The Ontological Independence of the System and Custody of the Body

I discussed in the previous the section the emergence of sovereignty in the capacity of a system of cooperation to transform from operating on objects to the process of discipline and punishment, where the system acts on its own members.  In this moment, it becomes self-reflective.  Discipline and punishment always require the system maintain control and custody over the body of the members.  For example, a family maintains custody over its children, and it is tasked with disciplining and punishing the children composing the family.  But a family is not a sovereign system.  Sovereignty occurs when control becomes de-personalized, the system has the capacity to take custody of every body composing the system.  All citizens are equal under the law, and all, under the proper circumstances, may be punished.  Power to act does not belong to a specific person, power belongs to a certain office or role within the system.  Even the King may be deposed or forced to abdicate and be beheaded.  The form replicates itself, independent of the material components of the system.  The system, the network of relationships of control, exists independently from the subjects composing it.  In the same sense, the soul, understood as the unifying principle of the body, exercises power over the many parts composing the body.  The immune system kills off enemy cells, even immune cells if it interprets them as a threat.

Sovereignty emerges due to the anarchic condition of people without a sovereign.  However, people do not "elect" a sovereign, nor do they invent a sovereign, they fundamentally acquiesce to the sovereign.  To be a subject of the sovereign is to be subject to the law.  One cannot defect, one must submit to punishment, or be coerced into submission.  Sovereignty dispels anarchy, but subjects must submit to the demands of the sovereign, and are trapped in the machinations of realpower politics.

The sphere of political possibility becomes limited by the need to acquire the material causes of power, production of soldiers and the production of effective weapons.  Productive economy, procreation of healthy children, scientific and technological innovation, ultimately trump other political objectives.  War is inevitable.

We can consider the following discussion of the continual collective violence characterizing hunter-gatherer tribes:

http://www.economist.com/node/10278703

If anything, the greater the concentration and centralization of control over human beings, in general, the safer the citizens become.  This does not entail freedom from realpolitic, or freedom from the tragic reality of human existence, but it does entail that most people in modern states live a mode of life with greater peace and prosperity than their ancient predecessors could have imagined possible.