Oswald Spengler believed and wrote in his massive work Decline of the West that every civilization goes through a period where it nucleates into an expansive twilight phase. He believed it was at that point a an ethical-political philosophy which had already appeared in the civilization sometimes centuries earlier becomes popular among the elite. For Rome, this was Stoicism. For the Magian civilization, Islam. In Ancient China, the elite philosophy was Confucianism. He believed this philosophy would be for us, the West, what he referred to as “ethical socialism”. However, he wrote disparagingly about National Socialism and Communism. He did champion what he called Prussian Socialism, which was a form of socialism most appropriate, he thought, for Germany, assuming Germany won the right to decide this elite philosophy which as we all know it did not. He was worried that its main rival “English socialism”, a sort of Billionaires’ socialism would win the day. Well, the English didn’t exactly win the right in his view. The Americans did. So it’s unclear what sort of socialism he would’ve ascribed to the Americans and which sort of socialism is likely to become the elite philosophy of the future in according to his worldview. What do you think?
Explain what he exactly means by socialism.
>>24742221Spengler's fatalism makes me cringe.
>>24742221oswald spengler was a fool who got a lot wrong and the only use for is history is as theory-fiction and/or justification for the total militarization of liberal society
>>24742253He isn’t fatalistic. In the early chapters of his book he lays out a vision of destiny which is something a set of possibilities laid out any one of which can be met or not met and in a wide variety of ways. The only thing he thinks we can’t escape is the life cycle, but this doesn’t call into question choice. We can’t choose to grow old and die but we still can make choices. This is his fire.
>>24742252Difficult to say exactly because he thought different people had different conceptions of socialism but what they all share in common is that they are angry grand ethical philosophy that basically leaves no stone unturned. It provides an ethical mandate that saturates life, everything from private household ethics to economic and scientific policies to political visions. He saw the main candidates: German socialisms, namely, the Austrian/Bavarian socialism (Nazism) and Prussian socialism, and English socialism, namely Billionaires’ socialism and Marxism. I think it’s important to point out though that Spengler was very much an Anglophobe. He hated the English and the only positive thing he wrote about the English character was that Western civilization was to the point of his death in reality just English civilization.
>>24742252>>24742298To give an example of this, Marxism is not really a mere economic theory but rather a grand ethical philosophy that informs thinking in every subject from politics to economics to education to history, everything. This is what makes socialism socialism in his view. Marxism, he thought though, was the closest to non-socialist capitalism of all the socialisms. He saw it basically as capitalism of the working class masquerading as socialism. > In contrast to Marxism, Spengler claimed that "true socialism" in its German form "does not mean nationalization through expropriation or robbery."[7] Spengler justified this claim by saying:>In general, it is a question not of nominal possession but of the technique of administration. For a slogan’s sake to buy up enterprises immoderately and purposelessly and to turn them over to public administration in the place of the initiative and responsibility of their owners, who must eventually lose all power of supervision—that means the destruction of socialism. The old Prussian idea was to bring under legislative control the formal structure of the whole national productive force, at the same time carefully preserving the right of property and inheritance, and leaving scope for the kind of personal enterprise, talent, energy, and intellect displayed by an experienced chess player, playing within the rules of the game and enjoying that sort of freedom which the very sway of the rule affords….Socialization means the slow transformation—taking centuries to complete—of the worker into an economic functionary, and the employer into a responsible supervisory official.[9]>True socialism according to Spengler would take the form of a corporatism in which "local corporate bodies organized according to the importance of each occupation to the people as a whole; higher representation in stages up to a supreme council of the state; mandates revocable at any time; no organized parties, no professional politicians, no periodic elections."[7]>He also posited that the West will spend the next and last several hundred years of its existence in a state of Caesarian socialism, when all humans will be synergized into a harmonious and happy totality by a dictator, like an orchestra is synergized into a harmonious totality by its conductor.[10]
spengler was proactively, directly, nominally and explicitly refuted by pitirim sorokin
>>24742298But OP said he didn’t like nazism
>>24742339Kek.
>>24742339>>24742374He didn’t like Nazism. He originally supported the Nazi party but came to believe that it was too wedded to racial mythologies he considered ridiculous, had too proletarian a character (as opposed to a Prussian/Juncker character), and had leaders including Hitler who were unimpressive morons. He was impressed with Lenin and Mussolini but not Hitler.
>>24742337Hahahahah Good one
