4th Political Theory & the “Other Europe” – Speranskaya

The Fourth Political Theory and “Other Europe”

By Natella Speranskaya

 

“The Fourth Political Theory is a volitional construction of the tradition based on deconstruction of modernity” – Alexander Dugin

Critique of (Neo)liberalism from “above”

In his book Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and The Concept of the Political Heinrich Meier states that the world that is trying to refrain from identifying the difference between a friend and an enemy Schmitt clearly shows the world the inevitability of “either or” in order to intensify the “awareness of an emergency situation” and re-awaken the ability that is manifested when “the enemy reveals itself with particular clarity”[1]. Indeed, today we can unmistakably identify our enemy. The ideological (as well as ontological) enemy is a liberal – a supporter of the political theory that defeated the two ideologies of the twentieth century – Communism and Fascism (National Socialism). Today we are dealing with the result of the victory. By saying “we” I do not mean some abstract political entity, rather I mean the representatives of the Eurasian geopolitical tradition or the approaches of tellurocratic geopolitics (therefore, the enemies are determined by their involvement in thalassocratic geopolitics). By commenting on the fundamental work The Concept of the Political Leo Strauss notes that despite all radical critique of liberalism incorporated in it Schmitt does not follow it through since his critique develops and remains within the scope of liberalism.

“His anti-Liberal tendency, – claims Strauss, – remains constrained by “systematics of liberal thought” that has not been overcome so far, which – as Schmitt himself admits – “despite all failures is not substituted by any other system in today’s Europe”[2]. Critique of liberalism is impossible within the scope of liberalism; without definite overcoming (or better to say, “collapsing”) the liberal discourse no substitution is possible.

We are well aware of the fact that all three major political ideologies of the past century – Liberalism, Communism and Fascism (the first, second and third political theories, respectively) – are the products of modernity. A paradigmatic shift to postmodernity necessarily implies the birth of a political theory that is beyond the scope of the preceding three theories (besides, given the political metamorphoses of Liberalism that can be reduced to a single definition – “Neoliberalism” – the need for a well-grounded alternative becomes essential). Only after getting liberated from the bondage of Liberal doctrine it is possible to proceed with its total critique. Moving a step beyond modernity does not mean: a) the attempts aimed at formation of another communist doctrine, b) a possibility of establishing a Neo-Fascist ideology capable of substituting an alternative political theory of counter-liberal essence. We are to make a political choice that will determine the future of the world order being already on the verge of transition to multipolarity, constituted by four poles, where the presence of the Eurasian pole is essential. Besides, the very political choice implies the conscious acceptance of the concept of The Fourth Political Theory enabling the critique of (Neo)liberalism from “above”.

“Other Europe”

“Only few people can actually argue against the fact that today, amid the frightening feeling of crisis and unease that has taken over the keenest minds, the whole European community appeals to the supreme ideal of world culture, culture, within which a new principle is expected to unite the powers and bearers of scattered European traditions”, – claims Italian philosopher Julius Evola in an introductory part of his essay United Europe: The Spiritual Prerequisite[3].

We, the representatives of the Eurasian political philosophy are building strategic relations with the last resistant rebels of Europe, those who even among the ruins maintain the courage to defend supreme, heroic and traditional values. When reflecting on preconditions of the new European unity, Evola highlights an imminent threat both from Russia and the USA. This essay deals with the historical period that has been characterized by a bipolar system of world order; the very model incorporated two poles, the two hegemons – the USSR and the USA. Nowadays, we are dealing with a unipolar model and a single hegemon, the United State of America and, therefore, find ourselves within a victorious Liberal discourse that is going through barely noticeable metamorphoses. Despite all the differences between the two historical periods, the European crisis not only remained an unresolved problem but rather increased significantly. However, what kind of Europe do we discuss? In one of his interviews Alexander Dugin noted that today we encounter “two Europes: “ liberal Europe” (or “Europe-1”) incorporating the idea of “open society”, human rights, registration of same-sex marriages, legalization of the Swedish family, and “other Europe” (“Europe-2”) – politically engaged, thinker, intellectual, spiritual, the one that considers the status quo and domination of liberal discourse as a real disaster and a betrayal of the European tradition. “Many years have passed since when the West became aware what the “tradition” stand for, in its highest sense; anti-traditional spirit has become synonymous with the western one as early as in the Renaissance era. “Tradition” in its full sense is a succession of periods called as “The heroic ages” by Vico – where there was the only creative force with metaphysical roots expressed in customs and religion, law, mythology, artistic creations – in all private areas of existence[4],– states Julius Evola. The last resistant rebels of Europe are the representatives of “Other Europe”.

In his work Europe and Globalization Alain de Benoist pays attention to the fact that “Europe possesses all trump cards that would enable it to overthrow the American hegemony and to become a major world power without any hesitation.” However, Europe restrains itself from making a strategic decision and allows to be thrown into an abyss of helplessness and total extinction by the USA; most of the Europeans have lost their identity, and only a few representatives of “Other Europe” are still faithful to the heritage of the European tradition. The fourth Nomos of the Earth that we have closely approached is characterized as “multipolar” or, more precisely, as potentially multipolar since “the only civilization – the United States of America is hegemonic in six major spheres of power – technologies, economics, finances, warfare, media and culture. De Benoist highlights that the US aims to delay inevitable transformation of Western universum into planetary pluriversum. A radical split from the US would lead Europe to become sovereign, to return its true identity (national, cultural, etc.) and, as a result, would contribute to the decline of the USA status of a world leader.

We would like to point out a need for identifying a principle capable of ensuring unity, mentioned by Evola, that we define as a political doctrine that represents a major alternative to the liberal ideology. The very political doctrine, founded by Alexander Dugin, has been titled as The Fourth Political Theory. Today we must reconsider the historical fate of Russia and Europe. Russia, not as a part of Europe, but rather Russia and Europe as two “big spaces” (Grossraum), two civilizations: on the one hand, given the multipolar model of the world order that incorporates the above-mentioned civilizations as actors, and on the other hand, considering comprehensive analysis of the relations between Russia and Europe that is overcoming the liberal paradigm and provides us with a completely different picture. Alain de Benoist also highlights that Russia, located in the center of Heartland, is not Europe, while Europe belongs to the Eurasian entity. It is noteworthy that the Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari, ex-governor of Venice and a former Member of the European Parliament (mostly popular in Russia for his work entitled The Geophilosophy of Europe) had a presentiment about the Fourth theory; this is described in Foreword of his geophilosophical work as follows: “…instead of a simplified classical scheme with two poles – left (Marxists) and right (anti-Marxists, conservatives), and the center in the middle, Cacciari discusses approproateness of the political scheme that involves, ar least, four distinctions”.

«Imitation of History»

The Fourth Political Theory is Liberalism’s enemy. However, what the current Liberalism stands for? Our strategic plan aimed at destruction of the hostile ideology depends on the answer to this question. Today we are dealing with “Neo-Liberalism” or “Post-Liberalism”, a non-authentic Liberalism. In his book The Fourth Political Theory A. Dugin establishes the change of status of the Liberal ideology within the transition from modernity to post-modernity, and describes the “scenery (панораму) of post-liberal grotesque”: the “individuum” of classical Liberalism, the former measure of all things, becomes a post- individuum; a man as a possessor of private property – that practically acquired a sacral status –becomes possessed by the latter; the Society of the Spectacle (La Société du spectacle (Guy Debord) occurs; the boundary between real and virtual is blurred – the world becomes a technical supermarket; all forms of supra-individual authority are eliminated; the state is substituted by the “civil society”; the principle – “the economy is our destiny” is replaced by another principle – “the digital code is our destiny”, in other words, everything comes to total virtuality.

“There is nothing more tragic than a failure to understand the historical moment we are currently going through; – notes Alain de Benoist – this is the moment of postmodern globalization”. The French philosopher emphasizes the significance of the issue of a new Nomos of the Earth that is a way of establishing international relations. So, what do you think the fourth Nomos will be like? De Benoist discusses two possibilities: transition to universe (or a unipolar world) which means the USA domination, and transition to pluriversum (a multi-polar world) where cultural diversity will face no threat of total absorption and “melting”. Indeed, the fourth Nomos of the Earth is related to the Fourth Political Theory. Alain de Benoist states that “similar to the three large Nomoi of the Earth within the modernity, there have been three major political theories”. In the era of modernity we have encountered the succession of Liberalism, Socialism and Fascism in the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries, respectively. And these three ideologies disappeared in the reverse order. So, the latest of the ideologies was the one that disappeared first. (…) The fourth Nomos of the Earth requires the emergence of the Fourth Political Theory. The Fourth Theory cannot yet be defined in detail, – adds de Benoist. – Indeed, it will be critical of the preceding theories. However, it will incorporate valuable ideas from the preceding ideologies. This will be a synthesis as well as Aufhebung in its Hegelian sense.

While elaborating an ideological basis for the Fourth Theory it is possible to analyze positive as well as negative aspects of the other three well-known political theories and adopt those aspects that we find acceptable. This is one of the ways. However, it does not mean that there are no other approaches. We can also propose the issue of “political mimesis” having considered it from another angle.

For instance, contemporary French philosophers Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy offer a new concept of “imitation of history”. They focus on the idea that Europe has tended to be imitation-oriented for a long time, “which, first of all, means imitating the ancients. The role of the antique model (Sparta, Athens, Rome) in the establishment of contemporary nation states and in the construction of their culture is well known»[5].

“Imitation of history” played a fundamental role in the concept of German Nazism (as well as Italian Fascism). It is important to reflect whether political mimesis of classical era is feasible today, and whether or not the need for a new shift towards antiquity has to be discussed. Was not it a mistake of the followers of the third political theory in the form of German National-Socialism (resulting in a defeat) that the imitation of the ancients ignored an important feature: existence of «two Greeces» – Apollonian and Dionysian, Greece of the light day and Greece of the mysteries, Greece of the Law and heroic severity and Greece of ecstatic rituals and sacrifices? And the last is the Russian rather than only European soil feasible for the revival of the spirit of antiquity? In other words, should not we borrow “political mimesis” or “Imitation of history” of more ancient ideologemes rather than those ideological aspects that exist within the political theories generated by modernity? This would be a radical solution for the development of political theory beyond the modernity.

As for Russia, establishment of the Russian school of Neoplatonism clearly indicates the seriousness of our intention and our understanding of Plato’s significant role. “The project of New Russia is to be commenced by Plato’s announcement”, – claims A. Dugin. The fact that Platonopolis, Plato’s Republic has never been founded may indicate that any attempt to establish it involved an initial intention of reducing a distance between modernity and antiquity by approximation of the Greek heritage to «us/them». However, the main point is that we/they are to be elevated to the Greeks. The city of the world must become the city of God and not the other way around.

“Nazism (and in many respects, the Italian Fascism) is characterized by defining its own movement, ideology and the state as a manifestation of some myth or as a living myth. This is what Rosenberg claims: “Odin is dead, but in another way, as essence of the German soul, Odin is resuscitating before our very eyes,” claim P. Lacoue-Labarthe, and J.-L.Nancy. National-Socialism was a synthesis of various myths (rather not quite successful): Apollonian and Dionysian Greece clashed rather than had anything in common within the new political doctrine; even at the early stage, this featured a further defeat in a historical collision. However, besides Greek element (Hitler used to say of himself: “I am Greek”), National-Socialism also incorporated the elements of the ancient Germanic paganism, Medieval and Indo-Aryan tradition. Mussolini’s Fascism, in its turn, represented an idealistic myth of Italy as the heiress of Rome. Julius Evola notes that with the doctrine of the state, Fascism “returned to the tradition underlying the great European states. Besides, it has revived or, at least, attempted to revive the Roman idea as the highest and special integration of “myth” about a new political organism that is “strong and organic”. For Mussolini the Roman tradition was not just a figure of speech, it was rather the “idea of power”, the ideal for upbringing of a new type of a human being who had to take power into his hands. “Rome is our myth” (1922). These words witnessed a proper choice and great courage; they incorporate a desire to bridge the gap over the abyss of centuries, to revive continuity of the only valuable heritage of Italian history”[6]. Nevertheless, Mussolini was never able to truly appreciate a spiritual dimension of Roman symbol and ancient Rome.

Racial Doctrine

A fatal mistake of the German National-Socialism was a distorted understanding of the racial doctrine that recognized only “racism of the first degree” (biological racism).

The first step in this succession was the confusion of concepts of “nation” and “race” that, in Evola’s words, equaled to democratization and degradation of the concept of race. Opinions of a small number of followers of different understanding of the racial theory were not taken into account. As for the Italian Fascism, from the very beginning this ideology was free from vulgar interpretation of the racial theory. In 1941 Evola was summoned to appear in the Venetian Palace where his meeting with Mussolini was planned. Mussolini expressed great interest in Evola’s work titled “The Synthesis of Racial Doctrine”, having discovered “a basis for establishing an independent fascist and anti-materialist racism” in it. Mussolini unconditionally accepted the theory of three races such as spiritual, mental and physical (biological). The very theory has had a direct correlation with Plato’s ideas: the race of body in the state corresponded to demos, the mass, while the mental race and the race of spirit correlated with guards/warriors and philosophers, respectively. However, subsequently Mussolini had come under pressure from the representatives of the Catholic Church who realized a major threat in racial issue being discussed on the level of spirit, and the theory of three races did not get an appropriate support.

Julius Evola used to emphasize that the concept of race (that is beyond its usual understanding as being both an anthropological and ethnic entity) confronts an individual (which is indeed a positive feature of racism). According to the Italian philosopher, one of the practical meaning of racial theory is “the need for overcoming liberal, individualistic and rationalistic conceptions according to which an individual is like an atom, the subject in itself, that lives, making sense only for himself”. Thus, the Italian Fascism with its roots was initially focused on the theory of three races that strongly distinguishes it from National-Socialist doctrine which fanatically professed biological racism.

Nowadays, the word “race” and its derivatives are only perceived in a negative sense; therefore, applying them as the elements of foundation for any ideological structure would be extremely incautious. The Fourth Political Theory categorically rejects racism including its latest, postmodern forms such as a dictatorship of glamour, following the trends of modern information, the idea of unipolar globalization (superiority of Western values). Alexander Dugin claims that the Fourth Political Theory rejects “all forms of normative hierarchization of societies on the basis of ethnic, religious, social, technological, economic and cultural origin. A comparison of societies is possible; however, one should not claim superiority of one society over the others”.

Returning to the issue of «Imitation of history» several questions might be posed: which path to follow when forming the Fourth Political Theory? Should we select “robust elements” from the three political ideologies or should we refer to Plato’s Politeia and pre-modern, traditional society (or combine both approaches)?

What could be a hypothetic transition from logos to mythos within the political ideology? And what is the relationship between the Fourth Political Theory and a myth?

What are the myth of Russia and the myth (or myths) of “other Europe” being incorporated in the Fourth Political Theory as a foundation for a multipolar world?

These questions await answers.

Alexander Dugin believes that Plato sacrificed the truth of the myth to the truth of philosophy. Therefore, Plato’s Republic, from the very beginning, was based on Apollonian principle (strictly rejecting the Dionysian one). Is not it appropriate to sacrifice the truth of philosophy for to Philosophy of the other Beginning that will eliminate the problematics of separation of logos and Mythos? Politeia is only possible when there are two of its constituent principles. The Fourth Political Theory is in need of a Myth, a Myth as a universal Myth, a Myth as paradeigma, within the scope of which the dialogue between Russia and “Other Europe” will mark (mean, become) the transition to a new political reality.

According to its founder, The Fourth Political Theory is a volitional construction of tradition based on deconstruction of modernity. It primarily deals with total rejection of subjects of three theories of the 20^th century: rejection of individual, class and race/nation-state in Liberalism, Communism and National-Socialism as well as Fascism, respectively. [Heidegger’s] Dasein (Germ. “being-there/there-being”) becomes the subject of the Fourth Political Theory making it a «fundamental-ontological structure developed in the field of existential anthropology». Besides, The Fourth Political Theory, focused on multi-polarity, goes even further than Heidegger and claims the plurality of Dasein. The Dasein-culture-civilization-big space-a pole of the multi-polar world presents an absolutely different context of political thought. There is no individual as it is abolished by Dasein; instead of individual there is an issue of authentic or non-authentic existence, that is a choice – das Mann or Selbst; that is the foundation of the Fourth Political Theory. A class and a race, as well as a state (at least, a contemporary national bourgeois state) all constitute anthropological and ontological constructs of modernity, versions of Techne, Ge-stell; and we are designing an existential political structure, – says Alexander Dugin.

Thus, all attempts of our liberal opponents aimed at discrediting the Fourth Political Theory as “a new version of National-Socialism” are groundless, and represent just a hostile reaction due to the occurrence of an equal (or a superior) rival and strategic actions aimed at eliminating the risk of the imminent collision with the enemy. Again, we would like to emphasize that the Fourth Political Theory is beyond the scope of the three political ideologies, and a rigid resistance to liberalism can be considered to be the only feature bringing it closer to the second and the third theories.

Notes

[1] Heinrich Meier. “Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and The Concept of the Political.” The Hidden Dialogue. Moscow: SKIMEN, 2012.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Julius Evola. United Europe: The Spiritual Prerequisite. Tradition and Europe. Ex Nord Lux, 2009.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Julius Evola. Men Among the Ruins. Critic of the Fascist Regime: Right-Wing Views. Moscow, ACT, 2007.

 

——————

Speranskaya, Natella. “The Fourth Political Theory ‘Other Europe’.” Global Revolutionary Alliance News (GRANews), 9 February 2013. <http://www.granews.info/content/natella-speranskaya-fourth-political-theory-and-other-europe >.

Note: See also Natella Speranskaya’s interview with Alexander Dugin: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/civilization-as-political-concept-dugin/ >.

 

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Othmar Spann – Tudor

Othmar Spann: A Catholic Radical Traditionalist

By Lucian Tudor

 

Translations: Português

Othmar Spann was an Austrian philosopher who was a key influence on German conservative and traditionalist thought in the period after World War I, and he is thus considered a representative of the intellectual movement known as the “Conservative Revolution.” Spann was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Vienna, where he taught not only scientific social and economic theories, but also influenced many students with the presentation of his worldview in his lectures. As a result of this he formed a large group of followers known as the Spannkreis (“Spann Circle”). This circle of intellectuals attempted to influence politicians who would be sympathetic to “Spannian” philosophy in order to actualize its goals.[1]

Othmar Spann himself was influenced by a variety of philosophers across history, including Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, J. G. Fichte, Franz von Baader, and most notably the German Romantic thought of Adam Müller. Spann called his own worldview “Universalism,” a term which should not be confused with “universalism” in the vernacular sense; for the former is nationalistic and values particularity while the latter refers to cosmopolitan or non-particularist (even anti-particularist) ideas. Spann’s term is derived from the root word “universality,” which is in this case synonymous with related terms such as collectivity, totality, or whole.[2] Spann’s Universalism was expounded in a number of books, most notably in Der wahre Staat (“The True State”), and essentially taught the value of nationality, of the social whole over the individual, of religious (specifically Catholic) values over materialistic values, and advocated the model of a non-democratic, hierarchical, and corporatist state as the only truly valid political constitution.

Social Theory

Othmar Spann declared: “It is the fundamental truth of all social science . . . that not individuals are the truly real, but the whole, and that the individuals have reality and existence only so far as they are members of the whole.”[3] This concept, which is at the core of Spann’s sociology, is not a denial of the existence of the individual person, but a complete denial of individualism; individualism being that ideology which denies the existence and importance of supra-individual realities. Classical liberal theory, which was individualist, held an “atomistic” view of individuals and regarded only individuals as truly real; individuals which it believed were essentially disconnected and independent from each other. It also held that society only exists as an instrumental association as a result of a “social contract.” On the other hand, sociological studies have disproven this theory, showing that the whole (society) is never merely the sum of its parts (individuals) and that individuals naturally have psychological bonds with each other. This was Othmar Spann’s position, but he had his own unique way of formulating it.[4]

While the theory of individualism appears, superficially, to be correct to many people, an investigation into the matter shows that it is entirely fallacious. Individuals never act entirely independently because their behavior is always at least in part determined by the society in which they live, and by their organic, non-instrumental (and thus also non-contractual) bonds with other people in their society. Spann wrote, “according to this view, the individual is no longer self-determined and self-created, and is no longer based exclusively and entirely on its own egoicity.”[5] Spann conceived of the social order, of the whole, as an organic society (a community) in which all individuals belonging to it have a pre-existing spiritual unity. The individual person emerges as such from the social whole to which he was born and from which he is never really separated, and “thus the individual is that which is derivative.”[6]

Therefore, society is not merely a mechanical aggregate of fundamentally disparate individuals, but a whole, a community, which precedes its parts, the individuals. “Universalists contend that the mental or spiritual associative tie between individuals exists as an independent entity . . .”[7] However, Spann clarified that this does not mean that the individual has “no mental self-sufficiency,” but rather that he actualizes his personal being only as a member of the whole: “he is only able to form himself, is only able to build up his personality, when in close touch with others like unto himself; he can only sustain himself as a being endowed with mentality or spirituality, when he enjoys intimate and multiform communion with other beings similarly endowed.”[8] Therefore,

All spiritual reality present in the individual is only there and only comes into being as something that has been awakened . . . the spirituality that comes into being in an individual (whether directly or mediated) is always in some sense a reverberation of that which another spirit has called out to the individual. This means that human spirituality exists only in community, never in spiritual isolation. . . . We can say that individual spirituality only exists in community or better, in ‘spiritual community’ [Gezweiung]. All spiritual essence and reality exists as ‘spiritual community’ and only in ‘communal spirituality’ [Gezweitheit]. [9]

It is also important to clarify that Spann’s concept of society did not conceive of society as having no other spiritual bodies within it that were separate from each other. On the contrary, he recognized the importance of the various sub-groups, referred to by him as “partial wholes,” as constituent parts and elements which are different yet related, and which are harmonized by the whole under which they exist. Therefore, the whole or the totality can be understood as the unity of individuals and “partial wholes.” To reference a symbolic image, “Totality [the Whole] is analogous to white light before it is refracted by a prism into many colors,” in which the white light is the supra-temporal totality, while the prism is cosmic time which “refracts the totality into the differentiated and individuated temporal reality.”[10]

Nationality and Racial Style

Volk (“people” or “nation”), which signifies “nationality” in the cultural and ethnic sense, is an entirely different entity and subject matter from society or the whole, but for Spann the two had an important connection. Spann was a nationalist and, defining Volk in terms of belonging to a “spiritual community” with a shared culture, believed that a social whole is under normal conditions only made up of a single ethnic type. Only when people shared the same cultural background could the deep bonds which were present in earlier societies truly exist. He thus upheld the “concept of the concrete cultural community, the idea of the nation – as contrasted with the idea of unrestricted, cosmopolitan, intercourse between individuals.”[11]

Spann advocated the separation of ethnic groups under different states and was also a supporter of pan-Germanism because he believed that the German people should unite under a single Reich. Because he also believed that the German nation was intellectually superior to all other nations (a notion which can be considered as the unfortunate result of a personal bias), Spann also believed that Germans had a duty to lead Europe out of the crisis of liberal modernity and to a healthier order similar to that which had existed in the Middle Ages.[12]

Concerning the issue of race, Spann attempted to formulate a view of race which was in accordance with the Christian conception of the human being, which took into account not only his biology but also his psychological and spiritual being. This is why Spann rejected the common conception of race as a biological entity, for he did not believe that racial types were derived from biological inheritance, just as he did not believe an individual person’s character was set into place by heredity. Rather what race truly was for Spann was a cultural and spiritual character or type, so a person’s “racial purity” is determined not by biological purity but by how much his character and style of behavior conforms to a specific spiritual quality. In his comparison of the race theories of Spann and Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss (an influential race psychologist), Eric Voegelin had concluded:

In Spann’s race theory and in the studies of Clauss we find race as the idea of a total being: for these two scholars racial purity or blood purity is not a property of the genetic material in the biological sense, but rather the stylistic purity of the human form in all its parts, the possession of a mental stamp recognizably the same in its physical and psychological expression. [13]

However, it should be noted that while Ludwig Clauss (like Spann) did not believe that spiritual character was merely a product of genetics, he did in fact emphasize that physical race had importance because the bodily racial form must be essentially in accord with the psychical racial form with which it is associated, and with which it is always linked. As Clauss wrote,

The style of the psyche expresses itself in its arena, the animate body. But in order for this to be possible, this arena itself must be governed by a style, which in turn must stand in a structured relationship to the style of the psyche: all the features of the somatic structure are, as it were, pathways for the expression of the psyche. The racially constituted (that is, stylistically determined) psyche thus acquires a racially constituted animate body in order to express the racially constituted style of its experience in a consummate and pure manner. The psyche’s expressive style is inhibited if the style of its body does not conform perfectly with it.[14]

Likewise Julius Evola, whose thought was influenced by both Spann and Clauss, and who expanded Clauss’s race psychology to include religious matters, also affirmed that the body had a certain level of importance.[15]

On the other hand, the negative aspect of Othmar Spann’s theory of race is that it ends up dismissing the role of physical racial type entirely, and indeed many of Spann’s major works do not even mention the issue of race. A consequence of this was also the fact that Spann tolerated and even approved of critiques made by his students of National Socialist theories of race which emphasized the role of biology; an issue which would later compromise his relationship with that movement even though he was one of its supporters.[16]

The True State

Othmar Spann’s Universalism was in essence a Catholic form of “Radical Traditionalism”; he believed that there existed eternal principles upon which every social, economic, and political order should be constructed. Whereas the principles of the French Revolution – of liberalism, democracy, and socialism – were contingent upon historical circumstances, bound by world history, there are certain principles upon which most ancient and medieval states were founded which are eternally valid, derived from the Divine order. While specific past state forms which were based on these principles cannot be revived exactly as they were because they held many characteristics which are outdated and historical, the principles upon which they were built and therefore the general model which they provide are timeless and must reinstituted in the modern world, for the systems derived from the French Revolution are invalid and harmful.[17] This timeless model was the Wahre Staat or “True State” – a corporative, monarchical, and elitist state – which was central to Universalist philosophy.

1. Economics

In terms of economics, Spann, like Adam Müller, rejected both capitalism and socialism, advocating a corporatist system relatable to that of the guild system and the landed estates of the Middle Ages; a system in which fields of work and production would be organized into corporations and would be subordinated in service to the state and to the nation, and economic activity would therefore be directed by administrators rather than left solely to itself. The value of each good or commodity produced in this system was determined not by the amount of labor put into it (the labor theory of value of Marx and Smith), but by its “organic use” or “social utility,” which means its usefulness to the social whole and to the state.[18]

Spann’s major reason for rejecting capitalism was because it was individualistic, and thus had a tendency to create disharmony and weaken the spiritual bonds between individuals in the social whole. Although Spann did not believe in eliminating competition from economic life, he pointed out that the extreme competition glorified by capitalists created a market system in which there occurred a “battle of all against all” and in which undertakings were not done in service to the whole and the state but in service to self-centered interests. Universalist economics aimed to create harmony in society and economics, and therefore valued “the vitalising energy of the personal interdependence of all the members of the community . . .”[19]

Furthermore, Spann recognized that capitalism also did result in an unfair treatment by capitalists of those underneath them. Thus while he believed Marx’s theories to be theoretically flawed, Spann also mentioned that “Marx nevertheless did good service by drawing attention to the inequality of the treatment meted out to worker and to entrepreneur respectively in the individualist order of society.”[20] Spann, however, rejected socialist systems in general because while socialism seemed superficially Universalistic, it was in fact a mixture of Universalist and individualist elements. It did not recognize the primacy of the State over individuals and also held that all individuals in society should hold the same position, eliminating all class distinctions, and should receive the same amount of goods. “True universalism looks for an organic multiplicity, for inequality,” and thus recognizes differences even if it works to establish harmony between the parts.[21]

2. Politics

Spann asserted that all democratic political systems were an inversion of the truly valuable political order, which was of even greater importance than the economic system. A major problem of democracy was that it allowed, firstly, the manipulation of the government by wealthy capitalists and financiers whose moral character was usually questionable and whose goals were almost never in accord with the good of the community; and secondly, democracy allowed the triumph of self-interested demagogues who could manipulate the masses. However, even the theoretical base of democracy was flawed, according to Spann, because human beings were essentially unequal, for individuals are always in reality differentiated in their qualities and thus are suited for different positions in the social order. Democracy thus, by allowing a mass of people to decide governmental matters, meant excluding the right of superior individuals to determine the destiny of the State, for “setting the majority in the saddle means that the lower rule over the higher.”[22]

Finally, Spann noted that “demands for democracy and liberty are, once more, wholly individualistic.”[23] In the Universalist True State, the individual would subordinate his will to the whole and would be guided by a sense of selfless duty in service to the State, as opposed to asserting his individual will against all other wills. Furthermore, the individual did not possess rights because of his “rational” character and simply because of being human, as many Enlightenment thinkers asserted, but these rights were derived from the ethics of the particular social whole to which he belonged and from the laws of the State.[24] Universalism also acknowledged the inherent inequalities in human beings and supported a hierarchical organization of the political order, where there would be only “equality among equals” and the “subordination of the intellectually inferior under their intellectual betters.”[25]

In the True State, individuals who demonstrated their leadership skills, their superior nature, and the right ethical character would rise among the levels of the hierarchy. The state would be led by a powerful elite whose members would be selected from the upper levels of the hierarchy based on their merit; it was essentially a meritocratic aristocracy. Those in inferior positions would be taught to accept their role in society and respect their superiors, although all parts of the system are “nevertheless indispensable for its survival and development.”[26] Therefore, “the source of the governing power is not the sovereignty of the people, but the sovereignty of the content.”[27]

Othmar Spann, in accordance with his Catholic religious background, believed in the existence of a supra-sensual, metaphysical, and spiritual reality which existed separately from and above the material reality, and of which the material realm was its imperfect reflection. He asserted that the True State must be animated by Christian spirituality, and that its leaders must be guided by their devotion to Divine laws; the True State was thus essentially theocratic. However, the leadership of the state would receive its legitimacy not only from its religious character, but also by possessing “valid spiritual content,” which “precedes power as it is represented in law and the state.”[28] Thus Spann concluded that “history teaches us that it is the validity of spiritual values that constitutes the spiritual bond. They cannot be replaced by fire and sword, nor by any other form of force. All governance that endures, and all the order that society has thus achieved, is the result of inner domination.”[29]

The state which Spann aimed to restore was also federalistic in nature, uniting all “partial wholes” – corporate bodies and local regions which would have a certain level of local self-governance – with respect to the higher Authority. As Julius Evola wrote, in a description that is in accord with Spann’s views, “the true state exists as an organic whole comprised of distinct elements, and, embracing partial unities [wholes], each possesses a hierarchically ordered life of its own.”[30] All throughout world history the hierarchical, corporative True State appears and reappears; in the ancient states of Sparta, Rome, Persia, Medieval Europe, and so on. The structures of the states of these times “had given the members of these societies a profound feeling of security. These great civilizations had been characterized by their harmony and stability.”[31]

Liberal modernity had created a crisis in which the harmony of older societies was damaged by capitalism and in which social bonds were weakened (even if not eliminated) by individualism. However, Spann asserted that all forms of liberalism and individualism are a sickness which could never succeed in fully eliminating the original, primal reality. He predicted that in the era after World War I, the German people would reassert its rights and would create revolution restoring the True State, would recreate that “community tying man to the eternal and absolute forces present in the universe,”[32] and whose revolution would subsequently resonate all across Europe, resurrecting in modern political life the immortal principles of Universalism.

Spann’s Influence and Reception

Othmar Spann and his circle held influence largely in Germany and Austria, and it was in the latter country that their influence was the greatest. Spann’s philosophy became the basis of the ideology of the Austrian Heimwehr (“Home Guard”) which was led by Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg. Leaders of the so-called “Austro-fascist state,” including Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg, were also partially influenced by Spann’s thought and by members of the “Spann circle.”[33] However, despite the fact that this state was the only one which truly attempted to actualize his ideas, Spann did not support “Austro-fascism” because he was a pan-Germanist and wanted the German people unified under a single state, which is why he joined Hitler’s National Socialist movement, which he believed would pave the way to the True State.

Despite repeated attempts to influence National Socialist ideology and the leaders of the NSDAP, Spann and his circle were rejected by most National Socialists. Alfred Rosenberg, Robert Ley, and various other authors associated with the SS made a number of attacks on Spann’s school. Rosenberg was annoyed both by Spann’s denial of the importance of blood and by his Catholic theocratic position; he wrote that “the Universalist school of Othmar Spann has successfully refuted idiotic materialist individualism . . . [but] Spann asserted against traditional Greek wisdom, and claimed that god is the measure of all things and that true religion is found only in the Catholic Church.”[34]

Aside from insisting on the reality of biological laws, other National Socialists also criticized Spann’s political proposals. They asserted that his hierarchical state would create a destructive divide between the people and their elite because it insisted on their absolute separateness; it would destroy the unity they had established between the leadership and the common folk. Although National Socialism itself had elements of elitism it was also populist, and thus they further argued that every German had the potential to take on a leadership role, and that therefore, if improved within in the Volksgemeinschaft (“Folk-Community”), the German people were thus not necessarily divisible in the strict view of superior elites and inferior masses.[35]

As was to be expected, Spann’s liberal critics complained that his anti-individualist position was supposedly too extreme, and the social democrats and Marxists argued that his corporatist state would take away the rights of the workers and grant rulership to the bourgeois leaders. Both accused Spann of being an unrealistic reactionary who wanted to revive the Middle Ages.[36] However, here we should note here that Edgar Julius Jung, who was himself basically a type of Universalist and was heavily inspired by Spann’s work, had mentioned that:

We are reproached for proceeding alongside or behind active political forces, for being romantics who fail to see reality and who indulge in dreams of an ideology of the Reich that turns toward the past. But form and formlessness represent eternal social principles, like the struggle between the microcosm and the macrocosm endures in the eternal swing of the pendulum. The phenomenal forms that mature in time are always new, but the great principles of order (mechanical or organic) always remain the same. Therefore if we look to the Middle Ages for guidance, finding there the great form, we are not only not mistaking the present time but apprehending it more concretely as an age that is itself incapable of seeing behind the scenes. [37]

Edgar Jung, who was one of Hitler’s most prominent radical Conservative opponents, expounded a philosophy which was remarkably similar to Spann’s, although there are some differences we would like to point out. Jung believed that neither Fascism nor National Socialism were precursors to the reestablishment of the True State but rather “simply another manifestation of the liberal, individualistic, and secular tradition that had emerged from the French Revolution.”[38] Fascism and National Socialism were not guided by a reference to a Divine power and were still infected with individualism, which he believed showed itself in the fact that their leaders were guided by their own ambitions and not a duty to God or a power higher than themselves.

Edgar Jung also rejected nationalism in the strict sense, although he simultaneously upheld the value of Volk and the love of fatherland, and advocated the reorganization of the European continent on a federalist basis with Germany being the leading nation of the federation. Also in contrast to Spann’s views, Jung believed that genetic inheritance did play a role in the character of human beings, although he believed this role was secondary to cultural and spiritual factors and criticized common scientific racialism for its “biological materialism.”

Jung asserted that what he saw as superior racial elements in a population should be strengthened and the inferior elements decreased: “Measures for the raising of racially valuable components of the German people and for the prevention of inferior currents must however be found today rather than tomorrow.”[39] Jung also believed that the elites of the Reich, while they should be open to accepting members of lower levels of the hierarchy who showed leadership qualities, should marry only within the elite class, for in this way a new nobility possessing leadership qualities strengthened both genetically and spiritually would be developed.[40]

Whereas Jung constantly combatted National Socialism to his life’s end, up until the Anschluss Othmar Spann had remained an enthusiastic supporter of National Socialism, always believing he could eventually influence the Third Reich leadership to adopt his philosophy. This illusion was maintained in his mind until the takeover of Austria by Germany in 1938, soon after which Spann was arrested and imprisoned because he was deemed an ideological threat, and although he was released after a few months, he was forcibly confined to his rural home.[41] After World War II he could never regain any political influence, but he left his mark in the philosophical realm. Spann had a partial influence on Eric Voegelin and also on many Neue Rechte (“New Right”) intellectuals such as Armin Mohler and Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner.[42] He has also had an influence on Radical Traditionalist thought, most notably on Julius Evola, who wrote that Spann “followed a similar line to my own,”[43] although there are obviously certain marked differences between the two thinkers. Spann’s philosophy thus, despite its flaws and limitations, has not been entirely lacking in usefulness and interest.

Notes

1. More detailed information on Othmar Spann’s life than provided in this essay can be found in John J. Haag, Othmar Spann and the Politics of “Totality”: Corporatism in Theory and Practice (Ph.D. Thesis, Rice University, 1969).

2. See Othmar Spann, Types of Economic Theory (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1930), p. 61. We should note to the reader that this book is the only major work by Spann to have been published in English and has also been published under an alternative title as History of Economics.

3. Othmar Spann as quoted in Ernest Mort, “Christian Corporatism,” Modern Age, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Summer 1959), p. 249. Available online here: http://www.mmisi.org/ma/03_03/mort.pdf.

4. For a more in-depth and scientific overview of Spann’s studies of society, see Barth Landheer, “Othmar Spann’s Social Theories.” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 39, No. 2 (April, 1931), pp. 239–48. We should also note to our readers that Othmar Spann’s anti-individualist social theories are more similar to those of other “far Right” sociologists such as Hans Freyer and Werner Sombart. However, it should be remembered that sociologists from nearly all political positions are opposed to individualism to some extent, whether they are of the “moderate Center” or of the “far Left.” Furthermore, anti-individualism is a typical position among many mainstream sociologists today, who recognize that individualistic attitudes – which are, of course, still an issue in societies today just as they were an issue a hundred years ago – have a harmful effect on society as a whole.

5. Othmar Spann, Der wahre Staat (Leipzig: Verlag von Quelle und Meyer, 1921), p. 29. Quoted in Eric Voegelin, Theory of Governance and Other Miscellaneous Papers, 1921–1938 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003), p. 68.

6. Spann, Der wahre Staat, p. 29. Quoted in Voegelin, Theory of Governance, p. 69.

7. Spann, Types of Economic Theory, pp. 60–61.

8. Ibid., p. 61.

9. Spann, Der wahre Staat, pp. 29 & 34. Quoted in Voegelin, Theory of Governance, pp. 70–71.

10. J. Glenn Friesen, “Dooyeweerd, Spann, and the Philosophy of Totality,” Philosophia Reformata, 70 (2005), p. 6. Available online here: http://members.shaw.ca/hermandooyeweerd/Totality.pdf.

11. Spann, Types of Economic Theory, p. 199.

12. See Haag, Spann and the Politics of “Totality,” p. 48.

13. Eric Voegelin, Race and State (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), pp. 117–18.

14. Ludwig F. Clauss, Rasse und Seele (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1926), pp. 20–21. Quoted in Richard T. Gray, About Face: German Physiognomic Thought from Lavater to Auschwitz (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004), p. 307.

15. For an overview of Evola’s theory of race, see Michael Bell, “Julius Evola’s Concept of Race: A Racism of Three Degrees.” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Winter 2009–2010), pp. 101–12. Available online here: http://toqonline.com/archives/v9n2/TOQv9n2Bell.pdf. For a closer comparison between the Evola’s theories and Clauss’s, see Julius Evola’s The Elements of Racial Education (Thompkins & Cariou, 2005).

16. See Haag, Spann and the Politics of “Totality,” p. 136.

17. A more in-depth explanation of “Radical Traditionalism” can be found in Chapter 1: Revolution – Counterrevolution – Tradition” in Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins: Postwar Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist, trans. Guido Stucco, ed. Michael Moynihan (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2002).

18. See Spann, Types of Economic Theory, pp. 162–64.

19. Ibid., p. 162.

20. Ibid., p. 226.

21. Ibid., p. 230.

22. Spann, Der wahre Staat, p. 111. Quoted in Janek Wasserman, Black Vienna, Red Vienna: The Struggle for Intellectual and Political Hegemony in Interwar Vienna, 1918–1938 (Ph.D. Dissertion, Washington University, 2010), p. 80.

23. Spann, Types of Economic Theory, pp. 212.

24. For a commentary on individual natural rights theory, see Ibid., pp.53 ff.

25. Spann, Der wahre Staat, p. 185. Quoted in Wassermann, Black Vienna, Red Vienna, p. 82.

26. Haag, Spann and the Politics of “Totality,” p. 32.

27. Othmar Spann, Kurzgefasstes System der Gesellschaftslehre (Berlin: Quelle und Meyer, 1914), p. 429. Quoted in Voegelin, Theory of Governance, p. 301.

28. Spann, Gesellschaftslehre, p. 241. Quoted in Voegelin, Theory of Governance, p. 297.

29. Spann, Gesellschaftslehre, p. 495. Quoted in Voegelin, Theory of Governance, p. 299.

30. Julius Evola, The Path of Cinnabar (London: Integral Tradition Publishing, 2009), p. 190.

31. Haag, Spann and the Politics of “Totality,” p. 39.

32. Ibid., pp. 40–41.

33. See Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, Alexander Lassner, The Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria: A Reassessment (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003), pp. 16, 32, & 125 ff.

34. Alfred Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Sussex, England: Historical Review Press, 2004), pp. 458–59.

35. See Haag, Spann and the Politics of “Totality,” pp. 127–29.

36. See Ibid., pp. 66 ff.

37. Edgar Julius Jung, “Germany and the Conservative Revolution,” in: The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, edited by Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p. 354.

38. Larry Eugene Jones, “Edgar Julius Jung: The Conservative Revolution in Theory and Practice,” Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association, Vol. 21, No. 02 (1988), p. 163.

39. Edgar Julius Jung, “People, Race, Reich,” in: Europa: German Conservative Foreign Policy 1870–1940, edited by Alexander Jacob (Lanham, MD, USA: University Press of America, 2002), p. 101.

40. For a more in-depth overview of Jung’s life and thought, see Walter Struve, Elites Against Democracy: Leadership Ideals in Bourgeois Political Thought in Germany, 1890–1933 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 1973), pp. 317 ff. See also Edgar Julius Jung, The Rule of the Inferiour, 2 vols. (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellon Press, 1995).

41. Haag, Spann and the Politics of “Totality,” pp. 154–55.

42. See our previous citations of Voegelin’s Theory of Governance and Race and State; Armin Mohler, Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Vorwerk Verlag, 1950); “Othmar Spann” in Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner, Vom Geist Europas, Vol. 1 (Asendorf: Muth-Verlag, 1987).

43. Evola, Path of Cinnabar, p. 155.

 

—————-

 

Tudor, Lucian. “Othmar Spann: A Catholic Radical Traditionalist.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 19 March 2013. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/03/othmar-spann-a-catholic-radical-traditionalist/>.

Note: This essay was also republished in updated form in Lucian Tudor’s From the German Conservative Revolution to the New Right: A Collection of Essays on Identitarian Philosophy (Santiago, Chile: Círculo de Investigaciones PanCriollistas, 2015).

 

German Conservative Revolution – Tudor

The German Conservative Revolution & its Legacy

By Lucian Tudor

 

Translations: Suomi, Română

During the years between World War I and the establishment of the Third Reich, the political, economic, and social crises which Germany suddenly experienced as a result of its defeat in the First World War gave rise to a movement known as the “Conservative Revolution,” which is also commonly referred to as the “Conservative Revolutionary Movement,” with its members sometimes called “Revolutionary Conservatives” or even “Neoconservatives.”

The phrase “Conservative Revolution” itself was popularized as a result of a speech in 1927 by the famous poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who was a Catholic cultural conservative and monarchist.[1] Here Hofmannsthal declared, “The process of which I am speaking is nothing less than a conservative revolution on such a scale as the history of Europe has never known. Its object is form, a new German reality, in which the whole nation will share.”[2]

Although these phrases give the impression that the Conservative Revolution was composed of people who shared the same worldview, this was in fact not the case because the thinkers and leaders of the Conservative Revolution often had disagreements. Furthermore, despite the fact that the philosophical ideas produced by this “new conservatism” influenced German National Socialism and also had links to Fascism, it is incorrect to assume that the people belonging to it are either Fascist or “proto-Nazi.” Although some Revolutionary Conservatives praised Italian Fascism and some also eventually joined the National Socialist Movement (although many did not), overall their worldviews were distinct from both of these political groups.

It is difficult to adequately summarize the views held by the Revolutionary Conservatives due to the fact that many of them held views that stood in contradistinction to certain views held by others in the same movement. What they generally had in common was an awareness of the importance of Volk (this term may be translated as “folk,” “nation,” “ethnicity,” or “people”) and culture, the idea of Volksgemeinschaft (“folk-community”), and a rejection of Marxism, liberalism, and democracy (particularly parliamentary democracy). Ideas that also were common among them was a rejection of the linear concept of history in favor of the cyclical concept, a conservative and non-Marxist form of socialism, and the establishment of an authoritarian elite. [3]

In brief, the movement was made of Germans who had conservative tendencies of some sort but who were disappointed with the state into which Germany had been put by its loss of World War I and sought to advance ideas that were both conservative and revolutionary in nature.

In order to obtain an adequate idea as to the nature of the Conservative Revolution and its outlook, it is best to examine the major intellectuals and their thought. The following sections will provide a brief overview of the most important Revolutionary Conservative intellectuals and their key philosophical contributions.

The Visionaries of a New Reich

The most noteworthy Germans who had an optimistic vision of the establishment of a “Third Reich” were Stefan George, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, and Edgar Julius Jung. Stefan George, unlike the other two, was not a typical intellectual but a poet. George expressed his Revolutionary Conservative vision of the “new Reich” largely in poetry, and this poetry did in fact reach and affect many young German nationalists and even intellectuals; and for this he is historically notable.[4] But on the intellectual level, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (who popularized the term “Third Reich”) and Edgar Julius Jung had a deeper philosophical impact.

1. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck

Moeller van den Bruck was a cultural historian who became politically active at the end of the First World War. He was a founding member of the conservative “June Club,” of which he became the ideological leader.[5] In Der preussische Stil (“The Prussian Style”) he described what he believed to be the Prussian character, whose key characteristic was the “will to the state,” and in Das Recht der jungen Volker (“The Right of Young Peoples”) he presented the idea of “young peoples” (including Germany, Russia, and America) and “old peoples” (including England and France), advocating an alliance between the “younger” nations with more vitality to defeat the hegemony of Britain and France.[6]

In 1922, he contributed, along with Heinrich von Gleichen and Max Hildebert Boehm, to the book Die neue Front (“The New Front”), a manifesto of the Jungkonservativen (“Young-conservatives”).[7] A year later, Moeller van den Bruck produced his most famous work which contained a comprehensive exposition of his worldview, Das Dritte Reich, translated into English as Germany’s Third Empire.[8]

In Germany’s Third Empire, Moeller made a division between four political stances: Revolutionary, Liberal, Reactionary, and Conservative. Revolutionaries, which especially included Communists, were unrealistic in the sense that they believed they could totally brush aside all past values and traditions. Liberalism was criticized for its radical individualism, which essentially amounts to egotism and disintegrates nations and traditions. Reactionaries, on the other hand, were criticized for having the unrealistic position of desiring a complete revival of past forms, believing that everything in past society was positive. The Conservative, Moeller argued, was superior to the former three because “Conservatism seeks to preserve a nation’s values, both by conserving traditional values, as far as these still possess the power of growth, and by assimilating all new values which increase a nation’s vitality.”[9] Moeller’s “Conservative” was essentially a Revolutionary Conservative.

Moeller rejected Marxism because of its rationalism and materialism, which he argued were flawed ideologies that failed to understand the better side of human societies and life. “Socialism begins where Marxism ends,” he declared.[10] Moeller advocated a corporatist German socialism which recognized the importance of nationality and refused class warfare.

In terms of politics, Moeller rejected republicanism and asserted that true democracy was about the people taking a share in determining its destiny. He rejected monarchy as outdated and anticipated a new form of government in which a strong leader who was connected to the people would emerge. “We need leaders who feel themselves at one with the nation, who identify the nation’s fate with their own.” [11] This leader would establish a “Third Empire, a new and final Empire,” which would solve Germany’s political problems (especially its population problem).

2. Edgar Julius Jung

Another great vision of a Third Reich came from Edgar Julius Jung, a politically active intellectual who wrote the large book Die Herrschaft der Minderwertigen, translated into English as The Rule of the Inferiour,[12] which has sometimes been called the “bible of neo-conservatism.”[13] This book presented a devastating critique of liberalism and combined ideas from Spann, Schmitt, Pareto, and other thinkers.

Liberal democracy was rejected by Jung as the rule of masses which were manipulated by demagogues and also the rule of money because it had inherent tendencies towards plutocracy. The French Revolutionary ideas of “liberty, equality, fraternity” were all rejected as corrosive influences harmful to society and sources of individualism, which Jung viewed as a key cause of decay. Jung also rejected Marxism as a corrupt product of the French Revolution. [14] The Conservative Revolution for Jung was, in his words, the

Restoration of all those elementary laws and values without which man loses his ties with nature and God and without which he is incapable of building up a true order. In the place of equality there will be inherent standards, in the place of social consciousness a just integration into the hierarchical society, in the place of mechanical election an organic elite, in the place of bureaucratic leveling the inner responsibility of genuine self-government, in the place of mass prosperity the rights of a proud people. [15]

In the place of liberal and Marxist forms, Jung envisioned the establishment of a New Reich which would use corporatist economics (related to the medieval guild system), would be organized on a federalist basis, would be animated by Christian spirituality and the power of the Church, and would be led by an authoritarian monarchy and an elite composed of selected qualified members. In Jung’s words, “The state as the highest order of organic community must be an aristocracy; in the last and highest sense: the rule of the best. Even democracy was founded with this claim.”[16]

He also critiqued the materialistic concept of race as “biological materialism” and asserted instead the primacy of the cultural-spiritual entity (it was on this basis, rather than on biology, that the Jewish Problem was to be dealt with). Furthermore, he rejected nationalism in the normal sense of the term, supporting the concept of a federalist, supra-national, pan-European Empire, while still recognizing the reality and importance of Volk and the separateness of ethnic groups. In fact, Jung believed that the new Reich should be formed on “an indestructible volkisch foundation from which the volkisch struggle can take form.”[17]

Edgar Jung, however, was not content with merely writing about his ideas; he had great political ambitions and actively worked with parties and conservatives who agreed with him in the 1920s up until 1934.[18] The necessity of battle was already part of Jung’s philosophy: “If the German people see that, among them, combatants still live, then they become aware also of combat as the highest form of existence. The German destiny calls for men who master it. For, world-history makes the man.” [19]

During his political activity, he came to dislike the National Socialist movement due to a personal dislike for Hitler as well as his view that National Socialism was a product of modernity and was ideologically linked with Marxism and liberalism. Jung was highly active in his opposition to the NSDAP and was eventually responsible for writing Papen’s Marburg address which criticized Hitler’s government in 1934, which resulted in Jung’s death on the Night of the Long Knives.[20]

Theorists of Decline: Spengler and Klages

1. Oswald Spengler

The most famous theorist of decline is Oswald Spengler, the “doctor-prophet” who predicted the fall of the Western High Culture in his magnum opus, The Decline of the West. According to Spengler, every High Culture has its own “soul” (this refers to the essential character of a Culture) and goes through predictable cycles of birth, growth, fulfillment, decline, and demise which resemble that of the life of a plant.[21] To quote Spengler:

A Culture is born in the moment when a great soul awakens out of the proto-spirituality of ever-childish humanity, and detaches itself, a form from the formless, a bounded and mortal thing from the boundless and enduring. It blooms on the soil of an exactly-definable landscape, to which plant-wise it remains bound. It dies when the soul has actualized the full sum of its possibilities in the shape of peoples, languages, dogmas, arts, states, sciences, and reverts into the proto-soul. [22]

There is an important distinction in this theory between Kultur (“Culture”) and Zivilisation (“Civilization”). Culture refers to the beginning phase of a High Culture which is marked by rural life, religiosity, vitality, will-to-power, and ascendant instincts, while Civilization refers to the later phase which is marked by urbanization, irreligion, purely rational intellect, mechanized life, and decadence. Spengler particularly focused on three High Cultures which he made comparisons between: the Magian, the Classical, and the present Western High Culture. He held the view that the West, which was in its later Civilization phase, would soon enter a final imperialistic and “Caesarist” stage – a stage which, according to Spengler, marks the final flash before the end of a High Culture.[23]

Perhaps Spengler’s most important contribution to the Conservative Revolution, however, is his theory of “Prussian Socialism” which he expressed in Prussianism and Socialism, and which formed the basis of his view that conservatives and socialists should unite. In this short book he argued that the Prussian character, which was the German character par excellence, was essentially socialist. For Spengler, true socialism was primarily a matter of ethics rather than economics.[24]

This ethical, Prussian socialism meant the development and practice of work ethic, discipline, obedience, a sense of duty to the greater good and the state, self-sacrifice, and the possibility of attaining any rank by talent. Prussian socialism was differentiated from Marxism and liberalism. Marxism was not true socialism because it was materialistic and based on class conflict, which stood in contrast with the Prussian ethics of the state. Also in contrast to Prussian socialism was liberalism and capitalism, which negated the idea of duty, practiced a “piracy principle,” and created the rule of money.[25]

2. Ludwig Klages

Ludwig Klages was a less influential, although still noteworthy, theorist of decline who focused not on High Cultures, but on the decline of Life (which stands in contrast to mere Existence). Klages’s theory, named “Biocentrism,” posited a dichotomy between Seele (“Soul”) and Geist (“Spirit”); two forces in human life that were in a psychological battle with each other. Soul may be understood as pure Life, vital impulse, and feeling, while Spirit may be understood as abstract intellect, mechanical and conceptual thought, reason, and Will.[26]

According to Biocentric theory, in primordial pre-historic times, man’s Soul and body were united and thus humans lived ecstatically in accordance to the principle of Life. Over time, human Life was interfered with by Spirit, which caused humans to use conceptual (as opposed to symbolic) thought and rational intellect, thus beginning the severing of body and Soul. In this theory, the more human history progresses, the more Life is limited and ruined by the Spirit in a long but ultimately unstoppable process which ends in completely mechanized, over-civilized, and soul-less people. “Already, the machine has liberated itself from man’s control,” wrote Klages, “it is no longer man’s servant: in reality, man himself is now being enslaved by the machine.”[27]

This final stage is marked by such things as a complete disconnection from Nature, the destruction of the natural environment, massive race-mixing, and a lack of true Life, which is predicted to finally end in the death of mankind due to damage to the natural world. Klages declared, “. . . the ultimate destruction of all seems to be a foregone conclusion.”[28]

Spann and the Unified State

Othmar Spann was, from 1919 to 1938, a professor at the University of Vienna in Austria who was influential but who, despite his enthusiastic support for National Socialism, was removed by the Third Reich government due to a few ideological disagreements.[29] He was the exponent of a theory known as “Universalism” (which is entirely different from universalism in the normal sense of the term). His Universalist view of economics, politics, society, and science was expounded in numerous books, the most important of which was his most memorable work, Der wahre Staat (“The True State”).[30]

Spann’s Universalism was a corporatist theory which rejected individualism. To understand Spann’s rejection of individualism it is necessary to understand what “individualism” is because different and even contradictory definitions are given to that term; individualism here refers to the concept that the individual is absolute and no supra-individual reality exists (and therefore, society is nothing more than a collection of atoms). The reader must be aware that Spann did not make a complete denial of the individual, but rather a complete denial of individualist ideology.[31]

According to Universalist theory, the individual exists only within a particular community or society; the whole (the totality of society) precedes the parts (individuals) because the parts do not truly exist independent from the whole.[32] Spann wrote, “It is the fundamental truth of all social science . . . that it is not the individuals that are the truly real, but the whole, and that the individuals have reality and existence only so far as they are members of the whole.”[33]

Furthermore, society and the State were not entirely separable, because from the State comes the rights of the individual, family, and other groups. Liberalism, capitalism, democracy, and Marxian socialism were all rejected by Spann as individualist or materialist and corrupt products of French Revolutionary ideas. Whereas in past societies the individual was integrated into community, modern life with its liberalism had atomized society. According to Spann, “Mankind can reconcile itself to poverty because it will be and remain poor forever. But to the loss of estate, existential insecurity, uprootedness, and nothingness, the masses of affected people can never reconcile themselves.”[34] As a solution to modern decay, Spann envisioned the formation of a religious Christian, corporatist, hierarchical, and authoritarian state similar to the First Reich (the Holy Roman Empire).[35]

A lesser-known Revolutionary Conservative academic, Hans Freyer, also held similar views to Spann and challenged the ideas and results of the “Enlightenment,” particularly secularism, the idea of universal reason, the concept of a universal humanity, urbanization, and democratization. Against modern society corrupted by these things, Freyer posed the idea of a “totally integrated society” which would be completed by a powerful, non-democratic state. Culture, Volk, race, and religion would form the basis of society and state in order to restore a sense of community and common values. Freyer also joined the National Socialists believing that the movement would realize his aims but later became disappointed with it because of what he saw as its repressive nature during the Third Reich.[36]

Zehrer and Elitist Theory

Hans Zehrer was a notable contributor to and editor of the “neoconservative” magazine Die Tat, and thus eventually also a founding member of a group of intellectuals known as the Tat-Kreis (“Tat-Circle”). Zehrer held the view that “all movements began as intellectual movements of intelligent, well-qualified minorities which, because of the discrepancy between that which is and that which should be, seized the initiative.”[37] His theory was somewhat related to Vilfredo Pareto’s concept of a “circulation of elites” in that he believed that intellectuals, in most cases gifted and intelligent men emerging from any social class, were crucial in determining the succeeding social order and its ideas.

In Germany at that time, the middle class, which made up a large segment of society and of which Zehrer was a member, was facing a number of economic problems. It was Zehrer’s dream that a new political order could be established by young intellectuals of the middle class which he attempted to reach. This new order would result in the abolishment of the insecure Weimar republic and the establishment of an authoritarian elite made up largely of such intellectuals. This elite would not be subject to control by the masses and would choose its own members based on the criterion of personal quality and ability without regard to social class or wealth.[38]

Zehrer’s vision was not fulfilled due to a series of failures to establish a new state by a “revolution from above” as well because of the rise of the NSDAP, which he attempted to influence in the early 1930s despite his disdain for party rule and, after being unsuccessful, retreated from political activity. However, although most Revolutionary Conservative thinkers did not envision an elite composed almost solely of intellectuals, it is notable that they shared with Zehrer the view that an authoritarian elite should have its membership open to qualified individuals of all classes and ranks.[39]

Sombart and Conservative Socialism

Socialists with nationalist and conservative leanings such as Paul Lensch, Johann Plenge, Werner Sombart, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, and Oswald Spengler to the rise of a new, national, conservative socialism. Of course, it should be remembered that non-Marxist socialism already had a long history in Germany, including such people as the Kathedersozialisten (“socialists of the chair”), Adolf Stöcker, and Ferdinand Tönnies.[40] Werner Sombart himself began as a Marxist, but later became disillusioned with Marxist theory, which he realized was destructive of the human spirit and organic community much in the same way capitalism was.

Sombart is for the most part remembered for his work on the nature of capitalism, especially his works linking the materialistic character of the Jews with capitalism. The obsession with profit, ruthless business practices, indifference to quality, and “the merely rationalizing and abstracting characteristics of the trader” which were key products of capitalism, destroy any “community of labor” and disintegrate bonds between people which were more common in medieval society.[41] Sombart wrote, “Before capitalism could develop, the natural man had to be changed out of all recognition, and a rationalistically minded mechanism introduced in his stead. There had to be a transvaluation of all economic values.”[42]

Sombart’s major objections to Marxism consisted of the fact that Marxism aimed to suppress all religious feelings as well as national feelings and the values of rooted, indigenous culture; Marxism aimed not at a higher mankind but mere base “happiness.” In contrast to Marxism and capitalism, Sombart advocated a German Socialism in which economic policies would be “directed in a corporative manner,” exploitation would be ended, and hierarchy and the welfare of the whole state would be upheld.[43]

Radicalism and Nationalism: Jünger and Niekisch

1. Ernst Jünger

Ernst Jünger is well-known for his work on what he saw as the positive effects of warfare and battle, with himself having experienced these in World War I. Jünger rejected the bourgeois civilization of comfort and security, which he saw as weak and dying, in favor of the hardening and “magnificent” experience of action and adventure in war, which would transform a man of the bourgeois world into a “warrior.” The warrior type battled “against the eternal Utopia of peace, the pursuit of happiness, and perfection.”[44] Jünger believed that the crisis and restlessness of Germans after the World War was essentially a good thing.

In his book Der Arbeiter, the “warrior” was followed by the “worker,” a new type which would become dominant after the end of the bourgeois order. Jünger had realized that modern technology was changing the world; the individual man was losing his individuality and freedom in a mechanized world. Thus he anticipated a society in which people would accept anonymity in the masses and obedient service to the state; the population would undergo “total mobilization.”[45] To quote Jünger:

Total Mobilization is far less consummated than it consummates itself; in war and peace, it expresses the secret and inexorable claim to which our life in the age of masses and machines subjects us. It thus turns out that each individual life becomes, ever more unambiguously, the life of a worker; and that, following the wars of knights, kings, and citizens, we now have wars of workers. The first great twentieth-century conflict has offered us a presentiment of both their rational structure and their mercilessness.[46]

Ernst Jünger’s acceptance of technology in the “worker” stage stands somewhat in contrast to the position taken by his brother, Friedrich Georg Jünger, who wrote critiques of modern technological civilization (although Ernst would later in life agree with this view).[47] Ernst Jünger later changed in his attitudes during World War II, and afterwards nearly inverted his entire worldview, praising peace and individualism; a change which had not come without criticism from the Right.[48]

2. Ernst Niekisch

Another notable radical nationalist in the Conservative Revolution was Ernst Niekisch, who began as a Communist but eventually turned to a seemingly paradoxical mixture of German nationalism and Russian communism: National Bolshevism. In accordance with this new doctrine, Niekisch advocated an alliance between Soviet Russia and Germany in order to overcome the Versailles Treaty as well as to counter the power of the capitalist and anti-nationalist Western nations. However, this deviant faction, in competition with both Communists and anti-Communist nationalists, remained an unsuccessful minority.[49]

Political Theory: Schmitt and Haushofer

1. Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt was a notable Catholic philosopher of politics and jurist who was a major influence on political thought and who also supported the Third Reich government after its formation. His most famous book was The Concept of the Political, although he is also the author of numerous other works, including Political Theology and The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy.

The “political,” for Schmitt, was a concept distinct from politics in the normal sense of the term, and was based on the distinction between “friend” and “enemy.” The political exists wherever there exists an enemy, a group which is different and holds different interests, and with whom there is a possibility of conflict. This criterion includes both groups outside of the state as well as within the state, and therefore both inter-state war as well as civil war is taken into account. A population can be unified and mobilized through the political act, in which an enemy is identified and battled.[50]

Schmitt also defended the practice of dictatorship, which he distinguished from “tyranny.” Dictatorship is a form of government which is established when a “state of exception” or emergency exists in which it is necessary to bypass slow parliamentary processes in order to defend the law. According to Schmitt, dictatorial power is present in any case in which a state or leader exercises power independently of the approval of majorities, regardless of whether or not this state is “democratic.” Sovereignty is the power to decide the state of exception, and thus, “sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”[51]

Schmitt further criticized parliamentary or liberal democracy by arguing that the original basis of parliamentarism — which held that the separation of powers and open and rational dialogue between parties would result in a well-functioning state — was in fact negated by the reality of party politics, in which party leaders, coalitions, and interest groups make decisions on policies without a discussion. Another notable argument made by Schmitt was that true democracy is not liberal democracy, in which a plurality of groups are treated equally under a single state, but a unified, homogenous state in which leaders’ decisions express the will of the unified people. In Schmitt’s words, “Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second – if the need arises elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.”[52]

2. Karl Haushofer

Karl Haushofer was another philosopher of politics who is well-known for his theoretical work on “geopolitics” which aimed to advance Germany’s understanding of international politics and geography. Haushofer asserted that nations not only had the right to defend their land, but also to expand and colonize new lands, especially when experiencing over-population. Germany was one nation in such a position, and was thus entitled to Lebensraum (“living-space”) for its excess population. In order to overcome the domination of the Anglo-American power structure, Haushofer advocated a new system of alliances which particularly involved a German-Russian alliance (thus Haushofer can be viewed as a “Eurasianist”). Haushofer joined the National Socialists but his ideas were eventually rejected by Third Reich geopoliticians because of their hostility to Russia.[53]

The Influences of the Conservative Revolution

The thinkers of the Conservative Revolution had not only an immediate influence in Germany during the early 20th Century, but also a deep and lasting impact on right-wing (and in some cases even left-wing) thought up to the present day. Aside from the obvious influence on National Socialism, and if we assume that Otto Strasser cannot be included as part of the Conservative Revolution, then Strasserism was still clearly influenced by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and Oswald Spengler.[54]

Francis Parker Yockey, the author of Imperium, also revealed influence from Spengler, Schmitt, Sombart, and Haushofer.[55] Julius Evola, the famous Italian traditionalist, is yet another writer who was affected by Revolutionary Conservative intellectuals, as is clear in such major works as Men Among the Ruins[56] and The Path of Cinnabar.[57]

More recently, the European New Right shows a great amount of inspiration from Revolutionary Conservatives. Armin Mohler, who may himself be considered a part of Germany’s Conservative Revolution as well as the New Right, is well-known for his seminal work Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932.[58] In addition, Tomislav Sunic also draws many intellectual concepts from Revolutionary Conservatives in his highly important book, Against Democracy and Equality, including Schmitt, Spengler, and to a lesser extent Spann and Sombart. [59]

Yet another intellectual in league with the New Right, Alexander Jacob, is the translator of Jung’s The Rule of the Inferiour and is also responsible for multiple works on various Revolutionary Conservatives.[60] When one considers these facts, it becomes apparent that much can be learned by studying the history and ideas of the German Conservative Revolution. It is a source of philosophical richness which can advance the Conservative position and which leaves its mark on the thought of the Right even today.

 

Notes

[1] On Hofmannsthal’s political views, see Paul Gottfried, “Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Interwar European Right.” Modern Age, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Fall 2007), pp. 508–19.

[2] Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Das Schrifttum als geistiger Raum der Nation (Munich, 1927). Quoted in Klemens von Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism; Its History And Dilemma In The Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 9.

[3] Armin Mohler, Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Vorwerk Verlag, 1950).

[4] Robert Edward Norton, Secret Germany: Stefan George and his Circle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).

[5] Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism, pp. 102–111.

[6] Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism, pp. 156–159.

[7] Mohler, Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland, p. 329.

[8] Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Germany’s Third Empire (New York: Howard Fertig, 1971).

[9] Ibid. p. 76.

[10] Ibid. p. 245.

[11] Ibid. p. 227.

[12] Edgar Julius Jung, The Rule of the Inferiour, trans. Alexander Jacob (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellon Press, 1995).

[13] Larry Eugene Jones, “Edgar Julius Jung: The Conservative Revolution in Theory and Practice,” Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association, vol. 21, Issue 02 (June 1988), p. 142.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Edgar J. Jung, Deutsche uber Deutschland (Munich, 1932), p. 380. Quoted in Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism, pp. 121–22.

[16] Jung, The Rule of the Inferiour, p. 138.

[17] Jung, “Sinndeutung der konservativen Revolution in Deutschland.” Quoted inJones, “Edgar Julius Jung,” p. 167. For an overview of Jung’s philosophy, see: Jones, “Edgar Julius Jung,” pp. 144–47, 149; Walter Struve, Elites Against Democracy; Leadership Ideals in Bourgeois Political Thought in Germany, 1890-1933 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 1973), pp. 317–52; Alexander Jacob’s introduction to Europa: German Conservative Foreign Policy 1870–1940 (Lanham, MD, USA: University Press of America, 2002), pp. 10–16.

[18] Jones, “Edgar Julius Jung,” pp. 145–48.

[19] Jung, The Rule of the Inferiour, p. 368.

[20] Jones, “Edgar Julius Jung,” pp. 147–73.

[21] Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West Vol. 1: Form and Actuality (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926).

[22] Ibid. p. 106.

[23] Ibid. For a good overview of Spengler’s theory, see Tomislav Sunic, Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right (Third Edition. London: Arktos, 2010), pp. 91–98.

[24] Oswald Spengler, Selected Essays (Chicago: Gateway/Henry Regnery, 1967).

[25] Ibid.

[26] See: Joe Pryce, “On The Biocentric Metaphysics of Ludwig Klages,” Revilo-Oliver.com, 2001, http://www.revilo-oliver.com/Writers/Klages/Ludwig_Klages.html, and Lydia Baer, “The Literary Criticism of Ludwig Klages and the Klages School: An Introduction to Biocentric Thought.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jan., 1941), pp. 91–138.

[27] Ludwig Klages, Cosmogonic Reflections, trans. Joe Pryce, 14 May 2001, http://www.revilo-oliver.com/Writers/Klages/515.html, 453.

[28] Ibid., http://www.revilo-oliver.com/Writers/Klages/100.html, 2.

[29] Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism, pp. 204–5.

[30] Othmar Spann, Der Wahre Staat (Leipzig: Verlag von Quelle und Meyer, 1921).

[31] Barth Landheer, “Othmar Spann’s Social Theories.” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Apr., 1931), pp. 239–48.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Spann, quoted in Ernest Mort, “Christian Corporatism.” Modern Age, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Summer 1959), p. 249. http://www.mmisi.org/ma/03_03/mort.pdf.

[34] Spann, Der wahre Staat, p. 120. Quoted in Sunic, Against Democracy and Equality, pp. 163–64.

[35] Janek Wasserman, Black Vienna, Red Vienna: The Struggle for Intellectual and Political Hegemony in Interwar Vienna, 1918–1938 (Saint Louis, Missouri: Washington University, 2010), pp. 73–85.

[36] Jerry Z. Muller, The Other God that Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). The single book by Hans Freyer to be translated into English is Theory of Objective Mind, trans. Steven Grosby (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1998).

[37] Hans Zehrer, “Die Revolution der Intelligenz,” Tat, XXI (Oct. I929), 488. Quoted in Walter Struve, “Hans Zehrer as a Neoconservative Elite Theorist,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Jul., 1965), p. 1035.

[38] Struve, “Hans Zehrer as a Neoconservative Elite Theorist.”

[39] Ibid.

[40] Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism, pp. 57–58. On Tönnies, see Christopher Adair-Toteff, “Ferdinand Tonnies: Utopian Visionary,” Sociological Theory, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 58-65.

[41] Alexander Jacob, “German Socialism as an Alternative to Marxism,” The Scorpion, Issue 21. http://thescorp.multics.org/21spengler.html.

[42] Werner Sombart, Economic Life in the Modern Age (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2001), p. 129.

[43] Jacob, “German Socialism as an Alternative to Marxism.”

[44] Ernst Jünger, ed., Krieg und Krieger (Berlin, 1930), 59. Quoted in Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism, p. 183. See also Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel, trans. Basil Greighton (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929) and Copse 125 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1930).

[45] Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism, pp. 185–88.

[46] Ernst Jünger, “Total Mobilization,” trans. Joel Golb, in The Heidegger Controversy (Boston: MIT Press, 1992), p. 129. http://anarchistwithoutcontent.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/junger-total-mobilization-booklet.pdf.

[47] Alain de Benoist, “Soldier Worker, Rebel, Anarch: An Introduction to Ernst Jünger,” trans. Greg Johnson, The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 3 (Fall 2008), p. 52.

[48] Julius Evola, The Path of Cinnabar (London: Integral Tradition Publishing, 2009), pp. 216–21.

[49] Klemens von Klemperer, “Towards a Fourth Reich? The History of National Bolshevism in Germany,” The Review of Politics, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Apr., 1951), pp. 191–210.

[50] Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, expanded edition, trans. G. Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

[51] Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. G. Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 1.

[52] Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. E. Kennedy, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), p. 9.

[53] Andrew Gyorgy, “The Geopolitics of War: Total War and Geostrategy.” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Nov., 1943), pp. 347–62. See also Mohler, Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland, p. 474.

[54] Otto Strasser, Hitler and I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1940), pp. 38–39.

[55] Francis Parker Yockey, Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics (Sausalito, Cal.: Noontide Press, 1962).

[56] Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2002).

[57] Evola, The Path of Cinnabar, pp. 150–55.

[58] See note #3.

[59] See Sunic, Against Democracy and Equality, pp. 75–98, 159–64.

[60] See Jacob, Europa; “German Socialism as an Alternative to Marxism”; Introduction to Political Ideals by Houston Stewart Chamberlain (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2005).

 

—————–

Tudor, Lucian. “The Conservative Revolution of Germany & its Legacy.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 14 August 2012. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/08/the-german-conservative-revolution-and-its-legacy/ >.

 

Review of Dugin’s 4th Political Theory – Pistun

The Fourth Political Theory – A Review

By Olivia Pistun

 

Professor Aleksandr Dugin is Head of the Centre of Conservative Researches at the Faculty of Sociology at Moscow State University and leader of the International Eurasian Movement.

What is perhaps initially most appealing about this publication – aside from the promise of an offer of a fresh, viable alternative to the present stagnant political void, this “end of history” in which we find ourselves – is the comprehensive critique of the prevailing liberal ideology from a perspective which neither wholly aligns itself with the traditional positions in opposition to liberalism, nor stations itself against these.

The principal aim of Professor Dugin’s work is not simply to deconstruct the previous failed political theories, which he lists as fascism, communism, and liberalism, but to fashion a new fourth theory, utilising what may be learnt from some of the previous models after their deconstruction rather than dismissing them outright on the basis of particulars worthy of rejection. That is not to say that the Fourth Political Theory is simply a synthesis of ideas that in their singular form have seen their day. Dugin is conscious of the necessity to bring something new to the table, with one of the principal of these novel ideas being the rejection of the subjects of the old ideologies, such as class, race, or the individual, in favour of the existential Heideggerian concept of Dasein (roughly Being or being-in-the-world. Literally da – there; sein– being) as the primary actor.

Arguably this is the greatest difficulty in Professor Dugin’s book. Whereby the subject of class or race may be conceived of on the scientific, quantifiable level, the metaphysical idea of Dasein as the cardinal actor in the Fourth Political Theory is significantly more difficult to grasp in an age which overvalues the scientific method. This said, the title of the book itself serves to suggest that the contents will not be free from abstract concepts. This is, after all, a work of theory.

Those hoping for a comprehensive outline of a route to salvation will be disappointed. At least initially. The Fourth Political Theory does not seek to form a rigid ideological structure founded on an exhaustive set of axioms, but rather to serve as an invitation to further build upon what is an initial guiding framework.

Traditionalists who ascribe to a more conservative world view need not be put off by Dugin’s avant-garde approach towards historically enemy ideologies. His boldly honest examination – unhindered by any concern of how he will be received – of the previous political theories is illustrative of the principle which is prevalent throughout his work, namely the opposition to the sort of reflexive reaction that stems from ingrained preconceptions, and advocating instead a willingness and ability to acknowledge the positive parts within an overall negative whole.

With this in mind, it may serve to benefit any to cast aside suspicions and scepticism towards this Russian thinker and to refrain from dismissing this innovating work on the basis of the presupposition that seemingly disagreeable notions act as principle maxims within the Fourth Theory.

Regardless of where one stands in relation to this seminal work, the Fourth Political Theory is a valuable contribution to the alternative political discourse and, I suspect, will be quick to gain even greater momentum.

Copies of Aleksandr Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory can be purchased from ARKTOS

 

—————

Pistun, Olivia. “Aleksandr Dugin: The Fourth Political Theory: A Review.” Traditional Britain Group, 26 May 2013. <http://www.traditionalbritain.org/content/aleksandr-dugin-fourth-political-theory-review-olivia-pistun >.

Publication notes: Aleksandr Dugin’s book The Fourth Political Theory (London: Arktos, 2012) is the English translation of the original Russian work Четвёртая политическая теория (Санкт-Петербург & Москва: Амфора, 2009). The book under review, The Fourth Political Theory,  has also been translated into many other languages. We will note that it is also available in Spanish translation as La Cuarta Teoría Política (Molins de Rei, Barcelona: Nueva República, 2013), in German translation as Die Vierte Politische Theorie (London: Arktos, 2013), in French translation as La Quatrième Théorie Politique (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2012), in Portuguese translation as A Quarta Teoria Política (Curitiba: Editora Austral, 2012), in Romanian translation as A Patra Teorie Politică (Chișinău: Editura Universitatea Populară, 2014), in Greek translation as Η τέταρτη πολιτική θεωρία (Αθήνα: Έσοπτρον, 2013), and in Serbian translation as Четврта политичка теорија (Београд: MIR Publishing, 2013). Other books or essays by Dugin may be available in these languages and many others. For more information, see the offical Fourth Political Theory website: <http://www.4pt.su/ >.

Notes on further reading: For a better summary of the Fourth Political Theory, see also especially “The Necessity of the Fourth Political Theory” by Leonid Savin and “The Fourth Political Theory and ‘Other Europe'” by Natella Speranskaya. We also recommend that our audience look at the other articles by Alexander Dugin on our website for a further clarification of the nature of his political philosophy (Fourth Political Theory, Eurasianism, Multipolar World Theory): <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/tag/alexander-dugin/ >.

Also of note in English is Dugin’s book Eurasian Mission: Program Materials (Moscow: International Eurasian Movement, 2005 [2nd edition: London: Arktos, 2015]). For those who know French, an important book by Alexander Dugin has been published as  Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2013), the French translation of the Russian original: теория многополярного мира (Москва: Евразийское движение, 2012). There is also a Portuguese translation of this work known as Teoria do Mundo Multipolar (Iaeg, 2012). On the theory of the multi-polar world in German, see Dugin’s Konflikte der Zukunft: Die Rückkehr der Geopolitik (Kiel: Arndt-Verlag, 2014). Also worth noting in French is Dugin’s books Le prophète de l’eurasisme (Paris: Avatar Éditions, 2006) and L’appel de L’Eurasie (Paris: Avatar Éditions, 2013). A Spanish version of the latter has been published as ¿Qué es el eurasismo? Una conversación de Alain de Benoist con Alexander Dugin (Tarragona: Ediciones Fides, 2014). It should also be noted that a deeper clarification of the Fourth Political Theory has also been published by Dugin (in Russian), titled Четвертый Путь (Москва: Академический проект, 2014).

Further information on Dugin and his ideas in the Spanish language can be found in Sebastian J. Lorenz’s Elementos, N° 70, “Alexander Dugin y la Cuarta Teoría Política: La Nueva Derecha Rusa Eurasiática” (Mayo 2014), <http://urkultur-imperium-europa.blogspot.com/2014/05/elementos-n-70-alexander-dugin-y-la.html >. (We have made Elementos Nº 70 available for download from our site here: Elementos Nº 70 – Dugin). For Spanish readers, the book ¿Qué es el eurasismo? (previously cited) also serves as a good introduction to Dugin’s thought, which augments the Elementos publication.

Commentary: We should also note that Dugin’s position on the matter of race and racism is somewhat unclear and questionable. Some have interpreted Dugin’s works as implying the view that race is unimportant to ethnic identity, and that rejecting racism necessarily means rejecting belief in racial identity and difference. It is not yet clear whether this interpretation is valid or not, and Dugin himself may actually believe that race has some importance, but no clear position on the matter is expressed in either The Fourth Political Theory or his essays on Eurasianism that we have seen thus far. If the former interpretation is in fact true, then his position is partly incompatible with that of the New Rightists, Identitarians, and Traditionalists. Although Dugin respects Alain de Benoist and has published some of his essays in Russian (collected in Против либерализма: к четвертой политической теории [Санкт-Петербург: Амфора, 2009]), it is significant to note that Benoist holds a clear ethnic and racial separatist – although strictly non-racist – view, as expressed in many of his works, such as “What is Racism?” (available on our site along with more information through the hyperlink) and Les Idées à l’Endroit (Paris: Libres-Hallier, 1979). Furthermore, Julius Evola, another thinker whom Dugin respects, held a view of race in which the biological race and heritage still held a degree of importance among traditionalist values, as expressed in, for example, The Path of Cinnabar (London: Arktos, 2010) and Revolt Against the Modern World (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 1995).

 

La Nueva Derecha Europea en Español (The European New Right in Spanish)

La Nueva Derecha Europea en Español

(The European New Right in Spanish)

Note in English: Due to the fact that the Spanish is one of the most important languages (along with French, Italian, and German) in which many key works of the European New Right have been published, we have created this page to bring attention to some of the more significant Spanish-language resources on the European New Right which are available on the Internet and which we have chosen to republish on our website. These include certain selected issues of Sebastian J. Lorenz’s online journal Elementos which we have deemed to be the most important, along with Alain de Benoist’s and Charles Champetier’s “Manifesto of the New Right” (Spanish version).

Aquí vamos a poner en conocimiento de los recursos más importantes en el idioma español para el pensamiento de la Nueva Derecha Europea. El recurso más importante es la revista de Sebastián J. Lorenz: Elementos: Revista de Metapolítica para una Civilización Europea, que se ha anunciado y publicado en línea en su sitio web: <http://elementosdemetapolitica.blogspot.com.es/ >. Hemos seleccionado y publicado en nuestra página web lo que hemos considerado que son los números más esenciales de esta revista en lo que respecta a las ideas de la Nueva Derecha. En el espacio a continuación vamos a enumerar y enlace en el espacio por debajo de estos números de Elementos y sus contenidos, junto con el manifiesto de Alain de Benoist y Charles Champetier.

Aquí también queremos mencionar los libros más importantes de la Nueva Derecha en español que están disponibles en formato impreso: Alain de Benoist, ¿Es un Problema la Democracia? (Barcelona: Nueva República, 2013); Benoist, La Nueva Derecha: Una respuesta clara, profunda e inteligente (Barcelona : Planeta, 1982); Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, & Carlos Pinedo Cestafe, Las Ideas de la “Nueva Derecha”: Una respuesta al colonialismo cultural (Barcelona: Nuevo Arte Thor, 1986); Guillaume Faye, Pierre Freson, & Robert Steuckers, Pequeño Léxico del Partisano Europeo (Molins de Rei, Barcelona: Nueva República, 2012); Tomislav Sunic, Homo Americanus: Hijo de la Era Postmoderna (Barcelona: Ediciones Nueva Republica, 2008); Dominique Venner, Europa y su Destino: De ayer a mañana (Barcelona: Áltera, 2010); Rodrigo Agulló, Disidencia Perfecta: La Nueva Derecha y la batalla de las ideas (Barcelona & Madrid: Altera, 2011); Jesús J. Sebastián Lorente (ed.), Alain de Benoist: Elogio de la disidencia (Tarragona: Ediciones Fides, 2015).

 

Manifiesto: La Nueva Derecha del año 2000 por Alain de Benoist y Charles Champetier

(Nota: Este libro también fue publicado en forma impresa como: Manifiesto para un renacimiento europeo [Mollet del Vallès, Barcelona: GRECE, 2000])

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 15 – “Moeller van den Bruck: Conservadurismo Revolucionario”  (publicado 1 Junio 2011)

Contenidos:

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck y la Nouvelle Droite, por Sebastian J. Lorenz

Moeller van den Bruck: un rebelde conservador, por Luca Leonello Rimbotti

Moeller van den Bruck: ¿un “precursor póstumo”?, por Denis Goedel

Moeller y Dostoievski, por Robert Steuckers

Moeller y la Kulturpessimismus de Weimar, por Ferran Gallego

Moeller y los Jungkonservativen, por Erik Norling

Moeller y Spengler, por Ernesto Milá

Moeller y la Konservative Revolution, por Keith Bullivant

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, por Alain de Benoist

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 16 – “Un Diálogo Contra la Modernidad: Julius Evola y Alain de Benoist”  (publicado 9 Junio 2011)

Contenidos:

Julius Evola, por Alain de Benoist

Posmodernidad y antimodernidad: Alain de Benoist y Julius Evola, por Marcos Ghio

Julius Evola, reaccionario radical y metafísico comprometido. Análisis crítico del pensamiento político de Julius Evola, por Alain de Benoist

Evola y la crítica de la modernidad, por Luisa Bonesio

La recepción internacional de Rebelión contra el mundo moderno, por Giovanni Monastra

Rebelión contra el mundo moderno, por Julius Evola

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 24 – “Europeismo Identitario”  (publicado 25 Mayo 2012)

Contenidos:

Hacia el reencuentro de Europa: Lo que piensa la Nueva Derecha, por Diego L. Sanromán

Europa a la búsqueda de su identidad, por Isidro J. Palacios

La cuestión europea: Bases ideológicas de la Nueva Derecha, por Carlos Pinedo Cestafe

Europa: la memoria del futuro, por Alain de Benoist

Una cierta idea de Europa. El debate sobre la construcción europea, por Rodrigo Agulló

La memoria en herencia: Europa y su destino, por Dominique Venner

Siglo XXI: Europa, un árbol en la tempestad, por Guillaume Faye

La identidad europea, por Enrique Ravello

Europa: no es herencia sino misión futura, por Giorgio Locchi

El proyecto de la Gran Europa, por Alexander Dugin

¿Unión Europea o Gran Espacio?, por J. Molina

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 26 – “Economía Orgánica. Una Alternativa a la Economía de Mercado” (publicado 11 Junio 2012)

Contenidos:

Salir de la Economía, por Rodrigo Agulló

La Economía no es el Destino, por Guillaume Faye

La Economía Orgánica en la Nueva Derecha, por Carlos Pinedo

Adam Müller: la Economía Orgánica como vivienca romántica, por Luis Fernando Torres

Friedrich List: Sistema Nacional de Economía Política, ¿proteccionismo?, por Arturo C. Meyer, Carlos Gómez y Jurgen Schuldt

Crear la Economía Orgánica, por A.L. Arrigoni

El principio de reciprocidad en los cambios, por Alberto Buela

¿Homo oeconomicus o idiota moral?, por Ramón Alcoberro

Por una Economía Mundial de dos velocidades, por Guillaume Faye

La Economía Local contra la Economía Global, por Edward Goldsmith

Dictadura de la economía y sociedad mercantilista, por Stefano Vaj

Crisis económica: aproximación a un modelo económico alternativo, por Juan P. Viñuela

La crítica de la Economía de Mercado de Karl Polanyi, por Arturo Lahera Sánchez

Por la independencia económica europea, por Guillaume Faye

¿Decrecimiento o barbarie?, por Serge Latouche

Decrecimiento: hacia un nuevo paradigma económico, por Luis Picazo Casariego

La Economía del Bien Común: un modelo económico alternativo, por Christian Felber

Charles Champetier: por una subversión de la lógica economicista, por Diego L. Sanromán

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 28 – “Contra el Liberalismo: El Principal Enemigo” (publicado 29 junio 2012)

Contenidos:

El liberalismo, enemigo principal, por Alain de Benoist y Charles Champetier

El liberalismo en las ideas de la “Nueva Derecha”, por Carlos Pinedo Cestafe

Liberalismo, por Francis Parker Yockey

Frente al Peligro de la Hegemonía Liberal, por Marco Tarchi

La esencia del neoliberalismo, por Pierre Bourdieu

El error del liberalismo, por Alain de Benoist

Liberalismo y Democracia: Paradojas y Rompecabezas, por Joseph Margolis

El liberalismo y las identidades, por Eduardo Arroyo

Dinámica histórica del Liberalismo: del mercado total al Estado total, por Tomislav Sunic

Neoliberalismo: la lucha de todos contra todos, por Pierre Bourdieu

La impostura liberal, por Adriano Scianca

Una crítica liberal del liberalismo, por Adrián Fernández Martín

Leo Strauss y su crítica al liberalismo, por Alberto Buela

Charles Taylor: una crítica comunitaria al liberalismo político, por Carlos Donoso Pacheco

El liberalismo norteamericano y sus críticos: Rawls, Taylor, Sandel, Walzer, por Chantal Mouffe

La crítica comunitaria a la moral liberal, por Renato Cristi

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 31 – “Armin Mohler y la “Konservative Revolution” Alemana” (publicado 12 Agosto 2012)

Contenidos:

El movimiento de la Revolución Conservadora, por Robert Steuckers

La herencia del movimiento de la “Revolución Conservadora” en Europa, por Ian B. Warren

La Revolución Conservadora, por Keith Bullivant

La crisis de la democracia en Weimar:Oposición ideológica de la Revolución

Conservadora,por José Ramón Díez Espinosa

La Revolución Conservadora en Alemania, por Marqués de Valdeiglesias

Ideas para Europa: la Revolución Conservadora, por Luca Leonello Rimbotti

Revolución Conservadora y nacionalsocialismo, por Andrea Virga

Evola y la Revolución Conservadora, por Giano Accame

La Konservative Revolution como doctrina de la decadencia de Alemania, por Miguel Ángel Simón

La influencia de Armin Mohler sobre la cosmovision de la Nueva Derecha, por Robert Steuckers

De la «Konservative Revolution» a la «Nouvelle Droite»: ¿apropiación o rehabilitación?, por Sebastian J. Lorenz

La Revolución Conservadora y la cuestión de las minorías nacionales, por Xoxé M. Núzez Seixas

El sinsentido de la Revolución Conservadora Historia de la idea, nacionalismo y habitus, por Henning Eichberg

Índice de los autores de la «Konservative Revolution”, según Armin Mohler

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 32 – “Imperio: Orden Especial y Espiritual” (publicado 11 septiembre 2012)

Contenidos:

La idea de Imperio, por Alain de Benoist

Translatio Imperii: del Imperio a la Unión, por Peter Sloterdijk

¿Hacia un modelo neoimperialista? Gran espacio e Imperio en Carl Schmitt, por Alessandro Campi

¿Europa imperial?, por Rodrigo Agulló

Imperialismo pagano, por Julius Evola

El concepto de Imperio en el Derecho internacional, por Carl Schmitt

Nación e Imperio, por Giorgio Locchi

El Imperium a la luz de la Tradición, por Eduard Alcántara

Imperio sin Imperator, por Celso Sánchez Capdequí

Imperio: Constitución y Autoridad imperial, por Michael Hardt y Antonio Negri

La teoría posmoderna del Imperio, por Alan Rush

El Imperium espiritual de Europa: de Ortega a Sloterdijk, por Sebastian J. Lorenz

 

ELEMENTOS N° 37 – “Federalismo Poliárquico Neoalthusiano” (publicado 28 Noviembre 2012)

Contenidos:

El primer federalista. Johannes Althusius, por Alain de Benoist

Carl Schmitt y el Federalismo, por Luis María Bandieri

Nacionalismo, Democracia y Federalismo, por Ramón Máiz

Europa federal y el principio de subsidiariedad, por Rodrigo Agulló

España, ¿federación o autodeterminación?, por Sebastian J. Lorenz

Plurinacionalidad, Federalismo y Derecho de Autodeterminación, por Jaime Pastor

El federalismo pluralista. Del federalismo nacional al federalismo plurinacional, por Miquel Caminal

Federalismo plurinacional, por Ramón Máiz

Estado federal y Confederación de Estados, por Max Sercq

De la Confederación a la Federación. Reflexiones sobre la finalidad de la integración europea, por Joschka Fischer

Federalismo versus Imperialismo, por Juan Beneyto

Europa. De imperio a federación, por Josep M. Colomer

Entrevistas imaginarias con el Presidente de Europa y el Jefe del Gobierno europeo

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 39 – “Una Crítica Metapolítica de la Democracia: De Carl Schmitt a Alain de Benoist, Vol. I” (publicado 23 Enero 2013)

Contenidos:

Democracia, el problema

Democracia representativa y democracia participativa, por Alain de Benoist

La crítica de la democracia, por Felipe Giménez Pérez

La democracia: Un análisis a partir de los críticos, por Eva Garrell Zulueta

La crítica decisionista de Carl Schmitt a la democracia liberal, por Antonella Attili

Rectificación metapolítica de la democracia, por Primo Siena

La crítica de Nietzsche a la Democracia  en Humano, demasiado humano, por Diego Felipe Paredes

Teoría democrática: Joseph Schumpeter y la síntesis moderna, por Godofredo Vidal de la Rosa

La crisis de la Democracia, por Marcel Gauchet

Democracia morbosa. Variaciones sobre un tema de Ortega, por Ignacio Sánchez Cámara

La democracia capitalista como forma extrema del totalitarismo. Entrevista con Philip Allot, por Irene Hernández Velasco

Sobre Nietzsche contra la democracia, de Nicolás González Varela, por Salvador López Arnal

La Democracia como Nematología. Sobre El fundamentalismo democrático, de Gustavo Bueno, por Íñigo Ongay de Felipe

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 40 – “Antonio Gramsci y el Poder Cultural. Por un Gramscismo de Derecha” (publicado 11 Febrero 2013)

Contenidos:

El gramscismo de derecha, por Marcos Ghio

Antonio Gramsci, marxista independiente, por Alain de Benoist

La estrategia metapolítica de la Nueva Derecha, por Carlos Pinedo

Un gramcismo de derechas. La Nueva derecha y la batalla de las ideas, por Rodrigo Agulló

El Poder Cultural, por Alain de Benoist

Gramsci, la revolución cultural y la estrategia para Occidente, por Ricardo Miguel Flore

El concepto de hegemonia en Gramsci, por Luciano Grupp

Gramsci y la sociología del conocimiento,por Salvador Orlando Alfaro

Antonio Gramsci: orientaciones, por Daniel Campione

Cómo Ganar la Guerra de las Ideas: Lecciones de la Derecha Gramsciana Neoliberal, por Susan George

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 41 – “Una Crítica Metapolítica de la Democracia: De Carl Schmitt a Alain de Benoist, Vol. II” (publicado 18 Febrero 2013)

Contenidos:

Democracia antigua y “Democracia” moderna, por Alain de Benoist

¿Es eterna la democracia liberal? Algunas opiniones al respecto,por Pedro Carlos González Cuevas

La democracia según la Escuela de Frankfurt y Carl Schmitt: ¿Opuestos y complementarios?, por Emmanuel Brugaletta

Carl Schmitt y René Capitant. Parlamentarismo y Democracia, por Xavier Marchand

La democracia federalista, por Sergio Fernández Riquelme

Tres modelos de democracia. Sobre el concepto de una política deliberativa, por Jürgen Habermas

Carl Schmitt y la paradoja de la democracia liberal, por Chantal Mouffe

Elitismo y Democracia: de Pareto a Schumpeter, por Mercedes Carreras

Democracia como sistema, democracia como ideología, por Pelayo García Sierra

Filósofos para una nueva democracia, por Braulio García Jaén

¿Hacia un nueva democracia? Habermas y Schmitt, por Ellen Kennedy

El invierno de la democracia, por Guy Hermet

Los enemigos de la democracia: la dictadura neoliberal, por Eduardo Álvarez Puga

Democracia sin demócratas, de Marcos Roitman, por Josep Pradas

 

ELEMENTOS N° 43 – “La Causa de los Pueblos: Etnicidad e Identidad” (publicado 18 Marzo 2013)

Contenidos:

La causa de los pueblos, por Isidro Juan Palacios

El etnocidio contra los pueblos: Mecánica y consecuencias del neo-colonialismo cultural, por José Javier Esparza

Etnopluralismo: las ideas de la Nueva Derecha, por Carlos Pinedo

El Arraigo por Alain de Benoist

La Europa de las etnias: nuestro único futuro posible, por Olegario de las Eras

La cuestión étnica: Aproximación a los conceptos de grupo étnico, identidad étnica, etnicidad y relaciones interétnicas, por Maria Cristina Bari

Visiones de la etnicidad, por Manuel Ángel Río Ruiz

Sobre la identidad de los pueblos, por Luis Villoro

La etnicidad y sus formas: aproximación a un modelo complejo de la pertenencia étnica, por Eduardo Terrén

El problema del etnocentrismo en el debate antropológico entre Clifford Geertz, Richard Rorty y Lévi-Strauss, por Rafael Aguilera Portales

La negación de la realidad étnica, por Guillaume Faye

Etnicidad y nacionalismo, por Isidoro Moreno Navarro

Etnicidad sin garantías: contribuciones de Stuart Hall, por Eduardo Restrepo

Etnia y etnicidad: dos categorías en construcción, por Carlos Ramiro Bravo Molina

 

ELEMENTOS N° 47 – “Elogio de la Diferencia. Diferencialismo versus Racismo” (publicado 28 Mayo 2013)

Contenidos:

Identidad y diferencia, por Alain de Benoist

Sobre racismo y antirracismo. Entrevista a Alain de Benoist, por Peter Krause

Diferencialismo contra racismo. Sobre los orígenes modernos del racismo, por Gilbert Destrées

El racismo. Génesis y desarrollo de una ideología de la Modernidad, por Carlos Caballero Jurado

Hacia un concepto convencional de raza, por Sebastian J. Lorenz

Nihilismo Racial, por Richard McCulloch

El antirracismo como religión de Estado, por Guillaume Faye

Un asunto tenebroso: el problema del racismo en la Nueva Derecha, por Diego Luis Sanromán

El racismo como ideología política. El discurso anti-inmigración de la Nueva Derecha, por José Luis Solana Ruiz

Sobre viejos y nuevos racismos. Las ideas de la Nueva Derecha, por Rodrigo Agulló

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 54 – “La Falsa Ideología de los Derechos Humanos” (publicado 30 Agosto 2013)

Contenidos:

Más allá de los Derechos Humanos. Defender las Libertades, por Alain de Benoist

Reflexiones en torno a los Derechos Humanos, por Charles Champetier

El Derecho de los Hombres, por Guillaume Faye

Derechos Humanos: una ideología para la mundialización, por Rodrigo Agulló

En torno a la Doctrina de los Derechos Humanos, por Erwin Robertson

¿Derechos del hombre?, por Adriano Scianca

¿Son universales los Derechos Humanos?, por François Julien

Los Derechos Humanos  como derechos de propiedad, por Murray Rothbard

La religión de los Derechos Humanos, por Guillaume Faye

Derechos comunes y Derechos personales en Ortega y Gasset, por Alejandro de Haro Honrubia

Derechos Humanos: disyuntiva de nuestro tiempo, por Alberto Buela

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 61 – “La Condición Femenina. ¿Feminismo o Feminidad?” (publicado 28 Noviembre 2013)

Contenidos:

Visión ontológico-teológica de lo masculino y lo femenino, por Leonardo Boff

El ser oculto de la cultura femenina en la obra de Georg Simmel, por Josetxo Beriain

El feminismo de la diferencia, por Marta Colorado López, Liliana Arango Palacio, Sofía Fernández Fuente

La condición femenina, por Alain de Benoist

La mujer objeto de la dominación masculina, por Pierre Bourdieu

Feminidad versus Feminismo, por Cesáreo Marítimo

Afirmando las diferencias. El feminismo de Nietzsche, por Elvira Burgos Díaz

La mujer como madre y la mujer como amante, por Julius Evola

El “recelo feminista” a proposito del ensayo La dominacion masculina de

Pierre Bourdieu, por Yuliuva Hernández García

Friedrich Nietzsche y Sigmund Freud: una subversión feminista, por Eva Parrondo Coppel

Hombres y mujeres. Un análisis desde la teoría de la polaridad, por Raúl Martínez Ibars

Identidad femenina y humanización del mundo, por Rodrigo Guerra
Simmel y la cultura femenina, por Raquel Osborne

La nueva feminidad, Entrevista a Annalinde Nightwind

El hombre no es un enemigo a batir, Entrevista con Elisabeth Badinter

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 64 – “El Eterno Retorno de Mircea Eliade”  (publicado 20 Marzo 2014)

Contenidos:

Bibliografía comentada de Mircea Eliade, por José Antonio Hernández García

Antropología y religión en el pensamiento de Mircea Eliade, por Pedro Gómez García

Mircea Eliade y el ideal del hombre universal, por Ioan Petru Culianu

Mircea Eliade y la Revolución Conservadora en Rumanía, por Claudio Mutti

Paisaje espiritual de Mircea Eliade, por Sergio Fritz Roa

Ingenieros de almas. Cioran, Elíade y la Guardia de Hierro, por Luis de León Barga

La experiencia de lo sagrado según Mircea Eliade, por François Chirpaz

Muerte y religión en Mircea Eliade, por Margarita Ossorio Menéndez

El paradigma del mito-ontológico de Mircea Eliade y su significación metodológica, por Nataly Nikonovich

Eliade y la antropología, por José Antonio González Alcantud

Mircea Eliade: hombre histórico, hombre mítico, por Hugo Basile

Mircea Eliade: un parsifal extraviado, por Enrico Montarani

Las huellas de la ideología en el pensamiento antropológico. El caso de

Mircea Eliade, por Pedro Jesús Pérez Zafrilla

Mircea Eliade, el novelista, por Constantin Sorin Catrinescu

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 70 – “Alexander Dugin y la Cuarta Teoría Política: La Nueva Derecha Rusa Eurasiática” (publicado 29 Mayo 2014)

Contenidos:

Alexander Dugin: la Nueva Derecha rusa, entre el Neo-Eurasianismo y la Cuarta Teoría Política, por Jesús J. Sebastián

Más allá del liberalismo: hacia la Cuarta Teoría Política, por Alexander Dugin

Necesidad de la Cuarta Teoría Política, por Leonid Savin

La Cuarta Teoría Política y la “Otra Europa”, por Natella Speranskaya

El Liberalismo y la Guerra Rusia-Occidente, por Alexander Dugin

Alexander Dugin, o cuando la metafísica y la política se unen, por Sergio Fritz

La Cuarta Teoría Política, entrevista a Natella Speranskaya, por Claudio Mutti

El quinto estado: una réplica a Alexander Dugin, por Marcos Ghio

La Tercera Teoría Política. Una crítica a la Cuarta Teoría Política, por Michael O’Meara

La gran guerra de los continentes. Geopolítica y fuerzas ocultas de la historia, por Alexander Dugin

La globalización para bien de los pueblos. Perspectivas de la nueva teoría política, por Leonid Savin

Alianza Global Revolucionaria, entrevista a Natella Speranskaya

Contribución a la teoría actual de la protesta radical, por Geidar Dzhemal

El proyecto de la Gran Europa. Un esbozo geopolítico para un futuro mundo multipolar, por Alexander Dugin

Rusia, clave de bóveda del sistema multipolar, por Tiberio Graziani

La dinámica ideológica en Rusia y los cambios del curso de su política exterior, por Alexander Dugin

Un Estado étnico para Rusia. El fracaso del proyecto multicultural, por Vladimir Putin

Reportaje sobre Dugin (revista alemana Zuerst!), por Manuel Ochsenreiter

Dugin: de la Unión Nacional-Bolchevique al Partido Euroasiático, por Xavier Casals Meseguer

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 79 – “Contra Occidente: Salir del Sistema Occidental” (publicado 29 Agosto 2014)

Contenidos:

Occidente debe ser olvidado, por Alain de Benoist

Occidente como decadencia, por Carlos Pinedo

¿Existe todavía el mundo occidental?, por Immanuel Wallerstein

¿Qué es Occidente?, por Juan Pablo Vitali

Romper con la civilización occidental, por Guillaume Faye

Sobre Nietzsche y el masoquismo occidental, por Carlos Javier Blanco Martín

Hispanoamérica contra Occidente, por Alberto Buela

El paradigma occidental, por H.C.F. Mansilla

El decadentismo occidental, por Jesús J. Sebastián

Critica del sistema occidental, por Guillaume Faye

¿El ascenso de Occidente?, por Immanuel Wallerstein

René Guénon, ¿profeta del fin de Occidente?, por Antonio Martínez

Más allá de Oriente y Occidente, por María Teresa Román López

Civilización y hegemonía de Occidente, por Jaime Parra

Apogeo y decadencia de Occidente, por Mario Vargas Llosa
Europa vs. Occidente, por Claudi Finzi

Occidente contra Occidente. Brecha intelectual francesa, por José Andrés Fernández Leost

Civilización e Ideología occidentales, por Guillaume Faye

Occidente como destino. Una lectura weberiana, por Jacobo Muñoz

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 82 – “El Debate sobre el Paganismo de la Nueva Derecha (Vol. 1)” (publicado 11 Octubre 2014)

Contenidos:

¿Cómo se puede ser pagano? (I), por Alain de Benoist

La cuestión religiosa y la Nueva Derecha, por José Javier Esparza

¿Qué aliento sagrado puede salvarnos? Carta abierta a José Javier Esparza, por Javier Ruiz Portella

La tentación pagana, por Thomas Molnar

Paganismo, la nueva religión europea, por Guillaume Faye

¿Qué religión para Europa? La polémica del neopaganismo, por Rodrigo Agulló

La Derecha pagana, por Tomislav Sunic

Monoteísmo versus Politeísmo, por Alain de Benoist

El paganismo: religión de la vida terrenal, por José Vicente Pascual

La religión en las sociedades occidentales, por Alain de Benoist

El paganismo de Hamsun y Lawrence, por Robert Steuckers

El eclipse de lo sagrado, ¿o el sagrado eclipse?, por Paul Gottfried

La reacción contra la modernidad y la secularización del cristianismo, por Adolfo Galeano Ofm

El Paganismo como concepción del Mundo, por Ramón Bau

Contra Dawkins: qué esconden sus preferencias por el politeísmo, por Javier del Arco

Politeísmo versus monoteísmo: el desarrollo de la crítica a la religión cristiana en la obra de Friedrich Nietzsche, por Herbert Fre

El origen de la Navidad. Las raíces paganas de una fiesta cristiana, por Alfredo Martorell

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 83 – “El Debate sobre el Paganismo de la Nueva Derecha (Vol. 2)” (publicado 11 Octubre 2014)

Contenidos:

¿Cómo se puede ser pagano? (II), por Alain de Benoist

Lo sagrado en la cultura europea, por Carlos Martínez-Cava

Marx, Moisés y los Paganos en la Ciudad Secular, por Tomislav Sunic

Dioses y titanes: entrevista con Guillaume Faye sobre el paganismo, por Christopher Gérard

¿Es preciso ser cristiano? La Derecha tradicional, por José Javier Esparza

La religión de Europa, por Alain de Benoist

¿Qué religión para Europa?, por Diego L. Sanromán

Entre el paganismo y la derecha radical, por Stéphane François

Europa: pagana y cristiana, por Juan Pablo Vitali

Humanismo profano y neopaganismo moderno, por Arnaud Imatz

Del politeísmo al monoteísmo: los riesgos de los fundamentalismos, por Juan Antonio Estrada

El Frente Nacional de Marine Le Pen y la derecha pagana, por Fernando José Vaquero Oroquieta

La cuestión del paganismo. Entrevista a Alain de Benoist, por Charles Champetier

Paganismo y nihilismo, por Daniel Aragón Ortiz

El neopaganismo pessoano, por Antonio López Martín

El nuevo paganismo ¿triunfo del ilusionismo?, por José Miguel Odero

Paganismo y Cristianismo, por Eduard Alcántara

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 84 – Julien Freund: Lo Político en Esencia (publicado 31 Octubre 2014)

Contenidos:

Julien Freund: una introducción, por Juan Carlos Corbetta

Julien Freund, un politique para nuestro tiempo, por Jerónimo Molina

Julien Freund y la impolítica, por Alain de Benoist

Evocación de Julien Freund, por Günter Maschke

Julien Freund, por Dalmacio Negro Pavón

Conflicto, política y polemología en el pensamiento de Julien Freund, por Jerónimo Molina

Julien Freund, analista político: contextos y perspectivas de interpretación, por Juan C. Valderrama Abenza

Lo público y la libertad en el pensamiento de Julien Freund, por Cristián Rojas González

El realismo político. A propósito de La esencia de lo político, de Julien Freund, por Felipe Giménez Pérez

Julien Freund. Del Realismo Político al Maquiavelismo, por Jerónimo Molina

Situación polémica y terceros en Schmitt y Freund, por Jorge Giraldo Ramírez

Orden y situación política en Julien Freund, por Juan C. Valderrama Abenza

Las nociones de mando y obediencia en la teoría política de Julien Freund, por Jerónimo Molina

Julien  Freund: la paz como medio de la política, por José Romero Serrano

Julien Freund: entre liberalismo y conservadurismo, por Sébastien de la Touanne

 

Otros Ensayos:

“Alain de Benoist y su crítica del capitalismo” por Carlos Javier Blanco Martín

“La Nueva Derecha Criolla” por Francisco Albanese

 

Idea of Empire – Benoist

The Idea of Empire

by Alain de Benoist

 

Europe was the place where two great models of polity, of political unity, were elaborated, developed and clashed: the nation, preceded by the monarchy, and the empire. The last emperor of the Latin West, Romulus Augustus, was deposed in 475. Only the Eastern empire remained. But after the Western empire was dismantled, a new unitary consciousness seems to have arisen. In 795, Pope Leon III started to date his encyclicals based on the reign of Charles, king of the Franks and patrician of the Romans, rather than on the reign of the emperor of Constantinople. Five years later in Rome, on Christmas Day in the year 800, Leon III placed the imperial crown on Charlemagne’s head.

This is the first renovation of the empire. It obeys the theory of transfer (transratio imperii) according to which the empire Charlemagne revived is a continuation of the Roman empire, thus putting an end to theological speculations inspired by the prophet David who foresaw the end of the world after the end of the fourth empire, i.e., after the end of the Roman empire which succeeded the Babylonian, the Persian and the Alexandrian empires.

At the same time, the renovation of the empire also breaks with the Augustinian idea of a radical opposition between civitas terrena and civitas Dei, which could have been understood to mean that a Christian empire was only a chimera. In fact, Leon III had a new strategy — a Christian empire, where the emperor would be the defender of the City of God. The emperor derived his powers from the pope, whose spiritual powers he reproduced in the temporal realm. Of course, all quarrels surrounding investitures will stem from this equivocal formulation which makes the emperor a subject in the spiritual order but at the same time makes him the head of a temporal hierarchy whose sacred character will soon be asserted.

After the Verdun Treaty (843) sealed the division of the empire between Charlemagne’s three grandsons (Lothario I, Ludwig the German, and Charles the Bald), the king of Saxony, Henry I, was crowned emperor in 919. The empire then became Germanic. After Carolingian power was dislocated, it was restored again in the center of Europe with the Othonians and the Franks in 962 to the benefit of King Otto I of Germania. It remained the major political force in Europe until the middle of the 13th century, when it was officially transformed into the Sacrum Romanum Imperium. After 1442, the appellation “of the German nation” was added.

It is not possible to retrace the history of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation here beyond pointing out that throughout its history it was a composite bringing together three components: antiquity, Christianity, and German identity.

Historically the imperial idea began to disintegrate in the Renaissance, with the appearance of the first national states. Of course, the 1525 victory of Pavia, won by imperial forces against Francis II’s troops, seemed to reverse the trend. At the time, this event was considered very important and caused a renaissance of Ghibellinism in Italy. After Charles V, however, the imperial title did not go to his son Philip, and the empire was again reduced to a local affair. After the Peace of Westphalia (1648), it was seen less and less as something dignified and more and more as a simple confederation of territorial states. The decline went on for another two and a half centuries. On 6 April 1806, Napoleon brought the revolution to fruition by destroying what remained of the empire. Francis II resigned his tide and the Holy Roman Empire was no more.

At first sight, the concept of empire is not easy to understand, given the often contradictory uses that have been made of it. In his dictionary, Littre is satisfied with a tautological definition: an empire is “a state ruled by an emperor.” This is a bit too brief. Like the polis or the nation, the empire is a kind of political unity; unlike the monarchy or the republic, it is not a form of government. This means that the empire is compatible a priori with different forms of government. The first article in the Weimar Constitution stated that “the German Reich is a republic.” Even in 1978, the constitutional court at Karlsruhe did not hesitate to claim that “the German Reich remains a subject of international law.” The best way to understand the substantive reality of the empire is by comparing it with that of the nation or the nation-state — the latter represents the end of a process of nationality-formation for which France more or less provides the best example.

In its current meaning, the nation appears as a modern phenomenon. In this respect, both Colette Beaune [1] and Bernard Guenée are wrong in locating the birth of the nation very early in history. This idea rests on anachronisms; it confuses “royal” and “national,” the formation of nationality and the formation of nation. The formation of nationality corresponds with the birth of a sense of belonging which begins to go beyond the simple natal horizon during the war against the Plantagenets — a sense reinforced during the Hundred Years War. But it should not be forgotten that in the Middle Ages the word “nation” (from nation, “birth”) had an exclusively ethnic meaning — the nations of the Sorbonne are simply groups of students who speak a different language. In the same way, the word “country,” which only appeared in France with the 16th century humanists (Dolet, Ronsard, Du Bellay), originally referred to the medieval notion of “homeland.” When more than a mere attachment to the land of one’s birth, “patriotism” is fidelity to the lord or allegiance to the person of the king. Even the word “France” appeared relatively late. Starting with Charles III (called the Simple), the title borne by the king of France was Rex Francorum. The expression Rex Franciae only appeared at the beginning of the 13th century, under Philippe-Auguste, after the defeat of the Count of Toulouse au Muret, which ended with the annexation of the countries speaking the langue d’oc and with the persecution of the Cathars.

The idea of nation was fully constituted only in the 18th century, especially during the revolution. At the beginning it referred to a concept of sovereignty opposed to that of absolute monarchy. It brought together those who thought the same politically and philosophically—it was no longer the king but the “nation” which embodied the country’s political unity. Finally, it was the abstract location where people could conceive of and exercise their rights, where individuals were transformed into citizens.

First of all, the nation is the sovereign people which, in the best of all cases, delegates to the king only the power to apply the law emanating from the general will; then it is those peoples who recognize the authority of a state, inhabit the same territory and recognize each other as members of the same political unity; finally, it is the political unity itself. This is why the counter-revolutionary tradition, which exalts the aristocratic principle, initially refrains from valuing the nation. Conversely, Article 3 of the 1789 Declaration of Rights proclaims “The principle of all sovereignty essentially resides in the nation.” Bertrand de Jouvenel even wrote that: “In hindsight, the revolutionary movement seems to have had as its goal the foundation of the cult of the nation.” [2]

What distinguishes the empire from the nation? First of all, the fact that the empire is not primarily a territory but essentially an idea or a principle. The political order is determined by it — not by material factors or by possession of a geographical area. It is determined by a spiritual or juridical idea. In this respect, it would be a serious mistake to think that the empire differs from the nation primarily in terms of size in that it is somehow “a bigger nation than others.” Of course, an empire covers a wide area. What is important, however, is that the emperor holds power by virtue of embodying something which goes beyond simple possession. As a dominus mundi, he is the suzerain of princes and kings, i.e., he rules over sovereigns, not over territories, and represents a power transcending the community he governs.

Julius Evola writes: “The empire should not be confused with the kingdoms and nations which constitute it because it is something qualitatively different, prior to and above each of them in terms of its principle.” [3] Before it expressed a system of supra-national territorial hegemony, “the old Roman notion of imperium referred to the pure power of command, the quasi-mystical force of auctoritas.” During the Middle Ages, the prevailing distinction was precisely one between auctoritas (moral and spiritual superiority) and potestas (simple political public power exercised by legal means). In both the medieval empire and the Holy Roman Empire, this distinction underlies the separation between imperial authority and the emperor’s sovereign authority over a particular people. For example, Charlemagne was part emperor and part king of the Lombards and the Franks. From then on, allegiance to the emperor was not submission to a people or to a particular country. In the same way, in the Austro-Hungarian empire, loyalty to the Hapsburg dynasty constituted “the fundamental link between peoples and replaced patriotism” (Jean Béranger); it prevailed over relations of a national or confessional character.

This spiritual character of the imperial principle directly provoked the famous quarrel concerning investitures which pitted the partisans of the pope and those of the emperor against each other for many centuries. Lacking any military content, the notion of empire originally acquired a strong theological cast in the medieval Germanic world, where one could see a Christian reinterpretation of the Roman idea of imperium. Considering themselves the executors of universal sacred history, the emperors deduced from this the idea that the empire, as a “sacred” institution (Sacrum imperium), must constitute an autonomous power with respect to the pope. This is the reason for the quarrel between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

The emperor’s followers who denied the pope’s pretensions—the Ghibellines — found support in the old distinction between imperium and sacerdotium, seen as two equally important spheres both instituted by God. This interpretation was an extension of the Roman concept of relations between the emperor and the pontifex maximus, each being superior to the other in their respective orders. The Ghibelline viewpoint was not to subject spiritual authority to temporal power but to claim for imperial power an equal spiritual authority in the face of the Church’s exclusive pretensions. So for Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, the emperor is the half-divine intermediary whereby God’s justice is spread on earth. This renovatio, which makes the emperor the essential source of law and confers on him the character of “living law on earth” (lex animata in terris), encapsulates the Ghibelline claim: like the pope, the empire must be recognized as an institution sacred in nature and character. Evola emphasizes that the opposition between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines “was not only political . . . it expressed the antagonism of two great dignitates, both claiming a spiritual dimension . . . On its deepest level, Ghibellinism held that during his life on earth (seen as discipline, combat and service) the individual could transcend himself . . . by means of action and under the sign of the empire, in accordance with the character of the ‘supernatural’ institution which was granted to it.” [4]

From here on, the decline of the empire throughout the centuries is consistent with the decline of the central role played by its principle and, correspondingly, with its movement toward a purely territorial definition. The Germanic Roman empire had already changed when the attempt was made in both Italy and Germany to link it to a privileged territory. This idea is still absent in Dante, for whom the emperor is neither German nor Italian but “Roman” in the spiritual sense, i.e., a successor of Caesar and Augustus. In other words, the empire cannot transform itself into a “great nation” without collapsing because, in terms of the principle which animates it, no nation can assume and exercise a superior ruling function if it does not rise above its allegiances and its particular interests. “The empire in the true sense,” Evola concludes, “can only exist if animated by a spiritual fervor . . . If this is lacking, one will only have a creation forged by violence — imperialism — a simple mechanical superstructure without a soul.” [5]

For its part, the nation finds its origin in the pretension that the kingdom has to give itself imperial prerogatives by relating them not to a principle but a territory. Its beginnings can be located in the division of the Carolingian empire following the Verdun Treaty. At that point France and Germany, if one can call them that, began to have separate destinies. The latter remained in the imperial tradition, whereas the kingdom of the Franks (Regnum Francorum), seceding from the Germanic community, slowly evolved toward the modern nation by the intermediary of the monarchical state. The end of the Carolingian dynasty dates from the 10th century: 911 in Germany, 987 in France. Elected in 987, Hugh Capet was the first king who did not understand francique. He was also the first sovereign who situated himself clearly outside the imperial tradition, which explains why, in the Divine Comedy, Dante has him say: “I was the malignant roof whose shade darkened all Christian land!”

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the kingdom of France was constructed against the empire with Philippe-Auguste (Bouvines, 1214) and Philippe le Bel (Agnani, 1303). As early as 1204, Pope Innocent III declared that “it is publicly known that the king of France does not recognize any authority above him in the temporal realm.” Just as the Trojan legend was instrumentalized, an entire work of “ideological” legitimation allowed the empire to be opposed to the principle of sovereignty of national kingdoms and their right to recognize no law other than their own interest. The role of jurists, emphasized so well by Carl Schmitt, is fundamental here. In the mid-13th century they were the ones who formulated the doctrine according to which “the king of France, who does not see anyone above him in the temporal realm, is exempt from the empire and may be considered as a princeps in regno suo.” [6] This doctrine was further developed in the 14th and 15th centuries with Pierre Dubois and Guillaume de Nogaret. By proclaiming himself “emperor in his own realm” (rex imperator in regno suo), the king opposed his territorial sovereignty to the spiritual sovereignty of the empire—his purely temporal power was opposed to imperial spiritual power. At the same time, jurists took the side of centralization against local freedoms, and against the feudal aristocracies, thanks especially to the institution of the cas royal. They founded a juridical order, bourgeois in character, in which the law — conceived as a general norm with rational attributes — became the basis of a purely statist power. Law was transformed into simple legality codified by the state. In the 16th century, the formula of the king as “emperor in his own realm” was directly associated with the idea of sovereignty, about which Jean Bodin theorized. Schmitt remarks that France was the first country in the world to create a public order completely emancipated from the medieval model.

What happened next is well known. In France the nation came into being under the double sign of centralizing absolutism and the rise of the bourgeoisie. Here the main role fell on the state. When Louis XIV said “L’Etat c’est moi,” he meant there was nothing above the state. The state creates the nation, which in turn “produces” the French people; whereas in the modern age and in countries with an imperial tradition, the people create the nation, which then creates a state. The two processes of historical construction are thus entirely opposed and this opposition is based on the difference between the nation and the empire. As has often been pointed out, the history of France has been a constant struggle against the empire. The secular politics of the French monarchy was primarily aimed at breaking up Germanic and Italian spaces. After 1792, the republic took up the same objectives: the struggle against the house of Austria and the conquest of the Rhine.

The opposition between the spiritual principle and the territorial power is not the only one. Another essential difference concerns the way in which the empire and the nation regard political unity. The unity of the empire was not mechanical but organic, which goes beyond the state. To the degree to which it embodies a principle, the empire only envisages a unity on the level of that principle. Whereas the nation engenders its own culture or finds support in culture in the process of its formation, the empire embraces various cultures. Whereas the nation tries to make the people and the state correspond, the empire associates different peoples.

The principle of empire tries to reconcile the one and the many, the particular and the universal. Its general law is that of autonomy and of the respect for diversity. The empire tries to unify on a higher level, without suppressing the diversity of cultures, ethnic characters and peoples. It is a whole whose parts are autonomous in proportion to the solidity of what unites them. These parts are differentiated and organic. In contrast to the unitary and centralized societas of the national kingdom, the empire embodies the classical image of universitas. Moeller van den Bruck rightly saw the empire as a unity of opposites, while Evola defined it as “a supranational organization such that its unity does not tend to destroy or to level the ethnic and cultural multiplicity it embraces,” [7] adding that the imperial principle makes it possible “to retreat from the multiplicity of diverse elements to a principle which is at once higher and prior to their differentiation—a differentiation which proceeds only from sensible reality.” So it is not a question of abolishing but of integrating difference.

At the height of the Roman Empire, Rome was an idea, a principle, which made it possible to unite different peoples without converting or suppressing them. The principle of imperium, which was already at work in republican Rome, reflected the will to realize an always threatened cosmic order. The Roman Empire did not require jealous gods. It admitted other divinities, known or unknown, and the same is the case in the political order. The empire accepted foreign cults and the diversity of juridical codes. Each people was free to organize its federation in terms of its traditional concept of law. The Roman jus prevailed only in relations between individuals of different peoples or in relations between federations. One could be a Roman citizen (civis romanus sum) without abandoning one’s nationality.

This distinction (foreign to the spirit of the nation) between what today is called nationality and citizenship can be found in the Germanic Roman Empire. The medieval Reich, a supra-national institution (because animated by a principle beyond the political order), was fundamentally pluralist. It allowed people to live their own lives according to their own law. In modern language, it was characterized by a marked “federalism” particularly able to respect minorities. After all, the Austro-Hungarian empire functioned efficiently for centuries while minorities began to constitute most of its population (60% of the total). It brought together Italians and Romanians, as well as Jews, Serbs, Russians, Germans, Poles, Czechs, Croats and Hungarians. Jean Béranger writes that “the Hapsburgs were always indifferent to the concept of nation-state,” even to the point where this empire, founded by the house of Austria, for many centuries refused to create an “Austrian nation,” which really only took shape in the 20th century. [8]

Conversely, what characterizes the national realm is its irresistible tendency to centralization and homogenization. The nation-state’s investment of space is first revealed in a territory on which a homogeneous political sovereignty is exercised. This homogeneity may at first be apprehended in law: territorial unity results from the uniformity of juridical norms. The monarchy’s secular struggle against the feudal nobility, especially under Louis XI, the annihilation of the civilizations of countries where the langue d’oc was spoken, the affirmation of the principle of centralization under Richelieu, all tended in the same direction. In this respect, the 14th and 15th centuries marked a fundamental shift. During this period the state emerged as the victor against feudal aristocracies and ensured its alliance with the bourgeoisie at the same time as a centralized juridical order was put in place. Simultaneously, the “national” economic market appeared. Thanks to a monetarization of all forms of exchange (non-commercial, intra-community exchanges being untaxable before then), it responded to the will of the state to maximize its fiscal revenues. As Pierre Rosanvallon explains: “the nation-state is a way of composing and articulating global space. In the same way, the market is primarily a way of representing and structuring social space; only secondarily is it a decentralized mechanism for regulating economic activity through the price system. From this perspective, the nation-state and the market refer to the same form of socialization of individuals within space. They are conceivable only in an atomized society in which the individual is considered autonomous. In both the sociological and economic senses of these terms, a nation-state and a market cannot exist in spaces where society unfolds as a global and social entity.” [9]

There is no doubt that monarchial absolutism paved the way for bourgeois national revolutions. After Louis XIV had broken the nobility’s last resistances, the revolution was inevitable when the bourgeoisie could in turn win its autonomy. But there is also no doubt that in many respects the revolution only carried out and accelerated the tendencies of the Ancien Régime. Thus Tocqueville wrote: “The French Revolution caused many subordinate and secondary things, but it really only developed the core of the most important things; these existed before it . . . With the French, the central power had already taken over local administration more than any other country in the world. The revolution only made this power more skillful, powerful, enterprising.” [10]

Under the monarchy, as under the republic, the “national” logic tried to eliminate anything that might interfere between the state and the individual. It tried to integrate individuals to the same laws in a unified fashion; it did not attempt to bring together collectivities free to preserve their language, cultures and laws. State power was exercised over individual subjects, which was why it constantly destroyed or limited the power of all forms of intermediate socialization: familial clans, village communities, confraternities, trades, etc. The 1791 law against corporations (loi Le Chapelier) thus found its precedent in Francis I’s suppression of “all confraternities of trades and artisans in the whole kingdom” in 1539 — a decision which at that time targeted those artisans belonging to societies said to be of duty. With the revolution, of course, this trend accelerated. The restructuring of the territory into departments of more or less equal size, the fight against “the provincial spirit,” the suppression of particularities, the offensive against regional languages and “patois,” the standardization of weights and measures, represent a real obsession with bringing everything into alignment. In terms of Ferdinand Tönnies’ old distinction, the modern nation emerges when society rises on the ruins of old communities.

This individualist component of the nation-state is essential here. The empire requires the preservation of the diversity of groups; by its very logic, the nation recognizes only individuals. One is a member of the empire in a mediated fashion through intermediary structures. Conversely, one belongs to the nation in an immediate way, i.e., without the mediation of local ties, bodies or states. Monarchial centralization was essentially juridical and political; it thereby pointed to the work of constructing the state. Revolutionary centralization, which accompanied the emergence of the modern nation, went further still. It aimed at “producing the nation” directly, i.e., at engendering new social modes of behavior. The state then became productive of the social, a monopolistic producer: it attempted to establish a society of individuals recognized as equal on a secular level, on the ruins of the intermediate bodies it had suppressed. [11]

As Jean Baechler points out, “in the nation the intermediate groups are seen as irrelevant with respect to the citizenry and so tend to become secondary and subordinated.” [12] Louis Dumont argues along similar lines, that nationalism results from transferring the subjectivity characteristic of individualism to the level of an abstract collectivity. “In the most precise, modern, sense of the term, ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ (distinguished from simple patriotism) have historically been part and parcel of individualism as a value. The nation is just a type of global society which corresponds to the reign of individualism as a value. Not only does the nation accompany individualism historically, the interdependence between them is so indispensable that one could say the nation is a global society composed of people who consider themselves individuals.” [13]

This individualism, woven within the logic of the nation, is obviously opposed to the holism of imperial construction, where the individual is not dissociated from his natural connections. In the empire the same citizenry is composed of different nationalities. In the nation the two terms are synonyms: belonging to a nation is the foundation for citizenship. Pierre Fougeyrollas summarizes the situation in these terms: “Breaking with medieval societies which had a bipolar identity—that of ethnic roots and of the community of believers — modern nations are constituted as closed societies where the only official identity is that which the state confers on citizens. Thus in terms of its birth and foundations, the nation has been an anti-empire. The Netherlands originated in a break with the Hapsburg Empire; England originated in a break with Rome and the establishment of a national religion. Spain only became Castilian by escaping from the grasp of the Hapsburg system, and France, which was slowly constituted as a nation against the Germanic Roman Empire, only became a nation by combating traditional forces in all of Europe.” [14]

The empire is never a closed totality, as opposed to the nation, which has been increasingly defined by intangible boundaries. The empire’s frontiers are naturally fluid and provisional, which reinforces its organic character. Originally the word “frontier” had an exclusively military meaning: the front line. At the beginning of the 14th century, under the reign of Louis X (“Louis the Stubborn”) in France, the word frontiere replaced marche, which had commonly been used up to then. But it would still take four centuries before it acquired its current meaning of delimitation between two states. Contrary to legend, the idea of a “natural frontier,” which jurists sometimes used in the 15th century, never inspired the external politics of the monarchy. Its origin is sometimes wrongly attributed to Richelieu, or even to Vauban. In fact, only during the revolution was this idea, according to which the French nation would have “natural frontiers,” used systematically. Under the Convention especially, the Girondins used it to legitimate the establishment of the eastern frontier on the left bank of the Rhine and, more generally, to justify their annexation policies. It is also during the revolution that the Jacobin idea that the frontiers of a state must all at once correspond to those of a language, a political authority, and a nation begins to spread everywhere in Europe. Finally, it is the Convention which invented the notion of the “foreigner within” (of which Charles Maurras was paradoxically to make great use) by applying it to aristocrats who supported a despised political system: by defining them as “strangers in our midst,” Barrère asserts that “aristocrats have no country.”

Even with its universal principle and vocation, the empire is not universalist in the current sense of the term. Its universality never meant expansion across the whole earth. Instead, it was connected to the idea of an equitable order seeking to federate peoples on the basis of a concrete political organization. From this viewpoint, the empire, which rejects any aim of conversion or standardization, differs from a hypothetical world-state or from the idea that there are juridico-political principles universally valid at all times and in all places.

Since universalism is directly linked to individualism, modern political universalism must be conceived in terms of the individualist roots of the nation-state. Historical experience shows that nationalism often takes the form of an ethnocentrism blown up to universal dimensions. On many occasions the French nation wanted to be “the most universal of nations,” and it is from the universality of its national model that it claimed to derive its right to disseminate its principles throughout the world. At the time when France wanted to be “the older sister of the Church,” the monk Guibert de Nogent, in his Gesta Dei per Francos, made the Franks the instrument of God. From 1792 on, revolutionary imperialism also tried to convert all of Europe to the idea of the nation-state. Since then, there has been no lack of voices authorized to ensure that the French idea of nation is ordered to that of humanity, and that this is what would make it particularly “tolerant.” One can question this pretension since the proposition can be inverted: if the nation is ordered to humanity, it is because humanity is ordered to the nation. With this corollary, those opposed to it are excluded not only from a particular nation but from the human species in its entirety.

The word empire should be reserved only for the historical constructions deserving this name, such as the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Germanic Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire. The Napoleonic empire, Hitler’s Third Reich, the French and British colonial empires, and modern imperalisms of the American and Soviet types are certainly not empires. Such a designation is only abusively given to enterprises or powers merely engaged in expanding their national territory. These modern “great powers” are not empires but rather nations which simply want to expand, by military, political, economic or other conquest beyond their current frontiers.

In the Napoleonic era the “empire” (a term already used to designate the monarchy before 1789, but simply in the sense of “state”) was a national-statist entity attempting to assert itself in Europe as a great hegemonic power. Bismarck’s empire, which gave priority to the state, also attempted to create the German nation. Alexandre Kojève observed that “Hitler’s slogan: Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer is only a (bad) German translation of the nationalistic watchword of the French Revolution: la Republique une et indivisible.” The Third Reich’s hostility to the idea of empire is also visible in its critique of the ideology of intermediate bodies and “estates.” [15] A centralist and reductive vision always prevailed in the Soviet “empire,” implying a unified politico-economic space thanks to a restrictive concept of local cultural fights. As for the American “model,” which tries to convert the whole world into a homogeneous system of material consumption and techno-economic practices, it is difficult to see what idea, what spiritual principle, it could claim!

“Great powers” are not really empires. In fact, modern imperialisms should be challenged in the name of what an empire truly is. Evola thought no differently when he wrote: ‘”Without a Meurs et deviens, no nation can aspire to an effective and legitimate imperial mission. It is not possible to retain one’s national characteristics and then to desire, on this basis, to dominate the world or simply another place.” [16] And again: “If the ‘imperialist’ tendencies of the modern age have been abortive because they often accelerate the downfall of the peoples who give in to them, or if they have been the source of all kinds of calamities, this is precisely because they lack any really spiritual — supra-political and supra-national — element; the latter is replaced by the violence of a power which is greater than the one it wants to subjugate but which is not of a different nature. If an empire is not a holy empire, it is not an empire but a kind of cancer attacking all the distinctive functions of a living organism.” [17]

Why think at all about the concept of empire today? Is it not purely chimerical to call for the rebirth of a true empire? Perhaps. But is it an accident if, even today, the model of the Roman Empire has continued to inspire all attempts to go beyond the nation-state? Is it an accident if the idea of empire (the Reichsgedanke) still mobilizes reflection at a time when thought is in disarray? [18] And is it not this idea of empire which underlies all the debates currently surrounding the construction of Europe? Is the nation-state irreplaceable? Many on the Left and on the Right have said so. This is, notably, Charles Maurras’ viewpoint. According to him, the nation is “the biggest of the temporally solid and complete communitarian circles.” [19] He declared that “there is no political framework larger than the nation.” [20] Thierry Maulnier replied: “The cult of the nation is not in itself a response but a refuge, a mystifying effusion, or worse still, a redoubtable diversion from internal problems.” [21]

What basically moves the world today is beyond the nation-state. The latter finds its framework for action, its sphere of decision-making, torn apart by many ruptures. The nation is challenged both from above and below. It is challenged from below by new social movements: by the persistence of regionalisms and new communitarian claims. It is as if the intermediate forms of socialization which it once did away with were born again today in new forms. The divorce between civil society and the political class is reflected in the proliferation of networks and the multiplication of “tribes.” But the nation is also challenged from above by often weighty social phenomena which mock national frontiers. The nation-state is stripped of its powers by the world market and international competition, by the formation of supra-national or communitarian institutions, by intergovernmental bureaucracies, techno-scientific apparati, global media messages or international pressure groups. At the same time, there is the increasingly distinct external expansion of national economies at the expense of internal markets. The economy is becoming globalized because of interacting forces, multinationals, the stock-exchange, global macro-organizations.

The imagery of nations also seems to be in crisis and those who talk of “national identity” are generally hard-pressed to define it. The national model of integration seems to be exhausted. The evolution of politics toward a system of techno-managerial authorities, which brings to fruition the implosion of political reality, confirms that the logic of nations is no longer able to integrate anyone or to assure the regulation of relations between a state criticized on all fronts and a civil society which is breaking apart. So the nation is confronted with the growth of certain collective or communitarian identities at the very moment when global centers of decision-making paint a gloomy picture above it. Daniel Bell expressed this when he said that nation-states have become too big for little problems and too little for the big ones. Deprived of any real historical foundation, in the Third World the nation-state seems to be a Western import. The long-term viability of, e.g., black African or near Eastern “nations,” seems increasingly uncertain. In fact these nations are the result of a series of arbitrary decisions by colonial powers profoundly ignorant of local historical, religious, and cultural realities. The dismantling of the Ottoman and of the Austro-Hungarian empires as a result of the Sevres and Versailles treaties was a catastrophe whose effects are still felt today — as the Gulf War and renewed conflicts in Central Europe show.

In such conditions, how can the idea of empire be ignored? Today it is the only model Europe has produced as an alternative to the nation-state. Nations are both threatened and exhausted. They must go beyond themselves if they do not want to end up as dominions of the American superpower. They can only do so by attempting to reconcile the one and the many, seeking a unity that does not lead to their impoverishment. There are unmistakable signs of this. The fascination with Austria-Hungary and the rebirth of the idea of Mitteleuropa [22] are among them. The call for empire will be born of necessity. The work Kojève wrote in 1945, only recently published, is remarkable. In it he makes a fervent appeal for the formation of a “Latin empire” and posits the necessity of empire as an alternative to the nation-state and to abstract universality. “Liberalism,” he wrote, “is wrong to see no political entity beyond the nation. Internationalism sins because it can see nothing politically viable beyond humanity. It too was incapable of discovering the intermediate political reality of empires, i.e., of unions, even international fusions, of related nations, which is today’s very political reality.” [23]

In order to create itself Europe requires a unity of political decision-making. But this European political unity cannot be built on the national Jacobin model if it does not want to see the richness and diversity of all European components disappear. It also cannot result from the economic supra-nationality dreamt by Brussels technocrats. Europe can only create itself in terms of a federal model, but a federal model which is the vehicle for an idea, a project, a principle, i.e., in the final analysis, an imperial model. Such a model would make it possible to solve problems of regional cultures, ethnic minorities and local autonomies, which will not find a true solution within the framework of the nation-state. It would also make it possible to rethink the whole problem of relations between citizenship and nationality in light of certain problems arising from recent immigration. It would allow one to understand the resurgent dangers of ethno-linguistic irredentism and Jacobin racism. Finally, because of the important place it gives to the idea of autonomy, it would make room for grass-roots democratic procedures and direct democracy. Imperial principle above, direct democracy below: this is what would renew an old tradition!

Today there is a lot of talk about a new world order, and one is certainly necessary. But under what banner will it take shape? The banner of man-machine, of the “computer-man,” or under the banner of a diversified organization of living peoples? Will the earth be reduced to something homogeneous because of deculturalizing and depersonalizing trends for which American imperialism is now the most cynical and arrogant vector? Or will people find the means for the necessary resistance in their beliefs, traditions, and ways of seeing the world? This is really the decisive question that has been raised at the beginning of the next millennium.

Whoever says federation, says federalist principle. Whoever says empire, says imperial principle. Today this idea does not seem to appear anywhere. Yet it is written in history. It is an idea which has yet to find its time. But it has a past and a future. It is also a matter of making an origin dear. At the time of the Hundred Years War, Louis d’Estouteville’s motto was, “Where honor is, where loyalty is, there lies my country.” We have our nationality and we are proud of it. But it is also possible to be citizens of an idea in the imperial tradition. This is what Evola argues: “The idea alone should represent the country . . . It is not the fact of belonging to the same soil, speaking the same language, or having the same bloodline which should unite or divide us, but the fact of supporting or not supporting the same idea.” [24] This does not mean that roots are unimportant. On the contrary, they are essential. It only means that everything must be put into perspective. This is the whole difference between origin as a principle and origin as pure subjectivity. Only origin conceived as a principle makes it possible to defend the cause of peoples, of all peoples, and to understand that, far from being a threat to one’s own identity, the identity of others in fact plays a role in what allows one to defend one’s respective identity against a global system which tries to destroy them. It is necessary to affirm the superiority of the idea which preserves diversity for everyone’s benefit. It is necessary to assert the value of the imperial principle.

Notes

[1] Naissance de la nation France (Paris: Gallimard, 1985).
[2] Les débuts de l’État moderne. Une histoire des idées politiques au XIXe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1976) p. 92.
[3] Révolte contre le monde moderne (Montreal: L’Homme, 1972) p. 121.
[4] Les hommes au milieu des ruines (Paris: Sept Couleurs, 1972) p. 141.
[5] Essais politiques (Puiseaux: Pardès, 1988) p. 86.
[6] Robert Folz, Le coronnement impérial de Charlemagne (Paris: Gallimard, 1964).
[7] Essais politiques, op. cit., p. 83.
[8] Histoire de l’empire des Habsbourg 1273-1918 (Paris: Fayard, 1990).
[9] Le libéralisme économique. Histoire de l’ldée de marché (Paris: Seuil, 1989) p. 124.
[10] L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, Vol. I (Paris: Gallimard, 1964) p. 65. (First edition 1856).
[11] Cf. Pierre Rosanvallon, L’État en France de 1789 à nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 1990).
[12] ‘Dépérissement de la nation?’ in Commentaire (Spring, 1988) p. 104.
[13] Essais sur l’individualisme (Paris: Seuil, 1983) pp. 20-1.
[14] La nation, essor et déclin des sociétés modernes, (Paris: Fayard, 1987) p. 931.
[15] Cf. Justus Beyer, Die Standeideologien der Systemzeit und ihre Uberwindung (Darmstadt, 1942).
[16] Essais politiques, op. cit., p. 62.
[17] Révolte contre le monde moderne, op. cit., p. 124.
[18] During the Weimar Republic, there was a real growth in publications concerning the idea of empire and of ‘thinking about the Reich’ (Reichsgedanke). On this subject, see Fritz Buchner, ed., Was ist das Reich? Eine Aussprache unter Deutschen (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1932); Herbert Krüger, ‘Der Moderne Reichsgedanke’, in Die Tat (December 1933) pp. 703-15 and (January 1934) pp. 795-804; Edmund Schopen, Geschichte der Reichsidee, 8 Volumes, (Munich: Carl Rohrig, 1936); Peter Richard Rohden, Die Idee des Reiches in der Europäischen Geschichte (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1943); Paul Goedecke, Der Reichsgedanke im Schriftum von 1919 bis 1935 (Marburg: Doctoral thesis, 1951). The authors dealing with this subject often disagree about the meaning of the idea of empire and about the relation between the medieval Germanic Reich and the Roman imperium. In Catholic circles, the apology for empire often expresses nostalgia for the medieval Christian unity before the religious wars. The concept of the Reich as a ‘Holy Alliance’ or as a ‘sacramental reality’ frequently points to romanticism (Novalis, Adam Müller) but also to Constantin Franz. In other respects, the idea of a ‘third empire’ carries chiliastic representations from the end of the Middle Ages (Joachim of Fiore’s announcement of the Reign of the Spirit). On the Protestant side, one finds the ‘Reich theologies’, especially in Friedrich Gogarten’s Politische Ethik (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1932), Wilhelm Stapel’s Der Christliche Staatsmann: Eine Theologie der Nationalismus (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1932) or Friedrich Hielscher’s Das Reich (Berlin: Reich, 1931), but from a different perspective. In Stapel, the main idea is that of a national Reich having its own ‘nomos’ with a pronounced pluri-ethnic character but sanctifying German hegemony. See his reply to the supporters of the Catholic Reich, ‘Der Reichsgedanke zwischen den Konfessionen’, in Deutsches Volkstum, (15 November 1932) pp. 909-16. In Moeller van den Bruck, this secularized and strictly German concept of empire is stressed even more. Very critical of the Holy Roman Empire, Moeller accuses Staufen of having been taken in by the ‘Italian mirage’, and of wanting to make the imperium romanum (the ‘periphery’) live again rather than trying to unify the German people (the ‘center’). This is the reason for his strange sympathy with the Guelphs and for his preference for the Deutsches Reich deutscher Nation as opposed to the Heiliges römisches Reich. After 1933, the discussion concerning the idea of Reich (Reichsidee) was carried on outside official circles. For Carl Schmitt, the notion of empire is the central representation of a new right-wing political order of peoples associated with the notion of ‘great space’ (Großraum) — an idea which was strongly criticized by the supporters of a purely German and völkische notion of empire. These supporters saw in the Reich the organizing force for a ‘living space’ grounded in the ‘biological’ substance of the German peoples. This argument is made by Reinhard Höhn (‘Großraumordnung und völkisches Rechtsdenken’: in Reich, Volksordung, Lebensraum, 1943, pp. 216-352). See also Karl Richard Ganzer, Das Reich als europäische Ordnungsmacht (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1941-2); and Oswald Torsten, Rîche. Eine Geschichtliche Studie bet die Entwicklung der Reichsidee (Munich and Berlin: R. Oldenburg, 1943).
[19] Mes idées politiques (Albatros, 1983) p. 281.
[20] Enquête sur la monarchie 1900-1909, 1st ed. (Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1909) p. XIII.
[21] Au-delà du nationalisme (Paris: Gallirnard, 1938).
[22] Cf. Karlheinz Weissmann, ‘Das Herz des Kontinents: Reichsgedanke und Mitteleuropa-ldee’, in Mut (January 1987) pp. 24-35.
[23] ‘L’empire latin’, in La Règle du jeu (1 May 1990) p. 94.
[24] Les hommes au milieu des ruines, op. cit., p. 41.

 

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De Benoist, Alain. “The Idea of Empire.” Telos, Vol. 1993, No. 98-99 (December 1993), pp. 81-98. Text retrieved from: <https://eurocontinentalism.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/the-idea-of-empire-alain-de-benoist/ >. (See this essay in PDF format here: The Idea of Empire).

Note: The essay “The Idea of Empire” was originally published in French as “L’idée d’Empire” (published in Critiques – Théoriques [Lausanne & Paris: L’Age d’Homme, 2003]). It is also available in a German translation as “Der Reichsgedanke. Das imperiale Modell für die künftige Struktur Europas” (published in Schöne Vernetzte Welt [Tübingen: Hohenrain-Verlag, 2001]), in a Spanish translation as “La idea de Imperio” (published in Elementos Nº 32, “Imperio: Orden Especial y Espiritual” [11 September 2012], <http://issuu.com/sebastianjlorenz/docs/elementos_n__32 >, pp. 3-30), in an Italian translation as “L’idea di Impero” (published in Incursioni [May 2007], pp. 31-51), in a Dutch translation as “De Europese Rijksgedachte” (published in Teksten: kommentaren en studies No. 68 [July-September 1992], pp 34-48), in a Russian translation as “Идея Империи” (published in Против либерализма: к четвертой политической теории [Санкт-Петербург: Амфора, 2009]), in  a Portugese translation as “Nação e império” (published online: website Legio Victrix, 10 April 2012, <http://legio-victrix.blogspot.com/2012/04/nacao-e-imperio.html >), and in a Belarusian translation as “Ідэя Імперыі” (published online: website Cytadel, n.d., <http://cytadel.org/en/node/2356 >).

Note on further reading: On this topic, see also the related essay by Benoist known as “What is Sovereignty?”

 

Tradition? – Benoist

Tradition?

By Alain de Benoist

There are many ways to understand tradition. Its etymology is Latin, from the verb tradere, which means “to give, to hand in, to transmit directly.” Originally tradition designated “that which is transmitted” and it had a religious meaning. Tradition understood as “the action of transmitting” was nevertheless in common usage in France up to the end of the 18th century and is still part of today’s legal lexicon. Yet tradere has also meant “betray,” in the sense of delivering up a man or a secret. In the plural, traditions are generally considered as forming part of the distinctive features of a culture in a particular period. They evoke a body of accepted and immutable hereditary characteristics inherited from the past customs, ways of being, but also celebrations, work cycles, and popular traditions. Tradition here implies a sense of duration: it contrasts with novelty, even if one accepts its evolution. It also implies the idea of standard or norm, even if the traditions in question can be challenged. Tradition encompasses what is permanent and immutable, as opposed to the succession of events and fashions. An older definition describes it as marking the submission of the living to the authority of the dead, encompassing accepted customs and habits (we obey traditions because we always have) that modern people denounce as conventions, prejudices or superstitions. The term can have a positive or pejorative meaning, depending on the context in which it is used. When advertisers and tourist offices extol the virtues of “traditional craftsmanship,” they implicitly refer to a tried set of values and know-how. Tradition here evokes quality and authenticity. But it may also be seen as what is outmoded, as in the modernist critics’ use of “traditional morality.”

But there is another meaning to the word tradition, articulated by the representatives of traditional thought. Here the term is singular and has a capital T: Tradition. The first name that comes to mind is that of Rene Guenon (1886-1951), who published his Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines in 1921 and died thirty. years later in Cairo under the pseudonym AbdeI Wahed Yahia.[1] Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World appeared in 1934. Other names are Arturo Reghini, Guido De Giorgio and Attilo Mordini,[2] Frithjof Schuon, whose writings began to appear in 1933 in Etudes Traditionelles, Michel Valsn, Titus Burckhardt, Ananda N. Coormaraswamy, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Marco Pallis, Martin Lings and Philip Sherrard.

In defining this school of thought, the word “traditionalism” (which appeared in France only in the middle of the 19th century) may lend itself to misunderstandings the representatives of traditional thought have been the first to denounce.[3] Rene Guenon qualifies as “traditionalists” those who “have only one sort of tendency or aspiration toward Tradition, without any real knowledge of it.”[4] Guido de Giorgio presents an even more radical opinion. “Tradition is absolutely different from traditionalism: one is an eternally fecund living patrimony, rich with infinite potentialities in all times and circumstances …. the other is but sterile residue, an inefficient, self-enclosing concreteness impossible to adapt and lacking all energetic and creative force. Tradition is clearly opposed to traditionalism, just as truth is opposed to commonplaces.”[5]

The word “traditionalism” contains yet another ambiguity. The way it is used by the representatives of traditional thought could be confused with counter-revolutionary political traditionalism or with Catholic traditionalism, sometimes referred to as “integral,” which is hostile to “progressivism” within the Church, to liturgical reform and to newer “modernist” theologies. If the school of traditional thought is perfectly counter-revolutionary, it is so in a way very different from those who claim to be linked politically to the Counter-Revolution. While some of the school’s adherents call themselves Catholics (or at least accord Catholicism a privileged place with respect to Tradition in general) others do not. Some even affirm themselves as anti-Christian. Mario Polia states: “Considering it more closely, ‘Catholic traditionalism’ is an ambiguous expression, as if being Catholic were only a specification of a more general and absolute category: ‘traditionalism.’ It is equally unsatisfactory to speak of ‘traditionalist Catholicism’, giving the expression the sense of ‘traditional’, for it either presupposes the parallel and antithetical possibility of a Catholicism outside of tradition or, by defining ‘traditionalism’ as the ‘traditional interpretation’ of Catholicism, reserves for the traditionalist movements the prerogative of being the only true Catholicism. Traditionalist movements would then assume the prerogative of being Catholicism. To speak of ‘traditional Catholicism’ does not make much sense, either because one cannot define Catholicism in terms of Tradition, or because it presupposes an anti-traditional type of Catholicism.”[6] In fact, there is much difference between, for example, a traditionalist like Marcel Lefebvre and a “Christian traditionalist” like Attilo Mordini.

In seeking to define the “Indo-European tradition,”Jean Haudry speaks of a “constituted literary heritage, essentially of formulas and schemes expressing and transmitting a concept of the world that guides individual actions and that can be materialized within institutions.”[7] Such a definition, with its reference to a “literary” origin, obviously does not conform to what traditional thought understands by Tradition. According to this school, Tradition cannot be defined through sociological or cultural data, nor can it be appreciated in purely human terms. Tradition is not the body of customs but rather that which derives from the philosophia perenis.[8] Far from encompassing a body of observed and accepted rules, it constitutes a doctrine voluntarily and consciously transmitted as principles — a series of transcendental truths of permanent worth and of non-human origin. According to traditional thought, tradition is only secondarily cultural. At most, it can be said to inspire certain cultural or social activities. It is fundamentally spiritual, possesses a religious character and implies the metaphysical. Taking it as unique or ‘primordial’ and anterior to all local traditions. Tradition becomes a metaphysical doctrine — drawing on knowledge of ultimate, invariable and universal principles. It is not a human invention but a supra-human ‘gift’ manifesting the existence of a superior order of reality. On this point, all are unanimous. For Antonio Medrano, Tradition must be understood as “a sacred articulation of reality based on metaphysical principles.” Frithjof Schuon, who espouses the principle of the “transcendental unity” of all religions, sees in Tradition a body of truths principally uniting “all that is human to a divine reality.” Guenon connects Tradition with metaphysics, defining it as “suprarational knowledge, intuitive and immediate.”

Thus conceived, Tradition is defined as a coherent body of intangible and sacred principles imposed on all which delineates the essential rules of conduct, allowing man to accede to the supra-human level, allowing the homo to detach from the humus, to pass from the terrestrial to the celestial order. In this light, the transmission of Tradition from generation to generation obviously plays an essential role. Mario Polia writes: “There is Tradition — in the spiritual sense — only if there is the ‘transmission’ of a truth of metaphysical (not simply cultural) order embodied in a doctrinal system, transmitted and guarded by a spiritually qualified hierarchy, encompassing the possibility of acceding to such truth through ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ means. In addition, a tradition must ensure a qualified and uninterrupted transmission through time from the source to the beneficiary, and the continuance of liturgical, ritualistic and “sacrificial” practices, without which transmission would become a purely cultural variable.”

Symbolic language is thus quintessentially traditional. Just as myth is beyond events and a properly historical significance, the symbol, contrary to allegory, is beyond words and semantic definition. Seeking to manifest the inexpressible, it communicates the abstract by transfiguring it into an always provisional and imperfectly concrete representation. It arouses affectivity in the body as much as in the mind. D.H. Lawrence said in Apocalypse: “Symbols are organic entities of conscience that have their own life: one can never exhaust their meaning, because they have a dynamic emotional value to the sensorial conscience of the body and spirit that is more than just intellectual.”

Above all, symbolic language constitutes the main path of analogical thinking that, by expressing correspondences between different levels of reality, simultaneously unveils the unity of the world and the subtle complementarity of the One and the Many. Reasoning by analogy can establish qualitative correspondences between these levels of reality and situate the backgrounds of meaning corresponding to symbols. Guenon evokes this “law of correspondence, which is the very foundation of all symbolism and by virtue of which each thing, while proceeding from a single metaphysical principle which guarantees its reality, translates or expresses this principle in its own way and according to its order of existence, such that all things are drawn together and correspond from one order to the next.” [10] According to the traditional outlook, the idea of non-separation is essential. “What is below is like what is above. Miracles are performed from one and the same thing,” according to the famed Emerald Table of Hermes Trismegistus. The city of men must reproduce the harmony pervading the city of God or expressed in the well-ordered cosmos. Similarly, Meister Eckhart writes: “The eye with which I see myself and the eye with which God sees Himself are one and the same” (Sermon 12), and Goethe adds: “What is inside is also outside.” For Raymond Abellio, the gnosis is also defined as a vision of universal interdependence, challenging the idea that there are separate beings or phenomena, though they may be distinct (union without confusion). This universal interdependence, says Abellio, implies an “intentionality of the world.” Being general, it can be applied to emotions as well as thoughts. Nothing — no thing, no person — can claim to be autonomous in the absolute.

This “holistic” vision is traditional in esotericism. From the viewpoint of traditional thought, the difference between esoteric and exoteric levels is also fundamental. One can say that Tradition constitutes the esoteric aspect of a spiritual reality. In their more immediately perceivable forms, institutionalized religions then express the esoteric aspect of this spiritual reality. Here esotericism should be taken in the sense of initiation and not the occult, which the school considers more a phenomenon of decadence or “counter-initiation.” Abellio states that esotericism dispels interior darkness .just as positive knowledge dispels exterior darkness. He adds that transcendental interior darkness does not proceed from an opposition or a duality between consciousness and the world but from a correlation between the world and consciousness of our own consciousness. “This genitive encapsulates the secret of esotericism. One must consider it in its immediate genetic function: it serves to generate another consciousness. Hence the deep meaning of what we call initiation, which is the awakening of consciousness to its own transcendental self-consciousness.” [11] This consciousness of consciousness, grounded in the internalized perception of external perception, is by definition fundamentally “self-intensifying.” Esotericism is the mode of knowledge and activity whereby man seeks to situate himself from a viewpoint which is no longer merely human.

Traditional thought, which began to develop seriously in the 1920s, has devoted itself to restoring order to the “occultist” jumble of the preceding century. It is a modern version of Oswald Spengler’s “second religiosity.” This demand for rigor undoubtedly distances it radically from false spiritualities and the “religious” pseudo-syncretisms of which the New Age doctrine is an extreme example. The boundary, however, is not always as clear-cut as desired. Should we treat the problems of sacredness and spirituality in general, as they are found within different religions? Should we speak of traditionalisms that do not conform to the traditional doctrine as we have defined it and which may be directly opposed to it? Where should the “theocratic” ideas of a Bonald, a Donoso Cortes or a Joseph de Maistre be placed? How can we avoid evoking the question of gnosis, as posed by Jean Borella, Raymond Ruyer and Raymond Abellio? Traditional thought emphasizes the study of myths and symbols. Jung and de Bachelar, Roger Caillois and perhaps also Rene Daumal immediately come to mind, as do the historical studies of religion by Mircea Eliade and the works on “myth analysis” and studies of the imaginary by Gibert Durand and various other contemporaries inspired by Jung. The traditional school also has its great ancestors, from Plato to Pericles, Meister Eckhart and many others. Should we also refer to the studies of Frederic Tristan and Antoine Faivre on hermetic philosophy and alchemy, and those of Jacob Bohme and Swedenborg about occultist Masonry and the Cabbala? Finally, how can we not also consider Islam, to which many of the school’s major representatives have turned? Little by little, one touches on the history of religions, mysticism, esotericism, even psychoanalysis, and the risk is therefore great from Annie Besant to Blavasky, from Rudolf Steiner to Krishnamurti, from Gurdjieff to Aurobindo, to arrive at a syncretism interested in all and feeding off anything (from holistic medicine to transcendental meditation, from popular astrology to runic divination, etc.). By keeping to the exposition of the fundamental themes of traditional thought, we have attempted to focus on and elucidate a few contiguous subjects.

Would Julius Evola’s denunciation of the “modern world” be as scandalous today, when criticism of modernity comes from all sides? The Greens question productivism. Post-modernists want to abolish the grandiose historicist narratives of legitimation. From Left and Right, modernism as the role of individualism, as the atomization of the world, as the triumph of the values of the market, as the dictatorial hegemony of the economy and money is being challenged. Felix Guatarri has recently written: “We focus our attention on impending catastrophes, while the true catastrophes are already here, under our noses, with the degeneration of social practices, with the mass media’s numbing effect, with a collective will blinded by the ideology of the ‘market’, in other words, succumbing to the law of the masses, to entropy, to the loss of singularity, to a general and collective infantilization. The old types of social relations, the old relations with sex, with time, with the cosmos, with human finitude have been rattled, not to say devastated, by the ‘progress’ generated by industrial firms.”[12] Clearly stated: the ideology of progress is crumbling. Novelty is no longer to be interpreted as increased well-being. It may well be that it is generally regressive and that we are living out the end of a cycle.

It is not surprising for the representatives of traditional thought who, in criticizing modernity, exhibit a radicalism difficult to surpass. Generally adhering to a cyclic conception of history, the school affirms that, within each cycle, humanity runs a course leading inexorably from a state of perfection and simplicity to a state of spiritual decline and accentuated materialism. The history of humanity is interpreted as “metaphysical entropy,” as fall, degradation from an original primordial state. All traditional authors see in modern times the time of Kali-Yuga [in Hinduism, the present age of the world, full of conflicts and sin], the apogee of the blackest age, the terminal phase of the cycle, the ne plus ultra of spiritual decline. The conflict between Tradition and anti-Tradition in fact crystallizes itself in decadence, and it is this decadence that the decadents call “progress”. The opposition between traditional thought and the ideology of progress is therefore total, while being perfectly symmetrical (but inversely). All that modern consciousness analyses and perceives as progress, the school interprets as decline: the Renaissance was a fall (decline); the Enlightenment, a darkening.

For Guenon, the crisis of the modern world is essentially explained by the weakening and extinction of principles that originally inspired the institutions and, afterwards, by the multiplication of structures charged with remedying the situation. These structures bring about the proliferation of abstract and contradictory rules, such that finally “the contradictions proper to the institutional system overcome the satisfaction that it is supposed to afford.” [13] Again, nothing is separated: the spiritual level falls as the material level rises, the maintenance of quality (in all areas) is incompatible with the dominance of quantity. Social life becomes mechanical and abstract as the very result of the dissolution of organic and concrete communities. Secularization — the disenchantment of the world (Max Weber’s Entzauberung), social atomization, the materialist hegemony of traded goods, the primacy of the principle of reason (an exclusively technical and reductionist reason), all the phenomena characteristic of the contemporary word — proceed (according to the school) from a sole logic that must be understood as the end of a secular and probably millenary involution. The ultimate effect of the hegemony of the principle of subjective individuation is the death of God, which entails the death of man and allows for, in the best case, only the self-consciousness of the radical void which constitutes the truth of an ego separated from the world and of the nonsense of a social life without finality, completely enclosed in the race for growth and the negation of being in exchange for material possessions.

The modern world is thus perceived first and foremost as distraction: literally, it diverts man away from the essential and keeps him in a state of a perpetual estrangement that prevents him from returning to and regrounding himself authentically. We must search for sense in a world which no longer seems to make sense. We have almost become incapable of understanding even the meaning of the word, “sense.” Guenon writes: “If all men understood what the modern world truly is, it would cease to exist.” Nihilism is also put to the test.

Notes

1. Guenon’s three fundamental works are Orient and Occident (1924), La crise du monde moderne (1927) and Le regne de la quantite et les signes des temps (1945).
2. Arturo Reghini, founder of the Italian Theosophical Society, editor of the journal Atanor, translator of Agrippa de Nettesheim’s De occulta philosophia, introduced Guenon to Evola. Guido de Giorgio (1890-1957) also collaborated with Evola in the journals Ur and La Torre. For more on Mordini (1923-1966), see Carlo Fabrizio Carli, Attilio Mordini, il Cattolico Ghibellino (Rome: Settimo Sigillo, 1989).
3. “Integral traditionalism” has also been discussed. See Karlheinz Weissmann, “Vom Geist der Uberlieferung. Die Lehre von der integralen Tradition,” in Etappe 2 (October 1988), pp. 79-90.
4. Le regne de la quantite et les signes du temps, op. cit., p. 280.
5. Linstant et l’eternite et autres textes sur la tradition (Milan: Arche, 1987), p. 148.
6. “Tradizione. 11 significato di un Termine,” in I Quaderni di Avallon 10 (January-April 1986).
7. Etudes indo-europeenes (December 19, 1986), p. 2.
8. This expression, often attributed to Leibniz, probably comes from Augustinus Steuchus’ book, De perinni philosophia, published in 1540 and read by Leibniz.
9. “Tradizione: il Significato di un Termine,” op. cit.
10. Le symbolisme de la croix (Paris: Vega, 1931), p. 12.
11. L’esprit moderne et la tradition, preface to Paul Serant, Au seuil de 1 ‘esoterisme‘ (Paris: Grasset, 1955), p. 18.
12. Liberation (June 30, 1989).
13. F. Jean Borella, “Rene Guenon et la crise du monde moderne” in Connaissance des religions (June 1989), p. 15.

 

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De Benoist, Alain. “Tradition?” Telos, Vol. 1992, No. 94 (December 1992), pp. 82-88. Text retrieved from: <http://www.amerika.org/globalism/tradition-alain-de-benoist/ >.

 

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.

 

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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).

 

The Problem of Decadence – Evola

The Problem of Decadence

by Julius Evola

 

Note (by Thompkins & Cariou): It may be in politics that the difference of nature between the ancient Indo-European world and the ‘modern world’ is most striking. The former is aristocratic, whereas, in the latter, what prevails is the political regime which was considered as the worst of all by Aristotle, democracy, which, as shown by Plato, through the excess of liberty which characterises it, has tyranny as a natural outcome, it being understood that, reassuming in this the traditional Indo-European world-outlook, Plato and Aristotle criticise liberty only in that it is given to all, to people who, by nature, are not made for it, or, at least, not to the same extent. According to this view, man has a specific function dictated by his own nature and man can only fulfill himself by performing this function well. This view is thus a hierarchic one. Aristocracy is based on an objective qualitative fact of life: natural hierarchy. By holding in common a fundamental premise, the equality and freedom of all human beings no matter what their race and their sex, the political theories born out of the Enlightenment deny this natural hierarchy, base of any society worth of the name, and, practically, what this leads to is an inverted hierarchy: in the ‘modern world’, the best do not rule, it is the worst who rule, or, to put it more accurately, who ‘manage’, in a chaos that they feed and intensify. Following in Aristotle’s footsteps, René Guénon describes and analyses from a metaphysical standpoint this state of affairs in the sixth chapter of ‘La Crise du Monde moderne’, translated and prefaced by Julius Evola (‘La Crisi del Mondo moderno’, Hoepli, 1937) : ‘Le Chaos social’. This chapter, revised, was to be published in the Fascist paper Lo Stato in April 1936, as ‘Suggestioni sociali, Democrazia ed Elite’ (‘Social Suggestions, Democracy and Elite’). At the end of the 60’s, ‘the friends of the Ar group’ (Ar Edizioni is a publisher of books by Evola) decided to publish it, in an anthology called ‘Gerarchia e Democrazia’ (‘Hierarchy and Democracy’), along with two articles by Evola, also taken from Lo Stato and written at the same period, ‘Sull’Essenza e la Funzione attuale dello Spirito aristocratico’, October 1941 (‘On the true Essence and Function of the aristocratic Spirit’) and ‘Il Problema della Decadenza’, May 1938 (‘The Problem of Decadence’). ‘Il Problema della Decadenza’ was already translated into English and can be found on various Internet sites, as ‘The Secret of Degeneration’. The translation we propose here is a ne varietur one.

THE PROBLEM OF DECADENCE

One of the most typical dogmas of so-called ‘modern thought’ in all its scientistic, rationalistic, illuministic and positivistic forms was the myth of ‘progress’, the interpretation of history as an uninterrupted ‘evolution’ of humanity, the latter conceived of uniformly, any articulation of mankind according to spiritual ideas, traditions, castes, or hierarchical traditional units being considered by that ‘modern thought’ as being peculiar to outdated stages of that so-called ‘evolution’. It is known that, by force of tragic experiences, such ‘myth’ has had its day: although it can still often be found in the methodological premises of various scientistic disciplines, the fields of culture and science being the ultimate strongholds of resistance in any outdated cycle of civilisation, the evolutionist and progressive myth, with regard to the political and social reality and the general vision of history, is nevertheless completely discredited ; and among the new forces suffused with the consciousness of these hard and tragic times, there is no lack of tendencies which return to more or less opposed views, peculiar to the greatest ancient traditions, to which this ‘evolutionist’ myth is totally foreign, for these are characterised on the contrary by the sense of a process of decadence, of a slow darkening or of a fall from a higher, primordial world. The fact that this view is singularly and impersonally shared by the traditions of the most different peoples, and not only in general, but also in detail, is, to a large extent, a proof that this is no mere philosophical attitude: in this connection, the reassumption of ideas of this kind must not be judged, as is erroneously thought in certain circles, as the contingent product of a certain pessimistic state of mind, as a sort of reflection of a state of crisis, but as the foreboding, though confused in most cases, of something far more real.

Anyone who wants to go deeper into this idea, both new and traditional or antievolutionist at the same time, cannot avoid tackling a further order of researches, to begin with those which are related to the mystery of decadence.

In a superficial sense, it cannot be said of this problem that it is new. For instance, in front of the grandiose remnants of magnificent civilisations, whose names sometimes haven’t even reached us, but whose very monumental traces often seem to reflect on earth the greatness and the power of supraterrestrial things, there is not a single person who has not posed to himself the problem of the death of civilisations and has not sensed the inadequacy of most of the explanations given in this regard by researchers. To de Gobineau, father of racism, we owe one of the best formulations of this problem and, at the same time, a masterly and documented criticism of all the main theories proposed for the explanation of the phenomenon. However, the solution suggested by de Gobineau, according to us, has no great persuasive power, and the part it contains which is correct needs to be completed by considerations of a higher order. As noted, to de Gobineau, a civilisation develops, lives on, and dominates as long as in its center the race that created it remains pure ; it decays and dissolves as soon as this purity begins to vanish, bloods mix, an ethnic chaos occurs. Somewhere else ( J. EVOLA: ‘Revolt against the Modern World’, Chapters X and XXII), we have said why such a thesis is insufficient and basically ends up taking the causes for the effects, since we think that the creative virtues of any superior race cannot be purely and simply explained by the mere biological factor, which is itself only an effect of another cause. Here we will merely point out that in many cases a civilisation declines even where crossbreeding cannot be alleged and the original race has remained substantially pure. This is particularly visible among certain savage populations, caught in a fatal process of slow death, though ethnically they remained closed in upon themselves almost hermetically. There are examples which are closer: Stapel has reminded us that the Swedes and the Dutch, racially, are nowadays more or less what they were two centuries ago, and yet, now, there is no longer even a ghost of the heroic civilisation which was theirs at that time. Other great civilisations and their related states sometimes seem to have survived as mummies ; without any visible alterations, they died a long time ago and they live on in appearance only. The slightest blow is thus enough to reduce them to powder. Among those who are best known to us, a typical case is offered by ancient Peru, this magnificent, immense, ‘solar’ empire, which a bunch of adventurers sufficed to destroy.

The mystery of decadence becomes even more obscure in a specifically doctrinal presentation of the problem. In this presentation, it is necessary to start from a dualism of types of civilisation, and, consequently, of state. On one hand, there are the traditional civilisations, diverse in form, but identical in their principle; these are civilisations in which spiritual and supra-individual forces and values are the axis and the supreme point of reference of the hierarchic organisation, of the setting up and the justification of all subordinated reality. On the other hand, there is modern civilisation, antitradition, pure construction made of human, terrestrial, individualist or collectivist factors, complete development of all that life entirely separated from ‘supra-life’ is capable of. We owe to René Guénon a classical presentation and a concluding justification of this fundamental view with respect to the morphology of civilisation. On this view, the meaning of history is a decadence, for history shows us a disappearance of previous civilisations of ‘traditional’ type and the more and more precise and general advent of a new common civilisation of ‘modern’ type.

Here, the problem we are faced with is double. How is it, in general, that this was possible? Evolutionism is entirely based on a logical impossibility, since it is impossible that the greater comes from the less and the superior from the inferior. But are we not confronted with a similar difficulty when we wish to explain involution? How is it possible that what is superior degenerate?

Certainly, mere analogies are hastily proposed as solutions ; the sane man can indeed get sick ; the virtuous can become vicious ; a natural law, which does not come as a surprise to anyone, sees to it that any organism, after birth, growth and maturity, gets old, weakens, dies ; and so on. But all this is a statement of fact, not an explanation, even assuming that there is a complete analogy between both orders of things, which is doubtful in states and in civilisations, since the forces of will play a very different part in them than in these natural phenomena.

The mystery, we were saying, is double, because we must explain not only decadence within a given world, but also the possibility that this decadence, once it has asserted itself in a given world, may have been able to ruin and implicate all the rest. To express ourselves in a more concrete way, we would say that, for instance, we must not only explain how the ancient Western traditional reality could degenerate and give birth to modern civilisation, but how the latter could get under control almost the whole earth, perverting the various peoples of any other kind of civilisation, asserting itself even where states with ‘traditional’ characters seemed to exist – in this connection, let us just cite the Eastern Indo-Germanic civilisations, not to mention Islam and China.

Concerning this, it cannot just be said that it is a matter of mere material and political conquest, and this, for two reasons. In the first place, in the long run, a country materially conquered cannot but be subjected to influences of another order, coming from the type of civilisation of its conquerors, and, as a matter of fact, we see that the European conquest has spread to some extent everywhere a ferment of europeanisation, that is to say of modernisation, of materialism, of antitraditional and individualist spirit. In the second place, and we are coming here onto an essential point, the traditional conception of civilisation and of state is hierarchic, and not dualistic. One who holds this conception could not subscribe without reservation to the ‘give to Caesar’ and ‘my kingdom is not of this world’. Tradition is to us the victorious and creative presence in the world of what ‘is not of this world’, that is to say of spirit, conceived of as something stronger than any purely material and simply human force. The antithesis between spirit and power, the opposition between strength and authority is only, once again, a characteristic of ‘modern’ thought.

Once this is admitted, as it must be from a strictly traditional standpoint, it is clear that one cannot speak simply, and almost rashly, of a merely material conquest. The material conquest appears to us as a spiritual ‘retreat’ when it comes to civilisations which were defeated and lost their autonomy. If in any case the spirit, conceived of as tradition requires, that is to say as the strongest of all forces, had in fact been present, it would not have lacked the means, more or less invisible, direct or indirect, to overcome any technical and material superiority. We must thus conclude that, wherever the West was able to inflict defeat, the traditional appearances hid a degeneration already in progress. The West would then appear as the civilisation in which an already general crisis assumed the most acute form, in which the decadence peculiar to ‘modern thought’, so to speak, ‘became precipitated’ and, getting organised, could sweep away more or less easily the other peoples, in which, even though they were at far less advanced stages of involution, tradition did not possess its original force any more, and, for this reason, they were able to be subjected from the outside to the force of events.

On the basis of these considerations, the second aspect of the problem would refer itself back to the first: the only thing left to do would be to explain the sense and the possibility of degeneration from the inside, that is, the propensity to decadence as a phenomenon likely to occur in a given civilisation or in a given state of traditional type, without the help of external factors connected with other forms of civilisations or of other states.

To arrive at any positive results in this connection, we must firstly make clear an extremely important point, relating to the essence of hierarchy. What we have to do specifically is to deny the idea, tendentiously put into circulation by ‘modern thought’, according to which the hierarchies peculiar to ‘traditional’ civilisations would be the product of some kind of pressure, of direct control and of violent domination of what was considered as superior over what is inferior. This view is purely modern, absolutely foreign to the nature of ancient civilisations and, we can even say, of any normal civilisation. Traditional teaching has indeed conceived spiritual action as ‘acting without acting’, has spoken of an unmoved mover, has always used the symbolism of the ‘pole’, of the fixed axis around which any movement of the secret things occurs ; has underlined the ‘Olympian’ attribute of true spirituality and true sovereignty and their direct way of asserting themselves, not through violence, but through presence ; finally, it has sometimes used the image of the ‘magnet’, in which, as we are about to see, the key of the whole problem lies.

In his work on ‘The doctrine of Fascism”, Carlo Costamagna has had the merit of elucidating some concepts which are not so far from this fundamental truth. Opposing the theory of the violent origin of the state, Costamagna has attempted to eliminate “the confusion between the idea of force and the idea of violence which has spoiled the whole attitude of modern thought on this subject, because it has prevented it, firstly, from acknowledging that the very content of power is not in any way that of a physical predominance, but in reality of a moral predominance which doesn’t have submission as a justification, but, primarily, the agreement of the governed”. He has also pointed out that the actual currents of anti-Marxist and anti-bourgeois revolution give more and more value to “the circumstance of acting and sacrificing in the name of something which is not the individual any more, which does not consider the animal instinct to live nor utility any more ; that is to say, of living a life which goes beyond the material fact of living”. Such is indeed the central point of the true hierarchical idea, through which the ‘superstition’ that individual life is the basis of everything is fought and something which is more than life can be assumed as the point of reference of the moral experience and simultaneously as the objective of the political activity. That which Costamagna mentions as principle of a new ‘antimodern’ order really is the keystone of any traditional social organisation, the political process carried to such a degree that it identifies itself with the development of the human personality itself and the fulfillment of its superior possibilities.

It is absurd to believe that the true representatives of spiritual authority, that is to say of tradition, would set about running after all their subjects in order to grasp them and bind everyone to his own place ; that, in short, these representatives ‘act’ and have some sort of direct interest in creating and maintaining these hierarchic relations, by virtue of which they could visibly appear also as the leaders. The recognition from the inferior is on the contrary the true base of any normal and traditional hierarchy. It is not the superior who needs the inferior, but the inferior who needs the superior ; it is not the Duce who needs a private, but the private who needs a Duce. The essence of hierarchy lies in the fact that there is in some superior beings, as a presence and as an actualised reality, what exists, in the others, only as confused aspiration, presentiment, so that the latter are irresistibly attracted by the former and they naturally submit to them, submitting in this not so much to something exterior as to their realer ‘I’. Here lies the secret of any readiness to sacrifice, of any heroism, of any manly dedication in the world of ancient hierarchies, and, on the other hand, of a prestige, an authority, of a calm power and influence which not even the most heavily armed tyrant could ever have secured.

To acknowledge this also means to see under a different light not only the problem of decadence, but also that of the possibility, in general, of any subversive revolution. Don’t we hear constantly that, if a revolution has triumphed, it is a sign that the ancient leaders were weak and the ancient leading strata had degenerated? And so would it be, if ever it had been about chained wild dogs which ended up biting the hands which fed them: this would obviously prove that the hands which had been holding firm these animals were not, or are not any more, strong enough. But things are different when the theory of the violent origin of the true state is rejected and when the starting point is spiritual hierarchy, whose true foundation we have just pointed out. Such hierarchy may decay and be ruined only in one case: when the individual decays, when he uses his fundamental liberty to say no to the spirit, to deprive his life of any higher point of reference and set himself up as a stump. Contacts are then fatally interrupted, the metaphysical tension which united the traditional organism and made of the political process the counterpart of a process of elevation and of integration of the individual loosens, any force becomes unsteady in its orbit, and, finally, after the vain attempt to substitute the lost tradition for rationalist interpretations and utilitarian processes, frees itself from it: the heights remain pure and intact, but the rest, which was beforehand as it were suspended from them, will look like an avalanche which, in an initially imperceptible, then accelerated movement, once the stability is lost, falls down, to the bottom, to the leveling of the valley: socialism, mass collectivism, Bolshevism.

This is the mystery of decadence, this is the mystery of any subversive revolution. The revolutionary has started by killing in himself hierarchy, mutilating himself of these possibilities to which corresponded the inner foundation of the order, which he has then brought down also externally. Without a preliminary inner destruction, no revolution, in the sense of antihierarchic and antitraditional subversion is possible. And since this preliminary stage escapes superficial observation, the one who, with an obtuse short-sightedness, can only see and appreciate the ‘facts’, has to get accustomed to considering revolutions as irrational phenomena and even to justify them by referring to materialist and social factors, which, in any normal civilisation, only ever had, contrarily to his view, an absolutely secondary and subordinated function. When the Catholic myth refers the fall of the ‘primordial man’ and the ‘revolt of angels’ to free will, it basically relates to the same explanatory principle. It is about the terrible power, inherent in man, to use freedom in the sense of a spiritual destruction, to reject everything that can secure him a supranatural dignity. This decision is a metaphysical one, of which the whole current which has been snaking through history, in the various forms of appearance of the antitraditional, revolutionary, individualist, humanistic, secular and, finally, ‘modern’ spirit is only the manifestation and, so to speak, the phenomenology. This decision is the sole active and determining cause in the mystery of decadence, of the destruction of tradition.

This being understood, we are able to comprehend the meaning of ancient traditions, of a rather enigmatic nature, related to the leaders who, in a certain sense, already exist, having never ceased to exist, and who can be found again (themselves or their ‘faiths’) by means of actions described in various ways, but always of symbolic character ; in fact, their search is equivalent to a reintegration, the creation of a certain attitude, whose virtue is similar to the essential qualities by which a given metal suddenly feels the magnet, discovers the magnet and orientates and irresistibly moves towards the magnet. We will limit ourselves to this remark, which anyone who wishes to can easily develop. To deal in detail with this order of ideas and to explain the myths to which we have just alluded and that come from the oldest Indo-European antiquity would lead us too far. We may get back on another occasion to the mystery of decadence, of the ‘magic’ able to bring back again the collapsed and unleashed mass, more than to temporary forms of order, to the unchanging peaks still suspended, invisible, in the heights.

Julius EVOLA

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Evola, Julius. “The Problem of Decadence.” Thompkins & Cariou, 2004. <http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id13.html >.

 

A True Empire – Evola

A True Empire: Form and Presuppositions of a United Europe

By Julius Evola

In order to head toward a united Europe, the first step should consist of a concerted exit of all European nations from the United Nations, which is an illegitimate, promiscuous, and hypocritical association. Another obvious imperative should be to become emancipated in every aspect and in equal measure from both the United States and the USSR. […]

[…] Here I will only hint at what concerns the form and the spiritual and doctrinal presuppositions of a united Europe. […] The only genuine solution must have an organic character; the primary element should be a shaping force from within and from above, proper to an idea and a common tradition. […]

[…] As I have indicated in another chapter, the concepts of fatherland and nation (or ethnic group) belong to an essentially naturalistic or “physical” plane. In a united Europe, fatherlands and nations may exist […] What should be excluded is nationalism (with its monstrous appendix, namely imperialism) and chauvinism—in other words, every fanatical absolutization of a particular unit. Thus “European Empire,” and not “Nation Europa” or “European Fatherland” should be the right term, in a doctrinal sense. In the Europeans we should appeal to a feeling of higher order, qualitatively very different from the nationalistic feeling rooted in other strata of the human being. […]

The scheme of an empire in a true and organic sense (which must clearly be distinguished from every imperialism, a phenomenon that should be regarded as a deplorable extension of nationalism) was previously displayed in the European medieval world, which safeguarded the principles of both unity and multiplicity. In this world, individual States have the character of partial organic units, gravitating around a unum quod non est pars (“a one that is not a part,” to use Dante’s expression)—namely, a principle of unity, authority, and sovereignty of a different nature from that which is proper to each particular State. But the principle of the Empire can have such a dignity only by transcending the political sphere in the strict sense, founding and legitimizing itself with an idea, a tradition, and a power that is also spiritual. The limitations of the sovereignty of the single national units before an eminent right of the Empire have as their sole condition this transcendent dignity of the Empire; as far as structure is concerned, the whole will appear as an “organism composed of organisms,” or as an organic federalism similar to that realized by Bismarck in the second German Reich, which was not acephalous. These are the essential traits of a true Empire.

What are the conditions and the opportunities for the realization of such an idea in Europe today? […] Because what is needed is an organic unity, the premise should rather be the integration and consolidation of every single nation as a hierarchical, united, and well-differentiated whole. The nature of the parts should reflect the nature of the whole. […] What matters is the synergy and the opportunity for every common action.

Every organic unit is characterized by a principle of stability. We should not expect a stability of the whole, where there is no stability guaranteed in its very components. Even from this point of view, the elementary presupposition of an eventual united Europe appears to be the political integration of the single nations. European unity would always be precarious if it leaned on some external factor, like an international parliament lacking a common, higher authority, with representations from various democratic regimes; such regimes, because they are constantly and mutually conditioned from below, cannot in any way ensure a continuity of political will and direction. […]

What is required is not to impose a common regime on every European nation; however, an organic, hierarchical, anti-individualistic, and antidemocratic principle should be adequately implemented, even though in various forms adopted to different circumstances. Thus, the preliminary condition is a general antidemocratic cleansing, which at the present appears to be almost utopian. Democracy, on the one hand, and a European parliament that reproduces on a larger scale the depressing and pathetic sight of the European parliamentary systems on the other hand: all this would bring ridicule upon the idea of a united Europe. In general, we should think of an organic unity to be attained from the top down rather than from the bottom up. Only elites of individual European nations could understand one another and coordinate their work, overcoming every particularism and spirit of division, asserting higher interests and motives with their authority. […] A well-established “center” should exist in every nation; as a result of the harmony and the synergy of such centers, the higher European unity would organize itself and operate.

Overall, what should be promoted is a twofold process of integration: on the one hand, national integration through the acknowledgment of a substantial principle of authority that is the basis for the organic, anti-individualistic, and corporative formation of the various sociopolitical national forces; on the other hand, supernational European integration through the acknowledgment of a principle of authority that is as super-ordained toward that which is proper of single units (individual States), as it is toward the people included in each of these units. Without this, it is useless to talk about an organically united Europe.

Having put the problem in these terms, there are serious difficulties regarding the spiritual, not merely political, foundations required to implement this European unity. Where should we find these foundations? […]

Obviously, it would be a pure Utopia to yearn to oppose in practical terms all the material aspects of modern civilization: among other things, this would involve surrendering the practical means that are necessary today for every defense and attack. However, it is always possible to establish a distance and a limit. It is possible to enclose that which is “modern” in a well-controlled material and “physical” domain, on the plane of mere means, and to superimpose upon it a higher order adequately upheld, in which revolutionary-conservative values are given unconditional acknowledgment. The Japan of yesterday demonstrated the possibility and the fecundity of a solution of this type. Only in that case could Europe represent something different, distinguish itself, and assume a new dignity among world powers. […] The first European detoxification should concern this obsession with “antifascism,” which is the catchphrase of the “crusade” that has left Europe in a pile of rubble. However, we cannot side either with those pro-European sympathizers who can only refer to what was attempted in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany before the war, toward the creation of a new order. These groups fail to recognize that Fascism and National Socialism were movements and regimes in which different and even contrasting tendencies coexisted; their development in the right, positive, revolutionary-conservative sense could have occurred only if circumstances had allowed for an adequate, further development, which was stricken down by the war they ignited and by their ensuing defeat. This is how we should at least proceed to a precise distinction, if we want to draw reference points from those movements.

Besides doctrinal difficulties, which I have examined, a radical European action finds its major obstacle in the lack of something that could represent a starting point, a firm support, and a center of crystallization. Before 1945 we could at least witness the wonderful sight of the principle of a supernational European Army, and the legionary spirit of volunteers from many nations who, having been organized in several divisions, fought on the Eastern front against the Soviets; at that time the foundation was the Third Reich. Today the only concrete, though partial, European initiatives of various governments are taken on a mere economic plane, without any deep ideological and ideal counterpart. Those who are sensitive to the idea of a united Europe in a higher sense are only isolated individuals, and not only are they not supported, but also they are even opposed by their own countries; and much more so, let me add, if their necessary antidemocratic and anti-Marxist profession of faith is openly declared. In effect, a European action must proceed in parallel with the rebirth and the revolutionary-conservative reorganization of the individual European countries: but to recognize this also means to acknowledge the disheartening magnitude of the task ahead.

Despite this, we could suggest the idea of an Order, whose members would act in the various nations, doing what they can to promote an eventual European unity, even in such unfavorable conditions. The enthusiasm of young militants who conduct an active propaganda should be commended, but it is not enough. We should count on people with a specific qualification, who occupied or intended to occupy key positions in their own nations. What kind of men could be up to this task? Assuming bourgeois society and civilization as a reference point, it is necessary to win over to the cause and to recruit people who neither spiritually belong to the bourgeoisie nor are affected by it, or who are already beyond it. A first group should be composed of members of ancient European families that are still “standing” and who are valuable not only because of the name they carry, but also because of who they are, because of their personality. It is very difficult to find such men but there are some exceptions, and even during and after the last World War, some of these figures emerged. Sometimes it is a matter of awakening something in the blood that has not been entirely lost but still exists in a latent state. In these elements we would expect to find the presence of congenital, “racial” dispositions (racial in the elitist and non biological-racist sense of the term) that guarantee an action and a reaction according to a precise and secure style, free from theories and abstract principles, in a spontaneous and complete adherence to those values that every man of good birth considered obvious before the rise of the Third Estate and of what followed it.

In regard to a second and more numerous section of the Order, I have in mind men who correspond to the human type shaped here and there through selections and experiences of an essentially warrior character, and through certain disciplines. Existentially speaking, this type is well versed in the art of “demythologization”: it recognizes as illusion and hypocrisy the entire tenacious legacy of the ideologies that have been employed as instruments, not to bring down this or that European nation, but to deal a deadly blow to the whole of Europe. These men harbor a healthy intolerance for any rhetoric; an indifference toward intellectualism and politicians’ gimmicks; a realism of a higher type; the propensity for impersonal activity; and the capability of a precise and resolute commitment. In the past, in some elite fighting units, today among paratroopers and analogous corps (e.g., Marines and others), some disciplines and experiences favor the formation of this human type, which displays the same traits in various nations. A common way of being constitutes a potentially connective element, beyond nationalities. By winning over these elements to the European cause, we could constitute, with a “force at the ready,” the most active cadres of such an Order. If direct and integrating communications were established between these two groups (which is not as difficult as it may first appear), the foundation would be laid. For these men, the most important concerns should be the European idea in terms of values and of worldview, followed by the Order and then by the nation.

Naturally, the personality of an authentic leader at the center and head of the Order is of the utmost importance. Unfortunately, no such person exists today: it would be dangerous and rash to see him in any of the figures who are currently working here and there, albeit with the best of intentions, selflessly and bravely, to form European groups. One has to consider here that no one could have detected in advance the potential of any of the men who later became leaders of great movements. Nevertheless, it is easy to see the great advantages in the case where such a man, in whom authority and status now became manifest, had been there from the beginning.

We do not need to repeat what the basic requirement is for such a European action to mature and bear any results. One must first get rid of the political class, which holds the power in almost all European countries in this time of interregnum and European slavery. This would be immediately possible if a sufficient mass of today’s peoples could be reawakened from their stupefied and stultified condition that has been systematically created by the prevailing political-social ideas.

But the greatest difficulty for the true European idea is the deep crisis of the authority principle and the idea of the State. This will seem contradictory to many, because they believe the strengthening of that principle and that idea would bring in its wake a schismatic division and thus a rigid, anti-European pluralism. We have already shown why this is not at all the case, when we were speaking of the Männerbünde and indicating the higher level that characterizes the idea of a true State and its authority, in contrast to everything that is merely “folk” or “nation.” For the individual, true political loyalty includes, besides a certain heroic readiness, a certain degree of transcendence, hence something not merely nature-bound. There is no break, but rather continuity when one crosses from the national level to the supernational: the selfsame inner readiness will be required as in the times of Indo-European origins and of the best feudal regimes, in which it was also a matter of the voluntary union of free powers, proud to belong to a higher order of things that did not oppress but rather embraced them. The real obstacles are only fanatical nationalism and the collapse of society and community.

In summary, let it be said that breaking through into more thoughtful minds is the idea that in the current state of affairs, the uniting of Europe into a single bloc is the indispensable prerequisite for its continuation in a form other than an empty geographical concept on the same materialistic level as that of the powers that seek to control the world. For all the reasons already explained, we know that this crisis involves a dual inner problem, if under these circumstances one hopes to establish a firm foundation, a deeper sense, and an organic character for a possible united Europe. On the one hand, an initiative in the sense of a spiritual and psychic detoxification must be taken against what is commonly known as “modern culture.” On the other, there is the question of the kind of “metaphysics” that is capable, today, of supporting both a national and a supernational principle of true authority and legitimacy.

The dual problem can be translated into a dual imperative. It remains to be seen which and how many men, in spite of it all, still stand upright among so many ruins, in order that they may make this task their own.

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Excerpted from: Evola, Julius. Men Among the Ruins: Postwar Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2002), pp. 275-286.

On the concept of empire, see also Alain de Benoist’s “The Idea of Empire.”