the protectors of misery
States have it in their name to be static and the antithesis of change. They’re the protectors of order and, in that sense, neutral to the kind of order they protect. The goal is to keep things happening in predictable ways with procedures that sustain stability. Whether that stability is unjust doesn’t matter as that doesn’t factor into the State institution’s functioning. Modern states have the nice and handy capability of allowing their subjects to slightly modify the way things are done. This is expertly done in a way that is both exclusive and ineffective at substantial change because, and I’m repeating myself, the State is static and a protector of what is, not a maker of what could be.
Frequently, people point out positive instances of states in which lots of positive changes happened such as Western Europe, Scandinavia and Turkey (the last one for different reasons than social safety nets). And while they’re right that these states changed the ruling conditions prior to their existence, their constitutions allowed for only these specific kinds of changes to happen within their narrow definitions while largely keeping the core extractivist arm of the State—that is capital—churning out more for consumption in an infinite heuristic circle, just so the growth line goes up. For instance, the raison d’être of Atatürk’s Turkey was to disruptively remake Turkey into a homogeneous nation-state, unlike its multi-ethnic predecessor, that was neutral to culture as long as it conformed to its ideals of projecting what a good society looked like. What it did was give more Turks a share of the pie while keeping Turkey’s economy greatly benefitting from the systematic destruction of nature and its ex-colonies.
Similarly, Western European and Scandinavian states sought to integrate the lesser fortunate among them into the Fordist/American way of life as a pacifier of an imminent revolt. You’ve got to remember the historical context: Europe was split into an openly capitalist and clandestinely capitalist half, so the Marshall Plan that made social safety nets in these war torn countries possible sought to contain the spread of State Communism with those policies first and foremost. Even prior to the Marshall Plan, Otto von Bismarck in Germany (Second Reich and post-unification) created the welfare state that shares a little of Germany’s colonial wealth with workers precisely to avoid a revolution, creating the blueprint for the modern welfare state implemented in post-war Germany1 and elsewhere. So even when change happen(ed) within state institutions, it was always aimed at protecting the continuation of resource extraction and wealth expropriation from the forcefully marginalized elsewhere.
Interestingly and above all, this brings to light how poverty is nothing more than a social relation, with the dichotomous relationship of owner/owned and ruler/ruled at its core, when—as in every welfare state’s case—measures of wealth redistribution don’t equitably redistribute wealth. Just because the poor in Germany had materially more than anywhere with a majority of people darker than vanilla ice cream, that didn’t mean that they stopped being considered „poor“ and „needy.“ There were still people who owned relatively more and thus controlled significant parts of Germany’s poor’s lives through work, housing, and service contracts. The wealth redistribution remained an endowment that solidified the capitalist order in which the wealth sharing could be successively taken away as simply as it was instated—just like how the post-Berlin Wall world showed us was possible.
I talk about this not to be pedantic, but because I look around me and see people online and in my social circle constantly complaining about grave injustice x and grave injustice y and how things never change. Then I ask them whether they think we should abolish state structures as the protectors of capital—the biggest and only conspiracy of modernity—and I get blank stares at best and Hobbesian metaphors at worst. It shows reluctance to change in the face of existentially necessary change and makes them out to be hypocrites. You can keep on criticizing with the aim of incremental change while people are crushed in-between the cogs in the distant elsewhere to keep you yapping endlessly, or you can choose to subscribe to a sensible end goal that would actualize your ideals. It’s your choice.
Further reading
Brand, U. (2010). Internationale Politik. In R. Sieder & E. Langthaler, Globalgeschichte 1800-2000 (pp. 213–259). UTB.
Brand, U., & Wissen, M. (2017). Imperiale Lebensweise: Zur Ausbeutung von Mensch und Natur im globalen Kapitalismus (1. Auflage). oekom verlag.
Der Begriff des Politischen (By C. Schmitt; pp. 20–45). (1932).
Germany has been embroiled in so many major wars that „post-war Germany“ could mean so many different eras of modern Germany which I find funny. What I mean here is post-1945 West Germany.↩