About imperialism

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About imperialism is an essay that the political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote shortly after the end of the Second World War in exile in North America. It was first published in 1946 under the title Imperialism: Road to Suicide, The Political Origins and Use of Racism in the Jewish political magazine Commentary ,founded in 1945. Almost at the same time the different German version appeared in Heidelberg in the magazine Die Wandlung and again in 1948 within the collection of six essays as the third volume in the series Schriften der Wandlung with the participation of Karl Jaspers , Werner Krauss and Alfred Weber , edited by Dolf Sternberger .

The text was published again in 1976 shortly after Arendt's death in the Federal Republic of Germany as part of an anthology containing two further essays. The ribbon bears the title: The hidden tradition. Eight essays. It is dedicated to her teacher and friend Karl Jaspers. The essay is one of the preliminary studies for her major political work, Elements and Origins of Total Domination , published in New York in 1951 . She included the essay unchanged in the American first edition The Origins of Totalitarianism . "It is a study of the current stage of imperialism and racial madness ."

Shortly after the end of the war, Arendt states "the inhuman absurdity of our time." Measured against the result: the devastation of all European countries, the collapse of all Western traditions, the threat to the existence of these peoples and the moral devastation of a large part of Western humanity is the existence of a small class of capitalists who (...) searched the globe with greedy eyes for profitable investments for superfluous capital, truly a trifle.

She describes modern history as a bloody spectacle that violates the awareness of human dignity .

“That it took a world war to deal with Hitler is so shameful precisely because it is funny too. The historians of our time have (..) tried again and again to cover up this element of the bloody fool's game, to erase it, and to give the events a certain size or dignity which they do not have, but which would make them more humanly bearable. "

Arendt connects the developments since the 19th century with the absolutist philosophy of history of Thomas Hobbes , "to whose naked brutality the elite of the bourgeoisie only dares to appeal in our time (...)."

Dealing with the "belief in economic progress"

She rejects the belief in the “economic factor” and its “necessary progressiveness” and states that this “imperialist heresy” has cost bloody victims - but also intellectual victims. In addition to the expanding capital, the mob of the big cities in Europe moved to Africa in the 19th century - an alliance between the “too rich and the all too poor.” These “pan” movements were the first attempts, Arendt said, to reorganize the nation an instrument for the devastating conquest of foreign territories and the exterminating oppression of foreign peoples, against which the traditions of the nation-state and the labor movement would have turned out to be helpless. She notes critically about the socialist movement:

"Occasional warnings against the lumpen proletariat and against the possible bribery of sections of the working class by participating in imperialist profits have not led to a deeper understanding of the new political force, which in the sense of Marxism and the dogma of class struggle, an alliance as unnatural as that between the mob and raised capital. "

"Alliance between mob and capital": priority of politics over economy

According to Arendt, socialist theorists such as Hobson , Hilferding and Lenin discovered the economic driving forces of imperialism, but its political structure and the attempt to divide people into “master and slave races” were hidden rather than enlightened. Today the economic factor has long since fallen victim to the imperial one. The initiative was passed on to the mob. “His belief in race has triumphed over daring hopes for unearthly profits. His cynicism against all reasonable and moral judgments has shaken the hypocrisy and thus the foundations of the capitalist system and has already partially destroyed it. ”Arendt explains, the mob can no longer be integrated into any national organization. The older empires were shaken to their foundations. Racial doctrines can poison all peoples, including those of color who revolt against white men.

Ambiguity of the "historical pessimists"

Arendt deals with the “historical pessimists” from Burckhardt to Spengler , who have correctly recognized the danger of democracy turning into despotism , but not that the mob “was made up of the rubbish of all classes”, (...) “the growing admiration of the good company for the underworld ”, (…)“ their constant indulgence in moral questions ”. She analyzes the differences between the major European states and finds that the political worldview of the mobs has a surprisingly strong affinity to the political worldview of bourgeois society, as it was in Hobbes's philosophy of hypocrisy 300 years ago, well before the emergence of the mob found adjusted basis.

The "nihilistic worldview" of the mob

Arendt summarizes the "essential axioms of this worldview " as follows:

  • The value of man (previously called virtue ) is his price, determined according to the law of supply and demand in public opinion .
  • Power is the accumulated rule over public opinion, the will to power is the basic quality of man.
  • In relation to the state's monopoly of power (“monopoly of the ability to kill”) there is therefore only “absolute obedience, the blind conformism of the bourgeois world”.
  • Political disenfranchisement, the random principle, competition as well as increased interest in private life and one's own “fate” increase, the importance of public affairs for the individual is lost.
  • By ceding the political rights of the individual to the state, the individual delegates his social duties, such as caring for the poor, to the state. Happiness and honor, misfortune and shame become one. The difference between poor and criminals is leveled out - "both are outside of society."
  • These "unsuccessful, unfortunate, disgraceful" are reset to the "state of nature" ( war of all against all ), and the socialization of the declassed into a gang of murderers is possible.
  • There is a break in the occidental tradition of freedom and justice .
  • Stability will be achieved by increasing the state's power at the expense of other states.
  • It is an infinite process in which individuals, peoples and humanity (up to and including the world state ) feel irrevocably the same, whether for salvation or disaster.

The "ideology of progress" is followed by the "doom superstition"

Contrary to the 18th century concept of progress , which was associated with the maturity, freedom and autonomy of the human being, according to Arendt, the concept of progress in bourgeois society is based on the “big man's addiction of the businessman who has become imperialist, whom the stars annoy because he cannot annex them . "

"Politically it follows from the necessary process of power accumulation that" expansion is everything ", economically: that no limits may be set to the pure accumulation of capital , and socially: the infinite career of the parvenus ."

As so often in her works, Arendt not only consults historical, political, philosophical and other sources, but also literature. She argues: Optimism of progress and even more severe melancholy, despair and doom and gloom are characteristic of the poets of the epoch: Baudelaire , Swinburne , Nietzsche up to Kipling (“the big game is only over when everyone is dead”). Hobbes had bluntly anticipated this attitude. Only after the “slaughter of the Communards (1871)” did the bourgeoisie feel so secure that it began to plan the state designed by Hobbes. The most radical form of rule as well as possession is annihilation. "This is the living basis of the nihilism of our time, in which superstition in progress was replaced by the equally vulgar superstition of doom (...)," is her summary.

"The most consistent form of the struggle of all against all is the annihilation of entire peoples, administrative mass murder"

She turned against scientific materialism , which deduces the origin of man from matter which is void for the spirit, and she advocated the idea of ​​a unified origin of the human race, since such naturalism combined with the idea of ​​separate races not in solidarity “fight against one another for eternity ”, the“ most consistent form ”of which she called“ administrative mass murder ”. This is the foreign policy of imperialism. The author makes no fundamental difference here between the National Socialists and other manifestations of a racist mob after the German surrender, but expresses the hope that the peoples will not allow themselves to be captured.

She distinguishes three types of nihilists: harmless people, fools who knowingly or unknowingly believe in nothingness, including most of the contemporary scholars (1946), who she subsumes under the ignorant nihilists; likewise harmless “poets and charlatans”, “only rarely a philosopher” who see themselves as nihilists and “dangerous people who try to bring about nothing” by trying in vain to “pile annihilation upon annihilation”.

Hobbes regards her as a "philosophical power worshiper" who based human equality on the " ability to kill" . Before the 20th century, bourgeois society did not recognize this “last secret of power”. It was not until the development of imperialism in the 19th century that the mob, enthusiastic about racial doctrines, arose, but initially seemed "hidden", covered over by better occidental traditions. The marginalized mob, neither class nor inadequately tied to the nation, looked at the marginalized Jews who were held together by the "bonds of blood" with envy and developed their political tactics along the lines of the forged protocols of the Elders of Zion . The downfall of the nation state automatically produced Hobbesian Leviathan (sovereign), which could lead to the downfall of the West, but on the other hand it also offers opportunities to defeat these dangers. Because in the Second World War the peoples had proven that the majority of them did not turn into mob. She believes the old nation-state cannot be restored and believes in the end of patriotism. Arendt's diagnosis is that the mob with a racist ideology specific to the individual European countries could penetrate this void and bring about the end of humanity.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Commentary I (1945-1946), No. 4, pp. 27-35.
  2. ↑ Die Wandlung I (1945-46), No. 8, pp. 650–666.
  3. ↑ Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1976 (The information on the history of the edition is from the bibliography of Ursula Ludz, ed., In: Hannah Arendt: I want to understand. Self- information on life and work. Piper, Munich-Zurich 1976, pp. 265, 267 taken.)
  4. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 13
  5. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 12
  6. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), pp. 12f
  7. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 25
  8. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 14
  9. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 14
  10. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 16
  11. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 17
  12. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), pp. 17f
  13. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p.
  14. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), pp. 19f
  15. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), pp. 20f
  16. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), pp. 21f
  17. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), pp. 21f
  18. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), pp. 23f
  19. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), pp. 25f
  20. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 26
  21. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 27
  22. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 28
  23. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), p. 28
  24. ↑ Arendt: About imperialism. (1976), pp. 29f

output

  • Hannah Arendt: About imperialism. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Suhrkamp TB, Frankfurt a. M. 1976, ISBN 3-518-06803-2 , pp. 12-31.