The Liberal Political Theology | Neema Parvini

Neema Parvini (2022) - From the realist perspective of [Carl] Schmitt, there is no structural difference between the liberal state, the communist state, and the fascist state — or indeed any other state. The only difference is the extent to which a regime may obscure the nature of its power or else genuinely buy into myths of neutrality. Viewed in this way, a state wedded to liberal democracy is as ‘totalitarian’ as any other since, by its very nature, it will be unable to tolerate any leaders who are not always already liberal democrats. 

 

"Liberalism is to freedom as anarchism is to anarchy." — Ernst Jünger, 1977

 

Should such leaders rise, the stalwarts of liberal democracy will perceive them as ‘populists’, ‘fascists’, ‘threats to democracy’, and so on. The extent of free speech, free inquiry, free thought, and so on is a liberal delusion. In fact, the range of ‘allowable opinion’ is always exceedingly narrow and the liberal democratic state is marked by its intolerance and spectacular inability to imagine any worldview that is not its own. The dominance of liberal political theology is total. Schmitt would not have disagreed with Oswald Spengler who wrote in The Decline of the West:

"England, too, discovered the ideal of a Free Press, and discovered along with it that the press serves him who owns it. It does not spread ‘free’ opinion — it generates it. […] Without the reader’s observing it, the paper, and himself with it, changes masters. Here also money triumphs and forces the free spirits into its service. No tamer has his animals more under his power. Unleash the people as reader-mass and it will storm through the streets and hurl itself upon the target indicated, terrifying and breaking windows; a hint to the press-staff and it will become quiet and go home. The Press today is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and war aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty."

As Edward Bernays would go on to say these ‘are the invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. […] In some department of our daily lives, in which we imagine ourselves as free agents, we are ruled by dictators exercising great power.’ The point is that viewed from the outside, liberal democracy looks just as ‘totalitarian’ as any other regime even if it relies more on subtle persuasion, nudge techniques, and other psychological tricks than coercion to obtain its results.

Quoted from:
Neema Parvini (2022) - The Populist Delusion

The Rulers and the Ruled | Gaetano Mosca

Gaetano Mosca (1896) - Among the constant facts and tendencies that are to be found in all political organisms, one is so obvious that it is apparent to the most casual eye. In all societies — from all societies that are very meagerly developed and have barely attained the dawnings of civilization, down to the most advanced and powerful societies — two classes of people appear — a class that rules and a class that is ruled.

 

[...] In reality the dominion of an organized minority, obeying a single impulse, over the unorganized majority is inevitable. The power of any minority is irresistible as against each single individual in the majority, who stands alone before the totality of the organized minority. A hundred men acting uniformly in concert, with a common understanding, will triumph over a thousand men who are not in accord and can therefore be dealt with one by one. Meanwhile it will be easier for the former to act in concert and have a mutual understanding simply because they are a hundred and not a thousand. It follows that the larger the political community, the smaller will the proportion of the governing minority to the governed majority be, and the more difficult will it be for the majority to organize for reaction against the minority.

"I can certainly call myself an anti-democrat, but I am not an anti-liberal;
indeed I am opposed to pure democracy precisely because I am a liberal.
I believe that the ruling class ought not to be monolithic and homogeneous
but ought to consist of elements which are diverse in regard to origin and
interests; when, instead, political power originates from a single source,
even if this be elections with universal suffrage, I regard it as dangerous
and liable to become oppressive. Democratic Jacobinism is an illiberal
doctrine precisely because it subordinates everything to a single force,
that of the so-called majority, on which it does not set any limits."

[...] What happens in other forms of government — namely, that an organized minority imposes its will on the disorganized majority — happens also and to perfection, whatever the appearances to the contrary, under the representative system. When we say that the voters ‘choose’ their representative, we are using a language that is very inexact. The truth is that the representative has himself elected by the voters, and, if that phrase should seem too inflexible and too harsh to fit some cases, we might qualify it by saying that his friends have him elected. In elections, as in all other manifestations of social life, those who have the will and, especially, the moral, intellectual and material means to force their will upon others take the lead over the others and command them.

[...] From our point of view there can be no antagonism between state and society. The state is to be looked upon merely as that part of society which performs the political function. Considered in this light, all questions touching interference or noninterference by the state come to assume a new aspect. Instead of asking what the limits of state activity ought to be, we try to find out what the best type of political organization is, which type, in other words, enables all the elements that have a political significance in a given society to be best utilized and specialized, best subjected to reciprocal control and to the principle of individual responsibility for the things that are done in the respective domains.

"Who says organization, says oligarchy. [...] Historical evolution mocks all the
prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy."
Robert Michels, 1911

[...] Any political organization is both voluntary and coercive at one and the same time — voluntary because it arises from the very nature of man, as was long ago noted by Aristotle, and coercive because it is a necessary fact, the human being finding himself unable to live otherwise. It is natural, therefore, and at the same time indispensable, that where there are men there should automatically be a society, and that when there is a society there should also be a state — that is to say, a minority that rules and a majority that is ruled by the ruling minority.

Quoted from:
Gaetano Mosca (1896) - The Ruling Class (Elementi di scienza política).

See also:

 Robert Michels (1915) - Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie).
Vilfredo Pareto (1916) - The Mind and Society (Trattato di sociologia generale).