Interview with Steuckers

Interview with Robert Steuckers by Troy Southgate

 

Troy Southgate: When and why did you decide to become involved in politics?

Robert Steuckers: I was never actually involved in politics, as I was never a member of a political party. Nevertheless I am a citizen interested in political questions but of course not in the usual plain and trivial way, as I have no intention to become a candidate, council deputy or Member of Parliament.

For me “politics” means to maintain continuities or, if you prefer, traditions. But traditions that are embedded in the actual history of a particular human community. I started to read historical and political books at the tender age of 14. This lead to a rejection of established ideologies or non-values.

From the age of 15 onwards, with the help of a secondary school history teacher, a certain Mr. Kennof, I realized that people should grasp the main trends of history in keys and always make use of historical atlasses (I have collected them ever since) in order to understand in one glimpse the main forces animating the world scene at a precise moment of time. Maps are very important for politics at a high level (diplomacy, for instance).

The principal idea I acquired at this young age was that all ideologies, thoughts or blue prints which wanted to get rid of the past, to sever the links people have with their historical continuities, were fundamentally wrong. As a consequence, all political actions should aim at preserving and strengthening historical and political continuities, even when futurist (pro-active) actions are often necessary to save a community from a sterile repetition of obsolete habits and customs.

The discourses of most ideologies, including the various expressions of the so-called far right, were in my eyes artificial in the Western World just as communism was an abstraction in front of the whole of Russian history in the East or an abstraction obliterating the genuine historical patterns of the East-European peoples submitted to Soviet rule after 1945. The rupture of continuities or the repetition of dead past “forms” leads to the political-ideological confusion we know nowadays, where conservatives aren’t conservative and socialists aren’t socialists anymore, and so on.

Fundamental political ideas are better served in my eyes by “Orders” than by political parties. Orders provide a continuous education of the affiliated and stress the notion of service. They feel reluctant in front of the mere politicians’ petty ambitions. Such Orders are the Chivalric Orders of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance in Europe, the notion of fatwa in the Persian Islamic world as well as later experiments, including in the 20th Century (The Legion of Michael the Archangel Michael in Romania, the Verdinaso in Flanders, etc.).

Troy Southgate: Please explain what you mean by the term “Conservative Revolution” and, if possible, provide us with an outline of some of its chief ideologues.

Robert Steuckers: When the phrase “Conservative Revolution” is used in Europe, it is mostly in the sense given to it by Armin Mohler in his famous book Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932. Mohler listed a long list of authors who rejected the pseudo-values of 1789 (dismissed by Edmund Burke as mere “blue prints”), stressed the role of the Germanic in the evolution of European thought and received the influence of Nietzsche. Mohler avoided, for instance, purely religious “conservatives,” be they Catholics or Protestants.

For Mohler the main brandmark of “Conservative Revolution” is a non-linear vision of history. But he doesn’t simply take over the cyclical vision of traditionalism. After Nietzsche, Mohler believes in a spherical conception of history. What does that mean? It means that history is neither simply a repetition of the same patterns at regular intervals nor a linear path leading to happiness — to the end of history, to a Paradise on Earth, to felicity, etc. — but is a sphere that can run (or be pushed) in every direction according to the impulsion it receives from strong charismatic personalities. Such charismatic personalities bend the course of history towards some very particular ways, ways that were never previously foreseen by any kind of Providence.

Mohler in this sense never believes in universalistic political receipts or doctrines but always in particular and personal trends. Like Jünger, he wants to struggle against everything that is “general” and to support everything that is “particular”. Further, Mohler expressed his vision of the dynamic particularities by using the some awkward terminology of “nominalism.” For him “nominalism” was indeed the word that expressed at best the will of strong personalities to cut for themselves and their followers an original and never used path through the jungle of existence.

The main figures of the movement were Spengler, Moeller van den Bruck, and Ernst Jünger (and his brother Friedrich-Georg). We can add to these triumviri Ludwig Klages and Ernst Niekisch. Carl Schmitt, as a Catholic lawyer and constitutionalist, represents another important aspect of the so-called “Conservative Revolution”.

Spengler remains the author of a brilliant fresco of the world civilizations that inspired the British philosopher Arnold Toynbee. Spengler spoke of Europe as a Faustian civilization, at best expressed by the Gothic cathedrals, the interaction of light and colors in the glass-works, the stormy skies with white and gray clouds in most of the Dutch, English, and German paintings. This civilization is an aspiration of the human soul towards light and towards self-commitment.

Another important idea of Spengler is the idea of “pseudo-morphosis”: a civilization never disappears completely after a decay or a violent conquest. Its elements pass into the new civilization that takes its succession and bends it towards original paths.

Moeller van den Bruck was the first German translator of Dostoevsky. He was deeply influenced by Dostoevsky’s diary, containing some severe judgments on the West. In the German context after 1918, Moeller van den Bruck advocated, on the basis of Dostoevsky’s arguments, a German-Russian alliance against the West.

How could the respectable German gentleman, with an immense artist’s culture, plea in favor of an alliance with the Bolsheviks? His arguments were the following: in the whole diplomatic tradition of the 19th century, Russia was considered as the shield of reaction against all the repercussions of the French Revolution and of the revolutionist mind and moods. Dostoevsky, as a former Russian revolutionist who admitted later that his revolutionist options were wrong and mere blue prints, considered more or less that Russia’s mission in the world was to wipe out of Europe the tracks of the ideas of 1789.

For Moeller van den Bruck, the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia was only a changing of ideological clothe Russia remained, despite the Bolshevik discourse, the antidote to the Western liberal mind. So defeated Germany should ally to this fortress of anti-revolutionism to oppose the West, which in the eyes of Moeller van den Bruck is the incarnation of liberalism. Liberalism, stated Moeller van den Bruck, is always the final disease of a people. After some decades of liberalism, a people will ineluctably enter into a terminal phase of decay.

The path followed by Ernst Jünger is known enough to everyone. He started as an ardent and gallant young soldier in the First World War, leaving the trenches with no gun, simply with a hand grenade under his arm, worn with elegance like the stick of a typical British officer. For Jünger the First World War was the end of the petty bourgeois world of the 19th Century and the “Belle Epoque,” where everyone had to be “as it should be,” i.e. behave according to said patterns pre-cut by borrowing teachers or priests, exactly as we all today have to behave according to the self-proclaimed rules of “political correctness.”

Under the “storms of steel,” the soldier could state his nothingness, his mere fragile biological being, but this statement couldn’t in his eyes lead to an inept pessimism, to fear and desperation. Having experimented the most cruel destiny in the trenches and under the shelling of thousands of artillery guns, shaking the earth thoroughly, reducing everything to the “elemental,” the infantrymen knew better of cruel human destiny on the surface of this planet. All artificiality of civilised urban life appeared to them as mere fake.

After the first World War Ernst Jünger and his brother Friedrich-Georg turned out to be the best national-revolutionist journalists and writers.

Ernst evolved to a kind of cynical, soft, ironical, and serene observer of humanity and the facts of life. During a carpet bombing raid on a Parisian suburb, where factories were producing war material for the German army during WWII, Jünger was terrified by the unnatural straight air path taken by the American flying fortresses. The linearity of the planes’ path in the air above Paris was the negation of all the curves and sinuosities of organic life. Modern war implied the crushing of those winding and serpentine organicities. Ernst Jünger started his career as a writer by being an apologist of war. After having observed the irresistible lines thrust forward by the American B-17s, he became totally disgusted by the unchivalrousness of the pure technical way of running a war.

After WWII, his brother Friedrich-Georg wrote a first theoretical work leading to the development of the new German critical and ecological thinking, Die Perfektion der Technik (The Perfection of Technics). The main idea of this book, in my eyes, is the critique of “connection.” The modern world is a process trying to connect human communities and individuals to big structures. This process of connection ruins the principle of liberty. You are a poor chained prole if you are “connected” to a big structure, even if you earn £3000 or more in one month. You are a free man if you are totally disconnected from those big iron heels. In a certain way, Friedrich-Georg developed the theory that Kerouac experimented untheoretically by choosing to drop out and travel, becoming a singing tramp.

Ludwig Klages was another philosopher of organic life against abstract thinking. For him the main dichotomy was between Life and Spirit (Leben und Geist). Life is crushed by abstract spirit. Klages was born in Northern Germany but migrated as a student to Munich, where he spent his free time in the pubs of Schwabing, the district in which artists and poets met (and still meet today). He became a friend of the poet Stefan Georg and a student of the most original figure of Schwabing, the philosopher Alfred Schuler, who believed himself to be the reincarnation of an ancient Roman settler in the German Rhineland.

Schuler had a genuine sense of theater. He disguised himself in the toga of a Roman Emperor, admired Nero, and set up plays remembering the audience of the ancient Greek or Roman world. But beyond his lively fantasy, Schuler acquired a cardinal importance in philosophy by stressing for instance the idea of “Entlichtung,” i.e. the gradual disappearance of Light since the time of the Ancient City-State of Greece and Roman Italy. There is no progress in history: On the contrary, Light is vanishing as well as the freedom of the free citizen to shape his own destiny.

Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin, on the left or conservative-liberal side, were inspired by this idea and adapted it for different audiences. The modern world is the world of complete darkness, with little hope of finding “be-lighted” periods again, unless charismatic personalities, like Nero, dedicated to art and Dionysian lifestyle, wedge in a new era of splendor which would only last for the blessed time of one spring.

Klages developed the ideas of Schuler, who never wrote a complete book, after he died in 1923 due to an ill-prepared operation. Klages, just before WW1, pronounced a famous speech on the Horer Meissner Hill in Central Germany, in front of the assembled youth movements (Wandervogel). This speech bore the title of “Man and Earth” and can be seen as the first organic manifesto of ecology, with a clear and understandable but nevertheless solid philosophical background.

Carl Schmitt started his career as a law teacher in 1912 but lived till the respectable age of 97. He wrote his last essay at 91. I cannot enumerate all the important points of Carl Schmitt’s work in the frame of this modest interview. Let us summarize by saying that Schmitt developed two main idea the idea of decision in political life and the idea of “Great Space.”

The art of shaping politics or a good policy lays in decision, not in discussion. The leader has to decide in order to lead, protect, and develop the political community he is in charge of. Decision is not dictatorship as many liberals would say nowadays in our era of “political correctness.” On the contrary: a personalisation of power is more democratic, in the sense that a king, an emperor, or a charismatic leader is always a mortal person. The system he eventually imposes is not eternal, as he is doomed to die like any human being. A nomocratic system, on the contrary, aims at remaining eternal, even if current events and innovations contradict the norms or principles.

Second big topic in Schmitt’s work the idea of a European Grand Space (Grossraum). “Out-of-Space” powers should be prevented to intervene within the frame of this Great Space. Schmitt wanted to apply to Europe the same simple principle that animated US President Monroe. America for the Americans. OK, said Schmitt, but let us apply “Europe to the Europeans.” Schmitt can be compared to the North-American “continentalists,” who criticised Roosevelt’s interventions in Europe and Asia. Latin Americans also developed similar continentalist ideas as well as Japanese imperialists. Schmitt gave to this idea of “Greater Space” a strong juridical base.

Ernst Niekisch is a fascinating figure in the sense that he started his career as a Communist leader of the “Councils’ Republic of Bavaria” of 1918-19, that was crushed down by the Free Corps of von Epp, von Lettow-Vorbeck, etc. Obviously, Niekisch was disappointed by the absence of a historical vision among the Bolshevik trio in revolutionist Munich (Lewin, Leviné, Axelrod).

Niekisch developed a Eurasian vision, based on an alliance between the Soviet Union, Germany, India, and China. The ideal figure who was supposed to be the human motor of this alliance was the peasant, the adversary of the Western bourgeoisie. A certain parallel with Mao Tse-Tung is obvious here. In the journals that Niekisch edited, we discover all the German tentatives to support anti-British or anti-French movements in the colonial empires or in Europe (Ireland against England, Flanders against a Frenchified Belgium, Indian nationalists against Britain, etc.).

I hope I have explained in a nutshell the main trends of the so-called conservative revolution in Germany between 1918 and 1933. May those who know this pluri-stratified movement of ideas forgive my schematic introduction.

Troy Southgate: Do you have a “spiritual angle”?

Robert Steuckers: By answering this question, I risk being too succinct. Among the group of friends who exchanged political and cultural ideas at the end of the Seventies, we concentrated of course on Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World. Some of us rejected totally the spiritual bias, because it lead to sterile speculation: they preferred to read Popper, Lorenz, etc. I accepted many of their criticisms, and I still dislike the uttermost Evolian speculations, alleging a spiritual world of Tradition beyond all reality. The real world being disregarded as mere triviality. But this is of course a cult of Tradition mainly supported by young people “feeling ill in their own skin,” as we say. The dream to live like beings in fairy tales is a form of refusing to accept reality.

In Chapter 7 of Revolt Against the Modern World, Evola, on the contrary, stresses the importance of the “numena“, the forces acting within things, natural phenomena or powers. The initial Roman mythology laid the accent more on the numena than on the personalised divinities. This bias is mine. Beyond the people and the gods of the usual religions (be they Pagan or Christian), there are acting forces and man should be in concordance with them in order to be successful in his earthly actions.

My religious/spiritual orientation is more mystical than dogmatic, in the sense that the mystical tradition of Flanders and Rhineland (Ruusbroec, Meister Eckhart), as well as the mystical tradition of Ibn Arabî in the Muslim area or of Sohrawardî in the Persian realm, admire and worship the total splendor of Life and the World. In these traditions, there is no clear-cut dichotomy between the godly, the sacred, and the holy on the one side and the worldly, the profane, and the simple on the other. Mystical tradition means omni-compenetration and synergy of all the forces yeasting in the world.

Troy Southgate: Please explain to our readers why you place such importance on concepts like geopolitics and Eurasianism.

Robert Steuckers: Geopolitics is a mixture of history and geography. In other words of time and space. Geopolitics is a set of disciplines (not a single discipline) leading to a good governance of time and space. Geopolitics is a mixture of history and geography. No serious power can survive without continuity, be it an institutional or historical continuity. No serious power can survive without a domination and a yielding of land and space.

All traditional empires first organized the land by building roads (Rome) or by mastering the big rivers (Egypt, Mesopotamia, China), then lead on to the emergence of a long history, to the sense of a continuity, to the birth of the first practical sciences (astronomy, meteorology, geography, mathematics) under the protection of well structured armies with a code of honor, especially codified in Persia, the womb of Chivalry.

The Roman Empire, the first empire on European soil, was focussed on the Mediterranean Sea. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation couldn’t find a proper core as well coordinated as the Mediterranean. The waterways of Central Europe lead to the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, or the Black Sea, but without any link between them. This was the true tragedy of German and European history. The country was torn between centrifugal forces. The Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen tried to restore the Mediterranean realm, with Sicily as the central geographical piece.

His attempt was a tragic failure. It is only now that the emergence of a renewed imperial form (even under a modern ideology) is possible in Europe: after the opening of the canal between the Rhine-Main system and the Danube river system. There is a single waterway now between the North Sea, including the Thames system in Britain, and the Black Sea, allowing the economical and cultural forces of Central Europe to reach all the shores of the Black Sea and the Caucasian countries.

Those who have a good historical memory, not blinded by the usual ideological blue-prints of modernism, will remember the role of the Black Sea shores in the spiritual history of Europe: in Crimea, many old traditions, be they Pagan or Byzantine, were preserved in caves by monks. The influences of Persia, especially the values of the oldest (Zoroastrian) Chivalry in world history, could influence the development of similar spiritual forces in Central and Western Europe. Without those influences, Europe is spiritually mutilated.

Therefore the Mediterranean area, the Rhine (also coupled to the Rhone) and the Danube, the Russian rivers, the Black Sea and the Caucasus should constitute a single civilization area, defended by a unified military force, based on a spirituality inherited from Ancient Persia. This, in my eyes, means Eurasia. My position is slightly different than that of Dughin but both positions are not incompatible.

When the Ottomans gained complete control over the Balkan Peninsula in the 15th Century, the land routes were cut for all Europeans. Moreover, with the help of the North African sea rovers assembled by the Turkish-born Barbarossa based in Algiers, the Mediterranean was closed to peaceful European commercial expansion towards India and China. The Muslim world worked as a bolt to contain Europe and Moscovy, core of the future Russian Empire.

All together, Europeans and Russians joined their efforts to destroy the Ottoman bolt. The Portuguese, Spaniards, English and Dutch tried the sea routes and circumvented the African and Asian land mass, ruining first the Moroccan kingdom, which drew gold from subtropical Western African mines and claims in order to build an army to conquer again the Iberian Peninsula. By landing in Western Africa, the Portuguese got the gold more easily for themselves and the Moroccan kingdom was reduced to a mere residual superpower. The Portuguese passed around the African continent and entered the Indian Ocean, circumventing definitively the Ottoman bolt, and giving for the first time a real Eurasian dimension to European history.

At the same time, Russia repelled the Tartars, took the City of Kazan, and destroyed the Tartar shackle of the Muslim bolt. This was the starting point of the continental Russian Eurasian geopolitical perspective.

The aim of American global strategy, developed by a man like Zbigniew Bzrzezinski, is to recreate artificially the Muslim bolt by supporting Turkish militarism and Panturanism. In this perspective, they support tacitly and still secretly the Moroccan claims on the Canary Isles and use Pakistan to prevent any land link between India and Russia. Hence the double necessity today for Europe and Russia to remember the counter-strategy elaborated by ALL European people in the 15th and 16th Century.

European history has always been conceived as petty nationalist visions. It is time to reconsider European history by stressing the common alliances and convergencies. The Portuguese seaborne and the Russian landborne actions are such convergencies and are naturally Eurasian. The Battle of Lepanto, where the Venetian, Genoan, and Spanish fleets joined their efforts to master the East Mediterranean area under the command of Don Juan of Austria, is also a historical model to meditate upon and to remember.

But the most important Eurasian alliance was without any doubt the Holy Alliance lead by Eugene of Savoy at the end of the 17th Century, which compelled the Ottomans to retrocede 400,000 sq. km of land in the Balkans and Southern Russia. This victory allowed the Russian Tsars of the 18th Century, especially Catherine II, to win decisive battles once more.

My Eurasianism (and of course my whole geopolitical thought) is a clear answer to Bzrzezinski’s strategy and is deeply rooted in European history. It is absolutely not to be compared with the silly postures of some pseudo-national-revolutionist crackpots or with the poor aesthetic blueprints of new rightist would-be philosophers. Besides, one last remark concerning geopolitics and Eurasianism: my main sources of inspiration are English. I mean the historical atlas of Colin McEvedy, the books of Peter Hopkirk about the secret service in the Caucasus, in Central Asia, along the Silk Road and in Tibet, the reflections of Sir Arnold Toynbee in the twelve volumes of A Study of History.

Troy Southgate: What is your view of the State? Is it really essential to have systems or infrastructure as a means of socio-political organization, or do you think a decentralized form of tribalism and ethnic identity would be a better solution?

Robert Steuckers: Your question needs a whole book to be properly and completely answered. Firstly, I would say that it is impossible to have A view of THE State, as there are many forms of States throughout the world. I make of course the distinction between a State, which is still a genuine and efficient instrument to promote the will of a people and also to protect its citizens against all evils be they machinated by external, internal or natural foes (calamities, floods, starvation, etc.).

The State should also be carved for one population living on a specific land. I am critical, of course, of all artificial States like those that were imposed as so-called universal patterns. Such States are pure machines to crush or to exploit a population for an oligarchy or foreign masters. An organization of the peoples, according to ethnic criteria, could be an ideal solution, but unfortunately as the events in the Balkans show us the ebbs and flows of populations in European, African, or Asian history have very often spread ethnical groups beyond natural boarders or settled them within territories which were formerly controlled by others. Homogeneous States cannot be built in such situations. This is the source of many tragedies, especially in Middle and Eastern Europe. Therefore the only perspective today is to think in terms of Civilizations as Samuel Huntington taught us in his famous article and book, The Clash of Civilizations, first written in 1993.

Troy Southgate: In 1986, you said “the Third Way exists in Europe at the level of theory. What it needs is militants.” [“Europe: A New Perspective” in The Scorpion, Issue #9, p.6] Is this is still the case, or have things developed since then?

Robert Steuckers: Indeed, the situation is still the same. Or even worse because, growing older, I state that the level of classical education is vanishing. Our way of thinking is in a certain way Spenglerian, as it encompasses the complete history of the human kind.

Guy Debord, leader of the French Situationnists from the end of the Fifties until the Eighties, could observe and deplore that the “society of the spectacle” or the “show society” has as its main purpose to destroy all thinking and thought in terms of history and replace them by artificial and constructed blueprints or simple lies. The eradication of historical perspectives in the heads of pupils, students, and citizens, through the diluting work of the mass-media, is the big manipulation, leading us to an Orwellian world without any memory. In such a situation, we all risk becoming isolated. No fresh troops of volunteers are ready to take over the struggle.

Finally, tell us about your involvement with Synergies and your long-term plans for the future.

“Synergies” was created in order to bring people together, especially those who publish magazines, in order to spread more quickly the messages our authors had to deliver. But the knowledge of languages is also undergoing a set-back. Being plurilingual, as you certainly know, I have always been puzzled by the repetition of the same arguments at each national level. Marc Lüdders from Synergon-Germany agrees with me. It’s a pity for instance that the tremendous amount of work performed in Italy is not known in France or in Germany. And vice-versa. In order to keep this short: my main wish is to see such an exchange of texts realized in a swift manner within the next twenty years.

 

———————–

Steuckers, Robert. “Interview with Robert Steuckers.” Interview by Troy Southgate. Synthesis, 2001. <http://www.rosenoire.org/interviews/steuckers.php>.

Note: See also Robert Steucker’s website Euro-Synergies: <http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com >.

Notes on further reading: Armin Mohler’s book Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1933 (Graz & Stuttgart: Ares-Verlag, 2005), mentioned in this interview, is one of the most important works concerning the Conservative Revolution. It has been translated into French as La Révolution conservatrice en Allemagne: 1918-1932 (Puiseaux, Loiret: Pardès, 1993).  Also worth noting is Mohler’s Von Rechts Gesehen (Stuttgart: Seewald Verlag, 1974).

On Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, one of the founding intellectuals of the Conservative Revolution, an excellent overview of his thought in English is Lucian Tudor’s “Arthur Moeller van den Bruck: The Man & His Thought” (originally published online: Counter-Currents.com, 17 August 2012), available on our website here: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/arthur-moeller-van-den-bruck-tudor/ >.

For a good overview of Carl Schmitt’s works and philosophy in English, see Paul Gottfried, Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990).

For an overview of Ludwig Klages’s works and philosophy, see Joe Pryce, “On The Biocentric Metaphysics of Ludwig Klages,” Revilo-Oliver.com, 2001, <http://www.revilo-oliver.com/Writers/Klages/Ludwig_Klages.html > (this essay was republished in print as an introduction to Klages anthology, The Biocentric Worldview [London: Arktos, 2013]). (See this essay in PDF format here: On the Biocentric Metaphysics of Ludwig Klages).

 

Advertisements

Liberalism or Democracy? – Sunic

Liberalism or Democracy? Carl Schmitt and Apolitical Democracy

By Tomislav Sunic

Growing imprecision in the language of political discourse has turned virtually everyone into a democrat or, at least, an aspiring democrat. East,West, North, South, in all corners of the world, politicians and intellectuals profess the democratic ideal, as if their rhetorical homage to democracy could substitute for the frequently poor showing of their democratic institutions.[1] Does liberal democracy – and this is what we take as our criterion for the “best of all democracies” – mean more political participation or less, and how does one explain that in liberal democracy electoral interests have been declining for years? Judging by voter turnout, almost everywhere in the West the functioning of liberal democracy has been accompanied by political demobilization and a retreat from political participation.[2] Might it be, that consciously or unconsciously, the citizens of liberal democracies realize that their ballot choices can in no substantial manner affect the way their societies are governed, or worse, that the rites of liberal democracy are an elegant smoke screen for the absence of self-government?

Liberal Parenthesis and the End of the Muscled State

This paper will argue both that democracy is not necessarily an accompanying feature of liberalism and that liberal democracy may often be the very opposite of what democracy is supposed to mean. Through the arguments of Carl Schmitt, I shall demonstrate that: 1) democracy can have a different meaning in liberal society than in non-liberal society, 2) the depoliticization of liberal democracy is the direct result of voter mistrust in the liberal political class, and 3) liberal democracy in multi-ethnic countries is likely to face serious challenges in the future.

Over the period of the last fifty years, Western societies have witnessed a rapid eclipse of “hard” politics. Theological fanaticism, ideological ferocity, and politics of power, all of which have until recently rocked European states, have become things of the past. The influence of radical left-wing or right-wing parties and ideologies has waned. “High” politics, as a traditional action and interaction process between the rulers and the ruled, and as a guide for purported national destiny, seems to have become obsolete. With the collapse of communism in the East, modern liberal democracies in the West appear today as the only alternative forms of government on the barren political and ideological landscape. Moreover, in view of the recent collapse of totalitarian ideologies, liberal democracy seems to have gained even more legitimacy, all the more so as it successfully accommodates differing political views. Western liberal democracy, people believe, can satisfy diverse and disparate opinions, and can continue to function even when these are non-democratic and anti-liberal.

For Schmitt, liberal tolerance towards opposing political views is deceiving. In all of his works, and particularly in Verfassungslehre and Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus, he points to differences between liberalism and democracy, asserting that liberalism, by its nature, is hostile to all political projects. In liberal democracy, writes Schmitt, “politics far from being the concern of an elite, has become the despised business of a rather dubious class of persons.”[3] One may add that liberal democracy does not appear to be in need of political projects: With its vast technological infrastructure and the free market network, argues Schmitt, liberal democracy has no difficulty in rendering all contending beliefs and opposing ideologies inoffensive, or, at worst, ridiculous.[4]

In liberal democracy, in which most collective projects have already been delegitimized by belief in individualism and in the private pursuit of economic well-being, “it cannot be required, from any thinkable point of view, that anyone lays down his life, in the interest of the undisturbed functioning [of this society].”[5] Little by little, liberal democracy makes all political projects unattractive and unpopular, unless they appeal to economic interests. “Liberal democracy,” writes Schmitt, “seems to be fitted for a rational, secularized environment in which the state is reduced to a “night-watchman” supervising economic transactions. The state becomes a sort of inoffensive “mini-state” [“Minimalstaat”] or stato neutrale.”[6] One could almost argue that the strength of liberal democracy lies not in its aggressive posturing of its liberal ideal, but rather in its renunciation of all political ideals, including its own.

To some extent, this apolitical inertia appears today stronger than ever before, since no valid challenger to liberal democracy appears on the horizon. What a stark contrast to the time prior to World War II, when radical left- and right-wing ideologies managed to draw substantial support from political and intellectual elites! Might it be that the “Entzauberung” of politics has gone so far as to contribute to the strengthening of apolitical liberal democracy? Very revealing, indeed, appears the change in the behavior of modern elites in liberal democracies; left, right, and center barely differ in their public statements or in their political vocabulary. Their styles may differ, but their messages remain virtually the same. The “soft” and apolitical discourse of modern liberal princes, as one French observer recently wrote, prompts the “liberal-socialist” to exclaim: “I will die from loving your beautiful eyes Marquise.” And to this the “socialist-liberal”responds: “Marquise, from loving your beautiful eyes, I will die.”[7] Leftwing agendas are so often tainted with right-wing rhetoric that they appear to incorporate conservative principles. Conversely, right-wing politicians often sound like disillusioned leftists on many issues of domestic and foreign policy. In liberal democracy, all parties across the political spectrum, regardless of their declaratory differences, seem to be in agreement on one thing: democracy functions best when the political arena is reduced to its minimum and the economic and juridical spheres are expanded to their maximum.

Part of the problem may result from the very nature of liberalism. Schmitt suggests that the notions of liberalism and democracy “have to be distinguished from one another so that the patchwork picture that makes up modern mass democracy can be recognized.”[8] As Schmitt notes, democracy is the antithesis of liberalism, because “democracy … attempts to realize an identity of the governed and the governors, and thus it confronts the parliament as an inconceivable and outmoded institution.”[9]

Organic Democracy vs. Apolitical Democracy

True democracy, for Schmitt, means popular sovereignty, whereas liberal democracy and liberal parliament aim at curbing popular power. For Schmitt, if democratic identity is taken seriously, only the people should decide on their political destiny, and not liberal representatives, because “no other constitutional institution can withstand the sole criterion of the people’s will, however it is expressed.”[10] Liberal democracy, argues Schmitt, is nothing else but a euphemism for a system consecrating the demise of politics and thus destroying true democracy. But a question arises: why, given liberalism’s history of tolerance and its propensity to accommodate diverse groups, does Schmitt adamantly reject liberal democracy? Has not liberalism, particularly in the light of recent experiences with “muscled ideologies,” proven its superior and humane nature?

The crux of Schmitt’s stance lies in his conviction that the concept of “liberal democracy” is semantic nonsense. In its place, Schmitt seems to suggest both a new definition of democracy and a new notion of the political. According to Schmitt, “democracy requires, first homogeneity and second-if the need arises-elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.”[11] Homogeneity and the concomitant elimination of heterogeneity are the two pillars of Schmitt’s democracy, something which stands in sharp contrast to liberal party systems and the fragmentation of the body politic. Democratic homogeneity, according to Schmitt, presupposes a common historical memory, common roots, and a common vision of the future, all of which can subsist only in a polity where the people speak with one voice. “As long as a people has the will to political existence,” writes Schmitt,” it must remain above all formulations and normative beliefs. . . . The most natural way of the direct expression of the people’s will is by approvals or disapprovals of the gathered crowd, i.e., the acclamation.”[12] To be sure, with his definition of homogeneous democracy that results from the popular will, Schmitt appears to be holding the value of the traditional community above that of civil society which, for the last century, has been the hallmark of liberal democracy.[13] One may therefore wonder to what extent can Schmitt’s “organic” democracy be applicable to the highly fractured societies of the West, let alone to an ethnically fragmented America.

Schmitt insists that “the central concept of democracy is the people (Volk), not mankind [Menscheit]. . . . There can be-if democracy takes a political form-only popular democracy, but not a democracy of mankind [Es gibt eine Volksdemokratie und keine Menscheitsdemokratie].”[14] Naturally, this vision of “ethnic” democracy collides with modern liberal democracy, one of the purposes of which, its proponents claim, is to transcend ethnic differences in pluralistic societies. Schmitt’s “ethnic” democracy must be seen as the reflection of the uniqueness of a given people who oppose imitations of their democracy by other peoples or races. Since Schmitt’s democracy bears a resemblance to ancient Greek democracy, critics must wonder how feasible this democracy can be today. Transplanted into the twentieth century, this democratic anachronism will appear disturbing, not least because it will remind some of both fascist corporate and Third World states with their strict laws on ethnic and cultural homogeneity. Schmitt confirms these misgivings when he states that “a democracy demonstrates its political power by knowing how to refuse or keep at bay something foreign and unequal that threatens its homogeneity [das Fremde und Ungleiche . . . zu beseitigen oder fernzuhalten].”[15] Any advocate of liberal democracy in modern multicultural societies could complain that Schmitt’s democracy excludes those whose birth, race, or simply religious or ideological affiliation is found incompatible with a restricted democracy. Foreign may be a foreign idea that is seen to threaten democracy, and a foreigner may be somebody who is viewed as unfit to participate in the body politic because of his race or creed. In other words, one could easily suspect Schmitt of endorsing the kind of democracy that approximates the “total state.”

Nor does Schmitt treat the liberal principles of legality with much sympathy. In his essay “Legalitat und Legitimitat,” Schmitt argues that the kind of liberal democracy creates the illusion of freedom by according to each political group and opposing opinion a fair amount of freedom of expression as well as a guaranteed legal path to accomplish its goal in a peaceful manner.[16] Such an attitude to legal rights is contrary to the notion of democracy, and eventually leads to anarchy, argues Schmitt, because legality in a true democracy must always be the expression of the popular will and not the expression of factional interests. “Law is the expression of the will of the people (lex est quod populus jubet),” writes Schmitt, [17] “and in no way can law be a manifestation of an anonymous representative or a parliamentarian who solely looks after interests of his narrow constituency.” “Indeed,” continues Schmitt, “an ethnically homogeneous and historical people has all the prerequisites to uphold justice and remain democratic, provided it always asserts its will.”[18] Of course, one may argue that Schmitt had in mind a form of populist democracy reminiscent of the 1930s’ plebiscitary dictatorships which scorned both parliamentary parties and organized elections. In his Verfassungslehre, Schmitt attacks free parliamentary elections for creating, through secret balloting, a mechanism which. “transforms the citizen (citoyen), that is, a specifically democratic and political figure, into a private person who only expresses his private opinion and gives his vote.”[19] Here Schmitt seems to be consistent with his earlier remarks about ethnic homogeneity. For Schmitt, the much-vaunted “public opinion,” which liberals equate with the notion of political tolerance, is actually a contradiction in terms, because a system which is obsessed with privacy inevitably shies away from political openness. True and organic democracy, according to Schmitt, is threatened by liberal secret balloting, and “the result is the sum of private opinions.”[20] Schmitt goes on to say that “the methods of today’s popular elections [Volkswahl] and referendums [Volksentscheid] in modern democracy, in no way contain the procedure for genuine popular elections; instead, they organize a procedure for the elections of the individuals based on the total sum of independent ballot papers.”[21]

Predictably, Schmitt’s view of democratic equality is dependent upon his belief that democracy entails social homogeneity, an idea Schmitt develops more fully in Verfassungslehre and The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Although liberal democracy upholds the legal equality of individuals, it ignores the equality of rooted citizens. Liberal democracy merely provides for the equality of atomized individuals whose ethnic, cultural, or racial bonds are so weakened or diluted that they can no longer be viewed as equal inheritors of a common cultural memory and a common vision of the future. Undoubtedly, equality and democracy, for Schmitt, are inseparable. Equality in a genuine organic democracy always takes place among “equals of the same kind (Gleichartigen).”[22] This corresponds to Schmitt’s earlier assertions that “equal rights make good sense where homogeneity exists.”[23] Could one infer from these brief descriptions of democratic equality that in an ethnically or ideologically fragmented society equality can never be attained? One might argue that by transferring the political discourse of equality to the juridical sphere, liberal democracy has elegantly masked glaring inequality in another sphere-that of economics. One could agree with Schmitt that liberal democracy, as much as it heralds “human rights” and legal equality and proudly boasts of “equality of (economic) opportunity,” encourages material disparities. Indeed, inequality in liberal democracy has not disappeared, and, in accordance with the Schmitt’s ‘observations regarding the shifts in the political sphere, “another sphere in which substantial inequality prevails (today, for example the economic sphere), will dominate politics. Small wonder that, in view of its contradictory approach to equality, liberal democracy has been under constant fire from the left and the right.[24]

To sum up, Schmitt rejects liberal democracy on several counts: 1) liberal . democracy is not “demo-krasia,” because it does not foster the identity of the governed and the governors, 2) liberal democracy reduces the political arena, and thus creates an apolitical society, and 3) in upholding legal equality, and pursuant to its constant search for the wealth that will win it support, liberal democracy results in glaring economic inequality.

The Rule of the People or the Rule of Atomized Individuals?

From the etymological and historical points of view, Schmitt’s criticism of liberal democracy merits attention. Democracy signifies the rule of the people, a specific people with a common ethnic background, and not the people construed, after the manner of some liberal democracies, as the atomized agglomeration flowing from a cultural “melting pot.” But if one assumes that a new type of homogeneity can develop, e.g., homogeneity caused by technological progress, then one cannot dispute the functionality of a liberal democracy in which the homogenized citizens remain thoroughly apolitical: Hypothetically speaking, political issues in the decades to come may no longer be ethnicity, religions, nation-states, economics, or even technology, but other issues that could “homogenize” citizens. Whether democracy in the twenty-first century will be based on apolitical consensus remains to be seen. Schmitt sincerely feared that the apoliticism of “global liberal democracy” under the aegis of the United States could become a dangerous predicament for all, leading not to global peace but to global servitude.[25] As of today, however, liberal democracy still serves as a normative concept for many countries, but whether this will remain so is an open question.

In view of the increased ethnic fragmentation and continued economic disparities in the world, it seems that Schmitt’s analysis may contain a grain of truth. The American experience with liberal democracy has so far been tolerable: that is, the U.S. has shown that it can function as a heterogeneous multi-ethnic society even when, contrary to Schmitt’s fears, the level of political and historical consciousness remains very low. Yet, the liberal democratic experiment elsewhere has been less successful. Recent attempts to introduce liberal democracy into the multi-ethnic states of Eastern Europe have paradoxically speeded up their dissolution or, at best, weakened their legitimacy. The cases of the multi-ethnic Soviet Union and the now-defunct Yugoslavia-countries in endless struggles to find lasting legitimacy-are very revealing and confirm Schmitt’s predictions that democracy functions best, at least in some places, in ethnically homogeneous societies.[26] In light of the collapse of communism and fascism, one is tempted to argue that liberal democracy is the wave of the future. Yet, exported American political ideals will vary according to the countries and the peoples among whom they take root. Even the highly Americanized European countries practice a different brand of liberal democracy from what one encounters in America.

Schmitt observes that liberalism, while focusing on the private rights of individuals, contributes to the weakening of the sense of community. Liberal democracy typifies, for Schmitt, a polity which cripples the sense of responsibility and renders society vulnerable to enemies both from within and without. By contrast, his idea of organic democracy is not designed for individuals who yearn to reduce political activity to the private pursuit of happiness; rather, organic, classical democracy means “the identity of the governors and the governed, of the rulers and the ruled, of those who receive orders and of those who abide by them.”[27] In such a polity, laws and even the constitution itself can be changed on a short notice because the people, acting as their own legislators, do not employ parliamentary representatives.

Schmitt’s democracy could easily pass for what liberal theorists would identify as a disagreeable dictatorship. Would Schmitt object to that? Hardly. In fact, he does not discount the compatibility of democracy with communism or even fascism. “Bolshevism and Fascism,” writes Schmitt, “by contrast, are like all dictatorships certainly anti-liberal, but not necessarily anti-democratic.”[28] Both communism and fascism strive towards homogeneity (even if they attempt to be homogeneous by force) by banning all opposition. Communism, for which the resolute anti-Bolshevik Schmitt had no sympathy, can surely be democratic, at least in its normative and utopian stage. The “educational dictatorship” of communism, remarks Schmitt, may suspend democracy in the name of democracy, “because it shows that dictatorship is not antithetical to democracy.”[29] In a true democracy, legitimacy derives not from parliamentary maneuvers, but from acclamation and popular referenda. “There is no democracy and no state without public opinion, and no state without acclamation,” writes Schmitt [30] By contrast, liberal democracy with its main pillars, viz., individual liberty and the separation of powers, opposes public opinion and, thus, must stand forth as the enemy of true democracy. Or, are we dealing here with words that have become equivocal? According to Schmitt, “democratic principles mean that the people as a whole decides and governs as a sovereign.”[31] One could argue that democracy must be a form of kratos, an exercise, not a limiting, of power. Julien Freund, a French Schmittian, concurs that “democracy is a ‘kratos.’ As such it presupposes, just like any other regime, the presence and the validity of an authority.” [32] With its separation of powers, the atomization of the body politic, and the neutralization of politics, liberal democracy deviates from this model.

Conclusion: The Liberal ‘Dictatorship of Well-Being’

If one assumes that Schmitt’s “total democracy” excludes those with different views and different ethnic origins, could not one also argue that liberal democracy excludes by virtue of applying an “apolitical” central field? Through apolitical economics and social censure, liberal democracy paradoxically generates a homogeneous consumer culture. Is this not a form of “soft” punishment imposed on those who behave incorrectly? Long ago, in his observations about democracy in America, Tocqueville pointed out the dangers of apolitical “democratic despotism.” “If despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.”[33] Perhaps this “democratic despotism” is already at work in liberal democracies. A person nowadays can be effectively silenced by being attacked as socially insensitive.

Contemporary liberal democracy amply demonstrates the degree to which the economic and spiritual needs of citizens have become homogenized. Citizens act more and more indistinguishably in a new form of “dictatorship of well-being.”[34] Certainly, this homogeneity in liberal democracy does not spring from coercion or physical exclusion, but rather from the voter’s sense of futility. Official censorship is no longer needed as the ostracism resulting from political incorrectness becomes daily more obvious. Citizens appear more and more apathetic, knowing in all likelihood that, regardless of their participation, the current power structure will remain intact. Moreover, liberal democrats, as much as they complain about the intolerance of others, often appear themselves scornful of those who doubt liberal doctrines, particularly the beliefs in rationalism and economic progress. The French thinker Georges Sorel, who influenced Schmitt, remarked long ago that to protest against the illusion of liberal rationalism means to be immediately branded as the enemy of democracy.[35] One must agree that, irrespective of its relative tolerance in the past, liberal democracy appears to have its own sets of values and normative claims. Its adherents, for example, are supposed to believe that liberal democracy operates entirely by law. Julien Freund detects in liberal legalism “an irenic concept” of law, “a juridical utopia . . . which ignores the real effects of political, economic and other relations.”[36] No wonder that Schmitt and his followers have difficulty in accepting the liberal vision of the rule of law, or in believing that such a vision can “suspend decisive [ideological] battle through endless discussion.”[37] In its quest for a perfect and apolitical society, liberal democracy develops in such a manner that “public discussion [becomes] an empty formality,”[38] reduced to shallow discourse in which different opinions are no longer debated. A modern liberal politician increasingly resembles an “entertainer” whose goal is not to persuade the opponent about the validity of his political programs, but primarily to obtain electoral majorities.[39]

In hindsight, it should not appear strange that liberal democracy, which claims to be open to all kinds of technological, economic and sexual “revolutions,” remains opposed to anything that would question its apolitical status quo. It comes, therefore, as no surprise that even the word “politics” is increasingly being supplanted by the more anodyne word “policy,” just as prime ministers in liberal democracies are increasingly recruited from economists and businessmen.

Schmitt correctly predicted that even the defeat of fascism and the recent collapse of communism would not forestall a political crisis in liberal democracy. For Schmitt, this crisis is inherent in the very nature of liberalism, and will keep recurring even if all anti-liberal ideologies disappeared. The crisis in liberal parliamentary democracy is the result of the contradiction between liberalism and democracy; it is, in Schmittian language, the crisis of a society that attempts to be both liberal and democratic, universal and legalistic, but at the same time committed to the self-government of peoples.

One does not need to go far in search of fields that may politicize and then polarize modern liberal democracy. Recent events in Eastern Europe, the explosion of nationalisms all around the world, racial clashes in the liberal democratic West – these and other “disruptive” developments demonstrate that the liberal faith may have a stormy future. Liberal democracy may fall prey to its own sense of infallibility if it concludes that nobody is willing to challenge it. This would be a mistake. For neither the demise of fascism nor the recent collapse of communism has ushered in a more peaceful epoch. Although Western Europe and America are now enjoying a comfortable respite from power politics, new conflicts have erupted in their societies, over multiculturalism and human rights. The end of liberal apolitical democracy and the return of “hard” politics may be taking place within liberal democratic societies.

Notes:

1. See Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962), 3. “In a somewhat paradoxical vein, democracy could be defined as a high-flown name for something which does not exist.” See, for instance, the book by French “Schmittian” Alain de Benoist, Democratie: Le probleme (Paris: Le Labyrinthe, 1985), 8. “Democracy is neither more ‘modern’ nor more ‘evolved’ than other forms of governance: Governments with democratic tendencies have appeared throughout history. We can observe how the linear perspective used in this type of analysis can be particularly deceiving.” Against the communist theory of democracy, see Julien Freund, considered today as a foremost expert on Schmitt, in Politique et impolitique (Paris: Sirey, 1987), 203. “It is precisely in the name of democracy, designed as genuine and ideal and always put off for tomorrow that non-democrats conduct their campaign of propaganda against real and existing democracies.” For an interesting critique of democratic theory, see Louis Rougier, La Mystique democratique (Paris: Albatros,1983). Rougier was inspired by Vilfredo Pareto and his elitist anti-democratic theory of the state.

2. See, for instance, an analysis of U.S. “post-electoral politics,” which seems to be characterized by the governmental incapacity to put a stop to increasing appeals to the judiciary, in Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter, Politics by other Means: The Declining Importance of Election in America (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1990).

3. Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge: MIT,1985), 4.

4. The views held by some leftist scholars concerning liberalism closely parallel those of Schmitt, particularly the charge of “soft” repression. See, for instance, Jurgen Habermas, Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968). See also Regis Debray , Le Scribe: Genese du politique (Paris: Grasset, 1980).

5. Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (Munchen und Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1932), 36. Recently, Schmitt’s major works have become available in English. These include: The Concept of the Political, trans. G. Schwab (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Prress, 1976); Political Romanticism, trans. G. Oakes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986); and Political Theology, trans. G. Schwab (Cambridge: MIT Press; 1985). There may be some differences between my translations and the translations in the English version.

6. Schmitt, Der Begriff, 76.

7. Francois-Bernard Huyghe, La soft-ideologie (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1987), 43

8. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 8.

9. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 15.

10. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 15.

11. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 9.

12. Carl Schmitt, Verfassungslehre (Munchen und Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker und Humblot, 1928), 83.

13. See Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft), trans. and ed. Charles P. Loomis (New York: Harper & Row, 1963). Tonnies distinguishes between hierarchy in modern and traditional society. His views are similar to those of Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, the Caste System and its Implications, trans. Mark Sainsbury and L. Dumont (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Dumont draws attention to “vertical” vs. “horizontal” inequality among social groups.

14. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 234.

15. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 9.

16. Carl Schmitt, Du Politique, trans. William Gueydan (Puiseaux: Pardes, 1990), 46. “Legalitat und Legitimitat” appears in French translation, with a preface by Alain de Benoist, as “L’egalite et legitimite”

17. Schmitt, Du Politique, 57.

18. Schmitt, Du Politique, 58. See also Schmitt’s Verfassungslehre, 87-91:

19. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 245.

20. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 246.

21. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 245.

22. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 10.

23. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 13.

24. See, for instance, the conservative revolutionary, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Das Dritte Reich (1923) whose criticism of liberal democracy often parallels Carl Schmitt’s, and echoes Karl Marx, The Critique of the Gotha Program (New York: International Publishers, 1938), 9. “Hence equal rights here (in liberalism) means in principle bourgeois rights. The equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor.” See also Schmitt’s contemporary Othmar Spann with a similar analysis, Der wahre Staat (Leipzig: Verlag von Qnelle und Meyer,1921).

25. See Carl Schmitt, “L’unite du monde,” trans. Philippe Baillet in Du Politique, 237-49.

26. In some multi-ethnic states, liberal democracy has difficulty taking root. For instance, the liberalisation of Yugoslavia has led to its collapse into its ethnic parts. This could bring some comfort to Schmitt’s thesis that democracy requires a homogeneous “Volk” within its ethnographic borders and state. See Tomislav Sunic, “Yugoslavia, the End of Communism the Return of Nationalism,” America (20 April 1991), 438–440.

27. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 234. See for a detailed treatment of this subject the concluding chapter of Paul Gottfried, Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory (Westport and New York: Greenwood Press, 1990).

28. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 16,

29. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 28.

30. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 247.

31. Carl Schmitt; “L’etat de droit bourgeois,” in Du Politique, 35.

32. Freund, Politique et impolitique, 204.

33. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1966), vol. 2, book fourth, Ch. 6.

34. There is a flurry of books criticizing the “surreal” and “vicarious” nature of modern liberal society. See Jean Baudrillard, Les strategies fatales (“Figures du transpolitique”) (Paris: Grasset, 1983). Also, Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Warner Books, 1979).

35. Georges Sorel, Les illusions du progres (Paris: M. Riviere, 1947), 50.

36. Freund, Politique et impolitique, 305.

37. Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie (Munchen und Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker und Humblot, 1934), 80.

38. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 6.

39. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 7.

 

———————————–

Sunic, Tomislav. “Liberalism or Democracy? Carl Schmitt and Apolitical Democracy.” THIS WORLD (An Annual of Religious and Public Life), Vol. 28, 1993. <http://www.tomsunic.com/?p=38 >. (See this essay in PDF format here: Liberalism or Democracy? Carl Schmitt and Apolitical Democracy).

Note: This essay was also republished in Tomislav Sunic’s Postmortem Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity – Collected Essays (Shamley Green, UK: The Paligenesis Project, 2010).