Jadwiga Staniszkis

 

 

FOREWORD

 

 

 

The Rise and Demise of the Metaphysics of the State

 

 

Globalization has entailed not so much the twilight of the state as such, as the twilight of a specific metaphysics of the state. For indeed, although states will continue to exist as administrative centers of public management, they can no longer be treated as the basic subject (and realm) of power relations. This degradation of the role of states (in terms of their etiological power) is accompanied by a range of manifestations that - when taken together - permit us to speak of a deontologization of power. For globalization has increased the power of depersonalized logic and has not given rise to clear-cut centers and hierarchies. A ready example of this is to be seen in the phenomenon of "structural violence". This concerns the case where one structure - by virtue of its very presence - not only becomes a catalyst eliciting the transformation of a second structure, but, moreover, proves able to force a sequence of undertakings and solutions that obstruct the second structure's development. This notably describes the experience of the postcommunist countries in their bid to join the international division of labor.

Globalization demands a departure from analysis within the category of actors in favor of analysis focusing on the relations between complex structures. More importantly, globalization lifts the phenomenon of power out from the hierarchic realm. Indeed, what is currently becoming ever more crucial is not power over persons, but the power of the system over itself in conjunction with the capability of horizontal meta-regulation - which is to say, the regulation of regulations and the harmonization of divergent logics and standards of rationality. In this regard, the fundamental challenge for the postcommunist countries that are now carving out their places in the European Union is the optimization of their positioning within the multi-network structure of relations. What is at issue is that, despite their loss of sovereignty in the traditional sense (meaning the autonomy of decision-making in specific areas), they seize upon the opportunities created by European integration to increase their problem-solving ability in those self-same areas. In other words, that they strengthen their real control over themselves and their destiny in spite of (or perhaps, due to) the limitation of sovereignty. Again, their context of reference is that of the endeavor to optimize their positioning within the polyreticular space of relations in such a way that the real control they gain over their own fates exceeds the loss of their formal sovereignty. This fundamentally changes the concept of "self-referentiality"[1], in that it shifts emphasis from the safeguarding of one's own identity statically conceived to the safeguarding of one's positioning within a dynamic and multiple network of relations.

Ironically, globalization corrodes "modern" states (i.e., those which had once articulated the metaphysics of the state) more rapidly than "premodern" states. This paradox, along with the divergent manner in which individual cultures conceptualize the phenomenon of power, explains the present divergence of their chances for meeting the challenges of globalization. The chances for effective adaptation to today's global challenges are greatest in East Asia and the US, where states did not succumb to the myth of rationalization (with its hope of creating a perfectly uniform realm of law and of reducing the tension between formal rationality and substantial rationality), and where each level of power heeds a differing principle of regulation. Indeed, in our era of globalization relations between the various levels cannot be subsumed within a "modern" hierarchy of the ideal type of bureaucracy postulated by Weber. This is because power more closely resembles authority in a "communicating community"[2] than it does Hobbes' political sovereign. This fact prompts comparison with the Asian concept of power, which is conceived as a catalyst in bringing about systemic change, a catalyst at most endowed with the capability of "penetrating", of drawing the attention of other actors, though without the possibility of homogenizing the parameters that define the latter's decisions. This approach better conforms to the essence of globalized, network economies and societies than does the now moribund metaphysics of the state created in Western Europe, with its uniform legal space and integration pursued through political discourse.

The attempt to present a brief synthesis of the factors responsible for the differing ways the phenomenon of power is conceived in various cultural settings is fraught with peril[3]. Particularly when, as in my own case, one shares the view of Nabokov, i.e., that only the concrete fact, the detail placed aside for examination and not woven into the collectively experienced narrative (and thus, not compounded with a superabundance of meanings), is able to impart a sudden flash of understanding and to reveal to us the continuity in change. But with that caveat, let us go ahead and try.

I shall focus on just one difference, a difference that strikes me as fundamental from the perspective of the issues of power here in question, namely, that of the divergent relationships in various cultures between the realm of ideas and the realm of being.

In Western civilization (in its European variant) what is key to understanding the genesis of the metaphysics of the state (and the fact that it arose only in that civilization) is the intellectual experience of 14^th-century nominalism, which supplanted the previously reigning realism. The nominalist statement that inference merely describes concepts and not entities (that is, its positing of a radical separation of the realm of ideas from the realm of things) led to a relativization of "philosophical truth" in that it stipulated that "the truth" is to be referred to starting-point premises, and not to reality. This entailed a multiplicity of "truths" and destroyed the ubiquitous sense of certainty. At the root of the nominalist revolution lay intellectual challenges connected with the re-discovery of ancient Greek philosophy, especially that of logic and Aristotelian philosophy[4]. This rent the harmony hitherto enjoyed between philosophy and theology, for it became no longer possible to treat them as an internally coherent system. Therefore, in order to preserve faith, philosophical questions were pushed aside to the realm of culture and refused answer as to their status in terms of "absolute truth". In this manner the foundations for conceiving the world were undermined, at the same time as - by way of exchange - the rudiments of the metaphysics of the state were created in a way that provided a venue where new sources of certainty could be sought. Thus it is no coincidence that the great 14^th-century proponent of nominalism William of Ockham[5], who attacked the realism of Duns Scotus and St. Thomas Aquinas, in so doing became the creator (alongside Marsilius of Padua[6]) of a new concept of the state, one that exceeded the premises of the "two swords" concept propounded by Aquinas. For according to Ockham, political power came from God through the people, and the legality of imperium was based on free-will acceptance as affirmed by subjects. The task of power, therefore, was to merit trust. Ockham's arguments on the absolute freedom of God (and thus, the absence of a design that restricted Him prior to the act of creation) and, relatedly, the arbitrary quality of created entities, led the philosopher to search for sure footing in constructions created by humans themselves.

Indeed, Ockham treated the state as a venue in the search for absolute truth in a world arisen from chance, that is, as a field where - through the perfecting of concepts, institutions, and law - success could be achieved in resolving the nominalist paradox that in the sphere of theology and philosophy seemed irresolvable. His theory of supposition (suppositio) was intended to maximally draw near the realm of ideas and symbols to the realm of being, though the centrally important axiom of the nominalists remained upheld that these two realms can never fully meet. This challenge, essentially tragic in that it was fated to less than full triumph, along with the fact that Ockham for a variety of reasons treated both the realm of being and the realm of ideas as equivocal and arbitrary, became the first paradigmatic presentiment of the essence of the modern state. After all, the state having a modern bureaucracy and ruled by law is, in the European context, none other than the "supposition" of reality with formal representation and its subsequent execution.

The realization of the vision of "supposition" was to form a vector of the ceaseless rationalization of the state and its concomitant legitimization. Hope for the realization of values (substantial rationality) in the realm of being through the active manipulation of form (formal rationality) on a state-scale has come to an end together with today's intensification of globalization. The metaphysics of the state has hereby succumbed to disintegration through its flawed grasp of globalization first and foremost as an intellectual challenge compelling strenuous effort and cooperation - for such is a task that cannot be fulfilled.

Ockham treated metaphysics as a science of being that replaces real being. Hence my emphasis in labeling his views on the state as "metaphysics". For he conceived the state above all as an intellectual challenge, not only as a plexus of power. Ockham's pursuit to define as absolutely necessary the possible relation (and thus, the irreducible gap) between real being and the being of ideas was, in his mind, to be realized through the encounter of two logics: the logic of terms (today we might say 'multivalue logic') describing an ambivalent world of ideas and symbols, and the dual-value logic describing real being. His vision of the state as a task and an intellectual challenge, as a venue of the quest for certainty in an arbitrary and uncertain world, became the starting point for later, Enlightenment concepts of rationalization and represented the final break from Neoplatonism.

Thus, at variance with those who pair "modernity" with the Enlightenment, I view Ockham's 14^th-century metaphysics of the state as the real beginning of modernity. For his vision of the state as an intellectual challenge required not only the autonomy of the state (something made possible by absolutism and crowned by the Peace of Westphalia), but first and foremost it required the precise articulation of the distinction between formal and substantial rationality. This is because the rationalizing of the state was to lead to a maximal substitution of the realm of being with its symbolic, formal image. Such a distinguishing was later to give rise to the concepts of the rule of law and procedural democracy.

The consummation of Ockham's model came in the 17^th-century liberalism fathered by John Locke. For the Lockean concept of the rational being enabled a resolution of the paradox contained in Ockham's metaphysics of the state. Let us recall that his metaphysics endeavored to define the necessary relationship between realms that were not only arbitrary, but - as was known - could not fully be reduced to their mutuality. It was this definition of the minimal, necessary gap between the realm of being and the realm of ideas - that is, between substantial and formal rationality - that was to be the only source of certainty. Lockean liberalism (not as it emerges from his Two Treaties of Government, but from his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding) rested upon the concept of the thinking being who was capable of creating an image of reality in his mind and of making logically proper deductions as per the outcomes of affirmed facts. This grasp emphasized the similarity of the cognitive structures of all people and made of that similarity a justification for the postulate of freedom. For Locke showed that the relatedness of mechanisms of perception and similar, formal standards of rationality suffice as a basis for cooperation. Moreover, he argued that the fact that people think in a rational way and are able to logically predict the outcomes of their actions ensures that they will not abuse their freedom. Locke treated this freedom above all as a realm for exploration where - through subsequent decisions - the individual encounters the space between necessity and autonomy, perfects his capabilities of rational prediction, comes to know himself, and discovers his community with others as equally rational beings. What is striking here is the resemblance with Plato's concept of politics (contained in The Republic) as not so much a realm for the emergence of rulers (for this was decided by access to knowledge and a contemplative striving for the Ideas), as a catalyst for the perfection of individuals. This is quite similar to Locke, according to whom an understanding of the formal principles for the functioning of the free and competitive market (as a realm of meta-transactions based on - as we would say today - the exchange of ownership rights) compels rationally thinking beings to perceive an inevitable inequality: in other words, to perceive effects in the material realm and in its relation to values, once having comprehended the essence of the formal rules of the game. In this way, in Locke's view, the thinking, rational being is able to integrate within himself two otherwise ever dichotomous levels: those of formal rationality and of substantial rationality. And this is coterminous with solving the task (and paradox) contained in Ockham's metaphysics of the state. For in Locke's grasp freedom is the condition for the development and reproduction of the individual capabilities of rational, logical thinking. Moreover, those capabilities are a guarantee that freedom will not be abused. This represents the central argument in favor of liberalism and against absolutism.

This 17^th-century, liberal completion of the 14^th-century metaphysics of the state formed the basis of "modernity". Today globalization is corroding both elements of that construction in that globalization has not merely constricted the autonomy of the state (as an entity once possessing a monopoly within its own territory on rationalization in the areas of concepts, law, and institutions in the aim of realizing the ideal of suppositio), but it has also irrevocably deformed the liberal, free-competition character of the market. The phenomenon described in this book of "structural violence", with the asymmetry of rationality as the vector of said violence, provides a telling illustration of this deformation. For it blocks individual, active subjects from making rational deductions on the existential consequences of familiarity with the formal rules of the game. This is because said rules are most often totally unknown, the systemicity of relations has begun to vanish, and the whole has started to slide into a chaos whose parameters are shaped not so much by rationality, as by irrationality (e.g., mimetic crises, about which I shall have much to say later on).

The limitation of the role of states and their reduction to being one of many regulating structures (which goes hand in hand with the twilight of Ockham's metaphysics of the state) is entwined with the radical transformation of the market. It may well be stated that the invisible hand of globalization has eliminated the invisible hand of the free market. What this signifies, however, is the collapse of the situation wherein - according to Locke (and also Hayek) - the rational being functioned and reproduced his rationality through the market game and wherein freedom was both the guarantor of harmony and the main resource of active persons. Thus we see a disappearance of the vision of the state as an intellectual task (and not merely a structure for governing), a task which - let us hasten to add - compelled cooperation and engendered societies. The rational being was - according to liberalism - the keystone of that construction and the solution to its internal paradox. The collapse of the metaphysics of the state and of the free market that has accompanied globalization therefore entails both a deterioration of societies and a crisis in the rational experiencing of the individual's own existence, an experiencing based on an understanding of the essence of one's own freedom and the logical implications of one's own endeavors.

Turning back to Ockham's more immediate impact, the emergence of the metaphysics of the state contributed to the progressive crisis of late medieval structures of control, based as they were on the societal mechanisms of feudal patrimonialism[7]. On a regional and local scale they worked to stabilize the continental empire's then loose structure that substituted for a state. That period's esthetic trends, in turn, lent strength to the insistence on separating form and content[8]. The dual typology (of background and of figures) of late-Gothic paintings, with their tell-tale devaluation of the importance of individual differences (as symbolic meaning was ascribed not to individual elements, but to the whole structure in a way that tied the two typologies together), entailed in this regard an intellectual experience of fundamental significance. For this new sensibility enabled the late medievals to discern the collision of two principles in the state; the formal and the substantial. Thus, the rationalization of statecraft was measured in terms of the capability to reduce the degree of antinomy - something otherwise accepted as inherent. In this way the tensions that late-medieval Europe could not successfully grapple with in the intellectual realm were transferred to the level of the state, in other words, to the structures of power. The then rediscovered formal rationality of Aristotelian logic (within which "truth" and "falsehood" were distinguished on the basis of the quality of procedures for reasoning) demolished the system based on the Judeo-Christian, essentialist, substantial rationality of "good" and "evil". Intellectual attempts to reduce this tension by shifting to a logic positing a triad of values, by elaborating an interpretation of the Absolute as an indeterminate whole within which contradictions disappear[9], or - finally - by concentrating on relations as the proper reality, (and thus, introducing elements that within the logic of Buddhism or Taoism proved able to meet similar intellectual challenges), quickly underwent marginalization in European thought.

Begun in the 14^th century, the metaphysics of the state (from which not only good governance was expected, but also the evolution of a structure that would resolve, within its sphere, the intellectual dilemmas of the epoch) survived the brief period of neo-realism. The Renaissance fascination with the autonomy of power swiftly led to a focusing on techniques of manipulation[10]. Soon, however, the main problem reasserted itself - that of the collision of substantial and formal rationality. The rationalization of procedures, which most addressed a mitigation of antinomy, was thus treated as the basic vector for transforming the state and - to an ever greater degree - as a source of its legitimacy. This was seen first in the version of Enlightened Absolutism, later in the Enlightened hope for the state as an embodiment of reason (both in the French political variant, and the German legalistic variant), and, finally, in the Weberian, ideal type of bureaucracy based on a dictatorship of form.

The myth of rationalization as a vector for perfecting the state introduced two tendencies within the state's dynamics, tendencies in some measure at variance with one another. On the one hand this involved the gradual emergence of politics (and political discourse) in result of both the struggle against absolutism and the attendant, progressive political emancipation of estates. On the other hand, this was a process of perfecting modern administration in which properly selected procedures and law were to compel, in and of themselves, the realization of values. Moreover, such laws and procedures were thus to reduce the antinomy between formal and substantial rationality. This vision of the fiat of form represented the apogee of the metaphysics of the state.

 In order to bring the uniqueness of Western European developments into greater relief, I shall now - by way of counterpoint - provide a brief and, hence,  simplified characterization of two other thought-systems, to wit, that of Orthodox culture and that of East Asian civilization.

Concerning Orthodox culture, what must be grasped is that no division of the realm of being from the realm of ideas transpired here in a manner resembling that of Western Europe's passage from realism to nominalism. For Orthodoxy accepted Greece's Platonism - not, as in Western Europe, Aristotelianism. Nor did Orthodoxy sever the plexus of "good" and "evil" as reciprocally generating opposites, as happened in Western Europe as early as the 11^th century through the aegis of St. Augustine. Such the case, the paradigmatic basis of Orthodox culture became that of the inviolable nexus between ideas and being. In accordance with that vision, pairs of contradictory particulars remained in conflict at the same time as they formed a complementary whole, their very antagonism being the matrix of their own reproduction. The vector of that civilization's development was drawn by the quest for the "supreme idea", something capable of expressing (and thus, of eliminating) the otherwise intrinsic antinomy. This also concerned the formula for the system of rule and hence explains why cultural revolution in Russian history always preceded political revolution, something that represents an utterly different dynamic than that of the process of rationalization which dominated the transformation of power structures in Western Europe, although in both instances what was at issue was a reduction of the antinomy embedded in their culturally conditioned premises regarding the existence of the world of ideas and the world of things. But whereas in Western Europe this was an antinomy engendered by the collision of two types of rationality (ones that, ipso facto, competed in the sphere of thoughts), in Orthodox culture there was a two-tiered construction in which the antinomy of particulars was reduced through the movement of ideas, that is, through proper naming. Hence Orthodox culture's deeply rooted predilection for "dialectic rationality", whose ideal - as I shall show in chapter two - was that of marshaling reality around a properly chosen concept. For Orthodoxy, shaped under the influence of Neoplatonism, distinguishes two truths: empirical and essential. The latter is established by way of a dual interpretation, one that locates a given fact within a certain whole and ascribes to it a defined referentiality to the "supreme idea". Access to particular knowledge (to ideas, in the Platonic sense) is here treated as both title to and the basis of rule. Communism further radicalized this vision by introducing the concept of the vanguard as both a center of power and - at the same time - its only essential, historical subject. The vanguard herein replaced real society, within which was the proletariat, i.e., the motor of progress that no longer existed (following the liquidation of the conflict between capitalists and workers with the elimination of the former).

The modern utopia of "rationalization" imprinted upon the Platonic paradigm therefore led to an institutionalization of the absurd. Conversely, that same utopia having been introduced into the nominalist paradigm (shaped under the influence of Aristotelianism) give rise to the modern Western-European state, predicated as it is upon the attempt at suppositio, that is, upon the attempt to attain justice via the manipulation of form and the (ultimately barren) quest for the meeting place of substantial and procedural rationality.  

Now let us turn to East Asian civilization, where the realm of ideas and the realm of being (more precisely, the realm of thinking and the realm of becoming) are treated as self-same. In Taoism and Zen Buddhism one becomes a subject in struggling - via a process of double negation - with the structures of reasoning. Here one is an individuum only to the extent that the path chosen to one's own "suchness" is individual[11]. Thus, epistemology is hereby equated with ontology. Interestingly, however, despite such a radical equation of thinking with becoming a subject, East Asian culture holds that what is truly real (i.e., the realm capable of becoming a cause, having etiological power) resides neither in the world of ideas, nor in the world of particulars. Rather, the true actuality is found midway, in the realm of relations between and within the world of ideas and the world of particulars, as well as in the field of the forces generated by those relations. This is accompanied by a specific ontologization of time, with emphasis on proper sequence, on the suitable portion of time necessary to extract all aspects of things, together with the crucial category of space-time. What this describes is a directed, developing space of relations (including relations with oneself) within whose framework the potential of a principle belonging to a given person, institution, or, simply, form is realized. The crucial relation here is that of "correspondence" (or its absence) between intersecting space-times - for example, between the state of advancement of a given person on a path within the framework of that path's space-time and the space-time of the system within which that person functions. According to this approach, the cause of malfunctioning is that of an improper relation - in other words, the lack of correspondence (suitability), not the characteristic features of the person or system. Essential here is also structural causality, as when one structure (usually one that is more mature within the framework of its available space-time) becomes a catalyst vis-a-vis another, simpler and "younger" structure.

An understanding of this phenomenon of structural causality facilitated the Chinese, for instance, in elaborating a strategy toward globalization based both on perceiving the correspondence of institutions and adopting procedures appropriate to their own stage of development, and on ensuring a proper sequence of steps. They also utilized the concept of a structure as a catalyst in transforming another. Membership in the WTO was understood as a disruption of the existing balance (recognized as balance on too low a level) that would force the mobilization of spontaneous self-organization following the elimination of the market's segmentation. This maneuver was taken once they possessed sufficient financial reserves to bear the costs of withdrawal in the event of failure. The Chinese also preserved their local buffering institutions in the form of the significant autonomy of provincial authorities, who at their own discretion regulate their markets' degree of openness. Here we see how difficult it is to fit China's perfecting of its system into a European perspective of rationalization. For what we may more aptly speak of is the perfecting of the system's power over itself through manipulating relations and catalyzing societal and institutional self-organization.

Much evidence of this approach in China is visible in the transformations of the power system, with the characteristic introduction of divergent (even contradictory) solutions at various levels. This is in keeping with the Taoist premise that each rung of power serves different objectives: hence their divergent principles of regulation, institutions, and even philosophies of control. Accompanying this is the expectation that midway between the contradictions, and on the basis of their interpenetration, a suitable system will emerge[12]. At the same time (in this instance in keeping with Confucianism), each level of power is to carry out its tasks within its proper sphere of relations[13]. Thus, checks and balances are set into motion from the same level as the institutions submitted to control: thus, everything takes place horizontally, inter pares, as it were. From a European perspective we might well say "within one estate". For Chinese hierarchical mechanisms of control are very weak, each level of power is its own supervisor. And here the difference from the vision of the "modern" European state is fundamental. For there is no pretense to uniform institutional logic or uniform, abstract  rationality (whether formal or substantial) that would characterize the system as a whole. What we have, rather, is a model of a network system, with government in the role of manipulating relations between reticulations of diverging logics whose uniformization or homogenization is not even bothered. These relations (and the weight ascribed to individual networks) undergo change in pace with development, such that standards have the character of meta-norms (harmony, balance). This system, without politics and hierarchy in the European sense, and without the essentialism that leads to the absolutization of any institution whatsoever, presents itself as the model of power for the future, a future defined by an ever more globalized world of network societies and economies.

Serious analyses of the European Union[14] increasingly often employ the term 'deontologization' to draw attention to the fundamental shift in accents in contemporary Europe. For it is no longer particulars (e.g., states) that best express Europe's existence, but processes and networks of relations that hearken to specific types of policy. The European Union can be understood only in reference to its network, multidimensional character. Individual instances of politics (agriculture, monetary and financial, industrial, social, environmental, foreign, and defense), create reticulations of differing degrees of integration and coordination. Some of them are strictly regulated, others have been left to the disposition of member countries. Within the framework of each of these types of policy-areas the position of any given country varies. What defines such a position is the set of trade-offs between the loss of sovereignty in a given area and the gaining (thanks to integration) of viable capabilities for solving problems in that area on the national level. The outcome of such a series of trade-offs depends significantly upon the skill of governments and the administrations of individual countries in taking advantage of that opportunity. The role of actors, various types of discourse, and activities traditionally included within the sphere of politics is clearly diminishing. The optimization of the relationship between the limitation of Westphalian sovereignty and the potentially greater (through integration) power of the system over itself primarily depends upon institutional choices and cooperation with subjects from beyond the sphere of politics. Of further paramount importance is the concealed stratification of EU member-countries. Especially for those countries that are more developed, the European Union presents a protective shield vis-a-vis globalization through its high standards that limit access to its markets. For others, such as the postcommunist countries, the immediate fulfillment of those standards absorbs their already limited means and encumbers their development, thus delegating them to a subservient role within the EU. Europe's postcommunist countries in prematurely harmonizing their institutions (which is to say, violating the principle of correspondence) have thereby become the object of structural violence. This also disorganizes their states and economies and impedes them in their bid to win favorable trade-offs in the course of their relinquishment of elements of national sovereignty and their struggle to strengthen the power of their system over itself. Moreover - and unfortunately - the procedures defining such trade-offs changed for the worse in the case of the EU's new member-countries, and the latitude once enjoyed by the EU's older members in constructing institutions for choosing one's proper tempo and path of integration was eliminated.

What was ignored was the fact that some regions of Europe, especially as regards the EU's new members, still occupy an early stage in the creation of a capitalist economy. And the greater the developmental lag, the greater the costs of adopting solutions that are indeed rational - but only for a higher stage of capitalism. A recent study conducted by the IMF[15] shows that the introduction of mature financial instruments - without the prior creation of institutions that both buffer the risks such instruments produce and absorb the advantages they offer - further complicates what is already a difficult situation for producers and fosters financial speculation on a large scale. By way of example, in Poland premature commercialization of state tasks (e.g., retirement security), together with the attendant concentration of savings that lacked proper conduits enabling its introduction into the economy (because the stock exchange and other economic entities are too weak), immobilized huge streams of money[16]. This negatively impacts Poland's chances for favorable trade-offs within the framework of individual policy-areas, for financial assets have been frozen and the state's need for loans has increased. What is more, the older countries of the European Union are enticed to treat said frozen savings as capital and to favorably (with regard to their different potentials) include it into the movement of capital. Blame for this lies with faulty institutional strategy. Poland's struggle to uphold the solutions agreed upon at Nice (and for position within the framework of "political politics") changes nothing in this regard. For what decides a given country's chances is first and foremost that country's tailoring of its integration strategy and its construction of institutions to its own developmental level. Poland is paying a price for the mistakes made during the transformation, as well as for having poorly coordinated the two paths leading into the world system: the European path and the more liberal one represented by the World Bank.

Europe's deontologization, with its shifting of thinking in the direction of individual policy-areas, complex institutional relations, and the divergent historical times of the regions having recently entered the EU (and not a stiff network of states), does not signify the disappearance of states - although it does change their role. For today their priority is to administer and to attune their societies and institutions to the requirements of individual EU policy-areas within the aim of gaining maximum advantage.

The draft constitution for the European Union prepared by the Convention drew conclusions based on the depoliticization of the role of states. This is because globalization diminished the hope that politics on the state level can enable a viable squaring off with the problems of the modern world. The principle introduced by the Convention of a double majority expresses this twilight of "political politics", as well as the shifting of accents to the social sphere. The fiat of form proper to the metaphysics of the state was shifted to the level of EU procedures controlled by the European Commission. The current (2004) conflict between the European Commission and the ministers of finance of the EU's member countries - who in November 2003 voted to forego the otherwise automatic (according to the procedures of the stabilization pact) sanctions against Germany and France - compelled the Commission to challenge the matter before the European Justice Tribunal. What this signifies is a clash of two principles of regulation: the fiat of form (in a deontologized Europe) on the one hand, and politics (with states as subjects) on the other.

However, the postcommunist countries have only recently regained their sovereignty and therefore it is difficult for them to deconstruct it via institutional trade-offs within the framework of individual EU policy-areas. Politics in Central and Eastern Europe is still experienced in categories of status and hierarchy, i.e., as the politics of power, which in the case of postcommunist politicians is limited to their ability to form spoiler coalitions and to enunciating their dissent. The role of institutions within the framework of specific policy-areas and the matter of power over itself as the ability to solve problems is underrated. And indeed, the voting procedure proposed by the Convention does block the possibility for conducting politics in the way understood in postcommunist Europe. For the automatic effect of that voting proposal truly is designed to render impossible the expression and pursuit of various interests connected with the region's relative underdevelopment. Thus, our role in the context of "political politics" will in fact diminish. But why, one must then ask, do we continue to fail to defend with equal zeal the chances for favorable trade-offs within the framework of specific institutional levels, which, for that matter, are also regulated by the draft constitution? Why have we not drawn the appropriate conclusions on what Europe has become and on why our status as a "state-administrator" is so catastrophic? "Political politics" in the European Union will become more and more elitist. The political participation of citizens will be confined to the otherwise crucial (for the fate of European societies) role of monitoring the "state-administrator" and forcing its effectiveness, along with defining the model for social life in terms of the world of values. The politics of the European Union as a whole, however, is to an ever greater degree limited to geopolitics and geoeconomics.

I now wish to make several comments on the implications of the above for Poland's internal situation. In my opinion Poland's current state crisis is not merely an internal problem involved with the selected model of transformation and the manner of entering the international division of labor. No - it is also a broader problem, particularly with regard to the diminishing role of politics as a mechanism for systemic regulation and as discourse, as well as - more generally - with regard to the demise of the metaphysics of the state brought about by globalization.

In referring to internal causes I most have in mind the malapropos sequence of liberalization that was carried out, which is by no means to suggest that liberalization was not necessary. But the mistakes committed most concern the matter alluded to above, to wit, the premature liberalization of financial markets, the so-called internal exchange of currencies that foster dependence upon imports, as well as the commercialization of public finances (e.g. retirement savings) on a scale that cannot be absorbed and introduced into the economy by the still underdeveloped financial institutions such as the stock exchange. This was compounded by over-regulation and administrative red tape that so encumbered the sphere of production that it led to a further relative anachronism in the form of deindustrialization. The production limits imposed were treated as a vehicle of mechanical integration with the EU economy (through creating a space for imports, especially imports of parts for assembly), and bankruptcy was recognized as the fastest route to privatization. Following the collapse of communism (and the brief period of creative, grass-roots self-organization), what was applied was a policy of institutionalization with a sequence and with solutions that were indubitably rational, but only for systems with a developmental level different than Poland's. Hand in hand with this came the outright rejection of even the most elementary industrial policy.

The outcome of the foregoing is incomplete capitalism, characterized by sub-optimal development, feeble mechanisms for the formation of national capital, the immobilization of important resources and the reorientation of others in favor of larger-scale markets, the interrupted circulation of capital (which is not multiplied through investment, but via speculation and the service of what is inevitable in this situation, namely, public debt), and the lack of a contract culture. Moreover, spontaneous defense mechanisms spawned an underground economy, political capitalism that used its "muscle" and opportunities of special access as leverage, as well as public sector capitalism based on patronage in the form of the redistribution of commercialized public funds - all of which even further deformed the state and economy. Corruption, oligarchization, the blurring of the line between the state and the market (coupled with a progressive segmentation of both), the wasteful dispersing of public funds, and the emergence of a political class (with its telltale ability to exchange political capital for economic capital and vice versa) are widely seen as the causes behind the crisis of the state, though in my view they are results. I do not here wish to discuss whether there were viable alternatives or not - much less do I intend to assign blame. Nonetheless, it must be said that part of the blame can be ascribed to the ahistorical, ideologized interpretation of liberalism and the failure to appreciate the role of institutions at the same time as the role of politics was overestimated.

The second outcome of this flawed, anti-developmental institutional policy is that of systemic non-steerability. For structural violence, albeit inadvertent and with unanticipated effects (as current discussions in international financial institutions reveal), has brought about a fundamental decomposition of activities which taken together decide steerability (or its lack). Real power (that is, the capability of "making a difference", of reorienting the activities of other subjects) is actualized by global logic on the one hand, and the demands of EU integration on the other, compounded with their "asymmetry of rationalities". For the sequence of undertakings and the procedures accepted proved to be rational from the perspective of the post-industrial phase of capitalism, but not from Poland's phase, i.e., that of the early accumulation of national capital. "Administration" compels behaviors in accord with the internal rationality of said institutional solutions. In this sense we are dealing with "power without subjects": for this is a single, complex structure, one that expresses global force fields, and that has become a catalyst for the transformations of another, simpler structure (postcommunism). Though ever more ineffectual, "government" continues to formulate objectives on the scale of the national economy and the state, despite the fact that it no longer possesses an instrumentarium for achieving those objectives. Institutions, procedures, and the logic of activities that results from the adopted sequence of liberalization carry out work (and ever so effectively!) in line with the goals of others, ones who are in conformity with global logic and mechanical integration with the EU. In this situation, the national government is to an ever greater degree answerable for what it no longer has influence over. Neither the strengthening of supervision (e.g., over retirement funds) or the shuffling of personnel can change this at all. The party-takeover of the state and political patronage are, in this situation, but marginally effective and more truly represent destructive attempts to force loyalty in spite of the above mechanisms.

This is all compounded by the interference to self-regulation caused by progressive desystemization and the polyreticular quality of the state and economy. Noteworthy here is the tell-tale "Enronization" of the state, with public funds functioning within two segments of the economy that operate along divergent logics (the budget sphere, and that of public tasks carried out through the market, though served by public agencies). Between them is the gray zone, this being an unregulated region of intensive redistribution and the flexing of political "muscle", as well as a highly detrimental pork-barrel prosthetic for the formation of national capital.

The third demand of steerability on the state scale (following the demand of correspondence between power, government, administration, and self-regulation) is coupled with the ability to recognize one's own logic. This does not concern the demand of authoritative communication (with trust as its condition), though in Poland the crisis of trust and the lack of such communication also contributes to the crisis of the state. Rather, I have in mind the system's presence (or absence) of a sui generis "anthropological rationality", wherein active individuals clearly recognize what is to be rewarded, and what is to be punished. Moreover, this system is constructed such that the principle of "anthropological rationality" does not induce behaviors that violate the "public good". Postcommunism does not possess such a clear, unequivocal "anthropological rationality". On the contrary - in the setting of structural violence what we see operating (as defense mechanisms) are activities that can well be labeled pathological from the point of view of contract ethics, the public good, or simple decency.

The external dimension of the crisis of the postcommunist state is connected with the demise of the metaphysics of the state, something which is not comprehended in Poland. The evolution of the EU (plainly visible in the draft constitution) provides a clear signal that the myth of the state as the vessel of hope for the rationalization of social life has exhausted itself. This of course is not to declare the passing of the state as one of many decision-making and regulating structures. Rather, what will undergo transformation is the relationship to the state and the role of politics. As I have indicated above, the movement of ideas that gave rise in Europe to the metaphysics of the state was connected with the rediscovery of Greek philosophy and the quest (beginning in the 14^th century) for a new source of certainty in the face of the progressive relativization of values and their relegation to the realm of culture. The Enlightenment (both in its revolutionary French version, and its conservative German version) laid the foundations of the concept of the modern state. The fullest sociological expression of that concept (and, thus, the metaphysics of the state) was made by Max Weber. He conceived the state as an entity that was the very embodiment of the process of rationalization, in that it was capable of overcoming antinomy, the tension between formal rationality (the law, procedure) and substantial rationality as represented in the idea of justice and development. Behind this concept lay a fascination with the fiat of form, as revealed in the premise that a sovereign country's ever perfected system of law and procedures would guide individuals, unconsciously as it were, toward an upholding of values.

This rationalizing automatism of structures was the basis of the metaphysics of the state. For that matter, John Locke much earlier had stressed that in accepting the market as a form of activity, we unconsciously, perhaps despite ourselves, accept inequality. Weber, in turn, stressed that the rationality of the modern state derives from its structure (which is to say, form), and not from the quality of the endeavors pursued by individual actors. The cost of this rationalization was, on the one hand, the reduction of individual freedom and moral subjecthood (hence, transcendence, as well). This was supplanted with a vision of liberation through participation in the construction embodying reason. On the other hand, this entailed a departure from the concrete ethos of responsibility in favor of the abstract ethos of intention. The profit gained from this was to include certainty, the homogeneity of meanings, sensibility, and the clarity of formal, hierarchically organized rationality, as well as the transparency of the democratic procedure allowing the expression of conflicts of interest and their resolving.

Globalization has undermined this vision. Unequivocal sovereignty and the uniformity of law no longer exist. What has become crucial to the functioning of societies is the conflict of standards of rationality that is not being expressed - and, more importantly, remains unrecognized within the existing framework. The meaning of institutions is changing in response to context and space-time from the perspective whereby appraisal is made. Political discourse in the democratic arena of the state and the uniform legal system created to that scale no longer provide a guarantee of the rationality of undertakings and the realization of values.

Steerability is currently a derivative of the quality of the intra-system ties between institutions, the correspondence of those institutions to the level of development, and expertise in meta-analysis and meta-regulation. Thus, it is not an outcome of the power capabilities concentrated in some unequivocally defined center of governance. Today such power without subjects, the power of the system over itself, looms before us as something more relevant than the power of democratically elected political representation.

The marginalization of politics (in comparison with other types of discourse and regulation) has elicited ever more questioning of the metaphysics of the rationalization that makes of the uniform law and political procedures embodied by the state a guarantor of the realization of values. Ever more often solutions drawn from other systems of government are reached for, ones that - like American federalism - did not succumb to the myth of rationalization. Their effectiveness in this age of globalization stems from their relative premodern character, which is typified in their: deficit of politics; dual power (political representation and judicial power); fuzzy regulation (with self-regulating streams of endeavor subject neither to unification nor to a control that exceeds the mere setting of boundary conditions); stability guaranteed by contractuality, not by the absolutizing of institutions, with a toleration of conflicts that ipso facto do not undergo ideologization; and - finally - the duality of their content within the framework of the self-same federal formula, which permits instant, automatic centralization in moments of crisis without political debate.

The draft proposal of a constitution for the European Union contains some of these solutions. The formula therein proposed permits the continued existence of the fiat of form so fascinating for Europeans, though it no longer is to reside with the state. The nondiscursive possibility of discontinuity built into the proposed procedures (e.g., dramatic recentralization, the barring of certain participants) , along with the proposed double majority principle (where the very form de-articulates, inasmuch as it automatically blocks the expression of certain interests without resorting to political arguments) - these are good examples of post-politics and the fiat of form. This is to serve a larger concentration of resources, a future limitation of redistribution, and an increase of Europe's global competitiveness. However, first and foremost it is an expression of the demise of the metaphysics of the state and the passage from a Europe of states to a Europe of Homelands.

The price which Europe may pay for this evolution is that of "desocialization". After all, it is none other than "politicality" that today provides the structural girding of societal activity. For "modernity" eliminated corporatism and traditionalism - and secularization debilitated religious ties. Thus, four scenarios seem most likely in the wake of the demise of the metaphysics of the state and the reduction of political activity. Either a transformation of societies into communities will transpire (seen this way, the rise of nationalism in Germany and France is a result, not a cause of the present evolution of the EU) - or Hobbesian self-regulating societies will emerge, ones that will replace withered states and will manipulate themselves by means of culture - or, finally, apathy will metastasize, bringing on atomization and a disintegration of societies down to the local and private level. A fourth possibility is that of the radical reformulation of the phenomenon of power along Asian lines, i.e., the deontologization of power and the paramount focus on relations and sequence, not on fixed identities and position. Such a change in the manner of thinking about the world is, however, immensely complicated and requires reinterpretation at every level. One thing is certain: the 17^th-century, Westphalian formula spawned the state as the critical subject of external and internal relations. The present deontologization of power in the European Union (and hence, the deontologization of Europe) signifies the close of that phase - one that has lasted a brief 400 years.

It is difficult for us Poles to understand the crisis of the metaphysics of the state, for we have not been participating in the emerging movement of ideas. When Western states were earnestly rationalizing themselves, we were under tripartite foreign occupation. The Gnostic (in its promise of earthly salvation), constructivist, and imposed formula of communism - in which the party-state tandem wielded power, and pretended to the role of the singular historical subject, presumed to know best what lay in society's objective interest - was but an aberration that led to absurdity and compromised the idea of rationalization.

Without a grasp of this process, the postcommunist countries will not achieve understanding with Europe. They will not comprehend their own state and political crisis, nor its nexus with the post-politicality of the new European discourse, concentrating as it does on steerability and the fiat of form on a broader, supra-state scale. As this book will show, we already have witnessed an attempt at such an unintended fiat in the postcommunist countries' experience of structural violence, when the sequence of liberalization and institutions without suitable context - not politics - defined the principles and direction of our course and elicited the societal costs we bore[17].

The deontologization, depoliticization, and dehierarchization of power will force an intellectual and institutional revolution in the Western world. For the metaphysics of the state responsible for the constitution of modern Europe has not met the test of globalization.