The State Is the Enemy: Part 4 of a Deep Dive into Jacques Ellul's "Autopsy of Revolution"
We like to think of "the left" as the enemy. But the left is not the real problem. They are more symptom, than cause. The real problem is the fact of the state and the reasons why it exists.
In part one of this series, we discussed how the first revolutions, as an outgrowth of revolt, were reactionary, in that they were a rejection of “history.” With the coming of Hegel and Marx in the aftermath of the French and American revolutions, a shift occurs. Both of these authors, argues Ellul, used the French revolution in particular as a window through which to understand history itself. In the process of revolution, they saw the unfolding, the generation of history. The principle features of Marxism were absorbed into understanding revolutionary theory. Two principle ideas emerge. One is the concept of the “objective situation” in which one must properly identify the objective, observable forces at play. Once identified, and they are in play, revolution becomes something that “must” happen. This lends the veneer of “science” to the whole project of studying revolution. Secondly, the revolutionary process is seen as largely automatic. Revolution is the product of “history.” Thus history becomes revolutionary.
“Thus, the aim of revolution was no longer to affect social or political change, but to establish the rule of history.”
No longer was revolution the process of institutionalizing the freedoms won in the revolt against the unbearable situation of history; rather, revolution becomes the means by which history unfolds towards its inevitable end. This is the Marxist soteriology, broadly speaking. Whether it is economic or cultural Marxism, the revolutionary actions are about moving history towards its utopian end. The force of history itself is salvific.
No longer could populist revolts be tolerated.
“For revolution to prevail, at this stage reason must rule. Irrationality must be barred, and therefore revolt, with its spontaneous and profoundly human character, must be put down.”
One only has to look to the hints of populist revolt that resulted in the election of Donald Trump. This offense against history had to be put down. Trump must be stopped, lest the populist energy which drove his political ascent gain real momentum and stop the movement of history itself, ending human progress. This is why there is such existential angst from the regime in regards to populism today. It carries with it the older energies of revolt, of the rejection of history. But because history has now taken on a soteriological importance, to stand athwart history and say “no more” is to reject the salvation of mankind. Thus anything which does not act in lock step with revolutionary history must be seen as counterrevolutionary and reactionary.
In this regard, to the regime, the proletariat are really of no consequence other than that they play their proper role in the realization of revolutionary history. The masses become a class only when they serve the interests of “the Party,” that is, the organizational instruments by which the managers instantiate revolutionary history. The masses cannot be allowed spontaneity. They can only find their proper revolutionary purpose under the teaching of “the Party.” The masses can no longer be allowed spontaneous revolt. They must be guided by the revolutionary elites. The masses must be subordinate to the revolutionary elites who see and understand the proper revolutionary direction of history. The masses are mere manpower for working of “history.” No longer are we concerned with the condition of the working class. The prime focus is the working out of history towards the equality of all.
“Revolutionary spontaneity is always founded upon revolt and is therefore by its nature conservative, or regressive.”
Thus, those influenced by Marxist ideas of history must now reject the spontaneity of revolt, calling it “counter-revolutionary” or “reactionary.” This posture ultimately leads the Marxist to reject the human, his hope, despair, suffering, anger in favor of the merciless nature of historical destiny. Marxism is all destiny, especially in the hands of the managers. It is scientific and technical. Mathematical. In the end, argues Ellul, Marxist patterns of thinking replace “man” with “history.”
Marxism is not an ethical system. Marx himself says so. It is not about liberty or justice. Ellul quotes Marx to make his point:
“I was obliged to include in the preamble (to the text of the constitution of the International in 1864) two sentences dealing with rights and duties, truth, morality and justice: I inserted them in such a way as to avoid offending anyone.”
Marx himself knew what he was arguing. It was about history and its inevitable resolution. From Engels:
“Marx would reject the political, economic and social idealism you ascribe to him: a scientist has no ideals…Marxism is not a system of ethics…one must never give way to moral indignation.”
If history was to be properly understood scientifically, then revolution becomes just another part of the machine. There is no need for morality. Revolution is just part of the mechanical inevitability of the natural world. You can talk about justice, liberty, democracy and freedom for propaganda purposes, but true Marxists do not take these idea seriously. Because Marxism regards history as the master key to understanding, it is cynical in its nature. You can either stand by as an observer or you can embrace the cynical use of naked power. Marxists have preferred the later.
This self-conscious use of power, combined with the centrality of “the Party” in the revolutionary process and the reality that the post-revolutionary utopia has not emerged as led, explains Ellul, to a shift from “doctrine” to “tactics.” Tactics is about winning, about always being on “the right side of history.” Rather than waiting for the grand revolutionary moment to simply just mechanically happen, the focus of “the Party” is turn its focus towards “winning.” Winning becomes equivalent to moving the revolution forward. “The Party,” as the tactical agent, comes to control the revolutionary process.
“Without the Party, the proletariat can do nothing and, ultimately, it is nothing. Thereafter, it can have no intellectual, ideological or ethical orientation toward any revolution differing from the one projected and organized in Party tactics.”
The tactical machinations of “the Party” aimed towards seeing “the Party” win, is the equivalent of the revolution. But within the technical system of political, party and state administration, tactics soon lose their revolutionary potency, their genius. The revolution becomes the machinery of the state.
“Historical nihilism in turn endows the state with an undreamed of achievement. Having known no restrictions, the state has no restraints and because it is inextricably wedded to the state, ‘revolution, limited only by historical efficacy signifies unlimited bondage.’”
What Ellul is saying here is that once the revolt becomes instantiated through the revolution by the managers in and through the mechanisms of the state in its multitude of forms, the revolution knows no boundaries. It begins to encompass everything. As the revolution gains ground and establishes itself, it loses its revolutionary energy and begins to act realistically, focusing on organizational tactics so as never to lose ground. At this point, the revolution cannot question itself, and it cannot turn on itself. Though the Party, it continually employs tactics in a self-conscious and cynical manner to always make gains by means of the state apparatus and can never question anything it does. To criticize the state, as Trotsky did for ideological reasons, argues Ellul, is to misunderstand the nature of power and the role of the state in the revolutionary reality.
“Whether we like it or not, a type of constant of revolution has existed since 1789. Each successful revolution has left the state enlarged, better organized, more potent, with wider areas of influence; that has been the pattern even when revolution has assaulted and attempted to diminish the state.”
The problem is the way that revolutionary thinking and action changes a society, transforming its institutions, creating a more rational, all-embracing, efficient and systemic state.
This is a problem for conservative and populist reactionaries. Now that we are in the revolutionary era, all attempts to reform, control or even diminish the state will leave it stronger and more potent. Any revolt that tries to establish itself in a new revolution by necessity will require the power of the managers to instantiate it, resulting in the same situation with new people at the helm. The one constant will be be the state: stronger, revitalized and ready to assert control over ever greater portions of people’s lives. Ideology is no longer important. It is the technical reality of the managerial state that matters. You cannot impose dictatorial control over the state while at the same time preparing to eliminate it. Ellul has discussed this elsewhere:
In many ways, from a perception point of view, the administrative state seems more benign than the figure of the dictator, regardless of the reality. Ellul asserts:
“Nowhere has the state receded since 1789.”
The state is the necessary instrument to instantiate the revolution, to create institutions capable of administering the freedoms won at great cost through the revolt. But the moment that liberty is proclaimed through the institutions necessary to make the revolution a reality, the revolution becomes integrated into power. Liberty now becomes defined by the institutions which supposedly guarantee and distribute it.
“With each surge of human freedom, the State grew stronger by pledging to secure the very freedom it absorbed.”
Ellul then identifies a mistake within the thinking of Marx, who saw the state as subordinate to class and capital. Whereas, says Ellul, the state is its own autonomous power that has subordinated both capital and class to its own interests. The administrative state is the ubiquitous reality. The capitalist economy requires the administrative state to organize society such that it could develop fully. At the same time, any plan to produce equitable systems requires a western style technocratic administrative state.
Ellul then makes a bold assertion: the real political struggle is not between the classes, but between society and the state. The last 200 plus years since the American and French revolutions have been defined by the gradual invasion of society by the administrative state. He also asserts that the modern administrative state is not a necessity for having a civilization. Whether liberal, conservative, dictatorial or totalitarian, whether constitutional or not, the last 200 plus years has been defined by the steady growth of the state beginning with the two major revolutions which began the process. Once power is located in the administrative state, its varied political forms are largely irrelevant. The Chinese administrative state is the same as the American administrative state which is the same as the Russian administrative state or the German, French, Swedish or Canadian versions. They are a single phenomenon. Even a decentralized, or rusticated, administrative state is still the same phenomenon. It remains “the state.” All efforts in public opinion, citizen participation, the effort of politicians are all in vain when attempting to defy the state.
There are three main realities which must be confronted in our relationship with and understanding of the state:
The state gradually assumes responsibility for all activities in society, largely because the state is the only entity that can exercise oversight over an increasingly complex world. To fully understand its scope, we must see large bureaucratic corporations as an extension of the state.
The state will continue to grow more and more abstract, being the framework for the entirety of society. The state becomes the metaphysical superstructure within which society is lived. It becomes self-developing according to its own needs and not the needs of the citizenry. The citizen must conform his life to the needs of the state.
Even though men profess revulsion against the state, demand freedom from it, all of their hopes and dreams necessarily reside in the state. Everything happens through the omnipresent state. It is the instantiation of the technical control over all things. The state enframes the lives of everyone.
All ideological development, all revolutionary and reactionary thought now has no other objective than the control and growth of the state.
“Of course, the system can be rendered useless and destroyed, but that dazzling prospect, built on the assumption that the state is merely a relatively ineffectual superstructure, becomes a nightmare face-to-face with the reality of that organism’s pervasive presence throughout the social body, and its cancer-like diffusion, which is impossible to check without destroying the entire society.”
Even though the administrative state is the enemy, to destroy it is to embrace the nihilistic impulse, the end of everything.
Ellul cites de Jouvenal to argue that uninterrupted growth of power is the natural course of “history” as understood in the post-revolutionary technical use of the term:
“The cycle began with the removal of insufficient power only to end in the consolidation of absolute power. Revolutions are the liquidation of a weak power and the implanting of a strong one.”
This, argues Ellul, is yet another key error of Marx. Marx postulated that the state would simply wither away once the exploiters and oppressors have been swept away and socialism is introduced. But the reality is that the relationship between the global society and the state has resulted in the opposite happening. In spite of professed efforts to to create ever greater amounts of equity, instead of withering away, the state has grown ever more powerful and ever more all encompassing.
There is a fundamental contradiction here. Because of the tactical importance of seizing power, which is the real purpose of the revolution, allowing the administrators to enact the revolutionary plan; if the state and with it the bourgeoisie, had been completely swept aside, no revolution would have ever taken place at all. You need the managers to institutionalize the values of the revolution for it to succeed. But in so doing, it makes the Marxist revolution an impossibility because the reality of the state is that it never simply withers away.
In truth, the revolutions were not class crisis, but rather a crisis over the type of state. The old inefficient state was replaced with the new technical administrative state amenable to the bourgeoisie merchant managers. It was the growth of the state in this context which then created the stratification of society along modern class lines. Our current class crisis has been generated by the fact of the administrative state itself and its role of managing society such that it allows for the efficient and orderly workings of the market economy on a global scale.
It all comes back to the state. The state is the true enemy, but to bring down the state means bringing down everything. More on this later.
The key is to see that the system itself, the idea of rational technocratic administration, is itself “left wing” in its fundamental organization. If you say, “we need better policies,” this is a technocratic response. It is fundamentally “left wing” in orientation. There are no (or very few) conservatives in America or the west in general. The administrative state is not a corruption of the Constitution and the ideas upon which it is founded. The very idea of a written constitution is a rationalist approach to setting up a governmental system. It’s like hiring consultants to give you a new set of policies. The bind that “conservatives” are in is that they are placed in the position of holding a “revolutionary” view. We need to sweep away the whole system and burn it to the ground, the whole of modernity, and let what emerges emerge. To me this is an untenable position. So this is why I am an advocate of building a parallel community.
This piece makes me think that conservatives can never actually win. They, too, are part of the administrative state or system but also play with inferior rules. The state, when administered by the left, uses tax revenues and either hires the revolutionaries or funds their NGOs. Conservatives, when controlling the state, supposedly attempt to reduce the size of government and are ultimately philosophically opposed to patronage jobs (I say philosophically because they do fund police and security-type functions). They both inherently support the state and contribute to its continual growth, albeit at different rates.
The left aims to grow the state, and the right merely hopes to slow it down.
I've personally watched as local parks and government has taken over programs run by either non-profits or small business. If you can get consistent revenue through taxes, you don’t need to worry about fundraising or paying customers. As a government entity, you always outlast your competitors during a downturn or crisis because you can get cheap bonds or loans backed by your agency.