The question in the subject line is the title of a 1932 exchange of letters
between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, arranged by the League of
Nations' International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation. Freud's reply
to the question sounds remarkably like one of Jay Hanson's riveting fables
of the instincts. In Freud's account, the Law and the rights of the
community originate as counter-violence to the primordial violence of the
dominant individual of the human horde -- in their origins, might and right
(Macht und Recht) are indistinguishable.
Let us suppose that Freud was correct in his surmise about the origins of
primitive society. Is it then reasonable to assume a similar evolution
proceeding from primitive society to the modern state? No.
Freud was commenting on a movement from a monopoly of violence to a more
diffuse exercise of legitimate violence. The modern state, however,
represents a movement back in the opposite direction toward a more
centralized administration of the monopoly of violence.
Furthermore, Freud was speculating about events occuring long before the
"dawn of history". The evolution of the modern state occurred in the bright
light of historical mid-day. In examining the evolution of the modern state,
we can name names and cite precise dates.
A couple of events, cited by Norbert Elias in _Power and Civility_, are
especially poignant for bracketing out the evolution of the modern state. In
1189, Philip Augustus forbid the levying of royal taxes by himself or his
successors. On September 16, 1380 -- a few hours before his death -- Charles
V signed a decree repealing the oppressive and unpopular house-tax. In the
less than 200 year interim, royal taxes had gone from being an extraordinary
and unpopular effrontery to custom to becoming a permanent -- if no less
despised -- feature of the monarchy.
What these taxes (whether extraordinary or permanent) ostensively paid for
was war. They were *les aides sur le fait de la guerre*. A more or less
permanent state of war (the Hundred Years' War) engendered a permanent state
of taxes.
A pivot point occurred after King John was taken prisoner in the Battle of
Poitiers: "in order to pay the enormous ransom demanded by the English, a
tax is levied for the first time not just for one year but for six . . . In
reality this tax is raised continuously not for six years but for twenty,
and we may suppose that by this time a certain adaptation of the market to
such payments is taking place."
Where Freud was concerned with the interplay of two *instincts*: the erotic
and the destructive, Elias chronicled the monopolization of two *functions*:
taxation and the exercise of violence. Violence is the common term, but it
is the divergent pair that produces a startling juxtaposition: eros and taxes.
Perhaps there's more than meets the eye to the expression of being "screwed
by the tax collector" or to the consonance between eros and IRS. I would
suggest that this odd couple(ing) of eros and taxes brings us back to the
dilemma of work, and more precisely to the distinction between "work and
play", which Marcuse points out hinges on the purpose and not the content of
the activity.
I'm afraid that a productivist view of work may lead us to overemphasize the
peripheral (subsistence) and underemphasize the central (domination) in
trying to come to terms with the difficulty of organizing non-repressive,
socially useful activity. And I want to repeat my earlier insight that the
so-called "free market" may best be understood as a hyperextended apparatus
for diverting, recirculating, and privitizing TAX REVENUES.
If emancipation may be described as a project of organizing non-repressive,
socially useful activity, the Dow Jones Industrial Average must then be
properly seen as a token for eroticizing repressive sublimation.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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