The first keyword, I argued, was to be counter-revolution. Leaving aside the broader horizons mentioned in Revolt Against the Modern World, in Men Among the Ruins I described the preliminary, practical duty of those men who remained standing (among the ruins, as it were) in terms of an integral and uncompromising rejection of all the ideologies borne of the French Revolution. The liberal revolution, after all represented the starting point of the latest phase in the crises of Europe: having engendered the democratic revolution, it had paved the way for socialism and Communism. No compromise, in this respect, was to be made. In the face of the increasing insolence and arrogance of the forces of subversion, I invoked the intellectual and physical courage of labelling oneself a 'reactionary': a charge which all the petty politicians of Italy feared – including those belonging to so-called Right wing parties.
Naturally, the reaction I invoked had nothing to do with the kind of reaction which serves as a handy pretext for our enemies: for it had nothing to do with the interests of an economic class and with the capitalist Right. The reaction I had in mind was rather that of a political and aristocratic Right, which would regard any form of power derived from the mere possession of wealth as an act of usurpation and subversion. Counter-revolution I defined not on the basis of material interests but of ideals. With the rejection of progressive social myths, I argued, fundamental ideals would emerge which possessed an immutable normative value for all social and political organisations of a superior kind. In a similar way, I suggested, Vico had spoken of 'the natural laws of an eternal republic which takes on various forms at different times and in different places'. — Julius Evola, The Path of Cinnabar, Integral Tradition Publishing, 2009, p. 188-189, Chapter XIII, In Search of Men Among the Ruins
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A further distinguishing trait of the true state, I argued, is its organic unity. For the true state exists as an organic whole comprised of distinct elements, and embracing partial unities, each possesses a hierarchically ordered life of its own. At the basis of the true state, therefore, lie the values of quality, of just inequality and of personality: the fundamental principle of such a state being the Classical principle of suum cuique ('to each his own and to each his own rights' in accordance with natural dignity). Hence the sharp contrast between the organic state and the totalitarian: for the latter necessarily expresses a leveling, despotic and mechanistic kind of unity. The totalitarian state derives from the individualistic corrosion of the organic state: for once individualism has freed each person from what links him to higher powers, once 'freedom and equality' have destroyed all hierarchies, and a shapeless multitude has emerged amid a chaotic array of separate interests and forces – each aiming to gain ascendancy by all possible means; in such a context, the violence of 'totalitarianism' acts as desperate means to impose some sort of external order by establishing a system which, nevertheless, stands as the materialist counterfeit of organic unity. I here recorded how the very process, which only recently unfolded on a vast scale, had already been recorded by Tacitus in exact terms: 'To overturn the state (i.e., the genuine, organic traditional state), they talk of freedom; once freedom will have been attained, this, too, they will attack.' Likewise, Plato had observed that: 'Tyranny is borne and takes hold from no other political system but democracy, which is to say that from extreme freedom, the most unmitigated and harsh slavery arises.' I shall add one final quotation, taken from Vico: 'Men first desire freedom of the body, then freedom of character – which is to say freedom of conscience (the "immortal principles") – and wish to be equal to others; then they wish to dominate their equals; and finally, to trample on their superiors'. — Julius Evola, The Path of Cinnabar, Integral Tradition Publishing, 2009, p. 190-191, Chapter XIII, In Search of Men Among the Ruins* Giambattista Vico (1668-1774) is a Neapolitan philosopher who is best known for his book, The New Science, in which he outlined a cyclical theory of civilisations as progressing through three ages: the divine, the heroic, and the human age, which closely resembles traditional doctrines of history.
