Classics | Arthur Moeller van den Bruck | Germany's Third Empire | Part2-end

Begining

Part 2 Socialism (end of 2 Part)

Every people has its own socialism.

German socialism took a pride in blending well-thought-out theory with practical application to create an equilibrium of justice. But the German socialist had no eye for foreign politics; he never thought of nations. He never thought of demanding the possibility of existence for young nations, for over-populated countries. He did not realize that it is even more important to attain a balance between nations than between classes. He never enquired what the crowded nations, who had not the same scope as the sated nations enjoyed, were to do with the product of their increasing industry. He would not see that it might be the role of a socialist-imperialism to procure them new markets and thus provide work for the worker. Today the German people is deprived all such possibilities. Today this nation counts twenty million too many, twenty million who cannot live. It may be that German socialism has a new national mission: prescribed not by Marx but by the World War: to place itself at the head of the oppressed nations and show them what are the conditions under which alone they can live.

When we talk of a German socialism, we do not of course mean the socialism of the social democrat in which the party took refuge after our collapse; neither do we mean the logical Marxist socialism which refuses to abandon the class war of the Internationals. We mean rather a corporative conception of state and economics, which must perhaps have a revolutionary foundation, but will then seek conservative stability. We call Friedrich List a German socialist because his view of foreign politics was based on political economy. In domestic politics the idea of organization by trade and profession points us back to Frieherr von Stein; the idea of guilds to the Middle Ages. Everything points to a new conception of socialism. Youth demands a leader who will march in the van: a leader who will make decisions, not the typical westerner who only sums up. Socialism for us means uprooting, re-organization, gradation.

International socialism does not exist. It did not exist before the War, still less after the War. The German working man has been the martyr of his Marxist faith. He must reconcile himself to the fact that the promise of "the world for the proletariat" has been unfulfilled. He must realize that the proletarians of each country thought only of their own country. The victorious nations applied Marx’s principle of "enlightened self-interest"—which that sceptic thought he had discovered to be the basis of all morality—only to the advantage of their own countries. They concluded a peace which was most deliberately designed to exploit Germany. The problems of socialism are still unsolved.

The Revolution which aimed at realizing the democratic state did not succeed in its intentions. The German socialist has nothing now left for him to do, but to ponder retrospectively on what it was in himself which prevented his solving his problems along Marxian lines. If he does so, he will perceive that it was the taint of liberalism in his socialism which was disastrous to him: an inelastic, dogmatic, rationalist liberalism that for sheer "reason" could not see reality. We do not yet know who will solve the problems that remain for socialism. We cannot believe that German communism which still clings faithfully to Marx will contribute to the solution, though German communism has about it something that is savagely and obstinately German. In any case we know—and we must believe—that the German socialism which we have in mind must and will solve its problems on a higher plane than Marx’s: on a plane where the problems are not those of a class but of the nation.

We have one advantage over our enemies in the existence of the problems set us by our defeat and unsolved by our Revolution. It is a purely intellectual advantage: but it is a great one. We have only to think of the complete absence of ideas which our enemies display: their victory brought them complacency, satiety—in spite of the economic and political peril which threatens their countries.

It will be a tragedy, a catastrophe, it will be our destruction, if we do not rise to the solution of the problems before us. But if we succeed in winning through to a solution of our problems, a genuine and permanent solution for all time, then the example of the new state and the new economic order which we will have created will give us an immense prestige, which will have a powerful influence on other countries, a prestige against which our enemies will be powerless.

Socialism begins where Marxism ends. German socialism is called to play a part in the spiritual and intellectual history of mankind by purging itself of every trace of liberalism. Liberalism was the unholy power of the nineteenth century which undermined and destroyed the very basis of socialism, as it undermined and destroyed the very basis of every political philosophy and of every world-order. Liberalism is a product of occidentalism which still lurks in parliaments and calls itself democracy.

To bring this German socialism to birth is not the task of Germany’s Third Empire.

This New Socialism must be the foundation of Germany’s Third Empire.