Dictatorship Carl Schmitt

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.Schmitt comes to see this ever more clearly in The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, as he explores the metaphysics of liberalism beyond its economic commitment to capitalist laissez-faire (this was rather an English concern of the political scientist Harold Laski).6 In that book he claims that liberalism’s ‘consistent, comprehensive system’ is founded upon ‘discussion and openness’ (Schmitt 1985: 34–5).He calls this state of affairs ‘a new evaluation of rational thought, a new belief in instinct and intuition that lays to rest every belief in discussion’ (ibid., p.66).Nevertheless, the Weimar Reichstag staggered on from day to day and, for Schmitt, its endless discussions must have seemed a more modern manifestation of romanticism’s apolitical commitment to ‘conversation’.Furthermore, as Schmitt observed, the fact that both election to the Reichstag and election to the office of president of the Reich (Reichspräsident) lay in the hands of the people only raised questions as to what the sovereignty of the people actually consisted of and how this ‘sovereignty’ was to be accessed and assessed so as to avoid private interests.Such problems, and the endless discussions that followed from them, were fundamental to Schmitt’s perception, expressed in Political Romanticism, that liberal democracy was a selfcontradictory notion.7As Political Romanticism appeared and Schmitt was pursing the concept of sovereignty in terms of the evolving nature of political dictatorship, nowhere was sovereignty a matter of the moment more than in Munich.In reconceiving the Reich and the new constitution, the National Assembly had to tackle the older political battles between unitarianism (should the Reich remain a single unit, as it had been created by Bismarck?) and federalism (Bavaria was always most insistent upon its differences from Prussia).8 In the National Assembly Kurt Eisner proclaimed Bavaria’s rights to federal sovereignty most vociferously, and on 21 February 1919 he was murdered by a German nationalist.If this destabilised the situation in that state, where Schmitt was working, it most particularly galvanised the communists with thoughts of revolution.At the beginning of April the new Soviet Republic of Hungary had been declared and, in rapid succession, the Munich Central Council proclaimed and established the Soviet Republic of Munich and Southern Bavaria, which was then taken over by the Munich communists.The Free Corps forces under Johannes Hoffmann (the elected Bavarian minister) and Gustav Noske (the German minister of defence) descended quickly upon Bavaria, and Munich in particular.Munich was only taken in the early days of May.The Soviet Republic had murdered ten Free Corps hostages; the Free Corps retaliated with the summary execution of hundreds of communists.Schmitt was caught up in these struggles and he makes fleeting references to them in Dictatorship.9 Perhaps it is also interesting that, throughout the Bavarian uprising and its suppression, the National Assembly was debating the controversial clauses of the Peace Treaty.These discussions were protracted throughout June, and there was some possibility of their being rejected by the generals.The generals were considering the idea of establishing a military dictatorship with Noske at its head.Would this have been along the lines of Schmitt’s commissary dictatorship? The question can be legitimately raised, given the awkward prominence in Dictatorship of the long Excursus on Wallenstein as an example of such a dictatorship.One further theme in Political Romanticism needs to be addressed here, in view of both Dictatorship and Political Theology that will follow it; and that is Schmitt’s conception of the relationship between Roman Catholicism and political conservatism.Schmitt was coming from a family committed to the Catholic Centre Party.Whatever his actual position on the Catholic church, there is no doubt that Schmitt’s Catholic background, his exposure to the tensions of being part of a Catholic community within the larger Prussian state, whose official religion was Protestantism, and his respect for the Catholic exercise of spiritual authority lie behind his total rejection of a soulless politics rooted in materialism: bourgeois liberalism on the one hand, socialism on the other.Both movements were profoundly anti-clerical.The Weimar Republic put an end to the ‘throne and altar’ alliance of Wilhelmine Germany; in fact Roman Catholicism underwent a pastoral and liturgical renaissance during the Weimar period, although there are few traces of this within Schmitt’s own writings.10 Although he contributed articles to the newly established Catholic journal Hochland, he nowhere embraces the enthusiasm of this Roman Catholic revival.Nevertheless, his interest in political theology is important for his understanding of secularism.We will say more on this subject later [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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