Politics: Grand Politics
An activity (the political) or a function (politics) whose object is the longevity and defence, in every domain, of a City (whose Greek etymological root is polis) — that is, of a human group constituting a community of origin and destiny — whose chief function is accordingly the exercise of sovereignty.
In contemporary political philosophy, sullied with economism, the essence of the political is ‘the management of the nation’, conceived as some sort of business. This transforms the political class into a caste of careerists, similar to the apparatchiks of the former Communist regimes. A people’s destiny totally eludes the politician’s political vision, as does every other historical dimension of political activity.
The political doesn’t exist in day-to-day management or in the American pursuit of happiness. It’s also not simply the designation of the enemy, as Carl Schmitt taught, however just and instructive this designation may be. The essence of the political is above all — fundamentally — the designation of the friend — i.e., the comrade, the one belonging to the same community and sharing the same values. In this sense, it is primarily the delineation of a field of belonging. Who is on our side? Who is who? Such is the central political question.
The essence of the political is aesthetic, poetic, and historical. According to the Greek verb poeisis — to create, to make. In effect, the ultimate vocation of the political is to create — to make — a people in history. It follows that the essence of the political is not solely about economics, justice, social equilibrium, civil peace, and international security, but also architecture, ecology, the fine arts, culture, demography, biopolitics, etc.
The political is the domain of will and sovereignty. It’s not surprising that our age does everything to destroy the political for the sake of economics or individual interest. Contemporary politicians have been depoliticised and Europe suffers from this abdication of the political, i.e., from the non-existence of the sovereign function. These politicians are the subject of jokes and the false flatteries of money and the media, but their calculations are inevitably short-term and they lack a historical project; similarly, they have no real power, which resides entirely in the hands of the financial forces.
The state itself has ceased to possess either a monopoly of power or a political will. It has ceased being a political authority in order to be a techno-bureaucratic authority. In either Brussels or Paris, it’s nothing but an administration, a corporation with short-term schedules. Functionaries or politicians — the two often being confused — act like salaried employees or corporate executives, but not like the people’s servants. Without exception, European politicians are situated somewhere between the stars of show-business and the upper echelons of corporate management. Vanity and money, but no real power. For real political power presupposes both a disinterested understanding of its exercise and a visionary spirit.
Finally, we arrive at the notion of Grand Politics, a term fashioned by Nietzsche. It expresses the essence of the political: to inscribe and maintain a people in history, as the autonomous creator and actor of its own destiny, preserving its identity and, if possible, spurring its ascension. Grand Politics is inscribed thus in history’s longue durée, which is the opposite of the politicians’ ‘petty politics’ — which is basically presentist and non-historical. Grand Politics situates itself at that crossroad between the individual’s welfare and the people’s longevity, between pacification and power, between loyalty to tradition and ambitious innovation.
Grand Politics must henceforth take account of the following essential factors and objectives (the list is not exhaustive), which are totally ignored by French and European politicians today:
1. To confront the revival of Islam’s ancestral struggle against European peoples.
2. To check the Continent’s demographic decline and to reverse its colonisation by the Third World.
3. To ensure the economic protection of European territories.
4. To liberate Europeans from their subjugation to the Americans — to win their independence; to construct a real continental union of power with Russia and to have as their principal allies China and India.
5. To find an alternative to the present short-term, catastrophic direction of the global economy, especially in respect to ecology.
We are far from any of this. But the dramatic sanctions that will soon spring from our lack of foresight could well put things back in their rightful place.
The political never supercedes the spiritual. But the spiritual is nothing without the political. The notion of the political supposes ideas of sovereignty and a transcendent sense of history.
(see history; sovereignty)
