{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"95af29fb-5c71-443d-9382-1c666228579d","title":"Speed and Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"1584350407","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"95af29fb-5c71-443d-9382-1c666228579d","id":"95af29fb-5c71-443d-9382-1c666228579d","uuid":"95af29fb-5c71-443d-9382-1c666228579d","title":"Speed and Politics","normalized_title":"speedandpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"1584350407","isbns":["1584350407","9781584350408"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":175,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/95af29fb-5c71-443d-9382-1c666228579d","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Speed%20and%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/95af29fb-5c71-443d-9382-1c666228579d/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/95af29fb-5c71-443d-9382-1c666228579d/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/95af29fb-5c71-443d-9382-1c666228579d","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/95af29fb-5c71-443d-9382-1c666228579d/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/95af29fb-5c71-443d-9382-1c666228579d/search"},"page":{"printed_page":36,"pdf_page":36,"physical_index":36,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"a9000067dce8c4ad79558f08cddfcde38bf1ad8a207b1482643b7b003ed569ef"},"chapter":"SPEED AND POLITICS","content":"Reorganized according to the same principle, the communal fortress remaines a \"field of strategems\" set for the adversary. But the latter changes character once more, becoming first and foremost a social enemy.\n\nAside from its military function, the rampart of the fortified place assumes a class function; its poliorcetic conception allows it to prolong the social combat indefinitely. The communal bourgeoisie gives rise to a new phenomenon, like a prolonged and patient war that has all the earmarks of the inertia of peace, and nothing more of the bloody efusions of ancient civil war, the seasonal outbursts and violent movements of the country battlefield. Bourgeois power is military even more than economic, but it relates most directly to the occult permanence of the state of siege, to the appearance of fortified towns, those \"great immobile machines made in different ways. \"9 In the same way, the decadence of the enclaved bourgeoisie, the loss of its own will, will be linked to the decline of its military technique in the domain of ground warfare. As Montesquieu remarks, \"With the invention of gunpowder, the impregnable place ceased to exist.\"\n\nClausewitz has admirably shown the mercenaries of the large Italian cities, then of Europe in general, lending their services to powerful economies-the only ones capable of furnishing the military entrepreneur with an increasingly large budget, the goods and transferable holdings that he can take with him at the end of his engagement contract (whence the \"evident conjuncture between money and what seems to found it, its military significance\"-Marx to Engels, September 25, 1 8 57) . But he doesn't go far enough in designating the latter as technical manufacturer, as engineer (of weapons). In fact, it was the military engineers who, depending on the opportunities aforded, were able to protect or destroy private securities within the bourgeois citadel. And here we have the unspoken conjucture from which the \"cannibalistic classes\" will come-not only the bourgeoisie, but also the permanent military class. The Marxist definition of capitalism, \"consumer of human life and founder of dead labor,\" is quite apt for the bourgeoisie, but only insofar as it is associated with its military technical adviser, who simultaneously invents the means of producing and of destroying what he produces, a war entrepreneur who will be at the origin of the State armies and later of the military industrial complex. Just as the condotiere had benefited from this system of ruin by leaning on the city's economic orientation, so the communal bourgeoisie already carries within itself the same ambiguous association of wealth and the production of destruction.\n\n36\n\nI Speed and Politics","previous_page":null,"next_page":null}