Gazdasági Ismeretek | Tanulmányok, esszék » Flies in the Ointment, Understanding Economics and Political Economy, Power, Authority and Regulation in Production and Reproduction

Chapter 2: Flies in the Ointment Understanding Economics and Political Economy--Power, Authority and Regulation in Production and Reproduction. Introduction Almost everyone has read Lord of the Flies. William Golding’s well-known 1953 fable of a group of English public schoolboys stranded on an island in the South Pacific during a global nuclear war is required reading for most American high school students, many of who do not seem very enamored with either the book or its “lessons.” The standard interpretation offered by English teachers has something to do with the absence of authority, the evil in men’s souls, and the descent into bloodshed and war when adults are not present. Perhaps some instructors acknowledge the irony of the boys’ “rescue” by the Royal Navy who, just recently, was engaged in a similar “warre of all against all,” only with atomic bombs instead of fire. For the most part, however, this is where the story ends. Except that it doesn’t. That

Golding applied Thomas Hobbes’s notion of the “state of nature” to his South Pacific gedankenexperiment is hardly a surprise; that there is more to Lord of the Flies than Leviathan is. For, what Golding did, intentionally or not, is to interrogate the foundations of English society and, especially, its political economy. No one would call Golding a political theorist, yet there is a great deal of social theory to be found in the novel. No one would call Thomas Hobbes a political economist, yet Leviathan ought to be seen as a work of and about political economy. In both cases, we can glean a considerable amount of insight into the basics of both neoclassical economics and critical political economy from the two. 2-1 In this chapter, I establish a conversation of sorts between Lord of the Flies and Leviathan as a means of interrogating neoclassical economics and critical political economy. I use Golding’s story of the “origins of society” to illustrate how, on the one

hand, fairly straightforward notions of supply and demand can be found even under relatively primitive conditions, those posited by Hobbes prior to society and state. At the same time, however, I also use the same stories to show how political economy, in the form of production and reproduction, are already present even before a notional society is established. Indeed, that both Hobbes and Golding were commenting on English society only reinforces this often-ignored point. To complicate matters, I also draw on a third work in this chapter, a non-fiction book published in 1954, only a year after Golding’s, that addresses some of the very same issues and concerns. Kenneth N Waltz’s Man, the State and War, a 20th century classic of international relations, is rarely examined as either a work of economics or political economy. Waltz’s primary concern is to explain why wars happen but, in doing so, he falls into some of the foundational fallacies that economists, in particular, hold

about society. This foreshadowing of what later emerged full-blown as “neorealism,” in his Theory of International Politics (1979) deals with the formation, or lack thereof, of “international society” and, although Waltz tends to abjure Hobbes’s “state of nature,” he is impressed by the extreme individualism of the state under conditions of international “anarchy.” Synopsis 2-2 Lord of the Flies takes place on a small deserted island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. In a recapitulation of the evacuation of British children from London during World War Two, a planeload of public schools boysthat is, private schools in the English rubricis attacked and crashes. Some number of boys survivewe know that some do not, but never how manyand we first glimpse them when two encounter each other near the edge of the jungle. One of themRalph emerges onto the beach and immediately strips off his clothingthe only sign of “civilization”and plunges into the water. The

otherwhose real name we never learn but who wants dearly not to be called “Piggy”carefully takes off his shoes and wades in the water, warning that he can’t swim and that his auntie worries about his “asthmar.” This is truly Hobbes’s state of nature: the boys “spring like mushrooms” from the forest, shed the trappings of society, and are reborn from the ocean into a new world waiting to be built. Or is it? Hobbes admitted that a true “state of nature” never existedit was purely a thought experimentbut he had to find some way to explain society’s existence. We can deduce from this opening scene that Golding had certainly absorbed the gross features of Hobbes’s reasoning, although we cannot tell what more he might have gained from it. As they are walking along the beach, Ralph and Piggy find a conch shell in the water. Here is the instrument through which society will be created Piggy tells Ralph how to blow into the shellcertainly something asocial beings would

not have known and the summons brings other boys out of the forest onto the beach, where they wait expectantly for something to happen. In what follows, it is Piggy’s counsel that lays the foundation for the new society of boys (men): the conch shell is the skeptron, the symbol of authority. The right to speak in the public sphere rests on momentary possession of 2-3 the skeptron. Piggy takes a census to determine who will participate in the creation of the new social contract. And Ralph, it seems, as finder of the conch and an idealized young man, is to be the new sovereign, albeit the leader of a democratic society with little hierarchy (we can imagine that working-class Piggy plays a role in this). It is at that moment that the worm crawls out of the appleor, perhaps, the snake shows up in Eden. Golding writes: Within the diamond has of the beach something dark was fumbling along. Ralph saw it first, and watched till the intentness of his gaze drew all eyes that way. Then the

creature stepped from mirage onto clear sand, and they saw that the darkness was not all shadow but mostly clothing [p. 19] A column of boys in uniform march up the beach. Unlike the first group, they are already organized into a society; they do not emerge from the jungle individually. And, immediately upon their arrival, Jack Merridew, the “leader” of the groupa chorus from a single schoolasks “Where’s the man with the trumpet?” This is, perhaps, too obvious a metaphor once one has finished the book; at this point, it is simply a query about the source of authority on the island. When Ralph makes clear that he is the “man with the trumpet,” Jack is crestfallen, but sees the opportunity to become the new sovereign in a freely-contested election. In the event, Jack loses to Ralph but is rewarded with leadership of the “hunters,” that is, the chorus that he leads. This division of labor is approved and the story proceeds, in a downward spiral, from there. Later in this

chapter, I will return to the story and argue that Golding has, unwittingly or not, posed the precise problem that Hobbes sought to address in Leviathan: how can men be brought to acknowledge and obey a source of authority that will establish and maintain a social order. Golding tries to being the world anewand fails, by the way, as we shall see. Hobbes, by contrast, looked at the worldor, rather, 2-4 England of the mid-17th centuryand tried to offer a means to re-establish social authority after it had been destroyed, with the regicide of Charles I in 1649. When he wrote his most famous work, Thomas Hobbes was in exile in Paris, having fled the Puritan Commonwealth headed by Oliver Cromwell in 1640 fear of his safety. In 1649, there was no lack of authority in England, but from the perspective of High Anglican Church clerics such as Hobbes, it was the wrong kind of authority. And it did not originate from a legitimate source which, until then, had been God. Throughout major parts

of the 16th century, England had been a country in which traditional sources of authority were under challenge and contestation. In breaking from the Catholic Church, Henry VIII had no intention of destroying the sovereign’s Divine Rights but, the near-simultaneous rise of Protestantism, capitalism and science all brought into question rights to rule, to own property and men, and to participate in political society. In particular, the old rules that regulated social relations across English society were breaking down, and the new form was not yet in place. In the turmoil of the English Civil War, from 1642 to 1651, various groups, sects and movements, including lower class ones, all tried to assert their “natural rights,” in contravention of custom. Hobbes was, we might say, a practical man. He did not see the need to legitimate the sovereign through the approval of God; it was enough that the propertied men in society agreed who was to be sovereign or, as he put it, “the

mortall god.” For making this argument, Hobbes was tried for heresy when he returned to England in 1651. That he was not far from being right became apparent in 1688, when William of Orange was, in essence, invited to replace James II as King of England. 2-5 Although Leviathan is regarded as a landmark in political philosophy, and Hobbes as one of the founders of liberal theory, it is equally useful to seem him as a political economist, for the problem he sought to answersupplying order to meet the demand for itis a quintessential one. The collapse of social order in 17th century England was, in part, a result of the new capitalist political economy of the country. For as long as anyone could remember, English society had been based on a feudal order. This was already changing even in the 15th century, but the rules and beliefs that legitimated that order, deeply encoded in the organization and practices of the Catholic Church, did not. The result was what might be called a

growing “contradiction” between the material base of society and the ideological superstructure: men who lacked the privilege to own large tracts of land were, nonetheless, acquiring them, while landowners were falling into poverty and losing theirs. There were rules to determine who stood where in the social and political hierarchy; there were no rules to deal with unauthorized changes in that order. The English Civil War was, in fact, not only about who would rule, but who would make the rules and what they would be. Without such regulationwithout a legitimate source of ruleseverything seemed to be fair game. No one was safe and no one knew their place. To Hobbes, this must have seemed a “state of nature,” for there was no time to engage in useful and productive activities if one could never be sure of keeping them. Freedom was good for some, but not for everyone Moreover, the problem was not only that one might be killed; it was also that, as Parliament had done, one might

be legally dispossessed. So why even try to maintain practices and appearances? Hobbes saw, moreover, that men would no longer accept the authority of the old system; he set 2-6 out to propose a new source of authority in order to meet the demand for it. Thus, Leviathan. But, in offering his solution, Hobbes found it expedient to assume away many of the features of English society that might complicate the story. To him, all of the trappings of life and society were so much decoration and, so, he could argue that reasonable men could use their powers of reason, whatever their particular position and interests, to restore authority and order. Let us now return to our group of English schoolboys, stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere, constructing their new society after having agreed to a symbol of authority and chosen their new sovereign. Of course, in the standard analysis, Ralph is no Leviathan (he is insufficiently Machiavellian, it would seem). He is too good, too

golden, and too dependent on Piggy. Jack Merridew, by contrast, knows how to command. His group of hunters quickly becomes the “military force” of the society and, in a sudden coup d’etat, Jack becomes the leader of his own, “independent” and autocratic state which, as we shall see, goes to war with Ralph’s democracy. But we are getting ahead of ourselves here, and into Waltz. Before doing that, we have to consider the conditions of economic possibility in this new society. Supply and demand; production and reproduction This new society cannot survive without organizing production, and it cannot produce without a division of labor. There are copious amounts of fruit available on the island and, for the first day or two after the crash, the boys avail themselves of this bounty, some of them suffering for their greediness. Indeed, they could probably survive indefinitely by foraging, with no need to create a social order. Even Ralph, emblematic 2-7 of English class

society, or Jack, member of the warrior class, cannot imagine this or how it might be done. Ironically, it is left to Piggy, working class bursary boy at some nameless and, no doubt, little respected public school to insist on the need for society. From where does he get this idea? And why is Ralph so devoid of imagination? We might guess that Piggy takes politics and society with the utmost seriousness; he has been taught, in school, of its importance, and his place in English society has probably been deeply impressed upon him. The working class works, the ruling class rules but, in postwar Great Britain, everyone gets to vote! And, of course, it is the working class that makes things, while the ruling class lives on profits and investments, and sometimes goes to war, with no idea how to make society run. Piggy recognizes that organization is key, but he has no authority to organize, relying instead on Ralph and the conch shell to get the other boys to produce. If they produce, they

can also “reproduce” and survive Even in the late 1940s and early 1950s, with the Labour Party in power in England, British class society was pretty rigid. It had acquired all the trappings of a “natural” system, much like feudalism in the 1500s, dying but not yet dead. The educational system was, moreover, divided into at least two tracks: vocational and academic. Today, the residue of this dual system remains in the distinction between “O levels” (ordinary or, maybe, occupational) and “A levels” (advanced, in the 12th and 13th grades, leading to college). Unless they were exceptionally bright, working class students were generally tracked into the former; middle and upper class students into the latter. The public school system feeding into the universities did offer scholarships to promising working class students (usually men), but never at the cost of forgetting class distinctions. The public schools tried hard to maintain British patriotism and class order; 2-8

prior to World War One, and to a significant degree between the wars, most upper class boys were fit only for military serviceat least until they could be eased into a proper adult role in society. These schools were thus the training ground for loyalty to “King and Country” and preparation for the officer corps. Unbridled enthusiasm for war led to the unprecedented slaughter of many of England’s upper class young men in the trenches between 1914 and 1918, the first signs of class suicide. In Lord of the Flies, Jack Merridew is a caricature of an upper class toff whose only real advantage is class brutality. That he orders his choristers to march down the beach dressed in their heavy uniforms, and proudly announces that he is “head boy,” only serves to underline his thirst for power and a complete absence of understanding of how to rule boys. Indeed, it is men like Jack who have egged England into war, and it is probably men like Jack who have now exposed England to atomic

annihilationa truth later revealed when he sets fire to the island in order to capture and kill Ralph. For now, however, it is Jack who notes that there are pigs on the island and that he and his band of hunters can provide meat, a welcome addition to the monotony of fruit three or more times a day. So, a bargain is struck, and it is a gendered one, at that For the neoclassical economist, there is nothing mysterious about this outcome. Every man comes to the table with particular skills: some hunt, others cook. It makes no sense for each individual to do everything; not only is that inefficient, it results in a suboptimal supply of goods. Supply fails to meet demand By applying comparative advantage and a division of labor, however, goods can be provided at an adequate level, thereby allowing the members of society to engage in other activities, such as writing, reading and arithmetic, all required for social reproduction. Moreover, those who cannot 2-9 produce usefully, such as

teachers, mothers and leaders, can nonetheless teach and provide and lead for the benefit of those who work. There are, therefore, three things that this new society requires to survive and even thrive: resources, household and rescue. For the first, the little’uns can gather fruit and bring it to the group, while Jack’s hunters will trap pigs and provide meat. For the second, Ralph will oversee construction of shelters, with the help of other, older boys, while Piggy will tell the little’uns stories about the England some of them are already beginning to forget. For the third, Piggy will supply the technologyhis glassesto build a signal fire, while the hunters will be responsible to see that it does not go out. This bargain breaks down rather quickly, but that is another story. What is more important here are two points. First, this new society is closely patterned on English class society, with all of its brutality and sexism. Second, this new society is deeply gendered, and

while Golding leaves sex entirely out of the booksomething we know was never characteristic of English public schoolsit seems fair to say that the hunters thoroughly fuck over the rest of the group. Ralph, as I have noted above, is depicted by Golding as a boy of considerable beauty (Jack, by contrast, is darkwe know what that is about). We can imagine him standing on a high peak, looking into the distance, one of the fair-haired boys who evokes homoerotic desires in others. It would not be too much to observe that the sadomasochism exhibited by Jack’s hunters, and especially Maurice, represent a non-toorepressed desire for Ralph. Piggy, of course, is thoroughly feminized He cannot see without his “specs.” His health is poor, he is fat and non-athletic, and he has no father Moreover, he is charged with oversight of the little’uns, the small children. His 2-10 intellectualism is regarded with disdain, as the mark of a weakling. Golding seems to make gendered violence almost

inevitablethe “masculine” hunters against the nonmasculine housekeepers. All of this is to suggest that it is not the absence of authority that is at the heart of Lord of the Flies. Rather, it is the presence of social order that generates violence In contrast to Hobbes’s men in the state of nature, Golding’s boys do have a history. They have been socialized into English class society, in which the division of labor runs in two directions: between men and women, on the one hand, and the upper and lower classes, on the other. In the latter case, the upper class loses no opportunity to brutalize its inferiors; in the former case, the men always have it over the women. On their seemingly-Edenic island, the boys create Hell not because there is no one to keep them from doing so but because this is what they have been taught by their elders. What all of this suggests is that the modest terms of neoclassical economics markets, supply, demand, division of labor, etc.mask

deeply-rooted, structural forms of social violence, into which each new generation of children is socialized. We are not born good or evil, even though our individual neuro-psychology may, under certain circumstances, push us in one direction or another. We learn from our parents and peers, preachers and teachers, from media and rituals and language, whom to love, who to hate, and how to act on those emotions. Most of the time, propensities to actual violence are repressed by rules, by law, by conventions of civil behavior, while social violence is structured into the everyday relations of our political economies. The apparently-neutral language of “division of labor” masks power relations that only emerge at those times when we are not compelled to behave. And, then, it means war! 2-11 Boys, the State and War We can be fairly certain that William Golding never heard of Kenneth Waltz. It is a sure bet that Golding never read Man, the State and War, which remains Waltz’s best

book and, quite possibly, one of the few 20th century books on international relations that might still be read 100 years from now. In the 50-odd years since it was published, Man, the State and War has been assigned to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of college students, who might not have always understood it but surely have not forgotten it. Whether this qualifies Waltz’s book as a work of “popular culture” is debatable; that its themes are reflected in popular culture is undeniable. Waltz, writing his dissertation in the late 1940s and revising it for publication in the early 1950s, was clearly concerned about the possibility of atomic warjust as was Golding. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 had convinced many that World War Three was just around the corner and, while those in positions of power and authority were quick to assure an anxious public that thermonuclear war would not mean the end of humanity, no one was entirely certain what it would mean. Waltz, we

might infer from his book, believed that, if he could clarify the sources of war, he could then recommend what might be done to prevent it. In the event, he instead arrived at a rather gloomy conclusion: wars happen because there is nothing to prevent them. This is a result of the abiding condition of anarchyaka, the Hobbesian “state of nature”in which only the state can protect itself from other states. In so doing, war was one possible result Waltz was witheringly dismissive of political philosophers, policymakers and textbook writers who thought the sources of war might be found in human naturethe 2-12 evil in men’s minds leading them to aggression against othersor in the structure and practices of the statethat dictatorships were evil and used war to generate domestic support and obedience. Without a world authoritya parent or super-ego writ large there was nothing to prevent individual states from acting out their natural tendencies. War was, thus, inevitable in the

absence of regulation. The causes of specific wars might be found in the irrational beliefs and practices of certain individuals, and in the tendencies of some forms of government to fall back on organized violence, but those explanations were best left to historians, who had the time to pursue what was now, in any case, history. And history, as Henry Ford once said, is bunk. Although Man, the State and War is rich with historical examples and figures, Waltz seems to regard history as bunk, too. His states exist in an eternal condition of diffidence and fear, unable (not just unwilling) to select a global Leviathan and always opposed to any efforts to impose such a sovereign on the world. To agree to such a solution to the problem of war would, it seems, turn states into something else and, because states value their sovereignty above all else, they could never agree to such a transformation. This argument sits uncomfortably next to Hobbes’s, who saw no problem in individuals giving

up much of their sovereignty in return for the elimination of war. For Waltz, at any rate, any transformation in states was not only impossible, it was unnatural. Hence, it could not happen In the decades since its publication, Man, the State and War has been the object of countless analyses and critiques and the subject of an equal number of scholarly papers and books based on its structural argument. My goal in this section of the chapter is not, however, to criticize Waltz’s argument but rather, to illustrate its appearance in Lord of 2-13 the Flies and its connection to both neoclassical economics and critical political economy. I will present this in two steps First, I will show how certain of Waltz’s assumptions appear in Lord of the Flies as the common principles of neoclassical economics. Second, I will show how Waltz’s political economy is deeply flawed because he, like Golding and unlike Hobbes, was so disdainful of the importance of history. Rational Man,

Rational Acts? In the free market, the rational consumer is king. Everyone encounters the market with certain desires and a specific quantity of resources that can be used to meet those desires. In the language of economics, an individual’s desires are called “preferences.” I would like to acquire more butter than guns; you would prefer more guns than butter. I can go to a butter fair; you can go to a gun fair. Once we see the cost of our desires, we can calculate how much we want to satiate them and decide whether or not to buy the necessary goods. This act of “rationality” is expressed purely in monetary terms: it makes no sense for me to offer, say, undying loyalty to a seller of either guns or butter, for what is that person to do with such a commitment? And to use a gun to steal butter is not a rational act, either, at least not in terms of the market. It is simply theft, which hearkens back to the state of nature. Although economists continually seek to bring more and

more aspects of human behavior into the ambit of market relations, it is fairly easy to see that not everything we do falls under the rule of the market. More importantly, perhaps, such economic models of behavior are very difficult to apply to groups of people. Even when we join a group be it a church, a political party, a social movement or a mobour individual desires and 2-14 goals are likely to be quite different. To be sure, every member of the group probably shares at least one desire or goalto pray, to vote, to demonstrate, to riotbut that does not mean that everyone will act in precisely the same way, even under identical circumstances. We cannot speak of the desires or preferences of a group as though they were individuals and, so, it is necessary to make a gross simplification if we want to apply rationality to the group: we must pretend the group is a single (or corporate) individual. This is precisely what Waltz does in Man, the State and War, which foreshadows his

later work in which this assumption become hardened to the point of crystallization. The state makes choices and acts as though it were a rational individual; its desires sometimes called the “national interest”apply to the entire body politic, and a failure to pursue these interests in a rational fashion is both illogical and dangerous. Because the state exists in a pre-social condition, however, it must behave like an individual in Hobbes’s state of nature. Economists assume that rules and rule protect the individual against depredatory violence by others; Waltz assumes no such thing. His is a world in which states “wake up” every morning to face the exact same world as the day before, one in which nothing can be assumed and past experience is worth nothing. In Waltz’s economy of violence, therefore, the state must stockpile sufficient resources so that, should an opportunity for “exchange” present itself, it can outbid the other and, it is hoped, acquire prestige

rather than humiliation. The shorthand for this type of exchange is “power,” which can be accumulated, like money, and used in bargaining with others. We can see, just barely, this type of reasoning in Lord of the Flies. Once Jack has been appointed to lead the hunters, he has already acquired the resources that will give 2-15 him leverage in negotiations with Ralph: violence. Technically speaking, this violence is the monopoly of the one “state” on the island, the boy’s democracy. It is to be used in hunting for meat which, in the internal division of labor, can be exchanged for fruit, shelter, fire, and socialization. But Jack is not happy with this arrangement: he desires glory and, as subordinate to Ralph, is denied it in full. And, bound as he and his hunters are to the household and state, they cannot pursue their desires in full. The answer is secession. Jack takes his hunters and forms an independent, second state, which he rules according to his fantasies and

writ, and whose members do his bidding. Now, however, the pattern of rational exchange within society has been broken. Jack’s state can offer meat, but Ralph’s state has little or nothing that he wantsexcept, of course, Piggy’s glasses. Jack’s state also has a supply of violence, which Ralph’s lacks Like the Mafiosi he is, Jack offers Ralph’s boys “protection” if they agree to join and be loyal to himbut not everyone is willing to accept the exchange, particularly Ralph and Piggy, who hew to the old ideals. Unable to buy what he desires, Jack falls back on theft, stealing fire and leaving Ralph’s state bereft of its last bargaining chip. At this point, it is only the idea of Ralph’s state that remains, which Jack seeks to wipe out by declaring war. According to Waltz, in a “world” of two states without a sovereign (adult), there is nothing to prevent war between them. When power and prestige are at stake, it is humiliating to truck and barter. The economy of

violence, moreover, requires that exchange take not the form of goods and money but, rather, injury and surrender. To be sure, the victor may realize material gainsland, weapons, peoplebut these are secondary to status. Jack’s state has little or nothing to gain through destruction of 2-16 Ralph’s, but the outcome is domination and glory. This is a theme oft-repeated in both popular culture and a pattern repeated in international politics: glory is its own reward. History Matters After the Franco-Prussian War, Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine; after World War One, France reclaimed Alsace-Lorraine; in World War Two, Germany reoccupied Alsace-Lorraine; following World War Two, the territory was returned to France. It is not as if anyone consulted the preferences of the areas inhabitants, who were, in any case, somewhere between being French and German. Nor, can it be said, were either France or Germany substantially better or worse off for the possession or dispossession of

AlsaceLorraine. Why, then, were France and Germany so intent on owning it? * That France and Germany might have fought so many wars for two provinces of relatively little material significance in the great scheme of thingsapologies to any Alsatians or Lorrainers(?) who might be reading thiscan hardly be attributed only to anarchy, proximity and threat. There was nothing to prevent France and Germany from going to war, but the memory of lands gained and lost were, no doubt, powerful motivators for those wars to which they went. More to the point, possession was important in terms of whose regulatory regime would govern the contested territory and what that might mean for social production and reproduction. When Germany ruled, the people were taught one set of “truths” about themselves and others; when France ruled, the people were taught another. Although the specific divisions of labor operative in Alsace-Lorraine might not have changed greatly from one regime to the next,

regulation and socialization In fact, the longer-term history of the region shows that it was transferred back and forth between Germanic and French states a number of times prior to 1871. * 2-17 almost certainly did. Inasmuch as these were the basis for the legitimacy of the occupying powerpardon me, return to the mother/father landthe repeated rewriting of rules and rule made a difference. History matters. It matters not only because of individual and collective memory and the desire for revenge and remuneration; it also matters because it is in the course of everyday “history” that societies produce and reproduce themselves and in which socialization into collective beliefs and practices occurs. This is a form of “regulation” or, in a Foucauldian sense, social discipline. In Waltz’s world, no such thing matters, if it even exists. A state has interests, these are threatened by other states, and what might have happened yesterday, or last week, or even last century

says nothing about what could happen tomorrow. The Romans warned “Si vis pacem, para bellum”; for the moderns, there is no peace, and one would be a greater fool to imagine it possible. Lord of the Flies appears to subscribe to the modernist tenet: The Beast dreamt of by a little’un, seen by the older boys, and materialized by Jack’s minions is not merely representative of the darkest corners of the id, as a psychological reading might suggest. The Beast is the super-ego, the authority that appears, at first look, to be absent from the island. Indeed, it is against The Beast that all England struggles, not only during war but all the time. Ironically, and paradoxically, The Beast is both order and disorder It threatens to emerge as violence within society; it brutalizes society in order to stanch violence. Fear becomes the means of control, and would control be necessary were there nothing to fear? This is an old story, one with which we are today only too familiar. Back in

Great Britain, it is this fear of The Beast that is foundational to the violence of class society. Leviathanthe sovereignhas been defanged and denatured 2-18 by constitutionalism. S/he no longer holds absolute power over her/his subjects, and cannot induce order through subjects’ fears of sovereign violence. The constitutional state holds the power of life and death, but this is a rationalized and bureaucratic power of which few are really fearful. Thus, to induce fear, one must be imagined: The Beast Indeed, the Beast is ontological: without fear there can be no order, without order there can be no state and, without the state, life is “nasty, brutish and short.” Or, so it is widely believed. The Beast is a figment of the collective imagination and, in this respect, it is not amenable to a neoclassical model. Fear of The Beast is irrational, evoked by collective emotions and hysteria. * If fear of The Beast is not to disappear, it must be constantly renewed, it must be

structured into everyday social relations, it must become the very foundation on which state and society operate. † The members of society must act as though The Beast is real, impose on others the reality of The Beast, and suppress all challenges to the claim that The Beast really exists. And, when The Beast inside seems to lose some of its teeth, for whatever reason, there remains The Beast outside which allows those in power to proclaim “There is no alternative!” In Lord of the Flies, it is Ralph’s state that invokes the (re)creation of The Beast. At home, British class society and its rigidities ensure that upper and middle class fears of the lower classeswitnessed during the English Civil War of the 17th centurywould not upset the regulation of society that mandated its social relations and divisions of labor. Every so often, the ruling class found it expedient to offer a few bones to the lower classes, but never so much as to disorder society as a whole. On the boy’s

island, To be sure, the market is often driven by fear of loss, which may also be irrational, but that is a calculated irrationality (if such a thing can be said to exist). † See “The Two Minutes Hate” episode in George Orwell’s 1984 for an illustration of this point. * 2-19 however, the democratic society under the skeptron promises freedom from The Beast as well as a mass disruption of class society, in which orderly regulation could collapse. “The world turned upside down,” as it was said of 17th century England. Jack, then, becomes the agent of restoration of this order although, in doing so, he also destroys the island and any hope of maintaining the old order (Golding provides a convenient dues ex machine in the arrival of the Royal Navy, who save the boys from themselves and their own Beast; such rescue would not be available to an England annihilated by atomic weapons). It is not enough, however, to control the instruments of violence, as Jack discovers; he

must also control minds and thoughts. He and his associated have been taught well in England’s public schools: terror is the best means of exercising control over those who might dream of other ways of life. Drawing on education, socialization, and his naturalized beliefs, he recapitulates English history on the island, destroying the Diggers and Levellers who, in their time, dreamt that things could be otherwise. And where is Waltz in all of this? The Beast is present in his world, although there is little indication that, when he wrote Man, the State and War, he recognized this. Realism bids us imagine the worst of all worlds and to act as though it were real. Such “worst case analysis” is a projection of our imaginations, it is The Beast against which we are to prepare. Failure to do so could expose us to our worst fears and, so, we prepare for that in order to avoid it. Wars happen, says Waltz, but prudence might prevent them Nuclear weapons are unfortunate but, as he writes

in his later works, our fear of them instills in us a healthy prudence, one that might yet avoid the vengeance of The Beast. Or not. 2-20 It’s not yet over, is it? Ever since the end of the Cold War, we have been engaged in imagining new Beasts. Having lost one with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we tried to imagine, with all our might and creativity, the next one. The attacks of September 11, 2001 on New York and Washington, DC gave impetus to collective fear and imagination, and a flood of film and fiction have served to give form to The New Beast. Space precludes mention of these works, but The New Beast it is not really new at all; it is the old one in a different guise. The Terrorist threatens, we imagine, a disordering of states and societies that must be avoided at all costs. Today, we trade in fear and loyalty, and rejection of the deal is almost impossible. “If you are not with us, you are with the terrorists,” warned President George W. Bush in Congress on

September 20, 2001 Once again, we might try to destroy the world in order to save it. Jack Merridew lives! 2-21