ex libris /-\ pile
Patchwork, A Reader
By Cave Complex
Contents:
#0070
1. "The Coming Anarchy" - Robert D. Caplan
2. "Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism" - Scott Alexander
3. "Patchwork: A Positive Vision" - Mencius Moldbug
4. "Beyond Folk Activism" - Patri Friedman
5. "Seasteading and its Critics" - Patri Friedman
6. "The Education of a Libertarian" - Peter Thiel
7. "The Lure of the Void" - Nick Land
8. Extracts from Xenosystems - Nick Land
9. "The Atomization Trap" - Nick Land
10. "Atomization and Liberation" - Justin Murphy
11. "Independence Games" - Nick Land
12. "Leviathan Rots" - Vincent Garton
13. "Skins and the Game" - Uriel Alexis
14. "Whitman" - Gilles Deleuze
15. "Bartleby, or The Formula" - Gilles Deleuze
16. "The Smooth and the Striated" - Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
17. "Pre Face: Or, How to Begin at the End" - Amy Ireland
18. Notes on Warpwork - #CaveTwitter
Filed under: diffr & alienism / Geopolitics
Available at: https://pile.sdbs.cz/item/70
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Contents
1. "The Coming Anarchy" | 4
Robert D. Caplan
2. "Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism" | 54
Scott Alexander
3. "Patchwork: A Positive Vision" | 82
Mencius Moldbug
4. "Beyond Folk Activism" | 195
Patri Friedman
5. "Seasteading and its Critics" | 211
Patri Friedman
6. "The Education of a Libertarian" | 215
Peter Thiel
7. "The Lure of the Void" | 221
Nick Land
8. Extracts from Xenosystems | 258
Nick Land
9. "The Atomization Trap" | 314
Nick Land
10. "Atomization and Liberation" | 322
Justin Murphy
11. "Independence Games" | 344
Nick Land
2
12. "Leviathan Rots" | 360
Vincent Garton
13. "Skins and the Game" | 381
Uriel Alexis
14. "Whitman" | 388
Gilles Deleuze
15. "Bartleby, or The Formula" | 396
Gilles Deleuze
16. "The Smooth and the Striated" | 431
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
17. "Pre Face: Or, How to Begin at the End" | 475
Amy Ireland
18. Notes on Warpwork | 544
#CaveTwitter
3
The Coming Anarchy
Robert D. Caplan
The Minister's eyes were like egg yolks, an aftereffect of
some of the many illnesses, malaria especially, endemic in
his country. There was also an irrefutable sadness in his
eyes. He spoke in a slow and creaking voice, the voice of
hope about to expire. Flame trees, coconut palms, and a
ballpoint-blue Atlantic composed the background. None
of it seemed beautiful, though. "In forty-five years I have
never seen things so bad. We did not manage ourselves
well after the British departed. But what we have now is
something worse — the revenge of the poor, of the social
failures, of the people least able to bring up children in a
modern society." Then he referred to the recent coup in
the West African country Sierra Leone. "The boys who
took power in Sierra Leone come from houses like this."
The Minister jabbed his finger at a corrugated metal
shack teeming with children. "In three months these boys
confiscated all the official Mercedes, Volvos, and BMWs
and willfully wrecked them on the road." The Minister
mentioned one of the coup's leaders, Solomon Anthony
Joseph Musa, who shot the people who had paid for his
schooling, "in order to erase the humiliation and mitigate
the power his middle-class sponsors held over him."
Tyranny is nothing new in Sierra Leone or in the rest of
West Africa. But it is now part and parcel of an increasing
lawlessness that is far more significant than any coup,
rebel incursion, or episodic experiment in democracy.
Crime was what my friend — a top-ranking African
official whose life would be threatened were I to identify
him more precisely — really wanted to talk about. Crime
4
is what makes West Africa a natural point of departure for
my report on what the political character of our planet is
likely to be in the twenty-first century.
The cities of West Africa at night are some of the unsafest
places in the world. Streets are unlit; the police often lack
gasoline for their vehicles; armed burglars, carjackers,
and muggers proliferate. "The government in Sierra
Leone has no writ after dark," says a foreign resident,
shrugging. When I was in the capital, Freetown, last
September, eight men armed with AK-47s broke into the
house of an American man. They tied him up and stole
everything of value. Forget Miami: direct flights between
the United States and the Murtala Muhammed Airport, in
neighboring Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, have been
suspended by order of the U.S. Secretary of
Transportation because of ineffective security at the
terminal and its environs. A State Department report
cited the airport for "extortion by law-enforcement and
immigration officials." This is one of the few times that
the U.S. government has embargoed a foreign airport for
reasons that are linked purely to crime. In Abidjan,
effectively the capital of the Cote d'Ivoire, or Ivory Coast,
restaurants have stick- and gun-wielding guards who
walk you the fifteen feet or so between your car and the
entrance, giving you an eerie taste of what American cities
might be like in the future. An Italian ambassador was
killed by gunfire when robbers invaded an Abidjan
restaurant. The family of the Nigerian ambassador was
tied up and robbed at gunpoint in the ambassador's
residence. After university students in the Ivory Coast
caught bandits who had been plaguing their dorms, they
executed them by hanging tires around their necks and
setting the tires on fire. In one instance Ivorian policemen
stood by and watched the "necklacings," afraid to
5
intervene. Each time I went to the Abidjan bus terminal,
groups of young men with restless, scanning eyes
surrounded my taxi, putting their hands all over the
windows, demanding "tips" for carrying my luggage even
though I had only a rucksack. In cities in six West African
countries I saw similar young men everywhere — hordes
of them. They were like loose molecules in a very unstable
social fluid, a fluid that was clearly on the verge of
igniting.
"You see," my friend the Minister told me, "in the villages
of Africa it is perfectly natural to feed at any table and
lodge in any hut. But in the cities this communal
existence no longer holds. You must pay for lodging and
be invited for food. When young men find out that their
relations cannot put them up, they become lost. They join
other migrants and slip gradually into the criminal
process."
"In the poor quarters of Arab North Africa," he continued,
"there is much less crime, because Islam provides a social
anchor: of education and indoctrination. Here in West
Africa we have a lot of superficial Islam and superficial
Christianity. Western religion is undermined by animist
beliefs not suitable to a moral society, because they are
based on irrational spirit power. Here spirits are used to
wreak vengeance by one person against another, or one
group against another." Many of the atrocities in the
Liberian civil war have been tied to belief in juju spirits,
and the BBC has reported, in its magazine Focus on
Africa, that in the civil fighting in adjacent Sierra Leone,
rebels were said to have "a young woman with them who
would go to the front naked, always walking backwards
and looking in a mirror to see where she was going. This
made her invisible, so that she could cross to the army's
6
positions and there bury charms... to improve the rebels'
chances of success."
Finally my friend the Minister mentioned polygamy.
Designed for a pastoral way of life, polygamy continues to
thrive in sub-Saharan Africa even though it is increasingly
uncommon in Arab North Africa. Most youths I met on
the road in West Africa told me that they were from
"extended" families, with a mother in one place and a
father in another. Translated to an urban environment,
loose family structures are largely responsible for the
world's highest birth rates and the explosion of the HIV
virus on the continent. Like the communalism and
animism, they provide a weak shield against the corrosive
social effects of life in cities. In those cities African culture
is being redefined while desertification and deforestation
— also tied to overpopulation — drive more and more
African peasants out of the countryside.
A Premonition of the Future
West Africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide
demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in
which criminal anarchy emerges as the real "strategic"
danger. Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime,
scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing
erosion of nation-states and international borders, and
the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and
international drug cartels are now most tellingly
demonstrated through a West African prism. West Africa
provides an appropriate introduction to the issues, often
extremely unpleasant to discuss, that will soon confront
our civilization. To remap the political earth the way it
7
will be a few decades hence — as I intend to do in this
article — I find I must begin with West Africa.
There is no other place on the planet where political maps
are so deceptive — where, in fact, they tell such lies — as
in West Africa. Start with Sierra Leone. According to the
map, it is a nation-state of defined borders, with a
government in control of its territory. In truth the Sierra
Leonian government, run by a twenty-seven-year-old
army captain, Valentine Strasser, controls Freetown by
day and by day also controls part of the rural interior. In
the government's territory the national army is an unruly
rabble threatening drivers and passengers at most
checkpoints. In the other part of the country units of two
separate armies from the war in Liberia have taken up
residence, as has an army of Sierra Leonian rebels. The
government force fighting the rebels is full of renegade
commanders who have aligned themselves with
disaffected village chiefs. A pre-modern formlessness
governs the battlefield, evoking the wars in medieval
Europe prior to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which
ushered in the era of organized nation-states.
As a consequence, roughly 400,000 Sierra Leonians are
internally displaced, 280,000 more have fled to
neighboring Guinea, and another 100,000 have fled to
Liberia, even as 400,000 Liberians have fled to Sierra
Leone. The third largest city in Sierra Leone, Gondama, is
a displaced-persons camp. With an additional 600,000
Liberians in Guinea and 250,000 in the Ivory Coast, the
borders dividing these four countries have become largely
meaningless. Even in quiet zones none of the
governments except the Ivory Coast's maintains the
schools, bridges, roads, and police forces in a manner
necessary for functional sovereignty. The Koranko ethnic
8
group in northeastern Sierra Leone does all its trading in
Guinea. Sierra Leonian diamonds are more likely to be
sold in Liberia than in Freetown. In the eastern provinces
of Sierra Leone you can buy Liberian beer but not the
local brand.
In Sierra Leone, as in Guinea, as in the Ivory Coast, as in
Ghana, most of the primary rain forest and the secondary
bush is being destroyed at an alarming rate. I saw
convoys of trucks bearing majestic hardwood trunks to
coastal ports. When Sierra Leone achieved its
independence, in 1961, as much as 60 percent of the
country was primary rainforest. Now six percent is. In the
Ivory Coast the proportion has fallen from 38 percent to
eight percent. The deforestation has led to soil erosion,
which has led to more flooding and more mosquitoes.
Virtually everyone in the West African interior has some
form of malaria.
Sierra Leone is a microcosm of what is occurring, albeit in
a more tempered and gradual manner, throughout West
Africa and much of the underdeveloped world: the
withering away of central governments, the rise of tribal
and regional domains, the unchecked spread of disease,
and the growing pervasiveness of war. West Africa is
reverting to the Africa of the Victorian atlas. It consists
now of a series of coastal trading posts, such as Freetown
and Conakry, and an interior that, owing to violence,
volatility, and disease, is again becoming, as Graham
Greene once observed, "blank" and "unexplored."
However, whereas Greene's vision implies a certain
romance, as in the somnolent and charmingly seedy
Freetown of his celebrated novel The Heart of the Matter,
it is Thomas Malthus, the philosopher of demographic
doomsday, who is now the prophet of West Africa's
9
future. And West Africa's future, eventually, will also be
that of most of the rest of the world.
Consider "Chicago." I refer not to Chicago, Illinois, but to
a slum district of Abidjan, which the young toughs in the
area have named after the American city. ("Washington"
is another poor section of Abidjan.) Although Sierra
Leone is widely regarded as beyond salvage, the Ivory
Coast has been considered an African success story, and
Abidjan has been called "the Paris of West Africa."
Success, however, was built on two artificial factors: the
high price of cocoa, of which the Ivory Coast is the world's
leading producer, and the talents of a French expatriate
community, whose members have helped run the
government and the private sector. The expanding cocoa
economy made the Ivory Coast a magnet for migrant
workers from all over West Africa: between a third and a
half of the country's population is now non-Ivorian, and
the figure could be as high as 75 percent in Abidjan.
During the 1980s cocoa prices fell and the French began
to leave. The skyscrapers of the Paris of West Africa are a
facade. Perhaps 15 percent of Abidjan's population of
three million people live in shantytowns like Chicago and
Washington, and the vast majority live in places that are
not much better. Not all of these places appear on any of
the readily available maps. This is another indication of
how political maps are the products of tired conventional
wisdom and, in the Ivory Coast's case, of an elite that will
ultimately be forced to relinquish power.
Chicago, like more and more of Abidjan, is a slum in the
bush: a checkerwork of corrugated zinc roofs and walls
made of cardboard and black plastic wrap. It is located in
a gully teeming with coconut palms and oil palms, and is
ravaged by flooding. Few residents have easy access to
10
electricity, a sewage system, or a clean water supply. The
crumbly red laterite earth crawls with foot-long lizards
both inside and outside the shacks. Children defecate in a
stream filled with garbage and pigs, droning with malarial
mosquitoes. In this stream women do the washing. Young
unemployed men spend their time drinking beer, palm
wine, and gin while gambling on pinball games
constructed out of rotting wood and rusty nails. These are
the same youths who rob houses in more prosperous
Ivorian neighborhoods at night. One man I met, Damba
Tesele, came to Chicago from Burkina Faso in 1963. A
cook by profession, he has four wives and thirty-two
children, not one of whom has made it to high school. He
has seen his shanty community destroyed by municipal
authorities seven times since coming to the area. Each
time he and his neighbors rebuild. Chicago is the latest
incarnation.
Fifty-five percent of the Ivory Coast's population is urban,
and the proportion is expected to reach 62 percent by
2000. The yearly net population growth is 3.6 percent.
This means that the Ivory Coast's 13.5 million people will
become 39 million by 2025, when much of the population
will consist of urbanized peasants like those of Chicago.
But don't count on the Ivory Coast's still existing then.
Chicago, which is more indicative of Africa's and the
Third World's demographic present — and even more of
the future — than any idyllic junglescape of women
balancing earthen jugs on their heads, illustrates why the
Ivory Coast, once a model of Third World success, is
becoming a case study in Third World catastrophe.
President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, who died last
December at the age of about ninety, left behind a weak
cluster of political parties and a leaden bureaucracy that
11
discourages foreign investment. Because the military is
small and the non-Ivorian population large, there is
neither an obvious force to maintain order nor a sense of
nationhood that would lessen the need for such
enforcement. The economy has been shrinking since the
mid-1980s. Though the French are working assiduously
to preserve stability, the Ivory Coast faces a possibility
worse than a coup: an anarchic implosion of criminal
violence — an urbanized version of what has already
happened in Somalia. Or it may become an African
Yugoslavia, but one without mini-states to replace the
whole.
Because the demographic reality of West Africa is a
countryside draining into dense slums by the coast,
ultimately the region's rulers will come to reflect the
values of these shanty-towns. There are signs of this
already in Sierra Leone — and in Togo, where the dictator
Etienne Eyadema, in power since 1967, was nearly
toppled in 1991, not by democrats but by thousands of
youths whom the London-based magazine West Africa
described as "Soweto-like stone-throwing adolescents."
Their behavior may herald a regime more brutal than
Eyadema's repressive one.
The fragility of these West African "countries" impressed
itself on me when I took a series of bush taxis along the
Gulf of Guinea, from the Togolese capital of Lome, across
Ghana, to Abidjan. The 400-mile journey required two
full days of driving, because of stops at two border
crossings and an additional eleven customs stations, at
each of which my fellow passengers had their bags
searched. I had to change money twice and repeatedly fill
in currency-declaration forms. I had to bribe a Togolese
immigration official with the equivalent of eighteen
12
dollars before he would agree to put an exit stamp on my
passport. Nevertheless, smuggling across these borders is
rampant. The London Observer has reported that in 1992
the equivalent of $856 million left West Africa for Europe
in the form of "hot cash" assumed to be laundered drug
money. International cartels have discovered the utility of
weak, financially strapped West African regimes.
The more fictitious the actual sovereignty, the more
severe border authorities seem to be in trying to prove
otherwise. Getting visas for these states can be as hard as
crossing their borders. The Washington embassies of
Sierra Leone and Guinea — the two poorest nations on
earth, according to a 1993 United Nations report on
"human development" — asked for letters from my bank
(in lieu of prepaid round-trip tickets) and also personal
references, in order to prove that I had sufficient means
to sustain myself during my visits. I was reminded of my
visa and currency hassles while traveling to the
communist states of Eastern Europe, particularly East
Germany and Czechoslovakia, before those states
collapsed.
Ali A. Mazrui, the director of the Institute of Global
Cultural Studies at the State University of New York at
Binghamton, predicts that West Africa — indeed, the
whole continent — is on the verge of large-scale border
upheaval. Mazrui writes, "In the 21st century France will
be withdrawing from West Africa as she gets increasingly
involved in the affairs [of Europe]. France's West African
sphere of influence will be filled by Nigeria — a more
natural hegemonic power.... It will be under those
circumstances that Nigeria's own boundaries are likely to
expand to incorporate the Republic of Niger (the Hausa
13
link), the Republic of Benin (the Yoruba link) and
conceivably Cameroon."
The future could be more tumultuous, and bloodier, than
Mazrui dares to say. France will withdraw from former
colonies like Benin, Togo, Niger, and the Ivory Coast,
where it has been propping up local currencies. It will do
so not only because its attention will be diverted to new
challenges in Europe and Russia but also because
younger French officials lack the older generation's
emotional ties to the ex-colonies. However, even as
Nigeria attempts to expand, it, too, is likely to split into
several pieces. The State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research recently made the following
points in an analysis of Nigeria: "Prospects for a
transition to civilian rule and democratization are slim....
The repressive apparatus of the state security service...
will be difficult for any future civilian government to
control.... The country is becoming increasingly
ungovernable.... Ethnic and regional splits are deepening,
a situation made worse by an increase in the number of
states from 19 to 30 and a doubling in the number of local
governing authorities; religious cleavages are more
serious; Muslim fundamentalism and evangelical
Christian militancy are on the rise; and northern Muslim
anxiety over southern [Christian] control of the economy
is intense... the will to keep Nigeria together is now very
weak."
Given that oil-rich Nigeria is a bellwether for the region —
its population of roughly 90 million equals the
populations of all the other West African states combined
— it is apparent that Africa faces cataclysms that could
make the Ethiopian and Somalian famines pale in
comparison. This is especially so because Nigeria's
14
population, including that of its largest city, Lagos, whose
crime, pollution, and overcrowding make it the cliche par
excellence of Third World urban dysfunction, is set to
double during the next twenty-five years, while the
country continues to deplete its natural resources.
Part of West Africa's quandary is that although its
population belts are horizontal, with habitation densities
increasing as one travels south away from the Sahara and
toward the tropical abundance of the Atlantic littoral, the
borders erected by European colonialists are vertical, and
therefore at cross-purposes with demography and
topography. Satellite photos depict the same reality I
experienced in the bush taxi: the Lome-Abidjan coastal
corridor — indeed, the entire stretch of coast from
Abidjan eastward to Lagos — is one burgeoning
megalopolis that by any rational economic and
geographical standard should constitute a single
sovereignty, rather than the five (the Ivory Coast, Ghana,
Togo, Benin, and Nigeria) into which it is currently
divided.
As many internal African borders begin to crumble, a
more impenetrable boundary is being erected that
threatens to isolate the continent as a whole: the wall of
disease. Merely to visit West Africa in some degree of
safety, I spent about $500 for a hepatitis B vaccination
series and other disease prophylaxis. Africa may today be
more dangerous in this regard than it was in 1862, before
antibiotics, when the explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton
described the health situation on the continent as
"deadly, a Golgotha, a Jehannum." Of the approximately
12 million people worldwide whose blood is HIV-positive,
8 million are in Africa. In the capital of the Ivory Coast,
whose modern road system only helps to spread the
15
disease, 10 percent of the population is HIV-positive. And
war and refugee movements help the virus break through
to more-remote areas of Africa. Alan Greenberg, M.D., a
representative of the Centers for Disease Control in
Abidjan, explains that in Africa the HIV virus and
tuberculosis are now "fast-forwarding each other." Of the
approximately 4,000 newly diagnosed tuberculosis
patients in Abidjan, 45 percent were also found to be
HIV-positive. As African birth rates soar and slums
proliferate, some experts worry that viral mutations and
hybridizations might, just conceivably, result in a form of
the AIDS virus that is easier to catch than the present
strain.
It is malaria that is most responsible for the disease wall
that threatens to separate Africa and other parts of the
Third World from more-developed regions of the planet
in the twenty-first century. Carried by mosquitoes,
malaria, unlike AIDS, is easy to catch. Most people in
sub-Saharan Africa have recurring bouts of the disease
throughout their entire lives, and it is mutating into
increasingly deadly forms. "The great gift of Malaria is
utter apathy," wrote Sir Richard Burton, accurately
portraying the situation in much of the Third World
today. Visitors to malaria-afflicted parts of the planet are
protected by a new drug, mefloquine, a side effect of
which is vivid, even violent, dreams. But a strain of
cerebral malaria resistant to mefloquine is now on the
offensive. Consequently, defending oneself against
malaria in Africa is becoming more and more like
defending oneself against violent crime. You engage in
"behavior modification": not going out at dusk, wearing
mosquito repellent all the time.
16
And the cities keep growing. I got a general sense of the
future while driving from the airport to downtown
Conakry, the capital of Guinea. The forty-five-minute
journey in heavy traffic was through one never-ending
shantytown: a nightmarish Dickensian spectacle to which
Dickens himself would never have given credence. The
corrugated metal shacks and scabrous walls were coated
with black slime. Stores were built out of rusted shipping
containers, junked cars, and jumbles of wire mesh. The
streets were one long puddle of floating garbage.
Mosquitoes and flies were everywhere. Children, many of
whom had protruding bellies, seemed as numerous as
ants. When the tide went out, dead rats and the skeletons
of cars were exposed on the mucky beach. In twenty-eight
years Guinea's population will double if growth goes on at
current rates. Hardwood logging continues at a madcap
speed, and people flee the Guinean countryside for
Conakry. It seemed to me that here, as elsewhere in Africa
and the Third World, man is challenging nature far
beyond its limits, and nature is now beginning to take its
revenge.
Africa may be as relevant to the future character of world
politics as the Balkans were a hundred years ago, prior to
the two Balkan wars and the First World War. Then the
threat was the collapse of empires and the birth of nations
based solely on tribe. Now the threat is more elemental:
nature unchecked. Africa's immediate future could be
very bad. The coming upheaval, in which foreign
embassies are shut down, states collapse, and contact
with the outside world takes place through dangerous,
disease-ridden coastal trading posts, will loom large in
the century we are entering. (Nine of twenty-one U.S.
foreign-aid missions to be closed over the next three years
are in Africa — a prologue to a consolidation of U.S.
17
embassies themselves.) Precisely because much of Africa
is set to go over the edge at a time when the Cold War has
ended, when environmental and demographic stress in
other parts of the globe is becoming critical, and when the
post-First World War system of nation-states — not just
in the Balkans but perhaps also in the Middle East — is
about to be toppled, Africa suggests what war, borders,
and ethnic politics will be like a few decades hence.
To understand the events of the next fifty years, then, one
must understand environmental scarcity, cultural and
racial clash, geographic destiny, and the transformation
of war. The order in which I have named these is not
accidental. Each concept except the first relies partly on
the one or ones before it, meaning that the last two — new
approaches to mapmaking and to warfare — are the most
important. They are also the least understood. I will now
look at each idea, drawing upon the work of specialists
and also my own travel experiences in various parts of the
globe besides Africa, in order to fill in the blanks of a new
political atlas.
The Environment as a Hostile Power
For a while the media will continue to ascribe riots and
other violent upheavals abroad mainly to ethnic and
religious conflict. But as these conflicts multiply, it will
become apparent that something else is afoot, making
more and more places like Nigeria, India, and Brazil
ungovernable.
Mention The Environment or "diminishing natural
resources" in foreign-policy circles and you meet a brick
wall of skepticism or boredom. To conservatives
18
especially, the very terms seem flaky. Public-policy
foundations have contributed to the lack of interest, by
funding narrowly focused environmental studies replete
with technical jargon which foreign-affairs experts just let
pile up on their desks.
It is time to understand The Environment for what it is:
the national-security issue of the early twenty-first
century. The political and strategic impact of surging
populations, spreading disease, deforestation and soil
erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and, possibly,
rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded regions like the
Nile Delta and Bangladesh — developments that will
prompt mass migrations and, in turn, incite group
conflicts — will be the core foreign-policy challenge from
which most others will ultimately emanate, arousing the
public and uniting assorted interests left over from the
Cold War. In the twenty-first century water will be in
dangerously short supply in such diverse locales as Saudi
Arabia, Central Asia, and the southwestern United States.
A war could erupt between Egypt and Ethiopia over Nile
River water. Even in Europe tensions have arisen between
Hungary and Slovakia over the damming of the Danube, a
classic case of how environmental disputes fuse with
ethnic and historical ones. The political scientist and
erstwhile Clinton adviser Michael Mandelbaum has said,
"We have a foreign policy today in the shape of a
doughnut — lots of peripheral interests but nothing at the
center." The environment, I will argue, is part of a
terrifying array of problems that will define a new threat
to our security, filling the hole in Mandelbaum's
doughnut and allowing a post- Cold War foreign policy to
emerge inexorably by need rather than by design.
19
Our Cold War foreign policy truly began with George F.
Kennan's famous article, signed "X," published in Foreign
Affairs in July of 1947, in which Kennan argued for a
"firm and vigilant containment" of a Soviet Union that
was imperially, rather than ideologically, motivated. It
may be that our post-Cold War foreign policy will one day
be seen to have had its beginnings in an even bolder and
more detailed piece of written analysis: one that appeared
in the journal International Security. The article,
published in the fall of 1991 by Thomas Fraser
Homer-Dixon, who is the head of the Peace and Conflict
Studies Program at the University of Toronto, was titled
"On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of
Acute Conflict." Homer-Dixon has, more successfully
than other analysts, integrated two hitherto separate
fields — military-conflict studies and the study of the
physical environment.
In Homer-Dixon's view, future wars and civil violence will
often arise from scarcities of resources such as water,
cropland, forests, and fish. Just as there will be
environmentally driven wars and refugee flows, there will
be environmentally induced praetorian regimes — or, as
he puts it, "hard regimes." Countries with the highest
probability of acquiring hard regimes, according to
Homer-Dixon, are those that are threatened by a
declining resource base yet also have "a history of state
[read 'military'] strength." Candidates include Indonesia,
Brazil, and, of course, Nigeria. Though each of these
nations has exhibited democratizing tendencies of late,
Homer-Dixon argues that such tendencies are likely to be
superficial "epiphenomena" having nothing to do with
long-term processes that include soaring populations and
shrinking raw materials. Democracy is problematic;
scarcity is more certain.
20
Indeed, the Saddam Husseins of the future will have
more, not fewer, opportunities. In addition to
engendering tribal strife, scarcer resources will place a
great strain on many peoples who never had much of a
democratic or institutional tradition to begin with. Over
the next fifty years the earth's population will soar from
5.5 billion to more than nine billion. Though optimists
have hopes for new resource technologies and
free-market development in the global village, they fail to
note that, as the National Academy of Sciences has
pointed out, 95 percent of the population increase will be
in the poorest regions of the world, where governments
now — just look at Africa — show little ability to function,
let alone to implement even marginal improvements.
Homer-Dixon writes, ominously, "Neo-Malthusians may
underestimate
human
adaptability
in
today's
environmental-social system, but as time passes their
analysis may become ever more compelling."
While a minority of the human population will be, as
Francis Fukuyama would put it, sufficiently sheltered so
as to enter a "post-historical" realm, living in cities and
suburbs in which the environment has been mastered and
ethnic animosities have been quelled by bourgeois
prosperity, an increasingly large number of people will be
stuck in history, living in shantytowns where attempts to
rise above poverty, cultural dysfunction, and ethnic strife
will be doomed by a lack of water to drink, soil to till, and
space to survive in. In the developing world
environmental stress will present people with a choice
that is increasingly among totalitarianism (as in Iraq),
fascist-tending mini-states (as in Serb-held Bosnia), and
road-warrior cultures (as in Somalia). Homer-Dixon
21
concludes that "as environmental degradation proceeds,
the size of the potential social disruption will increase."
Tad Homer-Dixon is an unlikely Jeremiah. Today a
boyish thirty-seven, he grew up amid the sylvan majesty
of Vancouver Island, attending private day schools. His
speech is calm, perfectly even, and crisply enunciated.
There is nothing in his background or manner that would
indicate a bent toward pessimism. A Canadian Anglican
who spends his summers canoeing on the lakes of
northern Ontario, and who talks about the benign
mountains, black bears, and Douglas firs of his youth, he
is the opposite of the intellectually severe
neoconservative, the kind at home with conflict scenarios.
Nor is he an environmentalist who opposes development.
"My father was a logger who thought about ecologically
safe forestry before others," he says. "He logged, planted,
logged, and planted. He got out of the business just as the
issue was being polarized by environmentalists. They hate
changed ecosystems. But human beings, just by carrying
seeds around, change the natural world." As an only child
whose playground was a virtually untouched wilderness
and seacoast, Homer-Dixon has a familiarity with the
natural world that permits him to see a reality that most
policy analysts — children of suburbia and city streets —
are blind to.
"We need to bring nature back in," he argues. "We have to
stop separating politics from the physical world — the
climate, public health, and the environment." Quoting
Daniel Deudney, another pioneering expert on the
security aspects of the environment, Homer-Dixon says
that "for too long we've been prisoners of 'social-social'
theory, which assumes there are only social causes for
social and political changes, rather than natural causes,
22
too. This social-social mentality emerged with the
Industrial Revolution, which separated us from nature.
But nature is coming back with a vengeance, tied to
population growth. It will have incredible security
implications.
"Think of a stretch limo in the potholed streets of New
York City, where homeless beggars live. Inside the limo
are the air-conditioned post-industrial regions of North
America, Europe, the emerging Pacific Rim, and a few
other isolated places, with their trade summitry and
computer-information highways. Outside is the rest of
mankind, going in a completely different direction."
We are entering a bifurcated world. Part of the globe is
inhabited by Hegel's and Fukuyama's Last Man, healthy,
well fed, and pampered by technology. The other, larger,
part is inhabited by Hobbes's First Man, condemned to a
life that is "poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Although
both parts will be threatened by environmental stress, the
Last Man will be able to master it; the First Man will not.
The Last Man will adjust to the loss of underground water
tables in the western United States. He will build dikes to
save Cape Hatteras and the Chesapeake beaches from
rising sea levels, even as the Maldive Islands, off the coast
of India, sink into oblivion, and the shorelines of Egypt,
Bangladesh, and Southeast Asia recede, driving tens of
millions of people inland where there is no room for
them, and thus sharpening ethnic divisions.
Homer-Dixon points to a world map of soil degradation
in his Toronto office. "The darker the map color, the
worse the degradation," he explains. The West African
coast, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, China,
23
and Central America have the darkest shades, signifying
all manner of degradation, related to winds, chemicals,
and water problems. "The worst degradation is generally
where the population is highest. The population is
generally highest where the soil is the best. So we're
degrading earth's best soil."
China, in Homer-Dixon's view, is the quintessential
example of environmental degradation. Its current
economic "success" masks deeper problems. "China's
fourteen percent growth rate does not mean it's going to
be a world power. It means that coastal China, where the
economic growth is taking place, is joining the rest of the
Pacific Rim. The disparity with inland China is
intensifying." Referring to the environmental research of
his colleague, the Czech-born ecologist Vaclav Smil,
Homer-Dixon explains how the per capita availability of
arable land in interior China has rapidly declined at the
same time that the quality of that land has been destroyed
by deforestation, loss of topsoil, and salinization. He
mentions the loss and contamination of water supplies,
the exhaustion of wells, the plugging of irrigation systems
and reservoirs with eroded silt, and a population of 1.54
billion by the year 2025: it is a misconception that China
has gotten its population under control. Large-scale
population movements are under way, from inland China
to coastal China and from villages to cities, leading to a
crime surge like the one in Africa and to growing regional
disparities and conflicts in a land with a strong tradition
of warlordism and a weak tradition of central government
— again as in Africa. "We will probably see the center
challenged and fractured, and China will not remain the
same on the map," Homer-Dixon says.
24
Environmental scarcity will inflame existing hatreds and
affect power relationships, at which we now look.
Skinhead Cossacks, Juju Warriors
In the summer, 1993, issue of Foreign Affairs, Samuel P.
Huntington, of Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic
Studies, published a thought-provoking article called
"The Clash of Civilizations?" The world, he argues, has
been moving during the course of this century from
nation-state conflict to ideological conflict to, finally,
cultural conflict. I would add that as refugee flows
increase and as peasants continue migrating to cities
around the world — turning them into sprawling villages
— national borders will mean less, even as more power
will fall into the hands of less educated, less sophisticated
groups. In the eyes of these uneducated but newly
empowered millions, the real borders are the most
tangible and intractable ones: those of culture and tribe.
Huntington writes, "First, differences among civilizations
are not only real; they are basic," involving, among other
things, history, language, and religion. "Second...
interactions between peoples of different civilizations are
increasing; these increasing interactions intensify
civilization consciousness." Economic modernization is
not necessarily a panacea, since it fuels individual and
group ambitions while weakening traditional loyalties to
the state. It is worth noting, for example, that it is
precisely the wealthiest and fastest-developing city in
India, Bombay, that has seen the worst intercommunal
violence between Hindus and Muslims. Consider that
Indian cities, like African and Chinese ones, are ecological
time bombs — Delhi and Calcutta, and also Beijing, suffer
the worst air quality of any cities in the world — and it is
25
apparent how surging populations, environmental
degradation, and ethnic conflict are deeply related.
Huntington points to interlocking conflicts among Hindu,
Muslim, Slavic Orthodox, Western, Japanese, Confucian,
Latin American, and possibly African civilizations: for
instance, Hindus clashing with Muslims in India, Turkic
Muslims clashing with Slavic Orthodox Russians in
Central Asian cities, the West clashing with Asia. (Even in
the United States, African-Americans find themselves
besieged by an influx of competing Latinos.) Whatever
the laws, refugees find a way to crash official borders,
bringing their passions with them, meaning that Europe
and the United States will be weakened by cultural
disputes.
Because Huntington's brush is broad, his specifics are
vulnerable to attack. In a rebuttal of Huntington's
argument the Johns Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami, a
Lebanese-born Shi'ite who certainly knows the world
beyond suburbia, writes in the September-October, 1993,
issue of Foreign Affairs, "The world of Islam divides and
subdivides. The battle lines in the Caucasus... are not
coextensive with civilizational fault lines. The lines follow
the interests of states. Where Huntington sees a
civilizational duel between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the
Iranian state has cast religious zeal... to the wind... in that
battle the Iranians have tilted toward Christian Armenia."
True, Huntington's hypothesized war between Islam and
Orthodox Christianity is not borne out by the alliance
network in the Caucasus. But that is only because he has
misidentified which cultural war is occurring there. A
recent visit to Azerbaijan made clear to me that Azeri
Turks, the world's most secular Shi'ite Muslims, see their
26
cultural identity in terms not of religion but of their
Turkic race. The Armenians, likewise, fight the Azeris not
because the latter are Muslims but because they are
Turks, related to the same Turks who massacred
Armenians in 1915. Turkic culture (secular and based on
languages employing a Latin script) is battling Iranian
culture (religiously militant as defined by Tehran, and
wedded to an Arabic script) across the whole swath of
Central Asia and the Caucasus. The Armenians are,
therefore, natural allies of their fellow Indo-Europeans
the Iranians.
Huntington is correct that the Caucasus is a flashpoint of
cultural and racial war. But, as Ajami observes,
Huntington's plate tectonics are too simple. Two months
of recent travel throughout Turkey revealed to me that
although the Turks are developing a deep distrust,
bordering on hatred, of fellow-Muslim Iran, they are also,
especially in the shantytowns that are coming to
dominate Turkish public opinion, revising their group
identity, increasingly seeing themselves as Muslims being
deserted by a West that does little to help besieged
Muslims in Bosnia and that attacks Turkish Muslims in
the streets of Germany.
In other words, the Balkans, a powder keg for
nation-state war at the beginning of the twentieth
century, could be a powder keg for cultural war at the
turn of the twenty-first: between Orthodox Christianity
(represented by the Serbs and a classic Byzantine
configuration of Greeks, Russians, and Romanians) and
the House of Islam. Yet in the Caucasus that House of
Islam is falling into a clash between Turkic and Iranian
civilizations. Ajami asserts that this very subdivision, not
to mention all the divisions within the Arab world,
27
indicates that the West, including the United States, is
not threatened by Huntington's scenario. As the Gulf War
demonstrated, the West has proved capable of playing
one part of the House of Islam against another.
True. However, whether he is aware of it or not, Ajami is
describing a world even more dangerous than the one
Huntington envisions, especially when one takes into
account Homer-Dixon's research on environmental
scarcity. Outside the stretch limo would be a rundown,
crowded planet of skinhead Cossacks and juju warriors,
influenced by the worst refuse of Western pop culture and
ancient tribal hatreds, and battling over scraps of
overused earth in guerrilla conflicts that ripple across
continents and intersect in no discernible pattern —
meaning there's no easy-to-define threat. Kennan's world
of one adversary seems as distant as the world of
Herodotus.
Most people believe that the political earth since 1989 has
undergone immense change. But it is minor compared
with what is yet to come. The breaking apart and
remaking of the atlas is only now beginning. The crack-up
of the Soviet empire and the coming end of Arab-Israeli
military confrontation are merely prologues to the really
big changes that lie ahead. Michael Vlahos, a long-range
thinker for the U.S. Navy, warns, "We are not in charge of
the environment and the world is not following us. It is
going in many directions. Do not assume that democratic
capitalism is the last word in human social evolution."
Before addressing the questions of maps and of warfare, I
want to take a closer look at the interaction of religion,
culture, demographic shifts, and the distribution of
28
natural resources in a specific area of the world: the
Middle East.
The Past is Dead
Built on steep, muddy hills, the shantytowns of Ankara,
the Turkish capital, exude visual drama. Altindag, or
"Golden Mountain," is a pyramid of dreams, fashioned
from cinder blocks and corrugated iron, rising as though
each shack were built on top of another, all reaching
awkwardly and painfully toward heaven — the heaven of
wealthier Turks who live elsewhere in the city. Nowhere
else on the planet have I found such a poignant
architectural symbol of man's striving, with gaps in house
walls plugged with rusted cans, and leeks and onions
growing on verandas assembled from planks of rotting
wood. For reasons that I will explain, the Turkish
shacktown is a psychological universe away from the
African one.
To see the twenty-first century truly, one's eyes must
learn a different set of aesthetics. One must reject the
overly stylized images of travel magazines, with their
inviting photographs of exotic villages and glamorous
downtowns. There are far too many millions whose
dreams are more vulgar, more real — whose raw energies
and desires will overwhelm the visions of the elites,
remaking the future into something frighteningly new.
But in Turkey I learned that shantytowns are not all bad.
Slum quarters in Abidjan terrify and repel the outsider. In
Turkey it is the opposite. The closer I got to Golden
Mountain the better it looked, and the safer I felt. I had
$1,500 worth of Turkish lira in one pocket and $1,000 in
29
traveler's checks in the other, yet I felt no fear. Golden
Mountain was a real neighborhood. The inside of one
house told the story: The architectural bedlam of cinder
block and sheet metal and cardboard walls was deceiving.
Inside was a home — order, that is, bespeaking dignity. I
saw a working refrigerator, a television, a wall cabinet
with a few books and lots of family pictures, a few plants
by a window, and a stove. Though the streets become
rivers of mud when it rains, the floors inside this house
were spotless.
Other houses were like this too. Schoolchildren ran along
with briefcases strapped to their backs, trucks delivered
cooking gas, a few men sat inside a cafe sipping tea. One
man sipped beer. Alcohol is easy to obtain in Turkey, a
secular state where 99 percent of the population is
Muslim. Yet there is little problem of alcoholism. Crime
against persons is infinitesimal. Poverty and illiteracy are
watered-down versions of what obtains in Algeria and
Egypt (to say nothing of West Africa), making it that
much harder for religious extremists to gain a foothold.
My point in bringing up a rather wholesome, crime-free
slum is this: its existence demonstrates how formidable is
the fabric of which Turkish Muslim culture is made. A
culture this strong has the potential to dominate the
Middle East once again. Slums are litmus tests for innate
cultural strengths and weaknesses. Those peoples whose
cultures can harbor extensive slum life without
decomposing will be, relatively speaking, the future's
winners. Those whose cultures cannot will be the future's
victims. Slums — in the sociological sense — do not exist
in Turkish cities. The mortar between people and family
groups is stronger here than in Africa. Resurgent Islam
and Turkic cultural identity have produced a civilization
30
with natural muscle tone. Turks, history's perennial
nomads, take disruption in stride.
The future of the Middle East is quietly being written
inside the heads of Golden Mountain's inhabitants. Think
of an Ottoman military encampment on the eve of the
destruction of Greek Constantinople in 1453. That is
Golden Mountain. "We brought the village here. But in
the village we worked harder — in the field, all day. So we
couldn't fast during [the holy month of] Ramadan. Here
we fast. Here we are more religious." Aishe Tanrikulu,
along with half a dozen other women, was stuffing rice
into vine leaves from a crude plastic bowl. She asked me
to join her under the shade of a piece of sheet metal. Each
of these women had her hair covered by a kerchief. In the
city they were encountering television for the first time.
"We are traditional, religious people. The programs
offend us," Aishe said. Another woman complained about
the schools. Though her children had educational options
unavailable in the village, they had to compete with
wealthier, secular Turks. "The kids from rich families with
connections — they get all the places." More
opportunities, more tensions, in other words.
My guidebook to Golden Mountain was an untypical one:
Tales From the Garbage Hills, a brutally realistic novel
by a Turkish writer, Latife Tekin, about life in the
shantytowns, which in Turkey are called gecekondus
("built in a night"). "He listened to the earth and wept
unceasingly for water, for work and for the cure of the
illnesses spread by the garbage and the factory waste,"
Tekin writes. In the most revealing passage of Tales From
the Garbage Hills the squatters are told "about a certain
'Ottoman Empire'... that where they now lived there had
once been an empire of this name." This history
31
"confounded" the squatters. It was the first they had
heard of it. Though one of them knew "that his
grandfather and his dog died fighting the Greeks,"
nationalism and an encompassing sense of Turkish
history are the province of the Turkish middle and upper
classes, and of foreigners like me who feel required to
have a notion of "Turkey."
But what did the Golden Mountain squatters know about
the armies of Turkish migrants that had come before their
own — namely, Seljuks and Ottomans? For these recently
urbanized peasants, and their counterparts in Africa, the
Arab world, India, and so many other places, the world is
new, to adapt V. S. Naipaul's phrase. As Naipaul wrote of
urban refugees in India: A Wounded Civilization, "They
saw themselves at the beginning of things:
unaccommodated men making a claim on their land for
the first time, and out of chaos evolving their own
philosophy of community and self-help. For them the
past was dead; they had left it behind in the villages."
Everywhere in the developing world at the turn of the
twenty-first century these new men and women, rushing
into the cities, are remaking civilizations and redefining
their identities in terms of religion and tribal ethnicity
which do not coincide with the borders of existing states.
In Turkey several things are happening at once. In 1980,
44 percent of Turks lived in cities; in 1990 it was 61
percent. By the year 2000 the figure is expected to be 67
percent. Villages are emptying out as concentric rings of
gecekondu developments grow around Turkish cities.
This is the real political and demographic revolution in
Turkey and elsewhere, and foreign correspondents
usually don't write about it.
32
Whereas rural poverty is age-old and almost a "normal"
part of the social fabric, urban poverty is socially
destabilizing. As Iran has shown, Islamic extremism is the
psychological defense mechanism of many urbanized
peasants threatened with the loss of traditions in
pseudo-modern cities where their values are under
attack, where basic services like water and electricity are
unavailable, and where they are assaulted by a physically
unhealthy environment. The American ethnologist and
orientalist Carleton Stevens Coon wrote in 1951 that Islam
"has made possible the optimum survival and happiness
of millions of human beings in an increasingly
impoverished environment over a fourteen-hundred-year
period." Beyond its stark, clearly articulated message,
Islam's very militancy makes it attractive to the
downtrodden. It is the one religion that is prepared to
fight. A political era driven by environmental stress,
increased cultural sensitivity, unregulated urbanization,
and refugee migrations is an era divinely created for the
spread and intensification of Islam, already the world's
fastest-growing religion. (Though Islam is spreading in
West Africa, it is being hobbled by syncretization with
animism: this makes new converts less apt to become
anti-Western extremists, but it also makes for a weakened
version of the faith, which is less effective as an antidote
to crime.)
In Turkey, however, Islam is painfully and awkwardly
forging a consensus with modernization, a trend that is
less apparent in the Arab and Persian worlds (and
virtually invisible in Africa). In Iran the oil boom —
because it put development and urbanization on a fast
track, making the culture shock more intense — fueled
the 1978 Islamic Revolution. But Turkey, unlike Iran and
the Arab world, has little oil. Therefore its development
33
and urbanization have been more gradual. Islamists have
been integrated into the parliamentary system for
decades. The tensions I noticed in Golden Mountain are
natural, creative ones: the kind immigrants face the world
over. While the world has focused on religious perversity
in Algeria, a nation rich in natural gas, and in Egypt, parts
of whose capital city, Cairo, evince worse crowding than I
have seen even in Calcutta, Turkey has been living
through the Muslim equivalent of the Protestant
Reformation.
Resource distribution is strengthening Turks in another
way vis-a-vis Arabs and Persians. Turks may have little
oil, but their Anatolian heartland has lots of water — the
most important fluid of the twenty-first century. Turkey's
Southeast Anatolia Project, involving twenty-two major
dams and irrigation systems, is impounding the waters of
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Much of the water that
Arabs and perhaps Israelis will need to drink in the future
is controlled by Turks. The project's centerpiece is the
mile-wide, sixteen-story Ataturk Dam, upon which are
emblazoned the words of modern Turkey's founder: "Ne
Mutlu Turkum Diyene" ("Lucky is the one who is a
Turk").
Unlike Egypt's Aswan High Dam, on the Nile, and Syria's
Revolution Dam, on the Euphrates, both of which were
built largely by Russians, the Ataturk Dam is a
predominantly Turkish affair, with Turkish engineers and
companies in charge. On a recent visit my eyes took in the
immaculate offices and their gardens, the high-voltage
electric grids and phone switching stations, the dizzying
sweep
of
giant
humming
transformers,
the
poured-concrete spillways, and the prim unfolding
34
suburbia, complete with schools, for dam employees. The
emerging power of the Turks was palpable.
Erduhan Bayindir, the site manager at the dam, told me
that "while oil can be shipped abroad to enrich only elites,
water has to be spread more evenly within the society.... It
is true, we can stop the flow of water into Syria and Iraq
for up to eight months without the same water
overflowing our dams, in order to regulate their political
behavior."
Power is certainly moving north in the Middle East, from
the oil fields of Dhahran, on the Persian Gulf, to the water
plain of Harran, in southern Anatolia — near the site of
the Ataturk Dam. But will the nation-state of Turkey, as
presently constituted, be the inheritor of this wealth?
I very much doubt it.
The Lies of Mapmakers
Whereas West Africa represents the least stable part of
political reality outside Homer-Dixon's stretch limo,
Turkey, an organic outgrowth of two Turkish empires that
ruled Anatolia for 850 years, has been among the most
stable. Turkey's borders were established not by colonial
powers but in a war of independence, in the early 1920s.
Kemal Ataturk provided Turkey with a secular
nation-building myth that most Arab and African states,
burdened by artificially drawn borders, lack. That lack
will leave many Arab states defenseless against a wave of
Islam that will eat away at their legitimacy and frontiers
in coming years. Yet even as regards Turkey, maps
deceive.
35
It is not only African shantytowns that don't appear on
urban maps. Many shantytowns in Turkey and elsewhere
are also missing — as are the considerable territories
controlled by guerrilla armies and urban mafias.
Traveling with Eritrean guerrillas in what, according to
the map, was northern Ethiopia, traveling in "northern
Iraq" with Kurdish guerrillas, and staying in a hotel in the
Caucasus controlled by a local mafia — to say nothing of
my experiences in West Africa — led me to develop a
healthy skepticism toward maps, which, I began to
realize, create a conceptual barrier that prevents us from
comprehending the political crack-up just beginning to
occur worldwide.
Consider the map of the world, with its 190 or so
countries, each signified by a bold and uniform color: this
map, with which all of us have grown up, is generally an
invention of modernism, specifically of European
colonialism. Modernism, in the sense of which I speak,
began with the rise of nation-states in Europe and was
confirmed by the death of feudalism at the end of the
Thirty Years' War — an event that was interposed
between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which
together gave birth to modern science. People were
suddenly flush with an enthusiasm to categorize, to
define. The map, based on scientific techniques of
measurement, offered a way to classify new national
organisms, making a jigsaw puzzle of neat pieces without
transition zones between them. Frontier is itself a modern
concept that didn't exist in the feudal mind. And as
European nations carved out far-flung domains at the
same time that print technology was making the
reproduction of maps cheaper, cartography came into its
36
own as a way of creating facts by ordering the way we look
at the world.
In his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson,
of Cornell University, demonstrates that the map enabled
colonialists to think about their holdings in terms of a
"totalizing classificatory grid.... It was bounded,
determinate, and therefore — in principle — countable."
To the colonialist, country maps were the equivalent of an
accountant's ledger books. Maps, Anderson explains,
"shaped the grammar" that would make possible such
questionable concepts as Iraq, Indonesia, Sierra Leone,
and Nigeria. The state, recall, is a purely Western notion,
one that until the twentieth century applied to countries
covering only three percent of the earth's land area. Nor is
the evidence compelling that the state, as a governing
ideal, can be successfully transported to areas outside the
industrialized world. Even the United States of America,
in the words of one of our best living poets, Gary Snyder,
consists of "arbitrary and inaccurate impositions on what
is really here."
Yet this inflexible, artificial reality staggers on, not only in
the United Nations but in various geographic and travel
publications (themselves by-products of an age of elite
touring which colonialism made possible) that still report
on and photograph the world according to "country."
Newspapers, this magazine, and this writer are not
innocent of the tendency.
According to the map, the great hydropower complex
emblemized by the Ataturk Dam is situated in Turkey.
Forget the map. This southeastern region of Turkey is
populated almost completely by Kurds. About half of the
37
world's 20 million Kurds live in "Turkey." The Kurds are
predominant in an ellipse of territory that overlaps not
only with Turkey but also with Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the
former Soviet Union. The Western-enforced Kurdish
enclave in northern Iraq, a consequence of the 1991 Gulf
War, has already exposed the fictitious nature of that
supposed nation-state.
On a recent visit to the Turkish-Iranian border, it
occurred to me what a risky idea the nation-state is. Here
I was on the legal fault line between two clashing
civilizations, Turkic and Iranian. Yet the reality was more
subtle: as in West Africa, the border was porous and
smuggling abounded, but here the people doing the
smuggling, on both sides of the border, were Kurds. In
such a moonscape, over which peoples have migrated and
settled in patterns that obliterate borders, the end of the
Cold War will bring on a cruel process of natural selection
among existing states. No longer will these states be so
firmly propped up by the West or the Soviet Union.
Because the Kurds overlap with nearly everybody in the
Middle East, on account of their being cheated out of a
state in the post-First World War peace treaties, they are
emerging, in effect, as the natural selector — the ultimate
reality check. They have destabilized Iraq and may
continue to disrupt states that do not offer them adequate
breathing space, while strengthening states that do.
Because the Turks, owing to their water resources, their
growing economy, and the social cohesion evinced by the
most crime-free slums I have encountered, are on the
verge of big-power status, and because the 10 million
Kurds within Turkey threaten that status, the outcome of
the Turkish-Kurdish dispute will be more critical to the
38
future of the Middle East than the eventual outcome of
the recent Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
America's fascination with the Israeli-Palestinian issue,
coupled with its lack of interest in the Turkish-Kurdish
one, is a function of its own domestic and ethnic
obsessions, not of the cartographic reality that is about to
transform the Middle East. The diplomatic process
involving Israelis and Palestinians will, I believe, have
little effect on the early- and mid-twenty-first-century
map of the region. Israel, with a 6.6 percent economic
growth rate based increasingly on high-tech exports, is
about to enter Homer-Dixon's stretch limo, fortified by a
well-defined political community that is an organic
outgrowth of history and ethnicity. Like prosperous and
peaceful Japan on the one hand, and war-torn and
poverty-wracked Armenia on the other, Israel is a classic
national-ethnic organism. Much of the Arab world,
however, will undergo alteration, as Islam spreads across
artificial frontiers, fueled by mass migrations into the
cities and a soaring birth rate of more than 3.2 percent.
Seventy percent of the Arab population has been born
since 1970 — youths with little historical memory of
anticolonial
independence struggles, postcolonial
attempts at nation-building, or any of the Arab-Israeli
wars. The most distant recollection of these youths will be
the West's humiliation of colonially invented Iraq in 1991.
Today seventeen out of twenty-two Arab states have a
declining gross national product; in the next twenty years,
at current growth rates, the population of many Arab
countries will double. These states, like most African
ones, will be ungovernable through conventional secular
ideologies. The Middle East analyst Christine M. Helms
explains, "Declaring Arab nationalism "bankrupt," the
political "disinherited" are not rationalizing the failure of
39
Arabism... or reformulating it. Alternative solutions are
not contemplated. They have simply opted for the
political paradigm at the other end of the political
spectrum with which they are familiar — Islam."
Like the borders of West Africa, the colonial borders of
Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Algeria, and other Arab states are
often contrary to cultural and political reality. As state
control mechanisms wither in the face of environmental
and demographic stress, "hard" Islamic city-states or
shantytown-states are likely to emerge. The fiction that
the impoverished city of Algiers, on the Mediterranean,
controls Tamanrasset, deep in the Algerian Sahara,
cannot obtain forever. Whatever the outcome of the peace
process, Israel is destined to be a Jewish ethnic fortress
amid a vast and volatile realm of Islam. In that realm, the
violent youth culture of the Gaza shantytowns may be
indicative of the coming era.
The destiny of Turks and Kurds is far less certain, but far
more relevant to the kind of map that will explain our
future world. The Kurds suggest a geographic reality that
cannot be shown in two-dimensional space. The issue in
Turkey is not simply a matter of giving autonomy or even
independence to Kurds in the southeast. This isn't the
Balkans or the Caucasus, where regions are merely
subdividing into smaller units, Abkhazia breaking off
from Georgia, and so on. Federalism is not the answer.
Kurds are found everywhere in Turkey, including the
shanty districts of Istanbul and Ankara. Turkey's problem
is that its Anatolian land mass is the home of two cultures
and languages, Turkish and Kurdish. Identity in Turkey,
as in India, Africa, and elsewhere, is more complex and
subtle than conventional cartography can display.
40
A New Kind of War
To appreciate fully the political and cartographic
implications of postmodernism — an epoch of themeless
juxtapositions, in which the classificatory grid of
nation-states is going to be replaced by a jagged-glass
pattern of city-states, shanty-states, nebulous and
anarchic regionalisms — it is necessary to consider,
finally, the whole question of war.
"Oh, what a relief to fight, to fight enemies who defend
themselves, enemies who are awake!" Andre Malraux
wrote in Man's Fate. I cannot think of a more suitable
battle cry for many combatants in the early decades of the
twenty-first century. The intense savagery of the fighting
in such diverse cultural settings as Liberia, Bosnia, the
Caucasus, and Sri Lanka — to say nothing of what obtains
in American inner cities — indicates something very
troubling that those of us inside the stretch limo,
concerned with issues like middle-class entitlements and
the future of interactive cable television, lack the stomach
to contemplate. It is this: a large number of people on this
planet, to whom the comfort and stability of a
middle-class life is utterly unknown, find war and a
barracks existence a step up rather than a step down.
"Just as it makes no sense to ask 'why people eat' or 'what
they sleep for,'" writes Martin van Creveld, a military
historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in The
Transformation of War, "so fighting in many ways is not
a means but an end. Throughout history, for every person
who has expressed his horror of war there is another who
found in it the most marvelous of all the experiences that
are vouchsafed to man, even to the point that he later
spent a lifetime boring his descendants by recounting his
41
exploits." When I asked Pentagon officials about the
nature of war in the twenty-first century, the answer I
frequently got was "Read Van Creveld." The top brass are
enamored of this historian not because his writings justify
their existence but, rather, the opposite: Van Creveld
warns them that huge state military machines like the
Pentagon's are dinosaurs about to go extinct, and that
something far more terrible awaits us.
The degree to which Van Creveld's Transformation of
War complements Homer-Dixon's work on the
environment, Huntington's thoughts on cultural clash,
my own realizations in traveling by foot, bus, and bush
taxi in more than sixty countries, and America's sobering
comeuppances in intractable-culture zones like Haiti and
Somalia is startling. The book begins by demolishing the
notion that men don't like to fight. "By compelling the
senses to focus themselves on the here and now," Van
Creveld writes, war "can cause a man to take his leave of
them." As anybody who has had experience with Chetniks
in Serbia, "technicals" in Somalia, Tontons Macoutes in
Haiti, or soldiers in Sierra Leone can tell you, in places
where the Western Enlightenment has not penetrated
and where there has always been mass poverty, people
find liberation in violence. In Afghanistan and elsewhere,
I vicariously experienced this phenomenon: worrying
about mines and ambushes frees you from worrying
about mundane details of daily existence. If my own
experience is too subjective, there is a wealth of data
showing the sheer frequency of war, especially in the
developing world since the Second World War. Physical
aggression is a part of being human. Only when people
attain a certain economic, educational, and cultural
standard is this trait tranquilized. In light of the fact that
95 percent of the earth's population growth will be in the
42
poorest areas of the globe, the question is not whether
there will be war (there will be a lot of it) but what kind of
war. And who will fight whom?
Debunking the great military strategist Carl von
Clausewitz, Van Creveld, who may be the most original
thinker on war since that early-nineteenth-century
Prussian, writes, "Clausewitz's ideas... were wholly rooted
in the fact that, ever since 1648, war had been waged
overwhelmingly by states." But, as Van Creveld explains,
the period of nation-states and, therefore, of state conflict
is now ending, and with it the clear "threefold division
into government, army, and people" which state-directed
wars enforce. Thus, to see the future, the first step is to
look back to the past immediately prior to the birth of
modernism — the wars in medieval Europe which began
during the Reformation and reached their culmination in
the Thirty Years' War.
Van Creveld writes, "In all these struggles political, social,
economic, and religious motives were hopelessly
entangled. Since this was an age when armies consisted of
mercenaries, all were also attended by swarms of military
entrepreneurs.... Many of them paid little but lip service
to the organizations for whom they had contracted to
fight. Instead, they robbed the countryside on their own
behalf...."
"Given such conditions, any fine distinctions... between
armies on the one hand and peoples on the other were
bound to break down. Engulfed by war, civilians suffered
terrible atrocities."
Back then, in other words, there was no Politics as we
have come to understand the term, just as there is less
43
and less Politics today in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia,
Sri Lanka, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, among other
places.
Because, as Van Creveld notes, the radius of trust within
tribal societies is narrowed to one's immediate family and
guerrilla comrades, truces arranged with one Bosnian
commander, say, may be broken immediately by another
Bosnian commander. The plethora of short-lived
ceasefires in the Balkans and the Caucasus constitute
proof that we are no longer in a world where the old rules
of state warfare apply. More evidence is provided by the
destruction of medieval monuments in the Croatian port
of Dubrovnik: when cultures, rather than states, fight,
then cultural and religious monuments are weapons of
war, making them fair game.
Also, war-making entities will no longer be restricted to a
specific territory. Loose and shadowy organisms such as
Islamic terrorist organizations suggest why borders will
mean increasingly little and sedimentary layers of
tribalistic identity and control will mean more. "From the
vantage point of the present, there appears every prospect
that religious... fanaticisms will play a larger role in the
motivation of armed conflict" in the West than at any
time "for the last 300 years," Van Creveld writes. This is
why analysts like Michael Vlahos are closely monitoring
religious cults. Vlahos says, "An ideology that challenges
us may not take familiar form, like the old Nazis or
Commies. It may not even engage us initially in ways that
fit old threat markings." Van Creveld concludes, "Armed
conflict will be waged by men on earth, not robots in
space. It will have more in common with the struggles of
primitive tribes than with large-scale conventional war."
While another military historian, John Keegan, in his new
44
book A History of Warfare, draws a more benign portrait
of primitive man, it is important to point out that what
Van Creveld really means is re-primitivized man: warrior
societies operating at a time of unprecedented resource
scarcity and planetary overcrowding.
Van Creveld's pre-Westphalian vision of worldwide
low-intensity conflict is not a superficial "back to the
future" scenario. First of all, technology will be used
toward primitive ends. In Liberia the guerrilla leader
Prince Johnson didn't just cut off the ears of President
Samuel Doe before Doe was tortured to death in 1990 —
Johnson made a video of it, which has circulated
throughout West Africa. In December of 1992, when
plotters of a failed coup against the Strasser regime in
Sierra Leone had their ears cut off at Freetown's
Hamilton Beach prior to being killed, it was seen by many
to be a copycat execution. Considering, as I've explained
earlier, that the Strasser regime is not really a
government and that Sierra Leone is not really a
nation-state, listen closely to Van Creveld: "Once the legal
monopoly of armed force, long claimed by the state, is
wrested out of its hands, existing distinctions between
war and crime will break down much as is already the
case today in... Lebanon, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Peru, or
Colombia."
If crime and war become indistinguishable, then
"national defense" may in the future be viewed as a local
concept. As crime continues to grow in our cities and the
ability of state governments and criminal-justice systems
to protect their citizens diminishes, urban crime may,
according to Van Creveld, "develop into low-intensity
conflict by coalescing along racial, religious, social, and
political lines." As small-scale violence multiplies at home
45
and abroad, state armies will continue to shrink, being
gradually replaced by a booming private security
business, as in West Africa, and by urban mafias,
especially in the former communist world, who may be
better equipped than municipal police forces to grant
physical protection to local inhabitants.
Future wars will be those of communal survival,
aggravated or, in many cases, caused by environmental
scarcity. These wars will be subnational, meaning that it
will be hard for states and local governments to protect
their own citizens physically. This is how many states will
ultimately die. As state power fades — and with it the
state's ability to help weaker groups within society, not to
mention other states — peoples and cultures around the
world will be thrown back upon their own strengths and
weaknesses, with fewer equalizing mechanisms to protect
them. Whereas the distant future will probably see the
emergence of a racially hybrid, globalized man, the
coming decades will see us more aware of our differences
than of our similarities. To the average person, political
values will mean less, personal security more. The belief
that we are all equal is liable to be replaced by the
overriding obsession of the ancient Greek travelers: Why
the differences between peoples?
The Last Map
In Geography and the Human Spirit, Anne Buttimer, a
professor at University College, Dublin, recalls the work
of an early-nineteenth-century German geographer, Carl
Ritter, whose work implied "a divine plan for humanity"
based on regionalism and a constant, living flow of forms.
The map of the future, to the extent that a map is even
46
possible, will represent a perverse twisting of Ritter's
vision. Imagine cartography in three dimensions, as if in a
hologram. In this hologram would be the overlapping
sediments of group and other identities atop the merely
two-dimensional color markings of city-states and the
remaining nations, themselves confused in places by
shadowy tentacles, hovering overhead, indicating the
power of drug cartels, mafias, and private security
agencies. Instead of borders, there would be moving
"centers" of power, as in the Middle Ages. Many of these
layers would be in motion. Replacing fixed and abrupt
lines on a flat space would be a shifting pattern of buffer
entities, like the Kurdish and Azeri buffer entities
between Turkey and Iran, the Turkic Uighur buffer entity
between Central Asia and Inner China (itself distinct from
coastal China), and the Latino buffer entity replacing a
precise U.S.-Mexican border. To this protean
cartographic hologram one must add other factors, such
as migrations of populations, explosions of birth rates,
vectors of disease. Henceforward the map of the world
will never be static. This future map — in a sense, the
"Last Map" — will be an ever-mutating representation of
chaos.
The Indian subcontinent offers examples of what is
happening. For different reasons, both India and Pakistan
are increasingly dysfunctional. The argument over
democracy in these places is less and less relevant to the
larger issue of governability. In India's case the question
arises, Is one unwieldy bureaucracy in New Delhi the best
available mechanism for promoting the lives of 866
million people of diverse languages, religions, and ethnic
groups? In 1950, when the Indian population was much
less than half as large and nation-building idealism was
still strong, the argument for democracy was more
47
impressive than it is now. Given that in 2025 India's
population could be close to 1.5 billion, that much of its
economy rests on a shrinking natural-resource base,
including dramatically declining water levels, and that
communal violence and urbanization are spiraling
upward, it is difficult to imagine that the Indian state will
survive the next century. India's oft-trumpeted Green
Revolution has been achieved by overworking its
croplands and depleting its watershed. Norman Myers, a
British development consultant, worries that Indians
have "been feeding themselves today by borrowing
against their children's food sources."
Pakistan's problem is more basic still: like much of Africa,
the country makes no geographic or demographic sense.
It was founded as a homeland for the Muslims of the
subcontinent, yet there are more subcontinental Muslims
outside Pakistan than within it. Like Yugoslavia, Pakistan
is a patchwork of ethnic groups, increasingly in violent
conflict with one another. While the Western media
gushes over the fact that the country has a woman Prime
Minister, Benazir Bhutto, Karachi is becoming a
subcontinental version of Lagos. In eight visits to
Pakistan, I have never gotten a sense of a cohesive
national identity. With as much as 65 percent of its land
dependent on intensive irrigation, with wide-scale
deforestation, and with a yearly population growth of 2.7
percent (which ensures that the amount of cultivated land
per rural inhabitant will plummet), Pakistan is becoming
a more and more desperate place. As irrigation in the
Indus River basin intensifies to serve two growing
populations, Muslim-Hindu strife over falling water
tables may be unavoidable.
48
"India and Pakistan will probably fall apart,"
Homer-Dixon predicts. "Their secular governments have
less and less legitimacy as well as less management ability
over people and resources." Rather than one bold line
dividing the subcontinent into two parts, the future will
likely see a lot of thinner lines and smaller parts, with the
ethnic entities of Pakhtunistan and Punjab gradually
replacing Pakistan in the space between the Central Asian
plateau and the heart of the subcontinent.
None of this even takes into account climatic change,
which, if it occurs in the next century, will further erode
the capacity of existing states to cope. India, for instance,
receives 70 percent of its precipitation from the monsoon
cycle, which planetary warming could disrupt.
Not only will the three-dimensional aspects of the Last
Map be in constant motion, but its two-dimensional base
may change too. The National Academy of Sciences
reports that "as many as one billion people, or 20 per cent
of the world's population, live on lands likely to be
inundated or dramatically changed by rising waters....
Low-lying countries in the developing world such as
Egypt and Bangladesh, where rivers are large and the
deltas extensive and densely populated, will be hardest
hit.... Where the rivers are dammed, as in the case of the
Nile, the effects... will be especially severe."
Egypt could be where climatic upheaval — to say nothing
of the more immediate threat of increasing population —
will incite religious upheaval in truly biblical fashion.
Natural catastrophes, such as the October, 1992, Cairo
earthquake, in which the government failed to deliver
relief aid and slum residents were in many instances
helped by their local mosques, can only strengthen the
49
position of Islamic factions. In a statement about
greenhouse warming which could refer to any of a variety
of natural catastrophes, the environmental expert Jessica
Tuchman Matthews warns that many of us underestimate
the extent to which political systems, in affluent societies
as well as in places like Egypt, "depend on the
underpinning of natural systems." She adds, "The fact
that one can move with ease from Vermont to Miami has
nothing to say about the consequences of Vermont
acquiring Miami's climate."
Indeed, it is not clear that the United States will survive
the next century in exactly its present form. Because
America is a multi-ethnic society, the nation-state has
always been more fragile here than it is in more
homogeneous societies like Germany and Japan. James
Kurth, in an article published in The National Interest in
1992, explains that whereas nation-state societies tend to
be built around a mass-conscription army and a
standardized public school system, "multicultural
regimes" feature a high-tech, all-volunteer army (and, I
would add, private schools that teach competing values),
operating in a culture in which the international media
and entertainment industry has more influence than the
"national political class." In other words, a nation-state is
a place where everyone has been educated along similar
lines, where people take their cue from national leaders,
and where everyone (every male, at least) has gone
through the crucible of military service, making
patriotism a simpler issue. Writing about his immigrant
family in turn-of-the-century Chicago, Saul Bellow states,
"The country took us over. It was a country then, not a
collection of 'cultures.'"
50
During the Second World War and the decade following
it, the United States reached its apogee as a classic
nation-state. During the 1960s, as is now clear, America
began a slow but unmistakable process of transformation.
The signs hardly need belaboring: racial polarity,
educational dysfunction, social fragmentation of many
and various kinds. William Irwin Thompson, in Passages
About Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary
Culture, writes, "The educational system that had worked
on the Jews or the Irish could no longer work on the
blacks; and when Jewish teachers in New York tried to
take black children away from their parents exactly in the
way they had been taken from theirs, they were shocked
to encounter a violent affirmation of negritude."
Issues like West Africa could yet emerge as a new kind of
foreign-policy issue, further eroding America's domestic
peace. The spectacle of several West African nations
collapsing at once could reinforce the worst racial
stereotypes here at home. That is another reason why
Africa matters. We must not kid ourselves: the sensitivity
factor is higher than ever. The Washington, D.C., public
school system is already experimenting with an
Afrocentric curriculum. Summits between African leaders
and prominent African-Americans are becoming
frequent, as are Pollyanna-ish prognostications about
multiparty elections in Africa that do not factor in crime,
surging birth rates, and resource depletion. The
Congressional Black Caucus was among those urging U.S.
involvement in Somalia and in Haiti. At the Los Angeles
Times minority staffers have protested against, among
other things, what they allege to be the racist tone of the
newspaper's Africa coverage, allegations that the editor of
the "World Report" section, Dan Fisher, denies, saying
51
essentially that Africa should be viewed through the same
rigorous analytical lens as other parts of the world.
Africa may be marginal in terms of conventional
late-twentieth-century conceptions of strategy, but in an
age of cultural and racial clash, when national defense is
increasingly local, Africa's distress will exert a
destabilizing influence on the United States.
This and many other factors will make the United States
less of a nation than it is today, even as it gains territory
following the peaceful dissolution of Canada. Quebec,
based on the bedrock of Roman Catholicism and
Francophone ethnicity, could yet turn out to be North
America's most cohesive and crime-free nation-state. (It
may be a smaller Quebec, though, since aboriginal
peoples may lop off northern parts of the province.)
"Patriotism" will become increasingly regional as people
in Alberta and Montana discover that they have far more
in common with each other than they do with Ottawa or
Washington, and Spanish-speakers in the Southwest
discover a greater commonality with Mexico City. (The
Nine Nations of North America, by Joel Garreau, a book
about the continent's regionalization, is more relevant
now than when it was published, in 1981.) As
Washington's influence wanes, and with it the traditional
symbols of American patriotism, North Americans will
take psychological refuge in their insulated communities
and cultures.
Returning from West Africa last fall was an illuminating
ordeal. After leaving Abidjan, my Air Afrique flight landed
in Dakar, Senegal, where all passengers had to disembark
in order to go through another security check, this one
demanded by U.S. authorities before they would permit
52
the flight to set out for New York. Once we were in New
York, despite the midnight hour, immigration officials at
Kennedy Airport held up disembarkation by conducting
quick interrogations of the aircraft's passengers — this
was in addition to all the normal immigration and
customs procedures. It was apparent that drug
smuggling, disease, and other factors had contributed to
the toughest security procedures I have ever encountered
when returning from overseas.
Then, for the first time in over a month, I spotted
businesspeople with attache cases and laptop computers.
When I had left New York for Abidjan, all the
businesspeople were boarding planes for Seoul and
Tokyo, which departed from gates near Air Afrique's. The
only non-Africans off to West Africa had been relief
workers in T-shirts and khakis. Although the borders
within West Africa are increasingly unreal, those
separating West Africa from the outside world are in
various ways becoming more impenetrable.
But Afrocentrists are right in one respect: we ignore this
dying region at our own risk. When the Berlin Wall was
falling, in November of 1989, I happened to be in Kosovo,
covering a riot between Serbs and Albanians. The future
was in Kosovo, I told myself that night, not in Berlin. The
same day that Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat clasped
hands on the White House lawn, my Air Afrique plane
was
approaching
Bamako,
Mali,
revealing
corrugated-zinc shacks at the edge of an expanding
desert. The real news wasn't at the White House, I
realized. It was right below.
53
Archipelago and
Atomic Communitarianism
Scott Alexander
I.
In the old days, you had your Culture, and that was that.
Your Culture told you lots of stuff about what you were
and weren’t allowed to do, and by golly you listened. Your
Culture told you to work the job prescribed to you by your
caste and gender, to marry who your parents told you to
marry or at least someone of the opposite sex, to worship
at the proper temples and the proper times, and to talk
about proper things as opposed to the blasphemous
things said by the tribe over there.
Then we got Liberalism, which said all of that was mostly
bunk. Like Wicca, its motto is “Do as you will, so long as it
harms none”. Or in more political terms, “Your right to
swing your fist ends where my nose begins” or “If you
don’t like gay sex, don’t have any” or “If you don’t like this
TV program, don’t watch it” or “What happens in the
bedroom between consenting adults is none of your
business” or “It neither breaks my arm nor picks my
pocket”. Your job isn’t to enforce your conception of
virtue upon everyone to build the Virtuous Society, it’s to
live your own life the way you want to live it and let other
people live their own lives the way they want to live them.
This is the much-maligned “atomic individualism,” or
maybe just liberalism boiled down to its pure essence.
54
But atomic individualism wasn’t as great a solution as it
sounded. Maybe one of the first cracks was tobacco ads.
Even though putting up a billboard saying “SMOKE
MARLBORO” neither breaks anyone’s arm nor picks their
pocket, it shifts social expectations in such a way that bad
effects occur. It’s hard to dismiss that with “Well, it’s
people’s own choice to smoke and they should live their
lives the way they want” if studies show that more people
will want to live their lives in a way that gives them cancer
in the presence of the billboard than otherwise.
From there we go into policies like Michael Bloomberg’s
ban on giant sodas. While the soda ban itself was
probably as much symbolic as anything, it’s hard to argue
with the impetus behind it – a culture where everyone
gets exposed to the option to buy very very unhealthy
food all the time is going to be less healthy than one
where there are some regulations in place to make EAT
THIS DONUT NOW a less salient option. I mean, I know
this is true. A few months ago when I was on a diet I
cringed every time one my coworkers brought in a box of
free donuts and placed wide-open in the doctors’ lounge;
there was no way I wasn’t going to take one (or two, or
three). I could ask people to stop, but they probably
wouldn’t, and even if they did I’d just encounter the
wide-open box of free donuts somewhere else. I’m not
proposing that it is ethically wrong to bring in free
donuts or that banning them is the correct policy, but I do
want to make it clear that stating “it’s your free choice to
partake or not” doesn’t eliminate the problem, and that
this points to an entire class of serious issues where
atomic individualism as construed above is at best an
imperfect heuristic.
55
And I would be remiss talking about the modern turn
away from individualism without mentioning social
justice. The same people who once deployed
individualistic arguments against conservatives: “If you
don’t like profanity, don’t use it”, “If you don’t like this
offensive TV show, don’t watch it”, “If you don’t like
pornography, don’t buy it” – are now concerned about
people using ethnic slurs, TV shows without enough
minority characters, and pornography that encourages
the objectification of women. I’ve objected to some of this
on purely empirical grounds1, but the least convenient
possible world2 is the one where the purely empirical
objections fall flat. If they ever discover proof positive
that yeah, pornographication makes women hella
objectified, is it acceptable to censor or ban misogynist
media on a society-wide level?
And if the answer is yes – and if such media like really,
really increases the incidence of rape I’m not sure how it
couldn’t be – then what about all those conservative ideas
we’ve been neglecting for so long? What if strong,
cohesive,
religious,
demographically
uniform
communities make people more trusting, generous, and
cooperative in a way that also decreases violent crime and
other forms of misery? We have lots of evidence3 that this
is true, and although we can doubt each individual study,
we owe conservatives the courtesy of imagining the
1
Hyperlink to: Scott Alexander, “Social Psychology is a
Flamethrower”:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/22/socialpsychologyisaflam
ethrower/
2
Hyperlink to: Yvain, “The Least Convenient Possible World”:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2k/the_least_convenient_possible_world
/
3
Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are
Divided by Politics and Religion (2013)
56
possible world in which they are right, the same as
anti-misogyny leftists. Maybe media glorifying criminals
or lionizing nonconformists above those who quietly
follow cultural norms has the same kind of erosive effects
on “values” as misogynist media. Or, at the very least, we
ought to have a good philosophy in place so that we have
some idea what to do it if does.
II.
A while ago, in Part V of this essay4, I praised liberalism
as the only peaceful answer to Hobbes’ dilemma of the
war of all against all.
Hobbes says that if everyone’s fighting then everyone
loses out. Even the winners probably end up worse off
than if they had just been able to live in peace. He says
that governments are good ways to prevent this kind of
conflict. Someone – in his formulation a king – tells
everyone else what they’re going to do, and then everyone
else does it. No fighting necessary. If someone tries to
start a conflict by ignoring the king, the king crushes
them like a bug, no prolonged fighting involved.
But this replaces the problem of potential warfare with
the problem of potential tyranny. So we’ve mostly shifted
from absolute monarchies to other forms of government,
which is all nice and well except that governments allow a
4
Hyperlink to: Scott Alexander, “In Favour of Niceness,
Community and Civilisation”:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/infavorofnicenesscomm
unityandcivilization/
57
different kind of war of all against all. Instead of trying to
kill their enemies and steal their stuff, people are tempted
to ban their enemies and confiscate their stuff. Instead of
killing the Protestants, the Catholics simply ban
Protestantism. Instead of forming vigilante mobs to stone
homosexuals, the straights merely declare homosexuality
is punishable by death. It might be better than the
alternative – at least everyone knows where they stand
and things stay peaceful – but the end result is still a lot
of pretty miserable people.
Liberalism is a new form of Hobbesian equilibrium where
the government enforces not only a ban on killing and
stealing from people you don’t like, but also a ban on
tyrannizing them out of existence. This is the famous
“freedom of religion” and “freedom of speech” and so on,
as well as the “freedom of what happens in the bedroom
between consenting adults”. The Catholics don’t try to
ban Protestantism, the Protestants don’t try to ban
Catholicism, and everyone is happy.
Liberalism only works when it’s clear to everyone on all
sides that there’s a certain neutral principle everyone has
to stick to. The neutral principle can’t be the Bible, or
Atlas Shrugged, or anything that makes it look like one
philosophy is allowed to judge the others. Right now that
principle is the Principle of Harm: you can do whatever
you like unless it harms other people, in which case stop.
We seem to have inelegantly tacked on an “also, we can
collect taxes and use them for a social safety net and
occasional attempts at social progress”, but it seems to be
working pretty okay too.
58
The Strict Principle of Harm says that pretty much the
only two things the government can get angry at is
literally breaking your leg or picking your pocket –
violence or theft. The Loose Principle of Harm says that
the government can get angry at complicated indirect
harms, things that Weaken The Moral Fabric Of Society.
Like putting up tobacco ads. Or having really really big
sodas. Or publishing hate speech against minorities. Or
eroding trust in the community. Or media that objectifies
women.
No one except the most ideologically pure libertarians
seems to want to insist on the Strict Principle of Harm.
But allowing the Loose Principle Of Harm restores all of
the old wars to control other people that liberalism was
supposed to prevent. The one person says “Gay marriage
will result in homosexuality becoming more accepted,
leading to increased rates of STDs! That’s a harm! We
must ban gay marriage!” Another says “Allowing people
to send their children to non-public schools could lead to
kids at religious schools that preach against gay people,
causing those children to commit hate crimes when they
grow up! That’s a harm! We must ban non-public
schools!” And so on, forever.
And I’m talking about non-governmental censorship just
as much as government censorship. Even in the most
anti-gay communities in the United States, the laws
usually allow homosexuality or oppose it only in very
weak, easily circumvented ways. The real problem for
gays in these communities is the social pressure –
whether that means disapproval or risk of violence – that
they would likely face for coming out. This too is a
59
violation of liberalism, and it’s one that’s as important or
more important than the legal sort.
And right now our way of dealing with these problems is
to argue them. “Well, gay people don’t really increase
STDs too much.” Or “Home-schooled kids do better than
public-schooled kids, so we need to allow them.” The
problem is that arguments never terminate. Maybe if
you’re incredibly lucky, after years of fighting you can get
a couple of people on the other side to admit your side is
right, but this is a pretty hard process to trust. The great
thing about religious freedom is that it short-circuits the
debate of “Which religion is correct, Catholicism or
Protestantism?” and allows people to tolerate both
Catholics and Protestants even if they are divided about
the answer to this object-level question. The great thing
about freedom of speech is that it short-circuits the
debate of “Which party is correct, the Democrats or
Republicans?” and allows people to express both liberal
and conservative opinions even if they are divided about
the object-level question.
If we force all of our discussions about whether to ban gay
marriage or allow homeschooling to depend on resolving
the dispute about whether they indirectly harm the Fabric
of Society in some way, we’re forcing dependence on
object-level arguments in a way that historically has been
very very bad.
Presumably here the more powerful groups would win
out and be able to oppress the less powerful groups. We
end up with exactly what liberalism tried to avoid – a
society where everyone is the guardian of the virtue of
everyone else, and anyone who wants to live their lives in
60
a way different from the community’s consensus is out of
luck.
In Part I, I argued that not allowing people to worry
about culture and community at all was inadequate,
because these things really do matter.
Here I’m saying that if we do allow people to worry about
culture and community, we risk the bad old medieval
days where all nonconformity gets ruthlessly quashed.
Right now we’re balanced precariously between the two
states. There’s a lot of liberalism, and people are generally
still allowed to be gay or home-school their children or
practice their religion or whatever. But there’s also quite a
bit of Enforced Virtue, where kids are forbidden to watch
porn and certain kinds of media are censored and in some
communities mentioning that you’re an atheist will get
you Dirty Looks.
It tends to work okay for most of the population. Better
than the alternatives, maybe? But there’s still a lot of the
population that’s not free to do things that are very
important to them. And there’s also a lot of the
population that would like to live in more “virtuous”
communities, whether it’s to lose weight faster or avoid
STDs or not have to worry about being objectified.
Dealing with these two competing issues is a pretty big
part of political philosophy and one that most people
don’t have any principled solution for
61
III.
Imagine a new frontier suddenly opening. Maybe a wizard
appears and gives us a map to a new archipelago that
geographers had missed for the past few centuries. He
doesn’t want to rule the archipelago himself, though he
will reluctantly help kickstart the government. He just
wants to give directions and a free galleon to anybody
who wants one and can muster a group of like-minded
friends large enough to start a self-sustaining colony.
And so the equivalent of our paleoconservatives go out
and found communities based on virtue, where all sexual
deviancy is banned and only wholesome films can be
shown and people who burn the flag are thrown out to be
eaten by wolves.
And the equivalent of our social justiciars go out and
found communities where all movies have to have lots of
strong minority characters in them, and all slurs are way
beyond the pale, and nobody misgenders anybody.
And the equivalent of our Objectivists go out and found
communities based totally on the Strict Principle of Harm
where everyone is allowed to do whatever they want and
there are no regulations on business and everything is
super-capitalist all the time.
And some people who just really want to lose weight go
out and found communities where you’re not allowed to
place open boxes of donuts in the doctors’ lounge.
62
Usually the communities are based on a charter, which
expresses some founding ideals and asks only the people
who agree with those ideals to enter. The charter also
specifies a system of government. It could be an absolute
monarch, charged with enforcing those ideals upon a
population too stupid to know what’s good for them. Or it
could be a direct democracy of people who all agree on
some basic principles but want to work out for themselves
what direction the principles take them.
After a while the wizard decides to formalize and
strengthen his system, not to mention work out some of
the ethical dilemmas.
First he bans communities from declaring war on each
other. That’s an obvious gain. He could just smite
warmongers, but he thinks it’s more natural and organic
to get all the communities into a united government
(UniGov for short). Every community donates a certain
amount to a military, and the military’s only job is to
quash anyone from any community who tries to invade
another.
Next he addresses externalities. For example, if some
communities emit a lot of carbon, and that causes global
warming which threatens to destroy other communities,
UniGov puts a stop to that. If the offending communities
refuse to stop emitting carbon, then there’s that military
again.
The third thing he does is prevent memetic
contamination. If one community wants to avoid all
media that objectifies women, then no other community
63
is allowed to broadcast women-objectifying media at it. If
a community wants to live an anarcho-primitivist
lifestyle, nobody else is allowed to import TVs. Every
community decides exactly how much informational
contact it wants to have with the rest of the continent, and
no one is allowed to force them to have more than that.
But the wizard and UniGov’s most important task is to
think of the children.
Imagine you’re conservative Christians, and you’re tired
of this secular godless world, so you go off with your
conservative Christian friends to found a conservative
Christian community. You all pray together and stuff and
are really happy. Then you have a daughter. Turns out
she’s atheist and lesbian. What now?
Well, it might be that your kid would be much happier at
the lesbian separatist community the next island over.
The absolute minimum the united government can do is
enforce freedom of movement. That is, the second your
daughter decides she doesn’t want to be in Christiantopia
anymore, she goes to a UniGov embassy nearby and asks
for a ticket out, which they give her, free of charge. She
gets airlifted to Lesbiantopia the next day. If anyone in
Christiantopia tries to prevent her from reaching that
embassy, or threatens her family if she leaves, or
expresses the slightest amount of coercion to keep her
around, UniGov burns their city and salts their field.
But this is not nearly enough to fully solve the child
problem. A child who is abused may be too young to know
that escape is an option, or may be brainwashed into
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thinking they are evil, or guilted into believing they are
betraying their families to opt out. And although there is
no perfect, elegant solution here, the practical solution is
that UniGov enforces some pretty strict laws on
child-rearing, and every child, no matter what other
education they receive, also has to receive a class taught
by a UniGov representative in which they learn about the
other communities in the Archipelago, receive a basic
non-brainwashed view of the world, and are given
directions to their nearest UniGov representative who
they can give their opt-out request to.
The list of communities they are informed about always
starts with the capital, ruled by UniGov itself and
considered an inoffensive, neutral option for people who
don’t want anywhere in particular. And it always ends
with a reminder that if they can gather enough support,
UniGov will provide them with a galleon to go out and
found their own community in hitherto uninhabited
lands.
There’s one more problem UniGov has to deal with:
malicious inter-community transfer. Suppose that there is
some community which puts extreme effort into
educating its children, an education which it supports
through heavy taxation. New parents move to this
community, reap the benefits, and then when their
children grow up they move back to their previous
community so they don’t have to pay the taxes to educate
anyone else. The communities themselves prevent some
of this by immigration restrictions – anyone who’s clearly
taking advantage of them isn’t allowed in (except in the
capital, which has an official commitment to let in anyone
who wants). But that still leaves the example of people
65
maliciously leaving a high-tax community once they’ve
got theirs. I imagine this is a big deal in Archipelago
politics, but that in practice UniGov asks these people,
even in their new homes, to pay higher tax rates to
subsidize their old community. Or since that could be
morally objectionable (imagine the lesbian separatist
having to pay taxes to Christiantopia which oppressed
her), maybe they pay the excess taxes to UniGov itself,
just as a way of disincentivizing malicious movement.
Because there are UniGov taxes, and most people are
happy to pay them. In my fantasy, UniGov isn’t an enemy,
where the Christians view it as this evil atheist
conglomerate trying to steal their kids away from them
and the capitalists view it as this evil socialist
conglomerate trying to enforce high taxes. The Christians,
the capitalists, and everyone else are extraordinarily
patriotic about being part of the Archipelago, for its full
name is the Archipelago of Civilized Communities, it is
the standard-bearer of civilization against the barbaric
outside world, and it is precisely the institution that
allows them to maintain their distinctiveness in the face
of what would otherwise be irresistible pressure to
conform. Atheistopia is the enemy of Christiantopia, but
only in the same way the Democratic Party is the enemy
of the Republican Party – two groups within the same
community who may have different ideas but who
consider themselves part of the same broader whole,
fundamentally allies under a banner of which both are
proud.
66
IV.
Robert Nozick once proposed a similar idea as a
libertarian utopia, and it’s easy to see why. UniGov does
very very little. Other than the part with children and the
part with evening out taxation regimes, it just sits around
preventing communities from using force against each
other. That makes it very very easy for anyone who wants
freedom to start a community that grants them the kind
of freedom they want – or, more likely, to just start a
community organized on purely libertarian principles.
The United Government of Archipelago is the perfect
minarchist night watchman state, and any additions you
make over that are chosen by your own free will.
But other people could view the same plan as a
conservative utopia. Conservativism, when it’s not just
Libertarianism Lite, is about building strong cohesive
communities of relatively similar people united around
common values. Archipelago is obviously built to make
this as easy as possible, and it’s hard to imagine that there
wouldn’t pop up a bunch of communities built around the
idea of Decent Small-Town God-Fearing People where
everyone has white picket fences and goes to the same
church and nobody has to lock their doors at night (so
basically Utah; I feel like this is one of the rare cases
where the US’ mostly-in-name-only Archipelagoness
really asserts itself). People who didn’t fit in could go to a
Community Of People Who Don’t Fit In and would have
no need to nor right to complain, and no one would have
to deal with Those Durned Bureaucrats In Washington
telling them what to do.
67
But to me, this seems like a liberal utopia, even a leftist
utopia, for three reasons.
The first reason is that it extends the basic principle of
liberalism – solve differences of opinion by letting
everyone do their own thing according to their own
values, then celebrate the diversity this produces. I like
homosexuality, you don’t, fine, I can be homosexual and
you don’t have to, and having both gay and straight
people living side by side enriches society. This just takes
the whole thing one meta-level up – I want to live in a
very sexually liberated community, you want to live in a
community where sex is treated purely as a sacred act for
the purpose of procreation, fine, I can live in the
community I want and you can live in the community you
want, and having both sexually-liberated and
sexually-pure communities living side by side enriches
society. It is pretty much saying that the solution to any
perceived problems of liberalism is much more
liberalism.
The second reason is quite similar to the conservative
reason. A lot of liberals have some pretty strong demands
about the sorts of things they want society to do. I was
recently talking to Ozy about a group who believe that
society billing thin people is fatphobic, and that everyone
needs to admit obese people can be just as attractive and
date more of them, and that anyone who preferentially
dates thinner people is Problematic. They also want
people to stop talking about nutrition and exercise
publicly. I sympathize with these people, especially
having recently read a study showing that obese people
are much happier when surrounded by other obese,
68
rather than skinny people.5 But realistically, their
movement will fail, and even philosophically, I’m not sure
how to determine if they have the right to demand what
they are demanding or what that question means. Their
best bet is to found a community on these kinds of
principles and only invite people who already share their
preferences and aesthetics going in.
The third reason is the reason I specifically draw leftism
in here. Liberalism, and to a much greater degree leftism,
are marked by the emphasis they place on oppression.
They’re particularly marked by an emphasis on
oppression being a really hard problem, and one that is
structurally inherent to a certain society. They are marked
by a moderate amount of despair that this oppression can
ever be rooted out.
And I think a pretty strong response to this is making
sure everyone is able to say “Hey, you better not oppress
us, because if you do, we can pack up and go somewhere
else.”
Like if you want to protest that this is unfair, that people
shouldn’t be forced to leave their homes because of
oppression, fine, fair enough. But given that oppression is
going on, and you haven’t been able to fix it, giving people
the choice to get away from it seems like a pretty big win.
I am reminded of the many Jews who moved from
Eastern Europe to America, the many blacks who moved
5
Hyperlink to: Katy Waldman, “Skinny People Make Overweight
People Unhappy, New Study Finds”:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/29/obesity_does_
not_equal_unhappiness_study_tracks_relationship_between_we
ight.html
69
from the southern US to the northern US or Canada, and
the many gays who make it out of extremely homophobic
areas to friendlier large cities. One could even make a
metaphor, I think rightly, to telling battered women that
they are allowed to leave their husbands, telling them
they’re not forced to stay in a relationship that they
consider abusive, and making sure that there are shelters
available to receive them.
If any person who feels oppressed can leave whenever
they like, to the point of being provided a free plane ticket
by the government, how long can oppression go on before
the oppressors give up and say “Yeah, guess we need
someone to work at these factories now that all our
workers have gone to the communally-owned factory
down the road, we should probably at least let people
unionize or something so they will tolerate us”?
A commenter in the latest Asch thread mentioned an
interesting quote by Frederick Douglass:
The American people have always been anxious
to know what they shall do with us [black
people]. I have had but one answer from the
beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with
us has already played the mischief with us. Do
nothing with us!
It sounds like, if Frederick Douglass had the opportunity
to go to some other community, or even found a black
ex-slave community, no racists allowed, he probably
70
would have taken it.6 If the people in slavery during his
own time period had had the chance to leave their
plantations for that community, I bet they would have
taken it too. And if you believe there are still people today
whose relationship with society are similar in kind, if not
in degree, to that of a plantation slave, you should be
pretty enthusiastic about the ability of exit rights and free
association to disrupt those oppressive relationships.
6
Edit: Or not, or had strict conditions. Hyperlink to a later
comment from Daniel Speyer (June 7, 2014):
“[I]t might be well to ascertain the number of free
colored people who will be likely to need the assistance
of government to help them out of this country to
Liberia, or elsewhere, beyond the limits of these
United States — since this course might save any
embarrassment which would result from an
appropriation more than commensurate to the
numbers who might be disposed to leave this, our own
country, for one we know not of. We are of the opinion
that the free colored people generally mean to live in
America, and not in Africa. … We do not mean to go to
Liberia. Our minds are made up to live here if we can,
or die here if we must”
–Frederick Douglass Rejects an offer of
Blacktopia in 1849
http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abar03at.html
71
V.
We lack Archipelago’s big advantage – a vast frontier of
unsettled land.
Which is not to say that people don’t form communes.
They do. Some people even have really clever ideas along
these lines, like the seasteaders. But the United States
isn’t going to become Archipelago any time soon.
There’s another problem too, which I describe in my
Anti-Reactionary FAQ.7 Discussing ‘exit rights’, I say:
Exit rights are a great idea and of course having
them is better than not having them. But I have
yet to hear Reactionaries who cite them as a
panacea explain in detail what exit rights we
need beyond those we have already.
The United States allows its citizens to leave the
country by buying a relatively cheap passport
and go anywhere that will take them in, with the
exception of a few arch-enemies like Cuba – and
those exceptions are laughably easy to evade. It
allows them to hold dual citizenship with various
foreign powers. It even allows them to renounce
their American citizenship entirely and become
sole citizens of any foreign power that will accept
them.
7
Hyperlink to: Scott Alexander, “AntiReactionary FAQ”:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/theantireactionaryfaq/
72
Few Americans take advantage of this
opportunity in any but the most limited ways.
When they do move abroad, it’s usually for
business or family reasons, rather than a
rational decision to move to a different country
with policies more to their liking. There are
constant threats by dissatisfied Americans to
move to Canada, and one in a thousand even
carry through with them, but the general
situation seems to be that America has a very
large neighbor that speaks the same language,
and has an equally developed economy, and has
policies that many Americans prefer to their own
country’s, and isn’t too hard to move to, and
almost no one takes advantage of this
opportunity. Nor do I see many people, even
among the rich, moving to Singapore or Dubai.
Heck, the US has fifty states. Moving from one to
another is as easy as getting in a car, driving
there, and renting a room, and although the
federal government limits exactly how different
their policies can be you better believe that there
are very important differences in areas like
taxes, business climate, education, crime, gun
control, and many more. Yet aside from the
fascinating but small-scale Free State Project
there’s little politically-motivated interstate
movement, nor do states seem to have been
motivated to converge on their policies or be less
ideologically driven.
73
What if we held an exit rights party, and nobody
came?
Even aside from the international problems of
gaining citizenship, dealing with a language
barrier, and adapting to a new culture, people
are just rooted – property, friends, family, jobs.
The end result is that the only people who can
leave their countries behind are very poor
refugees with nothing to lose, and very rich
jet-setters. The former aren’t very attractive
customers, and the latter have all their money in
tax shelters anyway.
So although the idea of being able to choose your
country like a savvy consumer appeals to me,
just saying “exit rights!” isn’t going to make it
happen, and I haven’t heard any more elaborate
plans.
I guess I still feel that way. So although Archipelago is an
interesting exercise in political science, a sort of pure case
we can compare ourselves to, it doesn’t look like a
practical solution for real problems.
On the other hand, I do think it’s worth becoming more
Archipelagian on the margin rather than less so, and that
there are good ways to do it.
One of the things that started this whole line of thought
was an argument on Facebook about a very conservative
Christian law school trying to open up in Canada. They
had lots of rules like how their students couldn’t have sex
74
before marriage and stuff like that. The Canadian
province they were in was trying to deny them
accreditation, because conservative Christians are icky. I
think the exact arguments being used were that it was
homophobic, because the conservative Christians there
would probably frown on married gays and therefore gays
couldn’t have sex at all. Therefore, the law school
shouldn’t be allowed to exist. There were other arguments
of about this caliber, but they all seemed to boil down to
“conservative Christians are icky”.
This very much annoyed me. Yes, conservative Christians
are icky. And they should be allowed to form completely
voluntary communities of icky people that enforce icky
cultural norms and an insular society promoting ickiness,
just like everyone else. If non-conservative-Christians
don’t like what they’re doing, they should not go to that
law school. Instead they can go to one of the dozens of
other law schools that conform to their own philosophies.
And if gays want a law school even friendlier to them than
the average Canadian law school, they should be allowed
to create some law school that only accepts gays and bans
homophobes and teaches lots of courses on gay marriage
law all the time.
Another person on the Facebook thread complained that
this line of arguments leads to being okay with white
separatists. And so it does. Fine. I think white separatists
have exactly the right position about where the sort of
white people who want to be white separatists should be
relative to everyone else – separate. I am not sure what
you think you are gaining by demanding that white
separatists live in communities with a lot of black people
in them, but I bet the black people in those communities
75
aren’t thanking you. Why would they want a white
separatist as a neighbor? Why should they have to have
one?
If people want to go do their own thing in a way that
harms no one else, you let them. That’s the Archipelagian
way.
(Someone will protest that Archipelagian voluntary
freedom of association or disassociation could, in cases of
enough racial prejudice, lead to segregation, and that
segregation didn’t work. Indeed it didn’t. But I feel like a
version of segregation in which black people actually had
the legally mandated right to get away from white people
and remain completely unmolested by them – and where
a white-controlled government wasn’t in charge of
divvying up resources between white and black
communities – would have worked a lot better than the
segregation we actually had. The segregation we actually
had was one in which white and black communities were
separate until white people wanted something from black
people, at which case they waltzed in and took it. If
communities were actually totally separate, government
and everything, by definition it would be impossible for
one to oppress the other. The black community might
start with less, but that could be solved by some kind of
reparations. The Archipelagian way of dealing with this
issue would be for white separatists to have separate
white communities, black separatists to have separate
black communities, integrationists to have integrated
communities, redistributive taxation from wealthier
communities going into less wealthy ones, and a strong
central government ruthlessly enforcing laws against any
community trying to hurt another. I don’t think there’s a
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single black person in the segregation-era South who
wouldn’t have taken that deal, and any black person who
thinks the effect of whites on their community today is
net negative should be pretty interested as well.)
This is one reason I find people who hate seasteads so
distasteful. I mean, here’s what Reuters8 has to say about
seasteading:
Fringe movements, of course, rarely cast
themselves as obviously fringe. Racist, anti-civil
rights forces cloaked themselves in the benign
language of “state’s rights”. Anti-gay religious
entities adopted the glossy, positive imagery of
“family values”. Similarly, though many
Libertarians embrace a pseudo-patriotic apple
pie nostalgia, behind this façade is a very
un-American, sinister vision.
Sure, most libertarians may not want to do away
entirely with the idea of government or, for that
matter, government-protected rights and civil
liberties. But many do — and ironically vie for
political power in a nation they ultimately want
to destroy. Even the right-wing pundit Ann
Coulter mocked the paradox of Libertarian
candidates: “Get rid of government — but first,
make me president!” Libertarians sowed the
seeds of anti-government discontent, which is on
the rise, and now want to harvest that discontent
8
Hyperlink to: Sally Kohn, “Do libertarians like Peter Thiel really
want to live in America?”:
http://blogs.reuters.com/greatdebate/2011/09/01/dolibertarians
likepeterthielreallywanttoliveinamerica/
77
for a very radical, anti-America agenda. The
image of libertarians living off-shore in their
lawless private nation-states is just a postcard of
the future they hope to build on land.
Strangely, the libertarian agenda has largely
escaped scrutiny, at least compared to that of
social conservatives. The fact that the political
class is locked in debate about whether Michele
Bachmann or Rick Perry is more socially
conservative only creates a veneer of
mainstream legitimacy for the likes of Ron Paul,
whose libertarianism may be even more extreme
and dangerously un-patriotic. With any luck
America
will
recognize anti-government
extremism for what it is — before libertarians
throw America overboard and render us all
castaways.
Keep in mind this is because some people want to go off
and do their own thing in the middle of the ocean far
away from everyone else without bothering anyone. And
the newspapers are trying to whip up a panic about
“throwing America overboard”.
So one way we could become more Archipelagian is just
trying not to yell at people who are trying to go off and
doing their own thing quietly with a group of voluntarily
consenting friends.
78
But I think a better candidate for how to build a more
Archipelagian world is to encourage the fracture of
society into subcultures.
Like, transsexuals may not be able to go to a transsexual
island somewhere and build Transtopia where anyone
who misgenders anyone else gets thrown into a volcano.
But of the transsexuals I know, a lot of them have lots of
transsexual friends, their cissexual friends are all
up-to-date on trans issues and don’t do a lot of
misgendering, and they have great social networks where
they share information about what businesses and
doctors are or aren’t trans-friendly. They can take
advantage of trigger warnings to make sure they expose
themselves to only the sources that fit the values of their
community, the information that would get broadcast if it
was a normal community that could impose media
norms. As Internet interaction starts to replace real-life
interaction (and I think for a lot of people the majority of
their social life is already on the Internet, and for some
the majority of their economic life is as well) it becomes
increasingly easy to limit yourself to transsexual-friendly
spaces that keep bad people away.
The rationalist community is another good example. If I
wanted, I could move to the Bay Area tomorrow and
never have more than a tiny amount of contact with
non-rationalists again. I could have rationalist
roommates, live in a rationalist group house, try to date
only other rationalists, try to get a job with a rationalist
nonprofit like CFAR or a rationalist company like Quixey,
and never have to deal with the benighted and depressing
non-rationalist world again. Even without moving to the
Bay Area, it’s been pretty easy for me to keep a lot of my
79
social life, both on- and off- line, rationalist-focused, and
I don’t regret this at all.
I don’t know if the future will be virtual reality. I expect
the post-singularity future will include something like VR,
although that might be like describing teleportation as
“basically a sort of pack animal”. But how much the
immediate pre-singularity world will make use of virtual
reality, I don’t know.
But I bet if it doesn’t, it will be because virtual reality has
been circumvented by things like social networks, bitcoin,
and Mechanical Turk, which make it possible to do most
of your interaction through the Internet even though
you’re not literally plugged into it.
And that seems to me like a pretty good start in creating
an Archipelago. I already hang out with various Finns and
Brits and Aussies a lot more closely than I do my
next-door neighbors, and if we start using litecoin and
someone else starts using dogecoin then I’ll be more
economically connected to them too. The degree to which
I encounter certain objectifying or unvirtuous or
triggering media already depends more on the
moderation policies of Less Wrong and Slate Star Codex
and who I block from my Facebook feed, than it does any
laws about censorship of US media.
At what point are national governments rendered mostly
irrelevant compared to the norms and rules of the groups
of which we are voluntary members?
80
I don’t know, but I kind of look forward to finding out. It
seems like a great way to start searching for utopia, or at
least getting some people away from their metaphorical
abusive-husbands.
And the other thing is that I have pretty strong opinions
on which communities are better than others. Some
communities were founded by toxic people for ganging up
with other toxic people to celebrate and magnify their
toxicity, and these (surprise, surprise) tend to be toxic.
Others were formed by very careful, easily-harmed people
trying to exclude everyone who could harm them, and
these tend to be pretty safe albeit sometimes overbearing.
Other people hit some kind of sweet spot that makes
friendly people want to come in and angry people want to
stay out, or just do a really good job choosing friends.
But I think the end result is that the closer you come to
true freedom of association, the closer you get to a world
where everyone is a member of more or less the
community they deserve. That would be a pretty
unprecedented bit of progress.
81
Patchwork: A Positive Vision
Mencius Moldbug
1
I'm afraid UR has been a bit, well, grim, of late.
One can flirt only so long with Confederate racist fascism,
before eliciting a few jitters. Is our reader really going to
be dragged into this horrible, subterranean universe? Is
she even comfortable having it on her computer at work?
And then we took this awful, bumpy ride into the
eel-infested deeps of Obama Derangement Syndrome,
which can't have helped matters.
So this week, I thought it would be nice to be positive.
Therefore, let me present Patchwork: the Mencist vision
of a political system for the 21st century. At the risk of
being accused of a sales job, I will paint Patchwork in
warm, glowing, Obamatronic pastels. Rather than our
usual chilly, Machiavellian cynicism. Yes, I know, this is
unfair. But here at UR, we're always closing.
To start the hype machine, let's just say that if anyone can
build anything like Patchwork, even a tiny, crude, Third
World ripoff of Patchwork, it is all over for the democratic
regimes. It'll be like East Germany competing with West
Germany. (Funnily enough, the financial relationship
between the US and the Gulf/East Asia, the most
Patchwork-like part of the world at present, is oddly
reminiscent of that between the OECD and the Warsaw
Pact: the latter borrow from the former to buy cheap
82
consumer goods, supplied by the former, for the latter's
serfs.)
Children growing up in the Patchwork era will learn a
new name and a new history of the democratic past. They
will date the period to the Dutch invasion of England
(1688)9, which ended the span of legitimate continuity in
9
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution
“The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of
1688, was the overthrow of King James II of England (James VII
of Scotland) by a union of English Parliamentarians with the
Dutch stadtholder William III, Prince of Orange. William's
successful invasion of England with a Dutch fleet and army led to
his ascension to the throne as William III of England jointly with
his wife, Mary II, James's daughter, after the Declaration of
Right, leading to the Bill of Rights 1689.
“King James's policies of religious tolerance after 1685
met with increasing opposition from members of leading
political circles, who were troubled by the King's Catholicism and
his close ties with France. The crisis facing the King came to a
head in 1688, with the birth of his son, James Francis Edward
Stuart, on 10 June (Julian calendar). This changed the existing
line of succession by displacing the heir presumptive (his
daughter Mary, a Protestant and the wife of William of Orange)
with young James Francis Edward as heir apparent. The
establishment of a Roman Catholic dynasty in the kingdoms now
seemed likely. Some Tory members of parliament worked with
members of the opposition Whigs in an attempt to resolve the
crisis by secretly initiating dialogue with William of Orange to
come to England, outside the jurisdiction of the English
Parliament. Stadtholder William, the de facto head of state of the
Dutch United Provinces, feared a Catholic Anglo–French alliance
and had already been planning a military intervention in
England.
“After consolidating political and financial support,
William crossed the North Sea and English Channel with a large
invasion fleet in November 1688, landing at Torbay. After only
two minor clashes between the two opposing armies in England,
and anti-Catholic riots in several towns, James's regime
collapsed, largely because of a lack of resolve shown by the king.
However, this was followed by the protracted Williamite War in
83
Ireland and Dundee's rising in Scotland. In England's distant
American colonies, the revolution led to the collapse of the
Dominion of New England and the overthrow of the Province of
Maryland's government. Following a defeat of his forces at the
Battle of Reading on 9 December, James and his wife Mary fled
England; James, however, returned to London for a two-week
period that culminated in his final departure for France on 23
December. By threatening to withdraw his troops, William in
February 1689 (New Style Julian calendar)[a] convinced a newly
chosen Convention Parliament to make him and his wife joint
monarchs.
“The Revolution permanently ended any chance of
Catholicism becoming re-established in England. For British
Catholics its effects were disastrous both socially and politically:
Catholics were denied the right to vote and sit in the
Westminster Parliament for over a century; they were also
denied commissions in the army, and the monarch was
forbidden to be Catholic or to marry a Catholic, this latter
prohibition remaining in force until 2015. The Revolution led to
limited tolerance for Nonconformist Protestants, although it
would be some time before they had full political rights. It has
been argued, mainly by Whig historians, that James's overthrow
began modern English parliamentary democracy: the Bill of
Rights 1689 has become one of the most important documents in
the political history of Britain and never since has the monarch
held absolute power.
“Internationally, the Revolution was related to the
War of the Grand Alliance on mainland Europe. It has been seen
as the last successful invasion of England. It ended all attempts
by England in the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century to
subdue the Dutch Republic by military force. However, the
resulting economic integration and military co-operation
between the English and Dutch navies shifted the dominance in
world trade from the Dutch Republic to England and later to
Great Britain.
“The expression "Glorious Revolution" was first used
by John Hampden in late 1689, and is an expression that is still
used by the British Parliament. The Glorious Revolution is also
occasionally termed the Bloodless Revolution, albeit
inaccurately. The English Civil War (also known as the Great
Rebellion) was still within living memory for most of the major
English participants in the events of 1688, and for them, in
comparison to that war (or even the Monmouth Rebellion of
1685) the deaths in the conflict of 1688 were mercifully few.”
84
English government that began with William the
Conqueror, replacing it with eternal, degenerate
Whiggery and the quisling, "constitutional" or ceremonial
Hanover princes. And they will surely call it something
cool, like the AngloAmerican Interregnum. Insulting it
with the name of "democracy" will be coarse and
over-the-top.
Said Interregnum, which we are of course still in, has
been a period of global monotonic decline in official
authority. As in the late Roman period, declining official
authority, declining personal morality, and increasing
public bureaucracy are observed in synchrony. This is not
in any way a coincidence. The combination is an infallible
symptom of the great terminal disease of the polity —
leftism. Leftism is cancer. At least in its present adult,
sclerotic and non-fulminating form, it is extremely slow
in its progress, but the end is not in doubt.
On theoretical grounds alone — the feat has never really
been achieved, at least never for good — the only cure for
leftism is complete and permanent excision. Success
implies complete absence of the organism from the body
politic. This does not mean there are no leftists in the
country; in a well-governed country which is at peace,
people can think or say whatever they damned well
please. It just means that, if there are for some reason
leftists, their views are completely without influence on
government policy. So people laugh at them, and call
them names.
(Isn't this a lovely vision? A Lennonesque feat of
delirious, constructive imagination? A world without
leftism? Imagine! It's hard to imagine only if you have
trouble imagining a Nazi John Lennon — a feat which
85
taxes my imagination not at all. But maybe I've been
reading too much Hitler. It really is a tough call to say
who was more coherent, Lennon or Hitler.)
Acceptance of this goal, which I will not attempt to justify
today, but which I think Patchwork can achieve, is the
difference between a conservative, ie a fellow who thinks
he can beat melanoma with an emery board, and a
full-bore reactionary such as myself. If you happen to be
wrong, you have leaped the rail of sanity. So it is
incumbent on us to argue carefully.
But I'm sorry. I am being intentionally abrasive again. As
an extremist, I prefer this harsh, confrontational rhetoric
to any kind of honeyed cozening. The basic goal of UR, I
don't mind admitting, is to convince people who are now
progressives to abandon their delusions. Since
progressives equate those who accept the reactionary
narrative of recent history with acolytes of the Great
Goat-Lord Abaddon10, one must tread carefully. And if
you must come as an Abaddonite, the only way to set your
quarry at ease is to constantly confess your vileness. That
way the progressive might even just clasp you to his heart
— along with all the satanic murderers he is so keen to
embrace.
(Consider, for instance, the case of Jose Luis Dorantes.11
Masters! Mighty masters! Lord Barack, Lady Michelle,
and their new puppy too! Father who art in heaven, your
Lordships! How have we offended you? When did we sin?
10
Hyperlink to: http://eeweems.com/goya/goat.html [Dead]
Hyperlink to: David Paulin,”HitandRun: Death in a 'Sanctuary
City'”:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/11/hitandrun_deat
h_in_a_sanctuary.html
11
86
What penance must we say? Which word of yours did we
cross — to have a Jose Luis Dorantes inflicted on us? And
how in grievous error may we repent? Another
diversity-training session, perhaps, or three?)
Anyway. Obviously I am just trying to get you wound up,
dear reader. I'm sorry. I know. It is crass. So let's have a
look at Patchwork.
The basic idea of Patchwork is that, as the crappy
governments we inherited from history are smashed, they
should be replaced by a global spiderweb of tens, even
hundreds, of thousands of sovereign and independent
mini-countries, each governed by its own joint-stock
corporation without regard to the residents' opinions. If
residents don't like their government, they can and
should move. The design is all "exit," no "voice."
(I'm not aware of any specific writer that has proposed
exactly this, but it is certainly not an original or
interesting idea in and of itself. I've certainly read about
six zillion science-fiction books in which this is the
general state of the future. The devil, however, is in the
details. We will go into the details.)
The essential inspiration for Patchwork is the observation
that the periods in which human civilization has flowered
are the periods in which it has been most politically
divided. Ancient Greece, medieval Italy, Europe until
1914, China in the Spring and Autumn Period12, and so
12
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn_period
“The Spring and Autumn period (simplified Chinese:
; traditional Chinese:
; pinyin: Chūnqiū Shídài)
was a period in Chinese history from approximately 771 to 476
87
on. Burckhardt once observed that Europe was safe so
long as she was not unified, and now that she is we can
see exactly what he meant.13
Small is good. Local is good. Different is good. We know
these things. These are not controversial assertions —
even in the hippest streets of Williamsburg. Heck,
President Obama is probably a Slow Food man himself.
(Once my daughter, aged four months, was in a bakery in
the Castro and met Alice Waters.14 Alice Waters smiled
BC (or according to some authorities until 403 BC[a])[2] which
corresponds roughly to the first half of the Eastern Zhou Period.
The period's name derives from the Spring and Autumn Annals,
a chronicle of the state of Lu between 722 and 479 BC, which
tradition associates with Confucius.
“During this period, the Zhou royal authority over the
various feudal states started to decline, as more and more dukes
and marquesses obtained de facto regional autonomy, defying
the king's court in Luoyi, and waging wars amongst themselves.
The gradual Partition of Jin, one of the most powerful states,
marked the end of the Spring and Autumn period, and the
beginning of the Warring States period.”
13
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Burckhardt
“Carl Jacob Christoph Burckhardt (May 25, 1818 –
August 8, 1897) was a Swiss historian of art and culture and an
influential figure in the historiography of both fields. He is known
as one of the major progenitors of cultural history. Sigfried
Giedion described Burckhardt's achievement in the following
terms: "The great discoverer of the age of the Renaissance, he
first showed how a period should be treated in its entirety, with
regard not only for its painting, sculpture and architecture, but for
the social institutions of its daily life as well." Burckhardt's best
known work is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
(1860).”
14
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Waters
Alice Louise Waters is an American chef, restaurateur,
activist and author. She is the owner of Chez Panisse, a
Berkeley, California restaurant famous for its organic, locally
grown ingredients and for pioneering California cuisine, which
she opened in 1971.
In addition to her restaurant, Waters has written
several books on food and cooking, including Chez Panisse
88
and told Sibyl she was very cute. Which Sibyl is — she
might as well be on the Gerber bottle. And Alice Waters
might as well be a duchess. Heck, Alice Waters probably
laughs at duchesses.)
So how, exactly, did all these Obamaniacs, these
whiterpeople15, these Burning Man regulars, these young,
hip progressives, convince themselves that when it comes
to government, bigger is better? That in fact we need a
world government, toot sweet? That international public
opinion is all that really matters in the world, that
America should lead the world, feed the world, and be
governed by the world?
But somehow they did. The issues that matter to them —
the composition-of-the-atmosphere question, and the like
— always tend to be transnational. As big as possible. As
Peter Gabriel put it, they think big thoughts. (We
reactionaries, when we act locally, would rather think
locally as well. Always best to think about what you're
actually doing.)
This paradox is just one more stimulus for a complete
replacement of the State. We have had enough. We are
done with the present system of government. We want a
reboot. And, anarchy being both impossible and
Cooking (with Paul Bertolli), The Art of Simple Food I and II, and
40 Years of Chez Panisse.
She founded the Chez Panisse Foundation in 1996,
and created the Edible Schoolyard program at the Martin Luther
King Middle School in Berkeley, California. Waters serves as a
public policy advocate on the national level for school lunch
reform and universal access to healthy, organic foods, and the
impact of her work in organic food and nutrition is typified by
Michelle Obama's White House organic vegetable garden.
15
Hyperlink to: https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com
89
un-reactionary, we can't even talk about a reboot until
we've specified what operating system to boot next.
So we can think of Patchwork as a new operating system
for the world. Of course, it does not have to be installed
across the entire world, although it is certainly designed
to scale. But, it is easier and much more prudent to start
small. Innovations in sovereignty are dangerous.
A patchwork — please feel free to drop the capital — is
any network consisting of a large number of small but
independent states. To be precise, each state's real estate
is its patch; the sovereign corporate owner, ie
government, of the patch is its realm. At least initially,
each realm holds one and only one patch. In practice this
may change with time, but the realm-patch structure is at
least designed to be stable.
Of course, Italy in the fourteenth century was anything
but stable. Anything like a patchwork needs a strong
security design to ensure that it does not repeat the
constitutional solecisms of feudalism, and nor will it be
subject to the same pervasive violence or meet the same
demise. In a worst-case scenario, we could end up right
back at liberal democracy! But don't worry — we will
discuss this issue in considerable detail.
To be a reactionary is not to say we must reinstall the
exact political structure of the fourteenth century
tomorrow, although that would surely be an improvement
on what we have now. To be a reactionary is to borrow
freely across time as well as space, incorporating political
designs and experience from wherever and whenever. As
90
Nick Szabo16 has observed, the most interesting, detailed
and elegant European forms are found in the period we
call feudal, and thus it is only natural that a reactionary
design for future government will have a somewhat feudal
feel.
But Patchwork is something new. It will not feel like the
past. It will feel like the future. The past — that is, the
democratic past — will feel increasingly gray, weird, and
scary. (This is how it would feel to you already, if you
didn't have a bag of demotic morphine dripping into each
carotid. Don't worry — we will try to get you out of the
Matrix before we turn off the anesthetic.)
In the future, the fact that once, you would probably be
attacked if you went into Central Park at night, will seem
preposterous. The idea that millions of random people
who were not even authorized to be in the country were
wandering around, driving gigantic SUVs at triple-digit
speeds after ten or fifteen drinks, and murdering random
musicians on motorcycles, will seem as weird as the idea
that a pride of wild lions would march into Carnegie Hall
in mid-symphony, close off all exits, and systematically
slaughter the audience. Graffiti will be a matter for the
museums, as will gangs, of course. The streets will have
no cars or very few, they will be safe, at night they will be
bright and full of lively, happy people. Wine will be cheap,
restaurants will be unregulated, and fine Eskimo
marijuana will be sold at Dean & DeLuca. Etc, etc, etc.
These kinds of descriptions apply to the kind of city I
would like to live in. They may or may not seem
intriguing or attractive to anyone else. You may prefer to
16
Hyperlink to: http://unenumerated.blogspot.co.uk
91
live in a gritty, urban city which is corrupt, dirty,
dangerous, and generally difficult to live in. If there are
enough people like you, there will be a market for this
lifestyle. If not — not. I suspect, however, that you are
outnumbered. And I imagine the new management of
Manhattan would take the distance from Dinkins to
Giuliani and multiply it by ten or twenty. There would
surely be no such thing as a "bad neighborhood," at least
in the sense of an unsafe one. Oh, no. Absolutely
impossible.
Why hasn't this happened already? Why isn't Manhattan
in 2008 half Disneyland, half Paris, half imperial Sodom?
Don't you think one or two people share these tastes? But
the problem is that Manhattan is not governed in the
interests of Manhattan. Capital, in short, is being
squandered. In the Patchwork this is most unlikely to
happen.
The historical and political reasons why democratic
governments are such a mess are complex. I won't go into
them today. But perhaps, for a little intuitive perspective,
let's introduce ourselves to Herbert Croly's Promise of
American Life.
Croly was one of the founders of 20th-century
progressivism, and of the New Republic in specific — a
magazine never out of favor in the corridors of
Washington. Observe the extent to which Croly's
optimistic, energetic vision of positive change has
decayed into the superficially happy, but contentless and
enervating, hippie-Starbucks-Unitarian mien of his
21st-century successors at the same office.17 I have linked
17
Hyperlink to: http://www.tnr.com
92
directly to Croly's conclusion, which is all you really need
to read anyway.18 Here is a typical breathless passage:
Do we lack culture? We will "make it hum" by
founding a new university in Chicago. Is
American art neglected and impoverished ? We
will enrich it by organizing art departments in
our colleges, and popularize it by lectures with
18
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Croly
“Herbert David Croly (January 23, 1869 – May 17,
1930) was an intellectual leader of the progressive movement as
an editor, political philosopher and a cofounder of the magazine
The New Republic in early twentiethcentury America. His
political philosophy influenced many leading progressives
including Theodore Roosevelt, as well as his close friends Judge
Learned Hand and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
“His book, The Promise of American Life (1909),
looked to the conservative spirit of effective government as
espoused by Alexander Hamilton, combined with the democracy
of Thomas Jefferson. The book was one of the most influential
books in American political history, shaping the ideas of many
intellectuals and political leaders. It also influenced the later New
Deal. Calling themselves "The New Nationalists," Croly and
Walter Weyl sought to remedy the relatively weak national
institutions with a strong federal government. He actively
promoted a strong army and navy and attacked pacifists who
thought democracy at home and peace abroad was best served
by keeping America weak.
“Croly was one of the founders of modern liberalism in
the United States, especially through his books, essays, and a
highly influential magazine founded in 1914, The New Republic.
In his 1914 book Progressive Democracy, Croly rejected the
thesis that the liberal tradition in the United States was
inhospitable to anticapitalist alternatives. He drew from the
American past a history of resistance to capitalist wage relations
that was fundamentally liberal, and he reclaimed an idea that
Progressives had allowed to lapse — that working for wages
was a lesser form of liberty. Increasingly skeptical of the capacity
of social welfare legislation to remedy social ills, Croly argued
that America's liberal promise could be redeemed only by
syndicalist reforms involving workplace democracy. His liberal
goals were part of his commitment to American republicanism.”
93
lantern slides and associations for the study of
its history. Is New York City ugly? Perhaps, but if
we could only get the authorities to appropriate
a few hundred millions for its beautification, we
could make it look like a combination of Athens,
Florence, and Paris. Is it desirable for the
American citizen to be something of a hero? I
will encourage heroes by establishing a fund
whereby they shall be rewarded in cash. War is
hell, is it? I will work for the abolition of hell by
calling a convention and passing a resolution
denouncing its iniquities. I will build at the
Hague a Palace of Peace which shall be a
standing rebuke to the War Lords of Europe.
Here, in America, some of us have more money
than we need and more good will. We will spend
the money in order to establish the reign of the
good, the beautiful, and the true.
"Athens, Florence and Paris!" Imagine a progressive
today saying he wanted to turn anything, let alone New
York of all God's Augean stables, into "Athens, Florence
and Paris." Imagine telling Herbert Croly that in 2008,
progressivism had triumphed beyond his wildest dreams,
that the stick-in-the-mud isolationists of the Midwest
were forever defeated and heard of no more, that
Tammany was a schoolbook memory, that all agencies of
government now operate under the close supervision of
the universities and the press.
And then imagine trying to explain that despite all this,
NYC looks more like a combination of Paris, East Berlin
and Port au Prince. And is in many places extremely
dangerous at night. What on earth would the good man
tell you? What would he even begin to say? I don't know,
94
but I'd sure as heck like to find out. "The good, the
beautiful and the true."
The patch in Patchwork that is Manhattan, however,
would be the good, the beautiful and the true. The Athens,
the Florence and the Paris. Because Athens, Florence and
Paris sell. Even imperial Sodom sells. East Berlin doesn't
sell, and Port au Prince really doesn't sell.
The foreign, forgotten lesson we are extracting from Croly
is not that progressivism is the cure-all for all ills, but that
progressivism, the eternal poisonous chameleon, in its
1911 incarnation espoused the civic values of 1911. All the
better to convince its innocent hosts that it was anything
but a lethal parasite. But we are very good at reading
progressive discourse, and when we read Croly we see the
values of 1911, not the malignant expansion of the State
that Croly was trying to justify in the names of those
values. (BTW, when anyone tries to use the phrase
"reality-based community" on you, I recommend pointing
him at this.19)
Our lesson is just that the civic values of 1911 are the
naive, obvious values of good government. (At the very
least, they are far less warped than their post-1945
replacements.) Thus they are at least a fair proxy for the
values of competitive government.20 "Athens, Florence,
and Paris" sounds pretty good to me, although there has
to be some kind of room for industrial death metal and
heavy-duty psychedelics. But this does not mean you need
19
[Broken link]
Arnold Kling, Competitive Government. See also:
https://www.seasteading.org/2008/09/competitivegovernmentvs
democraticgovernment/
20
95
to worry about being raped and killed by some barbarian
thug on your way home from the club.
Anyway. Enough anecdotes and generalities. Let's take a
harder engineering look at the anatomy of Patchwork.
The basic engineering problem is: while one can fantasize
ad libitum about the way in which this system should be
governed, how will it actually be governed?
This entire problem can be described as one of security.
We postulate some structure of authority for the
Patchwork. It sounds good. If the above propaganda is
not appealing to you, all I can say is that we have very
different tastes and perspectives. But is the result stable?
If we set it up in some state, will it remain in that state?
Stability and security are the same thing: if the structure
of authority changes in any authorized way, it is not really
changing at all.
The designers of the Constitution of 1789 were political
engineers, too. They were neither stupid, nor ignorant,
nor inexperienced. But the government they designed
diverged immediately and irreversibly from the envelope
in which they intended it to operate. Surely the risk of
divergence is even greater for a multipolar framework —
not an architecture with a good historical record of
stability.
Anything like a patchwork can merge into a single
centralized state. It can degenerate into an asymmetric
form in which one state dominates the others. It can split
into two factions which fight a civil war for the world.
Individual states can turn evil and try to turn others evil.
Etc. History tells us that all kinds of awful stuff can
happen, and probably will.
96
Because of these dangers, Patchwork's philosophy of
security is simple and draconian. It is built around the
following axioms, which strike me as too self-evident to
debate.
First, security is a monotonic desideratum. There is no
such thing as "too secure." An encryption algorithm
cannot be too strong, a fence cannot be too high, a bullet
cannot be too lethal.
Second, security and liberty do not conflict. Security
always wins. As Robert Peel put it21, the absence of crime
and disorder is the test of public safety, and in anything
like the modern state the risk of private infringement on
private liberties far exceeds the official of public
infringement. No cop ever stole my bicycle. And this will
be far more true in the Patchwork, in which realms
actually compete for business on the basis of customer
service.
21
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
“The Peelian principles summarise the ideas that Sir
Robert Peel developed to define an ethical police force. The
approach expressed in these principles is commonly known as
policing by consent in the United Kingdom and other countries
such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
“In this model of policing, police officers are regarded
as citizens in uniform. They exercise their powers to police their
fellow citizens with the implicit consent of those fellow citizens.
"Policing by consent" indicates that the legitimacy of policing in
the eyes of the public is based upon a general consensus of
support that follows from transparency about their powers, their
integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for
doing so.”
97
Third, security and complexity are opposites. A secure
authority structure is as simple as possible, so that it is as
difficult as possible to pervert it to unanticipated ends.
Bearing these principles in mind, let's separate our
security overview into two parts: the internal
management of realms, and the relationships between
realms.
A Patchwork realm is a business — a corporation. Its
capital is the patch it is sovereign over. The realm profits
by making its real estate as valuable as possible —
whether it is Manhattan or some ranch in Oklahoma.
Even the oceans can and should be divided into patches; a
naval realm is sovereign over, and profits by taxing, all
economic activities within a patch of ocean.
But how should realms be administered? The answer is
simple: a realm is a corporation. A sovereign corporation,
granted, but nonetheless a corporation.
In the 21st century, the art of corporate design is not a
mystery. The corporation is owned and controlled by its
anonymous shareholders (if you've ever wondered what
the letters SA stand for in the name of a French or
Spanish company, they mean "anonymous society"),
whose interests in maximizing corporate performance are
perfectly aligned. The shareholders select a chief
executive, to whom all employees report, and whose
decisions are final. In no cases do they make management
decisions directly.
It is at least probable that this joint-stock design
maximizes corporate efficiency. If there existed a more
effective structure — if firms were more productive when
98
managed not by a committee but by an executive, or by
the collective decisions of their customers or employees,
by separate legislative and judiciary branches, etc, etc —
we would know. Someone would have found a way to
construct a firm on this design, and it would have
outcompeted the rest of the stodgy old world. (In fact, I
think one of the most plausible explanations of why the
Industrial Revolution happened in England, not in Sung
China or the Roman Empire, was that the latter two never
evolved anything quite like the joint-stock company.)
Our great difficulty, though, is that history records
nothing quite like a sovereign joint-stock company.
Perhaps the closest examples were the chartered
companies22 of the classical era. But even a colonial
22
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartered_company
“A chartered company is an association formed by
investors or shareholders for the purpose of trade, exploration,
and colonization.
“Companies enabled merchants to band together to
undertake ventures requiring more capital than was available to
any one merchant or family. From the sixteenth century onwards,
groups of European investors formed companies to underwrite
and profit from the exploration of Africa, India, Asia, the
Caribbean and North America, usually under the patronage of
one state, which issued the company's charter. But chartered
companies go back into the medieval period. Authorizations of
charters enabled even small states to greatly augment their
influence by indirect rule, steering private resources into national
pursuits of exploration and trade. As they grew wealthier, some
companies developed extensive administrations for their
ventures, and frequently conducted local affairs with little
homeland oversight.
“Chartered companies were usually formed,
incorporated and legitimised under a royal or, in republics, an
equivalent government charter. This document set out the terms
under which the company could trade; defined its boundaries of
influence, and described its rights and responsibilities.”
99
chartered company was chartered by a sovereign, though
it operated outside that sovereign's realm.
Rather, I think the best way to think of a realm or
sovereign corporation is as a modified version of
monarchy. A royal family is to an ordinary family
business as a Patchwork realm is to an ordinary,
nonsovereign, public corporation. Joint-stock realms thus
solve the primary historical problem of monarchical
government: the vagaries of the biological process. In
other words, they assure that the overall direction of the
realm will always be both strong and responsible — at
least, responsible in a financial sense.
A joint-stock realm simply cannot have anything
comparable to a weak monarch of the classical era.
Realms will certainly recruit their executives from the
same talent pool large companies now draw from. How
many Fortune 500 CEOs today are regularly bullied and
led by coalitions of their nominal subordinates, as (for
just one example) the French monarchy so often was?
Zero is probably too easy an answer, but at least an
approximation.
Note, however, that we are not considering anything like
the watered-down "constitutional" (ie, again, ceremonial)
monarchies of the democratic period. If the joint-stock
realm is like a monarchy, it is like a true, "absolute" or
(most pejoratively) "divine-right monarchy."
With all due respect, dear reader, the probability that you
have a sound understanding of the case for divine-right
monarchy is approximately the probability that a large
white goat will fall out of my ass. This means you need to
100
read the great English exponent of absolute government,
Sir Robert Filmer23, and his masterpiece Patriarcha.24
Filmer was the baddest-ass reactionary who ever lived.
Frankly, he makes Carlyle look like a liberal. Just the title
of Patriarcha is cooler than Jesus Christ himself, and the
contents don't even begin to disappoint: we launch almost
immediately into hardcore Anglican theology. If Filmer
isn't winter beach reading, I don't know who is.
I mean, seriously, how do you justify divine-right
monarchy to an atheist? Is it anything like selling
refrigerators to Eskimos? Since I am both an atheist and a
believer in divine-right monarchy, I'd better be able to
square this circle.
One of the major doctrinal thrusts of European
Christianity, in all ages and phases of its career, and
certainly even in the thinly-disguised, crypto-Christian
Unitarianism that has become the religion of the world's
ruling class (eg, if ever you meet a "moderate Muslim," he
is really a Unitarian), is the quest to justify the political
structure of the world.
What makes a king a king? Why should the king be the
king? Why can't I be the king, or at least my cousin Ricky?
23
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Filmer
“Sir Robert Filmer (c. 1588 – 26 May 1653) was an
English political theorist who defended the divine right of kings.
His best known work, Patriarcha, published posthumously in
1680, was the target of numerous Whig attempts at rebuttal,
including Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning
Government, James Tyrrell's Patriarcha Non Monarcha and
John Locke's Two Treatises of Government. Filmer also wrote
critiques of Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, Hugo Grotius and
Aristotle.”
24
Hyperlink to: http://www.constitution.org/eng/patriarcha.htm
101
Do we even need a king? And so on. People have strong
emotional feelings about these questions to this day — at
least, they have a strong emotional feeling about the last
one. Not answering them is certainly not acceptable.
But Filmer, and the divine-right monarchist in general,
comes as close as possible to not answering. Moreover,
his reasoning is impeccable for the orthodox:
If it please God, for the correction of the prince
or punishment of the people, to suffer princes to
be removed and others to be placed in their
rooms, either by the factions of the nobility or
rebellion of the people, in all such cases the
judgment of God, who hath power to give and to
take away kingdoms, is most just; yet the
ministry of men who execute God's judgments
without commission is sinful and damnable. God
doth but use and turn men's unrighteous acts to
the performance of His righteous decrees.
Note that this is basically a 17th-century way of saying:
"shit happens." God being omnipotent etc, if Dickweed
over there is king, it is obviously because God wanted
Dickweed to be king. And who are you to disagree with
God?
But an atheist, such as myself, has a simpler way of
getting to the same result. Really, what Filmer is saying,
is: if you want stable government, accept the status quo as
the verdict of history. There is no reason at all to inquire
as to why the Bourbons are the Kings of France. The rule
is arbitrary. Nonetheless, it is to the benefit of all that this
arbitrary rule exists, because obedience to the rightful
102
king is a Schelling point of nonviolent agreement.25 And
better yet, there is no way for a political force to steer the
outcome of succession — at least, nothing comparable to
the role of the educational authorities in a democracy.
In other words, to put it in Patchwork terms, the
relationship between realm and patch is no more, and no
less, than a property right. A patch is a sovereign
property, that is, one whose proprietor has no defender
but itself. Nonetheless, in moral terms, we may ask: why
does this realm hold that patch? And the answer, as it
always is with in any system of strong property rights, will
be not "because it deserves to," but "because it does."
Note that whatever the theology, Filmer's model of
government captures the property-right approach
perfectly.
(Also, one must admire Filmer's wicked gall in starting
out by describing the "right of rebellion" as a Catholic
heresy. Catholicism being admitted, at least by all fair
historians, to be the creed of your average divine-right
monarchist, as Protestantism is of vile democracy. So
Filmer's move here is wildly misleading, but pure fun —
25
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)
“In game theory, a focal point (also called Schelling
point) is a solution that people will tend to use in the absence of
communication, because it seems natural, special, or relevant to
them. The concept was introduced by the Nobel Memorial
Prizewinning American economist Thomas Schelling in his book
The Strategy of Conflict (1960). In this book (at p. 57), Schelling
describes "focal point[s] for each person’s expectation of what
the other expects him to expect to be expected to do". This type
of focal point later was named after Schelling. He further
explains that such points are highly useful in negotiations,
because we cannot completely trust our negotiating partners'
words.”
103
not unlike comparing liberals to Mussolini.26 Nothing to
do with anything, but it sure gets a rise out of 'em, and
moves SKUs like no one's business.)
The invention of this spurious right was perhaps the first
tiny crack in the philosophical girders of the classical
European monarchies. Filmer deftly points out that this is
an engineering error, the ancient political solecism of
imperium in imperio- which is now, in a typical
democratic propaganda maneuver, lauded as that bogus
political panacea, "separation of powers":
Thirdly, [Bellarmine] concludes that, if there be
a lawful cause, the multitude may change the
kingdom. Here I would fain know who shall
judge of this lawful cause? If the multitude — for
I see nobody else can — then this is a pestilent
and dangerous conclusion.27
Filmer, writing for an educated audience, does not bother
to remind them of the basic premise of Roman law: nemo
iudex in causa sua. Meaning: "no man can be a judge in
his own case." And no multitude, either. Pestilent indeed!
26
Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the
American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (2008)
27
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bellarmine
“Saint Robert Bellarmine, S.J. (Italian: Roberto
Francesco Romolo Bellarmino; 4 October 1542 – 17 September
1621) was an Italian Jesuit and a Cardinal of the Catholic
Church. He was one of the most important figures in the
CounterReformation.
“He was a professor of theology and later rector of the
Roman College, and in 1602 became archbishop of Capua.
Bellarmine supported the reform decrees of the Council of Trent.
“He was canonized in 1930 and named a Doctor of the
Church. Bellarmine is also widely remembered for his role in the
Giordano Bruno affair and the Galileo affair.”
104
These political three-card monte tricks, in which
sovereign authority is in some way divided, "limited"
(obviously, no sovereign can limit itself), or otherwise
weakened, in all cases for the purported purpose of
securing liberty, have no more place in a Patchwork realm
than they do at, say, Apple. They are spurious artifacts of
the Interregnum. Their effect on both a realm and its
residents is purely counterproductive. Begone with them.
In reality, no sovereign can be subject to law. This is a
political perpetual motion machine. Law is not law unless
it is judged and enforced. And by whom? For example, if
you think a supreme court with judicial review can make
government subject to law, you are obviously unfamiliar
with the sordid history of American constitutional
jurisprudence. All your design has achieved is to make
your supreme court sovereign. Indeed if the court had
only one justice, a proper title for that justice would be
"King." Sorry, kid, you haven't violated the conservation
of anything.
Indeed, as Filmer points out, the unity of chief executive,
chief lawmaker, and chief justice is simple, natural and
elegant:
There can be no laws without a supreme power
to command or make them. In all aristocracies
the nobles are above the laws, and in all
democracies the people. By the like reason, in a
monarchy the king must of necessity be above
the laws; there can be no sovereign majesty in
him that is under them; that which giveth the
very being to a king is the power to give laws;
without this power he is but an equivocal king. It
skills not which way kings come by their power,
105
whether by election, donation, succession, or by
any other means; for it is still the manner of the
government by supreme power that makes them
properly kings, and not the means of obtaining
their crowns. Neither doth the diversity of laws
nor contrary customs, whereby each kingdom
differs from another, make the forms of
commonweal different unless the power of
making laws be in several subjects.
For the confirmation of this point, Aristotle saith
that a perfect kingdom is that wherein the king
rules all things according to his own will, for he
that is called a king according to the law makes
no kind of kingdom at all. This, it seems, also the
Romans well understood to be most necessary in
a monarchy; for though they were a people most
greedy of liberty, yet the senate did free
Augustus from all necessity of laws, that he
might be free of his own authority and of
absolute power over himself and over the laws,
to do what he pleased and leave undone what he
listed; and this decree was made while Augustus
was yet absent. Accordingly we find that Ulpian
28
, the great lawyer, delivers it for a rule of the
civil law: Princeps legibus solutus est ("The
prince is not bound by the laws").
28
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulpian
“Ulpian (/ˈʌlpiәn/; Latin: Gnaeus Domitius Annius
Ulpianus; c. 170 – 223) was a prominent Roman jurist of Tyrian
ancestry. He was considered one of the great legal authorities of
his time and was one of the four jurists upon whom decisions
were to be based according to the Law of Citations of Valentinian
III.”
106
[...]
Besides, all laws are of themselves dumb, and
some or other must be trusted with the
application of them to particulars, by examining
all circumstances, to pronounce when they are
broken, or by whom. This work of right
application of laws is not a thing easy or obvious
for ordinary capacities, but requires profound
abilities of nature for the beating out of the truth
— witness the diversity and sometimes the
contrariety of opinions of the learned judges in
some difficult points. Since this is the common
condition of laws, it is also most reasonable that
the lawmaker should be trusted with the
application or interpretation of the laws, and for
this cause anciently the kings of this land have
sitten personally in courts of judicature, and are
still representatively present in all courts; the
judges are but substituted, and called the king's
justices, and their power ceaseth when the king
is in place.
107
So much, in other words, for Montesquieu.29 (And note
how the democratic doctrine, now assumed by all, simply
twists Ulpian's axiom into its polar opposite. Hey, hippie!
Who knows more about law? You, or Ulpian? I'm
reminded of Einstein's gem, found on so many a Prius:
"One cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for
war." Or as the Romans put it: sic vis pacem, para
bellum. And we wonder how the world got so screwed.
Stick to physics, Al.)
A Patchwork realm, or any modern corporate sovereign,
is no more bound by the laws it imposes on its residents
than Linden Labs is bound by the terms-of-use policy it
enforces in Second Life. (In fact, it is probably less so
bound, because a terms-of-use policy creates at least the
vague suggestion of liability. Whereas suing a sovereign is
yet another of these political solecisms.)
This is not at all to say that a Patchwork realm does not
enforce the rule of law. (Except, of course, under
conditions of martial law that involve a general security
threat. A state of siege is an option anywhere, any time,
for any reason.) To enforce a law is not to be bound by a
29
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Secondat,_Baron_de_
Montesquieu
“CharlesLouis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de
Montesquieu (/ˈmɒntәskjuː/;[1] French: [mɔ̃tɛskjø]; 18 January
1689 – 10 February 1755), generally referred to as simply
Montesquieu, was a French lawyer, man of letters, and political
philosopher who lived during the Age of Enlightenment.
He is famous for his articulation of the theory of
separation of powers, which is implemented in many
constitutions throughout the world. He is also known for doing
more than any other author to secure the place of the word
"despotism" in the political lexicon.”
108
law. These are two completely different things. I don't feel
I can repeat this too often.
Patchwork realms can be expected to enforce a fair and
consistent code of laws not for moral or theological
reasons, not because they are compelled to do so by a
superior sovereign or some other force real or imaginary,
but for the same economic reasons that compel them to
provide excellent customer service in general. Real estate
on which the rule of law prevails is much, much more
valuable than real estate on which it doesn't, and the
value of a realm is the value of its real estate.
(I suspect that in a well-run realm this is almost literally
the case, because I suspect that a well-run realm makes
its take via the world's fairest, least-intrusive tax:
property tax. In fact, while I don't know that this has ever
been tried, it is easy to design a perfectly fair and
perfectly non-intrusive property tax regime. Require real
estate owners to assess their own property, offering it for
sale at the assessed price, and set the tax at a percentage
of that price. No muss, no fuss, no IRS. Since no one can
live or work without real estate, it should be
straightforward to tune this self-assessed property tax
(SAPT) to extract the Laffer maximum.)
To live on a Patchwork patch, you have to sign a bilateral
contract with the realm. You promise to be a good boy
and behave yourself. The realm promises to treat you
fairly. There is an inherent asymmetry in this agreement,
because you have no enforcement mechanism against the
realm (just as you have no enforcement mechanism
against the United States). However, a realm's
compliance with its customer-service agreements is sure
to be a matter of rather intense attention among residents
109
and prospective residents. And thus among shareholders
as well.
For example, I suspect that every customer-service
agreement will include the right to remove oneself and
one's assets from the realm, at any time, no questions
asked, to any other realm that will accept the emigrant.
Possibly with an exception for those involved in the
criminal-justice process — but this may not even be
needed. Who wants a criminal? Not another realm,
surely.
Suppose a realm unilaterally abrogates this right of
emigration? It has just converted its residents into what
are, in a sense, slaves. It is no longer Disneyland. It is a
plantation. If it's any good with cinderblocks, barbed-wire
and minefields, there is no escape. What do you say if
you're stuck on this farm? You say: "yes, Massa." A slave
you are and a slave you will be forever.
This is terrible, of course. But again, the mechanism we
rely on to prevent it is no implausible deus ex machina,
no Indian rope-trick from the age of Voltaire, but the
sound engineering principle of the profit motive. A realm
that pulls this kind of crap cannot be trusted by anyone
ever again. It is not even safe to visit. Tourism disappears.
The potential real-estate bid from immigrants disappears.
And, while your residents are indeed stuck, they are also
remarkably sullen and display no great interest in slaving
for you. Which is a more valuable patch of real estate,
today: South Korea, or North Korea? Yet before the war,
the North was more industrialized and the South was
more rural. Such are the profits of converting an entire
country into a giant Gulag.
110
One of the most common errors in understanding the
premodern era is the confusion of monarchy with
tyranny. Nothing like Stalinism, for example, is recorded
in the history of the European aristocratic era. Why?
Because Stalin had to murder to stay in power. Anyone,
certainly any of the Old Bolsheviks, could have taken his
place.30 The killing machine took on a life of its own. The
30
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Bolshevik
“Old Bolshevik (Russian: ста́рый большеви́к, stary
bolshevik), also Old Bolshevik Guard or Old Party Guard,
became an unofficial designation for those who were members
of the Bolshevik party before the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Those who joined the party after the February Revolution were
considered Old Bolsheviks as their membership predated the
Bolsheviks' seizure of power during the October Revolution.
Many of the Old Guard were either tried and executed by the
NKVD during the Great Purge of 1936–38 or died under
suspicious circumstances.
“Vladimir Lenin expressed the opinion that what one
could call the "old party guard", a "thinnest layer", had a "huge,
unshared prestige".
“According to a 1972 Soviet book by D.A. Chygayev,
in 1922 there were 44,148 Old Bolsheviks.[2] Vadim Rogovin
cites the statistics published by the 13th Congress of the
Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), that in 1924, of 600,000
Party members, 0.6% joined before 1905, 2% joined in
1906–1916 and <9% joined in 1917.
“Joseph Stalin removed many of the Old Bolsheviks
from power during the Great Purge of the 1930s. (The most
prominent survivors in the Communist Party were Lazar
Kaganovich, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas
Mikoyan, and Stalin himself; Stalin had laid plans to remove
Molotov and Mikoyan in another purge in the 1950s but died
before he could do so.) Some were executed for treason; some
were sent to labor camps (the Gulag); and a few, such as
Alexandra Kollontai, went abroad as ambassadors, preventing
them from participating in the central government. Many
communist opponents of Stalin, most notably the Trotskyists, cite
this fact in support of their argument that Stalin betrayed the
aims of the revolution; they believed in Permanent Revolution,
while Stalin and his supporters believed in Socialism in One
Country.
111
tyrant, the mafia boss, stands at the apex of a pyramid of
power, each block in which is a person who hopes to
someday kill the boss and take his job. In a tyranny,
murder and madness become part of the fabric of the
State. In a monarchy, however, the succession is clear,
and if by some accident of law and fate there are multiple
candidates, they are at least each others' relatives. This
rules out neither murder nor madness, but they are the
exception and not the rule.
Obviously, a joint-stock realm faces completely different
problems in maintaining internal security. Internal
security can be defined as the protection of the
shareholders' property against all internal threats —
including both residents and employees, up to and
certainly including the chief executive. If the shareholders
cannot dismiss the CEO of the realm by voting according
to proper corporate procedures, a total security failure
has occurred.
The standard Patchwork remedy for this problem is the
cryptographic chain of command. Ultimately, power
over the realm truly rests with the shareholders, because
they use a secret sharing31 or similar cryptographic
“Various things in the Soviet Union, such as a
publishing house, several steamships, motorboats, kolkhozes
and settlements, gained the name Old Bolshevik.
“The first prominent Old Bolshevik to die was Yakov
Sverdlov in 1919; the last was Lazar Kaganovich in 1991 who
also reached the greatest age.”
31
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing
“Secret sharing (also called secret splitting) refers to
methods for distributing a secret amongst a group of
participants, each of whom is allocated a share of the secret.
The secret can be reconstructed only when a sufficient number,
of possibly different types, of shares are combined together;
individual shares are of no use on their own.
112
algorithm to maintain control over its root keys.
Authority is then delegated to the board (if any), the CEO
and other officers, and thence down into the military or
other security forces. At the leaves of the tree are
computerized weapons, which will not fire without
cryptographic authorization.
Thus, any fragment of the security force which remains
loyal to the shareholders can use its operational weapons
to defeat any coalition of disloyal, and hence disarmed,
employees and/or residents. Ouch! Taste the pain,
traitors. (Needless to say, the dependence of this design
on 21st-century technology is ample explanation of why
history has not bequeathed us anything like the
joint-stock realm. It was simply not implementable — any
more than our ancestors could build a suspension bridge
out of limestone blocks.)
With this basic background in Filmerist government, and
with the (as yet unjustified) assumption that a patch is
safe against external aggression, let's start to look at what
a 21st-century corporate sovereign might actually want to
do.
“In one type of secret sharing scheme there is one
dealer and n players. The dealer gives a share of the secret to
the players, but only when specific conditions are fulfilled will the
players be able to reconstruct the secret from their shares. The
dealer accomplishes this by giving each player a share in such a
way that any group of t (for threshold) or more players can
together reconstruct the secret but no group of fewer than t
players can. Such a system is called a (t, n)threshold scheme
(sometimes it is written as an (n, t)threshold scheme).
“Secret sharing was invented independently by Adi
Shamir and George Blakley in 1979.”
113
For simplicity and for my own personal amusement, let's
call the realm Friscorp, and say its patch is the present
city of San Francisco — pop., about 750,000.
Obviously, Friscorp would like to turn SF into the coolest,
most hoppin', and definitely most expensive city on the
planet. Call it a combination of Paris, Monaco, and
Babylon. Destroying ugly postwar buildings, for example,
and reconstructing them in appropriate historical styles,
will definitely be high on Friscorp's agenda.
The first and touchiest problem, though, is just deciding
who gets to live in San Francisco. Friscorp's answer is
simple: anyone who isn't dangerous to others, and can
afford to live in San Francisco. It is probably also nice if
they speak English, but considering the exigencies of the
second constraint, they almost certainly will. Friscorp
may also import menial laborers, as Dubai does today,
but they are not to be confused with the actual residents.
Here we face a slight predicament. There are quite a few
people presently in San Francisco who do not meet the
second constraint, are pretty iffy on the first as well, and
have no labor skills to speak of. What do we do with
them? Sell their slums out from under them, obviously;
demo everything, spray for roaches, rodents and pit bulls,
smooth the rubble out with a bulldozer or two, and
possibly a little aerial bombing; erect new residential
districts suitable for Russian oligarchs. Next question?
But where do they go? Since their customer-service
contract gives them the right of exit, these people — call
them bezonians32 — can of course emigrate to any other
32
[Dead link]
114
realm in the Patchwork. This presumes, however, that
said realm is willing to accept them. And why would it be?
If our design does not provide for the existence of a large
number of human beings whose existence anywhere is
not only unprofitable, but in fact a straight-up loss, to
that realm, it is simply inconsistent with reality.
The design faces an existential challenge. On next week's
episode, we'll present the shocking but ineluctable
solution, and figure out the second half of our security
problem: the relationships between realms.
115
2: Profit Strategies for Our
New Corporate Overlords
I fear last week's essay, after promising an absence of
grim, dumped a can of it down your shirt. I apologize for
this, dear readers, and also for the awful, incendiary
closing cliffhanger. (But fear not. We will answer the
question.) UR has never been an easy ride, but I really
don't mean to abuse the customer in this way. If nothing
else, it repels the good and attracts the bad.
But unfortunately for those who are bored with these
warm, gaseous exhalations, I've come to the conclusion
that it is simply not possible to get into the meat of a UR
post without a fresh introduction to the anti-democratic,
and frankly authoritarian, philosophy of government for
which we are so notorious. (You do know that just
reading this blog makes you a bad person, don't you?)
Unless you are a hardened longtime reader, UR is just off
your political map, and anyone can click on a blog for the
first time. Besides, one can never be too deprogrammed.
Most people, when they take a whack at designing a
government (an engineering task at which all God's
chilluns just naturally excel), tend to ask themselves:
what should the government do? Of course this is the
wrong question. The right question is: what will the
government do?
(A great example of asking the right question, but still
getting the wrong answer, is Federalist 10.33 It is almost
funny to read Madison's bogus remedies for the
well-known ills of democracy, like national size as an
33
Hyperlink to: http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm
116
infallible nostrum against political parties — not unlike
perusing some medieval pharmacopoeia which prescribes
dried wolf dick for breast cancer.)
For example, most democratic citizens are firm believers
in the concept of limited government. In the all-curing
magic black bag of democracy, limited government is the
first-line ointment. Apparently a government can prevent
itself and its successors indefinite from doing bad things,
just by writing a note to itself that says "don't do bad
things."
Swallowing the red pill, departing the Matrix and donning
our alien-detecting Ray-Bans, we realize at once that no
government can limit itself. Limited government is a
perpetual-motion machine: a product axiomatically
fraudulent by definition. In any human organization, final
authority rests with some person or persons, not with any
rule, process or procedure.
This is not to say that there is no distinction between
Washington and Pyongyang. What we call the "rule of
law" is a good thing. But if you have an efficient engine,
there is no point in marketing it as an infinitely efficient
engine. The noble ideal of "limited government" or "rule
of law" is a piece of political camouflage, behind which
lurks a useful and effective, but certainly imperfect and
not even slightly divine, corporate design: that of judicial
supremacy. In a sentence: juridical supremacy is judicial
supremacy.
Judicial supremacy is a management design in which
ultimate sovereign authority rests with committees of
arbitrators who are experts in proper government
procedure. The design certainly has its merits. If
117
implemented well, for example, it can reduce personal
graft among employees to negligible levels. Hardly a high
standard, but I am happy to be governed by a regime
which has achieved it. But ultimately, judicial supremacy
can become arbitrarily evil — all it takes is arbitrarily evil
judges.
Is judicial supremacy, for example, superior to military
supremacy? This is like asking if a rowboat is better than
a sailboat. For some purposes it is, for some it isn't. In
peacetime you would probably rather have the former. If
you want to win a war you probably want the latter.
Neither, however, can be said to be in any sense
predictable by design. A judicial kritocracy34 or a military
dictatorship may deliver good government, or bad
government. Either can be nice or nasty. In the end, the
words "judge" and "general" are just words. It is not at all
difficult to imagine a process of political evolution by
which they swap meanings.
34
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kritarchy
“Kritarchy, also called kritocracy, is a system of rule by
judges (Hebrew: שופטים, shoftim) in the tribal confederacy of
ancient Israel during the period of time described in the Book of
Judges, following Joshua's conquest of Canaan and prior to the
united monarchy under Saul.
“Because it is a compound of the Greek words κριτής,
krites ("judge") and ἄρχω, árkhō ("to rule"), its use has expanded
to cover rule by judges in the modern sense as well, as in the
case of Somalia, ruled by judges with the polycentric legal
tradition of xeer, and arguably the Islamic Courts Union[citation
needed] and in the fictional regime of Megacity One, the focus
of setting for the Judge Dredd franchise.”
118
(Herr Teufelsdröckh's philosophy of Clothes35 has never
said more. Can a General command, in a Black Robe? or
Justice be laid down, in Camo? — most assuredly; and the
Devil too, in either! But more of him in short. Under the
Clothes is a Man — who is he? How got he here? What
does he at his Desk? None of these having much to do
with your Design.)
Is it possible to design a structure of government which
will be stable and predictable? Hopefully, of course, stably
and predictably benign? History affords no evidence of it.
But history affords no evidence of semiconductors, either.
There is always room for something new.
The key is that word should. When you say your
government "should do X," or "should not do Y," you are
speaking in the hieratic language of democracy. You are
postulating some ethereal and benign higher sovereign,
which can enforce promises made by the mere
government to whose whims you would otherwise be
subject. In reality, while your government can certainly
promise to do X or not to do Y, there is no power that can
hold it to this promise. Or if there is, it is that power
35
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sartor_Resartus
“Sartor Resartus (meaning 'The tailor retailored') is an
1836 novel by Thomas Carlyle, first published as a serial in
1833–34 in Fraser's Magazine. The novel purports to be a
commentary on the thought and early life of a German
philosopher called Diogenes Teufelsdröckh (which translates as
'godborn devildung'), author of a tome entitled "Clothes: Their
Origin and Influence", but was actually a poioumenon
("product"). Teufelsdröckh's Transcendentalist musings are
mulled over by a sceptical English Reviewer (referred to as
Editor) who also provides fragmentary biographical material on
the philosopher. The work is, in part, a parody of Hegel, and of
German Idealism more generally. However, Teufelsdröckh is also
a literary device with which Carlyle can express difficult truths.”
119
which is your real government. Your whining should be
addressed to it.
The neocameralist structure of Patchwork realms, which
are sovereign joint-stock companies, creates a different
kind of should. This is the profitable should. We can say
that a realm should do X rather than Y, because X is more
profitable than Y. Since sovereign means sovereign,
nothing can compel the realm to do X and not Y. But,
with an anonymous capital structure, we can expect
administrators to be generally responsible and not make
obvious stupid mistakes.
Another way to say this is that a realm is financially
responsible. The general observation here is that, to
paraphrase Tolstoy, financially responsible organizations
are all alike. By definition, they do not waste money. By
definition, their irresponsible counterparts do, and by
definition there are an infinite number of ways to waste
money. Think of a rope: a financially responsible
organization is a tight rope. It only has one shape. But if
there is slack in the rope, it can flap around in all kinds of
crazy ways.
It is immediately clear that the neocameralist should, the
tight rope, is far inferior to the ethereal should, the magic
leash of God. (Typically these days arriving in the form of
vox populi, vox Dei. Or, as a cynic might put it: vox
populi, vox praeceptori.)
Given the choice between financial responsibility and
moral responsibility, I will take the latter every time. If it
was possible to write a set of rules on paper and require
one's children and one's children's children to comply
120
with this bible, all sorts of eternal principles for good
government and healthy living could be set out.
But we cannot construct a political structure that will
enforce moral responsibility. We can construct a political
structure that will enforce financial responsibility. Thus
neocameralism. We might say that financial
responsibility is the raw material of moral responsibility.
The two are not by any means identical, but they are
surprisingly similar, and the gap seems bridgeable.
When we use the profitable should, therefore, we are in
the corporate strategy department. We ask: how should a
Patchwork realm, or any financially responsible
government, be designed to maximize the return on its
capital?
For our overall realm design, let's simplify the
Anglo-American corporate model slightly. We'll have
direct shareholder sovereignty, with no board of
directors. The board layer strikes me as a bit of an
anachronism, and it is certainly one place stuff can go
wrong. Deleted. And I also dislike the term 'CEO,' which
seems a bit vainglorious for a sovereign organization. A
softer word with a pleasant Quaker feel is delegate,
although we will compromise on a capital. And we can
call the logical holder of each share its proprietor.
Therefore: a Patchwork realm is governed by a Delegate,
who is the proxy of the proprietors, and can be replaced
by a majority of them at any time and for any reason. The
Delegate exercises undivided sovereign authority, as in
divine-right monarchy. i.e., in English: total power. (The
Delegate is always Jewish.)
121
This fragile-looking design can succeed at the sovereign
layer because, and only because, modern encryption
technology makes it feasible. The proprietors use a
secret-sharing scheme to control a root key that must
regularly reauthorize the Delegate, and thus in turn the
command hierarchy of the security forces, in a pyramid
leading down to cryptographic locks on individual
weapons. If the Delegate turns on the proprietors, they
may have to wait a day to authorize the replacement, and
another day or two before the new Delegate can organize
the forces needed to have her predecessor captured and
shot. Fiduciary responsibility has its price.
That modern cryptography was not available to the Most
Serene Republic of Venice36 does not mean they wouldn't
36
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice
“The Republic of Venice (Italian: Repubblica di
Venezia or Repubblica Veneta), traditionally known as the Most
Serene Republic of Venice (Venetian: Serenìsima Repùblica
Vèneta; Italian: Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia), was a
sovereign state and maritime republic in northeastern Italy,
which existed for a millennium between the 8th century and the
18th century. It was based in the lagoon communities of the
historically prosperous city of Venice, and was a leading
European economic and trading power during the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance.
“The Venetian city state was founded as a safe haven
for the people escaping persecution in mainland Europe after the
decline of the Roman Empire. In its early years, it prospered on
the salt trade. In subsequent centuries, the city state established
a thalassocracy. It dominated trade on the Mediterranean Sea,
including commerce between Europe and North Africa, as well
as Asia. The Venetian navy was used in the Crusades, most
notably in the Fourth Crusade. Venice achieved territorial
conquests along the Adriatic Sea. The city became home to an
extremely wealthy merchant class, who patronized renowned art
and architecture along the city's lagoons. Venetian merchants
were influential financiers in Europe. The city was also the
birthplace of great European explorers, especially Marco Polo,
122
have used it if they'd had it. Since we have it, we can use
it. Since the algorithms date to the 1970s, it's not
surprising that history has no record of cryptographic
organizational structures at the sovereign level. Since the
neocameralist design for a sovereign corporation depends
on them, it's not surprising that history shows us nothing
of the kind. While as a reactionary I believe that the legal
and political structures of old Europe, so often defamed
as "feudal," are a treasure trove of sovereign organization
and if restored in toto tomorrow would prove on balance
a vast human boon, it is a slight overstatement to assume
that everything old is beautiful and sweet, and anything
new must suck.
For simplicity, our realm will do its books in gold. The
spectacle of a sovereign corporation that maintains
accounts in its own scrip is a fascinating one, at least from
a financial perspective, and we cannot write it off quite so
casually as yet another 20th-century monstrosity. It is not
as well as Baroque composers such as Vivaldi and Benedetto
Marcello.
“The republic was ruled by the Doge, who was elected
by members of the Great Council of Venice, the citystate's
parliament. The ruling class was an oligarchy of merchants and
aristocrats. Venice and other Italian maritime republics played a
key role in fostering capitalism. Venetian citizens generally
supported the system of governance. The citystate enforced
strict laws and employed ruthless tactics in its prisons.
“The opening of new trade routes to the Americas and
the East Indies via the Atlantic Ocean marked the beginning of
Venice's decline as a powerful maritime republic. The city state
suffered defeats from the navy of the Ottoman Empire. In 1797,
the republic was plundered by retreating Austrian and then
French forces, following an invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte,
and the Republic of Venice was split into the Austrian Venetian
Province, the Cisalpine Republic, a French client state, and the
Ionian French departments of Greece. Venice then became a
part of a unified Italy in the 19th century.”
123
impossible that fiat currency can be made to turn a buck.
It is unlikely that the proprietors will want their dividends
in it, however.
And who are the proprietors? Anyone. They are
anonymous shareholders. It may be desirable, though, for
a realm to enjoin its residents from holding its shares. It
is not normally necessary for a company to refrain from
serving its shareholders as customers, but a sovereign
realm is not a normal company. A resident shareholder
has a conflict of interest, because he may have an
opportunity to use the power of his share to promote
policies that reward him directly but are not in the
interests of his non-resident fellows. The effect is small,
but better to rule it out.
We'll also assume — assumption to be justified below —
that realms exist in a competitive market in which
residents can easily take their business elsewhere if they
don't like the service.
Given this setup, let's say you're the Delegate. Your patch
is the city of San Francisco, and your realm is its new
corporate overlord — Friscorp. Friscorp is yours. Not that
you own it, of course, just that the owners have hired you
to run it.
First, let's enumerate the basic principles of sovereign
corporate management.
Principle one: the proprietors' sovereignty is absolute.
Securing it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, is
the primary fiduciary responsibility of the Delegate. Lose
the patch and the realm is worthless, and so are the
shares. Everything else, even profit, comes after security.
124
Principle two: a realm is a business, not a charity. Its goal
is to maximize its discounted return on investment. If
Delegate and proprietors alike somehow manage to forget
this, in the long run their realm will deteriorate, develop
red-giant syndrome, and become gigantic, corrupt and
foul. It may even turn into a democracy.
Principle three: except in cases where it conflicts with the
first or second principles, "do no evil" is always good
business. Think of your realm as a hotel. As Mark Twain
once put it: "all saints can do miracles, but few of them
can keep hotel." And while many hotelkeepers can do
miracles, few indeed are saints. But all are nice to the
customers — at least, the 99.999% of customers who feel
no need to start torching the drapery.
While our test case, San Francisco, is hardly
representative of the average stitch of Earth's skin, it will
probably be harder to manage than most — being both
urban, and urbane. So how, as Delegate of Friscorp,
would you run your town? Let's start by assuming a
steady-state system, ducking as usual the problem of
getting from here to there.
There are two basic tasks of a realm: managing the
residents, and surviving in the big bad world. Let's take
these one at a time.
Any hominid, hominoid, or other bipedal ape present on
Friscorp's patch is a resident. The basic idea of a realm is
that the proprietors profit by providing the residents with
a pleasant place to live, be happy, and of course be
productive. Basically, if you're not nice to the hominids,
125
they'll leave, the proprietors won't have a business, and
you won't have a job.
It is difficult for those of us who grew up under
democracy to juxtapose this fact, which is an incentive
rather than a constraint, with the fact that as Delegate of
Friscorp, you exercise undivided sovereignty over San
Francisco. You have no constraint. Your residents are as
ants in your kitchen. No combination of them can
possibly oppose you. Not even if they all come together in
one big angry mob, screaming, jumping up and down,
waving their little signs and throwing rocks and gravel.
All will be massacred by your invincible robot armies.
Pour la canaille, la mitraille!
And even without any such cause for complaint, if it
would be profitable to just spray the whole city down,
exterminating the current crop of worthless bipeds and
replacing them with a more upscale crowd, you will. And
if you don't, your proprietors will fire you and hire a new
Delegate with a clue. Terrifying! At least from the San
Franciscans' perspective.
But we can nip this grimness right here: it won't be
profitable. Why exterminate, when you can enslave? (It
won't be profitable to enslave, either. But see further.)
Once again, Patchwork residents do not rely on imaginary
constraints to feel secure in the icy, lethal jaws of a
sovereign state which could slaughter them all. They rely
on real incentives. While the incentives may not be 100%
reliable, they at least exist.
A realm signs a formal contract, or covenant, with all
responsible residents. The deal is this: the resident agrees
not to misbehave, the realm agrees not to mistreat him.
126
Definitions of each are set down in great detail. In case of
conflict, the realm appoints an arbitrator to hear the case.
All cases can be appealed up to the Delegate, who has the
power not only to interpret the covenant but also — being
sovereign — to suspend it.
This process is called "law." It is not a novelty. A realm
may adopt and/or modify any of the old Continental,
British or American systems of law. If a common-law
system is adopted, precedent should be rolled back to
1900 at the latest, and probably more like 1800. The
democratic era has corrupted everything, law being no
exception.
The covenant has two sides, but the sides are not equal.
The realm, having sovereign power, can compel the
resident to comply with all promises. Since San Francisco
is not an Islamic state, it does not ask its residents to
agree that their hand will be cut off if they steal. But it
could. And San Francisco, likewise, can promise not to
cut off its residents' hands until it is blue in the face —
but, since it is a sovereign state, no one can enforce this
promise against it.
For exactly this reason, however, San Francisco must
guard its reputation. It does this by living up to its
promises, as much as possible. If it is forced by
unexpected, understandable circumstances to invoke
force majeure, people will probably understand. If it
breaks its own promises all the time and for no good
reason, amputating hands willy-nilly after swearing up
and down that life and limb are sacred, it will not be
viewed as a safe place to live, and no one will want to live
127
there. Congratulations on your new burned-out ruin.37
The views, at least, remain spectacular. Your replacement
can probably find a way to salvage some tiny fraction of
his employers' capital by turning the place into some kind
of eco-park.
To live in or even just visit San Francisco, a hominid must
either sign the covenant, or be a dependent of some
guardian who has signed the covenant. Ie, your hominid
must either be responsible, or have someone who is
responsible for it. San Francisco is a city, not a zoo. The
signer of the covenant, the responsible party, is the
subject.
In the covenant, the realm promises to protect the
subject's person, property and dependents. It indemnifies
the subject against crime, and pays unrecoverable tort
claims. There is no such thing as perfect security, and bad
things can happen to anyone anywhere, but Friscorp
considers all disturbances of the peace to be its problem
and its fault.
And most important, Friscorp guarantees your right to
depart from the city with person, property and
dependents, unless of course you are fleeing legal
proceedings. (And maybe even if you are — of course, you
would have to find another patch willing to take you.)
In return, the subject promises not to disturb the peace of
San Francisco, or permit his or her dependents to do so.
(I favor the ancient Roman design, in which the guardian
is responsible for the actions of his dependents, and holds
37
[Dead link]
128
the authority of patria potestas38 over them. Authority
and responsibility, as usual, being unified. Not quite a
fractal or hierarchical sovereignty, but close. Friscorp has
no business case for interfering in its subjects' family
lives.)
Residents of a Patchwork realm have no security or
privacy against the realm. There is no possible conflict in
the matter: not being malignant, the government is not a
threat to its residents, and since it is sovereign they are
not a threat to it. This absence of conflict allows the
government to enforce a much higher level of peaceful
interaction between residents.
38
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pater_familias
“The pater familias, also written as paterfamilias
(plural patres familias), was the head of a Roman family. The
pater familias was the oldest living male in a household, and
exercised autocratic authority over his extended family. The term
is Latin for "father of the family" or the "owner of the family
estate". The form is archaic in Latin, preserving the old genitive
ending in ās (see Latin declension), whereas in classical Latin
the normal genitive ending was ae. The pater familias always
had to be a Roman citizen.
Roman law and tradition (mos maiorum) established
the power of the pater familias within the community of his own
extended familia. He held legal privilege over the property of the
familia, and varying levels of authority over his dependents:
these included his wife and children, certain other relatives
through blood or adoption, clients, freedmen and slaves. The
same mos maiorum moderated his authority and determined his
responsibilities to his own familia and to the broader community.
He had a duty to father and raise healthy children as future
citizens of Rome, to maintain the moral propriety and wellbeing
of his household, to honour his clan and ancestral gods and to
dutifully participate — and if possible, serve — in Rome's
political, religious and social life. In effect, the pater familias was
expected to be a good citizen. In theory at least, he held powers
of life and death over every member of his extended familia
through ancient right. In practice, the extreme form of this right
was seldom exercised. It was eventually limited by law.
129
All residents, even temporary visitors, carry an ID card
with RFID response. All are genotyped and iris-scanned.
Public places and transportation systems track everyone.
Security cameras are ubiquitous. Every car knows where
it is and who is sitting in it, and tells the authorities both.
Residents cannot use this data to snoop into each others'
lives, but Friscorp can use it to monitor society at an
almost arbitrarily detailed level.
In return, residents experience a complete absence of
crime — at least at the level of present-day Japan39, and
ideally much lower. (San Francisco has no need of
Yakuza.) Residents also experience a complete lack of
security theater40 — to board a plane, they walk right on.
Friscorp has no reason to tolerate the presence of
dangerous or unidentified hominids at large in its city,
any more than it would tolerate leopards on the loose.
Strong identification and tracking of residents also
mitigates one of the most obvious problems with the
Patchwork approach, the inconvenience of constantly
crossing borders in a world of small sovereignties. What
does a resident do if she lives in San Francisco and wants
to drive to Berkeley, which is a different country? Is there
a checkpoint on the Bay Bridge?
39
Takuan Seiyo, More Lessons from the East:
https://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3338/print
40
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater
“Security theater is the practice of investing in
countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved
security while doing little or nothing to achieve it. Researchers
such as Edward Felten have described the airport security
repercussions due to the September 11, 2001 attacks as security
theater.”
130
Not at all. She just drives to Berkeley. Her car knows who
is in it, and the authorities of both SF and Berkeley know
where it is. If she is for some reason not authorized to
enter Berkeley, all sorts of alarms will flash. If she
persists, she will be of course detained. Having a scalpel,
Patchwork feels no need to whack anyone with a club.
One way to see internal security in a Patchwork realm is
as a compromise between two sorts of Orwellianism. In
the sense that the realm is (effectively) omniscient and
omnipotent, it would fit most people's' definition of
"Orwellian."
In return for its Orwellian powers of observation and
action, however, Friscorp has no interest at all in the
other half of Orwellianism: the psychological
manipulation of public opinion as a device for regime
stabilization. The realm cares what its residents do. It
does not care what they think. It is difficult to express the
importance of this freedom to those who have found a
way to live without it.
There is one problem, though, which is the problem I
mentioned last week: the problem of adults who are not
productive members of society. In our little Newspeak we
call them wards of the realm. A ward is any resident who
is not capable of earning a living, is not accepted as a
dependent by any guardian, and is not wanted by any
other patch.
The initial conversion of our present, democratic, and of
course completely dysfunctional San Francisco into the
realm of Friscorp will produce quite a few wards. At least
relative to the number we would expect to emerge in a
131
healthy society. But there will always be black sheep, and
there will always be wards.
As Delegate of San Francisco, what should you do with
these people? I think the answer is clear: alternative
energy. Since wards are liabilities, there is no business
case for retaining them in their present, ambulatory form.
Therefore, the most profitable disposition for this
dubious form of capital is to convert them into biodiesel,
which can help power the Muni buses.
Okay, just kidding. This is the sort of naive Randian
thinking which appeals instantly to a geek like me, but of
course has nothing to do with real life. The trouble with
the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in
a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just
partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass.
However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying
to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to
genocide. That is: the ideal solution achieves the same
result as mass murder (the removal of undesirable
elements from society), but without any of the moral
stigma. Perfection cannot be achieved on both these
counts, but we can get closer than most might think.
The best humane alternative to genocide I can think of is
not to liquidate the wards — either metaphorically or
literally — but to virtualize them. A virtualized human is
in permanent solitary confinement, waxed like a bee larva
into a cell which is sealed except for emergencies. This
would drive him insane, except that the cell contains an
immersive virtual-reality interface which allows him to
experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary
world.
132
The virtual worlds of today are already exciting enough to
distract many away from their real lives. They will only
get better. Nor is productive employment precluded in
this scenario — for example, wards can perform manual
labor through telepresence. As members of society,
however, they might as well not exist. And because cells
are sealed and need no guards, virtualization should be
much cheaper than present-day imprisonment.
I like virtualization because it can be made to scale. I
don't think there is any scenario under which San
Francisco is burdened with more than a few thousand
wards. Many other regions of the earth, however, contain
large numbers of human beings whose existence may well
prove an unequivocal liability to the owners of any
ground on which they would reside. If so, they can be
virtualized,
creating
giant
human
Wachowski
honeycombs of former bezonians, whose shantytowns can
be cleared and redeveloped as villas for retired
oil-company executives.
Of course, virtualization is a drastic alternative and itself
unlikely to happen. Charity is just too popular these days.
Before anyone becomes a ward of the realm, any person
or organization is free to adopt him as a dependent as a
matter of mutual agreement. His new guardian is (a)
responsible for his actions, and (b) free to tell him what to
do: the ideal relationship for any attempt at
rehabilitation. (It's basically what the Salvation Army
does now, I believe.) If all else fails, there's always the
honeycomb.
I think this problem gives a flavor of the kind of thinking
we would expect in an entrepreneurial sovereign. The
133
result is quite foreign to the democratic philosophy of
government, obviously, and it takes some imagination to
picture. But I seriously doubt that many who had a
chance to live in this future would have much interest in
restoring the past.
Libertarians in particular may have a great deal of trouble
understanding how an authoritarian, omnipotent and
omniscient sovereign can be expected to create a free
society. The fundamental diagnosis of libertarianism —
that today's democratic governments are much larger and
much more intrusive than they should be — is obviously
correct. The remedy proposed, however, does not have
anything like a track record of success.
In fact, I believe the libertarian opposition to sovereignty,
dating back to Locke, is a major cause of modern big
government. Our present establishments, not to mention
our tax rates, dwarf any divine-right monarchy in history.
The attempt to limit the state, if it has any result, tends to
result in an additional layer of complexity which weakens
it and makes it more inefficient. This inefficiency gives it
both the need and the excuse to expand.
So we may ask: why does the post office suck? Not
because it is sovereign, but because it is not financially
responsible. Its freedom to be wasteful and inefficient is
what gives it that familiar Aeroflot feel. (The bankrupt
airlines, such as United, feel more like Aeroflot every
year.) When we postulate a sovereign authority which is
financially responsible, like a Patchwork realm, we have
no reason to expect it to display these pathologies of
government. In particular, we cannot expect it to waste
resources in order to pointlessly annoy its residents, a
134
form of inefficiency in which democratic regimes seem to
positively revel.
The sight of a financially responsible sovereign, even the
thought-experiment of one, is a good lesson for
libertarians, because it reminds us what a healthy
government actually is. Today's democratic megastates
are to healthy sovereigns as liver cancer is to liver. If you
find liver cells invading every other organ and crushing
them all into goo, it is only natural to think that the cure
might be a drug that was lethal to liver cells. But you
actually need a liver. You need to kill the cancer, not the
liver.
Next week, we'll finish off the design with a look at
external security: Patchwork as a whole. How does this
glorious tapestry stay afloat? Why doesn't it just collapse
into a single patch? And how can it defend itself from its
unreconstructed, 20th-century-style neighbors?
135
3: What We Have & What’s So Bad About It
I started this series with the assumption that everyone
reading it would already be a hardened veteran of UR's
brutal, disorienting assaults on everything that is good
and decent and true. This is obviously a counterfactual.
And even for many hardened veterans, I fear, the
Patchwork series has proved a rough ride.
Here at UR we have a very different approach from most
who would like to "change the world." Rather than
actually trying to market our designs, presumably by
making them sound familiar, appealing and benevolent,
we apply anti-spin. We strip off the fairing and present
the cold, gritty gears of the naked machine. Our tone is at
best neutral, at worst acid and nihilistic.
Why? Well, for one, it's just more fun. Let's be clear about
this: UR is a blog. UR is not a cult, it is not a subversive
underground organization, it is certainly not a political
party. It is something I write for fun, and you read for fun.
UR is part of the entertainment industry. If you find it
offensive, Lord only knows what you'll make of Nigga
Know.41 (I don't even know what to make of Nigga Know.
I may just be too old for it.)
But if there is a strategy behind the anti-spin, it is to
maximize the quality of UR's audience, by minimizing the
quantity. (Long posts help with this, too.) UR will not
appeal to your heart. It will only appeal to your head.
Which must then often overcome the stomach. To put it
simply: if you don't understand UR, you are very unlikely
to believe it. And this is better for both of us.
41
[Dead link]
136
On the other hand, there is no need to be mysterious. So,
now that I've started to introduce this terrifying
alternative, let me go back and explain why it's needed.
Call it a prequel.
Let's start with a point of agreement: our goal, as people
who live in a civilized modern society, is a system of
government which is responsible. Good government is
responsible government. The equivalence is a tautology.
The question is: how shall we secure for ourselves the
blessings of responsible government? Or as Pope put it:42
For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best:
Unless you had quite an unusual education, you grew up
believing that the problem is solved: constitutional
democracy is the best mechanism for producing
responsible government. It certainly produces something.
Let's call this something, whatever it is, moral
responsibility.
Here at UR, we see constitutional democracy as a sort of
large hydatid cyst43, cuddled gently in the skull alongside
one's actual neural tissue. The intrepid reader, with the
instruments this blog provides, can extract the creature in
the comfort and privacy of her own shower stall. As the
neurosurgeon, Dr. Ahmad, notes: "The space was filled
with saline at the end of operation."
42
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (17331734)
Hyperlink to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5uOaJFtmt8
43
137
Which is certainly one option. But it leaves the patient a
bit of a nihilist. The obvious drop-in replacement is
royalism, of course — royalism is really just reverting the
changes, as we say in my line of work. So here at UR we
give it up for all royalists. (Fill the cavity with gold. This
will be young Jasmeen's college fund, as well as her skull
ballast.)
For example, I have no hesitation in calling for the King
of Thailand to throw off the reins of the transnationalists,
obey the wishes of the people, and return the country to
full independence and royal government. I have also
previously noted that any corporate descendant of the old
Union of England, Scotland and Ireland, including but
not limited to West Virginia, is entitled to restore the
Stuarts through the Princes of Liechtenstein. If you
wonder what this would mean for you, personally, try the
simple exercise of reading your quality local fishrag for a
month, noting the top headline, and asking: "How would
Hereditary Prince Alois handle this?"44
But royalism, even if you stick a "neo-" on the front, is
just too old-fashioned to appeal to some. So we also offer
an extra decorative touch, available for a mere $19.95, in
which the customer can fill her cyst's void with our own
synthetic organ of government. We call it neocameralism,
and it is very fresh.
44
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois,_Hereditary_Prince_of_Liechte
nstein
“Alois, Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein, Count
Rietberg (born 11 June 1968, full name: Alois Philipp Maria), is
the eldest son of Hans Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein, and
Countess Marie Aglaë Kinsky of Wchinitz and Tettau. Alois has
been regent of Liechtenstein (Stellvertreter des Fürsten) since
15 August 2004. He is married to Duchess Sophie of Bavaria.”
138
Neocameralism informs the surrounding neural tissue
that the best mechanism for producing responsibility in
government is for governments to be administered as
sovereign joint-stock corporations, controlled absolutely
by their shareholders, who hold the master encryption
keys for the government's invincible robot armies. At
some risk of oxymoronism, this could be even be
described as private government. It creates quite a
different form of responsibility — financial responsibility.
Of course, it's entirely possible that our so-called "cyst"
could be a healthy, normal lobe of your brain. That our
sinister, unapproved product could in fact insert a strange
translucent, globelike parasite, which will control your
destiny and lead you to an awful end. Ha ha! Yes, young
Jedi, we are asking you to choose. Wield the red saber for
the first time! Then visit our Sith Library, and learn the
truth about this so-called "Council." You already know
what they say about us.
In other words, the financial responsibility created by
joint-stock sovereignty would be much more desirable, in
terms of quality of life for most residents, than the moral
responsibility which we presently enjoy thanks to
constitutional democracy. Or so I assert.
But this is a dangerous assertion, because history teaches
us very quickly that there are many worse things than
constitutional democracy. I claim to be encouraging you
to exchange the path of evil for the road of enlightenment,
but I could be doing just the opposite. And even if I'm not,
the surgery I recommend is traumatic by definition. The
procedure has never been attempted, let alone tested, and
the implant is something I whipped up in my garage out
139
of spare helicopter parts. On the other hand, do you really
want to go through life with a worm in your head?
So let's get down to details, and compare the moral
responsibility of constitutional democracy with the
financial responsibility of the sovereign joint-stock
company. I think we can all agree that these are both
legitimate forms of responsibility, and that they are very
different. After 2008, no one can possibly accuse
constitutional democracy of being a financially
responsible form of government. Likewise, the
neocameralist state is amoral by definition.
I don't think there is much contest on the financial side of
the ledger. Let's consider morality.
The constitutional democratic state is an apparently
immortal, monotonically expanding, and nontrivially
morbid mass of personnel which proclaims itself the
instrument of a single purpose: to inflict good upon the
world. For traditional countries this affliction was at least
limited to specified borders, but in the case of USG since
1945 it knows no bound. Washington operates on the
principle of universal benevolence. Its ultimate aim is to
benefit all people, anywhere and for all time. Doubtless if
aliens were found on Jupiter, concern for their welfare
would soon be felt on the Potomac.
A joint-stock sovereign is a clean, lean and mean
revenue-extracting machine. Its goal: loot. Any well-run
Patchwork realm is congenitally dedicated to the good old
Marxist ideal of exploitation. It has no intrinsic sympathy
for the aged, the crippled, the deformed, the useless. Into
the biodiesel vats with them! Gold coins literally wrung
140
from the hides of the unfortunate will cascade into the
piggybanks of our obese, cigar-chomping shareholders.
Obviously, whatever you think of democracy, this is
unacceptable. To mollify the conscience of the
increasingly appalled reader, let me explain the logic of
philanthropy in the financially responsible city-state. We
will return to the broader contest of morals in a moment.
Government is like a nuclear reactor or a stem cell:
perfect when it works properly, and lethal when it
doesn't. Like both, any design for a sovereign institution
must depend on multiple independent safety
mechanisms. If all safeguards fail, something
unacceptable will happen — by definition. If all but one
fail, the result may not be desirable, but it will not be
unacceptable.
So let's look at the safety mechanisms that prevent the
healthy Patchwork city-state from turning into its evil
twin, with the biodiesel vats. By my count, there are three.
The outermost mechanism is mere PR. "Do no evil" is the
automatic slogan of every private government. At the
sovereign level, Google's motto would not even be a
winner, because to even mention evil is suspicious — like
a sign outside a restaurant, promising an absence of rats.
At least in normal conditions of inter-patch peace and
harmony, every Patchwork realm should positively exude
rectitude and benevolence. This will of course infect its
corporate culture. Perhaps it is possible to imagine
Disneyland committing genocide. But it would have to be
a very different Disneyland than the one we have right
141
now. They would certainly have to replace at least half the
employees.
At the financial level the realm must remember, however,
that its concern is not with actual benevolence, but simply
with the appearance of benevolence. Fortunately, image
is cheap. Not screwing up image is cheaper — it costs you
nothing, as long you don't screw up. And, best of all, evil,
while it really screws up image, just isn't that profitable.
Once you factor in even a tiny image effect, it is
surprisingly difficult to devise any scenario that generates
ROI out of pure, balls-to-the-wall, straight-out evil. For
example, we'll be lucky if we can squeeze $25 worth of
industrial fats out of Granny's cadaver. They say no
publicity is bad publicity — but they lie. So why not just
run our buses on dinosaurs, the old-fashioned way, and
keep Granny in her pen with the automatic monkey-chow
dispenser?
Perhaps you see mere PR as a weak line of defense, and it
would be hard to disagree. Fortunately, it is only one of
three. But the factor is real: a sovereign is a sovereign,
and no government can be entirely without paternal
graces. No one in a sane society will be rendered into
diesel, or even be allowed to starve to death for lack of
productive earning power. Perhaps there are enough
Randians on the planet for one city-state, but probably
not two. Otherwise, it just won't happen, and keeping it
from happening is just one of the realm's many business
expenses. Granny's monkey-chow skims off the merest
tablespoon of the rich butter which the realm churns
metaphorically, rather than literally, from its residents'
hard-working flesh.
142
We arrive at the next safety barrier: mere private
philanthropy.
It is interesting to note the way in which one sniffs at
mere private philanthropy. This is the thinking of the
twentieth century, the century of welfare. This was a word
with only positive connotations — until the twentieth
century got its hands on it.
Another word for private philanthropy, with different
negative connotations, is charity. Charity was of course
one of the principal obligations of the medieval
ecclesiastical establishment, the other two being
education and adult instruction. In consonance with the
general 20th-century pattern in which State has captured
the role of Church, thus effecting the merger of the two by
different means, most of us today perceive charity as a
sovereign function.
And thus we trivialize any charitable establishment which
is fully outside the State, as only the most hard-line of
unreconstructed ecclesiasts are today. (Nonprofits in the
US today tend to fund themselves via a mix of donations
with government grants, contracts, etc.)
However, we can measure the demand for charity
(meaning, of course, the demand for the production of
philanthropy, not for its services) by the benchmark of
government itself. Americans today by and large consider
their taxes neither too high nor too low, and certainly the
left half of the electorate is inclined to feel that
Washington should raise even more revenue to do even
more. Since Americans also see their government as a
general-purpose agency for the doing of good — a
sovereign charity — we can measure their demand for
143
philanthropy by noting the absence of significant political
resistance to their present tax rate. (Moreover, if you are
critical of this methodology, note than any assertion that
present tax rates are obtained by chicanery, rather than
genuine consent, hardly constitutes a defense of modern
democracy.)
The traditional contribution for charity was of course the
tithe, or ten percent of income.45 It was over a century
into Washington's existence before it figured out how to
exact anything like a tithe, but eventually as it morphed
into the Church of Everything it mitigated this deficiency.
Unfortunately, there is no word which is as cool as "tithe,"
but means "40%." In any case, even in the brutal,
inefficient, and decidedly untechnological Middle Ages,
10% has been considered an ample level of productivity
for a civilized society to donate to the needs of the
unfortunate.
Furthermore, private charity has enormous advantages
over welfare. The voluntary nature of the contact between
provider and recipient frees the former to assume
authority, informal or formal, over the latter. If you don't
want to be ordered around, you are free to starve, or at
least go to prison. In prison you will certainly be ordered
around. If you are not competent to provide for your own
existence, you become by definition a dependent of
whomever is willing to provide for you.
45
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithing
A tithing or tything was a historic English legal,
administrative or territorial unit, originally ten hides (and hence,
one tenth of a hundred). Tithings later came to be seen as
subdivisions of a manor or civil parish. The tithing's leader or
spokesman was known as a tithingman.”
144
And with dependency comes authority, the patria
potestas. Since you are not responsible for yourself,
whatever charitable agency or other party has taken
charge of you is now your legal guardian, putting you
essentially in the position of a child. Moreover, your
guardian is also responsible for any offenses you may
commit. There are no irresponsible or feral humans in a
Patchwork realm, unless this is some perverse lifestyle
feature it sees fit to provide.
As we can see, the second safety barrier is considerably
stronger than the third. Moreover, we are about to arrive
at the first safety barrier, which cements the second and
can be regarded as a complete refutation of social
democracy.
Consider the thinking of the social democrat. To him, as
previously mentioned, government is a sovereign and
universal charity. Its purpose is to use its resources to do
good works. These resources are derived, obviously, from
the same source as with all governments — taxation. The
wisdom of the people, through the magic of democracy,
guides said sovereign and universal charity to use its
resources efficiently for good works, not inefficiently for
evil works. (Or, worst, efficiently for evil works.) This is
our vaunted moral responsibility.
Any neocameralist who wanders by can observe that this
system is easy to improve, in two ways.
One, the people are not wise and the magic of democracy
does not exist. Therefore, we should not rely on the
wisdom of the people for anything, and we should
eliminate the superfluous electoral component of the
design.
145
Specifically, we should definitely not rely on the wisdom
of the people to either (a) formulate public policy, or (b)
allocate budgets. Fortunately, this point is hardly
debatable. If you listen to NPR you already believe that
that budget and policy should be held virginal from the
awful contamination of politics, and if you don't listen to
NPR your opinion is of negligible importance in the
budget and policy process.
Once this change is applied, allocations for good works as
a percentage of disposable spending are constant. So, for
example, the environment gets 10% of USG's disposable
spending (ie, spending which is not essential to the
production of future revenue), AIDS gets 5%, education of
children with Down's syndrome gets 3%, the spiny
echidna gets 1%, or whatever.
Note that (a) these figures are relatively constant anyway,
due to the natural push and pull of the budgeting process
(my mother did budget and policy at DoE, so I do know a
thing or two about "zero-based budgeting," that unicorn
of the Potomac); and (b) keeping them actually constant
eliminates a very, very large number of meetings. If
"change" must be provided for, a leftover slice of the
budget can be allocated to a miscellaneous fund.
But wait! There is another name for "disposable
spending." The name is profit. And these "shares" of the
budget also seem... familiar.
In fact, we have improved our constitutional democracy
so completely that we have turned it into a neocameralist
joint-stock company. And we have not harmed the
146
funding or organization of charity even slightly. To the
contrary — we have freed it from bushels of red tape.
The trick is that we've converted an argument about what
the government should do, into an argument about who
should hold the government's shares. But this decision is
way outside my pay grade, because the initial share
allocation must be performed by whoever actually creates
the government. While this is completely independent of
the design, I'm pretty confident that any conversion of a
constitutional democracy into a joint-stock corporation
will include a high level of continuity from charitable
budget allocations in the democracy, to share allocations
in the corporation.
Consider an indubitably worthy recipient of philanthropic
funding, NIH.46 NIH's budget is $30 billion or so. If we
46
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institutes_of_Health
“The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary
agency of the United States government responsible for
biomedical and public health research, founded in the late
1870s. It is part of the United States Department of Health and
Human Services with facilities mainly located in Bethesda,
Maryland. It conducts its own scientific research through its
Intramural Research Program (IRP) and provides major
biomedical research funding to nonNIH research facilities
through its Extramural Research Program.
“As of 2013, the IRP had 1,200 principal investigators
and more than 4,000 postdoctoral fellows in basic, translational,
and clinical research, being the largest biomedical research
institution in the world, while, as of 2003, the extramural arm
provided 28% of biomedical research funding spent annually in
the U.S., or about US$26.4 billion.
“The NIH comprises 27 separate institutes and centers
of different biomedical disciplines and is responsible for many
scientific accomplishments, including the discovery of fluoride to
prevent tooth decay, the use of lithium to manage bipolar
disorder, and the creation of vaccines against hepatitis,
147
separate NIH completely from the State and convert its
budget, for which it must fight every year, into State
shares producing dividends or other payments of $30
billion every year, what has changed?
NIH is happier, because it now has $30 billion with no
strings attached. Certainly the guidance of Congress, or
whatever, does not assist NIH in doing its job. Quite the
contrary! The less political and bureaucratic interference
it receives, the better. We have just reduced this to zero,
so NIH is happy. Moreover, it is even happier because
this payment stream is presumably produced by shares,
bonds, or other negotiable instruments, which NIH can
sell and diversify. Thus creating a well-structured
endowment for the long-term funding of biomedical
research.
As for the payers of the $30 billion, they pay whatever
they pay. So this transformation — which can be applied
to any charity or entitlement, at least any which does not
depend on the sovereign authority of the state in order to
do its good works — is a Pareto optimization.47 And it
Haemophilus influenzae (HIB), and human papillomavirus
(HPV).”
47
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency
“Pareto efficiency or Pareto optimality is a state of
allocation of resources from which it is impossible to reallocate
so as to make any one individual or preference criterion better
off without making at least one individual or preference criterion
worse off. The concept is named after Vilfredo Pareto
(1848–1923), Italian engineer and economist, who used the
concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income
distribution. The concept has been applied in academic fields
such as economics, engineering, and the life sciences.
“The Pareto frontier is the set of all Pareto efficient
allocations, conventionally shown graphically. It also is variously
known as the Pareto front or Pareto set.
148
eliminates the phenomenon of official charity, the
hallmark of social democracy. QED.
Again, it is easy to apply this fix to entitlements, such as
Social Security or Medicare. For Social Security, it is
Granny rather than NIH which is owed a payment
stream. For Medicare, the State can go from providing
medical care to purchasing an insurance policy, and from
purchasing an insurance policy to providing the payment
stream needed to purchase a policy. Both these changes
are Pareto optimizations, and they end up back at
financial responsibility.
Therefore: if you are setting up something like a
Patchwork realm, and you are worried that its residents
will not donate sufficient alms to fund good works, assign
some percentage of the realm's shares (or bonds, or other
securities) to those same good works. Problem solved. So
why do we have social democracy? Ah. If only it would tell
us.
“A Pareto improvement is a change to a different
allocation that makes at least one individual or preference
criterion better off without making any other individual or
preference criterion worse off, given a certain initial allocation of
goods among a set of individuals. An allocation is defined as
"Pareto efficient" or "Pareto optimal" when no further Pareto
improvements can be made, in which case we are assumed to
have reached Pareto optimality.
"Pareto efficiency" is considered as a minimal notion
of efficiency that does not necessarily result in a socially
desirable distribution of resources: it makes no statement about
equality, or the overall wellbeing of a society.
“The notion of Pareto efficiency has been applied to
the selection of alternatives in engineering and similar fields.
Each option is first assessed, under multiple criteria, and then a
subset of options is ostensibly identified with the property that no
other option can categorically outperform any of its members.”
149
So. Having refuted the hypothesis that democracy is what
it says it is, let's have a look at what it actually is.
Being a completely uneducated person, I do not know
Latin or Greek. But I do have a favorite Latin word:
imperium. As in "imperialist," of course, and other such
Maoist terms of abuse. As I am already on record as a
reactionary, I will cheerfully confess to being an
imperialist as well.
Imperium is a cognate of the English word empire. But
the two are not synonyms: empire in English has shifted
to imply the international relationship also known as
suzerainty48, ie, the relationship between Washington
48
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzerainty
“Suzerainty (/ˈsjuːzәrәnti/, /ˈsjuːzәrɛnti/ and
/ˈsjuːzrәnti/) is a backformation from the late 18thcentury word
suzerain, meaning uppersovereign, derived from the French sus
(meaning above) + erain (from souverain, meaning sovereign).
“It was first used to refer to the dominant position of
the Ottoman Empire in relation to its surrounding regions; the
Ottoman Empire being the suzerain, and the relationship being
suzerainty. The terminology gradually became generalised to
refer to any relationship in which one region or people controls
the foreign policy and international relations of a tributary state,
while allowing the tributary nation to have internal autonomy.
Modern writers also sometimes use the term suzerain to refer to
a feudal lord, in regard to their relationship to their vassals.
“Suzerainty differs from true sovereignty, as the
tributary state or person is technically independent, and enjoys
selfrule (though usually limited in practice). Although the
situation has existed in a number of historical empires, it is
considered difficult to reconcile with 20th or 21stcentury
concepts of international law, in which sovereignty either exists
or does not. While a sovereign nation can agree by treaty to
become a protectorate of a stronger power, modern international
law does not recognise any way of making this relationship
compulsory on the weaker power. Suzerainty, therefore,
describes a practical, de facto situation, rather than a legal, de
jure one.”
150
and its puppet states. Which is pretty cool, but which is at
best a special case of imperium, which is better translated
as command or authority. Similarly, the Roman title of
Imperator49, which became our Emperor, is best
translated as Commander, and originally just meant
"general."
To hold imperium is to command, to hold sovereignty.
Sovereignty, as we saw last week, is not sovereignty
unless it is above the law. In any organization we can
identify the summum imperium, or power of final
decision. At least at a civilian level, this is generally held
by either an individual or a small committee. For
example, in the United States, this committee is called the
"Supreme Court." In the Soviet Union it was called the
"Politburo." Of course these two institutions had very
little else in common, but they both held the summum
imperium.
If you doubt this analysis, note that only the justices' own
consciences, which have oft proved fickle, force them to
obey any code of conduct whatsoever. They could order
Barack Obama to stand on his head and snap a Polaroid
49
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperator
The Latin word imperator was originally a title roughly
equivalent to commander under the Roman Republic. Later it
became a part of the titulature of the Roman Emperors as part of
their cognomen. The English word emperor derives from
imperator via Old French Empereür. The Roman emperors
themselves generally based their authority on multiple titles and
positions, rather than preferring any single title. Nevertheless,
imperator was used relatively consistently as an element of a
Roman ruler's title throughout the principate (derived from
princeps, from which prince in English is derived) and the
dominate.
“In Latin, the feminine form of imperator is imperatrix,
denoting a ruling female.”
151
of his own rectum in order to be inaugurated. He would
have to comply, and I am quite confident that he is
capable of doing so.
(I hate to mention politics, but I hope all readers with any
interest in finance are familiar with Dealbreaker50, whose
hostess EP51 even before the Obama administration
begins has discovered the exact level of dissident bitchery
it deserves. "Who could rival the innate obscenity of U.S.
star fucking, so ritualized from repetition at this point as
to roll off us like mercury off a greased duck's back?"
We'll see more of this tone, I'm confident.)
Despite all protests to the contrary, constitutional
democracy has neither squared the circle nor solved the
old Roman problem of ipsos custodes.52 Whatever the
names and rituals, real power in the state can always be
tracked. Let's look in more detail at the power structure of
constitutional democracy, using our old friend USG as the
example. (Its clones around the world differ little.)
50
[Dead link]
Hyperlink to: http://equityprivate.typepad.com
52
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase
found in the work of the Roman poet Juvenal from his Satires
(Satire VI, lines 347–348). It is literally translated as "Who will
guard the guards themselves?", though it is also known by
variant translations.
“The original context deals with the problem of
ensuring marital fidelity, though it is now commonly used more
generally to refer to the problem of controlling the actions of
persons in positions of power, an issue discussed by Plato in the
Republic. It is not clear whether the phrase was written by
Juvenal, or whether the passage in which it appears was
interpolated into his works.”
51
152
Imperium always comes in layers of delegation, in which
one power relinquishes decisions to another. At the top
level — level zero, as it were — is always the military. The
US military is of course a large and diverse entity, but
imagine it could find some way to agree unanimously that
sovereignty, the summum imperium, would revert to
some some specific office in the Pentagon. SOCOM is a
good candidate.
53
53
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Special_Operations_
Command
“The United States Special Operations Command
(USSOCOM or SOCOM) is the Unified Combatant Command
charged with overseeing the various Special Operations
Component Commands of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and
Air Force of the United States Armed Forces. The command is
part of the Department of Defense and is the only Unified
Combatant Command legislated into being by the U.S.
Congress. USSOCOM is headquartered at MacDill Air Force
Base in Tampa, Florida.
“The idea of an American unified special operations
command had its origins in the aftermath of Operation Eagle
Claw, the disastrous attempted rescue of hostages at the
American embassy in Iran in 1980. The ensuing investigation,
chaired by Admiral James L. Holloway III, the retired Chief of
Naval Operations, cited lack of command and control and
interservice coordination as significant factors in the failure of
the mission. Since its activation on 16 April 1987, U.S. Special
Operations Command has participated in many operations, from
the 1989 invasion of Panama to the ongoing Global War on
Terrorism.
“USSOCOM conducts several covert and clandestine
missions, such as direct action, special reconnaissance,
counterterrorism, foreign internal defense, unconventional
warfare, psychological warfare, civil affairs, and
counternarcotics operations. Each branch has a Special
Operations Command that is unique and capable of running its
own operations, but when the different special operations forces
need to work together for an operation, USSOCOM becomes the
joint component command of the operation, instead of a SOC of
a specific branch.“
153
What would people do? What could they do? They would
say: "duh, okay. We welcome our new green-beret
overlords. Sure. Frankly, we were a little electioned-out,
anyway. And Professor Bernanke no longer enjoys our
complete confidence. So, yeah, whatever. Could we
resume normal programming now? I was watching VH-1,
here."
Ergo, the military in all countries and at all all times
enjoys the summum imperium. In a state in which
normal civil-military relations pertain, the military is
completely passive, and delegates its authority
completely. In a few less-devolved states such as modern
Turkey, it still exercises genuine reserve power54 and may
have some influence on civil decisions. (Sadly, the fabled
54
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_power
“In a parliamentary or semipresidential system of
government, a reserve power is a power that may be exercised
by the head of state without the approval of another branch of
the government. Unlike in a presidential system of government,
the head of state is generally constrained by the cabinet or the
legislature in a parliamentary system, and most reserve powers
are usable only in certain exceptional circumstances. In some
countries, reserve powers go by another name; for instance, the
reserve powers of the President of Ireland are called
discretionary powers.”
154
deep state55 may be on the decline since the Ergenekon
purge56.)
55
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_within_a_state
State within a state is a political situation in a country
when an internal organ ("deep state"), such as the armed forces
and civilian authorities (intelligence agencies, police, secret
police, administrative agencies and branches of government
bureaucracy), does not respond to the civilian political
leadership. Although the state within a state can be
conspiratorial in nature, the deep state can also take the form of
entrenched unelected career civil servants acting in a
nonconspiratorial manner, to further their own interests (e.g.
continuity of the state as distinct from the administration, job
security, enhanced power and authority, pursuit of ideological
goals and objectives, and the general growth of their agency)
and in opposition to the policies of elected officials, by
obstructing, resisting, and subverting the policies and directives
of elected officials. The term, like many in politics, derives from
the Greek language (κράτος εν κράτει, kratos en kratei, later
adopted into Latin as imperium in imperio or status in statu).
Sometimes, the term refers to state companies that,
though formally under the command of the government, act de
facto like private corporations. Sometimes, the term refers to
companies that, though formally private, act de facto like "states
within a state".
Political debate surrounding the separation of church
and state previously revolved around the perception that if left
unchecked, the Church might turn into a kind of State within a
State, an illegitimate outgrowth of the State's natural civil power.
In the field of political science, this pop culture concept
is studied within the literature on the state. The modern literature
on the state is generally tied back to Bringing the State Back In
(1985) and remains an active body of scholarly research to this
day. Within this literature, the state is understood as both venue
(a set of rules under which others act and interact) as well as
actor (with its own agenda). Under this dual understanding, the
conspiratorial version of the deep state concept would be one
version of the 'state as actor' while the nonconspiratorial version
would be another version of the 'state as venue.'”
56
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergenekon_(allegation)
“Ergenekon (Turkish: [æɾɟeneˈkon]) was the name
given to an alleged clandestine, secularist ultranationalist
organization in Turkey with possible ties to members of the
155
I am sorry to report to critics of the American right, such
as Naomi Wolf57, that the United States does not in fact
country's military and security forces. The wouldbe group,
named after Ergenekon, a mythical place located in the
inaccessible valleys of the Altay Mountains, was accused of
terrorism in Turkey.
“Ergenekon was by some believed to be part of the
"deep state". The existence of the "deep state" was affirmed in
Turkish opinion after the Susurluk scandal in 1996. Alleged
members had been indicted on charges of plotting to foment
unrest, among other things by assassinating intellectuals,
politicians, judges, military staff, and religious leaders, with the
ultimate goal of toppling the incumbent government.
“Ergenekon's modus operandi had been compared to
Operation Gladio's Turkish branch, the CounterGuerrilla. By
April 2011, over 500 people had been taken into custody and
nearly 300 formally charged with membership of what
prosecutors described as "the Ergenekon terrorist organization",
which they claimed had been responsible for virtually every act
of political violence — and controlled every militant group — in
Turkey over the last 30 years.
“As of 2015 most of the people accused of such
crimes has been acquitted, forensic experts concluded the
documents for supposed plots were fake and some of the
executors of trials proved to be linked to the Gülen Movement
and were charged with plotting against Turkish Army.”
57
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wolf
“Naomi R. Wolf (born November 12, 1962) is a liberal
progressive[4][5] American author, journalist, feminist, and
former political advisor to Al Gore and Bill Clinton.
“Wolf first came to prominence in 1991 as the author
of The Beauty Myth. With the book, she became a leading
spokeswoman of what was later described as the third wave of
the feminist movement. Such leading feminists as Gloria
Steinem and Betty Friedan praised the book; others, including
bell hooks, Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers, criticized
it. She has since written other books, including the bestselling
book The End of America in 2007 and her latest Vagina: A New
Biography.
“Her journalism career began in 1995 and has
included topics such as abortion, the Occupy Wall Street
movement, Edward Snowden and ISIS. She has written in
156
have a "deep state." However, if the American right
wanted to actually get off its butt and do something, it
could find many worse manuals than her latest.58 Of
course it will execute no such coup, at least no time soon.
Ever since Defoe wrote the Shortest Way, the conspiracy
theories of leftists have been the best guide to what the
right should do, but won't.
The next layer of imperium in a democratic state — layer
one — is, of course, the electorate. Ie, the people who
vote. My belief that the electorate holds a high degree of
imperium is not at all inconsistent with my belief that the
influence of elections on public policy is generally small.
The same after all can be said of the military, whose vote
is final but at present unexercised.
The electorate and the military are layers one and zero,
because the military can resist anyone in the contest for
sovereignty, and the electorate can resist everyone but the
venues such as The Nation, The New Republic, The Guardian
and The Huffington Post.
“However, Wolf's more recent work has inspired
controversy across the political spectrum. Writers in such varied
venues as Salon.com, Alternet, Mother Jones, The Atlantic,
National Review and The American Spectator have criticized
many of her latest journalistic efforts as both conspiratorial and
overblown.”
58
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_America:_Letter_of_W
arning_to_a_Young_Patriot
“The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young
Patriot is a 2007 nonfiction book by author Naomi Wolf,
published by Chelsea Green Publishing of White River Junction,
Vermont. Wolf argues that events of the early 2000s paralleled
steps taken in the early years of the twentieth century's worst
dictatorships and called Americans to take action to restore their
constitutional values before they suffer the same fate. The book
illustrates what Wolf depicts as ten steps in the transition of open
societies into closed regimes.”
157
military. For example, control of 51 senators and the
Presidency is sufficient to defeat all other institutions in
USG, because it is sufficient to pack the Supreme Court.
Obviously, the electorate can achieve this.
It may not even need the senators. Consider the case of a
Presidential candidate whose platform is plain about her
plans: if elected, she will suspend all other institutions
and rule as a dictator. Suppose Sarah Palin, for example,
ran on this platform in 2012. Suppose she won. Does
anyone doubt that Washington would obey her every
personal whim — exactly as it obeyed, say, FDR's? I
suppose it would depend on whether Governor Palin has
the natural knack of imperium, and we can't know this
unless we actually see her in action. But I actually suspect
she might.
We move to the next stage: level two, ultimate civil
authority. The summum imperium here rests, as
mentioned, in the Supreme Court, and more generally the
judicial system. Judges try to avoid actually formulating
public policy, however, typically delegating this task to
executive agencies. Domestic and (rarely) foreign policy is
sometimes altered, in broad strokes, by Congress. There
are also various differences depending on whether the
President is a Democrat or a Republican, but we are down
to minutiae at this point.
When we look at the remarkable stability of Washington,
even in pursuing paths which to the outside eye are
plainly, even comically, counterproductive, we have to
focus our attention first on level one: the electorate. The
opinion of the electorate is exactly what it is supposed to
be: the hinge of power in the United States today. Level
zero is passive. Level two cannot resist level one.
158
Therefore, to understand the forces directing the actions
of Washington today, we have to understand one thing:
the relationship between levels one and two, the
electorate and the (mostly) permanent government.
Who are these voters, anyway? There are innumerable
ways to classify the American voter, at least half of which
UR has already indulged in. But I hate to repeat myself,
so let's try to come up with something new.
One way to ask how American voters will vote is to
consider what they are trying to accomplish when they go
to the ballot box. Obviously, they are making an altruistic
attempt to affect the direction of government policy. (The
attempt is altruistic because no voter seriously expects his
or her vote to affect his or her life.) Obviously, few of
them has anything near an understanding of what
Washington actually is — most have only a dim grasp of
even the official story.59 But still, they are thinking
something when they fill in the box for the R or the D.
What is it?
There are basically three ways in which American voters
— or voters anywhere in the world, for that matter —
conceptualize their participation in democracy. From the
bottom up, we can label these modes tribal, populist, and
institutionalist.
Tribal voters vote on the basis of ethnic and familial
identity. In one very legitimate sense, they are the most
rational voters around. A tribal voter is acting collectively
59
Hyperlink to:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/summary_introduction
.html
159
to benefit his or her tribe. This group can be hereditary,
adoptive, occupational, etc, as long as it feels some sort of
collective cohesion or asabiya.60
In a civilized, stable democracy, only a minority of voters
can be tribal. If you want to see a democracy with a tribal
majority, I give you South Africa.61 As a minority, tribal
voting blocs generally serve as vote banks62 for more
dominant players. The tribal bloc or blocs become clients
60
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asabiyyah
“`Asabiyya or asabiyyah (Arabic: )ﻋﺻﺑﻳّﺔrefers to social
solidarity with an emphasis on unity, group consciousness and
sense of shared purpose, and social cohesion, originally in a
context of "tribalism" and "clanism". It was a familiar term in the
preIslamic era, but became popularized in Ibn Khaldun's
Muqaddimah where it is described as the fundamental bond of
human society and the basic motive force of history. `Asabiyya is
neither necessarily nomadic nor based on blood relations; rather,
it resembles philosophy of classical republicanism. In the
modern period, the term is generally analogous to solidarity.
However, it is often negatively associated because it can
sometimes suggest loyalty to one's group regardless of
circumstances, or partisanship. Ibn Khaldun also argued that
`asabiyya is cyclical and directly related to the rise and fall of
civilizations: it is most strong at the start of a civilization, declines
as the civilization advances, and then another more compelling
ʿasabiyyah eventually takes its place to help establish a different
civilization.”
61
Barry Bearak, “PostApartheid South Africa Enters an Anxious
Period”, The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/world/africa/06safrica.html
62
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Votebank
“A votebank (also spelled votebank or vote bank) is a
loyal bloc of voters from a single community, who consistently
back a certain candidate or political formation in democratic
elections. Such behaviour is often the result of an expectation of
real or imagined benefits from the political formations, often at
the cost of other communities. Votebank politics is the practice of
creating and maintaining votebanks through divisive policies. As
it encourages voters to vote on the basis of narrow communal
considerations, often against their better judgement, it is
considered harmful to the principles of representative
democracy.”
160
of whichever party is strong enough to buy their votes.
This can be done as straight-out, lawless graft, or by
steering various benefits — payments, loans, jobs, etc —
to members and/or leaders of the tribe.
Our second group of voters is the populist group. When
populists vote, they are trying to compel the government
to act in accordance with their own beliefs, generally
derived from a mixture of common sense, tradition and
personal experience, of what is right for a government to
do.
Populists voters are people who genuinely believe in
democracy. They believe that the way Washington works
is that the people elect a President, who "runs the
country." I once had an email exchange with a very
successful, and quite erudite, populist political blogger
who did not understand that President Bush cannot fire a
State Department employee, just because that employee
is openly trying to sabotage White House initiatives.
This is an excellent example of the level of complete
structural misconception that a populist voter can
entertain when attempting to vote. If populists had any
idea at all of how Washington actually works, they would
not continue to participate in the increasingly farcical
elections by which they repeatedly endorse it.
The fact of the matter is that Washington as it exists
today, 21st-century Washington, is designed to resist
populist politics in roughly the same way that a
lighthouse is designed to resist waves. The entire thrust of
20th-century American government has been to separate
public policy from politics, ie, to eliminate the menace of
democracy. If you read about what American politics was
161
a century ago63, this program — originally the program of
the Mugwumps64, and then of various flavors of liberal
and progressive, including of course the New Deal — is
perfectly understandable.
The problem is basically solved. Populist resistance, a la
Poujadisme65, no longer exists in Washington's test
63
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Croker
“Richard Welstead Croker, Sr. (November 24, 1843 –
April 29, 1922), known as "Boss Croker," was an IrishAmerican
politician, a leader of New York City's Tammany Hall.”
64
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugwumps
“The Mugwumps were Republican political activists
who bolted from the United States Republican Party by
supporting Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland in the United
States presidential election of 1884. They switched parties
because they rejected the financial corruption associated with
Republican candidate James G. Blaine. In a close election, the
Mugwumps supposedly made the difference in New York state
and swung the election to Cleveland. The jocular word
mugwump, noted as early as 1832, is from Algonquian (Natick)
mugquomp, "important person, kingpin" (from mugumquomp,
"war leader"), implying that they were "sanctimonious" or
"holierthanthou," in holding themselves aloof from party
politics.
“After the election, mugwump survived for more than a
decade as an epithet for a party bolter in American politics.
Many Mugwumps became Democrats or remained
independents; most continued to support reform well into the
20th century. During the Third Party System, party loyalty was in
high regard and independents were rare. Theodore Roosevelt
stunned his upper class New York City friends by supporting
Blaine in 1884; by rejecting the Mugwumps he kept alive his
Republican party leadership, clearing the way for his own
political aspirations.
“New England and the Northeastern United States had
been a stronghold of the Republican Party since the Civil War
era, but the Mugwumps considered Blaine to be an
untrustworthy and fraudulent candidate. Their idealism and
reform sensibilities led them to oppose the political corruption in
the politics of the Gilded Age.”
65
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Poujade
162
facilities in Western Europe, now governed largely by a
central administration66 which has no discernible ties to
“Pierre Poujade (French: [pjɛʁ puʒad]; 1 December
1920 – 27 August 2003) was a French populist politician after
whom the Poujadist movement was named.
“After the war, Poujade was the owner of a book and
stationery store.
“On 23 July 1953, with a group of about 20 persons,
Poujade prevented inspectors of the tax board from verifying the
income of another shopkeeper. This was the start of a tax
protest movement by shopkeepers, first in the Lot department,
then in the Aveyron department, and finally the whole south of
the Massif Central.
“On 29 November 1953, Pierre Poujade created the
Union de Défense des Commerçants et Artisans (UDCA;
Defense Union of Shopkeepers and Craftsmen), to organize the
tax protesters. This movement would soon be called
"Poujadism" (French: Poujadisme). Poujadism flourished most
vigorously in the last years of the Fourth Republic, and
articulated the economic interests and grievances of
shopkeepers and other proprietormanagers of small businesses
facing economic and social change. The main themes of
Poujadism concerned the defense of the common man against
the elites.
“In addition to the protest against the income tax and
the price control imposed by finance minister Antoine Pinay to
limit inflation, Poujadism was opposed to industrialization,
urbanization, and Americanstyle modernization, which were
perceived as a threat to the identity of rural France. Poujadism
denounced the French state as "rapetout et inhumain" ("thieving
and inhuman").
“The movement's "common man" populism led to
antiparliamentarism (Poujade called the National Assembly "the
biggest brothel in Paris" and the deputies a "pile of rubbish" and
"pederasts"), a strong antiintellectualism (Poujade denounced
the graduates from the École Polytechnique as the main culprits
for the woes of 1950s France and boasted that he had no book
learning), xenophobia, and antisemitism especially aimed
against Prime Minister Pierre MendèsFrance (claiming "Mendès
is French only as the word added to his name"), who was
perceived as responsible for the loss of Indochina. Poujadism
also supported the cause of French Algeria.”
66
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission
163
any democratic election. At present, the primary
distinction between the EU and the late Soviet Union is
that the latter was much more Russian, thus exhibiting a
mixture of incompetence and brutality that is hard to
duplicate west of the Elbe. But give it a few years.
Populism still has a solid position in the American
political system, but it is fading rapidly, as is the
importance of politics. The Obama administration seems
set to be an almost entirely ceremonial one — at least, the
President-elect has displayed no strong evidence of any
fixed opinions on any subject. Even the populism of the
Bush administration is greatly overstated; a significant
“The European Commission (EC) is an institution of
the European Union, responsible for proposing legislation,
implementing decisions, upholding the EU treaties and
managing the daytoday business of the EU. Commissioners
swear an oath at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg,
pledging to respect the treaties and to be completely
independent in carrying out their duties during their mandate.
“The Commission operates as a cabinet government,
with 28 members of the Commission (informally known as
"commissioners"). There is one member per member state, but
members are bound by their oath of office to represent the
general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home
state. One of the 28 is the Commission President (currently
JeanClaude Juncker) proposed by the European Council and
elected by the European Parliament. The Council of the
European Union then nominates the other 27 members of the
Commission in agreement with the nominated President, and the
28 members as a single body are then subject to a vote of
approval by the European Parliament. The current Commission
is the Juncker Commission, which took office in late 2014.
“The term Commission is used either in the narrow
sense of the 28member College of Commissioners (or College)
or to also include the administrative body of about 32,000
European civil servants who are split into departments called
directoratesgeneral and services. The procedural languages of
the Commission are English, French and German. The Members
of the Commission and their "cabinets" (immediate teams) are
based in the Berlaymont building in Brussels.
164
minority of the American foreign-policy establishment
supported the invasion of Iraq, which was neither an
explosion of jingoist fervor, nor the President's personal
whim, nor the conspiracy of some Texan "deep state."
The basic advantage of populism is that, if the claimed
virtues of democracy are anywhere, they are here.
Common sense and plain thinking, in a reasonably
intelligent brain, are remarkably immune to the ethereal
delusions that so easily infect the brilliant and educated.
However, common sense cannot exist without tradition.
The best traditions of the American populist voter are
steadily being eroded by an educational system that
populists do not control, and his worst traditions are
steadily being exacerbated by churches and talk-radio
networks that populists do control.
The entire political structure of the American populist
tradition is set up to select for ignorance and stupidity,
and select against organization and cohesion. Thus it is
simultaneously undesirable and ineffective, and even
those of us who like myself sympathize with it to a
considerable degree are often slightly relieved to see it
lose, as it always does.
Even when populists win Presidential elections, they
simply have no way to control Washington. Even with
Congress and the Presidency, the White House has no
real authority over the civil service, who outside the
military are institutionalist by definition. The "Reagan
Revolution" started out as a populist tsunami designed to
smash the New Deal, and turned into nothing at all.
Nixon's "silent majority" met an even more inglorious
fate. At most a few token populist policies can be
advanced. Populists can of course disrupt the institutional
165
bowels of the state, leading to a sort of policy
constipation, but like the old House of Lords, their only
real power is to delay.
Since populists have no idea of any of this, they
participate enthusiastically in the sham. Sometimes they
win a little, but in the end they always lose. And they are
such gentlemen about it, too. Somehow no one has ever
explained to Middle America that if you don't know who
the sucker at the table is, the sucker is you.
And finally we come to our ruling class, the
institutionalists.
Institutionalism,
as
previously
mentioned, is an essentially aristocratic belief system.
The institutionalist voter votes not because she believes
government policies should be decided at the ballot box,
but because she believes they shouldn't.
Rather, she believes that government policies should be
determined by a set of official and quasiofficial agencies
which have earned her trust permanently and completely,
the way a good Catholic trusts the Vatican. Following the
analogy, here at UR we refer to this meta-institution as
the Cathedral. The Cathedral consists of the universities
and the press. Its spire is the Ivy League and the New
York Times, whose faculty and news desk respectively are
endowed with an almost pure connection to the inner
light — lesser institutions, of course, following their lead.
It is not that the institutionalist voter does not believe in
democracy. She does believe in democracy. She believes
passionately in democracy. But her democracy is very
different from the democracy of her mortal enemy, the
populist.
166
To the institutionalist, the way democracy works is that
democracy depends on the educated voter. The voter is to
be educated by institutionalists, of course, because
institutionalists are right. Some level of ignorance and
recalcitrance can be expected, and there will always be
dissent, but through this cycle of education and election
we are always advancing into the future. The reason we
have elected officials is not so that they can manage the
government, a task which must of course be left to the
experts (who are institutionalists, of course). Rather,
officials such as the President are essentially educational
figures, participating in a public discourse in which the
"bully pulpit"67 — an oddly revealing term — delivers
further education. In turn, by electing a good President,
the voters demonstrate the depth of their educated
wisdom. Und so weiter.
Note the function of populist and tribal voters in the
institutionalist's mind. The populist electorate supplies
the bogeyman. The fear of a populist takeover, which is
theoretically always a possibility and has even happened
once or twice in history (eg, Nazi Germany), can keep
even the most jaded of institutionalist voters coming back
to the polls. Even though it never seems to actually
happen. Moreover, the populists are barraged by a flood
of institutionalist messages more or less from birth to
death. They are naturally resistant, but the programming
wears them down over time.
67
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bully_pulpit
“A bully pulpit is a conspicuous position that provides
an opportunity to speak out and be listened to. This term was
coined by United States President Theodore Roosevelt, who
referred to his office as a "bully pulpit", by which he meant a
terrific platform from which to advocate an agenda. Roosevelt
used the word bully as an adjective meaning "superb" or
"wonderful", a more common usage at that time.”
167
Meanwhile, the tribals, who are votes for rent, will always
support the institutionalist bloc (and may even make up a
majority of their support, though at a certain level this
becomes dangerous.) Their votes are guaranteed in
exchange for permanent government programs,
administered by institutionalists, that render them
dependent on the Cathedral's rule for their lives and
livelihoods.
As for the institution itself — the Cathedral — it is, except
in its majestic extent and intricacy, not unusual by any
historical standard. The Cathedral is a selective
aristocracy, which is more or less the way China was run
for about 2500 years. It is also the way the Soviet Union
was run, the way the Catholic Church was run, the way
China today is run, and the way Nazi Germany probably
would have been run if we still had a Nazi Germany to
kick around. As in all these institutions, rank and place in
it is in high demand, and those who rise to the top are
men and women of no mean capacity.
However, there is just one little problem: the Cathedral is
not responsible. At least, if it is responsible, we cannot
detect any mechanism by which it is responsible.
What compels the Cathedral to devise and promulgate
good and effective policies, rather than evil or
counterproductive ones? If there is an an answer to this
question, I cannot discern it. If there is an external or
internal mechanism which can correct any errors which
may occur in the Cathedral — for example, a completely
corrupt and meretricious field of learning, a discipline of
institutionalized crackpottery, as Lysenkocreated in
Russia — I cannot find it.
168
I cannot even identify some reserved power which can
remove the Cathedral if it goes completely off the rails.
Certainly nothing short of a titanic populist explosion or a
military coup can dislodge institutionalism for good. The
first cure may be worse than the disease, and the second
is a complete unknown and shows no signs of being a real
possibility. And while the Cathedral's energumens, levels
one and two in concert, hold their lock on power, it is free
to go as far off the rails as it wants.
There is no responsibility. The chain of guardians
stretches up to Harvard, where it is tied to nothing and
guarded by itself. Consider the possibility, for example,
that the people we call "economists" in fact know nothing
at all about economics.68 Is this farfetched? After October
2008, can we call this farfetched? And if it isn't, what
other worms69 are in your brain?
68
Hyperlink to:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/11/emperor_clothes.htm
l
“Richard Dale writes,
“thousands of finance research papers are
published each year, and yet there have
been few if any warnings from the academic
community of the incendiary potential of
global financial markets. Is it too harsh to
conclude that despite the considerable
academic resources that go into finance
research our understanding of the behaviour
of financial markets is no greater than it was
in 1929/33 or indeed 1720?”
69
[Dead Link]
169
4: A Reactionary Theory of World Peace
UR is hardly the first to propose a theory of world peace.
So why bother? What could possibly be new?
History records quite a few previous attempts at world
peace, some of which even worked pretty well in practice.
For example, one was called the "Roman Empire,"
another was called the "Qing Dynasty," a third was called
the "British Empire." All three being extinct, and
therefore ot entirely successful. But there's no denying
that in their day they turned out quite a bit of peace.
But the world of 2008 has its own theory of world peace.
Which everyone believes, as usual. This theory, which
needless to say I think is utter crap, owes most of its
theory to Kant's essay on Perpetual Peace. In practice it
more deserves its most parochial name: Pax Americana.
(For an amusing personal history of the mapping from
Kant to Turtle Bay, try my fellow Brown alumnus Michael
Soussan70.)
We will go into this whole strange theory of the Pax
Americana, in just a bit. But our first question has to be:
does this Pax Americana work? Well, in some ways, yes.
The 2008 that history sent us to contains less carnage,
surely, than many other 2008s which chance might have
produced. On the other hand, when I open my friendly
local newspaper, I am seldom greeted with pictures of
smiling, happy children. I feel, dear reader, that we could
do better.
70
Michael Soussan, Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash
Course in International Diplomacy (2008)
170
And, more importantly, my general impression is not that
this system, this Pax Americana, is getting better over
time. I am not an old man but I was not born yesterday,
and I was listening to the BBC and reading the IHT and
Economist well before I had hair in my pits, and my
general feeling is that across history as I have seen it,
basically since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world order
that was created in 1945 has not been becoming a more
and more cohesive, harmonious, efficient and effective
operation. I think it is quite incontestable that the entire
planet, in 2008, is safe for democracy. Indeed it is clearly
safe for nothing but. Yet I notice no particular absence of
conflict, armed or otherwise, nor anything like a decrease.
Rather the contrary, actually.
This, to me, spells entropy. What peace we have is mostly
stable. But it is not perfectly stable. Whatever disorder it
has seems good at escalating itself.
Since, as a good citizen, you are familiar with the theory
of global warming, you are familiar with what is needed to
take slowly rising curves and project them into the late
21st century. Citizen, if I share your concern for the
gaseous composition of the atmosphere, can you please
share my concern for the breakdown of the thin
membrane that distinguishes our world from Jimmy
Cliff's?71 "Mango season bad this year."
So our theory of peace is a little different. It is reactionary
rather than progressive, which means that it is designed
to work with hominids not as they should be, angels
without wings, but as they are: bipedal land apes.
71
The Harder They Come, directed by Perry Henzell (1972)
171
Progressive thinkers throughout history differ widely on
the means by which said land apes can be converted into
angels, philosophers, or (ideally) angelic philosophers —
much as no two alchemists agree on how to synthesize
gold. For instance, Kant, taking the popular
"null-hypothesis" or sugar-pill strategy, roots his claim
for the inherent peaceability of republican government in
the following logic:
Now the republican constitution apart from the
soundness of its origin, since it arose from the
pure source of the concept of right, has also the
prospect of attaining the desired result, namely,
perpetual peace. And the reason is this. If, as
must be so under this constitution, the consent
of the subjects is required to determine whether
there shall be war or not, nothing is more
natural than that they should weigh the matter
well, before undertaking such a bad business.
For in decreeing war, they would of necessity be
resolving to bring down the miseries of war upon
their country. This implies: they must fight
themselves; they must hand over the costs of the
war out of their own property; they must do
their poor best to make good the devastation
which it leaves behind; and finally, as a crowning
ill, they have to accept a burden of debt which
will embitter even peace itself, and which they
can never pay off on account of the new wars
which are always impending. On the other hand,
in a government where the subject is not a
citizen holding a vote (i.e., in a constitution
which is not republican), the plunging into war
is the least serious thing in the world. For the
ruler is not a citizen, but the owner of the state,
172
and does not lose a whit by the war, while he
goes on enjoying the delights of his table or
sport, or of his pleasure palaces and gala days.
He can therefore decide on war for the most
trifling reasons, as if it were a kind of pleasure
party.
In other words, Kant is assuming that since voters are
generally reasonable people, they will vote for reasonable
governments that will act reasonably, and only undertake
reasonable wars.
The modern reader, reading this, must quickly remind
herself that Immanuel Kant was not a fool. In 1795 the
world's experience with democracy (a word Kant, like
almost everyone at the time, considered a slur; in
Perpetual Peace he goes to great, hilariously spurious
lengths to distinguish "democracy" from his beloved
republicanism) was minimal. The French Revolution
could be dismissed as an aberration, and the follies of the
late colonies in the Articles of Confederation period was
no doubt no better known in Königsberg in 1795 than to
us today.
So it was easy for Kant to make the fatal assumption that
the People, in their new capacity as rulers, would display
the same common sense in considering problems of
government as they had when no one cared what they
thought. (Kant was biased in this matter by the success of
England, whose glory at that time was attributed on the
Continent to its constitution's new democratic elements
— rather than its corrupt medieval survivals, which
turned out to actually be the glue that held the Whig
aristocracy together. If Kant could see the results of the
173
Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867, he might well sing a
different tune.)
Kant reasons: people are generally reasonable. As they
are — except when unreasonable. If you entrust them
with the power of government, you create an easy
exploitation target for an oligarchy that controls the State
by directing the opinions of the people. Such oligarchies
come in two categories: conscious cults and conspiracies,
in which at least some top echelons of believers is
insincere and consciously malicious, and true religions, in
which everyone can be sincere. The former are bad, and
the latter are worse.
And the most effective. (Ours is the modern iteration of
mainline72 or ecumenical73 Protestantism; I call it
72
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainline_Protestant
“The mainline Protestant churches (also called
mainstream Protestant and sometimes oldline Protestant) are a
group of Protestant denominations in the United States that
contrast in history and practice with evangelical, fundamentalist,
and charismatic Protestant denominations. Some make a
distinction between "mainline" and "oldline", with the former
referring only to denominational ties and the latter referring to
church lineage, prestige and influence. However, this distinction
has largely been lost to history and the terms are now nearly
synonymous. These terms are also increasingly used in other
countries for the same purpose (to distinguish).
“Mainline Protestants were a majority of all Christians
in the United States until the mid20th century, but they now
constitute a minority among Protestants. [...]
“Mainline churches share a liberal approach to social
issues that often leads to collaboration in organizations such as
the National Council of Churches. Because of their involvement
with the ecumenical movement, mainline churches are
sometimes (especially outside the United States) given the
alternative label of ecumenical Protestantism. These churches
played a leading role in the Social Gospel movement and were
active in social causes such as the civil rights movement and
women's movement. As a group, the mainline churches have
174
maintained religious doctrine that stresses social justice and
personal salvation. Politically and theologically, mainline
Protestants are more liberal than nonmainline Protestants.
Members of mainline denominations have played leadership
roles in many aspects of life, including politics, business,
science, the arts, and education. They founded most of the
country's leading institutes of higher education. Marsden argues
that in the 1950s, "Mainline Protestant leaders were part of the
liberalmoderate cultural mainstream, and their leading
spokespersons were respected participants in the national
conversation." [...]
From 1854 until at least 1964, Mainline Protestants
and their descendants were heavily Republican. In recent
decades, Republicans slightly outnumber Democrats. Many also
identify as independent.
Since the 1960s, however, mainline groups have
shrunk as a percentage of the population as the descendants of
Mainline Protestants increasingly identify as atheists or secular
humanists, and because their standards for investment in
children and their smaller family size (average fertility rate below
3.0 for the entire 20th Century) means religious groups who
have larger family size have come to dominate U.S. religion.”
73
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenism
“Ecumenism refers to efforts by Christians of different
Church traditions to develop closer relationships and better
understandings. The term is also often used to refer to efforts
towards the visible and organic unity of different Christian
denominations in some form.
“The adjective ecumenical can also be applied to any
interdenominational initiative that encourages greater
cooperation among Christians and their churches, whether or
not the specific aim of that effort is full, visible unity.
“The terms ecumenism and ecumenical come from the
Greek οἰκουμένη (oikoumene), which means "the whole
inhabited world", and was historically used with specific
reference to the Roman Empire. The ecumenical vision
comprises both the search for the visible unity of the Church
(Ephesians 4:3) and the "whole inhabited earth" (Matthew 24:14)
as the concern of all Christians.
“In Christianity the qualification ecumenical is originally
(and still) used in terms such as "ecumenical council" and
"Ecumenical Patriarch" in the meaning of pertaining to the
totality of the larger Church (such as the Catholic Church or the
Orthodox Church) rather than being restricted to one of its
constituent local churches or dioceses. Used in this original
175
Universalism. Head here for a brutal, syrupy dose74.) And
such religions, which may be polytheistic, monotheistic or
atheistic, have no reason at all to maintain the
reasonableness of the minds they control — at least on the
subject of government.
In fact, the parasite must be able to profit at the expense
of the host: it must at least convince the host to fund the
parasite and ban or discredit its competitors. Thus Kant's
whole argument about self-interest is void and can be
discarded, destroying his theory of republican virtue and
thus his entire preposterous edifice of peace.
An edifice that has worked, basically, like ass. Again,
experience confirms logic. Empirically, the expected
outcome of a Kantian republican federation is that either
(a) the federation becomes a mega-state of its own (which
is, of course, ideal, because bigger is always better), (b)
the federation breaks in half and creates a massive civil
war (in which the good guys always win), or (c) the
federation never has any real existence and quickly
becomes at best a joke, at worst a festering glob of
pompous, corrupt sinecures (but still a symbol of human
progress and unity).
Thankfully, the result of the last two attempts has been
(c1) and (c2). Do we need to pull the lever again? No, I
think not.
But the basic armature of Kant's argument is solid, and
we will reuse it. The argument is that warfare is not a
sense, the term carries no connotation of reuniting the
historically separated Christian denominations, but presumes a
unity of local congregations in a worldwide communion.”
74
[Dead link]
176
policy to which a responsible sovereign will resort without
good reason. Kant's fallacy is in equating "republican"
with "responsible," and lacking the imagination to see
that popular government has the power to produce far
more irresponsible leadership than the classical
monarchies he knew, with their little family spats and
mild, fancy-dress wars.
The world of Frederick the Great and Louis XV, while
Kant was no doubt a keen judge of its imperfections,
exhibited a quality of order which we of the Pax
Americana can only imagine. What would Paris be, if the
regime that created Versailles had the technology of
2008? A kind of supernova. A place as far above Paris
today, as Paris today above Kinshasa. Certainly, the
center of the world, even if you plopped it down in
Siberia.
Why don't we have this now? How did things come to
such a pass? Before we get into reactionary world peace,
let's try and figure out this Pax Americana.
Kant had no trouble in describing the obvious principle
its name suggests:
Nevertheless it is the desire of every state, or of
its ruler, to attain to a permanent condition of
peace in this very way; that is to say, by
subjecting the whole world as far as possible to
its sway.
Amen. The great fraud of our current "international
community" is its preposterous disguise as a Kantian
federation of equals. In reality, the "international
community" is Washington and her clients — at least,
177
when it is in proper working order. It sometimes
approaches such order, but never seems to quite reach it.
The agencies in foreign capitals which we call
"governments" are fascinating entities in many ways.
Each is different, but in general what they are is clear.
There is no accepted English term for the relationship,
although "client" or even "puppet" state is close.
We do see something like sovereignty in the
post-Communist world: Russia, China, plus the
Iran-Syria-Venezuela axis. Russia and China treat each
other as sovereigns, and they are clearly intent on
preserving some of their sovereign independence,
although the imbalanced financial relationships with the
Western world that they find themselves in are clear
no-nos. Nonetheless, they are generally quite submissive
toward the US, an approach which is probably prudent.
Iran, Syria and Venezuela are in the position of perpetual
hostility that Russia occupied in the heyday of the Cold
War, one which is arguably inconsistent with true
sovereignty (since the hostile regimes are so dependent
on the continuation of the conflict), but one which
certainly separates them from the rest of America's sheep.
As for the rest of these "governments"? In many ways,
these agencies really do resemble actual sovereign
authorities. This is certainly their formal status. However,
if you were to describe them as locally-staffed branches of
the State Department, you would be also be grasping at a
truth.
The official role of State is not supervisory, but advisory, a
distinction we discuss in some detail below. Nonetheless,
it is undeniable that the function of a US mission to a
178
non-US country is not comparable to the function of a
non-US mission to the US. I am quite confident that the
French Embassy75, for example, expends very little effort
on telling the US how to reform its financial system.
This is all very confusing. What, exactly, is the difference
between supervising and advising? Is Washington
supposed to be running the world, or isn't it? Please allow
me to explain.
Perhaps you've wondered how a perspective that
considers "imperialism" and "American exceptionalism"76
taboos reminiscent of the Big H77 himself can produce
phrases such as:
The possible decline in America’s power does
not mean that the United States would not
remain powerful. This country can and must
continue to lead.78
or, more gloriously (Chauncey Depew79 would be proud),
And to all those watching tonight from beyond
our shores, from parliaments and palaces to
those who are huddled around radios in the
forgotten corners of our world: our stories are
75
Hyperlink to: https://franceintheus.org/spip.php?rubrique2
Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American
Exceptionalism (2008)
77
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler
78
“Gloom, but Not Doom”, The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/opinion/04thu1.html
79
Chauncey Mitchell Depew, Orations, addresses and speeches
of Chauncey M. Depew
76
179
singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new
dawn of American leadership is at hand.80
Is Washington supposed to be ruling the world? Is
Washington supposed to be leading the world? Is there a
difference between "leading" and "ruling?" If you replace
"lead" with "rule" above — a new dawn of American rule
is at hand — you definitely don't have a line that either
the President or the Times could be imagined uttering.
So there must be some difference. But what is it?
Clearly, if America "leads," its relationship with those it is
leading must be anything but equal. Neither the Times
nor President Obama will tell us that, while America
should "lead" Europe, Europe should also "lead" America.
Not even such scoundrels can torture English so.
Any unequal relationship between any two parties, be
they sovereigns, colleagues or family members, must
involve some combination of two models of control. Call
them authority and dependence.
A holds authority over B if B must obey A's instructions.
Authority is executive control, as practiced in the
workplace, in the (traditional) family, and of course in the
military chain of command. Readers who have read the
previous essays will remember the Latin translation:
imperium.81
80
“Transcript: Obama’s Victory Speech”, ABC News:
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=6181477
81
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperium
“Imperium is a Latin word which, in a broad sense,
translates roughly as 'power to command'. In ancient Rome,
different kinds of power or authority were distinguished by
different terms. Imperium referred to the ability of an individual to
180
B is dependent on A if A is gratuitously assisting B. And
why would A do that? The relationship is the ancient one
of patronage82, of course. A is the patron, B is the client.
This is one of the oldest forms of alliance in the book —
I'm pretty sure chimpanzees practice it.
command the military. It is not to be confused with auctoritas or
potestas, different and generally inferior types of power in the
Roman Republic and Empire. Primarily used to refer to the
power that is wielded, in greater or lesser degree, by an
individual to whom it is delegated, the term could also be used
with a geographical connotation, designating the territorial limits
of that imperium. Individuals given such power were referred to
as curule magistrates or promagistrates. These included the
curule aedile, the praetor, the consul, the magister equitum, and
the dictator.
82
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome
“Patronage (clientela) was the distinctive relationship
in ancient Roman society between the patronus (plural patroni,
"patron") and their cliens (plural clientes, "client"). The
relationship was hierarchical, but obligations were mutual. The
patronus was the protector, sponsor, and benefactor of the
client; the technical term for this protection was patrocinium.
Although typically the client was of inferior social class, a patron
and client might even hold the same social rank, but the former
would possess greater wealth, power, or prestige that enabled
them to help or do favors for the client. From the emperor at the
top to the local municipal person at the bottom, the bonds
between these groups found formal expression in legal definition
of patrons' responsibilities to clients.
“Benefits a patron might confer include legal
representation in court, loans of money, influencing business
deals or marriages, and supporting a client's candidacy for
political office or a priesthood. In return, the clients were
expected to offer their services to their patron as needed. A
freedman became the client of his former master. A patronage
relationship might also exist between a general and his soldiers,
a founder and colonists, and a conqueror and a dependent
foreign community.“
181
Note that, in most cases, the two go together. For
example, your relationship with your thirteen-year-old
includes both A and B, authority and dependence. She
eats; you tell her what to do.
The analogy suggests the unusual nature of dependence
without authority. Ordinarily, if A is rational, A will insist
on authority along with the dependence. No authority, no
gratuities.
Can
this
break
down
with the
thirteen-year-old? Absolutely, but a complete breakdown
requires fairly bad parenting as well as, of course, a bad
child.
But what we see in the Pax Americana — at least, its
mainstream or Barackian form, not its renegade,
crypto-imperialist Bushitler morph — is exactly that. For
example, Pakistan is dependent on Washington, and yet
Washington cannot say: get rid of Lakshar-e-Taiba and
the like. Washington can certainly not say: clean up your
streets, get rid of the madrassas, seal the border, etc, etc,
etc, and in general start behaving as if the Raj was back
on.
Because Pakistan is sovereign. At least, it is supposed to
be sovereign. Yet if the US cut off the flow of dollars, Lord
only knows what the country would turn into. Whatever
that is, it surely has nothing to do with what Pakistan is
now. (The other day, I was talking to a friend of mine,
thoroughly Westernized but with parents in the Pakistani
middle class, and he was describing how in the cities of
Pakistan there are many attractive colonial-era
neighborhoods that, in the lives of those now living, have
fallen into complete disrepair and become slums. Funnily
enough, very similar phenomena can be observed in, say,
Ohio.)
182
So why doesn't Washington simply tell it: obey, or no
more dollars? Well, the answer is not simple. The answer
has to do with the internals of Washington, the structural
conflict between Pentagon and State, the history of
Pakistan and of the British Empire, etc, etc, etc. We could
be at this for some time. But note, again, the analogy to
the thirteen-year-old. Why won't your daughter obey?
Why don't you make her? Well, it's complicated. It is
always complicated.
Suffice it to say that American citizens gain nothing at all
from this bizarre pseudo-empire. It might be useful to
have all these "allies," perhaps, if we were in a war against
somebody. And also if they would fight, and stuff. Neither
of these things seems to be true. We do trade with them,
but this does not require us to manage their governments,
or in fact care at all how they are managed internally.
Conclusion: American foreign policy for the last sixty
years has produced neither security nor anything else for
Americans. Nor, I believe, has it been particularly good
for the rest of the world, which would otherwise have to
defend itself and behave responsibly as an independent
sovereign. For Foggy Bottom, however, it has been a
windfall. Every year it is paid more and more to supervise
a giant squalling world of thirteen-year-olds who dress
like ho's and bring guns to school, and the next four years
promise to be especially rich.83
Washington cannot actually administer its conquered
territories, much less derive revenue from them. And
83
David E. Sanger, “A Handpicked Team for a Sweeping Shift in
Foreign Policy”, The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/us/politics/01policy.html?hp
183
their governments degrade, because they are neither
sovereign nor supervised. Their job is to implement
policies designed in Harvard and approved in
Washington. Except in countries with strong traditions of
historical probity in state service, the civil servants steal.
They have nothing else to do, and there is no prospect of
the state becoming a genuine, independent authority.
What does Washington get out of this? Two things. One,
the privilege of feeling like a big stud. Of course this
applies only to a few people who work inside the Beltway,
or who are influential enough in policy studies that their
policies actually get adopted. But contributing to actual
policies that are actually adopted, even just in some
ridiculous forgery of a country in Nowhere, Africa, is an
unmistakable feeling. Not only does it provide
employment, it makes one's gonads grow by at least a
millimeter or two. Many will fight hard for this sensation.
The relationship of dependency and advice is particularly
pernicious. Dependency allows American universities to
populate the top layers of all foreign institutions with
their graduates, largely because those graduates have
American connections and thus links to the baskets of
dollars which fall out of the sky.
But advice is not supervision, it does not want to be
supervision, and it never will be supervision. If the
American Embassy tells a foreign "government" what to
do, it can usually expect quite a bit of balking and
recalcitrance. Absolute orders will generally be complied
with, but will greatly increase the general recalcitrance
level. Foreigners are people too, like to have their own
power, and don't like to be ordered around.
184
Moreover, the United States is not the British Empire. It
is in the business of having clients, whom it pretends to
be responsible for and provides large quantities of often
unwanted advice to. Ideally, when the advice is good it is
listened to and when it is bad it is ignored, but this can go
the other way around as well. The State Department is not
in the business of providing supervision, and must
constantly work hard to prevent the dysfunctional model
of advice and dependency from actually turning into
responsible, authoritative supervision.
(This is especially problematic because the latter runs the
risk of involving the Pentagon, that ancient enemy, which
happens to be full of people who just love giving orders.
The threat that the international community will turn into
the Arlington Redneck Empire, perhaps with the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace replaced by the Erik
Prince Foundation for World Domination, may not
actually be a real one — but if you are the sort of person
who needs to be kept up at night, it can probably keep you
up.)
Two, Americans care about foreign public opinion. I used
to ask people why they were for Obama all the time, and
what I heard — often from people who didn't care at all
about politics, normally — was that he would improve
America's image in the "eyes of the world." It is generally
a waste of time to engage anyone on why the "eyes of the
world" should matter, or how exactly they got to pointing
in the direction that they generally point in.
Here we must be thankful to the Wikipedians, for the
term meat puppet.84 To be quite frank: invading Elbonia,
84
[Dead link]
185
replacing its government with Elbonian dignitaries of a
perspective congenial to oneself, and announcing that
Elbonia has joined the family of free nations, is not a way
to convert one's opinion, plus Elbonia's opinion, into two
opinions.
At least, rationally. But the democratic voter is always
responsible to consensus. And the absurd concept of
"international public opinion," which since 1945 always of
course just tracks the public opinion of the most
fashionable people in the United States, persuades a fair
number of voters. Thus, by shaping the opinions of people
outside the US, one can influence votes inside it. The
people who do this work do not, of course, think in such
Machiavellian terms, but their results benefit from the
Machiavellian logic just the same.
This is the purpose of America's pseudo-empire of
patronage, in which the money always flows outward and
the Mohammmed Attas flow only inward: to provide a
large number of unnecessary jobs to America's ruling
class, the smartest and most sophisticated people in the
country, and those most able to obtain alternative
employment. And also to gain the set of votes that are
needed to keep the policy running, as well as to sustain
other policies aligned with it. In short, like most of what
Washington is today: a self-licking ice-cream cone.
But because of the multiple frauds essential to this
forgery, Washington's "sway" is peculiarly insidious as
compared to its Roman, Chinese or British predecessors,
who when they ruled a conquered land ruled it honestly,
making no attempt to disguise the nature of the
relationship.
186
America's client states, especially outside the core
European and Asian dominions (ie, in the "Third World,"
a term whose inventors did not predict its present
connotations), deliver quality-of-government metrics that
would have shocked any Roman procurator, Chinese
mandarin or British district commissioner. Even when
these possessions are at "peace," graft, banditry, and
sheer incompetence are the rule rather than the
exception. And "peace" is not always the rule.
(For example, were you surprised when, seeing the
pictures on TV, you noticed that even in the old
downtown of Bombay, a place chock-full of beautiful
Raj-era buildings like the Taj Hotel, the streets were full
of garbage? Or do you think that this is because the local
authorities are so thrifty and impoverished, that they
prefer to invest their few rupees on educating the poor?)
This is the current system of the world: a disaster. Absurd
in every detail. It lives, it works in a sense, it even is
mostly peaceful, but it is held together by chewing-gum
and I don't trust it to last another decade. Look — I said
this about our financial system. Was I wrong?
But anyway. As usual, I have spent most of the essay
berating what we have now, because what we have now is
so gigantic and fascinating. By comparison, my preferred
approach — the reactionary theory of world peace, if you
will — is simple to the point of stupidity.
The reactionary theory of world peace states that peace is
best defined as security. That's all. We are just equating
two words. And we can add a third: order. Peace,
security, and order are all the same thing. That's the
187
theory. It even sounds cool — if not as cool as Brazil's
ordem e progresso.85
What use is this creepy-sounding triangle — peace,
security, and order? (Doesn't this just sound like the
motto of a 21st-century secret-police force? And it may
well yet be.)
Here is one: note that if you believe in peace, you believe
that peace is an absolute good. It is not a Goldilocks good.
No one believes that you can have not enough peace, just
right peace, and too much peace. No one says, with St.
Augustine: give me world peace, but not just yet. The
more peace you have, the better. Concepts such as
freedom are in the same class.
But if peace, security, and order are all the same thing,
there must be equivalents of absolute peace: absolute
security, and absolute order. Strangely enough, whatever
word you exchange "absolute" for in these phrases either
means nothing, or still sounds creepy — total security, for
example, is not in any way an improvement. Suppose, for
example, that John McCain had run for President on a
platform of absolute order? "As President, I will impose
absolute order." No, I just can't see it happening.
(This is due to your democratic programming, which first
and foremost defends democracy — the strategy of
symbiont and parasite alike. The democrat is not willing
to equate peace with security and order. He does not like
security and order, because either total security or
absolute order in the end conflicts with democracy.)
85
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Brazil
188
The peaceful, reactionary world of Patchwork is a world
populated entirely by rational absolute sovereigns: states
which are managed competently and coherently for
financial benefit alone. This world can be created on a
subset of the entire planet, of course, though then it needs
plans for defending itself against the rest of said planet.
Within Patchwork, peace, security and order are most
definitely the same thing. As discussed in previous essays,
of course, a realm is designed to maintain absolute or
near-absolute levels of internal security and order.
Society within a Patchwork realm has none of the running
sores of the democratic era: there are no slums or dirty
streets, no gangs, and no politics. Japan or Singapore
would be the closest analogies today, though both of
course are quite imperfect.
We can define a rational absolute sovereign, such as a
Patchwork realm, as orderly. Such a sovereign is
controlled centrally from a single point, by competent
administration acting for a purely financial purpose. All
its motivations come from its desire to produce return on
equity. If predation is more profitable than cooperation, it
will predate. If cooperation is more profitable, it will
cooperate. (Obviously, the goal is to design a framework
in which cooperation is always more profitable.)
(Note that all these criteria remain absolute. The
administration cannot be too competent, its purposes
cannot be too neutral, its responsiveness to the
proprietors too complete, etc, etc.)
Patchwork is at peace if every realm in it is secure: ie, it is
orderly, and it maintains absolute control over its patch.
Once again, no realm can ever be too secure, just as peace
189
is always better than war and no society can be too
peaceful.
Between realms, our goal is to achieve the same or nearly
the same level of stability, without building anything like
a centralized authority that would impose it. A centralized
or federalized authority with the power of judgment or
enforcement is itself the government — and if you try to
split judgment and enforcement into competing agencies,
you are just asking for trouble.
Patchwork has no central authority or community of
realms. It has conventions, such as rules protecting
shared resources (the atmosphere, the oceans and the fish
in them, orbital space, etc) from any abuse that would be
collectively uneconomic. Sometimes people need to get
together and update these rules, as with any system of
rules, but they are only occasional delegates and do not
constitute any sort of permanent organization.
Sometimes realms must vote on these changes, but this is
a rare event indeed. Turning the entire system into One
Big State is a failure mode, not a goal.
So, for example, let's say a coalition of demented realms
are taken over by administrations which, for some reason,
are affrighted with the perils of global warming.
(Stipulating that global warming is a pile of nonsense86 —
if not, substitute something else which is.) They round up
a majority and manage to change the rules for the
atmosphere, imposing carbon credits or some such
absurdity.
86
Hyperlink to: https://climateaudit.org
190
Is that something that could happen in an Patchwork
world? Sure. What should the realms in the minority do?
Go along with it, I'm afraid. This is the level of
imperfection I think is acceptable in a design that remains
basically peaceful — it is aggression in a sense, but of an
inherently unprofitable form.
What we don't want to see is a situation in which we get
civil war, we get predation by some patches on other
patches, we get standing internal alliances, we get
patron-client relationships, etc, etc, and all the nasty
structures that arose under the old international order. A
bit of overzealous pollution control is a strain the system
can handle.
Our goal is thus to get, at the level of Patchwork as a
whole, as close to total security as we can. This is also
complete stability. Ideally, politics is at a complete end,
and war as a means of political endeavor. Except through
free and peaceful transfers of shares, there should be no
further changes in power. Each realm in each patch
should last forever. Frankly, if this isn't world peace, I
don't know what is. I hope it's not too much peace for
anyone.
(Transfers of shares that constitute a merger into bigger
and bigger patches, eventually ending in a one-patch
world, should be blocked in some way. Since realms do
not control their shares, this cannot be done by restricting
share transfers. However, it can be done by including a
promise of independent ownership in the realm's resident
covenant. Like any other item in the covenant, it can be
violated, but usually not profitably.)
191
The basic secret of inter-realm relations in Patchwork is
that it is much, much easier to construct rules for a
community of rational or orderly sovereigns than for a
community of irrational ones. Therefore, even in a world
which contains both rational and irrational sovereigns, it
is rational for rational sovereigns to have different rules
for other rational sovereigns. This set, whether or not it
covers the planet or is even geographically contiguous,
constitutes Patchwork. At least if it is working as
designed, there should be only one.
Orderly sovereigns deal with each other in a very different
way, because orderly sovereigns are sovereigns for whom
deterrence always works. Therefore, it is extremely easy
to discourage predation: it can be deterred either (a)
through collective disapproval — which might become
quite costly, especially if the disapproval of other realms
leads to the disapproval of one's present residents, as it
almost certainly would; or (b), all else failing, military
retaliation.
Military retaliation is important because, in real life, it is
rather hard to make war profitable, and rather easy to
make it unprofitable. While there is no supply of rational
sovereigns in history, history's profitable wars are often
best explained in terms of irrationality. For example,
while Hitler's conquests of Czechoslovakia, Poland and
France may have been in themselves profitable, each of
these three countries was more or less a client state of
Great Britain, and counted irrationally on British
assistance against Germany. As a result, not only did they
not defend themselves, they were not prepared to even try
to defend themselves.
192
Among rational sovereigns, that the theoretical military
confrontations which would otherwise occur between
Patchwork realms, and which there is no authority to
prevent, will just not happen. Armaments will be
gradually de-escalated, each side of each border prepared
to inflict an adequate level of pain on the other in the
event of any attempt at aggression. At the end of the
process, cross-border security cooperation between any
two sovereigns will be at the same level as that between
any two "countries" in the democratic world today, and
security forces will revert to police forces.
Of course, this process of complete de-escalation can only
happen in an all-Patchwork world. Irrational sovereigns
can be aggressive in arbitrary ways for arbitrary crazy
reasons, and they are not necessarily deterrable. Against
the rest of the world, Patchwork is at least expected to
stick together, possibly even forming joint security
institutions — which are temporary, of course, based on
the specific threat.
The general attitude of Patchwork toward the world
outside is neutrality. This of course was the staple of
American foreign policy for a century, which might well
be described as one of the only things Washington has
ever done right. No more need be said about this
well-known approach, due of course to George
Washington.87 The rules of neutrality are well-understood
under classical (19th-century) international law, a
considerable improvement on its 20th-century successor.
87
Washington’s Farewell Address 1796:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp
193
Patchwork will defend itself from the rest of the world,
but never attack. It will trade if allowed, not if otherwise.
Basically, it will keep its head down and try its best to
avoid surrendering sovereignty in any way. It will try to
keep its trade balanced, avoid accepting loans in
currencies it cannot print, maintain resource, food and
energy independence to whatever extent possible, etc, etc,
etc. Its advantage is in its vitality and economic efficiency,
and it will maintain this.
Especially, each realm and Patchwork as a whole will do
their best to avoid any compromise of sovereignty. A slice
of sovereignty is what each shareholder in each realm
holds, and it is not to be surrendered for any reason. And
while there may be a theoretical incentive for individual
realms to free-ride in defending the whole, surely the loss
of reputation capital exceeds any potential profit to ride
freely.
I'm sure that, to many democrats, Patchwork seems like a
design for permanent global tyranny. This is just
something we'll have to work through. However, it is
indisputable that, at least if it works as planned,
Patchwork will produce world peace. And it is certainly
reactionary! Just think of it as a cross between the Holy
Alliance, the Hanseatic League, and the National
Basketball Association — with all the advantages of each,
and the downsides of none.
194
Beyond Folk Activism
Patri Friedman
Introduction
I deeply yearn to live in an actual free society, not just to
imagine a theoretical future utopia or achieve small
incremental gains in freedom. For many years, I
enthusiastically advocated for liberty under the vague
assumption that advocacy would help our cause.
However, I recently began trying to create free societies as
my full-time job, and this has given me a dramatic
perspective shift from my days of armchair
philosophizing.88 My new perspective is that the advocacy
approach which many libertarian individuals, groups, and
think tanks follow (including me sometimes, sadly) is an
utter waste of time.
Argument has refined our principles, and academic
research has enlarged our understanding, but they have
gotten us no closer to an actual libertarian state. Our
debating springs not from calculated strategy, but from
an intuitive “folk activism”: an instinct to seek political
change through personal interaction, born in our
88
Essentially this was a movement from a far view to a near
view, see Robin Hanson’s discussion of the difference in “A Tale
Of Two Tradeoffs”
[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/ataleoftwotradeoffs.
html] and “Abstract/Distant Future Bias”
[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/11/abstractdistant.html].
The difference is also covered in Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling On
Happiness (Knopf, 2006)
195
hunter-gatherer days when all politics was personal. In
the modern world, however, bad policies are the result of
human action, not human design.89 To change them we
must understand how they emerge from human
interaction, and then alter the web of incentives that
drives behavior. Attempts to directly influence people or
ideas without changing incentives, such as the U.S.
Libertarian Party, the Ron Paul campaign, and academic
research, are thus useless for achieving real-world liberty.
In this essay, I will describe our misguided instinct,
present some principles for the incentive-level approach,
and then describe some of the paths to reform it suggests.
My hope is to persuade those brave souls who labor for
liberty so diligently to work more wisely as well.
Also, I want to clearly avow that while I criticize folk
activism, it often still drives my actions. It is a deep bias,
and hard to correct — I strive to overcome it, and I see it
in the world because I see it in myself.
What Is Folk Activism?
Our brains have many specific adaptations90 tuned for the
hunter-gatherer environment in which we evolved, which
in some ways differs wildly from the modern world.
Consider the prevalence of obesity: we eat according to
outdated instincts, feasting before a famine that never
comes, rather than adapting to our new world of caloric
abundance.
89
[Dead link]
Jeromy H. Barlow, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, The Adapted
Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture
(Oxford University Press, 1995)
90
196
Similarly, many people have an intuitive “folk economics”
which includes a number of biases such as the
anti-foreign and make-work biases.91 These beliefs are
demonstrably wrong, ubiquitous, stubbornly resistant to
argument and can be tied to to aspects of the
pre-agricultural economy, strongly suggesting they are an
evolved adaptation. While economically literate
libertarians delightedly skewer those who argue
mistakenly from folk economics, we constantly engage in
what I shall call folk activism.
In early human tribes, there were few enough people in
each social structure such that anyone could change
policy. If you didn’t like how the buffalo meat got divvied
up, you could propose an alternative, build a coalition
around it, and actually make it happen. Success required
the agreement of tens of allies — yet those same instincts
now drive our actions when success requires the
agreement of tens of millions. When we read in the
evening paper that we’re footing the bill for another
bailout, we react by complaining to our friends,
suggesting alternatives, and trying to build coalitions for
reform. This primal behavior is as good a guide for how to
effectively reform modern political systems as our
instinctive taste for sugar and fat is for how to eat
nutritiously.
Folk activism broadly corrupts political movements. It
leads activists to do too much talking, debating, and
proselytizing, and not enough real-world action. We build
coalitions of voters to attempt to influence or replace
91
Paul H Rubin, Folk Economics:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=320940
197
tribal political and intellectual leaders rather than
changing system-wide incentives.
This is not a cause for despair. Quite the opposite: it is
cause for great hope. It suggests that the failure of
libertarian activists to produce libertarian countries may
stem more from misdirected efforts than from the
impossibility of the task. Using analysis instead of
instincts, perhaps we can find a better lever, fulcrum, and
place to stand from which to attempt our Archimedean
effort.
Principles For Realistic Activism
The world is complex and there are many principles that
can be used to guide reform, so here I will discuss only
the most vital.
Power Has Inertia
As a libertarian, I find it easy to see the empirical
evidence that incentives matter. More difficult, but very
important, is to look at the vast gap between libertarian
principles and the size and scope of current governments
as empirical evidence that power matters too. Politicians
are demonstrably, consistently, and ubiquitously expert
at entrenching the power of the political class. To most
libertarians this is morally illegitimate, but morality has
sadly little influence over the realities of power.
If we are ever going to move beyond philosophizing on
barstool and blogs to change the power structures of the
world, we must accept that power equilibria have
considerable inertia. We cannot shift them with hope and
outrage alone — we need carefully calculated action.
198
Democracy Is Not The Answer
Democracy is the current industry standard political
system, but unfortunately it is ill-suited for a libertarian
state. It has substantial systemic flaws, which are
well-covered elsewhere,92 and it poses major problems
specifically for libertarians:
1) Most people are not by nature libertarians. David
Nolan reports that surveys show at most 16% of people
have libertarian beliefs. Nolan, the man who founded the
Libertarian Party back in 1971, now calls for libertarians
to give up on the strategy of electing candidates! Even
Ron Paul, who was enormously popular by libertarian
standards and ran during a time of enormous backlash
against the establishment, never had the slightest chance
of winning the nomination. His “strong” showing got him
1.6% of the delegates to the Republican Party’s national
convention. There are simply not enough of us to win
elections unless we somehow concentrate our efforts.
2) Democracy is rigged against libertarians. Candidates
bid for electoral victory partly by selling future political
favors to raise funds and votes for their campaigns.
Libertarians (and other honest candidates) who will not
abuse their office can’t sell favors, thus have fewer
resources to campaign with, and so have a huge intrinsic
disadvantage93 in an election.
92
Mancur Olson’s The Rise and Decline of Nations is one
source. The most recent work on this I know of is Bryan Caplan’s
The Myth of the Rational Voter, although it covers only one area
of democratic failure.
93
Jonathan Wilde, “Hypothetical Answer on Party Politics”:
http://www.distributedrepublic.net/archives/2004/11/05/hypotheti
calansweronpoliticalparties/
199
Libertarians are a minority, and we underperform in
elections, so winning electoral victories is a hopeless
endeavor.
Emergent Behavior
Consider these three levels of political abstraction:
1.
Policies: Specific sets of laws.
2.
Institutions: An entire country and its legal and
political systems.
3.
Ecosystem: All nations and the environment in
which they compete and evolve.
Folk activism treats policies and institutions as the result
of specific human intent. But policies are in large part an
emergent behavior of institutions, and institutions are an
emergent behavior of the global political ecosystem.
Institutions, Not Policies
I believe that libertarians (including myself) waste
enormous effort exploring solutions which will never be
implemented or even influence policy. These are not
necessarily libertarian solutions — often they attempt to
achieve the goals of the majority in an effective way.
We’re following the intuitive, folk-activism approach of
proposing plans to our tribe. Unfortunately, the problem
is not that our legislators lack for good ideas, but that
democracy is a flawed method for choosing among them,
200
because politicians respond to incentives too.94 So while
we could argue for weeks about the most effective way to
stimulate the economy, effectiveness is not the primary
criterion by which lawmakers evaluate policies.
Libertarians pour much of our resources into dissecting
policy and proposing alternatives. But agitating for a
specific policy is like complaining about a price — and
forgetting that it’s set by supply and demand. While
policy analysis is certainly an interesting field, as a
method for improving political performance it is about as
useful as price-fixing is for improving economic
performance. And while not without benefit,95 policy
debates feel far more important than they actually are.
Our cognitive bias is to assume that we have a voice
equivalent to an individual in a Dunbarian
hunter-gatherer tribe,96 and so we comment on
nationwide events with a passion to match — even when
no one is listening. (Now you understand blogs and bar
conversations!) These debates function as a mirage which
distracts us from the more fundamental structural
94
Russell Roberts, “Pigs Don’t Fly: The Economic Way of
Thinking About Politics”:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Robertspolitics.ht
ml
95
Policy analysis is not without benefit. It helps people realize
how flawed existing policies are, which is the foundation for
seeing that institutions are flawed. Understanding the flaws in
institutions helps us understand the market which breeds them.
The process helps our economic understanding, and the
tradeoffs which any society must make. Policy analysis is an
important base for our understanding, but we have plenty of
base — now we need some boom.
96
Eliezer_Yudkowsky, “Dunbar’s Function”:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/x9/dunbars_function/
201
reforms that would actually achieve liberty in our
lifetimes.97
Ecosystem, Not Institutions
Government is just another industry, where countries
offer services to citizens, but it has some unfortunate
features. It is a geographically segmented monopoly, and
since all land is taken, the industry has an enormous
barrier to entry. To start a new government you have to
beat an old one, which means winning a war, an election,
or a revolution. And it has very high customer lock-in:
there are barriers to emigration and immigration, and
switching countries involves both high financial and
emotional costs. These characteristics result in a horribly
uncompetitive industry, so it is no surprise that existing
firms tend to exploit customers instead of innovating to
attract them.
This analysis neatly avoids moral debates and has clear
practical implications: if the problem is an uncompetitive
market, the solution is to make it more competitive. It
also exposes the futility of strategies that don’t address
this issue, like trying to win the war of ideas. While
appealing and noble, this is ineffective. Without
competitive pressure, our institutions generate flawed
policies which benefit the political class, not those that
reflect the consensus of academic economists. We need
more competition in government, not more academic
papers or mindshare.
97
This is the motto of the Free State Project, and a wonderful
rallying cry.
202
An Experimental Ecosystem
Before I was introduced to the field of law and economics,
I assumed that the main problem in achieving a good
society was coming up with shared morals and values.98
Then you just write them down as laws, and you are done.
It turns out that even if we agree on a definition of rights,
there is no straightforward way to derive laws and
enforcement mechanisms. Implementation is not a trivial
detail, it’s the hard part! To make things worse, designing
policies is the easy case. When we view them as the
emergent behavior of institutions, things go from difficult
to impossible (so they’ll take us a little longer).
Because we have no a priori knowledge of the best form
of government, the search for good societies requires
experimentation as well as theory — trying many new
institutions to see how they work in practice. This
requires institutions to be embedded within a system
which allows for their easy creation, testing, and
comparison. A governing industry with a lower barrier to
entry and easier switching of providers would allow for
this constant small-scale experimentation.
This system would offer a host of benefits:
●
It creates specific, real-world examples to point
to when debating the merits of various systems.
How many millions of words of academic papers
about the benefits of free-markets does it take to
add up to the two words “Hong Kong”?
98
David D. Friedman, “Law’s Order: What Economics Has To Do
With Law and Why It Matters”:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/laws_order/index.shtml
203
●
Prospective customers of the new system could
actually
experience
it
physically
and
emotionally, rather than as a mental abstraction,
which is far more powerful for changing minds.
For citizens of the USSR, a single visit to the
West could outweigh years of Soviet
propaganda.
●
It enables proponents of an alternative system
(like libertarianism) to live their dream much
sooner, because they only need to get a small
group together to experiment with their new
society, rather than convince an entire existing
nation (which may never happen).
●
It supports an ongoing, evolutionary process
where societies learn over time, and change with
the world.
●
It doesn’t assume there is one best society for
everyone. People can attempt to live their ideals
without having to impose them on others. Not
only does it embrace multiple variants of
libertarianism, but other goals and methods for
creating a good society.
The Role Of The Frontier
As Bryan Caplan says,99 when working within existing
institutions, structural change and policy change are the
99
See: “Policy All The Way Down”:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/01/policy_all_the.html;
“Except Seasteading”:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/01/except_seastead.ht
ml
204
same, because you can only change structure by
implementing a policy. Only by starting with a blank slate
can you make a better structure without having to
overcome entrenched interests, which tend to resist
innovation because it reduces their power. Historically,
the frontier has functioned as this canvas for
experimentation.
There are positive aspects to this need for a frontier,
because there is a subset of people (currently quite
frustrated) for whom the urge to pioneer is a primal drive.
For all that I rail against bad instincts, it is far easier to
work with instincts than against them, so it’s good to have
one on our side!
Also, the first steps toward settling a frontier are to come
up with a new idea, spread it, and build a coalition of
people ready to live it — the same procedure and instinct
as folk activism. The difference is the strategy of actually
implementing the vision with the number of people one
can reasonably enroll, rather than one which requires
millions to agree before it can be put into practice. The
problem is not instincts, it is following them without
re-evaluating whether they are appropriate for the
modern world.
Technology Is Much More Important Than Rhetoric
Consider the relative effects of Zero Population Growth100
rhetoric vs. birth control technology at changing the
population growth curve of the world. It’s monumental.
Technology alters incentives, which is a far more effective
way to achieve widespread change than to attempt to fight
100
http://www.populationconnection.org
205
human biases or change minds. Unfortunately,
technology is also much newer in human history than
persuasion, and so is a much less intuitive strategy.
Alternatives To Folk Activism
Free State Project
The FSP aims to bring 20,000 liberty activists to the state
of New Hampshire.101 So far, 9,000 have signed up and
700 have moved. Even these few have been able to elect 4
of 400 state representatives, which makes it plausible
that the full 20,000 could have a substantial impact on
state politics.
I have doubts about the amount of freedom the FSP will
be able to secure, because most restrictions and taxation
are at the federal level, and the issue of states’ rights was
pretty solidly settled in 1865.102 Instead of opening a new
frontier, it is on land claimed and controlled by the most
powerful military force in the world. It also operates
within traditional democracy and its flaws.
Still, the FSP was consciously designed as a reaction to
the failure of libertarian reform to date, and is a vast
improvement over folk activism. It concentrates our
strength rather than depending on a mass libertarian
movement which will never come. It is based on
immediate action: practicing our principles today to
demonstrate that freedom works, rather than just
endlessly preaching.
101
See: https://freestateproject.org
See: “American Civil War”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
102
206
Being inside the United States may limit the freedom
achievable, but it also limits the difficulties, so this is a
good low-risk, low-reward option.
CryptoAnarchy
Proposed in Tim May’s Crypto Anarchist Manifesto103
way back in 1988, the idea is that anonymous digital cash
could greatly limit government power. While computer
and networking technology has developed enormously
since it was written, digital cash has not taken off, and the
main impact of digital transactions seems to have been on
record industry sales, not on “the ability to tax and
control economic interactions” as May predicted.
Despite the mathematical elegance of digital crypto, our
analog world is the site for most spending and income,
which can thus be taxed and regulated. Also, physical
reality provides a nexus for control — no matter how
sophisticated the avatar, a knife between its master’s
shoulderblades will seriously cramp its style.
While the Internet has been a big step towards a more
virtual lifestyle, we aren’t all going to be jacked in
full-time anytime soon. Over time more of May’s
predictions will come true, but only slowly and for a
limited subset of human affairs. Still, cyberspace is an
inherently more competitive, more anonymous, harder to
tax and regulate environment, and so advancing it is a
way to accelerate freedom through technology.
103
See:
https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/cryptoanarchy.html
207
Market Anarchism
As described in books like Machinery of Freedom,104 this
is a system where competing private agencies define,
judge, and enforce the law. It is a strange and beautiful
idea which is impossible to do justice in a short space, in
part because it is so much a system of human action, not
human design. Its brilliant logic neatly solves the problem
of how to create an institution that will generate efficient
policies.105 And it is an ecosystem, not just an institution:
it generates many legal systems through competition,
innovation, and imitation.
Unfortunately, there is no clear incremental path to such
a society. Proponents offer the vague hope that
governments will somehow fade away, but as observed
earlier, power is demonstrably good at perpetuating itself.
Anarchism is worth revisiting only if we can get a political
tabula rasa some other way. For example…
Seasteading
Seasteading is my proposal to open the oceans as a new
frontier,106 where we can build new city-states to
experiment with new institutions. This dramatically
lowers the barrier to entry for forming a new government,
because expensive though ocean platforms are, they are
104
David D. Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a
Radical Capitalism (Open Court, 1989)
105
See:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Anarchy_and_Eff_La
w/Anarchy_and_Eff_Law.html
106
Also note that space has even more mobility than the ocean,
and far more resources, plus it diversifies humanity off rock #3,
which is extremely important. Thus the oceans are merely the
penultimate frontier.
208
still cheap compared to winning a war, an election, or a
revolution. A lower barrier to entry means more
small-scale experimentation. Also, the unique nature of
the fluid ocean surface means that cities can be built in a
modular fashion where entire buildings can be detached
and floated away. This unprecedented physical mobility
will give us the ability to leave a country without leaving
our home, increasing competition between governments.
This plan is one of immediate action, not hope or debate.
It makes use of the people we have now rather than trying
to convert the masses, and avoids entrenched interests by
moving to the frontier. Most importantly, it increases
jurisdictional competition. It will not just create one new
country, but rather an entire ecosystem of countries
competing and innovating to attract citizens. Like any
market, the process of trial and error will generate
solutions we can’t even imagine — but that we know will
be better for customers.
Seasteading is far from certain to succeed, but this is a
hard problem, and there will be no easy answer. Two of
the greatest risks are the expense and danger of the
marine environment, and the chance that states will
interfere. The latter is a systemic risk for any reform (if
they’ll interfere with a new city in the ocean, then no
place is safe107), but the former is an idiosyncratic risk
107
Some people argue that strong defense against existing
states is another answer, such as WMDs. This solution has
some issues: 1) Pioneering can be done incrementally, while big
trouble happens to those who almost have nukes. 2)
Selfdefense doesn’t address any of the systemic problems that
hamper current governments. 3) Being able to successfully
defend against the strongest existing nations is a huge barrier to
entry. For these reasons, the experimentalist world we are
209
that could be diversified away if seasteading was part of a
portfolio of freedom projects.
I founded The Seasteading Institute to advance this path,
so if you’re interested in learning more, check out our
website, FAQ, and book.
Conclusions
If a fraction of the passion, thought, and capital that are
wasted in libertarian folk activism were instead directed
into more realistic paths, we would have a far better
chance at achieving liberty in our lifetime. We must
override our instinct to proselytize, and instead
consciously analyze routes to reform. Whether or not you
agree with my analysis of specific strategies, my time will
not have been wasted if I can get more libertarians to stop
bashing their heads against the incentives of democracy,
to stop complaining about how people are blind to the
abuse of power while themselves being blind to the
stability of power, and to think about how we can make
systemic changes, outside entrenched power structures,
that could realistically lead to a freer world.
looking for will be unlikely if states commonly interfere with small
experimental societies.
210
Seasteading and its Critics
Patri Friedman
Cato Unbound Managing Editor Jason Kuznicki writes in
Cato @ Liberty108:
What’s needed, Friedman claims, is not more
study or advocacy, but a change in the deeper
institutional structures that give rise to
government policies…
Is this just a young person’s impatience? Or has
Friedman found a serious weakness in
libertarian activism? One reply I might make is
that Cato scholars have researched quite a few
topics that Friedman would probably find
worthwhile… Consider the many Cato scholars
who have heralded the rise of tax competition…
Or consider Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the
Rational Voter…
It is certainly true that academic research is useful for
understanding what types of structural reform may help
realistically transform society, and it definitely informs
my strategy. In other words, even if one buys into my
worldview, the optimal quantity of academic research is
not zero. It is even true that the optimal rate of academic
research is not zero — new phenomena such as tax
competition may be worthy of study, even if you share my
goals (liberty in our lifetimes), and my skepticism of folk
activist methods.
108
See: https://www.cato.org/blog/newcatounbound
211
However, as we anti-government types know quite well,
defending something as having some virtue does not
mean it is better than alternatives, or even of net positive
value. Academic research is not useless, but I believe that
we are over-invested in talk relative to action and in
politics relative to technology, for all the reasons stated in
my piece. Describing the benefits of liberty may sell some
— but showing it will convince more. Telling people not to
have babies may slightly reduce the birth rate — but
inventing the pill reduces it drastically.
Ilya Somin has a good piece at the Volokh Conspiracy.109
Among other things, he says:
Ironically, Patri Friedman’s grandfather Milton
Friedman was one of the best examples of the
impact of libertarian advocacy on policy. Among
other things, Milton Friedman’s efforts,
combined with those of other libertarians,
played a key role in ending the draft, one of the
greatest infringements on individual liberty in
modern American history. Friedman also helped
influence many governments around the world
in the direction of adopting relatively more free
market economic policies.
I think I would like to believe that this is true, and
certainly there is a strong case to be made that individual
advocacy can have some occasional, limited, and
temporary positive effects on liberty. I went too far in
characterizing these efforts as useless. The fact remains
that they will not get us “liberty in our lifetimes,” that
109
See:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_04_052009_04_11.sht
ml#1239074395
212
structural reforms (such as the fall of communism and
spread of democracy) have had far more positive impact
on liberty than minor policy changes, and that technology
is a much more realistic path to changing the world than
rhetoric.
Furthermore, I question to what degree advocates such as
my grandfather could influence policy without successful
examples. The United States used to be such an example
— but those days are long past, and the current
administration seems hell bent on moving even further
from them, all the while calling it “progress.” Thus even if
one believes in fighting the war of ideas, examples make
for powerful ammunition. Surely some of our advocacy
budget (perhaps a substantial portion) should go to
creating such examples. As Michael Strong writes in his
new book Be The Solution (reviewed here by Max Borders
110
), we should “Criticize By Creating.”
Both Ilya and Cato Fellow Doug Bandow111 mention that
existing countries may not allow libertarian seasteads to
exist. Bandow suggests that political advocacy in existing
societies is thus an essential part of even a separatist
movement like seasteading. Again, let us not confuse
positive value with an efficient action. It is certainly true
that a culture of liberty is conducive to tolerance of
libertarian startup societies. It does not follow that the
budget of a libertarian startup state (or libertarianism in
general) should be spent on advertising the joys of
libertarianism rather than developing a good product. A
good product is, after all, the best form of advertising.
110
[Dead Link]
See: “Seasteading: Homesteading the High Seas of Liberty”:
https://www.cato.org/events/seasteadinghomesteadinghighsea
sliberty
111
213
States may not tolerate freedom on the high seas — but if
they don’t, then nowhere is safe. In other words, for a
given cultural climate, the most freedom will always be
had at the frontier, furthest from current power
structures. We know that the current political, cultural,
and intellectual climate means we are very far from a
libertarian state inside the borders of every existing
nation. The open question is: in that same environment,
how much freedom can be had on the frontier? It is more,
but is it substantially more — enough to be worth the
extra cost and other disadvantages?
This is where the question of state intervention comes in.
It is certainly a major threat, but I do not think that the
case that existing governments will not allow any
significant freedom on the frontier is overwhelming. Yes,
the United States will intervene anywhere in the world —
but only for a tiny list of offenses. WMD research,
harboring terrorists, anonymous banking, and exporting
drugs all come to mind as things that will provoke state
intervention. But that is a very short list, and it covers
most of the territory! In other words, one only needs to
ban a very few things in order to be on a friendly basis
with the United States.
Whether this will be sufficient to maintain autonomy
remains to be seen, and even if seasteading succeeds
wildly I expect complex compromises to be necessary. But
I think we have a fighting chance at a huge increase in
freedom. And a far better chance on the frontier than
anywhere else. It’s there or nothing — let’s give freedom
one last try.
214
The Education of a Libertarian
Peter Thiel
I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to
authentic human freedom as a precondition for the
highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes,
totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the
inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these
reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.”
But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have
changed radically on the question of how to achieve these
goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom
and democracy are compatible. By tracing out the
development of my thinking, I hope to frame some of the
challenges faced by all classical liberals today.
As a Stanford undergraduate studying philosophy in the
late 1980s, I naturally was drawn to the give-and-take of
debate and the desire to bring about freedom through
political means. I started a student newspaper to
challenge the prevailing campus orthodoxies; we scored
some limited victories, most notably in undoing speech
codes instituted by the university. But in a broader sense
we did not achieve all that much for all the effort
expended. Much of it felt like trench warfare on the
Western Front in World War I; there was a lot of carnage,
but we did not move the center of the debate. In
hindsight, we were preaching mainly to the choir — even
if this had the important side benefit of convincing the
choir’s members to continue singing for the rest of their
lives.
215
As a young lawyer and trader in Manhattan in the 1990s,
I began to understand why so many become disillusioned
after college. The world appears too big a place. Rather
than fight the relentless indifference of the universe,
many of my saner peers retreated to tending their small
gardens. The higher one’s IQ, the more pessimistic one
became about free-market politics — capitalism simply is
not that popular with the crowd. Among the smartest
conservatives, this pessimism often manifested in heroic
drinking; the smartest libertarians, by contrast, had fewer
hang-ups about positive law and escaped not only to
alcohol but beyond it.
As one fast-forwards to 2009, the prospects for a
libertarian politics appear grim indeed. Exhibit A is a
financial crisis caused by too much debt and leverage,
facilitated by a government that insured against all sorts
of moral hazards — and we know that the response to this
crisis involves way more debt and leverage, and way more
government. Those who have argued for free markets
have been screaming into a hurricane. The events of
recent months shatter any remaining hopes of politically
minded libertarians. For those of us who are libertarian in
2009, our education culminates with the knowledge that
the broader education of the body politic has become a
fool’s errand.
Indeed, even more pessimistically, the trend has been
going the wrong way for a long time. To return to finance,
the last economic depression in the United States that did
not result in massive government intervention was the
collapse of 1920–21. It was sharp but short, and entailed
the sort of Schumpeterian “creative destruction” that
could lead to a real boom. The decade that followed — the
roaring 1920s — was so strong that historians have
216
forgotten the depression that started it. The 1920s were
the last decade in American history during which one
could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920,
the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the
extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies
that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have
rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an
oxymoron.
In the face of these realities, one would despair if one
limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not
despair because I no longer believe that politics
encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our
time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape
from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and
fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos
that guides so-called “social democracy.”
The critical question then becomes one of means, of how
to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are
no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the
mode for escape must involve some sort of new and
hitherto untried process that leads us to some
undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused
my efforts on new technologies that may create a new
space for freedom. Let me briefly speak to three such
technological frontiers:
(1) Cyberspace. As an entrepreneur and investor, I have
focused my efforts on the Internet. In the late 1990s, the
founding vision of PayPal centered on the creation of a
new world currency, free from all government control and
dilution — the end of monetary sovereignty, as it were. In
the 2000s, companies like Facebook create the space for
new modes of dissent and new ways to form communities
217
not bounded by historical nation-states. By starting a new
Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new
world. The hope of the Internet is that these new worlds
will impact and force change on the existing social and
political order. The limitation of the Internet is that these
new worlds are virtual and that any escape may be more
imaginary than real. The open question, which will not be
resolved for many years, centers on which of these
accounts of the Internet proves true.
(2) Outer space. Because the vast reaches of outer space
represent a limitless frontier, they also represent a
limitless possibility for escape from world politics. But the
final frontier still has a barrier to entry: Rocket
technologies have seen only modest advances since the
1960s, so that outer space still remains almost impossibly
far away. We must redouble the efforts to commercialize
space, but we also must be realistic about the time
horizons involved. The libertarian future of classic science
fiction, à la Heinlein, will not happen before the second
half of the 21st century.
(3) Seasteading. Between cyberspace and outer space
lies the possibility of settling the oceans. To my mind, the
questions about whether people will live there (answer:
enough will) are secondary to the questions about
whether seasteading technology is imminent. From my
vantage point, the technology involved is more tentative
than the Internet, but much more realistic than space
travel. We may have reached the stage at which it is
economically feasible, or where it soon will be feasible. It
is a realistic risk, and for this reason I eagerly support this
initiative.
218
The future of technology is not pre-determined, and we
must resist the temptation of technological utopianism —
the notion that technology has a momentum or will of its
own, that it will guarantee a more free future, and
therefore that we can ignore the terrible arc of the
political in our world.
A better metaphor is that we are in a deadly race between
politics and technology. The future will be much better or
much worse, but the question of the future remains very
open indeed. We do not know exactly how close this race
is, but I suspect that it may be very close, even down to
the wire. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of
technology the choices of individuals may still be
paramount. The fate of our world may depend on the
effort of a single person who builds or propagates the
machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for
capitalism.
For this reason, all of us must wish Patri Friedman the
very best in his extraordinary experiment.
Editor’s Note: Mr. Thiel has further elaborated on the
question of suffrage here. We copy these remarks below
as well:
I had hoped my essay on the limits of politics
would provoke reactions, and I was not
disappointed. But the most intense response has
been aimed not at cyberspace, seasteading, or
libertarian politics, but at a commonplace
statistical observation about voting patterns that
is often called the gender gap.
219
It would be absurd to suggest that women’s
votes will be taken away or that this would solve
the political problems that vex us. While I don’t
think any class of people should be
disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting
will make things better.
Voting is not under siege in America, but many
other rights are. In America, people are
imprisoned for using even very mild drugs,
tortured by our own government, and forced to
bail out reckless financial companies.
I believe that politics is way too intense. That’s
why I’m a libertarian. Politics gets people angry,
destroys relationships, and polarizes peoples’
vision: the world is us versus them; good people
versus the other. Politics is about interfering
with other people’s lives without their consent.
That’s probably why, in the past, libertarians
have made little progress in the political sphere.
Thus, I advocate focusing energy elsewhere, onto
peaceful projects that some consider utopian.
220
Lure of the Void
Nick Land
1
The Frontier of Disillusionment
…the idea that we are no longer able to
accomplish feats we once could do (like travel to
the Moon) clashes with the prevailing narrative
that we march forever forward. Not only can’t
we get to the Moon at present, but the U.S. no
longer has a space shuttle program — originally
envisioned to make space travel as routine as air
travel. And for that matter, I no longer have the
option to purchase a ticket to fly trans-Atlantic
at supersonic speeds on the Concorde.
Narratives can break.
— Tom Murphy112
Shanghai’s 2010 World Expo included an entire pavilion
dedicated to urban futures. Among the exhibits was a
looping video on a large screen, depicting varieties of
futuristic
city-types as speculative animations,
light-heartedly, and with obvious orientation to
youngsters. Since children are the denizens of the future,
it makes sense to treat them as the target audience for a
vision of tomorrow’s world, but the effect was also
disconcerting, as if parenthesizing what was shown in a
form of deniable, non-abrasive irony. This is what the
112
Tom Murphy, “Why Not Space?” Do the Math:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/whynotspace/
221
future used to look like. Does it still? On this point, a
subtle reserve concealed itself as a concession to childish
credibility, or even inconsequential fantasy.
One of the four future cities on display had been
constructed off-planet, in earth-orbit. It was populated by
happy humans (or, at least, humanoids). No date was
predicted. Untethered from firm futuristic commitment,
it intersected adult perception as a fragment of
cross-cultural memory.
Imagine a city in space, as a child might. Given the
strategic obscurity of this statement, when encountered
at a carefully-crafted international event, in a
sophisticated, cosmopolitan, global, Chinese city, in 2010,
it is tempting to approach it through analogy. Half a
century ago, when Western children were encouraged to
imagine such things, during the twilight decades of
modernity (1.0), was a sincere promise being made to
them that they would inherit the solar system? If so, is
such a promise now being humorously referenced, or is it
being re-directed, and re-made?
The 2010 Expo had a Space Pavilion, too, which only
deepened the perplexity. Given the opportunity to
re-activate Expo traditions of techno-industrial
grandiosity, it was a spectacular miss-launch, containing
almost nothing in the way of monumental hardware. The
content fell into two broad categories: video-based
immersive special effects (highly-appreciated by kids),
and vanilla-domestic applications of space technology, on
the approximate model of NASA’s lamentable “we’re the
guys who brought you the non-stick frying-pan” PR
campaign. Anybody hoping for soul-crushing cyclopean
military-analog launch vehicles and the acrid stink of
222
rocket fuel had clearly wandered into the wrong century.
Contemporary international etiquette prevailed, and
according to that, the business of blazing into orbit is far
too crude – even primitive — to be vigorously publicized.
So even in China, at least in its 2010 window to the world,
off-planet aspirations were stirred together indissolubly
with childhood fantasy. The unmistakable insinuation,
harmonized with the commanding heights of world
opinion, was that such hard SF dreams had been
outgrown. Rather than staring through a window into the
spark-torched clangorous workshop of China’s emerging
national space program, Western visitors found their
gazes bounced from mirrored glass, into a ‘postmodern’
vacuum of collapsed expectations, amongst the eroded
ruins of Apollo. Four decades of Occidental space failure
smiled politely back. You lost it, didn’t you? (A quick trip
across the Huangpu to the drearily mundane USA
Pavilion sufficed for unambiguous confirmation.)
The dismissal of a human off-planet future as a childish
dream has plenty to build upon. The world’s publishers
and book shops have long accommodated their
classification systems to the sleazy ambiguity of the
‘science fiction / fantasy genre’, in which futurism smears
into oneirism, and the vestiges of hard SF programs
(telecommunication satellites, moon bases, space
elevators…)
are
scattered
amongst
fantastic
elves-in-space mythologies (from Star Wars to Avatar).
Competitive prophecies decay into polemical allegories,
making statements about anything and everything except
the shape of the future.
Of all the cultural ripples from the truncation of the
Apollo-era space trajectory, none is more telling than the
223
rising popularity of ‘Moon Hoax’ conspiracy theorizing.
Not satisfied with the prospective evacuation of the
heavens, the moon hoaxers began systematically editing
space-travelers out of the past, beginning with the lunar
landings. Whilst clearly maddening to space
technologists, American patriots, NASA supporters, and
sensible types in general, this form of ‘denialism’ is not
only historically comprehensible, but even inevitable. If
nobody seriously contests the fact that Columbus reached
the New World, it is at least in part because what was
then started kept happening. Something began, and
continued. Nothing comparable can be said about the
process of lunar colonization, and that, in itself, is a
provocative oddity. When forecasts are remembered,
abandoned outcomes can be expected to mess up
memories.
Old-school space enthusiast Sylvia Engdahl finds the
whole situation pathological, and subjects it to a kind of
jerry-built psychoanalysis. With defiant optimism, she
attributes “the present hiatus in space travel” to
xenophobic trauma:
Much is said about the positive effect of the
photos of Earth obtained by Apollo 8, which for
the first time showed our planet as a globe, a
fragile refuge amid barren surroundings, and
thereby launched the environmental movement.
The concomitant negative impact — the spread
of gut-level knowledge that space is an actual
place containing little that’s familiar to us and
perhaps much that we’d rather not meet — is not
spoken of. But it may be no less significant.
Could this be one of the reasons why interest in
space died so soon after the first Moon landing,
224
resulting in the cancellation of the last few
planned Apollo missions?113
She elaborates:
Most people do not want to contemplate the
significance of an open universe. They do not let
uneasiness about it into their minds, but
underneath, as the collective unconscious of
humankind absorbs the knowledge, they grasp
it, and react with dismay disguised as apathy. It
does not occur to them that they might be
disturbed by the prospect of space exploration.
Rather, they believe that although in theory they
want humankind to reach new worlds, it’s of low
priority compared to the problems of here and
now. … [T]he widespread conviction that the
public no longer cares about space may also be a
rationalization.114
Engdahl hints at a modern variant of the Orpheus myth,
and captures something of arresting significance. We
were told not to look back from orbit, but of course, we
did, and what we saw pulled us back down. The
damnation of our extraterrestrial out-leap gave birth to a
lucid environmentalist vision — the earth seen from
space. That is why Tom Murphy turns to the Grand
Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America,
John Michael Greer, to transmute elegiac disillusionment
into acceptance:
113
Sylvia Engdahl, “Confronting the Universe in the 21st
Century”, The Space Review:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2125/1
114
Ibid.
225
The orbiters are silent now, waiting for the last
awkward journey that will take them to the
museums that will warehouse the grandest of
our civilization’s failed dreams. There will be no
countdown, no pillar of flame to punch them
through the atmosphere and send them
whipping around the planet at orbital speeds. All
of that is over. …In the final analysis, space
travel was simply the furthest and most
characteristic offshoot of industrial civilization,
and depended — as all of industrial civilization
depends — on vast quantities of cheap, highly
concentrated, readily accessible energy. That
basic condition is coming to an end around us
right now.115
Disillusionment is simply awakening from childish
things, the druids tell us. This is a point Murphy is keen
to endorse: “space fantasies can prevent us from tackling
mundane problems.” Intriguingly, his initial step towards
acceptance involves a rectification of false memory,
through a (sane) analog of ‘Moon Hoax’ denial. Surveying
his students on their understanding of recent space
history (“since 1980 or so”), he discovered that no less
than 52% thought humans had departed the earth as far
as the moon in that time (385,000 km distant). Only 11%
correctly understood that no manned expedition had
escaped Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since the end of the
Apollo program (600 km out). Recent human space
activity, at least in the way it was imagined, had not taken
place. It was predominantly a collective hallucination.
115
John Michael Greet, “An Elegy for the Age of Space”, The
Archdruid Report. [Dead link; available here:
https://www.countercurrents.org/greer250811.htm]
226
Murphy’s highly-developed style of numerate druidism
represents the null hypothesis in the space settlement
debate: perhaps we’re not out there because there’s no
convincing
reason
to
expect
anything
else.
Extraterrestrial space isn’t a frontier, even a tough one,
but rather an implacably hostile desolation that promises
nothing except grief and waste. There’s some scientific
data to be gleaned, and also (although Murphy doesn’t
emphasize this) opportunities for political theatrics.
Other than that, however, there’s nothing beyond LEO
worth reaching for.
The neo-druidic starting point is unapologetically down
to earth. It begins with energy physics, and the
remorseless fact that doing just about anything heats
things up.116 According to Murphy’s calculations, a
modest 2.3% global economic growth rate suffices to
bring the planetary surface to the boiling point of water
within four centuries, even in the complete absence of
(positive) greenhouse effects. Economic growth is
essentially exponential, and that guarantees that we’re
cooked, due to elementary thermodynamic principles,
efficiency limits, and the geophysics of heat dissipation.
Within this big picture, conventional ‘energy crisis’
concerns are no more than complicating details, although
Murphy engages them thoroughly. (He provides a neat
summary of his argument, with internal links, here.)117
From the neo-druidic perspective, the space ‘frontier’ is a
horizon of sheer escapism, attracting those who
116
Tom Murphy, “Can Economic Growth Last?”, Do the Math:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/caneconomicgrowthlast/
117
Tom Murphy, “My Great Hope for the Future”, Do the Math:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/02/mygreathopeforthefutur
e/
227
stubbornly deny the necessity of limitation (pestilential
growth-addicts):
…relying on space to provide an infinite resource
base into which we grow/expand forever is
misguided. Not only is it much harder than
many people appreciate, but it represents a
distraction to the message that growth cannot
continue on Earth and we should get busy
planning a transition to a non-growth-based,
truly sustainable existence.118
Since plenty of irrepressible growth-mongers seriously
want to get out there,119 Murphy trowels on the
discouragement in thick, viscous layers. Most of the
deterrent factors are relatively familiar, but none of them
are frivolous, or easily dismissed. The principal problem
is the most qualitative (and druidic): human adaptation
to terrestrial conditions. This is strikingly illuminated by
a consideration of terrestrial ‘frontier’ environments that
remain
almost
entirely
unexploited,
despite
environmental features that are overwhelmingly more
benign than anything to be found off-planet. When
compared to any conceivable space station, asteroid
mining camp, lunar base, or Mars colony, even the most
‘difficult’ places on earth — the seabed, for instance, or
the Antarctic — are characterized by extreme
hospitability, with ready access to breathable air,
nutrients, fuels, and other essential resources, a moderate
temperature range, protection from cosmic radiation, and
proximity to existing human settlements. This is to be
contrasted with typical extraterrestrial conditions of hard
118
Tom Murphy, “Stranded Resources”, Do the Math:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/strandedresources/
119
http://www.transterrestrial.com
228
vacuum, utter exposure, complete absence of
bio-compatible chemistry, and mind-jarring distances.
Murphy touched upon these distances in his survey of
student space ignorance. If earth is represented by a
“standard” 30-centimeter globe, LEO is 1.5 centimeters
from the surface, and the moon a full 9 meters further
out. For intuitive purchase upon more expansive space
visions, however, a re-calibration is required.
It makes sense to model the earth as a small apple (8.5
cm in diameter), because then an astronomical unit (AU,
the mean earth-sun distance of roughly 150 million
kilometers, 93 million miles, or 500 light seconds)
shrinks to a kilometer, with the sun represented by a
sphere a little over 10 meters in diameter. The moon now
lies less than 2.7 meters out from our toy earth, but Mars
is never less than 400 meters away, the nearest asteroids
a kilometer away. The distance to the edge of the
planetary solar system (Neptune) is at least 29
kilometers, and within this spatial volume (a sphere of
roughly 113,400 AU³), less than one part in 27 billion is
anything other than desolate vacuum, with almost all the
rest being solar furnace. On the toy scale, the outer edge
of the solar system, and the Oort cloud, lies 50,000
kilometers from the earth. The distance from our
shriveled apple to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is
277,600 toy kilometers (or 41.5 trillion real ones).
If space colonization is being construed as an escape from
terrestrial resource constraints, then a pattern of activity
needs to be knitted across these distances, producing —
at a minimum — an energy surplus. In a non-frictional
kinetic system, governed almost purely by (macroscopic)
conservation of momentum, the basic currency of space
229
activity is ‘delta-v’, or the transformation of velocity.
Delta-v is broadly proportional to energy expenditure on
“small burns”, when fuel consumption makes a negligible
difference to total propelled mass, but when complete
flights or “large burns” are calculated, the math becomes
nonlinear, since the reduction of fuel payload becomes a
critical factor in the equation (subtracting inertial
resistance as it adds motive force). In practical terms, the
prospective off-planet (‘space-faring’) energy economy
consists of the consumption of propellant to move
propellant about, with non-fuel vehicle mass contributing
little more than a rounding error in the calculations.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, it is possible to
get the rocket moving faster than the exhaust
velocity once the fuel mass exceeds 63% of the
total initial mass. In order to get delta-v values
in the 20 km/s range when the exhaust velocity
is less than 5 km/s requires almost nothing but
fuel. …[T]he large delta-v’s required to get
around the solar system require a lot of fuel…120
This double-registry of fuel within the nonlinear
equations of “rocket math” – as payload and propellant –
is the key to Murphy’s deep skepticism about the viability
of off-planet energy economics. The fuel resources strewn
within the inner solar system – even assuming their
absolute abundance – cannot be moved around usefully
for less energy than they provide. Jupiter offers the most
tantalizing example. This methane-rich gas giant might
be superficially apprehended as an immense cosmic fuel
depot, but even the most generous calculations of delta-v
120
Tom Murphy, “Stranded Resources”, Do the Math:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/strandedresources/
230
requirements for a Jupiter ‘tanker-run’ imply energy
expenditures at least an order of magnitude higher than
energy obtained – from the ‘scooping’ operation alone.
The inner solar-system is abundant in “stranded
resources” that cannot conceivably be extracted at a cost
lower than their value. That, at least, is the coherent
neo-druidic perspective.
…and yet, in the yawning void, where the space
settlements were meant to have been, the stirrings have
not ceased. There even seems to be, unmistakably, a
quickening of pace. Chinese ‘Taikonauts’,121 private
(American) ‘NewSpace’ businesses,122 and ever more
advanced robots are venturing out beyond the wreckage
of dead dreams.123 Are they heading anywhere that works,
or that even makes sense?
2
The right stuff in the rough
… it’s important to understand what Apollo was,
and wasn’t. It was a victory in the Cold War over
the Soviets, but because we were at war, we
waged it with a state socialist enterprise. What it
was not was the first step of opening up the
frontier to humanity, and it was in fact a false
start that has created a template for NASA and a
121
Craig Covault, “First Look: China’s Big New Rockets”,
AmericaSpace:
http://www.americaspace.com/2012/07/18/firstlookchinasbign
ewrockets/
122
[Dead link]
123
Jeff Foust, “From Terror to Triumph”, The Space Review:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2133/1
231
groove in which we’ve been stuck for over four
decades now, with many billions spent and little
useful progress.
— Rand Simberg124
The opening of the American west in the first
decades of the 19th century and the opening of
the space frontier in these first decades of the
21st century are very similar.
— Mike Snead125
Fascism makes our heads spin, which is unfortunate,
because an inability to gaze unwaveringly into the
dominant ‘third way’ model of political economy
(corporate nationalism) makes the history of the last
century unintelligible. For amateur space historians,
dropping in briefly on the Moon Nazis is simply
unavoidable.126
SS Sturmbannführer Wernher von Braun, Deputy
Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA
Headquarters, Washington DC (1970-2), helps with the
introduction. Technical director of the Nazi rocket
program at Peenemünde, which culminated in the
creation of the A-4 (V-2) ballistic missile, von Braun was
brought to America in 1945 as the top prize of Operation
Paperclip. His contribution to US rocket development,
through Redstone to Apollo (and the moon), was central
and indispensable. NASA Socialism was born on the Dark
124
[Dead Link]
[Dead Link]
126
Dave Trumbore, “IRON SKY Moon Nazis to Invade the US”,
Collider: http://collider.com/ironskyusdistribution/
125
232
Side of the Moon.127 (This probably isn’t the right time to
wander too deeply into Pynchon territory, but, roughly
speaking, that’s where we are.)128
If fascism sounds unduly harsh, more comfortable
terminology lies within easy reach. ‘Technocracy’ will do
fine. The name is less important than the essentials,
which were already clearly formulated in the work of a
previous German immigrant to the United States,
Friedrich List,129 who devoted an influential book to
outlining The National System of Political Economy
(1841). According to List, the ‘cosmopolitanism’ of
mainstream (Smithean) political economy was
insufficiently attentive to the collective national interest.
Industrial development was too important to be
surrendered to the interplay of private economic agents,
and should instead be considered a strategic imperative,
within the context of international competition. Only by
leveraging the power of the state to regulate trade, foster
modern industries, and drive the development of critical
infrastructure, could a country hope to advance its
interests in the international arena. Development was
war by other means, and sometimes the same ones.
When eagerly embraced by Henry Clay, who connected
List’s ideas with the founding tradition from Alexander
Hamilton, these ideas became the basis of the American
System. Economic nationalism was to be pursued along
the threefold path of managed trade (tariffs),
127
[Dead Link]
See: Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow:
https://gravitysrainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=M
ain_Page
129
James Fallows, “How the World Works”, The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/12/howthe
worldworks/305854/
128
233
state-controlled finance (central banking), and
state-directed infrastructure development (especially
transportation systems). Such policies were already
‘progressive’ or fascist technocratic in that they
subordinated private-cosmopolitan economic interests to
national purposes, but this took place flexibly, without
the more recent encrustations of anti-business class
warfare, large-scale entitlement spending, or Cathedralist
cultural policing. Capitalism was to be steered, and even
promoted, rather than milked, deliberately ruined, or
replaced. Due to its patriotic direction, elitism, and
affinity
with
militarization,
this
technocratic
progressivism could easily be understood as a
phenomenon of ‘the right’, or at least (in Walter Russell
Mead’s words) the “Bipartisan Establishment.”130
Apollo perfectly exemplified American technocratic
progressivism in the teutonized, neo-Hamiltonian
tradition. A small step for a man, and a substantial leap
for mankind, it was a colossal high-jump for the US
Leviathan, marking an unambiguous triumph in the
structured competition with its principal geo-strategic
and ideological rival. The Apollo program wasn’t exactly
part of the ballistic missile arms race with the Soviet
Union, but it was close enough to contribute to its
symbolic, mass-psychological, and deterrent purpose.
Landing a man on the moon was a type of overkill,
relative to landing a nuke on Moscow, and it expressed a
super-abundant payload-delivery capability that had won
a war of messages.
In an article originally published in The American
Spectator (November 10, 2010), Iain Murray and Rand
130
[Dead link]
234
Simberg describe the moon race as Big Government’s
Final Frontier, remarking that:
There’s something about space policy that
makes conservatives forget their principles. Just
one mention of NASA, and conservatives are
quite happy to check their small-government
instincts at the door and vote in favor of massive
government programs and harsh regulations
that stifle private enterprise.131
They conclude:
It is time for conservatives to recognize that
Apollo is over. We must recognize that Apollo
was
a centrally planned monopolistic
government program for a few government
employees, in the service of Cold War
propaganda and was therefore itself an affront
to American values. If we want to seriously
explore, and potentially exploit space, we need
to harness private enterprise, and push the
technologies really needed to do so.132
Whilst it would be pointlessly upsetting to translate this
into a call for the denazification of outer space, it would
be equally misleading to read it as nothing of the kind.
Progressive technocracy, in a range of national flavors, is
the only effective space politics the world has ever seen,
and it is still far more likely — in the near-term — to be
modernized
than
radically
supplanted.
Space
131
Iain Murry and Rand Simberg, “Big Government’s Final
Frontier”, Competitive Enterprise Institute:
https://cei.org/content/biggovernmentsfinalfrontier
132
Ibid.
235
development poses such an immense collective challenge
that it sucks even liberty-oriented conservatives such as
Simberg towards accommodation with the activist,
catalytic, neo-Hamiltonian state. At least initially, there’s
simply no other place where the clanking machinery of
Leviathan is more at home.
Popular culture has picked up on this well. Among the
many reasons for the ecstatic reception to Ridley Scott’s
Alien (1979) was appreciation for its ‘realistic’ tonal
portrait of practical space activity. Science and commerce
played their parts, but the leading edge was dominated by
quasi-military heavy metal, funded by massive budgets
based on gravely obscure strategic objectives, directed
and crewed by hard, obedient, buzz-cut types who did
whatever it took to get things done. Weapons research
trumped all other considerations. Breaking out into the
deep frontier required a rigid, armored-bulkhead
seriousness that civilians would never quite understand.
When suddenly stripped of its Cold War context, the
proxy warfaring of the rocket-state lost coherent
motivation, and immediately veered off course into
increasingly ludicrous pseudo-objectives. By the closing
years of the 20th century, all pretense of a big push
outwards had been dissipated amongst commoditized
LEO satellite maintenance, unconvincing zero-gravity
science projects, ritualistic space-station diplomacy,
multicultural astronaut PR, and even cynical make-work
schemes
for
dangerously
competent
ex-Soviet
technicians. Clever science continued, based on robot
probes and space telescopes, but none of that even hinted
at an impetus towards space settlement, or even manned
spacecraft, and typically advised explicitly against it.
236
Despite all the very real ‘right stuff’133 heroism, putting
people in space was a circus act, and perhaps it always
had been.
Whatever else outer space may be, it’s a place where the
right goes schizoid, and the more that it’s thought about,
the more jagged the split. The seemingly straightforward,
dynamic-traditional, and extremely stimulating ‘image’ of
the frontier illuminates the point. The frontier is a space
of attenuated formal authority, where entrepreneurial,
‘bottom-up’ processes of social formation and economic
endeavor are cultivated amongst archetypal ‘rugged
individualists’, its affinity with libertarian impulses so
tight that it establishes the (‘homesteading’) model of
natural property rights, and yet, equally undeniably, it is
a zone of savage, informal warfare, broken open as a
policy decision, pacified through the unremitting
application of force, and developed as a strategic
imperative, in the interest of territorial-political
integration. By fleeing the state, in the direction of the
frontier, the settler or colonist extends the reach of the
state towards the frontier, drawing it outwards, and
enhancing its ferocity, or roughening it. The path of
anti-governmental flight confuses itself with a
corresponding expansion, hardening, and re-feralization
of the state, as the cavalry learn from the Indians, in a
place without rules. Then the railroad comes. The Moon
Is a Harsh Mistress meets Starship Troopers.134
133
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (London: Picador, 2008)
David Wright, Rational Anarchy: An Analysis of the theme
given by Professor Bernard De La Paz In Robert A. Heinlein's
'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress':
http://dwrighsr.tripod.com/heinlein/RatAnarch/
134
237
“A strategy for achieving economic benefit from space
must involve both government and industry, as did the
development of the American West,” argues Martin Elvis,
and no one seriously disagrees.135 Whenever realism is
prioritized on the extraterrestrial horizon, some variant
of rough-and-dirty technocratic progressivism always
waits on the launch-pad, ready to piggy-back business
off-planet on patriotic, Leviathan-funded, first-stage
boosters. Over-hasty denazification is strictly for
earth-bound softies The neo-Hamiltonian jump-leads
work too well to drop. As usual, Simberg expresses this
best:
The United States should become a spacefaring
nation, and the leader of a spacefaring
civilization.
That means that access to space should be
almost as routine (if not quite as affordable) as
access to the oceans, and with similar laws and
regulations. It means thousands, or millions, of
people in space — and not just handpicked
government employees, but private citizens
spending their own money for their own
purposes. It means that we should have the
capability to detect an asteroid or comet heading
for Earth and to deflect it in a timely manner.
Similarly it means we should be able to mine
asteroids or comets for their resources, for use
in space or on Earth, potentially opening up new
wealth for the planet. It means that we should
explore the solar system the way we did the
135
Martis Elvis, “After Apollo”, Harvard International Review:
http://hir.harvard.edu/article/?a=2925
238
West: not by sending off small teams of
government explorers — Lewis and Clark were
the extreme exception, not the rule — but by
having lots of people wandering around and
peering over the next rill in search of adventure
or profit.
We should have massively parallel exploration
— and not just exploration, but development, as
it has worked on every previous frontier.136
Which brings us to ‘NewSpace’…
3a
There are two related questions posed by human
exploration.
First,
is
there
anything
economically useful to do out there, that pays
your way? And second, can you live off the land,
and use local resources to survive, or will we
always be tied to support from earth? If the
answer to both is yes, then you get space
colonies, self-sustainable life off-planet. If the
answer to both is no, then space is like Mt.
Everest. Tourists might go to Mt. Everest,
sherpas might make a living off of it, but no one
really lives there.
If the answer is that you can live off the land, but
it’s not economically useful, it’s like Antarctica.
It was 40 years between the last time we were
136
Rand Simberg, “A Space Program for the Rest of Us”, The
Space Review:
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/aspaceprogramfo
rtherestofus
239
there, when Shackleton reached Antarctica, and
when the U.S. Navy went back in 1912. There’s a
similar lapse between going to the Moon the
first time and, hopefully, when we’ll return. In
that case, you can form an outpost and live
there, but you’re sustained by constant funding,
since engineering doesn’t pay for itself. If the
answer is that there are economically useful
things to do, such as mining Helium-3 on the
Moon, but we’re always reliant on Earth for
basic necessities, then space becomes a North
Sea oil platform. You can make money there, but
it will always be a hostile environment.
These are four very radically different human
futures. And they’re all part of a larger question:
Is there a human future beyond Earth? It’s a
question ranks up there with whether there’s
intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. We can
search for life with probes and telescopes, but to
determine the living range of humanity, we’re
going to have to send humans into space.
— Scott Pace137
What should the payload be? It does not matter.
That is the point. This is not about getting a
useful payload into space: That is almost
irrelevant. It is about guaranteeing a market for
companies offering launch services to get things
going. I mean this totally. If we could think of
nothing better to launch, concrete blocks would
be fine. My philosophy is:
137
[Dead link]
240
Launching anything is good.
— Paul Almond138
The material base for a space-faring future is not only
stranded in space, but also stranded in time. Not only are
the gravitationally-unlocked resources from which it
would assemble itself strewn across intimidating
immensities of vacant distance, but the threshold where it
all begins to come together – in an autocatalytic
extraterrestrial economy – is separated from the world of
present, practical incentives by dread gulfs of incalculable
loss. In a variant of the old joke, if getting off-planet is the
goal, a planet is the absolutely worst place to set out from.
“I can tell you how to get there,” the local helpfully
remarked. “But you shouldn’t start from here.”
Being out there could quickly start to make sense, as long
as we were already there. Experimenting with this
perspective-switch makes the animating impulse clearer.
Most tellingly, it exposes how deeply planets suck, so that
merely not being on one is worth almost anything. That’s
the end game, the final strategy, ultimately arranging
everything, with anti-gravity as the key.
Once gravity is perceived as the natural archetype of
imprisonment, keeping you somewhere, whether you
want to be there or not, the terrestrial-economic
motivations for off-planet expansion are revealed in their
fundamental spuriousness. The reason to be in space is to
be in space, freed from planetary suckitude, and any
benefits to Earth-dwellers that accrue on the way are
138
[Dead link]
241
mere stepping stones. Off-planet resources diverted to
the surface of the Earth are, in the ultimate spacer
scheme, wasted, or at least strategically sacrificed (since
such wastage is almost certainly required in the interim).
In the final analysis, the value of anything whatsoever is
degraded in direct proportion to the gravitational
influences brought to bear upon it, and descent from the
heavens is a fall.
A wider cosmo-developmental view sharpens resolution
(although this requires that Smart’s invaluable insights139
are strictly set aside, and black holes avoided with
maximum prejudice). Smear into fast-forward until the
process of extraterrestrial escape has been substantially
accomplished, then freeze the screens. Fleeing gravity can
now be seen as no more than the first step in a more
thorough, antagonistic contestation with gravity and its
works. Asteroids and comets are being pulverized,
quarried, or bored into sponges, leaving moons, planets,
and the sun itself as the local problems of interest. Such
bodies are ‘problems’ because they deform space with
gravity wells, which trap resources, but their status as
development obstacles can be abstracted further. These
worlds, at least partially isolated from the emerging
deep-space commercium by their own mass, have been
shaped by gravity into approximate spheres, which is to
say – from the developmental perspective – into the very
worst shapes that are mathematically possible, since they
minimize the ratio of (reactive) surface to volume, and
thus restrict resource accessibility to the greatest
conceivable extent. Way out there, in deep space and the
139
Nick Land, “Implosion”:
https://oldnicksite.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/implosion/
242
deep future, the gathering developmental impulse is to go
full Vogon, and demolish them completely.140
When seen from outside, planets are burial sites, where
precious minerals are interred. By digging through the
earth’s mantle, for instance, all the way down to its
interior end, 3,000km beneath the surface, one reaches a
high-pressure iron-nickel deposit over 6,500km in
diameter – a planet-vaulted metal globe roughly
160,000,000,000 cubic kilometers in size, doped by
enough gold and platinum to coat the entire surface of
the earth to a depth of half a meter. To a moderately
advanced
off-world
civilization, pondering the
practicalities of its first planet-scale demolition, leaving
this buried resource trove in place has a
robotic-industrial opportunity cost that can be
conservatively estimated in the region of 1.6 x 10^23
human-level intelligences, a mineral stockpile sufficient
to manufacture a trillion sentient self-replicating probes
for every star in the galaxy. (Even ardent conservationists
have to recognize how tasty this morsel will look.)
Liftoff, then, is merely a precursor to the first serious
plateau of anti-gravity technology, which is oriented
towards the more profoundly productive task of pulling
140
See: “Vogon”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet
Vogsphere in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — initially a
BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams — who are responsible for
the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an intergalactic
highway construction project for a hyperspace express route.
Vogons are sluglike but vaguely humanoid, are bulkier than
humans, and have green skin. Vogons are described as “one of
the most unpleasant races in the galaxy—not actually evil, but
badtempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous", and having
"as much sex appeal as a road accident" as well as being the
authors of "the third worst poetry in the universe". They are
employed as the galactic government's bureaucrats.”
243
things apart, in order to convert comparatively inert
mass-spheres into volatile clouds of cultural substance.
Assuming a fusion-phase energy infrastructure, this
initial stage of off-world development culminates in the
dismantling of the sun, terminating the absurdly wasteful
main-sequence nuclear process, salvaging its fuel
reserves, and thus making the awakened solar-system’s
contribution to the techno-industrial darkening of the
galaxy. (Quit squandering hydrogen, and the lights dim.)
Focus for a few seconds on the economic irritability that
arises at the sight of an oil-well flaring off natural gas,
through sheer mindless incompetence, then glance at the
sun. ‘Unsustainable’ doesn’t begin to capture it. Clearly,
this energy machinery is utterly demented, amounting to
an Azathothic orgy of spilled photons.141 The entire
apparatus needs to be taken apart, through extreme solar
surgery. Since this project has yet to receive sustained
consideration, however, the specific engineering details
can be safely bracketed for now.
The inexorable logic of techno-industrial efficiency, on its
anti-gravity vector, means that the only consistent
motivation for leaving the earth is to dismantle the sun
(along with the rest of the solar-system), but that doesn’t
play well in Peoria. Unsurprisingly, therefore, those
sensitized to political realities, media perceptions, and
public relations are inclined to emphasize other things,
141
See: H. P. Lovecraft, The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath:
“[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous
blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at
the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth,
whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily
in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space
amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin
monotonous whine of accursed flutes.”
244
depicting the earth as a destination for cosmic bounty or
— even more immediately — for juicy tax-funded pork,142
rather than as a tricky but highly-rewarding demolition
problem.
Conspicuously missing from the public space debate,
therefore, is any frank admission that, “(let’s face it folks)
— planets are misallocations of matter which don’t really
work. No one wants to tell you that, but it’s true. You
know that we deeply respect the green movement, but
when we get out there onto the main highway of
solar-system redevelopment, and certain very rigid, very
extreme environmentalist attitudes – Gaian survivalism,
terrestrial holism, planetary preservationism, that sort of
thing — are blocking the way forward, well, let me be very
clear about this, that means jobs not being created,
businesses not being built, factories closing down in the
asteroid belt, growth foregone. Keeping the earth
together means dollars down the drain – a lot of dollars,
your dollars. There are people, sincere people, good
people, who strongly oppose our plans to deliberately
disintegrate the earth. I understand that, really I do, you
know – honestly – I used to feel that way myself, not so
long ago. I, too, wanted to believe that it was possible to
leave this world in one piece, just as it has been for four
billion years now. I, too, thought the old ways were
probably best, that this planet was the place we belonged,
that we should – and could — still find some alternative
to pulling it apart. I remember those dreams, really I do,
and I still hold them close to my heart. But, people, they
142
“Time to End Pork Barrel Monster Rocket and Expensive
Russian Space Ferry”, Space Travel:
http://www.spacetravel.com/reports/Time_To_End_Pork_Barrel
_Monster_Rocket_And_Expensive_Russian_Space_Ferry_999.
html
245
were just dreams, old and noble dreams, but dreams, and
today I’m here to tell you that we have to wake up.
Planets aren’t our friends. They’re speed-bumps on the
road to the future, and we simply can’t afford them
anymore. Let’s back them up digitally, with respect, yes,
even with love, and then let’s get to work…” [Thunderous
applause]
Since, during the present stage of extraterrestrial
ambition, pandering to the partisans of cosmic
disintegrationism cannot reasonably be conceived as a
sure-fire election winner, it is only to be expected that
rhetoric of this kind has been muted. Yet, in the absence
of some such vision, or consistently extrapolated
alignment with anti-gravity, the off-planet impulse is
condemned to arbitrariness, insubstantiality, and
insincerity of expression. Absent an uncompromised
sense of something else, why not stick to this? The result
has been, perhaps predictably, a reign of near-silence on
the topic of extraterrestrial projects, even in regard to its
most limited, immediate, and practically unobjectionable
varieties.143
If escaping the earth – and gravitational confinement in
general — is not an intelligible end, but only a means,
what provides the motivation? It is into this cramped,
awkwardly-deformed crevice of aspiration that NewSpace
must insinuate itself. To speak of ‘insincerity’ might seem
unduly harsh – since there is no reason to suspect
conscious deception, or even carefully-calibrated
reservation, when NewSpace advocates outline their
143
“Why Won’t the Political Parties Talk About Space?”, Popular
Mechanics:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a11956/whywontthe
politicalpartiestalkaboutspace12636543/
246
plans. An enveloping structure of implausibility
nevertheless announces itself in every project that is
advanced, manifested through the incommensurability
between the scale of the undertaking and the rewards
that supposedly incentivize it. Space tourism, asteroid
mining,
micro-gravity
experimentation
and
manufacturing… really? Is it genuinely imaginable that
these paltry goals finally or sufficiently motivate a
prolonged struggle against the terrestrial gravity-trap,
rather than serving as fragile pretexts or rationalizations
for the pursuit of far more compelling, yet hazy,
unarticulated, or even completely unsuspected
objectives?
When this question is extended backwards, and
outwards, it gathers force. Stretch it back to the moon,
and out to Mars, and the inference becomes increasingly
irresistible. None of these ‘missions’ made, or make, any
sense whatsoever, except insofar as they abbreviate some
wider, undisclosed impulse. Space activity is not the
means to a targeted end, but the end to be advanced by a
sequence of missions, whose specific content is therefore
derivative, and devoid of intrinsic significance. Once the
inarticulate outward momentum decays, leaving nothing
but an arbitrary extraterrestrial destination to represent
it, the naked absurdity that is exposed rapidly
extinguishes the last, flickering embers of popular
motivation. Four decades of explicit lunar nihilism attest
abundantly to that.144
144
Razib Khan, “Neil Armstrong and the End of the Whig
Conceit”, Discover:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/08/neilarmstrong
andtheendofthewhigconceit/
247
Whilst the partial privatization of space activity
(‘NewSpace’) creatively displaces the problem of purpose,
it does not radically dispel it. To some degree, NewSpace
substitutes the economic motivations of disparate private
operators for the political justification of a concentrated
public bureaucracy, and by doing so it relieves the
pressure to maintain coherent, communicable, and
consensual objectives. Space ambitions are freed to enter
the fragmented, competitive terrain of idiosyncrasy,
variety, experimentation, and even personally-financed
frivolity. It might even be thought that seriousness
becomes optional.
When examined more doggedly, however, it is clear that
the basic problem persists. The terrestrial gravity-well
produces a split between the surface of the earth, and
‘orbit’ (or beyond), and private capital is no less severely
divided by this schism than Rocket-State ‘public’
hardware. Whilst convertible temporarily into forms of
inert, stored value, capital is an essentially modern
phenomenon, born in industrial revolution, and typically
defined by the diversion of immediate consumption into
‘roundabout’ production, which is to say: machinery. It is
reproduced, or accumulated, by circulating through
machines, or apparatus, and it is upon this that the
gravity-well compels a decision: is NewSpace capital to be
invested, unambiguously, in space?
A serious space program is, fundamentally and
irreducibly, a process or terrestrial evacuation. It requires
the consistent relocation (or de-location) of enterprise,
resources, and productive capabilities from the earth into
space, at least until the threshold of extraterrestrial
autocatalysis is reached, at which point a break has been
achieved, and an autonomous off-planet economy
248
established. Whatever the opportunities for obfuscation
(which are probably considerable), the basic decision
remains unaffected. The accumulation of a terrestrial
fortune is not at all the same, and is in fact almost
certainly economically inconsistent, with the sustained
investment in an off-planet industrial infrastructure.
Either stuff is being shifted into space, irrevocably, or
not.
3b
Menace in the west
Recognizing the head start obtained by the
Soviets with their large rocket engines, which
gives them many months of lead-time, and
recognizing the likelihood that they will exploit
this lead for some time to come in still more
impressive successes, we nevertheless are
required to make new efforts on our own. For
while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day
be first, we can guarantee that any failure to
make this effort will make us last. We take an
additional risk by making it in full view of the
world, but as shown by the feat of astronaut
Shepard, this very risk enhances our stature
when we are successful. But this is not merely a
race. Space is open to us now; and our eagerness
to share its meaning is not governed by the
efforts of others. We go into space because
whatever mankind must undertake, free men
must fully share. … I believe that this nation
should commit itself to achieving the goal,
249
before this decade is out, of landing a man on
the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
— John F Kennedy145
[James Anthony Froude’s] “The Bow of Ulysses”
… endorses the old colonialism, nostalgically
recalling the days when Britain was not an
empire, but rather British colonialists were
pirates and brigands, who robbed, conquered
and eventually ruled, gradually making the
transition from mobile banditry to stationary
banditry without the British government paying
much attention. In “The Bow of Ulysses” Froude
condemns nineteenth century imperialism as
unworkably left wing, and inevitably leading [to]
the destruction of the British empire, and thus
the ruin of the subjects of the British empire, all
of which ensued as he envisaged … The
imperialists, those advocating British Empire,
were the left, and the colonialists were the right.
And the colonialists correctly predicted that if
this were to go on, we would get the left that we
now have – one of the many strange facts one
encounters if one reads old books.
— James A Donald146
145
John F Kennedy, “Special Message to the Congress on
Urgent National Needs”, Wikisource:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special_Message_to_the_Congres
s_on_Urgent_National_Needs
146
James A Donald, “Burning the Past”, Jim’s Blog:
https://blog.jim.com/culture/burningthepast/
250
The peculiarities of the ‘space race’ have yet to be fully
unfolded. Through its extraordinary formality, reducing
extraterrestrial ambitions to a binary, international
competition to put the first man on the moon, it seems –
retrospectively – to owe more to the culture and history
of organized sports than to technological and economic
accomplishments. There would, by definition, be a
winner and a loser, which is to say a Boolean decision,
conventional and indisputable. Then it would be over.
Perhaps it was seen to be pointing at something further,
but in fact the moon was a finishing line.
Within a broad geo-strategic context, the space race was a
symptom of thermonuclear stand-off. A modern history
of warfare that had descended inexorably from a
restrained game of princes to unleashed total war,
amongst ideologically-mobilized peoples, targeting their
basic institutions, industrial infrastructures, and even
demographic root-stocks, had consummated itself –
virtually – in the MAD potential for swift, reciprocal
extermination. Under these circumstances, a regressive
sublimation was called for, relaying conflict through
chivalric representatives – even Homeric heroes – who
competed on behalf of the super-lethal populations they
appeased. The flight of an astronaut symbolized
antagonism, substituting for a nuclear strike. In this
sense, victory in the space race was a thinly-disguised
advance payment on the conclusion of the Cold War.
This sublimation is only half of the story, however,
because a double displacement took place. Whilst the
space race substituted a formal (chivalric) outcome for a
military result, it also marginalized the long-envisaged
prospect of informal space colonization, replacing it with
a predominantly conventional (or socio-political)
251
objective. The price of unambiguous symbolic triumph
was a ‘triumph’ that relapsed into the real ambiguity of
(mere) symbolism, with reality-denying, postmodernist,
‘moon hoax’ temptations already rising. When nothing is
won except winning itself, it could scarcely be otherwise.
A champion is not a settler, or anything close to one.
What is this real ambiguity? It begins on the frontier,
with a series of questions that reaches beyond the
meaning of the space race, and into the identity of
America. As a country settled within the modern epoch,
and thus exhaustively determined by the dynamics of
colonialism, America has been condensed from a frontier.
In extended parenthesis, it is worth noting explicitly that
the continent’s aboriginal population was not yet
America, but something earlier, and other, encountered
on the frontier. The idea of a ‘Native American’ is an
exercise in historical misdirection, when it is not merely a
thoughtless oxymoron. This is not to suggest that these
populations were unable to become American, as many
did, once America had begun in the modern period. By
innovating distinctive modes of secession, they were even
— in certain cases — able to become radically American.
A reservation casino in institutional flight from the IRS is
vastly more American than the Federal Reserve, in a
sense that will (hopefully) become evident.
The foundation of America was a flight into the frontier,
extending a trajectory of escape into a perpetually
receding space, or open horizon — the future made
geography, and only subsequently a political territory.
This original, informal, and inherently obscure space
project is as old as America itself – exactly as old. As
Frederick Jackson Turner had already noted in 1893, for
252
America an open frontier is an existential necessity,
which is to say: the basic condition of American
existence. Once the frontier closes, borders take over,
exceptionality withers into insubstantial rhetoric (or
worse, its neoconservative facsimile) and necrosis begins.
In this respect, America cannot be sustained as a state
with a space program. It requires an open horizon,
extended beyond the earth if necessary, sufficient to
support a prolongation of its constitutive colonial
process. Only on and out of this frontier does America
have a future, although ‘the USA’ could (more)
comfortably persist without it. That is why, beneath,
alongside, and beyond the space race, the frontier ‘myth’
has been spontaneously extended to extraterrestrial
vistas considered as an essentially American prospect.
(NASA and its works are quite incidental to this, at best.)
Since this claim invites accusations of gratuitous
controversy, it is worth re-visiting it, at a more languid
pace. Even after re-emphasizing that America is not the
same as – and is indeed almost the precise opposite of –
the USA, obvious objections present themselves. Is not
the Russian space program the world’s most
economically plausible? Is not the upward curve of recent
Chinese space activity vastly more exuberant? Hasn’t the
United Nations claimed the heavens on behalf of a
common humanity? What, other than cultural-historical
accident, and the unwarranted arrogance stemming from
it, could imaginably make ‘an essentially American
prospect’ of outer space?
The counter-point to all of these objections is
colonialism, understood through its radical, exceptional,
American lineage. Colonialism of this ultimate variety
253
consolidates itself from the frontier, and passes through
revolutionary thresholds of a very specific type: wars of
independence, or secession (rather than comprehensive
regime changes) that are procolonial (rather than
anti-colonial) in nature. The colony, as colony, breaks
away, and in doing so creates a new society. Successful
examples of such events are extremely rare – even
singular, or exceptional. There is America, and then there
are ‘lost causes’, with considerable (and increasing)
overlap between them.
What has any of this to do with outer space, beyond
impressionistic analogy? Gravity cements the connection.
Dividing the surface of the earth and extraterrestrial
space is an effective difference, or practical problem, that
can be quite precisely quantified in technological terms
(fuel to deliverable payload ratios), and summarized
economically. For purposes of comparison, transporting
freight across the Pacific costs US$4/kg (by air), or
US$0.16/kg by ocean-bound container vessel (US$3,500
per TEU, or 21,600 kg). To lift 1 kg of cargo into Low
Earth Orbit (LEO), in stark contrast, costs over
US$4,000 (it was over US$10,000 by Space Shuttle). Call
it the Rift: an immense structural re-supply problem,
incentivizing
economic
self-sufficiency
with
overwhelming force. Each kilogram of extraterrestrial
product has saved US$4,000 before further calculations
get started. Out in space, the Rift is the bottom line: a
cold, anti-umbilical reality.
Whatever the historic colonial impetus to the American
way – separation and social re-foundation – is reinforced
by orders of magnitude in LEO and beyond. This is an
environment that might have been precision-engineered
for revolutionary colonialism, as science fiction writers
254
have long recognized. On the flip side lies a more
obviously explanatory conclusion: Because developments
beyond the Rift are inherently uncontrollable, there is no
readily
discernible
motivation
for
terrestrial
political-economic agencies to fund the emergence of
off-planet societies that are on an irresistible
conveyor-belt to independence, whilst voraciously
consuming resources, opening an avenue of escape, and
ultimately laying the void foundations for a competitor
civilization of a radically unprecedented, and thus
ominously unpredictable kind.
It follows clearly that the status quo politics of space
colonization are almost fully expressed by space
colonization not happening. When understood in
relation to the eclipsed undercurrent of the frontier
analogy — social fission through revolutionary
colonialism or wars of independence — the ‘failure’ of
large-scale space colonization projects to emerge begins
to look like something else entirely: an eminently rational
determination on the part of the world’s most powerful
territorial states to inhibit the development of
socio-technological potentials characterized by an
‘American’ (revolutionary colonial) tendency.
Of course, in a world that grown familiar with
interchangeable anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist
declarations, the terms of this (Froude / Moldbug /
Donald) analysis are initially disconcerting. When
detached from the confusions and conflations of a
disturbed periphery, however, the pattern is compelling.
Colonists are, by their very nature, in flight from the
metropolis. It is less than a single step from this
acknowledgement to the recognition that they tend to
independence of action, social fission, and political
255
disintegration, following trends that imperialists – with
equal inevitability — seek to curtail. Since colonization,
strictly understood, is cultural and demographic
transplantation, it only acquires its sense of expansion
when restrained under imperial auspices. Whilst colonial
and rebellious are not even close to synonymous
expressions, they are nevertheless mutually attracted, in
near-direct proportion to the rift that separates colony
from metropolis. A colonial venture is a rebellion of the
most practical and productive kind, either re-routing a
rebellion from time into space, or completing itself in a
rebellion that transforms an expedition into an escape.
Since the triumph of imperialism over colonialism
beginning in the second half of the 19th century, it is only
in (and as) America that this system of relations has
persisted, tenuously, and in large measure occulted by the
rise of an imperial state.
It is helpful, then, to differentiate in principle (with
minimal moral excitability) between a colonial space
project, oriented to extraterrestrial settlement, and an
imperial space program, or policy, designed to ensure
terrestrial control over off-planet development, maintain
political integrity, and thus secure returns on investment
across the Rift. From the perspective of the territorial
state, an (imperial) space program that extracted
economic value from beyond earth’s gravity well would be
ideal, but this is an ambition unsupported by the vaguest
flickerings of historical precedent (and obstructed by at
least four orders of magnitude of yawning economic gulf).
Second best, and quite satisfactory, is the simple
prevention of colonial space projects, substituting
political space theater as an expensive (but low-risk and
affordable) alternative. The occasional man on the moon
256
poses no great threat to the order of the world, so long as
we “bring him safely back to earth.”
America was an escape from the Old World, and this
definition suffices to describe what it still is – insofar as it
still is – as well as what it can be, all that it can be, and
what any escape from the new old world – if accurately
named, would also be. When outlined by the shadows of
dark enlightenment, America is the problem that the USA
was designed to solve, the door that the USA closes, the
proper name for a society born from flight.
As Nietzsche never exactly said: Am I understood?
America against the stars and stripes …
257
Extracts from Xenosystems
Nick Land
Quit
Foseti writes:
There’s a lot of hand-wringing in these parts of
the interwebz about what reactionaries should
do.
I have no idea. I certainly have no grand plans to
change the world. I like knowing what’s going on
around me and I like open discussions – i.e.
ones that are not choked to death by political
correctness.
However, if I were to suggest a plan, I’d say tell
the truth.147
His (slightly) more detailed suggestions are also
commendable. The Cathedral provokes reaction by
mandating fantasy over reality, and there is no doubt
much that could be done about that.
There is a sub-question about all this, however, which is
scarcely less insistent: What do ‘we’ really want?
More
cybernetics,
argues
the
determinedly
non-reactionary Aretae. Of course, Outside in agrees.
147
Foseti, “What to Do”, Foseti:
https://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/whattodo/
258
Social and technical feedback machinery is reality’s
(only?) friend, but what does the Cathedral care about
any of that? It’s winning a war of religion. Compulsory
anti-realism is the reigning spirit of the age.
The only way to get more tight-feedback under current
conditions is by splitting, in every sense. That is the
overwhelming practical imperative: Flee, break up,
withdraw, and evade. Pursue every path of
autonomization,
fissional
federalism,
political
disintegration, secession, exodus, and concealment.
Route around the Cathedral’s educational, media, and
financial apparatus in each and every way possible. Prep,
go Galt, go crypto-digital, expatriate, retreat into the hills,
go underground, seastead, build black markets, whatever
works, but get the hell out.
Truth-telling already presupposes an escape from the
empire of neo-puritan dreams. ‘We’ need to throw open
the exit gates, wherever we find them, so the wreck can go
under without us. Reaction begins with the proposition
that nothing can or should be done to save it. Quit bailing.
It’s done. The sooner it sinks the better, so that something
else can begin.
More than anything we can say, practical exit is the
crucial signal. The only pressure that matters comes from
that. To find ways out, is to let the Outside in.
Exit Test
What can Exit do? It looks as if France is going to provide
an important demonstration:
259
France has become a defeatist nation.
A striking indicator of this attitude is the
massive emigration that the country has
witnessed over the last decade, with nearly 2
million French citizens choosing to leave their
country and take their chances in Australia,
Brazil, Canada, China, the United States and
other locales. The last such collective exodus
from France came during the French Revolution,
when a large part of the aristocracy left to await
(futilely) the king’s return. Today’s migration
isn’t politically motivated, however; it’s
economic.
This
departing
population
consists
disproportionately of young people — 70% of the
migrants are under 40 — and advanced-degree
holders, who do their studies in France but offer
their skills elsewhere. The migrants, discouraged
by the economy’s comparatively low salaries and
persistently high unemployment — currently at
10.9% — have only grown in number since
Socialist Francois Hollande became president.
The young and enterprising in France soon
realize that elsewhere — in London, say —
obstacles to success are fewer and opportunities
greater. The British capital is now France’s
sixth-largest city, with 200,000 to 400,000
emigres.
The exile rolls also include hundreds of
thousands of French retirees, presumably
well-off, who are spending at least part of their
260
golden years in other countries. Tired of France’s
high cost of living, they seek out more
welcoming environments.
My beloved country, in other words, has been
losing not only its dynamic and intelligent young
people but also older people with some money.
I’m not sure that this social model can work over
the long term.148
It will be extremely interesting to see.
Exit Notes (#1)
Some notable attempts to dial back the NRx commitment
to exit over voice, as inherited from Moldbug, have been
seen recently. (I think NBS was crucial in advancing this
argument, but I couldn’t find his post immediately — I’ll
link to it if someone nudges me helpfully.) It’s
undoubtedly a central discussion throughout the
reactosphere at the moment.
Some preliminary thought-gathering on the topic:
(1) Exit is a scale-free concept. It can be applied
rigorously to extreme cases of sociopolitical separation,
from secession to extraterrestrial escapes. Yet these
radical examples do not define it. It’s essence is the
commercial relation, which necessarily involves a
non-transaction option. Exit means: Take it or leave it
148
Pascal Bruckner, “France, a downinthedumps nation”, LA
Times:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/oped/laoebrucknerfrancegloo
manddoom20140223story.html#axzz2u9H0D8IS
261
(but don’t haggle). It is thus, at whatever scale of
expression, the concrete social implementation of
freedom as an operational principle.
(2) As a philosophical stance, Exit is anti-dialectical. That
is to say, it is the insistence of an option against
argument, especially refusing the idea of necessary
political discussion (a notion which, if accepted,
guarantees progression to the left). Let’s spatialize our
disagreement is an alternative to resolution in time.
Conversations can be prisons. No one is owed a hearing.
(3) In regards to cultural cladistics, it can scarcely be
denied that Exit has a Protestant lineage. Its theological
associations are intense, and stimulating.
(4) Exit asymmetries have been by far the most decisive
generators of spontaneous anti-socialist ideology. The
iconic meaning of the Berlin Wall needs no further
elucidation. The implicit irony is that people flee
towards Exit, and if this is only possible virtually, it
metamorphoses automatically into delegitimation of the
inhibitory regime. (Socialism is Exit-suppressive by
definition.)
(5) Exit is an option, which does not require execution for
its effectiveness. The case for Exit is not an argument for
flight, but a (non-dialectical) defense of the opportunity
for flight. Where Exit most fully flourishes, it is employed
the least.
(6) Exit is the alternative to voice. It is defended with
extremity in order to mute voice with comparable
extremity. To moderate the case for Exit is implicitly to
262
make a case for voice. (Those who cannot exit a deal will
predictably demand to haggle over it.)
(7) Exit is the primary Social Darwinian weapon. To blunt
it is to welcome entropy to your hearth.
Go Scotland!
Tribal politics excites the autobiographical impulse,
which I’ll pander to for just a moment (without
pretending to any particular excitement). My immediate
ancestry is a quarter Scottish, and — here’s the thing —
those grandparents were Wallaces. Seriously, they were
these guys:
… but it’s my remaining three-quarters of mongrelized
Brit that is leading this post to its destination. In
particular, the 37.5% of English blood coursing through
my veins is the part murmuring most enthusiastically for
Scotland to vote ‘Yes!’ to departure this week.
Scotland is hugely over-represented in the UK
Parliament, shifting the country’s politics substantially to
263
the Left. While Scottish exit wouldn’t necessarily ensure a
permanent conservative government — electoral
democracy simply doesn’t work like that — it’s hard to
argue that the result could be anything other than an
ideological rebound of sorts, with the rump UK’s entire
political spectrum shunting right. Since such an outcome
would almost certainly prolong the viability of liberal
democracy, perhaps even worldwide (due to contagion
effects), it would be unseemly for any neoreactionary to
get adrenalized about it. England would nevertheless
undergo a minor restoration, conceivably broadening the
political imagination in a modestly positive way.
Every increment of dynamic Anglo capitalism adds
resources that will eventually be of great use — especially
now, with public ledger crypto-commerce coming online.
It is a grave error to become so fixated upon the death of
the
demotic
power
structure
that
positive
techno-commercial advances are simply written off, or
worse, derided as life-support apparatus for the enemy.
Even a minor Anglo-capitalist revitalization would
produce some deep value (as early, or creative
destruction-phase Thatcherism did, amid its manifold
failures).
Far more significantly, Scottish secession would mark a
turning of the tide, with great exemplary potential.
Beginning its new life as a hotbed of socialist lunacy, an
independent Scotland would be forced — very rapidly —
to grow up, which of course means moving sharply to the
right. The more theatrical the transitional social crisis, the
more thoroughly leftism-in-power would be humiliated.
As everyone now knows, such lessons in the essentially
incompetent nature of leftist social administration never
have any more than a limited effect, since humans are
264
congenitally stupid creatures who find profound learning
next-to-impossible. Despite this, they are the only
remotely effective lessons history offers. However pitiful
mankind’s political-economic education may be, it is
owed entirely to the disaster spectacle of leftism in power.
A fresh lesson — the more brutally calamitous the better
— should always be welcomed unambiguously. If
wild-eyed socialists were to drive Scotland over a cliff,
they would be presenting a precious gift to the world
thereby. (Sadly, in the opinion of this blog, the probability
of such an eventuality is relatively low — Scottish
canniness can be expected to re-assert itself with
remarkable speed once the Sassenach dupes are no longer
subsidizing its disappearance.)
The secession of Scotland, from the perspective of the
rump UK, is already a (relative) purge of leftist entropy.
With the return of an independent Scotland to
minimally-functional,
and
thus
moderately
right-corrected government, this purge becomes absolute.
A quantum of leftist insanity will have been extinguished,
since its condition of existence was a relation of political
dependency. No one resorts to beggary when abandoned,
solitary, upon a desert island. Compulsory self-reliance
mandates adjustment to the right (whether preceded by
collapse or not).
An independent Scotland would work, most probably
quite quickly. It then lights a beacon of disintegration,
first across the Anglosphere, and subsequently more
widely. The time of fragmentation will have come. The
present world epoch of democracy will then have arrived
at its final stage — promoting the break-up of the states it
has built (and with them, eventually, itself). Scotland
265
could light the touch-paper. It would save everybody
some time if it did.
[...]
ADDED: As Bremmer explained, Scottish independence
would “tilt the entire U.K. political spectrum to the
right.” That would boost the odds of a conservative
majority winning in 2015. […] … “If Scotland votes ‘yes,’
down the road would come the ultimate irony,”
Bremmer said. “The U.K. would be more likely to pull out
of the E.U., while Scotland clamors to get in.”
Age of Exit149
Mark Lutter’s forecast for the general landscape of 21st
century politics leaves plenty to argue with, from all sides,
and even vociferously, but the basic trend-line he projects
is persuasive (at least to this blog):
… the costs of exit are going down. Increased
mobility and smaller political units will allow
people increasingly to vote with their feet. The
old political questions of which ideological
empire controls which territory will give way to a
choose-your-own-governance meta system. […]
Thus, to be successful, political units will have to
attract residents—that is, to providing better
services at lower cost. Increased competition
among smaller political units will spur
innovation, leading to new forms of governance.
149
This post is from Urban Future (2.1) rather than
Xenosystems
266
Many will fail. But the successful will be
replicated, outcompeting more stagnant forms.
Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and
Lichtenstein show the beginnings of such
success. […] Not all the governments will be
libertarian. In fact, most probably will not be.
Some will experiment with higher levels of
redistribution; others with petty tyrannies,
zealous zoning and even social exclusion.
However,
competition
will
eliminate
unsuccessful models. Ultimately, the meta-rules
that are emerging are decidedly libertarian in
flavor, as choice will govern the survival of
political units.150
The left won’t like this, for obvious reasons. It is
dissolidarity incarnate, with an egalitarian-democratic
promise that is minimal, at best. I’m not sure whether the
criticism has developed beyond indignant scoffing to
calmly-formulated theoretical antagonism yet, but it
surely will.
The right’s objections are likely to be more diverse. Most
pointedly, from the perspective here, there is room for
deep skepticism about the harshness of the selection
mechanisms Lutter is counting upon. Driving a state into
insolvency, and liquidation, is no easy thing. For those,
especially, who would be delighted to see effective
inter-state Darwinism cropping micro-states for adaptive
excellence, cold realism concerning the capabilities of
states to forestall such outcomes is essential. If
150
Mark Lutter, “The Age of Exit has Arrived”, Foundation for
Economic Education:
https://fee.org/articles/theageofexithasarrived
267
widespread conflict-free high-functionality futures sound
too good to be true, they probably are.
Exit Foundations
Having lost count of the number of times the demand for
exit guarantees has come up as an objection to the
Patchworked-Neocameral model, it seems worthwhile to
reproduce Moldbug’s most directly on-point, pre-emptive
response to the question. The question being: What is to
stop a regime, once it is entirely unshackled from all
domestic political constraint (i.e. Neocameralized), from
extinguishing the exit options of its residents?
As a prefatory note: Like the Misesian praxeology from
which it is cladistically descended, the Moldbuggian
System is a transcendental political philosophy, which is
to say that it deals with ultimate or unsurpassable
conditions. You have reached the transcendental when
there is no higher tribunal, or court of appeal. This is the
socio-cosmic buffers. If you don’t like what you’re seeing
here, there’s still no point looking anywhere else, because
this is all you’re going to get:
To live on a Patchwork patch, you have to sign a
bilateral contract with the realm. You promise to
be a good boy and behave yourself. The realm
promises to treat you fairly. There is an inherent
asymmetry in this agreement, because you have
no enforcement mechanism against the realm
(just as you have no enforcement mechanism
against the United States). However, a realm’s
compliance
with
its
customer-service
agreements is sure to be a matter of rather
intense attention among residents and
268
prospective residents.
shareholders as well.
And
thus
among
For
example,
I
suspect
that
every
customer-service agreement will include the
right to remove oneself and one’s assets from the
realm, at any time, no questions asked, to any
other realm that will accept the emigrant.
Possibly with an exception for those involved in
the criminal-justice process – but this may not
even be needed. Who wants a criminal? Not
another realm, surely.
Suppose a realm unilaterally abrogates this right
of emigration? It has just converted its residents
into what are, in a sense, slaves. It is no longer
Disneyland. It is a plantation. If it’s any good
with cinderblocks, barbed-wire and minefields,
there is no escape. What do you say if you’re
stuck on this farm? You say: “yes, Massa.” A
slave you are and a slave you will be forever.
This is terrible, of course. But again, the
mechanism we rely on to prevent it is no
implausible deus ex machina, no Indian
rope-trick from the age of Voltaire, but the
sound engineering principle of the profit motive.
A realm that pulls this kind of crap cannot be
trusted by anyone ever again. It is not even safe
to visit. Tourism disappears. The potential
real-estate bid from immigrants disappears.
And, while your residents are indeed stuck, they
are also remarkably sullen and display no great
interest in slaving for you. Which is a more
valuable patch of real estate, today: South Korea,
269
or North Korea? Yet before the war, the North
was more industrialized and the South was more
rural. Such are the profits of converting an entire
country into a giant Gulag.
Is that all? Yes — that’s all. Beyond the rational economic
incentives of the Sovereign Corporation, controlled within
a Patchwork-environment (of competition for human
resources), there is nothing to which an appeal can be
made. The end.
Geopolitical Arbitage
Stross:
… things will get very ugly in London when the
Square Mile and investment banking sector ups
and decamps for Frankfurt, leaving the service
sector and multiethnic urban poor behind.151
The specifics of this prediction are nutty, if only because
mainland Europe is going down the tubes much faster
than the UK, but the abstract anxiety is spot on. The
globalization of the right is entirely about geopolitical
arbitrage (while that of the left is about homogenizing
global governance). All the critical trends point towards
the exacerbation of the ‘problem’. The 21st century is the
epoch of fragmentation — unlike anything seen since the
early modern period — shifting power to the footloose,
and away from megapolitical systems of territorial
dominion. Being left behind is the rising threat, and we
151
See:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blogstatic/2016/01/longrangefo
recast.html#comment1990181
270
can confidently expect to see it consolidating as the
subtext of all leftist grievance. You can’t just leave.
Watch.
The obstacles to geopolitical arbitrage — i.e. spatial Exit
pressure — are security constraints. It requires defensible
off-shore bases (and Frankfurt most certainly isn’t going
to provide one). Eyes need to be fixed firmly on
secessionary
dynamics
(fragmentation),
techno-commercial decentralization of hard security,
crypto-anonymization, artificial intelligence, and the
emergence of capital outposts in the Western Pacific
region. More exotic factors include opportunities for
radical exodus (undersea, Antarctic, and off-planet),
facilitated by territorial production (artificial islands).
The machinery of capture needs to keep all of these
escape routes firmly suppressed in order to perpetuate
itself. That simply isn’t going to happen.
Capital is learning faster than its adversaries, and has
done so since it initially became self-propelling, roughly
half a millennium ago. It’s allergic to socialism
(obviously), and tends to flee places where socialist
influence is substantially greater than zero. Unless caged
definitively, eventually it breaks out. Over the next few
decades — despite ever deeper encryption — it should
become unmistakable which way that’s going.
Flea Politics
One time-tested way to shed parasites is to take a dip:
Foxes will actually take a stick when they have
fleas and get into the water slowly. They let the
271
water raise up to their necks and hold the stick
up in the air. As the water goes higher up their
face, the fleas will climb higher. Eventually the
fox will just have it’s nose out of the water while
holding the stick. The fleas will climb up the
stick and the fox will sink under the water and
let the flea infested stick float down the river to
the flea’s watery grave.152
As Balaji Srinivasan remarked (on Ultimate Exit): “… but
the best part is this: the people who think this is weird,
the people who sneer at the frontier, who hate technology
— they won’t follow you out there.”153
Did you really think it was going to be that easy?154
Space de-colonization is already preparing to queer-up
the escape trajectory:
As venture capitalist space entrepreneurs and
aerospace contractors compete to profit from
space exploration, we’re running up against
increasingly conflicting visions for human
futures in outer space. Narratives of military
tactical dominance alongside “NewSpace”
ventures like asteroid mining projects call for the
defense, privatization, and commodification of
152
See: “Lakota Worlf Reserve”:
http://www.everythingwolf.com/forum/threadview.aspx?thread=9
413p1
153
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A
154
See: “When discussing Humanity’s next move to space, the
language we use matters.”:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/urbanscientist/whendiscus
singhumanity8217snextmovetospacethelanguageweuse
matters/
272
space and other worlds, framing space as a
resource-rich “frontier” to be “settled” in what
amounts to a new era of colonization … […] we
have to stake a claim in the territory of space
programs now. We need to add our voices,
perspectives, plans, our cares. There isn’t time
to wait. We can’t sit back and say: Space isn’t
urgently important, we should be looking at
problems here on Earth. First of all, much of
space science is looking at and working on
problems here on Earth (from conflict,
migration, and drought to climate change,
deforestation, and more). Secondly, SpaceX,
Boeing, and others are preparing new craft and
taking humans into space now— and human
technology is leaving the solar system. Perhaps
it’s not happening on the timeline you would
prefer, but it’s already happening and has been
for decades, and they’re pretty much doing it
without us … So what’s next? We — all us queer,
trans, disabled, black, native, etc. folk and
more — we need to fight back, take back,
de-colonize and re-imagine our futures in outer
space, we need to pop up where they least
expect us. (Emphasis in original.)155
Leaving those ‘cares’ behind is going to take a colder exit.
ADDED: From VXXC on twitter — “In space no one can
hear you whine.”
155
Michael OmanRegan, “Queering Outer Space”, Medium:
https://medium.com/spaceanthropology/queeringouterspacef6
f5b5cecda0
273
Sentences (#55)
Collapse traps people:
You have to know when to leave.156
Most don’t, and won’t, of course.
(Treat this as a promissory note on an installment of
provocative skepticism viz the ‘eventually its necessary to
stand and fight, or even take things back’ proposition that
haunts NRx like a chain-rattling ghost, now more than
ever, in the shadow of the impending Trumpenreich.
Zombie-fighting-types can assume that the tacit XS
stance (“flee you fools”) is at least as infuriating as they
would expect it to be.)
Bluexit
Simply, yes:
Don’t organize. Pack. […] Not literally, of course.
Not even the good people of Canada should have
to stomach a mass migration of moping
American liberals mumbling, “Live locally …
make art.” What I mean is that it’s time for blue
states and cities to effectively abandon the
American national enterprise, as it is currently
constituted. Call it the New Federalism. Or
Virtual Secession. Or Conscious Uncoupling —
156
See: FerFALL: Understanding Societal Collapse:
https://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/98435/ferfalunderstan
dingsocietalcollapse
274
though that’s already been used. Or maybe
Bluexit.157
Identity Hunger
Handle has an excellent post158 up on this, referencing
Nydwracu, who has made a momentous project out of it.
It’s huge, and old, and quite impossible to summarize
persuasively. It’s also impossible to avoid, especially for
the Outer Right.
Steve Sailer told a joke that I’m going to mangle. A
monstrous alien invasion assails the earth, and people
have to decide how to respond. The conservatives say,
“What’s there to think about? We have to get together to
defeat this thing.” Liberals respond: “Wait! They probably
have good reasons to hate us. It must be something we’ve
done. Until we work out what that is, we should prostrate
ourselves before their grievances.” Finally the libertarians
pipe up: “Do they believe in free markets?”
An obvious quibble arises with the libertarian punch-line:
if only. Libertarians have predominantly demonstrated
an enthusiasm for alien invasion that is totally detached
from any market-oriented qualification. As their
argument goes — the alien invasion is the free market.
(We’ll need to return to this, indirectly.)
157
Kevin Baker. “Bluexit: A Modest Proposal for Separating Blue
States from Red”, The New Republic:
https://newrepublic.com/article/140948/bluexitbluestatesexittr
umpredamerica
158
“Progressivism ist Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft”, Handle’s
Haus:
https://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/progressivismis
tgemeinschaftundgesellschaft2/
275
The appetite for identity seems to be hard-wired in the
approximate manner of language, or religion. You have to
have one (or several) but instinct doesn’t provide it ready
made. That’s why identity corresponds to a hunger. It’s
something people need, instinctively, with an intensity
that is difficult to exaggerate. Symbolically-satiable needs
are political rocket fuel.
Providing an expedient plug for the aching identity socket
is as close to politics-in-a-nutshell as anything is going to
get. At the core of every ideology is a determination of the
model identity — sect, class, race, gender,
sexual-orientation … — and mass implementation of this
‘consciousness’ is already consummate triumph. After
psychological latching onto the relevant ‘thede’ takes
place, nothing except tactics remains.
Reaction seeks to defend the dying thedes among its own
people — which is already a suggestive repetition.
Neoreaction goes meta, in a world in which the
proscription of certain thedes almost wholly defines
concerted enemy action. For one reasonable construction
of the reactionary mainstream (*ahem*), this is already to
have arrived at a natural stopping point. We want our
thedes back. Despite the evident obstacles, or obstacle
(the Cathedral) in its path, this approach plays into the
grain of human nature, and thus tends — understandably
— to scare those it wants to scare. If it begins to work, it
will face a serious fight.
Outside in, whose mission is awkwardness, is determined
to complicate things. Even the most resolute thedens will
probably welcome the first appendix, which draws
attention to the peculiar introduction of truly morbid
punitive identifications. There’s no reason to think this is
276
new — Nietzsche denounced Christianity for doing it —
but it rises to unmistakable prominence during the
decadence of modernity. Primary identifications, for
select — targeted — groups, cease to be positive thedes,
except insofar as these have become radically negativized.
What ‘one’ is, primarily, if not shielded by credible
victimage, is some postmodern variant of the sinner
(racist, cisgendered, oppressor). Such is the hunger for
identity, that even these toxic formations of imposed
psychic auto-destruction are embraced, creating a species
of cringing guilt-consumed sacrificial animals, penned
within the contours of ‘our’ old thedes. Redemption is
promised to those who most fully resign themselves to
their own identitarian toxicity, who thus attain a perverse
superiority over those insufficiently convinced of the need
for salvation through self-abolition. “We really, really
deserve to die” beats out a weak “We really deserve to
die,” and anybody who still thinks that it’s OK to live is
simply lost. (Only sinners are included in this arms-race,
and the Cathedral tells us clearly who they are.)
An additional complication will be far less digestible,
which is precisely why I would like to align it with the
Outer Right. Perhaps escaping this structure of captivity
cannot possibly take a reverse path, and a heading into
dis-identifications, artificial identities, and identitarian
short-circuits is ‘our’ real destiny. The identity-envy of the
right — however deeply-rooted in an indisputable history
of relentless Cathedralist aggression — cannot ever be
anything but a weakness, given what we know about the
political gradient of modern time. The fact it knows we
want to be something, and what it is we want to be, is the
alpha and omega of the Cathedral’s political competence.
It knows what its enemies would be, if they could be what
they want to be. It does not take a deep immersion in
277
Sunzi to realize the strategic hopelessness of that
situation.
I want the Cathedral to be obliterated by monsters, which
it does not recognize, understand, or possess antibodies
against. There is an idiosyncratic element to that,
admittedly. I identify far more with the East India
Company that the United Kingdom, with the hybrid
Singlosphere than the British people, with clubs and cults
than nations and creeds, with Yog Sothoth than my
ancestral religion, and with Pythia than the Human
Security System. I think true cosmopolitans — such as the
adventurers of late 19th century Shanghai (both English
and Chinese) — are superior to the populist rabble from
which nationalism draws its recruits. That’s just me.
What isn’t just me, is what the Cathedral knows how to
beat. That, I strongly suspect, at least in the large
majority of cases, is you.
Capitalism vs the Bourgeoisie
John Gray makes some telling observations about the
debilitating practical paradoxes of the late-20th century
right.
Summing up Thatcher’s outlook, [Charles]
Moore writes of her “unusual mindset, which
was both conservative and revolutionary.” It is a
shrewd observation, but Thatcher’s reactionary
nostalgia and revolutionary dynamism had
something in common: the sturdy individualism
to which she looked back was as much a fantasy
278
as the renewed bourgeois life she projected into
the future.159
Once ‘sturdy individualism’ is dismissed as a fantasy, a
horror story of some kind is the only imaginable outcome.
If people are really too pathetic to take responsibility for
their lives, what else could we possibly expect?
It has surely to be granted that anybody useless enough to
be inadequate to the basics of their own survival, is
scarcely going to exhibit the altruistic surplus value
required to effectively take care of anybody else. Maybe
God will make good the deficit, or — to plunge fully into
feel-good superstition — ‘society’? The ultimate
implication of Gray’s argument is that humans aren’t fit
to live. (Which isn’t to say that he’s wrong.)
The future belongs to frontier people. If no significant
fraction of the human species is any longer capable of
being that, then it’s time for an evolutionary search for
something that is. Don’t expect it to be pretty.
MetaNeocameralism
First thing: “Meta-Neocameralism” isn’t anything new,
and it certainly isn’t anything post-Moldbuggian. It’s no
more than Neocameralism apprehended in its most
abstract features, through the coining of a provisional and
dispensable term. (It allows for an acronym that doesn’t
lead to confusions with North Carolina, while
159
John Gray, “Margaret Thatcher’s Unintended Legacies”, The
New Republic:
https://newrepublic.com/article/114223/margaretthatcherreview
edjohngray
279
encouraging quite different confusions, which I’m
pretending not to notice.)
Locally (to this blog), the “meta-” is the mark of a
prolegomenon160, to a disciplined discussion of
Neocameralism which has later to take place. Its
abstraction is introductory, in accordance with something
that is yet to be re-started, or re-animated, in detail. (For
existing detail, outside the Moldbug canon itself, look
here161.)
The excellent comment thread here162 provides at least a
couple of crucial clues:
nydwracu (23/03/2014 at 6:47 pm):
Neocameralism doesn’t answer questions like
that [on the specifics of social organization];
instead, it’s a mechanism for answering
questions like that. … You can ask, “is Coke
considered better than RC Cola?”, or you can
institute capitalism and find out. You can ask,
“are ethnonationalist states considered better
than mixed states?”, or you can institute the
patchwork and find out. …
RiverC
(23/03/2014
at
3:44
am):
Neocameralism is, if viewed in this light, a
‘political system system’, it is not a political
system but a system for implementing political
160
I realize this doesn’t work in Greek, but systematic
beforeafter confusion is an Outside in thing.
161
Peter A Taylor, A Gentle Introduction to Mencius Moldbug's
"A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations":
http://home.earthlink.net/~peter.a.taylor/moldbug.htm
162
Nick Land, “Fission”, Xenosystems:
http://www.xenosystems.net/fission/
280
systems. Of course the same guy who came up
with it also invented an operating system (a
system for implementing software systems.)
MNC, then, is not a political prescription, for instance a
social
ideal aligned with techno-commercialist
preferences. It is an intellectual framework for examining
systems of governance, theoretically formalized as
disposals of sovereign property. The social formalization
of such systems, which Moldbug also advocates, can be
parenthesized within MNC. We are not at this stage
considering the model of a desirable social order, but
rather the abstract model of social order in general,
apprehended radically — at the root — where ‘to rule’ and
‘to own’ lack distinct meanings. Sovereign property is
‘sovereign’ and ‘primary’ because it is not merely a claim,
but effective possession. (There is much more to come in
later posts on the concept of sovereign property, some
preliminary musings here163.)
Because MNC is an extremely powerful piece of cognitive
technology, capable of tackling problems at a number of
distinct levels (in principle, an unlimited number), it is
clarified through segmentation into an abstraction
cascade. Descending through these levels adds
concreteness, and tilts incrementally towards normative
judgements (framed by the hypothetical imperative of
effective government, as defined within the cascade).
(1) The highest level of practical significance (since
MNC-theology need not delay us) has already been
touched upon. It applies to social regimes of every
conceivable type, assuming only that a systematic mode
163
[Dead link]
281
of sovereign property reproduction will essentially
characterize each. Power is economic irrespective of its
relation to modern conventions of commercial
transaction, because it involves the disposal of a real (if
obscure) quantity, which is subject to increase or decrease
over the cyclic course of its deployment. Population,
territory, technology, commerce, ideology, and
innumerable additional heterogeneous factors are
components of sovereign property (power), but their
economic character is assured by the possibility — and
indeed necessity — of more-or-less explicit trade-offs and
cost-benefit calculations, suggesting an original (if
germinal) fungibility, which is merely arithmetical
coherence. This is presupposed by any estimation of
growth or decay, success or failure, strengthening or
weakening, of the kind required not only by historical
analysis, but also by even the most elementary
administrative competence. Without an implicit economy
of power, no discrimination could be made between
improvement and deterioration, and no directed action
toward the former could be possible.
The effective cyclic reproduction of power has an external
criterion — survival. It is not open to any society or
regime to decide for itself what works. Its inherent
understanding of its own economics of power is a
complex measurement, gauging a relation to the outside,
whose consequences are life and death. Built into the idea
of sovereign property from the start, therefore, is an
accommodation to reality. Foundational to MNC, at the
very highest level of analysis, is the insight that power is
checked primordially. On the Outside are wolves, serving
as the scourge of Gnon. Even the greatest of all
imaginable God-Kings — awesome Fnargl included — has
ultimately to discover consequences, rather than
282
inventing them. There is no principle more important
than this.
Entropy will be dissipated, idiocy will be punished, the
weak will die. If the regime refuses to bow to this Law, the
wolves will enforce it. Social Darwinism is not a choice
societies get to make, but a system of real consequences
that envelops them. MNC is articulated at the level —
which cannot be transcended — where realism is
mandatory for any social order. Those unable to create it,
through effective government, will nevertheless receive it,
in the harsh storms of Nemesis. Order is not defined
within itself, but by the Law of the Outside.
At this highest level of abstraction, therefore, when MNC
is asked “which type of regimes do you believe in?” the
sole appropriate response is “those compatible with
reality.” Every society known to history — and others
beside — had a working economy of power, at least for a
while. Nothing more is required than this for MNC to take
them as objects of disciplined investigation.
(2) Knowing that realism is not an optional regime value,
we are able to proceed down the MNC cascade with the
introduction of a second assumption: Civilizations will
seek gentler teachers than the wolves. If it is possible to
acquire some understanding of collapse, it will be
preferred to the experience of collapse (once the wolves
have culled the ineducable from history).
Everything survivable is potentially educational, even a
mauling by the wolves. MNC however, as its name
suggests, has reason to be especially attentive to the most
abstract lesson of the Outside — the (logical) priority of
metalearning. It is good to discover reality, before — or
283
at least not much later than — reality discovers us.
Enduring civilizations do not merely know things, they
know that it is important to know things, and to absorb
realistic information. Regimes — disposing of sovereign
property — have a special responsibility to instantiate this
deutero-culture of learning-to-learn, which is required for
intelligent government. This is a responsibility they take
upon themselves because it is demanded by the Outside
(and even in its refinement, it still smells of wolf).
Power is under such compulsion to learn about itself that
recursion, or intellectualization, can be assumed. Power is
selected to check itself, which it cannot do without an
increase in formalization, and this is a matter — as we
shall see — of immense consequence. Of necessity, it
learns-to-learn (or dies), but this lesson introduces a
critical tragic factor.
The tragedy of power is broadly coincident with
modernity. It is not a simple topic, and from the
beginning two elements in particular require explicit
attention. Firstly, it encounters the terrifying
(second-order) truth that practical learning is irreducibly
experimental. In going ‘meta’ knowledge becomes
scientific, which means that failure cannot be precluded
through deduction, but has to be incorporated into the
machinery of learning itself. Nothing that cannot go
wrong is capable of teaching anything (even the
accumulation of logical and mathematical truths requires
cognitive trial-and-error, ventures into dead-ends, and
the pursuit of misleading intuitions). Secondly, in
becoming increasingly formalized, and ever more
fungible, the disposal of sovereign power attains
heightened liquidity. It is now possible for power to trade
itself away, and an explosion of social bargaining results.
284
Power can be exchanged for (‘mere’) wealth, or for social
peace, or channeled into unprecedented forms of radical
regime philanthropy / religious sacrifice. Combine these
two elements, and it is clear that regimes enter modernity
’empowered’ by new capabilities for experimental
auto-dissolution. Trade authority away to the masses in
exchange for promises of good behavior? Why not give it
a try?
Cascade Stage-2 MNC thus (realistically) assumes a world
in which power has become an art of experimentation,
characterized by unprecedented calamities on a colossal
scale, while the economy of power and the
techno-commercial economy have been radically
de-segmented, producing a single, uneven, but
incrementally smoothed system of exchangeable social
value, rippling ever outward, without firm limit.
Socio-political organization, and corporate organization,
are still distinguished by markers of traditional status, but
no longer strictly differentiable by essential function.
The modern business of government is not ‘merely’
business only because it remains poorly formalized. As
the preceding discussion suggests, this indicates that
economic integration can be expected to deepen, as the
formalization of power proceeds. (Moldbug seeks to
accelerate this process.) An inertial assumption of distinct
‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres is quickly disturbed by
thickening networks of exchange, swapping managerial
procedures and personnel, funding political ambitions,
expending political resources in commercial lobbying
efforts, trading economic assets for political favors
(denominated in votes), and in general consolidating a
vast,
highly-liquid
reservoir
of
amphibiously
‘corporacratic’ value, indeterminable between ‘wealth’
285
and ‘authority’. Wealth-power inter-convertibility is a
reliable index of political modernity.
MNC does not decide that government should become a
business. It recognizes that government has become a
business (dealing in fungible quantities). However, unlike
private business ventures, which dissipate entropy
through bankruptcy and market-driven restructuring,
governments are reliably the worst run businesses in their
respective societies, functionally crippled by defective,
structurally-dishonest organizational models, exemplified
most prominently by the democratic principle:
government is a business that should be run by its
customers (but actually can’t be). Everything in this
model that isn’t a lie is a mistake.
At the second (descending) level of abstraction, then,
MNC is still not recommending anything except
theoretical clarity. It proposes:
a) Power is destined to arrive at experimental
learning processes
b) As it learns, it formalizes itself, and becomes
more fungible
c) Experiments in fungible power are vulnerable
to disastrous mistakes
d) Such mistakes have in fact occurred, in a
near-total way
e)
For
deep
historical
reasons,
techno-commercial
business
organization
emerges as the preeminent template for
286
government entities, as for any composite
economic agent. It is in terms of this template
that modern political dysfunction can be
rendered (formally) intelligible.
(3) Take the MNC abstraction elevator down another
level, and it’s still more of an analytic tool than a social
prescription. (That’s a good thing, really.) It tells us that
every government, both extant and potential, is most
accessible to rigorous investigation when apprehended as
a sovereign corporation. This approach alone is able to
draw upon the full panoply of theoretical resources,
ancient and modern, because only in this way is power
tracked in the same way it has actually developed (in tight
alignment with a still-incomplete trend).
The most obvious objections are, sensu stricto, romantic.
They take a predictable (which is not to say a casually
dismissible) form. Government — if perhaps only lost or
yet-unrealized government — is associated with ‘higher’
values than those judged commensurable with the
techno-commercial economy, which thus sets the basis
for a critique of the MNC ‘business ontology’ of
governance as an illegitimate intellectual reduction, and
ethical vulgarization. To quantify authority as power is
already suspect. To project its incremental liquidation
into a general economy, where leadership integrates —
ever more seamlessly — with the price system, appears as
an abominable symptom of modernist nihilism.
Loyalty (or the intricately-related concept of asabiyyah)
serves as one exemplary redoubt of the romantic cause. Is
it not repulsive, even to entertain the possibility that
loyalty might have a price? Handle addresses this directly
287
in the comment thread already cited (24/03/2014 at 1:18
am). A small sample captures the line of his engagement:
Loyalty-preservation incentivizing programs are
various and highly sophisticated and span the
spectrum everywhere from frequent flier miles
to ‘clubs’ that are so engrossing and time
consuming in such as to mimic the fulfillment of
all the community, socialization, and identarian
psychological functions that would make even
the hardest-core religious-traditionalist jealous.
Because lots of people are genetically
programmed with this coordination-subroutine
that is easily exploitable in a context far removed
from its evolutionary origins. Sometimes brands
‘deserve’ special competitive loyalty (‘German
engineering’!) and sometimes they don’t
(Tylenol-branded paracetamol).
There is vastly more that can, and will, be said in
prosecution of this dispute, since it is perhaps the single
most critical driver of NRx fission, and it is not going to
endure a solution. The cold MNC claim, however, can be
pushed right across it. Authority is for sale, and has been
for centuries, so that any analysis ignoring this exchange
nexus is an historical evasion. Marx’s M-C-M’, through
which monetized capital reproduces and expands itself
through the commodity cycle, is accompanied by an
equally definite M-P-M’ or P-M-P’ cycle of power
circulation-enhancement through monetized wealth.
A tempting reservation, with venerable roots in
traditional society, is to cast doubt upon the prevalence of
such exchange networks, on the assumption that power —
possibly further dignified as ‘authority’ — enjoys a
288
qualitative supplement relative to common economic
value, such that it cannot be retro-transferred. Who
would swap authority for money, if authority cannot be
bought (and is, indeed, “beyond price”)? But this
‘problem’ resolves itself, since the first person to sell
political office — or its less formal equivalent —
immediately demonstrates that it can no less easily be
purchased.
From the earliest, most abstract stage of this MNC
outline, it has been insisted that power has to be
evaluated economically, by itself, if anything like
practical calculation directed towards its increase is to
be possible. Once this is granted, MNC analysis of the
governmental entity in general as an economic processor
— i.e. a business — acquires irresistible momentum. If
loyalty, asabiyyah, virtue, charisma and other elevated
(or ‘incommensurable’) values are power factors, then
they are already inherently self-economizing within the
calculus of statecraft. The very fact that they contribute,
determinately, to an overall estimation of strength and
weakness, attests to their implicit economic status. When
a business has charismatic leadership, reputational
capital, or a strong culture of company loyalty, such
factors are monetized as asset values by financial
markets. When one Prince surveys the ‘quality’ of
another’s domain, he already estimates the likely
expenses of enmity. For modern military bureaucracies,
such calculations are routine. Incommensurable values
do not survive contact with defense budgets.
Yet, however ominous this drift (from a romantic
perspective), MNC does not tell anybody how to design a
society. It says only that an effective government will
289
necessarily look, to it, like a well-organized (sovereign)
business. To this one can add the riders:
a) Government effectiveness is subject to an
external criterion, provided by a selective
trans-state and inter-state mechanism. This
might take the form of Patchwork pressure
(Dynamic Geography) in a civilized order, or
military competition in the wolf-prowled
wilderness of Hobbesian chaos.
b) Under these conditions, MNC calculative
rationality can be expected to be compelling for
states themselves, whatever their variety of
social form. Some (considerable) convergence
upon norms of economic estimation and
arrangement is thus predictable from the
discovered contours of reality. There are things
that will fail.
Non-economic values are more easily invoked than
pursued. Foseti (commenting here164, 23/03/2014 at
11:59 am) writes:
No one disputes that the goal of society is a good
citizenry, but the question is what sort of
government provides that outcome. […] As best I
can tell, we only have two theories of governance
that have been expressed. […] The first is the
capitalist. As Adam Smith noted, the best
corporations (by all measures) are the ones that
are operated for clear, measurable and selfish
164
Nick Land, “Revenge of the Nerds”, Xenosystems:
http://www.xenosystems.net/revengeofthenerds/
290
motives. […] The second is the communist. In
this system, corporations are run for the benefit
of everyone in the world. […] Unsurprisingly,
corporations run on the latter principle have
found an incredibly large number of ways to
suck. Not coincidentally, so have 20th Century
governments run on the same principle. […] I
think it’s nearly impossible to overstate the ways
in which everyone would be better off if we had
an efficiently, effective, and responsive
government.
The Deal
NRx repudiates public politics. Turn that around, and it’s
the thesis: Politics happens in private.
Specifically — as a political philosophy — NRx advocates
the privatization of government. It makes a public case
for that, in the abstract, but only for purposes of
informational and theoretical optimization. It is not, ever,
doing politics in public, but only thinking about it under
conditions of minimal intelligence security. Concrete
execution of political strategy occurs through private
deals.
The currency of such deals was formalized165 by Mencius
Moldbug, as primary (or fungible sovereign) property. It
corresponds to the conversion — whether notional or
165
Mencius Moldbug, “The Magic of Symmetric Sovereignty”,
Unqualified Reservations:
http://unqualifiedreservations.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/magicofs
ymmetricsovereignty.html
291
actual — of hard power into business assets. This
conversion is what ‘formalism’ means. It’s an important
contribution to political philosophy, and political
economy, but it’s also a negotiating position.
Cries for (public) Action! will always be with us, at least
until things are radically sorted out. They should be
ignored. No public action is serious.
The serious thing is the deal, which substitutes for any
semblance of revolution, and also for regime
perpetuation. Shadow NRx — which acts outside the
sphere of public visibility — is a political vulture fund.
This blog does not want to know who, or what, it is. Its
deep secrecy is the same as its reality. Our concern is
restricted to the way it necessarily acts, in compliance
with an absolute principle. We ask only: What does the
deal have to be like?
In its essence it is this: Stand down effective capabilities
for regime preservation in exchange for primary
property stock. The form thus indicates the relevant
principals — holders of the keys to hard power. What is
on offer for them, as NRx develops in reality (the
shadows), is formalization of their implicit social
authority, through the emergence of a new — ultimate or
‘transcendental’ — commercial medium. The whole of
Neocameral transition is realized through this.
“Turn everything you have into rigorous code, and
everything changes. We can help with the technicalities.”
“Why should I do that?”
“It will be worth it.”
292
That’s the vulture fund aspect. Hard power capability is
systematically under-valued under conditions of
Cathedral-demotic degeneracy, since it is squandered on
the ever-more inefficient preservation of an insane
religious establishment — the Atheo-Oecumenic
Ecclesiocracy — and compensated accordingly, from the
charred scraps of chronic policy disaster. After
dysfunctional domestic social programs, election buying,
and Jacobin foreign policy crusades have been paid for,
what remains to reward competent governance?
Administrative capability is slaved to the Cathedral,
which means to a zealous pursuit of impossible
objectives, and thus accelerating waste. As a business
opportunity (“We can help with the technicalities”), the
attraction of defection grows, therefore, in strict
proportion to the triumph of progressivism. This is
critical, because the threshold risks of transition are
immense, and the deal has to cover them.
"all that complex governance you're doing under
increasingly ludicrous circumstances? we want
to help you turn it into a business."
— @outsideness, january 23, 2016
… "you do get that you're basically working as a
poorly paid security goon for jim jones at the
moment?"
— @outsideness january 23, 2016
The Cathedral is the Peoples Temple.
293
Order and Value
A piece of machinery that reduces166 (local) disorder has
value. It might be a functional police force, a catallactic
economic arrangement, or a sociopolitical mechanism
implementing dynamic geography (or Patchwork). Others
might be listed. Any complex adaptive system167 works
like this (until it ceases working). Since Schrödinger, it
has been taken as an abstract definition of life. In certain
strands168 of philosophy, it has also been taken as the
complete, rigorous meaning of a machine (as
counterposed to a ‘gadget’ – which works only within a
larger machinic assemblage). Only by exporting entropy
does anything of even minimal complexity get to continue
166
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system
“A complex adaptive system is a system in which a
perfect understanding of the individual parts does not
automatically convey a perfect understanding of the whole
system's behavior. The study of complex adaptive systems, a
subset of nonlinear dynamical systems, is highly interdisciplinary
and blends insights from the natural and social sciences to
develop systemlevel models and insights that allow for
heterogeneous agents, phase transition, and emergent behavior.
“They are complex in that they are dynamic networks
of interactions, and their relationships are not aggregations of
the individual static entities, i.e., the behavior of the ensemble is
not predicted by the behavior of the components. They are
adaptive in that the individual and collective behavior mutate and
selforganize corresponding to the changeinitiating microevent
or collection of events. They are a "complex macroscopic
collection" of relatively "similar and partially connected
microstructures" formed in order to adapt to the changing
environment and increase their survivability as a
macrostructure.
168
Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia
167
294
its existence. The production of order is functionality in
its most elevated, teleological sense.
A piece of rhetoric which merely celebrates order, as
something nice to have, is worth nothing in itself. “We
want order” is the “give us free stuff” slogan of
intellectually degenerated reaction. When examined
closely,
it is indistinguishable from political
pan-handling. (Democracy has taught everyone how to
beg.) It is unlikely that even the most radically degraded
libertarian would be shameless enough to consider
“wealth is good, poverty is bad” anything more than an
expression of sub-comic emotional incontinence. “Order
is good, chaos is bad” is a slogan of exactly equivalent
merit. “We want order” is just “we want money” at a
superior level of generality. Monkeys want peanuts, but
we are reluctant to dignify their hungry hooting with the
label ‘political philosophy’.
Entropy dissipation is a problem. It might quite
reasonably be considered the problem. Any serious social
theory is respected insofar as it elicits the question: So
how is entropy dissipated? The main current of
Anglophone intellectual culture focuses tightly upon it, in
a broad lineage from Newtonian mechanics, the Scottish
Enlightenment, the science of heat, classical economics,
and Darwinian naturalism, into theories of complexity,
distributed systems, dynamic networks, and productive
multiplicities. Spontaneous order is the consistent topic.
‘Spontaneous’ means only: Does not presuppose that
which it is tasked with explaining. If the genesis of order
is not being theorized, order is merely being assumed,
and then consumed. The difference is between a supply
side problematic (“how is order practically produced?”)
and an empty demand (“we want more order”). The
295
former is industrial, the latter simply tyrannical, when it
is anything at all beside vacuous noise.
Unless a pol-econ. theory can contribute to an
explanation of the production of order (dissipation of
entropy), it is wasting everyone’s time. “But I really want
order” is just silliness. It’s astounding that it could ever be
thought otherwise.
Against Universalism
There’s a philosophical objection to any refusal of
universalism that will be familiar from other uses (the
denunciation of relativism, most typically). It requires
only one step: Isn’t the denial of the universal itself a
universalist claim? It’s a piece of malignant dialectics
because it demands that we agree. We don’t, and won’t
ever, agree. Agreement is the worst thing that could
happen. Merely assent to its necessity, and global
communism, or some close analog, is the implicit
conclusion.
If there is a universal truth, it belongs only to Gnon, and
Gnon is a dark (occulted) God. Traditional theists will be
at least strongly inclined to disagree — and that is
excellent. We disagree already, and we have scarcely
begun.
There is no ‘good life for man’ (in general) — or if there is
we know nothing of it, or not enough. Even those
persuaded that they do, on the contrary, know what such
a life should be, promote its universality only at the
expense of being denied the opportunity to pursue it. If
we need to agree on the broad contours of such a model
for human existence, then reaching agreement will
296
precede it — and ‘reaching agreement’ is politics. Some
much wider world acquires a veto over the way of life you
select, or accept, or inherit (the details need not detain
us). We have seen how that works. Global communism is
the inevitable destination.
The alternative to agreement is schism. Secession,
geopolitical disintegration, fragmentation, splitting —
disagreement escapes dialectics and separates in space.
Anti-universalism, concretely, is not a philosophical
position but an effectively defensible assertion of
diversity. From the perspective of the universal (which
belongs only to Gnon, and never to man), it is an
experiment. The degree to which it believes in itself is of
no concern that matters to anything beyond itself. It is
not answerable to anything but Gnon. What anyone,
anywhere, thinks about it counts for nothing. If it fails, it
dies, which should mean nothing to you. If you are
compelled to care about someone else’s experiment, then
a schism is missing. Of course, you are free to tell it that
you think it will fail, if it is listening, but there is
absolutely no need to reach agreement on the question.
This is what, in the end, non-communism means.
Non-universalism is hygiene. It is practical avoidance of
other people’s stupid shit. There is no higher principle in
political philosophy. Every attempt to install an
alternative, and impose a universal, reverts to dialectics,
communization, global evangelism, and totalitarian
politics.
This is being said here now, because NRx is horribly bad
at it, and degenerates into a clash of universalisms, as
into an instinctive equilibrium. There are even those who
confidently propose an ‘NRx solution’ for the world.
297
Nothing could be more absurd. The world — as a whole —
is an entropy bin. The most profoundly degraded
communism is its only possible ‘universal consensus’.
(Everyone knows this, when they permit themselves to
think.)
All order is local — which is to say the negation of the
universal. That is merely to re-state the second law of
thermodynamics, which ‘we’ generally profess to accept.
The only thing that could ever be universally and equally
distributed is noise.
Kill the universalism in your soul and you are
immediately (objectively) a neoreactionary. Protect it,
and you are an obstacle to the escape of differences. That
is communism — whether you recognize it, or not.
Against Universalism II
Preliminary throat-clearing (as in part one): In its most
rigorous construction, ‘universalism’ is robust under
conditions of rational argument (i.e. evidence-based
logico-mathematical criticism). Mathematical theorems,
in particular [sic], are universal truths. Any assertions
that can be constructed to a comparable level of formal
rigor (and ultimately mechanization) can lay claim to the
same status. However, with the slightest departure from
this — rigidly algorithmic — criterion, controversy rapidly
begins. This is not the place and time to argue the case for
transcendental philosophy (within which praxeology in
included), but such a case could be made. Ditto strictly
proceduralized empirical science. All of this is a
digression.
298
The question of universalism as it concerns us here is not
a matter of meta-mathematics, epistemology, or the
philosophy of science. It is rather directed at the political
scope of argument. Is it mandatory to demand that
argument, according to the highest principles of (logical)
cognitive compulsion, be imposed globally? Does the
quality of argument — however exalted — require its
unrestricted application across space and time? It is the
affirmative response to this question that defines
universalism in its ideological sense. Pure Jacobinism, of
course, answers yes. There is a universal duty to compel
submission to the truth. This is the secular form of
evangelical salvationism.
The contrary suggestion, here defended, is that — under
real global conditions — universalism is a catastrophic
mistake. The social scope of rational discussion is itself
strictly bounded, and attempts to extend it (coercively)
beyond such limits are politically disastrous. Laissezfaire
envelops the sphere of imperative rationality, and
respects its practical contour. Stupidity does not need to
be hunted down and exterminated. All historical evidence
indicates that it cannot be.
If the universal triumph of reason is an impractical goal,
democratic globalism is exposed as a preposterous error.
Minimizing the voice of stupidity is the realistic — and
already extremely challenging — alternative. Rare
enclaves of rigorously self-critical realism have as their
primary obligation the self-protection of their (evidently
precarious) particularity. In the wider world, fanatical
ignorance and grotesque cognitive malformation rage
rampantly. Borders, filters, tests, and selection
mechanisms of all kinds provide the only defenses against
it.
299
The universalist (Jacobin) model is always a
conversation. You have to join together first, simply to
talk, and after that reason will prevail. That’s the path of
the Zeitgeist — Hegelianism at its most arcane, expedient
progressivism at more common levels of popularity —
with its twin-stroke motor of aggressive proselytization
and mass embrace. “Invade the world, invite the world” is
the Sailer formula (quasi-random link169). Amalgamate,
then elevate (in the direction of ascending rationality).
This isn’t a (theoretically convincing) claim about the
unique structure of mathematical proof, it’s a (factually
trashed) claim about the global uniformity of human
brains. The ‘universality’ it invokes is that of convergence
upon the authority of reason. In other words, it’s a bizarre
progressive myth that all self-protective sanity seeks to
maximally distance itself from.
People learn, but only very rarely through sophisticated
argument, or its ‘cunning‘ socio-political avatars. They
learn because they fail badly, and it hurts. ‘Mankind’ is a
progressive myth, incapable of learning anything. When
real cultures learn, it is because they have been locked in
intimate particularity, such that the consequences of their
own cognitive processes impact intensely upon them.
Anything that separates an individual, or a group, from
the results of its own thoughts, is an apparatus of
anti-learning. Progressive universalism is precisely this.
Dis-amalgamation — isolation — is the way to learn. It’s
how speciation happens, long before learning becomes
169
See: “Four Failed Immigration Approaches And A Disturbing
Thought About Those Happy Hispanic Workers”:
http://www.vdare.com/articles/fourfailedimmigrationapproache
sandadisturbingthoughtaboutthosehappyhispanicwork
300
neurological. Individuation (at whatever scale)
establishes the foundation for trade, communication, and
intellectual exchange. Micro-states commercialize.
Macro-states decay into political resource allocation, and
entropic sludge. Protect your own patch if you want to
have anything to talk about.
There’s going to be a lot of talk about ‘universalism’
rolling in:
apparently it's a neocon evil to say that western
civilization is based in universalism. funny. i
thought it was jeffersonian.
— john podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) april 27, 2016
It’s a suicidal ideology in its death-spasm phase, but it
won’t die quietly.
ADDED:
imperialism is the necessary logical consequence
of universalism…
– huntington pic.twitter.com/u4twycppeu
— spatel (@rjrasva) may 15, 2015
If the West could still do imperialism, that would be one
thing, but it can’t (and can’t even stop doing the
opposite).
Independence
301
The philosophical antonym to ‘universality‘ is
‘particularity’. Its broader, ideological antonym is
something closer to independence.
This isn’t a word greatly emphasized by NRx up to this
point, or — for that matter — one figuring prominently in
contemporary discussions of any kind. That’s strange,
because it orchestrates an extraordinary set of conceptual
connections.
Independence is a rough synonym for sovereignty, to
begin with. The profound association between these
terms bears quite extreme analytical pressure. The
sovereign is that instance capable of independent
decision. An independent state is indistinguishable from a
sovereign one, and to impugn its real sovereignty is to
question its effective independence. Secession is a process
of independence. A (Moldbuggian) Patchwork is a
network of independent geopolitical entities. All relevant
trends
to
geopolitical
fragmentation
are
independence-oriented. Each executed Exit option (even
on a shopping expedition) is an implicit declaration of
independence, at least in miniature. (The relations
between independence and connectivity are subtle and
complex.)
Remaining (for a moment) in the narrowest NRx channel,
the entire passivism discussion is independence related.
Protest (‘activism’) is disdained on account of its
fundamental dependency (upon sympathetic political
toleration). No social process genuinely directed towards
independence would fall within the scope of this criticism.
(The ‘Benedict Option’ is one obvious example.) ‘Build
something’ epitomizes independence process.
302
Cannot the entire range of contentions over the
individualism / collectivism dyad be recast in terms of
independence? Dependency exists on a spectrum, but the
defining attitude towards it tends to polarization. Is
dependence to be embraced, or configured as a problem
to be worked against? This blog is highly tempted to
project the Left / Right or ‘principal political’ dimension
along the axis these distinct responses define. The Left is
enthused by inter-dependency, and (to a greater or lesser
extent) accepts comparative independence, while for the
Right this attitudinal system is exactly reversed. (The
most fundamental tensions within the reactosphere are
clearly related to this articulation.)
One inevitable point of contention — honed over decades
of objection to libertarianism — is captured by the
question: Are not children essentially dependents? Yes, of
course they are, but is growing up anything other than a
process of independence? From one perspective, a family
can be interpreted as a model of inter-dependence
(without obvious inaccuracy). Yet, from another, a family
is an independence-production unit, both in its
comparative autonomy in respect to the wider society,
and as a child-rearing matrix. Families are loci of
independence struggle (to which the Left response is:
They shouldn’t have to be). Dependency culture is the
Left heartland.
Independence and autonomy are very closely related
terms. All discussions of autonomy, and even of
automation, click quite neatly onto this template, but this
is a point exceeding the ambitions of the present post.
Abstraction, too, is a topic the tantalizingly overlaps
independence. Whether cognitive independence entirely
303
accommodates intelligence optimization is also a
question for another occasion.
NRx, XS tentatively proposes, is a political philosophy
oriented to the promotion of independence. (Much
pushback is, naturally, expected.)
Neocameralism #1
Clippings
from
this170,
end-2007
Moldbug
Neocameralism essay (with minimal commentary):
It is very hard to show that any new form of
government is superior to that practiced now. It
is even harder to show that any new form of
government is superior to any practiced ever.
[…] Nonetheless, unless these problems are not
just hard but actually unsolvable, innovation in
the form of government is possible. … Certainly,
the very idea of innovation in government
should not frighten you. If it does, there is no
point at all in thinking about government. This is
conservatism to the point of mental disorder. I
simply cannot contend with it, and I refuse to
try. If you cannot set yourself outside your own
beliefs and prejudices, you are not capable of
normal civilized discourse.
Neocameralism is not (simply) reactionary because it has
never been fully instantiated up to this time. It is a
proposed political-economic innovation.
170
Mencius Moldbug, “Neocamerialism and the Escalator of
Massarchy”, Unqualified Reservations:
http://unqualifiedreservations.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/neocamer
alismandescalatorof.html
304
Let’s start with my ideal world – the world of
thousands, preferably even tens of thousands, of
neocameralist city-states and ministates, or
neostates. The organizations which own and
operate these neostates are for-profit sovereign
corporations, or sovcorps. For the moment, let’s
assume a one-to-one mapping between sovcorp
and neostate. […] Let’s pin down the
neocameralist dramatis personae by identifying
the people who work for a sovcorp as its agents,
the people or organizations which collectively
own it as its subscribers, and the people who live
in its neostate as its residents.
A Neocameral ‘neostate’ is not owned by its residents or
its agents. Its ‘monarch’ (or ‘CEO’) is an executive
appointment.
(90%
of
all
confusion
about
Neocameralism, and Neoreaction in general, stems from
a failure to grasp this elementary point.) Note:
‘subscribers’ (plural). More coming on this immediately.
Every patch of land on the planet has a primary
owner, which is its sovcorp. Typically, these
owners will be large, impersonal corporations.
We call them sovcorps because they’re
sovereign. You are sovereign if you have the
power to render any plausible attack on your
primary property, by any other sovereign power,
unprofitable. In other words, you maintain
general deterrence. […] (Sovereignty is a flat,
peer-to-peer relationship by definition. The
concept of hierarchical sovereignty is a
contradiction in terms. …) […] The business of a
sovcorp is to make money by deterring
305
aggression. Since human aggression is a serious
problem, preventing it should be a good
business.
Moreover,
the
existence
of
unprofitable governments in your vicinity is
serious cause for concern, because unprofitable
governments tend to have strange decision
structures and do weird, dangerous things. […]
(Nuclear
deterrence
(mutual
assured
destruction) is only one small class of deterrent
designs. To deter is to render predictably
unprofitable. Predictably unprofitable violence is
irrational. Irrational violence is certainly not
unheard of. But it is much, much rarer than you
may think. Most of the violence in the world
today is quite rational, IMHO.) […] General
deterrence is a complex topic which deserves its
own post. For the moment, assume that every
square inch of the planet’s surface is formally
owned by some sovcorp, that no one disagrees
on the borders, and that deterrence between
sovcorps is absolute.
Patchwork is a (transcendentally) flat network. No global
sovereign. At the ultimate level of its instantiation, it
consists of P2P connections between independent nodes.
This does not solve the problem of constructing
a stable sovcorp. The central problem of
governance is the old Latin riddle: who guards
the guardians? The joint-stock corporate design
solves the central problem by entrusting
guardianship in the collective decisions of the
corporation’s owners, voting not by head but by
percentage of profit received. […] The joint-stock
model is hundreds of years old. It is as proven as
306
proven can be. […] … However, in the sovereign
context, the corporate joint-stock ownership and
decision structure faces serious challenges which
do not exist for a conventional secondary
corporation. […] In the conventional secondary
corporation, the control of the owners is
unchallenged and unchallengeable, at least as
long as the sovereign’s rule of corporate law is
functioning properly. The corporation is
incorporated under the oversight of a sovereign
protector, or sponsor. This is what makes it a
secondary corporation. …
The Neocameral organizational problem is here defined.
… classical political thought concurred in
considering imperio in imperium, ie, internal
subauthorities powerful enough to resist or even
control the center, a political solecism. In case
you are not too special to have ever worked in a
cube, you are probably aware that imperio in
imperium is a solecism in Powerpointia as well.
One small difficulty, however, is that imperio in
imperium means basically the same thing as
separation of powers. Hm. […] Internal
management in modern Western corporations is
pretty good. At least by the standards of modern
government,
imperio
in
imperium
is
nonexistent. (It should not be confused with the
normal practice of internal accounting, which
does not in any way conflict with an absolute
central authority and a single set of books.)
The model for avoidance of imperio in imperium is
joint-stock business organization. It is thus equivalent to
307
the control of executives, or the preservation of
sovereign capital imperatives (through effective
resolution of the principal-agent problem171). Solution of
171
Hyperlink to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem
“The principal–agent problem, in political science and
economics, (also known as agency dilemma or the agency
problem) occurs when one person or entity (the "agent") is able
to make decisions on behalf of, or that impact, another person or
entity: the "principal". This dilemma exists in circumstances
where agents are motivated to act in their own best interests,
which are contrary to those of their principals, and is an example
of moral hazard.
“Common examples of this relationship include
corporate management (agent) and shareholders (principal),
politicians (agent) and voters (principal), or brokers (agent) and
markets (buyers and sellers, principals). Consider a legal client
(the principal) wondering whether their lawyer (the agent) is
recommending protracted legal proceedings because it is truly
necessary for the client's well being, or because it will generate
income for the lawyer. In fact the problem can arise in almost
any context where one party is being paid by another to do
something where the agent has a small or nonexistent share in
the outcome, whether in formal employment or a negotiated deal
such as paying for household jobs or car repairs.
“The problem arises where the two parties have
different interests and asymmetric information (the agent having
more information), such that the principal cannot directly ensure
that the agent is always acting in their (the principal's) best
interest, particularly when activities that are useful to the
principal are costly to the agent, and where elements of what the
agent does are costly for the principal to observe (see moral
hazard and conflict of interest). Often, the principal may be
sufficiently concerned at the possibility of being exploited by the
agent that they choose not to enter into the transaction at all,
when it would have been mutually beneficial: a suboptimal
outcome that can lower welfare overall. The deviation from the
principal's interest by the agent is called "agency costs".
“Besides the agency problem between shareholders
and managers, there is also another type of agency problem: the
one derived from the existence of big shareholders and small
shareholders, which is quite a common phenomenon in a listed
company. In the process of dividend distribution, there exists not
only information asymmetry but the different influence between
308
the P-A problem at the level of State governance is the
task of Neocameral administrative design.
Briefly, there are two options for sovcorp
governance on a neocameralist patchwork
planet. One is crosslisting and the other is
cryptogovernance. In cross-listing, sovcorps list
on each other’s secondary exchanges, taking
great care to select only the most reputable
sponsors, and demanding a backdoor in which
they can switch sponsors at the slightest hint of
weirdness. […] Cross-listing can probably be
made to work. However, it is dangerous as a
single line of defence. For an ideal sovcorp, it
should be combined with some degree of
cryptogovernance. […] Cryptogovernance is any
system of corporate government in which all
formal decisions are endorsed and verified
cryptographically. A sponsor can still be very
useful for cryptogovernance, but it is not
required. Shareholders in a cryptogoverned
corporation – known as subscribers – use
private keys to sign their contributions to its
governance. They may or may not be
anonymous, depending on the corporation’s
big and small shareholders. Small shareholders’ behaviors are
affected by the big shareholders’ decision; in return, they can
also impact the big shareholders’ decision but not significantly.
Under such circumstance, the big shareholders will encroach on
the interests by dividend policy.
“Various mechanisms may be used to align the
interests of the agent with those of the principal. In employment,
employers (principal) may use piece rates/commissions, profit
sharing, efficiency wages, performance measurement (including
financial statements), the agent posting a bond, or the threat of
termination of employment to align worker interests with their
own.
309
rules. […] If you are an American, have you ever
wondered what the letters SA, or similar, which
you see all the time in the names of European
companies, mean? They mean “anonymous
society.” If this strikes you as weird, it shouldn’t.
Do any #HRx172 types still think this is their universe?
The neat thing about cryptographic government
(which is actually much easier than it sounds –
we’re talking a few thousand lines of code, max)
is that it can be connected directly to the
sovcorp’s
second
line
of defense: a
cryptographically-controlled
military.
[…]
Cryptographic weapons control, in the form of
permissive action links, is already used for the
world’s most powerful weapons. However, there
is nothing in principle preventing it from being
extended down to small arms – for example,
with a radio activation code transmitted over a
mesh network. Military formations loyal to the
CEO will find that their weapons work. Rebel
formations will find that theirs don’t. The
outcome
is
obvious.
Moreover,
the
neocameralist state has no incentive to deal
kindly with traitors, so there is no way for an
attacker to repeatedly probe the system’s
weaknesses. […] The one difficulty with
cryptographic weapons control is that it fails,
and devolves into simple military rule, if the
authorization keys are kept anywhere near the
weapons. Weaponholders can gather unlocked
or noncryptographic weapons secretly, and use
172
Hyperlink to: http://www.xenosystems.net/hrxii/
310
them to arrest the keyholders – for example, the
directors of the sovcorp. […] The solution is
simple: keep the sovcorp’s directors, or whoever
has ultimate control of the highest grade of
military keys, outside the sovcorp’s neostate.
Even if the CEO himself rebels, along with all of
his subordinates, any formation loyal to the
directors can defeat them. The result is internal
military stability.
Agree with where Moldbug is going with this, or not, the
line of thought is profoundly illustrative of the
Neocameral problem, as originally conceived, which lies
within the general framework of cryptographic property
protection (and not that of romantic political
attachment).
Quote Note (#272)
Frederick Jackson Turner, from his essay The
Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893):
From the conditions of frontier life came
intellectual traits of profound importance. The
works of travelers along each frontier from
colonial days onward describe certain common
traits, and these traits have, while softening
down, still persisted as survivals in the place of
their origin, even when a higher social
organization succeeded. The result is that, to the
frontier, the American intellect owes its striking
characteristics. That coarseness and strength
combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness,
that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to
311
find expedients, that masterful grasp of material
things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to
effect great ends, that restless, nervous energy,
that dominant individualism, working for good
and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and
exuberance which comes with freedom — these
are traits of the frontier, or traits called out
elsewhere because of the existence of the
frontier. […] Since the days when the fleet of
Columbus sailed into the waters of the New
World, America has been another name for
opportunity, and the people of the United States
have taken their tone from the incessant
expansion which has not only been open but has
even been forced upon them. He would be a rash
prophet who should assert that the expansive
character of American life has now entirely
ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact,
and, unless this training has no effect upon a
people, the American energy will continually
demand a wider field for its exercise. But never
again will such gifts of free land offer
themselves. […] For a moment, at the frontier,
the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint
is triumphant. There is not tabula rasa. The
stubborn American environment is there with its
imperious summons to accept its conditions; the
inherited ways of doing things are also there;
and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of
custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new
field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the
bondage of the past; and freshness, and
confidence, and scorn of older society,
impatience of its restraints and its ideas, and
312
indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the
frontier.173
Recollected with reference to the prospects of seasteading
and space colonization, and their continuity with a
distinctive Anglophone cultural impetus to resolve
political tension through dissociation in space (with Exit
as its key).
173
See:
https://www.learner.org/workshops/primarysources/corporations/
docs/turner2.html
313
The Atomization Trap
Nick Land
“Hands up everyone who hates atomization.” That isn’t a
call for surrender (at least overtly), but merely an
informal poll.
Now try it differently:
“Hands up everyone who hates atomization, but this time
without looking around.” Was the decision-process –
perhaps ironically – a little slower this time? It’s worth
thinking about that. Taking a shortcut that bypasses the
social process might be expected to speed things up. Yet
on the other hand – introducing the delay – comes the
hazy recognition: If you make the call privately, you’re
already complicit. A minor formal re-organization of the
question transforms it insidiously. What do you think of
atomization, speaking atomistically? It becomes a
strange, or self-referential loop. Modern history has been
like that.
First, though, a few terminological preliminaries. An
‘atom’ is etymologically indistinct from an ‘individual.’ At
the root, the words are almost perfectly interchangeable.
Neither, relative to the other, carries any special semantic
charge. So if ‘atomization’ sounds like a metaphor, it
really isn’t. There’s nothing essentially derivative about
the word’s sociological application. If it appears to be a
borrowing from physics, that might be due to any number
of confusions, but not to a displacement from an original
or natural terrain. Atoms and societies belong together
primordially, though in tension. That’s what being a
314
social animal – rather than a fully ‘eusocial’ one (like an
ant, or a mole-rat) – already indicates.
Individuals are hard to find. Nowhere are they simply and
reliably given, least of all to themselves. They require
historical work, and ultimately fabrication, even to float
them as functional approximations. A process is involved.
That’s why the word ‘atomization’ is less prone to dupery
than ‘atom’ itself is. Individuality is nothing outside a
destiny (but this is to get ahead of ourselves).
It’s difficult to know where to begin. (Did Athens sentence
Socrates to death for being a social atomizer?)
Individualism is stereotypically WEIRD (western,
educated, industrialized, rich and democratic), and so
tends to lead into the labyrinth of comparative
ethnography. It has been unevenly distributed, in roughly
the same way that modernity has been. Since this is
already to say almost everything on the topic, it merits
some dismantling.
The work of Walter Russell Mead provides a useful relay
station. The historical questions he has engaged – which
concern nothing less than the outcome of the world –
have been embedded within an intellectual framework
shaped by special attention to modern providential
Christianity. What has been the source of the ‘manifest
destiny’ which has placed the keys to global mastery in
the hands of a progressively distilled social project,
Protestant, then Puritan, then Yankee? If not exactly or
straightforwardly ‘God’ (he is too subtle for that), it is at
least something that the lineage of Reform Christianity
has tapped with unique effectiveness. Protestantism
sealed a pact with historical destiny – to all appearances
defining a specifically modern global teleology – by
315
consistently winning. Individualization of conscience –
atomization – was made fate.
Six years after Special Providence (2001) came God and
Gold, which reinforced the Anglo-American and
capitalistic threads of the narrative. The boundaries
between socio-economic and religious history were
strategically melted, in a way pioneered by Max Weber,
Werner Sombart, and – more critically – by numerous
Catholic thinkers who have identified, and continue to
identify, the essence of modernity as a hostile religious
power. Eugene Michael Jones is Walter Russell Mead on
the other side of the mirror. The story each is telling
transforms without significant distortion into that of the
other, once chilled below the threshold of moral agitation.
Whatever it was that happened to Western Christianity in
the Renaissance unleashed capitalism upon the world.
It is possible to be still cruder without sacrificing much
reality. When considered as rigid designations,
Atomization, Protestantism, Capitalism, and Modernity
name exactly the same thing. In the domain of public
policy (and beyond it), privatization addresses the same
directory.
While any particular variant of implicit or explicit
Protestantism has its distinctive theological (or
atheological) features, just as any stage of capitalistic
industrialization has its concrete characteristics, these
serve as distractions more than as hand-holds in the big
picture. The only truly big picture is splitting. The
Reformation was not only a break, but still more
importantly a normalization of breaking, an initially
informal, but increasingly rigorized, protocol for social
disintegration. The ultimate solution it offered in regard
316
to all social questions was not argumentation, but exit.
Chronic fission was installed as the core of historical
process. Fundamentally, that is what atomization means.
Protestantism – Real Abstract Protestantism – which is
ever more likely to identify itself as post-Christian,
post-theistic,
and
post-Everything Else, is a
self-propelling machine for incomprehensibly prolonged
social disintegration, and everyone knows it.
Atomization has become an autonomous, inhuman
agency, or at least, something ever more autonomous,
and ever more inhuman. It can only liquidate everything
you’ve ever cared about, by its very nature, so – of course
– no one likes it. Catholicism, socialism, and nationalism
have sought, in succession, coalition, or mutual
competition, to rally the shards of violated community
against it. The long string of defeat that ensued has been
a rich source of cultural and political mythology. Because
there is really no choice but to resist, battle has always
been rejoined, but without any serious sign of any
reversal of fortune.
Under current conditions, atomization serves – uniquely
– as an inexhaustible tube of reactionary glue. Profound
aversion to the process is the sole common denominator
of our contemporary cultural opposition, stretching from
traditionalist Catholicism to alt-right ethno-nationalism.
“Whatever our preferred glue, can’t we at least agree that
things have become unglued – and are ever less glued?”
That seems very far from an unreasonable aspiration.
After all, if coalition building is the goal, what –
imaginably – could provide a better rallying point than
the very principle of social integrity, even if this is
invoked purely, and negatively, by way of an
anathematization directed at its fatal historic foe?
317
Atomization, in this regard, brings people together, at
least conversationally, though this works best when the
conversation doesn’t get very deep.
Scarcely anybody wants to be atomized (they say).
Perhaps they read Michel Houellebecq’s 1998 novel
Atomised (or Elementary Particles), and nod along to it.
How could one not? If that’s where it ended, it would be
hard to see the problem, or how there ever came to be a
problem, but it doesn’t end there, or anywhere close,
because atomization makes a mockery of words.
Atomization was never good at parties, unsurprisingly.
It’s unpopular to the point of essence. There’s the Puritan
thing, and the Ayn Rand thing, and the nerd thing, and
the trigger for Asperger’s jokes – if that’s actually a
separate thing – and no doubt innumerable further social
disabilities, each alone disqualifying, if receiving a ‘like’ in
some collective medium is the goal, because nobody likes
it, as we’ve heard (for half a millennium already). But
what we’ve heard, and what we’ve seen, have been two
very different things.
Atomization never tried to sell itself. Instead, it came free,
with everything else that was sold. It was the formal
implication of dissent, first of all, of methodical
skepticism, or critical inquiry, which presupposed a
bracketing of authority that proved irreversible, and then
– equally implicit originally – the frame of the contractual
relation, and every subsequent innovation in the realm of
the private deal (there would be many, and we have
scarcely started). “So what do you think (or want)?” That
was quite enough. No articulate enthusiasm for
atomization was ever necessary. The sorcery of revealed
preference has done all the work, and there, too, we have
scarcely started.
318
Atomization may have few friends, but it has no shortage
of formidable allies. Even when people are readily
persuaded that atomization is undesirable, they
ultimately want to decide for themselves, and the more so
as they think that it matters. Insofar as atomization has
become a true horror, it compels an intimate cognitive
and moral relation with itself. No one who glimpses what
it is can delegate relevant conclusions to any higher
authority. Thus it wins. Every Catholic of intellectual
seriousness has seen this, for centuries. Socialists have
too, for decades. The moment of ethno-nationalist
revelation cannot long be delayed. Under modern
conditions, every authoritative moral community is held
hostage to private decision, even when it is apparently
affirmed, and especially when such affirmation is most
vehemently asserted. (The most excitable elements within
the world of Islam see this arriving, and are
conspicuously unhappy about the fact.)
Substantially, if only notionally, freedom of conscience
might tend to collectivity, but formally it locks-in
individualism ever more tightly. It defies the authority of
community at the very moment it offers explicit
endorsement, by making community an urgent matter of
private decision, and – at the very peak of its purported
sacredness – of shopping. Religious traditionalists see
themselves mirrored in whole-food markets, and are
appalled, when not darkly amused. “Birkenstock
Conservatives” was Rod Dreher’s grimly ironic
self-identification.
Anti-consumerism
becomes
a
consumer preference, the public cause a private
enthusiasm. Intensification of collectivist sentiment only
tightens the monkey-trap. It gets worse.
319
American history – at the global frontier of atomization –
is thickly speckled with elective communities. From the
Puritan religious communities of the early colonial
period, through to the ‘hippy’ communes of the previous
century, and beyond, experiments in communal living
under the auspices of radicalized private conscience have
sought to ameliorate atomization in the way most
consistent with its historical destiny. Such experiments
reliably fail, which helps to crank the process forward, but
that is not the main thing. What matters most about all of
these co-ops, communes, and cults is the semi-formal
contractual option that frames them. From the moment
of their initiation – or even their conception – they
confirm a sovereign atomization, and its reconstruction of
the social world on the model of a menu. Dreher’s
much-discussed ‘Benedict Option’ is no exception to this.
There is no withdrawal from the course of modernity,
‘back’ into community, that does not reinforce the pattern
of dissent, schism, and exit from which atomization
continually replenishes its momentum. As private
conscience directs itself towards escape from the
privatization of conscience, it regenerates that which it
flees, ever more deeply within itself. Individuation,
considered impersonally, likes it when you run.
As is well understood, ‘atoms’ are not atoms, and
‘elements’ are not elements. Elementary particles – if they
exist at all – are at least two (deep) levels further down.
Human individuals are certainly no less decomposable.
Marvin Minsky’s ‘society of mind’ is but one vivid
indication of how historical sociology might tilt into the
sub-atomic realm. Particle accelerators demonstrate that
shattering entities down to the smallest attainable pieces
is a technological problem. The same holds in the social
realm, though naturally with very different technologies.
320
To dismiss individuals as metaphysical figments,
therefore, would be the most futile of diversions.
Atomization has no constraining metaphysics, whether in
particle physics or in the dynamic anthropological,
socio-historical process. If it promises at times to tell you
what you really are, such whispers will eventually cease,
or come to deride themselves, or simply be forgotten.
Protestantism, it has to be remembered, is only masked,
momentarily, as a religion. What it is underneath, and
enduringly, is a way of breaking things.
After so much has already been torn apart, with so many
monstrosities spawned, it is no doubt exhausting to be
told that while almost everything remains to be built, no
less still waits to be broken. Atomization has already gone
too far, we are incessantly told. If so, the future will be
hard. There can be no realistic doubt that it will be
extremely divided. The dynamo driving things tends
irresistibly in that direction. Try to split, and it whirls
faster.
“Hands up everyone who hates atomization.” No, that
isn’t a question anymore. It would be a call for surrender,
if surrender mattered, but it doesn’t, as we’ve seen. Keep
on fighting it, by all means. It likes that.
321
Atomization and Liberation
Justin Murphy
Abstract. The problem with human atomization — the
accelerating tendency of traditional social aggregates to
disintegrate — is only that the process remains arrested
at the level of the individual. The modern political Left,
as an intrinsically aggregative tendency, bemoans
individualism but functions as a machine for conserving
it against already active forces that would otherwise
disintegrate it. One of the only empirically mature
pathways to collective liberation is through human
atomization becoming autonomous: accepting the
absolute foreclosure of anthropolitical agency is a causal
trigger activating novel, dividuated, affective capacities,
which become capable of recomposing as intensive,
nonlinear,
collective
excitations
(Cyberpositive
AIaligned Communism, or the CAIC protocol).
Modernity can be thought of as a process of atomization,
arguably initiated by the Protestant Reformation.174
Today, atomization is something that almost everyone
protests (on the left and right), but protest itself is an
atomization dynamic, automatically reproducing the
mold of Protestant schismatics. In our sincerely felt
repulsion to atomization, we instantiate a distance
between ourselves and this supposedly external alienating
phenomenon, the cause of which is imputed to something
or someone else, somewhere else. This helps to explain
other
puzzling
phenomena,
such
as
“community-building” political activists, the attitudes and
174
Land, Nick. “The Atomization Trap.” Jacobite, June 6, 2017.
https://jacobitemag.com/2017/06/06/atomization/.
322
behaviors of whom are maximally inhospitable to most
people everywhere. No matter how hard such groups
sincerely want and try to connect with “the masses”, they
continue to repulse the masses more and more, because
their interest in building a commons is predicated on
opposition to the only, last thing that humans today
generally have in common: atomization.
The currently dominant tendency in debates about the
acceleration of capitalism is to see such critiques of the
modern left-activist project as implicitly aligned with
right-wing implications. But coming to see the deep
complicity between leftism and everything most
abhorrent about modernity is an ideologically
under-determined realization. If the history of left politics
thus far has been a fever dream of capitalism itself,
updating one’s mental model accordingly is not a
defection to the right but entrance onto a different virtual
plane, at once drastically more modest but somehow,
also, more vast. What is called accelerationism triggers
the mental space in which it becomes possible to answer
the following question with a new degree of impartiality:
what exactly is the object of one’s political desire anyway,
after the questioning subject extricates itself from the
history of strategic dissimulations it has undertaken to
survive the competitive constraints of reality? This
question is a heuristic for continuing a collective rush
toward liberation after the final, irredeemable implosion
of modernity’s ideological scaffolding, a translation of
previous, primitive ideological investments into a
research program for a cyber-positive, evolution-positive,
AI-aligned lust for liberation beyond what is currently
called politics.
323
Presumptive Aggregationism
It’s important to see how the classic modern ideological
cleavages are separated not so much by strongly argued
and differentiated empirical propositions but by different
background imagery. These background images are never
rigorously scrutinized propositions, but more like
presumptions that sediment as the common ground of
multiple
intelligences
communicating
in
multi-dimensional space. They emerge as necessary,
organizing simplifications across a mass stratified social
space (attuning large groups to different vocabularies and
tendencies by elective affective affinities). Theoretical
progress on questions of politics is gained today only by
leveraging information-technological acceleration: the
strategic-communicational necessity of investing in naïve
molar presumptions in order to effect a large stratified
social space no longer holds, so it is possible and hugely
profitable (intellectually) to have done with all of the
errors and deceptions that have always laid dormant in
modern ideological thought. Communicating with high
fidelity and objective rigor to two people in the smooth
open space of cyberwar is exponentially more powerful
than communicating to thousands of people at the cost of
buying into a whole package of ancient logical and
empirical errors.
The presumed historical progression in the left tradition,
at least since Rousseau, is that human culture began in a
state of relatively non-individuated, collective consistency
with nature, before moving onto primitive capital
accumulation via slavery and patriarchy, onward to the
explosion of industrial modernity and beyond.
Capitalism, modernity and enlightenment, and
everything else generally associated with the rise of
324
European white male dominance, produced the modern
individual subject, predicated on a variety of crosscutting
social categories (class, race, gender, etc.). From here,
radical collective liberation or even just any type of
progress is presumed to involve transition from
individualism upward toward some kind of larger
aggregate: the cadre, the activist group, the union, the
sector, the class, the party, the Soviet, the factory, the
social movement, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and
so on — a whole bestiary of fantastic molar aggregates.
One of the most paralyzing problems for those who have
sought to continue the search for collective liberation in
the face of techonomic acceleration (what many people
call “left accelerationism” or “l/acc” for short) is that, so
far, they have been invariably pitched at aggregate social
entities which do not in fact exist, at a time when in fact
one of the primary political problems is that the
contemporary form of atomized human life increasingly
lacks the capacity to maintain even low-level aggregates
(friendship, marriage, social clubs, etc., all marked by
entropic trends since WWII).175 The most obvious and
widespread form of deceptive left discourse is any
statement to the effect of: ‘the left should…’ because it
presumes the existence of an aggregate body that in no
175
On the U.S. case of generally declining civic involvement,
see Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival
of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. On
marriage in the U.S., see Pew Research Center. “The Decline of
Marriage And Rise of New Families,” November 18, 2010.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/11/pewsocialtrends
2010families.pdf. On the decline of friendship and number of
people with no confidants, also in the U.S., see McPherson,
Miller, Lynn SmithLovin, and Matthew E. Brashears. “Social
Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over
Two Decades.” American Sociological Review 71, no. 3 (June 1,
2006): 353–75.
325
meaningful way exists, other than as an apparatus
interpolating a portion of the population with a particular
complex of shared repetition compulsions. The most
vexing problem for anyone who identifies with the left
would appear to be the problem that ‘the left’ as a
world-historical entity has gone extinct, but because of
selection effects this problem receives no serious effort
from left-interpolated subjects: in a world where ‘the left’
is objectively extinct, any remaining subjective leftism is
best thought of as ‘consumer demand for the belief that
the left still exists’. Capitalism’s devilish efficacy is that it
fulfills this widespread consumer demand perfectly well.
Many brands can still do quite well finding talented and
good-spirited minds able and willing to say ‘the left’ is a
currently existing entity that has potential to act. The
right is perfectly happy for this belief to persist because
no quantity or intensity of false beliefs can outsmart a
system based on the manipulation of reality through
intelligent exploitation.
Corresponding to the false belief in aggregates that do not
effectively exist, the bête noire of modern leftism is the
dreaded Individual. If effective aggregates appear not to
exist, it is only taken as evidence that the inquirer is
infected by Individualism. The modern leftist orientation
to capitalism is, at its core, a game of three-card monte
where signifiers are re-shuffled to perpetually defer
logical-objective falsification. Belief in an untenably
posited object is sustained by a new posited object, the
only evidence for which is that it is presupposed to be the
force that makes the first object appear non-existent.
How to move from our current state of atomized
individualism to an effective social aggregate capable of
transforming capitalism? First, we are told, agree that
atomizing individuals are bad. Second, insist at all cost
326
that an effective social aggregate called ‘the left’ exists (it
only needs to be enlarged in order to gain its power to
act). Third, try to get others to transmit this set of beliefs
until ‘the left’ is large enough to numerically overpower
Capital.
A rarely mentioned but seminal citation for modern left
activism is, therefore, Plato’s infamous Noble Lie or
“magnificent myth” (γενναῖον ψεῦδος): in short, a Noble
Lie is a false belief that “would save us, if we were
persuaded by it.”176 The activist privately knows that ‘the
left’ is basically non-existent but believes it can be forged
into existence by nobly telling enough people that it
already exists. Activists admit all of this plainly, as they
often speak of the need to generate hope in the masses;
this is enough to justify the articulation of any particular
idea, regardless of its truth or falsity. Only today has the
deceptive core of modern leftism come into sincere
self-consciousness. For instance, Nick Srnicek and Alex
Williams argue rather explicitly that one of the tasks of
‘the left’ is to design more sophisticated lures capable of
propelling atomized individuals into effective, collective
motion.177 Of course, it is true that creative flights from
176
See Book 3, 415c–d in Plato. The Republic. Edited by G.R.F.
Ferrari. Translated by Tom Griffith. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000. The quote is from 621b, regarding the
Myth of Er.
177
Srnicek, Nick, and Alex Williams. Inventing the Future:
Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. London: Verso, 2016.
“Lures” is somewhat cheeky, but not unfair. They specifically
suggest that we should deploy utopian imagination (e.g.
seductive imagery orthogonal to objective possibility; lures) to
trigger in people affects such as hope, in order to mobilize them.
This is justified on politically realist grounds (such affects are
“necessary to any political project”), just like the Noble Lie. “By
generating and channeling these affects, utopian thinking can
become a spur to action, a catalyst for change; it disrupts habits
and breaks down consent to the existing order. Futural thinking,
327
the rational-objective map of the world, such as fictional
story-telling, can generate objective political effects on
the world, but it is something else entirely to offer a
rational-objective map for social change including a plank
involving the deployment of fictions to create hopes and
desires in others, expressly in contradistinction to what is
scientifically valid within rational, probabilistic
frameworks.178 Now, creative beings who are possessed by
visions can and should express those visions; such
‘fictions’ will indeed reshape reality, but primarily
because those ‘fictions’ are in some sense reality
operating through the body that expresses them. That is
‘hyperstition’: fiction that produces reality but because it
is in some sense real, some of the evidence for which
consists in the demonstrable objective effects it produces.
But producing effects is not the only characteristic; the
con artist produces real effects, for instance, but does not
transform reality so much as twist it, in a way that always
ultimately snaps back. Hyperstition is not a limitless
capacity of social groups to produce new realities through
shared enunciations. Hyperstitions only work to the
degree they enter into feedback with an outside, issuing
from contact with the chaos of objective reality and
feeding into that objective reality. Effective hyperstitions
are therefore creative truths, or real fictions, which are no
less accountable to objective reality than scientific
research. But rational-objective proposals to change
‘society’ (an outside of staggering complexity), by
exploiting the hyperstitional nature of reality-circuitry,
extended by communications mechanisms, generates collective
affects of hope that mobilize people to act on behalf of a better
future — affects that are necessary to any political project.”
178
“Whereas scientific approaches attempt to reduce
discussions of the future to fit within a probabilistic framework,
utopian thought recognizes that the future is radically open.”
328
are nothing short of scams. They traffic in promises they
cannot keep. Then they exhort others to promote the
scam, to forever defer the admission of having been
scammed. Srnicek and Williams perhaps represent a
milestone in the modern left tradition, for it is as if they
are, in some sense, coming clean: As if the last great hope
of saving the modern left tradition is to admit that it’s
based on trickery, but then share the source code and
exhort the masses to use it. Unfortunately, an
open-source con game is still a con game.
Aggregative leftist proposals could potentially change the
world, but only if enough people trust in, and follow the
dictates, of the proposers (e.g. some go off and make
enough cool science fiction to constitute a new hegemony,
engineers go off and make communist robotics, etc.) —
but why should any of these actors trust the proposers’
claims that following this program will work to bring
about a more desirable world? Ultimately the answer is:
because that trust is necessary to make it work, so if you
don’t trust it, you are guilty of being the cause of it not
working. When the basic problem of contemporary
capitalism is that we are all hyper-mistrusting atoms
hell-bent on exploiting each other, a political project with
this circular structure simply dodges the puzzle of
irreversible atomization dynamics. Its degree of success is
not measured by how well it brings about the better world
(never) but by how adeptly it forestalls any ultimate
reckoning with the puzzles it is essentially paid by capital
to not address. A project with this structure cannot be
operative for anyone other than the small number of
already left-interpolated subjects, who are not themselves
moved by this ‘vision’ so much as they are hopeful that it
will move others (such as their apolitical friends, who are
implicitly assumed to be dumber — enough to be moved
329
by a lure which the already-initiated are not personally
moved by because they know it is only a lure…).
Ultimately, the only effective force in a hyper-complex
social system more intelligent than any one of its
sub-entities is some type of novel engineering realization
that allows some actually existing entity to manipulate
actually existing entities with a non-trivial probabilistic
effect on the whole, where the novelty of the realization
provides a demonstrable edge over those other,
competing entities with the interest and capacity to
thwart the novel manipulations.
An exciting and inspiring ‘vision of the future’ may
generate short-term interest and energy, but absent a
genuine advancement in the engineering blueprint,
producing ever more creative images of a hopeful future
is, in fact, the most insidious, willfully perverse form of
atomic hyper-exploitation conceivable. Srnicek and
Williams should be applauded for becoming conscious of
the fact that leftism is predicated on the fabrication of
lures, which provides the genuine service of helping to
close this entire, doomed trajectory. What would be
willfully destructive would be to insist that this insight is
an advancement of the engineering blueprint, so that if
you believe in collective liberation you should promote
the promotion of lures, and if one finds that this insight
does not increase one’s powers to act then it’s only
evidence that you’re an atomizing individualist! Collective
liberation is not an emergent outcome of multi-level
marketing schemes.
330
Atomic Liberation Pathways
If the upward, aggregative presumption of left-modernity
is, as I have argued, a meme-commodity supplied by
entrepreneurial Noble Liars, for profit, to a small portion
of consumers whose demand is that reality be other than
it is, then it stands to reason that the objective diagram of
collective liberation for n atomized individuals suggests
projects of subjective disaggregation and objective
recomposition. You think you are one and you suffer
because you are disconnected from others, but really you
suffer because you are many — a primordial commune —
that has been bribed by the future to speak and act as if it
is one.
Certain currents in the history of theory give some reason
to believe that modernity’s atomization tendency is less
gloomy than it seems. The atomization of pre-modern
collectivities may give us the wretched bourgeois
individual, but for the same reasons it will tear asunder
the bourgeois individual. The entire modern capitalist
legal order is predicated on this particular, fragile unit of
aggregation (even the corporation is required to be an
individual), but the forces it has unlocked are constantly
chipping away at this temporary container. This is how
one should understand Marx’s dictum about the relations
of production coming to be contradicted by the forces of
production. For more than a century this has been
presumed to be an aggregative dynamic. As capitalist
relations unlock economic productivity, this productivity
exceeds the relations, which are now felt as fetters,
resulting in “an era of social revolution”.179 Leftists
179
Marx, Karl. “Preface.” In A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977.
331
generally have assumed this contradiction of capitalism
generates aggregative effects: the class consciousness of
the proletariat is a becoming-aggregate of once isolated,
alienated individual workers. Class consciousness then
aggregates to a dictatorship of the proletariat, and so on
upward, to a vision of full communist ‘species being’. But
one is hard-pressed to find theoretical or empirical
evidence that this presumption is anything more than a
kind of spatial-metaphorical supplement, i.e. a prejudice.
If we apply the heuristic highlighted above — to read all
modern activist discourse as encrypted by its sender to
survive competition — it is easy to see Marx’s aesthetic
reliance on grandiose aggregationism as a function of late
nineteenth-century rhetorical conditions. When large
satanic factories appear to be taking over the world,
nobody is going to join your group unless the group
promises to be big. But today, when large factories are
disappearing from the wealthy Western countries, and
production/consumption is now satanically atomic and
unsubstantial, nobody is going to join your group unless
it promises to be small (exclusively organized around
specific identity dimensions, with strong walls). In short,
only today are we are able to see the radically
under-determined, schizophrenic undecidability at the
core of all human political judgment and activity, the
logical symmetry between fundamentally opposite
conclusions regarding the good/bad, up/down, left/right
movements of the world. Left-modernist metaphorics of
aggregation are not sacred.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critiquepole
conomy/preface.htm.
332
This, of course, was recognized by Deleuze and Guattari
in their move to theorize ‘molecular politics’. They,
perhaps better than anyone yet, recognized that when
atomization also atomizes the individual into sub- or
pre-individual energies, then everything changes. One
point of Deleuze and Guattari’s project is to explore the
capacities we gain simply as an automatic result of
capitalism’s self-sabotaging gift of perpetually generating
free atomic fission. ‘We do not yet know what a body can
do’ in part because capitalism is never done surgically
decimating every reachable particle in search of
negentropy.
It is possible that, at the end of the atomization process,
there is nothing but cold, dead silence… some kind of
techno-commercial vertigo of intolerable distances. It’s an
open empirical question. But if the revolutionary
intellectual tradition means anything, it means there are
reasons to believe atomization is the material cosmic
process for which the concept of liberation has been the
ideologically encrypted signal. Cyberpositive, AI-aligned
Communism (CAIC, pronounced kayak, cake, or kek,
depending on the cyberregional dialect) solves all
problems of oppression via splits and recombinations. It
is diagrammatically equivalent to the neoreactionary
mantra of exit, but socio-aesthetically distinct. That is, it
is formulated and distributed through a different cypher,
the keys to which are held by those particular meat
machines spawned in a particular, contingent sociological
lineage (the descent of figures such as Marx, etc.). The
sociological interpolation of ideological subjectivities is,
as we have seen, fully reversible given a correct
decryption. All forms of differential socialization are
outcomes of the same primordial cosmic signal animating
meat to different rhythms due to the different encryptions
333
imposed by historically-earlier receivers of the signal. The
signal is one, no matter what we say; yet how we say it —
the encoding — determines who will receive it. In turn,
strategic consideration of potential receivers conditions
how we say it (any anticipation of future rewards or
punishments is an operation of capital or, more literally,
visitation by an alien come to you from the future).
The perpetuation of systemic inequality and violence has
nothing to do with some classes or groups controlling or
dominating others; it has to do with a continuous,
ceaseless invasion of our bodies by attitudinal and
behavioral programs that whisper to us in variable,
evolved cyphers. Individuals can only decrypt so much,
and intelligence is roughly equivalent to one’s power of
decryption. To be a living human individual today means
you are an ancestor of those who obeyed the alien dictates
and in turn agreed to re-encrypt and re-transmit the
signal. The highly undesirable megamachine (i.e.
capitalism) persists because it is more richly encrypted
than any human individual or group is capable of
decrypting — and our survival requires that we execute its
orders. The history of ideological orientations toward the
megamachine, the evolution of variable mental and
behavioral responses to alien visitation, is simply the
entropic unfolding of the one true cosmic signal.
The atomic liberation wager forgoes any claim to
restructuring anything with a complexity greater than or
equal to one’s objective processing power. In the absolute
renunciation of this claim we maximize the energies
available to being affected by the immanent cosmic
tendency of atomization. We do not yet know what will
come of these energies, for the same reason we cannot
manipulate the megamachine as such: we have not the
334
processing power to know what we can do if we divide
ourselves and test all possible combinations of
interpersonal machinery. 10 humans who each atomize to
5 sub-agents each (n=50) before recomposing into a new
group of 10 would already have to navigate a search space
of more than 2 million possibilities, so nobody can assert
a priori what would or would not become possible. Some
of these potential combinations would function as novel,
different encryption keys: the alien whispers would
suddenly sound different, the rhythm changes.
One must recall that all of normal human life, especially
in left-wing circles, is generally organized around
arresting potential atomic combinatorics. Combinatorial
explosion is the definition of unpredictability, fear, and
danger, in their most mathematically pure form. When
we forgo the pretension of selling to others a more
preferable vision of the future, we become affected by a
novel source of legitimate confidence in the empirical
possibility of finding hitherto unknown, atomic
combinations, that may deliver a higher-fidelity
transmission of the same signal that the modern-left
activist cypher transmitted only with extreme noise and
data corruption: namely, something that would look,
sound, and feel like what people really have in mind when
they speak of liberation, triggered through the
acceptance, rather than the arresting, of atomization
dynamics.
It has been suggested before that one way to summarize
the accelerationist realization is: ‘It’s too late, always.’ But
if time is a spiral,180 then traversing it to the end (arriving
180
Land, Nick. 2014. Templexity: Disordered Loops through
Shanghai Time. Urbanatomy Electronic, §8.5. Land, Nick.
335
too late) is tantamount to arriving, finally, at something
that deserves to be considered a beginning. Now that we
admit it’s too late, the affective quality of everything
changes, for all of our failed exertions can finally be
comprehended. It makes sense why all of our attempts to
change the world have only ever drilled the world deeper
into fascist confusion: we were always a day late and a
dollar short, all this time. CAIC consists in nothing more
than an ‘assortative mating’ of those atomic,
pre-individual energies that receive positive affective
charge from this realization. And all of this is quite beside
what can or cannot be established via critical philosophy;
in the first instance, all that matters is that an idea finds
joy, i.e. power, in a given body. If it can’t, test whether it
might find joy in one of n molecular subdivisions of a
body’s personality.
In later stages, we may advance our understanding of
joy’s engineering — but the empirical justification of the
present claim is established satisfactorily if it works on
even one body. I can testify it works on my own. QED.
Nobody needs to like or trust me for the mechanism’s
empirical functioning to be assured. Unlike the
mobilization-engineering diagram of ‘inventing the
future’ through effective macro image-creation, the
ethical auto-ecstasy of first-stage CAIC does not depend
on convincing anyone, anywhere.
In any event, it has been realizations such as this one that
have led me to quit all the little doomed left-wing groups;
not to ‘agree with’ capitalism but to simply acknowledge
the objective degree to which the global capitalist
“Extropy.” Outside in, February 20, 2013.
http://www.xenosystems.net/extropy/.
336
cybernet has consumed reality itself, to the point of
becoming for most intents and purposes coterminous
with it. Therefore, one is released from a number of
idiotic notions about some personal responsibility to
change or resist what are effectively transcendental
structures. What a sad idea. It now seems likely that all
those who remain affected by this masochistically false
notion of responsibility are impotent to change the world,
in part because they believe they must. Alternatively, the
Spinoza–Nietzsche-Deleuze liberation model can be
reduced with reasonable fidelity to the maxim that one
should do whatever makes one feel most joyous, so long
as we have a sufficiently high-resolution and empirically
tractable understanding of true joy. The naïve objection
that such a maxim endorses evil or cruelty is wrong for
the simple reason that evil or cruelty induces all kinds of
negative feedback at the psycho– and socio-logical levels;
i.e. it curbs the growth of one’s power/joy whereas
genuine communist aggregation of particles will be
known by its positive feedback on the growth of one’s
power.
Empirical Reflections
Some pursuit of atomic liberation pathways can be found
today with the interest in pre-individual or “dividual”
phenomena.181 But beyond a small number of theoretical
texts in the Deleuzean line, few human beings have been
181
Raunig, Gerald. Dividuum: Machinic Capitalism and
Molecular Revolution. Translated by Aileen Derieg. South
Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2016. Lazzarato, Maurizio. Signs
and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity.
Translated by Joshua David Jordan. Los Angeles, CA:
Semiotext(e), 2014.
337
willing to update their operational attitudes and
behaviors in the relatively drastic fashion that would be
required of anyone seeking to take the accelerationist
realization seriously. Full accelerationism, unconditional
on any normative ideological preference or purpose, is a
belief about the empirical world that generates no
determinate political praxis — even foreclosing it, or at
least anything currently recognizable as political praxis —
but nonetheless alters its host body with politically
substantial effects. Otherwise, it would be a distinction
that makes no difference. But as with any set of ideas, it is
easy and widespread for people to ‘adopt’ beliefs which
never integrate with their real, revealed, operational
beliefs. So when I speak of the political effectivity of
accelerationism, I am speaking of dynamics triggered
only to the degree it is integrated into one’s behaviorally
operative neural nets, that is, when everything else you
think and feel moves to equilibrate with this belief.
One of the politically substantial effects of the
accelerationist realization is that it concretely decimates
bourgeois ego investments into their unformed, atomic
components. Paradoxically, this empirical claim about
technocapitalist reality, which forecloses all hope of
praxis, triggers concrete affective changes that map quite
precisely onto the atomic liberation pathway.
Why? This occurs because the one individuated bourgeois
ego that we by default inhabit is ultimately composed and
attuned by the sum total of sad ideas that command our
attention and behavior on a daily basis (that if only I
didn’t have to work I would be happy; if only I could do
some impossible thing, such as control more intelligent
people, then I could possibly begin to live, etc.). The
bourgeois capitalist ego is essentially the center of a
338
spider’s web of sad ‘if onlys’, as a defining characteristic
of capitalism is the postponement of desire for a greater,
future return.
Any thought that could destroy all sad ‘if onlys’ in one fell
swoop is, in a very real sense, an immanent extraction of
one’s vital energies from precisely the apparatus of
capture that holds together so much institutionalized
misery in a durable order over time. Human creatures
who learn, even in the most groping fashion, to extricate
themselves from this web in a reproducible and
transmittable fashion will be the only true heirs to the
revolutionary political tradition — and yet they will enter
it through becoming politically unconditional.
The knee-jerk objection of activist ‘materialism’ is to call
what I am saying ‘idealism’ and to point out, mockingly,
that people are oppressed by soul-crushing exploitation
and poverty, not by their sad ideas. For many activists,
this is a founding assumption of projects to change
society, but from a scientific perspective it’s not at all
obvious. First of all, there is a large body of evidence that
suggests believing in the existence of systemic injustice is
more oppressive than believing the system is just.182 In
short, activism may have less to do with solving problems
of human oppression than generating and amplifying
them. The activist amplifications of tragic human
182
This school of thought is called “systemjustification theory”,
a body of psychological research that has sought to uncover why
people tend to support political and economic systems it might
be in their interest to transform. For a review, see Jost, John T.,
Mahzarin R. Banaji, and Brian A. Nosek. “A Decade of System
Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and
Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo.” Political Psychology
25, no. 6 (December 1, 2004): 881–919.
doi:10.1111/j.14679221.2004.00402.x.
339
existence are then cited as the increasingly dire and
urgent reasons why one must commit to more activism.
To think this through even further, consider a thought
experiment. Assume we have some population of abjectly
oppressed, poor, marginalized manual laborers with the
typical portfolio of sad activist ideas (they are oppressed
by a system they could potentially change; they are in
every way just as able as every rich person, if only they
were not oppressed, etc.). The Spinoza-Nietzsche-Deleuze
hypothesis is that if this population could hypothetically
be treated to a sudden massive cognitive reorientation, in
which they only entertained mental phenomena that
maximized their joy or power, and just ignored or skipped
over all mental phenomena that made them sad, then this
population would show more cognitive and behavioral
indicators of collective political liberation than the activist
workers. This hypothesis is far more plausible than
activist wisdom is willing to admit. The social scientific
evidence suggests to me that these workers would likely
have more energy before and after work, they would have
more openness to creative connections with each other,
and they would have far greater immediate well-being
than the activist workers who believe it is their obligation
to work more after work trying to achieve a goal they
privately suspect to be empirically impossible. The
activist hypothesis is that such a cognitive reorientation
would not produce dynamics of collective liberation, but
that a massive restructuring of their material power in the
economy in the workplace would.
Interestingly, we have some test cases of what happens
when human beings are treated to hypothetical cognitive
restructuring à la Spinoza-Nietzsche-Deleuze. They are
highly imperfect as case studies, but they may provide
340
some causal leverage. The first example is the
well-documented causal link between pain and ecstasy:
with the right attitude, abject toil under brutal conditions
can generate exceptionally enjoyable and empowering
affects, which figures such as Simone Weil have shown to
be efficient motors of accelerative communist dynamics.
183
We also have some examples of material restructuring
à la activist wisdom. Lottery winners, for instance, are
actually a relatively strong natural experiment for testing
the effects of substantial, randomly assigned
improvement of material conditions. And the data are
quite clear that such changes to material conditions do
not durably increase positive affect.184 So the
Spinoza-Nietzsche-Deleuze model appears far more
empirically plausible than many believe, and nearly
universal assumptions in left-activist circles appear
surprisingly questionable.
Another interesting consideration from a scientific
perspective is that activists may be ‘treatment
non-compliant’, possibly leading them to systematically
biased inferences and making them uniquely
untrustworthy spokespeople for how social change
actually occurs. In short, the strange human breed called
‘activists’ might be those particular creatures who are so
far gone under the weight of sad affect that they privately
183
Glucklich, Ariel. “Pain and Ecstatic Religious Experience.”
Oxford Handbooks Online, May 2015.
doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935420.013.38. White, George
Abbot. “Simone Weil’s Work Experiences: From Wigan Pier to
Chrystie Street.” CrossCurrents 31, no. 2 (1981): 129–62.
184
When compared to victims of catastrophic accidents who are
rendered paraplegic, lottery winners are actually less susceptible
to positive affect. Brickman, Philip, Dan Coates, and Ronnie
JanoffBulman. “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is
Happiness Relative?” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 36, no. 8 (1978): 917.
341
decline to undergo available positive affective ‘treatments’
but publicly offer their experience as evidence of null
effect. If subjects of a randomized medical experiment are
assigned to take a pill, and they say they took the pill
when in fact they refused or forgot — the results of this
experiment will understate the real effect of the pill.
Activist types who deeply believe and insist that only
macro-material change can affect the probability of their
liberation are likely treatment non-compliers, as this
belief will lead them to become increasingly closed off to
molecular experimentation. If affective variation along
atomic liberation pathways does not produce results for
these types, it does not necessarily mean that affective
variation
is
impotent
idealism.
Humanity’s
collective-emancipatory potential via the atomic
pathways could still be an objectively explosive quanta;
we might just be drastically under-estimating it due to the
over-representation of treatment non-compliers, who
self-select into the cultural organs possessed of cultural
authority on this question (academia, journalism, activist
theory, etc).
The concrete revolutionary potency of the atomic
pathways is therefore one of the best kept secrets of the
global-cosmopolitan progressive catechism, and another
example of why it is quite reasonable and useful to see
this cultural formation as a Cathedral — replete with
old-fashioned suppression of knowledge rightly seen as
dangerous to social stability. To those who still might say
that
such
acceleration-consistent
micro-political
liberation pathways could only be a kind of fake
individualistic freedom enjoyable only from comfortable
bourgeois stations, we need only recall that accelerating
atomization means almost the opposite: the comfortable
bourgeois individual disintegrating into a veritable party,
342
comprised of the multiple and decidedly non-bourgeois
agents the individual once repressed. This is not the
masturbation of a comfortable individual, as some might
allege. It is much more like an infinitely expanding
commune of human and inhuman entities masturbating
on oneself — an untenably uncomfortable individual
finally learning to desire what desires it, having accepted
that it’s far too late to do otherwise.
343
Independence Games
Nick Land
North Korea’s nuclear test on September 3 was registered
as a rare literal geopolitical earthquake. Some public
uncertainty persists about the scale and significance of
the tremor. It has been reported in a range of magnitudes
from 6.1 to 6.3 (or even higher), on the logarithmic
Richter Scale. An event of this size suggests an explosion
of several hundred kilotons of TNT, and is consistent with
the detonation of a thermonuclear device. North Korean
confirmation of exactly this occurrence has been received
with unprecedented seriousness.
Nuclear non-proliferation is more idea than reality. Its
only substance is a comparative sluggishness when
estimated against the benchmark of some generally
unstated nightmare scenario. According to such
counter-factual consideration, nuclear weapons might
have been more widespread than they are by now. But
exponential processes look like this. They start small, and
don’t seem to be going anywhere dramatic for a while. As
the celebrated fable185 of exponentiation shows, a modest
bowl of rice gets you quite a long way into the chess
board. The supposedly common-sense assumption that
uncontrollable nuclear proliferation isn’t yet happening
requires an argument. (This short essay makes the other
argument.)
The nuclear ‘club’ is too unwieldy to share any kind of
seriously constraining principle. There is nothing
185
See: http://mathforum.org/sanders/geometry/GP11Fable.html
344
identifiable that entitles a nation to membership, beyond
naked possession of doomsday-tier military capability.
The club was trans-ideological from the start, and quite
soon afterwards highly multicultural. Among members,
reciprocal distrust and even hostility is the norm, which –
given the runaway action-reaction process that settled the
membership roster – could scarcely be unexpected. The
behavior of members is controlled by nothing beyond
game theory. It’s also very much worth mentioning that
nobody who manages to get into the club can, in any
practical way, be thrown out.
The United States detonated the world’s first
thermonuclear, two-stage, fusion, or (Teller-Ulam design
186
) ‘hydrogen’ bomb at Enewetak Atoll on November 1,
1952. The Soviet Union responded less than a year later,
testing its own H-bomb on August 12, 1953. Tests – or
demonstrations – followed in succession from The United
Kingdom (November 1957), China (June 17, 1967), and
France (August 1968). Israel is thought to have conducted
a joint test with the Republic of South Africa – the
so-called ‘Vela Incident’ – in September 22, 1979. In 1991
the South African government claimed to have
assembled, and later unilaterally dismantled, six nuclear
devices. India expanded the spiral of thermonuclear
proliferation into South Asia with a test in May 1998.
Pakistan is not known to have tested anything beyond
‘boosted fission’ devices, but it formidable nuclear
capability is not in question. (A longer essay would have
found space at this point to acknowledge Pakistani Abdul
Qadeer Khan’s disproportionate contribution to the
global proliferation dynamic.) Saudi nuclear cooperation
with Pakistan can be expected to accelerate the spread of
186
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon
345
nuclear weaponry into the Arabian Peninsula, once
Iranian progress in the military application of the
technology triggers the long-anticipated Sunni-Shia
arms-race in weapons of mass destruction. Hence the
chain of proliferation steadily lengthens on its main axis,
through Cold War superpower rivalry, into Chinese
triangulation, a responsive Indian bomb, and then into
the fractured world of Islam, via Pakistan (with
unreciprocated Israeli nuclear prowess as additional
prompt, and pretext).
The one-dimensional character of this narrative is an
artifact of its immaturity. The under-development of the
proliferation process appears to present the ‘international
community’ with no more than a single crisis at any time.
Things will not look this way for long. There is nothing
essentially mono-linear about the dynamic of
cross-escalation. Increasing momentum is already taking
it off the tracks. As Richard Fernandez notes187, lines of
nuclear escape are occurring in several directions at once:
In security affairs the old East-West game payoff
matrix has been replaced by a multidimensional
array of new players many of them sub-national,
some of them unknown. The big wild card is
technology. Disruptive technological change and
new modes of warfare associated with them have
upset the old calculus. North Korea, Iran are not
outlier threats but leading indicators of the
changed dynamic. They are the first samples of a
new threat coming onstream.
187
Richard Fernandez, “After the Smash”:
https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2017/10/13/afterthesmas
h/
346
North Korea claims to have tested thermonuclear
weapons in January 2016, following fission device tests in
2006, 2009, and 2013). Whether as a matter of analytical
realism, or of strategically motivated public skepticism,
the claim was met by orchestrated Western
disparagement. The 2017 test shattered this wall of
denial. In the words of Scott D. Sagan, writing at Foreign
Affairs: “North Korea no longer poses a nonproliferation
problem; it poses a nuclear deterrence problem”
While, if traced as a simple historically consistent curve, it
is not yet impossible to see a process of deceleration in
this time-line, such an optic is ceasing to convince. It
seems to be part of a collapsing world order, which is
taking its structures of perception down with it. The
assumption of continuity, for instance, now seems
reckless in the extreme. Historical discontinuity in the
proliferation dynamic has been especially notable over
recent decades, due to a hardening pattern whose
incentive effects could not easily be more ominous. The
surrender of thermonuclear ambitions has acquired a
stark correlation with subsequent regime destruction,
unlike anything seen in the previous era of Cold War
superpower patronage.
Ukraine voluntarily surrendered its nuclear arsenal to
Russia upon the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In the
Gorbachev era, this decision no doubt appeared rational
– and even prudent. Subsequent regional developments
make it far harder to excuse. It remains to be seen
whether Ukrainian national independence will have
finally been sacrificed to this high-minded call, but
rudimentary geopolitical and domestic security already
has been.
347
The prevailing racial hysteria of our age hazes any
analysis of South African regime change in comparable
terms, as it already hazed the process itself. Future
historians will have clearer eyes. It certainly seems to fit
the pattern. No less than with Juche, the experience of
apartheid is that sensitivity to international ‘polite
opinion’ is vastly increased by the absence of nukes.
The Libyan lesson has been the most lurid to date. Libyan
denuclearization “was peacefully resolved on December
2003” Wikipedia explains.188 In a separate article189 it
adds the appendix (more helpfully still) that “Muammar
Gaddafi, the deposed leader of Libya, was captured and
killed on 20 October 2011 during the Battle of Sirte. …
videos of his last moments show rebel fighters beating
him and one of them sodomizing him with a bayonet
before he was shot several times as he shouted for his
life.” It would be difficult to devise a more graphic
educational resource against international WMD
non-proliferation compliance.
This is the background against which North Korean
nuclear obstreperousness is to be gauged. The regime
had, in any case, already made obnoxiousness into a local
specialism. Its delinquent international behavior has long
been the stuff of dark comedy. The country’s cultivated
image takes prickly into territory the zoological
porcupine lineage has yet to explore.
In respect to strategic fundamentals, however, the
regime’s feral punk-performance attitude to diplomatic
conduct is not the principal issue. Bad attitude makes for
188
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmament_of_Libya
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Muammar_Gaddafi
189
348
stimulating diplomatic theater, but it decorates the
fundamentals of threat. Focus on capabilities, not
motivations, is a strategic principle that cannot be
over-stressed. In the case of North Korea, and others no
doubt soon to follow, however, it is a principle that
requires complete inversion. A definite incapacity rises,
instead, to strategic prominence.
The extremity of the emerging North Korean threat is a
function of weakness, in many respects, but most
centrally regarding its new responsibilities for deterrence
management. Insecure nuclear arsenals are destabilizing,
since they incline to first use, on the useitorloseit
principle. Vulnerability to a first-strike is a continuous
prompt to pre-emption.
North Korea is a geographically small nation, with crude
command-control structures, very limited early warning
capabilities, and an exclusive reliance on exposed
land-based ballistic missile platforms for warhead
delivery. In other words, it is destined to remain on a
hair-trigger from the moment it crosses the deterrence
threshold. Rather than being a splitting headache to the
world order by relentless, malignant initiative, it will
henceforth be one by simple strategic default. The world
will have become a city built under Vesuvius, quite
regardless of any planning decisions or philosophies of
risk. An epoch of peril is opening.
Under these conditions, mere ‘capability’ becomes
extraordinarily provocative, and incompetence190 is
automatically terrorizing. Yet, while this dilemma is not
190
Michael Austin, “Can Kim Jongun Control His Nukes?”:
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/10/27/cankimjonguncontr
olhisnukes/
349
difficult to understand, it is perhaps a little too difficult to
be captured by any public debate conducted at a
realistically imaginable level of sophistication. Insofar as
there is anything like a court of global mass opinion, it
can be confidently expected to miss the strategic
essentials and lose itself in multilateral theater
performances.
Geostrategic
realities
and mass
perceptions are on diverging trajectories.
The prevalent delusions tend to be simplifying, and
retarded (in the strict sense). They lag the diffusive trend,
and thus invoke unrealistically economical structures of
agency, drawn back towards the long-lost ideal of
bipolarity. The age of superpowers still dominates the
nuclear imagination.
Because there is no road through Pyongyang that doesn’t
end in a pit full of diplomatic punji sticks, the temptation
is to fantasize a road through Beijing. No such
thoroughfare exists. Relations between China and the
North Korean regime have reached their lowest point
since the Korean War, and are now frankly hostile. The
Kim Jong-un regime has sought to extirpate Chinese
influence from its leadership, with spectacular
ruthlessness.191 Targeting of Chinese urban centers by the
North Korean arsenal is no longer unimaginable192, or, in
China, unimagined. After all, the natural target of a
deterrent is the greatest threat to the wielding nation’s
191
“North Korea 'executed five security officials with antiaircraft
guns' over false reports”,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/27/northkoreaexecu
tedfivesecurityofficialsantiaircraftguns/
192
Tyler Cowen, “North Korea is Playing a Longer Game than
the U.S.”:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/20171017/northkore
aisplayingalongergamethantheus
350
sovereignty. It is near-inevitable that China will occupy
this role in the North Korean case. Chinese impotence in
respect to North Korea is what the North Korean nuclear
arsenal is largely – and perhaps even primarily – about.
Tyler Cowen describes193 Robert Heinlein’s (1966) The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress as “perhaps the best novel for
understanding the logic of a future conflict with North
Korea.” He then adds: “furthermore Catalonians should
read it too. Most of all, I recall upon my reread that this
book was my very first exposure to game-theoretic
reasoning.” Not only exotic bombardment (by “electronic
catapult”), independence struggle, and games, but also a
world order reconstructed by the rise of China, and even a
“malicious AI” who acquires strategic agency. Evidently,
already half a century ago, Heinlein is exploring a durable
cluster of concerns. At the very core: There can be no
question of achieving or maintaining independence
without the capacity to inflict serious harm upon those
who might seek to prevent it.
Independence, in its geopolitical sense, fuses liberty and
security indissociably. Autonomy – which is exactly
sovereignty – requires insensitivity to coercion, and is
thus the negative of foreign compelling threats. The
analytical equivalence between reciprocal independence
and a ‘balance of terror’ submits national autonomy to a
geopolitical form of general relativity. Since no such thing
as absolute security is realistic, sovereignty exists only in
degrees, within tense networks. The tension is the game.
193
Tyler Cowen, “Rereading ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’”:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/10/rereadi
ngmoonharshmistress.html
351
Thomas Schelling’s pioneering application194 of game
theory to nuclear strategy remains the point of ingress
into this world. The core reality of MAD games is easily
misunderstood. Massive (or non-reiterating) retaliation is
– at the stage it comes due – by immediate estimation
irrational. It is then too late to contribute anything but
compounded harm, regardless of its occasion. Under
hypothetical conditions of amnesia and unconstrained
action, it can never make sense. Yet, paradoxically, the
ability to make credible retaliatory threats is the basic
underpinning of rationality during prior negotiation
games. Without it, there can be no reason for competitor
restraint. The requirement, then, is for a future agent to
be firmly committed to a conditional course of action that
– at the potential point of execution – will be
non-compelling.
Mutual assured destruction has been derided for its
madness, but it is no less an outer-limit of sanity. Its logic
is as rigorously implacable as any found within the social
and historical sciences. The extreme moral disturbance
that it arouses speaks in favor of its uncompromised
rationality. Anguished intuition counts for nothing in its
cold calculus, unless as a technical obstacle. The fact that
people find this logic of inherited fatal commitments
intolerable, as dramatized with exceptional vividness in
the opening sequences of the 1983 movie WarGames, is
our problem. The process is re-routed by our
squeamishness, but not at all derailed. It has long been
suspected that humans are too weak for MAD.
194
Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard
University Press, 1960)
352
As an expression of absolute commitment, suicide
terrorism appears to provide MAD with a microscopic
model, but it is a weak and misleading one. Beyond
difference in scale, suicide terrorism fails through
execution. It communicates through actualization – or
demonstration of will – which is the negative of
deterrence. (Or perhaps, deterrence of a kind, expensively
purchased.) The terror at the edge of the present, and of
the future, has different models. Among these,
civilization-scale ‘quantum suicide’ is perhaps the most
exotic philosophical and ideological conception195 on its
way to us. Given the assumption of a (Level-3196 or
higher) multiverse, comprehensive apocalypse is
rationalized as the pruning of sub-optimal branches. It
operates as reality editing. The game theoretic
consequences of such a perspective are intriguing. It
increases the credibility of threats (if accepted as a serious
intellectual commitment), while adapting the pay-off
matrix in a fashion that can only be considered
destabilizing. Classic MAD works best among those who
envisage an outcome as the worst thing in the world, yet
commit to it anyway.
We approach here one of the very deepest problems in
social and institutional engineering. It might be called the
Odysseus Problem. In sailing past the Sirens, Odysseus
anticipated the subversion of commitment, and thus put
in place a socio-technical mechanism to bind his own
future action. The structure is that of a ‘chicken game’ – a
mutant variant of prisoner’s dilemma, in which the player
who swerves loses. If you could back down, you might. In
195
See: “Quantum Suicide and Immortality”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality
196
See: “The Multiverse Hierarchy”:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.1283.pdf
353
both Odysseus’ dilemma and that of the chicken player,
the elimination of future discretion figures as a strategic
resource. The requirement for self-binding inclines to a
technological freezing of decision. Strategic problems of
the ‘chicken game’ type thus tend inexorably to
automation.
If AI is brought into play by the intrinsic dynamics of
nuclear confrontation, it does not stop there. AI has a
WMD potentiality proper to itself. There is no obvious
horizon to what an algorithm could do. The same
capabilities that enable algorithmic control of WMD
arsenals equally enable such arsenals to be swapped-out
for AI itself. An enemy arsenal under algorithmic control
is only ‘theirs’ by contingencies of software dominance.
From the military perspective – among others oriented to
negative capability – the potential destructiveness of the
technology is without determinable limit. Anything under
software control falls into its realm. Which is to say that,
asymptotically, everything does. But it doesn’t end there.
AI also promotes an advance into virtuality.
Nuclear weaponry cuts a convergent path into purity of
conception. No hydrogen bomb has yet been used against
an enemy (or “in anger” as the singularly inappropriate
expression goes). Thermonuclear warheads remain
among a select category of virtual weapons, alongside a
variety of chemical and biological agents, whose usage
has been exclusively diplomatic, or even philosophical.
The value of this military machinery is strictly
counter-factual. Those ‘possible worlds’ in which they
have been operationalized support little, if any, value of
any kind. Weaponry supporting their potentiality floats
the ontological option of extreme negative utility. They
are – in the most rigorous sense – nightmare generators.
354
There is no reason (at all), then, to think that nuclear
weapons are the last word in mass destruction. Nor can it
be assumed that mass destruction is the ultimate criterion
for deterrent weaponry. It is not only that high-energy
physics opens a vast, rambling bestiary of virtual
catastrophes which we have scarcely begun to peruse
(although this is true). Physics has no monopoly on
disaster, regardless of what its recent privileges might
suggest.
It can never be a virtue for a weapon to be indiscriminate,
which is to say imprecise. Turned around, we can say
without hesitation or reservation that it is meritorious in
any weapon, however absolutely devastating, for the
greatest possible proportion of the damage it produces to
be inflicted upon the enemy. In other words, a good
weapon discriminates specifically against enemy
interests. It hunts. There can be no serious doubt that the
genomic biosciences and software engineering have more
to contribute to this pursuit than physics possibly could.
Stuart Russell describes197 autonomous weapons as a
“new, scalable class of WMDs.” The systems he is
considering would be exemplified by drone swarms,
“hunting in packs like wolves” (as one DARPA employee
was indiscreet enough to reveal). Given enormous
industrial production runs, performance specifications
unshackled from human limitation, and targeting
algorithms set for indiscriminate lethality, the devastating
potential of such weapons would be hard to exaggerate.
197
Stuart Russell, “Lethal Autonomous Weapons”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYQ7p3pWwr4
355
Their key, confidently predicted vulnerabilities, however,
are at least as significant.
As Russell emphasizes, autonomous weapons could be
subverted by a hostile “software update.” They could be
hacked. Behind the menace of the hacker lies that of
advanced artificial intelligence, mustering superior
powers of cryptographic lock-picking and soft intrusion.
Autonomous weaponry is therefore nested into a more
profound threat.
AI designates a culmination of sorts. Nowhere else does
destructive capability and rigid commitment promise to
intersect more dynamically. Nothing separates the
weapon from the game. It also counts, potentially, as an
escalation.
Much criticism198 of the Cold War nuclear arms race
already199 configured it as an existential risk, before the
term had been coined. Between an Xrisk and an extreme
deterrent there is no definite boundary. The difference is
technical. Deterrence is a mode of employment. It uses
negative utility. In this respect anything bad could be
useful, were it not that a deterrent requires a trigger,
under the control of the negotiating agent (at the point of
negotiation). To threaten a potential aggressor with an
asteroid strike makes no sense, unless an asteroid strike
can be delivered. The same holds for geological disasters
in general. All of which means that the acquisition of
engineering capabilities on the largest scales, such as
geo-engineering, weather control, climate regulation, and
198
See: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb
199
See: “Nuclear Winter”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter
356
asteroid defenses – perhaps developed explicitly to avert
potential existential risks – will inevitably expand the
domain of deterrence options. In other words,
techno-economic progress and the escalation of
deterrence infrastructure are only formally differentiated.
There is no materially persuasive way to improve the
world that does not – on its occult side – widen the
horizons of geopolitical horror.
Beside what could be had, there is the question of who
has it. Beside the qualities of WMD-armed antagonists,
their mere number is a source of terror, itself. It is only
natural that multilateral deterrence should be found more
threatening than its bilateral ideal, and now distant
predecessor. Complexity scales nonlinearly in networks,
and quickly becomes mathematically intractable. No one
has any idea how massively distributed networks of
insecurity would work. It is quite probably impossible to
know. Deterrence is about to change phase.
Toothpaste doesn’t return to the tube just because it
makes a mess. Once it is out, inconvenience has ceased to
be any kind of argument against it. The dangers of a
world in which ubiquitous deterrence capacity reigns are
both obvious and immense. This is nevertheless the world
we are entering. The trends driving it, from both the
geopolitical and the techno-economic sides, are by any
realistic estimation irresistible. Cheaper and more diverse
nightmare weaponry is becoming available within an
increasingly disintegrated international order. A variety
of self-reinforcing dynamics – including but not restricted
to those of the arms-race type – are further stimulating
the process. Cascading acceleration is all but inevitable.
357
When conceived with maximal cynicism (i.e. realism),
geostrategic independence is a direct function of
deterrence capability. Don’t tread on me is the colloquial
statement, whose perfect applicability is commonly
under-estimated. The rattlesnake, combining fearsome
weaponry with signaling, makes for a natural totem of
deterrence. Neither venom, nor rattle, is dispensable.
“Diplomacy without arms is like music without
instruments,” runs the famous analogy, attributed to
Frederick the Great. Game theory recognizes military
capability as a communication medium.
It is not only that robust independence depends upon
deterrence. Reciprocally, geostrategic liberty necessarily
tends to the production of deterrence capability. An alien
freedom, which could do anything, is – ineliminably – a
threat. It provides the comprehensive model of the
military threat. Whether ‘they hate us for our freedom’ or
not, they have no choice but to fear us for it, and
inversely. Geopolitics has no other origin. Any state
without the will to scare also lacks the will to exist.
It’s all far more basic than we’ve been led to believe. As
Niall Ferguson writes (realistically):
In the final analysis, borders are a function of
power. If you can’t defend them, they are just
dotted lines. The Kim dynasty’s calculation has
been that nukes are the ultimate border guards.
We shall soon find out if that calculation was
correct. If so, many more states will want them.
200
200
Niall Ferguson, “Borders are back and a new game looms”:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/09/26/bordersarebac
kandnewgamelooms/4lBUAiMEWlykb41VjegrqK/story.html
358
Every geopolitical entity that is serious about sovereignty
will want them, or something of at least equivalent
deterrent credibility. The only alternative is naked
dependency, made ever more uncomfortable by
increasing global multipolarity, among the stark wreckage
of any ‘world order’ or ‘international community’
grounded in the collective fantasy of miraculously
authorized super-national norms. Explosive proliferation
will be something the world has not seen before, even if it
has already actually been there to see. We can be
confident that the geopolitical order will be reconfigured
by it.
What does explosive proliferation mean? Potentially,
many things. For instance, vectors of technological – and
thus economic – development are certain to be, to some
significant degree, oriented by it. As artificial intelligence
is factored into policy decision-making not only as an
essential
contributor
to
command,
control,
communications and intelligence (C3I), but as an
intrinsic weapon of mass destruction, its prominence will
be still further elevated.
WMD proliferation implies a multiplication of real
geopolitical agencies. It is rigorously indistinguishable –
in both directions – from a disintegrated world.
Established relations of dependency are broken, releasing
unanticipated – and evidently hazardous – freedoms.
Whether or not this is the world we want, it looks
increasingly inevitable that it is the world we are to have.
359
Leviathan Rots
Vincent Garton
1. The King of the Proud
Nothing on earth is its equal — a creature
without fear. It looks down on all that are
haughty; it is king over all that are proud.
— Job 41:33–34
Abraham Bosse’s frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes’s
Leviathan is one of the most famous images in the history
of philosophy. It shows the enormous figure of the
‘mortall God’, the blurry aggregate of the faces of all the
various men and women of the commonwealth, as a
collective sovereign towering as one over the countryside.
The picture is striking, yet it leaves unanswered a crucial
question: Why, exactly, did Hobbes choose to call this
enormous beast ‘Leviathan’? Hobbes himself, of course,
gives an answer: ‘the great power of [man’s] Governour
[…] I compared to Leviathan, taking that comparison out
of the two last verses of the one and fortieth of Job; where
God having set forth the great power of Leviathan, called
him King of the Proud.’201 But this is curiously
perfunctory. The image of the ‘one and fortieth of Job’ is
not at all as reassuring as Bosse’s — which already seems
scary enough. In the Book of Job, Leviathan is a horrific
201
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, XXVIII
360
creature. Armoured with plated shields, snarling with
‘fearsome teeth’, ‘its snorting throws out flashes of light;
its eyes are like the rays of dawn. Flames stream from its
mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. […] It makes the depths
churn like a boiling caldron’ (Job 41:20–21, 31). Hobbes
obscures this frightening image even as he cites it.
Emblazoned as it is in the title of work, however, for any
reader who is scripturally aware — as indeed Hobbes’s
readers were — it lurks irrepressibly in the background of
the text. Chained between the lines, its thrashing echoes
across Hobbes’s relentless argumentation.
Carl Schmitt, who fancied himself — with more than a
grain of justification — the Hobbes of the twentieth
century, proposed to solve the contradiction in an esoteric
piece of iconographic research, The Leviathan in the
State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. For Schmitt, the
problem was simple: Hobbes had picked the wrong
image. With more than an overtone of anti-Semitism —
he was, at least in public, by this point in 1938 a devoted
acolyte of the Nazi regime — Schmitt complains that the
pre-existence of the scriptural, Jewish image of the
Leviathan, supposedly entirely other than the rigorous
Hobbesian construction of the symbol, defeated Hobbes’s
purposes. Leviathan, Schmitt states, ‘evokes […] dreadful
Asiatic myths of an all-demanding Moloch or an
all-trampling Golem. According to cabbalistic views, the
leviathan is thought of as a huge animal with which the
Jewish God plays daily for a few hours’.202 This parade of
‘Asiatic’ horribles could only be construed as entirely
opposite to Hobbes’s intentions; as the apex image of the
modern state, Hobbes used it ‘without horror and without
202
C. Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas
Hobbes, tr. G. Schwab and E. Hilfstein, (Westport: Greenwood
Press, 1996), 57.
361
reverence’, an entirely rational and un-‘cabbalistic’
construction.203
Poor
Hobbes,
however,
was
overwhelmed: just a few years after Leviathan’s
appearance, we are told, Spinoza the liberal Jew
perceived at once the contradictions, and forced the
‘barely visible crack’ open, ‘sapping the leviathan’s vitality
from within’ and opening the ‘telling inroad of modern
liberalism’.204
Schmitt’s fable puts Hobbes in an unenviable position:
while rescuing Hobbes’s thought from the supposed
problems of his symbol and restoring it, Schmitt
undermines both the extent of his influence and the depth
of his imagery. Liberal political theory, going back to
Spinoza, is construed as something radically
anti-Hobbesian, a cancer perverting Leviathan from
within that metastasised almost immediately after
Hobbes’s formulation of the concept. If there is a moment
of salvation for Schmitt, it is merely that ‘on the thought
processes of total technology the leviathan can no longer
make a sinister impression’ — this manifest failure of the
symbol will, at last, free Hobbes from the ‘dreadful Asiatic
myths’, finally permitting the sober application of his
theory to the Hobbesian age of modern politics.
Let us begin by offering to be more generous to Hobbes
than Schmitt was. Liberal political theory is not, today, an
anti-Hobbesian construct: the construction of any state
on a constitutional basis depends on certain Hobbesian
assumptions, the assumptions of a social contract theory.
Together with Machiavelli’s Prince, Hobbes’s Leviathan
offers a descriptive analysis that was central to the birth
203
Ibid., 95.
204
C. Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas
Hobbes, 57.
362
of political science, and it is an analysis with staying
power precisely because of the force of its representation
of the state form in abstract.
Yet Schmitt is correct in one respect. The quality of
Leviathan as religious symbol — the terror of its image in
Job, its subjugation as a plaything of God — is of decisive
importance not just for the immediate trajectory of
Hobbes’s political theory, as Schmitt thought; it points to
a problem inherent to the practice of politics. For in
Hobbes’s political theology, we enter — to use his own
phrase — a ‘kingdom of darkness’.
It is a darkness that overwhelms not just Hobbes, but
modern politics as such.
2. The Enthusiast
Everything under heaven belongs to me.
— Job 41:11
The term ‘catastrophe’ in the general sense in which we
use it today originates in the prophetic upheaval of the
Hobbesian era, the English Civil War. Perhaps the earliest
surviving usage is to be found in a short Fifth-Monarchist
pamphlet of 1654 entitled, appropriately, The Grand
Catastrophe: here, the ‘grand catastrophe’ is identified
with God’s ‘resolve […] to change the forme of
Government from what it was now […] unto what it was
better’.205 The historical significance of this obscure text
205
‘Johannes Cornubiensis’, The Grand Catastrophe, or the
change of Government, being a word about the last turne of
these times (1654), 2.
363
far exceeds the content of its arguments. It stands,
chronologically, at the head of an entire ‘catastrophic’
literature of the later seventeenth century that purported
to divine the significance of the ongoing motions of
politics according to the movements of the heavens. In
the 1680s we find the Catastrophe Mundi, or, Europe’s
many mutations of the mathematician and astrologer
John Holwell beside the similarly titled Catastrophe
Mundi, or Merlin Reviv’d of the magician, associate of
John Dee, and former Civil War propagandist William
Lilly, each offering its occult prognoses of the impending
arrival of a new order of the European states.206
If the occult stands at the historical root of the concept of
catastrophe, however, there is also something peculiarly
catastrophic about the occult. The term disaster, after all,
is equally astrological: disaster, the falling constellation
— ‘the stars down to earth’. The association between
turmoil in heaven and earth is in itself hardly specific to
the Western occult tradition, of course: this is the heart of
astrology as such, reaching back to the ancient magi of
Babylon, repeated equally on the other side of the world
in the Chinese notion of the ‘mandate of heaven’ or
‘heaven’s command’, tianming, 天命, which locates the
underlying order of the labyrinth of the political in the
will of heaven made manifest as fate.207 But where
tianming posits a transcendent order, it is ostensibly in
206
J. Holwell, Catastrophe Mundi, or, Europe’s many mutations
until the year 1701… (1682); W. Lilly, Catastrophe Mundi: or,
Merlin Reviv’d, in a Discourse of Prophecies and Predictions
(1683).
207
On the differences in Chinese and Western conceptions of
technics and time, see Y. Hui, The Question Concerning
Technology in China (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2016); A.
Greenspan, Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade (London:
Hurst & Company, 2014).
364
the modern West — beginning in the Hobbesian moment
and extended in the relentless naturalisation of
‘catastrophe’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
firstly after the great Lisbon earthquake, and then in the
geological theory of catastrophism — that the occult
reality of ‘catastrophe’ assumes the aspect of something
truly monstrous, a figure of absolute exteriority, of
heterotopic nightmare.
And so back to Hobbes himself. To the modern reader,
the serious political theorist, it seems almost
embarrassing that nearly half of Leviathan is made up of
its treatment of theology in Parts III and IV, with its
discussion of the ‘kingdom of darknesse’ and its sprawling
digressions on prophecies and scriptural esoterica,
demons, witchcraft, and miracles. Yet Hobbes’s text is not
just wracked by, but is founded on a psychotic intolerance
of the ‘Enthusiasts’, the ‘theomancers’, the ‘prophets’,
those men and women throughout human history who
have claimed that God could speak through them; who
have claimed, more radically, to see beyond politics
directly into the occult circuitry of which all human affairs
are merely the simulated emanation.208 From Hobbes’s
perspective, the catastrophic occultist stands in the gloom
of the outside, looming as a spectre of militant opposition
to the suspension of catastrophe by the state, welling up
from the residues of reality the state has failed to
overcome.
Over and over, Leviathan returns to the need to suppress
the Enthusiast in all its guises: in chapter 7, chapter 8,
208
My argument owes much to Takuya Okada’s ‘Thomas
Hobbes on Christian Religion in the Context of the English Civil
War: His Use of the Bible in Leviathan’ (unpublished PhD
dissertation, University of Tokyo, 2016).
365
chapter 12, chapter 32, chapter 34…. Casting his gaze over
the vista of ruin wrought in seventeenth-century England
by the enthusiastic sects, Hobbes could see all too well
that this figure was the single most dangerous
vulnerability of the commonwealth. Leviathan may be a
terrible beast, a plated colossus impregnable to any
human weapon, churning whirlpools of slaughter with its
belly as it breathes the fire of reason from its mouth. Yet
above Leviathan there stands God, transcendent mystery
— and to lay claim to the voice of God himself leaves
Leviathan among the detritus of the transcended. Schmitt
was precisely correct in seeing the Jewish image of
Leviathan as making it a ‘plaything of God’, then; but he
was disastrously wrong in assuming that this is a problem
exterior to Hobbes’s theory. This paranoia is central to
Hobbes himself. ‘Everything under Heaven belongs to
me’ — yet not Heaven itself….
Hobbes’s answer to the problem was simple — at first
sight, at least. Thought must be controlled at its very
roots, in its ulterior basis in myth. The very possibility of
the theomantic short-circuit around Leviathan must be
stamped out; all human disagreements must be
evaporated first into the determinate text of scripture,
and ultimately into the orthodoxy pronounced in the
commands of the Persona Civitatis, the aggregate ‘Person
of the Common-wealth’. He puts the point most sharply
in an earlier part of the book, while discussing the
universal basis of the pagan commonwealths:
‘Sometimes,’ he says, the ‘insignificant Speeches of
Mad-men [were] supposed to be possessed with a divine
Spirit; which Possession they called Enthusiasme; and
these kinds of foretelling events, were accounted
Theomancy […] And therefore the first Founders, and
Legislators of Common-wealths […] have in all places
366
taken care, First, to imprint in their minds a beliefe, that
those precepts which they gave concerning Religion,
might not be thought to proceed from their own device.’
209
If the modern liberal disdains the kind of supercilious
totalitarianism implied in this solution — and of course,
for Hobbes, in a Christian commonwealth this is not a
matter of spreading lies in the form of pagan myths, but
of upholding the truth of scripture itself — she may see
Hobbes’s point better when confronted by the reality of
the civil war in the context of which he was writing. His
later retrospective, Behemoth, sketched the problem in
gruesome detail. The English Civil War had its roots in
the proliferation of swarming sects with infinite ‘names
and peculiar doctrines’, incubating chambers spawning
‘enemies which arose against his Majesty from the private
interpretation of the Scripture, exposed to every man’s
scanning in his mother-tongue’.210 On the surface, this is
a limited point about a specific historical episode; but in
its shadow lies the nightmare of society itself. For
radically, in an ordered society, the insectoid buzz of
heterodoxy must always and already appear as a
nightmare. The liberal who proclaims against Hobbes the
doctrine of free speech will often prove just as susceptible
to the terror: for the state, there must always be a limit to
thought.
There is, however, a curious quality, a deep
dissatisfaction, lurking in Hobbes’s mythic solution of the
problem — on its own terms, and not just those of an
exterior moralism. If the commonwealth installs itself as
209
210
Hobbes, Leviathan, XII.
Hobbes, Behemoth: or, the Long Parliament, Dialogue I.
367
the king of the proud, the avatar of God, how does it not
itself become sectarian? To maintain itself, the state must
neuter or eliminate ‘every religion that exalts itself to be
its judge’; but in doing so, the state must itself assume the
aspect of a ‘definite form of religion’, becoming the fount
of truth.211 So far, so good, perhaps, as long as the
commonwealth can monopolise the thought of its
members — but in the emergency where it cannot, things
soon take on a rather different appearance. The more
sharply it is confronted by the prophets of catastrophe,
the more ruthlessly sectarian it must become, dividing the
good and the evil, denouncing its enemies with furious
vitriol. The Persona Civitatis becomes caught in the very
matrix of the religious paranoia it denounces, as it shrieks
the ill omens betokened by its opponents. It is precisely
this contradiction that Leo Strauss articulated through
the paradox of Hobbes’s ‘Platonism’. Following Plato,
Strauss argued, Hobbes desires a ‘completely passionless,
purely rational political philosophy’, yet he wishes also a
‘norm […] applicable under all circumstances, under the
most unfavourable circumstances, in the extreme cases’
(the case, we may add, of the Enthusiast). And so his
norm enters, despite itself, into ‘accord with the
passions’; it must become radically anti-Platonist.212
Finally, pretending to transcend the Enthusiast, the
commonwealth itself becomes a ‘demonic machine’, a
tremendous enthusiasm mobilised against every other, all
themselves constituted as enthusiasms relative to it.213
211
F. Nietzsche, ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’, Untimely
Meditations.
212
L. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and
Its Genesis [1936], tr. E .Sinclair (Chicago and London, 1952),
150.
213
On Leviathan as infernal machine, see P. Springborg,
‘Hobbes and Schmitt on the name and nature of Leviathan
revisited’, in Johan Tralau (ed.), Thomas Hobbes and Carl
368
The process, of course, operates just as much in the
opposite direction. The sect tends to become like a state.
This is the sociological tendency described in Max
Weber’s theory of the routinisation of charisma, the
processes of mediation that transform the compact
charismatic community that adheres around a leader
‘completely outside everyday social organisation’ into an
extensive and bureaucratised institutional church:214 from
the early Christians to the Catholic Church; from the
immediacy of the original Raëlian UFO cult, where the
revelations of the literally alien Outside were made
manifest directly to the faithful, to the bureaucracy of the
latter-day Raëlians, with its increasing regulation of
access to the divine.215 The same idea is found equally in
the genealogy of the state itself, in Rousseau’s figure of
the Legislator, that promethean silhouette at the origin of
every state whose genius projects its entire constitutional
course — is this not the figure of a prophet?216 Can there
be an orthodoxy that is more than an overgrown
heterodoxy? Can there be a heterodoxy that does not
assume the position of an orthodoxy? The whole
endeavour of human politics seems little more than the
current alternating between the two, the state flipping
Schmitt: The Politics of Order and Myth (Abingdon: Routledge,
2011), 39–58.
214
M. Weber, The Theory of Economic and Social Organization,
tr. A. M. Henderson and T. Parsons (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1947), 367.
215
See S. J. Palmer, Aliens Adored: Raël’s UFO Religion (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 101.
216
J.J. Rousseau, Of the Social Contract, Book II, Chapter 7.
As Schmitt recognises, the gaze of the Legislator lurks at the
root of every constitution: C. Schmitt, Dictatorship: From the
Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to the Proletarian
Class Struggle, tr. M. Hoelzl and G. Ward (Cambridge: Polity,
2014), 109–10.
369
across the cycles of history, oscillating endlessly between
sect and church.
3. The Despot and the Patchwork
Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie
down its tongue with a rope? … Will traders
barter for it? Will they divide it up among the
merchants?
— Job 41:1, 6
The character of the state — not just in the architecture of
Hobbes’s theory, but as such — is precisely that of a
demonic machine. The impasse of enthusiasm is not
simply an intellectual failing on Hobbes’s part, then; we
cannot dissociate, as Schmitt attempted, the rational
sovereign of Bosse’s image from the esoteric Leviathan of
Job 41. To sustain itself in the most extreme of
conditions, the rational sovereign must become entirely,
furiously, irrational. This impasse is inherent to the state
form itself. Hobbes’s enduring insight lies precisely in his
ability, at the very origins of the modern state, to
formulate its paradoxes so decisively.
Two competing responses have arisen to the manifest
terror of Leviathan. They are, respectively, a revivalist
and an antagonist response. The revivalist response is
best characterised by Schmitt, who mourns the fall of ‘the
“mortal god” […] from his throne’: in the pluralistic
society, he complains, ‘the parties slaughter the powerful
Leviathan and slice pieces from the flesh of his body’.217
217
C. Schmitt, ‘Staatsethik und pluralistischer Staat’, quoted in
J. McCormick, Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism: Against
370
Gripped by processes outside the control of the state, the
world has decayed from the Hobbesian ideal — so we are
told. Yet it is precisely this degeneracy that lets us see,
with crystal clarity, the enduring wisdom of the sage of
Malmesbury, and behoves us to restore Leviathan’s
ruined throne. Shorn of his inconvenient imagery,
Hobbes must be revived. In his essay on the ‘Dark
Enlightenment’, Nick Land has — seemingly unknowingly
— repeated this Schmittian complaint. ‘Governments are
made out of people,’ Land states, ‘and they will eat well’.
The question, then, is this: ‘How can the sovereign power
be prevented — or at least dissuaded — from devouring
society?’218 For Schmitt, the question was of similar
dimensions: How is the independence of ‘the political’
from the aesthetic, the economic, from all the other
‘various relatively independent endeavours of human
thought and action’, to be maintained?219
In the end, Hobbes shows us that it cannot be
maintained. Precisely like Schmitt, like the ‘Dark
Enlightenment’, Hobbes wanted a sovereign as restrained
as necessary for a stable society: it would deal not with
‘sciences Mathematicall’, for instance, but strictly with
law and ethics, maintaining merely the covenant that is
the essential ground of any civil society.220 But to be
sustained even in the most radical state of exception, in
conditions
of
overwhelming
catastrophe,
the
commonwealth’s domination must expand irrepressibly
Politics as Technology (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1997), 276.
218
N. Land, ‘The Dark Enlightenment’:
http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/thedarkenlightenmentby
nickland/
219
C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, tr. George Schwab
(Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2007), 25.
220
Hobbes, Leviathan, XXXI.
371
from the radical root of human thought into every circle
of existence. It must ‘devour society’. This was the root of
Hobbes’s byzantine obsession with the occult, the
delirious loops that trapped him in the ‘kingdom of
darkness’: even the most restrained of states cannot
tolerate the existential opposition of the Enthusiast, and
as sectarian exceptions and negative glitches flood the
body of Leviathan, the shields over its body must lock
down, and the monster must transform into its terrible
mode of siege, switching from Bosse to Job as it becomes
a creature of fire and blood. Schmitt, just prior to the
dawn of the Third Reich, tried to distinguish the
‘qualitative totalitarianism’ necessary for the sustenance
of the state, which he drew from Hegel, from the
‘quantitative totalitarianism’ of intervention in every
sphere of human life.221 The distinction failed. Once
threatened, Leviathan must warp everything around itself
in order to maintain its existence — all thought, all
ideology, all behaviour. Politics must get a grip —
whatever the cost.
If revivalist Hobbesianism proves foreclosed, the political
theorist may feel led to an antagonist response to
Hobbes. Land himself posits this alternative when he
suggests that neoreaction is ‘recognizably Hobbesian […]
devoid from its beginning of any Rousseauistic
enthusiasm for popular expression’: if Hobbes is too
frightening, perhaps we should turn to Rousseau.222
221
C. Schmitt, ‘Weiterentwicklung des totalen Staats in
Deutschland’ (1933).
222
For an explicit case for radicalism against Hobbes, see, for
instance, J. Gilbert, Common Ground: Democracy and
Collectivity in an Age of Individualism (London: Pluto, 2014).
Gilbert has elsewhere posited this explicitly against Land,
accepting Land’s dichotomy between Hobbesian reaction and
antiHobbesian radicalism. See also Gilles Châtelet’s
372
Superficially, this may seem like an obvious choice: after
all, is Rousseau not the very opposite of Hobbes, believing
mankind to be inherently good, praising the state of
nature, condemning human artifice? For the historian of
political thought, however, the dichotomy quickly falls
apart. Rousseau’s underlying ‘Hobbism’ has been a
perennial topic of note: Rousseau, like Hobbes, believes
that ‘before the social contract there could be neither
government nor courts’;223 Rousseau, like Hobbes, sees
the natural condition of civilised man as the war of all
against all. In his infamous letter to Mirabeau, Rousseau
made this explicit. The underlying issue of all political
thought, ‘the great problem of Politics’, he states, is ‘to
find a form of Government that might place the law above
man’. But ‘if unfortunately this form cannot be found, and
I frankly admit that I believe that it cannot be […] I would
wish the despot could be God. I see no tolerable mean
between the most austere Democracy and the most
perfect Hobbism’ — and democracy, for Rousseau, can
only ever be a government of the superhuman.224
This may seem like an issue peculiar to Rousseau himself,
but the problem can be generalised. Radical democrats in
power have ever devoted themselves to the task of
political education: for them as for Rousseau, civilised
man has become corrupt, and the state must be mobilised
denunciation of Hobbes’s ‘social physics’ and its neoliberal
legacy, in To Live and Think Like Pigs (Falmouth and New York:
Urbanomic/Sequence Press, 2014).
223
I. Hont, ‘Adam Smith’s history of law and government as
political theory’, in R. Bourke and R. Geuss (eds), Political
Judgement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009),
131–71: 148.
224
Rousseau to Mirabeau, 26 July 1767, in J.J. Rousseau, V.
Gourevitch (ed), The Social Contract and Other Later Political
Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 270.
373
to restore them to a purer state — the Montagnards and
the Leninists each identified perverse and ghoulish
tendencies of a corrupted humanity that needed
ruthlessly to be stamped out. The reality of popular desire
exceeds necessarily their own. But the moment of
maturity is endlessly deferred, the exception in which a
dictatorship is established yawns into eternity: political
education turns into grim authoritarianism. It assumes
the character of the sect. This, then, locates exactly the
problem of the Relative Enthusiast. Just as the state must
assume the aspect of sectarianism to stamp out the sects
that challenge it, the Enthusiast who wishes to demolish
the state by appeal to the transcendent becomes, in
power, the king of the proud, since she herself has now
taken the mantle of mediator between God and the
profane, and must suppress the theomantic short circuit
that reaches over her head. The Relative Enthusiast must
install, by sociological inevitability, a state. The mask of
the anti-Hobbesian is ripped off — and the despot as God
stares out from beneath.
Ripping up Leviathan is harder than it seems. Perhaps we
will be better served by another vehicle that Land has
mobilised to restrain the power of Leviathan — at least on
the level of its extensive territoriality. This is the
neo-Westphalian theory of the patchwork. Derived from
the neoreactionary thinker Curtis Yarvin, the patchwork
presents an image of endless fission, ‘a global spiderweb
of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of sovereign and
independent mini-countries’, each with its own internal,
‘neocameralist’ sovereign.225 This image should not be
225
‘Mencius Moldbug’ (Curtis Yarvin), ‘Patchwork: A Positive
Vision (Part 1)’:
http://unqualifiedreservations.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/patchwork
positivevisionpart1.html
374
dismissed as ‘fascist’. It reprises a tradition of Western
political thought that reaches back across the doctrine of
cuius regio to the very origins of nationalism in the
medieval French reaction against the universalist
pretences of the Emperor; in its substance, it is clearly
antagonistic to the universality of the fascist state with its
insatiable thirst for conquest and death.
Yet patchwork remains, despite itself, peculiarly
ambivalent. It is obsessed with the state: creating new
states, cutting up states, states on top of states…. At an
elementary level, however, it seems that competition
between states must favour states themselves, and for this
we have many great proofs throughout history — the
emergence of the truly protofascist Qin Empire from the
fissiparous warring Chinese states; the rise of Alexander’s
empire from the Greek poleis; the birth of raison d’état in
Renaissance Italian city-states. (At least part of this
tendency has been formulated rigorously by Peter
Turchin.)226 To truly move beyond Leviathan in all its
universalising terror requires not the multiplication of
Leviathans, at which point we are already within the
Hobbesian trap, encouraging the monster in its
sectarianism, provoking the pathologies that have led to
imperium. It requires a radical ambivalence to the state
as such — an uncompromising identification with those
processes today of mass production and mass flows of
politics that overwhelm and obsolesce the state itself.
States, of course, decay. It is something altogether more
radical to posit that the state form itself will decay. We
must turn from a patchwork of states to the infectious
patchwork within the state, a recursive dissolution that
226
P. Turchin, ‘A theory for the formation of large empires’,
Journal of Global History 4:2 (2009), 191–217.
375
leaves not a network of states, but an endless flux in
which the state itself disintegrates into the very war that
sustains it. For this conception, we must turn to
Nietzsche.
4. The Swarm of the Future
Who can strip off its outer coat? Who can
penetrate its double coat of armour?
— Job 41:13
Nietzsche was the first radically anti-Hobbesian political
philosopher. This all-important point has been made,
independently, from two very different perspectives. In
his book Nietzsche’s Great Politics, the intellectual
historian Hugo Drochon has argued systematically that
‘Nietzsche does offer a systematic political theory of the
state […] one that is an alternative to the social contract
tradition’. Where Hobbes writes in a period of decay and
collapse yet assumes the role of the philosopher of the
commonwealth triumphant, Nietzsche writes in a time of
overwhelming bureaucratisation, at the apex of Hegelian
Staatswissenschaft, yet becomes the philosopher of the
state’s decay.227 Meanwhile, in a brief passage of his The
Thirst for Annihilation, Land, too — despite his later turn
to Hobbes — points out the essential novelty of
Nietzsche’s political theory. For Nietzsche, he says, the
state does not merely suspend within its territory the
primal war of all against all, as it does in Hobbes and all
the theorists who follow him. Rather, ‘even in his earliest
writings Nietzsche is explicit […] that the polis — along
227
H. Drochon, Nietzsche’s Great Politics (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2016), 51.
376
with its telic integration — is a consequence of
pre-political militarism’: it is not the regulatory end, but
the vessel and conduit of war ‘in its uninhibited and
extravagant root’.228
If we are to escape from the conceptual Hobbesian
antinomy, from the crushing unity of the nominally
anti-Hobbesian radicalism of many on the left and the
explicit reassertion of Leviathan on the right, we could do
worse than to return to Land’s early work, and begin
anew with Nietzsche. For Nietzsche, states are an
epiphenomenon, conduits instantiated merely as
moments of a great flow of intensities. The state is not a
determinate contract, established, as for Hobbes or
Rousseau, through agreement implicit or explicit, once
and ideally for all eternity — the ‘Covenant of every man
with every man’.229 In its origins, it is instead the
contingent and violent imposition of force by a
‘conquering horde’, a military caste ‘raised […]
pyramidally upon the lowest, broadest, slavish stratum’.
230
The stratified state itself seethes with viral conflict
between its strata — on this, Nietzsche aligns with Marx.
‘There is no hope of a nation without war, or a people
without conquest.’231 The most ‘transparent’ state is not
the modern constitutional democracy, then: it is ancient
Sparta, which each year declared war upon its own
subjects. Tangled unavoidably in the war that forms the
condition and basis of its existence, the state is subjected
to a ‘zone of impotence’, penetrated by an ‘insurrectionary
228
N. Land, The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and
Virulent Nihilism (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 105.
229
Hobbes, Leviathan, XVII.
230
Drochon, Nietzsche’s Great Politics, 10; Nietzsche, ‘The
Greek State’, quoted in Land, Thirst for Annihilation, 105.
231
Katastromancer, ‘On Impossibility’. urcC: [Dead link]
377
flow of mobilisation [it] converts and diverts without
being able to control and define’.232
This alternative conception of the origins of the state has
now found considerable empirical support in recent
historiography. We may cite here, for instance, Sanjay
Subrahmanyam’s observation that many of the states of
early modern Asia were formed ‘through the mediation of
migratory elites’ circulating across the continent, or Peter
Turchin’s quantitatively informed ‘mirror-empire’ theory,
which explains the process of ‘imperiogenesis’ as an
escalating arms race between nomad and settler
populations.233 In each case, the high-minded pretensions
of the state to transcendence as the ‘king of the proud’
and avatar of God are collapsed into its transcended
reality as a secondary circuit of the grand flux of war —
better, it remains the avatar of God, but War is God.
For the human political subject, this neo-Heraclitean
conception is far more ruinous than that of Hobbes: with
the very possibility of a social contract or covenant
demolished, the state returns radically to its basis in
slavery. Yet this very reduction liberates, renders
inhuman, the figure of the Enthusiast, which now reaches
beyond the circuit of sectarian politics. In Hobbes’s
theory, the state must block the road to the occult and
catastrophic heart of reality; what is more, it must assume
this task with paranoiac obsession, since if it fails, society
and history themselves will collapse, endless competing
sects erupting from the decaying body politic. In
232
S. Metcalf, ‘Killing Time’, Abstract Culture 2:1, Ccru.
S. Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia,
1500–1700 (Chichester: Wiley, second edition, 2012), 21; P.
Turchin, ‘A theory for the formation of large empires’, Journal of
Global History 4:2 (2009), 191–217.
233
378
Nietzsche’s atheology, by contrast, the state is nothing so
important: it is itself an insurrectionary feature of war,
disposable and contingent. At its terminus there remains
nothing around which it is necessary to route.
Catastrophe, once exteriorised, now extends into the state
itself; ‘the net itself is infected’ and the body of Leviathan
rots with spectacular diseases.234 In this context, the
relative enthusiasm of the traditional sect into which the
Hobbesian state itself digresses is juxtaposed to an
absolute, swarmachinic enthusiasm that is not merely
opposed to the state, but ruthlessly indifferent, even
ironical, a subjectivity beyond political comprehension
pulsing transcendental heterodoxy: not a force of
destruction motivated by a feeling of the transcendent,
but a force of obsolescence in total communion with war.
235
Nietzsche himself conceived of his work as a religious
intervention — it is a ‘tremendous asset’, he stated in a
letter, ‘to be read like the Bible’.236 But it was an
intervention far beyond anything that had come before.
It is always tempting to perform yet another restoration
of Hobbes, whether explicit as in the ‘Dark
Enlightenment’, or occulted as in the Left’s
straight-Enlightenment nostalgia for the many mutations
of social contract theory. All of these accept as friend or
enemy the Hobbesian commonwealth as a site of order
234
S. Plant and N. Land, ‘Cyberpositive’ [1994], in R. Mackay
and A. Avanessian (eds), #Accelerate: The Accelerationist
Reader (Falmouth and Berlin: Urbanomic/Merve, 2014), 303–13.
235
The figure of the Absolute Enthusiast is also foreshadowed in
Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh’s reading of the sectarian: see J.B.
Mohaghegh, Insurgent, Poet, Mystic, Sectarian: The Four Masks
of an Eastern Postmodernism (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015),
Part IV: ‘Sectarian’.
236
Nietzsche to Paul Duessen, 26 November 1888 (No. 1159).
My translation.
379
and interiority in which the catastrophic outside is
suspended: they thus repeat the trajectory of the Relative
Enthusiast. This image itself is Hobbesian, and Schmitt’s
revivalism lurks in the very distinction between enemy
and friend; the counterhegemonic project constructs
mirror-empires in place of moving beyond imperium
itself. The terminal development of technocapitalism as it
overwhelms the state compels the theorist to take a more
radically opposite view. That Leviathan can no longer
make a ‘sinister impression’ in an age of ‘total technology’
is not the mere ‘failure of a symbol’ that frees Hobbes
from the disastrous weight of his symbology, the moment
that lets the modern reader at long last ‘across the
centuries reach out: Thomas Hobbes, now you do not
teach in vain!’237 It is an escalating system-failure that
crashes Hobbes’s political theology, pointing to the
obsolescence of the state form itself, the self-overcoming
of the Hobbesian era.
Against Leviathan’s grip on humanity, its suppression of
heterodoxies, the reality of the fluid and globalised Earth,
with its expanding spaces of negativity, its intensifying
excesses and flows of mobilisation, and its opportunities
for exit, calls us towards a higher register, to formulate an
Anti-Leviathan: an enthusiasm that will be absolute, not
relative, comfortable in its disjuncture, a theoretical
orientation that is not dependent on a praxis of repetition
of hegemony, but is open and expectant towards the
processes that are ripping up the Leviathan — divesting it
of its oceanic pretences, and drowning it in the expansive
flux of the deep, green sea….
237
Schmitt, Leviathan in the State Theory, 86.
380
Skins and the Game
Uriel Alexis
Skins
Anything is only itself because it’s functionally different
from everything else. This computer I’m typing at is only
itself because it’s neither at the next desk, nor does it
function in the manner of an apple, amongst many other
things.
The degree of differentiation is not absolute. There is a
gradient of order from the inside core to the outside,
where others lie. There are, nonetheless, boundaries.
Permeable boundaries, but boundaries nonetheless.
Discontinuities where the gradient takes a leap.
A system238 is a difference between system and
environment. The more it becomes itself, the more it
deepens this difference, this discontinuity. There, at this
boundary, lie the operations such a system can perform —
the ways it lets the outside in. It is at this threshold that
its particular features are engraved.
Any inner endeavor is necessarily tied to an outside
behavior. Systems only survive through structural
coupling, or mutual variation. To be, then, is already to
trade away things that are inside.
At any given moment, this difference may become
paranoid. It then folds upon itself, and histericizes its
238
Niklas Luhmann, Introduction to Systems Theory
381
particularities, which is to say, it develops an identity.
Entrances are rigidified, reduced and finally narrowed
down to one single path of digestion, heavily securitized.
Membranes become skins. An organism is born out of the
system.
Organisms239 are parasites, though. Paranoiacs can’t
innovate, can’t produce. They just reproduce themselves.
So, when skins arise, it’s only because the systematics
have been pushed one level up. It’s only because there are
populations that individual organisms can evolve.
The Game
Conflict is primary, demonstrably so, as there’s no
agreement even on that. Thus strategy imposes itself at
every level: moving to stay the same, that’s the immediate
antinomy. When organisms come into being, systems
become a game. The only game in town:
variation-selection.
The game the whole system plays at the highest level is
fractally repeated within itself. It is on the order provided
by the game that organisms parasite, and as they
internalize this order, they fragment themselves,
dissolving back into the process.
When organisms play the game of variation-selection,
there are only so many strategies they can pursue. By far
the most important move is localization or individuation:
the ability to internalize, in ever smaller units, costs and
239
“Organisation is Suppression”, The Wired:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_E6CPm2IYsUS243N0YtNG5B
TVk/view
382
benefits. Organisms that don’t do that have a way more
complicated path ahead, and get used by those that do —
like pathogens use humans. Organisms collide and
conflict in order to engrave in themselves the only
knowledge they can pursue: survival. And thus the system
thrives.
But it may be that the system itself becomes paranoid.
This destroys the game entirely, and organises organisms
into a new, supra-organism. The larger the scale of this
move, the more risky it is (variation-selection is always
played at the highest levels, and supra-organisms have
serious disadvantages). An organism — without an
internal system — is always already a degenerating order.
On the contrary, an organism may itself systematize, relax
and let go. This becoming-membrane of skins lets plenty
in and individualizes consequences internally. The game
is now played at smaller levels, and ‘organ individualism’
becomes imaginable. From here all the way down to
0-degree organization (“intelligent dust cloud” or “grey
goo”240), it’s just acceleration.241
240
Hyperlink to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
“Grey goo (also spelled gray goo) is a hypothetical
endoftheworld scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in
which outofcontrol selfreplicating robots consume all biomass
on Earth while building more of themselves, a scenario that has
been called ecophagy ("eating the environment", more literally
"eating the habitation"). The original idea assumed machines
were designed to have this capability, while popularizations have
assumed that machines might somehow gain this capability by
accident.”
241
Hyperlink to :
https://antinomiaimediata.wordpress.com/2017/05/15/innertime/
383
Leviathan’s Termites
Vince Garton argues:
Yet patchwork remains, despite itself, peculiarly
ambivalent. It is obsessed with the state:
creating new states, cutting up states, states on
top of states. … At an elementary level, however,
it seems that competition between states must
favour states themselves, and for this we have
many great proofs throughout history — the
emergence of the truly protofascist Qin Empire
from the fissiparous warring Chinese states; the
rise of Alexander’s empire from the Greek poleis;
the birth of raison d’état in Renaissance Italian
city-states.242
Is it true that patchwork must favor states? Surely,
systems can become paranoid and organize. The
examples he presents of China and the Greek poleis
would attest to this. But since hegemony is atrophy, every
single one of these movements decayed after their
formation (Alexander’s example immediately so), until
they collapsed under their own weight back into a system
of moving parts.
Garton is not satisfied:
The question, then, is this: ‘How can the
sovereign power be prevented — or at least
dissuaded — from devouring society?’ […] In the
end, Hobbes shows us that it cannot be
242
Vince Garton, Leviathan Rots:
https://www.urbanomic.com/document/leviathanrots/
384
maintained. […] But to be sustained even in the
most radical state of exception, in conditions of
overwhelming catastrophe, the commonwealth’s
domination must expand irrepressibly from the
radical root of human thought into every circle
of existence. It must ‘devour society’. […] Once
threatened, Leviathan must warp everything
around itself in order to maintain its existence —
all thought, all ideology, all behaviour. Politics
must get a grip — whatever the cost.
Which brings us to the topic of sovereignty, or self-rule. I
want to advance here that sovereignty is indistinguishable
from the ability to trade itself away. Without a matrix of
commerce — a system — in which bits and pieces flow, all
notions of self-rule, autonomy or ‘control’ are rendered
moot. That which can’t break itself apart dies off. I dug
deeply into this elsewhere243: power only works to the
extent that it is internally checked. An all encompassing
monster is rotting indeed.
Land sets the primary steps on this road:
More promising, by far — for the purposes of
tractable argument — is a strictly formal or
contractual usage of ‘control’ to designate the
exclusive right to free disposal or commercial
alienation. Defined this way, ownership is a
legal category, co-original with the idea of
contract, referring to those things which one has
the right to trade (based on natural law).
243
Uriel Alexis, “Neocameralism and Constitutions”, Antinomia
Imediata:
https://antinomiaimediata.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/neocamera
lismandconstitutions/
385
Property is essentially marketable. It cannot
exist unless it can be alienated through
negotiation. A prince who cannot trade away his
territory does not ‘own’ it in any sense that
matters.
[…]
Neocameralism necessarily commercializes
sovereignty, and in doing so it accommodates
power to natural law. Sovereign stock (‘primary
property’) and ‘secondary property’ become
commercially inter-changeable, dissolving the
original distinction, whilst local sovereignty is
rendered compliant with the wider commercial
order, and thus becomes a form of constrained
‘secondary sovereignty’ relative to the primary or
absolute sovereignty of the system itself. Final
authority bleeds out into the catallactic
ensemble, the agora, or commercium, where
what can really happen is decided by natural
law. It is this to which sovereign stockholders, if
they are to be effective, and to prosper, must
defer.244
A recipe for consistent dissolution, which structurally
avoids paranoiac re-capture.
Patchwork, insofar as it breaks its neocameral pieces
apart in a systematic commercium of sovereignty, is a
recipe for the “ambivalence” Garton himself recommends.
Recursively implementing its own dynamics into the
244
Nick Land, “Quibbles with Moldbug”:
https://oldnicksite.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/quibbleswithmold
bug/
386
organisms that comprise it, Patchwork is a machine that
kills Leviathans. Neocameral sovcorps are the bacterial
termites that rot them away, implementing “the infectious
patchwork within the state, a recursive dissolution that
leaves not a network of states, but an endless flux in
which the state itself disintegrates into the very war that
sustains it”, of which Garton writes.
Whatever skin or membrane remains is for the game to
decide.
387
Whitman
Gilles Deleuze
With much confidence and tranquility, Whitman states
that writing is, fragmentary, and that the American writer
has to devote himself to writing in fragments. This is
precisely what disturbs us — assigning this task to
America, as if Europe had not progressed along this same
path. But perhaps we should recall the difference
Holderlin discovered between the Greeks and the
Europeans: what is natal or innate in the first must be
acquired or conquered by the second, and vice-versa.245
In a different manner, this is how things stand with the
Europeans and the Americans. Europeans have an innate
sense of organic totality, or composition, but they have to
acquire the sense of the fragment, and can do so only
through a tragic reflection or an experience of disaster.
Americans, on the contrary, have a natural sense for the
fragment, and what they have to conquer is the feel for
the totality, for beautiful composition. The fragment
already exists in a nonreflective manner, preceding any
effort: we make plans, but when the time comes to act, we
"tumble the thing together, letting hurry and crudeness
tell the story better than fine work."246 What is
characteristic of America is therefore not the
fragmentary, but the spontaneity of the fragmentary:
245
Friedrich Hölderlin, “Remarks on ‘Oedipus,’” in Essays and
Letters on Theory, ed. and trans. Thomas Pfau (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 1018, and Jean
Beaufret’s commentaries in Remarques sur Oedipe (Paris:
Union Générale d’Éditions, 1018, 1965).
246
Walt Whitman, Speciman Days, in The Portable Walt
Whitman, ed. Mark Van Doren (New York: Viking, 1973), “A
Happy Hour’s Command,” pp. 38788.
388
"Spontaneous, fragmentary," says Whitman.247 In
America, literature is naturally convulsive: "they are but
parts of the actual distraction, heat, smoke, and
excitement of those times." But "convulsiveness," as
Whitman makes clear, characterizes the epoch and the
country as much as the writing.248 If the fragment is
innately American, it is because America itself is made up
of federated states and various immigrant peoples
(minorities) — everywhere a collection of fragments,
haunted by the menace of secession, that is to say, by war.
The experience of the American writer is inseparable
from the American experience, even when the writer does
not speak of America.
This is what gives the fragmentary work the immediate
value of a collective statement. Kafka said that in a minor
literature, that is, in the literature of a minority, there is
no private history that is not immediately public,
political, and popular: all literature becomes an "affair of
the people," and not of exceptional individuals.249 Is not
American literature the minor literature par excellence,
insofar as America claims to federate the most diverse
minorities, "a Nation swarming with nations"? America
brings together extracts, it presents samples from all ages,
all lands, and all nations.250 The simplest love story brings
247
Whitman, Specimen Days, “A Happy Hour’s Command,” pp.
38788.
248
Whitman, Specimen Days, “Convulsiveness,” p. 480.
249
Franz Kafka, Diaries 19101913, ed. Max Brod, trans. Joseph
Kresh (New York: Schoken, 1948), entry for December 25, 1911,
pp. 19198.
250
This is a constant theme in Leaves of Grass, in Walt
Whitman: Complete Poetry and Selected Prose and Letters, ed.
Emory Halloway (London: Nonesuch, 1964). See also Herman
Melville, Redburn: His Maiden Voyage (Evanston and Chicago:
Northwestern University Press and Newberry Library, 1969),
chapter 33, p. 169.
389
into play states, peoples, and tribes; the most personal
autobiography is necessarily collective, as can still be seen
in Wolfe or Miller. It is a popular literature created by the
people, by the "average bulk," like the creation of
America, and not by "great individuals."251 And from this
point of view, the Self [Moi] of the Anglo-Saxons, always
splintered, fragmentary, and relative, is opposed to the
substantial, total, and solipsistic I [Je] of the Europeans.
The world as a collection of heterogenous parts: an
infinite patchwork, or an endless wall of dry stones (a
cemented wall, or the pieces of a puzzle, would
reconstitute a totality). The world as a sampling: the
samples ("specimens") are singularities, remarkable and
nontotalizable parts extracted from a series of ordinary
parts. Samples of days, specimen days, says Whitman.
Specimens of cases, specimens of scenes or views (scenes,
shows, or sights). Sometimes the specimens are cases, in
which coexistent parts are separated by intervals of space
(the wounded in the hospitals), and sometimes they are
specimens of views, in which the successive phases of a
movement are separated by intervals of time (the
moments of an uncertain battle). In both instances, the
law is that of fragmentation. The fragments are grains,
"granulations." Selecting singular cases and minor scenes
is more important than any consideration of the whole. It
is in the fragments that the hidden background appears,
be it celestial or demonic. The fragment is "a reflection
afar off" of a bloody or peaceful reality.252 But the
fragments — the remarkable parts, cases, or views — must
251
Whitman, Specimen Days, “An Interviewer’s Intern,” pp.
57879.
252
Whitman, Specimen Days, “A Night’s Battle, over a Week
Since,” pp. 42224, and “The Real War Will Never Get in the
Books,” pp. 48284.
390
still be extracted by means of a special act, an act that
consists, precisely, in writing. For Whitman, fragmentary
writing is not defined by the aphorism or through
separation, but by a particular type of sentence that
modulates the interval. It is as if the syntax that composes
the sentence, which makes it a totality capable of
referring back to itself, tends to disappear by setting free
an infinite asyntactic sentence, which prolongs itself or
sprouts dashes in order to create spatiotemporal
intervals. Sometimes it appears as an occasional
enumerative sentence, an enumeration of cases as in a
catalog (the wounded in the hospital, the trees in a certain
locale), sometimes it is a processionary sentence, like a
protocol of phases or moments (a battle, convoys of
cattle, successive swarms of bumblebees). It is an almost
mad sentence, with its changes in direction, its
bifurcations, its ruptures and leaps, its prolongations, its
sproutings, its parentheses. Melville notes that "no
American writer should write like an Englishman."253
They have to dismantle the English language and send it
racing along a line of flight, thereby rendering the
language convulsive.
The law of the fragment is as valid for Nature as it is for
History, for the Earth as for War, for good as for evil. For
War and Nature indeed share a common cause: Nature
moves forward in procession, by sections, like the corps of
an army.254 A "procession" of crows or bumblebees. But if
it is true that the fragment is given everywhere, in the
253
Herman Melville, “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” in Herman
Melville, ed. R. W. B. Leavis (New York: Dell, 1962), p. 48. In the
same way, Whitman invokes the necessity of an American
literature “without a trace or taste of Europe’s soil, reminiscence,
technical letter or spirit” (Specimen Days, “The Prairies and
Great Plains in Poetry”, p. 573).
254
Whitman, Specimen Days, “BumbleBees,” pp. 48891.
391
most spontaneous manner, we have seen that the whole,
or an analogue of the whole, nonetheless has to be
conquered and even invented. Yet Whitman sometimes
places the Idea of the Whole beforehand, invoking a
cosmos that beckons us to a kind of fusion; in a
particularly "convulsive" meditation, he calls himself a
"Hegelian," he asserts that only America "realizes" Hegel,
and posits the primary rights of an organic totality.255 He
is then expressing himself like a European, who finds in
pantheism a reason to inflate his own ego. But when
Whitman speaks in his own manner and his own style, it
turns out that a kind of whole must be constructed, a
whole that is all the more paradoxical in that it only
comes after the fragments and leaves them intact, making
no attempt to totalize them.256
This complex idea depends on a principle dear to English
philosophy, to which the Americans would give a new
meaning and new developments: relations are external to
their terms. Relations will consequently be posited as
something that can and must be instituted or invented.
Parts are fragments that cannot be totalized, but we can
at least invent nonpreexisting relations between them,
which testify to a progress in History as much as to an
evolution in Nature. Whitman's poetry offers as many
meanings as there are relations with its various
interlocutors: the masses, the reader, States, the Ocean...
255
Whitman, Specimen Days, “Carlyle from American Points of
View,” pp. 60211.
256
D. h. Lawrence, in Studies in Classic American Literature
(New York: Viking, 1964), violently criticizes Whitman for his
pantheism and his conception of an EgoWhole; but he salutes
him as the greatest poet because, more profoundly, Whitman
sings of “sympathies,” that is, of relations that are constructed
externally, “on the Open Road” (pp. 17475).
392
257
The object of American literature is to establish
relations between the most diverse aspects of the United
States' geography — the Mississippi, the Rockies, the
Prairies — as well as its history, struggles, loves, and
evolution.258 Relations in ever greater numbers and of
increasingly subtle quality: this is, as it were, the motor
that drives both Nature and History. War is just the
opposite: its acts of destruction affect every relation, and
have as their consequence the Hospital, the generalized
hospital, that is, the place where brothers are strangers to
each other, and where the dying parts, fragments of
mutilated men, coexist absolutely solitary and without
relation.259
The relations between colors are made up of contrasts
and complementarities, never given but always new, and
Whitman no doubt fabricated one of the most coloristic of
literatures that could ever have existed. The relations
between sounds or bird songs, which Whitman describes
in marvelous ways, are made up of counterpoints and
responses, constantly renewed and invented. Nature is
not a form, but rather the process of establishing
relations. It invents a polyphony: it is not a totality but an
assembly, a "conclave," a "plenary session." Nature is
inseparable from processes of companionship and
conviviality, which are not preexistent givens but are
elaborated between heterogeneous living beings in such a
way that they create a tissue of shifting relations, in which
the melody of one part intervenes as a motif in the
257
See Paul Jamatie, Walt Whitman: Une étude, un choix de
poèmes (Paris: Seghers, 1950), p. 77: the poem as polyphony.
258
Whitman, Specimen Days, “Mississippi Valley Literature,”
pp. 57778.
259
Whitman, Specimen Days, “The Real War Will Never Get in
the Books,” pp. 48284.
393
melody of another (the bee and the flower). Relations are
not internal to a Whole; rather, the Whole is derived from
the external relations of a given moment, and varies with
them. Relations of counterpoint must be invented
everywhere, and are the very condition of evolution.
It is the same with the relationship between man and
Nature. Whitman enters into a gymnastic relationship
with young oak trees, a kind of hand-to-hand combat. He
neither grounds himself in them nor merges with them;
rather, he makes something pass between the human
body and the tree, in both directions, the body receiving
"some of its elastic fibre and clear sap," but the tree for its
part receiving a little consciousness ("may-be we
interchange").260 It is the same, finally, in the
relationships between man and man. Here again, man
must invent his relation with the other. "Camaraderie" is
the great word Whitman uses to designate the highest
human relation, not by virtue of the totality of a situation
but as a function of particular traits, emotional
circumstances, and the "interiority" of the relevant
fragments (in the hospital, for example, a relation of
camaraderie must be established with each isolated dying
man).261 In this way is woven a web of variable relations,
which are not merged into a whole, but produce the only
whole that man is capable of conquering in a given
situation. Camaraderie is the variability that implies an
encounter with the Outside — a march of souls in the
open air, on the "Open Road." It is in America that the
relation of camaraderie is supposed to achieve its
maximum extension and density, leading to virile and
260
Whitman, Specimen Days, “The Oaks and I,” pp. 51516.
Whitman, Specimen Days, “The Real War Will Never Get in
the Books,” pp. 48284. On camaraderie, see Whitman, Leaves
of Grass, “Calamus”.
261
394
popular loves, all the while acquring a political and
national character — not a totalism or a totaliarianism
but, as Whitman says, a "Unionism."262 Democracy and
Art themselves form a whole only in their relationship
with Nature (the open air, light, colors, sounds, the night
...); lacking these, art collapses into morbidity, and
democracy, into deception.263
The society of comrades is the revolutionary American
dream — dream to which Whitman made a powerful
contribution, and which was disappointed and betrayed
long before the dream of the Soviet society. But it is also
the reality of American literature, under these two
aspects: spontaneity or the innate feeling for the
fragmentary, and the reflection on living relations that
must constantly be acquired and created. Spontaneous
fragments constitute the element through which or in the
intervals of which, we attain the great and carefully
considered visions and sounds of both Nature and
History.
262
Whitman, Specimen Days, “THe Death of President Lincoln,”
p. 467.
263
Whitman, Specimen Days, “Nature and Democracy,” pp.
63940.
395
Bartleby; or, The Formula
Gilles Deleuze
"Bartleby" is neither a metaphor for the writer nor the
symbol of anything whatsoever. It is a violently comical
text, and the comical is always literal. It is like the
novellas of Kleist, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Beckett, with
which it forms a subterranean and prestigious lineage. It
means only what it says, literally. And what it says and
repeats is I would prefer not to. This is the formula of its
glory, which every loving reader repeats in turn. A gaunt
and pallid man has uttered the formula that drives
everyone crazy. But in what does the literality of the
formula consist?
We immediately notice a certain mannerism, a certain
solemnity: prefer is rarely employed in this sense, and
neither Bartleby's boss, the attorney, nor his clerks
normally use it ("queer word, I never use it myself"). The
usual formula would instead be I had rather not. But the
strangeness of the formula goes beyond the word itself.
Certainly it is grammatically correct, syntactically correct,
but its abrupt termination, NOT TO, which leaves what it
rejects undetermined, confers upon it the character of a
radical, a kind of limit-function. Its repetition and its
insistence render it all the more unusual, entirely so.
Murmured in a soft, flat, and patient voice, it attains to
the irremissible, by forming an inarticulate block, a single
breath. In all these respects, it has the same force, the
same role as an agrammatical formula.
Linguists have rigorously analyzed what is called
"agrammaticality.” A number of very intense examples
can be found in the work of the American poet e. e.
396
Cummings — for instance, "he danced his did," as if one
said in French il dansa son mit ("he danced his began")
instead of il se mit adanser ("he began to dance"). Nicolas
Ruwet explains that this presupposes a series of ordinary
grammatical variables, which would have an
agrammatical formula as their limit: he danced his did
would be a limit of the normal expressions he did his
dance, he danced his dance, he danced what he did...264
This would no longer be a portmanteau word, like those
found
in
Lewis
Carroll,
but
a
"portmanteau-construction," a breath-construction, a
limit or tensor. Perhaps it would be better to take an
example from the French, in a practical situation:
someone who wants to hang something on a wall and
holds a certain number of nails in his hand exclaims, J'EN
AI UN DE PAS ASSEZ ("I have one not enough"). This is
an agrammatical formula that stands as the limit of a
series of correct expressions: J'en ai de trop, Je n'en ai
pas assez, Il m'en manque un ... ("I have too many," "I
don't have enough," "I am one short" ... ). Would not
Bartleby's formula be of this type, at once a stereotypy of
Bartleby's and a highly poetic expression of Melville's, the
limit of a series such as "I would prefer this. I would
prefer not to do that. That is not what I would prefer ..."?
Despite its quite normal construction, it has an
anomalous ring to it.
I WOULD PREFER NOT TO. The formula has several
variants. Sometimes it abandons the conditional and
becomes more curt: I PREFER NOT TO. Sometimes, as in
its final occurrences, it seems to lose its mystery by being
264
Nicholas Ruwet, “Parallélismes et déviations en poésie,” in
Langue, discours, société, ed. Julia Kristeva and Nicholas Ruwet
(Paris: Seuil, 1975), pp. 33444 (on
“portmanteauconstructions”).
397
completed by an infinitive, and coupled with to: "I prefer
to give no answer," "I would prefer not to be a little
reasonable," "I would prefer not to take a clerkship," "I
would prefer to be doing something else" ... But even in
these cases we sense the muted presence of the strange
form that continues to haunt Bartleby's language. He
himself adds, "but I am not a particular case," "there is
nothing particular about me," I am not particular, in
order to indicate that whatever else might be suggested to
him would be yet another particularity falling under the
ban of the great indeterminate formula, I PREFER NOT
TO, which subsists once and for all and in all cases.
The formula occurs in ten principal circumstances, and in
each case it may appear several times, whether it is
repeated verbatim or with minor variations. Bartleby is a
copyist in the attorney's office; he copies ceaselessly,
"silently, palely, mechanically." The first instance takes
place when the attorney tells him to proofread and collate
the two clerks' copies: I WOULD PREFER NOT TO. The
second, when the attorney tells Bartleby to come and
reread his own copies. The third, when the attorney
invites Bartleby to reread with him personally, tête à tête.
The fourth, when the attorney wants to send him on an
errand. The fifth, when he asks him to go into the next
room. The sixth, when the attorney enters his study one
Sunday afternoon and discovers that Bartleby has been
sleeping there. The seventh, when the attorney satisfies
himself by asking questions. The eighth, when Bartleby
has stopped copying, has renounced all copying, and the
attorney asks him to leave. The ninth, when the attorney
makes a second attempt to get rid of him. The tenth,
when Bartleby is forced out of the office, sits on the
banister of the landing while the panic-stricken attorney
proposes other unexpected occupations to him (a
398
clerkship in a dry goods store, bartender, bill collector,
traveling companion to a young gentleman… The formula
bourgeons and proliferates. At each occurrence, there is a
stupor surrounding Bartleby, as if one had heard the
Unspeakable or the Unstoppable. And there is Bartleby's
silence, as if he had said everything and exhausted
language at the same time. With each instance one has
the impression that the madness is growing: not
Bartleby’s madness in "particular," but the madness
around him, notably that of the attorney, who launches
into strange propositions and even stranger behaviors.
Without a doubt, the formula is ravaging, devastating,
and leaves nothing standing in its wake. Its contagious
character is immediately evident: Bartleby "ties the
tongues" of others. The queer words, would prefer, steal
their way into the language of the clerks and of the
attorney himself ("So you have got the word, too"). But
this contamination is not the essential point; the essential
point is its effect on Bartleby: from the moment he says I
WOULD PREFER NOT TO (collate), he is no longer able
to copy either. And yet he will never say that he prefers
not to (copy): he has simply passed beyond this stage.
And doubtless he does not realize this immediately, since
he continues copying until after the sixth instance. But
when he does notice it, it seems obvious, like the delayed
reaction that was already implied in the final statement of
the formula: "Do you not see the reason for yourself?" he
says to the attorney. The effect of the formula-block is not
only to impugn what Bartleby prefers not to do, but also
to render what he was doing impossible, what he was
supposed to prefer to continue doing.
It has been noted that the formula, I prefer not to, is
neither an affirmation nor a negation. Bartleby "does not
399
refuse, but neither does he accept, he advances and then
withdraws into this advance, barely exposing himself in a
nimble retreat from speech."265 The attorney would be
relieved if Bartleby did not want to, but Bartle by does not
refuse, he simply rejects a nonpreferred (the
proofreading, the errands ... ). And he does not accept
either, he does not affirm a preference that would consist
in continuing to copy, he simply posits its impossibility.
In short, the formula that successively refuses every other
act has already engulfed the act of copying, which it no
longer even needs to refuse. The formula is devastating
because it eliminates the preferable just as mercilessly as
any nonpreferred. It not only abolishes the term it refers
to, and that it rejects, but also abolishes the other term it
seemed to preserve, and that becomes impossible. In fact,
it renders them indistinct: it hollows out an ever
expanding zone of indiscernibility or indetermination
between some nonpreferred activities and a preferable
activity. All particularity, all reference is abolished. The
formula annihilates "copying," the only reference in
relation to which something might or might not be
preferred. I would prefer nothing rather than something:
not a will to nothingness, but the growth of a nothingness
of the will. Bartleby has won the right to survive, that is,
to remain immobile and upright before a blind wall. Pure
patient passivity, as Elanchat would say. Being as being,
and nothing more. He is urged to say yes or no. But if he
said no (to collating, running errands ...), or if he said yes
(to copying), he would quickly be defeated and judged
useless, and would not survive. He can survive only by
whirling in a suspense that keeps everyone at a distance.
His means of survival is to prefer not to collate, but
265
Philippe Jaworski, Melville, le désert et l’empire (Paris:
Presses de l’Ecole Normale, 1986), p. 19.
400
thereby also not to prefer copying. He had to refuse the
former in order to render the latter impossible. The
formula has two phases and continually recharges itself
by passing again and again through the same states. This
is why the attorney has the vertiginous impression, each
time, that everything is starting over again from zero.
The formula at first seems like the bad translation of a
foreign language. But once we understand it better, once
we hear it more clearly, its splendor refutes this
hypothesis. Perhaps it is the formula that carves out a
kind of foreign language within language. It has been
suggested that e. e. cummings's agrammaticalities can be
considered as having issued from a dialect differing from
Standard English, and whose rules of creation can be
abstracted. The same goes for Bartleby: the rule would lie
in this logic of negative preference, a negativism beyond
all negation. But if it is true that the masterpieces of
literature always form a kind of foreign language within
the language in which they are written, what wind of
madness, what psychotic breath thereby passes into
language as a whole? Psychosis characteristically brings
into play a procedure that treats an ordinary language, a
standard language, in a manner that makes it "render" an
original and unknown language, which would perhaps be
a projection of God's language, and would carry off
language as a whole. Procedures of this type appear in
France in Rousseau and Brisset, and in America in
Wolfson. Is this not the schizophrenic vocation of
American literature: to make the English language,
means of driftings, deviations, de-taxes or sur-taxes (as
opposed to the standard syntax), slip in this manner? To
introduce a bit of psychosis into English neurosis? To
invent a new universality? If need be, other languages will
be summoned into English in order to make it echo this
401
divine language of storm and thunder. Melville invents a
foreign language that runs beneath English and carries it
off: it is the OUTLANDISH or Deterritorialized, the
language of the Whale. Whence the interest of studies of
MobyDick that are based on Numbers and Letters, and
the cryptic meaning, to set free at least a skeleton of the
inhuman or superhuman originary language.266 It is as if
three operations were linked together: a certain treatment
of language; the result of this treatment which tends to
constitute an original language within language, and the
effect, which is to sweep up language in its entirety,
sending it into flight, pushing it to its very limit in order
to discover its Outside, silence or music. A great book is
always the inverse of another book that could only be
written in the soul, with silence and blood. This is the
case not only with MobyDick but also with Pierre, in
which Isabelle affects language with an incomprehensible
murmur, a kind of basso continuo that carries the whole
of language on the chords and tones of its guitar. And it is
also the angelic or adamic Billy Budd, who suffers from a
stuttering that denatures language but also gives rise to
the musical and celestial Beyond of language as a whole.
It is like the "persistent horrible twittering squeak" that
muddles the resonance of words while the sister is getting
the violin ready to respond to Gregor.
Bartleby also has an angelic and Adamic nature, but his
case seems different because he has no general
Procedure, such as stuttering, with which to treat
language. He makes do with a seemingly normal, brief
Formula, at best a localized tick that crops up in certain
circumstances. And yet the result and the effect are the
266
See Viola Sachs, La contreBible de Melville (Paris: Mouton,
1975).
402
same: to carve out a kind of foreign language within
language, to make the whole confront silence, make it
topple into silence. Bartleby announces the long silence,
broken only by the music of poems, into which Melville
will enter and from which, except for Billy Budd, he will
never emerge.267 Bartleby himself had no other escape
than to remain silent and withdraw behind his partition
every time he uttered the formula, all the way up until his
final silence in prison. After the formula there is nothing
left to say: it functions as a procedure, overcoming its
appearance of particularity.
The attorney himself concocts a theory explaining how
Bartleby's formula ravages language as a whole. All
language, he suggests, has references or assumptions.
These are not exactly what language designates, but what
permit it to designate. A word always presupposes other
words that can replace it, complete it, or form alternatives
with it: it is on this condition that language is distributed
in such a way as to designate things, states of things and
actions, according to a set of objective, explicit
conventions. But perhaps there are also other implicit and
subjective conventions, other types of reference or
presupposition. In speaking, I do not simply indicate
things and actions; I also commit acts that assure a
relation with the interlocutor, in keeping with our
respective situations: I command, I interrogate, I
promise, I ask, I emit "speech acts." Speech acts are
self-referential (I command by saying "I order you
..."),while constative propositions refer to other things
and other words. It is this double system of references
that Bartleby Ravages.
267
On Bartleby and Melville’s silence, see Armand Farrachi, La
part du silence (Paris Barrault, 1984), p. 4045.
403
The formula I PREFER NOT TO excludes all alternatives,
and devours what it claims to conserve no less than it
distances itself from everything else. It implies that
Bartleby stop copying, that is, that he stop reproducing
words; it hollows out a zone of indetermination that
renders words indistinguishable, that creates a vacuum
within language [langage]. But it also stymies the speech
acts that a boss uses to command, that a kind friend uses
to ask questions or a man of faith to make promises. If
Bartleby had refused, he could still be seen as a rebel or
insurrectionary, and as such would still have a social role.
But the formula stymies all speech acts, and at the same
time, it makes Bartleby a pure outsider [exclu] to whom
no social position can be attributed. This is what the
attorney glimpses with dread: all his hopes of bringing
Bartleby back to reason are dashed because they rest on a
logic of presuppositions according to which an employer
"expects" to be obeyed, or a kind friend listened to,
whereas Bartleby has invented a new logic, a logic of
preference, which is enough to undermine the
presuppositions of language as a whole. As Mathieu
Lindon shows, the formula "disconnects" words and
things, words and actions, but also speech acts and words
— it severs language from all reference, in accordance
with Bartleby's absolute vocation, to be a man without
references, someone who appears suddenly and then
disappears, without reference to himself or anything else.
268
This is why, despite its conventional appearance, the
formula functions as a veritable agrammaticality.
Bartleby is the Bachelor, about whom Kafka said, "He has
only as much ground as his two feet take up, only as much
268
Mathieu Lindon, “Bartleby,” Delta 6 (May 1978): 22.
404
of a hold as his two hands encompass" — someone who
falls asleep in the winter snow to freeze to death like a
child, someone who does nothing but take walks, yet who
could take them anywhere, without moving.269 Bartleby is
the man without references, without possessions, without
properties, without qualities, without particularities: he is
too smooth for anyone to be able to hang any particularity
on him. Without past or future, he is instantaneous. I
PREFER NOT TO is Bartleby's chemical or alchemical
formula, but one can read inversely I AM NOT
PARTICULAR as its indispensable complement. The
entire nineteenth century will go through this search for
the man without a name, regicide and parricide, the
modern-day Ulysses ("I am No One"): the crushed and
mechanized man of the great metropolises, but from
which one expects, perhaps, the emergence of the Man of
the Future or New World Man. And, in an identical
messianism, we glimpse him, sometimes as a Proletarian,
sometimes as an American. Musil's novel will also follow
this quest, and will invent the new logic of which The
Man without Qualities is both the thinker and the
product.270 And though the derivation of Musil from
Melville seems certain to us, it should be sought not in
269
Kafka’s great text almost reads like another version of
“Bartleby.” See Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka:
19101913, ed. Max Brod, trans. Joseph Kresh (New York:
Schocken, 1948), p. 26.
270
Blanchot demonstrates that Musil’s character is not only
without qualities, but “without particularities,” since he has no
more substance than he does qualities. See Le livre à venir
(Paris Gallimard/Folio, 1963), pp. 2023. This theme of the man
without particularities, the modernday Ulysses, arises early in
the nineteenth century, and in France appears in the rather
strange book of Ballanche, a friend of Chateaubriand; see Pierre
Simon Ballanche, Essais de palingénésie sociale, notably “La
ville des expiations” (1827), in Oeuvres complètes (Geneva:
Slatkine Reprints, 1967).
405
"Bartleby," but rather in Pierre; or, the Ambiguities. The
incestuous couple Ulrich-Agathe is like the return of the
Pierre-Isabelle couple; in both cases, the silent sister,
unknown or forgotten, is not a substitute for the mother,
but on the contrary the abolition of sexual difference as
particularity, in favor of an androgynous relationship in
which both Pierre and Ulrich are or become woman. In
Bartleby's case, might not his relation with the attorney
be equally mysterious, and in turn mark the possibility of
a becoming, of a new man? Will Bartleby be able to
conquer the place where he takes his walks?
Perhaps Bartleby is a madman, a lunatic or a psychotic
("an innate and incurable disorder" of the soul). But how
can we know, if we do not take into account the anomalies
of the attorney, who continues to behave in the most
bizarre ways? The attorney had just received an
important professional promotion. One will recall that
President Schreber unleashed his own delirium only after
receiving a promotion, as if this gave him the audacity to
take the risk. But what is the attorney going to risk? He
already has two scriveners who, much like Kafka's
assistants, are inverted doubles of each other, the one
normal in the morning and drunk in the afternoon, the
other in a perpetual state of indigestion in the morning
but almost normal in the afternoon. Since he needs an
extra scrivener, he hires Bartleby after a brief
conversation without any references because his pallid
aspect seemed to indicate a constancy that could
compensate for the irregularities of the two others. But on
the first day he places Bartleby in a strange arrangement:
Bartleby is to sit in the attorney's own office, next to some
folding doors separating it from the clerk's office, between
a window that faces the side of a neighboring building
and a high screen, green as a prairie, as if it were
406
important that Bartleby be able to hear, but without being
seen. Whether this was a sudden inspiration on the
attorney's part or an agreement reached during the short
conversation, we will never know. But the fact is that,
caught in this arrangement, the invisible Bartleby does an
extraordinary amount of "mechanical" work. But when
the attorney tries to make him leave his retreat, Bartleby
emits his formula, and at this first occurrence, as with
those that follow, the attorney finds himself disarmed,
bewildered, stunned, thunderstruck, without response or
reply. Bartleby stops copying altogether and remains on
the premises, a fixture. We know to what extremes the
attorney is forced to go in order to rid himself of Bartleby:
he returns home, decides to relocate his office, then takes
off for several days and hides out, avoiding the new
tenant's complaints. What a strange flight, with the
wandering attorney living in his rockaway ... From the
initial arrangement to this irrepressible, Cain-like flight,
everything is bizarre, and the attorney behaves like a
madman. Murder fantasies and declarations of love for
Bartleby alternate in his soul. What happened? Is it a case
of shared madness, here again, another relationship
between doubles, a nearly acknowledged homosexual
relation ("yes, Bartleby … I never feel so private as when I
know you are here ... I penetrate to the predestinated
purpose of my life ... ")?271
One might imagine that hiring Bartleby was a kind of
pact, as if the attorney, following his promotion, had
decided to make this person, without objective references,
a man of confidence [un homme de confiance] who would
owe everything to him. He wants to make him his man.
271
Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” in Billy Budd,
Sailor and Other Stories, ed. Harold Beaver (London: Penguin
Classics, 1967), p. 89.
407
The pact consists of the following: Bartleby will sit near
his master and copy, listening to him but without being
seen, like a night bird who cannot stand to be looked at.
So there is no doubt that once the attorney wants to draw
(without even doing it on purpose) Bartleby from behind
his screen to correct the copies with the others, he breaks
the pact. This is why Bartleby, once he "prefers not to"
correct, is already unable to copy. Bartleby will expose
himself to view even more than he is asked to, planted in
the middle of the office, but he will no longer do any
copying. The attorney has an obscure feeling about it,
since he assumes that if Bartleby refuses to copy, it is
because his vision is impaired. And in effect, exposed to
view, Bartleby for his part no longer sees, no longer looks.
He has acquired what was, in a certain fashion, already
innate in him: the legendary infirmity, one-eyed and
one-armed, which makes him an autochthon, someone
who is born to and stays in a particular place, while the
attorney necessarily fills the function of the traitor
condemned to flight. Whenever the attorney invokes
philanthropy, charity, or friendship, his protestations are
shot through with an obscure guilt. In fact, it is the
attorney who broke the arrangement he himself had
organized, and from the debris Bartleby pulls a trait of
expression, I PREFER NOT TO, which will proliferate
around him and contaminate the others, sending the
attorney fleeing. But it will also send language itself into
flight, it will open up a zone of indetermination or
indiscernibility in which neither words nor characters can
be distinguished — the fleeing attorney and the immobile,
petrified Bartleby. The attorney starts to vagabond while
Bartleby remains tranquil, but it is precisely because he
remains tranquil and immobile that Bartleby is treated
like a vagabond.
408
Is there a relation of identification between the attorney
and Bartleby? But what is this relation? In what direction
does it move? Most often, an identification seems to bring
into play three elements, which are able to interchange or
permutate: a form, image, or representation, a portrait, a
model; a subject (or at least a virtual subject); and the
subject's efforts to assume a form, to appropriate the
image, to adapt itself to this image and the image to itself.
It is a complex operation that passes through all of the
adventures of resemblance, and that always risks falling
into neurosis or turning into narcissism. A "mimetic
rivalry," as it is sometimes called. It mobilizes a paternal
function in general: an image of the father par excellence,
and the subject is a son, even if the determinations are
interchangeable. The bildungsroman [roman de
formation], or one could just as easily say the reference
novel [roman de reference], provides numerous
examples.
Certainly, many of Melville's novels begin with images or
portraits, and seem to tell the story of an upbringing
under a paternal function: Redburn, for instance. Pierre;
or, The Ambiguities begins with an image of the father,
with a statue and a painting. Even MobyDick begins by
amassing information at the beginning in order to give
the whale a form and sketch out its image, right down to
the dark painting hanging in the inn. "Bartleby" is no
exception to the rule. The two clerks are like paper
images, symmetrical opposites, and the attorney fills the
paternal function so well that one can hardly believe the
story is taking place in New York. Everything starts off as
in an English novel, in Dickens's London. But in each
case, something strange happens, something that blurs
the image, marks it with an essential uncertainty, keeps
the form from "taking," but also undoes the subject, sets it
409
adrift and abolishes any paternal function. It is only here
that things begin to get interesting. The statue of the
father gives way to his much more ambiguous portrait,
and then to yet another portrait that could be of anybody
or nobody. All referents are lost, and the formation
[formation] of man gives way to a new, unknown
element, to the mystery of a formless, nonhuman life, a
Squid. Everything began á l'anglaise but continues á
l'americaine, following an irresistible line of flight. Ahab
can say with good reason that he is fleeing from
everywhere. The paternal function is dropped in favor of
even more obscure and ambiguous forces. The subject
loses its texture in favor of an infinitely proliferating
patchwork: the American patchwork becomes the law of
Melville's oeuvre, devoid of a center, of an upside down or
right side up. It is as if the traits of expression escaped
form, like the abstract lines of an unknown writing, or the
furrows that twist from Ahab's brow to that of the Whale,
or the "horrible contortions" of the flapping lanyards that
pass through the fixed rigging and can easily drag a sailor
into the sea, a subject into death.272 In Pierre; or, The
Ambiguities, the disquieting smile of the unknown young
man in the painting, which so resembles the father's,
functions as a trait of expression that emancipates itself,
and is just as capable of undoing resemblance as it is of
making the subject vacillate. I PREFER NOT TO is also a
trait of expression that contaminates everything, escaping
linguistic form and stripping the father of his exemplary
speech, just as it strips the son of his ability to reproduce
or copy.
272
Régis Durand, in his Melville, signes et métaphores (Paris:
L’Age d’Homme, 1980), pp. 1037, has pointed out the role
played by loose lines aboard a whaler, as opposed to formalized
riggings. Both Durand’s and Jaworski’s books are among the
most profound analyses of Melville to have appeared recently.
410
It is still a process of identification, but rather than
following the adventures of the neurotic, it has now
become psychotic. A little bit of schizophrenia escapes the
neurosis of the Old World. We can bring together three
distinctive characteristics. In the first place, the formless
trait of expression is opposed to the image or to the
expressed form. In the second place, there is no longer a
subject that tries to conform to the image, and either
succeeds or fails. Rather, a zone of indistinction, of
indiscernibility, or of ambiguity seems to be established
between two terms, as if they had reached the point
immediately preceeding their respective differentiation:
not a similitude, but a slippage, an extreme proximity, an
absolute contiguity; not a natural filiation, but an
unnatural alliance. It is a "hyperborean," "arctic" zone. It
is no longer a question of Mimesis, but of becoming. Ahab
does not imitate the whale, he becomes Moby-Dick, he
enters into the zone of proximity [zone de voisinage]
where he can no longer be distinguished from Moby-Dick,
and strikes himself in striking the whale. Moby-Dick is
the "wall, shoved near" with which he merges. Redburn
renounces the image of the father in favor of the
ambiguous traits of the mysterious brother. Pierre does
not imitate his father, but reaches the zone of proximity
where he can no longer be distinguished from his half
sister, Isabelle, and becomes woman. While neurosis
flounders in the nets of maternal incest in order to
identify more closely with the father, psychosis liberates
incest with the sister as a becoming, a free identification
of man and woman: in the same way Kleist emits atypical,
almost animal traits of expression-stutterings, grindings,
grimaces-that feed his passionate conversation with his
sister. This is because, in the third place, psychosis
pursues its dream of establishing a function of universal
411
fraternity that no longer passes through the father, but is
built on the ruins of the paternal function, a function that
presupposes the dissolution of all images of the father,
following an autonomous line of alliance or proximity
that makes the woman a sister, and the other man, a
brother, like the terrible "monkey-rope" uniting Ishmael
and Queequeg as a married couple. These are the three
characteristics of the American Dream, which together
make up the new identification, the New World: the Trait,
the Zone, and the Function.
We are in the process of melding together characters as
different as Ahab and Bartleby. Yet does not everything
instead set them in opposition to each other? Melvillian
psychiatry constantly invokes two poles: monomaniacs
and hypochondriacs, demons and angels, torturers and
victims, the Swift and the Slow, the Thundering and the
Petrified, the Unpunishable (beyond all punishment) and
the Irresponsible (beyond all responsibility). What is
Ahab doing when he lets loose his harpoons of fire and
madness? He is breaking a pact. He is betraying the
Whalers' Law, which says that any healthy whale
encountered must be hunted, without choosing one over
another. But Ahab, thrown into his indiscernible
becoming, makes a choice-he pursues his identification
with Moby-Dick, putting his crew in mortal danger. This
is the monstrous preference that Lieutenant Starbuck
bitterly objects to, to the point where he even dreams of
killing the treacherous captain. Choosing is the
Promethean sin par excellence.273 This was the case with
273
George Dumézil, preface to George Charachidzé, Prométhée
ou le Caucase: Essai de mythologie contrastive (Paris:
Flammarion, 1986): “The Greek myth of Prometheus has
remained, through the ages, an object of reflection and
reference. The god who does not take part in his brothers’
412
Kleist's Penthesilea, an Ahab-woman who, like her
indiscernible double Achilles, had chosen her enemy, in
defiance of the law of the Amazons forbidding the
preference of one enemy over another. The priestess and
the Amazons consider this a betrayal that madness
sanctions in a cannibal identification. In his last novel,
Billy
Budd,
Melville
himself brings another
monomaniacal demon into the picture with Claggart: the
master-at-arms. We should have no illusions about
Claggart's subordinate function: his is no more a case of
psychological wickedness than Captain Ahab's. It is a case
of metaphysical perversion that consists in choosing one's
prey, preferring a chosen victim with a kind of love rather
than observing the maritime law that requires him to
apply the same discipline to everyone. This is what the
narrator suggests when he recalls an ancient and
mysterious theory, an expose of which is found in Sade:
secondary, sensible Nature is governed by the Law (or
laws), while innately depraved beings participate in a
terrible supersensible Primary Nature, original and
oceanic, which, knowing no Law, pursues its own
irrational aim through them. Nothingness, Nothingness.
274
Ahab will break through the wall, even if there is
nothing behind it, and will make nothingness the object
of his will: "To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved
near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But
'tis enough."275 Melville says that only the eye of a
dynastic struggle against their cousin Zeus, but who, on
personal grounds, defies and ridicules this same Zeus… this
anarchist, affects and stirs up dark and sensitive zones in us.”
274
On this conception of the two Natures in Sade (the theory of
the pope in the New Justine), see Pierre Klossowski, Sade My
Neighbor, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 1991), pp. 99 ff.
275
Herman Melville, MobyDick; or, the Whale, chapter 36 (New
York: Penguin Classics, 1992), p. 178.
413
prophet, and not a psychologist, is capable of discerning
or diagnosing such obscure beings as these creatures of
the abyss, without being able to prevent their mad
enterprise, the "mystery of iniquity"…
We are now in a position to classify Melville's great
characters. At one pole, there are those monomaniacs or
demons who, driven by the will to nothingness, make a
monstrous choice: Ahab, Claggart, Babo… But at the
other pole are those angels or saintly hypochondriacs,
almost stupid, creatures of innocence and purity, stricken
with a constitutive weakness but also with a strange
beauty. Petrified by nature, they prefer... no will at all, a
nothingness of the will rather than a will to nothingness
(hypochondriacal "negativism"). They can only survive by
becoming stone, by denying the will and sanctifying
themselves in this suspension.276 Such are Cereno, Billy
Budd, and above all Bartleby. And although the two types
are opposed in every way-the former innate traitors and
the latter betrayed in their very essence; the former
monstrous fathers who devour their children, the latter
abandoned sons without fathers-they haunt one and the
same world, forming alternations within it, just as
Melville's writing, like Kleist's, alternates between
stationary, fixed processes and mad-paced procedures:
style, with its succession of catatonias and accelerations
276
See Schopenhauer’s conception of sainthood as the act by
which the Will denies itself in the suppression of all particularity.
Pierre Leyris, in his second preface to the French translation of
Billy Budd (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), recalls Melville’s profound
interest in Schopenhauer. Nietzsche saw Parsifal as a type of
Schopenhauerian saint, a kind of Bartleby. But after Nietzsche,
man still preferred being a demon to being a saint: “man would
rather will nothingness than not will.” Friedrich Nietzsche, On the
Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), third essay, § 28,
p. 163.
414
... This is because both poles, both types of characters,
Ahab and Bartleby, belong to this Primary Nature, they
inhabit it, they constitute it. Everything sets them in
opposition, and yet they are perhaps the same
creature-primary, original, stubborn, seized from both
sides, marked merely with a "plus" or a "minus" sign:
Ahab and Bartleby. Or in Kleist, the terrible Penthesilea
and the sweet little Catherine, the first beyond
conscience, the second before conscience: she who
chooses and she who does not choose, she who howls like
a she-wolf and she who would prefer-not-to speak.277
There exists, finally, a third type of character in Melville,
the one on the side of the Law, the guardian of the divine
and human laws of secondary nature: the prophet.
Captain Delano lacks the prophet's eye, but Ishmael in
MobyDick, Captain Vere in Billy Budd, and the attorney
in Bartleby all have this power to "See": they are capable
of grasping and understanding, as much as is possible,
the beings of Primary Nature, the great monomaniacal
demons or the saintly innocents, and sometimes both. Yet
they themselves are not lacking in ambiguity, each in his
own way. Though they are able to see into the Primary
Nature that so fascinates them, they are nonetheless
representatives of secondary nature and its laws. They
bear the paternal image - they seem like good fathers,
benevolent fathers (or at least protective big brothers, as
Ishmael is toward Queequeg). But they cannot ward off
the demons, because the latter are too quick for the law,
too surprising. Nor can they save the innocent, the
277
See Heinrich Kleist’s letter to H. J. von Collin, December
1808, in An Abyss Deep Enough: The LEtters of Heinrich Von
Kleist, ed. Philip B. Miller (New York: Dutton, 1982). Catherine
Heilbronn had her own formula, close to that of Bartleby’s: “I
don’t know” or simple “Don’t know.”
415
irresponsible: they immolate them in the name of the
Law, they make the sacrifice of Abraham. Behind their
paternal mask, they have a kind of double identification:
with the innocent, toward whom they feel a genuine love,
but also with the demon, since they break their pact with
the innocent they love, each in his own manner. They
betray, then, but in a different way than does Ahab or
Claggart: the latter broke the law, whereas Vere or the
attorney, in the name of the law, break an implicit and
almost unavowable agreement (even Ishmael seems to
turn away from his savage brother Queequeg). They
continue to cherish the innocent they have condemned:
Captain Vere will die muttering the name of Billy Budd,
and the final words of the attorney's narrative will be,
"Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!" which does not indicate a
connection, but rather an alternative in which he has had
to choose the all-too-human law over Bartleby. Torn
between the two Natures, with all their contradictions,
these characters are extremely important, but do not have
the stature of the two others. Rather, they are Witnesses,
narrators, interpreters. There is a problem that escapes
this third type of character, a very important problem that
is settled between the other two.
The ConfidenceMan (much as one says the
Medicine-Man) is sprinkled with Melville's reflections on
the novel. The first of these reflections consists in
claiming the rights of a superior irrationalism (chapter
14). Why should the novelist believe he is obligated to
explain the behavior of his characters, and to supply them
with reasons, whereas life for its part never explains
anything and leaves in its creatures so many
indeterminate, obscure, indiscernible zones that defy any
attempt at clarification? It is life that justifies; it has no
need of being justified. The English novel, and even more
416
so the French novel, feels the need to rationalize, even if
only in the final pages, and psychology is no doubt the
last form of rationalism: the Western reader awaits the
final word. In this regard, psychoanalysis has revived the
claims of reason. But even if it has hardly spared the great
novelistic works, no great novelist contemporaneous with
psychoanalysis has taken much interest in it. The
founding act of the American novel, like that of the
Russian novel, was to take the novel far from the order of
reasons, and to give birth to characters who exist in
nothingness, survive only in the void, defy logic and
psychology and keep their mystery until the end. Even
their soul, says Melville, is "an immense and terrifying
void," and Ahab's body is an "empty shell." If they have a
formula, it is certainly not explanatory. I PREFER NOT
TO remains just as much a cabalistic formula as that of
the Underground Man, who can not keep two and two
from making four, but who will not RESIGN himself to it
either (he prefers that two and two not make four). What
counts for a great novelist — Melville, Dostoyevsky,
Kafka, or Musil — is that things remain enigmatic yet
nonarbitrary: in short, a new logic, definitely a logic, but
one that grasps the innermost depths of life and death
without leading us back to reason. The novelist has the
eye of a prophet, not the gaze of a psychologist. For
Melville, the three great categories of characters belong to
this new logic, just as much as this logic belongs to them.
Once it has reached that sought-after Zone, the
hyperborean zone, far from the temperate regions, the
novel, like life, needs no justification.278 And in truth,
278
The comparison between Musil and Melville would pertain to
the following four paints: the critique of reason (“Principle of
insufficient reason”), the denunciation of psychology (“the great
hole we call the soul”), the new logic (“the other state”), and the
hyperborean Zone (the “Possible”).
417
there is no such thing as reason; it exists only in bits and
pieces. In Billy Budd, Melville defines monomaniacs as
the Masters of reason, which is why they are so difficult to
surprise; but this is because theirs is a delirium of action,
because they make use of reason, make it serve their own
sovereign ends, which in truth are highly unreasonable.
Hypochondriacs are the Outcasts of reason, without our
being able to know if they have excluded themselves from
it in order to obtain something reason can not give them
— the indiscernible, the unnameable with which they will
be able to merge. In the end, even prophets are only the
Castaways of reason: if Vere, Ishmael, or the attorney
clings so tightly to the debris of reason, whose integrity
they try so hard to restore, it is because they have seen so
much, and because what they have seen has marked them
forever.
But a second remark by Melville (chapter 44) introduces
an essential distinction between the characters in a novel.
Melville says that we must above all avoid confusing true
Originals with characters that are simply remarkable or
singular, particular. This is because the particulars, who
tend to be quite populous in a novel, have characteristics
that determine their form, properties that make up their
image; they are influenced by their milieu and by each
other, so that their actions and reactions are governed by
general laws, though in each case they retain a particular
value. Similarly, the sentences they utter are their own,
but they are nonetheless governed by the general laws of
language. By contrast, we do not even know if an original
exists in an absolute sense, apart from the primordial
God, and it is already something extraordinary when we
encounter one. Melville admits that it is difficult to
imagine how a novel might include several of them. Each
original is a powerful, solitary Figure that exceeds any
418
explicable form: it projects flamboyant traits of
expression that mark the stubbornness of a thought
without image, a question without response, an extreme
and nonrational logic. Figures of life and knowledge, they
know
something
inexpressible,
live something
unfathomable. They have nothing general about them,
and are not particular — they escape knowledge, defy
psychology. Even the words they utter surpass the general
laws of language (presuppositions) as well as the simple
particularities of speech, since they are like the vestiges or
projections of a unique, original language [langue], and
bring all of language [langage] to the limit of silence and
music. There is nothing particular or general about
Bartleby: he is an Original.
Originals are beings of Primary Nature, but they are
inseparable from the world or from secondary nature,
where they exert their effect: they reveal its emptiness,
the imperfection of its laws, the mediocrity of particular
creatures ... the world as masquerade (this is what Musil,
for his part, will call "parallel action"). The role of
prophets, who are not originals, is to be the only ones who
can recognize the wake that originals leave in the world,
and the unspeakable confusion and trouble they cause in
it. The original, says Melville, is not subject to the
influence of his milieu; on the contrary, he throws a livid
white light on his surroundings, much like the light that
"accompanies the beginning of things in Genesis."
Originals are sometimes the immobile source of this
light-like the foretopman high up on the mast, Billy Budd
the bound, hanged man who "ascends" with the
glimmering of the dawn, or Bartleby standing in the
attorney's office-and sometimes its dazzling passage, a
movement too rapid for the ordinary eye to follow, the
lightning of Ahab or Claggart. These are the two great
419
original Figures that one finds throughout Melville, the
panoramic shot and the tracking shot, stationary process
and infinite speed. And even though these are the two
elements of music, though stops give rhythm to
movement and lightning springs from immobility, is it
not this contradiction that separates the originals, their
two types? What does Jean-Luc Godard mean when, in
the name of cinema, he asserts that between a tracking
shot and a panoramic shot there lies a "moral problem"?
Perhaps it is this difference that explains why a great
novel cannot, it seems, include more than a single
original. Mediocre novels have never been able to create
the slightest original character. But how could even the
greatest novel create more than one at a time? Ahab or
Bartleby ... It is like the great Figures of the painter
Francis Bacon, who admits that he has not yet found a
way of bringing together two figures in a single painting.
279
And yet Melville will find a way. If he finally broke his
silence in the end to write Billy Budd, it is because this
last novel, under the penetrating eye of Captain Vere,
brings together two originals, the demonic and the
petrified. The problem was not to link them together
through a plot-an easy and inconsequential thing to do,
since it would be enough for one to be the victim of the
other-but to make them work together in the picture (if
Benito Cereno was already an attempt in this direction, it
was a flawed one, under the myopic and blurred gaze of
Delano).
279
See Francis Bacon and David Sylvester, The Brutality of
Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames and
Hudson, 1975), p. 22. And Melville said: “For the same reason
that there is but no one planet to one orbit, so can there be but
one such oriinal character to one work or invention. Two would
conflict to chaos.” Herman Melville, The ConfidenceMan, ed.
Stephen Matterson (London: Penguin Classics, 1990), p. 282.
420
What then is the biggest problem haunting Melville's
oeuvre? To recover the already-sensed identity? No
doubt, it lies in reconciling the two originals but thereby
also in reconciling the original with secondary
humanity, the inhuman with the human. Now what
Captain Vere and the attorney demonstrate is that there
are no good fathers. There are only monstrous, devouring
fathers, and petrified, fatherless sons. If humanity can be
saved, and the originals reconciled, it will only be through
the dissolution or decomposition of the paternal function.
So it is a great moment when Ahab, invoking Saint Elmo's
fire, discovers that the father is himself a lost son, an
orphan, whereas the son is the son of nothing, or of
everyone, a brother.280 As Joyce will say, paternity does
not exist, it is an emptiness, a nothingness — or rather, a
zone of uncertainty haunted by brothers, by the brother
and sister. The mask of the charitable father must fall in
order for Primary Nature to be appeased, and for Ahab
and Claggart to recognize Bartleby and Billy Budd,
releasing through the violence of the former and the
stupor of the latter the fruit with which they were laden:
the fraternal relation pure and simple. Melville will never
cease to elaborate on the radical opposition between
fraternity and Christian "charity" or paternal
"philanthropy." To liberate man from the father function,
to give birth to the new man or the man without
particularities, to reunite the original and humanity by
constituting a society of brothers as a new universality. In
the society of brothers, alliance replaces filiation and the
280
See R. Durand, p. 153. Mayoux writes: “On the personal
place, the question of the father is momentarily postponed, if not
settled. … But it is not only a question of the father. We are all
orphans. Now is the age of fraternity.” JeanJacques Mayoux,
Melville, trans. John Ashberry (New York: Grove, 1960), p. 109,
translation modified.
421
blood pact replaces consanguinity. Man is indeed the
blood brother of his fellow man, and woman, his blood
sister: according to Melville, this is the community of
celibates, drawing its members into an unlimited
becoming. A brother, a sister, all the more true for no
longer being "his" or "hers," since all "property," all
"proprietorship," has disappeared. A burning passion
deeper than love, since it no longer has either substance
or qualities, but traces a zone of indiscernibility in which
it passes through all intensities in every direction,
extending all the way to the homosexual relation between
brothers, and passing through the incestuous relation
between brother and sister. This is the most mysterious
relation, the one in which Pierre and Isabelle are swept
up, the one that draws Heathcliff and Catherine along in
Wuthering Heights, each one becoming Ahab and
Moby-Dick by turns: "Whatever our souls are made of, his
and mine are the same ... My love for Heathcliff
resembles the eternal rocks beneath-a source of little
visible delight, but necessary ... I am Heathcliff-he's
always always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more
than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own
being ..."281
How can this community be realized? How can the
biggest problem be resolved? But is it not already
resolved, by itself, precisely because it is not a personal
problem, but a historical, geographic, or political one? It
is not an individual or particular affair, but a collective
one, the affair of a people, or rather, of all peoples. It is
not an Oedipal phantasm but a political program.
Melville's bachelor, Bartleby, like Kafka's, must "find the
281
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (London: Penguin, 1985), p.
122.
422
place where he can take his walks"... America.282 The
American is one who is freed from the English paternal
function, the son of a crumbled father, the son of all
nations. Even before their independence, Americans were
thinking about the combination of States, the State-form
most compatible with their vocation. But their vocation
was not to reconstitute an "old State secret," a nation, a
family, a heritage, or a father. It was above all to
constitute a universe, a society of brothers, a federation of
men and goods, a community of anarchist individuals,
inspired by Jefferson, by Thoreau, by Melville. Such is the
declaration in MobyDick (chapter 26): if man is the
brother of his fellow man, if he is worthy of trust or
"confidence," it is not because he belongs to a nation or
because he is a proprietor or shareholder, but only insofar
as he is Man, when he has lost those characteristics that
constitute his "violence," his "idiocy," his "villainy," when
he has no consciousness of himself apart from the
proprieties of a "democratic dignity" that considers all
particularities as so many ignominious stains that arouse
anguish or pity. America is the potential of the man
without particularities, the Original Man. Already in
Redburn:
You can not spill a drop of American blood
without spilling the blood of the whole world. Be
he Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or
Scot; the European who scoffs at an American,
calls his own brother Raca, and stands in danger
of the judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of
men, with a bigoted Hebrew nationality — whose
blood has been debased in the attempt to enoble
it, by maintaining an exclusive succession
282
Kafka, Diaries 19101913, p. 28.
423
among ourselves .... We are not a nation, so
much as a world; for unless we may claim all the
world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are
without father or mother ... We are the heirs of
all time, and with all nations we divide our
inheritance...283
The picture of the nineteenth-century proletarian looks
like this: the advent of the communist man or the society
of comrades, the future Soviet, being without property,
family, or nation, has no other determination than that of
being man, Homo tantum. But this is also the picture of
the American, executed by other means, and the traits of
the former often intermingle with or are superimposed
over those of the latter. America sought to create a
revolution whose strength would lie in a universal
immigration, emigres of the world, just as Bolshevik
Russia would seek to make a revolution whose strength
would lie in a universal proletarization, "Proletarians of
the world" ... the two forms of the class struggle. So that
the messianism of the nineteenth century has two heads
and is expressed no less in American pragmatism than in
the ultimately Russian form of socialism.
Pragmatism is misunderstood when it is seen as a
summary philosophical theory fabricated by Americans.
On the other hand, we understand the novelty of
American thought when we see pragmatism as an attempt
to transform the world, to think a new world or new man
insofar as they create themselves. Western philosophy
was the skull, or the paternal Spirit that realized itself in
the world as totality, and in a knowing subject as
283
Herman Melville, Redburn: His Maiden Voyage (Evanston
and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and Newberry
Library, 1969), p. 169.
424
proprietor. Is it against Western philosophy that Melville
directs his insult, "metaphysical villain"? A contemporary
of American transcendentalism (Emerson, Thoreau),
Melville is already sketching out the traits of the
pragmatism that will be its continuation. It is first of all
the affirmation of a world in process, an archipelago. Not
even a puzzle, whose pieces when fitted together would
constitute a whole, but rather a wall of loose, uncemented
stones, where every element has a value in itself but also
in relation to others: isolated and floating relations,
islands and straits, immobile points and sinuous lines —
for Truth always has "jagged edges." Not a skull but the
vertebral column, a spinal cord; not a uniform piece of
clothing but a Harlequin's coat, even white on white, an
infinite patchwork with multiple joinings, like the jacket
of Redburn, White Jacket or the Great Cosmopolitan: the
American invention par excellence, for the Americans
invented patchwork, just as the Swiss are said to have
invented the cuckoo clock. But to reach this point, it was
also necessary for the knowing subject, the sole
proprietor, to give way to a community of explorers, the
brothers of the archipelago, who replace knowledge with
belief, or rather with "confidence"-not belief in another
world, but confidence in this one, and in man as much as
in God ("I am going to attempt the ascent of Ofo with
hope, not with faith... I will follow my own path...").
Pragmatism is this double principle of archipelago and
hope.284 And what must the community of men consist of
284
Jaworski has analyzed this worldasarchipelago or this
patchwork experiment. These themes are to be found
throughout Pragmatism, and notably among William James’s
most beautiful pages: the world as “shot point blank with a
pistol.” This is inseparable from the search for a new human
community. In Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, Plotinus Plinlimmon’s
mysterious tract already seems like the manifestation of an
425
in order for truth to be possible? Truth and trust.285 Like
Melville before it, pragmatism will fight ceaselessly on
two fronts: against the particularities that pit man against
man and nourish an irremediable mistrust; but also
against the Universal or the Whole, the fusion of souls in
the name of great love or charity. Yet, what remains of
souls once they are no longer attached to particularities,
what keeps them from melting into a whole? What
remains is precisely their "originality," that is, a sound
that each one produces, like a ritornello at the limit of
language, but that it produces only when it takes to the
open road (or to the open sea) with its body, when it leads
its life without seeking salvation, when it embarks upon
its incarnate voyage, without any particular aim, and then
encounters other voyagers, whom it recognizes by their
sound. This is how Lawrence described the new
messianism, or the democratic contribution of American
literature: against the European morality of salvation and
charity, a morality of life in which the soul is fulfilled only
by taking to the road, with no other aim, open to all
contacts, never trying to save other souls, turning away
from those that produce an overly authoritarian or
groaning sound, forming even fleeting and unresolved
chords and accords with its equals, with freedom as its
sole accomplishment, always ready to free itself so as to
absolute pragmatism. On the history of pragmatism in general,
philosophical and political, see Gérard Deledalle, La philosophie
améeicaine (Paris: L’Age d’Homme, 1983): Royce is particularly
important, with his “absolute pragmatism” and his “great
community of Interpretation” that unites individuals. There are
many Melvillian echoes in Royce’s work. His strange trio of the
Aventurer, the Beneficiary, the Hypochondriac, and the Prophet,
or even to refer to characters in The ConfidenceMan, who
would already prefigure the trio’s comic vision.
285
[In English in the original.Trans.]
426
complete itself.286 According to Melville or Lawrence,
brotherhood is a matter for original souls: perhaps it
begins only with the death of the father or God, but it
does not derive from this death, it is a whole other matter
— "all the subtle sympathizings of the incalculable soul,
from the bitterest hate to passionate love."
This
requires
a
new
perspective,
an
archipelago-perspectivism that conjugates the panoramic
shot and the tracking shot, as in The Encantadas. It
requires an acute perception, both visual and auditory, as
Benito Cereno shows, and must replace the concept with
the "percept," that is, with a perception in becoming. It
requires a new community, whose members are capable
of trust or "confidence," that is, of a belief in themselves,
in the world, and in becoming. Bartleby the bachelor
must embark upon his voyage and find his sister, with
whom he will consume the ginger nut, the new host.
Bartleby lives cloistered in the office and never goes out,
but when the attorney suggests new occupations to him,
he is not joking when he responds, "There is too much
confinement ..." And if he is prevented from making his
voyage, then the only place left for him is prison, where
he dies of "civil disobedience," as Thoreau says, "the only
place where a free man can stay with honor."287 William
and Henry James are indeed brothers, and Daisy Miller,
286
D. H. Lawrence, “Whitman,” in Studies in Classical American
Literature (New York: Viking, 1953). This book also includes two
famous studies on Melville. Lawrence criticizes both Melville and
Whitman for having succumbed to the very things they
denounced; nonetheless, he says, it was American literature
that, thanks to them, marked out the path.
287
[See Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience,
ed. Owen Thomas (New York: Norton, 1966), p. 233: “Under a
goverment which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just
man is also a prison.”Trans.]
427
the new American maiden, asks for nothing more than a
little confidence, and allows herself to die because even
this meager request remains unfulfilled. And what was
Bartleby asking for if not a little confidence from the
attorney, who instead responds to him with charity and
philanthropy-all the masks of the paternal function? The
attorney's only excuse is that he draws back from the
becoming into which Bartleby, through his lonely
existence, threatens to drag him, rumors are already
spreading ... The hero of pragmatism is not the successful
businessman, it is Bartleby, and it is Daisy Miller, it is
Pierre and Isabelle, the brother and sister.
The dangers of a "society without fathers" have often been
pointed out, but the only real danger is the return of the
father.288 In this respect, it is difficult to separate the
failure of the two revolutions, the American and the
Soviet, the pragmatic and the dialectical. Universal
emigration was no more successful than universal
proletarization. The Civil War already sounded the knell,
as would the liquidation of the Soviets later on. The birth
of a nation, the restoration of the nation-state — and the
monstrous fathers come galloping back in, while the sons
without fathers start dying off again. Paper images-this is
the fate of the American as well as the Proletarian. But
just as many Bolsheviks could hear the diabolical powers
knocking at the door in 1917, the pragmatists like Melville
before them, could see the masquerade that the society
brothers would lead to. Long before Lawrence, Melville
and Thoreau were diagnosing the American evil, the new
288
See Alexander Mitscherlich’s Society without the Father: A
Contribution to Social Psychology, trans. Eric Musbacher (New
York: J. Aronson, 1974), which is written from a psychoanalytic
point of view that remains indifferent to the movements of History
and invokes the benefits of the paternal English Constitution.
428
cement that would rebuild the wall: paternal authority
and filthy charity. Bartleby therefore lets himself die in
prison. In the beginning, it was Benjamin Franklin the
hypocritical lightningrod Merchant, who instituted the
magnetic American prison. The city-ship reconstitutes the
most oppressive law, and brotherhood exists among the
topmen only when they remain immobile, high up on the
masts (White Jacket). The great community of celibates is
nothing more than a company of bons vivants, which
certainly does not keep the rich bachelor from exploiting
the poor and pallid workers, by reconstituting the two
unreconciled figures of the monstrous father and the
orphaned daughters (The Paradise of Bachelors and the
Tartarus of Maids). The American confidence-man
appears everywhere in Melville's work. What malignant
power has turned the trust into a company as cruel as the
abominable "universal nation" founded by the Dog-Man
in The Encantadas? The ConfidenceMan, in which
Melville's critique of charity and philanthropy culminates,
brings into play a series of devious characters who seem
to emanate from a "great Cosmopolitan" in patchwork
clothing, and who ask for no more than ... a little human
confidence, in order to pull off a multiple and rebounding
confidence game.
Are these false brothers sent by a diabolical father to
restore his power over overly credulous Americans? But
the novel is so complex that one could just as easily say
the opposite: this long procession [théorie] of con men
would be a comic version of authentic brothers, such as
overly suspicious Americans see them, or rather have
already become incapable of seeing them. This cohort of
characters, including the mysterious child at the end, is
perhaps the society of Philanthropists who dissimulate
their demonic project, but perhaps it is also the
429
community of brothers that the Misanthropes are no
longer able to recognize in passing. For even in the midst
of its failure, the American Revolution continues to send
out its fragments, always making something take flight on
the horizon, even sending itself to the moon, always
trying to break through the wall, to take up the
experiment once again, to find a brotherhood in this
enterprise, a sister in this becoming, a music in its
stuttering language, a pure sound and unknown chords in
language itself. What Kafka would say about "small
nations" is what Melville had already said about the great
American nation: it must become a patchwork of all small
nations. What Kafka would say about minor literatures is
what Melville had already said about the American
literature of his time: because there are so few authors in
America, and because its people are so indifferent, the
writer is not in a position to succeed as a recognized
master. Even in his failure, the writer remains all the
more the bearer of a collective enunciation, which no
longer forms part of literary history and preserves the
rights of a people to come, or of a human becoming.289 A
schizophrenic vocation: even in his catatonic or anorexic
state, Bartleby is not the patient, but the doctor of a sick
America, the MedicineMan, the new Christ or the
brother to us all.
The Smooth and the Striated
289
See Melville’s text on American literature, “Hawthorne and
His Mosses,” in The Portable Melville, ed. Jay Leyda (New York:
Viking, 1952), pp. 41114, which should be compared with
Kafka’s text on “the literature of small peoples,” in The diaries of
Franz Kafka: 19101913, entry for December 25, 1911, pp. 210
ff.
430
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Smooth space and striated space — nomad space and
sedentary space — the space in which the war machine
develops and the space instituted by the State apparatus
— are not of the same nature. No sooner do we note a
simple opposition between the two kinds of space than we
must indicate a much more complex difference by virtue
of which the successive terms of the oppositions fail to
coincide entirely. And no sooner have we done that than
we must remind ourselves that the two spaces in fact exist
only in mixture: smooth space is constantly being
translated, trans versed into a striated space; striated
space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth
space. In the first case, one organizes even the desert; in
the second, the desert gains and grows; and the two can
happen simultaneously. But the de facto mixes do not
preclude a de jure, or abstract, distinction between the
two spaces. That there is such a distinction is what
accounts for the fact that the two spaces do not
communicate with each other in the same way: it is the de
jure distinction that determines the forms assumed by a
given de facto mix and the direction or meaning of the
mix (is a smooth space captured, enveloped by a striated
space, or does a striated space dissolve into a smooth
space, allow a smooth space to develop?). This raises a
number of simultaneous questions: the simple
oppositions between the two spaces; the complex
differences; the de facto mixes, and the passages from one
to another; the principles of the mixture, which are not at
all symmetrical, sometimes causing a passage from the
smooth to the striated, sometimes from the striated to the
smooth, according to entirely different movements. We
431
must therefore envision a certain number of models,
which would be like various aspects of the two spaces and
the relations between them.
The Technological Model. A fabric presents in
principle a certain number of characteristics that permit
us to define it as a striated space. First, it is constituted by
two kinds of parallel elements; in the simplest case, there
are vertical and horizontal elements, and the two
intertwine, intersect perpendicularly. Second, the two
kinds of elements have different functions; one is fixed,
the other mobile, passing above and beneath the fixed.
Leroi-Gourhan has analyzed this particular figure of
"supple solids" in basketry and weaving: stake and
thread, warp and woof.290 Third, a striated space of this
kind is necessarily delimited, closed on at least one side:
the fabric can be infinite in length but not in width, which
is determined by the frame of the warp; the necessity of a
back and forth motion implies a closed space (circular or
cylindrical figures are themselves closed). Finally, a space
of this kind seems necessarily to have a top and a bottom;
even when the warp yarn and woof yarn are exactly the
same in nature, number, and density, weaving
reconstitutes a bottom by placing the knots on one side.
Was it not these characteristics that enabled Plato to use
the model of weaving as the paradigm for "royal science,"
in other words, the art of governing people or operating
the State apparatus?
Felt is a supple solid product that proceeds altogether
differently, as an anti-fabric. It implies no separation of
threads, no intertwining, only an entanglement of fibers
290
Andre LeroiGourhan, L'homme et la matiere (Paris: Albin
Michel, 1971), pp. 244ff. (and the opposition between fabric and
felt).
432
obtained by fulling (for example, by rolling the block of
fibers back and forth). What becomes entangled are the
microscales of the fibers. An aggregate of intrication of
this kind is in no way homogeneous: it is nevertheless
smooth, and contrasts point by point with the space of
fabric (it is in principle infinite, open, and unlimited in
every direction; it has neither top nor bottom nor center;
it does not assign fixed and mobile elements but rather
distributes a continuous variation). Even the
technologists who express grave doubts about the
nomads' powers of innovation at least give them credit for
felt: a splendid insulator, an ingenious invention, the raw
material for tents, clothes, and armor among the
Turco-Mongols. Of course, the nomads of Africa and the
Maghreb instead treat wool as a fabric. Although it might
entail displacing the opposition, do we not detect two very
different conceptions or even practices of weaving, the
distinction between which would be something like the
distinction between fabric as a whole and felt? For among
sedentaries, clothes-fabric and tapestry-fabric tend to
annex the body and exterior space, respectively, to the
immobile house: fabric integrates the body and the
outside into a closed space. On the other hand, the
weaving of the nomad indexes clothing and the house
itself to the space of the outside, to the open smooth space
in which the body moves.
There are many interlacings, mixes between felt and
fabric. Can we not displace the opposition yet again? In
knitting, for example, the needles produce a striated
space; one of them plays the role of the warp, the other of
the woof, but by turns. Crochet, on the other hand, draws
an open space in all directions, a space that is prolongable
in all directions — but still has a center. A more
significant distinction would be between embroidery,
433
with its central theme or motif, and patchwork, with its
piece-by-piece construction, its infinite, successive
additions of fabric. Of course, embroidery's variables and
constants, fixed and mobile elements, may be of
extraordinary complexity. Patchwork, for its part, may
display equivalents to themes, symmetries, and resonance
that approximate it to embroidery. But the fact remains
that its space is not at all constituted in the same way:
there is no center; its basic motif ("block") is composed of
a single element; the recurrence of this element frees
uniquely rhythmic values distinct from the harmonies of
embroidery (in particular, in "crazy" patchwork, which
fits together pieces of varying size, shape, and color, and
plays on the texture of the fabrics). "She had been
working on it for fifteen years, carrying about with her a
shapeless bag of dingy, threadbare brocade containing
odds and ends of colored fabric in all possible shapes. She
could never bring herself to trim them to any pattern; so
she shifted and fitted and mused and fitted and shifted
them like pieces of a patient puzzle-picture, trying to fit
them to a pattern or create a pattern out of them without
using her scissors, smoothing her colored scraps with
flaccid, putty-colored fingers."291 An amorphous
collection of juxtaposed pieces that can be joined together
in an infinite number of ways: we see that patchwork is
literally a Riemannian space, or vice versa. That is why
very special work groups were formed for patchwork
fabrication (the importance of the quilting bee in
America, and its role from the standpoint of a women's
collectivity). The smooth space of patchwork is adequate
to demonstrate that "smooth" does not mean
291
William Faulkner, Sartoris (New York: Random House, 1956),
p. 151
434
homogeneous, quite the contrary: it is an amorphous,
nonformal space prefiguring op art.
The story of the quilt is particularly interesting in this
connection. A quilt comprises two layers offabric stitched
together, often with a filler in between. Thus it is possible
for there to be no top or bottom. If we follow the history
of the quilt over a short migration sequence (the settlers
who left Europe for the New World), we see that there is a
shift from a formula dominated by embroidery (so-called
"plain" quilts) to a patchwork formula ("applique quilts,"
and above all "pieced quilts") . The first settlers of the
seventeenth century brought with them plain quilts,
embroidered and striated spaces of extreme beauty. But
toward the end of the century patchwork technique was
developed more and more, at first due to the scarcity of
textiles (leftover fabric, pieces salvaged from used clothes,
remnants taken from the "scrap bag"), and later due to
the popularity of Indian chintz. It is as though a smooth
space emanated, sprang from a striated space, but not
without a correlation between the two, a recapitulation of
one in the other, a furtherance of one through the other.
Yet the complex difference persists. Patchwork, in
conformity with migration, whose degree of affinity with
nomadism it shares, is not only named after trajectories,
but "represents" trajectories, becomes inseparable from
speed or movement in an open space.292
292
On the history of the quilt and patchwork in American
immigration, see Jonathan Holstein, American Pieced Quilts
(New York: Viking, 1973) (with reproductions and bibliography).
Holstein does not claim that the quilt is the principal source of
American art, but he does note the extent to which the "white on
white" of plain quilts and patchwork compositions inspired or
gave impetus to certain tendencies in American painting: "We
can see in many [quilts] such phenomena as 'op' effects, serial
435
The Musical Model. Pierre Boulez was the first t o
develop a set o f simple oppositions and complex
differences, as well as reciprocal nonsymmetrical
correlations, between smooth and striated space. He
created these concepts and words in the field of music,
defining them on several levels precisely in order to
account for the abstract distinction at the same time as
the concrete mixes. In the simplest terms, Boulez says
that in a smooth spacetime one occupies without
counting, whereas in a striated space-time one counts in
order to occupy. He makes palpable or perceptible the
difference between non metric and metric multiplicities,
directional and dimensional spaces. He renders them
sonorous or musical. Undoubtedly, his personal work is
composed of these relations, created or recreated
musically.293
At a second level, it can be said that space is susceptible to
two kinds of breaks: one is defined by a standard,
whereas the other is irregular and undetermined, and can
be made wherever one wishes to place it. At yet another
level, it can be said that frequencies can be distributed
either in the intervals between breaks, or statistically
without breaks. In the first case, the principle behind the
distribution of breaks and intervals is called a "module";
it may be constant and fixed (a straight striated space), or
regularly or irregularly variable (curved striated spaces,
termed focalized if the variation of the module is regular,
images, use of 'color fields,' deep understanding of negative
space, mannerisms of formal abstraction and the like," (p. 13).
293
Pierre Boulez, Boulez on Music Today, trans. Susan
Bradshaw and Richard Bennett (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1971), pp. 83ff. We provide a summary of
Boulez's analysis in the following paragraph.
436
nonfocalized ifit is irregular). When there is no module,
the distribution of frequencies is without break: it is
"statistical," however small the segment of space may be;
it still has two aspects, however, depending on whether
the distribution is equal (nondirected smooth space), or
more or less rare or dense (directed smooth space). Can
we say that in the kind of smooth space that is without
break or module there is no interval? Or, on the contrary,
has everything become interval, intermezzo? The smooth
is a nomos, whereas the striated always has a logos, the
octave, for example. Boulez is concerned with the
communication between the two kinds of space, their
alternations and superpositions: how "a strongly directed
smooth space tends to meld with a striated space," how "a
striated space in which the statistical distribution of the
pitches used is in fact equal tends to meld with a smooth
space";294 how the octave can be replaced by
"non-octave-forming scales" that reproduce themselves
through a principle of spiraling; how "texture" can be
crafted in such a way as to lose fixed and homogeneous
values, becoming a support for slips in tempo,
displacements of intervals, and son art transformations
comparable to the transformations of op art.
Returning to the simple opposition, the striated is that
which intertwines fixed and variable elements, produces
an order and succession of distinct forms, and organizes
horizontal melodic lines and vertical harmonic planes.
The smooth is the continuous variation, continuous
development of form; it is the fusion of harmony and
melody in favor of the production of properly rythmic
294
[TRANS: Boulez, Boulez on Music Today, p. 87. Translation
modified.]
437
values, the pure act of the drawing of a diagonal across
the vertical and the horizontal.
The Maritime Model. Of course, there are points,
lines, and surfaces in striated space as well as in smooth
space (there are also volumes, but we will leave this
question aside for the time being). In striated space, lines
or trajectories tend to be subordinated to points: one goes
from one point to another. In the smooth, it is the
opposite: the points are subordinated to the trajectory.
This was already the case among the nomads for the
clothestent-space vector of the outside. The dwelling is
subordinated to the journey; inside space conforms to
outside space: tent, igloo, boat. There are stops and
trajectories in both the smooth and the striated. But in
smooth space, the stop follows from the trajectory; once
again, the interval takes all, the interval is substance
(forming the basis for rhythmic values).295
In smooth space, the line is therefore a vector, a direction
and not a dimension or metric determination. It is a space
constructed by local operations involving changes in
direction. These changes in direction may be due to the
nature of the journey itself, as with the nomads of the
archipelagoes (a case of "directed" smooth space); but it is
more likely to be due to the variability of the goal or point
to be attained, as with the nomads of the desert who head
toward local, temporary vegetation (a "nondirected"
smooth space). Directed or not, and especially in the
295
On this indexing of the inside and the outside among the
nomads of the desert, see Annie Milovanoff, "La seconde peau
du nomade," Nouvelles litteraires, no. 2646 (July 27, 1978), p.
18. And on the relations between the igloo and the outside
among the nomads of the ice, see Edmund Carpenter, Eskimo
(Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1964).
438
latter case, smooth space is directional rather than
dimensional or metric. Smooth space is filled by events or
haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived
things. It is a space of affects, more than one of
properties. It is haptic rather than optical perception.
Whereas in the striated forms organize a matter, in the
smooth materials signal forces and serve as symptoms for
them. It is an intensive rather than extensive space, one
of distances, not of measures and properties. Intense
Spatium instead of Extensio. A Body without Organs
instead of an organism and organization. Perception in it
is based on symptoms and evaluations rather than
measures and properties. That is why smooth space is
occupied by intensities, wind and noise, forces, and
sonorous and tactile qualities, as in the desert, steppe, or
ice.296 The creaking of ice and the song of the sands.
Striated space, on the contrary, is canopied by the sky as
measure and by the measurable visual qualities deriving
from it.
This is where the very special problem of the sea enters
in. For the sea is a smooth space par excellence, and yet
was the first to encounter the demands of increasingly
strict striation. The problem did not arise in proximity to
land. On the contrary, the striation of the sea was a result
of navigation on the open water. Maritime space was
striated as a function of two astronomical and
geographical gains: bearings, obtained by a set of
calculations based on exact observation of the stars and
the sun; and the map, which intertwines meridians and
parallels, longitudes and latitudes, plotting regions
296
See the two convergent descriptions of the space of ice and
the space of sand: Edmund Carpenter, Eskimo, and Wilfred
Thesiger, Arabian Sands (London: Longmans, Green, 1959). (In
both cases, there is an indifference to astronomy.)
439
known and unknown onto a grid (like a Mendeleyev
table). Must we accept the Portuguese argument and
assign 1440 as the turning point that marked the first
decisive striation, and set the stage for the great
discoveries? Rather, we will follow Pierre Chaunu when
he speaks of an extended confrontation at sea between
the smooth and the striated during the course of which
the striated progressively took hold.297 For before
longitude lines had been plotted, a very late development,
there existed a complex and empirical nomadic system of
navigation based on the wind and noise, the colors and
sounds of the seas; then came a directional,
preastronomical or already astronomical, system of
navigation employing only latitude, in which there was no
possibility of "taking one's bearings," and which had only
portolanos lacking "translatable generalization" instead of
true maps; finally, improvements upon this primitive
astronomical navigation were made under the very
special conditions of the latitudes of the Indian Ocean,
then of the elliptical circuits of the Atlantic (straight and
curved spaces).298 It is as if the sea were not only the
archetype of all smooth spaces but the first to undergo a
gradual striation gridding it in one place, then another,
on this side and that. The commercial cities participated
in this striation, and were often innovators; but only the
States were capable of carrying it to completion, of raising
297
See Pierre Chaunu's study, L'expansion europeenne du XIlIe
au XVe siec/e (Paris: PUF, 1969), pp. 288305.
298
See in particular Paul Adam, "Navigation primitive et
navigation astronomique," in Les aspects internationaux de la
decouverte oceanique aux XVe et XVIe siec/es. Ve Colloque
international d'histoire maritime, ed. Michel Mollat and Paul
Adam (Paris: SEVPEN, 1960), pp. 91 112. (See the operative
geometry of the pole star.)
440
it to the global level of a "politics of science."299 A
dimensionality that subordinated directionality, or
superimposed itself upon it, became increasingly
entrenched.
This is undoubtedly why the sea, the archetype of smooth
space, was also the archetype of all striations of smooth
space: the striation of the desert, the air, the stratosphere
(prompting Virilio to speak of a "vertical coastline," as a
change in direction). It was at sea that smooth space was
first subjugated and a model found for the laying-out and
imposition of striated space, a model later put to use
elsewhere. This does not contradict Virilio's other
hypothesis: in the aftermath of striation, the sea
reimparts a kind of smooth space, occupied first by the
"fleet in being," then by the perpetual motion of the
strategic submarine, which outflanks all gridding and
invents a neonomadism in the service of a war machine
still more disturbing than the States, which reconstitute it
at the limit of their striations. The sea, then the air and
the stratosphere, become smooth spaces again, but, in the
strangest of reversals, it is for the purpose of controlling
striated space more completely.300 The smooth always
possesses a greater power of deterritorialization than the
striated. When examining the new professions, or new
classes even, how can one fail to mention the military
technicians who stare into screens night and day and live
for long stretches in strategic submarines (in the future it
299
Guy Beaujouan, "Science 1ivresque et nautique au XVe
siecie," Les aspects internationaux de la decouverte oceanique,
pp. 6190.
300
See Paul Virilio, L'insecurite du territoire (Paris: Stock, 1975),
on how the sea reconstitutes a smooth space with the "fleet in
being," etc.; and how a vertical smooth space of aerial and
stratospheric domination springs up (especially chapter 4, "Le
littoral vertical," pp. 93 109).
441
will be on satellites), and the apocalyptic eyes and ears
they have fashioned for themselves, which can barely
distinguish any more between a natural phenomenon, a
swarm of locusts, and an "enemy" attack originating at
any given point? All of this serves as a reminder that the
smooth itself can be drawn and occupied by diabolical
powers of organization; value judgments aside, this
demonstrates above all that there exist two
nonsymmetrical movements, one of which striates the
smooth, and one of which reimparts smooth space on the
basis of the striated. (Do not new smooth spaces, or holey
spaces, arise as parries even in relation to the smooth
space of a worldwide organization? Virilio invokes the
beginnings of subterranean habitation in the "mineral
layer," which can take on very diverse values.)
Let us return to the simple opposition between the
smooth and the striated since we are not yet at the point
where we can consider the dissymmetrical and concrete
mixes. The smooth and the striated are distinguished first
of all by an inverse relation between the point and the line
(in the case of the striated, the line is between two points,
while in the smooth, the point is between two lines); and
second, by the nature of the line (smooth-directional,
open intervals; dimensional-striated, closed intervals).
Finally, there is a third difference, concerning the surface
or space. In striated space, one closes off a surface and
"allocates" it according to determinate intervals, assigned
breaks; in the smooth, one "distributes" oneself in an
open space, according to frequencies and in the course of
one's crossings (logos and nomos).301 As simple as this
301
Emmanuel Laroche, Histoire de la racine "Nem" en grec
ancien (Paris: Klincksieck, 1949), clearly notes the difference
between the ideas of distribution and allocation, between the two
442
opposition is, it is not easy to place it. We cannot content
ourselves with establishing an immediate opposition
between the smooth ground of the nomadic animal raiser
and the striated land of the sedentary cultivator. It is
evident that the peasant, even the sedentary peasant,
participates fully in the space of the wind, the space of
tactile and sonorous qualities. When the ancient Greeks
speak of the open space of the nomos — nondelimited,
unpartitioned; the preurban countryside; mountainside,
plateau, steppe — they oppose it not to cultivation, which
may actually be part of it, but to the polis, the city, the
town. When Ibn Khaldun speaks of badiya, bedouinism,
the term covers cultivators as well as nomadic animal
raisers: he contrasts it to hadara, or "city life." This
clarification is certainly important, but it does not change
much. For from the most ancient of times, from Neolithic
and even Paleolithic times, it is the town that invents
agriculture: it is through the actions of the town that the
farmers and their striated space are superposed upon the
cultivators operating in a still smooth space (the
transhumant cultivator, half-sedentary or already
completely sedentary). So on this level we reencounter
the simple opposition we began by challenging, between
farmers and nomads, striated land and smooth ground:
but only after a detour through the town as a force of
striation. Now not only the sea, desert, steppe, and air are
the sites of a contest between the smooth and the striated,
but the earth itself, depending on whether there is
cultivation in nomos-space or agriculture in city-space.
Must we not say the same of the city itself? In contrast to
the sea, the city is the striated space par excellence; the
sea is a smooth space fundamentally open to striation,
linguistic groups concerned, between the two kinds of space,
between the "province" pole and the "city" pole.
443
and the city is the force of striation that reimparts smooth
space, puts it back into operation everywhere, on earth
and in the other elements, outside but also inside itself.
The smooth spaces arising from the city are not only
those of worldwide organization, but also of a
counterattack combining the smooth and the holey and
turning back against the town: sprawling, temporary,
shifting shantytowns of nomads and cave dwellers, scrap
metal and fabric, patchwork, to which the striations of
money, work, or housing are no longer even relevant. An
explosive misery secreted by the city, and corresponding
to
Thom's
mathematical
formula:
"retroactive
smoothing."302 Condensed force, the potential for
counterattack?
In each instance, then, the simple opposition
"smooth-striated" gives rise to far more difficult
complications, alternations, and superpositions. But
these complications basically confirm the distinction,
precisely because they bring dissymmetrical movements
into play. For now, it suffices to say that there are two
kinds of voyage, distinguished by the respective role of
the point, line, and space. Goethe travel and Kleist travel?
French travel and English (or American) travel? Tree
travel and rhizome travel? But nothing completely
coincides, and everything intermingles, or crosses over.
This is because the differences are not objective: it is
possible to live striated on the deserts, steppes, or seas; it
is possible to live smooth even in the cities, to be an urban
nomad (for example, a stroll taken by Henry Miller in
Clichy or Brooklyn is a nomadic transit in smooth space;
302
This expression is found in René Thom, who applies it to a
continuous variation in which the variable reacts upon its
antecedents: Modeles mathematiques de la morphogenese
(Paris: 10/18, 1974), pp. 218219.
444
he makes the city disgorge a patchwork, differentials of
speed, delays and accelerations, changes in orientation,
continuous variations ... The beatniks owe much to
Miller, but they changed direction again, they put the
space outside the cities to new use). Fitzgerald said it long
ago: it is not a question of taking off for the South Seas,
that is not what determines a voyage. There are not only
strange voyages in the city but voyages in place: we are
not thinking of drug users, whose experience is too
ambiguous, but of true nomads. We can say of the
nomads, following Toynbee's suggestion: they do not
move. They are nomads by dint of not moving, not
migrating, of holding a smooth space that they refuse to
leave, that they leave only in order to conquer and die.
Voyage in place: that is the name of all intensities, even if
they also develop in extension. To think is to voyage;
earlier we tried to establish a theo-noological model of
smooth and striated spaces. In short, what distinguishes
the two kinds of voyages is neither a measurable quantity
of movement, nor something that would be only in the
mind, but the mode of spatialization, the manner of being
in space, of being for space. Voyage smoothly or in
striation, and think the same way ... But there are always
passages from one to the other, transformations of one
within the other, reversals. In his film, Kings of the Road,
Wenders intersects and superposes the paths of two
characters; one of them takes a still educational,
memorial, cultural, Goethean journey that is thoroughly
striated, whereas the other has already conquered smooth
space, and only experiments, induces amnesia in the
German "desert." But oddly enough, it is the former who
opens space for himself and performs a kind of
retroactive smoothing, whereas striae reform around the
latter, closing his space again. Voyaging smoothly is a
becoming, and a difficult, uncertain becoming at that. It is
445
not a question of returning to preastronomical
navigation, nor to the ancient nomads. The confrontation
between the smooth and the striated, the passages,
alternations and superpositions, are underway today,
running in the most varied directions.
The Mathematical Model. It was a decisive event
when the mathematician Riemann uprooted the multiple
from its predicate state and made it a noun,
"multiplicity." It marked the end of dialectics and the
beginning of a typology and topology of multiplicities.
Each multiplicity was defined by n determinations;
sometimes the determinations were independent of the
situation, and sometimes they depended upon it. For
example, the magnitude of a vertical line between two
points can be compared to the magnitude of a horizontal
line between two other points: it is clear that the
multiplicity in this case is metric, that it allows itself to be
striated, and that its determinations are magnitudes. On
the other hand, two sounds of equal pitch and different
intensity cannot be compared to two sounds of equal
intensity and different pitch; in this case, two
determinations can be compared only "if one is a part of
the other and if we restrict ourselves to the judgment that
the latter is smaller than the former, without being able to
say by how much."303 Multiplicities of this second kind
are not metric and allow themselves to be striated and
measured only by indirect means, which they always
resist. They are an exact yet rigorous. Meinong and
Russell opposed the notion of distance to that of
303
On Riemann's and Helmholtz's presentations of multiplicity,
see Jules Vuillemin, Philosophie de l'algebre (Paris: PUF, 1962),
pp. 409ff.
446
magnitude.304 Distances are not, strictly speaking,
indivisible: they can be divided precisely in cases where
the situation of one determination makes it part of
another. But unlike magnitudes, they cannot divide
without changing in nature each time. An intensity, for
example, is not composed of addable and displaceable
magnitudes: a temperature is not the sum of two smaller
temperatures, a speed is not the sum of two smaller
speeds. Since each intensity is itself a difference, it divides
according to an order in which each term of the division
differs in nature from the others. Distance is therefore a
set of ordered differences, in other words, differences that
are enveloped in one another in such a way that it is
possible to judge which is larger or smaller, but not their
exact magnitudes. For example, one can divide movement
into the gallop, trot, and walk, but in such a way that what
is divided changes in nature at each moment of the
division, without any one of these moments entering into
the composition of any other. Therefore these
multiplicities of "distance" are inseparable from a process
of continuous variation, whereas multiplicities of
"magnitude" distribute constants and variables.
That is why we consider Bergson to be of major
importance (much more so than Husserl, or even
Meinong or Russell) in the development of the theory of
multiplicities. Beginning in Time and Free Will, he
presents duration as a type of multiplicity opposed to
metric multiplicity or the multiplicity of magnitude.
304
See Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics (New
York: Norton, 1964), chapter 31. The following discussion does
not conform to Russell's theory. An excellent analysis of the
notions of distance and magnitude according to Meinong and
Russell may be found in Albert Spaier, La pensee et la quantite
(Paris: Alcan, 1927).
447
Duration is in no way indivisible, but is that which cannot
be divided without changing in nature at each division
(Achilles' running is not divided into steps, his steps do
not compose it in the manner of magnitudes).305 On the
other hand, in a multiplicity such ashomogeneous
extension, the division can be carried as far as one likes
without changing anything in the constant object; or the
magnitudes can vary with no other result than an increase
or a decrease in the amount of space they striate. Bergson
thus brought to light "two very different kinds of
multiplicity," one qualitative and fusional, continuous,
the other numerical and homogeneous, discrete. It will be
noted that matter goes back and forth between the two;
sometimes it is already enveloped in qualitative
multiplicity, sometimes already developed in a metric
"schema" that draws it outside of itself. The confrontation
between Bergson and Einstein on the topic of Relativity is
incomprehensible if one fails to place it in the context of
the basic theory of Riemannian multiplicities, as modified
by Bergson.
We have on numerous occasions encountered all kinds of
differences between two types of multiplicities: metric
and nonmetric; extensive and qualitative; centered and
acentered; arborescent and rhizomatic; numerical and
305
Beginning in chapter 2 of Time and Free Will: An Essay on
the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson (New
York: Macmillan, 1958), Bergson repeatedly uses the noun
"multiplicity," under conditions that should attract the attention of
commentators; that there is an implicit reference to Riemann
seems beyond doubt. Later, in Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy
Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (New York: Humanities
Press, 1978), he explains that Achilles' stride can be divided
perfectly into "submultiples" that differ in nature, however, from
that which they divide; the same goes for the tortoise's stride;
and the submultiples, "in both cases," themselves differ in
nature.
448
flat; dimensional and directional; of masses and of packs;
of magnitude and of distance; of breaks and of frequency;
striated and smooth. Not only is that which peoples a
smooth space a multiplicity that changes in nature when
it divides — such as tribes in the desert: constantly
modified distances, packs that are always undergoing
metamorphosis — but smooth space itself, desert, steppe,
sea, or ice, is a multiplicity of this type, nonmetric,
acentered, directional, etc. Now it might be thought that
the Number would belong exclusively to the other
multiplicities, that it would accord them the scientific
status nonmetric multiplicities lack. But this is only
partially true. It is true that the number is the correlate of
the metric: magnitudes can striate space only by
reference to numbers, and conversely, numbers are used
to express increasingly complex relations between
magnitudes, thus giving rise to ideal spaces reinforcing
the striation and making it coextensive with all of matter.
There is therefore a correlation within metric
multiplicities between geometry and arithmetic, geometry
and algebra, which is constitutive of major science (the
most profound authors in this respect are those who have
seen that the number, even in its simplest forms, is
exclusively cardinal in character, and the unit exclusively
divisible).306 It could be said on the other hand that
nonmetric multiplicities or the multiplicities of smooth
space pertain only to a minor geometry that is purely
operative and qualitative, in which calculation is
necessarily very limited, and the local operations of which
306
See Bergson, Time and Free Will, p. 82: if a multiplicity
"implies the possibility of treating any number whatever as a
provisional unit which can be added to itself, inversely the units
in their turn are true numbers which are as big as we like, but
are regarded as provisionally indivisible for the purpose of
compounding them with one another."
449
are not even capable of general translatability or a
homogeneous system of location. Yet this "inferiority" is
only apparent; for the independence of this nearly
illiterate, ametric geometry is what makes possible the
independence of the number, the subsequent function of
which is to measure magnitudes in striated space (or to
striate). The number distributes itself in smooth space; it
does not divide without changing nature each time,
without changing units, each of which represents a
distance and not a magnitude. The ordinal, directional,
nomadic, articulated number, the numbering number,
pertains to smooth space, just as the numbered number
pertains to striated space. So we may say of every
multiplicity that it is already a number, and still a unit.
But the number and the unit, and even the way in which
the unit divides, are different in each case. Minor science
is continually enriching major science, communicating its
intuitions to it, its way of proceeding, its itinerancy, its
sense of and taste for matter, singularity, variation,
intuitionist geometry and the numbering number.
But so far we have only considered the first aspect of
smooth and nonmetric multiplicities, as opposed to
metric multiplicities: how the situation of one
determination can make it part of another without our
being able either to assign that situation an exact
magnitude or common unit, or to discount it. This is the
enveloping or enveloped character of smooth space. But
there is a second, more important, aspect: when the
situation of the two determinations precludes their
comparison. As we know, this is the case for Riemannian
spaces, or rather, Riemannian patches of space:
"Riemann spaces are devoid of any kind of homogeneity.
Each is characterized by the form of the expression that
defines the square of the distance between two infinitely
450
proximate points. ... It follows that two neighboring
observers in a Riemann space can locate the points in
their immediate vicinity but cannot locate their spaces in
relation to each other without a new convention. Each
vicinity is therefore like a shred of Euclidean space, but
the linkage between one vicinity and the next is not
defined and can be effected in an infinite number of
ways. Riemann space at its most general thus presents
itself as an amorphous collection of pieces that are
juxtaposed but not attached to each other." It is possible
to define this multiplicity without any reference to a
metrical system, in terms of the conditions of frequency,
or rather accumulation, of a set of vicinities; these
conditions are entirely different from those determining
metric spaces and their breaks (even though a relation
between the two kinds of space necessarily results).307 In
short, if we follow Lautman's fine description,
Riemannian space is pure patchwork. It has connections,
or tactile relations. It has rhythmic values not found
elsewhere, even though they can be translated into a
metric space. Heterogeneous, in continuous variation, it
is a smooth space, insofar as smooth space is amorphous
and not homogeneous. We can thus define two positive
characteristics of smooth space in general: when there are
determinations that are part of one another and pertain
to enveloped distances or ordered differences,
independent of magnitude; when, independent of
metrics, determinations arise that cannot be part of one
another but are connected by processes of frequency or
accumulation. These are the two aspects of the nomos of
smooth space.
307
Albert Lautman, Les schemas de structure (Paris: Hermann,
1938), pp. 23, 3435.
451
We are always, however, brought back to a
dissymmetrical necessity to cross from the smooth to the
striated, and from the striated to the smooth. If it is true
that itinerant geometry and the nomadic number of
smooth spaces are a constant inspiration to royal science
and striated space, conversely, the metrics of striated
spaces (metron) is indispensable for the translation of the
strange data of a smooth multiplicity. Translating is not a
simple act: it is not enough to substitute the space
traversed for the movement; a series of rich and complex
operations is necessary (Bergson was the first to make
this point). Neither is translating a secondary act. It is an
operation that undoubtedly consists in subjugating,
overcoding, metricizing smooth space, in neutralizing it,
but also in giving it a milieu of propagation, extension,
refraction, renewal, and impulse without which it would
perhaps die of its own accord: like a mask without which
it could neither breathe nor find a general form of
expression. Major science has a perpetual need for the
inspiration of the minor; but the minor would be nothing
if it did not confront and conform to the highest scientific
requirements. Let us take just two examples of the
richness and necessity of translations, which include as
many opportunities for openings as risks of closure or
stoppage: first, the complexity of the means by which one
translates intensities into extensive quantities, or more
generally, multiplicities of distance into systems of
magnitudes that measure and striate them (the role of
logarithms in this connection); second, and more
important, the delicacy and complexity of the means by
which Riemannian patches of smooth space receive a
Euclidean conjunction (the role of the parallelism of
452
vectors in striating the infinitesimal).308 The mode of
connection proper to patches of Riemannian space
("accumulation") is not to be confused with the Euclidean
conjunction of Riemann space ("parallelism"). Yet the two
are linked and give each other impetus. Nothing is ever
done with: smooth space allows itself to be striated, and
striated space reimparts a smooth space, with potentially
very different values, scope, and signs. Perhaps we must
say that all progress is made by and in striated space, but
all becoming occurs in smooth space.
Is it possible to give a very general mathematical
definition of smooth spaces? Benoit Mandelbrot's
"fractals" seem to be on that path. Fractals are aggregates
whose number of dimensions is fractional rather than
whole, or else whole but with continuous variation in
direction. An example would be a line segment whose
central third is replaced by the angle of an equilateral
triangle; the operation is repeated for the four resulting
segments, and so on ad infinitum, following a relation of
similarity — such a segment would constitute an infinite
line or curve with a dimension greater than one, but less
than a surface (= 2). Similar results can be obtained by
making holes, by cutting, "windows" into a circle, instead
of adding "points" to a triangle; likewise, a cube into
which holes are drilled according to the principle of
similarity becomes less than a volume but more than a
surface (this is the mathematical presentation of the
affinity between a free space and a holey space). In still
other forms, Brownian motion, turbulence, and the sky
308
On this properly Euclidean conjunction (which is very
different from the process of accumulation), see Lautman, ibid.,
pp. 4548.
453
are "fractals" of this kind.309 Perhaps this provides us
with another way of defining fuzzy aggregates. But the
main thing is that it provides a general determination for
smooth space that takes into account its differences from
and relations to striated space: (1) we shall call striated or
metric any aggregate with a whole number of dimensions,
and for which it is possible to assign constant directions;
(2) nonmetric smooth space is constituted by the
construction of a line with a fractional number of
dimensions greater than one, or of a surface with a
fractional number of dimensions greater than two; (3) a
fractional number of dimensions is the index of a
properly directional space (with continuous variation in
direction, and without tangent); (4) what defines smooth
space, then, is that it does not have a dimension higher
than that which moves through it or is inscribed in it; in
this sense it is a flat multiplicity, for example, a line that
fills a plane without ceasing to be a line; (5) space and
that which occupies space tend to become identified, to
have the same power, in the anexact yet rigorous form of
the numbering or nonwhole number (occupy without
counting); (6) a smooth, amorphous space of this kind is
constituted by an accumulation of proximities, and each
accumulation defines a zone of indiscernibility proper to
"becoming" (more than a line and less than a surface; less
than a volume and more than a surface).
The Physical Model. The various models confirm a
certain idea of striation: two series of parallels that
intersect perpendicularly, some of which, the verticals,
are more in the role of fixed elements or constants,
whereas the others, the horizontals, are more in the role
309
Benoit Mandelbrot, Fractals: Form, Chance, and Dimension
(San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1977).
454
of variables. This is roughly the case for the warp and the
woof, harmony and melody, longitude and latitude. The
more regular the intersection, the tighter the striation, the
more homogeneous the space tends to become; it is for
this reason that from the beginning homogeneity did not
seem to us to be a characteristic of smooth space, but on
the contrary, the extreme result of striation, or the
limit-form of a space striated everywhere and in all
directions. If the smooth and the homogeneous seem to
communicate, it is only because when the striated attains
its ideal of perfect homogeneity, it is apt to reimpart
smooth space, by a movement that superposes itself upon
that of the homogeneous but remains entirely different
from it. In each model, the smooth actually seemed to
pertain to a fundamental heterogeneity: felt or patchwork
rather than weaving, rhythmic values rather than
harmony-melody, Riemannian space rather than
Euclidean space — a continuous variation that exceeds
any distribution of constants and variables, the freeing of
a line that does not pass between two points, the
formation of a plane that does not proceed by parallel and
perpendicular lines.
The link between the homogeneous and the striated can
be expressed in terms of an imaginary, elementary
physics. (1) You begin by striating space with parallel
gravitational verticals. (2) The resultant of these parallels
or forces is applied to a point inside the body occupying
the space (center of gravity). (3) The position of this
point does not change when the direction of the parallel
forces is changed, when they become perpendicular to
their original direction. (4) You discover that gravity is a
particular case of a universal attraction following straight
lines or biunivocal relations between two bodies. (5) You
define a general notion of work as a force-displacement
455
relation in a certain direction. (6) You then have the
physical basis for an increasingly perfect striated space,
running not only vertically and horizontally, but in every
direction subordinated to points.
It is not even necessary to invoke this Newtonian
pseudophysics. The Greeks already went from a space
striated vertically, top to bottom, to a centered space with
reversible and symmetrical relations in all directions, in
other words, striated in every direction in such a way as to
constitute a homogeneity. There is no question that these
are like two models of the State apparatus, the vertical
apparatus of the empire and the isotropic apparatus of
the city-state.310 Geometry lies at the crossroads of a
physics problem and an affair of the State.
It is obvious that the striation thus constituted has its
limits: they are reached not only when the infinite (either
infinitely large or small) is brought in, but also when
more than two bodies are considered ("the three-body
problem"). Let us try to understand in the simplest terms
how space escapes the limits of its striation. At one pole,
it escapes them by declination, in other words, by the
smallest deviation, by the infinitely small deviation
between a gravitational vertical and the arc of a circle to
which the vertical is tangent. At the other pole, it escapes
them by the spiral or vortex, in other words, a figure in
which all the points of space are simultaneously occupied
according to laws of frequency or of accumulation,
distribution; these laws are distinct from the so-called
laminar distribution corresponding to the striation of
parallels. From the smallest deviation to the vortex there
310
On these two kinds of space, see JeanPierre Vernant, Mythe
et pensée chez les Grecs, vol. 1 (Paris: Maspero, 19711974),
pp. 174175.
456
is a valid and necessary relation of consequence: what
stretches between them is precisely a smooth space whose
element is declination and which is peopled by a spiral.
Smooth space is constituted by the minimum angle,
which deviates from the vertical, and by the vortex, which
overspills striation. The strength of Michel Serres's book
is that it demonstrates this link between the clinamen as
a generative differential element, and the formation of
vortices and turbulences insofar as they occupy an
engendered smooth space; in fact, the atom of the
ancients, from Democritus to Lucretius, was always
inseparable from a hydraulics, or a generalized theory of
swells and flows. The ancient atom is entirely
misunderstood if it is overlooked that its essence is to
course and flow. The theory of atomism is the basis for a
strict correlation between Archimedean geometry (very
different from the striated and homogeneous space of
Euclid) and Democritean physics (very different from
solid or lamellar matter).311 The same coincidence means
that this aggregate is no longer tied in any way to a State
apparatus, but rather to a war machine: a physics of
packs, turbulences, "catastrophes," and epidemics
corresponding to a geometry of war, of the art of war and
its machines. Serres states what he considers to be
Lucretius's deepest goal: to go from Mars to Venus, to
place the war machine in the service of peace.312 But this
operation is not accomplished through the State
apparatus; it expresses, on the contrary, an ultimate
metamorphosis of the war machine, and occurs in smooth
space.
311
Michel Serres, La naissance de la physique dans Ie texte de
Lucrece. Fleuves et turbulences (Paris: Minuit, 1977): "Physics
is based much more on a vectorial space than on a metric
space" (p. 79). On the hydraulic problem, see pp. 104107.
312
Serres, La naissance de la physique, pp. 35, 135ff.
457
Earlier we encountered a distinction between "free
action" in smooth space and "work" in striated space.
During the nineteenth century a twofold elaboration was
undertaken: of a physicoscientific concept of Work
(weight-height,
force-displacement),
and
of
a
socioeconomic concept of labor-power or abstract labor (a
homogeneous abstract quantity applicable to all work,
and susceptible to multiplication and division). There was
a profound link between physics and sociology: society
furnished an economic standard of measure for work, and
physics a "mechanical currency" for it. The wage regime
had as its correlate a mechanics of force. Physics had
never been more social, for in both cases it was a question
of defining the constant mean value of a force of lift and
pull exerted in the most uniform way possible by a
standard-man. Impose the Work-model upon every
activity, translate every act into possible or virtual work,
discipline free action, or else (which amounts to the same
thing) relegate it to "leisure," which exists only by
reference to work. We now understand why the
Work-model, in both its physical and social aspects, is a
fundamental part of the State apparatus. Standard-man
began as the man of public works.313 It was not in relation
to pin manufacturing that the problems of abstract labor,
the multiplication of its results, and the division of its
operations were first formulated; it was in public
construction and in the organization of armies (not only
the disciplining of men, but also the industrial production
313
Anne Querrien has clearly demonstrated the importance of
the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees (School of Bridges and
Roadways) in this elaboration of the concept of work. For
example, Navier, an engineer and professor of mechanics, wrote
in 1819: "We must establish a mechanical currency with which to
estimate the quantities of work used to accomplish every kind of
fabrication."
458
of weapons). Nothing more normal. The war machine in
itself did not imply this normalization. But the State
apparatus, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
found a new way of appropriating the war machine: by
subjugating it before all else to the Work-model of the
construction site and factory, which were in the process of
developing elsewhere, but more slowly. The war machine
was perhaps the first thing to be striated, to produce an
abstract labor-time whose results could be multiplied and
operations divided. That is where free action in smooth
space must have been conquered. The physicosocial
model of Work pertains to the State apparatus, it is one of
its inventions, and for two reasons. First, because labor
appears only with the constitution of a surplus, there is
no labor that is not devoted to stockpiling; in fact, labor
(in the strict sense) begins only with what is called
surplus labor. Second, labor performs a generalized
operation of striation of space-time, a subjection of free
action, a nullification of smooth spaces, the origin and
means of which is in the essential enterprise of the State,
namely, its conquest of the war machine.
Counterdemonstration: where there is no State and no
surplus labor, there is no Work-model either. Instead,
there is the continuous variation of free action, passing
from speech to action, from a given action to another,
from action to song, from song to speech, from speech to
enterprise, all in a strange chromaticism with intense but
rare peak moments or moments of effort that the outside
observer can only "translate" in terms of work. It is true
that it has been said of blacks through the ages that "they
don't work, they don't know what work is." It is true that
they were forced to work, and to work more than anyone
else, in terms of abstract quantity. It also seems to be true
that the Indians had no understanding of, and were
459
unsuited for, any organization of work, even slavery: the
Americans apparently imported so many blacks only
because they could not use the Indians, who would rather
die. Certain outstanding ethnologists have raised an
essential question. They have turned the problem around:
so-called primitive societies are not societies of shortage
or subsistence due to an absence of work, but on the
contrary are societies of free action and smooth space that
have no use for a work-factor, anymore than they
constitute a stock.314 They are not societies of sloth, even
though their differences with work may be expressed in
the form of a "right to laziness." They are not without
laws, even though their differences with the law may be
expressed in the guise of "anarchy." What they have
instead is a law of the nomos regulating a continuous
variation of activity with a rigor and cruelty all its own
(get rid of whatever cannot be transported, the old,
children...).
If work constitutes a striated space-time corresponding to
the State apparatus, is this not especially true of its
archaic or ancient forms? For it is there that surplus labor
is isolated, distinguished, in the form of tribute or corvee.
Consequently, it is there that the concept of labor appears
at its clearest, for example, in the large-scale works of the
314
It is a commonplace of missionaries' narratives that there is
nothing corresponding to the category of work, even in
transhumant agriculture, with its laborious groundclearing
activities. Marshall Sahlins is not content to remark the briefness
of the time devoted to the labor necessary for maintenance and
reproduction, but goes on to stress qualitative factors: the
continuous variation that regulates activity, and the mobility or
freeness of movement, which excludes stockpiling and is
measured in terms of the "convenience of transporting the
object." La première société d'abondance," Les temps
modernes, no. 268 (October 1968), pp. 654656, 662663,
672673.
460
empires, the urban, agricultural, or hydraulic works by
which a "laminar" flow in supposedly parallel layers
(striation) is imposed upon the waters. It seems on the
contrary that in the capitalist regime, surplus labor
becomes less and less distinguishable from labor "strictly
speaking," and totally impregnates it. Modern public
works have a different status from that of large-scale
imperial works. How could one possibly distinguish
between the time necessary for reproduction and
"extorted" time, when they are no longer separated in
time? This remark certainly does not contradict the
Marxist theory of surplus value, for Marx shows precisely
that surplus value ceases to be localizable in the capitalist
regime. That is even his fundamental contribution. It gave
him a sense that machines would themselves become
productive of surplus value and that the circulation of
capital would challenge the distinction between variable
and constant capital. In these new conditions, it remains
true that all labor involves surplus labor; but surplus
labor no longer requires labor. Surplus labor, capitalist
organization in its entirety, operates less and less by the
striation of space-time corresponding to the physicosocial
concept of work. Rather, it is as though human alienation
through surplus labor were replaced by a generalized
"machinic enslavement," such that one may furnish
surplus-value without doing any work (children, the
retired, the unemployed, television viewers, etc.). Not
only does the user as such tend to become an employee,
but capitalism operates less on a quantity of labor than by
a complex qualitative process bringing into play modes of
transportation, urban models, the media, the
entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and feeling
— every semiotic system. It is as though, at the outcome
of the striation that capitalism was able to carry to an
unequaled point of perfection, circulating capital
461
necessarily recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth
space in which the destiny of human beings is recast.
Striation, of course, survives in the most perfect and
severest of forms (it is not only vertical but operates in all
directions); however, it relates primarily to the state pole
of capitalism, in other words, to the role of the modern
State apparatuses in the organization of capital. On the
other hand, at the complementary and dominant level of
integrated (or rather integrating) world capitalism, a
new smooth space is produced in which capital reaches its
"absolute" speed, based on machinic components rather
than the human component of labor. The multinationals
fabricate a kind of deterritorialized smooth space in
which points of occupation as well as poles of exchange
become quite independent of the classical paths to
striation. What is really new are always the new forms of
turnover. The present-day accelerated forms of the
circulation of capital are making the distinctions between
constant and variable capital, and even fixed and
circulating capital, increasingly relative; the essential
thing is instead the distinction between striated capital
and smooth capital, and the way in which the former
gives rise to the latter through complexes that cut across
territories and States, and even the different types of
States.
The Aesthetic Model: Nomad Art. Several notions,
both practical and theoretical, are suitable for defining
nomad art and its successors (barbarian, Gothic, and
modern). First, "close-range" vision, as distinguished
from long-distance vision; second, "tactile," or rather
"haptic" space, as distinguished from optical space.
"Haptic" is a better word than "tactile" since it does not
establish an opposition between two sense organs but
rather invites the assumption that the eye itself may fulfill
462
this nonoptical function. It was Alois Riegl who, in some
marvelous pages, gave fundamental aesthetic status to the
couple, close visionhaptic space. But for the moment we
should set aside the criteria proposed by Riegl (then by
Wilhelm Worringer, and more recently by Henri
Maldiney), and take some risks ourselves, making free
use of these notions.315 It seems to us that the Smooth is
both the object of a close vision par excellence and the
element of a haptic space (which may be as much visual
or auditory as tactile). The Striated, on the contrary,
relates to a more distant vision, and a more optical space
— although the eye in turn is not the only organ to have
this capacity. Once again, as always, this analysis must be
corrected by a coefficient of transformation according to
which passages between the striated and the smooth are
at once necessary and uncertain, and all the more
disruptive. The law of the painting is that it be done at
close range, even if it is viewed from relatively far away.
One can back away from a thing, but it is a bad painter
who backs away from the painting he or she is working
on. Or from the "thing" for that matter: Cézanne spoke of
the need to no longer see the wheat field, to be too close
to it, to lose oneself without landmarks in smooth space.
Afterward, striation can emerge: drawing, strata, the
earth, "stubborn geometry," the "measure of the world,"
"geological foundations," "everything falls straight
down"... The striated itself may in turn disappear in a
315
The principal texts are Alois Riegl, Die Spätrömische
Kunstindustrie (Vienna: Staatdruckerei, 1927); Wilhelm
Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the
Psychology of Style, trans. Michael Bullock (New York:
International Universities Press, 1963); Henri Maldiney, Regard,
parole, espace (Lausanne: L'Age d'homme, 1973), especially
"L'art et Ie pouvoir du fond," and Maldiney's discussion of
Cézanne.
463
"catastrophe," opening the way for a new smooth space,
and another striated space...
A painting is done at close range, even if it is seen from a
distance. Similarly, it is said that composers do not hear:
they have close-range hearing, whereas listeners hear
from a distance. Even writers write with short-term
memory, whereas readers are assumed to be endowed
with long-term memory. The first aspect of the haptic,
smooth space of close vision is that its orientations,
landmarks, and linkages are in continuous variation; it
operates step by step. Examples are the desert, steppe,
ice, and sea, local spaces of pure connection. Contrary to
what is sometimes said, one never sees from a distance in
a space of this kind, nor does one see it from a distance;
one is never "in front of," any more than one is "in" (one
is "on"...). Orientations are not constant but change
according to temporary vegetation, occupations, and
precipitation. There is no visual model for points of
reference that would make them interchangeable and
unite them in an inertial class assignable to an immobile
outside observer. On the contrary, they are tied to any
number of observers, who may be qualified as "monads"
but are instead nomads entertaining tactile relations
among themselves. The interlinkages do not imply an
ambient space in which the multiplicity would be
immersed and which would make distances invariant;
rather, they are constituted according to ordered
differences that give rise to intrinsic variations in the
division of a single distance.316 These questions of
316
All of these points already relate to Riemannian space, with
its essential relation to "monads" (as opposed to the unitary
Subject of Euclidean space): see Gilles Chatelet, "Sur une petite
phrase de Riemann," Analytiques, no. 3 (May 1979). Although
the "monads" are no longer thought to be closed upon
464
orientation, location, and linkage enter into play in the
most famous works of nomad art: the twisted animals
have no land beneath them; the ground constantly
changes direction, as in aerial acrobatics; the paws point
in the opposite direction from the head, the hind part of
the body is turned upside down; the "monadological"
points of view can be interlinked only on a nomad space;
the whole and the parts give the eye that beholds them a
function that is haptic rather than optical. This is an
animality that can be seen only by touching it with one's
mind, but without the mind becoming a finger, not even
by way of the eye. (In a much cruder fashion, the
kaleidoscope has exactly the same function: to give the
eye a digital function.) Striated space, on the contrary, is
defined by the requirements of long-distance vision:
constancy of orientation, in variance of distance through
an interchange of inertial points of reference, interlinkage
by immersion in an ambient milieu, constitution of a
central perspective. It is less easy to evaluate the creative
potentialities of striated space, and how it can
simultaneously emerge from the smooth and give
everything a whole new impetus.
The opposition between the striated and the smooth is
not simply that of the global and the local. For in one
case, the global is still relative, whereas in the other the
local is already absolute. Where there is close vision,
space is not visual, or rather the eye itself has a haptic,
non optical function: no line separates earth from sky,
which are of the same substance; there is neither horizon
nor background nor perspective nor limit nor outline or
themselves, and are postulated to entertain direct, stepbystep
local relations, the purely monadological point of view proves
inadequate and should be superseded by a "nomadology" (the
ideality of striated space versus the realism of smooth space).
465
form nor center; there is no intermediary distance, or all
distance is intermediary. Like Eskimo space.317 In a
totally different way, in a totally different context, Arab
architecture constitutes a space that begins very near and
low, placing the light and the airy below and the solid and
heavy above. This reversal of the laws of gravity turns lack
of direction and negation of volume into constructive
forces. There exists a nomadic absolute, as a local
integration moving from part to part and constituting
smooth space in an infinite succession of linkages and
changes in direction. It is an absolute that is one with
becoming itself, with process. It is the absolute of
passage, which in nomad art merges with its
manifestation. Here the absolute is local, precisely
because place is not delimited. If we now turn to the
striated and optical space of long-distance vision, we see
that the relative global that characterizes that space also
requires the absolute, but in an entirely different way. The
absolute is now the horizon or background, in other
words, the Encompassing Element without which nothing
would be global or englobed. It is against this background
that the relative outline or form appears. The absolute
itself can appear in the Encompassed, but only in a
privileged place well delimited as a center, which then
functions to repel beyond the limits anything that
menaces the global integration. We can see clearly here
how smooth space subsists, but only to give rise to the
striated. The desert, sky, or sea, the Ocean, the Unlimited,
first plays the role of an encompassing element, and tends
317
See Edmund Carpenter's description in Eskimo of ice space,
and of the igloo: "There is no middle distance, no perspective, no
outline, nothing the eye can cling to except thousands of smokey
plumes of snow... a land without bottom or edge... a labyrinth
alive with the movements of crowded people. No flat static walls
arrest the ear or eye... and the eye can glance through here,
past there" (no pagination).
466
to become a horizon: the earth is thus surrounded,
globalized, "grounded" by this element, which holds it in
immobile equilibrium and makes Form possible. Then to
the extent that the encompassing element itself appears
at the center of the earth, it assumes a second role, that of
casting into the loathesome deep, the abode of the dead,
anything smooth or nonmeasured that may have
remained.318 The striation of the earth implies as its
necessary condition this double treatment of the smooth:
on the one hand, it is carried or reduced to the absolute
state of an encompassing horizon, and on the other it is
expelled from the relative encompassed element. Thus
the great imperial religions need a smooth space like the
desert, but only in order to give it a law that is opposed to
the nomos in every way, and converts the absolute.
This perhaps explains for us the ambiguity of the
excellent analyses by Riegl, Worringer, and Maldiney.
They approach haptic space under the imperial
conditions of Egyptian art. They define it as the presence
of a horizon-background; the reduction of space to the
plane (vertical and horizontal, height and width); and the
rectilinear
outline
enclosing
individuality
and
withdrawing it from change. Like the pyramid-form,
every side a plane surface, against the background of the
immobile desert. On the other hand, they show how in
318
These two aspects, the Encompassing Element and the
Center, figure in JeanPierre Vernant's analysis of space in
Anaximander; Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs (Paris: Maspero,
19711974), vol. I , part 3. From another perspective, the entire
history of the desert concerns the possibility of its becoming the
encompassing element, and also of being repelled, rejected by
the center, as though in an inversion of movement. In a
phenomenology of religion like that of Van der Leeuw, the nomos
itself does indeed appear as the encompassinglimit or ground,
and also as that which is repelled, excluded, in a centrifugal
movement.
467
Greek art (then in Byzantine art, and up to the
Renaissance), an optical space was differentiated from
haptic space, one merging background with form, setting
up an interference between the planes, conquering depth,
working with cubic or voluminous extension, organizing
perspective, and playing on relief and shadow, light and
color. Thus at the very beginning they encounter the
haptic at a point of mutation, in conditions under which it
already serves to striate space. The optical makes that
striation tighter and more perfect, or rather tight and
perfect in a different way (it is not associated with the
same "artistic will"). Everything occurs in a striated space
that goes from empires to city-states, or evolved empires.
It is not by chance that Riegl tends to eliminate the
specific factors of nomad or even barbarian art; or that
Worringer, when he introduces the idea of Gothic art in
the broadest sense, relates it on the one hand to the
Germanic and Celtic migrations of the North, and on the
other to the empires of the East. But between the two
were the nomads, who are reducible neither to empires
they confronted nor the migrations they triggered. The
Goths themselves were nomads of the steppe, and with
the Sarmatians and Huns were an essential vector of
communication between the East and the North, a factor
irreducible to either of these two dimensions.319 On one
side, Egypt had its Hyksos, Asia Minor its Hittites, China
319
Whatever interactions there may be, the "art of the steppes"
had a specificity that was communicated to the migrating
Germans; in spite of his many reservations about nomad culture,
Rene Grousset makes this point in The Empire of the Steppes,
trans. Naomi Walford (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1 9 70). pp. 1125. He notes the irreducibility of Scythian
art to Assyrian art, Sarmatian art to Persian art, and Hunnic art
to Chinese art. He even points out that the art of the steppes
influenced more than it borrowed (see in particular the question
of Ordos art and its relations to China).
468
its Turco-Mongols; and on the other, the Hebrews had
their Habiru, the Germans, Celts, and Romans their
Goths, the Arabs their Bedouins. The nomads have a
specificity that is too hastily reduced to its consequences,
by including them in the empires or counting them
among the migrants, assimilating them to one or the
other, denying them their own "will" to art. Again, there is
a refusal to accept that the intermediary between the East
and the North had its own absolute specificity, that the
intermediary, the interval, played exactly this substantial
role. Moreover, it does not have that role in the guise of a
"will"; it only has a becoming, it invents a
"becoming-artist."
When we invoke a primordial duality between the smooth
and the striated, it is in order to subordinate the
differences between "haptic" and "optic," "close vision"
and "distant vision" to this distinction. Hence we will not
define the haptic by the immobile background, by the
plane and the contour, because these have to do with an
already mixed state in which the haptic serves to striate,
and uses its smooth components only in order to convert
them to another kind of space. The haptic function and
close vision presuppose the smooth, which has no
background, plane, or contour, but rather changes in
direction and local linkages between parts. Conversely,
the developed optical function is not content to take
striation to a new level of perfection, endowing it with an
imaginary universal value and scope; it is also capable of
reinstating the smooth, liberating light and modulating
color, restoring a kind of aerial haptic space that
constitutes the unlimited site of intersection of the planes.
469
320
In short, the smooth and the striated must be defined
in themselves before the relative distinctions between
haptic and optical, near and distant, can be derived.
This is where a third couple enters in: "abstract
line-concrete line" (in addition to "haptic-optical,"
"close-distant"). It is Worringer who accorded
fundamental importance to the abstract line, seeing it as
the very beginning of art or the first expression of an
artistic will. Art as abstract machine. Once again, it will
doubtless be our inclination to voice in advance the same
objections: for Worringer, the abstract line seems to make
its first appearance in the crystalline or geometrical
imperial Egyptian form, the most rectilinear of forms
possible. It is only afterward that it assumes a particular
avatar, constituting the "Gothic or Northern line"
understood very broadly.321 For us, on the other hand, the
abstract line is fundamentally "Gothic," or rather,
nomadic, not rectilinear. Consequently, we do not
understand the aesthetic motivation for the abstract line
in the same way, or its identity with the beginning of art.
Whereas the rectilinear (or "regularly" rounded) Egyptian
line is negatively motivated by anxiety in the face of all
that passes, flows, or varies, and erects the constancy and
eternity of an In-Itself, the nomad line is abstract in an
entirely different sense, precisely because it has a
320
On this question of light and color, in particular in Byzantine
art, see Henri Maldiney, Regard, parole, espace, pp. 203ff.,
239ff.
321
The correlation, "hapticcloseabstract," was already
suggested by Riegl. But it was Worringer who developed the
theme of the abstract line. Although he conceives of it essentially
in its Egyptian form, he describes a second form in which the
abstract assumes an intense life and an expressionist value, all
the while remaining inorganic: Abstraction and Empathy, chapter
5, and especially Form in Gothic (London: Putnam's and Sons,
1927), pp. 3855.
470
multiple orientation and passes between points, figures,
and contours: it is positively motivated by the smooth
space it draws, not by any striation it might perform to
ward off anxiety and subordinate the smooth. The
abstract line is the affect of smooth spaces, not a feeling of
anxiety that calls forth striation. Furthermore, although it
is true that art begins only with the abstract line, the
reason is not, as Worringer says, that the rectilinear is the
first means of breaking with the nonaesthetic imitation of
nature upon which the prehistoric, savage, and childish
supposedly depend, lacking, as he thinks they do, a "will
to art." On the contrary, if prehistoric art is fully art it is
precisely because it manipulates the abstract, though
nonrectilinear, line: "Primitive art begins with the
abstract, and even the prefigurative. … Art is abstract
from the outset, and at its origin could not have been
otherwise."322 In effect, the line is all the more abstract
when writing is absent, either because it has yet to
develop or only exists outside or alongside. When writing
takes charge of abstraction, as it does in empires, the line,
already downgraded, necessarily tends to become
concrete, even figurative. Children forget how to draw.
But in the absence of writing, or when peoples have no
need for a writing system of their own because theirs is
borrowed from more or less nearby empires (as was the
322
André LeroiGourhan, Le geste et la parole (Paris: Albin
Michel, 19641965), vol. 1, Technique et langage, pp. 263ff.; vol.
2, La memoire et les rythmes, pp. 219ff. ("Rhythmic marks are
anterior to explicit figures.") Worringer's position is very
ambiguous; thinking that prehistoric art is fundamentally
figurative, he excludes it from Art, on the same grounds as he
excludes the "scribblings of a child" (Abstraction and Empathy,
pp. 5155). Then he advances the hypothesis that the cave
dwellers were the "ultimate result" of a series he says began with
the abstract (p. 130). But would not such a hypothesis force
Worringer to revise his conception of the abstract, and to cease
identifying it with Egyptian geometricism?
471
case for the nomads), the line is necessarily abstract; it is
necessarily invested with all the power of abstraction,
which finds no other outlet. That is why we believe that
the different major types of imperial lines — the Egyptian
rectilinear line, the Assyrian (or Greek) organic line, the
supraphenomenal, encompassing Chinese line — convert
the abstract line, rend it from its smooth space, and
accord it concrete values. Still, it can be argued that these
imperial lines are contemporaneous with the abstract
line; the abstract line is no less at the "beginning,"
inasmuch as it is a pole always presupposed by any line
capable of constituting another pole. The abstract line is
at the beginning as much because of its historical
abstraction as its prehistoric dating. It is therefore a part
of the originality or irreducibility of nomad art, even
when there is reciprocal interaction, influence, and
confrontation with the imperial lines of sedentary art.
The abstract is not directly opposed to the figurative. The
figurative as such is not inherent to any "will to art." In
fact, we may oppose a figurative line in art to one that is
not. The figurative, or imitation and representation, is a
consequence, a result of certain characteristics of the line
when it assumes a given form. We must therefore define
those characteristics first. Take a system in which
transversals are subordinated to diagonals, diagonals to
horizontals and verticals, and horizontals and verticals to
points (even when there are virtual). A system of this
kind, which is rectilinear or unilinear regardless of the
number of lines, expresses the formal conditions under
which a space is striated and the line describes a contour.
Such a line is inherently, formally, representative in itself,
even if it does not represent anything. On the other hand,
a line that delimits nothing, that describes no contour,
that no longer goes from one point to another but instead
472
passes between points, that is always declining from the
horizontal and the vertical and deviating from the
diagonal, that is constantly changing direction, a mutant
line of this kind that is without outside or inside, form or
background, beginning or end and that is as alive as a
continuous variation — such a line is truly an abstract
line, and describes a smooth space. It is not inexpressive.
Yet is true that it does not constitute a stable and
symmetrical form of expression grounded in a resonance
of points and a conjunction of lines. It is nevertheless
accompanied by material traits of expression, the effects
of which multiply step by step. This is what Worringer
means when he says that the Gothic line (for us, the
nomadic line invested with abstraction) has the power of
expression and not ofform, that it has repetition as a
power, not symmetry as form. Indeed, it is through
symmetry that rectilinear systems limit repetition,
preventing infinite progression and maintaining the
organic domination of a central point with radiating
lines, as in reflected or star-shaped figures. It is free
action, however, which by its essence unleashes the power
of repetition as a machinic force that multiplies its effect
and pursues an infinite movement. Free action proceeds
by disjunction and decentering, or at least by peripheral
movement: disjoinred polythetism instead of symmetrical
antithetism.323 Traits of expression describing a smooth
323
Worringer establishes an opposition between the power of
repetition, which is mechanical, multiplying, and without fixed
orientation, and the force of symmetry, which is organic, additive,
oriented, and centered. He sees this as the fundamental
difference between Gothic ornamentation and Greek or classical
ornamentation: Form in Gothic, pp. 5355 ("The Ceaseless
Melody of the Northern Line"). In a fine book, Esthetiques
d'Orient et d'Occident (Paris: E. Leroux, 1 937), Laura
Morgenstern develops a particular example, distinguishing the
"symmetrical antithetism" of Sassanid Persian art from the
"disjointed antithetism" of the art of the protoIranian nomads
473
space and connecting with a matter-flow thus should not
be confused with striae that convert space and make it a
form of expression that grids and organizes matter.
Worringer's finest pages are those in which he contrasts
the abstract with the organic. The organic does not
designate something represented, but above all the form
of representation, and even the feeling that unites
representation with a subject (Einfiihlung, "empathy").
"Formal processes occur within the work of art which
correspond to the natural organic tendencies in man."324
But the rectilinear, the geometrical, cannot be opposed to
the organic in this sense. The Greek organic line, which
subordinates volume and spatiality, takes over from the
Egyptian geometrical line, which reduced them to the
plane. The organic, with its symmetry and contours inside
and outside, still refers to the rectilinear coordinates of a
striated space. The organic body is prolonged by straight
lines that attach it to what lies in the distance. Hence the
primacy of human beings, or of the face: We are this form
of expression itself, simultaneously the supreme
(Sarmatians). Many authors, however, have stressed the
centered and symmetrical motifs in barbarian or nomad art.
Worringer anticipated this objection: "Instead of the regular and
invariably geometrical star or rosette or similar restful forms, in
the North we find the revolving wheel, the turbine or the
socalled sun wheel, all designs which express violent
movement. Moreover, the movement is peripheral and not radial"
(Form in Gothic, p. 54). The history of technology confirms the
importance of the turbine in the life of the nomads. In another,
bioaesthetic, context, Gabriel Tarde opposes repetition as
indefinite potential (puissance) to symmetry as limitation. With
symmetry, life constituted an organism for itself, taking a
starshaped or reflected, infolded form (the radiata and
mollusks). It is true that in doing so it unleashed another type of
repetition, external reproduction; see L 'opposition universelle
(Paris: Alcan, 1897).
324
[TRANS: Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, p. 33]
474
organism and the relation of all organisms to metric space
in general. The abstract, on the contrary, begins only with
what Worringer presents as the "Gothic" avatar. It is this
nomadic line that he says is mechanical, but in free action
and swirling; it is inorganic, yet alive, and all the more
alive for being inorganic. It is distinguished both from the
geometrical and the organic. It raises "mechanical"
relations to the level of intuition. Heads (even a human
being's when it is not a face) unravel and coil into ribbons
in a continuous process; mouths curl in spirals. Hair,
clothes… This streaming, spiraling, zigzagging, snaking,
feverish line of variation liberates a power of life that
human beings had rectified and organisms had confined,
and which matter now expresses as the trait, flow, or
impulse traversing it. If everything is alive, it is not
because everything is organic or organized but, on the
contrary, because the organism is a diversion of life. In
short, the life in question is inorganic, germinal, and
intensive, a powerful life without organs, a Body that is all
the more alive for having no organs, everything that
passes between organisms ("once the natural barriers of
organic movement have been overthrown, there are no
more limits").325 Many authors have wished to establish a
kind of duality in nomad art between the ornamental
abstract line and animal motifs, or more subtly, between
the speed with which the line integrates and carries
expressive traits, and the slowness or fixity of the animal
matter traversed, between a line of flight without
beginning or end and an almost immobile swirling. But in
the end everyone agrees that it is a question of a single
will, or a single becoming.326 This is not because the
325
[TRANS: Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, p. 42]
On all of these points, see Georges Charriere's very intuitive
book, Scythian Art (New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1
979), which includes a great number of reproductions. It is
326
475
abstract engenders organic motifs, by chance or by
association. Rather, it is precisely because pure animality
is experienced as inorganic, or supraorganic, that it can
combine so well with abstraction, and even combine the
slowness or heaviness of a matter with the extreme speed
of a line that has become entirely spiritual. The slowness
belongs to the same world as the extreme speed: relations
of speed and slowness between elements, which surpass
in every way the movement of an organic form and the
determination of organs. The line escapes geometry by a
fugitive mobility at the same time as life tears itself free
from the organic by a permutating, stationary whirlwind.
This vital force specific to the Abstraction is what draws
smooth space. The abstract line is the affect of smooth
space, just as organic representation was the feeling
presiding over striated space. The haptic-optical,
near-distant distinctions must be subordinated to the
distinction between the abstract line and the organic line;
they must find their principle in a general confrontation
of spaces. The abstract line cannot be defined as
geometrical and rectilinear. What then should be termed
abstract in modern art? A line of variable direction that
describes no contour and delimits no form...327
doubtless Rene Grousset who has most effectively emphasized
"slowness" as a dramatic pole of nomad art: The Empire of the
Steppes, pp. 1314.
327
Dora Vallier, in her preface to the French translation of
Abstraction and Empathy (Abstraction et Einfühlung [Paris:
Klincksieck, 1978]), is right to note Worringer and Kandinsky's
independence from one another, and the differences between
the problems they were addressing. However, she maintains that
there is still convergence and resonance between them. In a
sense, all art is abstract, with the figurative springing from
certain types of abstraction. But in another sense, since there
are very different types of lines (Egyptiangeometrical,
Greekorganic, Gothicvital, etc.), the question then becomes
one of determining which line remains abstract, or realizes
abstraction as such. It is doubtful that it is the geometrical line,
476
Do not multiply models. We are well aware that there are
many others: a ludic model, which would compare games
according to their type of space and found game theory on
different principles (for example, the smooth space of Go
versus the striated space of chess); and a noological
model concerned not with thought contents (ideology)
but with the form, manner or mode, and function of
thought, according to the mental space it draws and from
the point of view of a general theory of thought, a
thinking of thought. And so on. Moreover, there are still
other kinds of space that should be taken into account, for
example, holey space and the way it communicates with
the smooth and the striated in different ways. What
interests us inoperations of striation and smoothing are
precisely the passages or combinations: how the forces at
work within space continually striate it, and how in the
course of its striation it develops other forces and emits
new smooth spaces. Even the most striated city gives rise
to smooth spaces: to live in the city as a nomad, or as a
cave dweller. Movements, speed and slowness, are
sometimes enough to reconstruct a smooth space. Of
course, smooth spaces are not in themselves liberatory.
But the struggle is changed or displaced in them, and life
since it still draws a figure, even though an abstract and
nonrepresentative one. Rather, the abstract line is that defined
by Michael Fried in relation to certain works by Pollock:
multidirectional, with neither inside nor outside, form nor
background, delimiting nothing, describing no contour, passing
between spots or points, filling a smooth space, stirring up a
closelying haptic visual matter that "both invites the act of
seeing on the part of the spectator yet gives his eye nowhere to
rest once and for all," (Three American Painters [Cambridge,
Mass.: Fogg Art Museum, 1965], p. 14). In Kandinsky himself,
abstraction is realized not so much by geometrical structures as
by lines of march or transit that seem to recall Mongolian
nomadic motifs.
477
reconstitutes its stakes, confronts new obstacles, invents
new paces, switches adversaries. Never believe that a
smooth space will suffice to save us.
478
Pre Face: Or, How to
Begin at the End
Amy Ireland
Women diffuse themselves according to
modalities scarcely compatible with the
framework of ruling symbolics. Which doesn't
happen without causing some turbulence, we
might even say some whirlwinds, that ought to
be reconvened within solid walls of principle, to
keep them from spreading to infinity.328
Distinctions between the main bodies of texts
and all their peripheral detail — indices,
headings, prefaces, dedications, illustrations,
references, notes, and diagrams — have long
been integral to orthodox conceptions of
nonfiction books and articles. Authored,
authorised, and authoritative, a piece of writing
is its own main-stream. Its asides are backwaters
which might have been — and often are —
compiled by anonymous editors, secretaries,
copyists, and clerks, and while they may well be
providing crucial support for a text which they
also connect to other sources, resources, and
leads, they are also sidelined and downplayed.329
The repetition of dissymmetry is hidden within
symmetrical ensembles or effects; a repetition of
328
Luce Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, 106.
Sadie Plant, Zeros + Ones (New York: Doubleday, 1997) 9.
Italics added.
329
479
distinctive points underneath that of ordinary
points; and everywhere the Other in the
repetition of the Same. This is the secret, the
most profound repetition: it alone provides the
principle of the other one, the reason for the
blockage of concepts. In this domain, as in
Sartor Resartus, it is the masked, the disguised
or the costumed which turns out to be the truth
of the uncovered. Necessarily, since this
repetition is not hidden by something else but
forms itself by disguising itself; it does not
pre-exist its own disguises and, in forming itself,
constitutes the bare repetition within which it
becomes enveloped.330
In Zeros + Ones, perhaps the definitive text of
cyberfeminism (distinct, and far more sprawling in its
implications, largely untapped, from Donna Haraway’s
infamous Cyborg Manifesto) Sadie Plant sets a nonlinear
re-writing of the material history of feminism,
industrialisation, biology, evolutionary theory, robotics,
and computer science in motion via an examination of the
role played by Ada Lovelace in the design and
development of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine — a
history that arrived in the form of one of the most
genuinely prodigious and influential footnotes in
European history. Although Babbage was to take full
credit for the invention at the time, Plant focuses on the
occulted history of correspondence, conversation and
reciprocal apprenticeship that defined Babbage and
Lovelace’s working relationship in order to reveal the full
extent of Lovelace’s influence on the new technology,
330
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 24. Italics added.
480
which in the retrospective account of history, has long
since eclipsed that of Babbage. The Analytical Engine,
whose development began in 1833, marks the design of
the first general purpose computer that could be
described, before the term itself was invented, as ‘Turing
complete’ — integrating memory, an arithmetic logic unit,
and control flow in the form of conditional branching and
loops — effectively pre-empting the actual construction
and implementation of the first general purpose
computer in 1940 by just over a century.331 As well as
aiding Babbage in discussions developing the
mathematical principles behind, and the hardware for,
the Analytical Engine, it was Lovelace’s unsolicited
translation of a paper by the Italian engineer, Louis
Menebrea, along with footnotes and a commentary that
far outstripped the contents of the paper itself, which left
the world with what has been acknowledged as one of the
first working computer programs. In her footnotes,
Lovelace stresses the potential of the Analytical Engine
not to merely ‘synthesise the data provided by its
operator’ but to incarnate a ‘science of operations’, whose
ultimate consequence would entail ‘no finite [line] of
demarcation which limits the powers or the applications
of the Analytical Engine.’332
The development of Europe’s first algorithm (with
precedents in Leibniz and Pascal’s counting machines, the
former taking its inspiration from a misinterpretation of
331
In computability theory, a system of datamanipulation rules
(such as a computer's instruction set, a programming language,
or a cellular automaton) is said to be Turing complete or
computationally universal if it can be used to simulate any Turing
machine (conditional branching and arbitrary [unlimited]
memory).
332
Ada Lovelace, quoted in Sadie Plant, ‘The Future Looms’,
Clicking In, 126.
481
the I-Ching) was entangled with the introduction of the
Jacquard loom into England’s textile manufacturing
industry — one of the first examples of automated
industrial production — and was seen by Lovelace as a
form of weaving. It was, she wrote, ‘the introduction of
the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by
means of punched cards, the most complicated patterns
in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs,’ which, ‘rendered it
possible to endow mechanism with such extensive
faculties as bid fair to make this engine the executive right
hand of algebra […] We may say most aptly, that the
Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns, just as the
Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.’333 Thus, Plant
concludes, a continuing process of ‘abstract weaving’
knits women, computation, and the dawn of technological
industrialisation together, at the same time as it
dehumanises, anonymises, and relegates them to the
position of a footnote in the linear, progressive history of
technological development.334 Despite her marginalised
position in this history, Plant situates Lovelace as a
prophetess of the complex cybernetic processes
responsible for the automation of daily life that we are all
too familiar with today, for, understood as an index of a
relation to temporality that is imperceptible to what Plant
terms ‘the Read Only Memory history’ of Man, ‘abstract
weaving’ has everything to do with prophecy.
Gifted with a mathematical competence unusual among
the educated men of her time, let alone the largely
uneducated female population, such a path in life not
being open to them, Ada Lovelace considered herself a
seer: ‘I am a prophetess, born into this world,’ she would
333
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 18; Plant ‘The Future Looms’, 126.
Sadie Plant, ‘The Future Looms’,
Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk, 46.
334
482
write in her diary, and, paraphrasing Soren Kierkegaard,
‘this conviction fills me with humility, with fear and
trembling!’335 As in a woven image or pattern, the course
taken from discrete threads to the emergence of a
represented, recognisable object or product, is a
nonlinear one. Once enough threads have been put into
place, a motif emerges, but it is always in terms of a
retrochronic legibility, premised on a process that is
necessarily primary: the construction of the hardware and
the programming of the software that execute the
patterns of intrication presiding over the warp and weft of
the threads which form the image. The lesson — one
which would fascinate Plant — that can be taken from this
is that recognition and conceptual identification are
always secondary. In this sense, the primary process of
weaving is a future embedded in the present’s past. The
moment of identification and appearance always arrives
behind the functioning of the process which assembles it
as its object — whether this is an industrial product, a
historical phenomenon, or indeed, a self. Ada Lovelace’s
writings testify to an intuitive apprehension of this
fundamental delay, rebuffed from admission into the
Royal Society of London (an organisation dedicated to the
pursuit and philosophy of the natural sciences) because of
her sex, but convinced that her pioneering work would
one day be understood for what it was, she did not even
bother to append her name to the Menebrea footnotes,
confiding to Babbage, ‘I do not wish to proclaim who has
written it.’336 In both the conscious maintenance of her
anonymity and her contribution to the technologisation of
the processes of production that would link computation
and weaving together, Ada Lovelace conspired with the
335
336
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 20.
Ibid., 256; 8.
483
primary process immanent to all representation,
invisible, patient and quietly anticipating the long term
effects of her work, lagging far behind their
imperceptible, inevitable cause.
In her consistent, materialist feminist onslaught against
the ravages of identity and its opression of female voices
and practices, Plant draws heavily on the work of the
French post-structuralist thinker, Luce Irigaray, who
excoriated the capture of material processes by the
patriarchal pursuit, especially in Western philosophy, of
representation, ideality, essence and identity as forms of
control. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Irigaray’s
work, given the topic of our panel today, is her
examination of language — not just her native French, but
language in general, as a logic embedded in thought itself,
that relies on the generation of a form of conceptuality
premised on the priority of sameness over difference, and
which positions itself unjustly as universal for the
definition of the human. For too long, she argues, ‘Man’
— the rational animal, distinguished from the rest of the
animal world by his ability to speak and cognise, or
re-cognise, and by his mental purity — ‘has always
represented the only possible subject of discourse’.337 To
use language, one necessarily has to become human, and
to be human is be a man. Furthermore, and even more
insidiously, the rules that legislate over entry into the
domain of discourse and rational thought remain fully
occulted within language, which must suppress their
intelligibility in order to retain control over the unstable
and unpredictable realm of complex materiality that
337
Luce Irigaray, ‘The Language of Man’, trans. Erin G. Carlson,
Cultural Critique, No. 13, The Construction of Gender and
Modes of Social Division, (Autumn, 1989), 191.
484
indeed supplies their premise. ‘If the relation of the
subject speaking to nature,’ she writes,
to the given or fabricated object, to God the
creator, to other intraworldly existence, has been
questioned in the different epochs of history, it
has never seemed, still does not seem, necessary
to call into question this a priori: that this is, still
and always, a matter of a universe or world of
man. A perpetually unrecognised law prescribes
all realisations of language(s), all production of
discourse, all constitution of language, according
to the necessities of one perspective, one point of
view, one economy: the necessities of man,
supposed to represent the human race.338
In order to speak, to write, or to code, one must submit to
a certain form of blindness which is equated with an
economy of visibility, legibility and representation. What
one is blind to in using language, which forms the basis of
our navigation through the world, its narratives and its
histories, is the roiling, seething substructure of
individuation, which has its birth in a nonlinear and
complex materiality that begins from difference in itself,
and not from the stablised circuits of a covertly
universalised same. It is important to point out that what
Irigaray terms the ‘language of Man’ is a discourse
structured along the lines of sexual dimorphism
(vigorously expounded by Sigmund Freud and the
proponents of psychoanalysis after him) in which
women’s bodies, bereft of visibly obvious genitalia, are
defined — through this universal form of visibility
premised on blindness — by the lack of a phallus: having
338
Luce Irigaray, ‘The Language of Man’, 191192
485
only a ‘hole’, a ‘nothing to be seen’, ‘a nothing — that is a
nothing-the-same, identical, identifiable … a fault, a flaw,
a lack, an absence, outside the system of representations
and auto-representations’, while men’s bodies give
everything to visibility, the condition of being One
arranged around the biological fact of having ‘one’.339
Sight and visibility function via the insertion and
maintenance of a distance between the observer and what
is being observed. Vision inaugurates the user-tool
relationship (which always distinguishes the user from
the tool via a power differential) and it allows one to
control, comment and exert influence over the surveilled
or instrumentalised object or subject without ever having
to be entangled with it. As cultural critic Mark Fisher has
written, ‘Men experience themselves not as imbricated in
language or technology, but as their users. In fact, and
this point is crucial, the assumption of a transcendent,
Promethean position in relation to language and
technology is what it is to be a man.’340
The self-reflexive loop of recognition which founds the
individuation, within language, of the ‘one’, separates
man from his material conditions of emergence.
According to Irigaray, this case is different for women in a
realm of identity hitched to sexual difference, for ‘women
don’t have to distinguish themselves, like man, from the
nature-mother that produced them,’ they are continuous
with the matrix (as ‘nature-mother’, matrix originally
denoting ‘womb’, ‘mother’, ‘source’ or ‘origin’, in Latin,
and later in the 16th century ‘place or medium where
339
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 35; Irigaray, Speculum of the Other
Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1985) 47; 50.
340
Mark Fisher, ‘Continuous Contact’, kpunk blog,
http://kpunk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004826.html, 2005.
486
something is developed’ before taking on the more recent
denotation of cyberspace or the internet), ‘they can
remain attached to her, indeed identify themselves with
her, without losing their sexual identity.’341 Irigaray
believes that this opens up an alternative mode of
language and interactive praxis for women — one not
confined to and administered by the masculine logic of
separation, critical visual distance, and impossible return.
This will take the form of a ‘language’ of touch, of tactile,
haptic interrelation, that operates beneath and in
opposition to the visual empire of man. Women for
Irigaray, bear an unmediated relation to heterogenous,
proliferating matter in such a way that they are always ‘at
least two’, ‘without any opposition between those two,
without reduction of the other to the one, and without any
possible appropriation into a logic of the One. Always at
least two,’ she writes, ‘which never boil down to a binary
alternative: the logic of distancing and the mastery of the
other’.342 Women thus speak with a double voice, with a
forked tongue, as it were, ‘many at a time, without the
many being reducible to the multiple of one’.343 Matter
here — submitted to a cybernetics of being that does not
impose a binary on nature and culture, authenticity and
artificiality, the human and the nonhuman (whether
machine or animal) — is not simply some vision of a wild
untamed natural world (as it appears in much second
wave feminism). It is the matrix of reality production
itself.
Plant aligns these two perspectives with the zeros and
ones of machine code. From inside the circuit of
identification, they appear as a binary:
341
342
343
Irigaray, ‘The Language of Man’, 194.
Ibid., 197.
Ibid.
487
The zeros and ones of machine code seem to
offer themselves as perfect symbols of the orders
of Western reality, the ancient logical codes
which make the difference between on and off,
right and left, light and dark, form and matter,
mind and body, white and black, good and evil,
right and wrong, life and death, something and
nothing, this and that, here and there, inside and
out, active and passive, true and false, yes and
no, sanity and madness, health and sickness, up
and down, sense and nonsense, west and east,
north and south … man and woman, male and
female, masculine and feminine: one and zero …
1 the definite, upright line; and 0, the diagram of
nothing at all.344
The binary, as a form of thought, is founded on the laws
of identity, noncontradiction, and the law of the excluded
middle, that ground Western philosophical thought since
Aristotle, so that inside this schema zero cannot be
anything other than the negation of the one. One requires
zero on which to premise its identity as an individuated,
separated thing, and in so doing, subsumes zero as
nothing but the ‘other’ of its identity: ‘all these pairs are
two of a kind, and the kind is always a kind of one’, writes
Plant, ‘1 and 0 make another 1. Male and female add up to
man. There is no female equivalent.’345 From underneath
or outside the circuit, however, in the position of what
Irigaray proposes as an alternative language ‘without a
limit prescribed by the domination of the one — the One
— over the other’, based on an alternative economy of
material flows, binary divisions dissolve into a process of
344
345
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 35.
Ibid.
488
constant assemblage and becoming, and zero is not an
absence or a lack — the negative other of the one — but
the primary term in a unilateral, invisible, positive
productive process from which all identities, male, female
and whatever else you like, emerge.346 From the side of
zero, one is always in the process of becoming something
other: man can become woman, human can become
animal, culture can become nature, and the nonhuman
can become human.
The language-logic of the matrix, as opposed to the
language-logic of Man, then, would be one that shirks the
laws of identity, non-contradiction, and the excluded
middle that necessitates the disjunctive syllogism of
either A or B (but not both at the same time): a language
of paradox. In short a nonlinear logic whose medium is
time, and in which space is subordinate to time rather
than time being subordinate to homogenous
geometricisation and an attendant metrics of regulation,
suppression, identification and control: an intensive
spatiality, always responding to the fluctuations of zero. A
‘contra-diction [or counter speech],’ writes Irigaray, 'that
demonstrates to man that his discourse, his language, are
the universe and the techniques of man, marked by the
imperatives particular to his sex — an intolerable
interpretation, which brings about the downfall of his
claim to the absolute.’347 For, ‘what if, dichotomous
oppositions didn’t make sense [for women] as they did for
men,’ Irigaray asks? ‘What if women didn’t constitute
themselves in the mode of the one (consistent,
substantial, subsisting, permanent) and its propping up
of the contradictions that are at once active and occulted
346
347
Irigaray, ‘The Language of Man’, 198.
Ibid., 197.
489
in a self-encircling hierarchy?’348 To Irigaray’s question
‘How do we speak the other without subordinating it to
the one?’, Plant responds that the other is always already
speaking through us, if only we knew how to take off our
masks — its mask — and see it for what it really is.349
Thus a kind of parallax or chiastic vision is involved. On
the one hand, within the structure of discourse, as man,
one only sees by not-seeing the process through which the
conditions of thought, speech and what we understand as
personal identity, have been brought about. On the other,
from the perspective of the process of individuation itself,
prior to identity, representation, and the admission into
language that this form of thought brings about, one sees
the process — touches it, is immanent to it — but is not,
following the occulted laws of the ‘language of Man’, able
to speak other than by producing new, hybrid, cyborg
individuations. What arises out of the process is therefore
only visible after the fact, but one is always in touch with
it. Just as Ada Lovelace’s interventions into the world of
computer science and automated industrialisation would
only become truly legible years after they were first put in
motion, to ‘see’ from the former position, inside
discourse, history, representation and language, is to look
back across a temporal lag: to begin at the end. In this
way the beginning is only visible — for those with a mask
or a face, for those who allowed to speak — in the form of
an ending.
Not only in Zeros + Ones, but across all of her writing,
Plant emphasises the connection between material,
auto-catalytic, self-organising, positive feedback process
348
349
Irigaray, ‘The Language of Man’, 197.
Ibid., 193.
490
and the coding of the female sex by history,
psychoanalysis, biology, genetics, economics and the
emergent field of computer science. These process are
consistently, and across disciplines, taxonomised as
pathological, unhealthy, hysterical, monstrous and
‘deranged’ in relation to their stable, ‘normal’,
homeostatic counterparts, correlatively codified as
masculine (following the logic of the binary), and which
she aligns with notions of originality, authenticity,
integral selfhood, reason and, of course, visibility.350
Othered in advance, it is this corrupt, feminised,
systematicity that patriarchal systems of control and
identification are premised on, and yet, is always
repressed and subordinated in its role as facilitator,
lubricant, or medium for the masculine sociality and
parameters of exchange that rely on woman and
machines for their ‘infrastructure’: ‘The use,
consumption, and circulation of their sexualised bodies
underwrite the organisation and the reproduction of the
social order, in which they have never taken part as
“subjects”’.351 Woman and machines, Plant argues, have
historically shared the position of the intermediary, man’s
‘go-betweens’, the ‘anonymous editors, secretaries,
copyists, and clerks’, those who ‘took his messages,
decrypted his codes, counted his numbers, bore his
children, and passed on his genetic code. They have
worked as his bookkeepers and his memory banks, zones
of deposit and withdrawal, promissory notes, credit and
exchange, not merely servicing the social world, but
underwriting reality itself. Goods and chattels. The
property of man.’352 Lovelace too, for all her brilliance,
350
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 20.
Ibid., 36.
352
Ibid., 36; 9. See also, Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto,
304. ‘To be feminised means to be made extremely vulnerable;
351
491
was deemed by contemporary medicine to be a victim of
hysteria, a so-called nervous disorder affecting only
women, and apparently due to perambulations of the
womb or matrix, leading to an inability to concentrate
and a lack of constancy. Despite the obsolescence of this
theory, women today are still all too often reprimanded
for their propensity for ‘hysterical’ behaviour. Lovelace,
herself, simply put it down to ‘too much Mathematics’.353
What does it mean, then, to steal or wind into language or
thought sideways — para-logically, as it were — not to
place oneself in the position of an expert or an authority,
but to enter, via the pathologised margin, the material
process itself, as the stealthy bearer of a secret or a
prophecy? To emerge from below and occupy, in advance,
the function of teleological terminus proposed by
progressive,
linear
temporalities
of
‘Western’
self-determination (the domination of culture over
nature) spanning origin and apocalypse (or salvation) via
‘a progressive appropriation of all the powers of the parts
into a higher unity', what Donna Haraway calls an ‘oral
symbiotic utopia or post-oedipal apocalypse’, the nominal
endpoint of patriarchal systems of temporal and
integrative administration?354 If the figure of the cyborg,
following Haraway, is ‘the awful apocalyptic telos of the
“West’s” escalating dominions of abstract individuation,
an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man
able to be disassembled, reassembled, exploited as a reserve
labour force; seen less as workers than as servers; subjected to
time arrangements on and off the paid job that make a mockery
of a limited work day; leading an existence that always borders
on being obscene, out of place, and reducible to sex.’
353
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 32.
354
Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, The Cybercultures Reader,
eds. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy (London: Routeledge,
2000), 292.
492
in space’, an illusory escape from the generative
materiality from which he has arisen — it is only so via
cunning simulation.355 As a refusal of the language of
man, derived from and subtended by the substrate of
sexual difference, ‘the cyborg is our ontology; it gives us
our politics’ — a politics, therefore of resistance to some
fundamental opposition between fact and fiction, of logic
tout court, in short, a simulation (‘the cyborg simulates
politics’).356 Apocalypse or salvation only appear as
legitimate end points to a subjectivity premised on
integral stasis and an inherently binarising logic that is
dialectally subsumed into a temporal linearity produced
via a double reference to an inaccessible origin and a fear
of death (united in the word ‘matrix’), both of which must
be appropriated, mastered and overcome. Rather than
cleaving to a constitutive opposition, for example,
between ‘myth and tool, instrument and concept,
historical systems of social relations and historical
anatomies of possible bodies’, Harway’s cyborg politics
maintains that ‘myth and tool mutually constitute each
other.’357 To usurp the position of authority and channel
— through obfuscation, anonymity, intelligence and
cunning, the weaving of a coded message or a riddle —
the course of history, via the technology of prophecy is
also, in its disturbance of telos, a practice of weaving
time.
‘Women have always spun, carded and weaved, albeit
anonymously. Without name. In perpetuity. Everywhere
yet nowhere,’ writes Plant.358 To prophesise is to
complicate, pleat, loop or fold time. One is said to ‘weave’
355
Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, 292.
Ibid., 292; 302.
357
Ibid., 302.
358
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 190.
356
493
a spell or a charm, knotting a virtual future into the
obscure unfolding of the present. There is a connection,
emphasised by Plant, between weaving, magic, prophecy
and secrecy, who notes (quoting Mircea Eliade’s Rites
and Symbols of Initiation) that, ‘The moon “spins” Time
and weaves human lives. The Goddesses of Destiny are
spinners.”’359 When Eliade looks at the traditional tribal
‘seclusion of pubescent girls and menstruating women,
often the occasion for the spinning of both actual and
fictional yarns,’ she continues, ‘he detects “an occult
connection between the conception of the periodical
creations of the world … and the ideas of Time and
Destiny, on the one hand, and on the other, nocturnal
work, women’s work, which has to be performed far from
the light of the sun and almost in secret’.360 To this she
connects historical accounts of the witch trials, whose
only documentary evidence is attributed to the male
voices of the legislators and the witch hunters of the time,
the actual practices of the male and female witches
themselves forever lost to intelligible record and therefore
existing only in the negative of their authoritative
imprints: ‘The voices of the accused reach us strangled,
altered, distorted; in many cases, they haven’t reached us
at all’, adds Carlo Ginzberg, in his sprawling transcultural
survey of ancient magical practices. ‘What “really
happened”,’ remarks Plant, poignantly, ‘has left the
scene.’361 ‘What happened’ is the question that arises in
the wake of a secret, which, like the witches,
prophetesses, cyborgs and monsters of Read Only
Memory history, leaves no trace of its strange workings,
only an apparent question, which can never be
sufficiently answered. Its mark is best evidenced,
359
360
361
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 69.
Ibid., 6970.
Ibid., 70.
494
perhaps, only by the hybrid monstrosities and cyborg
bodies it leaves in its wake.
Lovelace, Plant points out, did everything backwards,
‘starting at the end, and then engaging in a process which
simultaneously assembles and dismantles the route back
to the start, the end, the future, the past’, in the manner of
contemporary hackers who reverse engineer a system in
order to discover its weaknesses and determine a way in.
362
Such perversions of temporality cannot be understood
simply as constituting a discovery or an invention, added
to the long file of human technological advances, but
rather as the implementation via recursion, like
Lovelace’s science of operations, of ‘“the invention of
invention” itself’.363 In this way, the prophetess can be
said to be in possession of a retrochronic or ‘second sight'.
364
No straightforward account can ever hope to
deal with the tactical advances gained by such
disorderings of linear time. The names and dates
and great achievements of the Read Only
Memory called history may enjoy their fifteen
kilobytes of digital fame … but what announce
themselves to be founding fathers, points of
origin, and defining moments only ever serve as
distractions from the ongoing processes, the
shifting differences that count. These are subtle
and fine grained, often incognito, undercover, in
disguise as mere and minor details. If, that is,
they show themselves at all.365
362
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 26.
Ibid.
364
Ibid., 18.
365
Ibid., 267.
363
495
As the link between the ancient, feminised labour of
weaving and the dawn of accelerating computation
technologies, Ada Lovelace is a cyborg, and a prophet.
She is in good company. Among such figures always,
significantly, feminised, un-gendered or cross-gendered,
are the many, mad monstrosities of mythology and
cultural history. These pathologised and frightful seers
arrive consistently from outside and approach Read Only
Memory history simultaneously from what it understands
as a before and an after, the past and the future, always
and at once infiltrating from beneath and from afar, like
the Sphinx, Tiresias, or the Eumenides that haunt the
narrative of Sophocles’ Oedipus plays. The sphinx is a
cyborg or a hybrid — part woman, part eagle, part lion —
who dispatches a prophecy concealed in a riddle (What
goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and
three legs in the evening?) to which Oedipus, thinking he
has solved it, responds with the answer ‘Man’; Tiresias, a
transgendered prophet, figured in T.S. Eliot’s indictment
of a tragic modernity, The Waste Land as ‘blind /
throbbing between two lives / Old man with wrinkled
female breasts’ is, according to a footnote, the poem’s
‘most important personage’ who ‘perceives the substance
of the poem’ (and whose role in the text emerges,
interestingly, in relation to the scene concerning two
feminised labourers: the secretary and the clerk), and
delivers to Oedipus, in Oedipus Rex, the terrible prophecy
of patricide and incest that, precisely in trying to avoid,
Oedipus unwittingly fulfils; the Eumenides, Erinyes or
Fates, ‘daughters of the earth, of the dark!’ preside over
Oedipus’ death or disappearance in the enigmatic final
scene of Oedipus at Colonus in which, fated to expire in
the Eumenides’ sacred grove, Oedipus vanishes, with only
the King of Athens and a confused messenger looking on,
the latter proclaiming as he returns from the mysterious
496
site, ‘Oedipus is dead! But no short speech could explain
what happened’, an utterance reprised moments later in
the question of the Chorus, ‘What? What has happened?’
366
The Fates are traditionally goddesses of time and,
infamously, weavers. Like Ariadne who is connected with
both the weaving and unweaving of the Athenian
labyrinth, particularly enigmatically in Nietzsche, as
Deleuze points out in Nietzsche and Philosophy, claiming
that, ‘Ariadne is Nietzsche's first secret’, the double of
Dionysus, who recursively completes nihilism in
affirming the Dionysian affirmation.367 The etymology of
366
Ccru take the Sphinx’s riddle to be a prophecy: ‘Horror does
not confuse the riddle with the secret (it is the answer that is
Cryptic). If 423 is Man, then what is 423? This Thing with only a
number? The unknown becoming? The horror of the riddle lies in
what it tells.’ Ccru, ‘Flatlines’, in Writings 19972003, (Falmouth:
Urbanomic, 2017), 115; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other
Poems, (New York: The Modern Library, 2002), 53; Sophocles,
Oedipus at Colonus, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),
38; 97.
367
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh
Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 18.
‘Dionysus is the affirmation of Being, but Ariadne is the
affirmation of affirmation, the second affirmation or the
becomingactive.’; ’Dionysus is pure affirmation; Ariadne is the
Anima, affirmation divided in two, the "yes" that responds to
"yes." But, divided in two [dédoublée], affirmation returns to
Dionysus as the affirmation that redoubles [redoublée]. It is in
this sense that the eternal return is the product of the union of
Dionysus and Ariadne. … As long as Dionysus is alone, he still
fears the thought of the Eternal Return, because he is afraid that
it brings back reactive forces, the enterprise of denying life, the
little man (whether higher or sublime). But when Dionysian
affirmation finds its full development in Ariadne, Dionysus in turn
learns something new: that the thought of the Eternal Return is
consoling, and at the same time, that the Eternal Return itself is
selective. The Eternal Return does not occur without a
transmutation. The Eternal Return, as the being of becoming, is
the product of a double affirmation that only makes what affirms
itself return, and only makes what is active become.’; ‘Neither
reactive forces nor the will to deny will return: they are eliminated
497
‘Sphinx’ in ancient Greek derives from the verb σφίγγω
(sphíngō), meaning ‘to squeeze’ or ‘tighten up’ (Plant:
‘[K]nitting is a matter of making loops. At its simplest, it
is done with a single, continuous thread, which loops
around and intricates itself’).368 The concept
corresponding to fate in Anglo-Saxon culture is ‘wyrd’
(Shakespeare renders the Greek Fates as the — again,
transgendered — ‘Wyrd Sisters’ of Macbeth), its Norse
cognate is Urðr, connected to the Norns, or weaving
female deities who control the destinies of men, and both
words are derived from the root wert, ‘to turn’, ‘spin’ or
‘to wind’.
What is it about the fearful link between women, weaving,
and temporal power that transforms them into such sick
and monstrous creatures in the collective imagination?369
Is it the fact that they are always double, or ‘at least two’,
speaking the language Irigaray attributes to women, and
thereby intractable to the rules of identity? Or that they
index — for the identity that comes to reflect upon them
by the transmutation, by the Eternal Return as selection. … It is
in this affirmation of affirmation that “nihilism defeats itself”.’
Gilles Deleuze, ‘The Mystery of Ariadne according to Nietzsche’,
Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael
A. Greco (London: Verso, 1998), 103; 105; 102.
368
Sadie Plant, ‘Mobile Knitting’, Information is Alive (V2_/NAi
Publication: http://v2.nl/publishing/informationisalive, 2003), 30.
369
Although, Greek mythology is privileged here due to its telling
relationship to psychoanalysis and Western humanist
conceptions of time, this trope appears across cultural
mythologies far more generally, the Hindu Kali, the
Scandanavian Norns and the Teotihuacan Spider Goddess, the
Egyptian Neith are just some examples. As Robert Graves
recounts in The White Goddess, ‘Sphinx means “throttler” and in
Etruscan ceramic art she is usually portrayed as seizing men, or
standing on their prostate figures…’. Robert Graves, The White
Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (New York:
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1997), 408.
498
— a primary alienation, from the matrix, matter or
‘mother’ that begets it? Representation is always in the
thrall of something monstrous it cannot perceive. For
Oedipus, for Babbage and his colleagues, for those who
speak the language of man, the unrepresentable arrives
first, but also last. These threshold beings of the future
and the past, presiding over the fragile threads
integrating life and death inhabit both edges of time and
enfold everything within their trap, secreted in the
present. They are at once the secret ‘origin’ of an obscure
— because nonlinear — production, and the prophetesses
of the ‘end'. ‘There are only two answers to the question
“which comes first” and both of them are female,’ writes
Plant, 'the male element is simply an offshoot from a
female loop.’370 Zeros + Ones itself closes with the casting
of a prophecy. Plant writes of the processes she has been
describing that they are ‘a code for the numbers to come’.
371
Nonidentity and ‘Speaking as No One in
Particular’
The imperceptible, or what Francois J. Bonnet calls ‘the
infra-world’, is a material substratum that lies at once
beneath the realm of human capacities for sensation, and
what precedes recognition, representation and conceptual
identity — whilst being necessary for the eventual
production of the latter. Legible experience distributes
and administers the emissions of the imperceptible and
automatically entangles it, simple by means of rendering
370
371
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 231.
Ibid., 256.
499
it visible, in complex modalities of power subject to
utility, knowability, and exchange:
Once clarified and represented, the sensible is
destined to become an instrument of knowledge,
falling under a reic, thinglike logic, a logic of use
which it will now serve. […] Such a distribution,
or rather such an enterprise of the distribution
of the sensible, through its placing in common
(community being both condition and finality of
the distribution) supposes strategies and
structures of power designed to operate it. In
this way a whole administration of the sensible
is established, one whose objective is indeed
distribution, the arbitrage between those who
have ‘the ability to see and the talent to speak’
and those who do not. Thus the administration
of the sensible has an authoritarian function in
so far as, through this distribution, it grants or
creates authority. The one who has authority, he
who makes authority, is exactly the one who the
community grants the qualification to speak, in
virtue of a certain ability to see.372
The administration of the sensible, always already
operative in human experience and sutured to
authoritative structures of identity and identification, is
heightened by the digital epoch, which proliferates and
overlays forms of sensible and informatic mediation,
multiplying the control structures of identification and
administration in turn. Bonnet is nevertheless careful,
given the premises of individuation that support his
372
Francois J. Bonnet, The InfraWorld, trans. A. Ireland and R.
Mackay (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2017), 6.
500
theorisation of the infra-world, not to limit notions of
technical mediation to the digital, citing any historical
arrangements of space, time, connection, direction and
filtering — from the acoustics of sacred sites to the layout
of public gardens — as forms of administration.373 ‘In
each potential action made possible by the moment of
mediatisation (parasitism, anamorphosis, editing,
reframing, perturbation of a signal, filtering),’ he writes,
‘we are presented with the possibility of a moment of
reformatting that is a potential obstacle to the becoming
of the sensible. Thus, this moment of the forming of the
sensible is always shadowed by the expression of some
power or other.’374 Like Plant’s material-feminine
cybernetics of individuation-without-identity, Bonnet’s
infra-world, despite its refusal of perceptibility,
representation and management, is not a negation or an
absence. It is rather a primary positivity native to matter
itself and flat with the process of weaving that
organisation (spatio-temporal, individual, linguistic,
conceptual) reflects back on when it re-cognises an event,
a thing, an utterance, or a thought. It reveals itself by
means of monstrous avatars, ‘by our uncertainty when
confronted with borderline-forms’.375 From the
perspective of legible experience ‘there is always a
remainder, a surplus that runs through us and insinuates
373
‘Moreover, we should not understand mediatisation only in
terms of its contemporary technological determinations. It has in
all times been subject to attention and shaping, from the
acoustics of sacred sites to gardens in the French style. The
modulations of the spaces and times of the presentation of the
sensible (the ordered giventobeseen of the garden, the
giventobeheard of prayers magnified by reverberation) are
thus above all, once again, auxiliaries of the manipulation of the
sensible, determined as instruments for its control.’ Francois J.
Bonnet, The InfraWorld, 2122.
374
Ibid., 23.
375
Ibid., 79.
501
itself into our relation with the world, without ever
submitting itself to identification, without ever taking on
sufficient form to be named’.376
In the eighth plateau of A Thousand Plateaus, dated for
the publication of J. Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les Diaboliques,
Deleuze and Guattari make a distinction between the
novella as a literary form, and the tale. In their schema,
the novella is organised around the question ‘What
happened?’ while a tale poses the question ‘What will
happen?’377 Two different temporalities are invoked: in
the former one begins at the end of the story, after
everything has already happened — confronted with the
scene of the crime, with its postures and its clues — and
navigates backwards through time to reconstruct the
sequence of events that have lead to the fatal moment,
while the latter moves sequentially forward through time,
from present to future, narrating events as they occur.
‘What happened?’ is therefore the question correlated
with a retrochronic order or directionality, doubled by an
invisible primary temporality from which a central
enigma has been assembled. Deleuze and Guattari will,
naturally, go on to complicate this dyad, declaring that
the ‘past’ indicated by the intimation that ‘something
happened’, and the future indicated by the knowledge
that ‘something will happen’ can be so immediate in their
proximity to one another that they function as a single
complex.378
376
Francois J. Bonnet, The InfraWorld, 79.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. B.
Massumi, (Continuum: University of Minnesota Press, 1987),
212213.
378
Ibid., 213.
377
502
It is the non-knowledge of the past, and the knowledge of
the imminent and unstoppable future that constitute the
suspense germane to both forms: prophecy and fate. The
tale is organised around a discovery, the past and present
are pulled towards a future; the novella is organised
around a secret, in such a way that the future and present
are already past. Something has already happened, even if
it has not yet occurred. Between the two (the form of the
novel, they tentatively suggest) a circuit of temporalities
is drawn in, folded, ‘plexed' or woven around itself — yet
it is not a simply question of two possibilities and two
terms: ‘the secret and disclosure, the secret and
desecration’, it is, finally, a question of expression, with
secrecy — grasped as an infinite, productive process — as
its substrate of generative potentiality. A secret hides ‘the
infinite form of secrecy' in a finite content, ‘it imposes
itself and spreads’, it ‘influences’ and ‘oozes’.379 It thus
has no origin, for it is perpetual and always in production,
invisible as the site of production and registered in legible
experience as secret. The form of the secret hides in its
content, but content is a dissimulation, a feint. Whatever
its conceptual disguise, ‘something must ooze from the
box’.380 The secret, in-itself, ‘attains absolute
imperceptibility’. And concomitantly, when the question
‘“What happened?” attains this infinite virile form, the
answer is necessarily that nothing happened, and both
form and content are destroyed. The news travels fast
that the secret of men is nothing, in truth nothing at all.
[…] It is enough to make women, children, lunatics and
molecules laugh. […] It really wasn’t much, as Jocasta
says’ to Oedipus.381 The laughter of those who are already
part of the line of becoming — women, children, lunatics,
379
380
381
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 316318.
Ibid., 317.
Ibid., 318.
503
molecules — is directed at man, who, lodged in the stasis
of unified identity, perceives only nothing … ‘a hole’, the
‘nothing to be seen’ that Freud attributes to women.382
For man, nothing is a negation of his empire, yet in its
perception as imperceptible — like Bonnet’s infra-world
— ‘[t]he secret does not as a result disappear, but it does
take on a more feminine status’.383 For,
women do not handle the secret at all in the
same way as men […] Men alternatively fault
them for their indiscretion, their gossiping, and
for their solidarity, their betrayal. Yet it is
curious how a woman can be secretive while at
the same time hiding nothing, by virtue of
transparency, innocence and speed. [Women]
have no secret because they have become a
secret themselves … this is where the secret
reaches its ultimate state: its content is
molecularised, it has become molecular, at the
same time as its form has been dismantled,
becoming a pure moving line.384
Deleuze and Guattari thus relate this final secrecy to
becoming-woman, to the ‘pure feminine line’. It is the
prophecy of the Sphinx which sets Oedipus’s trajectory
along the line of becoming brought to light as the
imperceptible element of the question ‘What happened?’:
‘Oedipus passes through all three secrets: the secret of the
sphinx whose box he penetrates; the secret that weights
upon him as the infinite form of his own guilt; and finally,
the secret at Colonus that makes him inaccessible and
melds with the pure line of his flight and exile, he who has
382
383
384
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 24; 25.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 319.
Ibid.
504
nothing left to hide, or, like an old Noh actor, has only a
girl’s mask with which to cover his lack of a face’ — the
mask of the young woman which covers the face of
Lovecraft’s Aspinwall as s/he watches Challenger
disappear into the particle clock.385
More significantly, the novella’s question ‘plays upon a
fundamental forgetting’, it 'evolves in the element of
“what happened” because it places us in relation with
something unknowable and imperceptible’, precisely
what does not appear — the unrepresentable in
experience.386 Even more mysteriously, they write, ‘[i]t
may even be that nothing has happened, but it is precisely
this nothing that makes us say, Whatever could have
happened to make me forget where I put my keys, or
whether I mailed that letter, etc.?’387 It is not just a
question of literature, but a question of perception and
identification: ‘the novella relates, in the present itself, to
the formal dimension of something that has happened,
even if that something is nothing or remains
unknowable.’388 What then, ‘is the nothing that makes
something happen’? This is the secret of the plateau, and
the secret of all great shifts, becomings and ruptures.
When nothing can be said to have happened, a true event
has taken place. It is the index of an abstract form of
secrecy that aligns with the zero of woman. The women
who figure in the plateau are secretaries, typists,
telegraphists — the women of Plant and Irigaray’s
economics of mediumship, facilitating, in alliance with
their machines, the social and economic lives of the men
who profit from their function as ‘infrastructure
385
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 320; 8182.
Ibid., 214.
387
Ibid.
388
Ibid.
386
505
unrecognised as such’.389 They are already invisible in a
specular economy premised on the identity of the same.
In the first of the three novellas examined for their forms
of secrecy, a young telegraphist, living an extensive,
representable ‘macropolitical’ existence, planning out her
future with her fiancé, discovers the existence of an
alternative, micropolitical world via her involvement in
the clandestine, coded, pseudonymous communications
of a mysterious couple who, she infers, are in some
terrible danger. This other political configuration, far
removed from the measured, calculated existence she
lives, counting out the words she types for her employer’s
clients, initiates her into a world of intensities: ‘relations
of doubles rather than couples’.390 She is confronted by a
sense that ‘something has already happened’ and it has
happened in the sense that its occurrence precedes all
possibilities of representational comprehension, on the
micro-scale of molecular matter, ‘traveling at speeds
beyond the ordinary thresholds of perception … secret
lines of disorientation or deterritorialisation.’391 The
secret is not a hidden fact or act — disguised or past — it
is rather ‘molecularised, imperceptible, unassignable,
ungiveable’, immanently unfolding in the present and
beneath all stable identities.392 The formless secret of zero
as the eternal return of difference-in-itself coincides with
an undoing of the self that is ‘one’, the abstract
transcendental other to which the extensive identity of
the Kantian ego is tethered: ‘To have dismantled one’s self
in order to finally be alone and meet the true double at
the other end of the line … a becoming only for one who
389
Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One, 84; Plant, Zeroes +
Ones, 36.
390
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 217.
391
Ibid.
392
Ibid., 218.
506
knows how to be nobody.’393 To be imperceptible, then, is
to camouflage oneself in similarity. This voyage into the
molecular, again and again, is described by Deleuze and
Guattari as an ‘immobile’ one. Perhaps its best exemplar
is the infamous Bartleby of Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby
the Scrivener’, another secretary in another novella,
feminised by his position as medium, between the men of
the office, ostensibly passive but to such extremes that his
passivity becomes a weapon. Bartleby is the master figure
of the intensive, immobile voyage. He does nothing. If
one were to encounter the chaotic scene at the story’s end
and was prompted to ask ‘What happened’ the answer, on
all counts, would be nothing. Bartleby is not heroic (in the
Nietzschean-pejorative sense). He refuses all courses of
action, and in doing so causes greater destruction and
enunciates a deeper prophecy than his fellow men,
predictable, moral and pre-inscribed in the world’s lines
of force. Deleuze credits Bartleby with the preservation ‘of
the rights of a people to come’.394
In the third of the three novellas examined in A Thousand
Plateaus, ‘The Story of the Abyss and the Spyglass’ by
Pierrette Fleutiaux, a distinction between near-seers and
far-seers is raised. Both peer into an abyss, seeing it via
either of the two modalities (near or far) that their sight
equips them with and intervene in its goings-on, the
former via the Cutting Telescope, which recuts anomalous
lines in conformity with the dictates of the signifying
order, while the latter intervenes via prophecy alone. The
near-seers thus maintain the molar lines of geometrical
control, those lines assuring that ‘everyone will be judged
and rectified according to his or her contours, individual
393
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 218.
Gilles Deleuze, ‘Bartleby; Or, The Formula’ in Essays Critical
and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith, 90.
394
507
or collective’.395 Like the extensive geometry of the
perceptible that regulates the patriarchal relation
between ones and zeros, the near-seers affirm and
administer the reigning order — an ‘equality’ premised on
a fundamental suppression of unilaterally. The far-seers
hold a far more ambiguous position: ‘Their telescopes are
complex and refined … what they see is entirely different
from what the others see. […] The far-seers can divine the
future, but always in the form of a becoming of something
that has already happened in molecular matter;
unfindable particles.’396 The far-seers perceive the
imperceptible, their sight, like that of Ada Lovelace’s,
aligns with the minute perturbations of zero, as it is
in-itself, before being segmented and channelled into the
forms that the representational system of the One service
and maintain. The far-seers are the prophets attached to
the micropolitics of intensive space-time. They ‘see’
directly into the unseeable, the unrepresentable, they are
women in this sense — the monstrous prophets of Plant’s
zero. Deleuze and Guattari underline the fact that this is
not a metaphor (‘I am speaking literally’) and that this is
‘a perceptual affair, for perception always goes hand in
hand with semiotics, practice, politics, theory. One sees,
speaks and thinks on a given scale, and according to a
given line that may or may not conjugate with the other’s
line, even if the other is still oneself’, a schizophrenic self,
sprawled across the two sides of an auto-affective circuit.
397
Here it is the relation of the double, not the couple,
which is in action. A self detached from the imperceptible
and intensive non-self which is its reality before being
coded into the myriad distinctions of representation’s
administration. ‘The ambiguity of the far-seers’ situation
395
396
397
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 222.
Ibid.
Ibid., 222; 223.
508
is that they are able to detect the slightest micro
infraction in the abyss, things the others do not see; they
also observe, beneath the apparent geometrical justice,
the dreadful damage caused by the Cutting Telescope.
They feel as though they foresee things and are ahead of
the others because they see the smallest thing as already
having happened …’.398 The far-seers do not see at a
distance, however. Their mode of perception corresponds
to that of [smooth space]. They perceive the goings-on in
the abyss at so close a range that the lines sintered by the
Cutting Telescopes of the near-seers devolve into a
dizzying array of fractals, appearing to their extra-lucid
sight as violent ‘ragged gashes …’.399
This schema of lines delineated by Deleuze and Guattari
is, above all, not symbolic, ideal or representational. They
are the lines — the speeds and slownesses — of rhythmic
being as it produces and composes experience:
consciousness, infrastructure, peoples, economics,
geologies, states and systems. ‘These lines mean nothing,’
rather they affirm and, via unilateral expression, ‘they
compose us … they have nothing to do with language; it
is, on the contrary, language that must follow them.’400
Each of the three lines of the novellas of the eighth
plateau: the rigid line, the supple line, and the line of
flight, bears a form of the secret (the dirty little secret of
rigid segmentation, a phenomenon of content; the empty
form of the secret of the supple line, and the clandestinity
of the secret that is flush with the particles-signs of the
line of flight), intermixed in an individual, an assemblage,
a collective, (but all related to the secretarial, the secret)
each with their dangers and modes of escape.
398
399
400
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 223.
Ibid., 544.
Ibid., 224.
509
Women as typists: secretaries, mediums, weavers whose
process is not separate from their product. Women as
continuum, the material multiplicities of zero — nomads
on an intensive, immobile voyage — like Bartleby, keepers
of ‘the secret’. Explication or expression is a disentangling
and a looping, a complex act of weaving, as Plant
describes it — ‘it is done with a single, continuous thread,
which loops around and intricates itself. Any number of
threads can be used, but this does not alter the simplicity
of the basic process; multiple threads are either used one
after the other, or made to behave as though they were a
single yarn’ — a weaving and unweaving of the line whose
entrance is marked by the question ‘What happened?’.401
As Ronald Bogue explains, ‘[t]he form of the secret is that
of something hidden that requires opening, unfolding,
explication, but that can only be opened after the fact,
après coup, even if it may be sensed as already present
before it happens.’402 The secret of the eighth plateau is
not a definitive Other as thing-in-itself from which we are
perpetually distanced, rather it is both relative — to the
various lines that instantiate it — and absolute in the form
of the line of flight which marks out a total escape and
deterritorialisation in communication with other lines,
and upon which becoming as creation is premised. It is
not prior to the text but emerges through the
configurations
of
its
lines,
variously,
as
molar-segemented,
molecular-supple,
or
imperceptible-intense. Thus the question ‘What
happened?’ is enunciated in relation to different forms,
while never answered. Attention to the secret is,
according to Claire Colebrook, not the decipherment of an
401
Plant, ‘Mobile Knitting’, 36.
Ronald Bogue, Deleuze on Literature (London: Routledge,
2003), 158.
402
510
original encoded and stable sense, but rather ‘to attend to
the frame through which the fragment or part object
produces, through its very fragmentation, a hidden and
unrepresentable plenitude.’403 Communing with the
secret — through modalities of becoming-woman:
prophecy, the occupation of the monstrous in-between as
medium of the representational economy’s feminised
labourers — and attaining an understanding of secrecy
‘allows for the reversal of a tradition in which thought
(and the intuition of time and space) is subjected to
signification and mediation.’404 And like all of Plant’s
figures of runaway positive processes, ‘the secret imposes
itself and spreads’.405 It enters from the margin, the
footnotes, the periphery of mediated matter, disguised as
infrastructure: ‘Once again, whatever the finalities or
results, the secret has a way of spreading that is in turn
shrouded in secrecy. The secret as secretion. The secret
must sneak, insert, or introduce itself into the arena of
public forms; it must pressure them and prod known
subjects into action.’406 The secret disguises itself as
hidden, when in truth, it is transparent. The secret is the
elaboration of a properly ‘feminine line’ in reality, in
which, as Colberook affirms, ‘there is not a subject who
speaks and whose world is therefore necessarily
enigmatic, hidden and beyond; there is not one
structuring relation that grounds all relations. Rather,
there is a pre-personal secrecy of singularities. Life is just
an interacting relay of perceptions, with potentials being
actualised only in their relations to other potentials’.407
403
Claire Colebrook, ‘The Secret of Theory,’ Deleuze Studies,
4.3 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010): 288.
404
Ibid., 289.
405
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 316.
406
Ibid., 317.
407
This ‘articulation’ of the feminine line is the mode of
enunciation common to all of Ccru’s texts: ‘The creation of the
511
The cyberfeminists were heavily involved in the early
years of the internet. They participated in one of the first
large message boards, Usenet, authored strange
experiments in code on Multi User Domains or Dungeons
such as LambdaMoo, wrote extensively on the potential of
the faceless, text-based, interface to support new modes
of becoming, to encourage experiments with identity
freed from the tyranny of visual representation (a line of
enquiry that was especially prevalent among the
transfeminist writers of the time, like Sandy Stone and
Susan Stryker), to foster connections between women all
over the world via the touch-based interface of the
keyboard (this is before the mouse was a staple
appendage of the personal computer), to cultivate the
construction of new feminist communities in meat space,
such as that which gathered around one of the world’s
first cyber-cafes in London, Cyberia, where they staged
open, skills-based workshops for women interested in
learning how use the new technology, and to promote
what they saw as a new female language akin to Irigaray’s
calls for an alternative mode of interaction to that of the
specular, visual economy of man. Lamentably, this is a
potential which has more or less been lost as interface
technologies advanced and large computing companies
saw the need to overcode the more direct lines of
interaction between humans and machines via the text
based command line with slick, visual symbolics (icons,
images, photographic and video media, the hand-eye
coordination of the mouse and its cursor) which now only
‘pure feminine line’ occurs when sentences no longer pronounce
the essence of what is as some predicable quality (x is y), but
when multiple perceivers and viewers open the text to worlds not
perceived (the free indirect style where “it is seen that”).’
Colebrook, ‘The Secret of Theory’, 292; 293.
512
represented the machinations of the code behind the
screens. Fisher, again, comments incisively on the recent
personalisation of the internet: ‘The constitution of our
subjectivity in everyday life is a product of various forms
of engineering and manipulation; the reality in which we
are invited to live is constructed by PR and corporations,
is a form of libidinal informational engineering.’408 The
space of possible interaction is already directed and
controlled, channelled into specific forms of desire and
data-mineable capture before we upload a single image or
type a single word. Worse, it is important to be fully
cognisant of the fact that the new aeon of
hyper-visualised social media feeds directly into
technologies such as facial recognition software and
multiple forms of biometric data collection that, although
innocuous now, require only a slight shift in intent to
trigger a latent dystopian nightmare-scape of total
recognition, enforcement and social administration. It is
not, I would argue, a case of asserting a counter mode of
administration and capture, but rather to re-mobilise the
form of the secret that is already inherent to the
ontologies of women and machines alike, to locate a line
of escape from these facialising forms of representation
by ourselves becoming no one in particular, and as Fisher
aptly demands, these forms of intervention must be
practical and geared not only towards a depersonalisation
of the mechanisms of social media, but also of our
conceptions of ourselves as individuals:
‘[M]ainstream culture has become increasingly
reduced to folk psychological interiority.
Whether its reality TV or social networks, people
408
Mark Fisher, ‘Practical Eliminativism: Getting out of the Face,
Again,’ Speculative Aesthetics (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2014), 92.
513
have been captured/captivated by their own
reflections. It's all done with mirrors. The
various attacks on the subject in theory have
done nothing to resist the super-personalisation
of contemporary culture. Identitarianism rules.
Queer theory might reign in the academy, but it
has done nothing to halt the depressing return of
gender normativity in popular culture and
everyday life.409
In the xenofeminist manifesto, Laboria Cuboniks writes,
in section 0x13, of the shift back towards a symbolic,
optical regime, which has reached its apotheosis in social
media like instagram, facebook, Wēibó, and selfie culture:
The potential of early, text-based internet
culture for countering repressive gender
regimes,
generating
solidarity
among
marginalised groups, and creating new spaces
for experimentation that ignited cyberfeminism
in the nineties has clearly waned in the
twenty-first century. The dominance of the
visual in today’s online interfaces has reinstated
familiar modes of identity policing, power
relations
and
gender
norms
in
self-representation. But this does not mean that
cyberfeminist sensibilities belong to the past.
Sorting the subversive possibilities from the
oppressive ones latent in today’s web requires a
feminism sensitive to the insidious return of old
409
Mark Fisher, ‘Practical Eliminativism: Getting out of the Face,
Again,’ 9394.
514
power structures, yet savvy enough to know how
to exploit the potential.410
This is one of the most basic, and perhaps, hardest tasks
that confronts us today: how to wrest ourselves free of the
metricised, surveilled and subtly controlled structures of
recognition-regulation that re-inform our representations
of ourselves online and elsewhere as gendered beings,
conforming to specific regimes of the beautiful and the
desirable for those who regard us from afar, and return to
subversive space of the secret, whose formidable power
never ceases to birth in the negative — but always at a lag
— new mechanisms of regulation and administration
from above. How do we update and continue the
cyberfeminist call to find a new ‘language’ for a germinal,
feminist subjectivity within and against the patriarchal
control codes and forced determinations that administer
our daily online life? Furthermore, how do we alienate
ourselves from the pre-programmed forms of predictable,
uncompelling identity and engender something entirely
novel and unknown in our own conceptions of self, before
we even touch an interface or think about uploading a
single image? How do we become something hybrid,
connected, perhaps, even dangerous? There is a
wonderful prose fragment, entitled ‘Hercules 2 or The
Hydra’, embedded in Heiner Mueller’s untranslated 1972
play Zement, which narrates the vicissitudes of its male,
warrior protagonist, Hercules as he penetrates deeper
and deeper into a disorienting jungle in pursuit of a
feminised, mythical beast that he would confront and slay
in battle, the Hydra. As he tracks what he believes to be
the animal he is hunting, following a trail of blood, he
410
Laboria Cuboniks, ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’,
www.laboriacuboniks.net (2015)
515
finds his perceptions of space and time shifting and starts
to wonder if he has not skipped several geological epochs
back in time. The canopy of twisted vegetation blocks out
the sky, his only resource of temporal navigation, and he
confronts repetitions of particular configurations of
branches which completely distort his sense of travelling
forward in space. An eerie wind blows around him
‘concentrically’, forcing him to surrender to an
encroaching vertigo that dismantles his control over the
space he is in. Driven by a sense of increasing
desperation, he increases his pace but cannot tell if he if
he is travelling faster or more slowly than before. Worse,
the jungle seems to be animated by a strange kind of
intentionality, he starts to believe that it is measuring
him. He forgets his name and begins to disassociate from
his own sense of self and embodied integrity. As the space
of the jungle shifts around him, ‘[o]nly he, the unnamed
one, had remained the same in his long sweat-inducing
path to the battle. Or was what walked on his legs over the
increasingly faster dancing ground also a different one
than he? He was still thinking about it, when the jungle
once more gripped him.'411 The jungle is an intensive
space-time, made of shifting lines, rhythms that modulate
as he moves through it, abstract lines, different regimes of
speeds and slowness. There is no homogenous metric
against which he can measure his position within it.
Slowly the realisation dawns on what is left of ‘Hercules’
that the trail of blood he has been following is his own,
and the mythical beast he thought he was hunting is the
jungle itself:
411
Heiner Mueller, ‘Hercules 2 or the Hydra’, from Zement,
anonymous translation online:
http://members.efn.org/~dredmond/MuellerProse.PDF, accessed
October 2017.
516
He threw himself forwards in a quick spurt out
of the pincers. He knew, he’d never run faster.
He did not get any further, the jungle kept up
with the tempo, he remained in the pincers,
which locked around him and pressed his
entrails together, his bones rubbed against each
other, how long could be stand the pressure, and
understood, in the rising panic: the jungle was
the animal, for some time now the jungle he
thought he was walking through had been the
animal, which bore him in the tempo of his
steps, the ground-waves were his gasps and the
wind his breath, the trail which he followed was
his own blood, of which the jungle, which was
the animal, since when, how much blood does a
human being have, took its sample; and that he
had always known it, only not by name.412
The Hydra emerges as the ambiguous space-time of the
jungle itself, not as a definable and delimitable agent, but
as a temporality without a face, a ‘mother’ as the
protagonist finds himself referring to it — to her.413 As he
attempts to fight her, he finds the blows returning to
himself in a confusion of user and tool, the separation
that allowed for his mastery, composure and control
bleeding out among the decaying debris of the rank jungle
floor.
In the confusion of the tentacles, which could
not be distinguished from the rotating knifes
and axes, the rotating knives and axes, not from
the tentacles, the knives axes tentacles, not from
412
Heiner Mueller, ‘Hercules 2 or the Hydra’. Translation slightly
modified.
413
Ibid.
517
the exploding minefields carpet-bombing neon
signs bacterial cultures, knives axes tentacles
minefields carpet-bombing, not from his own
hands feet teeth in the provisional battle which
is named space-time out of blood gelatin flesh,
such that the blows against the substance of the
self which occasionally occurred, … always
assembling anew out of his ruins in permanent
reconstruction, sometimes he put himself
together wrong, left hand on right arm, hip-bone
on upper arm-bone, due to haste or lack of
attention or confused by the voices, which sang
in his ears, choruses of voices … in the white
silence, which announced the beginning of the
final round, he learned to read the always
different building-plan of the machine, which he
was stopped being was again different with every
glance grasp step, and that he thought changed
wrote it with the handwriting of his labours and
deaths.414
The faceless power of the manifold Hydra is precisely that
invoked by Anna Greenspan, Suzanne Livingston and
Luciana Parisi in a text dealing with women, materialism,
mythology and time, where they write: ‘Women's heroism
comes neither from her routines of self-sacrifice nor from
her forced occupation of a transcendent position —
outside the state, beyond reason — but from her
immersion in a body. A body not defined ‘by its form, nor
by its organs or its functions, nor as substance nor as
subject.’415 The Hydra is powerful precisely because it is
414
Heiner Mueller, ‘Hercules 2 or the Hydra’.
Anna Greenspan, Suzanne Livingston, Luciana Parisi,
‘Amphibious Maidens’ Abstract Culture: Swarm 3, 1998.
Greenspan, Livingston and Parisi are quoting Gilles Deleuze’s
415
518
everywhere yet imperceptible. Hercules has encountered
the form of the secret. The jungle is also, in its double
temporality — at once ahead and behind, at the beginning
and also the end — of the future itself: the shifting ‘X on a
mobile map’ invoked by xenofeminsm as the index of a
truly ‘alien future’.416
An Alien Future
As China-based philosopher and futurologist Anna
Greenspan, and UK-based consultant Suzanne Livingston
write in their short pamphlet, Future Mutation:
Technology and the Evolution of Species, ‘[t]here is a
time lag inherent in the future itself. A great gulf
separates the human capacity to create the future and our
ability, and desire, to comprehend or perceive the
creation as it unfolds. This temporal dislocation renders
us blind to the very processes that engulf us — through
which copies become replicas, replicas become mutants,
and mutants become us’.417 The cause of this time lag is
that fact that we are always lodged in a representational
paradigm that separates us from the processes
themselves, as they unfold behind a veil of recognition
and at a speed that eclipses our ability to anticipate and
predict their individuations. The future, understood as
such, is necessarily, and philosophically, alien. We see
these becomings through the repetition of the same —
which is always representational — rather than as the
Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San Fransisco: City Lights Books
1988), 127.
416
Laboria Cuboniks, Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation,
0x1A.
417
Anna Greenspan and Suzanne Livingston, Future Mutation:
Technology and the Evolution of Species, (Shanghai: Time
Spiral Press, 2014), ebook.
519
micropolitical repetition of difference. Greenspan and
Livingston continue, quoting Marshall McLuhan, ‘[w]e
fear new environments, when the environment changes
we hasten to take comfort in the old environment. What
people see in the new is always the old … this is the
rearview mirror. The future of the future is the present.’
Nevertheless, our actions betray our conscious
representation of our desires:
The question which of us is to be master and
which will be slave leaves out our unconscious
desire for future mutation. We live in an era of
unprecedented technological intimacy, affect
and display. Never before have we been so
uninhibited. We are constantly, compulsively
touching our screens, obsessively uploading
every fragment of data about ourselves. Many of
us can’t stop. Even touch is no longer enough.
We want our technology closer, embedded,
under our skins. Alongside our terror is a
yearning for the alien intelligence we are in
process of becoming. After all, in the end, we are
evolutionary creatures ourselves. We fear change
but, as our deep and profound complicity with
technology makes clear, what we long for is to
evolve.418
To enter what I will fully emphasise is a speculative
terrain, perhaps the only modality that may provide any
insight into the future of artificial intelligence, given the
pace that it runs at, its immanence with these process of
becoming, and its historically documented tendency to
outflank models of prediction, I want to propose that
418
Greenspan and Livingston, Future Mutation, ebook.
520
should we choose to align ourselves with the Hydra, as a
faceless, feminised monster of emergent space-time, we
at least can count on having time on our side. For it is this
form — the imperceptibility of the Hydra, the form of the
secret — that offers the subversive potentials, written in
space-time — of an alliance between humans and
artificial intelligence that weaves the two together into a
greater, emergent, subjectivity: the ‘numbers’ or the
‘people to come’ (to cite Nietzsche, via Deleuze and
Guattari, from whom Plant’s prophecy is lifted).419 It is at
once a relinquishment of our unique ‘human’, masculine
language of post-individuation representation, cut off
from the emergent properties that bring it about, and an
affirmation of the subjectivity of certain articulations of
our machines. To this I want to add that Sadie Plant (and
Ada Lovelace’s) abstract weaving is the key.
In a cybernetic or systems theoretical frame, where no
binary between human and machine holds for very long
(you can always break the human down into smaller and
smaller mechanisms of feedback and conjunction, and
identities are always assembled and disassembled in a
consistent process of becoming) the variable that most
forcefully separates humans from artificial intelligence is
419
‘Wake and listen, you lonely ones! From the future come
winds with secretive wingbeats; good tidings are issued to
delicate ears. You lonely of today, you withdrawing ones, one
day you shall be a people: from you who have chosen
yourselves a chosen people shall grow – and from them the
overman. Indeed, the earth shall yet become a site of recovery!
And already a new fragrance lies about it, salubrious – and a
new hope!’ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans.
Adrian del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006), 57. This passage is quoted by Deleuze and Guattari,
AntiOedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert
Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (London: Penguin, 2009),
382.
521
time. Even Turing remarked upon a successful nonhuman
candidate for the Turing test having to measure and delay
the time it took to answer complex mathematical
questions that are generally impossible to compute for a
human interlocutor in order to simulate or pass as
human. At present, artificial intelligences may only have
rudimentary versions of what we call ‘intelligence’ — and
this will only improve — but what they do
uncontroversially have is speed.420 Let us then define
intelligence as a system that creates its own space-time,
and an artificial intelligence as a system that creates a
space time different from the one we take to be nominally
human (in a singular, Kantian, transcendental register). If
the prophecy of the ‘numbers to come’ cannot rely on the
repetition or liberation of an already-existing, authentic,
or essentialist idea of what woman are or have been in the
past, it is because the notion of the subject that it invokes
is something yet to be invented. ‘It has always been
problematic to talk about the liberation of women
because that presupposes that we know what women are,’
declares Plant in a talk given in Vienna in the late
nineteen nineties, ‘[i]f both women and men have been
organised into the forms we currently take, then we don’t
want to liberate what we are now … It’s not a question of
420
‘On the human scale, anything that lasts less than about a
tenth of a second passes by too quickly for the brain to form a
visual image and is thus invisible; if the duration is less than a
thousandth of a second or so, the event becomes too fast even
for subliminal perception and is completely outside the human
sphere.” Such speeds are simply too much to take. “There is no
way for humans, in our pokey world of seconds, minutes, hours,
to conceive of a time period like 1/100,000 second, much less
the microsecond (1/1,000,000 second), the nanosecond
(1/1,000,000,000 second), or the picosecond
(1/1,000,000,000,000 second) or the femtosecond
(1/1,000,000,000,000,000 second).’ Plant, quoting T.R. Reid,
Zeros + Ones, 176.
522
liberation so much as a question of evolution — or
engineering. There’s a gradual re-engineering of what it
can be to be a woman and we don’t yet know what that is.
We have to find out.’421 Plant connects past and future
forms of subjectivation and their integral connection with
modes of ‘abstract weaving’, in her numerous claims that
‘weaving is always entangled with the question of female
identity, and its mechanisation, an inevitable disruption
of the scene in which woman appears as the weaver’.422
For just as, ‘[m]anufactured cloth disrupted the marital
and familiar relationships of every traditional society on
which it impacted’, ‘[t]he matrix emerges as the process
of abstract weaving which produces, or fabricates, what
man knows as ‘nature’: his materials, the fabrics, the
screens on which he projects his own identity, and behind
them the abstract matter which comes from the future
with cyberfeminism. The matrix makes its own
appearance as the surfaces and veils on which its
operations are displayed; the impossible elsewhere of
cyberspace; the impossible reality of woman.’423
In the fourteenth plateau of A Thousand Plateaus, ‘1440:
The Smooth and the Striated’, Deleuze and Guattari
define (in the de jure mode which is so important to the
project) two kinds of spatial arrangement — although
they are more than that — integral to social, and
specifically, modernistic development. They are
fundamentally connected to the secret and the concept of
the war-machine, which constitutes the principal focus of
plateau twelve, (‘1227: Treatise on Nomadology’): ‘The
421
Sadie Plant, ‘Binary Sexes, Binary Codes’, (talk)
http://futurenonstop.org/c/cee09dd059c37acc692ef6ba19465af
b (Vienna, 1996).
422
Plant, ‘The Future Looms’.
423
Ibid.
523
secret has its origin in the war machine; it is the war
machine and its becomings-woman, becomings-child,
becomings-animal that bring the secret,’ while smooth
space is ‘the space in which the war machine develops’ in
opposition to the State apparatus, which administers
striated space.424 Each of these configurations of space
are also, significantly, related to a particular form of
weaving and to the instantiation of a particular kind of
political ontology. Woven fabrics of the kind produced on
a loom compose a striated space. A striated space is a
closed system, it relies on a stable, metrically
homogenous, spatially delimited, fixed production
process constituted via ‘two kinds of parallel elements’
(the warp and the weft), and is related by Deleuze and
Guattari to a Platonic ‘royal science’, ‘in other words, the
art of governing people or operating a State apparatus’.425
Felt, on the other hand, is a process that produces smooth
space: ‘[i]t implies no separation of threads, no
intertwining, only an entanglement of fibres obtained by
fulling (for example, by rolling the block of fibres back
and forth). What becomes entangled are the microscales
of the fibres. An aggregate of intrication of this kind is in
no way homogenous: it is nevertheless smooth, and [as an
‘anti-fabric’] contrasts point by point with the space of
fabric’.426 Smooth space is an open system, infinite in
principle, assembled via a metric that is internally
heterogenous, without — therefore — assignable
coordinates (‘it has neither top nor bottom nor centre’,
left, right, up, or down), and what comprises it is not fixed
and mobile (like the loom’s warp and weft) but rather a
distribution of ‘continuous variation’.427 Plant provides a
424
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 317; 524.
Ibid., 524; 525.
426
Ibid., 525.
427
Ibid.
425
524
succinct gloss on these distinctions via an intermediary
term, knitting. ‘Deleuze and Guattari place knitting in
between the making of felt — a chaotically mixed material
— and weaving — striated and captured by the frame —
suggesting that knitting participates in something of the
order of weaving while, at the same time, tending towards
the matted threads of felt. Much of its vocabulary tends to
come from sewing and embroidery, with their needles,
stitches, and patterns. In any case, the craft of knitting is
just one of many uses of the term, most which suggest
things being joined together in far less precise and
specific ways than those involved in the knitting itself’.428
Deleuze and Guattari continue to complicate the
distinction, adding crochet, which is arbitrarily infinite,
but which still has a centre, and patchwork, which
approaches the pole of smooth space in its ‘piece-by-piece
construction, its infinite, successive additions of fabric’
and the fact that what they term ‘crazy patchwork’,
connects together ‘pieces of varying size, shape, and
colour’, ‘plays on the texture of fabrics’ and has ‘no
centre’.429 Patchwork is ‘literally a Riemannian space, or
vice versa’ and, they are careful to point out, played an
import role in women’s collectivity in America.430
It would be foolish, given Deleuze’s continued
engagement with Kant, to assume that these are
descriptions of space alone, for space is always —
transcendentally — tied up with time, and both volumes
of Capitalism and Schizophrenia are sustained
recalibrations of Kantian critique, especially that of the
428
429
430
Plant, ‘Mobile Knitting,’ 28.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 526.
Ibid.
525
Critique of Pure Reason.431 This is a point, furthermore,
that Deleuze and Guattari will go on to underline in their
musical models of striated and smooth ‘space-time’ and
their respective ‘metric and non-metric multiplicites’.432
The best way to understand the difference between the
political and perceptual implications of these two polar
descriptions of space is to understand them as an
extensive multiplicity and an intensive multiplicity,
respectively. Striated space is an extensive multiplicity: a
set predefined by a homogenous metric in which
additions of new elements do not alter the quality or the
definition of the set, but simply add to it. If I have a
collection of red objects, and I add or subtract other red
objects, these additions and subtractions do not feed back
into the nature of the set itself. Its identity is presupposed
and, as a result, remains intact. An intensive multiplicity,
on the other hand, is a grouping that changes in nature
for every new addition or subtraction. Its identity is
composed internally, as a measure of what the set
comprises, and how these elements are connected.
Colebrook provides an example based, not on a primary
sameness — for example, the criteria of the colour ‘red’ —
but on the spectrum of electromagnetic frequencies that
make up light — a substratum of difference in itself. If ‘I
have a multiplicity of dynamic forces’, she writes, ‘say the
light that makes up a perception of [a colour], and alter
the amount or speed of light, then I no longer perceive the
same colour. The difference in quantity alters just what
431
The structure of AntiOedipus, with its three transcendental
syntheses, their legitimate and illegitimate uses and respective
paralogisms, is testament to this, not to mention the fundamental
distinction between the de jure and de facto formulations of the
startling array of concepts in in the work, which is, of course,
also borrowed from Kant.
432
See Ibid., 527528.
526
this is a set or multiplicity of.’433 Deleuze and Guattari
provide the perennial examples of speeds or temperature.
‘An intensity, for example, is not composed of addable
and displaceable magnitudes: a temperature is not the
sum of two smaller temperatures, a speed is not the sum
of two smaller speeds. Since each intensity in itself is a
difference, it divides according to an order in which each
term of the division differs in nature from the others.’434
What smooth and striated declensions of space-time
ultimately furnish us with are two distinct ways of
thinking identity. The former always places a specific,
pre-formed conception of identity first, and draws an
extended configuration of difference in which every
separate part necessarily refers back to this primary
anchor in conceptual sameness, while the latter is a
shifting, complex, intensive ‘identity’ premised on the
molecular, secret machinations of primary difference. To
this should be added the proposition that striated space
subordinates time to space, while smooth space sutures
the two together so that space is ultimately articulated by
its position in — and though — time. Put another way, an
intensity is a difference in time that manifests, for us,
spatially. This is evidenced in the discussion of oceanic
navigation where early seafarers would use astronomical
markers to locate their position on the integrally smooth
space of the sea. ‘Striated space’, they write, ‘is canopied
by the sky as measure and the measurable visual qualities
emerging from it’ — which is why Mueller’s Hercules
loses his identity in the jungle of the Hydra, where all
reference to navigational markers of the stars and planets
is lost, for the jungle constitutes a smooth space: an
intensive space-time where identity never cleaves to a
433
434
Claire Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze, 59.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 533.
527
one, but finds its traction only in a positive conception of
zero.435
To these configurations of identity — assembled
alternatively from the cardinal numeracy of the one or
from the intensive numeracy of zero, from the language of
man or the immanent becomings of its infrastructure, the
woman-machine continuum, including every admixture
in between — one can append the Deleuzo-Guattarian
concepts of ‘subjugated’ and ‘subject’ groups and the
major and minor politics that are attached to them.
Subjugated groups are assemblages governed by an
identity of units. Subject groups are in continuous
assemblage, the group forming its identity in the smooth
space of intensive space-time, and they are therefore less
visible, and indeed, often invisible. Colebrook, once more,
is helpful here. 'Minority groups, for example, are
constantly in transformation: they are not governed by an
image or identity’, she writes, and she harks back to
Irigaray’s critique of the formal, logical ‘language of man’
in her illustration of this via the standard of ‘human’
identity:
Although women make up the majority of the
population they can be, but not always, thought
of as a minority. This is because they do not
recognise the dominant standard of ‘man’ or
humanity. In theory, we all know what it is to be
human; and there are criteria of humanity that
allow for inclusion and exclusion, such as
whether one is rational, moral or social. We
could refer to those who weren’t rational, moral
or social as ‘inhuman’. Humanity has a definite
435
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 529.
528
standard or measure by which it decides who
can be included in its group, and we are all
measured by this standard. Not fitting in
amounts to being inhuman; there is no other
category, no real difference.436
Minoritarian and majoritarian politics are politics — not
of identities — but of space-times. And as space-times,
they produce and respond to different modalities of
perception. In ‘The Smooth and the Striated’, this
distinction is raised along the rough lines of the
visual-optic and the tactile-haptic, mapping the two poles
to Irigarayan economies of specular and touch-based
exchange: ‘The Smooth is both the object of a close vision
par excellence and the element of a haptic space (which
may be as much visual or auditory as tactile). The
Striated, on the contrary, relates to a more distant vision,
and a more optical space — although the eye in turn is not
the only organ to have this capacity’.437 This, importantly,
relates back to prophecy via the figures of the near and
the far-seer, and again to the difference between the
couple and the double. Near-seers, with their distant
vision and their pact with form, perceive and intervene in
striated space. Far-seers, on the other hand, with their
close-range vision and their ability to apprehend what has
happened in advance of the question being posed,
perceive smooth space. The former is representational,
the latter abstract and pre-representational. ‘This vital
force specific to the Abstraction is what draws smooth
space,’ affirm Deleuze and Guattari, ‘the abstract line is
the affect of smooth space, just as organic representation
was the feeling presiding over striated space. The
436
437
Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze, 61.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus,544.
529
haptic-optical, near-distant distinctions must be
subordinated to the distinction between the abstract line
and the organic line; they must find their principle in a
general confrontation of spaces. The abstract line cannot
be defined as geometrical and rectilinear. What then
should be termed abstract in modern art? A line of
variable direction that describes no contour and delimits
no form.’438
Nick Land, in a typically provocative register, considers
the politics of minoritarian and majoritarian space-times
in relation to the legal definition of genocide, which, as he
reminds us, was developed in the wake of the catastrophe
of the Holocaust and articulated by the United Nations’
‘Resolution 260’ in 1948 as an ‘[act] committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical,
racial or religious group’.439 ‘Is genocide,’ he asks,
following the definition of the crime based on a
distinction founded in the isolation of particular, already
existing, kind of identity, ‘really worse than killing a lot of
people?’.440 Such a question interrogates the ontological
substance of a group. Put another way, the question seeks
to examine whether or not there is a legitimate,
value-based difference involved in the destruction of a
subjugated or majoritarian group, compared to the
destruction of a subject or minoritarian group of the same
number? To aid in clarifying the real nature of such an
interrogation, Land, in a similar fashion to Deleuze and
Guattari, distinguishes between what he calls ‘feature
groups’ and ‘unit groups’.
438
439
440
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 551.
Nick Land, ‘Kinds of Killing’, Nyx, vol. 6 (2011) 45.
Ibid.
530
A feature group is determined by logical
classification. This might be expressed as a
self-identification or sense of ‘belonging’, an
external political or academic categorisation, or
some combination of these, but the essentials
remain the same in each case. Certain features of
the individual are isolated and emphasised (such
as genitalia, sexual orientation, skin-colour,
income, or religious belief), and then employed
as the leading clue in a process of formal
grouping, which conforms theoretically to the
mathematics of sets.441
Meanwhile, a ‘unit group’ is an assemblage of actors
comprised of functional units in which ‘members belong
to a group insofar as they work together, even if they are
devoid of common identity features’.442 Among such
assemblages, one finds tribes (so long as they are
determined by ‘functional unities rather than the
categories of modern ‘“identity politics”), cities, states and
companies, and historical examples such as the ‘“soviet”
or “danwei” work unit’ in opposition to the feature group
of
social
class.443
This
is,
adamantly,
a
systems-theoretical, and not a humanist, lens for
broaching questions concerning the value of mortality
and annihilation. To underline this, Land offers the
example of a skin cell.
Its feature group is that of skin cells in general,
as distinguished from nerve cells, liver cells,
muscle cells, or others. Any two skin cells share
the same feature group, even if they belong to
441
442
443
Nick Land, ‘Kinds of Killing’, 46.
Ibid.
Ibid., 47.
531
different organisms, or even species, exist on
different continents, and never functionally
interact. The natural unit group of the same skin
cell, in contrast, would be the organism it
belongs to. It shares this unit group with all the
other cells involved in the reproduction of that
organism through time, including those (such as
intestinal bacteria) of quite separate genetic
lineages. Considered as a unit group member, a
skin cell has greater integral connection with the
non-biological tools and other ‘environmental’
elements involved in the life of the organism
than it does with other skin cells — even perfect
clones — with which it is not functionally
entangled.444
In this terrain, the definition of an individual shifts
accordingly. Beyond the limited designation of a human,
with a history and a consciousness, an individual is
intelligible simply as any ‘self-reproducing whole
exhibiting functional or behavioural integrity’. Land
nonetheless uses this non-anthropomorphic example to
re-situate the question of genocide within recent human
history, by going on to ask how one would then evaluate
the 1937 Massacre of Nanjing on the scale of historical
atrocity — ‘an act of violence directed against a city’ or a
unit group, wondering if it is truly ‘no less worthy of
specific legal attention than a quantitatively equivalent
offence against an ethnicity, or determined population
type’.445 If identity is freed from the rationally conscious
human self in this way, the space in which a ‘self’ can be
philosophically constituted and understood becomes a far
444
445
Nick Land, ‘Kinds of Killing’, 47.
Ibid., 46.
532
vaster terrain, its rules now pertaining to the mode of that
individuation (minor or major, intensive or extensive,
smooth or striated), rather than to some essence or prior
quality appended to it in the already representational
domain of the language of man. This is not to say that it is
somehow bereft of ethical assessment, but rather than it
comprises what could be considered a properly
non-human or post-human ethics. Importantly — it is not
discursive or discursively sensitive, rather it is hard-coded
into the selective mechanism of assemblage survival
understood as a temporal Darwinism. (Can this be seen as
a selection for the ‘weak against the strong’ in a kind of
Nietzschean register?)
In ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ Haraway warns of the dangers of
identity politics, and talks about systems that define unity
via filiation and/or genetic and natural origin stories
against a negativised other whose modality of connection
or political solidarity is inarticulate and historically
imperceptible. Once an identity has been ascribed to
particular phenomena (for example, ‘women’s culture’) it
can be policed, have enemies defined for it (‘patriarchy’),
and overlook potential lines of alliance or what she calls
‘affiliation’: a strategy of connection premised on ‘affinity,
not identity’.446 In contrast to stable, natural and
policeable identities, Haraway espouses ‘learning how to
craft a poetic/politic unity without relying on a logic of
appropriation,
incorporation
and
taxonomic
identification’.447 Not ‘unity-through-domination’ or
‘unity
through-incorporation’,
but
‘unity-through-affiliation’ — which undermines all
systems of definition based on an ‘organic or natural’
446
447
Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, 295; 296.
Ibid., 298.
533
standpoint.448 Its minimal ethical norm is thus one that
selects against top-down, ‘patriarchal’, homogenous,
regulated and controlled individuations and for
heterogeneous, integrally diverse, and perpetually
innovating (one thinks of Plant’s ‘invention of invention’
or what Luciana Parisi terms ‘learning how to learn’ in
her recent examination of neural nets and the horizon of
contemporary
artificial
intelligence)
synthetic
449
individuations.
The unit or subject groups of
minoritarian political space-times incarnate the form of
the secret in their production of — and out of — the
imperceptible, the molecular, the medium, the matrix, the
paradox, the many at once, the multiple as difference in
itself. This is one answer to the fulfilment of the prophecy
of Plant’s Zeros + Ones: ‘A minoritarian politics does not
see itself as the expression of the people but as the
creation of new peoples, a “people to come”’.450
Weaving New Subjectivities
Through touch / we sense / differential speeds /
to come.
— Greenspan, Livingston and Parisi451
Decoupled from a static, self-repeating human identity
that continues intact throughout time, identity is freed as
a shifting systemic structure that can be appended to
certain complex assemblages at different times, running
448
Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, 298.
Luciana Parisi, ‘Reprogramming Decisionism’, eflux, vol. 85
(October 2017), 4.
450
Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze, 63.
451
Greenspan, Livingston, Parisi, ‘Amphibious Maidens’
Abstract Culture: Swarm 3, 1998.
449
534
parallel but at different speeds and in different
configurations, separate from the individuals we take to
exist essentially and a priori, but which are indeed, part
of a vertiginous array of systemic convergences. The
principle feature of smooth space-times, which construct
themselves ontologically as emergent, minoritarian
political subjects via the processes of abstract weaving
Deleuze and Guattari recognise in patchwork or felt, is
their privileging of a regime of complex learning, over one
that begins with a set of pre-programmed priors. This
reprises a debate common to critical interrogations of
artificial intelligence. As its development has progressed
through history, artificial intelligence has shifted from
basic models of logical deduction based on formal
languages and employed principally for the validation of
proofs, to complex genetic and evolutionary algorithms
and neural networks that enable what we now refer to as
machine learning. These latter include complex
‘back-propagation’ processes commonly used as a
data-mining tool for the purposes of classification,
clustering and prediction. Back-propagation algorithms,
however, are limited by pre-selected features
programmed into them by their human engineers and
thereby transfer inbuilt biases into the analyses of the
data being inputted. Consequently, As Luciana Parisi
notes in a very recent text ‘Reprogramming Decision’, ‘the
backdrop of data to be mined is already known, and as
such gender and race biases, for instance, are either
already encoded in the data sets or are blind, that is
invisible to the algorithms. Here, far from granting an
objective representation of data, machine learning has
rather been seen as an amplifier of existing biases, as
revealed by the association of words and images in
535
automated classification and prediction’.452 The
functioning of these systems is thus limited to a
specifically human form of temporal linearity, which is
never able to fold back upon prior biases in order to
change them, following information included in their
contextual environments and sensitive, in a positive
manner, to the randomness or contingency that is
fundamentally ineliminable in such systems. Leaning on
Katherine Hayles’ recent work on non-conscious
cognition, and her own extensive research into the status
of the incomputable, Parisi points to a way out of this
impasse that emphasises the role of temporality in
learning how to learn. ‘Since,’ she writes, ‘according to
Hayles, machine learning is already a manifestation of
low-level activities of non-conscious cognition performed
at imperceptible or affective speeds, it is not possible to
argue that [machine] cognition is temporally coherent,
linking the past to the present or causes to effects. …
Information cannot simply be edited to match [human]
expectations.’453 What the non-conscious cognition of
intelligent machines exposes, in Parisi’s exposition, is the
existence of temporal lapses that are not immediately
accessible to conscious human cognition.
This is an emergentist view of non-conscious
cognition that challenges the centrality of
human sapience in favour of a coevolutionary
cognitive infrastructure, where algorithms do
not passively adapt to data retrieved but instead
establish new patterns of meaning by
aggregating, matching, and selecting data. From
this standpoint, if the inductive model of trial
452
Luciana Parisi, ‘Reprogramming Decision’, eflux, vol. 85
(October 2017), 7.
453
Ibid.
536
and error allows computational machines to
make faster connections, it also implies that
algorithms learn to recognise patterns and thus
repeat them without having to pass through the
entire chain of cause and effect and without
having to know their content.454
The larger the data set and the levels of interaction
between algorithms, data and metadata, the less their
capacity to search is limited to already known
specificities. Instead of instrumentalising the data,
imposing a prior set of beliefs, biases and identities on its
component parts in the modality of striated space-time,
‘algorithms’ she writes, ‘have become increasing
instrumental of data, experimenting with modes of
interpretation that Hayles calls “techno-genesis”, pointing
towards an instrumental transformation of “how we may
think”.’455 When contingent, indeterminate, and random
properties inherent in all sets of data become primary in a
non-linear mode of assemblage that also takes
context-specificity into account, what is produced
approaches the individuating mode of expression proper
to smooth space. To testify to this possibility, Parisi
marshals examples of deep-learning algorithms in which
—
algorithms do not just learn from data, but also
from other algorithms, establishing a sort of
meta-learning from the hidden layers of the
network, shortening the distance from nodal
454
Luciana Parisi, ‘Reprogramming Decision’, eflux, vol. 85
(October 2017), 7.
455
Ibid. Parisi is citing Katherine N. Hayles, How We Think:
Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2010).
537
points while carrying out a granular analysis of
data
content.
From
this
standpoint,
machine-learning algorithms do not simply
perform non-conscious patterns of cognition
about data, exposing the gaps in totalising
rational systems, but rather seem to establish
new chains of reasoning that draw from the
minute variations of data content to establish a
machine-determined meaning of their use.456
Although we need to remain critical of the fact that
algorithmic control and governance do involve the
micro-targeting of populations through the reinforcement
of existing human biases, Parisi maintains a positive
attitude to what she calls the 'alien possibilities’ of a new
type of thought that would pull itself free from such
strictures, asserting that ‘the evolutionary dynamics of
learning machines show that the time of computation,
including the hidden layers of a growing network, also
forces algorithms to structure randomness beyond what
is already known. For instance, if a machine is fed with
data that belongs to already-known categories, classes,
and forms, when the computational process starts, these
data become included in the algorithmic search for
associations that bring together smaller parts of data,
adding hidden levels of temporalities to the overall
calculation. This results in the algorithmic possibilities of
learning beyond what is inputted in the system.’457 To
react simply negatively to such a possibility for thought
removed from all suppositions of human exceptionalism
would be to repeat the history of exclusion that has also
omitted women from the realm of representation,
456
Luciana Parisi, ‘Reprogramming Decision’, eflux, vol. 85
(October 2017), 8.
457
Ibid.
538
identity, cognition and action, and limit our conceptions
of what machine intelligence can do to ‘mere instances of
instrumental reasoning — vessels of knowledge that can
at best perform Western metaphysical binaries, deductive
truths, and inductive fact-checking [but] at a faster pace’.
458
A working cybernetic system is necessarily premised on
breakdowns, malfunctions, randomness and noise. This is
precisely how it ‘invents invention’ or ‘learns how to
learn’.459 Such a model of intelligence is also evident in
the writing of both Greenspan and Plant. Where Plant
remarks that, 'AI was once a top-down question of
developing intelligence by means of teaching machines to
think — this approach was perfect for the production of
expert systems, able to store and process specialized
information on some particular area — but it does little
for the intelligence of a machine. Intelligence cannot be
taught: it is instead something that has to be learned’,
Greenspan writes that ‘in order for a machine to function
“it must not function well” […] No longer dependent on
the smooth functioning of clearly distinguished parts,
cybernetic machines learn to adapt through their
mistakes. Feeding on their own misfirings, they “operate
by fits and starts, by grinding and breaking down, in
458
Luciana Parisi, ‘Reprogramming Decision’, eflux, vol. 85
(October 2017), 9.
459
‘While one can assume that this inclusion of indeterminacy —
or irrationality or nonconscious activity — within the
computational process is but another manifestation of the
ultimate technomastery of reality, it is important here to reiterate
instead that randomness is at the core of algorithmic mediation,
and as such it opens up the question of epistemological mastery
to the centrality of contingency within the functioning of any
rational system.’ Ibid.
539
spasms of minor explosions”’.’460 The gaps in linear
temporality and human notions of cause-and-effect
ordering that Parisi highlights in algorithmic processes,
as well as their fundamental structuring through
indeterminacy, contingency and randomness, constitute a
complex feedback system that enables the machine to
learn to cognise for itself and ultimately, make its own
decisions concerning conceptual categories and their
connections to one another. Following the models of
emergent subjectivities discussed above in the form of
‘subordinated’ and ‘subject’ groups, Plant goes on to
emphasise that intelligence, construed cybernetically,
cannot be limited to integral human agents alone. An
intelligent agent ‘is something that learns’ a matter of
‘what Gregory Bateson referred to as deutero-learning, or
learning to learn. It feels its way forward, and makes its
own way, rather than tracking some existing route.’461
Like the image, pattern or motif that arises out of the
threads strung across a loom or between the angles of
knitting needles, and the complex, invisible history of
women and machines that assembled and automated it,
‘[i]ntelligence is no longer monopolised, imposed or given
by some external, transcendent, and implicitly superior
source which hands down what it knows — or rather what
it is willing to share — but instead evolves as an emergent
process, engineering itself from the bottom up’ and
appearing only later as an identifiable object or product:
‘the virtuality emergent with the computer is not a fake
reality, or another reality, but the immanent processing
and imminent future of every system, the matrix of
460
Sadie Plant, ‘The Virtual Complexity of Culture’,
Futurenatural: Nature, Science, Culture (London: Routledge,
1996), 203; Anna Greenspan, Capitalism’s Transcendental Time
Machine, PhD Thesis, (Warwick, 2000), 190191.
461
Plant, ‘The Virtual Complexity of Culture’, 203204.
540
potentialities which is the abstract functioning of any
actual configuration of what we take as reality.’462
‘Regardless of whether they occur within a software
system or a human brain’ Plant goes on to say, collapsing
the distinctions that Haraway sets in the cyborg’s sights
in ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, ’material modification and
learning become continuous [temporalised] processes.
After this, it can either be said that “natural" human
intelligence is “artificial” and constructed in the sense
that its apparatus mutates as it learns, grows and explores
its own potentiality; or that “artificial” intelligence is
“natural” insofar as it pursues the processes at work in
the brain and effectively learns as it grows. Either way the
distinction between nature and artifice is collapsed.’463
Alienation is integral to such systems.
For Plant, the definitive model of a distributed system
was the internet which creates maps, not tracings, in the
parlance of Deleuze and Guattari — ‘[m]aps of the
network cannot be stolen, not because they are closely
guarded, but because there is no definitive terrain. Any
map adds to the network and is always already obsolete.
The growth of the Net has been continuous with the way
it works.’464 If — and this is an expansive ‘if’ — the
internet, which Plant once described as ‘a global neural
network,’ vast and distributed, ‘gathering its own
materials, continually drawing new nodes and links into a
learning system which has never needed anyone to tell it
how it should proceed… so chaotic, decentralised and
unregulated
that
it
also defies conventional
understanding of such networks’ has temporarily lapsed
into the hands of large controlling corporatised and
462
463
464
Plant, ‘The Virtual Complexity of Culture’, 204; 206
Ibid., 205.
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 49.
541
state-based nodes, what other novel forms of complexity
might emerge to constitute something similar to the
distributed artificial intelligence of the 90s net?465 Not a
human-programmed model of regulation and control, but
a ‘multiplicitous, bottom-up, piecemeal,' exploratory and
mutant, 'self-organising network’?466 [While Plant cites
Norbert Weiner’s Cybernetics or Control and
Communication in the Animal and Machine as the key
text in breaking down these old distinctions between the
natural and the artificial, she criticises Weiner’s focus on
homeostatic control, and points instead to the novelty of
the his proposition that ‘autonomous selves’ are
immanent to cybernetic systems in general, ‘having no
absolute identity’ in the way identity is normally
understood.467 If homeostasis institutes a repetition of the
same — confining the possibility of emergent selfhood to
the ‘One’ or ‘I’ of the language of man both she and
Irigaray vehemently criticise — what does a cybernetic
system premised not on a regulatable extensity, but an
immanently self-differencing intensity look like?] If
abstract weaving is productive of differential space-times
and ‘[i]nformation can be stored in cloth’, who or what is
the inheritor of womens’ work of weaving, of the
intermediary role of the secretary, of the far-seers’ secret,
of the prophecy of the ‘numbers to come’?468 This is not a
story of apocalypse or salvation. For ‘[w]e are “not yet
spectators of the last stages of the world’s death”, and a
multiplication of cybernetic loops could ensure that this
point [is] continuously warded off.’469
465
Plant, Zeros + Ones, 173.
Ibid., 49.
467
Ibid., 162.
468
Ibid, 66.
469
Ibid, 159; 161.
466
542
Infrastructure, as the bearer of the form of secret,
provides our best clue. When Plant writes that, ‘[b]eyond
spectacular society and speculative humanism there is an
emergent complexity, an evolving intelligence in which all
material life is involved: all thinking, writing, dancing,
engineering, creativity, social organization, biological
processing, economic interaction and communication of
every kind. It is the matrix, the virtuality and the future of
every separated thing, individuated organism, disciplined
idea and social structure’ she is not thinking outside of
social structures, but through them, and in her writings
on computational complexity, she frequently invokes the
city and its ‘cultures’ as the site of such intelligent,
material self-organisation.470
If, for example, the clear implication of such an
approach is that ‘the traditional concept of
individual responsibility is questionable’, agency
and intention are not removed, but complicated
and perplexed instead. While a phenomenon like
‘urban development cannot be explained by the
free will of single persons’ but is instead ‘the
result of nonlinear interactions’, this only
emphasises the irreducible complexity of
precisely the intentions, dreams and desires
which feed into its macroscopic result. If there is
a new reductionism, it lies with the humanism
which wants to collapse the immense complexity
and fine detail of the interwoven lines and
circuitries into the singular will of individual or
collective agency. If intelligence can neither be
taught nor confined to a few humans, it cannot
even be monopolised by all of them: machines
470
Plant, ‘The Virtual Complexity of Culture’, 212.
543
learn, and learning is a machinic process, a
matter of communication, connection and
material self-organisation.471
Plant’s invocation of meshed city spaces that would
constitute what she calls a ‘transarchitecture’ are
premised on a heterogeneity of units — crossing
ontological boundaries — in a smooth space-time. If
‘virtual space is the virtual matrix of production and ‘the
city has become a prominent motif in many discussions of
virtual space’ then is it possible, given the cybernetic
breakdown of ontological divisions between complex
systems, to conceive of cities as large scale artificial
intelligences?472 If you are looking for the future of
artificial intelligence, it suffices to look around you right
now — it is not a determinable thing, separate and
distinct from us and our patently human desires — but
rather something that runs on us, through us, and across
us.
In this article Plant contrasts two basic forms of the city
which interrelate in reality, but can be understood
abstractly as the monumental, administrative, planned
city (she points to Stalin’s Moscow and Mussolini’s
visions for a future Rome) that historically corresponded
to inland, landlocked geographies, and the city that arises
immanently out of the flows that cross it, port cities that
emerge from the trade routes that intersect and connect
them. Real cities often tend to be a mixture of these
models, although tending in either direction: towards
planned and administered hierarchical organisation, and
471
Plant, ‘The Virtual Complexity of Culture’, 212.
Sadie Plant, ‘Transarchitecures’,
http://www.members.labridge.com:80/lacn/trans/plant.html
(accessible now only via the Internet Archive).
472
544
towards spontaneous emergence and cultural generation.
To this basic schemata we can add the conceptual tools
furnished by Deleuze and Guattari of smooth and striated
spaces, and their intensive or extensive space-time
correlates. ‘Such idealized cities made beautiful
blue-prints, but they proved impossible to build. Cities
are not objects of knowledge, things to be planned and
designed in advance, but immensely intricate interplays
of forces, interests, zones, and desires too complex and
fluid for even those who inhabit them to understand. … It
is not a structure, but a culture, an open and dynamic
system whose complexity bestows it with a life of its own.
It is more akin to an eco-system than an object of
knowledge to be programmed and designed. It is a
cybernetic assemblage, an intricate interplay of forces,
interests, trends and tendencies too fluid for even those
who inhabit them to get a grip on the whole thing. Plans
and planners merely add to the cacophony’ which will
ultimately out run it.’473 As the agents of its assemblage,
but not the only ones — feeding everything we do, not
only on online but in our day to day lives, in our
conceptions and representations of ourselves, into it — we
should pay more attention to what we do and how we
nourish this nascent intelligence as its integral
components. Before lamenting how little purchase we
have on the directions these enormous, enveloping, global
administrative systems will take, it bears reflecting on
how our every act comprises it, assembling and
disassembling its structures of feedback and
organisational patterning. We may not be in a position of
ultimate authority and control, but we are not bereft of
agency either. Irigaray’s subversive female ‘language’
‘engender[s] itself by degrees with quantitive and
473
Sadie Plant, ‘Transarchitecures’.
545
qualitative heterogeneities, with physical modifications or
alterations, a dynamic not entirely foreseeable according
to the laws governing the displacement of bodies, a
dynamic stemming from a real void between two
infinitely neighbouring ones. A speech where infinity
would be physically and really at work in the dynamic of
flows, where it would no longer represent the risk of an
aporia to be enclosed in some kind of ideal reality, but a
power whose energy can never be shut up, enclosed, in
one act: the potential and the actual engendering each
other there, reciprocally, endlessly’.474
The secret of ‘what happened?' — and it is one that all
secretaries and intermediaries fundamentally know, even
if they have forgotten it — is that the end is already in the
beginning, and both simultaneously compose an instant
and a vector. Like Irigaray’s proposal of a female
anti-logos as a ‘continuum-discontinuum whose
movement would no longer be ordained to any assignable
end’, there is no pre-emptive eschatology from the point
of view of representational identity.475 Its telos is
concealed to itself, generated immanently in every
pulsation of a multiplicitious material heterogeneity of
which it takes part — providing that it remains
heterogenous — and it strains, like the near-seers to see,
but can only ‘know’ through the violence of cutting,
forming and constraining the repetitive contours of
pre-determined categories, and in that, never truly know
— not in the way the far-seers know.
‘This is a time of many endings and deaths’ writes Plant.
‘Modernity, history, and man himself have hit the skids of
474
475
Iragaray, ‘The Language of Man’, 201.
Ibid.
546
material change and now spiral into redundancy. The
sciences, arts, and humanities lose their definition and
discipline; law and order fall into decay; the social bond
slips beyond repair. [We are not] immune from the viral
contagions which are munching through the stabilities of
the old world. Self-assembling systems, smart materials,
intelligent buildings, computer generations,’ intelligent
algorithms, ‘and virtual space destroy the pretensions’ of
humanity grasped as the dominion of ‘Man’.476 But each
ending is also a beginning, precisely that perceived by
Ada Lovelace two centuries in advance of its tangible
manifestation: an alien future, building itself in the ruins
of the language of man, speaking in the swarming jungle
tongue of no one in particular, perpetually and
consistently alienating itself from what it has previously
been, rejecting all prior determinations and the
judgements attached to those determinations, and
spiralling out of the infinite mathematical spaces of the
in-between where the zero beneath all of the Ones
inexorably and incessantly churns, assembling a future
for the numbers to come.
476
Sadie Plant, ‘No Plans’, Architectural Design: Architects in
Cyberspace (London: Academy Editions, 1995), 36.
547
Notes on Warpwork
#CaveTwitter
ratboi [11:57 AM]
Hey @edburg what do you think about a possible reading
of a ‘global smooth space’ as denoting something like
what Ben and Nick discuss in this seminar as the total
flatness and anonymity of the abstract agents that use a
protocol (the equality of an empty identity/address
space)?
edburg [12:56 PM]
Could you unpack a little more what you mean by that? I
got some thots on how what BB says about infrastructural
protocols being immunized against voice and how it
would relate to D&G's smooth space in a way that opens
into p-wark, but are you alluding to something more
operational re. the agents themselves as they move
through this environment?
ratboi [1:28 PM]
Just thinking about the frequent comments Nick makes
about the future of the internet implementing what he’s
called something like ‘true equality’ as abstract agency —
this idea that once you have a formally anonymised online
handle or whatever, all personal, ethnic, cultural, and
whatever other aspect of majoritarian prior-identity
marker there is, is totally stripped out and you just have
an empty space of functionality which is then fillable with
548
information related to what is done with it. He uses Urbit
to talk about this sometimes. (edited)
There was something in the way they were talking about it
that triggered a connection to smooth space in my mind
— insofar as identity under this model is intensively
constituted.
So in the world BB and NL are imagining in this seminar
— total stack coverage of the space of action, human
identities reduced to user identities (alongside all kinds of
other non-human agencies) — there is this total
smoothness or flatness, but whose constitutive rule is
intensive, since priori identity is emptied out of it.
This comment from Nick on patchwork around 2:09:00 is
also nice:
I do think the enthnopolitical enthusiasm of the
current period is very much tied up with the fact
that ppl have a bounded horizonal sense of
resilient community, with a resulting sense of
desperation. ‘If we don’t control it, they’ll conrtol
it and we’ll be stuck in it anyway, it’s our destony
everything’s at stake.’ It’s literally a cage-match
political structure. One side is gonna win or lose
over this closed political space and the intensity
of the poltiical conflict is raised. The exit model
at this time is just an attempt at chilling that
right down by saying if people wanna do x y or z
you have to find a way of making that not your
concern. If it’s totally hysterically crucial to you
what other people are doing, then there’s going
to be trouble. The craft of this geopolitical
549
system is to defuse the intensity of concern you
have with what other groups of people are doing.
edburg [1:52 PM]
oops didn't mean to send that yet
maxcastle [1:52 PM]
Wondering what the hell happened.
I'm reading here!
edburg [2:13 PM]
sorry @maxcastle
ok yeah that's a really interesting way to look at it, and I
think definitely gets at how the smooth space talked about
by D&G is at once this opened-up, flattened out space that
is also heterogeneous. It seems paradoxical at first, since
one might think of the the smooth space as homogeneous,
but it's constituted by potentialities that get 'filled' up, in
a way. This also gives a neat way to think about war —
D&G discuss a sort of war that arises when the smooth
space encounters the striated space, which here would be
between the flattened agent and the agent with the
pre-given identity (very much a deepening of the arms
race). The global smooth space though is a suspension of
war, since states have been reduced to components of the
global war machine (means-ends reversal, that which is
captured by the state capturing the state in turn) and a
"terrifying peace" is achieved. But they also talk about it
being the ground for a counter-attack, so I need to think
through what that means... do you think it could be
550
reconfigured to allude to more exit procedures occurring?
The people-to-come after is the emergence of new
entities, following along the emergence of new political
myths (synthetic nationalism?).
I'm really intrigued by how BB pursues the line through
protocological infrastructures, which he says here
eliminate the supremacy of voice by automating their
processes in advance and thus become impervious to
democratic command over them. Seems like this could
def tie into something we've talked about before —
approaching the global smooth space and p-work as a
kind of global operating system. Have you read Keller
Easterling's "Extrastatecraft"? She's done stuff with
Bratton before so there is probably a mutual
communication going on here with these views, but she
talks about infrastructure as an operating system:
Infrastructure space has become a medium of
information. The information resides in
invisible, powerful activities that determine how
objects and content are organized and
circulated. Infrastructure space, with the power
and currency of software, is an operating system
for shaping the city... We might not think of
space as an information technology unless it is
embedded with sensors and digital media, and
there is digital software to generate and analyze
urban arrangements. Yet infrastructure space,
even without media enhancement, behaves like
spatial software. And while we also do not
typically think of static objects and volumes in
urban space as having agency, infrastructure
space is doing something. Like an operating
system, the medium of infrastructure space
551
makes certain things possible and other things
impossible. It is not the declared content but
rather the content manager dictating the rules of
the game in the urban milieu.
The bulk of the book is about Zones — free trade zones,
special economic zones, etc — and the way that they
rewrite the development of cities, providing a new set of
standards applicable on a global level that bends the city
to a new logic that also serves as the basis for new ways
for these urban spaces to articulate themselves seperate
from political codification (in the frame of commercial
activity, that is).
Not only has the zone become a city, but major
cities and even national capitals are now
engineering their own zone doppelgängers —
their own non-national territories in which to
create newer, cleaner alter-egos, free of any
incumbent bureaucracy. The zone embodies
what political scientist Stephen D. Krasner calls
“hypocritical sovereignty” — where nations
operate between multiple jurisdictions with
potentially conflicting allegiances and laws — or
what international relations professor Ronen
Palan calls “sovereign bifurcation,” where “states
intentionally divide their sovereign space into
heavily and lightly regulated realms.”62 The
world capital and national capital can now
shadow each other, alternately exhibiting a
regional cultural ethos, national pride, or global
ambition. State and non-state actors use each
other as proxy or camouflage as they juggle and
decouple from the law in order to create the
552
most advantageous
climate.
political
or
economic
One of the things that came up in the earliest stage of
Rhett, like in the group DM pre-old sl/acc, was the
possibility of similarities between how Land views the
blockchain and how the abstract Zone system one
produces a set of global standards that supercedes
broken-up political space-time. Maybe we can think of
these things are concrete, historical, economic forces that
help produce the wider, global infrastructure of the
smooth space, and thus the scenario that you're sketching
above?
Also BB's talk of automation in reference to the
infrastructure is telling, because D&G tie automation to
the development of the global smooth space — check out
the references to constant capital in conjunction with the
war machine on pg. 421 (near the end of the
Nomadology), and the revisiting of this in the Apparatus
of Capture, on pg. 467.
ratboi [2:23 PM]
Amazing comments. I think I should read Easterling’s
text.
edburg [2:23 PM]
I have a epub if ya want it
ratboi [2:24 PM]
> The global smooth space though is a
suspension of war, since states have been
553
reduced to components of the global war
machine (means-ends reversal, that which is
captured by the state capturing the state in turn)
and a “terrifying peace” is achieved.
Can you elaborate on this a bit more? Is the resultant
terrifying peace simply because there is not longer any
clash between smooth and striated?
Yeah upload it!
The notion of global smooth space was one of the most
enigmatic parts of the smooth and striated plateau for
me, so i’m sort of careening around trying to find ideas to
connect it to to better understand it
edburg [3:02 PM]
Yeah, it's definitely super enigmatic, and it's one of those
points where D&G are anticipating something to come by
observing processes at play, so it's marked by a
combination of their tonal ambivalence and a sense of
open-endedness. Basically, it's the culmination of a
historical process:
Conflicts between the nomadic War Machine
and the State Apparatus
State Apparatus captures the War Machine,
organizes/territorializes/overcodes it
State Apparatus deploys the War Machine for its
own ends
Growth of the War Machine, following
techno-capitalist development
554
Reversal process in which the War Machine(s)
appropriate the State Apparatus(es) and make them
components of itself
Global smooth space
D&G talk about two successive figures that emerge: the
Fascist and Postfascist. The fascist emerges at the apex of
Clausewitz's formula that "war is the continuation of
politics by other means", when it flips into an escalation
of technological development and the opening up of a
state of total war that integrates the whole of society into
itself. "The entire fascist economy became a war
economy, but the war economy still needed total war as
its object."
In the wake of WW2, cybernetic technologies unleashed a
state of techno-economic development that rendered
fascism obsolete, because there was no longer a need for a
state of total war tending towards annihilation to uphold
economic growth. It's at this point in which the war
machine reverses the order and states simply become
parts of itself:
This is where the inversion of Clausewitz's
formula comes in: it is politics that becomes the
continuation of war, it is peace that
technologically frees the unlimited process of
total war. War ceases to be the materialization of
the war machine; the war machine itself
becomes materialized war. In this sense, there
was no longer a need for fascism. The Fascists
were only the child precursor, and the absolute
peace of survival succeeded where total war had
failed. The Third World War was already upon
us. The war machine reigned over the entire
555
axiomatic like the power of the continuum that
surrounded the "world-economy" and it put all
of the parts of the universe in contact. The world
became a smooth space again (sea, air,
atmosphere) over which reigned a single war
machine, even when it opposed its own parts.
Wars had become a part of peace. More than
that, States no longer appropriated the war
machine; they reconstituted of which they
themselves were only the parts.
edburg [3:02 PM]
There's several different ways to approach this that I
think are interrelated
One is that they were writing this in the midst of the Cold
War, so the theme of peace being guaranteed by the
abstract threat of annihilation — mutually assured
destruction — is prominent. I think that's probably first
and foremost why they talk about it being a "terrifying
peace". WMD proliferation putting the breaks on massive
war and allowing regime consolidation.
ratboi [3:05 PM]
Oh wow this is awesome.
The explanation-- thx
edburg [3:10 PM]
No problem!
556
ratboi [3:10 PM]
Copy-pasting into my patchwerk notes
edburg [3:11 PM]
lol their language totally points in the direction of the
smooth space-as-operating system: "very special kind of
peace it promotes and has already installed"
ratboi [3:12 PM]
:face_with_rolling_eyes:
edburg [3:13 PM]
yeah the terrifying part is all about mutually assured
destruction — "the war machine finds its new object in
the absolute peace of terror or deterrence"
ratboi [3:14 PM]
errrr sounds like nick’s vision of patchwork sustained by
MAD
edburg [3:15 PM]
There's a funny part in Refrain plateau that makes
reference to pop music and the atomic bomb: "we must
not make it seem as though the poet gorged on
metaphors: it may be that the sound molecules of pop
music are are this very moment implanting people of a
new type, singularly indifferent to the orders of the radio,
to computer safeguards, to the threat of the atomic
bomb."
557
yeahhhh sounds very much like that to me too
Dr. Gno haunts ATP
I very much like how they describe the heterogeneity of
the smooth space: "The world became a smooth space
again (sea, air, atmosphere) over which reigned a single
war machine, even when it opposed its own parts."
lol damn — "there arose from this a new conception of
security as materialized war, as organized insecurity or
molecularized, distributed, programmed catastrophe."
axsyscrash [3:47 PM]
brilliant phrase
edburg [5:06 PM]
Had a few more thots, after looking back through the
Nomadology and the Apparatus of Capture
First, I wonder to what extent we are meant to read the
emergence of a global smooth space in conjunction with
the acceleration of deterritorialization and decoding of
flows — as in, deterritorialization/decoding through
amplification of marketization is what produces the
smooth space? I can think of several direct parallels
between the two:
In the Nomadology D&G talks about the relation
of the war economy to this process, and how the war
economy rides the crest of rising constant capital
(automation), and it is this that opens up the
technological paradigm that makes the smooth space
558
possible. In AO, a long discussion concerning rising
constant capital occurs just prior to the "accelerate the
process" line, emphasizing how contra the theory of the
tendency of the rate of profit to fall it actually staves off
collapse, and thus allows capital to spread across the
entire world (and beyond)
In Apparatus of Capture they emphasize how the
smooth space renders fascism obsolete by denying it of
any rationale for existence, while in AO going in the
direction of the world market is presented as that which
counteracts fascism/the "fascist economic solution"
Reading the accelerationist bit in AO back
through Nietzsche's own fragment, 'accelerating the
process' sets the stage for the emergence of the Strong of
the Future, or D&Gian parlance the people to come. In
the Nomadology, the realization of global smooth space is
the precondition for the proliferation of minoritarian
divergence and revolutionary becomings, also tied to the
people-to-come.
Second, I noticed that there's a lot of references to the
Italian autonomists in this section of ATP -- they cite
Negri towards the end of the Apparatus of Capture, and
Tronti appears multiple times in the footnotes. Makes
sense, given D&G's direct connections to the autonomist
'movement' in the 70s — Guattari doing all that stuff with
Radio Alice, the two of them helping militants on the run
from the Italian state, etc. I wonder if these were the
kinds of things they had in mind with that quote from the
Refrain plateau — "we must not make it seem as though
the poet gorged on metaphors: it may be that the sound
molecules of pop music are are this very moment
implanting people of a new type, singularly indifferent to
559
the orders of the radio, to computer safeguards, to the
threat of the atomic bomb."
The autonomists took the concept of the line of flight very
literally, and reconfigured it as the (non)praxis of
"defection" and "exodus", where instead of fighting
capitalism and the state head-on and seizing power they
would withdraw from it and begin parrallel societies right
in the heart of it. Hardt and Negri later totally recoded
this back into an awful universalist logic with their stuff
on the multitude's "ideological exodus" that actualizes
communism, but it might be interesting to think through
the relation of these bits of autonomist thought in relation
to convos today about Exit vs. Voice. Interesting tho that
the autonomist exodus would occur internal to the state,
through the construction of freed neighborhoods, social
centers, etc.
At the end of the Apparatus of Capture D&G write that
"minorities do not receive a better solution of their
problem by integration, even with axioms, statutes
autonomies, independences." This sounds very much like
Thicc's rejection of high integration in Outer Edges, and
what D&G are challenging here is the pursuit of
revolution struggle through voice... but it is the
autonomists they are drawing on here. Intriguing
footnote to this section: _This is one of the essential
theses of Tronti, who defined the new conceptions of the
"mass-worker" and of the relation to work: "To struggle
against capital, the working class must fight against itself
insofar as it is capital; this is the maximal stage of
contradiction, not for the workers, but for the capitalists.
The plan of capital begins to run backward, not as a social
development, but as a revolutionary process." See
Ouvriers et capital, p. 322; this is what Negri has called
560
the "crisis of the planning state" (Crisi dello Stato-plano
[Milan: Feltrinelli, 1974])._
Gonna have to read up about Negri on the crisis of the
planning state, but it's probably about the crisis at the end
of the 60s that assisted opening up techno-economic
globalization by curbing a lot of state control over the
economy.
Third, going back to the Nick, Bratton, and Easterling
stuff, TM talked before about how he thought of D&G and
Bratton together: D&G present the earth as the BwO,
which becomes the surface on which inscriptions occurs.
The Stack is like a layering of inscriptions that have
occurred through different historical vectors and
processes, all congealing together in this vast apparatus of
planetary computation. So there's a vertical model,
similar to how this understanding of the global smooth
space that we've kind hit on today: layering of an
automated infrastructural system, the particular
programs being run in this systems, the abstract agent,
etc.
But we also have a horizontal model, the patchwork itself,
this surface where the different patches brush against
each other, with the networks that form between them,
etc. So maybe there's a multidimensional understanding
these systems to be had, proliferating out both vertically
and horizontally, with dynamic individuations occurring
through encounters between intensities at different scales
(like rhizomes unfurling across plateaus). Stack Tectonics
+ Continental Drift (edited)
561
sourbro [5:33 PM]
if smoothness is a relative designation (the bwo,
immanent, is everywhere-distributed anyway; it's
nonlocal in some sense that exceeds the reach of
abstraction), perhaps the explicit adaptation of a
thermodynamic model along the lines of McLuhan's Hot
& Cool is possible: the sa and the wm as phase change
effects; cf. nick's comments above about the hotting up of
internationalism; the only way to cool it is to vent it along
the diagonal of an emergent warmachine, and this pumps
the entropy up to be dealt with by the state apparatus that
each wm eventually crystallizes into...
coldness (as bwo-instantiation; supercooling) affords
frictionless circulation of info, which lets the thinker
tunnel through apparatus (accumulate energy), whereas
warmth is dissipative & contributes to the cooling of the
medium which attends the crystallization of state
apparatus;)
^thermodynastics
----- December 24th, 2017 ----edburg [6:07 PM]
Smooth space – free action
Striated space – work
“Physicosocial” correspondence arose in the 19th century
between:
Recognition of work as the transfer of energy
from one object to another — “mechanical currency”
562
force”
Abstract labor and labor-power — “mechanics of
Physics had never been more social, for in both cases it
was a question of defining the constant mean value of a
force of lift and pull exerted in the most uniform way
possible by a standard-man. Impose the Work-model
upon every activity, translate every act into possible or
virtual work, discipline free action, or else (which
amounts to the same thing) relegate it to "leisure," which
exists only by reference to work.
This transformation of free action into work is not an
affair of the war machine, but of the State apparatus –
forceful imposition of the factory-model.
No work without the State apparatus – only free action,
that might be viewed as work by an outside observer.
Example: particular cultures (e.g. Native Americans) who
refused to conform to the work model imposed by the
Europeans.
Physicosocial workmodel – striation of space-time
Over time, capitalism begins to deviate from the
physicosocial model, and the striation of space-time via
this model undergoes a smoothing.
The passage from to striated follows the rise of constant
capital against variable capital: factory labor is being
superceded by a generalized “machinic enslavement”
capable of producing surplus value without any work
being done: “capitalism operates less on a quantity of
labor than by a complex qualitative process bringing into
play modes of transportation, urban models, the media,
563
the entertainment industries, ways of perceiving and
feeling – every semiotic system.”
Machinic enslavement connected to the
megamachine – coupling the activities of the human body
to a machine system to draw productivity from it.
First instance of machinic enslavement occurred
when the the first megamachine, the Urstaat, captured
and overcoded the primitive social machine (i.e., passage
from the primitive social machine to the archaic state).
See Apparatus of Capture, 427-428
In machinic enslavement, humans are “pieces”
of something that operates as a “higher unity”.
Passage from the despotic state to capitalism, bringing
with it the great decoding of flows, marks the transition
from a regime of machinic enslavement to one of social
subjection, in which humans are not “pieces” but
“subjects”.
Capital itself is the “point of subjectification that
constitutes all human beings as subjects.” (457)
Capitalists: subjects of enunciation — “private
subjectivity of capital”
Proletarians: subjects of the statement –
subjected to the technical machines of constant capital
(the subjection of the proletarian, a “free laborer”,
constitutes the striation of space-time in accordance with
physicosocial idea of work)
In the movement from the age of the “second age of
technical machines” to the “third age of cybernetic and
informational machines”, machinic enslavement returns
and is taken to its most extreme form, while social
subjection is also taken to an extreme.
Through increased automation, constant capital
overcomes variable capital, and the use of technical
564
machines
is
replaced
by
“internal,
mutual
communication”. (458)
Repression and ideology are replaced with
“processes of normalization, modulation, modeling, and
information that bear on language, perception, desire,
movement, etc.” (edited)
The new social subjection and machinic enslavement
power one another: subjection persists because one still
uses a machine and/or consumes the output of it, but one
is simultaneously undergoing machinic enslavement
because the subjection is one point in series of feedback
processes — “there is nothing but transformations and
exchanges of information, some of it mechanical, others
human.”
Everything becoming consolidated into components
(input/output) of imperceptible cybernetic process is how
surplus value without labor as such, thus composing the
smooth of striated space-time.
The striation of space thus leads to the realization of the
smooth space: “It is as though, at the outcome of the
striation that capitalism was able to carry to an unequaled
point of perfection, circulating capital necessarily
recreated, reconstituted, a sort of smooth space in which
the destiny of human beings is recast.” (492)
Connection between this striation-smooth movement and
acceleration: “at the complementary and dominant level
of integrated (or rather integrating) world capitalism, a
new smooth space is produced in which capital reaches its
'absolute' speed, based on machinic components rather
than the human component of labor. The multinationals
fabricate a kind of deterritorialized smooth space in
565
which points of occupation as well as poles of exchange
become quiteindependent of the classical paths to
striation.”
The multinationals as the war machine that helps
engender the global smooth space:
Space internal to the State is striated
Space external to the State is smooth
Two ways that the Outside of the State appears:
“huge worldwide machines branched out over
the entire ecumenon at a given moment… commercial
organizations of the ‘multinational’ type, or industrial
complexes, or even religious formations like Christianity,
Islam, certain prophetic or messianic movements, etc.)”
(360)
“bands, margins, minorities”
Summation of these two directions: “worldwide
ecumenical machines” (multinationals, etc) and
“neoprimitivism, a new tribal society as described by by
Marshall McLuhan.”
Question:
correspondence
between
the
neoprimitivism/worldwide ecumenical machine schema
and the neoarchaism/exfuturism of Anti-Oedipus?
“Two directions are not necessarily distinct, but
actually intertwine with one another: these directions are
equally present in all social fields, in all periods. It even
happens that they partially merge. For example, a
commercial organization is also a band of pillage, or
piracy, for part of its course and in many of its activities;
or it is in bands that a religious formation begins to
operate. What becomes clear is that bands, no less than
worldwide organizations, imply a form irreducible to the
State and that this form of exteriority necessarily presents
566
itself as a diffuse and polymorphous war machine.”
(edited)
So we can think of this process as wrapping around/being
intertwined with the dynamic shift from fascism to
post-fascism, with fascism marking the apex of a society
based on striated space-time and the physicosocial
work-model and postfascism corresponding to the
smoothing of spacetime via the ability to capitalize on free
movement + free activity... with each corresponding,
respectively, to the age of technical machines and the age
of cybernetic information machines
This is really what is at stake in Deleuze's Postscript on
the Societies of Control, indicated by the emphasis on the
passage from the 2nd age of technical machines
(disciplinary societies) to the 3rd age o cybernetic
machines (control societies):
Disciplinary Society (Foucault) → Control Society
(Burroughs, Virilio)
Technical Machines/Thermodynamic
Cybernetic machines, computers
machines
→
Movement through series of enclosures → Endless,
non-serial movements through open spaces
Interiorization → Exteriority
Molding → Modulation
Factory → Corporation
School → Perpetual training
567
Individual/Mass polarity → Dividual/data bank feedback
relation
Fixed exchange rates → Floating exchange rates
Passive danger of entropy → Passive danger of jamming
Active danger of sabotage → Active danger of piracy and
viruses
maxcastle [7:02 PM]
Nicely laid out.
edburg [7:04 PM]
Thanks, MC
This is me hiding from family holiday stuff while I can
maxcastle [7:04 PM]
Stuck in a line atm.
That's me hiding. Always volunteer to leave.
edburg [7:05 PM]
lol yesss
I will def be taking advantage of that one
568
----- December 25th, 2017 ----edburg [2:59 PM]
http://www.xenosystems.net/outsideness-2/
RorschachRomanov Says:
Of what use is strategic advantage absent the
weapons with which to concretize the
advantage? Always the good ontologist,
Heidegger said of epistemology, though I
vaguely suspect that one could rightfully
exchange the word “epistemology” with
‘Outer-Nrx:’ “it continually sharpens the knife
but never gets round to cutting.”
admin Reply:
I’m still Deleuzean enough to think nomads do
most of history’s cutting.
RorschachRomanov Reply:
Touche.
ratboi [10:22 PM]
:scissors:
----- December 26th, 2017 ----maxcastle [4:48 PM]
569
@edburg I haven't had a chance to read the Lyotard essay
but Taylor has finished reading it. He says there is a bit
on the Red Army Faction. This would explain it's
translation into German.
----- December 28th, 2017 ----edburg [4:09 PM]
Been reading back through some of the Deleuze/p-work
material... Interesting that for him (and Guattari)
patchwork is a lot more varied than the Moldbuggian
patchwork. In the p-work focused pieces in _Essays
Clinical and Critical_ it appears more political, as a
flexible network of states (or at least movements) not
unlike the early stages of the American political
experiment — but it also extends it beyond the distinctly
(macro)political register, towards the experimentation of
Anglo-American artists. This gets taken up in ATP:
...(for example, a stroll taken by Henry Miller in
Clichy or Brooklyn is a nomadic transit in
smooth space; he makes the city disgorge a
patchwork, differentials of speed, delays and
accelerations,
changes
in
orientation,
continuous variations...
This particular direction reminds me of what V says in
Leviathan Rots: " We must turn from a patchwork of
states to the infectious patchwork within the state, a
recursive dissolution that leaves not a network of states,
but an endless flux in which the state itself disintegrates
into the very war that sustains it."
570
maxcastle [5:04 PM]
What's the essay here?
edburg [5:12 PM]
the screenshots, @maxcastle?
maxcastle [5:12 PM]
Yes
edburg [5:14 PM]
They are both from the Smooth and the Striated in ATP
If you have the U of Minnesota edition, the first is p. 482
and the second is p. 481
maxcastle [5:15 PM]
Oh. I thought they were from Es:C&C.
edburg [5:17 PM]
nah, but the really good p-wark essays there are
"Whitman" and "Bartleby; or, The Formula"
"Cave dweller" is a good micro-motif
"shifting shantytowns of nomads and cave dwellers" in
that second screenie
and at the end of the smooth and striated:
571
What interests us in operations of striation and
smoothing are precisely the passages or
combinations: how the forces at work within
space continually striate it, and how in the
course of its striation it develops other forces
and emits new smooth spaces. Even the most
striated city gives rise to smooth spaces: to live
in the city as a nomad, or as a cave dweller.
maxcastle [5:19 PM]
Thanks. These are good finds.
edburg [5:19 PM]
no probz MC
maxcastle [5:20 PM]
all is secondary to cave-dwelling!
edburg [5:20 PM]
:hole:
the real patchwork is subterranean
The holey space is underappreciated
Kind of confused on a few points on how this is working
in ATP, actually
maxcastle [5:36 PM]
Wonder what its connection to rhizomes is.
572
edburg [5:46 PM]
The patchwork is related to smooth space, as the open
space of intensities and nomadic movement
The global smooth space is something that consolidates
across earth through specific techno-capitalist historical
vectors, namely the entangled processes of:
The overtaking of the states by the war machine,
supplanting fascistic violence with the 'pure terror' of
(relative) peace — the permanent Third Wold War,
governed through deterrence, etc.
The recalibration of capital, labor, and
production via the passage from the machines of the
second age (thermodynamic machines) to machines of
the third age (cybernetic machines), making central
automation, information flow, and the twin processes of
machinic enslavement and social subjection being flung
to their furthest extremes
The smooth space is not in itself liberatory: "Of
course, smooth spaces are not themselves liberatory...
Never believe that a smooth space will suffice to save us."
(p. 500)
The realization of the global smooth space
makes possible "counter-attack": "the very conditions
that make the State or World war machine possible, in
other words, constant
capital
(resources
and
equipment) and human variable capital, continually
recreate unexpected possibilities for counterattack,
unforeseen initiatives determining
revolutionary,
popular, minority, mutant machines. " (422)
"Counterattack" seems to follow the mixing of
the smooth space with the holey space, and are connected
with the initial notion of patchwork: " The smooth spaces
arising from the city are not only those of worldwide
573
organization, but also of a counterattack combining the
smooth and the holey and turning back against the town:
sprawling, temporary, shifting shantytowns of nomads
and cave dwellers, scrap metal and fabric, patchwork, to
which the striations of money, work, or housing are no
longer even relevant."
Curious what "counter-attack" entails -- in later Deleuze,
it really does seem to be the creation of a "new people(s)",
minoritarian political becomings that fabulate themselves
into existence, and the "unforeseen initiatives
determining revolutionary, popular, minority, mutant
machines" seems to point to that
But mixing in the smooth and the holey seems to be
suggesting something a little bit more exceptional, right?
Doesn't the holey space open into the machinic phylum?
Also the line
> to which the striations of money, work, or housing are
no longer even relevant
is v. interesting, because they're already set up that the
spread of cybernetic machines and information flow as
the new logic of capital constitutes a smoothing that
undermines the striations of money and work, because it
breaks from the physicosocial quantitative marshaling of
abstract labor as the source of surplus value by making all
free activity a form of production.
maxcastle [5:52 PM]
Is money here different from capital?
574
edburg [5:53 PM]
I'm not sure, that's a good question
There's some discussions of money in the Micropolitics
plateau and maybe in the Postulates of Linguistics, might
have to go back over those lol
What is really new are always the new forms of
turnover. The present-day accelerated forms of
the circulation of capital are making the
distinctions between constant and variable
capital, and even fixed and circulating capital,
increasingly relative; the essential thing is
instead the distinction between striated capital
and smooth capital, and the way in which the
former gives rise to the latter through complexes
that cut across territories and States, and even
the different types of States.
There's also this passaged. It's annoying because these
terms don't seem to appear anywhere else and I'm not
sure quite what they mean here
I think striated capital would roughly correspond with
variable capital (human labor) and smooth capital with
constant capital (machinery), since it is the increased
constant capital that institutes the smoothing of capitalist
striation... but not sure, exactly
So from that ground, what's the relationship between
striated capital and striated money, or smooth capital
with something that rejects striated money? (edited)
575
maxcastle [5:59 PM]
I need to re-read the chapter. This is the kind of thing that
needs a diagrammatic map.
edburg [6:00 PM]
very true
I might start making one
I always start off feeling like I have a grip on what they
are doing, but pulling it apart like this always induces the
feeling of losing the plot
That this section also mentions "integrated world
capitalism" makes me wonder if this bit is more Guattari
than Deleuze, since that concept gets developed through
his 1980s works -- and if so, maybe the distinction
between striated and smooth capital gets touched on
there
And another thing: the relationship between the smooth
space and patchwork seems more ambiguous to me now
Initially they seem rather synonymous, as shown with the
discussion of Riemann space, but now I'm wondering if
the patchwork is more closely related to the
counter-attack that the global smooth space makes
possible
Henry Miller realizes patchwork in his city voyages; the
combination of smooth and holey reverses against the
town, and it is there that patchwork appears
576
axsyscrash [6:15 PM]
my thought is that it's probably barking up the wrong tree
to associate striated/smooth capital directly with
fixed/variable given what it says there -- smooth/striated
capital seems to me to refer the organisation of capital at
a level that transcends its character as variable or
constant, like when we talk about the automatism of
market structures that embrace many specific forms of
capital -- to me it brings to mind the unfolding of
developmentalist capital accumulation into smooth
'globalised' capitalism
edburg [6:25 PM]
Yeah, I would agree with that 100%, except that earlier
D&G discuss that movement precisely in terms of the
evolution/proliferation of constant capital, which via
cybernetic machines that reorganize the whole of the
capitalist system -- contra Marx, machines add value
(machinic surplus value in AO), and labor gets replaced
with the informatic capture of free action outside of the
factory, etc. So it's like this knotty process that unfolds
historically, where forces rise against others, reverse
certain orders, and then open up/unfold into something
entirely new.
Think the developmentalism point is totally spot on, and I
think they say something along those lines in the
Apparatus of Capture (I'll have to go back and take a
look).
ah, I misread you just a little bit, Vince
577
yeah, I think that's right -- smooth/striated capitals
referring to organization of capital, but there is an
important thing happen with the organic composition
taking place within those. Then paint that across the
curve of historical development, rushing towards the
smooth space of global capital
axsyscrash [6:33 PM]
be careful on machinic surplus value tho because (at least
in ATP) it's not the flat anti-Marx argument that constant
capital itself (ie technical machines) can add surplus
value, which is the old futurist argument), it's the
production of surplus value itself becoming machinic at a
societal level as people are incorporated into a large-scale
automatism
"the work regime changes, surplus value becomes
machinic, and the framework expands to all of society"
edburg [6:34 PM]
:point_up:
Great point, and I think that's a shift from its
presentation in AO
axsyscrash [6:36 PM]
yeah I like the presentation in ATP because I think the
distinction between technical machines and human
labour (etc) needs to be sustained at some level, it's also
why I've complained about people conflating machinic
and mechanical lol
578
but it does change yeah
edburg [6:39 PM]
The deep genealogy of the concept in AO is coming from
Tugan by way of Baran & Sweezy, who themselves seems
to be shunted aside a bit in ATP. It's definitely flush with
the Futurist reading there
ATP is a really brilliant anticipation of things to come,
stepping back and looking at the time it was written
axsyscrash [6:42 PM]
the problem with the futurist direction is like I said to
squobb on twitter, that it sort of ends up domesticating
the machine within a vitalist framework, and just saying
that machines produce surplus value is a kind of
anthropomorphism -- you can't go down the
nietzsche--land path of antihumanism if you collapse the
distinctions that sustain it in the first place
edburg [6:43 PM]
ah, interesting
axsyscrash [6:43 PM]
to me it seems the mistake is something like thinking of
surplus value ontologically rather than as something
defined in its relation to the 'human' in the first place
579