We are moving next to two back-to-back segments (2nd Essay: #9 & #10) in Nietzsche’s Zur
Genealogie der Moral, where he offers his take on the evolution of the
concept of justice as a function of the growing power of the community.
Curiously, he talks of this as a diachronic horizontal progress within the same
community (I am using my own, and not Nietzsche’s, terminology here), but his
theory starts making much more sense, and even reveals a remarkable prophetic
gift on his part, only when we regard the switch from #9 to #10 as two
alternative routes of progress, taken by the two ideologically divergent
community types, corresponding to the totalitarian and the modern European
models.
The first of these two segments
is very appropriately discussed in the entry Understanding Stalinism (in
my Collective section), to which I am directing the reader for the
details. Here however is the segment in point, followed by my
commentary.
“Still
retaining the criteria of prehistory (this prehistory is in any case present in
all ages, or may always reappear), the community, too, stands to its members in
that same vital basic relation, that of the creditor to his debtors. One lives
in a community, enjoys the advantages of a communality… dwells protected, cared
for, in peace and trustfulness, without fear of certain injuries and hostile
acts to which the man outside, the ‘man without peace’ is exposed...
since one has bound and pledged oneself to the community precisely with a view
to injuries and hostile acts. What will happen if this pledge is broken?
The community, disappointed creditor, will get what repayment it can, one may
depend on that. The direct harm, caused by the culprit, is here a minor matter.
The lawbreaker is a breaker of his contract and his word with the whole,
in respect to the benefits and comforts of communal life of which he has
hitherto had a share; the lawbreaker is a debtor who has not merely failed to
make good the advantages and advanced payments bestowed on him, but has
actually attacked his creditor: therefore he is not only deprived henceforth of
all these advantages, which is fair,--- he is also reminded what these
benefits are really worth. The wrath of a disappointed creditor, the
community throws him back into the savage and outlaw state against which he has
hitherto been protected, and now every kind of hostility may be vented upon
him. Punishment at this level of civilization is simply a copy of the normal
attitude toward a hated, disarmed, prostrated enemy, who has lost not only
every right and protection, but all hope of quarter as well... Vae victis!” (Genealogy
of Morals, 2nd Essay, Section 9.)
The “community” in this
segment closely corresponds to the Stalinist State, and the infamous mass
purges of the 1930’s and of other times are in effect rationalized. It does not
matter how serious the crime committed by the individual is, in terms of the
actual harm done (it can be an “innocent” act of adultery by mutual consent,
which not only is non-punishable, but openly tolerated as acceptable, or even
normal behavior in modern free societies), but the serious nature of the
offense is established ipso facto, when the offending individual breaks his or
her pledge to the community as a whole. The grave crime committed here is not
so much the particular offense by the individual, whatever that may have been, as
the generalized offense of pledge-breaking, which constitutes an act of
betrayal perpetrated by the individual against society, and must be therefore
severely punished as no less than treason.
Moving now to Nietzsche’s #10, it
is hard for me to see an evolutionary development within the community which I
have previously identified as a Stalinist-type society, leading to the
following reinterpretation of the concept of justice:
“As
its power increases, a community ceases to take the individual’s transgressions
so seriously. because they can no longer be considered as dangerous and
destructive to the whole as they were formerly: the malefactor is no longer
“set beyond the pale of peace” and thrust out; universal anger may no longer be
vented upon him as unrestrainedly as before -- on the contrary, the whole from
now on carefully defends the malefactor against this anger and takes him under
its protection. As the power and self-confidence of the community grow, the
penal law always becomes more moderate. ‘The creditor’ always becomes more
humane to the extent that he has grown richer; finally, how much injury he can
endure without suffering from it becomes the actual measure of his wealth. It
is not unthinkable that a society might attain such a consciousness of power
that it could allow itself the noblest luxury possible to it: letting those who
harm it go unpunished. This self-overcoming of justice: mercy, remains the
privilege of the most powerful man, or better, his -- beyond the law.” ( Nietzsche’s Genealogy
of Morals, 2nd Essay, Section 10.)
In this amazing segment,
Nietzsche is making a prophetic leap from the totalitarian society of the
twentieth century to the free society of the twentieth century, as represented
by modern Europe. Yes, this is not some evolutionary change of the one into the
other (to believe that such a thing is possible is to indulge in a large dose
of wishful thinking), but an analysis of a separate branch of society, whose
main tree trunk is known as Western Civilization.
One can argue, of course, that
Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, both totalitarian states, have evolved into
the type of modern European community, which makes Nietzsche’s evolutionary
scenario perfectly accurate. It is not a correct kind of reasoning, however.
Nietzsche’s main condition of such an evolution (“as its power increases…”)
has not been met by these formerly totalitarian communities. Their power had
not increased at all: in fact, these nations were overwhelmingly defeated in World War Two, and their
subsequent manner of development was not a natural result of their increase in
power, but rather, it was imposed on the defeated enemies by the victor nations
of the West.
There was only one totalitarian
victor in WWII, and that was Russia. If we wish to study the evolution of an
authentic totalitarian state, we must study the evolution of Russia, first and
foremost. Except that her history has not been written yet: it is still in the
making. But, honestly, I see no reason to expect her abandonment of the
historical Russian totalitarian model in favor of the modern European model,
except in producing a few whiffs of smokescreen to convince the West that
Russia and Europe have not been all that far apart, after all, in this new age
of mass communications, “media power,” and the miracle of the Internet.
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