The Myth of the Modern State as the Objective Commodity Form of. Polity *

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1 The Myth of the Modern State as the Objective Commodity Form of Polity * Pablo Ahumada La Trobe University School of Economics Bundoora, 3086 Victoria, AUSTRALIA P.Ahumada@latrobe.edu.au * I am grateful to Professor John King and Professor Pablo Levín for helpful feedback on this paper. Any errors in it, however, are the sole responsibility of the author.

2 The Myth of the Modern State as the Objective Commodity Form of Polity I. Introduction Commodity production appears as a self-contained, self-regulated sphere of human interactions in which personal relations of power have been eliminated. Individuals become immediately autonomous, communal bonds are thereby severed, and work has to be carried out privately and independently as a result. Thus it will be up to the product of labour itself to re-instate the status of its crafter as a member of the newly-established universal society. The products of labour now acquire the form of commodities or, equivalently, of private products. However, it is impossible for the commodity to make its crafter a member of society other than by asserting the social character of the type of work that crafts the particular product in which this commodity is embodied. This it does by giving the owner of the commodity command over the particular products of other kinds of work in a determinate proportion. The only power remaining in society seems to be purchasing power (Smith, 1776), which is fleeting, impersonal and above all, reciprocal. For somebody to acquire purchasing power, they have to offer a useful commodity-product of equivalent market value, and for someone to acquire a useful commodity-product, they have to give away an equivalent purchasing power. Therefore, in commodity production, nobody can take more from the social pool of objectified labour than they put into it. From this viewpoint, commodity production ideologically signifies the end of political relations, and hence of history itself. Marx (1859, 1867), in contrast, brought out the fact that in an atomistic system of production, there has to be a particular instantiation of the social as the universal viz. money in order for the social reconciliation of decisions of labour that are made 1

3 independently of one another to be possible. 1 Money is not the result of the encumbrances of barter, which are contingent, but the outcome of the private character of labour in commodity production. 2 From the moment that commodity production gives rise to money out of its own bowels as the only possible mercantile form of value, and hence as the general mercantile form of use value (Levín, 1997), the illusion of apolitical homogeneity is shattered. The commodity now requires a standard unit of measurement of the money-commodity in order not to be deadlocked by the encumbrance of having to ascertain the quantity of the money-equivalent effectively present in every commodity exchange. Since the price of an ordinary commodity is the quantity of money for which it is offered, the above requirement amounts to that of a standard of price. The commodity also requires instruments of circulation in order not to be deadlocked by the social cost that commodity exchange imposes as a result of the wear and tear of the money-commodity in its circulation as currency. In addition, the commodity requires a system of enforcement of credit contracts not to be deadlocked by the disparities in the time of realisation of the price of the different commodities. These disparities are the result of the contingent nature of the sale of an ordinary commodity, and of structural differences in the completion time of commodities. The above three conditions entail the need to enforce the recognition of individual property as inviolable private property and of bodily integrity, that is, the enforcement of the commodity as the general relation of production. Thus the commodity brings back political relations out of its own self, since direct conscious agreement forced or otherwise is required upon the standard of price, the institution of legal tender, and the punishment of breaches of credit contracts, of violations of private property and of hindrance of individual autonomy. However necessary for universal commodity production to be 1 See Levín (1997, 2010), Rubin (1928), Kicillof & Starosta (2007a, 2007b) and Ahumada (2012b). 2 The encumbrances of barter could be by-passed by a Walrasian auctioneer (Arrow & Debreu, 1954; Patinkin, 1956; Walras, 1874) without the need to resort to money. 2

4 feasible, these are matters of convention, and are therefore left undetermined by the commodity itself. 3 In the following pages I will argue that the commodity subsumes political relations and reconstitutes them as a differentiated sphere bearing the internal structure of the commodity, yet never attaining the commodity s universality. In section II I argue that the commodity producer cannot establish direct political relations, but has to do so through the public political position, which becomes his or her political relation of production. It is shown that the public political position is the objectification of public political will. In section III I argue that the public political position also has to be the objectification of public political action as the flip side of public political will in order to gain determination as one position among many. In section IV I point out that the differentiation of the Modern State into a general government and a civil service is the outcome of the indirect, ex post character of public political relations. In section V I argue that the Modern State formally embodies the unity between the principle of power and the exercise of power (Romero, 2012), but that the actual unity is constituted ex post through the Modern State s mediation. In section VI I argue that the public political idea is yet another objectification of labour. I also show that the Modern State mediates the motion of the commodity system of production, whereas money mediates its adjustment. Section VII offers the conclusions. II. The Commodity Form of Political Will, or Public Political Will A system of production hinging on the formal autonomy of the individual cannot rest on any political system other than a system of representative democracy based upon equal suffrage. The 3 This has given rise to the misconception that money and commodity production are themselves a matter of convention e.g. Wray (1999, 2012), when they are the objective, autonomous outcome of the dissolution of all direct relations of production. 3

5 commodity immediately rules out inequalities based on personal attributes, and its ontology of rights as inalienable private rights prevents direct relations of power. However, if the isolated individuals have gained the right not to have to yield to the personal whim of any other particular individual, by the same token they have lost the right and ability to subject any other particular individual to their own personal needs. Therefore, the political relations that have emerged as necessary for the very feasibility of the commodity form of production have to be established by universal, impartial representatives of these individuals, and their mandate has to be constituted on the premise that the political position of any one individual is just as valid as that of any other. A political position is a representation by a certain group of people with a say in the general direction of society of the collective conditions of labour that have to be instituted in order to ease the process of reproduction of their material conditions of life. For formally isolated individuals, this is a representation of the individual conditions necessary to ease the process of reproduction of their own material conditions of life, the actualisation of which requires the individual to play a determinate role. The role is determined as the relations this individual will have to establish with other individuals who are also in a position to decide the future course of society, so that the relations they each establish lead them to build the collective conditions of labour entailing the individual conditions the former individual desires. Such relations are personal, non-reciprocal relations of production. Thus a political position is the objectification of a political will that is, the willingness to create a determinate set of collective conditions of labour in a particular form. The possible forms that the political position of an individual could take are limited by the particular technical conditions of his or her labour, since it determines the alternative sets of collective conditions of labour which would leverage his or her own individual labour. Within the framework of the commodity, the political positions of the isolated citizens are mute in their immediacy, and therefore cannot have a form of collective existence in the citizens 4

6 themselves. Citizens have to express their own political position, but would be unable to do so directly, for this would give rise to direct personal relations. Thus each citizen has to externalise their own political position and give it the form of other citizens who as a result will count as mere vessels of political positions, that is, as particular political representatives. This means that there has to be citizens willing to be directly identified with a particular political position. However, the particular position embodied in any such representative is immediately as particular hence, noncollective as those of the citizens they purport to represent, because it is the representative s own. Through these particular representatives, the political position of each citizen would have attained an objective form of existence, but in no way a collective one. Since the different political positions of society have acquired a separate, objective form of existence as particular political positions in the body of the respective particular representatives, citizens must now express the political will that their own political positions i.e. their own particular representatives carry. They can only express this will relative to a collective body of political representation as a quantity of this body of representation, and for the expression to be truly collective, they all have to express the will of their respective political positions relative to one and the same body of political representation. Given the number of seats at stake at the body of political representation, each citizen will have to nominate the political positions that represent him or her, and express how many of those seats each political position is worth for him or her. Citizens can only do this by stating which of the political candidates should occupy seats in the body of political representation, for these candidates are the particular forms of existence of these particular political positions. In an atomistic and formally egalitarian society, the expression of the political will objectified in the political positions embodied in the different candidates can only be carried out secretly and simultaneously, or equivalently, the ballot is the only possible form of such expression. 5

7 As a result of every citizen expressing the political will objectified in their particular political positions as a number of seats in the collective body of representation, the latter acquires the universal equivalent form of public political will. In other words, the collective body of political representation becomes the form of any particular political position, and thereby turns into the collective form of existence of the political idea (Hegel, 1821). The public body of political representation cannot express its own public political idea, but is the universal form of existence of the public political will objectified in the public political positions of the isolated citizens of society. Therefore, it becomes a sphere of society in its own right, separate from its own constituency. Society thereby unfolds into two complementary, yet opposite spheres: civil society and the Modern State. However, even though every isolated citizen must express the political will objectified in his or her political position as a quantity of the collective body of representation, it in no way means that this will be the effective form of the collective political will, if any, of his or her political position. Whether the expression of the political will objectified in the political position of the isolated citizen is a mere expression or its effective universal form depends on the outcome of the ballot. Collective political representatives are not directly selected but elected, that is, their selection occurs ex post upon tallying the votes for each of them. The ballot is an impersonal system of political mediation. Because collective political representation is constituted ex post, it is not directly collective, but becomes so through the ballot itself. Political representation is actually public political representation, and political positions are either public or private, according to whether they have achieved the universal public form or not. This is the result and pre-supposition of the political will objectified in each political position being constituted as public political will and necessarily unfolding into relative form and universal equivalent form. Thus the political positions of isolated 6

8 citizens are conditional conditional upon attaining the public form and the public body of representation becomes the embodiment of the public political idea, which is unconditional, hence binding for every isolated citizen. The conditional character of the public political will objectified in the political position of each individual member of civil society is the manifestation of the unconditional character of the public political will objectified in the Modern State, yet the latter is the necessary result of the former. 4 The ex post constitution of the public political will objectified in political positions, and hence of public political representation, brings about not only the unfolding of the form of public political will but also of its content. Due to the clash between political expectations and the ex post outcome, the public political will objectified in public political positions unfolds into institutionalised political will and immanent public political will. The content of public political will is the latter but immanent public political will needs the objective mediation of the former and the subjective mediation of individual political will, that is, the political will that the public political position represents to the individual who has this position among his or her range of options. 5 The deviations between the institutionalised political will objectified in the different public political positions and their immanent counterparts are mutually offsetting society-wide, though not necessarily within the sphere of civil society and within the sphere of the Modern State. These deviations will determine which positions are over-represented and which ones are under-represented, and to which extent. Likewise, they will determine whether civil society as a whole is over- or under- represented, and hence, whether it is easier to assert one s own public political position within the Modern State or as a particular citizen from civil society. 4 A, for instance, cannot be your majesty to B, unless at the same time majesty in B s eyes assumes the bodily form of A, and, what is more, with every new father of the people, changes its features, hair, and many other things besides (Marx, 1867 [1954, pp. 51 2]). 5 The nature of this unfolding and the actual mechanism of long-term adjustment of the public political system are discussed in section VI below. 7

9 Thus public political will gives rise to a public structure of political franchise. Despite formal equal franchise, effective political franchise depends on the degree of political representation or advocacy that a citizen s public political position achieves relative to competing public political positions. Those whose positions fail to garner representation and those candidates who fail to actually make it into the public assembly as the embodiment of such a position become publicly disenfranchised. Their positions have no political existence. Thus, within the framework of the commodity, these citizens become the modern slaves. However, insofar as the institutionalised political will objectified in each public political position does not match its immanent counterpart, the ensuing structure of political franchise will be contingent, and adjust to its long-term foundation. From the above argument, the public political position emerges as the means for the individual to acquire public political franchise. The public political position does not get political representation because it is collective, but becomes collective because it obtains political representation. Thus the public political position is not just one among many, but it is itself the political relation of production for the individual. The Modern State can no more represent this individual as a concrete person than the commodity can, since it can only represents his or her political position, and only through this, the individual s political persona. The individual s citizenship is yet another partial aspect of his or her particular identity, and since it is established ex post, this aspect of his or her is as external as his or her role as a commodity producer. III. The Commodity Form of Political Action, or Public Political Action The collective political will can only assert itself through particular public political positions that conform to, and at the same time mediate, this universal will. Put differently, the collective political will has to find the necessary particular forms that fulfil this will. The degree of public political 8

10 franchise of the public political representatives, as determined by the election results, will, in turn, determine with which other representatives within the Modern State they will establish political relations of production. Due to the ex post character of the constitution of the public political idea, these relations are unlikely to match those promised while they were electioneering. Their mediation will determine the public political relations of production that the franchised citizens within civil society will effectively establish, and hence the creation of which set of collective conditions of labour each franchised citizen will contribute to. These indirect political relations within civil society are likely to differ from those relations established through the ballot. The creation of a particular set of conditions requires not only labour but particular kinds of work, and since the creation of an irreproducible product occurs only once, the set of collective conditions of labour to be created will be underpinned by the productive capacities of individuals but directly influenced by the structure of the particular products of labour available at that point in time. If a particular product is used in a particular work process for the creation of new conditions of labour, it cannot be used for the continuation of an existing process of labour, whether as a means of mercantile labour or as a means of consumptive labour. If at a particular point in time, one is to divert labour capacity and some of the existing products of labour away from the process of reproduction into the process of positing new conditions, first one had better be sure that these conditions will enhance the productive capacities of one s labour, and hence ease the process of reproduction of one s own material conditions of life. Second, one had better make sure that this diversion will not break down the current processes of reproductive labour and jeopardise the reproduction of one s own material conditions of life. Under this viewpoint, an existing public political position becomes the objectification of political action, that is, the contextualisation of the public political position according to its particularity and the particular current conditions of the multifaceted work processes. The political action objectified 9

11 in public political positions hinges on their public political wills, but it is clear that the publicly franchised citizen will not be indifferent between creating collective conditions of labour which are his or her own individual conditions, and creating somebody else s, which become also his or her own not by choice but from political impotence. In other words, the franchised citizen will be concerned about whether he or she has to work for others without reciprocation, and thus be governed, or whether he or she can impose his or her own particular needs as collective needs, and govern. The publicly franchised citizen is now part of the Modern State, either as the universal form of his or her public political position or as an actual public political representative i.e. as the political relation of production itself. Now he or she has to choose the particular forms of the political action objectified in his or her public political position. Since every franchised citizen is doing exactly the same on their own account, the political action objectified in each franchised citizen s political relation is determined ex post. Because political will is determined as public political will, political action is determined as public political action too. What the franchised citizen selects is the particular forms of the public political action of his or her public political position. Since this relation can only be established by currently franchised citizens and through the Modern State, the public political action objectified in a public political position necessarily unfolds into general form and public particular forms. The quantity of political representation that the public political position of an individual commands is the general form of the public political action objectified in it, and the particular public political positions through which it asserts itself are the particular forms of its public political action. Thus for the political position to become a collective political position, it has to take alternately and subsequently the form of ordinary political position, a quantity of the Modern State, and a determinate combination of other public political positions. As a result of the unfolding of his or her 10

12 political relation of production, the modern citizen unfolds into formal citizen, publicly franchised citizen, and public citizen. The completion of the transformations of the public political position is the means through which the modern citizen becomes an effective citizen, and determines this individual s degree of citizenship. If the public political position was originally the means to get public political franchise, through its unfolding into general and particular forms of public political action, it becomes the means to realise one s own political power, or the means to govern. Therefore, the first transition of the political position, and hence of the formal citizen, is the difficult one, because it is the transition in which the position has to assert its particularity as part of the public political idea. The second transition, in contrast, is a matter of course, since the political position now turned public merely has to find its particular mode of existence within the collective. If the citizen fails to attain public political representation, his or her position was just private rant. As a result, this formal citizen will have to reproduce the system of production but will be unable to re-create it. In other words, this formal citizen will end up furnishing the material conditions for the construction of someone else s system of production. Due to his or her exclusion from the public system of representation and of the unconditional character of the public political position of the Modern State, he or she is indirectly coerced into donating a quantity of the product of his or her labour to the construction of the collective conditions of labour of his or her one-sided subordination. It becomes apparent that in a representative political system the collective political position of a citizen can only be realised as part of the collective political positions of other citizens, and that the former citizen s collective political position is the mode of realisation of part of the collective political positions of yet other citizens. Thus collective political positions are also the objectification of collective political action, whose mediation particularises formless will. Through this mediation the collective is able to govern itself, since it creates the conditions for the establishment of the 11

13 political relations of production which will furnish the necessary collective conditions of labour, the need for which has given rise to the collective political will. Therefore the concept of government by the citizens means that a citizen partially governs others by the latter governing themselves according to the former citizen s political will, and that other citizens though not necessarily the latter govern the former citizen by this citizen governing him- or herself according to this group s political will. The novelty of the public political system of representation lies not in this, but in that political franchise and citizenship are determined through the public political relation itself. And because this is necessarily established ex post, the public political action objectified in the public political position of the publicly franchised citizen no longer matches the public political will objectified in this position. The public political will objectified in the public political position of the franchised citizen arises from political alliances established ex post through the poll. Its public political action, in turn, though objectified in the same quantity of the Modern State, is the result of the public political representatives shifting public political positions and ex post determining new political relations between this franchised citizen and other franchised citizens. With the ex post change in political relations, now the Modern State necessarily represents a different quantity of public political will and public political action. This is why franchised citizens need to permanently re-assess and shuffle around public political positions themselves. Every time a new public political position is adopted, a new political relation of production is established through this position, representing a new quantity of public political will. Every time others change positions, the quantity of public political action of this political relation of production changes, and every time the representatives of this position changes positions, even the particular forms of public political action of the political relation of production change. If this shuffling around of public political positions according to public political action is possible at all, it is because everyone expresses the political will objectified in a political position as public political will i.e. relative to the Modern State. The public political 12

14 action objectified in a public political position is always the mode of realisation of the public political will objectified in another. Modern society brings about not only the unfolding of the public political action objectified in public political positions into general form and particular forms, but also the unfolding of its own content. Due to the ex post character of political relations, public political action unfolds into institutionalised political action and immanent political action. The latter is the content of the former, but the former and the individual political action that public political positions represent to the franchised citizen are the respective objective and subjective mediations of immanent political action. Deviations between the institutionalised political action objectified in the different public political positions and their immanent counterparts make up a short-term public structure of governance. Those franchised citizens holding public political positions representing more institutionalised political action than their immanent counterparts will be over-governing those in the converse situation, who would be over-governed. Likewise, civil society as a whole could be over-governing the Modern State or be over-governed by it. The short-term adjustment of the public political system consists in the convergence of institutionalised individual franchise to immanent individual governance power, or in the convergence towards a political structure in which each franchised citizen governs according to the degree of political franchise they have attained. Therefore, the short-term equilibrium is multiple, because every political relation outside of equilibrium gives rise to a different power structure. Public political action, in turn, rests on public political will, because the public political positions taken in the short term depend on the individual conditions of labour that the franchised citizen aims to attain in the longer term. 6 Thus it should not be in the least surprising that public political representatives should change their public political positions frequently, break electoral promises and end up with a different 6 The nature and content of the constitution of public political action will be discussed in section VI below. 13

15 constituency from its original one. Ex ante they could not possibly know whether they would be elected or the composition of the public assembly that the poll would land them into. Nor should the change in public political positions of the publicly franchised citizens surprise us. The public system of political representation hinges precisely on the continual revision of public political positions, because of the necessary ex post nature of political relations. IV. The Unfolding of the Modern State into General Government and Civil Service Unlike money, the Modern State can never fully transcend the opposition between its universality and its particularity. The particularity of the Modern State is not limited to the requirement that universality has to exists as a separate entity in its own right, but is further developed by the fact that the representatives of the Modern State are themselves particular citizens from civil society with particular public political positions. The personal lives of public political representatives are private. The moment they leave their office, they are just private citizens from civil society. It is as if, in certain circumstances, money became again an ordinary commodity. The money-commodity may be used as a good, but in the society of commodities i.e. in the market it is always money. The public political idea must acquire an external form of existence, first because it is the Modern State and thus the form of existence of the public political will, and second, because it is not the public political position of any political representative in particular, but the position of all as a body. In other words, it is not the representatives themselves who are universal but their role in constituting the collective form of existence of the public political idea. Therefore it should be clear at all times what the members of the public assembly stand for. Besides, in a system of atomistic individuals who are strangers to each other, there is no guarantee that in the short term any such representative might not use his or her universal role for personal gain, although in the long term 14

16 they are checked by the system of expression of the public political will objectified in the public political positions of citizens. Because of the universal character of the Modern State, the public political position of the public assembly cannot be expressed in relative form, but has to be documented, recorded and archived. This position takes the form of laws, which are written statements of the rules applicable to all political relations of production, both within civil society and within the Modern State itself. As such, these laws play the role of non-commodity, or public, rules of the mercantile game i.e. of commodity relations of production, and are the specific public product of public political representatives. In modern society, laws are the only way of informing the effective citizens of civil society what these citizens have signed up for, and making their agreement binding. Laws are also the way of informing the politically disenfranchised of the collective conditions of their labour and binding them to these conditions. As public political positions change due to changes in society s structure of political power, laws have to be upgraded, updated, replaced, scrapped or created as need be. This will be the job of public political representatives during the tenure of their position within the Modern State, which, in turn, will be the outcome of ever-renewed attempts at building political consensus. Without written laws, the mediation of the Modern State would become personal and particular, and civil society would be unable to govern itself, because behind every instance of mediation by the state there would lurk the suspicion of personal favouritism. In sum, within the framework of the commodity there has to be law for there to be order, but the law is the product of the mercantile order, or of the commodity form of structuring the production and reproduction of social life. The Modern State is the unconditional form of polity because it is the collective form of existence of the public political idea. However, this autonomous instantiation of the public political idea can 15

17 be nothing but a public political position itself, and hence a particular form of public political action. In fact, it is the internal mediation of the public political positions of the public political representatives. Since public political will is an objectification of a public political position, it has to appear in a particular form of public political action. Thus particularity is a necessary condition for the Modern State. However, since every citizen expresses the public political will objectified in their own political positions relative to the same particular, particularity turns into singularity, or an instantiation of the universal. The Modern State is a particular form of public political action, but of formal, rather than genuine, public political action. The public political action objectified in it is nothing but the collective form of existence of public political will, and hence the necessary mediation for all political relations. The Modern State is a clean slate of public political action ready to take any of the existing particular forms. No matter how explicit the legal framework may be, the Modern State in its capacity of public assembly will fail by a long way to bring civil society to establish every particular political relation of production required to uphold modern society i.e. the commodity form of production. For starters, a political relation is a personal, non-reciprocal relation of production, but no citizen would have any other citizen tell him or her what to do, nor would the Modern State, since in his or her immediacy, a modern citizen could not possibly embody the collective but the particular. The modern citizen has signed for collective-based personal, non-reciprocal relations of production, not for particular, personal ones. Second, modern citizens are commodity producers, and they are too busy trying to reproduce the material conditions of their lives on their own. Therefore, they will be unwilling to spend any of their own labour capacity on anything that would not result in a commodity or a product for exchange, or in the prospect of facilitating the realisation of the price of one such commodity. By definition public work does not lead to such an outcome, because it creates a non-commodity, or public, product. 16

18 Thus it will be the Modern State itself which will have to establish a standard unit of measurement of the money-commodity i.e. a standard of price, institute legal tender and enforce credit contracts. These are its main functions, and all three are particular in form, since one standard of price excludes others, a certain instrument of circulation of money excludes others, and credit relations at a particular time in the process reproduction of material life are an array of particular relations between particular commodity producers. The three main functions entail the secondary particular functions of enforcing private property and bodily integrity. Enforcement comprises policing relations between particular citizens, judging particular evidence of prospective offences, and punishing particular offenders. The constitution of a separate, universal political sphere in society in the form of the Modern State and filled with individuals coming from civil society, in turn, entails the need to enforce the universal functions of the Modern State itself. Abuse of public authority by a public political representative would be a crime by the Modern State against civil society, and abuse of civil rights by a citizen would be a crime by civil society against the Modern State. Such cases would be judged within the framework of public law, that is, a differentiated system of laws which arises from the need to deal with the relations of a particular which is nothing but the embodiment of the universal. Despite the fact that crimes against the physical integrity of an individual are offences against the particular aspects of the Modern State, they are also judged and punished within the framework of public law. The conceptual reason for this apparent anomaly is that it is the individual him- or herself that is the bearer of his or her public political position, and thus the particular form of existence of public political will and public political action. Second, citizens are not only the constituency of the Modern State, but also the sole source of public political representatives. A crime against a person is a crime against the Modern State. 17

19 However grand the universal functions of the Modern State may sound, and however important its secondary particular functions may be, they all hinge on the three plain main functions of the Modern State. All functions are only meaningful within a system of production of commodities. However, it is the first three that make the commodity relation of production feasible as the general relation of production. Otherwise the commodity would be stifled by the social cost that the atomistic form of organisation of production imposes on society. 7 With the Modern State itself becoming the unity-in-difference of the general form of public political action and some particular forms of it, the particular forms of public political action within civil society i.e. the public political positions of franchised citizens gain still further determinacy. This creates the necessary non-commodity, or public, conditions for the commodity relation of production. A seller adopts a determinate standard of price, and the buyer accepts it though not necessarily the price expressed in this standard because they both accept the standard unit of measurement of the money-commodity established by the state. A seller and a creditor accept legal tender as the means of purchase and as the means of payment respectively, because they both accept the symbol of money instituted by the state. A debtor honours his or her debt, because he or she recognises the authority of the state to force the debtor to abide by his or her credit bond. Likewise, a commodity producer recognises another commodity producer s individual property as private property, and the individual s body as the individual s own, because the former individual is a lawabiding commodity producer. In the event of a breach or a violation, the perpetrator compensates the victim and serves his or her sentence, because he or she recognises the authority and judgement 7 I.e. the cost of the monetary uses of the money-commodity, and the constraint imposed by the a-synchronicity of commodity relations. 18

20 of the state to set a fitting punishment. The victim accepts the decision of the state, because he or she accepts the authority and judgement of the state. 8 The two-fold character of the Modern State as the general form of public political action and as some particular forms of public political action gives rise to the Modern State s internal differentiation into general government and civil service. The former is the result of, and at the same time concerns itself with, the general form of public political action, while the latter is the result of, and concerns itself with, the necessary particular forms of public political action which fall upon the Modern State. Although the civil service only acquires legitimacy as the necessary executing arm of the Modern State s universal laws, and hence of the general government, it is the embodiment of the necessary particular forms of public political action that civil society cannot create on its own. Therefore the civil service does not originate from the complexity of the tasks that the Modern State has to undertake, but from the commodity relation of production. The commodity gives rise to the state as a separate, autonomous sphere, and yet it needs the Modern State to create all new collective conditions for the commodity which are not the governmentmediated by-products of the commodity relations of production themselves. Thus, in order for modern society to be feasible, the Modern State has to subsume part of civil society and give it the form of the Modern State. If originally the public political action objectified in the public political position of the public political representative took only the form of somebody else s position within the public assembly, it now has to take some particular forms of genuine 8 In the first case, the buyer works for the seller and gets nothing in return for the fact that he or she has accepted the standard of price used by the seller. In the second case, the seller and the creditor work for the buyer and the debtor respectively, because they give away a commodity-product, or the unity of private value and private use value, in exchange for neither. In the third case, the debtor works for the creditor, because he or she gives the creditor a quantity of money in exchange for nothing. The creditor had already worked for the debtor, because he or she had given away a commodity product in exchange for a mere promise of a certain quantity of money at a certain time in the future. 19

21 public political action. That is, some of the political relations of productions established by public political representatives now have to take the form of the particular public political positions of some enfranchised citizens from civil society. For these enfranchised citizens to become civil servants, in turn, the Modern State has to be not only the universal equivalent form of the public political will of their respective public political positions, but also the particular form of the public political action objectified in these positions. Modern citizens will not have such an end, unless they are absorbed into the Modern State. Whereas the latter condition is necessary for the rise of the civil service, the former is sufficient. This way the public body of political representation manages to govern outside of itself without establishing personal relations of power outside of the bounds of the Modern State, which would undermine its legitimacy. However, the relationship between the body of representation and the civil service, though personal, has to be indirect and hence mediated by the general form of the public political action that gives rise to the civil service. The above requirement will bring about a differentiation within the general form of public political action itself. In addition to written laws, the general form now has to be embodied in policies and legal codes. Policies are protocols and procedures for the effective currency of the laws, and codes are comprehensive compilations of laws related by subject-matter in order for it to be possible to judge on prospective breaches of law and to punish effective breaches of it. In other words, due to the objective need for a civil service, the general government will have to unfold into the legislative body, the executive and the judiciary. The civil service, in turn, will unfold into as many differentiated functions as civil society requires it to perform. The necessary unfolding of the Modern State into general government and civil service is as if the commodity-products exchanged for the money-commodity in its character as good, and not as money, had to become moneycommodities themselves in order that the money-commodity could be used as a good. 20

22 V. The Commodity Form of Political Power, or Public Political Power As the unity of the universal equivalent form of public political will and the general form of public political action the Modern State is the objectification of absolute political power, and hence of sovereignty, whereas civil society appears as a sphere of atomistic individuals without power. However, if its power appears as absolute, it is because of the ex post character of the constitution of collective political positions, and hence of political representation. The underlying principle of political power is separated from its immediate exercise, and their unity is re-instated through the Modern State. Nevertheless, immediately this unity can only be re-instated in the Modern State. The aforementioned unity is re-instated formally at all times as the permanent matching up of the institutionalised political action objectified in every form of public political position with the respective institutionalised political will they each represent i.e. as the unity and singleness of the Modern State. However, in the short term, the unity asserts itself through the convergence of the institutionalised political will objectified in public political positions towards the immanent political action they each represent. Were this not the case, the exercise of power would undermine its principle and become illegitimate, and the power of the state would dwindle, though not the role of the government as the guardian of the Modern State. Offending public political representatives would fall into discredit and would be institutionally ousted. Moreover, in the long term, the unity between the principle and the exercise of power asserts itself through the convergence of the institutionalised political will of public political positions to their underlying counterparts. By this token, the immanent public political action objectified in public political positions converges to their respective underlying public political wills, and the exercise of political power converges to the needs of the underlying constituency. Otherwise it would be the government itself that would fall into discredit, which would bring about social unrest in the search for a new, true embodiment 21

23 of the Modern State. The long-term adjustment of the political system, in terms, defines effective structural citizenship. Thus the Modern State is the foundation of its own power only immediately, and will remain so only for as long as it is the collective form of mediation of the political power of civil society. This means that the Modern State does not eliminate personal relations of power from civil society, but gives them the veneer of external, impersonal relations. If somebody is unhappy, public political representation is to blame; civil society throws the stone but hides its hand. Political power in modern society is public political power, that is, collective political power asserted ex post and in a formally independent form. Due to the atomistic character of commodity production, and hence of modern society, sovereignty detaches from every individual and takes on a universal form in a particular body of individuals which exists alongside those individuals whose sovereignty it is purported to represent. This universal form, however, can be nothing but the sovereignty of its constituency. It is the form which brings the individual in line with the collective when their unity can only be asserted ex post. If the relations of production between two individuals immediately conform to the collective requirements, the Modern State becomes the ultimate social contract (Rousseau, 1762), and could be replaced by mere symbols of itself i.e. the standard of price, legal tender and the law. In every instance of contradiction between the individual and the collective interest, in contrast, the Modern State has to appear as the Leviathan (Hobbes, 1651). Thus the Modern State is the social contract mediated by the Leviathan, or the necessary form of the collective contract when this contract is established ex post by atomistic individuals. In contrast, for those individuals who have been publicly disenfranchised, that is, for those who merely have formal citizenship, the Modern State is nothing but the Leviathan in the garb of the social contract a total travesty. 22

24 VI. Collective Labour as the Content of Public Political Positions In sections II and III above I discussed the formal determinations of public political positions and of the public political idea, and argued that it is the public political will and the public political action objectified in them that drive the public political system in the long and the short term respectively. In this section I will discuss the content of public political will and public political action, and thus get rid of the metaphysics of my prior analysis. Public political will and public political action are further objectifications of labour which hinge on those objectifications that appear as the commodity-value of commodities and their respective commodity-use-values. 9 They are objectifications of the quantity of labour collectively necessary to create the collective conditions of labour entailed in a determinate public political position. The creation of collective conditions of labour takes not only a determinate quantity of collective labour, but also labour applied in determinate forms, or a collective structure of work processes. This is why collective labour is objectified not only as quantities of public political will, but also as quantities of public political action. The private conditions of labour of a commodity producer determine which alternative sets of new individual conditions of labour would enhance the productive capacities of his or her own labour and thus ease the process of reproduction of the material conditions of his or her own life. The sets of alternative new conditions that the commodity producer would be willing to have created would be limited by the technical abilities of the commodity producer, that is, his or her technical domain. Conditions at odds with the commodity producer s technical domain would not enhance but degrade his or her commodity, so the commodity producer would be completely unwilling to spend any part of the product of his or her labour in the construction of such a set of conditions. This is 9 See Levín (1997), Rubin (1928), Backhaus (1980) and Ahumada (2009, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c). 23