The immediate question of gender in the use of the language should linger with you as we contemplate this. What is hu(man)? What is a person? What is dasein? As the Heideger the philosopher who would go on to embrace fascism would ask. We see the dual problem of supremacy of race and supremacy of gender in asking this question through history. Built from the preconceived biases that we function assuming to be the normative objective unbiased. We must confront the reality that positionality has always directed the bias in this. Humanity is separate in this, from other life and the wider world in which we exist. Nutrients, minerals, water, information, and dogma flow into the being of a single instance of dasein, person, human or man. These flows all construct a given instance both materially and ideologically. Dasein was not that constraint of man though, it is the being of it all which has been debated since antiquity which the intersubjective has formed some agreement upon in various cultural hegemonies over time. Dasein will likely always carry the burden of the Nazis as it came from a Nazi.
Does the ideological flow matter any from that which is external to the single instance of man? As the ideology, religion, science, philosophy, mathematics and understanding of self only exists within a given instance (being, dasein). It becomes unified in the interplay of ideas that are shared and the intersubjective agreement becomes a formal stance classified according to a beaurovariance which has been constructed to comprehend the external.
Historically, what is man? Is this in the consciousness? Is man found within the assembled parts of the individual? We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, but equal in what manner? In the intersubjective realm of law man has constructed legal definitions of what man is. This is the agreed baseline which can be rigidly suited in the subjective bias which we saw above. In Genesis man is crafted from the clay of the earth and woman is constructed from the rib of man, the first man. In Narnia man is called a son of Adam and woman becomes a daughter of Eve. We are the inheritors of the history which led to the existence of the individuals that remain. All history is in the past therefore not present at hand, but the record of history remains before us. We see that the previous lineages are not present with us in any way except for how we continue to revive it within our tradition and actions of the present, and the actual physical results of what came before.
But, we claimed there must be a constant, laws that are always because that is how the world works, this is nature. What assurance do we have of any constant outside of the assumption of the past that reality exists in this manner? There was no empirical foundation for this; it was not given from a higher order, but higher order was assumed. The foundation of a higher order which emerges from monotheism and deism are reassuring to some who would construct understanding from these lenses. This leads also to the initial problem of the supremacy of man within the question of what a man is.
It was claimed that using the word man was to be gender neutral, but this was rejected as we realized it was not in fact used in this manner. The divide between the formalized use of man as gender neutral was not the real use, which led to the incongruent use of the gendered term and a deviation within the dialect of thought evolving through history. The use and context changed by the very interaction of people within reality despite a claim to neutrality. It was convenient to be able to step between the two uses when the distinction mattered in giving justification from one’s positionality.
In the United States, man is the quantified intersubjective we find that is organized through bureaucracy of the system, social security administration, birth certificates, bank accounts, legal in financial intersubjective constructs become a guidance Force in the existence of a being. Alain Badiou declared Heidegger to be the last philosopher. Another ending of history in the western world with a Nazi as the definitive outcome the philosophy seems like a bad ending to me. Felix Guattari and Giles Deleuze saw philosophy more like a toolbox as Manuel DeLanda might articulate it. Heidegger said that the question of philosophy that we must focus on is the question of being. In this approach man or the human becomes dasein. This iteration of a human being exists within the context of that which is around it lost within its own self amongst what is that hand in relation to the being.
The being as the individual experience, as an individualist ideology, situates itself within extreme subjectivity. The subjective finds a congruent authority through the intersubjective. The intersubjective then finds a social claim to the objective. The social claim to the objective still relies upon the intersubjective. In realizing this I acknowledge that I can only speak to the subject of experience I have had thus far. The philosopher and scientist struggles to situate their theory outside of the subjective, the bias, and in doing so does themselves a disservice in not acknowledging it.
In this the subjective is all we can know and our congruences exist according to the social similarities of construct that have influenced the converging subjective experiences. This could be a shared bourgeoisie sensibility, which shares benefits that can exclude the vast majority; or this can be in the alienated individualized nuances of the various fields of knowledge.
(The) Assemblage?
An assemblage can be any collective effort. It is the assembly of (The) functions or (The) impacts of (The) various parts. Note it is not “the assembly” as it indicates a singular, whereas the assemblage overlaps and exists within the various complex parts. This is in contrast to the scientific ideal as science to understand breaks down (The) parts of the assembly to see (The) instance, (The) individual, (The) one observable. To understand in a scientific experiment you narrow down your focus to as limited of an observable assembly as possible to the point where you can not see further divisions that would alter the definition.
DeLanda connects (The) Assemblage through flows. This is as he derives the lens within the ideological construct from Deleuze. Flow is a process, it is action, movement and exchange. It is the money, people, goods and information that moves from one assemblage to another.
Flows of reclamation
We reclaim what exists, we take from what we have access to, and claim it for our use. This can be in the material world around us or within the realm of a shared mental process. We see this in traditions, construction. We construct the functions of society every day, each taking a place as a cog in a machine. The metaphor of our physicality or the physicality of the external material world becomes the way in which we understand the interaction. The physicality of the supply chain is accompanied by the interlocking actions of those who exist along it.
The assemblage exists with physical parts that can shift through flows. The flows facilitate the actual condition of the assemblage. The flows are directed by action. The action exists on varying levels of cognitive intent. The good worker turns off the cognitive challenges and engages in the repetitive actions according to external dictates. The only mind acceptable is to achieve the goal of the assemblage. It exists according to the bureavariance of the given assemblage. When deviation surfaces it is often expelled. It does so by being either forced out, or fleeing.
From corporate chain and production to the landfill
Flows often have congruent and counter flowing streams. In the corporate chain it is reduced to the product, service, or merchandise, in response to the counter flowing stream of the intersubjective idea of money. Ideas flow from the human to the real creating action which produces, moves or controls. When Ludwig Von Mises claims economy to be human action, he is focusing on the individual action within the flow from the perspective of the controlling action. In the process the human being becomes an abstract reduced to numbers and the demand to force economic determinism through various schools of thought.
Common sense is formed in the immediate at hand. It self verifies. It interacts in the immediate at hand, for the utility of the individual cog, and has limited usefulness beyond this. It is subjective. It varies along various stages of stratification and alienation in the production process, according to the position of the cogs within the social construct. Cause and effect is the mind’s struggle to see the laws that dictate the action. In physics we can see a pool ball hit another, the transfer of energy, the direction of movement, the friction of the felt on the ball all can be measured and observed. We see immediate impact, we understand that A impacts and moves B into a flow. We know the initial flow energy came from the skilled arm of the player who hit the cue ball with the pool cue. The intent directed from the mind. In the social interaction we do not stand over the table and watch the entirety. The concept of cause and effect finds a problem in translation as it is the metaphor we attempt to attribute the physical reactions of the world around and the impacts it has to the actions we partake in. The conversation of gesture ({#} Mead), the response according to the perceived external and the actions that the individual life form takes according to a subjective understanding cannot be understood in the same manner. We are not cue balls.
Varying conflicts of self interest rise from this. Unity can be found within a given assemblage through solidarity. The authoritarian corporate structure seeks to demand solidarity with the godhead, the idea from on high. It maintains a solidarity and organism at the top to maintain control, and a solidarity of submission from the bottom, the cogs who participate with little consideration of the directive from on high. This is where we truncate understanding with the idea of God’s will. For we have no power of will in the condition, it is above and beyond control. This is codified through policy and procedure to be followed according to dictate which maintains the flow and the interests of the assemblage. The corporate assemblage takes many forms but it is a control apparatus codified and defended through social norms. Authoritarianism can be understood through this social dynamic. The cultural tradition of the imperialist and the capitalist is the empirical reduction which maintains a control of the various assembled apparatuses. This is the bureaucratic control from on high. The ordering and classifying of various cogs along the complex system which perpetuates the system under the dictates from on high. Its influence in discourse is seen in the cultural hegemony (See Gramsci) it funds through various media and education assemblages.
The intended purpose of this is the extraction of the flow of power, often through money, towards the top of the one who holds power. The mechanisms of power are used in the free market as a tool of warfare to gather more power consolidated at the top. The individual focus in the ideology of a free market is to become the winner and the pursuit of conquest through these tools of economic warfare. In this, machiavellian ideology finds itself very useful in the individual conflict of those who act in solidarity towards the goal of the collective, the functioning of the assemblage. We enact the hobbesian war of one against all in the workplace, personal relationships and more. We do this, yet it is not necessary. We create the functioning of the world every day. Maintaining a programmed solidarity of submission finds the divisions at the bottom of this form of functioning maintains a division at the bottom restricting a solidarity of all which might threaten to upend the given authority.
Corporate offices have their physical spaces, the material positions within the assemblage. The given corporate assemblage has many various physical spaces, all assemblages constructed and directed from a point of central planning. Layers of assemblages form the various cogs at various levels. There is little autonomy or power at the lower levels of the machine. The subway[™] employee, the marketed “sandwich artist [(c)]” responds to the dictate of the one who will pay for that specific sandwich which is being constructed. The sandwich is a constructed assemblage of the given ingredients at hand. The flow of cash to the register demands the flow of the sandwich to the consumer’s possession, this in turn leads to the flow of the sandwich to the mouth tasting the preferred ingredients which all had separate flows to reach the mouth of a human assemblage. The flow of the sandwich through the stomach and into energy and matter forming the individual human assemblage becoming a part of that person and finally discarded into the toilet as shit.
The shit in the toilet has come from flows across the globe, tomatoes from south america, grain from china, water from California. As the sunlight, water, and soil have given their physicality to the formation of the assemblage of a single vegetable it is then removed from that place in the world where those materials are extracted and sent to a completely different physical space, often restricted, zoned, and given boundaries by imagined borders of a national assemblage. The actual physical composition of the earth in that place flows out, first as a product, then as waste. We view shit as bad, so it is flushed and we filter the urine and feces out for water through a larger process of flows that deal specifically with water filtration and sanitation. This also functions in the national boundaries of an authoritarian nation state through the flow of money, and despite it being a public good mostly exists in the private authoritarian form of corporate economic extraction. The ones who rely on those who consume these goods and services from the subway[™] sandwich to the sewage system are often subject to the decisions from the authoritarian control of the very things they rely on to continue this social arrangement. This creates a dependence on the captured and centrally controlled and planned assemblage on a market. The power within this is in how much control of a flow one might have. If your only flow is a shit and a sandwich you hold little power.
We look at the assemblage of a mass production consumer industrialist economy. The laborers as individual cogs only existing in solidarity with the authority hold little power. The labor existing in solidarity with one another claims power. The power of labor creates the products and the machines used to create products and the corporate power claims authority to design the direction of flows and control where they are distributed. The supply chain is not an abstract, it is an everyday action taken by labor. The materials are extracted and moved, placed in the proper containers, and shipped through trucks, shipping containers, trains and back to trucks all over again. The process of M-C-M, money – commodity – money as Marx illustrated exists in the assemblages, which facilitate this process of extracting wealth or money at each level. The reality of the movement is the assembled body of a person who digs or physically moves the product from the initial place it exists within to the place and containment in which it will be moved. The pallet jack and forklift are common tools operated by the laborer, the individual cogs. These are all people existing in the assemblage at that moment.
From the point of extraction we move to the transformation of the commodity to a product, the movement is executed by labor. Either automated or the physical labor of a person’s body. The automation of labor only exists because of the physical labor which created the form of automation. These are constructed and directed according to flows internally or interacting with other assemblages. The agreement between the various interacting assemblages form many different flows of both money, products, or services. Every topping on the subway sandwich comes from a different laborer, likely a different assemblage, and each tool used in the process also comes from a different assemblage. The parts of the assemblages can change and alter switching out laborers, tools, processes and procedures while maintaining the given goals and structure. It can be in flux.
This leads to the production of waste. When a given assemblage operates it looks to predict social behavior through economic determinism. The flow moves an object to a market. The apparatus of the assemblage contains the various functioning divisions which serve various purposes to either facilitate this or predict this. The marketing, public relations or propaganda looks to interact, influence and respond to the behavior of people and markets. In some instances we have determined a close approximation of what is needed or will be consumed. This becomes easier with actual needs of survival such as food, water, utilities etc… The superfluous products often find themselves successful in the market because of marketing, PR and Propaganda, through the invention of imagined need. The purpose of those industries and departments is to influence action, belief and solidarity with a brand or abstract represented idea of a corporate assemblage. This also leads to a great deal of superfluous luxury items that contribute to a great deal of waste as the market does not consume initially. Those are sent to landfills and reclamation. To make this understood in a real physical way that would be experienced by the instance of a human experience we see the products enmasse. This is where the junk man comes in. The corporation often has insurance or tax constructs it uses to prevent losses in this process of failure in the system. We see the nation state will intervene if the corporate assemblage begins to collapse thus removing the risk that economic empiricism claims as right of extract through the property of a social assemblage, which is the attitude of domination and control taken by those who have played the game of domination and power or control within the given bureaucratic structure of an assemblage. Often those higher positions are safeguarded by those who hold the mechanisms of control already. They safeguard the power and control for continued extraction and accumulation.
Infrastructure
The flows move along roads, bridges, boats, trains, trucks, cranes, forklifts, pallet jacks and more as follows through alienated labor physically divided along this path. Each machine, truck, train or forklift for instance, has labor behind both its construction and operation. Each one a point with a human cog who makes sure the process, if followed, is replicated from day to day according to policy and procedure. These work in conjunction with history. History of labor exists in what has been made real in the world. It could be a book, a road, a building, a machine. It is the wider world that we interact with as it has been constructed by ourselves and those who came before us. In this the physical ability to ship exists because we have carved into the surface of the earth the pathways that make this possible. The structures of the world we interact within took into consideration the purpose of the structures that are constructed. They are made according to a goal which is dictated by the intent of the action. Thus in a capitalist society, the physical reality we interact within is literally constructed to facilitate the flows of capitalism or the assemblages that dictated the construction. We are left with the option to use what is at hand which we have access to to facilitate flow to meet our needs.
Reclamation
In a state of excess the actual need itself is manufactured, not the object to meet the need, but the necessity is manufactured through marketing, public relations and propaganda. When the actual product fails to find a market we end up with large quantities of wasted labor and resources. These are now physical products, pallets upon pallets of excess that nobody wanted or needed. The destination of this excess production ends up in landfills or can be repurposed. It is in the junk world that these are often repurposed and make it onto the market in little country stores, flea markets, auctions, or peddler malls.
In the reclamation business the excess production is bought up at a low reduced price, or is discarded and given to one who can just clear out what has become garbage. Producers produce in mass as they are looking to accumulate wealth in units sold not in a high price of a product. In this model, it is in looking how much can be pushed into the market, and glut leads to profit. Advancement becomes excessive use of resources that just go on to destroy for the sake of profit, and resources to push this towards profit through marketing departments inventing a need for the consumer. They claim they create value.
Buildings and business
Storage of excess requires physical space. If one has the warehouse or physical space to hold large quantities of merchandise it can become another stop along the flow. The products find themselves with a markup as they leave as the act of just taking in requires labor to move trucks full of pallets loaded with merchandise. The owner of the property demands a price that must be covered with the continued flow of the product. Even though the product may have left the assemblage that produced it at a discounted price, it goes back into the flow demanding a right of increase at each point of exchange. Two business models of moving the excess are wholesale and retail. At the wholesale level the name of the game is to move en masse, business to business. Then direct to the consumer. The one who can buy truck loads of products wish to do so at the lowest cost per unit, and sell to the merchant in large quantities.
In a larger corporation such as ones owned by Blackrock, the middle disconnection between the producer and the merchant are often consolidated under the same corporate portfolio of profit. The people along the chains still must perform the tasks, it is simply a monopolization of produced products on their way to the point of sale. Owning the point of sale in the form of mass corporate chain locations across the country or world gives direct access to the consumers in their physical spaces. Familiarity with corporate brands lets the consumer know what they can expect at a location of one of these mass assembled stores. It also was useful in gaining dominance over the market by these companies like Walmart, Target, Bass Pro Shop and so on. The model of Walmart was to undercut prices of local businesses pushing them out of the market. The local business could not purchase as large of an amount of product to demand lower prices for the higher volume which they could distribute.
On Marx and DeLanda
It seems that when Karl Marx spoke of the dialectical process he didn’t really flesh it out a whole lot, those writings were in response to and built upon the concepts laid out by Hegel. In that tradition I approached this writing, from a perspective of materialist phenomenology as written by Manuel Delanda. For that reason, I write this in a different manner than a traditional academic paper. As I am working currently loading trucks full of junk for the junk man to be sold at auctions, Old country stores, and flea markets, this is not an academic paper for I am not an academic, am I a mythical proletarian? I think perhaps I am the Lumpen Prole. In the tradition of academic theories and writings, my place in this has more aligned with the anarchist thinkers as they tend to rise from the working class outside of the institutions of the Ivory towers as an antithesis to the existing power structures.
Manuel Delenda could hardly be considered a Marxist from what I have seen in his writing. That is not to say that Marx did not influence the thought which he espouses. The thought of Karl Marx has impacted most realms of knowledge over the last 150 or more years. Karl Marx himself has become a type of Christ, communist ideas have become types of religions. For this reason it is necessary to examine the letter of the law and the spirit of the law in light of what we currently know. In questioning this I realize it is a matter of approach to the problem found in the religious approach, as it emulates the infighting of church denominations without the ability to bridge despite difference. Instead we should approach the contradictions in looking for a synthesis, a vital part in the dialectics of creating knowledge and advancing human understanding. The ideologies of Karl Marx have interacted with liberalism greatly over the last century. The reality is that if you live in the United States of America, you were socialized and developed in a liberal individualist society. This means that your interactions and day-to-day activities are driven by the individualist liberal practical process of development, which occurs within the assemblages that have been developed. The assemblages which develop us here in the United States are strongly liberal individualist assemblages by their structure.
In the Marxian manner the Proletariat and Bourgeois are given as a dichotomy as they represent a real power struggle under capitalism. The liberal professor might emphasise teaching Marx with an emphasis on the Petit Bourgeois, as likely that is slightly more in line with a third social construct of a Middle Class, within modern neoliberalism the classes get further divided down to Lower Middle Class, Upper Middle Class, and Criminal or Terrorist. The divisions continue. They become based upon skin color through the creation of white supremacy. The divisions are backed by a point of conflict. The point of conflict is often reinforced with access to power. Often the power itself is the power of money, but it also comes in the form of other social sanctions. In the division of the multi-tiered stratification of the capitalist manner, a function of control is in the division. Higher class positions within workplaces are divided not just by labor, but by logistics and management that control labor. The worker who does physical labor sees a real financial impact between themselves and the workers who treat them as commodities and resources. The ones who treat workers as a resource or commodity find more access to wealth and power, not only in being able to implement their directive within an assemblage through those stratified under them, their compensation financially removes them from the worst impacts of poverty brought about by a capitalist structured assemblage. They can direct more power through financial flows than those who work under them and can not afford basics, yet are entangled within the given assemblage through that very same flow of money which keeps them returning as a dog begging to have their food dish refilled.
A Brief History of Radicalism
Anarchism, Communism, Capitalism and Democratic Confederalism
Kropotkin thought there would be a time of hardship between the end goal of liberation and the current state. The state falls, then we build it. On the contrary Leninists tend to see a long transitionary period leading to a better tomorrow. Both, I assert, look to the same end goal. But individuals within the transitions may have different focuses between these that vary for their given situation within time and history. Various other conflicts emerge in these wider interactions historically, such as the church. In both of these industrialism are maintained but transformed to a more equal operating and distribution of need.
Anarchism is not a single coherent ideology. It encompasses a vast array of resistances, not from the academic down, but from the bottom up. Anarchism is situated in history between the old and the synthesis of the new as an antithesis. Anarchists of Cuba spent decades agitating and organizing before the rise of Fidel and Che. For some anarchism manifested as transitory between the old Imperialist capitalist state and the new Communist revolution where real needs and problems were mitigated to improve the conditions for the masses of the country.
Che was successful in his efforts for revolution until he was not. In going to Bolivia he was no longer in the time and place as the Cuban revolution of 1952. The coming of the Día de la Revolución of July 26th existed in history prior to many decades of organizing and other revolutionary attempts to change. Even Fidel Castro had his moment of suppression before leaving Cuba and seeking support for his cause. Bolivia had its prior history of politics which Che was entering, and in that history it was claimed that the revolution had already succeeded. Those who were the Peasant class in the countryside of Bolivia had seen the promise of the revolution and, frankly, just did not trust another white man coming to them promising a revolution asking for their sacrifice to get there. If Che had gone north and realized the potential of organizing with the Miners in the north, he may not have survived and not been killed by a CIA backed regime. Now, there are those who may say an idea of industrial revolution is also the model for agriculture that misses the most basic difference, and that is the existing conflict of culture which has often existed in the two modes of production. This conflict is seen in the USSR with the conflict in Ukraine of Kronstadt, and resistance of Makhno. The conflict over land and agriculture in regards to the Mexican Revolution.
The Mexican Revolution of 1910 like the Cuban Revolution did not happen within a vacuum, it happened after much agitation and organizing that found resistance from the Porfirio Diaz regime. Ricardo Florez Magon fled the country after himself and his brothers were jailed and were targeted for the revolutionary ideas coming from their writing and the paper they published. Magon continued publishing in the United States for his Mexican audience. This paper reached Emiliano Zapata where he took up Magon’s slogan “Land and Liberty”. Magon wrote to those close to him that what they were pushing for was Anarchist Communism, and pushed for those ideals and ethics while labeling it ‘liberal’ so as to not frighten those who misunderstood the meaning of both Anarchism and Communism.
During the Spanish Revolution of 1936, the Anarchists of Spain allied themselves with many other factions while they implemented new methods of society under an anarchist ideal. The Fascists maintained power in Spain and the resistance turned in on itself with factions such as the soviets and communists turning on the anarchists. But those who survived this period with those ideals went on to found the Mondragon corporation. Mondragon is not a state, but a corporation that sought to push back on the existing market within the confines of capitalism by building a larger structure to meet needs. It did not capture power at the top of the fascist state it emerged from, it adjusted holding to some of the ethics of the liberation and applied them to what they had power over and began to adjust relationships to the means of production within the current. This has gone on to spread across the globe even as far as here, to Cincinnati and Cleveland Ohio. Modragon not only has coop modeled companies, but it also works with non-profits to promote the formation of new cooperatives in the state. (Co-Op Cincy)
The Mondragon corporation is not the only remaining impact of Anarchistic struggle globally. Anarchist efforts have left their remains in various institutions they have built and partaken in. One example is the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). It is important to say that the IWW is not ‘Anarchist’ in fact it rejects any political endorsement whatsoever, which I think confuses people when talking about these things. There is a local Mutual Aid society where I am called Monkey Mutual Aid Society. It is nice walking down the street seeing the stained glass words over a door saying “Mutual Aid”. I see it across the street from the Library as I step out front to smoke. It is a reminder to me that there are the remains of those who struggled all around us. Now, what the Mutual Aid society became over the years is not what the vision was. But it does survive as a sort of local social club which has faced some sketchy allegations you may be able to deduce. The origin of the Monkey Mutual Aid Society was rooted in local labor struggle when it was founded in 1901 by Union Members who worked at the local Champion Paper Mill. I think it is a testament that the Mutual Aid Society outlived the Corporation as the Champion Paper Mill no longer exists. The Monkey Mutual Aid society does some charity work around the Christmas Holiday seasons as I understand, so it is not completely without a current function in society.
Structure of Flows and Ideological relationship with material action
If you speak to most political radicals you will hear a lot about theory, but the actual theory they draw from is limited, and often at least a century old. If you enter into academia, you will hear a great deal of theory that has removed itself from the radical political traditions and visions of the past which these radicals cling to, and perpetuate a liberalism that is alienated, fractured and splintered. Many of those very theories were directly influenced by Marx in their conceptions. We exist in the current reality constructed of all that came before and which remains. The current reality does not reflect any theory or ideology when it is examined in depth, but various theories and ideologies take a more accurate look when we view the proof through their lens.
I hear of scientific socialism, but do not see that socialism using scientific methods. It tends to be a dogmatic remnant of the past. Online there is a radical shouting onto tik tok GOAT! He claims it is Guidance Of All Theory (GOAT). (Eric, I appreciate you) In their book, “What is Philosophy?” Deleuze and Guittari presents philosophy as a tool box to be used as ways to approach reality and reconceptualize it. The scientific method is one which negation leads to better understanding. If we do not negate and refine and shift as the various theories find their weak points and failings, we can not advance.
Our journeys through life begin with sense perception. Vision, color, sight, taste, feel, sound, and smell are all the inputs that we attach significant symbols to in our development. As an illustrator I can shift perspective of vision to be represented on computer, paper or canvas. I know in a real way that proximity changes perspective, and I can use a ruler to emulate that, capturing the shift of the physical appearance through perspective. The external world forms the individual, in that the individual does not develop without social and physical interaction. The experience of being human is in relation to others around us and the world we have built collectively. We are born within and exist within collectives of various forms and sizes. These collectives vary greatly in their objectives and functions. Processes and procedures find their ways into ideologies and directives that solidify the action and results of the collective and what folk work together to accomplish. These are assemblages. Assemblages exist interconnected through flows. The flows can be the interchangeable humans who assemble them, often each being a part of various assemblages.
Life as a journey is a metaphor we create to comprehend what we are engaging in. This metaphor like many of the metaphors we use are founded in our physicality, the way we developed to comprehend the world around us. This physical aspect it uses is traveling. Walking down a path we encounter the world progressively over time. At all times we are in the current reality, informed and influenced by the past, history. Progressing forward we are still in the current reality as we look forward to what is to come. The formed understanding of the world we develop is our history. History in this way creates the current reality as reality does not remain stagnant. Action and change occurs constantly. The power to move mountains was once seen as a god-like accomplishment, but with extraction we have moved them to all parts of the planet, in fragments that are removed and formed through action. This is done through assemblages mostly understood as corporate entities as they are currently formed in the legal construct under the existing systems. The rare minerals, coal and iron ore move through flows from the mountaintop to homes and businesses (all assemblages) globally. I have walked on the land which remains in Appalachia where once mountains stood which we have removed in the pursuit of profit.
The flow of coal from the mountains to the trains to the coke plant, then to the blast furnace used to smelt the iron oar down to steel is a physical flow. The counter flow which keeps it moving and greases the machine and maintains the human action that makes this a real physical reality is capital, the money. The capital is a egregor, it is a myth, it is a shared truth only existing within mutually agreed attitudes which spur action. This flow is a flow of power over behavior. This is not the only flow possible, and not the only flow historically, but it is the flow of capitalism as an idea that catapults us into human action. It increases and decreases flow from one assemblage to another.
In a traditionally structured capitalist assemblage, the power is held centrally at the top. Decisions on directing flows of resources are determined by the heads of the assemblage. Often this is driven in flows congruent to the capital. This is the authoritarian structured assemblage. It is countered by the liberatory structured assemblage in which the other people who are part of the assemblage have equal say in the flows, functions, processes and procedures. This is done at times through forms of democratization, or consensus. An assemblage can be varied and not limited to these two forms, but these two forms are present in corporations, nonprofits and other structures we depend on for our day to day lives here in the imperial core.
The metaphors we use to discuss the assemblages are not a direct connection to the material reality they exist within, nor the actual action which they participate within. The varying boundaries that exist to restrict, constrain, produce or grow vary according to the constructed legal structures as they relate to the corporate entities. These work hand in hand while conflicting. Assemblages as entities tend to seek their own self preservation as the positions filled are constructed with the intent of upholding the structure and function. They serve self interests, so the connection between two while they have shared interests they seek to maintain, largely in the realm of property, power and capital. At the same time they do not always work cooperatively as the various assemblages find that their functions may be inhibited or at odds with those of another. Those with most power within a given assemblage can often exert more influence over the assemblage and the directions of its flows. This enables a select few within the assemblage to extract more from a given assemblage than others who function within the assemblage. This is where the capitalist extracts profit from the workers labor.
Human beings learn to act along ordered lines with each other. The level of control of that order is subject to empirical order. This order rises from imagined and created classification and delineation. As the inputs for behavior are learned, so also the direction of the learning rises from what has been constructed and imagined and relayed through the metaphors, language and ideology behind the direction of function. It is for some to engineer the flows, for some to enact them through actual physical labor. It is for some to engineer narratives and ideologies to run congruent within the flow, and pass them down as culture to be embraced within the assemblage. It is for some to engineer the process of streamlining action and physical reality of the working conditions to extract from a laborer. It is for some simply to do the real work that is necessary to carry out the dictates from on high. To shift the directives from profit to goals such as human need would necessarily structure the functioning in a different manner with different culture, ideology and directives. Action as necessary to accomplish the real material results of an assemblage either maintains its place with workers or is automated. Automation enables the streamlining for the sake of profit at the detriment of the workers’ need under profit driven assemblages. Meeting human needs distributes labor and flows in a different manner than the authoritarian assemblage.
Supply chains are constructed to serve the movement up as the ideology under global capitalism is one of authoritarianism. This serves to extract more and more from the bottom. Now, to see it as a monolithic grand narrative is to only perceive through the lens of the assemblages ideological justifications and negates the agency of the actors who execute the flow and function of assemblages. As a flow moves from one legally constructed boundary or border the ideological orientation of how the philosophical justification of the actions and function adjusts to the social and material differences within the given boundaries. On a scale of grand narratives in the imperial core this can be seen as a dichotomy of capitalism versus communism. The marxist influences in grand narratives find themselves evolving and changing to counter the imperialist narratives. The Imperialist exists within its varied interactions of assemblages as does any other where they find congruence. We are at once interconnected and alienated. Disconnection despite interdependence helps to direct flows of control, and limit the organizational approaches that would look to reverse the authoritarian manners of assemblage construction.
Max Weber said on bureaucracy that there are three types of legitimate authority, the rational, the traditional and the charismatic. Despite not being a focus of his work I insert that In this the monopoly of violence, social sanctions, and psychological manipulation are necessary to maintain the authority. He states that “In the case of legal authority, obedience is owed to the legally established impersonal order.” That is to say obedience is to the assemblage not the individual who holds control. The processes that continue the structure themselves are what we adhere to by tradition, the preservation of power. Weber saw this as being the office and positions themselves which demand respect. In a structure where we respect based on the criteria we have rationalized and defined via written or unwritten norms and criteria. The unwritten can hold weight but the written is solidified as the official word or doctrine.
The characteristics of bureaucracy according to Weber hold fixed jurisdictional areas which are ordered by rules of law or administrative regulations. The two hold differing processes at arriving at the official authority. The distribution of official duties, and authority to command are bound to the authorization. To act outside of this is direct action, which breaks from submission from authority.
We are social animals who work towards collective goals. We form cultures in this interconnected goal striving in various assemblages. Some may be organized around a constructed national heritage, some a corporate assemblage, some a manufactured counter culture consumer flow, there can be many cultures, subcultures and countercultures. We attach to these divisions through an understanding of self within the social structures and our roles within them.
Two finishing thoughts to further consider within context of this:
I have often said that human nature is a myth. In this I mean that there is no knowing what a “natural person” is outside of social influence for the very process of developing a human animal is a social process.
Variance of perception and subjectivity give me pause to embrace any absolute claims of objectivity. Objectivity is found in the minds consensus of (xyz). It is a metaphor and myth of authoritarianism.
Things to further consider within Assemblages:
Assemblage of an Individual
Assemblage of a Collective
On the stage of grand narratives and the removal of power
Human development within the social interaction
Grand Narratives, Ideology, and Understanding
Ideological fictions and metaphors
Authoritarianism Vs Autonomy
Forms of Assemblages
Breaking Points and Destruction of Assemblages
Liberatory Assemblages vs. Totalitarian Authoritarian Assemblages
Redistributing Power