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The 20th Century Political Outlook
— Spengler
— Nietzsche, 1885
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The distribution of powers in the first two World Wars was grotesque — the way it was occasioned is examined elsewhere. The results of these two wars were consequently grotesque. In both of them the outlook of the nineteenth century was apparently victorious. Superficially it was indeed, but actually such a thing is impossible. Owing to the organic nature of a Culture, as well as of the nations it creates, the Past cannot triumph over the Future — the alternatives are always only two in organic life: either forward development, or sickness and extinction. The Western Civilization was not extinguished by these fearful conflicts, even though its existence was brought to the lowest possible point politically. The First of the series of World Wars created a new world. The old ideas of history, politics, war, nations, economics, society, culture, art, education, ethics, were swept away. The new ideas of these things however were possessed only by the best brains of Europe, the small Culture-bearing stratum. |
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Unfortunately the political leaders in Europe immediately after the First World War — save one — did not belong to this stratum. The Second in the series arose from the fact that all Europe had not yet come under the impress of the new idea, the 20th century world-outlook. Half of Europe continued to play the old-fashioned, fatal game of petty-stateism. The leaders responsible for this represent what Goethe had in mind when he said: “The most terrible thing in the world is ignorance in action.” Europe has not yet paid the full price for the malice and stupidity of these leaders. Nietzsche had wished to see such an increase in the threatening attitude of Russia that Europe would be forced to unite, to abandon the miserable game of political nationalism, petty-stateism. Not only did this happen politically, it happened culturally — Russia seceded totally from Europe and returned to Asia, whence Peter the Great had dragged it. But Europe continued to luxuriate in the repulsive game of frontiers and customs, little plans, little projects, little secrets — even after it had looked on at the spectacle of the Bolshevik revolution. Nietzsche had assumed in his thought that brains would be present at the helm — in Europe he forgot to wish that. Readers in the year 2000 will find it hard to believe that in 1947 a French aspirant for power based himself on a program for making France secure from Germany, or that in 1947 England and France signed at Dünkirchen a treaty of alliance against Germany . Both America and Russia allowed these two political powers of yesterday to sign this harmless treaty — it could not in any way conflict with the plans of the extra-Europeans in Moscow and Washington, for it looked not to the future, or even to the present, but solely to the Past. Is it possible that the people who prepared and signed this treaty were under a collective hallucination that the year was 1750, 1850, |
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or in any other century? When politicians become subjects of confusion, their countries must suffer. Such things could not happen — Europe could not have reached such a low — if the new outlook on politics, the organically necessary outlook, had been clearly present in the ruling stratum in every European land. This new outlook — which becomes automatically the view of anyone who understands it — is now formulated here for the first time in its entirety. The word politics itself has been subject in recent history — say, since 1850 — to a deep misunderstanding. Two things are responsible: first the economic obsession of the nations of our Civilization during the 19th century, second the culture-distorting influence of America on certain European areas. The economic obsession gradually developed into the view that politics was something outmoded, that it only reflected preceding economic realities, that ultimately it would pass away. Thus war came to be regarded as an anachronism. In America, because of the special conditions which prevailed there, unique in Western history, the word politics came to mean adherence to a group or an idea from a chicane motive. American politicians continually accused one another of engaging in “politics.” This meant that politics was regarded as something unnecessary, something dishonest, something that could and should be done away with. This was in very truth their understanding of the word. This deep misunderstanding of the nature of politics in Europe grew because of the extraordinarily long period of peace among the European nations between 1871 and 1914. This seemed to prove that war and politics were gone. The idea was so deeply fixed that 1914 only seemed to be the exception that proved the rule. There was also a mental necessity on the part of weak heads in Europe and America to regard the 1914 |
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war as the last war. Nor did 1939 change this. Again there was a last war. People with this viewpoint are not embarrassed by the necessity of regarding every war as the last war. To an ideologist, his theory is normative — it is the facts which go askew. The time has come when persistence in this sort of mental legerdemain must cease. Politics is not a subject for logical exercises, but a field for action in the Spirit of the Age. |
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First, what is politics? That is, politics as a fact. Politics is activity in relation to power. Politics is a domain of its own — the domain of power. Thus it is not morality, it is not esthetics, it is not economics. Politics is a way of thinking, just as these others are. Each of these forms of thought isolates part of the totality of the world and claims it for its own. Morality distinguishes between good and evil; esthetics between beautiful and ugly; economics between utile and inutile (in its later, purely trading phase these are identical with profitable and unprofitable). The way politics divides the world is into friend and enemy. These express for it the highest possible degree of connection, and the highest possible degree of separation. Political thought is as separate from these other forms of thought as they are from each other. It can exist without them, they without it. The enemy can be good, he can be beautiful, he may be economically utile, business with him may be |
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profitable — but if his power activity converges on mine, he is my enemy. He is that one with whom existential conflicts are possible. But esthetics, economics, morality are not concerned with existence, but only with norms of activity and thinking within an assured existence. While as a matter of psychological fact, the enemy is easily represented as ugly, injurious, and evil, nevertheless this is subsidiary to politics, and does not destroy the independence of political thinking and activity. The political disjunction, concerned as it is with existence, is the deepest of all disjunctions and thus, has a tendency to seek every type of persuasion, compulsion, and justification in order to carry its activity forward. The extent to which this occurs is in direct ratio to the purity of political thinking in the leaders. The more their outlooks contain of moral, economic or other ways of thinking, the more they will use propaganda along such lines to further their political aims. It may even happen that they are not conscious that their activity is political. There is every indication that Cromwell regarded himself as a religionist and not as a politician. A variation was provided by the French journal which fanned the war spirit of its readers in 1870 with the expectation that the poilus would bring car-loads of blonde women back from Prussia . On the other side, Japanese propaganda for the home populace during the Second World War, accented almost entirely the existential, i.e., purely political nature of the struggle. Another may be ugly, evil and injurious and yet not be an enemy; or he may be good, beautiful, and useful, and yet be an enemy. Friend and enemy are concrete realities. They are not figurative. They are unmixed with moral, esthetic or economic elements. They do not describe a private relationship of antipathy. Antipathy is no necessary part of the political disjunction of |
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friend and enemy. Hatred is a private phenomenon. If politicians inoculate their populations with hatred against the enemy, it is only to give them a personal interest in the public struggle which they would otherwise not have. Between superpersonal organisms there is no hatred, although there may be existential struggles. The disjunction love-hatred is not political and does not intersect at any point the political one of friend-enemy. Alliance does not mean love, any more than war means hate. Clear thinking in the realm of politics demands at the outset a strong power of dissociation of ideas. The world-outlook of Liberalism, here as always completely emancipated from reality, said that the concept enemy described either an economic competitor, or else an ideational opponent. But in economics there are no enemies, but only competitors; in a world which was purely moralized (i.e., one in which only moral contrasts existed) there could be no enemies, but only ideational opponents. Liberalism, strengthened by the unique long peace, 1871–1914, pronounced politics to be atavistic, the grouping of friend-enemy to be retrograde. This of course belongs to politics as a branch of philosophy. In that realm no misstatement is possible; no accumulation of facts can prove a theory wrong, for over these theories are supreme, History is not the arbiter in matters of political outlook, Reason decides all, and everyone decides for himself what is reasonable. This is concerned however only with facts, and the only objection made here to such an outlook in the last analysis is that it is not factual. Enemy, then, does not mean competitor. Nor does it mean opponent in general. Least of all does it describe a person whom one hates from feelings of personal antipathy. Latin possessed two words: hostis for the public enemy, inimicus for a private enemy. Our Western languages unfortunately do not |
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make this important distinction. Greek however did possess it, and had further a deep distinction between two types of wars: those against other Greeks, and those against outsiders of the Culture, barbarians. The former were “agons” and only the latter were true wars. An agon was originally a contest for a prize at the public games, and the opponent was the “antagonist.” This distinction has value for us because in comparison with wars in this age, intra-European wars of the preceding 800 years were agonal. As nationalistic politics assumed the ascendancy within the Classical Culture, with the Peloponnesian Wars, the distinction passed out of Greek usage. 17th and 18th century wars in West-Europe were in the nature of contests for a prize — the prize being a strip of territory, a throne, a title. The participants were dynasties, not peoples. The idea of destroying the opposing dynasty was not present, and only in the exceptional case was there even the possibility of such a thing happening. Enemy in the political sense means thus public enemy. It is unlimited, and it is thus distinguished from private enmity. The distinction public-private can only arise when there is a super-personal unit present. When there is, it determines who is friend and enemy, and thus no private person can make such a determination. He may hate those who oppose him or who are distasteful to him, or who compete with him, but he may not treat them as enemies in the unlimited sense. The lack of two words to distinguish public and private enemy also has contributed to confusion in the interpretation of the well-known Biblical passage (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27) “Love your enemies.” The Greek and Latin versions use the words referring to a private enemy. And this is indeed to what the passage refers. It is obviously an adjuration to put aside hatred and malice, but there is no necessity whatever |
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that one hate the public enemy. Hatred is not contained in political thinking. Any hatred worked up against the public enemy is non-political, and always shows some weakness in the internal political situation. This Biblical passage does not adjure one to love the public enemy, and during the wars against Saracen and Turk no Pope, saint, or philosopher so construed it. It certainly does not counsel treason out of love for the public enemy. IIEvery non-political human grouping of whatever kind, legal, social, religious, economic or other becomes at last political if it creates an opposition deep enough to range men against one another as enemies. The State as a political unit excludes by its nature opposition of such types as these. If however a disjunction occurs in the population of a State which is so deep and strong that it divides them into friends and enemies, it shows that the State, at least temporarily, does not exist in fact. It is no longer a political unit, since all political decisions are no longer concentrated in it. All States whatever keep a monopoly of political decision. This is another way of saying they maintain inner peace. If some group or idea becomes so strong that it can effect a friend-enemy grouping, it is a political unit; and if forces are generated which the State cannot manage peaceably, it has disappeared for the time at least. If the State has to resort to force, this in itself shows that there are two political units, in other words, two States instead of the one originally there. This raises the question of the significance of internal politics. Within a State, we speak of social-politics, judicial-politics, religious-politics, party-politics and the like. Obviously they |
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represent another meaning of the word, since they do not contain the possibility of a friend-enemy disjunction. They occur within a pacified unit. They can only be called “secondary.” The essence of the State is that within its realm it excludes the possibility of a friend-enemy grouping. Thus conflicts occurring within a State are by their nature limited, whereas the truly political conflict is unlimited. Every one of these internal limited struggles of course may become the focus of a true political disjunction, if the idea opposing the State is strong enough, and the leaders of the State have lost their sureness. If it does — again, the State is gone. An organism either follows its own law, or it becomes ill. This is organic logic and governs all organisms, plant, animal, man, High Culture. They are either themselves, or they sicken and die. Not for them is the rational and logical view which says that whatever can be cogently written down into a system can then be foisted on to an organism. Rational thinking is merely one of the multifarious creations of organic life, and it cannot, being subsidiary, include the whole within its contemplation. It is limited and can only work in a certain way, and on material which is adapted to such treatment. The organism is the whole, however, and does not yield its secrets to a method which it develops out of its own adaptive ability to cope with non-organic problems it has to overcome. Secondary politics often can distort primary politics. For instance the female politics of petty jealousy and personal hatred that was effective in the court of Louis XV was instrumental in devoting much of French political energy to the less important struggle against Frederick, and little French political energy to the more important struggle against England in Canada and India and on the seas. Frederick the Great was not beloved by the Pompadour, and France paid an empire to chastise |
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him. When private hostility exerts such an effect on public decision, it is proper to speak of political distortion, and of such a policy as a distorted one. When an organism consults or is in the grip of any force outside of its own developmental law, its life is distorted. The relation between a private enmity and a public politics it is circumstanced to distort is the same as that between European petty-Stateism and the Western Civilization. The collectively suicidal game of nationalistic politics distorted the whole destiny of the West after 1900 to the advantage of the extra-European forces. IIIThe concrete nature of politics is shown by certain linguistic facts which appear in all Western languages. Invariably the concepts, ideas, and vocabulary of a political group are polemical, propagandistic. This is true throughout all higher history. The words State, class, King, society — all have their polemical content, and they have an entirely different meaning to partisans from what they have to opponents. Dictatorship, government of laws, proletariat, bourgeoisie these words have no meaning other than their polemical one, and one does not know what they are intended to convey unless one knows also who is using them and against whom. During the Second World War, for instance, freedom and democracy were used as terms to describe all members of the coalition against Europe, with an entire disregard of semantics. The word “dictatorship” was used by the extra-European coalition to describe not only Europe, but any country which refused to join the coalition. Similarly, the word “fascist” was used purely as a term of abuse, without any descriptive basis whatever, just as the word democracy was a word of praise but not of description. In the |
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American press, for example, both during the 1914 war and the 1939 war, Russia was always described as a “democracy.” The House of Romanov and the Bolshevik regime were equally democratic. This was necessary to preserve the homogeneous picture of these wars which this press had painted for its readers: the war was one of democracy against dictatorship; Europe was dictatorship, ergo, anything fighting Europe was democracy. In the same way, Machiavelli described any State that was not a monarchy as a republic, a polemical definition that has remained to this day. To Jack Cade the word nobility was a term of damnation, to those who put down his rebellion, it was everything good. In a legal treatise, the class-warrior Karl Renner described rent paid by tenant to landlord as “tribute.” In the same way, Ortega y Gasset calls the resurgence of State authority, of the ideas of order, hierarchy and discipline, a revolt of the masses. And to a real class warrior, any navvy is socially valuable, but an officer is a “parasite.” During the period when Liberalism ruled in the Western Civilization, and the State was reduced, theoretically, to the role of “night-watchman,” the very word “politics” changed its fundamental meaning. From having described the power activities of the State, it now described the efforts of private individuals and their organizations to secure positions in the government as a means of livelihood, in other words politics came to mean party-politics. Readers in 2050 will have difficulty in understanding these relationships, for the age of parties will be as forgotten then as the Opium War is now. All State organisms were distorted, sick, in crisis, and this introspection was one great symptom of it. Supposedly internal politics was primary. If internal politics was actually primary, it must have meant that friend-enemy groupings could arise on an internal political |
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question. If this did happen, in the extreme case civil war was the result, but unless a civil war occurred, internal politics was still in fact secondary, limited, private, and not public. The very contention that inner politics was primary was polemical: what was meant was that it should be. The Liberals and class-warriors, then as now, spoke of their wishes and hope as facts, near-facts, or potential facts. The sole result of focusing energy onto inner problems was to weaken the State, in its dealings with other States. The law of every organism allows only two alternatives: either the organism must be true to itself, or it goes down into sickness or death. The nature, the essence of the State is inner peace and outer struggle. If the inner peace is disturbed or broken, the outer struggle is damaged. The organic and the inorganic ways of thinking do not intersect: ordinary class-room logic, the logic of philosophy textbooks tells us that there is no reason why State, politics and war need even exist. There is no logical reason why humanity could not be organized as a society, or as a purely economic enterprise, or as a vast book-club. But the higher organisms of States, and the highest organisms, the High Cultures, do not ask logicians for permission to exist — the very existence of this type of rationalist, the man emancipated from reality, is only a symptom of a crisis in the High Culture, and when the crisis passes, the rationalists pass away with it. The fact that the rationalists are not in touch with the invisible, organic forces of History is shown by their predictions of events. Before 1914, they universally asserted that a general European war was impossible. Two different types of rationalists gave their two different reasons. The class-warriors of the Internationale, said that international class-war socialism would make it impossible to mobilize “the workers” of one country against “the workers” in another country. The other type — also with its center of |
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gravity in economics, since rationalism and materialism are indissolubly wedded — said no general war was possible because mobilization would bring about such a dislocation of the economic life of the countries that a breakdown would come in a few weeks. |
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We come to the relation of war to politics. It is not proposed to treat of the metaphysics of war, but to develop a practical outlook of the possibilities and necessities of war to serve as a basis for action. First, a definition: war is an armed struggle between organized political units. It is not a question of the method of fighting, for weapons are merely a way of killing. Nor of military organization — these things determine nothing about the inner nature of war. War is the highest possible expression of the friend-enemy disjunction. It confers the practical meaning on the word enemy. The enemy is he upon whom one is preparing to make or upon whom one is making war. If there is no question of war he is not an enemy. He may be a mere opponent in a contest for a prize, he may be a mere heathen, a mere ideological opponent, a competitor, a hateful thing for reasons of antipathy. The minute he becomes an enemy, the possibility or actuality of armed struggle war, enters. War is not an agon, and thus the armed struggles among the States of the Western |
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Culture up to the middle of the 18th century were not wars in the 20th century meaning of the word. They were limited in their object and scope, and vis-à-visthe opponent they were not existential. Thus they were not political in the 20th century meaning of the word — they were not fought against enemies in our sense of the term. Unfortunately our Western languages lack the precision which Greek had in this respect to distinguish between intra-Hellenic struggles, agons, with the opponent the “antagonist,” on the one hand, and wars against the non-Culture member, on the other hand, in which the opponent, e.g., the Persian, was the enemy. The Crusades were thus war in the full unlimited sense of the word: the deep spiritual objective was the assertion of the Cultural superiority, and of the true Faith against the heathen. The opponent — though one naturally extended personal magnanimity to his soldiers because of the inner imperative of chivalrous honor — was an enemy, not to be allowed to continue in his unity if it could be destroyed. Honor in the Crusades forbade personal meanness, but did not exclude total destruction of the enemy organized unit. Honor in intra-European struggles did forbid imposing too harsh a treaty upon the defeated opponent, and it entered no one’s mind to deny the opponent the right to existence as an organized unit. During the history of our Culture, from Pope Gregory VII to Napoleon, the struggle against a member of the Culture was limited, but that against the heathen, the non-member of the Culture was true, unlimited war. Wars before, after and outside a Culture are unlimited. They are a more pure expression of the barbarian in man, in that they are not highly symbolic. They are spiritual, for everything human is spiritual. The spirit is primary with man, the material |
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is the vehicle of the spiritual development. Man sees symbolic significance in that around him — his experiencing of these symbols and his acting and organizing in accordance are what make him man, even though he carry within him also the animal instincts. His soul of course, with its transforming symbolism, completely changes the expression of these instincts. They pass into the service of the soul and its symbolism. Man does not kill, like a tiger, for food to eat — he kills because of spiritual necessity. Not even wars entirely outside a High Culture are purely animal, entirely devoid of symbolic content. With man that would be impossible — only something spiritual can bring masses on to a battlefield. But the symbolism of a High Culture is a grand symbolism — it links past, present and future and the totality of things, dissolving them all into a magnificent performance of which it is later realized that that, too, was a symbol. It is only in comparison with these grand meanings, this grand super-personal destiny, that extra-Cultural human phenomena seem merely zoological. Thus, because of their lower symbolic content, lower spiritual potential, these wars can never approach the intensity, scale, or duration of wars connected with High Culture. Defeat is acknowledged much more easily, for it is only the souls of those engaged that are affected. In Cultural wars however, the soul of the Culture is at work, lending its invisible, but invincible strength to those in its service, and a struggle can be maintained for years against fearful odds. A few defeats, and all would have been up with Genghis Khan. Not so with Friedrich der Grosse, or George Washington, for they felt themselves to be the vehicle of an Idea, of the Future. There can not be said to exist an enmity unless the possibility of war is present. A possibility in fact, not a mere conceivability. Nor need the possibility be daily and imminent. Nor need the |
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door be closed on negotiations before the possibility of war, and therefore true enmity can be said to exist. Not even among warlike States is life a daily blood-shed. War is the highest possible intensification of politics, but there must also be something less intense, the period of recuperating, negotiating, steering, preparing. Without the fact of peace, we would not have the word war, and — what the pacifists have never thought of — without war, we could not have peace, in the blissful, dreamy, saccharine, way they use the word. All the fierce energy that war devotes to super-personal struggles would go into domestic discord of one sort or another, and the casualty list would hardly be less. The relation of war to politics is clear. Clausewitz, in the usually misquoted passage, called war “the continuation of political intercourse by other means.” Usually misquoted, because it does not mean that the military fighting is the continuation of politics, for this it is not. Fighting has its own strategic and tactical grammar. It has its own organic rules and imperatives. War does not have however a motivation of its own — this is supplied by politics. As is the intensity of the political struggle, i.e., of the enmity, so is the war. It was insight into this interrelationship that prompted an English diplomat to say that a politician was better trained for fighting than the soldier, for he fights continually and the soldier only occasionally. It is also observable that professional soldiers would turn a war into an agon before political soldiers would. The phrase political soldier is only ad hoc, to designate anyone fighting from conviction, rather than from profession. Clausewitz expressed in the same chapter a description of this relationship between politics and war that has validity in this century: “As war belongs to politics, so does it take on its character. When politics becomes grand and powerful, so does |
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the war, which can ascend to the height where it attains to its absolute form.” War presupposes politics, just as politics presupposes war. Politics determines the enemy, and the time of opening the war. These are not problems for the soldier. Armies must be prepared to fight any political unit. War and politics cannot be defined in terms of mutual aim, or purpose. It makes no organic sense to say that war is the aim of politics, or politics of war. It could not be, in either case. Each is the prerequisite of the other, neither could exist without the other. A given policy could aim at a certain war, naturally, but no politics could possibly aim at war in general. It is the eventuality of war which gives to political thinking its hall-mark that makes it a different form of thinking from, say, economic thinking, moral, scientific, or esthetic thinking. IIThe disjunction of friend-enemy being the essence of political thinking and acting, is this to say that there is nothing between? No, for neutrality exists as a fact. It has its own rules and conditions of existence. The Western Culture developed as a part of its international law — a law governing neutrality. The very formulation of these rules for neutrals shows that the decisive thing is the conflict, the friend-enemy disjunction. The problem for a neutral is how to keep out; it is not the problem of the others in the usual case how to keep the neutral out. The whole practice of the law of neutrality was dependent upon who was at war. If the Great Powers were at war, neutrals had as a matter of practice, few rights. If small powers were engaged in a war, and the Great Powers were neutral, neutrals had many rights. |
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But the essential thing is that neutrality as a policy stands in the shade of the practical possibility of war and active politics. For a country to become neutral as a form of existence would be to cease to exist as a political unit. It might continue to exist economically, socially, culturally, but politically it could not exist if it were neutral. To renounce war is to renounce the right to an enemy. As long as a power is committed to war in any one given eventuality, it has not adopted total neutrality. Thus, Belgium’s neutrality during the 19th century was only a word, and not a fact, for it maintained an army, diplomatic representation abroad, and it entered into military understandings with France and England against Germany. As long as a country maintains an army it cannot say its basic national policy is neutrality. An army is an instrument of politics, even if only a politics of self-defense. Politics and neutrality exclude one another, as do neutrality and continued existence. Here again, another instance of the polemical nature of all political language: Neutrality was turned into a polemical word by certain small countries of Europe. Actually by their very existence they were serving the political purposes of one half of Europe against the other half. This position, of being committed by their very existence to one side of a struggle, they called “neutrality.” They knew their politics would involve them in war, they knew on which side they would be, and when the war did come, they cried aloud that their “neutrality” had been violated. To renounce politics — which is what total neutrality means — is to renounce existence as a unit. In many cases it is the part of wisdom and the dictates of Culture to amalgamate with another power, to renounce an empty existence as a unit, an existence without a meaning or a future. In addition to neutrality as a precarious fact, during war, and neutrality as a polemical fraud, there is neutrality which |
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arises from the hopelessness of carrying on a war successfully. This is closer to true neutrality, for what it means is that powers reduced to such a case have disappeared from the calculations of the other powers, unless of course the land in question is attractive as spoils or as a battlefield. In this case, it must choose for itself to which of the powers still in the struggle it will surrender its independence. If it fails to do this, the choice will be made for it. A power which by its economic weakness, small size, or age, cannot possibly carry on a war has in effect renounced war and become neutral. Whether it is allowed to continue a posthumous existence depends entirely on how attractive its domains are. For purposes of high politics, it is not a political, but a neutral factor. From the development of colossal war technics came the fact that few powers can support or wage a war. This led the rationalists and Liberals, ever bright with a new wish-informed thought, to announce that the world was becoming pacified. No more war or politics — “power-politics” is their word, just as one could talk of beauty-esthetics, utile-economics, good-morality, piety-religion, legal-law — the world is become neutral, the occasions of war are going, political powers can no longer afford wars, and the like. It is not war or politics which is disappearing, it is only that the number of contestants has grown less. A pacified world would be one in which there was no politics. It would thus be one where no human difference could possibly arise which could range men against one another as enemies. In a purely economic world men could be opposed, but only as competitors. If morality was also there the proponents of different theories could oppose one another, but only in discussion. Religionists could oppose one another, but only with the propaganda of their respective faiths. It would have to be a |
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world in which there was no one who would kill, or better yet, such a languid, colorless and boring world that no one could possibly take anything seriously enough to kill or risk his life about it. The only conclusion to be drawn is that a rationalist, Liberal, or pacifist who believes that it is possible for war to vanish simply does not understand what the word war means, its reciprocal existence with politics or the nature of politics as the ranging of men against one another as enemies. In other words, and in the kindliest words possible, these people do not know what they are talking about. They wish to abolish war by politics, or even by war. If war were gone and politics remained, they would then abolish politics by war, or perhaps by politics. They confuse verbal virtuosity with political thinking, logic with soul-necessities, accident with history. As for superpersonal forces, they do not exist, because they cannot be seen, weighed and measured. IIISince the symbiosis of war and politics forms its own thought-category, independent of other ways of thinking, it follows that a war could not be carried on from a purely nonpolitical motive. If a religious difference, an economic contrast, an ideological disjunction, were to reach the degree of intensity of feeling at which it would range men against one another as enemies, it would thereby become political, and such units as formed would be political units and would be guided by a political way of maneuvering, thinking, and valuing, and not by a religious, economic or other way of thinking. Pure economics could not possibly wage a war, for war does not pay economically. Pure religion could not wage a war, nor pure ideology, |
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because war cannot spread religion, cannot convert, but can only result in an accretion or diminution of power. Motives other than strictly political ones can indeed actuate a war — but the war takes them up into itself, and they vanish into it. Western Christianity has motivated wars, such as the Crusades, but these wars did not let loose the forces upon which Christianity places a positive value. Economics has motivated wars, but the immediate result of a war has never been a profit. For this reason the Liberals and rationalists comfortably convinced themselves before 1914 that war had vanished because it did not show a profit. They were moving in their private world of abstraction, where economics was the sole motive of human conduct, and where invisible superpersonal forces did not exist. And 1914 did not cause them to change their theory — no, where the facts and theory conflict, it is the facts which need revision. 1914 caused them to re-implement their theory: The First World War was all the more proof of their viewpoint, for it showed that it was economically necessary that war disappear. These people did not know that economic necessity of human beings is never taken into account by superpersonal forces. Could they get no clue from the statement of one of the most immediate participants in the feverish flurry of negotiations of July, 1914, that all of the statesmen concerned merely drifted into the war? A strictly factual view shows that superpersonal organisms have no economics in our sense of the word, for they are purely spiritual. When Culture populations nourish themselves — and that is what economics is — they are nourishing the higher organism, for the populations are its cells. Its cells are to the superpersonal soul as the cells of a human body are to the human soul. A war from purely religious, economic, or other, motives would be senseless as well as impossible. From religious contrasts |
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arise the thought-categories of believer and non-believer, from economics those of co-worker and competitor, from ideological those of agreer and disagreer. Only from political contrasts come friend-enemy groupings, and only from enmity can come war. The enmity can start elsewhere the personal distaste of the mistress of a ruler has brought about an enmity grouping among Western States — but when it comes to enmity, it is politics. Although the enmity may have started on a religious contrast, when it comes to war, one will fight against believers, or accept the help of non-believers. Only the Thirty Years War need be mentioned in this connection. Though economics be the beginning of the enmity, once it rises to the intensity of enmity, one fights without regard to the economic consequences of his fighting, but only to the political consequences. Other thought-categories claim they should have a monopoly of thinking, that the political should be subject to them. The 20th century outlook on politics merely observes that they do not as a matter of fact. From an esthetic standpoint, war and politics may be ugly, from an economic, wasteful, from the moral, wicked, from the religious, sinful. These viewpoints, however, are neutral from the political standpoint, which tries first, to assess the facts, and second to change them, but never tries to value them according to a non-political scheme of values. Some politicians do this, it is true. English politicians in particular, after Cromwell, felt an inner compulsion to present every one of their wars as somehow directly involving Christianity, even a war which planted the Hammer and Sickle in the heart of Europe was a war for Christianity. But this does not affect what I am saying here, as this sort of thing only affects vocabulary, but does not touch facts, or action. Using a nonpolitical terminology or propaganda cannot depoliticize politics, |
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any more than using a pacifist terminology can debellicize war. Politicians are usually not pure in their thinking any more than other men. Even a saint commits sins, even a scientist has his private superstitions, even a divine may have his little taint of mechanism, even a Liberal may have his minuscule trace of animal instinct which if released may cause a sanguinary war, after the conclusion of which he may try to exterminate the human beings comprising the population of the former enemy. Just as a war cannot, as a matter of fact, be purely economic, religious, or moral, it follows that a war need not qualify under any other category in order to be justifiable from the political standpoint. The Scholastic philosophers set forth the ethico-religious prerequisites of a just war. St. Thomas Aquinas formulated them in a fashion which is final for ethico-religious thought. From the political standpoint however, the test of the justification is quite different. It is of course obvious that the word justification is inadequate, since this word belongs originally to moral thinking and not to political thinking. It must therefore not be interpreted as an invasion of the field of morality if the word justification is used in this connection, for what is meant is appropriateness, desirability, advantageousness, and indeed these are contained in the secondary meaning of the word justification. Now, in this practical, political sense, what wars are justified? Politics is activity in regard to power. Units engaged in politics may gain or lose power. Instinct and understanding direct them to seek to increase power. War is the most intense method of trying to increase power. Thus a war which has no practically foreseeable possibility of increasing power is not politically justifiable. A war which promises an increase in power is politically justifiable. This is what the word success means in this connection, i.e., that increased |
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power is the result of the war. When diminished power is the result of the war, the war was unsuccessful. IVThe words defeat and victory thus divide into two sharply and precisely defined sets of meanings: the military and the political. Although the armies in the field may be on the winning side, nevertheless the unit to which they supposedly belong may emerge from the war with less power than it entered upon it. I say supposedly belong for the reason that when a political unit is in the situation where even military victory means political defeat, it is not in political reality an independent unit. Thus: if there were only two powers in the world, the one gaining the military victory in a war would of necessity gain the political victory. There is no second possibility. But if there were more than two powers engaged in a war, and a military victory was gained, one or more powers must have gained the political victory, i.e., must have increased in power. Thus if any power, despite the fact that it was on the winning side in a military sense, nevertheless emerged with less power, it was in fact fighting for the political victory of another power. In other words it was not actually an independent unit, but was in the service of another unit. To be specific instead of general: after the First World War, England, although on the side of the victorious in a military sense, was weaker in the political sense, i.e., it had less power afterwards than before the War. In the War of the Spanish Succession, France emerged from the War weaker than it had entered, despite the fact that it had gained the military victory. But between these two sets of meanings of the words victory and defeat, there is an order of rank: the political meaning is |
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primary, for war itself is subsidiary to politics. Any politician would prefer a military defeat coupled with political victory to the converse. Despite the military defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars, Talleyrand negotiated a political victory for France out of the Congress of Vienna. To say that a unit gained a military victory and also suffered a political defeat is only another way of saying that the military opponent was not a real enemy. A real enemy is he whom one can strike down and thereby increase one’s own power. It is for the politician to determine whom to fight, and if he selects as the enemy a unit at whose expense no power can possibly be gained even in a militarily successful war, that politician was incapable. He may be merely stupid, he may be carrying on a private parasite-politics, using the lives of his countrymen to implement his personal antipathies, like Graf Brühl in the Seven Years War, he may be a distorter, representing an outer force not belonging to the Nation, or even to the Culture. Such a politician may also be a traitor who sells himself for a private economic consideration, like the Poles who disappeared upon the outbreak of war in 1939 and were never heard of again. But regardless of why a politician chooses for an enemy a unit which was not a real enemy, the fact remains that in so doing he is abdicating the sovereignty of his State and placing it therewith in the service of another State. The classic example of this in recent history is, of course, England’s participation in the Second World War. England was on the victorious side in the military sense, but sustained a total defeat in the political sense. Already during the war a member of the English Parliament was able to announce that apparently England was a dependency of America. At the conclusion of that War, England’s power and prestige had sunk |
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so low that it had to abandon the Empire. Extra-European forces were the victors. England had fought in the Second World War and had given lives and position for the political victory of others. It was not the first time in history, nor will it be the last, but because of its magnitude, it will always remain the classic example. A tiny island of some 242,000 quadrate kilometers, with only 40,000,000 population, nevertheless, England controlled in 1900 17/20 of the surface of the earth. This includes all the seas, on which England was supreme in the sense that it could deny them to any other power. In less than 25 years, or after the First World War, 1914–1918, England found this sea supremacy gone as well as its commercial primacy, and its position of arbiter of Europe in the sense that it could prevent any power taking first place. In less than 50 years, or after the Second World War, 1939–1945, all was gone, the Empire and also the independence of the homeland. The lesson of course is that a structure built through centuries of war, bloodshed, and high political tradition of choosing always for an enemy him whose defeat would increase the Empire of England — that this can be lost through one or two wars against a power not a real enemy. In 1939 even there could be no difference of opinion among political thinkers that England could not have an enemy in Europe, since the extra-European forces, Japan, Russia and America had become decisive in world-politics. But in 1946 there could be no difference of opinion on this subject among human beings anywhere in the world, regardless of their ability or inability to think politically. Always excepting the Liberals, of course, who move among theories, and not among facts. Indeed, even after this disastrous War, Liberals, distorters and stupid persons in England continued to glory in the “victory” |
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of England. From the political standpoint, the most hopeful fact for England’s future in the period after the War was that the extra-European occupation forces were withdrawn from England. Thus we have seen again the existential nature of organic alternatives: a unit can either fight a real enemy, or it must lose. And again, a unit not fighting a real enemy is in the service of another power — there is no middle ground. If a unit is not fighting for itself, it is fighting against itself. The broadest formulation of this fundament is: an organism must be true to its own inner law of existence, or it will sicken and die. It is the inner law of a political organism that it must increase its own power; this is the only way it can behave toward power. If it tries to confer power on another organism, it injures itself. If it tries merely to prevent another organism from attaining power, it injures itself; if it gives up its complete existence to blocking another organism, quite regardless of its success in this negative aim, it will destroy itself. France from 1871 onward is an example of the latter. The whole idea of the existence of France as a State was to block and frustrate a neighboring State. The inspiriting slogan of this idea was Revanche. The idea was pursued for decades, and in the process, French power was destroyed. The policy could not of course have arisen in a healthy organism. |
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the possibility of civil war to be present, or a severe crisis in the organism, which renders the organism liable to damage or extinction from without. Therefore, every organism, by its very existence, has the characteristic that it assumes power over the determination of all issues. This does not mean that it plans the total life of the population — economic, social, religious, educational, legal, technical, recreational. It means merely that all of these things are subject to political determination. Many of these things are neutral to some States, but objects of interest to others. But all organisms will intervene when an inner grouping may possibly become a focus of a friend-enemy disjunction. This describes all political units whatever, entirely independently of how they formulate their written constitutions, if they have any. The Law of Totality affects individuals by embracing them existentially in the life of the organism. Politics places the life of every man within the political unit in the balance. It demands, by its very existence, the readiness of all individuals in the service of its fulfillment to risk their lives. Other groups may demand dues, periodical attendance at meetings, investment of time in group projects. If they demand however — so fundamental is this organic law of totality — that the member plight his life to the group, they become therewith political. The French public law professor Haurion designated it as the hall-mark of a political unit that it embraced the individual entirely, whereas non-political groups embrace him only partially. This is the Law of Totality in other words. It is thus a touchstone of a group for this purpose whether it demands an existential oath. If a group extracts such an oath from members, the group is political. This Law of Totality, it is hardly necessary to add, is |
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not at all derived from conscription for military service. Conscription exists only for a few centuries within a High Culture, whereas the Law of Totality describes the Culture itself when it is itself constituted as a political organism, and, during the period of concentration of politics in Culture-States, it describes every individual State. Like all organic laws it is existential: if any inner force can challenge it, the organism is sick; if the challenge is attended with success, the organism is in severe crisis and may be annihilated. In any case, its unity will be temporarily in abeyance, with the possibility of partitioning by outer powers. The Law of Sovereignty is the inner necessity of organic existence which places the decision in every important juncture with the organism, as opposed to allowing any group within to make the decision. An important juncture is any one which affects the organism as a whole, its steering in the world, its choice of allies and enemies, the decision of war and peace, its inner peace, its unchallenged inner right to decide controversies. If any of these can be called into question, it is a sign that the organism is sick. In the healthy organism, this sovereignty is absolutely undisputed, and may continue so for centuries. But a new age with new interests may raise contrasts which the rulers do not grasp; they may blunder, and find themselves on the defensive in a civil war. The challenge of the sovereignty of the organism was the first symptom of crisis. If the organism survives the crisis, the new rulers of the same organism will be the focus of the same sovereignty. An important fact has been touched upon with this: it is not the rulers who are sovereign within the meaning of this law. Their powers in fact are derived from their symbolic-representative position. If a stratum represents and acts in the Spirit of the Age, revolution against it is impossible. An organism true to itself cannot be sick or in crisis. |
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The Law of Sovereignty does not mean that every aspect of group life within the organism is dominated at all times by the political, nor that everything is organized, or that a centralized system of government necessarily reaches out always and destroys every organization of whatever kind. The outlook developed here is purely factual, and the Law of Sovereignty describes all political organisms; it is a formulation in words of a quintessential characteristic of a political organism. Totality of organization — the “Total State” — is a phase of political organizations at certain times and under certain conditions. Some States are neutral in religious matters, others promulgate an official religion. Some States during the 19th century were more or less neutral economically, others intervened in the economic life. In the 20th century all States intervene in economic affairs. Different terminology is used to describe this intervention in different States, and the degree of intervention depends on the necessity of the organism. Thus an organism with relatively abundant economic resources will intervene to a lesser degree than one which must make every particle of work and material count. But this does not alter the fact that all States intervene in economics in the 20th century. The Law of Sovereignty is independent of the fact that in a given organism some internal force, say, religion or economics, may be stronger than the government. Such a thing can, and often does, exist. If this internal force is not yet strong enough to hinder the government, it is not yet political; if it is strong enough only to stalemate the government, but not yet strong enough to create war, then there is no political unit present. If no one can make a determination of enmity, or of war, there is no politics. This means that other units which preserve their political character can either ignore the sick unit in making their own combinations, or can attack it with good initial advantage. |
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The Law of Sovereignty is thus also existential. It describes a healthy organism, on its path to fulfillment. Where this law does not obtain, the organism is — vis-à-vis other organisms of the same kind — in abeyance, and if this condition persists, the political organism will disappear. The best example of a case where the Law of Sovereignty showed its existential character is that of 18th century anarchic Poland . The weakness and sickness of the organism led to its repeated partitioning. |
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In the 19th century Western Civilization, the comparative neutrality of the various States, and therefore the apparent weakness of the States vis-à-visinternal economics units and their tactics, e.g., trade unions with their strikes, led the Liberals and intellectuals to announce, a bit prematurely as it turned out, that the State was dead. “This colossal thing is dead,” announced the French and Italian syndicalists. They were heard by other rationalists, and Otto von Gierke came out with his doctrine of “the essential equality of all human groups.” This was, of course, a way of denying the primacy of the State, and was thus polemical and not factual. The intellectuals wanted the State to be dead, and so they announced its passing as a fact. This theory came to be known as the doctrine of “the pluralistic State.” It took its philosophical foundation and its political theology from pragmatism, a philosophy of materialization of the spiritual evolved in America. Pragmatism branded the seeking for a last unity, in whatever realm, even in that of nature-study, as a superstition, |
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a remnant of Scholastic. Thus no more Cosmos, and naturally no more State. This outlook was peculiarly adapted to the members of the Second Internationale, which was liberal in tendency. Its two poles of thought were the individual, at one extreme, and humanity, at the other. It saw the “individual” as living in “society” as a member of many organizations, an economic enterprise, a home, a church, a Turnverein, a trade-union, a nation, a State, but none of these organizations had any sovereignty whatever over the others, and all were politically neutral. The fighting proletariat of the Communists became in such a pluralistic State also a politically neutral trade-union or party. All the organizations would have their claim on the individual, who would be bound to a “plurality of obligations and loyalties.” The organizations would have relations and mutual interests, but no subjection to the State, which would be merely an organization among organizations, not even primes inter pares. Such a pluralistic State is of course not a political organism. If an external danger were to threaten such a State, it would either succumb at once, or else fight, in which case, it would become at once a political organism, and the “pluralism” would vanish. Such a pluralistic thing is not politically viable. There is always the possibility of an external danger, an internal natural catastrophe, such as a drought, famine or earthquake, which would force centralization, or the arising of a group with political instincts which aims at total power over other groups, and which does not have enough intellect to understand the refined theory of the “pluralistic” State. America, before 1914, was more or less such a thing, and from 1921 to 1933 it resumed its pluralism. This “pluralistic State” came to an end in 1933, when a group arose which seized for itself a totality of power. |
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Political theories, like “pluralistic State,” “dictatorship of proletariat,” “Rechtstaat,” “check and balance,” all have political significance, provided they attain to a certain vogue. This significance is dual: first, all such theories are imperative and polemical, and, by demanding a change in the internal form of the State, show by their very existence at least that the State against which they are complaining is sick; secondly, they are a technic for weakening the State further, by working up real contrasts and finally rising to the intensity of a friend-enemy disjunction, i.e., Civil War. The 19th century was the heyday of using theories as political technics. It will be as difficult for the 21st century to understand the idea of “dictatorship of the proletariat” as it is for us to understand how Rousseau’s theories could have been the focus of so much political passion. The frightful crisis that occurs in all High Cultures when they enter upon their last great phase, Civilization, the externalization of the Culture-soul, is also the birth-time of Rationalism. As Napoleon said, “Intellect runs about the pavements in France.” Intellect, the externalized, analyzing, dissecting faculty of the soul, applies itself also to politics. The results are a spate of theories, decline in the internal authority of all States, and the calling into question of the internal authority in all States. |
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It has been seen that theories are a technic for weakening the State by trying to work up a friend-enemy disjunction on the basis of the theory. This technic is available not only to internal groups which aspire to attain to true political significance, but also to other States. The other State need not even have to carry out an intervention in order to reap the benefit of the activity of theorizing groups in another State. We have seen that a State which fights a power not a real enemy is thereby fighting for a third power. This was but an instance of a law which is broader, and which is called the Law of Constancy of Inter-Organismic Power. It may be thus formulated: In any age, the amount of power in a State-system is constant, and if one organic unit is diminished in power, another unit, or other units are increased in power by the same amount. If a statesman, entrusted with the destiny of a State, moves with the sure consciousness of mastery which a feeling for organic laws confers upon him, he can never choose for the |
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enemy of his State a power which his State cannot defeat, for such a power would not be a real enemy. He would know, even if only unconsciously, that the power which his own State would lose, in a war it could not win, would merely be transferred to some other power, either the one wrongly chosen as enemy, or a third power. One of the many phenomena which instance the Law of Constancy of Inter-Organismic Power is that of a given State being racked internally by groups using theories to work up internal contrasts. A point will be reached — short of the point of civil war, which of course dissolves the organism at least temporarily — in this process at which the external power of the organism will be diminished. The power lost passes thereby to another State or States. The circumstances of the total situation determine which other power will be the beneficiary of this accretion of power. Even the particular theory which the agitating group is using plays often a certain role, for certain theories are owned by certain powers. France owned the theories of “democracy” and “equality” from 1789 to 1815. England owned the theory of “liberalism” in its many forms from the middle of the 19th century down to the First World War. Russia took over the theory of “dictatorship of the proletariat” in 1917. IIIn reality there is no such thing as a “political association” or a “political society” — there can only be a political unit, a political organism. If a group has real political significance, as shown by its ability to determine a real enmity, with the actuality or possibility of war, the political unity becomes decisive, and, even though it started out as a free intellectual association, it has become a political unit, and has lost entirely any “social” |
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or “associative” character it may have had. This is no mere distinction of words, for the political is its own thought category. To be in politics is not the same as to be in a society, since a society involves no risk of life. Nor can a society become political by calling itself so. True political thinking, occasioned by the presence of a political organism will not take place in it, unless it acquires real political unity, and the only way it can do this is to be the focus of an enmity-opposition, with its possibility of war. The fact that a group in an “election” votes as a unit does not confer upon it political significance; usually the “election” itself has no political significance. |
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In the matter of elections which had a vogue of almost two centuries during the life of the Western Civilization, both in Europe and in its spiritually dominated areas elsewhere, an important law of political organisms is shown. In “democratic” conditions — the origin and historical significance of “democracy” are shown elsewhere — occur the inner-political phenomena known as “elections.” It was the theory of “democracy” arising about 1750 that the “absolute” power of the monarch, or the aristocracy, depending on local conditions, must be broken, and this power transferred to “the people.” This use of the word “people” shows again the necessarily polemical nature of all words used politically. “People” was merely a negative; it merely wished to deny that the dynasty, or else the aristocracy, belonged to “the people.” It was thus an attempt to deny the monarch or aristocracy political existence; in other words, this word implicitly defined them as the enemy, in the true political sense. It was the first time in Western history that an intellectualized theory became the |
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focus of political happening. Wherever the monarch or aristocracy were stupid or incapable, wherever they looked backward instead of adapting themselves to the new century, they went down. Wherever they took over the theories themselves and interpreted them officially, they retained their power and their command. The technique of transferring this “absolute” power to “the people” was to be through plebiscites, or “elections.” The theoretical proposal was to give the power to millions of human beings, to each his nth/millionth fraction of total existing political power. This was of course impossible in a way that even the intellectuals could see, so the compromise was “elections” through which each individual in the organism could “choose” a “representative” for himself. If the representative did something, by a satisfying fiction it was agreed that each little individual “represented” had done that himself. In a short time it became obvious to men interested in power, either for themselves personally, or to carry through their ideas, that if one worked previously to one of these “elections” to influence the minds of the voting populace, he would be “elected.” The greater one’s means of persuasion of the masses of voters, the more certain was his subsequent “election.” The means of persuasion were whatever one had at hand: rhetoric, money, newsprint. Since elections were large things, disposing of large amounts of power, only those who commanded corresponding means of persuasion could control them. Oratory came into its own, the Press stepped out as a lord of the land, the power of Money towered above all. A monarch could not be bought; what bribe could appeal to him? He could not be put under the usurers’ pressure — he could not be sued. But party politicians, living in times when values became increasingly money-values, could be bought. Thus democracy presented the picture of the |
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populace under the compulsion of elections, the delegates under the compulsion of Money, and Money sitting in the seat of the monarch. So the absolute power remained — as it must in any organism, for it is an existential law of every organism that: The power within an organism is constant, and if individuals, groups, or ideas within the organism are diminished in power, some other individuals, groups, or ideas are increased in power by that amount. This Law of Constancy of Intra-Organismic Power is existential, for if a diminution of power in one place within does not pass elsewhere within the organism, the organism is sickened, weaker, and may have lost its political existence as an independent unit. The history of South America from 1900 to 1950 is rich in examples of triumphant revolutions against regimes that stripped them of power — which then moved to the United States of North America, and as long as that condition continued, the country in which such a revolution had occurred was a colony of Yanqui imperialismo. |
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We have seen what the pluralistic State is. There is, however, another type of pluralism, one of fact and not of theory. There is a pluriverse in fact, which is not merely an attempt to prove one philosophy or to deride another. The world of politics is a pluriverse. Although politics has been defined as activity in relation to power, and the inner nature, prerequisites, and invariable characteristic of politics have been set forth, nevertheless the nature of power itself remains to be shown. Power is a relation of control between two similar organisms. The degree of control is determined by the nature of the two organisms acting reciprocally on one another. Power appears, in its dim beginnings, in the animal world, where the beasts of prey exert something similar to power over their prospective victims. As something more than transitory, something constituted, however, it begins with man. Animals can be classified spiritually — and there is no point in any other classification, such as the materialistic Linnean one — into two great groups, herbivores and beasts of prey. If the |
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materialistic thinkers had ever looked at it so, they would surely have put man down as a beast of prey. And they would have been correct for the animal part of him. This animal part is in constant tension with the spiritual part, the specifically human soul which sees symbolism in things and gives the symbol primacy over the mere phenomenon. For this is in very truth the deepest depth of all philosophizing whatever. Where does the question of a conflict between “appearance” and “reality” ever come from in the first place? All great philosophy in High Cultures, and there is none without High Cultures, has been saturated with the idea of establishing the true relationship between appearance and reality, and this was in obedience to an instinct which embodies the essence of man: his human soul tells him that Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis. The will-to-power of the beasts of prey is limited and practical; it is fierce but unspiritual. Man carries within him this same will-to-power, but his soul infuses into it a purely spiritual intensity that raises its demands and its performances incomparably above the level of the beast. To the beast his will-to-power comes into play only in killing. Man, however, seeks not to kill, but to control. To control he will kill, but as Clausewitz correctly said, conquerors prefer submission and peace, it is the victim who makes the war. A man with a strong will-to-power wants control, not war as an end in itself. But a display of will-power by one man calls forth opposition elsewhere. Similarly with superpersonal organisms — they do not and cannot exist alone, since, in their political aspect they are units of opposition. Each one exists as a unit-with-the-power-to-choose-and-fight-enemies. The ability to create a friend-enemy disjunction is the essence of the political. But this ability necessitates opponents of similar rank. Hence |
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it is quite total political stupidity to speak of a world with only one State, one Parliament, one government or however they put it. One could forgive Tennyson, but one can only say that if a politician talks about a world with “one State,” “one Parliament,” or “one government,” he is the perfect type of the intellectual ass, and should be anywhere except in a position to distort the destiny of a State and bring misery to the individuals in it. He is an ass, even though he knows better, for — and this will sound self-evident to readers of 1980 and after — there is absolutely no necessity for a politician to deal in lies exclusively, as the Liberal school, the class-warriors, and the distorters believe. Men who are fighting against the Future perhaps have good reason to practice deception constantly, to throw clouds of theories over their actions, to say peace when they mean war, and war when they mean peace, and to keep elaborate classifications of “secret,” “confidential” and the like. The only secrecy that needs to exist in politics is that created by limitations of understanding on the part of individuals — and absolutely nothing can be done about this type of secrecy. For instance, the facts about the nature of politics and power which have been set down here will remain secret from the intellectuals and rationalists forever, even though they read this. And similarly with lies: quite obviously the statesman who is the embodiment of the Spirit of the Age has no need of fundamental lies. He cannot fear the truth, since his actions are those of organic necessity, against which no force within the organism can prevail. Equally obviously he who sets out to strangle the Future, like Metternich and the Fürstenbund, or the Liberals, democrats, party-leaders of whatever nature, culture-distorters, and intellectuals of the period 1900–1975 have daily, pressing need of lies, ever bigger and better lies. They like to call this Macchiavellism, and to accuse others of it. But |
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Macchiavelli was certainly not a “Macchiavellian,” or he would not have written his factual, truthful book. Instead he would have written a book about how good human nature is in general, and how extraordinarily good in particular is the nature of princes. Where Macchiavelli writes of deception he is thinking of deceiving the enemy — Liberals and distorters regard deception as the norm of conduct toward the populations whose destiny is in their hands, and over whose lives they hold the power of disposition. The classic example in this realm is and will always remain the “election” in America in the Fall of 1940. There were two candidates, representing the same interests, and the populace was offered its “choice” between them. The issue which the populace would thereby “decide” was whether or not America would intervene in the Second World War. Both candidates said publicly in totally unequivocal language that they would not involve America in the War. Yet both of them were committed to the interests which made them candidates to involve America in the war as soon as possible. Both candidates were of course successful, for in late democratic conditions, the parties become trusts and no longer compete, since competition would injure them both. After the “election,” the two successful candidates carried out their real commitment, took America to war, and sent to their deaths the very men whose lives they had vowed to spare from death in the Second World War, which did not affect American interests. One of the candidates explained after the “election” that his non-intervention promise to the populace was mere “campaign oratory.” In such a case, there is no doubt whatever that Macchiavelli would have counseled the rulers of America to have both candidates declare for intervention. But party-politicians deal in lies from inner compulsion, for their activity itself is an organic lie. |
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units. There is no political unit without organic sovereignty; there is no organic sovereignty without a political unit. What, then, were these two “leagues of nations”? They had two aspects, the ethical and the practical-political. In terms of practical politics, they were polemical realities. Whatever power controlled them could thus speak for all nations, and thus any power opposing it was hors-la-loi, outside the comity of nations, not even human, for the league was humanity. They rapidly of course, needless to say, passed into the control of certain member-States, according to the Law of Sovereignty — where there is no sovereignty there is no independent political unit, and sovereignty must therefore reside elsewhere. And, in fact, the first league of nations, formed after the First World War, passed into the control of England. The second league of nations, formed in a time — after the Second World War — when politics had entered upon a more absolute stage, was seized by America. This was foreseeable from the fact that Russia had allowed the geographical site of it to be established in America. This was not merely to keep out the undesirable swarms of ideologues, parasites, and holiday-makers, such as necessarily accompany every “league of nations,” and to keep out the spies who pullulate in such a condition, but it actually showed a limited and secondary interest in the thing. In the past, certain powers have owned certain theories. Conversely, there has never been an important theory that did not have practical, political ownership. A theory without a political unit to use it to practical purpose is not important; if the protagonists of a theory have sufficient passion and non-theoretical political skill to work up intense feeling with their theory, they will possibly attain power with such a weapon. If they reach a point just short of power, an already existing political |
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unit will appropriate the theory for practical purposes. Example: Marxism, taken over in 1918 by Bolshevik Russia for political use against Europe, when its protagonists in Germany showed themselves politically stillborn. The “league of nations” theory was, in fact, owned by America. Whoever spread the idea — even England, which seized the first “league” — was increasing the power of America, whether he knew it or not. It was inevitable that politicians free of ideology, like the Kremlin Mongols, would see this. Since they understood how to use theories, it was obvious they would allow no political unit to hamstring them with its theory. Thus perished the second and last “league of nations.” There was also an ethical aspect to these leagues. They were another example of the deception that was still thought in the first half of the 20th century to be a necessity of political conduct. They were actually nothing but polemical attempts to deny Europe. The formation of Europe as a political unit was in the Spirit of the Age. Whoever agitated anything else was merely negating this idea. This explains the fact that though the two “leagues of nations” accomplished nothing else as a political fact, nevertheless they prevented — Europe. This is quite independent of whether all people participating were conscious of this. However, it is the organic task of the politician to be conscious of political reality and to understand and assess rightly the possibilities of the time. It is of course now known that many persons who participated in these world-frauds were quite conscious of the realities. From what has been said about the nature of political organisms the relation of the statesman to his political organism is obvious: just as he calls on his populace to die, he cannot refuse if necessary to give his own life. To his political unit he owes |
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all his physical energies and all his talent and genius. For him to be careless in researching a situation — and above all — for him to do that which he knows is contrary to the furtherance of the life of the organism is to forfeit his right to live. He can consider himself lucky indeed if he is able to die of a heart attack, brain concussion, blood clot or simply old age. When the extra-European forces gradually increased their power to such an extent that the independent existence of the West became problematical — this was evident from 1920 onward, and was transparent from 1933 — it was the collective duty to their States and to the Western Civilization for all statesmen in Europe to endeavor to save their respective States and Western States collectively from political annihilation by extra-European forces. Thus any statesman in a European State who sabotaged the general West-European understanding and final settlement that was sought by the custodians of the spirit of the Western Civilization was a strangler and distorter of the destiny of his own country and of that of the Western Civilization. The ethics thus formulated is an ethics of fact. It is organic, political, factual and nothing else. Its sole imperative is an organic-political one. It is distinguished from religious ethics in that it has no theological sanction. It is distinguished from all ethical systems whatever in that it only sees one relationship — that of the individual to the political unit. Nor does it have a sanction in the punitive sense. The organic relationship between the political unit and the statesman itself sets the ethical imperative. If the statesman violates it by injuring instead of furthering the life of the organism, the sanction is a matter for Destiny, the inner force of organisms. By doing so he forfeits his right to live, but often he is fortunate enough to escape with his life. The existential |
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embrace of the lives of the individuals in it which has been shown to be an essential characteristic of a political unit makes no exception in favor of politicians. At its highest tension, this organic imperative causes a statesman in its service to tie his own life to the success of his own idea for the organism. Bismarck and Friedrich der Grosse also were determined to take their lives in the event of failure. |
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The Law of Sovereignty describes characteristics of all political units whatever. It places the decision in every matter having political significance with the organism. Depending on circumstances any one, or even more, internal issues may become important politically, i.e., may begin to assume the form of a political unit and determine a friend-enemy disjunction. The government of the organism will always intervene at this point if its understanding and will are unimpaired. Charles I of England allowed this critical juncture to pass, by allowing his first Parliament to send Montague to the tower for preaching the divine right of kings. From then on the situation deteriorated steadily, and a correspondingly increasing amount of force was necessary to attempt to change the direction events were moving. The actual significance of the struggle was seen from the very beginning by the contemporary political thinker Thomas Hobbes, who wrote against the State-destroying nature of the Parliamentary position. He was also sensitive enough to the situation to know when things had reached the stage of personal |
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insecurity, and left England in 1640. During these years of internal enmity, England did not exist as a political unit, it was ignored in European power-combinations, and it can thank the total European situation that it was not partitioned. The Parliament considered itself the government, the monarchists considered themselves the government. A political outlook naturally does not concern itself with the question of which was “right.” Such a question has no political meaning. It has only a legal meaning, and law is a reflex of politics. Politics is concerned with assessing facts and acting upon them; law comes afterward and has the function of consolidating a given political fact-complex. Law formulates the disjunction legal-illegal according to political dictate. If there is no political unit to prescribe the law, there can be no law. Thus in time of Civil War there is no law — there are two laws. If the result of the War is a reconstitution of the former people and territory again as a political unit, it will always turn out that the victor was the one who was legally right all the time, and the defeated was legally wrong. This invariable fact shows the nature of law. Nevertheless, Parliament and King stood opposed, each claiming to be England. Politically, they were both wrong, for there was no England. In political language, two Englands equal no England. Each of the two groups was a political unit, and had become such by determining an enemy. Each of them was conducting itself as a government and each availed itself of the organic political right — also, but afterward a legal right — to determine the inner enemy. An organic characteristic of all political units whatever — that they determine the inner enemy when they feel it necessary — is the internal corollary of the Law of Sovereignty. Thus Cavaliers in Parliamentary territory were the enemy of the government, and their existence was that |
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of outlaws. Correspondingly with adherents of Parliament in Royal territory. It must not be supposed because of the example used of a Civil War, that such determination of the inner enemy only occurs then. On the contrary, if Charles I had declared his opponents to be inner enemies from the very beginning, and had treated them as such, there had been no Civil War. To do this however, he lacked the vigor and the understanding. He should have consulted Hobbes, who understood these things. But Charles was not a reading man, and did not know Hobbes’s treatises on Human Nature and De Corpore Politico. Every political unit in history has exercised in need, and sometimes not in need, its organic power to determine the inner enemy. If it does it soon and proceeds thoroughly, the danger is past. If it procrastinates and takes half-measures, it ceases to be a political unit. If it exercises this power when there is no need, it is merely persecuting its own population, and is sowing seeds of hatred that will one day bear surprising fruit. The organic ethic of the relation of the statesman to his political unit applies also to conduct of this type. The statesman has no organic right to dispose wantonly of the lives of the populace. To send subjects to their death in a war against a power not a real enemy, a war which thus by its very nature must be unsuccessful, or to declare a group as an inner enemy when it does not contain the real possibility of constituting itself as a true political unit, is vicious, non-political conduct in both cases. Such a man exposes himself to the organic sanction that Destiny often imposes in such cases. This organic right to determine the inner enemy is not always exercised in the same manner. It may be open: arrest, sudden attack, shooting down at home, butchery in the streets. It may be concealed: drawing up of punitive laws general in their |
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terms but applying in fact only to one group. It may be purely formless, but nonetheless real: the ruler may attack verbally the individual or group in question. Such a declaration may be used only to intimidate, or it may be a method of bringing about assassination. It may be economic pressure — such a tactic is naturally the favorite of Liberals. A “blacklist” or boycott may destroy the group or individual. It goes without saying that the exercise of such a right has no connection whatever with any written “constitution” which purports verbally to distribute the public power in a political unit. Such a “constitution” may forbid such a declaration of inner enemy, but units with such constitutions have never hesitated in need, and have often invoked such procedure independently of need. Thus the transatlantic part of the anti-Europe coalition in the Second World War carried out, quite independently of necessity, since there was no real inner enemy as a matter of fact, extensive inner persecutions directed against groups and strata of its population. It does not affect the political nature of this activity that it was done by culture-distorting elements, for the organic laws set out here describe all political units whatever, even if they fall into the hands of political and cultural outsiders. IIThis inward application of the Law of Sovereignty is of course valid for political units in all the High Cultures. Our information on it in the Classical Culture is sufficient to show its development there. The best-known example is that of the Resolution of Demophantos in the year 410 B.C. which declared of every person who sought to destroy Athenian democracy that he was “an enemy of the Athenians.” In the same period the |
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Ephors of Sparta declared war on all Helots found living within the territory of Sparta. In our own Culture, the activities of the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada are instructive, and above all the famous document by which Phillip II condemned the entire population of the Netherlands to death as heretics represents about the ultimate development of which this organic right is capable. Calvin’s theocracy in Geneva was outdone by Phillip only quantitatively. In old Roman public law the undesirable was declared solemnly to be “hostis,” which was the word describing the public enemy. The Imperial proscriptions, regardless of their economic motive, were an application of the same organic function. In the Holy Roman Empire, the Acht und Bann were directed against inner dangerous or unwanted elements. They were declared Friedlos, and placed outside all protection. Anyone aiding such a person fell thereby into the same category. The Jacobins and the Comité de salut public slew their thousands of victims, both with and without declaration of enmity. In early democratic conditions, the weakening of the State vis-à-vis internal groups would have made it more difficult to invoke this right, but correspondingly, since all Western States were in more or less the same internal condition, the necessity for its invocation was not often present. In any case the triumph of theories of equality and freedom in the realm of political vocabulary made it inexpedient to invoke the right in the old open, declared, legalistic way. The early democracy was, in the Western Civilization, from about 1800 to 1850. During this period internal sovereignty as exemplified by determination of the internal enemy was more refined, intellectualized, concealed. Examples: The American Alien and Sedition Laws, the Austrian measures against democrats 1815–1848. Bismarck’s laws against class-warriors. |
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Of course in war the right was as forcefully exercised as ever, but was usually legally formless: the Yankees in the American War of Secession, 1861–1865; French Communards, 1871. With the sudden transition to non-democratic conditions marked by the First World War, began the Age of Wars of Annihilation. It could also be called the Age of Absolute Politics. The 19th century was the Age of Economics — not that economics was ever prior in a real sense in the world of action, but economics supplied much of the motivation of politics, as shown by phenomena like the Opium War, the American War of Secession, the Boer War. Economics wants a weak State, and in the Age of Economics, the States were on the defensive, but the new Zeitgeist changed the entire meaning of History and content of action. Because of the fact that the Zeitgeist of the 20th century did not attain to external triumph in all Europe, many supposed that the Age of Economics was not only continuing but was attaining to new victorious heights. That this was not the case was shown by the war which greeted the opening of the century. The war in question was between the Boer State, a colony of the Western Civilization, and England. The War was not against savages, or aborigines of spoil lands and thus does not come into the same classification as the Australian war against the autochthonous tribes of Tasmania, when the victims were hunted down like rabbits to total extermination. We have seen that the armed contests between Western Culture-States were not true wars, but were agonal in nature. The turning point to Civilization was marked by Napoleon, the herald of absolute war and politics, but this tradition continued so strong that in the French War against Prussia, 1870–1871, victorious Prussia still did not think of annihilating the totally defeated foe, nor of subjecting it to an endless military occupation, but contented itself with re-incorporating |
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two provinces and imposing an indemnity which was paid off in a few years. England had also so conducted itself in intra-Cultural armed contests. And yet in 1900, it carried the war against the Boers to complete annihilation. This was in true 20th century style, and note that it was England, the organism which had brought forth the idea of the 19th century and was not destined to produce the idea of the 20th century, which thus acted completely within the spirit of the new age. So strong is the Spirit of the Age — it compels inner submission even though one use the formulae of the past and believe that he is leading a moribund idea to new life. The Boer War was mentioned because it marked a turning point also in the matter of the internal aspect of the Law of Sovereignty. In this War, the English armies initiated the 20th century method of designating and handling the inner enemy. It is nonetheless an historical epoch in this matter that no real political need existed for what occurred, for we are interested in what did occur, and not in re-writing history. In this War, large numbers of civilian Boers, men, women and children, came into the custody of the English armies. They were taken into custody on the theory that they were a danger to the internal security of the territory controlled by the Empire, that thus they were inner enemies. The numbers involved were considerable, too great for the systems of prisons and jails there existing. The solution adopted was to place them into detention camps, hastily constructed ad hoc. These were called “concentration camps,” and this word was to have a destiny of its own. After the First World War, the Age of Absolute Politics showed its manifestations everywhere, and one way it did it was to introduce this “concentration camp” system into every country in the Western Civilization. The more dangerous its |
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external situation, the greater was the necessity of firm inner control, unbroken and unbreakable inner peace, and thus those countries with the most political concern introduced large numbers of persons they declared inner enemies, or in any case treated as inner enemies, into prison camps. But since the word was connected with politics, it acquired polemical significance, and was used by some States as a method of attacking the “morality” of other States. And yet these concentration camps were similar in all countries, just as prisons are. It is not material that extra-European forces imprisoned Europeans in the camps they set up in England, or that Europe imprisoned Slavs, Jews and Bolsheviks in the camps it set up in Europe; the camps were essentially the same from the political standpoint. They both illustrate the internal aspect of the Law of Sovereignty as it develops in the 20th century. The Age of Absolute Politics has a full century more in its course, and thus the number of prison camps and the number of inmates will increase and not decrease. It remains to say a word on the future development of internal sovereignty. Since the spirit of these times and the next is no longer that of economics, but that of absolute politics, sly and veiled methods of acting against inner individuals and groups will fall into disuse. In their place will appear once more open and legally formulated inner enemy-declarations. Even economically motivated determinations will be quite openly pursued with political means. |
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A political unit has the jus belli, the organic right to make war on the enemy it has determined. Not moral right here — this organic right is a thing independent of morality, even though also the strictest Scholastic philosophers gave to political units the purely moral right to wage war. But it is in a purely political way that the word is used here: the right to make war is a part of the habitus of the organism. The existence as a political unit, the determination of an enemy, the making of war, the maintenance of the inner peace, the declaration of the inner enemy, the power of life and death over the life of all subjects — these are merely different facets of politico-organic existence. They cannot be separated; they are an indivisible whole; insofar as they can be defined at all, they can only be so in terms of each other. In the exercise of its power to make war, a State disposes of the lives of its own subjects and of those of the enemy. This bloodshed is not a life-requirement of a State, but occurs merely as a part of the process of acquiring power. The State |
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directly seeking power is not the one that brings about bloodshed and war. No politician whatever would make war against another unit if he thought it would submit to incorporation without a fight. Thus war is always the result of resistance, and not of political dynamism. War is not normative; it is existential only. In the entire panorama of the history of the High Cultures, I doubt that there has been a case where the ruling stratum of a political unit ever decided that, first of all, it wanted war, and then cast about for someone upon whom to make war. It would not be political. Nor is the mere power over life and death generally, jus vitae ac necis, the hall-mark of a political organism. Many States in history recognized this power to be in family units. Old Rome gave it to the paterfamilias. Some States have allowed the master power over the life of the slave. Most states have permitted the victim of an imputation of dishonor to contest for the life of his vilifier. Many States have recognized the right of blood-revenge among clans — although this reaches the very frontier in this matter, and is seldom found, and then only in peace. It is thus quite conclusive that politics, as such, seeks no monopoly of taking life. Politics at its highest potential, war, takes life only because resistance requires it. Politics is activity in relation to power, and there is only one way organic instinct behaves toward power: it seeks more. Metaphysically this is the relation between the soul of man and the soul of the High Culture on the one hand, and the habitus of the beast of prey on the other hand. Although it permits subjects in certain cases, which it determines, in accordance with the Law of Sovereignty, to take life, the State never permits subjects to make war. If a group of subjects assume this power, a new State has arisen. If the right of blood-revenge turns into clan-warfare, the State |
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must intervene, for its existence is involved. That is why, in all States engaged in serious politics, the right of blood-revenge is abrogated. The right to make war and in the process to dispose of life is purely political. No Church could possibly ask its members to die for the Church — this is quite different from insisting that martyrdom is preferable to apostacy — unless it is becoming a political unit. In critical times, many Churches, such as Abu Bekr’s Islam, have become States, but then they are no longer Churches, and they are ruled by the political way of thinking and its basic inner, organic demand for more power, and no longer by the religious imperative of salvation and conversion. It would be cruel and insane to ask men to die in order that the remainder would have an unimpaired, or higher standard of economic life. When war is motivated by an economic idea, the economics vanishes into the war-political situation; i.e., the test of success is the political one, the method of waging it is not reviewed as to its cost, the means used always are military-political, the leadership is always political, and would be so even if exclusively economists were used as the war leaders. Their thinking would indeed be curious, but it would not be economic. Politics and economics are two different directions of human thinking and are hostile to one another. For this reason no true politician and no true soldier would ever with full consciousness carry on or fight a war for an exclusively economic motive, no matter what grand opportunities it offered for personal distinction. Economically motivated wars like the American War of Secession, 1861–1865, the English Opium War, the Boer War were of necessity presented to the participants under an untruthful propaganda. Economics lacks the strength in itself — i.e., “pure” economics — to rouse men to the level of action where they will risk their |
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lives. This is because economics presupposes life, and merely seeks ways of securing, nourishing, perpetuating the life. It simply does not make sense to buy life with death — when death becomes a possibility, we are no longer in the sphere of economics. If economics wants a certain war, it can only bring it about by political means, and then also — we are no longer in the sphere of economics. Morality has often been put forward as the motivation of war, and many wars have been waged in the name of morality. This however does not make sense — that is not according to any Western system of morality — for States are not within the purview of morality, which is valid only for individuals. Furthermore the materialistic morality of the 19th century denounced war as murder. Therefore when protagonists of this type of morality — and they continue to exist and to do so — demand a war to stop war, it is an obvious fraud. The most any one man can do about stopping murder is to refrain from murders himself, but these morality-warriors have not done that. A morality-war is impossible not only from the moral side, but from the war-political side. War is not a norm — one cannot fight against it. War is an existential disjunction, not a system or an institution. There is no rational aim, program, for economic, moral, esthetic or other change, no ever-so-correct norm that would justify one in killing. To adopt war and politics is in fact to abandon the other things. One can retain non-political ideas privately, but if they become public they vanish into the political. The result is politics dressed in moral clothing. Another fact emerges about politics mixed with morality. There are, first, two possible mixtures: that of the Cromwell-Torquemada type on the one hand, in which also the politician believes that he is actualizing morality by his policies, and the |
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Lincoln-Roosevelt type, in which the morality is purely a deception. In the first case, in proportion as the politician thinks morally, his politics is faulty. Thus Cromwell refused in 1653 a Spanish Alliance which would have been highly advantageous to England because he abhorred the religion of Spain. His conduct was of course nonetheless politics, for he made with France the same alliance he refused with Spain and received considerably less from it than Spain had offered. In the second case, where it is not taken seriously, as in the case of Roosevelt, it is not morality at all and is repulsive to honor. Thus morality in politics makes bad politics if taken seriously, and if used cynically, it dishonors him who uses it. The question may be asked why moral vocabulary is imported into politics in this Age of Absolute Politics. The answer is that it is done quite deliberately and politically. It is elementary that politics does not include within the idea enemy any subsidiary content of malice or hatred. Hatred is private; it occurs between antipathetical persons out of their own private hostility. Even though this terminology is different from that of Hegel, the idea is identical. He spoke of the hatred of the public enemy as being undifferentiated and totally free from personality. This is no longer hatred in the primary meaning of that word. War is between States, and when the enemy State is overcome what overcome means is a reflex of the Age, and in an Age of Absolute Politics means total incorporation of the other State — there can be no more war. Enmity ceases, and if there ever was any animosity of any kind it must cease now, since it was directed, if it was political, against the enemy State. That State is gone. But — if the population of a State has been given exclusively propaganda to the effect that the war was not political, but for moral, humanitarian, legal, scientific and other reasons, this |
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population will regard the end of the war as the beginning of unlimited opportunities of oppressing the population of the former enemy State. Moral propaganda thus stands forth in its nakedness — in the 20th century it is a means of fighting a war after the war, a war not this time against a State with weapons in its hands, but against the survivors of the defeat. Herein is the true significance of a phenomenon that mystified many persons at that time — I refer to the “concentration camp” propaganda against Europe, which was developed to its full height after the Second World War. This propaganda was solely for the purpose of a war after the war, thus not a true war, since there was no opposing unit, but an attempt to rouse extra-European populations and extra-European armies of occupation to ever-renewed ferocity and personal hatred against a defenseless European population. Thus a moral “war to end war” develops in actuality into an endless war. A war for humanitarian purposes develops into a war to exterminate by starvation the population of the former State. A war against concentration camps results in bigger and more numerous concentration camps. This must be so in an Age of Absolute Politics, for obviously moral reasons for a war are not necessary in such an age. Propaganda cannot bring more men on to the battlefield than can the Spirit of the Age. Therefore he who is using the vocabulary of morality wishes to import into the struggle a viciousness that the spirit of politics alone cannot develop. Proudhon observed: “Whoever says humanity wishes to deceive.” Only politics shows the real meaning of war. Economics, esthetics, law and the other forms of thought cannot supply its meaning, for war is politics at its highest intensity. The political meaning of a war is that it is waged against a real enemy. To be justified politically, the war must be an affirmation of the |
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political organism or for the saving of the organism. To expend human life in any other war is distortion of the destiny of the State and treacherous dishonorable killing of the soldiers and civilians who die in it. The decision as to who is the enemy must be made by statesmen who embody the national idea, and if it is not, the result is political distortion. In the language of politics a just war is only that one waged against a real enemy. It is immature thinking to suggest that military men should decide in such matters. It is possible for a politician to be also a soldier, but a soldier does not become ipso facto a politician. In Rome all statesmen generally speaking were ex-commanders, but they had gone into the field as part of their political careers. Caesar embarked late in life upon the military career, but how many professional soldiers could have gone into politics with corresponding attainment? In matters of politics, soldiers are circumstanced the same as the populace in general. |
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The essentiality of war to organic political existence is shown by the fact that a State cannot give up its jus belli without thereby giving up political existence. There have been in the history of the High Cultures very few examples of a political unit abandoning, either openly and consciously, or simply through submission, the organic right to make war. And in no case has a power that was important, or even considered itself to be important, renounced this right. The famous Kellog Pa |