chiefly to make money or even with the illusion that he would make money, or make more money in that way than in some other. I don’t believe any estimate of Mussolini will be valid unless it starts from his passion for construction. Treat him as artifex and all the details fall into place. Take him as anything save the artist and you will get muddled with contradictions. Or you will waste a lot of time finding that he don’t fit your particular preconceptions or your particular theories ( GK 83 ).

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Bill Freind Pound suggests that his grandfather put a railroad through the Wisconsin woods not to make money but to expend it in an otherwise purposeless demonstration of his will. 22 The value of the railroad is that it has no economic value: it simply serves as a manifestation of his desire to contruct and his indifference to financial gain. ( It should go without saying that Pound’s belief that his grandfather would construct a railroad with no concern for profit is ludicrous. ) The description of Mussolini that follows operates from an almost identical premise: it is predicated on the idea that it is a kind of categorical error to expect any kind of ideological consistency – and, by implication, tangible results – from the Duce. 23 Pound begins by praising Mussolini’s “passion for construction” which would sound as if he were building roads, railways, or other infrastructure, or working to establish a better, more efficient, and / or more modern society . But Pound immediately works against that, suggesting that Mussolini is an “artifex,” a word that can mean master, artist, or artificer; if we evaluate him by the standards we typically apply to political leaders, we will be “muddled by contradictions.” In other words, by any normal political criteria, Mussolini would seem to be woefully inconsistent or, perhaps, even an outright failure, as would any leader dedicated to expenditure. All of this also holds true of Malatesta. Many critics have suggested that Pound celebrated Malatesta because of his construction of the Tempio. However, the Tempio is not a major focus of the Malatesta Cantos, and the few discussions that occur often focus on minutiae such as Malatesta stealing marble from the Basilica of S Apollinaire to use in the Tempio, or fairly mundane epistolary exchanges with the architects and builders of that structure. Additionally, Pound’s description of the Tempio in Guide to Kulchur is somewhat contradictory: “if the Tempio is a jumble and junk shop, it nevertheless registers a concept. There is no other single man’s effort equally registered” ( GK v ). Pound, then, suggests that 22 Pound also opens Canto XXII with a reference to his grandfather: An’ that man sweat blood To put through that railway, And what he ever got out of it? ( XXII / 101 ) 23 It’s worth noting that other times Pound did in fact praise Mussolini’s actual accomplishments, such as draining the swamps at Vada and forcing contractors to accept lower prices ( XLI / 202 ).

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos the fact that the Tempio is a failure is largely irrelevant, since it serves as a material representation of Malatesta’s “effort” and “concept”; although Pound does not bother to specify what that effort and concept might be, it seems like a gesture that is nearly identical to Homer Pound’s railroad. On the same page in Guide to Kulchur, Pound discusses Malatesta himself in similar terms, claiming “[i]f you consider the Malatesta and Sigismundo in particular, a failure, he was at all events a failure worth all the successes of his age. He had in Rimini, Pisanello, Pier della Francesca. Rimini still has ‘the best Bellini in Italy’” ( GK v ). This is a somewhat bizarre statement: Malatesta lived in Renaissance Italy, so the “successes of his age” were nothing short of extraordinary . How could he, as a “failure” and the creator of “a jumble and a junk - shop” compare to those? 24 The answer, I would argue, is that Pound celebrates Malatesta not in spite of the latter’s failure but because of it. Malatesta’s tendency to undermine his own power is a kind of expenditure in which political power is dissipated instead of acquired. In this, it is roughly analogous to the lovers’ opposition to political power, although on a much smaller scale. This is perhaps best understood through Bataille’s discussion of glory: ... the most absurd of these [unproductive] values, and the one that makes people the most rapacious, is glory . Made complete through degradation, glory, appearing in a sometimes sinister and sometimes brilliant form, has never ceased to dominate social existence; it is impossible to attempt to do anything without it when it is dependent on the blind practice of personal or social loss. 25 Since this was written in 1933, Bataille’s thoughts were obviously shaped by the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in that same year, as well as the carnage of World War I, Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922, and the turn to Stalinism in the Soviet Union. Bataille clearly recognized that the pursuit of glory was a major factor in the ascension of all those men. And yet Bataille’s discussion of glory is strangely ambivalent: he dismisses it as the “most absurd” form of expenditure, but acknowledges 24 As many critics have noted, the Cantos could be described as a jumble and a junk shop. 25 Bataille, The Notion of Expenditure, pp. 128 - 29.

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Bill Freind it is “sometimes brilliant” and clearly indicates that it has always been an essential aspect of human existence. Additionally, Bataille’s slightly elliptical claim that “it is impossible to attempt to do anything without it when it is dependent on the blind practice of personal or social loss” seems to suggest two opposed forms of glory . The more obvious form would be the warrior or military leader who inflicts a loss on the enemy by killing large numbers of them. However, loss also leads to glory when the warrior dies heroically, whether or not he wins the battle. A Draft of XXX Cantos also displays this ambivalence: we see a very large number of leaders toppled, and even the “heroes” routinely face devastating losses, including their lives. A section near the end of Canto VIII offers a perfect encapsulation of the Malatesta Cantos, presenting a jumble with no narrative or even a central point, in which Malatesta’s accomplishments are thrown together with setbacks and outright failures: Who stood with the Venetians in November, With the Milanese in December, Sold Milan in November, stole Milan in December Or something of that sort, Commanded the Milanese in the spring, the Venetians at midsummer, The Milanese in the autumn, And was Naples’ ally in October, He, Sigismundo, templum ædificavit In Romagna, teeming with cattle thieves, with the game lost in mid - channel, And never quite lost till’ 50 [when Sforza became Duke of Milan and never quite lost till the end, in Romagna, So that Galeaz sold Pèsaro “to get pay for his cattle.”

( VIII / 32 )

According to Pound’s account, Malatesta switches sides at least eight times in the space of thirteen months. Pound makes no attempt to articulate a coherent reason for these reversals, even acknowledging, with the aside “[o]r something of the sort,” that he himself has trouble keeping track of Malatesta’s actions and alliances. This section ends

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos with what Pound suggests is Malatesta’s conclusive defeat: “the game is lost” when Francesco Sforza becomes Duke of Milan in 1450, and when Malatesta’s cousin Galeazzo sold Pèsaro, which had been a domain of the Malatesta family, to Sforza. But one might ask what “game” Malatesta was playing. Pound offers no indication that Malatesta’s ( at least ) eight separate allegiances were part of any strategy . Instead, they seem an end in themselves, as if he were fighting simply for the pleasure of fighting, or even to deliberately undermine his own successes. In many ways, Pound paints Malatesta as the anti - Sforza: if the odious Sforza succeeds, Malatesta’s failures must be a badge of honor. Those failures are also a form of expenditure. In Guide to Kulchur, Pound suggests “[n]o one has claimed that the Malatesta cantos are obscure. They are openly volitionist, establishing, I think clearly, the effect of the factive personality, Sigismundo, an entire man” ( GK 194 ). That first sentence is almost laughable, since nearly everyone would acknowledge the Malatesta cantos are exceptionally obscure. However, I want to focus on the word “volitionist,” a word that Pound appears to borrow this from Dante’s directio voluntatis, which, as Akiko Miyake notes, refers to the soul’s movement away from worldly concerns toward those of heaven through a purified and ascetic love. 26 Although Pound may have found the term in Dante, he uses it in a very idiosyncratic manner, since in most cases it appears to suggest a quasi - Nietzschean process through which the enlightened leader can, through sheer force of will, shape society according to his own purposes. However, while Pound often celebrates the directio voluntatis, A Draft of XXX Cantos usually presents an indirectio voluntatis: Pound celebrates an exercise of the will that either aims toward largely symbolic gestures that result in no lasting political achievements, or that fails utterly . In other words, Pound often praises leaders who are dedicated to a form of political expenditure that is indifferent to or even contemptuous of conventional forms of glory and political power.

26 Miyake, Ezra Pound and the Mysteries of Love, p. 65.

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Bill Freind Anti  - Expenditure in the Hel l Cantos If Pound presents an irrational anti - economy based on sexual and political expenditure, the Hell Cantos present the opposite: a rational, traditional economy based on monetary gain. Pound’s lovers risk their own lives for sexual pleasure; Malatesta spends money with no expectation of any material return and is dedicated ( sometimes, at least ) to an irrational exercise of his will, even if it leads to his undoing. In contrast, the usurers and politicians of the Hell Cantos are singlemindedly devoted to the acquisition of money and political power, and either deny themselves sexual pleasure or “pervert” it: The stench of wet coal, politicians . . . . . . . . . . e and. . . . . n, their wrists bound to their ankles, Standing bare bum, Faces smeared on their rumps, wide eye on flat buttock, Bush hanging for beard, Addressing crowds through their arse - holes

( XIV / 61 )

The politicians Pound refers to are David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson, and the exposed bottoms and bound wrists suggest a fettered and restricted homosexuality that is set in opposition to the heterosexual encounters in the earlier poems, which are free from legal and marital restraints. Perhaps, because these lovers behave so recklessly, they may even be free from the fear of their own deaths, which might be the ultimate freedom. While the actions of the lovers effectively eliminate the political power of Tereus and others, Lloyd George and Wilson are willing to humiliate themselves in an attempt to secure and retain that power. This also presents a striking contrast with Malatesta, who refuses to be bound by any treaty or allegiance. As Matthew Hofer notes, the word “faces” in “[f]aces smeared on their rumps” suggests both the countenances of those politicians, and “faeces” 27, which connects to many other referenc27 Hofer, Modernist Polemic: Ezra Pound v. “the perverters of language”, p. 474.

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos es to excrement in these cantos. While Pound’s general economy is based upon the circulation and expenditure of energy, the Hell Cantos present a number of scatological images in which excrement, the waste which remains after energy is expended, is preserved instead of discarded – a complete inversion, analogous to the politicians who, with their heads between their knees, allow their anuses to become their mouths. “Profiteers” – those who would obstruct the circulation of money in a healthy economy, drink “blood sweetened with sh - t” ( XIV / 61 ). We also see “dung” ( 62 ), “the petrified turd that was Verres” ( 62 ), “black beetles, burrowing into the sh - t” ( 62 ), “harpies dripping sh - t through the air” ( 63 ), the “laudatores temporis acti / claiming that the sh - t used to be blacker and richer” ( XV / 64 ), and the great scabrous arse - hole, sh - tting flies, rumbling with imperialism, ultimate urinal, middan, pisswallow without a cloaca, ( XV / 64 ). Pound returns to the familiar critique of usury as unnatural, depicting a scene in which usurers engage in coprophagy and hematophagy, and in which the only things produced are the flies simultaneously excreted by and born of a “scabrous arse - hole.” “Cloaca” is an anatomical term referring to the urogenital cavity in non - mammalian vertebrates, but Pound seems to be using it in its etymological meaning of “sewer”: there is no cloaca because the usurers consume the excrement, rendering the sewer unnecessary . This works as a parody of the coldly hyperrational nature of usury, since the economic circulation here appears to be repellently efficient, as excrement is consumed and re - excreted in what would seem to be a self - contained system. But, of course, that is an illusion, since the blood is shed by the soldiers who are killed by the weapons sold by the profiteers and financed by the usurers. In what might be the most important line in the Hell Cantos, Pound suggests that the problem with usurers is that they are “perverts, who have set money - lust / Before the pleasures of the senses” ( XIV / 61 ). The term “perverts” is interesting, since Pound uses it neither for Lloyd George and Wilson, nor for the “episcopus” with “tattoo marks round the anus and a circle of lady golfers about him” ( XV / 64 ). Those Pound identifies as perverts are actually obstructors, since their obsession with mon-

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Bill Freind ey leads them to deny and impede the sexual economy that is central to The Cantos. At the end of Canto XIV, Pound greatly extends his attacks: “. . . . . m Episcopus, waving a condom full of black beetles, / monopolists, obstructors of knowledge, obstructors of distribution” ( 63 ). That presents a nice encapsulation of the many aspects of Pound’s general economy . The condom represents a blockage of the sexual drive, and in this instance it is filled with beetles, symbols of death and decay that present a striking contrast with the passion of the sexual impulse. 28 Pound moves on to other forms of blockage, such as the “monopolists” who restrict the free circulation of goods and services, and the “obstructors of knowledge” who block the free circulation of ideas. Knowledge, money, sexuality: in Pound’s general economy, all of these are manifestations of the circulation of energy in the universe. Given the scatological vitriol that Pound directs at those he held responsible for the carnage of World War I, it’s striking that while the earlier cantos presented a very large number of deaths, Pound condemns very few of them, and implicitly celebrates many of them. The deaths of the lovers and others killed by the destructive power of irrational sexuality, such as Seremonda and Cabestan, as well as the citizens of Troy and Auvergne, seem included to testify to the power of the lovers’ passion. More importantly, as a mercenary who casually betrayed the kingdoms who hired him, Malatesta is every bit as unprincipled as those arms merchants, ( although he himself fought in battle and was responsible for a fraction of the deaths of those who manufactured, sold, or financed arms in World War I ). Pound’s Malatesta is not qualitatively different from Krups: like the arms merchant, his military commitments are predicated on an almost absolute indifference to patria. Pound himself acknowledges as much, perhaps unintentionally . In Canto X, he writes “they caught poor old Pasti / In Venice, and were like to pull all his teeth out” ( X / 46 ). “Pasti” is the artist the artist Matteo de’ Pasti, whom Malatesta sent to Mehmet II in an attempt to enlist the Ottoman ruler as an ally in Malatesta’s battles against Pope Paul II. Pasti brought Mehmet a map of the coast of Italy and a copy of Robert Valturio’s De Re military . In the dedication, Valturio described Mehmet as “the wondrous glory of the 28 The ellipsis hides “Ingram,” the surname of Arthur Foley Winnington - Ingram, Bishop of London from 1901 - 1939. Winnington - Ingram vocally opposed birth control and other forms of vice; he also stridently supported the First World War.

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos world’s princes” 29. Obviously, this amounted to a transparent attempt to convince a foreign ruler to invade and, hopefully, conquer at least some of the Italian states that Sigismundo had once been paid to defend, and the fact that Mehmet was a Muslim who Sigismundo had asked to defeat the de facto leader of European Christendom would have been seen as treason and apostasy . It’s hard to argue that that’s substantially worse than Krups providing weapons to whomever could pay for them. Canto XIII, which immediately precedes the Hell Cantos, marks the first time Confucius appears in The Cantos, and Confucius differs so radically from Malatesta that much of Canto XIII seems like a ( perhaps unintentional ) critique of the condottiere: And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves: If a man have not order within him He can not spread order about him; And if a man have not order within him His family will not act with due order; And if the prince have not order within him He can not put order in his dominions

( XIII / 59 )

That’s a concise description of Malatesta, whose multiple marriages and extramarital affairs, casual betrayal of allies, and loss of family lands suggest a life of exceptional disorder. The differences between Confucius and Malatesta represent a fundamental and, ultimately, unreconcilable split in Pound’s economy . Initially, it is predicated on an irrational and anarchic sexuality that stands opposed to political power. But as the 1930s progressed, Pound’s commitment to the rational, hierarchical order of Confucius, and to the totalitarian order of Mussolini, substantially intensified. However, that never supplanted his commitment to the irrational, anarchic, and destructive tendencies of Aphrodite that he first articulates in A Draft of XXX Cantos. A similar split occurs in Pound’s discussion of political economy . C. H. Douglas’ Social Credit is, in theory, a rational and orderly system in which the government almost effortlessly establishes the Just Price, 29 D’ Elia, A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome, p. 128.

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Bill Freind and issues credit so that it circulates fluidly and harmoniously throughout the nation. On the other hand, Silvio Gesell’s theory of stamp scrip is clearly a form of expenditure: Nobody, not even savers, speculators, or capitalists, must find money, as a commodity, preferable to the contents of the markets, shops, and warehouses. If money is not to hold sway over goods, it must deteriorate, as they do. Let it be attacked by moth and rust, let it sicken, let it run away; and when it comes to die let its possessor pay to have the carcass flayed and buried. Then, and not till then, shall we be able to say that money and goods are on an equal footing and perfect equivalents – as Proudhon aimed at making them. 30 As Alec Marsh notes, Pound heavily annotated this passage in his copy of Gesell’s The Natural Economic Order. 31 Just as the deaths of the lovers testifies to the power of the circulation of sexual love, the “death” of money is the ultimate manifestation of its real power, since by “dying” it allows goods and services to circulate. In many ways, the split between Pound’s celebration of rational circulation and irrational expenditure is figured in the treatment of Odysseus in The Cantos. Jacques Derrida, again noting that “economics” etymologically derives from oikos ( home ) and nomos ( law ), observes: [t]his motif of circulation can lead one to think that the law of economy is the – circular – return to the point of departure, to the origin, also to the home. So one would have to follow the odyssean structure of the economic narrative. Oikonomia would always follow the path of Ulysses. The latter returns to the side of his loved ones or to himself; he goes away only in view of repatriating himself, in order to return to the home from which the signal for departure is given. 32

30 Gesell, The Natural Economic Order, p. 9. 31 Marsh, Money and Modernity, p. 96. 32 Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, pp. 6 - 7.

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos The Cantos famously begin in the voice of Odysseus as he visits the underworld searching for a way to return to Ithaka, and yet the first named character is Elpenor, who, unburied and all but forgotten by his shipmates, languishes in the underworld, unable to return home. This tension runs throughout The Cantos: Pound begins with the search for the nostos but then switches the focus of his poem to the periplum, or journey to a destination that Pound never specified. However, he later suggested a kind of destination to The Cantos itself, claiming it “begins ‘In the Dark Forest,’ crosses the Purgatory of human error, and ends in the light, fra i maestri di color che sanno.” And yet Pound’s long poem ends not with a paradisal vision, but with drafts and fragments. Odysseus and Elpenor, nostos and periplum, divine light and incompletion, law and lawlessness: Pound’s general economy oscillates between rational circulation and irrational expenditure.

Works cited Allan Antliff, Ezra Pound, Man Ray, and Vorticism in America, 1914 - 1917, in: Vorticism: New Perspectives, ed. Mark Antliff / Scott W. Klein, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 139 - 155. Aristotle, Oeconomica, trans. E. S. Forster, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920. Georges Bataille, The Notion of Expenditure, in: Visions Of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927 - 1939, trans. Allan Stoekl, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985, pp. 116 - 129. –––, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy . Vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley, Cambridge M A: Zone Books, 1991. –––, The Accursed Share. Vols. 2 and 3: The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty, trans. Robert Hurley, Cambridge MA: Zone Books, 1993. Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound, New York: Delta, 1988. Robert Casillo, Troubadour Love and Usury in Ezra Pound’s Writings, in: Texas Studies in Literature 27.2 ( 1985 ), pp. 125 - 153.

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Bill Freind William M. Chase, The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1973. Anthony F. D’ Elia, A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Euripides, The Bacchae, in: The Bacchae and Other Plays, trans. Philip Vellacott, Baltimore: Penguin, 1954. Silvio Gesell, The Natural Economic Order, trans. Philip Pye, Berlin: Neo - Verlag, 1934. Matthew Hofer, Modernist Polemic: Ezra Pound v. “the perverters of language”, in: Modernism / Modernity 9.3 ( 2002 ), pp. 463 - 489. Huw Grange, Guilhem de Cabestanh’s Eaten Heart, or the Dangers of Literalizing Troubadour Song, in: Tenso 27.1 - 2 ( Spring - Fall 2012 ), pp. 92 - 108. Alec Marsh, Money and Modernity: Pound, Williams, and the Spirit of Jefferson, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, New York: Penguin Random House, 1990. Akiko Miyake, Ezra Pound and the Mysteries of Love: A Plan for the Cantos, Durham N C: Duke University Press, 1991. A. David Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet. Volume I: The Young Genius 1885 - 1920, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Paul Morrison, The Poetics of Fascism: Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Paul de Man, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. David Raeburn, New York: Penguin, 2004.

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From the Oikos to the Cosmos Ezra Pound, Indiscretions; Or, Une Revue De Deux Mondes, Paris: Three Mountains Press, 1923. –––, Guide to Kulchur, New York: New Directions, 1968. –––, Selected Prose: 1909 - 1965, ed. William Cookson, New York: New Directions, 1975. –––, Personae. The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound, ed. Lea Baechler / A. Walton Litz, New York: New Directions, 1990. –––, The Cantos, New York: New Directions, 1996. Alan Stoekl, Introduction, in: Georges Bataille, Visions Of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927 - 1939, trans. Allan Stoekl, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. E. P. Walkiewicz / Hugh Witemeyer, Ezra Pound and Senator Bronson Cutting: A Political Correspondence, 1930 - 1935, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.

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CONSTITUTIVE ASPECTS OF EZRA POUND’S ECONOMICS

THE BANK OF ENGLAND AND THE “CRIME / OV TWO CENTURIES” Alex Pestell Brecht’s rhetorical question, “What’s breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?” is peculiarly relevant to Pound’s attitude to the Bank of England. 1 Pound was not opposed to banking per se, but he saw certain banks, especially the central banks of France, Britain and the U.S., as criminal in the sense implied by Macheath. In particular, Pound viewed the Bank of England – the model for the first Bank of America – quite precisely in this dramatic sense, as the culprit of an enormous crime, which he made it his life’s work to solve: “Seventeen / Years on this case, nineteen years, ninety years / on this case” ( XLVI/231 ). These words come from Canto XLVI, which, when it was first published, carried a dateline of “30 Jan XIV” ( i.e. 1936 in the Fascist calendar ) ( P&P VII: 1 - 3 ); if Pound was writing in 1935, seventeen years puts us in 1918, around the time he became aware of C. H. Douglas. Ninety years puts us in 1845, at the death of Andrew Jackson ( enthroned by Pound for his role in the Bank War ) or the year after Britain’s 1844 Bank Act. Looking back at his earliest acquaintance with Douglas, Canto XLVI recalls Pound ( “the fuzzy bloke” ) at a point when economic ideas which he would later rehearse ad nauseam in articles and correspondence were just dawning on him. 2 From this point, the canto reiterates, Pound was “on this case”, for either seventeen or nineteen years, pursuing the perpetrators of the “CRIME / Ov two centuries”. Events like the Great War were symptoms, Pound thought, of a far greater conflict in which the sole antagonist was an elite of usurers, whose origin story was often presented in terms of the founding of the Bank of England in 1694. As in 1936, looking back on the First World War, so in 1942 in the midst of the Second: “The war in which brave men are being killed and wounded our own war here and now, began – or rather the phase we are now fight1 Brecht, The Threepenny Opera, p. 76. 2 See Stock, Reading the Cantos, p. 31 for Pound’s later ( 1957 ) description of his contribution to Douglas’ understanding of economics.

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Alex Pestell ing began – in 1694, with the foundation of the Bank of England” ( SP 308 ). For Pound, then, the founding of the Bank of England was quite literally a crime, compared to which robbing a bank is as nothing. 3 The Bank of England consequently held a privileged place in his historical inferno, at least for a few years, as letters, articles and essays written in the late 1930s and during the war testify . As a private, central bank with an opaque administrative body, the Bank was an apposite adversary for Pound’s peculiar ( and increasingly paranoid ) form of economic democracy . It was, Pound wrote in 1935, one of two “centres of evil” ( the other being the American Treasury ) ( P&P VI: 298 ). If the early 1930s saw this role taken by arms manufacturers and dealers like Basil Zaharoff and Schneider - Creusot, from 1933 onwards they change places with banks as the chief agents of infernal misery . 1933 was the year Roosevelt came to office, and the year of his Emergency Banking Act. Pound followed these events closely, and cautiously welcomed what he saw as F D R’ s recognition that a small group of financiers wield disproportionate control over the lives of American citizens. And yet, as Pound put it, “President Roosevelt’s effort is NOT novel. The whole battle was fought in America in the 1830s, and the records have been hidden” ( P&P VI: 111 ). Partly seeking to understand the roots of a battle for American credit which had already been fought in the nineteenth century, then, and partly thanks to the efflorescence of heterodox or contrarian economic writings in the wake of the Great Depression, the Bank of England appeared on Pound’s radar as a figure in the international control of the destiny of nations. What was the Bank’s great crime, in Pound’s view? Canto XLVI presents, underlined and indented, its exhibit A in its case against the Bank, a quotation attributed to one of the Bank’s founders, the Scottish entrepreneur William Paterson ( 1658 - 1719 ):

3 As he put it in 1938, “A crime has been committed? Well; that is putting it very mildly, for over two centuries an innumerable and unending series of crimes has been committed by a number of the slickest gangs ever dreamed of. And once a man is on the trail of THAT set of bleeders the mere theft of a diamond necklace is no more exciting than the idea that little Jimmie has pinched a couple of marbles” ( P&P VII: 357 ).

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The Bank of England and the „Crime / Ov two Centuries“ Said Paterson: Hath benefit of interest on all the moneys which it, the bank, creates out of nothing. ( XLVI/233 ) The case for the prosecution seems to be two - fold: first, that the Bank creates debt ( since loans are essentially the creation of money “out of nothing” ). Second, that it makes a profit on these loans ( “Hath benefit of interest” ). As Pound put it later, in “America, Roosevelt, and the Causes of the Present War”: Paterson, in other words, proposed to lend not money but notes, gambling on the very likely probability that only a small fraction of the “depositors” would ever want to withdraw their money at the same time. The crime, then, is profiting from what we now know as fractional - reserve banking: Pound’s hatred of the Bank of England appears to stem from its iconic position in the history of debt - creation. But Pound is a fuzzy bloke in more ways than one, since he never is quite able, or at least never tries, to articulate why precisely these circumstances are so pernicious to the public welfare. Instead, he merely asserts its negative effect on the social fabric: 1694 anno domini, on through the ages of usury On, right on, into hair - cloth, right on into rotten building, Right on into London houses, ground rents, foetid brick work, Will any jury convict ’um? ( XLVI/233 ) Debt was – for Pound as for the economists he read – the prime evil of existence. For Pound, there was apparently no distinction to be made between private debt, or the debt of a small business or farmer, and national debt. In phrases which will sound familiar nowadays, echoed as they are by the architects of austerity, Pound and the heterodox economists he was reading ridiculed the notion that debt could be a way

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Alex Pestell for a state to claw its way out of depression. Writing of the New Deal, Pound uttered the sceptical note, “By increase of debt? strengthen??” ( C/733 ). In 1935, he was starting to rail against the notion that a nation can “borrow itself out of debt,” and noted that the New Deal meant that “Consciously or unconsciously Roosevelt sinks to the level of usurers’ tool” ( P&P VI: 288, 287 ). 4 If the Bank of England was ( for a space ) his inferno, paradise was a world without debt. In May 1940, he wrote “Freedom consists in being able to keep out of debt” ( EPEC 254 ), and towards the end of the 1950s he wrote: U  T  O  P  I  A where every man has the right to be born FREE of debt, and to be judged, in case of disagreement, by a jury capable of understanding the nature and implications of the charges against him ( P&P IX: 115 ). Debt loses all specificity, the connection between individual and national debt being only a vaporous homology rather than an empirically demonstrated fact. National debt’s responsibility for the First World War, for the recession of 1919 - 21 in the UK, or for the global depression in the 1930s is nowhere demonstrated in his writings. In the economists Pound was reading, debt was criticised by appeal to a moral standard that smells more of the cloister than the bank. What is overlooked is any notion that credit might be viewed as a public tool ( currently, and for the worse, in private hands, but in theory nationalisable ) for investment and production. To get a clearer idea of what Pound might have found objectionable in the founding of the Bank it might help to look at the works of heterodox economists he was reading in the 1930s. Together they do not compose a sharply - defined map of Pound’s ideology – he was to disagree with many of their authors at one point or another in their careers – but they supply some of the arguments and tropes that Pound relied on in his excoriation of the Bank. One thing that is shared, to greater or lesser extents depending on the author, is a quite pronounced sense that the banks are not only in the driver’s seat at the world’s econ4 Compare Jeffrey Mark, The Modern Idolatry: Being An Analysis of the Pathology of Debt, p. 41: “you cannot borrow yourself out of debt”.

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The Bank of England and the „Crime / Ov two Centuries“ omy – something which seems irrefutable today – but also that they act according to prior agreement ( again, an agreement that is to a greater or lesser extent explicit, depending on the conspiratorial antennae of the author ). It’s difficult to argue with the notion that a political motivation lies behind the decisions of supposedly neutral central banks: the history of monetarist policies and their disastrous effects upon the fabric of society is distressingly manifest. But in the writings of these heterodox economists there was sometimes an imputation of concerted and closeted planning which ascribes to the conspirators too comprehensive and too cohesive a grasp of the fate of nations. Pound’s correspondence, articles and essays in the 1930s contain many recommendations of contemporary economic texts. They show that Pound’s critique of banking is not particularly original, prescient or sui generis: rather it was shared by a host of writers of various political stripes, from the relatively orthodox to the conspiratorially - minded and anti - Semitic. J. L. Jarvie’s The Old Lady Unveiled ( 1933 ), Arthur Kitson’s The Bankers’ Conspiracy! ( 1933 ), Robert McNair Wilson’s Promise to Pay ( 1934 ), Jeffrey Mark’s The Modern Idolatry ( 1934 ) and Christopher Hollis’ The Two Nations ( 1935 ) all responded to a demand ( created by the global financial crisis that had begun in 1929 ) to understand the financial markets, and were all recommended by Pound in his writing of the period. 5 These studies vary in their assertion of a hidden hand or identifiable malefactor, as well as of an all - encompassing influence, but Pound was certain. He read the words attributed to Paterson as a kind of battle - cry, as usury’s declaration of war: This war [the Second World War] was no whim of Mussolini’s, nor of Hitler’s. This war is a chapter in the long and bloody tragedy which began with the foundation of the Bank of England in far - away 1694, with the openly declared intention of Paterson’s now famous prospectus, which contains the words already quoted: “the bank hath benefit of the interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing”. ( SP 343 )

5 Kitson’s book was actually written in 1919, but was reprinted as a response to the depression.

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Alex Pestell Pound’s reference to this “now famous prospectus” is puzzling, since its existence is still in doubt. Most Pound scholars ascribe the quote to Christopher Hollis’ The Two Nations: A Financial Study of English History ( 1935 ), a book Pound held in high esteem. Having explained the planned operation of the Bank of England, Hollis notes that the Bank’s ability to issue money grounded on national debt is good for the bank, but bad for the rest of the taxable population: As Disraeli put it, “the principle of that system was to mortgage industry in order to protect property,” or, as Paterson, the originator of the Bank, himself explained with charming simplicity, “The bank hath benefit of the interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing”. 6 Most critics have assumed that Hollis is the source of Pound’s quote, and the dates of publication of Canto XLVI ( 1936 ) and The Two Nations ( 1935 ) make this plausible, except for the fact that Pound first mentions the Paterson quote in an article published in February 1935, almost certainly before he could have read Hollis’ book. In the article, Pound complains about the lack of information on banking history: No explanation of the defective supply of information on this topic springs easily into mind. The absence of windows in the Bank of England is symbolical? Or do they trust to the “inner light,” the “dark lanthorn of the spirit”? As Lenin shows up the communists, so the Founder of the Bank has shown up, posthumously, his brain - child, in a passage that has received insufficient publicity, though the “New Age” unearthed it: The bank hath benefit of the interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing. ( P&P VI: 250 ) Paterson’s confession, Pound says, has received ‘insufficient publicity’ since its discovery by The New Age. By mentioning it here and in Canto XLVI ( as well as in later articles ), Pound was presumably trying to give it the publicity he thought it lacked, though both here, as in Hollis and the canto, no source is given. 6 Hollis, The Two Nations, p. 30.

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The Bank of England and the „Crime / Ov two Centuries“ Although I have not been able to track the quote to a reliable source, I can go one small step further. Pound’s article notes that The New Age “unearthed” the quote. In 1935, The New Age was no longer under the editorship of A. R. Orage, who had died the previous year, but it was nonetheless still active as a social credit journal that ( around this time ) displayed a marked animosity towards banks. In the issue of Thursday, January 31 1935, a letter buried at the back bears the heading Costless Money 250 Years Ago: Sir, – The following excerpts from a book published in 1693, the author of which was William Patterson [sic], first governor of the Bank of England, may be of interest to your readers: – “Whereas before the money was only the running cash of the nation, now the credit founded upon this money is as much a running cash as the money itself. The running cash of the nation will be greatly increased answerable to the credit issued out, let it be what it will, it will be great.” … “The Bank hath the benefit of the interest of whatever credit it issues out of nothing” ( italics mine ). These quotations to me, a Socialist, appear of little propaganda value; but Socialists, and Social - Creditors alike, will, one feels, consider them of historical interest. W. N. 7 Here the trail runs dry . The identity of “W. N.” is unknown to me, and – as with the other occurrences of the Paterson sentence – “W. N.” declines to name the book it comes from, though he does give a date, 1693. 8 In the list of publications by Paterson in T. A. Stephens’ Bibliography of the Bank of England, there is none for 1693. 9 However, his biographer and editor notes that “it is conjectured that he was the author of several tracts which cannot be proved to have come from his pen. He always published anonymously” 10.

7 W. N., Costless Money 250 Years Ago, p. 163. 8 Could W. N. be W. N. Ewer, a guild socialist associated with The New Age? 9 Stephens, A Contribution to the Bibliography of the Bank of England, p. 163. 10 Bannister, William Paterson, The Merchant Statesman, and Founder of the Bank of England, p. 27.

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Alex Pestell It probably doesn’t matter whether or not the passage is genuine. 11 Perhaps the apocryphal answer a need felt by outraged analysts of the banking system. “The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled,” writes J. K. Galbraith. “Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent”. 12 Presented as it is by Pound in “The Root of Evil,” the passage attributed to Paterson becomes a rare moment of unveiling, and by implication the discovery of a process of systematic concealment. In fact, the creation of money by central banks is not a secret: the conspiracy suggested by Pound simply doesn’t exist. As Thorold Rogers – hardly a radical observer – notes, the Bank “differed fundamentally” from its predecessors, the great banks of Venice, Genoa and Amsterdam. 13 Its roots were in the practice of the goldsmiths, which had, Rogers writes: been attacked or criticised when their custom of giving bills on deposits had become familiar, for the earliest system of English banking treated the goldsmith’s bill […] as the equivalent of the money deposited on it, and thus allowed the banker to make use of so much of his customers’ balances as experience taught him was not necessary for the calls that were made on him from day to day . 14 Deposits were, in other words, the raw material for trading on the part of bankers, and this trading became – unprecedentedly – the profession of the Bank. “It never professed to make its issues square exactly with its coin and bullion […] It coined, in short, its own credit into paper money”. Even at its inception, there were fears that the Bank “would absorb all the money of the country, and subject all trade to usurious exactions”. 15 It seems though that there is an apparently cyclical amnesia – perhaps coincident with the cycles of euphoric expansion and depression that characterise the Trade Cycle – at which points the fact of the 11 Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, p. 449, agrees that this phrase, “first attested to only in the 1930s,” is “almost certainly apocryphal”. 12 Galbraith, Money: Whence it came, where it went, p. 18. 13 Rogers, The First Nine Years of the Bank of England, p. 8. 14 Ibid., p. 6. 15 Ibid., pp. 9 - 10.

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The Bank of England and the „Crime / Ov two Centuries“ Bank’s money - creation powers is forgotten and needs to be reiterated. One sees the unveiling rehearsed at periods throughout history . Marx, for example, quotes a W. Leatham, who observes that the credit issued by banks is vastly out of proportion to their actual gold holdings: “If I estimate the whole currency” ( he means of the banknotes ) “and the amount of the liabilities of the Bank and country bankers, payable on demand, I find a sum of 153 million, which, by law, can be converted into gold … and the amount of gold to meet this demand” only 14 million. 16 This was from 1840; by 1934 this has apparently been forgotten, and it is reiterated by a columnist in The New Age: Much confusion concerning banking has been caused by the refusal of Bankers ( though not all of them ) to admit the full implication of banking practice. They have denied that Banks create money . Statements are made such as that “the only real creators of money are the authorities who have the right to print notes” ( I am quoting here from a speech by Mr. Beaumont Pease, chairman of Lloyds Bank, to the British Engineers’ Association on May 10, 1934. ) 17 Examples of this scandalous revelation are legion. It doesn’t help that economists and academics deny that bank loans create money . Baron Desai, former lecturer at the London School of Economics - turned - Pound scholar, thinks it a “common fallacy as to how banks operate” 18. This would come as a surprise to the Bank of England, which recently printed an official report which confirmed that this is precisely how it operates. 19 It’s a story that is crystallized into a kind of creation myth in Promise to Pay, by the historian, surgeon and popular novelist Robert McNair Wilson, whom Pound described as “one of the most lucid and 16 Marx, Capital. Vol. 3, p. 526. 17 Joseph, Banking and Industry, p. 7. 18 Desai, The Route of All Evil: The Political Economy of Ezra Pound, p. 68. 19 Cf. Michael McLeay et al., Money Creation in the Modern Economy .

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Alex Pestell clear - headed British Economists”. ( P&P VI: 213 ) He tells the story of banking as a kind of fairy tale, removing or simplifying any historical, political or geographical details for the sake of a clarified schematisation of the banking system. Wilson relates the origins of banking in the ‘strong - rooms’ of goldsmiths, who would give an IOU or promise to pay in return for the deposits of their clients, this slip to be destroyed when the deposit was recovered. A putative proprietor of one of these strong - rooms noticed that very rarely was the entirety of a deposit ever claimed at once; he also noticed that people who were not his customers were coming to him to redeem IOUs he had previously issued to his clients. In other words, these promises to pay were being used as money, a function they were able to bear because of the trust the goldsmith enjoyed for security and reliability . These realisations lead to a further one: that if “half of that money [in his vault] got lost, nobody would be a penny the wiser or a penny the worse off ” 20. He realises that if the quantity of IOUs were increased ( beyond his actual holdings ), it would be very unlikely that he would ever be embarrassed by everyone coming to redeem them at once. 21 Therefore he goes into “the business of lending promises to pay what he did not possess”. For example, a customer needing extra cash borrows: £100 worth of IOUs on condition that the loan was repaid by a certain day and that it carried, meanwhile, interest at 5 per cent. As a guarantee of good faith the borrower handed over the title deeds of his house, saying that, if he failed to repay the IOUs the lender could sell the house and so recoup himself. 22 With each injection of money into circulation, the Bank was in factstaking its claim to the national product: this is the meaning of Disraeli’s accusation that “the principle of that system was to mortgage industry in order to protect property”. But when, in Wilson’s narration, the banker reaches a point at which the fraction of gold he holds against the loans is no longer sufficient, necessitating his calling in of loans, the market deflates, prices and wages fall, producers have trouble making 20 Robert McNair Wilson, Promise to Pay, p. 14. 21 Ibid., p. 15. 22 Ibid., p. 16.

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The Bank of England and the „Crime / Ov two Centuries“ their repayments, and their capital is seized by the bank. This credit cycle, while ruinous for the majority of the nation, is advantageous for the banker: “if prices or wages were fixed or pegged in any way, if they were even moderately stable, you [the banker] would soon be out of business”. It would enable efficient planning on the part of farmers and manufacturers, with the result that “very soon they would get out of debt”. 23 Wilson’s book goes on to detail the operations of international banking in a series of dialogues between bankers, ministers and bishops, all of which reinforce the conspiratorial atmosphere. The language is straight out of Wilson’s crime novels: “The Chief Minister’s cheeks, too, were glowing. His eyes were bright” 24; “The Home Minister’s eyes flashed” 25; “The Home Minister’s face was red. The International Banker flicked the ash from his cigar”. 26 At the more conspiracy - theory end of the spectrum was Arthur Kitson. His work The Bankers’ Conspiracy is a reprint of a report delivered in 1919 to the Cunliffe Committee. Named for the then governor of the Bank of England, Walter Cunliffe, the committee had been convened to decide on the future of British finance after the First World War. Their decision to return to the gold standard was criticized by Kitson in his report; in the Foreword to the 1933 edition, he recalls that decades earlier he had predicted that “The Gold Standard means inevitable war. Nations cannot possibly exist for long under it”. 27 As a tool to enable free trade between nations, the gold standard can only be harmful to the industries of particular nations, since it pays no heed to local interests. “Money,” he says, “is not international, and the attempt to make it so is part of a deep - laid plot on the part of certain international financiers to control the world politically, industrially, and financially”. 28 Insofar as the gold standard put the economic fate of nations in the hands of the central banks, there is something to be said for Kitson’s critique – indeed his career was devoted to debunking the gold standard, years before Keynes described it as a “barbarous relic” 29, 23 Ibid., p. 51. 24 Ibid., p. 87. 25 Ibid., p. 78. 26 Ibid., p. 75. 27 Kitson, The Bankers’ Conspiracy! Which Started the World Crisis, p. 29. 28 Ibid., p. 28. 29 Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, p. 179.

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Alex Pestell and before the UK finally abandoned it in 1931. But Kitson is unable to prove the fine - grained control that he suggested was at the disposal of “international financiers,” and therefore in place of proof he liberally quotes the apocryphal Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 30 In his attraction to these economics Pound, like Kitson, is close to the American Populist movement, which, like Hollis ( quoting Disraeli ) saw Western society as composed of two nations – the money - power and the producers of value. Money power was the source of all social injustice, and to restore “the money of the Constitution” the sole condition of all reform. Richard Hofstadter outlines the conspiratorial cast of the Populists’ understanding of history: “It was not enough to say that a conspiracy of the money power against the common people […] stemmed from Wall Street. It was international: it stemmed from Lombard Street” ( in other words, London’s centre of banking ). 31 The gold standard was an important tool for the money power: it symbolized a common interest between financiers on both sides of the Atlantic. For the Populists, it only demonstrated the extent to which purchasing power was under the control of an international elite ( often figured in anti - Semitic language ) rather than working people. And as Alec Marsh has shown, debt, for the Populists and Jeffersonian agrarianism in general, was anathema 32, and the Bank of England was the target of their conspiratorial aspersions. 33 Of the heterodox economists mentioned by Pound in these years, Kitson is probably the most conspiratorially - minded, but his central complaints about the Bank of England are common to all. “Here is a private trading company to which has been given, by Mr. Baldwin’s Government, the absolute control of the public’s money system,” he writes. The Bank, he goes on, is suspicious because of the inscrutability of board and their interests; its being “international in character”; its being able and willing to lend to foreign, and thus rival industries; the control it wields over the “Bank Rate” ( interest ) and therefore British wealth; and the fact that its influence over trade impacts unemploy30 Kitson, The Bankers’ Conspiracy, pp. 40 - 1. For Pound’s reaction to the Protocols, see Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet. Vol. 3, pp. 50 - 3. 31 Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R., p. 74. 32 Marsh, Money and Modernity: Pound, Williams, and the Spirit of Jefferson, pp. 11 - 23. 33 Ibid., p. 119.

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The Bank of England and the „Crime / Ov two Centuries“ ment, over which it therefore has control quite independent of the government. 34 The opacity of the Bank’s directorship is the subject of J. R. Jarvie’s 1933 book The Old Lady Unveiled, which sought to uncover what it presented as the shady directorship of the Bank. In a letter dated 17 April 1933, Pound writes “This book contains ‘news’ as above defined re/ the Bank of Hengland and its direct ( or mis di -  ) rectors, more or less parallel to that given in Mercanti di Cannoni re / metallurgical and banking relations”. Another letter recommends the same book “re / that wonderful fake the Bank of ole England” ( P&P VI: 35 ). There is something about the Bank of England that brings out the detective in people: like Pound, Jarvie is on the case, delving into the biographies of the directors of the Bank at the time he was writing in order to uncover a scandal that he cannot, however, prove. The Bank’s “absence of windows,” in Pound’s phrase, is invigorating for the conspiratorial mind, but – as with Hollis and Kitson – it can tempt the investigator into realms of speculation that find expression in overheated, gaseous prose. 35 Jarvie is meticulous in uncovering the various affiliations the Bank’s board members have with foreign concerns, but his inability to fill in the lines of cause and effect leads him coyly to float conspiracy theories, only to hastily assert their implausibility . He finds it puzzling, for example, that the Rothschilds have not been associated with the Bank of England, and whimsically speculates that they “may be the ‘hidden hand’ which has excited many imaginations”; before immediately adding: “I do not think for a second that the Rothschilds do control the Bank of England, or ever did”. 36 This in a chapter titled “Where are the Rothschilds?” Similarly, there is a breathless, greedy curiosity about the private lives of the Bank’s directors, that, combined with salacious gossip about its governor, Montagu Norman, cast vague shadows rather than outline specific trajectories of cause and effect that are suggested in the book’s tabular data. Jarvie’s near hysterical take - down of Norman distracts from his argument that the Bank ought to be publicly - owned and operated. Pound shared both the hatred of Norman and the notion that 34 Kitson, The Bankers’ Conspiracy! Which Started the World Crisis, p. 42. 35 Compare “That is to say, the place of control is a dark room back of a bank, hung with deep purple curtains” ( SP 207 ). 36 Jarvie, The Old Lady Unveiled, p. 18.

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Alex Pestell the Bank should be under government control. It was still a private institution and would remain so until its nationalisation in 1946, and Pound found it important to mention this fact more than once: “Since many Americans do not know that the Bank of England is a private corporation,” he wrote in a letter in 1933, “it might be well to tell them. Also several Englishmen” ( P&P VI: 72 ). Both these themes are present in “Safe and Sound,” a poem published under Pound’s pseudonym Alfred Venison in the New English Weekly on 25 October 1934: My name is Monty Norman And my finance is sound, I lend you Englishmen hot air At one and three the pound The poem goes on for seven stanzas, relating the bankers’ practice of “lend[ing] out their printed slips / To keep the wolf away / From their vaults and combination / Safes in Thread and Needle street”. Although it begins in the voice of Norman, the poem’s persona quickly becomes that of the victims of the world depression, and the poem concludes that their suffering will not end “Till the King shall take the notion / To own his coin again”. ( P&P VI: 206 ) For Pound, the British central bank ought, like the Italian banks, to be placed under governmental supervision: “I fail to see what violence would be done to your constitution if the Bank of England were placed under the supervision of the King, the Prince Admiral, or the Privy Council, and if great financial operations were considered according to their relevance to the commonweal”. ( P&P VI: 236 ) “The Bank of England,” Pound wrote in 1933, “supports a pernicious financial system which makes for continued wars” ( P&P VI: 12 ). The Bank’s foundation as a solution to the Treasury’s problem of how to fund William’s war with Louis XIV is only the beginning of its long association with conflict. As one historian of the Bank puts it, “public finance and the institutional mechanisms designed to service the spiralling national debt were forged in an atmosphere of ongoing conflict and crisis.” There is a real sense in which the Bank’s fate is tied up with the propensity of the government to war: “for most of the first 120 years of the Bank’s existence the nation was either preparing for war, waging war, or seeking retrenchment after war.” Every renewal of the Bank’s

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The Bank of England and the „Crime / Ov two Centuries“ charter coincided with Britain’s being at war or just emerging from it. 37 One can see how international conflict might come to be seen as advantageous to the Bank, though if anything, it suggests that the Bank exists because governments required money for war, rather than that war exists because Banks were willing to lend money to governments. And yet – as we have seen – Pound came to view the two great wars as mere symptoms of a greater one that the founding of the Bank instigated. In this war, the combatants were money power and the working man ( which included, in fact emphasised, property owners and proprietors of small businesses ). The perpetual threat, then, was not the military defeat of a country, but the enslavement of a nation’s people by means of debt. As time wore on, the Bank became for Pound an adjunct to a vague projection of a conspiracy to steer Western democracy into slavery . Pound could find this in the economists he read, and eventually it fed into his fantasies of enslavement by a Jewish world - government that preoccupied his thought during and after the Second World War. Although Pound did not accept Kitson’s anti - Semitic insinuations at first, eventually his belief in the presence of a secretive, malign conspiracy to enslave the inhabitants of democratic constitutions drew him even further from any concrete investigation of the Bank’s workings. In the late 1930s, with the Bank of England now off the gold standard ( something cheered as the downfall of money - power by McNair Wilson in The Defeat of Debt [1935] ), it ceased to be as strong a focus of Pound’s economic critique. But as the Second World War commenced, Pound had the Bank on his mind, as his radio broadcasts attest. “The present war dates AT LEAST from the founding of the Bank of England at the end of the XVIIth century, 1694 - 8” ( RSWWII 259 ). We’ve seen that Pound still has recourse during World War II to the Paterson canard. 38 The Bank of England also becomes responsible for what Pound calls the suppression of Pennsylvania colony money . In an article in the Japan Times Weekly of 13 June 1940 Pound again rehearses the pedigree of the war as originating with Paterson’s apocryphal prospectus, before going on to describe the inauguration of paper money in Pennsylvania in 1723. This was money as it was supposed to be used: “a useful ticket 37 Bowen, The Bank of England during the Long Eighteenth Century, pp. 5 - 6. 38 See above. It also crops up frequently in his broadcasts; for example: “Bank of England, makin’ money from VACUUM, and levying interest tax in respect to it” ( RSWWII 78 ).

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Alex Pestell or handy means of reckoning and recording how much work had been done.” But, as Pound had learnt from the historian W.  A. Overholser’s History of Money in the United States, in 1751 the British passed a Currency Act restricting the usage of the Pennsylvania notes. As Pound put it, they “did not suit the game of the London monopolists” ( P&P VIII: 43 ). In an abbreviation of American monetary history, Pound is more succinct: “Bank of England suppression of Pennsylvania colony money” ( RSWWII 162 ). “Wars in old time were made to get slaves,” Pound broadcast during the war, “The modern implement of imposing slavery is DEBT” ( RSWWII 261 ). In this he was merely repeating what he’d read in his favourite economics textbooks. “Finance has conquered the universe quite as effectually as the hordes of Ghengis Khan or of Timur the Lame conquered the nations which opposed them,” Wilson had written. “Not only so, we have developed and are developing the slave - mind. We glory in our shame and extol the gods of our enemies”. 39 Debt is bad because it enjoins us to repay it, it enslaves us to a miserable existence in order to redeem our indebtedness. Again, the “we” in this schema is left as a fuzzy placeholder, and debt is curiously honoured as something that must be repaid no matter what its source. The notion that debts are fictions created by Banks is accepted, but the corollary that they can be dissolved by states is not. Once a debt is created, it must be honoured. Jeffrey Mark, whose book The Modern Idolatry Pound described as “an invaluable book” ( P&P VI: 228 ) struck the same apocalyptic note: Finance, like the international armaments racket which is its blood brother, knows no frontier; and if the end of the latter is universal destruction, the result of the former is universal slavery . 40 On the one hand, at the present time it’s hard to argue with this statement; on the other, like most of the economic writers Pound praised, it’s also hard not to feel that language that is so ready to proclaim the “slavery” of a class which is, essentially, comprised of middle - class property owners, is itself inflammatory . It overlooks not just the con39 Wilson, Promise to Pay, p. 99. 40 Mark, The Modern Idolatry, p. 157.

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The Bank of England and the „Crime / Ov two Centuries“ siderable complexity of the mechanisms to which finance is subjected by the machinery of government, but also the conditions of real slavery that go unnoticed in Pound’s historical imagination, in favour of indulging in fantasies in which shadowy creatures of unified omnivorousness seek to dispossess the hard - working individual. Two pieces in Oswald Mosley’s newspaper Action in 1938 give a taste of Pound’s now all - consuming preoccupations. The first is a letter that recalls the opacity of the Bank’s operations that had been analysed by Jarvie: “This secrecy, or shall we say reticence, about the affairs of the Bank so called and vilely so called ‘of England,’ is overdone. We want a list of the citizens of YIDDonia whether semite, chazar or full - buttocked Briton” ( P&P VII: 391 ). In the second he repeats the suggestion floated by Jarvie that the Rothschilds are somehow involved with the Bank: “The lie that the Rothschilds are no longer in international politics is both superficial and silly . The Rothschilds are the sole and exclusive gold brokers for the Bank of England” ( P&P VII: 392 ). We are here deep in the noxious vapours of Pound’s translation of economics to volition, or more broadly to psychology . There is nothing here that might bear on the practices of banks, on the possibilities of understanding them, or on those of doing something about them. This translation from “science,” or at least from observation, of economic phenomena to volition was effected much earlier but its culmination in the most hackneyed of conspiracy theories should not be surprising. The volition alluded to in “Volitionist Economics” recognised a real problem – that economics was cloaked in the paraphernalia of a forbidding terminology, and that to understand the world ( which to Pound meant understanding economics ) required a conscious effort of the will to penetrate this cloak. ( Of course, it also referred to the will of the sovereign to pass his suggestions into law against the will of money - power. ) For Pound, as Marsh notes, this involved the notably impotent tactic of “turning up the volume and hectoring his audience”. 41 But if the fate of Pound’s economics is indicative of anything in its earlier manifestations, it was that the application of will to the observation of a long and complex history distracted from Pound’s goal of the equitable distribution of wealth. The thought both of Pound and of the more conspiratorial fringe of heterodox economics in the 1930s was led astray by a focus on personalities, on secrets, and 41 Marsh, Money and Modernity, p. 102.

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Alex Pestell on banks devouring industry and indiscriminately voiding debt. They were bound to end in fantastic, ghoulish pantomime. Works cited Saxe Bannister, William Paterson, The Merchant Statesman, and Founder of the Bank of England, Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1858. Huw V. Bowen, The Bank of England during the Long Eighteenth Century, 1694 - 1820, in: The Bank of England: Money, Power and Influence 1694 - 1994, ed. Richard Roberts / David Kynaston, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 1 - 18. Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera, trans. Ralph Manheim / John Willett, London et al.: Bloomsbury, 1993. Meghnad Desai, The Route of All Evil: The Political Economy of Ezra Pound, London: Faber, 2006. John K. Galbraith, Money: Whence it came, where it went, 2nd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, New York: Melville House, 2011. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F. D. R., New York: Vintage, 1955. Christopher Hollis, The Two Nations: A Financial Study of English History, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1936. J. R. Jarvie, The Old Lady Unveiled: A Criticism and an Explanation of The Bank of England, London: Wishart & Co., 1933. A. W. Joseph, Banking and Industry, in: The New Age 56.1.1 ( Nov. 1934 ), p. 7.

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The Bank of England and the „Crime / Ov two Centuries“ John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Arthur Kitson, The Bankers’ Conspiracy! Which Started the World Crisis, London: Elliot Stock, 1933. Jeffrey Mark, The Modern Idolatry: Being An Analysis of the Pathology of Debt, London: Chatto & Windus, 1934. Alec Marsh, Money and Modernity: Pound, Williams, and the Spirit of Jefferson, Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press, 1998. Karl Marx, Capital. Vol. 3, trans. David Fernbach, London: Penguin, 1981. Michael McLeay / Amar Radia / Ryland Thomas, Money Creation in the Modern Economy, in: Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin 54.1 ( Q1 2014 ), pp. 14 - 27. A. David Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet. Volume 3: The Tragic Years 1939 - 1972, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Ezra Pound, Selected Prose: 1909 - 1965, ed. William Cookson, New York: New Directions, 1973. –––, Ezra Pound Speaking: Radio Speeches of World War II, ed. Leonard Doob, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978. –––, Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals, ed. Lea Baechler / A. Walton Litz / James Longenbach, Garland, 1991. –––, The Cantos, New York: New Directions, 1996. –––, Ezra Pound’s economic correspondence: 1933 - 1940, ed. Roxana Preda, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. James E. Thorold Rogers, The First Nine Years of the Bank of England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887. Thomas A. Stephens, A Contribution to the Bibliography of the Bank of England, London: Effingham Wilson, 1897.

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Alex Pestell Noel Stock, Reading the Cantos: A Study of Meaning in Ezra Pound, London: Routledge, 1966. W. N., Costless Money 250 Years Ago, in: The New Age 56.14 ( 31 Jan. 1935 ), p.163. Robert McNair Wilson, Promise to Pay [1934]. www.scribd.com/document/37047488/Promise - to - Pay - Wilson - R - McNair.

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GOLD AND / OR HUMANENESS. POUND’S VISION OF CIVILISATION IN CANTO 97 Roxana Preda “abbreviare” ( XCVII/697 ) Preamble When Pound published Canto XCVII in the Hudson Review in the fall of 1956, well in advance of the rest of Thrones, he may have done so because he regarded it self - sufficient. Its reliance on Alexander Del Mar’s History of Monetary Systems ( HMS ) and the nickname it acquired over time, as the “Del Mar Canto,” were neither reflections on the complete canto nor the ripe fruit of a love at first sight. Pound read the HMS around 1948 but did not pay enough attention to it to start mining it for new cantos. 1 If in 1951 Pound was writing to Olivia Rossetti Agresti ( ORA ) that Del Mar is no stylist save at moments, ( ICNTY 68 ) in July 1955, he reproached himself for this lack of initial attention: Del Mar’s Hist Monetary SYSTEMS, really tremendous, I didn’t get the full power of it when I first read it, done in 1895 when he had been over a lot of ground, and corrects minor errors in earlier work and ends with TREMENDOUS summary, which I was either too tired or distracted to read { get force of } 7 years ago. Alzo correlated with Paul the Deacon on Habdimelich, and SATANICE stimulatus / ie. his lucidity . ( ICNTY 197 ).  2 1 See Carpenter, A Serious Character, p. 798 for a different point of view. 2 To readers today, a word of caution about the various editions of the HMS is in order. Early commentators such as Daniel Pearlman, Steven Helmling or Mohammad Y . Shaheen used either the London edition or else Pound’s reprints of the chapters on Rome and Moslem moneys in the Square $ series. In order to understand more accurately the first part of Canto XCVII, it is necessary to use the Chicago edition of the HMS that

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Roxana Preda The comparison with Paul the Deacon may well go beyond the reference to Habdimelich, or Abd - el - Melik, as Pound calls the Umayyad caliph in Canto XCVII. Pound had found the reference to Habdimelich in Paul’s Historia miscella. 3 Paul was also a grammarian and lexicographer: In the same volume with the histories, Pound found Paul’s abridgement and commentary of Sextus Festus’ De Verborum Significatione, itself an epitome of Verrius Flaccus’s encyclopaedic dictionary of the Roman world by the same name, now all but lost. This gathering of Paul’s historical and lexicographic works in the Patrologia may have prompted Pound to see the parallelisms between Del Mar and Paul and especially the particular situation in which Del Mar’s work found itself: treating of an unloved topic apparently irrelevant to modern life, the HMS was in grave danger of being forgotten. Traditionally, extensive works had been saved from the inexorable passage of time by copying, translation and abridgments ( epitomes ), designed to maintain the attention of educated readers on the ancients and serve those who may not have had the patience or the need to read the entire work. Pound used the power of The Cantos to create an epitome of Del Mar and thus to reconstitute the process through which texts are preserved through commentary and abridgement even in our time. Del Mar is a good avatar of Paul: a monetary historian who was a splendid researcher and eminent stylist, yet was not read and appreciated. At the same time, Del Mar was a precise and thorough explainer of words, his history included a great many examples of etymologies, disquisitions and disagreements with his sources on the meaning of terms. In his history, Pound found a treasure trove of words related to numismatics that were “dead and buried” ( “inter mortua jam et verba sepulta,” as Pound quotes Gothofrede at the end of the canto ) yet Del Mar talked about these terms with such interest and vividness that his readers cannot but see and feel them revive. In this sense he was a thorough commentator of ancient sources, continuing them through Pound himself read. Page references in the canto lead of course to that particular edition; more importantly, the Chicago edition was abridged in comparison with the London one, starting with the chapter on Roman money ( chapter 5 in the London version, after four chapters dedicated to Indian, Persian, Hebraic and Greek moneys ). The chapter on Moslem money is thus the 9th in the London edition and the 5th in the Chicago one, and the overall difference between the two editions is 70 pages. 3 Migne ( ed. ), Patrologia Latina 95, pp. 1158 - 1160.

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Gold and / or Humaness repetition and comment as Sextus ( 2nd century AD ), Paul the Deacon ( 729 - 299 AD ) and Pomponio Leto ( 1428 - 1498 ) had done with De Verborum Significatione. Looking at the canto in its entirety, we see Pound providing two epitomes: the first is his personal abridgment and commentary of Del Mar’s most important work, History of Monetary Systems; the second, starting with “new fronds / novelle piante” is an epitome of his own beliefs on meaningful life, religious feeling and good government, presented in his own Cantos ( especially Rock Drill ) and concluding with a lexicographer’s gesture, his own fragment out of Festus integrated into a personal ceremony . To sum up, what Pound proposes for this canto is to re - enact the meeting of the historian, the grammarian and the poet in his own epitomes, the way he had seen them gathered in the Patrologia 95; by derivation to enact, again, the heart - breaking losses of value and meaning through time, the remnants and enigmas we are left with when the originals have been lost, the words buried and the languages forgotten. If the canto is a gesture, then it is Pound successfully acting to counteract forgetting as it is taking place and ensure the survival of the HMS together with his own opinion of the facts revealed by Del Mar. The readers’ urge is strong to keep these two sections apart and neglect their being yoked together in a single canto. And yet, if we believe that Pound was working ideogrammically, we have a duty to assume that both parts work by analogy and contrast to enact and reflect on a single idea. I propose that the idea underlying the canto is that of the ( gold ) coin: on its obverse, the coin has the face of the emperor and the numerical value assigned to it. This face is historical, changing with every new emperor or king, to such an extent that Del Mar called coins the “state gazette” of the pre - print era ( HMS 67 - 68 ). The reverse of the coin is the province of culture: it bears on it the unchanging symbols of generally held values that are outside the economic sphere: the god, the temple, the cross, the sun. Since from East to West, gold was originally issued as a purely sacerdotal prerogative, the second part of the canto details Pound’s long held convictions on the foundations of civilization and hence of government: sensibility and discernment, care in the use of words, an appreciation of the inexorability of change ( expressed in the presiding deity of this canto – Fortuna, the pivot and interface of the two worlds ), natural symbols like the sun, the moon, and the falcon.

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Roxana Preda All these are reunited on the foundation of what is non - economic, not part of the market and not under the realm of exchange: the sacredness of the temple, the signs and wonders of nature, the fine discriminations of human language. The reverse of a coin is a mythographer’s paradise. 4 Par t I – Epitomizing Del Mar The dialogue between source and poem in Canto XCVII takes a similar form to a method Pound had used before, more notably in the Adams Cantos: rapid note - taking in time. To read the canto is to follow Pound’s reading and understand what he chose to include in his notes and the way in which these connect to his thoughts and memories. The process is fluid, going seamlessly from notes to memories and back in a continuous weaving. Following Pearlman ( 1972 ), Coyle ( 1997 ) and Nicholls ( 2004 ), it would be wrong for us to assume that Pound is writing for an “initiated” reader. No one is as initiated; the only reader who would conceivably understand these notes would be one who has read Del Mar with professional interest and pen in hand very recently and even then, such an ideal reader would be puzzled by the seemingly haphazard note - taking. We could accept these notes better if we look at this canto as an American poem of the 1950s, the era of Jackson Pollock and Frank O’Hara. For both artists, it was the process of creation rather than the end result that took centre stage – both foregrounded their work as it was being made, informal, rapid, improvisational and immediate. Questions of design, planning, and structuring took the back seat: the reader or viewer was confronted with a texture in which the artist is immersed in the creation process, choosing his elements and direction following the imperative of a hidden inner compass. From this perspective, the texture of canto XCVII courts abstraction, a situation observed by Richard Sieburth and Peter Nicholls. 5 Unless we can understand the 4 It is not the first time that Pound is using conflicting themes yoked together in The Cantos: we might remember the opposition between the economic theme and love in The Eleven New Cantos, or the contrasting of monarchy ( China ) and republic ( the Adams Cantos ) in Cantos LII - LXXI. 5 A reader’s exasperation is well - documented in statements such as: “unless we have a copy of Del Mar at our side, we have little choice but to read this text as a mosaic of signi-

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Gold and / or Humaness magnetic activity of this inner compass we won’t be able to comprehend why Pound chose one quotation from Del Mar over another. In the extreme fragmentation, the attention to words as discrete units of interest in and for themselves becomes unique to the canto, in an homage to both Paul the Deacon’s and Del Mar’s lexicographic activity . Nowhere else in The Cantos do we find so many interesting, exotic, mysterious words and names thrown liberally within the texture of the poem for our wonder and delight. Implicitly, it is also a radicalization of Pound’s own poetics of concision presented in the ABC of Reading. Words are the coins of poetry: some active, some decried, some practical and sharply defined, some evocative and magical. The purpose of the Del Mar section, as far as it is comprehensible to us, was to present the notes in this manner in order to force the reader’s hand. Pound knew that Del Mar was too good a stylist to bear trimming or editing – the latter’s prose strikes the reader even today as so clear, concise, logical and confident that there was hardly anything Pound could have changed on a stylistic level. The poet fully recognized this when he characterized the HMS to ORA as “tremendous.” Pound was keen that everyone he knew should read Del Mar: he enjoined his correspondents, visitors and mentees, and he published chapters of the HMS in the cheap Square $ series for the wider public. Canto XCVII is his most important attempt at making his own readers turn in desperation to the source and be delighted, as he had been, by Del Mar’s learning, clarity and wisdom. I thus follow Daniel Pearlman who observed that Pound’s choice not to be clear was deliberate and designed to “irritate” the reader into action. 6 Pound’s design was to “save” Del Mar, but his epitome, if written coherently, would have defeated the purpose. Readers would have been satisfied with his abridgment and never consulted Del Mar at all. Pound thus structured his poem as a sefiers without signifieds” ( Sieburth, In Pound We Trust, p. 144 ) or “Pound’s habit of ellipsis and decontextualization is now so extreme that it does not so much invite this work of recovery as make a countervailing claim for the autonomy of his own text” ( Nicholls, Reckoning with Thrones, pp. 233 - 34 ). 6 “It is obvious that if the poet had wanted to be “clear” and “coherent”, he could have been; but if he chose not to be, what irritating ulterior motive could he have had? Perhaps exactly that: to irritate. [...] we are given the choice of either sticking with Pound at these exasperating junctures, or throwing up our hands. If we stick with it, of course, the only thing left us to do is to go to the source ourselves ( Pearlman, Alexander del Mar in The Cantos, pp. 161 - 62. )

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Roxana Preda quence of enigmas and puzzles that only a reading of Del Mar can solve: “what is?” “who is?” “what does this have to do with that?” In his history, Del Mar was using a number of principles that apply to The Cantos as well and the analogies are too striking to be passed over. Though his book’s inner structuring was historical, Del Mar’s mode of presentation was not always narrative: he discussed monetary problems with his sources, agreeing or disagreeing and correcting the authors he relied on. The HMS is not for the beginner, but for an educated reader who is already familiar with Roman and Byzantine history as well as with the ways the latter related to Islam. The innocent reader is bound to “supplement” with dates and historical relations from other sources since the narrative basis he provides is fragmentary . Additionally, Del Mar was using the “mythical method” avant - la - lettre. Though he was retelling the story of ancient coinage for the most part of his book, his point of view, purpose, and primary interest were contemporary . His main thesis, that coinage was a prerogative of the state that was wantonly abdicated to private organizations ( for the first time in Britain during the reign of Charles II ) causing the cycle of capitalist boom and bust, informs everything he has to say about coinage, indeed it is the main thesis of his book and the reason it was written. Del Mar’s reader is plunged into history from ancient times to the moment of writing, but constantly bears in mind the contemporary situation of bank money, the controversy over the greenback and the campaign for the remonetisation of silver raging in the United States at the time of Del Mar’s writing at the beginning of the 1880s. Pound was in the best position to supplement with facts that occurred after Del Mar’s moment: the creation of the Federal Reserve and the financial reforms of the New Deal. It was especially Roosevelt’s financial policy that occupied Pound’s mind and that often surfaced in his implicit dialogue with Del Mar. The implicit theme of this part of Canto XCVII is the universal and time - sanctioned sovereign duty of the state to exercise control over coinage, understood as an umbrella term for the minting of coins, establishing their value through the quantitative ratio between metals, and guarding limitation, that is, ensuring value stability by fighting inflation and counterfeiting. The fundamental agreement between Pound and Del Mar in the matter of the decline of monetary understanding in governmental circles and systematic fraud at the basis of the is-

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Gold and / or Humaness suance of paper money, makes the series of ratios silver to gold that the Canto presents, acquire a particular poignancy . Indeed the price of gold over the centuries and in various parts of the globe revealed fundamental regularities deeply connected to the stability of empires. This was not mere propaganda. It was not the theory of a crackpot economist. These numbers were real, true, and valid. As expressions condensed to the maximum and utterly precise, they deserved to make poetry . As Michael Coyle remarks, Pound radically cut even the fragmentary story - telling which Del Mar used to contextualise the various ratios between gold and silver in history and adapted “economics as a kind of writing” within the poetic texture, choosing to concentrate on “discreetly quantified information” 7. This coin - inspired poetry, one of Pound’s last poetic experiments, deserves our attention qua experiment, because it is the logical culmination of the aesthetics of precision and condensation he had been practising since the ABC of Reading. As Pound himself almost casually remarks in the poem, “nummulary moving toward prosody” ( XCVII/691 ) – his poetic practice is here inspired by coins: the aural aspect of the canto delights in the evocation of exotic foreign languages. The first monetary historians had been grammarians and lexicographers – they defined words and took care to commemorate those that had gone out of use. All through the canto Pound rescues words and names, erecting a stele or an oar to forgotten meanings and beautifully sounding words that have been forgotten. Pound starts the canto in medias res, going to Del Mar’s 5th chapter ( On Moslem Moneys ) to state its main economic theme – the nature of sovereignty as it was historically manifested through the use of the monetary system, more particularly the sovereign privilege of coining gold. Melik & Edward struck coins - with - a - sword, “Emir el Moumenin” ( Systems p. 134 ) six and 1/2 to one, or the sword of the Prophet,

( XCVII/688 )

7 Coyle, Popular Genres, p. 215.

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Roxana Preda Del Mar points out that in the Roman Empire, gold was considered sacred and the task of striking gold coins during the Republic was a sacerdotal prerogative, belonging to the High Pontiff. But when Octavianus turned Rome into an empire he consolidated the religious and military powers into one. From the time of Augustus, the Emperor became the Sovereign Pontiff. The emperor was thus both god and priest; the coins would henceforth bear the emperor’s image on its obverse, whereas the reverse would include religious and political symbols. Striking gold coins would be the first action of a new accession to power and the very first political action of a new emperor. No one except the emperor could have his face on a gold coin and every mistake ( such as having one’s face struck on a piece of gold jewelry ) was punishable by death. The local vassal princes could strike silver coins and the Roman Senate struck bronze or copper coins – these however were not full legal tender and had limited circulation unless sanctioned by the emperor. No vassal state of the Roman Empire was allowed to strike gold coins, unless it was a local coining of the emperor’s money: it bore his stamp, paid him seignorage and was subjected to such limits as he chose to impose ( HMS 68 - 69 ). In 47 BC Julius Caesar, secured Roman control over Egypt and gained the upper hand in the so - called “Oriental trade.” By lowering the quantity of gold in the aureus from 168 grains to 125, Caesar raised the ratio of silver to gold from 9 to 12 to 1, a ratio which became mandatory within the Roman empire ( HMS 89 ). Yet gold could be bought in India much cheaper, at the rate of 6 1/2 to 1. The “Oriental trade” consisted in collecting taxes in silver within the empire, buying gold cheaply in India, and coining it in Egypt at the imperial rate of 12 to 1. This trade held in monopoly by the Roman Emperors amply enhanced their wealth until the loss of Egypt to the Arabs in the wars of 639 - 642 AD ( HMS 86 - 87 ). Del Mar pointed out that the sacred character of gold ensured the preservation of the imperial monopoly over this stream of income: “the profits of the oriental trade could only be secured by an ordinance enjoying the sanctity of religious authority” ( HMS 90 ). To put it differently: the temple was definitely for sale. The sacredness of this prerogative and its financial advantage explained its long duration even after the fall of the empire, a duration that was ensured by the new Christian religion as long as it had an effective hold on the political imagination. Only after the sack of Constan-

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Gold and / or Humaness tinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, was the idea of the empire sufficiently weakened for former vassal kings to strike local gold coins. Earliest Christian gold coinage in Europe was that of Frederick II of Sicily ( the augustals of 1225 ); Henry III Plantagenet was the first king to strike the gold penny in 1257, followed almost a century later by Edward III’s noble – a coin struck in 1344 bearing his figure with a drawn sword with the legends and insignia of his kingly prerogatives.

Edward III’s noble ( 1344 AD )

Pound’s canto opens at the end of the 7th century when the Arab empire was rising on the ruins of the Persian Empire and was battling the Byzantine. Its privileged position at the opening of the canto as well as the particular length of ( more than one page of text ) denotes its importance as main theme of the canto. Melik’s act of defiance, that of striking gold coins with his figure on them was an open declaration of sovereignty and strength in the face of an already decrepit empire and a corrupt emperor. According to Del Mar, Justinian II declared war for this sacrilege, but lost it at the battle of Sebastopolis in 692. These facts were corroborated by Pound’s other source, Paul the Deacon, who in his turn relied on Theophanus’ account. 8

8 The accuracy of Del mar’s account of Malik’s financial policy and its relationship to his wars of expansion and religion were rightly challenged by Shaheen, The Story of Abd - El - Melik’s Money in 1982. Rereading Del Mar’s chapter in the light of newer research ( Treadwell, Abd al - Malik’s Coinage Reforms, 2009 ) we realize that he not only missed the point of Malik’s reform ( which aimed to Arabize government and money throughout the empire ) but also did not see Malik’s coin, did not date it properly and made the fantastic inference that the coin did not have a sacerdotal function. According to Treadwell, the

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Roxana Preda

Abd - al - Malik gold coin with sword ( 694 AD )

The iconography of the coins makes amply clear the military basis on which the ratio was being upheld. The control of gold was dependent on the particular regions held by the power of the sword. Three years later Justinian II was going to be driven out of power: he would be able to return in 705, the year Melik died, but was finally assassinated in 711. By contrast, Melik was an able warrior and administrator. In the earliest Moslem system the mithcal ( gold dinar of 65 grains weight, the equivalent of the Byzantine solidus in Muhammad’s time ) was divided into 96 parts: 96 barleycorn = 48 habbeh = 24 tussuj = 6 danik = 1 mithcal ( XCVII/688, HMS 141 ). The ratio silver to gold at the time of the Prophet was 12 to 1, replicating the Roman ratio. Since the death of Muhammad in 632, the Arabs had spread the Islamic message by the sword and had been able to unify first the Arab peninsula and then conquer the Persian Empire. Melik continued the campaign in North Africa initiated under his predecessors in order to wrest territory from the already weak Byzantine Empire. Egypt was already part of the Arab zone in Melik’s time. However, his capital and gold mint was at Damascus, in the Eastern zone of the empire. Melik decided to coin his spoils of war at the Oriental ( Indian ) ratio of 6 1/2 to 1. As Del Mar’s recoin with Malik’s figure was issued in 694 ( AH 74 ) in a second phase of his financial reform, after his victory over Justinian at Sebastopolis and lasted only for about three years until the new issue of completely epigraphic gold dinars became the universal currency of the Arab empire ( Treadwell 362 ). The troublesome coin that started the war with the Byzantines had the three figures of Heraclius and his two sons on its obverse, which was acceptable. However the reverse had the cross replaced by a pole ( or Muhammad’s spear ) and a globe. Around the edges, the Shahada message in Arabic ( There is no God but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God ) made the coin unrecognizable to the Roman Emperor, a political and religious sacrilege, impossible to accept as tribute. ( See the reverse of the coin with the caliph’s figure above ).

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Gold and / or Humaness construction of Melik’s arguments supporting his decision showed, the Arab conquest of Roman territory made this ratio eminently practical, as Roman usury could thus be turned on its head. Vast quantities of silver captured by conquest could thus be coined more cheaply into gold at the Oriental rate, since the channels of commercial communication with the Orient were in Arab hands. The Arab silver dirhem was an average of three silver coins circulating in the Persian empire, including the especially heavy one with the “Feast in Health” ( Nouch Khor ) legend ( weight 1 mithcal ). Melik simplified the Arab financial system and introduced the decimal principle ( 1 gold dinar = 10 silver dirhems ) ( HMS 143 ). Both in the Roman and Moslem systems, individuals were excluded from coinage and punished if caught. But the lower ratio made it possible for people with more limited means to own gold and thus made the acceptance of Arab conquest easier. Money was taxed: 20% went to “God” i. e. to the state administration. As Michael Coyle shows, Pound was sensitive to this tax, punning Prophet with profit: 9 “and by devlish ingenuity Abd - el - Melik” says, ut supra Paulus the Deacon, out of Theophanus, & went decimal, and the Prophet set tax on metal ( i. e. as distinct from ) & the fat ’uns pay for the lean ’uns, said Imran, & a king’s head and “NOUCH KHOR” persian, optative, not dogmatic, in fact as sign of cordiality and Royal benevolence.

( XCVII/688 )

Here was a ruler after Pound’s heart: an able administrator, a tolerant sovereign, respecting local custom, administration, and money: definitely not a usurer. The ratios could thus be regarded as delimiting territories of influence in the medieval world until the 1250s when the 9 Coyle, Popular Genres, pp. 222 - 24.

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Roxana Preda influence of the Byzantines disintegrated: the zone of the former Roman empire, dominated by the ratio of 12 to 1; the Arab zone, reaching along North Africa to the north of Spain, 6 1/2 to 1; the Northern states, extending from Germany to Scandinavia 8 to 1. Melik’s reasoning paid off. The Arab coins had a long life and a wide circulation in Europe, reaching as far as Britain and Scandinavia. One of them, a silver dirhem struck in 682 was paid in a post - office in Istanbul in 1859 ( XCVII/688 ). Del Mar’s remark that silver was “in the hands of the people whilst gold was in those of their rulers” ( HSM 135 ) may have brought to Pound’s mind the memory of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter, whom Pound called “regal” to ORA ( ICNTY 185 ). Pound mentions Princess A in his poem: “and for the first time in my life “I had thousand $ bills in my handbag” ( Princess A. ) after the 27/75 Spew Deal wangle

( XCVII/688 )

Pound never spells out the reason why she may have had thousand dollar bills in her handbag but a good reason may have been the Gold Reserve Act of January 1934, one of the first financial measures of the New Deal, whereby it was made a criminal offense for individuals to hold or trade gold. Those of them who had gold certificates had to sell them to the Treasury at the new price for the gold troy ounce, which was increased from $20.67 to $35. The dollar was made inconvertible by this measure. By raising the value of gold and setting up an absolute monopoly not only on the minting but also on the national possession of gold, the Treasury was able to amass a great quantity and cause an influx of gold into the US. The nation became nominally richer during the Depression, since it now possessed a much greater quantity of gold than before and also had active measures in place to prevent gold from leaving the country . The dollar was thus devalued by 40% and the monetary mass M1 was increased. A year later Congress passed a progres-

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Gold and / or Humaness sive income tax law authorizing a surtax on the rich ranging from 25 to 75%. 10 We have in this implicit juxtaposition between the gold monopoly of the Roman and Arab empires with the state monopoly initiated through the Gold Reserve Act, a prime engine for Pound’s interest in the economic half of the canto. To America the “ratio” was between dollars and gold: the gold had been made more expensive by decree and the taxes had been raised. To Pound this was bad government since the powers that be measured wealth in gold, not in natural resources, people’s achievement and general standard of living. Looking back on his hopes when Roosevelt had taken power in 1933, Pound remembered his friend’s Mencken’s letter describing the new president as a “weak sister” – indeed the joke seemed now inopportune ( XCVII/690 ). Pound now evaluated Roosevelt through Del Mar’s eyes, looking at similar acts of changing the ratio in history . He could see no political rationale for it and concluded that it must have been motivated by the interests of the “underworld,” that is for Pound, the Jewish bankers who advised the president. And the president could not be punished ( see Pound’s paraphrase from King Lear: “not for coining.” “Can’t get me on that, I am Royal.” XCVII/689 ). References to Roosevelt and his Banking Act will be a theme that would at times interrupt the flow of the notes from Del Mar ( 688, 690, 691 ) to punctuate the contemporary relevance of the historical gold - silver ratios that Del Mar considers. Asking ourselves in what the continuities or rationale of Pound’s note - taking consisted, we are bound to observe that he was particularly interested in the fluctuations and diversity of the ratio between silver and gold, more particularly in the political implications of the contrast between monetary stability vs instability and change. Questions of corruption, degradation, inefficiency, counterfeiting and illegality occur like a red thread in the canto. Particularly interesting are instances where these forms of degradation do not issue with wear and tear of currency or minor counterfeiting, but out of governmental initiative, driven by the desire of the king or emperor to gain as much person10 “Surtaxes on incomes $44,000 or above on individuals are increased on a graduating scale to a range of 27 to 75 per cent from a present range of 20 to 55 per cent. Small incomes are not touched.”  ( Rich Men and Big Business Pay More Taxes After Jan. 1, in: Long Island Daily Press, Jamaica, N Y, Dec. 27, 1935, p. 1 ). I am grateful to Archie Henderson for this piece of information.

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Roxana Preda al wealth as possible. Effective methods to this end were a. massacre, plunder and persecution; b. manipulating the ratio between gold and silver and forbidding gold export; c. coining degraded coins of inadequate silver or gold content; d. coining tin ( blancs ). Pound therefore implies that in most cases the king is the supreme counterfeiter who punishes the nobles or clerics who aim to imitate him and derive similar profits from coinage. Del Mar distinguished among four periods of coinage and Pound covers them all in his canto: 1. From Julius Caesar to the sack of Constantinople and the fall of the Byzantine Empire ( 49 BC to 1204 AD ), during which the Roman Emperor had the coinage of gold in monopoly . 2. From 1204 to the 16th century: coinage became a kingly prerogative and the wildest changes in the ratio took place to suit political interests of the kings and barons. 3. From the assumption of private ( free ) coinage in Holland in 1607 to 1871 - 5: the principal states of the West ceased to coin silver – the ratio between silver and gold was the mint price, i.e. an average of the various prices paid at the important European mints 4. The period since 1875, when the general market price relation became distinct from the mint price. However much the kings and nobles debased the coin and derived profits out of coinage, the greatest irregularities and fluctuations happened after they surrendered this privilege to the goldsmiths, companies and banks. The process began with the act of Charles the II giving the minting prerogative to the East India Company in 1620, further with the British government giving up the power over the ratio in 1816 ( demonetization of silver ) and ending with the surrendering of the remains of the prerogative during the reign of Queen Victoria in 1870. Del Mar’s most passionate flourishes of rhetoric are reserved for the chapter where he delineates the evils that have befallen societies, especially the British one as a result of this disastrous decision. He especially attributed the cycles of economic expansion and contraction to the surrender of the prerogative of coining money ( HMS 386 - 7 ). By the time he was adding notes out of these chapters, Pound was obviously bored by the regularities of money debasement and fraud:

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Gold and / or Humaness degradations, depredations, degradations whatsodam of emperors, kings and whatsodam, Dukes et cetera have since been exceeded, Kitson, Fenton & Tolstoi had observed this.

( XCVII/693 )

The finale of this section spells out a foregone conclusion, which he had been approaching steadily through his review of the monetary history – the American situation, the bankers’ intervention against the greenback and the protest of honest Mr. Carlyle, congressman from Kentucky, against the “heartless domination of the syndicates, stock exchanges, and other great combinations of money - grabbers in this country and in Europe” 11. Mr. Carlyle later went to work for the Treasury and Pound ends this section of the canto by a comma to indicate that this sort of struggle is indeed still going on. But for the moment, he will direct his attention to a wholly different realm. Par t 2 – The „Eter nal Order“ As I previously argued in this essay’s preamble, we could compare the two sections of Canto XCVII with the two faces of a coin. One side is stamped with the face of the emperor and establishes the value of the coin with relation to land, grain, silver; this face is ‘historical’ and asserts the power relations in a certain period in history; moreover, it is subjected to multiplicity and disorder, being in a steady process of change, owing to wars, politics and new religions. The reverse of a coin points to a different order: since gold coins were originally stamped by sacerdotal authority, they contain religious symbols and expressions of cultural value: the face of a god, the symbol of the cross, the insignia of a culture. These symbols are not meant to be in the realm of history but indicate the foundational values of a civilization. Here, it is the sacerdos who decides the adequate symbols for values that have nothing to do with the numbers inscribed on the coin. They are outside the economic 11 Terrell, Companion, p. 621.

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Roxana Preda sphere and underlie the essentials of good government and culture in a certain time and space. When Pound started this new section with ‘new fronds / novelle piante’ he followed Dante who had left the Inferno and Purgatory behind him, and guided by Matilda had bathed in the two sacred rivers: Lethe ( to forget his mortal sins ) and Eunoe ( to remember his good deeds ). After bathing in the Eunoe, at the end of Canto XXXIII of Purgatory, Dante feels “reborn, a tree renewed, in bloom / with newborn foliage, immaculate, / eager to rise, now ready for the stars” ( Pur 387 ), and crosses the threshold into Paradise. The formula is the beginning of Pound’s verbal ritual in a temple of words he would erect in his poem where he is the priest - poet - augur. It is a ceremony meant to commemorate the truths he cherished and learnt from others as well as to recapitulate and abridge his holy beliefs about life, art, money and government. Pound’s temple is dedicated to the sun and the ceremony he officiates will start at dawn and send with sunset. The ceremony starts by conjuring the sunrise and Pound uses the shape and power of ideograms to evoke a temple on the page. The tan ideogram ( dawn ) is flanked on both sides by ch’in ( relatives, people ) – three columns with the sun rising above a horizontal stroke in the middle ( XCVII/695 ): Novelle piante

what ax for clearing?

If we look more closely at the ch’in ideogram, we see that it is composed of two radicals, the first of which it shares with hsin ( new ) also present on the page to illustrate the “novelle piante”: a “plant” radical showing roots and an upper part resembling the crown of a tree. The next radical in ch’in looks like a house on legs, prompting Pound to define ch’in not simply as “people,” or “relatives” but as “a way people grow.” When defining the Great Learning in his translation of the Ta Hio of 1947, Pound affirmed that it “takes root in clarifying the way wherein the

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Gold and / or Humaness intelligence increases through the process of looking straight into one’s heart and acting on the results: it is rooted in watching with affection the way people grow” ( Con 26 - 27 ). The columnar disposition of the ideograms on the page reminds us of the temple icon, which Pound would use further down in the canto with its leitmotif “the temple is holy / because it is not for sale.” Though the icon of the temple is taken from Sargon’s cartouche ( XCIV/699, 701, 702 ) 12 Pound’s syncretic imagination also evokes the dawn at Stonehenge during solstice ( recalled in Canto XCI ) as a possible correlative to his solar ceremony and hall of echoes.

Stonehenge ( Summer Solstice )

Pound defines and redefines the colors of the dawn, as the portent of hope, the way the Sybil herself had put the prophecy of Britain’s prosperity in a book ( Layamon’s Brut, referred in the quotation below ). In his invocation, he draws on the sacred mysterious sound of Greek, which he now combines with Medieval English, French and Chinese to give his hymn to the sunlight at dawn both its sacredness and its sophisticated discernment: 13 οἶνος αἰθίοψ the gloss, probably, not the colour. So hath Sibilla a boken ysette as the laquer in sunlight ἁλιπόρφυρος or shall we say: russet - gold,

12 Cf. Casillo, Genealogy of Demons, p. 72. 13 See Bacigalupo, The Forméd Trace, pp. 350 - 52 for a detailed analysis of this passage and the ramifications and meanings of the Greek words Pound is using.

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Roxana Preda That this colour exists in the air not flame, not carmine, orixalxo, les xaladines lit by the torch - flare & from the nature the sign, as the small lions beside San Marco. Out of ling the benevolence

( XCVII/695 )

Discernment in the use of words, ( ching ming ), and awareness for the needs of the people are the touchstones of “sensibility” ( ling ) whose ideogram dominates the whole page and which in Pound’s view is the fundamental principle of good government, an association he had made both in his Guide to Kulchur and more recently in Canto LXXXV, where he put the stability and “luck” ( speak “long duration” ) of a dynasty on the basis of this foundation. From this sensibility to the needs of the people and to the signs and wonders of nature derives what Pound calls “benevolence” and compassion, a sense of values that brings together the emperor and the artist. Pound adapts from the Ta Hio a passage made of six ideograms spelling out the fundamental principle of government as he sees it: it is not the love of wealth but that of people which is the true treasure of benevolence, true manhood and leadership ( Con 74 - 75; XCVII/696 ) 14. We notice that the ideogram for “people” or “kindred” ( ch’in ) appears twice, in the lower left and upper right corners. The connotation of new growth and the three - column disposition give the ideograms a sacerdotal value and the quality of a holy and active truth ( XCVII/696 ).

14 Cf. Lan, Ezra Pound and Confucianism, p. 153

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Gold and / or Humaness This is the fundamental idea whereby Pound in this second section responds to or rather counteracts the hell of history and the distortion of true values that are the lot of homo economicus: gold, taxes, war and bloodshed. Pound wants his temple to be clean and his ritual pure: following Apollonius, who had refused to accept gold from a tyrant and who worshipped the gods without animal sacrifice, Pound affirms that “the temple is holy / Because it is not for sale.” His ritual will be made of colors and memories, he will venerate the day, will be thankful for the sun and moon and for his writing taking him from dawn to sunset. Within the Confucian framework Pound includes – almost surreptitiously – words from Homer’s Odyssey, adjectives on the color of the sea ( “wine dark” ), boats ( “long oared” ), ghosts that flit like shadows in the underworld ( Od X 495 ) – Odysseus is a hero who serves as a classic example of the ups and downs of leadership and of the need for responsibility and utmost vigilance. It is a way of punctuating the way forward to Pound’s invocation of the great goddess governing the sublunar world, “all neath the moon” – Fortuna. Research by Pearlman ( 1971 ) and Sieburth ( 2003 ) has shown that Pound was aware of all the authors who had famously dealt with Fortuna as a deity or “minister of God”: Cavalcanti, Dante, Boccaccio, Thomas D’Aquinas, Macchiavelli. Each of them had seen her differently and subsumed her in their literary projects and views of the world. Though Pound mentions Cavalcanti’s take on the subject, especially the first stanza of the canzone to Fortune, which he considered genuine ( “io son la donna che volgo la rota” ) it is rather Dante’s view of Fortuna which was a natural choice: Dante had her presiding over the circle of the avaricious and prodigals in the fourth circle of the Inferno ( Dante Inf 7 39 ). Evidently, she rules over the hopes, illusions and punishments of the economic man and is the divine instance over all the waxing and waning of empires and kingdoms that Del Mar had described in monetary terms in his book. Though Pound had mentioned Fortuna before, including her Chinese ideogram in the Rock Drill ( LXXXVI/586 and XCI/633 ), it is here that she achieves her plenitude. Pound quotes liberally from Dante, calling Fortuna “beata gode” and an “eel in sedge” presiding over the “splendor mondan” ( earthly splendor ) but makes this deity his own first by connecting her to Chinese dynasties and Confucian precepts of government, then by making her preside over the world as the moon ( we are in the sphere of

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Roxana Preda the moon, the first of Dante’s Paradise ) and finally by imagining her as ruling not only over the punishments of people in thrall to wealth, but over the fates of everyman, kings, heroes and artists alike. Her eyes now have the colour of periwinkle, a special kind of violet blue which changes its hue into the colour of the sea, sometimes darker ( the Homeric ἁλιπόρφυρος that Pound included in his evocation of the dawn ) sometimes lighter ( the “pale sea - green” that Drake sees in Queen Elisabeth’s eyes in Canto XCI ). Fortuna’s is an order that includes Odysseus and Raleigh, the Chinese dynasties and Pound himself. Even Aquinas could not demote her, Fortuna, violet, pervanche, deep iris, beat’ è, e gode, the dry pod could not demote her, plenilune, phase over phase.

( XCVII/698 )

Pound’s conjuring of a temple presiding over a personal realm of poetry is not a new idea that he came upon out of his reading and his special circumstances at St Elizabeths, but rather a way of going back to his own original spring, drawing from there the freshness he wanted for this epitome of the self. The idea of poetry as a radical response and counterpart to the hell of history is old and coincides with the period of elaboration of a stable “draft” for The Cantos. The function of poetry, Pound declared, is to: assert the existence of a world ... into which usurers and manufacturers of war machinery cannot penetrate; into which the infamy of politicians, elected or hereditary, cannot enter and upon which expediency has no effect; against which the lies of exploiting religions, the slobberings of bishops, have no more influence than the bait of journalism or oppressions of the ‘purveyors of employment’. Or shall we say: To assert an eternal order ... 15

15 Pound, Response on the Function of Poetry, pp. 17 - 18 ( 1922 ).

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Gold and / or Humaness This cultural order is made of personal intellectual discoveries gleaned from reading and moments of intensity which he had been privileged to have had in conversation with other people whom he now recalls: Brancusi, Picabia, Delcroix, Griffith, Ungaro and Knittl. He invokes their remarks as magical tokens, saving them from forgetting, creating for them a monument in his poem. The second part of the canto thus has a number of stated or evoked themes that are interwoven and find each other out: the solar theme, especially the idea of dawn, beginnings, prophecies and hopes; the images around the moon, Fortuna, and the vagaries of human fate; the idea of the temple, holy because it is pure of bloodshed and greed: connected with it the worship of nature and its sacred character ( the Nile flowing from heaven “flames gleam in the air” ( 695 ), Luigi gobbo worshipping grain at sunrise ( 699 ) or Fou - Hi ( reigning ) by wood ( 699 ) ); anti - Semitic sentiment spurts at times in a thread of its own, which emerges from this texture for contrast – the unnamed Jews are “those who have a code and no principles” ( 698 ) and started “the original sin - racket” ( 699 ); finally, the luminous details of Pound’s memories of his friends, sustaining the edifice of his world through magical moments of personal revelation. From every word or phrase remembered there are others, forgotten or lost. Pound’s association with Paul the Deacon may have been more intimate than we have been able to see until now. Pound recapitulated and abridged his poetic history as Paul had written his. But next to his history, Paul wrote an abridgment of Sextus Festus’s dictionary, published in the same Migne Patrologia 95, which Pound had used for his digest of Paul in Canto XCVI. Festus in his turn, had epitomized a larger dictionary of Roman civilization written by Verrius Flaccus, now all but lost. Pound had paid attention to the mediators of tradition before: he acknowledged and highlighted both what is preserved and what was lost in transmission. According to John Peck 16, Pound must have had an additional source for Festus: Dionysius Gothofrede’s lexicon, Auctores Latinae in Unum Redacti Corpus, ( first published in Geneva 1585 ), which assembled all the entries that had been salvaged from Flaccus to Festus to Paul to Leto: fragments from the letter M, which Leto takes over and comments in his epitome of Sextus, starting with Masculine – Pound 16 Peck, Pound’s Lexical Mythography, p. 29.

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Roxana Preda evaluates the sound and value of the Greek equivalents: ἀρδενικὰ ( masculine ) and in Leto’s opinion the “less elegant” ἀνδρικὰ ( manly ). Pound proceeds more or less in the order of the dictionary entries and as Peck points out, he uses them as a “mythographer’s handbook”: Deorum manium ( the holy dead ) appear in the entry on “mundus”; the Flamen Dialis ( priest of Jupiter ) and Pomona appear in the entry “maxime dignationis.” The mission of the augur is to name the god, as Pound does in his invocation of Fortuna and indeed since the beginning of this second section of the canto. The Menes Di ( gods of the underworld ) are also invoked because they “stay on” in the earth and air. Pound invokes these dead and buried words ( “intermortua jam et verba sepulta” ) so as to resurrect them for his ceremony . With them he recovers the lost images of ancient Greek rituals, like the horse sacrifices to the sun. As a solar ceremony to close his canto he invokes the ritual of Rhodos where the Greeks drove a chariot into the sea. The sun is the “old horse god,” Helios, also illustrated by the three ideograms closing the canto. We are now at sunset, at the end of the day – but Pound would not rest: again he invokes beginnings, hopes, innovations: Athelstan’s introduction of guilds in Britain, his own attempt to reform and improve the food situation in Italy ( by introducing peanuts, maple syrup and kadzu ) and Confucius’s advice to Tse Lu: “not lie down!” Or, if you prefer another translation, “be tireless!” Works cited Dante Alighieri, The Portable Dante, ed. Mark Musa, New York: Penguin, 1995. Massimo Bacigalupo, The Forméd Trace. The Later Poetry of Ezra Pound, New York: Columbia UP, 1980. Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious Character. The Life of Ezra Pound, New York: Delta, 1988. Robert Casillo, The Genealogy of Demons: Anti - Semitism, Fascism, and the Myths of Ezra Pound, Evanston IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1988.

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Gold and / or Humaness Michael Coyle, Ezra Pound, Popular Genres, and the Discourse of Culture, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Alexander Del Mar, A History of Monetary Systems, London: Effingham Wilson Royal Exchange, 1895. –––, A History of Monetary Systems; Chicago: Charles Kerr, 1895. Archie Henderson, ‘I Cease not to Yowl’ Reannotated. New Notes on the Pound / Agresti Correspondence, Houston: CreateSpace, 2009. Eva Hesse, ‘Kadzu, Arachidi, Acero’ in Canto XCVII/683: A Matter of Coherence, in: Paideuma 8.1 ( 1979 ), pp. 53 - 54. Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998. Feng Lan, Ezra Pound and Confucianism. Remaking Humanism in the Face of Modernity, Toronto: Univerity of Toronto Press, 2004. Peter Nicholls, ‘2 Doits to a Boodle.’ A Reckoning with Thrones, in: Textual Practice 18.2 ( 2004 ), pp. 233 - 249. Paul the Deacon, Patrologia Latina. Vol. 95, ed. Jacques P. Migne, Paris: 1841 - 1855. Daniel Pearlman, Alexander del Mar in The Cantos: A Printout of the Sources, in: Paideuma 1.2 ( 1972 ), pp. 161 - 180. –––, The Blue - Eyed Eel. Dame Fortune in Pound’s Later Cantos, in: Agenda 9.4 - 10.1 ( 1971/72 ), pp. 60 - 77. John Peck, Pound’s Lexical Mythography: Kings’ Journey and Queen’s Eye, in: Paideuma 1.1 ( 1972 ), pp. 3 - 36. Ezra Pound, The Cantos, New York: New Directions, 1998. –––, [ Response on the function of poetry . ] Chapbook 27 ( July 1922 ), pp. 17 - 18. –––, Confucius, New York: New Directions, 1969.

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Roxana Preda Mohammad Y Shaheen, The Story of Abd - El - Melik’s Money in Canto XCVI and XCVII, in: Paideuma: A Journal Devoted to Ezra Pound Scholarship 11.3 ( 1982 ), pp. 420 - 428. Print. Richard Sieburth, ‘From Rossetti to Radio’: Pound’s Opera Cavalcanti, in: Ezra Pound and Referentiality, ed. Hélène Aji, Paris: Presses Paris Sorbonne, 2003, pp. 148 - 160. –––, In Pound We Trust: the Economy of Poetry / The Poetry of Economics, in: Critical Inquiry 14.1 ( 1987 ), pp. 142 - 172. Leon Surette and Demetres Tryphonopoulos ( eds. ), ‘I Cease Not to Yowl.’ Ezra Pound’s Letters to Olivia Rossetti Agresti, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Carroll Terrell, A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Vol. II, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Luke Treadwell, Abd al - Malik’s Coinage Reforms: the Role of the Damascus Mint, in: Revue numismatique 6.165 ( 2009 ), pp. 357 - 381. persee.fr. Web. 29.05.2016.

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EZRA POUND, ARISTOTLE, AND ANCIENT GREEK ECONOMICS Peter Liebregts Although Ezra Pound developed an interest in economics so as to understand the occurrence of what he saw as political and social evil in the course of history as early as World War I, it was not until the 1930s that economics and economic reform would become one of the most often discussed topics in his prose and correspondence, and a major theme in The Cantos. As Pound stated in his essay “Dateline” ( 1934 ): “An epic is a poem including history . I don’t see that anyone save a sap - head can now think he knows any history until he understands economics” ( LE 86 ). Pound’s study of economics in the 1930s, with a focus on the nature of money, state control versus private banking, and usury, used Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics as his main primary sources from classical antiquity . In this article, I will discuss Aristotle’s analysis of economic issues as well as Pound’s reading of these texts, and show how for him they became touchstones of sound economic thinking. This is not only evident from his prose and correspondence, but also from The Cantos, where certain Aristotelian phrases serve as leitmotifs. Although the word ‘economics’ is derived from the Greek word oikonomikè, ‘the art of managing a household’, it is noteworthy how small the amount of Greek economic literature actually is. Depending very much on one’s definition of it, with a stretch it may include passages from Hesiod’s Works and Days, Lysias’ Against the Corn - dealers, Aristophanes’ Frogs, and Plato’s Republic and Laws, next to Xenophon’s Oeconomicus and the pseudo - Aristotelian Oeconomica. 1 Yet these writings are generally works of practical advice of how to manage a land, a household, an estate, or slaves, and not applicable to the broader context of the economy at large. It is Aristotle’s discussion of economic matters in only a few pages in his Nicomachean Ethics ( V.5; 1132b - 1133b ) and Politics ( I.8 - 10; 1256a - 1258b ) which are generally regarded as the first truly

1 For an anthology of Greek economic writing, see Laistner, Greek Economics.

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Peter Liebregts analytical contributions to economics, and most histories of economic thought begin with them. These Aristotelian passages have been read very differently since the end of the nineteenth century, when scholars began to use modern economic notions to study the social nature of antiquity . 2 Many of them regarded the ancient economy as an early version of our own system, and therefore saw no problem in applying modern economic concepts to describe it. This approach was criticized by especially Moses Finley in his The Ancient Economy ( 1973 ), which claims that such modern notions distort our understanding of ancient economic thought and practice. Finley pointed out that the crucial difference between ancient and modern economy was the fact that the Greeks did not have a market economy, and therefore should be studied in a different light. While the relevance of ancient thought to modern economics and vice versa remains a debated topic, Aristotle’s thought has also been interpreted in various ways due to particular translations of key words in the Greek, and to the extent readers have recognised or failed to see how these writings are more ethical rather than economic in the modern scientific sense. Pound gives an extended discussion of the Ethics in his Guide to Kulchur ( 1938 ), that rag - bag covering a great variety of topics meant for educating his readers, and insisting on the importance of using exact terminology in teaching a sense of civic and social responsibility . Given that he read Greek philosophy as a convinced Confucian with a focus on ‘ideas into action’ and political responsibility, Pound in Kulchur largely rejects “greek philosophic thought” as “utterly irresponsible”, as it “is at no point impregnated with a feeling for the whole people”, but “mainly highbrow discussion of ideas among groups of consciously superior persons … who felt themselves above the rest of society” ( GK 29 - 30 ), with the Stoics and some works by Aristotle as the only exceptions. For Pound, Aristotle, too, “did not engender a sense of social responsibility”, but two redeeming features were, firstly, his analysis of Greek political entities in his Athenian Constitution ( discussed further below ), and secondly, he at least tried to define matters, however unsuccessfully at times, and one “can find worthy suggestions about conduct” in his work ( GK 39 ). Pound accounted for his choice to offer a detailed 2 Meikle, Aristotle’s Economic Thought, pp.1 - 2.

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Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics analysis of the Nicomachean Ethics at the end of Kulchur by claiming that “one has a duty to attempt rectification, i.e. to compare one’s outline with some gt. book against which one may be prejudiced or at least wherewith one supposes one’s self to be not in accord.” ( GK 304 ) Pound read the Ethics in the Loeb edition with a Greek text accompanied by a translation by Harris Rackham, first published in 1926, and revised in 1934. Rackham in his Preface makes clear that his translation is designed to assist the readers of the Greek text and is therefore “interpretative”, and not an attempt at “reproducing the Greek as closely as possible”. 3 Despite his misgivings about both Aristotle and the translation, in a letter to T.S. Eliot of 16 April 1938, Pound regarded Rackham’s text as “the most careful ( his edtn or the Loeb ( or Lowebb classics ) edtn ) the Nic. Ethics has had.” ( SL 307 ) Although a full analysis of Pound’s reading of the Ethics falls outside the scope of this article, it should be noted that Rackham’s introduction to his translation did influence Pound’s appreciation of Aristotle’s treatise, as a whole. In Kulchur, Pound states that at first, he was ready to believe he had misjudged Aristotle up until page xxii of Rackham’s introduction ( GK 305 ). This may not be surprising as on pp. xx - xxi Rackham claims how according to Aristotle, man’s happiness is determined by “his social environment, by the laws, customs and institutions of the community to which he belongs. A social being can only achieve his good in society, and in a society rightly organized for his welfare.” This is why the “Science of Politics” has to study “in what mode of life man’s happiness consists” ( the subject of the Ethics ), and “by what form of government and social institutions that mode of life can be secure for him” ( the subject of the Politics ). 4 However, on pp. xxiii - xxiv Rackham notes how the Ethics concludes that Theoretical Wisdom is the highest form of knowledge, making thought “the highest form of Action”, with the result that “the life of moral action” only provides a lower form of happiness as it is merely a means to an end. In his fight against abstraction and favouring the notion of ‘ideas going into action’, this went totally against the grain of Pound’s beliefs. 5 Pound’s annoy3 Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics, with an English translation by H. Rackham, pp. xi - xii. Hereafter referred to as NE. 4 Rackham, NE, p. xxi. 5 Pound in Kulchur quoted with great disapproval from Rackham’s introduction: “Hence the tendency to think of the End not as a sum of Goods, but as one Good which is the

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Peter Liebregts ance results in a very biased reading of the Ethics, noting after having read only half a page that it was “a second - rate book” ( GK 306 ). For him, Aristotle’s text in toto consists of three elements, namely, lists of “imbecilities”, “yatter” ( “the bulk of the book” ) or imprecise and hedging attempts at defining words and thoughts, but on the positive side also “a residuum ( small ) of phrases that a good advocate could defend, claiming that they reveal or cover something of value.” ( 310 ) This brings us to Book V, in which Aristotle discusses Justice. Pound regarded this as a sort of ‘hit and miss’ book, as while he commends Aristotle for trying to remedy the looseness of terms when it comes to defining judiciary terms, and thus actions and forms of behaviour as ‘unjust’ and ‘illegal’, he regards the terminology unsatisfactory on other occasions. Still, he claims approvingly that “bk. V does register a gain over the preceding books in that we have here the concept of ‘the practice of virtue toward someone else’.” ( GK 321 - 22 ). Of special importance to Pound is section V.5, which is, as we have seen, together with Politics I.8 - 10, one of the key Aristotelian passages on economic issues. My analysis of Aristotle in the following pages is largely based on Scott Meikle’s Aristotle’s Economic Thought ( 1995 ), which gives the most nuanced reading of the Stagirite’s economic thought, and I will intersperse this interpretation with Pound’s comments on the text as given in Guide to Kulchur and its link to The Cantos. In Nicomachean Ethics V.5, Aristotle distinguishes between Reciprocity and Justice. After all, it is not in all cases just for a man when he is struck, to strike back. But “in the interchange of services Justice in the form of Reciprocity is the bond that maintains the association” ( NE V.5.6 ) 6. Indeed, as Pound notes by quoting the Greek: “μεταδόσει δὲ συμμένουσιν/ on proportionate reciprocity necessary to the existence of the state.” ( GK 323 ) The Greek phrase means ‘they come together through exchange’, rendered by Rackham as “it is exchange that binds them together”. 7 Interestingly enough, Pound noted that “Metadidomi [is] dictionaried also as the “giving a share” ( GK 323 ) Best. Man’s welfare thus is ultimately found to consist, not in the employment of all his faculties in due proportion, but only in the activity of the highest faculty, the ‘theoretic’ intellect.” ( Rackham, NE, pp. xxvi - xxvii = GK 342 - 43 ) 6 Rackham, NE, p. 281. 7 Ibid.

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Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics – the Greek - English dictionary of Liddell - Scott gives for metadosis, “exchange of commodities”, and as an alternative “the giving a share”, while under metadidoomi, the verb to which the noun is related, we may find “to give part of, give a share of a thing”. What Pound has uncovered here but does not express or work out explicitly, is that Aristotle in his discussion of economic value makes a distinction between use value and exchange value. Aristotle offers the example of a shoe, which has a use related to itself as it is meant to be worn, thereby having a value in use as it is made for a particular need, but it can also be used as an article for exchange and be exchanged for food or a house. However, as a shoe is not made for the purpose of exchange, the problem arises how to determine its exchange value. Aristotle notes in the Nicomachean Ethics V.5 how in any exchange different objects are by nature incommensurable, and he thus focuses on the possibility of fairness in exchange. He argues that “in the interchange of services Justice in the form of Reciprocity is the bond that maintains the association: reciprocity, that is, on the basis of proportion, not on the basis of equality .” ( NE V.5.6 ) 8 After all, it would not be fair to exchange one shoe for one house, no matter how high the quality of each individual item is; in exchange, it is quantity that matters. Therefore one must establish the equality of proportion of the goods in exchange: how many shoes for one house? If this could be established, then there would be the possibility of fair exchange. This creates the problem of commensurability, of how to ascertain when the objects of exchange are equal in proportion. And not only physical objects: Aristotle also mentions immaterial objects of exchange such as medical services. How thus to equate objects in exchange, in other words, what is the exchange value of an object? But before this can be answered, one must first establish what ‘exchange value’ is per se. Here, then, Aristotle asks a metaphysical rather than an economic question, as exchange value for him has no substance and as such has no being. Meikle 9 has pointed out that the failure to understand this has led to distortions in reading Aristotle’s economic thought. He rightly states:

8 Ibid. 9 Meikle, Aristotle’s Economic Thought, pp. 18 - 20.

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Peter Liebregts The object of Aristotle’s inquiry is to discover the nature of a property, exchange value, and an inquiry with that kind of aim is a metaphysical inquiry . The fact that the property inquired into has its home in economics does not make the inquiry itself an economic one. 10 In his Ethics, Aristotle suggests two ways in which objects can be made commensurable and thus equal in a fair exchange. The first is money, the second is chreia, variously translated as ‘demand’ or ‘need’, thereby leading to different interpretations. Aristotle argues that at one point money was introduced so that all things can be measured and their value established, which would answer the question “how many shoes are equivalent to a house or to a given quantity of food.” ( NE V.5.10 ). This argument was greatly admired by Pound: … money is BORN as a MEASURE. [Aristotle] has, and let no one fail to credit him with it, come at money from the right side, as a measure. A means of ascertaining the proportionate worth of a house and a pair of shoes. In the hierarchy of its constituents he has got hold of the chief reason for money’s existence. ( GK 323 ) Having stated that money serves as a measure, Aristotle concludes dio dei panta tetimèsthai ( V.5.14 ), which Rackham renders as “Hence the proper thing is for all commodities to have their prices fixed.” 11 Yet, as Meikle has rightly noted, this translation implies that the state or any state authority set prices, but this is not what happened in practice. 12 Pound, too, noted the difficulty here: But “their prices fixed” Rackham’s rendering of PANTA TETIMESTHAI can have half a dozen different meanings. All this estimated, valued?? prices determined in Jan. and kept set? I don’t think Aristotle can be invoked and saddled with the 10 Ibid., p. 19. 11 Rackham, NE, p. 287. 12 Meikle, Aristotle’s Economic Thought, p. 21.

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Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics stabilization racket on the strength of panta tetimesthai. Let us use his own justice on him. Not accuse him of sins of special commission where he has merely used general terms. ( GK 325 ) Rackham’s rendering of the verb tetimèsthai indeed is misleading as it should be translated more neutrally as ‘to be estimated / valued / assessed at a certain price’, or even more generally ‘to be expressed in money’, and thus the sentence would read “it is necessary for everything to be expressed in money”. Then there would be a common standard of measurement which would make equalization of goods possible. Money, then, “serves as a measure which makes things commensurable and so reduces them to equality .” ( NE V.6.14 ). And it is at this point that Pound failed to understand Aristotle’s subtlety, as is evident from the following statement: “The proper thing is to have commodity prices fixed” ( Oh yeah! ) and then money serves as a measure which makes ‘em commensurable as scarcely on sea or land in human experience, but properly Utopian. I am not arguing against it, I am merely indicating the insufficiency of our philosopher as guide. ( GK 325 ) However, what Pound does not take into account is that Aristotle not only claims that there can be “no exchange without equality”, but that there can also be “no equality without commensurability” ( NE V.6.14 ), so logically speaking there must have been a rate of exchange “before money existed” ( NE V.5.16 ). Aristotle therefore drops this line of thought as the measurement actually presupposes commensurability instead of creating it. After all, how does one attach exchange value to a shoe or a house in terms of money? It would simply rephrase the question of how many shoes should be exchanged for one house in different terms: what would be the money equivalent of a shoe? Money in itself, then, does not create the exchange value, but the other way round, as it is the exchange value that may create the possibility of a measure ( money as customary currency ) to define it.

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Peter Liebregts An alternative for money as a standard of commensurability is chreia, rendered by Rackham as ‘demand’, which actually suggests a notion from modern economics. However, chreia may be linked to the Latin opus, and thus may be rendered as ‘need’, ‘want’, ‘necessity’, or it may be translated as ‘use’. Meikle claims that ‘need’ would be a much better translation than ‘demand’. 13 In Kulchur Pound in his criticism of Rackham’s rendering of Aristotle’s chreia as ‘demand’, seems to opt for ‘use’, and makes very clear why: … it makes an infinite difference whether you translate χρεία as demand or USE. Here the black curse of university obfuscation descends on Rackham. The man has met somewhere a university professor of economics or some work exuded from such licery . He falls into class - room jargon, and translates χρεία as demand. The value of a thing depends on USUS, its price may be distorted by its OPUS. Here, then, Pound seems to have made his own clear choice for a translation of chreia, different from Rackham’s, but in line with Kulchur’s insistence on exact terminology and definitions, he also continues to note in his provocative way that: Arry has not made his paragraph fool - proof. XREIA is a wood - pile in which you can hide an indefinite number of niggers … The pimps’ paradise of indefinite verbiage. ( GK 324 ) Pound’s wording of his criticism of Rackham’s translation of chreia in Guide to Kulchur has caused some confusion. Thus, for example, the editors of the Pound - Olivia Rossetti Agresti correspondence gave the following gloss on chreia mentioned in a letter of 8 September 1953 about the “Loeb library / ( in which XREIA, demand {,} is mistranslated, lest Aristotle’s good sense on that point shd/ reach the under - grad”: 14 13 Meikle, Aristotle’s Economic Thought, p. 23. 14 Pound, “I cease Not to Yowl”, ed. Demetres P. Trytphonopoulos and Leon Surette, p. 126. Hereafter referenced to as EP/ORA. Cf. a letter of 1948: “Must reexamine Aristotle’s terminology . XREIA, if I remember rightly, obscured in Loeb edtn/ translation.” ( EP/ ORA 12 ); and in a letter of 1 December 1953, Pound referred to “Aristotle/ ( being ware of

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Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics Gk.: “use.” According to EP, the word is used by Aristotle to mean “use” rather than “demand”; he therefore challenges H. Rackham’s use of the term “demand” in his translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics ( Guide to Kulchur 324 ) – this, of course, is another example of EP’s insistence on the importance of correct terminology . ( EP/ORA 127 - 28 ) Yet Pound does not want to render chreia simply as ‘use’. His criticism of Rackham’s “demand” is directed at the fact that by adapting a term from modern economics, Rackham imposes a concept that may cause misunderstanding, and thus needs to be contextualised. When Pound states that the “value of a thing depends on USUS, its price may be distorted by its OPUS”, he is not arguing that USUS or ‘use’ is the correct translation of chreia, but he is rather seeing the term in the context of Aristotle’s distinction between use value ( USUS ) and exchange value, which is determined by its OPUS ( chreia ), and is expressed in a monetary price. For Pound, then, OPUS or chreia covers, and should continue to do so, the many meanings of ‘need, want, necessity, use’, which Rackham simplified to ‘demand’. Pound noted the same difficulty of rendering a word with multiple meanings in a note about money as a guarantee of future exchange: “To want, to be in want OF, to need, are not identical conditions ... That is O.K. so long as the reader isn’t lulled into forgetting that the statement about guarantee is INCLUSIVE of these various conditions.” ( GK 324 n.1 ) This is why there is not an inconsistency when Pound seems to translate chreia as ‘demand’ in the “Chronology for school use” at the end of Guide to Kulchur: ARISTOTLE ( 384 - 322 b.c. ) saw that money is not a measure of value, but of demand. Price indicating the demand. XREIA. ( GK 359; cf. 357 ) Pound, then, had no objection to use the word ‘demand’ for chreia, but it should be used with caution, as for him it represented a concept covering a wider range of possible meanings. This is also evident from his use of the word in The Cantos, as in Canto LXXXVII, where it is mistranslations in the ‘Loeb’ edtn.” ( EP/ORA 136 ).

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Peter Liebregts connected with the French classicist Claudius Salmasius ( 1588 - 1653 ), author of De usuris liber ( 1638 ) and De modo usurarum ( 1639 ), the first extended analysis of usury, claiming that there are no justifiable legal or moral arguments against it, and that money - lending is a business like any other: Until Salmasius, wanting precision: Want, χρεία, “Common practice!” Sd / Ari re business;

( LXXXVII/590 )

( The last statement is a reference to Aristotle’s discussion of monopoly and money - lending in Politics I.4 - 5 which we will discuss later. ) By paratactically placing ‘want’ on a line with chreia, Pound leaves it in the open what sort of ‘want’ is meant, that is, a need or a demand. This is also how he uses the word in one of this drafts for The Cantos of the 1950s, after having looked it up in Friederich Ellendt’s Lexicon to Sophocles: “Χρεία necessity, as per Ellendt / desire for a necessity”. 15 In Canto CIV, Pound again warned against a too simple rendering of the word: “In Xreia, to dissociate demand from the need.” ( CIV/759 ), while in Canto CVI, he again emphasized the use of money in exchange as a measure of chreia: All goods light against coin - skill If there be 400 mountains for copper – Under cinnabar you will find copper – River gold is from Ko Lu; Price from XREIA; ( CVI/773 ) What has Aristotle himself to say about chreia, however one wants to translate the term? Aristotle notes that the measure for all commodities in an exchange “is in reality [chreia]” ( NE V.5.11 ), and that “it is [chreia] which, by serving as a single standard, holds such an association together, is shown by the fact that, when there is no demand for 15 Ezra Pound: Posthumous Cantos, ed. Massimo Bacigalupo, p. 150; cf. pp. 153 and 155.

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Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics mutual service on the part of both or at least one of the parties, no exchange takes place between them” ( NE V.5.13 ) 16. Chreia, then, creates a situation of possible exchange, and money becomes a representation of chreia: “[chreia] has come to be conventionally represented by money; this is why money is called nomisma ( customary currency ), because it does not exist by nature but by custom ( nomos ), and can be altered and rendered useless at will.” ( NE V.5. 11 ) 17. So it is chreia which brings together parties in exchange, but again, this need or demand per se does not make things commensurable, as chreia is “a condition of the people exchanging [objects], not a property of the things.” 18 So both money and chreia do not solve Aristotle’s problem of commensurability, and in fact, he gives up on defining exchange value. The distinction Aristotle makes between use value and exchange value is often overlooked, which accounts for the fact that generally he is seen as the founder of utilitarian or neo - classical economics, which sees demand and perceived utility as the unit of value, that is, exchange value is explained in terms of use value. The reason for this may be that many scholars, ignoring the metaphysical ‘abstract’ perspective of the Ethics, have focused on the ‘everyday practice’ of chreia, Aristotle himself seems to state: “Though therefore it is impossible for things so different to become commensurable in the strict sense, our demand furnishes a sufficiently common measure for practical purposes.” ( NE V.5.14 ) 19. Here again it is the translation, in this case Rackham’s, that provides the possibility for this sort of utilitarian interpretation. Ross stays closer to the Greek than Rackham: “Now in truth it is impossible that things differing so much should become commensurate, but with reference to demand they may become so sufficiently .” 20 It is clear from his Preface that Rackham took certain liberties with his interpretative translation of the Greek, and that he thus wanted to answer the question ‘sufficiently for what?’ in his rendering, so has added “for practical purposes”. However, what Aristotle is actually saying is that although he has no answer to the metaphysical or epistemological prob16 Rackham, NE, p. 285. 17 Ibid. 18 Meikle, Aristotle’s Economic Thought, p. 24. 19 Rackham, NE, p. 287. 20 Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross, pp. 120 - 21.

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Peter Liebregts lem of what exchange value per se is and therefore cannot actually solve the issue of commensurability of goods, in practice chreia may make an exchange of goods possible, as demand or need makes them commensurable enough. This then may lead to the step taken by many utilitarian readers of Aristotle’s economic writings, namely, that chreia simply is the basis of commensurability and that money is the measure of it. Aristotle’s notion of money as a measure, although in Pound’s view not “a clear concept of money”, is referred to several times in Guide to Kulchur, most significantly on p.  278 where Pound comments on the idea of money in NE V.5.11, in the passage about nomisma quoted above: “The pregnant phrase is that wherein it says it is called NOMISMA because it exists not by nature but by custom and can there be altered or rendered useless at will.” Pound suggests that the latter part of the sentence, which he gives in italics, should actually be translated as “’be rendered comparatively useless’”, and this “rendering more or less useful or useless is now part of the bank wheeze.” ( GK 279 ) Despite his criticism of Aristotle’s definition of money as too vague, Pound does admire the discussion about money as a guarantee of future exchange, as presented in NE V.5.14 ( GK 324 ). He would refer to this notion in other economic essays, such as What Is Money For? ( 1939 ), where Pound in defining ‘money’ as “measure of price” and “means of exchange”, also includes “guarantee of future exchange”, explaining that Aristotle meant to say that money is “an undated ticket, that will be good when we want to use it.” ( SP 260 - 261 ). And in An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States ( 1944 ), Pound states that against monopoly and usury, it “is necessary that money be a guarantee for future exchange … for a just price - index”, that is, “exchangeable for agricultural products or other goods.” ( SP 152 ) In Kulchur Pound also singles out in this context Aristotle’s awareness as “to the wobbly nature of any monetary unit”, and notes how even Rackham’s “longer expository translation is much too vague to enlighten the ignorant.” ( GK 324 ) Pound here refers to a very short statement in the original: πάσχει μὲν οὖν καὶ τοῦτο τὸ αὐτό: οὐ γὰρ ἀεὶ ἴσον δύναται: ὅμως δὲ βούλεται μένειν μᾶλλον. Money, it is true, is liable to the same fluctuation of demand as

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Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics other commodities, for its purchasing power varies at different times; but it tends to be comparatively constant. ( trans. Rackham ) 21 Now the same thing happens to money as to goods – it is not always worth the same; yet it tends to be steadier. ( trans. Ross ) Here Pound sees the possibility of money coming to be seen as a commodity, although Aristotle does not say this himself: “There is nothing here to rule out Charlemagne’s commodity denar. If Arry is to be patron of anything specific, the commodity dollar or denar is as good a great - grandchild as any .” ( GK 325 ) Having analysed the Nicomachean Ethics and finding it wanting in many parts, with perhaps the exception of Book V, Pound in Kulchur hints at taking up the Politics although he does not do so in this text, perhaps with an eye on the length of the book at this point. 22 Indeed, both the Ethics and the Politics became for Pound essential reading for any student of history, ethics, and economics, as in, for example, Gold and Work ( 1944 ), where Pound claims he would “conclude the compulsory studies of every university student with a comparison – even a brief one – between the two major works of Aristotle ( the Nichomachean Ethics and the Politics ), on the one hand”, and “the Four Books of China” on the other ( SP 320 ). 23 And in America and the Second World War ( 1944 ), Pound recommends Aristotle’s Politics as one of the books to study the relationship between economics and the historical process, resulting in the war he finds himself in. 24 As in the case of the Ethics, Pound read the Politics in the Loeb edition by Rackham ( 1932 ). 25 21 Rackham, NE, p. 287. 22 See GK 341 and 342. In a letter to F. V. Morley of 9 May 1937, Pound admits that his Guide to Kulchur may seem long, “but kulchur occurs in or above the stinking manure heap, and cannot be honestly defined without recognition of the dung - heap. Don’t let this worry you into thinking I spend much type space mentioning lice. But Harry Stotl, he mentions POLITIKE, etc.” Still, Pound hopes Morley will not think he “overdid Aristotle, cause I got to do somfin so’t of thorough, fer to kork up deh end ( deh TELOS or termination ). Can’t just go butterflying round all deh time.” ( SL 294 ). 23 Cf. An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States, SP 152 - 53. 24 Pound, Impact, ed. Noel Stock, p. 193. 25 Aristotle, Politics, with an English translation by H. Rackham, 1932. Hereafter referred to as Pol. Rackham has a different division into chapters and sections, thus Pol. I.8 ( 1256a - b ) = Rackham I.III.1 - 9; I.9 ( 1257a - 1258a ) = Rackham I.III.10 - 20; I.10 ( 1258a - b )

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Peter Liebregts In his discussion of exchange and money in his Politics I.8 - 10, Aristotle takes a less abstract approach than in the Ethics. The aim of this treatise is an analysis of man’s happiness ( discussed in the Ethics ) in relation to forms of government and social institutions. In the Politics I.9 - 10, Aristotle distinguishes different forms of exchange: “barter, or exchange without money; the use of money in exchange as a way of getting something that is needed; buying and selling to make money; and usury, or the lending of money at interest.” 26 By analysing these forms, Aristotle shows the development of exchange and what role money played in it, while also keeping an eye on the ethical character of these exchanges and their effects on the polis and its citizens. The ideal for any household or polis is to be autarkès, which means ‘sufficient in oneself, having enough, independent of others’ ( Liddell - Scott ). Oikonomikè or the art of managing a household partly consist of acquiring goods “which are necessary for life and useful for the city or household.” ( Pol. I.8 ) 27. This is a natural form of acquisition, which has its aim getting useful things, either by producing them yourself or by exchange. This results in what Aristotle calls “riches in the true sense” 28. There is also another form of acquisition, that of “wealth - getting” ( chrèmatistikè ), often confused with the first, but this has a different aim, which includes trade and the getting of money . Aristotle again distinguishes between use value and exchange value, and where the first form of acquisition of ‘true riches’ consists of the possession of goods with use value, ‘wealth - getting’ aims at the possession of goods with exchange value in the form of money . And where natural acquisition has a natural limit, as at one point one has all one needs of useful goods, wealth - getting knows no limit because the acquisition of money or exchange value becomes an end in itself, and when does one ever have enough of it? Aristotle connects these two forms of acquisition to the various forms of exchange in Politics I.9. Barter is a natural activity as its aim is to satisfy one’s primary needs. Out of this grew the exchange of goods mediated by money, where you can buy certain goods you may not have = Rackham I.III.21 - 23. 26 Meikle, Aristotle’s Economic Thought, p. 43. 27 Rackham, Pol., p. 39. 28 Rackham, Pol., p. 39.

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Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics need of immediately but will do so at a later moment in time. Here exchange value comes to the fore, but Aristotle still sees this second form of exchange as natural since “money was brought into existence for the purpose of exchange” ( Pol. I.10 ) 29. The following stage is that of trade, “which at first no doubt went on in a simple form, but later became more highly organized as experience discovered the sources and methods of exchange that would cause most profit” ( Pol. I.9 ) 30. Profit as an aim of course exceeds the stage of acquiring things for their use value, and aims at increasing wealth consisting of exchange value. It is at this point that Aristotle’s ethical distinction between the two makes his views different from modern economics, which sees exchange value “either as a means to use value ( the best or only means ), or else as an end conjoint with use value, such that to pursue one is to pursue the other.” 31 Aristotle, however, offers an ethical choice, the existence of which is denied in a modern market economy which is “represented as the unavoidable, or the most efficient, means to the natural ends of living.” 32 This brings us to the fourth form of exchange ( Pol. I.10 ), obolostatikè [technè] ( 1258b ), literally ‘the art of weighing obols’, but more known as ‘usury’. This form of acquiring wealth is of all forms malista para phusin, “the most contrary to nature” ( or as Pound would state in Canto XLV/230, “CONTRA NATURAM” ), and “most reasonably hated, because its gain comes from money itself and not from that for the sake of which money was invented”, that is, for the purpose of exchange. Thus “interest increases the amount of money itself and this is the actual origin of the Greek word [tokos]: offspring resembles parent, and interest [tokos] is money born of money ); consequently this form of the business of getting wealth is of all forms the most contrary to nature.” 33 ( Greek words inserted are mine ) Tokos means ‘offspring’, ‘child’ ( and is related to tokeus, ‘parent’ ), but it acquired a metaphorical meaning as “the produce of money lent out, interest” ( Liddell - Scott ). In the whole of The Cantos Pound used the Greek word only once, in 29 Ibid., p. 51. 30 Ibid., p. 41. 31 Meikle, Aristotle’s Economic Thought, p. 60. 32 Ibid. 33 Rackham, Pol., p. 51.

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Peter Liebregts Addendum for C, an extended denunciation of usury: “Τόκος hic mali medium est” ( p. 818 ). It has to be noted that Aristotle, like Pound, does not distinguish between degrees of usury as being minimal, moderate or excessive: for him usury is simply bad and unnatural because of its aims. Aristotle can make this forceful claim as in classical Athens lending took place free of interest ( although other forms of returns may have been expected, such as doing the lender a favour later ). 34 There was some marginal lending at interest, but this was not seen as a respectable activity, and its practitioners were rather shady characters. And the institutions which we now would call ‘banks’ did not exist as such. ‘Bankers’, such as they existed, would mainly be involved in money - changing or guarding deposits given to them for safe - keeping at no charge. There is no evidence that they did lend such deposits at interest, and as such there seemed to have been no notion of productive credit. One of the examples Aristotle gives of wealth - getting in Pol. I.11 is monopoly . He describes how the philosopher Thales of Milete wanted to combat those who regarded the practice of philosophy as useless. Being a knowledgeable man, he foresaw that there would be a large crop of olives the next year, so he paid deposits for all available wine presses. When the Spring season arrived, there was a great demand for presses, which Thales lent out on his own terms, thereby making a fortune. Aristotle concludes that Thales wanted to prove that “it is easy for philosophers to be rich if they choose, but this is not what they care about. Thales then is reported to have thus displayed his wisdom, but as a matter of fact this device of taking an opportunity to secure a monopoly is a universal principle of business” ( 1259a ) 35. In his fight against the monopolistic use of what Pound saw as public purchasing power, which included money and credit, he referred in An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States ( 1944 ) to Aristotle’s example as a universal manifestation of unnatural wealth - getting: The usual frauds of book - keeping, monopoly, etc., have been known since the beginning of history, and it is precisely for this reason that the usurers are opposed to classical studies. Aristotle, in his POLITICS 1.4/5, relates how Thales, wishing to show 34 See Millett, Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens. 35 Rackham, Pol., p. 57.

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Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics that a philosopher could easily ‘make money’ if he had nothing better to do, foreseeing a bumper crop of olives, hired by paying a small deposit, all the olive presses on the islands of Miletus and Chios. When the abundant harvest arrived, everybody went to see Thales. Aristotle remarks that this is a common business practice. And the Exchange frauds are, nearly all of them, variants on this theme – artificial scarcity of grain and of merchandise, artificial scarcity of money, that is, scarcity of the key to all the other exchanges.

( SP 142 )

Further on, in another attack on monopolists, Pound criticizes the merchants of gold for overcharging in selling to the government, thereby defrauding the American people: “The manipulation of silver follows simple lines. It all fits perfectly into what Aristotle calls the ‘common practice of commerce’. ( Politics 1.4/5 Thales ).” ( SP 151 ) 36 Aristotle’s depiction of Thales and his generalization about monopoly was first introduced in The Cantos in Canto LXXVII ( “and for notes on monopoly / Thales”, 488 ), and then became a leitmotif in Rock - Drill, occurring in Canto LXXXVII ( “’ Common practice!’ sd/ Ari re business”, 590; “gold - bugs against ANY order,/ Seeking the common ( as Ari says )/ practice/ for squeeze”, 592 ), Canto LXXXVIII ( “Or monopoly, Thales, common practice, but dirty”, 600 ), and Canto XCII ( “’a common’/ sez Ari ‘custom in trade’”, 642 ). 37 Pound’s observation in the quotation given above that “the usurers are opposed to classical studies” also recurs in The Cantos in combination with what he regarded as a clear example of how the extension of credit should be the prerogative of the state, not of private banks. This example was the building of the Athenian fleet that would defeat the Persians at Salamis in 480 BC. As he stated in A Visiting Card ( 1942 ): “The state can lend. The fleet that was victorious at Salamis was built with money advanced to the shipbuilders by the State of Athens.” ( SP

36 For another reference to Thales, see SP 146. 37 Cf. a letter to Olivia Rossetti Agresti of 13 June 1952: “As Ari’s sez, a common business practice by the time of Demosthenes.” ( EP/ORA 88 )

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Peter Liebregts 284 ). 38 This is a recurrent refrain in The Pisan Cantos ( LXXIV/449, 451, 460; LXXVII/488; LXXIX/506 ), best encapsulated in the following passage: nevertheless the state can lend money and the fleet that went out to Salamis was built by state loan to the builders hence the attack on classical studies ( LXXIV/451 ) It is most likely that Pound’s source here again was Aristotle, although not the Politics, but the Athenian Constitution ( 22.7 ), which he read in Rackham’s Loeb edition: Two years later, in the archonship of Nicomedes, in consequence of the discovery of the mines at Maronea, the working of which had given the state a profit of a hundred talents, the advice was given by some persons that the money should be distributed among the people; but Themistocles prevented this, not saying what use he would make of the money, but recommending that it should be lent to the hundred richest Athenians, each receiving a talent, so that if they should spend it in a satisfactory manner, the state would have the advantage, but if they did not, the state should call in the money from the borrowers. On these terms the money was put at his disposal, and he used it to get a fleet of a hundred triremes built, each of the hundred borrowers having one ship built, and with these they fought the naval battle at Salamis against the barbarians.  39

38 Pound uses the same statement in Gold and Work ( 1944 ), SP 312. He derived this belief from C. H. Douglas’ Economic Democracy ( London 1920 ), as is evident from his review in the Little Review VI/11 ( April 1920 ), pp. 39 - 42. Here he quotes Douglas’ statement: “It must be perfectly obvious to anyone who seriously considers the matter that the State should lend, not borrow ... in this respect as in others the Capitalist usurps the function of the State.”; see Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose, Vol. IV: 1920 - 1927, p. 38. In later editions of Economic Democracy, Douglas changed “Capitalist” into “financier”. 39 Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, Eudemian Ethics, Virtues and Vices, trans. H. Rackham, p. 69. Pound may have mentioned the text in a letter to W. C. Williams, as the latter states in a letter of November 26, 1941: “Yes, I have read the Athenian constitution.” ( Pound / Williams, Selected Letters, ed. Hugh Witemeyer, p. 209. )

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Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics Pound on occasion in The Cantos combined the examples of Thales and Salamis with a key phrase from the Politics, which is yet another leitmotif in the poem. He first introduced this Aristotelian phrase in the original Greek in the Chinese Canto LIII: And King Wang thought to vary the currency μεταθεμένων τε τῶν χρωμένων against council’s opinion, and to gain by this wangling.

( LIII/273 )

The phrase metathemoon te toon chroomenoon is from Pol. I. 9 ( 1257b16 ), taken from the following passage in which I have italicized the translation of the Greek phrase: “wealth is often assumed to consist of a quantity of money, because money is the thing with which business and trade are employed. But at other times, on the contrary, it is thought that money is nonsense, and entirely a convention but by nature nothing, because when those who use it have changed the currency it is worth nothing, and because it is of no use for any of the necessary needs of life ...” 40 Money, then, is only by convention a measure of the value of goods, and its sole purpose is that of being a measure of exchange. Still, those who control it may manipulate its exchange value for their own good. Pound re - used the Greek phrase in The Pisan Cantos, as in Canto LXXIV, where he quoted it while criticizing monopoly and usury: and the largest rackets are the alternation of the value of money ( of the unit of money METATHEMENON TE TON KRUMENON and usury @ 60 or lending that which is made out of nothing and the state can lend money as was done by Athens for the building of the Salamis fleet ( LXXIV/460 ) 40 Rackham, Pol., p. 43.

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Peter Liebregts Having also used the phrase at the close of Canto LXXVI ( “for a usurer’s holiday to change the/ price of a currency / ΜΕΤΑΘΕΜΕΝΩΝ ..., 483 ), Pound again linked it to Salamis, and also to Thales in Canto LXXVII, only to wryly note that nothing seems to have changed since Aristotle’s time: it is recorded, and the state can lend money as proved at Salamis and for notes on monopoly Thales; and credit, Siena; both for the trust and the mistrust; “the earth belongs to the living” interest on all it creates out of nothing the buggering bank has; pure iniquity and to change the value of money, of the unit of money METATHEMENON we are not yet out of that chapter

( LXXVII/488 )

This power to manipulate the exchange value of money is seen as a root evil in Canto LXXVIII: “The root stench being usura and METATHEMENON” ( 501 ). Pound then combined this Aristotelian phrase with chreia in an unused draft of the 1950s: usury, monopoly, changing the currency METATHEMENON and exceeding, a falling short ( of demand XREIA )

( PC 153 )

The final occurrence of metathemenoon is in Thrones, in Canto XCVII, where it is to the Doge of Venice who despoiled Constantinople in 1204: “Μεταθεμένων after Dandolo got into Byzance” ( 691 ). For his more ethical rather than strictly economic analysis of exchange and its aims in his Ethics and Politics, Aristotle cannot be called a utilitarian, which is why Pound, despite all of his misgivings, may have been attracted to him. In modern economics, ethics seems to play no

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Ezra Pound, Aristotle and Ancient Greek Economics part at all anymore, but for Aristotle the two notions cannot be severed. After all, fair exchange is of the utmost importance for the polis, which “exists for the good life” ( Pol. I.2, ) 41. And “a state is not merely the sharing of a common locality for the purpose of preventing mutual injury and exchanging goods. These are necessary pre - conditions of a state’s existence, yet nevertheless, even if all these conditions are present, that does not therefore make a state, but a state is a partnership of families and of clans in living well, and its object is a full and independent life.” ( Pol. III.9 ) 42. Ultimately, then, exchange and acquisition of wealth should only be means towards the ultimate end of living a good life, both as an individual and as part of a koinoonia or community . It is this Aristotelian message that rings out clearly throughout Pound’s writings as well. Works cited Aristotle, Politics, with an English translation by H. Rackham, Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1932. –––, The Nicomachean Ethics, with an English translation by H. Rackham, Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1934. –––, Athenian Constitution, Eudemian Ethics, Virtues and Vices, trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1952. –––, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross, revised by J. L. Ackrill and J. O. Urmson, Oxford: OUP, 1980. Moses I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973. M. L. W. Laistner, Greek Economics, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1923. Scott Meikle, Aristotle’s Economic Thought, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.

41 Rackham, Pol., p. 9. 42 Ibid., p. 217.

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Peter Liebregts  aul Millett, Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens, Cambridge: P Cambridge UP, 1991. Ezra Pound, Impact: Essays on Ignorance and the Decline of American Civilization, ed. Noel Stock, Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960. –––, Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose, Vol. IV: 1920 - 1927, ed. Lea Baechler / A. Walton Litz / James Longenbach, New York/ London: Garland Publishing, 1991. –––, The Cantos, New York: New Directions, 1998. –––, “I cease Not to Yowl”. Ezra Pound’s Letters to Olivia Rossetti Agresti, ed. Demetres P. Trytphonopoulos and Leon Surette, Urabana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. –––, Ezra Pound: Posthumous Cantos, ed. Massimo Bacigalupo, Manchester: Carcanet, 2015. Ezra Pound / William Carlos Williams, Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, ed. Hugh Witemeyer, New York: New Directions, 1996.

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THE POETIC DIMENSION OF ECONOMICS : BYZANTIUM Mark Byron Pound stated in an interview with Donald Hall that “Thrones concerns the states of mind of people responsible for something more than their personal conduct.” Pound compares his project with Dante’s Paradiso, where the Florentine’s thrones “are for the spirits of the people who have been responsible for good government,” whilst Pound’s thrones “are an attempt to move out from egoism and to establish some definition of an order possible or at any rate conceivable on earth.” 1 From the opening canto, Thrones takes Byzantium as one of its thematic focal points in the transition from the classical to the early medieval epoch. Pound draws on Alexander Del Mar’s History of Monetary Systems ( 1895 ) and the Book of the Eparch of Leo the Wise, a late - ninth or early - tenth century text concerning the rules of commerce between guilds in Byzantium, rediscovered and translated by the Genevan scholar Jules Nicole in 1891. Matters of currency and its implications for political power occupy the centre of the discourse on statecraft and responsible rule in the early medieval Mediterranean, and these carry through to Pound’s thinking on the relation between currency and government in the modern United States, drawing on such texts as Thomas Hart Benton’s Thirty Years’ View ( 1854 ) in its evaluation of the battle over the nation’s money supply between President Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States, and Brooks Adams’s The Law of Civilization and Decay ( 1896 ) in its stringent condemnation of modern finance capitalism. Pound saw these themes in the longue durée of history, whereby the economic and social conditions of Byzantium could shed light on modern and contemporary problems of currency and finance, and in turn provide examples to benefit the ethical and cultural health of the nation – both the United States and the modern nation state in general. The strengths of Byzantine rule are on display in its legal system, monetary policy, and in the supreme aesthetic achievement of the mosaics in 1 Hall, The Art of Poetry V: Ezra Pound: An Interview, p. 49.

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Mark Byron Ravenna, where the visage of Justinian the Great, Byzantine Emperor between 527 and 565 and the first emperor to appear on coinage bearing the Christian cross, as well as that of his consort Theodora, grace the apse of the Basilica di San Vitale. His rule was distinctive for his codification of Roman law in the Corpus Juris Civilis and the construction of the Hagia Sophia in Byzantium, a neat rhyme with Abd al - Malik’s construction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem a century later. These intersections of law, civil administration and treasury serve as prime exemplars for Pound in Thrones, alongside other examples: the Sacred Edict of Confucian conduct composed by the fourth Qing emperor Kangxi in the seventeenth century; the Institutions of the Laws of England by Edward Coke, a leading Elizabethan - Jacobean Attorney General and Chief Justice; and such medieval legal reformers as Edward I of England, Alfonso X of Castile, Louis IX of France and Magnus VI of Norway . Notions of just commerce and transparency in the establishment of monetary value are embedded in, and reflecting in the high aesthetic achievements of these different cultural spheres. Byzantium, in this sense, is a kind of blueprint for successful statecraft and economic policy Pound attempts to identify in a range of historical moments leading to his contemporary support for the policies of Social Credit. Byzantium and Rome The emergence of Byzantium as a scene of lawmaking, currency valuation, and cultural achievement occurs relatively late in Pound’s epic. Earlier cantos are more concerned with the cultural spheres of the classical world, the High Middle Ages of Paris, Provence and Tuscany, the Italian Renaissance and the emergent modern world in Leopoldine Italy, Napoleonic France and the newly established United States ( not to mention the dynastic history of Confucian China ). Yet as the possibility of writing his paradiso receded, and as his even conceiving of a paradiso terrestre dissipated following the catastrophe of the Second World War, arrest, and internment in Saint Elizabeths, Pound’s attention turned to some of the more fascinating, if more easily overlooked developments in European history: the epoch in which the late classical sensibility was eclipsed by war and hostile migrations, and the emergent Christianity of Europe came under threat from the newly established Islamic

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium caliphate. That is to say, Pound read deeply in sources spanning from the third to the tenth centuries during the composition of Thrones, a time marking out the zenith of cultural expression and economic and political power of Byzantium. The origin and history of Byzantium as a key locale for trade – “called Bosphorus from the bull tax” ( XCVI/674 ) – cultural transmission and imperial design makes it an obvious point of interest for Pound. Given their Odyssean flavour, the early cantos exhibit a preoccupation with the city of Troy, located at the southern end of the Sea of Marmara. The city’s role in Virgil’s Aeneid as the source for Rome’s founding population draws it into the orbit of the great centres of civilisation for Pound, who also uses Virgil’s text to explore the father - son relation between Anchises and Aeneas ( XXIII/109 ). Beyond these orienting devices for classical civilisation, it is late - classical and medieval Byzantium that dominates Pound’s attention in the North - East Mediterranean. The city’s quasi - mythical foundation by Greeks from Megara in 657 BCE, Byzantium’s advantageous position between the natural harbour of the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara had the peninsular city overlook the Bosphorus at the entrance to the Black Sea and sat at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, providing it with the essential elements for a cosmopolitan economic hub. The city was subject to numerous sieges in its pre - Constantinopolitan history . As Thucydides records in the first book of The History of the Peloponnesian War, the city - state was subject to a siege by Sparta during its conflict with Athens, motivated by the city’s strategic importance in the supply of grain to Athens from the Black Sea region. It was also besieged by the Romans in the late second century and subsequently rebuilt by Emperor Septimus Severus ( XCVI/673 - 4 ). The Crisis of the Third Century ( famine, plague, warfare, invasion ) had weakened Rome considerably, and when Diocletian’s Tetrarchy dissolved in 313, Constantine, already declared Augustus in York in 306, legalised Christianity in the Edict of Milan and then in 324 founded the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople.

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Mark Byron Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire Pound shows only limited interest in the life of Constantine the Great, despite his pivotal role in establishing the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire in the city that was to remain the largest in Europe until the time of Dante. Despite his not converting to Christianity and making it the state religion until near death, Constantine’s ecclesiastical interventions were pivotal in the establishment of the early Church. Following the Edict of Milan in 313 he convened the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the doctrine of the Trinity was resolved and the Arian heresy suppressed: that is, that Father and Son are two parts of the triune God, and not, as the Arians had it, that God created the Son ex nihilo as a separate being. 2 Pound makes brief allusion to the Donation of Constantine, the imperial decree allegedly giving ultimate temporal power over the Western Empire to the Roman Pope, but which the fifteenth - century scholar Lorenzo Valla proved to be a later forgery ( LXXXIX/622, CIV/759 ). These achievements in the life of Constantine are major events in world history in their own right, yet Pound tends to make reference to them in relation to other shifting centres of power in the late classical and early medieval epoch. The Council of Nicaea was called as a way of neutralising the threat posed by the Bulgars to the northwest of Constantinople, although they continued to exert pressure on the Eastern Empire well beyond the reign of Justinian ( 527 - 565 ). The Donation of Constantine is thought to have evolved from a document presented by Pepin the Short to Pope Stephen II in the mid - eighth century: this bestowed upon the Church the lands recently ceded by the Byzantine Empire – lands that were to become the Papal States for the next millennium – and in return inaugurating the Carolingian dynasty in Western Europe. 3 Pope Hadrian made mention of this decree to Charlemagne, although it appears to have been first invoked directly by Pope Leo IX in 1054. It becomes relevant to Pound’s interests in the Justinian Corpus Juris Civilis, which asserted the primacy of civil law and civil jurisdiction over Papal authority . Pound’s view of the Byzantine Empire centres on its political and cultural life in the reign of Justinian the Great in the sixth century, par2 Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 33 - 80. 3 Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, p. 89.

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium ticularly its economic transformation and codification of its laws in the Corpus Juris Civilis, then to The Eparch’s Book of Leo the Great in the ninth century and its reception under Constantine IX Monomachus as depicted by the historian and philosopher Michael Psellus in the eleventh century . Pound understands the ebb and flow of economic prosperity to be conditioned by enlightened rule, on the one hand, and the external forces of migration, trade competition and warfare on the other. Such cultural and devotional achievements as the construction of Hagia Sophia and the mosaics of San Vitale in Ravenna ( IX/41 ) are mentioned, yet these take a subordinated place in Pound’s hierarchy of interests, beneath trade and currency in the Eastern Empire. When he turns to The Eparch’s Book in Thrones, it is in the context of wider considerations of European and Eurasian history . Canto XCVI begins with a ceremonial cleansing – “burned cedar and juniper” ... “[Tuscany] from the name of the incense” ( 671 ) – before providing a schematic account of the history of Northern Italy in late antiquity drawn from Paul the Deacon’s late - eighth century History of the Langobards. Pound follows the chronology of Paul’s text, providing shorthand reference to the migrations into Italy between the fourth century BCE and the eighth century of Paul’s time. This history of Northern Italy begins with the displacement of the Sabines by Italic tribes, marking out the originary act of displacement and colonisation. This is followed by the Gaulish invasions of the peninsula under Brennus ( fourth century BCE ) and the despotic treachery of Cunimundus in the sixth century . This figure, leader of the Gepids, took territory in modern - day Serbia from the Byzantine Empire during the rule of Justinian. Having then enjoined war with Lombard forces, a truce was achieved once Justinian had supplied the Lombards with very substantial military support. Cunimundus was eventually defeated by the Lombards, despite his several appeals to Justin II of Byzantium for support, and was killed by Alboin, the Lombard leader. Alboin then forcibly married Cunimundus’s daughter Rosamund, 4 by whom he was assassinated for his having turned her father’s skull into a drinking cup. 5 Pound enumerates several important cities founded by Celtic tribes – “Bergamo, Brescia, Ticino [Pavia]” ( 671 ) – and the major po4 Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, p. 51. 5 Ibid., p. 82.

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Mark Byron litical figures at the time of the Lombard invasions: Tiberius Constantine, Eastern Roman Emperor from 574 to 582, who redistributed the wealth of the treasury to the population and reduced taxes on bread and wine instituted by Justinian the Great; Chosroes, the Sassanid Persian Emperor whose reign ( 531 - 579 ) saw the Empire’s greatest prosperity, and who entered into war with Byzantium ( Chosroes also took a great interest in literature and philosophy, and introduced military, administrative and taxation reform into his empire, thus bearing affinities with Justinian the Great ); and Augusta Sophia, consort of Justin II, who abdicated in favour of Tiberius Constantine. The history of Byzantium from Constantine onwards is also marked by the constant Bulgar threat ( XCIV/654 ), a consequence of the threat posed by the establishment of Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and the related Byzantine suppression of Arianism, then widespread among Bulgar populations. These complex historical threads, from the Lombards to the Avars, Byzantium and Sassanid Persia foreshadow the emphasis on taxation and governmental administration in The Eparch’s Book later in Canto XCVI. Notably it was during this time that Nestorian Christian traders smuggled silkworm eggs into Byzantium from China, instigating the industry that was to dominate the edicts of Leo the Wise. Sogdian traders attempted to bypass Sassanid Persia and initiate direct trade with the Byzantine Empire under Justinian. 6 Canto XCVI proceeds with the complex affiliations, enmities and shifting allegiances of sixth - century Italy and Byzantium. The enlightened rule of the Lombard king Alboin’s successor – “Authar, marvelous reign, no violence and no passports” ( 671 ) – restored peace to Italy, but the gnomic reference to “Vitalis beati” obscures the precariousness of such peace. This phrase refers to the burial of the Byzantine general Droctulf in the Basilica di San Vitale in Ravenna, who changed sides from the Lombards to that of the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Papacy . His epitaph in San Vitale is recorded in full in Paul’s History . The canto shifts to the royal lineage of the Germanic world: “Childibert, a.D. 589” ( 672 ) was king of Austrasia and Burgundy 575 - 596; “Theodolinda” was daughter of Garibald I of Bavaria and married into the Lombard throne by Authari. In emulation of Constantine, she defended Nicene Christianity from the recurrent threats of the Arian heresy, 6 Liu, The Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Interactions in Eurasia, p. 168.

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium a threat later manifested in the figure of Rothar – “touched with the Arian heresy” ( 672 ) – a seventh - century Lombard king who authored the Edictum Rothari in 643, one of the many leges barborum composed in emulation of Roman Law during the early middle ages. Theodelinda also oversaw construction of the first Florentine Baptistery and the Basilica di San Giovanni Battista in Monza, in which her life is given narrative treatment in the frescoes of the Theodelinda chapel, painted by Ambrogio and Gregorio Zavattari in 1444. The cultural decadence into which Italy fell under Lombard rule in the seventh century led to Byzantine reconquest, especially under “Constans Augustus”, or Constantine IV, who ruled 642 - 685 and who “stripped the brass tiles from the Pantheon, / shipped ’em toward Constantinople, / and got bumped off in his bath / in Siracusa” ( 672 ). The mention of Syracuse indicates Pound’s interest in the complex history of medieval Sicily – its seizure by the Arabs from the Byzantine Empire in the tenth century, then reconquest, followed by the Norman invasion later in the eleventh century – also evident in Pound’s marked up edition of Michele Amari’s Storia dei Muselmani di Sicilia housed in Brunnenburg. 7 The complex system of competing forces across Europe in the eighth century widens Canto XCVI into one of comparative political and economic valuation. The evolving Lombard sphere of influence across northern Italy is set against the emergent Carolingian sphere in the Frankish lands to the northwest. The genealogy from Pepin of Heristal, to Charles Martel, to Pepin the Short and thence to Charlemagne – crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Paris in 800 – is defined against the Sarecen invasions of the eighth century . Pound mixes quotation from Paul the Deacon and his own paraphrase, “apud Pictavum, Aquitaine, Narbonne and Proença” ( 673 ), to locate two major battles at Poitiers ( the Battle of Tours ) in 732 and Narbonne in 737, won by Martel ‘the Hammer’ against the invading forces. The Byzantine loss of northern Italian lands was the diplomatic gain of the Carolingians: the Lombards under Luitprand looked on Charles Martel favourably ( “Lombards pro Carolus” ), who in turn sent his son for a tonsural rite to Luitprand’s court, consolidating the accord between the two kingdoms. Pound draws a direct connection between Byzantium and the court of Charlemagne, namely empress Irene’s attempt to marry her 7 Amari, Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia / X.

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Mark Byron son Constantine IV to Charlemagne’s daughter Rotrude in 781 – “in the second year of Eirene sent Constans to Carolus Magnus” ( XCVI/673 ) – a contract Irene later rescinded. The rise of Charlemagne and particularly his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor, on Christmas Day in the year 800 by Pope Leo III, presented an enduring threat to Irene’s Byzantium. However the two figures bore analogous roles as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Eastern Roman Empire respectively . Pound’s interest in the Carolingian Empire was concentrated on the poetic and philosophical productions of the Palatine school under John Scotus Eriugena during the reign of Charlemagne’s grandson Charles the Bald. Pound’s intensive reading of Eriugena’s Cursus Completus in volume 122 of the Patrologia Latina in 1939 - 40 was intended as preparatory work for the paradiso phase of The Cantos, a phase postponed by virtue of Pound’s unstinting wartime activity, eventual arrest and subsequent internment in Saint Elizabeths between 1945 and 1958. But the return in Canto XCVI to this theatre of eighth - century Europe, including the Avar and Sarecen threats from the south and the east, establishes the Lombard and Carolingian contexts for Pound’s historical aperçus of Byzantine rule. Justinian the Great Pound’s treatment of the rule of Justinian the Great punctuates his general history of Byzantium in several ways: his codification of the empire’s laws places Justinian in a lineage of enlightened rule; his sponsorship of cultural, architectural and artistic excellence is memorialised in such monuments as the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the mosaics of the Basilica di San Vitale in Ravenna, and the Corpus Juris Civilis in Roman Law. The necessity of defending the empire against such competing forces as the Persian Empire of Chosroes also placed a concentrated burden upon the way Justinian negotiated the art of statecraft. Pound gives passing mention to Justinian in The Pisan Cantos ( LXXVII/486; LXXVIII/499 ) in the context of enlightened legal and social reform, and in Rock - Drill Pound refers to Justinian’s project to update Roman law ( LXXXVII/591 ), with success qualified by the necessity of later major changes by Leo the Great and others. Both Justinian and Theodora are mentioned in the company of Pythagoras, Ocellus, and

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium others who advanced human understanding by touching on transcendence ( XCI/631 ) – as Moody elegantly states, those “who enacted the intelligence of love in their works and lives” 8 – suggesting that Pound may be thinking here of the construction of Hagia Sophia. In Thrones Pound tightens this focus to how Justinian codified Roman law and how this marked a critical phase in a tradition of Roman law reform stretching from Vespasian in the first century to the Eparch’s Book of Leo the Wise in the tenth century . Justinian’s reforms arise in Thrones in the context of late - Roman and Byzantine history . Following his brief overview of Byzantine and Frankish history early in Canto XCVI, Pound cites the Edict on Maximum Prices ( Ēdictum Dē Pretiīs Rērum Vēnālium ) – “DIOCLETIAN, 37th after Augustus, thought: more if we tax ’em / and don’t annihilate” ( XCVI/673 ) – issued in 301 CE either in Antioch or Alexandria in both Greek and Latin. This edict was a directive on maximum prices, not standardised prices, meant to offset the problems of inflation, price tampering and currency debasement suffered in the Crisis of the Third Century . In Canto XCIV Pound mentions Julius Paulus, author of precedent legal texts for Justinian’s Digests, in the context of Septimus Severus ( reigned 193 - 211 CE ) and Antoninus Pius ( reigned 138 - 161 ), who each bestowed tax privileges upon the maritime city of Tyre ( home of Apollonius ): “Ius Italicum ( Digest Fifty, xv ) / Antoninus gave this to Tyre ( Paulus, two )” ( XCIV/654 ). These themes of legal codification, especially with respect to taxation and maritime law, are proleptic gestures toward the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian. Justinian directed his court official Tribonian to codify the entire body of Byzantine law in 529 - 534, published in Latin as the Corpus Juris Civilis. This monumental work was divided into three parts: the Codex, comprising a selection of imperial enactments; the Digesta or Pandectae, an encyclopaedia of writings by Roman jurists; and the Institutiones, designed to function as a textbook for the learning of the law but equally binding as the other parts of the Corpus. Later additions were collected under the title Novellae Constitutiones ( New Laws ). Tribonian based his Digesta on and quoted very liberally from the Institutiones of Gaius ( XCIV/654 ), a Roman jurist of 2nd century . Pound refers serially to the 8 Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet, Volume III: The Tragic Years, p. 358.

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Mark Byron Pandectae / Digesta in Canto XCIV, the first quote from Book 1 Title 8 concerning the division between human laws and divine laws, “that all gates are holy” ( 654 ). The context for this motif is the division between nature and the forces of spirit ( light, crystal, jade ), where the gate functions as the transitional boundary between them, rhyming with gates elsewhere in the Cantos ( Ecbatan in Cantos IV and V, Wagadu in Canto LXXIV ). Subsequent quotations – Book 50 title 15 ( 654 ); Book 1 title 3; Book 5 title 27, Novel 127 Chapter 4, “the paragraph preceding 2” ( XCIV/654 - 5 ); and Book 5 title 4, 23, 5 ( XCIV/655 ) – centre upon the concept of affection and its role in the institution of marriage. Justinian softened Constantine’s harsh measures on marrying women of lower social standing and associated dotal ( dowry ) requirements. Although as Basileus he was not subject to the law, 9 Justinian made this change presumably to accommodate Theodora, who was previously an actress and mother and thus of ill repute. Her restored reputation was extended to her offspring, as articulated in Book 5, title 4 of the Pandectae. In making this law, Justinian accords the general populace the same liberties of marriage ( “of affection” ) as enjoyed by him. 10 Another, more gnomic reference to Byzantine law occurs a few pages later: “Said ANTONINUS: / ‘Law rules the sea’ / meaning lex Rhodi” ( XCIV/659 ). This refers to the Lex Rhodia, the ancient maritime law then current throughout the Byzantine Empire first mentioned in the Pisan Cantos ( LXXVIII/499 ). Book XIV Title II of the Pandectae pertains to the so - called Law of Jettison, one of very few parts of the Lex Rhodia to have survived in legal commentaries, whereby the specific losses incurred by throwing goods overboard to save a vessel would be equally shared by investors and traders associated with the shipment in its entirety . 11 An essential element of Justinian’s reform is his control over coinage within the empire: he inherited a stabilised value of gold and silver from the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar having settled on a silver to gold ratio at 12 for 1, where one gold aureus was calculated at 125 grains fine, 12 and coin value was stabilised with stamps of “the most sacred devices and

9 Freshfield, Roman Law in the Later Roman Empire, p. 59. 10 Gordon, Corpus Juris and Canto XCIV, pp. 317 - 323. 11 Zimmermann, The Law of Obligations, p. 407. 12 Katsari, The Roman Monetary System, p. 72.

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium solemn legends”. 13 This was the bezant or gold coin directly descended from the sacred aureus of Augustus and the sacred solidus of successive emperors of Rome. 14 During the reign of Theodosius – the final time the eastern and western halves of the empire were ruled by one figure – the office of Comes Sacrarum Largitonium ( Count of the Sacred Trust ) was initiated in the treasury to oversee the mining of gold, its minting into coins, and the circulation and depositing of currency in exchange for silver, as well as wool and linen trade in the empire. Justinian rebuked Theodoret the Frank for striking heretical gold coins, as Justinian II was later to declare war on Abd - el - Melik for a similar disregard for the sovereign’s prerogative to coin gold. 15 The Theodosian Code of 438 CE formalised the ratio of 12 to 1 for silver and gold, thus providing a genesis narrative for the value of libra to solidi argentum as 1 to 5, and from which all Latinate nations derive their term for money . Stability of value meant stability of empire, for when coinage was debased and altered after the Siege of Constantinople in the Third Crusade in 1204, the Christian princes were to assert sovereignty as separable from that of empire. 16 Pound follows Del Mar who locates the essential bond of responsible currency control with other facets of civil society and government: “Without tribunals of justice, without laws, without associations of labour, without commerce, without even organized society, money is not only useless, it is almost inconceivable.” 17 Justinian’s legacy largely rests upon the exhaustive detail of the writings of Procopius, official chronicler of the empire and advisor of Belisarius in the first Sassanid Persian campaign of 527 CE. In addition to the scurrilous Secret History ( XCVIII/708 ) and the eight - volume Wars of Justinian dealing with lengthy campaigns against the Persian and Goths, among other adversaries, Procopius wrote the panegyric On Buildings, documenting the construction of the Hagia Sophia, the aqueducts of Constantinople, and other major building works accomplished during Justinian’s reign. Pound follows his source Paul the Deacon and accords Justinian the status of enlightened rule with his wife and co - ruler The13 Del Mar, History of Monetary Systems, p. 130. 14 Ibid., p. 223. 15 Ibid., pp. 131 - 2. 16 Ibid., pp. 136, 282. 17 Del Mar, Money and Civilization, p. 5.

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Mark Byron odora who “died in the 19th Justinian” ( XCVI/674 ) or 548 CE, the year following the consecration of the Basilica di San Vitale which housed their processional portraits in mosaic. Theodora’s early death added mystery to the life described in The Secret History, where she rose from humble origins, following her mother and sister into the demimonde of the theatre – with its implications of prostitution and the probability of Theodora having had an illegitimate child – to her marriage with Justinian and the position of co - ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire in 525. During the Nika riots of 532 between rival Blue and Green factions of the city, Theodora called on the court to stand their ground rather than flee, refusing to relinquish the nobility of the purple mantle ( an ironic precursor to the purple dyestuffs of such symbolic significance in the Eparch’s Book ). This event comprised the most serious challenge to Imperial rule in the history of Constantinople, leading to the destruction of much of the city and vast loss of life, including a massacre in the city’s hippodrome where the insurrection began. Pound places Justinian and Theodora among the Thrones in his poem not only by virtue of their economic and political reforms, but also for their contributions to aesthetics in architecture. Rather than the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Pound’s focus centres upon Ravenna and its several sixth - century basilicas as primary examples of the “medieval clean line”: Byzantium gives us perhaps the best architecture, or at least the best inner structure, that we know, I mean for proportions, for ornament flat on the walls, and not bulging and bumping and indulging in bulbous excrescence. The lines for example of the Byzantine heritage in Sicily, from which the best ‘Romanesque,’ developing to St Hilaire in Poitiers; or if the term Romanesque has become too ambiguous through loose usage, let me say that there are medieval churches such as the cathedral at St Leo, or San Zeno in Verona, and others of similar form which are simply the Byzantine minus riches. It is the bare wall that the Constantinopolitan would have had money enough to cover in gold mosaic. ( LE 150 - 1 ) Ravenna was reabsorbed into the Eastern Roman Empire with Belisarius’s victory in the Gothic War of 535 - 540. The Basilica di San Vitale,

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium begun under Ostrogothic rule, was consecrated in 547; Sant’Apollinare in Classe was consecrated in 549; and Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, the court chapel of Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great, was reconsecrated in 561 under Justinian. The “interior harmony” ( LE 151 ) Pound saw in this architectural phase is widely accepted in architectural history: “Monumental churches on a central plan are best known […] from Constantinople and its sphere of influence in the early reign of Justinian.” 18 Pound notes the harmony of architecture and interior design as early as Canto XXI, when he praises the interior of Galla Placidia’s fifth - century burial site in Ravenna, considered to be one of the most impressive of all late - antique tombs: “Gold fades in the gloom / Under the blue - black roof, Placidia’s / Of the exarchate” ( XXI/98 ). Pound ennobles the architectural and artistic achievements of Justinian’s Ravenna, along with “Greek plastic”, as well as Roman, Provençal and Tuscan poets, over what he saw as “idiotic asceticism” in Christian ( but not only Christian ) cultures ( LE 150 ). The iconography of San Vitale thus functions as an important metonym for cultural energy spanning Pound’s favoured political and cultural spheres. The aim in San Vitale was to glorify Justinian and Theodora as well as “the whole institution of imperial autocracy, in Italy and throughout the world” 19 in keeping with Justinian’s expansionist agenda at this time. While there has been extensive debate concerning interpretations of the mosaics’ iconography, it is clear that the prominence given to the position of both Justinian and Theodora in ecclesiastical processions signifies how devotional art was used for political and ideological glorification: “The scholarly consensus is that these mosaics represent an imaginary procession, given that Justinian, Theodora, and Maximian, the archbishop of Ravenna, who is labeled in the mosaic, were never together in the same place after Maximian’s consecration in 546.” San Vitale is also notable for having been constructed across two decades, “under four bishops and two radically different political regimes, one Ostrogoth and Arian and the other Byzantine and Orthodox.” 20 The Ostrogoths ceded Ravenna in 540 to the Byzantines under Belisarius, following which the mosaics were presumably commissioned. These 18 Krautheimer, Success and Failure in Late Antique Church Planning, p. 131. 19 Andreescu - Treadgold / Treadgold, Procopius and the Imperial Panels of S. Vitale, p. 708. 20 Ibid., pp. 708, 712.

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Mark Byron artworks bear additional symbolic significance, embodying the possibilities of art in a time of responsible governance and economic affluence. They are paradisal for Pound inasfar as the conventional run of history precludes such cultural efflorescence: A PAIDEUMA carried on, out of Byzantium, or, at least as I see it, the Romanesque building and the arab building in Sicily, was Byzantine or late Roman structure, the difference being merely in expensiveness. With the break down of Constantine’s and Justinian’s economic system, no one cd. cover church walls with gold mosaic. ( GK 108 - 9 ) The construction and decoration of San Vitale was enabled by Justinian’s codification of the law and control over currency ( subject of the long Latin prose passage in Canto XCVI ), associating him with the most prominent reformers of the Empire’s history: “Antoninus, Constantine and Justinian were serous characters, they were trying to work out an orderly system, a modus vivendi for vast multitudes of mankind.”( GK 40 ) These continuities – Pound traces them as far back as Aristotle’s Ethics – were partly a result of the unchanging “definition of money [...] for 2000 years, though the canonists did spade work on the Just Price, with usura as a subsection.” ( GK 342 ) This is the ‘hierarchy of values’ Pound extols throughout Thrones, premised upon grounded realities of civilization beyond metaphysical questions of damnation and salvation in Christian orthodoxy, and still evident in the historical record: “The steady building up of social and economic criteria, ever with a tendency to control, via Constantine, Justinian, Charlemagne is still there in the records.” ( SP 104, 126 ) Canto XCVI provides a brief conspectus of the post - Justinian Empire and its decline. Following the death of his uncle Justinian, the rule of Justin II and his consort Sophia Augusta saw the rise of usurious practices and renewed schismatic violence. Theodora’s Monophysitism ( Christ being of one nature mixing the human and divine ) was suppressed in favour of the Chalcedonian orthodoxy of Justinian ( the dual nature of Christ as human and divine ). Mauricius ( ruled 577 - 595 ) overcame hostile external threats from the Slavs, Avars, and Lombards, and “urbem splendidam reddidit” [restored the shining city] ( XCVI/675 ). Heraclius ( 610 - 641 ) lost territory to the Persians in counterpoint to

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium Belisarius and Justinian, who recovered much of Eastern Roman Empire lost in the century prior to Muslim Arabs. This jostling imperial ambition with the resurgent Arabs ( XCVI/676 - 7 ) continued in the rule of Constans ( 642 - 688 ). Finally Justinian II ( 685 - 711 ) – named ‘Rhinotmetus’ for having had his nose cut off – engaged with Abd - l - Malik ( 685 - 705 ), the Omayyad caliph ( “Habdimelich” [XCVI/677] ). Abd - l - Malik circulated coinage bearing his image, refusing to deal in Roman coins with Justinian II’s image ( 678 )  – the subject of the long Latin quotation at XCVI/678 from Paul the Deacon on the striking of gold coins. Justinian II failed to take this threat seriously, initiating the collapse of the Eastern Empire by turning from the convention established by Julius Caesar for tributes to be paid in gold or in silver at ‘sacred ratio’ of 12:1. This loss of imperial monopoly on the production of currency precipitates the empire’s eclipse until the epoch of Leo the Wise in the ninth century . The Eparch’s Book of Leo the Wise Thrones enumerates various epochal attempts to codify legal systems in the Roman Empire, especially those elements pertaining to economic and trade. This history of law and economy begins with the Edict of Diocletian ( XCVI/673 ) issued in Latin and Greek in 301 CE. This was a directive on maximum prices to offset inflation, price tampering and currency debasement suffered during the Roman Empire’s Crisis of the Third Century . Pound’s focus on currency, particularly the various challenges to the Roman standard silver to gold ratio of 12:1, spans classical, medieval and early modern history in Thrones, “setting up patterns of imagery to articulate symbolic tensions which gather about money and precious metals.” 21 James J. Wilhelm has described Canto XCVI in particular as a move through the “murk” of history towards the golden city of Byzantium, 22 culminating in Pound’s extensive treatment of the Eparch’s Book of Leo the Wise. Its most significant precursor texts was the Ecloga of Leo III of Isauria issued in 726, a decisive intervention in Roman legal history and the first such pronouncement to be issued in 21 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 213. 22 Wilhelm, The Later Cantos of Ezra Pound, pp. 117 - 9.

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Mark Byron Greek. This text set out to reform Byzantine law – taxation, the law of the sea, and trade – and particularly to soften the edges of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis with a pronounced Christian worldview. Leo III was the first emperor to strike the image of Christ on gold numismata in place of the emperor’s effigy: “The religious views of Leo III are clearly indicated in the preamble and the text of the Ecloga, and reflected in his coinage.” 23 Emperor Basil I ‘the Macedonian’, father of Leo the Wise, revived work on Justinian’s Corpus Juris in his sixty - book Basilika ( mentioned at XCVI/686 ) and lesser volumes or Eisagoge. These works endured as the basis of Byzantine law until the Ottoman conquest in 1453, and formed the basis for Leo’s subsequent compilations and emendations in more than a hundred edicts pertaining to civil and church matters. 24 Among these many sources, Pound’s interest in the Eparch’s Book of Leo the Wise ( 866 - 912 ) accorded with several of his enduring preoccupations: “not only because it reinforces his own preference for a guild system, but also because the legal controls which it imposes upon trading all hinge on the fixing of currency - value and prices by a central authority .” 25 The Ἐπαρχικόν Βιβλίον became one of Pound’s sources occluded from history, having been rediscovered in the manuscript Genevensis 23 in 189 by Professor Jules Nicole, whose transcription into modern Greek was accompanied by Latin and French translations, upon which Pound drew directly . 26 Its twenty - two chapters attend to money, banking, food, clothing, construction, as well as to the nature of guilds and the practice of honesty, pricing, profit margins, taxation, and competition. Its early chapters were probably composed during Leo’s reign – Chapter 1 dealing with notaries dates from his reign – but later chapters were probably added posthumously, drawing on such evidence as a lack of reference to Rus traders, and the mention of tetartera lightweight gold coinage instigated by Nikephoros II Phokas ( 963–69 ). The Byzantine Eparch was the city governor with the authority to set tariffs, the levels and kinds of imports, and other matters of trade. The eparchy of the edict’s title alludes to the administrative district 100 23 Freshfield, Roman Law in the Later Roman Empire, p. 25. 24 Terrell, The Eparch’s Book, p. 227. 25 Nicholls, A Study of The Cantos, p. 215. 26 Nicole ( ed. and trans. ), Le Livre du Préfet, ou, l’ Édit de L’ Empereur Léon le Sage sur les Corporations de Constantinople; Terrell ( ed. ), A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound, p. 607.

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium miles in each direction from Constantinople itself. Whilst the edict centred on the activities of guilds ( συστήματα ), not all merchants belonged to these organisations. There existed other voluntary associations of craftsmen and traders ( σωματεῖα ) as well as societies of professionals ( σύλλογοι ): “Fundamentally, the state’s organs enforced the government’s economic policy and the stipulated rules of business conduct; they did not act as stewards of the professional interests of the guild members. Associations and societies, on the other hand, were independent, self - governed organizations initiated and formed by their own members and run by elected members and their own instituted bylaws.” 27 Whilst the guild system was not as pervasive or influential in Byzantium as scholars have long believed, the Eparch’s Book represents state interest in controlling trade activities within the guilds. The first chapter ( Ταβουλλάριοι ) concerns the Notaries or Tabularies who are required

to know the Basilika, write with a clear hand, transcribe with supreme accuracy, demonstrate upright character and attend imperial processions following their own consecration ceremonies: “the smoke at his consecration / incense Θυμίαμα ἐνώπιον Κυρίου / shows how this thought shd/ go. Upward videlicet” ( 686 ). A brief glance at the text’s contents shows the outsized importance of the silk trade, with three separate chapters dedicated to a trade reinvigorated by new routes from China via central Asia, and the establishment of local production by means of imported silk worms. Fishing comprises another target industry, for political as much as economic reasons: purple dyestuffs for royal silks were obtained from the Greek “purple fishermen” 28. Pound makes reference to “fake purple” mentioned in Chapter 4 ( XCVI/678 ), and the series of apparent glosses in Greek, English, Chinese characters, and Wade - Giles transliterations ( 679 ) refer to the regulation of the quality of dyestuffs – Terrell translates the Chinese text as “purple goes far in surpassing red” 29. The Greek text refers to the directive to expel from the guild silk merchants found guilty of manipulating the price of raw silk or engaging in insolence or gossip.

Pound continues this line of citation from the Eparch’s Book for the remainder of Canto XCVI, in line with his general overview of legal codification and controls on trade and currency within the Roman and 27 Maniatis, The Domain of Private Guilds in the Byzantine Economy, p. 342. 28 Ibid., p. 369. 29 Terrell, The Eparch’s Book, p. 237.

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Mark Byron Eastern Roman Empires. Prohibitions against the hoarding of currency ( 685 ) and goods – by perfumers ( 685 ) and grocers ( 680 ) – are cited alongside the proper use of scales and weights bearing the Eparch’s seal ( 679, 685 ) and coins bearing the Emperor’s effigy ( 680 ). Failure to conform to these regulations – “μὴ τῆ τοῦ ἐπάρχου ἐσφραγιομένον / not stamped with the prefect’s seal βούλλη”( 679 ) – bore the punishment of being “flogged shaved and exiled” ( 687 ), as did the selling of wine at irregular times or without proper seals. Pound also mentions the regulations in Chapter 20 limiting the residency of importers – “ΠΕΡΙ ΛΕΓΑΤΑΡΙΟΥ / seem to be foreign importers / are to stay 3 months only” ( 681 ). Canto XCVI repeatedly makes reference to regulations ( 679 - 687 ) concerning measures, hoarding, pricing, and the location of various trades: for example bakeries were not permitted beneath residential properties, and goldsmiths were required to operate in public workshops ( 687 ), whereas “Candle - makers to work in their own ergastorios” ( 685 ), and grocers were to keep shops in easily accessible locales throughout the city ( 685 ). Later Byzantium Throughout its history as the capital of the Eastern Roman and Byzantine Empires, Constantinople was subject to a number of sieges: by an alliance led by the Sassanid Persians in 626, by the Umayyad Caliphate in 674 - 78 and 717 - 18, by the Khanate of Bulgaria in 813, and a sequence of Rus sieges in 860, 907 and 941. In addition to numerous eruptions of civil uprisings and outright war, the city was also plundered in the Fourth Crusade in 1204, in which such precious objects as the four horses of the Triumphal Quadriga were taken from the city’s hippodrome and installed on the loggia of the Basilica di San Marco in Venice. Following a series of Nicaean sieges in the thirteenth century, the city came to the attention of the burgeoning Ottoman Empire. Sieges and blockades arose at regular intervals in the late - fourteenth and early - fifteenth centuries, leading to the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 and the migration of the Greek population to Athens and further west. This exodus carried profound implications for the resurgence of classical thought in the Latin West, where the influx of Greek scholars, along with Gemistus Plethon’s presence in Florence for

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium the Council of 1438 - 39, led Cosimo de’ Medici to establish the Platonic Academy in that city under the stewardship of Marsilio Ficino ( VIII/31, XXI/96, XXIII/107, XCVIII/705; see also GK 224 - 25 ). Pound’s interests in the earlier history of Byzantium / Constantinople in Thrones aligned with his wider interests in early medieval cultural transmission by way of migration, peaceful and otherwise, and in the lineage of just legal codes via the Corpus Juris Civilis, particularly with respect to trade, currency and taxation. At the time of writing Thrones Pound returns to the work of Michael Psellus, to whose Neoplatonic works he alludes in Ur - Canto III and Cantos V and XXIII ( C 17, 107 ). Pound marked up and lightly annotated passages in Emile Renauld’s two - volume French translation of Psellus’s Chronographie, ou Histoire d’un Siècle de Byzance ( 976 - 1077 ), now housed in Pound’s library at Schloss Brunnenburg. 30 Pound heavily marked up a passage from Renauld’s Introduction to volume 1 concerning the reinstatement of the Academy at Constantinople during the reign of Constantine IX Monomachus ( 1042 - 1055 ) and Michael’s appointment as its professor of philosophy . The passage describes how Michael was responsible for educating the young, aided in the scientific renaissance of the eleventh century, and in his admiration of the thought of classical antiquity, particularly Neoplatonic doctrine, pursued similar lines of inquiry as his Arab philosophical contemporaries ( Avicenna and Averroes being of great importance to Pound as potential influences on the thought of Cavalcanti ). 31 Pound is drawn to Michael’s description of the court of Basil II – great - grandson of Leo the Wise who reigned 976 - 1025 and was known as Basil the Porphyrogenitor 32 – in which the cultivation of philosophy was pronounced. Basil expanded and consolidated the lands of the Byzantine Empire to include much of the Bulgar region and formed a familial alliance with the Kievan Rus’ who adopted Christianity as a consequence. By reducing the power of land - holding families Basil centralised power in the Empire and led through its period of greatest prosperity . Sections of Psellus’s book concerning the rule of subsequent emperors attract Pound’s attention largely with respect to biographical par30 Psellos, Chronographie. Vol. 1 and 2. 31 Ibid., p. xiii. 32 Stephenson, The Legend of Basil the Bulgar - Slayer, pp. 66 - 80.

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Mark Byron ticulars: the dissolution of Constantine VIII ( 1025 - 28 ); the program of church construction of Michael IV ( 1034 - 41 ); and the Neoplatonic learning of Constantine IX, who identified the genesis and transmission of Neoplatonic principles from Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus through Proclus and down to his own time. 33 Pound heavily marks passages concerning the uses of the treasury during the rule of Constantine IX Monomachus, his consort Zoe and her sister Theodora ( 1042 - 55 ). Constantine introduced tax immunities to landowners and the church in return for military support, and greatly enhanced the status of the arts and philosophy during his reign, which included the instatement of Michael Psellus to his position as historian and philosopher of the Academy . Constantine, Zoe and Theodora are depicted on the exquisite gold and cloisonné enamel Monomachus Crown, produced circa 1042, rediscovered in a Hungarian ( now Slovakian ) field in 1860 and since housed in the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest. 34 The precise nature of its allegorical figuration remains subject to scholarly speculation and dispute, and there is no evidence that Pound knew of the crown or the story of its rediscovery . Pound moderately marked up and annotated the second volume of the Chronographie, centred on Psellus’s incorporation of his own life, tonsuration and intellectual development in the Constantine court. Pound’s intensive focus in Thrones on the taxation practices on the economy and culture of the Byzantine Empire is brought back into full interplay with his Neoplatonic interests in the Eastern Roman Empire and its hinterlands ( such as his study of the work of Pseudo - Dionysius transmitted and evaluated by Eriugena as preparatory work for the wartime Italian canto drafts that were shelved in virtue of The Pisan Cantos ). The tectonic movements of empire, economy, migration and invasion, cultural advancement and destruction in the mid - Eurasian zone finds its geographical, temporal and institutional centre in the Byzantine Empire, stretching from its inception by Constantine in 330 to its fall to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the legacy of which brought new light into Western Europe and initiated the age of modernity .

33 Psellos, Chronographie, p. 136. 34 Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, p. 214.

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium Works cited Michele Amari, Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, 2ª edizione, ed. Giorgio Levi della Vida / Carlo Alfonso Nallino, Biblioteca Siciliana di Storia Letteratura ed Arte, Catania: Libreria Tirelli di F. Guaitolini, 1931. Irina Andreescu - Treadgold / Warren Treadgold, Procopius and the Imperial Panels of S. Vitale, in: Art Bulletin 79.4 ( 1997 ), pp. 708 - 723. John Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils ( 325 - 787 ): Their History and Theology, Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 1983. Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Donald Hall, The Art of Poetry V: Ezra Pound: An Interview, in: The Paris Review 28 ( Summer - Fall 1962 ), pp. 22 - 51. Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum ( History of the Langobards ), in: Patrologia Latina 95, ed. Jacques - Paul Migne, Paris, 1851. –––, History of the Lombards, trans. William Dudley Foulke, ed. Edward Peters, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1907. Edwin Hanson Freshfield, Roman Law in the Later Roman Empire: The Isaurian Period, Eighth Century, The Ecloga, Cambridge: Bowers & Bowes, 1932. David Gordon, Corpus Juris and Canto XCIV, in: Paideuma 11.2 ( 1982 ), pp. 313 - 324. Constantina Katsari, The Roman Monetary System: The Eastern Provinces from the First to the Third Century AD, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

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Mark Byron Richard Krautheimer, Success and Failure in Late Antique Church Planning, in: Age of Spirituality: A Symposium, ed. Kurt Weitzmann, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980. Xinru Liu, The Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Interactions in Eurasia, in: Agricultural and Pastoral Societies in Ancient and Classical History, ed. Michael Adas, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001, pp. 151 - 180. George C. Maniatis, The Domain of Private Guilds in the Byzantine Economy, Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries, in: Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 ( 2001 ), pp. 339 - 369. Alexander Del Mar, Money and Civilization, 1867; New York: Burt Franklin, 1969. –––, History of Monetary Systems, London: Effingham Wilson, 1895. A. David Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet, A Portrait of the Man and his Work, Volume III: The Tragic Years, 1939 - 1972, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Peter Nicholls, Ezra Pound: Politics, Economics and Writing. A Study of The Cantos, London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984. Jules Nicole ( ed. and trans. ), Le Livre du Préfet, ou, l’ Édit de L’Empereur Léon le Sage sur les Corporations de Constantinople, Genève and Bale: Georg & Co, 1894. Ezra Pound, Guide to Kulchur, London: Faber, 1938. –––, Literary Essays, ed. and intro. T. S. Eliot, New York: New Directions, 1968. –––, Selected Prose 1909 - 1965, ed. William Cookson, London: Faber, 1973. –––, The Cantos, New York: New Directions, 1996. Michel Psellos, Chronographie, ou Histoire d’un Siècle de Byzance ( 976 - 1077 ). Vol I, ed. and trans. Émile Renauld, Paris: Société d’Édition « Les Belles Lettres », 1926; and vol. II, 1929.

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The Poetic Dimension of Economics: Byzantium Paul Stephenson, The Legend of Basil the Bulgar - Slayer, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Carroll F. Terrell, The Eparch’s Book, in: Paideuma 2.2 ( 1973 ), pp. 223 - 242. –––, ( ed. ), A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound, 1980; Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993. James J. Wilhelm, The Later Cantos of Ezra Pound, New York: Walker & Co, 1977. Reinhard Zimmermann, The Law of Obligations: Roman Foundations of the Civilian Tradition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

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POUND’S AGRARIAN BENT : PHYSIOCRACY AND THE IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF THE WHEAT IN OUR BREAD PARTY Alec Marsh Notorious for his interest in money and sustained attacks on finance capitalism, Pound is less recognized for his attention to the productive side of the economy, agriculture. Yet, early and late, Pound can fairly be called an agrarian who believed that the family farm, the homestead held in freehold, is the basis for any civilized society and a sane, sustainable economy . “The Occident is based on the homestead,” Pound claimed in a 1942 radio broadcast, “ ... the civilization of the whole western world comes up from the soil, and from the personal responsibility of the man who produces things from it” ( 6/19/1942 RSWWII 176 ). In a 1952 letter to Olivia Agresti, Pound suggested that an Agrarian party be started in Italy “to be called AGRARI having NO institutional program / nothing that could connect them with any political  - ism”. Nonetheless, he outlined an Agrari program starting with slogan “alberi e cisterni [trees and cisterns]” then proceeding to include “aqueducts / bonifica [public cooperative granaries]” then promoting soy beans, peanuts ( for fodder ) maple trees and kudzu, for ground cover to prevent soil erosion” ( Pound’s emphasis ( EP/ORA 93 ). In his final manifesto— “Program in Search of a Party” sent to Dave Horton in 1958 - 9, Pound urged “That the health dept. should pay some attention to quality of food ... the history of agriculture, … the value of rye as against wheat”. 1 Since the 1930s, influenced in part by Paul de Kruif ’s Hunger Fighters ( 1926 ), Pound had been a persistent advocate for healthy nutritional food, recognizing that the adulteration of food for profit was a classic symptom of and perfect metaphor for Usura, the metaphysical dimension of Usury economics, a life - denying, profit - seeking ethos that is in every sense “Contra Naturam” – against nature, which is the on - going life process, the source of everything. “With usura sin against nature, / is thy bread ever more of stale rags / is thy bread dry as paper, / with no 1 Beinecke YCAL MSS 43, Box 19, folder 854.

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Alec Marsh mountain wheat, no strong flour” ( XLV/229 ) – Canto XLV says it all. As he wrote in Meridiano di Roma in September 1940: “the agricultural morality remains. The grain is and remains sacred”. 2 Perhaps we can say that “usury” is to economics as “usura” is to the economy of nature, that is to say, ecology . The late Cantos abound in wheat imagery . In the spring of 1957, Pound was reading The Sacred Edict. In cantos XCVIII and canto XCIX, the latter mostly written at one go in a notebook in March 3, we find “Without grain you will not eat … ” ( XCVIII/706 ); “Food is the root / Feed the People” ( XCIX/715 ), and “There is worship in plowing / and equity in the weeding hoe” ( XCIX/731 ). Following up, still paraphrasing the Sacred Edict, he writes: “keep mind on the root; / Ability as with grain in the wheat - ear / Establish the homestead / … Sow to the very corner” ( XCIX/724 ). One might say that the heart - land is the home - stead, the family farm. Like the grain in wheat, ability is innate potential. But it needs cultivation and careful breeding, as wild grasses were cultivated and gradually bred into nutritious wheat. A few pages later we read “The State is corporate / as with pulse in its body” ( XCIX/727 ); ‘pulse’ meaning both heart - beat and grain. Later on, in Thrones, we learn: “strength of men is in grain” ( CVI/772 ), and “wheat was in bread in the old days” ( CVII/783 ). In Canto XCIX, Pound defined the state as “order, inside a boundary” ( XCIX/728 ). Following the sage advice of The Sacred Edict, Pound realized that protecting the boundary, the wheat fields and the homestead requires a system of dykes and drainage “Dykes for flood - water, / someone must build ‘em; / must plan em” ( XCIX/727 ). Proper drainage is a concern in the late cantos, as the references to the ancient “cunicoli” – a pre - historic drainage system discovered in Italy by Giulio Del Pelo Pardi and cited in three cantos ( Cantos CI, CIII, CXVI ) testifies. 4 “Take care of the body as implement,” Pound quotes, “It is useful / 2 Pound in Nicholls, Ezra Pound’s Lost Book: Orientamenti, p. 146. 3 Beinecke Library Ezra Pound Papers, folder 4975 Notebook 107 Marzo 14 April. ( See Baller, The Sacred Edict ,pp. 3 - 18 and XCIX/720 - 28 ). 4 Giulio Del Pelo Pardi is directly in the physiocratic tradition. His Per la pace del mondo ( Roma: 1923 ) was translated by Pound’s friend at Catholic University, Giovanni Giovannini and printed by John Kasper’s friend Paul “Pablo” Koch as For the World Peace in 1955 with a more or less Confucian “Preface” probably by Pound or composed under his direction. “Agriculture,” Del Pelo Pardi writes, “satisfies the elemental needs of life, and it is man’s most permanent material possession & his only real wealth. Agricultural products

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent to shield you from floods and rascality” ( XCIX/726 ). Explicitly agricultural, we will see that the implications here are eugenic. The flood is an inundation from outside, threatening pollution of the “Ancestral spring making breed, a pattern” ( XCIX/726 ) because “the whole tribe is from one man’s body / what other way can you think of it?” ( XCIX/727 ). Following Agassiz as well as eugenic “laws of nature” Pound worried that racial “mongrelization” implied the end of civilization as such. He may have remembered Hitler’s warning in Mein Kampf : “All who are not of good race in this world are chaff ”. 5 Pound’s agrarian bent is the product of American populist politics descended from the Farmer’s and People’s Parties of the late 19th c., themselves the political offspring of Thomas Jefferson and the French Physiocrats, Mirabeau, and especially its inventor Francois Quesnay . Quesnay’s intellectual ancestor was a geographer named Rousselot de Surgy, from whom Quesnay plagiarized extensively in writing his Confucian Le despotisme de la Chine in 1767. 6 De Surgy, in turn, must have profited from Confucius Sinarum philosophus, a translation of Confucius prepared by the Jesuit Mission in China in 1687, among whom was Prospero Intorcetta, the Sicilian Jesuit. Pound knew who Intorcetta was and appreciated his importance as a transmitter of Confucius to the West. Complaining of historical ignorance, Pound wrote Agresti about “lack of knowledge of sequence / Kung / Intorcetta / ,Leibnitz, Voltaire, Leopoldine reforms, 1776” ( EP/ORA 4/3/1954 145 ). Like the Leopoldine reforms, the American Revolution was informed by Confucian political economy in the guise of Physiocracy . Pound recalled Intorcetta’s portrait seen in Sicily, in Canto CIV ( 756 ), where he is positioned in close proximity to Comte de Mirabeau, an important French Physiocrat. It was Mirabeau who called Quesnay “the Confucius of Europe” 7 in reference to Quesnay’s invention of the science of economics 8, which behave intrinsic value. This is particularly true of wheat, which has always been the mystical & symbolical expression of life, the basis of prosperity of peoples in peace & of resistance to war. ( 17 ). Del Pelo Pardi’s son, Tomaso, who visited Pound at St. Elizabeths in 1953, and Boris De Rachewiltz edited Giulio’s Agricoltura e Civiltà ( 1923 ) Boringhieri 1971. This work argues a direct connection between a philosophically superior culture and its agriculture. 5 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 296. 6 Maverick ( trans. ), China: A Model for Europe, pp. 127 - 8. 7 Meek, The Economics of Physiocracy, pp. 18 - 9. 8 Gay, The Enlightenment. Vol. II, p. 349.

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Alec Marsh came Physiocracy . Quesnay had already constructed his famous Tableau Economique ( 1758 ), the first econometric model, before publishing his praise of China as a rational, agricultural empire. 9 To my astonishment the first translation into English of Le despotism de la Chine was done by Lewis Maverick in his book China: A Model for Europe ( 1946 ). 10 Maverick was an important correspondent and informant of Pound in 1957; he is mentioned by name in canto CV ( 770 ). “Maverick just as good as his book,” Pound wrote with obvious satisfaction to John Theobald in August of that year, “even apparently willing to enter into conversation with other denizens” ( L/JT 8/3/1957 64 ). Maverick’s Economic Dialogue in Ancient China: Selections from the Kuan - tzu, a collection of 32 essays attributed to Kuan - Chung 11 is a main source for Canto CVI. Pound learned of Maverick’s work through Tze - Chiang Chao, a translator of Tu - Fu who read at the “Make It New Bookstore” where he mingled with Pound’s younger followers, including David Wang, Sheri Martinelli, Florette Henry and John Kasper. Chao had written on ancient Chinese monetary theory and in December 1956 suggested Pound find “a copy of Kuan - Tzu, the greatest economist China has ever produced” 12, which led Pound to Maverick’s book. In a letter written the next summer Chao informed Pound that he ( Pound ) had already encountered Kuan - Tzu in Confucius’ Analects, where he is praised for unifying and rectifying the empire. 13 There, Pound had rendered his name Kwan Chung, and had Confucius remark that but for him “we’d be wearing our hair loose, and buttoning our coats to the left” a line rendered “But for Kuan Chung we would still dress as barbarians” in canto CVI (  773 ). Chao translated Confucius’s meaning for Pound more soberly, as “without benefiting from Kuan Tzu ... [China] might

9 Fox - Genovese, The Origins of Physiocracy, p. 74. 10 Maverick was an authority on the Physiocrats. See Lewis A. Maverick, Chinese Influence upon the Physiocrats, in: Economic History 3 ( February 1938 ), pp. 54 - 67, and The Chinese and the Physiocrats, in: Economic History 4 ( February 1940 ), pp. 312 - 318. Refs. courtesy Archie Henderson. 11 In fact, the authorship of the text was disputed, there may be as many as four. The text appears to have been assembled between 700 and 300 BCE ( see reviews ). Maverick himself suggests the book was composed between 330 and 300 BCE ( see Maverick, Economic Dialogue in Ancient China, p. 14 ). 12 Chao to EP 12/24/1956, in: Qian ( ed. ), Ezra Pound and His Chinese Friends, p. 167. 13 Chao to EP 6/16/1957, ibid., p. 169. See also Con 257.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent have been subjugated by a foreign race” 14, which is likely what Pound means in his canto. Unfortunately, Pound does not seem to have known Maverick’s earlier translation of Quesnay . If so, he would have been struck by Maverick’s opening sentence: “On reading the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius, I realized how strongly his writings resemble those of the physiocrats of eighteenth century France”. 15 No wonder then, that Maverick’s edition includes generous “Selections from the Book of Mencius”. 16 The parallels are indeed remarkable, and the circle of influence from Confucius and Mencius to the French Enlightenment to Pound and back again comes full circle. “ The Book of Mencius ” Pound wrote in 1942, “is the most modern book in the world” ( SP 288 ). Quesnay was a well regarded an Enlightenment philosophe and physiocracy, if controversial, was well respected by a host of 18th c. luminaries including Adam Smith and Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany who is celebrated in the cantos. Turgot, the French monarchy’s last best hope, was influenced by physiocracy . The Dauphin, the French King’s brother, was friendly with Quesnay and imitated the Chinese emperors by, if not plowing the first furrow, at least allowing himself to be shown holding a small model plough in his hands. Maverick notes that “another European prince of more robust character, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, used a full - sized plow” in direct imitation of the Chinese Emperors in 1769 ). This piece of political theatre is recorded in cantos LXXXVI and LXXXIX ( LXXXVI/579, LXXXIX/615 ). Physiocracy was well - known to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who was friends with Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, author of a book on Physiocracy and protégé of Quesnay as well as negotiator of the treaty of 1783, in which France recognized the United States. 17 Lastly, Hector St. John de Crevecouer, French author of The American Farmer ( 1783 ) and another correspondent of Jefferson’s, was much influenced by Physiocracy . It seems Pound must have run across Quesnay’s name in

14 Chao to EP 12/24/1956, ibid., p. 168. 15 Maverick ( trans. ), China: A Model for Europe, p. 111. 16 Ibid., pp. 65 - 79. 17 The text is Physiocratie: Ou Constitution naturelle du gouvernement le plus avantageux au genre humain ( 1768 ). Du Pont later edited Ephemerides, the journal that published Quesnay’s book Despotisme de la Chine.

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Alec Marsh his reading 18; unaccountably, he does not notice Quesnay in The Cantos or anywhere else I have been able to discover. Quesnay published his treatise on China in four issues of the journal Ephemerides. The first three parts are copied from Rousselot’s history and include among much Confucian material like the plowing emperor, the sixteen maxims of The Sacred Edict that Pound would cite in Canto XCIX 19. Part four is addressed to contemporary economic problems in France, and proposes a physiocratic political economy based on a “Natural Order”, with “Natural Laws” established by the “author of nature”. 20 They are those physical and moral laws “most advantageous to the human race”. 21 “These fundamental laws,” Quesnay writes, “which were not at all of man’s asking, and to which all human power must be subjected, constitute the natural rights of men, dictate the laws of distributive justice,” establish the armies to assure the protection of the nation against “unjust encroachments of external or internal powers against which it must protect itself,” and finally “establish the public revenue in order to provide all of the necessary funds for security, good order, and the prosperity of the state”. 22 “These natural and fundamental laws of the body politic” are maintained through a “guardian authority established by the nation” – for China, the Emperor; for France, the monarchy . 23 Following Quesnay, Du Pont wrote: “The science of economics is nothing but the application of the natural order of government to society”. Peter Gay comments on this: “Economics was, therefore, more

18 Archie Henderson reports in his invaluable I Cease Not to Yowl Reannotated that Pound probably knew of Quesnay through either or both of the following writings of H. G. Creel: Confucius, the Man and the Myth ( New York: The John Day Co., 1949 ), which mentions Quesnay on numerous pages, and Creel’s The Master Who Lighted the Way in China, in: New York Times Sunday Magazine, August 28, 1949, pp. 15 - 16, 18, which mentions Quesnay on p. 18. See Henderson, ‘I Cease not to Yowl’ Reannotated, p. 60. 19 Maverick ( trans. ), China: A Model for Europe, pp. 196 - 98. 20 Ibid., p. 265. 21 Ibid., p. 264. 22 Ibid., p. 265. 23 “The authority must be unique and impartial in its decisions and operations, and be united under a head who alone holds executive power, and the power of compelling all citizens to the observance of the laws, of assuring the rights of all against all, of the weak against the strong, of preventing and suppressing unjust encroachments, usurpations and oppressions by internal and external enemies of the kingdom” ( Ibid., p. 268 ).

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent than a mere science of wealth; it was the science of social justice.” 24 – a science guaranteed at the top to be aligned with natural reason. This vision of a guardian authority in harmony with nature and man prompted the properly problematic slogan “legal despotism” 25, but brings us close to Pound’s views on authority, which are metapolitical. If the state is properly constituted and the moral laws followed—for example by following Confucius’ advice – the supreme authority will be prevented from becoming partial or tyrannical by nature itself. The holder of executive power must realize that his own best interest is the same as the Empire’s because “The laws of nature impose themselves with such force that no rational man can refuse their assent”. 26 A full account of Pound’s metapolitics would link it to his Neo - Platonism on the one hand and his Confucianism on the other as two horizons of his metapolitical vision. As Mary Cheadle observes, “under the influence of Neoplatonism, the Confucianism of The Unwobbling Pivot is elevated above the political and social totalitarianism of The Great Digest to a metaphysical totalitarianism” 27 – i.e. metapolitics. On the Neo - Platonic side, Pound envisions a route upward through various levels of vital force expressed in Yogic terms, through prana, crystal, to jade ( see XCIV/654 ); on the Confucian side, he founds his paradiso terrestre on an ethics of the “THE FOUR TUAN” ( LXXXV/565 ) grounded in an agricultural economy in accord with nature. For Pound these became “manhood / equity/ceremonies, propriety / knowledge”. 28 24 Gay, The Enlightenment. Vol. II, p. 351. 25 See ibid., pp. 494 - 95. 26 Ibid., p. 495. 27 Cheadle, Ezra Pound’s Confucian Translations, p. 100. 28 Qian ( ed. ), Ezra Pound and His Chinese Friends, p. 67, 67n. Eustace Mullins tells us that in 1951 Pound scribbled the key to the four as 1 ) love, 2 ) duty, 3 ) propriety and wisdom ( Mullins, This Difficult Individual, Ezra Pound, pp.325 - 26 ). But Pound’s correspondence with Achilles Fang, recently published, reveals something rather different—in part because of Fang’s searching criticisms of Pound understanding of Chinese ways of thinking about virtue. Fang told Pound that the Chinese never thought of duty or justice as abstractions; they are practices. Justice is part of etiquette and good manners ( Qian ( ed. ), p. 83 ). Pound, naturally for a westerner, assumed the Confucian “four tuan” usually translated as benevolence, righteousness, propriety and knowledge were virtues. Fang was unhappy with this category; he insisted that the tuan were not virtues at all, but aspects of an “ethical outlook” and felt “at a loss to suggest any sensible translation ( Ibid., p. 82 )—one reason that Pound does not translate them in The Cantos ( see LXXXV/559 ). In light of this Pound suggested the four tuan might be rendered, “decent impulse, limits to

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Alec Marsh This metapolitical cosmos is held together be “light”, which can also be interpreted as “sincerity .” Together these make sensibility – the sign under which the late cantos attempt build their paradise. This may be a reasonable, if Poundian, translation of “ling,” the large ideogram presiding over Rock Drill ( LXXXV/563 ). 29 Pound’s political thought is always acknowledged as largely Confucian. By exposing Confucian affiliations within French physiocracy, we can shed light on an important tension, if not contradiction in Pound’s thinking about political economy – his respect for law and representative government on the one hand and his need for some guardian authority “willing the national good” and responsible for the whole people on the other – an authority he imagined in the person of Mussolini. As an agrarian populist in need of an enlightened despot, Pound has recourse to “natural law” or the laws of nature, that is to say, metapolitics, to justify his politics. This contradiction repeats in a 20th c. key the unresolved tensions the physiocrats discovered as they attempted to adapt their concept of natural law to actual political economy – something only a couple of semi - mythical Chinese emperors, I Yin and Kao Tsung had been able to do with any visible success. 30 The emperors allegedly succeeded because they recognized that “Only the most abwhich, modus to which and horse sense acquired by action” ( Qian ( ed. ), p. 85 ) a formula that explains lines from Canto LXXXV “Praecognita bonum et ut moveas [pre - know the good to move yourself] / and then consider the time” ( LXXXV/563 ). In canto XCIX he says that “the four TUAN / are from nature / jen, I, li, chih / Not from descriptions in the school house” ( XCIX/731 ), which suggests they are innate, possibly racial; certainly not “culturally constructed.” Pound finally settled on “manhood / equity/ceremonies, propriety / knowledge” as close to the four tuan ( Qian ( ed. ), 67, 67n ). This choice matters for the late Cantos, especially Rock - Drill ( 1955 ) because he posits the “THE FOUR TUAN// or foundations” ( LXXXV/565 ) as their philosophical support. In Pound’s revised formula, the four, “manhood / equity / ceremonies / propriety / knowledge” makes five ( an all important number in China as there are five cardinal directions, North, East, South, West and center, where is the capital ). For us, the concept four signifies order –that’s why ‘the whole creation [is] concerned with FOUR ( XCI/636 ), explaining why “ceremonies/ propriety” must be run together. 29 In his Guide to Ezra Pound’s Selected Cantos, George Kearns spends a few pages unpacking what this ideogram meant to Pound – for it is rare, and is not generally thought to mean “sensibility, but rather something like “marvelous” or even close to “benevolence.” He glosses the opening of canto LXXXV roughly as “the spiritual forces registered by the Emperor I Yin provide a point of reference for sincere and intelligent action.” See Kearns, Guide to Ezra Pound’s Selected Cantos, pp. 197 - 99. 30 Cheadle, Ezra Pound’s Confucian Translations, p. 94.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent solute sincerity under heaven can effect any change” ( Con 95 ) and convinced a few people act on that principle. “Only the absolute sincerity under heaven can effect any change” ( Con 95 ) is a quintessence of Pound’s metapolitics. It was used by John Kasper to close his later writings and is relevant to his political faction The Wheat In Our Bread Party ( WHIB ), as will be shown. Change in this case would not mean deviating from the course of nature, but changing back to the chung yung or middle path; this is why we turn “conversation towards justice” ( XCIX/718 ). Once on the middle path, political faction will disappear and class struggle will not exist. Class collaboration and social harmony would prevail. 31 Distributive justice would underwrite social justice. Social justice, in turn, would be guaranteed economically by the laws of nature. In accordance with the physical laws of nature, the physiocrats believed that all wealth came directly from the earth, quite in accord with The Sacred Edict, which says “wealth is produced by nature”. 32 The source of wealth was cultivated land; wealth itself, “the net product” was agricultural produce. Farmers were the sole productive class and “Agriculture the supreme occupation, not only because its produce was primary on the scale of wants and always in demand, but also—and mainly – because it alone yielded a disposable surplus over new cost”. 33 “Productive” to the physiocrats meant productive of a net product, all other occupations, manufacture, commerce were by contrast “unproductive” and “sterile”. 34 As for finance, Quesnay argued that “the trivial and specious science of financial operations whose subject - matter in only the money stock of the nation and the monetary movements resulting from traffic in money, in which credit, the lure of interest … bring about a sterile circulation”. 35 In 1942 Pound asserted, “Money converts itself into foodstuffs, or ‘develops’ ( or degenerates ) as credit”. 36 True 31 True, over - population and abject poverty can occur as a result – but over - population is the sign of a prosperous state – so the problem, while real and troubling, is at least reasonable. A just taxation and poor relief system is the best way to mitigate this unwanted product of the well - regulated state, but Quesnay is worried about it. 32 Baller, The Sacred Edict, p. 61. 33 Meek, The Economics of Physiocracy, p. 20. 34 Ibid. 35 Kuczinski / Meek, Quesnay’s Tableau Économique, pp. 21 - 2. 36 Pound in Nicholls, Ezra Pound’s Lost Book: Orientamenti, p. 147.

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Alec Marsh credit as opposed to bank credit rests in the abundance of nature realized in agricultural output – including prospective production; “The true basis of credit ... is, the abundance, or productivity, of nature with the responsibility of the whole people” behind it ( Gold and Work SP 309 ). Pound was already in the physiocratic tradition when he wrote in 1914, “The artist is one of the few producers. He, the farmer and the artisan create wealth; the rest shift and consume it” ( LE 222 ). Quesnay was more rigorous; probably associating artisanal production with luxury goods, he chastised the “the third estate” – “predominantly artisans, manufacturers and tradesmen who scorn the husbandman” and mislead the nation into monopolies, exclusive privileges, profit taking and trade wars. 37 But as Adam Smith noted, under a properly physiocratic regime, the third estate could serve a useful purpose even if not increasing the net product and thus remaining technically unproductive. 38 However, if finance is sterile, it is not inert; finance is, to the physiocratic mind like Pound’s, literally counter - productive, a “the cult of sterility” destroying “the mystery of fecundity” ( SP 287 ). The financier – that is to say, the usurer – is a destroyer of natural value in the service of private profit; the financier is “the hogger of harvest” opposed to the local farmer who nurtures natural abundance: “Said Baccin: ‘That tree, and that tree, / Yes I planted that tree ...’” ( LXXXVIII/601 ). In contrast to the financial destroyers, who confuse profit for wealth, the physiocrats used two telling words for wealth: “jouissance,” or “utilité.” The physiocratic idea of wealth referred to “things which satisfy in a direct manner the general human demand for food, raiment and shelter,” Beer writes. “It is much nearer nature’s gifts and the bodily needs of man than that which the urbanized man conceives as wealth”. 39 Quoting Mencius, Pound stresses use value: “Let it be seen that the people USE ( caps. mine ) their resources of food seasonably ...” ( Pound’s emphasis SP 103 ). Physiocrats were oriented towards values - in - use, rather than values - in - exchange; life - sustaining satisfactions rather than profit. This sense of jouissance is embodied in the American “Dec-

37 Maverick ( trans. ), China: A Model for Europe, p. 269. 38 Gay, The Enlightenment. Vol. II, p. 352. 39 Cited in: Marsh, Money and Modernity, p. 38.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent laration of Independence” drafted by Jefferson, which famously calls for “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. 40 Pound’s political economy is grounded on specific agricultural practice. His important “Mang Tsze” essay of 1938 shows how Mencius’s well - field system – eight fields surrounding a ninth communal field centered by the communal well – is based directly on arable land from which all wealth was created. “It is nature, the actual existence of goods, or the possibility of producing them that really determines the capacity of a state” ( SP 282 ). It is on this “material basis” ( SP 300 ), the nine - field system of fields arranged like a tic - tac - toe board, that the superstructure of Confucianism was raised. Pound’s political philosophy is sited there too. A recent marvelous and informative article by Jeffrey Blevins called “Pound Sign” focuses on the cross - hatched, tic - tac - toe sign embedded the tangle of notes and signs that end Canto C. 2 million diesd for investiture, Rome; Autun; Poictiers; Benevento crosse ( + ) et l’anneau ( 0 ). 1075; ’77; ’78; ‘87 et le prepuce at Pu yen Vellay “To avoid other view” said Herbert ( De Veritate ) “their first consideration” Pound stresses the tic - tac - toe link with his “crosse ( + ) et l’anneau ( 0 ).” The + seems to indicate places such as the sites mentioned above: “Rome; Autun; Poictiers; Benevento” and these, Terrell suggests, are under Papal control indicated by “l’anneau” or the ring ( C 651 ). The lines evidently have to do with the investiture controversy, for which “2 million died,” significant dates for which are listed; “1075, ’77, ’78; ’87.” Next under a line from Cavalcanti, a soothing, italicized cascade of lines from Villon celebrates the body and we come to rest on the firm blocks of Plotinus “EX OUSIAS ... HYPOSTIN” gesturing cryptically to that hypostasis which underlies all. This turns out to be 1 ) “III, 5, 3,” as Blevins points out, a citation from Mencius, Book 5, paragraph 3 40 I’m reminded of John Ruskin’s concept of wealth and its opposite, “illth.” See Ruskin, Munera pulveris. Six Essays on the Elements of Political Economy, pp.6 - 9.

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Alec Marsh where the well / field system and fair system of taxation are explained 41 and “PERI EROTAS” – “Concerning Love” a section of The Enneads ( C  651 ). Peter Liebregts has stressed the contrast between “spiritual and physical love” in this passage 42 but Pound is more earthly . Proper land distribution, taxation by tithe and Confucian probity tempered by love form the proper basis for a just agrarian society where venal church politics, dogmatic violence and corrupt theology could not exist. To Blevins, Canto C is much concerned with finding a stable basis of value in a world where values are arbitrary to the point where, as he argues, “the concept of value itself is destabilized,” and “all values ... become ‘unknown.’ ” Blevins notes that “the ability to manipulate values opens up the possibility of endless fraud.” The crosshatch sign and the temple sign ( C/741 ) which we know from Canto XCVIII is holy because it is “not for sale” ( XCVIII/692, 693 ) constitute a polarity defining the boundaries of how value can be thought. Blevins argues that Pound prescribes the cure for the corruption of values in a series of paradisal images in Canto C that build to the temple sign. It’s all about “proportion,” which allows Blevins to make much sense of the seemingly fragmented quality of the poem’s final lines. 43 To do so, Blevins goes back to the Chinese “ching” in the Wade - Giles system Pound used, which in fact, refers to the nine - field system with the well at its center taught by Mencius. In the I Ching, an ancient divination text that attracted Pound very late in life, this well is either leaky or well contained; it is used with other signs to express such different things as “overflow” and “crystal.” Using this etymology as well as draft material, Blevins revises our sense of “diafana” ( one of the last words of Canto C, see C/742 ) to put it in play with “crystal,” showing how there is a rich dialectical relation between the two seemingly opposed terms. He notes that Pound seems to have literally “rectified” the Chinese character by making it all right angles in his book, 44 thus emphasizing the hard crystal aspect of ching rather than its diaphanous, flowing, abundant quality, but Blevins shows how in Canto C the watery aspect is honored in the cascade of lines filled with tender sentiments that 41 Blevins, Pound Sign, p. 1334. 42 Liebregts, Ezra Pound and Neoplatonism, p. 349. 43 Blevins, Pound Sign, p. 1336. 44 Ibid., p. 1343.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent appear both before and after the temple sign – all things are a - flowing after all. Therefore, ching is both the structure of the crystal and the “overflow expression of the force” of flow; in the poem we find “crystal as water, water as crystal, both alembicating light.” … “# stands as a rich symbol,” Blevins concludes, “that gives a balanced articulation of paradise…the point of the ending is not to make a Manichean decision between the hellishness of bad values and the purity of paradise. Rather # provides a way of carving arteries into paradise that do not efface the value of living in the world”. 45 Blevins’ helplessly mixed metaphor may be necessary, certainly it expresses the paradisal synthesis Pound wishes to achieve. If Pound ended his Cantos there, perhaps Blevins happy conclusion would be justified, but the paradisal synthesis is only fitful – the world remains locked in a “secular war between usurers and peasants, between the usurocracy and whoever does an honest day’s work with his brain or his hands”. 46 In November 1937 Pound wrote to C. H. Douglas that he was reading Mencius “looking at the original text not merely the translation” ( EPEC 209 ). This suggests that he was reading Vol. 2 of Legge’s Chinese Classics ( 1875 ). Significantly, when Pound explains Mencius’s system in his 1938 essay, he explains it not in terms of Social Credit, but in terms of Italian Fascist practice; the nine - field system predicts the Italian amassi, or communal granaries: “The earlier politica or ammassi was as follows: in a square divided in nine equal parts, the central one was cultivated by the eight surrounding families and its produce went to the administration, this was commuted to ten percent … In irregular country a just equivalence of what would be equal measuring of flat acreage” ( SP 105 ). Notice that the nominal ten percent is a tithe, not a tax; it is a share of production, not a lien against it. “Tax as a share of something produced” Pound repeats in canto XCIX ( 720 and see 712, 719 ). In a letter to Jorian Jenks, the principal British fascist writing on agriculture, in August 1939, Pound observes that “[Edmondo] Rossoni [Fascist Minister of Agriculture] rightly said that ammassi showed a way to a 45 Ibid., p. 1355. 46 Stock ( ed. ), Impact: Essays on Ignorance and the Decline of American Civilization, p. 185. In Impact the essay is retitled, perhaps by the editor, Noel Stock, to “America and the Second World War,” but the original was written in Italian in aid of the Axis war effort. Its English translation by John Drummond c. 1951, for one of Peter Russell’s Money Pamphlets, was titled “America, Roosevelt and the Present War.”

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Alec Marsh completely new method of taxes” that is, Pound argues, “TITHES, considered [good by] Mencius who found fixed charge evil” ( EPEC 224 ). Pound is emphatic in “Mang - Tze” in justifying Mencius’s 10% tithe: “In the conditions of 500 and 400 b.c. if you cut the tithe lower that 10 per cent you could live only as the ‘dog and camp - fire people’. If you raised it above 10 per cent for traders and people in the centre of empire and above the NINE FIELDS share system for rurals and border folk, you would have tyranny” ( SP 103 ). Naturally, the tenth must be collected after the harvest was in, not beforehand. In “Mang - tze” Pound takes up the tax question explicitly, quoting “‘nothing is worse than a fixed tax.’ A fixed tax on grain is in bad years a tyranny, a tithe proper, no tyranny” ( SP 103 ). “Mencius distinguishes a tax from a share,” Pound explains; “he is for an economy of abundance” ( SP 100 ). This remark illuminates the lines Pound inserted late into his composition of Canto CV “A tenth tithe and a circet of corn 47” placed alongside the names of Admiral Crommelin and Gen. Del Valle, both right - wing, States’ Rights extremists violently against racial integration ( and mentors to Pound’s disciples John Kasper and Dave Horton respectively ). They would uphold a just tax system and in so doing, follow Mencius and through him, Confucius, Pound thought; although both, like American conservatives generally, were against any income - tax, that socialistic remnant of the New Deal. 48 Pound, however, continued to cite Mencius as late as 1959, showing that practical social justice “should consist in a share of the available products” ( SP 323 ). In 1957, Pound promoted an agrarian party in the US, the Wheat in Our Bread Party ( WHIB ), closely linked to John Kasper’s white nationalist program as the proper and sincere expression of agrarian and racial virtue. 49 More than the pipe - dream of a political prisoner, WHIB was an actual political party that ran candidates for public office in eastern Tennessee in 1958. WHIB’s rather unwieldy and mysterious name would seem to be 47 A “circet” is a gift of grain or produce from a farmer to a local church. 48 Del Valle, for example, ran explicitly against the Maryland income tax in his gubernatorial campaign of 1954 – a run probably prompted by the first Brown decision ( see Correspondence with John Kasper, p. 106 ). Pound had his own solution to modern taxation, Gesell’s demurrage tax on money itself. It is a constant theme in his writings during and after the War. See A Visiting Card and Gold and Work. 49 Correspondence with John Kasper, pp. 205 - 13.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent an example of Pound’s “Aesopian language” to give away nothing that could be construed as connecting to any “ism.” Supposedly its name was inspired by group of British women who, in Housewives Today, a right - wing publication that Pound received, promoted organic farming and demanded that the government put wheat vitamins back in their bread. 50 WHIB was born in the crucible of the “second reconstruction,” the Civil Rights struggle in the United States ignited by the federal mandate to racially integrate the nation’s public schools. Until Brown v School Board of Topeka in 1954, all schools south of the Mason - Dixon Line ( and many above it, as in Topeka, Kansas ) were segregated by race. White southerners correctly understood that the Brown decision threatened the so - called “southern way of life,” which was determined by both law and custom to keep whites and people of African descent apart. They saw that, in effect, Brown annulled the concept of white supremacy -  - a slogan closely associated with the Democratic Party that still dominated the Southern states. As I have written elsewhere, Pound and Kasper were dedicated to maintaining segregation in the name of “states’ rights” and racial purity . Like virtually all white Southerners ( including J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI ) and many other Americans, they realized that school integration and eventual civil equality between blacks and whites would lead to “social mixing” and racial amalgamation. As a flyer Kasper put out through his Seaboard White Citizen’s Council based at the Cadmus Bookshop in Washington succinctly argued: “First the sacred schoolhouse. Then restaurants, picture shows, DANCES, home, then marriage - bed. No fight NOW. FIGHT! There’s nowhere to run”. 51 It was widely believed in the South and in the halls of power that integration was a Jewish / Communist plot, to weaken America by “mongrelizing” the white race. Though not southerners themselves ( Kasper was from New Jersey ) Pound and Kasper were convinced from reading eugenic literature – most notably, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, but also Louis Agassiz who was one of the very first scientific racists ( a eugenicist avant la lettre ) – that racial mixing led to actual degeneration. Pound called it “Degradation.” This anxiety is a covert, yet once noticed, powerful theme in the late cantos that becomes an integral part of Pound’s 50 Pearson, The Washington MerryGoRound, p. B17. 51 Beinecke, Hall - Hoag Box 76.72 1296 1 - GR.

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Alec Marsh physiocracy, which added a eugenic component after 1942, when Pound read Mein Kampf Vol. II in Italian translation. Nazi racial “science” is based on American eugenic discourse and Hitler’s legal proposals adopted American miscegenation laws on the books in the majority of states till the 1960s. On September 25, 1957 Pound wrote to Ohio State University student John Stafford, his thoughts on the “laws of nature,” race and “wheat in bread” in a “Note on Degradation”: NOTE AGAINST DEGRADATION ‘The fight against variety is a fight against the laws of nature as manifest in all animal and vegetable life. If you believe in God it is a fight against the laws of God. If you are a scientist, not a shyster, it is a fight against the manifest facts of nature. No one ever advocated melting all things down to one pattern save in lust for domination, and in hatred of all qualities the tyrant had not in himself. There is NO serious political thought apart from the power of SOVEREIGNTY inherent in the power to issue money . Each race has its own qualities. Any attempt to obscure racial character is antiscientific. No race can fully perform the functions of another. The howl for equality comes from a bastardizations of words, though it started in a righteous fight in the law courts. It has been taken up by the dregs of humanity, such as Roosevelts, Berias, DexterWhites and enemies of America ... We want pure food, wheat in bread, time given for yeast to function it ( sic ) making bread. Filthiness in high places is more dangerous than in low places and filters down. The ethics of Churchill are detestable. We are against diseases of THOUGHT, not against individuals seeking to rid themselves of infections.’ 52 It is entirely possible that this note is more or less the programme of the Wheat in Our Bread Party . Just two weeks earlier, Pound had written 52 Correspondence with Jack Stafford.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent to John Theobald about the “PRINCIPLE OF DEGRADATION / of bastardization and mélange.” Racial integrity, not mixing, was what nature wanted, providing the only basis for a sound cultural Anschauung: “it is good that hindoos be MORE hindoo / that chinks be MORE chink each rising to its own height and note a mélange adultère tout” ( L/JT 9/11/1957 84 ). The parallel with Pound’s doctrine of cheng ming, or right naming, his “dissociation of ideas” and his constant demand for the “definition of words” is worth noting. Kasper visited Pound at St Elizabeths on September 21, 1957 immediately after his return from Nashville, Tennessee, where he had been agitating against school integration. There, he was suspected in the bombing of an elementary school and under indictment for starting a riot. During this same week in Little Rock, Arkansas, elements of the 101st Airborne Division commanded by Gen. Edwin Walker had occupied Central High School, where Governor Faubus had used his State militia ( The National Guard ) to defy the Federal Government’s racial integration orders. Across the South, violence against black citizens and property was rampant. This insurrectionary atmosphere is the background for WHIB. John Kasper announced the WHIB party a week after talking with Pound, on Sept. 27, at the Cadmus bookstore in Washington. Although no manifesto or party platform has been found, with the “Note on Degradation” written that same month in hand, enough circumstantial evidence can be assembled to give us a broad picture of the WHIB program. Like the “Note,” the WHIB platform must have included a protest against the adulteration of food; otherwise it was certainly a White Nationalist, segregationist, States’ Rights party, the immediate goals of which would have been compatible with the Seaboard White Citizens’ Council to whom it was announced. The sole report of the event is known from the muck - raking gossip Drew Pearson, who, probably relying on illegal FBI surveillance tapes, predictably called WHIB “Nazi - like”. 53 No doubt, he wanted to emphasize WHIB’s racial aspects, but in another sense he wrote better than he knew, for Hitler in Mein Kampf argues in a physiocratic vein that “preserving a healthy peasant class as a foundation for a whole nation can never be valued highly enough ... A solid stock of small and middle peasants has 53 Pearson, The Washington MerryGoRound, p. B17.

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Alec Marsh at all times been the best defense against social ills such as we possess today .” It “is the only solution which enables a nation to earn its daily bread within the inner circuit of its econom”.When domestic agriculture is prospering, “Industry and commerce recede from their unhealthy leading position and adjust themselves to the framework of a national economy of balanced supply and demand”. 54 In Italy while Hitler was writing, the 1920s, Mussolini’s “Battle for Grain” deployed high tariffs on grain imports and subsidies to support the Italian peasantry and economic autarky . In the manner of the Chinese Emperors and Emperor Joseph before him, Mussolini showed himself cutting grain and operating FIAT tractor ploughs. Praise of agriculture as the core of economic autarky and concern for the small - holder is an admirable aspect of fascism that is too easily forgotten, but which resonated with Pound’s Confucian / Jeffersonian outlook. Compare Jefferson himself in his Notes on the State of Virginia: “generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregation of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts ... ”. 55 Of course, WHIB was “Nazi” in the eugenic sense too. We can see this aspect of the WHIB program from studying WHIB’s closely related “North American Party for the Constitution” ( NACC ) conceived if not fully articulated by David Wang early that same month of September 1957 – it’s mentioned in a p.s. to a letter to Pound dated Sept. 11, [1957]: “Official title for Hsin’s organization = NORTH AMERICAN CITIZENS FOR THE CONSTITUTION = NACC”. 56 Although Wang did not send along a NACC party program until after WHIB was announced ( it is dated Nov. 1, 1957 but seems to have arrived in Washington on the 27th or 28th of September ), it is possible that Pound was provoked to invent WHIB by Wang’s idea. Wang’s Program for the NACC styled itself an “affiliate” of the WHIB Party, so one can assume there is significant overlap in party principles. It stood for “Social Justice” ( in those days a right - wing term; Father Coughlin’s publication, avidly read by Pound through the 1930s, was called Social Justice ) and

54 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 138. 55 Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, p. 312. 56 Correspondence with David Wang.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent “Racial Integrity” 57. At the bottom of the NACC bulletin Wang wrote “The purpose of the Republic is to make a better type of manhood and womanhood”. Above it, a bellicose final paragraph copies the conclusion of Kasper’s political manifesto Segregation or Death ( 1957 ): “Our movement is young and growing. We are aimed toward the youth. We will not fail in this struggle even in death. To those who oppose us, Marxist, usurer, race - mixer, degenerate politician, we pledge eternal vigilance, eternal combativeness, even death!”. 58 What’s missing from Wang’s NACC “Bulletin” is any explicit agrarian element; there is no mention of wheat or farming. Unlike WHIB, which imagined its constituency as white Tennessee farmers, Wang’s message was given to students on elite university campuses: Harvard, Columbia, Princeton among them. For these audiences, agrarian politics might have been a distraction except as a metaphor. Still, according to The Princetonian his audience at Princeton was told that “the Whibs aim to restore the Constitution to the republic so that it has the same relationship as wheat has to bread”. 59 Wang’s WHIB mission to Ivy league campuses was greeted by incomprehension by many; why was a Han Chinese preaching white supremacy? In fact, as Wang attempted without much success to make his audiences understand, he was not preaching white supremacy but racial destiny . Pound was technically correct when he reassured young William Cookson that “Wang’s advocacy of ‘Wheat in Bread’ seems nearer to Soil Association movement in Britain than to a howl for white supremacy” 60; but as the Soil Association was, at that time, a revenant fascist group led by Jorian Jenks, among others, this disclaimer means a good deal less than one might at first think. Explicit white supremacy no, but racialist politics yes; call it the Blood and Soil Association. Let each race rise to its own height, as Pound had remarked to Theobald in the letter quoted above, but those heights are not the same. On September 28th 61 Pound commented to Wang on NACC Bulletin #1: “O.K. eugenics / very necessary / ... WHIB Wheat in bread party a concept 57 Marsh, John Kasper & Ezra Pound: Saving the Republic, pp. 207 - 8. 58 Correspondence with David Wang. 59 Quoted in Marsh, John Kasper & Ezra Pound: Saving the Republic, p. 206. 60 EP to Cookson 1/10/1958, quoted in Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet. Vol. III, p. 390. 61 This letter is almost certainly mis - dated in Qian ( ed. ), Ezra Pound and His Chinese Friends, pp. 181 - 2.

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Alec Marsh the incult should agree on.” Although the NACC platform upholds the “right [to] coin and print our own money and set value thereof ” as WHIB probably did, Pound finds it “Unfortunate that J. K. [Kasper] shd/ be on local line not on universal slogan” that is to say “the issue of money & tax SYSTEM”. A proper money and tax system is predicated on the notion of tax as a share of production, not a “fixed charge” against it ( XCIX/712 ). Or, as he said in his Note Against Degradation: “There is NO serious political thought apart from the power of SOVEREIGNTY inherent in the power to issue money .” Even though in his “Note” Pound himself moves immediately to Race – “Each race has its own qualities. Any attempt to obscure racial character is antiscientific. No race can fully perform the functions of another” – here Pound argues that segregation has distracted Kasper from the true issue of sovereignty itself. States, like races, are demarcated by boundaries that need defending. Pound’s insistence that “sovereignty” inheres in “the power to issue,” ( LXXXIX/608 ), and “in the right over coinage” ( 610 ) means that sovereignty resided in the right to assign value in proper proportion within a state. However, as Pound was acutely aware, after the Brown decisions of 1954 and ( regarding implementation ) 1955, many southern states, including Virginia ( 1955 - 6? ), Mississippi ( 1956 ), Louisiana ( 1956 ), and Arkansas ( 1957 ) established “Sovereignty Commissions” to explore ways to uphold the rights of states against undue encroachments of Federal authority, principally school integration. So, even though the explicit source for Pound’s remarks on sovereignty in canto LXXXIX and elsewhere is Alexander Del Mar’s History of Monetary Systems 62 and he had been concerned with sovereignty earlier while explicitly warning against “race hatreds” as his note to Oswald Moseley’s The European in 1953 ( i.e. before Brown ) shows ( SP 322 ), in responding to Wang, Pound must have been aware of the term’s timely relevance to current events in the States’ rights struggle in Nashville and Little Rock. He encodes his view in these late cantos, where the discourse of States’ Rights is a recurrent motive. Till today, the way the federal government enforces its mandates on the individual states is by withholding federal funds – disbursed tax revenues – from recalcitrant states. Pound understood that unless states – or even localities – could issue their own money and create their own tax 62 See Del Mar, A History of Monetary Systems, p. 66.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent systems, perhaps using some sort of Mencian / fascist ammassi device, or Gesselite Schwundgeld, they were under control of those who could. Pound felt deeply the implication that even the Federal government did not control its own currency; international bankers did via their conduit, the semi - private Federal Reserve Bank. Pound’s Note on Degradation demands “pure food, wheat in bread, time given for yeast to function i[n] making bread.” Two weeks after Pound sent off the note to Stafford, on Nov. 15, 1957, Kasper himself clarified some of what is implied in a statement in court at a sentencing hearing in Knoxville. Kasper accused the judge of abetting a genocide of the white race by upholding the law on school integration. He told him he had learned much from Ezra Pound and argued that all he, Kasper, had tried to do was “give more light” to “increase the intelligence” of Americans as “the American people,” so it seemed to him, were “starving for mental nourishment, mental nutriment. Our bodies are well taken care of, but we are dying in our heritage of history”. 63 This idea that Americans were starving for their true history, currently being rewritten by Jewish Communists, was congruent with Pound’s notion of what his Cantos were doing – feeding the people. Vitamins in bread, certainly; but Wheat in Bread is also the nutritious ideological content of Pound’s Cantos and other writings. It is suggested by the “strong flour” and “mountain wheat” that Usura renders scarce in canto XLV. “Nutrition” serves as one of Pound’s master metaphors for content. In Canto LXXX, written at Pisa, Pound imagined himself as a shepherd “to take the sheep out to pasture / to bring your g. r. to the nutriment / gentle reader to the gist of the discourse / to sort out the animals” ( LXXX/519 - 20 ) – the sheep would separate from the goats depending on how they responded to Pound’s poetic fodder. Instructing Dallas Simpson on the content of Simpson’s Four Pages in 1948, Pound insists: “Confucius and Gesell were SEED god dammit SEED”. 64 These seeds were to sprout into a Confucian hybrid using Pound’s Gesellite economic mechanism to escape the debt / tax system. By 1957, there was a Jeffersonian slant to this as well involving the states’ rights, racial angle; Jack Stafford suggests that in the 50s, Pound’s “policy was to get the Southern farmers to support his programme of monetary reform after 63 Kasper, Statement of Defendant Nov. 16, 1957 ( sic ), p. 10. 64 Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet. Vol. III, p. 291.

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Alec Marsh attracting them by his ‘states rights’ stand and his racial views which evolved from his theories of culture” 65 Pound was released from St. Elizabeths in April 1958 and returned to Italy in May . Canto CVII ends on an elegiac note: “Wheat was in bread in the old days.” ( 777 ). This implies that the U.S. Constitution once meant something but is now adulterated. It means that the basis of the state – any state: China, Italy the U. S. – is in agriculture. The extent to which agriculture is neglected, and mere trade promoted, especially the sterile shiftings of financial paper ( such as now passes for “wealth management” ) predicts the ruin of the state. “Don’t burn to abandon production and go into trading”, Pound warns in Canto XCIX, don’t “Dig up root to chase branches” ( XCIX/724 ). An economy based on money values means obfuscation of history and literature, and the consequent degradation of textbooks, a theme in Pound’s letters to John Theobald, Norman Holmes Pearson, and Harry Meacham in the last years of the poet’s confinement. There, what aliment is permitted is adulterated by “slop”, from which extracting intellectual nutriment is impossible, except by “a gift of GAWD” to their instructor enabling him to “dissociate the pewk / from the punkins” ( L/JT 9/11/1957 84 ). His attempt to remedy this situation in his collaboration with Marcella Spann is Confucius to Cummings, a poetry anthology designed to “arouse curiosity, not kill it and this without implying false values or false views of proportion” 66 ( my emphasis ). Knowing true values must lead readers back to the earth and the laws of nature. As For WHIB, Kasper told Pound in a May 1960 letter written from the Davidson County Workhouse, where Kasper was serving his final jail sentence, that WHIB had garnered “34,000 votes in ’58 gubernatorial election and [even though we] were off ballot in a major county ( illegally )”. In fact, WHIB polled about 6,500 votes. In the same letter, Kasper writes of “a new political party”: This was the “National States Rights Party,” a violent Nazi - sect soon engaged in synagogue bombings and other outrages. 67 WHIB may have been absorbed into the NSRP, which had a small, but active following mostly in the South. Agrarian, peasant parties and even the organic food movement 65 Stafford, Ezra Pound and Segregation, p. 60. 66 Pound / Spann, Confucius to Cummings, p. vii. 67 JK to EP 5/10/60, in: Correspondence with John Kasper.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent have a long history of right - wing affiliations, stretching deep into the 19th c.  68After all “Blut u. Boden” stems from polemics justifying the proto - Nazi Artamen, a back to the land movement in eastern Germany in the 1920s. The Soil Association in Britain during the 1950s is an example of this nexus as was the Melbourne New Times, with which the young Noel Stock was affiliated, providing an Australian outlet for Pound and disciples like Eustace Mullins, informing readers about the Jew / Commie conspiracy along with organic farming practices. Just down the road from where I write, the Rodale Institute, well - known for its men’s health and sport magazines, has long promoted organic farming while supporting the right - wing anti - fluoridation campaign. Through his correspondent Beatrice Abbott, an avid gardener, Pound was apprised that fluoridated water was a Communist scheme to stupefy the masses; he will mention water fluoridation occasionally in letters. Preceding any Left or Right concept, Physiocracy and Confucianism are merely authoritarian in accordance with “Nature”. But “nature” does not naturally ally itself with the Left, or even democracy . The family farm stands in resistance to collectives as Rome – that is, “civilization” resists Babylon – i.e. Semitic excess and barbarism. Homestead versus kolshoz Rome versus Babylon ( CIII/746 ) We might add to this equation, producers versus destroyers of production – those Portuguese ( actually Dutch ) uprooting spice trees to create scarcity and so drive up monetary values noticed in The Cantos ( LXXXIX/616, XCII/636 ). Thinking along with Pound’s agrarian bent, he might add Mencius versus Marx and more painfully, but following the same logic, racial integrity versus mongrelization; all of these, or degradation follows, as history showed.

68 A recent book in German, Braune Ökologen; Hintergrund und Strukturen am Beispiel Mecklenburg - Vorpommerns, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Band 26, Rostock 2012, shows that the connection is still strong, even in German territory .

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Alec Marsh Works cited Frederick W. Baller, The Sacred Edict of K’ Ang Hsi, Shanghai 1924. Facsimile ed. Orono: University of Maine 1979. Jeffrey Blevins, Pound Sign, in: English Literary History 81.4 ( 2014 ), pp. 1327 - 1361. Mary Patterson Cheadle, Ezra Pound’s Confucian Translations, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Alexander Del Mar, A History of Monetary Systems, Chicago: Charles Kerr, 1895. Giulio Del Pelo Pardi, For World’s Peace, Roma, 1923, trans. Giovanni Giovannini, with an introduction by Ezra Pound, New York, 1955. –––, Agricoltura e civiltà, Roma, 1923. Borighieri, 1971. Elizabeth Fox - Genovese, The Origins of Physiocracy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: Vol. II. The Science of Freedom, New York: Norton, 1977. Archie Henderson, ‘I Cease not to Yowl’ Reannotated. New Notes on the Pound / Agresti Correspondence, Houston: CreateSpace, 2009. Henry Higgs, The Physiocrats ( 1897 ), New York: Augustus M. Kelley Pub, 1968. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Richmond: Randolph, 1853. John Kasper, Statement of Defendant Nov. 16, 1957 ( sic ), Ezra Pound Papers: Personal Correspondence, Beinecke Library Yale. YCAL MSS 43, Box 26, folder 1134.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent George Kearns, Guide to Ezra Pound’s Selected Cantos, New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1980. Marguerite Kuczinski / Ronald L. Meek, Quesnay’s Tableau Économique, London: Macmillan, 1972. Peter Liebregts, Ezra Pound and Neoplatonism, Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004. Alec Marsh, John Kasper & Ezra Pound: Saving the Republic, London: Bloomsbury, 2015. –––, Money & Modernity: Pound, Williams and the Spirit of Jefferson, Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press, 1998. Lewis Maverick ( trans. ), China: A Model for Europe, San Antonio: Paul Anderson Co., 1946. Translation of Francois Quesnay, Le despotisme de la Chine, 1767. –––, ( ed. ) Economic Dialogue in Ancient China: selections from the Kuan Tzu, Los Angeles: Maverick, 1954. Ronald L. Meek, The Economics of Physiocracy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963. Mencius. The Life and Teachings of Mencius, in: The Chinese Classics, trans. James Legge, vol.2., London: Trübner, 1875. A. David Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet. Vol. III: The Tragic Years, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Eustace Mullins, This Difficult Individual, Ezra Pound, New York: Fleet Publishing, 1961. Peter Nicholls, Ezra Pound’s Lost Book: Orientamenti, in: Modernist Cultures 9.2 ( September 2014 ), pp. 139 - 157. Drew Pearson, The Washington MerryGoRound. Kasper Meeting Here Described, in: Washington Post ( 1 Dec. 1958 ), p. B17.

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Alec Marsh Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna, 2nd ed, London: Faber, 1956. Ezra Pound, The Cantos, New York: New Directions, 1996. –––, The Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. by T. S. Eliot, London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1954 –––, The Confucian Odes ( 1954 ), New York: New Directions, 1959. –––, Impact: Essays on Ignorance and the Decline of American Civilization, ed. Noel Stock, Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960. ––– / Marcella Spann, Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry, New York: New Directions, 1964. –––, Confucius [The Unwobbling Pivot. The Great Digest. The Analects], New York: New Directions, 1969. –––, Selected Prose, 1905 - 1965, ed. William Cookson, London: Faber & Faber, 1973. –––, Ezra Pound Speaking: Radio Speeches of World War II, ed. Leonard Doob, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978. –––, Ezra Pound / Letters / John Theobald, ed. Donald Pearce / Herbert Schneidau, Redding Ridge CT: Black Swan, 1984. –––, Ezra Pound’s economic correspondence, ed. Roxana Preda, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. –––, Correspondence with Jack Stafford, Beinecke YCAL 43 Box 49, folder 2190. –––, Correspondence with John Kasper, Beinecke, YCAL 43, YCAL MSS 43 Box 26, Folder 1134. –––, Correspondence with David Wang, Beinecke. YCAL 43 Box 54, folder 2485. Zhaoming Qian ( ed. ), Ezra Pound and His Chinese Friends, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. John Ruskin, Munera pulveris. Six Essays on the Elements of Political Economy, London: George Allen, 1894. Jack Stafford, Ezra Pound and Segregation, in: London Magazine 9 ( 1969 ), pp. 60 - 72.

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Pound’s Agrarian Bent Leon Surette and Demetres Tryphonopoulos ( eds. ), ‘I Cease Not to Yowl.’ Ezra Pound’s Letters to Olivia Rossetti Agresti, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Carroll F. Terrell, A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Vol. II, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

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EZRA POUND AND MR MARX, KARL Mark Steven “An epic is a poem containing history .” ( LE 86 ) So reads Ezra Pound’s eminently quotable and altogether familiar definition of the genre in which he spent most of his literary career. Just as memorable within the present context, however, is the relationship between this definition and Pound’s subsequent clarification of that third noun. “I don’t see that anyone save a sap - head can now he think he knows any history until he understands economics.” ( LE 86 ) If history means economics, or if historical understanding requires some kind of economic insight, then the epic should also be a poem containing this more specialized branch of knowledge. While such a provision will be familiar to readers of The Cantos, a long poem shot through with all manner economic postulates and monetary formulae, in what follows I want to make a case for that epic’s unlikely though formative engagement with one economist in particular, namely Karl Marx, and to argue that the economic thought of Marx and Pound is complementary in some potentially unfamiliar ways. Any sort of consonance between Marx and Pound is unlikely, to be sure, because Pound’s well - documented adherence to the diagnostic theories and reformist programs of Clifford Hughes Douglas and, later, Silvio Gesell is, as we will see, fundamentally incompatible with Marx’s account of value and his logic of class struggle. “Pound adamantly rejected the concept of class - struggle,” writes Peter Nicholls in what remains the authoritative account of Pound and Marxism. “Like Douglas, he tended to view society as almost exclusively a body of consumers.”1 Moreover, the apparent incompatibility between Pound and Marx is as much political as it is economic. Whereas Marx’s political legacy would be carried out in the early twentieth century by socialists like Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky and later by Joseph Stalin, Pound would swear allegiance to their fascist opposition in the black - shirted forces of Benito Mussolini. Nevertheless, Pound was thoroughly if imprecisely engaged with Marx and Marxism for the duration of his literary life. Stray references to Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin appear all throughout Pound’s

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Mark Steven critical writing, in his public declarations, in his letters, and in several unpublished notes. Marx is mentioned or quoted from in Cantos XIX, XXXIII, XLVI, and XLVIII, and his followers appear elsewhere: Lenin and Trotsky emerge in XVI; Stalin in XXXVIII, LII, and LXXXIV; Lenin and Stalin in LXXIV; and Lenin is quoted in CIX. All of which presents something of a tension for any study of the two writers, in that neither Marx nor Pound were static thinkers; both thought in ways that evolved drastically, sometimes in contradictory ways, over several decades. While there is value in taking a “mature” version of Pound s a whole, as a relatively stable and consistent thinker about economics, which can then be compared to the “mature” Marx, that presents problems, too. As Louis Althusser puts it, summarizing an old debate, “we must admit that Capital ( and ‘mature Marxism’ in general ) is either an expression of the Young Marx’s philosophy,  or its betrayal.  In either case, the established interpretation must be totally revised and we must return to the Young Marx, the Marx through whom spoke the Truth.”2 Similar things could be said of Pound, who was more actively or sympathetically engaged in the discursive formations of socialism in the 1910s and 1920s than he was in the 1940s and 1950s, but what should also be stated clearly is that for Pound, writing half a century or more after Marx, the older economists thinking would be mediated through the historical present of the twentieth century . In other words, while neither Marx nor Pound are absolutely consistent across the entirety of the oeuvres, Marx’s influence over Pound arrives by way of numerous heteroclite thinkers and historical phenomena. Before economics, however, we can begin teasing out an affiliation between Marx and Pound at the level of literary aesthetics. In describing Capital, the book that Marx lauded as his own masterpiece, Pound would oftentimes praise its literary accomplishment over the veracity of its economic thought. “I wonder,” Pound would muse, “really whether anyone in America has taken the trouble to detach Marx’s tenth chapter from the rest of his sometimes indefinite writing.”3 The chapter to which Pound is referring, on the working day, is Marx at his most stylistically burnished and affectively charged, and could therefore be emblematic of a principally literary appreciation for the economic thought. As Pound would say of Lenin, he “is more interesting than any surviving stylist. He probably never wrote a single brilliant sentence … but he invented or very nearly invented a new medium,

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Ezra Pound and Mr Marx, Karl something between speech and action ( language as cathode ray ) which is worth any writer’s study .”4 If, as this backhanded tribute suggests, Pound is willing to let slip economic and political commitments to pursue communist thought on the level of style, or as literary aesthetics, there is reason to hypothesize that doing so is a critical heuristic that Pound also extended back to Marx. That said, we begin examining the relationship between Marx and Pound neither with economics nor politics but with their overlapping thoughts on the epic as an aesthetic form uniquely responsive to history and as a form for which both writers share some formative precedents. The intention for what follows is to demonstrate that Pound was just as if not more sympathetic to the role of style in Marx as he was to Marx’s critique of capitalism, and that he deployed a similar style in ways that serve the comparable purpose of promoting anti - capitalist economic literacy . This examination of this literary relationship will lead us to a more thoroughgoing comparison between the economic thought of each writer. 1. Capitalism is Hel l: Mar x and Pound after Dante Marx developed an almost chiasmic inversion of Pound’s theory of the epic. While, for Pound, the epic requires an understanding of economics because it is a poem that contains history, in Marx’s view history is what ultimately circumscribes the epic precisely because of history’s economic predicate. He develops this theory most famously in a series of questions from the Grundrisse, a lengthy manuscript that Marx set aside in 1858 and which was published posthumously in 1939: “is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?”5 These questions, which consider the epic and its ancient world as incompatible with industrial capitalism, collocate almost serendipitously with Pound’s thoughts on literary historicity published throughout the same decade. For example, in How to Read from 1931, Pound also uses the language of ballistics to describe a shift out of medieval into renaissance and modern literature: “the medieval mind,” he speculates, “had little but words to deal with, and it was more careful in its definitions and verbiage. It did not

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Mark Steven define a gun in terms that would just as well define an explosion, nor explosions in terms that would define triggers.” ( LE 22 ) There are obvious differences in this. While Marx opposes the ancient epic to modern ballistics, Pound pits mediaeval precision about ballistics against modern imprecision, and while Marx is writing about the epic Pound here is interested in verbal precision. Nevertheless, both Marx and Pound appear to be in agreement that capitalist modernity, for all its advances in technology, has stripped us of some aesthetic quality, either the heroic agency required to unify the epic’s world or a kind of verbal precision. Production lines and distribution networks are, as both writers seem to appreciate, sterile environments from the standpoint of a genre once preoccupied with the glorious acts of superhuman will. What really brings Marx and Pound together on the epic, however, is not their similar claims about the genre’s apparent superannuation, which would likely condemn this form an ancient past, but their remarkably different claims for the epic’s historical survivability . These claims are remarkable because each sounds much more like the other’s thought than we might otherwise expect – because, in a strange inversion of expectations, Marx begins to anticipate Pound and Pound seems to echo Marx. For Marx, thinking about Homer, “the difficulty lies not in understanding that the Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as a norm and as an unattainable model.”6 This claim to literary immortality resonates with Pound’s insistence that, whilst Homer has lasting value because he inaugurated the epic, the “‘great dramatists’ decline from Homer, and depend immensely on him for their effects.” ( LE 27 ) In Pound’s view, by contrast to ( the young ) Marx’s almost idealistic gesture toward something like a trans - historical universalism, the epic’s survival is wagered on the logic of uneven and combined economic development – on the idea that seemingly outmoded forms like the epic persist because, in any one era, the multiple stages of history, from ancient through modern, share the one spatial landscape. “It is quite obvious,” Pound concludes the essay in which he proposes the definition with which we began, “that we do not all of us inhabit the same time.” If Marx sounds like Pound, here Pound has given a gnomic condensation of one of the most recognizably influential theories in twentieth - century Marxism, “uneven and combined development.” ( LE 86 ) This the-

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Ezra Pound and Mr Marx, Karl ory or concept, which rejects the idea that society develops through a linear sequence of stages and instead suggests a planet on which the productive forces have not developed homogenously, evolved primarily through the writings of Lenin and Trotsky, which Pound had certainly read by the time he wrote that sentence in 1934. These mirroring claims about the epic also resonate in the two writers’ compositions within that genre. Although it is tempting to propose that, as writers, both Marx and Pound progressed from lyric to epic ( or something like it ) in the standard Miltonic passage of literary maturation – evolving from short and romantically - inflected forms to culminate respectively in mature systems of Capital and The Cantos – it will be more rewarding to confirm that similarities in approach abound because both writers modelled parts of their epics on shared predecessors, including the works of Homer and Virgil but also and especially the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. That is to say, both writers think about the epic as an adjunct to capitalism, and both conscript at least one poet, Dante, as a literary template for the recrimination of that economic system. Naturally, given the anachronism in opposing a medieval poet to a modern system, this requires some détournement of the source material, to adapt the theological Dante into a secular machine age. Readers of Marx with an eye for literary detail have emphasized the parallels between Capital and the Inferno – that, for example, when Marx invites the reader away from the market and into “the hidden bode of production,” he is casting himself as Virgil and alluding to descent undertaken by Dante into the depths of Hell.7 Pound, likewise, begins The Cantos with a katabatic descent into the underworld – “And then down went the ship” ( I/3 ) – that he would later describe in both economic terms and with an allusion to the Florentine. “For forty years I have schooled myself,” he would come to reflect, “not to write an economic history of the U.S. or any other country, but to write an epic poem which begins ‘In the Dark Forest,’ crosses the Purgatory of human error, and ends in the light, and ‘fra I maestri di color che sanno.’” ( SP 167 ) Though Marx and most Marxists would likely balk at Pound’s final enthronement of the knowing masters, arguments have been made that Capital holds to a comparably Dantean structure, directing beyond the inferno and toward a paradise of communism – not within the text itself, which famously offers little in the way of political strategy, but as that text’s futural projection, a communist utopia beyond us and be-

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Mark Steven yond the book. In the most thoroughgoing comparison between Marx and Dante, William Clare Roberts superimposes the architectonic of these two books to show that, in Capital, “political economy is the Hell into which socialists and workers – Marx’s presumptive readers – must descend in order to effectively and properly orient themselves in their struggles to transform the lived, material Hell.”8 It is with Dante, then, that we can triangulate the relationship between Marx and Pound as two decidedly literary thinkers of economics. Indeed, when depicting a lived, material Hell – the Hell of industrial capitalism – both Marx and Pound frequently turn to the writings on Dante, whose epic provides a shared template for thinking the experience of life under capitalist modernity . That said, it remains irreducible that Dante only ever presents one of the proposed plans for Marx and Pound’s respective texts, rather than the plan, but in even in this way, as an allusion or citation, Dante galvanizes a web of more disparate quasi - theological registers. Beyond the sphere of circulation and exchange – which Marx describes witheringly as “a very Eden of the innate rights of man” – is the real of capitalist value, the realm of industrial production.9 It is this realm – in which “the money - owner now strides out in front as a capitalist” and “the possessor of labour - power follows as his worker” – that attracts a stylistics built from Dante.10 Here, in the workshops and on the factory floor, workers are routinely subject to comparable tortures as though chronicled in Dante’s expedition through the underworld. Marx’s descriptions of everyday terror frequently underscore the hellishness with allusion and citation. For instance, when describing the industrial production of “lucifer matches” in the workhouses of London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle, and Glasgow, Marx accounts for the lockjaw disease that typically infects phosphorous workers and for the fact that this workforce almost exclusively comprises ( in the factory inspector’s words ) “ragged, half - starved, untaught children,” delivered up by the similarly “half - starved widows” of the working class.11 This description of intergenerational exploitation – a theme Pound would take up from Marx in Cantos XXXIII and XLVIII – is not singular but only one of numerous revelations of the horrors that befall labor under capitalism. As such, it adds pigment to a mosaic of degradation the totalized form of which amounts a kind of secular hell. “Dante,” Marx reflects, “would have found the worst horrors of his Inferno surpassed in this manufac-

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Ezra Pound and Mr Marx, Karl ture.”12 Of course, that surpassing of Dante is as much to do with the fact that those horrors are completely unearned as it is with the peculiarities of damnation. In short, the workers are not subject to these tortures because they deserve it, as in Dante’s cosmic scheme of justice and love, wherein damnation is earned through wickedness; rather, the very opposite is true, that workers are unjustly abused and murdered, not because they have sinned but because they are subject to an historically specific and contingent mode of production. Pound, in the “Hell Cantos” ( XIV–XV ), would also depict England and specifically London as a Dantean hell whose pestilence is rooted in the economy: Io venni in luogo d’ogni luce muto; The stench of wet coal, politicians ... e and ... n, their wrists bound to their ankles, Standing bare bum, Face smeared on their rumps, Wide eye on flat buttock, Bush hanging for beard, Addressing crowds through their arse - holes, Addressing the multitudes in the ooze newts, water - slugs, water - maggots, And with them ... r, a scrupulously clean table - napkin Tucked under his penis, and ... m Who disliked colloquial language, Stiff starched, but soiled, collars circumscribing his legs, The pimply and hair skin Pushing over the collar’s edge, Profiteers drinking blood sweetened with sh - t, And behind them ... f and the financiers lashing them with steel wires.

( XIV/61 )

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Mark Steven That Pound, too, is consciously modeling this Hell on Dante is confirmed by the opening line, which is a direct quotation from the fifth Canto of the Inferno, wherein Dante departs limbo for the unholy darkness of hell proper. This is where, as Ronald Bush observes with a quote from Dante, those obsessed with money squat “like dogs in summer that ply, now snout, now paw, when they are bitten by fleas or gnats or flies.”13 Here, however, we should emphasize one aspect of this passage beyond its delirious grotesquerie: these lines are not simply taking aim at a handful of semi - anonymous officials – “not even the first but only the last letters of their names had resisted corruption,” recalled Pound in 1937 ( SL 293 ) – because we are also witnessing a vision anchored in the economy of England during the first decades of the twentieth century . Note that, after the line from Dante, the first contextualizing detail is a “stench of wet coal,” which is not only a superlatively English miasma but also an indexical reference to the coal - burning power stations of the second industrial revolution and, with that, to the atmospheric presence of large - scale capitalist industry . This industry, however, is not the source of horror for Pound, as it was for William Blake, but only part of a hell administered by what would become, in Pound’s evolving worldview, the real source of social corruption: that which is presented here as blood - sucking, coprophilic, and sadistic, namely the finance sector. If large - scale industry provides the architecture of this hell, Pound will eventually come to think of the “profiteers” and the “financiers” as its architects. We can now say with certainty that there are at least some literary parallels between Pound and Marx and that those parallels are responsive to capitalist modernity as it centered on London. “During the prelude of my London existence,” Pound recalls in one article written for The New Age, “I was permitted, even forced, to notice some of the viscera of this metaphorical beast,” and that is what Dante grants for both Marx and Pound: an affective if inexact means of framing that beast, and one that derives from a common desire for political censure.14 As S. S. Pawer describes it, “what Marx found most important of all in his reading of Dante was that the Inferno could provide points of comparison with which to characterize, standards against which to measure, the hell on earth which, he thought, the Victorians had created for the urban and rural poor.”15 This, too, is true of Pound. By his own admission, in a letter to John Lackay Brown, Pound claims to hav-

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Ezra Pound and Mr Marx, Karl ing conscripted Dante to better lay siege to “the unmitigated – of the present econ. system, artificially maintained by the most god damned – and liars.” While Dante might be historically anachronistic – “Dante,” concedes Pound, “is not modern truth” – his theological worldview provides an imperfect though affectively resonant insight into the “mental and spiritual rottenness” that Pound wanted to convey with maximal force. ( SL 385 ) In other words, these shared citations, allusions, or even stylistic models project a vision of capitalism as hell but also a hell that is both navigable and, finally, escapable – thought for Marx and Pound the means of escape would be vastly different. Indeed, all of this only brings us to the question that will occupy what remains of this essay: how compatible are Marx and Pound’s economic analyses when producing descriptions and critiques of capitalism? 2. Paral lax Visions: the Matter of Value The primary source of conflict between the economic thought of Marx and Pound is laid bare in a particularly hostile exchange between Pound and his Marxist protégée, Louis Zukofsky, on the fate of labor under capitalism. “There’s more material fact and imaginative poetic handling of fact in that first chapter of Marx than has been guessed at in your economic heaven,” charged the younger poet.16 While Zukofsky holds to the Marxist view that, under capitalism, labor is reduced to a sellable commodity unique in its capacity to valorize – to create value – Pound embraces the positivism typical of bourgeois economics, according to which labor cannot be a commodity because it is not an object in the most literal sense: You bloody buggering fool / Have you not even enough sense to USE A WORD with a meaning and let the meaning adhere to that word. A commodity is a material thing or substance/it has a certain durability . If you don’t dissociate ideas, and keep ONE LABEL for ONE thing of category, you will always be in a gormy mess. Labour may transmute material, it may put value into it, or make it serviceable.17

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Mark Steven Despite acknowledging that labor is a force of creation, that it ultimately valorizes raw materials, Pound wants to keep labor conceptually separate from the commodity . What this separation neglects, to Zukofsky’s consternation, is that when conscripted by wage remuneration labor has been purchased by the capitalist. So Marx reflects: “our money - owner must be so lucky as to find within the sphere of circulation, on the market, a commodity whose use - value possesses the peculiar quality of being a source of value, whose actual use, therefore, would itself be an objectification of labor, hence a creation of value.”18 In other words, the worker’s labor is purchased by some other figure – the bourgeoisie or capitalist – so that the worker can transfer value into another commodity, which is only realized as profit when the capitalist sells that commodity for a higher price than the combined cost of purchased labor and whatever raw materials. This sociality is what Marx and Marxists call the “value - relation,” in contrast to which Pound here maintains a simpler and in some ways less compelling view of social life, and social ills, under capitalism. Here we can follow Christopher Nealon’s helpful reconstruction of Pound’s economic thought by way of its lucid if unadventurous working through within Canto XXXVIII: A factory has also another aspect, which we call the financial aspect It gives people the power to buy ( wages, dividends which are power to buy ) but it is also the cause of prices or values, financial, I mean financial values It pays workers, it pays for material. What it pays in wages and dividends stays fluid, as power to buy, and this power is less, per forza, damn blast your intellex, is less than the total payments made by the factory ( as wages, dividend, AND payments for raw material bank charges, etcetera ) and all, that is the whole, that is the total, of these is added to the total of prices caused by that factory, any damn factory, and there is and must be therefore a clog and the power to purchase can never

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Ezra Pound and Mr Marx, Karl ( under the present system ) catch up with prices at large, and the light became so bright and so blindin’ in this layer of paradise that the mind of man was bewildered.

( XXXVIII/190 )

These lines set out to illustrate, in strictly pedagogical terms, Clifford Hughes Douglas’ theory of scarcity, one of the defining features of a capitalist economy . Douglas’ argument, which at the level of its most basic premise resembles that of Marx, is that the production of commodities requires a capitalist to make payments into two groups: “Group A: Payments made to individuals as wages, salaries, and dividends; Group B: Payments made to other organizations for raw materials, bank charges and other external costs.”19 Remuneration is lower than overall expenses, for Douglas, not because that is how profits are generated under capitalism, but instead and exclusively because the unproductive finance sector draws profits from the industrial sector, requiring the capitalist to make further payments ( Group B ) thereby driving up the price of commodities beyond which workers ( Group A ) can afford. This is what Pound famously calls “usury,” which he defines clearly in an addendum to Canto XLV: “A charge for the use of purchasing power, levied without regard to production; often without regard to the possibilities of production. ( Hence the failure of the Medici bank. )” ( XLV/230 ) Nealon is particularly articulate on the irony that attends the final three lines of this passage and their leap into Dante’s paradise or what Zukofsky calls Pound’s “economic heaven”: “Douglas’s theory, while trying to explain why workers can’t afford to buy the very goods they produce, skips over the question of relations of production in its race to summarize economic activity .”20 While blaming scarcity on the finance sector, which is seen to be extracting money from an industry whose workers will ultimately bear the cost, Pound and Douglas neglect precisely what Zukofsky had found in Marx: that the law of capitalist accumulation means labor is a commodity that will always be paid at a lower rate than the total price of the other commodities produced and sold. This, the function of labor within the value - relation, requires careful explanation – not to provide some corrective foil to Pound’s

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Mark Steven thoughts on economics, but because there are times when Pound seems sensitive to Marx’s understanding of that sociality . While, for Douglas, production is shortchanged by finance, according to Marx – who similarly thinks of manufacture and the market as antagonistic – the real theft, the one that defines all exploitation, is internal to the relations of production. Marx’s concept of “surplus value” is important here. Different from labor’s generative capacity to “put value into” commodities, surplus value refers to the new value created by workers in excess of the price of their labor, which is finally appropriated by the capitalist as profit when commodities are sold. In Capital, Marx shows at length how a society predicated on this kind of value - relation descends into absolute horror, when capitalists go to every extreme to extract more and more surplus value, vampire - like, from their living laborers. We have already seen, when alluding to Dante, the employment of children – the cheapest of all laborers – to work through sickness unto death in the phosphorous factories. Pound, in another and equally as hellish depiction of factory labor, paraphrases several passages from Marx on working life in the Manchester slums. Here is the first passage, as it appears in Canto XXXIII: limits of his individuality ( cancels ) and develops his power as a specie ( Das Kapital ) denounced in 1842 still continue ( today 1864 ) report of ’42 was merely chucked into the archives and remained there while these boys were ruined and became fathers of this generation for workshops remained a dead letter down to 1871 when was taken from control of municipal and placed in hands of the factory inspectors, to whose body they added eight ( 8 ) assistants to deal with over one hundred thousand workshops and over 300 tile yards. ( XXXIII/162 ) What we encounter here, at the levels of both content and form, is very different to the glaring illumination of the factory in Canto XXXVIII. This block comprises three condensations from Chapters Thirteen and Fifteen of Capital – “Co - operation” and “Machinery and Modern Industry” – the amalgamation of which generates an image of capitalist production that combines the material and social relations whose interaction is at its most decisive as industrial labor. Two aspects of this require emphasis, not only because they illuminate Pound’s un-

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Ezra Pound and Mr Marx, Karl derstanding of the value - relation according to Marx, but also because they present a version of economic thought that is more sophisticated than that which we see in Pound’s exchange with Zukofsky . First, the opening clause adapts from Marx’s insistence that the profit - driven intensification of “social labor” requires that the worker “strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.” By changing “species” to “specie,” Pound extends this metaphor by punning on the transformation of individual workers into commodities ( only etymologically related to “species,” “specie” is a term for the money - commodity ). Second, after parenthetically naming the source material as “Das Kapital” the remainder of this text is preoccupied with the state’s inability to supervise or intervene against the exploitation of labor. The object of Marx’s original text, the Workshops’ Regulation Act, is shown to have comprehensively failed to protect children from capital, not least because the factory inspectorate responsible for its implementation was catastrophically understaffed. These two aspects require emphasis because they seem to indicate Pound’s awareness that, in the value - relation, labor is in fact a commodity, and that the reification and exploitation of labor is much harder to track than the “so bright and so blindin’” parasitism of finance. That is what we are seeing in the willful complications of its form, the way the sentence leaps from subject to subject as a kind of descriptive quicksilver, which stands in contrast to what Bob Perelman has called the “aggression and frustrated pleonasm” of Canto XXXVIII. And indeed, the subsequent references to Marx from Canto XXXIII, amounting to a total of five consecutive verse - paragraphs, all develop the theme of labor as an exploited commodity, caught by the value - relation, and as a living entity that defies simple categorization. Laws introduced to limit child labor to twelve hours per day are “always blocked by the jealous uneasiness that met any law tampering with the absolute freedom of labour”; factory inspectors are denounced as “a species of revolutionary commissar pitilessly sacrificing the unfortunate labourers to their humanitarian fantasies”; factory owners and their families, “father, brother, or son,” must be forcibly removed from their sitting as magistrate for “cases concerning the spinning of cotton”; juries are unable to decide how much dust and sand workers should consume in their helpings of “real soot”; and laboring children are made unverifiable by nefarious practices: “And if the same small

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Mark Steven boys are merely shifted from the spinning room to the weaving room or from one factory to another, how can the inspector verify the number of hours they are worked?” ( XXXIII/162 - 63 ) Timothy Redman has also pointed out where, in Canto XXXIII, Pound’s text corresponds with Marx’s, but what remains unsaid is how these correspondences instantiate a meaningful engagement with Marx’s thought and method, which appears to have taken Pound beyond a mere sympathy for industrial workers.21 In his selective quotation, and in his deformations of the source text, Pound betrays a sensitivity to the value - relation, and with than an awareness of the measures taken to extract more value out of living labor as well as the real costs suffered by labor’s embodying subjects. Whether he claimed this knowledge or not, Pound reveals himself to be aware of the capitalist’s rapacious desire to extract surplus value from his purchased labor, of labor’s degradation in the face of capital, and that there are no easy solutions to this, or at least few solutions that aren’t already compromised by the interests of capital. It is this difference in emphasis, between the relations of production ( Marx ) and the exigencies of finance ( Douglas ), which ultimately causes a break between Pound and the Marxist tradition of economic thought. Of course, anti - banking features prominently within the broader discourse of Marxism, and in ways to which Pound would surely have been sympathetic. Tellingly enough, perhaps, one of Pound’s unpublished notes simply reads: “Banks. cf. Lenin.”22 While Marx had little to say in Capital about usury – “the usurer is most rightly hated,” Marx quotes Aristotle, “because money itself is the source of his gain”23 – the book’s opening chapters exhaustively prove that finance is incapable of producing real value. “Turn and twist then as we may,” writes Marx, “the fact remains unaltered. If equivalents are exchanged, no surplus - value results, and if non - equivalents are exchanged, still no surplus - value.”24 This, to Pound, would have been a validating discovery . And yet, while Pound conceived his critique of finance in relation to Marx and Marxism, he developed it in a different direction. Pound’s early political mentor and committed Douglasite A. R. Orage was partly responsible for this. In an essay from 1920, the ideas of which would evidently stick with Pound, Orage seeks to update Marx by rearranging his categories as one might command military units:

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Ezra Pound and Mr Marx, Karl The line of conflict to - day, the real trench warfare, is no longer between Capital and Labour; it is between Finance, on the one side, and Capital and Labour, more or less in the same army, on the other side. It is a hard saying, no doubt, but the world has not stood still since Marx wrote; and, in effect, his doctrines are as dead as himself.25 Equally responsible for Pound’s distancing his thought from Marxism was Pound’s 1934 discovery of the economist Silvio Gesell, who extended Douglas’ theories into a practicable model for stamp scrip as an alternative currency and who openly dismissed Marx. In 1935, Pound confirmed the influence of both Douglas and Gesell on his disengagement from Marxism as a viable method for economic critique: “Two men have ended the Marxist era. Douglas in conceiving the cultural heritage as the greatest and chief fountain of value. Gesell in seeing that ‘Marx never questioned money . He just took it for granted.”26 That Pound had reservations about this historically counterfactual line on Marx is evident enough from his adaptations from Capital in Canto XXXIII. Still, there is strong evidence that Pound maintained a similar vantage to Orage and Gesell. Take, for instance, an unpublished adaptation of one of Marx’s more striking metaphors. “Capital,” wrote Marx, “is dead labour, that, vampire - like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”27 Like Marx, Pound called finance “fictitious capital” but, in an unpublished note, he contrasts it to the “the proper use of capital,” or what he calls ( in an arresting echo of Marx’s gothic metaphor ) “real capital, productive capital as contrasted to vampire or sucking capital.”28 While this line is jarring because of its misprision of Marx – for whom capital as a whole is the vampire, draining labor of its life substances – it usefully articulates an irreducible difference in values, which would ramify into different political strategies. While sympathetic to and in some ways, or at some times, consonant with Marx’s thought, Pound would not arrive at a stance of revolutionary anti - capitalism, like Marx and the Marxists, but more exclusively a stance of anti - financial reformism. While Marxism’s chief adherents would strive to overturn or eradicate the relations of production, Pound would advocate new monetary systems, mostly famously that of Gesell’s “stamp scrip,” an alternative currency the replaces the money - commodity with “work - certificates,” as Pound has it in Can-

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Mark Steven to LXXIV. How this nascent political strategy registers as a point of differentiation is given full run in The Cantos, and specifically in Canto XLVI, published in 1937 as part of The Fifth Decad of Cantos, where Pound criticizes Marx for not bringing a compelling enough indictment against monetary accumulation through finance capital: This case, and with it the first part, draws to a conclusion, of the first phase of this opus, Mr Marx, Karl, did not foresee this conclusion, you have seen a good deal of the evidence, not knowing it evidence, is monumentum look about you, look, if you can, at St Peter’s Look at the Manchester slums, look at Brazilian coffee or Chilean nitrates. This case is the first case.

( XLVI/233 - 34 )

There are several ways of reading these lines, the difference between which might hinge of the meaning of that word, “conclusion.” It could either be referring to the first part of Pound’s own project, The Cantos, which had just culminated in the explosively critical Canto XLV. Or it could be referring to the first part of Marx’s Capital, which presents a similar charge against the Bank of England before retraining its focus on the sphere of production. If that were to be the case, this would require a awkward double figuration: the apposition of “this opus” and “Mr Marx,” suggesting their identity, and then the synecdoche of Marx with Capital, via the author function. There is also contextual reason to speculate on the use of that Latinate term, opus, which means work, or labor, as well as the product of that work or labor. While the idea that all this figuration is intentional is by no means out of the question, we only need to underscore the specific charge directed at Marx, for it confirms the willfully forced distinction between these two bodies of economic thought. These lines insist that Marx has failed to draw an evidential line between the Bank of England and the experiential realities of urban squalor; and between localized expressions of that squalor, “the Manchester slums,” and the returns of British imperialism, “Brazilian coffee” and “Chilean nitrates.” While Marx would discuss those broader geopolitical concerns elsewhere – both on the pages of Capital

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Ezra Pound and Mr Marx, Karl and in other works – according to Pound Marx is failing to name the bank, or finance, as the root of all evil. The problem, in short, is “Marx did not question money,” or at least not in a way that led to the kind of solutions that would please Pound, and which he would mistakenly believe had been implemented in fascist Italy . Finally, we conclude here by coming full circle, with economic thought arriving back at the question of literature. Pound expressed some admiration for Marx as a writer, and both Marx and Pound maintained overlapping thoughts on the epic as well a shared antecedent in Dante Alighieri. While Pound would eventually arrive at an adherence to the economic thought of Clifford Hughes Douglas, with Canto XXXVIII we encountered Douglasite economics producing a relatively flat - footed poetry, lacking in the stylistic dexterity we might otherwise expect from its author. This is the kind of thing that Robert Langbaum was thinking of when, in 1985, he observed in Pound a “lack of fusion between the poetry and the ideas, especially the ideas about money .”29 The simplicity of economic thought, there, does not lend itself to the complexities of history and of economics as they appear together and elsewhere throughout The Cantos. With Marx, by contrast, we encounter the affirmative version of that lack of fusion, an epistemologically uncertain form that seems infinitely more generative of a literary aesthetic: a mode of epic writing that not only “contains history,” but which in its Dantean turns performs history’s economic degradation – showing how capital, or in Pound’s view “usura,” rots away at the very core of our social being. Even as Pound railed against various aspects of the value - relation, the language and conceptualization with which Marx had described it nevertheless haunted his thought and writing in the form of an inexorable specter.

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Mark Steven 1 Nicholls, Ezra Pound: Politics, Economics and Writing, p. 53. 2 Althusser, For Marx, p. 52. 3 Pound, in a 1931 letter to Senator Bronson M. Cutting, quoted in Timothy Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, p. 90. 4 Pound, The Exile 4, pp. 155 - 56. 5 Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy . Ebook. ( p. 111 in Print - Version ) 6 Marx, Grundrisse ( cf. n. 5 ). Ebook ( p. 111 in Print - Version ). 7 Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1, The Process of Capitalist Accumulation, ed. Friedrich Engels. Ebook. 8 Robert, Marx’s Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital. Ebook. 9 Marx, Capital. Ebook. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Bush, The Genesis of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, p. 289. 14 Pound, Through Alien Eyes, p. 275. 15 Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature, p. 421. 16 Zukofsky quoted in Ruth Jennison, The Zukofsky Era: Modernity, Margins, and the Avant - Garde, p. 104. My reading of this exchange is consonant with Jennison’s. 17 Ibid. 18 Marx, Capital. Ebook. 19 Douglas, The Monopoly of Credit. Ebook. 20 Nealon, The Matter of Capital: Poetry and Crisis in the American Century, p. 47. 21 Redman, An Epic is a Hypertext Containing Poetry: 11 New Cantos ( 31 - 41 ) by Ezra Pound, in: A Poem Containing History: Textual Studies in The Cantos, ed. Lawrence Rainey, p. 130. 22 EP at B. 23 Marx, Capital. Ebook. 24 Ibid. 25 Orage, Notes for the Week, p. 179. 26 Pound, Social Credit: An Impact, p. 13. 27 Marx, Capital. Ebook. 28 EP at B. 29 Langbaum, The Word from Below: Essays on Modern Literature and Culture, p. 200.

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Ezra Pound and Mr Marx, Karl Works cited Louis Althusser, For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster, London: Verso, 1969. Ronald Bush, The Genesis of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, Princeton N J: Princeton University Press, 1976. Clifford H. Douglas, The Monopoly of Credit, Sudbury U K: Bloomfield Books, 1979. Ebook. T. S. Eliot ( ed. ), Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, London: Faber & Faber, 1954. Ruth Jennison, The Zukofsky Era: Modernity, Margins, and the Avant - Garde, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Robert Langbaum, The Word from Below: Essays on Modern Literature and Culture, Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. Karl Marx, Capital : A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1, The Process of Capitalist Accumulation, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, ed. Friedrich Engels, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1906. Ebook. ––––, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin Nicolaus, London: Penguin, 1973. Ebook. Christopher Nealon, The Matter of Capital: Poetry and Crisis in the American Century, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Peter Nicholls, Ezra Pound: Politics, Economics and Writing, London: Macmillan, 1984. Alfred R. Orage, Notes for the Week, in: The New Age 27.12 ( July 1920 ), pp. 177 - 179.Ezra Pound, Through Alien Eyes, in: The New Age 12.12 ( January 1913 ), pp. 275 - 276. ––––, The Exile 4 ( Autumn 1928 ). ––––, Social Credit: An Impact. London: Steven Books, 2010, p. 13.

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Mark Steven ––––, Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. Douglas D. Paige, New York: New Directions, 1971. ——, Selected Prose, 1905 - 1965, ed. William Cookson, London: Faber & Faber, 1973. ––––, The Cantos of Ezra Pound, New York: New Directions, 1998. Siegbert S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature, London, Verso: 2011. Timothy Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ––––, An Epic is a Hypertext Containing Poetry: 11 New Cantos ( 31 - 41 ) by Ezra Pound, in: A Poem Containing History: Textual Studies in The Cantos, ed. Lawrence Rainey, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1997, pp. 117 - 150. William Clare Robert, Marx’s Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital, Princeton N J: Princeton University Press, 2017. Ebook.

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EZRA POUND AND THE ANARCHIST ECONOMICS OF SILVIO GESELL Kristin Grogan The mid - 1930s were a moment of consolidation in the development of Pound’s economics. That decade saw the end of his flirtation with Marxism and his wholehearted commitment to the fascist economic policies of Mussolini’s Corporate State, as well as the intensification of his campaign against money, usury, and finance capitalism which would be the primary project for the rest of his life. Yet despite his importance in the 1930s, a key figure in this period of Pound’s life remains almost unknown to contemporary readers: the German Proudhonian anarchist and monetary theorist, Silvio Gesell. This chapter explores the impact that Gesell’s writing had on Pound’s economic thinking. It traces Gesell’s most important contribution to monetary theory – his theory of Schwundgeld, or shrinking money – its implementation in the Austrian town of Wörgl in 1932, and Pound’s conviction that Schwundgeld could break the privilege enjoyed by both banks and money . 1 This chapter then shows how Gesell influenced Pound’s anti - capitalism as well as his rejection of Marxism. It ends by reading the place of Gesell in The Cantos and in Pound’s growing interest in theories of organic growth and decay more broadly . Silvio Gesell ( 1862 - 1930 ) was a German businessmen, anarchist socialist, and economic theorist influenced by Pierre - Joseph Proudhon. Born in 1862 in Malmedy, then in Rhenish Prussia ( now Belgium ), Gesell emigrated to Argentina in 1886 and founded a company that imported surgical tools. He began writing and publishing monetary theory in the 1890s, with The Reformation of Currency as the Bridge to the Social State appearing in 1891 and Nationalisation of Money the following year. Gesell retired to Switzerland in 1900 but returned to Argentina a few years later following his brother’s death. In 1911 Gesell moved to Eden, a single - tax, vegetarian colony near Berlin, where he began a monthly 1 Gesell’s theory of perishable money has variously been referred to Schwundgeld, Freigeld, or stamp scrip.

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Kristin Grogan journal named Der Physiokrat ( The Physiocrat ), which was closed due to censorship at the outbreak of the First World War.  2 Four years later Gesell wrote The Natural Economic Order and began to find some notoriety as an economic thinker. During the short - lived socialist uprising in Bavaria in 1919, Gesell was very briefly installed as state minister of finance. The revolutionary government was overthrown after only a few days, and Gesell was indicted for treason. He successfully managed his own defense, and was acquitted. 3 Gesell is a compelling historical figure, not least for his role in the failed revolution and his almost proto - Poundian biography, but he is almost forgotten today . This is partly because of his allegiance to the French economist Proudhon, who himself is neglected in academic circles; Proudhon is remembered largely for being on the losing side of an intellectual argument with Marx. 4 Alec Marsh points out that “Gesell reminds us that Proudhon was perhaps the first political economist to realize that what capitalists call overproduction is, if left unchecked, the death of capital.” 5 Like Adam Smith, Gesell argued that scarcity generates surplus value, because production reduces the surplus value of each item produced. If surplus value is not converted into profit, then the money that supports production is invested elsewhere and production ceases. The solution, for Gesell, is to detached surplus value from money, and to reattach it to the goods that money is supposed to stand for. 6 Marsh points out that the following passage from Gesell is heavily marked in Pound’s copy of The Natural Economic Order held at his library in Brunnenburg: Let us, then, make an end of the privileges of money . Nobody, not even savers, speculators, or capitalists, must find money, as a commodity, preferable to the contents of the markets, shops, and ware - houses. If money is not to hold sway over goods, it must deteriorate as they do. Let it be attacked by moth and rust, let it sicken, let it run away; and when it comes to die let 2 Wise, Silvio Gesell, pp. 1 - 3. 3 Surette, Pound in Purgatory: From Economic Radicalism to Anti - Semitism, pp. 176 - 7. 4 See Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, for Marx’s response to Proudhon’s Système des contradictions économiques, ou, Philosophie de la misère, Paris: Garnier, 1850. 5 Marsh, Money and Modernity, p. 95. 6 Ibid., pp. 95 - 6.

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Ezra Pound and the Anarchist Economics of Silvio Gesell its possessor pay the cost of burial. Then, and not till then, shall we be able to say that money and goods are on an equal footing and perfect equivalents – as Proudhon aimed at making them. 7 “Money and goods are then perfect equivalents,” Gesell continued: “Proudhon’s problem is solved, and the fetters are burst that have prevented humanity from developing its full powers.” 8 Similarly, in the

‘money part’ of The Natural Economic Order, Gesell writes:

Money is an instrument of exchange and nothing else. Its function is to facilitate the exchange of goods, to eliminate the difficulties of barter. Barter was unsafe, troublesome, expensive and very often broke down entirely . Money, which is to replace barter, should secure, accelerate and cheapen the exchange of goods. 9 The problem, for Gesell, is that money enjoys a disproportionate privilege over perishable goods, which require a great deal of energy and resources in order to be stored and maintained, and this is a privilege which grants the capitalist such a disproportionate amount of power. He writes: The purpose of Free - Money is to break the unfair privilege enjoyed by money . This unfair privilege is solely due to the fact that the traditional form of money has one tremendous advantage over all other goods, namely that it is indestructible. The products of our labor cause considerable expense for storage and care - taking, and even this expense can only retard, but cannot prevent their natural decay . The possessor of money, by the very nature of the money - material ( precious metal or paper ) is exempt from such loss. In commerce, therefore, the capitalist ( possessor of money ) can always afford to wait, whereas the possessors of merchandise are always hurried. So if the negotiations about the price break down, the resulting loss 7 Gesell, The Natural Economic Order. Land Part, p. 9. 8 Ibid. 9 Gesell, The Natural Economic Order. Money Part, p. 130.

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Kristin Grogan invariably falls upon the possessor of goods, that is, ultimately, upon the worker ( in the widest sense ). This circumstance is made use of by the capitalist to exert pressure upon the possessor of goods ( worker ), and to force him to sell his product below the true price. 10 Gesell’s solution to this was an alternative form of legal tender called Schwundgeld, or stamp scrip, which was designed to make money depreciate ( or decay, to follow Gesell’s terminology ) over time. The holder of these notes was obliged to attach small stamps, similar to postage stamps, to the designated space of the notes at regular monthly ( or weekly ) intervals so that the bills would lose a designated portion – one per cent – of their value. Gesell describes the system in this way: Free - Money loses, at the expense of the holder. The holder has to keep the notes at their face value by attaching to them the small - change stamps mentioned above. Everyone of course tries to avoid this loss by passing on the notes. Thus the circulation of money is subjected to pressure, with the result that everyone pays ready money, settles old accounts, and at once brings any surplus money to the savings back which, in turn, must at once find borrowers for the money deposited, if necessary by reducing the rate of interest. 11 At the end of the year, the old, fully - stamped notes were to be exchanged for a new issue for circulation during the following year. As a direct tax on money, this would encourage free spending and consumption, because to amass this money would only mean that it would decrease in value. As interest could not be made from the money, the use of stamp scrip would take power away the banks’ powers to make interest from money . Gesell argued that stamp scrip would lead to uninterrupted circulation of money and unlimited sales, a simplification of commerce, the “immediate and permanent cessation of unemployment, entire disappearance of the labor reserve,” a gradual increase in

10 Ibid., pp. 136 - 7. 11 Ibid., p. 136.

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Ezra Pound and the Anarchist Economics of Silvio Gesell wages, and a gradual decline and eventual disappearance of interest. 12

He ends his outline of the effects of Freigeld with this prophetic statement: Money, accursed throughout the ages, will not be abolished by Free - Money, but it will be brought into harmony with the real needs of economic life. Free - Money leaves untouched the fundamental economic law which we showed to be usury, but it will cause usury to act like that force which seeks evil but achieves good. By eliminating interest Free - Money will clear away the present ignoble motley of princes, stockholders and proletarians, and leave space for the growth of a proud, free, self - supporting race of men. 13

By directly taxing the notes and making money self - liquidating, Gesell’s theory of stamp scrip discouraged hoarding and encouraged spending: it increased the ‘velocity’ of money . Stamp scrip’s efficacy, as Roxana Preda puts its, “relied on a psychological effect. Knowing that the notes would depreciate, no one wanted to keep them.” 14 The

Yale - based economist Irving Fisher, discussing a weekly tax, described stamp scrip as a “fleet - footed currency which nobody can hoard.” He continued: What is the secret of this extra speed on the part of stamp scrip? The secret resides in each stamp due on a Wednesday . You learn to watch Wednesday coming; and, realizing that Wednesday is tax day, you buy what you want before that day, on Thursday or Friday or Saturday or Sunday or Monday or Tuesday – and so does the next recipient, unless you “stick” him late on Tuesday night. That is, you do your buying, so far as possible, in the intervals between stamping days ( Wednesday ) in order to escape the 2 cent stamp tax which you would otherwise have to pay . Of course, if there is nothing which you ought to buy, you can 12 Gesell, The Natural Economic Order. Money Part, pp. 138 - 9. 13 Ibid., p. 139. 14 Preda, ‘Introduction’, in: Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence, p. 26.

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Kristin Grogan invest the scrip in any enterprise, or deposit it in any bank, which is a party to the initial agreement to use the scrip. Meanwhile the extra speed is of utmost benefit in a depression when everyone is afraid to spend real money . 15 Stamp scrip was put in place in the Austrian town of Wörgl, in the Tyrol, in July 1932. Wörgl’s 5,000 inhabitants were hard hit by the Depression; most of the town’s industrial workers were unemployed. The town’s Social Democrat mayor, Michael Unterguggenberger, submitted an Emergency Recovery Plan to the Relief Committee which proposed to substitute the national money for stamp scrip. The plan was accepted, and the ‘Wörgl experiment’ continued until September 1, 1933. 16 The notes were issued by the town council and called

Arbeitsbestätigungen, or certificates of work; they were used to pay salaries and taxes and from their revenue the local council were able to fund a programme of public and infrastructure works and to reduce unemployment by 25 per cent. 17 In the summer of 1934, accompanied by James Laughlin, Pound travel to Wörgl and visited the home of Unterguggenberger. Unterguggenberger “was out chopping wood,” Humphrey Carpenter writes, “but his wife showed them some of the abandoned stamp - scrip notes, and Laughlin was allowed to take away one of them worth 10 schillings, with a single tax stamp stuck on it.” 18 Despite the Austrian government scrapping the experiment, the idea gained some currency in North America during the years of the Depression. A form of stamp scrip was introduced in Hawarden, Iowa, in October 1932 ( although the town failed to mandate a set date for affixing the stamps, which Fisher deemed a grave error ); a merchants’ association in Evanston, Illinois introduced a scrip to their members in a bid to keep shoppers in Evanston, rather than Chicago. Several other towns, mostly in the Midwest, also introduced scrips. 19 Moreover, a form of stamp 15 Fisher, Mastering the Crisis, p. 157. 16 Wise, Silvio Gesell, pp. 12 - 3. 17 Preda, ‘Introduction’ in: Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence , p. 26. 18 Carpenter, A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound, p. 530. 19 Fisher, Stamp Scrip, pp. 30 - 3.

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scrip, named the “Velocity Dollar”, was introduced by the Social Credit Government of Albert in August, 1936 and was used until it was scrapped by the Canadian Federal Government the following year. A quarter of a million notes, or ‘Prosperity Certificates’ valued at one dollar were put into circulation; a one - cent stamp was affixed each week and the certificates were to be redeemed after two years. 20 Today Gesell is all but forgotten, and it is easy to ( mistakenly ) characterize him as another member of Pound’s idiosyncratic catalogue of important thinkers ( who vary in intellectual quality and historical significance ). Yet his ideas did gain some currency . In The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, J.M. Keynes wrote of Gesell: It is convenient to mention at this point the strange, unduly neglected prophet Silvio Gesell ( 1862 - 1930 ), whose work contains flashes of deep insight and who only just failed to reach down to the essence of the matter. In the post - war years his devotees bombarded me with copies of works; yet, owing to certain palpable defects in the argument, I entirely failed to discover their merit. As is often the case with imperfectly analysed intuitions, their significance only became apparent after I had reached my own conclusions in my own way . Meanwhile, like other academic economists, I treated his profoundly original strivings as being no better than those of a crank. 21 Keynes went on to write with admiration of Gesell’s contribution to monetary theory and his “moral quality”, but he also acknowledges that his theory is only “half a theory of the rate of interest,” and that “the notion of liquidity - preference had escaped him.” 22 “I believe that the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx,” wrote Keynes; we might suggest that such a future has yet to be seen. 23

20 Wise, Silvio Gesell, p. 14. 21 Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, p. 353. 22 Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, p. 356. 23 Ibid., p. 355.

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Kristin Grogan Roxana Preda dates Pound’s initial discovery of Gesell to sometime between March and July 1933, when he first read about the Wörgl experiment in Claude Cockburn’s The Week. 24 From September 1933, Pound relied on the Yale economist Irving Fisher’s book Stamp Scrip for his knowledge of Gesell’s ideas, until he obtained a copy of the Natural Economic Order early in 1935. 25 From 1933, Gesell features frequently in Pound’s prose. The first appearance of Gesell in Pound’s writing, according to Leon Surette, was in a 1933 review of Roosevelt’s Looking Forward, entitled “Points”. In it, Pound describes “the highly successful demonstration of the virtues of negative interest performed by Herr Unterguggenberger in the town of Woergl.” Pound directs Roosevelt to pay attention to “the sadistic action of the Bank of Austria, the minute they heard the simple villagers were no longer in distress.” 26 Two months later, in an article entitled “Questions” published in New Democracy in October 1933, Pound wrote: The Woergl plan worked. Not only did the town have no need to pay rent for its money ( or as they say, ‘issue bonds’ ) but the people who got the money, and who therefore HAD THE MONEY and cd. afford to pay a little rent, did pay a little, a very little rent for the money, AND IT WORKED. 27 A fortnight after this article appeared, Pound published a review of Irving Fisher’s Stamp Scrip in New English Weekly . In proper Douglasite fashion, Pound listed seven points of weakness in stamp scrip and Fisher’s book. Surette summarises these objections as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Lacks a national dividend Stamp scrip is only palliative. Lacks any ethical principle Ignores the social dividend, i.e. public ownership of technological and cultural improvements.

24 Preda, Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence, p. 27. 25 Surette, Pound in Purgatory, p. 179. 26 Pound, Points, in: New Democracy, Vol I, no. 1. ( August 25, 1933 ), p. 4. Reprinted in Blaecher, Poetry and Prose, vol. 6, p. 68. 27 Pound, Questions, with Simple Historical Reference, in: New Democracy I.4 ( October 10, 1933 ), p. 4. Reprinted in Blaecher, Poetry and Prose, vol. 6, p. 84.

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Ezra Pound and the Anarchist Economics of Silvio Gesell 5. “A community accustomed to no dividends would probably not refuse to accept them in schwundgeld” ( i.e., stamp scrip ) 6. Does not propose the abolition of taxes, as Douglas does 7. If the British dole had been paid in stamp scrip, two - thirds of their problems would be solved. 28 We might object to some of Pound’s criticisms ( compare point three, for example, with Gesell’s thunderous rhetoric about the ethics of money and Keynes’s assertion of Gesell’s “moral quality ). Pound’s praise for Gesell continued, and seems to have intensified, later that year. In November 1933, Pound wrote to William E. Woodward: Gesell solved the thing that worried me in my ABC. Undoubtedly a stroke of genius, like inventin gasoline engine or carburetter /// IT does ( I mean stamp scrip ) DOES damn well solve the question of money that will correspond with PERSIHABLE goods. Some money must MATCH permanent goods / other money must match stuff that gets eaten and used up. […] Stamp scrip gets more money into circ. without depreciating the value of the money =dollars or whatever= More money IS necessary but 2 dollars wroth fifty cents each are NOT more than $1@$1> 29 Despite Pound’s enduring loyalty to Douglas, Gesell’s theory of stamp scrip became a permanent and frequently repeated part of Pound’s economic vocabulary . Pound went to great lengths to try to unite Gesell’s theories with Douglas’s Social Credit, and to push Gesell onto Douglas and A. R. Orage. “Gesell and Untreguggie have got as far in 2 years as we

28 Surette, Pound in Purgatory, pp. 177 - 8. 29 Pound to William E. Woodward, 28. November 1933, in: Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence, pp. 76 - 7.

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Kristin Grogan have in 15”, Pound wrote to Douglas in October 1933. 30 In The Individual in His Milieu, published in The Criterion in 1935, Pound expressed his frustration with his inability to bring the two into conversation: So long as Douglasites refuse to consider ( if they any of them really do so refuse ) the unjust privileges of money above any other product, so long as Gesellites refuse to consider the cultural heritage ( the increment of association, and the possibilities inherent in a right proportion in the issue of fixed money and Schwundgeld, monnaie fondante, stamp scrip ) for just so long will both groups sabotage each other and delay economic light.  31 “Neither side shows adequate readiness to define their lines of agreement with the other,” Pound continued. 32 Despite Pound’s persistence, Orage and Douglas were not particularly receptive – and at times outright hostile – to Pound’s enthusiasm for Gesell and his attempts to unite Social Credit and Gesellian economics. “It just won’t do,” Orage wrote to Pound in October 1934, “We’ve got enough to contend with without hanging Gesell round our necks.” 33 Douglas was similarly critical: “Gesell’s practical proposals seem to me merely a continuous and heavy tax. Any validity that they have rests on the assumption the plant of civilization does not belong to the consumer.” 34 Tim Redman concludes from this letter that Douglas had not read Gesell very attentively and that he ignored Gesell’s insistence that any public money generated by the scheme would be counterbalanced by a proportional reduction in tax. Indeed, Preda argues that Pound’s vision for a synthesis of Social Credit and stamp scrip was “not so eccentric as to be dismissed offhand. Both Social Credit and Gesellism were founded on 30 Pound to C. H. Douglas, October 13, 1933, in: Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence, p. 70. 31 Pound, The Individual in his Milieu, in: Selected Prose, ed. William Cookson, London: Faber and Faber, 1973, pp. 245 - 6. 32 Ibid., p. 246. 33 Orage to Pound, October 3, 1934, quoted in Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, p. 128. 34 Douglas to Pound, September 3, 1934, quoted in Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, p. 128.

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Ezra Pound and the Anarchist Economics of Silvio Gesell critiques of the financial arrangements of liberalism: interest and the gold standard.” 35 Both sought to abolish interest, and both rejected the premise of the gold standard that money has an intrinsic value, and that this is mystically governed by gold. “Though Gesell spoke of currency and Douglas of credit,” Preda writes, “it was evident to Pound that their goals – the abolition of interest and the neutralization of the system of finance capitalism – were the same.” 36 Pound also pushed Gesell on his economically minded and left - wing poet friends. In an increasingly heated exchange of letters, Louis Zukofsky wrote to Pound in March 1936 It ain’t important whether E. P. or L. Z. read Lenin’s S[tate] & R[evolution], first. The point is, having read it how can you find Social Credit, Vol[itionist]. Ec[onomics]., & Mussolini compatible with it. I’ll send you a copy, first chance I get to pick it up, however. Might be profitable for you, too, to re - read it. Sure Lenin knew how to handle the banks, after the revolution. Gesell’s schwundgeld didn’t get that far. 37 The letter implies that Pound had written to Zukofsky about Gesell ( although that letter is not published in Pound / Zukofsky ), but Zukofsky remained skeptical. Also in March of that year, Pound made a last - ditch attempt to introduce Gesell to Russian thinkers. If by the early 1940s Pound had abandoned any residual enthusiasm for the Soviet project, in the mid - 1930s he wrote to the poet - translator and anti - Communist John Cournos about Douglas and Gesell: Are you in touch with any of these Rhooshun blokes you write about in Criterion? As there is no way of getting one grain of sense into Communists outside Russia, would there be any way of inducing Rhoosian intelligentsia to consider Douglas and Gesell? Especially Doug. as a phase of Communism suited to countries already in a higher state of technical development than their own. Converging movements. Doug’s distribution 35 Preda, Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence, p. 28. 36 Ibid. 37 Zukofsky to Ezra Pound, March 12, 1936, in: Pound / Zukofsky, ed. Barry Ahearn, p. 178.

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Kristin Grogan effective for technological phase whereas Russia started in agricultural condition. Gesell providing the great implement for breaking grip of finance. Allow for conspiracy of bankers and the new 7% Russian loan. But get the idea to some decent bloke ( if any exists ). The only real one I ever met was O.K., but all American communists are, as far as I can discover, absolute boneheads. 38 “Converging movements” is particularly telling; it encapsulates Pound’s willingness to overlook differences and objections if these movements appeared to be operating with similar aims in mind. We can thus see Gesell as an element in a broader attempt by Pound to bring diverse and seemingly incompatible economic theories together. Pound took one more crucial point from Gesell. It was through Gesell, in part, that Pound absorbed a Proudhonian critique of Marxism, and especially of Marx’s neglect of money . If the 1920s had seen Pound engage seriously with Marx, by the early -  to mid - 1930s he had turned against Marxism. In part this was a turn against the Marxist labour theory of value and towards a Douglasite view of cultural heritage, which he described as “the accumulated fruit of labour, mental and physical,” as the primary determiner of value. 39 He wrote in Jefferson and / or Mussolini in 1933 that the “‘cultural heritage’ as foundation of value in Douglas’ economics is in process of superseding labour as the fountain of values, which it WAS in the time of Marx, or at any rate was in overwhelming proportion”( J/M 127 ). If Douglas was largely responsible for Pound’s rejection of the labour theory of value, in Gesell’s writing Pound found proof of an ostensible lacuna in Marx’s thinking: namely, the issue of money . Pound argued in Social Credit: An Impact, “Amoral technocrats have gathered the statistics of production. Gesell observe that Marx found no fault with money; ‘nothing to criticize in money’; just took it for granted.” 40 In Gesell, Pound saw the antidote to “nineteenth - century blindness ( specifically Marx’s ).” 41 “Two men have ended the Marxist era,” Pound wrote, “Douglas in conceiving the cultural heritage as the 38 Pound to John Cournos, September 25, 1936, in: Selected Letters, ed. D. D. Paige, p. 276. 39 Pound to Harriet Monroe, August 13, 1935, in: Selected Letters, p. 276. 40 Pound, Social Credit, p. 7. 41 Pound, The Individual in his Milieu, p. 244.

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Ezra Pound and the Anarchist Economics of Silvio Gesell greatest and chief foundation of value. Gesell in seeing that ‘Marx never questioned money . He just took it for granted.’” 42 Taking the side of Proudhon, Gesell opens The Natural Economic Order by taking issue with Marx’s analysis with capital. He lists seven points of opposition: 1. Marx conceives of capital as real wealth. “For Proudhon, on the other hand,” Gesell writes, “interest is not the product of real wealth, but of an economic state, a condition of the market.” 43 2. Where Marx regards surplus value as “spoil resulting from the abuse of a power conferred by ownership”, Proudhon sees surplus - value as governed by supply and demand. 3. Where Marx conceived only of positive surplus value, Proudhon took the possibility of negative surplus value into account. 4. Marx’s remedy is political: the organization of the proletariat. “Proudhon’s remedy is the removal of the obstacles preventing us from the full development of our productive capacity .” 44 5. Marx promoted strikes and crises; Proudhon argued that strikes, crises, and unemployment are the allies of capital, and only hard work its enemy . 6. For Marx, strikes were the direct route to the revolution; for Gesell and Proudhon “methods of that kind carry you away from your goal. With such tactics you will never filch as much as one per cent from interest.” 45 7. Marx abhorred private ownership as involving power and supremacy; Proudhon recognised that supremacy and power are rooted in money .

42 Pound, Social Credit, p. 13. 43 Gesell, The Natural Economic Order. Land Part, p. 4. 44 Ibid., p. 5. 45 Ibid.

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Kristin Grogan This was influential for Pound, especially, as I have suggested, the seventh point; this critique of Marx’s insufficient criticism of money would reappear frequently in Pound’s economic prose. But the other points are also noteworthy . We might pause on the fifth point, for example, and remember that Pound would wholeheartedly support Italian fascism and the Italian Charter of Labour, which outlawed non - Fascist unions and the right to organise. A vocal contemporary supporter of Fascism in Europe, the economic and political writer Paul Einzig, boasted in 1933 that “strikes and lock - outs were outlawed from the very outset of the Fascist régime, and for over ten years there has been no strike or lock - out in Italy .” 46 Indeed, Pound would go on to view Proudhon as a forerunner to Italian Fascism. “The corporate state,” Pound would write in 1936, “grows out of Proudhon.” 47 One of the most important roles that Gesell would play, then, was his contribution to both Pound’s rejection of Marxism and his wholehearted commitment to the politics and economics of the far right. Pound’s attraction to Gesell was also closely tied – though it may not seem so at first glance – to his theories of language and the development of his poetics. Alec Marsh has noted that in Pound’s prose, money and language are brought together such that “the term ‘money’ often sounds as if it should mean ‘language.’” 48 For Pound, money itself “is like an inaccurate or false language, which is not true to its referents.” 49 Gesell was attractive in part because of its aim to undo the abstraction of money and return it to a concrete basis or rootedness. Gesell forms part of Pound’s anti - capitalist critique of both money and language – or culture – or, as Marsh brilliantly puts it: Capitalism has undoubtedly propelled money and monetary valuation relentlessly into the moral universe once the exclusive domain of priests, poets, and other guardians of morality, ethics, and language, so Pound’s confusion about money is a complex nostalgia for an unfallen economic world, a world where things and their values maintain a mystical connection. 46 Einzig, The Economic Foundations of Fascism, p. 11. 47 Pound, How to Save Business: Invoking Social Credit plus Free Economy to Prove no Man wants Ten Million Washtubs, pp. 195 - 6. 48 Marsh, Money and Modernity, p. 97. 49 Ibid.

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Ezra Pound and the Anarchist Economics of Silvio Gesell Gesell’s Schwundgeld attracted him because of its faithful mimesis of the real wealth of real things. 50 Gesell and his theories appear at several points in The Cantos. Wörgl appears at the very end of Eleven New Cantos: “Said C. H. “To strangle the banker ...? ” / And Woergl in our time?”. 51 Here, as Tim Redman has noted, Pound is drawing on a letter from Douglas: “The real trouble about the Woergl scheme is what has happened to the Woergl scheme, which is another way of saying that the problem of reforming the financial system is not how to reform the financial system, but how to strangle the bankers.” 52 In The Pisan Cantos, Gesell appears by name: Gesell entered the Lindhauer Government which lasted rather less than 5 days but was acquitted as an innocent stranger. ( LXXIV/462 ) It is certainly suggestive that in the extraordinary first section of The Pisan Cantos, written when Pound himself was a caged man and had, like Gesell, been indicted for treason, Gesell appears by name – rather than Wörgl or stamp scrip, Gesell himself is the focus here. Leon Surette has noted that Pound never directly likens his own situation to Gesell’s indictment. But here we received an oblique reference to the similarity between the poet and the economist, and an indication that Pound’s relationship with Gesell changed somewhat after his own indictment for treason. Not long after, in Canto LXXX, Gesell appears once more: And the Franklin Inn club ... and young fellows go out to the colonies but go on paying their dues but old William was right in contending that the crumbling of a fine house profits no one 50 Ibid., p. 99. 51 Pound, The Cantos, p. 205. 52 Douglas to Pound, quoted in Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, p. 127.

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Kristin Grogan ( Celtic or otherwise ) nor under Gesell would it happen

( LXXX/527 )

This passage comes after a reference to “Dr Weir Mitchell,” or Silas Weir Mitchell, a physician and writer whose work on neurasthenia and hysteria would be taken up by Freud, and who founded the Franklin Inn Club, a cultural club in Philadelphia, in 1902 ( C 441 ). Later in the passage Pound draws on Yeats’s poem “Upon a House shaken by the Land Agitation”, a meditation on land reform. The passage echoes Pound’s earlier tirade against usury, “With usura hath no man a house of good stone” ( XLV/229 ) Here, Gesell is admired as a figure who would prevent the crumbling of fine houses. It would be a mistake to think that Gesell was important to Pound only as an economic thinker. Or, to put it another way, for Pound, what is at stake in monetary reform is not only economics, but culture; economics are crucial precisely because they govern and protect art and culture. Sound economics, for Pound, creates better, clearer art; unnatural economics does the opposite. “The greater the component of tolerance for usury,” Pound wrote, “the more blobby and messy the work of art. The kind of thought which distinguishes good from evil, down into the details of commerce, rises into the quality of line in paintings and into the clear definition of the word written.” 53 Gesell’s Schwundgeld resurfaces again much later in the poem, in Canto CXIII of the Drafts & Cantos: but there is something intelligent in the cherry - stone Canals, bridges, and house walls orange in sunlight But to hitch sensibility to efficiency? grass versus granite, For the little light and more harmony Oh God of all men, none excluded and howls for Schwundgeld in the Convention ( CXIII/808 )

53 Pound, Immediate Need of Confucius, p. 355.

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Ezra Pound and the Anarchist Economics of Silvio Gesell Terrell suggests Gesell is compared to the currency used to finance the American Revolution ( C 721 ). Moreover, once again Gesell is linked to a sort of astounding structural soundness ( “Canals, bridges, and house walls” ), and also to “something intelligent in the cherry - stone”, an extraordinary image of the design and success of nature. These appearances might not be particularly out of the ordinary, but they do point to Gesell’s lasting impact on Pound, and to the economist’s place in Pound’s catalogue of notable figures who appear and reappear at various stages, most notably in moments of personal crisis, such as The Pisan Cantos and the emotionally resonant and troubled Drafts & Fragments. We might also place Gesell in a broader arc in Pound’s thought and his poetics, namely, an increasing emphasis on organic processes, on the natural, motivated link between the signifier and signified, and an emphasis on preserving and maintaining the ‘natural’ developments and progressions of the organic world. This preoccupation both pre -  and post - dates Gesell; we should see Gesell not as a pivotal figure but as part of a lineage. It was this sort of preoccupation with ‘natural’ language that in part accounted for Pound’s early attraction to Fenollosa and the Chinese character, as preserving a motivated relationship between signifier and signified. So too was Pound’s version of Confucianism often described as an organic, totalizing system, which he directly contrasted with “Greek splitting” or unnecessary compartmentalization and an inadequately totalizing system of thought: “at no point,” Pound writes, “does the Confucio - Mencian ethic or philosophy splinter and splinter away from organic nature.” 54 In his late poems, Pound would see in the early modern British jurist’s Edward Coke’s theories of natural tithes – in which acorns can be used as a fair and ethically sound tithe, because they renew annually, whereas to cut a slow - growing oak, ash, elm, or beech tree would constitute usury: “That grosbois is oak, ash, elm, / beech, horsbeche & hornbeam / but of acorns tithe shall be paid” ( CVIII/789 ). Like Gesell’s self - liquidating money that prevents ‘unnatural’ hoarding, Coke’s acorn tithes prevent against the ‘usurious’ destruction of landscape. Gesell, then, was part of a decades - long campaign against all that was unnatural or diseased in a capitalist world system, which led Pound to bring philosophers, artists, and economists into conversation. 54 Pound, Mang Tsze, in: Selected Prose, p. 101.

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Kristin Grogan Gesell was not an altogether transformative figure. He did not usher in a new era in Pound’s thinking nor radically alter the course of Pound’s thought, so much as he did confirm, support, and extend Pound’s existing ideas and hypotheses. But his impact on Pound’s criticism of money and finance capitalism should not be understated. Gesell presented a concrete solution to the imperishability of money and the premise of the gold standard. He also proposed a solution to the problem of money hoarding, and one that would encourage spending in the low - spending context of the Depression. Gesell’s focus on money, too, played a significant role in Pound’s critique and rejection of Marxism. And, as we have seen, Gesell both appears in Pound’s Cantos in several passages, and forms part of Pound’s ‘organic turn’, or his conviction that a sound, anti - usurious economics is in tune with the natural state of things.

Works Cited Barry Ahearn ( ed. ), Pound / Zukofsky: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky, London: Faber & Faber, 1987. Lea Baechler ( ed. ), Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose. Contributions to Periodicals, vol. 6, New York: Garland, 1991. Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound, London: Faber & Faber, 1988. Paul Einzig, The Economic Foundations of Fascism, London: MacMillan, 1933. Irving Fisher, Stamp Scrip, New York: Adelphi, 1933. –––, Mastering the Crisis, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1934.

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Ezra Pound and the Anarchist Economics of Silvio Gesell Silvio Gesell, The Natural Economic Order: A plan to secure an uninterrupted exchange of the products of labor, free from bureaucratic interference, usury, and exploitation, trans. Philip Pye, San Antonio: Free - Economy Publishing, 1934. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, London: MacMillan and Co, 1949. Alec Marsh, Money and Modernity: Pound, Williams, and the Spirit of Jefferson, Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press, 1998. Ezra Pound, The Cantos of Ezra Pound, New York: New Directions, 1996. –––, Jefferson and / or Mussolini, London: Stanley Nott, 1935. –––, How to Save Business: Invoking Social Credit plus Free Economy to Prove no Man wants Ten Million Washtubs, in: Esquire 1, ( January 1936 ), pp. 195 - 6. –––, Immediate Need of Confucius, in: Aryan Path 8, vol. 8, ( August 1937 ), pp. 354 - 8. –––, Selected Letters, ed. D. D. Paige, New York: New Directions, 1950. –––, Selected Prose, ed. William Cookson, London: Faber & Faber, 1973. –––, Social Credit: An Impact, London: Steven Books, 2010. Roxana Preda, Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence: 1933 - 1940, Gainseville: University Press of Florida, 2007. Tim Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Leon Surette, Pound in Purgatory: From Economic Radicalism to Anti - Semitism, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Carroll F. Terrell, A Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound. Volume II, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Leonard Wise, Silvio Gesell, London: Holborn Publishing and Distg. Company, 1946

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‘MONEY AND HOW IT GETS THAT WAY’ : EZRA POUND, HENRY MILLER AND THE ECONOMIC PROCESS OF THE 1930s Guy Stevenson Introduction In 1934, Ezra Pound wrote to Henry Miller extolling the virtues of his debut novel Tropic of Cancer, but also enquiring as to why Miller had not made more of “the money issue”. “Though you realize the force of money AS destiny”, Pound wrote, “the one question you haven’t asked yourself is: What IS money? who makes it/ how does it get that way?” 1. This correspondence is surprising for two connected reasons: in the first place, Miller is not the kind of writer most people would expect Pound to have enjoyed. Tropic of Cancer – a sexually graphic, autobiographical picaresque from the point of view of a struggling artist in Paris – was dismissed by the critical establishment not only as “bawdy” but insubstantial and juvenile. Although original for its then shocking confessional honesty – and in this respect a successor to James Joyce’s Ulysses – its style is “torrent[ial]”, as Frank Kermode puts it, denying “form and mesure”, where Pound’s early modernist preference was for Gustav Flaubert’s “le mot juste” and a precise “efficiency” of expression. 2 Indeed, precision and efficiency were Pound’s benchmarks for aesthetic quality in the 1910s and the reasons he gave for Joyce and Wyndham Lewis’ importance to the age. From a historical - political perspective, Pound and Miller are also remarkably unlikely bedfellows; Pound having tarnished his stellar literary reputation by siding with Mussolini during World War Two and Miller having espoused a Whitmanesque ideology of total acceptance that set the tone for America’s countercultural revolution in the 1950s and 60s. In the second place, as his question suggests, by this point in his career Pound had become fixated on economics, a subject about which there is little to no explicit discussion in Miller’s Tropic of 1 December 4th 1934, in: Stuhlmann ( ed. ), Henry Miller: Letters, p. 162. 2 Kermode, Henry Miller and John Betjeman, in: Puzzles and Epiphanies, p. 150.

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Guy Stevenson Cancer. It is entirely incongruous and therefore intriguing that Pound spoke of Miller as having “realize[d] the force of money AS destiny”, particularly since Pound’s developing obsession with economics after World War One led him to excommunicate almost all the contemporaries he had previously professed to admire. Beyond Joyce and Lewis  -  whom Pound called “the only man - sized writers” of the 1910s and 20s, but consigned in the 1930s to a pile marked “retrospect” ( GK 96 ) – he chastised his friends and mentees Robert McAlmon and Ernest Hemingway, writing to McAlmon in 1934 that by “not recognizing the economic factor you … have limited yr. work” 3. “People too lazy to examine the facts”, he explained, “are not intelligent enough to write interesting books ( reduced to bulls [Hemmingway] and memoirs [McAlmon] depending on personalities ).” 4 These writers, Pound would go on to say, were “put back in their proper cubby - holes” by the appearance of Tropic of Cancer. 5 Miller himself expressed bemusement at Pound’s interest, writing to his friend Lawrence Durrell in 1937 to complain that James Laughlin, his publisher at New Directions and a sometime protégé of Pound’s, “had got word … that he [Pound] would promote the book if I would swing the bat for his crazy social credit theories”. 6 He went on to respond in print, producing a satirical economic treatise with Pound’s exact suggestion as its title. Money and How it Gets that Way is a partly successful send - up of economic jargon and of a literary celebrity like Pound’s attempt to involve himself in economics; the treatise is “a burlesque” Miller puts it in a 1939 letter to his friend Gerhsam Legman, “on the pedagogical style”. 7 Deliberately nonsensical ( Miller also called it “a hilarious farce meaning absolutely nothing” ), it gives a good indication of Miller’s irreverence for a topic Pound treated with the utmost seriousness as well as revealing some of his genuine ideas on money that exist beneath the surface of his spoofing. 8 Miller vacillates between the assumption that the study of money is futile or “idle” –  “Money is”, he writes in Money and How it Gets that Way “and whatever form or shape it 3 Read ( ed. ), Pound / Joyce: The Letters, p. 255. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., p. 256. 6 MacNiven ( ed. ), Durrell - Miller Letters, p. 69. 7 Decker, Money and How it Gets that Way, Par 1. 8 Miller, Money and How it Gets that Way, p. 26.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ may assume it is never more nor less than money . To inquire therefore how it comes about that money has become what it is now is as idle as to inquire what makes evolution” – and occasional serious declarations about protestant, capitalist economic morality that suggest the need for radical reform. 9 This chapter will test Pound’s economic reading of Tropic of Cancer against the novel itself and other 1930s writings by Miller, seeking to provide insight not only into an anomalous and under - examined literary relationship but also the more general cross - pollination of radical political ideas that occurred in an inter - war period defined by economic crisis and political extremism. Despite Miller’s misgivings and mockeries, there are in fact ways in which Cancer can be read as an implicit critique of the system Pound despised. As we shall see, not only does Cancer address these larger economic issues allegorically, it also implicitly incorporates commodities, production and labor into its narrative. Fussing with In’nards As Peter Nicholls, K. K. Ruthven, Leon Surette, Tim Redman and Alec Marsh have all pointed out, Pound’s objection to modern capitalism was based on his conviction that usury ( defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest’ 10 had “twisted all morality out of shape” ( GK 247 ). In Ruthven’s words, Pound viewed usury as the “original sin” at the root of a modern misalignment in linguistic, societal and sexual relations. 11 By their promotion and dissemination of lending that was “contra naturam” ( against nature ), immoral bankers had contaminated every strata of human existence ( XLV/229 - 30 ). To Pound’s mind, Joyce’s Ulysses had summed up “the age of Usury” in the 1910s, a mess of economics, language, law and politics that produced vested economic interests in government and led to the outbreak of the First World War ( GK 96 ). In the wake of that conflict, he had become convinced of the conspiracy theory that governments, banks and arms companies 9 Ibid., p. 14. 10 OED, Par 1. 11 Ruthven, Ezra Pound as Literary Critic, p. 150.

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Guy Stevenson relied on war as a means of sustaining the status quo. As Ruthven notes, Pound wrote in 1944 that “usurers provoke wars to impose monopolies in their own interests ... so that they can get the world by the throat”. 12 Pound fell upon a gratifying – and oversimplified  -  antidote to the evil of usury in the form of Major C.  D. H. Douglas’ Social Credit movement. Douglas, an engineer untrained in economics, believed that the world economic model was in trouble because of the discrepancy between an exponentially high rate of production and an equally low rate of “purchasing power” among its citizens. 13 The result was a state of “overproduction” and “under - consumption”. 14 Since goods were being produced regardless of peoples’ ability to buy and consume them, Douglas claimed, it was inevitable that supply outweighed demand, leading to ever more frequent “dumping” of excess product as well as job “layoffs”. 15 The consequence of this inverse and cyclical relationship, the Social Crediters held, was an equivalent increase in the frequency of “trade wars”, and the only way for the cycle to be disrupted was to rebalance the relationship between production and purchasing power through an annual dividend allotted equally to all citizens. 16 Using Douglas’ theorems and terminology, Pound was able to connect the “unnatural increase” of usurious banking to the over production and under consumption of goods on a worldwide scale ( ABCE 18 ). Where his discussions of Ulysses are built around abstract pronouncements on financial avarice and institutional abuses of power, the essays of the thirties follow Douglas’ lead by engaging head - on with the nature of “money”, “labor”, “credit” and “interest” and the paradox between poverty and distress on the one hand and potential plenty on the other.”. 17 In Jefferson and / or Mussolini, Pound paraphrases Douglas: The way to solve the discrepancy between the goods on sale and the purchasing power of THE WHOLE PEOPLE, is by

12 Ibid., p. 152. 13 Douglas, The Use of Money, p. 14. 14 Ibid. 15 Redman, Pound’s politics and economics, p. 253. 16 Ibid. 17 Douglas, The Use of Money, p. 20.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ the issue of purchasing power DIRECTLY to the people, equitably and per person. ( J/M 23 ) If Tropic of Cancer contains no reference or allusion to “usura” or “social credit”, much less the “technocracy” and “economic computations” Pound would later accuse Joyce, of ignoring, it appealed to Pound as a first - person illustration of the human suffering wrought by the economic crisis. 18 Indeed, Pound’s identification of the “economic factor” in Cancer arises from his reading of the narrative as an accurate reflection of the individual’s subjective experience under the pressures of “the monetary system”. 19 “No one man in a thousand” he writes in The ABC of Economics “can be aroused to an interest in economics until he definitely suffers from the effects of an evil system” ( ABCE 34 ). In a review of Cancer composed in 1935 but unpublished until the 1990s, Pound defines Miller as a writer of contemporary importance because his perspective has been unclouded by exposure to the fundamental economic evils of the period. As opposed to the current crop of authors who, he says in his letter to McAlmon, are busy “fussing with in’nards which are merely the result of economic pressure” 20, Miller reports truthfully on the direct impact of a usurious banking system, of the illogical and unjustifiable “paradox between poverty and distress on the one hand and potential plenty on the other” 21. Moreover, Miller is presented as an antidote to what Pound calls the “damn rot” of “psychology” and self - indulgent introspection. 22 Here is a writer who, enlightened by his social and economic degeneration, is able to identify the impact on the individual of the malevolent governmental, economic and industrial forces that have corrupted the world. In a sense then, Pound posits Miller as a “cure” to the decadent influence of psychoanalysis on literature. In a section of Jefferson and/ or Mussolini entitled “Freud”, he rails against literary art that follows the psychoanalytical path, dismissively claiming that it represents “the flower of a deliquescent society going to pot.” “The average human 18 Read ( ed. ), Pound / Joyce: The Letters, p. 256. 19 Ibid., p. 255. 20 Ibid. 21 Douglas, The Use of Money, p. 30. 22 Read ( ed. ), Pound / Joyce: The Letters, p. 255.

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Guy Stevenson head”, he goes on, “is less in need of having something removed from it, than of having something inserted” ( J/M 100 ). This is a far cry from his position in 1920, when he praised Joyce for his psychoanalytical complexity in his depiction of Molly Bloom: “her ultimate meditations are uncensored ( bow to the psychoanalysis required at this point ). The ‘censor’ in the Freudian sense is removed” ( LE 407 ). Indeed, Pound criticized Joyce, Lewis, McAlmon and Hemingway in the 1930s for producing introspective works that dealt with the trivial anxieties of the ordinary human mind, indulging their own and their readers’ childish desires for catharsis. Presaging his 1938 retrospective description of Joyce as a writer who had “answered my invocation to ‘spew up some Rabellais to define the age’”, in 1922 Pound wrote to American educator Felix Schelling, exclaiming that from now on “it isn’t enough to give the Rabelaisian guffaw” ( SL 178 ). Art should instead operate towards an understanding of “the facts”, by which he means the great economic pressures that cause those anxieties in the first place ( SL 178 ). This attack on introspective, psychoanalytical literature – made through Pound’s use of the term “katharciser” [sic] as an insult for Joyce – implies that Miller is the originator of a new kind of confessional prose. 23 Lampooning Joyce, caricaturing him as “Jim drunk occupied with the crumb on his weskit”, while at roughly the same time praising Miller for his enlarged “circle of reference”, Pound suggests that Cancer represents a new explorative approach to subjective experience. 24 Pound’s shift in positions on the subject of literary catharsis reveals another paradox inherent in his support for Miller. Indeed, Miller located his own means of catharsis in the irreverent transgression of societal taboos; specifically, the uninhibited expression of sexual obscenity . If, as Miller put it, Cancer represents an author “coming out with it cold” in order to purge himself of harmful, repressive fears and anxieties, 25 then Pound’s disdain for Joyce as “katharciser”, “occupied with the crumb on his weskit” could apply to Miller as well. Why, then, does Pound read Miller’s own inspection of himself as a truer, more productive form of catharsis?

23 Ibid., p. 254. 24 Ibid. 25 Brooks ( ed. ), Writers at Work, pp. 153 - 54.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ In Jefferson and/or Mussolini, Pound criticizes literature that limits itself to a diagnosis of the individual’s suffering and stops short of seeking either cause or cure. If Joyce’s “foecal” analysis had served a useful purpose in its time, what is now required of confessional literature is something altogether more constructive – “That which makes a man forget his bellyache ( physical or psychic ) is probably as healthy as concentration of his attention on the analysis of the products or educts of a stomach - pump.” ( J/M 101 ). Thus Miller satisfies his desire for a literary figure who, in plumbing the depths of his everyday existence, not only proves the veniality of a usurious and “unnatural” economy but prepares the way for a healthier life. Indeed, the Miller of Pound’s review passes what William Chace, in Political Identities in Ezra Pound, describes as Pound’s litmus test for artists in the 1930s: [For Pound] The test of man is his ability to endure the contemporary hell contrived by usurers and, moreover, to so describe its shape and feel that the preciseness of his description will serve the struggle of all others so imprisoned. 26 Miller’s “honesty”, according to Pound, arises from his position as a man who has “no money” and whose “major preoccupation is ‘FOOD’” 27. Thus Pound not only categorizes Miller as virtuous for honestly representing his physical, stomachic suffering, he understands him as someone who reaffirms the core values and truths that occur at the “nadir” of a personal inferno, here represented by “the café international strata” 28. His hunger intensified at the center of the inferno, the lowest point of “the low - life”, Miller is able to identify and delineate a positive and instructive “hierarchy of values” 29.

26 Chace, Political Identities, p. 71. 27 Pound, Review of Tropic of Cancer, p. 88. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid.

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Guy Stevenson Money Dehumanized Although Pound conspicuously neglects to support his claims regarding Miller’s understanding of money, there is evidence in Cancer of a genuine interest in modern systems of industry and commerce as “unnatural” and a genuine desire for more straightforward modes of exchange. Indeed, the “shape and feel” of the “hell contrived by usurers” in Pound’s world can be traced in both the legitimate and illegitimate worlds of employment in Cancer. 30 Pound’s mission statement in ABC of Economics, to demystify the monetary system and return its various components to their basic functions, is epitomized in Miller’s veneration of prostitution at the expense of more socially acceptable professions. Miller was enamored, as Caroline Blinder points out, with the often criminal social and economic life he observed in working - class cafes, identifying his own quest to escape the fixed conditions of a repressive economic system with a system he took to represent a freer way of living: Miller … took great pride in [his] local working - class cafes, and saw [his] own ability to move from high to low culture as a sign of independence from traditional economic pressures. 31 It is through an analysis of his visits to these cafes, ans Parisian working class bars and brothels, that Pound’s Douglasite pronouncements on the corruption of societal relationships – between currency and goods, employees and their employment, men and women – can be traced. Describing his time as a copy - editor at the Paris - based American paper The Chicago Tribune, Miller posits the underworld he occasionally stumbled into as a more honest and liberated marketplace than the one in which he and his colleagues operate. In contrast to the reporters and editors at his office – compared to “frogs dancing around like drunken squibs” – the prostitute Lucienne, who dines with her pimp lover at the cafe between her shifts, is depicted as powerful, dangerous and splendidly transcendent – “a silver condor suspended over the sluggish tide of traffic ... sailing down the boulevard with her wings out30 Chace, Political Identities, p. 71. 31 Blinder, Henry Miller’s Sexual Aesthetics, p. 21.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ stretched”. 32 Unlike the tired, socially successful men who work frenetically all day, Lucienne is the mistress of her own destiny and transgressions. Above all, Miller writes, she is “no wage slave” 33. Miller’s belief that the transgression of taboo affirms the individual’s humanity is rooted in a celebratory analysis of the illegal money that changes hands between the prostitutes, their pimps and clients on the Rue Lafayette. For Miller, this black market economy is representative of a fluid, positive counterforce to the stagnant and negative flow of legal tender from citizen to business, to bank to the stock market. The sullied, crumpled notes exchanged for sex symbolize a direct relationship between human work and reward: Every bar is alive, throbbing, the dice loaded; the cashiers are perched like vultures on their high stools and the money they handle has a human stink to it. There is no equivalent in the Bank of France for the blood money that passes currency here, the money that glistens from human sweat, that passes like a forest fire from hand to hand and leaves behind it a smoke and stench. A man who can walk through the Fauberg Montmartre at night without panting or sweating, without a prayer or a curse on his lips, a man like that has no balls, and if he has, then he ought to be castrated. 34 The money is vitalized by the fact that the goods it buys are animate and bodily, because it fulfills the natural, human desire for satisfaction of the flesh rather than material acquisition. Its “human stink” substantiates it whereas the clean, untainted bank notes in the vaults of the Bank of France are disconnected from any live activity . More importantly, the currency that circulates in the Faubourg Montmartre directly participates in the universal life process through its facilitation of sexual activity . By the same token, the image of the notes passing “like a forest fire from hand to hand” is reminiscent of the universal charge that Miller remembers from his sexual encounters with another prostitute, Germaine: 32 Miller, Tropic of Cancer, pp. 164 - 65. 33 Ibid., p. 160. 34 Ibid., p. 163.

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Guy Stevenson All the men she’s been with and now you, just you, and barges going by, masts and hulls, the whole damned current of life flowing through you, though her, through all the guys behind you and after you. 35 His conception of the opposite, negative flow is illustrated in his recollection of a busy New York street in Cancer’s prequel, Tropic of Capricorn: To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don’t have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money? 36 In contrast to the seedy, decrepit Parisian quartier, “alive, throbbing with the dice loaded”, the clean, wealthy and modern American setting is sterile and lifeless. Rather than an agent for human activity, marked and stained by the humans who use it, money here is an independent, omnipresent and dominant force. The vitality of the Parisian scene is partly sourced from a sense of menace, of imminent danger that is entirely missing here. Swaddled or “lulled” by the money in their pockets and on show in the new and impressive buildings and lights around them, the Manhattan crowd is removed from the vital current of life that electrifies and sustains the prostitutes’ district in Cancer. Indeed, while the experience of walking past the prostitutes in the Fauberg Montmartre induces perspiration and a panicked shortening of breath – “panting ... sweating” – in New York a person’s very breath is “money”, their quick and urgent emotions having been neutralized by the hyper - commercial atmosphere of the street.

35 Ibid., p. 51. 36 Miller, Tropic of Capricorn, p. 108.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ Money Desexualized Thus Miller shares Pound’s horror at the dehumanizing power bestowed on money . In this respect, both see it as an independent commodity with an allure that supersedes the goods it affords. Miller’s improvisational riff, with its frenzied repetition of the word “money”, reads in part like a parody of the con artist salesman’s spiel, in part the madman’s soliloquy . “It is the money that counts” not the “object” it buys, the actual value of each object having been subsumed by its price tag – there is “no least single object anywhere that is not money”. Again describing his job at the newspaper, Miller posits the capitalist approach to money and labor as examples of a “debauchery” of ideas: What is ... strange is that the absence of any relationship between ideas and living causes us no anguish, no discomfort. We have become so adjusted that, if tomorrow we were ordered to walk on our hands, we would do so without the slightest protest. Provided, of course, that the paper came out as usual. And that we touched our pay regularly ... We have become coolies, white - collar coolies, silenced by a handful of rice each day . 37This separation “between ideas and living” is equal to Pound’s critique of the “unnatural increase” of usury ( ABCE 18 ). Just as Miller points out the futility of a thought or theory that has “no sex, no vitality” 38, Pound sees the accumulation of money from money as the result of a neutered impulse. In this way, both writers are interested in Capitalism as a symbolic and literal threat to the positive, sexual charge necessary for humanity’s survival. They are in agreement that money  -  like ideas – enslaves people when it is disconnected from its first basic and natural principals, when it becomes a negative rather than positive force of energy . Though Miller does not suggest anything like the specific reforms that Pound puts forward as a Social Crediter, they overlap in their understanding of the perpetual, active use of money as a way of demystifying and disempowering it. Increased circulation is at the heart of the idea of ‘social credit’ as something that should be regularly and equally allotted to all citizens. This relates interestingly to Pound’s introduction to de Gourmont’s The Natural Philosophy of Love, in which he 37 Miller, Tropic of Cancer, p. 158. 38 Ibid.

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Guy Stevenson equates the movement of creative thought with the reproductive activity of sperm. “Creative thought”, he writes, “is an act like fecundation, like the male cast of the human seed”. 39 Discussing this eccentric metaphor in his study Language, Sexuality, Ideology in Ezra Pound’s the ‘Cantos’, Jean - Michelle Rabaté speculates that for Pound: money becomes positive when it is fluid, when circulation is swift and easy; a liquidized money loses its bad smell, it detaches itself sufficiently from the anal gift in which it found its origin. The flow of magnetized money then figures the equivalent of sperm in its orgastic and phallic dynamic. 40 In other words, Pound sees the liquidized flow of money as representative of and symbiotic with a natural reproductive system of exchange and a natural reproductive system of thought. It is in line with this kind of thinking, then, that Miller perceives the micro economy of the red light district as “alive, throbbing” because it exists independently of a vast, economic machine. 41 As he puts it later on in the text, to “put money into circulation – that’s the principal thing” 42. Sex - trade currency, Miller claims, “will never be taken out of circulation because there’s nothing in the Banque de France to redeem it with”. 43 By its illegality, it is forced into a positive perpetual motion and by the “human sweat” and “stink” it carries ( both figuratively and literally ), it has a fair, basic and vital value, maintaining contact with the activity it affords. 44 In this way, Miller creates a stripped down version of the monetary system in which money enables consumption rather than conservation and accumulation and in which “purchasing power” is situated amongst human beings rather than “clogg[ed] up” in the machinery of capitalist market economics. Thus, when Miller writes of Lucienne as a majestic bird “suspended over the sluggish tide of traffic”, it is in direct response to the frenzy of

39 Pound, Introduction, p. vii. 40 Rabaté, Language, Sexuality, Ideology, p. 268. 41 Miller, Tropic of Cancer, p. 51. 42 Ibid., p. 197. 43 Ibid., p. 168. 44 Ibid., p. 163.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ the established economic machinery . 45 He daydreams of her, a symbol of individual liberty in a world driven crazy by money, while copy - editing the financial reports at the paper: In between the rubber and silk markets and the Winnipeg grains there oozes a little of the fizz and sizzle of the Faubourg Montmartre. When the bonds go weak and spongy and the pivotals balk and the volatiles effervesce, when the gain market slips and slides and the bulls commence to roar, when every fucking calamity, every ad, every sport item and fashion article, every boat arrival, every travelogue, every tug of gossip has been punctuated, checked, revised, pegged and wrung through the silver bracelets, when I hear the front page being hammered into whack and see the frogs dancing around like drunken squibs, I think of Lucienne sailing down the boulevard with her wings outstretched, a huge silver condor suspended over the sluggish tide of traffic. 46 Miller’s figuration of prostitutes as symbols of protest against mainstream economics is part of a more pervasive attraction to the underside of bourgeois life. If the pimps and prostitutes exploit each other and their clients, at least they make no attempt to hide the fact. Interestingly, given the common association of organized crime with money laundering, Miller posits criminal money as unlaundered, a stained symbol of the pimps’, prostitutes’ and punters’ moral transparency . It follows that the banking system itself can be read as an enormous, complex and convoluted laundering network. For Miller, criminal workers are liberated by their marginalisation since their transactions take place outside of the larger hypocrisies implicit in the international economic sphere. The description of Lucienne “suspended over the sluggish tide of traffic” suggests – perversely – that it is the very commodification of her body that has freed her from wage - slavery . The prostitute accepts, rather than obscures, the dehumanizing project represented by modern capitalist society, thereby paradoxically rendering her able to cope with its worst excesses. 45 Ibid., pp. 164 - 65. 46 Ibid.

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Guy Stevenson The Protestant Value Scale As with their common opposition to puritanical sexual codes, Pound and Miller’s ideas about the corruption of modern capitalist relations are rooted in a profound antipathy towards Lutheran and Calvinist utilitarian morals and skewed definitions of ‘wealth’. Indeed, in his Cancer review Pound suggests that Miller’s strong “hierarchy of values” is a welcome corrective to “the grossness of the protestant value scale” 47. This attempt by Pound to ally himself with Miller on the issue of religious - economic evil is paradoxically echoed in an essay on Miller by French writer Georges Bataille, who himself reads Miller as an important opponent of the banal, petit bourgeois obsession with acquisition, conservation, and social and professional productiveness. All three writers locate the evil of capitalist economics in their Lutheran roots, preferring the pre - utilitarian moral positions of pagan and – in the cases of Bataille and Pound  -  Catholic societies. In Guide to Kulchur ( 1938 ), Pound attributes the rise of usury and the cultural, moral corruption outlined earlier to Martin Luther’s sixteenth - century founding of the Protestant Church. “Putting usury on a pedestal”, Pound writes in Guide to Kulchur in order to set avarice on high, the protestant centuries twisted all morality out of shape.” ( GK 247 ). By building a moral religious system based on the limited notion of the individual’s will towards industry, he claims, Martin Luther created the conditions within which the “semitic” practice of usury – banned for fifteen centuries by the Roman Catholic Church – could flourish. According to this scheme, Calvinism – which succeeded Lutheranism as the dominant branch of European Christianity in the 1600’s – extended Martin Luther’s legacy by legalizing usury: The scale and proportion of evil, as delimited in Dante’s hell ( or the catholic hell ) was obliterated by the Calvinist and Lutheran churches. I don’t mean to say that these heretics cut off their ideas of damnation all at once, suddenly or consciously, I mean that the effect of Protestantism has been semiticly to obliterate values, to efface grades and graduations. ( GK 185 )

47 Pound, Review of Tropic of Cancer, p. 88.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ Pound consistently couches Lutheran and Calvinist corruption of Catholic values – economic and otherwise – in terms of Jewish contamination. Chace writes that “just as feelings against usury ... lead Pound immediately to feelings against Protestants, so feelings against Protestants lead him immediately to feelings against those who behave ‘semiticly’”. 48 Similarly, in his 2005 study Ezra Pound and Confucius: Remaking Humanism in the Face of Modernity, Feng Lan quotes Pound as saying that John Calvin was “responsible ... for reviving ‘the savage mythology of the Hebrews’” 49 Miller’s own reductive and racialist ( but by no means as programmatic ) comments about Jewish people require address in relation to Pound’s antipathy towards Judaism, but they appear separately to the former’s ideas of social and economic morality . Moreover, Pound makes no specific reference to Judaism in his review of Cancer. For the purpose of this Poundian economic reading of Cancer, it is productive to focus primarily on the aversion to inhuman utilitarianism that he sees reflected in the text. Pound believes that Protestantism’s promotion of work as an inherent virtue has resulted in an economic approach that excludes questions of humanity and morality . “The science of economics will not get far”, he warns, “until it grants the existence of will as a component: i.e will toward ... justice or fairness, desire for civilization, amenities etc ...” ( ABCE 35 ). In this sense modern capitalism is blighted, Pound claims, by “overwork” as much as “overproduction”, twin examples of the utilitarian loss of perspective on the fundamental functions of “money”, “goods” and “labor”. Indeed, Pound advocates a move away from the incessant emphasis on labour by introducing a shorter working day, the provision of “two hours more per day to loaf, to think, to keep fit by exercising a different set of muscles [mental]” ( ABCE 35 ). Miller’s own objection to the protestant work ethic is more radical. Where Pound promotes a healthy balance between work and leisure, Miller subverts the moral paradigm to advocate “play” instead of industry . These ideas are fundamental to Bataille’s thoughts on Cancer, which are framed according to his aversion to protestant utilitarianism, but also to the Frenchman’s very particular redefinition of the concept of ‘wealth’. Though not fixated on usury’s totemic evil, Bataille nonethe48 Chace, Political Identities, p. 78. 49 Lan, Ezra Pound and Confucianism, p. 143.

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Guy Stevenson less shares Pound’s belief that it represents the limited and damaging bourgeois protestant value system of Martin Luther and Calvin. As he puts it in The Accursed Share: Luther upheld the Church’s traditional curse against usury and generally had the aversion for business that was inherent in the archaic conception of the economy . But Calvin advanced the doctrinal condemnation of loans at interest and generally recognized the morality of commerce. “What reason is there why income from business should not be larger than that from landowning? Whence do the merchant’s profits come except from his own diligence and industry? ... from the first it was the religion of the commercial bourgeoisie.” 50 As a result of these Protestant developments, according to Bataille, “wealth was deprived of meaning, apart from productive value”, whereas “contemplative idleness, giving to the poor and the splendor of ceremonies and churches” was relegated to the category of “sin” 51 Like Pound, Bataille seeks to establish Miller as an opponent of Protestantism’s reductive and damaging idea of wealth as “productive value”. He goes further than Pound, however, promoting Miller as an exemplar of “contemplative idleness” and “splendor”. In his 1946 essay La Morale de Miller Bataille defines Cancer’s moral raison d’étre as the resistance to external bourgeois pressures to enter into “the sphere of production, to prefer the utilitarian and profitable to sensual enjoyment”. 52 Indeed Bataille pits Miller – “the child” with a full appreciation of the present and an equally full disregard for the future – against the world of social, domestic and economic productivity that an individual’s parents “are obliged to bring the child into” 53. For Bataille Miller’s position as semi - homeless vagabond artist symbolizes his desire for consumption and expenditure and his rejection of the capitalist impulse towards production and acquisition. In Miller’s writing, Bataille argues, “life’s meaning is intrinsically linked to the negation of restraint”, a philos50 Bataille, The Accursed Share, p. 122. 51 Ibid., pp. 122 - 23. 52 Bataille, La Morale de Miller, p. 2. 53 Ibid.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ ophy that is “dangerously inconvenient” because it refuses to comply with societal codes of “work, merit and reward” and invariably leads to a life of poverty and social marginalization. 54 Signs of Miller’s “negation of restraint” and refusal of “work, merit and reward” do indeed abound throughout his writing. As Bataille recognizes, the book that most clearly demonstrates his rebellion against expectations of industriousness and discipline is Capricorn. Because it describes Miller’s life before the decision to separate himself from the conventional worlds of work and family, Capricorn offers explicit accounts of his hatred for the restraint they impose and his longing to desecrate and deny it. For Miller, his German immigrant family symbolized the utilitarian religious code of hard work, cleanliness and frugality: Every wrong idea which has ever been expounded was theirs. Among them was the doctrine of cleanliness, to say nothing of righteousness. They were painfully clean. But inwardly they stank. 55 Moving back to the family home in his twenties, Miller is dismissive of his mother’s frustration that he sleeps all day rather than looking for work. She would, he writes, fly into a “Lutheran Rage” upon finding him in bed after noon. 56 Rather than admit to shame or self - loathing about his status as an adult subject to his mother’s disapproval, or indeed attempt to understand her position in hindsight, Miller elevates the act of lying in bed to an important preliminary stage in the artistic process. His mother is rounded on for her stupid blindness to the importance of dreams and the imagination, her inability to understand that this act is of far greater significance than the act of seeking employment: “Poor imbecile that she was, [she] thought I was lazy .” 57 Bataille makes a positive connection between this attitude and the moral impunity experienced by children, equating Miller’s rejection of labor as a virtuous activity not dissimilar to the child’s inability to 54 Ibid., p. 3. 55 Miller, Tropic of Capricorn, p. 11. 56 Ibid., p. 178. 57 Ibid.

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Guy Stevenson comprehend the proportions of the adult’s moral world. Citing Miller’s anecdotal story – again from Capricorn – about a rock - fight he and his cousin Gene were involved in as small boys, an episode that ended with the death of another small boy from a rival gang, Bataille posits Miller’s lack of guilt about his actions as evidence of a vital moral truth understood in childhood, but quickly forgotten when the individual enters the corruptive sphere of work and responsibility: It is not enough for Miller to simply confirm his innocence: he aggressively opposes it to the moral values of the adults. “The boy whom I saw drop dead”, he says further on, “who lay there motionless, without making the slightest sound or whimper, the killing of that boy seems almost like a clean, healthy performance. The struggle for food, on the other hand, seems foul and degrading and when we stood in the presence of our parents we could never forgive them.” ( 1946: 2 ) Miller’s refusal to regret or justify the boy’s murder is deliberately, provocatively outrageous, and intended to emphasize the intensity of his opposition to the utilitarian value system. By forgiving himself for his part in an apparently unforgivable crime, he locates a deeper, more pernicious evil in the societal transfixion with the labor - effort - money ratio. Indeed, he posits the basic requirement of working to feed one’s family – “the struggle for food” – as a sinful act that taints the adult’s experience of life. Describing the “two big slices of sour rye with fresh butter and little sugar over it” he and his cousin receive from his Aunt Caroline when they return home from the rock fight, 58 he makes a distinction between the joy and, indeed, “beauty” inherent in “ungrateful” consumption and the corruption inherent in work and monetary exchange: To give us that thick slice of bread each day the parents had to pay a heavy penalty . The worst penalty was that they became estranged from us. For, with each slice they fed us we became not only more indifferent to them, but we became more su-

58 Bataille, The Accursed Share, p. 115.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ perior to them. In our ungratefulness was our strength and beauty . Not being devoted we were innocent of all crime. 59 In the acquirement of economic responsibility, the individual becomes complicit in a production, accumulation and price obsessed system, losing the ability to savor the act of consumption: “the taste goes out of the bread as it goes out of life [since] getting the bread becomes more important than the eating of it. Everything is calculated and has a price on it”. 60 By flagging up this scene, Bataille both highlights Miller’s interest in consumption over production and emphasizes the predominance of irresponsibility and excess in the latter’s thinking about work and money . Miller might share Pound’s exasperation at the capitalist fixation on work – “getting the bread becomes more important than the eating of it” – but his response to it is less aligned with Pound’s drive to control circulation than the conflicting Bataillian interest in uncontrolled and anarchic expenditure. In this respect, Miller and Pound exhibit impulses that appear to contradict their natural politics. Although for Miller, James Decker points out, “an economy based on capital rather than on meeting basic needs seems preposterous” and he is adamant “individuals should not have to prostrate themselves in exchange for sustenance” 61, his fixation on his own pleasure through consumption and his distaste for “the struggle for food” mean he distances himself from any kind of cooperative attempt at regulating economics towards the wellbeing of the collective. Pound, on the other hand, a staunch elitist who railed against “the mob” and “the bullet - headed many”, and promoted fascist dictatorial over democratic systems of government, was closer in his economic thinking to the Marxian socialist model. The paradox is usefully explained through Jean Baudrillard’s comparison of Bataillian and Marxian economic theory: The Marxist seeks a good use of economy . Marxism is therefore only a limited petit bourgeois critique, one more step in the ba59 Ibid., p. 117. 60 Ibid. 61 Decker, Henry Miller and Narrative Form, p. 72.

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Guy Stevenson nalization of life towards the ‘good use’ of the social! Bataille, to the contrary, sweeps away all this slave dialectic from an aristocratic point of view, that of the master struggling with his death. 62 It is the fascist Pound – rather than the expressly Marxist Bataille – who seeks to reform the economic system to make “‘good use’ of the social”. Where Pound wants to sanitize a messy and manic situation masquerading as ordered and rational, Bataille ( and Miller ) deny the virtue in rationalizing monetary exchange, advocating instead a physical and desire driven model of primitive economy built on the acceptance of chaotic and uncontrolled excess. If Pound’s enemies are usury and utilitarianism, Bataille’s according to Baudrillard ( and Miller’s if we understand him according to Bataille’s reading ), “is utility, in its root. Rather than an apparently positive principle of capital: accumulation, investment, deprecation, etc. ... it is, on Bataille’s account, a principle of powerlessness, an utter inability to expend”. 63 Conclusion Ezra Pound’s unorthodox economic theories – his belief in the evil of usury and adherence to the Social Credit theory espoused by Major C. H Douglas – have become inseparable from the fascist politics he believed would actualise them. That Pound championed Henry Miller – remembered for forerunning the socially progressive, predominantly left wing countercultural movement that emerged in America after World War Two – and that he did so on explicitly economic grounds, sheds light on the contradictions inherent in his worldview. Looking past Miller’s bemusement at being endorsed by Pound, and past the plain truth that Miller was uninterested in the economic social and political program Pound was promoting, what we see is a writer whose ground level disaffection with modern capitalism was often strikingly close to Pound’s. Both writers conflated economics and sexuality, seeking a return to alignments between economic and natural patterns of 62 Baudrillard, When Bataille Attacked, pp. 192 - 93. 63 Ibid., p. 192.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ growth. Both abhorred what they regarded as the Protestant origins of corruption in all spheres of existence. More importantly, reading Pound through his appreciation of Miller demonstrates a lot more than the zealot’s misappropriation it first suggests. It illuminates the tension between Pound’s desire to correct the discrepancy between “the paradox between poverty and distress on the one hand and potential plenty on the other” and his belief that this could be achieved through totalitarian government. Concomitantly, the comparison with Miller also shows that Pound was in many ways closer in his thinking to a “use - value” Marxist logic than writers otherwise assumed to be left wing. Miller is ordinarily – and correctly – situated on the left because of his utopian hope for a world in which there is “no feeling of class, caste, color or country ... no need of possessions, no use for money, no archaic prejudices about the sanctity of the home or marriage” but his impulse towards Bataillian squander – viewed from a certain angle – is more destructive and retrogressive than the Elysium imagined by Pound. 64 Finally, these ideological slippages – the result, in part, of experimentation with radical new economic positions – shed light on a period in history when the scramble for new ways to imagine money and markets had the perverse effect of neutralizing the moral positions that motivated them. Works cited Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, New York: Zone Books, 1988. Orig. ed.: 1949. –––, La Morale de Miller ( 1946 ), in: Oeuvres completes de Georges Bataille, vol. ii, Paris: Gallimard, 1971. Orig. published in Critique I ( June, 1946 ), trans. by Caroline Blinder but unpublished. Jean Baudrillard, When Bataille Attacked the Metaphysical Principle of Economy, in: Bataille: A Critical Reader, ed. Fred Botting & Scott Wilson, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 191 - 195.

64 Miller, Of Art and the Future, p. 232.

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Guy Stevenson Caroline Blinder, Henry Miller’s Sexual Aesthetics: A Comparative Analysis of Selected Twentieth - Century Influences on Henry Miller’s Writing, Unpublished doctoral thesis, King’s College London, 1995. Van Wyck Brooks ( ed. ), Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, London: Secker and Warburg, 1963. William M. Chace, The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1973. James Decker, Henry Miller and Narrative Form: Constructing the Self, Rejecting Modernity, New York: Routledge, 2005. –––, Money and How it Gets that Way, in: Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal 1 ( 2008 ). C. H. Douglas, The Use of Money, in: The Social Credit Pamphleteer, ed. C. H. Douglas et al., Stanley Nott, Ltd.: London, 1935, pp. 5 - 30. Frank Kermode, Henry Miller and John Betjeman, in: Puzzles and Epiphanies: Essays and Reviews 1958 - 1961, ed. Frank Kermode, New York: Routledge, 1962, pp. 140 - 54. Feng Lan, Ezra Pound and Confucianism, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Ian S. MacNiven ( ed. ), Durrell - Miller Letters, 1935 - 1980, New York: New Directions, 1988. Henry Miller, Money and How it Gets that Way, Paris: Booster Publications, 1937. –––, Of Art and the Future, in: The Best of Henry Miller, ed. by Lawrence Durrell, London: New Directions, 1959, pp. 228 - 41. Orig. published in Sunday After the War, Norfolk CT: New Directions, 1944. –––, Tropic of Cancer, London: Harper Perennial, 2005. Orig. ed.: Paris: Obelisk Press, 1934. –––, Tropic of Capricorn, London: Harper Perennial, 2005. Orig. ed.: Paris: Obelisk, 1939.

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„Money and how it gets the way“ OED.com ( 1709 ). ‘Home: Oxford English Dictionary .’ http://www.oed. com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=usury&_searchBtn=Search [accessed 21st January 2014]. Ezra Pound, The ABC of Economics, London: Faber & Faber, 1933. –––,The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907 - 1941, ed. D. D. Paige, New York: New Directions, 1971. Orig. ed.: 1950. –––, Jefferson and/or Mussolini, London: Stanley Nott, 1935. –––, Guide to Kulchur, Norfolk C T: New Directions, 1952. Orig. ed.: 1938. –––, Ulysses, in: The Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot, London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1954, pp. 403 - 09. Originally published in The Dial ( June, 1920 ). –––, Introduction, in: Remy de Gourmont, The Natural Philosophy of Love, trans. by Ezra Pound, London: Neville Spearman, 1957. –––, Gold and Work ( 1941 ), in: Selected Prose, 1909 - 1965, ed. with intro. William Cookson, London: Faber, 1973, pp. 306 - 21. –––, Review of Tropic of Cancer, in: Critical Essays on Henry Miller, ed. by Ronald Gottesman, New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1992, pp. 87 - 90. Written in 1935. –––, The Cantos, New York: New Directions, 1998. Jean - Michelle Rabaté, Language, Sexuality, Ideology in Ezra Pound’s the ‘Cantos’, New York: State University of New York Press, 1986. Forrest Read ( ed. ), Pound / Joyce: The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce with Pound’s essays on Joyce, London: Faber, 1968. Tim Redman, Pound’s politics and economics, in: The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, ed. Ira B. Nadel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 249 - 263. Kenneth K. Ruthven, Ezra Pound as Literary Critic, London: Routledge, 1990. Gunther Stuhlmann ( ed. ), Henry Miller: Letters To Anaïs Nin, London: Shelden Press, 1979.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ABCE – Ezra Pound, ABC of Economics, London: Faber & Faber,

1933.

ABCR – Ezra Pound [1934], The ABC of Reading, New York: New Directions, 1960. C – Carroll Terrell, A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Con – Ezra Pound, Confucius, New York: New Directions, 1969. EPEC – Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence: 1933 - 1940, ed. Roxana Preda, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. GK – Ezra Pound, Guide to Kulchur, London: Faber & Faber, 1938. HMS – Alexander Del Mar, A History of Monetary Systems, London: Effingham Wilson Royal Exchange, 1895. ICNTY – Leon Surette / Demetres Tryphonopoulos ( eds. ), ‘I Cease Not to Yowl.’ Ezra Pound’s Letters to Olivia Rossetti Agresti, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. J/M – Ezra Pound, Jefferson and / or Mussolini, London: Stanley Nott, 1935. L/BC – E. P. Walkiewicz / Hugh Witemeyer ( eds. ), Ezra Pound and Senator Bronson Cutting, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. LE – T. S. Eliot ( ed. ), Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, London: Faber & Faber, 1954. L/JT – Donald Pearce / Herbert Schneidau ( eds. ), Ezra Pound / Letters / J ohn Theobald, Redding Ridge CT: Black Swan, 1984.

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 Od – Homer, The Odyssey . PE – Ezra Pound, Polite Essays, London: Faber & Faber, 1937. P&P – Lea Baechler ( ed. ), Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose Contributions to Periodicals, 10 Volumes, New York et al.: Garland. Pur – Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy: Purgatory . RSWWII – Leonard Doob ( ed. ), Ezra Pound Speaking: Radio Speeches of World War II, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978. SL – D. D. Paige ( ed. ), The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907 - 1941, New York: New Directions, 1971. Orig. ed.: 1950. SP – William Cookson ( ed. ), Selected Prose: 1909 - 1965, New York: New Directions, 1975.

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