People v. State

First, let me recommend Mike’s recent post on Nietzsche. Although I don’t know much about Nietzsche, based on what I do know Mike’s conclusion seems quite right.

I was most recently prompted to rummage around the internet for a refresher on Nietzsche by finally reading my copy of Community Technology by Karl Hess. This in turn prompted me to rummage around for Peter Kropotkin, who is one of the few thinkers quoted by Hess in that book, and whose ideals mesh nicely with my own. Here is a good summary of Kropotkin:

This brings us to the conception that Kropotkin had of anarchism as reflected in “The Conquest of Bread” and his other works. He doesn’t seem to see anarchism as a political ideology on a par with, say Marxism, but rather he sees it as a constantly present tendency within human groups. Anarchism, then, is more of an anthropological category than a political one for Kropotkin. In his “Mutual Aid” he looks at the ancient European tribes, the medieval city states, the guilds, and even the animal world, for examples of solidarity, self-sacrifice and mutual aid – all aspects of the anarchist idea. In “The Conquest of Bread” he does the same. He highlights events from the French revolution where associations of labourers sprang up to till the soil together. He looks at aspects of Russian and Swiss peasant communal land use as well as the English lifeboat crews who voluntarily aid seamen in distress. This is where Kropotkin’s real worth is – in the field of history and ethics. Of course some of his historical conclusions can be criticised: medieval cities were not as democratic and peaceful as he would have us believe. But he did illuminate an aspect of human history which had been completely neglected. Academics of the nineteenth century were heavily under the influence of neo-Darwinist ideas which sought to justify both capitalism and imperialism. Kropotkin was one of the very first to attempt to refute the ‘survival of the fittest’ idea. The basic point that humanity has made most progress under conditions of co-operation runs through the length and breadth of “The Conquest of Bread”.

And this in turn reminded me of “The New Idol” in Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, which I’ve quoted in full before, and quote again in full below, and which I hereby designate as the official anthem of this blog:

Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brothers: here there are states.

A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears to me, for now I will speak to you about the death of peoples.

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.”

It is a lie! It was creators who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.

Destroyers are they who lay snares for the many, and call it state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.

Where there are still peoples, the state is not understood, and is hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.

This sign I give to you: every people speaks its own language of good and evil, which its neighbor does not understand. It has created its own language of laws and customs.

But the state lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it says it lies; and whatever it has it has stolen.

Everything in it is false; it bites with stolen teeth, and bites often. It is false down to its bowels.

Confusion of tongues of good and evil; this sign I give you as the sign of the state. This sign points to the will to death! it points to the preachers of death!

All too many are born: for the superfluous the state was created!

See how it entices them to it, the all-too-many! How it swallows and chews and rechews them!

“On earth there is nothing greater than I: I am the governing hand of God.” — thus roars the monster. And not only the long-eared and short-sighted fall upon their knees!

Ah! even in your ears, you great souls, it whispers its gloomy lies! Ah! it finds out the rich hearts which willingly squander themselves!

Yes, it finds you too, you conquerors of the old God! You became weary of conflict, and now your weariness serves the new idol!

It would set up heroes and honorable ones around it, the new idol! Gladly it basks in the sunshine of good consciences, — the cold monster!

It will give everything to you, if you worship it, the new idol: thus it buys the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes.

Through you it seeks to seduce the all-too-many! Yes, a hellish artifice has been created here, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of divine honors!

Yes, a dying for many has been created here, which glorifies itself as life: verily, a great service to all preachers of death!

The state, I call it, where all drink poison, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all — is called “life.”

Behold the superfluous! They steal the works of the creators and the treasures of the wise. Education, they call their theft — and everything becomes sickness and trouble to them!

Behold the superfluous! They are always sick; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour each other and cannot even digest themselves.

Behold the superfluous! They acquire wealth and become the poorer for it. They seek power, and the lever of power, much money — these impotent ones!

See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and thus pull each other into the mud and the abyss.

They all strive for the throne: this is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne! Often filth sits on the throne. — and often also the throne on filth.

Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Foul smells their idol to me, the cold monster: foul they all smell to me, these idolaters.

My brothers, will you suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites! Better to break the windows and jump into the open air!

Escape from their foul stench! Escape from the idolatry of the superfluous!

Escape from their foul stench! Escape from the steam of these human sacrifices!

The earth is yet free for great souls. There are still many empty sites for the lonesome and the twosome, surrounded by the fragrance of tranquil seas.

A free life is yet possible for great souls. He who possesses little is that much less possessed: blessed be a little poverty!

There, where the state ends — there only begins the man who is not superfluous: there begins the song of the necessary, the single and irreplaceable melody.

There, where the state ends — look there, my brothers! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Overman?

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

A couple of amateurish observations:

How does Nietzsche’s supposed Darwinian affirmation of the Will to Power comport with, for example, these lines, and other lines, in the above: “They seek power, and the lever of power, much money — these impotent ones! . . . ”

Nietzsche values “peoples” over “states.” But he does not appear to advise a return to, or reformation of, “peoples,” as Hess and Kropotkin seemed to do. Rather, he observes that there are “still many empty sites for the lonesome and the twosome, surrounded by the fragrance of tranquil seas.” Perhaps that is because “peoples” really are dead, and there’s no going back. “States” have killed them. The conscious and organized effort that Hess wrote about in Community Technology wound up being a failure. Perhaps nostalgia for neighborhood is just that — nostalgia.

But who knows. Nietzsche, famously, is easily misunderstood. Conversely, he must be hard to understand. It seems at least clear that he was a man, and a philosopher, of many apparent contradictions. I feel no great urgency to study him closely. “The New Idol” is enough. I already take too many of my ideas secondhand, a tendency he himself no doubt would have looked down upon. To the limited extent I understand him, I take him to be for life and the affirmation of life, and to be a denigrator of dogma and mediocrity. I’m on board. God is dead? Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

According to Wikipedia, a favorite motto of Nietzsche’s, taken from Pindar (although I haven’t been able to find on the internet the source for this claim in either Nietzsche or Pindar), was: “Become what you are.” What if, before Abraham was, you are? That’s aristocracy for you. And humility.

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