On June 25, 1946, one year before his death, the self-proclaimed “Wickedest Man in the World” Aleister Crowley wrote a letter to his literary executor John Symonds in which he described his political outlook as “aristocratic communism,” a seemingly contradictory concept. This had been something which Crowley had been turning over in his head for decades, since as far back as 1917 he wrote in his diary “I have a Socialistic or Anarchistic brain, but an Aristocrat’s heart.” Given these paradoxical leanings, Crowley might be considered as independently arriving at the positions of the Conservative Revolutionaries, a 1920s pre-Nazi German Reactionary movement defined by its opposition to liberalism, social conservatism, democracy, commercialism, and orthodox Marxism and characterized by figures such as Oswald Spengler and Ernst Junger and movements such as the Volkisch movement and the National Bolsheviks. In terms of his views on the fascist movements of the time, Crowley found himself initially fascinated by Fascism and Nazism, only to repudiate the former for its opportunistic abandonment of its anti-clericism. Crowley’s relationship to Nazism would be more complicated, with him believing that his texts had influenced Hitler and the Nazi philosophy. However by the late 1930s he had come to believe that Nazi leadership had misinterpreted his writings and failed to embrace Thelema, and that he found their anti-semitism “unintelligible.” In a deliberately provocative letter to a Nazi-supporting follower in 1939, months before the invasion of Poland, Crowley wrote “Germans are as far below Jews, generally speaking, as monkeys are below men; but I have always been fond of monkeys and do not want to offend them by comparing any German to one.” Come World War II, Crowley would be enthusiastically offering his services to the Allies as an intelligence agent and source of occult consultation, claiming that he had invented the “V sign” used by Winston Churchill as a magical symbol to counter the power of the Nazi Swastika.
In contrast with his attitudes towards the Fascists and the Nazis, Crowley’s attitudes towards the Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet Union were generally more positive. He did not believe that communism would come to dominate the Aeon of Horus, much like he dismissed liberal democracy and fascism, but clearly saw the “anti-Christian” politics of the Soviets as an exciting development which could lead to a spiritual revolution. Aleister Crowley wrote in a letter to his associate, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Communist sympathizer Walter Duranty that he “want[ed] to get the USSR to adopt a state religion,” hopefully including elements of his Thelemic Gnosticism. Of course, this never came to pass, but Crowley’s unusual sympathies towards the Bolsheviks and the fascinating contradictory idea of an “aristocratic communism” leads the author to wonder if there might be any utility to introducing the concept of “aristocracy” to the communist project. Is Crowley’s conception of “aristocratic communism” nothing more than another eclectic third positionism doomed to failure from the start, or can something of use be extracted from the Great Beast 666’s idiosyncratic political musings?
In discussing matters of aristocracy, a distinction must be drawn between the philosophical conception of aristocracy and the context in which the term is usually deployed. Conventionally understood, an aristocracy is a form of hereditary ruling class while the original term referred to the “rule by the excellent.” These two definitions have often been considered complimentary by proponents of reactionary elite rule who either consider certain bloodlines to have been chosen and elevated by divine providence to be best to lead, or that such an institution is best suited to preparing leadership through education for that particular role. However the philosopher and most prominent advocate for aristocratic government in antiquity, Plato, would outline a model distinct from the institution’s later historical form in The Republic using his mentor Socrates as a mouthpiece. Plato’s aristocracy took the form of the rule by “philosopher kings,” who are selected from a young age to undergo extensive education and training to pursue justice with no regard for personal ambition, and who are forbidden from possessing property of their own. It would be necessary that they be selected and trained on the basis of not only their capacity for learning, but also for their ability to love wisdom and justice above all else. Plato’s aristocracy was defined by virtue and knowledge, but they were also defined by their limitations which prevented them from accumulating wealth and bound them to their responsibilities. The philosopher kings of Plato’s Republic are not unfettered, but subordinated to the collective good of the city which they administer.
The goal of a Marxist movement is to install a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the working class are the ruling class, with the ultimate aim of abolishing the class system entirely. The rule of the proletariat over society and the other classes requires the use of an instrument of power and organization to carry out their will and interests, which is where the role of the Party comes in. As the administrators of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the party cadres must be aristocrats in the classical sense, as well suited and prepared to the tasks that they are assigned as possible. A successful revolutionary party requires leadership that exhibits excellence in the ability to absorb and synthesize information for decision-making and to effectively put those decisions into practice, something which can only be achieved through constant contact and consultation with the proletarian and exploited masses. In this sense the Party must serve as both the aristocratic masters who administer the social order and the ochlocratic slaves of the people, an oscillation which requires constant movement between the two roles and for actions to be taken with both in mind. The “professional revolutionary” described by Lenin must aspire to be capable of instructing the masses in the methods of dialectics and class conflict while also serving and attending to the needs of those masses, being instructed by them to further the party’s understanding of the circumstances they face. In this sense the revolutionary must be an aristocrat and philosopher who receives knowledge from the masses and returns it to them as direction towards necessary action.
Amadeo Bordiga, the notorious Marxist thinker and left-communist, would likely denounce this conception of the Party, but at the same time his thought and writings lay out the foundation for it. In his Lyon Theses, Bordiga, while condemning the emergence of elitism within the Communist movement, asserted that “Marxism explains that the leaders in the party itself are given their job because they are considered as instruments and operators who best manifest the capacity to comprehend and explain facts and lead and will action, with such capacities nevertheless maintaining their origin in the existence and character of the collective organ.” This explanation of the role of party leadership captures their twin duties as aristocratic specialists and servants of the people, who are raised to these positions as a result of their experience and accumulated knowledge. Bordiga’s model of organic centralism rejects the “systematic application of the principles of formal democracy” except in as far as it is convenient. Instead, decision making is made on the basis of an informed dialectical and Marxist analysis of the present circumstances to determine the correct course of action “including maximum possible consultation with the base.” From this model, we can understand the Bordigist ideal of the party cadres as “philosophers” in the literal sense: lovers of wisdom, who seek out knowledge as the means to become closer to the Good, in this case the Great Work of Communism. They are chosen for their role not because of popularity within the Party, which can easily lead to the cadres being dominated by opportunism or ultra-leftism, but because of their demonstrated capacity to apply dialectical analysis to whatever new circumstances arise.
A similar, though distinct, approach to the question of party leadership which can inform our understanding of “Aristocratic Communism” is illustrated by Mao Zedong’s organizational method of the Mass Line. The party reaches out to the masses, with the cadres investigating the social problems and struggles which they face and learning about their needs and desires before synthesizing this information through the application of dialectic philosophical analysis to compose solutions and policies that are then implemented and evaluated by the masses for their effectiveness. Under the Mass Line model, the cadres are “aristocrats” by virtue of excellence in Marxist analysis and their ability to be of service to the masses, tying together leadership and subservience into a single role. Furthermore, the cadres are philosophers who love wisdom above all else, as manifests in their duty to seek out knowledge from the masses, apply the methods of philosophy to transform this base knowledge into a plan to shape the future, and then learn from the masses regarding the successes and failures of such a plan. The Maoist ideal of the cadre is in this sense the modern realization of the Platonic Republican model of the society administered by philosophers, where the dialectical method of acquiring knowledge of a higher order is reflected in the organizational method of developing social policy. The philosopher and the cadre alike strive towards achieving excellence, Arete, by allowing themselves to act as a part of a larger whole, in coordination with the masses.
From here we return to Aleister Crowley’s desire for an “Aristocratic Communism,” where what once seemed an impossible contradiction now appears to us as clearly compatible with both the Platonist and Marxist intellectual traditions. The core maxim of Crowley’s belief system, “Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law,” informs our understanding of this proposed social order further. On the surface a declaration of radical individualism, those familiar with Thelema understand that Crowley intends for one to act in accordance with their “True Will,” in which one’s actions are taken in accordance with the path laid out by Nature. In this way one’s “Will” is above an individual’s base desires, and while each person’s True Will may lead them down a different path, ultimately they use the acquisition of wisdom and self-knowledge to lead towards the accomplishment of the Great Work, which Crowley describes as the “uniting of opposites,” where the Self and the Other are brought together. This Hermetic conception of the True Will and the accomplishment of the Great Work found in Thelema and Crowley’s writings is paralleled in the philosophy of Hegel, who was himself informed by Hermeticism and interpreted the unfolding of history as the process of God coming to know Themself through humanity. In turn, Marx applied the Hermetic-Hegelian philosophy to the matter of political economy and the conflict between classes, and Lenin and Mao would carry out the application of these principles in pursuit of reaching this unity of opposites, developing theories of the relationship between the party and the masses derived from experience.
Communism is the Great Work, and the aristocracy are those who are initiated and trained as cadres to carry out the Mass Line, the collective realization of the True Will which unites the dual forces of the Party and the Masses. Aristocratic Communism is the union of opposites, where cadres and masses alike both lead and follow, and the revolutions in Russia and China were the first great strides in the construction of this social order, which is perpetually being refined by capitalist and imperialist antagonisms. Crowley himself recognized this, writing in an undated letter that one should “never forget that Lenin was an aristocrat of aristocrats. He destroyed the so-called Aristocracy of Russia, because they were no aristocrats. They were apes, mocking the aristocratic tradition. Lenin was a King of Men.” Indeed, Lenin was an aristocrat, in the same understanding that Plato had of such a term, and all great revolutionaries are also aristocrats who united leadership and service in their relation to the masses. From this, the aspiring revolutionary must understand that they must strive towards excellence and recognize it in others, that only the accumulation of knowledge through the union of the party and the masses can bring about the accomplishment of our Great Work, and that like Plato’s philosopher kings we must love wisdom and virtue more than wealth, power, and recognition. The true aristocrat follows that Maoist slogan to “serve the people,” and in this way the only true aristocracy is communism.