Otto Koellreutter: wanted the “establishment of a real folk community, which elevates itself above the interests and conflicts of status groups and classes”
This is the fifth in a series of posts about Herbert Marcuse's 1934 essay, "The Struggle Against Liberalism in the Totalitarian View of the State." See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
Marcuse addresses Nazi universalism from a somewhat different viewpoint in another section of his essay. The fact that his discussion of Nazi universalism overlaps his analysis of Nazi existentialism is a function of the fact of the simplistic core of Nazi ideology and of the philosophies that elaborated it: the Master Race, the nation, the Führer. Or, as one of the regime’s slogans had it: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer (One people, one empire, one Leader).
Nazi universalism was not the universalism of Christianity or of liberal philosophy, which held that in some basic sense that “all men are created equal.” (And, yes, they usually meant men.) The universalism of the Third Reich was that of ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. It was the nation, the Master Race and the Führer speaking for them that were the ultimate source of value: not God, not Reason, and certainly not the rights of the individual.
Marcuse stresses that monopoly capitalism itself has created a kind of social universalism by consolidating economic power and authority into larger and larger economic units that have a collective quality largely absent in the capitalism of the early 19th century characterized by the individual entrepreneur, the social assumptions of which lie at the root of classical liberalism. Liberalism emphasized the reality and the positive value of the diversity of interest groups within society. James Madison gave it a classic expression in Federalist #10 in 1787:
As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.Liberal theory not only recognized the existence of these diverse factions based on different opinions and interests, but, in Madison’s formulation, called the protection of those interests “the first object of government.” Nazi universalism instead wished to deny their existence, particularly the existence of class conflicts, in opposition to Madison’s liberal recognition that “the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.” Marcuse writes of Nazi universalism:
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government. [my emphasis]
The whole that it presents is not the unification achieved by the domination of one class within the framework of class society, but rather a unity that combines all classes, that is supposed to overcome the reality of class struggle and thus of classes themselves: the "establishment of a real folk community, which elevates itself above the interests and conflicts of status groups and classes" [quote from pro-Nazi jurist Otto Koellreutter]. A classless society, in other words, is the goal, but a classless society on the basis of and within the framework of – the existing class society. [my emphasis in bold]Nazi naturalism/organicism
The other of the “three constitutive components“ of the pro-Nazi philosophy Marcuse identified in 1934 along with universalism and existentialism is naturalism or organicism. The central feature of Nazi naturalism/organicism is to set up the allegedly organic nature of the nation and the Master Race I opposition to any theory of historical development. To defend their absurd, pseudoscientific and ahistorical notion of the innate superiority of the "Aryan" race, the Nazis had to present history as periodically demonstrating the emergence of the superior Aryan qualities, without allowing the perception that the "Aryan race" was decisively shaped in any way shaped by its historical experience, let alone by biological mixture with non-Aryans.
(I deal more specifically with the pseudoscience behind the notion of the alleged Aryan race in Indo-Europeans, language and the myth of the "Aryan" race Old Hickory’s Weblog 11/24/2009.)
The glorification of Blut und Boden in Nazi philosophy held out the prospect that the German people could realize their destiny by adjusting their way of life to some sort of natural order that most closely fit their racial characteristics. Marcuse says of this notion:
The naturalistic myth begins by apostrophizing the natural as ‘eternal’ and ‘divinely willed’. This holds especially for the totality of the folk, whose naturalness is one of the myth’s primary claims. The particular destinies of individuals, their strivings and needs, their misery and their happiness – all this is void and perishable, for only the folk is permanent. The folk is nature itself as the substructure of history, as eternal substance, the eternally constant in the continual flux of economic and social relations. In contrast with the folk, the latter are accidental, ephemeral, and 'insignificant'.The model of this supposed natural order, of course, is to be revealed to the Master Race through the leadership of the Führer. Marcuse describes the problem with this naturalist/organicist concept of history:
These formulations announce a characteristic tendency of heroicfolkish realism: its depravation of history to a merely temporal occurrence in which all structures are subjected to time and are therefore 'inferior'. This dehistoricization marks all aspects of organicist theory: the devaluation of time in favor of space, the elevation of the static over the dynamic and the conservative over the revolutionary, the rejection of all dialectic, the glorification of tradition for its own sake. ...Part of this natural order to which the Germans should strive, as described by Nazi philosophers and propagandists, involves sacrifice and duty on the part of most people. He quotes Ernst Krieck, who was already becoming a leading pedagogical authority for the Third Reich:
The community of destiny almost always operates at the expense of the large majority of the people: it thus cancels itself out as a community. In previous human history, this cleavage of national or communal unity into social antagonisms is not merely secondary, nor is it the fault or responsibility of individuals. Rather, it comprises history’s real content, which cannot be changed through adaptation to any sort of natural order. In history there are no longer any natural patterns that could serve as models and ideas for historical movement. Through the process in which men in society contend with nature and with their own historical reality (whose state at any given time is indicated by the various conditions and relations of life), 'nature' has long been historicized, i.e. to an increasing degree denuded of its naturalness and subjected to rational human planning and technology. Natural orders and data occur structured as economic and social relations (so that, for example, the peasant's land is less a clod in the homeland than a holding in the mortgage section of the land register). [my emphasis in bold]
We no longer live in the age of education, of culture, of humanitarianism, and of the pure spirit, but rather under the necessity of struggle, of shaping political reality, of soldiery, of folkish discipline, of folkish honor and of the future of the folk. What is required of the men of this era, consequently, is not the idealist but the heroic attitude as both task and necessity of life.Liberal philosophy certainly emphasized the values of patriotism and of sacrifice for the community and for the highest ideals. But the celebration of militarism and sacrifice for the sake of "heroic" sacrifice were far from the spirit of classical liberalism, as Marcuse explains:
As we have seen, the model of man projected by today’s heroic realism is of one whose existence is fulfilled in unquestioning sacrifices and unconditional acts of devotion, whose ethic is poverty and all of whose worldly goods have been melted down into service and discipline. This image stands in sharp opposition to all the ideals acquired by Western man in the last centuries. How justify such an existence? Since man's material well-being is not its goal, it cannot be justified on the basis of his natural needs and instincts. But neither can its goal be his spiritual welfare, or salvation, since there is no room for justification by faith. And in the universal struggle against reason, justification by knowledge can no longer count as a justification. [my emphasis]That justification is provided by the "existential" fear described above that the nation and the Master Race are imminently in danger of being destroyed by external enemies.
Tags: critical theory, frankfurt school, herbert marcuse, liberalism, national socialism
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