The German Eagle on a Red Flag

Karl Otto Paetel and German National Bolshevism

Here is the basic outline of this book analysis, each chapter of the book The National Bolshevist Manifesto will be broken down into sections like so:

-            Nationalism

o   The Task

o   Ten Years of ‘National Bolshevism’

o   Young Nationalism

o   War and Peace

o   The Nation as the Highest Value

o   Marxism and the National Question

o   Prussia as a Principle

o   The Class Struggle as a Nationalist Demand

o   Versailles

o   Revolutionary Foreign Policy

o   The New Faith

-            Opposition to Fascism

o   Reformed National Socialism?

o   The Fascist Mistake

o   The Historical Error of the NSDAP

o   Council State or Corporate State?

-            Socialism

o   Nationalist Communism

o   The Face of National Communism

o   Why not KPD?

o   Happiness or Freedom?

o   Socialism

-            Position on the Peasantry

o   Rural Revolution?

o   The Peasant Question in Germany

Nationalism

This section titled nationalism will explain the nationalist tendencies of the book which are very prevalent. Karl Otto Paetel’s nationalism was entirely distinct from the trend of bourgeois nationalism which wanted to retain every part of the historical enterprise that is the nation. His nationalism focused on a palingenetic rebirth of the nation where the new leadership of the proletariat would replace the leadership of the bourgeoisie. As well as recognizing the fact that Germany under Versailles and the Young treaty had become nothing more than a debt colony, his program of nationalism, therefore, was premised on providing a homeland for the homeland-less.

“Germany has to fight today for the freedom of its unfree-born children, for a future home for its homeless, for the future hopeless generations.

But not only that. In German territory will the vision of our century be shaped. Here shall the formal principle of Mitteleuropa* have to be proven. The fight for the sovereignty of the German lands will decide the fight for Europe’s future, the rise or fall of the West. In German hearts and German minds today the forces of the East are already feuding with the principles of Western thought. The solution will have to be: to find one’s own principle.

In the body of the German people [deutschen Volkskörper], within the German territories, the decisive battle will be fought between world mercantilist economy and socialist statehood. Here the class struggle between proletarian dynamism and bourgeois self-reliance will be fulfilled.” – Karl Otto Paetel, The Task, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here Paetel extricates the emerging German national vision from Western thought and premises it on a proto-Duginist position that one’s homeland must find its own principle in the face of western modernity, reconciling the national Dasein and traditions of the past with the march towards the future. 

“The task that lies before the young generation of political Germans is one of decades. To solve it means giving a new, creative meaning to that old misused concept of the German imperial world-mission; that on the third attempt (Moeller van den Bruck’s expression already carries this meaning) the German nation-building which was unsuccessful in the Ottonenreich and Staufferreich, as well as in the Bismarckian Reich, will become a reality.

To break away from this task means gambling away the future of Eternal Germany, shifting the Switzerlandization of the German Volk into its final stage.

The name of the task is, becoming a Nation.

Its guarantor is called, Socialism.

The path to it: Revolution.

Only those called to this task from within will understand what it is about, alone and above all: to open the door to tomorrow for a proletarianized Volk; to break all its bonds – chaos, adversity, affirmation of victimhood, class, estate, granting it personal happiness – in order that reality for the German people shall be:

The nation as the highest value.”  - Karl Otto Paetel, The Task, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here he lays out that the task of German National Bolshevism is to provide a form of German statehood for a greater Germany that the Ottonenreich, Staufferreich, and Bismarckian Reich, couldn’t. He refers to the threat of Switzerlandization of the German Volk which refers to the fact of Switzerland where groups of no common ethnogenesis share the same nation. The task of National Bolshevism is for Germany to become a nation which is guaranteed by socialism and can only be achieved with revolution, therefore Karl Otto Paetel’s position is a revolutionary nationalist one and not an orthodox Marxist position.

Now that we have addressed the task of National Bolshevism, let’s address its origins and history as a political movement in Germany. 

“Wherever in Young-Germany today the deathly stillness of official politics is alarmed by an underground tremor – wherever the unconditionality of nationalist youth calls into question the old values of their fathers, over whose funeral-shrouds the elderly wail with spread hands, registering the (still emotional) socialist demand of the national-revolutionary young bourgeoisie – wherever the proletariat seems to recognize that only the German eagle on red flags will create a Fatherland for them which bears the national fervour of those without a Homeland - there does one see in the bourgeois newspapers a watchword:

National Bolshevism!

But what historical fact first arose in Germany to trigger the political movement meant by that phrase?” – Karl Otto Paetel, The Years of National Bolshevism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

National Bolshevism was used as a buzzword in Weimar Germany by the bourgeois press to describe the convergence of a young national-revolutionary petite bourgeois intellectual class with the proletarianized homeland-less represented by the mass class party of the KPD. We know now the origin of the term, but what are the historical facts that drove the movement and who are the individuals responsible for formulating it?

“The first truly National Bolshevist document was the ‘Political Testament’ of Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, in which he set down the belief that a German radical socialism must take in hand, beneath the banners of socialism, a policy of freedom against Western imperialism and capitalism.” - Karl Otto Paetel, The Years of National Bolshevism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

While this might have been the first National Bolshevist document, there are historical facts corresponding to the proliferation of National Bolshevism:

“Brockdorff-Rantzau’s refusal to sign the Treaty of Versailles, Lenin’s offer to the People’s Deputies to support the resistance on the Rhine – these were the political realities behind it. The second National Bolshevist wave was the policy of fraternization pursued by the Hamburg ‘National-Communist circles’ under Wolffheim-Laufenberg (alongside and within the KAPD, after their expulsion from the KPD), with parts of General Lettow-Vorbeck’s Freikorps in Hamburg and other cities. Later there were the efforts in Munich to come to a policy of joint action between the communist Thomas, völkisch Police-President Poehner, and the fellows of the Freikorps Oberland, attempting such organising in Thuringia, in the East Prussian border-guard, and yes, among the Kapp soldiers.” - Karl Otto Paetel, The Years of National Bolshevism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

The national communist circles of Wolffheim-Laufenberg are the most overt national-bolshevist tendency, but what is often glossed over is the elements of the Freikorps who broke with the Kapp putsch as well as the mummies of the Wilhelmine regime. In the footnotes we find a description of this.

“In the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 16th, a detachment of soldiers from the Ehrhardt-Brigade arrives at the Reich Chancellery seeking to be received by Kapp. When they are not admitted, they express their discontent in heated words: they have no more desire to continue their involvement in the swindle, since the seizure of the assets of profiteers has not occurred; they have not tagged along to set in place of Ebert a new Wilhelmine government; from Kapp they’ve had a gutful. When it becomes known among the troops that the detachment has not been admitted, they are seized with a tremendous uproar. The last troops which still hold loyal to Kapp erupt in white-hot mutiny. Immediately the shop-stewards of all contingents are mustered together. The assembly takes place towards midday in a hall of the Reich Chancellery, while in an opposite hall the helpless mummies of the old regime are pensively racking their empty brains. In the soldiers’ assembly, the indignation of the shop-stewards, who feel blatantly abused, is vented with unrestrained force. Added to that is the impression that they are situated in the midst of a mousetrap, from which the ring-leaders of the Putsch would certainly know of no way out. All who speak give speeches against the Wilhelmine officers and against the old regime. Under stormy applause, the Ehrhardt-people now call out to one of the national-socialist leaders in the hall: ‘We helped the Reaction get back on its feet again, we must make it clear to the workers that we are not against them, but want to fight with them.’ It is agreed to present their demands to General Lüttwitz. At this moment about 15 young officers rush into the hall, slung with hand-grenades from head to toe. One of them springs atop a table and calls out: ‘Comrades, who is in favour of the military taking charge? Who is in favour of fumigating the hall next door? Who is in favour of doing it the way we thought it was going to be done?’ And to all three questions there follows a unanimous, stormy applause. With rifles inversed, the formations that had just risen against the Kapp regime now move out of the city, where they come across armed workers in Friedenau to whom they shout: ‘We’ve broken with Kapp! We’re leaving!’ But already shots are being fired from the rows of armed workers. The soldiers also tear their guns around and return fire. The carnage begins.” - Karl Otto Paetel, Footnotes, The Years of National Bolshevism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

This description gives details of an alternative current within the Kapp putsch where Freikorp soldiers were dissatisfied with the aim of the Putsch in replacing Ebert with a Wilhimine government and instead wanted the military to take power. Unfortunately, the envisioned unity between the workers and the Kapp mutineers would never take place as when the Kapp mutineers arrived in Friedenau, they came across armed workers who started firing immediately so likewise the soldiers returned fire. Karl Otto Paetel gives more description of failed attempts at unity between communists and nationalists in Germany during the early 1920s.

“After Schlageter’s execution in 1923, Karl Radek on the 20th of June delivered to the Central Committee of the KPD his famous speech titled “Schlageter, the Wanderer into the Void”, which called on the honest nationalists to integrate into the front of red revolution which alone would fight for national freedom, as the Ruhrkampf was being betrayed yet again by the bourgeoisie. The debate between the communists Radek & Fröhlich and the nationalists Reventlow & Moeller van den Bruck over “going a bit of the way together” was thereupon initiated in the ‘Roten Fahne’, the völkisch ‘Reichswart’ of Count Reventlow, and the ‘Ring’ of Baron von Gleichen; likewise that too eventually failed.” - Karl Otto Paetel, The Years of National Bolshevism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

National Bolshevism reached maturity in the later years of the 1920s with National Bolshevist journals such as The Socialist Nation being published.

“In 1929 these concepts, which had in the meantime become worked out ever more clearly and concretely, were revived again by the other side – this time by the right.

First in the Jungen Volk, then in the Kommenden – two newspapers of the national revolutionary youth – were National Bolshevist demands discussed. In a special edition which committed itself to the class struggle, to the complete socialization of resources, and to a Greater German council-state, the National Bolsheviks for the first time presented themselves to the general public; Ascension Day 1930 thus saw the ‘Group of Social-Revolutionary Nationalists’ establish themselves around the National Bolshevist theses and the foundational work, “Social-Revolutionary Nationalism” [“Sozialrevolutionärer Nationalismus”].12 From here the other national revolutionary groups became more and more infected with this tendency. The Socialist Nation became the national-communist mouthpiece.

Such a ‘National Bolshevist’ position is today no longer so surprising as it was years ago. Ever more circles of people, especially of the younger generation, are today of anti-capitalist disposition, are through their mindset ‘National Bolsheviks’ even if they do not use the term. And where does one still find youth today who, turning their attentive eyes on their era, on the unemployment offices and working-districts, are still willing to justify and defend a social order that prevents 95% of the German people having any share at all in what they’re supposed to call their Fatherland?” - Karl Otto Paetel, The Years of National Bolshevism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

The more matured National Bolshevism did not come from the Wolffheim-Laufenberg attempt at drawing nationalists towards the ranks of red revolution but rather later on in the 1920s from nationalists who were instinctually drawn towards socialism and formulated “social revolutionary nationalism” and would work alongside but not within the KPD taking the form of the Group of Social Revolutionary Nationalists whose content was both ardently socialist and nationalist simultaneously.

Now that the history of German national bolshevism is laid out, we will move on to the chapter “Young Nationalism” which deals with the trend of nationalist youth in Germany. Paetel does come from this trend of revolutionary nationalist youth as he is a petite bourgeois intellectual who was pursuing a degree in history and sociology before he was arrested and kicked out of school for attending anti-Versailles Treaty protests of which both NSDAP and KPD members would attend. So, in this chapter, he is essentially talking about himself and the GSRN milieu.

“The youth in Germany are today faced with a concrete decision: Either jeunesse dorée, to be the last contingent of yesterday’s age, in clear acknowledgement of the hopeless situation of the bourgeoisie who have failed politically in every circumstance (the shameless capitulation of the capitalists in the Ruhrkampf before General Dégoutte at the moment state subsidies were cut off is but one of many examples); or else, as socialists, to be the guardians of the original values of German history and even of bourgeois culture, standing in solidarity with the proletariat in their class-struggle without sentimental ‘Proletkult’. There is no compromise solution.

This decision does not cut off German youth from the history of their people. And the facts, around which every political decision must be oriented today, make the choice clear enough:

The lost war, doomed due to its entire structure justifying un-völkisch politics(three-class franchise*), due to the bourgeoisie’s corruption amidst the commercial tumult – this made us into the most profoundly anti-bourgeois.

The lost revolution, doomed due to the half-measures and lack of instinct on the part of its leaders, lost out of blindness towards the national task of radical upheaval – this made us all the more revolutionary.

The lost sovereignty of Germany, its doom guaranteed by the liberal-capitalist Weimar Republic and sustained through its subordination to Paris and Wall Street – this made us unequivocal nationalists.

The lie of the Volksgemeinschaft, a lie which defamed the process of renewing the body of the Volk [Volkskörper] and was embodied in the new state’s people-destroying [Volkszerstörend] striving for power – this made of us fighting-comrades in the class-struggle.

The hopeless fate of all post-war generations, the recognition that this fate is contingent on an anti-grass-roots, propertied-bourgeois, capitalist order – this made us into anti-capitalists, made us into socialists.” - Karl Otto Paetel, Young Nationalism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Paetel gives expression to the fact that although socialism will establish a new socialist being which will give rise to a new revolutionary consciousness, there is a sublation of the past at play where the new socialist regime will act as custodial guardians of the old heritage of the nation and even the high bourgeois values. This has been the general experience of socialist revolutions in the nations in which they take hold. The old capitalist being is transformed into a new socialist one, and a new consciousness arises that incorporates elements of the old while expunging other detrimental elements. The greatest example of this is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which has integrated into its national proletarian consciousness elements of Korean folk religion (as expressed by the existence of the Chondoist Chongu Party) as well as the petite-bourgeois values of Korean anarchist Kim Chwa-Chin and his self-reliance principle which is found in the teachings of Juche.

Through a series of political failures of the ruling German bourgeoisie to secure sovereignty for Germany and the so-called revolution of the National Assembly, which was doomed by social democratic half-measures, the young German nationalists would be pushed into a socialist revolutionary nationalist position. To Paetel and the GSRN, Germany was nothing but a colony of the Entente and its liberal bourgeois plutocracy. This fate of post-war Germany pushed the class-struggle on national and social lines, the nationalist aim of severing Germany from the grasp of the liberal-democratic bourgeoisie of the entente and the socialist aim of expropriating the comprador German bourgeoisie merged into a National Bolshevist position which promised discarding the Versailles treaty, refusal to pay war debts, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, a socialist economy, and an alliance with the USSR against the entente.

Paetel gives us his thoughts on the Bundische groups, which were associations of young men engaged in what basically amounted to boy scouts’ activities. These Bundische groups all had their own flags, rituals, beliefs, theories, and principles.

“Unquestionably, the Bündische willingness – as demonstrated by the Jugendbünde, the Freikorps, and so on – to subordinate oneself and one’s own freedom to the ‘We’, to the self-selected ‘collective’, is not to be underestimated. It is pre-political rather than a fact of politics; ultimately it is a pedagogical category.

The Bündische ideal is not a political principle, it does not have to commit itself to a concrete manifestation in German politics. All the theories that the ‘Bündische Front’ can achieve state power tomorrow and will be able to transfer the laws of collective life from young people to the state order are indeed beautiful, but are regardless just romantic utopianism.

The true fronts work differently.

The Youth Movement has many accomplishments. Its educational aspects are undeniable today and can no longer be undone. Politically, however, it has failed all along the line.

In order to evaluate German politics correctly, the Youth Movement has to learn one thing: the significance of the Germany of big cities, the unemployment office, mass actions.

“The Youth Movement is dead! – Long live politics!”

This slogan, which years before closed out a leadership conference of one of the largest Bünde (although there were never any real consequences resulting from it), must be taken seriously at last by every single “Bündische” type.

Then, and only then, will power and success for the whole be pried from the substantial force which undoubtedly exists there.” - Karl Otto Paetel, Young Nationalism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here Paetel says that the Bundische ideal is good for pedagogy, meaning the art of teaching and instructing the youth, but cannot be useful for political purposes. He also criticizes its aim of transferring the laws of the collective life of the young bundists into the state for being romantic utopianism while still having some beauty to it. It is necessary, therefore, to move from the realm of outdoor escapism and simulated collective life into the dark, gritty reality of German politics, hence the slogan “The Youth Movement is dead! – Long live politics!”. A true political youth front does not function like a boys’ scouts club; rather, it is active among the big cities, at the unemployment office, and through mass actions.

In the last excerpt from Young Nationalism, Paetel describes the task that the young nationalists must take, and that is the task of organizing with mass proletarian parties.  

“But there is a mission for young nationalism, particularly the post-War youth, which – after over ten years of the Front-generation’s struggling in vain – only they are able to resolve: to plant the flags of the nation in the camp of the class-struggle, to pass on by the word of mouth the watchword “Germany” in the Heerbann of the revolution, to form alongside the formations of the proletarian parties an order of nationalist, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist revolutionaries.

To establish the focal point of immortal Germanness in the camp of today’s Fatherland-less, in readiness of the morrow’s duties: that is the task of

Young Revolutionary Nationalism.

Only there can the questions which face Germany’s youth today be answered.

We do not consider following Oswald Spengler’s counsel: “Endure the lost position of a sinking world, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a gate in Pompeii, who died at his post because, during the eruption of Vesuvius, they had forgotten to relieve him.”’ - Karl Otto Paetel, Young Nationalism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Paetel explains here that the mission for young nationalism is to join forces with the class struggle and to plant the flag of the nation there. To make the class struggle into a national struggle and not to be fanatically loyal to the old order of Germany as to be that Roman soldier who stood there during the eruption of Vesuvius and did not endeavour to escape as his masters certainly must have.

Now we will move on to the chapter War and Peace.

“War and peace can never in themselves be judged, per se. The denial or affirmation of their value and status is decided only in relation to the requirements of völkisch life [völkischen Lebens], the national will to self-determination, and those unique personal decisions that affect the national destiny which dominates the lives of individuals. Those unwilling to see and address every problem from the perspective of their individual experience will only be able to pass such a judgement when their relationship to this aspect is clear. War can only be approved of when it is definitively established that it is essential and unavoidable for the future, freedom, and viability of a Volk, only if its squandering of the Volk’s substance [Volkssubstanz] is justified by a greater and more secure future for the Volksgemeinschaft itself.

But a Volk that, as in Germany today, is merely an object of the politics of other states, can know only one alternative: first freedom, then peace.

 A war for the sake of freedom always receives – and the invention of gas weapons has changed nothing from the times in which death was brought by sword and spear – its inner sanctification. But never will nationalism itself be able to frame the struggle between peoples in such a fashion; it is earnest in attributing the supreme nation [Absolutum Nation] as the source of everything that it does. “War is the continuation of politics by other means” – this quote from Clausewitz demonstrates that the question of the affirmation or rejection of war cannot be posed abstractly, but must derive from the meaning, the legitimacy of politics – whose “continuation” it is. Only that communicates the essentials.” - Karl Otto Paetel, War and Peace, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

War and peace can never in themselves be judged as abstract values. Rather, war and peace must be judged according to the requirements of volkischen Lebens or the national will to self-determination. War is a measure that a people must take when it becomes necessary for the future freedom and viability of a people, and the temporary squandering of the Volk’s substance is justified by a greater and more secure future for the Volksgemeinschaft itself. A people, however, that are merely the object of the politics of other states can only know one alternative to the imposed state of peace. That alternative is first freedom and then peace, even through means of war. While war for the sake of freedom always receives its inner sanctification, nationalism won’t be able to frame wars between peoples in this fashion as it must relate all its actions to the supreme nation. As evidenced by the quote from Clausewitz that war is the continuation of politics by other means, it must be ascertained that war can only be accepted or rejected on the basis of the legitimacy of politics and the question of whose continuation we are talking about. In the next excerpt we see that Paetel rejects the abstract love of war posed by Ernst Junger.

“Dr. Kurt Hiller*, for example, accuses me of letting the “frivolous” position of Ernst Jünger (of whom I quoted something without refuting it) not be given a sufficiently sharp differentiation.

Ernst Jünger is and will remain a beloved example of the daring ‘new nationalists’. He has given us, as the author of The Adventurous Heart, an eternal breviary of the nationalist faith. But his rationale for war in “fire and blood”, in which he expressly rejects sourcing the justification for war from anywhere (not even in the nation) but instead derives its raison d’être from the unique, great, intoxicating opportunities for adventure it provides in fulfilling the laws of the earth – we leave no doubt that this must be rejected. Just as little can we accept Jünger’s much too non-committal political demand for the state, which should be “social, defensive, and authoritarian”. The question of war and peace, of which the revolutionary pacifist senses “no hint of a distant sound” in our country, cannot be posed in absolute terms at all, and can only be answered in the context of “What for?”’ – Karl Otto Paetel, War and Peace, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

While Karl Otto Paetel is a sincere admirer of Ernst Junger, he makes it clear that his rationale for a war in “fire and blood” whose justification only comes from the abstract love of war and the opportunities for adventure it brings must be rejected. A National Communist Germany would have a sensible foreign policy and its aptitude for war is measured on the basis of “what for?”, an ultima ratio decision. This is a charge both against the revolutionary warmonger and the revolutionary pacifist. As for the charge against revolutionary pacifism, Paetel writes in the footnotes:

“Only one response would be possible towards such ‘pacifists’ as F.W. Förster, who deigns to write: (12th Dec., 1930) “The Treaty of Versailles… not in the least an act of revenge… must not be undermined!” and (24th July, 1923) “ I wish someone had marched on Berlin… Oh, the French policy is but a half-measure… Someone must bring an end to this pig-sty!” To specify what that response might be would make one liable for the threat of murder.” ’ – Karl Otto Paetel, War and Peace, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

…I think I’ll let this quote speak for itself, it does a great job at that.

Anyways let’s continue.

“As national-revolutionaries we stand for the nation as the “ultimate value”. Its existence and sovereignty is the political criterion. Only from this position can everything that happens be appraised, even the question of war and peace. Carl Schmitt has taught us one thing:

“For as long as a people exists in the political sphere, this people must, even if only in the most extreme case – and whether this point has been reached has to be decided by it – determine by itself the distinction of friend and enemy. Therein resides the essence of its political existence.”

Schmitt, the author of one of the best books on ‘political romanticism’, builds on Adam Müller’s† thesis: “Eternal peace cannot be the ideal of politics. Peace and war should complement each other like movement and repose. Mutual relations between states are the pre-requisites for growth and prosperity.” That means simply that the sovereignty of the socialist nation is the only benchmark according to which the actions of one revolutionary socialist state can be assessed against another. The Young Socialist Professor Heller‡ admits this, for example, when he avows the “national self-determination of the German people” to be the immutable goal of our “contemporary foreign policy decisions”.41 The implicit respect between socialist nations excludes neither the necessity nor the possibility of military confrontation. Choosing to position oneself to others as friend or foe connotes that, as Carl Schmitt correctly infers:

“War is only the most extreme consequence of enmity. It does not have to be common, normal, something ideal, or desirable. But it must nevertheless remain a real possibility for as long as the concept of the enemy has meaning.”

And thus this notion of the Enemy will not be able to vanish even in a socialist aggregation of free peoples, so long as state-sovereignty is demanded, so long as its safeguarding through living-space and its own laws of life [durch Lebensraum und eigene Lebensgesetze] must always be guaranteed anew.

Even among those of us outside this aggregation, no one sees in war simply an alarm clock, a means of awakening creative impulses. Not personal opportunities for adventure but the collectivity’s law of life determines the decision. Revolutionary nationalism thinks politically, not ideologically. Hence that is why it does not believe, so long as the concept of the political becomes a reality from the sovereignty of the state, that the decision by a people to be the friend – or enemy – of another can be done away with.” – Karl Otto Paetel, War and Peace, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

The national revolutionary position holds that the nation is the ultimate value, and that the political criterion is its existence and sovereignty. Only from this position can war and peace be appraised. According to Carl Schmitt a people, while they exist in the political sphere, must determine its existence by the friend and enemy distinction. This is why he remarks further on that the implicit respect between socialist nations excludes neither the necessity nor the possibility of military confrontation. As Schmitt explains war does not have to be common, normal, or desirable in order to be a real possibility so long as the friend/enemy distinction and therefore the concept of the political is the reality for the sovereignty of the state, even in a socialist aggregation of free peoples.

“That also means, ultimately, affirming the existence of war as ultima ratio: not as a ‘value in and of itself’, but as the last resort for the safeguarding of state sovereignty.

The acid test will be the – today outdated – question of space [Raumfrage]. The socialist state, which unlike in capitalism will not artificially restrict the biological power of a Volk (abortion), will some day find itself facing a surplus of humanity – ‘People Without Space’**. What then?

The Marxist answer that, as a consequence of amicable agreement, the population surplus could be settled in other, less populated parts of the Earth – perhaps Siberia – contradicts utterly the nationalist conception of the inseparability of the völkisch organism.

Here then will this ultima ratio be demonstrated: either the Volk freely receives its Lebensraum, or it takes it for itself.

Even a socialist nation will here make a decision: friend or foe.

Highest above all is the Volk’s right to exist.

Even in socialism.

For everything that is required of us happens for the sake of Germany’s eternal meaning, whose manifestations change, but whose core is immutable; the state of the Germans, as a generational succession of German people (one of Adam Müller’s true, basic principles), is a state of fate.” – Karl Otto Paetel, War and Peace, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, the concept of living space plays a crucial issue for the possibility of military confrontations in a socialist world. Without artificial caps on the population rate, such as abortion, a socialist state may run into an excess of humanity and must acquire more land. Here, the ultima ratio as a disposition towards war will be demonstrated; either the people receive their living space, or they take it for themselves.

Now we will move on to the chapter The Nation as the ‘Highest Value’.

“In a passage from the previously-discussed article by Hiller (we remain with this topic because it is symptomatic of the dispute with the ‘Left’ in general), it is said of the national-revolutionaries that they “come over to us from nationalism as something that needs to be overcome”; elsewhere, approvingly, he says that: “they don’t relinquish one jot of the ‘golden core’ of their national sentiments (something alien to those with crippled souls).” These two quotes appear to be contradictory, but in reality they are quite related. Hiller, like Marx, respects the nation as existent today, and is even willing to concede to the continued existence of its ‘golden core’, i.e. its cultural aspects, language, customs, sense of homeland; however, exactly as Lenin so clearly said in his essays on the ‘National Question’, parallel to the withering away of the state there is to be an amalgamation of the nations into a higher unity.

There is also Jaurès’s view*, which does not exhaust the political meaning: “The nation is that treasury of human genius and progress, and it would be wicked for the proletariat to smash those precious vessels of human culture.”

The concept of sovereignty is alien to him, as it is alien to Lenin and Stalin, in an otherwise superb analysis of the nature of the nation.” – Karl Otto Paetel, The Nation as the ‘Highest Value’, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Paetel remarks that while the Marxist analysis has a superb conception of the nature of the nation, it lacks the notion of sovereignty. Namely a sovereign nation must have authority over its territories and politics, for a nation to remain sovereign therefore it must have its own independent state.

“But we know that there is an innate meaning ingrained within folkdom; that here, as Ernst Jünger formulates it, is the ‘magical zero-point’ from which politics and economy, life and form derive their order. We know that ‘central value’ of the nation, as the fateful expression of this völkisch community, does indeed abide within all material forms of manifestation, that nation-building itself is also a very concrete affair. But we also know that this ‘ultimate value’ has an existence in itself which is not worth affirming today, but is reactionary and worth overcoming tomorrow.

It is beyond the determinations of space and time when exactly racial, geopolitical, economic, and other components of the Volk emerged, but at some point something ‘happened’ amongst a group of people and they became the historical phenomenon that is the German Volk (in Germany likely as a result of specific incidents between the six tribes: Franconian, Swabian, Bavarian, Thuringian, Saxon, Frisian).

Spengler has rightly determined that peoples [Völker] are born – i.e. they can appear and perish in historical terms, but never suffer an ‘evolution’ and suddenly become something else tomorrow, like a ‘human race’. Lagarde’s‡ expression: “Every Volk is a thought of God,” makes it clear that this faith in the fateful basis of völkisch existence [völkischen Dasein] is beyond discussion on a purely rational level.

It is therefore a misconception on the part of Marxists when they frequently deem our political ‘radicalization’ to be the sign of an evolution towards their position, that one day we shall also overcome our today somewhat troublesome metaphysical childishness and thus our ‘idolatry’ of the nation.

That belief is the very basis of our being. End of discussion.” – Karl Otto Paetel, The Nation as the ‘Highest Value’, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Paetel explains the magical zero-point in which politics, the economy, life, and form derive their order. For the German people, something happened amongst the six tribes, and following this, the racial, geopolitical, economic, and other components of the Volk emerged. The central value of the nation does indeed abide within all material forms of manifestation, and nation-building itself is also a very concrete affair. However, the ultimate value contains aspects that are at the present time reactionary and worth overcoming in the future. Paetel agrees with Spengler when he says that peoples are born and can appear and perish in historical terms, but they never suffer an evolution and become something else in the future, such as a “human race”. The faith that every Volk is, in essence, a thought of God, meaning that each Volk arises through historical conditions and is subject to historical laws, forms the faith of Volkischen Dasein and thus is beyond discussion on a purely rational level. Therefore, the Marxists are mistaken when they see that the National Bolsheviks are on an evolutionary trend towards their position; rather, the belief in the nation forms the basis of their entire being.

Now we will move on to the chapter Marxism and the National Question

“That Lenin in any event saw this as a future goal is inarguable. He expressed it clearly and unambiguously: “It is with pride that we can say: at the First Congress we were in fact merely propagandists; we were only proclaiming our fundamental ideas among the world’s proletariat; we only issued the call to fight; we were merely asking where the people were who were capable of taking this path. Now the advanced proletariat is everywhere. Everywhere there is, albeit often poorly organized, a proletarian army, and if our international comrades will now help us to organize a united army, then nothing will prevent us from accomplishing our task. That task is the world proletarian revolution, the creation of a world Soviet republic.”

Trotsky, too, in his pamphlet “Against National Communism” clearly puts forward the slogan of the “United Soviet States of Europe”.

Or, as Lenin puts it: “The socialist movement cannot triumph within the old, national framework. It creates new, higher forms of human coexistence, in which the legitimate needs and progressive aspirations of the working masses of each nationality will, for the first time, be satisfied through international unity, provided existing national partitions are eliminated.”

Lenin further says: “In the era of imperialism, there can be no other salvation for the majority of the world’s nations than through revolutionary actions undertaken by the proletariat of the Great Powers, spreading beyond the bounds of nationality, smashing those boundaries, and overthrowing the international bourgeoisie. If this overthrow does not occur, the Great Powers will continue to exist, i.e. the oppression of nine-tenths of all nations in the world will remain. But if the bourgeoisie’s fall does occur, it will enormously accelerate the downfall of each and every national partition…”

In the Sessions of the 16th Congress (1930, June/July), Stalin expressed himself unequivocally on the issue of the future of national languages:

“But as far as the future prospects of national cultures and national languages are concerned, I have always been and will always remain of Leninist opinion that, at the time of socialism’s victory on a world scale where socialism will infuse and strengthen the way of life, national languages must merge into one common tongue; although this tongue will neither be Great-Russian nor German, but something new.”’ – Karl Otto Paetel, Marxism and the National Question, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Paetel points out that there is basic agreement between Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky that the goal is a borderless world communism, but as discussed earlier this project is unachievable because of the role of sovereignty as a factor of the nation. Even socialism in one country is conceived only as a stepping stone to this project of borderless world communism. In contrast to the dialectical materialist view that national partitions of the world economy must begin to disintegrate, Paetel draws a dialectical idealist view from Fichte to von Ranke.

“In contrast, a line of dialectical idealism can be drawn from Fichte through Hegel to von Ranke:

“The relationship of the individual to the Spirit of the people [Volksgeist] is that he appropriates this substantial existence, that this becomes his character and ability, that he may be something. For he finds the being of his own Volk as a wide, established, firm world before him, with which he has to incorporate himself.” (from Hegel’s Lectures). Or as Hegel formulated in his Foundations of the Philosophy of Right:

“The march of God in the world, that is what the state is; its reason is power, actualized as will. In considering the Idea of the state we must not have our eyes on particular states, nor particular institutions; instead one must consider the Idea, this actual God, by itself.”

 And Leopold von Ranke (Political Dialogues) states that:

“All the states in the world that count for something are suffused with their own special tendencies. It would be ridiculous to interpret them as little more than protection agencies for individuals who’ve banded together to protect their private property, for example. On the contrary, those tendencies are of a spiritual nature, and the character of all their fellow-citizens is thereby determined, indelibly imprinted upon them.”

Moeller van den Bruck refers to this avowal in his The Eternal Reich [“Das ewige Reich”]: “Every Volk embodies a special thought that belongs to it, just as it itself is an indivisible whole belonging to itself. It is born with this thought. With this thought it breaks away from the bosom of race and earth and hurls itself into historical space.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Marxism and the National Question, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

In the first excerpt from Hegel we understand the view that the individual appropriates the substantial existence from the spirit of the people or Volksgeist, transforming him from a primitive abstract individual to a social and historical concrete individual. The second views the state as reason in content, power in form, actualized as will or “the march of God in the world”. In considering this idea of the state, one must not have their eyes on particularities of spirit but rather the spirit in the abstract, the actual God by itself in isolation. In the excerpt by von Ranke, we understand that all the states in the world that count for something are suffused with their own special tendencies springing from the people, rather than being viewed as little more than protection agencies for private property, states have a spiritual and pedagogical character to them. This spiritual and pedagogical character is understood by the fact that states transform abstract individuals into social and historical concrete individuals or citizens. The excerpt by van den Bruck gives us insight into the idea of ethnos or ethnic logos, the view that each people embodies a special thought that belongs to it and that this special thought hurls it out of the world of primitive being into historical space.

What Paetel is referring to with these excerpts is that the state constitutes more than just a protection agency to defend property rights; rather, there is a spiritual aspect to statehood that springs from the special ideas of peoples that, so long as they exist this spiritual aspect of the state, will not wither away. The Marxist-Leninist stance on nations and the state is contradictory; therefore, on one hand, it stands for a withering away of the state and of national partitions but on the other supports national self-determination in a federalist structure. That in a future socialist world, there will be a withering away of statehood as a form of economic tutelage and social rule of men over men, or reason in content and power in form actualized as will, is undeniable. However, so long as we don’t become merged into one rootless cosmopolitan mass, as Stalin suggested before, there will be a heightening of the spiritual and pedagogical aspects of statehood transforming each ethnic logos into socialist consciousness or, as we can call it, a people’s logos.

“But Lenin quite clearly says the opposite in his articles on “The National Question”:

“Marxism is irreconcilable with nationalism, be it even the fairest, purest, most civilized brand of nationalism. Marxism substitutes internationalism in place of all forms of nationalism, the amalgamation of nations into a higher unity, a unity that is growing before our eyes with every mile of railway line built, with every international trust, and with every workers’ association formed (an association that is international in its economic activities as well as in its ideas and aspirations).”

“The proletariat cannot support any consolidation of nationalism; on the contrary, it supports everything that hastens the abolition of national differences and the removal of national barriers, everything that makes the ties between nationalities closer and closer, everything that leads to the merging of nations.”

Against these hypotheses, which as predictions are, of course, based on faith rather than knowledge, we position another:

Assuming the Marxist thesis to be correct that being determines consciousness (more likely, there may be interplay between the two), we are of the belief that a new socialist being will also shape a new consciousness, insofar as that sense of attachment to the values of homeland, soil, and Volk (absent from the capitalist being) will restore itself, and of itself restore a strengthening of the national character – but the drive towards assimilation, towards a withering away, will never arise. On the contrary, the outcome instead will be an ever-growing awareness of national distinctiveness, an ever-growing involvement in the German historical tradition, an ever-growing consciousness of one’s own formative principles, i.e. the will to live as a sovereign, socialist nation.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Marxism and the National Question, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Lenin here argues that the determination of the development of the forces of production into a centralized unity necessitates that the development of the forms of production corresponds with an international system of global governance, making nationalism a reactionary movement. To a degree, this has been realized; we have the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, and a unipolar international banking system premised on US dollar reserve currency we must also consider other facts. Other facts such as that there is a trend toward the decentralization of the forces of production with the advancements such as production lines, small motors, advanced small profile computing, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and solar panels. This decentralization of the forces of production is a fact talked about by Sorel when he described the future of production in small prodigiously productive workshops. This decentralization of the forces of production is shown in the emerging multipolar world as a geopolitical reflection of material reality. Lenin’s belief in internationalism was based on faith as they were predictions of the formation of the forms of production in the future, predictions that would, in historical experience, be shown to be incorrect. Paetel’s belief in a socialist consciousness that would heighten national consciousness was shown to be correct as every socialist nation has separated from the system of global international production. Instead these socialist nations focused on autarkic civilizational production as well as displaying a consciousness that was both socialist and nationally defined, premised on sovereignty and the friend/enemy distinction. The withering away of the state took place on the level of the forms of production where collectivized state-owned production took away the aspects of economic tutelage and a political hegemon for the fulfillment of bourgeois property rights that compose the material aspects of the state. However, on the level of spirit, there was a heightening of statehood and, therefore, a heightening of a proletarian national consciousness, which was promoted by the state. A nationalistic and civilizational view of the forms of production in socialism is therefore correct, and Karl Otto Paetel is vindicated here.

“It is however but a simple dilettantism of Otto Strasser’s, not much improved by its backwards-looking pathos, when he always reduces the debate with Marxism in his excitable ‘disputations’ down to the set formula:

“We and you want socialism! But the path is different. You want it on an international basis, we on a national one! The first is impossible because of every country’s different economic maturity, and because experience shows that the Comintern has achieved nothing.”

Strasser, if he were to read Marxist writings, would find that sentiment far better expressed in them, such as in the “Programme of the 6th World Congress of the Communist International”

(46th Session, from 1st September 1928): “Unequal economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. It is exacerbated even more acutely in the epoch of imperialism, hence it follows that the international proletarian revolution cannot be conceived as a single event occurring simultaneously world-wide. At first socialism may be victorious in a few, or even in a single country alone. But every such proletarian victory broadens the basis of the world revolution and consequently further intensifies the general crisis of capitalism. The capitalist system in this way approaches its final collapse. The dictatorship of finance capital breaks apart.”

The second of Strasser’s claims is not proven in all instances, the Russian Revolution being based for example on the here-denied ‘international’ way. So there is no split between the fronts at all: There is nothing contradictory in the way nationalist socialism can be quite international, working together with all those other forces seeking to take down the same adversary.

The final goal, however, is achieved by separation.

That Marxism rejects the socialist nation is proclaimed by Lenin: “The idea of the juridical separation of nations from one another (the so-called ‘national-cultural autonomy’ of Bauer and Renner§) is a reactionary idea.”

This is the same goal – whereby the different nature of the current practise of Russia’s nationality-policy is by no means misunderstood – as Trotsky describes:

“Marxism takes its point of departure from the world economy, not as a sum of national parts but as a mighty and independent reality created by the international division of labor and the world market, and which in the present epoch holds sway over the national markets.

“The productive forces of capitalist society have long outgrown the national powers. The imperialist war was an expression of this fact. Compared to capitalist society, socialist society must represent a higher stage in respect to technique of production. To aim at building a nationally isolated socialist society means, in spite of all passing successes, to pull back the forces of production even as compared with capitalism.”

“Attempting to realize – independent of the geographical, cultural, and historical conditions of the country’s development, which constitutes a part of the world unity – a self-contained proportionality of all branches of the economy within a national framework means pursuing a reactionary utopia.”

But Nationalist Communism (before Marx, incidentally, a man in the French Revolution had already put forward entirely communist demands for the sake of the nation: Fouché in the Lyons “Instructions”) ** knows that with this goal a Fata Morgana is placed before the German people, knows that it can only mean: Communism? – Yes! – But as a German duty of order, within the boundaries of the nation. That is what calls us, not the world economy.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Marxism and the National Question, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Paetel criticizes Strasser for not having adequately read Marxist doctrines. Socialism must first arise on a national basis and will not happen in all countries at once as said by the Comintern. A nationalist socialism can also be quite international since it will assist revolutions in other nations and also trade with them after the revolution, so in a sense, an international community is inevitable, however, not necessarily the withering away of nations and national partitions of the world economy. In the final analysis therefore, communism is what we desire but within the boundaries of the nation. The world economy can handle itself and does not need a withering away of national partitions to develop.

Now we will move on to Prussia as a Principle

“There is one thing socialism cannot ignore: the reality of Prussia.

There indeed, as both Oswald Spengler and Moeller van den Bruck identified within the ‘Prussian style’, is the type of state socialism which we have demanded arise within the German territories; it already exists in them in embryonic form. There has that choice for ‘We’ over ‘I’, for unity in polarity, already manifested itself (in contrast to the Marxist conception of society) a creative self-existence, grounded in blood and steel – and experienced as a demand, not as some special opportunity.

Of course, one must keep in mind that there is another side to these things: it is no coincidence that the synthesis became ‘Prussianism and Socialism’*, e.g. Spengler’s glorification of the ‘human carnivore’. Even the Prussian principle is today in danger of being misused.

Only Prussia is historically capable, seeing itself always as the correlate of the Eternal German; only Prussia, which incorporates the old Junker tradition, meets the demands of Baron von Stein to involve the Volk in the responsibility of the state.

Never, however, should the veneration of that Old Prussianism which is popular in some circles – such as we see reflected in the writings of A. Ludwig von der Marwitz, with their unbelievable invective towards the ‘youth leagues’, their contempt for the liberation of the peasants, for self-government reforms, and even for the ‘Jacobins’ of 1813 – be answered with anything other than a declaration of war. Not such transitory forms of Prussian statehood, unconditional antagonisms from a period of upheaval, but instead the plea to be a ‘servant of the state’, as lived and embodied by Frederick II – that is the formative power that cannot be renounced and which instead forms the basis of state power, as indeed Russia has well taken note of. That Prussia of which the knightly orders dreamed when they erected the massive battlements of Marienburg‡ – and one must be clear about this, too – is another source of will, and one that is unacceptable if one is not ready to accept the foundation of faith behind the vows which shaped the people, nature, and histories of the Teutonic Knights and determined the direction of their will: Christianity.

The unifying rationale for today’s ‘heathen’ idea of the state is not to be drawn from Hermann von Salza, nor from Ludwig von der Marwitz; only from the Potsdam of Frederick the Great can one make the leap over the philosophers of Hegel’s total state and his Marxist inversion to reach the socialist statehood of tomorrow.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Prussia as a Principle, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, the idea of Prussia is taken to be the principle on which German socialist statehood will rest its basis. This is because the principle of Prussia, where the citizen is seen as a servant of the state, is the only principle capable in Germany of meeting the demand that the Volk be involved in the state. The Prussian principle is not to be taken in a reactionary sense with declarations against youth leagues, liberation of the peasantry, and self-government reforms but rather is to be the principle which actualizes these exact aims. This is not a Christian Prussianism but rather a heathen one that makes the leap over Hegel’s total state and the Marxist inversion towards the socialist statehood of tomorrow.

“For this nationalism is unchristian [unchristliche], then and now. The personal fate of the Prussian officer Trenck shows what it’s all about: Personally plunged by the King into the most painful depths, this former favorite of the King and beloved of the King’s sister, after nine years of inhuman suffering in the casemates of Magdeburg, dedicated at the end of a ruined existence his life’s confession to “the spirit of Frederick the Unique.”

This clearly illustrates that in Prussia no oath is subject to recall. Only through this ethos, which uniquely and irrevocably is able to bind the Germans of tomorrow to the socialist nation, will Germany live. And therefore:

Prussia must be.

Prussia as an attitude.

Prussia as a principle.

Prussia as a spiritual reality.

As Moeller van den Bruck put it:

“Germany cannot do without Prussia, because it cannot do without Prussianism.”

“Prussianism, that is the will to the state and the recognition that historical life is a political life in which we must act as a political people.”

It goes without saying, of course, that this is not about the country of Prussia – which will have to be subordinated to the organic, decentralized unity-concept through the council-structure of the tribal regions (the ancestral heartland of Prussia indeed did not establish a biologically distinct but historically existent ‘new tribal concept’) – but Prussia’s impulse of will. One could also say that it is about Germany’s ‘Prussianization’.

Socialism will transform German ‘citizens’ into appendages of the German state; the contradictions between Nation, Volk, and State will be abolished by it and refashioned into a new synthesis.

It is obvious that the old medieval ‘imperial idea’ [Reichsidee] of the supranational Christian ruler, which the German emperor still embodies à la Dante, has nothing to do with this. Its end-goal, too, the “pacification of the world by the sceptre-bearer of the Imperium”, has faded away into irrelevance. Socialist Germany is of a different essence entirely.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Prussia as a Principle, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, the heathen concept of state is understood, Prussia as a nation will be subordinated to the decentralized unity concept through the council structure of the tribal regions, however, its principle will become the spiritual reality of the new German statehood. The German citizens will become appendages of the German state which will abolish the contradictions between nation, volk, and state.

Now we will move on to the chapter The Class Struggle as a Nationalist Demand

“The class struggle is not an invention of the ‘Jew Marx.’

It is a fact of daily life, reflecting the labor contract between employer and employee, as well as the functions of press, state, and cultural life.

It is a battle line established by those who are in possession of the economic means of power, imposed on those ‘below’, who respond with fury. It does not require a moral judgement but instead a stated decision on which side we want to fight.

The class struggle is not some artificial construct. As everywhere in the life of cells, new, young life replaces the old and feeble; so too in the body of the Volk [Volkskörper] is the old leadership class, after fulfilling its function for the community over a certain period, replaced by new forces – usually with violence.

Thus is the class struggle, irrespective of the fact that this process is playing itself out amongst all peoples, a course of events in the life of the Volk [Volkslebens], a process of reversal against the leadership forces within a folk-organism. [Volksorganismus].

Just as every previous revolution had its sociological bearer – the clearest example being the ‘bourgeois’ French Revolution – so too does the revolution in which we are situated. The working class, which is today pounding at the gates of German history, will have to battle out the class struggle with the current holders of the economic resources and instruments of power so that it can have both transferred into the workers’ hands at the moment of revolution, thus being ready to declare itself a nation and to replace the old leadership.” – Karl Otto Paetel, The Class Struggle as a Nationalist Demand, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, the class struggle is understood as a process in each folk organism, in every peoples the class struggle is a material reality in which the new leadership must replace the old. Every revolution had its sociological bearer, as is commensurate with the material laws governing history. Those pounding at the gates of German history are compelled by these laws to win the battle of the class struggle and to have the economic resources and instruments of power transferred to the workers. The will to become a nation and the class struggle are one and the same, and it is through the proletarian revolution that Germany may be able to once again constitute a nation in the face of the international bourgeoisie that dominates Germany.

Regarding the Jewish Question, Paetel writes this:

“Incidentally: The Jewish question cannot be resolved at all without being incorporated into the overall racial question – and not at all in a purely negative fashion. Marx’s analysis (“On The Jewish Question”) that the entrepreneurial, usurious, exploitative ‘Jewish spirit’ can be liquidated only at the moment when it is deprived of the basis of the capitalist order is correct. In socialist Germany the Jews will face the decision to emigrate or to productively integrate themselves as a ‘national minority’ into the process of national construction (settlers, artisans). In völkisch-cultural life, like all minorities, their influence will be weak, represented only be a few men who have demonstrated their pre-eminence; for example, Friedrich Gundolf’s work on Goethe, Gustav Landauer’s writing on Hölderlin, or Maximilian Harden’s Heads [“Köpfe”] have proven their authors possible exceptions. In the political arena, like all minorities, they will have the right to vote in and stand for elections to the legislative organs, but not the right to stand for the executive. Rather, they will only be delegable to council meetings in their own cultural representative bodies.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Footnotes, The Class Struggle as a Nationalist Demand, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

In contrast to the Hitlerite purely negative view of Jewry, Paetel takes a different stance. As a national minority, they are capable and have demonstrated so in the past that they are able to contribute to the nation. It is, therefore, appropriate that they have the right to vote in and stand for elections, however, they must be barred from the executive. Rather it is appropriate that they have their own cultural representative bodies.

Now we will move on to the chapter Versailles!

“The enemy of revolutionary nationalism remains:

Versailles!

There is little we have to say thereof, but always remember: that is the boulder that weighs down upon Germany’s freedom.

The path to nationhood,

The path to socialism,

The path to revolution,

leads only through the tearing-up of all treaties and pacts

from Versailles to Young!

Anyone who betrays this realization by snivelling for revision betrays the German future, betrays the socialist nation of tomorrow.

The path to the sovereign German nation leads only through the restoration of Greater Germany, i.e. solely and exclusively through the ruins of the system of Versailles!

 Frenchman Jaurès shows us the  right response:

“The fatherland is not an idea that has outlived its usefulness; the concept of the fatherland evolves and deepens itself. I have always been convinced that the proletariat in its innermost being cannot accept any doctrine of national renunciation, of national servitude. To revolt against the despotism of kings, against the tyranny of the ruling class, yet let the yoke of conquest and the rule of a foreign militarism be imposed without any resistance, is such a childishly pathetic contradiction that at the first alarm of invasion all forces of instinct and reason would have to be swept away for it to make sense. That the proletarians, who are not liberated from capital by the conqueror, should consent furthermore to be a tributary, is a monstrosity… The reality, however, is this: wherever there is a fatherland, that is, a historical group that is conscious of its unity and continuity, then any attack on the freedom and independence of this fatherland is an assassination attempt against civilization, a relapse into barbarism.”’ – Karl Otto Paetel, Versailles, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here Karl Otto Paetel makes it clear that the Versailles and Young treaties must be done away with. The path to a greater German socialist statehood is through the ruin of the system of Versailles, imposed on Germans by victorious outsiders for an imperialist war they were not responsible for.

Now we will move on to the chapter Revolutionary Foreign Policy

“The revolutionary-nationalist conception of foreign-policy is therefore clear:

A front against Versailles, which means a front against the West and its eastern and southeastern satellites. Which involves taking up the old slogan of Brockdorff-Rantzau: “Against capitalism and imperialism.” A slogan for which the words of Moltke cannot hold true: “It is a hard lot to be a patriot in Germany, for one is… forgotten.” – Yet he is, nonetheless, the wayfarer of our insurrectionary will.

It means forming a fighting-community with the adversary of the Versailles world: Russia. Only in league with Russia, which as the first socialist world-power will be a natural ally for a socialist Germany, can the German Eastern Question be resolved – which at the same time will determine the existence of Poland.

The same front includes all the oppressed peoples of the Earth [alle unterdrückten Völker der Erde]. In place of a colonial policy, the ‘League of Oppressed Nations’ will be brought under German leadership.

These are the political frontlines – all while the NSDAP is in racial sympathy with England, full of resentment and romanticism, its anti-Russia policy a capitalistic mercenary attitude, its exclusive Italian agenda suggestive of dogmatic obsession.

So exist the fronts in the world today, created by the class-struggle of nations. The foreign-policy of a Volk is invariably conditioned in part through that struggle; what the others do or not do is never doctrine – but instead always a question of expediency. Therefore this policy cannot be made by a Germany of Hindenburg or Hitler, but can only arise from a Revolutionary Germany.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Revolutionary Foreign Policy, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Karl Otto Paetel expresses that the foreign policy of Socialist Greater Germany is an anti-Versailles alliance with the Soviet Union. An alliance with Russia would also determine the German Eastern Question and the existence of Poland. The fighting league with the USSR against Versailles would also include a front of all the oppressed nations of the earth, which would be brought under German leadership. Paetel contrasts this position with the NSDAP which is in racial sympathy with England and pursues a mercenary capitalist anti-Russia policy.

Now we will move on to the chapter The New Faith

 ”Brüning, rightly described as the greatest German Chancellor since Bismarck, governed not only by virtue of the bureaucratic and organizational leverage of the state he represented, not only because finance capital bestowed all its support upon him as a solid advocate against social revolution. This Roman Chancellor of the German nation was the master of Germany because he is one of the few men of our day who lives from faith, who acts from faith, who is supported by a spiritual reality: faith in Eternal Rome. And faith can always and can only be overcome by a new faith, never through negation, never through scepticism. Eternal Rome will only disappear from the German regions when faith in Eternal Germany replaces it.

Rome, and with it all of Western Christianity, can with utmost tranquillity face the trite pseudo-enlightenment of the free-thinking circles, the tasteless invective directed against the priesthood. By virtue of its faith it will be able to master such mere ‘anti’ tendencies.

Yet with all the disquiet and unrest today, Rome is already confronted with the beginnings of a new faith, the approach of a German renaissance. And from here it is understandable if, for example, the work of Rudolf Pannwitz or Stefan George is branded dangerous by the Christian intellectual circles which Ludwig Klages bitterly fought against; if, on the edges of today’s politics, the still unfinished attempts of the circles around Ludendorff to work on a new German faith are answered with hate and scornful vilification.

Here, where the outline of a new paganism shines forth, a new cosmic religiosity centered in blood, soil, and race, rooted in the divine breath of worldly life – here do the first axe blows fall upon the edifice of the Oriental faith which overshadows the people.

And if German nationalism has a deep spiritual and religious sense, then it is that (as Rosenberg recognized, but then recanted under the pressure of his Catholic master) of an insurrection of the Germanic way of life, poisoned and suppressed since the days of Charlemagne the Saxon-slayer, against the foreign infiltration of Christianity.

The new paganism, the renaissance of a German faith, will be the living justification and the power source of the German revolution.” – Karl Otto Paetel, The New Faith, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Karl Otto Paetel suggests that faith can only be done away with a new faith; in this case, the faith in eternal Rome with a faith in eternal Germany. Paetel suggests that Christianity in Europe’s history took the role of a foreign infiltrator and as an Oriental faith. Instead Paetel points to an emerging Germanic faith in intellectual circles to be the new guiding faith of the revolution. The new faith would be a cosmic religiosity centered around blood, soil, and race. This new renaissance of a German faith would be the living justification and source of power for the German revolution.

Now, we will move on to the section dealing with an opposition to Fascism.  

Opposition to Fascism

We will start with Paetel’s criticism of the Strasserists or rather a “reformed national socialism”. Reformed national socialism was an endeavour to create a “German Socialist Party” out of the Strasserist Fighting Community of Revolutionary National Socialists and Captain Stennes Independent National Socialist Combat Movement of Germany which splintered away from Hitler’s party. Paetel endeavours to try and convince these splinter groups of the NSDAP to join the GSRN in their alliance with the KPD to oppose the NSDAP as they have sold out their principles.

“The main reason why every attempt at reform (an approach which puts their mission in the wrong from the very beginning) involves turning against the NSDAP is due to the accusation of personal inadequacy against the old Party leaders, of the leaders’ deviation from the old (and in principle correct) 25-point line, as well as their pursuit of the wrong tactical measures.

They all want to be National Socialists, those who turn against the unsatisfactory Hitler, against the influence of the big shots [Bonzokratie], against the creeping bourgeois mentality, against the Brown House, against the incorrect ‘legal’ measures of the Party leadership, each believing themselves to be the one in possession of the true ring. Otto Strasser has to that end provided the framework of a ‘Worldview of the 20th Century’; Captain Stennes appeals to the revolutionary sentiment and yearning of the SA-members; the German-Socialist Party is turning away from the incorrect measures of the last quarter.

And here is the breaking-point of all these attempts. Being an opposition group can be valuable. The fate of the various oppositions within the Marxist camp, however, shows clearly enough that the most auspicious fate awaiting an opposition is that its arguments (three quarters of which are only ever in respect to tactical differences) will one day be silently accepted, with the ‘conscience of the party’ thereupon, without any further ado, shedding its entire reason for existence.

If, however, the real failure of the Hitler-party is not due to the inadequacy of its leading personalities, but is based instead in the party’s fundamentally poor decisions, then any such reformer misses the core issue and becomes a miniature copy of the bigger brother, never the bearer of historical laws.” - Karl Otto Paetel, Reformed National Socialism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, he argues that an opposition group can be useful as its fate is often having its arguments being silently accepted and then being absorbed into the original party, which Paetel aimed to do with the KPD and, to the extent that Thalmann made nationalist pronouncements, was successful. However, the National Socialist reformers miss the fact that the failure of the Hitler party wasn’t due to the inadequacy of its leading personalities but rather based on the party’s poor decisions and is doomed to become a miniature copy of the bigger brother as it does not reject the poor decision of the NSDAP to not join the ranks of red revolution, and therefore, become a bearer of historical laws.

Now, we will address the chapter The Fascist Mistake where he criticizes the fascist position of the NSDAP and the splinter elements of it.

“The disastrously misjudged historical mission of that which quite justifiably might have been called ‘national-socialism’* can already be seen in the Hitler-party’s first months of work in 1919, in which the anti-statist resentments against Berlin (which are practically a philosophy of life on the other side of the ‘Main line’, where it is preferred to look to Rome rather than to the land of the ‘Prussian Gau’) were underlined by a pronounced historical mistake, a mistake which definitively rejected the character of the ‘Germanic uprising’ against Paris.

At the moment when those under Versailles alone were capable of making history, the slogan of rebellion against Versailles was supplemented by the domestic-political slogan “Against Marxism”, turning on its head the willingness to, in the Party’s name, take the side of the destitute or homeless, the Fatherland-less, in order to create for them a homeland via radical change to societal and economic life. Upon realizing that the demand of the hour was “Through Socialism to the Nation”, the calculation of the fascist propertied-bourgeoisie became: “Beat Marxism – and you eliminate Volk-destructive class-stratification!’

Thus the principle that the NSDAP committed itself to was false from the start, which therefore dooms to failure every attempted renaissance of its spirit which reaffirms that same principle.” - Karl Otto Paetel, The Fascist Mistake, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

According to Paetel, the first error of the NSDAP was to reject Berlin and the Marxist base there and to instead look to Rome and adopt the model of a fascist corporate state, a utopian socialist project, rather than rooting itself in the Marxist tradition of scientific socialism. When the popular demand was “Through Socialism to the Nation” the fascistic propertied bourgeois, in a vain attempt at protecting their interests in private capital, adopted the phrase “Against Marxism”. They much preferred the utopian and bourgeois socialism of fascist Italy which did not threaten their interests so much and allowed them their private capital. This mistake forms the rotten core of the NSDAP which premised itself on a false bourgeois principle.

“A look at the development of Italian fascism demonstrates the inevitable, obligatory lawfulness of such a fighting position. In recent months Dr. K.A. Wittfogel was unequivocally able to prove, on the basis of old ideological texts18, that the first fascist programmes bore a thoroughly revolutionary socialist character, roughly equivalent to the German USPD. So long as the Fascios stood by these demands, they simply remained one among many troublemaking frontline fighters’ associations. At the moment, however – just as occurred in Germany in 1919 – in which the bourgeoisie, menaced by the “Bolshevik wave”, recognized the chance to deploy these militant forces for its own security, then fascism emerged theoretically and practically as an anti-Marxist force and unambiguously assumed a societal function as a security organization for the establishment.

When on the first of May the cells of fascist railwaymen made it impossible to carry out a general strike for the first time in Italy; when the fascist fighting-leagues, with clandestine support from the government, liquidated the syndicalist occupation of the factories; then had Mussolini, completely ignoring the old radical points of his programme, created the psychological conditions for the anti-Bolshevik forces to more or less gladly clear the way for the establishment of ‘Peace and Order’.” - Karl Otto Paetel, The Fascist Mistake, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Paetel describes that the original fascist program was thoroughly socialist and revolutionary and so long as the Fascios stood by this program, they were one among many troublemaking frontline fighters’ associations. However, the bourgeoisie menaced by the Biennio Rosso were calculating enough to use the Fascios against the Bolsheviks as a security force. The fascists, who desperately needed funding, were willing to trade blood for gold and fight against the rival Bolsheviks on the behalf of the bourgeoisie. He also points out that the fascist fighting leagues, with clandestine support from the government, liquidated the syndicalist occupation of the factories effectively acting as a security force for the bourgeoisie and betraying their original revolutionary socialist and national syndicalist principles.

Now we will move on to the chapter The Historical Error of the NSDAP which covers their historical error as a party.

“The parallel is obvious. The seven-man-council in Munich, as an anti-Versailles force and likewise through its ‘alignment’ (the emotional anticapitalism of “breaking the bondage of interest”, only attractive to the uprooted, revolutionary layers of radicalized front-soldiers, students, etc.), became a piece on the chessboard of sluggishly reviving bourgeois politics at the moment it became clear that from them (with the bourgeoisie’s gracious toleration of their youthful exuberance in expressing radical feelings) the forces could be formed that would be able to push back against the advancing Marxist working-class and, possibly, be in the position to eliminate them.

In a situation where the urgent decision to be made on the class forces was increasingly clear-cut, whoever took up the slogan “Against Marxism” in the battle between Capital and Labor had to remain willingly or unwillingly indifferent out of necessity, in order to be able to side with those who had every interest in repudiating Marxism’s political and economic claims to power. Finance-capital and large landowners, jobless officers and restoration-obsessed feudal lords, all could at that moment overlook a few programmatic blemishes, since they still demonstrated the NSDAP’s possibilities for returning the distribution of power in German politics back to its old state.

The blame for this development does not lie with the incapable Osaf Herr Stennes, Herr Strasser, or even with Herr Schulze*, who were likewise powerless to escape from the internal dynamic.

One may reject certain points of the Marxist program, one may maintain that its worldview is deficient and out-of-date, but one will refute it neither by coaxing nor with Stormtroopers. It can only be overcome from within itself. Russia shows that. As a nationalist, one’s thinking on German politics today must be in terms of forces, not ideologies.” – Karl Otto Paetel, The Historical Error of the NSDAP, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Paetel points out the emotional anti-capitalism of “breaking the bondage of interest,” which, while an important socialist demand is typical of Proudhonian mutualist petty bourgeois socialism. It was only attractive to the uprooted petite bourgeoisie and less attractive to the proletariat. Paetel points out that this young radical segment of the bourgeoisie who held to nationalism and a soft form of socialism such as a nationalized mutualism could be sprung into action against the Marxist working class, which is the grand historical error of the nationalist petite-bourgeoisie. He also points out that because of the NSDAP’s stance against Marxism, they have become willingly or unwillingly indifferent towards the class struggle. This is attractive to elements of finance capital, feudal landlords, as well as petite bourgeois classes who are willing to overlook the programmatic blemishes of the NSDAP for the promise that they will restore Germany to its old state. Paetel says that one may reject certain points of Marxism and consider that its worldview is deficient and out of date but that fundamentally, these issues must be overcome within itself and not through deploying violent stormtroopers against the Marxist proletariat. Paetel ends on a gem that many Marxists should understand, which is that when thinking about politics, one must think in terms of forces and not ideologies.

We will finish off the anti-fascist section with Paetel’s chapter Council State or Corporate State? where he lays out his plan for a council republic and juxtaposes and argues against the fascist corporate state.

“The basic demand for the economy in national-revolutionary socialism can only be: All power in the hands of the nation. So too is there the parallel, concrete demand for the state-structure: The state is the sovereign nation, its legislative and executive organs are the mandataries of the Volk.

Which means in consequence: the council-state.

The principle of self-government expressed within it is in no way ‘racially-foreign’ [“Volksfremd”] or typically Russian, rather it is the old ‘Germanic democracy’.

Even the German-National politician Martin Spahn says about it:

“The council-idea strives to bring spirit and active living back to our völkisch existence [völkisches Dasein] once more…

“It is consciously a construction from below. Those who live together and who work together, all who know one another and have common horizons, should lay the foundation of its administration; and only those involved in laying these foundations should afterwards help build the floors and finally may assist in placing the copestone.

“This is what Baron von Stein intended. Through this he promised the beneficial outcome of the Volk’s participation in the state.”’ – Karl Otto Paetel, Council State or Corporate State?, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Paetel argues that the true principle of self-government takes the form of a council state which is based on the old Germanic democracy. It is the realization of the promise of all power in the hands of the nation and that the volk constitutes the nation. He even quotes the German national politician Martin Spahn who says that the council idea strives to bring spirit and active living back to Germany’s volkisches Dasein.

Now let’s see how Paetel lays out the formation of the council state:  

“Elections to the councils (council-assemblies), which take place in an indirect form, staggered from the local council up to the Greater German Council Congress [Großdeutschen Rätekongreß], breaking up the parties, forming the administration agencies authorized to the executive – this alone provides a true reflection of the peoples’ will [Volkswillens], irrespective of distinctions of economic interest.

All working people are eligible to vote. The foundation is the working-district, i.e. the enterprises [Betriebe], while for the ‘free’ middle classes (who in Germany constitute a larger social layer) it is the residential-district. The plural voting system which prevails in Russia to the detriment of the peasants is therefore unfeasible.

The council formations establish special committees (peasant-chambers, workerchambers) on an occupational basis. All elected delegates in them, the council parliaments, and the executive bodies, are recallable at any time; are each at any time accountable to the forum responsible for their mandate; and have an income which is no higher than that of their previous profession.

 In primary elections, the village councils, city councils, and district councils are elected. The process is run by administration agencies. The next highest council assembly is not directly elected by the primary elector, but comprises delegates of the respective lower council parliaments in each Gau – which, on the basis of tribal classification, will replace the current dynastic states [dynastischen Länder]. The highest formation is the Greater German Council Congress, which fulfils legislative functions and commissions the government.

The Council Constitution, which through its Greater German foundation involves every working German in the fate of the nation, is to be straightforward and logical, without any literary flourishes. As for the bureaucracy being wound up at all, it will be liquidated. The ‘civil servant’ type perishes. The economic interests which hitherto have been fighting one another in the guise of ‘ideological parties’ (the role of syndicates in the parties) will be eliminated from the state body, the organizational apparatus of the parties shattered. (A goal, incidentally, employed by the Young German Order in its own state-building, obscured only by the somewhat romantic terms “neighborhoods”, “cure”, “chapter”.)

An entirely new social body thus arises, that which finally, as a real volonté générale, represents the unity of the nation, sprouting from life and its bearers, the generational line of the people, not falsified through party and caste, but tied to the state.

Councils in the sense demonstrated here have already been formed before, in Cromwell’s armed formations. Lenin’s model was above all the Paris Commune. And Gustav Landauer rightly pointed to the old Germanic Thing as an inspiration.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Council State or Corporate State?, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

The council system would organize itself vertically and indirectly by summoning votes from the local levels and having these levels vote on the higher levels. The foundation of these councils is at the level of the enterprise or workplace as well as the residential level. These councils will form chambers of workers and peasants that are appointed by occupation. The highest level of this council structure is the Greater German Council Congress, which fulfills legislative duties and appoints the central committee. This would effectively dissolve parties and independent special interest groups from the body of the nation, incorporating the economy, the nation, and the volk into one organism or Volksgemeinschaft.

Paetel continues and criticizes nationalists who envision a “corporate state” as a method for attaining the Volksgemeinschaft.

“Today, however, it has become fashionable among many ‘national’ groups to proffer the ‘corporate state’ as the successor to moribund parliamentarism.***

For that reason an entire ‘universalist worldview’ – of distinctly Catholic characteristics, by the by – has been crafted by Othmar Spann. And yet, just as little as his revolutionary-biological Epigones understood the fact that the organic, inherited Estate of the Middle Ages cannot be replaced today by the occupation, was he able to conjure away or cover up the anti-state thinking contained therein.

The ‘corporate state’, in being established on the occupations – and thus on the earning interests of its elected representatives – signifies only the perpetuation of ‘interest groups’ upon the transformation of the state’s outward form, a new opportunity for making the ‘economy’ the fate of völkisch life. It is conceivable that for some ‘estates’ answers may be found – but it is also certain that no sovereign state policy can be advanced, even if production is functioning; that, above all, the shared public responsibility for the nation will be smothered in a tangled mass of corporate organizations. The state here is, in essence, only a manufacturing company.

From here, too, the problem of leadership acquires no new meaning. Socialism and the council-structure, however, do not want to negate nor destroy leadership, merely to integrate it into service to the whole. Who will lead is whoever works most for the community, whoever works best for them. The possible starting point in the competition for proof of worth and commitment must always be the same; the result will always be different. Corresponding to aptitude and achievement, there will be leaders and led in the future, too. But this designation will provide to them the law of life and qualification, not an arbitrary separation by caste. Even the question of ‘Nordic leadership-substance’ could only be decided like so: through performance for the struggle of the entire Volk. If Nordic blood is indeed the creative, state-building, heroic element in the German Volk, then the revolution undoubtedly clears the way for it to prove its leadership capabilities for itself.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Council State or Corporate State?, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Paetel identifies the corporate state with a universalist worldview rooted in Catholicism. He says that Othmar Spann does not understand that the tradition of German statehood dating back to the Middle Ages cannot be replaced with an occupational government but only by a renewed formulation of the German tribal confederacy taking the form of a council republic. Paetel argues that the corporate state form would essentially reduce the nation to a manufacturing company where the economy is the end of volkische life, and the reign of interest groups predominates over a volkische existence. In the corporate state, the primary interest of government would be on the salaried earners who fill the entangled mass of corporations and live off of surplus value as a CEO does. In the council state, however, it would be those who are best fit for leadership that would lead, giving them the ability to prove themselves in the vertical council structure. Paetel argues that if Nordic blood truly possesses leadership-substance as the Nordicists claim, then organically, Nordic blood would begin to fill the ranks of the council structure.

Now that we’re done covering the anti-fascist elements of Karl Otto Paetel’s thought, let’s move on to the section dealing with the socialism of Karl Otto Paetel

Socialism

This section details the socialism of Karl Otto Paetel, which is quite robust. We will start with the chapter Nationalist Communism

“Here then is the mission of German National Communism: to form the cadres who are prepared, for the sake of the nation, to sever all bourgeois ties, who no longer have any relationship with the values and judgements of their fathers since they were plucked from their jobs, studies, and careers and turfed out onto the street – and who, for precisely that reason, want Germany, a Germany that is their own.

The mission of the national-revolutionary groups is to be the rallying-point of those who, in a fighting-community with the Marxist KPD, form a front of those revolutionaries and socialists who as non-materialists avow the nation as the ultimate value, but who are also ready for a radical revolution for the sake of the nation, because only that creates the preconditions for nation-building.

Three different things make this political position politically effective:

Consistent will: To be socialists in the truest sense of the word.

To become aware of oneself as non-Marxists: To be nationalists of faith and knowledge.

And the fundamental rejection of any desire and attempt to reform National Socialism.

Not reformed National Socialism, but a bloc of uncompromising young-nationalist forces in Germany, with steadfast socialist will, unwavering nationalist faith, recognition of the practical situation conferred through Versailles, fighting comradeship with the KPD.

Only in this way (and not in the fashion being muttered about today by those who, in reality, only mean National Socialism without Hitler, and who want to pull the rug out from under the KPD) is the formation of an organized German National Communism worthwhile. The KPD will become its compatriot, and fascism and quasi fascism will find in it their most dangerous opponent. It will have to step forward when the time is right.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Nationalist Communism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Paetel suggests that it is the task of national revolutionaries to form a fighting community with the Marxist KPD while also keeping their independence as nationalist revolutionaries. Not a reformation of national socialism but rather an organized German national communism is the worthwhile project of revolutionary nationalists. Paetel also clarifies here that the national communists are non-Marxists and rather nationalists of faith and knowledge.

With this out of the way we will proceed to The Face of National Communism which is more in-depth.

“In outline, German National Communism proclaims that:

We recognize the necessity of the German socialist revolution. It is the spiritual transformation that determines the economic, political, and cultural features of our time; it is in effect the revolution of the workers, peasants, and proletarianized middle-classes.

We commit ourselves to the nation. It is our last political value as a fateful expression of völkisch community.

We commit ourselves to the Volk as the natural ethnic cultural community, in contrast to ethnically-destructive Western civilization.

We commit ourselves to the intrinsic meaning of German folkdom.

We commit ourselves to a socialist planned economy which, after breaking the capitalist order, binds Volk and Nation into an organic economic structure and as a social economy constitutes the foundation of state sovereignty.

The fulfilment of our aims is the Free Greater-German Peoples’ Council-State as the expression of the self-government of the productive Volk.

The means of production are to be transferred to the nation as common property, and the nation’s fundamental ownership of land and soil to be declared.” – Karl Otto Paetel, The Face of National Communism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Paetel says that German National Communism stands for the necessity of the German socialist revolution, commitment to the nation, commitment to the Volk as the natural ethnic cultural community in contrast to the ethnically destructive western civilization, commitment to a socialist planned economy, and finally commitment to a People’s council state as the expression of the self-government of the productive Volk. These are strong principles that reflect the desire for a self-governing socialist Volk that will, after the event of the revolution, comprise the nation.

Paetel continues further on what these principles necessitate.

“Consequently:

Nationalization of all large-scale and medium-scale industrial enterprises.

Immediate, extensive settlement of the East with expropriation of the large estates.

Partial awarding of smallholdings to second and third peasants’ sons and to farm-workers as Reich Entails.

Partial socialization of state-goods.

Replacement of Roman private law with German common law.

State monopoly on foreign trade. Nationalization of the monetary system. For the transitional period after the revolution, autarchy of the economic region of Russia-Germany; German autarchy as the ultimate goal.” – Karl Otto Paetel, The Face of National Communism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Paetel explains here that all large and medium-scale industrial enterprises would be nationalized, that there would be an immediate and extensive settlement of the east with expropriation of large estates, parcelling out of smallholdings as Reich entails to second and third peasants’ sons and to farm workers, partial socialization of state-goods, the replacement of Roman private law with German common law, a state monopoly on foreign trade, nationalization of the monetary system, and the achievement of a Russia-Germany autarky with German autarky as an ultimate goal. These are no doubt sweeping radical and communist programmes.

Paetel continues:

“The situation today calls for:

Ruthless struggle against all foreign-policy enslavement-treaties, from Versailles to Young, until they are torn to shreds.

Struggle against all aspects of the Weimar system and its sanctioning of external servitude, from Hilferding to Hitler, until it is annihilated.

Struggle against Roman politics in German territory.

Struggle for a racially-appropriate religiosity attuned to the German people as a pre-condition for völkisch unity.

A policy of alliance with the Soviet Union.

Supporting revolutionary movements to create a united front of all oppressed classes and nations.

The situation today necessitates:

The most severe execution of the class-struggle of the oppressed against all who represent the private-capitalist dogma of the sanctity of private property.

That is the only way to the German sovereign socialist nation.

To safeguard the revolution against seizure by International Capital and against counter-revolutionary aspirations, the revolutionary Peoples’ Militia [Volksheer] shall replace the mercenary army at the moment of revolution, and the indivisibility of Greater Germany is to be proclaimed upon the establishment of the socialist state.

To achieve these goals, this is what is necessary today:

A fighting-community of revolutionary nationalism with the class-party of the revolutionary proletariat, the KPD.” – Karl Otto Paetel, The Face of National Communism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Karl Otto Paetel lays out the path to the German sovereign socialist nation. First, the destruction of the Versailles and Young treaties and then struggle against all aspects of Weimar Germany, including all its forces from Hitler to Hilferding. The nation would struggle against Roman politics in Germany, which includes fascism, it would struggle for racially appropriate religiosity as a pre-condition for Volkisch unity, and it would also struggle for a policy of alliance with the Soviet Union. This situation necessitates the most severe execution of the class struggle, which includes replacing the capitalist mercenary army with a revolutionary people’s militia or Volksheer. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to form a fighting-community of revolutionary nationalism with the class party of the proletariat, the KPD.

Now we will move on to the chapter Why not KPD? which explains why the German National Bolsheviks do not work within the party and the differences between revolutionary nationalism and revolutionary Marxism.

“As these theses demonstrate, revolutionary nationalism and the communist movement today are unquestionably on the same side of the political frontline in the struggle against fascism and capital and for socialism and national liberation.

Why are we not in the KPD?

Revolutionary German nationalism strives for, as its ultimate political goal, the sovereign German nation, existing in a community of free states of peoples [Völker] independent from one another.

Revolutionary Marxism – the KPD – strives for, as its ultimate goal, the classless society, which (through the slow death of the state and the amalgamation of nations) unites the peoples into a higher unity.

Revolutionary nationalism affirms the class-struggle as an organic upheaval in the leadership of the body of the Volk, which by replacing the obsolete ruling-classes reorients the youthful new state to a leadership based on the political and social functions of the whole.

Revolutionary Marxism views history as a succession of class struggles, with victorious participation in such struggles as the means by which the international proletariat can overcome international capitalism with international socialism. It recognizes the bondage of class over the boundaries of the primary reality that is the folkdom.

Some today are fighters for national freedom and class-fighters for the sake of the nation, others are both for the sake of a classless society.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Why Not KPD?, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, revolutionary nationalism and Marxism are at odds with each other over the view of the nation. Revolutionary nationalism desires a community of sovereign socialist states whereas Marxism wants a classless society where all nations amalgamate. Marxism views history as a succession of class struggles where, at the present time the international proletariat can overcome international capitalism only with international socialism. Revolutionary nationalism views history as a struggle between nations with the class struggle, as an organic upheaval in the leadership of the Volk. Therefore, the nationalists are fighters for national freedom and class-fighters for the sake of the nation while the Marxists are both for the sake of a classless society.

“Revolutionary nationalism strives for the implementation of a socialist planned economy on the basis of autarchy (for the transition to a German-Russian autarchy!), for the elimination of private ownership over the means of production, and for the nationalization of land and soil, all as a precondition for the sovereignty of the nation to be created by the revolution.

Revolutionary Marxism strives for the planned economic organization of the world, negating autarkic economic areas by eliminating private ownership of the means of production and socializing land and soil. Socialist construction in a country (Russia) is only conceivable as a preliminary stage.

Revolutionary nationalism does not believe in the possibility of eternal peace, in a humanity capable of nullifying the antagonisms between different peoples (friend/enemy-principle*).

Revolutionary Marxism strives for a pacified world, guaranteed after the abolition of economic antagonisms.

Revolutionary nationalism strives for an appropriately German solution to the peasant question [Bauernfrage]. It is of the conviction that an integration of the small peasants into the planned economy through a private-property-abolishing fiefsystem must preserve the ‘eternal category of the peasant’, and must be utilizable by the state as a reservoir of power.

Revolutionary Marxism strives to liquidate the ‘regressive class’ through collectivizing and rationalizing farming operations, with the end goal being a synthesis with the worker into a higher, ‘classless’ human type. (Russia)

Revolutionary nationalism understands the potency of the Idea, the need for religious renewal and the existence of irrational forces; it sees in the idea of the nation its ultimate goal and in folkdom a fatefully imminent power. All political and economic imperatives are the means of giving this idea form and reality.

Revolutionary Marxism, building on historical materialism, interprets the processes of human history from their economic conditions and assigns the ‘ideological superstructure’ to the secondary role. Belief in the irrational is to be (and certainly will be) overcome.

Revolutionary nationalism is anti-fascist because fascism, aside from its racially-alien characteristics [fremdvölkischen Zügen], does not understand how to incorporate the leadership of the proletariat; in its economic order is only a reform of capitalism; and in its corporatist state-form is a camouflaged dictatorship over the working Volk which thereby perpetuates the division of the nation into ruler and ruled.

Revolutionary Marxism sees in fascism a militant self-defence movement for the structure and interests of the capitalist system, directing the movements of the petitbourgeois masses with pseudo-ideologies formed for the purpose of its own preservation.

Revolutionary nationalism strives for a political and economic alliance with the Soviet Union, as the only European opponent of the Versailles system and as a socialist neighbouring-state – on these grounds it fights against any intent of intervention against Soviet Russia.

Revolutionary Marxism calls for the “Defense of the Soviet Union” as the “Fatherland of the Working People” and the beginning of world communism.

Revolutionary nationalism rejects any intention of acquiring colonies, in recognition of the fundamental rights of oppressed peoples to national freedom and in accordance with its own watchword of national sovereignty. On the path towards a community of free peoples it hails the liberation movements of India, China, Egypt, etc., as allies in the fight against the signatory-powers of Versailles, just as it hails the international struggle of the proletariat against international fixed capital.

Revolutionary Marxism hails the national-revolutionary movements of colonial- and semi-colonial peoples as precursors of the proletarian world-revolution.

Revolutionary nationalism resists the use of the racial-question [Rassenfrage] for the establishment of a born-to-rule master-race; rejects race-dogmatism as a criterion for foreign-policy; and in the construction of socialism demands as evidence for the value of race not entitlement but achievement.

Revolutionary Marxism sees in race an economic category that receives its true meaning in a classless society, and rejects its usage in forming political slogans.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Why Not KPD?, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Revolutionary Marxism views socialist construction in the nation as a preliminary stage and desires socialist planning across the whole world. Revolutionary nationalism, on the other hand, desires socialist construction as the goal of the nation and desires a community of autarkic socialist trade zones. On the question of eternal peace, Marxism strives for a pacified world brought about by the amalgamation of nations, whereas revolutionary nationalism does not believe it is possible to create eternal peace as the friend/enemy principle will remain as a significant factor in the politics of a community of sovereign socialist states. Revolutionary nationalism believes in irrational forces and the power of the idea, whereas Marxism assigns the ideological superstructure to a secondary role and believes that the belief in the irrational will be overcome. Revolutionary nationalism is, like Marxism, opposed to fascism, however, for the reason that it is racially alien and represents Roman politics in Germany. Revolutionary nationalism is also opposed to fascism for the same reason as Marxism in the sense that its corporate system is only a reform of capitalism, and its corporate state is, in reality, a dictatorship of capital over the working volk and further divides the nation into ruler and ruled, dismissing the principle of Volksgemeinschaft. Marxism desired a friendly alliance with the Soviet Union as the beginning of world communism, whereas revolutionary nationalism desired a friendly alliance with the Soviet Union because it was the only anti-Versailles country in Europe. Revolutionary nationalism is against colonialism because it premises itself on the basis of national sovereignty and extends this principle across the world, supporting the national liberation struggles in India, Egypt, and China, amongst others. Marxism also supports the anti-colonial struggle but as a preliminary to an international proletarian revolution. Marxism rejects the forming of political slogans based on race and reduces it to an economic category that receives its true meaning in a classless society. Revolutionary nationalism views race as an important category but rejects the notion of a born-to-rule master race. In the mission of socialist construction, it premises racial value not on entitlement but on achievement.

“Revolutionary nationalism sees in the council-structure the self-government of the productive Volk, the guarantee of political accountability and economic control of the Volksgemeinschaft, presaged in the early forms of Germanic rule.

Revolutionary Marxism strives, through the council-structure’s division into executive and legislative powers, to move towards the eventual superfluity of the state.

Already in these few comparisons, and putting aside more detailed descriptions of their individual points (the number and scope of such examples can be supplemented as needed), it follows that the world-goals of nationalism and of Marxism are thoroughly different. It nonetheless also follows, however, that the necessities of today’s politics yield a range of demands and insights from Marxism and nationalism which coincide (class-struggle, revolution, socialism, councils, foreign-policy, anti-fascism – although their rationales for them are different).

Young Nationalism, however, has a mission for tomorrow extending beyond this front today. It is: unity of faith and blood with the political principles of formation.

Under this insight, the small cadres of ‘National Bolshevist’ nationalism are formed today alongside and not within the KPD. Nevertheless they affirm their affiliation with it, because notwithstanding the differing objectives, the Communist Party in Germany today is the only mass-factor:

Against the Versailles System – Against the Roman Counter-Reformation – Against the drive to intervene against Russia – Against the fascist deception of the people – For the socialist revolution – For Greater Germany!” – Karl Otto Paetel, Why Not KPD?, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Marxism desires to use the council structure to move to the eventual outmoding of the state, whereas revolutionary nationalism desires to use the council structure to realize the Volksgemeinschaft. It is evident then that on the issues of class struggle, revolution, socialism, councils, foreign policy, and anti-fascism, revolutionary nationalism and Marxism are united, however, on the basis of different rationales. Therefore, because of the same objectives but different long-term aims it made sense for the GSRN to differentiate itself from the KPD but ultimately work alongside it.

Now we will move on to the chapter Happiness or Freedom?

“On the point of whether decisions should be oriented from the individual or from the collective, another of Dr. Hiller’s questions will be answered. Hiller in his work on social-revolutionary nationalism quotes the sentence (which, incidentally, does not originate from Ernst Jünger like the quote before, but is a comment of my own*): “We stand on the side of the insurrectionary proletariat for the sake of the nation, not for the sake of few ideas of humanitarian happiness.” He then asks:

“These bringers of misery, these outspoken brutes, these monsters who do not hide that they are monsters, does their ideal nation require that its members be miserable?”

No, Dr. Hiller, no! However: In Saint-Just’s† speech against Danton, for example, there is a passage which shows what we mean:

“The love of Fatherland is a great and terrible thing. It is without mercy, without fear, without respect for the individual when it comes to the public good. This love brought Regulus to Carthage and Marat to the Pantheon.”

We are socialists. We support the revolution, the class-struggle, the socialization of the means of production, the nationalization of land and soil, a state structure on the principle of self-administration.

Why? Because we see in these demands – which represent the political position of an enslaved, proletarianized Volk, a semi-colony of the foreign imperialists – the only path forwards for carrying out the integration of the oppressed, disenfranchised, homeland-less proletarians, which is necessary for the restoration of the nation’s sovereignty. For the sake of the nation, for the sake of its people: Socialists! That does not mean the lunatic wish to see these proletarians miserable in their new state of affairs. But indeed, we do demand from the individual, as Saint-Just demands, as is done in Russia, a sacrifice of happiness and affluence for the development of the community, which, through its freedom and power, will again be capable of giving happiness and freedom to its members.

We want to smash economic liberalism to pieces, to free the economy for the totality: the nation. As the socialist nation liberates its members, the path towards cultural assets as well as to political rights and workers’ participation in the economy – in the context of the ‘We’ – is conceived of as being for rather than against the individual. Only we echo Saint-Just: When the call sounds that “The Fatherland is in danger”, then these ‘rights’ are handed back to the nation, everyone divesting himself of them.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Happiness or Freedom?, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Dr. Hiller accuses the National Bolsheviks of being outspoken brutes and bringers of misery because they do not ascribe to the utopian ideals of humanitarian happiness. This does not mean that they desire the people to be miserable, only that they sacrifice some happiness on their part for the benefit of the community which will fulfill the aims of true social happiness.

Now we will move on to the chapter Socialism.

“We recapitulate:

We are socialists.

That means:

At the moment of revolution, we demand:

1. Nationalization of land and soil. Distribution of the large estates. All land-ownership in the future will be the mandate of the nation.

2. Transfer of all large-scale and medium-scale enterprises of industry, banking, department stores, mineral resources, mining, and transportation into the hands of the Volk.

3. State-planned economy with a monopoly of foreign trade.

4. Weapons in the hands of the whole: establishment of a Peoples’ Militia [Volksheeres].

Any doctrines of profit-sharing and private management which guarantee, even partially, the private ownership of the means of production and the commodity character of land, are semi-fascist diversionary manoeuvres.

A planned economy like that demanded by Werner Sombart* in his Future of Capitalism [“Zukunft des Kapitalismus”], which envisages “private property and social property, private economy and social economy”, is one of the many half-measures desired today, for all intents and purposes, only as a last resort – including by the Tat people.

This includes primarily Strasser’s ‘German Socialism’ – but also for example the ‘Possedism’ of the Wehrwolf.‡

The fundamental law of true nationalist socialism remains: the economy in the hands of the nation.

This law applies as much to industrial enterprise as to the question of property, but above all, however, does it serve as justification for autarchy and the monopoly over foreign trade.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Socialism, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Karl Otto Paetel makes his demand for socialism quite clear. He demands the nationalization of land and soil and the distribution of the large estates such that all landownership in the future will be the mandate of the nation. He also demands the transfer of all large-scale and medium-scale enterprises of industry, banking, department stores, mineral resources, mining, and transportation into the hands of the working class. I imagine this would look like a conglomerated council syndicate nationalized into the state. He demands a state-planned economy with a monopoly on foreign trade which is common in socialist countries. He also makes the radical demand for the creation of a people’s militia or Volksheeres as a program of universal armament among the people. Karl Otto Paetel makes it clear that any doctrine of profit-sharing and private management which guarantees even a partial remnant of private ownership of the means of production and the commodity character of land are semi-fascist diversionary maneuvers. These diversionary maneuvers include Werner Sombart in his Future of Capitalism as well as Strasser’s German Socialism and the Possedism of the Wehrwolf. The fundamental law of true nationalist socialism will remain, as such, the economy in the hands of the nation.

Now that we’re done with this section of the video detailing socialism, we will move on to the section dealing with the peasantry and the rural question.

Position on the Peasantry

This section will be very short, it only deals with two chapters both dealing with the rural question. The first chapter we will address is Rural Revolution which talks about the possibility of a revolution amongst the peasantry.

“The new nationalism, born in the hearts of those who no longer have any connection to the bourgeois lifestyle out of clear recognition that no political dynamism can be expected from it, is beginning today to turn its hopeful gaze over the forces of the revolution towards the Landvolk movement – that from there, where the strength and substance of the German people are still rooted, tomorrow shall be built.

And a romanticism begins to unfold which, nourished by the myth of the black flags, nourished by the legendary myth of the name Claus Heim, disdainfully turns itself away from the uprooted metropolitan masses, disdainfully turns itself away from the materialistic slogans of the proletariat, believing in the new rebirth of völkisch life from the soil, and reckoning that it can dispense with worker, city, and asphalt.

But that perspective completely overlooks that the driving forces behind the will to resist, especially in the case of the peasantry and the Landvolk’s every attempt at self-help, are actually in the end derived solely from the personal plight of the individuals in question.

There, where peace is driven from the farmyard, the lease collected under compulsion, the farmer reaches for the scythe and drubs the bailiffs from the yard. There, where the Jew fleeces the individual, völkisch self-assertiveness awakens.

It is in large part the same misery that also unites the proletarian under the revolutionary banners. His will, too, that things should be different, better, cannot be separated from the misery that preys on his mind. But there is something more there which the peasants’ resistance, wherever it is organized, is still missing today, but which has left the worker a fifty year worker’s movement in his blood: a sense of mission. When the ‘Internationale’ begins to sound amidst the march of the metropolitan columns, then the hard-driven prole [Prolet] feels within himself the burning desire that he may someday fare better, the dogged certainty that he himself is the bearer of a historical trend, a member of a history-shaping force. The peasant, however, is – still today – revolutionary only out of hardship, not out of sense of mission. The battle against the revolution, therefore, will be made within the metropolis.

But certainly never against the peasants. A ‘white ring’ of the country, under fascist flags, would be the starvation of the revolutionized city.

The object therefore is to procure the peasants as the second wave of the revolution – and also, of course, to interest them economically.” – Karl Otto Paetel, Rural Revolution, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Karl Otto Paetel makes it clear that while revolution in the countryside is important, the revolution in the city is the primary struggle. One thing the peasant lacks that the proletarian has is the sense of a world-historical mission. The peasant is revolutionary only out of hardship whereas the proletarian is revolutionary out of the sense that he is the bearer of historical laws and is called forth to the mission of building socialism. Despite this, though, it is still necessary to bring the peasantry into the revolutionary fold as a fascist white ring of the country would mean the starvation of the revolutionized city in the final battle.

Now we will move on to the chapter The Peasant Question in Germany?

“National Communism cannot consider preaching a ‘reformed National Socialism’, but nor can it consider preaching a reformed Marxism. The suggestions that nationalism offers on the subject of the peasant question are only in regards to the necessity of not destroying the eternal category of the soil-bound peasant; never can they undermine socialist economic planning.

But Dr. Rosikat is right when he states:

“The German peasant thinks not at all of voluntarily relinquishing his self-sufficient economy. His ideal is not like the proletarian’s: self-abolition as a social stratum. On the contrary, his is: autonomy at any price! The advantages that communism promises him hold no selling power over his desire to work independently on his own soil.

“The communists like to refer to Russia. There the peasants followed Bolshevism, so why not also one day in Germany? To answer, I may be permitted to point to the following differences:

“1. In Russia the peasantry has been won by an enormous gift of land. In Germany this gift can only turn out poorly. (Compare the “Programme of the 3rd International”, IV, 8, sec. 4).

“2. In Russia the peasantry did not know – in contrast to today’s Germans – that this gift was only of a provisional nature.

“3. Russia under communism remains, in contrast to Germany, agriculturally self-sufficient. Its farming as such is not endangered.

“But is the peasantry not in any case doomed to be merged into large-scale enterprises because they are technically superior?

“Answer: Not in Germany. The sheer superiority of large farms can really only be demonstrated in extensive grain-producing and livestock-farming areas (for example, America, Australia, Russia). In the expansive low-mountain areas of Germany they are not at all effective. In the intensively-cultivated German lowlands they are present in areas of arable crops, although not to such an extent that they would not be more than compensated for through the voluntary overtime that the peasant performs in the interest of his own self-sufficiency.”’ – Karl Otto Paetel, The Peasant Question in Germany, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Karl Otto Paetel explains that the peasant question in Germany is different from the demands of the proletariat as well as the peasant question in Russia. The proletariat demands the abolition of his class, whereas the peasant demands autonomy at any cost. Karl Otto Paetel also makes it clear that the devouring of the peasant class by large-scale firms is not inevitable in Germany because the farming and soil conditions are more appropriate for smaller plots, unlike America, Australia, and Russia which have expansive fields.

“The peasantry is capable of agreeing to a social order which fulfils the total elimination of capitalist class-rule without necessarily having to sacrifice itself. It can help establish a socialism in which the means of production of all capitalists and large-landowners, in addition to the entire transportation, finance, banking, and wholesale sectors, are socialized; foreign trade is monopolized; and voluntary, state subsidized cooperatives flourish in the non-capitalist economic sector. The German peasantry is furthermore well on its way to overcoming the liberal conception of property, and to comprehending its right of possession to the soil as the mandate of the nation; it is entitled furthermore to exercise these rights of possession, turning them towards the fulfilment of large-scale tasks. Here an independent development occurs in the peasantry, a progression towards a communal-economic mode of thought, which unfortunately, because it retains the form of the individual economy, is misunderstood by Marxism as reactionary and feudalist.

An order which exhibits the above-mentioned characteristics may justifiably, and without the distortion unfortunately so common today, be described as “socialist”. It means not only the breaking of capitalist class-rule, the eradication of the contradictions between oppressive and oppressed classes, but also the rule of the ideals of Plan and Community – because the working nation holds every commanding height of the economy firmly under its control.

Thus is the small peasant farm, maintained within the framework of the planned economy, cooperatively bound, with second and third farmers’ sons, farm laborers, and settlement-craving city-dwellers on the expropriated estates of the big landowners (alongside state-owned farms, but not collectives, required partly due to the soil properties of the land, as in Russia), the demanded German form of farming enterprise in socialism.” – Karl Otto Paetel, The Peasant Question in Germany, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

Here, Karl Otto Paetel explains that the mode of agricultural economy would be state-subsidized co-operative entails bound by the plan. While this retains the form of an individual economy, it removes the commodity character of land and, therefore, should not be confused by Marxism as being reactionary and feudalist. What is achieved here is the retaining of the self-autonomy of the peasant while also socializing agriculture into co-operative entails bound by the plan.

This is the end of the last section of the video, now we will move on to our concluding thoughts.

Concluding Thoughts

My concluding thoughts on Paetel are that he was mostly pretty based, but I do have my disagreements with him. One example is that I think his sourcing of nationalism in the power of the idea is a false effort, Paetel was a confused materialist who sought to place above the material something ideal, being the nation. But in doing this, he reveals something in the material that Marx, Engels, and Lenin tried to hide, this thing is the force of the nation. Nations assert themselves in history according to the development of consciousness in a people which is a result of material factors such as the political and economic integration of tribes. From the formation of nations a sort of “national myth” arises, which, as a reflection of material reality and developed by the institutions becomes a force capable of directing men’s actions. The nation, when taken as a myth and therefore as a material force and not an idea, forms the basis of a materialist national communism.

Another part where Paetel loses me is with the neo-paganism, while it is true that Christianity is a Roman religion and therefore hostile to the goals of the nation as well as the mission of constructing socialism, partly because it regards these as “fallen wills” in which god’s will in history will overcome through the congregation of believers. But also because the church (whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox) is like a capitalist cartel that sustains itself on rent-seeking behavior as well as the subordination of national and social interests to the special interests of the church cartel. However, this does not mean that a neo-pagan religion that is born out of a few intellectual circles should be artificially imposed. It is enough to confiscate the churches of their properties and wealth as well as their influence in politics and allow these institutions to wither away, giving rise to a new organic religious development, whether it be atheism, paganism, or even a revived Christianity, or even Islam, so be it. The clerics, so long as they don’t become troublesome after the revolution, should just be left alone; there is no need to revive this doomed-to-death class for the purposes of a new artificial religiosity.

Though, there are parts where Karl Otto Paetel is vindicated. He rightly showed the internationalists that a borderless world communism and eternal peace is impossible because of the friend/enemy principle, sovereignty, and the concept of the political. An international community of sovereign socialist states is an inevitable end result of proletarian revolution because of these political realist facts, but also because of the fact that revolution cannot happen at all places at once, socialism in one country was a realization of this fact. Even if the amalgamation of nations occurs, there will likely be the evolution of new in-group distinctions because of the fact that self-realization occurs through a sequence of negations, an eternal law of history. Therefore, the friend/enemy principle will remain as a factor, and so will the conception of the political, and therefore, so will remain the continuation of politics by other means, war. Eternal peace is therefore not possible, and arguably not desirable, because struggle, namely class struggle, is the motive force of history, so therefore, eternal peace means eternal stagnation. The fact that a community of sovereign socialist states is an inevitable outcome of socialist revolution means that national partitions of the world economy will exist, albeit social and planned. Thus the socialist world economy will take the form of warlike peace or peaceful war where nations compete and co-operate and may occasionally go to war. Because so long as the friend/enemy principle remains, so will the possibility or even necessity of war, which does not have to be desirable or even ideal. This fact is shown in the skirmishes between Vietnam and the PRC as well as between the PRC and the USSR.

On the question of Karl Otto Paetel’s socialism, I notice that it is quite Sorelian as it uses a worker’s council system that is nationalized into the state but retains a decentralized character as described by the decentralized unity principle. This council system is analogous to the industrial federations that Sorel talked about, saying that their development should be autonomous and self-governing but ultimately unified in the association of producers. I think his solution for peasant farms as co-operatively bound entails of the plan is a good preliminary land reform towards collectivization as it would retain the individual form of economy while also making it social and associated with the state plan. I think that a council system is much more efficient than a corporate state as it does away with a lot of unnecessary bureaucratic oversight and gives workers direct control over production.

In conclusion, Karl Otto Paetel, while flawed, is an excellent read for all socialists. His objections to borderless world communism must be taken seriously and thought through. He is also great if you want to truly understand what National Bolshevism is/was as an ideology and not just another buzzword instead of fascist to call someone. I highly recommend that everyone reads the National Bolshevist Manifesto for themselves.