Item 97a - Letter from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Piero Sraffa

Clarifies statements he made earlier about 'the changes of fashion' and the nature of taste; also elaborates on his discussion of 'the mentality of a people'. He ‘never said that the Austrians couldn’t be fascist because it was incompatible with their mentality’, but that he ‘could not immagine [sic] how this change could take place. The mistake I made was that I called fascism a kind of physiognomy & my difficulty was: how can the Austrians change into the face which I called fascism. The answer to this should have been: Fascism isn’t a face but a form of government etc etc, & though it is true that the face of Austrian fascism won’t be like the face of German & Italian fascisms still the form of government etc etc will be fascism’. Discusses predictions of the future using scientific and intuitive methods; example of weather forecasting.