Carl Schmitt and Nazi Government Ideals

[yup22]

Anyone else think Nazi Government theory by Carl Schmitt is actually good? Like, the separation of the sovereign out of all domains except for the political and producing binaries is a good thing?

[Matthew]

Sort of.

Separating the sovereign from apolitical domains doesn't make sense unless you buy that there is a way to make clean analytical distinctions between political and apolitical domains. I don't. I think power operates in all spheres of life, and that everywhere power is exercised it should be democratized as much as possible. This may, in some cases, mean extending the power of the sovereign public, ie, using democratic decision-making to "interfere" in cases where the state may have previously been excluded in order to correct abuses of power. Examples of this include labor regulation and court interference into family life to prevent domestic violence.

As for producing binaries being occasionally good, yes, I agree. A terrific book on the subject (and one you'd find fascinating if you are a liberal democrat interested in Schmitt's theory) is The Democratic Paradox by the Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe.

[entrepy]

Isn't most of Schmitt's theory based around the idea of having an enemy or 'other' to rally the people together against? 'Cause that's not a great idea.

[Matthew]

Again, sort of.

But one of the key insights of both psychoanalysis and postmodern theory is that "selves" - be they individuals or political communities - are always defined in relation to an other. It is inevitable that we define some people or groups as other because it would be impossible to have a conception of self if that self had no boundaries.

Mouffe argues, and I agree with her, that our "others" should be political opponents, but that these should be "agonistic" relationships, that is adversarial, rather than "antagonistic" - like the relationship between enemies in a state of war. The reason she thinks being able to do this is important is because you can't have radical politics if everybody's political ideas are just accepted as equally valid. We need to be able to say that some ways of treating people are wrong or unjust, and that may mean identifying political enemies. You can read her argument here (http://www.ihs.ac.at/publications/pol/pw_72.pdf).

Unfortunately, that paper is not especially clear. She makes the point better in the book I mentioned above.