Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

July 1^st, 1961 (without Author's revision)

With devotion to the Sacred Hearts, the Church puts in practice the contrary to materialist productivity.

A peculiar set of surreptitious morals is setting out to install itself in the entire West, constituting one of the most significant aspects of the European decadence that clashes with the morals of previous centuries. These morals center on the idea that the production of goods is the supreme value of the each man’s life and of society. Man is worth something to the degree that he in some way, by action or omission, contributes to the production and economy of material goods. If not all, at least many vices and qualities are measured by whether or not they favor production. The same can be said for nations. The production of material goods is the supreme end of man’s life and of all human society.

The penetration of these synarchic morals [Synarchic, synarchism, synarchy are used to refer to the materialist system of morality that gives value to things in so far as they produce. There is not English equivalent for the Portuguese "sinárquica"] is visible in Brazil, above all in the more industrialized centers in the guise of the industrial boom considering the most recent developments of this boom – the current industrialization is not exactly that of the time of Getulio Vargas when people only wished for millions. In the industry of today, the supreme goal, at least remotely, is to be the executive of an immense organization that prides itself in producing much for society and thus elevating the standard of living.

From the point of view of personal interest, the hard working businessman of today doesn’t know exactly why he is working. To fully gratify the largest number of people, the quality always decreases. He aims only for quantity with the minimum of quality. The formula to present and advertise products is: “They are good little trinkets.” It is the industrialization of ABC (as they call the highly industrialized satellite cities of Sao Paulo: Santo André, São Bernardo and São Caetano).

In Europe, the ABC spirit can be seen in the contrast between old monuments that show us the splendor of Europe of the past and the style of life in Europe today. The roads and squares are full of grand things from the past – castles, bridges, gates, etc. – but those who live in the middle of these splendors are each time more at the level of the “modern automobile”: they want to live a modern, tidy little life. Europeans of a certain category are still attached to the quality of products made according the good old tradition. But everything that is a new, modern product is not made of the same quality as things of the past. While what is old and at best still maintained, one way or another tends to decay. New things are produced like tin cans or worse.

This signifies a tendency to take a type of production completely different from the past as a standard. And this type of European, principally the Frenchman, is totally monopolized for social production. His spirit, mentality, way of being are all marked by the idea of economizing as much as possible. Also, productivity becomes a supreme value for him. It is the what is barely acceptable at the European level.

Man, A Mere Producer of Useful Material Goods

One could now ask why call this “moral synarchy.” In the language of the European right, synarchy is qualified as a clan of international nabobs to which they attribute the following state of spirit: They don’t want Communism, but at the same time they are full of the spirit of the Revolution. The are conservatives in the worst sense of the word since they don’t want to correct or destroy anything.  To fight Communism, they are disposed to spend any amount of money, but they are clearly opposed to any return to the past. They are indifferent to the slow evolution of society to the left so long as Communism does not arrive now.

Their action results in a slow form of Revolution in apparent conflict with the rapid form of the Revolution, that is Communism. They are a gang of criminals that in final analysis favor the Revolution considered broadly – for the Communists and even more than even the Communists – while in appearance opposing Communism. In regions where Communism produced crystallization, and only in these regions, synarchy deviates these crystallizations. At the same time they lead to socialism in the form I finished exposing: a way of life dominated by the shoddiest product acceptable and the mystique of work and of production.

This socialism can be directly that of the state as well as that of gigantic private businesses ran less by their owners than by managers who tend to ever greater proletarianization.

Thus, by these two forms of socialism – that of the state and of large businesses – that are easily distinguished in theory and that live well together in practice and of which the second prepares the way for the first, society slips toward Communism. It is a slow, light pink, unperceived, sneaky and non-violent Bolshevization.

The synarchic capitalists, to make their plans go ahead, promote and stimulate in every way this synarchic morality which is centered around the production of economic values and the consideration of man as a mere producer of material goods. But for them the economic production worthy of applause is not the production of any goods, but rather of goods useful for the material human development of man. They do not have hearty applause for an industry with a merely cultural scope.

The Characteristics of Synarchic Morality

Moral synarchy has the following characteristics:

1) It is egalitarian;

2) It depersonalizes;

3) It is materialistic;

4) It erects economic production as the criteria of morality.

Before we examine each of these characteristics, we will study how these morals spread.

From the Encyclopedists until 1939, there were unequal classes and an immense ideological fight by which the egalitarian Revolution advanced, gradually leveling these classes. People had conviction. They reasoned.  Even the adepts of wrong ideas adopted ways of seeing things that revealed an appreciation for logic, an appreciation that is inherent to the old, good traditions of Christian Civilization.  The sophistic revolution was needed to throw down the tendencies which expressed themselves and conquered territory in the realm of the ideas.

A tendential revolution – for example Romanticism, the sentimentality that preceded Romanticism and the French Revolution – was being born from the decline of logic and itself accentuated this decline. At par with reason, sentiments clearly began to appear in the fight between Revolution and Counter-Revolution. An ideological element continues to exist in the Revolution alongside a tendentious element that is each time more influential. The sophistic revolution continued to lose ground.

In our days this fact is even more accentuated coming together with the “new generation.” In reality even in preceding generations, aspects of the new generation of already came in sight. This is the sneaky way tendencies drag such things down. Without firm convictions and rather than discuss them, it was better to slowly fill the mental space of people or of the masses with new convictions.

A Surreptitious Entry Process

Without attacking the past but substituting past themes with new ones, it enters. But its process is that of the surreptitious entry. Men even continue to be friends of order, of hierarchy, etc, but these attitudes become always more platonic.

The sophistic revolution continued during the French Revolution, but it attained its height in the 19th century. In the last two decades of this century, given the climate of pacifism that was established, the sophistic revolution is diminishing. The need to discuss is substituted by a ever greater silencing tendency, and the need to attack or defend the truth with arguments disappears. The taste for discussion grows weaker as the decades pass and finally arrives at its present quasi-death like state. Terror in the face of discussion is one of the traits that characterizes Catholic circles today. They fear (and it is a fear-panic) internal and external discussion.

We have been analyzing the characteristics of the deceitful advance of the tendential synarchic revolution. It is important to describe the relations inside the mentality of the man of today between the old doctrinal deposits that still exist and the new mentality of synarchic morals we are discussing.

The values of past centuries continue to live today. They lost some of their vivacity, but it would be an exaggeration to say they died. One could then object that we are exaggerating the importance of synarchic morals. However, the affirmation I am making must be understood in light of the image I used in Revolution and Counter-Revolution of that tree (the strangler fig) that envelops the other tree and ends up devouring its substance.

The Evolution of the Human Ideal in Recent Centuries

The ideal of man in the Middle Ages was the saint. In the 18th century, it was the viveur. In the 19th century, the brilliant bourgeois. In the 20th century, the productive bourgeois.

In the 18th century, man’s ideal was no longer the saint as in the Middle Ages but rather a man whose glory consisted in making of life a fountain of pleasure for the soul and body. An elegant, refined, noble font of pleasure, at least in appearances if not in matters of morals. It is the man viveur – that is, one who loves life for the pleasure of life, aristocratic and elegant, that preceded the French Revolution.

In the 19th century, with the advent of the bourgeois, this ideal suffered a transformation. The great man of the new society came to be the brilliant bourgeois, above all the man who practiced the liberal professions or that of an artist. To be a great doctor, a great lawyer, scientist, journalist, politician, or artist was the ideal of the respectable and highly esteemed man. When a very rich person favored the arts, at least by underwriting them, he had influence in politics, and thus he could intervene in the field of ideas, in discussions, and in the intellectual life. And because of this title, he was respectable.

But the 19th century, which had so many nouveaux riches, also deeply despised the nouveaux riche. They put them in satires, songs, and made of them the image of the despised egoist. Thus, we cannot say that richness was the ideal of the 19th century.

When we pass to the beginning of the 20th century, with industrialization, the progress of natural sciences, the progress of techniques, international commerce, the accumulation of great fortunes, more and more prestige was constituted around great economic production. To make a great fortune ended up being something prestigious. It mattered little if one was uneducated, ridiculous, pretentious, or if one made his fortune in a prosaic way or even dishonestly: he was rich.

With ever lower moral and intellectual values, with cynicism and opportunism ever more accentuated because of the general decadence of morality, there was more condescendence for the parvenu, and it even arrived to the point that there was a certain consideration for him.

This admiration, which existed to some extent in Europe, was immense in the United States. The “self-made man,” the king of canned onions or chewing gum, with a patent that allows him to accumulate an unheard of fortune, were admired and venerated at the beginning of this century until approximately the Second World War.

This parvenu who is not by far the fidalgo of the past tries as much as possible to appear like the fidalgo. He will buy a title of nobility, marry into the aristocracy, and build palaces that look like wedding cakes. By a stupid luxury – champagne baths for example – he attempts to imitate the refinement of the old nobility.

The Post-War Misery Generated the Synarchic Spirit

Only latter, with the advent of post-war misery – the World War brought misery, and pari passu the horror of misery, of suffering, and of any form of suffering, these existed before, but they were accentuated – another personage rose as the social ideal. The phobia of misery brought the obsessive desire to satiate the hunger of everyone and the idea to produce as much as possible and the cheapest possible to obtain this end. The idea of individual profit was substituted by the idea of collective service. Thus appears the synarchic type that we are speaking about.

How are these things related? The tree of the 18th century, that is the admiration for the elegant, noble man was not totally destroyed by the tree of the 19th century which is admiration for the brilliant bourgeois. On the contrary, the brilliant bourgeois tried in many ways to make himself equal to the noble, imitating as much as possible the spiritual values of the noble, his culture, and his manners. And the nobility, though in a state of decadence, continued to exercise an influence throughout the 19th century that in some aspects was preponderant. Since if the nobility was not the dominant class, it served as the ideal and model of the dominant class.

But the relation of the two forces between the bourgeois and the aristocracy was such that in this coexistence the bourgeois spirit was like a tree that eats the other tree. In the bourgeois world, aristocratic values exist like an old tree with rotten wood that is being devoured and killed by the new living wood. Each day marked a decrease for the nobility and a progress for the bourgeois.

After the intellectual bourgeois came the bourgeois whose grandeur was calculated according to matter; this is what the nouveau riche is. Already, he does not imitate the spiritual values of the noble but only the material opulence of the noble. It is like another tree that eats the previous one.

After this comes finally comes the producing bourgeois who has no type of grandeur other than that productive, collective grandeur. He does not imitate the noble in any shape or form. This forms another tree that again devours the bourgeois spirit of the recently arrived millionaire.

As we have seen, the most recent dynamic force and the one that is consuming the others is the new synarchic bourgeois. Though in a state of decadence, admiration still exists for the nouveau riche. In an even greater state of decadence is appreciation for the intellectual bourgeois, the university professor, etc. In an even greater decadence is the appreciation for the noble. The appreciation for any one of the stages has not entirely died, but each tree, even before it has eaten the previous one, begins to be eaten by the one that succeeds it.

This explains how the various admirations still exist though in a state of agony. Admiration for the noble is almost annihilated while admiration for the intellectual bourgeois is slightly more alive. But the noble could say to the bourgeois: “I was what you are, you will be what I am.” The bourgeois could say the same to the nouveau riche, and he say the same to the boss of the synarchic era.

The New Ideal: The Labor Union Leader of Proletaritized Society

Synarchy did completely eliminate the previous values, but each time more their life and blood are departing. Only synarchism has true life today.  But it is already outlining the importance of the man of tomorrow that is the trade union leader of a totally proletariat society. Now we are in the era of the prestige of production.

Lets imagine an important businessman who is at the office of the Federation of Industries (Chamber of Commerce) conversing with friends before a meeting. A friend asks him: “What do your children do? Lets suppose he responded: “They don’t work because I am rich. They enjoy life.” Today, no one would dare to give this answer which would have been normal 100 years ago. He would not dare to say he has totally unproductive children. He would be a little less embarrassed to say his children were not habituated to the Brazilian ambience and that they went to live in Europe. There, we don’t know why (because he would say that he didn’t have anything to do with this) they fit in well with the aristocratic ambience, and they are very well accepted. One is engaged to the daughter of prince so-and-so, the other to duke so-and-so. He would say all this with a certain embarrassment.

Since this still manifests the acquisition of a certain value though archaic, anachronistic, and worthy of execration, he says this with less shame than if he affirmed simply that his son did not work and lived only off of interest income. But even so, he will not say this with much satisfaction. This goes so far that if he had a son who was a great university professor, he would comment on his situation differently. He would affirm that this one followed a different path, diving into research, and he lives for science. You have no idea how he works; his results are even know internationally; he received such reward, etc. This is already more beautiful compared than the noble.

Deification of Synarchic Spirit

Clearly, this businessman would like to say that his third or fourth child is a hard-working speculator who works day and night and is accumulating a very respectable personal fortune. But even this is not so beautiful since it is not so much production but obtaining profits by playing with money. In some circles, it would be better to say that the son is doing well, having started at the bottom of the ladder without any help from the father. He didn’t even want to start at his father’s business. At another firm, he progressed so fast that he was promoted and transferred afterwards to the father’s business where he is a manager. He works a lot, and perhaps he is the hardest working man at the factory. He is the first to enter and the last to leave. He doesn’t have any privileges. He is very simple and friend of all his co-workers. He even frequents the club of the workers, etc.

Since it is a little shocking to go so far along the proletariat path, the father adds that the son is now engaged to so-and-so, a parvenu. But it is the last son who made the father proud since he was the most productive. To the degree the activity of the son is close to economic production (considered the ideal) and to the degree this economic production is turned toward the collectivity and not to individual profit, the father is proud of the son.

Let’s imagine the contrary lineup. Someone asked a father how his children were, and he started proudly with this last one. When speaking of the speculator, he would speak with less enthusiasm. He would speak of the university professor with even less enthusiasm, of the aristocrat with obvious embarrassment, and of the “useless” son with endless shame.

Through these two gradations, I believe it is clear how the other values are moribund. Almost all of them can only be called values in a very relative sense because in part they cause shame. On the contrary, production is the only authentic value that causes pride and not shame.

Exemplified with Daughters

To express this in a different way, maybe more convincing, let’s imagine we are dealing with daughters instead of sons. In Brazilian society, people are not acclimated to the idea that women also should be economic producers. If a father answers that his daughter is the best because she stays at home, knits, and lives her life, the interlocutor would react with an indifferent “ah” thinking to himself that the girl is stupid and plain.

If he were to say that she spent her life entertaining herself, the interlocutor would smile, but inside he would think: she is useless. If the father said she is in Europe where she frequents high society and fits in quite well – so well that she is engaged to prince so-and-so, he would be well received since this is still beautiful for a woman. Nobility which for man is ugly since it is so distant from production, for women, who are not required to be economically productive, is still beautiful. Instead of slavering at home, at least she is doing something. If he says she married prince so-and-so whom she met while studying at the Sorbonne, this would cause admiration: besides marrying a prince, she studied literature at the Sorbonne!

But he would really be a colossus if he said this: She is at home helping her father with business and it works well; she is engaged to a boy who works for her father and who is making his career; the two live to work and like each other a lot. They would be considered a pair of enchanting little doves since this pays homage to the idol of the day, that is production.

Still, there is more tolerance for a non-producing woman, but even women are already judged according to how close they are to the ideal which is the capacity for economic production.

A Humanitarian Mystique Behind the Moral Synarchy

As always, wrong morals are based on an unilateral study of divine things. Concretely, what mystique are these morals based on? It is based on this: People suffer hunger, suffer from lack of medicine, suffer an indigent and uncomfortable life, and suffer from all limitations brought by illiteracy; they are subject to risks, to being worn out at work; they suffer from the hard contingency of having superiors and having to obey orders. There are many, many people like this – maybe the majority of humanity is in this situation. But even if they weren’t very numerous, this is entirely intolerable, and mankind absolutely must do away with this as soon as possible. This obligation is so very pressing that all must be sacrificed to it. All luxury is theft since it takes away that which is necessary for those needy people.

From this comes the uniform and omnimode tendency to lower the level of the types of production to only produce that which is essential to entirely finish with this state of misery among men.

At first sight, this mystique is humanitarian. It is based on the utopic idea that all misfortunes can be eliminated; it is based on the presupposition that the pain of physical privations is the greatest man can suffer – it is curious that this productivistic mentality ignores moral sufferings, ignores spiritual problems and sufferings, only considering material necessities; it can be qualified in the line of those scripture censures as having their stomach as their god – and they think material suffering is strictly unsupportable and revolting. We must make this stop by finishing with all luxury, pleasure, refinement, etc.

Behind the Humanitarian Mystique, Egalitarianism

Behind this humanitarian idea that is eminently laicist and completely lacking in the sense of the cross and spirituality appears another mystique: egalitarianism. It is insinuated that independent of this a man who possesses more makes the other suffer since the one without desires that which the other possesses. Perfect humanitarianism overflows into complete equality. Equality is needed so long as hunger exists; but even if all material privations ceased, inequality would be irritating; it would constitute a lack of charity. Thus, complete equality appears not as a necessity of the moment to eliminate hunger, but rather as the charming, normal order of humanity.

This position can be called Christian in the blasphemous sense in which the sons of the Revolution understand and explore Christian Democracy; that is, a sweetened, laicist Christianity that has horror of the cross, whose charity consists in hatred of all suffering and in the vision of mere material suffering. They would say that to act like I just described is very Christian, that it corresponds even to the social function of property. In first place, it eliminates misery, and secondly, it establishes equality. I believe that this radically egalitarian scheme is essential in the state of spirit that constitutes revolutionary “Christian” democracy especially in our days.

Let’s see the role of production in all of this. If everyone produces in large quantities what is indispensable, no one will suffer misery. The ideal is that everyone has only the sufficient so that no one lacks anything. Work is for this. It isn’t horrible or enjoyable; it is a duty. It is an activity that must be done. Clearly, if one diverts factories, machines and man-power to establish and maintain luxury and pleasure industries, these means will be taken from industry that produces the indispensable to sustain man. Because of this, luxury and pleasure industries must be eliminated.

On the other hand, the enjoyment of refinement and voluptuousness takes away the disposition to work. And it is a state of soul that is weak and suspect in the eyes of the modern worker-synarch. These refinements complicate life. The poet, artist, musician are seen by everyone as complicated people, almost as much as the aristocrat.  This new humanity, which does not rise to the Byzantine sphere and exclusively worries about production, is much more sympathetic. We must finish with refinement and complications so that everyone works, is simple, content with a little, so that the great economic mass functions well and contents everyone, obtaining uniform progress for all. Man must change his way of being. He cannot be stable, solemn, a thinker, but must be quick, agile, superficial, and work a lot to produce much since to think much does not fill anyone’s stomach.

Thus, we see the links between egalitarianism, the mystique of work, and the mystique of synarchic production, and we see how labourism or synarchic productivity ends up being the same thing as egalitarianism.

The Utopic Character of the Synarchic-Productivist Spirit

Clearly, this influence produces an entire social ambience that we will analyze shortly. Before proceeding, I insist on the utopia-like character of this state of spirit: “We must be optimists. Nothing will be complicated; nothing will cause trouble, everything will work out. Crying doesn’t help. The norm is “break a leg and continue smiling.’” This does not upset the relatives the man who suffered an accident, and that is good since they can go to work without worries – they do not annoy or worry the doctor. What does it help to weep if the doctor knows how much a broken leg hurts? A doctor who is not bothered is taking care of two patients; if you smile, it will help fix your leg and the other man’s too. Thus, in a certain sense social justice leads the man who breaks his leg to continue smiling. It is certain that technology will put an end to all this suffering. We have to look with optimism to the future.

If a man who is an optimist could even auto-suggest and even feel less pain; pain is a type of fantasy and lamentation from the past. The proof of this is that women give birth without pain by using hypnotism. And if science cannot eliminate the men who crash and break a leg, at least the day will arrive when the man who breaks a leg will be able to avoid feeling the pain in his leg. He will wait alongside the road with a bottle of Coke until he can be taken to the hospital. Bureaucracy, being the technique to simplify the human soul, will eliminate all real and imaginary pains. In such a way that we should be optimists, happy, and smiling.

Evidently, there is an immense lie behind all this, an immense utopia, but we must believe to avoid being antipathetic and marginalized, since only the perpetually optimistic, smiling man is nice.

This Mentality Repercuts in Medicine and in the Hospitals

These types of attitudes have an enormous repercussion in medicine. For example, relatives should not stay together with the sick man. The doctor and his technique take care of the sick man; relatives are compassion, company, mercy, and soul. Now, for this productivist world there is no soul. A man who broke his leg does not have pain in his soul. He has pain in his leg. Thus, it is useless to be close to some relative since this does not set the broken bone, and it is from the break that he is suffering. He stays alone, always smiling and giving little trouble to the nurses so they can take care of the others and so they can also live according to their schedule and under syndical vigilance because they also have the right not to suffer. You should carry yourself so that you don’t weigh on others. Isn’t it enough not to be working, thereby diminishing production by your immobility? Relatives, out! The sick one alone, without a bell by his bed, or subject to severe reprimands if he rings the bell needlessly. And he endures it smiling. This is how the productivist hospital goes ahead.

Evidently, euthanasia enters in this line: the elimination of children born with a physical defect or of old people who don’t want to live any longer, or of those who are considered not to want to live, of the incurables, etc. Also, diets to loose wait enter in this line. Never before had medicine discovered so many inconveniences in being fat. In fact, the worst thing about the fat man is that he carries with him so much protein that should belong to others. He is a type of fat shark, monopolizing it for himself on the universal level while in Malaysia there is a thin, consumptive man who would live well with that fat. The fat man is an egotist, and under this title he is seen in a bad light. Thus, medicine recommends that one be thin.

How can we describe the human type formed according to this spirit? I will describe it in man and in woman. Since all differentiations make a mess of production – because the more the standardization, the greater the production – the type of a man and of a woman should be the least different possible. But some differences remain because the weight of tradition is great.

Synarchic morality is very feminist since it wants to masculinize women. It is also somewhat “masculinist” in the sense that that it wants to feminize men to establish a medium quid. But it is above all infantilism. It wants to make of man and woman a stupid entity without soul – a big baby, a simpleton, an imbecile, a joker – with all the defects of irreflection and infantile spontaneity, almost like a mental retard.

In infancy, the sexes are less different. Leading man back to infancy, synarchy leads to the maximum of irreflection, of physical agility, entrainement for work, and the leveling of everything and everyone. In such a way the reduction of all to the physical state of adolescence and intellectual infantility is the ideal to which synarchism leads.

Synarchic Morality Exemplified in a Married Couple

Since we are analyzing man and woman, we will consider a couple with small children (this is the apex of synarchic married life, when the children are young and everything goes well). In very rich families, what characterizes this couple is that they do not join the proletariat, they do not pass to a different social class. But in their own class, they are always the most proletariat possible without falling from that class.

Lets imagine, for example, a very rich couple. They might have a large house. But in this large house, practical worries will be much greater than esthetic ones. In the past, the great preoccupation was to furnish the house beautifully, even sumptuously. Kitchen, pantry, the maid’s room, closets, etc. all well furnished. Today, no. The pride and joy of a girl is to have an ultra easy to clean kitchen organized with the practical spirit of a factory. The laundry and ironing room in the same style; stupendous rooms for the children. Storage places protected from any type of deterioration with neon lights, good ventilation, and of course easy to clean.

All this gives the greatest pride to the synarchic lady of the house who readily economizes in the living rooms to have a kitchen or children’s bathroom the best possible. At the sumptuous house, they still have a lot of money for automobiles, but they do not look for a representative car. If they have an expensive car, it would be a pretty station wagon that already can be used to transport chickens, vegetables, and children to or from the farm, the ocean, or on trips to the country, etc. The ideal is to have two or three small, easy to drive cars that the housewife and also the governess can drive. If necessary, any one of them can go to the market to buy food.

If necessary, they would have servants, but the best is to have the smallest number possible. The mania is for cleanliness. The servant can expend energy as he likes, but everything must be cleared and clean. This, one understands. What is not clean, that is dirtiness, brings with it a certain image of death, of evil. This contrasts with the spirit of utopia that dominates this mentality.

In poor and middle class houses, this spirit also exists to a certain degree. Lets imagine the house of family of the small or medium bourgeois. Everything is cleared, clean, cleanable, easily replaced, and everything is always new. Even the matron who has one or two servants cleans some things herself; the difference between the matron and the servants is not so great just as the difference between the matron, the chauffeur, and the servants is not so great. They converse and have a certain friendship. Evidently, the tendency is for the suppression of servants. It is beautiful since it leads to production.

The micro-synarchic couple in a modest house, as far as possible has a mechanized home: an excellent vacuum cleaner, an electric mixer, a blender, refrigerator, television. Air conditioning that eliminates heat is to be relished. It is funny that there is a certain modesty in feeling cold for people like this; they have a type of phobia of heat. To such a point that they go to the beach and do not say they are hot. The pretend that the heat doesn’t bother them. To feel heat is something ignominious.

In the medium level house, everything has to be cheap, but it must be joyous, dandyish, and a little ostentatious in the sense that it is durable. But nothing grave, or serious, or solemn. A portrait of the great-grandfather would by shocking in this ambience. The children also should be happy, healthy, playing with each other. The mother takes care of the children. 

With these intentions, we can divide labourism into two tendencies: 1) one is Malthusian: not to many children because they might lack food; 2) the other is productivist, that is, it encourages more children: that they produce, that children are born since each child is an arm. One tendency satisfies the taste of the Protestant, and the other that of the Catholic.

Depersonalizing Character of Synarchic Morality

The pastimes of synarchic people are simple. First, they do not have vast social relations since this means prestige and prestige signifies soul. It is a spiritual value, that is, fiction, an encumbrance. The couple has their little circle of friends with whom they have fun. It is a limited circle in which the relations are very simple – no ceremony – and everything happens in the strictest intimacy. Pleasure is the television, a quick conversation that is fickle and insignificant. And all these pleasures are in a series. There is an entertainment industry that serves the whole city and all social classes.

A car for everyone since everyone has the ideal of owing a car. They have fun in waves. The style is to go to a summer resort in Guaruja, and everyone goes. No one has to think to choose his pleasure since this is completely socialized and produces in a series for everyone. And everyone has sufficient level of relaxation. To eulogize refined diversions for small groups is antipathetic.

And it is only in this socialist atmosphere that people have fun. Work dominates everything in such a way that pleasure ends up being an image of work. People no longer relax like a pasha seated on his cushions with a narghile or like an intellectual or noble in a brilliant salon, but rather by camping, surfing, climbing a mountain, doing all sorts of difficult excursions since this is the image of work. One notes that hunting is not much appreciated since humanitarianism has pity for the animals. The pleasure of sports is good because it prepares the person for work and thus leisure does not diminish his productivity.

We must admit that even work is collective. The man of exceptional intelligence should be put aside. The team routinely produces well, and produces for everyone. That is how things are good. And the universities form legions of very well informed cretins and with perfect resume for work like this. And even this of the worker university: it only gives information, not structures, general concepts. The people have piles of files, resolve concrete little cases, material life continues and all is well.

These types of people do not sympathize with the horrors of modern art. This is because the horrible is the sublime of the ugly, and it also cannot be accepted. Works of art are reduced to the crude boxes like those long, stretched out ones in Brasilia. You do not have to be an artist to make those. A team suffices that perceives functional needs that are studied and investigated by the team and resolved by the team. Clearly, with this no one is anyone, everyone is anonymous. And the only form of prayer for this type of person is liturgiscism, because people go to church and pray like they live: on a team, in common. The do not even know how to do anything else.

How far will this go? It is clear that these notes have just begun in this gloomy synarchic aurora, but they will be each time more accentuated: each time more anonymous, more egalitarian, depersonalized, a greater adoration of material values. As it becomes more accentuated, this has to arrive at Communism. Under the appearances of fighting communist morals, synarchy introduces another set of morals that is a preparation for communism.

The True Catholic Must Hate Synarchy

We will now look at the attitude of the Catholic in face of this. The true Catholic, that is not a liberal or socialist, must hate synarchy. St. Joseph and Our Lady were the opposite of producers and Our Lord too. St. Francis of Assisi and St. Claire represent the exact opposite of the businessman who adores production.

The good of temporal society is the good of the soul before that of the body. And the production of intellectual and spiritual values in light of eternal salvation is more necessary for humanity than the production of material goods. Obviously, we should tend to eliminate misfortune, but this should be done not so that no one is hungry, so that no one can have culture, or soul. This is to prepare a suffocating life for everyone, and it takes away the very reason for life away from everyone to save a few lives.

In other terms, however great one’s desire to put an end to situations where people suffer from material wants – the Catholic should desire this with all the strength of his soul – one cannot go to the point of destroying all elites, all true culture, all raffinement.

Synarchism is important in that it introduces a morality that applies only as the negation of the spirit. This morality would only be true if man were only matter. It is the logical consequence of two presuppositions: One is materialism, the negation of all Catholic doctrine; the other is the negation of the human personality, also a negation of Catholic doctrine. It is the construction of a morality – and also of a new world – founded on the liturgisist error of only collective piety when Catholic moral formation is before all else essentially personal.

To be capable of fighting this error, we have to fight the myth in us of the man who knows, who can, who does, and who has. It is already a little anachronistic, in so far as it is plutocratic, since today he is merely the manager of his goods. He is no longer an outstanding man, and he is presented as the equal of everyone; who thinks like everyone and is on the same level as the rest; who knows as much as the others; who can do as much as the other can; who has as much as the others, and does as much as the others, ashamed to be less and to be more. It is the abomination of egalitarianism.

To Be Productive in the Moral Order

When man is more, he should be happy and see in this a more faithful reflection of God and gives thanks to God. When he is or has less, he should also be happy and see in this the likeness to Our Lord’s voluntary poverty, and he also should give thanks to God. He should not continually want to be equal to everyone.

We should preserve ourselves from the synarchic morality with the same care we should preserve ourselves from all errors. From this one, with even greater care since the living error always has a greater power of seduction than the dead one. We do not run the risk so much of deforming ourselves with errors of past centuries, but we do run the risk with the errors of our century since unfortunately we are sons of our century, and we feel in us all the charge of the bad attractions of our century. With very special care, we should stomp on this synarchic idea that we should be equal to everyone, that we should not want beautiful, noble, or refined things, that we should think that the most beautiful thing for man is to be productive in the material order.

In reality, not even Catholics should think that the most beautiful thing is for man to be productive in the spiritual order, rather we should thing that the most beautiful is for him to be productive in the moral order, producing love of God. Man was made with the ultimate end not of production but to love God. And when he loves God above all things, he has the reward promised by Our Lord Jesus Christ: “Search ye first for the kingdom of heaven and all else will be added unto you.” And beyond this, we will have eternal life.

Only like this – in the complete repudiation of the synarchic spirit – will one have ordered, calm, stable, and sufficient material production without the utopia of eliminating miseries but with a true desire to reduce them to the degree possible without prejudicing the moral and intellectual necessities of a hierarchical society.

If things are not like this, charity disappears and only the cold feeling of social justice remains. Accompanied by charity, social justice is something beautiful, but separate from charity, it is a monster. It is like a human eye separated from its pair. Both were made to be together, but when they are alone on someone’s face or on the ground, one as the impression of a monstrosity.

On the other hand, we must understand that even for a poor man – who, we repeat, should be helped in every way with his material necessities – it is better to have a society full of spiritual values and to suffer some privations than to live in a society empty of spiritual values but with a full stomach. To have the soul filled is more necessary than to having a full stomach. Full of the love of God, of the light of the Holy Ghost, of the apostolic, Roman Catholic faith in which we were raised.

The task of fighting against this synarchic morality is from several aspects so serious, so arduous that it cannot be done without Divine help. This is the help we should ask for through Our Lady, Mediatrix of all graces. We should ask for these graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

With devotion to the Sacred Hearts, the Church puts in practice the contrary to materialist productivity. There are problems of the soul, sufferings of the soul, anxieties of the soul, and the satisfaction one finds in God that the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary teach us. We ask these Hearts for a meticulous and exact repudiation of all the errors of synarchism and a complete conviction and practice of the Catholic truths that are opposed to synarchic morality.