Orthocracy

Right Rule

Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash

It might be overly ambitious, even pretentious for me to attempt to create a political framework with an unique name. It would even be so if I was not a relative newcomer to the Scene. After developing it for more than a year and discussing it with several acquaintances, I have chosen to finally publicise it, in the hope that it will pollinate the minds of those looking for a common denominator within the traditionalist faction of the Dissident Right.

In the stead of two draft Manifestos that are yet to be reworked into a final version, I have decided to create a more academic introduction. While the project is undoubtedly conceived as a Russian and Orthodox one, I hope that someday it can serve to generalise the very ideologies that it draws from. Therefore, I will attempt to describe it in more general terms, as a template that can be modified and adapted to the needs of any Western nation. The adherents of many historical reactionary, integral and traditional movements will hopefully find in this term a way to describe the similarities between their beliefs.

Indeed, it can not be the vocation of a Traditionalist to simply conjure something from nothing. Rather, the following is an attempt at a synthesis between various historical and modern attempts at express what the True Right is.

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What is Orthocracy?

First and foremost, Orthocracy, or ὀρθοκρατία, is what it literally means: Right Rule, or the Rule of the Righteous, or Correct Rule. To politics it is what Orthodoxy is to faith. This is not a coincidence, for Orthocracy takes the worldly role in the Byzantine concept of Symphonia.

Orthocracy is the political expression of Christianity, it is the mode of government that submits itself to the Supreme Kingship of God, seeking to create a state following Natural Law, which is the Law created by God. Orthocracy aims to be, as compelled by its name, the most Right-wing form of thought possible. Orthocracy is the absolute and total negation of modernity and its products such as democracy, liberalism, rationalism, humanism, false “conservatism”, socialism, egalitarianism, and progressivism. This obviously makes it radical, which does not mean that it can not, at times, find a synthesis between two seemingly contradictory positions on the Right. What is right and Right is Orthocratic, by definition.

Orthocracy differs from other forms of government by having a clear purpose, a telos that is transcendental and not materialist. That purpose is to Save human beings, to bring them to Heaven and prevent them from being condemned to Hell. It does so by spreading the Good News, promoting Virtue and suppressing Vice, and compelling a Biblical life. The purpose of the Orthocratic state is identical to the purpose of the Church, it can be said to be the army and navy of the Church, without necessarily being a theocracy in the narrow sense. The Orthocratic state’s greatest enemy is Satan, and it finds itself in a constant war with him.

The Orthocratic Telos is superior to any worldly goals. There may be disagreements among the wise over how to achieve Salvation, how to live a life that makes the Lord happy, but there can be no disagreement over the fact that society must seek Salvation by any means possible. All elements of society must work together for this purpose, led by the most virtuous among themselves, and there can be no tolerance for those who do not want to be Saved and want a life of sin and degeneracy. Orthocracy rejects the left-wing conception of Freedom which means the freedom to sin and to offend the Lord. The Orthocratic state is built around the three truths of the Right, namely, our Inequality, Imperfection and Inferiority to God. In Orthocracy, Freedom is the insecurity that arises from our inferiority to God, it is the search for the most virtuous of all paths. It is a necessary evil, and we must seek to reduce, not to extend it. There is far less freedom in Heaven because those who live there are much closer to God and, due to their different form of existence, can comprehend His will much more precisely.

Orthocracy gives the virtuous, who are more likely to choose a more virtuous path, responsibility over the lives of the less virtuous. The Christian state is a paternal state, a pastoral state, and, necessarily, a total state.

Orthocracy is a Regime of Virtue, in which the virtuous are provided with optimal conditions to multiply their virtue and to share it with others. However, it is not a giant monastery. Not all men are ordained to forsake the world completely. God commands us to be fruitful and multiply. Orthocracy does not negate Vitalism; and while the state must support monastics who have chosen to forsaken the world to seek a closer bond to the Lord even in this life, to conquer the world and seek knowledge and power is the foundation of life for most of humanity, and it is necessary to spread the Good News and enforce virtue. Morality, a part of Natural Law, serves to constrain vitality wherever it can have negative effects, while encouraging anything that is positive and promotes the spiritual and physical well-being of the people. We are also commanded to preserve God’s Creation over which we are given stewardship, which means that true vitalism may never contradict nature and degrade into the pursuit of technologies that would eventually strip us of our humanity, but always remain conscious of the natural environment.

The foundation of the Orthocratic state is the family, formed by a man and a woman who submits to him in marriage and their children. The formation of a family is the way in which humans naturally reproduce. The recognition of the family’s importance allows us to think in generations. There is nothing more antithetical to Orthocracy than the chauvinism of the present which negates the past and the future. The Great Chain of Being stretches into time, and every one of us is but a link in this chain. Crucial to the achievement of Orthocracy is the ability to extend one’s time horizon beyond one’s own life: most truly great things require many generations to create.

The entire State is, most obviously, a family unto itself. On the one hand, it means that the complementary roles of the sexes must apply to the political order as well and that it is generally the men of a society who shall lead it. On the other hand, it also tells us which form of state is the most Godly and natural one.

In almost all cases, a nation is healthiest and happiest when it lives under a hereditary monarchy. Divergence from monarchy makes it harder to achieve Orthocracy. Only a King who rules for life and is compelled to be a steward of the state to preserve it for his own descendants and those of his subjects can be a true pater patriae. Furthermore, the principle of inequality commands us to have a clear hierarchy, and only a monarch who is accountable to God for the entire state can be the capstone of such a hierarchy. The State is embodied by his person. The King is not a tyrant and relies on the expertise of the estates to run his Realm, but it is he who is directly invested with power by the Grace of God and it is from him that all power must flow to the organs, bodies and institutions which require it. The State has no citizens but Subjects - subjects of the King, who obey God in obeying him. Every person who belongs to the Orthocratic state knows that he is a tool of God, with a distinct role and purpose.

The recognition of inequality means that different groups of people require different privileges, obligations and responsibilities to function and live faithfully. Intermediate, organic bodies that stand between individuals and families on the one hand and the State on the other hand fulfill this need. This is not limited to the various administrative levels of government, but also includes corporations such as guilds, associations of landowners and certain professions, universities, charities, and of course the most important entity of them all, the Church, which both stands beside the State to serve as its conscience and is integrated into it in all places. Families themselves are of course also intermediate bodies, especially if they are larger - Orthocracy must recognise and encourage for family consciousness to extend far beyond the nuclear family. If the State is Imperial, i.e. consists of more than one Nation, specific institutions must be provided to every nation, for their unique conditions, temperaments, traditions, cultures and languages may require different approaches in governing them.

The subjects of the State are organised into Estates according to their social position and professions, with membership being hereditary, to promote the accumulation of traits beneficial specifically to a certain position in society over time. The highest Estate beneath the King is the nobility, and it provides leadership to all other Estates and bodies. Nobles combine in themselves good stock, intelligence and virtue, the qualities necessary to serve and lead wherever they might be of use to the State. Social mobility must be constrained not only by strict selection but also by the recognition of the fact that every new ennoblement can potentially mean the loss of a good peasant or burgess. Excellence in one estate does not necessarily, in itself, mean that a person would be similarly excellent if he were promoted to a higher one.

A landed nobility compartamentalises and territorialises the monarchy. By cultivating a virtuous noble class and giving noble families communities to govern, the State contributes to the enforcement of virtue on all levels of society. The larger the State is, the more complex is the noble hierarchy. Nobles who do not own land can nevertheless serve their King in the army, discharge various bureaucratic functions, open a business, or, if they feel such a calling, join the clergy. The nobility shall be the vehicle through which the state promotes Godly aesthetics, art and beauty, for with virtue come good manners.

If the nobility fulfills its obligations, its inferiors will submit to it faithfully, knowing that cooperation between the classes leads to the best outcomes for all both in the material and the spiritual sphere. Control over the nobility is achieved by the King who is the source of its condition, not through democratic means which are nothing but a hierarchic inversion that lets commoners and their more base desires hold their betters hostage. It is the privilege, or rather the mandate, of every well-born person to show his inferiors their place should the Enemy attempt to sow revolution. Just as the King, every noble Lord is a father to his people, and a father must be ready to be harsh when it is necessary for the well-being of the child.

Crimes must be dealt with severely and this must also extend to acts that are seemingly victimless. Any sin, any form of degeneracy is a crime against God, and to punish it, to subject the transgressor to Earthly suffering purifies his soul and helps him obtain the virtue needed for Salvation. In fighting against the forces of Satan, the Christian state must relentlessly fight against sin. The death penalty is Biblical and just and the State must be ready to apply it, not only when a person is dangerous to others, but also when his soul is so damaged that any continuation of his existence would only corrupt it even more and give more time to Satan to attempt to capture it.

Well-meant but false deference towards one’s subjects can have more grave results than virtuous force. It is through faithful prayer, petitions and the interventions of higher bodies and ultimately the King that real grievances can be addressed. Acceptance of hardships and punishments in this world purifies the soul and thus benefits the recipient greatly. The importance of forgiveness is no reason to jeopardise the administration of justice.

Placement in an Orthocratic hierarchy means submission to those who are higher and leadership of those who are lower. There is no human without superiors and inferiors. Even the basest and most destitute members of society who lead no other men still take part in humanity’s command over nature and are stewards of the world. And the King is beneath God and answers to Him even though on Earth all in the State is under his command. To stand in a hierarchy means to receive virtue, to learn what acts are just, from above, and to spread this knowledge.

Law must codify this knowledge. True, natural law can not be made, it was created by God and can only be discovered and then applied to the realities of our environment. If God created everything, then how can there be a difference between the laws of Physics and the Ten Commandments? God decreed not to commit adultery, and He also decreed that the Earth pulls things down and that e=mc². The junction between Nature, Law and Faith is Tradition. Apart from the Word of God itself, Tradition is the most organic and natural expression of humanity’s Creation and what makes a life virtuous and just. A longstanding tradition is the product of slow discovery, it is revealed to a civilisation through generations and generations of trial and error, through instincts that are aspects of our nature. Written laws made by men can only approximate natural law because we are imperfect and inferior to God. The most virtuous, those who are more able and closer to God, can comprehend natural law better and should be given the responsibility of translating it into human laws.

It is through just rulers that Divine Providence is enacted. Orthocracy’s absolute rejection of democracy serves to protect humanity from inferior lawmakers who do not obey God and thus make laws that cannot be derived from any natural, Biblical principle and are thus unjust. Lay lawmakers who stand in the world but are advised at all times by the Church which may also send some of its representatives into the government directly are able to balance various worldly needs in such a way that virtue is gained. The gravest crime of the revolutionaries of our history is perhaps not even their assault on the monarchy and their attempt to install a democracy, but the separation between church and state, which cripples a nation in the same way as separation between the two halves of the brain cripples a man.

The greatest expression in which the relationship between the various levels of being as applied by the State can be subsumed is Count Uvarov’s Triad of Official Nationalism: Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality. It perfectly embodies how power flows down from God (Orthodoxy) to the ruler (Autocracy) and finally, to the State’s organic institutions, families and only finally every subject (Nationality). Note that the order is not coincidental. The Revolution, showing its Satanic character, inverted it, placing the individual at the base, the elected and thus defective government second and God last. The supremacy of the Divine as expressed in the three Truths of the Right is the central part of Orthocracy, it is reflected in the various hierarchies that form the Great Chain of Being which, if worldly, are linked to God through the King. The Triad can also be mapped onto the minimal, simplest order of human estates: Clergy, Nobility and Commoners.

Uvarov’s torch would be taken up by Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Ivan Ilyin and Lev Tikhomirov. These are only some of the many great Russian Reactionary thinkers. Any successful Russian restorationist movement must find to Orthocracy through them and continue their tradition.

However, there is also much wisdom to be found in the West, in the works of the great Iberian Catholic thinkers. Indeed, Carlism, Lusitanian Integralism and their descendants in the New World, while their adherents unfortunately could not secure power for a sufficient amount of time, developed rich bodies of literature that are studied by us Traditionalists to this day. Their movements persevere under the onslaught of liberalism and socialism, even though some heretical streams fused with the latter. The bridge between the Iberian traditionalism of the old and the New Right of today is the thought of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira and the Tradition, Family and Property movement founded by him in Brazil.

In France, very similar ideas are espoused by the radical Right-wing monarchists, most notably Action Française, one of the oldest extant traditionalist political movements outside the Hispanic world.

In Britain, the gradual republicanisation and democratisation that started in the 17th century gave birth to an influential aristocratic counter-populist movement - High Toryism. Its most radical strand, Young England, sought to return to the Crown the powers it was dispossessed of throughout the centuries and to institutionalise the paternal obligations of the nobility.

In all of these ideas, elements of what is described here as Orthocracy can be identified.

As stated in the introduction, it is not my intention to invent something new but to use the works of the Great Men of all nations who too recognised the evils of modernity as building bricks for something in which they can all find themselves. Orthocracy is a scaffold designed to guide its practical implementations adapted to the needs of individual nations, to find commonalities and to identify and remove impurities which may lead to a slow infection of what begins as a virtuous line of thought with the revolutionary disease. Especially the latter is important, and the feeling of solidarity with fellow Orthocrats abroad should strengthen the resolve of somebody who finds himself, politically, in the minority in his own country.

Orthocrats should not forget that, as the Creation predates its corruption, and the natural state predates the Revolution, it is not enough to be merely a Counter-Revolutionary and Reactionary. An idea that finds its justification in the negation of something else can only live as long as the problem does. If Orthocracy is to be for eternity, then it must not only recognise where wrong choices were made in the past but also outline what the right path would have been, and offer a way to reach it today.

Those who already follow a line of Traditionalist, Counter-Revolutionary thought should not see in Orthocracy an invitation to forsake it. They can already be Orthocrats, and adopting the term should help them find identify others who share their interests.

There is nothing wrong in adopting Orthocracy as a political banner directly, but it always remains an idea which, as it is guided by Divine Providence, can not be realised with perfection on this imperfect Earth. The only fully Orthocratic State is the Kingdom of God. A good Orthocrat must be ready to embark on a journey to a place which he will never reach in this life. True nobility lies in the ability to think outside the minuscule fragment of time that a few decades - or even a century - of earthly existence represent. Orthocracy is the pursuit of the perennial. Unlike other political ideas, it does not limit its perspective to the fleeting moment of a human life.

Let the willing and the virtuous work, there is much to be done, but let us never forget that the fruits of our toil are not to be reaped in this world.