Beyond Leviathan

The objective contradiction of such reproductive structure is blatantly obvious, even if it is idealized at the historical phase of wage slavery by the privileged side as the benevolent “Invisible Hand” and not perceived as an untenable contradiction by those at the receiving end.

Significantly, even at the stage of capitalistic wage slavery—when the primary modality of surplus-labor extraction and its discriminatory expropriation as expanding surplus value is the class determined, and supposedly “neutral,” economic material dependency of the workers (combined with the deceitful semblance of their “political equality” and indeed “liberty”)—from time to time, in periods of major crises, forms of directly authoritarian even extreme dictatorial political control must be imposed on society.

Antagonistic political formations, including the modern capitalist state, are hierarchical by their innermost substance, and therefore—even if they wanted to do the contrary—cannot help being opposed to any idea of substantive equality. T

The principal forms of antagonistically perpetuated materiality across history are:

1. slave-owning early societies, controlled by military force;

2. feudal serfdom in which the predetermined and even religiously sanctioned antagonistic rule continues to be imposed, wherever and whenever needed, by force;

3. “wage slavery” (in the words of Marx), perpetuating itself by directly material/economic means under the rule of capital, no matter how “advanced” and ultimately safeguarded by political/military force.

The need to find and secure a sustainable mode of overall decision-making is much more fundamental than the form in which that mode can be articulated even on the broadest scale through the state.

The state, as we know it, has been constituted across many centuries. In its present-day reality it confronts us with the historically specific determinations of the capital system as a structurally articulated and embedded mode of overall decision-making, with its own fundamental powers as well as their necessary limitations.

Despite all attempts—and corresponding vested interests—bent on the eternalization of this mode of overall societal decision-making, establishing conditions in which, as they say, “there can be no alternative,” the state is inherently historical.

For the false consciousness in question is not individualistic fanciful/arbitrary consciousness, as characteristically misrepresented by Max Weber in his projection of the fictitious but socially most apologetic “Private Demon”—decreed to be absolutely insuperable—dominating all individuals.

Historical sustainability is therefore totally inconceivable in conjunction with such determinations.

The innermost determinations of all-embracing historical development on this planet are always objective, even though their carriers are particular human individuals who may well exercise their role under the distorting determinations of false consciousness.