Alain de Benoist Constantly described as a “prophet of decline,” Oswald Spengler deserves to be read today before all as the author of a deeply original philosophy of history, which perhaps doesn't permit us to automatically predict the future (how would that be possible?) but which, by helping to better understand the past, also clarifies our present. From the introduction to issue number 59 of the magazine Nouvelle Ecole. Likewise, when he advocates “Prussianism”28, Spengler is firstly referring to a style – the ethics of duty, based on active impersonality and the sense of honor – and not to a historical belonging or birthplace. In this sense he also contrasts “ethical socialism,” of a “Roman – Prussian” (römisch-preußisch) character, to “economic socialism,” that is to say Marxism, which is only a “capitalism from below” (Kapitalismus von unten). The “Prussian Socialism” which he advocated is a socialism of duty, not a socialism of demands. It is not so much an economic doctrine as it is a style of life, based before all on service and conduct, the impersonal style and the spirit of community. For individuals as for peoples, it's about putting oneself “into form” by aligning with a principle. But, internal liberty is only attained in discipline and service: “Such is our freedom: it's what frees us from the yoke of individualism and its arbitrary economics”29. Prussian socialism must be carried by the Faustian soul's will to power, which seeks to shape the masses in order to give them a style. Thus for Spengler Prussia is an ideological “myth” more than a historical reality: there are “Prussians” everywhere. It's on this basis that Spengler denounces liberalism (“the internal England”) and capitalism (“the domination of money”): “Everyone for himself, that's what is English; everyone for all, that's what is Prussian” (“Jeder für sich: das ist english; alle für alle: das ist preußisch”)30. But it's also why certain left wing authors constantly represent “Prussian socialism” as a simple form of imperialism that only attacks finance capitalism in order to preserve the privileges of industrial capitalism, without seeing that the latter is no less exploitative and predatory than the other31. To which Spengler retorts that its Marxism instead that hasn't sufficiently distanced itself from the economistic foundations of liberal capitalism, the proof being that “the great movement which makes use of Marx's phraseology hasn't delivered the entrepreneur into the worker's power, but has delivered both to the power of the Stock Exchange”32. * https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/oswald-spengler-introduction