Esperanto and Its Rivals: The Struggle for an International Language
- Автор: Garvía Roberto
- Год: 2015
- Язык: русский
- Жанр: Культурология
Электронная книга - «Esperanto and Its Rivals: The Struggle for an International Language». Краткое содержание книги:
Up to the mid-1930s, when most Central and Eastern European countries abandoned democratic principles and nationalist and authoritarian regimes emerged, the Esperantists were able to increase their numbers and pursue different goals, which they materialized in specialized organizations. Wher- ever political conditions were favorable, a colorful array of specialized Espe- rantist organizations blossomed. These organizations had their own agendas and were governed by their own internal dynamics. Sometimes they were sub- ordinated to other international organizations, such as the Comintern or the Holy See, but most often they were loosely coupled with the official national and international organizations of the movement.
In the next chapters we see the Esperantists participating, in sometimes contradictory ways, in the public debates of their times, nested in a variety of social groups and phenomena, such as pacifists, free thinkers, teachers, old and new religious or quasi-religious movements, and movements that catered to the needs and expectations of new social groups (such as young people) or new lifestyles (vegetarians and theosophists, for example). Diverse as they were in their views and social composition, Esperantists gathered to create spe- cific organizations in order to prove that their language could help assuage the anxieties that were afflicting the European and world societies.
Pacifists, Taylorists, and Feminists
In a standardization battle where positivist feedback mechanisms operate, the number of adopters is criticaclass="underline" the more that people adopt technology A instead of B, the more likely next adopters will also choose A rather than B. But equally and perhaps more important than the number of adopters is the variety of places and social settings where adoptions occur. If adoptions con- centrate within the boundaries of a specific location or interest group, the door is open for rival technologies to gain a foothold elsewhere and offset the progress made by the first adopters. Also, if for whatever reason the social group where adoptions concentrate loses economic, social, or political lever- age, the more difficult it will be for their adopted technology to obtain visi- bility and expand, for in the same way that rational investors diversify their portfolios in order to minimize risk, technologies competing in a standard- ization battle can better sustain it the more diverse the social settings they have been able to infiltrate.
In preceding chapters we have seen that the Volapukists had the poten- tial to spread in different directions. Some saw in Volapuk an instrument to facilitate international commerce, while others were more interested in its capacity to advance scientific research, a new literary corpus, or a closer un- derstanding among nations. This potential, however, was radically curtailed given their failure to agree on the basics of their language. On the contrary, the Esperantists were able to reach such an agreement, which let their language find shelter among different and sometimes diverging social groups: from hu- manists to supremacists, from scientists and engineers to people looking for a new spirituality, and from social conservatives to anarchists. Spread in dif- ferent directions, the Esperantists made it practically impossible for later rivals to crowd them out.
Among the different groups that compounded the Esperanto movement, the pacifists were probably the most visible. As we saw in the last chapter, around 30 percent of Esperantists learned the language because they associ- ated it with pacifism. A quick glance at the international Esperanto press of the years leading up to World War I indicates that this association was rather strong. The international pacifist movement, however, was far from uniform. Different strands of pacifism coexisted, cooperating with each other most of the time, and working diligently to avoid open conflict. The most important of these strands was the realist pacifism of the French positivists and German Monists. Theirs was a quasi-determinist pacifism, based on a grand narrative that envisioned the convergence of peace and progress in the near future. For this strand of pacifism, which some supporters called "scientific pacifism," or- ganization was the buzzword: peace could only be guaranteed through the organization of the world, which required the promotion and planning of sci- entific research working against religious prejudices. Some pacifists of this school took the primacy of science over religion to its extreme, embracing one or another version of Social Darwinism. Side by side with this scientific or positivist pacifism was the old brand of religious pacifism of Quakers, Men- nonites, and Tolstoyans, as well as representatives of the Catholic and Prot- estant churches. Finally, a new strand of pacifism, not necessarily associated with the socialist movement and particularly important in the interwar years, was represented by women who linked their subjugation to militarism and military spending. Some of the leading representatives of these three branches of pacifism were also reputed Esperantists.
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Advances in the chemical and electricity industries had changed the living conditions of many people. More and more cities substituted electric for horse- drawn cars, and electricity for kerosene. An increasing number of city dwell- ers had access to a telephone, and new methods for producing paper increased the number of periodicals, making it easier for political and industrial en- trepreneurs to publicize their ideas and products. Also, the electrification of factories accelerated the introduction of the assembly line, mass production became increasingly common, and advances in medicine (such as new vac- cines and X-rays) also improved the living standards of many people. For many contemporaries, the definite triumph of science over superstition and meta- physics was only a question of time. History and progress were two sides of the same coin, and more powerful advances in science and technology could make people happier and healthier. Underpinning this grand narrative were Auguste Comte and Positivism in France and Ernst Mach and Monism in the German-speaking world.1
The changes in the economic and social environments that the second in- dustrial revolution had brought about, however, also created new problems, which, following the positivist grand narrative, demanded rational solutions. A first challenge was to rationally organize science and technology. A sec- ond problem was the destructive potential of that science and technology, for if progress could bring humanity closer to Eden, it could also destroy it. Given the lethal power of the new weaponry, many were convinced that a European war would be tantamount to total annihilation. As Bertha von Suttner put it: "Every village will be a holocaust, every city a pile of rubble, every field a field of corpses, and the war will rage on."2 For some of the most important public figures, these two problems, ensuring an orderly progress of science and making the world a more secure place, were also linked to a particular view of the role of an artificial language.
We find an example of this combination of scientism, pacifism, and sup- port for an artificial language in the German Monist and Nobel laureate in chemistry, Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932), first an Esperantist and later an Idist. Shortly before World War I, Ostwald founded Die Brucke (The Bridge: Institute for the Organizat ion of Intellectual Work). Understanding the human race as a living organism, Ostwald thought that this organism re- quired a brain, able to coordinate the scattered efforts of scientists, engineers, artists, and industrialists. The Bridge was going to be this brain. As he ex- plained to his American colleagues, The Bridge's goal was to apply scientific management to scientific research.3 This required the normalization of sci- entific technology, the publication of bibliographies, directories, encyclope- dias, international catalogues, and the like. It also required the creation of international research institutes, to maximize scientific efficiency by side- stepping inefficient national research institutions. An international institute for chemistry, for example, would standardize chemical nomenclature, establish an international committee on atomic weights, host a universal library of chemical works, and publish an international register of chemists and research projects. The Bridge promoted the universalization of the Dewey cataloguing system and also a "World Format" for scientific commu- nication, which encompassed from the standardization of scientific reports and abstracts to the size of scientific journals in order to save shelving space.4