Slave Morality Kicks the Ass of Master Morality: stupid Nietzsche again

When I started this blog my first post was a somewhat strident entry on why I hate Nietzsche.  In retrospect, it was probably not the most logical choice for my first blog-post, but since I was my blog's only reader at the time, and was under the impression that this would be the normative state of affairs forever, I just wrote a quick rant to try out the space.  (Also in retrospect, I should have thought more clearly about the name and url of the blog rather than, in my typical slap-dash manner, just throwing something together randomly.)  Apparently my sloppily written rant about Nietzsche has annoyed at least one reader who felt the need, like a first year philosophy student, to "correct" my understanding with a rather typical pro-Nietzschean response in that entry's comment string.

Although I do not feel the need to write a prolonged and devastating critique of every aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy now or ever (I have better things to do with my time), I was reminded of my sloppy rant today when, yet again, curriculum requirements in one of my classes caused me to teach Nietzsche.  [An aside for all you Nietzscheans who think my anti-Nietzsche sentiments render me incapable of teaching your beloved philosopher: I know his work well enough, unfortunately, to have accidentally convinced a former student (much to my chagrin) that I loved Nietzsche––and I really should self-criticize for that!]

In any case, what I want to discuss here is the problem that lurked behind my old rant, a long-standing frustration that provoked me to write it in the first place.  That is, I am less concerned with Nietzsche's philosophy than the fact that there are leftists who are under the impression that Nietzschean philosophy can be congruent with their progressive political commitments.  If anything, the critical (but predictable) comment on the original post demonstrated that Nietzsche lacked, at least in the mind of the commenter, this congruency––the implicit point behind that old post, the reason it was written to begin with.

I am not arguing that there are things we cannot learn from Nietzsche.  As I think I indicated in that strident post, I am sympathetic to Adorno and Horkheimer's reading of Nietzsche as an auto-critique of the European Enlightenment project.  What I am arguing, however, is that Nietzsche's ultimate philosophical commitments––and I apologize if this offends lazy readers who think he lacks any philosophical coherence––are utterly opposed to any progressive project and that, on the political spectrum, Nietzsche is the antithesis of Marx.  This is a fact that all anti-capitalists, all people who care about solidarity and liberation, need to take seriously.  Even if you are a social anarchist who rejects the trajectory of marxism, you should at least be suspicious of a philosopher who is politically the diametrical opposite of Marx––especially since Marx, regardless of the faults you wish to ascribe to him, did care about human solidarity, whereas Nietzsche (and this is the logic that runs through his entire work) rejected human solidarity as the basis for progress.

It is clear that Nietzsche despised the Paris Commune and the emergent Womens Movement, citing both as instances of "slave morality."  Rather than dismiss his rejection of liberatory and egalitarian struggle as unfortunate, though, we need to understand that this rejection is a symptom of his philosophical position. Throughout his work Nietzsche contrasts "slave morality" with "master morality."  The former deals with "good and evil" and the latter with the aesthetic judgment of "good and bad."  Historical progress, which Nietzsche celebrates as exploitation, is only possible through the morality of the masters, the enlightened few who are held back by the slavish masses.

We need to understand that Nietzsche is not arguing that "slave morality" is simply some sort of product of oppression and exploitation––his theory of ressentiment is not the same as a false consciousness where the oppressed accepts the ruling ideas of the ruling classes.  Rather, ressentiment (resentful self-hatred) is the very act of egalitarian thinking, of putting others before oneself ("good") and despising selfishness ("evil"), because solidarity and egalitarianism are in themselves weak, slavish, bovine, and herd-like.  Thus, solidarity movements to overthrow oppression are, in Nietzsche's worldview, intrinsically slavish and demonstrate this ressentiment––they are against life itself rather than, as those of us who believe in mass movements would hold, instances of human liberation.  So his argument about "slave morality" is not at all akin to marxist arguments about workers whose consciousness is not yet for-itself and who collaborate with the bosses, or akin to anti-racist arguments made by Malcolm X about house slave consciousness.  Nietzsche is arguing that mass movements that seek to overthrow oppressive structures are, in themselves, slavish.

Historical progress, which Nietzsche celebrates as exploitation, is only possible through the morality of the masters, the enlightened few who are often held back by the herd.  The greatest ideas, he argues, come from those individuals who are able to rise above the herd, ignore the "slave morality" that values being kind to others, and distinguish their individual master morality.

And yet Nietzsche's division between master and slave morality, the comparison he makes of different perspectives, is oddly in accordance with certain historical materialist approaches to morality… except that he reverses the value equation.  In Anti-Duhring, for example, Engels speaks of two moralities, one for the bourgeoisie and one for the proletariat, and argues that peoples' individual moralities are connected to class perspective.  Unlike Nietzsche, however, Engels holds that the master morality is inferior and in the way of human progress.  Similarly, in the Chinese Revolution, contra the Nietzschean position, the revolutionaries often spoke of how historical progress was made by the slaves and never by the masters; the masters were ultimately parasites, their existence as masters (along with the morality they developed) dependent on those deemed slaves.  We could also cite the Spanish Revolution and the anarchist maxim "No Gods, No Masters"––a statement that only the first half would be agreeable to Nietzsche.

This Nietzschean philosophy is evident in libertarian elegies to individual merit.  In Ayn Rand's odious Atlas Shrugged (that is now, unfortunately, about to be released as a film), society is made mundane, and historical progress halted, due to the intervention of the state on behalf of the herd.  Heroic individuals, who are uncompromising in their selfish master morality, are being brought low by the common and slavish masses.  Thus the visionary protagonist, John Galt, devises a capitalist/intellectual bizarro-strike where the special and unique individuals, the great men, disappear from society and thus prove that it is the masters who make history.  The herd, possessed by slavish morality of collectivism and unionism, can do nothing but produce a stagnant society, Rand argues, and progress can only be assured by those individuals who make themselves great––who do not have to suffer under the morality of the slaves.

Clearly Rand's proposition is ludicrous for anyone who considers hirself a proper progressive: this is capitalist pseudo-radicalism that imagines workers need capitalists when the opposite, as every strike and mass movement proves, is the historical truth.  (Rand also assumes that without state intervention on behalf of the collectivist herd, capitalism will flourish––a position that remains blind to every state intervention on behalf of capitalism, every redistribution of profit for the wealthy, every military adventure to preserve the world market, and every global institution that exists to ensure that capitalism will continue to function.)

But Rand's story of John Galt is simply a rearticulation of Nietzsche's beloved master morality and it is a terrible mistake to ignore the parallels.  Yes, I agree that it is not fair to accept Rand's reading of Nietzsche as authoritative… but after a while, when every libertarian ever continues to cite Nietzsche as the reason s/he's a libertarian, we should begin to wonder whether the correlation is telling us something.

When Nietzsche claims that the problem with society, the malaise that holds back the strong, is slave morality, we cannot simply dismiss what this implies by arguing (as some have) that he is being "ironic" and "satirical."  Why not assume that Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman are being ironic as well?  In order to take Nietzsche seriously as a philosopher, and not someone who spent his entire life being a vague satirist, we have to accept his position on master versus slave morality.  For if he was just a stairist, then his philosophy would not have inspired so much veneration; nor would he be a very good satirist considering that satire requires a certain level of focus to make the satire dissimilar from what is being satirized.  If there is any satire in Nietzsche it is the same satire that can be found in right-wing pundits: unintentional self-satire.

Nietzsche's philosophy is that of an extreme capitalist, and sometimes of an extreme aristocrat, who believes that history is made by great men (and perhaps great women if we grant that, as some desperately argue, he was not a misogynist) and not by the masses.  He argues for the coming of the ubermensch, the truly excellent individual, and refuses to see that those who would call themselves ubermensch, who claim to exist beyond the "good and evil" of slave morality, are nothing more than parasites, the fetters of progress.