Ernst Niekisch explores the development of Americanism and comfortism, highlighting how young America’s technical and economic ambitions fostered a society driven by material comfort and liberal values, distinct from the qualitative traditions of old Europe.
This is an excerpt from Ernst Niekisch’s Europäische Bilanz (European Assessment), 1951.
The bourgeois economism of young America, unencumbered by any feudal-class tradition, soon allied itself with the intellectual-aristocratic type of the technician; it adopted the types of priest and philosopher only as rudimentary appendages. The economic drive to accumulate globally merged with the technical urge to conquer nature; the result was an economic and political force of unprecedented victoriousness. There was nothing for which the price could not be paid, no difficulty that could not be surmounted by finding the necessary means and ways. In every respect, it was the land of unlimited possibilities, and what seemed impossible was made possible. Old Europe had a constant sense of boundaries and the peculiarities woven into its own limits, thus qualities. Young America knows no boundaries; qualities do not interest it — they are outdated junk, consolation for those who need to immerse themselves in the small and discover charms in the minor. Where there are no boundaries, one has an eye only for quantities; beyond the vast stretches lies even more, beyond the large lies the gigantic. The small and the narrow are contemptible; one proves one’s healthy strength by not being crushed by any enormity.
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