Prussianism and Socialism - Oswald Spengler (1920).pdf

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Prussianism And Socialism
Oswald Spengler
Translated from the German by Donald O. White
Contents
Introduction
I. The Revolution
II. Socialism as a Way of Life
III. Prussians and Englishmen
IV. Marx
V. The International
Introduction
This essay is based on notes intended for the second volume of
The Decline of the West.
The notes comprise, at least in part, the germinal stage in the development of the entire
thesis presented in that work. [1]
(1. See Oswald Spengler,
The Decline of the West,
trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), I, 46.)
The word "socialism" designates the noisiest, if not the most profound, topic of current
debate. Everyone is using it. Everyone thinks it means something different. Into this
universal catchword everyone injects whatever he loves or hates, fears or desires. Yet no
one is aware of the scope and limitations of the word’s historical function. Is socialism an
instinct, or a planned system? Is it a goal of mankind, or just a temporary condition? Or
does the word perhaps refer simply to the demands made by a certain class of society? Is
it the same thing as Marxism?
People who aim to change the word continually fall into the error of confusing what
ought
to be with what
shall
be. Rare indeed is the vision that can penetrate beyond the
tangle and flux of contemporary events. I have yet to find someone who has really
understood this German Revolution, who has fathomed its meaning or foreseen its
duration. Moments are being mistaken for epochs, next year for the next century, whims
for ideas, books for human beings.
Our Marxists show strength only when they are tearing down; when it comes to thinking
or acting positively they are helpless. By their actions they are confirming at last that
their patriarch was not a creator, but a critic only. His heritage amounts to a collection of
abstract ideas, meaningful only to a world of bookworms. His "proletariat" is a purely
literary concept, formed and sustained by the written word. It was real only so long as it
denied, and did not embody, the actual state of things at any given time. Today we are
beginning to realize that Marx was only the stepfather of socialism. Socialism contains
elements that are older, stronger, and more fundamental than his critique of society. Such
elements existed without him and continued to develop without him, in fact contrary to
him. They are not to be found on paper; they are in the blood. And only the blood can
decide the future.
But if socialism is not Marxism, then what is it? The answer will be found in these pages.
Some people already have an idea of what it is, but they are so diligently involved with
political "standpoints," aims, and blueprints that no one has dared to be sure. When faced
with decisions, we have abandoned our former position of firmness and adopted milder,
less radical, outmoded attitudes, appealing for support to Rousseau, Adam Smith, and the
like. We take steps against Marx, and yet at every step we invoke his name. Meanwhile
the time for fashioning ideologies has passed. We latecomers of Western civilization
have become skeptics. We refuse to be further misled by ideological systems. Ideologies
are a thing of the previous century. We no longer want ideas and principles, we want
ourselves.
Hence we now face the task of liberating German socialism from Marx. I say
German
socialism, for there is no other. This, too, is one of the truths that no longer lie hidden.
Perhaps no one has mentioned it before, but we Germans are socialists. The others cannot
possibly be socialists.
What I am describing here is not just another conciliatory move, not a retreat or an
evasion, but a Destiny. It cannot be escaped by closing one’s eyes, denying it, fighting it,
or fleeing from it; such actions would merely be various ways of fulfilling it.
Ducunt
volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.
The spirit of Old Prussia and the socialist attitude, at
present driven by brotherly hatred to combat each other, are in fact one and the same.
This is an incontrovertible fact of history, not just a literary figment. The elements that
make up history are blood, race—which is created by ideas that are never
expressed—and the kind of thought which coordinates the energies of body and mind.
History transcends all mere ideals, doctrines, and logical formulations.
For the work of liberating German socialism from Marx I am counting on those of our
young people who are sound enough to ignore worthless political verbiage and scheming,
who are capable of grasping what is potent and invincible in our nature, and who are
prepared to go forward, come what may. I address myself to the German youth in whom
the spirit of the fathers has taken on vital forms, enabling them to fulfill a Destiny which
they feel within themselves, a Destiny which they themselves
are.
They must be willing
to accept obligations despite hardship and poverty; they must possess a Roman pride of
service, modesty in the exercise of authority, and the willingness to take on duties readily
and without exception rather than demand rights from others. These conditions once met,
a silent sense of awareness will unite the individual with the totality. Such potential
awareness is our greatest and most sacred asset. It is the heritage of anguished centuries,
and it distinguishes us from all other people—us, the youngest and last people of our
culture.
It is to these representatives of German youth that I turn. May they understand what the
future expects of them. May they be proud to accept the challenge.
I. The Revolution
1
No people in history has had a more tragic development than our own. In times of serious
crisis all other peoples have fought either for victory or momentary setback; with us the
stakes have always been victory or annihilation. Witness our military history from Kolin
and Hochkirch to Jena and the Wars of Liberation, when the attempt was made on French
soil to win Prussia’s allies for Napoleon by proposing partition; to the desperate hour at
Nikolsburg when Bismarck contemplated suicide; to Sedan, which just barely staved off
a general offensive of the armies poised at our borders by preventing Italy’s declaration
of war; to the frightful tempest of wars on our entire planet, the first thunderclaps of
which have just died away. Only in Frederick the Great’s and Bismarck’s states was
resistance at all feasible.
In all these catastrophes Germans have fought Germans. That it was often tribe against
tribe or sovereign against sovereign is significant only for the surface of history. Beneath
all these conflicts lay the intense discord that inhabits every German soul, an inner
struggle that first erupted ominously in the Gothic age, in the personages of Frederick
Barbarossa and Henry the Lion at the time of the Battle of Legnano. Has anyone
understood this dichotomy in the German soul? Who has recognized in Martin Luther the
reincarnation of the Saxon Duke Widukind? What inscrutable drive was it that made
Germans sympathize and fight with Napoleon when, with French blood, he was
spreading the English idea on the Continent? What makes us conclude that the riddle of
Legnano is profoundly similar to that of Leipzig? Why did Napoleon regard the
destruction of the little world of Frederick the Great as his most urgent problem, and in
his innermost thoughts as an insoluble one?
Now, in the evening of the Western culture, we can see that the World War is the great
contest between the two Germanic ideas, which like all genuine ideas are lived rather
than expressed. Following its actual outbreak in the Balkan outpost skirmish of 1912, it
first assumed the outward appearance of a conflict between two great powers, one of
which had everybody, the other nobody on its side. It reached a provisional conclusion in
the stage of trench warfare and the devastation of huge armies. During this stage a new
formula was found for the unresolved inner discord in the German breast. Currently,
owing to a nineteenth century habit of overestimating the economic factor, we
characterize the conflict by the superficial terms "socialism" and "capitalism." What is
actually taking place behind this verbal façade is the last great struggle of the Faustian
soul.
At the moment in question, although the Germans themselves were not aware of it, the
Napoleonic riddle made its reappearance. With the goal of destroying this masterpiece of
a state, our most genuine and personal creation—so personal that no other people has
been able to comprehend or imitate it, hating it instead like everything daemonic and
inscrutable—an English army invaded Germany.
2
Believe it or not, that is exactly what happened. The lethal blow in this was not
necessarily aimed by the preachers of cosmopolitanism or other treacherous elements. It
was we ourselves who brought about this calamity—we Germans, with our almost
metaphysical will, our stubborn and selfless determination, our honest and enthusiastic
patriotism. This will of ours is by its very nature a handy weapon for any external enemy
with the practical sense of the English. It is a precarious compound of political ideas and
aspiration, one which only the English are really capable of mastering and implementing.
For us, despite all our passion and self-sacrificing zeal, it has led to political dilettantism;
its effect on our political existence has been disastrous, poisonous, suicidal. It is our
invisible English army, left by Napoleon on German soil after the Battle of Jena.
Our deficient sense of reality, so pronounced as to have the force of a Destiny, has
counteracted the other instinct in the German people, and has caused our external history
to develop as a steady sequence of dreadful catastrophes. It failed us at the height of the
Hohenstaufen period, when the glorious rulers considered themselves exalted above the
demands of mundane life, just as it did in the nineteenth century, giving rise to the
provincial philistinism that we have personified as "the German Michel." Michelism is
the sum of all our weaknesses: our fundamental displeasure at turns of events that
demand attention and response; our urge to criticize at the wrong time; our need for
relaxation at the wrong time; our pursuit of ideals instead of immediate action; our
precipitate action at times when careful reflection is called for; our
Volk
as a collection of
malcontents; our representative assemblies as glorified beer gardens. All these traits are
essentially English, but in German caricature. Above all, we cherish our private morsel of
freedom and guaranteed security, and we are fond of brandishing it at the precise
moments when John Bull, with sure instinct, would conceal it prudently.

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