The
folkish National Socialist state sees its chief task in educating
and preserving the bearer of the state. It is not sufficient
to encourage the racial elements as such, to educate them
and finally instruct them in the needs of practical life;
the state must also adjust its own organization to this task.
It
would be lunacy to try to estimate the value of man according
to his race, thus declaring war on the Marxist idea that men
are equal, unless we are determined to draw the ultimate consequences.
And the ultimate consequence of recognizing the importance
of blood - that is, of the racial foundation in general -
is the transference of this estimation to the individual person.
In general, I must evaluate peoples differently on the basis
of the race they belong to, and the same applies to the individual
men within a national community. The realization that peoples
are not equal transfers itself to the individual man within
a national community, in the sense that men's minds cannot
be equal, since here, too, the blood components, though equal
in their broad outlines, are, in particular cases, subject
to thousands of the finest differentiations.
The
first consequence of this realization might at the same time
be called the cruder one: an attempt to promote in the most
exemplary way those elements within the national community
that
have been recognized as especially valuable from the racial
viewpoint and to provide for their special increase.
This
task is cruder because it can be recognized and solved almost
mechanically. It is more difficult to recognize among the
whole people the minds that are most valuable in the intellectual
and ideal sense, and to gain for them that influence which
not only is the due of these superior minds, but which above
all is beneficial to the nation. This sifting according to
capacity and ability cannot be undertaken mechanically; it
is a task which the struggle of daily life unceasingly performs.
A
philosophy of life which endeavors to reject the democratic
mass idea and give this earth to the best people - that is,
the highest humanity - must logically obey the same aristocratic
principle within this people and make sure that the leadership
and the highest influence in this people fall to the best
minds. Thus, it builds, not upon the idea of the majority
but upon the idea of personality.
Anyone
who believes today that a folkish National Socialist state
must distinguish itself from other states only in a purely
mechanical sense, by a superior construction of its economic
life - that is, by a better balance between rich and poor,
or giving broad sections of the population more right to influence
the economic process, or by fairer wages by elimination of
excessive wage differentials - has not gone beyond the most
superficial aspect of the matter and has not the faintest
idea of what we call a philosophy. All the things we have
just mentioned offer not the slightest guaranty of continued
existence, far less of any claim to greatness. A people which
did not go beyond these really superficial reforms would not
obtain the least guaranty of victory in the general struggle
of nations. A movement which finds the content of its mission
only in such a general leveling, assuredly just as it may
be, will truly bring about no great and profound, hence real,
reform of existing conditions, since its entire activity does
not, in the last analysis, go beyond externals, and does not
give the people that inner armament which enables it, with
almost inevitable certainty I might say, to overcome in the
end those weaknesses from which we suffer today.
To
understand this more easily, it may be expedient to cast one
more glance at the real origins and causes of human cultural
development.
The
first step which outwardly and visibly removed man from the
animal was that of invention. Invention itself is originally
based on the finding of stratagems and ruses, the use of which
facilitates the life struggle with other beings, and is sometimes
the actual prerequisite for its favorable course. These most
primitive inventions do not yet cause the personality to appear
with sufficient distinctness, because, of course, they enter
the consciousness of the future, or rather the present, human
observer only as a mass phenomenon. Certain dodges and crafty
measures which man, for example, can observe in the animal
catch his eye only as a summary fact, and he is no longer
in a position to establish or investigate their origin, but
must simply content himself with designating such phenomena
as 'instinctive.'
But
in our case this last word means nothing at all. For anyone
who believes in a higher development of living creatures must
admit that every expression of their life urge and life struggle
must have had a beginning; that one subject must have
started it, and that subsequently such a phenomenon repeated
itself more and more frequently and spread more and more,
until at last it virtually entered the subconscious of all
members of a given species, thus manifesting itself as an
instinct.
This
will be understood and believed more readily in the case of
man. His first intelligent measures in the struggle with other
beasts assuredly originate in the actions of individual, particularly
able subjects. Here, too, the personality was once unquestionably
the cause of decisions and acts which later were taken over
by all humanity and regarded as perfectly self-evident. Just
as any obvious military principle, which today has become,
as it were, the basis of all strategy, originally owed its
appearance to one absolutely distinct mind, and only in the
course of many perhaps even thousands of years, achieved universal
validity and was taken entirely for granted.
Man
complements this first invention by a second: he learns to
place other objects and also living creatures in the service
of his own struggle for self-preservation; and thus begins
man's real inventive activity which today is generally visible.
These material inventions, starting with the use of stone
as a weapon and leading to the domestication of beasts, giving
man artificial fire, and so on up to the manifold and amazing
inventions of our day, show the individual creator the more
clearly, the closer the various inventions lie to the present
day, or the more significant and incisive they are. At all
events, we know that all the material inventions we see about
us are the result of the creative power and ability of the
individual personality. And all these inventions in the last
analysis help to raise man more and more above the level of
the animal world and finally to remove him from it. Thus,
fundamentally, they serve the continuous process of higher
human development. But the very same thing which once, in
the form of the simplest ruse, facilitated the struggle for
existence of the man hunting in the primeval forest, again
contributes, in the shape of the most brilliant scientific
knowledge of the present era, to alleviate mankind's struggle
for existence and to forge its weapons for the struggles of
the future. All human thought and invention, in their ultimate
effects, primarily serve man's struggle for existence on this
planet, even when the so-called practical use of an invention
or a discovery or a profound scientific insight into the essence
of things is not visible at the moment. All these things together,
by contributing to raise man above the living creatures surrounding
him, strengthen him and secure his position, so that in every
respect he develops into the dominant being on this earth.
Thus,
all inventions are the result of an individual's work. All
these individuals, whether intentionally or unintentionally,
are more or less great benefactors of all men. Their work
subsequently gives millions, nay, billions of human creatures,
instruments with which to facilitate and carry out their life
struggle.
If
in the origin of our present material culture we always find
individuals in the form of inventors, complementing one another
and one building upon another, we find the same in the practice
and execution of the things devised and discovered by the
inventors. For all productive processes in turn must in their
origin be considered equivalent to inventions, hence dependent
on the individual. Even purely theoretical intellectual work,
which in particular cases is not measurable, yet is the premise
for all further material inventions, appears as the exclusive
product of the individual person. It is not the mass that
invents and not the majority that organizes or thinks, but
in all things only and always the individual man, the person.
A
human community appears well organized only if it facilitates
the labors of these creative forces in the most helpful way
and applies them in a manner beneficial to all. The most valuable
thing about the invention itself, whether it lie in the material
field or in the world of ideas, is primarily the inventor
as a personality. Therefore, to employ him in a way benefiting
the totality is the first and highest task in the organization
of a national community. Indeed, the organization itself must
be a realization of this principle. Thus, also, it is redeemed
from the curse of mechanism and becomes a living thing. It
must itself be an embodiment of the endeavor to place thinking
individuals above the masses, thus subordinating the latter
to the former.
Consequently,
the organization must not only not prevent the emergence of
thinking individuals from the mass; on the contrary, it must
in the highest degree make this possible and easy by the nature
of its own being. In this it must proceed from the principle
that the salvation of mankind has never lain in the masses,
but in its creative minds, which must therefore really be
regarded as benefactors of the human race. To assure them
of the most decisive influence and facilitate their work is
in the interest of the totality. Assuredly this interest is
not satisfied, and is not served by the domination of the
unintelligent or incompetent, in any case uninspired masses,
but solely by the leadership of those to whom Nature has given
special gifts for this purpose.
The
selection of these minds, as said before, is primarily accomplished
by the hard struggle for existence. Many break and perish,
thus showing that they are not destined for the ultimate,
and in the end only a few appear to be chosen. In the fields
of thought, artistic creation, even, in fact, of economic
life, this selective process is still going on today, though,
especially in the latter field, it faces a grave obstacle.
The administration of the state and likewise the power embodied
in the organized military might of the nation are also dominated
by these ideas. Here, too, the idea of personality is everywhere
dominant - its authority downward and its responsibility toward
the higher personality above. Only political life has today
completely turned away from this most natural principle. While
all human culture is solely the result of the individual's
creative activity, everywhere, and particularly in the highest
leadership of the national community, the principle
of the value of the majority appears decisive, and from
that high place begins to gradually poison all life; that
is, in reality to dissolve it. The destructive effect of the
Jew's activity in other national bodies is basically attributable
only to his eternal efforts to undermine the position of the
personality in the host-peoples and to replace it by the mass.
Thus, the organizing principle of Aryan humanity is replaced
by the destructive principle of the Jew. He becomes 'a ferment
of decomposition' among peoples and races, and in the broader
sense a dissolver of human culture.
Marxism
presents itself as the perfection of the Jew's attempt to
exclude the pre-eminence of personality in all fields of human
life and replace it by the numbers of the mass. To this, in
the political sphere, the system of a trade-union movement,
which, from the smallest germ cells of the municipality up
to the supreme leadership of the Reich, we see in such disastrous
operation, and in the economic sphere, the system of a trade-union
movement which does not serve the real interests of the workers,
but exclusively the destructive purposes of the international
world Jew. In precisely the measure in which the economy is
withdrawn from the influence of the personality principle
and instead exposed to the influences and effects of the masses,
it must lose its efficacy in serving all and benefiting all,
and gradually succumb to a sure retrogression. All the shop
organization which, instead of taking into account the interests
of their employees, strive to gain influence on production,
serve the same purpose. They injure collective achievement,
and thus in reality injure individual achievement. For the
satisfaction of the members of a national body does not in
the long run occur exclusively through mere theoretical phrases,
but by the goods of daily life that fall to the individual
and the ultimate resultant conviction that a national community
in the sum of its achievement guards the interests of individuals.
It
is of no importance whether Marxism, on the basis of its mass
theory, seems capable of taking over and carrying on the economy
existing at the moment. Criticism with regard to the soundness
or unsoundness of this principle is not settled by the proof
of its capacity to administer the existing order for
the future, but exclusively by the proof that it can itself
create a higher culture. Marxism might a thousand times
take over the existing economy and make it continue to work
under its leadership, but even success in this activity would
prove nothing in the face of the fact that it would not be
in a position, by applying its principle itself, to
create the same thing which today it takes over in a finished
state.
Of
this Marxism has furnished practical proof. Not only that
it has nowhere been able to found and create a culture by
itself; actually it has not been able to continue the existing
ones in accordance with its principles, but after a brief
time has been forced to return to the ideas embodied in the
personality principle, in the form of concessions;
- even in its own organization it cannot dispense with these
principles.
The
folkish philosophy is basically distinguished from the Marxist
philosophy by the fact that it not only recognizes the value
of race, but with it the importance of the personality, which
it therefore makes one of the pillars of its entire edifice.
These are the factors which sustain its view of life.
If
the National Socialist movement did not understand the fundamental
importance of this basic realization, but instead were merely
to perform superficial patchwork on the present-day state,
or even adopt the mass standpoint as its own - then it would
really constitute nothing but a party in competition with
the Marxists; in that case, it would not possess the right
to call itself a philosophy of life. If the social program
of the movement consisted only in pushing aside the personality
and replacing it by the masses, National Socialism itself
would be corroded by the poison of Marxism, as is the case
with our bourgeois parties.
The
folkish state must care for the welfare of its citizens by
recognizing in all and everything the importance of the value
of personality, thus in all fields preparing the way for that
highest measure of productive performance which grants to
the individual the highest measure of participation.
And
accordingly, the folkish state must free all leadership and
especially the highest - that is, the political leadership
- entirely from the parliamentary principle of majority rule
- in other words, mass rule - and instead absolutely guarantee
the right of the personality.
From
this the following realization results:
The
best state constitution and state form is that which, with
the most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in
the national community to leading position and leading influence.
But
as, in economic life, the able men cannot be appointed from
above, but must struggle through for themselves, and just
as here the endless schooling, ranging from the smallest business
to the largest enterprise, occurs spontaneously, with life
alone giving the examinations, obviously political minds cannot
be 'discovered.' Extraordinary geniuses permit of no consideration
for normal mankind.
From
the smallest community cell to the highest leadership of the
entire Reich, the state must have the personality principle
anchored in its organization.
There
must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons,
and the word ' council' must be restored to its original meaning.
Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the
decision will be made by one man.
The
principle which made the Prussian army in its time into the
most wonderful instrument of the German people must some day,
in a transferred sense, become the principle of the construction
of our whole state conception: authority of every leader
downward and responsibility upward.
Even
then it will not be possible to dispense with those corporations
which today we designate as parliaments. But their councillors
will then actually give counsel; responsibility, however?
can and may be borne only by one man, and therefore
only he alone may possess the authority and right to command.
Parliaments
as such are necessary, because in them, above all, personalities
to which special responsible tasks can later be entrusted
have an opportunity gradually to rise up.
This
gives the following picture:
The
folkish state, from the township up to the Reich leadership?
has no representative body which decides anything by the majority,
but only advisory bodies which stand at the side of
the elected leader, receiving their share of work from him,
and in turn if necessary assuming unlimited responsibility
in certain fields, just as on a larger scale the leader or
chairman of the various corporations himself possesses.
As
a matter of principle, the folkish state does not tolerate
asking advice or opinions in special matters - say, of an
economic nature - men who, on the basis of their education
and activity, can understand nothing of the subject. It, therefore,
divides its representative bodies from the start into political
and professional chambers.
In
order to guarantee a profitable cooperation between the two
a special senate of the élite always stands over them.
In
no chamber and in no senate does a vote ever take place. They
are working institutions and not voting machines. The individual
member has an advisory, but never a determining voice. The
latter is the exclusive privilege of the responsible chairman.
This
principle - absolute responsibility unconditionally combined
with absolute will gradually breed an élite of leaders such
as today, in this era of irresponsible parliamentarianism,
is utterly inconceivable.
Thus,
the political form of the nation will be brought into agreement
with that law to which it owes its greatness in the cultural
and economic field.
*...............*...............*
As
regards the possibility of putting these ideas into practice,
I beg you not to forget that the parliamentary principle of
democratic majority rule has by no means always dominated
mankind, but on the contrary is to be found only in brief
periods of history, which are always epochs of the decay of
peoples and
states.
But
it should not be believed that such a transformation can,
be accomplished by purely theoretical measures from above,
since logically it may not even stop at the state constitution,
but must. permeate all other legislation, and indeed all civil
life. Such a. fundamental change can and will only take place
through a movement which is itself constructed in the spirit
of these ideas and hence bears the future state within itself.
Hence
the National Socialist movement should today adapt. itself
entirely to these ideas and carry them to practical fruition
within its own organization, so that some day it may not only
show the state these same guiding principles, but can also
place the completed body of its own state at its disposal.