Comments and Questions to: John Protevi
LSU French Studies
Protevi
Home Page
Classroom use only. Do not cite w/o permission.
April 23, 1999
SA = state apparatus
AC = apparatus of capture
WM = war machine
DT = deterritorialization
RT = reterritorialization
SV = surplus
value
FE = form of expression
WW/BH = white wall/black hole
Proposition X: The State and Its Poles (424-27)
Proposition XI: Which
comes first? (427-37)
Proposition XII: Capture (437-48)
Proposition
XIII: The State and its Forms (448-60)
Proposition XIV: Axiomatics and the
present-day situation (461-73)
1. Addition, subtraction (461-3)
2. Saturation (463-4)
3. Models, isopmorphy (464-6)
4. Power (puissance) (466-7)
5. The included middle (468-9)
6. Minorities (469-71)
7. Undecidable propositions (471-3)
I. Proposition X: The State and Its
Poles (424-27)
A. Dumézil: two poles of sovereignty (capture/contract); exteriority
of war
1. Curious rhythm of the SA
a. Magician-emperor: one-eyed: signs that capture
b. Priest-jurist-king: one-armed: laws and tools
2. Relation of SA and WM
a. Magician-emperor: encasts WM
b. Jurist-king: appropriates WM for SA
c. Warrior: exterior, traitor
d. SA: zombies: pre-mutilation for work
B. “tempting 3-part hypothesis”: WM between two poles of SA,
assuring passage btw them
1. Norse, Greek, Roman examples from Dumézil and Detienne
2. This is not a causal movement:
a. Urstaat rather than evolution of State
b. Capture is “preaccomplished and self-presupposing” [=”magic”]
II. Proposition XI: Which comes first?
(427-37)
A. Urstaat: imperial/despotic capture
1. Overcoding of lineal-territorial codes by despot to whom all
belongs
2. Regime of signs = signifier
3. Machinic enslavement
4. Public property: giving w/o transfer of ownership: bond/rent
5. State is origin of agriculture, animal breeding, metallurgy
B. Contra evolutionism and neglect by ethnology of archaeology
1. Critique of Clastres
2. D/G: must see co-existence of empires and primitives in
interaction
a. Note on language as translation, not communication
b. Vectors w/in primitive society that “seek” the State
3. Topology of social machines; history only turns co-existence into
succession
C. Phyics models of causality to explain hunter-gatherer/State
interaction
1. Reverse causality w/o finality: convergent wave and anticipated
potential
2. Co-existent thresholds (virtual)
a. Town transconsistency: polarizing town-road-network
b. State intraconsistency: resonance-stratification-isolation
(1) DT = taking territory as object to stratify, make resonate
(2) hierarchy: recombine the isolated by subordination
(3) global integration; redundancy of resonance; stratification of
territories
c. Primitive societies: ward off/anticipate both town/State
thresholds/potentials
3. Each threshold (town/State) is a DT relative to primitive
territorial codes
a. reciprocal presupposition of town/State
b. Both needed to striate space
c. Towns achieve autonomy w/ decoded flows
d. But only States allow capitalism
(1) models of realization of axiomatic of decoded flows
(2) worldwide axiomatic like a single City (cf. Fascist desire for
autochthony)
D. Defining social formations by machinic processes rather than by
mode of production
1. Definitions:
a. primitive warding off;
b. State capture;
c. town polarization;
d. WM nomadization;
e. Ecumenical encompassment
2. Two forms of co-existence
a. Extrinsic interaction (brought to expression by ecumenical
organizations)
(1) discussion of ecumenicals (trade, religions, ...)
(2) objection: doesn’t capitalism homogenize?
(a) capitalist axiomatic – isomorphy
(b) isomorphy not = homogeneity
(c) peripheral polymorphy
b. Intrinsic interaction
(1) SA appropriates WM, polarization, and warding off
(2) warding off (bands) transferred to towns (vs States) and States (vs
ecumenicals)
(3) WM metamorphizes (revolution? creativity?)
III. Proposition XII: Capture (437-48)
(Rent/Profit/Tax)
A. Modified marginalism (“exchange” btw primitive groups)
1. “Last”/”marginal” = penultimate = limit (maintains assemblage)
2. Too far = threshold (forces change of assemblage)
B. Critique of exchangist models
1. hunter-gatherer; serial; itinerant; territorial: Each group
assesses its own limits from the start
a. Not a comparison of quantity of social labor (=exchange value)
b. Rather it is a matter of a desire to conserve an assemblage
(preventing the threshold)
c. Series of objects is evaluated in an “operation period”
2. sedentary groups: overcoding of land: at thresholds, stockpiling
(after exchange has lost its interest)
a. co-existence of simultaneously exploited territories or
b. succession of exploitations of same territory
C. Three types of capture
1. Ground Rent: comparison of exploitation of territories
a. Stock is what permits comparison of plantings
b. “Last” no longer = limit of ordinal series, but threshold of
cardinal set
c. Rent homogenizes, deterritorializes, (appropriation)
(1) by comparing different lands of one landowner
(2) relative to surplus over least productive land
d. Land is deterritorialized, distributed among people (vs. smooth
distribution of people on a territory)
2. Profit: work as other correlate of the stock
a. Same process of comparison and appropriation
b. Surplus labor = appropriation by entrepreneur: presupposition of
labor as comparison of activity
c. Primitive groups do not have labor, but free action in continuous
variation
(1) this free action does not mean no “work”, but that ritual codes
prevent profit taking
(2) that is, prevent appropriation and comparison
3. Taxation
a. Money is derived from taxation (money is political before it is
commercial/financial)
b. Money is the correlate and subset of stock
c. Issued by SA to establish equivalence of goods/services/money
d. Monopoly of foreign trade by State
D. Recap: Three-headed AC
1. Stock has three aspects: land/labor/money
2. AC is the megamachine, the archaic empire
a. Operations of direct comparison and monopolistic appropriation
(1) general space of comparison and mobile center of appropriation
(2) = WW/BH system = face of despot
b. General semiology overcoding primitive semiotics (hylomorphic
politics)
(1) primitive (or WM metallurgy): follow machinic phylum/singularities
(2) SAC: FE (resonance/appropriation); matter as homogeneous content
(comparison)
E. Schmitt’s model of the AC
F. State violence is preaccomplished (that is, it is invisible w/in
assemblage [= primitive accumulation])
1. D/G enlarge upon Marx: regimes of violence
a. Struggle: primitive: code: last of series
b. War: WM: violence against SA
c. Crime: capture w/o “right”
d. State violence: law: capture and create right to capture:
(1) structural violence
(2) i.e., create what is used against “criminals,” “primitives,” “nomads”
IV. Proposition XIII: The State and its forms
(448-460) Internal principle of evolution of the State
A. Archaic State’s overcoding frees decoded flows that escape
1. Decoding = state of flow escaping its own code
a. old, primitive codes
b. new flows: labor/mines; money/commerce/public/private property
(1) origin of private property
(2) freed slaves: decoded: develop trade and metallurgy
2. Figure of the Outsider: East/West
a. Childe: absorption of surplus/overcoded content
(1) military and bureaucracy
(2) artisans
b. Aegean marginality: access to Oriental stock through
plunder/trade w/o having to compile it
c. different role of metallurgy (artisans and traders) in West
(1) prefigured middle class
(2) no longer SV code, but SV flow
B. Aegean States: another pole of State: evolved empires (e.g. Rome)
1. Public sphere not = property but shared means of private
appropriation
a. Personal rather than public relations of dependence
b. Law = organizing conjunctions of decoded flows: topics
c. Regime of signs = processes of subjectification
d. Machinic enslavement leads to social subjection
C. Capitalism: conjugation of flows of decoded labor and wealth,
beyond SA
1. Capitalism = general axiomatic of decoded flows
2. Beyond previous flow inhibitors (feudal countryside; corporative
towns)
3. Social subject (no longer personal dependence bond)
4. Law = civil “code” = axiomatic
5. Property = right (deterritorialized from land/things/people)
D. Worldwide axiomatic beyond States (capitalism deterritorialized
beyond State DT/RT)
1. General characteristics
a. Cap DT has as object the commodity as materialized labor
b. International division of labor
c. State is mode of realization for worldwide axiomatic exceeding it
(not = “do w/o”)
d. State DT moderates capitalist DT and gives it compensatory RT
2. State isomorphy (“axiomatic” is not a metaphor)
a. All States isomorphic re: capitalist axiomatic: only one global
market
b. Polymorphy/heteromorphy
c. Metaeconomics
3. Nation-State: State as model of realization
a. Nation = land/people as DT = collective subjectification =
passional/living form for realizing capital
b. State = process of subjection
4. Machinic enslavement vs social subjection of modern State
a. Enslavement = humans part of larger machine controlled from above
b. Subjection = humans separate from object: subjected to machine
c. Capital = point of subjectification: all humans are subjects
(1) some are subjects of enunciation = capitalists (give orders)
(2) some are subjects of the statement = proles (take orders)
5. Worldwide axiomatic reinvents new form of machinic enslavement
(cybernetics)
a. Machinic SV: emergent property of new human/machine assemblage
b. New power: both subjection and enslavement as co-existent poles
(1) TV subjection: viewers used as node in communication network
(2) TV enslavement: viewers part of information loop:
ads–behavior–polls–ads–behavior-polls.....
E. Universal history of forms of the State
1. Archaic empires:
a. enslavement
b. overcoding
2. Diverse States: evolved empires, towns, feudalisms, monarchies:
a. subjectification and subjection
b. topical conjunction of decoded flows
3. Modern nation-States: models of realization for axiomatic of
decoded flows
a. Machinic enslavement and social subjection
b. General conjugation of decoded flows
F. The State and flows
1. Two poles of the State: bond and contract only forms of capture
a. Bond: overcoding
b. Contract: treatement of decoded flows resulting in
subjectification/subjection
(1) but this is itself a knot/bond
(2) thus subjection is only a relay for capture/machinic enslavement
(3) this is preaccomplished: neither voluntary nor forced
V. Proposition XIV: Axiomatics and the
current situation (461-73)
A. Introductory paragraph
1. Politics as axiomatic
2. Axiomatics in science
a. Stopping point; reordering to prevent decoded flows from escaping
b. Axiomatics/theorematics vs intuitionism/problematics
B. Numbered sections
1. Addition, subtraction (461-3)
a. Axioms of capitalism:
(1) component parts of assemblages of production/circulation/consumption
(2) conjugating (RT) the flows
b. Addition: capitalism always adding new axioms: New Deal, Marshall
Plan
(1) when integrated domestic market organized for foreign market
(2) = social democracy = method of mastering flows
c. Subtracting axioms: small number of axioms for dominant flows;
others theorems (=State force)
(1) = totalitarianism
(2) promotion of foreign sector
(3) = minimum State of anarcho-capitalism (Chile): Virilio
d. Fascism: (here = “national socialism”) SAC: economic definition
of fascist State
(1) coincides w/ totalitarian in collapse of domestic market/reduction of
axioms
(2) not an appeal to foreign capital, but a war economy
(a) expansionism (foreign to totalitarianism)
(b) autonomous fabrication of capital
(3) domestic market inundated with the Ersatz
(4) proliferation of axioms
(a) seemingly Keynesian
(b) tautology/fictitious proliferation: multiplication by subtraction
2. Saturation (463-4)
a. Immanent laws of capitalism: tendency of rate of profit to fall:
displacement of own limits
(1) confronts limits (depreciation of existing capital): totalitarian
restriction of axioms
(2) displaces limits (formation of new capital): social democratic
multiplication of axioms
b. Political struggle on level of axioms: “pressure of living flows”
3. Models, isomorphy (464-6): isomorphy of States as “domains of
realization of capital”
a. Isomorphy in center
b. Heteromorphy of East-West
c. Polymorphy of North-South: international division of labor
4. Power (puissance) (466-7)
a. Axiomatic marshalls higher power: destruction/war
(1) war follows movement of capital: increase in constant capital:
machinic enslavement
(2) depreciation/formation of capital: WM incarnated in
military-industrial complexes
b. Three steps in State appropriation of WM
(1) war becomes object of WM; State political aim directs WM
(2) total war becomes object of WM; State political aim in contradiction
w/ its object
(a) fascist “inversion”
(b) suicidal State
(3) peace becomes object of WM; world order (politics) is now aim of WM
(a) WM = materialized war
(b) no longer any need for fascism
(c) world = smooth space of terror / MAD
(d) States = WM of which they are only parts
c. Virilio’s theses
(1) peace of terror deterrence: object of WM
(2) technoscientific “capitalization” of WM
(3) terror of peace of WM
(4) the “unspecified enemy”
(5) security = materialized war
5. The Included Middle (468-9)
a. Center/E-W split destabilized by N-S split
b. Overcoding stimulates decoded flows: matter-energy; population;
food; cities
(1) internal margins
(2) difference between subjection and machinic enslavement
(a) subjection: labor vs property
(b) enslavement: split of labor
i) intensive SV: does not take route of labor
ii) extensive labor: erratic and floating
6. Minorities (469-71)
a. Minorities defined by becomings, by gap separating them from
majority
(1) nondenumerable set: line of flight: masses (“one” is black and white
and ... : Tiger Woods)
(2) minority “nationalitarian” movements
(3) recognition = transferring into denumerable sets = our own new axiom!
b. Struggle on level of axioms is important, but not final word
(1) index of another struggle
(2) opens gap of propositions of flow/propositions of axioms
(3) calculus: problems of nondenumerable sets vs. axioms of denumerable
sets
7. Undecidable propositions (471-3)
a. WM attacks on minorities
b. Capitalist integration of minorities
c. Leaving the plan(e) of capital: refusal of work, refusal of
proletarianism (variable capital)
d. Deepest law of capitalism: “overcoding” (as axiomatization) frees
decoded flows
e. Undecidable propositions = coexistence of conjugation/capture
& connection/escape (revolution)