[Translated excerpts from Gegenstandpunkt 1/2 1996]
The call of the rulers on the subjects to help them to power has two conditions: a complete state monopoly on violence whose laws are binding over the society and whose underlying principle stands firm so that it is doesn’t make any difference which figure takes over leadership of office. On the other side, subjects who agree to their role as a people and, as such, demand leadership. (Democratic rule is characterized by the fact that sovereignty is based on the will of the people.) The vote, marking a preferred leader, is in practice the affirmation of being ruled: authorization. For politicians the importance of the vote consists of their being elected entitles them to be in power. (They do not line up an alternative state principle but present themselves as having the aptitude for the existing office. Therefore a lost election does not lead to rebellion, but to the role of the opposition that wants to win the next election.) The people are honored that they are allowed to elect whom they want to be governed by.
On the one hand, the point of view taken in the democratic dialogue and by the democratic public is the requirement that the politicians be authorized; on the other, the right of the people to clever leadership of the nation. Only by these standards is there discord. (He does not come across well = the people did not understand which one is better / he is not a politician worthy of his office...)
The good reasons to vote are no good (but say something about what insanity the society ends up with).
This experiences its reversal in the fight of every practical criticism. A democratically legitimized rule is not criticizeable; their measures are to be accepted -- and anyone who offends against it is an enemy of democracy In the arguments for voting, as well as in handling practical criticism, it is clear that when democracy becomes the argument, it is not about trying to convince, but about calling for absolute validity for the rule.
With these killer arguments for democracy the elected rulers (and their apologists) sue for the respect that their authority is justly entitled to:
It is not because of the brilliance of these arguments that politicians get the respect that they call for. The "arguments" do not establish why one has to comply. The fact is that they appeal to subordinate subjects who already have the will to be ruled.
How does the insanity work so that those who are subjected to rule want to be ruled and even worry about the interests of those who control them?
These two things belong together, as everybody knows. This becomes clear when other political forms of rule are criticized because they adopt different economic principles within their territories. We are ruled by freedom (and all the other beautiful achievements of Democracy & Market, which are uncontroversial Goods), which is missing elsewhere in the world. Rule is discovered elsewhere, which enslaves its subjects for their purposes; in reverse, with the “argument” that here rule is subservient, rule is denied.
Ideology: the state kindly donates the "order" which is necessary so that people can do what they want.
Already this is the purpose that democracy forces on its citizens: Free-market economy only!
But all subjects are subordinated equally to state violence, and have to accept its regulatory power of equality. The state creates the terms and conditions for all areas that everything they do is related to the state.
The setting of one’s purposes is left up to the subjects themselves, under the condition that they too own the state regulations when going about their business: freedom. Within the limits of what is permitted (not forbidden) materialism is justified and the legitimate will is protected, which includes that these limits are respected, protected and sanctioned from excess. (Importantly: in democracy, contrary to all preceding forms of rule, the will is not broken, but is free and placed under conditions.)
There a will is prescribed that knows it is dependent in everything that it plans because it is dependent on state regulations. (The democratic violence monopoly does not recognize any other will anyway!) The state requires that its regulations, which are the conditions for every getting along of the subjects, become the content of the will of the subjects. If the people get involved in incorporating the state barriers into the program of their will (to "unite"), then they are nationalists. The equating of one’s will = what is allowed, the relativizing of interests on the scale of the permitted (legitimate interests), happens only on condition that one sees in these limits not the dictates of a superior force, but the regulations of a community which one feels to be one’s partner: the nation.
How does an innocent person become a nationalist?
The objective condition is that one is subordinated to a superior force. The interpretation that one is not subjected to it, but belongs to it (to gain something from this community), comes from the interest in wanting to use the rule. The quality is attributed to it of being useful, i.e. one's own, for me.
Democratic rule requires this misinterpretation – conceiving rule as a collective -- of its subjects. It demands not only surrender before its violence, but requires that it be taken up by the will of its subjects. Turned around, the existence and every freedom of democratic sovereignty are based on this small contribution of the subject, which is why this false consciousness is constantly maintained.
This necessarily false (these two attributes actually directly contradict each other!) consciousness is determined by the constitution of this community. It is "necessary" that in social conditions dictated by force one must find a way of getting by. It is it "false" to extend this practical necessity into a theoretical judgment and to want to not only know it as a getting along in these social conditions but can and want to believe in them as mine. Then the negative conditions become interpreted as great positive conditions for one’s benefit (restrictions as means) and pleased about the mechanism of this society. Everything is given "should" as a quality -- which immunizes them against every negative experience. The addressee of the "should" is the violence monopoly, which through its power should govern over these idealisms. So the subjects have a positive interest in the state. Then it matters to them that the correct person sits in power. Thus the insanity comes about that the subjects advise the rulers about their leadership responsibilities. This is rightfully owed to the fact that the state forcefully binds them to capitalism. All idealisms are not destroyed, but are served with interpretations: because of the "objective constraints" to which the government is also subjected (but which it creates itself), fulfilling demands is difficult and is also connected with unpleasant side effects, but of course is in the best of hands with the government ...
The practice of rule does not agree with the subordinated, and not only at the starting point, but at all corners and ends there is the possibility of gaining clarity about the purposes of the community and discontinuing allegiance to it. Otherwise the mind is strained to make peace with it.
Everyone is to brood over the correct dose of freedom. Everyone knows that the allocation of the correct dose is the business of the highest power, and also say that it is a decision of the rule, but talk as if freedom is for the people. Instead of asking the obvious question what the rule wants with it if the order to freedom is already its action.
The real content of freedom is decided by the state: From its purposes follow which interests are fulfilled. If the people discuss their idealism of freedom and about the correct dose, they first of all know that the state is the decision maker, secondly it is clear to them that only entitled interests may be spoken of, and it is also well-known to them that the content of freedom is property, i.e. how much freedom someone enjoys has to do with their means. The popular saying that the rich become even richer and the poor become even poorer expresses that the existence of rich and poor, which line up their freedom with quite different means, gets into order, when it is felt to be unfair.
The fact that the means are so unequally distributed is not "simply like that," but is contained in the program. From the fact that production is committed to property, distribution relations follow. Where the state avows everything as property (i.e., the needy must bring the subject of their need into their possession by money in order to use it, and the useful things are suited for the owner to enrich himself by exclusion of the needy), it creates the need to acquire money. Then work must be good for incomes, and demand must be solvent. Production must be worthwhile for what it is organized for, and all employment has to relate to this criterion. All this is considered natural. And that it appears as natural to the false consciousness of the subjects is a necessary condition for the fact that it is like that.
With property over need the condition is imposed that one must possess the object for its satisfaction before one can use it. The measure of the need is no longer everything that there is as use values, as lies in the nature of the need, but the sum of money over which one disposes. Thus the quantitative restriction of needs in a society of abundance in which nature does not represent a barrier to production.
If a need finds its satisfaction only through the market, then the separation of property and use is presupposed: the needy are excluded from the useful things on which they are focused and whose owners in turn do not need them. If use takes place only with money, then every use lies with money as its power of access; quantitatively: which need gets met depends on the sum of money. Therefore it is clear that the whole world chases after money. Materialism is now called striving to acquire private wealth. In money acquisition exclusion of others is acquired (and no special rule, as with a toothbrush or lemonade, where nothing is taken from anybody!) With the mutual reliance on one another, in which humans exist in a division of labor, every need is used as a lever for private enrichment at the expense of others. Each sale takes place on condition that the salesman earns more money from it it, and each demand counts only to the extent that it is solvent. Freedom of the market means that every benefit hangs on money, which one is thus forced to acquire. The state also ensures the existence of the money that it orders its society to hunt after. The people who are subsumed under its force monopoly are provided by the stipulations of the state with the compulsion to make money; then the increase of money (and not need satisfaction) is the purpose of the economy.
The politicized subject tries to gain the object. In addition one and the same stipulation is separated into good and (unfortunate) bad aspects: Capitalism offers an enormous amount of goods (unfortunately not one), one can buy what one wants (as long one as one has enough money), and one can be happy for what one has as one’s “own” (which only in a world of property is insane!) Money as a means of exclusion is a fine thing if one can exclude others, "on the other hand," it is unfortunate that most things belong to other people!
Those people who in order to acquire money "look for work” have no means at hand. Whether they get the property that they need does not depend on them. They must make themselves the means for somebody else to acquire property, thus be suitable for it. However, the "usefulness" that is accordingly required of the worker can not at all be produced by him. "Usefulness" is not a quality, but a stipulation for measurement. "Profitability" as a criterion means that the workers are measured by whether their employment is worthwhile for the profit of the enterprise.
There is unemployment for two reasons: continuous rationalization (unit wage costs are saved on for the purpose of price competition) in profitable enterprises creates at the same time losers of the competition, whose bankruptcy releases their staff.
The affirmative subject also sees this differently. He operates the logic of dependence. Because his source of income depends (negatively) on the survival of the entrepreneur in competition, he accepts austerity for the competitive success of his employer. It makes sense to him that he must restrict himself just because of his wage, always with the idealism that when "investments" are produced, something also leaps out for him. Of course, this conception is continuously disappointed. The affirmative subject displaces this onto the incompetence of management and so retains his idealism: If the sluts up there did their job, then the investments would have led to the protection of jobs, etc.
For this intellectual performance it is necessary to reproduce the purpose of capital. One must save "the enterprise" on which entrepreneurs and employees equally depend. The entrepreneurs continuously mess up what the employees have from it.
It appears that the requirements of the enterprise will adjust itself if supplemented by union organized voluntary give-backs to avoid the bankruptcy of the enterprise.
Finally, the workers still behave as if they were the subjects of the enterprise and actively pursue competition between themselves. They argue diligently about what the layoffs of their colleagues would earn. The competition among themselves, which is a means of capital, is again thought to be a means for themselves and it is consistently concluded that the damage of other proletarians must be pursued.
With their payments in advance the workers make themselves cheaper. Whether more jobs result from it is the whole question. Hope remains after work (for those further to back-put it is not given up), and resigns itself to the fact that there are just unfortunately only the jobs which there are; those must be profitable, and that there are unfortunately necessities which prevent that there is more of it.
[The judgment about work is thus neither that it is a means (that would be the prelude to wage conflicts), nor that it is not (that would be revolution), but exactly in between: Work should be my means; it harms me that it is not.]
The welfare state is considered to modern citizens as having overcome the class state. However, if it does not abolish class misery, but administers it, then that is evidence to the contrary. The political reason why the welfare state takes care of those who are not directly usable for capital (which does not mean that it keeps them in the lap of luxury) was the threat to its social order by class warfare by part of that class whose survival is not possible through work without state regulation. The administration of the working class guarantees social peace. As soon as the welfare state exists, the state discovers in it a means for economic policy.
For the financing of welfare the state lets the working class be responsible for its cash accounts. No state dough is spent on proletarians. Turned around, by the fact that the state treats social insurance as a component of its budget, pays for it with tax revenues and administers certain social measures equal from budgetary appropriations, it documents that it regards the "social" as a component of its state purpose: On the one hand, wages are a contribution to its financial apparatus, on the other hand the expenditures are necessary in the realm of the "social" for the establishment and supervision of its state purpose. As long as wages prove satisfactory as a source of state income, it makes no fuss about social welfare services.