Postmortem Report
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23. One of the best works on this topic is Jacqueline de Romilly’s essay Problèmes de la démocratie grecque (Paris: Hermann, 1975).
24. Romilly, Problèmes de la démocratie grecque.
25. The word démos is opposed to the word laós, a term employed in Greece to designate the people, but with the express meaning of “the community of warriors.”
26. In France, the right to vote was implemented only in stages. In 1791, the distinction was still made between “active citizens” and “passive citizens.” Subsequently, the electorate was expanded to include all qualified citizens able to pay a specified minimum of taxes. Although universal suffrage was proclaimed in 1848, it was limited to males until 1945.
27. On the evolution of that notion, see Jacqueline Bordes, ‘Politeia’ dans la pensée grecque jusqu’à Aristote (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1982).
28. Nicole Loraux interprets the Athenian notion of citizenship as a result of the “imaginary belonging to an autochthonous people” (Les enfants d’Athéna. Idées athéniennes sur la citoyenneté et la divison des sexes [Paris: Maspéro, 1981]). The myth of Erichthonios (or Erechtheus) explains in fact the autochthonous character and the origins of the masculine democracy, at the same time as it grafts the Athenian ideology of citizenship onto immemorial foundations.
29. Emile Benveniste, Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, vol. 1 (Paris : Minuit, 1969), p. 321.
30. On the work of Aristotle and his relationship with the Athenian constitution, see James Day and Mortimer Chambers, Aristotle, History of Athenian Democracy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1962).
31. Finley, Démocratie antique et démocratie moderne, p. 80.
32. Finley, Démocratie antique et démocratie moderne, p. 141.
33. Veyne adds: “Bourgeois liberalism organizes cruising ships in which each passenger must take care of himself as best as he can, the crew being there only to provide for the common goods and services. By contrast, the Greek city was a ship where the passengers made up the crew.” Paul Veyne, “Les Grecs ont-ils connu la démocratie?” Diogène, October-December 1983, p. 9.
34. For the liberal critique of Greek democracy, see Paul Veyne, “Les Grecs ontils connu la démocratie?” and Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory (see n. 6 above).
Liberalism or Democracy: Carl Schmitt and Apolitical Democracy
1. See Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962), 3. “In a somewhat paradoxical vein, democracy could be defined as a high-flown name for something which does not exist.” See, for instance, the book by French “Schmittian” Alain de Benoist, Démocratie: Le problème (Paris: Le Labyrinthe, 1985), 8. “Democracy is neither more ‘modern’ nor more ‘evolved’ than other forms of governance: Governments with democratic tendencies have appeared throughout history. We can observe how the linear perspective used in this type of analysis can be particularly deceiving.” Against the communist theory of democracy, see Julien Freund, considered today as a foremost expert on Schmitt, in Politique et impolitique (Paris: Sirey, 1987), 203. “It is precisely in the name of democracy, designed as genuine and ideal and always put off for tomorrow that non-democrats conduct their campaign of propaganda against real and existing democracies.” For an interesting critique of democratic theory, see Louis Rougier, La Mystique démocratique (Paris: Albatros, 1983). Rougier was inspired by Vilfredo Pareto and his elitist anti-democratic theory of the state.
2. See, for instance, an analysis of U.S. “post-electoral politics”, which seems to be characterized by the governmental incapacity to put a stop to increasing appeals to the judiciary, in Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter, Politics by other Means: The Declining Importance of Election in America (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1990).
3. Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge: MIT, 1985), 4.
4. The views held by some leftist scholars concerning liberalism closely parallel those of Schmitt, particularly the charge of “soft” repression. See, for instance, Jürgen Habermas, Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968). See also Régis Debray, Le Scribe: Genèse du politique (Paris: Grasset, 1980).
5. Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (München und Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1932), 36. Recently, Schmitt’s major works have become available in English. These include: The Concept of the Political, trans. G. Schwab (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1976); Political Romanticism, trans. G. Oakes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986); and Political Theology, trans. G. Schwab (Cambridge: MIT Press; 1985). There may be some differences between my translations and the translations in the English version.
6. Schmitt, Der Begriff, 76.
7. François-Bernard Huyghe, La soft-idéologie (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1987), 43.
8. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 8.
9. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 15.
10. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 15.
11. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 9.
12. Carl Schmitt, Verfassungslehre (München und Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker und Humblot, 1928), 83.
13. See Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft), trans. and ed. Charles P. Loomis (New York: Harper & Row, 1963). Tönnies distinguishes between hierarchy in modern and traditional society. His views are similar to those of Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, The Caste System and its Implications, trans. Mark Sainsbury and L. Dumont (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Dumont draws attention to “vertical” vs. “horizontal” inequality among social groups.
14. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 234.
15. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 9.
16. Carl Schmitt, Du Politique, trans. William Gueydan (Puiseaux: Pardès, 1990), 46. Legalität und Legitimität appears in French translation, with a preface by Alain de Benoist, as L’égalité et légitimité.
17. Schmitt, Du Politique, 57.
18. Schmitt, Du Politique, 58. See also Schmitt’s Verfassungslehre, 87–91:
19. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 245.
20. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 246.
21. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 245.
22. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 10.
23. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 13.
24. See, for instance, the conservative revolutionary, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Das Dritte Reich (1923) whose criticism of liberal democracy often parallels Carl Schmitt’s, and echoes Karl Marx, The Critique of the Gotha Program, (New York: International Publishers, 1938), 9. “Hence equal rights here (in liberalism) means in principle bourgeois rights. The equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor.” See also Schmitt’s contemporary Othmar Spann with a similar analysis, Der wahre Staat (Leipzig: Verlag von Qnelle und Meyer, 1921).
25. See Carl Schmitt, “L’unité du monde”, trans. Philippe Baillet in Du Politique, 237–49.
26. In some multi-ethnic states, liberal democracy has difficulty taking root. For instance, the liberalisation of Yugoslavia has led to its collapse into its ethnic parts. This could bring some comfort to Schmitt’s thesis that democracy requires a homogeneous Volk within its ethnographic borders and state. See Tomislav Sunic, “Yugoslavia, the End of Communism the Return of Nationalism”, America (April 20, 1991), 438–440.
27. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 234. See for a detailed treatment of this subject the concluding chapter of Paul Gottfried, Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory (Westport and New York: Greenwood Press, 1990).
28. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 16.
29. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 28.
30. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 247.
31. Carl Schmitt; “L’état de droit bourgeois”, in Du Politique, 35.
32. Freund, Politique et impolitique, 204.
33. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1966), vol.
2, book fourth, Ch. 6.
34. There is a flurry of books criticizing the “surreal” and “vicarious” nature of modern liberal society. See Jean Baudrillard, Les stratégies fatales (“Figures du transpolitique”) (Paris: Grasset, 1983). Also, Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Warner Books, 1979).
35. Georges Sorel, Les illusions du progrès (Paris: M. Rivière, 1947), 50.
36. Freund, Politique et impolitique, 305.
37. Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie (München und Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker und Humblot, 1934), 80.
38. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 6.
39. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 7.
The Liberal Double-Talk and Its Lexical Legal Consequences
1. A. James Gregor, Metascience and Politics (1971 London: Transaction, 2004), 318.
2. Alan Charles Kors, “Thought Reform: The Orwellian Implications of Today’s College Orientation”, in Reasononline, (March 2000). See the link: http://reason.com/0003/fe.ak.thought.shtml.
3. Paul Gottfried, The Strange Death of Marxism (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2005), 13.
4. Jean Baudrillard, The Evil Demons of Images (University of Sydney: The Power Inst. of Fine Arts, 1988), 24.
5. Josef Schüsslburner, Demokratie-Sonderweg Bundesrepublik (Lindenblatt Media Verlag: Künzell, 2004), 233.
6. See Journal officiel de la République française, 14 juillet 1990 page 8333loi n° 90–615.
Historical Dynamics of Liberalism: From Total Market to Total State
1. Michael Beaud, A History of Capitalism 1500–1980 (Paris: New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 80.
2. François Perroux, Le capitalisme (Paris: PUF, 1960), 31.
3. Ernst Topitsch, “Dialektik — politische Wunderwaffe?”, Die Grundlage des Spätmarxismus, edited by E. Topitsch, Rüdiger Proske, Hans Eysenck et al., (Stuttgart: Verlag Bonn Aktuell GMBH), 74.
4. Georges Sorel, Les illusions du progrès (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1947), 50.
5. François-Bernard Huyghe, La Soft-idéologie (Paris: Laffont, 1988). See also, Jean Baudrillard, La Gauche divine (Paris: Laffont, 1985). For an interesting polemics concerning the “treason of former socialists clerics who converted to liberalism”, see Guy Hocquenghem, Lettre ouverte à ceux qui sont passés du col Mao au Rotary (Paris: Albin Michel, 1986).
6. Serge-Christophe Kolm. Le libéralisme moderne (Paris: PUF, 1984), 11.
7. Carl Schmitt, Die geistegeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlametatarismus (München and Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker and Humblot, 1926), 23.
8. Kolm, op. cit., 96.
9. Karl Marx, Kritik des Gothaer Programms (Zürich: Ring Verlag A.G., 1934), 10.
10. Ibid., 11.
11. Sanford Lakoff, “Christianity and Equality”, Equality, edited by J. Roland Pennock and J. W. Chapmann, (New York: Atherton Press, 1967), 128–130.
12. David Thomson, Equality (Cambridge: University Press, 1949), p. 79.
13. Sorel, op. cit., 97.
14. Loc. cit.
15. Theodore von Sosnosky, Die rote Dreifältikeit (Einsiedeln: Verlaganstalt Benziger and Co., 1931).
16. Cf. Raymond Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism (New York: Frederick Praeger Publishers, 1969), 194 and passim.
17. Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (München and Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker and Humblot, 1932), 76 and passim.
18. Ibid., 36.
19. Jürgen Habermas, Technik and Wissenschaft als Ideologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968), 77.
20. Alain de Benoist, Die entscheidenden Jahre, “In der kaufmännisch-merkantilen Gesellschaftsform geht das Politische ein” (Tübingen: Grabert Verlag, 1982), 34.
21. Julius Evola, “Procès de la bourgeoisie”, Essais politiques (Paris: édition Pardès, 1988), 212. First published in La vita italiana, “Processo alla borghesia”, XXV1II, nr. 324 (March 1940): 259–268.
22. Werner Sombart, Der Bourgeois, cf. “Die heilige Wirtschaftlichkeit”; (München and Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker and Humblot, 1923), 137–160.
23. Louis Dumont, From Mandeville to Marx; The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 16.
24. Ibid., 59.
25. Cf. L. Dumont, Essays on Individualism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986).
26. Emanuel Rackman, “Judaism and Equality” in Equality, edited by J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: Atherton Press, 1967), 155.
27. Milton Konvitz, Judaism and the American Idea (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978). Also, German jurist Georg Jellinek argues in Die Erklärung der Menschen-und Bürgerrechte (Leipzig: Duncker and Humbolt, 1904), 46, that “the idea to establish legally the unalienable, inherent, and sacred rights of individuals, is not of political but religious origin.”
28. John Schaar, “Equality of Opportunity and Beyond”, in Equality, op. cit., 230.
29. Ibid., 236.
30. Ibid., 235.
31. Murray Milner, The Illusion of Equality (Washington and London: Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers, 1972), 10.
32. Antony Flew, The Politics of Procrustes (New York: Promethean Books, 1981), 111.
33. Milner, op. cit., 11.
34. Claude Polin, Le libéralisme, espoir ou péril (Paris: Table ronde, 1984), 211.
35. Ibid. 213.
36. Julien Freund, Politique, Impolitique (Paris: ed. Sirey, 1987), 336. Also in its entirety, “Théorie des besoins”, 319–353.
37. Loc. cit.
38. Ibid., 336–337.
39. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 165 and passim.
40. Max Scheler, Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (Abhandlungen and Aufsäzte) (Leipzig: Verlag der weissen Bücher, 1915), 58.
41. Claude Polin, Le totalitarisme (Paris: PUF, 1982), 123. See also Guillaume Faye, Contre l’économisme (Paris: ed. le Labyrinthe, 1982).
42. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Book, 1958), 478.
Part V: Multiculturalism and Communism
Woodrow Wilson’s Defeat in Yugoslavia: The End of a Multicultural Utopia
1. Arend Lijphart, “The Power-Sharing Approach,” in V. Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1990). Tomislav Sunic is assistant professor of political science at Juniata College in Pennsylvania. He is currently working in the Department of Culture at the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Zagreb.
2. United Nations Charter, Articles 2(4) and 2(7). See also R. J. Vincent, Non-intervention and International Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 233–77.
3. “Yugoslavia Country Report,” published by The Economist Intelligence Unit, no. 3, 1991, 7.
4. “Not Quite Belsen,” The Economist, August 15–21, 1992.
5. “U.N. Fights Bonn’s Embrace of Croatia,” New York Times, December 14, 1991.
6. Patrick Glynn, “Yugoblunder”; and “Lawrence of Serbia,” New Republic, February 24, 1992.
7. Jonathan Eyal, “E.C. Baptism Turns to Debacle,” The Guardian, January 16, 1992.
8. Wolfram Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
9. Viktor Meier, “Im Hintergrund Amerika, Die westliche Feindseligkeit gegen Kroatien und Slowenien,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 2, 1992.
10. From the liberal perspective see, Morton Halperin and David Scheffer, “What Recognition of New Nations Really Means,” The Christian Science Monitor, January 31, 1991. From an entirely different perspective, see Alain de Benoist’s approach to “multi-ethnicism.” “L’Idée d’Empire,” in Nation et Empire (Paris: Acts of XXIV colloquium of the GRECE, 1991).
11. For a theoretical approach to understanding political decision and “apolitical decision” within the European Community and the United Nations in regard to the Yugoslav
crisis, one could still draw lessons from the classic by Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1932).
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