Slavery, Oppression, & the Economy of Agency: Nietzsche, Marx, & Fanon | The Masters’ Game 2
a Short Essay for the Modern Existentialist
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Value is derived from what someone’s willing to pay for something. If I say it’s worth that much, it’s worth it. At least… to me.
—Stanley Johnston | The Gentlemen
1 | The Economy of Agency: the Marx in the Sartre & the Nietzsche
The Power of Kings is not something which is seized, but instead, is something which is acknowledged—and thus, is given by those who serve. A King—a Master, after all—is only one Man; and thus, alone, can only ever hope to accomplish what one single person could. A Master’s might is not and has never been a Metaphysical Power. Instead, it has only ever been a Social one.
Agency is, as we’ve said:
The ability to act upon and shape the world according to one’s designs.
And so, the totality of a person’s Agency is, in effect, their Lifespan—the amount of time and energy which one single person possesses, and thus the time which they have left to spend upon the Earth.
Agency is required for Work to be done. When Work is done, it creates Value—because Value is, in itself, an expression of Agency; a piece of Lifespan which has been used and consumed in order to create something that’s considered valuable. In other words:
Agency is Value… because it is Valued, because it can be transformed into Labor—into:
Work which has been done.
Thus, Agency itself—one’s effort and one’s time—is quite literally what we’d call… Human Capital.
Value is created when Agency is expended. And so, we—human beings—trade our Labor and our Lifetimes in order to create or obtain Resources: the things which we need to survive.
In this way, Agency is converted into Capital, and is thus stored as things-of-Value—as things which are judged as Valuable by a collective human Subjectivity. After all, it took someone else’s Labor—the investment and expenditure of their human Lifeforce—in order to create or obtain them.
This is the reason why Economics is called a social-science: because it’s the study not of human social-behavior, but instead, of the behavior of human societies. The study of the movement and management of Value—and, therefore, of the Economy of Agency.
And so, in the spirit of Marx and Sartre and Nietzsche all, we can say that:
Capital is generated through the Will to Power.
Or, in other words:
2 | An Axis of Oppression: the Beauvoir & the Nietzsche in the Fanon
Agency is both the beginning and end of the creation and determination of Value in the world.
In our previous essay, we established that the goal of the Masters’ Game is to collect as many Resources as possible—this, so as to better guarantee the Survival and prosperity of one’s own people. Each Man, however, only has so much Agency—each Master only so much time and energy which he could use to accomplish this goal. Thus, in order to increase the reach of his Power and Agency—to amplify his ability to aggregate Value—the Master must first aggregate as much Agency as possible. After all:
It is only through Agency—through the Labor of his people—that the Master is able to create or acquire Value-as-Resources; the things which are necessary for Survival.
And so, the Master first needs people—vassals, servants, workers, serfs… or, in Nietzsche’s terms, Slaves—if he hopes to accomplish anything at all. He must gather together a group of human beings to be the Master of, and must convince them to cooperate and work together towards a common goal… under his direction. Through either:
Diplomatic negotiation, and promising reward in exchange for their loyalty and Labor—or, through
Oppressive domination, and promising punishment in the absence of their loyalty and Labor.
The Master is a leader who seeks laborers who agree—one way or another—to pledge their allegiance and to follow his command, amplifying and increasing the effective Value of his Agency; to increase his Power in order to be better able to guarantee both his and their Survival and prosperity. We can see then that the Slave, in turn, is a person whose Power and Agency has been either pledged or seized—taken, in either case, to serve that Master, and to act out his will.
If we return now to our Dialectical Cube—to the Nietzschean-Beauvoirian Architecture—we can see clearly how the Tame/Feral axis manifests itself as an axis of Objectification; and, therefore, of Oppression. It is, after all, an axis which illustrates the way in which an individual is represented in relation to an Other. In other words:
The Socially Objective Value which is assigned to a person… by Other people.
A Tame person is, after all, someone who has been judged to be a potentially-valuable Object by Other Subjects. Seen as predictable or controllable things, they are taken to be Valued—in other words, to be possessed or to be held ready-at-hand; subordinated so that an Other might be able to collect, aggregate, and therefore exploit that perceived Value.
A Feral person, on the other hand, is someone who has been judged to have no or negative potential Value as an Object by Other Subjects. They are thus shunned—regarded as strange and uncontrollable beasts. And so, they are either discarded or feared; ignored and allowed to roam free—that is, for so long as they are not perceived as posing a danger to the world of Subjects; to the Master and his people.
And so, we can see that the Slave is a person who has been Objectified—or, in other words, commodified; Man as Slave, and Woman as Wife. The Slave is someone who is assessed and possessed for their Value as an Object—for their ability to provide Labor and Utility, and for the Capital which their subjugated Agency can be made to produce for their Master.
Thus we see that, in reality, human Agency does not primarily direct itself toward its relationship to a Metaphysical Objectivity. Human freedom-of-action, after all, is not something which can be confirmed as being either permitted or denied by gods, or fate, or the simple nature of reality itself. Instead, Agency is something which exists primarily in relation to a Social Objectivity; after all, it’s a freedom which we can empirically observe as being either permitted or denied by Others—by Man and Masters and other people, and by a world of Social Objectivity.
3 | The Collapse of the Master’s Gambit
Within the Masters’ Game, there are only two paths toward victory—toward the complete domination of the Rival-Other who would compete against the Master’s people for the Resources necessary for Survival and prosperity. These are:
Assimilation: a complete consolidation and absorption of a Rival—or…
Annihilation: a complete destruction and eradication of that Rival.
This is what we call the Master’s Gambit—and, any situation which falls outside the scope of the achievement of either of these goals… becomes Subjugation instead; the ultimate failure of the Master’s Gambit.
When a Master is unable to play his Gambit out to its completion—regardless of whether he has chosen to employ the strategy of Assimilation or Annihilation—what results instead is Subjugation:
The failure of the Master to eliminate the existence of the Rival and his people—and, thereafter, his attempt to enslave them instead.
Slavery, bondage, and any-and-all forms of Subjugation, have always been driven by Economic incentive—by the desire of the Master to not Annihilate, and therefore waste, the Agency of the Rival and his people. It only makes sense, after all, to attempt to the best of one’s ability to Assimilate instead, thereby preserving the Human Capital instead of having to destroy it. And so it can be said that Subjugation is the ultimate result of an attempt to combine these two Gambits into a single, unitary strategy—which… inevitably results in failure. After all, you cannot reasonably expect to be able to just walk onto somebody’s land, murder his family, take their shit, and burn down their house… and then, come back later and expect that guy to not be trying to kill you, and instead to be cooperative and nice.
That… would be stupid.
Subjugation is what leads to the chaos of rebellion—and, as we said in our previous essay:
Rebellion, at any scale, will transform into a constant drain on the Resources of the Master’s people. Such a long and drawn-out conflict is the bane of the Master’s Gambit—the most Resource-intensive method, and the worst of all possible choices.
At first glance, it might seem to a given Master that Subjugation might be a good idea—after all:
Why would anybody in their right mind actively choose to destroy anything that they’d just end up having to replace later anyway?
Why would anyone choose to kill them all… when you could just make them work for you instead?
It’s true that Subjugation can pay extremely well for a given, individual Master—after all, free or low-cost Labor means that, in theory, the difference in Value-created through the use of Subjugated Agency goes straight into the Master’s pocket. In practice, though—in reality—slavery isn’t free Labor. It can’t even technically be considered low-cost. In reality, the cost of using Subjugated Labor is one which is hidden, because the cost doesn’t appear at the time of hiring or acquiring a laborer. The cost of Subjugation doesn’t appear on anyone’s balance sheets—instead, it is carved out from overall worker productivity.
Human beings don’t want to be Slaves. From the time that they’re born, every Man, Woman, and Child upon the Earth dreams of the day when they’ll be free—when they’ll be the Master of their own fate. Few are born into this dream—never working a day in their lives. Others labor to achieve it through the sweat of their own brow. Many never make it—and for them, the dream dies, and they resign themselves to despair… or, they rise in rebellion, and seek to seize for themselves what they believe is their birthright.
Let me put it this way:
Men who are clean, clothed, well-fed, and have a place to sleep at night… will be happy and loyal to whoever leads them, and makes this all possible—to their Good and glorious Master, who deserves all their praise and admiration. And so, they’ll follow him willingly, dedicating their lives and Agency to him, and giving him their time and energy—that is, for so long as they continue to believe that he makes their lives Good.
Men who have nothing, and are forced to work and live in their own piss and shit… will make piss and shit, and dedicate that to their Oppressor. If these Men are forced to ply their Labor in order to do good Work instead, then they will get angry—after all, they are given nothing for their efforts, but instead face punishment if they fail to comply. They will curse their Oppressor, branding him an Evil, despicable Man—after all, they are being forced to use up their limited lives and Agency to serve the will of someone who does nothing but make their lives Bad.
Human beings don’t want to be Slaves—and, when a person is discontented, their Work and their Labor suffers for it. People who believe themselves to be free, in contrast—who feel themselves to be fairly compensated—will do good Work instead.
Subjugation foments rebellion. Emancipation creates allegiance.
Freedmen, who are allowed to ply their Labor and collect fair Value in exchange for their Work… will work hard, and work well. Allowed to serve their own self-interests, and to freely choose which Master and Project they’d want dedicate their Agency to, this independent individual is now finally free and able to participate as an equal citizen in a Capital Economy.
Now able to own their own wealth—to accumulate a pool of Capital, and to aggregate a reserve of Value and Agency which belongs to them—these emancipated Freedmen are now able to become a kind of “miniature Master”—or, what we’ll refer to here as a Middle-Master, living beneath their own Master’s wing. This Middle-Master will likely, for the time being, remain employed by the Master to whom they’ve dedicated their Agency—however, it’s clear that they are, in some sense, also Masters in their own right; perhaps even with people whom they could call their own. And, in time, when they’ve gathered enough Value—enough Capital and Agency of their own—perhaps they will be able to achieve true independence; to become their own Master, free from employment, and unbeholden to any Other for the means of their survival.
4 | Conclusions
Fanon says this:
It is clear why in the colonial countries the peasants are revolutionary, for they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. The starving peasant is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; it is only just a question of relative Power.
Slavery, in the colloquial sense, is Bad for the economy. Subjugation is, after all, a poorly-structured incentive system founded upon Nihilistic ideals. As Existentialists and as Nietzscheans both, we know and understand that it was Schopenhauer who believed that human beings are driven by the “Will to Life”—the idea that Man acts only to prolong his own pitiful existence. We know also, however, that this Will to Life is not an accurate representation of truth—not a depiction of human nature reflective of the reality of the world which we inhabit. Human beings, after all, are demonstrably not driven by the Will to Life… but instead, by the “Will to Power”—the idea that:
Man expends his existence in order to accomplish the things which he wants to do.
The desire of Man to achieve immortality—to prolong and extend his own existence towards infinity—is only a facet of this Will to Power; an act not of seeking longevity in-and-for-itself, but instead, an act of seeking more Agency. Man seeks to preserve and extend his existence because he wants more time—time, which he might then be able to use to accomplish the things which he wants to do.
Human beings are not best-motivated when they’re threatened with punishment. They are, instead, best-motivated when they’re promised a reward.
And so, in order to create a stable and prosperous society, the Master must be willing and able to give everybody a slice of the pie. He must give everybody the opportunity to become a stakeholder—to believe that they own their very own part of the collective project which is a nation—and thus, to become one of his people.
In order to guarantee the Survival and prosperity of him and his people, the Master must ensure that everyone who lives in his society feels and believes that they are his people—that their Labor has Value, their Agency is protected, and that their Master would come immediately to their aid should any misfortune befall them. If the Master fails to do these things, and his people begin to lose faith in him—to question whether or not he truly sees them as his people… or whether perhaps he sees them as his Slaves instead—then, the Master will have rebellion at his doorstep, and there will be prosperity no more.
