That is why I’ve been a big supporter of the Center for a Stateless Society ever since Brad Spangler founded it in 2006. Both left libertarianism and market anarchism (a label I try to hold at arm’s length) deserve an outlet focused on getting their unique points of view in front of as many eyes as possible. The goal from the very beginning has been outreach and advocacy, to embark upon a coordinated, funded effort to get left libertarian polemics into mainstream outlets to influence policy and public opinion. The emergence of C4SS was a sign that left libetarianism had grown up and wanted to be a player on the political stage, not simply a loose ring of blogs (though those were heady, fun days indeed).
I’ve written several essays for the Center. The first two pieces I wrote for them were among the hardest writing I’ve ever done in my life. It turns out that writing for the general public outside the normal cliches of politics has very, very little in common with writing for an expressly radical audience. Couple that with the rules that guide newspaper publication, such as word counts, an emphasis on very accessible diction, and conforming to certain reading levels, and suddenly writing from the heart transforms into a kind of eristic crossword puzzle. However, the finished product was not only something of which I could be proud, but something that felt like an important, unique contribution to the conversation precisely because it was disciplined.
It’s been a long time since I’ve regarded the Center as a disciplined outlet for left libertarian politics. It seems they try to get anything and everything mildly related to left libertarianism published. This would be fine for a left libertarian blog that sought to serve a readership that already agrees with left libertarian views (my leftlibertarian.org project was just such an unfocused survey). But it’s important to remember that the Center raises money not simply to publish writing–anybody can do that these days–but to publish the best, most focused, most accessible writing that can subvert mainstream media outlets and turn non-anarchists into anarchists. That’s not easy, which is why I was always in favor of paying writers for the burden of writing pieces that are not necessarily straightforward, enjoyable to work on, or directly from the heart like most of us enjoy writing.
Consider this essay by Aster Alice Raizel. Despite my rejection of the thesis, this is a really interesting piece, as a twitter friend reminded me, because it recalls the intensity of 19th century, luciferian-tinged anarchism. I’ve been a fan of her voice and writing for many years. The question is not whether this is a good essay, but whether it is an essay that promotes left libertarianism to a mainstream audience. After all, that mission is what brought me an others to the Center; it’s no failure to expand beyond that, but does an essay like this marginalize the Center among mainstream outlets more than necessary? I think it does, and so it is incompatible with the Center’s whole reason for existing.
Now, I won’t pretend this isn’t personal: Alice has been an extremely divisive figure in the left libertarian milieu. She was central to one of the first rifts that found me on a different side than many of my C4SS comrades. Based on my private and public interactions with her, I believe she is a seriously disturbed individual (it sucks this has to be said, but for the record, I am not referring to her gender identity). Based on observing her angry, vitriolic, unhinged behavior on public forums and blogs, I further believe she is an atrocious ambassador for any cause, let alone one that promotes the just and peaceful resolution of conflicts. So the fact that the Center would use donor funds to publish a wildly troubled person working out their daddy issues in public is just the latest and best example of its loss of purpose.
I was also struck by the sloppy and grating takedown of Greenwald by Arthur Silber that caught the Center’s interest for some reason. Indeed, I wrote my own piece criticizing Greenwald’s journalistic practices and principles not because I thought I was making an original contribution. Largely I wanted to salvage the ongoing, important conversation about journalism from such an overwrought and hysterical temper tantrum. There is simply no point in lecturing on integrity with a voice of petulent self-righteousness and caustic hate. I feel sorry for radicals like Raizel and Silber who have no other voice with which to discuss these matters, but it’s simply a mistake for the Center to support such bile.
To give voice to concerns about an institution’s direction inevitably risks offending those who see their interests aligned with the institution. This is even more true when people get their pay from that institution. So as desperate and sad as this seems for such an accomplished thinker, it just makes me grateful for the privilege to pursue politics on my own terms and eschew the constant performance that comprises politically correct leftism. And that’s the position I’ve always strived to occupy on the libertarian left: an independent, anti-ideological, common sense position that can reflect on our faults as well as our virtues. I have no interest in the “me too” rah-rahing of movement clicktavists motivated more by publicly distinguishing their moral value from the fallen masses than by engaging with those folks to find ways forward for us all. Let me know when that kind of cultivated sanctimony actually effects changes in the world, Kevin, and I’ll gladly eat my hat.
Any movement trying to find its own political identity, priorities, and values as well as maintain ideological integrity will make philosophical independence difficult. To their credit, left libertarians and C4SS adherents are if anything more honest than most ideologues. But if ideology requires any kind of balancing force, only the individual conscience can reliably provide it. Sometimes that means standing on the outside looking in, but that’s immensely more satisfying to me than drowning myself in the echo chamber of self-congratulating, progressive puritanism. It’s not true that the Center does no good work, but its supporters deserve to know the real motivation for its work. Presently the Center functions more as a thin veneer of institutional professionalism over of an insular clique of ideologues; I’m certain my comrades are capable of better.
The internet is a wonderful nursery for anti-system radicals, but eventually one needs to leave that noumenal realm of relative safety, put aside childish Twitter grandstanding and forum feuds, and apply one’s values to the real world. There is an outlet that takes these kinds of politics seriously, which makes it both dangerous and promising. I believe Attack the System, for all its flaws, has usurped the position that C4SS could have thrived in, and I hope you will give that site and its writers a chance to show you what the application of genuine anti-state politics through a pluralist framework means for leftist aspirations and the egalitarianism we all believe is possible. (I no longer associate or support Attack the System and disavow them completely.)
Almost all that is dismissed as conspiracy theory today is really only good or poor attempts at writing history in our own time. But why is it that when we are talking of the histories of whole different places in whole different times, we easily accept that this or that group of powerful people made this or that important event happen, yet when it comes to histories of our own time and place, we automatically reject any suggestion of any group of people making any important event happen? Throughout history, every important event always has some group of people behind it, and these events always offer revealing meanings about the kind of societies in which they occur. It is the same today.
I give this article the highest possible recommendation.
]]>I guess you see your role as speaking truth to power, whoever happens to be in power. Which I can appreciate. The world definitely needs people like that.
What’s the alternative? Flattering and cheering for power when it’s on your side, no matter what it does?
The article Greenwald wrote is good, too.
]]>]]>Entities within your culture are fond of saying that humankind is made in the image and nature of the Creator. What image do we think of? What image comes to mind when one thinks of the Creator? That is a key question, and central to those who seek faith. For if a Creator is sought that is angry and punishing, righteous and full of justice, then we gaze at a part of ourselves, and if the Creator is gentle and nurturing and all embracing and unifying, then we gaze at a part of ourselves. Since there is a mystery, there is a choice to be made concerning one’s attitude towards that mystery. Those who feel instinctively that the Creator is an unifying, loving and nurturing Creator are those which discover faith in one way, that is the positive path of polarization through service to the infinite One and to other selves, the images of the infinite One. Those who choose to see the creator of judgment, righteousness and law, are those who wish control, control over the life, control over the self, control over others, that there be no surprises, but that all be reckoned ahead of time, safe and tidy. This is the path of separation. We are aware that we speak to those upon the positive path of polarization, and so we will address faith in its positive sense, that is, that faith does not begin with faith in the self, but faith in the Creator. (Hatonn, February 3, 1991)
It is not natural, however, to fit tragedy into an ideological narrative. Ideology doesn’t originate within us but arises from our acceptance of a narrow system of thought to which we attempt to conform. So complex events and nuanced actions must be shoved like a square peg into a round hole in order to validate the black and white ideological approach in our gray shaded lives. But we adopt ideological approaches for similar reasons: to give ourselves a sense that we can explain it all, that if we can just achieve the world prescribed by the ideology, such tragedy will never occur again.
The attack on Representative Giffords is now being portrayed by many as an outgrowth of the “climate of hate” surrounding conservative politics in general and the Tea Party movement in particular. The assassin would never have attacked this congresswoman, many claim, if there wasn’t a poisonous undercurrent of anti-government sentiment. While an individual is responsible for his or her actions, we have a responsibility also to preserve a civil discourse and ensure that loose cannons do not employ our rhetoric in the service of violence.
Insofar as this goes, I have no problem with the argument above. We should take responsibility for the climate our politics creates, because that climate is the reality behind the abstractions of politics, civil society, and other institutions we ostensibly critique and support. The less positive and constructive our participation in the network of society, the more we create the hell we claim to seek to avoid. We each have an unenforceable but important duty to be our best selves in all matters.
However, this duty is only part of the story. Yes, we the people are accountable for our participation in the body politic. And if people are angry, then that is a problem - but a problem for all of us. After all, people don’t just get upset for no reason. It is usually the persistent denial of their interests, their values, the legitimacy of their point of view that creates the frustration and cynicism leading to such lashing out, rhetorically or physically.
Conservatives and liberals are jumping on the Giffords attack to push it into or out of their ideological narratives. They either blame those who stand against government overreach, or they deny that resistance to government overreach is to blame. What neither side does is question the premises of this argument: that only one side is responsible for this.
It seems to me that the growing conservative backlash to intrusive government has contributed to the climate of hate. But then, by the same token, so has the intrusive government acts that created the backlash. For that matter, the attitude with which certain statists have demonized and marginalized anti-statists also fed the feelings of hate and resentment. If there is a climate of hate, then all of us are responsible - not just the party that breaks first from these conditions.
Those who support the establishment - government functionaries, liberals sometimes, conservatives other times - act as if state actions are automatically legitimate, and that anybody who disagrees is a crank. Why isn’t this dismissive attitude not just as responsible for the eventual violence as the resentful attitude? If civility is the order of the day, it cannot be defined merely as fitting within the narrow confines of “accepted thinking”. And so extremism and hate are singled out as the problems, rather than the symptoms.
If we are to heal these divides and build a society based on some modicum of trust and appreciation, a society that can solve problems in the name of all its members and not to benefit some members over others, we have to take a step back from what we’ve been doing all this time and think freshly and honestly. It is incumbent on all of us - not just the side with which we disagree - to end the climate of hate. But ending that climate means addressing the causes, not the individual straw that breaks the camel’s back. And that likely means a stiff challenge to the centrist, establishmentarian elites who benefit no matter which side of the debate is labelled “extremist”.
]]>Still, I was a bit taken aback when I first heard of Keith’s plans for a four-part series of articles on German jurist Carl Schmitt (Part 1, Part 2). Here was a thinker who provided the legal basis for a continuity between Nazi-era totalitarianism and emergency, extra-constitutional measures in the present “War on Terror”. But as it turns out, Schmitt’s actual scholarship on these subjects has been rather narrowly read over the past eighty or so years. One need not adopt his advocacy for the establishment to see the problems with liberal democracies he pointed out. This passage from Keith’s latest is particularly compelling:
At a fundamental level, there is an innate tension between liberalism and democracy. Liberalism is individualistic, whereas democracy sanctions the “general will” as the principle of political legitimacy. However, a consistent or coherent “general will” necessitates a level of homogeneity that by its very nature goes against the individualistic ethos of liberalism. This is the source of the “crisis of parliamentarianism” that Schmitt suggested. According to the democratic theory, rooted as it is in the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau, a legitimate state must reflect the “general will,” but no general will can be discerned in a regime that simultaneously espouses liberalism. Lacking the homogeneity necessary for a democratic “general will,” the state becomes fragmented into competing interests. Indeed, a liberal parliamentary state can actually act against the “peoples’ will” and become undemocratic. By this same principle, anti-liberal states such as those organized according to the principles of fascism or Bolshevism can be democratic in so far as they reflect the “general will.”
I think this perspective also has very relevant things to say about current populist phenomena such as the Tea Parties. It’s clear that these people talk the language of individual rights, but behind the language is an earnest desire for a return to a social consensus of the 1950s: a feeling of common purpose, belief and aspiration for white middle class people (even if chaos and betrayal lay seething under the rug). It’s why they can, in one breath, call their movement apolitical, and in the other breath denounce Obama as a Muslim, communist “other”. The homogeneity they seek is nothing if not typical of historical democracies, Schmitt says, which often had stratified societies in which equality was reserved for a particular class.
You won’t agree with all of Schmitt’s thought on the role of the state, parliamentarianism, “states of exception”, etc. But don’t you read enough stuff that you agree with already? Those with different politics see the same world we do; it can’t hurt to hear them out, for they might expose important facets of the human condition that, though we don’t see them, are nevertheless crucial to address. Kudos to Keith for advancing thoughtful anarchist scholarship once more.
]]>Your revolution succeeds. Through whatever means you think it possible, your fellow ____s have defeated the authoritarian/fascist/totalitarian forces and are ascendant. You, of course, know that your side will not rule in the same ruthless manner your enemy did.
Now what do you do with all these enemies whom you haven’t killed or converted yet? The same beliefs that motivated them to oppose you in the past are likely not to be simply cast aside. After all, you didn’t cast yours aside when you were out of power. As somebody experienced with dissidence, you know all too well that such people can take a long term view of their agenda and undermine the society you want to build in countless subtle ways.
Well, if you’re Lenin, you kill as many as you can and install a ruthless regime of your own to deter revolt of the rest. If you’re Washington, you expel as many “loyalists” to the enemy side as possible and, oh yeah, if anybody doesn’t like it you lead the army against them. If you’re Hitler, you kind of just kill them all. If you’re Mao, you kind of just kill them all.
See where I’m heading with this? We’re so used to being dissidents that we don’t even have a plan for success. Not only have we built the assumptions of marginality and defeatism into our politics, but we leave ourselves with a giant, gaping hole in the middle of our view of the world we seek to change. And if we don’t address this hole in the middle of our strategy, our revolution is likely to bring about the same kind of reactionary despotism we sought to overthrow, because there’s always going to be some asshole who’s willing to be the “serious, pragmatic” son-of-a-bitch to get shit done.
The only honest anarchists I know recognize that violent revolution is likely to come only after a large majority of people have rejected the establishment, and that any outward revolution will be, at most, a lagging indicator of the shift in public opinion, not the cause. These activists stress education and outreach. On the face of it, I think this is admirable for reasons I explained in my last post. But what about people who, even in the face of arguments you find compelling, simply do not agree with you? How do you deal with them? You can neither ignore the problem nor resolve to just kill them all, because the latter undermines the legitimacy of your victory and the former just invites somebody in your camp to do the same.
Let me pose a possible solution: yes, outreach and education as much as possible. But not just printing pamphlets and screeching at people; genuine dialogue with people who make you uncomfortable; dialogue that allows you to uncover peacefully what the ill-planned, knee-jerk revolution will uncover violently. You need to understand the strains of belief among your fellow man and not just call them bigoted or evil or stupid, but genuinely address them. We need to reach the hearts of people and not just change the label they attach to themselves, and that is harder work than most people consider when they advocate for propaganda (nothing wrong with propaganda, just that it’s not the end-all-be-all of the task).
But we need a back-up plan, and here’s my suggestion: anarcho-pluralism. Because people hold beliefs that are rigid and often unshakeable in the face of majority or forceful opposition, we need to be able to go our separate ways if we cannot resolve our differences. Of course, every attempt should be made to have as good of a relationship as possible with these people, but we must be ready for their rejection of premises and values we find compelling. If that means the theocrats or the fascists or the racists get their own little territories to be autocrats, well, what’s the alternative? Killing them? Imprisoning them?
Here’s the upside: by not marginalizing them within a majority society they find alien and intolerable, but instead letting them have their own sphere of influence - no matter how despicable we might find its exercise, we keep the door open that someday they will come around of their own accord. The kind of counter-revolutions that darken the history of initially pure revolutions around the world always happen because what was the ruling ideology becomes an insurgent ideology. People can feel like they are victimized and oppressed, even if they were previously oppressors, because their views are not realized - similarly to how we feel now. But by letting them build their own societies and live their own lives:
At the core of this approach is the understanding that none of us have a monopoly on the truth. If we desire freedom in order to express ourselves and our conception of truth better, we must allow others equal freedom - in spite of how distasteful it may seem to us. Finally, if we truly believe in the principles of egalitarianism and liberty, we should expect that the less regimented and controlled the world is, the more likely our ideas are to emerge spontaneously. And nothing will undermine the fascists, the theocrats, the bigots, the petty dictators, and other assholes like having to abandon minority politics and actually govern according to their sad principles.
This approach also forces us to come to terms with the true significance of our agenda. It’s not just about the workers or the productive class or the people rising up; it’s about starting to genuinely address the dark sides of our world, instead of just overcoming it in some outburst of eschatological exuberance. If this causes us to be more careful in how we revolt, well, we should be careful.
Finally, what about the people who would suffer under these other totalitarian societies through no fault of their own? Here we have to be practical: ridding the world of human suffering cannot be our political goal. In any society, even ours, people will suffer. Look at our rich, flush society and how much even privileged people cause themselves grief and heartache. The real question is: do you want to fight a fucking war over it, or do you want to start healing that suffering in the nuanced and personal manner that is required?
Again, we have to face the fact that mere military victory doesn’t solve anything, and that it is a patient, thoughtful, engaging people that truly changes minds. If we are really caring and open-hearted, we will not fool ourselves into thinking evil can be simply vanquished by some faux-end-times conception of revolution. We will remain sympathetic to suffering, willing to continue the unending work of reaching out. Anarcho-pluralism allows the revolution, the transformation to continue even after we win.
Idealists and realists are always juxtaposed as if they represent two unreconcilable approaches. But in looking at these two camps with respect to revolutionary politics, perhaps this is only the case because they both go about their tasks in such a totalitarian manner. Idealists consider the revolution successful only if the ideals are adopted by 100% of the people. On the other hand, pragmatists consider themselves successful if they are able to rule with 100% of the power.
True transformation of society must be more subtle and thoughtful, and anarcho-pluralism provides a framework for ongoing transformation in just this manner. You can be idealistic and realistic by simply living and letting live; all you have to give up is the desire for the shallow smugness of instant moral satisfaction in exchange for a genuine, long-term commitment to your ideals. If these beliefs are worth fighting for, aren’t they worth continuing to work for after the peace accord? Or are you only in it for a final triumph of good over evil?
]]>With whom, economically and culturally, should or does the contemporary poet or artist identify?
I appreciate the question. My personal opinion is that I see no difference between the answer to this question and the answer to the question, “With whom should anybody identify?” You either see an unjust system as acceptable or not. How honest you are with yourself about the actual decision you’re making is the real matter, and I don’t think anybody scores perfectly in that area.
The range of self-honesty among artists is probably on par with the general population. Some honestly find an elite-organized society appealing (it’s a cliche to mention nowadays, but let’s remember Hitler’s artistic inclinations). I’d agree that artists tend to have more empathy than your average person, but not that all do without exception. And business, prejudice, religion, and other forces invade art to varying degrees of distortion like every other aspect of life.
Any genuine resistance should begin, and in fact is beginning, to engage more directly with the conservative political economic vision of the status quo. As long as these ruling class systems are accepted as the default starting point by which others are compared, any truly revolutionary cultural impact artists can make is hedged against, as a rule. But the burden of moving the center of discourse is by no means borne solely by artists - everybody has talents that they can and should put to better use in order to convince one’s fellow man that more is possible in our world. Artists and poets can inspire the imagination, but it takes a lot of people doing the imagining to realize material change.
Realizing it, frankly, means slowly building and growing counter-institutions and organic, human-scale communities that can give people an identify and context independent of the status quo. Kevin Carson is a big fan of the old Wobbly slogan about “building the new society within the shell of the old”. To see rejection of the status quo as primarily a question of violence is mistaken. In order for such a rebellion to even be possible, much creative, positive work will have had to take place.
It’s kind of like what John Adams said during the debate over independence with Britain: the question isn’t whether to separate, but whether or not to formally acknowledge the separation between Britain and America that has already occurred. Similarly, the question isn’t whether the revolution will be violent, but to what degree the establishment will suppress the rejection of the regime that will have already occurred. Any armed struggle is far less important and completely at the mercy of the creative forms of insurrection, such as building counter-institutions like mutual aid societies, militias and community patrols, local businesses using their own transactional forms and instruments that fly under the state’s radar, building local economic networks for distribution (say, in emergencies to start), etc.
If one focuses on the violence brought about by change, it is far too easy to be discouraged. It may feel hypocritical to advocate for change when so much suffering is possible and when one benefits from the current state of affairs. But supporting the status quo as an effort to minimize violence is far more hypocritical, ignoring the ocean of violence exercised on behalf of this system every single day, at home and abroad. As white, middle class American men we have the privilege of occupying a societal position where this violence is not apparent. But it’s still real.
So if a moral cost to action is weighed, the cost of complacency and inaction must also be considered in comparison. Calling what we enjoy now “peace” is just as empty as calling revolution “justice”. In our hearts, we know neither is a pure good or pure evil, and dangers lurk on all sides. Faced with such daunting moral calculus, what is the concerned individual to do?
A more responsible approach would be to simply look at the world honestly and decide the manner in which one wants to contribute to it. We live within a system that is positively saturated in violence; escaping it is not an option, but acknowledging it is. The issue to my mind is not whether we will achieve a personally consistent and non-hypocritical approach to our condition (as Derrick Jensen once said, the genius of our system is that it’s impossible to live in it and not be a hypocrite) but whether we will act according to our values or resign ourselves to spectating. Moral certainty has never been a pre-requisite of moral actions, and we are dishonest to believe so.
The honest path is, I feel, to acknowledge the complexity of our situation instead of pushing it down and ignoring it because it’s uncomfortable. I think you can live a normal life and still work for human freedom and dignity. Contributing money and time to social or political causes, or building mutual aid institutions to solve your own problems, or engaging in conversations to open others’ minds - all of these things are individual acts of transforming self and, by extension, the society in which the self moves and has being. We need changed minds, not changed politics or economics; too often the cart is put before the horse.
What I think is important to understand about the anarchist perspective is that individual transformation, not some grand, outward historical event or abstract ideological mass realization, is the essence of revolution. These small, individual creative and social acts scale up spontaneously to the large, outward events that historians study, to be sure. But it’s a mistake to see the events as causing the change. The real change already occurred in the hearts and mind of the people. The events are at best lagging indicators; the personal transformation of individuals and the emergent social paradigm shifts are the material change we seek.
Revolution is a correction to the political order similar to a stock crash: the tumult comes from the delayed realization of the inherent imbalance that existed all along. If a social correction becomes violent, who is more to blame: those who prize their own hegemony over addressing injustice and suffering, or those willing to risk their lives to address it? Blaming violence on those who want change is an attempt to take the spotlight off those who fuel the system that caused the instability in the first place. Ultimately, those with the money and power will determine how violent the correction becomes, just as they decide right now how violent their “peaceful” rule is.
To put it another way: the reason I’m an anarchist and advocate for change is not because I think I know how the world should be organized. The goal is to change minds about what is possible, so that human potential can be explored more fully and people can live in a world that makes sense to them, that they have a stake and say in. The improvement over our current condition will come from all of us working messily and disjointedly towards it, not from one easily-identified leader or one tidy systemic model or one clever ideology. As Karl Hess once said, “Liberty means the right to shape your own institutions. It opposes the right of those institutions to shape you simply because of accreted power or gerontological status.”
]]>When considering each competing interpretation, it’s most interesting and instructive to note which institution plays the victim and which the oppressor. After all, the quote is often used by people who assume the legitimacy of both big business and big government. The quibble lies solely with the relative power of one party relative to the other.
To my mind, the victim/oppressor dichotomy is positively self-reinforcing. In this case, the ontological dynamics serve to restrict what might be a broader conversation about not just the powers that be, but the powers we might have alternatively. Even radicals reinforce these established concepts: capitalists must have an articulable definition of the corporation and of the government to be able to ensure the victory of one over the other. Same for radical communists. If they didn’t have set definitions of each institution, how would they understand the conditions of success towards which they strive?
Nobody ever considers the political climate in which Mussolini made this remark; nor do they consider the indeterminate nature of the concept of “state” and “business”. And so they divide themselves into left/right positions and jockey for supremacy without instead challenging the ground rules of the game. Take this article by Nelson Hultberg, where he advances a position in the debate about whether the Federal Reserve is a public or a private entity:
For example, Exxon Corporation is considered a private corporation. So let’s compare it to the so called “private” Federal Reserve corporation. Does Exxon have its CEO and board of directors appointed and confirmed by the government? No, but the Fed does. Are 97% of Exxon’s profits turned over to the federal Treasury? No, but the Fed’s profits are. Can Exxon be voted out of existence tomorrow by Congress? No, but the Fed can. Therefore despite what our courts maintain, the Fed is not a private corporation; it is a government run cartel.
But this is simply not true: corporations most certainly can be voted out of existence by a deliberative body, as corporations are chartered according to laws that legislatures enact. In fact, before the Civil War, corporations had to be granted a charter by a deliberate act of the state legislature, and usually for a limited time and only for limited purposes. In the same way that government supplies fiat, artificial money that we are bound by law to honor, it supplies fiat, artificial entities that we must recognize.
Congress may not preside over the appointment of anybody to the upper echelons of Exxon, but it certainly doesn’t butt out, either. It’s constantly looking over the shoulders of those executives, regulating the corporation to stabilize and protect it minimally from management’s potential malfeasance with property it has little stake in. And surprise, surprise: those who rise to the highest levels of corporate business tend to be those who can best navigate the bureaucracy government has established. Direct appointments by senators might at least be more honest.
But the point of this post is not to rehash Reagan’s old line about government being the problem. At its root, government is one aspect of a system of collusion designed to privilege some over others. The radical socialists of the 19th century understood this when they critiqued the aristocratic, nascent industrialist class that had started pulling together this giant system that would give advantages to those who knew how to navigate it. We find ourselves subject to an interlocking directorate, as C. Wright Mills would put it, involving elites in government, business, academia, and other core institutions of society. These elites are not necessarily intelligent, or even competent at management - they are skilled at maneuvering through the bureaucracy and rituals of the highly structured society we live in.
The radicals of the 19th century saw the state as larger than just the government. The state was composed of all those who benefited from the status quo. Government, business, academia, and other institutions work to stabilize this status quo as the basis of their privilege. So when Mussolini talks about a merger between corporate and state power, he is not talking about fusing business to government - that alliance already exists, and most people back then knew it, too.
Mussolini was talking about bringing all aspects of society under a smaller group of technocratic, autocratic managers. The full power of society could only be leveraged by total submission of the individual. Today, that’s hardly necessary; the system has become so suffocating that its a trivial matter to convince most people to give up and become a cog in the machine. And we’re not going to reach those cogs as long as we talk in terms of the machine’s operating manual. The state is more subtle than the conservative “government vs. business” paradigm.
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