The State as an Economic Institution

Peacefully conquering the world through commercial penetration is absurd.

The triumphant progress of technical science in Germany and the marvellous development of German industries and commerce led us to forget that a powerful State had been the necessary pre-requisite of that success.

On the contrary, certain circles had the theory that the State:

• owed its very existence to economic phenomena
• was an economic institution and should be built with economic interests.
• therefore was dependent on the economic structure.*

The State in itself has nothing whatsoever to do with any definite economic concept or a definite economic development. It does not arise from a compact made between contracting parties, within a certain delimited territory, for the purpose of serving economic ends.

The State is a community of living beings who have kindred physical and spiritual natures, organized for the purpose of assuring the conservation of their own kind and to help towards fulfilling those ends which Providence has assigned to that particular race or racial branch.

Therein, and therein alone, lie the purpose and meaning of a State. Economic activity is one of the many auxiliary means which are necessary for the attainment of those aims.

But economic activity is never the origin or purpose of a State, except where a State has been originally founded on a false and unnatural basis.

This alone explains why a State as such does not necessarily need a certain delimited territory as a condition of its establishment.

This condition becomes a necessary pre-requisite only among those people who would provide and assure subsistence for their kinsfolk through their own industry, which means that they are ready to carry on the struggle for existence by means of their own work.

People who can sneak their way, like parasites, into the human body politic and make others work for them under various pretences can form a State without possessing any definite delimited territory.

This is chiefly applicable to that parasitic nation which, particularly at the present time preys upon the honest portion of mankind; I mean the Jews.

The Jewish State has never been delimited in space. It has been spread all over the world, without any frontiers whatsoever, and has always been constituted from the membership of one race exclusively. That is why the Jews have always formed a State within the State.

One of the most ingenious tricks ever devised has been that of sailing the Jewish ship-of-state under the flag of Religion and thus securing that tolerance which Aryans are always ready to grant to different religious faiths. But the Mosaic Law is really nothing else than the doctrine of the preservation of the Jewish race.

Therefore this Law takes in all spheres of sociological, political and economic science which have a bearing on the main end in view.

The instinct for the preservation of one’s own species is the primary cause that leads to the formation of human communities. Hence the State is a racial organism, and not an economic organization. The difference between the two is so great as to be incomprehensible to our contemporary so-called ‘statesmen’.

That is why they like to believe that the State may be constituted as an economic structure, whereas the truth is that it has always resulted from the exercise of those qualities which are part of the will to preserve the species and the race. But these qualities always exist and operate through the heroic virtues and have nothing to do with commercial egoism; for the conservation of the species always presupposes that the individual is ready to sacrifice himself. Such is the meaning of the poet’s lines:

UND SETZET IHR NICHT DAS LEBEN EIN, NIE WIRD EUCH DAS LEBEN GEWONNEN SEIN. (AND IF YOU DO NOT STAKE YOUR LIFE, YOU WILL NEVER WIN LIFE FOR YOURSELF.)

The sacrifice of the individual existence is necessary in order to assure the conservation of the race. Hence it is that the most essential condition for the establishment and maintenance of a State is a certain feeling of solidarity, wounded in an identity of character and race and in a resolute readiness to defend these at all costs.

With people who live on their own territory this will result in a development of the heroic virtues; with a parasitic people it will develop the arts of subterfuge and gross perfidy unless we admit that these characteristics are innate and that the varying political forms through which the parasitic race expresses itself are only the outward manifestations of innate characteristics.

At least in the beginning, the formation of a State can result only from a manifestation of the heroic qualities I have spoken of.

The people who fail in the struggle for existence, that is to say those, who become vassals and are thereby condemned to disappear entirely sooner or later, are those who do not display the heroic virtues in the struggle, or those who fall victims to the perfidy of the parasites.

And even in this latter case the failure is not so much due to lack of intellectual powers, but rather to a lack of courage and determination. An attempt is made to conceal the real nature of this failing by saying that it is the humane feeling.

The qualities which are employed for the foundation and preservation of a State have accordingly little or nothing to do with the economic situation.

This is conspicuously demonstrated by the fact that the inner strength of a State only very rarely coincides with what is called its economic expansion. On the contrary, there are numerous examples to show that a period of economic prosperity indicates the approaching decline of a State.

If it were correct to attribute the foundation of human communities to economic forces, then the power of the State as such would be at its highest pitch during periods of economic prosperity, and not vice versa.

It is specially difficult to understand how the belief that the State is brought into being and preserved by economic forces could gain currency in a country which has given proof of the opposite in every phase of its history.

The history of Prussia shows in a manner particularly clear and distinct, that it is out of the moral virtues of the people and not from their economic circumstances that a State is formed.

It is only under the protection of those virtues that economic activities can be developed and the latter will continue to flourish until a time comes when the creative political capacity declines.

Therewith the economic structure will also break down, a phenomenon which is now happening in an alarming manner before our eyes. The material interest of mankind can prosper only in the shade of the heroic virtues. The moment they become the primary considerations of life they wreck the basis of their own existence.

Whenever the political power of Germany was specially strong the economic situation also improved. But whenever economic interests alone occupied the foremost place in the life of the people, and thrust transcendent ideals into the back.-ground, the State collapsed and economic ruin followed readily.

If we consider the question of what those forces actually are which are necessary to the creation and preservation of a State, we shall find that they are: The capacity and readiness to sacrifice the individual to the common welfare. That these qualities have nothing at all to do with economics can be proved by referring to the simple fact that man does not sacrifice himself for material interests. In other words, he will die for an ideal but not for a business.

The marvellous gift for public psychology which the English have was never shown better than the way in which they presented their case in the World War. We were fighting for our bread; but the English declared that they were fighting for ‘freedom’, and not at all for their own freedom.

Oh, no, but for the freedom of the small nations. German people laughed at that effrontery and were angered by it; but in doing so they showed how political thought had declined among our so-called diplomats in Germany even before the War. These diplomatists did not have the slightest notion of what that force was which brought men to face death of their own free will and determination.

As long as the German people, in the War of 1914, continued to believe that they were fighting for ideals they stood firm. As soon as they were told that they were fighting only for their daily bread they began to give up the struggle.

Our clever ‘statesmen’ were greatly amazed at this change of feeling. They never understood that as soon as man is called upon to struggle for purely material causes he will avoid death as best he can; for death and the enjoyment of the material fruits of a victory are quite incompatible concepts. The frailest woman will become a heroine when the life of her own child is at stake. And only the will to save the race and native land or the State, which offers protection to the race, has in all ages been the urge which has forced men to face the weapons of their enemies.

The following may be proclaimed as a truth that always holds good:

A State has never arisen from commercial causes for the purpose of peacefully serving commercial ends; but States have always arisen from the instinct to maintain the racial group, whether this instinct manifest itself in the heroic sphere or in the sphere of cunning and chicanery.

In the first case we have the Aryan States, based on the principles of work and cultural development. In the second case we have the Jewish parasitic colonies. But as soon as economic interests begin to predominate over the racial and cultural instincts in a people or a State, these economic interests unloose the causes that lead to subjugation and oppression.

The belief, which prevailed in Germany before the War, that the world could be opened up and even conquered for Germany through a system of peaceful commercial penetration and a colonial policy was a typical symptom which indicated the decline of those real qualities whereby States are created and preserved, and indicated also the decline of that insight, will-power and practical determination which belong to those qualities.

The World War with its consequences, was the natural liquidation of that decline.

To anyone who had not thought over the matter deeply, this attitude of the German people–which was quite general–must have seemed an insoluble enigma.

After all, Germany herself was a magnificent example of an empire that had been built up purely by a policy of power. Prussia, which was the generative cell of the German Empire, had been created by brilliant heroic deeds and not by a financial or commercial compact.

The Empire itself was but the magnificent recompense for a leadership that had been conducted on a policy of power and military valour.

How then did it happen that the political instincts of this very same German people became so degenerate? For it was not merely one isolated phenomenon which pointed to this decadence, but morbid symptoms which appeared in alarming numbers, now all over the body politic, or eating into the body of the nation like a gangrenous ulcer.

It seemed as if some all-pervading poisonous fluid had been injected by some mysterious hand into the bloodstream of this once heroic body, bringing about a creeping paralysis that affected the reason and the elementary instinct of self-preservation.

During the years 1912-1914 I used to ponder perpetually on those problems which related to the policy of the Triple Alliance and the economic policy then being pursued by the German Empire. Once again I came to the conclusion that the only explanation of this enigma lay in the operation of that force which I had already become acquainted with in Vienna, though from a different angle of vision.

The force to which I refer was the Marxist teaching and WELTANSCHAUUNG and its organized action throughout the nation.

For the second time in my life I plunged deep into the study of that destructive teaching. This time, however, I was not urged by the study of the question by the impressions and influences of my daily environment, but directed rather by the observation of general phenomena in the political life of Germany.

In delving again into the theoretical literature of this new world and endeavouring to get a clear view of the possible consequences of its teaching, I compared the theoretical principles of Marxism with the phenomena and happenings brought about by its activities in the political, cultural, and economic spheres.

For the first time in my life I now turned my attention to the efforts that were being made to subdue this universal pest.

I studied Bismarck’s exceptional legislation in its original concept, its operation and its results. Gradually I formed a basis for my own opinions, which has proved as solid as a rock, so that never since have I had to change my attitude towards the general problem.

I also made a further and more thorough analysis of the relations between Marxism and Jewry.

I considered the disastrous policy of the Triple Alliance as one of the consequences resulting from the disintegrating effects of the Marxist teaching; for the alarming feature was that this teaching was invisibly corrupting the foundations of a healthy political and economic outlook.

Those who had been themselves contaminated frequently did not realise that their aims and actions sprang from this WELTANSCHAUUNG, which they otherwise openly repudiated.

Long before then the spiritual and moral decline of the German people had set in, though those who were affected by the morbid decadence were frequently unaware–as often happens–of the forces which were breaking up their very existence.

Sometimes they tried to cure the disease by doctoring the symptoms, which were taken as the cause. But since nobody recognized, or wanted to recognize, the real cause of the disease this way of combating Marxism was no more effective than the application of some quack’s ointment.

Notes

[Note 8. German Austria was the East Mark on the South and East Prussia was the East Mark on the North.]

[Note 9. Carlyle explains the epithet thus: “First then, let no one from the title GEHOERNTE (Horned, Behorned), fancy that our brave Siegfried, who was the loveliest as well as the bravest of men, was actually cornuted, and had hornson his brow, though like Michael Angelo’s Moses; or even that his skin, to which the epithet BEHORNED refers, was hard like a crocodile’s, and not softer than the softest shamey, for the truth is, his Hornedness means only an Invulnerability, like that of Achilles…”] [Note 10. Lines quoted from the Song of the Curassiers in Schiller’s WALLENSTEIN.]