Systems and Debates

by Alain de Benoist

  Schmitt reproaches the Weimar Constitution for being ‘almost too perfect juridically and simultaneously too magnificent to remain political’. This criticism summarises the essence of his argumentation, an argumentation that is based on the distinction between the ‘statal’ concept and that of the ‘political’.

  The two conceptions had, for a long time, been indistinguishable: ‘There was indeed an age when the identification of the “statal” and “political” notions was justified’, which is why the analysis of the political phenomenon has mostly been reduced to a general theory of the state (the allgemeine Staatstheorie). However, says Schmitt, ‘the notion of state presupposes a concept of the political’. For politics is not merely a consequence of the state. Its existence, in fact, precedes the latter’s. Since man leads a social life, every society is necessarily characterised by political organisation. As for the state itself, it is but one of the means to achieve such organisation. The state is thus not a timeless historical necessity, but a specific ‘means of existence’ (a state). Political activity could indeed take place outside the statal framework, and likewise, politics could endure even if the state were to vanish.

  The Mistake of ‘De-Politicisation’ and Its Consequences

  In the preface that he wrote for this book, Mr Julien Freund,31 who works as a professor at the University of Strasbourg and has authored a book entitled L’essence du politique32 (Sirey, 1965), explains how a state can cease to be political: ‘It is impossible to express a genuinely political will if one has, in advance, renounced the use of normal political means, namely power, constraint, and in exceptional cases, violence. To act politically is to exercise authority and manifest power. Otherwise, one runs the risk of being removed by a rival power which intends, by contrast, to act in a fully political manner’.

  ‘Every policy, in other words, implies power and constitutes one of the latter’s imperatives. Consequently, the act of excluding the exercise of power from the very outset by reducing a government, for instance, to a mere meeting place or a mere arbitration body mirroring the function of a civil tribunal is synonymous with acting against the very law of politics. The very logic of power demands that it be powerful and not impotent. And since politics essentially necessitates power, any policy that relinquishes the latter through weakness or legalism thus ceases to be truly political: it no longer fulfils its normal function, having become incapable of protecting the members of the collectivity that has been entrusted to it. The issue is thus not for a given country to have a juridically flawless Constitution, nor for it to seek an ideal form of democracy, but to grant itself a regime that is capable of responding to specific difficulties and maintaining order, while simultaneously generating a consensus that remains favourable to all innovations with the potential to resolve the conflicts that inevitably surface in every society’.

  This approach is tantamount to distinguishing political authority from political substance. The decadence of the liberal state during the 19th century and the rise of technocracy and ‘management policy’ have both accelerated the process. When the state ceases to be political, its authority vanishes. Its substance, however, endures.

  This substance thus floats, lacking any and all institutional support. It becomes the prey and focus of competing ideological pressure groups, which replace the state so as to make genuinely political decisions, attempting to take control of statal means in order to implement these decisions by imposing their own organisations. As a result, the domains that had hitherto been reputed to be neutral (religion, culture, arts, education, and the economy) ‘lose their neutrality insofar as this word is synonymous with an absence of ties to both the state and to politics’. It is these metapolitical domains that subsequently embody the ideal scope of political action. And it is this shift in the political enactment field that triggers the illusion of ‘de-politicisation’.

  Such is indeed the situation that characterises our age, an age in which the state gradually withers away (particularly under the influence of American conceptions of governance) and the belief according to which economics has henceforth ‘replaced’ the political aspect only leads to having the control and exercise of a genuine political function fall into the hands of non-statal powers (since politics is seen as subordinate to economics, just like the latter is subordinate to the social domain, resulting in a complete reversal in the traditional order that defines these three functions).

  Although it would be tempting to define politics through its substance, it would mean falling into Aristotle’s erroneous approach, as he attempted to delineate its metaphysical ‘essence’. Schmitt’s purpose is both more modest and more ambitious. The aim, writes Mr Freund, is to ‘determine the criterium, meaning the sign, that allows us to recognise whether an issue is of a political nature or not, thus enabling us to discern what is purely political, independently from any other connection’.

  Friend and Foe

  This fundamental connection, this identifying criterium relating to every strictly political dynamic, lies, according to Schmitt, in one’s aptitude to distinguish friend from foe (the Freund-Feind Theorie). In the political field, this distinction is as fundamental as that between the beautiful and the unsightly in aesthetics, the good and the evil in the moral domain, and so on. ‘All in all, the political criterium lies in the possibility of having any opposition evolve towards an extreme conflict in which enemies confront each other’, Freund writes. The archetypal political decision is thus that of designating one’s ‘public enemy’ (hostis, meaning someone who, for reasons that have no bearing upon morals or legality, acts as everyone’s foe, and must not be confused with one’s private enemy, inimicus). As for true political authority, it is the one that possesses the means to attack this foe or to defend itself against him.

  Whether the enemy is menacing or not is of little importance. ‘In terms of a definition, it is enough for him to be someone characterised by a particularly pronounced Otherness and foreignness, both of which define his very existence, and for potential conflicts with him to be perfectly conceivable should worst come to worst, conflicts that could neither be resolved through a set of pre-established general norms nor through the judgement pronounced by any third party that is acknowledged as being uninvolved and impartial’. Clausewitz’s33 proposal, according to which ‘war is merely the extension of politics, but with the selection of different means’ (as stated in Vom Kriege34 ), thus finds itself inverted.

  ‘A world from which the contingency of genuine struggle has been completely eliminated and banned, a planet that has been pacified once and for all, would be a world devoid of all differentiation between friend and foe, and thus a world without politics’. It would be a world whose appreciations no longer have any value or significance, a world unable to evolve further, lacking creative tensions and condemned to repeat itself indefinitely and ‘ruminate’ the same moment over and over again. Such a world would be drained of all history.

  The troubling perspective of ‘exiting history’ fuelled the German generation of 1914–1918, the very same generation that wondered about its own position in the universe and read the works of Spengler and Rathenau.35 Its anguish in the face of a rising and soulless quantifying technology was justified, ‘for it fed upon an obscure feeling stemming from the very logic of the neutralisation process’, declares Carl Schmitt.

  In 1927, however, Schmitt expressed his conviction that this process was nearing its end, precisely because it eventually managed to attain technology. ‘It is only in a temporary fashion that one can consider this century to have been one of technology, in accordance with the state of mind that pervades it. The final judgement will only be passed when one has determined which type of politics is powerful enough to bend the modern world to its will and what actual rallying of friends and foes has taken place in this new domain’, Schmitt wrote.

  ‘We have reached an age characterised by its utter ignorance of the classical distinctions between war, peace and neutral
ity, between politics and economics, military personnel and civilians, combatants and non-combatants; the only exception lies in the difference between friend and foe, whose logic presides over its birth and determines its very nature’.

  The consequences are fearsome. The very notion surrounding the existence of ‘international bodies’ whose authority surpasses the sovereignty of states and which are responsible for ‘interpreting the law’ implies that it is necessary to ‘demonstrate’ to everyone that it is the enemy that is actually in the wrong. As part of this universalistic perspective, one’s adversary must thus be declared an outlaw, meaning literally inhuman. He can therefore no longer be respected while one struggles against him; instead, he can only be hated, for he has become the embodiment of evil. The limitless power entailed in the various means of destruction is echoed by the utter devaluation of one’s enemy, whose extermination is ‘justified’ once his absolute worthlessness has been established. By the same token, the fundamental differences between war and peace and the civilian and military domains no longer apply. All wars are of a global nature and can be undertaken at any given moment. And as the political is invaded by the moral, the hour of the partisan is suddenly upon us.

  The Partisan Theory

  In his Partisan Theory, a lecture delivered in Spain back in 1962, Schmitt demonstrated that the appearance of the ‘revolutionary combatant’ corresponded most perfectly to what he himself had predicted. For a partisan is not merely someone characterised by the methods that he chooses to use. He also embodies the very political function which regular institutions no longer perform. ‘He engages in combat by aligning himself with a certain policy, and it is the very political aspect of his action that highlights the original meaning of the term “partisan”’. While soldiers fight because their duty is to wage war (regardless of their personal convictions), partisans fight because they believe their struggle to be justified. A partisan’s revolutionary awareness is expressed through ‘complete requisition’. It was Che Guevara36 who once said: ‘The partisan is the Jesuit of war’.

  Another specific trait characterising our age lies in the fact that the state, which has all the necessary means of power at its disposal, is no longer a genuine political authority, whereas the partisan, who acts as the incarnation of political substance, seeks to appropriate the means that he lacks through those of his own actions.

  The impact that Carl Schmitt has had in the space of half a century has been a considerable one. He has been a source of inspiration for many Rightists (including Armin Mohler), Leftists (such as Kirchheimer), and even the Maoist Schickel.

  This fact, however, has not sheltered him from criticism. Mr Maurice Duverger,37 who, at least in Mr Freund’s view, has probably never read any of Schmitt’s works, has opted to treat him with disdain. Others have reproached him for giving the enemy precedence over one’s friends (or ‘comrades’), an accusation to which Schmitt responded as follows: ‘This objection disregards the fact that, as a result of dialectical necessity, the development of any judicial concept stems from its negation. The root of both criminal action and criminal law does not lie in deeds, but misdeeds. And yet, would anyone ever speak of a positive conception of such misdeeds, or of the primacy of crime?’

  As everyone is well aware of, the foremost principle of a ‘Machiavellian’ attitude is to boisterously manifest one’s disapproval of Machiavelli. Carl Schmitt makes the following reasonable remark, including it as a footnote in his book: ‘Had Machiavelli truly been Machiavellian, he would have authored an instructive literary work instead of his Prince, ideally an anti-Machiavellian one’.

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  The Concept of the Political, followed by The Partisan Theory, works of Carl Schmitt, Calmann-Lévy, 331 pages.

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  Originally published in the magazine Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (vol. LVIII, 1927), The Concept of the Political was already partially translated into French in 1942, under the title ‘Considérations Politiques’38 (Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence). In Germany itself, it was reedited into its 1932 version after the war (‘Der Begriff des Politischen’, Duncker u. Humblot, Berlin, 1963).

  Further works by Carl Schmitt have been either published (or republished) quite recently: Politische Romantik, Duncker u. Humblot, Berlin, 1968), Legalität und Legitimität (Duncker u. Humblot, Berlin, 1968), Gesetz und Urteil (C. H. Beck, Munich, 1969), Der Hüter der Verfassung (Duncker u. Humblot, Berlin, 1969), Die Geistesgeschichliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus (Duncker u. Humblot, Berlin, 1969), Politische Theologie II (Duncker u. Humblot, Berlin, 1970), Verfassungslehre (Duncker u. Humblot, Berlin, 1970), Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (Duncker u. Humblot, Berlin, 1974).

  A complete bibliography of Carl Schmitt’s literary work can be found in Mr Piet Tommissen’s Over en in zake Carl Schmitt (Economischehogeschool Sint-Aloysus, Brussels, 1975).

  In his Essence of the Political (Sirey, 1965), Mr Julien Freund dedicates some important developments to the antithesis between ‘friend’ and ‘foe’ (pp. 442–633).

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  On Power

  ‘We end where savages begin. We have rediscovered the art of starving non-combatants, burning huts and leading the vanquished into slavery. What need do we have of barbaric invasions? We are our own Huns’.

  This remark, which is reiterated on two separate occasions in Mr de Jouvenel’s book on power, expresses the concern of a great liberal aristocrat.

  Displaying a snowy white beard and matching hair, Mr Bertrand de Jouvenel has never ceased to ask himself questions. He grew up in an erudite and brilliant milieu, in which politics and literature blended with important discussions. His father, senator Henry de Jouvenel des Ursins, had married novelist Colette. His uncle, Robert de Jouvenel, authored the book La République des camarades39 and was once the editor-in-chief at Oeuvre.

  Educated at the School of Mathematics, Economic Forecasting and Positive Sciences, Mr de Jouvenel began his career as a diplomatic correspondent and then went on to teach at several British and American universities.

  In his already extensive list of literary books, which stretch from L’économie dirigée40 (1929) to Arcadie, un éssai sur le mieux-être41 (1968), and also include La crise du capitalisme américain42 (1933), De la souveraineté43 (1955) and L’art de la conjecture44 (1964), one often encounters certain recurring themes: the theory of the political, social provision, the connections between culture and efficacy, as well as the relationship between the state and the individual. As an economist with a neo-liberal tendency, he is not part of senior management. A professor (at the Faculty of Law in Paris I), he has distanced himself from the University and avoided our capital city, ideologies and fashions. His scope of action has always been a little further than that, focusing on the unexplored prospects of the different possible futures.

  Along with Gaston Berger,45 he was one of the pioneers in what is known today as forecasting. In 1961, he became the head of the SEDEIS (Société d’études économiques, industrielles et sociales)46 and took charge of the ‘Futuribles’ collection, the purpose of which was to provide specialists with a rigorous method that would allow them to study specific cases based on a certain number of hypotheses; ‘in real life’, so to speak.

  Having already been noticed in 1927, Mr de Jouvenel achieved international acknowledgement in 1945, thanks to a work entitled On Power (published in Geneva by éditions du Cheval ailé), which was reedited in 1972 without the introduction of any modifications.

  ‘It is a book of war that saw the light of day in occupied France. The drafting process began at the monastery of La-Pierre-qui-Vire. The copybook that contained it was our sole luggage when we crossed the Swiss border on foot in September 1945’, Bertrand de Jouvenel told us. He then added: ‘It is, however, a book of war in an otherwise substantial sense of the word, as if it was the fruit of a meditation on the historical march towards total war’.

  What lies
at the source of this work is a reflection regarding the contrast between the ‘tremendous increase that has taken place in the available means of power and the weakening that has afflicted the control over the latter’s uses’. Defined as a ‘livre de circonstance’,47 this book thus became an all-time classic.

  Genuinely Historical Societies

  In Jouvenel’s eyes, power is embodied by the Minotaur, a man with a bull’s head. Driven by his inner motion, he devastates everything in his path. Criticism? Mr de Jouvenel does not claim to oppose the state’s prerogatives, restricting his actions to the investigation of the causes and growth modalities of power. This is because the state has more than one aspect; one must not look upon it as a ‘thing’, but instead, distinguish a certain ‘them’.

  Mr de Jouvenel rejects the idea that power was born in the same manner and has evolved through identical stages in all societies. He tends to think that ‘human societies, which emerged independently upon the face of the earth, could, from the very outset, have indeed given birth to different structures that may have determined their future grandeur or eternal mediocrity. Those that were naturally organised in accordance with the patriarchal model or the first to be so, the ones which displayed a natural ability to populate the universe with fewer malicious intentions, and those that were the fastest to free themselves from their fears come across as the genuine founders of states, as genuinely historical societies’.

  Anthropology, likewise, contradicts Rousseau’s hypotheses: ‘There are pacifistic peoples and belligerent ones. Circumstances alone cannot account for this fact, which seems both insurmountable and primal. The will to power is either there, or it is not’.