CHAPTER XXX
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION (Concluded). POLITICAL VIEWS AND ANTICIPATIONS
I
Nietzsche's political principles are implied in his general social doctrine and receive no separate statement. The state was originally founded on force and not on contract,[1] though it may be assented to in time and obedience to it become a second nature.[2] Political power is conceived of as coming from above down, not from below up. Sovereignty is inherent in the first social class, delegated to the second class (the rulers), and only sparingly to be granted to the third (business and professional men and laborers). So far as the third class are allowed power, it should be as great interests rather than as individuals—and the idea is evidently that they should be heard, considered, rather than rule.[3] It cannot be too distinctly stated that possession of power, not wealth, is the distinguishing mark of the two upper classes. They control wealth, but the lowest class may own more of it than they—they live "poorer and more simply, still in possession of power."[4] It is an odd conception in this plutocratic age.
The state, like independent social groups in general, has a more or less super-moral way of thinking and acting.[5] Morality, in Nietzsche's conception, as we have already seen, concerns the relation of parts of a society to one another and to the whole, but does not apply to the whole as such.[6] Representing the
- ↑ Genealogy etc., II, § 17.
- ↑ Nietzsche even speaks of power being "intrusted" to his future ruling caste, their innate superiority demonstrating itself in a variety of ways (Werke, XII, 204, § 434); and he admits that reverence and the nobler emotions have played their part in sustaining state-formations in the past (ibid., XIII, 195).
- ↑ Cf. ibid., XIII, 352, § 872.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 764.
- ↑ Ibid., § 927.
- ↑ See pp. 218 ff.
