While researching what others have written regarding Ernst Jünger’s Der Arbeiter, I found out that one of the contributors to the Ernst Jünger Translation Project Substack had recently made a reading list of various works that are either similar to Der Arbeiter or are reviews and commentaries on the work. Looking through them, I can tell that a handful of them are works that I have already read, such as The Failure of Technology, Prussianism and Socialism, Marx’s “Fragment on Machines,” and Blok’s Ernst Jünger’s Philosophy of Technology. There were also the well-known reviews of Der Arbeiter by Niekisch and Evola, both of whom had diametrically opposing perspectives on it. Other than that, several do stand out.
If people do not know by now, then let it be known that I never liked Alexis de Tocqueville, especially after reading Democracy in America, which I felt focused too heavily on the Jeffersonian tendencies that had succeeded in consolidating power at the time of his writing. Even so, there is a chapter from Democracy in America called “How an Aristocracy May Be Created by Manufactures.” The author of the Substack post I am mentioning here referred to it as “‘How Industry Could Give Rise to an Aristocracy.’” In that chapter, de Tocqueville described how American manufacturing, originally a Hamiltonian venture, was cultivating an “Aristocratic Democracy” comparable to the one described by Jüngerin Der Arbeiter and “Total Mobilization”:
“As the conditions of men constituting the nation become more and more equal, the demand for manufactured commodities becomes more general and extensive, and the cheapness that places these objects within the reach of slender fortunes becomes a great element of success. Hence there are every day more men of great opulence and education who devote their wealth and knowledge to manufactures and who seek, by opening large establishments and by a strict division of labor, to meet the fresh demands which are made on all sides. Thus, in proportion as the mass of the nation turns to democracy, that particular class which is engaged in manufactures becomes more aristocratic. Men grow more alike in the one, more different in the other; and inequality increases in the less numerous class in the same ratio in which it decreases in the community. Hence it would appear, on searching to the bottom, that aristocracy should naturally spring out of the bosom of democracy.
But this kind of democracy by no means resembles those kinds which preceded it. It will be observed at once that, as it applies exclusively to manufactures and to some manufacturing callings, it is a monstrous exception in the general aspect of society. The small aristocratic societies that are formed by some manufacturers in the midst of the immense democracy of our age contain, like the great aristocratic societies of former ages, some men who are very opulent and a multitude who are wretchedly poor. The poor have few means of escaping from their condition and becoming rich, but the rich are constantly becoming poor, or they give up business when they have realized a fortune. Thus the elements of which the class of poor is composed are fixed, but the elements of which the class of the rich is composed are not so. To tell the truth, though there are rich men, the class of rich men does not exist; for these rich individuals have no feelings or purposes, no traditions or hopes, in common; there are individuals, therefore, but no definite class.”
In essence, the emergence of the State of Total Mobilization has yielded not only the erasure of older notions of Aristocracy and Democracy, it has also given birth to more appropriate conceptions of both. In Der Arbeiter, this relationship is best described by Jünger as “Work-Democracy,” which is in many respects a comparable analogue to the sort of Council Democracy described in The Work-Standard (3rd Ed.) or The Third Place (1st Ed.). But instead of Social Rank being defined in terms of how much Kapital someone has, everyone’s Social Rank will be determined based on how much Arbeit they contribute to the Life-Energy Reserve. That is why Arbeit is given so much importance than Kapital, especially when the latter relies heavily on its distinct conceptions of Technology to eliminate the former in order to further its own interests.
There are two more essays from Jünger that I would like to investigate further at some point: “The Machine” and “Maxima-Minima.” The former is a sort of precursor to Der Arbeiter like “Total Mobilization,” whereas the latter is a post-1945 series of notations that Jünger made for later editions of Der Arbeiter. The most recent release of Der Arbeiter from 2017 does include some of Jünger’s notations, but I have a feeling that there had to have been others, otherwise An die Zeitmauer would not have been considered as a respectable sequel to Der Arbeiter.
Without going into specifics, An die Zeitmauer delves into the question of whether there will be an end to Modernity as far as the State of Total Mobilization is concerned. If the State of Total Mobilization does not lead to humanity’s destruction through Climate Change, nuclear war or other some technological-related catastrophe, then it will undergo a transformation signaling the true end of Modernity as we know it. Only then can one speak of a genuine “Postmodernity.”
Additionally, two works from Carl Schmitt stand out. “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations” was a 1929 essay that Schmitt wrote to describe the epoch of the 20th century in connection with the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. In the 20th century as well as in previous ones, Schmitt directed the reader’s attention toward Russia and its relationship with Europe and Technology. Since I have not read much beyond the Abstract, I cannot comment on it further.
The other notable work from Schmitt is “Hegel and Marx,” a 1931 radio broadcast that has since been translated into English. In it, Schmitt raised the question of exactly how much of Hegelian philosophy went on to influence aspects of Marxist Theory, and in particular whether Marxist Theory deviated from Hegelian philosophy even as it conceptualized its own ideas (i.e. “Historical Materialism,” “Dialectical Materialism,” and so forth). Schmitt’s analysis is a discussion about why Marx (and to a lesser extent, Engels) was more concerned about identifying the Bourgeoisie and Liberal Capitalism than outlining the alternatives to it for the Proletariat. Marxist Theory in this sense is more about understanding the here and now, the present Liberal Capitalist Parliamentary Democratic reality, instead of striving toward the hereafter, which is the onset of Socialism and eventually Communism.
Everything else is some obscure essays and fictional works from the 19th and 20th centuries that delve into some aspect of the State of Total Mobilization as it emerged. The ones that I would like to eventually read at some point are Nikolai Berdyaev’s “The Bourgeois Mind,” Andrei Platonov’s The Foundation Pit, and George Orwell’s The Road To Wigan Pier. Whenever I get a chance to read those works, I might write a follow up or two.
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