History Restarts: Spengler and the 2024 Election

History, Nature, Culture and Civilization.

This essay is intended to be read along with its predecessor Spengler, The Election, And The Fate Of The West, which should be read first, but doesn’t have to be. The discussion of the rise of the Caesar is much more in depth there.

Spenglerian History and Culture

“History” must be understood, in Spenglerian terms, as a distinct condition within which culture develops and proceeds via metaphysical forces, or epiphenomenon, beyond the contingencies of material conditions. In other words, material conditions are shaped by the force that drives history, and not vice versa. This force may be understood as “destiny,” the fulfillment of an inner necessity driving a shared culture toward its ultimate form. Once that form is achieved, history recedes, as it were, drains from the culture until it has dried up of whatever this driving Will might have been. This Will can be understood as the cultural need to express itself, but this expression can only persist for so long, until the form withers and dies, leaving behind only a shell of itself, like the stalks of plants in winter whose leaves and fruit have fallen away. In this stage, the culture returns to the state of nature it was in prior to its fruition, though where before it was a wild field teeming with potential life-energy, it is now spattered with fragile husks and detritus of organic matter, not yet mulch for the next planting season.

“Nature” is a human experience of time contrasted with History, and people and culture pass in and out of History and Nature during different periods in their lifespan. According to Oswald Spengler, this passing from nature into history and back into nature only happens once for a culture, and can never be repeated by that culture again, for the experience of cycling through History, to borrow a phrase from Yeats, causes that culture to “change utterly.” Nature, by Spengler’s characterization, is defined by a pulse, the beat of time that passes in rhythm with the seasons and the world round about, circulating through time like blood through an organism. Contrast this to History, which is linear, and defined by tension pulling those within its current toward its final form, as it were. An organism experiencing History also experiences meaning as time passes and the past and future are held out in tension, propelling and pulling, and change within itself can be appreciated and expected. History, then, is the crystallization of a “microcosm” within the greater “cosmos,” and while the “cosmic beat” of time goes on outside and all around, the “microcosm” finds meaning in the passing of time - History - that is specific unto itself, and that while beings in nature reside within the circular pulse of time, “Beings” in time experience a polarity in which they extend their “selves” across time. According to Spengler, these “organisms” and “Beings” in this analogy are entire cultures. While Spengler has all the world's cultures mapped out according to this estimation, only one example needs to serve our purposes here.

When Rome fell, the German Barbarians still existed in a state of nature. Rome and “The West” are two distinct civilizations according to Spengler. Classical civilization was defined by the Greeks, who came out of a state of nature and entered history during the Mycenaean period, depicted in the Iliad, and persisted through Rome until it fell about 400 AD. This was what he called the “Apollonian” civilization, and all cultural forms took on an “Apollonian” expression. Spengler illustrates what he means in great detail in The Decline Of The West, but for our purposes we will only say that these cultural expressions are what he calls the “Macrocosm;” the sum-total of all cultural production, be it mathematics, sculpture, literature, law, warfare, economics, religion, etc. Once Rome fell, the Apollonian culture had passed away, never to return. What was left was Byzantium and what soon became Islam, constituting for Spengler another distinct Civilization he called “Magian.” The German barbarian “states” of Western Europe eventually became Western Christendom, or what he dubbed “Faustian”civilization. America is the ultimate inheritor of Faustian civilization, in every sense that Rome was of Greek Hellenism.

Cultures in Nature aren’t born and do not die in the sense that cultures in History do. Often they are semi-nomadic or at least aren’t fixed in one territory via state boundaries as we know them, but they occupy territory based on what they are able to hold by their marital strength against their neighbors, and the boundaries of these territories shift over time. They are also subject to the tides of nature, be it herds of grazing animals, dry seasons, winters, heavy rains, or any other natural conditions that cause peoples to move en masse, either towards or away from something. This can also mean raiding nomads from elsewhere. Think of the great movements of the Goths and Huns that had such historic consequences for Rome, though their history is filled with these such migrations and shifting territories, like that of the Gauls that inspired Caesar to invade, thereby making his name and changing history forever.

For Rome, which was in history, the only thing its borders did was expand. Once it reached its height as an Empire, in the time of Trajan, it can be said to have reached what we earlier referred to as its “final form.” To be sure, Spengler meant a great deal more than the apex of territorial conquest when he said a culture was driven to express something in its completion, but for our purposes the largest extent of its Empire can be considered the actualization of Rome's reason for being as an empire. According to Spengler’s biological model of history and culture, this was Rome’s “maturation.” It then persisted for some time at this size, and eventually began to fall away as it “collapsed.” In other words, it withered and died. According to Spengler, this is inevitable. What rose in its place, many centuries later, was not a rebirth of Rome, but a totally new and distinct culture that did not achieve its identity - and this is the crucial detail for our purposes here - until it was suffused with Germanic culture.

All the while Greece and Rome were going through this lifecycle, as we’ve said, the Germans were still “in nature.” They did not “enter” history properly until about the eleventh century AD, when the roving vikings finally settled all throughout Europe and Russia. It was only then that they began to build states and experience the growth of an organic, living entity as a culture. The culture they went on to build was of course a confluence of Catholic and Germanic, but as Spengler argues, all of the forms of this culture were Faustian and not Apollonian, and this is because the Germans had entered history and were living out their destiny, through the form of Christianity, which he says was Magian and therefore, foreign. A distinct sign of maturation, and an argument that Spengler was ascertaining a real phenomenon, was the Protestant reformation, which was a wholly Germanic interpretation and expression of Christianity, a totally novel religion. In other words, the Germanic spirit “overtook” the Magian spirit and shaped Christianity unto itself, and it was that which went on to continue to build and develop Western civilization. In fact, we can even argue that the developments that took place within Catholic Europe happened despite Catholicism, and not because of it. According to Spengler, the Astronomy of Galileo, the drafting of Davinci, and the entirety of the Age of Exploration were expressions of the Faustian spirit emerging out from under Catholic Europe and not products of it. These phenomenon would be part of what we earlier referred to as Macrocosm.

If we agree with Spengler’s characterization, what we have then is Germanic culture coming into form within Magian Catholicism, growing in its womb so to speak, and then it emerges as its own distinct life-form and absorbs its former shell unto itself. It still exists within the greater organism, but Faustian civilization is now the greater organism. Note - and this is a discussion for elsewhere - that the people involved do not have to be German by origin, they only have to reside within Germanic, or Faustian, culture, in order to express themselves the way they do. Never-the-less, it is irrefutable that what emerged as the unquestioned leaders of Western Civilization by the end of the Medieval Era were Northern and Western European cultures like England, France, and Germany, all of which were heavily inseminated over centuries by Germanic vikings. And it was this culture that Spengler wrote about in Decline of the West, it was this culture that was dying, that tore itself apart and committed suicide in World War I. Spengler was dead when World War II broke out, but it was only more of the same, an extension of World War I, a European Civil war that brought Faustian culture to its end.

Or, perhaps, it was only the transition into its final phase, the initial stages of its autumn, when life still clings to the landscape in brilliant colors, harbingers of an imminent passing away that has not yet arrived.

Culture Vs. Civilization

Thus far in the West what we’ve been discussing is what Spengler called the “culture phase.” Spengler likened the lifecycle of a culture, or the period that spans History, to the four seasons; birth/spring, maturation/summer, middle-aged/elderly/autumn, death/winter. It must be said, however, that Spengler doesn’t use the term “death” but rather “decline,” that decline is not a process but a state. He says culture “ossifies” and that its forms - the Macrocosm - becomes “rigid,” and that rather than developing or expressing the forms, they become fixed and repeatable through rote copy and reproduction, and that no creativity or inspiration goes into them. The implications for art deserve their own essay - or demand a reading of both volumes - but for our purposes we only need consider what this means for History.

Once the winter phase is reached, the culture cycles through the forms, repeating them almost by compulsion rather than, as we said, inspiration. While the forms may grow in size, they do not become more elegant or sophisticated. The economy, administration of the law, artistic production, and warfare may accumulate and grow more powerful, asserting themselves and drawing more power unto the culture, but none of these things are “taking shape,” none of them are the result of any artistic genius. At best they are modified by reformers, but in this phase none of them fundamentally change and, in the cases they do, it's for the worse (Spengler gives a few, particularly in Egypt and Rome, but they are for another discussion). Therefore, while culture may persist in decline during the winter phase, it can no longer be said to be “in” History. Its experience of time is more akin to Nature, in that it has already achieved its Destiny and is now circulating as its institutions pulse along, a sort of simulation of the earlier forces of nature. While before peoples moved about because of the weather or the herd or the crops, now they do so in response to economic factors or warfare between states, forces equally beyond their control but now wholly generated by man.

However, the passing from summer to autumn and winter is characterized more broadly by Spengler as the transition from Culture to Civilization. The Culture is the aspect that is born, grows, establishes and develops the forms. The Civilization lives in the forms set out by the Culture, but it does not make any new ones, nor does it improve on them. At best, it can only clone them. You may be able to imagine a sculpture equalling the grace and skill of Michelangelo or Bernini - although even that becomes more difficult over time - but what is totally inconceivable for us today is to imagine a sculpture revolutionizing, veritably creating the art form the way their predecessors did. While Spengler was a pessimist, this is not in and of itself a reason for pessimism for us. While I believe it's quite clear we are not on the cusp of a great artistic flourishing like the Renaissance or even the Fin de Siecle, there is still great reason to believe we have much time left for prosperity and flourishing on the individual level, even as a nation if not a civilization, and if Spengler’s ascertaining of the life cycles of civilization bears any meaning for our current condition in America and thereby the West, there is still reason for optimism, at least in the short term, and with some important caveats.

If Europe “died” with the World Wars, then it was Faustian Civilization shedding its cultural skin and assuming its new form as a Civilization with America as the driving force, just like Rome assumed and perpetuated Hellenism after the Hellenic empires fell. And it’s important that the Hellenic Empires fell to Rome, just like Europe fell to America. Therefore, the West entered its Decline phase in Spengler’s time, which is why he was a pessimist - there was no hope for Europe, and whatever was in its future would be worse than what came before. But Rome's initial period of Empire is often considered one of the most prosperous and best times to be alive in human history, especially for what Spengler would call “the man in the street.” So for us to use a Spenglerian model, we must not only be realistic about what may happen and why, but also about how bad worse, and how good the best case scenarios may be. Spengler estimates that Europe passed from “culture” to civilization” around the time of Napoleon, which makes a certain sort of sense given the transition from aristocracy and kingship over to bureaucracy and civil institutions. Remember, while Napoleon was a major historical marker for this time period, this transition was a process that took over a century and was experienced throughout Western Europe.

I disagree with this timeframe, and I believe part of why Spengler miscalculated is because of his historic perspective and untimely death. My main contention here is that from the time of Napoleon to the second world war, Europe was still very much the engine of culture in the West with Paris persisting as the most important cultural city in the world into the 1920’s, not to mention the relevancy of London, Vienna, and Berlin. Europe, in other words, was still generating culture, and undergoing evolution in its art forms that bear historical significance to the world history of art. The evolution of the novel in 19th century England and France was alone one of the most important developments in all of world literature, and along with that we had the rise and fall of Impressionism, what Spengler himself called the final form of Faustian painting, Wagner also being identified by Spengler as the final chapter in Faustian music. All of this overlaps with the genesis of photography and film, totally novel art forms that didn’t even reach their heights until after his death . In other words, even by Spengler's own model, European culture was not “ossified,” though it must be kept in mind that Spengler was looking at this from the immediate aftermath of World War I, which he felt was a sort of “ending.”

He never saw what came after, and while we can say for certain that art has undergone a downgrade and become popularized, we can also say many of the traditions of European culture were carried forward by American culture. The most important is space technology, arguably the apex and ultimate achievement of the “form” of the Faustian Spirit, and the fulfillment of its “destiny.” To sum it up very briefly, the Faustian Spirit is defined by a striving toward the infinite, to bring all of the cosmos within the epistemology of the human mind. This defines everything from vaulted cathedrals to perspective in painting, fluidity in sculpture, crescendos in music, and the circumnavigation of the globe in seafaring. To this we may add flight and the exploration of space. Physics itself, as Spengler understands it, is an expression of the Faustian spirit. Note that spacefaring rocket technology was not possible without German scientists working for the American government, thereby extending the influence of Germany over all of Western Civilization. Spengler hardly included America in his description of the lifespan of Western Civilization, but he may be forgiven because he did not live to see how America continued the Faustian Spirit, to the extent that it did.

So while we may say that the 19th century saw the waning of the Faustian, it certainly did not close with the World Wars. To employ Spengler’s formulation, perhaps Napoleon initiated the autumn phase, and we did not enter the winter proper - the Civilization phase - until after World War 2, when America became the dominant player on the world stage. We can say with certainty, however, that America has continued European culture and, perhaps, it still has somewhere to “take it,” that History has not ended, and that the destiny of the West has not been fully achieved. Spengler did say the year 2000 and the 21st century would be the time of the Caesars, though perhaps he never could have imagined that this phase of history would play out in America. Remember that the Hellenistic Empire came into being several centuries before the Roman Empire, and though fully played out on the European stage, perhaps the Empire phase may not have even begun for America or, depending on how you look at it, is still in its early phases. Equating America's role in the postwar world order to empires that came before is a difficult thing to do, at best as an analogy that can only be carried so far. Still it could, perhaps, be lined up on the timeframe of the transition from the foreign policy and internal politics of the Roman republic and the Roman Empire, in which case the Imperial phase is on the near horizon but not yet initiated.

If we are in fact entering the time of the Caesars, the lifespan of Western Culture is far from over. One of the ways Spengler characterizes the Caesar figure is that he wields all the powers and institutions of the state to his will, using it to fulfill his idiosyncratic vision and accomplish his personal goals. He is not a bureaucrat, civil servant, or even an elected official (though he may initially be elected to power) fulfilling his role within the state, rather he directs the state through his personality and the loyalty of supporters who feel beholden to him, and not the nation as such. We already see this playing out now, while Elon Musk and Trump dictate policy from social media by decree, under threat of costing their “peers” future elections if they don’t comply, while not yet even in office. While we cannot say for certain that Spengler’s model has predictive power over how American history and the history of the West will play out over the next few years or decades, it is noteworthy that Musk is deeply concerned with space exploration, that in fact the state has almost wholly outsourced space travel, rocket, and satellite technology almost exclusively to him. What else could this be but a vestigial stirring, perhaps even the rebirth, of the dormant Faustian Spirit?

The Rise of Caesar

The age of the Caesars is the final chapter of a civilizations lifecycle, however this age may persist over several centuries. The Civilization phase is defined by rule of Caesars, who are inaugurated by an age of sclerotic institutions whose initial purpose has been obliterated by democracy, the very thing that they were set in place to administer. Once the people, or the mass, or the bourgeois, become the primary source of politics, the securement and direction of rights and liberties, enfranchisement, and special interests repurpose the nation into an entitlement dispenser and very soon any future horizon dissolves and the foreground of immediate needs obfuscates long-term planning. At the same time, so much capital has accumulated that money becomes a self-generating force, advocating for its own interests and becoming the only competitor with the mass, vying for control of tax-revenue flows. In this condition, politicians, who were once bred for office and entrusted with the responsibility of the long-term survival of a nation, are swayed either by thought only of the next election or the influence of those holding the purse-strings. Often enough politicians initially consider policies that are in the country's best interest, only to change tack at the behest of powerful lobbies, who at times bring large voting blocks to bear but also large infusions of cash. According to Spengler, during the time of this struggle, the “tension” of history reaches a fever pitch, but money inevitably wins out. Eventually, fatigue sets in with all classes, be they upper, lower, noble, worker, or bourgeois, and all thought of the nation's historical greatness has been forgotten. They tire of the struggle for the largesse of the state. Citizens now only seek relief from the burden of History. Responsibility is abdicated and money becomes the prime mover of politics.

The state and its institutions are first pulled to and fro by electoral politics, and then capital and special interests. Eventually, these monied influences eventually give way to money men, individuals so wealthy they are able to wield the state to their own interests, ultimately stepping in to fulfill the needs of the state, whose crippled institutions have ceased even pretending to fix problems. This condition then redirects the invective and strife inherent in electoral politics, which have been reduced to the vitriol spewed in newspapers and, in our time, on TV and online, into the support for the Caesar figure, who becomes a last vestige of inspiration and source of meaning. In an earlier, more virile time, which Spengler dubbed spring/summer/Culture, the energetic vigor of the people was used to assert the interests of the culture in warfare, build institutions, perpetuate art, and develop religious thought. Now, all of that energy, whatever remains, is dissipated entropically into the “formlessness” of institutions “destitute of all meaning and weight.” The tension that once drove History is relieved for a time, and the culture experiences “biological stretches” where nothing happens. Civilization is defined by the “cosmopolis,” or “world-cities,” and events transpire and peoples move about like shifting dunes and sand blown adrift merely to accumulate in “chinks of stone” when they once “settled” and “built.”

This interregnum phase, when Culture withers under the advent of Civilization, is defined by a sense of purposelessness, timelessness, and futility. The people and institutions cannot coalesce around one purpose or mission, broadly defined as the perpetuation and assertion of the state and its future, and foreign policy seems an inescapable yet meaningless inevitability superimposed over domestic policy, this due to the interests of money guiding policy, wholly divorced from the needs of the people. Spengler states this period is preceded by the “Contending States,” for our time the power-struggles of Europe that culminated in the world wars, and gives way to an Imperial phase that defines Civilization long term. It is during the Imperial phase that “there are no more political problems,” politics as such has ended, and political situations are managed by the “powers that be.” Within this epoch History restarts and plays out as shadows of the earlier, true forms, reemerging to drive Civilization to its final destiny. Whereas before aristocratic men drove Culture, developed thought, and the founding stock organically made up fighting forces, carried out agricultural production, and generated the economy, a mummers show of mercenary forces, built-up military technology, opportunistic business-men, and academically educated “intellectuals” continue the show of Civilization. The difference between the two eras is that during the Culture phase, only the founding stock and a breed of leaders were able to carry the burden of state and culture, while during the Civilizational era, the players are interchangeable. Anyone can step forward to become a leader or wield influence over the state, be they a foreigner, the nouveau riche, a criminal scammer, or a former “second class” citizen - slave, soldier, and the like. However, the civilization cannot undergo the transition from Culture to Civilization without the Caesar figure, who reawakens a shared purpose among the founding stock, dispels political deadlock - cuts the Gordian knot - and directs History with his vision.

Trump, quite clearly, fulfills much of this role, however time will tell if he is merely a harbinger of the true Caesar or a Caesar himself, and we can’t know until his term ends. Certainly he has reawakened a patriotic fervor and sense of togetherness among the American people that is often reserved for times of war. The last time the American people were as united and vocal about something in the way they are for Trump was around the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but those quickly dissipated. The enthusiasm around Trump has not merely sustained itself, but has palpably grown, overtaking more of the country despite a long-term near total blackout by the mainstream media. In fact, this shows the increasing irrelevance of manufactured narratives and political positions, which itself shows Trump’s ability to get people interested and active in politics once again, if only just to vote. While this does say something about the shift in media sources from cable television and newspapers to online platforms, it perhaps says even more about Trump's invigorating persona as the savior of politics and redeemer of America and the American people. In terms of popularity, Trump fills the role of a Caesar more than anyone before, hence the attempt to denigrate him as a “populist.” Simply put, this means he caters to the needs of the people and, more importantly, the people love him for it.

But does this end electoral politics in America? Is the two party system finally destroyed, with Trump and his heirs taking over the system in perpetuity, or will we go back to politics as usual for the next election cycle? He smashed two dynasties, the Clintons and Bush’s, but will he establish his own? And lastly, is any of this enough to believe Trump’s popularity and domination of politics is the harbinger of a coming American empire? A real empire, mind you, not the neoliberal foreign policy of the post-war era, which enriched banks and private companies, but not America as a nation. Only when the extraction of resources from provinces or colonies outside our borders help balance our budget and fund the government will we be an empire proper. So as I said in the previous episode that we may not see Caesar rise on tidal waves of blood like he did in Rome, America’s coming “Imperial” phase may look quite different than that of Rome. It is far too early to make these predictions, though one may find it hard to imagine that we just lived through such a dramatic and final shift.

America already lived through a similar period, known as the Golden Age but also the time of the Robber Barons, during which great men became fabulously wealthy and greatly - though not completely - influenced and shaped the state and culture. Spengler however already identified this period, pointing rather to Cecil Rhodes than any American magnate or oligarch, as a mid-point between Napoleon and the true Caesar. If anything differentiates that period and ours, it's the exhaustion of the culture and the people, who then had not completed the work of building and maintaining institutions, and still had a century of artistic and economic production ahead of them. The Caesar period, according to Spengler, is defined in part by gridlocked institutions, the ubiquitous influence of money in electoral politics, and is of course preceded by decades of major figures like Scipio Africanus, the Gracchi Brothers, Marius, and Sulla, who are not themselves Caesars but signs of power accumulating more and more over time in one figure. Perhaps our once powerful magnates, maligned as “robber barons,” were those nascent figures harkening to one final, all-powerful Caesar. Even now, we are seeing money men arising to play an outsized role in politics and culture, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, and it appears that their role and influence is only going to grow. What we should expect, if we are on Spengler's timeline, is for them to use their influence on the state to direct more of the states revenue to their own businesses and for their interest to begin to overshadow and drown-out the influence of all other figures or groups. One wonders if Trump would’ve changed his tune on H1B if Elon Musk didn’t want it.

Recall the previous essay, wherein I claimed that current events don’t necessarily tell us where the near and long term future are going, they simply give us reason to continue using Spengler as a way to understand the present and the recent past. In so doing, we may also use Spengler to look forward to the future in a broad sense. If time recently seems like it’s been speeding up, with a number of major and consequential events taking place starting with the attempted assassination of Trump, it’s because America has entered back into History. Marc Andreessen said on the Joe Rogan Podcast that when the assassination attempt happened we “jumped timelines,” but I prefer to see it as time “speeding up.” Earlier we said Spengler characterized the time immediately preceding Caesar as consisting of “biological stretches,” as if we’ve reverted back to a state of nature. What he means is that culture is no longer being pulled forward toward its destiny, or propelled as he would say by some “inner necessity,” but is rather languishing as-is. Trump has quite clearly reawakened the dormant or actively suppressed American Spirit, and the opposition to immigration, both legal and illegal, shows that the American people still see themselves as one people within a distinct nation, with a meaning, history, and destiny. Make no mistake, the political struggles of the near term are over who America serves, who its institutions are here to enfranchise, and all power struggles are over who controls them. The American people have nowhere else to look except Donald Trump. The question is if he will continue to serve the interests of the American people and thereby his own grandeur, or if this is only the beginning of a longer power struggle that will ultimately culminate in a true American Empire.

Note on sources: I greatly dislike hyperlinks or endnotes and footnotes, and prefer simply to read through an essay without distraction or interruption. However, it should be noted that the great majority of this essay has been drawn almost exclusively from chapter 1 and 11 of volume 2 of the Decline of the West, as well as the Introduction to Volume 1 (this is true of the previous essay as well) and the charts in the back of Volume 1, with a little influence from The Hour Of Decision, and from Nietzsche in Gay Science.

For the next installment in this series, we will bring in Fracis Parker Yockey and transpose his conceptualization of an Imperium onto current events in America. While I have not tried to argue, nor will I, that Spengler and next, Yockey, have given us a blueprint of what the future will look like - and that blueprint is more or less the past - we can use their terms and concepts to better anticipate what men like Trump, Elon Musk, and others might do with their power, and what the future of western civilization might have in store.