2. Mafia, Gulag and Agon
“What Makes Men Tick?”
Everyone knows the contrite statement, accompanied by deeply ashamed sighs, about the lack of roots of liberalism in Germany. It is a central formula of the subjugation ritual that has accompanied careers in the Federal Republic since its foundation. At the beginning of the 1980s, an author as unsuited to such rituals as Hans-Dietrich Sander1 unapologetically pointed out that this lack had proved to be a blessing during industrialisation. It had enabled the Germans to cope better with the social and human problems caused by this upheaval than liberalised countries such as England or France. Beyond his ideals, the liberal has difficulty with practice. With the question, “what makes men tick?” he obviously has his difficulties.
The conservative has an easier time of it as long as he is guided by experience. As already mentioned: in all human affairs, this can only be historical experience; it alone leads to useful statements. When making judgements about political matters, it is advisable to move past the ideological recommendations and moral prohibitions to those elementary reflexes in the creation of which human thought has so little part. We seek access to this zone via a phenomenon that must appear almost obscene to those afflicted by the delusion of intelligibility: via the Mafia.
Little Italy
An Italian connoisseur once defined a mafioso as a “criminal with milder circumstances”. Back then, shortly after the Second World War, it was still possible to agree on such a formula. Today it is unsuitable, because in a permissive society there are excuses for every crime (except for being a “fascist”—here evil has survived in a nature reserve).
Before the war, “Mafia” was nothing more to me than a piece of Italian folklore that had become atavistic. The war then shifted the perspectives; the many individually registered pieces of information on the subject began to group themselves into broader outlines. For me, “Mafia” became a keyword for a “general human” form of behaviour that was neither locally nor temporally limited. And, in keeping with my practice with unfamiliar and uncomfortable topics, I provocatively used every opportunity that presented itself to define those outlines more precisely. For example, at the end of the seventies during a small group discussion about crime in New York. I remembered that the owner of a small flat in Manhattan was also in our group. Since he can only spend a third of the year there at most, it was natural to ask whether he wouldn’t find his flat ransacked every time he returned.
“Oh no,” was the answer, “my flat is in Little Italy (that’s the Italian neighbourhood of New York, on lower Broadway, sandwiched between the vagabond paradise of the Bowery and Chinatown). Little Italy and Chinatown are the only two neighbourhoods in Manhattan with such solid social ties (or, for that matter, constraints) that crime is kept within limits, as you are used to in Munich for the time being.” When he objected that he wasn’t Italian, he replied: “Of course you have to play by the rules—then you’re part of it. Whenever I’m there, after a while a dignified old gentleman visits me to collect money for a relief fund in favour of needy old Italians. First we chat about the weather for a while, then I hand him the money in an envelope. It’s quite a hefty sum, by the way; I discussed the amount with friends who know a thing or two about such things.” And as not everyone who was listening seemed to have realised, he added: “I’m convinced that the old people will already benefit from some of the money...”
After the penny had dropped all round, we raised a glass to the New Yorker as the “financier of the Mafia”. And one of us began to sing the praises of this “tax”. It was something much more real than the taxes you have to pay to the state—which no longer exists anyway; there the money seeps into some abstract projects, flows into the pockets of institutions and parties that are theoretically there for the citizen, but in reality are far removed from him: “Here, however, with this Mafia tax, you get something very tangible, concrete—protection for your home; inclusion in a community; a certain amount of leeway, as long as you respect the rules of the game.”
On the cue of the “rules of the game”, a heated debate developed that evening about the advantages and disadvantages of the Mafia. Its main advantage was said to be that it was based on people “as they are”—not on the abstract individual that theologians and philosophers had invented: “A social order that assumes from the outset that people are guided by self-interest works better than one that gives people too much credit for what they can’t achieve after all.” The Mafia apologist calmly accepted the objection that the Mafia was the socio-political equivalent of economic liberalism.
He was obviously somewhat more uncomfortable with the objection that the Mafia, whether in Sicily or the USA, are after all groups with clearly criminal activities, not mere pressure groups: “We have all learnt from Carl Schmitt. What he said about war also applies to crime: you can’t abolish it, but you can nurture it. That’s exactly what the Mafia does. When they murder, it’s not for their own pleasure, but to get their way. They don’t attack women and children...” This is where a contradiction arose: kidnapping. Can the kidnappings in Italy really only be attributed to fanatical political extremists or perverted lone wolves who do not abide by the rules that apply to “normal” crooks? And there is no doubt that, after some initial hesitation, part of the American Mafia has entered the drug trade and, with it, parts of the Mafia in the Italian “motherland”.
Third Reich With Gaps
No agreement was reached in that dialogue. The majority of those involved came from that part of the world that is still purged by Protestantism, where people think more in terms of black and white either/ors than in terms of transitions. However, most of them were probably aware that the Mafia was a form of socialisation that also existed outside the crime zone. In these organisations, people do not subordinate themselves to certain principles or worldviews; they come together according to much more personal criteria. Of course, it is no longer the bonds of an extended family that have an effect here—but there is something family-like about it. You subordinate yourself to a boss, join his clientele—then you get something of what he has to distribute. This doesn’t just mean money and little posts—it can also be less material goods, prestige, influence, room for personal tolerance.
In Switzerland this is called the Vetterli economy, in Munich the Freunder economy! Everyone knows this from Bavarian politics. Here, only those who have “house power” count; only through them can you achieve anything. There is talk of the “Oberammergau mafia”, the “Lower Bavarian mafia”—by which, of course, no gangster groups are meant, but associations in which the ethos is decisive instead of a programme. It’s all about the right tone.
Of course, all of this also exists in the other federal states, but nowhere is it lived out as carefree as in Bavaria. In the north of the Federal Republic, politics is also developing in this direction, but people live it with a very bad conscience. The Alpine states, on the other hand, know how to honour it. Until recently, both major parties in Bavaria behaved in the same way: the SPD distributed the posts in the big cities, the CSU in the countryside. So why did Munich suddenly get a CSU mayor after all? Because a few doctrinaires without any cosiness got the upper hand in the Munich SPD. The people don’t like that sort of thing at all; they went to the polls—and that was the end of the one “people’s party” ... The doctrinaires had to bring back a popular “royal Bavarian” Social Democrat, whom they had already pushed to the fringes of the party, with rage in their bellies, in order to recapture the town hall.
Is it fair to say that politics, with its Mafia-like behaviour, is more human? “Human” is a fuzzy word; what does it say? The best way to describe the Mafia regime is against the background of the uncomfortable “totalitarian” systems. We older people know that even in the Third Reich you could make yourself quite comfortable as a non-party member if you knew how to jump on the right rungs. Back then there were all the “tribal dukes”, from Göring to Ley to Himmler. Hitler had them skirmish against each other so that no one would be completely strong. Everyone endeavoured to the best of their ability to gather the largest possible domestic power around them. Anyone would do, ideology or not.
What did the official pre-historians from the Weimar period do, who fell out of favour with Rosenberg after 1933 because they did not devalue the Roman part of German history radically enough in favour of the Germanic tribes? They placed themselves under the protection of Himmler of all people. He was so flattered by the request of the respected professors that he once forgot his beloved Germanic tribes. And so that the gentlemen did not feel they were in dubious company, he banned the publication of völkisch ideologues such as Herman Wirth or Friedrich Hielscher, who had also taken refuge under his protection. Typical Mafia reflexes from the very tribal duke who was considered the most radical...
Anyone who knows the “other side of the Third Reich” from personal experience or at least from studying sources also knows that such reflexes were relatively common. Almost every expert among the “degenerate painters” (there were also bad ones) had his patron in the party hierarchy who protected him and bought his paintings from behind the scenes. There were flourishing Waldorf schools in the Third Reich, and even a new psychoanalytical institute was founded at the time. Almost every Gauleiter had his “Schutzjuden”, with or without the Iron Cross. And how did Lieutenant Scheringer, the KPD’s advertising trump card at the end of the Weimar period, fare after 1933? Although he had defected from the NSDAP in favour of the KPD, although he never recanted, he was able to run his farm in Lower Bavaria throughout the Third Reich, and when war broke out, he was sent into the field as an artillery captain. Why? Because the SA-Obergruppenführer Ludin was his friend and favourite...
Are these examples supposed to prove a special “humanity” of the Third Reich? They are simply intended to show that even in such a supposedly totalitarian empire there were areas in which decisions were not made according to the doctrine that was the only true truth, but according to personal whim. No matter how much arbitrariness is involved—it gives the non-conformist a chance. Decisions based on an abstract principle are deadly. If some authority decides that everyone with more than two ‘f ‘s in their name or every ram in a special constellation should be liquidated, the computer starts searching. It sorts out the marked, and there is no escape. Compared to this, the Mafia-like thicket with its confusion, chance and sloppiness does have its advantages.
Softening of the Soviet Empire?
Of course, you can say that the Third Reich only lasted twelve years (half of which were war years) and therefore did not have time to become one hundred per cent totalitarian. What about the Soviet empire, which lasted 73 years? Can Mafia soft spots also be discovered in it? At first glance, this seems unlikely. Compared to the Third Reich, the Soviet empire seemed more monolithic. The belief in scripture had reached a level there that would have been unthinkable in the more differentiated German society, even if the regime had lasted longer. Then violence, direct cruelty, had an unbroken tradition there: Russia is already in Asia. But why should the more single-minded and primitive be the more durable? Consistency should not be thought of too simply. The more complicated composition is not automatically the more fragile. Doesn’t the chunky thing tend to crack and split?
In any case, under Khrushchev, there was a shift towards a more cosy atmosphere, at least for the ruling class, which lasted. Despite Brezhnev, it remained a kind of camarilla rule; the rule of a single person, towards whom all lines converge, was not restored until the end. The overthrown greats were no longer sent to prison, hardly ever to exile—some lived on the outskirts of the capital in a pensioner’s dacha. Some people failed to see this in their clouding anti-communism: we were too used to thinking of the Soviet empire only in terms of the two extremes: either it would overrun us or disappear with a bang, through an overthrow or an invasion. Behind this was the universalist thinking of the world state (or wishful thinking), which is only able to imagine developments in the larger, more comprehensive realm. That something could also shrink is probably beyond imagination.
There seem to be only two political options left: the attempt to establish an ideal society (or a pure national community) according to abstract guidelines, with all the deadly coercion that this entails, or then, as a lesser evil, the Mafia society with its coercion tempered by sloppiness and capriciousness. In a nutshell: the alternative between the gulag and the Mafia.
My comments in 1981 earned me the scorn of Russia experts. Since then, reports have appeared about the astonishing proliferation of Mafia-like power structures in the former Soviet Union, with self-sufficient economic areas and armed protection forces. They suggest that such Mafias are the real domestic political problem for Moscow—especially as Mafia-like groups also appear to be the main driving forces behind the turbulence of the “nationalities”. Speaking of nationality conflicts: in the 1981 text, I only mentioned Poland as a centre of unrest—later a dozen or so republics of the former USSR were added—today almost all of them independent.
Today the information floodgates about Russia are open. What is becoming visible is a continuation of what has developed here. From the point of view of Mafia structures, many things that surprised foreigners travelling in Russia become understandable. For example, the countless “restricted areas”, the number of which can hardly be explained in military terms alone. Perhaps one needn’t make a 500-kilometer detour to a city only 60 kilometers away because the central government doesn’t want to reveal the means of power it has accumulated between the point of departure and the destination—presumably, it wants to conceal the fact that it has little or no say there. We now suddenly understand why, by chance, a certain group of people could be found to have an abundance of what would otherwise be in short supply—and not only among the bigwigs, but down to the number of small people assigned to them, which is suspiciously Mafia-like. The mistrust of some ordinary Russians towards perestroika—“let’s stick to the little that no one can take away from us”—therefore has its point.
So the Soviet empire was not the giant machine beast that had so long captured the Western imagination, playing with muscles and metallic sinews, unable to wait for the leap. Rather, it shrank like an apple that had been left too long. And what a turmoil became visible in the wrinkles of this apple! You can see how close the liberal West and Russia had come by the fact that the perestroika fans among the Russians also wanted to catch up on those crazy ideas of the permissive society that only make you yawn in New York or Paris. And there was no colossus of a state in sight that would flatten everything once again—as in Beijing.
A Third Way?
If we only have the choice between the gulag and the Mafia, we will necessarily opt for the second—as the lesser evil. A Mafia-ridden society still offers the individual citizen more loopholes to slip through than a perfectly developed totalitarian system with its denser networks. A Mafia does not subordinate itself to an ideology, but to a boss (or an entire family). It does not want to change the world together with its clientele. The liberal-minded society it finds is just fine with it, because it has enough room to manoeuvre. If the question is posed as to what is “more humane”, then it can only be that form of socialisation which does not divide people into those to be exterminated and those to be tolerated, but only into foxes and fools.
What is grotesque is that the Mafia-like structures have eaten their way into the gulags, which are regarded as the centres of totalitarian rule. Consider, for example, the description of the prisoners’ canteen in Dachau concentration camp given by a prominent concentration camp inmate in one of the earliest concentration camp reports—we are referring to the book Teufel und Verdammte. Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse aus sieben Jahren in deutschen Konzentrationslagern des Sozialdemokraten Benedikt Kautsky.2 (Unfortunately, K. retouched some particularly surprising statements in later editions under pressure from outside). The fact that Mafia-like organisations were tolerated in most German concentration camps speaks even more clearly in favour of the efficiency of Mafia survival techniques in a totalitarian environment, because they largely relieved the camp administration of the difficult task of disciplining the camps internally. (This was no easy task, given the rather heterogeneous composition of the prisoner masses, consisting of politically persecuted, racially persecuted, morally persecuted, sect followers and professional criminals). The communists among the prisoners, to whom the (also revolutionary) National Socialists largely left the internal management of the camps, right down to the allocation of the prisoners to the heavier or lighter work, fulfilled their mission to the best of their ability. They put their ideology on ice until the end of the war, amassed large stocks of coveted goods, food and luxury foods, created a clientele right into the furthest corner of the barracks by casually distributing small benefits and were thus excellently informed about even the smallest events. The role of these “victims of fascism” was a taboo subject for a long time; one can talk about it since the French newspapers were full for weeks of reports by socialist and Christian-socialist inmates about the rule of these communist Kapos3 in Buchenwald and other camps. We remember the account of a French socialist’s plea to one such Kapo, also French, whom he begged not to assign an already very weakened Frenchman without CP membership to particularly heavy labour. The powerful man receives the petitioner in his room at the end of the barracks, in front of a bed covered in spotless white sheets, his fat body pressed into a brand new parka, surrounded by a crowd of young servants. Quite the image of the great godfather interrogating a defector from another family who has been beaten off.
The insight into such underworlds is fascinating and depressing at the same time. One is delighted when the “fundamental” doctrines that explain the world are so radically reduced to absurdity, whether they are of an Enlightenment-liberal, Marxist or Catholicising hue. At the same time, however, people are resisting an alternative—here gulag, here Mafia. Is there really only a choice between fanatical adherence to principles on the one hand and violence curbed by chance, whim and sloppiness on the other? Do only these two paths open up before us: on the left, the road to the standardised city of the future with the lines of flight of the Balkans meeting on the horizon—on the right, the beaten track to an underground wolf’s den, where one is content to have at least spiced up the soup for “the others”? Or is there a third way?
The alternative of Mafia or gulag is not a historical necessity. In history, we come across a multitude of political entities—empires, kingdoms, city states, confederations—that cannot be reduced to one model or the other. And in Germany, which is also Hegel’s country, the search for a third way is an endeavour deeply rooted in the mind and heart. Is there perhaps a third way in which the polarity of gulag and Mafia is cancelled out?
However, the excesses of liberal ethics of conviction have piled up veritable heaps of conceptual rubble in front of this question. They are intended to make it difficult to approach what is different, what does not fit the mould. In addition, in a less conscious area, topoi have become entrenched in all preoccupation with politics, which block rethinking. One of these, for example, is epidemically widespread: that politicians fundamentally and deliberately do the opposite of what they say. If the Postal Minister speaks out against an increase in tariffs, one can be sure that telephone units and letters will cost more in three months at the latest. Or topoi of a more complicated kind, less widespread, but again quite effective in a roundabout way due to their attraction for the more demanding. For example, that the politician who sincerely wants good creates evil because he upsets the unstable balance of reality. Does this mean that we should only trust politicians who promise blood and tears? If you listen carefully, you will recognise the half-truths that make such topoi so effective—topoi with which you become entangled in the alternative of gulag - Mafia.
The third can probably only be aimed at if one finds that special limbo in which one can be—to put it with an apt paradox—seriously unserious.
Concerning the Agonal
Coming from the school of Nietzsche-Spengler-Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger, the word “agonal” (derived from the Greek word ἀγών—competition) was a matter of course for me from an early age. In my home town of Basel, the word was not offensive. Although the Basel patriciate, which also dominated the city intellectually, was a stronghold of reformed Protestantism, the humanist grammar school, where Jacob Burckhardt and Nietzsche also taught, was one of its centres.
I was all the more perplexed when, as a student, my use of the term provoked an outburst of aggressive ridicule from Carl Schmitt, whom I admired. This Roman, who held Hellas in high esteem, could only imagine the agonal as an endlessly repetitive and therefore pointless hammering of swords on shields. He was too clever to settle into a comfortable alternative of general principles and narrow pragmatism; with his late “concrete order thinking”, he advanced very far along the third path. In his feelings, however, which were as strong as his intelligence (sometimes even stronger), the starting position remained the same: the universal justice of the Roman Empire and the universal knowledge of the Catholic Church stood in a common front against the confusion of the hucksters. No wonder he was also suspicious of the word “tragic”: it could only come from a world without grace (and thus without history, in Schmitt’s sense).
Carl Schmitt (letter to R R Pattloch dated 13 September 1961) pushed Nietzsche away from himself as an “impressionist” (a dirty word for Schmitt!). The agon/competition plays a key role in Friedrich Nietzsche’s work. Even in his early fragment Homer’s Contest, which he gave to Cosima Wagner for Christmas in 1872, he says that the community would degenerate without “competitive ambition”. However, he immediately makes it clear that he does not mean the competition of abstractions: “no ambition in the unmeasured and unmeasurable, as is usually the case with modern ambition”. The dead general is to be avoided: “Modern man, on the other hand, is everywhere crossed by infinity, like the swift-footed Achilles in the parable of the Eleatic Zeno: infinity hinders him, he does not even catch up with the tortoise.” The chaotic world of “a horrific savagery of hatred and lust for destruction” must be contained by a rule.
In all his statements on the agonal, Nietzsche emphasises the nurturing character of competition. Thus in the fragment of 1872: “Competition unleashes the individual, and at the same time tames him according to eternal laws.” In the late fragments towards the end of his life, we read: “The free and temperate invented competition as the ever-growing refinement of that need for the expression of power ...” Or, in another passage: “The Greek legislators promoted the agon in order to divert the idea of competition from the state ...” And in another late fragment: “The ‘useless’ waste of energy (in the agon of every kind) as the ideal towards which the state strives ...” When Nietzsche himself puts the word “useless” in inverted commas, he is saying that he does not mean a purpose-bound waste of energy demanded by some abstract considerations, but rather a waste for its own sake. It is also striking that for the agonistically behaving person there is no enemy (inimicus) but an opponent (adversarius) who can be closer to him than the lukewarm one in his own camp.
The Rite
However, there is one thing to bear in mind: The agon is not the same as the game (ludus). The competition can be very serious, it can lead to my own or the other person’s downfall. (This side of the agon is less emphasised by Nietzsche than by Ernst Jünger—the difference between a professor and a trench warrior of the First World War). However, the agon is very close to something else: the rite. Ever since man has existed, he has always had a means of reconciling himself with his own inadequacy and frailty: in rituals of various kinds. In the rituals that are deeply engraved in our memory, however, we always come across the same basic pattern: the enigmatic intertwining of destruction and birth, which we are confronted with and which we are unable to change, is depicted in an exaggerated style that transcends and at the same time includes the individual—from birth ceremonies to initiations of all kinds and funerals. If the Third Reich, for all its shadows, has left a positive echo in so many people, it is because it sought to satisfy this deep human need. This Reich not only had its gulag side, but also this side. Today we call this “fulfilment of meaning” or something similar. One should not overlook the fact that today’s subculture, after first trying to abolish all rites, starting with the robes, is now trying to dig up rites again from everywhere, from folklore and history. The “festival” has suddenly become a popular subject of research again. However, this is still largely just a game for those left behind by the Cultural Revolution. These people will still have to learn that what our ancestors fought for in times of need cannot be taken over for free.
The peculiar thing about the rites is that those which present the human condition to us most relentlessly also seize us most intensely. They instil more vitality in us than the utopians, and more than those negative utopians who only perceive the disgusting. This experience is astonishing; it cannot be explained rationally. And it shows us a way beyond the paralysing alternative of gulag and Mafia. We have to find our way back to an agonal view of our existence. A view that allows us to see both: birth, which makes life worth living, and death, which saves us from hubris—and incidentally also from the “taedium”, the life-constricting weariness.
[An author of the German Neue Rechte (New Right) who died in 2017. Ed.]
Devils and the Damned. Experiences and insights from seven years in German concentration camps by the social democrat Benedikt Kautsky.
[The German term for a prisoner functionary in the concentration camps, charged with administrative or supervisory tasks. Ed.]