Risk and Extortion II: The Establishment and the Estate

It is impossible to engage with critical historical analysis without a materialist framework. That is, it is pointless to talk about the virtuality of risk, for example in the light of a historical analysis of “Russian aggression”, if this exclusively evolves around a history of ideas. Unfortunately, most of the so called analyses of the Russian invasion into the Ukraine are virtually indistinguishable from news reports, which themselves have been largely written in the name of geopolitical interests. it is a real problem for the discipline of International Relations, for example, that it cannot separate its analysis from the political language of nation states.

Nothing Else Matters

We must understand discourse  – for example public declarations of powerful men – as material-performative practices; they have consequences. The non-performative notion of ideas, i.e. pure thought, cannot defend itself against mythology and is thus unable to support a critical historical engagement. When Putin speaks of a Greater Russia or Netanyahu speaks of a Greater Israel, these have to be taken seriously has historical events. The fact that both ideas are now being actualized by the deployment of military force in the Ukraine, Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem prove once more that discourse has to be understood performatively. There is no reason to treat the discourse of Trump on Panama, Mexico, Canada or Greenland any differently.

So far, neither Putin, nor Netanyahu, nor Trump have declared an interest in invading Europe (unless one counts Greenland as still a property of Denmark), so the fear that is mobilized in relation to the need to expand the military industrial complex in Europe remains a lot more virtual than actual. Peopkle thus need to be convinced in terms of anticipating future warfare. What however is not being discussed is the question whether the proposed military spending is the best option to handle the risk of Russian, Israeli or US-American aggression? There seem to be no alternatives. This is odd, given the fact that there is sufficient reason to consider cheaper and more effective forms of resistance. One could, for example, enable people to become better at self- defence, or develop localized guerrilla skills, for example in terms of manufacturing and operating drones like those deployed by the Houthi resistance movement against the imperial forces of Saudi Arabia and the USA.

Why do they always send the poor?

A historical-materialist analysis would also have to include a critique of the modes of abstraction,  that are deployed in the name of “the Nation State” (which is itself an abstraction). We should never take these abstractions as things in themselves but understand them as discursive figurations. They have actual consequences but not as that which they claim to represent. This is at the heart of Whitehead’s critique of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

For example, the term “country” relates to the actual land it territorializes, but in its abstraction removes the question of the property of that land; i.e. who owns the land. So when people are asked or even volunteer to “die for their country”, they do not die for land that is their property, but for an expropriated imaginary relationship to land that someone else owns. We then end up with the historical fact that those who own the most land are the least likely to die for it.    The fear mongering by above all the so called “moderates” and “centrists” of European politics has to be understood in simple terms: they want others to sacrifice for “their” interests. Increased military spending is primarily profitable for a very small group of contractors, shareholders and stockbrokers.

The interests of centrist and moderate politicians are firmly entrenched with those of the Establishment. That is: all leading politicians (just like all mainstream media executives, all judges etc.) work for and are therefore part of the practices of abstraction that uphold “the Establishment”, even if they are not the actual proprietors of the estates that provide the actual-material conditions of existence of this establishment. Almost every political party in Europe has pledged its allegiance to upholding the establishment of one or other nation state. As we have seen with the treatment of the critics of Israel, questioning the right of a nation state to exist, is a most serious offense, even if this is “business as usual” for imperialist states.