article_muller_radical conservative critique of liberal democracy

CARL SCHMITT, HANS FREYER AND THERADICAL CONSERVATIVE CRITIQUE OF

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLICJerry Z. Muller

During the Weimar Republic, Germany was a liberal, democratic, capitalist, welfarestate. To be sure, each of these adjectives applied only in some imperfect sense �but then that can be said about most regimes to which they are applied. The tensionsbetween these various characteristics of the Weimar Republic helped bring about itsdemise � as such tensions have destroyed many other comparable states in inter-warEurope and beyond Europe in the post-war decades. This essay explores the sharedcritique of such a regime developed between 1918 and 1933 by Carl Schmitt andHans Freyer, two of the most intellectually accomplished German examples of whatmight be called �radical conservatism�. The hazard of such a presentation is that itslights the internal development of the thought of each thinker and understates thedivergences between them. The advantage of such a dual focus is to provide astereoscopic view of radical conservatism, which brings into relief the commonthemes and concerns sometimes flattened by the peculiar vocabulary or formalpresentation of either Schmitt or Freyer. In the case of Schmitt, much of recentscholarship in English has overlooked or even denied the radical conservatism of hisWeimar writings. The approach pursued here will, I hope, put his works into morehistorically accurate perspective.1 In the case of both Freyer and Schmitt, their

1 Among the significant recent contributions to scholarship on Schmitt is Joseph Bendersky, CarlSchmitt: Theorist for the Reich (Princeton, 1983), which has done a good deal to clarify Schmitt�s politicalconnections and legal positions during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Unfortunately (as anumber of sympathetic reviewers have noted in both English and German reviews), the book is weak inits handling of Schmitt�s ideas, isolating his particular legal positions from the larger context of Schmitt�sown work, and ignoring the relation of Schmitt�s ideas to those of the wider radical right in Weimar.Many of these errors are compounded in Bendersky�s essay �Carl Schmitt and the ConservativeRevolution�, Telos (Summer, 1987), pp. 27�42. There, for example, Bendersky claims that none ofSchmitt�s writings were published by journals affiliated with the conservative revolution (p. 37), whichhe later amends to three minor articles (p. 40), but he neglects the fact that several of Schmitt�s importantessays were published in the radical conservative Europäische Revue. More substantively, Benderskywrites that Schmitt�s �primary point of agreement with Stapel and Günther was the presidential systemand the need to contain the National Socialists. But whereas Stapel and Günther looked to the presidentialsystem as a transition to a new authoritarian state, Schmitt favored the strengthening of state power withinthe existing constitutional framework.� In fact, Günther hoped to use the National Socialists to bring aboutradical conservative goals (see Was wir vom Nationalsozialismus erwarten, ed. Albrecht Erich Günther(Heilbronn, 1932) ), while �a new authoritarian state� was precisely what Schmitt hoped to achieve throughhis interpretation of �the existing constitutional framework�. The claim by Guy Oakes in his introduction to the English translation of Schmitt�s Political Romanti-cism (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), pp. x�xi, that Schmitt�s legal doctrine of the �equal chance� (accordingto which the state did not have to give an equal chance to parties which intended to use theirdemocratically-obtained power to transform the political order) was aimed at the Communists and

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intellectual and rhetorical gifts helped undermine support for liberal democracy inGermany, and indeed were intended to do so; this paper, however, focuses on theirsocial and political thought rather than on their influence.2

Radical ConservatismBefore turning to their particular cases, a conceptual delineation of radical conser-vatism may be useful. Radical conservatism unites several predilections which, incombination, make it a recognizably distinct and recurrent phenomenon. The radicalconservative shares many of the concerns of more conventional conservatism, suchas the need for institutional authority and continuity with the past, but believes thatthe processes characteristic of modernity have destroyed the valuable legacy of thepast for the present, and that a restoration of the virtues of the past therefore demandsradical or revolutionary action. Hence the self-description of one radical conservativeas �too conservative not to be radical�, and the credo of another, �Conservative means

National Socialists is a distortion, as is the claim that Schmitt�s newspaper article of July 1932 advisedagainst voting for the Nazis. In fact, Schmitt used his doctrine of the �equal chance� to argue in favour ofthe Papen government�s seizure of power from the Social Democratic government of Prussia. The warningagainst voting for the Nazis quoted by Oakes comes not from Schmitt�s article but from an afterwordappended to it by the editors of the newspaper in which it appeared. (See Bendersky, Carl Schmitt,pp. 153�9.) Among the most useful guides to Schmitt�s thought in recent scholarship is Günther Mashke. A formerradical leftist turned radical rightist, Mashke shares Schmitt�s fundamental anti-liberal sympathiesemphatically and empathetically, which has made him an unusually sensitive reader of Schmitt�s work.Moreover, the very attention which Mashke has lavished on Schmitt�s writings and their intellectualsources have made him aware of important characteristics of Schmitt�s work which have eluded manyreaders. Mashke notes that Schmitt�s key concepts are striking without being clear; that Schmitt�s keyworks and concepts do not fit together into a coherent whole; that his works are not scholarly in the usualsense and that his writings are influential more for their suggestiveness than for their careful argumentation.Especially useful, because relatively unpolemical, is Maschke�s essay �Drei Motive im Anti-LiberalismusCarl Schmitts�, in Carl Schmitt und die Liberalismuskritik, ed. Klaus Hansen and Hans Lietzmann(Opladen, 1988), pp. 55�79. Maschke�s Der Tod des Carl Schmitt. Apologie und Polemik (Vienna, 1987),while both polemical and apologetic as its title implies, provides a critical overview of recent writing onSchmitt in several languages. Of varying but generally high quality are the essays and discussions included in Complexio Opposi-torum. Über Carl Schmitt, ed. Helmut Quaritsch (Berlin, 1988); the richest essay in terms of biographicalinformation on Schmitt is Piet Tommissen, �Bausteine zu einer wissenschaftlichen Biographie (Periode:1888�1933)�, pp. 71�100, and the discussion which follows. On the connection between Schmitt�s earlyKulturkritik and his critique of liberalism see Ellen Kennedy, �Politischer Expressionismus: Die kulturk-ritischen und metaphysischen Ursprünge des Begriffs des Politischen von Carl Schmitt�, in ComplexioOppositorum, ed. Quaritisch, pp. 233�51, and the discussion which follows; as well as her �Carl Schmittund Hugo Ball: Ein Beitrag zum Thema ��Politischer Expressionismus�� , Zeitschrift für Politik (June1988), pp. 143�61. Jacob Taubes, Ad Carl Schmitt. Gegenstrebige Fügung (Berlin, 1987), is idiosyncratic and apologetic,though of some use in tracing Schmitt�s contacts and influence. Bernd Rüthers, Entartetes Recht.Rechtslehren und Kronjuristen im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1988), pp. 99�175, reviews most of thesecondary literature on Schmitt�s character and career and offers a fair synthesis.2 For more on Freyer�s influence, see Jerry Z. Muller, The Other God that Failed: Hans Freyer and theDeradicalization of German Conservatism (Princeton, 1987), passim.

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creating things that are worth preserving�.3 Radical conservatism shares with con-servatism an emphasis on the role of institutions, but seeks to create new institutionswhich will exert a far stronger hold on the individual than do existing ones, whichbecause of their relative tolerance are perceived by radical conservatives as �de-cayed�. Like other political radicals, radical conservatives look to state power toreach their goals. These aims typically include the reassertion of collective particu-larity � of the nation, the Volk, the race, or the community of the faithful � againsta two-fold threat. The internal threat arises from ideas and institutions identified byradical conservatives as both foreign and incapable of providing worthy goals forthe collectivity and the individuals who comprise it. These threats usually includethe market as the arbiter of expressed preferences, parliamentary democracy, and thepluralism of value-systems which capitalism and liberal-democracy are thought topromote. But the ideas and institutions perceived as threatening may also includethose of internationalist socialism, which is similarly perceived as corrosive ofcollective particularity. The external threat arises from powerful foreign states whichare perceived as using their power to spread ideas and institutions identified byradical conservatives as corrosive. Yet together with its antipathy to such �modern� phenomena as liberalism, Marx-ism, capitalism and parliamentary democracy, radical conservatism typically advo-cates technological modernization, in part because a successful challenge to thepower of these external states demands the mastery of technology. The defenceagainst the cultural and political effects of modernity on the body politic is thusthought to require a homeopathic absorption of the organizational and technologicalhallmarks of modernity.4 Radical conservatism should therefore be distinguishedphenomenologically from both traditionalist conservatism and reaction.

Freyer and Schmitt: Formative ExperiencesDespite significant differences in origin, style and temperament, Freyer and Schmittshared a number of formative experiences which help to account for their develop-ment into radical conservative intellectuals.5 Both were born into religiously pioushouseholds, Freyer into a Protestant family in Saxony in 1887, Schmitt into aCatholic family in Westphalia one year later. Both were expected by their families

3 The self-description stems from Paul de Lagarde, Deutsche Schriften, p. 5, quoted in Rudolph Hermann,Kulturkritik und konservative Revolution (Tübingen, 1971), p. 241. The credo is from Arthur Moeller vanden Bruck, Das dritte Reich (Hamburg, 3rd edn., 1931), quoted in Martin Greiffenhagen, Das Dilemmades Konservatismus in Deutschland (Munich, 2nd edn., 1977), p. 243.4 On the affirmation of technology by radical conservatives see Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism:Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1984), esp. Chs. 1 and 9.I have explored the topic of the conceptual barriers to the recognition of National Socialism as �radicalconservative� and its implications for historical research and interpretation in Jerry Z. Muller,�Enttäuschung und Zweideutigkeit: Zur Geschichte rechter Sozialwissenschaftler im Dritten Reich�,Geschichte und Gesellschaft, #3 (1986), pp. 289�316.5 For biographical information on Freyer, see Muller, Other God, Chs. 1�3; on Schmitt see the works byBendersky, Kennedy and Tommissen cited above.

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to pursue clerical careers, but neither did. During and after their years of universitystudy each were part of cultural circles which were deeply critical of contemporarybourgeois society: in the case of Freyer this took the form of membership in theJugendbewegung; in the case of Schmitt, in expressionist circles in Munich. Bothbecame members of the Bildungsbürgertum deeply alienated from the bourgeoisculture of the German Reich. For both men the Great War became another formativeexperience. Freyer spent most of the war as an officer on the Western Front, whileSchmitt served as a legal counsellor to the German Army. In each case the warprovided models for civilian society: for Freyer, the �community of the trenches�;for Schmitt, the viability of dictatorship in modern society. These war-time experi-ences took on added significance in view of the events which followed, namelyrevolution and civil strife in Leipzig and Munich, where Freyer and Schmitt respec-tively found themselves at the war�s end. For Schmitt, who had been appointed to agovernment post in Strassburg, the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was especially painful.Shortly thereafter, in 1923, as a professor in Bonn, Schmitt experienced first-handthe French occupation of the Rhineland. These last two events made the question ofnational sovereignty and national power central to his concerns. During the 1920s, Freyer and Schmitt wrote academic works in their respectivedisciplines, but also works which combined historical, philosophical and politicalreflection and were intended for a larger, non-academic audience. Freyer made hisname as a professor of philosophy in Kiel, and then as professor of sociology inLeipzig after 1925. Schmitt became a professor of law first in Bonn, and after 1928in Berlin. The two met in the late 1920s and became friends, their personal friendshipfollowing from and contributing to their intellectual and ideological affinities. Freyer and Schmitt were both part of the communicative network of the radicalright in Weimar, and Schmitt became part of the coterie around General Schleicher,but both had friends and influence well beyond these circles. Neither man was aNational Socialist before 1933, but after Hitler�s assumption of power both cooper-ated closely with the Nazi regime and saw themselves and their students appointedto important positions in the universities and in the governmental bureaucracy.Eventually both men were disappointed and disillusioned with the regime they hadsupported. Both men lived long lives: Hans Freyer died in 1969, and Carl Schmitt in1985. After 1945 both remained intellectually active and productive. Freyer�s Theo-rie des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters (1955) was a widely-read and influential work ofsocial thought in the Germany of the 1950s, after which his intellectual influencedeclined markedly. Schmitt�s influence has waxed and waned, both in Germany andabroad; in recent decades his work has been most influential in Spain and Italy; therehas also been some interest in his writings in France and Japan, and in recent yearsseveral of his works have been translated into English as well.6 There is thus a large

6 On Schmitt�s influence in and beyond Germany see Maschke, Der Tod des Carl Schmitt, and the essaysin Complexio Oppositorum, ed. Quaritsch. On Schmitt�s influence in Italy from the 1930s to the 1980ssee Wolfgang Schieder, �Carl Schmitt und Italien�, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (January 1989),pp. 1�22. On the appropriation of Schmitt by the French Nouvelle Droit see also Manfred Baldus, �CarlSchmitt im Hexagon�, Der Staat, Vol. 26, no. 4 (1987), pp. 566�686.

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and growing secondary literature on Schmitt, which varies radically in quality andaccuracy. Forming a clear picture of Schmitt�s ideas and his place in history presents someunusual obstacles. First, Schmitt�s own accounts of his past are tendentious andunreliable: in the four decades after the fall of the Third Reich Schmitt devoted agood deal of his time and energy to rewriting his past and trying to convince firstAllied investigators, then journalists and historians that he had been intellectuallyand politically distant from National Socialism before and after 1933. Second, thereis the problem of the continuity and change in Schmitt�s work. In fact, while thereare continuities (often seamless) between the works written before 1933 and thosewritten from 1933�45, there are important differences as well, not least the appear-ance of an open and virulent anti-semitism in the works published during the ThirdReich. In the 1950s and 1960s there was a tendency for the West German literatureon Schmitt to read his earlier work in light of his post-1933 writings and actions,which presented a somewhat distorted version of Schmitt�s thought of the Weimarperiod.7 Much recent literature, by contrast, tends to err in the opposite direction,accepting Schmitt�s claim that he was a defender of Weimar democracy (which, aswe will see, is true only in a Pickwickian sense). Moreover, Carl Schmitt was apowerful rhetorician, and his works abound in key terms and definitions which areoften striking, but upon close inspection turn out to be suggestive but ambiguous,such as democracy as the identification of ruler and ruled, or politics as characterizedby the distinction between friend and enemy. The problem is compounded by thefact that Schmitt himself sometimes used his key terms in opposite senses over time.8For all these reasons it is especially important to place Schmitt�s conceptual claimsin their political and cultural context in order to understand their meaning and import.

Freyer�s Critique of LiberalismBoth Hans Freyer and Carl Schmitt tended to equate liberalism with enlightenment,with rationalism, and with universalism. A key premise of their critique of liberaldemocracy was that ultimate meaning in collective life was possible only on the basisof collective particularity and collective delimitation. These premises and theircontemporary political implications were spelled out in a series of books whichFreyer wrote in the early 1920s: Die Bewertung der Wirtschaft im philosophischenDenken des 19. Jahrhunderts (1921), Prometheus: Ideen zur Philosophie der Kultur(1923), Theorie des objektiven Geistes: Eine Einleitung in der Kulturphilosophie(1923), and concluding with Der Staat (1925), which drew out the implications ofhis philosophy of culture and his critique of contemporary society for politicalphilosophy and political action.

7 This is the case in otherwise worthwhile works of Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in derWeimarer Republik (Munich, 1962), and Christian Graf von Krockow, Die Entscheidung: Eine Unter-suchung über Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger (Stuttgart, 1958).8 As Freyer pointed out in an admiring review of Schmitt�s collected essays published in 1940. SeeFreyer�s review of Schmitt, Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar-Genf-Versailles, in DeutscheRechtswissenschaft, Vol. 5 (1940), pp. 261�6, esp. pp. 261�3.



Freyer�s Die Bewertung der Wirtschaft im philosophischen Denken des 19. Ja-hrhunderts was an effort to flesh out the notion of a �spirit of the nineteenth century�and to suggest by contrast the spirit of the twentieth.9 In fact the range of attitudeswithin nineteenth-century philosophy regarding the relationship of the economy tothe rest of culture was so broad that no common spirit could be distilled inductively.What Freyer actually did was to assume that a particular social philosophy � roughlyequivalent to Manchesterian liberalism � was the real spirit of the nineteenthcentury. Freyer�s portrait of economic liberalism and of classical political economywas of a system of thought which had resulted in the reification of the economy. Itwas the subordination of all realms of existence to the demands of the marketeconomy and the extension of the modes of thought characteristic of the market tothe realm of ethics which Freyer regarded as the spirit of the nineteenth century. Freyer�s views on the nature of culture, of politics and of the contemporary humanpredicament were based upon a core conception of the nature of man, on whatGermans have come to call a �philosophical anthropology�. Freyer often expressedthis core conception of his social thought in metaphorical terms. The controllingmetaphors were of boundedness and unboundedness or of openness and closedness.Freyer used these metaphors to express his central concern, that of possibility andlimitation. For Freyer it was unbounded possibility which most threatened contem-porary man. His political philosophy stressed the need for boundaries, and hispolitical programme was a quest for collective delimitation. The emphasis of Freyer�ssocial theory was on the problem of social integration. Behind his theory lay hisconviction that only through membership in stable, well-integrated social groups wasthe individual freed from the sense of limitlessness intrinsic in subjective life. The source of boundaries on the labile self and hence of meaning was culture, aterm which Freyer used in the broadest sense to indicate all the externalized creationsof men, i.e. institutions and beliefs.10 The individual could only escape the limitlessflux of subjective life by internalizing the delimiting purposes provided by culture.The solution to the problem of individual identity thus lay in the ability of socialgroups to convey a set of delimiting purposes to the individual, and this in turndepended upon the stability of the social groups of which the individual was a part.Freyer�s theory of social groups was voluntaristic or idealistic:11 men existed as agroup primarily by virtue of sharing some common purpose, some collective end orgoal. They ultimately cohere through the voluntary subordination of the individualto a collective purpose, and their degree of cohesion reflects the intensity of

9 See Muller, Other God, pp. 78�87.10 Hans Freyer, Theorie des objektiven Geistes. Eine Einleitung in die Kulturphilosophie (1923), p. 55.Freyer here follows Hegel�s use of the term in the Phenomenology, in which the culture to be internalizedis not only �high culture� but culture in the anthropological sense of the sum total of institutions and beliefsof a society. On Hegel�s usage, see Judith Shklar, Freedom and Independence: A Study of the PoliticalIdeas of Hegel�s Phenomenology of Mind (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), p. 144.11 The terms �voluntaristic� and �idealistic� are drawn from Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action(2 vols., New York, 1968), passim and esp. pp. 81�2.

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commitment to such supra-individual ends.12 The social groups upon which theindividual depended for a sense of stability and delimitation were thus themselvesdependent upon the affirmation of some higher purpose. Assuming, as Freyer did, that society required some ultimate purpose or collectiveaim, from where was this goal to come? Could a society not agree on some ultimatepurpose and a system of institutions and symbols through which to embody such apurpose? Could such a purpose not be freely and rationally chosen, based onuniversal, rational standards? Could man not create such a rational and universalculture de novo? This was the political project which Freyer identified with theEnlightenment and of its liberal and socialist successors. Freyer�s response to thesequestions was negative. His scepticism was a product of the central premises of hisradical conservative social theory, namely the connection between meaning, tradi-tion and particularity. Freyer�s theory of tradition is an outgrowth of his over-riding concern for stabilityin the face of the natural flux of life. The role of culture was to provide stability amidflux. But were culture to change as quickly as life itself, it would fail to fulfil thestabilizing function which it occupied in Freyer�s social thought. Life lived only inan awareness of the present, in a system of institutions, values and symbols whichreflected only the needs of contemporary life, could not provide such stability andcontinuity. How then did cultural forms acquire �depth�, some degree of permanenceamid the changing needs of men over historical time? Freyer�s answer, briefly stated,was that cultural forms acquire greater emotional resonance for the present by virtueof their multiple past associations and connotations. Through tradition � thereappropriation of past culture � contemporary life thus acquires some historical�weight�, some continuity with the past which gives �depth� to the culture of thepresent and enhances social stability.13

Freyer�s critique of enlightened, rationalist universalism was two-pronged. Therole of tradition, of grounding in the past as the source of cultural �weight� was thefirst prong. His conception of the relatioship between meaning and particularityformed the second prong. Since for Freyer personal meaning was linked to collectivestability, collective integration was linked to collective purpose, and collectivepurpose was linked to the renewal of tradition, the question inevitably arose of whichtradition ought to form the basis of collective purpose. Were such a choice trulyarbitrary � were there no overriding criteria for choosing one cultural tradition overanother � the result would be indecision and inaction, accompanied by the sense ofmeaninglessness which Freyer�s entire programme was intended to obviate. In sucha case, he wrote, �The melancholy of multiple possibilities lays upon us and paralysesour action�.14 In contradistinction to all philosophies which asserted the existence ofsome universal set of norms appropriate for all men on the basis of their commonhumanity and accessible to all through reason, Freyer maintained that meaning exists

12 Freyer, Theorie, pp. 52�4.13 Ibid., pp. 94�8.14 Hans Freyer, Prometheus: Ideen zur Philosophie der Kultur (Jena, 1923), p. 70.



in history only in multiplicity.15 �History�, he wrote, �thinks in plurals, and its teachingis that there is more than one solution for the human equation.�16 The �plurals� werethe various distinct historical cultures, each of which was created and transmitted bya historical collectivity or �Volk�. This assumption, as Freyer often noted, was alegacy of the German historicist tradition. In the case of Hans Freyer these historicistassumptions now became the basis of a normative social theory and a prescriptiveplan of political action centred on the concept of the Volk. During his radical conservative phase Freyer judged the affirmation of collectivehistorical particularity in the form of the Volk to be the only alternative to theunbounded society and ephemeral culture of rationalist universalism. The charac-teristic processes of modernity, according to Freyer, dissolved all connection with aparticular culture of the past which could add depth to the culture of the present,leaving no bounded collectivity to which the individual could subordinate himself. For Freyer the main currents of modern history threatened this retention ofcollective purpose and hence of individual meaning. A society which lacked acommon collective purpose, Freyer believed, left the lives of its members bereft ofmeaning. It might leave them free to pursue their individual interests and vocations,but without some larger collective goal the pursuit of individual choices would bearbitrary. Only a society devoted to the affirmation of its particularity could providethe individual with a sense of purpose. It was this perspective which lay at the heartof Freyer�s critique of contemporary Germany in the 1920s. In Prometheus, Freyerexpressed his hatred of �chaotic ages without any limits�.17 �We have a bad consciencein regard to our age�, he wrote. �We feel ourselves to be unconfirmed, lacking inmeaning, unfulfilled, not even obligated.�18 For Freyer an open society was ameaningless society. His philosophy of history was primarily concerned with ex-plaining how modern society had become so open, his political philosophy with howit could be closed again. Modern society, according to Freyer, was characterized by what his teacher, GeorgSimmel, had called �the tragedy of culture�. Each realm of culture takes on a life ofits own: as each realm develops independently it loses its connection to a specifichuman group and to a specific historical culture; it thus has a universalistic impetus.The various realms of objective culture become independent of one another, developaccording to their own logic and lose their connection to a particular historicalsubject.19 The realms of such a culture � art, science, scholarship, the economy,technology � no longer fit together into some meaningful totality, no longer providea closed world of shared horizons for its members. It was the relationship between capitalism and technology which most vexed HansFreyer. Freyer�s concern was that the expansion of capitalism, technology and

15 Hans Freyer, Der Staat (Leipzig, 1925), p. 194.16 Freyer, Prometheus, p. 78.17 Ibid., p. 57.18 Ibid., p. 107.19 Freyer, Der Staat, pp. 66�72.

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science would result in the decline of collective purpose and the dissolution ofparticular cultures. The intrinsic logic of these fields was trans-national. Left toflourish according to their intrinsic logic and without political control, they led tothe dissolution of political and cultural barriers.20 The unguided spread of technologywould lead to some global system without a historical or organic connection to anyparticular collective culture. All of humanity would eventually be absorbed into �arationalized order of objective relations, an economic trading company�.21 Thisimage of a pacified world order based upon peaceful trade between nations pursuingtheir collective welfare was close to the vision of the future of nineteenth-centuryliberals such as Herbert Spencer. To Hans Freyer and Carl Schmitt, however, thisfuture was not a dream but a nightmare. For given Freyer�s premise that meaningarose only from cultural particularity, this prospect was tantamount to universalmeaninglessness.

Schmitt�s Critique of LiberalismSimilar themes � of the loss of cultural coherence and the threat of subjectivism �run through the works written by Carl Schmitt from 1916 to 1929. Freyer�s equationof the nineteenth century with liberalism, perceived as the economization of exist-ence, was also a recurrent theme in Carl Schmitt�s writings. The theme of the modernage as the age of economization and mechanization goes back in Schmitt�s work atleast as far as his book Theodor Däublers �Nordlicht� of 1916.22 In his book PoliticalRomanticism, published in 1919, Schmitt argued that romanticism ought to bedefined not by the varied institutions to which various romantics were committed,but by the nature of their commitment. For Schmitt, romanticism was characterizedby its ultimate subjectivism, which made lasting, binding commitments to anyauthoritative idea or institution impossible. For the romantic, according to Schmitt,any given institution is merely the occasion for the romantic�s own subjective,aesthetic experience.23 This romantic attitude was subversive of all normativeinstitutions.24 For Schmitt, there was a close historical and sociological link between thesubjectivist aestheticism characteristic of romanticism and the rise of the bourgeoisieand of liberalism. Once the Roman Catholic Church had provided what Schmittcalled �form� or a clear sense of ultimate authority and structure.25 With the declineof the theological basis of shared authority after the wars of religion, the only viablesource of ultimate and integrative authority in continental Europe was the newly-

20 Ibid., pp. 174�5.21 Freyer, Prometheus pp. 55�6.22 See the analysis of that work in Kennedy, �Politische Expressionismus�, esp. p. 243.23 Page references are to Carl Schmitt, Politische Romantik (Berlin, 2nd edn., 1925), p. 132.24 Ibid., p. 22.25 See Carl Schmitt, Römischer Katholizismus und politische Form (Hellerau, 1923).



created institution of the modern absolutist state.26 In the course of the nineteenthcentury, the new bourgeoisie with its philosophy of liberalism had challenged theclaims of the absolutist state to ultimate authority and sovereignty, only to have itsown authority challenged by new social forces and demands for mass democracy.Thus older structures of political and cultural authority had been dissolved, but nonew authoritative �forms� had taken their place.27 While romanticism had begun asan anti-bourgeois movement, the bourgeoisie had itself adopted the subjectivizedaestheticism of romanticism.28

Romanticism was thus the cultural correlate of what Schmitt called the �individu-alistic, disintegrated society� of a �bourgeois world which isolates the individual inthe cultural realm, making the individual his own source of reference�.29 �When thehierarchy of spiritual spheres dissolves, anything can become the center of culturallife�, wrote Schmitt, which was tantamount to having no centre. As a result, contem-porary spiritual existence was privatized, uncertain and suspicious of all authority.30

The link between romantic subjectivism and the spread of capitalist relations wassummarized by Schmitt as follows: �The path . . . towards economization goesthrough the aesthetic, and the path through sublime aesthetic consumption andsatisfaction is the most certain and pleasant path to a general economization ofcultural life and a spiritual constitution which finds the central categories of humanexistence in production and consumption�.31 Behind Schmitt�s more concretepolitical analysis of Weimar politics, therefore, lay the premise that the domination26 In his work of the late 1930s Schmitt maintained that a key distinction in modern European history wasbetween the continental great powers of France and Prussia, which were forced to develop an absolutiststate based on the landed army and the professional bureaucracy on the one hand, versus the English, whohad opted against this model and instead championed the navy, the sea and trade. This historicaldichotomy, which identified Prussia with the absolutist, military model and England as its paradigmaticantithesis, appears to have been adapted by Schmitt from Otto Hintze, whose own dichotomy was adaptedfrom Herbert Spencer�s distinction between the military and industrial models of society, but placed greateremphasis on divergent developments in political representation. Thus, for Schmitt, the struggle betweenGermany and England was a struggle for the preservation of �the political�, the state and delimited nationalculture against the disintegrative forces of liberalism, trade and the Jews. For Schmitt�s dichotomies seehis Leviathan (1938), esp. pp. 119�27; �Staat als konkreter, an eine geschichtliche Epoche gebundenerBegriff� (1941), now in his Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1924�1954 (Berlin, 1958),pp. 375�85; and Carl Schmitt, Land und Meer: Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung (Cologne, 1981;originally published 1942), pp. 86�102; for the expression of related sentiments in Schmitt�s personalconversations of the period, see the memoir by Nicolaus Sombart, �Spaziergäng mit Carl Schmitt�, in hisJugend in Berlin, 1933�43 (Munich, 1984), pp. 260�5. On Hintze�s dichotomy and its relationship toSpencer see Otto Hintze, �Military Organization and the Organization of the State�, in The HistoricalEssays of Otto Hintze, ed. Felix Gilbert (New York, 1975), pp. 178�215; and also Edward C. Page, �ThePolitical Origins of Self-Government and Bureaucracy: Otto Hintze�s Conceptual Map of Europe�,Political Studies, Vol. 38 (1990), pp. 39�55.27 Schmitt, Politische Romantik, p. 18.28 Schmitt, �Das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen� (first published 1929), pagereferences here are to the reprint in Schmitt, Positionen und Begriffe, pp. 122�4.29 Schmitt, Politische Romantik, pp. 26�7.30 Ibid, pp. 17, 21.31 Schmitt, �Zeitalter�, p. 123.

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of modern life by economic considerations was culturally degrading, that it wastantamount to the trivialization of existence. Among the implicit aims of Political Romanticism was to restore the plausibilityof non-rational sources of authority by severing the link between romanticism on theone hand and the particular commitments of the romantics to the Catholic Church,the state and the historically-evolved Volk on the other.32

A central contention in the work of Schmitt (as well as of Freyer) was that thecontemporary loss of unified cultural and political authority had its roots in thecentral process of the nineteenth century, which Schmitt called �economization� andFreyer the rise of bourgeois society. Their philosophy of history and contemporarypolitical programme was based upon a shared belief that the process of economiza-tion in the nineteenth century had brought about what Schmitt termed the decline ofform or what Freyer (following Saint-Simon) termed a negative or inorganic epoch.

Positive Alternatives:The Political Assertion of Collective Purpose and Particularity

For both Freyer and Schmitt, then, the nineteenth century was as much a spiritual asa chronological designation, identified with the economization of existence, thesubjectivization of authority, and the dissolution of a shared culture and sharedultimate purpose. Their alternative was the recreation of collective purpose whichwould lift men out of their private concerns. That collective purpose was thereassertion of the power of the German Volk and the creation of a state powerfulenough to make Germany a player on the stage of world history. It was Freyer�s contention that his prospect of a dawning age devoid of meaningwas not an inexorable consequence of the development of technology. Technologymight lack intrinsic meaning and purpose, but general purposelessness and anabsence of �totality� threatened modern society not because it was dominated bytechnology but rather by capitalism. The development of technology in modernEurope had until now gone hand-in-hand with that of capitalism, a system basedupon the maximization of individual profit. It was capitalism, not technology, whichwas responsible for the loss of common goals in modern society. The challengefacing his contemporaries, Freyer believed, was to dissolve the connection betweentechnology and capitalism. The political task at hand was the reintegration oftechnology into the �totality of life of the European nations�.33 In a similar vein,Schmitt wrote that technology was not politically neutral: it was an instrument anda weapon, and the question facing the present was the political use of technology.34

Writing in 1925, Freyer maintained that Europe now stood at the threshold of anew historical era, which would maintain the cultural and especially technological32 See esp. Politische Romantik, pp. 88�101, where Schmitt distinguishes the political philosophy of thecounter-revolutionary conservatives such as Burke, Bonald and Haller, from the fleeting commitmentsof the romantics to these institutions.33 Hans Freyer, �Zur Philosophie der Technik�, Blätter für die deutsche Philosophie (1929�30), pp. 200�1. On the attitudes of thinkers of the Weimar right towards technology, see Herf, Reactionary Modernism.34 Schmitt, �Zeitalter�, pp. 128�31.



achievements of the nineteenth century, but integrate them into a closed totality basedupon the reassertion of collective particularity, in a manner which recaptured thecommunity of shared purpose. The reassertion of the transcendent value of one�sparticular Volk was to be the essence of the faith which would reintegrate society,and the preservation of the Volk was to serve as the transcendent goal to which allaspects of culture, the economy and technology were to be subordinated. The agencywhich would guarantee and control this subordination was the state. Freyer termedthe structure that the Volk and the State would create the �Reich�. The Reichrepresented a condition in which the alienation and fragmentation of the present hadbeen overcome. The diversity of pursuits characteristic of the present would continue,but each occupation would now be oriented by the state to the purposes of the Reich.Thus each occupation would now become a calling, its occupant aware that hisdevelopment of technical means served the ultimate end of the preservation of theReich.35 In keeping with his neo-Hegelian perspective, Freyer described the state as theultimate objectification of Geist, its most concrete, institutional expression. As withthe economy and technology, so too were all other realms of human endeavour to beguided by the state in the interests of the Volk. The role of the state, Freyer wrote,was to politicize all elements of culture. He scoffed at the liberal, �negative� view offreedom which sought to secure �so-called individual freedom� from the �so-calledcoercion of the law�. True freedom, he wrote, is positive freedom, �freedom not fromthe state, but through the state; not in contrast to law, but in the law itself�. Freedomin this sense meant the freedom to participate in the self-realization of the Volksgeist,the freedom to subordinate oneself to the goal of collective self-assertion.36 What did Freyer mean by the Volk? He used the term in two senses, the firsthistoricist-romantic, the second in the Machiavellian or civic republican sense.Freyer drew on Hegel, Dilthey and Spengler in an attempt to reformulate the conceptof Volksgeist in a systematic, scientific manner, but even the most systematic of hisexpositions remains little more than suggestive. Each historical culture, he wrote, isthe expression of a basic group attitude �which is thoroughly pre-rational, unformu-lated, and non-conscious�. The entire culture of each group (which he equated withVolk) is the realization or development of this particular �primordial attitude towardthe world�.37 Each culture therefore places a different accent on the characteristicfeatures of human life.38 Freyer provided few specific examples of the manner inwhich such collective particularities were expressed in culture. He regarded languageas the most important expression of the Volksgeist and the major constitutive elementof the Volk. When writing for a non-scientific audience drawn from the Jugendbewegung andthe intellectual right Freyer wrote of the organic origins of the Volk in race or blood.39

Writing for the same audience he would elsewhere refer to Volk as the result of thehistorical interaction of a particular race with a particular landscape � as a product35 Freyer, Der Staat, p. 126.36 Ibid, pp. 165�7.37 Freyer, Theorie, pp. 111�13.

38 Ibid., p. 119.39 Freyer, Prometheus, pp. 58, 89.

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of Blut and Heimat.40 Yet whenever Freyer sought to define these terms he did sonot according to their literal meaning but to their social or psychological function.Thus blood was �that which comprises our essence, and from which we cannotseparate ourselves without degenerating�. Heimat was �that place from which wecome and which we cannot abandon without becoming sick�.41 The key terms inFreyer�s programmatic thought were thus tautological metaphors: to write of bloodas the ultimate source of collective identity and then to define blood as the ultimatesource of collective identity is to have added nothing to our knowledge of the actualorigin of collective identity. What remains is the affirmation of an image of emotivepower, an image which evoked the importance of collective particularity. Thevarious uses of the term Volk in Freyer�s work of the early 1920s shows it to havedenoted very little, but to have connoted a good deal, namely the myth of commonorigin and common cultural substance. In the second, Machiavellian sense, the Volk designated a politicized entity unitedin common purpose. It was Machiavelli who had first distinguished between thosepeoples who possessed virtù and hence were capable of collective self-defence, andthose who lacked this quality and were at the mercy of others.42 At least since thetime of Fichte and Hegel, Machiavelli�s work in general and the concept of historicalversus unhistorical peoples in particular had been a source of fascination for Germanintellectuals. Like others in this tradition, Freyer regarded war as an indispensableelement in the creation and preservation of the intense political consciousness whichhe believed ought to characterize the state. The constant need to prepare for warprovided the intensity of emotional commitment which for Freyer is characteristicof politics, the constant reminder of the primacy of political over particular inter-ests.43

For Schmitt too, the alternative to bourgeois existence with its privatized, eco-nomic concerns lay in the realm of what he called �the political�, which itself wasdefined by the potential conflict between states. Among Schmitt�s most important works of the Weimar era was �The Concept ofthe Political�, which began as an essay in 1927 and was published in expanded formas a book in 1932. A key confusion runs through the book: on the one hand, Schmittsought to define �the political� in purely formal terms, as characterized not by the

40 Freyer, Der Staat, p. 151.41 Ibid.42 On the concept of virtù in Machiavelli, see esp. J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton,1975), Chs. 6�7; and Jerrold Seigel, �Virtù in and since the Renaissance�, Dictionary of the History ofIdeas (New York, 1974); Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli (Oxford, 1981), pp. 53 ff.; Jeff A. Weintraub,�Virtue, Community and the Sociology of Liberty: The Notion of Republican Virtue and Its Impact onModern Western Social Thought�, Ph.D. diss., Berkeley, 1979, Ch. 3. The concept of liberty as popularcontrol which recent Anglo-American writers have emphasized in their exploration of Machiavelli�sthought was virtually absent from Freyer�s discussion. Freyer read Machiavelli as most German thinkersin the nineteenth century had read him, namely as a prophet of national liberation from foreign domination.On the German reading of Machiavelli see Friedrich Meinecke, Die Idee der Staatsräson (1924).43 Freyer, Der Staat, pp. 142�9.



substance of human relations, but by their intensity. �The political� so defined wasbased upon the intensity of friend/enemy relations, of relations of association(friendship) versus those of disassociation. Yet in fact the book was motivated by aconcern for a particular kind of relationship, the relationship of antagonism betweenpeoples, the willingness of members of Volk to kill and be killed for the sake of theircollective preservation of the Volk. The political was defined in contradistinction tothe economic and to the realm of economic needs (Gesellschaft).44 The political couldnot be legitimated on economic grounds. It was �the most profound assertion of one�sown form of collective existence against the negation of this form�. A key passagein Schmitt�s essay maintained that �the fact that a Volk no longer has the power orthe will to maintain itself in the realm of the political does not mean the disappearanceof the political from the world. It means the disappearance of a weak Volk�.45 Now this statement, narrowly construed, does express the basic truth that thepopulation of a state in a condition of enmity can maintain its political independenceonly if it is willing to kill and be killed. Given Schmitt�s understanding of theinternational position of Weimar Germany, however, the statement takes on a morebellicose significance. According to Schmitt, the demilitarization of the Rhinelandrequired by the Versailles Treaties, by leaving the Rhineland open to French invasionmade the fourteen million German residents of the Rhineland into �the victims ofpossible war measures� and �an atrocious sort of hostage�.46 The real effects of theVersailles sanctions were to leave Germany vulnerable to imminent destruction byits enemies.47 The �existential question� facing the German Reich was whether itwould tolerate such a situation, which was tantamount to the end of its politicalexistence. Since modern technology was �making the earth smaller�, in the futureonly large political units would survive. Either the German Volk would demonstratethe political will to remain a world-power, Schmitt wrote, or �its flesh and blood�would be consumed by its enemies.48 Elsewhere, Schmitt portrayed the League ofNations as a pseudo-moral entity which uses economistic language to maintainGerman subjection and the economic imperialism of the western powers.49

To appreciate the resonances of Schmitt�s conception of the political in itshistorical context, one must thus consider that Schmitt conceived of the Versaillessystem if not as the physical genocide of the Germans, then at least as their extinctionas a great power, i.e as a political Volk on the stage of world history, which for himwas almost as bad. The views of Freyer and Schmitt on these matters were quitetypical of the German political right and even centre, namely the refusal to accept

44 Carl Schmitt, �Der Begriff des Politischen� (1927) in his Positionen und Begriffe, pp. 67�74, here p. 71.45 Schmitt, �Begriff�, p. 72.46 Schmitt, �Völkerrechtliche Probleme im Rheingebiet� (1928), reprinted in Positionen, pp. 97�108, herep. 101.47 Ibid., p. 103.48 Ibid., pp. 106�7.49 Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen: Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien(Berlin, 1963), pp. 77�8. This part of the text was published in 1932.

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the defeat of 1918, the ongoing belief in the need for Germany to remain a greatpower in Europe and in the world at large, and the ongoing memory of the�Hunger-Blockade� of the war years and the spectre of its return.50

Schmitt�s critique of parliamentarianism, then, must be understood against thebackground of his assumptions about the relationship between politics, society andforeign policy. Put succinctly, authentic politics was about the ability of the Volk toassert itself in the international arena. A normal state was one in which relations ofenmity were directed outward, in which the �enemy� was foreign.51 The deficienciesof parliamentary politics in Weimar were of acute concern not because they threat-ened civil disorder or economic growth, but because in the face of the Versaillessystem the lack of a strong central government threatened the political existence ofthe German Volk, which Schmitt often elided with collective physical existence assuch.52 The novelty of Schmitt�s critique of parliamentary democracy � expressed in anumber of his works, beginning with Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigenParliamentarismus of 1923 � is often misjudged, and focuses on his contentionthat the practice of contemporary politics negated arguments made for representativegovernment by nineteenth-century liberals. Those arguments, Schmitt claimed cor-rectly but one-sidedly, had been based on the rationalist belief that open discussionamong elected representatives would lead parliamentarians to choose the publicgood.53 Contemporary politics, on the other hand, was based upon disciplined,organized parties which sought to appeal to voters through propaganda, whichappealed to economic self-interest and passions. Deputies, bound by party discipline,did not make their decisions based on a rational weighing of the public good, anddecisions were therefore no longer made in parliament but �behind closed doors� incommittees, between leaders of party factions.54 This critique was in fact hardly new, having been propounded for years by Maurrasand Sorel (both of whom influenced Schmitt). In fact, the critique of parliamentarydemocracy was common coin among central European social theorists by the timeSchmitt propounded it; in 1920 (three years before Schmitt�s book) it was cited as

50 Andreas Hillgruber, �Unter dem Schatten von Versailles � Die aussenpolitische Belastung derWeimarer Republik: Realität und Perzeption bei den Deutschen�, in Weimar: Selbstpreisgabe einerDemokratie, ed. K.D. Erdmann and Hagen Schulze (Düsseldorf, 1980), pp. 54�5. It is worth recallingthat Schmitt served in a legal capacity in the German army at a time when a German empire in the eastseemed a possibility; in 1918 he began work on a constitution for Lithuania, which would have formedpart of that empire. See, Tommissen, �Bausteine�, p. 76.51 Carl Schmitt, Hugo Preuss: sein Staatsbegriff und seine Stellung in der deutschen Staatslehre(Tübingen, 1930), p. 26, n1.52 See for example, in Carl Schmitt, �Das Problem der innenpolitischen Neutralität des Staates� (April1930), reprinted in Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze, pp. 41�62, here pp. 56�8.53 Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, Mass.,1985), pp. 34�5. This translation includes a useful introduction by Ellen Kennedy, which helps to placeSchmitt�s work in the context of legal debates in Weimar Germany.54 Ibid., pp. 5�8, 49�50.



common wisdom by Joseph Schumpeter in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft undSozialpolitik, the most prestigious journal of social science in German-speakingEurope.55 What was peculiar about Schmitt�s critique of parliamentary democracywas first that it proceeded by measuring contemporary parliamentary practice by thestandards of nineteenth-century liberalism, for which Schmitt had no high regard inthe first place.56 What was most significant about his analysis was his emphasis onthe conflict between liberalism and democracy, his definition of democracy, and thecontemporary political ramifications of his analysis. Schmitt insisted that he was a �democrat�, opposed to the superannuated �liberal-ism� of the nineteenth century. But both his definition of democracy and hisconception of appropriate means for its expression were peculiar. Democracy hedefined as �the identity of those who govern with those who are governed�.57 Its keyvalue was not numerical equality (since it did not regard those who were outside thepolity as equal), but equality in the sense of shared substance, or what Schmitt called�homogeneity�. In the modern period, this homogeneity took the form of membershipin a particular nation, in national homogeneity. �A democracy demonstrates itspolitical power by knowing how to refuse or keep at bay something foreign thatthreatens its homogeneity�.58 In the abstract, there is much to be said for thisdefinition: in context and in practice, it must be remembered that Schmitt believedand repeatedly asserted that the Versailles system prevented Germany from possess-ing just this sort of political power. Democracy, for Schmitt, was a political form, based upon the shared sense ofbelonging together. Real democracy, as Schmitt understood it, did away with the�disintegrating� pursuit of private interest which were encouraged by competitiveelections. By Schmitt�s reckoning, the Italian Fascist election of 1928 in which thevoter could choose for or against a single list of candidates was more democratic,since it allowed the �unity of the Volk� to express itself in the electoral process.59

Time and again Schmitt claimed that the liberal institution of the secret ballot wasanti-democratic, since it allowed and encouraged the individual to express his privateinterest, while dictatorship and caesarism allowed for the �immediate expression ofthe democratic substance and power� of the Volk.60

55 Joseph Schumpeter, �Sozialistische Möglichkeiten von heute�, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft undSozialpolitik, Vol. 48 (1920�1), pp. 305�60, here pp. 328�31.56 As noted by Maschke, �Drei Motive�, p. 63.57 Carl Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus (Berlin, 2nd edn., 1926),p. 20. I have departed slightly from the translation by Ellen Kennedy on p. 14 of the English edition.58 Schmitt, Crisis, p. 9.59 Carl Schmitt, �Wesen und Werden des fascistischen Staates�, Schmollers Jahrbuch, Vol. 53, no. 1(1929), pp. 107�13, here p. 109.60 Schmitt, Geistesgeschichtliche Lage, pp. 22�3, 50; Carl Schmitt, Verfassungslehre (Munich, 1928),pp. 244�6, though elsewhere in his Verfassungslehre � one of the more scholarly and balanced ofSchmitt�s works � he could also make the case for parties as the necessary representatives of �publicopinion� in a democracy.

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The analysis and critique of Weimar democracy, in the writings of both Freyerand Schmitt, drew upon Rousseau�s recasting of the civic republican tradition interms of the distinction between citoyen and bourgeois, which both Freyer andSchmitt correlated with the Hegelian distinction between state and society. Bothregarded the state as the realm of the political, in which the key public interest wasthe expansion of German power, while society was the private realm of productionand consumption. Their analysis of Weimar politics owed much to a Hegeliantradition which criticized contemporary politics for the encroachment of the eco-nomic interests of civil society upon the state, a tradition which reached back toLorenz von Stein and to Marx.61 In 1931, Schmitt published The Protector of the Constitution, a book in which hebrought together a series of arguments which he had made in essay form during theprevious three years. The Weimar state, he argued, had become subordinated to thepluralistic social interests of civil society, thus robbing it of its unity and sover-eignty.62 This reflected what Schmitt took to be a false understanding of pluralism:legitimate pluralism existed not in the domination of the state by competing socio-economic interest groups, but in the competition among the cultures of the Völker,each embodied in its own state.63 The contemporary state was �neo-feudal�: itreflected the pluralistic interests of civil society as represented in parliamentaryparties.64 As a consequence, Schmitt wrote, the state was becoming a �total state�,forced by politically organized social interests to intervene in ever-more areas ofsociety. Here the term �total state� had an opprobrious connotation.65 It was inevitablethat the state would have a large role in the economy, Schmitt agreed, yet the Weimarstate was incapable of exercising the legislative authority demanded by this newreality, because parliament now served to divide the state�s power among politicallyorganized social interests.66

In Schmitt�s writings of the late 1920s and early 1930s his earlier criticism of thecontemporary state on moral and political grounds (in the sense of its inability torally the Volk for a more activist foreign policy) gave way to an emphasis on theabsolute paralysis of decision-making in the face of a splintered party system whichreflected so wide a divergence of economic, religious and political interests. Writingin the final weeks before Hitler�s appointment as chancellor, Schmitt contrasted thecontemporary weak, indecisive total state �in the purely quantitative sense�, to theideal of the total state �in the qualitative sense�:

61 Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, p. 253.62 Carl Schmitt, �Staatsethik und Pluralistischer Staat�, Kantstudien, Vol. 35 (1930), pp. 28�42, herepp. 28�31; and Carl Schmitt, Der Hüter der Verfassung (Berlin, 1931), pp. 71�88.63 Schmitt, �Staatsethik�, pp. 37�40.64 Schmitt, Hugo Preuss, p. 21; and Schmitt, Hüter, pp. 84�8.65 Carl Schmitt, �Die Wendung zum totalen Staat�, Europäische Revue (April, 1931), pp. 241�50, herepp. 242�3, and Schmitt, Hüter, pp. 78�88.66 Schmitt, �Wendung�, p. 247; and Schmitt, Hüter, pp. 108 ff.



The total state in this sense is an especially strong state. It is total in the senseof its quality and of its energy, of what the fascist state calls the �statototalitario�, by which it means primarily that the new means of power belongexclusively to the state and serve the purpose of augmenting its power. Sucha state allows no forces to arise within it which might be inimical to it, limit it,or fragment it. It does not think of surrendering the new means of power to itsenemies and destroyers and allowing its power to be undermined by categoriessuch as liberalism, �Rechtsstaat�, or whatever. Such a state can distinguishfriend from foe.67

The institutional locus of this strong state was to be the Reich�s president, rulingthrough the bureaucracy, with the support of the army, and legitimated in somenever-clearly-defined sense through acclamation.68 This was the intellectual basis ofSchmitt�s political role as a member of the circle around General Kurt von Schleicher. In an essay published in late 1929, Carl Schmitt wrote that beneath the facade ofcontemporary political exhaustion a new élite was forming which, relinquishing thesecurity of the status quo, would appear in the form of a return to basic principles.From the perspective of the existing status quo, this regenerative élite would appear�as a cultural or social nothing�.69 Early in 1931, Freyer published Revolution vonrechts, which was devoted to an analysis of what he too, in a deliberate paraphraseof Abbé Sièyes�, contended was �nothing� in the political order of the present, butwould become �everything� in the new political order. What lay between Schmitt�scryptic suggestion of late 1929 and Freyer�s political pamphlet were of course theelections of September 1930, in which the National Socialists emerged as a majorelectoral force. Though never mentioned explicitly, it was the potential transforma-tion of German politics represented by this movement which was the pamphlet�scentral point of reference. For Freyer the movement represented the rising forces of the twentieth centuryagainst the ossified forces of the nineteenth; and of the politicized Volk, finally readyto reject a social and political order based upon the pursuit of self-interest. �Thenineteenth century�, in Freyer�s usage, was not a chronological designation butreferred instead to the mind-set appropriate to capitalist, industrial society. Individualand collective action in industrial society, according to Freyer, was based on�interest�, the pursuit of individual or group self-advantage.70 The natural social unitsof industrial society were therefore classes, groups organized for the pursuit ofcollective interests. Industrial society was thus in a permanent state of revolutionfrom below, of chronic or acute class conflict.71

67 Carl Schmitt, �Weiterentwicklung des totalen Staats in Deutschland�, Europäische Revue (February1933), reprinted in Carl Schmitt, Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze, pp. 359�65, here p. 361.68 Schmitt, Hüter, pp. 108�59; �Weiterentwicklung�, p. 365.69 Schmitt, �Das Zeitalter�, p. 131.70 Hans Freyer, Revolution von rechts (Jena, l93l), pp. l9, 34, 38.71 Ibid., pp. 9, l5.

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In historical materialism, Freyer saw the mode of thought most appropriate toindustrial society, and he saw the Marxist movement as the most significant politicalphenomenon of �the nineteenth century� considered in both its chronological andcultural sense. With its recognition of the dominant role of economic interests inmodern society, Marxism made explicit the real dynamics of industrial society inthe nineteenth century.72

In Revolution von rechts, Freyer first analysed what he called �The Self-Liquidation of the Nineteenth Century�. Freyer asserted that the socialist movementof the working class � the embodiment of the hope for a revolution of the left whichwould transcend industrial society � had been definitively and irrevocably absorbedinto capitalist, industrial society. In response to the successful political organizationof the proletariat, politics had been transformed into a struggle over material welfare:through the development of governmentally enacted social provisions, industrialsociety had moved from the era of laissez-faire to the new era of industrial societyin its socially expanded form. In this new era the material condition of the proletariatwas ameliorated sufficiently to lift it above the absolute misery which Marx � quiterightly in Freyer�s estimation � had deemed necessary for socialist revolution tooccur. Thus, Freyer wrote, the revisionist socialists of the turn of the century hadmerely been speaking the truth about what their movement had become, a non-revolutionary movement which sought an expansion of rights and benefits withinindustrial society.73 The essential elements of capitalism had remained intact.74 Freyer�s emphasis then was on the unexpectedly successful capacity of welfare-state capitalism to co-opt its opposition and hence diffuse revolutionary challenges.It was this disappearance of realistic hopes for a revolution from the left which Freyerdubbed �the self-liquidation of the nineteenth century�. Much of Revolution von rechts was devoted to a dissection of the role of the statein industrial society. Echoing Carl Schmitt, Freyer claimed that the state had becomenothing but the broker between organized social interests.75 The rise of the socialistmovement and its integration into industrial society through government socialpolicy (Sozialpolitik) had made the state itself into the battleground of organizedsocial and economic interests. Parliamentary democracy meant nothing more � orless � than the surrender of the state to the umbrella organizations of interestgroups.76 Such a state, Freyer wrote, lacked the essential attributes of a real state,namely sovereign power over industrial society, a �binding collective conscious-ness�, and continuity of purpose. �It is the sum of all that is unpolitical�, heconcluded.77

Since, in Freyer�s view, industrial society treated man as nothing but a producerand consumer, it had failed to provide the individual with a sense of belonging to alarger whole. It was this pent-up discontent with the inability of industrial society to

72 Ibid., p. l9.73 Ibid., pp. 26�8, 33.74 Ibid., p. 30.

75 Ibid., pp. 23, 58�60.76 Ibid., pp. 39, 59�60.77 Ibid., p. 60.



provide a higher meaning or collective purpose to its members which Freyer saw asthe real source of the new revolution of the right.78 The Volk in Revolution von rechts was used in the neo-Machiavellian sense, tocharacterize all those who refused to define themselves in terms of their social classand economic self-interest. The source of Freyer�s enthusiasm for the gatheringmomentum of National Socialism is not difficult to discover. He saw in it a massembodiment of that cultural critique of modernity which had been developed byearlier generations of German social theorists and which lay at the heart of his ownwork.79 He devoted the final chapter of Revolution von rechts to an invocation of thenew order which the revolution would create. The new state was to be �freed� fromthe egoistical demands of industrial society in order to engage in real history, namelythe integration of the Volk for the sake of collective self-assertion and the acquisitionof temporal power.80 This was the higher collective purpose to which all were to besubordinated. The capitalist economy with its logic of production for profit was tobe replaced by state socialism (Staatssozialismus), in which production would occurfor the sake of collective historical self-assertion.81 The new state would continueand expand what Freyer regarded as the two greatest accomplishments of industrialsociety � namely the development of technology and of governmental social policy(Sozialpolitik). Yet the significance of each would be transformed. Technologicalmodes of thought would now be clearly subordinated to those of politics.82 Govern-ment social measures would continue not because of the struggles of social groupsacting according to egoistic self-interest, but by virtue of a truly collective ethoswhich would pervade the new state.83 The role of the state would be one of ongoingintervention in order to shape the social order.84 The new state brought about by therevolution from the right would thus combine technology and social organizationwith the �endlessly deep roots� of the Volk.85 It would solve the problem to whichFreyer�s work had been devoted: the reconciliation of modern technology with asense of collective identity and individual meaning rooted in the particularist past.Freyer saw in the revolution from the right a real, mass political embodiment of hisown Kulturkritik and the possibility, at least, of realizing the total state which he hadlong advocated. That is how the revolution from the right looked to Hans Freyer in theory. Thepractice would look rather different.86 Carl Schmitt and Hans Freyer were both men of great intelligence and widelearning. Like other moral diagnosticians whose radical critiques have helped todelegitimate past liberal-capitalist democracies, they stressed the cost of suchsocieties with little awareness of their benefits; they judged such societies wantingby measuring them against romanticized models from the past, while remaining so

78 Ibid., pp. 47�9.79 Ibid., p. 72.80 Ibid., p. 65.81 Ibid., pp. 66�7.82 Ibid., p. 66.

83 Ibid., pp. 67�70.84 Ibid., p. 70.85 Ibid., p. 72.86 See Muller, Other God, Chs. 7�8.

714 J.Z. MULLER


vague about future alternatives that it became impossible to weigh the costs andbenefits of the existent against their proposed alternative. The danger from suchcritics is that their unbalanced assessment may attract them to a political cure that isworse than the disease itself. That is what happened to Hans Freyer and Carl Schmitt,and to countless other members of the German educated classes who, influenced bysuch critiques, were lured towards another god that was to fail.

Jerry Z. Muller CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA



article_muller_radical conservative critique of liberal democracy

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