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Premium – 275. TMK BC5: Mute Compulsion, Introduction (Patreon)

Published:
2023-08-15 23:09:01
Imported:
2026-06
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We kick off the TMK book club with the excellent new book – Mute Compulsion by Søren Mau – which offers a foundational analysis of power, value, capital, and social reproduction. Mau’s book is written with a real analytical clarity that advances our critical, theoretical understanding of the relations and operations of those things in society and our lives. We set the context for the book and our approach before discussing the Introduction chapter, which established the book’s motivating questions and overarching argument about the need to pay special attention to the economic power of capital.

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

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Comments

SpartaFC

Excellent stuff guys! You might be bored of doing them by now, but there’s another rather breathless AI article, this time in Foreign Affairs, that deserves a good critique. Very “inevitablist” as might be expected, also as might be expected written by a Deep Mind executive (Mustafa Suleyman) and another “venerable” member of the establishment foreign policy community (Ian Bremmer). The combination of authors and their approach is a pretty familiar pattern by now but was reading it think, man, the TMK crew would have a thing or two to say about this…

Nick GiRAFfe

From the way you mentioned how different tendencies’ conceptions of “power” stem from their focus on economics vs. social reproduction vs. (state) violence reminded me of another really good recent book I think would go very well w/ ‘Mute Compulsion’: ‘The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State’ (2021, AK Press) by Eric Laursen

Nick GiRAFfe
>>122691344

A couple bangers from the book: “Thanks to its single-minded focus on squeezing out “value” for capital and the State, economics comes to be seen in elite circles as the organizing discipline of (practically) all life. That which has no economic justification has no justification at all.” “If violence is the State’s first and last method of control, it relies day-to-day on complex methods of cultural hegemony to keep the population loyal or at least acquiescent.” Selections from the ToC: III. Versions of the Operating System * Version 1.0: Monarchical or dynastic state * Version 2.0: Commercial oligarchy * Version 3.0: National state * Version 4.0: One-party state * Version 5.0: Social-democratic or welfare state * Version 6.0: Neoliberal state IV. Characteristics of the System, 1: Ways and Means * States are “individuals” in the eyes of the law * The State claims the right to determine who is a person (with legitimate rights and claims on the society) * The State is an instrument of violence and war * The State is above the law V. Characteristics of the System, 2: Motivations and Drivers * The State is first and foremost an economic endeavor * The State encourages bigness and uniformity * The State is a system of cultural hegemony * The State is always hierarchical VI. Characteristics of the System, 3: Distinguishing: Features and Preferences * The State has borders * The State is fundamentally opposed to any identity that competes with it * The State is totalizing * The State is fundamentally technocratic * What the State does and what it knows is “privileged” * The State wants to know everything so it can predict the future * States are (inter)connected and mutually reinforcing * The State is an ideal