For an Emancipatory State of Exception

As the euro-mediterranean countries enter their umpteenth phase of decay, their governments are starting to consider extraordinary measures to face the situation. In Italy, on 15 October 2011, 200,000 people took to the streets to protest against the austerity measures enforced by their government. A day of mayhem followed, as the so-called ‘black bloc’ declared urban war. The smoke of petrol bombs was still lingering in the air when the right-wing Minister of the Interior declared the necessity of exceptional security regulations, promptly backed by the left-wing opposition.

In Greece, on the eve of the general strike of 15th and 16th of October 2011, the government allowed once again the intervention of the new-born Eurogendfor, a military force created ad-hoc to tackle emergency situations such as widespread urban guerrilla fighting. Appropriately for its task, Eurogendfor is not under any specific local legislation, but only responds to an internal disciplinary committee. A similar trend seems to be taking place also further north from the mediterranean circus of atrocities. The British government, for example, has recently shown no hesitation in allowing the use of hard-line force to tackle emergency situations such as the wave of riots in August 2011.

Nothing new on the western front, one might say, as it is well known how democratic governments have historically proven to be prone to these types of measures in the ‘interest of national security’. Similarly, there is little surprise in finding the extra-parliamentary left stuck in a victimized position, as it claims the illegitimacy of such measures. Since its acceptance of a self-appointed ‘moral’ role within the western system,  the extra-parliamentary left seems to be getting used to the role of the ‘indignant’ witness of the use of the state of exception.

On the other hand, from 2008 onwards, the galaxy of global banks has appeared much less indignant in the face of the possibility of exploiting the institution of the state of exception. It was on this ground that the bailouts for banks were claimed and given, at the beginning of the global financial crisis.

Carl Schmitt used to notice that the ‘sovereign is who decides on the state of exception’, that is on the suspension of the normal order of law in liberal democracy. In Schmitt’s view, it was exactly through the recourse to this suspension that politics could finally come back on the social scene as free from the administrative dogma of the law. In an epoch in which the lawyers, and not the philosophers, are kings, it is only breaking away from the law that decisions can once again become political. In Schmitt’s view, such a return of the political had to happen through the advent of an authoritarian regime. How can we apply this reading to the current political and economic situation?

On the one hand, we can certainly identify an exceptional, authoritarian element in the practice of transnational business and finance. Such has been the methodology of practice of global corporations since the beginning of the neoliberal era, as exemplified by the extra-territorial capitalist spaces of the maquiladoras in Mexico or by the continuous interference of corporate interest in national legislations in most of the global south. More recently, since the beginning of the financial crisis, the ascension of transnational finance above liberal law is exemplified by the enforcement of extraordinary austerity measures by governments, in the interest of the consolidation of the primacy of pure capitalist agencies over social structures.

Similarly, the State has attempted a similar maneuver after 9/11, with the arbitrary restriction of civil liberties in countries such as the USA and the UK and the unilateral declaration of war by the western coalition against Afghanistan and Iraq. Back then, in the times of permanent war and ‘enduring freedom’, the State and the corporate galaxy seemed to have finally found a shared path towards a new type of sovereignty. Today, with the explosion of the public debt crisis in Europe and in the USA, it seems that such an alliance is coming to an end, at least in the West. Once partners, State and Capital are today developing separate strategies. Capital’s strategy articulates through an unprecedented concentration of economic wealth at the expense of both national states and society, while the State implements its strategy through a vertiginous expansion of its military role within national (or, in the case of the EU, communitarian) borders. Both strategies, it is clear, exploit the institution of the state of exception as their main ground of action.

The third and, so far, losing position is currently occupied by civil society. In the rhetoric of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the ‘99%’. Faced by the vertical race of the military State and predatory Capital above the law, civil society seems to be stuck in a position of submission to those same discredited sets of laws. Exemplary, in this sense, is the claim of the majority of the 99% movement of enacting a peaceful and lawful protest. The rhetoric of acceptable and colorful demonstrations, with their paraphernalia of fancy dress, witty banners and pretty couples kissing in the streets, goes exactly toward this direction. Paradoxically, the majority of today’s ‘indignant’ civil society seems to have decided to embrace its own, solitary subjection to the law as a weapon against its lawless opponents. Even more strangely, vast strata of that same movement seem to have chosen the State as their unlikely ally in their fight against Capital, in the name of an ideal universal welfare State. Even, if necessary, an authoritarian State, strong enough to stop the drift of Capital above the law.

Exemplary, in this sense, is the current situation in Italy. After almost two consecutive decades, Italians seem to have finally decided to put an end to the Berlusconi era. This  political shift is clearly represented both by the results of recent polls, and by the resurgence of popular, grassroots movements on the left, such as the Italian ‘indignants’ movement. Despite their use of the street as a stage for political intervention, the general character of these movements is essentially social-democratic and hardly classifiable as extremist. The Italian constitution and code of laws are often held by demonstrators as symbols of their demands, and magistrates, police and judges are most often praised by protesters as their ideal allies in the overthrowing of Berlusconi’s corrupt regime. It is in the name of the law, and on behalf of the law, that the Italian ‘indignants’ are taking to the streets in their thousands.

At the same time, a fringe of the Italian movement is articulating its demands in a very different way. As witnessed in the huge demonstrations of 14 December 2010 and 15 October 2011 in Rome, as well as throughout Summer 2011 in Val di Susa, a loose federation of a few thousand individuals – usually identified by the press as ‘black bloc’ – has opted for a more confrontational and even violent political strategy, outside of the law and in the name of radical social change. Despite their common interest in social justice and their common opposition to the Berlusconi government and the rule of Capital, these two sides of the Italian movement seem to be increasingly at odds with each other. During the October demonstration in Rome, for example, peaceful ‘indignants’ have several times actively opposed their ‘black-bloc’ counterparts, while the parliamentary representatives of the social democratic left have promptly requested heavy-handed intervention of the police against the non-peaceful fringes.

Something similar happened in Greece during the mass demonstrations of 20 October 2011, when militants of the KKE communist party, armed with sticks and stones, joined forces with the police to attack the anarchist fringes, eventually engaging in a proper street battle with the ‘blacks’ in front of the Greek Parliament.

Admittedly, the decision of acting above or below the law has always been a major line of demarcation between the two ends of the political spectrum on left. However, such a demarcation seems strikingly paradoxical today, as both the State and Capital chase each other high up above the legal system. Is there still a use for civil society today in heralding the supremacy of liberal law, when no one but that same civil society is subjected to its restrictions? Also, and perhaps more urgently, is it possible for civil society today to develop its own discourse on the state of exception, in an attempt to reclaim its own sovereignty?

Certainly, the petty vandalism of some street protests does not automatically produce civil sovereignty by the mere violation of some laws. However, on the other hand, the criminalization of any divergence from the law and the fundamentalist obedience to it, as proposed by the Italian ‘indignants’, certainly contributes to closing any alternative to the current attempts to gain full sovereignty by both the military State and global, predatory Capital. If it is true that the imposition of a new political discourse necessitates the elaboration of a concrete set of autonomous, alternative policies, it is equally true that breaking away from the framework of the law is a necessary step towards the possible implementation of such policies. In this sense, we must interpret historical examples of civil disobedience, such as those famously lead by Ghandi in India, as the minimum ground of such a break, that is, of the creation of an emancipatory state of exception to the law.

Drawing on Schmitt’s intuition, we, the fragmented universe of civil society, should consider today the opportunity of developing our own discourse on the state of exception with the aim of claiming our own sovereignty. Disobedience, and not submission to the law, is the starting point of any emancipatory politics which aims at constructing an autonomous sovereignty of civil society (or, better, civil societies). It might happen that such disobedience requires behavior commonly considered as violent, and decisions about the use of violence certainly demand maximum care. However, considerations of the use of violence must be understood within the strategic outlook of the struggle for emancipation, rather than through the lens of fundamentalist legalism. It is a matter of efficacy, rather than of legality. As it is known, legality follows sovereignty, and is docile in the hands of the rulers.

Thus, on the one hand, today’s indignant civil society is faced by the challenge of developing a collective discourse on the emancipatory possibilities of declaring a state of emergency that opposes those so far declared by both State and Capital. This process should be aimed at overthrowing State and Capital from their position of dominion and, at the same time, at the seizure of sovereign power by civil society. For this end, it is essential that today’s civil society interrogates itself on the organizational aspects of a post-State and post-Capital society, rather than indulging in toothless, lawful barking against its opponents. In this sense, it might be a good moment now to restart that process of social imagination (the so-called ‘utopian’ thinking) that seems to have dried up for the last few decades.

On the other hand, we should not forget another meaning of the word sovereignty, as explored by George Bataille. Bataille used to notice how the excess of the carnival, in which individuals allow themselves the emancipatory experience of their own excess, had nothing to do with the excess of a civil war, in which the adjustment of the social system imposes its own excess on the individuals, thus annihilating them. In Bataille’s view, sovereignty is indeed the opposite of the affirmation of one’s own power over the others, being the mystical loss of one’s own narrow identity. As noted both by Bataille, Blake and as far back as the medieval Movement of the Free Spirit, it is only through the exercise of love (better, excessive love) that the individual is able to gain his or her own sovereignty. In this sense, the individuals composing today’s civil society should not forget that the political process of social struggle has to go hand-in-and with a similar process within the individual lives that are part of it. Thus, there would be no advantage in advocating a suspension of the law by means of a proper civil war, in the name of social emancipation, if that same strategy led to the annihilation of the possibility of individual emancipation of all those involved. As Ernesto Guevara used to say, ‘one must endure without losing tenderness’.

Today’s civil society is thus confronted by the double task of raising itself above the current, discredited system of liberal law by all means necessary, with the aim of imposing its primacy over the rule of the State and of Capital, and, at the same time, to do so in a way that would allow the individual to also raise him or herself above the subjugating system of de-humanized, abstract sociality (such as it is implicit in the very concept of civil society). Possibly, a good way of proceeding along this path could be that of focusing on tactics of withdrawal rather than occupation. By withdrawing from the processes through which both the law, Capital and the State reproduce themselves, civil society could perform a tremendous action of suspension of the power of its opponents. At the same time, this movement of withdrawal could be redirected towards the creation of constituent communities of federated individuals, focused around the satisfaction of the needs and desires of their members. Always, as it is necessary, keeping in mind that the mere substitution of a law for another, of a social abstraction for another, of a domination for another, is nothing but a cruel waste of time.