El crepúsculo de las ideologías

Carlos X. Blanco:

 

El crepúsculo de las ideologías

 

Ex: https://latribunadelpaisvasco.com

Una de las constantes quejas del pensador español don Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora era el exceso de pathos y la carencia de logos en nuestra producción intelectual nacional. Creía el filósofo que en nuestro suelo patrio habían florecido no pocos "sentidores", pero muy escasos "razonadores". Es la España en exceso quijotesca la que causaba rechazo en don Gonzalo, la España plena de ideales –que no ideas- nunca realizados por resultar desde el principio ideales imposibles. Es la España trágica unamuniana, anegada de dudas y desazón, rica en sentimiento pero carente de hilos de discurso racional, la que había que superar según él, cargándola a nuestras espaldas pero no mirándola más, pues la mirada nacional, decía el pensador, ha de apuntar hacia un futuro nítido trazado a base de planes racionales, cuidadosamente calculados, racionalmente trazados, inyectados con dosis adecuadas de realismo y pragmatismo.

Yo también lo creo, y en esto coincido con Fernández de la Mora. Nos hace falta una filosofía, y no una filosofía cualquiera. Nos hace falta una filosofía positiva. Entiéndaseme bien: positiva no significa positivista. De esta otra ya andamos sobrados. No faltan columnistas, periodistas, científicos sociales y naturales, expertos en "H" o en "B", que lanzan al aire y a las masas la carnaza positivista de que la "filosofía no sirve para nada" y venden la baratija de que, a lo sumo, un mero análisis lógico y lingüístico de los enunciados es cuanto queda por hacer al filósofo profesional. Eso, o la divulgación generalista, el trenzado ideológico-partidista o la labor anticuaria de rescatar y exponer "ideas del pasado". El neopositivismo anglosajón y colonizador fue parte del recado atlantista que nos llegó tras la "apertura" de nuestro país a la ayuda y a la influencia angloamericana en pleno franquismo, y se tradujo en la creación masiva de cátedras y plazas docentes de una filosofía –- la "analítica" –- que no era nuestra y que nada nos decía. Pudo ser una alternativa "modernizadora" ante el acartonamiento escolástico de la universidad franquista, es cierto, un acicate, siempre saludable, para estudiar lógica formal o interesarse por la epistemología de las ciencias "duras", pero poco más.

La filosofía positiva por la que abogaba don Gonzalo, me parece a mí, era más bien otra. Es la filosofía rigurosa, la que atiende a hechos, experiencia y raciocinio, pero no al sentimiento. Es la filosofía entendida como un saber estricto, tomando ésta expresión del antecedente germánico de Fichte (1762-1814). Dicho proyecto del saber estricto tuvo continuadores en suelo hispano, en grandes autores como Ortega y Zubiri. En tiempos más recientes, y a pesar del sesgo que el propio nombre implica, hablo del término "materialismo", la filosofía de Gustavo Bueno supone un jalón fundamental para superar la etapa noventayochista y neorromántica de los "sentidores" hispanos y edificar definitivamente una escuela filosófica hispana de "pensadores" rigurosos, distantes y alérgicos de cualquier sesgo ideológico, metafísico (metafísico en el sentido de pre-crítico), partidario, etc. En la actualidad, un discípulo de Gustavo Bueno, don Manuel Fernández Lorenzo, pugna por elaborar esa filosofía "positiva", que no positivista, ni tampoco materialista, que esté "al nivel de nuestro tiempo", dando cuenta, como quería Ortega, de la génesis operatoria (en gran parte manual) de nuestros conocimientos y de las estructuras ontológicas del mundo.

Las quejas de G. Fernández de la Mora, así como sus proyectos modernizadores, han quedado en el olvido. El cambio de Régimen, desde el franquismo (sistema en el cual éste pensador fue destacado miembro, e incluso ministro) hacia la Restauración borbónico-constitucional (R78) supuso el olvido e incluso la postergación de su obra. El filósofo conservador, pero en absoluto fascista, había concebido una España moderna en el plano científico y tecnológico, una España en la cual primaran el mérito, la capacidad, la preparación, y en donde se proscribiera para siempre la demagogia, el juego doctrinario, la retórica verbal y el patetismo. Es una voz la de Fernández de la Mora que no ha sido escuchada. Una España que la escuchara, será una nación radicalmente otra, renovada y sin prejuicios.

Si bien es del todo cierto que asistimos a un Crepúsculo de las ideologías (título de un jugoso y fundamental ensayo suyo), hay una y muy fundamental ideología que todavía se sostiene en pie. Una simple y llana ideología que a alguien le interesa sostener aunque sea a través de todos los artificios y por medio de las más variadas tretas: la ideología de actuar como si aún existieran ideologías y la de hacer creer que existen y son importantes. Le resulta muy útil al sistema, y en especial al R78, hacer creer a la gente que aún existen izquierdas y derechas. Le resulta muy rentable al sistema ese empeño en catapultar a la fama a ignorantes retóricos que propagan discursos vacuos y sofismas del más bajo nivel.

A veces da miedo. Este país estuvo a punto de ser gobernado por un profesor de ciencias políticas que no era capaz de citar adecuadamente una obra de Kant, y al punto, si Dios no lo remedia, nos va a gobernar otro señor de la nueva hornada a cuyo magín ni siquiera le viene el título de ninguna, lo cual no sé si es peor. No es que haya desaparecido la filosofía de nuestro escenario político, y que nunca haya entrado en las cabezas de nuestros políticos, sino que más bien el Régimen es la negación más explícita y radical del pensamiento racional mismo.

La ignorancia de nuestros políticos o líderes de masas es mucho más peligrosa que la barbarie de las turbas descontroladas, pues estos personajes sirven de modelos de conducta y sentimiento a turbas futuras más numerosas y más osadas. Sus consignas encaminadas a la indignación o la movilización sirven para que un pueblo esclavizado refuerce la apretura de sus grilletes, creyéndose libre en un sistema que se dice liberal. La ideología según la cual existen ideologías, la creencia de que en Podemos hay un ápice de socialdemocracia y otro de libertarismo, el señuelo de que allí anidan comunistas y revolucionarios, tanto como el engaño de que en Cs y en el PP existe un liberalismo, o de que en el PSOE se conservan esencias de la II Internacional o del modelo sueco… Todo esto es engaño, demagogia, ideología. Todo ello no es más que esa Ideología que reza que nuestro R78 es ideológico. Esa ideología es la Caverna Platónica en la que media España está metida. La otra media se desinteresa, ve deportes o escucha chascarrillos en vez de ruedos políticos, o se evade alienada por los medios más diversos.

Fernández de la Mora proclamaba sustituir las ideologías, ya moribundas, por ideas. Trocar a los demagogos y a los declamadores por expertos. En vez de entusiasmo, peligroso explosivo que siempre deviene en tiranía, consenso. El consenso tácito y la deliberación fría deben ocupar su puesto rector en lugar de la asamblea tumultuaria. El análisis sosegado de proyectos racionales en vez de agitación y propaganda. Qué duda cabe que la filosofía positiva no corrió la mejor de las fortunas una vez desembocada la partidocracia del R78. El régimen constitucional postfranquista ensalzó la retórica partidista y encumbró a un sinfín de ideólogos, retóricos vanos, arribistas, vividores "liberados" de los sindicatos y de los aparatos electoralistas. Los expertos, las personas formadas en las distintas ramas de la vida orgánica del Estado (administradores, expertos juristas, tecnólogos, economistas planificadores…) hubieron de ceder sus sillas o pasar a un discreto y segundo plano ante el soberano imperio de los grandilocuentes vendedores de humo. Incluso dentro de la democracia postfranquista se advierten claramente dos generaciones: una, primera, aún bien acreditada en cuanto a titulación académica y experiencia práctica en la empresa pública o en la privada, y otra, segunda, en la que ahora más y más nos hundimos, en la cual el lumpen de la sociedad, los sectores sociales más refractarios al esfuerzo intelectual, profesional y, en general, humano, se dedican, con el carnet en la boca, a ascender por los aparatos electoralistas para conseguir aplausos fáciles y cargos sine cura.

Don Gonzalo despedía con alegría al tipo de político retórico y declamador, pero experto en nada, que había dominado la escena pública europea durante todo el siglo XIX y que aún prolongaba su inútil existencia en el XX. A la par, el filósofo bendecía en "El Crepúsculo de las Ideologías" al tecnócrata, al experto, al "conocedor" que no busca encandilar a las masas, manipularlas y tocar las fibras de su entusiasmo, sino ser eficaz servidor público que plantea objetivos realistas en orden a una mejora del bienestar general, haciendo del Estado una maquinaria ágil, inteligente, bien engrasada. Una maquinaria que ha de renunciar, bajo riesgo de recaer en el ideologismo y en el utopismo más peligrosos, a reformar al hombre.

La visión gramsciana, tan extendida hoy en Occidente, y no precisamente bajo gobiernos comunistas sino bajo fuerzas que a menudo se dicen "liberales", es la antítesis del "Estado de Obras" de nuestro autor. El filósofo marxista italiano Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), uno de los principales intelectuales revolucionarios de toda la Historia, había dejado claro que el Estado tenía la misión de transformar al hombre. El Estado era, bajo el capitalismo y, después, bajo el futuro comunismo, algo más que un comité dirigente de la Producción. El Estado poseía una misión ética. El Estado debía ser el agente de la transformación de la propia esencia del hombre. Una esencia histórica, si cabe hablar así, esto es, transformable. Dicha transformación fue dirigida inicialmente por los patronos capitalistas que habrían creado un Estado a su medida (muy especialmente a través de las instituciones educativas), para así disponer de un obrero igualmente hecho a su medida. El comunismo hará lo propio. Una vez conquistada la hegemonía, y tras ella, inmersa la sociedad toda en una etapa revolucionaria, el Estado proseguirá con esa función que hoy llamaríamos función de "ingeniería social", haciendo de cada individuo un convencido comunista.

Por el contrario, casi diríamos que en las antípodas, la Tecnocracia de Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora se situaría en la más genuina tradición del realismo político hispano. Lejos de una transformación general del hombre, pues en el colectivo "hombre" siempre habrá hondas e insalvables disparidades (de talento, de capacidad, de formación, de inquietud, de lealtad), el Estado debería reducirse a ser el más elevado servicio de "puesta a punto" de todos los torrentes de energía social, para aprovecharlos y encauzarlos de la mejor manera posible, haciendo aquí de catalizador, allí de coordinador, y más allá de planificador y rector. En el Estado tecnocrático los expertos siempre serán consultados y el gestor político, como el buen ingeniero, se debe poner el casco, bajar "a pie de obra" y consultar a los subordinados y a los adláteres para palpar las realidades sobre las que quiere operar. Una cosa es poner a punto la maquinaria estatal, partiendo de una sustancia antropológica dada, y otra es transmutar esa sustancia.

Un ejemplo de cómo esta filosofía de ideas y no de utopías ideológicas perdió la batalla, y el vicio del ideologismo alcanzó el triunfo, fue el rosario de las reformas educativas de la democracia. Cada nueva ley de educación, comenzando con la barbarie de la LOGSE, hasta llegar a la actual LOMCE, demostró ser la consagración del ideologismo. En lugar de dotar al Estado de ideas, ideas tonificantes, hemos tenido ideología y más ideología. España necesitaba ideas en el sentido filosófico, esto es, conceptos generales (trans-categoriales) que hundieran sus raíces en los más variados conceptos y categorías científicas y técnicas, ideas que, debidamente entretejidas, formaran un proyecto comunitario para "poner a punto" nuestra sociedad y vuelvan a "ajustar" debidamente a España en el orden internacional, colocándola en el puesto que le compete y que se merece ateniéndose a su Historia y a su Presente. Pues bien, en lugar de eso, hemos sido víctimas de los pedagogos, esto es, de los ideólogos, que de manera harto interesada nos equipararon a todos por lo bajo, sustituyendo el imperativo del esfuerzo por la "integración" y halagando al vago y al parásito, con la esperanza de que sean muchedumbre los que sigan depositando en los mismos ataúdes ideológicos el voto mayoritario de los borregos.

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Liberalismus vs. Konservativismus – Sozialismus

Liberalismus vs. Konservativismus – Sozialismus

Ex: http://www.unwiderstehlich.org

Das 18. Jahrhundert ist das Zeitalter der „Aufklärung“. Aus der Gesamtheit der menschlichen Kräfte löst sich die Vernunft heraus und sucht ungebunden durch religiöse Glaubenssätze und staatlich-gesellschaftliche Überlieferungsmächte die Welt zu durchdringen und ihre „eigentlichen“ Gesetze zu erkennen. Überall waren Vorurteile zu beseitigen, jahrhundertelange Irrtümer und Dunkelheiten schienen sich aufzuhellen, in allen Ländern, in Holland wie in England, in Frankreich und in Deutschland regten sich kampflustig die Geister, um die religiösen und geistigen, schließlich auch die gesellschaftlichen und politischen Formen zu zerbrechen oder jedenfalls zu wandeln und den Erkenntnissen der „Vernunft“ anzupassen.

Einer der Begriffe, mit dem eine starke Richtung des 18. Jahrhunderts aufräumen zu müssen glaubte, war der des Staates. Man empfand den Staat als Hemmung der persönlichen Freiheit und als eine betrübliche Minderung des ursprünglichen Glücks, dessen sich der Mensch im Naturzustand erfreut.

Der Mensch werde frei geboren, jetzt sei er aber überall in Banden, so ließ sich Rousseau (1712 – 1778) vernehmen; das komme daher, dass der Staat seine Rechte überschritten habe; der Staat beruhe auf einem Vertrag der Menschen untereinander und habe nur dann Sinn, wenn er die Freiheit des einzelnen, sein menschliches Recht und Glück sichere. Hier fehlt jeder Sinn für die großen geschichtlichen Mächte, für die schöpferische Kraft der Gemeinschaft, für Hingabe und Opfer über das persönliche Sein hinaus; aber man darf nicht vergessen, welchen Staat die Aufklärer vor sich haben: den Absolutistischen!

Der absolutistische Staat ist ohne von Gott geschöpftes Recht nicht denkbar. Der westeuropäische und schließlich der deutsche Materialismus, als ein Ergebnis der Aufklärung, ist trotz zeitbedingter Einseitigkeit eine geschichtlich notwendige, revolutionäre Bewegung gegen das geistige Mittelalter. Der orientalische Jahveismus hat sich in Verbindung mit der platonischen Ideenlehre als spiritualistische Metaphysik über Europa gelagert, die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung dogmatisch begrenzt und die wahre Naturforschung behindert. Fast 1500 Jahre lang wurde die vom heidnischen Griechentum eingeleitete wissenschaftliche Erforschung und Beobachtung der realen Wirklichkeit unterbrochen.

Der Liberalismus als Frucht dieses Materialismus entartete jedoch wegen seiner Einseitigkeit sehr rasch und mutierte zu einer asozialen und staatsverneinenden Idee.

„Der Liberalismus behauptet, dass er alles, was er tut, für das Volk tut. Aber gerade er schaltet das Volk aus und setzt ein Ich an die Stelle. Der Liberalismus ist der Ausdruck einer Gesellschaft, die nicht mehr Gemeinschaft ist. […] Es liegt im Triebe eines jeden, dass er Individuum sein möchte, auch wenn er keines ist. Jeder Mensch, der sich nicht mehr in der Gemeinschaft fühlt, ist irgendwie liberaler Mensch. Seine Allzumenschlichkeiten sind liberal. Und die Selbstliebe ist sein eigenster Bereich.“ (Arthur Moeller van den Bruck: „Das dritte Reich“; Ring-Verlag, Berlin 1926; S. 117 ff.)

Der scharfdenkende Analyst Francis Parker Yockey gelangt in seinem Opus Magnum „Chaos oder Imperium“ zu einem vernichtenden Urteil:

„Der Liberalismus kann nur negativ definiert werden. Er ist ausschließlich Kritik, keine lebende Idee. Ein großes Schlagwort ‘Freiheit’ ist ein Negativum. Es bedeutet in Wirklichkeit Freiheit von Autorität, d.h. Auflösung des Organismus. In seinen letzten Stadien erzeugt er sozialen Atomismus, mit dem nicht nur die Autorität des Staates, sondern auch die der Gesellschaft und der Familie bekämpft wird. Die Scheidung ist der Ehe gleichrangig, die Kinder den Eltern. Seine Haltung war immer widersprüchlich, er suchte immer einen Kompromiss. Aber bei einer Krise war der Liberalismus als solcher nie vertreten; seine Anhänger schlugen sich auf die eine oder die andere Seite eines revolutionären Kampfes, je nachdem wie konsequent ihr Liberalismus und wie stark seine feindselige Einstellung zur Autorität war.“ (Francis Parker Yockey: „Chaos oder Imperium“; Grabert Verlag, Tübingen 1976; S. 120 f.)

Im 19. Jahrhundert führte das Aufbäumen gegen den mittelalterlichen Obrigkeitsstaat im Politischen, vom Liberalismus zum marxistischen Sozialismus, andererseits zur Gegenreaktion des Konservativismus.

Werner Sombart schreibt dazu:

„Es gehört zu den Erbschaften, die der Liberalismus in Deutschland dem Jahre 1848 verdankt, dass eine seiner hervorstechenden Charaktereigentümlichkeiten eine seltsame Furcht vor dem roten Gespenst ist. Freilich hat das Proletariat ihm selbst durch sein Verhalten dazu verholfen. Es ist bekannt, wie die bürgerliche Bewegung des Jahres 1848 in Deutschland zusammengeklappt wie ein Taschenmesser sich unter die preußischen Bajonette flüchtet in dem Augenblicke, als die „gens mal intentionés“, die bekannte, in jeder bürgerlichen Revolution vorhandene demokratische Unterströmung – siehe 1789 ff.! – sich bemerkbar zu machen beginnen. Da war es vorbei mit dem Bürgerstolz und dem Bürgertrotz; und es ist immer wieder damit vorbei gewesen, sobald auch nur von Ferne das Gespenst der sozialen Revolution am Horizonte auftauchte: siehe Sozialistengesetz! So war die Brücke zwischen der proletarischen Bewegung und der bürgerlichen Opposition frühzeitig schon geborsten, um bald ganz abgebrochen zu werden.“ (Werner Sombart: „Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert“; Verlag von Gustav Hischer in Jena, 1897; S. 37.)

Der Konservativismus ist immer auf die eine oder andere Art und Weise der Versuch das Rad der Geschichte zurückzudrehen. Er ist zutiefst reaktionär! Mag er sich auch in verschiedenster Form verkleiden, uneingestanden ist allen Konservativen das Ressentiment gegen die Aufklärung gemein. Anstatt mutig in die Geschichte voranzuschreiten und die immer neuen Problemstellungen zu bewältigen, herrscht die Sehnsucht nach „der guten alten Zeit“ vor, die in Wahrheit bedeutet in das geistige Mittelalter zurückzukehren. Zu christlicher Dogmatik, zu Scholastik, zu Spiritualismus und Wissenschaftsfeindlichkeit. Da sich das Rad der Zeit aber nicht zurückdrehen lässt und sich der Geist der Zeit, im Unterschied zum Zeitgeist, nicht aufhalten lässt, gehört die Zukunft dem Sozialismus. Einem Sozialismus der eine gerechte Gemeinschaftsordnung bedeutet.

Selbst für einen so freien und genialen Geist wie Goethe war die unabdingbare Rückkoppelung des Einzelnen an die Gemeinschaft über jeden Zweifel erhaben.

„Im Grunde aber sind wir alle kollektive Wesen, wir mögen uns stellen, wie wir wollen. Denn wie weniges haben und sind wir, das wir im reinsten Sinne unser Eigentum nennen! Wir müssen alle empfangen und lernen, sowohl von denen, die vor uns waren, als von denen, die mit uns sind. Selbst das größte Genie würde nicht weit kommen, wenn es alles seinem eigenen Innern verdanken wollte. Das begreifen aber viele sehr gute Menschen nicht und tappen mit ihren Träumen von Originalität ein halbes Leben im Dunkeln. […] Und was ist denn überhaupt Gutes an uns, wenn es nicht die Kraft und Neigung ist, die Mittel der äußeren Welt an uns heranzuziehen und unseren höheren Zwecken dienstbar zu machen. Ich darf wohl von mir selber reden und bescheiden sagen, wie ich fühle. Es ist wahr, ich habe in meinem langen Leben mancherlei getan und zustande gebracht, dessen ich mich allenfalls rühmen könnte. Was hatte ich aber, wenn wir ehrlich sein wollen, das eigentlich mein war, als die Fähigkeit und Neigung, zu sehen und zu hören, zu unterscheiden und zu wählen, und das Gesehene und Gehörte mit einigem Geist zu beleben und mit einiger Geschicklichkeit wiederzugeben. Ich verdanke meine Werke keineswegs meiner eigenen Weisheit allein, sondern Tausenden von Dingen und Personen außer mir, die mir dazu das Material boten.“ (Johann Peter Eckermann: „Gespräche mit Goethe“; Berlin o. J.; Eintrag vom 17.2.1832, S. 520 ff.)

Der Sozialismus als Gemeinschaftsordnung setzt voraus, dass es einen Bewertungsmaßstab gibt, der die verschiedenen Rangstufen innerhalb der Ordnung festsetzt. Dieser Maßstab ist im Nationalstaat die Leistung des Einzelnen für sein Volk. Sozialismus hat also nichts mit Gleichmacherei zu tun. Sozialismus ist ein Gemeinschaftszustand, eine Gesellschaftsordnung, zu der alle Angehörigen des Volkes zählen. Es ist unmöglich Sozialismus in rein äußeren Staats- und Wirtschaftsformen erschöpfen zu wollen. Sozialismus setzt die Gemeinschaft eines Volkes voraus und diese wiederrum gleiche Vernunft, Einsicht und Haltung.

Der Sozialismus ist also im Wesentlichen keine wirtschaftliche Angelegenheit, sondern im Grunde allumfassende Gemeinschaftsgesinnung und Gemeinschaftstat aller Glieder eines Volkes.

“Anarcho-Fascism”: An Overview of Right-Wing Anarchist Thought

“Anarcho-Fascism”: An Overview of Right-Wing Anarchist Thought

 

by Keith Preston

Ex: https://attackthesystem.com

This is the text of a lecture delivered to the H.L. Mencken Club on November 5, 2016.

The topic that I was given for this presentation is “Anarcho-Fascism” which I am sure on the surface sounds like a contradiction in terms. In popular language, the term “fascism” is normally used as a synonym for the totalitarian state. Indeed, in a speech to the Italian Chamber of Deputies on December 9, 1928 Mussolini describe totalitarianism as an ideology that was characterized by the principle of “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

However, the most commonly recognized ideological meaning of the term “anarchism” implies the abolition of the state, and the term “anarchy” can either be used in the idealistic sense of total freedom, or in the pejorative sense of chaos and disorder.

Anarchism and fascism are both ideologies that I began to develop an interest in about thirty years ago, when I was a young anarchist militant who spent a great deal of time in the university library reading about the history of classical anarchism. It was during this time that I also became interested in understanding the ideology of fascism, mostly from my readings on the Spanish Civil War, including the works of Dr. Payne, whom I am honored to be on this panel with. And I have also looked into some of these ideas a little more since then. One of the things that I find to be the most fascinating about anarchism as a body of political philosophy is the diversity of anarchist thought. And the more that I have studied right-wing political thought, the more I am amazed by the diversity of opinion to be found there as well. It is consequently very interesting to consider the ways in which anarchism and right-wing political ideologies might intersect.

Anarchism is also normally conceived of as an ideology of the far Left, and certainly the most well-known tendencies within anarchism fit that description. The anarchist movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth century was certainly a movement of the revolutionary Left, and shaped by the thought and actions of radicals such as Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, the Ukrainian anarchists, the Spanish anarchists, and others. Anarchism of this kind also involved many different ideological sub-tendencies including anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, collectivist anarchism, and what was known as “propaganda by the deed” which was essentially a euphemism for terrorism, and other forms of anarchism that advocated violent resistance to the state, such as illegalism or insurrectionary anarchism.

There is also a modern anarchist movement that largely functions as a youth subculture within the context of the radical left, and modern anarchism likewise includes many different hyphenated tendencies like “queer anarchism,” “transgender anarchism,” or “anarcha-feminism,” and many of which, as you might guess, maintain a very “politically correct” orientation.

However, there are also ways in which the anarchist tradition overlaps with the extreme right.

The French intellectual historian Francois Richard identified three primary currents within the wider philosophical tradition of anarchism. The first of these is the classical socialist-anarchism that I have previously described that has as its principal focus an orientation towards social justice and uplifting the downtrodden. A second species of anarchism is the radical individualism of Stirner and the English and American libertarians, a perspective that posits individual liberty as the highest good.  And still a third tradition is a Nietzsche-influenced aristocratic radicalism, or what the French call “anarchism of the Right” which places its emphasis not only on liberty but on merit, excellence, and the preservation of high culture.

My actual presentation here today is going to be on the wider traditions of anarchism of the Right, right-wing anti-statism, and Left/Right crossover movements which are influenced by the anarchist tradition.

First, it might be helpful to formulate a working definition of “anarcho-fascism.” An “anarcho-fascist” could be characterized as someone that rejects the legitimacy of a particular state, and possibly even uses illegal or extra-legal means of opposing the established political or legal order, even if they prefer a state, even a fascist state, of their own.

There are looser definitions of “anarcho-fascism” as well, and I will touch on some of these in a moment. However, it should also be pointed out that many anarchists of the right were not part of a movement or any kind of political parties or mass organizations. Instead, their affinity for anarchism was more of an attitude or a philosophical stance although, as I will explain shortly, there were also efforts to translate right-wing anarchist ideas into a program for political action.

Anarchists of the Right during the French Revolution and Pre-Revolutionary Era

Left-wing anarchist thought can to some degree trace its roots to tendencies within revolutionary France of the late eighteenth century, as well as the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. This is also true, to some degree, of the right-wing anarchist tradition. Once again, to cite Francois Richard:

“Here, at the end of the 18th century, in the later stages of the ancien régime, formed an anarchisme de droite, whose protagonists claimed for themselves a position “beyond good and evil,” a will to live “like the gods,” and who recognised no moral values beyond personal honour and courage. The world-view of these libertins was intimately connected with an aggressive atheism and a pessimistic philosophy of history. Men like Brantôme, Montluc, Béroalde de Verville and Vauquelin de La Fresnaye held absolutism to be a commodity that regrettably opposed the principles of the old feudal system, and that only served the people’s desire for welfare.” –Francois Richard

These intellectual currents that Richard describes mark the beginning of an “anarchism of right” within the French intellectual tradition.  As mentioned previously, these thinkers could certainly be considered forerunners to Nietzsche, and later French thinkers in this tradition included some fairly prominent figures. Among them were the following:

-Arthur de Gobineau, a 19^th century writer, and early racialist thinker

-Leon Bloy, a novelist in the late 19^th century

-Paul Leautaud, a theater critic in the early 20^th century

-Louis Ferdinand Celine, a well-known French writer during the interwar period

-George Bernanos, whose political alignments were those of an anti-fascist conservative, monarchist, Catholic, and nationalist

-Henry de Montherlant, a 20^th century dramatist, novelist, and essayist

-Jean Anouilh, a French playwright in the postwar era

Among the common ideas that were shared by these writers were an elitist individualism, aristocratic radicalism, disdain for established ideological or ethical norms, and cultural pessimism; disdain for mass democracy, egalitarianism, and the values of mass society; a dismissive attitude towards conventional society as decadent; adherence to the values of merit and excellence; a commitment to the recognition of the superior individual and an emphasis on high culture; an ambiguity about liberty rooted in a disdain for plebian values; and a characterization of government as a conspiracy against the superior individual.

Outside of France

A number of thinkers also emerged outside of France that shared many ideas in common with the French anarchists of the Right. Ironically, considering where we are today, one of these was H. L. Mencken, who was characterized as an “anarchist of the right” by another French intellectual historian, Anne Ollivier-Mellio, in an academic article some years ago. An overlapping tradition is what has sometimes been referred to as “anarcho-monarchism” which included such figures as the famous author J.R.R. Tolkien in England, the artist Salvador Dali in Spain, the Catholic traditionalist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn in Austria, and, perhaps most intriguingly, the English occultist Aleister Crowley, who has been widely mischaracterized as a Satanist.

Conservative Revolutionaries  

The traditions associated with right-wing anarchism also overlap considerably with the tendency known as the “Conservative Revolution” which developed among right-wing European intellectuals during the interwar period. Among the most significant of these thinkers were Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and Stefan George in Germany, Maurice Barres in France, Gabriele d’Annunzio in Italy, and, considerably later, Yukio Mishima in postwar Japan.

Perhaps the most famous intellectual associated with the Conservative Revolution was Ernst Junger, a veteran of World War One who became famous after publishing his war diaries in Weimar Germany under the title “Storms of Steel.” Much later in life, Junger published a work called “Eumeswil” which postulates the concept of the “Anarch,” a concept that is modeled on Max Stirner’s idea of the “Egoist.” According to Junger’s philosophy, an “Anarch” does not necessarily engage in outward revolt against institutionalized authority. Instead, the revolt occurs on an inward basis, and the individual is able to retain an inner psychic freedom by means of detachment from all external values and an inward retreat into one’s self. In some ways, this is a philosophy that is similar to currents within Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies.

Yet another well-known figure from the Conservative Revolutionary era, and one that is certainly influential among the more radical tendencies on the alternative right today, is Julius Evola. Evola was a proponent of an extreme elitism that characterized the period of the Kali Yuga of Hindu civilization during approximately 800 B.C. as the high point in human development. Indeed, he considered everything that has taken place since then to have been a manifestation of degeneracy. For example, Evola actually criticized fascism and Nazism as having been too egalitarian because of their orientation towards popular mobilization and their appeals to the ethos of mass society. Evola also formulated a concept known as the “absolute individual,” which was very similar to Junger’s notion of the “Anarch,” and which can be described an individual that has achieved a kind of self-overcoming, as Nietzsche would have called it, due to their capacity for rising above the herd instincts of the masses of humankind.

Now, I must emphasize that the points of view that I have outlined thus far were largely attitudes or philosophical stances, not actual programs of political action. However, there have also been actual efforts to combine anarchism or ideas borrowed from anarchism with right-wing ideas, and to translate these into conventional political programs. One of these involves the concept of syndicalism as it was developed by Georges Sorel. Syndicalism is a revolutionary doctrine that advocates the seizure of industry and the government by means of a worker insurrection or what is sometimes called a “general strike.” Syndicalism was normally conceived of as an ideology of the extreme left, like anarchism, but a kind of right-wing syndicalism began to develop in the early twentieth century due to the influence of Sorel and the German-Italian Robert Michels, who formulated the so-called “iron law of oligarchy.” Michaels was a former Marxist who came to believe that all organizations of any size are ultimately organized as oligarchies, where the few lead the many, and believed that anti-capitalist revolutionary doctrines would have to be accommodated to this insight.

Cercle Proudhon

Out of these intellectual tendencies developed an organization called the “Cercle Proudhon,” which combined the ideas of the early anarchist thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, such as mutualist economics and political federalism, with various elitist and right-wing ideas such as French nationalism, monarchism, aristocratic radicalism, and Catholic traditionalism. Cercle Proudhon was also heavily influenced by an earlier movement known as Action France which had been founded by Charles Maurras.

Third Positionism, Distributism and National-Anarchism

Another tendency that is similar to these is what is often called the “Third Position,” a form of revolutionary nationalism that is influenced by the economic theories of Distributism. Distributism was a concept developed by the early 20^th century Catholic writers G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc, which postulated the idea of smaller property holders, consumer cooperatives, workers councils, local democracy, and village-based agrarian societies, and which in many ways overlaps with tendencies on the radical Left such as syndicalism, guild socialism, cooperativism or individualist anarchism. Interestingly, many third positionists are also admirers of Qaddafi’s “Green Book” which outlines a program for the creation of utopian socialist and quasi-anarchist communities that form the basis for an alternative model of society beyond both Capitalism and Communism.

Within more recent times, a tendency has emerged that is known as National-Anarchism, a term that was formed by a personal friend of mine named Troy Southgate, and which essentially synthesizes anarchism with the notion of ethno-cultural identitarianism.

Troy Southgate

Right-wing Anarchism, Libertarianism and Anarcho-Capitalism

Certainly, any discourse on right-wing anarchism needs include a discussion of the sets of ideas that are associated with Libertarianism or Anarcho-Capitalism of the kinds that are associated with an array of free-market individualist thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich August von Hayek, Milton Friedman, and, of course, Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard.

In many ways, modern libertarianism has a prototype in the extreme individualism of Max Stirner, and perhaps in thought of Henry David Thoreau as well. The more recent concept of anarcho-capitalism was developed in its most far reaching form by Murray Rothbard and his disciple, Hans Hermann Hoppe. Indeed, Hoppe has developed a critique of modern systems of mass democracy of a kind that closely resembles that of earlier thinkers in the tradition of the French “anarchists of the Right,” Mencken, and Kuehnelt-Leddihn.

It is also interesting to note that some of the late twentieth century proponents of individualist anarchism such as James J. Martin and Samuel E. Konkin III, the founder of a tendency within libertarianism known as agorism, were also proponents of Holocaust revisionism. Indeed, when I was doing research on the modern libertarian movement, I discovered that Holocaust revisionism  was actually popular among libertarians in the 1970s, not on anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi grounds, but out of a desire to defend the original isolationist case against World War Two. Konkin himself was actually associated with the Institute for Historical Review at one point.

Samuel E.  Konkin III

There are also various types of conservative Christian anarchism that postulated the concept of parish-based village communities with cooperative or agrarian economies. Such tendencies exist within the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox traditions alike. For example, Father Matthew Raphael Johnson, a former editor of the Barnes Review, is a proponent of such an outlook.

Very similar concepts to conservative Christian anarchism can also be found within neo-pagan tendencies which sometimes advocate a folkish or traditionalist anarchism of their own.

Left/Right Overlaps and Crossover Movements

A fair number of tendencies can be identified that involved left/right overlaps or crossover movements of some particular kind. One of these was formulated by Gustav Landauer, a German anarcho-communist that was killed by the Freikorps during the revolution of 1919. Landauer was also a German nationalist, and proposed a folkish anarchism that recognized the concept of national, regional, local and ethnic identities that existed organically and independently of the state. For example, Landauer once characterized himself as a German, a Bavarian, and a Jew who was also an anarchist.

In the early 1980s, a tendency emerged in England known as the Black Ram, which advocated for an anarcho-nationalism that sought to address the concept of national identity as this related to left-wing anarchism. Black Ram was a conventionally left-wing tendency in the sense of being anti-statist, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and anti-sexist, but which understood nationalities to be pre-existing cultural and ethnic expressions that were external to the state as an authoritarian institution.

Dorothy Day was an American radical, a religious pacifist, and advocate of social justice, who combined anarchism and Catholic traditionalism. She was the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, and considered herself to be a supporter of both the Industrial Workers of the World and the Vatican.

One of the godfathers of classical anarchism was, of course, Mikhail Bakunin, who was himself a pan-Slavic nationalist, and continues to be a peripheral influence on the European New Right. In fact, Alain De Benoist’s concept of “federal populism” owes much to Bakunin’s thought and is remarkably similar to Bakunin’s advocacy of a federation of participatory democracies.

Dorothy Day

There are a number of left-wing anarchists that have profoundly influenced the ecology movement that have also provided inspiration for various thinkers of the Right. Kirkpatrick Sale, for example, is a neo-Luddite and the originator of a concept known as bioregionalism. Leopold Kohr is best known for his advocacy of the “breakdown of nations” into decentralized, autonomous micro-nations. E.F. Schumacher is, of course, known for his classic work in decentralist economics, “Small is Beautiful.” Each of these thinkers is also referenced in Wilmot Robertson’s white nationalist manifesto, “The Ethnostate.”

Anarchism and Right-Wing Populism

Because American political culture contains strands of both anti-state radicalism and right-wing populism, it is also important to consider the ways in which these overlap or run parallel to each other. For example, there are tendencies among far right political undercurrents that favor a radically decentralized or even anarchic social order, but which also adhere to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories or racial superiority theories. There is actually a tradition like that on the US far right associated with groups like the Posse Comitatus.

There is also a radical right Christian movement that favors county level government organized as an uber-reactionary theocracy (like Saudi Arabia, only Christian).  Other tendencies can be observed that favor no government beyond the county level, such as the sovereign citizens, who regard speed limits and drivers’ licensing requirements to be egregious violations of liberty, the proponents of extra-legal common laws courts, and various other trends within the radical patriot movement.

The relationship between the Right and the state in many ways mirrors that of the Left in the sense that both Right and Left have something of a triangular interaction with systems of institutional and legal authority. Both Left and Right can be divided into reformist, libertarian, or totalitarian camps. In the case of the Left, a leftist may be a reform liberal or social democrat, they may be an anarchist or a left-libertarian, or they may be a totalitarian in the tradition of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and others. Similarly, a rightist may advocate for reforms of a conservative or rightward leaning nature, they may be an anarchist of the right or a radical anti-statist, or a person of the Right may be a proponent of some kind of right-wing authoritarianism, or a totalitarian in the fascist tradition.

Why Are We Political Soldiers?

Rodolphe Lussac

Ed. and trans. by Michael O’Meara / Ex: http://toqonline.com/

 

“In the final instance civilization is always saved by a platoon of soldiers.”

–Spengler

We are soldiers who serve the cause of Europe’s Renaissance — a cause as pure, hard, and imperious as our banners.

We are soldiers because we refuse the reformist tinkering of the dominant system, which — through its electoral and party committees, its partisan venalities, and its parliamentary charade — endeavors to ensure the self-regulation and recycling of the corrupt elites controlling the existing plutocratic system.

We are soldiers because we believe that the salvation of Europe’s family of nations depends on the destruction of the present system.

We are soldiers who serve and not merely talk, we reflect and we act.

We serve the cause of politics in the sense of Julien Freund [France's leading Schmittian scholar], knowing that the essence of action is action itself.

Our trifold praxeological, destining, and eschatological understanding of politics transcends the purely operational, pragmatic, and secular policies of modern politics. Going further, we think that propaganda by ideas is a chimera and that ideas come from action and not the reverse.

This is why we embrace the revolutionary dialectic of Carlo Pisacane, Enrico Malatesta, Carlo Cafiero, Paul Brousse, and José Antonio, who advocated the propaganda of the deed — the deed pregnant with ideas.

Our soldierly faith and duty is wedded to the national-revolutionary ideal that seeks a new political, aristocratic, hierarchical, anti-democratic, and anti-egalitarian order, situated within a European continental frame, geopolitically self-centered, disconnected from the global economy, independent of our present Atlanticist servitude, and rooted in a Eurocultural concept of civilization based on the values of blood and soil.

We are soldiers because we see history as a clashing dialectic between antagonistic forces, whose constituent elements are peoples and nations.

For conflict and struggle, as the work of Stéphane Lupasco and Max Planck demonstrates, are inherent to every system.

History is thus an endless battle between peoples organized around their distinct cultures and communities, each, consciously or unconsciously, motivated by a desire to expand and dominate.

As soldiers, we fight for the restoration of the poltical principle in the noble sense of politea, imperium, and auctoritas, and in function of Evola’s anagogy, which is capable of impregnating peoples with those specific metapolitical, spiritual, and anti-materialist values that ensure the masses’ spontaneous adhesion.

For us, as for Carl Schmitt, politics is that privileged arena in which the enemy and the friend is clearly designated.

This is why we reject the administrative or managerial concept favored by party politicians, who promote a state sustained by hedonistic frenzies — a state whose subjects are cretinized and emasculated, manipulated by consumer society and the media — subjected in this way to a whoring enterprise which organizes, directs, and patronizes them in order to dissolve all revolutionary effort in the solvent of a fake, hyper-festive order of permanent entertainment.

As soldiers, we advocate the ideal of a “polemological” state charged, above all else, with defending the survival and growth of Europe’s power from assaults by American hegemonism, radical Islam, and the extra-European colonization of our ancient lands.  In this sense, we categorically reject the social-contractual conception of the nation and seek to restore it as that mystical body passed from one generation to another.

The nation for us remains a determinism, a necessity, a force, and a will.

We are soldiers because we believe that war-like activity is the highest degree by which civilizations become complex and by which history’s primordial lever raises motherlands and city-states.

War in this Heraclitian sense has animated international relations from the time of Thucydides and from that of Machiavelli.

War is the highest expression of the state, as Hegel shows; it evokes its greatest consciousness and its greatest efficacy.

The state is and remains above all a war machine and all its other functions are subordinate to it, even if the bourgeois and managerial conception of the dominant democratic state has patched together a certain order from the ruling delinquency and its corrupting prosperity.

The international authority of the state is as great as its ability to inflict harm, and history shows that only those attached to mos majorum (ancestral law) and to a conservative opposition to the centrifugal forces succeed in attaining the aureole sovereignty of military glory.

This is the way it was in the Rome of Augustus and Diocletian, in the Russia of Peter the Great and Lenin, in the Islam of Mehmet Ali and Mustapha Kemal, in the China of Huang-di and Mao Zedong, each of whom won domestic and foreign victories before daring to impose the profound revolutionary transformation in which they believed.

As political soldiers, we seek to restore the ideal of a political vocation that transcends contemporary economism and to re-legitimate the ideal of those exceptional men who articulate and embody an ethic of conviction, responsibility, and duty.

Within the bourgeois democracies governing and offending us, there thrives a class of professional politicians and bureaucrats, of demagogues and opportunists of all sorts, whose mercenary use of high political office is motivated solely by reasons of personal gain or career.

As soldiers, we will make the necessary sweep that sends these impostors, these betrayers of our great European political ideals, to the devil.  And in this we aspire to see emperor and proletarian, animated by the same revolutionary faith, marching shoulder to shoulder: paradigm of a new heroism.

We uphold that there is an essential contingency between the state of exception and the essence of political sovereignty, constituting the point of disequilibrium separating public law from political fact.

We advocate a state of exception in order to establish the state as the emanation of a new order, as a means of terminating the general anomie and the reigning disorder.

The syntagma “force of law” rests on a long tradition of Roman and medieval law constituted for efficacy and loyalty.

We would like to restore an operational perspective invested with the archetype of the Roman juridical institution — the iustitium – enacted whenever the Roman Senate was informed of a situation that might compromise the Republic — a senatus consultum ultimum dictating measures necessary to ensure the state’s security.

This way of dealing with states of emergency harped back to the ancient concept of sol-stitium: to those instances when the law came to a stop, like the sun at its solstice, [and where the question of sovereignty -- the question of who holds ultimate authority -- was forthrightly posed].

Above all, we are political soldiers because we are militants.

Etymologically, “militants” refer to the theological distinction between the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant.

An analogy can be made between the political militant and the believer, whose truths inform all aspects of his being, especially in its essence and totality

The militant fights, attacks, and pays with his person for the triumph of his ideals.

The verb “to militate” comes from the Latin militari, which means “soldiers” (in the plural), to whom belonged a Church (an army) that required a spirit of discipline, self-sacrifice, and abnegation.

This is why militancy is at the heart of our political struggle.

The ideal militant for us must be a revolutionary, capable of dialectically linking his theoretical and practical knowledge to a global understanding of the society in which he lives.  He thus voluntarily submits himself to a disciplined routine, realizing in it a unity of theory and practice.

As political soldiers, we do not believe that evolution is automatic or that revolutions are spontaneous, because there are no fatalities in politics or in economics; the dominant, liberal, capitalist order well knows how to regenerate itself and how to overcome contradictions in order to survive.

The masses too are not solely exploited, they are mentally manipulated and alienated.

There is no revolutionary advance without a process of development, culminating in a struggle between warring peoples (lutte des peuples).

These struggles are manifested in many forms, in sectional or local struggles (at the level of the enterprise, the region, etc.)

They may appear spontaneous but they are linked to a changing consciousness and to the effort of militants who rise from below as they are directed from above.

Rank and file struggles, however exemplary, cannot accomplish a global change of the system, because such struggles address only certain lived particulars, products of the larger social complex, [not the system itself].

Instead, they need to be linked and coordinated in the form of a global, ideological vanguardist action, capable of posing issues from a system-wide perspective. It is necessary, then, to avoid an overly rigid elitism and an unserious reformism — in order to ensure a dialectical liaison between the global struggle and the local struggle, between the political action of the vanguard and the mass movement.

As political soldiers we advocate a revolution that brings about not merely structural change in the economy and the state, but also in the spirit, an ontological change that will lead to the formation a new man, free of bourgeois individualism and egoism.

This “total revolution” will affect the relations and ethics regulating the larger significance of our quotidian life.

The revolution we advocate will be a return to origins, a revolving back, that establishes an authoritarian state-order, a managed economy, and an exclusive conception of identity — a revolution carried out in harmony with the distinct mentality of European peoples and in accord with a principle of homology that purges institutions and mentalities of alien, distorting elements.

As political soldiers, we are irredeemably imbued with a tragic conception of life, knowing, with Alfred Weber, that every superior order ends up perpetuating a certain chaos as it enhances its power.

Tragic because we are conscious of the imponderable grandeur of the universe and the world and of the imperfection and finitude of human nature.

In face of this constant and paradoxical metaphysics, we advocate a re-enchantment of the world and an aestheticization of the state, as envisaged by German romantics like Goethe, Novalis, Schlegel, and Müller — conscious, as we are, that the illuminist ideas of the French Revolution [the liberal revolution of 1789], along with the general process of secularization, has since disenchanted the world in Max Weber’s sense.

We want, like Novalis, our revolution to become an organic, poetical totality in which the new state is the existential and aesthetic embodiment of our ideal of human perfection.

And once we complete this task, we will go somewhere else, farther away, always farther, way over there near our gods.

Source: “Pourquoi sommes-nous des soldats politiques?” (2003)

http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/tag/soldats%20politiques

America's Left-Conservative Heritage

America’s Left-Conservative Heritage

http://attackthesystem.com/

Recent dialogue between Kevin R.C. Gutzman, Christian Kopff and Tom Piatak concerning the tension between classical liberal-libertarians and traditionalist conservatives reminded me of an observation from my Portuguese “national-anarchist” colleague Flavio Goncalves concerning  the clarion call issued by Chuck Norris a while back: “Seems like the US Right is as revolutionary as the South American Left? Your country confuses me.”

It does indeed seem that most of the serious dissidents in America are on the Right nowadays, and I think this can be understood in terms of America’s unique political heritage. American rightists typically regard themselves as upholders and defenders of American traditions, while American liberals tend to admire the socialism and cultural leftism of the European elites. However, the republican political philosophy derived from the thought of Locke, Montesquieu and Jefferson that found its expression in such definitive American documents as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and of which modern neo-classical liberalism and libertarianism are outgrowths, is historically located to the left of European socialism.

A variety of thinkers from all over the spectrum have recognized this. For instance, Russell Kirk somewhat famously remarked that conservatives and socialists had more in common with one another that either had with libertarians. Murray Rothbard observed that “conservatism was the polar opposite of liberty; and socialism, while to the “left” of conservatism, was essentially a confused, middle-of-the-road movement. It was, and still is, middle-of-the-road because it tries to achieve liberal ends by the use of conservative means.” Seymour Martin Lipset affirmed Rothbard’s thesis:

Given that the national conservative tradition in many other countries was statist, the socialists arose within this value system and were much more legitimate than they could be in America…Until the depression of the 1930s and the introduction of welfare objectives by President Roosevelt and the New Deal, the AFL was against minimum wage legislation and old age pensions. The position taken by (Samuel) Gompers and others was, what the state gives, the state can take away; the workers can depend only on themselves and their own institutions…Hence, the socialists in America were operating against the fact that there was no legitimate tradition of state intervention, of welfarism. In Europe, there was a legitimate conservative tradition of statism and welfarism. I would suggest that the appropriate American radicalism, therefore, is much more anarchist than socialist.

Back in 1912, when the German Social Democrats won 112 seats in the Reichstag and one-third of the vote, Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote a letter to a friend in which he said that he really welcomed the rise of the socialists because their statist positions were much to be preferred to the liberal bourgeoisie, whose antistatism he did not like. The Kaiser went on to say that, if the socialists would only drop antipatriotism and antimilitarism, he could be one of them. The socialists wanted a strong Prussian-German state which was welfare oriented, and the Kaiser also wanted a strong state. It was the pacifism and the internationalism of the socialists that bothered him, not their socialism. In the American context, the “conservative” in recent decades has come to connote an extreme form of liberalism; that is, antistatism. In its purest forms, I think of Robert Nozick philosophically, of Milton Friedman economically, and of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater politically.

Thomas Sowell has provided some interesting insights into what separates the Left and Right in contemporary American discourse. Both Left and Right are derivatives of eighteenth century radicalism, with the Left being a descendent of the French Revolution and the Right being a descendent of the American Revolution. What separates the legacies of these two revolutions is not their radicalism or departure from throne-and-altar traditionalism, but their differing views on human nature, the nature of human society, and the nature of politics. Both revolutions did much to undermine traditional systems of privileged hierarchy. After all, how “traditional” were the American revolutionaries who abolished the monarchy, disestablished the Church, constitutionally prohibited the issuance of titles of nobility, constitutionally required a republican form of government for the individual states and added a bill of rights as a postscript to the nation’s charter document? One can point to the Protestant influences on the American founding that coincide with the Enlightenment influences, but how “traditional” is Protestantism itself? Is not Protestantism the product of a rebellion against established religious authorities that serves as a kind of prelude to a latter rebellion to established political authorities?

I would maintain that what separates the modern Right and Left is not traditionalism versus radicalism, but meritocracy versus egalitarianism. For the modern Left, equality is considered to be a value in its own right, irrespective of merit, whether individual or collective in nature.  The radical provisions of the U.S. Constitution, for instance, aimed at eliminating systems of artificial privilege. No longer would heads of state, clerics, or aristocrats receive their position simply by virtue of inheritance, patronage or nepotism, but by virtue of individual ability and achievement. No longer would an institution such as the Church sustain itself through political privilege, but through the soundness of its own internal dynamics. To be sure, these ideals have been applied inconsistently throughout American history, and all societies are a synthesis of varying cultural and ideological currents. For instance, it is clear that nepotism remains to some degree. How else could the likes of George W. Bush ever become head of state?

Yet, for the Left, equality overrides merit. With regards to race, gender or social relations, for example, it is not sufficient to simply remove barriers designed to keep ethnic minorities, women or homosexuals down regardless of their individual abilities or potential contributions to society. Instead, equality must be granted regardless of any previous individual or collective achievement to the point of lowering academic or professional standards for the sake of achieving such equality. This kind of egalitarian absolutism is also apparent with regards to issues like the use of women in military combat or the adoption of children by same-sex couples. The Left often frames these issues not in terms of whether the use of female soldiers is best in terms of military standards (perhaps it is) or what is best for the children involved or whether the parenting skills of same-sex couples is on par with those of heterosexual couples (perhaps they are), but in terms of whether women should simply have the “right” to a military career or whether same-sex couples should simply have “equal rights” to adopt children, apparently with such concerns as military efficiency, child welfare and parental competence being dismissed as irrelevant.

To frame the debate in terms of tradition versus radicalism would seem to be setting up a false dichotomy. Edmund Burke, the fierce critic of the French Revolution considered by many to be the godfather of modern conservatism, was actually on the left-wing of the British politics of his time. For instance, he favored the independence of Ireland and the American colonies and even defended India against imperial interests. A deep dig into Burke’s writings reveals him to have been something of a philosophical anarchist. His opposition to the French Revolution was not simply because it was a revolution or because it was radical, but because of the specific content of the ideology of the revolutionaries who aimed to level and reconstruct French society along prescriptive lines. The American Revolution was carried out by those with an appreciation for the limits of politics and the limitations imposed by human nature, while the French Revolution was the prototype for the modern totalitarian revolutions carried out by the Bolsheviks, Nazis (whom Alain De Benoist has characterized as “Brown Jacobins”), Maoists , Kim Il-Sung and the Khmer Rouge.

One can certainly reject the hyper-egalitarianism championed by the Left and still favor far-reaching political or social change. It would be hard to mistake Ernst Junger for an egalitarian, yet he was contemptuous of the Wilhelmine German military’s practice of selecting officers on the basis of their class position, family status or political patronage rather than on their combat experience. He preferred a military hierarchy ordered on the basis of merit rather than ascribed status. Junger’s Weimar-era writings are filled with a loathing for the social democratic regime, yet he called for an elitist worker-soldier “conservative revolution” rather than a return to the monarchy.

Nor does political radicalism imply the abandonment of historic traditions. I, for one, advocate many things that are quite radical by conventional standards. Yet I am extremely uncomfortable with left-wing pet projects such as the elimination of “offensive” symbols like the Confederate flag; the alteration of the calendar along PC lines (C.E. and B.C.E instead of A.D. and B.C); the attacks on traditional holidays like Christmas or Columbus Day; a rigidly secular interpretation of the First Amendment (and I’m an atheist!); and the attempted reconstruction of language along egalitarian lines (making words like “crippled” or “retarded” into swear words or the mandatory gender neutralization of pronouns). All of these things seem like a rookie league version of Rosseauan/Jacobin/Pol Potian “year zero” cultural destructionism. Nor do I wish to do away with baseball, Fourth of July fireworks displays, Civil War re-enactors or the works of Edgar Allan Poe. I am also somewhat appalled that one can receive a high school diploma or even a university degree without ever having taken a single course on the history of Western philosophy. It is not uncommon to find undergraduates who have never heard of Aristotle. If they have, they are most likely to simply dismiss him as a sexist and defender of slavery. I’ve met graduate level sociology students who can tell you all about “the social construction of gender” but have no idea who Pareto was.

The principal evil of the Cultural Marxism of present day liberalism is its fanatical egalitarianism. Unlike historic Marxists, who simply sought equality of wealth, cultural Marxists seek equality of everything, including not only class, race, or gender, but sexuality, age, looks, weight, ability, intelligence, handicap, competence, health, behavior or even species. I’ve heard leftists engage in serious discussion about the evils of “accentism.” Such equality does not exist in nature. It can only be imposed artificially, which in turn requires tyranny of the most extreme sort. The end result can only be universal enslavement in the name of universal equality. For this reason, the egalitarian Left is a profoundly reactionary outlook, as it seeks a de facto return to the societies organized on the basis of static caste systems and ascribed status that existed prior to the meritocratic revolution initiated by the Anglo-American Enlightenment.

Perhaps just as dreadful is the anti-intellectualism of Political Correctness. In many liberal and no-so-liberal circles, the mere pointing out of facts like, for instance, the extraordinarily high numbers of homicides perpetrated by African-Americans is considered a moral and ideological offense. If one of the most eminent scientists of our time, Dr. James Watson, is not immune from the sanctions imposed by the arbiters of political correctness, then who would be? Are such things not a grotesque betrayal of the intellectual, scientific and political revolution manifested in Jeffersonian ideals? Is not Political Correctness simply an effort to bring back heresy trials and inquisitors under the guise of a secularized, egalitarian, fake humanitarian ideology? The American radical tradition represents a vital “left-conservative” heritage that elevates meritocracy over both an emphasis on ascribed status from the traditional Right and egalitarianism from the Left. It is a tradition worth defending.