Guenon’s Critique of Modernity – Bertonneau

The Kali Yuga: René Guenon’s Critique of Modernity

By Thomas T. Bertonneau

 

 

The Conservative critique of modernity is by no means a recent phenomenon; it begins rather with the responders to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Jacobin followers in the late Eighteenth Century. It is sufficient in this regard to mention the names of Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797) and Joseph de Maistre (1753 – 1821) and of their successors, S. T. Coleridge (1772 – 1834) and François-René de Chateaubriand (1768 – 1848), to suggest the range and richness of immediately post-revolutionary conservative discourse. In the Twentieth Century, José Ortega y Gassett (1883 – 1955), Oswald Spengler (1886 – 1936), and T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965), among others, continued in the line established by French réactionisme. In Ortega’s case and in Spengler’s this continuation entailed incorporating the iconoclastic skepticism of Friedrich Nietzsche into the discourse qualifiedly. In Eliot’s case, it meant rejecting Nietzsche’s atheism and taking up from Chateaubriand and Coleridge the apology for Christian revelation and for a theological, as opposed to a secular, view of existence. René Guénon (1886 – 1951) belongs by his dates with the generation of Ortega, Spengler, and Eliot; like Eliot, Guénon is a theist, but despite his favorable treatment of Catholicism he is less identifiably Christian than Eliot. Guénon sees Catholicism as the vessel of tradition in the West, but elsewhere tradition has other forms that are valid in their own contexts.[i]

Spengler’s Decline of the West undoubtedly made an impression on Guénon, much as it did on Guenon’s younger contemporary Julius Evola (1898 – 1974). Guénon and Evola knew each other and mutually influenced one other.[ii] Both Guénon and Evola together exemplify a branch of modern critical anti-modernism affiliated much more than casually with the Twentieth Century occult revival. Guénon at one time, in the 1920s, edited the chief French-language occult periodical, La Gnose or “Gnosis.” Yet Guénon, a fierce un-masker of religious mountebanks, can hardly be accused of employing mystic obscurantism to push a doctrinaire agenda. Guénon’s interest in occult topics, even more than Evola’s, strikes one as rigorous and objective. As for Guénon’s awareness of ideological deformations of reality, it ran to the acute. The driving force of deformation, in Guénon’s analysis as in Evola’s, is the stultifying massiveness of modern society, with its conformism on an unprecedented scale, and its receptivity to oratorical manipulation.

I. Guénon’s study Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion (1921) offers a useful entry into the man’s view. This comprehensive account of Helena Blavatsky (1831 – 1891) and her idiosyncratic cult also serves valuably as a study of modern ersatz-religion in general, delving as it does beyond Blavatsky and Theosophy into related sectarian developments, some of which exhibit a distinctly political character. Guénon never uses the term Gnosticism pejoratively in Theosophy, where it designates only a species of ancient theological speculation. Anyone familiar with Eric Voegelin’s usage of the same term will, however, recognize that Guénon frequently addresses the identical phenomenon of antinomian rebellion, motivated by libido dominandi and expressing itself in apocalyptic language, as addressed by Voegelin. Such self-aggrandizing rebellion, which would impose itself on the whole world, attempts to disguise its libidinousness under the banner of sweeping moral imperatives. Crusading slogans of this type make an appeal to the compensatory self-righteousness of the frustrated and resentful. According to Guénon, Blavatsky’s movement belongs generically to the revolt of distorted moral righteousness against nature; specifically it belongs to the type of destructive petulance that he denominates under the term mystic socialism, a peculiar development of Western civilization in the early Nineteenth Century.

The Blavatsky phenomenon thus serves for Guénon as a case study with broad implications beyond its peculiarities. In the chapter in Theosophy on “The Principle Points of Theosophical Teaching,” in a discussion of reincarnation in Blavatsky’s thought, Guénon writes that, “most revolutionaries [of the 1830s and 40s] were ‘mystics’ in the worst sense of the word, and everyone knows of the extravagances occasioned among them by the theories of Fourrier, Saint-Simon, and others of this kind.” Guénon echoes numerous others in his insight. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, and Anatole France, all note-worthily perceived the same overlap between radical leftwing politics and what Guénon calls “pseudo-mystical aspirations.” Hawthorne writes about political religiosity in The Blithedale Romance (1852); Conrad in Under Western Eyes (1911); James in The Princess Casamassima (1886); and France, using sacrificial terminology and borrowing not a little from de Maistre, in The Gods Will Have Blood (1912). The convergence of judgment bolsters the plausibility of the observation.[iii]

Where Voegelin, for his part, commented on a pronounced mystic strain in the writings of Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, and others Guénon commented on a pronounced political strain in modern mysticism, taking Theosophy as his main instance. Voegelin would have agreed with Guénon’s observation that a “restless and misguided religiosity,” coupled with evangelical “eagerness” to propagate doctrine, animates much of what is characteristically modern in both religion and politics, Voegelin having made similar observations in his own work. Guénon even anticipates Voegelin in his assertion that radical preaching, whether for the advancement of socialism or for the disestablishment of authority, invariably employs “a sentimental and ‘consoling’ moralism,” just as in modern liberal oratory, with its parade of alleged victims of iniquity. Such “moralism” finds fertile ground in the varieties of Protestantism, especially in its Puritan offshoots, like Unitarianism. “The modernist mentality and the Protestant mentality,” Guénon writes, “differ only in nuance,” both being directed at an ancien régime, or religious establishment, denounced as intolerable; both being moralistic; and both being politically messianic.

Theosophy, in Guénon’s analysis, exhibits in its organization the telltale features of a political cabal. Not only did Blavatsky and her collaborators conduct their activities in clandestine and conspiratorial ways, but also Theosophy articulated itself as the inner party/outer party configuration noticeable in Communist organizations. In this way, by recruiting a large exoteric enrollment, the actual ruling minority provides itself with an instrument of willing drones and propagandists. Idealism finds its locus in the movement in the large following. The inner circle, by contrast, aware of its own manipulative character and jealous of its privileges, quickly becomes cynical if it were not so from the beginning; it extracts money from the membership and delegates to volunteers the workaday and unsavory tasks that it prefers not to undertake directly on its own. In a chapter on “The Oath in Theosophy,” Guénon writes, “a secret society is not necessarily a society that conceals its existence or that of its members, but is above all a society that has secrets, whatever their nature.” The secrets might be absurdities, as was the case with many Theosophical secrets; but by pledging the inner-circle to keeping the secrets, on pain of denunciation, the organization inculcates obedience – the real objective of what otherwise might appear so much pointless flummery.

The heart of Guénon’s History of a Pseudo-Religion consists of its twenty-seventh through twenty-ninth chapters – “Theosophical Moralism,” “Theosophy and Protestantism,” “The Political Role of the Theosophical Society” – and its “Conclusion.” In these sections of the book, Guénon begins to abstract from the mass of details concerning the peccadilloes of Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, Annie Besant, and the other capital mountebanks of the cult. Under the topic of “moralism,” Guénon remarks that while a vaguely Christian “universal brotherhood” had been a stated goal of Theosophical activity, Blavatsky steadily described her many social enterprises as incompatible with “confessional differences.” Blavatsky’s enterprises were nevertheless, as Guénon writes, “in direct competition with charitable institutions having a confessional character.” Theosophy resembles in its practical activity the socialism contemporary with it, not least in seeing itself as the opposition to constituted religion, from which it wishes to recruit away the membership; and after that in its aggressive and imperious character, expressed in crusades of shaming and prohibition.[iv]

According to Guénon, “Humanitarianism, pacifism, anti-alcoholism, and vegetarianism [are] ideas that are at root sentimental.” In appropriating these themes Theosophy shows itself to be thoroughly informed by “the essentially ‘moralistic’ mentality of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism,” just as Fabian socialism was. The modern moralization of politics undoubtedly runs in train with the modern politicization of religion. Theosophy reveals much about the generics of modern agitation and complaint: Modern sentiment-driven prohibition-crusades, Guénon writes, organize themselves for “puerile ends.” Yet the crusaders also expect, when they have succeeded in imposing their prohibitions universally, that the event will transform the world. One recalls Fourier’s belief that on the accomplishment of the global Phalanstery the seas would turn to lemonade. Such “pietism” reacts to principled resistance by amplifying its wont as an authoritarian stance.

Because Christianity is an ethos of freedom, all “moralist” – that is to say, “immanentist” – programs “must logically become anti-Christian,” hence also despotic. There is a syllogistic connection, Guénon argues, between a movement “which does not even admit the divinity of Christ,” and the “messianic and millenarist” themes that predominate among “contemporary pragmatists and intuitionists.” The first is the premise and the others are variants of the conclusion.

II. In the term pragmatist Guénon implicates the psychologist William James and in the term intuitionist, the philosopher Henri Bergson. That Guénon yokes James and Bergson with Blavatsky and Besant will outrage many a sensibility. Yet Bergson in fact yoked himself to James, whom he first met in London in 1908 and whom he had quoted approvingly as early as 1889 in Time and Free Will; James repaid that compliment twenty years later in A Pluralistic Universe. James’ best-known book, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), might seem somewhat anti-modern, validating as it does visionary events and a type of non-empirical knowledge. In Guénon’s view, however, as he expresses it in his keynote Crisis of the Modern World (1927) Jamesian pragmatism merely exemplifies the modern tendency to emphasize action over contemplation and instrumentality over knowledge. Guenon remarks how under the Protestant dispensation religion descends towards two privative states, “moralism” and “sentimentality,” until it dwindles down to jejune “religiosity.” Guénon writes: “To this final stage [of dispirited religion] correspond theories such as that of the ‘religious experience’ of William James, which goes to the point of finding in the ‘subconscious’ man’s means of entering into communication with the divine”; thus “a limited God [of subjective rather than transcendental experience] is stipulated as being more ‘advantageous’ than an infinite God.”[v]

As for Bergson, he too according to Guénon is “anti-metaphysical,” his “reality” corresponding blandly “to a vaguely defined sensory order… conceived as something essentially changing and unstable.” But if everything were “change” no possibility of knowledge would exist; nor could intuition have an object, not even itself.[vi]

Guénon wrote The Crisis of the Modern World to summarize his encyclopedic assessment, shared by such illustrious contemporaries as Ortega and Spengler, and canvassing every aspect of life, that Western civilization had entered a phase of terminal deliquescence. Guénon saw in the modern era not merely the age of the vulgate flouting itself en masse, as did Ortega, or of Culture fossilizing into Civilization, as did Spengler: He discerned the “Kali Yuga,” the “Dark Age” of willful havoc, borrowing the label from Hindu scriptures. Thus: “The human cycle [Sanskrit: Manvantara] is divided into four periods marking so many stages during which the primordial spirituality becomes gradually more obscured; these are the same periods that the ancient traditions of the West called the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages. We are now in the fourth age… and have been so already… for more than six thousand years.” (“The Dark Age” is the title of the book’s first chapter.)

The sequence of metallic ages comes from Hesiod’s Works and Days (Eighth Century BC). Hesiod laments having been born into the Iron Age, saying, “Would that I were not among the men of the fifth generation, but either had died before or been born afterwards”; Hesiod’s catalogue of prevailing evils encompasses the triumph of “envy” and the dissolution of justice in selfish claims.

Describing modernity in terms similar to those in Hesiod’s complaint, Guénon refers to such phenomena as “occlusion,” “dispersion in pure multiplicity,” and “progressive materialization” as traits of the times. Guénon traces the remote origin of the specifically modern crisis to the Greek world of two centuries later than Hesiod, particularly to the differentiation of philosophy (self-denominated and as such) from traditional wisdom. In its Pythagorean etymology, as the “love of wisdom,” philosophy connoted modestly “the initial disposition required for the attainment of wisdom,” a “preliminary and preparatory stage.” Soon, however, “the perversion… ensued that consisted in taking this transitional stage for an end in itself and in seeking to substitute ‘philosophy’ for wisdom.” Such arrogance generated “a pretended wisdom that was purely human and therefore entirely of the rational order, and that took the place of true, traditional, supra-rational, and ‘non-human’ wisdom.” These events reflect, in small, and likewise forecast the larger crisis, which Guénon characterizes as inevitable. “The reason [for their inevitability] is that the development of any manifestation implies a gradually increasing distance from the principle from which it proceeds.”[vii]

Tendencies like sophism (egocentric) and skepticism (epistemologically nihilistic) gradually undermined the foundations of Greco-Roman civilization, Guénon opines. Modern consensus-scholarship takes the dominance of Stoicism and Epicureanism over the views of the imperial upper classes as signifying progress in rationality. Guénon assesses the same transformation contrarily as showing “to what point intellectuality had declined.” He writes: “The ancient, sacred doctrines… had degenerated through… lack of understanding into [actual] ‘superstitions’ [that is to say] things which, having lost their meaning, survived for their own sake merely as manifestations.” When the Gothic tribes belatedly dismantled the western Imperium, they did little more in Guénon’s view than put the period to a sentence long completed. The ensuing Gothic Christianity represents for Guénon a temporary positive “readjustment” to tradition. The so-called Renaissance, which follows the Middle Ages “was in reality not a rebirth but the death of many things,” so much so that in respect of the medieval mind modernity is “unable to understand its intellectuality.” Together the Renaissance and the Reformation correspond with “the disruption of Christendom” and they therefore together mark “the starting-point of the modern crisis” in a “definitive rupture with the traditional spirit.”[viii]

Modernity invariably caricatures the Middle Ages as socially and technically stagnant, in contrast to itself, which it conceives as meritoriously active. The modern mentality chiefly demands “change,” which, in a mood of self-congratulation, modern people call dynamism or progress. But, as Guénon writes in the chapter on “Knowledge and Action,” “change, in the widest sense of the word, is unintelligible and contradictory”; thus no society can actually predicate meaningful order purely on “change.” Quite the opposite, constant “change” is indistinguishable from anarchy, toward which all agitating trends like “humanism,” “individualism” and “materialism” lead or so Guénon believes. In the chapter on “Individualism,” Guénon defines that sacrosanct term as, in fact, “the negation of any principle higher than individuality, and the consequent reduction of civilization, in all its branches, to purely human elements.” Individualism existed in ancient society without ever becoming the dominant ethos, but with humanism and Protestantism it broke its fetters and became the defining omniprevalent motif.

For Guénon, Florentine humanism corresponds to Luther’s schismatic rebellion with a Latinate accent – an insight, one might add, that a calm re-reading of Pico’s famous Oration will support. Both movements position themselves resentfully as anti-Catholic and anti-traditional. Florentine neo-Platonism is of the very late, magical variety. As for Protestantism as such, The Crisis classifies it under the formula of “individualism as applied to religion.” Guénon puts it this way: “Protestantism, like the modern world, is built upon mere negation, the same negation of principles that is the essence of individualism.”

III. Much of the refraichement in Guénon’s work comes from its author’s forthright judgment, his judgment of Protestantism furnishing a signal specimen. In The Crisis, Guénon goes on to say that, once it had undergone the Protestant transformation, “The modern outlook was bound to reject all spiritual authority in the true sense of the word, namely authority that is based on the supra-human order, as well as any traditional organization.” One can easily imagine the faculty of a contemporary philosophy department squirming in response to Guénon’s words or bursting into demonstration of outrage. The ire would be unanimous. But that is precisely the paradox that Guénon’s analysis of modernity reveals: In the vaunted individualism noticeable individuality swiftly ceases to exist; a welter of contending subjects replace it, who, in their egocentric contentiousness, soon resemble one another indistinguishably. Guénon has the temerity to write: “Protestantism denied the authority of the organization qualified to interpret legitimately the religious tradition of the West and in its place claimed to set up ‘free criticism,’ that is to say any interpretations resulting from private judgment, even that of the ignorant and incompetent, and based exclusively on the exercise of human reason.” Having validated the subjective, the Protestant or modern mind has no criterion by which it might reject any opinion; so it embraces the opposite and declares a regime of mandatory relativism in ideas and moeurs. From this turn-around arises the social, cultural, and epistemological chaos of the modern age.

Readers of The Crisis, especially of the chapter on “Social Chaos,” must remind themselves every few paragraphs that the writing dates from over eighty years ago, so aptly does it depict existing circumstances in 2010. Guénon denounces “the pseudo-principle of… ‘equality,’” which as he says, “almost all of our contemporaries blindly accept.” Along with pseudo-principles there are “pseudo-ideas” such as “progress” and “democracy,” which have “nothing in common with the intellectual order.” These “false ideas” are, properly speaking, “suggestions,” rooted in sentiment, whose “contagious” character endows them with propagandistic effectiveness; these “verbalisms” are the “idols” of the contemporary masses. As for democracy, “The higher cannot proceed from the lower, because the greater cannot proceed from the lesser.” Guénon’s analysis of mob-behavior (“a sort of general psychosis”) owes something to Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd (1895). Guénon would return to the basic plan of The Crisis in 1945, enlarging the scale of the presentation, with The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, reading whose pages is, if possible, an even more powerful experience than reading those of The Crisis.

The great “signs of the times” in 1945 offered themselves in the wrecked cities of Europe and Japan, the “liberated” concentration camps and POW camps, the presence of the Red Army in Eastern Europe all the way to Vienna, and the new omen of the mushroom cloud. The world’s victorious governments and their eager servants, the agencies of the free press, hastened to call the concatenation of these things “peace” – a “verbalism” which when seen starkly against its background becomes suggestive of actual dementia. Guénon had written The Reign of Quantity during the conflict yet tellingly and deliberately the book barely mentions the war. Eschewing the topical, Guénon returns to his patient diagnosis of modern intellectual and cultural degradation, always keen to reveal the origin of modern perversity. Vital – which is to say, traditional – civilizations acknowledge quality as superior to quantity; such civilizations eschew quantity for its own sake and thus often appear to modern people to have lived in material poverty. The modern idea of the Middle Ages corresponds to this prejudice, which in its turn indicates the impoverishment of modern thinking.[ix]

For Guénon the idea of “democracy” belongs ineradicably to the mentality that values quantity over quality, so much so that it despises the latter – in the social, moral, and esthetic senses – for being incompatible with the so-called equality. It is this, equality, which supplies that mentality’s overriding desideratum. Guénon steadfastly refuses to allow any dignity to the word “democracy,” which he takes as synonymous with modernity’s mad insistence on equalizing all human achievement at the lowest level, the only level at which such a project could come near to completing itself. Thus in the chapter on “The Hatred of Secrecy,” Guénon addresses the pedagogical folly that tries to bring the totality of knowledge and every associated practice “within the reach of all.” Nowadays conservative commentary refers to such programs under the names of “dumbing down” and “affirmative action,” which it would locate as recent developments. Guénon sees the process as co-incipient with Protestant and Revolutionary spitefulness against constituted authority in any domain. Guénon writes: “The modern mentality… cannot bear any secret or even any reserve,” but “such things appear [to it] only as ‘privileges.’” The modern mentality again despises “any kind of superiority” of intellect or mastery because the fact that these things require preparation, capacity, and attunement “is just what ‘egalitarianism’ so obstinately denies.”

Guénon’s Reign makes a telling comparison with another apocalyptic book, H. G. Wells’ Mind at the End of its Tether, like The Reign written during the war and published in 1945. Wells (1866 – 1946), the great prophet of material civilization and “progress,” suddenly knows what Guénon has long known: “The writer finds very considerable reason for believing that, within a period to be estimated by weeks and months rather than by aeons, there has been a fundamental change in the conditions under which life, not simply human life but all self-conscious existence, has been going on since its beginning.” Wells writes of “the abrupt revelation of a hitherto unsuspected upward limit to quantitative material adjustability.” But Wells, militantly secular in his lifelong orientation, cannot grasp that his own sudden disorientation stems from the very attitude that his career successfully promoted. What dawns belatedly on Wells as a mysterious and abrupt alteration presents itself to Guénon only as the inevitable outcome of a long trend. An earlier book by Wells, The Work Health and Happiness of Mankind (1931), is an extravagant instance of what Guénon means by “The Reign of Quantity.”

In the chapter in The Reign on “The Illusion of ‘Ordinary Life,’” Guénon writes, “Materialists, with all their boasted ‘good sense’ and all the ‘progress’ of which they proudly consider themselves to be the most finished products… are really only [people] in whom certain faculties have become atrophied to the extent of being completely abolished.” What materialists like Wells call “normal” is, from a traditional perspective, quite paltry and abnormal. A world organized purely on material lines – as Wells and those of his convictions first prescribed and then realized – exists “as it were in an eminently unstable state of equilibrium.” Hence those mushroom clouds. Unsurprisingly then “the world has even now reached a point where the security of ‘ordinary life,’ on which the whole outward organization of the modern world has rested up till now, runs serious risks of being troubled by unanticipated ‘interferences.’” Those last phrases resemble the opening sentence from The Mind at the End of its Tether previously quoted, but the shock of an unexpected discovery is entirely absent from Guénon’s prose.

IV. Wells, about whom much in a positive way could be said, nevertheless serves as an exemplar of the modern, anti-traditional mentality and thus also as a useful counter-figure to Guénon; indeed, at the end of his life, Wells might be said to have encountered himself uncannily, with The Mind at the End of its Tether and the less pessimistic but equally quirky Happy Turning testifying to the event. Knowledge of Wells helps in understanding Guénon’s diagnosis of modernity in another way, for, having been raised by a Methodist mother, a good deal of righteous evangelism remained in Wells’ makeup even after he rejected any notion of God and adopted as one of his hobbies the making of nasty attacks on organized religion. Guénon argues that modernity is a deviation from but also a deviation of religion or at any rate from and of the “sacred” – the realm of the “profane” being the same as the realm of matter and of quantity. Several French contemporaries of Guénon saw socialism as a Christian heresy, not least Gustave Le Bon (1841 – 1931) and Henri de Lubac (1896 – 1991). Much more recently the American Paul Gottfried (born 1941) has argued that political correctness is a continuation of Protestant Nineteenth-Century social crusades. The distance between Gottfried’s view as expressed in Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt (2002) and Guénon’s view either in The Crisis or The Reign is hardly great; both men remark the intolerant, dogmatic character of “liberal” crusades and the appeal of those crusades to base emotions rather than to intellect.

The liberal professoriate, from which Gottfried is maximally distant, creates theories aplenty that have a superficially intellectual appearance and that deploy arcane terminology, but in the very thickness of the verbalism one can discern Guénon’s themes of “materialization” or “solidification” as keynote characteristics of the prevailing situation.

Wells’ bulking Work Health and Happiness again offers itself as emblematic: It is a two-volume bludgeon of statistics of its day with audacious quantitative prescriptions for realizing global socialism. In The Reign, in the chapter on “Cain and Abel,” Guénon lists, as figuring among the consequences that “materialization” and “solidification” have devolved on the social order, that regime “in which everything is counted, recorded and regulated,” as he writes. This “mania for census-taking,” which Guenon associates with the centrality of statistics in modern thinking, belongs to “the endless multiplication of administrative interventions in all the circumstances of life.” The sixty-five years since The Reign’s appearance have only strengthened the legitimacy of Guénon’s lexical choice of the term mania.” Thus whatever else they might be (articulating that would entail a long list of invidious motives), both “diversity,” on the one hand, and “climate change policy,” on the other, to name but two Twenty-First Century political programs, are maniacally quantitative and anti-traditional.

In describing bureaucratic number-fixation Guénon writes clairvoyantly that: “These interventions [in tradition] must naturally have the effect of insuring the most complete possible uniformity between individuals, all the more so because it is… a ‘principle’ of all administration to treat individuals as mere numerical units all exactly alike… thus constraining all men to adjust themselves… to the same ‘average’ level.”

The tyranny of quantity, it will be seen, overlaps in the Venn diagram of Guénon’s commentary almost entirely with the tyranny of equality; any manifestation of quality, as such, then looms as the enemy of both. Because an egalitarian dispensation can only be achieved at the price of quality in itself, all modern intellectual activity will be constrained by mandatory simplification toward numerical dumbness. This engrossment of thinking – indeed of the perception and experience from which thinking derives its material – is also a topic in The Reign. Traditional society, Guenon argues, being hierarchical is also initiatory. Entrance into the guilds and brotherhoods of traditional society occurs by rigorous selection and arduous training, thus assuring that those who fill the established offices are those best suited to discharge the work that their appointed stations entail. Guénon writes: “Initiation, in whatever form it may appear, is that which really incarnates the ‘spirit’ of ‘supra-human’ states.” For the rebellious mentality that spurns hierarchy, “initiation is the thing that must be opposed.” Modern society, in Guénon’s vocabulary, realizes its program through “counter-initiation,” which strives to effect “a change in the general mentality” and the concomitant “destruction of all traditional institutions.”

Protestantism (once again), rationalism, and humanism re-enter the discussion. Guénon sees them all as agitating, corrosive forms of “counter-initiation,” most obviously in the cases of Calvin and Luther, but no less perniciously in other later non-religious and anti-religious discourse. According to Guénon, “the most astonishing thing is the speed with which it has been possible to induce Westerners to forget everything connected with the existence of a traditional civilization in their countries.” The modern self-congratulatory enlightenment of the European and North American nations therefore corresponds, as Guenon observes, with “total incomprehension of the Middle Ages and everything connected with them.” This forgetfulness is not a spontaneous or natural development, but the result rather of deliberate hostility against the traditional past – of the propaganda, in the exercise of which modern movements, whether political, cultural, sectarian, or scientific excel.

The “Reign of Quantity” requires that its constituency live unconnected with any past in a kind of perpetual present, on the multiplying distractions of which the untutored mind remains stupidly fixed. Guénon remarks how industry fills life with things, objects and devices, which monopolize attention, and which assimilate individuals to the pattern of the consumer. In our own time the variety and fascination – and the idiocy – of these things have only increased. The trend toward “materialization” thus converges with the trend toward mental stultification and, in the stultifying vocabulary of modern politics, “democracy.” Having abolished the normal and the traditional, modernity offers counterfeits in the form of “pseudo-religion,” “pseudo-nature,” and even “pseudo-comfort.” Thus the modern regimes organize “civic or lay ‘pseudo-rites’ that… provide the ‘masses’ with a purely human substitute for real religious rites.” Such counterfeits include the reintroduction of “nature,” or what is supposed to be nature, as an object of worship. Guénon’s analysis of the counterfeit anticipates Jean Baudrillard’s theory of the Simulacrum although as far as I know no one has ever called attention to Guénon’s priority in this respect.

Many literate people nowadays have the gnawing sense that a crackup of the world is at hand. This sense too belongs to The Reign, in whose pages Guénon predicts repeatedly that the “descent” into the nullity of pure quantity is about to hit its lowest depth, its stopping point, at which moment the Kali Yuga will have completed its cycle and a new, opposite motion will begin. Reading Guénon, many literate people will very likely experience some nervousness about the mystic-mythic vocabulary with which he articulates his philosophy of tradition. It is significant, however, that someone as temperamentally opposite to Guénon as was Wells had, at the end of his life, a vision of modern fraudulence as stark as Guénon’s. Given then the total jejuneness of everything modern, including the scrubbed-clean, anti-transcendent vocabulary of positivism; given the vapidity and imposture of Foucault-speak and Derrida-speak, both designed to destroy thinking; given, I say, the rampant perniciousness of the socialistic-egalitarian experiment in all its guises – Guénon’s insistence on the archaic, the traditional language of symbol and myth begins to appear in a new light as both useful and urgent. Guénon displays a kinship in this regard with another explorer of tradition, Richard Wagner.

Notes

[i] Guénon was sympathetic with Islam, especially with the Sufi movement of Islam; he underwent initiation in Islamic mysteries and took an Arabic name.

[ii] Evola wrote a book about Guénon, René Guénon: a Teacher for Modern Times (1933). Other writers who have addressed Guénon are: Frithjof Schuon, Paul Chacornac, Robin Waterfield, and Jean Borella.

[iii] I am, of course, aware that France later became a Communist, an event proving only the vast capacity of human beings for self-delusion and oblivious self-contradiction. France’s novel La Revolte des Anges (1914) is explicitly Gnostic, using actual Gnostic nomenclature; but it is also Marxian and revolutionary, making it a complete turn-around from The Gods will have Blood.

[iv] In the United States, “Spiritism,” Feminism, and the Temperance Movement were all related; their chief personae were the same.

[v] I assess James more positively than Guénon does although I prefer the James of The Varieties of Religious Experience to the James of Pragmatism.

[vi] Hence in Heraclitus, the symbol of the river, ever-changing, on the one hand, and the symbol of the Logos, or eternal idea on the other, with the latter making it possible for the investigating subject to recognize that the river is one and the same even though it is always changing.

[vii] By “manifestation,” Guénon means revelation – of metaphysical truth, vouchsafed by the equivalent of deity, to truth’s original human codifiers. Spengler too wrote that every “Great Culture” begins in a mystic vision, but in Spengler’s scheme revelation is immanent, effective but subjective; for Guénon the source of revelation is living, an entity, and the basis of existence. It is quite real.

[viii] Spengler refers to the Renaissance as an “imbroglio.”

[ix] For Guénon, the Middle Ages represented the last normal phase of Western Civilization.

 

————-

Bertonneau, Thomas T. “The Kali Yuga: René Guenon’s Critique of Modernity.” The Brussels Journal, 13 December 2010. <http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4603 >.

 

Advertisements

Hourglass Capitalism – Benoist

Hourglass Capitalism

By Alain de Benoist

Translated by Tomislav Sunic

 

Inequalities are increasing everywhere—between countries and within each country. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, while the middle class is under threat of being downgraded. The question arises—how did we get there? The answer lies in the recent history of capitalism.

In the capitalist system of the 19th century, the class struggle was a zero-sum game: everything won by one class was automatically lost by the other—hence the ferocity of the System. In the following century, starting with the 1930s, the birth of the Fordist era introduced a major revolution that moved the entire system into second gear. The Fordist era was based on the fact that production was useless unless it becomes the object of consumption, which implied that workers needed to be more or less decently paid if they were to purchase the merchandise intended to be sold to them.

In the Fordist system, the fraction of the added value, which was given away by the capitalists and dispensed in the form of wages, flows now back to the capitalists as employees start purchasing goods and services. From then on, wages represent both the cost and benefit tool. At that moment, social consensus could emerge. In exchange for security and more or less a constantly increasing salary, workers were ready to give up their revolutionary claims. Moreover, the unions also become reformist. Besides, the Fordist system was in line with the welfare state, even if the latter curbed the financial sphere and attempted to fuse the economic dynamics into the framework of a nation- state, and insofar as the strengthening of social rights and the continued growth in wage incomes was allowed.

Thus, a relative balance was achieved between the interests of the market, productivity, competition, and a number of other protecting factors. Capitalism was no longer impoverishing its citizens: rather, it multiplied its own working poor (to increase the number of the working poor a society needs to be more affluent). Such was the nature of the system which dominated social relations until the 1970s.

The Iron Hand of the Market

It was at that time, which had already started during the interwar period, that the middle class began its gradual expansion—mainly at the expense of the working class, with its main feature being that as one entered the ranks of the middle class, there was no coming back. During the Fordist era, due to its ever increasing purchasing power, the middle class actually began to prosper. It contributed to the smooth functioning of the system characterized by mass production and mass consumption. Furthermore, the middle class played an important role in creating and keeping the demand, while absorbing quantities of ever important standardized goods and services, while also willing to pay a higher price for quality products. This, in turn, spurred innovation and investments. In addition, with the gradual improvement of parental funds, younger people were able to pursue higher education for a longer period of time, thus injecting onto the labor market a skilled workforce required by the business sector.

The alliance between the middle class and industrial capitalism was getting stronger insofar as the areas of production and consumption went hand-in-hand: whatever was produced in the North was also consumed in the North. In other words, the middle class was getting more compact just as the capital was gaining more in value. With revolutionary political parties now gone, and with the unions voicing only marginal demands, the political class found itself in tune with the voters.

However, as soon as the interests of the middle class began to diverge from those of capital, the middle class, once an ally of expanding capital, was bound to undergo its own downgrade. The cyclical nature of the middle class dynamics can be explained by the fact that after having been a factor in development and a contributor to capital growth, it now became a burden to productivity growth. At that moment governments were ready to prepare its decline. [1]

In the course of the 1970s, the Fordist era began to wither away. The explosion of the Bretton Woods monetary system, which in 1971 had put a seal on the fixed-rate system, the oil shock of 1973 and 1979, the stagflation, the debt crisis in the Southern hemisphere in 1982, the collapse of the Soviet system, the economic and financial globalization—all this led to the disconnection of the interest of the middle class from those of capital. Things changed profoundly when state interventions, which once played an important role in the establishment of national markets (i.e. when capitalism was still anchored at a national level), turned out to be incompatible with the internationalization of the markets, all of which was carried out within the context of globalization. A new brand of totally deterritorialized capitalism took the upper hand, with its major driving force being the emergence of large international firms and financial markets, spearheaded by the new American hegemony. This resulted in a considerable expansion of international trade whose rapid growth rate surpassed the growth of national wealth. What one witnessed was the end of social democratic consensus which used to be a trade mark of the immediate post-war period—a consensus that became increasingly irrelevant as about the same time the Soviet Union had disappeared.

It is from that time on that the market has attempted to resolve the economy of global society by means of a rapid liberalization of the international flows of goods and capital. From now on, as was very well explained by Bernard Conte, growth was no longer self-centered and the surpluses were no longer automatically redistributed. “Free trade allows the flooding of the markets with low-priced commodities that stand in the competition with domestic commodities, thereby showing their own lack of “competitiveness.” Consequently, in order to stay competitive, one has to lower the costs of production, both directly and indirectly. This approach entails the reduction of real wages, benefits, and, generally speaking, “clientelist” matters (corporate expenditures usually associated with corruption), as well as the reduction of expenses related to the welfare state. Under the guise of competition—profit must be boosted. In order to achieve this, it is essential to adjust national, economic and social structures to the rules of “laissez-faire,” “laissez-passer,” albeit extended, this time around, to the entire planet. As there are too many poor people amidst the population, with the rich being exempted, it is the middle class that must bear the brunt of the adjustments. Due to its unjustified existence—the fact that, in other places around the world ,the jobs of the middle-class people can be performed at lower costs—the middle class thus becomes the “enemy” of financial capitalism. Capitalism has rejected the compromise previously made and moved on to the “euthanizing of the parasitic middle class.” [2]

In order to accomplish this, state intervention—the state being now itself subject to the principles of “global governance”—proved to be indispensable. This took the form of systematic deregulation, destruction of social gains, erosion of public service, reforming of pension plans, and taxation, whose first victims was the middle class—all this against the backdrop of resurgence of a neo-liberal ideology once inspired by the Thatcherite and Reaganite reforms. About the same time, a gap between the middle class and the ruling class started to grow. The ruling class did not stop from implementing policies adverse to the interests of its traditional electorate, which only resulted in the electoral voting abstention on the one hand, and in the global crisis of legitimacy of the New Class, on the other.

Being the transmission belt of new ferocity, this third type of capitalism, often dubbed “turbo capitalism” or “neoliberal capitalism” in the functioning of economy, sanctifies the crucial role of financial markets. Essentially, this is what financial capitalism is all about. Since the early 1980s, financial transactions have brought in more assets than the capital once invested in the manufacturing of goods. The purchase and the sale of fictitious capital on the stock markets bring in more than the value added of the productive real capital. For example, prior to the 2008 crisis, out of 3200 billion dollars traded on a single day, less than 3 percent corresponded to actual goods and services. This may give an idea as to how disconnected the speculative economy has become from the real economy. The liberal justification for this phenomenon is that financial markets must be the sole mechanisms in the efficient process of capital allocation; hence it is important not to impede, let alone regulate their operations.

This theoretical postulate (called “informational efficiency”) has no foundations: the financial crisis of 2008 has demonstrated that markets are not efficient and that financial competition does not necessarily bring about a fair pricing system. Instead it triggers inadequate pricing.

Free Trade Traps

The major error of this theory consists in transposing onto financial market the theory of ordinary goods, which is based on the classic laws of supply and demand. However, as far as the financial markets are concerned, as soon as the price of a security increases, what one sees is not a decrease but rather an increase in demand, for the simple reason that price boosting means higher yields for those who possess that security, and also based on the fact that they can henceforth pocket the added value. This is at the heart of the “speculative bubbles”: a cumulative price increase that feeds itself of its own until a big incident occurs—an unpredictable, yet an inevitable incident provoking the inversion of expectations and the big crash.

Starting with the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), we have been witnessing the introduction of the euro, which came into existence in 1999, first as the interbank exchange system and then, in 2002, in the from of notes and coins. This monetary creation, which was in itself a good endeavor, could make sense only if the two conditions were met: that is, the existence of the customs union and the awareness of economic disparities between the European countries. This, however, was not the case. The single European currency imposed a single interest rate on the 16 economies of opposing needs. In the absence of the optimal exchange rate system, which was in any case impossible to set up, the single European currency turned into a global variable for U.S. deficit adjustments. As far as the abolition of the customs barriers was concerned, its end result was the pitting of French and European employees into the competition against more than 3 billion people (1.3 billion Chinese, 1 billion Indians, 580 million inhabitants of other countries), whose salaries are disproportionally lower than those of European employees. This has resulted in trade relations taking shape in the conditions of product dumping, as well as serial relocations, and as far as France is concerned, in industrial hemorrhage. As of now, we are losing between 800 and 1,000 industrial jobs per working day! (In 2006, there were more than 3.9 million jobs in the manufacturing sector, in comparison to 5.9 million in 1970). The euro, being significantly overvalued in comparison to the dollar, is in the process of suffocating a good part of European industry by diminishing its export margins.

The policies of general dismantlement of the regulations regarding the exchange of goods and capital have been the main vehicle of globalization. In the post-Fordist system, the organization of production has become a network of interconnected flows in an economy that has become more and more competitive. The process of trans-nationalization is being accomplished through the establishment of a systemic coherence. where capital, goods, technologies, like never before, have all been made mobile, as a result of the interplay between large enterprises and the markets. “Capital mobility, crucial for the transnational system, operates in the form of direct investments abroad, while contributing to the growth of private and public debt and eventually disrupting the system of a nation’s accumulation.” [3]

Maurice Allais had clearly seen the negative role played by the “multinationals that, along with stock markets and the banking sector, are prime beneficiaries of an economic mechanism that makes them rich, while impoverishing the majority of French citizens and the world population” (“Lettres aux Français “in Marianne). Allais, who was a Nobel Prize laureate in economics and who recently passed away, had estimated that globalization and international free trade had caused the destruction of the one third of French income. If one takes into account the multiplying effects of industrial employment on global employment—in addition to outsourcing and to the pressures exerted by free trade—it seems, then, that the number of the active population has decreased by 3.5 percent.

The downward pressure on wages, already fostered by resorting to immigration, has been the result of the two factors combined. The first was the establishment of global free trade, which mainly affected Europe and has resulted in a series of relocations. “French managers align their incomes at the highest notch on the world scale, while relocating industrial service sector jobs to the areas where the labor price is the lowest. Chinese or Filipino workers can be used as a reference, whereas French workers who are laid off are offered substitute jobs hundreds or thousands of miles away from home, at a local rate, i.e. a poverty rate .” [4] Economies have thus become entangled in a spiral of creeping deflating wages, i.e. the shrinkage of the purchasing power, which is temporarily hidden, thanks to the use of credit, and while creating a “fake middle class” only aggravating existing individual debts.

The other factor results from the shareholding constraints. In the current system, like never before, companies finance shareholders. The rise of shareholder value has now encouraged the idea that a company must primarily be in the service of the shareholders—starting with those powerful shareholders who represent investment funds—and whose intentions must be honored regarding the return on their investment, and as fast and as high as possible (the norm now is that a rate of return on equity is about 15 percent to 25 percent), even if that means cutting wages, layoffs and relocations, as well as a slowdown in a company’s investments. Such a simultaneous slow down in the investment and consumption results in chronic unemployment. Thus, corporations and businesses have been used only as a tool and reduced to the level of profit-making machines.” [5]

These two phenomena, starting with the 1980s, have resulted in the rise of structural mass unemployment (and no-longer-cyclical unemployment), to which productivity gains have significantly contributed. Meanwhile, the share of labor income in the overall GDP has continued to drop in favor of capital income. The essential feature of this overwhelming “Third-World”-process in the developed economies [6] has been the declining wage share in the value added, that is to say, the increase in the rate of exploitation within a context where capital can from now introduce labor competition on a global scale.[7] Henceforth, global society no longer resembles a pyramid, as was the case during the so-called postwar “golden years”—namely when the accumulated profits at the top of the pyramid ended up sliding downwards toward the bottom, according to the “the spillover theory” formulated by Alfred Sauvy. Rather its has become a sandglass with the rich getting richer at the top, the poor getting poorer at the bottom, whilst in the middle, the middle classes getting increasingly strangled. One can observe now that this widening of inequalities belies the thesis that is at the heart of the dogma of free trade and the ideology of “laissez-faire,” and which claims that within the context of free competition, people receive an income proportional to their contribution in the production process.

In fact, the more free trade expands the more income inequality increases.

Notes:

[1] Cf. Bernard Conte, “Néolibéralisme et euthanasie des classes moyennes,” Octobre 2010.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jérôme Maucourant et Bruno Tinel, “Avènement du néocapitalisme – d’une internationalisation à une transnationalisation des économies.”

[4] Michel Pinçon et Monique Pinçon-Charlot, Le président des riches. Enquête sur l’oligarchie dans la France de Nicolas Sarkozy, Zones, Paris 2010.

[5] Jean-Luc Gréau, entretien in Le Choc du mois, May 2010, p. 36.

[6] Cf. Bernard Conte, La tiers-mondialisation de la planète, Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, Bordeaux 2009.

 

————–

De Benoist, Alain. “Hourglass Capitalism.” Alternative Right, 3 April 2013. <http://alternativeright.com/blog/2013/4/3/hourglass-capitalism >. Transferred to The Identitarian Congress: <http://www.identitariancongress.org/blog/2013/4/3/hourglass-capitalism >.

Note: This article was originally published as “Classes Populaires et Classe Moyennes Face au Capital”, Eléments, January –March, 2011.

 

Democracy: Representative & Participatory – Benoist

Democracy: Representative & Participatory

By Alain de Benoist

 

Representative democracy — essentially liberal and bourgeois — is the most widespread political regime in the Western world today. Representatives are authorized by election to transform the popular will into acts of government. Thus we tend to think of “democracy” and “representation” almost as synonyms. The history of ideas, however, does not at all support this.

The great theorists of representation are Hobbes and Locke. For both, the people, in effect, contractually delegates its sovereignty to governments. For Hobbes, this delegation is total. But it by no means leads to democracy: on the contrary, it invests the monarch with absolute power (the “Leviathan”). For Locke delegation is conditional: the people agrees to give up its sovereignty only in exchange for guarantees concerning fundamental rights and individual freedoms. Popular sovereignty is not so much lost between elections as suspended, so long as the government respects the terms of the contract.

Rousseau, for his part, holds that democracy is incompatible with any representative regime. The people, for him, does not contract with the sovereign. The prince is only the executive of the people, which remains the sole holder of legislative power. He is not even invested with the power belonging to the general will; indeed, it is rather the people that governs through him. Rousseau’s argument is very simple: if the people is represented, then its representatives hold power, in which case it is no longer sovereign. The sovereign people is a “collective being” that can only be represented by itself. To renounce its sovereignty would be like renouncing its freedom, i.e., destroying itself. As soon as the people elect its representatives, “it is a slave, it is nothing” (On the Social Contract, III, 15). Freedom, as an inalienable right, implies its full exercise, otherwise there cannot be true political citizenship. Under these conditions, popular sovereignty can only be undivided and inalienable. Any representation thus constitutes an abdication.

If it is granted that democracy is the regime based on the sovereignty of the people, then one must accept Rousseau’s argument.

Democracy is the form of government that corresponds to the principle of the identity of the ruled and the ruler, i.e., the popular will and the law. This identity derives from the nominal equality of the citizens, i.e., from the fact that they are all equally members of the same political unity. To say that the people is sovereign, not essentially but by vocation, means that it is from the people that the public power and the laws proceed. The rulers can thus be only agents of execution, who must conform to the ends determined by the general will. The role of the representative must be reduced as much as possible, the representative mandate losing all legitimacy as soon as it relates to ends or projects not corresponding to the general will.

Exactly the opposite is the case today. In liberal democracies, primacy is given to representation, and more precisely to whomever incarnates representation, i.e., the representative. The representative, far from being merely an “agent” expressing the will of his voters, is the very incarnation of this will by the mere fact of being elected. Election justifies him acting no longer according to the will of those who elected him, but according to his own will—in other words, he regards himself as authorized by election to do whatever he judges best.

This system is the object of those criticisms that have always been raised against parliamentarism, criticisms that assume new urgency in current debates on the “democracy deficit” and the “crisis of representation.”

In the representative system, once the voter has delegated his political will to his representative by voting, power’s center of gravity inevitably resides in the representatives and the political parties that subsume them, and no longer in the people. The political class soon forms an oligarchy of professionals who defend their own interests (the “New Class”), in a general climate of confusion and unaccountability. Today, when decision-making power is increasingly allotted by nomination or co-optation rather than election, this oligarchy is further augmented by “experts,” senior officials, and technicians.

The rule of law, whose virtues liberal theorists regularly celebrate—despite all the ambiguities attached to this expression—seems unlikely to correct the situation. Consisting of an ensemble of procedures and formal legal rules, it is actually indifferent to the specific aims of politics. Values are excluded from its concern, thus leaving an open field for the confrontation of interests. Laws have authority solely because they are legal, i.e., in conformity with the constitution and the procedures provided for their adoption. Thus legitimacy is reduced to legality. This legalist-positivist conception of legitimacy encourages respect for institutions as such, as if they constituted ends in themselves, without the popular will being able to amend them and control their operation.

However, in democracy, the legitimacy of power does not depend solely on conformity to the law, or even conformity to the Constitution, but above all on conformity of governmental practices to the aims assigned by the general will. Thus the justice and the validity of the laws cannot lie entirely in the activity of the state or the legislation of the party in power. Likewise, the law’s legitimacy cannot be guaranteed by the mere existence of jurisdictional control: it is also necessary that the law be legitimate, that it answer to the citizens’ expectations, and that it serve the common good. Finally, one can speak of constitutional legitimacy only when the authority of the constituent power is recognized as always having the right to amend the laws’ form or contents. That is to say that the constituting power cannot be completely delegated or alienated, that it continues to exist and that its authority is higher than the Constitution and constitutional laws, even if these are based on it.

Obviously we can never completely escape representation, since the idea of a controlling majority encounters insurmountable difficulties in modern societies. Representation, which is never more than a makeshift, does not, however, exhaust the democratic principle. It can to a large extent be corrected by the implementation of participatory democracy, also called organic democracy or embodied democracy. Such a reorientation appears even more necessary today given the general evolution of society.

The crisis of institutional structures, the disappearance of the founding “grand narratives,” the growing disaffection of the electorate for conventional political parties, the revival of community life, the emergence of new social or political movements (ecological, regionalist, identitarian) whose common characteristic is less to defend negotiable interests than existential values—all these allow us to envision the possibility of recreating a fundamentally active citizenship.

The crisis of the nation state — due in particular to the globalization of economic life and the deployment of phenomena of planetary influence — causes for its part two modes of transcendence: at the top, through various attempts to recreate at the supranational level a coherence and efficiency in decision-making that would allow at least partial regulation of the globalization process; at the bottom, through the renewed importance of small political unities and local autonomies. These two tendencies — which not only do not oppose but actually complement and imply one another — offer a remedy for today’s democracy deficit.

But the political scene is still changing. On the right we are seeing the rupture of the old “hegemonic block” because capitalism can no longer maintain its alliance with the middle classes—due to its belated modernization, the evolution of production costs, and the transnationalization of capital accelerated by the crisis. At the same time that the middle classes feel disorientated if not threatened, the lower classes are increasingly disappointed by the governmental policies of a left that, after disavowing practically all its principles, tends to identify more and more with the interests of the upper middle class. In other words, the middle classes no longer feel represented by the parties of the right, while the popular elements feel abandoned and betrayed by the parties of the left.

Moreover, the effacement of old points of reference, the collapse of models, the disintegration of the great ideologies of modernity, the absolute power of a commercial system that (may) ensure the means of existence but not the meaning of life, raise finally the crucial question of the significance of man’s earthly existence, of the meaning of individual and collective life, in an age when the economy produces more and more goods and services with less and less labor, multiplying exclusions in a context already heavily marked by unemployment, precarious employment, fear of the future, insecurity, reactive aggressiveness, and tensions of all kinds.

All these factors call for an in-depth recasting of democratic practices that can take place only in terms of true participatory democracy. Indeed, in an increasingly “illegible” society, participatory democracy has the main advantage of eliminating or correcting the distortions caused by representation, ensuring greater conformity of the law to the general will, and founding a legitimacy without which institutional legality is mere show.

It is not possible to recreate such an active citizenship at the level of the great collective institutions (parties, trade unions, churches, armies, schools, etc.) for today they are all more or less in crisis and thus no longer able to perform their traditional functions of social integration and mediation. Nor can the control of power be the sole prerogative of political parties whose activity is too often reduced to clientelism. Today, participatory democracy can be only a grassroots democracy.

The purpose of grassroots democracy is not to generalize discussion to all realms of life, but rather — with the input of as many people as possible — to arrive at new decision-making procedures in conformity with the requirements of grassroots democracy and the aspirations of the citizens. This is not merely a matter of opposing “civil society” to the public sphere, which would amount to increasing private influence and giving up political initiative for obsolete forms of power. Rather, grassroots democracy works to make it possible for individuals to prove themselves as citizens, and not as members of the private sphere, while supporting as much as possible the multiplication and flourishing of new public spheres of initiative and responsibility.

The referendum procedure (which results either from government decision or popular initiative and which is either optional or obligatory) is only one form of direct democracy among others — one whose importance is perhaps overestimated. Let us stress once again that the real political principle of democracy is not that the majority decides, but that the people is sovereign. Voting per se is only a simple technical means of consulting and revealing opinion. This means that democracy is a political principle that should not be confused with the means it uses, any more than it is to be reduced to a purely arithmetic or quantitative idea. Citizenship is not exhausted by voting, but is present in all methods allowing one to give or refuse consent, to express refusal or approval. It is thus advisable to explore systematically all possible forms of active participation in public life, which are also forms of responsibility and personal autonomy, since public life conditions the daily existence of us all.

But participatory democracy is more than just political. It also has social import. By supporting relations of reciprocity, by allowing the re-creation of social bonds, it can help reconstitute today’s weakened organic solidarity, repairing a social fabric frayed by the rise of individualism, competition, and self-interest. Insofar as it produces elementary sociality, participatory democracy goes hand in hand with the rebirth of vibrant communities, the re-creation of solidarity in neighborhoods, districts, workplaces, etc.

This participatory conception of democracy is entirely opposed to the liberal legitimation of political apathy, which indirectly encourages abstention and leads to the reign of managers, experts, and technicians. Democracy, in the final analysis, rests less on the form of government per se than on people’s participation in public life, such that the maximum of democracy merges with the maximum of participation. To participate is to take part, to prove oneself as part of a unit or a whole, and to assume the active role that results from this membership. “Participation,” René Capitant says, “is the individual act of the citizen acting as a member of the popular collectivity.” One sees by this how much the concepts of membership, citizenship, and democracy are interdependent. Participation sanctions citizenship, which results from membership. Membership justifies citizenship, which allows participation.

Everyone knows the motto of the French republic: “Liberty, equality, fraternity.” If the liberal democracies have exploited the word “liberty,” if the former people’s democracies seized upon “equality,” then organic or participatory democracy, based on active citizenship and popular sovereignty, could well be the best way to respond to the imperative of fraternity.

Note

Alain de Benoist, “Démocratie représentative et démocratie participative,” in Critiques—Théoriques (Lausanne, Switzerland: L’Age d’Homme, 2002), 426–30. The translator wishes to thank Alain de Benoist for permission to translate and publish this essay, and Michael O’Meara for checking and editing the translation.

 

————–

De Benoist, Alain. “Democracy: Representative & Participatory.” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 2008), pp. 19-24. Text retrieved from: <http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/democracy-representative-and-participatory/ >.

 

Dostoyevsky and Russia – Dugin

Dostoyevsky and the Metaphysics of St. Petersburg

By Alexander Dugin

Translated by Vladislav Ivanov

 

The Author Who Wrote Russia

Russia’s principal writer is the novelist Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky. Russian culture and its outlook accumulate in him, as if to some magic source. All the previous anticipates Dostoyevskiy, all the following results from him. No doubt he is Russia’s greatest national genius.

Dostoyevsky’s heritage is immense and almost all researchers agree upon the importance of his main novel, “Crime and Punishment”. If Dostoyevsky is the main author of Russia, “Crime and Punishment” is the main work of Russian literature and fundamental text of the Russian history.*

Consequently, there is nothing accidental or arbitrary about it, and there cannot be. Certainly this book must contain some mysterious hieroglyph, in which the whole Russian fate is concentrated. Deciphering that hieroglyph is the equivalent of attaining knowledge of the unfathomable Russian Mystery.

The Third Capital – The Third Rus

The novel is set in St. Petersburg. This fact, in itself, has a symbolic meaning. What is the sacred function of Petersburg in Russian history? By understanding this, we come near to Dostoyevskiy’s position.

St. Petersburg takes on sacred significance only in comparison with Moscow. Both capitals are bound up with each other by a ial cyclic logic, by a symbolic thread. Russia has had three capitals. The first one – Kiev – was the capital of a national, ethnically uniform state, situated on the periphery of the Byzantine Empire. That northern frontier formation did not play a very important civilizational or sacred role. A usual state for Aryan barbarians. Kiev is the capital of the ethnic Russ.

The second capital – Moscow – is something much more important. It took on a special significance at the moment of Constantinople’s fall, when Russ turned out to be the last Orthodox Christian Kingdom, the last Orthodox Christian Empire left.

Hence it follows: “Moscow is the Third Rome”. The idea of the Kingdom in the Orthodox Christian tradition has a special eschatological role: the State, by recognizing the completeness of the Church’s truth is, according to Tradition, the obstacle in the way of “Ruin’s son”, the hindrance to the advent of the “Antichrist”.

The Orthodox Christian State, constitutionally recognizing Orthodox Christianity’s truth and the Patriarch’s spiritual sway, is the “cathechon”, or “deterrent” (from Saint Paul the Apostle’s second Letter to the Thessalonians). The introduction of Patriarchate in Russ became possible only at the moment when the Byzantine Empire had fallen as a kingdom and, consequently, the Constantinopolitan Patriarch had lost his eschatological significance. For this significance is concentrated not just in the Orthodox Christian Church hierarchy, but in the Empire which recognizes the authority of that hierarchy. Hence follows the theological and eschatological significance of Moscow, of Moscow Russ. The Byzantine Empire’s fall signified, in the apocalyptic view of Orthodox Christianity, the approach of the “apostasy” period, of general recreancy. Only for a short time does Moscow turn out to be the Third Rome so as to postpone the Antichrist’s advent, to put off the moment when his arrival becomes a general, universal phenomenon. Moscow since then is the capital of an essentially new State. Not a national State, but a soteriological, eschatological, apocalyptic one. Moscow Russ, with its Patriarch and Orthodox Christian King (or Czar), is a Russ which is absolutely different from the Kievan one. It is no longer on the Empire’s periphery, but is the last stronghold of salvation, the Ark, the ground cleared for New Jerusalem to descend. “There will not be the Fourth one”.

St. Petersburg is the capital of the Russ which comes after the Third Rome. In some sense there is no such capital, there can’t be. “There won’t be a Fourth Rome”. St. Petersburg establishes the Third Russia. Third by quality, structure and sense. It is neither a national state, nor a soteriological ark. It is a strange titanic chimera, the ‘postmortem’ country, the nation that lives and develops in a space that is beyond history. Petersburg is a city of “Nav” (“Death’s incarnation”, Old Russian), a city of the reverse side. Hence follows the assonance of the Neva River (on which Petersburg is situated) and the Nav. The city of moonlight, water, strange buildings, alien to history’s rhythm, to national or religious aesthetics. The Petersburg period of Russian history was the third sense of its fate. That was a time of special Russians, of ones beyond the ark. The old believers were the last to embark the ark of the Third Rome by the christening fire which committed their huts together with them to flames.

Dostoyevsky is the writer of Petersburg. He is not intelligible without Petersburg. But Petersburg itself would remain in the virtual, illusive state without Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky revived it, made this enigmatic city actual, having had revealed its sense (only then does anything exist, when its sense shows through itself).

Only in Petersburg does Russian literature appear. The Kievan period is the period of epic legends. Moscow period is the time of soteriology and national theology.

Petersburg brings literature to Russia, the unholy rudiment of what used to be a valuable national thinking, the extolled trace of what has gone. Literature is a covering, a surface speck of sidereal waves, a vacuum, which is moaning with despair. Dostoyevsky heeded this call of emptiness so much that everything gone, erased, forgotten was, as it were, resurrected in his heroic spiritual doing.

Dostoyevsky is more than literature. He is theology, epic legend. Therefore his Petersburg seeks the idea, the sense. It constantly turns to the Third Rome. It agonizingly scrutinizes the sources of the nation.

The main character of “Crime and Punishment” is named Raskolnikov, being a direct reference to the Schism (or “Raskol”). Raskolnikov is a man of the Third Rome, “geworfen” (or “thrown”) into navi Petersburg. The suffering soul, which by a strange logic suddenly found himself after self-immolation in the damp labyrinth of the Petersburg streets, yellow walls, wet roadways and morose gray skies.

The Capital

The plot of “Crime and Punishment” is a structural analogue to Marx’s “Capital”: the prophecy of the coming Russian Revolution. It was simultaneously a draft to a new theology, a theology of being forsaken by God, what would become the main philosophical problem of the Twentieth Century. That theology could be called the “theology of Petersburg”, navi thoughts, the intellectualism of ghosts.

The story is extremely simple. The student Raskolnikov sharply senses the social reality as a revelation of evil, a special sensation that is so characteristic in some Gnostic, eschatological teachings.

The potassium cyanide of civilization. The degeneracy and the vice flourishes where the organic connections, spiritual meanings and anagogic spirals of hierarchies that ascend unimpeded to heaven, are lost. The perception of unholy reality. The insufferable loss of the “Third Rome”. The horror before the encounter with the universal Antichrist element, with Petersburg. Raskolnikov guesses absolutely correctly that the symbolic pole of evil is a perverted womanhood (Kali). That is that damned by religion loan capital, which equalizes the living with the lifeless and creates monsters. That is the decaying, degradation of the world. All this is the crone-usurer, the Baba-Yaga of the modern world, the Winter-Woman, Death, murderer. Out of her dirty place she spins Petersburg’s web, sending through its black streets Luzhins, Svidrigaylovs, dvorniks and Marmeladovs, the “black brothers”, secret agents of the capitalist sin.

The toils of the Underworld entangle taverns and brothels, dens of misery and ignorance, and stairwells and gateways plunged in semi-darkness. Because of her senile sorcery, the Sophia, God’s wisdom, turns to pitiful Sonechka with the yellow ticket. The hub of the wheel of Petersburg’s evil is found. Rodion Raskolnikov completes the ontological reconnoitering. Certainly, Raskolnikov is a communist. Though he is closer to the socialist-revolutionaries, to the narodniks. Certainly, he is familiar with the contemporary social teachings. He knows foreign languages and could have familiarized himself with Marx’s “Manifesto” or even with “Capital”. What is important is at the beginning of the “Manifesto”: “…a specter is wandering Europe…”. This is not a metaphor, it is a precise definition of that special mode of being that comes about after a society becomes unholy, after “God’s death”. From that time on we are in the world of wraiths, in the world of visions, chimeras, hallucinations, of navi plots.** For Russia this means “journeying from Moscow to Petersburg”, the incarnation into the city on the Neva, into the ghost-city. This incarnation could never be complete.

The communist specter makes all reality ghostly. Having settled in the consciousness of the student, who searches for the lost Logos, it plunges him into a current of distorted visions: there an old libertine drags a drunk teenage girl somewhere; there Marmeladov cries in a heart-rending way, after he has sold the last shawl of his lady-love to get money for alcohol; there demonic Svidrigaylov, the envoy of the web eternity, which is under the wardship of the usurer-crone, sidles toward Rodion’s pure sister. But is this a delusion? The ghost, having possessed the consciousness, in fact rids the unconsciousness. The reality unveiled is frightful, intolerable, but true. Is it evil to understand evil? Is it an illusion to reveal the illusory character of the world? Is it insanity to realize that the humankind lives according to the laws of ill logic? The ghost of Marxism, the narcotic of disclosure, the Gnostic call to uprising against the evil Demiurge… The bloody pain of these wounds is more acute than the image of a brightly lit hall, full of well-dressed couples, whirling in the dance.

Raskolnikov, killing the old crone, commits a paradigmatic gesture, carries out a Deed to which, in an archetypal way, the Praxis as Marxism perceives it, is reduced. Rodion Raskolnikov’s Deed is the act of the Russian Revolution, the summary of all Social Democratic, Narodnik and Bolshevik literature. This is a fundamental gesture of Russian history which just came about after Dostoyevsky, having been prepared long before him in enigmatic initial points of the national fate. All our history is divided into two parts – before the murder of the usurer-crone by Raskolnikov and after the murder. But being a phantasmal, supertemporal moment, it cast flashes forward and backward into time. It shows itself in peasant uprisings, in heresies, in Pugachov’s and Razin’s rebellions, in the split of the Orthodox Christian Church (Schism, Raskol), in the advent of the dark time (the events at the beginning of 17th Century Russia), in all the complicated, multi-stage, insatiable metaphysics of Russian Murder, which spread from the profundity of the initial Slavic birth to the Red Terror and Gulag. Any hand raised over a victim’s skull was impelled by a passionate, vague, profound outburst. It was participation in the Common Deed and its philosophy. Killing and Death brings near the Resurrection of the Dead.

We Russians are a blessed nation. Therefore all our manifestations – lofty and shabby, comely and terrifying – are sanctified by otherworldly senses, by rays of the otherworldly city, are washed by transcendent moisture. In the abundance of the national Grace the good and the evil are mixed, pour from one to another, and suddenly the dark lightens, whereas something white becomes a mere hell. We are as unknowable as the Absolute. We are a divine nation. Even our Crime is incomparably superior to some other’s virtue.

Dichotomy of the two

Between the middle of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Russian consciousness was in a strange way possessed with comprehending one of the ten commandments – “kill not”. They discussed it as if it were the Christianity essence. Theologians, revolutionaries, and terrorists constantly repeated it (Savinkov was mad for that commandment) as well as humanitarians, progressives, and conservatives. Both the theme and the argumentation around it were so important that it affected, to a considerable extent, all modern Russian consciousness. Although the significance of that formula faded with the advent of Bolsheviks, it reemerged at the end of the Soviet period and began to haunt intellectuals’ brains with the renewed force. “Kill not” is not an exactly Christian and New Testament commandment, but is the Judaic and Old Testament one. This is a part of the Law, the Torah, that regulates, as a whole, the exoteric, outer, social and ethical norms of Israeli popular life. That commandment doesn’t have any special significance. You can find something analogous in most traditions, in their social codes. In Hinduism the equivalent is called “ahimsa”, “non-violence”. This “kill not”, as well as the rest of the paragraphs of the Law, regulate human freedom, directing it to the stream which, according to the spirit of Tradition, belongs to the better part, to its “right-hand side”. In addition, it is significant that “kill not” does not have any absolute metaphysical sense. As well as all exoteric statues this commandment just serves with the others in keeping the collective existence in order and for preserving the community from falling into chaos (“The Law has committed nothing”, according to Saint Paul the Apostle). In principle, if one compares the Old Testament reality with the modern one, the formula to “kill not” approximately corresponds to the inscription “smoking is forbidden”, put up in the theater’s foyer. Smoking in a theater is not allowed, it is not good. When some strained spectators begin to smoke, it’s a state of emergency for the usherettes. Such people are condemned by public opinion and subjected to repression by the servants of justice.

It is very significant that the Old Testament is full of defiant non-observance of that commandment. Murder is all around. It is committed by not only sinners, but also by righteous men, kings, anointed sovereigns, even prophets. Elijah’s favorite pupil, the prophet Elisha, was especially stern: he had no mercy even for innocent little ones. They killed during wars, killed natives and aliens, killed criminals and those who have killed, killed women. They had no mercy for infants, the aged ones, goyim, prophets, idolaters, sorcerers, sectarians, relatives. A lot of things were destroyed. In the Book of Job, Yahweh – without any special reason except a fairly superficial controversy with Lucifer – treats in a sadistic way his own chosen and virtuous man.

When the latter, covered with leprosy, gets indignant at this, Jahwe cows him with two geo-political*** monsters: the land called Behemoth and the sea called Leviathan, i.e. Jahweh mortifies him in the moral sense too. Modern Biblical investigation proves convincingly that the original text of the Book of Job comes to its end at the peak of the tragedy, and the naively moralistic end was added by Levites long after, who were terrified by the primordial, rigid nature of that most archaic of “Old Testament” fragments.

In other words, in the Judaic context where the commandment to “kill not” was directly taken from, it has neither any absolute character nor any special significance.

There was no controversy on that theme and apparently no reflection was given it with any express purpose. That is not to say that the commandment was never taken into account. It was: they tried not to shed blood for no purpose. They also bewared the rabbinical court. If someone was finished off in vain, a punishment followed. The usual law. The ordinary commandment. Nothing special. The standard of human conduct. In Christianity everything is different. Christ is the fulfillment of the Law. The Law ends with him. The Law’s mission is carried out. In some sense, it is removed from the agenda. Exactly “removed”, but not repealed. The spiritual problems pass on to a radically different plane. From now on the Post-Law, the era of Grace, begins. “The protection of Law is overcome”. Strictly speaking, the advent of such an era signifies the unimportant character of commandments.

Even the very first commandment of worshipping One Lord is overcome by the New Testament, by the Precept of Love for Him. Through the Incarnation, the Logos-God brings about absolutely new relations between the Maker and all creation, and among the creatures themselves. From then on everything happens under the sign of Emmanuel, by the beneficial formula, “God is with us”. God is not somewhere far away, He performs not just the role of Judge and Law-giver, but also the role of the Beloved and Loving One. The New Commandment does not reject the ten previous ones, but makes them unnecessary.

New Testament humanity is in a cardinal way different from the old, Judaic (or heathen) one. It bears the sign of transcendent Love. That is why the dichotomy of Law- “worship – worship not”, “singular – plural”, “steal – steal not”, “seduce – seduce not” and, finally, “kill – kill not”- doesn’t make sense anymore.

In Christian holiness, all means are expressed positively. The new man needs no rules here, he lives for one thing – the sober, everlasting, undiluted Love, staying in prayer and contemplation. Here, there’s not just “kill not”. The Christian saints would laugh at such caution for in them the duality is already abolished, the barrier between self and non-self is crushed. Moreover, they want to be killed, they aspire to suffer, they long for martyrdom. However, valuable Christian life doesn’t have any relation to the old Ten Commandments. They are once and forever overcome in the sacred christening. Further, there is only the realization of Grace.

But let’s consider a Christian not in holiness, not in monkshood, not in asceticism and the hermitic life. Will the idea set by the Old Testament order be valid for him? No. He is christened, which means born from above, and consequently God is with him too. Inside, but not outside. Therefore, even being a sinner, the unworthy one too lives beyond the old man, in the new being, in the stream of the undeserved light of Grace. Observing or not observing Old Testament legislation has nothing to do with the intimate essence of the Christian existence.

Of course, it is more convenient for a society to have dealings with those who are obedient and observe rules. For a Christian society too. But all this doesn’t have any common measure with the Church sacrament, with the mystical life of a believer. Here the most interesting element begins. A Christian, by overstepping some Old Testament commandment, in fact demonstrates that he did not complete in himself the mysterious nature of the New Man, the potential personality cast by the Holy Spirit in the font of christening.

But who can boast that he has reached full deification? The more one is holy, the more mean, sinful, terrible he seems to himself before the face of the Shining Trinity. Consequently, as in the case of the yurodivy (“God’s fools”) who disparaged the human aspect, falling can be, in a paradoxical Christian way, a sacrament.

Observing the Ten Commandments isn’t a decisive factor for an Orthodox Christian. Only one thing is important for him: Love, the New – absolutely New – Testament, the Love Testament. The Ten Commandments without Love is the way to hell. And if Love is, then they have no significance anymore. This was all clear to radical Russian intellectuals. In Boris Savinkov’s book, “The Pale Horse”, a terrorist named “Vanya” (a literary character, inspired by Ivan Kalyayev) says before committing a murder: “And the other way – Christ’s way to Christ… Listen, if you love a lot, really love, you can then kill, can you not?”

And further –

“…one must undergo a cross torment, one must determine on doing all this out of love and for love. But absolutely out of love and for love… So I live, and what for? Maybe I live for my death-hour. I pray: Lord, give me death in the name of love. You cannot pray for murder, can you?”.

Savinkov lived, thought, wrote, and murdered after Dostoyevsky. But nothing is added to Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov murders not just for humankind’s sake (though for it too), he murders for the sake of Love. In order to go through suffering, he has to die, to kill death in himself and others. Ivan Kalyayev, as well as Savinkov himself, are profoundly Russian, profoundly Orthodox Christian, profoundly “dostoyevskian-type” people: having an evidently divine character, along with the entire nation, and filled with such lofty, paradoxical and Orthodox Christian Thought, a comparison which makes the most refined and profound Western philosophical schemes turn insipid. Russians don’t formulate a theology, they endure it, live it throughout all their lives. This is the theology, coming through pores, through breath, through tears, through sleep and grimaces of wrath. Through torment and torture. Through the wet and bloody, carnal and spiritualized element of the New Life.

With Love and for Love’s sake one may do everything. This doesn’t mean that one must do everything and that all commandments should be countermanded, rejected. On no account. One should just demonstrate with one’s life and gestures that there is – and this is the chief thing – another measure of being, the new light, the light of Love.

The place of the usurer-crone’s murder is St. Petersburg. So this is the place of Love in Russia, locus amoris.

Rodion raises two hands, two angular signs, two sinew plexus, two runes over the wintry shriveled skull of the Capital. In his hand there is a coarse, gross, crudely made item. With this item, the central ritual of Russian history, and of Russian mystery, is committed. The wraith materializes, the moment falls out of the system of earthly time (Goethe would have gone immediately crazy, having seen which moment in fact stopped…). Two theologies, two testaments, two revelations meet in the magic point. This point is absolute.

Axe is its name.

Labris

The short genealogy of the axe.

The most brilliant hypotheses concerning this item – its origin and its Symbolism – was advanced by Herman Wirth, a German scientific genius and a specialist in the sphere of human prehistory and ancient letters. Wirth showed that the twofold axe was the primordial symbol of the Year, of the circle, of its two halves, one is following the winter solstice, the other is foregoing it. The standard (not twofold) axe correspondingly symbolizes one half of the Year, as a rule the springtime, the ascending half.

Moreover, the utilitarian use of an axe for chopping trees, also according to Wirth, bears a relation to yearly symbolism, for the Tree in Tradition means Year. Its roots are the wintry months, its crown are the summer ones. Therefore chopping trees is correlated, in the primordial symbolical context of the sacred societies, with the advent of the New Year and the old one’s end.

The Axe is simultaneously the New Year and the instrument with which the old is destroyed. Simultaneously it is a cutting instrument, splitting Time, snipping the umbilical cord of its span off in the Winter Solstice’s magic point, when the Sun’s greatest Mystery of death and resurrection comes about.

The rune in the ancient runic calendar depicting the axe was called “thurs” and was dedicated to God Thor. It fell on the first months of the New Year. Thor was the Axe-God or its symbolic equivalent, the Hammer-God or Miollnir. With this Hammer-Axe, Thor smashed the skull of the World Serpent, Irmunganthr, who floated in the lower waters of darkness. Again the obvious solstice myth, connected with the point of the New Year. The Serpent is the Winter, the cold, the lower waters of the Sacred year, where the polar sun descends to. Thor, here he is both the Sun and the spirit of the Sun, overcomes the cold’s grasp and sets the Light free. On the later stages of the myth, the Sun-Light figure is divided into two – the savior and the saved – and then into three with the addition of salvation’s instrument, the axe. In the primordial form, all those personalities were something united – god-sun-axe (hammer).

The earliest inscription of the axe sign in the ancient Paleolithic caverns and rock carvings were analyzed by Herman Wirth in the light of the entire ritual and calendar structure. He traced the amazing constancy of the axe proto-sense through the most different by both age and geographic location cultures and languages. He showed the etymological and semantic relation of words which mean ‘axe’ with other symbolic notions and mythological subjects, which are also associated with the mystery of New Year, the middle of Winter, the Winter Solstice.

Especially interesting are the indications that the symbolic meaning of “axe” is strictly identical with two other ancient hieroglyph-word-items: “labyrinth” and “beard”.

The “Labyrinth” is a development of the idea of a year spiral, twisting to the New Year and then right away starting to untwist. “Beard” is merely the masculine sun’s light in the autumn-winter half of the year circle (the hair as a whole are the sun’s rays). Therefore in the runic circle another rune – “peorp” – looks like the axe, but means the beard. In the middle of the Labyrinth lives Minotaurus, the monster, the human-bull, the equivalent of Jormungandr, the World Serpent and… the usurer crone. Dostoyevsky described the ancient mythological subject, the secret paradigm of a symbolic succession, the primordial ritual, which our ancestors practiced for many millennia. But this is not just an anachronism or uncoordinated fragments of the collective unconscious. In fact the matter is about a much more important eschatological picture, about the sense and gesture of the End of Times, about the sacred apocalyptic moment, when time collides with Eternity, when the fire of Doomsday blazes.

The Russians are the blessed nation, and Russian history is the resume of world history. To us, like to a temporal, spatial and ethnic magnet, the destiny sense of centuries gravitates with increasing progression. The First and the Second Rome were just for the Third one to appear. The Byzantine Empire was the prophecy of the Holy Russ. The Holy Russ in the apocalyptic way drew itself to the wraith-city named St. Petersburg, where Russia’s greatest prophet Fyodor Dostoyevsky appeared. The scene of his main novel, “Crime and Punishment”, is set in the labyrinth of Petersburg’s streets and the novel’s main characters are Russia’s main characters. Among them, the most important are Raskolnikov, the usurer-crone and the axe. In addition, the axe is the beam that connects Raskolnikov with the usurer-crone. Consequently, world history – through the history of Rome, through the history of the Byzantine Empire, through the history of Russia, through the history of Moscow, through the history of St. Petersburg, through the history of Dostoyevsky, through the history of “Crime and Punishment”, through the history of the novel’s main characters – is reduced to the AXE.

Raskolnikov splits the capitalist crone’s head. The name “Raskolnikov” (“Raskol” means literally a “split”) itself indicates the axe and the operation it makes. Raskolnikov performs the New Year ritual, the Doomsday mystery, the celebration of the Sun’s resurrection.

Capitalism, creeping to Russia from the West, from the sunset side, carnally represents the world serpent. Its agent is the spider-crone, spinning a web of usurious slavery. She is also part of it.

Raskolnikov brings the axe of the East.

The axe of the rising sun, the axe of Freedom and the New Dawn.

The novel should have ended in a triumphal way with the full justification of Rodion. Raskolnikov’s crime is the punishment for the usurer. The era of the Axe and proletarian Revolution is proclaimed. But… additional forces entered the affair. The investigator Porfiriy turns out to be especially insidious. That representative of Kafkian jurisprudence and Pharisaical pseudo-humanitarianism begins a complicated intrigue to defame the main character and his actions in Raskolnikov’s own eyes. Porfiriy, in the mean way he juggles the facts, leads Raskolnikov up a blind labyrinth of doubt, nervousness, and mental derangement. He doesn’t just try to put Rodion in jail, but seeks to suppress him in a spiritual way. The main character should have treated that scum the same way he did the crone: “Smash the serpent’s skull”. But our personage turns out to be unable to gather himself up… Then the rest of the tissue of the myth also turns out to be unraveled. Raskolnikov, according to the primordial scenario, should have gotten Wisdom-Sophia out of the brothel, like Gnostic-Simon did with Helena. Even the scene of reciting the gospel narration about Lazarus’s resurrection remained from the original version: Sophia, rescued by Love and upon being released from usurious slavery propagates the universal resurrection. But here for some reason she joins in a conspiracy with the “humanitarian serpent-worshipper”, Porfiriy. She begins to suggest to Raskolnikov an idea: that the old woman, she said, should have been spared, that she was “not a shaking louse”. The society of love of animals, including the world serpent from pitch-darkness. A care for a capitalist’s tear.

How can this all be explained?

Dostoyevsky was a prophet and had the gift of a clairvoyant. He foresaw, not only the revolution (the stroke on the skull with the axe), but also its degeneration, its betrayal, its being put on the market. The Sophia of socialism gradually degraded to humanitarian Pharisaic dithering. Porfiriys penetrated the party and undermined the basics of the Soviet country’s eschatological reign.

First they gave up the permanent revolution, then the purges, and then Sonya, under the guise of the late-Soviet intellectuals, again started whining about the silliest – to “kill not”… And blood gushed as a river. This wasn’t the blood of usurer-crones, but that of really innocent children.

There exists a virtual version of “Crime and Punishment”, which has an absolutely different ending. It has to do with the new, coming period of Russian history. Till now we lived through the first version. But now that’s all over. The new myth is incarnating, the scarlet sword of Boris Savinkov is scorching the hands of a new youthful Russia, the Russia of the End Times.

Axe is the name of that Russia.

Notes

* Let’s take notice right away of the fact that quite a few of the concepts in this article are suggested by reading the very interesting work of V. Kushev, “730 steps”, in which the author analyzes the paradigm of “Crime and Punishment”.

** Stirner wrote in “German Ideology”: “Mensch, es spukt in deinem Kopfe!”, what could be approximately translated as, “Man, it is your head what is haunted by ghosts”. Regarding the exact translation of the German verb “spuken”, it is derived from “der Spuk” (a wraith) and is analogous to the French “hanter” and the English “to haunt”. Father Seraphim indicated to us an interesting analogy, having remembered that in Old Russian there existed the verb “stuzhati”, meaning the same as the German “spuken” – to be overcome by the evil ones, be possessed by the invisible beings. Jacques Derrida in his text “Hamlet and Hecuba” (1956) pointed out the similarity between Shakespeare’s drama and Marx’s “Manifesto”. In both cases everything begins with the ghost, from expecting its appearance. Derrida points out precisely that “the moment of the ghosts doesn’t belong to usual time”. In other words, time in the world of ghosts doesn’t have any common measure with the time of the human world. It is very closely connected with the very essence of Petersburg, the ghost-city, living beyond the sacred time of Russian history in some subtle sleep, sidereal dizziness. This is the ghost-like eternity of Svidrigaylov. This “flying Dutchman-like” city, its lights, its chandeliers, its candles and bulbs, and its Enlightenment are nothing more than St. Elm’s lights, the fictitious luminescence of a marsh-like quasi-existence. Stuzhalyy gorod, the haunted city, la ville hantee… The place of insanity, illness, fever, perversions, vice and…dawning consciousness.

*** In modern geopolitics, Leviathan and Behemoth means sea power and land power correspondingly. The Leviathan is Atlantism, the West, America, the Anglo-Saxon world, and market ideology. The Behemoth is the Eurasian, continental structure, and is associated with Russia, hierarchy and tradition.

 

——————

Dugin, Alexander. “Dostoyevsky and the metaphysics of St. Petersburg.” Eurocontinentalism Journal, 13 Friday 2013. <http://eurocontinentalism.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/dostoyevsky-and-the-metaphysics-of-st-petersburg-prof-dr-alexandr-dugin/ >.

 

Greater Europe Project – Dugin

The Greater Europe Project

(A geo-political draft for a future multi-polar world)

By Alexander Dugin

 

1. Following the decline and disappearance of the socialist East European Block in the end of the last century, a new vision of world geopolitics based on a new approach became a necessity. But the inertia of political thinking and the lack of historic imagination among the political elites of the victorious West has led to a simplistic option: the conceptual basis of western liberal democracy, a market-economy society, and the strategic domination of the USA on the world scale became the only solution to all kinds of emerging challenges and the universal model that should be imperatively accepted by all of humanity.

2. Before our eyes this new reality is emerging – the reality of one world organised entirely on the American paradigm. An influential neo-conservative think tank in the modern USA openly refers to it by a more appropriate term – the ‘global Empire’ (sometimes ‘benevolent Empire’ – R. Kagan). This Empire is uni-polar and concentric by its very nature. In the centre there is the ‘rich North’, Atlantic community. All the rest of the world, –the zone of underdeveloped or developing countries, considered peripheral, – is presumed to be following the same direction and the same course that the core countries of the West did long before it.

3. In such a uni-polar vision, Europe is considered the outskirts of America, the world capital, and as a bridgehead of the American West on the large Eurasian continent. Europe is seen as a part of the rich North, not a decision maker, but a junior partner without proper interests and specific characteristics of its own. Europe, in such a project, is perceived as an object and not the subject, as a geopolitical entity deprived of autonomous identity and will, of real and acknowledged sovereignty. Most of the cultural, political, ideological and geopolitical particularity of European heritage is thought of as something passé: anything that was once valued as useful has already been integrated into the Global Western project; what’s left is discounted as irrelevant. In such circumstances Europe becomes geopolitically denuded, deprived of its own proper and independent self. Being geographically a neighbour to regions with diverse non-European civilisations, and with its own identity weakened or directly negated by the approach of the Global American Empire, Europe can easily lose its own cultural and political shape.

4. However, liberal democracy and the free market theory account for only part of the European historical heritage and that there have been other options proposed and issues dealt with by great European thinkers, scientists, politicians, ideologists and artists. The identity of Europe is much wider and deeper than some simplistic American ideological fast-food of the global Empire complex – with its caricaturist mixture of ultra-liberalism, free market ideology and quantitative democracy. In the cold war era, the unity of the Western world (on both sides of the Atlantic) had more or less solid base of the mutual defence of common values. But now this challenge is no longer present, the old rhetoric doesn’t work anymore. It should be revised and new arguments supplied. There is no longer a clear and realistic common foe. The positive basis for a united West in the future is almost totally lacking. The social choice of European countries and states is in stark contrast of Anglo-Saxon (today American) option towards ultra-liberalism.

5. Present-day Europe has its own strategic interests that differ substantially with American interests or with the approach of the Global West project. Europe has its particular positive attitude towards its southern and eastern neighbours. In some cases economic profit, the energy supply issues and common defence initiative don’t coincide at all with American ones.

6. These general considerations lead us, European intellectuals deeply concerned by the fate of our cultural and historical Motherland, Europe, to the conclusion that we badly need an alternative future world vision where the place, the role and the mission of Europe and European civilisation would be different, greater, better and safer than it is within the frame of the Global Empire project with too evident imperialistic features.

7. The only feasible alternative in present circumstances is to found in the context of a multi-polar world. Multi-polarity can grant to any country and civilisation on the planet the right and the freedom to develop its own potential, to organise its own internal reality in accordance with the specific identity of its culture and people, to propose a reliable basis of just and balanced international relations amongst the world’s nations. Multi-polarity should be based on the principle of equity among the different kinds of political, social and economic organisations of these nations and states. Technological progress and a growing openness of countries should promote dialogue amongst, and the prosperity of, all peoples and nations. But at the same time it shouldn’t endanger their respective identities. Differences between civilisations do not have to necessarily culminate in an inevitable clash between them – in contrast to the simplistic logic of some American writers. Dialogue, or rather ‘polylogue’, is a realistic and feasible possibility that we should all exploit in this regard.

8. Concerning Europe directly, and in contrast to other plans for the creation of something ‘greater’ in the old-fashioned imperialistic sense of the word – be it the Greater Middle East Project or the pan-nationalist plan for a Greater Russia or a Greater China – we suggest, as a concretisation of the multi-polar approach, a balanced and open vision of a Greater Europe as a new concept for the future development of our civilisation in strategic, social, cultural, economic and geopolitical dimensions.

9. Greater Europe consists of the territory contained within the boundaries that coincide with the limits of a civilisation. This kind of boundary is something completely new, as is the concept of the civilisation-state. The nature of these boundaries presumes a gradual transition – not an abrupt line. So this Greater Europe should be open for interaction with its neighbours in the West, East or South.

10. A Greater Europe in the general context of a multi-polar world is conceived as surrounded by other great territories, basing their respective unities on the affinity of civilisations. So we can postulate the eventual appearance of a Greater North America, a Greater Eurasia, a Greater Pacific Asia and, in the more distant future, a Greater South America and a Greater Africa. No country – except the USA – as things stand today, can afford and defend its true sovereignty, relying solely on its own inner resources. No one of them could be considered as an autonomous pole capable of counterbalancing the Atlantist power. So multi-polarity demands a large-scale integration process. It could be called ‘a chain of globalisations’ – but globalisation within concrete limits – coinciding with the approximate boundaries of various civilisations.

11. We imagine this Greater Europe as a sovereign geopolitical power, with its own strong cultural identity, with its own social and political options – based on the principles of the European democratic tradition – with its own defence system, including nuclear weapons, with its own strategic access to energy and mineral resources, making its own independent choices on peace or war with other countries or civilisations – with all of the above depending on a common European will and democratic procedure for making decisions.

12. In order to promote our project of a Greater Europe and the multi-polarity concept, we appeal to the different forces in European countries, and to the Russians, the Americans, the Asians, to reach beyond their political options, cultural differences and religious choices to support actively our initiative, to create in any place or region Committees for a Greater Europe or other kinds of organisations sharing the multi-polar approach, rejecting uni-polarity, the growing danger of American imperialism and elaborating a similar concept for other civilisations. If we work together, strongly affirming our different identities, we will be able to found a balanced, just and better world, a Greater World where any worthy culture, society, faith, tradition and human creativity will find its proper and granted place.

 

Alexander Dugin, The Committee for a Greater Europe.

In North America this project is endorsed by New Resistance.

——————-

Dugin, Alexander.” The Greater Europe Project.” Open Revolt, 24 December 2011. <http://openrevolt.info/2011/12/24/the-greater-europe-project/ >.

This article was also found at the Fourth Political Theory website (<http://www.4pt.su/en/content/greater-europe-project >) and at the GRANews website (<http://granews.info/content/greater-europe-project >).

Note: For a brief discussion of Dugin’s theories and also a listing of major translated works by him, see Natella Speranskaya’s interview with Dugin: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/civilization-as-political-concept-dugin/ >.

 

Establish Multipolar World Order – Savin

Establish a Multipolar World Order

Interview with Mr. Leonid SAVIN of the International Eurasian Movement – by Euro-Synergies

 

Could you describe in a few key words the essence and goals of your movement? Does it place itself in an existing sociopolitical-historical trend of Russian politics? Does it lobby in Russian government circles to achieve its goals?

The main idea and goal of the International Eurasian Movement is to establish a multipolar world order, where there will be no dictatorship of the U.S. anymore or of any other country or actor of world politics. In the sector of ideology we strongly reject (neo)liberalism and the globalization process as its derivative. We agree that we (as well as other nations) need a constructive platform for our alternative future. In the search of it, our work is directed to dialogue with other cultures and peoples who understand the meaning and necessity of conservative values in contemporary societies. Speaking about Russian reality, we are heirs and assigns to the former Eurasianists (this ideology was born in the 1920s): Piotr Savitsky, Nikolay Trubetskoy, Nikolay Alekseev as well as Lev Gumilev — the famous Soviet scholar. They all studied historical processes and proposed a unique vision of our history, separate from the eurocentric science approach. The understanding that Russia is not part of Europe or Asia, but forms a very own unique world, named Eurasia, is also implemented in our political activity. In cooperation with members of parliament or the Council of the Federation or other governmental bodies, with our advices and recommendations, we always provide a strong basis linked to our history, culture, diversity and so on. And I must tell you that many people understand and support our ideas and efforts (in governmental structures, local and regional authorities, science and education, religious institutions and in society at large).

What is your vision on a multipolar world? Which role do you see for Western European nations? Do they have any future at all on the world stage of the 21st century? Will they surmount the actual crises on a demographic, metaphysical and mental level?

In my opinion, a multipolar world is the order with 5 or more centers of power in the world and this reality will keep our planet more safe and balanced with shared responsibility between the regions. But it is not just interdependence by the logic of liberalism: some regions might well exist in relative political and economic autarky. Beside that, there might exist a double core in one center (for example Arabs and Turks in a large Muslim zone or Russia and Central Asian states for Eurasia) and shifted and inter-imposed zones, because, historically, centers of power can be moved. Of course at the moment the most significant centers of power are described in terms of nuclear arms, GDP, economic weight/growth and diplomatic influence. First of all we already have more poles than during the Soviet-US opposition. Secondly, everybody understands the role of China as a ‘Bretton Woods-2’, as well as emerging countries under acronyms as BRICS or VISTA, “anchor countries” and so on. And, thirdly, we see the rise of popular and unconventional diplomacy and the desire of many countries (many of them are strong regional actors such as Iran, Indonesia and Brazil) to not follow the U.S. as satellites or minor partners.

Of course, Washington does not like this scenario and tries to make coalitions based on states with a neocolonial background or on dutiful marionettes. But even in the U.S., politicians and analysts understand that the time of unipolar hegemony has gone. They are trying to build a more flexible approach to international relations, called ‘multilateralism’ (H. Clinton) or ‘non-polarity’ (R. Haas), but the problem is that the U.S. do not have enough confidence in foreign actors united as joint, but who still have no strong alternative to the contemporary world order. So, they use another option for destabilization of rising regions, known as controlled chaos. Because of its military presence over most parts of the globe and its status of promoter of democracy and the protection of human rights, the White House can justify its own interests in these places. And cyberspace is also the object of manipulation, where the whole world is divided in two camps that remind us of the times of the Cold War (I call it ‘Cold Cyber War’).

We think that the contemporary West European nations are one of the poles (centers of power) in a forthcoming multipolar world order). But the problem for now is their engagement in U.S. pro-atlanticist politics, as manifested in the Euro-Atlantic chart of cooperation (common market, legislation and regulation mechanisms, including items of domestic politics), as well as NATO activity. The same we see on the other side of Eurasia – attempts of Washington to start trans-Atlantic cooperation with Asian countries. The contemporary crisis is neither good nor bad. It’s a fact. And the European nations must think about the way they’ll choose, because it will form the future (at least in Europe). It is not the first time in history: during the middle ages there was decline of population because of pestilence and wars. Religious schisms also occurred, so Europeans have some experience in metaphysics and ethics dealing with system failure too. The point is that now we have more interconnected reality and the speed of information sharing is fantastic, that was not possible, imagine, a century ago. And European society becomes more consumerist! But even in Europe, there are a lot of voices in respect of nature (organic greens), anti-grow movements (in economics) and traditionalists who try to keep and preserve ethnic and historical values and manners. Even the Soviet experience could be useful: after the Great Social Revolution there was a strong anti-church attitude promoted by the government, but after 70 years we’re back at our roots (of course during all this time not all people were atheists and the return to church happened during Stalin’s period when the institute of the Patriarchy was restored).

How do you see the dialogue of civilizations in the light of more than 10 years of wars between the West and the Muslim world? Where does Russia stand in this opposition? Are there fears of an islamization process within the Russian Federation, or are Russian authorities setting on long-time accommodation with Muslim minorities and actors?

At first we must bear in mind that the idea of Huntington (the ‘clash of civilizations’) was developed out of necessity of justifying the U.S.’s military and economic expansion. His book was issued when the first wave of globalization as the highest principle of Westcentrism just began its tide in the Third World. By the logic of neo-liberal capitalism it must be re-ordered and re-programmed in the search for new markets. All non-western societies must consume western products, services and technologies by this logic. And let’s remember that war against the Muslim countries originated from the neocons from Washington. So, these 10 years of wars that you to mention is nothing more than a provoked conflict by a small group that was very powerful in American politics at the beginning of the 2000s. By the way, all kinds of radical Islam (Wahhabism) were promoted by the United Kingdom. This version of Islam was founded in Saudi Arabia only with London’s special support. The Great Game in Eurasia was started many years ago and Britain has played here a most significant role. The U.S. took this role only after WW2, but many destructive processes were already unleashed. Of course, Russia is suspicious of radical Islam, because emissaries of the Wahhabis and al-Qaeda were already in the Northern Caucasus. And still now, there are different terrorist groups with the idea of the so-called “Emirate of the Caucasus.” There were also attempts to spread another sectarian belief promoted by Fetullah Gullen (Nurjular), but for now this sect is prohibited here. Actually Islam is not a threat to Russia, because, traditionally, a lot of people living here are Muslim. Regions like Tatarstan, the North Caucasus republics, Bashkortostan have an Islamic population. And our government supports traditional Islam here.

What do you think about the American/Western strategy of strategic encirclement of Russia? Can we see this as well in the process of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’? Is an open, Western-waged war against Syria and Iran possible and would it be the onset to a major world conflict, a ‘Third World War’? Where would Russia stand?

It works. Not only because of the reset of the Anaconda strategy for Eurasia by means of military presence. Sometimes it doesn’t manifest in classical bases. Logistics is the main element of contemporary warfare, as well as C4ISR – Command, Control, Computer, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance – works in the vein of smart engagement. Other tools are: economics, promotion of democracy and human rights, cyber politics. The Arab Spring is a very complex phenomenon – there are a couple of components, but you can see that the U.S. has a bonus anyway: Egypt has asked for a huge loan from the World Bank; Western companies go to Libya; Muslim extremists are being manipulated against moderate Muslims, because they are a threat to western interests and so on. Organized chaos is just another view on the socio-political reality in turbulence. As Steve Mann (famous theorist of the chaos principle in diplomacy) wrote: the state is just hardware and ideology is its soft version. It were better to use ‘virus’ (in other words ‘promoting democracy’) and not to break PC. Syria and Iran are interesting for many nations now. The hysteria of Israel is not good, because this country has nuclear weapons. What will come of Israel using it? The Palestinian question is also on the table. I think that Israel is a more serious problem than Syria and Iran. Russia firmly supports Syria and takes a moderate position on Iran. During the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia declined to provide the “S-300” rocket complex to Iran (we had already signed the contract) and the deal was canceled. You bear in mind that during the same time Russia supported resolution 1973 of UN Security Council and the West started operation “Odyssey Dawn” against Libya. So, even VIP politicians in Russia sometimes do wrong things! But Mr. Putin is actively pro-Syrian and I think that the position of Russia about Iran and about Western pressure will be more adequate than before. As foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told: “we got experience with Libya and don’t believe the West anymore”.

What do you think about the Western Europeans: should they remain loyal to their historical-political heritage of individualism and atlanticism, or should they rethink themselves and orient themselves towards Russia and continentalism? What about pro-Russian elements in European society? Can they be partners or are they, politically and socially spoken, too marginal for that?

John M. Hobson, in his brilliant work The eurocentric conception of world politics, made very clear that the West is rooted in the logic of immanence instead of the logic of co-development that is characteristic of non-western societies. He continues that the formula “the West and the Rest” is wrong, because without the rest there is no place for the West. Now we see one United Europe, but in real life we have two levels. The first one is presented by the bureaucratic establishment with its symbols, history, power projections and procedures. The second one is active publicity with movements, political parties and personal activists who are not interested in an Orwellian future with “Big Brother,” universal values and so on. Actually, in geography we have more than one substance. And where is the border between Southern, Western and Eastern Europe? It’s mostly in the minds. From history we remember the Celtic space, the Roman Empire, the Germanic and nomad invasions (Huns, Avars, etc.), that shows that the face of Europe permanently changed throughout the centuries. Now the European population includes people from Africa and Asia and soon the demographic balance will change. Political culture will change too. Without Russia, Europe is impossible. Not only because of geography (just look at the map and you will see that the EU is just the small, overpopulated western peninsula of Eurasia), but also because of the role of Russia in European history. Napoleon and Hitler – the two most significant unifiers of Europe – were stopped and defeated in Russia and, after that, new political orders were established. And for now in Europe we have so many Russian “prints”: in culture, history, the role of some persons and diasporas. I think that pro-Russian elements just now have a very good choice, because the window of opportunity is open. All these elements could form an avant-garde of a new kind of cooperation: in trade relations, science, art and education and public diplomacy. The last one is the tie for all activities. Actually Minister Lavrov just today (i.e. 26.02.2013) announced that, because of the Russia year in the Netherlands and vice versa, there will be more than 350 actions on state level. It is a good sign of mutual respect and it may be deeper.

What about key power Germany? Do you believe in, let’s say, an ‘Indo-European bloc’, an axis Berlin-Moscow-New Delhi, as a formidable counterweight to the atlanticist bloc of the axis Washington-London-Paris? Do the horrors of the Second World War still affect Russians’ views of Germany and the Germans, or is it possible to turn the page on both sides and look forward? What about the French: do they belong in the atlanticist bloc, or can they be won for the continentalist bloc without giving in to their chauvinism? And what about China: will it turn out to be an even more dangerous enemy than the USA, or will both Russia and China remain strategic partners, e.g. within the SCO?

Because the EU has two levels, the same is true for Germany. One Germany, represented by the political establishment, is pro-U.S. and cannot do anything without Washington. Another one (latent or potential) is looking for closer cooperation with Russia. At the time of the Russian Empire a lot of German people came to our country at the invitation of Empress Catherine the Great. Even before that, many foreigners were in Russia as military officers, teachers, technical specialists, etc. People’s potential can do a lot of things. We must keep in mind that, besides Sea Power and Land Power in geopolitics, we have Man Power, which is the unique and main axis of any politics. The problem is that, after WWII, there was in most European countries a strong influence of Britain and the U.S.. They used very black propaganda and the peoples of Europe were afraid of a communist invasion. The U.S. even started more horrible projects in Western Europe (for example Propaganda-Due and operation “Gladio” in Italy, as well as “Stay Behind” NATO secret armies, formed from right-wing extremist elements). Still now in the EU, we see anti-Russian propaganda, but our borders are open and any European can go to Russia and see what happens here. The case of Gérard Depardieu is just one example.

If we look at what happens in China we’ll understand that it is a very strong actor and that its power grows from year to year. In the UN Security Council China is an important partner of Russia (for the Syria voting too). Russia is a supplier of oil and gas to China and we have new agreements for the future. Besides that we provide military equipment to China, though they have good weapon systems of their own as well. In the SCO we had good results and I think that cooperation in this organization must be enlarged through strategic military elements with the entry at least of Iran, Belarus, India and Pakistan (they have an observer or dialogue partner status). Turkey is interested as well, but because of its NATO membership it will be difficult to join.

I know that some Russians and Europeans describe China as a possible enemy, a “yellow threat” (the Polish writer Ignacy Witkiewicz even wrote about it in his novel in 1929!!!) and so on, but in reality China has no intents of border pretence to Russia. We have had some incidents in Siberia with contraband, but these are criminal cases which do not deal with state politics. China will focus on Taiwan and on the disputed islands in the Pacific and it will take all geopolitical attention and may be some loyalty from Russia and SCO members.

Also China has the same view on the future world order – multipolarity. Actually this idea (duojihua) was born in China in 1986. And with the strategic cooperation with many other countries in Africa and South America, joint efforts against western hegemony will be fruitful.

So, I think China and Russia can do a lot for a reform of the forthcoming world order.

A lot of people now want to forget their own origins and the origins of other peoples. Bavaria, for example, was populated centuries ago by Avars from Asia (part of them still live in the Caucasus) during the Migration Period. Groups of Turkish origin also went to lands of contemporary Austria. So in contemporary Europe we have a lot of Asian elements. And vice-versa in Asia we have people of Aryan origin. Not only in the North of India, but also in Tajikistan, Pakistan, Iran (arya is the self-name of the people of Iran and India). And hybridization is continuing as we speak in Europe and in other regions. Just before Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union we had a pact with Germany and had been cooperating extensively in technologies and in the economy. And France was attacked first by Germany, but now relations between both countries are normal. I think that historical harms between Germany and Russia have been mostly forgotten. And I think that many Germans still remember that the most destructive attacks did not come from the Soviet army but from U.S. and British air forces (Dresden, Leipzig…). It was not a war, but a deliberate destruction of cities and non-armed refugees. Actually now Germans is mostly good businessmen for Russians, compared to representatives of other European nations (these facts have been confirmed by many friends who do business with Europeans).

I can not to speak with enough certainty of what happens with Russian-French relations, because I’m not very interested in this sector. During the XXth century we had many deals with France, and after WWII it was the idea of Stalin to give the winner status to France. Charles de Gaulle also was pro-Soviet in a geopolitical sense. But after the legalization of gay marriage in France, many Russians feel suspicious about this country. But every people and every country has its own specifics. We have had many interesting philosophers from France who have had influence on Russian thinkers too.

Turning to domestic Russian problems: Russia under President Putin has been able to make enormous progress in the social field, mainly due to energy sales during the 2000s. Has this changed the face of Russia? Has this period come to an end or is there stagnation? How will Russia cope with its domestic problems, such as the demographic crisis, which it shares with Western Europe? Should the Siberian land mass be ‘re-colonized’ by Russians and other Europeans, in order to make it an impregnable ‘green lung fortress’ for the white peoples?

The grand contribution of Mr. Putin is that he stopped liberal privatization and the process of separatism in Russia. Persons such as Chodorkovsky were representatives of the Western oligarchy, especially of powerful financial clans (for example, he is a personal friend of Rothschild) and he had plans to usurp power in Russia through the corruption of parliament. We still have the rudiments of predatory liberalism such as misbalances, corruption, fifth column, degradation of traditional values, etc. For now we see in Russia efforts to build a smarter kind of economics, but it must be done very carefully. The questions that must be at the center are: how to deal with the Federal Reserve System? What about a new currency order that may be represented by BRICS? How to start mobilization? What to do with the neoliberal lobby within the government? The demographic crisis is also linked with neoliberalism and consumerism. A century ago, there was a rise of population in Russia, but two world wars have cut it. Even during Soviet times we had a good demography index. Now the government has started supporting young families and the process of human reproduction. In addition to birth programs we have an initiative dealing with the return of compatriots to Russia and all people who were born in the USSR can come to Russia very easily and get certain funding from the state. But I think that, because the Russians were the state-forming people, there must be a preference for Slavonic origin, because migrants from Asian countries (who do not speak Russian and have other traditions) will flow to Russia for economic reasons. Many Russian activists who take a critical stance on Asian people are already disappointed by this program. I think that the attraction of Byelorussians and Ukrainians can equalize this disproportion. But, strategically, the state must support a system of child-bearing with all necessary needs (fosterage, education, working place, social environmental, etc.). In some regions governors personally start up that kind of programs dealing with local and regional solidarity. First of all, Siberia is still Russian. The Siberian type of Russian is different from citizens from the central or southern regions, but till now it’s still mainly Russian, not only institutionally, but also ethnically. Actually, according to our statistics, most labor migrants to Russia come from Ukraine! So, in spite of strange relations between both countries and with strong anti-Russian stances on the part of Ukrainian nationalists and pro-western “democrats,” people just make their own choice. Rationally speaking, Siberia is not only interesting, because of its virgin forests and natural resources, but also because of its neighbors — and China is one of them with an emerging economy. So Siberia could serve as a hub in the future. I think that Europeans would also go to Russia (not only to Siberia), but this migration must be done meticulously, because of the language barrier, with a period of adaptation to different social conditions and so on. Maybe it could be useful to organize towns of compact residence and also city-hubs for foreign people who come to live in Russia, where they can live and work in new conditions. New Berlin, New Brussels, New Paris (of course translated into the Russian language) will then appear on a new Russian map.

What is your opinion about the future of Putinist Russia? Will the government be able to enduringly counter Western propaganda and destabilization campaigns, and come to a ‘generation pact’ between the older generation, born during Soviet times, and the younger generation, born after 1991? What will be President Putin’s fundamental heritage for Russian history?

The key problem for Russia is a neoliberal group inside the Kremlin. Putin has the support of people who want more radical actions against corruption, western agents and so on. But a “colored revolution” in Russia is impossible, because the masses do not believe in the pro-western opposition. Ideas of democracy and human rights promoted by West have been discredited worldwide and our people understand well what liberalization, privatization and such kind of activities in the interest of global oligarchy mean. And because of the announcement of the Eurasian Customs Union Russia must work hard the coming years with partners from Kazakhstan and Belarus. As for counterpropaganda, the new official doctrine of Russian foreign policy is about softpower. So Russia has all the instruments officially legalized to model its own image abroad. In some sense we do this kind of work, just as other non-governmental organizations and public initiatives.You mention a “generation pact,” referring to different ideals of young and older people, especially in the context of the Soviet era. Now, you would be surprised that a figure as Stalin is very popular among young people and thinking part of the youth understands well that Soviet times were more enjoyable than contemporary semi-capitalism. As I told in my previous answer, Putin is important because he stopped the disintegration of Russia. He already is a historical figure.

Is there a common ‘metaphysical future’ for the whole of Europe after the downfall of Western Christianity (catholicism, protestantism)? Can Russian Orthodoxism be a guide? What do you hold of the modest revival of pre-Christian religious traditions across the continent? What about countering the influence of Islam on the European continent? Is there a different view concerning that discussion between Russia and Western Europe?

Russian Christian Orthodoxy is not panacea, because there are also some problems. Christianity in XIIth century, XVIth century and nowadays is very different. Now many formal orthodox Christians go to church two times a year, at Easter and at Christmas. But Orthodox Christianity is also a thesaurus of wisdom where you can find ideas from ancient Greek philosophy, metaphysics, cultural heritage, transformed paganism and psychology. In this sense, Russian Christian Orthodox old believers keep this heritage alive and may be interested as well in forms (ceremonies) as in the spiritual essence with its complex ideas. Speaking about paganism, Russia is the only country in Europe that still has authentic pagan societies (Republics of Mari-El, Mordovia, Komi) with very interesting rites and traditions. Actually Finno-Ugric peoples historically were very close to Slavonic people and assimilated together, so there is a good chance to research these traditions for those who are interested in Slavonic pre-Christian culture. But the postmodern version of a restored paganism in Europe or any other region to my opinion is just a fake and there is not so much from true paganism. As for Islam, as I told before, in Russia there exist a couple of versions of traditional Islam, which are presented by several law schools (mazhabs). In the Northern Caucasus, the regional government has tried to copy the idea of multiculturalism and to implement Euro-Islam as an antithesis to spreading Wahhabism. But it has not worked and now more attention is paid to traditional religious culture linked with education and the social sector. But the project of multiculturalism has failed in Europe as well, so all common Euro-Russian outlooks on Islam are finished. But, to be honest, I think that Europe must learn from the Russian experience of coexistence of different religions (not forgetting paganism and shamanism – this belief is widely found in Siberia). In Europe, they use the term tolerance but we, Eurasianists, prefer the term complimentarity, proposed by Lev Gumilev, meaning a subconscious sympathy between different ethnic groups. As Gumilev explained, Russia became so large because Russians, during the expansion, looked on other people as on their own and understood them. This differs from the point of view (more specifically in ethnosociology) that all ethnic groups have the idea of “We are” against “The Other,” represented by another group. The imperial principle works with the idea of mosaics where every ethnos is a “We are.” And our famous writer and philosopher Fjodor Dostoevsky told about all-human (all-mankind) nature (not common to all mankind) that is represented by the Russians, because inside, you can find all radical oppositions. I think it is a good reason to turn to Russia and its people.

Thank you, Mr. Savin, for this very interesting and open-hearted interview.

 

—————-

Savin, Leonid. “Establish a Multipolar World Order: Interview with Mr. Leonid Savin of the International Eurasian Movement.” Interview by Synergies Européennes. Euro-Synergies, 25 March 2013. <http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/archive/2013/03/22/interview-with-mr-leonid-savin.html >. (See this essay in PDF format here: Establish a Multipolar World Order).

Notes: For another discussion of the theory of the multi-polar world, see Natella Speranskaya’s interview with Alexander Dugin: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/civilization-as-political-concept-dugin/ >. See also Dugin’s essays: “The Multipolar World and the Postmodern” and “Multipolarism as an Open Project”. The full exposition of the theory of the Multipolar World was made in Russian in Dugin’s book теория многополярного мира (Москва: Евразийское движение, 2012), which was translated into French as Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2013). For the Eurasianist perspective on Japan in particular, we recommend reading Dugin’s essay “In the Country of Rising ‘Do’”.

 

On White Nationalists & Other Potential Allies – Dugin

On “White Nationalism” & Other Potential Allies in the Global Revolution

By Alexander Dugin

 

The following text was compiled from various informal statements that Prof. Dugin posted to his Facebook page over the last year which deal with common themes. I have combined and restructured them in an attempt to reshape them into a single, coherent text, and also brushed up the language somewhat. -Ed. (John Morgan)

There are different tendencies in the new generation of revolutionary, non-conformist movements in Europe (on the Right as well as the Left), and some of them have been successful in attaining high political positions in their respective countries. The crisis of the West will grow broader and deeper every day, so we should expect an increase in the power and influence of our own Eurasianist resistance movement against the present global order, which is a dictatorship by the worst elements of the Western societies.

Those from either the Right or the Left who refuse American hegemony, ultra-liberalism, strategic Atlanticism, the domination of oligarchic and cosmopolitan financial elites, individualistic anthropology and the ideology of human rights, as well as typically Western racism in all spheres – economic, cultural, ethical, moral, biological and so on – and who are ready to cooperate with Eurasian forces in defending multipolarity, socio-economic pluralism, and a dialogue among civilizations, we consider to be allies and friends.

Those on the Right who support the United States, White racism against the Third World, who are anti-socialist and pro-liberal, and who are willing to collaborate with the Atlanticists; as well as those on the Left who attack Tradition, the organic values of religion and the family, and who promote other types of social deviations – both of these are in the camp of foe.

In order to win against our common enemy, we need to overcome the ancient hatreds between our peoples, as well as those between the obsolete political ideologies that still divide us. We can resolve such problems amongst ourselves after our victory.

At the present time, we are ALL being challenged, and ALL of us are being dominated by the forces of the prevailing global order.

Before we concern ourselves with these other issues, we first need to liberate ourselves.

I am very happy that Gábor Vona, whom I have met, and who is the leader of the Jobbik party in Hungary, understands this perfectly. We need to be united in creating a common Eurasian Front.

In Greece, our partners could eventually be Leftists from SYRIZA, which refuses Atlanticism, liberalism and the domination of the forces of global finance. As far as I know, SYRIZA is anti-capitalist and it is critical of the global oligarchy that has victimized Greece and Cyprus. The case of SYRIZA is interesting because of its far-Left attitude toward the liberal global system. It is a good sign that such non-conformist forces have appeared on the scene. Dimitris Konstakopulous writes excellent articles and his strategic analysis I find very correct and profound in many cases.

There are also many other groups and movements with whom we can work. The case of the Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi) is interesting because it is part of the growing (and very exciting indeed) reappearance of radical Right parties in the European political landscape. We need to collaborate with all forces, Right or Left, who share our principles.

The most important factor should not be whether these groups are pro-Russian or not. What they oppose is of much greater importance here. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. It is simple and easy to understand. If we adopt such an attitude in order to appeal to all possible allies (who either approve of us or who do not), more and more people will follow suit – if only due to pragmatism. In doing so, we will create a real, functioning network – a kind of Global Revolutionary Alliance. It is important that we pursue a strategy of uniting the Left and the Right everywhere, including in the United States. We need to save America from its own dictatorship, which is as bad for the American people as it is for all other peoples.

The issue of limited or unlimited government is, as far as I can see, of lesser importance in comparison with geopolitics – it all depends on the historical tradition of the nation in question. Gun ownership is a good thing when the guns are in our hands. Therefore, these two points when taken as a political platform I consider to be absolutely neutral in themselves. Such an American Right can be good or bad, depending on other factors beyond these two points. We need to have a dialogue with those who look deeper into the nature of things, into history and who try to understand the present world order.

I consider the “White nationalists” allies when they refuse modernity, the global oligarchy and liberal-capitalism, in other words everything that is killing all ethnic cultures and traditions. The modern political order is essentially globalist and based entirely on the primacy of individual identity in opposition to community. It is the worst order that has ever existed and it should be totally destroyed. When “White nationalists” reaffirm Tradition and the ancient culture of the European peoples, they are right. But when they attack immigrants, Muslims or the nationalists of other countries based on historical conflicts; or when they defend the United States, Atlanticism, liberalism or modernity; or when they consider the White race (the one which produced modernity in its essential features) as being the highest and other races as inferior, I disagree with them completely.

More than this, I can’t defend Whites when they are in opposition to non-Whites because, being White and Indo-European myself, I recognize the differences of other ethnic groups as being a natural thing, and do not believe in any hierarchy among peoples, because there is not and cannot be any common, universal measure by which to measure and compare the various forms of ethnic societies or their value systems. I am proud to be Russian exactly as Americans, Africans, Arabs or Chinese are proud to be what they are. It is our right and our dignity to affirm our identity, not in opposition to each other but such as it is: without resentment against others or feelings of self-pity.

I can’t defend the concept of the nation, because the idea of the “nation” is a bourgeois concept concocted as a part of modernity in order to destroy traditional societies (empires) and religions, and to replace them with artificial pseudo-communities based on the notion of individualism. All of that is wrong. The concept of the nation is now being destroyed by the same forces that created it, back during the first stage of modernity. The nations have already fulfilled their mission of destroying any organic and spiritual identity, and now the capitalists are liquidating the instrument they used to achieve this in favor of direct globalization. We need to attack capitalism as the absolute enemy which was responsible for the creation of the nation as a simulacrum of traditional society, and which was also responsible for its destruction. The reasons behind the present catastrophe lie deep in the ideological and philosophical basis of the modern world. In the beginning, modernity was White and national; in the end, it has become global. So White nationalists need to choose which camp they want to be in: that of Tradition, which includes their own Indo-European tradition, or that of modernity. Atlanticism, liberalism, and individualism are all forms of absolute evil for the Indo-European identity, since they are incompatible with it.

In his review of my book The Fourth Political Theory, Michael O’Meara criticized it on the grounds of advocating a return to the unrealized possibilities of the Third Political Theory. It is good that people from different camps present their responses to the Fourth Political Theory, but it uses typically old Right/Third Way racist/anti-Semitic arguments. It is not too profound, nor too hollow. I doubt that we can get anywhere by repeating the same agenda of Yockey and so on. This draws the line between the Third Way and the Fourth Way. At the same time, I consider Heidegger to be a precursor of the Fourth Political Theory, and he was acting and thinking in the context of the Third Political Theory.

Concerning the “identitarians,” I have never uttered the name of Faye in all of my writing – he is not bad, but also not good. I consider Alain de Benoist to be brilliant – simply the best. Those “identitarians” who view the positive attitude toward Islam or Turks as a negative aspect of the Fourth Political Theory do so, I believe, partly due to the manipulation of globalist forces who seek to divide those revolutionary forces which are capable of challenging the liberal-capitalist Atlanticist hegemony.

Muslims form a part of the Russian population, and are an important minority. Therefore, Islamophobia implicitly calls for the break-up of Russia. The difference between Europe and Russia in our attitude toward Islam is that, for us, Muslims are an organic part of the whole, while for Europe they are a post-colonial wave of re-invaders from a different geopolitical and cultural space. But since we have a common enemy in the globalist elite, which is pro-Pussy Riot/Femen, pro-gay marriage, anti-Putin, anti-Iran, anti-Chávez, anti-social justice and so on, we all need to develop a common strategy with the Muslims. Our traditions are quite different, but the anti-traditional world that is attacking us is united, and so must we become.

If “identitarians” really love their identity, they should ally themselves with the Eurasianists, alongside the traditionalists and the enemies of capitalism belonging to any people, religion, culture or political camp. Being anti-Communist, anti-Muslim, anti-Eastern, pro-American or Atlanticist today means to belong to the other side. It means to be on the side of the current global order and its financial oligarchy. But that is illogical, because the globalists are in the process of destroying any identity except for that of the individual, and to forge an alliance with them therefore means to betray the essence of one’s cultural identity.

The problem with the Left is different. It is good when it opposes the capitalist order, but it lacks a spiritual dimension. The Left usually represents itself as an alternative path to modernization, and in doing so it also opposes organic values, traditions and religion, just as liberalism does.

I would be happy to see Left-wing identitarians who defend social justice while attacking capitalism on one hand, and who embrace spiritual Tradition and attack modernity on the other. There is only one enemy: the global, liberal capitalist order supported by North American hegemony (which is also directed against the genuine American identity).

In terms of traditionalism, usually traditionalism is defensive or is considered to be such. What we need is to break this assumption and promote offensive traditionalism. We should attack (hyper)modernity and make the status quo explode, in the name of the Return. I mean “offensive” in all ways. We need to insist.

Politics is the instrument of modernity. I think neo-Gramscism is an important tool. We have to form a historic bloc of traditionalists alongside organic intellectuals of a new type. We have Orthodox Christians (and perhaps other types of Christians as well), Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus who all reject the idea of the “Lockean heartland” (as per Kees van der Pijl) becoming global. We need to attack it together, not by ourselves. And we need to attack in any possible way – everyone as he or she is able – physically, politically, and intellectually . . .

It is time to be offensive.

Soon the world will descend into chaos. The financial system is going to collapse. Disorder, ethnic and social conflicts will be breaking out everywhere. Europe is doomed. Asia is in tumult. The oceans of immigrants everywhere will overthrow the existing order. The present system will be broken and disbanded.

After this transitional period, direct global dictatorship will be implemented. We should be prepared and start to organize the global resistance right now – the planetary network of traditionalists, Conservative Revolutionaries, Heideggerians, the partisans of the Fourth Political Theory and multipolarity, and non-conformists of all sorts – a kind of Sacred Front beyond Right and Left, and consisting of different, older political and ideological taxonomies. All three of the political theories have been phased out of modernity, and also out of conventional and assumed history. We, and also our enemies, are entering absolutely new ground.

Every traditionalist should ask himself (or herself) the following questions:

1. Why have I arrived to be on the side of Tradition in opposition to modernity?

2. What is the reality that makes me what I am, in essence? Where have I got it from?

3. Is my vocation as a traditionalist the result of my socio-cultural heritage (society, family, and culture) or is it the result of some other factor?

4. How it is possible, in the midst of modernity and postmodernity, to be differentiated from them?

5. In which way can I cause the modern world around me real damage? (In other words, how can I effectively fight against the Devil?)

The Fourth Political Theory struggles for the cause of all peoples, but it is not made for the people. It is a call to the intellectual elite of every human society, and rejects hegemony in all senses (philosophical, social, and political). This time, the people cannot help us. This time, we must help the people.

Opposing us is nothing more than an intellectual elite, but it is a hegemonic one. All its material power is nothing but an illusion and a phantasm: its texts, discourse and words are what really counts. Its force lays in its thought. And it is on the level of thought that we have to fight and, finally, win. Everything material that opposes us is actually nothing but pure privation. Only thought really exists.

It is easy to manipulate the masses, much easier than to persuade the few. Quantity is the enemy of quality – the more so, the worse. The capitalist elite thinks differently. That error will be fatal. For them. And we are going to prove it.

We need an open, undogmatic Front that is beyond Right and Left.

We have prepared for the coming moment of opportunity for too long. But now, finally, it is not so far in the future.

We will change the course of history. At present, it is on a very wrong course.

We can only win if we combine our efforts.

 

—————-

Dugin, Alexander. “Alexander Dugin on ‘White Nationalism’ & Other Potential Allies in the Global Revolution.” Open Revolt, 19 May 2013. http://openrevolt.info/2013/05/19/alexander-dugin-on-white-nationalism-and-other-potential-allies-in-the-global-revolution/ >.

Note: For a brief discussion of Dugin’s theories and also a listing of major translated works by him, see Natella Speranskaya’s interview with Dugin: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/civilization-as-political-concept-dugin/ >.

 

Fourth Dimension – Benoist

The Fourth Dimension

By Alain de Benoist

Translated from the French by Tomislav Sunic

 

Modernity successfully gave birth to three major competing political doctrines; liberalism in the eighteenth century, socialism in the nineteenth century and fascism in the twentieth century. Being the last in line, fascism was also the one that disappeared most rapidly. However, the breakdown of the Soviet system has not brought to a halt socialist aspirations and even less so the ideas of communism. Liberalism, for its part, seems to be the biggest winner in this competition. In any case the principles of liberalism, spearheaded by the ideology of human rights, and thriving now within the New Class all over the globe, are today the most widespread within the framework of the process of globalization.

None of these doctrines are totally wrong. Each one of them contains some elements of truth. Let us have a rapid look at this panorama. What needs to be retained from liberalism is the following; the idea of freedom accompanied by the sense of responsibility; the rejection of rigid determinism; the importance of the notion of autonomy; the critique of statism; a certain tendency towards republicanism, anti-Jacobinism and anti-centralism. What needs to be rejected is: possessive individualism; the focus on the anthropological concept of the producer vs. consumer in which everybody searches for his best interest; the principles based on what Adam Smith called “the gift for peddling,” that is, the inclination for tradeoffs; the ideology of progress, the bourgeois spirit, the primacy of utilitarian and mercantile values; the paradigm of the market — in short, capitalism.

What needs to be retained from socialism are the following points: its critique of the logic of the capital in so far as socialism was the first to analyze each of its economic and supra-economic dimensions; the idea that society must be defined as a whole (holism, the original key-concept of sociology); the desire for enfranchisement; the notion of solidarity and the idea of social justice. What needs to be rejected is: historicism; statism; the drive toward egalitarianism and doleful hypermoralism.

From fascism what needs to be retained is the following: the affirmation of the uniqueness of identity of each people and its national culture; the sense of heroic values; the bondage between ethics and aesthetics. What needs to be rejected is: the metaphysics of subjectivity, nationalism, Social Darwinism, racism, primitive anti-feminism and the cult of the leader, and of course, again, statism.

The Interregnum

Will the fourth political theory, the one the twenty-first century so badly needs, be a radically new doctrine, or will it provide a synthesis of what was best in the preceding ones? In any case this project has been a major focus of interest of (what one calls) the “European New Right” for well over 40 years.

The twenty-first century will also be the century of the 4^th Nomos of the Earth (general power configuration at the global level). The First Nomos, the one where nations lived relatively isolated from each other, came to an end with the discovery of America. The Second Nomos, embodied by the Eurocentric order of modern states (the Westphalian order), ended with the First World War. The Third Nomos was the one in place since 1945 and it shaped the Yalta regime and the Soviet-American condominium.

What will be the Fourth Nomos? That one may take on the form of a unipolar America-centric world, i.e. a vast global market, that is to say, an immense free trade space, or possibly a multi-polar world where major continental blocks, being both autonomous power actors and hubs of civilizations, play a regulatory role vis-à-vis globalization, preserving thus the diversity of lifestyles and cultures that make up the wealth of mankind.

But it may just as well be said that we have entered now World War IV. World War One (1914–18), which ended for the benefit of the City of London, had brought about the dismantlement of the Austro- Hungarian and the Ottoman empires. The two big winners of the Second World War (1939–45) were the United States and Stalinist Russia. World War III corresponded to the Cold War (1945–89). It ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet system, mainly to the advantage of Washington. World War IV began in 1991. It means a war led by the United States against the rest of the world; a multifaceted type of war, both militarily and economically; both at the financial, technological and cultural level and inseparable from the world-wide “enframing” and rationalization of everything (‘Gestell’) by boundless capital.

The evolution of warfare depends not only on technological advances in armaments, but also on the succession of political forms and institutions to which they are related. One can say that the well-defined military forms of conflict have gone through four stages in modern times: first came the war of sovereign states — as a fall-out of the birth of modern politics, so well described by Hobbes and Machiavelli. In other words back then we were witnessing the dispossession of the theological in favor of a pure political conception of the sovereign. Henceforth, wars were solely conducted for the interests of each state. These were limited wars — wars against justus hostis (“just enemy”), in which only a specific political order was defended.

In the 18^th century surfaced the “democratic war” of nations, who in their turn became sovereign actors. This was also the war that included irregulars while giving birth to guerillas within the context of rising nationalism, and in which what needed to be defended was a given territory as the first priority. In the nineteenth century one could witness the rise of wars conducted in the name of humanity, i.e., wars of a moralizing and criminalizing nature, wars based on an ideology in which abstract principles were defended. This type of war signaled the return of “just war” (its first apparition could be observed during the American Civil War). The fourth form of warfare is now the war against “terror” (or “Star Wars”) — a war of asymmetric and total character.

In many aspects we have already entered the fourth dimension of warfare. Entering this fourth dimension brings us closer to the moment of truth. The question remains as to what will be the general configuration of issues in this century, the major lines of demarcation and the decisive cleavages? For the time being we still live in a kind of interregnum. Yet from now on, the essential issue needs to be addressed: the enigma of the subject in the historical process in a world dominated by Capitalism, in which Capitalism is itself subject to terrible internal contradictions, while at the same time becoming stronger and stronger day after day. Who will be the historical subject to shake things up in life now?

Being a historical subject and not an object of the history of others requires full self-awareness and awareness of how to unfold oneself towards one’s own potential. Heidegger spoke of Being (Dasein), a Being shaped by his time, waiting to unfold. But there is also a Being (Dasein) of peoples in the political sense of this term. All peoples are waiting to see the end of their alienation — as peoples. Facing the objectified forms of their work — which is represented by capital — they need to affirm themselves as historical subjects in the present age — in order to become again the subjects of their own social endeavors.

 

————–

De Benoist, Alain. “The Fourth Dimension.” The Occidental Observer, 30 January 2011. <http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/01/the-fourth-dimension/ >.

Note: This article was originally published in French in Elements, Nr. 136, June 2011.

 

The “West” Should be Forgotten – Benoist

The “West” Should Be Forgotten

By Alain de Benoist

Translated from the French by Tomislav Sunic

 

The “West”? Raymond Abellio observed that “Europe is fixed in space, that is to say, in geography, as opposed to the West which is “portable.” In fact, the “West” has continued travelling and changing directions. In the beginning that term meant the land where the sun sets (Abendland), as opposed to the land of the rising sun (Morgenland). Starting with the reign of Diocletian in the late third century AD, the opposition between East and West came down to the distinction between the Western Roman Empire (whose capital was Milan and then Ravenna) and the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople. The first one disappeared in 476 AD, with the abdication of Romulus Augustulus. After that the West and Europe merged for good. However, starting with the eighteenth century the adjective “Western” came to light on nautical charts referring to the New World, also called the “American system,” as opposed to the “European system,” or the “Eastern Hemisphere” (which then included Europe, Africa and Asia).

In the interwar period the West, having always been associated with Europe, as for example in Spengler’s works, was contrasted to the Orient, which turned into an object of fascination (René Guenon) and a scarecrow (Henri Massis). During the Cold War, the West included Western Europe and its Anglo-Saxon allies such as England and the United States, both being at that time opposed to the “Eastern bloc,” dominated by the Soviet Russia. This view, which allowed the U.S. to legitimize its hegemony, survived the collapse of the Soviet system (also for example with Huntington).

Today, the West has again acquired new meanings. At times it can have a purely economic one: “Western” are all developed, modernized, industrialized countries, such as Japan, South Korea and Australia, including the countries of the former “Eastern Europe,” North America or Latin America. “Ex Oriente lux, luxus ex Occidente,” (Light comes from the East; luxuriousness comes from the West) quipped jokingly the Polish writer Stanislaw Jerzy Lec. The West is losing its spatial content only to become merged with the notion of modernity. On the global level and as the last incarnation of furor orientalis in the eyes of Westerners, the West is opposed to Islamism. Accordingly, a fundamental divide separates the “Judeo-Christian” West from the “Arab-Muslim East,” and some people do not hesitate to predict that the final struggle of “Rome” and “Ismaël” — the war of Gog and Magog — will culminate in the messianic era.

In reality, there is no more such thing as the unitary “West,” just as there is no homogenous “East.” As for the notion of the “Christian West,” it has lost all meaning ever since Europe sank into indifference and “practical materialism” and in view of the fact that religion has become a private matter. Europe and the West have become completely disjointed from each other — to the point that defending Europe often means fighting against the West. No longer related to any geographical domain, let alone cultural, the word ‘West’ should be forgotten for good.

Let us rather talk about Europe. By thinking objectively, that is to say, by acquiring the gift for distancing itself from its self, and in order to be able to objectively rule on the true, the just and the good, Europe, all of a sudden, wished to access the universal — a desire that is not to be found in other cultures. Jean-François Mattei rightly speaks about the “theoretical view of the universal.” This idea of the universal has later on degenerated into universalism, which originally had a religious nature and then a secular nature (there is just as much distance between the universal and universalism as there is between liberty and liberalism). In its quest for Sameness, universalism boils down to the ideology of the Same, at the expense of Difference, i.e. in affirming the primacy of Oneness over Multiplicity. But it also reflects hidden ethnocentrism to the point that any idea of universal inevitably reflects a specific conception of the universal. Initially, there was a need to grasp the Other from the point of view of the Others and not from one’s own Self — which was both commendable and necessary. Afterwards, one gave up on being his Self — which turned out to be catastrophic.

Europe seems to be now in decline at all levels. The very construction of Europe is melting away before our eyes. Not only is Europe the “sick man on the economic planet” (Marcel Gauchet); it is also facing an unprecedented crisis of intelligence and political will. It wishes to bail out of history, driven by the idea that the present state of things — the boundless capital and techno-science — are expected to continue their course forever and that there is nothing else possible, and especially that there is nothing better. Ceding to an impetus that has become a part and an object of the history of others, Europe has exempted itself from its very self. Between the destitution of its past and the fear of its future, it believes in nothing else other than abstract moralism and disembodied principles that would save her from thriving in its being — even if the price is its metamorphosis. Forgetting that history is tragic, assuming that its can reject any consideration of power, searching for consensus at any cost, floating weightless, as if in a form of lethargy, not only does it consent to its own disappearance, but it interprets its disappearance as a proof of its moral superiority. One can obviously think of the “last man” that Nietzsche talked about.

So the only thing that is not declining is the subject of the decline itself — which is the subject of the permanent “declination.” This issue is not an offshoot of the old tradition of cultural pessimism. We need to know whether history obeys intrinsic laws that go beyond human action. If there is a decline of the West, then this decline comes from far away and must not be reduced to the present state of affairs such as globalization. The fate of a culture is contained in its origin. Its very history is determined by its origin because its origin determines its historical itinerary, its narrative skill, and the content of its narration. Historically, the Western idea first expressed itself in a metaphysical form, after that in an ideological form, and then in a “scientific” form. Evidently, it is running out of steam today. The West has said everything it had to say; it conjugated all its myths in every possible manner. It is coming to an end in a chaotic dissolution, as a depletion of energy and all-out nihilism.

The real issue is whether there is another culture which, having already embraced modernity, could offer the world a new form of mastering the universal, both in theory and practice, or for that matter, whether Western culture, having reached its terminal phase, could give birth to another one. Indeed, when a culture comes to a close, another one can replace it. Europe has already been the site of many cultures and therefore, there is no reason why it can’t be again the homeland of a new culture, of which we need to detect warning signs. This new culture will follow on the preceding one, but it will not be its extension. Rather than lapsing into unnecessary lamentation, what is needed is an eye sharp enough to look at the margins where something can grow that enables hope.

We are back at Spengler’s, but with one correction; what comes to an end heralds a new beginning.

 

—————

De Benoist, Alain. “The “West” Should Be Forgotten.” The Occidental Observer, 21 April 2011. <http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/04/the-%e2%80%9cwest%e2%80%9d-should-be-forgotten/ >.

Note: This article was originally published in French in Elements, #139 (April–June, 2011).

 

Defining Paganism – Faye

Defining Paganism

By Guillaume Faye

 

Paganism: The philosophic and/or religious attitude, generally polytheistic and pantheistic, that is the antipode to the revealed salvation religions, to religious or secular monotheism, or to Western materialism.

For Christopher Gérard, one of the principal contemporary practicing authorities on the subject: ‘Paganism, as a coherent vision of the world … is faithful to an ancestry, considered part of a very long memory, enrooted in multiple terrains, opened to the invisible … an active participant in the world, a sought-after harmony between microcosm and macrocosm. Paganism in essence is a natural religion, the most ancient of a world “born” with its birth – if the world were ever born. Rather than an eccentric fad – or the elegant nostalgia of literary refugees from some mythic Golden age, I think paganism is on the way to becoming the first of the world’s religions.’ He mentions 1.5 billion pagans on five continents, which would make it the world’s largest religious group. Gérard adds, ‘Without being narrowly moralistic … a lived paganism seems to me incompatible with whatever makes man servile. As the exaltation of life – of the eternal élan – paganism refuses everything that debases man: drugs, dependencies, every kind of unhealthy life.’ A lived paganism, in other words, is not destructuring, nor linked to the permissive, anti-vitalist mores of the present West (as certain prelates would have us believe). Gay Pride has nothing in common with the pagan bacchanalia! Paganism, moreover, is neither superstitious nor vacuously ritualistic, in contrast to Islam (this belief system which is most opposed to it), for Islam is all these things to the highest degree.

Pierre Vial has written that paganism is not anti-Christian, but a-Christian and post-Christian. ‘To be pagan is to refuse the inversion of values that Nietzsche denounced in Christianity. It is to take the hero, not the martyr, as the model. Christian suffering has always repulsed me. To celebrate the redemptive value of suffering seems life a form of masochism.’ (Today, modern European Christians practice their ethno-masochism and culpability on the immigrant colonisers; in every domain they practice the ‘duty to repent.’) Vial continues, ‘To exalt wretchedness, suffering, and sickness is unhealthy and I much prefer the Greek ideal of transcendence or the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius. Paganism ought not, though, to be confused with anti-clericalism or atheism. Another point: a purely intellectual definition of paganism … won’t suffice. It’s perhaps necessary, but it doesn’t go far enough. For paganism to exist, it must be lived. Not simply in gestures, but in life’s most ordinary expressions. Paganism is defined primarily in reference to the sacred … It affirms the immanence of the sacred.’

For both Gérard and Vial, paganism the authentic ‘religion,’ for it ties men of the same community together and ties them to a cosmos in which the divine is everywhere, where the gods are not separated from, but part of, the profane world.

Similarly, Gnosticism, which inspires Freemasonry, has nothing to do with paganism. Paganism’s constituting traits are: the presence of the sacred and the supernatural within nature; a cyclical or spherical conception of time; the refusal to consider nature the ‘property’ of the men who exploit and thus destroy it; the coming-and-going of sensuality and asceticism; the unqualified apology of the life-force (the ‘yes to life’ and ‘the Great Health’ of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra); the idea that the world is ‘uncreated’ and corresponds to a river of becoming, without beginning or end; the tragic sentiment of life refusing all nihilism; the cult of ancestors, of the line, of our people’s biological and cultural identity; the refusal of all revealed and universal Truths and thus the refusal of all fanaticism, dogmatism, and forced proselytism.

We need to beware, though, of certain so-called pagans who hold that paganism stands for ‘absolute tolerance,’ in the name of ‘social polytheism.’ Such pagans, like the post-conciliar Church, support, for instance, immigration and Islam and refuse to struggle against the reigning social decadence. This pseudo-paganism of secular clerics gives the pagan spirit a Leftist slant. It’s a pseudo-paganism, in effect – purely negative and reactive, a hollow Judaeo-Christianity, an anti-Catholic fixation.

It’s not a philosophy of life, but an attitude of resentment. Besides, these pseudo-pagans, who lack true culture, have never been able to define nor positively live their assumed ‘paganism.’ In a totally absurd way, it’s even led them to a pro-Islam position (whose Qur’an considers pagans ‘idolaters’ – and whose lot is that of the Eid al-Adha’s slaughtered sheep) – and to the egalitarianism of absolute toleration for every form of deviance, justified in the name of a purely casuistic ‘social polytheism’ (hemophilia, antiracism, ethno-pluralism, tribalism, etc.) One doesn’t even have to criticise the Church to assume the position of Monsignor Gaillot and the post-conciliar humanitarians.

Against this, we affirm that paganism is in essence a partisan of social order – which it sees as reflecting the cosmic order, it equally opposes the fusion of peoples, random mixing, and thus a massifying individualism. The pagan vision of the world is holistic and organic and views its people as a hierarchical community of destiny. Like ancient Greek paganism, the notion of the City, inseparable from notions of patriotism and ethnic identity, is fundamental the pagan conception of the world. Similarly, Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power perfectly accords with paganism (to the degree it respects the natural, cosmic order).

In Europe, paganism – her ancient religion, far older than Christianity – has taken several forms: first there’s a ‘philosophical’ paganism (or neo-paganism), with Hellenic, Roman, Germanic, Scandinavian, etc., components, all of which hold no belief in anthropocentric gods, but rather in a sacred, polytheistic, and pantheistic vision of the world, in which the divinities are eternal allegories representing the multiplicities of life and cosmos; this paganism knows numerous communal rituals linked to the different stages of human life and to the seasonal cycles; it’s been evident in European art for centuries. There’s also a ‘wild’ paganism that stretches from the (pseudo-pagan) New Age to European Buddhism. Another false paganism is intellectualist paganism, which is often just a form of anti-Catholic hatred; what Gérard calls ‘salon paganism.’ And finally, there’s the latent or implicit paganism of traditional Catholicism and Orthodoxy, especially evident in their polytheistic cults.

There’s no pagan ‘Church.’ Paganism isn’t sociologically unified – one needs to speak of paganisms. The word itself is ambiguous, coined by Christians to designate the religion of peasants (pagani).

It might also be noted that sects belong neither to paganism nor its philosophy, but to derivations of the mystic monotheistic salvation religions.

Pagans today need to have the intelligence and wisdom to not – apriori – reject traditional Christianity, and vice versa, for the struggle against the common enemy is what’s most important. Not sectarianism, but a historic compromise, is needed here. No reconciliation, by contrast, is possible with the Judaeo-Christianity of the post-conciliar Left.

The main pagan reproach of Christianity (as made by Pierre Vial, Giorgio Locchi, and Louis Rougier) is its roots in universalism and egalitarianism and its progressive view of history; totalitarian ideologies of salvation, such as globalist liberalism, with its end to history and its disarming humanitarianism, are simply secularised forms of Christianity. Universalism, for example, has been transformed into a secular cosmopolitanism, and Christian charity into a masochistic humanitarianism. Universal charity, as it comes from Judaeo-Christianity and clashes with the pagan world vision, has been central to Europe’s moral disarmament, to its failure to resist the Third World’s colonising invasion. Similarly, in situating God outside or above the universe and declaring the latter profane, Judaeo-Christianity opened the way to an atheistic materialism. Following Augustine and Aquinas, traditional Christianity claimed that the equality and universality of men before God is destined not for the City, but for the beyond, following the Last Judgment.

We need, henceforth, to recognise that the egalitarian, universalist, and anti-nationalist virus of the early Christians, neutralised by the Medieval Church and by chivalry, has returned in force with the modern post-conciliar Church. Traditional Christianity, whether Catholic or Orthodox, incorporated important pagan elements, notably in the polytheism of the Holy Trinity, the cult of the saints and the Virgin Mary, etc. We might also mention Pelagius, Teilhard de Chardin, Giordano Bruno, or other Churchmen who attempted a synthesis of European Christianity and paganism.

The most important thing today is to confront the common enemy, Islam – the most abstract, the most intolerant, the most dangerous of the monotheistic religions (founding model of totalitarianism, even more so than Communism), with which, unfortunately, the Catholic hierarchy and our pseudo-pagan ‘ethno-pluralist’ intellectuals suicidally collaborate. In the course of the Twenty-first century, it’s not unreasonable to expect that authentic pagans in Europe and India will be the ones manning the front line in the struggle against the desert’s totalitarian religion – not the Catholic clerics or republican ‘secularists.’

It would be vain to instrumentalise paganism as a ‘political religion.’ For paganism is above all an attitude, a philosophical, spiritual positioning, a choice of values, and in no case does it have a vocation to institutionalise itself as a religion – as a ‘new Church.’ European Catholicism – before it was desacralised by Vatican II – included important pagan elements, to such a degree that certain modern theologians accuse it of having been a ‘pagano-Christianity’ – the same reproach Luther and Calvin made of it. Slavic-Greek Orthodoxy still retains many pagan remnants.

The historic alliance of authentic pagan philosophers (inspired by the heritage of Greece, Rome, and India) to traditional European Christianity is a prerequisite to the merciless struggle that is to be waged against the Masonic gnosis, the obscurantism of the Muslim colonisers, and the virus of materialism.

————-

Excerpt from: Faye, Guillaume. Why We Fight: Manifesto for the European Resistance. London: Arktos Media, 2011, pp. 205-210.