MEN AMONG THE RUINS

Postwar Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist

JULIUS EVOLA

Translated by Guido Stucco, Edited by Michael Moynihan

CONTENTS

EDITOR’S NOTE

For the present English edition, we have endeavored to convey precisely Evola’s own system of terminology. Thus the reader will note the capitalization of words like Tradition (when used by Evola to denote a transcendent spiritual tradition), Idea, Land, Leader, Mothers (Evola utilizes this term in a sense inspired by J. J. Bachofen), Orders (referring to Knightly Orders, Mannerbunde, etc.), and the State. We have attempted to follow the precedent of the Italian edition (Rome: Volpe, 1972) as closely as possible in this respect. In addition, we have followed the now common scholarly practice of capitalizing the terms Fascism and Fascist only when they refer specifically to aspects of the historical Italian Fascism of the Mussolini regime. The terms are set in lower case when they refer to “generic” or less specific conceptions. The footnotes to the text are all from Evola, with the exception of occasional clarifications by the Editor, which are noted as such. We have also made a concerted effort to provide the bibliographical details of English translations (when these exist) for books cited by Evola.

Editor’s Acknowledgments

Sincere gratitude is expressed to the following people for their efforts with regard to this edition: Dr. H. T. Hansen for his new preface and for the use of his excellent introductory essay, Jon Graham at Inner Traditions, Martin Schwarz, Markus Wolff, Phillip Luciani for his initial support of the project, Dr. Stephen Flowers for helpful suggestions, and above all to Joscelyn Godwin for his many generous contributions and insights.

MEN AMONG THE RUINS

ONE

Revolution — Counterrevolution — Tradition

Recently, various forces have attempted to set up a defense and a resistance in the sociopolitical domain against the extreme forms in which the disorder of our age manifests itself. It is necessary to realize that this is a useless effort, even for the sake of merely demonstrative purposes, unless the disease is dealt with at its very roots. These roots, as far as the historical dimension is concerned, are to be found in the subversion introduced in Europe by the revolutions of 1789 and 1848. The disease must be recognized in all of its forms and degrees; thus, the main task is to establish if there are still men willing to reject all the ideologies, political movements, and parties that, directly or indirectly, derive from those revolutionary ideas (i.e., everything ranging from liberalism and democracy to Marxism and communism). As a positive counterpart, these men should be given an orientation and a solid foundation consisting of a broad view of life and a stern doctrine of the State.

Strictly speaking, the watchword could then be counterrevolution; however, the revolutionary origins are by now remote and almost forgotten. The subversion has long since taken root, so much so as to appear obvious and natural in the majority of existing institutions. Thus, for all practical purposes, the formula of “counterrevolution” would make sense only if people were able to see clearly the last stages that the world subversion is trying to cover up through revolutionary communism. Otherwise, another watchword is to be preferred, namely reaction. To adopt it and call oneself “reactionary” is a true test of courage. For quite some time, left-wing movements have made the term “reaction” synonymous with all kinds of iniquity and shame; they never miss an opportunity to thereby stigmatize all those who are not helpful to their cause and who do not go with the flow, or do not follow what, according to them, is the “course of History.” While it is very natural for the Left to employ this tactic, I find unnatural the sense of anguish that the term often induces in people, due to their lack of political, intellectual, and even physical courage; this lack of courage plagues even the representatives of the so-called Right or “national conservatives,” who, as soon as they are labeled “reactionaries,” protest, exculpate themselves, and try to show that they do not deserve that label.

What is the Right expected to do? While activists of the Left are “acting” and carrying forward the process of world subversion, is a conservative supposed to refrain from reacting and rather to look on, cheer them on, and even help them along the way? Historically speaking, it is deplorable that a “reaction” has been absent, inadequate, or only half-hearted, lacking people, means, and adequate doctrines, right at the time when the disease was still at an embryonic stage and thus susceptible to be eliminated by immediate cauterization of its infectious hotbeds; had that been the case, the European nations would have been spared untold calamities.

What is needed, therefore, is a new radical front, with clear boundaries drawn between friends and foes. If the “game” is not over yet, the future does not belong to those who share in the hybrid and crumbling ideas predominant even in groups that do not belong to the Left, but rather to those who have the courage to espouse radicalism—namely, the radicalism of the “absolute negations” or of “majestic affirmations,” to use expressions dear to Donoso Cortes.

Naturally, the term “reaction” intrinsically possesses a slightly negative connotation: those who react do not have the initiative of action; one reacts, in a polemical or defensive way, when confronted by something that has already been affirmed or done. Thus, it is necessary to specify that reaction does not consist in parrying the moves of the opponent without having anything positive to oppose him with. This misperception could be eliminated by associating the formula of “reaction” with that of “conservative revolution,” a formula in which a dynamic element is evident. In this context “revolution” no longer signifies a violent overthrow of a legitimate established order, but rather an action aimed at eliminating a newly emerged disorder and at reestablishing a state of normalcy. Joseph De Maistre remarked that what is needed, more than a “counterrevolution” in a polemical and strict sense, is the “opposite to a revolution,” namely a positive action inspired by the origins. It is curious how words evolve: after all, revolution, according to its original Latin meaning (revolvere), referred to a motion that led again to the starting point, to the origins. Therefore, the “revolutionary” force of renewal that needs to be employed against the existing situation should be derived from the origins.

However, if one wants to embrace the idea of “conservatism” (i.e., a “conservative revolution”), it is necessary to proceed with caution. Considering the interpretation imposed by the Left, the term “conservative” is as intimidating as the term “reactionary.” Obviously, it is necessary to first establish as exactly as possible what needs to be “preserved”; today there is very little that deserves to be preserved, especially as far as social structures and political institutions are concerned. In the case of Italy, this is true almost without exception; to a lesser degree it was valid for England and France, and even less for the nations of central Europe, in which vestiges of higher traditions continued to exist even on the plane of everyday life. In fact, the formula “conservative revolution” was chosen by German intellectuals immediately after World War I, even with very recent historical references. As far as everything else is concerned, we must acknowledge the reality of a situation that is an easy target for the polemics of the Left, according to which conservatives are not the champions of ideas, but rather of the interests of a particular economic class (i.e., the capitalist one), which organized itself politically in order to perpetuate, for its own advantage, what is alleged to be merely a regime of privileges and social injustices. Thus, it has become all too easy to lump together conservatives, “reactionaries,” capitalists, and bourgeoisie; in this way, a “faux target,” to use a military term employed in artillery barrages, was successfully chosen. Moreover, the same tactic was employed at a time when the avant-garde of world subversion did not yet wave the flag of Marxism and communism, but instead were represented by liberalism and by constitutionalism. The efficacy of this tactic was due to the fact that yesterday’s conservatives (not unlike the contemporary ones, even though the former were of an undeniably higher caliber) limited themselves to defending their sociopolitical positions and the material interests of a given class, of a given caste, instead of committing themselves to a stout defense of a higher right, dignity, and impersonal legacy of values, ideas, and principles. This was indeed their fundamental and most deplorable weakness.

Today we have sunk to an even lower level; therefore, the “conservative” idea to be defended must not only have no connection with the class that has replaced the fallen aristocracy and exclusively has the character of a mere economic class (i.e., the capitalist bourgeoisie)—but it must also be resolutely opposed to it. What needs to be “preserved” and defended in a “revolutionary fashion” is the general view of life and of the State that, being based on higher values and interests, definitely transcends the economic plane, and thus everything that can be defined in terms of economic classes. In regard to these values, what refers to concrete orientations, positive institutions, and historical situations is just a consequence; it is not the primary but rather the secondary element. If things were set up in this way, by absolutely refusing to set foot in the field where the Left trains its aim on the “faux target,” its polemics would be rendered totally ineffective.

Moreover, what is needed is not to artificially and coercively perpetuate particular forms tied to the past, despite having exhausted their vital possibilities and being out of touch with the times. For the authentic revolutionary conservative, what really counts is to be faithful not to past forms and institutions, but rather to principles of which such forms and institutions have been particular expressions, adequate for a specific period of time and in a specific geographical area. And just as these particular expressions ought to be regarded as changeable and ephemeral in themselves, since they are connected to historical circumstances that are often unrepeatable, likewise the corresponding principles animating them have a value that is unaffected by such contingencies, as they enjoy a perennial actuality. New forms, corresponding in essence to the old ones, are liable to emerge from them as if from a seed; thus, even as they eventually replace the old forms (even in a “revolutionary” manner), what remains is a certain continuity amid the changing historical, social, economic, and cultural factors.

In order to ensure this continuity, while holding fast to the underlying principles, it is necessary to eventually throw away everything that needs to be discarded, instead of stiffening, panicking, or confusedly seeking new ideas when crises occur and times change: this is indeed the essence of the true conservative spirit. Therefore, conservative spirit and traditional spirit are one and the same thing. According to its true, living meaning, Tradition is neither servile conformity to what has been, nor a sluggish perpetuation of the past into the present. Tradition, in its essence, is something simultaneously metahistorical and dynamic: it is an overall ordering force, in the service of principles that have the chrism of a superior legitimacy (we may even call them “principles from above”). This force acts through the generations, in continuity of spirit and inspiration, through institutions, laws, and social orders that may even display a remarkable variety and diversity. An analogous mistake to the one I have just condemned consists of identifying or in confusing the various formulations of a more or less distant past with the tradition itself.

Methodologically, in the quest for reference points, a given historical form must be considered exclusively as the exemplification and more or less faithful application of certain principles: this is a perfectly legitimate procedure, comparable to what in mathematics is called the shift from the differential to the integral. In such a case there is no anachronism or regression; nothing has been turned into an idol, or made absolute, that was not already so, since this is the nature of principles. Otherwise it would be like accusing of anachronism those who defend certain peculiar virtues of the soul merely because the latter are inspired by some person in the past, in whom those virtues were exhibited to a high degree. As Hegel himself said, “It is a matter of recognizing in the apparitions of temporal and transitory things, both the substance, which is immanent, and the eternal, which is actual.”

With this is mind, we can see the ultimate premises of two opposing attitudes. The axiom of the revolutionary-conservative or revolutionary-reactionary mentality is that the supreme values and the foundational principles of every healthy and normal institution are not liable to change and to becoming: among these values we may find, for instance, the true State, the imperium, the auctoritas [authority], hierarchy, justice, functional classes, and the primacy of the political element over the social and economic elements. In the domain of these values there is no “history,” and to think about them in historical terms is absurd. Such values and principles have an essentially normative character. In the public and political order they have the same dignity as, in private life, is typical of values and principles of absolute morality: they are imperative principles requiring a direct, intrinsic acknowledgment (it is the capacity for such an acknowledgment that differentiates existentially a certain category of beings from another). These principles are not compromised by the fact that in various instances an individual, out of weakness or due to other reasons, was unable to actualize them or to even implement them partially at one point in his life rather than another: as long as such an individual does not give up inwardly, he will be acknowledged even in abjection and in desperation. The ideas to which I am referring have the same nature: Vico called them “the natural laws of an eternal republic that varies in time and in different places.” Even where these principles are objectified in a historical reality, they are not at all conditioned by it; they always point to a higher, meta-historical plane, which is their natural domain and where there is no change. The ideas that I call “traditional” must be thought of along the same lines.

The fundamental premise always revealed, more or less distinctly, in the revolutionary mentality is the total opposite. The truths it professes are historicism and empiricism. According to the revolutionary mentality, “Becoming” rules in the spiritual realm as well: everything is believed to be conditioned and shaped by the age and by the times. According to the revolutionary mentality, there are no principles, systems, and norms with values independent from the period in which they have assumed a historical form, on the basis of contingent and very human aspects such as physical, social, economic, and irrational factors. According to the most extreme and up-to-date trajectory of this deviant mind-set, the truly determining factor of every structure, and of what resembles an autonomous value, is the contingency proper to the various forms and development of the means of production, according to its consequences and social repercussions.

In chapter 7 I will discuss at greater length the historicist thesis I have merely outlined here, in order to clarify the fundamental and unbridgeable gap between the two premises. It is therefore useless to engage in a discussion when this gap is not acknowledged as given, a priori. The two views are as irreconcilable as the patterns of thought behind them. The former is the truth upheld by the revolutionary conservative, and by any group that, in the political realm, can be properly characterized as part of an authentic “Right”; the latter is the myth upheld by world subversion, the common background of all its forms, no matter how extreme, moderate, or watered down they may be. The previous considerations concerning the method and the meaning of some historical references also have a practical value. As a matter of fact, in a nation there is not always a sufficient living traditional continuity, whereas referring to existing or relatively young institutions may serve directly as a reference to the corresponding ideas. Conversely, it may happen that, when the continuity is broken, the previous procedure is adopted: then one must look to other eras, but only in order to derive from them ideas that are valid per se. This is especially the case for Italy. In previous books of mine I have often wondered what could actually be “preserved” in this country. In Italy we find no basis of political forms that have been preserved sufficiently intact from a traditional past; this is due mainly to the fact that such a past is lacking and that, unlike in major European states, in Italy there was no secular and continuous unitary formation connected to a symbol and to a central, dynastic political power. More specifically, in Italy there is no trace of a strong ideological legacy (not even as the legacy of a few) that would enable people to feel everything connected with the ideologies that arose with the French Revolution as extraneous, unnatural, and destructive. In fact, it was precisely these ideologies, in various forms, that propitiated the unification of Italy, continued to prevail in the unified Italy, and multiplied in the most virulent forms after the Fascist era. Thus, there is a hiatus and a vacuum—and, in the case of Italy, the reference to traditional principles will necessarily have an ideal rather than a historical character. And even if we refer to historical forms, we should only acknowledge them to be the mere basis for an integration that will immediately leave them behind, having in mind ideas instead; the historical distance being (as in the case of the ancient Roman world, or certain aspects of medieval civilization) too great for that reference to serve any other purpose.

Such a circumstance does not represent a disadvantage from all points of view—for instance, if the ideas to which I allude were implemented by a new movement, they would appear in an almost pure state, with only a minimum of historical dross.

Unfortunately, Italian representatives of these principles will not be able to benefit from what some states, especially the central European ones, displayed as a residual historical positive basis or as a predisposition for a conservative revolution; the positive counterpart of this disadvantage is that if the formation I have in mind will come into existence, it will be endowed with an absolute and uncompromising character. Precisely because there is no material support still alive emanating from a traditional past and made concrete in historical forms that are still valid, the conservative revolution in Italy must emerge as a predominantly spiritual phenomenon, based on a pure idea. However, since the present world looks more and more like a world of ruins, sooner or later the same line of action will assert itself everywhere: in other words, people will realize that it is useless to lean on what still has vestiges of more normal institutions, but which is compromised by several negative historical factors, and that it is imperative to go back to the origins and to start anew from them, as if they towered over history, moving ahead with pure forces along the path of an avenging and reconstructive reaction.

It may be useful to make another brief consideration of the term “revolution” applied in a particular context, namely in relation to the fact that in various national right-wing movements opposed to the present system we find a yearning to be “revolutionary.” This tendency, after all, was present in the movements of the most recent past, considering the choice of designations such as “Fascist revolution,” “revolution of the Brown Shirts,” and “revolution of order” (e.g., Salazar’s movement in Portugal). Naturally one should ask: revolution against what? Revolution in the name of what? In any event, every word has its “soul” and one should be careful not to be unconsciously influenced by it. I have made it clear, from my perspective, that one could speak of “revolution” only in a relative sense—as Hegel used to say, a “negation of the negation”—in reference either to an attack against something that has a negative character or to a number of changes, whether violent or not, aimed at reinstating normalcy, just as a person who has fallen down gets up again, or an organism is freed from degenerative growths by halting the spread of cancerous cells. Thus, it is necessary to prevent the hidden “soul” of the term “revolution” from influencing even those who are not Leftists, leading them away from the right course when they claim to be revolutionaries, in a sense that diverges from the one I have just indicated, in virtue of being somehow positive.

The danger may consist in appropriating, more or less implicitly, foundational premises that are not different from those of one’s opponents, espousing the idea that “history marches on” and that it is necessary to be open to the future by creating new things and formulating new principles: in that case the “revolution” becomes an aspect of a forward direction, a course that would then imply breaking points and upheavals. There are some who believe that in this fashion the “revolutionary spirit” acquires a greater dignity and as a myth exercises a greater power of suggestion. I believe this amounts to a capitulation; it is then difficult, even without being aware of it consciously, not to espouse the progressive ideology according to which every new thing represents something more and better than what preceded it.

We already know what the true foundation of progressivism is: the mirage of technological civilization, the lure exercised by some undeniable material and industrial progress that, however, is appreciated without paying much attention to its negative drawbacks, which often affect other, more important and valuable domains of human life. Those who are not subject to the predominant materialism of our times, upon recognizing the only context in which it is legitimate to speak of progress, will be on guard against any orientation in which the modern “myth of progress” is reflected. In ancient times the matter was very clear. In Latin, the word denoting subversion was not revolutio (which had a different meaning, as I have explained before) but rather seditio, or eversio, or civilis perturbatio, or rerum publicarum commutatio. Thus, the term “revolutionary,” in its modern meaning, was rendered with circumlocutions such as remit novarum studiosus, or fautor; namely one who aims at and promotes new things. According to the traditional Roman mentality, “new things” were automatically regarded as negative and subversive.

Thus, in regard to “revolutionary” ambitions it is necessary to clear the misunderstanding and to choose between the two aforementioned opposing positions, which determine two likewise opposing styles. Again, on the one hand there are those who acknowledge the existence of immutable principles for every true order and who abide by them, not allowing themselves to be swept along by events. Such people do not believe in “history” and in “progress” as mysterious super-ordained entities, but instead attempt to dominate the forces of the environment and lead them back to higher, stable forms: according to them, this is what embracing reality amounts to. On the other hand there are those who, having been “born yesterday,” have nothing in the past, who believe only in the future and are committed to a groundless, empirical, and improvised action, deluding themselves that they are able to direct events without knowing or acknowledging anything that rises above the plane of matter and contingency; such people devise many systems, the end result of which will never be an authentic order, but instead a more or less manageable disorder. The “revolutionary” vocation belongs to this second line of thought, even when it does not directly serve the interests of unadulterated subversion. In this context, the lack of principles is supplied with the myth of the future, through which some dare to justify and sanctify recent destructions that have occurred, since in their view they were necessary in order to move ahead and to achieve new and better horizons (any trace of which, I am afraid, it is difficult to point out).

Once things are clearly seen in these terms, it is necessary to thoroughly examine one’s “revolutionary” ambitions, all the while aware that if these ambitions are kept within their legitimate limits, one would then be a part of history’s demolition squad. Those who are still standing upright in this world of ruins are at a higher level; their watchword is Tradition, according to the dynamic aspect I have just made evident. When circumstances change, when crises occur, when new factors come into play, where the previous dams begin to crack, these people know how to retain their sangfroid and are capable of letting go of what needs to be abandoned in order that what is truly essential may not be compromised. These people know how to move on, upholding in an impassive way the forms that are proper to the new circumstances, knowing how to assert themselves through them; their goal is to reestablish and maintain an immaterial continuity and avoid a groundless and adventurous course of action. This is the method of the true dominators of history, which is very different from and more virile than that of the merely “revolutionary.”

I will end this series of considerations with a particular application for them. Since, as I have said, Italy lacks an authentic “traditional” past, there are some who, in their attempt to organize themselves against the avant-garde of world subversion, and in order to claim some concrete and historical basis, have found a reference point in the principles and institutions of the Fascist era. I wish to uphold the following fundamental principle: if the “Fascist ideas” still deserve to be defended, they should not be defended simply insofar as they are “Fascist,” but rather insofar as they have represented a particular form of the apparition and affirmation of ideas that were older and more elevated than Fascism, ideas that have the character of “constants,” so that they may found again as integral parts of a great European political tradition. To cherish these ideas not according to this spirit, but solely because they are “revolutionary,” original, and proper only to Fascism, would amount to belittling them, adopting a limiting perspective, and making difficult a much needed task of clarification. To those for whom everything begins and ends with Fascism, including those whose political horizons are confined by the mere polemics between Fascism and anti-fascism and who have no other reference point beside these two poles—these people would hardly be able to distinguish the best potential of the Italian world of the past from some of its aspects that were affected by the same evils that it is necessary to fight against today.

Thus, when I will later discuss ideas for which the Italy and Germany of yesterday fought, I will always do so within revolutionary-traditional parameters; I will take the utmost care to limit as much as possible any contingent reference to the past and to emphasize the principles’ pure ideal and normative character, which is not connected to a particular period or movement.

TWO

Sovereignty — Authority — Imperium

The foundation of every true State is the transcendence of its own principle, namely the principle of sovereignty, authority, and legitimacy. This essential truth has been variously expressed in the course of history; if this truth was not recognized, the meaning of everything that belongs to political reality would be misunderstood, or at least distorted. Through the multifaceted variety of these forms we always find as a “constant” the notion of the State as the intrusion and the manifestation of a higher order, which is then actualized in a power. Therefore, every true political unity appears as the embodiment of an idea and a power, thus distinguishing itself from every form of naturalistic association or “natural right,” and also from every societal aggregation determined by mere social, economic, biological, utilitarian, or eudemonistic factors.

In previous eras it was possible to speak of the sacred character of the principle of sovereignty and power, namely of the State. For instance, the ancient Roman notion of imperium essentially belonged to the domain of the sacred. This notion, in its specific meaning, even before expressing a system of territorial, supernational hegemony, designated the pure power of command, the almost mystical power and auctoritas inherent in the one who had the function and quality of Leader: a leader in the religious and warrior order as well as in the order of the patrician family, the gens, and, eminently, of the State, the res publica. In the Roman world, which was intensely realistic (or, I should say, precisely because it was intensely realistic), the notion of this power, which is simultaneously auctoritas, always retained its intrinsic character of bright force from above and of sacred power, beyond the various and often spurious techniques that conditioned its access in different periods.

It is possible to deny the principle of sovereignty; but if we acknowledge it, it is also necessary to recognize its attribute of absoluteness. A power that is also auctoritas (aeterna auctoritas [eternal authority], as the Romans would say) must necessarily have in itself the decreeing power of something that represents the ultimate application. A power and authority that are not absolute, are not real authority or real power, as De Maistre made very clear. Just as in the order of natural causes, likewise in the political domain it is not possible to regress indefinitely from condition to condition; the series must have its limit in one point, which is characterized by the unconditioned and by an absoluteness in the act of deciding. This will also be the point of stability and of consistency, the natural center of the entire organism; if it lacks this, a political association would be merely an aggregate, an unstable formation. Conversely, the above-mentioned power refers to a transcendent order that alone can ground and legitimize it in terms of a sovereign, autonomous, and underived principle that is the basis of every right without being subject to another right. These two aspects and two necessities mutually condition each other in reality; in doing so they express the nature of the pure political principle of the imperium and also the figure of the one who, as true Leader, must embody and represent it.

The juridical view of sovereignty (the so-called “State of right,” cf. Kelsen), no matter what form it embodies, refers only to a caput mortuum, namely the condition proper to a dead political organism, which lives in a mechanical fashion and is characterized by a latency or an absence of its center and original generating force. If order, the form that triumphs over chaos and disorder (thus the law and the right), is the very substance of the State, all this has its sufficient reason and ultimate justification only in the above-mentioned transcendence. Thus it was rightly said: “princeps a legibus solutes”—namely, the law does not apply to the one who acts as Leader, just as Aristotle stated concerning those who, being themselves the law, have no law. In particular, the positive essence of the principle of sovereignty has rightfully been recognized in the power of making absolute decisions, in exceptional or emergency situations, beyond any duties and discussions, whenever the existing right and laws are suspended or their suspension is required. In such instances and circumstances, one can witness the new arising and manifestation of the absolute power from above, which, though it remained invisible and silent in every other period and at other times, nevertheless should not cease to be present wherever the State remains steady in its generating principle, or wherever the State is a living organism and not a mechanical thing or a mere routine. The “exceptional powers” and a “dictatorship” are devices of necessity, or the “life belt” that is required in such circumstances when the awaited awakening of the central principle of the State does not occur. In the same way, a dictatorship is not a “revolutionary” phenomenon; it represents legitimacy but it does not constitute a new political principle and a new right. In the best period of the Roman civilization, the dictatorship was conceived and allowed as a temporary remedy; far from replacing the existing order, it was its reintegration. In every other regard, dictatorship equals usurpation.

The State is not the expression of “society.” The basis of sociological positivism, namely the “social” or “communal” view of the State, is the index of a regression and naturalistic involution. It contradicts the essence of the true State, inverting every proper relationship; it divests the political dimension of its proper character, original quality, and dignity. The “anagogical” end (namely, of a power drawing upward) of the State is thus completely denied.

The political domain is defined through hierarchical, heroic, ideal, anti-hedonistic, and, to a degree, even anti-eudemonistic values that set it apart from the order of naturalistic and vegetative life. Authentic political ends are mostly autonomous ones (i.e., not derived from something else): they are connected to ideas and interests different from those of peaceful living, pure economics, and physical well-being, pointing to a higher dimension of life and a separate order of dignity. This opposition between the political and the social domains is fundamental. It has the value of a “category”; the more it is emphasized, the more the State is animated by a metaphysical tension, displaying solid structures and representing the faithful image of a superior type of organism. In fact, the superior functions in such an organism are not the expression of its biological and vegetative part; aside from cases of obvious degradation, these functions are not even at the service of this part. Rather, these superior functions carry on an activity that may eventually assert itself over the physical life in order to direct it toward ends, actions, or disciplines that the mere physical life cannot explain or justify. All this has an analogical application concerning the relationships that, in a condition of normalcy, must exist between political order and “society.”

The differentiation between the political and the physical domains was well articulated in the origins (i.e., the traditional past). It was also found in various primitive societies, in which some primordial meanings appeared in a purity that would be vainly sought in the shallow and crumbling sociologies of our times.

According to an old view, the State derives from the family: the same principle responsible for shaping the family and the gens, having been integrated and extended, allegedly gave rise to the State. Whether or not this is the case, it is possible, from a logical point of view, to trace the origins of the State to a naturalistic plane only by committing an initial mistake: to assume that in ancient civilized areas, and especially those populated by Indo-European civilizations, the family was a unity of a purely physical type, and that the sacred, together with a well-articulated hierarchical social system, did not play a decisive role in it. Even if we were to rely on the findings of modern investigations, thanks to the evidence marshaled by Fustel de Coulanges, there should be no doubts about this matter. But if the family is thought of in naturalistic terms, or in the terms in which it presents itself today, the generating principle of the properly political communities must be traced to a context that is very different from the one typical of the family: it must be traced to the plane of the so-called Mannerbunde.

Among several primitive societies, the individual, up to a certain age, being regarded as a merely natural being, was entrusted to the family and to maternal tutelage, since everything related to the maternal, physical aspect of existence fell under the maternal-feminine aegis. However, at a certain point what happened, or better, what could happen, was a change of nature and status. Special rites, known as “rites of passage,” which were often preceded by a period of detachment and isolation, and which were accompanied by harsh trials, generated a new being according to a scheme of “death and rebirth” who alone could be regarded as a “man.” In fact, prior to this initiation, the member of the group, no matter what his age, was believed to belong to the same category that included women, children, and animals. Once the transformation occurred, the individual was incorporated into the Mannerbund. It was this Mannerbund, in which the qualification of “man” had simultaneously an initiatory (i.e., sacred) and a warrior meaning, that wielded the power in the social group or clan. This Mannerbund was characterized by special tasks and responsibilities; it was different from all other societies to which other members of the tribe belonged.

In this primordial scheme we find the fundamental “categories” differentiating the political order from the “social” order. First among these is a special chrism—namely, that proper to “man” in the higher sense of the word (vir was the term employed in Roman times) and not merely of a generic homo: this condition is marked by a spiritual breakthrough and by detachment from the naturalistic and vegetative plane. Its integration is power, the principle of command belonging to the Mannerbund. We could rightfully see in this one of the “constants” (i.e., basic ideas) that in very different applications, formulations, and derivations are uniformly found in the theory or, better, in the metaphysics of the State that was professed even by the greatest civilizations of the past. Following the processes of secularization, rationalization, and materialization, which have become increasingly accentuated in recent times, those original meanings became obscured and attenuated; and yet, wherever they are entirely obliterated, even though they exist in a transposed form, without an initiatory or sacred background, there no longer is a State or a political class in the specific, traditional sense. In reference to this, someone was able to say that the “formation of a ruling class is a divine mystery”; in some cases, though, it could be a “demonic mystery” (e.g., the tribunes of the people; demagogy; communism), but never something that could be defined in mere social or, worse yet, economic factors.

The State is under the masculine aegis, while “society” and, by extension, the people, or demos, are under the feminine aegis. Once again, this is a primordial truth. The maternal domination, from which the political-virile principle subtracts itself, was also understood as the domination of Mother Earth and the Mothers of life and fertility, under whose power and tutelage existence was believed to unfold in its physical, biological, and collective-material aspects. The common mythological background is that of the duality of the luminous and heavenly deities, who are the gods of the political and heroic world on the one hand, and of the feminine and maternal deities of naturalistic existence, who were loved by the plebeian strata of society on the other hand. Thus, even in the ancient Roman world, the idea of State and of imperium (i.e., of the sacred authority) was strictly connected to the symbolic cult of the virile deities of heaven, of light and of the super-world in opposition to the dark region of the Mothers and the chthonic deities. The same ideal line runs through the themes found in primitive societies (i.e., Mannerbunde), up to the central, bright motif of the Olympian-state tradition of the Classical world and several superior Indo-European civilizations.

Later on in history this line leads, if not to the imperium, to the divine right of Kings; where there were no groups created by the power of a rite, there were Orders, aristocracies, political classes defined by disciplines and dignities that cannot be reduced to social values and economic factors. Then the line was broken, and the decadence of the State idea—parallel to the degeneration and the obfuscation of the pure principle of sovereignty and authority—ended with the inversion through which the world of the demos and the materialized masses emerged on the political horizon, engaging in the struggle for power. Such is the primary meaning of any democracy in the original sense of the term, and of every kind of “socialism”: in their essence they are both anti-State, and represent the degradation and contamination of the political principle. Both democracy and socialism ratify the shift from the masculine to the feminine and from the spiritual to the material and the promiscuous. This is an involution, the basis or counterpart of which is an involution occurring within the individual himself, expressed by the inner triumph of faculties and interests connected to the naturalistic, obtuse, and merely vitalistic part of the human being. According to the correspondences already acknowledged by Plato and Aristotle, injustice—namely, the distortion and the external collective subversion—always reflects the internal subversion: that which is present in a given human type that has prevailed in a given civilization.

Today there are political forms in which such a fall of level and inversion are very clear and unmistakable; they are expressed in unequivocal terms in the political and ideological platforms of political parties. In other cases this is a less noticeable phenomenon; in regard to them, it will be helpful to make the following clarification.

The previously mentioned gap between the political idea of State and the physical idea of “society” is found again in the opposition that exists between State and nation. The notions of nation, fatherland, and people, despite their romantic and idealistic halo, essentially belong to the naturalistic and biological plane and not the political one; they lead back to the “maternal” and physical dimension of a given collectivity. Wherever these concepts were emphasized and bestowed with the dignity of a primary element, this has always happened in a revolutionary or even polemical function toward the concept of the State and the pure principle of sovereignty. With the passage from the expression “by grace of God” (as approximate and stereotypical as it was, it still designated the true right “from above”) to that of “by will of the nation,” what really occurs is the above-mentioned inversion, which is not a shift just from an institutional structure to another, but also from one world to another world, separated by an unbridgeable hiatus.

A brief historical overview will clarify this regressive meaning of the myth of the nation. The origin of this myth should be traced to the deviation proper of those European States that, while acknowledging the political principle of the pure, higher sovereignty, assumed the form of “national States.” This phenomenon had an essentially anti-aristocratic (i.e., anti-feudal), schismatic, and anti-hierarchical function, vis-a-vis the European ecumene, in that it refused to acknowledge the superior authority of the Holy Roman Empire and conferred an absolute anarchical character to the particular political units over which the individual princes ruled. These princes, after they ceased to receive support “from above,” sought their support “from below” and pursued a policy of centralization destined to occasion their downfall, since a more or less formless and inarticulate human conglomerate increasingly gained preeminence. Thus they shaped the structures that eventually ended in the hands of the “nation” first understood as the Third Estate, and later on in the hands of the nation understood as the “people” and the masses. This shift, as it is well known, was brought about by the French Revolution. In the French Revolution the “nation” emerged in an exclusively demagogical function; since then, nationalism allied itself with revolution, constitutionalism, liberalism, and democracy, becoming the symbol of the revolutionary movements that from 1789 to 1848, all the way to 1918, were responsible for subverting whatever remained of traditional Europe’s preceding order. These “patriotic” ideologies were responsible for the upheaval in virtue of which a given naturalistic factor (such as that of belonging to a particular stock and historical society) is transformed into something mystical and assumes a supreme value; in this context the individual matters only as citoyen and as l’enfant de la patrie. The cumulative unity of citizens eventually detracts from authority, undermines or subordinates every higher principle to itself (i.e., to the “will of the people”), beginning with the principle of sovereignty.

We know what high consideration the social matriarchate held in Marxist historiography; it was regarded as the primordial social constitution and the original state of justice, which were ended by the institution of private property and by the political forms associated with it. However, the regression from the masculine to the feminine is equally visible in the previously mentioned revolutionary ideologies. The image of the fatherland as Mother, as Land of which we are all children and before which we are all equals and brothers, clearly recalls that physical, feminine-maternal order from which “men” separate themselves in order to create the virile and luminous order of the State, while the physical order, per se, has a pre-political character. Moreover, it is a very significant fact that country and nation have prevalently been allegorized through feminine figures, even among peoples whose land had a neuter or masculine, rather than a feminine, name. The sacred character and inviolability of “nation” and of “people” are merely the transposition of features attributed to the Great Mother in ancient plebeian gynecocracies and in societies that ignored the virile and political principle of the imperium. Thus, it has rightfully been suggested by Bachofen and by Steding that “men” uphold the idea of State, while feminine natures, which are spiritually matriarchical, side instead with “fatherland,” “nation,” and “people.” This casts a sinister light on the nature of the influences that have been predominant in the political history of the West, beginning with the French Revolution.

An additional insight could be gained by considering this problem from yet a different perspective. An idea also embraced by Fascism was that the nation exists and has an awareness, a will, and a superior reality only in service of the State. This idea has a specific historical confirmation, especially in reference to what Vico called “the right of heroic peoples” and the origin of the main European nations. Even though “fatherland” certainly means “land of the fathers,” the term could have acquired this meaning only a very long time ago, since the historical fatherlands and nations known to us, almost without exception, have been established in lands that were not the primordial ones, and, in any event, in areas wider than the original ones. Their establishment occurred through conquests and aggregative and formative processes that presuppose the continuity of a power, of a principle of sovereignty and of authority, as well as the bond of a group of men sharing the same idea and loyalty, pursuing the same goal, and obeying the same inner law reflected in a specific political and social ideal. Such is the generating principle and the basis of every great nation. Understood in naturalistic terms, the political nucleus therefore relates to the nation in the same manner as the soul (as “entelechy”) is related to the body: it shapes it, unifies it, and makes it partake of a higher life. In reference to this, we could say that a nation exists and overcomes geographical and even ethical boundaries wherever we find the reproduction of the same “inner form,” namely the consecration or the imprint bestowed by the higher political force and its representatives. Thus it would be absurd, for instance, to call ancient Rome a “nation” in the modern sense of the word: one could refer to it as a “spiritual nation” or as a unity defined by the “Roman man.” The same applies to the creations of the Franks and the Germans, as well as the Arabs who spread Islam, just to cite a few examples. Maybe the most significant case is the Prussian State, which originated from a knightly Order (a classic example of a Mannerbund), namely the Order of Teutonic Knights, which later on became the structure and the “form” of the German Reich.

Only when the tension decreases do differences become attenuated and the group of men gathered around the supra-ordained symbol of sovereignty and authority weakens and crumbles; only then may that which is a by-product and an artificial creation (i.e., the “nation”) become autonomous and separate itself, thus acquiring the appearance of a living entity in its own right. Then what emerges is the “nation” as people, collectivity, and mass—namely, that which such a concept has increasingly signified since the French Revolution. When a sovereignty is no longer allowed other than one that is the expression and the reflection of the “will of the nation,” it is almost as if a creature overtook its creator. From the political class understood as an Order and a Mannerbund shift occurs to demagogues and to the so-called “servants of the nation,” to the democratic ruling classes who presume to “represent” the people and who acquire for themselves various offices or positions of power by flattering and manipulating the masses. The natural and fatal consequence of the above-mentioned regression is the inconsistency and, most of all, the cowardice of those who, in our time, constitute the “political class.” It has rightly been said that in previous times there has never been a sovereign so absolute that he could silence an eventual opposition of the nobility and clergy; yet today nobody dares to blame the “people” and they refuse to believe in the “nation,” or at least are openly defiant toward it. However, this does not mean preventing the ruling classes from playing with, deceiving, and exploiting the people as their Athenian demagogic counterparts did and as, in more recent times, courtesans used to do with degenerate and vain sovereigns; this happens because the demos, which is feminine by nature, will never have its own, clear will. The real difference between then and now lies in the cowardice and servile attitude of those who today no longer have the moral stature of men or of representatives of a higher legitimacy and authority from above. At most, we find what Carlyle referred to when he spoke of a “world of domestics that yearns to be ruled by a pseudo-hero” and not by a real master; I will return to this idea in chapter 4, when discussing the phenomenon of Bonapartism.

Action through “myths,” namely through formulas lacking any objective truth and that appeal to the sub-intellectual dimension and passions of individuals and the masses, is the inseparable counterpart of the aforementioned political climate. In the most characteristic modern trends, the notions of “country” and “nation” display to an eminent degree the quality of myths, susceptible to receiving the most varied contents depending on which way the wind blows and on the political parties, with the only common denominator being the denial of the political principle of pure sovereignty.

We may add that the system that was established in Europe through the advent of democracies (i.e., the majority system based on universal suffrage) is characterized from the start by the degradation of the ruling class. In fact, the majority, being free from every restriction and qualitative clause, is necessarily on the side of the lower social strata; in order to win the favors of these strata and be elected to office by their votes, it will always be necessary to speak the only language they understand and to give priority to their predominant interests (which are naturally the most coarse, material, and illusory), always promising but never demanding. Thus, every democracy is also a school of immorality, an offence to the dignity and inner code of conduct that ought to be the trademark of a true political class.

I wish now to continue to discuss the genesis of the great European nations in service of the political principle, in order to derive some orientations. The substance of every true and stable political organism is something resembling an Order, a Mannerbund in charge of the principle of the imperium, comprising men who see loyalty as the basis of their honor (as the saying of the Saxon Code goes). But in time of crisis and of an overall moral, political, and social disintegration (as is the case in our day and age), a generic reference to the “nation” does not suffice for reconstructive work unless such an idea assumes a revolutionary overtone, including elements of a properly political order, weakened to various degrees. The “nation” will always be a promiscuous entity; in the above-mentioned situation what needs to be done is to emphasize the fundamental duality of the origins: on the one side stand the masses, in which, besides changing feelings, the same elementary instincts and interests connected to a physical and hedonistic plane will always have free play; and on the other side stand men who differentiate themselves from the masses as bearers of a complete legitimacy and authority, bestowed by the Idea and by their rigorous, impersonal adherence to it. The Idea, only the Idea, must be the true fatherland for these men: what unites them and sets them apart should consist in adherence to the same idea, rather than to the same land, language, or blood. The true task and the necessary premise for the rebirth of the “nation” and for its renewed form and conscience consists of untying and separating that which only apparently, promiscuously, or collectively appears to be one entity, and in reestablishing a virile substance in the form of a political elite around which a new crystallization will occur.

I call this the realism of the idea: realism because what are needed for this work are strength and clarity, rather than “idealism” and sentimentality. This realism, however, is opposed both to the coarse, cynical, and degenerate realism of politicians and to the style of those who abhor “ideological prejudices”; the latter, in fact, are capable only of reawakening a vague feeling of “national solidarity” (a herdlike spirit) by means that do not really differ from the general techniques employed to arouse the excitement of the masses.

All this falls below the level of what politics is, in the virile, traditional sense; moreover, it is inadequate for the times. It is inadequate because a realization of the idea is already present on the opposite front. In fact, today we can witness the gradual formation of blocs that have the supernational character proper to units essentially based on political ideas, as barbaric as they may be. This is the case of communism, in which the aggregating and uniting factor beyond “nation” and “country” consists of being proletarian communists belonging to the Third International. This is also the case of democracy when it pretends to summon “crusades.” The so-called Nuremberg ideology established certain principles—not at all the only conceivable ones—even though they are supposed to be categorically upheld, without regard to country or nation, according to the official formulation: “with precedence over the duty of obedience of the individuals toward the State to which they belong.”

In this way, too, we can see the insufficiency of the simple notion of “nation” as a guiding principle, and the need for its political integration, in terms of a higher idea that alone must be the standard, uniting and dividing factor. The essential task ahead requires formulating an adequate doctrine, upholding principles that have been thoroughly studied, and, beginning from these, giving birth to an Order. This elite, differentiating itself on a plane that is defined in terms of spiritual virility, decisiveness, and impersonality, and where every naturalistic bond loses its power and value, will be the bearer of a new principle of a higher authority and sovereignty; it will be able to denounce subversion and demagogy in whatever form they appear and reverse the downward spiral of the top-level cadres and the irresistible rise to power of the masses. From this elite, as if from a seed, a political organism and an integrated nation will emerge, enjoying the same dignity as the nations created by the great European political tradition. Anything short of this amounts only to a quagmire, dilletantism, irrealism, and obliquity.

THREE

Personality — Freedom — Hierarchy

The beginning of the disintegration of the traditional sociopolitical structures, or at least whatever was left of them in Europe, occurred through liberalism. Following the stormy and demonic period of the French Revolution, the principles espoused by the Revolution first began to act under the guise of liberalism; thus, liberalism is the origin of the various interconnected forms of global subversion.

It is therefore necessary to expose the errors on which this ideology is based and especially those of the “immortal principles” by which it is inspired. This is necessary not only from a doctrinal point of view, but also from a practical one. Nowadays the intellectual confusion has reached such an extent that liberalism, which according to ancient regimes and the Church was synonymous with antitradition and revolution, is portrayed by some as a “right-wing” movement, bent on protecting human dignity, rights, and freedom against Marxism and totalitarianism. The following considerations are aimed at exposing this misconception.

The essence of liberalism is individualism. The basis of its error is to mistake the notion of the person with that of the individual and to claim for the latter, unconditionally and according to egalitarian premises, some values that should rather be attributed solely to the former, and then only conditionally. Because of this transposition, these values are transformed into errors, or into something absurd and harmful.

Let us begin with the egalitarian premise. It is necessary to state from the outset that the “immortal principle” of equality is sheer nonsense. There is no need to comment on the inequality of human beings from a naturalistic point of view. And yet the champions of egalitarianism make equality a matter of principle, claiming that while human beings are not equal de facto, they are so de jure: they are unequal, and yet they should not be. Inequality is unfair; the merit and the superiority of the liberal idea allegedly consists of not taking it into account, overcoming it, and acknowledging the same dignity in every man. Democracy, too, shares the belief in the “fundamental equality of anything that appears to be human.”

I believe these are mere empty words. This is not a “noble ideal” but something that, if taken absolutely, represents a logical absurdity; wherever this view becomes an established trend, it may usher in only regression and decadence.

Concerning the first point, the notion of “many” (i.e., a multiplicity of individual beings) logically contradicts the notion of “many equals.” First of all, ontologically speaking, this is due to the so-called “principle of undiscernibles,” which is expressed in these terms: “A being that is absolutely identical to another, under every regard, would be one and the same with it.” Thus, in the concept of “many” is implicit the concept of their fundamental difference: “many” beings that are equal, completely equal, would not be many, but one. To uphold the equality of the many is a contradiction in terms, unless we refer to a body of soulless mass-produced objects.

Second, the contradiction lies in the “principle of sufficient reason,” which is expressed in these terms: “For every thing there must be some reason why it is one thing and not another.” Now, a being that is totally equal to another would lack “sufficient reason”: it would be just a meaningless duplicate.

From both perspectives, it is rationally well established that the “many” not only cannot be equal, but they also must not be equal: inequality is true de facto only because it is true de jure and it is real only because it is necessary. That which the egalitarian ideology wished to portray as a state of “justice” is in reality a state of injustice, according to a perspective that is higher and beyond the humanitarian and democratic rhetorics. In the past, Cicero and Aristotle argued along these lines.

Conversely, to posit inequality means to transcend quantity and admit quality. It is here that the two notions of the individual and the person are differentiated. The individual may be conceived only as an atomic unit, or as a mere number in the reign of quantity; in absolute terms, it is a mere fiction and an abstraction. And yet it is possible to lean toward this solution, namely to minimize the differences characterizing the individual being, emphasizing mixed and uniform qualities (what ensues from this, through massification and standardization, is a uniformity of paths, rights, and freedoms) and conceiving this as an ideal and desirable condition. However, this means to degrade and to alter the course of nature.

For all practical purposes, the pure individual belongs to the inorganic rather than to the organic dimension. In reality, the law of progressive differentiation rules supreme. In virtue of this law, the lower degrees of reality are differentiated from the higher ones because in the lower degrees a whole can be broken down into many parts, all of which retain the same quality (as in the case of the parts of a noncrystallized mineral, or those parts of some plants and animals that reproduce themselves by parthenogenesis); in the higher degrees of reality this is no longer possible, as there is a higher organic unity in them that does not allow itself to be split without being compromised and without its parts entirely losing the quality, meaning, and function they had in it. Therefore the atomic, unrestricted (solutus), “free” individual is under the aegis of inorganic matter, and belongs, analogically, to the lowest degrees of reality.

An equality may exist on the plane of a mere social aggregate or of a primordial, almost animal-like promiscuity; moreover, it may be recognized wherever we consider not the individual but the overall dimension; not the person but the species; not the “form” but “matter” (in the Aristotelian sense of these two terms). I will not deny that there are in human beings some aspects under which they are approximately equal, and yet these aspects, in every normal and traditional view, represent not the “plus” but the “minus”; in other words, they correspond to the lowest degree of reality, and to that which is least interesting in every being. Again, these aspects fall into an order that is not yet that of “form,” or of personality, in the proper sense. To value these aspects and to emphasize them as those that truly matter is the same as regarding as paramount the bronze found in many statues, rather than seeing each one as the expression of distinct ideas, to which bronze (in our case, the generic human quality) has supplied the working matter.

These references clarify what is truly a person and personal value, as opposed to the mere individual and the mere element belonging to a mass or to a social agglomerate. The person is an individual who is differentiated through his qualities, endowed with his own face, his proper nature, and a series of attributes that make him who he is and distinguish him from all others—in other words, attributes that make him fundamentally unequal. The person is a man in whom the general characteristics (beginning with that very general characteristic of being human, to that of belonging to a given race, nation, gender, and social group) assume a differentiated form of expression by articulating and variously individuating themselves.

Any vital, individual, social, or moral process that goes in this direction and leads to the fulfillment of the person according to his own nature is truly ascending. Conversely, to give emphasis and priority to that which in every being is equal signifies regression. The will to equality is one and the same with the will to what is formless. Every egalitarian ideology is the barometric index of a certain climate of degeneration, or the “trademark” of forces leading to a process of degeneration. Overall, this is how we should think about the “noble ideal” and the “immortal principle” of equality.

After establishing this first point, it is easy to recognize the errors and misunderstandings associated with other liberal and revolutionary principles.

To begin with, I find it odd that the title “natural right” has been given to that which appears to be the most unnatural thing conceivable, or to that which is proper to primitive societies. The principle according to which all human beings are free and enjoy equal rights “by nature” is truly absurd, due to the very fact that “by nature” they are not the same. Also, when we go to an order that is not merely naturalistic, being a “person” is neither a uniform quality or a quality uniformly distributed, nor a dignity equal in everybody, being automatically derived from the mere membership of the single individual in the biological species called “mankind.” The “dignity of the human person,” with everything that this expression entails, and around which the supporters of the doctrine of natural law and liberals rally, should be acknowledged where it truly exists, and not in everybody. And even where this dignity truly exists, it should not be regarded as equal in every instance. This dignity admits different degrees; thus, justice means to attribute to each and every one of these degrees a different right and a different freedom. The differentiation of right, and the hierarchical idea in general, derives from the very notion of a person, since this notion, as we have seen, is inconceivable without referring to the difference, to the form, and to the differentiating individuation. Without these presuppositions, the respect for the human person in general is only a superstition, or rather one of the many superstitions of our time. In the domain of the person there is nothing on which the idea of a universal right could be based, or of a right that, as the doctrine of natural law claims, is to be enjoyed by everyone without discrimination. Anybody who has the conscience and the dignity of a “person” cannot help but feel offended when that which is supposed to be one’s own law becomes a law binding everybody else (as is the case in Kant’s categorical imperative). Conversely, ancient wisdom believed in the principle suum cuique tribuere, to each his own. According to Plato’s view, too, the highest responsibility of the Guardians is to ensure that justice (understood in this sense) prevails.

Hence, the conundrum facing those who uphold the principle of “equality”: equality can exist only among equals, namely among those who are objectively at the same level and who embody an analogous degree of “personhood,” and whose freedom, right, and also responsibility are not the same as those characterizing other degrees, whether higher or lower. “Brotherhood,” too, which was included among the so-called “immortal principles” as a sentimental complement to the other two abstract principles (freedom and equality), is subject to the same restrictions: it is insolent to impose it as a norm and universal duty in indiscriminate terms. In the past, precisely thanks to the acknowledgment of the hierarchical idea, “peers” and “equals” were often aristocratic concepts: in Sparta, the title homoioi (“equals”) belonged exclusively to the elite in power (the title was revoked in cases of misconduct). We find an analogous idea in ancient Rome, among the Nordic peoples, and during the Carolingian and the Holy Roman Empire periods. Moreover, in the days of old, the title “peers” was attributed to English lords.

The same applies to freedom, the first term of the revolutionary triad. Freedom must be understood and defended in the same qualitative and differentiated manner as the notion of “person”: everybody enjoys the freedom he deserves, which is measured by the stature and dignity of his person or by his function, and not by the abstract and elementary fact of merely being a “human being” or a “citizen” (as in the much acclaimed droits de l’homme et du citoyen). Thus, according to the Classical saying libertas summis infimisque aequanda, freedom ought to be equally distributed above and below. It has been rightly remarked that “there is not one freedom, but many freedoms. There is no general, abstract freedom, but there are articulated freedoms conformed to one’s own nature. Man must not generate within himself the idea of a homogenous liberty, but rather that of the whole of such differentiated and qualified liberties.” The other freedom, which is upheld by libertarianism and by natural law, is a fiction just like the idea of “equality.” Practically speaking, it is only a revolutionary weapon: freedom and equality are the catchwords certain social strata or groups employed in order to undermine other classes and to gain preeminence; having achieved this task, they were quickly set aside.

Again, in regard to freedom, it is important to distinguish between the freedom to do something and the freedom for doing something. In the political domain, the former is a negative freedom that corresponds to the absence of bonds while remaining itself formless. It generally culminates in arbitrariness and in anomie, and where it is granted to everybody, in an egalitarian and democratic fashion, it becomes an impossibility. Where there is equality there cannot be freedom: what exists is not pure freedom, but rather the many individual, domesticated, and mechanized freedoms, in a state of reciprocal limitation. Paradoxically, that kind of freedom could approximately be realized in the system that is most opposite to liberal preferences: namely, in the system in which the social question is resolved in such a way as to guarantee certain privileges for a small group, at the cost of the total subjugation of everybody else. If carried to its extreme consequences, the figure of a tyrant would then be the most perfect concretization of this concept or ideal of formless freedom.

The freedom for doing something that is connected to each one’s own nature and specific function is quite another thing. This freedom mainly signifies the power to actualize one’s potential and to achieve one’s particular perfection within a given political or social context; it has a functional and organic character, and is inseparable from an immanent and unmistakable end. It is characterized by the Classical saying “Be yourself” and thus by quality and by difference; this is the only true freedom, according to justice and to right. In the Classical view, as it was expressed by Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus, the only institution conformed to justice is the one in which everybody has, does, and realizes what is proper to himself. Catholicism itself, during the golden age of Scholasticism (an age that is reviled today by progressive and liberal Catholics as “feudal” and “obscurantist”), upheld the same truth and ethics. The foundations of medieval Catholicism’s social doctrine were the idea of “proper nature,” which varies with every being; the freedom in terms of such nature as “willed by God”; and the adherence to one’s condition within a socially organic and differentiated system. Luther, too, upheld this doctrine. More recently, Benedetto Croce has written about the modern “religion of freedom,” though what he is referring to should rather be called the “fetishism of freedom.”

In the same order of ideas, we should consider the vexed question whether man comes before society or vice versa, and which of the two is the ultimate goal. From the traditional point of view, this question is definitely resolved by upholding man’s rather than society’s primacy. Every “social” thesis is a deviation connected to the same leveling and regressive tendency that I have criticized before—so much so, that individualism and anarchism have undoubtedly their good reasons and a much less degrading character when seen as reactions against such regressive tendency. Everything that is social, in the best of hypotheses, falls in the order of means and not in the order of ends. Society as an entity in itself is but a fetish and a personified abstraction; in reality, the plane proper to society is entirely material, physical, and subordinated. “Society” and “collectivity” are synonyms; if we exclude the individualistic interpretation of society as a sum of atoms coming together on the basis of a hypothetical contract, we are left with the idea that society is just a background before which the person is the positive, primary, and real thing.

Moreover, there are cases in which I am willing to acknowledge the priority of the person even before the State. The statolatry of the modern age has nothing to do with the traditional political view; the impersonal State, when regarded as a heavy juridical and bureaucratic entity (e.g., Nietzsche’s “cold monster”), is also an aberration. Every society and State is made of people; individual human beings are their primary element. What kind of human beings? Not people as they are conceived by individualism, as atoms or a mass of atoms, but people as persons, as differentiated beings, each one endowed with a different rank, a different freedom, a different right within the social hierarchy based on the values of creating, constructing, obeying, and commanding. With people such as these it is possible to establish the true State, namely an antiliberal, antidemocratic, and organic State. The idea behind such a State is the priority of the person over any abstract social, political, or juridical entity, and not of the person as a neuter, leveled reality, a mere number in the world of quantity and universal suffrage.

The perfection of the human being is the end to which every healthy social institution must be subordinated, and it must be promoted as much as possible. This perfection must be conceived on the basis of a process of individuation and of progressive differentiation. In this regard we must consider the view expressed by Paul de Lagarde, which can be expressed approximately in these terms: everything that is under the aegis of humanitarianism, the doctrine of natural law, and collectivity corresponds to the inferior dimension. Merely being a “man” is a minus compared to being a man belonging to a given nation and society; this, in turn, is still a minus compared to being a “person,” a quality that implies the shift to a plane that is higher than the merely naturalistic and “social” one. In turn, being a person is something that needs to be further differentiated into degrees, functions, and dignities with which, beyond the social and horizontal plane, the properly political world is defined vertically in its bodies, functional classes, corporations, or particular unities, according to a pyramid-like structure, at the top of which one would expect to find people who more or less embody the absolute person. What is meant by “absolute person” is the supremely realized person who represents the end, and the natural center of gravity, of the whole system. The “absolute person” is obviously the opposite of the individual. The atomic, unqualified, socialized, or standardized unity to which the individual corresponds is opposed in the absolute person by the actual synthesis of the fundamental possibilities and by the full control of the powers inherent in the idea of man (in the limiting case), or of a man of a given race (in a more relative, specialized, and historical domain): that is, by an extreme individuation that corresponds to a de-individualization and to a certain universalization of the types corresponding to it. Thus, this is the disposition required to embody pure authority, to assume the symbol and the power of sovereignty, or the form from above, namely the imperium.

Going from humanity, through “society” or a collectivity based on natural law and the nation, and then proceeding in the political world all the way to a personality variously integrated, and finally to a dominating super-personality, means to ascend from lower degrees to degrees that are increasingly filled with “being” and value, each one the natural end of the previous one: this is how we should understand the principle according to which man is the end or the primary end of society, and not vice versa.

By way of example we may refer to the hierarchical place proper to the “nation” when it has a positive and constructive, rather than a revolutionary, meaning. “Nation” is a plus in regard to “humanity.” Thus, it is a positive and legitimate thing to uphold the right of the nation in order to assert an elementary and natural principle of difference of a given human group over and against all the forms of individualistic disintegration, international mixture and proletarization, and especially against the mere world of the masses and pure economy. Having set this demarcation as a protective fence, it is necessary to actualize inside it further degrees of differentiation that need to be implemented in a system of bodies, of disciplines and hierarchies, in virtue of which the State is created out of the substance of the nation.

It should be noted that the above-mentioned hierarchical notion is based on, among other things, freedom understood in a further special and ethical sense. The freedom upheld by the antitraditional ideologies has an undifferentiated, nonfunctional and subversive character, as well as an external and almost “physical” one. These ideologies usually ignore the emancipation of the single individual, which consists of being not so much free in relation to an external situation, whether real or imaginary, and in relation to others, as in being free toward oneself, namely toward the naturalistic part of one’s self. Usually every dignity within qualitative hierarchies should be legitimated with this kind of freedom, without love for which one could not call oneself a person. With this kind of assumption, the political domain interferes with the ethical one (“ethical” in the spiritual, rather than moralistic, sense of the term). In this context what will be paramount is the virile quality of him who, in the case of conflict between opposite needs, knows how to assert the right of given principles and a given law over that which belongs to the naturalistic and material realm, whether in his case or that of others. Thus, family bonds or special affections will not limit such a person, nor will he be guided by the mere notions of utility and well-being, even if these notions were defined in social and collective terms. The personality is realized and consolidated along the path of the special “asceticism” required by freedom understood in this way—namely, by inner freedom and control over oneself as a physical individual; likewise, the foundations of the hierarchical connections proper to that which can be rightly called “the natural right of heroic peoples” are not to be sought elsewhere.

The first of these foundations is that the measure of what one can demand from others is dictated by the measure of what one can demand from oneself; he who does not have the capability to dominate himself and to give himself a code to abide by would not know how to dominate others according to justice or how to give them a law to follow. The second foundation is the idea, previously upheld by Plato, that those who cannot be their own masters should find a master outside of themselves, since practicing the discipline of obeying should teach these people how to master their own selves; thus, through loyalty to those who present themselves as the representatives of an idea and as the living approximations to a higher human type, they will remain as faithful as possible to their best nature. This has always been recognized in a spontaneous, natural way, and has created in traditional civilizations a special fluid, the vital substance of the organic and hierarchical structures, long before people fell under the spell of the suggestions or shallow rationalism espoused by subversive ideologies. In normal conditions all this goes without saying; thus, it is absurd to say that the only way in which the highest degrees in the social hierarchy were able to retain control was to apply physical force, violence, and terror and that people obeyed only out of fear or servility, or for their self-serving purposes. To think so is to denigrate human nature even in its most humble representatives, and to suppose that the atrophy of every higher sensibility that characterizes most people in this final age has always and everywhere ruled supreme.

Superiority and power need to go hand in hand, as long as we remember that power is based on superiority and not vice versa, and that superiority is connected with qualities that have always been thought by most people to constitute the true foundation of what others attempt to explain in terms of brutal “natural selection.” Ancient primitive man essentially obeyed not the strongest members of society, but those in whom he perceived a saturation of mana (i.e., a sacred energy and life force) and who, for this reason, seemed to him best qualified to perform activities usually precluded to others. An analogous situation occurs where certain men have been followed, obeyed, and venerated for displaying a high degree of endurance, responsibility, lucidity, and a dangerous, open, and heroic life that others could not; it was decisive here to be able to recognize a special right and a special dignity in a free way. To depend on such leaders constituted not the subjugation, but rather the elevation of the person; this, however, makes no sense to the defenders of the “immortal principles” and to the supporters of “human dignity” because of their obtuseness. It is only the presence of superior individuals that bestows on a multitude of beings and on a system of disciplines of material life a meaning and a justification they previously lacked. It is the inferior who needs the superior, and not the other way around. The inferior never lives a fuller life than when he feels his existence is subsumed in a greater order endowed with a center; then he feels like a man standing before leaders of men, and experiences the pride of serving as a free man in his proper station. The noblest things that human nature has to offer are found in similar situations, and not in the anodyne and shallow climate proper to democratic and social ideologies.

We should note in passing the irrationalism of the so-called utilitarian sociology, which could have been valued only in a society of merchants: in this doctrine, the “useful” is regarded as the positive foundation of every socio-political institution. However, there is hardly anything more relative than the concept of “useful.” “Useful” for what? In view of what? For if utility is restricted to its coarsest, most materialistic, calculating, and petty form, we must say that, whether for better or for worse, human beings rarely think and act by following the “useful,” understood in this narrow sense. Everything that has an emotional or irrational motivation has and will play a larger role in human conduct than that played by petty utility; if we did not acknowledge this fact, a great part of human history would be unintelligible. Among this order of non-utilitarian motivations (all of which lead man beyond himself), there is certainly a class that reflects higher possibilities, a certain generosity and a certain elementary heroic disposition; the above-mentioned forms of natural acknowledgment animating and sustaining every true hierarchical structure are derived from them. In these structures, authority as power may also play a part or, more specifically, it must have one. Thus, we can agree with Machiavelli’s saying that where one is not loved one should at least be feared (feared, not hated). It is a distortion to begin from a mutilated and degraded image of man in general and believe that in all the historical hierarchies, other than strength, the principle of superiority and the direct and proud acknowledgment of the superior by the inferior did not play a relevant part. Burke’s saying that every political system that presupposes the existence of heroic virtues and of higher dispositions leads to vice and corruption is not so much an index of cynicism, but instead of short-sightedness about knowledge of the human species.

The higher and more genuine legitimization of a true political order, and thus of the State itself, lies in its anagogical function: namely, in arousing and nourishing the individual’s disposition to act and to think, to live, to struggle, and eventually to sacrifice himself for something that goes beyond his mere individuality. This disposition is so real that it is possible not only to implement it, but also to abuse it; thus, alongside currents in which the single individual is led beyond himself by something that is spiritual and metaphysical (as was the case in all the major traditional forms), we can see other currents in which a demonic element is responsible for promoting an individual’s ecstasies (i.e., the experience of being “outside one’s self”). What is at work here is not an anagogic power, but rather a catagogic power—namely, the power that acts in the revolutionary phenomenon and is concretized in every collectivist ideology. In both cases, a sociology adopting utilitarian and individualistic perspectives is refuted; it proves to be merely a sophisticated and intellectual construction, especially when we consider human nature in its reality and concreteness. The progress of one form of human organization over another is not measured by the fact that in it things are materially and socially fine and that the materialistic need of utility is satisfied to a higher degree; rather, progress is measured by the degree to which certain interests and criteria of evaluation have become differentiated and predominant in it. These criteria should rise above the mediocre concept of “utility,” which happens to be the only perspective adopted by positivist sociology.

Coming back to liberalism, I wish to say that it represents the antithesis of every organic doctrine. Since according to liberalism the primary element is the human being regarded not as person, but rather as an individual living in a formless freedom, this philosophy is able to conceive society merely as a mechanical interplay of forces and entities acting and reacting to each other, according to the space they succeed in gaining for themselves, without the overall system reflecting any higher law of order or meaning. The only law, and thus the only State, that liberalism can conceive has therefore an extrinsic character in regard to its subjects. Power is entrusted to the State by sovereign individuals, so that it may safeguard the freedoms of the individuals and intervene only when these freedoms clash and prove dangerous to one another. Thus, order appears as a limitation and a regulation of freedoms, rather than as a form that freedom itself expresses from within, as freedom to do something, or as freedom connected to a quality and a specific function. Order, namely the legal order, eventually amounts to an act of violence because, practically speaking, in a liberal and democratic regime a government is defined in terms of a majority; thus, the minority, though composed of “free individuals,” must bow and obey.

The specter that most terrifies liberalism today is totalitarianism. It can be said that totalitarianism may arise as a borderline case out of the presuppositions of liberalism, rather than out of those of an organic State. As we shall see, in totalitarianism we have the accentuation of the concept of order uniformly imposed from the outside onto a mass of mere individuals who, lacking their own form and law, must receive one from the outside, be introduced in a mechanical, all-inclusive system, and avoid the disorder typical of a disorganized and selfish expression of partisan forces and special-interest groups.

Events have recently led toward a similar solution, after the more or less idyllic view proper to the euphoric phase of liberalism and of laissez-faire economy has turned out to be simply a fancy. I am referring here to the view according to which a satisfactory social and economic equilibrium allegedly arises out of the conflict of particular interests: almost as if a preestablished harmony a la Leibniz would take care of ordering everything for the better, even when the single individual cares only for himself and is freed from every bond.

Thus, not only ideally, but historically too, liberalism and individualism are at the beginning and at the origin of the various interconnected forms of modern subversion. The person who becomes an individual, by ceasing to have an organic meaning and by refusing to acknowledge any principle of authority, is nothing more than a number, a unit in the pack; his usurpation evokes a fatal collectivist limitation against himself. Therefore, we go from liberalism to democracy: and then from democracy to socialist forms that are increasingly inclined toward collectivism. For a long time Marxist historiography has clearly recognized this pattern: it has recognized that the liberal revolution, or the revolution of the Third Estate, opened a breach and contributed to erode the previous traditional sociopolitical world and to pave the way to the socialist and communist revolution; in turn, the representatives of this revolution will leave the rhetorics of the “immortal principles” and the “noble and generous ideas” to naive and deluded people. Since every fall is characterized by an accelerated motion, it is not possible to stop halfway. Within the system of the predominant ideologies in the West, liberalism, having absolved its preliminary task of disintegration and disorganization, has quickly been set aside—thus, the claim of some of its contemporary epigones to be able to contain Marxism, which represents the last link in the chain of causes, rings hollow indeed and is indicative of lack of wisdom. There is a saying from Tacitus that summarizes in lapidary style what has happened since the “liberal revolution”: Ut imperium evertant, libertatem praeferunt; si perventerint, liberatem ipsam adgredientur—that is, “in order to overthrow the State (in its authority and sovereignty: i.e., imperium) they uphold freedom; once they succeed, they will turn against it too.” Plato said: “Probably, then, tyranny develops out of no other constitution than democracy—from the height of liberty, I take it, the fiercest extreme of servitude.” Liberalism and individualism played merely the role of instruments in the overall plan of world subversion, to which they opened the dams.

Thus, it is of paramount importance to recognize the continuity of the current that has generated the various political, antitraditional forms that are today at work in the chaos of political parties: liberalism, constitutionalism, parliamentary democracy, socialism, radicalism, and finally communism and Sovietism have emerged in history as degrees or as interconnected stages of the same disease. Without the French Revolution and liberalism, constitutionalism and democracy would not have existed; without democracy and the corresponding bourgeois and capitalist civilization of the Third Estate, socialism and demagogic nationalism would not have arisen; without the groundwork laid by socialism, we would not have witnessed the advent of radicalism and of communism in both its national and proletarian-international versions. The fact that today these forms often appear either to coexist or to be in competition with each other should not prevent a keen eye from noting that they sustain, link, and mutually condition each other, being only the expression of different degrees of the same subversion of every normal and legitimate institution. It necessarily follows that, when these forms clash, the one that will prevail will be the most extreme, or the one located on the lowest step. The beginning of the process is to be traced to the time when Western man broke the ties to Tradition, claiming for himself as an individual a vain and illusory freedom: when he became an atom in society, rejecting every higher symbol of authority and sovereignty in a system of hierarchies. The “totalitarian” forms that are emerging are a demonic and materialistic counterfeit of the previous unitary political ideal, and they represent “the greatest and most savage slavery,” which, according to Plato, arose out of formless “freedom.”

Economic liberalism, which engendered various forms of capitalist exploitation and of cynical, antisocial plutocracy, is one of the final consequences of the intellectual emancipation that made the individual solutus—that is, lacking the inner, self-imposed bond, function, and limit that are found instead in every organic system’s general climate and natural hierarchy of values. Moreover, we know that in more recent times, political liberalism has become little more than a system at the service of laissez-faire—namely, economic liberalism—in the context of a capitalist-plutocratic civilization; from this situation new reactions arose, pushing everything lower and lower, to the level of Marxism.

The above-mentioned connections are also visible in the special sector of property and wealth, especially when we consider the meaning of the change that occurred within it, following the institutions created by the French Revolution. By denouncing everything in the economic world that was still inspired by the feudal ideal as a cruel regime based on privileges, the organic connection (displayed mainly in various feudal systems) between personality and property, social function and wealth, and between a given qualification or moral nobility and the rightful and legitimate possession of goods, was broken. It was the Napoleonic Code that made “property” neutral and “private” in the inferior and individualistic sense of the word; with this code, property ceased to have a political function and bond. Moreover, property was no longer subject to an “eminent right,” nor tied to a specific responsibility and social rank and subject to a “higher right.” In this context, rank signified the objective and normal consecration in a hierarchical system that the superior one, as well as the personality formed and differentiated by a supra-individual tradition and idea, receives Property, and wealth in general, no longer had any duties before the State other than in fiscal terms. The subject of property was the pure and simple “citizen,” whose dominant concern was to exploit the property without any scruples and without too much regard for those traditions of blood, family, and folk that had previously been a relevant counterpart of property and wealth.

It was only natural that in the end the right to private property came to be disputed; whenever there is no higher legitimization of ownership, it is always possible to wonder why some people have property and others do not, or why some people have earned for themselves privileges and social preeminence (often greater than those in feudal systems), while lacking something that would make them stand out and above everybody else in an effective and sensible manner. Thus the so-called “social question,” together with the worn-out slogan “social justice,” arose in those conditions where no differentiation is any longer visible other than in terms of mere “economic classes” (wealth and property having become “neutral” and apolitical; every value of difference and rank, of personality and authority having been rejected or undermined by processes of degeneration and materialization; the political sphere having been deprived of its original dignity). Thus, subversive ideologies have successfully and easily unmasked all the political myths that capitalism and the bourgeoisie have employed, in the absence of any superior principle, in order to defend their privileged status against the push and final violation by the forces from below.

Again, we can see that the various aspects of the contemporary social and political chaos are interrelated and there is no real way to effectively oppose them other than by returning to the origins. To go back to the origins means, plainly and simply, to reject everything that in any domain (whether social, political, or economic) is connected to the “immortal principles” of 1789, as a libertarian, individualistic, and egalitarian thought, and to oppose it with the hierarchical view, in the context of which alone the notion, value, and freedom of man as person are not reduced to mere words or excuses for a work of destruction and subversion.

FOUR

Organic State — Totalitarianism

One of the catchphrases that have become a rallying cry in the intellectual confusion of our contemporaries is antitotalitarianism. This catchphrase is employed mostly by democracies; the reference point that is upheld is basically the confused and formless view of the individual’s freedom that I have criticized in the previous chapter. In this formula many different things are lumped together, as is shown by the distinction, expressed in very primitive terms, between a “right-wing” and a “left-wing” totalitarianism. But in the above-mentioned currents, it is clear that quite often “totalitarianism” is only a pretext. Just as communists and socialists find it useful and agreeable to brand anybody and anything that does not agree with their ideology with the label of “fascism,” likewise the confusion about totalitarianism is employed in a tactical fashion by various parties in democratic regimes, and is exploited in order to try to discredit and to portray the traditional view of the true State in a heinous way.

In order to put an end to this misunderstanding, it will be helpful to introduce a fundamental distinction between the totalitarian State and the organic State. In regard to the terminology I have adopted, I want my readers to know that it is not in order to make concessions to my opponents that I have refrained from categorizing the traditional political view that I uphold as “totalitarian.” In this regard, I am already vindicated by the fact that totalitarianism is a recent and rather modern term, and as such it is inseparably connected to the situation of a world that in no way, shape, or form should be employed as a reference point. Therefore, it is better to let the word totalitarianism designate what the representatives of democracy mean by it, applying instead to the idea of “organic State” whatever positive meaning may be found, despite everything, in totalitarianism (understood in a general fashion). In this way both concepts will be defined and contrasted with each other in a sufficiently clear manner.

The idea of the organic State was not born yesterday. This needs to be recalled both for those who have forgotten it and for those whose intellectual horizons are restricted to the polemics between “fascism” and “antifascism,” as if nothing else ever existed previously in history. The idea of the organic State is a traditional one, and thus we can say that every true State has always had a certain organic character. A State is organic when it has a center, and this center is an idea that shapes the various domains of life in an efficacious way; it is organic when it ignores the division and the autonomization of the particular and when, by virtue of a system of hierarchical participation, every part within its relative autonomy performs its own function and enjoys an intimate connection with the whole. In an organic State we can speak of a “whole”—namely, something integral and spiritually unitary that articulates and unfolds itself—rather than a sum of elements within an aggregate, characterized by a disorderly clash of interests. The States that developed in the geographical areas of the great civilizations (whether they were empires, monarchies, aristocratic republics, or city-states) at their peak were almost without exception of this type. A central idea, a symbol of sovereignty with a corresponding, positive principle of authority was their foundation and animating force. Almost as if thanks to a spontaneous gravitation, men and social bodies found themselves working in synergy; though they retained their autonomy, they undertook activities that converged toward the same fundamental direction. Even contrasts and antitheses had their part in the economy of the whole; as they did not have the character of disorderly parts, they did not question the super-ordained unity of the organism, but rather acted as a dynamic and vivifying factor. Even the “opposition” of the early British parliamentary system was able to reflect a similar meaning (it was called “His Majesty’s most loyal opposition”), though it disappeared in the later party-ruled parliamentary regime.

Reading G. B. Vico and Fustel de Coulanges helps us to realize the power that the organic ideal had in antiquity. The main thing that emerges in ancient forms is that unity in them did not possess a merely political character, but rather a spiritual and quite often religious one, the political domain apparently being shaped and upheld by an idea or a general view that was also articulated in thought, law, art, customs, cult, and the form of the economy. A unitary spirit was manifested in a choral variety of forms, corresponding to the various possibilities of human existence; in this context, organic and traditional are more or less synonymous terms. The spirituality of the whole was that which occassioned the integration of the particular, rather than its compression and coercion. A relative pluralism and decentralization are essential features in every organic system. The criterion for this decentralization is that it can be accentuated in proportion to the degree to which the center enjoys a spiritual and even trascendent character, a sovereign equilibriating power, and a natural prestige.

An objective observer cannot help but find it odd that all these things have been entirely forgotten, despite the fact that not long ago, before the advent in Europe of liberalism, individualism and revolutions, there were political systems that reflected in a sensible way some aspects of the organic idea, and these systems appeared entirely normal and legitimate in the eyes of most people. But this is also the reason for the aforementioned confusion about totalitarianism, and for the fact that, displaying a bovine obtuseness and playing into the hands of the communists, the Italian people these days repeatedly view and denounce as “fascism” any system different form those glorified by the apostles of democracy and the “immortal principles.”

However, totalitarianism merely represents the counterfeited image of the organic ideal. It is a system in which unity is imposed from the outside, not on the basis of the intrinsic force of a common idea and an authority that is naturally acknowledged, but rather through direct forms of intervention and control, exercised by a power that is exclusively and materially political, imposing itself as the ultimate reason for the system. Moreover, in totalitarianism we usually find a tendency toward uniformity and intolerance for any partial form of autonomy and any degree of freedom, for any intermediary body between the center and the periphery, between the peak and the bottom of a social pyramid. More specifically, totalitarianism egenders a kind of sclerosis, or a monstrous hypertrophy of the entire bureaucratic- administrative structure. These structures became all-pervasive, replacing and suppressing every particular activity, without any restraints, due to an insolent intrusion of the public sphere into the private domain, organizing everything into rigid schemes; these schemes eventually turn out to be meaningless because, starting from a formless center of power, what eventually arises is a sort of intrinsic and gloomy enjoyment of this relentless leveling process. Concerning the most materialistic aspect — namely, that of the economy (which has gained pre-eminence in this “era of economics”) — super organization, centralism and rationalization play an essential part in this rigid and mechanical type of unity.

Though this type of unity has become predominant in the contemporary era, it was foreshadowed in various places and other ages, although always in the terminal and twilight phases of a given cycle of civilization. Among the most notable examples we may recall the forms of bureaucratic governmental centralization that developed during the decline of the Roman, Byzantine, and Persian Empires; what ensued was eventually a definitive dissolution.

Examples of this sort indicate the proper locus and meaning of “totalitarian” centralizations: they follow the crisis and the dissolution of previous unities of an organic nature, and the dissolution and turning loose of forces that were previously united by an idea in a differentiated civilization and in a living tradition. These forces are now mastered and brought together in a violent and extrinsic manner within an order, without any characteristic of true, recognized authority, and without anything connecting the single individuals from within.

In the previous chapter I have suggested that totalitarian or semi-totalitarian systems often arise as an unavoidable reaction against the libertarian-individualistic disintegration. In other times, all this was reduced to the final, short-lived reactions of an already doomed and senescent political organism. In the modern world, due to the predominance of materialistic, economic, and technological factors, this phenomenon may enjoy a certain stability (e.g., communism in the USSR), though the meaning remains the same.

In fact, the best image to illustrate these processes is the analogy with living organisms: after enjoying life and movement, a stiffening sets in when they die that is typical of a body turning into a corpse. This state, in turn, is followed by the terminal phase of disintegration. Thus, in these totalitarian systems we may note two processes that, though they appear to run toward opposite directions, eventually converge into one and the same effect, and up to a point even permeate each other. Totalitarianism, though it reacts against individualism and social atomism, brings a final end to the devastation of what may still survive in a society from the previous “organic” phase: quality; articulated forms, castes and classes, the values of personality, true freedom, daring and responsible initiative, and heroic feats. An organism of a superior type includes multiple functions retaining their specific character and a relative autonomy, all the while mutually coordinating and integrating each other, converging into a superior unity that never ceases to be ideally presupposed. Thus, in an organic State we find both unity and multiplicity, gradation and hierarchy; we do not find the dualism of center and formless mass typical of a totalitarian regime. Totalitarianism, in order to assert itself, imposes uniformity. In the final analysis, totalitarianism rests and relies on the inorganic world of quantity to which individualistic disintegration has led, and not on the world of quality and of personality. In such a system, the authoritarianism we encounter is such as we may expect from a drill instructor or a pedagogue wielding a whip, if I may use an image dear to Toynbee. The attitudes that totalitarianism requires are: obedience, even though such obedience does not amount to acknowledgment and adhesion; conformism; and irrational forms of aggregation, among which it is possible to detect a fanatical, sinister, and blind capability of sacrifice. The whole system has an undefined character because it lacks a true authority; moreover, there is a lack of true commitment among people living in a totalitarian society; a lack of the sense of responsibility; and a lack of the dignity of free beings who acknowledge this authority and arrange themselves in one efficient formation. In this perspective, totalitarianism is a school of servility and a pejorative extension of collectivism: it acts not as an influence from above, capable of leading and unifying people, but rather as a formless power that has become crystallized in a center, in order to absorb, bend, mechanize, control, and impose uniformity on the rest of society.

In these terms, two perspectives stand most visibly in irreducible antithesis: an antithesis that first of all must be understood as that of the spirits animating the two systems.

This must be taken into account in regard to those special situations of an economic order that require a strengthened coordinating intervention, regulating the central powers, as happened recently. Even in these circumstances (in which, due to a congestion of forces and to a complexity of factors that are likewise difficult to control, the “managerial” mania must be assigned a relevant role) it is possible to retain the organic ideal as the shaping principle, in opposition to every totalitarianism; this will be shown later when I discuss the idea of corporatism.

I wish to make one more comment in regard to the terminology used. Statolatry and statism are two expressions that have been recently used with polemical intent, as in the case of the term totalitarianism. Polemical remarks are pointless when aimed at criticizing the preeminence that legitimately belongs to the political principle of the State over “society,” “people,” “national community,” and, in general, over the entire economic and physical dimension of any human organization. To refuse to acknowledge this preeminence amounts to denying that very principle in its proper reality and function, in contrast to what appears to be a constant element in traditional thought. Thus, there is no need to employ the neologism “statism” (which has a negative connotation) in order to describe the aforementioned preeminence.

As far as the term statolatry is concerned, it is necessary to examine the effective basis of the two fundamental principles of imperium and auctoritas. There is a profound and substantial difference between the deification and absolutization of what is profane and the case in which the political reality derives its legitimization from reference points that are also spiritual and somehow transcendent. There is usurpation and fetishism in the former instance but not in the latter; only in the former instance it is legitimate to talk about “State worship.” State worship falls in the same context of totalitarianism; its limit is the theology or the mysticism of the omnipotent totalitarian State, having as its background the new earthly religion of materialism.

Conversely, the organic view presupposes something “transcendent” or “from above” as the basis of authority and command, without which there would automatically be no immaterial and substantial connections of the parts with the center; no inner order of single freedoms; no immanence of a general law that guides and sustains people without coercing them; and no supra-individual disposition of the particular, without which every decentralization and articulation would eventually pose a danger for the unity of the whole system.

I must admit that nowadays, considering the climate of general materialization and desacralization, it is not easy to indicate solutions conforming to the latter perspective. But the fact remains that even in the modern political reality there are still remarkable residues that would be entirely absurd without a similar frame of reference. This is the case, for instance, with an oath. An oath transcends the categories of the profane and secular world. And yet we see that even in the modern, democratic, republican, and secular States there is the requirement and even the obligation to take an oath: as in the situation, for example, of judges, cabinet ministers, and even members of the armed forces. This is indeed absurd or even sacrilegious when the State, in one way or another, does not embody a spiritual principle: an oath in such a case would be an instance of State worship. Where the meaning of what an oath is all about has been completely lost, how can one be willing or required to swear such an oath, if the State is nothing more than what modern “enlightened” ideologies claim it to be? A mere secular authority—weltliche Obrigkeit, to employ a Lutheran expression—as such has no right to require an oath, no matter what the circumstances. Conversely, we find oaths to be a normal and legitimate essential element in the political organization of an organic and traditional type; an example is found with the oath of loyalty, which was regarded as a true sacrament, the sacramentum fidelitatis, in the feudal world. In Christianity, this type of oath represented the most terrible of all oaths: in the words of a historian, “it made martyrs out of those who gave their lives in order to remain faithful to it, just as it damned those who violated it.”

This is not without relation to a second point. In the communitarian and democratic views, we find the recurrent idea of sacrifice and of service; “altruism,” the subordination and sacrifice of the single individual for the common good, all play a role in these views. Again, in this we have yet another instance of statolatry or at least of “sociolatry” or, in any event, of fetishism. We must ask what meaning these appeals have in the context of an organization, when its foundation is assumedly “positivist” and contractual. True, there are also forms of the capability to sacrifice oneself that are instinctive, heedless, irrational; sometimes we even find this capability among animals. A classic example of this instinctive and naturalistic type is the sacrifice of a mother for her children. However, these are dispositions that fall short of the sphere in which the concept of “person” is defined, and thus of the political sphere in its proper sense. Hofler has explained through an adequate comparison how things exist within this context: imagine a corporation, he writes, that truly represents a communion of interests on a purely contractual basis. In this type of organization (i.e., a corporation), to expect one of the stockholders to sacrifice himself to any degree for the common good and, worse yet, in favor of another stockholder would be regarded as absurd. This is because the foundation and the only sufficient reason of the system is the utilitarian interest of the single individual.

However, things are just the same in a society or in a State lacking any spiritual consecration or a transcendent dimension: when in such a State ap