Realpolitik is a German word for actual conditions that determine political phenomena. In the seventh edition of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, realpolitik has been defined as “a system of politics that is based on the actual situations and needs of a country or political party rather than on moral principles.” So, realpolitik is political realism that believes in power politics.

 Desire for domination is human nature and probably the ultimate law of this world. It is one of the instincts that cause human violence. So, the history of civilization is almost a long series of violence of empires that can maintain their hegemony through wars. War has always been a project, guided by the motive of domination to achieve power. It is a crucial phenomenon of human civilization that marks a myriad of our social dimensions which are functioned by power.

Domination of the Power

The study of all the great civilizations is incomplete unless it is linked to wars. Battles were fought either to increase power for the ambitious project of imperialism or to defend the motherland from the bloody claws of imperialism. The Peloponnesian war, recounted by the historian Thucydides, of 416-5 BC shows how some ten thousand Athenian soldiers against five hundred Melians, of the independent island state of Melos. Athenians ignored the Melians’ interest in a friendly alliance with them. They mercilessly slaughtered the men and enslaved the women and children of Melos. Thus, power mattered in the domination of the Athenians to whom Simon Blackburn says, “They are the direct ancestors of blitzkrieg, terrorism, the worship of the free market, and the ethics of the business school.” Blackburn is aware of the Machiavellian dog-eat-dog world where every struggle is for existential concern. This is an inevitable course of the law of nature; it means nature’s logic is responsible for the Peloponnesian war or dog-eat-dog world is a natural phenomenon of this civilization.

Social Darwinism

The arrival of Darwinism in the nineteenth century justified more logically the nature of law that opened up a new vista to debate on capitalism and imperialism:

. . . the arrival of Darwinism, which was often interpreted as showing that a dog-eat-dog world was not only morally justifiable, but somehow inevitable, so that it was useless to try to moderate it or make any attempt to ease its harsh effects. Realpolitik was nature’s own law. Winners win, and losers go to the wall. The logic of unbridled capitalism was nature’s own logic, with which it would be not only futile, but impious to tamper. The results of course included poor or non-existent social provision internally, colonialism and imperialism abroad, and competition between the industrialized nations turning to militaristic expansion and aggressive arms races. (Blackburn 34)

At this point, the imperialist ambitions of empire builders seem very natural to Social Darwinism which has propounded the evolutionary theory, of survival of the fittest, as the law of nature. Hitler theorized, “One is either the hammer or the anvil” (187). As a result, the bloody ambition of Nazism was followed by racial tension and genocides.  He wrote, “If men wish to live, then they are forced to kill others. The entire struggle for survival is a conquest of the means of existence which in turn results in the elimination of others from these same sources of subsistence(186-187).”  

Hitler fabricated Darwinian conception with German nationalism that forbade Jews to breathe within the territory Germany had occupied. Darwin’s idea of man as the product of nature gave the Nazis a strong reason to interpret racism as Hannah Arendt observes, “. . . Nazi’s belief in race laws as the expression of the law of nature in man, is Darwin’s idea of man as the product of natural development which does not necessarily stop with the present species of human beings (463).” The approach Social Darwinism has raised on the inevitability of the struggle for survival justifies power as the ultimate law of this world. In this relation, Darwin’s evolution theory can be linked to the Machiavellian dog-eat-dog world. It also marks a deep relationship between power and domination that has been very important in studying the projects of imperialists. 

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 2nd ed. New Work: Meridian Books,

            1958

Blackburn, Simon. Plato’s Republic. Bhopal: Manjul Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.,

            2008.

Hitler, Adolf. “Man Must Kill.” The Course of Ideas. Eds. Jeanne Gunner, and Ed Frankel

Gunner and Frankel: New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1986: 186-187.