“This is perhaps a convenient moment to consider what has been
happening in the second half of the twentieth century, the period to which
‘we’ are witnesses.

1 The state is consolidating on a world scale. It weighs down on society (on
all societies) in full force; it plans and organizes society ‘rationally’, with the
help of knowledge and technology, imposing analogous, if not homologous,
measures irrespective of political ideology, historical background, or the
class origins of those in power. The state crushes time by reducing
differences to repetitions or circularities) dubbed ‘equilibrium’, ‘feedback’,
‘self-regulation’, and so on). Space in its Hegelian form comes back into its
own. This modern state promotes and imposes itself as the stable centre –
definitively – of (national) societies and spaces. As both the end and the
meaning of history – just as Hegel had forecast — it flattens the social and
‘cultural’ spheres. It enforces a logic that puts an end to conflicts and
contradictions. It neutralizes whatever resists it by castration or crushing. Is
this social entropy? Or is it a monstrous excrescence transformed into
normality? Whatever the answer, the results lie before us.

2 In this same space there are, however, other forces on the boil, because
the rationality of the state, of its techniques, plans and programmes,
provokes opposition. The violence of power is answered by the violence
of subversion. With its wars and revolutions, defeats and victories,
confrontation and turbulence, the modern world corresponds precisely
to Nietzsche’s tragic vision. State-imposed normality makes permanent
transgression inevitable. As for time and negativity, whenever they re-
emerge, as they must, they do so explosively. This is a new negativity, a
tragic negativity which manifests itself as incessant violence. These seething
forces are still capable of rattling the lid of the cauldron of the state and its
space, for differences can never be totally quieted. Though defeated, they
live on, and from time to time they begin fighting ferociously to reassert
themselves and transform themselves through struggle.

3 Nor has the working class said its last word. It continues on its way,
sometimes underground, sometimes in the light of day. It is not an easy
matter to get rid of the class struggle, which has taken myriad forms not
accounted for by the impoverished schema usually so referred to – a schema
which is nowhere to be found in Marx even if its devotees
claim to be Marxists. It may be that a fatal balance of power has now been
reached which will prevent the working class’s opposition to the bourgeoisie
from ever becoming an open antagonism, so that society totters while the
state rots in place or reasserts itself in convulsive fashion. It may be that
world revolution will break out after a period of latency. Or perhaps world
war will circle the planet in the wake of the world market. At all events,
everything suggests at present that the workers in the industrialized countries
are opting neither for indefinite growth and accumulation nor for violent
revolution leading to the disappearance of the state, but rather for the
withering away of work itself. ”

 

What I thought after reading this:

 

Of course, and as usually, the subversive, anti-capitalist work of artists is not acknowledged because we are outside all systems and our rebellion is non-violent since we have no interest in power! The joy of creation which most people find in their hobbies and pastimes we insist on experiencing in our primary occupation — which is why we are seen with suspicion by a society in which work is meant to produce stuff folks consume, and therefore need to replace, in an endless cycle which enriches the owners of the means of production and, at the same time, keeps most workers so exhausted they do not have time to rebel …