0348 As Santner suggests, the subject matter of political economy includes some very un-economic (that is, political) subject matter.

In the Marxist-Freudian view, a fetish occupies the actuality of the situation levels of both the society and organization tiers of the West.

0349 A fetish connects expertise (as another term for citizen^Marat)_2bC with political objectives_2bC.

A fetish connects price_2bB with perceived value_2bB.

The apparent actualities of expertise and price are the sites of busy-ness and business, respectively.

0350 Now, I may wonder: Are the hidden actualities of political objectives and perceived value the sites of glory andadministration, respectively.

Or, is glory the same as administration?

0351 Consider this juxtaposition of three nested forms.  One is general.  The other two match the sovereign level of the society tier.

0352 Now, allow me to convert the dyadic actuality into a sign structure.

The structure of a sign goes like this: A sign vehicle stands for a sign object in regards to a sign interpretant.

0353 Take a look at the actualities in the above figure.

The apparent actualities are subjective.  The hidden actualities are objective. 

Thus, the dyad of actuality constitutes two elements of a triadic sign, the sign object and the sign vehicle.

The king’s mortal body stands for regal values according to a sign interpretant.

Citizen^Marat stands for political objectives according to a sign interpretant.

0354 The contiguity between the sign vehicle and the sign object is not the sign interpretant.  It is the referral making the sign interpretant possible.

0355 So, where is the sign interpretant?

Is it somewhere in the clouds of the perspective level?

Glory and administration hovers like incense above the king’s mortal body and citizen^Marat.

These spirits belong to the perspective level.

0356 The lecture continues. 

The words “policy” and “police” are both rooted in the word Greek word polis, meaning “city”.

I can describe a polis in terms of policy and policing.  But, these do not capture the splendor of the city.

0357 Cities are risky.

Every city is vulnerable.  Yet, most citizens proceed with confidence, reflecting the splendor of their city.  Policy makers may claim to have designed it.  Police may pretend to have kept it.  But, the foundation of confidence comes from a success that cannot be accounted for by policy makers or police.

0358 The confidence is aesthetic.

It is expressed in the liturgy of everyday life.

0359 Indeed, both policy makers and police may destroy the liturgy of the regular citizen.

They do so by usurpation.

What are they usurping?

0360 They are usurping the production of splendor.

But, what is splendor?

0361 Let me show a figure that has previously appeared.

0362 Policing runs horizontal.

The situation levels of all three tiers are subject to policing.

Each tier is vulnerable.

The police can break the discipline of citizens^Marat.  The police can undermine the contiguity between perceived value and price.  The police can force ideology into the reckonings and phantasms of everyday life.

0363 The citizens^Marat may use the police in order to regulate the organization tier and individual in community tiers.

Indeed, many of the political objectives that inform citizens^Marat attempt to alter perceived value by regulating prices.  They also teach myths about everyday stuff.

0364 Policy runs vertical.

The content level of the society tier is subject to policy.

Because the content level of the society tier contextualizes the organization and iic tiers, policy spills out into the entire 3-teir system.

In a democratic society, the citizens^regular supposedly validate the citizens^Marat through open and contested elections.

Is this the case?

The proof is in the pudding.

For example, turnover among elected officials in the United States of America, the home of big-government (il)liberalism, is remarkably low.  Most so-called “representatives” are career politicians.  Turnover in the non-elected federal administrative state is even lower.

0365 Consider Western society from 1945 on.

During this period, political objectives are increasingly determined by citizen^Marat, rather than citizen^regular.  The situation level of the society tier becomes more impressive, more splendid, while the content level falls into line.

Citizens^regular lose the capacity to participate with a rational spirit.

Will big government liberalism forgo democracy once the administrative state can survive without the approval of its citizens^regular?

Or will it rely on democracy to achieve its objectives?

What puts citizen^Marat into perspective?

Look at the painting The Death of Marat.

What is that blank space above citizen^Marat?

0366 Giorgio Agamben’s genealogy of economy and government supports Foucault’s conclusion: 

The modern person supplements and supplants medieval sovereignty with “govern-mentality” (that is, management of the political economy).

0367 Agamben claims that the Christian elaboration of the Trinity as a description of God is key.

Early Church writers transubstantiated the Greek term for “household”, oikos, into an image for the “oik”-onomy of God.  Later, Gnostic interpretation brought the term, “economy”, from heaven to earth.

0368 The latter transition may be phrased as a question: If Jesus is king, then who is sitting on the throne in yon castle?

The theological difference between general and special providence split into a host of late medieval and early modern distinctions.  Politics went with words “law”, “constituted power”, and “legal”.  Economics went with “order”, “constituent power” and “legitimate”.

0369 One irony of God’s Entrance into the Continuum of Time is that God does not want glory.

God wants flow.  Divine grace flows into human nature just like water fills an artisanal spring.

Grace (the hidden) and human nature (the apparent) are contiguous.

The contiguity is flowing in.

Grace [inflows] nature.

0370 Jesus is God’s Entrance into the Continuum of Time.

Early Christians addressed many questions. 

What happened?  How did this come to be?  How did time itself become divided by the presence of God?  Isn’t God outside of time?  How could a mortal being order the continuum of time?

Christians did not go about glorifying the One True (Time-Ordering) God as a public work.  They did so as a way to get in tune with one another.

If anyone heard Christians singing their doxologies, they could call Roman soldiers to break up the meeting.

0371 Yet, there is always the matter of advertising.

Doxologies to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit eventually translated into the political fetish_2bC, the commodity fetish_2bB, as well as the me-too fetish_2bA.

0372 Indeed, the story that Santner and Agamben tell begins when the kings of the fledgling realms of Europe began to ask, “What about me?”

Thus, the glorification of the One True (Time-Ordering) God was taken out of its theological box and fashioned into goofy theories like the king’s dual body.

The royal values imbuing the mortal body of the king were glorious.

0373 The transfer of glory from God to king fits the sovereign level of the society tier.

0374 The question that I have to ask is this:  Why would the One True (Time-Ordering) God need praise and glorification?

Surely, it is not to shore up His Sovereign Power through habituation.

0375 Maybe it is keep us on shore through habituation.  Otherwise we could be lost at sea.

The Church performs liturgy in order to remind herself of something the angels already know and do.

0376 Angels unite thought and action without contradiction.  In doing so, they think-do good and evil.

0377 For humans, the unity of thought and action is full of contradictions.

In fact, the unity goes under the label: good and evil.

0378 There are two actualities to good and evil: thinking and doing.

Since they contradict, their nested forms cannot hierarchically order themselves.  They do not interscope.  Instead, they intersect.  Two actualities combine into one.

0379 This is the basic intersection for the message that underlies the word “religion”.

0380 What does this imply?

Liturgy, to humans, habituates what angels already think-do.

0381 Santner mentions a 1935 book that Agamben found inspiring.

Eric Peterson’s Book of Angels: Their Meaning and Place in the Liturgy puts it simply: The hymnic glorification of Godconstitutes the very being of angels.

0382 To me, this implies that an angel goes with a liturgical office, occupying the normal context of the situation level of the society tier, just like the glorious body of the king.

An angel sings words about God, praising His laws, His actions, and His decrees, just as the mortal body of the king expresses the embodiment of noble values.

Finally, the angel, contrary to the strange bureaucratic characters in Kafka’s stories, emerges from the potential of ‘something to announce’.

0383 The angel is a messenger, emerging from and situating the potential of a message, just as the mortal body of the king actualizes the potential of kingliness.  

0384 That makes me wonder.

Is kingliness like a message?

0385 Here is how this looks as a diagram.

0386 The Greek word doxa means “glory”.

Christians perform doxologies in imitation of the angels.

Angels perform their songs of praise with felicity.

I don’t think that they even need practice.

0387 In contrast, doxologies habituate humans into the cognitive space potentiated by Jesus, the Messiah.

0388 God is One Household (or Oikos).

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three persons in One Oikos.

0389 One Oikos describes the potential underlying three divine manifestations within the Abrahamic and Pauline traditions: Yahweh, Jesus and the Spirit.

Three Persons are in One God.

0390 What is the doctrine of the Trinity?

Three Persons are in One Household?

0391 In order to appreciate this doctrine, I first re-present the basic interscope of the society tier.

0392 Consider the suprasovereign level.

The normal context is assume.

0393 The word “assume” has two referents.

One, the common use of the term is to take for granted.

Thomas Hobbes described Christian doctrine as a pill not to be chewed.  It is to be swallowed whole.

Two, the technical and religious use of the term means to take up into heaven.

For example, in Genesis, Enoch was taken into heaven.  In the Catholic tradition, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was assumed.

0394 These two uses do not exclude one another.

What does this imply?

There are nuances to the word assume.

So, there may be more than one model for a single suprasovereign religion.

However, these models cannot exclude one another.

Or, can they?

0395 The actuality of a suprasovereign religion is a relational object.

0396 Object^relation emerges from and situates the potential of bringing all into relation.

0397 Now, let me present one Christian model for the society tier.  Remember, this is not the only model.  This is a doxological model.

Look down the category of firstness.  The Trinity is the One, True God.

To me, that sounds like a line that could come from angelic voices.

0398 The Trinity manifests the all the elements of a suprasovereign religion.

The Holy Spirit brings the contiguity between the Father and the Son into relation with the possibilities inherent in the unity of The One House of God.  

0399 What is this contiguity between the hidden actuality of the Father and the witnessed actuality of the Son?

The contiguity is Real, therefore to name it reduces the contiguity to one of its facets.

0400 If the contiguity is begetting, the names are Father and Son.  If the contiguity is speaking, the names are The One Who Speaks and The Spoken Word.  If the contiguity is hand talk, the names are The Gesturer and The One Who Embodies the Gesture.  If the contiguity is creation, the names are The Creator and The One Who Embodies Creation.

0401 The divine names tell of a dyad of persons belong to secondness.

0402 The Holy Spirit is the Person defining the Contiguity.

0403 The names of the contiguities must be compatible with the Holy Spirit, else they are excluded.

The names of the contiguities virtually contextualize the divine values extolled by the angels.

0404 From the examples above, the angels sing praises to the divine potency, the divine voice, the divine gesture, and the divine creation.

Each lifts up one facet of the Contiguity between the Hidden and the Apparent Persons of God.

0405 On the situation level, the angelic officers gaze up to God.

The angels proclaim the divine attributes of God in word and song.

Each acclamation delivers a message.

0406 Christian doxologies bear witness to God Entering Time Itself.

0407 In the realm of potential, angelic messages_1b virtually situate righteousness_1b for the human being, the creature belonging to the content level of this model of the society tier.  

Furthermore, angelic messages are virtually contextualized by The One House of God.

0408 On the content level, the person hears sacred words and songs (the doxologies of the angels) and looks up, through the angels, into the clouds of divine unknowing.

0409 Within those clouds, the Holy Spirit virtually excludes, from the One House of the God, those angelic officers who re-interpret divine values.  They are cast into darkness.

0410 Fallen angels bear false messages.  Humans can pick up these little gems.  The gems turn into the righteousness of gods who are neither one nor true.  How captivating.

Then, humans situate these gems as organizational objectives.  The captivated humans paint over the One True God.  They may exploit some facet of the Contiguity between the Hidden and Apparent Persons of God.  But, they fail to recognize the entire divine relation.

0411 Is this how Jesus is King became Henry VIII is King?

Was Henry VIII Jesus with a sword and bishop’s staff, both weapons of sovereign power?

I love rhetorical questions.

0412 Let me go through some of the items that Santner examined in the course of his discussion.

Jean-Paul Marat, the one who died in a bathtub, may have thought that he was an angel, but his assassin Charlotte Corday, thought he was a devil (Preface 0.2).

In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Portia, in the guise of the lawyer Balthazar, serves as an angel, praising the laws of the city (Lecture 1.2).

In Kafka’s stories, various bureaucrats act as messengers, but have no truth, hence, no message to tell (Lecture 1.4).

0413 Professor Bonnie Honig adds Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab to the list.  Ahab is a devil who wants to deliver a message to the leviathan that stumped him (First Comments).

Moby Dick portrays the dangers of mercantilism as brilliantly as The Merchant of Venice.

0414 In addition, Santner’s key terms, normative, somatic and flesh, correspond to the columns of the angelic model.

The flesh corresponds to possibility.  The somatic emerges from and situates the flesh. The normative brings the somaticinto relation with the possibilities inherent in the flesh.

0415 The sovereign office compares to the angelic office.

The one who occupies the office is more than he otherwise would be.  The king would be just another person.  The angel would be nothing.  Or worse, the angel would retain its office while proclaiming a false message.  Similarly, the mortal body of the ignoble prince grows corrupt.

0416 Erik Peterson concludes his 1935 book with this: Knowledge of God culminates in praise of God.  Theology builds into doxology.

0417 For Santner, doxology takes on a life of its own.

Theologically informed acclamations may be transubstantiated into political glorification.

0418 How is this so?

The sovereign offices occupy the same slot as the angelic offices.

Theological acclamations always carry political undertones.

A political slogan may sound identical to a theological message.

0419 Both angels and sovereigns proclaim.

Angels proclaim the actions, laws and decrees of God.

In the late medieval and early modern periods, the king, or rather, his ministers, proclaimed sovereign actions, laws and decrees in the name of God.

In modernism, the same bureaucrats proclaim in the name of the People.

Or maybe, they do so in the name of institutions that stand in for the People.

It’s hard to see what is upstairs.

Do administrators stand for anything, other than their appointed duties?

0420 Both angel and king situate the subject, the regular folk.

Agamben argues that traditional acclamations of the king’s legitimacy (or kingliness) weighted the occupant of the sovereign office.

The weight of the king’s flesh is somatic (soma is “body”).

Nobility supplements the king’s mortal body.

0421 The king’s glorious body congeals vibrant doxological matter.

The noble flesh of the king appears to embody an angelic message: This mortal being serves a royal destiny.

0422 Similarly, the truth of God congeals vibrant doxological matter.

But, what is the weight of an angel’s flesh?

Word and song accompanies the angelic office.  An angel embodies word and song.

0423 These words and songs are witnessed by the folk.

0424 So is the mortal body of the king.

0425 Is the supplement of liturgy necessary?

The king has a mortal body.  Why does he need a glorious one?

Does a political theology of sovereignty require a theological oikos-onomy of glory?

0426 If so, then the supplement is foundational.  It is the libidinal oikos-onomic base that shapes the political bond.

0427 This logic seems both circular and foundational.

In Christianity’s divine Oikos, doxologies appear to be a mode of God’s own Self-glorification.

0428 One problem is that God does not have a Self, but that does not matter for this argument.  The angels are singing about something up there.

Does it matter whether the words and songs are about God’s Self (not Christian doctrine, since God is a Household) or the contiguity between the Father and the Son (which is not a Self, but a connection that may be symbolized by a name)?

0429 I suppose this technical aside sounds neurotic, consistent with a picture of circular logic.

Yes, this is the stuff of obsessions.

Why else would Santner give these lectures?

Why else would anyone consider them?

0430 Santner connects this neurotic circularity with Freud’s concept of the superego.

The constant pressure to live up to my own expectation of righteousness produces a super me, or better yet, a surplus me.

Or, maybe the term should be surplus ego.

Or maybe, super ego.

0431 Is Freud’s superego one of the paradoxes generated by the circular and foundational logic of Christianity?

0432 To me, the term superego goes with the person as an institution.

The Freudian term ego goes with personal objects^organization and deeds.

0433 Recall, the intersection of thought and action constitutes a single actuality: what is good and what is evil.

This is precisely what the ego responds to.  The ego is responsible for good and evil.

The ego trains the Self to love the good and despise the evil.

But, the Self is not naturally attuned to good and evil.

The Self is prone to temptations, fantasies and desire.

The Self is like a horse.  The ego is like the rider.

0434 The Freudian word “id” goes with the angelic possibility of righteousness (according to God).

But, it also goes with the devilish possibilities of temptation, fantasy and desire.

0435 Id^righteous underlies the ego.

Id^fantasy underlies the Self.

Does the circle go in two directions?

If so, then righteous laws may inspire sin by naming what is to be fantasized about.

How is that for a twist?

Humans are so impressionable.

The horse can carry the rider wherever it wants to go.

0436 Consider this comparison.

It_1a directs.  It_1a misdirects.

0437 Santner quotes Agamben’s recitation of a series of Christian paradoxes.

0438 Glory goes to God for eternity.

However, no one can increase or decrease God’s glory.

0439 All creatures owe God glory.  God demands it of them.

At the same time, God does not need glorification.

0440 God does not need glory.

Yet, God creates and redeems for His own glory.

0441 Surely, this list sounds like a sequence of paradoxes.

I sense that these paradoxes describe a Christian complement to the society tier.

Here is how that might look:

0442 Glory flows up the virtual nested form in the realm of actuality.

Livingness flows down.

0443 Take the first paradox listed by Santner.  Glory exists, but cannot be increased or decreased.

The Father is Creator.  The Son is the Manner of Creation.

The glory of God does not increase or decrease.

Glory rises from below but does not build up.

The contiguity between the Father and the Son turns it into something else: new life.

Now, for the second paradox, why does God demand glory?

Glory rises.  Livingness descends.

God’s demand for glory is begotten by God’s gift of life.

Stop glorifying God and God’s mandate to live withers.

0444 Finally, the third paradox asks: Why does God create and redeem glory when God does not need glory?

Look at the contiguity between the Father and the Son.

It is conception.

0445 In English, one may conceive of ideas.

Liturgical doxology ends up as God’s conception of life.

The Father’s act of conception ends up as a conceptual space in which my active soul animates my body.

If that is not livingness, I don’t know what is.

0446 The contiguity between my active soul and my body is animates.

My active soul animates my body.

My body reminds me of my active soul.

That referral is conceptualized as a message actualized by the angels.

Existence induces adoration.  Adoration glorifies the Son.

0447 Glory encompasses the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  The Father conceives the Son.  The Holy Spirit contextualizes the love between the Father and the Son.  

0448 Glory flows up.  Livingness flows down.

What a beautiful way to describe the cognitive space opened by this meaning underlying the Christian religion.

0449 Santner does not seem to be impressed.

He unhesitatingly moves from the usurpation of this model by the political theology of king’s dual body to the craziness of political economy.

0450 Let me slow down and imagine how this feedback loop translates into late medieval political theology.

0451 Going up, the body of the subject glorifies the mortal body of the king.

Going down, royal values grant livingness to the active soul of the subject.

0452 Theoretically, the glorious body of the king was directly answerable to God (rather than some corrupt pope).

0453 However, some Christian factions balked at the glory of the king business.

Instead, they claimed that the king answered to the People.

0454 Does this sound familiar?

These factions believed that industriousness was a way to glorify God.  The wealth that came from such business served as a sign of one’s destination.

Thus, the work of everyday life became a liturgical practice, producing glory as well as things that could be sold.

0455 Here is how that looks in terms of a feedback loop in the vertical column of actuality:

0456 Note how the passive, impressionable soul is replaced by the sane soul of one who does rational calculations.

A life of prayer?  That is for lazy superstitious monks.

0457 At this point in history, the body, that thing that worships God simply by being animated by an active soul, becomes driven by an organizational objective that derives from (mercantilist) values.

0458 The mercantile version of the Protestant Ethic says, “Wealth is a sign of salvation.”

Livingness is heavy, shiny and metallic.  Put it in your safe.  Gold is livingness.

The active soul has been subsumed by an organizational objective.

0459 Finally, I extrapolate the diagram to a fully modern political theology.

Or should I say, “political economy”?

0460 Industriousness is no longer for the glory of God.

Industriousness illustrates the glory of citizen^Marat.

Citizen^Marat looks into the blankness of the heavens and finds a perspective that will inform his (biopower) values.

These values, in turn, will virtually situate the object^org-active soul of the People.

0461 Remember, Jean-Paul Marat’s revolutionary rag was titled Friend of the People.

Maybe it should have been called The Biopower Values Virtually Situating the Organizational Objectives of the People’s Active Soul.

0462 This raises the question: How does the object^org possess the active soul?

Two terms stand out at the end of this section, flesh and the paired opposites of operative and inoperative.

Maybe they can provide an answer.

0463 Santner associates his category, flesh, to Agamben’s use of the term inoperative. 

To me, the term, flesh, labels the body in the realm of actuality.  So the term, inoperative, applies to the active soul.  The active soul becomes inoperative.

0464 What does this imply?

The industrious flesh of the People is animated, not by an operative active soul, but by a soul rendered inoperative by an organizational objective.

0465 In order to compensate for this negation of the active soul, I also negate its potential.

Thus, the potential of the passive soul becomes an impossibility underlying the inoperative active soul.

0466 So, where does the contrasting term, operative, go?

It goes with the normal context.

0467 A spirit of operative expectations_3a brings the actuality of object^org – inoperative active soul [animates] industrious flesh_2a into relation with an impossibility within the passive soul_1a.

0468 A spirit of operative expectations_3a reflects and supports the apparent situational busy-ness of citizen^Marat_2b.

In turn, the hidden situational actuality of the (biopower) values of citizen^Marat_2b declares that the passive soul cannot operate on its own accord.

0469 Who are you going to believe, your own eyes or citizen^Marat?

The human body no longer mindless refers back to the source of its presence, the Creator [Gestures] The Path Through Which Creation Becomes.

The active soul of citizen^regular must be rendered inoperative.

That is to say, “Something_2b is needed in order to activate the soul of the regular citizen_2a.”

If I don’t know what that ‘something_2b‘ is, then I had better watch more screens.

0470 What is this impossibility underlying the inoperative active soul?

That is a good question.

0471 All I know is that this potential comes from something other than what is in the person.

Activity flows towards to heavens.

Something paralyzing the passive soul comes to earth.

Is that why everyone seems so bored?

0472 The surplus value of labor is a slippery topic.

The term describes a circulation within the subject of commodities.

To me, that means the organization tier.

0473 At the same time, the term puts the machinations of the organization tier into perspective.

So, the theory of the surplus value of labor belongs to the institution level of the society tier.

It sustains righteousness_1aC.

0474 My question is: Does the theory of surplus value project a political theology from the society tier onto the organization tier?

This requires a derivation.

Let me start with the original presentation of the organization tier.

0475 According to Marx, as soon as the exchange of commodities is conducted with money, the specializations of laborbecome a matter of indifference.

Price_2bB situates the content-level of the organization tier_2aB, just as adoration_2bC situates the human body_2aC that initiates the upward cascade of glory. (See point 441.)

0476 Adoration_2bC looks upwards, towards what defines its existence_2cC.

Does price look upwards also?

So far, what do I know?

Price_2bB moves up and down according to fashion value_2bB.

However, the word “fashion” is too restrictive.  So, I will replace it with the term “supplementing”.

0477 Price is significant to the assessor level.  The costs that went into producing the product are also significant.  Labor is one of costs.  So are regulations, taxes and so forth.  Assessors weigh many items.

0478 Marx reduces all the assessed items to a single term: value-producing labor.

To Santner, the term value-producing labor ought to inform the price.

But, he is not sure how.

Value-producing labor is a generalized term for all that goes into corporate-level activities.  Some types of labor are very expensive.  Others are less so.  However, they all congeal into the life-blood of the organization.

0479 But, what is life-blood if there is no life?

What is life without purpose?

Institutional purpose brings the organization to life.

So, where does value-producing labor fit in the organization tier?

To me, value-producing labor enters into the question posed to the assessor: 

Do we continue this value-producing labor?

0480 Okay, then the assessment might go like this:

Value-producing labor will continue as long as the organization experiences surplus value.

This places value-producing labor into the realm of possibility.

What about the realm of actuality?

Could an organization’s institutional mission exist without surplus value?

If not, then I may assume that an institution’s mission (reflecting the society tier) is contiguous with surplus value?

The organization depends on surplus value.

Surplus value depends on the way that a supplementing value informs (and often enhances) the price of a commodity.

0481 A picture of the changes in the organization tier follows:

0482 These changes settle into a picture that looks more like the society tier.

0483 Now, Marx’s terms begin to meld with Freud’s.

Value-producing labor goes into constructing the shape that is called “commodity”.

So I will replace “commodity” with shape as situational potential.

In addition, what the buyer’s money is looking at concerns both the commodity and money itself.  Money does the talking.

So, I will replace “buyer” with money as situational potential.

Instead of price, I substitute what money regards.

Figuratively, what the money sees parallels the mortal body of the king, suggesting that the supplementing valuecoincides with royal values.  Like royal values, the supplementing value exhibits an abstract materiality.

The situation-level actuality_2bB becomes an abstract material [informs] what the money regards.

What else?

Market discipline parallels the glorious body of the king.

But, market discipline is not sublime.  It is subliminal.

Does that seem Freudian?

The situation-level contiguity, informs, equals the commodity fetish.

0484 Now, the organization tier looks even more like the society tier.

0485 On the assessment level, generalized labor value goes with the potential for continuing the organization.

This potential is actualized by surplus value.

Surplus value becomes the (apparent) Real that is contiguous with the (hidden) Real of the institution’s mission.

On the market-exchange level, the commodity fetish is the contiguity between a hidden abstract material and what the money sees, that is, the (apparent) price.

0486 Finally, in conducting a purchase, the buyer participates in the corporation level, not as a member of the organization, but as one who buys into a social relation with the corporation.

The buyer becomes contiguous with the actualities of management, production and service.

Remember, [is contiguous with] may be replaced by “surplus value”.

[Informs] may be replaced by “commodity fetish”.

0487 Thus, the pattern of the society tier is re-capitulated in the organization tier.

In Santner’s reading of Marx, the organization tier mirrors the society tier.

Shape-producing labor is surcharged with social mediation.  The buyer (often, unwittingly) enters into a relation with the corporation.  This corporation is imbued with the righteousness of value-producing labor.  An institutional mission situates that labor.

0488 The obvious example is brand-name recognition.

0489 The only remaining step is to add the dashed arrows, mimicking the upward flow of glory and the downward flow of livingness.

0490 Money flows upwards.  Money nurtures management, production and service.  Price turns labor value into money.  Money is what is Real for assessment.

Without it, the organization cannot live up to its institutional mission.

0491 An institutional mission flows downwards.  It virtually contextualizes the abstract material informing the price.  Then, it brings the buyer into contact with something that is not present, the actualities of management, production and service.

A purchase buys into a brand name.

0492 Typically, the corporation producing the shape is not in the same locale as the buyer.  Therefore, through transactions, the buyer establishes residence in a home that is not a place, but an institution.

The buyer indirectly joins an institutional mission that situates an organization’s value-producing labor.

0493 My derivation (starting at point 474) is complete.

The organization tier has become an icon of the society tier.

0494 In the last section of the second lecture, Santner grapples with the implications.

0495 Did Marx isolate the alchemy of mercantilism?

The political theory of mercantilism magically transforms into an impossible righteousness, capitalism.

To me, capitalism is Marx’s projection of the society tier onto the organization tier.

The industrial economy becomes an icon of the religion of mercantilism.

0496 Santner uses the mercantilist fixation, gold, as an example.

Money flows upwards.  Gold flows downwards.

0497 This example easily fits Marx’s projection of the society tier onto the organization tier.

0498 The general labor value of gold produces something that money can buy.  The transactions produce surplus value.  Surplus value actualizes the potential for continuing gold production.

0499 The institutional mission that ‘gold is wealth’ virtually contextualizes the abstract material that informs price of gold.

Anyone familiar with current gold markets finds this abstract material quite tangible.  It reifies the fear that fiat currencies are being printed without collateral.

Since gold is wealth, gold is collateral.

The buyer is purchasing what the fiat currency lacks.

0500 Collateral flows downwards from an institutional mission, through the abstract material emerging from the potentials of shape and money, into the peace of mind of the gold buyer.

0501 This is not an -ism.  This is not “capital”-ism.

No, these diagrams describe the machinations of the organization tier as an icon of the society tier.

-Isms belong to the society tier.

Mercantilism belongs to the society tier.

Mercantilism solved one problem in the organization tier.

Here is the issue:  The abstract material that informs price should not also weigh a changing value of money, in addition to the potential of shape and the buyer’s accounts.

So mercantilism fixed the value of money.

Money was defined as a certain weight of pure gold.

0502 However, the mercantilist religion produced a host of other problems within the society tier.

In particular, it degraded the Protestant Ethic, where the virtue of industriousness served to glorify God.

Mercantilism glorified… something other than the One True God.

0503 Marx’s specter of communism rose to contest the political theology of mercantilism.

0504 To me, Marx projected something transcendent onto the immanence of the organization tier.

0505 The term “capitalism” labels the projection of a mercantilist political theology onto the organization tier.

0506 To the extent that the projection is manifest, the organization tier is unrighteous compared to the righteousness of Marxist ideologies.

0507 The role of the Marxist in our contemporary world is to regulate perceived manifestations of mercantilist political theology in the organization tier.

Soviet communism was an experiment.  It failed.

But, could the schema still be correct?

Welcome to big government (il)liberalism, where the political economy is freighted with a subject matter weighing all flesh.

0508 Speaking of flesh, is global mercantilism a form of prostitution?

0509 Here is how prostitution looks as an icon of mercantilism.

How unrighteous is global mercantilism?

0510 In the organization tier, paper money flows up into surplus value.

A purpose-filled abstract material flows down into what the buyer lacks.

0511 What does the buyer lack?

0512 In the society tier, the flesh is the industrious body, contiguous with an inoperative active soul.

An object^org is supposed to fill in for the active soul.

The object^org-inoperative active soul situates the fact that the passive soul cannot work on its own accord.

0513 This is shown in the following diagram:

0514 What does this imply?

The buyer in the organization tier lacks a quality that allows the passive soul do what it is supposed to do.

0515 That quality is righteousness.

But, it can also be unrighteousness.

Righteousness and unrighteousness are the potentials underlying good and evil.

0516 Okay, the passive soul of the citizen lacks a certain quality.

Something will fill that lack.

If something conforms to mercantilism, then the citizen^regular gains the quality of rationality, then the person is sane and enters the organization tier.  The resulting behaviors are capitalist.

But, capitalism is evil.

Thus, the active soul of citizen^regular must be rendered inoperative.

If something conforms to institutional purposes aligned with the actuality of citizen^Marat, then the person is no longer burdened with sanity.  Instead, institutional purpose defines what is sensible.

The expectation of rationality adjusts to organization objectives that render the active soul inoperative.  The resulting behaviors exhibit the discipline of citizen^Marat.

Ah, if capitalism is evil, then communism must be good.

Thus, evil and good define something that provides the qualities that the passive soul lacks.

0517 Consequently, the organization tier takes on the mantle of the society tier as either the capitalism theorized by Marxist communism or a projection regulated by a coalition of Marxist infrasovereign religions.

0518 Consider the following diagram:

Money ascends.  Greed (unrighteous, capitalist) or identity (righteous, communist) descends.

Thus, the doxologies of everyday (regulated) social life recapitulate, in the organization tier, the doxologies of the Christian faith on the society tier.

Why the Christian faith?

The perspective level is revealed only with Christian faith.

0519 Here is how that happens.

0520 Does this explain why Santner and Agamben regard the Christian formulation of the Trinity as the foundation of both the political theology of the dual body king and the Marxist projection of a political theology onto the organization tier?

0521 Even if you say, “No.”, the suggestion that Marxism contextualizes the organization tier carries intellectual momentum.

0522 The following shows a number of Marxist terms contextualizing the organization tier.