The Naked Capitalist (quotes)

Quotes from the book, The Naked Capitalist, by W. Cleon Skousen (a review and commentary on Dr. Carroll Quigley’s book, Tragedy and Hope.) Note – Bill Clinton, during his Democratic presidential nomination acceptance speech in 1992, named Dr. Carroll Quigley as his ‘mentor’!
———————————————————————————————————-
When Carroll Quigley wrote his 1,300 page book called TRAGEDY AND HOPE, he knew he was deliberately exposing one of the best kept secrets in the world. As one of the elite ‘insiders’, he knew the scope of this power complex and he knew that its leaders hope to eventually attain total global control. Dr. Quigley makes it clear throughout his book that by and large he warmly supports the goals and purposes of the ‘network’. But, why did Quigley write this book? He says in effect, that it is now too late for the little people to turn back the tide. In a spirit of kindness he is therefore urging them not to fight the noose which is already around their necks. He feels certain that those who do will only choke themselves to death. On the other hand, those who go along with the immense pressure which is beginning to be felt by all humanity will eventually find themselves in a man-made millennium of peace and prosperity. Quigley assures us that we can trust these benevolent, well-meaning men who are secretly operating behind the scenes. THEY are the HOPE of the world. All who resist them represent TRAGEDY … hence, the title for his book.
Dr. Quigley states, “I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for 20 years and was permitted for 2 years in the early 1960’s, to examine It’s papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of it’s aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of it’s instruments. I have objections … to a few of it’s policies … but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe it’s role in history is significant enough to be known.”
Quigley expresses the utmost contempt for members of the American middle class who think they can preserve what he calls ‘petty-bourgeois’ property rights and Constitutional privileges.
Quigley admits he is telling more than his comrade-in-arms would care to have disclosed. He thinks it is time people knew who was running things.
The real value of TRAGEDY AND HOPE is [first] the rather bold and boastful admission by Quigley that there actually exists a relatively small but powerful group which has succeeded in acquiring a choke-hold on the affairs of practically the entire human race. Of course we should be quick to point out that no small group could wield such gigantic power unless millions of people in all walks of life were ‘in on the take’ and were willing to knuckle down to the iron-clad regimentation of the bosses behind the scenes. The network has succeeded in building it’s power structure by using tremendous quantities of money (together with the vast influence it buys) to manipulate, intimidate, or corrupt millions of men & women and their institutions on a world-wide basis.

Dr. Quigley says the true dimensions of the whole scheme are better appreciated when it is realized that the far-reaching aim of the dynastic bankers was; “… nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. Each central bank … sought to dominate it’s government by it’s ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.”

Having established how powerful the money-managers of the world have now become, Quigley’s second purpose appears to have been his desire to let us know what the political philosophy of these world giants has turned out to be. This is the most shocking aspect of his book. It is all the more disturbing because the facts in this part of the book fit perfectly with the world of reality in which we find ourselves. Many things which have seemed inconsistent and incongruous suddenly loom up with startling clarity as Quigley provides an insider’s analysis of what has been happening.
There is a growing volume of evidence that the highest centers of political and economic power have been forcing the entire human race toward a global, socialistic, dictatorial-oriented society. And what has been most baffling about it has been the fact that this drift toward dictatorship with it inevitable obliteration of 1000 years of struggle toward human freedom, is being plotted, promoted and implemented by the leaders of free nations and the super rich of those nations whose positions of affluence would seem to make them the foremost beneficiaries of the free-enterprise, property-oriented, open society in which so much progress has been made. Certainly they, above all men, should know that in order for this system to survive, freedom of action and the integrity of property rights must be preserved. Then why are the super capitalists trying to destroy them?
Quigley provides an answer that is so startling that at first it seems virtually inconceivable. It becomes rational only as his scattered references to it are collected and digested point by point. In a nutshell, he has undertaken to expose what every insider like himself, has known all along – that the world hierarchy of the dynastic super-rich is out to take over the entire planet, doing it with socialistic legislation where possible, but having no reluctance to use communist revolution where necessary. [Chip – note, I think more along the lines of fascism which is a kindred philosophy of socialism]
As an example of how a “thread” of this ‘network’ has grown, we trace John Ruskin’s influence (1819 – 1900) on Oxford. “ … in that year [1870] John Ruskin was named to such a chair [professorship of fine arts]. He hit Oxford like an earthquake … because he talked about the empire and England’s downtrodden masses, and above all because he talked about these things as moral issues.”

What were his ideas? “He saw that the state must take control of the means of production and distribution and organize them for the good of the community as a whole … he was prepared to place the control of the state in the hands of a single man.” Ruskin derived most of his ideas and inspiration “directly from the source book of all dictatorships, Plato’s Republic. He read Plato almost every day, and of course, Marx, Engels, Proudhon and Saint-Simon. Plato wanted a ruling class with a powerful army to keep it in power and a society completely subordinate to the monolithic authority of the rulers. The upper dimensions of Plato’s ‘ideal’ society included the elimination of marriage and the family so that all women would belong to all men and all men would belong to all women. Children resulting from these promiscuous unions would be taken over by the government as soon as they were weaned and raised anonymously by the state. There was to be selective breeding under control of the government and children considered inferior or crippled were to be destroyed. Women were to be equal with men – to fight wars with the men.” Ruskin taught that the ruling class of England had a world mission. Cecil Rhodes, one of his students, caught the vision of a world-wide federation. Rhodes (1853 – 1902) exploited the diamond and gold fields of South Africa and “left part of his fortune to found the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford in order to spread the English ruling class tradition throughout the English-speaking world as Ruskin had wanted.” Rhodes and other Ruskin disciples formed a series of secret societies “ … institutes of International Affairs were established in the chief British dominions and in the United States (where it is known as the Council on Foreign Relations) in the period 1919-1927 … the American branch of this organization (sometimes called the Eastern Establishment) has played a very significant role in the history of the United States in the last generation …”
“Money for the activities of this organization came originally from the associates and followers of Cecil Rhodes … since 1925 there have been substantial contributions …[from] … other organizations associated with J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller and Whitney families …”
Dr. Quigley bluntly confesses that the International Bankers who had set out to remake the world were perfectly confident that they could use their money to acquire the cooperation and eventual control of the communist-socialist conspiratorial groups. John Ruskin had persuaded … that the way to federate the world was along socialistic lines, i.e. by having all property, industry, agriculture, communications, transportation, education and political affairs in the hands of a small cadre of financially-controlled political leaders who would organize the world and its peoples in a way which would compel everyone to do what was good for the new world-society.
It may seem somewhat contradictory that the very people whom Marx identified as the epitome of “capitalism” should be conspiring with the followers of Marx to overthrow traditional capitalism and replace it with socialism. But the record supports the Quigley contention that this is precisely what has been happening. The reason is rather simple.
Power from any source tends to create an appetite for additional power. Power coming from wealth tends to create an appetite for political power and visa versa. It is almost inevitable that the super-rich would one day aspire to control not only their own wealth, but the wealth of the whole world.
To achieve this, they were perfectly willing to feed the ambitions of the power-hungry political conspirators who were committed to the overthrow of all existing governments and the establishment of a central world-wide dictatorship along socialistic lines. This was … a risky business for the Anglo-American secret society. The super-rich were gambling on the expectations that when the violence and reconstruction had been completed by the political conspirators, the super-rich would then take over (like Plato’s philosopher-kings and ruling class) to guide mankind hopefully and compulsively into a whole new era of universal peace and prosperity.
To take such a risk, the cadre of super-rich had to ignore the most elemental aspects of the ferocity of the left-wing conspiratorial mentality. Mao Tse-tung has articulated the basic communist conviction that political power comes from the barrel of a gun and once they seize control it is their expressed intention to use the gun to prevent the super-rich or anyone else from taking their control away from them.
Nevertheless, the secret society of the London-Wall Street axis elected to take this risk. The master-planners have attempted to control the global conspiratorial groups by feeding them vast quantities of money for their revolutionary work and then financing their opposition if they seemed to be getting out of control. This policy has required them to deliberately align themselves with dictatorial forces which have committed crimes against humanity in volume and severity unprecedented in history. It has required them to finance and support international intrigue by the most ruthless kind of political psychopaths. Studies show that many of these totalitarian political demagogues never would have come to power without the financial support of the super-rich.
But for all of this, Quigley pleads that these London-Wall Street manipulators had the best of intentions and were really angels in disguise. Here is the way he says it; “The chief aims of this elaborate, semi-secret organization were largely commendable: to coordinate the international activities and outlook of the English-speaking world into one; to work to maintain peace; to help backward, colonial and underdeveloped areas to advance toward stability, law & order & prosperity along the lines somewhat similar to those taught at Oxford and the University of London (especially the School of Economics and the Schools of African and Oriental studies”.

Note Quigley’s admission that the remaking of the world by the super-rich was to be along the socialist lines taught at those British institutions which look upon global socialism as the hope of the world. Quigley continues …. “These organizations and their financial backers were in no sense reactionary or fascistic persons, as the communist propaganda would like to depict them. Quite the contrary. They were gracious and cultured gentlemen … who were much concerned with the freedom of expression of minorities and the rule of law for all … if their failures now loom larger than their successes, this should not be allowed to conceal the high motives with which they attempted both.”
“It is this group of people, whose wealth and influence so exceeded their experience and understanding, who provided much of the framework of influence which the communist sympathizers and fellow-travelers took over in the United States in the 1930’s. It must be recognized that the power that these energetic left-wingers exercised was never their own power or communist power but was ultimately the power of the international financial coterie …”.
Once (in the 1950’s) the American branch of this secret society barely escaped being exposed … “Once the anger and suspicions of the American people were aroused, as they were by 1950, it was a fairly simple matter to get rid of the Red sympathizers. Before this could be done, however, a congressional committee, following backward to their source, the threads which lead from admitted communists like Whitaker Chambers, through Alger Hiss and the Carnegie Endowment to Thomas Lamont and the Morgan Bank, fell into the whole complicated network of interlocking tax-exempt foundations.” [The 83rd Congress, 1953, Special Committee to investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations with Rep. Reese of Tenn., as chairman] “It soon became clear that people of immense wealth would be unhappy if the investigation went too far and that the ‘most respected’ newspapers in the country, closely allied with these men of wealth, would not get excited enough about any revelations to make the publicity worthwhile, in terms of votes or campaign contributions. An interesting report showing the leftwing associations of the interlocking nexus of tax-exempt foundations was issued in 1954, rather quietly.”
“More than 50 years ago, the Morgan firm decided to infiltrate the left-wing political movements in the United States. This was relatively easy to do, since these groups were starved for funds and eager for a voice to reach the people. Wall Street supplied both. The purpose was not to destroy, dominate, or take-over, but was really threefold, (1) to keep informed about the thinking of the left-wing or liberal groups, (2) to provide them with a mouthpiece so that they could ‘blow off steam’ and (3) to have a final veto on their publicity and possibly their actions, if they ever went ‘radical’ “
Throughout his book, Quigley ridicules the stupid ‘radical right’ (his favorite epithet for ordinary Americans trying to preserve their Constitutional prerogatives) and says they are missing the real target when they blame all subversion and chicanery on the communists. His attack on the ‘radical right’ is primarily because of their ‘ignorance’ in failing to recognize the vast secret network of master planners for whom the communists are working, particular in Europe and the United States.
“There is, however, a considerable degree of truth behind the joke, a truth which reflects a very real power structure. It is this power structure which the radical right in the United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they were attacking the communists. This is particularly true when these attacks were directed as they so frequently are, at ‘Harvard Socialism’, or ‘Left-Wing Newspapers’ like the New York Times and Washington Post …”
“There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical right believes the communists act.”

“This is the group which created the basic structure of the United Nations … there were 74 CFR members in the American delegation to the U.N. Conference at San Francisco in 1945. They included Alger Hiss (communist spy), Harry Dexter White (Soviet agent), John McCloy (formerly head of Rockefeller Chase-Manhattan Bank), Harold Stassen, Nelson Rockefeller, John Foster Dulles, Dean Acheson …”
Dr. Quigley contends that the CFR and the Global Establishment have gained such a hold on the elective process in the United States that no matter which political party goes into power, the winner is beholden to those powers to a significant degree.
“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers… Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”
The whole concern of the globalist conspiracy is to do their work in such a way that the public will not become sufficiently aroused to use their ‘votes and campaign contributions’ to knock the agents of the Establishment out of political power in Washington. As long as the Constitution remains in effect, the American people still have an opportunity to wake up and ‘throw the rascals out’. Quigley was horrified, along with his fellow ‘insiders’ when this earth-shaking possibility almost became a reality in 1964.
Dr. Quigley admits that nothing panics the international Establishment like the possibility of a threatened exposure. Whenever the public has become dangerously aware of the conspiratorial process operating around them, the vast interlocking power structure of the whole London-Wall Street combine has immediately shifted into high gear and raced to the rescue. Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, government policy-makers, college officials, and other opinion molders in high places have all commenced a recitation of a carefully prepared ‘line’ designed to pacify the public and put them back to sleep.
Of course, to members of the Establishment, their globalist socialist society represents the ultimate dream in human achievement. Therefore, to them, anti-communist Americans look like reactionary conspirators who are guilty of postponing the communal millennium with our old-fashioned Constitutional concepts of freedom and self-determination.
The political climate of 1964 was such that a capable conservative candidate had an excellent chance of winning the presidency. Money & manpower was thrown into the primaries to try and stop Barry Goldwater before he ever got to San Francisco. The Establishment forces at the Republican National Convention were represented by the Rockefeller-Scranton contingents. To veteran political observers it was amazing how strong the locked-in Goldwater delegates stood up under the pressure. Goldwater was nominated. The Establishment then turned to its own locked-in resources of power. The media were turned on Goldwater with blazing vengeance. In retrospect, it was an amazing demonstration of what a controlled press can do in a free republic. The tactic was to divert the attention of the people away from the real issues and use whatever circumstances became available to frighten the American people away from Goldwater. It was impossible for Goldwater to be heard on the issues when the press, the magazines, the radio and TV were all pounding out a subtle (and sometimes blatant) message of ‘extremist’, ‘racist’, ‘atomic-bomber’, ‘trigger-happy’, ‘war-monger’ and ‘he will scrap social security’. The election did not hinge on the popularity of Lyndon Johnson. He was a secondary figure. It was not a testament to his wisdom or leadership, but rather an indication of the violent dislike for Goldwater generated largely by the hundreds of magazine articles, the derogatory remarks of the columnists. It will be recalled how hysterically Dr. Quigley reacted to the Senator Joseph McCarthy situation? Goldwater did the same thing to him. The possibility of the American people turning their backs on the trend toward socialism and actually longing for the open fields and blue sky of a free society, practically sent Quigley into a frenzy. Note how he feels compelled to explain Goldwater support only in terms of ignorance, stupidity …”

“His [Goldwater’s] most ardent supporters were of the extremist petty bourgeois mentality driven to near hysteria by the disintegration of the middle classes and the steady rise in prominence of everything they consider anathema, Catholics, Negroes, immigrants, intellectuals, aristocrats and educated men generally, people from big cities, or from the East, internationalists and above all, liberals who accept diversity as a virtue.”
In the best tradition of Marx and Lenin, Quigley insists that the small property owner is a roadblock to progress and must be eventually eliminated. Goldwater’s supporters were “petty bourgeoises” (note the key words in the first sentence of the above quotation) It makes one think be might be reading Karl Marx or Lenin.
Dr. Quigley is certain that the Global Establishment has the brains and the resources to put down any Americans like McCarthy or Goldwater who have the audacity to suggest that America can restore the basic Constitutional concepts on which she was built and eliminate from public life those who have been subverting them.
“On the whole, the neo-isolationists discontent was a revolt of the ignorant against the informed or educated, of the 19th century against the insoluble problems of the 20th … of the simple absolutes against complex relativism … of frontier activism against European thought, a rejection out of hand, of all the complexities of life which has arisen since 1915 in favor of a nostalgic return to the simplicities of 1905 and above all, a desire to get back to the inexpensive, thoughtless and irresponsible international security of the 1880’s.”
In this quotation, Quigley clearly sets the stage for the coming conflict between traditional Americans and the powerful secret combination of the Global Establishment. Quigley has no doubt in his mind as to the final outcome. He equates hope and progress with the Establishment, tragedy and horse-and-buggy backwardness with traditional Americanism.
Of course, if you go to Washington, New York, the United Nations headquarters, or to the capitals of any major nation in the world, you will find massive evidence that Quigley has a basis for his bias. His people ARE everywhere. And, they ARE running things!
As I see it, the great contribution which Dr. Quigley unintentionally made by writing TRAGEDY AND HOPE was to help the ordinary American realize the utter contempt which the network leaders have for ordinary people. Human beings are treated en masse as helpless puppets on an international chess board where giants of economics and political power subject them to wars, revolutions, civil strife, confiscation, subversion, indoctrination, manipulation and deception as it suits their fancy and their concocted schemes for world domination. But this mass of world humanity is precisely the source of latent power which terrifies the Establishment. There is the constant fear that the masses might awaken and frustrate their gigantic schemes, particularly where they acquire an education and accumulated a little property (which gives them a highly significant degree of independence). The great middle class is recognized to be the backbone of our society, the most important segment of the population in maintaining a progressive, self-governing, secure and freedom-loving people. But … if you are trying to set up a virtual dictatorship, this group is an enemy. This group will resist a dictatorship. At least, it will do so if it knows what is happening.
So this is the fact of life which the super-rich collectivists of the Establishment face today. Everything they do must be accomplished in an atmosphere of propaganda and deception. Otherwise they keep running into a groundswell of resentment and resistance as they try to compel middle class Americans to give up their independence, their property and their Constitutional prerogatives.
Pressure from the top and pressure from the bottom … the current tactic is to create revolution, violence and extremely serious social dislocation at the bottom while creating an ever-increasing pressure at the top for the monolithic power by demanding that the executive branch of the Federal government be given massive power to “solve” all these problems.

Naturally, many fine, well-meaning people support the broad ramifications of social legislation because they think they are supporting ‘a good cause’ … but as time has gone by … it has gradually become alarmingly apparent what all this social legislation is doing to us. Americans are losing control of their destiny. Furthermore, many of the people whom we have been calling our national problem-solvers have been secretly engaged in actual problem-making.
Actually, what we are witnessing is a very carefully and methodically executed program designed to destroy constitutional government as we have known it and make a shambles of the society which has wanted to keep the Constitution alive. Only then can a highly centralized, socialist state be established.
To achieve this, the middle class in America must be ruthlessly squeezed out of existence. That is the message which looms large from many passages in Dr. Quigley’s book and which will be found as a favorite theme in the books, magazines and newspapers of the Establishment’s liberal press. Just as Marx and Engels waged war against the middle class to set up a socialist state, so does Quigley and the global network.
Middle-class values are represented by the Constitutional concepts of limited government, states rights, rights of property, a competitive economy, the solving of problems on the lowest level. However, one might ask Dr, Quigley, “If the middle class in America is to disappear, where will all these masses go?”
The Establishment has provided the answer in it’s millions of pages of socialist-oriented literature. The doomed members of the middle class are promised that they will become the carefully nurtured, carefully housed, carefully educated, totally dependent class of government wards in a man-made paradise of a one-world state.
Through the eyes of Quigley, the sheer size and power of the world-wide, super-rich network is now too big and too well entrenched to be overturned, or even resisted effectively. Its members will go right ahead financing revolution, moral depravity and social dislocation at the bottom and then sanctimoniously and energetically promise to solve all these problems if we will just delegate to them total power at the top.