#imperial representation

One might think that the system of imperial representation is, in spite of everything, milder than that of territorial representation. The signs are no longer inscribed in the flesh itself but on stones, parchments, pieces of currency, and lists. According to Wittfogel’s law of ‘diminishing administrative returns,’ wide sectors are left semiautonomous insofar as they do not compromise the power of the State…In point of fact the regime is not milder; the system of terror has replaced the system of cruelty. The old cruelty persists, especially in the autonomous or quasi-autonomous sectors; but it is now bricked into the State apparatus, which at time organizes it and at other times tolerates or limits it, in order to make it serve the ends of the State, and to subsume it under the higher superimposed unity of a Law that is more terrible. As a matter of fact, the law’s opposition or apparent opposition to despotism comes late – when the State presents itself as an apparent peacemaker between classes that become distinct from the State, making it necessary for the latter to reshape its form of sovereignty.