Victor's Reviews > The Concept of the Political

A fantastic political piece of work on the nature of politics, or as Schmitt puts it; 'the political.'

Schmitt fundamentally describes politics as a realm whereby groups of people with shared characteristics compete for collective power over other groups with opposing characteristics. Schmitt is the political theorist who famously coined the 'friend/enemy' distinction, meaning that within the realm of politics, a group has allies and opponents. Schmitt argued that if your group had no enemies, then it was not truly political.

Interestingly, Schmitt also theorises that those political groups who argue they are 'fighting for humanity' must ultimately class their enemies as inhuman, and not worthy of human rights. He theorises that the more grandiose a political group claims it is fighting for morality, the more immoral they can class their political enemies, and the more worthy they are thus of being eliminated. This personally reminded me of the radical left of today, who claim to be fighting for humanity, but also classify their right wing opponents often as 'scum' ‘evil’ etc. and thus not deserving of belonging to the group they have coined 'humanity.'

Schmitt also criticises the ideology of liberalism, describing it fundamentally as an open vacuum whereby it allows political groups with strong beliefs to compete for power and social dominance. Liberalism is fundamentally an apolitical belief according to Schmitt and is an ideology that fundamentally remains opposed to the State having power. Schmitt thus argues that if a group of individuals choose to remain apolitical, they are destined to be dominated by another group that asserts its political right to rule.

This essay is well worth the read for anybody interested in politics. I will probably revisit it again in the future.

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Kindle Highlights:

"If a people no longer possess the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics, the latter will not thereby vanish from the world. Only a weak people will disappear."

'The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.'

'Liberalism in one of its typical dilemmas of intellect and economics has attempted to transform the enemy from the viewpoint of economics into a competitor and from the intellectual point into a debating adversary. In the domain of economics there are no enemies, only competitors, and in a thoroughly moral and ethical world perhaps only debating adversaries.'

'it cannot be denied that nations continue to group themselves according to the friend and enemy antithesis, that the distinction still remains actual today, and that this is an ever-present possibility for every people existing in the political sphere.'

'An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity.'

'War is the existential negation of the enemy. It is 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 remains valid.'

'A world in which the possibility of war is utterly eliminated, a completely pacified globe, would be a world without the distinction of friend and enemy and hence a world without politics.'

'Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy.'

'The political entity is by its very nature the decisive entity, regardless of the sources from which it derives its last psychic motives.'

'If a part of the population declares that it no longer recognises enemies, then, depending on the circumstance, it joins their side and aids them. Such a declaration does not abolish the reality of the friend-and-enemy distinction.'

'If a people is afraid of the trials and risks implied by existing in the sphere of politics, then another people will appear which will assume these trials by protecting it against foreign enemies and thereby taking over political rule.'

'It would be ludicrous to believe that a defenceless people has nothing but friends, and it would be a deranged calculation to suppose that the enemy could perhaps be touched by the absence of a resistance. No one thinks it possible that the world could, for example, be transformed into a condition of pure morality by the renunciation of every aesthetic or economic productivity. Even less can a people hope to bring about a purely moral or purely economic condition of humanity by evading every political decision. If a people no longer possesses the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics, the latter will not thereby vanish from the world. Only a weak people will disappear.'

'the word humanity, to invoke and monopolise such a term probably has certain incalculable effects, such as denying the enemy the quality of being human and declaring him to be an outlaw of humanity; and a war can thereby be driven to the most extreme inhumanity.'

'The Geneva League of Nations does not eliminate the possibility of wars, just as it does not abolish states. It introduces new possibilities for wars, permits wars to take place, sanctions coalition wars, and by legitimising and sanctioning certain wars it sweeps away many obstacles to war.'

'The radicalism vis-a-vis state and government grows in proportion to the radical belief in the goodness of man's nature.'

'Thus the political concept of battle in liberal thought becomes competition in the domain of economics and discussion in the intellectual realm. Instead of a clear distinction between the two different states, that of war and that of peace, there appears the dynamic of perpetual competition and perpetual discussion.'