What is a National Revolutionary?

Jürgen Schwab

Jürgen Schwab talks about the necessity of clarifying a frequently misinterpreted term and the importance of the nation-state.

A dazzling term that is rarely questioned in nationalist journalism is “national revolution.” Revolutionary nationalists, National Socialists, National Bolsheviks, national communists — these groups and more can be (mis)interpreted as “national revolutionary.”

Armin Mohler defined the “national revolutionaries” — alongside the “young conservatives,” the Völkische (ethno-nationalists), the Bündische (alliance movements), and the Landvolk movement (rural people’s movement) — as one of the five main groups of the “Conservative Revolution,” which, however, did not exist under this collective term during the author’s period of study, namely the 1920s and 1930s. At that time, the term “New Nationalism” was commonly used, but it was no longer considered appropriate after the war, leading Mohler to replace it in his dissertation with “Conservative Revolution.” The national revolutionaries of the interwar period would likely have strongly opposed being redefined as “conservative revolutionaries.”

Apart from historical examples, what does “national revolutionary” mean today? Fundamentally, “national revolutionaries” seem to believe that in a particular political situation, the common good of their people can only be permanently secured if a revolution overcomes and reverses the prevailing conditions. A “revolutionary” attitude generally consists of the desire to overturn the existing power structures. “Power structures” do not refer merely to a change of parties or personnel at the top of the state but rather to a questioning of the political system itself.

A true national revolutionary, who does not merely use “national revolutionary” as a trendy marketing label, is by no means loyal to the prevailing political order. If they were, they would not be revolutionary. This does not need to be the case. Being “revolutionary” must not be an end in itself. In a state that serves the interests of its own people, an original national revolutionary can abandon his “revolutionary” stance and become an ordinary citizen. This makes it clear that the definition of “national revolutionary” cannot bypass state theory. The question of the state is particularly crucial in a time when there is no sovereign nation-state.

If the national revolutionary intent lies in reversing the power structures, then today, regarding the Federal Republic of Germany (BRD), almost everything fundamentally opposed to the federal democratic order could be considered “revolutionary”: a real democracy, a hereditary monarchy, a rule by the nobility, a communist party dictatorship, a fascist and National Socialist party dictatorship, a medieval feudal system, and much more. A one-party dictatorship, especially a National Socialist one, would today, since we have a parliamentary multi-party dictatorship in Germany, merely be a pseudo-alternative to the prevailing liberal-capitalist system as it would only replace the plural of party dictatorship with the singular. According to the author of these lines, Germany should introduce a mixed constitution supported by the people, consisting of direct democratic, aristocratic, presidential, and corporatist elements.

Thus, “national revolution” and the state idea are inseparable. The most well-known German national revolutionary of the interwar period, Ernst Niekisch, was, for example, an unwavering advocate of the (Prussian) state idea. As early as 1918, even before the end of World War One, Niekisch spoke in his article “The German People and Their State” of the idea that “the fate of the state is the fate of the people.”

Niekisch justified this from the logic of German history: Since the early Middle Ages, he saw in the “German character” a “peculiar trait,” namely the urge towards the “general, formless, unlimited” on the one hand, and the tendency towards “self-restriction to the narrowest and most personal” on the other. It was always this dialectic between the “urge towards the particular, personal, and self-restrictive” and the “counterplay,” the striving for the general, “towards cosmopolitanism,” that kept German history in motion.

For a long time, the Germans did not find their state between liberal individualism and Christian-Roman universalism — until Prussia put an end to this condition. Now, Germany could also temporarily participate as a legal entity in the concert of world powers (through the Prussian state idea). This was important, as history, according to Niekisch, taught that states in international politics behaved like “living individuals”; “they act like organic entities, pursuing purposes, performing deeds, suffering fates, striving for recognition,” and the only law that applies here is the “will to live” of nation-states.

Today, there are anarchists — such as Berlin’s Peter Töpfer — who, starting from the 19th century, claim that the nation-state is a matter for the bourgeoisie. In contrast, Niekisch clarified in 1925, as editor-in-chief of the social democratic magazine Firn, the still relevant connection between the state’s protective community and the socialist interests of the working class. In his essay “The Path of the German Working Class to the State,” he called on the SPD (Social Democratic Party) to embody the spirit of resistance of the German people against Western imperialism. This meant abandoning the Marxist doctrine of the class state and returning to Lassalle: either the “denial of the state, which condemns it to insignificance,” or “the clear decision to become the most skilled instrument of state policy.” In this sense, today’s national revolutionaries should reverse the slogan of the “fatherless fellows,” which around 1900 was hurled at the social democrats and socialists by big capital and big landowners. For, at least, big capital today needs neither a fatherland nor a national state for its profit maximization and can do well in a “global world.” Even Niekisch saw the state idea betrayed by conservative elites and the liberal bourgeoisie, which is why he assigned the task of creating the German state to the working class. In his essay “The Political Space of German Resistance,” he wrote:

Since 1918, things in Germany have been moving towards a point where the necessities of the state come into irreconcilable conflict with the necessities of bourgeois society, where one has to choose between the state and bourgeois society. Since then, there has only been the citizen or the German; the German citizen has become a hopeless contradiction in itself. Bourgeois German politics is no longer feasible; it inevitably leads to bourgeois betrayal of Germany. For reasons of self-preservation, the German citizen must become a pan-European; in order to continue existing, they must incorporate Germany into pan-Europe. Bourgeois society, Western culture, and the Versailles state are, since 1918, different facets of the same reality; the true meaning of this reality is the subjugation of Germany and the exploitation of the German people. German politics, which aims to meet the essential needs of the German people, can only be anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist, and anti-Western; if it is not, it inevitably plays into the hands of France.

One would only need to replace Versailles with Maastricht, pan-Europe with the European Union, and France with the USA, and Niekisch would still be relevant today. His position is particularly timely in the age of globalization, which is nothing more than the powerlessness and dissolution of nation-states. Everything else commonly associated with globalization is rather side effects: the exploitation of nature, social poverty, the economic and cultural imperialism of the USA, and the global partisan struggle as a response to the inability of nation-states to act — in other words, the inability to wage war against the impositions of the pax Americana. Those who ideologically want to support peoples in the fight against US imperialism must recommend states that can defend themselves, economically (through tariffs) and militarily when Uncle Sam once again wants to kick in the national door, claiming “democracy and human rights” but really meaning “open markets” for US products and international resource plundering.

In 1926, Ernst Niekisch wrote in his essay “Revolutionary Politics,” “German politics, if it wants to be both German and political, can have no other goal than the restoration of German independence, the liberation from imposed shackles, and the re-establishment of a great, influential world position.” This “restoration of German independence” hinges on the concept of the state. In his 1931 essay “The Law of Potsdam,” Niekisch advocated the “Prussian idea of rule,” which includes the “rule of order.” In this sense, the sovereign nation-state is to be understood as a spiritual counterpoint to globalization, where the common good — especially the welfare state and environmental protection — finds its place, as increasingly recognized by critical left-wing opponents of globalization, such as the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.

However, those who fundamentally negate the nation-state have already abandoned the self-determination of peoples as a political goal and are already caught up in the vortex of globalization. Mere declarations of grassroots democracy, regionalism, self-determination, environmental protection, and social justice — following the slogan “think globally, act locally” — do nothing to change this. They are only meant to calm the bad, actually system-compliant conscience. Those who do not question the system of global disenfranchisement of peoples as states from the ground up, in reality, belong to global America, its “Western community of values,” and its unified civilization.

Even grassroots democracy at the local level, according to the principle of subsidiarity, and regionalism, as theorized by thinkers like Alain de Benoist and Henning Eichberg, cannot be realized without this representative and its institutions. The size of a state does not matter: whether the French wish to remain unified or if the Bretons, Basques, and Corsicans want to secede and establish their own nation-states, it does not change the fundamental principle of the nation-state. Labeling this as “regionalism” only semantically discriminates against the legitimate nationalisms of oppressed peoples. “One people — one state” is the fundamental demand of nationalism.

Which issues and which social groups, on the other hand, could have an interest in the general interest of the state? Environmental protection and, above all, the welfare state — which only find their real organizational guarantee in the nation-state. In a mere liberal society, neither environmental protection nor state-organized social insurance is economically viable. They are just an alibi for the bad conscience of, for example, the wife of the chairman of the board, who buys expensive goods in health food stores, looks down on the little people who go to Aldi and Norma,¹ and throws five euros into the hat of a beggar on the street, but fundamentally supports the capitalist system with her material existence. In this respect, Paul A. Weber’s picture titled “Only through the Citizen Leads the Way to Germany’s Freedom” is appropriate in the current situation.

The nation-state is the only antidote to globalization. There cannot be a “good” and “just” form of globalization, as some “anti-globalization” activists suggest. Therefore, we should clearly reject all tempting stateless pseudo-alternatives: grassroots democracy, regionalism, and anarchism. There is nothing wrong with the principle of local and regional political subsidiarity within the framework of the nation-state. We should only oppose a supposed “diversity at the grassroots” where it is used as a spearhead against national unity — by promising “self-determination” where no state sovereignty is intended. Instead, we should, in the spirit of Ernst Niekisch, begin our resistance against global Americanization by choosing the German nation-state, the German Reich.²

(translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister)

1. German supermarket chains.

2. Ernst Niekisch: “The Prussian uprising has ignited; all hearts in which the German element is rooted look to Prussia with hope and longing, that it may create the German Reich.”