National Bolshevism

Celtiberian wrote:I realize this question wasn't directed to me, but I felt compelled to offer my own perspective on the matter.

To an extent, a change in material conditions will adjust how we view the family unit and culture, but it's not as though the adjustments in our mental conceptions will necessarily be extreme. For example, the family unit has undergone changes over the millennia, but it has always existed in some form or another. Likewise, religious rituals can be traced as far back as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. Material factors certainly adjust how religious views manifest themselves (e.g., relatively poor countries tend to be more dogmatic about their faith than the secularism observed in nations with a robust welfare system) but it's unlikely to end notions of an afterlife altogether. Personally, I believe the origin of religion mainly rests with man's ability to be cognizant of his own mortality; the immense anxiety this causes inevitably generates comforting thoughts about eternity.

I just meant to say that it's not good to rely too much on traditional values because they may not end up being in the people's best interest as dictated by material conditions after a revolution. I was not saying that we should abandon values because they will not necessarily be in line with the future world. I fully acknowledge that our values and ideas drive us along with the material conditions. These ideas however, should be flexible and not rigid as most traditional ideas are, since they are likely to be conservative. That's all that I meant.

RedSun wrote:My objection to Rev Scare's comment in this case was more about the idea that a conservative cannot under any circumstances be a revolutionary.
Also, I think the conservative revolutionaries predated fascism, or at least developed alongside it, but I don't know.

The terms 'conservative' and 'revolutionary' are indeed contradictory, and that is that. When taking into account the core beliefs of the RSF especially, Rev Scare was perfectly correct in objecting to your statements. Going on a spiel about how it is or is not possible under any circumstance for a conservative to be revolutionary is ultimately irrelevant, considering the inherent ideological disposition of his forum, which dictates that anything impeding the progress what it espouses is ultimately reactionary.

My point was that in no way are "revolutionary conservatives" actually revolutionary at all. Your statement of "The Conservative Revolutionaries didn't want to revert to a previous age; they wanted to use traditional values to make sure progress was occurring in the right direction" prompted this, because they were indeed regressing instead of progressing, in the end.

Let it be noted that Moeller van den Bruck, who pretty much headed the entire Conservative Revolutionary Movement, authored The Third Reich, from which the Nazis took the name.

Disregarding the possibility that they may or may not have been revolutionary (and not in a good way) for their time period, location, etc., the point is that they are right to be considered counter revolutionary or contradictory, especially by those on this forum.

RedSun wrote:The whole point of the Conservative Revolutionary movement was to repudiate the assertion that conservatism is reactionary. "Conservative Revolutionary" covers a lot of ideological territory when one considers its descendants, but I'd certainly consider myself a conservative and a revolutionary. I see nothing about conservative social values (sanely conservative, not religious fanaticism) that contradicts the need for social revolution.

Which "conservative" social values do you espouse, exactly? Traditional values vary from time and place. Do you support strict roles for women? Do you oppose the use of contraceptives? What?

Conservatism is a disposition that is characterized by aversion and skepticism toward social, economic, and political change, preferring small and gradual changes over sweeping alterations. In short, conservatives strive to conserve the present social arrangement or elements thereof. They stand in stark contrast to revolutionaries, who desire radical social transformation (i.e., rapid social progress). Revolutionaries are, by nature, progressive, whereas extreme conservatives are reactionary. That some reactionary currents viewed revolution as instrumental to assuming power and thereby a means by which to quash socialist and democratic progress did not render them revolutionary in character.

The Conservative Revolutionaries didn't want to revert to a previous age; they wanted to use traditional values to make sure progress was occurring in the right direction. The topic about libertine "socialists" gives an example of how this can be beneficial.

What is particularly novel about the ideas propounded by the Conservative "Revolutionaries"? They do not greatly differ from those of classical conservatives. Their notion of "progress," in my estimation, was in fact regression.

Pantheon Rising wrote:Well, besides playing with semantics Conservative Revolutionary isn't a contradiction in terms.

It very much is.

One has to actually believe history has been one long progression in order to think that.

Yes, I suppose you are correct. The Enlightenment actually represented a period of backwardness.

Altair wrote:Let it be noted that Moeller van den Bruck, who pretty much headed the entire Conservative Revolutionary Movement, authored The Third Reich, from which the Nazis took the name.

I don't mean to be trivial, but many National Bolsheviks looked to van den Bruck for inspiration too, as well as Strasserists and NatComs and even Monarchists. Everyone had different visions of what the Third Reich should look like. It just so happens that Hitler won out and so the term seems to be synonymous with Nazism. I think it can even be said that Hitler was scarcely inspired by van den Bruck.