Kirchheimer framed Bolshevik rule as sovereign over the merely constitutional Social Democratic state

Evidence

The Social Democrats, according to Kirchheimer, believed in `dual progress’, in the idea that the progress of the capitalist economy would correspond to progress in the education of humanity. But Lenin had replaced this doctrine with the doctrine of all-embracing, total struggle. The Social Democrats were fetishizing a state which amounted to less than a sovereign state with a definite enemythat is, merely a constitutional state. Bolshevik Russia, however, was more than a state: it proclaimed class as the sovereign power, it supported the immediately effective myth of world revolution instead of a rational utopia, it had a sovereign concept of dictatorship and a resolute concept of the enemy. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 954

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Schmittian contrast between a sovereign state (with a definite enemy) and a mere constitutional state that Kirchheimer applied to the USSR vs. Weimar.
• XREF: connects to: Kirchheimer read Lenin through Schmitt’s categories against SPD constitutionalism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 954; Sovereignty theory was retained as ideology to mask disciplinary power — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 545

Broader Connections

• Sovereignty theory was retained as ideology to mask disciplinary power #corroborates (0.75) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 545