Name: The Sayings of Redbeard
Rating: 4.05 (4 reviews)
ISBN: 9781716014529

49 reviews31 followers

May 26, 2022

The name Ragnar Redbeard is remembered today, to the extent that it is remembered at all, as the pseudonymous pen-name adopted by the author of an infamous political tract, and philosophical treatise, that came to be known under the title ‘Might is Right’.

Yet ‘Might is Right’ is far from the only work published under this name. On the contrary, the pseudonymous Redbeard was seemingly quite prolific, poetry and prose under this name being published in a number of obscure turn-of-the-century radical, anarchist and Nietzschean journals, a few of which have survived.

However, the only other book-length manuscript which has both survived and remained in print is this work, titled ‘Sayings of Redbeard’.

However, although I say book-length, ‘Sayings of Redbeard’ is, in length, more like a pamphlet than a book.

Moreover, rather than representing a single sustained argument, manifesto or treatise, it is composed largely of poetry and aphorisms, compiled, seemingly, in no particular order.

This is, in one sense, a benefit.

As I argued in my review of ‘Might is Right’ (full version here), Redbeard is a better poet than he is an internally-consistent or coherent moral philosopher. Therefore, ‘Sayings of Redbeard’ is arguably a superior work to ‘Might is Right’ precisely because it does not purport to set out a comprehensive or coherent treatise, but is rather composed of aphorisms and poetry.

The rampant internal contradictions that plague ‘Might is Right’ (see my review: full version here) are therefore less of a problem in ‘Sayings of Redbeard’.

H.L. Mencken, a near-contemporary of similarly Nietzschean, elitist, anti-Christian, anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic sentiments, wrote that “Religion… like poetry, is simply a concerted effort to deny the most obvious realities” and “a device for gladdening the heart with what is palpably untrue” (A Mencken Chrestomathy: p7; p569).

Redbeard would agree with respect to religion. However, with respect to poetry, he disproves Mencken’s dicta with some delightfully cynical, social Darwinist and Nietzschean verse of his own.

Inevitably, the best known (but still relatively little known) such examples come from ‘Might is Right’ and include ‘The Logic of Today’ (aka ‘The Philosophy of Power’), as well as ‘Boldly Stand Erect’ and ‘The Higher Law’.

However, no few are found also within ‘Sayings of Redbeard’. Of these, a personal favorite is this, seemingly untitled piece, which I quote in full, since it is long past copyright and seems to be almost completely unavailable elsewhere on the internet:

Let lions cease to prowl and fight,
Let eagles clip their wings,
Let men of might give up their right,
The foolish poet sings.

Let lords of gold and Caesars bold
Forever pass away,
Enrich the slaves; enthrone the knaves,
The base-born prophets say.

Yet I maintain with hand and pen
The other side of things.
The bold man’s right to rule and reign,
The way of gods and kings.

So capture crowns of wealth and power
(If you’ve the strength and can)
For strife is life’s eternal dower,
And nothing’s under ban.

Ye lions, wake and hunt and fight,
Ye eagles, spread your wings,
Ye men of might, believe you’re right
For you indeed are kings.

I notice that another reviewer on goodreads (currently the top rated review) has assumed that ‘Sayings of Redbeard’ is simply composed of extracts from ‘Might is Right’:

“Someone typed up his favorite quotes from Might is Right and published it as its own little book”.

Actually, it is a separate book in its own right and seems to have been published by ‘Redbeard’ (i.e. Arthur Desmond) himself.

Moreover, far from being composed merely of someone’s “favorite quotes from Might is Right”, there appears to be little overlap in the content of the two books.

The only notable overlap I noticed was a long passage that appears at the very beginning of the opening chapter of ‘Might is Right’, but is also included towards the end of ‘Sayings of Redbeard’, and begins:

“A man’s opportunities are never exhausted, so long as other men (who are not his friends) possess millions of acres and thousands of tons of gold…”

Certainly the two works are thematically similar, extolling social Darwinism, individualism, anti-egalitarianism and Hobbesian cynicism regarding the primacy of physical force, and, though the extreme (and self-contradictory) racialism of ‘Might is Right’ is, to my recollection, largely absent, Redbeard’s anti-Semitism (also self-contradictory) is again a recurrent theme, as is economically-illiterate nonsense about the exploitative nature of ‘usury’.

In addition, not only are the two books thematically very similar, but some of the content seems to be have been reworked from whichever of the two books was published first.

For example, ‘Might is Right’ includes the memorable rhyming couplet:

“Statute books and golden rules were made to fetter slaves and fools.”

A similar but more developed poem appears in ‘Sayings of Redbeard’, as:

“Poison lurks in pastor preachments,
Satan works through golden rules,
Hell is paved with law and justice,
Christs were made to fetter fools.”

Even more similar is another rhyming couplet that appears in ‘Sayings of Redbeard’ and ‘Might is Right’ as, respectively:

“Life is strife for every man,
for every son of thunder;
Then be a lion not a lamb,
and don’t be trampled under.”

“Life is strife for every man,
for every son of thunder;
Then be a lion in the path
and don’t be trampled under.”

Finally, given the obscurity of Redbeard’s corpus of writing, I am not even sure which of the two works was published first.

A pdf of an early edition of ‘Sayings of Redbeard’, available at the Internet Archive and also courtesy of Dil Pickle Press, describes itself in its copyright as “Reprinted from ‘Redbeard’s Review, London, 1896”.

This date, 1896, is the same as that usually cited in respect of the first full edition of ‘Might is Right’, but Trevor Blake, editor of the recently published self-styled ‘Authoritative Edition’ of Might is Right, published by Underworld Amusements, reports in his preface that:

“The 1896 edition [of Might is Right] could not have been published in 1896 based on quotes in the text that were published after 1896” (Might is Right, Authoritative Edition: p16).

All that can be said with certainty is that it is a thematically similar but independent work published roughly contemporaneously.

Thus, readers who enjoyed or found inspiration in ‘Might is Right’ would do well to pick up a copy of ‘Sayings of Redbeard’, since it contains many insightful and inspiring poems and aphorisms not contained within ‘Might is Right’.

Among my personal favorites are two rhyming couplets on the theme of life as struggle and combat:

“What are men but hungry wolves, a prowling on the heath?
If in a pack of wolves you hunt, you'd better sharp your teeth.”

“For strife and struggle
Man is born;
But sheep and lambs
Are always shorn.”

Against the Labor Theory of Property
In addition, ‘Sayings of Redbeard’ addresses several topics neglected in ‘Might is Right’.

A notable example Redbeard’s critique of the labor theory of property in a section entitled ‘The First Principle of Proprietorship’.

This is the theory, espoused by the British empiricist philosopher, John Locke, among others, that property rights ultimately derive from the labor expended in the transformation of natural resources. According to this theory, by, say, sculpting a rock into a statue, or cutting down a tree to build a log cabin, a person thereby acquires ownership over the rock statue or log cabin so created.

In contrast, Redbeard maintains that that property rights derive ultimately from force of arms:

“In the history of nations, the sword at all times commands the plow, the hammer and the spade. Everywhere the soil must be captured before it can be cultivated.”

“‘The laborer is entitled to the full fruits of his labor’… but only on condition that he… can successfully defend his product against anyone and everyone who comes up against him. Whoever can defend a thing against ‘all the world’ is its natural and rightful owner.”

“Upon land titles written in blood the entire fabric of modern industrialism is founded.”

As a matter of fact, rather than of morality, Redbeard is surely right.

However much labor a person has expended in the transformation of a natural resource, nevertheless, if this transformed resource is then taken from him by a third-party by force, then he will no longer, in any practical sense, own it.

Whether he has a theoretical moral right to the property in question is, of course, a different question—though Redbeard himself would regard the two questions, or at least their answers, as the same.

At any rate, to say a person has a theoretical moral right to certain property, even though s/he lacks the capacity to enforce that right, doesn’t really help that person very much. It is, in the absence of an enforcement mechanism, mere empty words.

Yet, while practical possession is indeed determined ultimately by force, in modern western jurisdictions, force is usually employed, not by the person asserting ownership, but rather by agents of the state (e.g. police) acting on his or her behalf. In other words, the state claims a monopoly on the use of force.

Thus, it may still be true that, as Redbeard avers, “the sword at all times commands the plow, the hammer and the spade”. However, the sword is now in the hands of, and wielded by, the Hobbesian Leviathon, not the individual.

Yet Redbeard has no trust in the state as an enforcer of individual rights, and no respect for those who would willingly surrender or delegate the enforcement of their property rights to the state.

After all, the state, in Redbard’s view, is itself a notoriously acquisitive extorter of monies. Thus, Redbeard dismisses governments as “little more than tax collecting bureaus”, claiming:

“Forms of government change but the principle of government never changes. It is taxgathering.”

Redbeard thus momorably counsels those who would place their faith in politicians or government:

“While statesmen are your shepherds ye shall not want for shearing.”

Against the Labor Theory of Value
In addition to debunking the labor theory of property, Redbeard also, almost in passing, takes a gratuitous sideswipe at an a related theory, namely the labor theory of value.

This is the view, long abandoned by serious economists, but still held as a sacosanct dogma by unreconstructed Marxists, that the economic value of goods is determined by the labor expended in their creation.

Thus, Redbeard contends:

“The sword, not labor, is the true creator of economic values.”

I am, of course, like all right-thinking people, all in favor of gratuitous sideswipes at Marxism. Moreover, the labour theory of value is indeed largely discredited.

However, the idea that ‘value’, in the economic sense, can be created by force of arms seems, on its face, even more problematic that the idea that value is created by labor.

After all, value, in the economic sense, is usually predicated on the free exchange of goods, rather than their forcible capture. Could the ‘value’ of property really be measured by, not the value of other property for which a person is willing to exchange that property, but rather the security costs expended on behalf of protecting that property (e.g. security guards, burglar alarms, barbed wire fences), or the expenses incurred in forcibly stealing such property (e.g. guns, time, risk)?

At any rate, whatever the merits of this admittedly novel and intriguing idea, to justify such a radical notion, some sort of sustained discussion and argument is surely required. Redbeard’s single throwaway sentence does not suffice.

Politics as Religion
In ‘Might is Right’, Redbeard dismisses the whole notion of religious salvation as mere wishful thinking, delusion and deception. This theme is reiterated in ‘Sayings of Redbeard’, where he writes:

“The ‘light’ that comes from Jerusalem is a wrecker’s beacon.”

However, in ‘Sayings of Redbeard’, Redbeard extends this critique to the pseudo-secular political religions of modernity (e.g. Marxism).

Thus, the notion of political liberation or emancipation is, for Redbeard, simply a secular version of, and no more realistic than, that of religious salvation:

“Rationallsts in religion are numerous, but rationalists in politics are few. Nevertheless salvation by politics is quite as much of an insanity and a dream as salvation by the watery blood of a circumcised Jew. When his faith is analyzed the average Rationalist is even more irrational than the wildest Supernaturalist. What is politics but priestcraft in a new mask and cloak?”

This anticipates a major theme of John Gray’s Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (which I have reviewed here and here).

Nihilism and Belief
Redbeard has sometimes been accused of nihilism and sometimes seemingly flirts in this direction. Thus, among his alternative beatitudes in ‘Might is Right’ is the following:

“Blessed are those who believe in nothing—Never shall it terrorize their minds.”

However, in Sayings of Redbeard, Redbeard rejects any notion of nihilism, writing:

“One must have faith and courage even to be a pirate. He who does not believe in anything does not believe in himself, which is atheism of the worst kind. A religion is essential. Nobility of action is impossible without it. Faith is an integral part of all heroic and noble nature… He must believe something or else sit down to contemplate his navel and rot into nothingness as the Buddhists teach. The negative life won’t do, remember that.”

Quite what it is that one ought to believe in is less clear. Certainly, like Nietzsche, he purports to prefer paganism over Christianity, writing, in an extension of the famous Nietzschean aphorism:

“Christ is dead. Thor lives and reigns.”

He also writes:

“The religion of the ‘Eagle and the Serpent’ is the religion of the Plains of Troy. We do not found a new religion. We revive the true one.”

However, I do not take Redbeard for a true theistic pagan.

In writing “Thor lives and reigns”, Redbeard surely meant this only in a metaphoric sense, just as Nietzsche meant the death of God in a metaphoric sense.

In a literal sense, God (like Thor) could never die, simply because He had never existed, and hence never been alive, in the first place.

Ultimately, given his radical individualism, I suspect Redbeard believes that we must, in the last instance, believe ultimately only in ourselves.

Thus, he would, I suspect, approve of the tenth century Viking, who, asked by a Frank, to what religion he adhered, reputedly replied:

“I believe in my own strength – and nothing else” (The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings: p20).

In other words, to translate Redbeard into explicitly Nietzschean terms, we might say:

God is dead; Long live the Ubermensch.

Or, as Redbeard himself might have put it:

Nietzsche said: ‘God is dead’.
Ragnar Redbeard says: ‘God is dead. Long Live Ragnar Redbeard!’

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