Mein Kampf (Stackpole Sons)/Volume 2/Chapter 5
5. World-Concept and Organization
The populist state, of which I have tried to draw a general picture, will not be realized by the mere perception of what is necessary to the state. It is not sufficient to know how a populist state should look. Much more important is the problem of its creation. We cannot expect that the existing parties, which primarily are usufructuaries of the present state, shall of themselves effect a change and voluntarily alter their present attitude. This is the more impossible because their real directing elements are Jews and more Jews. The development we are going through at the moment would, if continued without hindrance, finally result in the all-Jewish prophecy—the Jew would devour the peoples of the earth and become their master.
Thus in his relation to the millions of German “bourgeois” and “proletarians” who shamble to their destruction largely out of cowardice coupled with indolence and stupidity, he pursues his way irresistibly, fully conscious of his future aim. A party led by him can therefore fight for none but his own interests; these have nothing in common with the concerns of Aryan peoples.
If one wishes to try to transform the ideal image of a racial-Nationalist state into practical reality, one must independent of the forces of public life hitherto, seek a new force willing and able to undertake the battle for such an ideal. For a battle it must be, inasmuch as its first task is not the creation of a populist conception of the state, but above all the elimination of the present Jewish conception. As so often in history, the main difficulty lies not in the formation of the new state of affairs but in making room for it. Prejudices and interests league themselves in a solid phalanx, and try by every means to prevent the victory of a disagreeable and menacing idea.
Thus the fighter for such an ideal, with all his positive emphasis on it, is, alas, forced primarily to fight out the negative part of the battle, the part that is to bring about the elimination of the present condition.
Unpleasant as it may be to the individual, a young doctrine of great and new insignificance in principle must use the probing of criticism in all sharpness as its first weapon.
It shows little insight into historical developments when the so-called populists today thing it worth while to keep declaring that they by no means intend to indulge in negative criticism, but only in constructive work. This gabble is as childish and idiotic as it is truly “populist,” and it proves how little trace even the history of their own times has left on them. Marxism too, has had an aim and it too is no stranger to “constructive work,” (even if only the erection of a despotism of international world-finance Jewry!) But it began by practicing criticism for seventy years, nevertheless. It was destructive, disintegrating criticism, until the constant gnawing of the acid had undermined the old State and brought about its collapse. Only then did its so-called “building-up” begin. And this was natural, right and logical. An existing condition is not removed by mere emphasis and insistence on a future one. It is not to be expected that the followers, let alone those with an interest in the already existing state of affairs, can be completely converted and won over to the new one merely by defining a necessity. On the contrary it may all too easily happen that both conditions will exist side by side, so that the so-called world-concept becomes a party, from whose limitations it can never afterwards escape. For world-concepts are intolerant, and cannot be satisfied with the role of a “party among others;” they imperiously demand complete and exclusive recognition of themselves, along with a complete transformation of public life in accordance with their views. They cannot tolerate any simultaneously continuing defense of a previous state of affairs.
This is equally true of religions. Christianity, too, could not be content with building its own altar, but had perforce to proceed to the destruction of the heathen altars. The apodictic faith could grow only out of this fanatical intolerance: indeed intolerance is absolutely indispensable to it.
No doubt one can object that most such phenomena in world history are a matter of a specifically Jewish way of thinking; that this kind of intolerance and fanticism is the absolute embodiment of the Jewish character. This may be a thousand times true, and we may deeply deplore the fact, and may, with all the well founded disquiet, remark its appearance in the history of mankind as something hitherto unknown—but that does not alter the fact that this condition exists to-day. The men who want to deliver our German people from its present situation must not rack their brains about how wonderful it would be if this and that did not exist, but must try to find out how what does exist can be got rid of. A world-concept full of hellish intolerance cannot be shattered except on an idea impelled on by a similar spirit, defended by the same intense will, but at the same time pure and absolutely true in itself.
The individual today may be pained to discover that the first intellectual terrorism befell the much freer ancient world with the appearance of Christianity; but he will not be able to dispute the fact that since then the world has been driven and dominated by this coercion, and that coercion can be broken only by coercion, and terrorism by terrorism. Only then can a new condition be constructively created.
Political parties are inclined to compromise; world-concepts never. Political parties count on adversaries; world-concepts proclaim their infallibility.
Political parties, too, almost always intend originally to achieve sole and despotic domination; they almost always have some tiny urge toward a world-concept. But the very narrowness of their program robs them of the heroism that a world-concept demands. This conciliatory intent brings them small and feeble souls, with whom no crusades can be undertaken. The result is that they very soon stick fast in their own miserable pettiness. By doing that they give up the fight for a world-concept, and try instead, by so-called “constructive cooperation,” to reserve themselves a place at the feeding-trough of existing institutions, and to keep it as long as possible. This is their whole aim. And if they are ever pushed away from the common trough by some brutally-inclined feeder, they do nothing but strive and scheme, whether by force or by guile, to push to the fore again among the hungry drove, to refresh themselves at last at the cherished fountain of nutriment, even though it cost their most sacred conviction. Jackals of politics!
As no world-concept is ever ready to share with another, it can never be ready to help in an existing state of affairs which it condemns, but feels duty bound to fight the condition and the entire world of hostile ideas by all means, i.e., to contrive its downfall.
Both this purely disintegrative battle, which the others instantly recognize as a threat, and therefore oppose with united resistance, and the positive battle, attacking in order to establish its own new ideology, require determined warriors. Thus a world-concept can lead its ideas to victory only if it unites in its ranks the most courageous and energetic elements of its age and people, shaping them solidly into a vigorous fighting organizations. But for this end it is necessary for it, keeping these elements in mind, to pick certain ideas from its worlds image, and to clothe them in a form whose brief, precise, slogan-like quality makes them seem suitable as a credo for a new fellowship of men. While the platform of a merely political party is a formula for success in the coming election, the program of a world-concept is a formula for success in the coming election, the program of a world-concept is a formulated declaration of war on an existing order, an existing state of things, in short on an existing attitude toward the world.
That does not mean it is necessary for every individual fighting for this world-concept to have complete understanding and knowledge of the ultimate ideas and reasoning of the movement’s leaders. It is much more necessary that a few large points of view be made clear to him, and the most essential basic lines stamped indelibly on his mind, so that he is absolutely impregnated with the necessity of his movement’s and his doctrine’s victory.
The individual soldier is not initiated into the trains of reasoning in higher strategy. Instead he is trained to rigid discipline and a fanatical belief in the justice and strength of his cause, and to complete assimilation to it; the same thing must be done to the individual follower of a movement great in stature and future, and supreme in purpose.
An army whose soldiers were all generals, if only by training and comprehension, would be worthless; a political movement as the upholder of a world-concept is equally so if it tries to be a mere reservoir of “thinking” people. No: it needs the primitive soldier as well, or no inner discipline can be achieved.
It lies in the nature of any organization that it can subsist only if the supreme intellectual leadership is served by a broad and more emotional-minded mass of people. A company of two hundred men all equal in intellectual capacity would in the long run be harder to discipline than one of a hundred and ninety with smaller intellectual capacity, and ten more cultivated men.
In the past this fact has been of the greatest service to Social Democracy. It got hold of those members of the broad masses of our people who had been discharged from the army, where they had already been broken to discipline; and took them under its own equally rigid discipline. Its organization too constituted an army of officers and soldiers. The German laborer discharged from the army was the soldier, the Jewish intellectual the officer; the German trade-union officials may be regarded as the non-commissioned officers. The thing that our bourgeoisie always shook its head over, viz. the fact that only the so-called uneducated masses belonged to Marxism, was in reality the essential presumption for its success. For whereas the bourgeois parties, one-sidedly intellectual, constituted a useless and undisciplined mob, Marxism formed from its unintellectual human material an army of party soldiers who obeyed their Jewish director as blindly as they had once obeyed their German officer. The German bourgeoisie, being exalted far above psychological problems, paid no attention to them on principle, and here too considered it unnecessary to ponder and so to recognize the deepest meaning and the peril of this fact. On the contrary, they believed that a political movement formed only from circles of the “intelligentsia” was superior for that very reason, and had more right, nay actually more chance, of getting into power than the uneducated masses would have. They never realized that the strength of a political party by no means consists in the greatest possible and most independent intellectuality of the individual members, but rather in the disciplined obedience with which its members follow their intellectual leadership. What counts is the leadership itself. If two bodies of troops are fighting, it is not the one each of whose members has the most advanced strategical training that will win, but the one with the superior leadership and at the same time the better-disciplined, more blindly obedient and better-drilled troops.
This is a fundamental perception which we must keep constantly in view in testing the possibility of translating a world-concept into action.
If, then, we must transform a world-concept into a fighting movement in order to lead it to victory, logically the movement’s program must take into account the human material at its disposal. On one hand he ultimate aims and guiding ideas must be immovable; on the other the recruiting program must be brilliant and psychologically sound in its adaptation to the soul of those without whose help even the most splendid idea would always remain but an idea.
If the race-Nationalist idea is to grow from the vague washing of today into a clear success, it must pick out from the wide world of its ideas certain guiding principles calculated by nature and substance to attract and hold a great mass of men—specifically, that mass which alone can guarantee the battle of this idea as a world-concept. That is the German working class.
For this reason the program of the new movement was summed up in a few guiding principles—twenty-five in all. They are intended to give a rough picture of the movement’s intent primarily to the man of the people. They are to a certain extent a political profession of faith, on the one hand enlisting support for the movement, and on the other binding and welding the recruits together through a jointly recognized obligation.
At the same time the following realization must never be absent from our minds: Since the so-called program of the movement, while undoubtedly absolutely sound in its ultimate aims, has had to be formulated with due consideration of psychological factors, the conviction may in the course of time very well arise that perhaps certain tenets ought to be worded differently, i.e. formulated better. But any such attempt usually works out disastrously. For this opens to discussion something which ought to be unshakably firm; and if an individual point be deprived of dogmatic, doctrinal formulation, discussion will not immediately produce a new, better, and above all a unified formulation; it is far more likely to lead to endless debate and general anarchy. In such a case the alternatives must always be weighed—a new and happier formulation that causes a dispute within the movement, or a form perhaps not the very best at the moment, but constituting a coherent, unshakable, inwardly unified organism. Consideration will show that the latter is preferable every time. For since changes will never be more than a matter of outward form, such corrections may come to seem possible or desirable time after time. And lastly, in view of men’s superficiality there is great danger that they may see this purely external formulation of a program as the fundamental business of a movement. But with that the will and strength to fight for the idea diminish, and the energy which should be directed outward is consumed in internal battles over the program.
With a doctrine actually sound in broad outline, it is less harmful to retain a formulation even though it no longer accords exactly with the truth, than to improve it and thus open up to discussion, with its mischievous consequences, what has thus far been considered a rock-ribbed basic law. That is in fact quite impossible so long as the movement itself is still struggling for victory. How are we to fill men with blind faith in the truth of a doctrine if we spread uncertainty and doubt by constant alterations in its external structure?
After all, we must seek the essence not in outward shape, but always in the inner meaning. This, however, is unchangeable; and for its sake we can in the end but hope that, by keeping all disjunctive and doubt-producing processes at bay, the movemen may gain the strength necessary for it to maintain itself.
Here too we can learn from the Catholic Church. Although its doctrinal structure conflicts at many points sometimes quite unnecessarily, with exact science and research, it is nevertheless not ready to sacrifice one syllable of its theses. It very rightly realizes that its vitality is not in more or less close adaptation to scientific results of the moment (which in reality are constantly wavering), but in tenacious adherence to dogmas once laid down, which alone give the whole its character of a faith. And so it is more solid today than ever. We may safely prophesy that the more appearances flee, the more blind devotion the Church, as a pole at rest amid the flight of appearances, will attract.
Accordingly, anyone who really and seriously desires the victory of a populist world-concept must realize not merely that only a movement capable of fighting is equipped to gain such success, but secondly that such a movement can itself hold its own only if built on an unshakably safe and solid program. In formulating its program, the movement must never presume to make concessions to the momentary spirit of the times, but must keep forever to the form originally found advantageous, or in any case at least until victory has crowned the movement. Until this has happened, any attempt to introduce arguments about the expediency of this or that point of the program will shatter the unity and fighting strength of the movement to whatever degree its followers take part in such inner discussion. That does not mean that an “improvement” carried out today might not be subjected to renewed critical scrutiny tomorrow, only to encounter another better substitute the day after. Anyone who lets down the bars here opens up a road whose beginning he knows, but whose end is lost in a boundless expanse.
This important realization had to be put to use in the young National-Socialist movement. In the program of the Twenty-Five Theses the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party has a foundation which must be immovable. The task of our movement’s present and coming members must consist not in critically reworking these guiding principles, but in pledging themselves to them. Otherwise the next generation might, with equally good right, once more waste its strength on similar purely formal work within the party, instead of bringing new followers and thus new force to the movement. For the greater the number of followers the less will the essence of our movement consist in the letter of our tenets than in the meaning we succeed in giving them.
To these conclusions the young movement originally owed its name; in accordance with them the program was later drawn up; and in them the manner of its promulgation is rooted. To bring victory to populist ideas it was necessary to create a people’s party, a party consisting not of intellectual leaders alone, but of manual workers as well.
Any attempt to proceed to the realization of populist lines of thought without such a forceful organization would be futile today and forever, just as in the past. Hence it is not only the movement’s right but its duty to feel itself the advance guard and thus the embodiment of these ideas. As the basic ideas of the National-Socialist movement are populist ones, so too populist ideas are National-Socialistic. And if National Socialism is to conquer, it must avow this absolutely and exclusively. Here too it has the duty as well as the right to emphasize most sharply the fact that any attempt to maintain the populist idea outside the confines of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party is impossible, and in most cases actually based on fraud.
If anyone today accuses the movement of acting as if it “owned” the populist idea, there can be but a single answer:
It not only owns it, but for practical purposes it created it.
Nothing previously existing under that name was fitted to influence the destiny of our people in the slightest, because all these ideas were without any clear, unified formulation. It was in most cases a matter of mere isolated, disconnected convictions of various degrees of soundness, which not infrequently contradicted one another, and in no case had any cohesion among themselves. Even if this cohesion had existed, it was too weak ever to have sufficed as a basis on which to plan and build a movement.
This the National-Socialist movement alone accomplished.
Today all sorts of societies and petty societies, groups and petty groups, even “great parties,” if you please, lay claim to the word populist; this in itself is a result of the National-Socialist movement’s labors. Except for its work, none of these organizations would ever have dreamed even of saying the word “populist”; the word would have conveyed nothing to them, and their guiding minds, in particular, would have had no relation of any sort to that concept. It was only the work of the N. S. D. A. P. (Nationalsozialistische deutsche Arbeiterpartei) that made this concept into a meaningful word, which all sorts of people now lay their tongues to; its successful work in enlisting support, above all, has shown the power of populist ideas, so that the others are forced, if only by their own cupidity, at least to pretend they desire something similar.
Just as they have always made everything serve their petty speculation in elections, so now to these parties the concept, “populist,” remains a wholly external empty catch word, by which they try to offset the National-Socialist movement’s drawing-power with their own members. For it is only fear for their own survival and alarm at the rise of a movement supported by a new world-concept, whose universal significance and dangerous exclusiveness both they have inklings of, that puts into their mouths words they did not know of eight years ago, laughed at seven years ago, called idiocy six years ago, combatted five years ago, hated four years ago, prosecuted three years ago, and finally themselves annexed two years ago to use along with the rest of their vocabulary as a war-whoop in battle.
Even today we have still to keep pointing out that none of these parties has any inkling of what the German people needs. The most striking proof of this is the superficiality with which they mouth the word “populist.”
No less dangerous are all those who roam around as sham populists, forging fantastic plans based mostly on nothing beyond some fixed idea that may be sound enough in itself, but whose isolation makes it quite meaningless in forming a great, unified fighting fellowship, and certainly unfitted to build one up. These people who stir together a program partly from their own thinking and partly from what they have read are often more dangerous than the confessed enemies of the populist idea. At best they are sterile theorists; but they are usually unconscionable blusterers, who not infrequently believe they can mask the spiritual and intellectual hollowness of their actions and abilities behind a flowing beard and a primitive-Germanic to-do.
In contrast with all these unprofitable attempts, therefore, it is a good thing for us to recall to mind the time when the young National-Socialist movement began its struggle.