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Socialism-as the logical conclusion of the tyranny of the least and the dumbest, i.e., those who are superficial, envious, and three-quarters actors-is indeed entailed by "modern ideas" and their latent anarchism; but in the tepid air of democratic well-being the capacity to reach conclusions, or to finish, weakens. On follows-but one no longer sees what follows. Therefore socialism is on the whole a hopeless and sour affair; and nothing offers a more amusing spectacle than the contrast between the poisonous and desperate faces cut by today's socialists-and to what wretched and pinched feelings their style bears witness!-and the harmless lambs' happiness of their hopes and desiderata. ?But there will always be too many who have possessions for socialism to signify more than an attack of sickness-and those who have possessions are of one mind on one article of faith: "one must possess something in order to be something." But this is the oldest and healthiest of all instincts: I should add, "one must want to have more than one has in order to become more." For this doctrine preached by life itself to all that has life: the morality of development. To have and to want to have more-growth in one word-that is life itself. In the doctrine of socialism there is hidden, rather badly, a "will to negate life"; the human beings or races that think up such a doctrine must be bungled. Indeed, I should wish that a few great experiments might prove that in a socialist society life negates itself, cuts off its own roots. (WP 125)
The over-all degeneration of man down to what today appears to the socialist dolts and flatheads as their "man of the future"-as their ideal-this degeneration and diminution of man into the perfect herd animal, this animalization of man into the dwarf animal of equal rights and claims, is possible, there is no doubt of it. Anyone who has once thought through this possibility to the end knows one kind of nausea that other men don't know-but perhaps also a new task! (BGE, 203)
Nietzsche was not one to often discuss politics in his work, but when he did, he usually ended up detesting politics of any sorts. Here is is reasoning behind why socialism actually negates life in its practice found in a note from 1885 found in The Will to Power. Is Nietzsche right? Does a socialist country cut off itself at the roots?
This quote from Beyond Good and Evil reminded me of Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy about the dumbing down of society to its ultimate conclusion of stupidity.
I've just recently got the book beyond good and evil, a newbie to philosophy all together but it's interesting to read what others have to say about him. I find that i probably will be enjoying him. Can anyone suggest other philosophers similar in taste?
Nietzsche also seems to think that socialism makes people dumber through degeneration of goals and values. Through the project of making humanity more average by people striving to be of the common herd, N thinks that people turns into "dolts and flatheads". Socialism seems to eliminate the possibility of N's Ubermensch ideal--or at the least, less likely. N does not seem to like the prospects of wisdom within socialism. The common person is too stupid and too common to value striving beyond desires and low expectations of how people are to be.
are you saying Nietzsche is a bad example of a philosopher?
I think he was sloppy, and I think he drew a few significant and false conclusions... As an antimoralist he had no grasp of morals, or the basis of morals in community...He did not even grasp European history short term, and since the relics and results of Feudalism were everywhere in evidence, such ignorance is inexcusable...The Junkers, the Feudal Prussian class to which Bismark belonged even played a small part in the rise of Hitler... Kings, Kaisars, Czars and lords and holy empires were at each others throats only a few years after Nietzsche... Where was the equality he feared??? It was all class, class, and privilage...
I think he was sloppy, and I think he drew a few significant and false conclusions...
any philosophers you can suggest otherwise?
In the quote in the OP Nietzche says he hoped for some experiments in socialism so as to see how in it, life cuts itself off from its roots.
I think he made the same mistake rightist usually do about socialism: to imagine that there's any choice regarding it. The existence of socialism in our world, including the US, is not by choice. It's simply because unrestrained greed will reduce a society to a desperate wasteland that isn't worth living in... which is exactly what the European aristocracy predicted would happen with capitalism.
So yes: it does cut life off from its roots... in as far as one of the roots of life is greed.
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