Dictatorship 1st edition by Schmitt, Carl (2014) Paperback

by Carl Schmitt

Now available in English for the first time, "Dictatorship" is Carl Schmitt's most scholarly book and arguably a paradigm for his entire work. Written shortly after the Russian Revolution and the First World War, Schmitt analyses the problem of the state of emergency and the power of the Reichsprasident in declaring it. Dictatorship, Schmitt argues, is a necessary legal institution in constitutional law and has been wrongly portrayed as just the arbitrary rule of a so-called dictator. "Dictatorship" is an essential book for understanding the work of Carl Schmitt and a major contribution to the modern theory of a democratic, constitutional state. And despite being written in the early part of the twentieth century, it speaks with remarkable prescience to our contemporary political concerns.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Law, History, 20th Century, Political Science

Paperback

First published October 21, 2000

About the author

Carl Schmitt's early career as an academic lawyer falls into the last years of the Wilhelmine Empire. (See for Schmitt's life and career: Bendersky 1983; Balakrishnan 2000; Mehring 2009.) But Schmitt wrote his most influential works, as a young professor of constitutional law in Bonn and later in Berlin, during the Weimar-period: Political Theology, presenting Schmitt's theory of sovereignty, appeared in 1922, to be followed in 1923 by The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, which attacked the legitimacy of parliamentary government. In 1927, Schmitt published the first version of his most famous work, The Concept of the Political, defending the view that all true politics is based on the distinction between friend and enemy. The culmination of Schmitt's work in the Weimar period, and arguably his greatest achievement, is the 1928 Constitutional Theory which systematically applied Schmitt's political theory to the interpretation of the Weimar constitution. During the political and constitutional crisis of the later Weimar Republic Schmitt published Legality and Legitimacy, a clear-sighted analysis of the breakdown of parliamentary government Germany, as well as The Guardian of the Constitution, which argued that the president as the head of the executive, and not a constitutional court, ought to be recognized as the guardian of the constitution. In these works from the later Weimar period, Schmitt's declared aim to defend the Weimar constitution is at times barely distinguishable from a call for constitutional revision towards a more authoritarian political framework (Dyzenhaus 1997, 70–85; Kennedy 2004, 154–78).

Though Schmitt had not been a supporter of National Socialism before Hitler came to power, he sided with the Nazis after 1933. Schmitt quickly obtained an influential position in the legal profession and came to be perceived as the ‘Crown Jurist’ of National Socialism. (Rüthers 1990; Mehring 2009, 304–436) He devoted himself, with undue enthusiasm, to such tasks as the defence of Hitler's extra-judicial killings of political opponents (PB 227–32) and the purging of German jurisprudence of Jewish influence (Gross 2007; Mehring 2009, 358–80). But Schmitt was ousted from his position of power within legal academia in 1936, after infighting with academic competitors who viewed Schmitt as a turncoat who had converted to Nazism only to advance his career. There is considerable debate about the causes of Schmitt's willingness to associate himself with the Nazis. Some authors point to Schmitt's strong ambition and his opportunistic character but deny ideological affinity (Bendersky 1983, 195–242; Schwab 1989). But a strong case has been made that Schmitt's anti-liberal jurisprudence, as well as his fervent anti-semitism, disposed him to support the Nazi regime (Dyzenhaus 1997, 85–101; Scheuerman 1999). Throughout the later Nazi period, Schmitt's work focused on questions of international law. The immediate motivation for this turn seems to have been the aim to justify Nazi-expansionism. But Schmitt was interested in the wider question of the foundations of international law, and he was convinced that the turn towards liberal cosmopolitanism in 20th century international law would undermine the conditions of stable and legitimate international legal order. Schmitt's theoretical work on the foundations of international law culminated in The Nomos of the Earth, written in the early 1940's, but not published before 1950. Due to his support for and involvement with the Nazi dictatorship, the obstinately unrepentant Schmitt was not allowed to return to an academic job after 1945 (Mehring 2009, 438–63). But he nevertheless remained an important figure in West Germany's conservative intellectual scene to his death in 1985 (van Laak 2002) and enjoyed a considerable degree of clandestine influence elsewhere (Scheuerman 1999, 183–251; Müller 2003).

Unsurprisingly, the significance and value of Schmitt's works

Reviews

[Charles Haywood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dictatorship, in the form of Caesarism, is in the American air. I have recently written on what, in practical terms, an American Caesar would do; I will soon tell you how likely our Caesar is, and why. As it happens, I am at the same time working my way through all the books of Carl Schmitt, in their order of original publication, and his next book up, Dictatorship, published in 1921, clarifies the historical and legal-analytical part of what is unspooling before our eyes. We cannot be better informed, analytically at least, than by pondering this work of the peerless German, whose book, as always, puts to shame today’s mostly insipid political and constitutional analysis.

All modern Western nations are governed, in theory, by a constitution. These all rely on the separation of powers; no Western nation is a unitary state. The key question for Schmitt’s writings from the 1920s, which he begins to address in this book, is this: in a system of separation of powers, who is to rule by suspending that separation when there is an emergency that threatens the nation, and by what authority and under what limitations does he take such action?

Dictatorship forms a crucial groundwork for, and bridge to, Schmitt’s later work on the “state of exception,” part of Schmitt’s larger framework that is often called (though Schmitt never called it that), “decisionism,” which revolves around the question of ultimate sovereignty as the justification of action. For Schmitt, the core matter for the political life of all nations is that someone must make the necessary decisions when there is an emergency; such decisions and the decision-maker are not an emergent property from any preexisting body of people or laws. In crisis situations, whatever the governing law is, gaps will arise that are not addressed by that governing law, and therefore someone must address the concrete situation not addressed by the law, if order, and even more justice, are to be attained. “Measures” must be taken when “law” does not provide the answer. No doubt this is dangerous, but it is inevitable, and ought to be faced head-on, not avoided or dodged.

In today’s popular mind, to be sure, dictatorship simply means despotic single-man rule. This is a confusion that ignores both the history of dictatorship and the many variations possible; it is obvious from Schmitt’s text that he writes in part to clarify what was already, in his far better-educated time, a concept often addressed in a way that offered no light. He writes not only to talk about the present day, but to explain what a dictator was, in the Classical and Renaissance worlds, and what it has become since Western monarchy went the way of the dodo. Even absent a larger political framework, this book would be a clarifying work.

If there is a Cliffs Notes version of Dictatorship, it is that moderns should distinguish between commissary and sovereign dictatorships. A commissary dictatorship is one where a ruler, whether king or parliament, grants great, yet circumscribed, authority to an individual to accomplish goals set by the ruler, within the existing political order, with the goal of maintaining that order. A sovereign dictatorship is where the political will of a nation is delegated to an assembly, or an individual, to establish an entirely new order; limits are not to be found, and the maintenance of the existing order is not a goal. Schmitt further distinguishes between dictatorship, of either type, and “arbitrary despotism,” which seeks no larger political goal. From this flow certain crucial conclusions, notably about the Weimar Constitution, with which Schmitt was, unsurprisingly, particularly concerned. (An Appendix, first published in the second edition of 1928 but first delivered in 1924 as a lecture, directly addresses the Weimar Constitution in detail, whereas the original edition of Dictatorship ends with only a relatively brief set of thoughts on that critical document.)

Dictatorship, however, did not spring fully formed from Schmitt’s mind, nor was it simply a reaction to postwar chaos and uncertainty as to who controlled the German state at any given moment. (Although this book makes no direct reference to the turmoil of 1919 and 1920, no doubt the extremely unsettled circumstances surrounding him focused Schmitt’s attention. A Communist regime briefly took control of Munich, where Schmitt had lived since 1915, and violence directed at overthrowing the existing order, the Weimar Republic, declared in November, 1918, was everywhere in postwar Germany. Mostly this was violence from the Left, but it also came from the Right, notably the Kapp Putsch.) The “state of siege,” a limited suspension of constitutional provisions by a locally-commanding military officer, had been permitted under the nineteenth-century Imperial Constitution. This allowed a commander actually under literal siege to temporarily take over and administer all branches of local civilian government, voiding the separation of powers, in order to address a present emergency. In theory this power was quite limited, but in practice during the World War the use of the state of siege had gradually expanded to excessive proportions, permitting the military to swallow local legislative and judicial functions entirely at times. While working in the Bavarian state apparatus during the war (he was medically exempt from fighting, but volunteered for the army, who eagerly used his legal skills), Schmitt had worked closely on administering instances of this and related matters, such as martial law, and in both 1916 and 1917 he had published articles on the state of siege. Dictatorship therefore more broadly applies these narrow learnings, in order to historically and intellectually analyze the political reality of exceptions to the rule of a governing constitution.

The first half of the book is a historical tour de force, in which Schmitt is essentially showing off his erudition, tracing the development of the theory of dictatorship through history. None of this is polemic and, frankly, you have to be quite interested, not to say dedicated, to stay focused and absorb the material. We begin with a dense theoretical analysis of constitutional state theory. Until the nineteenth century, any talk of dictatorship meant a discussion of the Roman practice of extraordinary magistrates, appointed by the Senate for a limited (usually six-month) period. Such dictatorships were usually directed at streamlining processes to win an existential war, or at suppressing internal turmoil, and while the practice changed over time, ending in the mutated and near-permanent dictatorships of Sulla and Julius Caesar, focus on dictatorship as an institution ended with Rome. Apologists for the absolute monarchs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not analogize their rule to the Roman practice, which was nonetheless sometimes discussed in detail in “modern” texts such as Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, with reference to a similar practice sometimes used in Venice. Analyses such as Machiavelli’s did not treat dictators as sovereign, however; they had extraordinary powers, but some other institution was sovereign, the Senate in Rome or the Great Council in Venice. In practice, sovereignty was distinct from dictatorships; or put another way, technically at least, all dictatorships were regarded as commissary.

This is just the launching point for a deep dive into Renaissance history, analyzing how the theory of dictatorship has changed over time. Schmitt explores the emergence of the modern state through the development of executive power and its limitations, discussing several very diverse thinkers. On the one end, he cites the monarchomachs, who opposed absolute kingly rule and upheld organic limits on all princes, such as Junius Brutus, who wrote Vindiciae contra tyrannos (“Defenses Against the Tyrants”). On the other end, he cites Thomas Hobbes, who endorsed the absolute sovereignty of the prince. In all cases, however, the key question is “whose decision carries the day in the end, and by what authority?” And the answer was never “the people”; it might be an absolute prince, or the estates, or a combination, but no suggestion was made in early state theory that the right of decision lay with the people as a body. Again, dictatorship was, for all practical purposes, a historically-irrelevant curiosity. Nobody suggested that monarchs, possessors of sovereignty, were dictators.

Only in the works of Jean Bodin, namely in The Six Books of the Commonwealth, Schmitt tells us, did a more subtle understanding of dictatorship emerge. Bodin’s focus was sovereignty of monarchs, but he did touch on dictatorship, and his analysis understands that what is called dictatorship can be fruitfully classified by the degree of sovereignty held by a man called dictator. Bodin distinguished between the Roman dictator, who was not sovereign, and other ancient appointed holders of extraordinary power, such as the Spartan harmosts, military governors sent to conquered cities. The former had extraordinary power, to be sure, but it was circumscribed power, to be used only to accomplish goals specified by the actual sovereign, and sharply limited in time. He could act against the laws, as necessary; he could not make new laws, much less alter the arrangement of the state. For a Roman dictator, that would undermine the essence of the system, and in fact be impossible within the system, like wishing a genie grant you more wishes (my example, not Schmitt’s—humor is not his strong point). The Spartan harmosts, and others such as the elected tyrants of Macedon, had absolute power to do what they wished with the society over which they ruled, for a time not set. Bodin was the first to recognize what Schmitt revolves much of his analysis around: sovereignty itself is in large part the power to decide when a state of exception exists for which a dictator is a solution—a concept that would loom very large in Schmitt’s later writings.

Hobbes also pointed in a modern direction, through his experience of the Protectorate and its influence on him, which drove the question of whether sovereignty derives from the people, which arguably would imply that any holder of power delegated from the people is necessarily less than wholly sovereign, because the people could withdraw their delegation. Even a Caesar, in this understanding, is not truly sovereign.

The analytical solution to these various struggles (only a brief overview of which I have given here) is to formally distinguish between sovereign and commissary dictatorship. We will come back again to sovereign dictators; a commissary dictator is one given a mandate by a sovereign “to do, in an appropriate manner, what the concrete situation requires, combined with the corresponding authorization to represent the authority of the state.” Only a commissary dictator can exist within the boundaries of any modern theory of the state without exploding the state itself; this is Schmitt’s core point.

We’re not done with history yet. Having introduced this distinction as a frame, we next turn to a very long exposition of how royal commissars were used until the 1700s, to execute the monarch’s will in France and Germany. Schmitt at points seems to suggest these were not, in fact, even commissary dictators to the extent they were not addressing a state of emergency, rather mere administrators, but he leaves the dividing line vague. Such commissars were necessary in days of slow and limited communication, but naturally the key question was always how to circumscribe the powers of a commissar without crippling his needed efforts. (The recent integralist-tinged history of Louis IX, Before Church and State, talks at length about the King’s commissars, called enquêteurs.) As a result, a great deal of law grew up around the practice of these commissars. Schmitt talks at length, again seemingly showing off, about the German military captain Albrecht von Wallenstein, supreme commander of the armies of the Holy Roman Emperor during the Thirty Years War, who seemed to be a dictator with near-absolute powers, but whose powers were strictly circumscribed (and he was ultimately assassinated on the orders of the Emperor, because he had gotten too big for his britches). In Schmitt’s view, actually, Wallenstein was not even a commissary dictator, because there was no state of exception, merely a war being fought, but the point is that none of these men were sovereign, and nobody at the time would have made that mistake—except perhaps Wallenstein, and that didn’t work out for him so well.

However, this clean separation between sovereignty and delegated power began to change in eighteenth-century theory, as exemplified by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Abbé de Mably. Here emerged the idea that the sovereign could be a dictator appointed by the people, through the general will, embodying a unitary power without any separation of powers. Schmitt does not think much of Rousseau, seeing his thought as full of gaps, but as useful for exploring what Schmitt really cares about—from where comes the “constituent power” that allows legality and power to be bound into one unit?

From this exhaustive history Schmitt distils his theory of what dictatorship is, and within that, what is commissary dictatorship and what is sovereign dictatorship. He states that dictatorship is not the mere suspension of the separation of powers, but rather a suspension with a concrete object, an end to be achieved that is extraordinary. Given this, as I say, he concludes there are two types of dictatorship in the modern world. The commissary dictatorship, which derives from existing law “suspends the constitution in order to protect it—the very same one—in its concrete form.” It is by definition temporary, designed to render itself superfluous; the measures it takes, while outside the normal legal framework, are paradoxically aimed at preserving that framework. And the sovereign dictatorship, for which “the entire existing order is a situation that dictatorship will resolve through its own actions,” “does not suspend an existing constitution through a law based on the constitution . . . rather it seeks to create conditions in which a constitution—a constitution that it regards as the true one—is made possible. Therefore [sovereign] dictatorship does not appeal to an existing constitution, but to one that is still to come.” This latter is the “constituent power,” which supersedes the power of the existing sovereign.

And in whom does the constituent power lie? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? In modern theory, which denies that God delegates the constituent power, it must lie in the people—or at least that is the thrust of nearly all modern thinkers. The constituent power delegates power to a sovereign dictator—but this is necessarily transitional, for the constituent power does not itself transfer to the dictator, who is formed to accomplish a specific task. Thus, “this power is sovereign in a completely different sense from that in which the absolute monarch or a sovereign aristocracy can be said to be ‘sovereign.’ ” For Schmitt, the best example of this process in pure form is the French Revolution, in particular the Constituent Assembly, which exercised a commissary dictatorship derived from the sovereign dictatorship of the National Convention, and the “people’s commissars” sent out to administer the will of the Assembly—who continued to be used until 1815 and the restoration of the monarchy.

However, the constituent power being located in the people poses a challenge for the modern state. After all, popular sovereignty as the basis for rule is extremely dangerous, because it can be used to justify any revolutionary action, including claims made by the true enemy, the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat. Not that Schmitt focuses directly on the dictatorship of the proletariat; at first glance, its mention in the book’s title seems out of place. But gurgling beneath the surface of Schmitt’s analysis of constituent power is a seeking for how a constitutional order can avoid the horrors of Communism.

So finally we come to modern Germany, the state of siege, and the Weimar Constitution. Schmitt struggles to rationalize the change of the nineteenth-century state of siege, a practical measure not by any means crucial to the survival of the nation, into the broader need for recognition of the state of exception during an emergency (both technical terms to Schmitt, Ausnahmezustand and Notfall) that existentially threatens the nation. The point of the state of exception, of course, is that normalcy is not a choice; the nation can’t just simply pretend there is no problem. Someone must decide what is to be done. Such existential threats from within are a modern problem, not faced in Germany during the age of parliamentary democracy—though repeatedly faced in France throughout the nineteenth century, as in the June Days of 1848, suppressed by the commissary dictator Louis-Eugène Cavaignac. At this point in his career, Schmitt was more clearly on the Right than in his earlier work, yet not as much on the Right as he became later. How the legitimate German state could preserve itself was his concern; he had no more truck with the Kapp Putsch than he did with the Munich Communists, and he rejected the idea that the Weimar Constitution was illegitimate because it was, in effect, the output of a sovereign dictatorship.

In this final chapter . . . [Review completes as first comment].

[Pinkyivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Important for aspiring Schmitt enthusiasts, but otherwise not recommended. Relevant for his ideas on dictate and necessary action not based in legislation, but in sovereignty. Mostly a historical work.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important contribution to the theory of dictatorship, and - given the role Carl Schmitt was to play in the decades after this work was published - a fateful one too. A technical distinction is drawn between a commissary dictatorship - one in which dictatorial powers are temporarily given to an agent of the state, a state that nonetheless retains supremacy with respect to the dictator - and a sovereign dictatorship, a perfectly Spinozist coincidence of right and power in which the dictator appears as Deus sive Natura, wielding constituting power over the entire field of the state. You might be tempted to think of this as mere absolutism, L'État, c'est moi, but this temptation must be resisted. Sovereign dictatorship is by nature democratic, not in the sense of a plebiscite, but in the sense that its legitimacy supposedly derives from its popular character. A sovereign dictator is an assemblage of the people's will, and derives its sovereignty from the people. The sovereign dictatorship always assumes a Volksgeist that it simultaneously constructs. When we say "dictator" today, this is what we mean, though often without much cognizance of the philosophical content. This content, however, is not nothing, and while Schmitt's historical exegesis of the development of the dictator concept begins dry, in drawing out its historical and philosophical logic much food for thought is supplied.

The spread, in brief:

1) Fuse entirely with the real power that constitutes the state, in full knowledge of your responsibility to direct it. This power derives entirely from the will of the people, though - as rabble - they are incapable of expressing themselves except through you.

2) Understand that the will of the people is not the mean or sum of the opinions held by the individual people within a territory. The people is a supernatural category, a spirit expressive of the true inner tendency of a people and under no circumstances must it be confused with the liberal-democratic (numerical, majoritarian) will. To that end, the people can fail to understand their own will, and it is the responsibility of the dictator to oppose to the people their true will.

3) Identify with the highest severity the true enemy and define the security of the state against this enemy, constituting the true people and the true state in one vicious movement.

4) Eliminate the legislature and suspend the autonomy of the judiciary branch. The organs of the state, as constituted powers, hold no legitimacy except as vectors of the people's will, and therefore need no independence, which can mean only insurrection in a sovereign dictatorship.

It's a liberal truism that dictatorship is always a threat, but if dictatorship haunts democracy, it haunts it as its nightmare, its parodic hell, deriving its power from the same principles that democracy does. In a democracy, all right derives from the nation - the people - all state organs are conceived as modes through the substance of popular sovereignty. To that end it is always legitimate (though it's historically simple enough to see that it is also never desirable) for the inhibiting institutions to be dissolved to make way for a direct expression of popular will. Like the Spinozist substance or a gravitational singularity, the popular will can never appear naked, but must be mediated. The argument between liberal democracy and dictatorship concerns the legitimate form that mediation takes.

[Julay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bon c'est une analyse schmittiene du pouvoir, alors on est d'accord ou on ne l'est pas (je suis du côté "on ne l'est pas"), mais d'un point de vue intellectuel c'est quand même passionnant.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Dictatorship" is a book written by Carl Schmitt, a German jurist and political theorist, and first published in 1921. The book is an exploration of the concept of dictatorship, and an argument in favor of a strong, centralized state power.

Schmitt's concept of dictatorship is not based on the traditional idea of a tyrant or despot ruling over a subject population, but rather on the idea of a sovereign leader who is able to make decisive decisions in times of crisis. Schmitt argues that the crisis of modernity requires a new form of political power, one that is capable of transcending the limitations of liberal democracy and responding to the challenges of the modern world.

Schmitt's concept of dictatorship has been criticized for its authoritarian implications and its potential for abuse. However, Schmitt argues that dictatorship is necessary for preserving the integrity and stability of the state, and that it can be used for the greater good of the people.

Overall, "Dictatorship" is an important contribution to the study of political theory and the history of ideas. While Schmitt's ideas have been controversial and have been associated with fascist and authoritarian regimes, his work continues to be studied and debated by scholars and intellectuals around the world.

GPT

[Pinky 2.0 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Important for aspiring Schmitt enthusiasts, but otherwise not recommended. Relevant for his ideas on dictate and necessary action not based in legislation, but in sovereignty. Mostly a historical work.

[James Yu · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intellectual picture of dictatorship from commissars to absolute leaders, Schmitt provides a thorough examination of Roman Commissarial dictators to Marx and Engels’ dictatorship of the proletariat (only briefly mentioned). The distinction of mandates, powers, and legislative capabilities of the commissar vs sovereign dictator is made clear only after an exhaustive and thorough examination of precise arguments sandwiched amid a flurry of annoying waffling on the French Revolution, Machiavelli, Descartes and Donoso Cortés. I have gained not much from this book other than a new understanding of what exactly constitutes a non-despotic legitimate (?) legal dictator and a neck ache.

Schmitt’s interpretation of Reichspräsident Ebert’s constitutional powers under Article 48 is insightful and is useful for any juridical analysis of the Weimar Republic. Beyond that I see no reason to read this book unless one is, for some reason, a fan of the theory and practice of dictatorship.

[Aaron Crofut · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schmitt has a useful distinction between sovereign and commiserial dictatorships, between those that create states and those that work outside of the law to preserve them. His historical overview is good (the ancients would not understand our word "dictator" as we do, and would certainly not see it as a synonym for tyrant), but be prepared to get lost in a forest of details. I am amazed that anyone was able to accomplish anything at all in the Holy Roman Empire, much less fight a war as bloody as the Thirty Years War.

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phenomenally dense. Will take a few more reads before I've really grasped it I feel. Most interesting concept for me though was the temporary function-specific form of dictatorship. Whereby the dictator had a finite amount of time to accomplish a very specific task for which the constitution could be suspended to do so. Could we employ this to address climate change?

[Eduardo Fort · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), uno de los autores malditos de la filosofía politica en el siglo XX, traza en La dictadura un recorrido histórico para entender el concepto de "dictadura", sus aplicaciones específicas y su vigencia hacia 1931.

[Zelai Xu · Rating 5 out of 5]

insightful analysis overall, Appendix sucks tho

[Vladimir Tarasov · Rating 5 out of 5]

С моей точки зрения очень хороший экскурс в историю и реальный смысл термина диктатура и эволюцию этого смысла с течением времени.

[Colm Gillis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning of this book is excellent and really sets forth a theory of dictatorship. Most of the rest of the book is a history of dictatorship. This part of the book was weak and was in serious need of editing. Many times I was asking myself 'what is the point here?' At the end there is Schmitt's discussion on Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, which he interpreted as giving the Reichs President dictatorial powers. I felt the translators/editors were to blame here for not providing more footnotes and making it easier for the reader.

[Luke Echo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Detailed philological study of the use of "dictator". Ultimately not that interesting though.