Deleuze and Guattari's 'A Thousand Plateaus' by Holland Eugene W.;

Author:Holland, Eugene W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

“Apparatus of Capture” (1)

In this first approach to the Capture plateau, I will be looking only at the role of money in certain economic assemblages. There is much more to be said about apparatuses of capture, however, to which I will return in connection with the Problem of politics. At the same time, however, examination of modes of capture will enrich our understanding of the State beyond what has already been said about the State-form of thought, inasmuch as despotism marks an important watershed among modes of capture.

The first thing to be said about economic assemblages is that they fall into two basic categories: those that involve stockpiles and those that don’t. Indeed, one of the principal ways that territorial societies ward off the formation of State power and remain a-cephalous (i.e., without a head, without a head of State), as we know from the important work of French anthropologists Marcel Mauss and Pierre Clastres, is by preventing the accumulation of goods or wealth (through rituals such as potlatch). This type of social formation is in a sense an-economic as well as a-cephalous, in the sense that value is indistinguishable and inseparable from the codes informing everyday life and practices, and thus could just as well be called religious or social or prestige-value as “economic” value. All this changes with empire, for the Despot is in the position to—is able to and must—compare the relative value of the lands and peoples he has conquered. Paradoxically, the imperial conquest and ownership of territory actually entails a major movement of de-territorialization, in that value is now determined exogenously and from on high, by the Despot, rather than endogenously in term of the codes of local groups working the land. Despotic ownership of a stockpile of land thus becomes the basis of ground rent, which is determined by comparing the productivities of different parcels of land, and charging rent (or tribute) accordingly: only the Despot is in a position to do this.

Something very similar happens with respect to work. Just as there is no such thing as specifically “economic” value in territorial societies, there is no such thing as “work” per se, either: instead there is an indistinguishable assortment of free activities, aspects of which in connection with aspects of others “produce” enough and more than enough to sustain the group. All this changes with the conquest of people and/or the institution of slavery, whose value to the Despot is their labor-power and their labor-power alone. Or rather, their surplus-labor: the Despot has no vested interest in an amount of “necessary labor” needed to keep the laborer alive—there is always more labor-power to be had through further conquest or enslavement. So paradoxically enough, surplus-labor comes first, and at first, that was all there was. (Deleuze & Guattari call this form of slavery “machinic enslavement” because, unlike wage-slaves who choose their employment and develop their labor-power accordingly, the subjectivity of these slaves is inconsequential: they form, and are treated as, a herd rather than a pack, so to speak.

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