by Kerry Bolton
Schubart cited ethnologist and philosopher-historian Nikolay Danilevski’s Russia and Europe (1871) as anticipating Spengler on organic culture cycles, in which the replacement of the West by Russia as the next world-civilisation was part of the ongoing cyclic historical process.63 Danilevski had also critiqued the Westernisation of Russia by Peter as ill-fated. Foreshadowing Spengler, Danilevski’s culture epochs are those of youth, adulthood, and old age. He saw the Slavic as being in the youth phase, and that with its capital in Constantinople, the Slavic would be considered by a decaying world as its redeemer.
With the revival of “Eurasianism”, and Dr. Alexander Dugin’s blueprint for a multipolar world against American globalisation, achieving influence among the highest echelons of Russian politics and scholarship, the vision of Danilevski and the 19th century Slavophils, and Spengler’s prescience on a post-Western Russian world-civilisation are being actualised. Konstantin N. Leontiev at about the time of Danilevski advanced the idea of “the law of cyclicity of historical development”. Lev Gumilev’s cyclic-ethnology has a great deal of influence in present-day Russia.64 Russia has therefore had a long tradition of scholarship on culture-morphology.
Schubart believed there was after the crisis of World War I a revival of religion in the West. Spengler also stated that during the epochal crisis of a Late civilisation there is a “second religiousness”,65 Materialism, secularism, rationalism and scientism, do not satisfy an innate religious yearning, and themselves must assume religious forms. Note how zealous atheists and Darwinists are in defending their faith. Now there are a proliferation of cults and religions throughout the West, symptomatic of existential crisis, of a yearning for a return to the nexus with the divine that is lost in the Winter epoch. If the spiritual chaos that marks a culture in decay takes form as a “second religiousness” in the Spenglerian sense, then perhaps Schubart’s aborted hope of a re-spiritualised West as the prelude to a Russian symbiosis will eventuate. At the time Schubart saw Western man “approaching closer to the spirit” of Russia. “While the night of decline is descending upon Western culture, which is destined to perish, the dawn of the Millennium is coloring the distant horizon…”66 “The approaching collapse of Western culture is unavoidable, and we may even ask ourselves whether it would be desirable to avoid it”.67
Neither Spengler nor Schubart believed it organically possible to return the West to a Spring epoch, any more than it is possible for a geriatric to return to youth, despite whatever cosmetic and medicinal efforts are made. What Schubart did hope for was a chastising of the Late West’s hubris, which we see in our collapsing societies, and existential angst, that would lead to the liberation of religious feeling without which “no new creation can become possible”.68 In this “apocalyptic age” Schubart saw the promise of “new life”, while in Russia a new type emerges that is transforming what is of value in Western culture, without being retarded or distorted by it, despite the conscious efforts of inner and outer enemies. “This new type, while truly Russian, is yet heir to the eternal values of the West”.69 “For although the Russian of today is not yet the Man of the Millennium, yet it is he – and only he – who will succeed in evolving him; the Russian will purify himself until he has attained the height of development necessary to produce him”.70
Schubart wrote that “The spiritual Russian needs practical qualities; the practical European is in need of a new humanity”. Schubart called it a “synthesis”.71 The remaining option is for the Late West to continue as an animated zombie at the call of the USA, as a carrier of culture-pathogens.
“A new Apocalypse is approaching with a Last Judgement – and a Resurrection! Promethean man already bears upon his brow the sign of Death. Now let the Man of the Millennium be born!”72
* * *
1 Vladimir Putin, 2012.
2 Britta Sandstroem, “Russia’s Baby Boom. Fertility Rate Far Higher Than in EU, Rising Quickly. Unique in Western Hemisphere, Government Programs have Worked”.
3 Ibid.
4 Sergey Lavrov, “Russia’s Foreign Policy: Historical Background”, 2016.
5 Lev Gumilev, Zigzag Istorii, 2013.
6 Spengler, The Decline …, Vol. I, 183.
7 Ibid., I, 201.
8 Ibid., II, 502.
9 Nikolai Berdyaev, 1948, 1.
10 Petrine, Petrinism, named after Peter the Great, refers to efforts to Westernise Russia. Bolshevism was one such effort, insofar as Marxism reflects 19th century English economic theory. The accusations of “Jewishness” obscure the materialist Zeitgeist from which both Marxist and Free Trade theories arose in England. Bolshevism was Russianised by Stalin. See: Bolton, Stalin: The Enduring Legacy.
11 Spengler, The Decline …, Vol. I, 309.
12 Barbara J. Brothers, From Russia with Soul, 1993.
13 Berdyaev, 97-98.
14 John Cournos in Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Taras Bulba & Other Tales.
15 Gogol, Ibid., III.
16 Ibid., IX.
17 K. R. Bolton, “Saint Joseph: Was Stalin a Defender of the Church?”
18 Alexander Dugin, 2015.
19 Golgol, IX.
20 Ibid., IX.
21 Ibid., XII.
22 Berdyaev, 1.
23 Spengler, The Decline..., Vol. II, 193.
24 Ibid., II, 193.
25 Ibid., II, 194.
26 Berdyaev, 1.
27 Spengler, The Decline…, II, 194.
28 Berdyaev, 15.
29 Ibid.
30 Spengler, The Hour of Decision, 63n.
31 F. Dostoyevsky, The Possessed, II: I: 7, 265-266.
32 2 Thessalonians 2: 6-8.
33 A. Solzhenitsyn, 1978.
34 “Putin Speaking About the Collapse of Western Civilization at the Valdai International Discussion Club”, 2013.
35 Spengler, The Decline..., II, 194.
36 Berdyaev, 70.
37 Ibid.
38 Spengler, The Decline…, II, 194.
39 Ibid.
40 Spengler, The Hour of Decision, 60.
41 Ibid., 61.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., 63.
44 Ibid.,182.
45 Ibid., 212.
46 D. Brandenberger, 2002). Bolton, Stalin: The Enduring Legacy.
47 Igor Panarin, 2006.
48 Spengler, “The Two Faces of Russia and Germany’s Eastern Problems”, 1922.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 “From Lisbon to Vladivostok: Putin Envisages a Russia-EU Free Trade Zone”, Spiegel, 25 November 2010; http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vladivostok-putin-envisions-a-russia-eu-free-trade-zone-a-731109.html
52 Lev Gumilev, Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere.
53 Ibid.
54 Schubart was professor of sociology and philosophy at the Latvian state University. Dismissed by the Germans in 1941, he was thought to have died in a Soviet camp.
55 W. Schubart, 72-73.
56 Ibid., 74.
57 Ibid., 80.
58 Spengler, The Decline…, XIV, “The Form-World of Economic Life (B) The Machine”, Vol. II, 499-507.
59 W. Schubart, 80.
60 Ibid., 83-84.
61 Ibid., 191.
62 Quoted by Schubart, Ibid.
63 Ibid., 192.
64 Mark Bassin.
65 Spengler, The Decline…, Vol. II, 455.
66 Schubart, 284.
67 Ibid., 293.
68 Ibid.
69 Ibid., 295.
70 Ibid., 296.
71 Ibid., 297.
72 Ibid., 300.
Conclusion
Materialism is the product of a Late civilisation in decay. Materialist doctrines whether on economics, sociology, or history can only interpret according to the gross visions of the “last man” of a dying culture, albeit undertaken in the name of “progress”. “Progress” is an illusion. History is organic and therefore cyclic. What is called “progress” today has been seen many times
before. Yet our Late Western historians assure us that we are in the best of times, at the “end of history,” where Utopia is finally achieved as the crescendo of five thousand years of civilisation. All of history has been marching in a straight line inexorably towards the present. Any who resist are “reactionaries”.
Any destructive, depraved or pathogenic fad, ideology or policy can be called “progress”. Those who express a more “conservative” approach to current contrived “issues” such as feminism, “reproductive rights”, multiculturalism or the current fads of “transgender choice”, and “refugee migration”, are ridiculed as “fossils” with anachronistic views within modern society. “Such a view in this day and age…”, we hear continually, to ridicule anyone who objects to what is called “progress”. Yet, what we are told is “progressive” and “modern” is a replay of pathogenic symptoms that have been seen during the Late epoch of civilisations over millennia. If a sage from Egypt, India, Israel, China, Greece, Rome, Persia, were to return today and survey the trends and ideologies that are called “progressive” and “modern” he would smirk, frown, laugh or sneer, and cry out “been there, done that”. Today’s fads and fancies are as “progressive” as a cancer that changes the cells of an organism. Both, after all, are agents of “change”.
Those who do realise that the Late West is in a terminal state, rather than at the dawn of a universal era of peace and plenty, often also do so from materialistic assumptions. Like Karl Marx attempting to formulate an anti-capitalist ideology within the materialistic Zeitgeist of 19th century England, but instead formulating another version of the same; zoological theories about “race”, where a “race” is defined by statistical analyses of skulls, bones, gene clusters, and I.Q.; are as materialistic as defining the worth of a culture by calculating its gross national product. The 19th century Zeitgeist, part of a centuries’ long process starting in the West about the time of the Renaissance, saw the birth of “modern” race theories alongside the rise of Darwinism, Marxism and Free Trade.
Race-materialism is like any other form of materialism. As with Marxism, it is a symptom of decline; not an answer to it. Assumptions are made about civilisations dying due to miscegenation, which discount the organic rhythms of life and death. The outlook of the race-materialist is the same as that of the Marxist materialist or the Liberal: that if certain laws are followed utopia awaits. The reality of death is called “pessimism”, hence the rejection or ignorance of Spengler among much of the “Right”. Yet the optimism of the materialist obscures the possibilities of new life, like someone who refuses to prune a tree of dead matter because the dead matter was once colourful and vibrant. The materialistic Zeitgeist that now hangs over the entire world thanks to globalisation, obliterates the metaphysical and spiritual connexion that a culture must maintain if it is live.
Race-materialism is part of this process. Enamoured with the new materialistic sciences of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics, the spiritual meanings of race and culture that had been previously in vogue, especially among the German Idealists, were lost. Ironically, Hitlerism adopted English science at the expense of German metaphysics. The wider application of Darwinian evolution to history, sociology and economics enhanced materialistic conceptions. Again, England was the birthplace of this, concomitant with the industrial revolution and the Manchester School of Free Market economics’. Hebert Spencer, the most influential, widely read philosopher of his day, combined Darwinism with Liberal economics. Darwin saw man an animal; Freud saw man as a penis, and Marx saw man as a stomach. All contributed to the existential problems of the Late Westerner.
Those who resist the “spirit of the age” of decay, yet who are caught within it, like Karl Marx, cannot see from the perspective of detachment. Paradoxically, we Westerners might profit by turning to traditional texts from the East, such as the Bhagavad Gita. Evola certainly recommended such study. We Westerners are bogged down in a quagmire of decadence that does not allow one to see with detachment. The severing of our connexion with the divine and the fracturing of our collective psyche started centuries ago. The collapse of the West has been imperceptible over the gradual course of centuries. Our course of death is likely to be that of a whimper rather than a bang, to paraphrase T. S. Eliot. Hence what we see as causes are symptoms and often secondary symptoms at that. There is a spiritual malady that lacks diagnosis because the diagnostic tools have been replaced by materialistic methods to examine materialistic pathogens, that are symptoms rather than causes. What is required is a return to the spiritual essence in defining race and history.
There have arisen new developments in science that have reconnected the nature of man with what was once called the metaphysical and the spiritual, which are renewing our traditional perceptions of man’s place in the cosmos. Epigenetics and morphic resonance both provide empirical insights into how races and ethnoi are formed through history and landscape, and how Jungian race archetypes of the collective unconscious can be passed along, without discounting genetic laws, as per Lysenko.
Once the unpalatable realisation of the inexorability of the West’s death is realised and accepted, consideration might be given as to what can follow. The question is whether the Late Westerner enters a phase of what might forever be that of the fellaheen, existing outside history, or whether there are elements of the West that might contribute to another culture cycle. After the fall of the Roman Empire the Italic peoples did not become fellaheen, they became part of a synthesis with the Gothic and Frankish peoples, enabled by the catalyst of a metamorphosed Christianity, and became a vital part of the new culture cycle: that of the West.
The Westerner has reached, to use Spengler’s term, “the hour of decision”. As Fortunae asks of Boethius, why do we bemoan our fate when the Wheel spins against us, as it eventually must? Will the still vital elements of the West march along the path of death behind U.S. leadership, in the name of “progress”, towards “the end of history”? Alternatively, will the West, like the Italic peoples after the collapse of the Roman Empire, enter into new relations of symbiosis or synthesis with what seems to be the only alternative for redemption: Russia. Whether Russia herself can endure, revitalise and lead, and not succumb to the same forces of outer decay and inner treachery that caused the Soviet bloc to implode, remains the question of our time. Meanwhile, China, having adopted the Late Western economic model, awaits with interest.
The ideal of “one world, one race” is not even a desirable dream. For what purpose? “World peace”? “Universal harmony”? “The Brotherhood of Wo/Man”? While Liberalism sees epigenetics as its ideological ally, it points rather to a new understanding on the forming and shaping of races and ethnoi. Historical experience takes race-formation beyond zoology. The Liberal will object that epigenetics allows for the elimination of race by the shared experiences of all “humanity”. Such a psychotic vision requires the imposition of universal conformity in every mode of existence, thought and deed. The objective is complete levelling, with all the violence that implies: a communistic regime without precedent, but more likely implemented by plutocrats than commissars; Jacobinism and Bolshevism on a global scale, but in the name of “democracy”. The only way to equalise shared experiences would be to reduce mankind to a nebulous, amoebic existence.
Then finally that might be the “end of history”. Anything less, and new ethnoi would arise, and new identifies would be formed, requiring prompt suppression. The race concept as a means of transcendence was affirmed by Julius Evola as a “revolutionary idea” in ways that are beyond the comprehension of pseudo-revolutionary bourgeois such as Marxists, liberals and anarchists. Of this Evola wrote that race doctrine is “a healthy a reaction against both democratic and collectivist myths… of quality over quantity, of ‘cosmos’ over chaos, of form over shapelessness”, the prerequisite for “reorganizing those forces which, through the crisis of the modern world, are sinking the in quagmire of a mechanical, collectivistic and internationalistic indifferen
tiation”. Race as a Revolutionary Idea, as Evola called a text, requires reaffirming by today’s Right, above materialistic inanities. The Identitarian movement is a step forward.
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