Imperium - Francis Parker Yockey

[Delbáeth]

152

The Laws of Totality and Sovereignty

The organic Laws of Sovereignty and Totality refer to all political units whatever. They describe any unit, whatever its provenance, that reaches the degree of intensity of expression at which it participates in a friend-enemy disjunction. Totality refers both to issues within the organism and to persons within the organism. Any issue within the organism is subject to political determination, because every issue is potentially political. Any person in the organism is existentially embraced in the organism. Sovereignty places the decision in every important juncture with the organism. Both of these laws are existential, like all organic conditions: either the organism is true to them, or it is faced with sickness and death. Both laws will be explained.
First the Law of Totality: Any contrast, opposition, or hostility whatever existing within groups among the organism may become political in its nature, if it reaches the point where a group or a unit feels another group, class or stratum to be a real enemy. For such a unit to arise within an organism is for

153

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

154

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.

155

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.

156

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.

[Delbáeth]

157

The Pluralistic State

In the 19th century Western Civilization, the comparative neutrality of the various States, and therefore the apparent weakness of the States vis-à-vis internal 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,

158

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.

159

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.

[Delbáeth]

160

The Law of Constancy of Inter-Organismic Power

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

161

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.

II

In 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”

162

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.

163

The Law of Constancy of Intra-Organismic Power

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

164

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

165

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.

[Delbáeth]

166

The Political Pluriverse

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

167

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

168

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

169

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.

[Delbáeth]

170

League of Nations

The fact that a world with one State or one government was an organic impossibility was well shown by two attempts on the part of what might be called the Holy Alliance of the 20th century to institute such a condition. After each of the first two World Wars the extra-European Holy Alliance against Europe established a “League of Nations.”
The political organisms however remained organic, and thus subject to the Law of Sovereignty. If a political unit exists it is sovereign; the member units of these two “leagues of nations” continued to exist politically and thus were sovereign. Incidentally the organic Law of Sovereignty is not the “principle of sovereignty of nations” of Grotius and Pufendorff; that was a legal concept and thus subject to juristic quibbling, whereas the organic Law of Sovereignty describes all political units whatever since it belongs to their very existence.
Thus the dilemma was that the “leagues of nations” had no sovereignty — again I am speaking of factual, organic sovereignty, not legal sovereignty — and hence were not political

171

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

172

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

173

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

174

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.

[Delbáeth]

175

The Inner Aspect of the Law of Sovereignty

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

176

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

177

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

178

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.

II

This 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

179

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.

180

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

181

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

182

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.

[Delbáeth]

183

Political Organisms and War

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

184

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

185

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

186

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

187

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

188

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

189

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.