Translated from German with the help of AI. The original is the authoritative version.
Marxism is not made by the idea that the material productive forces play a role in the development of our societies. What is characteristic of it is rather the conviction that the productive forces alone are decisive. Against that background it is at least surprising that Antonio Gramsci counts as a Marxist.
As a Gramsci of the right, Alain de Benoist, the leading thinker of the Nouvelle Droite, positioned himself in his book Kulturrevolution von rechts (1985). De Benoist’s work is a collection of essays and suffers from the ailments proper to that form: some things repeat themselves, others would have needed more space; some is interesting, some at best peripheral noise. The passages most exciting for the critical reader concern the Gramsci-inspired theses on the primacy of the spiritual over the material in the development of societies. Less deep but of some interest is, as a second pillar, his analysis of social development, that is, his sociological-historical work. The low point, third, is de Benoist’s account of his own ideas, which in the end are nothing but the crude collectivist and tyrannical impulses of a man who sees the „Hauptfeind” in „bürgerliche[n] Liberalismus” (186).
Let’s begin with the third aspect. It is fairly convincing when de Benoist explains his impatience with the term „right”. It is, he says, „völlig gleichgültig, ob [er] persönlich rechts [ist] oder nicht” (47). And yes: given the haziness that the terms left and right carry with them, the only sensible course is to determine one’s own position by content. And this de Benoist tries to do, by stressing that the core of his position is to see „die Vielgestaltigkeit der Welt” (30), which necessarily issues in inequalities, as something good. What exactly is meant by this remains, however, uncertain, and at most takes shape in his opposition to egalitarianism.
De Benoist’s position becomes clearer when one looks at the position of the individual in his worldview. For him it is about the community, and at most, derivatively, about the individual. In a recent idiom: community first, „Einzelmensch” (187) second. It also becomes clear why he sets as his goal „sowohl die Rechte als auch die Linke in sich zu vereinigen” (55). Such a union only makes sense if it is primarily about the community, which is threatened by liberalism (190). For if the „fundamentale Wert” is „Völker und Kulturen” (187), then the aim must be to bring the elements of every people (left and right) into harmony so they can prosper, while the diversity of peoples, with their respective differences, is preserved.
With the focus on community and the idea of overcoming a schism, de Benoist can be read as an echo of the Hitlerian thought of reaching a synthesis of left and right, of nationalism and socialism, in order to found a strong people’s community. To determine what this community is, who is part and who not, and what has to be done for it, Hitler, de Benoist, and other collectivists have, when in doubt, chosen themselves. For exactly that reason, it is a waste of effort to examine de Benoist’s constructive ideas further. There is nothing more there than the classical collectivist compulsions.
More interesting is the second pillar, the historical and sociological analysis. Some of what de Benoist offers as a description of our society should make liberals sit up too. Looking ahead at the coming decades he notes that on the left „sich jeder sozialistisch, kommunistisch oder marxistisch nennen und dabei ganz fraglos behaupten [könne], daß [seine] Doktrinen nichts mit dem Stalinismus, noch überhaupt mit irgendeiner historisch verwirklichten Form des Sozialismus etwas zu tun hätten” (33).
From a liberal perspective, looking at left and right from the safe distance of someone who keeps a polite distance, who wants to let people do their own thing and is therefore neither left nor right but simply liberal, one has to allow this sober observation: de Benoist is quite right when he describes the phenomenon as an „erstaunliche[s] Schauspiel”. That the memory of unspeakable atrocities of ideologies commonly classified as far-right overshadows the term „right” is understandable. Less understandable is the fact that similarly terrible crimes in the name of far-left ideologies do not burden the term „left” in a comparable way, at least in the decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
What makes de Benoist a relevant thinker, and the critical reading of the anthology worthwhile, is the explanation he offers for the astonishing spectacle, which brings us to the third pillar. Why is it not a curiosity of our time that even radical leftists could shed the burden of past versions of their ideology? That comes, contra Marx and pace Gramsci, from the cultural hegemony, from the „kulturelle[n] Macht” (73) the left at least temporarily had. What matters, then, is the convictions people hold. And precisely that is also decisive for the direction in which a society will move. What, then, has to be done by anyone who wants to revolutionise society?
um die politische Mehrheit auf Dauer zu erringen, muß man zunächst die ideologische Mehrheit erringen, denn erst, wenn sie für Werte gewonnen ist, die von ihren eigenen Werten verschieden sind, wird die bestehende Gesellschaft in ihren Grundfesten zu wanken und ihre effektive Macht abzubröckeln beginnen. Dann wird man die Situation auf der politischen Ebene ausnutzen können: Die historische Aktion oder die Volksabstimmung werden eine Entwicklung, die sich in den Mentalitäten bereits vollzogen hat, bestätigen und sie auf der Ebene der Institutionen und des Regierungssystems umsetzen. (75)
And at another place, in a similar and even more pompous register:
Alle großen Revolutionen der Geschichte haben nichts anderes getan, als eine Entwicklung in die Tat umzusetzen, die sich zuvor schon unterschwellig in den Geistern vollzogen hatte. Man kann keinen Lenin haben, bevor man einen Marx hatte. Dies ist die Revanche der Theoretiker — die nur scheinbar die großen Verlierer der Geschichte sind. Eines der Dramen der Rechten — von der „putschistischen” Rechten bis zur gemäßigten Rechten — ist ihre Unfähigkeit, die Notwendigkeit zu begreifen, daß auf lange Frist geplant werden muß. (38)
De Benoist postulates, then, that convictions come before deeds. This holds, as Gramsci also says, of course only if in society a „spezifische kulturelle Atmosphäre herrscht” (73). But if that is the case, the rule reads: before the world can be won, minds have to be conquered. Before a right-wing party prevails, the right-wing intellectuals have to prevail. The explanation of the development of history as one in which the theoreticians are, in the end, the winners or the decisive figures, is at the same time a directive for action. It tells us what anyone aiming for a successful revolution must do. At the same time it makes understandable how the Nouvelle Droite acts and what playbook it follows: despite all differences, what unites the new right is that it is busy with what de Benoist regards as decisive, and what today goes under the name „metapolitics” (so Michael Böhm in his introduction, or the name of the Metapolitik Verlags UG behind the journal Sezession): the attempt, as Böhm tellingly titles his introduction, to conquer minds.
Besides explaining the world and its development, as well as the behaviour of the new right, de Benoist’s work is also a warning to all those who entertain (collectivist) fantasies of another colour, or who reject tyrannical impulses entirely and put the individual in their place. Because if Gramsci, de Benoist, and those who follow them are right, and much suggests they are, then cultural hegemony is in the long run decisive for the development of societies. The struggle of the intellectuals, their contest for minds, decides in which direction we go tomorrow. And to take part in this struggle is then the single most important task for us liberals. If we fail at it, then the individual, whether in the name of community or other supposedly noble ideas, will be subjugated by other individuals.
