MacLean 1
Connor MacLean
Prof. Carolyn Hill
CWP 106
04 November 2014
The Concept of the Political: Carl Schmitt’s Argument for the Total State
When a country is in shambles, others are prosperous, and the world is on the brink of
war, it is natural for some to place blame on existing political structures. In the absolute
destruction left by World War I, Germany was in a state of limbo - everyone wanted someone to
blame, and with the world’s perception of Germany as “the enemy,” Germany turned on the
world. Leading up to the Nazi takeover in 1933, opponents and supporters alike published
hundreds of opinions on the state of the world, using a wide variety of reasoning - from
economic logic to appeals to emotion to scientific ‘fact.’ In the midst, Carl Schmitt, a strong
supporter of the Nazi party and later an influential economist for the Third Reich, published his
manuscript The Concept of the Political, supporting a proposed state in which economics would
not govern any considerations of what he called “the political.” According to Schmitt,
democracy, socialism, liberalism, pacifism, anarchy, and the likes are flawed systems because
they give the common citizen too much voice in the government, leading to a politicalization of
issues that he views as inherently nonpolitical. Schmitt presents the natural tendency towards a
friend versus enemy mentality as the explanation for - and defining factor of - what he calls “the
political.” Nevertheless, Carl Schmitt’s argument is erroneous and deceptive because it uses
sound logic to support false claims by overreaching its logical conclusions.
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Schmitt’s main dispute with the structure of liberal governments lies in the fact that those
types of government include nonpolitical domains in their concept of “the political.” The
political as he defines it refers to international relations based on friend-enemy relationships;
politics, on the other hand, are domestic. The friend-enemy relationship always exists because is
it a natural human tendency to group others into these categories. He distinguishes between the
state and society, arguing that “the equation state = politics becomes erroneous and deceptive at
exactly the moment when state and society penetrate each other […] as must necessarily occur in
a democratically organized unit” (Schmitt 22). In other words, he is saying that government
policy and social issues are separate areas which should not become intertwined, but that because
citizens of a democracy are given a voice in their government, in a democracy, they do. The
initial logic is sound; one may accept the distinction between state and politics as valid and
recognize that they are combined when members of a state may vote to influence how their
government will act. The state then becomes political.
Continuing his argument, Schmitt states that “democracy [is] a doctrine nourished by a
thousand springs, and varying greatly with the social status of its adherents,” which is also
plainly true (23). That is to say, people’s voting patterns tend to reflect their socioeconomic
status, and since voting affects government policy, government policy will be made by the
socioeconomic status of voters. Schmitt’s continued correctness builds credibility, making the
reader more likely to accept his later arguments.
However, furthering his claims, he states that “only in one respect [is] [democracy]
consistent, namely in the insatiability of its demand for state control of the individual,” an
allegation which is simply false (23). Schmitt paints a picture of democracy as an inconsistent
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form of government dependable only in the fact that its end goal is total control over every
aspect of the lives of its citizens. One may be deceived into believing this after reading the logic
he presents leading up to this conclusion, but the final step he takes in making this conclusion is
false. Because citizens of a democracy vote, and thus influence the policy of their state, it is the
individuals who have an insatiable desire to control the state. If the state changes, it is because
the people voted to do so, and in that respect the state is weak compared to the whims of the
people. Therefore, the state does not and can not possibly demand control over the individual.
What’s more, Schmitt contradicts himself by explicitly acknowledging democracy as “a
doctrine nourished by a thousand springs” in his preceding logic. The argument collapses on
itself because it recognizes the power that people hold over democracy, yet goes on to claim that
democracy strips people of their power and aims to control them. The facts presented leading up
to the accusation that democracy is a form of total government are true, but Schmitt makes a
purposefully deceptive final claim that purports to be true when it is false. Although Schmitt’s
principal argument that liberal governments over-politicize social issues may initially be viewed
as a credible opinion, his fraudulent claims about other aspects of democracies destroy the
soundness of his beliefs.
Schmitt credits the existence of the political to the basic human tendency to classify
others into two groups: friends and enemies. Friends are insiders who share some set of beliefs,
while enemies have some fundamental difference that makes their existences so incompatible
that they are willing to kill the other. It is important to note the distinction between two types of
enemies: public and private. Keep in mind that these enemies are members of “the political,” so
should be though of as members of different nations. Those who disagree about affairs of state,
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such as foreign policy relations, human rights’ issues, etc. are public enemies, while those who
disagree about personal beliefs, such as religion, culture, etc. are private enemies. Schmitt
argues that public enemies are part of “the political” while private enemies, in an ideal state,
would not be.
To begin his explanation, Schmitt refers back to the idea that the political is completely
independent from the economy, religion, science, law, aesthetic, etc., and that personal disputes
should not influence public ones, as they do in a democracy. Once again, his logic seems sound
and he makes acceptable claims. He asserts that “rationally speaking, it cannot be denied that
nations continue to group themselves according to the friend and enemy antithesis” characteristic
of human nature (28). If this is accepted as true, then the ideal world which he describes consists
of many states grouped in various alliances, all based solely on public disputes. On the surface, it
seems that his logic could be correct in assuming that this is an attainable goal. However, in the
real world his cold never happen.
According to Schmitt’s logic, two countries can be private friends, but public enemies.
First, consider two real countries, Country A and Country B. Because of their public dispute,
Country A and Country B go to war. According to Schmitt, although Country A and Country B
are at war, they remain private friends. Private issues, including economics, are completely
separate from public ones, and therefore can continue normally and in a friendly manner. By this
logic, the countries could be engaged in total war, yet continue supporting each other morally
and economically. By that fact, Schmitt’s logic collapses. In the real world, no country would
ever provide economic support to a wartime enemy, as doing so would ultimately provide
support for the war against oneself. Unless a country is specifically aiming to lose, this will not
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happen. It is an undeniable fact that wars cost money, so supporting a political enemy
economically (under the guise of private support) equates to supporting that enemy publicly.
Therefore, economics is inherently public. Schmitt agrees that anything nonpolitical can become
political, but fails to accept that because of human nature, it will. The downfall of his argument
lies in the fact that his very own explanation of the existence of the political - the friend versus
enemy relationships inherent to all humans - breaks down the possibility of the separation of
private and public affairs.
Throughout his critique, Schmitt repeatedly misleads the reader into believing that
democracy is a total state which should be replaced with the ideal state he vaguely describes.
After viewing the breakdown of the first part of the argument - that democracy is a total state - it
is important to examine exactly what the ideal state he describes entails. Schmitt says that
although a perfectly peaceful world without war may be ideal, it is unattainable because of the
human tendency to group into friends and enemies. This makes sense, so the hope of a world
with no war can be deemed irrelevant. The ideal state, then, must aim to create as much order as
possible out of the chaos created by human nature.
Schmitt declares that the existence of the political creates order through the constant
threat of possible war. No one wants to experience the atrocities of war, so the threat keeps
nations from being aggressors. Since, because of human nature, the political is inevitable, this is
acceptable logic. Furthermore, through the breakdown of his earlier logic, it it is clear that public
and private issues will mix and that conflict will arise. However, Schmitt believes that the ideal
state will somehow be able to keep the political separate from the social, thus achieving
nonpoliticality, in that they will not mix. But how can this be possible?
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Schmitt mentions briefly that a democracy “must not defend its existing form in any
crisis”; that is to say that a democracy must (and does) constantly change to suit the interests of
its people through their votes (23). In this way, the political and politics are combined, and the
state is not ideal. The ideal state that Schmitt describes is one which does defend itself against
change. This sounds all right, yet he never elaborates on how this can be done. Thinking about
the real world, a state which defends itself against change - and against the whims of its people -
is necessarily totalitarian.
For a state to never change, it must stamp out any and all opposition to maintain rigid
order. Historically, the any nation which has ever attempted this has been totalitarian. The USSR
aimed to protect itself not only from public enemies, but private enemies domestically.
Dissenters were collected and sent to Siberia, where they met almost certain death. In the same
way, Germany during World War II ran concentration camps in order to “purify” society of those
it viewed as private enemies, using public power to do so. In the end, all left living adhere to the
same private and public goals, so the state appears to be nonpolitical. However, through the
means, the public and private spheres become absolutely the same. Therefore, nonpoliticality is
merely a façade veiling absolute politicality.
Interestingly, the ideal state Schmitt embodies all of the evils he seeks to eliminate in
democracy, to an even greater extent than in democracy. Schmitt calls the nonpolitical state
“superior” to the political, yet at its core the state he describes is the epitome of political (32).
Schmitt expects his reader not to fully understand his logic, and to simply believe all his claims.
He deceives the reader into thinking that the ideal state is perfectly nonpolitical because of its
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façade as such. However, underneath what seems to be the possibility of a nonpolitical state,
Schmitt advocates for exactly the opposite of what he seems to be advocating for.
Ultimately, Schmitt’s attempt to use true logic to support his false claims leads to its own
destruction. He intentionally deceives his reader into accepting his logic and believing that his
vague solution is best. What the reader is unaware of is the fact that the solution Schmitt
advocates for is the exact opposite of what it seems. Schmitt purports to dislike democracy
because it combines the political and politics too greatly, but actually he believes that it does not
combine them enough. Schmitt faults liberals for being overly ideal in believing politics can be
eliminated, yet blatantly lies to the reader and claims his ideal state will do it, itself; he presents
the friend-enemy antithesis as an insuperable tenet basic to human nature, yet claims that for the
political it may be overcome; and in the end, he condemns democracy for being what he believes
to be a total state, yet advocates for a state even more total in power and scope. In the end, The
Concept of the Political is an ingeniously planned manipulation of the average person’s thoughts,
pretending to contain airtight logic to support its claims, while in reality using deception to
convince the reader of a lie.
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Works Cited
Schmitt, Carl. The Concept of the Political. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Print.
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Critical Information Sheet
1. Intent Statement
Carl Schmitt’s argument is erroneous and deceptive because it uses sound logic to support false
claims by overreaching its logical conclusions.
2. Audience Description
The audience of my paper is people who have read Carl Schmitt’s “Concept of the Political” and
believe the claims he makes. Initially, readers of my paper would disagree with the fact that his
argument is deceptive or incorrect because on the surface it seems solid. They would also
probably contest the fact that it is possible for true logic support untrue claims. They may have
an attitude that any well-known economist must be credible and that they must be acting for the
good of all society. However, they may not consider what “good” means to different people. The
audience will most likely (if they’re not extremely racist) hate Nazis, so the fact that Carl
Schmitt was a Nazi will help my argument that he is not acting for the good of all. What he
thinks of as “good” is not what most people think of as good. Readers will likely be college
students who have read Schmitt in a class. The audience intent statement would probably go
something like “Carl Schmitt’s conclusion is valid because Carl Schmitt’s conclusion is reached
through sound logic.”
3. Strategy Explanation
At first, I wrote the paper using language as dense as Schmitt’s paper; however, I quickly
realized that just as I was bored reading the Schmitt’s paper, my reader would probably get bored
reading mine, too. So I stepped down the language a little bit, but kept it very straightforward to
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maintain the tone typical of many economic papers. Prof. Lough, the economist I interviewed,
said that papers in the field of economics waste no time on unnecessary information and instead
get straight to the point, assuming the reader is well-versed in the background of the paper. That
being said, I did try to include a little more background so that a reader would better understand,
even if they hadn’t read Schmitt’s essay. I chose to use sound logic to break down other sound
logic, because a reader who believe logic in the first place is likely to respond to other types of
logic. I also used real-world examples to contrast the ideals Schmitt presents to show that,
although the ideals sound good on paper, they are impossible in practice. The reader will be
someone who thought the ideal sounded good on paper but possibly had a hard time envisioning
what it actually entailed, and a hard time envisioning reasons it could possibly be incorrect. The
examples provided give a concrete meaning to those counter-situations. Also, the history is
relevant because a reader will know that the Nazis did not create a state that was ideal - in fact
the state they created was far from it.
4. Writer’s Reflection
At first, I had difficulty deciding how to divide up the paragraphs. I tend to write very long
paragraphs, but I realized I could structure the paper in terms of many, short paragraphs. This
way, the reader doesn’t lose track of the thought, and is continually introduced to a new idea and
then quickly brought to accept it. I kind of wanted the whole argument to be “hey, this guy’s a
Nazi, can’t we all agree that he’s crazy?” but while it’s an emotional argument it’s not logical; his
paper does seem to make sense. In fact, when I first read it (and before knowing Schmitt’s
affiliation with the Nazi party) I believed it myself! Much of my writing process was just spitting
out short ideas and quotes to go along with them, in bullet form, and then organizing them into a
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structured argument. So many of Schmitt’s ideas relate to each other so greatly that it was hard to
decide how to categorize them and separate on from another, but in the end I feel like I did a
pretty good job of doing so, but keeping sure to connect them throughout and show that they all
support (albeit erroneously) each other. I really enjoyed being able to meet with other people
during the class workshops and have them read my essay to make sure they understood what I
was saying. The readings we did on logical fallacies was very helpful for this paper! Schmitt
commits a ton of them! It’s also interesting to notice that logical fallacies aren’t just an accidental
thing that breaks down an argument - sometimes they’re intentional, but necessary (as in
Schmitt’s case) because real logic doesn’t exist for the situation and therefore an author must be
deceptive and manipulative. But then again how moral is this? It made me think about the power
of writing.
5. Optional Stuff
Carl Schmitt wrote “The Concept of the Political” just before World War II, when much of the
world was in a state of economic despair because of the effects of World War I. Germany had
been financially devastated, but was recovering. Amid the all the recent attempted revolutions in
Europe, governments which gave ordinary citizens power were seen as very dangerous to the
state. What Europe had gone through had devastated everyone economically, and many wanted
to blame those uprisings. Democracy and other liberal governments were untrusted because they
were seen as leading to these crashes. In his writing, Schmitt tries to convince the reader that
democracy is evil. He says that it ends up acting like a total state because social issues become
issues of the state (since everyone can vote) and that the state should not be involved in social
affairs. This is his main problem with these types of governments. In his paper, it sounds like this
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is true! Everything we believe about democracy seems to be broken down. The reader ends up
questioning how much say they really have in democracy and wondering if they are simply a
puppet of the state. However, my essay seeks to dispel this fear by exposing the faults in
Schmitt’s logic and pointing out the true implications of his claims - a total state none of us
would want.
TH
E C
ON
CE
PT O
F TH
E PO
LIT
ICA
L
EXPA
ND
ED ED
ITION
CA
RL SC
HM
ITT
Translation, Introduction, and Notes by G
eorge Schwab
With "The Age o
f Neutralizations and D
epoliticizations"
(I929) translated by Matthias K
onzen and John P.
McC
ormick
With Leo Strauss's N
otes on Schmitt's Essay, translated by
J. Harvey Lom
ax
Foreword by Tracy B. Strong
TH
E U
NIV
ERSITY
OF C
HIC
AG
O PRESS
Chicago and London
20 The C
oncept of the Political entities, it is in the decisive case the ultim
ate authority. More need
not be said at this mom
ent. All characteristics of this im
age of entity and people receive their m
eaning from the further distinctive trait
of the political and become incom
prehensible when the nature of
the political is misunderstood.
One seldom
finds a clear definition of the political. The w
ord is m
ost frequently used negatively, in contrast to various other ideas, for exam
ple in such antitheses as politics and economy, politics and
morality, politics and law
; and within law
there is again politics and civil law
/ and so forth. By means of such negative, often also
polemical confrontations, it is usually possible, depending upon the
context and concrete situation, to characterize something w
ith clar-ity. B
ut this is still not a specific definition. In one way or another
"political" is generally juxtaposed to "state" or at least is brought into relation w
ith it.' The state thus appears as som
ething political, the political as som
ething pertaining to the state-obviously an un-satisfactory circle.
George Schw
ab, "Enemy oder Foe:
Der K
onflikt der modernen Politik,"
tr. J. Zeumer, Epirrhosis: Pestgabe fur Carl Schm
itt, ed. H. Barion, E.-W
. BOckenforde, E. Forsthoff, W
. Weber (B
erlin: Duncker &. H
umblot,
II, 665-666. 1 T
he antithesis of law and politics is easily confused by the antithesis
of civil and public law. A
ccording to J. K. Bluntschli in Allgemeines Staats-
recht, 4th ed. (Munich: J. G
. Cotta, 1868), I, 219: "Property is a civil law and
not a political concept." The political significance of this antithesis carne particularly to the fore in 1925 and 1926, during the debates regarding the expropriation of the fortunes of the princes w
ho had formerly ruled in G
er-m
any. The following sentence from
the speech by deputy Dietrich (Reichstag
session, Decem
ber 2, 1925, Berichu, 4717) is cited as an example: "W
e are of the opinion that the issues here do not at all pertain to civil law
questions but are purely political ones .... "
2 Also in those definitions of the political w
hich utilize the concept of pow
er as the decisive factor, this power appears m
ostly as state power, for
example, in M
ax Weber's "Politik als B
eruf," Gesam
melte politjsche Schrif-
ten, 3rd ed., ed. Johannes Winckelm
ann (Tlibingen: ,. C. B. Mohr
[Paul Siebeck], 197
1), pp. 505, 506: "aspiring to participate in or of influencing the distribution of pow
er, be it between states, be it internally betw
een groups
The Concept of the Political
21
Many such descriptions of the political appear in professional
juridic literature. Insofar as these are not politically polemical, they
are of practical and technical interest and are to be understood as legal or adm
inistrative decisions in particular cases. These then re-ceive their m
eaning by the presupposition of a stable state within
whose fram
ework they operate. T
hus there exists, for example, a
jurisprudence and literature pertaining to the concept of the political club or the political m
eeting in the law of associations. Furtherm
ore, French adm
inistrative law
practice has attempted to construct a
concept of the political motive (m
obile politique) with w
hose aid political acts of governm
ent (actes de goullernement) could be dis-
tinguished from nonpolitical adm
inistrative acts and thereby removed
from the control of adm
inistrative courts. 3
Such accomm
odating definitions serve the needs of legal prac-
of people which the state encom
passes," or "leadership or the influencing of a political association, hence today, of a state"; or his "Parliam
ent und Regie-rung im
neugeordneten Deutschland," ibid., p. 347: "The essence of politics
is ... combat, the w
inning of allies and of voluntary followers." H
. Triepel, StaatsruM
und Po/itik (Berlin: W
. de Gruyter &. Co., 1927), pp. 16-17, says:
"Until recent decades politics w
as still plainly associated with the study of
the state .... In this vein Weitz characterizes politics as the learned discus-
sion of the state with respect to the historical developm
ent of states on the w
hole as well as of their current conditions and needs." Triepel then justly
criticizes the ostensibly nonpolitical, purely juristic approach of the Gerber-
Laband school and the attempt at its
continuation in the postw
ar period (K
elsen). Nevertheless, Triepel
had not yet
recognized the pure political
meaning of this p,retense of an apolitical purity, because he subscribes to the
equation politics = state. As will still be seen below
, designating the adversary as political and oneself as nonpolitical (i.e., scientific, just, objective, neutral, etc.) is in actuality a typical and unusually intensive w
ay of pursuing politics. 8 •
•• For the criterion of the political furnished here (friend-enem
y orientation), I draw
upon the particularly interesting definition of the spe-cifically political acU
de gouvernement w
hich Dufour ... (Traite de droit
administratif applique, V
, 128) has advanced: "D
efining an act of govern-m
ent is the purpose to which the author addresses him
self. Such an act aims
at defending society itself or as em
bodied in
the government against its
internal or external enemies, overt or covert, present or future. . . ."
22 The C
oncept of the Political
tice. Basically, they
provide a practical
way
of delimiting legal
competences of cases w
ithin a state in its legal procedures. They do
not in the least aim at a general definition of the political. Such
definitions of the political suffice, therefore, for as long as the state and the public institutions can be assum
ed as something self-evident
and concrete. Also, the general definitions of the political w
hich contain nothing m
ore than additional references to the state are understandable and to that extent also intellectually justifiable for as long as the state is truly a clear and unequivocal em
inent entity confronting nonpolitical groups and affairs-in other w
ords, for as long as the state possesses the m
onopoly on politics. That w
as the case w
here the state had either (as in the eighteenth century) not recognized society as an antithetical force or, at least (as in G
er-m
any in the nineteenth century and into the tw
entieth), stood above society as a stable and distinct force.
The equation state = politics becom
es erroneous and decep-tive at exactly the m
oment w
hen state and society penetrate each other. W
hat had been up to that point affairs of state becom
e thereby social m
atters, and, vice versa, what had been purely social
matters becom
e affairs of state-as must necessarily occur in a dem
-ocratically organized unit. H
eretofore ostensibly neutral domains-
religion, culture, education, the economy-then cease to be neutral
in the sense that they do not pertain to state and to politics. As a
polemical concept against such neutralizations and depoliticaliza-
tions of important dom
ains appears the total state, which potentially
embraces every dom
ain. This results in the identity of state and society. In such a state, therefore, everything is at least potentially political, and in referring to the state it is no longer possible to assert for it a specifically political characteristic.
[Schmitt's N
ote]
The developm
ent can be traced from the absolute state of
the eighteenth century via the neutral
(noninterventionist) state
The Concept of the Political
23
of the nineteenth to the total state of the twentieth! D
emocracy
must do aw
ay with all the typical distinctions and depoliticaliza-
tions characteristic of the liberal nineteenth century, also with those
corresponding to the
nineteenth-century antitheses
and divisions
pertaining to the state-society (= political against social) contrast,
namely the follow
ing, among num
erous other thoroughly polemical
and thereby again political antitheses:
religious cultural econom
ic legal scientific
as antithesis of political as antithesis of political as antithesis of political as antithesis of political as antithesis of political
The m
ore profound thinkers of the nineteenth century soon recognized this. In Jacob B
urckhardt's W t'ltgeschichtliche Betrach-
lungen (of the period around IR70)
the following sentences are
found on "dem
ocracy, i.e., a
doctrine nourished by
a thousand
springs, and varying greatly with the social status of its adherents.
Only in one respect w
as it consistent, namely, in the insatiability
of its demand for state control of the individual. T
hus it blurs the boundaries betw
een state and society and looks to the state for the things that society w
ill most likely refuse to do, w
hile maintaining
a permanent condition of argum
ent and change and ultim
ately vindicating the right to w
ork and subsistence for certain castes." B
urckhardt also correctly noted the inner contradiction of democ-
racy and the liberal constitutional state: "The state is thus, on the
one hand, the realization and expression of the cultural ideas of every party; on the other, m
erely the visible vestures of civic life and pow
erful on an ad hoc basis only. It should be able to do every-thing, yet allow
ed to do nothing. In particular, it must not defend
its existing form in any crisis-and after all, w
hat men w
ant more
4 See Carl Schmitt, D
er Hule,' der
Ver!assung (Tiibingen: J. C. B.
Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1931j Berlin: D
uncker & Hum
blot, 1969), pp. 78-79.
The Concept of the Political
than anything else is to participate in the exercise of its power. T
he state's form
thus becomes increasingly questionable and its radius
of power ever broader." 5
Germ
an political science originally m
aintained (under the
impact of H
egel's philosophy of the state) that the state is quali-tatively distinct from
society and higher than it. A state standing
above society could be called universal but not total, as that term
is understood nowadays, nam
ely, as the polemical negation of the
neutral state, whose econom
y and law w
ere in themselves nonpolit-
ical. Nevertheless, after 1848,
the qualitative distinction betw
een state and society to w
hich Lorenz von Stein and Rudolf G
neist still subscribed lost its previous clarity. N
otwithstanding certain lim
ita-tions, reservations, and com
promises, the developm
ent of Germ
an political science, w
hose fundamental lines are show
n in my treatise
on Preuss,s follows the historical developm
ent toward the dem
o-cratic identity of state and society.
An interesting national-liberal interm
ediary stage is recogniz-able in the w
orks of Albert H
aenel. "To generalize the concept of
state altogether with the concept of hum
an society" is, according to him
, a "downright m
istake." He sees in the state an entity joining
other organizations of society but of a "special kind which rises
above these and is all embracing." A
lthough its general purpose is universal, though only in the special task of delim
iting and organ-izing socially effective forces, i.e., in the specific function of the law
, H
aenel considers wrong the belief that the state has, at least poten-
tially, the power of m
aking all the social goals of humanity its goals
too. Even though the state is for him universal, it is by no m
eans tota1. 7 T
he decisive step is found in Gierke's theory of association
(the first volume of his Vas deutsche G
enossenschaftsrecht appeared
5 Kroner's edition, pp. 133, 135. 197.
6 Hugo Preuss: Sein StaaubegriO
und seine Ste/lung in der deutschen Staatslehre (Tlibingcn: J. C. B. M
ohr [Paul SiebeckJ, 1930). 7 Studien zum
Deutschen Staatsrechte (Leipzig: V
erlag von H. H
aessel, 1888), II, 219; D
eutsches Staatsrecht (Leipzig: D
uncker &: Hum
blot, 1892), I, 110.
The Concept of the Political
in 1868), because it conceives of the state as one association equal to other associations. O
f course, in addition to the associational ele-m
ents, sovereign ones too belonged to the state and were som
etimes
stressed more and som
etimes less. But, since it pertained to a theory
of association and not to a theory of sovereignty of the state, the dem
ocratic consequences were undeniable. In G
ermany, they w
ere draw
n by Hugo Preuss and K
. Wolzendorff, w
hereas in England it led to pluralist theories (see below
, Section 4). W
hile awaiting further enlightenm
ent, it seems to m
e that R
udolf Smend's theory of the integration of the state corresponds
to a political situation in which society is no longer integrated into
an existing state (as the Germ
an people in the monarchical state
of the nineteenth century) but should itself integrate into the state. T
hat this situation necessitates the total state is expressed most clearly
in Smend's rem
ark about a sentence from H
. Trescher's 1918 disser-tation on M
ontesquieu and Hegel." There it is
said of Hegel's
doctrine of the division of powers that it signifies "the m
ost vigorous penetration of all societal spheres by the state for the general pur-pose of w
inning for the entirety of the state all vital energies of the people." T
o which Sm
end adds that this is "precisely the integration theory" of his book. In actuality it is the total state w
hich no longer know
s anything absolutely nonpolitical, the state which m
ust do aw
ay with the depoliticalizations of the nineteenth century and
which in particular puts an end to the principle that the apolitical
economy is independent of the state and that the state is apart from
the econom
y. •
2 A definition of the political can be obtained only by discover-
ing and defining the specifically political categories. In contrast to the various relatively independent endeavors of hum
an thought and
8 Rudolf Smcnd, Ver/assung und Ver/auungsrecht (M
unich: Dunckcr
&. Hum
bfot, 1928), p. 97, note 2.
The Concept of the Political
action, particularly the moral, aesthetic, and econom
ic, the political has its ow
n criteria which express them
selves in a characteristic w
ay. The political m
ust therefore rest on its own ultim
ate distinc-tions, to w
hich all action with a specifically political m
eaning can be traced. Let us assum
e that in the realm of m
orality the final distinc-tions are betw
een good and evil, in aesthetics beautiful and ugly, in econom
ics profitable and unprofitable. The question then is w
hether there is also a special distinction w
hich can serve as a simple crite-
rion of the political and of what it consists. T
he nature of such a political distinction is surely different from
that of those others. It is independent of them
and as such can speak clearly for itself. T
he specific political distinction to which political actions and
motives can be reduced is that betw
een friend and enemy.· This
provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not
as an
exhaustive definition
or one
indicative of
substantial content.t
Insofar as it is not derived from other criteria, the
antithesis of friend and enem
y corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other antitheses: good and evil in the m
oral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. In any event it is inde-pendent, not in the sense of a distinct new
domain, but in that it
can neither be based on anyone antithesis or any combination of
other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these. If the antithesis of good and evil is not sim
ply identical with that of beautiful and
ugly, profitable and unprofitable, and cannot be directly reduced to the others, then the antithesis of friend and enem
y must even less
be confused with or m
istaken for the others. T
he distinction of friend and enem
y denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union
or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theo-• Since Schm
itt identified himself w
ith the epoch of the national sov-ereign state w
ith its ius publicum Europaertm
, he used the term Feind in the
enemy and not the foe sense. t O
f the num
erous discussions
of Schmitt's
criterion, particular attention is called to H
ans Morgenthau's LA N
otion du "politique" et la thiorie des diU
erends internationaux (Paris: Sirey, 1933), pp. 35-37, 44-64. T
he critique contained therein and Schmitt's influence on him
is often im
plied in Morgenthau's subsequent w
ritings.
The Concept of the Political
retically and
practically, without having sim
ultaneously to
draw
upon all those moral, aesthetic, econom
ic, or other distinctions. The
political enemy need not be m
orally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an econom
ic competitor, and it m
ay even be advantageous to engage w
ith him in business transactions. B
ut he is, nevertheless,
the other, the stranger; and
it is sufficient for
his nature that he is, in a specially intense w
ay, existentially something
different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts w
ith him
are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously deter-m
ined general norm nor hy the judgm
ent of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party.
Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, under-
stand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case
of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the
adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore
must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's ow
n form of
existence. Emotionally the enem
y is easily treated as being evil and ugly, because every distinction, m
ost of all the political, as
the strongest and m
ost intense of the distinctions and categorizations, draw
s upon other distinctions for support. This does not alter the autonom
y of such distinctions. Consequently, the reverse
is also
true: the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or econom
ically damaging
need not necessarily be the enemy; the m
orally good, aesthetically beautiful, and econom
ically profitable need not necessarily become
the friend in the specifically political sense of the word. T
hereby the inherently objective nature and autonom
y of the political be-com
es evident by virtue of its being able to treat, distinguish, and com
prehend the
friend-enemy
antithesis independently
of other antitheses.
3 The friend and enem
y concepts are to be understood in their concrete and existential sense, not as
metaphors or sym
bols, not
The Concept of the Political
mixed and w
eakened by economic, m
oral, and other conceptions, least of all in a private-individualistic sense as a psychological expression of private em
otions and tendencies. They are neither norm
ative nor pure spiritual antitheses. Liberalism in one of its
typical dilemm
as (to be treated further under Section 8) of intellect and econom
ics has attempted
to transform
the enem
y from
the view
point of economics into a com
petitor and from the intellectual
point into a debating adversary. In the domain of econom
ics there are no enem
ies, only competitors, and in a thoroughly m
oral and ethical w
orld perhaps only debating adversaries. It is irrelevant here w
hether one rejects, accepts, or perhaps finds it an atavistic remnant
of barbaric times that nations continue to group them
selves accord-ing to friend and enem
y, or hopes that the antithesis will one day
vanish from the w
orld, or whether it is perhaps sound pedagogic
reasoning to imagine that enem
ies 110 longer exist at all. T
he COI1-
cern here is neither with abstractions nor w
ith normative ideals, but
with inherent reality and the real possibility of such a distinction.
One m
ayor may not share these hopes and pedagogic ideals. B
ut, rationally speaking, it cannot be denied that nations continue to group them
selves according to the friend and enemy antithesis, that
the distinction still remains actual today, and that this is an ever
present possibility for every people existing in the political sphere. T
he enemy is not m
erely any competitor or just any partner
of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary w
hom
one hates. An enem
y exists only when, at least potentially, One
fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. T
he enem
y is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a
relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a w
hole nation, becom
es public by virtue of such a relationship. The enem
y is hostis, not inirnicus in the broader sense; noli!!LOe;, not EX{}Qoe;.9
a In his Rt:public (Bk. V, C
h. XV
I, 470) Plato strongly emphasizes the
contrast between the public enem
y (nOAE!!lOe;) and the private one (EX{}QOe;), but in connection w
ith the other antithesis of war (noAs!!oe;)
and insurrec·
The Concept of the Political
As G
erman and other languages do not distinguish betw
een the private and political enem
y, many m
isconceptions and falsifications are possible. T
he often quoted "Love your enemies" (M
att. 5 :44; Luke 6 :27) reads "diligite inim
icos vestros," uyun<lt'E mue; EX{}QOUe;
U!!WV, and not diligite hostes vestros. No m
ention is made of the
political enemy. N
ever in the thousand-year struggle between C
hris-tians and M
oslems did it occur to a C
hristian to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love tow
ard the Saracens or Turks. The
enemy in the political sense need not be hated personally, and in
the private sphere only does it make sense to love one's enem
y, i.e., one's adversary. T
he Bible quotation touches the political antithesis even less than it intends to dissolve, for exam
ple, the antithesis of good and evil or beautiful and ugly. It certainly does not m
ean that one should love and support the enem
ies of one's own people.
The political is the m
ost intense and extreme antagonism
, and every concrete antagonism
becomes that m
uch more political the
closer it approaches the most extrem
e point, that of the friend-enemy
grouping. In its entirety the state as an organized political entity
tion, upheaval, rebellion, civil war «(HacHe;).· Real w
ar for Plato is a war
between H
ellenes and Barbarians only (those w
ho are "by nature enemies"),
whereas
conflicts am
ong H
ellenes are for
him
discords (at'aaELe;).
The thought expressed here is that a people cannot w
age war against itself and a
civil war is only a self-laceration and it does not signify that perhaps a new
state or even a new
people is being created. Cited m
ostly for the hostis con. cept is Pom
ponius in the Digt:st 50,
16, 118. The most clear-cut definition
with additional supporting m
aterial is in Forcellini's Lex-icon totius latinitatis (1<)65 ed.), II, 684: "A
public enemy (hO
Slis) is one w
ith whom
we are at
war publicly .... In this respect he differs from
d private enem
y. He is a
person with w
hom w
e have private quarrels. They may also be distinguished
as follows: a private enem
y is a person who hates us, w
hereas a public enemy
is a person who fights against us."
• Stasis also means the exact opposite, i.e., peace and order. T
he dia-lectic
inherent in the
term
is pointed
out by Carl
Schmitt
in Politische
Tht:ologit: II: Dit: Lt:gt:ndt: lion dt:r Erlt:digung ;t:dt:r Politischt:n Tht:ologie
(Berlin: D
uncker &; Hum
blot, 1970), pp. Il7-u8.
30
The Concept of the Political
decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction. Furtherm
ore, next to the prim
ary political decisions and under the protection of the decision taken, num
erous secondary concepts of the political ema-
nate. As to the equation of politics and state discussed under Section
I, it has the effect, for example, of contrasting a political attitude of
a state with party politics so that one can speak of a state's dom
estic religious, educational, com
munal, social
policy, and so on. Not-
withstanding, the state encom
passes and relativizes all these an-
titheses. How
ever an antithesis and antagonism rem
ain here within
the state's domain w
hich have relevance for the concept of the
political. lO Finally even m
ore banal forms of politics appear, form
s w
hich assume parasite-
and caricature-like configurations. What re-
mains here from
the original friend-enemy grouping is only som
e sort of antagonistic m
oment, w
hich manifests itself in all sorts of
tactics and practices, competitions
and intrigues;
and the
most
peculiar dealings and manipulations are called politics. B
ut the fact that the substance of the political is contained in the context of a concrete antagonism
is still expressed in everyday language, even w
here the awareness of the extrem
e case has been entirely lost.
This becomes evident in daily speech and can be exem
plified by tw
o obvious phenomena. First, all political concepts, im
ages, and term
s have a polemical m
eaning. They are focused on a specific conflict and are bound to a concrete situation; the result (w
hich m
anifests itself in war or revolution) is a friend-enem
y grouping, and they turn into em
pty and ghostlike abstractions when this situa-
tion disappears. Words such as state, republic,l1 society, class, as w
ell
10 A social policy existed ever since a politically notew
orthy class put forth its social dem
ands; welfare care, w
hich in early times w
as administered
to the poor and distressed, had not been considered a sociopolitical problem
and was also not called such. Likew
ise a church policy existed only where a
church constituted a politically significant counterforce. 11 M
achiavelli, for example, calls all nonm
onarchical states republics, and his definition is still accepted today. R
ichard Thoma defines dem
ocracy as a nonprivileged state; hence a\l nondem
ocracies are classified as privileged states.
The Concept of the Political
31
as sovereignty, constitutional state, absolutism, dictatorship, econom
ic planning, neutral or total state, and so on, are incom
prehensible if one does not know
exactly who is to be affected, com
bated, refuted, or negated by such a term
.12 Above all the polem
ical character de-
12 Num
erous forms and degrees of intensity of the polem
ical character are also here possible. B
ut the essentially polemical nature of the politically
charged terms and concepts rem
ain nevertheless recognizable. Terminological
questions become thereby highly political. A
word or expression can sim
ul-taneously be reflex, signal, passw
ord, and weapon in a hostile confrontation.
For example, K
arl Renner, a socialist of the Second International, in a very
significant scholarly publication, Die Rechtsinstitute des Privatrechts (Tiibin-
gen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1929), p_ 97, calls rent w
hich the tenant pays the landlord "tribute." M
ost Germ
an professors of jurisprudence, judges, and law
yers, would consider such a designation an inadm
issible politicaliza-tion of civil law
relationships and would reject this on the grounds that it
would disturb the purely juristic, purely legal, purely scientific discussion.
For them the question has been decided in a legal positivist m
anner, and the therein
residing political
design of
the state
is thus
recognized. O
n the
other hand, many socialists of the Second International put m
uch value in calling the paym
ents which arm
ed France imposes upon disarm
ed Germ
any not "tribute," but "reparations." "R
eparation" appears to be more juristic,
more legal, m
ore peaceful, less polemical, and m
ore apolitical than "tribute." In scrutinizing this m
ore closely, however, it m
ay be seen that "reparation" is m
ore highly
charged and therefore also political
because this
term
is utilized politically to condem
n juristically and even morally the vanquished
enemy. T
he imposed paym
ents have the effect of disqualifying and subjugat-ing him
not only legally but also morally. T
he question in Germ
any today is w
hether one should say "tribute" or "reparation." This has turned into an internal
dispute. In previous centuries a
controversy existed
between
the G
erman kaiser (and king of H
ungary) and the Turkish sultan on the ques-tion of w
hether the payments m
ade by the kaiser to the sultan were in the
nature of a "pension" or "tribute." The debtor stressed that he did not pay
"tribute" but "pension," whereas the creditor considered it to be "tribute."
In the relations between C
hristians and Turks the w
ords were still used in
those days more openly and m
ore objectively, and the juristic concepts per-haps had not yet becom
e to the same extent as today political instrum
ents of coercion. N
evertheless, Bodin, w
ho mentions this controversy (Les Six Livres
de la RcpuMique, Paris, 1580, p. 784), adds that in m
ost instances "pension"
3 2 The C
oncept of the Political term
ines the use of the word political regardless of w
hether the adversary is designated as nonpolitical (in the sense of harm
less), or vice versa if one w
ants to disqualify or denounce him as political in
order to portray oneself as nonpolitical (in the sense of purely scien-tific, purely m
oral, purely juristic, purely aesthetic, purely economic,
or on the basis of similar purities) and thereby superior.
Secondly, in usual domestic polem
ics the word political is
today often used interchangeably with party politics. T
he inevitable lack of objectivity in political decisions, w
hich is only the reflex to suppress the politically inherent friend-enem
y antithesis, manifests
itself in the regrettable forms and aspects of the scram
ble for office and the politics of patronage. T
he demand for depoliticalization
which arises in this context m
eans only the rejection of party politics, etc. T
he equation politics = party politics is possible w
henever antagonism
s among dom
estic political parties succeed in weakening
the all-embracing political unit, the state. T
he intensification of internal antagonism
s has
the effect of w
eakening the com
mon
identity vis-a-vis another state. If domestic conflicts am
ong political parties have becom
e the sole political difference, the most extrem
e degree of internal
political tension
is thereby reached;
Le., the
domestic, not the foreign friend-and-enem
y groupings are decisive for arm
ed conflict. The ever present possibility of conflict m
ust alw
ays be kept in mind. If one w
ants to speak of politics in the context of the prim
acy of internal politics, then this conflict no longer refers to w
ar between organized nations but to civil w
ar. For to the enem
y concept belongs the ever present possibility of com
bat. All peripherals m
ust be left aside from this term
, in-cluding m
ilitary details and the development of w
eapons technology. W
ar is armed com
bat between organized political entities; civil w
ar is arm
ed combat w
ithin an organized unit. A self-laceration en-
dangers the survival of the latter. The essence of a w
eapon is that
is paid not to protect oneself from other enem
ies, but primarily from
the
protector himself and to ransom
oneself from an invasion (pour it
l'intJasion).
The Concept of the Political
33 it is a m
eans of physically killing human beings. Just as the term
enem
y, the word com
bat, too, is to be understood in its original existential sense. It does not m
ean competition, nor does it m
ean pure intellectual controversy nor sym
bolic wrestlings in w
hich, after all, every hum
an being is somehow
always involved, for it is a fact
that the entire life of a human being is a struggle and every hum
an being sym
bolically a combatant. T
he friend, enemy, and com
bat concepts receive their real m
eaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. W
ar follows from
enmity.
War is the existential negation of the enem
y.· It is the mOst extrem
e consequence of enm
ity. It does not have to be comm
on, normal,
something ideal, or desirable. B
ut it must nevertheless rem
ain a real possibility for as long as the concept of the enem
y remains valid.
It is by no means as though the political signifies nothing but
devastating war and every political deed a m
ilitary action, by no m
eans as though every nation would be uninterruptedly faced w
ith the friend-enem
y alternative vis-a.-vis every other nation. And, after
all, could not the politically reasonable course reside in avoiding w
ar? The definition of the political suggested here neither favors
war nor m
ilitarism, neither im
perialism nor pacifism
. Nor is it an
attempt to idealize the victorious w
ar or the successful revolution as a "social ideal," since neither w
ar nor revolution is something
social or something ideal.13
The m
ilitary battle itself is not the
• Schmitt dearly alludes here to the foe concept in politics.
13 Rudolf Stam
mler's thesis, w
hich is rooted in neo-Kantian thought,
that the "social ideal" is the "comm
unity of free willing individuals" is
CO
Il-
tradicted by Erich Kaufm
ann in Das
des ViJlkerrechts und die clausula rebus sic stantibus (Tiibingen: J. C. B. M
ohr [Paul Siebeck], 19II), p. 14 6,
who m
aintains that "not the comm
unity of free willing individuals, but the
victorious war is the social ideal: the victorious w
ar as the last means tow
ard that lofty goal"
(the participation and self.assertion of the state in world
history). This sentence incorporates the typical neo·Kantian liberal notion of
"social ideal." But w
ars, including victorious wars, are som
ething completely
incomm
ensurable and incompatible w
ith this conception. This idea is then joined to the notion of the victorious w
ar, which
has its habitat in
the
34 The Concept 01 the Political
"continuation of politics by other means" as the fam
ous term of
Clausew
itz is generally incorrectly cited. a War has its ow
n strategic, tactical, and other rules and points of view
, but they all presuppose that the political decision has already been m
ade as to who the enem
y is. In w
ar the adversaries most often confront each other openly;
normally they are identifiable by a uniform
, and the distinction of friend and enem
y is therefore no longer a political problem w
hich the fighting soldier has to solve. A
British diplom
at correctly stated in this context that the politician is better schooled for the battle than the soldier, because the politician fights his w
hole life whereas the
soldier does so in exceptional circumstances only. W
ar is neither the aim
nor the purpose nor even the very content of politics. But as an ever present possibility it is the leading presupposition' w
hich determ
ines in a characteristic way hum
an action and thinking and thereby creates a specifically political behavior.
The criterion of the friend-and-enem
y distinction in no way
implies that one particular nation m
ust forever be the friend or
enemy of another specific nation or that a state of neutrality is not
Hegdian-R
ankian philosophy of history, in which social ideals do not exist.
The antithesis which appears at first glance to be striking thus breaks into
two disparate parts, and the rhetorical force of a thunderous contrast can
neither veil the structural incoherence nor heal the intellectual breach. H
Carl von C
lausewitz (V
om K
riege, 2nd ed. [B
erlin: Ferd. Diim
m-
len Verlagsbuchandlung,
18531, Vol.
III, Part III, p.
120) says: "W
ar is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse w
ith a mixture of other
means." W
ar is for him a "m
ere instrument of politics." This cannot be
denied, but its meaning for the understanding of the essence of politics is
thereby still not exhausted. To be precise, w
ar, for Clausew
itz, is not merely
one of many instrum
ents, but the ultima ratio of the friend-and-enem
y group-ing.
War has its ow
n gramm
ar (i.e., special
military-technical law
s), but politics rem
ains its brain. It does not have its own logic. This can only be
.derived from the friend-and-enem
y concept, and the sentence on page 121 this core of politics: "If w
ar belongs to politics, it will thereby assum
e Its character. The m
ore grandiose and powerful it becom
es, so will also the
war, and this m
ay be carried to the point at which w
ar reaches its absolute form
..•. "
The Concept 01 the Political 35
possible or could not be politically reasonable. As w
ith every political concept, the neutrality concept too is subject to the ultim
ate pre-supposition of a real
possibility of a friend-and-enemy grouping.
Should only neutrality prevail in the world, then not only w
ar but also neutrality w
ould come to an end. T
he politics of avoiding war
terminates, as does all politics, w
henever the possibility of fighting disappears. W
hat always m
atters is the possibility of the extreme
case taking place, the real war, and the decision w
hether this situa-tion has or has not arrived.
That the extrem
e case appears to be an exception does not negate its decisive character but confirm
s it all the more. T
o the extent that w
ars today have decreased in number and frequency,
they have proportionately increased in ferocity. War is still today the
most extrem
e possibility. One can say that the exceptional case has
an especially decisive meaning w
hich exposes the core of the matter.
For only in real combat is revealed the m
ost extreme consequence
of the political grouping of friend and enemy. From
this most ex-
treme possibility hum
an life derives its specifically political tension. A
world in w
hich the possibility of war is utterly elim
inated, a com
pletely pacified globe, would be a w
orld without the distinction
of friend and enemy and hence a w
orld without politics. It is con-
ceivable that such a world m
ight contain many very interesting
antitheses and contrasts, competitions and intrigues of every kind,
but there would not be a m
eaningful antithesis whereby m
en could be required to sacrifice life, authorized to shed blood, and kill other hum
an beings. For the definition of the political, it is here even irrelevant w
hether such a world w
ithout politics is desirable as an ideal situation. T
he phenomenon of the political can be understood
only in the context of the ever present possibility of the friend-and-enem
y grouping, regardless of the aspects w
hich this possibility
implies for m
orality, aesthetics, and economics.
War as the m
ost extreme political m
eans discloses the possi-bility w
hich underlies every political idea, namely, the distinction
of friend and enemy. T
his makes sense only as long as this distinc-
The Concept 01 the Political
tion in mankind is actually present or at least potentially possible.
On the other hand, it w
ould be senseless to wage w
ar for purely religious, purely m
oral, purely juristic, or purely economic m
otives. The friend-and-enem
y grouping and therefore also war cannot be
derived from these specific antitheses of hum
an endeavor. A w
ar need be neither som
ething religious nor something m
orally good nor som
ething lucrative. War today is in all likelihood none of these.
This obvious point is m
ostly confused by the fact that religious,
moral, and other antitheses can intensify to political ones and can
bring about the decisive friend-or-enemy constellation. If, in fact,
this occurs, then the relevant antithesis is no longer purely religious, m
oral, or economic, but politicaL T
he sole remaining question then
is always w
hether such a friend-and-enemy grouping is really at
hand, regardless of which hum
an motives are sufficiently strong to
have brought it about. N
othing can escape this logical conclusion of the political. If pacifist hostility tow
ard war w
ere so strong as to drive pacifists into a w
ar against nonpacifists, in a war against w
ar, that would
prove that pacifism truly possesses political energy
because it is sufficiently strong to group m
en according to friend and enemy. If,
in fact, the will to abolish w
ar is so strong that it no longer shuns w
ar, then it has become a political m
otive, i.e., it affirms, even if only
as an extreme possibility, w
ar and even the reason for war. Presently
this appears to be a peculiar way of justifying w
ars. The w
ar is then considered to constitute the absolute last w
ar of humanity. Such
a war is necessarily
unusually intense and inhuman because, by
transcending the limits of the political fram
ework, it sim
ultaneously degrades the enem
y into moral and other categories and is forced to
make of him
a monster that m
ust not only be defeated but also utterly destroyed. In other w
ords, he is an enemy w
ho no longer m
ust be compelled to retreat into his borders only.· T
he feasibility of such w
ar is particularly illustrative of the fact that war as a real
• Also here Schm
itt dearly alludes to the enemy-foe distinction.
The Concept 01 the Political
37 possibility is still present today, and this fact is crucial for the friend-and-enem
y antithesis and for the recognition of politics.
4 Every religious, moral, econom
ic, ethical, or other antithesis transform
s into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group hum
an beings effectively according to friend and enemy. T
he political does not reside in the battle itself, w
hich poss<:sses its own technical,
psychological, and military law
s, but in the mode of behavior w
hich is determ
ined by this possibility, by clearly evaluating the concrete situation and thereby being able
to distinguish correctly the real
friend and the real enemy. A
religious comm
unity which w
ages wars
against mem
bers of other religious comm
unities or engages in other w
ars is already more than a religious com
munity; it is a political
entity. It is a political entity when it possesses, even if only nega-
tively, the capacity of promoting that decisive step, w
hen it is in the position of forbidding its m
embers to participate in w
ars, i.e., of decisively denying the enem
y quality of a certain adversary. The
same holds true for an association of individuals based on econom
ic interests as, for exam
ple, an industrial concern or a labor union. A
lso a class in the Marxian sense ceases to be som
ething purely econom
ic and becomes a political factor w
hen it reaches this decisive point, for exam
ple, when M
arxists approach the class struggle seri-ously and treat the class adversary as a real enem
y and fights him
either in the form of a w
ar of state against state or in a civil war
within a state. T
he real battle is then of necessity nO longer fought according to econom
ic laws but has-next to the fighting m
ethods in the narrow
est technical sense-its political necessities and orienta-tions, coalitions and com
promises, and so on. Should the proletariat
succeed in seizing political power w
ithin a state, a proletarian state w
ill thus have been created. This state is by no m
eans less of a political pow
er than a national state, a theocratic, mercantile, or
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