Beyond War and Peace

The res publica on the wane

Post mortem

The following translation is a rarity we encountered reviewing the bewildering number of writings in Martin’s œuvre. Written in February 2003 at the request of the Arch+ magazine (as a reaction to the American Iraq war and George W. Bush’s Nation Building effort), Martin’s thoughts on the metamorphoses of the Leviathan seemed so strange that the magazine preferred not to publish his essay. This breach of hospitality is all the more astonishing since Martin’s thoughts on the Achitecture of Civil War anticipated what actually happened. If the architectural magazine is often described as an architectural version of Lettre International that’s always had a progressive political orientation (»including: aesthetics and postmodernism in the late 1970s, the legacy of the modern movement in the mid-1980s, and high-tech architecture in the 1990s.«), this can only lead to the conclusion that the postmodern avant-garde has evolved into an intellectual rearguard.

Now, in retrospect, besides presaging everything he wrote about in The Hydra, the reader may find all the various leitmotifs that characterize Martin’s writing: the discontent of modernity, the transformation from representation to simulation, and the abysses of the attention economy. If one reads this essay today, one understands that the erosion of our institutions, indeed of democracy as a whole, has a long, unexposed history.

The cause therefore, of civil wars is, that men know not the causes neither of war nor peace. (Thomas Hobbes)

©ex nihilo, exc. 2024

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Martin Burckhardt

Architecture of the Civil War

It seems paradoxical to speak of an Architecture of Civil War since it is generally assumed that civil war is a state of anomie, of complete lawlessness. Of course, Thomas Hobbes, chronicler of civil war and theorist of the modern State in equal measure, recognized that civil war is not a state of lawlessness but rather the result of divergent conceptions of law. The body politic, which is supposed to represent the general, no longer appears as a generally binding form but rather as a privation, an instrument in the hands of those in power. But if the law no longer represents the general public but only as its author, it becomes a plaything – and if anyone can imagine themselves as Solon, Damocles, or Berlusconi acting as our national coach, then the door is open to Anything Goes. Of course: this is where the Other’s black side of pop culture takes its course, where the fundamentalists' hour strikes as they prepare to practice their brand of arbitrariness. In front of the screen, shielded from the impositions of everything not fitting into the picture, reality can be more aptly criticized for not being a heavenly building. Jihad! To speak of fundamentalism here is misleading - the precondition of Fundamentalism is precisely that the foundation no longer exists or only exists as a Sign.

Architecture of the Imaginary

Even if it has to follow architectural laws to be sustainable, the State isn’t a house, but it stands on symbolic ground; its principles make up its structural stability. Asking about the essence of this body politic, we're faced with the embarrassment that what confronts us as a real existing Being [Wesen] is, in principle, illusory (and in this respect, quite comparable to the power structure of the defunct communism). The State’s architecture is an architecture of the imaginary: a flag, a banknote, a line on a map. What intersects here, which in our forefather’s minds was condensed into a symbolic quantity that they were willing to die for, takes on the appearance of its face-value worth. Putting it in more contemporary terms: where a society succeeds in creating a State, the symbols of State Sovereignty have taken on such credibility that their appearances become transformed into a real power. If we're dealing with a secular credit system, then this describes a certain embarrassment as it collides with the carefully cherished prejudice of being a rational entity. Reading the whole of Hobbes, including the architectural problem addressed by the Leviathan's illusory construction, we're confronted with a strange double being. The biblical monster of the Behemoth stands for the fluidity of the sea, while the Leviathan, the land-­dweller, stands for the solid ground of reason. Here, Hobbes summarizes these two aggregate states of society in their symbolic forms. The decisive point is that he doesn't start from some imagined state of nature but categorically recognizes the body politic as a monster, as a beast that can only be encountered in fables. Thus, his social theory responds to an ambivalence that - as a psycho-historical tension and a constant threat of civil war – resides in the symbolic tension between sym-bolon and dia-bolon. If sym-ballein refers to the collective project articulated as a symbol in its historical form: the diabolic stands for this moment of discord in sacrifice, in a collective willingness to make sacrifices. Society no longer finds itself in a collective symbol but sinks – floating hopelessly – into the depths. Of course, this downfall isn't attributable to a divine adversary but, like the symbol, is man's work. In this sense, the civil war should be understood as a symbolic crisis, as that historical moment when a society loses its language when that minimum of symbolic glue dissolves and perishes in the imbroglio of voices.

Initial

The question is: how could a symbolic monster like the Nation-State have come into being in the first place?¹ Much of the astonishment expressed in the wake of September 11^th is evidence of a deep-seated naivety: as if the Nation-State's Symbolic Order were a matter of nature – as if there were a monopoly on the use of force, wearing uniform, regulatory laws of warfare, general taxation, conscription and so on. Only those who have internalized this wearing of uniforms can be surprised by asymmetrical warfare. That laws of dissimulation and mimicry prevailed isn’t the exception but the original state of affairs, as exemplified in the Yugoslav civil war where Serbian soldiers marched in French uniforms – particularly remembering it was only Cromwell who equipped his irregulars in the New Model Army with uniforms. Seen in this light, the historical return to pre-modern configurations of power is a kind of awakening process – and the question here of the Modern State's genesis is anything but academic. Because if we place its historical initiation here, we're naming an a priori structure – or more clearly, this symbolic body’s drive [Triebwerk] – and, in turn, this also has repercussions on our conceptions of contemporary politics. The Nation-State is generally associated with the 17^th century, primarily with Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. This interpretation can claim a certain plausibility insofar as the 17^th century’s second half had equipped itself with the Nation-State symbolic insignia only after the New Model Army, a theory of the general tax, and the prototype of a central bank were established. However, any mantra-like references to Hobbes should raise doubts about whether the Nation-State's architecture could really have been born out of nothing or, more precisely: whether it could have been a Philosopher-king’s brainchild. Assuming its power structures are inert and slow-moving, this ready-made theory as a creatio ex nihilo seems improbable. Regressing into the soft historical picture of this period reveals that, while we're dealing with a superstitious retroactive political theory, it is not an adequate description of historical development. This superstition suggests the Nation-State is a product of reason – thus representing a setting based primarily on a monopoly of violence. However, the Nation-State isn't a sudden emanation – instead, it's the conclusion of a painful transformation spanning several centuries. Tracing this prehistory, the Nation-State's architecture becomes legible as a response to a dilemma afflicting Medieval society that plunges it into spiritual confusion, civil wars, and the like. The most eloquent witness against the Leviathan's Hobbesianism would be Hobbes himself, whose Behemoth is still an unrivaled sociogram – indeed a deconstruction of civil war. If the Behemoth has a leitmotif, it's that the reality of its combatants' discourses has nothing in common with their deeds. You begin sensing the period’s schizological nature when you realize that Charles I, the King, was executed in the name of the King, while Parliament, for its part, proclaimed itself the true King – until Cromwell, with the help of naked violence, finally put an end to this pretence.

In the Omnibus

Of course, the question of power, decided in this way, goes back much further – and, more importantly, has a different background. In this context, the most remarkable writing is by 14^th-century scholastic Nichole Oresme, titled De mutatione monetarum / Treatise on monetary devaluations.² Although, at the time, there was no sign of a Nation-State in the Hobbesian sense, there was a theory of a centralized State outlined there. In it, the central idea wasn’t that there should be an authority for the pacification and containment of the civil warring parties; instead, it's the question of how a Society could be structured that provides all its citizens with the general desideratum of a stable currency. The question is: Who does money belong to? Until the 14^th century, money was generally accepted as the property of the Sovereign, whose face was stamped on the coin. This corresponded with the idea that money, as such, didn't represent any value; instead, it functioned as a calibration instrument for measuring a thing's value. Of course, this doctrine couldn't be reconciled with reality even then. It was when usury gave rise to interest after Europe began issuing gold currencies – and the Church had to come to terms with this spiritual foreign body by finally resorting to purgatory’s invention of purgatory and thus to a reconstruction of heaven³ – that gold itself had become a coveted value.

Under the table, a new credit system had developed, recoding the Medieval polities in Schumpeter's spirit of creative destruction. To halt their progressive loss of power, Middle Ages princes increasingly transformed themselves into warlords, but more importantly, turned to counterfeiting operations. The 14^th century can be seen as a century of counterfeit wars –and, against this backdrop, the question of who owns the money is nothing less than revolutionary as it isn’t just the feudal lord's sovereignty at stake here. Oresme's answer is straightforward and ruthless, as it’s not based on political calculation but on the matter’s logic: Because money serves the good of the commonwealth’s citizens, it must belong to all. With the Nation-State’s omnibus established, the next question is how the community can control whom it places at the helm and, in turn, endows with the right to levy taxes. Oresme’s model is a central perspective State where the sovereign acts only as a Representative of the volonté génerale anticipating Hobbes' Leviathan, which is also a machinery of representation.⁴

Double talk

Reading this prehistory, there isn’t any question that the political primacy in building the 17^th Century’s Capitalist Exchange System is a symptom of the far too-late necessity of establishing an international credit system. Between this 14th-century thinker and Hobbes lie three centuries of civil war and the collapse of what is known as the scholastic way of thinking. This is precisely the scenario Hobbes describes in his Behemoth. What he denounces isn’t new, but it’s identical to the lamenting swelling everywhere since the 14^th century: namely the accusations that political speech, always articulated in religious, was merely a camouflage of base motives. When Hobbes denounces scholasticism, he's denouncing the dual nature of the European credit system, which couldn’t distinguish between Money and God. Everyone is engaged in the discourse of scholasticism, but beneath the surface, the interests are this-worldly. This double talk, in which religious speech – but also the community's driving force [Triebwerk] and money, that can only appear in camouflaged form – can be read as a form of collective schizophrenia. This is the deepest reason for the ghostly, thoroughly theatrical character of the time: everyone is constantly dealing with masks, larvae, and deceptive maneuvers. This division is most clearly conveyed in a mandate by the man who could decide the English Civil War but whose judgment couldn’t keep pace with his decision-making ability. Because Cromwell knows precisely what he doesn't want but doesn't know what he wants, he gathers his men (as the first uniformed irregular force in history) in a field for a two-day prayer and implores – in improvised speech – their heavenly enlightenment. God is supposed to judge what you have staged yourself. But this schizophrenia – and this is Thomas Hobbes’ achievement – is taken to its logical conclusion in the Modern State's blueprint, where it becomes a constitution allowing the two spheres (Money and God) to develop into separate, segregated forms via the institutional division of Church and State.

Pseudomorphoses

If we look at this prehistory, it becomes clear that the era of the civil wars can be attributed to a cultural transformation: that the language of domination, which drives reality, isn't capable of becoming the discursive reality, indeed, even more, that religious delusions dominate the stage precisely to the extent that the engine of capitalism is taking shape. To characterize this process, we could speak of a cultural pseudomorphosis. Something new emerges, but because it can’t assert itself as such, there isn’t a complete metamorphosing into a new form but only a pseudomorphosis – new wine is being poured into old wineskins. Now, it's fair to say that this cultural larval stage is extremely fruitful both despite and precisely because of its structural ambiguity, as exemplified by how the most advanced corporations shaping the face of Europe today still have their origins here: the Treasury, the University, the Limited Liability Company. However, the price being paid for this is high, as using outdated formal language to maintain the illusion that nothing has fundamentally changed transforms thinking itself into an illusionary technique. It's no longer about the thing (which is taboo to name anyway) but only about how something is adequately staged so that it doesn't appear as such but as something else. From an architectural point of view, we are dealing with panels and front ends whose only purpose is to aesthetically conceal the inner life of the housing in an enrobement.⁵

Crisis of Sovereignty

As the fast-paced evolution of conceptual simulationism⁶ has shown, this description of the pre-Modern dilemma also characterizes our immediate present – the body politic, the Monster of the present, seems to be afflicted by a new systemic crisis. That it took September 11^th to awaken our sensorium to the Nation-State's vulnerability is further evidence that public discourse hasn’t kept pace with the facts. De facto, the very logic of our weapons of mass destruction brings the question of Sovereignty itself into play. After all, possessing such a weapon or even its pretense, combined with a credible threat of possibly using it, becomes a billet d’entrée of acceptance into the circle of major world powers. Because, in extreme cases, this recognition can be granted to a single person or small group, this constellation represents the caricature of conventional sovereignty—at least to the extent that the monopoly on the use of force defines it.

In retrospect, it could be said that ›the atomic bomb is to the modern State what the ontological proof of God was to the Middle Ages.‹ Whereas in the Middle Ages, God became a Thing [Ding] in the form of the Automaton, the Nation-State attains its tangible form as a Sovereignty in the atomic bomb – it's no coincidence that the somewhat agnostic sober scientists who built the bomb christened it Trinity. What appears to be the apotheosis of the State is literally its nuclear fission. Because anyone capable of gaining possession of this Thing can empower themselves in an unheard-of, monstrous way. From now on, we are literally living in an atmosphere of terror, trying to locate the unknown enemy flying object in the sky where the other person's Thing might be. To some extent, these are the same characters who, having worked on constructing the Thing, are now involved in its prophylaxis. It's only fitting that the SAGE Air Defense System’s first large computer is aptly called Whirlwind. To some extent, these are the same characters who, having worked on constructing the Thing, are now engaged in prophylactic protection. Data from various radar stations, flight plans, marine radio, and radar are processed in this electronic brain and viewed on a screen to track and prevent the entry of the Thing – but, of course, SAGE isn’t the ultimate wisdom. For as much as the monster may protect itself from the unthinkable underlying its existence, the politics of the sky are fragile, and it’s the Thing itself that confronts the superpower with the principle of its own decomposition. Surprisingly, although it could have been asked much earlier, the question only arose in 1957 when the air defense system was installed and put into operation: How does the monster know it’s injured? How can we prevent the monster from mistakenly deciding to launch a counter-attack due to a system or communication failure or from refraining from doing so even though it would be necessary? In fact, as Hobbes taught, the Sovereign is only the intersection of a collective imagination – it's always individuals who, spatially located in different positions, have to come to a common decision. Insofar as the Sovereign is a symbolic being, knowledge about him can only be transmitted in symbolic form by telephone or radio – no, the latter isn't possible due to the Thing's effect. If it's realized in detonation, meaning it's exceeded its fissionable critical mass, the resulting atmospheric disturbances make it impossible to use the ether for hours. So, the screen that’s supposed to indicate the entry of the thing will inevitably fail due to a lack of incoming data. The only remaining communication line capable of reporting the catastrophe would be via the telephone lines. But even these are highly vulnerable, as the probability of their survival from a nuclear attack is extremely low. This question underlies the Internet’s real utility, at least from the government's point of view, in deciding how to avoid a communications blackout. How can we build a communication network that can still transport knowledge about the trauma even if large parts of it fail? Such a general design of a survival machine is relatively easy to describe: a decentralized communication network that, like a split earthworm, can always find its final form again. Even if this network is torn in two, as long as a single thread remains intact, the overall State isn't lost.

Overkill

In 1961, the RAND Corporation commissioned a young engineer named Paul Baran to design such a network. »I started to examine what military communications needs were regarded as essential...The more that I examined the issues, the longer the list. So I said to myself. ›As I can’t figure out what essential communications is needed, let’s take a different tack. I’ll give those guys so much damn bandwidth that they wouldn’t know what in Hell to do with it all.‹ When one starts a project aim for the moon.«⁷ In the imaginary network that Baran was designing, he envisioned that each network node could communicate with any other network nodes because the information flow had to go via the remaining surviving paths. Here, he faced a fundamental problem, a problem concerning the transmission's materiality. An analog signal runs the risk of being drowned out by noise if passed on more than five times, similar to a cassette copy, where tape noise increases with each transfer. Given this difficulty, it was clear to Baran that the network design would no longer be analog-based but necessarily operate solely on a digital level. The advantage of digital coding is that the signal remains recognizable as long as it doesn't get lost entirely in digital noise, ensuring it can always be restored to its original form: forever young – making the conclusion clear:

»The future survivable system had to be all-digital.«‹⁸

A second aspect was the modularization of the transmission. Insofar as the system's overall state was no longer transmitted as such but broken down into individual, manageable packages, we're no longer dealing with one message but with a composite assembled from various sources at its destination. This is the exact opposite of the atomic bomb – an overkill of particularized, atomized, modularized information necessary for reassembling the particular: anytime, anywhere. If the Thing threatened to atomize everything, the answer was to turn the symbolically atomized back into a Thing. The decision to design the future survival system as a digital network also made it possible to overcome other difficulties that otherwise would have been insurmountable. Besides the data they carried, the information particles needed knowledge about their path. This was accomplished by numbering the network like a zip code system. This allowed the particles to spread out chaotically in all directions without following a master plan or a royal roadmap. »Imagine that you are a hypothetical postman and mail comes in from different directions, North, South, East and West...for example if our postman was in Chicago, mail from Philadelphia...had arrived from the North, South, or West it would arrive with a later cancellation date because it would have had to take a longer route (statistically). Thus, the preferred direction to send traffic to Philadelphia would be out over the channel connected from the East as it had the latest cancellation date. Just by looking at the time stamps on traffic flowing through the post office you get all the information you need to route traffic efficiently.«⁹

Free-floating

If the atom bomb represents a kind of reification of the Nation-State Sovereignty as a fetish, then forcing the development of a decentered language of rule unexpectedly creates the rival that the Nation-State can’t and won’t be able to withstand: the Specter of Globalization. We can describe the appearance of this world power whatever we like; we could speak of a people without space, of international consumers, or a world citizen of money – but such attempts at description are dashed by the fact that this new kind of monster, although active on a world scale and as a world power, doesn’t appear in a structured form as an institution. It has much more in common with the capital ID, which also characterizes the flow of world capital – one could speak of a free-floating Sovereignty. While this power may be placeless, its effects can be felt everywhere, for the weight of the World rests on every single point. Understandably, this weight is experienced more oppressively in comparatively backward regions of the world than as a form of cultural de-territorialization, but it applies no less to entities generally attributed to sovereignty. Bearing in mind that the Nation-State's fundamental issue was the provision and safeguarding of money, it becomes clear that the involuntary surrender of the monetary monopoly, which the Bretton Woods agreement led to, is basically a declaration of bankruptcy. Where once the representatives of State power were enthroned, a faceless, global market now reigns – and where once Statist or National rhetoric was cultivated, the magic words of the market circulate: Service, Assistance, Mobility. No State in the world can make policy without the international – or, more precisely, post-National money markets. In free-floating, conventional structures become fluid, and what was once firm and corporate is consecrated to the sphere of the Behemoth.

Out of Nowhere

Since Bretton Woods, a strange battle of systems has been going on, the outcome of which is entirely predictable. In this confrontation, the liquid, volatile bodies disintegrate the existing inert bodies, and simulation techniques bring an end to the stationary and static. There's no doubt that placeless Capital has a much better starting position here (if you want to clothe the atopic in a spatial concept) – the State, as a down-to-earth entity also held responsible for Social Security, is notoriously expendable. If it's supposed to take care of all the victims of the globalization process, it can't be sure of the fruits of globalization. Contrary to what Karl Marx once suspected, capital wears neither national colors nor uniform but is atopian and unpatriotic – if you will: capital-fugitive. In this light, there is not even malice, but only an economic rationale when the arbitrage profits resulting from the difference in economic systems are realized. What’s realized here is nothing other than the potential gap between two incompatible orders: between the solid and landed on the one hand and the liquid-atopic on the other.

As far as the effect is concerned, the malignant traits are unmistakable. National economies can only choose between sealing themselves off or devaluing their social systems to meet their growing obligations. The first option is illusory, given economic interdependence; the second is a prelude to civil war. In this sense, the movements of Capital represent for the Social Sphere what terror represents for the Political Sphere: an attack from nowhere. Of course, all these attacks hit the mark, showing that the Sovereign isn't who he claims to be. Moreover, migratory movements, which, with an unavoidable delay, follow the flow of money, bear witness to the fact that we're no longer dealing with Nation-State aggregates but with Transnational entities, we could even say: with Multinationals. For this reason, as well as domestic political reasons, the former distinction between domestic and foreign is proving to be a chimera, and every foreign policy disruption threatens to become a domestic policy disruption. And vice versa.

Forza Italia!

Now, the awareness of this eroding power has long since taken hold of the existing system's administrators, and it's clear that the corporations use simulation techniques. Just as the kings of the Middle Ages weren't above appearing as Counterfeit Kings or offering titles of Nobility for sale, we're dealing with a progressive sell-out of the Nation-State, sensibly carried out by this body's trustees – just think of the Europe-wide privatization of the telecommunications apparatus. Since Bretton Woods, we're no longer dealing with Nation-States but with simulations of Nation-States. However, it'd be foolish to assume this time-honored entity will simply disappear from the world, but rather that it will continue to shape the political arena for a long time to come – as imported branded products. Forza Italia sends its regards! In fact, it’s worth looking at the fate of the Medieval feudal systems. While they had long since been ideologically gutted and were increasingly threatened by insolvency and other home-grown grievances, the ability of these entities to adapt and assimilate was astonishing. It is no coincidence that the 14^th century Counterfeit Wars also saw the rise of massive anti-Semitism, which, for example, made it possible to expropriate and expel the Jewish usurers in England simultaneously and to obtain a Parliamentary veto. The invention of Witchcraft, the horrors of the Inquisition, and the sudden awakening of Nationalism are all the aphrodisiacs that the weary body politic of the Middle Ages fed itself. Even a cursory glance at the newspaper is enough to realize the current world situation is leaning in a similar direction, that the war on terror is primarily about asserting sovereignty. Even the questionable construction of the sleeper, who lingers among us as an invisible foreign body but mutates into a killing machine at a certain time, marks the space that can be filled with other enemies in the future. The moment of camouflage is the most remarkable aspect of the contemporary form of confrontation. Whereas in the past, it was about ideological differences, now that a staging of general suspicion has entered the game, it is about understanding the political stance of the opponent as a form of camouflage – to get behind the secret machinations and dodges, to decipher the staging. Consequently, ideological criticism has given way to conspiracy theory speculation.

War and Peace

If an act of war is a symbolic act, where does a warlike action begin? And above all: who are the combatants? We know terrorists are a new species on the scene, but what about the superpower once called the "silent majority"? Is it not the case that even those holding a remote control – the small telematic guillotine – participate in the general mobilization? And isn't his voice already more potent than the opinion of the so-called elites? That zapper's vote is law, and the representatives arousing his displeasure sooner or later disappear from the screen. No, even more: the logic of political representation itself falls victim to the visceral curiosity drive of the zapper. As a result, the body politic hollows itself out even further, and the existing institutions, constituted according to the law of representation, hasten to get ahead of this faceless monster – or, as they say, to pay tribute to the laws of demoscopy. This process is as random as the rhizome-like proliferation of network communities, for the laws of representative democracy are, as the political terms of standpoint and perspective reveal, of a central-perspective nature. As such, they belong to an era that's become superfluous with the television image with its ephemeral, fleeting image. Under real-time conditions, the voice of the people can have a direct impact on the political process. Consequently, the populists' physiognomies appear on the screen. Thus, the projection screen itself – as the ideology-producing worldview machine – tells of the general mobilization.

If the images are mobile, the couch potato longs for nothing more than for the narratives taking place on the surface to compensate for the real loss of home. In this sense, the pseudomorphosis that Fascism has already made into a political strategy is also used here: Kitsch and surface sentimentalization with simultaneous media armament. Those having seeing eyes know this peace isn't to be trusted – that it's not the surface that counts, only what is decided under the hand, with the pressure of the finger. In this sense, even if this front remains and must remain invisible, positions are taken, structures are created, and attempts are made to penetrate the monster in such a way that it isn’t swept off the screen. Now, you don't just have to analyze business magazine vocabulary to realize economic figures of thought have taken on an increasingly bellicose form. More or less insidiously, a state of war has taken hold of people's minds; it is all about strategic thinking, positioning, and gaining ground. However, it's all too naïve to assume imperial desires here: it's more a defensive struggle, a war primarily fueled by self-defense impulses. With the certainty that the all-pervading power of globalization is eroding existing privileges, people are feeling the resulting fear of the world, so they are thinking about erecting bastions and protective measures. The logic of globalization already necessitates a continuing preventive war, except that it's being waged both internally and externally, as evidenced by the armies of the unemployed, which far outnumber the military contingent. Perhaps even more potent than the social substitutability is the technological humiliation: the feeling of being inferior to the hopelessly proliferating, ubiquitous machine. That IT¹⁰ happens, one way or another.

Architecture of the Civil War

Civil war, says Hobbes, begins at the very moment when neither the cause nor the reason for war is known – and just as it becomes doubtful that our States, empowered to act, can lay the foundation for peace, so the distinction between war and peace begins to dissolve. But what could be understood by the architecture of civil war? If you step out of the soft picture of the present – and take an unmoved, historical view – it becomes clear that we're dealing with a systemic crisis, or more precisely: a replacement of two basic, fundamental systemic concepts. Consequently, this crisis can be identified most precisely in the form of those two Universal Machines that shape the political metaphor and the reality of capitalism: Wheelwork [Räderwerk] and Computer. Just as vehemently as the Wheelwork Automaton [Räderwerkautomat] hit the thinking of the Middle Ages like a comet, we too are experiencing a shaking of our foundations as we're confronted with the imposition of adapting our political theology and our secular credit system to digital realities. This cultural shock is hitting us as unprepared as the impositions of Capitalism hit the unprepared Middle Ages. In a way, this astonishment is expressed by the emergency word Globalization, which has dominated the debates for some time now. To invoke the constraints of globalization is to consider a horse without a rider, a revolution without a revolutionary, a world spirit without a head or an address. That this Being nevertheless dominates political debate testifies to the power it exerts on our political thinking and, therefore, can be read as an indicator of progressive political evacuation. As we know, a political vacuum never remains empty but calls other powers onto the scene who feast on the Leviathan's corpse. It is unlikely that these powers will work towards reason and much more likely that the political will degenerate into a pandemonium of dead gods, of vanished empires – that any junk will be good enough to be resurrected. Yet Arab fundamentalism, which feeds on a deep-seated cultural idiosyncrasy, is only a harbinger of future horrors, as new groups with new conspiracy theories will appear on the scene. All these groups, like Cromwell, will know exactly what they don't want – but they will not be able to articulate what they wish to appropriately. We may face all sorts of blue miracles and promises of salvation at the level of discourse, but predictably, the means used will be far from arbitrary. If we were Stoics, we could be sure that reason would win the day in the end – as in the time of Leviathan. But what would the end be? And when? And what would that victory consist of? Certainly not that some group would usurp the monopoly of power, but that the world's citizen money would find the society and the institutions it deserves, and that we, on the other hand, would regard this omnibus as our common vehicle.

Translation Hopkins Stanley and Martin Burckhardt

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Related themes

1. What’s oft-forgotten is that the Nation-State is a pseudomorphism of the poleis not appearing until the end of the 17th century; its development is this continual shifting forward in the Occidental’s Symbolic Order. Psychotopically, this is a relieving-out from the obscured Christological Powerhouse [Christologisches Kraftwerke] or battery driving our Occidental Social Drives [Gesellschaftstriebwerke] forward as Central Perspective’s ›Representative‹ on Earth. Even after Charles, the First’s willingly self-sacrifice (as an imitatio Christi) in his belief in a Christological Nation-State has been fully transformed into secularism by the French Revolution, the Christological tracing of Central Perspective is part and parcel of our Universal Machine’s outsourced unconscious.

2. Commonly referred to as Oresme’s De moneta, the Tractatus de Origine, Natura Jure, et Mutacionibus Monetarum is one of the earliest medieval works on money and is generally considered the foundation of modern economics. See The De moneta of N. Oresme and English Mint Documents, trans. C. Johnson, London, 1956.

3. See Le Goff, J. – The Birth of Purgatory, trans. A. Goldhammer, Chicago, 1984. [Translator’s note]

4. Thus, we are tracing how the Christological Central Perspective becomes the code of representation during this interregnum between Universal Machines as proto-Capitalism transforms into Capitalism.

5. Fuller elucidations on this enrobing/entombing something for concealment can be found in Das Geld und der Tod (chapter two in Vom Geist der Maschine: Eine Geschichte kultureller Umbrüche, Frankfurt/M, 1999) and Metempsychose der Zeichen (chapter 6 in Philosophie der Maschine, Berlin, 2018.) [Translator’s note]

6. This evolution refers to the interregnum between the Code of Representation and the Code of Simulation as the Social Drive of our new Universal Machine is coming online. Here, we find the beginning thread of this leitmotif in Martin’s thinking, tracing the Occidental Psychtope’s movement from the inception of the Lost Form through the Representative as we move into the role of the Simulant and its particular rooting in the ideal forms of its obscured foundational Christo-Marilogisch Kraftwerk.

7. See Paul Baran: An Interview Conducted by David Hochfelder, IEEE History Center, 24 October 1999, p. 8.

8. Id. p. 9.

9. Id. p. 10.

10. The Id. [Translator’s note]