The Hour of Decision

THE HOUR OF DECISION

Also by Oswald Spengler

The Decline of the West

First published 1934

This edition © 2020

Rogue Scholar Press

All Rights Reserved

On the world’s loom

Weave the Norns doom,

Nor may they guide it nor change.

RICHARD WAGNER:

Siegfried (Act III)

CONTENTS

PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

THE POLITICAL HORIZON

Germany is not an island. Dread of reality. Rationalism and Romanticism. The deceptive peace, 1871-1914. Greatness of the age.

WORLD WARS AND WORLD POWERS

The age of world wars. Between past and future forms of power, Metternich. The first world war threatened from 1878. 1918 decided nothing. End of Europe. Decline of the dignity of the State from the Congress of Vienna. Democratic nationalism. Economics mightier than politics: germ of the economic crisis. Transformation of armies and strategic ideas. Navies and colonies. Economic warfare. New powers. Russia once more Asiatic. Japan. The United States and revolution. England. France. Standing out of world politics does not protect against their consequences.

THE WHITE WORLD-REVOLUTION

The revolution from below. Age of the Gracchi in Rome. Not economic, but urban: dissolution of society. Society as order of rank. Differences, not contrasts. Underworld of great cities: noble and vulgar. Goal of the Revolution: the leveling of society. Democracy = Bolshevism. Property, luxury, wealth. Class war begins about 1770. In England. The united movement from Liberalism to Bolshevism. Mobilization of the working class from 1840. Dictatorship of the proletariat. Professional agitators. Bolshevism not Russian. Tolerance of Liberal society. Cult of the worker. Type of the demagogue. Church and class war. Communism and religion. Economic egoism as the moral of class war. Age of revolutionary theory, 1750-1850. National economy from 1770 onward belongs to it. Negative ideal of class war: from 1770, destruction of the order of rank; from 1840, of the economic order. Capitalism and Socialism as moral concepts. Socialism as capitalism from below.

The White Revolution now at its goal: the world economic crisis has been sought by the proletariat’s leaders since 1840. The labour leader as the victor of 1918. Class war by means of the shortening of working hours and raising of wages. Substitution of the political wage as weapon in place of the surplus-value theory. Extent and effect of the political wage. Triumph of inferior mass labour over constructive work. Peasantry and urban luxury wages. The hectic pace of economic development a consequence of wage pressure. Expansion of finance-capital a further consequence. End of industrial monopoly of the white working class. The coloured wage enters the contest.

The white economic system already undermined by 1900. Crash of the World War not brought about, but only no longer averted. Dictatorship of the Labour parties over State and economics since 1916. Unemployment. Robbing of society. Lack of insight. Inflation, autarchy, provision of work. Class war not yet over. Two fronts. What is Left? Meaning of Fascism. "Preussentum und Sozialismus. Close of the revolution from below." Caesarism. Individualism as the Nordic life-form.

THE COLOURED WORLD-REVOLUTION

Fact of two revolutions: class war and race war. The revolution from without against the Roman Imperium. Position of the white nations. Versailles a victory for the coloured world. Asia active: Russia and Japan. Indians. Negroes. India and China. Weariness of the white nations: barrenness. Pacifism, panem et circenses. Danger of an understanding between the coloured and the white proletariat. Entry into the decisive decades.

PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD:

SPENGLER FOR THE 21st CENTURY

Oswald Spengler is perhaps Nietzsche’s greatest heir. Of all the thinkers and writers who wrestled with Nietzsche’s ideas throughout the 20th century — from early would-be aristocrats who fancied themselves to be Übermenschen, to National Socialists who saw Nietzsche entirely as a precursor to their own ideas, to post-World War 2 liberal philosophers determined to make Nietzsche play nice, and finally the postmodernists for whom Nietzsche is a fragment of a fragment to be used as they please — it was Spengler who best understood and applied the essence of Nietzsche’s worldview.

Like Nietzsche, Spengler’s vision is broad and far-reaching, both stretching back into the distant past and also far into the future; indeed, it is because he understands the past so well that his insights into the future are so sharp and accurate. He sees with the eagle’s eye — from a long distance, but with great, exacting clarity. Like Nietzsche, his view of human life is rooted in biology, nature and history. It is un-metaphysical and decidedly un-romantic. He calls it a brave pessimism, echoing what Nietzsche wrote about the Greeks’ pessimism of strength in his later preface to The Birth of Tragedy.

Spengler writes:

There is a Nordic world-feeling, reaching from England to Japan, which is full of joy just because of the burden of human destiny. One challenges it for the sake of conquering it, and one goes under proudly should it prove stronger than one’s own will. … It is the tragic view of life, which is not yet dead, but will blossom anew in the future just as it blossomed in the World War. All the very great poets of the Nordic Cultures have been tragedians, and tragedy, from ballad and epic onward, has been the deepest form of this brave pessimism. The man who is incapable of experiencing or enduring tragedy can never be a figure of world significance. He cannot make history unless he experiences it as it really is — tragic, permeated by destiny, and in consequence meaningless, aimless, and immoral in the eyes of the worshippers of utility. It marks the parting of the ways between the superior and the subordinate ethos of human existence.

The Hour of Decision was the last book Spengler wrote. Published in 1934, it was intended to be Part One of a larger study and bore the subtitle Germany and World-Historical Evolution. But Spengler died in 1936 and no further volumes were written. While the first half of the book is mostly concerned with European history and politics, and the power dynamics that would lead to the Second World War only a few years later, the second half concerns Europe and Western civilization in the larger context of world trends. It is here that the book sounds utterly contemporary and remains just as relevant today, if not more so.

What Nietzsche diagnosed as the ressentiment and pathology of the chandala is here exposed as the motive force behind the revolutionary political movements which began in the late 19th century and which continue in the present day. Spengler’s vitalist biologism exposes them for what they really are:

In every society degenerate elements sink constantly to the bottom: exhausted families, downfallen members of generations of high breed, spiritual and physical failures and inferiors. One has only to glance at the figures in meetings, public-houses, processions, and riots; one way or another they are all abortions, men who, instead of having healthy instincts in their body, have only heads full of disputatiousness and revenge for their wasted life, and mouths as their most important organ. It is the dregs of the great cities, the genuine mob, the underworld in every sense, which everywhere constitute the opposition to the great and noble world and unite in their hatred of it …

His analysis of what is now called globalization and the movement of production from Europe and America to the Third World is prophetic. The false oppositions of communism and capitalism (two equally shallow, materialist philosophies) and of liberalism and conservatism (the latter merely a weak and ineffectual reaction to the former) are laid bare.

But more than the accuracy of his predictions, what makes The Hour of Decision important and relevant today is the spirit of vitality and truth that informs all of Spengler’s writing. For, as he says, "the forces which will sway the future are no other than those of the past. These forces are: the will of the Strong, healthy instincts, race, the will to possession and power."

Rogue Scholar Press

INTRODUCTION

No one can have looked forward to the national revolution of this year with greater longing than myself. The sordid Revolution of 1918 I detested from its first day, for it was the betrayal by the inferior part of our people of that strong, live part which had risen up in 1914 in the belief that it could and would have a future. Everything of a political nature that I have written since then has been directed against the forces which had entrenched themselves, with our enemies’ help, on the mountain of our misery and misfortune in order to render this future impossible. Every line that I wrote was meant to contribute to their overthrow, and I hope that it has done so. Something had to come in one form or another to release the deepest instincts in our blood from that load, if we were, like others, to have a voice and to act in the coming world-crises and not merely be their victim. The great game of world politics is not over. Only now are the highest stakes being played for. Every living nation must rise to greatness or go under. But the events of this year allow us to hope that the decision in our case has not yet been made — that we, as in Bismarck’s day, shall sooner or later again be subjects and not mere objects of history. The decades in which we live are stupendous — and accordingly terrifying and void of happiness. Greatness and happiness are incompatible and we are given no choice. No one living in any part of the world of today will be happy, but many will be able to control by the exercise of their own will the greatness or insignificance of their life-course. As for those who seek comfort merely, they do not deserve to exist.

The man of action is often limited in his vision. He is driven without knowing the real aim. He might possibly offer resistance if he did see it, for the logic of destiny has never taken human wishes into account. But much more often he goes astray because he has conjured up a false picture of things around and within him. It is the great task of the historical expert (in the true sense) to understand the facts of his time and through them to envisage, interpret. and delineate the future — which will come whether we will or no. An epoch so conscious of itself as the present is impossible of comprehension without creative, anticipating. warning, leading criticism.

I shall neither scold nor flatter. I refrain from forming any estimate of those things which are only just coming into being. True valuation of an event is only possible when it has become the remote past, and the definitive good or bad results have long been facts: which is to say, when some decades have passed. No ripe understanding of Napoleon was possible before the end of last century, and even we can as yet have no final opinion about Bismarck. Facts alone stand firm, judgments waver and change. In sum, a great event has no need of a contemporary estimate. History itself will judge it when its contemporaries are no longer living.

So much, however, can be said already: the national revolution of 1933 was a mighty phenomenon and will remain such in the eyes of the future by reason of the elemental, super-personal force with which it came and the spiritual discipline with which it was carried through. Here was something Prussian through and through, just as was the uprising of 1914, which transformed souls in one moment. The German dreamers stood up with a calm imposing naturalness to open a way into the future. But all the more must those who took part realize that this was no victory, for opponents were lacking. The force of the rising was such that everything that had been or was still active was swept away in it. It was a promise of future victories that have yet to be won by hard fighting, and merely cleared the ground for these. The leaders bear the full responsibility therefor, and it is for them to know, or to learn, the significance of it all. The task is fraught with immense dangers, and its sphere lies not within the boundaries of Germany but beyond, in the realm of wars and catastrophes where world politics alone speak, Germany is, more than any other country, bound up with the fate of all the others. Less than any can it be directed as though it were a thing unto itself. And, moreover, it is not the first national revolution that has taken place here — there have been Cromwell and Mirabeau — but it is the first to occur in a politically helpless and very dangerously situated land, and this fact enhances incalculably the difficulty of its tasks.

These tasks are, one and all, only just emerging, are Barely grasped and not solved. It is no time or occasion for transports of triumph. Woe betide those who mistake mobilization for victory! A movement has just begun; it has not reached its goal, and the great problems of our time have been in no wise altered by it. They concern not Germany alone, but the whole world, and are problems not of a few years, but of a century.

The danger with enthusiasts is that they envisage the situation as too simple. Enthusiasm is out of keeping with goals that lie generations ahead. And yet it is with these that the actual decisions of history begin.

The seizure of power took place in a confused whirl of strength and weakness. I see with misgiving that it continues to be noisily celebrated from day to day. It were better to save our enthusiasm for a day of real and definitive results — that is to say, of successes in foreign politics, which alone matter. When these have been achieved the men of the moment, who took the first step, may all be dead — or even forgotten and scorned, until at some point posterity recalls their significance. History is not sentimental, and it will go ill with any man who takes himself sentimentally!

In any movement with such a beginning there are many possible developments of which the participants are not often fully aware The movement may become rigid from excess of principles and theories; it may go under in political, social, or economic anarchy, or it may double back upon itself in futility. In Paris in 1793 it was definitely felt que ça changerait. The intoxication of the moment, which often ruins coming possibilities at the outset, is usually followed by disillusionment and uncertainty as to the next step. Elements come into power which regard the enjoyment of that power as an event in itself and would fain perpetuate a state of things which is tenable for moments only. Sound ideas are exaggerated into self-glorification by fanatics, and that which held promise of greatness in the beginning ends in tragedy or comedy. Let us face these dangers in good time, and soberly, so that we may be wiser than many a generation in the past.

But if a stable foundation is to be laid for a great future, one on which coming generations may build, ancient tradition must continue effective. That which we have in our blood by inheritance — namely, wordless ideas — is the only thing which gives permanence to our future. "Prussianism (Preussentum)," as I called it years ago, is important — it is this, precisely, that has just been tested — but Socialism, of whatever description, is not. We need educating up to the Prussian standard, which manifested itself in 1870 and 1914 and still sleeps in the depths of our soul as a permanent potentiality. It is to be reached only through the living example and moral self-discipline of a ruling class, not by a flow of words or by force. The service of an idea demands mastery of ourselves and readiness for inward sacrifices to conviction. To confuse this with the intellectual compulsion of a program is to be ignorant of the whole issue. And this brings me back to the book: Prussianism and Socialism,[1] in which, in 1919, I began to point out this moral necessity without which there can he no permanent building. All other nations of the world have inherited a character from their past. We had no educative past and have therefore still to awaken, develop, and train the character which lies dormant in our blood.

The work of which this volume is the first part is written with the same object. I do as I have always done. That is, I offer no wish-picture of the future, still less a program for its realization — as is the fashion amongst us Germans — but a clear picture of the facts as they are and will be. I see further than others. I see not only great possibilities but also great dangers, their origin and perhaps the way to avoid them. And if no one else has the courage to see and to tell what it is he sees, I mean to do so. I have a right to criticism since by means of it I have repeatedly demonstrated that which must happen because it will happen. A decisive series of facts has been set in train. Nothing that has once become a fact can he withdrawn — we are all thereafter obliged to walk in the particular direction, whether we will or not. It would be short-sighted and cowardly to say no. What the individual will not do, that History will do with him.

But to say yes presupposes comprehension, and this book is here to help in comprehension. It is a danger-signal. Dangers are always there. Everyone who acts is in danger. Danger is life itself. But those who link the fate of States and nations with their own must meet these dangers seeingly — and to see requires possibly the most courage of all.

The present book arose out of a lecture: Germany in Danger,[2] which I delivered at Hamburg in 1929, without meeting with much comprehension. In November 1932 I began to develop the theme, still in terms of the existing situation in Germany. By the 30th January 1933 it was printed up to page 106. I have altered nothing in it, for I write not for a few months ahead or for next year, but for the future. What is true cannot be made null by an event. The title alone I have changed, so as to avoid misunderstandings. It is not the national seizure of power which is a danger; the dangers were there — some of them dating from 1918, others from much further back — and they still persist, since they cannot be got rid of by an isolated event which before taking effect against them must undergo a long development in the right direction. Germany is in danger. My fear for Germany has not grown less. The March victory was too easy to open the eyes of the victors to the extent of the danger, its origin, and its duration.

No one can know what forms, situations, and personalities will arise out of this upheaval, or the reactions which may result from outside. Every revolution makes the external situation of a country worse, and that fact alone requires statesmen of Bismarck’s order to deal with it. We stand, it may be, close before a second world war, unable to gauge the distribution of forces or to foresee its means or aims — military, economic, revolutionary. We have no time to limit ourselves to home politics; we have to be in form to deal with any conceivable occurrence. Germany is