Spenglerism

Spenglerism is a conservative philosophy that rejected both liberalism and marxism as Spengler had considered them to be both based on the english spirit which was opposed to the german spirit. Spengler advocated that both german conservatives and german (non-communist) socialist must cooperate against the weimar republic. Spengler also advocated for a new system which can be summarized as a socialist-corporatist nationalist-militarist state under a authoritarian Prussian monarchy.

Cultures/Civilizations
Spenglerism using the two terms in a specific manner, loading them with particular values. For him, Civilization is what a Culture becomes once its creative impulses wane and become overwhelmed by critical impulses. Culture is the becoming, Civilization is the thing become. Rousseau, Socrates, and Buddha each mark the point where their Cultures transformed into Civilization. They each buried centuries of spiritual depth by presenting the world in rational terms—the intellect comes to rule once the soul has abdicated.

Spenglerism classifies eight Hochkulturen or high cultures have existed: Babylonian, Egyptiac, Indic, Sinic, Mesoamerican (Mayan/Aztec), Apollonian or Classical (Greek/Roman), Magian or Arabian, and Faustian or Western (European).

Pseudomorphosis
The concept of pseudomorphosis is one that Spenglerism borrows from mineralogy and is introduced as a way of explaining what he calls half-developed or only partially manifested Cultures. Specifically, pseudomorphosis refers to an older Culture or Civilization being so deeply ingrained that a young Culture cannot find its own form and full expression of itself. In Spengler's words, this leads to the young soul being cast in the old molds, young feelings then stiffen in senile practices, and instead of expanding creatively, it fosters hate toward the older Culture.

Spenglerism believed that a Magian pseudomorphosis began with the Battle of Actium, in which the gestating Arabian Culture was represented by Mark Antony and lost to the Classical Civilization. The battle was different from the conflict between Rome and Greece, which had been fought out at Cannae and Zama, with Hannibal being the representative of Hellenism. He said that Antony should have won at Actium, and his victory would have freed the Magian Culture, but his defeat imposed Roman Civilization on it.

In Russia, Spengler saw a young, undeveloped Culture in a pseudomorphosis under the Faustian form. He said that Peter the Great distorted the tsarism of Russia to the dynastic form of Western Europe. The burning of Moscow, as Napoleon was set to invade, he described as a primitive expression of hatred toward the foreigner. In the following entry of Alexander I into Paris, the Holy Alliance and the Concert of Europe, he said that Russia was forced into an artificial history before its culture was ready or capable of understanding its burden. This would result in a hatred toward Europe, which Spengler said poisoned the womb of an emerging new Culture in Russia. While he does not name the Culture, he said that Tolstoy is its past and Dostoyevsky is its future.

Democracy, media and money
Spengler said that democracy is the political weapon of "money", and the media are the means through which money operates a democratic political system. The penetration of money's power throughout a society is described as another marker of the shift from Culture to Civilization.

Democracy and plutocracy are equivalent in Spengler's argument, and he said the "tragic comedy of the world-improvers and freedom-teachers" is that they are simply assisting money to be more effective. He believed that the principles of equality, natural rights, universal suffrage, and freedom of the press are all disguises for class war of the bourgeois against the aristocracy. Freedom, to Spengler, is a negative concept, only entailing the repudiation of any tradition. He said that freedom of the press requires money, and entails ownership, meaning that it serves money. Similarly, since suffrage involves electoral campaigns, which involve donations, elections serve money as well. Spengler said that the ideologies espoused by candidates, whether Socialism or Liberalism, are set in motion by, and ultimately serve, only money.

Spengler said that in his era money has already won, in the form of democracy. However, he said that in destroying the old elements of the Culture, it prepares the way for the rise of a new and overpowering figure, who he calls the Caesar. Before such a leader, money collapses, and in the Imperial Age the politics of money fades away.

Spengler said that the use of one's constitutional rights requires money, and that voting can only work as designed in the absence of organized leadership working on the election process. He said that if the election process is organized by political leaders, to the extent that money allows, the vote ceases to be truly significant. In his view, it is no more than a recorded opinion of the masses on the organizations of government over which they possess no positive influence. He said that the greater the concentration of wealth in individuals, the more the fight for political power revolves around questions of money. He believed that this was the necessary end of mature democratic systems, rather than being corruption or degeneracy.

On the subject of the press, Spengler said that instead of conversations between men, the press and the "electrical news-service keep the waking-consciousness of whole people and continents under a deafening drum-fire of theses, catchwords, standpoints, scenes, feelings, day by day and year by year." He said that money uses the media to turn itself into force—the more spent, the more intense its influence. In addition, a functioning press requires universal education, and he said schooling leads to a demand for the shepherding of the masses, which then becomes an object of party politics. To Spengler, people who believe in the ideal of education prepare the way for the power of the press, and eventually for the rise of the Caesar. He also said there is no longer a need for leaders to impose military service, because the press will stir the public into a frenzy and force their leaders into a conflict.

Spengler believed that the only force which can counter money is blood. He said that Marx's critique of capitalism was put forth in the same language and on the same assumptions as capitalism, meaning it is more a recognition of capitalism's veracity, than a refutation. He said the only aim of Marxism is to "confer upon objects the advantage of being subjects."

Prussian Socialism
Spenglerism rejected both marxism and capitalism which he saw as both being based on the English spirit which was based on money and was antithetical to the German spirit which was based on money and instead promoted a form of socialism based on the German spirit.