The Alliance of Power: State and Social Subject in the Economy of Violence. II Part

The Economy of Violence.

The expression "economy of violence" is not a metaphor. It describes a system for the production, circulation, and distribution of harm. In this economy, the State provides the infrastructure—emergency laws, security apparatuses, bureaucracy, material resources—and the framework of legitimacy. The individual contributes the psychological disposition, obedience, and, in many cases, local initiative. Power flows in both directions.

The State shapes the individual through propaganda, education, rituals of belonging, and the threat of exclusion. The individual, in turn, sustains the State through active participation or complicit passivity. Every act of compliance reinforces the system's normality; every silence contributes to its stability. Militarization plays a decisive role in this economy. Military logic—hierarchy, discipline, top-down obedience, the depersonalization of the enemy—permeates civil administration and daily life. The individual learns to think in terms of orders, chains of command, and collective goals that justify individual sacrifices (borne by others).

Violence becomes, in a sense, "professional." The systematic violation of ordinary laws appears not as a system failure, but as one of the conditions for its operation. When the legal order is subordinated to a project of power, the individual finds an environment where their most archaic psychological defenses prove adaptive. What would generate internal conflict under democratic conditions and the rule of law becomes, here, expected and rewarded behavior.

The Alliance in Action

The alliance between the State and the social subject solidifies when several simultaneous conditions are met. An ideology exists that offers a simple narrative of threat and salvation. There is a hierarchical structure that dilutes responsibility. Classifications are created that dehumanize the "other." Loyalty and efficiency are rewarded, while doubt and dissent are punished. Within this framework, the subject need not be particularly cruel; it suffices to be functional. This functionality is precisely what is most unsettling. The participating subject does not always perceive themselves as an agent of violence; they may view themselves as a defender of order, an efficient professional, or a responsible citizen.

The economy of violence relies, to a large extent, on this self-perception. At the same time, the alliance is neither total nor irreversible. Fissures exist. There are subjects who resist, who process guilt, and who regain the capacity to recognize the other as a complete human being. The depressive position—in Kleinian terms—remains a possibility, however much of a minority one. The alliance of power is potent, but not all-encompassing.

Perspective ...

The alliance of power between the State and the social subject is not a historical accident. It is a structural possibility of the human condition when the monopoly on violence combines with psychic configurations based on splitting, projection, and the externalization of the superego. This articulation produces an economy of violence in which harm is organized, distributed, and normalized.

Understanding this alliance does not imply excusing anyone. It implies recognizing that the danger lies not merely in exceptional personalities, but in the capacity of power systems to activate and amplify psychic dispositions present—to a greater or lesser degree—in many subjects. The State provides the framework; the subject contributes the disposition. Together, they can turn violence into a form of governance and obedience into a form of identity. The open question is whether it is possible to forge different alliances—alliances in which power is limited, the law is preserved as a check, and the social subject finds the conditions to process ambivalence rather than project it. That possibility exists, but it is not automatic. It requires robust institutions, critical thinking, and an ethic that resists the temptation of splitting. As long as those conditions remain unstrengthened, the economy of violence will continue to find allies.