procedure. Only the few guarantee the unbounded and secure character of the most inconspicuous implementation of power. This way of proceeding is metaphysically determined, spurred on and stirred up solely by being's abandonment, unrecognizable as such, of all beings. Only through such a fewb can the agreement be secured in an unconditional and uncompromised way, that "welfare," partaking in the advances made by culture, the elimination of distinctions of class and profession, and treating governed and "governors" as equal are merely pretexts for the "people," before which the "people" stand entranced and thus cannot at all strive to see beyond them into that which alone is: the power of the few. Once more: It is not that these few are the possessors of power, but rather that their "resoluteness" alone everywhere maintains the unimpeachable priority of the complete power of institutions over against every attempt at independent insight or assertion of the will on the part of individuals or groups.c
The despotism of the few does not, therefore, have its grounds in the personal lust for power on the part of individual "subjects"; rather, the latter are for their part, and without their knowing it, merely exploited as the bearers and "place holders" of the unconditional empowering of pure power with the single goal of letting power install itself in its own institutions and securing for it the status of what is truly real. Whoever speaks of "materialism" here attests only to how much representation is still left clinging to the scraps that one or other school of thought has thrown out there for the "people." This "materialism" is "spiritual" in the highest sense, so decisively that the consummation of the essence of spirit belonging to Western metaphysics must be recognized in it.d Lenin knew this clearly. And this is why the "danger" of communism does not consist in its economic and social consequences; it consists, rather, in the fact that its spiritual essence, its essence as spirit, is not recognized, and the debate is placed on a level that entirely ensures the supreme power of communism and the inability to resist it.e The historical power of communism and its proper essencef as oligarchic Soviet power is the simplest and most compelling counter-proof against the allegedly Nietzschean doctrines, propagated
b. Trs.: The few and the non-public most sheerly related to publicness. How! Why this. The non-public as form of power. In its form inconspicuously thrust [?] upon the habitual-the grand slogans-the invention of names.
c. Trs.: Concerning Russia-few know-even if more familiar, no longer to be known!
d. Trs.: Essence.
e. Trs.: This sounds as though it could still be stopped and turned back.
f. Trs.: Its spiritual essence stymies decisions.