Disclaimer: The Author, Editors, and Executive Committee does not support the views of Carl Schmitt. In fact, we condemn his complicity in Nazi atrocities. As such, the author is simply academically examining Schmitt's views on the state.
The Kronjurist of Hitler’s Third Reich, [1] jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt’s long intellectual record of legal-political works is characterised by its scathing critiques of liberalism and the principles of parliamentary democracy. Many political theorists and ideologues of both the extreme right and extreme left have embraced his works in polemics criticising the theory and practices of both contemporary and Weimar German liberal democratic structures and institutions. [2] His juridical works have been highly influential in critiquing legal structures within liberal states governed by the rule of law; specifically, the issue of ‘legal indeterminacy’, wherein all legal norms are necessarily open-ended in such systems without a general consensus among jurists; this interpretation of liberal jurisprudence reveals the flaws of the liberal legal system, simultaneously representing one of the challenges and forms of rhetoric utilised by this disillusioned jurist.[3]
The area of focus, however, remains the relevance that Schmittian arguments and political conceptualisations of politics retain among leftist [4] scholars since a Schmittian renaissance among leftist theorists was launched in 1987 by the New Left journal Telos. [5] Schmitt’s intellectual works retained prominence both during the Weimar Republic (especially amid many of its crises) and in the post-war Federal Republic, though in the latter his influence was only retained in smaller sections of liberal-democratic and socialist constitutionalist circles. The renaissance of Schmittian theory fluctuated with evolving world events; the search for new intellectual bases for the post-Soviet Western Left began in the 1980s amid the decline and ultimate collapse of the Warsaw Pact and USSR in 1991, leading to the conditions of unipolarity and neoliberal world dominance. Despite his authoritarian Conservative political ideology, Schmitt was known to seriously engage with opposing political viewpoints, demonstrated in the close attention paid to Karl Marx, Georg Lukács, among other theorists, and his supervision of socialist jurist Otto Kirchheimer’s doctoral thesis “On the State Theory of Socialism and Bolshevism”. [6] Schmitt retains intellectual importance for both right- and especially left-wing scholars seeking to contextualise or interpret contemporary political situations. Before any appropriation of his intellectual, and political ideas for scholarly purposes, it is necessary to consider the issue of Schmitt’s perception of Marxist socialism in his works. It therefore remains to be asked: given that numerous scholars of the left have consistently made use of Schmitt’s legal-political works, what were Schmitt’s views on Marxist socialism? How did he personally conceive of Marxist socialism, and to what extent does Schmitt’s political theory align with this conception?[7]
This investigation is thereby justified based on the volume of leftist intellectual literature published both during and after Schmitt’s death, during the Weimar Republic and in the Cold War-era world. It is necessary to investigate Schmitt’s personal conceptualisation of Marxist socialism and the compatibility of its ideological and philosophical outlook alongside his own legal-political theoretical outlook. This essay, therefore, will investigate Carl Schmitt’s conception of Marxist socialism in his written works prior to 1933, and the compatibility of the legal-political theories of Schmitt with said conception. It will be argued that the two worldviews fundamentally differ on numerous substantive aspects, particularly in the Schmittian conception of the element of the political, alongside the conceptions of economics and state theory. However, it will be demonstrated that three points of convergence between Schmittianism and Marxist socialism exist; namely, the shared Hegelian world-historical framework, the condition of absolute enmity proposed in Marxist ideology, the conception of sovereign dictatorship and social order change, and the shared animosity for liberalism of each thinker. This will be demonstrated with regard to Schmitt’s conception of Marxist socialism as provided in his influential Weimar-era [8] works Political Theology, On Dictatorship, The Concept of the Political, and The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy to be analysed with the concepts of sovereignty, dictatorship, democracy, and the friend-enemy distinction. [9]
It is at this juncture that Schmitt must be appropriately contextualised. Though Schmitt’s controversy stems partially from his intellectual theories, the primary issue of appropriating Schmittian arguments are the implications which follow. Firstly, Schmitt’s works functionally defend the system of dictatorship; though Die Diktatur is labelled an intellectual-historical trace of the concept of dictatorship in Western political history, Schmitt was a strong defender of the Reichspräsident’s right to implement a form of dictatorship endorsed within Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, defending this dictatorship as one of the leading constitutional jurists of the late Weimar Republic. [10] In this aforementioned capacity, Schmitt provided the legal theoretical foundations for the rise of Hitler’s regime; he served as legal advisor to Kanzler Franz von Papen in the Preußenschlag of 1932, provided theoretical defences of Hitler’s NSDAP, and blocked DNVP-leader Alfred von Hugenberg’s attempt to slow the NSDAP’s rise to power. [11] The antisemitic remarks of Schmitt taint his record, while his refusal of denazification presented moral quandaries of utilising his works in the postwar period. [12] As historian Matthew Specter notes, ‘It was not for nothing that Schmitt was banned from teaching in Germany from 1945 to his death’; paraphrasing political scientist Kurt Sonthemeier, he remarks, ‘he who aspires to be realistic about politics has no need of Carl Schmitt.’ [13] However, in the words of author Joseph Bendersky, ‘to allow Schmitt’s Nazi collaboration to overshadow all other aspects of his life and work would create a distorted image of an important historical figure’; in contrast to his authoritarian tendencies, some of Schmitt’s legal theories also advocated for defences of the democratic order, some of which were entrenched within the postwar Bonn Constitution. [14] A highly influential historical figure, Schmitt warrants critical engagement.
Helpfully, political philosopher Jorge Dotti has provided a summary of the key points in which Schmitt and Marx converge. Specifically, the identification of Marxist 'consciousness’ as a political element, the principle of proletarian dictatorship as a exception for the Marxist transformation of society, the realist Hegelian conception of history, and their mutual denunciation of the liberal distortion of democratic homogeneity, leading to the concealment of economic and political differences. [15]
1 - Schmitt’s conception of Marxism
Schmitt personally engaged with Marxist ideology, though an in-depth investigation of his perception of Marxist theory remains largely limited, scattered across numerous intellectual works. In Dictatorship, Schmitt acknowledged he had provided only a limited sketch of the concept of proletarian dictatorship in anticipation of further, more in-depth analysis of this concept; however, this was never entirely fulfilled. [16] The clearest articulation of Schmitt’s conception of Marxist socialism can be found within the 1923 work The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, where he states the principle philosophical upholder of the post-1848 concept of a rationalist dictatorship lived on as ‘radical Marxist socialism, whose ultimate metaphysical proof was built on the basis of Hegel’s historical logic.’ [17] Schmitt’s conceptualisation remained chiefly through the lens of Marxism as an offspring of the Hegelian world-historical process, a scientific, rationalist observation of human history as a unique, concrete, antithetical, self-manifesting, organic process developed within the contemporary social and political reality. [18] For Schmitt, Marx was truly revolutionary in completely restructuring the concept of class struggle from its prior forms, and integrating it into a Hegelian-inspired dialectic of communist revolution; existing class definitions (Schmitt provides Ricardo’s capitalist—landowner—wage worker definition as an example) and contradictions were simplified: Marx systematically concentrated class struggle ‘into a single, final struggle of human history, into the dialectical peak of tension between bourgeoisie and proletariat’. [19] The conception followed that the simplified, singular, antithetical, real struggle of the bourgeois-proletariat contradiction necessarily follows a path of absolute intensification: ‘the class that owns everything must face the class that owns nothing; the bourgeois, who only possesses, who only has and who is no longer human, opposes the proletarian, who has nothing and who is nothing but a person.’ [20] Schmitt notes the subsequent classless, stateless society of a post-communist revolutionary world, the premise that capitalism would produce its own negation from itself, would only be evident based upon the dialectical logic of Hegel. [21] Schmitt states the tautological logic of Marxism makes itself apparent from this Hegelian rationalism: the conditions for this absolute contradiction and subsequent revolution begins on the premise that an ever-increasing consciousness of the bourgeois-proletarian contradiction, a form of weltgeist that progressively manifests, through a vanguard of the conscious, informed by the ‘correct knowledge’ of the contemporary and previous epochs of world history, the past as a development into the present. [22] From here, it follows, the proletariat is both the dialectical negation of the bourgeois and negatively defined in such a manner; the consciousness must inform the proletarian that he ‘is nothing but a person’, and that in the transition phase (the communist revolution), he can ‘be nothing but a member of his class’; this, Schmitt reasons, leads to the class contradiction becoming an absolute contradiction, with the teleology stating that this will lead to the overcoming of all forms contradictions. [23] Schmitt understands that Marx’s obsessive investigation of the bourgeois-capitalist structure was compelled by the Hegelian-informed, self-justifying metaphysical compulsion for ‘correct consciousness’ as necessary for the beginning of a new epoch, without which the new era of development cannot occur.[24]
This conception of a proletarian revolution as laid out above is multifaceted. In concrete terms the transition phase of the revolution (a proletarian dictatorship) takes the form of an Enlightenment-informed ‘educational dictatorship’, forcing the ‘unfree to be free.’ [25] This idea corresponds to the theory of the sovereign dictatorship Schmitt had previously laid out in Dictatorship. In Dictatorship, Schmitt outlines the historical development of the concept of dictatorship from its commissarial origins in the Roman legal system to the dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist dialectic. [26] The simplest definition of a sovereign dictatorship is the capacity of the dictator to possess a legislative power: ‘le pouvoir constituant [the constituting power].’ [27] Schmitt defines the constituting power as the capacity of the dictator to institute a new social order or constitution in place of the previous one—an ‘unconditional commission of action in a pouvoir constituant’. [28] To this end, Schmitt identified the ‘theoretical specificity’ of the concept of dictatorship in Marxist theory; in particular, he identified the presupposition of the concept of the sovereign dictatorship inherent within Marxist theory, wherein a sovereign dictatorship would instate an economic transition vis-à-vis the aim of post-revolutionary statelessness. [29] According to Schmitt, the ‘sovereign is he who decides the exception’—an exception to general legal norms—to this end, the proletarian dictatorship constitutes an exceptional circumstance, with a specific aim. [30] The legitimacy of dictatorship, Schmitt argues, is entirely dependent on ‘pursuing a concrete result’; [31] In this sense, the concrete results laid out in the Marxist teleology serves a self-legitimating purpose. As such, Schmitt’s conception of Marxist theory converged with a number of philosophical and legal-political theories created in his own works, including the principle of sovereign dictatorship.
Schmitt further develops his conceptualisation of Marxism in his 1932 work The Concept of the Political. Schmitt conceptualises the ‘sphere’ of the political in a form both unique and antithetical; the political is chiefly a distinction of friend from enemy. This distinction corresponds to (but remains independent of) antitheses in other categories (e.g. economics—profitable/unprofitable, aesthetics—beautiful/ugly, morality—good/evil). [32] The friend-enemy distinction exists in a collective—not private-individualistic —sense: a ‘public enemy’ exists, as opposed to a business competitor or a private opponent, characterised by a real possibility of violence between the two groupings. [33] Where this corresponds to Marxism is Schmitt’s identification of the Marxist theory with this friend-enemy distinction. Schmitt notes that other antitheses can transform into a political antithesis in the event it is ‘sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy’; in the Marxist understanding, the class antithesis of the bourgeois-proletarian distinction assumes a political character upon reaching ‘a decisive point, for example, when… [Marxists] treat the class adversary as a real enemy and fights him’. [34] Consequently, the economic contradiction attains a political character, converging with Schmitt’s conceptualisation of the political. Schmitt further credits Marx with creating the most potent and effective example of a political antithesis: Marx integrated all bourgeois and proletarian parties into a single order, thereby forming an extreme antagonism that concentrated all contradictions of humanity into a singular antithesis; forging a ‘mighty friend-enemy grouping’. [35] The synthesis of all human contradictions into a single, absolute bourgeois-proletarian contradiction—as informed by appropriate class consciousness—corresponds to a different political theory written by Schmitt: the condition of the foundations of a state. Specifically, responding to Rousseau’s Contrat social, Schmitt claims that ‘a true state… only exists where the people are so homogeneous that there is essentially unanimity… there can be no parties in the state, no special interests… nothing that can divide persons, not even a public financial concern.’ [36] In short, in substitution of a social contract, Schmitt advocates for a condition of homogeneity as a prerequisite for a state; the consolidation of all humans into the bourgeois-proletarian friend-enemy distinction, it follows, additionally creates a ‘homogeneity elevated into an identity’ on account of the teleological prerequisite of a general proliferation of class consciousness. [37] The conception provided for this homogeneity was not—as Ellen Kennedy’s foreword states—an advocation for racial homogeneity; instead, it was ‘directed toward the theoretical question of political will’, a general identification of people with the state. [38] Insofar as Schmitt observed the Marxist political state theory, this was limited to the concept of the sovereign dictator; however, his conceptions of the pre-conditional basis of the state vis-à-vis Schmitt’s advocacy for plebiscitary democracy can extend to the revolutionary proletarian grouping—only as a temporary condition, however, as the Marxist teleology leads to the end of statehood. [39]
Therefore, Schmitt’s conception of Marxism converged with his own political theory and philosophy on numerous points. Firstly, the Hegelian conceptualisation of the world-historical development process joins both Schmitt and Marx; Schmitt’s entire conception of Marxism in Crisis remains firmly entrenched in a Hegelian view, while his political conceptualisation heavily relies upon Hegel. [40] Secondly, the transformation of class struggle into a singular and absolute bourgeois-proletarian contradiction connects with the Schmittian conceptualisation of the friend-enemy distinction. Lastly, Schmitt’s state theory on homogeneity could suggest his conceptualisation of Marxism creates a political theory of the state beyond the understanding offered in Dictatorship.
2 - The question of Liberalism
The scathing critiques of liberalism launched by Schmitt serve as a point of convergence between Schmitt’s political theory and his conception of Marxism. Schmitt’s legal-political heavily criticises the intellectual basis of liberalism in various forms. The first critique is that Schmitt denies the existence of any specific political idea that may be derived from liberalism. Liberalism, he charges, is primarily based upon the principle of individualism, the anthropological presupposition humans are, by nature, good; [41] the principle of liberalism is thereby transformed into a polemical antithesis against any institutions within society which may inhibit individual freedoms. [42] It follows that liberalism has only advanced controls on state and government, attempting to restrain the element of the political without creating any theories of the state itself; instead, its core aim is ‘to tie the political to the ethical and subjugate it to economics.’ [43]
Policies of a liberal character or worldview may exist in the spheres of economics, religion, education and beyond; though, Schmitt claims, there is no liberal conception of the political, as evidenced in two principal ways. Firstly, liberal individualism is based on the aforementioned principle of individualism, rooted in a humanitarian-moral argument; in practice, liberalism actively seeks to struggle against the power of the state itself. [44] The negation of the political element is thereby a consequence of the liberal humanitarian-moral and individualistic principles; politics, as characterised by the possibility of real violence and bloodshed, is incompatible with individualism—the individual lacks a collective with which he may be compelled to enter a life-or-death struggle in conditions of extreme intensity. [45] Moreover, liberalism seeks to deny or sideline the issue of the sovereignty of the state; for Schmitt, general legal norms are undefinable without understanding the sovereign authority, the entity capable of declaring exceptions to said norms. [46] In evading sovereignty amid its decentralising and anti-political antagonisms, liberalism fundamentally undermines the concept of the state. [47]
Secondly, Schmitt argues that a consequence of this individualism leads to the creation of demilitarised, depoliticised polarity of two main concepts: ethics (intellectuality) and economics (trade). Political concepts of combat and enmity are consequently transformed into economic competition and intellectual debate, a hazy, non-binary—as opposed to the binary friend-enemy, war-peace—distinction, from which stems only further competition, further discussion and debate. [48] The economic-ethics polarity is intensified to the extreme, wherein human realms became isolated; production, consumption, and markets, for instance, were isolated from and did not correspond to ethics. [49] The humanitarian-moralist foundations, meanwhile, proved a powerful ideological weapon; the monopolisation of the term humanity served to justify wars in name of humanity and its associated concepts, while (on the basis of its economic foundations) providing a useful mechanism for economic imperialism. [50]
The clearest embrace of Marxism by Schmitt is a consequence of this anti-liberalism. Historian Ellen Kennedy notes the simplification of all human history into a single idea of class struggle of a bourgeois-proletarian contradiction, for Schmitt, constituted the most potent ideological critique of liberalism. [51] Certainly, Schmitt appreciated the depth that the Marxist critique of liberalism reached; its power was found in ‘[following] its liberal bourgeois enemy into its own domain, the economic, and challenged it… with its own weapons.’ [52]The salience of this convergence is found within the Marxist conception of violence as a ‘creative proletarian force’; Schmitt’s understanding of a liberal political position founded on economic superiority is that it will necessarily seek to continuously expand, applying and managing its economic means. Under such circumstances, any attempt at defence would necessarily take the form of non-economic methods—thereby characterised as violence and crime—reinforcing the dominance of the liberal economic-ethical political entity. [53]
Schmitt’s criticism of the alliance of democracy and liberalism within the structure of the state further emphasises this idea. Parliamentarism, Schmitt argues, has enabled the consolidation of decision-making power in the hands of committees that increasingly represent party-political and especially extra-parliamentary economic interests: as ‘one followed the bourgeois into economic terrain… one must also follow him into democracy and parliamentarism’. [55] This represents an additional point of convergence between Schmitt and Marx, in that the foundations of the parliamentary order necessarily stem from the economics of liberalism; as such, Schmitt’s identification of Marxism as the most salient intellectual antithesis vis-à-vis the bourgeois-proletarian distinction, based on its economism, demonstrates a convergence in the challenges to the parliamentarism. Jurist Chris Thornhill articulates this most clearly: Schmitt and Marx have a shared understanding that democratic states sanctioning the rule of law necessarily risk the possibility that the economically powerful may exploit parliamentarism to assert greater authority within society. Subsequently, democratic legitimacy and capitalism are constantly in tension; accordingly, ‘the state can easily be transformed into an instrument of economic control.’55
3 - Contradictions between Schmitt and Marx
Despite the numerous convergences between the political theories of Schmitt and Marx, substantial distinctions between Schmittianism and Marxism constitute significant theoretical contradictions between the two. Firstly, Schmitt’s conception of the political contends that it cannot be based upon other categories of antitheses—including economics. [56] While Marxism does embody a political character in its conflict with bourgeois liberalism, it only achieves this following the consolidation of the existing class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat; [57] the ideology of Marxism therefore only temporarily retains a political character in the transitional phase between the bourgeois-liberal order and the post-revolutionary order.
Secondly, Schmitt’s arguments on anti-liberalism on the basis of its neutralisations of the political element can extend to Marxist teleology. On the other side of the transitional phase in Marxist teleology exists a presumption that a post-revolutionary society would necessarily be classless and free of the contradictions inherent to bourgeois liberalism. [58] The consequence of this would be the neutralisation of the political element, and the elimination of the friend-enemy distinction. Schmitt does account for this possibility: ‘If the different… human groupings on earth should be so unified that conflict among them is impossible… then the distinction of friend and enemy would also cease. What remains is neither politics nor state’; [59] the implication would suggest that Schmitt concedes a slim possibility that complete human unity could exist, however, there is no indication to suggest that this is born of a Marxist interpretation of human history that would necessarily lead to the end of conflicts within humanity. For all intents and purposes, the neutralisation of the political remains entirely at odds with the Schmittian conception of politics; regardless of whether this neutralisation and depoliticisation is a consequence of liberal or Marxist theory, neither is adaptable to Schmitt’s political theory.
The third contradiction exists within Schmitt’s conception of the economic-technical worship embraced in the 20th century. A commentary on contemporary intellectual thought, Schmitt’s 1929 lecture ‘The Age of Neutralisation and Depoliticisation’ outlined his perception of the shifting ‘central domains’ of Western intellectualism over the prior four centuries. [60] Motivated by an impulse to neutralise the sharp contradictions of their era, the intellectual elites of each century progressively shifted to new intellectual realms; in the 19th century, a shift occurred from the humanitarian-moral to the economic domain. [61] Schmitt equates the economism of Marxism with the 20th century’s central domain of technology, a concept previously underlined in his conceptualisations of the teleology of Marxism. [62] Schmitt’s caution against an overreliance on technology as a solution or neutralisation of mankind’s many problems is primarily formed on the basis that technology has no particular direction; the deployment of technology—as instruments or weapons—can be for peace or war, risking the politicisation of it for oppression and inhumanity, thereby precluding technicity as a realm of political neutralisation.[63] The caution against technicity as a central domain and its equation with Marxist economism consequently indicates the Schmittian position opposes a key cornerstone of Marxist philosophy. The categorisation of the USSR’s statist implementation of the ‘anti-religion of technicity’ compounds this position. [64]
Therefore, the numerous discrepancies between Schmittian and Marxist political theories indicate the fundamental worldviews of Schmitt and Marx diverge. Specifically, the teleology of Marxism is generally incompatible with Schmittian conceptions of the political, the antithesis of the friend-enemy distinction and its dynamics with other categories of antitheses, alongside the irreducibility of political contradictions within human civilisation generally preclude an alignment of Schmitt and Marx. Moreover, Schmitt’s implied belief that Marxist socialism relies upon a worship of technicity in its philosophical and political outlook suggests an additional point of divergence.
4 - Conclusion
In conclusion, Schmitt’s political theory converges at numerous points with his conceptualisation of Marxist socialism, with strong parallels between key concepts of both Schmitt and Marx represented. Specifically, Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction of politics closely aligns with the Marxist theory of the bourgeois-proletariat conception of class struggle; moreover, Schmitt’s opposition to the philosophical and economic foundations of liberalism is shared by Marx. Additionally, the shared Hegelian-inspired interpretation of historical reality is well pronounced in the two theorists. Lastly, Schmitt’s works afford to the proletarian grouping a precondition of statehood within his works. However, strong distinctions between Schmitt and Marx exist primarily in the context of the Schmittian conception of Marxist theory. The irreducibility of the political element in Schmitt’s theory marks a divergence from Marxist teleology, wherein the post-revolutionary order is characterised by permanent neutralisation of the political. Lastly, the association of Marxism with economism and technicity marks an additional, substantive contradiction with Schmittianism.
It is not for nothing that Schmitt remains philosophically, juridically, and intellectually relevant to this day; Schmitt’s theories on state sovereignty, conceptualisation of politics, and dictatorship retain their significance in intellectual circles. Repeated attempts to adapt Schmittian theory to leftist ideologies have occurred since at least 1928; Frankfurt School theorist Otto Kirchheimer, is a representation of this phenomenon, as his doctoral dissertation (to which Schmitt supervised) relied heavily upon Schmittian conceptualisations of state legitimacy and critique of pluralism. [65] Subsequent members of the Frankfurt school, including Jurgen Habermas, found it difficult to distance their critiques of bourgeois liberalism from their theoretical origins in Schmitt. [66] The works of many contemporary leftist scholars show striking parallels with Schmitt’s works, including Georg Lukács’ claim that false consciousness stemming from the antinomies of liberalism was the foundation of the liberal-capitalist social order, and Gramsci’s acceptance of the irreducibility of the political element, one of the key contradictions of the economism of Marxism and the politicity of Schmittianism. [67]
Schmitt seriously engaged with Marxist, socialist, and leftist intellectuals; his close contacts with noted leftists Otto Kirchhemier and Franz Neumann, publication of the first edition of Concept in the leftist Journal for Social Research in 1928,[68] and engagement with Marxist and socialist theory does not preclude any leftist engagement with Schmittianism on grounds of political contradiction. Moreover, the wane and end of the Cold War reopened Schmitt as a valid thinker to be employed in critiquing international relations, particularly concerning international humanitarian law and the characterisation of adversaries, non-state or otherwise; the humanistic-moral categorisation of a Western-led unipolar world increasingly lent itself to categorisations of adversaries as ‘outlaws of humanity’, to which their annihilation is warranted.[69] In the same vein, Schmittian interpretations were utilised in critiques of domestic politics, particularly with regards to a Western Left ‘drifting unmoored towards the centre’ found Schmitt politically relevant amid the salience of Third Way centrist politics of Blair and Clinton, alongside the wars and diplomatic conduct of a unipolar American-led neoliberal coalition. [70] As such, scholars may find it necessary or even fruitful to engage, appropriate, oppose, or consider Schmitt’s political theory for intellectual or political thought, regardless of any preceding affiliations.
It is for this reason that Matthew Specter’s polemical remark, ‘he who aspires to be realistic about politics has no need of Carl Schmitt’, may be inaccurate. [71] A serious jurist and political theorist with substantial ramifications on Weimar politics, a staunch intellectual critic of the theory and institutions of liberalism, and a scholar with profound influences on interpretations of modern politics and geopolitics cannot simply be disregarded. Though, for his affiliations with the NSDAP and the regime which brought about incalculable destruction and inhumanity, serious engagement with Schmitt must acknowledge and disclose the real consequences of the moral implications in his theoretical works.
[1] A label given to Carl Schmitt by opponent Waldemar Gurien. See: Joseph Bendersky, Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich (Princeton UP, 1983), 224-5
[2] Richard J. Bernstein, “The Aporias of Carl Schmitt,” Constellations 18, no. 3 (September 2011): 403–30, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8675.2011.00651.x., 403
[3] Ibid., 403-4
[4] NB: not used pejoratively; the term ‘leftist’ here denotes scholars of a socialist, marxist, or other left-wing disposition
[5] Matthew G. Specter, “What’s ‘Left’ in Schmitt? From Aversion to Appropriation in Contemporary Political Theory,” in The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt, ed. Jens Meierheinrich and Oliver Simons (Oxford UP, 2014), 426–54, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199916931.013.011., 426
[6] Bendersky, Theorist, 61-2
[7] This investigation will only make use of the conceptualisation of Marxism within Schmitt’s published works to avoid anachronism
[8] Many scholars assert a ‘break’ in Schmitt’s political theory from 1933 when he joined the NSDAP. This ‘break’ is nuanced and remains a source of debate, remaining mostly beyond the scope of this paper. For context, see: William Scheuerman, “States of Emergency,” in The End of Law: Carl Schmitt in the Twenty-First Century (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), 269–86., 279-83. See also: Scheuerman, “The Fascism of Carl Schmitt: A Reply to George Schwab,” German Politics & Society, no. 29 (1993): 104–11, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23735274., 104-7
[9] NB: the edition of Concept of the Political used in this essay includes Schmitt’s 1929 Lecture “The Age of Neutralisations and Depoliticizations”, 80-96
[10] Carl Schmitt, On Dictatorship: From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to Proletarian Class Struggle, eds. Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014)., 180-1, 193-4; hereafter Dictatorship
[11] Bendersky, Theorist, 157-8; Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (2003; repr., New York: Penguin Books, 2005). 853-4
[12] Scheuerman, “Fascism of Schmitt”, 104-6
[13] ‘What’s “Left”?’, 428, 450
[14] Bendersky, Theorist, 282-4
[15] Jorge Dotti, “Schmitt Reads Marx,” Cardozo Law Review 21, no. 6 (2000): 1473–86, https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/cdozo21&collection=journals&id=1487&startid=&endid=1500., 1483-4
[16] Schmitt, Dictatorship, 127n22
[17] Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy (1923; repr., Cambridge, Mass.: MIT UP, 1988)., 52; hereafter Crisis
[18] Schmitt, Crisis, 52-4
[19] Schmitt, Crisis, 59
[20] Ibid., 59-60
[21] Ibid., 60
[22] Ibid., 58; 60-1
[23] Ibid., 61-2
[24] Ibid., 63
[25] Ibid., 52, 57
[26] Schmitt, Dictatorship, xli-xliv
[27] Ibid., 110-111
[28] Ibid., 126-7
[29] Ibid., 179
[30] Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, ed. Tracy B. Strong, trans. George Schwab (1922; repr., Chicago UP, 2005)., 5-6; hereafter Theology
[31] Ibid., xlii
[32] Schmitt, Concept, 26
[33] Ibid., 28-9, 32-3
[34] Ibid., 37
[35] Ibid., 74
[36] Schmitt, Crisis, 13
[37] Ibid., 14
[38] Schmitt, Crisis, xxxii (Kennedy), 62; Specter confuses this distinction; Specter, ‘What’s “Left”?’, 446
[39] Schmitt, Dictatorship, 179
[40] Ibid., 52-64; Schmitt, Concept, 24-5, 59-63
[41] Ibid., 60-1
[42] Ibid., 70
[43] Ibid., 61
[44] Ibid.,
[45] Ibid., 71
[46] Schmitt, Theology, 13-15, 17-18
[47] Ibid., 21-4
[48] Schmitt, Concept, 72
[49] Ibid.
[50] Ibid., 54
[51] Ellen Kennedy, “Hostis Not Inimicus: Toward a Theory of the Public in the Work of Carl Schmitt,” Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 10, no. 1 (January 1997): 35–47, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0841820900000229., 95
[52] Schmitt, Concept, 74
[53] Ibid., 77-9; Schmitt, Crisis, 72-3
[54] Ibid., 20
[55] Chris Thornhill, “Carl Schmitt and Early Western Marxism,” in Critical Theory to Structuralism: Philosophy, Politics, and Human Sciences, ed. David Ingram and Alan D. Schrift (Routledge, 2014), 19–45., 31-2
[56] Schmitt, Concept, 26
[57] Ibid., 37
[58] Schmitt, Crisis,
[59] Schmitt, Concept, 53-4
[60] Ibid., 80-1
[61] Schmitt, Concept, 82
[62] Schmitt, Crisis, 54-5; Schmitt, Concept, 84-5
[63] Ibid., 94-5
[64] Ibid., 81
[65] Bendersky, Theorist, 61; Thornhill, Schmitt and Marxism, 33-4
[66] Ibid., 34
[67] Ibid., 35-6, 39-40
[68] Balakrishnan, 101-2
[69] Schmitt, Concept, 79; David Luban, “Carl Schmitt and the Critique of Lawfare,” Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 621 (2011), https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/621/. 7, 10, 12-3
[70] Specter, ‘What’s “Left”?’, 449-50
[71] Ibid., 450
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