1. When we talk about reactionary politics, it is always in contrast to “progressive” politics. So this is about a contest, a competition, where purportedly progressive energy within the system can be mobilised to tame reaction. Evidently, this duel is a sort of Newtonian mechanics of action and reaction, which stabilises the system, the machine. Till recently, the contrast between these two poles of politics was stark and a distinct progressivist political programme could really be charted out.
2. However, in recent times, the machinic and intrinsic fatalism of state and polity, about which Marxists have always talked, but very few of them have been able to make this critique a consistent ground of their politics and analysis, has gripped the societal energy into the mire of barbaric inertia. No political breakthrough is visible on the horizon. Hence, it is time when we must stop talking about reactionary politics, and start talking about reaction as the general condition of politics – about the reactionary political structure or reactionary polity. The digits in which the “contest” is taking place are themselves reactionary. Reaction which was the result has become the means of politics. Reactionary polity with its discourse of reactivity is what binds left, right and centre together to (re)form itself. We are simply responding to the systemic machinery. The machinic system has realised itself in its fullness – this constitutes the polity itself.
3. The Asimovian utopia or rather dystopia has been realised – humanics and robotics have been integrated. Our general intellect alienated from us has gained a full life-form and we have been robotised.
“As soon as humanity in the abstract is introduced, the Laws of Robotics begin to merge with the Laws of Humanics.”
“Since emotions are few and reasons are many, the behavior of a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behavior of one person can.”
The machine has reduced us to a mere crowd with a few emotions, hence predictable and manageable. Our innumerable grievances are summarised into a set of emotive reactions.
(To be continued)
Beyond Capital 