Desert Fox
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With the whole talk of IMF loans and the danger of foreign influence on a nations economy to the point that it becomes beholden to the whims of external powers even at it's own detriment, I thought this would be a great opportunity to reflect on an essay by Julius Evola on the spiritual concept of Autarchy (also spelled Autarky) in two of his books on Fascism and the application of this concept to economics (and foreign policy) that Mussolini as well as Hitler implemented, or at least made serious initiatives towards this eventual goal and did achieve results where circumstances allowed.
The two books by Evola I'm referring to here are compilations of his analyses and critique of Italian Fascism called Fascism Viewed From The Right and A Traditionalist Confronts Fascism. These are perhaps the only valid critiques of Fascism to-date since they are devoid of the cliche victors propaganda common to most books on the subject. Both books can be purchased from Arktos Publishing but are also available in free pdf format on the net.
For this post i will be quoting excerpts from one of these essays titled 'The Spiritual Value of Autarchy'.
"‘Fascism’, as Mussolini said, ‘still believes in sanctity and heroism, that is to say in acts in which no economic motive, immediate or remote, operates’. He refuses to admit that economic activities by themselves, to the exclusion of all other factors, suffice to explain all of history."- [A Traditionalist Confronts Fascism]
Autarchy is the concept of 'individual sovereignty'. To be self-reliant in ones basic necessities; to be content with & make the most of what one already has; to not over-extend oneself; to live within one's means. Basically self-control and discipline, both of which necessitate the prerequisite of having a greater long-term (spiritual) ideal to strive for in order to subordinate one's immediate desires for excessiveness and indulgence, are key ingredients, along with persistence, towards achieving autarchy. This concept exists in all major eastern philosophies and spiritual worldviews like Taoism, Zen, Buddhism and Hinduism as well as in western philosophy like Stoicism, though Stoicism places more emphasis on this concept and is usually accredited with this. But traces of similar concepts can also be found in the Abrahamic Faith's (Islam and Christianity in particular) in a less direct and more implicit way.
"By not adoring the worthy, people will not fall into dispute.
By not valuing the hard to get objects, people will not become robbers.
By not seeing the desires of lust, one’s heart will not be confused.
Therefore the governing of the saint is to empty one’s mind, substantiate one’s virtue, weaken
one’s worldly ambition and strengthen one’s essence.
He lets the people to be innocent of worldly knowledge and desire, and keeps the clever ones from making trouble with their wits.
Acts naturally without desire, then everything will be accomplished in its natural order"- [Tao Te Ching]
As an important side note, Autarchy does not mean 100% self-reliance as we will always remain dependent on our surroundings (material & immaterial) to some extant or another.
Even plants, who produce their own food from sunlight, depend on the sun for sustenance.
This is true on the individual level as well as on a national level.
Evola notes this, "While on the one hand we cannot avoid rejecting the principles of the Idealist revival, on the other we often find ourselves compelled to deal with very precise practical necessities, and bearing them in mind is an equally sacred commitment for anyone who does not want to cut his own nation off from reality and lead it on short notice to ruin."- [A Traditionalist Confronts Fascism]
Having said that, ultimately one cannot use this as an excuse to dwell in the state of affairs where they are at the mercy of external factors due to a lack of self-sovereignty.
"Sometimes people are compelled to shut up for the moment, or to delay the idea in the name of the needs of economic, financial, and commercial forces that are demanded by the most essential interests of the nation. Idea and reality do not always run in parallel lines in contemporary politics. This is a matter of indifference where the idea is a pure simulacrum, a mere myth, subordinate to Mammon, but it is very serious where we are dealing with a real idea."- [Ibid]
The goal of Autarchy is to limit (& not expand) this dependence on external sources to as minimum as possible, so that when the going gets tough one's honor and dignity won't be up for sale, or that one would not feel inadequate without the external factors and one's physical, mental and thus spiritual health won't be in jeopardy. 'Letting go' would be easy and contentment with little will be fulfilling, until better alternative(s) to the previous source(s) can be found.
Except for a few rare cases, majority of people only make certain decisions when circumstances compell them. This is especially true in an age where everything has been desacrilized and any spiritual meaning that remains has been relegated to a handful of "religious" holidays a year.
It is because the great majority of people easily submit to their base materialistic urges. This has always been the case to a relatively small extant and isn't exactly something to be alarmed about. However the level of this degeneration has certainly increased over the generations to previously unknown proportions (ask your grandparents, if they're still alive).
For example, If someone values taking out a massive loan on interest to purchase a Lamborghini more than he cares about providing for the basic needs of his family at the cost of his own excessive indulgences, such a person is no different from a gambler who squanders his earnings to feed his addiction at the expense of his family, or even a drug addict. In any normal society people would naturally look down on such persons. But within the current materialistic globalized world order it is considered normal for this kind of behavior to be prevalent within society.
Today living beyond ones means is not only normal but even encouraged. This is why consumer products are aggresively pushed through advertisements and carefully planned marketing techniques upon millions of people to feed on their debased materialistic desires. The use of celebrities like actors, singers, dancers is particularly noteworthy in this case as these are presented as role models for impressionable minds of still developing youth.
But sometimes reality hits you hard in the face and forces you to take a U-turn. The person goes broke (out of money, which is best case scenario if it's only a material loss). If they're smart they will alter their lifestyle, start rationing, budgeting, and cutting down on useless expenses and learn their lesson. The hardship they undergo changes them for the better by putting them outside their comfort zone. But even in this case, the necessary action being taken is being done out of contingency reacting to a particular circumstance and not in pursuit of a sacred purpose.
As Evola points out, "In today’s world it often happens that the force of circumstances and of those ‘positive causes’ which in many circles are valued so highly, seem to determine situations that appear to derive all their meaning from them, but that to a sharper eye are revealed to be susceptible to incarnating a higher value as well, and in so doing elevate themselves above the order of pure contingency."- [A Traditionalist Confronts Fascism]
"There are many cases in which destiny offers us something, without our noticing it and being able to take advantage of it. And in many other cases, in both individual and collective life, the force of things acts like a horse tamer, who, although he has real love for the horse, is compelled to whip it repeatedly, because the horse cannot understand him. The horse is diligently accomplishing all the elements of the exercise, but is always stopping at the last hurdle, which he could easily have jumped over with a small effort if he had understood."-[Ibid]
"In an age in which the eye is hypnotically fastened to the material level, the level of ‘positive reality’, painful cases of this type occur with great frequency. People receive ‘blows’ from every direction, without succeeding in understanding and coming to the right orientation. The ‘lessons of experience’ serve to accumulate facts laboriously and organise them in different ways for our practical goals, but they do not serve to help us realise their meaning; they do not serve, that is, to wake us up and, once we are awake, to guide us to the right reaction."- [Ibid]
Similarly, the same applies on a national level. Majority of cases where certain nations were compelled to take measures that can be classified as 'autarchic' did so under the compulsion of circumstances when the political factor imposed itself into the economic affairs. Examples like embargoes, sanctions, etc.
"Anyone who examines the developments of recent years can come to believe that autarchy is more than a principle; it is the necessary consequence of a definite general political and economic situation. For many people, this presently constitutes an authentic scandal and the height of irrationality, since rationality for them has been recognised in the ‘division of labour’ and trade with a sufficient margin of liberty and equality of tariffs. It is absurd, they say, to establish a system on principle according to which some people are compelled to excogitate every resource and to tighten their belts to live ‘autarchically’, and other people are instead amazed by their own wealth. From this we see a ‘creature of necessity’ in autarchy, determined by the violent and irrational intervention of politics in the economy."- [Ibid]
But yet, despite the contingency factor due to circumstances which compelled these autarchic measures in the first place, the opportunity presents itself for a spiritual awakening by recognizing the silver lining around what appears to be a 'dark cloud'. Thus making it a 'blessing in disguise' or a 'glass half full'.
"People today who refuse to be caught in the gears of such machinery, and who have chosen autarchy for a principle, are people who have awakened to something spiritual, people who have shown that they possess sensibility for values that are not reducible to those of the stomach and those annexed to it: this is already the principle of a liberation. If they have been brought here by necessity (and by necessity we ought to include everything that refers to a realistic politics alone), we ought to acknowledge that necessity, in this case, has had exactly this providential function, to which we referred at the beginning, and that a single step suffices, with the right reaction, to raise oneself to an effectively spiritual consciousness."- [Ibid]
"Etymologically, autarchy means a person ‘has his own first principle in himself’. The only free man — the ancients used to say — is one who has his own first principle in himself"- [Ibid]
"Economic autarchy guarantees us a margin of liberty concerning the politics of currency; it allows us to regulate and defend our money. Secondly, economic autarchy is a necessary premise for modern war. Without economic independence, the conduct of a modern war is seriously prejudiced; it is reduced to something like a game of chance that either succeeds on the spot (that is, on short notice) or leads to ruin, since the technical and military machinery of a modern war cannot be nourished on its own"- [Ibid]
"Autarchy has the value of a principle, in the highest sense of the term, because it is the conditio sine qua non for a liberty of alliances and hostilities on a basis that is not materialist (pragmatic) but ethical. In fact it is evident that the greater the degree to which a nation will succeed in establishing itself as economically autarchic, the greater will be its capacity to follow an idea, if not finally an ideal, in its complete foreign politics; in other words, the greater will be its capacity to choose friends and enemies independently of crude opportunity and brute necessity."- [Ibid]
"Autarchic nations would be the only ones in a condition to form alliances justified by true principles, by ideal and spiritual affinities, instead of a pure and changeable juncture of interests. The one thing, certainly, does not exclude the other, and the ideal condition undoubtedly exists when it results from the conjunction of the two levels (material and spiritual). The case of an imperfect conjunction is exemplified by the dark epoch of materialism and economism, from which we are only now escaping, and which was characterised by a cynical, cold, and ready subordination of the idea to self-interest."- [Ibid)
"The new epoch, if it does not betray itself, and if it should really deserve to be called new, will be characterised by the opposite principle, that is, by an active decision of nations and by a decision from above, on the basis of these possibilities of independence and mobility, which proceed from the highest level of autarchy sensibly realisable in each of them."- [Ibid]
These excerpts are from the essay 'The Spiritual Meaning of Autarchy', published in March of 1931, thus explaining Evola's hopeful tone in his expectations of Fascism successfully entrenching itself as a counterweight against the Liberal materialist order dominant in the West even then.
Is Autarchy viable in the age of globalization?
To answer this question we must ask ourselves 'what is the greatest motivation for achievement?' Is it greed for material wealth or is it love for something far more superior to any worldly material possession?
If material wealth were the greatest motivating factor then mercenaries would be considered the most reliable type of soldiers and all armies would be disbanded in favor of them. That is clearly not the case.
Because a man can only quench his thirst for material greed as long as he lives, he will never risk his life for the attainment of material alone. It is almost as if we are hardwired to understand the reality that none of this will go with us to the next world (and we all believe in an afterlife, even if some openly deny it).
We are willing to give our lives for immaterial concepts, like for the sake of loyalty to familial relations, for God, for nation and country.
In fact, all beautiful & appealing forms of human expression were created out of love for something far superior to any material possession, and not greed for material. Whether we are talking about the various forms of art, or exploration, acts of heroism, etc.
But despite this the current globalized world is one of materialism because materialism is the driving force of globalization. It is the expression of the worldview of the third caste (bourgeoisie/merchantile) in the hierarchy of castes, which characterizes Liberalism and which today is in the dominant position on a global scale with no region of the world spared from its influence.
In order for national autarchy to establish itself within any particular nation a reorientation of priorities must take place on a national scale; on a social, political and thus eventually on the economic level. The question must be presented; 'is accumulating material wealth beyond one's basic necessities the purpose of existence?'.
Just as individuals must be true to their nature, so too must nations be true to their unique nature and destinies. But today every nation is pursuing the globalist model of becoming interconnected within the global financial and economic web to the point that material gain & comfort far supersedes any principled stance for a higher purpose.
@Nilgiri @Psychic @Taimur Khurram @KhalaiMakhlooq @OsmanAli98
The two books by Evola I'm referring to here are compilations of his analyses and critique of Italian Fascism called Fascism Viewed From The Right and A Traditionalist Confronts Fascism. These are perhaps the only valid critiques of Fascism to-date since they are devoid of the cliche victors propaganda common to most books on the subject. Both books can be purchased from Arktos Publishing but are also available in free pdf format on the net.
For this post i will be quoting excerpts from one of these essays titled 'The Spiritual Value of Autarchy'.
"‘Fascism’, as Mussolini said, ‘still believes in sanctity and heroism, that is to say in acts in which no economic motive, immediate or remote, operates’. He refuses to admit that economic activities by themselves, to the exclusion of all other factors, suffice to explain all of history."- [A Traditionalist Confronts Fascism]
What Is Autarchy?
Autarchy is the concept of 'individual sovereignty'. To be self-reliant in ones basic necessities; to be content with & make the most of what one already has; to not over-extend oneself; to live within one's means. Basically self-control and discipline, both of which necessitate the prerequisite of having a greater long-term (spiritual) ideal to strive for in order to subordinate one's immediate desires for excessiveness and indulgence, are key ingredients, along with persistence, towards achieving autarchy. This concept exists in all major eastern philosophies and spiritual worldviews like Taoism, Zen, Buddhism and Hinduism as well as in western philosophy like Stoicism, though Stoicism places more emphasis on this concept and is usually accredited with this. But traces of similar concepts can also be found in the Abrahamic Faith's (Islam and Christianity in particular) in a less direct and more implicit way.
"By not adoring the worthy, people will not fall into dispute.
By not valuing the hard to get objects, people will not become robbers.
By not seeing the desires of lust, one’s heart will not be confused.
Therefore the governing of the saint is to empty one’s mind, substantiate one’s virtue, weaken
one’s worldly ambition and strengthen one’s essence.
He lets the people to be innocent of worldly knowledge and desire, and keeps the clever ones from making trouble with their wits.
Acts naturally without desire, then everything will be accomplished in its natural order"- [Tao Te Ching]
As an important side note, Autarchy does not mean 100% self-reliance as we will always remain dependent on our surroundings (material & immaterial) to some extant or another.
Even plants, who produce their own food from sunlight, depend on the sun for sustenance.
This is true on the individual level as well as on a national level.
Evola notes this, "While on the one hand we cannot avoid rejecting the principles of the Idealist revival, on the other we often find ourselves compelled to deal with very precise practical necessities, and bearing them in mind is an equally sacred commitment for anyone who does not want to cut his own nation off from reality and lead it on short notice to ruin."- [A Traditionalist Confronts Fascism]
Having said that, ultimately one cannot use this as an excuse to dwell in the state of affairs where they are at the mercy of external factors due to a lack of self-sovereignty.
"Sometimes people are compelled to shut up for the moment, or to delay the idea in the name of the needs of economic, financial, and commercial forces that are demanded by the most essential interests of the nation. Idea and reality do not always run in parallel lines in contemporary politics. This is a matter of indifference where the idea is a pure simulacrum, a mere myth, subordinate to Mammon, but it is very serious where we are dealing with a real idea."- [Ibid]
The goal of Autarchy is to limit (& not expand) this dependence on external sources to as minimum as possible, so that when the going gets tough one's honor and dignity won't be up for sale, or that one would not feel inadequate without the external factors and one's physical, mental and thus spiritual health won't be in jeopardy. 'Letting go' would be easy and contentment with little will be fulfilling, until better alternative(s) to the previous source(s) can be found.
Humans: Creatures of Necessity
Except for a few rare cases, majority of people only make certain decisions when circumstances compell them. This is especially true in an age where everything has been desacrilized and any spiritual meaning that remains has been relegated to a handful of "religious" holidays a year.
It is because the great majority of people easily submit to their base materialistic urges. This has always been the case to a relatively small extant and isn't exactly something to be alarmed about. However the level of this degeneration has certainly increased over the generations to previously unknown proportions (ask your grandparents, if they're still alive).
For example, If someone values taking out a massive loan on interest to purchase a Lamborghini more than he cares about providing for the basic needs of his family at the cost of his own excessive indulgences, such a person is no different from a gambler who squanders his earnings to feed his addiction at the expense of his family, or even a drug addict. In any normal society people would naturally look down on such persons. But within the current materialistic globalized world order it is considered normal for this kind of behavior to be prevalent within society.
Today living beyond ones means is not only normal but even encouraged. This is why consumer products are aggresively pushed through advertisements and carefully planned marketing techniques upon millions of people to feed on their debased materialistic desires. The use of celebrities like actors, singers, dancers is particularly noteworthy in this case as these are presented as role models for impressionable minds of still developing youth.
But sometimes reality hits you hard in the face and forces you to take a U-turn. The person goes broke (out of money, which is best case scenario if it's only a material loss). If they're smart they will alter their lifestyle, start rationing, budgeting, and cutting down on useless expenses and learn their lesson. The hardship they undergo changes them for the better by putting them outside their comfort zone. But even in this case, the necessary action being taken is being done out of contingency reacting to a particular circumstance and not in pursuit of a sacred purpose.
As Evola points out, "In today’s world it often happens that the force of circumstances and of those ‘positive causes’ which in many circles are valued so highly, seem to determine situations that appear to derive all their meaning from them, but that to a sharper eye are revealed to be susceptible to incarnating a higher value as well, and in so doing elevate themselves above the order of pure contingency."- [A Traditionalist Confronts Fascism]
"There are many cases in which destiny offers us something, without our noticing it and being able to take advantage of it. And in many other cases, in both individual and collective life, the force of things acts like a horse tamer, who, although he has real love for the horse, is compelled to whip it repeatedly, because the horse cannot understand him. The horse is diligently accomplishing all the elements of the exercise, but is always stopping at the last hurdle, which he could easily have jumped over with a small effort if he had understood."-[Ibid]
"In an age in which the eye is hypnotically fastened to the material level, the level of ‘positive reality’, painful cases of this type occur with great frequency. People receive ‘blows’ from every direction, without succeeding in understanding and coming to the right orientation. The ‘lessons of experience’ serve to accumulate facts laboriously and organise them in different ways for our practical goals, but they do not serve to help us realise their meaning; they do not serve, that is, to wake us up and, once we are awake, to guide us to the right reaction."- [Ibid]
Similarly, the same applies on a national level. Majority of cases where certain nations were compelled to take measures that can be classified as 'autarchic' did so under the compulsion of circumstances when the political factor imposed itself into the economic affairs. Examples like embargoes, sanctions, etc.
"Anyone who examines the developments of recent years can come to believe that autarchy is more than a principle; it is the necessary consequence of a definite general political and economic situation. For many people, this presently constitutes an authentic scandal and the height of irrationality, since rationality for them has been recognised in the ‘division of labour’ and trade with a sufficient margin of liberty and equality of tariffs. It is absurd, they say, to establish a system on principle according to which some people are compelled to excogitate every resource and to tighten their belts to live ‘autarchically’, and other people are instead amazed by their own wealth. From this we see a ‘creature of necessity’ in autarchy, determined by the violent and irrational intervention of politics in the economy."- [Ibid]
But yet, despite the contingency factor due to circumstances which compelled these autarchic measures in the first place, the opportunity presents itself for a spiritual awakening by recognizing the silver lining around what appears to be a 'dark cloud'. Thus making it a 'blessing in disguise' or a 'glass half full'.
"People today who refuse to be caught in the gears of such machinery, and who have chosen autarchy for a principle, are people who have awakened to something spiritual, people who have shown that they possess sensibility for values that are not reducible to those of the stomach and those annexed to it: this is already the principle of a liberation. If they have been brought here by necessity (and by necessity we ought to include everything that refers to a realistic politics alone), we ought to acknowledge that necessity, in this case, has had exactly this providential function, to which we referred at the beginning, and that a single step suffices, with the right reaction, to raise oneself to an effectively spiritual consciousness."- [Ibid]
"Etymologically, autarchy means a person ‘has his own first principle in himself’. The only free man — the ancients used to say — is one who has his own first principle in himself"- [Ibid]
"Economic autarchy guarantees us a margin of liberty concerning the politics of currency; it allows us to regulate and defend our money. Secondly, economic autarchy is a necessary premise for modern war. Without economic independence, the conduct of a modern war is seriously prejudiced; it is reduced to something like a game of chance that either succeeds on the spot (that is, on short notice) or leads to ruin, since the technical and military machinery of a modern war cannot be nourished on its own"- [Ibid]
"Autarchy has the value of a principle, in the highest sense of the term, because it is the conditio sine qua non for a liberty of alliances and hostilities on a basis that is not materialist (pragmatic) but ethical. In fact it is evident that the greater the degree to which a nation will succeed in establishing itself as economically autarchic, the greater will be its capacity to follow an idea, if not finally an ideal, in its complete foreign politics; in other words, the greater will be its capacity to choose friends and enemies independently of crude opportunity and brute necessity."- [Ibid]
"Autarchic nations would be the only ones in a condition to form alliances justified by true principles, by ideal and spiritual affinities, instead of a pure and changeable juncture of interests. The one thing, certainly, does not exclude the other, and the ideal condition undoubtedly exists when it results from the conjunction of the two levels (material and spiritual). The case of an imperfect conjunction is exemplified by the dark epoch of materialism and economism, from which we are only now escaping, and which was characterised by a cynical, cold, and ready subordination of the idea to self-interest."- [Ibid)
"The new epoch, if it does not betray itself, and if it should really deserve to be called new, will be characterised by the opposite principle, that is, by an active decision of nations and by a decision from above, on the basis of these possibilities of independence and mobility, which proceed from the highest level of autarchy sensibly realisable in each of them."- [Ibid]
These excerpts are from the essay 'The Spiritual Meaning of Autarchy', published in March of 1931, thus explaining Evola's hopeful tone in his expectations of Fascism successfully entrenching itself as a counterweight against the Liberal materialist order dominant in the West even then.
Autarchy In The Age of Globalization
Is Autarchy viable in the age of globalization?
To answer this question we must ask ourselves 'what is the greatest motivation for achievement?' Is it greed for material wealth or is it love for something far more superior to any worldly material possession?
If material wealth were the greatest motivating factor then mercenaries would be considered the most reliable type of soldiers and all armies would be disbanded in favor of them. That is clearly not the case.
Because a man can only quench his thirst for material greed as long as he lives, he will never risk his life for the attainment of material alone. It is almost as if we are hardwired to understand the reality that none of this will go with us to the next world (and we all believe in an afterlife, even if some openly deny it).
We are willing to give our lives for immaterial concepts, like for the sake of loyalty to familial relations, for God, for nation and country.
In fact, all beautiful & appealing forms of human expression were created out of love for something far superior to any material possession, and not greed for material. Whether we are talking about the various forms of art, or exploration, acts of heroism, etc.
But despite this the current globalized world is one of materialism because materialism is the driving force of globalization. It is the expression of the worldview of the third caste (bourgeoisie/merchantile) in the hierarchy of castes, which characterizes Liberalism and which today is in the dominant position on a global scale with no region of the world spared from its influence.
In order for national autarchy to establish itself within any particular nation a reorientation of priorities must take place on a national scale; on a social, political and thus eventually on the economic level. The question must be presented; 'is accumulating material wealth beyond one's basic necessities the purpose of existence?'.
Just as individuals must be true to their nature, so too must nations be true to their unique nature and destinies. But today every nation is pursuing the globalist model of becoming interconnected within the global financial and economic web to the point that material gain & comfort far supersedes any principled stance for a higher purpose.
@Nilgiri @Psychic @Taimur Khurram @KhalaiMakhlooq @OsmanAli98
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