Amerika

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

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