The Origins of Totalitarianism: Chapter XIII

"Totalitarian lawfulness, defying legality and pretending to establish direct reign of justice on earth, executes the law of History or of Nature without translating it into standards of right and wrong for individual behaviour." - What the ruler says goes, whether it's right or not.

Totalitarian governments break the link between civilised world and themselves due to monstrous crimes, but it is not ruthlessness for the sake of being ruthless, it's because someone broke the laws in their country.

People can be judged as criminals when they break the consensus irius - When they break the laws by which they are governed.

Darwin's laws of nature and survival of the fittest are being swept into history as they develop through time. They can be seen as racist to the extent that Marx's survival of the fittest class can also be seen as racist.

Meaning of 'law' changed from expressing the framework of stability within people must act to become the expression of motion itself.

If the law of nature is for unfit species to die, then the law of history is for unfit classes to wither away, so if new classes did not form it would mean the end of humanity.

"In the body politic of totalitarian government, this place of positive laws is taken by total terror, which is designed to translate into reality the law of history or nature."

"Terror in totalitarian government has ceased to be a mere means for the suppression of opposition, though it is also used for such purposes."

"Terror becomes total when it becomes independent of all opposition; it rules supreme when nobody any longer stands in its way. If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarian domination."

Chief aim of terror is to make law of history and nature race through mankind.

Terror, when not used to execute law or to improve the welfare of mankind, eliminates individuals for the sake of the species, sacrifices the 'parts' for the sake of the 'whole.'

"By pressing man against each other, total terror destroys the space between them; insofar as it is still some kind of space, appears like a guarantee of freedom."

Total terror is not for or against men, it provides nature and history with things to accelerate their movement.

Ideologies combine scientific approach with philosophical relevance and pretend to be scientific philosophy. The word ideology implies that ideas can be the subject of science like animals are the subject of zoology.

The New Industrial Estate

Info from:

http://abridge.me.uk/doku.php?id=the_new_industrial_state

The Imperatives of Technology

It takes far longer to complete any task,

There is a large increase in the amount of capital required, beyond that needed for increased production — increased time means increased inventory, increased knowledge is required, more specialised equipment is used at each stage of manufacture,

The process becomes ever more inflexible, designs must be known long in advance and not changed,

Specialised manpower is required, with deep knowledge of a tightly limited area (not necessarily manpower with more aptitude or skill),

The need for organisation increases as a function of specialisation, and organisation becomes a specialised role in itself,

Planning becomes much more important as a consequence of the increased investment of time and money, the inflexibility of the commitment, the need for complex organisation and the intolerance of the market for defective products.

The General Theory of Motivation

1. Compulsion: the stick. Bad consequences if the individual does not pursue the organisation's goals,
2. Compensation: the carrot. The individual receives money for serving the organisation's purposes,
3. Identification: the individual is convinced that the organisation's goals and/or methods are superior to his own, that working for the organisation is a more effective means of achieving his ends than working alone, and
4. Adaptation: the individual sees working for the organisation as an effective means of altering the organisation's goals to more accurately reflect his own.

The Nature of Employment and Unemployment

Reduce blue-collar workers, replace with technology

Need for skilled and unskilled blue-collars dwindling, replaced by educated people in the technostructure

The Industrial System and Union

1. The shift in power from the entrepreneur to the technostructure, as previously mentioned, means that those deciding whether to accept wage demands are no longer those who will pay the bill. The urgency of undermining or destroying the union felt by the entrepreneur is not felt by the technostructure — the union poses a threat to planning through the risk of striking rather than a threat to pecuniary reward through seizing their profits. Thus it is in the interests of the technostructure to pursue more docile relations and assent to more generous wage agreements. Moreover, increased costs can be passed on to consumers, especially when wage agreements are industry-wide, signalling equal price increases for all firms simultaneously.
2. Technological advance reduces the number of workers within reach of the union, shifting employees in large number into white collar positions who tend to identify more with management than with unions.²⁶⁾
3. The regulation of markets and aggregate demand as well as comparative affluence have reduced the dependence of the worker on the union. Where previously the worker had been unable to find another job because of high level of unemployment, management of aggregate demand has made this much easier. Consequently, where the union was previously the only mechanism by which he could solicit for better working conditions, and the only organisation that could protect him from the extreme privation of unemployment, now he is less dependent. He is much more able to find another job if he is dissatisfied and thus the problem of recruitment motivates firms to voluntarily improve conditions.²⁷⁾
4. The imperatives of price and wage regulation place wage negotiation firmly within the remit of the state, and are ultimately likely to demand that wage increases progress in line with industry average improvements in productivity.

HCJ Lecture - The End(s) if Western Civilisation?

Weber - Bureaucracy - Charisma is a source of bureaucratic power (eg. Obama)

Main power in bureaucracy is legal - rules and laws - Lawyers

People worried that people from third world countries will take their jobs for less pay

Keynesianism - credit so people can buy things, government creating jobs to keep the economy going, keep printing money forever [problem: inflation]

Depression - Almost wiped out capitalism

Communism - Central planning, committees for everything, low quality goods

1950s - Era of American prosperity. Keynes is awesome, his system replaces neo-classical economics.

Keynesianism attacked - Far left: Maoism, third world-ism, ecology, feminism, transvaluation
                                                    Mao - third world is China, Brazil, etc, the new proletariat will rise            and destroy the first world (USA, Europe...)
                                     - Right: Racial discrimination, cultural decadence, economic parasitism (make people redundant with cheap machines), loss of national identity, globalisation as disintegration, relative and absolute economic decline of the west

The New Industrial State

Heidegger says that western civilisation is doomed - worships death, has no future, no vision of the future. Just produces trash [Hollywood movies, music, etc]

It is violent, as Heidegger suggested it would be - nuclear weapons, military spending

Anthropology - Women exist only to reproduce, true human is a violent Schopenhauerian monster

Frazer - The Golden Bough - the high priest of Nemi; and the observed behaviour of apes (rape of females by dominant male) is true human nature

Vietnam - First entirely bureaucratic-technological ware automate death machine. Defeat of the USA was the end of the enlightenment in the Heideggerian terms - not just a setoback but a complete malfunction of the civilisation.