[Translation of a lecture presented at the Seminar on the Analysis of Fascism held by Anti-Fascist Revolutionary Action Berlin on October 4, 2008] Introduction: NationalismThe state is the real institution, the political power, which orders this society, controls it, or if you will: keeps it running. And it dictates to the citizens the general living conditions under which they must get by.
Nationalism, and actually already the nation, is an ideology, the image of the overall whole, where the state and the society are thought of as one. Where the individual person thinks: I am a member here, and because I am in it, I am for it. Thus the nation is already an ideology and nothing more. And nationalism is then already in addition the partisan stance of being in favor of this order and its state and the engaged hope that this order may function, that this community may prosper, because as a member of it one depends on it. So it is better to first talk about the state and then in addition about what nationalism is, what stance it is and what is so wrong in it.
So now a little something about the state.
A definition: The state is the political force of bourgeois society. Sounds like an easy declarative sentence: it is the political power of the bourgeois society.
The first part is: the state is a force. Here there is not much to prove. Yes, what else would it be? The authority itself says: in this state, a monopoly on force is reserved for the state. The state is not only a force, but the only force, the only legitimate one in this society. It says so itself, so we do not need to repeat it. It governs by force.
In what form? In the form that the political authorities in parliament make political decisions, meaning laws, and these are enforced in the society in the form that obedience is enforced by the police and the judiciary. All this is not in need of further proof. In a society in which there is a police and a justice system, where there are prisons, it is nevertheless clear that the order is based on force.
So it a relationship of rule. It is a relationship of rule when the community of people is organized by force. An authority forces the people to something that they do not themselves want. In other words, said the other way around: if an authority only exists so that the people do what they themselves want, they could save themselves the trouble of the rule. One does not need rule merely so that people do what they want. So, in some way, something else is demanded of them than what they themselves want.
So this is a relationship of rule. And if this means that force must be used so that people deal with each other peacefully, if the state protects the peace among the people with force, law and order, then this is an indication of a quite special kind of governing of the interests of the citizens, that whenever they act they are always automatically non-peaceful towards each other.
However, this is no self-evident fact which one may assume. But if we were to follow this up, we would soon be in the capitalist economy. But we must keep away from this for the moment, because the subject is now the state and not now the economy.
The bourgeois state is a power, it is a relationship of rule. That is the the first point. The second point, and this is decisively important and the bigger stumbling block: it is a relationship of rule that is based on the will of the subjects. This is a prickly matter. Yes, here one can say, in retrospect, with princes and imperial rulers, there everything was easy, at least in retrospect. Here one knows: there was a king who had power and he forced general living conditions on the people which were of no benefit to these people, but to him. He forced people into an order. And in the order, they had to do nothing other than provide him with the basis for his power and the financing of his courtly life. They were exploited. The authority exercised power over people in order to exploit them to his benefit. It is clear. These people had to somehow put up with the authority. It cannot be said that in feudalism and slave holding societies the authority was based on their will. Yes, the slaves were just at the mercy of the superior strength of the slave holders. If they attempted an uprising, they were massacred. These forms of rule were not based on the will of their subjects.
However, this is so in the modern state. First, still without a big argument, how it is, how the phenomenon looks. If you ask the citizens in our society, they are for this state. When the government holds elections, 90% turn out. And it is only 90 because some don't show up. Otherwise there would be nearly 100%. They opt for one or other of the people's alternatives who promise them that they want to administer this state. Including the Left Party. They want to administer this state. Of course, everybody in these competing electoral associations says: I want to administer this state better than the other parties. But the fact that they want to administer this state, that they take the state power in their care and want to shape it better than the others, each one promises to those who want to vote. And in so far as they agree to it, the citizens really are for this state.
Those who still remember can tell the young about the experience of the attacks by the RAF [Red Army Faction] in Germany. In this case, armed attacks on the institutions and the representatives of the rule were understood by the citizens as attacks on themselves. In this society, the propaganda of the deed fails. It works only where the people believe themselves suppressed and exploited; where the people only obey because they do not believe that anything can be done against the state power. If they believe they cannot defend themselves against it, and then someone comes and says, I'll shoot a representative and then it is dead, then they say, oh if its so easy, then we'll join you.
But in this society it is not so. In this society, if a politician is shot, there is a demonstration of a million people and all the well-behaved citizens say: that shot was directed at me. Not at the rule which suppresses me. One must first look this fact in the eye before one criticizes it. We live in a world where the people are persuaded that they need an authority which forces them to live together in peace. One notices how absurd the world and the people are. The authority forces them to live together in peace; this is something that they gladly want, but it is something they would never do if they were not forced.
This is first the stance of the citizen towards the state. He knows it is an authority, he knows it will pass laws, one must then adhere to them. He knows that anyone who does not, anyone who violates the laws, gets to feel a billy club. And he does not see himself suppressed, he sees his social life thereby allowed and protected.
It is a rule which decrees, enforces and protects freedom. And this rule is accepted and wanted by the subjects. The extraordinary stability of this society is based on this fact, that the rule is wanted by the subjects. Based on this fact, the left in this system has a hard nut to crack. Whoever wants to overthrow the whole business not only has the authority against him, but also the people itself. This contradiction is not only a practical hurdle of the crudest kind, it is a theoretical stumbling block which most do not cope with well.
Rule for freedom, rule over people which is affirmed by the ruled, this is such a tough contradiction that, if we listen to the bourgeois utterances about it, thus the social studies teachers, the political science professors, etc., then they deny rule in the name of freedom. They say: if the people are free, you cannot talk of rule. If the people want the rule, then one cannot say that they are ruled and suppressed.
One can be quite sure that the group gathered here today are not in danger of making this mistake. Here the common opinion prevails that the state is force, the state is rule. We do not let ourselves buy this so easily. Yes, this is also correct. If there is a problem here, then it is more the reverse one: that here, in the name of the judgment that rule exists, freedom is denied. That one turns around this contradictory, heavy thought, a rule for freedom, this doesn't go anywhere. The common people deny rule in the name of freedom. The left is more in the danger of saying, in the name of the rule they see: oh well, true freedom, real freedom does not exist. They see freedom not realized because of rule. Then they explain freedom to be formal freedom, to be a sham, to be a trick of deception. They do not understand their bourgeois fellow men. They hold them to have a servile nature, and call to them: don't you want to be free at long last? Then everyone says: but we are!
Dictated freedom, what is that for an odd fish? In this connection, I would like to address still another ideological point. Whoever talks about the bourgeois order, talks ideologically about it, who praises it, really does not do it without a comparison. The praise does not take place as: here everything is good. It is not an easy matter of saying: here everything is so great. The praise of bourgeois society takes place by an enthusiastic comparison with backward ones instead. Yes, yes, once, some time, before there were citizens there were serfs and slaves, today they are free people. Earlier, the king could take virgins as he wanted. Today this no longer happens with chancellors, or this chancellor. Etc., etc.
The comparison, that freedom is something good if we compare it to pre-bourgeois conditions, is a quite cheap way of praising an order about which one generally has nothing good to say, one merely has to say: yes, it was even worse before. This is of no use. But it is also no use when the left try to criticize bourgeois relations by borrowing from pre-capitalistic relations. The modern person, also the modern proletarian, the wage laborer, is no slave. He doesn't want to be a slave, but he also isn't one. One does not grasp the modern relations if one uses metaphors of master and slave to characterize the modern world. Here also one must distance oneself from these intellectual tools, to say, no, what's really up then in this country. So now I want to show what's up here.
Freedom is a relationship of rule, this is a heavy thought. What does free mean? Free means: I can act and do what I want. So a person is really free if he lives as a hermit in the wild. There in his vast environment he doesn't bump into any other wills and he can do whatever he wants without having anything to do with anybody. Freedom as: whatever comes into my head, whatever my will is, I just do.
In society, it is already a quite strange thing to say: I do what I want. If people in a society call for freedom, here one thinks sometimes historically: Sire, grant freedom of thought! (Schiller) If people call for freedom, then it is already obvious: this is not the freedom of the will that one has in the wilderness, when one is alone. Freedom, if one shouts for it, is given to one, also when workers say: we want freedom of coalition, we want to establish trade unions, one notices: it is the demand for a license which the authority should give. Grant freedom of thought, Sire, this is directed at the Sire. Whoever says, we want freedom of coalition, this is directed at the authority, and says: permit us. Freedom in society is always first of all something permissible, something approved. It is a license which one gets granted. And when one shouts for freedom, one shouts for the license.
In this respect, freedom is from the outset a relation to a ruling power. And freedom is not a state in which there is no rule. In society, freedom cannot exist differently than as approval from above. What then becomes approved when one gets it? If one lives in a modern state, like ours, and one has indeed been granted freedom, what does one then have? What may one then do? You may, gets said, but what may you do?
Do and don't do what you want, as long as you do not infringe on the freedom of others. These are the basic bits of wisdom of social studies that everybody has to learn at some time. Do and don't do what you want, as long as you do not tread on others' freedom. Here it is defined by the state now maybe this gets a little philosophical from above, from the one who grants freedom. It determines: in the area in which you come across nobody else, your will counts absolutely. But there, where you come across others, there you come to where your freedom stops and those whose freedom begins; your will generally no longer counts, but the will of others counts absolutely.
It is clear that a relationship of human living together is defined by freedom. The relation which is defined there means: you can and may be inconsiderate as far as your license reaches, and you have nothing more to say where your license does not reach. And where the borders of the license are, the laws regulate. What may a teacher do with a student: may he give him a slap on the ears? No. May he disgrace him? Yes. May he give him bad grades? Yes. May he ? All this is nit pickingly regulated, everything in life is full of laws, which always say: how far your freedom reaches, where it stops.
Freedom is a comprehensively legally regulated life. And it is not the denial of freedom in the sense that it is not at all there then. This is not the argument: that freedom then is a deception or a sham or something. No, this is freedom: an extensively legally regulated life where licenses are granted and licenses are limited. Now we'll be philosophical again and say: freedom in everyday life is not how loud I turn up my music, although it is also this. May I do this? Yes, you may, until you pass the level of disturbing the peace, and the neighbor is disturbed in their freedom, etc., etc. Real freedom needs an object, a material. Free decisions and doing what one wants needs an object. In this respect, the granting of freedom is generally not separate from and generally is nothing other than the institution of private property. The material which is freely decided over is always detritus, pieces of the world, produced and not produced parts of the world over which I as an owner have an exclusive right of disposal. And about which nobody else has anything to say because they belong to me. The subdivision of the world into: it always belongs to one or the other. And if it belongs to one, he may do whatever he wants with it and the other nothing at all.
Freedom is not only: which will is permitted here, but as it is really practiced is the freedom of property, the owner-controlled disposal over parts of the world.
A country which grants freedom grants private property.
Here one notices how stupid the Left Party, leftist parties are to say: socialism without freedom, that would be shit. If one grasps what freedom is, it is completely clear that socialism does not go together with freedom. Freedom is something completely different than people organizing their concerns rationally. Freedom is the opposite of this. Freedom means: I command exclusively over myself and that which belongs to me. I put all this only to my sole benefit. What belongs to another, this is not my concern.
To make it clear once more: with the decree of freedom and private property, a certain form of social life is defined. In further development, this means capitalism. But first, consider what is prescribed here for the people. They no longer live in the woods and everybody is no longer alone by themselves, but lives in society and exists in a division of labor. What does the division of labor of private owners look like? Work is still divided. Big factories are a form of the division of labor. The fact that the baker only bakes bread and the plumber only fixes pipes and the whole is then exchanged is also a form of division of labor. But what does the division of labor of private owners look like? Here people do not divide the necessary labor in order to handle it as appropriately as possible. In this form of division of labor, everybody comes with his property, with his private contribution, what he can perform to the total work. Either because he has something that is needed for the whole work, or because he can go to work. And fights with his exclusive right of disposal either over himself as a person or over that which belongs to him. With it he strives to extort all the others so that they convey to him as large as possible a part of the together-generated product. Everyone runs riot with their property.
A collaboration takes place, but a cooperation which exists in all-around extortion. Everybody tries to use the dependence of the others on his contribution for their own enrichment. Thus: the dependence of the others on my labor contribution is their weakness, which I take advantage of when I say: you get my contribution only if you give me this and that.
Then it is also clear: the degree of dependence of the others on my contribution decides how much I can make the others servants to myself. Those people who have something to contribute that everybody else is able to contribute, here it is clear from the start, they do not benefit much from this fight. All those, however, who contribute something that everybody needs and nobody has are able to make the others into servants.
Respectable private owners come across each other and extort according to how badly you are dependent on my contribution, on my assistance.
The bourgeois world always thinks, nevertheless, property is good because then I have a guaranteed utility. According to the example: it is good that there is property, because my bicycle is outside the door, and if there was no property, it would not be there when I want to ride it. Property is good as a precondition of utility. And on the one hand, this is a truth in this society. In a society where everything is property, here the legal title to ownership really is the precondition that I can ride the bicycle. But the institution of property is not there so that I can ride the bicycle. The concept that property would be a good condition so that I can use a thing, this misses the matter insofar as property unfolds its real economic charms when I own something that I myself do not want to use at all, but which others need.
That which I myself will use, thus the sausage sandwich that I will eat, only I can eat it. Here it lies in the nature of the use value that it excludes. But for this exclusion, there is no need for a legal system to watch over it. Vice versa, in a world where everything is property, even a sausage sandwich is sometimes contentious. In situations of absolute need, there is then sometimes contention.
But in and of itself, that someone who wants to use something can use it, property does not exist for this reason. Property exists for the fact that somebody has an exclusive right of disposal over things which he himself does not want to use at all. Because he does not use them himself at all, he can draw an economic use from it.
There are in old Hegel wonderful places that always say: there the people think the field should belong to he who grows crops on it. This may be nice and good, but this has nothing to do with property in reality, basically. Because the joke in property is that the field belongs to someone who does not grow crops on it. Because first property unfolds an economic effect. Namely: the others who need my field, I will let on my field when they first of all work for me and only then for themselves. If they enrich me first of all, only then can they take up the labor necessary for themselves.
In this respect, the concepts now combine: freedom is the political form, the juridical form of property. And private property is the legal form in which the citizens as capitalistic competing subjects are defined and attempt with their property to put others in their service. To extort others into servitude to themself.
Then it is of course clear: anybody who owns a lot of property, to whom the means of production belongs, which all the others need if they want to do useful work for themselves, can make all the others first serve his enrichment before they can work for themselves. And anybody who can offer only his labor, like millions of others on whom the opposite side may depend in principle but in the isolated case precious little, this person is truly taken for a ride, one which never amounts to anything, even though he works all day long.
It is the world of freedom, property and capitalism. This is one and the same.
So a small look at the invitation leaflet: it is a shortcoming that it says the state furnishes the basic conditions of the capitalistic society, and then it goes on about commodity economy and further below says: and another reform in capitalism was freedom. This doesn't withstand scrutiny. One cannot say, the state furnishes the commodity economy and, in addition, sometime and later freedom as well. Freedom, economic freedom, is nothing other than the control of property and the commodity economy.
The second great principle of the bourgeois state is the equality of the citizens. Freedom and equality.
Equality is also to be taken seriously. Here one does not do well to say that it is a fraud, not true equality, not real equality. Also here one must say: equality, yes, the only equality that there is, the state furnishes. It defines all its subjects as equally free citizens who are subjected to the law. Here it occurs to everybody, of course: there are poor and rich. Clearly, it is a joke, the state abstracts from this. But equality, also in any other regard, is always an abstraction. You understand if I say: there is a redhead, there a black-haired, they are equal, then I abstract at least from hair color. There is a man and there a woman, there a short one and a tall one, a weak and a strong one; if for me the people here are equal, I abstract from the differences. If I do not care about the differences, they are equal. It cannot go at all differently, that equality is an abstraction.
The state abstracts when it treats the citizens as equals from the social position which they have and it abstracts from the power of control over property which they own. Someone who has nothing at all is a free citizen just like someone who has millions and sits on the board of the big corporations. And like already said, equal does not mean: fraud, but says, yes, this is the legal form in which the authority deals with its citizens. It abstracts from the differences, and it says: you are legally equal, and whether you are poor or rich is your private matter. This does not interest the state. This type of abstraction, which equates the richest capitalist with the poorest bum, which just says: the state does not get mixed up here, is a special hardship.
The state has merely the task of treating everybody before the law equally. Everyone has their license and the borders of their license. So what the capitalist may do with the worker is also regulated. He may let him work for him. He may not let him work 24 hours for him. He may pay him a cheap wage. He may not pay the wage he did not agree to. Etc., etc... What the worker has is also regulated. They are subjected equally to the law. And just by the fact that they are equally subjected, and the state itself does not get mixed up in poor and rich, precisely thereby the state sets free the economic power of extortion of property so suitably. Precisely in this way, it relegates all the people into economic dependence on the ruling interests.
To that extent, something interesting happens with equality. It is a modern achievement of the state. Still a hundred years ago in Germany, in the empire, the equality of the citizens was not really realized. Maybe, before the law, even a pauper could call a court. There was, of course, the problem whether he can afford the court costs. But, in any case, not realized in regards to the vote. There the propertied had 3, 5, 17 times the voting weight the simple folk had. There the state was still the state of the propertied class. Now you must see: the modern state is really the state of all its citizens. All citizens are equal before the law and as eligible voters have one person, one vote. The absurdity is that in the modern state the propertied, the capitalists in the narrower sense, are a vanishingly small minority. Politically seen, they have really no chance to assert their concerns. They assert them quite differently.
Just by the fact that through freedom of property all citizens are referred back to economic power, the interest of capital is made the general interest of the society. Not by the fact that the capitalists have greater power in politics, but just by the fact that they too are merely a few citizens, although all citizens know that their income depends on them, on the fact that the capitalists have a need for labor power.
Now we live in a world that completely does not care that one can choose a Labor Party. The dependence on capital is the basis for the fact that the capital interest is recognized as the general interest in this society. And indeed absolutely recognized by those who are not capitalists. Then we choose a Labor Party, and what do they say? If there is not an economic upswing, there are no jobs, there are no wages, so dear voters, dear proletarian voters, you must see that nothing is more important than to promote the business of the capitalists.
And not in the form that the capitalists exercise total control in politics, but because with the setting of freedom and equality politics binds everything to the economic power of extortion, the economic power of capital, and with it really makes the interest of capital into the general interest of the society, although most normal people do not have the interest of capital as their interest, but rather must serve it. And indeed to their harm.
The political power counts on this kind of extortion, this is the political side of freedom. One can establish parties, one can say: I would like to administer the state differently. The authority counts on the fact that the citizens recognize their dependence on the condition of the economy as it is so expressed. The fact that all political alternatives are only those which revolve around how one organizes this dependence better, how one promotes the nation, the whole, better. Politics relies on the fact that all alternatives squabble over this question.
And only in states in which the working class has also recognized their dependence on capital as their general living condition is there freedom and democracy in the perfect version. Otherwise, capitalist society can function only as a dictatorship; then, however, also as a party instrument of those who have the economic power and buy themselves the state power. But from the standpoint of our state, the EU, the Americans, that is for weak states which do not function well.
Important final point.
The consent of the citizens to being governed, to their system, does not generally make force from above superfluous. Not if everyone says: it is acceptable to us, then it does not need to exercise force. But force rules the everyday life of bourgeois society. Not in the form that rebellion is underway everywhere and emancipation movements have to be struck down. This happens relatively seldom. Where it occurs, this is also done. But the normal force, the everyday force of bourgeois society, which is therefore necessary and never becomes superfluous because with property the authority sets into existence the right: run riot with the power you can exercise over others with your property.
With this license, or right, the authority gets a fight going. A competition fight where the benefit of one takes place in a way that is directly connected to the damage of the other. One notices this immediately in the price fight. The price fight always means: I'll sell as expensively as possible. And from the other side: I'll pay as little as possible. My benefit is higher the bigger the damage of the other is. If I can make somebody pay a high price, then I have done good business. And the other has to fork over a lot. Then the fight over the price of labor is immediately the fight over: how the people live. And this freeing of a hostile fight of competition, this freeing of the pursuit of profit which exists in the damage of the others, this freeing requires at every step that the freed competition vultures be supervised.
Because everybody encounters in the damage of the others the limits which are necessary, this fight of all against all is also kept alive. If one left these free private subjects without supervision, there would be absolutely nothing, a civil war.
One also knows this wonderful story: once in New York there was a blackout. And with the electricity of course the ability of the police to act went out. And generally the presence of the state power. It was a night of looting. The order had collapsed. If it is not constantly paid attention to, it simply does not hold. Thus the force which is always necessary is not at all the force to suppress insurgents, or in the rarest cases. In general, the force is one where citizens go too far in the exercise of their freedom. That their fight against each other goes further than is functional for the community.
Then the state sets limits and says: you may exploit the workers. But its over after 8 hours. Except there are hours of overtime, then those are over after 12 hours. Except in a special case, then it is over after 24 hours. Etc... But everything is regulated, and there is one order for all. And in reverse, there is also a price for everything.
This force is the usual force which works and works every day in all the transactions of the citizens. Rights are involved in everything, whatever people do together always has a legal form. Even one's sex life, which goes under the name of the private sphere and should concern nobody, has detailed juridical regulations. You don't even have to be married for it. There is a law for everything. And the state always pays attention to whether the people keep within the limits. And it is not that the state with its informers and police overseers must always be behind it. This misses that this is the everyday life of the citizens themselves. Everybody immediately shouts after the state. The life of the citizens, their interactions with each other, is one that they also know to be regulated by force. Everybody tries to get the help of the force on his side against the others.
The citizens in their interactions against each other try to use the state power. The landlord comes and says, I must raise the rent he says: I must; not: I want to raise it, then I'll earn more they understand, I must raise the rent. Others also raise them, thus I must also. The question of the tenant is the same: may he do this? Right away it is the question: what is the legality? May he do this? Yes, if he may, I must pay it. If he may not, then I'll go to the state. There is the tenant's association which regulates it for me. I call on the state. And it says: he may do this or he may not do this. So state force is in everyday interactions.
All quarrels are in the last instance, no matter whether the police must be deployed or not, in the last instance decided by power. Namely, through the award of rights, how far the license of one to damage the other reaches and where it stops. Therefore, also again important: the fact that force is continually necessary is no indication of the insurrectionary will of the citizen.
A thief is no critic of property. A thief takes something for himself that does not belong to him. And indeed because he wants to appropriate it. He has regard for property when it ends up with him. A criticism of property is something completely different than that one takes something away from another.
Most use of force in our society takes place to avenge violations of the law and with it to maintain the respect for the legal system. Not to knock down insurgents. Rule and the force to back it up are necessary, but only seldom against a will to revolt. The fact that force is exercised, one may not take vice versa as an indication that it is because of a slumbering, or a beginning, or an ongoing rebellion. Force is everyday life here. And not: there is force only if people defend themselves against the representatives of the order.