Political Thought

National Socialism, Communism, and Democracy. Any account of the political theories of the last quarter century must inevitably end with a comparison of national socialism and communism and of both with liberal democracy. For within this period these three have been the rivals for men’s loyalty and each has exacted from its followers miracles of … Read more

Totalitarianism. Both Italian fascism and German national socialism were intrinsically efforts to submerge all differences of class and group in the single purpose of imperialist aggrandizement. The myths which constituted their philosophy were designed to further that purpose. Hence the practical outcome of both, however justified, was the totalitarian internal organization of the state. For … Read more

Lebensraum. The national socialist theory of territory or space, like the theory of race, was put together from ideas that had been current in Europe for a century. Fundamentally it was merely an enlargement or plans for a powerful German state in Central and Eastern Europe, which should expand as far as its military powers … Read more

The Racial Myth. This idea of the Volk and the leader was supported by a general theory of race and-of the relationship between race and culture, or more specifically by the myth of the Aryan or Nordic race and its place in the history of Western Civilization. Hence the racial theory and the parallel and … Read more

The Folk, the Elite, and the Leader. No figure of speech recurred more frequently in national socialist writing than that of the organism and its organs to express the relationship between the individual and the nation of which he is a member. Mussolini had written it into the Italian Labor Charter in 1927 which began … Read more

Fascism and Hegelianism. According to the preceding interpretation, the intellectual affinities of fascism and national socialism were with philosophic irrationalism. This conclusion makes it necessary to consider their relation to Hegelian nationalism and the Hegelian theory of the state. The relation was in fact somewhat complicated. Hegel’s philosophy had been regarded throughout the nineteenth century … Read more

Philosophy a Myth. Until about the close of the nineteenth century philosophic irrationalism was notable for lacking any very specific applications to politics. It had been on the whole an artist’s philosophy, viewed askance by academic philosophers and neglected by political theorists. There was, indeed, a steadily growing reaction in psychology and sociology against intellectualist … Read more

Irrationalism: The Philosophic Climate of Opinion. A philosophy whose immediate political implication was national expansion by war must of necessity be an adventurers philosophy. By no rational calculation either of individual happiness or of tangible national benefit could such a purpose be made plausible. It must assign a mystical rather than a calculated value to … Read more

Fascism and National Socialism. The political philosophy of communism represented on the whole a coherent and carefully developed point of view. Even in change it was meticulously careful to preserve its continuity with Marxism, which in turn had been elaborated by two generations of scholarship. Lenin and Trotsky were men of settled convictions and long … Read more

The Temper of Communism. While Mao without doubt has written a new chapter in the development of communism, it is Lenin who remains its characteristic exponent. In spite of the semi-scholastic quality of Lenin’s though this constant practice of seeming to spin concrete answers out of a dialectical manipulation of abstractions its effective characteristic was … Read more