View source for Leopold Kohr


=Contextual Quote=

"'''Kohr	envisions	the	dissolution	of	political	entities''',	which	are	by	all	means	the	largest	human	organizations	
existing.	He	offers	two	avenues	to	liquidate	political	organizations:	war	and	division	
through	proportional	representation."

-Knut Wimberger [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340023596]


=Bio=

Kirkpatrick Sale:

"Leopold Kohr was born in 1909 in the little town of Oberndorf, in central Austria, a village of 2,000 people or so, famous until then only for being the place where “Silent Night” was written. (I once asked Kohr what influences were most important in the formulation of his theories about size, expecting him to cite some ancient philosopher. He paused, wrinkled his forehead, and said, “Mostly that I was born in a small village.”) Oberndorf, too, was in the cultural orbit of the once-independent city of Salzburg, some fifteen miles away, and though it was not until he was nine that Kohr first visited there, the accomplishments of the city remained impressed upon him his entire life. As he was later to describe it:

The rural population that built this capital city of barely more than 30,000 for its own enjoyment never numbered more than 120,000.... Yet, single-handedly they managed to adorn it with more than 30 magnificent churches, castles, and palaces standing in lilied ponds, and an amplitude of fountains, cafes, and inns. And such was their sophisticated taste that they required a dozen theaters, a choir for every church, and an array of composers for every choir, so that it is not surprising that one of the local boys should have been Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. All this was the result of smallness, achieved with not an iota of foreign aid. And what a rich city they made it into.

A city, in effect, very much like the city-state Kohr came later to admire and advocate.

Kohr attended gymnasium in Salzburg, graduating in 1928, and later that year registered at the law school in Innsbruck. Then, while a friend signed his name to attendance records there, he went off to England to study at the London School of Economics, at the time bustling with such eminent teachers as Harold Laski, Hugh Dalton, F. A. Hayek, and Phillip Noel-Baker. That proved an excellent place for learning English, and not bad for learning economics, but it meant that for the next two years after he returned to Innsbruck he had to work with what were known as “crammers” to catch up on the courses he had missed and to spend long hours reading in cafes over a single cup of coffee.

During these days the menace of Hitler was growing in the country to the north, but somehow it did not touch the law students of Innsbruck very directly. Kohr was a founder of the Socialist Club at the university — his father, a country doctor, had been what he calls a “liberal socialist” — and enjoyed developing his rhetorical skills in debating the fascists of the day. But, he admits, looking back, “I was adrift”: none of the -isms then prof-ferred looked to be very desirable, and friendship seemed more important than any ideology. That was a perception that was to stay with him his entire life.

Kohr graduated from the Innsbruck law school in 1933, full of — as he confesses — youthful surety about the importance of the legal profession and a belief that the best lawyers were those who managed to get their guiltiest clients acquitted. It didn’t last long. On a trip to Copenhagen that summer a young Danish woman he was courting penetrated his lawyerly posturing with a simple, “You are too cold” — and the pain of that assertion, so at odds with what the young man knew to be his real self, made him realize instantly how far his legal training had led him astray. He never practiced law, nor read another law book, from that day on.

Footloose again, Kohr enrolled for another degree, this time in political science from the University of Vienna, one of the foremost universities in Europe at the time — though, Kohr says now, “somewhat too big for my tastes.” Again he spent two years of intensive academic work, again using the local cafes as his study halls, and he finished in 1935 with the credits for his second degree — into a Europe in turmoil.

Nowhere more so than in Spain, then on the eve of its civil war. Though Kohr’s ideas were still incompletely formed, the struggles of the Spanish republicans seemed to speak to much of what Kohr held important, and so he spent the next six months there, working as a freelance correspondent for a number of French and Swiss newspapers, armed with nothing but a Spanish dictionary and a copy of Don Quixote. “That is when it started,” he remembers now. From visiting the independent separatist states of Catalonia and Aragon, from seeing how the Spanish anarchists operated small city-states in Alcoy and Caspe (“I’ll never forget reading the sign, Welcome to the Free Commune of Caspe”), Kohr took away an understanding of the depth of European localism and an appreciation of the virtues of limited, self-contained government. What he left behind, incidentally, were some of the trappings of pomp: “I forgot my pajamas and my visiting cards when I left Madrid, and that’s the last time I’ve ever had either one.”

In 1938, with Hitler’s rise in Germany and the likelihood of war ever more imminent, Kohr, then based in Paris, decided to go to America. Impossible, he was told: it would take at least a year to get a visa, a year more to book passage. He did it in a week. Dashing back to Austria and using all his charm to wangle a temporary visitor’s visa to the United States, he slipped back through Germany into France via the Orient Express, and five days later was on his way to New York. It was, he says, “the power of ignorance.”

Landing penniless in New York, Kohr learned to eat “Automat banquets” — relish, ketchup, mustard, and other free condiments — and made contact with some of the Austrian community in America. Then when his United States visa was about to expire, he went on to Toronto to see if he could get landed-immigrant status there. Weeks and weeks of Laocoonian tangles with the Canadian immigration bureaucracy ensued — one official even told him he would have to go back to Austria, then under Nazi occupation, to get the necessary papers — but ultimately he was taken under the protective umbrella of Professor George M. Wrong, the “father of Canadian history,” and his status, and safety, were assured.

For the next twenty-five years Leopold Kohr was to make his home in North America. From 1939 to 1940 he was given a fellowship from the University of Toronto, and for the next year served as a secretary to Professor Wrong. It was during this time that his ideas on size and the division of nations began to take form, and in 1941 he published his first article on the subject (Commonweal, September 26, 1941, though he was given the byline “Hans” Kohr), arguing even then that Europe should be “cantonized” into the kind of small regional politics that existed in the past: “We have ridiculed the many little states,” he concluded grimly, “now we are terrorized by their few successors.”

After the war, Kohr joined the economics faculty of Rutgers University as an assistant professor, where he was to serve for the next nine years. Most of the ideas that permeate Breakdown were worked out during this Rutgers period, and it was there, during the Christmas recess of 1952, that he fashioned the book, working every day from early morning to late afternoon in his campus office, each day adding another chapter, until by January the manuscript was complete. In April 1953 Kohr finally sent out the manuscript to a succession of American publishers, both academic and trade: some interest but no takers. It then made the rounds of the English publishers, with the same story: nibbles but no bites. The feeling ran high in those days for world government and for the American and British imperiums, and a book seriously proposing the reorganization of nations on a smaller scale found little favor. Kohr was discouraged, and on a junket to Oxford, sitting next to some unknown man at some unpromising lunch, he unburdened himself to his neighbor about the sorry fate of his manuscript: “The trouble with these publishers is that they cannot place me — they haven’t met a legitimate anarchist in the past half century.”

His companion looked suitably sympathetic and said, “Why don’t you let me have a look at your manuscript? I am an anarchist myself — and also a publisher.” He handed Kohr his business card: “Herbert Read, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.”

Herbert Read, of course, was easily the foremost anarchist thinker of the day — a fact which, Kohr later said, instantly “made ‘me wish for the ground to open beneath my chair” — but he graciously offered to read the book and see what he could do. Dutifully Kohr sent the book, still dubious. Read got the point immediately and published the book straightaway in the fall of 1957.

The British reception was, at best, mixed. A few reviewers commended its charm and style, but the whole tenor of the book seemed to set them on edge: “a maddening little book” is how the prestigious Economist referred to it. Questioning of empires, even empires about to disintegrate, was bad form. In the United States, where Rinehart imported a pitiable 500 copies, publication of Breakdown had all the impact of a single vote in a nationwide election: it was ignored by every periodical except the Political Science Quarterly where Kohr’s colleague, the economist Robert J. Alexander, dutifully noted it as “thought-provoking” and added, accurately, “it will probably not be taken as seriously as it should be.”

In the meantime, Kohr had been invited to the faculty of the University of Puerto Rico, and there he spent most of the next ninteen years — teacher, pundit, widely read columnist, author, lecturer, and island figure — until his retirement in 1974. During those years, Kohr turned out a number of distinguished books, all of them working around the size theories presented in Breakdown (quoting Confucius, Kohr says, “I know only one thing — but that permeates everything!”): The Overdeveloped Nations (Germany 1962, Spain 1965, reprinted in the U.S. 1978), Development Without Aid (Wales 1973), and The City of Man (Puerto Rico 1976). He appeared regularly in both scholarly quarterlies and popular publications, Business Quarterly, American Journal of Economics and Society, Vista, Spectator, and Land Economics among them. He also wrote a series of newspaper columns for three of Puerto Rico’s dailies and appeared regularly in Resurgence, the self-styled “magazine of the fourth world” — that is, of the small nations and independent-minded regions of the world — begun in Wales in 1966, And increasingly he appealed in the United States and the United Kingdom as a lecturer, particularly on university campuses, and was by all accounts successful and provocative.

Yet despite all that, Leopold Kohr remained virtually unknown, a prophet without honor except among a small and faithful band. He did gain an ardent and most vociferous circle of friends, including people like Herbert Read, Welsh nationalist Gwynfor Evans, American adman Howard Gossage, architect Richard Neutra, and Puerto Rican leader Jaime Benitez; and he did slowly win a most prestigious group of admirers, including some of the finest minds of our age, people like Fritz Schumacher, Ivan Illich, Kenneth Kaunda, and Danilo Dolci. But despite this, despite the importance of his contributions in a society bedeviled with bigness, despite his undoubted singularity in an era that makes celebrities even of weightlifters, he continued — and continues — to be a figure unrecognized in the larger world.

No matter. After his mandated retirement from Puerto Rico in 1974, Kohr accepted an offer to lecture in political philosophy at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, where he was able to cement his relations with the growing Welsh nationalist movement and work in support of its ideas of an independent and self-reliant small nation. He settled into a small townhouse there, a block away from the sea, and he opens it to friends and students of all ages, a most attractive host, it is said, and a niost engaging raconteur. And there he lives today, a small, energetic figure, seen around the town jogging or drinking at the pub or talking at the’ local hall, arguing, entertaining, listening, telling stories, making friends, and always, sometimes gently, sometimes passionately, teaching about the theories of size and the virtues of smallness."

(https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/leopold-kohr-the-breakdown-of-nations)


=Discussion=

Knut Wimberger:

"Leopold	Kohr	was	the	originator	of	the	concept	of	“the	
human	scale”,	an	idea	later	popularized	by	his	friend	E.F.	
Schumacher,	notably	in	the	best-selling	book	Small	is	
Beautiful.	Born	near	Salzburg	in	1909,	Kohr	was	an	
economist	by	profession,	holding	academic	positions	at	
many	universities.	

As	the	physicists	of	our	time	have	tried	to	elaborate	an	
integrated	single	theory,	capable	of	explaining	not	only	
some	but	all	phenomena	of	the	physical	universe,	so	I	have	
tried	on	a	different	plane	to	develop	a	single	theory	through	
which	not	only	some	but	all	phenomena	of	the	social	
universe	can	be	reduced	to	a	common	denominator.	The	
result	is	a	new	and	unified	political	philosophy	centering	in	
the	theory	of	size.	It	suggests	that	there	seems	only	one	
cause behind	all	forms	of	social	misery:	bigness.	[p.22]
In	“The	Breakdown	of	Nations” Leopold	Kohr	shows	that,	throughout	history,	people	who	
have	lived	in	small	states	are	happier,	more	peaceful,	more	creative	and	more	prosperous.	
He	argues	that	virtually	all	our	political	and	social	problems	would	be	greatly	diminished	if	
the	world’s	major	countries	were	to	dissolve	back	into	the	small	states	from	which	they	
sprang.	Rather	than	making	ever-larger	political	unions,	in	the	mistaken	belief	that	this	will	
bring	peace	and	security,	we	should	minimize	the	aggregation	of	power	by	returning	to	a	
patchwork	of	small,	relatively	powerless	states,	where	leaders	are	accessible	and	
responsive	to	the	people.	

Thus,	the	greater	the	aggregation,	the	more	dwarfish	becomes	man.	But	this	is	not	all,	for	
along	with	the	decline	of	a	person’s	share	in	sovereignty	goes	a	decline	in	his	share	in	
government.	[p.	118]

The	political	scientist	Kohr	does	not	argue	for	a	return	to	exploitative	feudalism,	petty	
kingdoms or	pre-Neolithic	hunter-gatherer	tribes.	Instead	he	separates the	economic	realm 
from	the	political	one	and	envisions	a	global	economic	system	paired	with	local	political	
units.	

Would	it	not	be	truly	reactionary	to	erect	again	the	countless	barriers	separating	countless	
regions	from	each	other,	impeding	traffic	and	trade,	and	undoing	the	gigantic	economic	
progress	which	the	existence	of	large-area	states	and	the	resultant	big-plant	and	massproduction	facilities	have	made	possible?	If	union	has	sense	anywhere,	it	certainly	has	in	the	
economic	sphere	considering	that	without	it	our	living	standards	would	in	all	likelihood	still	
be	at	the	low	level	that	characterized	the	Middle	Ages.	[p.	143]

Kohr	concludes	his	socio-economical	deliberations	by	suggesting	a	union	through	division	
and	quotes	Henry	C.	Simons:	These	monsters	of	nationalism	and	mercantilism	must	be	
dismantled. It	is	interesting	that	Kohr’s	political-administrative	model	of	a	global	society	
echoes	the	ideas	of	visionary	paleontologist	Pierre	Teilhard	de	Chardin,	who	wrote	about	
the	concept	of	a	noosphere,	i.e.	a	global spiritual	sphere,	which	unites	the	multitude	of	
human	entities	on	planet	Earth.	When	I	missed	solid	economic	thinking	in	Chardin’s	
writing,	I	do	miss	the	spiritual	and	natural	scientific	perspective	in	Kohr’s	work.	They	make	
though	a	great	complimentary	reading.	

Summarizing,	we	may	thus	say	that	even	economics	refuses	to	yield	arguments	against	a	
small-state	world.	For,	even	in	the	field	of	economics,	the	only	problem	of	significance	seems	
to	be	the	problem	of	excessive	size,	suggesting	as	its	solution	not	growth,	no	union,	but	
division. We	have	found	that	high	living	standards	in	large	states	seem	a	macro-economic	
illusion	while	they	appear	to	be	a	micro-economic	reality	in	mature	small	ones.	We	have	
found	that,	as	the	size	of	the	productive	unit	grows,	its	productivity	ultimately	begins to	
decline	until,	instead	of	giving	off	energy,	it	puts	on	fat. We	have	found	that	the	reason	for	this	
is	the	law	of	diminishing	productivity	which	puts	limits	to	the	size	of	everything.	[p.	174]	
The	author	continues	to	describe	the	ideal	form	of	administration	and	paves	the	road	for	
what	is	the	central	pillar	of	the	post-modern	management	paradigm:	teamwork.	

Considering	that	Leopold	Kohr	published	The	Breakdown	of	Nations	in	1957,	when	the	
orange	modern	management	paradigm	of	big	business,	large	corporations	and	rigid	topdown	hierarchies	was	probably	at	its	climax,	we	can	understand	why	he	was	named	one	of	
the	most	original	political	thinkers	of	the	20th century.

Thus,	wherever	we	look	in	the	political	universe,	we	find	that	successful	social	organisms,	be	
they	empires,	federations,	states,	counties,	or	cities,	have	in	all	their	diversity	of	language,	
custom,	tradition,	and	system,	one,	and	only	one,	common	feature	– the	small-cell	pattern.	
Permeating	everything,	it	is	applied	and	reapplied	in	unending processes	of	division	and	subdivision.	The	fascinating	secret	of	a	well-functioning	social	organism	seems	thus	to	lie	not	in its	overall	unity	but	in	its	structure,	maintained	in	health	by	the	life-preserving	mechanism	of	
division	operating	through	myriads	of	cell-splittings	and	rejuvenations	taking	place	under	the	
smooth	skin	of	an	apparently	unchanging	body.	Wherever,	because	of	age	or	bad	design,	this	
rejuvenating	process	of	subdivision	gives	way	to	the	calcifying	process	of	cell	unification,	the	
cells,	now	growing	behind	the	protection	of	their	hardened	frames	beyond	their	divinely	
allotted	limits,	begin,	as	in	cancer,	to	develop	those	hostile,	arrogant	great-power	complexes	
which	cannot	be	brought	to	an	end	until	the	infested	organism	is	either	devoured,	or	a	forceful	
operation	succeeds	in	restoring	the	small-cell	pattern.		[p.	191]

It	is	probably	in	this	paragraph	that	Kohr and	Chardin	move	closest	to	each	other.	The	
economist	and	political	scientist	Kohr	draws	on	a	biological	metaphor	and	describes	large	
political	entities	with	the	osmotic	model	as	calcified	organisms	which	have	developed	
political	cancer.	Chardin	interprets	increasing	complexity	as	the	axis	of	evolution	of	matter	
into	a	geosphere,	a	biosphere,	and	finally	into	consciousness	and	then	to	supreme	
consciousness	(the	Omega	Point).	He	explains	that	evolution	shifted	from	the	realm	of	
physics	into	chemistry	from	chemistry	into	biology,	and	from	biology	into	culture.	He	
describes	the	omega	point,	i.e.	the	breakdown	of	nations	in	Kohr’s or	singularity	in	Ray	
Kurzweil’s	terminology,	as	a	final	destination	of	consciousness	evolution	and	explains	the	
turmoil	in	the	physical	world	thereby.

The	great	powers,	those	monsters	of	nationalism,	must	be	broken	up	and	replaced	by	small	
states;	for	as	perhaps	even	our	diplomats	will	eventually	be	able	to	understand,	only	small	
states	are	wise,	modest	and,	above	all,	weak	enough,	to	accept	an	authority	higher	than	their	
own.	

While	Kohr	is	not	outspoken	what	higher	authority	small	state	governments	will	accept	– it	
could	be	both	the	authority	of	the	democratic	body	of	small	state	citizens	or	a	
transcendental	entity,	it	becomes	rather	clear	that	his	vision	is	very	much	aligned	with	
Chardin’s.	Two	thinkers	who	have	started	in	their	own	academic	field,	far	apart	from	each	
other,	recognize	human	power	concentration	as	the	central	problem	in	social	evolution.	
One	draws	on	osmotic	modelling	and	develops	a	theory	of	a	decentralized	organization,	the	
other	provides	a	metaphysical	explanation	for	why	creation	moves	through	culture	into	
organizations	of	increased	complexity.


(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340023596)


=Source=

* Article: The Breakdown of Nations through a Bioregional Blockchain. By Knut Wimberger. Preprint · March 2020. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14249.13921


[[Category:Global Governance]]

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[[Category:P2P_Hierarchy_Theory]]
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