Systems and Debates

by Alain de Benoist

  An Eternal Present

  The United States is not a country like any other; it is a land without a people. Across our whole planet, it is the nation that represents unity of destiny, which consecrates (and, in turn, accentuates) a certain human homogeneity — a homogeneity that may be tradition-based, cultural, ethnic, etc. There is no such thing at all in the USA, a land that is but a simple agglomeration of men and women that have come from all corners of the world, having initially nothing in common but a desire to break with Europe and to participate in a certain way of life as part of their everyday existence (in this respect, a way of life is the opposite of a lifestyle). Wherever the prevailing principle is that of cosmopolitism, there cannot, in fact, be any homogeneity on a human level. The only unity that can be established takes place on a material level, on the level of things. This is why the American way of life is the sole genuine source of national consolidation in this country, where, instead of saying ‘you are a gentleman’ (as is the case everywhere else), one uses the following expression to show one’s appreciation of someone: ‘You are the goods!’

  America’s cosmopolitan characteristic accounts for its lack of culture, in the inevitably organic sense of the word. Keyserling remarks: ‘Never has there been any culture that has not been traditional. Why? Because life’s genuine form and order demand that the present, past and future share a ratio that is in keeping with a just relationship. This implies the presence of a predetermined relation between the principles of tradition and those of progress’ (America Set Free, Stock, 1931). Such a relation is an impossibility in a country that is, in fact, characterised by its refusal to put things into perspective.

  Born of a breaking with its (European) past, America cannot envision a future that would not act as an indefinitely extended path of utopian ‘progress’; yet it lacks the necessary support to entertain such ‘imagination’. In connection to historical becoming, America experiences an eternal present, as part of an irreversible succession of present moments that constitute the framework of the pursuit of happiness to which each person is ‘entitled’ according to what the Declaration of Independence guarantees. Its implicit thought consists in a unidimensional reduction of temporal tridimensionality; its social objective resides in the maximal concurrence of all people within a single dimension of simultaneousness. As has been repeatedly pointed out, the American unconscious is based on a spatial sort of mystique (the notion that there is always some space to exploit beyond the border), as opposed to a temporal one. Hence the importance of ‘spatial conquest’, which acts as a substitute for the temporal conquest represented by innovation whose roots reach deep into traditional culture. This is the reason why the existence of an American culture is, in itself, nonsensical. For culture is, essentially speaking, a product of the typical. In the USA, however, the isolated takes precedence over all that is typical. What is isolated can be added up together but never ‘merge’ into the synthesis embodied by a single people; what is produced is thus not culture, but civilisation. (Keyserling gives us a good example when highlighting the fact that in the US, ‘prettiness occupies the exact same position in relation to beauty as popularity [conceived of at kindergarten level] does compared to spiritual value’. Indeed, within any nation that lacks homogeneity, the sense of beauty can bear no connection to the implicit norms of the popular spirit, and neither can the sense of spiritual value. All that one can have is a notion of abstract beauty that does not relate to anything specific.)

  As a result of this, American universalism proves to be incompatible with the existence of cultures and styles that differ from it. It is no coincidence that the spreading of the American way of life has gone hand in hand with the reduction of the differences between countries and peoples. Americans are irresistibly driven to impose their own model and absorb all the qualitative differences that stem from our world’s diversity into their own quantitative civilisation. They are doomed to cause the decline of every culture they touch and to uproot all traditions. By exporting their way of life, they invariably obliterate the very spirit of peoples, because their own existence derives from such an act.

  Rejecting the Reason of State

  Recently, Mr Thomas Griffith906 wrote: ‘More than any other nation worldwide, the United States is haunted by the notion of equality, which is at the very basis of its Constitution’ (Time, 15th April, 1974). Indeed, America is the only Western country never to have had as little as a semblance of aristocracy — with ‘aristocratism’ consisting particularly in knowing how to bestow value upon things that have no price (as noted by Keyserling, ‘money is, in America, the symbol of all accomplished tasks’). Originally, this rejection of aristocracy was, in fact, part of America’s breaking with Europe.

  America does not love the best; it only loves winners: those who succeed without ceasing to be ‘like everyone else’. This notion of ‘success’, one that is exclusively material and social, replaces the conception of superiority. It shapes the prevailing optimism. The rejection of authority even leads to a certain distrust of ‘specialists’, of anyone who might be tempted to transform their knowledge into power. In no other country has the ‘fortuitous’, the maverick, the soldier of fortune been honoured as much. In the Far West, one of the most widespread proverbs was the following: ‘First comes the liar, then the dirty liar, then the specialist’. The entire conception of American-style ‘success’ (the myth of the hardworking and virtuous boy who, having begun ‘from scratch’, achieves success) stems from this, as well as from the biblical idea that an ‘ordinary man’ is always worth more than a ‘superior’ one, since only the meek are pleasing to the eye of God. In parallel, the topic of ‘equal initial opportunities’ is founded upon the fundamental conviction that thanks to a decent education and good ‘socialisation’, anyone would be capable of any feat. ‘Individual initiative’, which is no way incompatible with the collectivism of mores, is, in this respect, perceived as the best possible means for one to question hierarchies.

  Career militaries, who act as the archetypal embodiment of authority, are all particularly targeted with contempt and, at times, even hatred. Ever prompt in denouncing the ‘military-industrial complex’, the opponents of the Vietnam War have forgotten — or are, at least, pretending to have — that the Americans are among the least militaristic peoples in the world. In no other Western country have military values been considered so distant from the norms of civil life as in the US. Throughout its history, America has strived to stay out of conflicts, only engaging in the latter when coerced and forced, and mostly in response to ‘provocations’. As is the case in all bourgeois systems, the army is considered a mere police force: this was already true of the American cavalry during the ‘conquest of the West’ (which was actually the conquest of empty space, since the total number of American Indians was never in excess of one million). Likewise, in no other country have military defeats ever generated such waves of culpability; for there are only two options: either the American army comes out victorious or it refuses to keep playing.

  Likewise, the purpose of the government is not to give the people a destiny that would serve as its reason for living, but only to ensure its means of existence. The American state is not a whole that grows, but merely one that adds things together. The rejection of the reason of state stems logically from the rejection of the very notion that a country is more than the mere sum of its citizens, that it is actually in the name of this ‘more’ that heads of state govern and that it is for this reason that they enjoy prerogatives which ‘common men’ do not have. The development and result of the Watergate affair are the perfect illustration of this repugnance for the notion of a ‘reason of state’: in Europe, the very same event would only have had negligible consequences (depending on the perspective one espouses, one may either deplore this fact or commend it). Furthermore, the reason of state lies, by definition, beyond Good and Evil: the considerations that motivate it transcend any and all such values. It is
thus incomprehensible and almost repugnant to the inhabitants of a land whose two cornerstones are the Constitution and the Bible. For the Americans, the ideal government is one that manifests its presence as little as possible. The state, therefore, does not actually rule: it only manages things. It is but an annex of social security.

  Since politics in the traditional sense of the word is rooted in the very notion of a reason of state, in the conception that the sovereign principle is one of authority, what America generates is but a distorted image of it. Its essence is no longer that of power; it has simply been annexed to morality. Supreme political values intersect with those of the Bible: egalitarian justice, moralism, and an aspiration of universal peace. Archetypal politics is no longer embodied by a foreign policy that brings certain power relations into play, but by a domestic policy restricted to mere management. Hence the system’s astounding stability, in which the interaction of the two or three parties (whose programmes are virtually identical) boils down to regular alternations founded upon electoral pageants, cheerleading and bribery.

  What American politicians must do is above all strive to convince their electorate that they are ‘citizens like any other’. They govern in accordance with opinion polls, and those that genuinely decide are not so much statesmen as public opinion representatives, media network owners, lobby leaders and lawyers.

  The American Way of Death

  Immediately after America gained its independence, the US Congress adopted the following resolution: ‘It is in the very interest of the United States to meddle as little as possible in the policies and controversies of European nations’. Expressed by George Washington and repeated by Monroe,907 this resolution became the golden rule that defines the absence of an American foreign policy. And here is another significant detail: the US has not had a Foreign Affairs Ministry since 1787. The person that occupies such a post simply bears the title of ‘Secretary of State’. Isolationism has become a constant feature of American history, with foreign ‘commitments’ resulting from operations in which the United States has become involved or from ‘crusades’ with a moral dimension to them (against Nazism, Communism, etc.).

  When giving a speech in Paris on 10th June, 1971, under the auspices of the Institute for Western Studies (IEO), Mr Thomas Molnar explained: ‘The source of the second wind enjoyed by old revolutionary ideas lies in the messianic belief embraced by numerous Americans since the days of Thomas Jefferson908 and the Founding Fathers, a belief centred around the notion that destiny has entrusted them with the mission of exporting the benefits of ideal American democracy to every corner of the world’. Nowadays, America’s global significance is due to its weight and not its will to achieve a grand design or implement a great policy.

  Every single component of the American nation is different. The only similarity is that of the American way of life, and it is precisely at this level that difference is rejected (in contrast with a homogeneous country, where the diversity of lifestyles, acting as a reflection of the various living conditions, embodies the most natural rule). The reason is that in the US, the pressure exerted by the public opinion (and measured through polls) is particularly intense. It is so unrelenting that every single social act is completely ritualised. Whosoever finds himself genuinely different ends up on the analyst’s couch or seeks out the appropriate group therapy. Such is the collectivism of mores.

  In this regard, Keyserling once wrote: ‘The difference between what is happening in Bolshevik Russia and in America is merely a matter of prosperity: the level is different, but the levelling is identical. […] This extraordinary resemblance between Russia and the USA is one of the most informative observations I have ever made. The dissemblance between the two is, in fact, due to a simple language difference: the essence remains the same, whatever the causes which, in each case, have enabled it to have its own empirical existence. Both countries are fundamentally socialistic, but the socialism expressed by America takes on the shape of general prosperity and, in Russia, that of general poverty’ (America Set Free, op. cit.). In both countries, the human aspirations that are deemed essential are social ones, and ‘economy is destiny’ (one encounters analogous observations in Spengler’s Jahre der Entscheidung909 and, in a different form, with Gobineau and Renan).

  On thus realises that if a revolution is ever to take place in the USA, it has already happened. In relation to the mental universe that characterises the European world, the formation of the USA has actually been a decisive rupture. In 1776, for the very first time, a country decided to found itself upon an egalitarian principle that had become fully conscious. For the first time ever, in defiance of the obvious facts, a legal proclamation was issued stating that ‘men are born free and equal’. America’s entire raison d’être, existence and history stem from this revolution, through which it voluntarily severed its ties to its European ‘father’: it was the first (major) democratic revolution in human history.

  From 1960 to 1970, the number of ‘radical’ American students increased more than twofold, and it has not ceased to grow since. This phenomenon is, nonetheless, nothing new. About half a century ago, Keyserling had already made the following observation: ‘American socialism is, in part, the result of three causes: its youth, the predominance of a feminine spirit and a moralistic attitude. Since women represent mankind’s altruistic part, they are social both in principle and by nature. Furthermore, group consciousness always precedes, temporally speaking, individual consciousness. Last but not least, the fundamental moralism of the American type of man must necessarily favour the growth of social tendencies, since morality’s primary preoccupation does not lie in perceiving man as a unique entity, but in the relation between a “you” and a “me”. There are also further reasons behind the existence of American socialism, reasons which could be labelled accidental. Today, the spirit of 18th-century revolutions, whose essence lay in a rebellion against any and all value hierarchies, still reigns supreme. It is the very soul of the entire political constitution of the United States’ (op. cit.).

  This ‘spirit of 18th-century revolutions’ is precisely what characterises the current wave of dissent best. Admittedly, today’s ‘radicals’ preach catastrophism more willingly than their belief in indefinite progress. And yet there is a certain inner logic to be found here. In their desire to ‘forget’ their own past, Americans have always been convinced that ‘tomorrow’ could only be better than ‘today’. Once they discover that this may not necessarily be the case, they become persuaded that ‘tomorrow’ can only be worse. Having surrendered to disappointment, pathological optimism does not turn into realism, but, instead, into excessive pessimism. Each is but the relative antithesis of the other. The aspiration that lies at the source of this twofold approach is one and the same.

  It is no coincidence at all that the American type of dissent (which Mr Revel acknowledges to be solely possible ‘in the interstices of an economy of abundance, thanks to its surpluses’) has rushed into cheap evangelism crossbred with orientalism. It was inevitable for the hippie movement to lead to a Jesus revolution, to the search for ‘a world of brothers and sisters whose love for one another would be genuine’ (as stated in the ‘political’ programme of the Black Workers’ Congress). Indeed, just like their Puritan ancestors, the ‘radicals’ seek to reclaim a mental disposition whose historical antecedents are the Jewish apocalypses and the values of primitive Christianity.

  The Legacy of the Mystic Pioneers

  In a recent book entitled The New Left and Christian Radicalism (William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan), Mr Arthur G. Gish910 has drawn a convincing parallel between the representatives of the ‘New Left’ and the anabaptists of the 16th century. He writes: ‘They too, along with Thomas Münzer,911 longed to establish on earth a kingdom of God founded upon community of property and women, as well as social equality’.

  There is no essential difference between these American ‘revolutionaries’ and the Founding Fathers of the 18th
century, those mystical pioneers that Fitzgerald912 described so well (in The Great Gatsby), those who were driven out of Europe and who perceived the ‘New World’ as both an Israel and an Eldorado. They are the new pietists, the worthy sons of both William Penn, the founder of the ‘city of brotherly love’ (Philadelphia), and Brigham Young, the man who wanted to establish the ‘City of God’ in the Great Salt Lake valley. What they reproach the current generation for is not the fact of conveying the very principles that they espouse, but the fact of having actually betrayed them, of not having implemented them sufficiently, of having forgotten that enrichment is merely the presupposition of philanthropy. Far from longing to change the very system in which they live, they yearn to return to its source by reclaiming the egalitarian spirit of ‘biblicism’ and ‘enlightened’ philosophy. Faced with a crumbling American dream, what they propose is not a transcendence (which would, by contrast, be truly revolutionary), but a regression.

  There is, however, a further thing that leads one to question this movement’s ‘revolutionary’ character: it is the fact that in the United States, no anti-establishment protest ever seems to be able to trigger real change. It is fascinating to note, as Stanley Hoffman913 has, that ‘America absorbs virtually everything and feeds upon all that contests’. It is a fact that, throughout its history, America has never ceased to rehabilitate its marginal elements. The only ‘heroes’ that it has endowed itself with have been those outlaws whose ‘wrongdoings’ gave it a clear conscience: the bandits of the Far West and the gangsters of the 1930s, whose exploits novels and films never grow weary of recounting. Is it not true that these ‘beloved bandits’ were themselves self-made men who just happened to be on the wrong side?