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Conservative Revolution in Sweden
Nikolai von Kreitor
The Swedish magazine ResPublica, published by Brutus ?stlings Bokf?rlag Symposium, has
made the first substantial presentation of the historical and ideological phenomenon of
German Conservative Revolution in both Sweden and
Scandinavia.(1) The theme issue has been edited by G?ran Dahl and Carl-G?ran Heidegren.(2)
The issue contains translations from Carl Schmitt s works Politische Theologie , Land und
Meer and Glossarium , Ernst J?nger s book Der Arbeiter , as well as theoretical analyses
of the concept of Conservative Revolution by the editors, Eric Bolle, Louis Dupeux and
Ellen Kennedy.
G?ran Dahl s and Carl-G?ran Heidegren s introductory essay The Magic Zero Hour is the most
interesting in the issue. Its reference point is Armin Mohler s standard work on German
Conservative revolution Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932. Grundriss
ihrer Weltanschaungen . Mohler differentiates between three main ideological lines within
the revolutionary conservatism which constitute a development from German Myth, through
German Legal Idea and to a Prussian Principle.
Völkische Rasse, Volk germanisch
Jungkonservative Reich deutsch
Nationalrevolutionïre Bevegung preussisch
The Völkische current can be characterized as an entirely anti--intellectual and
irrational and its influence on the ideological development during the Weimar-republic is
relatively very limited. However during the Third Reich Himmler, Rosenberg and to a large
extend also Hitler, were exponents of the irrationalism of the Völkische ideology.
The Jung-konservative is the current most closely associated with the older traditional
conservatism which preserves Christian influence and values. It is the least revolutionary
group which does not expose an irreconcilable opposition to the Weimar Republic. A central
ideological leitmotif in their ideology is the concept of the Reich (=Empire) as a
supra-state formation, different and opposed to both the nation-state as well as the
imperialist state. Their ideal is a decentralized multi-ethnic empire under German
dominance achieved by virtue of the size of the German population as well as the German
industrial and cultural development and pre-eminence. (3)
The national-revolutionaries are the most radical, anti-Weimar and anti-capitalist group.
Characteristic for their ideological world-outlook is the anti-West and anti-Civilization
orientation intellectually conceived in a way similar to Thomas Mann's thoughts in
Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man. Civilization-criticism was equated with criticism of
Anglo-Saxon influence and capitalism, disguised as progress, liberalism and democracy. Or
as Thomas Mann wrote:
"Whatever the state of Germany s spiritual power of resistance may be today (May
1917), in 1914 she had recognized as superstition the belief that the Western ideas were
still the leading, victorious and revolutionary ones; she was convinced that progress,
modernity , youth, genius, and novelty were on the German side; she thought it patently
clear that compared with the conservatism of the immortal principles , her own
psychological conservatism signified something truly revolutionary." (4)
Thomas Mann noted further that:
"Whoever would aspire to transform Germany into a middle-class democracy in the
Western-Roman sense and spirit would wish to take away from her all that is best and
complex, to take away the problematic character that really makes up her
nationality; he would make her dull, shallow, stupid, an un-German, and he would therefore
be an antinationalist who insisted that Germany become a nation in a foreign sense and
spirit."(5)
The term West was seen as synonymous with Anglo-Saxon and therefore the anti-West
orientation in concrete political terms translated into corresponding East orientation,
toward Russia.(6)
Ernst Jünger, the National-Bolshevik Ernst Niekisch and Otto Strasser, the
anti-capitalist National Socialist and leader of the Black Front, are the most prominent
representatives of the national-revolutionaries. The capitalism was ideologically
perceived as anti-German, as Anglo-Saxon imposition and a deadly threat to culture and to
the quality of life, note Dahl and Heidegren. The work of the sociologist Werner Sombart Händler
and Helden, published in 1915, had an important influence on the criticism of capitalism:
it contraposed the Hero against the Händler (= the shopkeeper(7)) .
In the Fourteen Theses of the German Revolution , published in 1929 as the manifesto and
program of the Black Front, Otto Strasser clearly defined the extent of his faction s
commitment to socialist social change. The main points of the program were:
"nationalist, against the enslavement of Germany by the Versailles powers; socialist,
against the tyranny of money and Volkish, against the destruction of the German soul."
(8)
His first point placed him in the company of Moeller van den Bruck , for he advocated a
foreign policy oriented toward the East , toward what van den Bruck described as the
territory of the young Russian nation. His second point demanded nationalization of all
land and abolishment of all unearned income. And the third point was directed against
foreign elements and institutions working to undermine and enslave the German soul and
German historical and cultural traditions.(9)
Conservative revolutionaries were also critical of the political form of expression of
capitalism: the liberalism. The liberalism, built on an atomistic, individualistic
principle, had undermined all organic Gemeinschaft or as Moeller van den Bruck asserted in
Das Dritte Reich : The liberalism has ruined cultures, it has undermined religions. It has
destroyed nations and fatherlands. The liberalism is the self-dissolution of the mankind.
Against the liberalism he envisioned a new ethical-political German or Prussian socialism.
Oswald Spengler stated in his book Preussentum und Socialismus that:
"Power belongs to the whole. The individual serves it. The whole is
sovereign...Together Prussianism and socialism stand against the England within us ,
against the world view which has penetrated the whole existence of our people, paralyzed
it, and robbed it of its soul ."(10)
The basic mood of the ideology of Conservative Revolution is best summarized by the
distinction between Culture and Civilization as well as between organic unity and economic
liberalism.
A Culture, to recall Oswald Spengler s words, has a soul, whereas Civilization is the most
external and artificial state of which humanity is capable. The acceptance of Culture and
rejection of Civilization meant for many people and end to alienation from the society.
The word rootedness occur constantly in their vocabulary. They sought this in spiritual
terms, through an inward
correspondence between the individual, the native soul, the Volk and the universe. In this
manner the isolation they felt so deeply would be destroyed.
The external was equated with the present, disappointing
society; the state was opposed to the Volk, and the divisive parliamentary politics
contrasted with that organic unity for which so many Germans longed. Moreover, the
external signified a society which had forgotten its genuine, Germanic purpose . (11)
Following Armin Mohlers thoughts Dahl and Heidegren concentrate on the Nietzschean
elements in the ideology of the Conservative Revolution: the dichotomy between linear
versus cyclical (Nietzsche, Spengler)-without beginning or an end- concept of history and
the notion of the Return of the Eternal , the contraposition of progress versus inner and
outer organic development, the conviction that the fall, the destruction are at the same
time a rebirth. Those irrational elements have a certain historical significance, but they
are neither generally representative nor decisive for the ideology of the Conservative
Revolution.
More interesting is the discussion of the relationship between cultural pessimism, the
feeling of doom, and decisionist voluntarism, a relationship similar to that of illness
and medicine. According to Loius Dupeux the decisionist voluntarism became the
intellectual foundation of a new optimism, a conservative optimism as Moeller van den
Bruck called it, centered on notions
of national rebirth, resurrection and self-affirmation, on assertion of a new national
identity as a trans-individual subject of history. Therefore in his book Die Entscheidung
Christian Graf von Krockow correctly calls Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger and Martin
Heidegger the prophets of decision during a historical period which already Oswald
Spengler had described as The Hour of Decision.
LEBENSPHILOSOPHIE
The Weltanschauung of the Conservative Revolution , its vitalistic and decisionist
approach to society, human being as well as to international relations, can not be
understood without the reference to the concept of life identified with experience,
central in the German tradition of Liebensphilosophie, the latter, in the words of Georg
Lukacs, using the intuition as its organom and the irrational as its natural object (12),
conjured up the necessary elements of a vitalistic world-view. The epistemological
rationale of Lebensphilosophie proceeded from the thesis that experiencing the world is
the ultimate basis of knowledge and that an epistemological solution to man s relationship
with the objective external world could only be elucidated by way of praxis.
Louis Dupeux asserts in his contribution to the issue(13) that the most important
ideological characteristic of the Conservative Revolution- is the emphasis on the concept
of life which, after Nietzsche, takes the roll of the Right-wing antagonist to the Left s
concept of reason, a concept of life which Thomas Mann defined as key concept of every
modern Weltanschaung.
GLOSSARIUM
The translation of part of Carl Schmitt s book Glossarium-Aufzeichungen 1947-1951 , first
published in 1991 in Germany and consisting of short philosophical and existential
reflections, contains several interesting observations, written with aphoristic clarity,
concerning Carl Scmitt s criticism of neo-Kantian legal positivism, American political
theology- the
Wilsonian pseudo-universalism - used as a ideological vehicle for imperialist
expansionism, notes dealing with Schmitt s high esteem for Georg Lukacs and his
intellectual affinity with Heidegger, as well as the juridical interpretation of the
existential theme of the trowness in history.
Schmitt compares his own criticism of legal positivism with the young Hegel s rejection of
positivism. Positivism=Legality=Judaism=Despotism=the cramp of the Duty and the Norm. On
the split between legality and legitimacy Schmitt notes The jurist s and the legal
profession s fate on the Continent: since the French Revolution 1789-1848 the law is split
in legality and legitimacy, it ends with the jurist falling in the pitfall of mere
legality, in pure positivism. After this split followed after 1848 a split of legitimacy.
The tendency appeared first during the Restoration, from 1815 to 1850, as a pure
historical, dynastic and restoration legitimacy. Against it appeared a new revolutionary
legitimacy which finally prevailed and was victorious. The criterion is: good conscience
in respect to legality and legitimacy. The manifesto of the victory as well as its
authentic legal philosophy is Georg Lukacs History and Class Consciousness .
The political ideology of the American imperialism and expansionism- the Wilsonian
pseudo-universalism- is compared with the dogmas of the Catholic Church. This ideology
reconstructs and totalizes the world in a mold for American domination and hegemony. Thus
the ideology of universalism is not only dogmatically-ecumenical to its essence, it is
above all totalitarian. American political ideology is compared with political theology
and as such it is not only totalitarian but also totalizing in Hegelian sense.(14)
On the relationship between theology and technique he observes that both are totalitarian
preserves. The theology is out of necessity totalitarian to both its substance and its
consequences; the technique is totalitarian in its methods, out of its functionality. The
result is always totalization . On the subject of the existential fate of man Schmitt
remarks that the human being of today is exposed to the same fate as Kaspar Hauser .
Several months latter he notes: The beautiful Nietzschean though: With wide shoulders the
Room resists the Nothingness. Where Room exists, exists the Being.
I disagree with Ellen Kennedy s assertion that Carl Schmitt created an expressionistic
concept of the political in his book The Concept of the Political (15). I mention that
only because also Jürgen Habermas advances a similar notion in his essay The horrors of
autonomy: Carl Schmitt in English, published in the book The New Conservatism .(16) The
political manifests
itself in the collective organized self-assertion of a politically existing people against
external and internal enemies...A people welded together in a battle for life and death
asserts its uniqueness against both external enemies and traitors within its own ranks.
The political extreme case is characterized in terms of the phenomenon of defining one s
own identity in the struggle
against the alienness of the enemy who threatens one s very existence, and thus in terms
of the situation of war between people or civil war , writes Habermas and concludes that
thus Schmitt created an expressionist concept of the political.
Habermas, however, is misstaken. Rather, as Georg Lukacs has noted, Schmitt created an
existentialist concept of the political, the nature of the state sovereignty and of the
international law(17) and if so only because the Versailles system was perceived by him as
a threat to the national existence and the national substance of Germany. Therefore a
concept of international law,
preserving and defending the national existence was necessary, and that concept had a very
strong Hegelian influences .
A discussion on similarities between Hegel s and Schmitt's concepts of international law
is clearly beyond the scope of this short review. However a few brief observations are
necessary. Hegel defines the individuality of the sovereign state in the states existence
as a unit in a sharp distinction from other states. Only in preserving its uniqueness can
a state maintain and preserve its sovereignty. Since the sovereignty of a state is the
principle of its relations to other states , the rights of sovereign states are actualized
only in their particular wills and not in an universal will with constitutional powers
over them.
Hegel rejected Kant s idea of an early League of Nations, a formalized Holy Alliance in
the post-1815 Restoration Europe. Hegel claimed that the nature of the sovereignty was the
right of a sovereign state to create and oppose an enemy. And whenever war breaks out
because two sovereign states oppose each other, it is because two sets of rights, each
legitimate in its own way, clash. Wars to Hegel are always clashes between two rights, not
between right and wrong. Hence the outcome of a war never proves one side right and the
other wrong. It only regulates which right will yield to the other.(18)
Agness Heller has noted that Lukacs , Heidegger and Schmitt all focus on the concept of
existential choice.
The idea of collective existential choice thus emerged almost naturally in their closely
similar visions and theoretical interests. The political appeared to them to identify the
essence and existence in community. When a collective entity chooses itself and thus its
own destiny , the political act par excellence has already been accomplished. In Lukacs it
is the empirical
proletariat, this merely economic class, which is bound to choose itself and thus its own
destiny. The moment of proletarian revolution is the very moment of constituting the
political. In Heidegger it is the nation, the empirical German nation, which is bound to
become fully political in the gesture of self-choice. This is what happens in the German
revolution which is a quintessential political gesture .(19)
For Carl Schmitt it is also the empirical German nation as a collective entity, surrounded
by alien entities, which must become political and thus emancipate itself from the
dictates of Versailles. In History and Class Consciousness Georg Lukacs quotes Karl Marx
words in Critique of Hegel s Philosophy of Right :
"When the proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the previous world order it does
no more than reveal the secret of its own existence, for it represents the effective
dissolution of that world order. The self-understanding of the proletariat is therefore
simultaneously the objective understanding of the nature of society. When the proletariat
furthers its own class-aims it
simultaneously achieves the conscious realization of the objective aims in society , aims
which would inevitably remain abstract possibilities and objective frontiers but for this
conscious intervention...The proletariat makes its appearance as the product of the
capitalist social order. The forms in which it exists are the repositories of reification
in its accutest and direst form and they issue in the most extreme dehumanization."(20)
In a sort of a paradoxical way one may compare the reificatory, dehumanizing effects of
the commodity fetishism on the proletariat as a collective subject, as well as on the
society, in the marxian tradition, with the dehumanizing effect of the Versailles system
and its dictates on the German nation as a collective subject in Carl Schmitt s
jurisprudence.(21)
THE SWEDISH MODEL
What I would have liked to see in the magazine is a discussion on two important issues:
the historical tradition of the ideology of the Conservative Revolution in Sweden(22) as
well as the relevance and actuality of that ideology today.
The so called Swedish model was not only the most successful implementation of the
ideology of the Conservative Revolution, but also the world s most advanced implementation
of corporativist state, a model of political-economic organization known as corporativism.
Sweden perfected the essential elements of the economic strategies employed in Italy and
Germany in the interwar years. The particular type of society the Swedish social democracy
created -Folkhemmet (Peoples Home,Volksstaat, a corporativist organic gemeinschaft)- was
heralded as The Third Way, a social formation between liberal capitalism and Marxist
socialism; a Swedish socialism analogous to the concept of Prussian socialism.(23)
The concept of Folkhemmet was originally developed by the Swedish geopolitician Rudolf
Kjellen in 1910 and it included two components -Realm (Reich)- the geographical component
-, and Folk, the racial component. Folkhemmet was both a
racial as well as a geographical concept, i.e. a racial existence of Volk in geopolitical
space. In his book Kjellen The State as a Live Form ( Staten som livsform ) conceptualized
the People s Home (Folkhemmet, Volksstaat) as a geopolitical construct.
The foundation of the People s Home (Volksstaat) was laid after the Saltsj?baden Agreement
of 1938, concluded between the trade unions and the employer s association, which outlawed
strikes and created the institution of centralized wage bargaining for the entire nation.
The most obvious effect of the Saltsj?baden agreement was the entrenchment of industrial
peace, but the most profound consequence was the establishment of the corporative State.
Through the Saltsj?baden agreement, unions and employers, labor and capital, coalesced
into a single corporate structure.
Per Engdahl, the most prominent Swedish fascist and a personal friend of leading
Social-Democratic politicians, such as the long-time Prime Minister Tage Erlander and the
Finance Minister Gunnar Str?ng, asserted in his memoirs Fribrytare i Folkhemmet that the
creation of the People s Home has been the most successful realization of the political
idea of corporativism.
The ideology of the Swedish Social Democracy incorporated also many ideological völkisch
components. The national substance of the Folkhemmet was a racially defined Folkgemenskap
(Volksgemeinschaft, People s Community).(24) A
nationalistic overtone was attached to the membership in the Folkgemenskap, members were
exclusively those belonging to Den Svenska Folkstammen (Volkstum, Swedish Racial Group),
minorities on the territory of Sweden, like the Tornedal
Finns, were on the other hand excluded by virtue of not being members of the Volkstum.(25)
The social democratic slogan of national and political unity became staten, r?relsen,
folket (Staat , Bewegung, Volk (26); State, Movement, People), the organic totality of the
state, the movement-the social-democratic party-, and the people. Sweden even constructed
Scandinavia, and above all Finland and Norway, as a Swedish Grossraum, a small one but
nevertheless a Grossraum. (After Karl XII The Great s Russian misadventures a Swedish
Grossraum could not be anything but a miniature one.)
The Swedish leading socialdemocratic jurist and the most prominent theoretician, Axel
H?gerstr?m, can be seen as a Swedish equivalent of Carl Schmitt. The criticism of Swedish
legislation during the 70-ties stressed the non-normative, decisionist substance of the
legislation, the use of the so called general clause as a legislative technic conferring
to the legislation the character of promisses imperecta; attached to the law it served as
a conduit of the decisionist free will of the civil servants, it had the function of a
general exception to the normative use and substance of the legislation.
Axel H?gerstr?m equated power with law asserting that the structure of power is the
structure of law . The state and the power are identical with the persons who exercise
permanent, real power in such a way that their collective will becomes acknowledged as the
will of the State. Upper bureaucracy, in Swedish ?mbetsm?n (higher civil servants) is
identical with power and, consequently, also with the State. In consistency with this view
Axel H?gerstr?m wrote in R?tten och viljan (The Law and the Will) that:(27)
The constitutional laws which regulate the actions of the highest holders of power and the
limits of their sphere of power, should be regarded as standardization of declarations of
will and thus the constitutional laws express the common will of those same power holders
as having the actual power. Then, if one of them doesn t want to follow the laws in one
aspect or another, the laws cease to have legal validity. An unconstitutional procedure by
such holder of power (makthavare) is thus impossible. The constitution then also becomes,
as far as it regulates the power holder s actions and sphere of power , without any
legal meaning. It can also be said that the constitution, like every rule of law, ceases
to have any legal meaning when it is no longer in use. In my opinion the constitutional
laws are not applicable to the highest holders of power. They can proceed in any way they
like and as far as they like, arbitrarily breaching the established law- this would not be
against ! any of the provisions of the constitution from the viewpoint of the
constitutions own meaning .
According to the Carl Schmitt s maxim that sovereign is he who decides on the exception
(28) the omnipotent sovereign in the Swedish People s Home became the ?mbetsm?n,
resulting, as critics claimed, in an absolutist civil servant state.(29)
Folkhemmet, the Swedish People s Home, in now, during the 90-ties gone, replaced by an
American style economic liberalism. The new liberal-economic universalism turned however
in reality to be an accelerated economic Thatcherism, resulting
in a sharply lowered living standards for the majority of the Swedish population, in
dismantling of the protective social security and labor legislation, in economic
destabilization, decline of culture and increase of criminality. The Swedish economy, once
a prototype for many countries, is now in shambles.
The prominent Swedish economist Professor Rudolf Meidner defines the demise of the Peoples
Home as a System Shift . The economic consequences of this system shift are the
dismantling of the welfare state, privatization of state monopolies, abandoning of the
policy of full employment, upsurge of non-productive speculative investment, resulting in
destabilization of the
economy and substantial loss of jobs in manufacturing. The system shift required an
assault on the core institutions sustaining wage earner solidarity, especially the system
of nationwide collective bargaining through which the unions had pursued their
solidaristic wage strategy. (30)
Decentralization of the collective bargaining, which has obtained since the Saltsj?baden
Agreement, led to a gradual destruction of the institution through which wage solidarity
had been pursued. The system shift-the counterrevolution of universalism-has led to
assault on labor unions, labor laws, labor movement and social welfare, in short on all
that traditionally has been associated in Sweden with substantive human rights.
Rudolf Meidner states that deregulation of currency flows and regulations pertaining to
investments abroad has resulted not only in substantial capital outflow abroad and
transferal of Swedish companies abroad in the name of multinationalism, with sharp
decrease of job opportunities and employment in Sweden, but also in a virtual
deindustrialization of the country and
pauperization of large segments of the population. Should the tendencies emanating from
the system shift continue the institutional underpinnings of working class solidarity and,
more broadly, the alliance of wage earners (i.e. blue and white collar workers) will have
been demolished. In other words, what are at stake are the very political foundations of
the model .(31)
In retrospect the omnipotence and fiats of the concrete social democratic ?mbetsm?n -the
Swedish Nomenclatura- appear as very benevolent in comparison to the omnipotence and fiats
of the abstract capital.
In a way one may say that after the fall of the Berlin wall of the People s Home and the
intrusion of Americanism, the resulting experience of life is that of allm?nt
f?rj?vligande, an expression which is difficult to translate but corresponds to a general
backlash, a decline and worsening of the structures of the Life-World, a sort of a
ground-zero. That is why G?ran Dahl and Carl-G?ran Heidegren write at the end of their
introduction that:
Our time, in similarity with the Weimar epoch, is a time of conflict, crisis and
transition. The optimism from 1989 has , confronting the development in Russia and
Yugoslavia, been substituted with a total pessimism. In turbulent epochs the old concepts
no longer can grasp the reality. And the perception of an unstructured reality is a
fertile soil for new or old-new ideas to sprout. Whatever one thinks about the idea of the
Conservative Revolution, we believe it is an idea to take into account in the future.
And that brings us to the relevancy of the idea of Conservative Revolution in the
post-Cold War period, the epoch after the D-Day of the American pseudo-universalism.
The ideological and above all political phenomenon of Conservative Revolution can not be
correctly understood without taking into account the three historical traumas: the trauma
of The God is dead , which Nietzsche heralded, the trauma
of the W.W.I and the trauma of the Treaty of Versailles and the world order, tailored
after Anglo-Saxon dominance, it created.
In many aspects Carl Schmitt s jurisprudence, his criticism of the Wilsonian
pseudo-universalism and his definition of the enemy, can be seen as an ongoing polemic
against the Versailles Treaty, its prodigy- the League of Nations-, and the inner England
- seen outward as an Anglo-Saxon world domination and inward in the political institutions
as well as in the cultural values of the Anglo-Saxon liberal capitalism: liberal democracy
and parliamentarianism.
The resurgence of the ideological tendencies in Europe now, similar to the Conservative
Revolution in the past, can in many respects be seen as a reaction to a similar trauma of
the American New World Order, perceived as a threat to existing state sovereignties,
national identities and national culture. What was once defined as rejection of the inner
England is now a rejection of the inner America .
One can paraphrase Oswald Spengler s words in Preussentum und Socialismus: Europe as
political and cultural entity stands against America within us, against the world view
which has penetrated the whole existence of people s in Europe, paralyzed it, and robbed
it of its soul. All that being said, its is obvious that one can not talk about American
Conservative Revolution because the original Conservative Revolution was anti Anglo-Saxon
then and is anti-American now.
In this context , as a political as well as an ideological alternative to the New World
Order, the concept of Europe as a New World has been constructed in above all French
debate. The substance of this concept is the notion of reversal of historical roles: when
the original Monroe Doctrine was pronounced in 1823, America was conceived as a New World
in opposition to Europe of the Holly Alliance- the Old World. In the 90-ties the positions
have become reversed.
United States is the interventionist world of old values, of the past-the Old World; the
New Europe on the other hand, Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, and further, to
Vladivostok, is the New World, the world of the future. And it
is an existential imperative for the New World to reject and oppose the interference and
interventionism of the Old World, which by necessity leads to a formulation of a Monroe
Doctrine for Europe. Because if the New World is not the
negation of the Old World, but to a great extend integrated in it, then the new political
forms and national entities are confronted with a situation where authentic expression of
national life exists but can not be attached to a particular form of ideological
resistance, political expression and national substance.
In the intellectual climate of the post-Cold War Europe not only the ideas of Europe as a
New World, but also elaborations of the ideology of the Conservative Revolution , by
virtue of their otherness, can stand against the homogenizing,
neutralizing impact of the Old World, against the American managers of ideological
oppression and their clients and customers. The threatening ideological homogeneity of the
American totalitarian political theology and its prodigy - the American universalism- has
been loosening up, and alternatives are beginning to break into the repressive continuum.
The notion of Europe as a New World and alternative ideologies such as the ideology of the
Conservative Revolution , are therefore not only a firm rejection of the American jargon
of universalism but also an expression of growing opposition to the global domination of
the American New World Order.
Francis Fukuyama recently asserted in a deeply apologetical book (32) that Americanism
constituted the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the final form of human
government and as such constituted the end of history .
The historical actuality of the contemporary resurgence of the ideology of the interwar
Conservative Revolution is then situated in the existential necessity to recapture the
history- the powerful humanizing and liberating force of its continuing evolution. In a
critical historical period in Europe when the old is no more but the new is not yet, the
recapturing of the history is possible only
if one follows the old Nietzschean maxim expressed in the Genealogy of Morals: No American
Future. (33)
ENDNOTES
(1) Carl Schmitt s book The Concept of the Political has also been translated into Swedish
and published as a part in Sven-Erik Lidman(ed)-Fr?n Machiavelli till Habermas (Bonniers,
Stockholm, 1991).
(2) G?ran Dahl, who is a professor in sociology at the University of Lund and responsible
for the Carl Schmitt s part in the issue, has written works in the tradition of the German
so called Hannover School of Socialization which in many
respects build on and develop the Lukacs tradition of subjectivist Marxism. One of his
most interesting papers is Individ och Kapital. Till begripandet av den subjectiva faktorn
under kapitalismen (Tekla, 6/1979, Lund) which is a presentation of Alfred Crovoza s ideas
on the political dimension of societal socialization and the interrelationship between
commodity fetishism and
socialization (Alfred Crovoza-Production und Socialization, EVA, 1976). Other books
written by Dahl are Beg?r och kritik (1986) and Psykoanalys och kulturkritik (1992).
Carl-G?ran Heidegren has published Filosofi och revolution. Hegels v?g till visdom (1984)
and Hegel. Behovet av filosofin (1992)
(3) G?ran Dahl and Carl-G?ran Heidegren - Den magiska nollpunkten, ResRublica -at p. 7.
Derived from the idea of Reich is Carl Schmitt s concept of Grossraum and a world order
build on a plurality of Grossr?ume. see Grossraum versus
Universalismus in Positionen und Begriffe - p.p. 295-302. Carl Schmitt defines the empire
as the leading and supporting powers whose political idea is radiated over a specified
major territory and which fundamentally exclude the
intervention of extra-territorial powers with regard to this territory. see Der
Reichsbegrif im V?lkerrecht in Positionen und Begriffe -p. 303. It is also interesting to
note the resurrection of the concept of Empire in Russia in
contemporary Russian Conservative Revolutionary debate. see for example the Chairman of
the National-Republican Party Nikolaj Lysenko s work Nasha celj sozdanie velikoj imperii
-in Nash Sovremennik, Nr 9, 1992 (Moscow) p.p. 122-130,
Alexander Dugins contributions on the subject in the Journal Elementy and also the program
of the Russian National-Bolshevik Party. Recently the concept of The Third Russia ,
reminiscent of Moeller van den Bruck s Das Dritte Reich , has been advanced in the
National Conservative debate in Russia.
(4) Thomas Mann -Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (Frederick Ungar Publishing, Co., New
York, 1983) at p. 256.. Thomas Mann quotes Dostoevski who wrote that The most
characteristic, most essential trait of this great, proud, and special
people has always been, since the first moment of its appearance in the historical world,
that it has never, neither in its destiny nor in its principles, wanted to be united with
the far Western World - ibid. p. 26
(5) Thomas Mann- ibid. p. 36
(6) the anti-West and pro Russian orientation had many supporters within the German
General Staff-General von Seeckt is the most prominent representative-, and within the
Foreign Ministry- the so called group of Osterners, the architects of the Rappalo Treaty.
One may recall that already Nietzsche in the Genealogy of Morals had envisioned a
political union between Germany and Russia.
(7) England was ideologically conceived as a nation of shopkeepers.
(8) Vierzehn Thesem der Deutschen Revolution in Wilhelm Mommsen and G?nther Frantz Die
Deutschen Partej-Programme (Leipzig and Berlin , 1931), p. 118.
(9) George L. Mosse- The Crisis of German Ideology (Closet & Dunlap, New York,1964)
p.288.
(10) Here a quote from Peter Gay Weimar Culture (Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1970) p.86
(11) George L. Mosse- The Crisis of German Ideology (Closet & Dunlap, New York, 1964)
p.6,7
(12) Georg Lukacs- The Destruction of Reason (Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlights, 1981)
-at p.402
(13) Louis Dupeux - Conservative Revolution and Modernity in ResPublica- p.p. 140-169
(14) Totalitarianism can be defined from the point of view of what is the constituting,
totalizing principle of society: Race (Nazism), Class (Marxism), Abstract Capital (Liberal
capitalism, American universalism.) On the political aspects of the American
totalitarianism Carl Schmitt has written in Grossraum gegen Universalismus.
(15) Ellen Kennedy -Kulturkritiska och metafysiska k?llor till begreppet det politiska hos
Carl Schmitt- in ResPublica- pp. 96-116. Carl Schmitt s jurisprudence could be possibly
called expressionistic only in a context of Wilhelm Worringer s theories developed in his
book Formprobleme der Gotic (1911) in which he counterpoised the rebellious, governed by a
metaphysical
restlessness German Geist, best expressing itself in the form of Gothic, to the balanced
Roman Geist, expressing itself in the form of Classicism, in the form of the Renaissance.
Different late interpretation of Wilhelm Worringers theories tended to see the
Expressionism in the same way Wilhelm Worringer saw the style of Gothic? as an expression
of metaphysical restlessness immanent in the German Geist.
(16) Jürgen Habermas-The New Conservatism (The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990) - pp.
128-139
(17) see Georg Lukacs-The Destruction of Reason (Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands,
1981) -at p. 658.
(18) see G.W.F. Hegel -Philosophy of Right (Oxford University Press, London , 1967) - at
p.p. 208-216; also Sclomo Avineri -Hegel s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1989) - at p.p. 194-207
(19) Agnes Heller -The Concept of the Political Revisited in David Held (ed) -Political
Theory Today (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1991) - at p. 334.
(20) Georg Lukacs - History and Class Consciousness (The MITT Press, Cambridge, 1985)- at
p. 149.
(21) it is interesting to note that the reception of Carl Schmitt as well as the ideology
of the Conservative Revolution in Russia are focused on the existential predicament of
Russia- with the post-Cold War settlement compared to a Second
Treaty of Versailles-, and the necessity of decision to repeal the dehumanizing impact and
aliennes of the American New World Order.
(22) the elements of the predominant Swedish V?lkische ideology during the 20-ties are
discussed in Rolf Torstendahl -Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism (Uppsala, 1969)
(23) Oswald Spengler defined the Prussian Socialism build on alliance of conservatives and
socialist toward a common aim- a corporativism as a truly German form of government .
Politische Schriften (Munich ,1932) p. 64
(24) see also Rudolf Kjellen Staten som livsform (Hugo Gebers F?rlag, Stockholm, 1916).
(25) In the Swedish government s bill in the Rikstag (Parliament) introducing the 1927
Immigration Law it was stated that the value of the homogenous and pure race of the people
of our country can not be overestimated (see Thomas
Hammar-Sverige ?t svenskarna, Stockholm 1964, at p. 367; also Hans Lindberg - Svensk
flyktingpolik under internationellt tryck 1936-1941, Allm?na f?rlaget, Stockholm, 1973, at
p. 37) The main function of the 1927 Immigration Law was to
protect the racial purity of the Swedish Volkstum.
How strong those sentiments remained can be illustrated with the following conversation
about the status of minorities in Sweden I had with Gunnar Myrdal in 1974. He had written
An American Dilemma, dealing with the minority question
in the United States. I, on the other hand, had published in 1974 a longer essay
Invandrarfr?gan-ett svenskt dilemma ( The Minority Question. A Swedish Dilemma).During the
course of the conversation I suggested that in similiarity
and analogy with the Finland-Svenska Folkpartiet i Finland (Finnish-Swedish Peoples Party
in Finland), representing the Swedish minority in Finland, the minorities in Sweden and
above all the Tornedal-Finns (a large Finish minority
in Sweden) should form their own party. Gunnar Myrdal became red in the face and
exclaimed: Minorities can and must exist only in total integration in the majority
society. God protect them if the minorities will start organizing their own party. That
will be a suicide for them.
And even today Swedish law does not recognize the concept (and existence) of minorities in
Sweden.(see Gustaf Petren-Minoriternas r?ttsst?llning i Sverige in David Schwarz
-Identitet och minoritet, Almquist&Wiksell f?rlag, Stockholm,
1971, at p. 28)
(26) see Carl Schmitt - Staat, Bewegung, Volk: Die Dreigliederung der politischen Einheit
(Hamburg, 1933)
(27) Axel H?gerstr?m - R?tten och viljan (Lund, 1961) - at p. 71
(28) Carl Schmitt - Political Theology (The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1988)- p. 5
(29) see Nikolaj-Klaus von Kreitor -Beamtendiktatur -auf Schwedisch (Demokratie und Recht
4/1979, Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, K?ln, 1979); Nikolaj-Klaus von Kreitor-Das Ausnahmegesetz-
das schwedische Model der repressiven Gesetzgebung
(Democratie und Recht 4/1979); Nikolaj-Klaus von Kreitor -Schweden bricht das Abkommen von
Helsinki (Frankfurter Hefte 9/1980, Frankfurt, 1980); Nikolaj-Klaus von Kreitor -Das
schwedische Model...der Zenzsur (Bl?tter f?r deutsche und
internationale Politik 10/1978, Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, K?ln, 1978); Nikolaj-Klaus von
Kreitor -Berufsverbot en Suecia (Argumentos 27/1979, Madrid, Spain 1979); Nikolaj-Klaus
von Kreitor-Undantagslagen: Skyddar h?gre ?mbetsm?n.
Kr?nker fri- och r?ttigheter (Jusek, 4/1980, Stockholm, 1980); Nikolaj-Klaus von
Kreitor-Undantagslagen och r?ttsstatens kris (Svensk r?ttsforum, 18, 1979, Lund, 1979);
Nikolaj-Klaus von Kreitor -M?ls?gandetalan mot h?ga ?mbetsm?tsm?n upph?vd (Oikeus 2/1979,
Helsinki, 1979 and Medborgarr?ttsr?rel! sen 4/1979, Stockholm, 1979); Nikolaj-Klaus von
Kreitor-Folkhemsmytens nedgang och fall. Charta 79 och den demokratiska oppositionen i
Sverige (Soihtu 5/1980.
Helsinki, 1980); Nikolaj-Klaus von Kreitor -Undantagslagen- ett exempel p? repressiv
lagstiftning (Retfaerd-Scandinavian Law Review 11/1979, Arhus 1979, Denmark);
Nikolaj-Klaus von Kreitor-Kansankodin kuokavieras.Omael?m?kerralinen
ruotsalaisen yhteiskunnan korporativismen kritiikki (Gummerus F?rlag, Jyv?skyl?,
Finland, 1980).
see also the recently published book by Stephan Wehowsky (introduction by Christian Graf
von Krockow)-Schatten Gesellschaft (Hanser Verlag, M?nchen, 1994)
(30) Rianne Mahon and Rudolf Meidner - System Shift ; or What is the Future of Swedish
Social Democracy , Socialist Review at p. 65
(31) Rianne Manon and Rudolf Meidner - System Shift - ibid. p. 63
(32) Francis Fukuyama-The End of History (Avon Books, New York, 1992)
(33) The Philosophy of Nietzsche (Modern Library, New York, 1954) p. 802