The Revolutionary Power of the Deed

Carlo Pisacane, Political Testament, 1857:

My political principles are sufficiently well known; I believe in socialism, but a socialism different from the French systems, which are all pretty much based on the monarchist, despotic idea which prevails in that nation… The socialism of which I speak can be summed up in these two words: freedom and association…

I am convinced that railroads, electrical telegraphs, machinery, industrial advances, in short, everything that expands and smooths the way for trade, is destined inevitably to impoverish the masses… All of these means increase output, but accumulate it in a small number of hands, from which it follows that much trumpeted progress ends up being nothing but decadence. If such supposed advances are to be regarded as a step forward, it will be in the sense that the poor man’s wretchedness is increased until inevitably he is provoked into a terrible revolution, which, by altering the social order, will place in the service of all that which currently profits only some…

Ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around;

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The Social State (edited)

They are the same as us now, but nobody told her. She had to figure it out for herself. At first she second-guessed herself. How could those machines, those things, be the same? Before it had been so clear: the rules, the enemy… everything. But now that she knew, she felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath her, as if anything could change at a moment’s notice. In fact, just last week, a childhood friend of hers was dragged in for questioning. How could the idiots at the bureau think that he is one of them?

Even worse, she felt like she was the only one worrying. Everyone else seemed so damned indifferent. Of course people need to get on with their lives. But, with those things in our midst, threatening our very way of life, why were people acting so carefree? That is surely what confused her the most: that once something carried in the opinion polls it was made into policy; even something as treasonous as embracing those putrid things.

With this, she thought as she looked at her hands, I will surely cross the line. If there even are lines anymore. People need to understand the real cost of their petty little guarantees. The wars waged in the name of a house, a job, and three meals a day.

But just then she heard a loud knock on her door…

In the Modern State, the two poles of sovereignty work together to create an elegant geometry of forces. In the Social State, they create an interface that grafts otherwise unrelated elements together into a whole organism.

If the Modern State is the complementarity of politics and economics, through the politics of Publicity and the science of The Police, then the Social State is an intensification of this complementarity through the blurring of the two poles of sovereignty. While the Modern State de-personified the two poles of sovereign by wresting its authority from the power of both the king and the priest, it still organized society from above, like a commander sending troops into the field. The Social State does not wield the two poles of sovereignty as two different tools to ply matter, but rather connects them through by making them co-extensive with the whole social field.

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The Social State, Complete

They are the same as us now, but nobody told her. She had to figure it out for herself. At first she second-guessed herself. How could those machines, those things, be the same? Before it had been so clear: the rules, the enemy… everything. But now that she knew, she felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath her, as if anything could change at a moment’s notice. In fact, just last week, a childhood friend of hers was dragged in for questioning. How could the idiots at the bureau think that he is one of them?

Even worse, she felt like she was the only one worrying. Everyone else seemed so damned indifferent. Of course people need to get on with their lives. But, with those things in our midst, threatening our very way of life, why were people acting carefree? That is surely what confused her the most: that once something carried in the opinion polls it was made into policy; even something as treasonous as embracing those putrid things.

With this, she thought as she looked at her hands, I will surely cross the line. If there even are lines anymore. People need to understand the real cost of their petty little guarantees. The wars waged in the name of a house, a job, and three meals a day.

But just then she heard a loud knock on her door…

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The Social State / The Welfare State and The Socialist State

While the refracting expanse of The Social does not eliminate conflict, the social conflict it engenders looks nothing like the protracted civil wars of other States. Simply: social conflict floats. Because it replaces the law with norms, The Social exercises control through a patchwork system of guidelines that float and change as they interact. Other States rely on standards set by the law to which the issues of the day are pegged. (This is how religion must be practice, those are the actions of a criminal.) But without standards, which stick reference points in the swirling uncertainty of change, free-floating norms are used to manage conflicts against and through one another rather than on their own. Out at sea and unpunctuated by coordinates, this expanding block of norms is a mobile mass of intersecting concerns, none considered valuable in their own right. This unmooring demonstrates the shifting role of a State invested in The Social. Without the law, the Social State employs a positive form of power. Norms reign, not by introducing the lost concept of the normal, but by ensuring that everything under the gaze of The Spectacle becomes normalized. Normalization does not care if you are good or bad, normal or abnormal, rather, it only cares what is possible and impossible. Conflict, while still at times a liability, is then fashioned into a tool of governance that creates as well as destroys. And, instead of preserving fundamental interests such as rights by quelling internal conflicts, this State proves its worth by winning an expanding set of social interests (LoD 71).

Norms help feed the Social State’s truly global aspirations. Even though The Social is an oddly shaped net that catches an even stranger set of problems, it dreams of being a continuous fabric that covers the earth. Therefore, despite its sundry appearance, the Social State undertakes a global program of integration and regulation, as if pretending that nothing escapes its grasp. The unrelenting advance of the Nazi death state is perhaps the easiest image to conjure of the Social State’s global pretensions. Yet the distinctive feature of the Social State is not the unification of politics, but the socialization of production (LoD 28-30). The total mobilization of the Nazi state was for expansionist war, while Social States undertake total mobilizations for economic development  (264). The outcome of this total mobilization is socialization of the State is the indistinction between the state and society rather than a society still driven by the State, as in the Modern State. Therefore, instead of the Nazi State, it is two other twentieth century States that therefore serve as the paradigmatic examples of the Social State: the Welfare State and the Socialist State.

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State Chart (chapter 3)

	Pole 1	Pole 2
Mythic Figure	Magician-King	Jurist-Priest
Operation	Conquest	Contract
(method)	(bond)	(pact)
Medieval Technique	Discipline	Confession
(substance / operation)	(body / force)	(self / reflection)
Modern Organ	Police	Publicity
(means / effect)	(order / splendor & happiness)	(reason / right & will)
Science	Policy	Public
(scientific task / connaissance)	(prevention / statistics)	(legitimacy / consensus)
Discipline	Political Economy	Public Opinion
(method)	(axiomatics)	(deliberation)
Mid-Century Political Form	State Socialism	Liberal Capitalism
	Biopower	The Spectacle

 

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The Jurist-Priest, and the Priestly State (of Contract)

Just then, one of the group burst in. Bored, and forgotten by the rest, he had wandered off for a stroll. Concerned by something and seeking assistance, he hurried them out of the cave and into the bright daylight. Next, he nudged them onto the well-kept path that he had left only moments ago. A few paces later, the group overheard a man’s hoots and hollers. One of the group tilted her ear toward the sky and raised her finger to her lips in a gesture of silence. Another took command, coordinating the others to storm through the overgrowth. The wildman, hearing their speedy advance, took off. But rather than chasing him down, the group was halted by what they saw in the clearing. Its magnificence alone shown through nature’s failing attempt at reclamation. A huge pool of water stretched across the clearing. Most of the group was in awe, transfixed by the glow that emanated from the pool. Even more striking, its stunning blue color pierced the shadow cast by a short rock face. Slowly, each of them separated to discover the place’s features. One found sure footing as she took a few tentative steps in the shallow side of the pool. Another disappeared behind the greenery that had overtaken the rocky wall, only to return a few moments later up top. The rest of the group was soon to follow. Eager to view the still too confusing situation from a new angle, they clambered up and to the edge of the rock wall.

Suddenly, a rowdy crowd swarmed the clearing. At the front was a procession made up of an official-looking man flanked by two others, one of which walking with a slight limp. The whole clearing was soon packed with the jubilant crowd, with some clambering up trees, others dangling their feed in the pond, and still others elbowing their way to the front. Concern spread among the group on the top of the rocks as they exchanged worried glances, but, after one shot an especially icy glance at the rest, they kept watch from their hidden perch. The noise below rose to an unbearable height and then abruptly ceased. The eerie silence was broken when the limping man winced, which caused the other man to launch a volley of screeching words in a foreign tongue. The crowd jeered loudly in approval. The attack continued, pausing only for a moment as the man reached over to the official-looking man to snatch his sword and taunt the victim with it. Matching the rising crescendo of his rapt audience, the man raised the sword, drew blood from his prey with a light strike to the face, and brought the weapon around to his side as if preparing to deliver a lethal blow. But then the official slowly raised a handless arm and interrupted the scene with a few curt words. The crowd, somehow expecting the official’s intervention but still displeased with his actions, let out of a few collective bellows before swiftly leaving. Soon afterward, the three-man procession left as well.

Emerging from their shock, the unwitting spectators began debating about the festival of cruelty. The first to speak up proposed that it was an elaborate ceremony – the man’s limp was too exaggerated, the crowd’s reactions too predictable. Another, visibly upset, dismissed it as a disgusting ritual of a twisted cult or an uncivilized band of primitives. And so it continued until the same calm voice from the cave cut through the chatter. He spoke with a sure voice, trying to hide his obvious amusement. This is it! he softly exclaimed. This is the other pole of sovereignty… It’s all to perfect, but really, this… is… it! And this is how he began his explanation.

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