the kind of agreement by virtue of which the just-a-few are united in their possession of power. Their being with one another consists neither in some "sentimental" "camaraderie," nor in being blindly sworn to conspiracy, but rather in that cold distrust from which each watches over the other and in this way binds himself to the other. Such distrust is never nourished by the petty fear of a reduction in one's personal possession of power. It stems from a profound anxiety in the face of any inappropriate disturbance in the empowering of power that could have as its consequence a petrification of power at a level that has already been attained. Such essential anxiety, which, in order truly to be able to be an anxiety, must beforehand already have put behind it any unease concerning the personal fate of the possessors of power, is the fundamental attunement of the just-a-few. Genuine anxiety, which in its many shapes only ever springs from an exposure to beings as such as a whole in each case, can pervasively attune one's stance and comportment only where the latter are thoroughly governed by a daring courage that in turn is not merely summoned up by the strength of personal will but is bequeathed as dowry from out of a directedness into beings as a whole and through the latter. Thus there arises too the non-public namelessness of the just-a-few, a namelessness by virtue of which they are as though they simply were not, belonging to the same directedness into the deployment of power's empowering, a directedness already removed from every choice. Namelessness, however, extends to all essential operations and states of affairs in "communistic" reality. It is thus the reflection of that assimilation of all power relationships into homogeneity. Uniformity alone gives the power of unconditional empowering power over itself. Power "belongs" neither to the "people," nor to an individual, nor even to those just-a-few. Power tolerates no possessors. This unconditional intolerance prevailing in the essence of power's empowering is characteristic of communism. Yet power does not rule for the sake of power, which is to say: for the mere exercise of a force that has just been attained; that always means a relapse into the petrification of a power that in truth remains impotent against the essence of power. Power rules for the sake of empowering itself into its essence, that is, machination. "Communism" is power's permeating beings as such with the empowering of power into machination as power's unconditionally instituting itself upon the previously erected malleability of all beings. "Communism" would be thought in too harmless a manner, were one to abhor it or celebrate it as the monstrous outgrowth of some human addiction, whether to "revenge," or to "happiness," or to mere violence. "Communism" is not at all something "human." "Subhumankind" may be the slave, the "overman" may be the sovereign