Reason and Revolution - Crisis

The infationary phenomenon is the clearest manifestation of this attempt by

capital to re-defne and integrate the ineluctable antagonism of the wage relation
in monetary terms, to trans-late it into its own language, its own symbolic
equivalence the better to subject it to the Rationalisierung, the better to be able to
measure antagonism in terms of the money-wage. Consequently, infation is
the most meaningful measure and tool of social antagonism against the wage
relation because it serves as a warning sign to capital that the money-wage is
failing as the fundamental indicator of the willingness of living labor to subject
itself to the tyranny of dead labor. This is precisely what is happening at the
moment with the evident decline and implosion not just of the fnancial
system, but also of the parliamentary partitocracy that has dominated
government in advanced industrial capitalist countries since the New Deal
Settlement. (See on all this, Jean Meynaud, Les Pouvoirs de Decision dans lEtat
Moderne.)
It is in the very nature of a beginning to carry with itself a measure of complete arbitrariness. Not only
is it not bound into a reliable chain of cause and efect, a chain in which each efec timmediately turns
into the cause for future developments, the beginning has, as it were, nothing whatsoever to hold on to;
it is as though it came out of nowhere in either time or space. For a moment, the moment of beginning,
it is as though the beginner had abolished the sequence of temporality itself, or as though the actors
were thrown out of the temporal order and its continuity.
The problem of beginning, of course, appears frst in thought and speculation about the origin of the
universe, and we know the Hebrew solution for its perplexities - the assumption of a Creator God who
is outside his own creation in the same way as the fabricator is outside the fabricated object. In other
words, the problem of beginning is solved through the introduction of a beginner whose own
beginnings are no longer subject to question because he is 'from eternity to eternity'.
This eternity is the absolute of temporality, and to the extent that the beginning of the universe reaches
back into this region of the absolute, it is no longer arbitrary but rooted in something which, though it
may be beyond the reasoning capacities of man, possesses a reason, a rationale of its own. The curious
fact that the men of the revolutions were prompted into their desperate search for an absolute the very
moment they had been forced to act might well be, at least partly, infuenced by the age-old thought-
customs of Western men, according to which each completely new beginning needs an absolute from
which it springs and by which it is 'explained'. (Arendt, On Revolution, p.206)
Here is Constant (note reference to private happiness against freedom [not
liberty!] and to guarantees [our liberties]:
La libert individuelle, je le rpte, voil la vritable libert moderne. La libert politique en est la
garantie; la libert politique est par consquent indispensable. Mais demander aux peuples de nos
jours de sacrifer comme ceux d'autrefois la totalit de leur libert individuelle la libert politique,
c'est le plus sr moyen de les dtacher de l'une et quand on y serait parvenu, on ne tarderait pas leur
ravir l'autre..
Le commerce rend l'action de l'arbitraire sur notre existence plus vexatoire qu'autrefois, parce que nos
spculations tant plus varies, l'arbitraire doit se multiplier pour les atteindre; mais le commerce
rend aussi l'action de l'arbitraire plus facile a luder, parce qu'il change la nature de la proprit, qui
devient par ce changement presque insaisissable.
Le commerce donne la proprit une qualit nouvelle, la circulation: sans circulation, la proprit
n'est qu'un usufruit; l'autorit peut toujours infuer sur l'usufruit, car elle peut enlever la jouissance;
mais la circulation met un obstacle invisible et invincible cette action du pouvoir social.
Les efets du commerce s'tendent encore plus loin: non seulement il afranchit les individus, mais, en
crant le crdit, il rend l'autorit dpendante.
L'argent, dit un auteur franais, est l'arme la plus dangereuse du despotisme, mais il est en mme
temps son frein le plus puissant; le crdit est soumis l'opinion; la force est inutile; l'argent se cache
ou s'enfuit; toutes les oprations de l'tat sont suspendues. Le crdit n'avait pas la mme infuence
chez les anciens; leurs gouvernements taient plus forts que les particuliers; les particuliers sont plus
forts que les pouvoirs politiques de nos jours; la richesse est une puissance plus disponible dans tous
les instants, plus applicable a tous les intrts, et par consquent bien plus relle et mieux obie; le
pouvoir menace, la richesse rcompense: on chappe au pouvoir en le trompant; pour obtenir les
faveurs de la richesse, il faut la servir: celle-ci doit l'emporter.
Par une suite des mmes causes, l'existence individuelle est moins englobe dans l'existence politique.
Les individus transplantent au loin leurs trsors; ils portent avec eux toutes les jouissances de la vie
prive; le commerce a rapproch les nations, et leur a donn des moeurs et des habitudes peu prs
pareilles: les chefs peuvent tre ennemis; les peuples sont compatriotes.
Que le pouvoir s'y rsigne donc; il nous faut de la libert, et nous l'aurons; mais comme la libert qu'il
nous faut est difrente de celle des anciens, il faut cette libert une autre organisation que celle qui
pourrait convenir a la libert antique; dans celle-ci, plus l'homme consacrait de temps et de force a
l'exercice de ses droits politiques, plus il se croyait libre; dans l'espce de libert dont nous sommes
susceptibles, plus l'exercice de nos droits politiques nous laissera de temps pour nos intrts privs,
plus la libert nous sera prcieuse.
De la vient, Messieurs, la ncessit du systme reprsentatif. Le systme reprsentatif n'est autre chose
qu'une organisation l'aide de laquelle une nation se dcharge sur quelques individus de ce qu'elle ne
peut ou ne veut pas faire elle-mme. Les individus pauvres font eux-mmes leurs afaires: les hommes
riches prennent des intendants. C'est l'histoire des nations anciennes et des nations modernes. Le
systme reprsentatif est une procuration donne un certain nombre d'hommes par la masse du
peuple, qui veut que ses intrts soient dfendus, et qui nanmoins n'a pas le temps de les dfendre
toujours lui-mme. Mais a moins d'tre insenss, les hommes riches qui ont des intendants examinent
avec attention et svrit si ces intendants font leur devoir, s'ils ne sont ni ngligents ni corruptibles,
ni incapables; et pour juger de la gestion de ces mandataires, les commettants qui ont de la prudence se
mettent bien au fait des afaires dont ils leur confent l'administration. De mme, les peuples qui, dans
le but de jouir de la libert qui leur convient, recourent au systme reprsentatif, doivent exercer une
surveillance active et constante sur leur reprsentants, et se rserver, des poques qui ne soient pas
spares par de trop longs intervalles, le droit de les carter s'ils ont tromp leurs voeux, et de rvoquer
les pouvoirs dont ils auraient abus.
Car, de ce que la libert moderne difre de la libert antique, il s'ensuit qu'elle est aussi menace d'un
danger d'espce difrente.
Le danger de la libert antique tait qu'attentifs uniquement s'assurer le partage du pouvoir social,
les hommes ne fssent trop bon march des droits et des jouissances individuelles.
Le danger de la libert moderne, c'est qu'absorbs dans la jouissance de notre indpendance prive, et
dans la poursuite de nos intrts particuliers, nous ne renoncions trop facilement notre droit de
partage dans le pouvoir politique.
(De la libert des anciens).
Quite by contrast, if labor is seen in its real immanent meaning as living
labor, then its objectifcation cannot be used in exchange for its freedom.
Living labor can be exchanged for dead labor only through the violent
suppression of its freedom. In this sense, freedom is no longer seen as a
transcendental or ontological entity but rather as the immanent objectifcation
of living labor. Freedom can no longer be mistaken for freedom of the Will in
that the Will is no longer the expression of individuality as acquisitiveness
and possession, but rather individuality as creation and fulflment. Labor
then becomes art; techne becomes poiesis, though not as individual
ownership of the means of production. Instead, labor (living labor) becomes
reconciled with its multi-versality in its particularity because it is no longer
devoted to the satisfaction of human needs seen as wants independent of
living labor, but rather it becomes the most basic need of being human.
It is in order to escape from the gravitational orbit of equilibrium that the
freedom of the entrepreneur is needed for Schumpeter. Indeed, the entire point
to Neoclassical value theory is precisely the ability of the capitalist-entrepreneur
to free himself from immediate consumption by deferring it and thereby
substituting it with labor-saving tools. It is not the renunciation of
Schopenhauer whose society is entirely eristic and the State can only keep
individuals from descending back into the bellum civium. For Neoclassical theory
the State can reward the productivity of labor by protecting the deferral of
consumption of the capitalist entrepreneur. But Schumpeter sees this deferral
or renunciation, this A-skesis (ascending, climbing), as still limited to the
Statik framework of general equilibrium analysis, insufcient to explain the
Dynamik features of the capitalist economy, its development, its ability to
defeat stagnation. For Schumpeter the deferral or saving of the Neoclassics
is inadequate to explain value and profts because these can arise only from the
creativity, from the authorship (auctoritas, augere, to grow, to initiate
[legislation in the Roman Senate]) of the entrepreneur who elevates and
therefore frees himself from the gravitational pull of the circular fow
(Kreislauf), reaching thereby the heights of innovation by distinguishing his
individuality-personality (Unternehmer-Personlichkeit) from that of the
mass (this is the way Schumpeter himself describes the process in the
suppressed [to smoothe his Harvard appointment] chapter 7 of the Theorie). Not
labor but enterprise is the gateway to freedom and proft as against
interest and rent.
Weber shares the same Neoclassical platform as Schumpeter. But for him it is not
the entrepreneurs creativity that counts; it is instead the technical expertise
that invariably generates bureaucratic control not in a purely formal-
rational manner (Zweck-rationalitat) but rather as an expression of conficting
interests over the iron cage. These conficting self-interests are purely
Hobbesian and Nietzschean, they replicate the universal Eris of Schopenhauer in
answer to German Classical Idealism from Leibniz onwards.
[Arendt seems to think, incidentally, that there is transcendence in all this
which is right for Rousseau and the Idealists, but incorrect for Hobbes and
Nietzsche who are immanentists (or materialists) as was Spinoza. (Russell
argues [in his Treatise on Leibniz] that the German philosopher was a pantheist.
That may be so, but his pantheism was more a monism whereby Nature is
swallowed up by Spirit, by God. Leibnizs monism is purely rational-logical
whereas Spinozas is derived from a multiplicity of powers refecting the com-
penetration of God and Nature: Deus sive Natura.)]
With Classical theory, the capitalist appears redundant or a nefarious barrier
to the freedom of living labor from the start, because if labor is the source of
value, then it soon becomes clear that labor cannot be measured by its pro-
duct. Yet even Marxs version preserves socially necessary labor time and the
reproduction of society. Whence is derived the surplus value that
capitalists exploit from workers. For Schumpeter, surplus is the domain of
entrepreneurial creativity. In contrast, Marx introduces the use value of
living labor (a pleonasm because use value for Marx re-fers already to a
potential free-dom). - So here the sphere of necessity is labor-power and that of
potential freedom is living labor (Grundrisse); whereas surplus value, which
is spent on the reproduction of the capitalist class and the expansion of the
labor force (cf. Kaleckis capitalists earn what they invest or get what they
spend), is both exploitation and potential for freedom. But if value is
determined by socially necessary labor time, then even surplus value is
necessary so that the social question boils down to one of distribution of
income which is what the neo-Ricardians argue, with politics determining
the wage and therefore the rate of proft. If one stuck to this Marxian theory of
value, then the purpose of living labor would be, as it was for Rodbertus and the
idiotic saraband of neo-Ricardian epigones that followed after him, nothing other
than control over the distribution of surplus value which validates Webers
elitarian and organicist position (shared by Arendt and the Heideggerians who
then denounce Technik!) on the inevitability of bureaucratic control over the
production of value through the rational organisation of formally free labor. (On
all this, see Grossman.) As we saw in Part One, once the Law of Value is
assumed, it matters little whether value is produced in the factory or
realised in the market: the process of capitalist production becomes
technical because production and consumption, valorisation and realisation of
value are homologated as quantities in short, there is no crisis in capitalist
production, no antagonism in the wage relation, no Politics in the social
question.
This is the wheel of necessity, the Economics as science of choice: the
removal of freedom intended as reconciliation and its renunciation as
universal Eris in the dismal science. Even the Weberian leitender Geist is an
ofcial, a worker! And that is precisely why he cannot be a Schumpeterian
entrepreneur riding on mere Subjectivity, on Individualitat and Unternehmer-
Personlichkeit. The leitender Geist and its politics of responsibility is the
immanent Un-freiheit of Nietzsches will to power. Here in Weber we encounter
the Hobbesian problematic that Nietzsche had already overcome. In Hobbes
the absolute is all Euclidean, axiomatic: the legitimacy and legality of the
Sovereign is founded upon the dira necessitas of the social contract which is
philosophically made freely, as in Montesquieu, but coerced externally by
the ob metum mortis, the fear of imminent and violent death. The State is the
ultima ratio in foro externo (the inter-national state of nature), it is driven by the
raison detat, whilst it preserves the law for its subjects in foro interno: similarly,
the subjects are free in foro interno (the psyche), but not free in foro externo,
because subject to the law. It is exactly the same in Weber that is why he is more
the descendant of Hobbes than of Machiavelli (pace Aron). The leitender Geist is
certainly no Principe because Machiavellis problematic of virtus and fortuna
cannot be homologated even remotely (historically, politically, philosophically)
with the Lebenswelt, the Kultur, the Zivilisation of late nineteenth-century
capitalism.
This compromise, this dis-cutio or dia-lectic that Weber envisages almost
socratically, is what Schmitt denies is possible (remember accusations of
dithering and flibuster he aims at it): the State cannot have both legitimacy
and legality at the same time either the laws are arbitrary or else the
legislator is illegitimate. Only potestas can give legitimacy to law provided we
accept the legitimacy of the power to decide over the exception which itself
has no legal legitimacy and therefore no legitimate legality and is therefore
the suspension of natural laws, the realm of freedom that emanates from
one Will. This Schmittian stance is confrmed by the very nature of parties
(Parteienwesen or party system) which, as Michels stresses (in Political
Parties), intensify the division of the civil society into friend and foe
because, we add, political parties re-present only the economic liberties of their
electorates subject to the Constitution, which is no longer a constituent power!
For Weber and Schumpeter, the scientifc inevitability of capitalism identifed
absolutely with the market economy is what makes the potestas and the potentia
of the State indisputable or common-sensical. But Weber sides a little more
with Hobbes and Nietzsche on the pessimistic side, whereas Schumpeter is
more Lockean in his optimism but then is as elitarian (by this I mean the
theory of elitism rather than the practice someone can believe
theoretically in the necessity of elites without being elitist) as Weber or
Pareto and Mosca. For Hobbes the State prevents or ab-solves the state of nature,
for Locke it simply protects it (especially the estate). There is no initium in the
Treatises, as Arendt observes, no revolution, and the State is one virtually by
acquisition, one that merely con-frms the possessive individualist status quo
of civil society. But there is an initium in Hobbes because the con-ventum, the
social contract, erects a Commonwealth that is a state by institution
diametrically opposed to the state of nature and yet, unlike Lockes, is
necessitated by it, a state by axiomatic acquisition, to prevent the inevitable
civil war!
So Weber needs a constitution in his political re-construction of Germany
because without it though it needs a minimum of inner assent, which may
well be constituted by the dira necessitas, by the ob metum mortis, the fear of death -
there could be no civil society or State, whereas Schumpeter (his
entrepreneur) does not because the market economy is the nature of the thing,
it is the social synthesis. Weber does not have to explain confict, but then has
difculty explaining how parliamentary democracy is able to function,
whereas Schumpeter needs only to presume that it may not function to come
up with elitarian democracy or with an authoritarian state to guarantee the
market mechanism. We know that Weber eventually concedes defeat. The defeat
was pre-announced in Michelss introduction to Politischen Parteien.
Da un punto di vista astratto e superficiale sembra abbastanza
facile superare la difficolt principale arrivando a una definizione
plausibile dello spirito rivoluzionario senza doversi rifare esclusivamente,
come abbiamo fatto in precedenza, a una terminologia
coniata prima delle rivoluzioni. Poich il maggior evento in ogni
rivoluzione l'atto di fondazione, lo spirito rivoluzionario contiene
due elementi che a noi sembrano inconciliabili e persino
contraddittori. L'atto di fondare il nuovo stato, di progettare la
nuova forma di governo implica il serio problema della stabilit
e della durata della nuova struttura: d'altra parte l'esperienza destinata
a uelli che sono impegnati in uesto serio compito l'esaltante
consapevolezza della capacit umana di cominciare, la gioia
che sempre accompagna la nascita di ualche cosa di nuovo sulla
terra. !orse nel fatto stesso che uesti due elementi, la preoccupazione
della stabilit e lo spirito di novit, siano divenuti due
concetti opposti nel pensiero e nella terminologia politica " in
cui l'una viene identificata come conservatorismo e l'altro viene
acclamato come se detenesse il monopolio del liberalismo progressista
" dobbiamo riconoscere uno dei sintomi della nostra sconfitta. #p.$%&'
Nevertheless, Weber has forgotten the Nietzschean lesson (HATH) on the
Demokratisierung, the fact that if everyone wants to be equal the State is
thereby dissolved, the Vergeistigung becomes utopian, and so also the
Parlamentarisierung (Cacciari, DCP, p55f, p64f, Lo Stato e puro mezzo,
strumento della salus publica) The Hegelian Vergeistigung is caught up in the
apory of a Freiheit whereby the Will wants to attain the freedom of the will,
but in reconciling itself with reality rationally then becomes freedom from
the will, which is the very antithesis of what liberalism and socialism ofer
because their operari ends up in the desert of the opus, of nihilism, the
crystallised spirit, the Ent-seelung and Ent-zauberung. (Tocqueville, Arendt,
Constant examples.)
( vero infatti che la caratteristica essenziale dei sistemi partitici,
sotto altri aspetti tanto diversi, )che essi 'nominano' i candidati
agli incarichi elettivi o al governo rappresentativo), e pu*
essere anche esatto dire che )l'atto stesso della presentazione delle
candidature sufficiente a dar vita a un partito politico) + , . Perci*
fin dai suoi inizi il partito come istituzione presuppone o che la
partecipazione dei cittadini alla vita pubblica sia garantita da altri
organi pubblici o che tale partecipazione non sia necessaria e i
ceti recentemente ammessi della popolazione si accontentino di essere
rappresentati o infine che tutte le uestioni politiche nel
welfare state siano ridotte a problemi amministrativi, da trattarsi
e decidersi a opera di esperti: nel ual caso anche i rappresentanti
del popolo non possiedono un'autentica area d'azione ma
sono semplicemente funzionari amministrativi, i cui compiti, ben-
./%
che0 si svolgano nel pubblico interesse, non sono sostanzialmente
diversi dall'attivit gestionale nell'azienda privata. 1e risultasse
esatto l'ultimo di uesti presupposti " e chi potrebbe negare
che nelle nostre societ di massa la sfera politica si sia in larga
misura inaridita e sia stata rimpiazzata da uella )amministrazione
delle cose) che 2ngels pronosticava per una societ senza classi3 "-
allora senza dubbio i consigli si dovrebbero considerare istituzioni
ataviche, senza alcuna importanza nel campo delle vicende umane.
Ma le stesse considerazioni, o altre molto simili, si dovrebbero
ben presto fare per il sistema dei partiti; infatti l'amministrazione
e la gestione aziendale, i cui compiti sono dettati dalle
necessit insite in ogni processo economico, sono essenzialmente
non solo non politiche ma anche non partitiche.
Nessun poeta o flosofo posteriore ha espresso l'intimo signifcato
di questa coincidenza pi elegantemente e pi succintamente di Platone,
quando, verso la fne della sua vita, osserv quasi casualmente: .
!'inizio infatti, poich" contiene il suo proprio principio, viene a essere anche
un dio, il quale, fnch" dimora fra gli uomini, fnch" ne ispira
le imprese, salva tutto. #ra la stessa esperienza che qualche secolo
dopo faceva dire a Poli$io: !'inizio non soltanto e% met& dell'impresa,
ma arriva gi& verso la fne''. #d era sempre la stessa intuizione,
dell'identit& principium e principio che alla fne persuase
la comunit& americana a guardare alle proprie origini per
trovare una spiegazione delle proprie qualit& distintive e cos( un'indicazione
su ci che teneva in ser$o il futuro ) *+ intuizione che
gi& aveva condotto ,arrington - che certamente non conosceva
5 7 Le Leggi, li$ro . / , 0 0 ) .
) 1 P2!/3/2, ., '4.5. !'inizio 6 pi della met& del tutto 6 un antico prover$io,
citato cos( anche da 7ristotele, Etica nicomachea, 55*1$.
8 ' 9 . : . ;<7.#N, op. cit., p. 5.
4=)
7gostino e pro$a$ilmente non aveva una consapevole nozione della
frase di Platone - alla convinzione: ;ome nessuno potr& mai
indicarmi una comunit& nata diritta che sia mai diventata storta,
cos( nessuno potr& mostrarmi una comunit& nata storta che sia
mai diventata diritta.
Per quanto profonde e signifcative siano queste intuizioni, la
loro importanza politica emerge in piena luce solo quando ci si
sia resi conto che sono in netta contrapposizione con le vecchie
nozioni ancor oggi difuse sulla violenza che detta legge, necessaria
per qualsiasi fondazione e quindi, si suppone, inevitabile in tutte
le rivoluzioni. 8otto questo aspetto il corso della rivoluzione americana
racconta una storia indimentica$ile e insegna una straordinaria
lezione: perch" questa rivoluzione non scoppi da sola ma fu
fatta da uomini per comune deli$erazione e sulla $ase di reciproci
impegni. /l principio che venne alla luce durante quegli anni fatidici
in cui furono poste le fondazioni - non con la forza di un
solo architetto ma col potere com$inato di molti - era il principio
della mutua promessa e della comune deli$erazione+ e l'evento
stesso infatti decise, come ,amilton aveva auspicato, che gli uomini
sono realmente capaci >...? di darsi, per propria scelta e
attraverso matura ri@essione, un $uon governo: che essi non sono
condannati a far dipendere dal caso e dall'uso della forza le proprie
costituzioni politiche A 5.