Istvan Meszaros

Antagonistic political formations, including the modern capitalist state, are hierarchical by their innermost substance, and therefore—even if they wanted to do the contrary—cannot help being opposed to any idea of substantive equality. T

The principal forms of antagonistically perpetuated materiality across history are:

1. slave-owning early societies, controlled by military force;

2. feudal serfdom in which the predetermined and even religiously sanctioned antagonistic rule continues to be imposed, wherever and whenever needed, by force;

3. “wage slavery” (in the words of Marx), perpetuating itself by directly material/economic means under the rule of capital, no matter how “advanced” and ultimately safeguarded by political/military force.

The objective contradiction of such reproductive structure is blatantly obvious, even if it is idealized at the historical phase of wage slavery by the privileged side as the benevolent “Invisible Hand” and not perceived as an untenable contradiction by those at the receiving end.

Significantly, even at the stage of capitalistic wage slavery—when the primary modality of surplus-labor extraction and its discriminatory expropriation as expanding surplus value is the class determined, and supposedly “neutral,” economic material dependency of the workers (combined with the deceitful semblance of their “political equality” and indeed “liberty”)—from time to time, in periods of major crises, forms of directly authoritarian even extreme dictatorial political control must be imposed on society.