Oswald Spengler: Prussianism and Socialism

[Marulus]

Oswald Spengler

Prussianism And Socialism

Translated from the German by Donald O. White

Contents

Introduction

I. The Revolution

II. Socialism as a Way of Life

III. Prussians and Englishmen

IV. Marx

V. The International

[Marulus]

Introduction

This essay is based on notes intended for the second volume of The Decline of the West. The notes comprise, at least in part, the germinal stage in the development of the entire thesis presented in that work. [1]

(1. See Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), I, 46.)

The word "socialism" designates the noisiest, if not the most profound, topic of current debate. Everyone is using it. Everyone thinks it means something different. Into this universal catchword everyone injects whatever he loves or hates, fears or desires. Yet no one is aware of the scope and limitations of the word’s historical function. Is socialism an instinct, or a planned system? Is it a goal of mankind, or just a temporary condition? Or does the word perhaps refer simply to the demands made by a certain class of society? Is it the same thing as Marxism?

People who aim to change the word continually fall into the error of confusing what
ought to be with what shall be. Rare indeed is the vision that can penetrate beyond the tangle and flux of contemporary events. I have yet to find someone who has really understood this German Revolution, who has fathomed its meaning or foreseen its duration. Moments are being mistaken for epochs, next year for the next century, whims for ideas, books for human beings.

Our Marxists show strength only when they are tearing down; when it comes to thinking or acting positively they are helpless. By their actions they are confirming at last that their patriarch was not a creator, but a critic only. His heritage amounts to a collection of abstract ideas, meaningful only to a world of bookworms. His "proletariat" is a purely literary concept, formed and sustained by the written word. It was real only so long as it denied, and did not embody, the actual state of things at any given time. Today we are beginning to realize that Marx was only the stepfather of socialism. Socialism contains elements that are older, stronger, and more fundamental than his critique of society. Such elements existed without him and continued to develop without him, in fact contrary to him. They are not to be found on paper; they are in the blood. And only the blood can decide the future.

But if socialism is not Marxism, then what is it? The answer will be found in these pages. Some people already have an idea of what it is, but they are so diligently involved with political "standpoints," aims, and blueprints that no one has dared to be sure. When faced with decisions, we have abandoned our former position of firmness and adopted milder, less radical, outmoded attitudes, appealing for support to Rousseau, Adam Smith, and the like. We take steps against Marx, and yet at every step we invoke his name. Meanwhile the time for fashioning ideologies has passed. We latecomers of Western civilization have become skeptics. We refuse to be further misled by ideological systems. Ideologies are a thing of the previous century. We no longer want ideas and principles, we want ourselves.

Hence we now face the task of liberating German socialism from Marx. I say German socialism, for there is no other. This, too, is one of the truths that no longer lie hidden. Perhaps no one has mentioned it before, but we Germans are socialists. The others cannot possibly be socialists.

What I am describing here is not just another conciliatory move, not a retreat or anevasion, but a Destiny. It cannot be escaped by closing one’s eyes, denying it, fighting it, or fleeing from it; such actions would merely be various ways of fulfilling it. Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt. The spirit of Old Prussia and the socialist attitude, at present driven by brotherly hatred to combat each other, are in fact one and the same. This is an incontrovertible fact of history, not just a literary figment. The elements that make up history are blood, race—which is created by ideas that are never expressed—and the kind of thought which coordinates the energies of body and mind. History transcends all mere ideals, doctrines, and logical formulations.

For the work of liberating German socialism from Marx I am counting on those of our young people who are sound enough to ignore worthless political verbiage and scheming, who are capable of grasping what is potent and invincible in our nature, and who are prepared to go forward, come what may. I address myself to the German youth in whom the spirit of the fathers has taken on vital forms, enabling them to fulfill a Destiny which they feel within themselves, a Destiny which they themselves are. They must be willing to accept obligations despite hardship and poverty; they must possess a Roman pride of service, modesty in the exercise of authority, and the willingness to take on duties readily and without exception rather than demand rights from others. These conditions once met, a silent sense of awareness will unite the individual with the totality. Such potential awareness is our greatest and most sacred asset. It is the heritage of anguished centuries, and it distinguishes us from all other people—us, the youngest and last people of our
culture.

It is to these representatives of German youth that I turn. May they understand what the future expects of them. May they be proud to accept the challenge.

[Marulus]

I. The Revolution

No people in history has had a more tragic development than our own. In times of serious
crisis all other peoples have fought either for victory or momentary setback; with us the
stakes have always been victory or annihilation. Witness our military history from Kolin
and Hochkirch to Jena and the Wars of Liberation, when the attempt was made on French
soil to win Prussia’s allies for Napoleon by proposing partition; to the desperate hour at
Nikolsburg when Bismarck contemplated suicide; to Sedan, which just barely staved off
a general offensive of the armies poised at our borders by preventing Italy’s declaration
of war; to the frightful tempest of wars on our entire planet, the first thunderclaps of
which have just died away. Only in Frederick the Great’s and Bismarck’s states was
resistance at all feasible.

In all these catastrophes Germans have fought Germans. That it was often tribe against
tribe or sovereign against sovereign is significant only for the surface of history. Beneath
all these conflicts lay the intense discord that inhabits every German soul, an inner
struggle that first erupted ominously in the Gothic age, in the personages of Frederick
Barbarossa and Henry the Lion at the time of the Battle of Legnano. Has anyone
understood this dichotomy in the German soul? Who has recognized in Martin Luther the
reincarnation of the Saxon Duke Widukind? What inscrutable drive was it that made
Germans sympathize and fight with Napoleon when, with French blood, he was
spreading the English idea on the Continent? What makes us conclude that the riddle of
Legnano is profoundly similar to that of Leipzig? Why did Napoleon regard the
destruction of the little world of Frederick the Great as his most urgent problem, and in
his innermost thoughts as an insoluble one?

Now, in the evening of the Western culture, we can see that the World War is the great
contest between the two Germanic ideas, which like all genuine ideas are lived rather
than expressed. Following its actual outbreak in the Balkan outpost skirmish of 1912, it
first assumed the outward appearance of a conflict between two great powers, one of
which had everybody, the other nobody on its side. It reached a provisional conclusion in
the stage of trench warfare and the devastation of huge armies. During this stage a new
formula was found for the unresolved inner discord in the German breast. Currently,
owing to a nineteenth century habit of overestimating the economic factor, we
characterize the conflict by the superficial terms "socialism" and "capitalism." What is
actually taking place behind this verbal façade is the last great struggle of the Faustian
soul.

At the moment in question, although the Germans themselves were not aware of it, the
Napoleonic riddle made its reappearance. With the goal of destroying this masterpiece of
a state, our most genuine and personal creation—so personal that no other people has
been able to comprehend or imitate it, hating it instead like everything daemonic and
inscrutable—an English army invaded Germany.

Believe it or not, that is exactly what happened. The lethal blow in this was not
necessarily aimed by the preachers of cosmopolitanism or other treacherous elements. It
was we ourselves who brought about this calamity—we Germans, with our almost
metaphysical will, our stubborn and selfless determination, our honest and enthusiastic
patriotism. This will of ours is by its very nature a handy weapon for any external enemy
with the practical sense of the English. It is a precarious compound of political ideas and
aspiration, one which only the English are really capable of mastering and implementing.
For us, despite all our passion and self-sacrificing zeal, it has led to political dilettantism;
its effect on our political existence has been disastrous, poisonous, suicidal. It is our
invisible English army, left by Napoleon on German soil after the Battle of Jena.
Our deficient sense of reality, so pronounced as to have the force of a Destiny, has
counteracted the other instinct in the German people, and has caused our external history
to develop as a steady sequence of dreadful catastrophes. It failed us at the height of the
Hohenstaufen period, when the glorious rulers considered themselves exalted above the
demands of mundane life, just as it did in the nineteenth century, giving rise to the
provincial philistinism that we have personified as "the German Michel." Michelism is
the sum of all our weaknesses: our fundamental displeasure at turns of events that
demand attention and response; our urge to criticize at the wrong time; our need for
relaxation at the wrong time; our pursuit of ideals instead of immediate action; our
precipitate action at times when careful reflection is called for; our Volk as a collection of
malcontents; our representative assemblies as glorified beer gardens. All these traits are
essentially English, but in German caricature. Above all, we cherish our private morsel of
freedom and guaranteed security, and we are fond of brandishing it at the precise
moments when John Bull, with sure instinct, would conceal it prudently.

July 19, 1917, was the first act in the drama of the German Revolution. Rather than
simply a change in leadership, it was, as our enemies could tell by the brutal forms it
took, the coup d’état of the English element in us, which saw its opportunity at just that
time. It was not a revolt against the power of an incompetent, but against power in
general. Incompetence at the top level? It is nearer to say that these "revolutionaries,"
among them not a single true statesman, beheld the mote in the eyes of the men in
positions of authority. Did they, at that moment, have anything at all to offer in place of
incompetence besides an abstract principle? It was not a popular revolt. The people
looked on anxiously and doubtfully, though not without a certain amount of Michel-like
sympathy for measures taken against "those at the top." It was a revolution of the caucus
rooms. The term "majority party" does not, in our sense, have anything to do with the
greater number of the people; it is the name of a club with two hundred members.
Matthias Erzberger was tactically the most gifted demagogue among them, excelling at
scandal mongering, intrigue, and ambush, a virtuoso at the child’s game of overthrowing
ministers. He lacked the slightest trace of the English parliamentarian’s gift for
statesmanship; all he did was borrow their tricks. He attracted a swarm of nameless
opportunists who were after some public office or other. These were the late descendants
of the philistine revolution of 1848; for them, political opposition was a Weltanschauung.
These were the latter-day Social Democrats, trying to function without the iron hand of
August Bebel. Bebel’s acute sense of reality would not have tolerated this shameless
spectacle. He would have demanded and achieved a dictatorship either of the Right or the
Left. He would have capsized this parliament and put the pacifists and League of Nations
zealots before the firing squad.

This, then, was the Storming of the Bastille—auf deutsch.

Sovereignty of party leaders is an English idea. In order to put it into effect one would
have to be an Englishman by instinct and have mastered the English style of conducting
public affairs. Mirabeau had this in mind when he said, "The time in which we live is
very great; but the people are very small, and as yet I see no one with whom I would care
to go aboard ship." In 1917 not one person had the right to repeat this proud, sad
statement. This coup d’état was entirely negative in character. It broke the oppression of
political power, it refused to yield to decisions from above, but it lacked the ability to
make new decisions. It overthrew the state and replaced it with an oligarchy of party
subalterns who regarded opposition as a vocation and responsible government as a
presumption. It undermined, shifted, and dismantled everything piece by piece, to the
amusement of political opponents and the despair of observers on the inside. It tried out
newly gained power on the most important officials like a native chieftain testing a rifle
on his slaves. This was the new spirit that prevailed until, in the black hour of final
resistance, the state disappeared.

Following the assault by our English insurgents there came, of necessity, the uprising of
the Marxist proletariat in November of 1918. The scene changed from the halls of the
Reichstag to the city streets. Encouraged by the mutiny of the "Home Army," the readers
of the radical press broke loose, even though they had been abandoned by their leaders,
who were wise enough by now to be only half-convinced of their cause. Following the
revolution of stupidity came the revolution of vulgarity. Once again it was not the people
who initiated action, not even the socialistically trained masses; it was a mob led by the
vermin of journalism. The true socialists were still engaged in the final struggle at the
military front, or lay in the mass graves of Europe. They had risen up in 1914, and now
they were being betrayed.

It was the most senseless act in German history. One looks in vain for anything like it in the history of other countries. A Frenchman would justifiably reject a comparison with
1789 as an insult to his nation.

Was that the great German Revolution?

How drab, how feeble, how utterly void of conviction it all was! Where we expected heroes we found ex-convicts, journalists, deserters roaming about yelling and stealing, drunk with their own importance and impunity, ruling, deposing, brawling, and writing poetry. It is said that such types have sullied every revolution. Perhaps that is true. But in other revolutions the entire people rose up with such elemental force that the dregs simply disappeared. Here it was the dregs alone who went into action. Not a sign of the great mass, forged into unity by a common idea. The party of August Bebel had militant qualities which distinguished it from the socialism of all other countries: the clattering footsteps of workers’ battalions, a calm sense of determination, good discipline, and the courage to die for a transcendent principle. Yet the soul of the party expired when its more intelligent leaders of yesteryear surrendered to the enemy of yesteryear, reactionary philistinism. They did this out of fear of responsibility, out of fear of succeeding in a cause they had championed for forty years. They dreaded the moment when they would have to create reality rather than combat it. When this happened, Marxism and socialism, i.e., class theory and collective instinct, parted ways for the first time. Only the Spartacists retained a modicum of integrity. The smarter ones had lost faith in the dogma, but lacked the courage to break with it openly. Thus we witnessed the spectacle of a working class divorced from the people by a few ideas and doctrines learned by rote. Leaders were actually deserters; followers plodded ahead leaderless; and over on the horizon was a book which the followers had never read and which the leaders had never understood in its proper limitations.

In a revolution the victor is never a single class (the common interpretation of 1789 is false, "bourgeoisie" is just a word). The true victor—and this cannot be repeated often enough—is the blood, the idea become flesh and spirit, a force that drives the totality onward. The victors of 1789 called themselves the bourgeoisie; but every true Frenchman was then and is today a bourgeois. Every true German is a worker. It is part of his way of life. The Marxists held power, but they gave it up voluntarily; the insurrection came too late for their convictions. The insurrection was a lie.

Do we know anything at all about revolution? When Bakunin was opposed in his
intention to crown the Dresden revolt of 1848 by burning all public buildings, he
declared, "The Germans are just too stupid for that," and went on his way. The
indescribable ugliness of our November Days is without precedent. Not one forceful
moment, nothing in the least inspiring. Not one great man, no enduring words, no
incisive actions; only pettiness, loathsomeness, and folly. No, we are not revolutionaries.
No emergency, no party, no press can stir up an anarchic tempest having the same force
as that exhibited in the name of order in 1813, 1870, and 1914. This revolution seemed to
everyone, except for a handful of fools and opportunists, like the collapse of a building,
perhaps most of all to the socialist leaders themselves. It was a unique situation: they had
won suddenly what they had coveted for forty years, absolute power—and they were
miserable. The same soldiers who fought as heroes for four years under the black-whitered
banner turned spineless and impotent under the red flag. This revolution did not
impart fortitude to its adherents; it robbed them of it.

The classical site of Western European revolutions is France. The resounding of
momentous phrases, streams of blood in the streets, la sainte guillotine, terrifying nights
of conflagration, heroic death at the barricades, orgies of the crazed masses—all these
things point up the sadistic mentality of this race. The whole repertoire of symbolic
words and deeds for the perfect revolution originated in Paris, and we only gave a bad
imitation of them. The French showed us in 1871 what a proletarian insurrection looks
like in the face of enemy artillery. And this was surely not the only time.

The Englishman attempts to persuade the domestic enemy of the weakness of his
position. If he is unsuccessful he simply takes sword or pistol in hand and, eschewing
revolutionary melodrama, presents him with the choice. He decapitates his king, for
instinct tells him that this is required as a symbol. For him, such a gesture is a sermon
without words. The Frenchman does such things out of revanche, for the sheer pleasure
of watching a bloody scene. He is titillated by the clever idea of lopping off the royal
head. Without human heads impaled on spikes, aristocrats hanging from lampposts, and
priests slaughtered by housewives, he would be frustrated. He could care less about the
outcome of such days of grandeur. The Englishman desires the goal, the Frenchman
desires the means.

What was our desire? All that we accomplished was a travesty of both techniques. We
produced pedants, schoolboys, and gossips in the Paulskirche and in Weimar, petty
demonstrations in the streets, and in the background a nation looking on with faint
interest. A real revolution must involve the whole people: one outcry, one brazen act, one
rage, one goal.

The real German Socialist Revolution took place in 1914. It transpired in legitimate and
military fashion. In its true significance, scarcely comprehensible to the average person,
it will gradually overshadow the sordid events of 1918 and make them appear as phases
in the long-range development of the Revolution itself.

And yet popular historical opinion will not give prominence to this Revolution, but to the
November uprising. It is easy to imagine how, under ideal conditions, a true proletarian
revolution might have started at the time. This only indicates the glaring cowardice and
mediocrity of those who declared themselves in support of the proletarian cause. Great
revolutions are fought with blood and iron. What might the great popular leaders, the
Independents and the Jacobins, have done in this situation? And what did the Marxists
do? They had the power, they could have done just about anything. One great man from
the ranks of the people could have had the entire nation behind him. Yet never has a mass
movement been more thoroughly ruined by the incompetence of its leaders and their
lieutenants.

The Jacobins were prepared to sacrifice everything because they sacrificed themselves:
"Marcher volontiers, les pieds dans le sang et dans les larmes," as Saint-Just put it. They
did battle against the majority within the nation and against half of Europe at the front.
They swept everything along with them. They created armies out of nothing. They won
victories without officers or weapons. If only their parrot-like German imitators had
unfurled the red banner at the front and declared war to the death against capitalism! If
only they had set an example by staking their lives in the struggle! Had they made this
choice they would not only have breathed life into the mortally exhausted army and its
officers, they would have won over the entire West as well. It was a moment when
personal sacrifice would have spelled victory.

But they ducked out. Instead of stepping to the command of red legions they grabbed top
positions in well-salaried workers’ soviets. Instead of winning the battle against
capitalism they conquered window panes and liberated stores of provisions and state
treasuries. Instead of selling their lives they sold their uniforms. This revolution failed
from cowardice. Now it is too late. We shall never recover what was lost during the
Armistice. The mass ideal degenerated into a series of corrupt wage deals, forced through
without reciprocal promises. In their valor these "revolutionaries" did not shrink from
sponging on the rest of the people, on the farmers, the civil servants, and the intellectuals.
Instead of initiating action they bellowed the slogans "soviet," "dictatorship," and
"republic" so often that within two years’ time they will have become a laughing-stock.
The only "action" that occurred was the overthrow of the monarchy. And yet a republican
form of government has nothing at all to do with socialism.

All this proves that, as opposed to the rest of the people (and it turns out that it is opposed
to them), the "fourth estate," which is actually a negative concept, [2] is incapable of
constructive action. It proves that if this was indeed the socialist revolution, then the
proletariat cannot be its most effective champion. No matter what is yet to ensue, this
question is now definitely resolved. The social class trained by August Bebel for the
decisive struggle has failed right down the line. And it has failed for all time, because
momentum of this sort, once lost, can never be regained. A grand passion cannot be
replaced by embitterment. From now on let there be no illusions among the advocates of
the erstwhile "socialist" program; they have completely alienated the valuable element of
the working class. Formerly the leaders of a great movement, they will one day find
themselves as big-mouthed heroes of street brawls in the suburbs. From the sublime to
the ridiculous is but one step.

(2. The Decline of the West, II, 354 ff.)

Such, then, was the great German Revolution, the event that was heralded in poetry and song for generations. It was a spectacle of such fearful irony that decades must pass before the Germans can see it in its true light: a revolution that succeeded in overthrowing its own aims, and that now aims for something else—without knowing exactly what.

Let us imagine for the moment that we are citizens of the future looking back on these three revolutions: the honorable English Revolution, the superb French Revolution, and the absurd German Revolution. We can conclude that through these events the three
latest peoples of the Western world attempted to achieve the three ideal forms of
existence enunciated in the famous motto: "Liberty, equality, and brotherhood." These
ideals appear in the political programs of liberal parliamentarism, social democracy, and
authoritarian socialism. In each case it seemed that such ideals were a new concept for
these peoples, whereas in reality the ideals were the purest and most extreme expression
of their wholly personal and immutable patterns of life.

In antiquity the purpose of revolutions was to establish the basis on which a stable
existence was at all feasible. Despite the outward signs of passionate struggle that
accompanied them, they were all defensive actions. No one, from Cleon on down to
Spartacus, ever thought to look beyond the immediate crisis toward a general reordering
of ancient society. The three great Western revolutions, on the other hand, have dealt
essentially with a problem of power: Is the will of the individual to be subjected to the
common will, or vice versa? Once a decision was reached, the intention was to force it on
the whole world.

English instinct decided that power belongs to the individual. Life is a free-for-all, every
man for himself, the stronger man wins. The English opted for liberalism and the belief
in the inequality of men. The state was to exist no longer; everyone was to fight his own
battles, for in the end it would benefit all.

The instinct of the French decided that all men are equal, and hence power should belong
to no one. There was to be no such things as subordination, and therefore no order and no
state—in fact, nothing at all. This theoretical ideal of anarchy has, in practice, been
periodically reaffirmed (in 1799, 1851, 1871, and 1918) by the despotic rule of generals
and presidents.

Both of these systems may be called democracy, but for very different reasons. Neither
had anything to do with class struggle in the Marxist sense. The English Revolution,
which produced the type of citizen who leads his life in private and is responsible only to
himself, directed its action against the state rather than the estates. The secular and
religious powers that sustained the state were abolished, and in their place came a
reliance on the advantages of England’s insular location. The estates still exist today,
recognized and respected by all—even by the workers, who honor them instinctively.
Only the French Revolution was a genuine "class conflict," but it was a conflict between
social rather than economic ranks. In France the privileged few were integrated with the
homogenous mass of the people, the bourgeoisie.

In contrast to these two, the German Revolution grew out of a theory. German, or more
precisely, Prussian instinct declares that power belongs to the totality. The individual
serves the totality, which is sovereign. The king, as Frederick the Great maintained, is
only the first servant of his people. Each citizen is assigned his place in the totality. He
receives orders and obeys them. This is authoritarian socialism as we have known it since
the eighteenth century. It is essentially nonliberal and antidemocratic, at least when
compared with English liberalism and French democracy. But it is also clear that the
Prussian instinct is antirevolutionary. The task of transposing the state organism from the
eighteenth to the nineteenth century—a process that might be described as liberal and
democratic but in an entirely different, Prussian sense—was one for organizational talent.
But the radical theoretical mind invented a "fourth estate" out of a portion of the
citizenry, which was senseless in a country of farmers and civil servants. Theory gave the
name "third estate" to the most numerous segment of the population, the one containing a
motley variety of occupations and professions, thus singling it out as an element in a
"class conflict." And finally, it made the socialist idea a prerogative of the "fourth estate."
With these abstractions in mind the theorists set out in November, 1918, to achieve what
had actually been in existence for a long time. Beclouded by slogans, they failed to
apprehend the actual state of affairs, and in the end succeeded in destroying it. They not
only ruined the state, they also crushed Bebel’s party, the masterpiece of a truly socialist
man of action, a genuinely authoritarian and militant organization, the best weapon the
workers had in their battle to infuse the state with the spirit of the new century.
That is what makes this revolution so desperately comical. It succeeded admirably in
setting its own house on fire. What the German people had promised itself in 1914; what
it had already begun to bring about, slowly and dispassionately; what millions of men
had died for on the battlefields—all this was denied and destroyed. And then
embarrassment set in. Nobody knew how to convey the impression that an active
revolution was actually taking place. Such an explanation was urgent, because the
workers, who had expected something quite different, viewed their leaders with
increasing distrust. The constant barking of slogans into thin air was no solution.

And so the German Michel, that inveterate liberal, set the overturned throne aright and
seated himself upon it. The guileless heir to this revolutionary prank, intensely
antisocialist by nature, he was equally repelled by Conservatives and Spartacists and
fearful that these groups might one day discover what they have in common. He was
Schiller’s Karl Moor in an easy chair, tolerant of all political faiths including the most
questionable ones—provided that they upheld the republican-parliamentarian-democratic
principle, provided that they were long on talk and short on action, provided that they
kept out of his sight such authoritarian qualities as resoluteness, audacity, and disciplined
obedience. To protect himself, our good friend Michel beckoned to the one outstanding
personality of the November episode, and it is not insignificant that this man was a dyedin-
the-wool soldier. Whereupon Michel immediately reverted to his old distrust of the
military spirit, without which the Weimar farce would have ended swiftly.

This sorry display of ignorance, incompetence, weakness, and indignity should suffice to
discredit parliamentarism forever in Germany. Under the black-red-yellow banner, which
has now become the everlasting symbol of folly, we witnessed a repetition of all the
stupidities of 1848, when politics was likewise not action but empty talk and theorizing.
The liberal of 1917 was in his glory. He had his armistice, his League of Nations, his
peace, and his government. Michel doffed his cap with a smile in the expectation that
John Bull would be "simply splendid." But his smile turned to tears as he signed the
papers: John Bull was using a crazed Frenchman as his business manager.
In the heart of the German people Weimar is doomed. It is not even a laughing matter.

The ratification of the Constitution has been greeted by absolute indifference. Its authors
thought that the dawn of parliamentarism had arrived, whereas even in England it is
rapidly growing dusk. Such as it is, the English system presupposes the presence of
strong personalities, distributed between two very old, mutually complementary political
groups. In Weimar, where there was a desperate lack of strong personalities, it was
believed that political opposition was the very hallmark of the parliamentarian system.
And so they dutifully started opposing a government that no longer existed. It was like a
schoolroom when the teacher is away.

The future will most certainly look on this episode with profound contempt. The year
1919 is the nadir of German dignity. The Frankfurt Paulskirche contained honest fools
and academicians, altogether a comical collection of eggheads. In Weimar one had the
feeling that clever operators were behind the scenes. It makes no difference whether the
acting politicians were conspirators themselves or just the dupes of conspirators; these
parties confused the fatherland all too often with their own advantage. What we now
have is a pre-Thermidor Directoire. Woe to us if we have to make up for the phase we
passed over!

It is equally certain that the dismal comedy of this counterfeit revolution will end. The
outside world is preparing for a new phase of the World War. Things happen fast these
days. In our National Assembly, a degenerate Reichstag, the politicians are using the
ruins of our demolished state to build a makeshift shelter. Soon the only activities there
will be graft and fraudulent dealings in salaries, merchandise, and official positions.
Meanwhile, other people are beginning to think differently about the events of last year.
They are comparing what is now being constructed with what was there previously. They
are beginning to understand that, in reality, a people can never choose between different
types of government. It can choose the outer trappings of government, but not the
essential thing, the spirit of government—even though public opinion constantly
confuses the two. What gets written into a constitution is never essential. The important
thing is how the instinct of the people interprets it. The English Parliament governs
according to unwritten and, in part, quite undemocratic laws that have evolved through
long practice. And that is precisely why it is so successful.

Make no mistake, the revolution is not yet ended. No matter how you interpret it, as
senseless or significant, as a failure or as an auspicious beginning, as the prelude to a
world revolution or merely as a mob uprising in a single country, the fact remains that we
are in the midst of a crisis. And like everything organic, like every disease, this crisis will
follow a more or less typical course that cannot be influenced by artificial means. In the
light of this fact such ethical distinctions as "just cause" and "treachery" are quite
worthless. >From now on, revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries alike must have
expert knowledge of human nature; they must be able to grasp and exploit the immediate
situation with deliberateness and sobriety. Instead of practicing the ancient art of
diplomatic psychology on diplomats and sovereigns, they must learn to apply it to the
mass mind, which responds much more rapidly to errors of tact.

Popular leaders, even those of mediocre intelligence, have an infallible knack for this sort
of thing. The lack of instinct shown by our present political leaders is perhaps best
explained by the typical German thoroughness of their "theoretical" training. The truly
popular leader must have an absolutely accurate sense of the duration, the tempo, the
rhythm, the crescendo and decrescendo of each phase of the situation; one false move
and he will lose all control. What is more, he must know exactly which factors he can
control, and which ones he must allow to run their course, waiting out the time when he
can exploit them in a broader context or, by skillful manipulation, steer them in the
direction he deems necessary. Great revolutionaries have always possessed the tactical
know-how of great generals. For an army, the prevailing mood of a single hour can spell
victory or defeat.

To the theoretical mind, the most important part of a revolution is its beginning, when
forces are arrayed in clear and definite opposition to each other. The skeptical mind
prefers, however, to study the final phase of a revolution, for it has much greater
significance and is psychologically more instructive. Matters of state have never been so
complicated as they are today. The outbreak of the German Revolution was at the same
time the betrayal of our nation to the enemy. As a result, our emotional attitude toward
Marxism differs radically from that of all other countries. In 1792, nation and revolution
were one and the same; in 1919, they are opposites. The English Revolution confined
itself to an island, and the French insurgents, owing to their bravery in the field, were
able to keep the situation in hand at all times. In our own revolution, each new phase
occurs under pressure of foreign designs. Paris, London, and New York are all
involved—not with their labor movements but with their armies, which they will send
against us should the German Revolution take on undesirable forms. That is the way our
Marxists wanted it, and they had better be prepared to take the consequences. Besides the
Spartacists’ hand grenades and the machine guns of the Reichswehr, we have the French
Army of Occupation and the English fleet to reckon with.

Our newspapers are full of "heroic" bolshevist pronouncements. Every day we can take
our pick among massacres of Western capitalists—on the editorial pages. Journalism is
no substitute for a true revolutionary front line, backed up by heavy artillery. The longer
they preach about world revolution the less threatening it becomes. There is mostly
anger, and very little confidence, in the revolutionary talk we hear and read these days. It
should be pointed out that not even the Russian revolutionaries made cowardice in the
face of the enemy a cardinal point in their program. And it must not be forgotten that
many of those who participated in the November insurrection did so, not out of
enthusiasm for this or that political solution, but because they were hungry and desperate,
because their nerves could no longer stand the strain. The decisions reached at Versailles
have caused the state of war to continue. But how much longer can the psychological
effect of those decisions be an aid, rather than an obstacle, to the designs of the Marxists?
The general strike has outlived its usefulness as a weapon. The past year has dissipated
whatever energies the Marxist movement had to start with, and at this point revitalization
is out of the question. The absurd goings-ons in the National Assembly are bound to
produce nothing but contempt for the parliamentary idea.

There comes a time in every revolution when the people will settle for peace and
domestic order at any price, when no revolutionary minority can persuade them, not even
with the most drastic methods, to make fundamental political decisions. When this point
is reached the revolution has virtually come to an end, and no one has the power to avoid
its effects or postpone them. We need only compare the actual number of votes cast in
the Jacobin plebiscite with those cast at the installation of Bonaparte as first consul to see
that the French people had finally had enough of the revolution. We are now rapidly
approaching this terminal point in the German Revolution. And the patience of the
German people will be exhausted even more quickly.

Nevertheless, it is not only the confirmed advocates of radical change who are in danger
of committing errors; their equally confirmed opponents can make mistakes just as
easily. A strong but indeterminate feeling of disappointment is still a long way from the
actual decision to capitulate. The sense of political failure that is widespread in the
German people today is like an open wound that is sensitive to the touch. If the
opposition were to make the slightest attempt to end the revolution by violence, they
would release in the people an irresistible wave of bitterness and fury such as the radicals
themselves are no longer capable of arousing. We would experience a protest of
contagious force, a sudden quickening of the popular mood which resolute leaders could
exploit for action of a very drastic sort. While it is true that such a development would
not affect the duration or essential meaning of historical events, it would nonetheless
alter their form and intensity to a decisive degree. Things could get very bloody.

We have now reached a crucial stage in this revolution, a time when the inscrutable mass
mind could confuse even the most knowledgeable observers by giving a surprise twist to
the course of events, as it has in previous great revolutions. Does the tense silence that
prevails in some quarters of our country indicate the presence of an indomitable will? Is
the irritable clamoring we hear from other quarters to be interpreted as a growing
awareness of final defeat? Is it too late for the insurgents to take action? Too early for the
opposition?

It is common knowledge that certain political structures which seem invincible at the
moment can, after two years’ time, fall of their own weight. That was true in 1918 and
will again be true, though with a nearly opposite effect, in the near future. Yesterday’s
courtiers can be the regicides of today, and today’s regicides, the princes of the future. In
such times no one can be sure of how long his convictions can endure.

But to what unit of time should we now adapt our thinking? Should we start thinking in months, or in years? The tempo and duration of the German Revolution were determined by the time and manner in which it began. No one may have knowledge of these factors, yet they exist and they operate with the inevitability of Destiny. Whoever tries to interfere with them will perish. The Girondists perished because they thought that the climax of the revolution was behind them; Babeuf met his fate because he believed that the climax was yet to come. The intrinsic nature of the Revolution would remain intact even if new wars were to break out, even if a great personality were to make his appearance. Such occurrences might cause a sudden and complete change in the historical appearance of the German Revolution—which is all that matters to the
ordinary observer—but their true function would be to confirm its deeper and more essential significance. A great man is one who understands the spirit of his time, who is himself the incarnation of that spirit. He does not come to destroy, but to fulfill it. Let us now investigate the origins of the spirit of German socialism.

[Marulus]

II. Socialism as a Way of Life

Six thousand years of higher human history lie before us. Amid the great mass of persons
and events that have appeared on the entire planet we can distinguish those elements that
make up history in the proper sense: the spectacle and destiny of the great cultures. They
appear to the eye of the observer as formal entities having a basically similar structure, as
visible manifestations of powerful forces of the human soul, as the real and vital
expressions of the most profound mysteries of human evolution.

In each culture there resides an immutable principle which gives it its particular features
of belief, thought, feeling, and action, of government, art, and social structure. This same
principle has brought forth what we know as the various "types" of man: the Classical,
Indic, Chinese, and Western. Each has had its own unity of instinct and consciousness, its
own "race" in the spiritual sense.

Moreover, each of these cultural units is complete in itself and independent of all others.
Traditional historiography has been interested solely in historical influences on cultures,
not realizing that such influences are in fact of the most superficial kind. Inwardly, all
cultures remain just what they are. They arise and flourish on Nile and Euphrates,
Ganges and Hwang Ho, in the Semitic Desert, on the shores of the Aegean, or on the
river-lined plains of Northern Europe. Each culture gathers together the human beings in
its locality and breeds them to form a people; a people, in other words, is not the creator
but the creature of its culture. [3] Dorians and Ionians, Hellenes and Etrusco-Romans, the
peoples of ancient China, Teutons and Latins, Germans and Englishmen—each people
has its own peculiar mentality and significance, each stands in passionate contrast to the
others. Seen from the outside and compared with foreign cultures, each assumes a unified
form: we speak of Classical man, Chinese man, and Western man.

(3. The Decline of the West, II, 165.)

At the base of every culture lies an idea that is expressed by certain words of profound
significance. In Chinese culture these words are tao and li; for the Apollonian Greeks this
cultural idea was contained in the worlds lógos and tò ón ("that which is"). In the
languages of Faustian man the basic cultural idea is expressed by the words "will,"
"strength," and "space." Faustian man differs from all others in his insatiable will to reach
the infinite. He seeks to overcome with his telescope the dimensions of the universe, and
the dimensions of the earth with his wires and iron tracks. With his machines he sets out
to conquer nature. He uses his historical thinking to take hold of the past and integrate it
into his own existence under the name of "world history." With his long-range weapons
he seeks to subdue the entire planet, including the remains of all older cultures, forcing
them to conform to his own pattern of life.

How long, we may well ask, will this striving continue? After a certain number of
centuries each culture is transformed into a civilization. What was formerly alive
becomes rigid and cold. Expansiveness of mind and spirit is replaced by a lust for
expansion in the material world. "Life" in the sense used by Meister Eckart becomes
"life" in the political and economic sense; the militant power of ideas becomes
imperialism. One sign of the onset of this transformation is the enunciation of ultimate
but very earthly ideals; a mood of ripeness, of age and experience begins to take hold
within the culture. Socrates, Lao-tse, Rousseau, and Buddha each presaged a downward
turn in his respective culture. [4] All of these thinkers are inwardly related. None
possessed a genuine metaphysics; each of them was the proponent of practical but
terminal ideas and attitudes to which we have applied such comprehensive titles as
Buddhism, Stoicism, and socialism.

(4. The Decline of the West, I, 351 ff.; II, 305 ff.)

Socialism, then, is not an instinct of dark primeval origin like the instincts that found
expression in the style of Gothic cathedrals, in the lordly mien of great emperors and
popes, or in the founding of the Spanish and British empires. It is, rather, a political,
social, and economic instinct of realistically-minded peoples, and as such it is a product
of one stage of our civilization—not of our culture, which came to