Repression: Legitimate and Despotic, and the Furious Uprising of the Proletarian Class

In all the long history of civil society, man has never been absolutely free.

Man was born free. In the days before civil society, man walked the earth largely un-frustrated by the social ideals of other men. While he still had to struggle with the unyielding forces of nature and the fragility of his own flesh, he did not yet have to hold himself to the objective standards of the others. But man in this time was few, his faculties undeveloped, and his moral character devoid of complexity. With the development of civil, and, consequently, class society, he won many victories. He was able to collaborate with his fellows so that he may conquer the outside world and bring mother nature to her knees. Eventually, he was even able to develop cures to the ailments that plagued his flesh. But there was, in this victory, a hidden condition. Now bound by the collected rules and expectations of civil(and class) society, he could no longer walk free, he could no longer follow his whims to their ultimate end. His desire was, more or less, frustrated.

Such was the tragedy of civilization. In freeing himself from the chains of nature, man had only imposed upon himself new shackles, and it would appear that these were far harder to break. Over many hundreds and thousands of years, man's intellectual faculties were unhindered by the concerns that chiefly occupied his attention in the savage times, and he was able to double and double and double the relative position of strength he held over the forces of nature. Man had traded some freedoms for others.

What did civil society require of man in return for the blessings of science, industry, agriculture and fire? Servitude. Domestication. Man signed a contract with society, one of servitude in return for security. He gave up the myriad freedoms of nature, the total freedom of movement and action largely unhindered by morality and civic expectation, so that he may be able to collaborate with his fellows in the development of human productive capacities and thus be free of the chains that nature placed upon him.

Ultimately, civilization, civil society, it frustrates the desire of man. For what began as simple practical restrictions quickly developed into the absurdities of sexual moralism and private property. For what began as simple collaboration soon gave way to domination and supremacy of some men over others, the establishment of private interest and greed. Repression became diffuse throughout civil society. The initially beneficial contract between man and society was eventually replaced by the control of men by other men and of women by men.

The total repression of desire, be it sexual, be it violent, be it simply 'strange' or 'unacceptable' created the great frustration that today's man is ill with. He longs for excitement and glory, but the world tells him that he must toil and suffer for 'the greater good'. Rather than consisting of free and equal citizens engaging in peaceful collaboration with one another and the free development of the intellectual, emotional and artistic capacities, we see the total enslavement of all people. This society is, in essence, illegitimate. It lives off of stolen value and slavery, war and death, as well as the total debasement of all people's minds and their filling with disgusting consumerism. The modern and historical state has done nothing to ensure the freedom of people other than their freedom from the forces of nature and from the weakness of their flesh, and even then, it has not done a very great job at this task.

This society is based not on the common good, the general will, but rather upon the particular wills of a few individuals and of capital itself. This society is not legitimate, but rather, despotic. It rules over all men without a care for their wellbeing. It would seem to me that a good and reasonable society should be based upon the good of all rather than the greed of the few.

Now, this is not to say that civil society should be done away with in its entirety; this would be nothing short of madness. The great numbers of people that presently exist and the even greater numbers of modern needs that must be fulfilled cannot allow for the return to a primitive state, and indeed, such a return would be essentially genocidal and cause more destruction than creation. That being said, we cannot simply accept the relations of existing society and allow them to continue to destroy any semblance of freedom. Instead, it is necessary to devise a societal plan in which all people are free of the horrors of civil society, and particularly, capitalist civil society.

A legitimate civil society is one in which the general will, rather than particular wills, dictates the repression of society. It is important to recognize that so long as men live in large groups, and so long as they have social relations with one another, some level of repression will exist. The goal is to direct this repression in favor of the repressed, rather than to use it in the interest of capital. The legitimate civil society is defined by a contractual relationship between all of those present within it, one that is not totally dissimilar from the existing social contract. This one, however, is far more true to itself.

The legitimate social contract consists of an agreement between all people that they will give up the more-or-less total freedom present in nature in return for the free development of their passions, intellectual and emotional, and the freedom from the forces of nature and the weakness of the flesh(to the extent that this is possible.) In this society, repression only exists when its existence is justified. What justifies any repression in the legitimate social contract is the general will: the common good of all people. Rather than repressing individuals in accordance with the will of capital, individuals will be repressed in accordance with the collective good of all people.

In the legitimate civil society, all presently existing social relations which repress unjustly will be done away with. Private property, senseless laws, pointless taboos, the old moralisms, and all similar relations will be totally abolished. In their place will be a new society in which every person is free to develop his intellectual and emotional capacities until he is contented, and every person is free to do as they wish, so long as it is in accordance with the general will.

We find in proletarian revolution the most generalized and righteous expression of the general will. When the working people of society come to realize the incongruence between the dictatorship of capital and the general will, they necessarily chafe against their chains, against the unjustified repression which the despotic-capitalist regime brings down upon them. It is a truism that, under the despotism of capital, man is broken up. Rather than be allowed to produce freely, to work freely, live freely and to love freely, he is pinned to the instruments of production and forced upon threat of death to toil for the proliferation of capital. Here, we must be careful to make a crucial distinction between capital and the bourgeoisie, the ruling class. For, while the old theorists spoke of a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, we must necessarily discuss a dictatorship of capital, as the bourgeoisie is simply the class of administrators and slave drivers of the great and odious machine of capital.

However, let us make sure not to become carried away. It was said before that, under the dictatorship of capital, man is broken up. What do we mean here by 'broken up'? Simply that he is not-whole. He is diffuse throughout society, and society is diffuse throughout him. He is unable to conceive of himself as a whole being, and can only see his own reflection as shattered and strewn about. The soul of man under capitalism is no soul at all; it is a shadow, a shadow of a soul. We must observe two cases, representative of the two classes which everybody in capitalism is increasingly homogenized into.

The proletarian. They work, they consume, they reproduce, and then, they die. Such is the plight of the worker. As we see it, the worker is basically and essentially divided into two halves. One productive, one social, neither *alive*. The proletarian in the productive state is a walking corpse. They, in this mode, exist to produce, to "create". But this creation, this creation brings no joy and has within its character no aspect of creativity. Indeed, this act of creative production is in of itself uncreative; it is replicative. While, in the social mode, the proletarian is able to engage in a mediocre level of social interaction with their fellows, their family and friends, this constitutes a far lesser portion of their day than the amount spent sleeping and working. Indeed, it seems that the leisurely and social portion of the life of the proletarian is merely an afterthought, while the productive(really replicative) and reproductive(or resting) hours constitute the majority of their time. This "life", really more of a poverty of life than a life in itself, is supremely repressive. Every aspect of it is calibrated to maximize production. Working hours are spent producing, free hours are spent consuming, and resting hours really only exist to ensure that production can continue. The proletarian replicates so that they may live, and lives so that they may replicate.

Now, we must examine the abject life of the bourgeoisie. Oftentimes misconstrued as luxurious, the bourgeois life is, while more life-like than that of the proletarian, ultimately lifeless as well. Rather than being consumed, the profit extracted by the bourgeois class is devoted, almost entirely, to reinvestment. Rather than being used, the profit is primarily devoted to one thing: the production of further profit. Yes, we can observe the luxuries of the many billionaires and say, "Wait! This man is not lifeless. His existence is more life-like than any I have seen before!", it is necessary to recognize that this is most of all a simulacrum of life. It is a fake-life, and is thus, like all the other capitalist lives, not a life itself. The masses of commodities hoarded and expended by the most decadent upper echelons of the bourgeoisie ultimately represent a futile attempt to fill the deep hole that is present in all bourgeois lives. For the bourgeois man is not a man at all: he is an instrument of capital. He, much like the proletarian, is used as a tool by the great machine to further production, albeit a far better taken care of farm animal than any proletarian. In the bourgeois life, all enjoyment is sacrificed to the eternal loop of capital. Now, none of this is to say that the bourgeois man deserves any greater sympathy, or, indeed, any sympathy at all. it is rather to counter the oft-repeated claim that, once we have done away with the bourgeoisie, we have done away with the despotic society.

Returning to our original case, that of the proletarian, we can come to understand that there is a fundamental tension under the surface of capital's dictatorship: yes, a tension between bourgeois and proletarian, but, even more so, a tension between the organic life of man and the artificial death of capital. This tension will ultimately be at the root of all great revolts and all wondrous restructurings, for, in the end, the tension that bubbles will one day burst.

The general will of society is contradicted by every exchange of a commodity. Every time capital multiplies itself, the general will screams. But it is, like man, in chains. The bourgeois-republican revolutions distorted and mocked thgeneral will, painting it as the great standard-bearer of private property and representative democracy. But it is not so. The general will is the will of society in the interest of society; These bourgeois revolutionaries may very well be seen as parasites, feasting on the revolutionary blood of the general will and growing fat off of its fruits. And now, as the bourgeoisie continues its endless service to the particular will of capital, it is solely the mission of the proletariat to tear down the capitalist institutions and replace them with socialist ones, to command great violence in the service of the general will and once and for all excise the bourgeois cancer from the body politic.