Schmitt and Weber

The general progress of Schmitt's lecture (up to the point I'd like to discuss, which is the treatment of Lenin, which I don't get to below) goes like this: The emergence of the partisan, best represented by the anti-French resistance in 1808-1813 Spain, begins a long process that decays the distinction between 'citizen' and 'soldier.' Due to this international actors are pushed more in the direction of total war, where there are no citizens who can be reliably separated off from combattants. A lot of fascinating detail from the history of partisan activity is provided to illustrate the legal and technical changes. Particularly striking is the attempt by the Prussian state to adopt the Spanish model and, by legal fiat, compel the citizens of Prussia to employ 'partigiano' tactics against the French.

But at the same time Schmitt accompanies the description of this development with hyperbolic phrasing about the significance of the phenomena under study. "A spark flew north from Spain at that time. It did not kindle the same flame that gave the Spanish Guerrilla War its world-historical significance. But it started something whose continuance today in the second half of the twentieth century changed the face of the earth and its inhabitants. It produced a *theory* of war and of enmity that culminates in the theory of the partisan" (5). What do people think: does Schmitt overstate the significance of development he traces? Would it be fair to paraphrase Schmitt like this: "The emergence and growth of the partisan meant that the old approach to wars – which relied on a sharp, binary distinction between regular and irregular, combattants and non, legal and illegal – was no longer applicable. That's why the partisan is a world-historic figure that ends up producing new theories of war."

The partisan itself is surpassed. Schmitt acknowledges that "the terrestrial type of the active fighter" (that is, the partisan) will be around "for at least as long as anticolonial wars are possible on our planet" (14). But as the techniques of warfare become more mobile, "the autochthonous partisan of agrarian origin is drawn into the force-field of irresistible technical-industrial progress. His mobility is so enhanced by motorization that he runs the risk of complete while there will always be the possibility of complete dislocation" (14). So, Schmitt is very tied to the 'tellurian' nature of the partisan. Mao uses this famous metaphor that makes the same point using water: "Guerrillas are the fish, and the population is the sea in which they swim." But Schmitt also raises the possibility that the partisan will fade once we get past anticolonial wars and technology reaches its natural global saturation point.

I read with great interest, but still don't think I follow the section on the word 'risky,' maritine insurance practices, and their relation to the topic at hand. Maybe it's just an aside! If you think it's worth explaining it to me, see p. 20.

What do readers make of the very interesting moment on 21 where it seems Schmitt is praising the Soviet Union for its stand – despite its status as a 'great power' with some history of its own invasions – in support of small nations who want to expand the 'right of resistance' and the status of partisans when confronted by occupiers? "In the councils of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 a comprimise formula was reached with great effort in which organized resistance movements were considered on a par with a volunteer corps. Here, too, the typical configuration is reproduced in connection with the effort to contain within international legal norms the experiences of World War II. The great military powers, potential occupiers, again were aligned against the smaller states that feared occupation, but this time with a modification as striking as it is symptomatic. The largest land power in the world, far and away the strongest potential occupying power, the Soviet Union, stood now on the side of the smaller state" (21). But of course we know that in practice the Soviet Union was a horrible violator of the rights of smaller states. But in theory they were pretty good! Those four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, Schmitt says, "are the work of a humane conscience, and a humanitarian development that deserves our admiration." But they are impossible to implement, to 'realize.' "While they" (that is, the four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 - jsr) "thus, relax these essential distinctions" (war and peace, regular-irregular, etc. - jsr) "and even question them, they open the door for a kind of war that would knowingly destroy such clear divisions. At that point many carefully formulated compromise-rules [Kompromiss-Normierung] will look like the fragile bridges over an abyss concealing portentous metamorphoses in the concepts of war, peace, and the partisan." Where's that New Yorker 'block that metaphor' feature when you need it? Schmitt is an intense writer, or speaker, as these are transcripts of lectures, correct? He reminds me of the way Weber writes and speaks. With Weber, you get these long, sociologically dispassionate descriptions of some historic development (such as the 'protestant ethic' or 'the bureaucrat'), also filled with lots of entertaining details and illustrations, and it all seems so 'sober' and 'objective' and all of a sudden Weber forgets to take his Effexor and says: "The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter's view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the 'saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.' But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage." I mean it makes you cry! And one feels so touched, so surprised, by this sentimental *concern* that Weber wears on his sleeve. The same 'Wagnerian' 'resolution' occurs in Politics as a Vocation. It's so Wagnerian! Wagner was the founder of the orgasm as delayed pleasure = intensified pleasure, and he wasn't wrong! Wagner was the prophet of internet pornography. Internet pornography invites one to linger long after any reasonable timetable for satiation. In Tristan und Isolde one is only allowed to cum very late, but the intensity of the orgasm compensates. But the same delay, the same 'opera' is found in "Politics as a Vocation." A long objective account of the rise of the bureaucrat and its dangerous dominance over politics, discussion of the 'journalist' that reminds us of Lukacs, of the 'machine' politician so familiar from the early American scene, boy is Weber good at this kind of thinking, as is Schmitt – and then Weber can't take it anymore; the Hans Castorp in him comes out. I know the quotation here is long, but I hope you will be so kind as to bear with me, with Weber. Notice the sudden appearance of the 'me' and the 'I'; the 'personalism' of these reflections.

"Surely, politics is made with the head, but it is certainly not made with the head alone. In this the proponents of an ethic of ultimate ends are right. One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one and when the other. One can say only this much: If in these times, which, in your opinion, are not times of 'sterile' excitation--excitation is not, after all, genuine passion--if now suddenly the Weltanschauungs-politicians crop up en masse and pass the watchword, 'The world is stupid and base, not I,' 'The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate,' then I declare frankly that I would first inquire into the degree of inner poise backing this ethic of ultimate ends. I am under the impression that in nine out of ten cases I deal with windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations. From a human point of view this is not very interesting to me, nor does it move me profoundly. However, it is immensely moving when a mature man--no matter whether old or young in years--is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere he reaches the point where he says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other.' That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position. In so far as this is true, an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts but rather supplements, which only in unison constitute a genuine man--a man who can have the 'calling for politics.'

Now then, ladies and gentlemen, let us debate this matter once more ten years from now. Unfortunately, for a whole series of reasons, I fear that by then the period of reaction will have long since broken over us. It is very probable that little of what many of you, and (I candidly confess) I too, have wished and hoped for will be fulfilled; little-perhaps not exactly nothing, but what to us at least seems little. This will not crush me, but surely it is an inner burden to realize it. Then, I wish I could see what has become of those of you who now feel yourselves to be genuinely 'principled' politicians and who share in the intoxication signified by this revolution. It would be nice if matters turned out in such a way that Shakespeare's Sonnet 102 should hold true:

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my lays;

As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days.

But such is not the case. Not summer's bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which group may triumph externally now. Where there is nothing, not only the Kaiser but also the proletarian has lost his rights. When this night shall have slowly receded, who of those for whom spring apparently has bloomed so luxuriously will be alive? And what will have become of all of you by then ? Will you be bitter or banausic ? Will you simply and dully accept world and occupation? Or will the third and by no means the least frequent possibility be your lot: mystic flight from reality for those who are gifted for it, or--as is both frequent and unpleasant--for those who belabor themselves to follow this fashion? In every one of such cases, I shall draw the conclusion that they have not measured up to their own doings. They have not measured up to the world as it really is in its everyday routine. Objectively and actually, they have not experienced the vocation for politics in its deepest meaning, which they thought they had. They would have done better in simply cultivating plain brotherliness in personal relations. And for the rest--they should have gone soberly about their daily work.

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth--that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for politics."

Jesus holy Christ it's such a tear-jerker! Weber ambushes the reader. It's almost indecent – a man of his talents can reduce someone like me to tears, and it's almost impolite to use the power. Similar to the way Anthony Hopkins is able to drive fellow prisoners insane when he's upset that they have insulted his guest Jodi Foster – it's like, I can't support the weight of this romantic pessimism. Shakespeare's sonnet 102! Stop it! Cut it out!