What is Mammonism?
Mammonism is the sinister, invisible, mysterious reign of the great international
money-powers. Mammonism is however also a mindset; it is the worship of these
money-powers on the part of all those who are infected with the Mammonistic
poison. Mammonism is the unlimited hypertrophy of the -- in itself healthy --
human drive for acquisition. Mammonism is the lust for money grown into a
madness, which knows no higher goal than to pile money on top of money, which
seeks with unequaled brutality to coerce all forces of the world into its service,
and must lead to the economic enslavement, to the exploitation of the work
potential of all peoples of the world. Mammonism is the mindset that has led to a
decline of all moral concepts. Mammonism considered as a worldwide
phenomenon is to be equated with brutal, ruthless egoism in man. Mammonism is
the spirit of greed, of boundless desire to rule, of the mentality entirely focused on
seizing the goods and treasures of the world; it is at its core the religion of the
purely worldly-oriented human type.
Mammonism is the direct opposite of socialism. Socialism, conceived as the
highest moral idea, as the idea that man is not in the world only for himself alone,
that every man has duties toward the community, toward all humanity, and that
he is not only responsible for the momentary wellbeing of his family, of the
members of his tribe, of his folk, but that he also has unshakable moral obligations
toward the future of his children and his folk.
More concretely, we must see Mammonism as the conscious collusion of the
power-hungry big capitalists of all peoples. Noteworthy in this has always been the
hidden arrival of Mammonism.
The big tycoons lurk indeed as the ultimate driving force behind world
encompassing Anglo-American imperialism; nothing else. The great money-powers
indeed financed the terrifying mass-homicides of the World War. The great
money-powers have indeed, as owners of all great newspapers, woven the world
into a web of lies. They have with satisfaction whipped up all lower passions, have
diligently fostered the growth of present tendencies, and have through clever
press-propaganda brought French revanchism to a boil. They carefully nurtured the
Pan-Slavic idea, the Serbian conceit of being a great power, and the need of these
states for money, to the point that the world conflagration must ignite.
Even among us in Germany the spirit of Mammonism that wanted to know only
more export-figures, national wealth, expansion, big bank projects, and
international finance deals, led to a rout of public morality, to the decline of our
ruling circle into materialism and hedonism, to a superficiality in our national life,
all factors that share blame for the terrifying collapse.
- Gottfried Feder, Manifesto for the abolition of slavery to Interest on Money