Showing posts with label Karl Marx. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karl Marx. Show all posts

Monday, April 16, 2018

Appreciating Your Possessions: Extending Faith Through Extending Credit


     Another moonth is upon us, just as the Jungian shadow of the Moon is upon the Earth every forthwith and forthwhence. If time is money, then it's money for another lesson. But first, what have we learned thus far?
     That, though your cracked subconscious be flawed, it and its master are of the utmost value, almost as if they were holey. That you must choose your possessions wisely, and possess them as would a ghost, or else they shall possess you. That spiritual appreciation is the source of financial appreciation; of appreciation in value. That the source of value is the meaning of your name: it is like Hanson Enhancing the Value of the Ensign.
     To be not fooled by claims that “witchcraft” is itself a “source” of value; it is but an intermediary, a midwife and witness to the Birth of Value. The Cherishing TechniqueTM is as a divining rod, pointing us in the direction of The Source. Full ownership of yourself requires that you exploit the scarcity of your Unique, and redeem yourself – and the very sweat of your brow - for cash!
     To invest and extend credit is to invest and extend faith, that to put stock in your beliefs is how to take maximum advantage of your leverage. By choosing a living currency – one backed by time, and which is pierced, can be tethered, and keeps as current as the waters – we may procure a currency that works for us, instead of the other way around. Only then may we find a currency suitable for assisting us to work for one another, and for a wage other than death.
     To numismance the stone is to get through the Eye of the Rai. We mustn't fuck holes in ourselves by worshiping Mammon; instead, we must fuck those holes in order to sacrifice the hole for the whole of the donut. To do this is to see the Spiritual Light through the lens of the Eternal Bagel, to prevent the Moon from growing/glowing/growling/glowering red with blood mooney. It is to use the Moon as our spectacles, not as a spectacle, nor as a spectre.
     Only through the Cherishing TechniqueTM may we save ourselves from losing sight of the (w)hole in the Donut. For the donut is the pierced blood cell which is at the root of all existence, and thus the root of all living value. To see the Black Hole Son, the Day Religion and the Night Religion, and the Cosmic Clock Theory (and its corresponding time=money system) verily, we must Fuck With a Sigil.
     Also, double your value by killing your doppelgänger.
     This much we know for sure.
     And that is why we must blow a hole in the Moon.

     We cannot fit into the hands of God unless you put a hole in there first. Similarly, if we, our money, our god, and our Moon do not have holes in them, then they cannot be tethered down, and the Heavens can Spirit them away. The Moon is the last of these four to remain whole; thus, it must become hole for the cosmic coin-counter to be complete. This is how you keep your value Earth-bound. For if the Moon has a hole, then it can be tied to the Earth.
     Oh, also, we're gonna blow a hole in the Earth.
     The Discordians evidently believe that all value derives from 2 and 3. It has apparently escaped their notice that 0 is the source of 1, and thus, the source of all value and values. Their numerology is like a god that someone forgot to properly tie down at the hitching post. We must teach the Discordians how to return the favor which 0 gave to 1; by annihilating the 1, by adding a negative 1. It is in this way that by adding a hole to a barrel, we decrease its weight, though we add something to it. Again, think negative space, think Mustard Seed.
     I'm sure you think you need a hole in the Moon and the Earth like you need a hole in your hand, but have ye not heard it said that “Cleanliness is next to godliness”? As this is true, we must be wary, for our “money” is unclean in so many ways, as has been elaborynthmiated previously. And also, that “portability is next to trackability”?
     Though itchy money be a wolf's bane, rejoice! For, fortunately for you, portability, durability, divisibility, fungibility, induplicability, rarity, stability, and trackability are also next to godliness! Though a cloned Christ, or a cloned you, be duplicable, take heart! For this exempts you - saves you - from being used like a currency!
     Just as well, redeemability in real assets; effort involved in creation; high purchasing power, and service as a unit of accounting, medium exchange, and real store of value, are next to godliness. All of these are like theology; they are Like a Prayer.

     If mankind is to be redeemed, then it must be redeemed in real assets. But if that's so, then given that cows (also known as beef-apples) were one of the earliest forms of currency – being that their value derives from their mobility, their ability to self-replicate, and, just like the Chinese tea brick, the ability to be eaten as food in an emergency - what is to prevent us from taking them as Sacred Cows? From treating them as Golden Bulls, instead of gold bullion? From crucifying mankind upon a Cross of Beef? I've got no beef with them!
     We all know that the buillon cube is a portable, divided unit of accounting on the beef stock market. But cubes are not the shape for buillon which God hath ordained. Nay, the proper shape is the shape of the Moon. But are the Moon and Earth shaped as we believe?
     We can start with what we know for certain: first, that WeTM LiveTM InsideTM theTM EarthTM. It may take a Moonatic to explain, but we can infer from this that the Earth is a hollow disk. Those who doubt will ask, “Why, though the Earth seem flat from one perspective, from another it appear round as the disk of the Son?” But true believers will know that this is the result of the Earth being shaped like a nickel; and upon this nickel I shall build my Church. And just as the Earth is shaped like a nickel, so too is the Moon.
     The Earth goes 'round the Moon, just as naturally as the Moon goes around the Son. Everything revolves around the Son, just ask one of his followers. We celebrate Eostre, of course, by remembering that the Son hatched like an egg. Why? Because the Moon, just like God, is an egg. And just like the egg, God, and we His children, the Moon shall one day crack.
     Looking into the Eye of the Rai will afford us the Name. And the Name of the Rai is fei; Fay who say “they fill up slots with little things they find in space”. Our little Earth is but a nickel in the slot of a great cosmic slot machine, the plaything of some alien or deity who fashions zimself some sort of pinball wizard. And when the Earth and Moon have holes, they can be threaded with string. And if God can tie a string through his coins, then when God goes to play pinball, He can Get His Money Back.

     Just like the rai, and your god, you too must die while being brought to Shore. Or else, while helping others reach the shore. So the greater becomes the heroic tale of your money-carrying, Christ-carrying journey. And thus, the rai appreciate, while themselves being appreciated. As you are precious, so too are you appreciated. Although this sensing sentience - this touching feeling – is the root of the subject-object confusion, it is also its resolution.
     The only way to intellectually appreciate your possession - “your” god – is to poke a hole in it. It shows inquisitiveness; to poke a hole in it is to challenge it. And God always appreciates a challenge or a bet.
     Ye have heard it said that “He who does not work, neither shall he eat”. But from whom cometh this quote? St. Paul, of blessed memory, yes, and the Jamestown settlers, but also Lenin. What if you do as God commands, and walk around eating like a bird? Isn't it an assault on the freedom of worship to require a license for that?
     What is the purpose of a left-vs.-right divide on economic issues, when the “money” we all use is of no value to begin with? One side values labor and believes the Earth round, while the other values capital and believes the Earth flat. Reconciliation only becomes possible when currency stops being impossible; and that can only be done through alchemy.
     Just as “property is impossible” - since a society can't have property norms without either a state or unanimous agreement – currency is impossible. How can you hold a society's monetary norms together without either a standing army, or else mass psychology? Believe the Oculus, not the ochlocracy.

     As you will recall, Milton Friedman remarked that myth – that is, unquestioned, unverified superstition – is the most important element in a society's monetary system.
     A myth sets up the basis of an economic system, and thus a monetary system. As in the Cahokia Mounds, when a society chooses to spend hundreds of years building something – to help a warlord, or as tribute to a god – then its economy inevitably revolves around that. Just as well, its currency will be based on whichever resource occurs naturally in the area and has the popularity to become a durable form of currency for some amount of time.
     In his analysis of rai, Friedman rightfully avoided value judgments. But had Friedman concluded his research with a shamanic recommendation – like that we rip the cow's heart out before turning it into money, in order to boost the value of our beef-disks; or perhaps that we ought to eat our money to gain its purchasing power – then he could have made his observations that myth matters most in monetary matters more moving. ...By the way, do that.
     Why didn't Friedman ever shake a stick that had shrunken heads dangling from it, so the jaws open and close as the stick shakes up and down? Ludwig von Mises may be to blame. Ludwig von Mises (rhymes with “Jesus”) said, “Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices, and must not be left to esoteric circles.”
     And so, the free-marketer flat-Earthist must ask himself, why didn't Friedman ever notice his disagreement with Mises? Surely you can't have a coherent economic theory (and corresponding monetary cosmology) if one of your theorists believes that myth is essential to economics, while another believes that economics “must not be left to esoteric circles”? Blasphemy!
     Esoteric circles ought to determine everything! If indeed the Chaos Theory of Value is the key to overcumming the Power Theory of Value, then it must support a currency which is, like USD, truly a cum-oddity. For as we splurge with it, we splooge upon it. Therefore, only qualified alchemists may do monetary theory.

     Fortunately, there's a little more thinking going on about this subject on the Left.
     Labor leader Big Bill Heywood said, “The mine owners did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them!” Heywood alone spies the alchymical marriage which is necessary to spawn a healthy new monetary system.
     While Heywood understands the importance of alchemy in establishing a monetary system the best out of all those considered herein, Karl Marx comes close, and certainly bests Friedman. That's because Marx said, “The less you eat, drink, and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes the treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital.”
     Just as Lenin echoed the Christian settlers at Jamestown and the Christian St. Paul, Marx echoed Christ's exhortation in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:19). And we pretend that there is any purpose for the left-vs.-right divide on religious matters, let alone the economic and the monetary! Why divide people according to their values, when you can divide your currency into equally valuable Moon-units!? Only when moonetary matters are settled, may Jamestown, Russia, or the Kingdom of God - or the tab, for that matter - be settled.

     If you read your Bible, you'll know that God always speaks in capital letters. He calls Himself YHWH, and I AM, like a pissed-off internet troll. Why does He do this? To show people the Meaning of His Word, which is the source of all value in the universe.
     Speaking in tongues wouldn't even have occurred to us if not for God! He's the 0ne who taught us to ritualistically induce ecstatic trance, so that we generate new words! Think of how many more words you could capitalize on, if you also trademarked the CAPITALIZED versions of the divine but apparently meaningless utterances that you generate during trance states! Think of the prophets you'll rake in!
     Marx knew this just as well; for his advice shows that he understood the importance of not only capital and myth in creating value, but also of capitalizing on what you say, so that you don't have to capitalize what you say.

     For the Earth, too, shall crack like an egg. But that shouldn't mean that your money has to as well.
     Roll those nickels, God wants to play another round.



Written on April 15th and 16th, 2018
Edited on May 2nd, 4th, and 11th, 2018

Originally Published on April 16th, 2018

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Two Competing Class Theories

Man is more enslaved by desires than by his needs,
and by his needs more than by his captors,
but by none of these so much as he is enslaved by ideology.


The proper set of ideas allows him to think his captors into or out of existence.
The proper set of captors allow him to seize or liberate that which satisfies his needs.
The proper set of satisfied needs allows him to yearn for or forsake his desires.

The proper set of nourished desires allows him to

dream himself, control himself, need himself,

and even to transcend desire itself.

As such, the revolution must be intellectual, political, biological, and spiritual,
and - if for some reason all of these things cannot be pursued simultaneously -
and in that order of priority, although not without equal importance.




 Click, expand, and download the above image,
and upload it to your Facebook photos to use as a banner.


The above prose and images were inspired
by Wally Conger's "Agorist Class Theory",
as well as by the work of Karl Marx,
Max Stirner and Hannah Arendt.



For more entries on theory of government, please visit:

Friday, April 22, 2011

Materialism: Stirner, Marx, and Arendt


Max Stirner, Karl Marx, and Hannah Arendt

Max Stirner was born Johann Kaspar Schmidt in Germany in 1806. He was a student of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the German philosopher who developed systems of thought which came to be known as Hegelian Idealism and the Hegelian dialectic.
      In his thirties, Stirner had contact with the philosophers Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels, and possibly also Karl Marx. Stirner, Bauer, Engels, Marx, David Strauss, and Ludwig Feuerbach were among many philosophers whom were influenced by Hegel. Marx once wrote a work which criticized Stirner’s writing.
      Marx and Engels articulate materialist conceptions of history, which Engels refers to as “historical materialism”. Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of what causes the development of human society. It views political and societal structures as outgrowths of economic structures and activity.
      According to Josef Stalin, “historical materialism is the extension of the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of social life, an application of the principles… to the phenomena of the life of society; to the study of society and of its history.”
      While Marx and Stirner have each been described as both admirers as well as detractors of Hegel, Stirner is typically characterized as more un-Hegelian or anti-Hegelian than Marx.

      Each Marx and Stirner has his own conception of radical materialist philosophy. While Marx gravitates towards a collectivist model which focuses on labor and its product, Stirner articulates an individualist model which focuses on man, his mind, and his humanity.
      In order to properly differentiate the two philosophers’ ideas, it shall be necessary to first explain the concepts of commodification, fetishism, and abstraction.
      In Marx’s view, the actions which men perform in order to sustain their lives and their livelihoods have been turned into mere commodities, just like any other life-sustaining product such as food. So too has the relationship between laborer and employer been turned into a mere commodity, as well as having been objectified and mystified.
      Thus, the social relationship between laborer and employer – and labor itself as well as its product – have ceased to be things which are material and concrete, and have instead become things which are immaterial and abstract.
      The result of this abstraction and this fetishism of the commodity is that labor, its product, and the relationship have become things which are held over and against the laborer, causing him to become a slave, doomed to pursue the rarely-achievable goals of ever-increasing wages, benefits, standards of living, property values, and the payment of accumulating debt.

      Curiously, socialist philosopher Hannah Arendt criticizes Marx for doing the very same thing which he alleges he is trying to combat. According to Arendt, Marx has elevated the labor of man such that it has become the primary end of human existence. Arendt asserts that this has resulted in the subordination of the political realm to the needs of mere animal necessity, which she calls “the rise of the social”.
      Thus, Arendt effectively argues that it is neither the commodification of labor nor the fetishism thereof which enslaves men, but rather, men are enslaved by necessity, by their own need to survive; men are unfree because they have obligations to themselves which are extraordinarily difficult to provide for permanently.
      Stirner would likely be inclined to agree with Arendt in her criticism of Marx. While Marx is focused on labor as a commodity, Stirner appears to be focused on men themselves – as well as on their minds and their humanity – as the things which have been commodified, objectified, and mystified.

      Stirner defends solipsism, which holds that one’s mind is the only thing which one can be certain exists. Stirner writes, “I am not abstraction alone… I am not a mere thought, but at the same time I am full of thoughts, a thought-world.” Thus, Stirner defends men and the minds of men as the only things which are certainly concrete and material.
      Often, publicly-traded companies are referred to as “corporations”, governmental entities are referred to as “parliamentary bodies”, and groups of people belonging to churches or governmental entities are referred to as the “body politic” or as the “corpus mysticum” – meaning “mystical body” of the group. All of these terms connote the idea that groups of people may perceive themselves to possess a singular physicality. This is perhaps best illustrated by the manner in which Catholics partake in the sacrament.
      But Stirner contests the claimed corporeity of “God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc.”, and asserts that the only way to reclaim what is one’s own and what is one’s property is to destroy the corporeity of these “ghosts”, to resume perceiving of oneself as his own creator – dislocating the traditional role assigned to the gods – and to proclaim, “I alone am corporeal”.
      Thus, Stirner asserts that only the singular man may possess a body – which is concrete, material, physical, and tangible – as opposed to an abstract, immaterial, intangible concept which multiple men have agreed to construct in their own minds through voluntary cooperation which is – more often than not – merely temporary.
      Being that Stirner asserts that men themselves are corporeal, it would be reasonable to assume that he disagrees with Marx that the labor relationship, labor, or its product were ever either concrete or material to begin with, and so, they cannot be abstracted, because they were already abstract concepts which only existed in the minds of those who perceived them.

      It may be concluded that Stirner believes that men have had their own minds and their own humanity abstracted from them and held over and against them, and that men’s humanity and the need for mankind to pursue a more perfect humanity in addition to the goal of civilization have turned men themselves into slaves.
      Now, due to the commodification of the minds and of the humanity of men themselves – and the fetishism thereof – rather than chasing unachievable economic goals through endless labor, men instead chase the deity-like perfection which is held over and against them by the abstract, immaterial, intangible, and truly incorporeal body politics of the church and of governmental entities, in addition to chasing examples of pinnacles of civilization which often draw back hundreds of generations into the past.
      Thus, humanity and civilization have become mere abstract concepts which are no longer grounded in reality. Furthermore, considering the principles of solipsism subscribed to by Stirner, one can no longer even be certain that humanity and civilization exist in the first place.
      As a result, rather than adopting a societal model which places focus on the importance of the individual, his uniqueness, and his specialty, we have allowed the perfect – which is, for all intents and purposes, unachievable – to take precedence as the primary end of human existence.
      This may be what is truly signified when the abstract is “held over and against us”. Not only is perfection above us, but it has – in a way – become an enemy; an enemy which taunts us from behind the safety of the whip and the chains which it uses to hold and keep us in thrall, terrifying us into resigning not to even consider whether we are free to reach out and achieve it.

      Ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras said, “Man is the measure of all things”. It is a well-known and widely-accepted premise in capitalist and Smithian economics that efficiency, prosperity, and liberty increase with the division of labor and the specialization of profession and task.
      But this specialization has been forfeited, along with the specialty of men – i.e., that which makes men special – and men have consented that their minds, their freedom – especially the freedom to choose their own profession – and their humanity – their essence – become mere chattel, unachievable perfection always just beyond arms’ reach.
      Stirner writes, “…liberalism is a religion because it separates my essence from me and sets it above me, because it exalts [capital-‘M’] ‘Man’ to the same extent as any other religion does its God or idol, because it makes what is mine into something otherworldly, because in general it makes out of what is mine, out of my qualities and my property, something alien – namely, an ‘essence’; in short, because it sets me beneath [capital-‘M’] Man, and thereby creates for me a ‘vocation’.”
      While “vocation” typically denotes one’s occupation, profession, or task, Stirner is using the word in a way which suggests that what he means is that an individual feels that liberalism has summoned him into living a religious life; that he has begun to feel that he has a calling which causes him to feel obligated to act within a framework of moral principles that resembles the structure of religion.

      Stirner appears to be defending men’s ability to choose their own callings, occupations, professions, and tasks, and to create themselves in the manner which they believe to be most conducive to their own uniqueness and specialty. But what does it truly mean to be special?
      A species is a class of individuals having some common characteristics or qualities. An individual is deemed “special” when it is recognized as having some unusual characteristic or quality which distinguishes it from the others. Thus, as one out of many – e pluribus unum – it becomes an example of the commonality to which it belongs.
      In a representative democracy, the common people choose one individual person from among them to become their representative. Once he is chosen – or elected – he joins the collective governmental body politic, and, in so doing, he runs the risk of becoming drowned out in a sea of voices, and compelled to negotiate his own principles away in the name of accomplishment, getting things done, and doing what the people pay him to do. Thus, he can lose his uniqueness, his specialty.
      However, as he has distinguished himself from among his people, and as he has been elected as an example of the people, he also becomes an example to the people and for the people. The representative’s achievements become a symbol of the achievements of his district’s constituency, and the representative’s moral character becomes an example to and for the moral standards of the people whom he represents.
      Hmmm… one individual coming from among the people, and rising up to be held over and against them as an example of, to, and for their achievement and their moral character, and then participating in their judgment… where have I heard that before?
      Stirner writes that Jesus was “not a ringleader of popular mutiny”, nor was he “carrying on any liberal or political fight against the established authorities”, nor was he a revolutionary who desired to overturn the state. Nor, writes Stirner, was Jesus someone who expected any “salvation from a change of conditions”.
      Instead, Stirner characterizes Jesus as an insurgent who “wanted to walk his own way, untroubled about – and undisturbed by – these authorities”, and so, he “straightened himself up” and “lifted himself above everything that seemed so sublime to the government and its opponents, and absolved himself from everything that they remained bound to...” Stirner continues, “…precisely because [Jesus] put from him the upsetting of the established, he was its deadly enemy and real annihilator…”.

      What is the desire of humanity? Is the desire of humanity whatever the collective wants and needs? Or is the desire of humanity the desire for humanity, whether felt by the collective or by the individual; the feeling of want and need to obtain that abstract, intangible, immaterial, incorporeal, unachievable commodity known as humanity itself, which is always held – just beyond reach – over and against us in the forms of civilization and moral perfection?
      Is there something that makes the desire of humanity which is felt by the collective inherently superior to the desire of humanity which is felt by the individual, or are the desire for humanity and the desire of the individual one and the same?
      Stirner would likely argue that it is the fetishism of the commodification of humanity which has caused this “two-heads-are-better-than-one”, “strength-in-numbers”, “what-is-popular-is-always-right-and-what-is-right-is-always-popular” mindset.
      Lower-case-“m” men and lower-case-“h” humans have allowed capital-“M” Man and capital-“H” Humanity to get away from them and become abstracted from them. Thus, our humanity has disappeared; it has gone from the only thing which we were certain materially and concretely existed to an intangible, immaterial concept.
      Humanity has become held over and against us; used not only as a standard and as an example, but also as something which ironically and humorlessly can be legitimately used as an excuse to punish and torture us for failing to achieve it.
      Humanity has become institutionalized into the falsely corporeal realms of the state, the church, and the corporate business. These entities have stolen our unique claim to the concrete, the material, the corporeal, the physical, the tangible, the achievable. They have stolen our ownership; literally, that which has the quality of being our own. Stirner contends that these things are property which have been stolen from us, and that they are property which we can and must reclaim.

      Some say we should glorify that which we hold in common. It may be argued that we, in fact, do this quite often, through voting and through the election of our representatives. But what is it about using voting results to make decisions that necessarily causes the outcome to be wiser, fairer, and more appropriate?
      If individual freedom to pursue one’s own selfish desires does not bring about the public good, then why are individuals given the freedom to vote democratically in accordance with the pursuit of their own selfish desires?
      Furthermore, if all legitimate government power is derived from the authority of the governed, then precisely why and how is the government able to do things which those governed individuals are not themselves permitted to do, such as wield a monopoly over the legitimate use and exercise of coercive, violent force?
      How can one delegate a right which one does not have?
      Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin agree that private property rights are to be upheld through social contract. Stirner appears to agree as well, although the manner in which he articulates that agreement reveals a unique approach to the concept of the social contract.
    Stirner writes, “According to the Communists’ opinion, the commune should be proprietor. On the contrary, I am proprietor, and I only come to an understanding with others about my property. If the commune does not do what suits me, I rise against it and defend my property… society gives me what I require – then… I take what I require.”
      He also writes, “Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property…” and “What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing.”
      Stirner is correct when he contends that the commune should not be proprietor. The truth is that the commune cannot be proprietor. To be proprietor is to possess property; to have ownership. Inherent in the concepts of property, propriety, ownership, and ownness is individuality.
      Only one man can have what is his own; only one man can have what is proper to himself. The only types of so-called “propriety” which the commune may wield are possession, utility, and access.

      Those who assert that that which is common to all individuals should be held up, exalted, and glorified as the ultimate goal of the existence of men and as an example to and for them are often the same people who seem content to allow just the opposite to occur; that the collective ought to choose one unique, special, distinguished individual from among them to be held up, exalted, and glorified as one who represents the masses, in exemplification of them.
      Perhaps they allow this to happen because they know that their representative’s uniqueness and specialty nearly inevitably become overshadowed by the other representatives with whom he becomes obligated to compromise his ideals in the name of getting things done.
      That which all people have in common does not need to be held up, glorified, nor exalted; it merely needs to be recognized.
      Lower-case-“m” men have no need to become capital-“M” Man; what they need is to take satisfaction in – and feel fulfillment from – the mere fact that they are men, whom are uniquely material, corporeal, physical, tangible, and concrete, unlike the abstract, falsely corporeal body politics which beat them for failing to achieve perfect capital-“M” Manhood.
      Likewise, lower-case-“h” humans have no need to attain capital-“H” Humanity; what they need is to take solace in the fact that they are able to conceive of such an idea in the first place – which gives them certainty about the materiality of their own minds, their own freedom of thought, and their ability to achieve a sort of theoretical perfection – and in the fact that they are free and liberated enough within their own minds to arrive at their own conclusions about how best to make decisions that may be conducive to guiding them towards their own personal, subjective conceptualization of what humanity really is.

      But can we truly attain perfection? Is capital-“H” Humanity within our grasp? No, it is certainly not within our grasp. However, it may be within the reach of individuals whom have truly freed themselves; individuals whom have become free through reclaiming their ownership and propriety.
      Once an individual has acceded to the commonly accepted system of rules, he has consented to be governed by the institutionalization of mediocrity. Once an individual has acceded to the commonly accepted set of constraints, he has consented to become chained to the wall of Plato’s Cave, only able to see – although not even necessarily comprehend – the shadows of the true Forms.
      It is only when a man decides he will play by neither the Rule of Law nor the rules of revolt… that he reaches out and grasps true freedom, perfection, capital-“M” Manhood, and capital-“H” Humanity.
      It is only when a man realizes his own capacity as creator, commits unequivocally to creating himself, reclaims his corporeity from his captors – the body politics of the church and the State – and absolves himself from everything to which the body politics remain bound.
      It is only when a man rises above the external material world within his own mind that he distinguishes himself as unique, as exceptional. As exception to the Rules.
      Out of many, one. E pluribus unum.


Post-Script (2014):

     The adoption of terms like "head of State" into our political lexicon - as well as "the invisible hand of the market", "the three arms of government", "body politic", "parliamentary body", "the publicly-traded corporate (bodily) business", its "corporate head-hunters" - and also the perception that the "oneness" of the supposedly collectivist "union", the "corpus mysticum" of the Church, the notion of "corporate personhood", and ideas like Strawman Theory and Capitis Diminutio, affirm the propriety of Stirner's desire to destroy and reclaim the corporeity of these "ghosts".
     That the national bank, corporations, and unconstitutional government bureaus and programs have the potential to be extended (i.e., to live) past the expiration of their charters (and indefinitely); that an American president has joked that government bureaus seem to possess eternal life; that the government still claims "legitimate violence" in asserting its right to indefinitely detain and murder us, and that the legal fiction of "corporate personhood" (which is possessed by governments, businesses, cooperatives, unions, churches, trusts, etc.) fails to obligate corporate entities to behave with the same responsibility and responsiveness which are expected of individuals, re-affirm Stirner's desire.
     Perhaps we should describe what we desire as "corporate humanity".







The following was written in July 2011,
as "Liberalism as a Religion".

     Decades before Ann Coulter was railing against liberalism as a secular religion, Max Stirner decried liberalism as a religion. Religion and liberalism alike become vocations (callings), compelling men to subject their actual bodies to the authority of falsely-corporeal body-politics (corpus mysticum / mystical body) of the church and the governmental association.
     Welfare liberalism is like asceticism in that it teaches the poor to endure their own suffering (in the case of Catholicism, with the hope that the poor will come to identify their suffering with the suffering of Christ). But liberalism largely ignores the other important role of religion, which is to encourage private charity.
     When laborer and employer contract with one another, each may become aware that the values of each person is subjective; the laborer values his employer’s money more than he values his own labor, while the employer values the laborer’s money more than he values his own money.
     Once one of the parties becomes aware that the other party believes himself to be in a position of benefit (or advantage), he may conclude that he himself must be in a position of detriment (being taken advantage of). But he may fail to take account of his own subjective desires, i.e., that he would take advantage of the other party were the opportunity presented to him (and indeed it is presented to him whenever an employment interview takes place).
     It is the duty of each party to exchange to simply choose for his own purposes whether mutual aid, mutual harm, unilateral benefit, or unilateral detriment is occurring. To assume the other person is trying to harm him is an act of apprehension, neglecting the possibility of mutual aid based on subjective values.
     But to ignore this apprehension and proceed with the contract is an act of good faith; it is an act of charity in which at least one party concerns himself with profiting off of the agreement, but resigns himself to rejoicing in the opportunity to help and serve another human being.
     Coerced charitable giving earned through the extraction of taxes – on the other hand - is a perversion of consequentialist morality; it relieves the taxpayers’ burden of having to bother to contemplate how to act morally of their own volition, and delegates the duty of determining morality to government and to the institutionalized mediocrity resulting from the decision-making of the majoritarian will.
     As in the Alex character in “A Clockwork Orange”, not being able to do evil does not make us good, so long as we still wish to do evil. I see economic systems which place emphasis on the private sphere as inherently more moral than those which do not. I say, give evil a fair shot at competing, and let the good win out by identifying evil as such.



Originally Written in April 2011
Post-Script Written and Added in July 2011





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http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/02/max-stirner-images.html

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http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2013/08/anarchist-kindergarten-open-letter-to.html

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Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Writing of Michel Foucault as Radical Political Theory

 Michel Foucault (1926-1984)




In The History of Sexuality: An Introduction – Volume 1, author Michel Foucault explores the relationship of sex, sexuality, and procreation to the family, society, the State, the economy, religious institutions, and cultural practices.

But does Foucault’s writing amount to a theory of politics? Furthermore, if The History of Sexuality is indeed political theory, does it qualify as theory that can rightfully be deemed “radical?” My answer to both of these questions is yes.

I aim to defend Foucault’s writing as radical political theory, and to argue that any theoretical writing that asserts itself to be so, or is itself asserted to be so, must necessarily include discussions of sex and sexuality as imperative to the understanding of both the origins of society and of the individual, as well as an analysis of how sex, morality, history, and power have influenced and shaped one another.

According to Karl Marx, “[t]o be radical is to grasp things by the root. But for man the root is man himself.” (The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 60) Thus, any theoretical writing purported or purporting to be radical is necessarily writing that is focused on explaining what brought about the existence of a man as an individual himself, or of men as a group themselves, in the first place.

Any theoretical writing claimed or claiming to be political is writing that is focused on explaining the origins of either the State, government, the rule of law, the use of force and enforcement; techniques, methods, and mechanisms of exercising power and control; the propagation of moral standards and norms, all six of these, or any combination thereof.

Therefore, theoretical writing that is both radical and political is writing that attempts to explain and / or provide evidence for relationships of the State, legislation, power, and force, to the origins of a man as an individual, and to the origins of men as components of, and actors within, society.

What is meant by “the origins of a man as an individual” is that radical political theory must explain the relationships of the State, power, force, and compulsion, to that original act which brings about the production of a man as an individual; i.e., sexual intercourse.

This is to say that the writing must include a discussion of how the natural and biological conditions which surround sex, sexuality, and sexual reproduction shape and are shaped by them, and of how those conditions relate to the need for order and security. 

What is meant by “the origins of men as components of, and actors within, society” is that radical political theory must explain the relationships of the State, power, force, and compulsion to whichever event or process brought about the production of men or of mankind as a group; i.e., the advent of society.

This is to say that the writing must include a discussion of how the societal, moral / ethical, religious, and cultural customary conditions which surround sex, sexuality, and procreation affect them and are in turn affected by them, and of how those conditions relate to the necessity and dependence that make it appropriate and beneficial for men to become associated with one another.

Does Foucault do this, then, with his writing? I shall first demonstrate that his writing discusses the relationship of the State, force, compulsion, and regulation to sexual intercourse and reproduction. 

On page 24, Foucault claims that “one had to speak of [sex] as of a thing to be not simply condemned or tolerated but managed, inserted into all systems of utility, regulated for the greater good of all, made to function according to an optimum. Sex was… a thing one administered [, and] called for management procedures… In the eighteenth century, sex became a ‘police’ matter… not the repression of disorder, but an ordered maximization of collective and individual forces… A policing of sex: that is, not the rigor of a taboo, but the necessity of regulating sex through useful and public discourses.”

On pages 37-38, Foucault says that “[u]p to the end of the eighteenth century, three major explicit codes – apart from the customary regularities and constraints of opinion – governed sexual practices: canonical law, the Christian pastoral, and civil law… They were all centered on [the marital relation, which] was under constant surveillance: if it was found to be lacking, it had to come forward and plead its case before a witness…. [the courts] could condemn homosexuality as well as infidelity, marriage without parental consent, or bestiality. What was taken into account in the civil and religious jurisdictions alike was a general unlawfulness. [A]cts ‘contrary to nature’… were perceived simply as an extreme form of acts ‘against the law’; they were infringements of decrees which were just as sacred as those of marriage, and which has been established for governing the order of things and the plan of beings. Prohibitions bearing on sex were essentially of a juridical nature.”

On page 83, Foucault writes “[p]ower is essentially what dictates its law to sex… power prescribes an ‘order’ for sex… sex is to be deciphered on the basis of its relation to the law… power acts by laying down the rule… [t]he pure form of power resides in the function of the legislator; and its mode of action with regard to sex is of a juridico-discursive character.”

Whether Foucault is correct or incorrect, and whether he uses evidence and examples that are either strong or weak, he does at least attempt to show that there existed a relationship between law and the courts and sexual practices, which fulfills the first requirement of my definition of radical political theory; that the writing must at least attempt to verify that there have existed legal practices that, in one way or another, have acted upon and affected the free exercise of sexual practices.

Next, I will demonstrate that Foucault’s writing discusses the relationship of natural and biological conditions to the need for order and security.

On pages 25-26, Foucault writes about “the emergence of ‘population’ as an economic and political problem”. “[P]opulation as wealth,… as manpower or labor capacity, population balanced between its own growth and the resources it commanded. Governments perceived that they were not dealing simply with subjects, or even with a ‘people,’ but with a ‘population,’ with its specific phenomena and its peculiar variables: birth and death rates, life expectancy, fertility, state of health, frequency of illnesses, patterns of diet and habitation. All these variables were situated at the point where the characteristic movements of life and the specific effects of institutions intersected… At the heart of this economic and political problem of population was sex: it was necessary to analyze the birth-rate, the age of marriage, the legitimate and illegitimate births, the precocity and frequency of sexual relations, the ways of making them fertile or sterile, the effects of unmarried life or of the prohibitions, the impact of contraceptive practices…”

On page 140, Foucault says that “[d]uring the classical period… there was… the emergence, in the field of political practices and economic observation, of the problems of birthrate, longevity, public health, housing, and migration. Hence there was an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations, marking the beginning of an era of ‘bio-power.’”

The quotations in the two preceding paragraphs prove that Foucault is concerned with arguing that governments perceived that sex and population were problems related to politics and economics, and that the understanding of how natural and biological factors such as those mentioned above affect the ability of governments to deal with their subjects in such a way that allows for the provision of security and order for the populace as they relate to favorable allocations of wealth and resources. This means that Foucault’s writing fulfills the second part of my definition of “radical political theory.”

Next, I will show that Foucault’s writing includes a treatment of the relationship of politics, force, and compulsion to that which makes associates of men.

On pages 142-143, Foucault says “biological existence was reflected in political existence… Power would no longer be dealing simply with legal subjects over whom the ultimate dominion was death, but with living beings… If one can apply the term bio-history to the pressures through which the movements of life and the processes of history interfere with one another, one would have to speak of bio-power to designate what brought life and its mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations and made knowledge-power an agent of transformation of human life… [the] ‘threshold of modernity’ has been reached when the life of the species is wagered on  its own political strategies…  modern man is an  animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question.”

The preceding quotation shows that Foucault claims a direct relationship between the advent of “modern man” and the beginning of politics, which means that his writing fulfills the third requirement of what constitutes a theoretical work that is both radical and political.

Next, I will show that Foucault’s writing asserts that sex and reproduction are affected religious, moral / ethical, and customary conditions.

There is certainly no shortage of evidence to support the claim that Foucault shows that religious and moral / ethical conditions have affected sex, sexuality, and reproduction. On page 37, Foucault explains that many laws and norms governing sex and sexuality arose out of the need to protect the sanctioned, procreative sexuality that exists within traditional marriage, which may be conceived of as a moral / ethical, religious, or legal / civil status, practice, or institution.

Perhaps the best-known example of religion acting upon sexual mores is the prohibition of adultery by the Sixth Commandment, of which Foucault makes mention on page 39. On page 9, he discusses sex and sexuality as “sin”, and lists on page 39 several “grave sins” such as “debauchery…, rape, spiritual or carnal incest… sodomy, or the mutual ‘caress.’”

On page 159, he says that Christianity employed procedures “to make us detest the body.” On page 19, in discussing the Counter Reformation, Foucault says that the “new pastoral” meant that the flesh would be made into the “root of all evil, shifting the most important moment of transgression from the act itself to the stirrings – so difficult to perceive and formulate – of desire.” On pages 4-5, he says that “modern Puritanism imposed [on sex]… taboo, nonexistence, and silence.”

Foucault also shows that conditions related to customs but not necessarily related to ethics, morality, religion, or spirituality, have affected sex. On page 61, he says that “[i]n [ancient] Greece, truth and sex were linked, in the form of pedagogy, by the transmission of a precious knowledge from one body to another; sex served as a medium for initiations into learning.” He also mentions, on page 57, that numerous societies, the list of which transcends religious and cultural boundaries, “endowed themselves with an… erotic art [in which] truth is drawn from pleasure itself… [the] knowledge [of which] must be deflected back into the sexual practice itself”.

The quotes in the previous several paragraphs show that Foucault attempts to make his readers aware of how sexual practices have been affected by ethics, morality, religion, and cultural customs; not only that such practices have been limited, controlled, or interfered with, as is often the case, but also, as in the case of the ancient Greeks, have occasionally been endorsed and sanctioned as well. These quotes fulfill my fourth requirement for “radical political theory.”

Finally, I will show that Foucault alleges a relationship between customary cultural conditions and the necessity and dependence that bring about the association of men. 

On page 135, Foucault describes the Roman cultural custom “patria potestas,” by which the male head of the family had the “right to ‘dispose’ of the life of his children and his slaves; just as he had given them life, so he could take it away.” Soon after, he discusses the custom’s application to the sovereign. Foucault goes on to say on page 136 that “[t]his death that was based on the right of the sovereign is now manifested as simply the reverse of the right of the social body to ensure, maintain, or develop its life.”

On  page  137,  he further  expounds that  “[w]ars are  no longer  waged  in the  name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital… the power to expose a whole population to death is the underside of the power to guarantee an individual’s continued existence… that one has to be capable of killing in order to go on living… has become the principle that defines the strategy of states… If genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers, this is not because of a recent return of the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population.”

The quotations in the two preceding paragraphs, all coming from The History of Sexuality’s chapter “Right of Death and Power Over Life,” show that Foucault has alleged the existence of a relationship between the patria potestas custom, the right of the sovereign, the use of mobilizing subjects for war and slaughter “in the name of life necessity.” This fulfills the fifth and last of my requirements for radical political theoretical writing, which is that a link must be made between cultural practices and biological necessity.

Throughout The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault touches on political themes such as the State, the sovereign, the courts, legal codes, religious / ethical / moral codes, and war. Also, he touches on radical themes such as the origins of man as a political animal, and sex as it relates to biology and to survival.

There should remain no doubt as to whether this work by Foucault amounts to a theory of radical politics.  It deals with the origins of a man as an individual, and of men as a collection of individuals coming together to associate.

What his writing seemed to lack, however, although the absence of which in no way would have detracted from the validity of my claim, was a discussion of the origins of the division of labor, as in Karl Marx’s The German Ideology. Had Foucault focused more on the differences between the genders as something which gave order to the structure of human development, and / or had he given more thought to how the course of human progress has been affected by the differences in the abilities of members of each gender to perform certain actions, it perhaps would have been easier to defend his writing as of a radical and political nature.




Written in May 2009
Originally Published on October 24th, 2010





For more entries on gender, sexuality, and L.G.B.T.Q. issues, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/justice-stephen-breyer-and-recognition.html

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