Bhumics Week 3: “The Pauper”
Quote of the week:
Labour was adrift, rudder-less, its moorings in the working class unhinged by the dissipation of the class itself, and hanging on to the driftwood of trade unionism, while Thatcherism charted an assured and defiant course through troublesome seas. ‘Authoritarian populism’ only explained why Thatcherism had found a hold among the people, but not why people were prepared to put up with it."
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the new Marxists were unable to bring to New Times the understanding that all the seismic changes in society and culture that they were so adroitly and bravely describing stemmed from (and in turn contributed to) the revolutionary changes at the economic level, at the level of the productive forces, brought about by the new technology.
Here was an ongoing revolution, the size, scope, comprehensiveness of which had never been known in the history of humankind and it was passing the Left by — till Thatcherism inadvertently brought it to their notice. And even then, what the Left understood was the scientific and technical magnitude of its achievements, summed up in Sir Ieuan Maddock's phrase that electronics had replaced the brain as once steam had replaced muscle.
But its sociological size — that Capital had been freed from Labour — had escaped the Left altogether. The Labour Party was too sunk in its own stupor of trade unionism to see that the working class was decomposing under the impact of the new forces of production and that old forms of Labour organisation were becoming frangible.
From A. Sivanandan, 'The Hokum of New Times,' reprinted in Sivanandan, A., "Catching History on the Wing." Pluto Press (2008).
The interplay between positive and normative bhumics is essential--one doesn't make sense without the other--but before anything else, we need to get the positive side right. This isn't just a theoretical concern; it's about understanding planetary order in a way that is rigorous and effective. And while we might borrow insights from Machiavelli, this isn't about being Machiavellian for its own sake. We read Machiavelli not to become cynical manipulators but to learn how to think clearly and strategically--how to be "positive" in the sense that economics uses the term: grounded in reality, attentive to mechanisms, and focused on outcomes.
There are two key reasons for this emphasis on the ‘positive’.
First, physics matters. This is something climate activists often point out: physics doesn't care about your politics. It doesn't care whether you believe in vaccines or whether you think climate change is real. If too much carbon accumulates in the atmosphere, the consequences will unfold regardless of our beliefs. But here's the catch: this same logic applies to the climate movement itself. Whatever stories we tell, whatever moral urgency we invoke, if our proposed actions don't actually reduce carbon in the atmosphere, then we have failed. Physics doesn't just confront climate skeptics--it confronts climate advocates, too.
Second, language matters. We are drowning in vague, ineffectual rhetoric. How many times have we heard--or said--something like, "climate change is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced"? These phrases sound grand but don't land. They don't move people. They lack precision, and without precision, there is no power. If design is about what works, then we must design for physics, and we must design for minds. Right now, the way we communicate about planetary concerns is failing on both counts.
Caricaturing the Elon Musks of the world as uniquely evil has some truth to it. I mean, he has become a grotesque parody, but it also triggers tried responses: mass mobilization, social media campaigns, trite slogans of hope and progress. But we know that if anything, those tools have become the tools of the enemy. The authoritarians are much better at this game and they own its channels. The new world we are in has been mastered by the princes who rule it. Which leaves us, the paupers, with little recourse. We better learn how to be Machiavellian paupers soon.
Here’s an excerpt from a recently written article that makes the same point:
This week-end’s abrupt attempt, through pre-emptive tariff changes, to reshape the global environment to new political reality is the beginning of the test to what degree the US can ignore the reactions of the rest of the world (and stack the deck toward a certain kind of new regime) as its struggles internally over its future. Your guess is as good as mine in these matters, but I strongly suspect that none of the rules of thumb and maxims about how the world really works that policymakers, commentators, global businesses, NGOs, and academics have relied upon for, say, the last thirty to sixty years, are going to be very robust.
From:
Schleisser also says:
In fact, because modern liberal democracies refuse to impose terror on their populations, one may well suspect that Machiavelli is wholly irrelevant for our predicament. For, the function of renewal for Machiavelli is:
By revising the government they meant inspiring such terror and such fearin the people as they had inspired on first taking charge, for at that time they punished those who, according to that kind of government, had done wrong. When the memory of such punishment disappears, men take courage to attempt innovations and to speak evil; therefore it is necessary to provide against them by moving the government back toward its beginnings. (421; emphasis added)
Co/Re/Production
We are in the throes of three revolutions: in production (think AI), reproduction (think Fertility) and coproduction (think Climate Change). Bhumics isn't exhausted by these three shifts (not enough focus on biophysicality, for example) but just these three alone will keep us busy for a while. Each one of these three has a positive component grounded in data and scientific understanding. It also has a normative component, but my instinct is to assume that the normative aspects can't be imposed from up above, but only by looking closely at the specific conditions of production, reproduction and coproduction.
This is where Machiavelli becomes most useful--not as a model of political scheming, but as an instrument of critique. A clear-eyed, unsentimental lens allows us to dissect two major complexes whose contradictions are weakening the pauper’s capacity to seize the means of co/re/production: the Hope Industrial Complex and the Harmony Industrial Complex.
I'll go into these complexes in detail in the coming weeks, but for now, the crucial question is: who is this critique for?
Machiavelli wrote ‘The Prince’ for rulers. He addressed his work to Lorenzo Medici (not Lorenzo the Magnificent, but his grandson), making it clear that power requires an understanding of how people think. He says:
For those who draw maps place themselves on low ground, in order to understand the character of the mountains and other high points, and climb higher in order to understand the character of the plains. Likewise, one needs to be a ruler to understand properly the character of the people, and to be a man of the people to understand properly the character of rulers.
From: Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Edited by Quentin Skinner and Russell Price, CUP 2019.
In his telling, Machiavelli was the man of the people who understood the character of rulers and mirrored it back to them. But what if we twisted this logic 180 degrees, understand the character of rulers, but relay it back to the people? What if, instead of writing for princes, we wrote for paupers? An alternate dedication might read:
I hope it will not be considered presumptuous for a man of humble condition to dare to discuss the ways of rulers and to lay bare their methods. For just as those who draw maps place themselves on low ground to study the mountains and climb high to survey the plains, so too must one be among the ruled to properly understand the rulers. Those in power may believe they alone grasp the nature of the people, but it is we—the many, the governed—who best see the nature of those who govern us. From below, we observe their heights; from outside their chambers, we hear their whispered dealings. If rulers study us to maintain their rule, then we must study them to understand how we are ruled.
My goal, then, over the next three months is to draft 'The Pauper' while paying close attention to The Prince and keeping:
One eye on the immense revolution in production, reproduction and co-production that are happening in front of our eyes (Ideology).
Another eye on the Hope and Harmony industrial complexes and their failings (Affectology).
Re: Ideology in point 1 above -
I have long been a fan of the Biden administration's IRA, but I am having second thoughts now, having read about how it's helped the fossil fuel industry (FFI henceforth) rebrand itself with subsidies. The FFI is always finding new ways to maintain dominance while claiming to be part of the solution. Michael Levien's Reactionary Decarbonization lays this out with clarity, showing how carbon capture and storage (CCS) is being used as a tool not for real decarbonization but for prolonging the life of fossil capitalism. CCS allows oil and gas companies to continue extracting, burning, and profiting--only now with the added benefit of public subsidies and a greenwashed narrative of climate responsibility.
What's striking is how this isn't just a techno-fix but a deeply political move. In places like Louisiana, CCS projects are reinforcing long-standing patterns of environmental and social injustice, disproportionately affecting already marginalized communities. Yet, some environmentalists and even parts of the left are endorsing CCS, treating it as a pragmatic compromise rather than recognizing it for what it is: a lifeline for a system that should be dismantled.
Real decarbonization isn't about capturing emissions while keeping fossil fuel infrastructure intact; it's about breaking with that infrastructure altogether. Anything less risks deepening the crisis rather than solving it. It will be interesting if the Trump administration continues funding for CCS incentives in the IRA while gutting the rest. My gut instinct - I see CCS and DAC and other fossil fuel industry driven initiatives as the future of climate action in the US; will fit well with reactionary electrification of the kind the Musks of the world stand for.
PS: The only good news in Levien’s piece:
The movement involves many retired petrochemical plant workers who find themselves arrayed against the industry for the first time. Though politically conservative and not otherwise inclined to climate action, most of their critiques of the project are persuasive....As I write, parish-level opposition to CCS injection wells is spreading like wildlife across the state.
After that, over to Thomas More and Utopia. That’s still a ways to go, but let me warn you that my reading of Utopia is as utopian as my reading of Machiavelli is Machiavellian. The speculative is as much an element of the modern vocabulary as the positive, and the pauper needs to be able to speculate the world as well as they need to see the world through a positive lens.
Speculative thinking and positive thinking are deeply interrelated capacities
TLDR; The Pauper will start arriving in your mailboxes in a couple of weeks, but before that, we will enjoy a requiem to the ‘rules based international order’ next week, in celebration of the massive tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China and half of all Danes considering the US a threat to their nation.
