By Joe. Video: https://youtu.be/BQkeTBfo3Bk
Carl Schmitt defines the concept of the sovereign as one who decides upon the exception. The exception in itself is not merely defined as a state of emergency or simple boundaries set up by legal parameters, rather the exception is an existential crisis of the modern state and a threat the core that legal order is based on, which is that of the norm. For the sovereign is to decide to suspend the legal order, with the regulations that once were encoded in a constitution or similar body of law, and use his power of decision to restore the norm to its original position as such. The sovereign then reveals himself at the moment of decision, for it is the sovereign’s powers alone that can suspend the constitution and legal bindings that at one point constrained his abilities, and with confirmation that the sovereign has decided can there be confirmation that the legal order in itself exists.
In light of recent events, with the understanding that the current decline of the global order and the decline of domestic order in the United States, clearly, we find ourselves in a state of exception and that there is now an existential crisis of the American common law order. And yet with a president whose power serves as that sovereign has refused to choose, and we find ourselves in a moment of a non-decision, of inaction. For all of the work Schmitt had put into his framework in a form of theory, a question is now posited in the realm of the actual: What happens when the sovereign refuses to decide? What happens as a result of the inaction?
To answer such a question another question must be put into place: can those who are not the sovereign and do not have the ability to make such a powerful decision see that the current position the system is in as an SoE? In Schmitt’s pure understanding perhaps not, however, we do have means of measuring scientifically an “existential threat” to the state’s order. In Peter Turchin et al on the issue of state collapse, we find that revolutions and other events relating to such a collapse can be equated on that existence or lack thereof state order. In the structural-demographic model on state stability, there are three main actors in play: The Elite, the State, and the Commoners. Elite set up the State, sacrificing some form of selfishness and give the construction a degree of autonomy, the State then acts as an enforcer of rule of law, which protects Elites from arbitrary violence and in cases of the developed world also protects the Commoners. The State as an actor is perpetually funded by the State’s ability to extract funds from the Commoner via taxation. In the case of growing potential State collapse, certain parameters must be set: Inter-Elite competition (in junction with overproduction), inability for the State to extract from the populace (equaling the inability to protect the elite), and in addition using the model of the Political Stress Indicator, the mobilization potential of both Commoner and Elite in “sacrificial lamb” events that spark insurrections. In the most brutal conclusion, a complete inability for the State to extract from the Commoners would put the Elite on the same field of vulnerability to random acts of violence. When then added with the decline of cooperation between the Elites and harsh competition between factions amongst them, then there is no ability for a State to then formulate as it had previously existed, the field has changed from the competition of politically orientated friend vs other into a war against all. The collapse that unfolds gives rise to non-state actors, which then gives rise to 4th generational warfare.
Through this model of cliodynamics we can see the stage set:
· Global pandemic causes an economic standstill with wages of the commoner have been suppressed by the massive waves of unemployment.
· The conflict between party elites over the lifting of these shutdowns.
· A single sacrificial lamb event that causes the mobilization of a maddened population which in turn either destroys blatantly or indirectly the ability of the police to enforce the rule of law. (meanwhile, local elites facilitate the destruction.)
Clearly, we find ourselves in that moment of an existential crisis of the state. The president as the supposed sovereign has relegated himself to continue playing the game of politics, like the rest of the GOP it seems, and he has held himself back from being the decider against the growing opportunity of collapse. With that, the answer to the inaction can be posited now as a dilemma.
The dilemma is a crisis of identity within the system: Without the sovereign’s decision there is no reinforcement of both himself and the norm, and without that norm there, in theory, cannot be a state. The president has refused to choose, relying on rhetoric, half measures that follow within the bounds of constitutional restraints, and party politics. The implications may lead to several different destructive endings but all of them stem from the same root problem, the inability to identify a sovereign. The inaction leads to the dilemma, and now the dilemma must be solved by drastic means.
All that there is left is pure speculation. Perhaps another moment could rise up for the sovereign to finally choose yet again, but will the power of a sovereign who’s reigned in his own power previously be enough to quell the ever-growing instability? Maybe the power of the sovereign is now gone from a centralized figure. It seems the power that the sovereign once weld can now be chosen on a regional scale, that power decentralizing down to the state and to elites, eventually leading down at the local. In absence of the norm, it seems up to community bodies to decide upon the exception themselves, to either restore that norm or create a new body of norms.
credit to photo: (Julio Cortez/AP Photo)
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