Nietzsche and Democracy

DO EXTREMES MEET?

In La Bataille Syndicaliste, several articles have appeared on Nietzsche and Nietzschean philosophy, which interest me from an economic and social point of view.

In a first article, published on January 3, the “Nietzschean” Louis Estève began with an article of a general and rather purely philosophical nature, an article that might have gone unnoticed in my circles had it not been for the controversy for and against Nietzsche by comrades Charles Albert and Laïeaut, who followed up on it.

Indeed, are the readers of our newspaper really interested in knowing whether the “Will to Power,” so dear to Nietzsche's heart, was only “an artistic Will to Power,” as his disciple, Louis Estève, tried to make us believe, and that the German philosopher “has no thesis of his own to promote the national imperialism of his country”?

Although I have always had a deep aversion to Nietzschean paradoxes ¹, and I agree with Laïeaut that they would be truly poisonous if ever taken seriously by our fellow workers, I nevertheless believed that we had other things to do at this time than engage in bad philosophy, and that the French critical spirit would always prevail over Nietzschean metaphysics as soon as it touched on the events of real social life.

However, in a recent article (dated February 7), Louis Estève seeks to draw a parallel between Nietzsche's philosophy and democracy and to promote what he calls “a Nietzschean education in democracy.” He says he wants to “superhumanize democracy,” “exalt within it the heroic, ascetic, and rational virtues necessary for any great evolution,” and to do so, he wants to “go back to pure aïrathéatrique, from which we will only be able to draw, however, at the crucial moments when it flows clearly.”

So, I stayed put! Even though I was sure that no worker would take Nietzsche's paradoxes seriously when they relate to his real life, I nevertheless intend to show, as a matter of principle, the deep gulf that separates this thinker's philosophy from any democratic movement and any working-class conception. I will do so all the more because the “pure source of anger” disgusted me most precisely at the times and moments when it could be said to flow clearly.

How could the principles of this pretentious Vaurien of the Superman, of this “metaphysical construction,” of this caricature of a man in flesh and blood, the principles of Zarathustra, guide and educate democracy?

Yet “democracy,” the free and egalitarian society where popular will has the preponderant influence (LITON), is based on the harsh necessities of real life. The “pros and cons” of this movement can be explained by the difficulties that men experience in life, every day, in their conquest of nature and natural forces. Zarathustra, on the contrary, lives above the clouds, in his cave on the rock, with his “rule,” his “Serpent,” and his “Source.” That is why this hallucinatory hermit and the “demot,” the great people, will never understand each other!

I have entered here squarely into my critique of Nietzsche and the Nietzscheans.

For it is not only in the creation of his figure of Zarathustra, but in all of his works that Nietzsche showed that he understood nothing about the fundamental questions of human existence, because he understood nothing about the production of all the necessities of life. That is why all the figures created by Nietzsche lack realization. When Nietzsche introduces us, at the end of his main book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, to the “supermen,” individuals who were modeled on his Zarathustra, we find ourselves in the presence of a collection of society's rejects: the Viens Puße, the cunning Zorocier, Zoro, the voluntary beggar, and so on.

Zarathustra himself is, in short, a kind of idealized airy being. At his side are the Eagle and the Serpent, who taught him:
fresh honey, we feel at every moment that Nietzsche did not realize that the human race needs so many millions of tons of coal, so many building stones, so much timber, so much wheat and meat per year to live, and that the “Eagle” and the “Serpent” bring us none of these necessities of life.

This could still be accepted in the time of the Gospel of Jesus, when one could believe that a whole crowd could be fed, by a miracle, with a few fish, or believe in natural transformation: it is wine, just as children believe in Mother Goose tales.

But a philosophy constructed in our modern times, outside of real life, must necessarily create human figures that are measurable.

Zarathustra himself does not gather wisdom by scrutinizing the phenomena of real life, but by withdrawing from this hydrobenthic life, so rich in its revelations, to go and live in the superb eternal snows of the Mountain, with Lady Moon. It is there that he learns to penetrate the hearts and consciences of men!!!

I have always attributed Nietzsche's caricatural conception of human life to his status as a university professor and his studies outside of everyday life. The main fault of almost all our philosophers has always been that they knew too little about life, and with German philosophy's predilection for metaphysics, so developed in Nietzsche, we should not be surprised to find only abstractions in his works instead of living men.

“Nietzsche would be the life of his Zarathustra in all reality,” writes his biographer, Peter Gart, in the German preface to his main work. However, when the hermit philosopher descends from the heights of his mountain to teach the world his “superhumanist” wisdom, is it then worthwhile to relate his principles to the working masses who live by the sweat of their brow?

Nietzsche himself understood it differently. Peter Gart (p. 1) notes in the philosopher, throughout all three periods of his life, an “imperious rejection of our democracy,” by which he felt “disguised” (angouident). Nietzsche saw democracy as “the most obvious sign of misdirection and, above all, of a lack of grand visions, of men capable of opening up new paths.”

Nietzsche himself devoted a short chapter of his Zarathustra to his principles on this point, entitled “On the Servants” (Vom Gesinde). Not having the English translation of the book to hand, I am translating it from my copy of the original German:

"But one day I asked myself, and the question almost strangled me: How? Does Life still need the rabble?

“The unity of poisoned springs and fearful fires and broken dreams and worms in the bread of life!...

”And I would turn my back on the rulers when I saw what we call rulers today: trading meanly and haggling over power—with the rabble!

“More than one man, who turned away from life, meant only to turn away from the rabble: he did not want to share the source and the fire and the fruits with the rabble.

”And more than one man, who went into the desert and suffered thirst with the wild animals, refused only to break around the cistern with dirty camel drivers.
“

Faced with such an attitude, should we be content with this remark by Louis Estève: ”Do not be shocked by his attitude of aristocratic disdain: it is a flaw whose illegitimacy he must not have seen...

When democracy triumphs, thanks to the experience gained and energetic asceticism, will it not have become, as a whole, its own aristocracy!"

Ah! No, this is neither an illegitimate one nor a play on words about the democratic aristocracy, a sort of combination of fire and water. The disdain for the “rabble,” for the ‘popular’ (der Pabel), is present in all of Nietzsche's thinking and is part of his whole rebalancing of aristocratic paradoxes.

Nietzschean asceticism, moreover, is highly problematic, not only in terms of its effect on the working class, but also on the German philosopher's “superman.”

The terrazzier who must spend ten hours a day digging in the damp earth needs more than heroic acceleration; he needs a good meal and good clothes. And as for the philosophical “superman,” let us remember the following words of Zarathustra:

“The best belongs to my people and to me, and if it is not given to us, we will take it: the best food, the purest air, the strongest thoughts, the most beautiful women!” (Max sprach Zarathustra, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 41).

Nor can we accept as an argument against Zarathustrianism what Louis Estève says: that we should not judge the works of the German prophet by his disciples, the “parade Nietzscheans.” Let us judge the order by its fruits, at least a little! Nietzsche himself does the same. When he rails against poets and against Christ, whose status as Savior he disputes, he rightly says: “His disciples should look a little more like they have been ‘saved’” (Ibid., p. 129).

Particularly! Let us apply this a little to the Nietzscheans in the anarchist movement.

I have struggled with these individualist anarchists who, at the age of eighteen, while still knowing nothing about life and being good-for-nothings, already had this damn elitism of the “Foulé” and the “Canaille.”

One of the best of these disciples I ever met invited us to follow the example of the beech and the oak, making our small sacrifices to the “people,” like the acorn that scatters its seeds to the four winds, but always holding our heads high in the air, high above the “crowd.”

The true “supermen” and ‘superwomen’ we knew in our labor movement never showed this aristocratic disdain. Just look at the good Louise Michel! Could anyone ever say of her, “Here is Louise, a servant of the people; she herself remains at a distance from the rabble”? Would she ever have deserved her statue in Montmartre, which the artist wanted to make “unique, because the good Louise never placed herself on a pedestal and lived with the people, down to earth”?

No, let's be clear. In the German preface to another book seized by anarchist individualism, The Evocator and His Property by Max Sterner, Paul Lanstebach recalls the words of a French critic, saying that it is “a book that leaves you a monarch.”

It is somewhat the same case with Nietzsche. Well, let all these “monarchs,” all these “aristocrats,” fend for themselves, and let us not concern ourselves with them. Let them circle far away from us, with the Eagle, at the Source of the mountain!

Let's say it loud and clear: Nietzsche is the philosophy of those German bohemians and generals who have not yet been dethroned by democracy, by social revolution. He is the philosopher of Vos Kreitschke and Vos Rombardi. He is the philosopher of Wilhelm II and his manic and criminal “will to power.”

But Nietzsche has nothing to do with us, with the “rabble.”