Kampf!

- The Dangerous Liason Between Radical Conservatism and Radical Democracy.

Democratic theory is dominated by a vivid and critical discussion of what is called liberal democracy. We have witnessed, so the debate goes, how the parliamentary political systems have failed to recognize minorities. The "tyranny of the majority", is said to be a prophecy come true in almost every nation with some kind of representative democracy. This is indeed one great dilemma inherent in a mass-democracy. In the early 20’s, Carl Schmitt considered this as one of the major flaws of parliamentary democracy. In fact, combined with a catholic social philosophy, it forced him to believe that the only alternative was presidentialism, with a strong leader directly elected by the people and a crippled parliament. For Schmitt, the Third Reich was not the best rule, but it was inevitable. I will highlight the underestimated importance of Georg Simmel’s Hegelian notion of Kampf, as a basic social-philosophical idea underlying the radical conservatism of Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Max Weber is usually singled out as one of the thinkers who influenced Schmitt the most. Indeed, both lawyers saw authority as necessary for a well-functioning rule of law. But the similarities end there. Max Weber was one of the founding fathers of the constitution of the Weimar-republic, a government that evoked Schmitt’s ambivalence, and ultimately ignited his contempt. However, as I will argue, Weber’s assumptions of conflict, emanated originally from Georg Simmel´s reworking of Hegel’s metaphysics. Kampf, according to Simmel a fundamental interaction and “sociation”, lies behind Carl Schmitt's perhaps most well-known figure of thought; “friend/enemy”. The concept of friend/enemy, constitutes in turn a vital element in the social philosophy of both Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. In stressing conflict and Kampf, the radical conservatives Schmitt, Heidegger and Gadamer, never attempted to be neither egalitarian, nor democratic. It also led them to dubious affiliations with the national-socialist party. Odd enough, their radical conservatism revives and flourishes today, in radical democratic theory of the left.

Author: Helen Lindberg, Örebro University