2009 The Philosophical Forum, Inc.

NIETZSCHES SOCIAL VIEWS (187682)

CHARLES ANDLER1
Translated by Helene Erlichson-Kloehn

Countless biases hold sway over Nietzsches ideas on society. Even in the
Weimar circle, where his cult is maintained with a fervent pietythough somewhat defensivelyI noted some uncertainty on this question. I heard Mme
Foerster-Nietzsche, the philosophers sister, speak of her concern regarding the
social interpretations of her brothers work: Which political party, she said,
will know how to apply them? Who will be the masters of the world? We can
sense another concern lurking beneath her question. Which party did Nietzsche
prefer or which one did he think victorious in the future, even if he entertained
some reservations? A two-pronged definition by Georg Brandes does not shed any
light on the issue. He had written to Nietzsche: Your philosophy is an aristocratic radicalism. Nietzsche did not deny it. But what did that mean? Was one to
insist on the word radicalism, or on aristocracy? Was one to understand that
Nietzsche was ready to accept all the democratic and social reforms, perhaps not
using the rationale of democracy and socialism but following its spirit because,
once a democratic and socialist society is constituted, we will see the emergence
of a new aristocracy of spirit? One would like to attribute to the skillful essayist an
opinion which would have instinctively hit the mark. Still, he wrote: I am a little
disappointed to see that your writings judge, too hastily and with such vehemence,
phenomena such as socialism and anarchism. The anarchism of Prince Kropotkin,
for instance, is not obtuse. But, in 1887, G. Brandes could not know what we
know of Nietzsche today. He took offense with some trenchant aphorisms. Other
aristocratic writers used the same aphorisms, believing them as sound and solid as
1

Charles Andler (18661933) was Professor of German at the Sorbonne and the Collge de France.
He was a specialist of German socialism and the translator of Marxs Communist Manifesto. Besides
his six-volume Nietzsche, sa vie et sa pense, he wrote on German imperialism, Bismarck and the
Reformation.

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weapons. Let us remember that there are many other aphorisms in Nietzsches
work that have to yet be evaluated.
Neither should one think that Nietzsche can be dismissed by pitting one aphorism against another and pointing out their contradictions. Nietzsche developed
several systems which are perhaps not in accord with one another; but within a
single system the unity of his reasoning attains an exceptional and solid coherence. However, we must get used to his highly nuanced sense of the Real. It is not
his thought that is in contradiction with itself. He believes that reality incorporates
opposite aspects, and as far as he is concerned, he claims to have scrutinized the
totality of reality. Thus, any single thought in Nietzsche has its natural counterpart that provides it with its limit. His thinking does not contradict itself. One
understands Nietzsches true thought once the antagonisms he found in human
reality are taken into account and once one has grasped the effective compromise
through which these active forces, as Nietzsche believed, hold each other in check
and balance. Understanding his philosophy cannot be formulated with a few
improvised definitions. Nietzsches social views form part of a whole; he could
only present their disjointed vertebra, but its spine and other parts are certainly
there.
From the beginning of his career, Nietzsches principal aim was to discover
the unknown link, which certainly exists, between social, mental, and biological
phenomena. He completed a genuine philosophy through these conjectural investigations. He tried to extend the path toward the unknown that science had already
cleared and perhaps extended it even into the unknowable. His philosophy is an
attempt to apply the laws discovered by the theory of transformism to the sciences
of the mind. But at the height of Darwinism, Nietzsche acknowledged the perceptive objections of those who, beyond Darwin, could be traced back to
Lamarck. That is his strength as well as his originality. Taine ventured to declare:
The law of selection can be applied to mental phenomena. Nietzsche responds
that selection does not constitute the central problem; the question is rather
adaptation to a milieu. He acknowledges the secondary role played by Darwinism
and recognizes Lamarckism as the principal theory. He adds that the laws of
Lamarck and William Roux are true not only of mental facts, but also of social
ones.
As early as his Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche believed that he had discovered
a major law of social biology. There is an antagonism, a Darwinian struggle for
life among the instincts of man, just as there is biological intercellular warfare
within the tissue or tissues of an organism. This struggle can be deadly when
pushed to the limit. But if it is circumscribed, it succeeds in constituting stronger
tissues or organisms through a selection of components which have been strengthened by the struggle. The Darwinian struggle among elements results in the
Lamarckian model of a better adapted organism.
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Specifically, Nietzsche believed that he had discovered a conflict between the

instinct of knowledge and the deep instincts of affective life. Knowledge serves life
but if abused, it can compromise feelings from which stem vital illusions, and can
exhaust the sources which feed life itself.
Inversely, we cannot put our trust exclusively in the obscure drives of affective
life. These drives are blind as to their goal and can be wrongly diverted from their
paths. Life is fragile and civilized life even more so. Mens instincts produced
knowledge, just as life itself created consciousness as a means of orientation and
to avoid the greatest threats and the waste of energy and blood which too often end
up in the extinction of species. The personal vitality of men and civilizations must
be controlled; but we must also realize that human intelligence ought to discipline
and enlighten the affective energies. The ancient Platonic concept thus becomes
possible again. With knowledge, we can create a superior social life and consciously produce a social hygiene. In an attempt to apply the theory of transformism to social facts, what support can one obtain from the doctrine of socialism, and
how can we harness the force of the passions thus unleashed? Answering these
questions is the only way to approach Nietzsches social views.
I. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE BOURGEOIS REGIME: SOCIALISM
It has often been said that Nietzsche is an antisocialist. On the other hand,
Nietzsche spoke with an elitist scorn of the bourgeois, of men who earn 200 or
300 thalers per year, wanting to become merchants or government officials, or
who, earning this salary, seek a more lucrative trade. Nietzsche, therefore, could
not be a partisan of capitalism. His ascetic aristocratism has nothing in common
with those we find trying to dissimulate an outmoded cynicism behind
Nietzschean philosophy. Nietzsche borrows from socialism his critique of actual
society. However, it is correct to say that he does not believe that socialist systems
can advance a feasible plan for a new reconstruction.
Nietzsche praises socialism for its disrespect of the present ruling classes.
These classes are not qualified to assume the responsibility for civilization. They
no longer know the art of commanding, or the art of obeying with pride, the proud
and discreet heritage transmitted by old aristocracies. Todays upstarts ignore that
the ability to command is also an art of suffering and sacrifice; it is the outcome
of a long practice of the control of ones passions andeven under the most
desperate conditions and at the expense of noble formsof keeping a clarity of
mind and a tranquil soul. In the natural dignity of the aristocracy, there was a
manner of degrading, with grandeur, all the selfs vulgar instincts. This very
practice constituted the guarantee of the strong and refined cultivation of a persons character. The audacity of the wealthy manufacturer does not replace this
heritage of dignity that is still found in the demeanor and the most subtle gestures
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of a few individuals. The vulgar man, on the other hand, has plenty of audacity due
to his insolence and a blind belief in sheer luck.
Nietzsches Lamarckism logically leads him to the ideas that he certainly did
not think he shared with Marx. In its economic analysis, Marxism is also an
application of the theory of transformism. Marx and Nietzsche both found that
even in the most developed social mentalities there still remains a trace of their
origins. However, the origin of the new capitalism is technological. By making
mechanical tools, man continues the work of adaptation that life itself had started
when it developed the skeleton. Our machines lengthen the limbs that grasp and
move and were given to us by nature. But the force and intelligence that direct
them will remain, in the last analysis, physical strength and mental energy. By
itself, industrial mechanization is thus a new organization of the masses. The
capitalist bourgeoisie comes out of industrial mechanization, and this was sufficient to give it its legitimacy, since without it there would have been no industrial
progress. However, the fact remains that there are as many ways to use machines
as there is more than one skeletal structure. Each structure is set in motion by
different muscular systems. Current automation, an invention from the most
advanced thought processes, only uses force devoid of thought. The bourgeois
regime is like those enormously powerful and muscular large-boned prehistoric
beasts with a small brain. It calls for energies which it can never elevate to a
spiritual level. In the struggle for existence, social groups wherein all human units
develop their freewill and consciousness will overcome this huge and blind
monster. Therein sits the profound significance of the socialist movement.
Nietzsche does not say much more than what Proudhon and the first theorists
of the division of labor before him said, when he shows that mechanized work has
degraded the workers consciousness. If Nietzsche claims to demonstrate that
machine work makes production uniform through mediocrity and generalizes it
through its perfect uniformity favorable for the sale of rubbish and, that it also
imposes an outmoded industrial piracy over the habit of probity which had been
the norm for merchants, then his exposition was quite accurate regarding the state
of German industry at the time when Reuleaux attributed to its products the now
famous epithets: billig und schlecht (cheap and of poor quality). These judgments
no longer hold for the most qualified work in contemporary industry that requires
from the worker such an intelligent effort and that now regularly produces quality
products. But what is important for us is that Nietzsches evaluation takes into
account, above all else, the possibility of raising the human value of the worker.
This point is omitted when we are reminded only of his harsh aphorism on the
forced labor caste.2 Civilization must continue, but it is also necessary that it be
worth continuing. In this sense, the former artisanal economy was more humane.
2

Nietzsche, Human, All too Human, 439.

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To buy an artisans goods, at a time when each artisan had his own trademark and
merit, was to honor the man through his product. In a way, ones household
donned the symbols of that esteem: Thus, even the most humble work carried
human value. The simplest trade would produce a bond of solidarity and friendship. Nietzsche regrets to see this flowering of humanity uprooted and degraded
by the uniform and humiliating slavery to which the monotonous work of
machine production has reduced the worker. But doesnt socialism commit the
same error, since its goals of egalitarianism disregard the disparate values of
individuals? This disregard, answers Nietzsche, is no more illogical than the
generalizations of science which also finds individual differences negligible. In
practice, it is no more condemnable than the Christian maxim which supposes
that all men are equally sinners in need of redemptive grace. Socialism bets on a
near equality of men. But it also wants to elevate the worker. The dispute may
merely rest on knowing whether or not the differences among men are so strongly
marked that they would ruin, in advance, a policy determined to ignore them.
There is no doubt that in the period of Lacustrine cities, the ruins that Nietzsche
visited in Swiss museums, men were more or less equal.3 Is this so of contemporary men? What we can say is that at present the intellectual culture of our
workers is so close to that of the bosses that the mere idea of imposing on them
the full burden of mechanized work rouses a sentiment of revulsion. Today, the
worker has reached such a point of maturity that this burden is the cause of an
extreme torture to him, and so he is no longer content to lessen it but rather rejects
it altogether. Secondly, todays triumphant bourgeoisie spurns individualism. It
distinguishes itself from the workers in terms of a caste, and not because it
labored to form a class of superior men, for whom it cares not a whit. It too is a
leveling demagogy, and while the working class is beginning to abandon menial
work, the bourgeois class rejects mental work. Therefore, if we are confronted
with a choice between the bourgeois and socialism, we should certainly choose
socialism.
The socialist masses are quite right to try to bring themselves, externally as well, to the level of [the
bourgeois], since inwardly, in heart and head, they are already on the same level.4

According to Nietzsche, socialism is a continuation of democratic uprisings organized by the bourgeoisie itself against the former feudal regime: Its nemesis
demands that the bourgeoisie perish in the storm it itself unleashed. But let us not
pretend that there is justice in this catastrophe. A pathetic need, a vicious hatred,
3

Ibid: 448 (Lacustrine cities were the prehistoric Helvetic dwellings on the Swiss lakeshores before
Roman invasion) [ed.].
Ibid: 480.

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and a vindictive melancholy are masked behind the pretext of justice. There is no
reason to blame the workers since their adversaries are no better. But we must not
entertain any illusions on this subject. There is injustice in socialist justice;
nevertheless, the new rational civilization must have a scrupulous and pure justice.
Certainly, the existing division of properties is the result of a prior violence. The
entire civilization of the past is built on deception, fraud, error, and carnage. But,
are we not the inheritors of this civilization? How do we extract pure justice from
these accumulated and preset inequities? Certainly not by declaring that current
leaders do not deserve their good fortune. The foundations of the world are so
fragile, and social organization so riddled by chance that no one really deserves
either his good fortune or misfortune. The evil lies rather in our indifference
toward the misfortune of others. Would the cynicism characteristic of the spirit of
the wealthy when they accumulated their riches under the favorable circumstances
that were offered them be a lesser evil when appropriated by the poor? Our way
of thinking must be reformed. We must overcome our mean-spiritedness and
hateful jealousy. Then, social reform will emerge naturally.
Nietzsche finds this hateful spirit of Pharisaic justice and violence in the
socialist proposals in contemporary debates. Perhaps he was only exposed to the
theories his teacher of political economy, Roscher, had taught in Leipzig, or to
what newspapers disseminated. He was not familiar with any of the classical
socialist systems of his timeSaint-Simon, Pecqueur, Rodbertus, or Marx. His
objections are directed against a vague Rodbertism popularized by Lassalle. But
it is accurate to say that the major leaders of German socialism, including Bebe
and Liebknecht, had slipped toward an imprecise Lassalleanism at the time.
Nietzsche, filled with his ardent sense for life, is closer to Marxism as we
interpret it today than was the first generation of his readers, between the years
187682.
If social justice consists of an equitable evaluation of work, Nietzsche contests
the possibility of ever accurately calculating it. Are we assessing work according
to time, zeal, good or bad will, inventiveness, laziness, or probity displayed at
work? If so, we evaluate the whole person, we calculate an unknown entity and
compare what is irreducible: Yes, there certainly is an injustice. Nietzsche objects
judiciously to the theory that all work is worth what it should be in a social state
that equally distributes power, knowledge, and needs. The worker has no choice in
whether or not he will work or how he will work. Social forces stronger than he
is constrain him, and the concept of collective utility determines how to dispose of
his production. There is no justice. Nonetheless, production must continue. Any
social group tries to adapt to its milieu. Societys concern to maintain itself will,
accordingly, prohibit the exploitation of the worker which occurred in the past. It
condemns this exploitation, not because it is unjust, but as an imprudent folly, an
irresponsible waste of future resources, and a menace to posterity. What Nietzsche
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reproaches in todays bourgeoisie is its senseless perpetuation of an exploitation

that has spawned the class war in every factory, and which will require the most
onerous compromises if we are to maintain peace.5
This peace will come since civilization must go on. But what a pathetic and
mediocre ideal to ask for better wages, in the name of justice! Can we not see what
is humiliating in being a mere screw and cog in the social machinery? The most
serious objection that one can wage against socialism is that it extends, once again,
the automatism that the new industry has produced. It pushes centralization to the
farthest limits, and, far from working to restore his personality to the worker, it
sets a wage to which the worker consents while alienating his person in the name
of justice. What can these reforms do, in the end, other than turning workers into
the bourgeois? The demands formulated in such terms have already fashioned
a vulgar bourgeois soul in the worker who no longer thinks of self-control, of
noble asceticism, of leisure afforded by thought, or of an honest and humble
independencein short, of inner values.6
None of the material means recommended to improve the lot of the worker can
regenerate his inner self. In truth, Nietzsche is only aware of two, which reveals
his rather limited knowledge. He refers to a few well-worn notions of ancient
history and Platonic philosophy. Obviously, modern industrialism is foreign to
him. His argument is as outmoded as a debate from the time of Gracchus Baboeuf.
For him, socialism seems to lead to two equally inadequate revolutionary
measures:
(1) The measure that was taken in Antiquity, the agrarian law, the equal
partition of lands. And Nietzsche recalls the short duration of these attempts in
ancient republics. What bitterness would be produced among us by a similar
revolution uprooting part of the rural population! How long would such a forced
equality last? What hatred, resentment, and new violence these measures would
unleash? Morality, more than we would like to think, is constructed on the
veneration of ancestral land. And it is respect for the social order itself that is
eradicated in a man by displacing the boundaries of his paternal field.
(2) Will we proceed, on the contrary, with the socialization of property with
its usufruct to be leased to individuals? This would then be, especially in agriculture, a return to savagery. The land would lie fallow in a few generations. We must
not idealize man. He wastes and mistreats what is not his private property. His core
is egoism and vanity. Plato might have believed that once private property disappeared, all the vices based on self-interest would be extirpated. He lacked an
accurate knowledge of the psychology of the drives of man. He did not know
about moral transformism, that the highest virtues germinate from a base root. No
5
6

Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow, 286.

Nietzsche, Daybreak, 206.

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disaster would be worse than the destruction of egoism and vanity: Once they are
destroyed the roots of life would dry up.7 Thus socialism, which promises to
regenerate society, tends to destroy civilization at its foundations. It is a contradictory ideal of base hatreds and envious asceticism which dry out the sources of
a legitimate egoism. It threatens to produce a wasteland in its wake, much like the
Musulman invasions after which all fertile sources were desiccated and the fields
were reduced to bush and desert. It will bring this invasion through tyrannical
means. It has a frighteningly well-organized army at its command. It forces
citizens to kneel in front of the State in humiliation to a degree that no former
despotism had ever practiced. Socialist doctrine has always matured alongside
Ceasarism. Hadnt Plato asked a Sicilian tyrant to carry out his plans for society?
What man better resembled Bismarck than Lassalle? In such a way socialism,
mediocre and vulgar like democracy, is as tyrannical as the old Absolutist State. It
is composed of concentrated intolerance, hatred, and brutality. There is no greater
danger for the superior culture of the spirit. Yet, Nietzsche believes in the social
revolution. It will be full of errors, but we must anticipate it as a given, and to
question the legitimacy of a fact is pointless. It is a matter of knowing what makes
it probable and what we can gain from it.
Socialist revolution is probable because socialism is a force that nothing can
stop at the present time. This alone makes it unnecessary to question its rights to
legality. One must make peace with powers or destroy them. Lassalle had said as
much. It remains to be known whether we want to declare war against socialism
or if we want to treat with it before the battle breaks out.
There are grounds for measuring its considerable and respectable strength. A
leveler as to its goals, socialism is individualist in the real results that it produces.
Its conceptual preaching is full of errors, but the most rigorous reasoning must
recognize the efficacy of its methods in training the worker. Behind the revolutionary worker appears then the peril of perilsthe individual! and it will not be
Nietzsche who finds it objectionable.8 Nothing unleashes individual energies more
than putting the stakes on equality as socialism has. And nothing equals the
contagious power of feelings. Its demand for justice, though full of cruelty and
madness, is also an extravagant intoxicant. Its terrorism is a return to an untamed
and fierce enthusiasm. The Revolution produces an emotion and a fever more
ecstatic than national war: Die soziale Revolution ist vielleicht noch etwas
Groesseres; desshalb koemmt sie. It is part of a virile rejuvenation that will
awaken todays effeminate European nations. We know that for Nietzsche nothing
is predetermined. There is nothing but absolutely contingent facts. Force can
oppose force and annihilate the formers authority. Nietzsche considered seriously
7
8

The Wanderer and His Shadow, 285.

Daybreak, 173.

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the idea of choking the Revolution at its birth.9 He thought that the bourgeoisie
had neither the power nor the will required to stop the social revolution. But when
the revolution comes, it should not be a cause for despair. Perhaps through a deep
displacement, at times slow or at times tumultuous, it will fulfill a subterranean
and monumental task which will be of some use. It cannot create the new society;
but, like some geological upheaval, it can create its infrastructure. It would build
colossal dykes and ramparts against the worst barbarities, against bad hygiene,
inadequate training, and, material and mental servitude. It would generate hills
volcanically where the fruits of a new civilization are to ripen under the sun.
Socialism supposed wrongly that the Revolution was an end in itself. It merely
allows for the possibility of a renewed human generation. Nietzsche believes he is
one of the unknown wine growers who will plant, in the soil plowed by the
Revolution, the grape varieties of the life of the future.
II. THE SOCIAL UTOPIA OF NIETZSCHE
To understand his plans for social reform, we must first recognize that
Nietzsche begins with the hypothesis that the revolution has already started or is
perhaps already completed. The task of the thinking elite is not to fight the
bourgeoisiethat would be a lost causebut to move forward with a clean
sweep, to reorganization. The driving forces of revolutionary thought are intoxicating, cruel, and sensual. Revolutionary thought certainly does not lack a dose of
true rationalism or of Aufklaerung, the philosophy of the Enlightenment. On the
contrary, it wears it as a crown.10 But according to Nietzsche, the pure rationalism
of the 18th century was never put into practice. It passed over like clouds with a
silver lining. It was by incorporating the electric sentiment of the revolution that
it became so violent, stormy, and dangerous. Todays work of analysis and philosophical propaganda is to extract the fluid of violent enthusiasm from humanitarian thought and to continue afterward its work toward a rational society. One
should call on science and skepticism, both of which cool attitudes that are
otherwise prone to the violence of emotions. We must go to Voltaire rather than
Rousseau. We should no longer believe in the fundamental goodness of nature that
is concealed under social institutions and which, once this latter are destroyed,
would lead to fraternal harmony. Social reform entails the work of reconstruction.
What is needed is the spirit of order, architecture, and artthe Voltairean qualities
of the intellect. It is the spirit of enlightenment, of gradual development, because
it is reason that is moderate and not sentiment, contrary to what is believed. Clear
and resolute reflection and freedom of thought integrated into the character
9
10

Ibid: 221.
The Wanderer and His Shadow, 221.

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weaken desire and discipline ones behavior. The danger of a bourgeois regime
was indeed the same as the danger of revolution. It originated from the same
hypertrophy of gregarious sentiment and a fanatical passion for justice and power.
Such scourges must end by a metamorphosis of the soul. The new society would
not encounter the embittered demands of workers, nor would it face the appetites
of the capitalists. Neither the socialist demand for abstract justice nor the lies of
our penal system would have a place in it. It would no longer assemble men in
masses for the type of work that annihilates the human individual. It would not
know military or party discipline. The workers terroristic tendencies would be
unknown in it, but so would the parliamentary government. It will shed the
tyranny of demagogues like that of statesmen. There would be no Lassalle or
Bismarck. It would not be a traditional state of law, yet it would avoid the
unruliness of the revolution.
1. It will be first and foremost a society where the law only expresses natural
needs. This law would not develop all at once. A long education will be necessary.
Thanks to this education, we shall see that the dawn of the new society has begun:
For it will not have the legal system we have today. Made for adults, it would be
superior. Daily lessons and meditations would assemble the most mature men, like
those between Socrates and the most astute men of his time, the sophists.
Churches, still filled with the memory of ancient religions, would be used for the
celebration of reason. Through these discussions, new educators of youth will be
formed. The new instructor is no longer the humanist of the past. He will combine
sentiment, art and knowledge of medicine, the exact sciences, and pragmatic
wisdom. All the qualities that are required of the artist and the doctor, of the
scientist, and of the sage would thus be merged in the educator of the future and
form part of his discourse and method. The essential object of teaching will be the
theory of the body and of hygiene. This training should omit neither secondary nor
primary schools. A tremendous and universal zeal would prompt the multitude to
learn about the care of the body that so deeply influences our moral regime, and
the entire public ethos would be transformed if ethics were for the most part about
health and treatment.11 The new conclusions of Lamarckian transformism also
confirm this concept of teaching.
2. However, if morality is merely the outward aspect, even the most outward
symptom from which we can diagnose our physical constitution, then crime, as
the new school of psychiatry holds, is really but a diathesis and is not a sign of a
weak willpower. Presently, knowledgeable men believe that the function of state
justice is obsolete. Yet, there are reasons to establish silent societies of men who
would forsake appealing to the courts.12 Rather, they would build, discreetly, crime
11
12

Daybreak, 202.
Ibid.

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sanatoriums. Through a cleansing of consciousness, remorsethe mere illusion

of having been free when in fact ruled by temperamentwill be erased. Contemporary society considers that remorse is a guarantee against a relapse. It is the
temperament that should be redressed. It is not sufficient to treat the criminal with
an arrogant cruelty or a prideful pity: Medical prudence is all the more suitable.
The criminal needs a change of space and of society, a temporary distancing and
new goals. He must be removed from the horrible torment of public discredit. Let
us show the criminals how they can make amends for the wrong of their offense,
by letting them provide a selected and demanding service to the collectivity. Using
different names and with frequent changes of places, the criminal could thus
prove, anonymously, his capacity and resolution to do some good. It is customary
to keep the guilty under lock until the end of his sentence. Is it not enough to jail
him until he has no hostile feeling against society and, also, until men lose any
vindictive thought toward him? Is it not a useless cruelty, a return to the law of
retaliation, and a waste of a human potential to do some good, to extend the
sentence beyond this limit?
If true justice existed, who knows if the criminals would not turn themselves in
voluntarily and claim their own punishment, proud to thus honor the law? Since
they would contribute to devise the law rather than merely acknowledge it. These
men, having once been guilty, would no longer be banned from society, but would
themselves exercise the power of the legislator and the judge by handing down their
own sentence. The sentence voluntarily accepted would better compensate for the
crime than our system of coercive sanction. It would reestablish mans dignity
through the serene grandeur of a punishment freely assumed, and this voluntary
respect for the law would add a moral strength to the collectivity. In spite of this, if
the criminals were found to be so morose or totally depraved that the means to heal
them were non-existent, their incurable condition would have to be explained to
them, and the possibility of suicide could be offered as a supreme diminution of
such a condition. Thus, the consent of the man sacrificed for the sake of public
safety would not really be a shedding of blood just as, on certain occasions, those
suffering from an agonizing terminal illness are relieved by a compassionate death.
3. But who would make the penal law itself and who would regulate the
institutions? And how would they be administered? Nietzsche has no difficulty in
defining the new legislative powers. For him, the difficulty is in the exercise of this
power. He accepts that the ultimate end of a true democracy is to guarantee an
independence of opinion, of life, and of work to the largest number of people. To
establish itself, democracy will have to take away, provisionally, the right to vote
from the very rich and the very poor. These two classes cannot exist in a state:
They form either an oligarchic tyranny or a tyranny of the mob.13 In addition, one
13

The Wanderer and His Shadow, 293.

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would have to prohibit the formation of political parties which end up, in any case,
with a babbling government of frantic masses. The need to resort to suffrage
would be extremely rare for it would have no object. The new government would
resemble the model drafted in Renans Philosophical Dialogues. In each country,
men worthy of respect due to their integrity and even more due to their competence would rise above the rest. They would be brought together through their
mutual trust, insight, and a secret predilection. Through an open process of
selection, they would designate the most prominent experts in all the arts and the
most eminent scientists in their specific disciplines. Their choice would be both a
guarantee and an acknowledgment of an unmistakable superiority. They would
constitute the sole legislative body.
This body would never use majority voting. In each case, only the most
qualified men would vote. Honor and a highly developed sense of propriety
accepted by all would obligate each legislator to recuse himself in recognition of
his incompetence in the matter at hand. The laws would be created from the
understanding of those who are truly competent in a subject and not from the vote
of ill-informed, vain, imitative, impulsive, and conformist minds. Laws would no
longer be made bearing the mark of the dishonesty of non-qualified voters.
But what power would ever establish such a rational legislation? Renan had
shown that his caste of scientists, masters of the world, was obeyed by the
multitude because of the threat of terrible artificial cataclysms, the secret of which
only the scientists possessed. Nietzsche, despite what has been said, never imagined such an association of destroyers armed with threats.14 One must know how
to read his subtle texts. Nietzsche is not at all sure that a rational government
would ever be established. But if it is, it would occur only when the utility of
science and scientists and the superiority of such a government over the regime of
numbers are admitted even by the most incredulous. One must rely on science
itself, on its power of persuasion. Im Sinne dieser Zukunft sei unsere Losung:
Mehr Ehrfurcht vor den Wissenden! und nieder mit allen Parteien.
In Nietzsches texts, there are few succinct indications on the important social
and political tasks entrusted to this parliament of scientists. But we can follow
some of the key ideas:
(a) A consistent theory of Lamarckism divides work according to individuals
aptitudes. It is probably impossible that misery and suffering vanish from our
planet. But we can eliminate the excess of suffering due to a poor social organization. Among useless social ills we can include all those originating from a
defective division of labor. The same work does not cause the same suffering in all
men. Excitable minds suffer more from pain and hardship. The health of many
14

I will soon demonstrate this hypothesis. The opposite point of view has been put forward by
M. Fouill in his Nietzsche et limmoralisme (F. Alcan, 1902) 138.

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brute beings, on the contrary, adapts well to physically demanding labor without
any disadvantage. Their life is hard, but not draining. A division of labor must be
determined to especially manage the delicate natures that are mentally excitable
and infinitely susceptible to pain.15 Perhaps our working class is already too
refined to allow itself to be confined to vile tasks. One possible initial improvement is to develop better machines. In the past, the machine degraded the worker:
Without a doubt, machines will someday spare human labor instead of enslaving
man in their inexorable and ceaseless march. Is it not possible to have rotating
work shifts and coordinate professions, rather than blunt the intelligence of the
worker with a monotonous task that reduces him to the appendage of a machine?
(b) Nevertheless, this transformation will probably not occur quickly enough.
Nietzsche resigns himself to a harsh proposition: The burden of manual labor
should be imposed on laborers other than the European worker. There will be a
need to import large numbers of people from the barbaric tribes of Asia and Africa.
The civilized world will take the non-civilized world as a beast of burden. Do the
Chinese not have the physical tenacity and slow mental faculties required of
laboring ants? The possibility of a prudent social evolution will increase when
they will mix with our anxious and worn out race and infuse in us their blood, a
bit of their phlegmatic nature, their contemplative mind, and their steadfastness.16
(c) According to Nietzsche, the serious flaw of the economic system created by
the uncontrollable appetites of the bourgeois class is the anarchy of the market, of
trade, and of currency speculation. With a new oversimplification of the democratic principle, the ignorant mass of consumers is supposedly able to judge
the value of goods. But it is duped by flattering appearances and cheap products
which compromise any guarantee of quality and durability. Nietzsches political
economy is taken from the producers point of view: The producers are the only
ones who are competent. So, all commodities should bear the name of the producer making him accountable, or lacking this, the name of a recognized expert.
Science must preside over the pricing of goods.17
(d) Nietzsches system is a type of socialism because it imposes limits on
competition, and also because it limits the means of acquiring wealth and believes
that great riches are a public danger.18 He demands that all transport and commerce
industries be returned to the community, especially money exchange, which favors
the massive accumulation of private capital. In this way he seeks to disarm social
envy, rather than promoting it. Hostile to the gloomy arithmetic of vulgar socialists
15
16
17
18

Human, All too Human, 462.

Daybreak, 206.
The Wanderer and His Shadow, 280.
Man betrachte ebenso die Zuviel-, wie die Nichts-Besitzer als gemeingefhrliche Wesen (ibid:
285).

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who calculate wages based on a strict parity, he places equal blame on the feverish
and mad greed of capitalism. But he claims to open wide the access to mediumsized property. He desires a European working class that would be a class of
masters.
(e) This is the reason why he advises the workers to go on general strike against
the humiliating condition of slavery in a Europe that has become too bourgeois.
Yet he discourages them to sink into resentment and content themselves with the
deception of a useless revolt and conspiracy. Nietzsche imagines desirable work
conditions in the image of the combative farmers on the new continents. The
successful adventure in distant lands, a life full of peril and of simple joys enjoyed
by the pioneers working the virgin soil of the earth: That is the life of a working
class with its dignity intact, the class that would like to escape the soil and the
painful choice it faces in contemporary societyto submit to the capitalist system
or to the revolutionary party. These pioneers of labor would import European
virtues with them to distant lands. Through them, one would observe how Europe
inoculated its most diligent and simple sons with reason and justice. Because the
working class is oppressed, its legitimate resentment might push it to take desperate measures. In the fresh air of freedom, the dangerous resentment would
blossom into honorable decency and the temptation toward criminal rebellion
would fade. Through this great dispersion, the adaptation of the human race to the
planet would then reach a decisive phase.
The task would be enormous, first the transformation of man through this work,
for man must be made to perfectly adapt to all the climates. We must learn to
compensate, scientifically, for the disadvantages of each climatic zone, as we have
learned to avoid the danger of freezing by developing heating systems. The
question of the working class exists today not only because of the failure to adapt
to a climate but also because a small number of men have seized, through violent
means, the limited resources which are necessary to compensate for the natural
dangers of the milieu.
In the past, civilizations sprung spontaneously from the earth, like huge, wild
plants. With science, knowing the exact properties of the soil would, doubtlessly,
enable us to create new and different civilizationsstrong, long-lasting, and
beautiful; and by analogy, these would be to spontaneous civilizations what the
cultivation of our gardens is to the flora of virgin forests. The metaphor used by
Nietzsche, which compares diverse civilizations to climatessome torrid, some
moderateis thereby more justified than we previously thought. We will know
how to create civilizations like the artificial climates of the mind. Different
mentalities deserve to live, and we will know the secret of how to make them grow.
We will found the curative thermal stations of the mind, of diverse social states
where the souls sickened by our incoherent and monotonous civilization would
escape for one day of therapy.
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We would also dream of an inexhaustible industrial production, capable of

absorbing the greatest productive powers. Everyone would be able to enjoy some
luxury. The most miserable landscapes would be transformed. Nietzsche imagines
a great social art, similar to what the architecture of the underground tombs of
Egypt and India represent; he imagines a sculpture which would mold the very
bedrocks of the Alps or the Andes to fashion a dcor that no theater scene could
match.
4. As often happens when a better adaptation has succeeded, a solution gives
rise to other problems. The most important issues today, the questions of militarism and of nationalities, will find its solution. The great task of conquest will
require horrible and massive wars, where humanity will find the proper caliber of
a strong passion, even seeking sacrifice, without which it perishes from a surfeit
of its own civilization. But this does not mean that Europeans kill each other off.
There are sufficient wild lands left to colonize. Let our soldiers and workers chase
the colored brutes who, through mass deportation, will replace the white workers
in our workshops. The obvious cruelty of this measure is no worse than any
previous violence at the origins all the great works of civilization. However, it
lessens the blameworthy brutality reigning in Europe today and removes, forever,
the ambivalent regime of an armed peace that poisons relations among the most
advanced nations, with suspicion and hypocrisy. Nietzsche condemns the rivalry
in armament as more inhumane than war: It disguises an unadulterated and
permanent provocation under the guise of the deceitful assurances for peace and
of the conceit of simulated self-defense. And he imagines that one day a great
people, full of glory and victories, well-disciplined and incisive, and known for its
acts of self-sacrifice, will decide to break their swords spontaneously. They will
leave the entire European military organization in rubble, keeping only a colonial
army of workers destined to conquer the barbarians. Having once been the best
armed and having the most glorious of military histories, the decision to disarm,
with selflessness and pride, is the means for a definite peace because it points to
a sincere intention for peace.
This attitude is not without risk. But the most tragic risk is the lot of life in the
universe. It is not only a question of living, but living as a civilized people. On this
account, one should not forget that civilization protects itself from itself. Did the
Greeks not maintain their superiority when, so few in numbers, they settled in a
land still populated by Mongolians in the interior and encircled by Semites?19 It
would have been, however, far more commendable had they not shed so much
Greek blood. Their virile civilization perished from these remnants of barbarity.
They did not see that one must be strong only against barbarians; and that with
civilized men, one must be civilized. But then, it is better to die than to fear,
19

Human, All too Human, posth. XI, 136.

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better to die twice than to be hated and feared, one day this should be the supreme
maxim of all well-ordered societies.20 These are Nietzsches incontrovertible
thoughts on European warfare, and yet he has so often been presented as the
apologist of a holy war.
Since he is a historian and not an idealist, Nietzsche hastens to acknowledge that
the notion of nationality has been useful to past civilizations. It is more advanced
than the idea of race, for it originates from reason, even if from a provisional reason.
What is admirable in this idea is that such an insufficient reason was first made of
flesh and blood, then became an ide-force, and thus renewed itself. The collaboration of diverse races in following the same juridical and political laws is foremost
a matter for reflection. And with the mixing of races, it will bring a new physiological reality. History and physiology demonstrate that there is no original purity, but
only a gradual process of purification of a people. Fortunate crossings and a careful
selection yield a stronger and more beautiful humanity than the races from which it
stemmed. The Greeks are the type of race thus purified. Today we have the chance
to create the European race through the erasure of nationalities.21 The symptoms
are already multiplying and attest that this race will be born. Because life is
increasingly more mobile for some of us, the ties that bind the Europeans are
increasing and more solid than ever. The formation of a mixed race, of a European
race, is thus facilitated. But it would come about faster if the disastrous national
interests of certain dynasties and certain social classes did not maintain a constant
violent siege and passionate hatred among governments.
Nietzsche wrote during a period when the German nation was torn violently by
brutal anti-Semitic hatreds. He was humiliated when he witnessed how his master
Richard Wagner resolved the difficult Jewish question through a scandalously
demagogic anti-Semitism. Nietzsche thought that his transformist humanitarianism could be a remedy. He is aware of the unpleasant and dangerous flaws from
which the Jewish nationality was no more exempt than any other. He believes that
the mixing of races would neutralize the flaws and erase the defects. The Jewish
speculators in the marketplace might disgust usour nations lack of chivalry is
all too obvious in this regard. Yet, certain qualities are still present: the qualities
that gave us the noblest and gentlest, Jesus; or, Spinoza, the purest of sages, and
the Bible, the most formidable book, and the Decalogue, the most effective
morality; and still at hand is the element of Jewish free thinking which, in the
Middle Ages, was the true inheritor of Greek thought that defended us against the
Asiatic corruption of Roman Christianity.22 And what other people offered a more
20
21
22

The Wanderer and His Shadow, 284.

Daybreak, 272.
Human, All too Human, I, 475. In Beyond Good and Evil, 250, Nietzsche reiterated that we owe
to Jews the grand style of the morals, the taste for sublime problems.

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accomplished example of cold prudence, of tenacity, of subtlety in the skill of

making the best out of misfortune and chance, of indestructible courage in
genuine humility, of disdain for public disdain, of maintaining a defiant dignity
while performing the vilest menial tasks? There is no race more capable of
cultivating its restrained passion, its resolve, and its virtues through the work and
the intelligence of eminent men. There is no other race more measured, more
assured of the future, more competent to dominate, or more desirous to forsake
dominance and more capable of merging with other races. If the question is to
shape a European race, the Jewish race will be one of its most precious elements,
and it is quite amenable to the idea.23 It already possesses a European state of
mind. It wants to stop being the eternal Wandering Jew. Excluded from established nationalities, it finds a home and a country in the greater nationality to
come. Are we not the ones who push it back, and thus push back wisdom?
Nietzsche would not be surprised at this. The odds of bringing reason into the
world are always tenuous; yet, we cannot dodge reality. We will absorb the Jews,
or they will dominate us, and they will then carry out the fusion of the races from
which we shy away. Nietzsche leaves us no other alternative, and the two exits of
his dilemma lead to only one possible end.
Nietzsche anticipates the resistance that the new Europeanism will encounter.
That everyone would agree is not necessary, but things would be facilitated with
such an agreement. At present, the national spirit, that is to say, the sentimental
exclusivity of each people, recoils from that notion. Nietzsche counts on historical
evolution to make us abandon this last prejudice. The differences that we call
national are more differences of civilization. The most nationalistic particularities
change and pass from one people to another. Many things that were once German
are no longer so, and can now only be found in France. A good German would be
heartbroken were he to forego the qualities that make him a German. Yet, the great
Germans always enriched themselves by adopting external elements. To remain
obstinately attached to qualities which previously composed a nation means to
prohibit any future development that will necessarily chip away at the former
block. A patriotism that wishes to fossilize its people is not enlightened. To be a
good German is to skin him of his Germanism.24
Some precedents illustrate on a small scale how a European unification could be
realized on a grand scale. Will the people be diminished because they would hold
a place in a confederated Europe comparable to the one sovereign cantons occupy
in the Swiss confederations? Adjusting frontiers will be desirable. These adjustments will be made when everyones attachment to an historical past has weakened. Economic interests and intellectual knowledge will be the judges of this.
23
24

Daybreak, 205.
Human, All too Human, II, 323.

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The future diplomats will be backed by utilitarian reasons and not by armies. They
will be economists, technicians, or experts in civilization. Foreign policy would be
a province of domestic policy.25
This is the politics that an intelligent sage foresees. Does this mean that his
insight will be realized? One must win over the peoples adhesion and the passion
that presently opposes it. But this passionate opposition will not last forever. The
unification of the German governments into one great State is called a great idea.
The same kind of people will one day be enthusiastic about the United States of
Europe. This is an even greater idea.26 Nietzsche understands that this idea is
more likely to satisfy the needs of the masses for sentimentality. The European
Republic will come as would any Republic, because it is a logical outcome of
democracy, and because democracy powerfully moves and thrills the multitudes.
Even a barbarian nation, like other nations, works toward the leveling of national
inequalities. Yet, the collaboration of the passion of the masses with reason is not
certain and not yet a guarantee. We must then allow that the European confederation would, itself, be founded on the triumph of absolutism, through militarism
and war. The small states will be devoured by the larger ones which, in turn, will
be devoured by mega-states. Only one will remain on each continent and we
already see its outlines. But this mega-state will disintegrate because it will lack
the circle of enemies which constrained it to remain a single entity. At this very
junction, the time for a European confederation will be ripe. It will be founded on
the dissolution of the mega-stateif not through a concerted effort. The Napoleonic idea of a Europeanism that would be master of the world through science and
war, will be realized using the Napoleonic method if we are mad enough not to
create it through a peaceful entente. We have the choice of methods but not the
choice of where the facts would lead us. The dilemmas of Nietzsche do not force
us to choose among contrary solutions; rather, using contrary venues, they end up
with the same solution. Our inescapable destiny is that we cannot wring from facts
more than they contain. In one way or another, life will draw out, either brutally
or with intelligent orientation, the possibilities which ultimately strengthen it.
That is why the future belongs to the European Republic.27

25
26
27

The Wanderer and His Shadow, 292.

Human, All too Human, posth. XI, 439.
A final section on the elite is omitted [ed.].

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