War machine

From Capitalism and Schizophrenia

The war machine is a machine ("logic") that counteracts the striating process of the State - that 'smoothens' space.

The interrelation between the State and the war machine is crucial to the understanding of how Deleuze and Guattari conceives of totalitarianism, fascism and war. Deleuze's view of war and the State differs significantly from many of his contempraries. So, as opposed to his friend Foucault, Deleuze did not see war as the continuation of the State. War, he posited, can be seen as a process separate from the ordering, striating efforts of the State.

Thus, Deleuze did believe in the existence of what Carl von Clausewitz philosophical construct 'absolute war' – a war bent on pure destruction, completely devoid of moral or political interests. While Clausewitz argued that the absolute war is a purely thought construct, practically impossible to actualise, Deleuze argued that such war machines have indeed existed. For Deleuze and Guattari,

the nomads warring nascent States was an historical case of an absolute war: 
The historical war machine of the nomads was brought near 'perfection' by the 
almost entirely anti-State, countersignifying destruction of the Mongol hordes,
burning, raping, and looting their way across striated spaces. (Reid, 165-166)

The war machine, just like the process that yields a consistent State, is to be seen as a abstract machine, existing in the virtual realm. In the opening chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari describe it as a self-organising structure, without centralised control:

the problem of the war machine, or the firing squad: is a general necessary 
for n individuals to manage to fire in unison? The solution without a General
is to be found in an acentered multiplicity possessing a finite number of states
with signals to indicate corresponding speeds, from a war rhizome or guerilla
point of view, without any tracing, without any copying of a central order. 
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1988: 17)

So, in many ways, the war machine is the decentralised, self-organising opposite of the top-down, overcoded State. As such, it is completely devoid of any overarching ideals – collective action emerges as 'communication runs from any neighbour to any other ... such that the local operations are coordinated and the final, global result synchronised without a central agency'.

While the war machine is separate from the stratification process that keeps a State structure in place, states have always tried to control the war machine, appropriating it for its own uses:

There are many reasons to believe that the war machine is of a different origin,
is a different assemblage, than the State apparatus. It is of nomadic origin and
is directed against the State apparatus. One of the fundamental problems of the
State is to appropriate this war machine that is foreign to it and make it a piece
in its apparatus, in the form of a stable military institution; and the State has
always encountered major difficulties in this.(230)

Thus, since the advent of the modern State, there has always been a tension between it and the war machine. However, the State has generally had the upper hand:

The nomadic war machines were captured by States and one way or another many
settled down. In the case of the Vikings [...], they became Normans, and [...]
fell under the control of sedentary [State] forces [...] on the conquest of
territory, as in the Crusades (Bonta & Protevi, 2004: 166)

However, there have been instances when the State has tried to appropriate the war machine, and in so doing has become overcome by it. Thus, there have been instances when the table has turned – when the war machine "has constructed itself a State apparatus capable only of destruction" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988: 230). In such instances, the (totalitarian) State morphs into a fascist structure.

See also fascism.

[edit] References

• Bonta, M. & J. Protevi (2004) Deleuze and Geophilosophy: A guide and a glossary. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
• Reid, J. (2003) 'Deleuze's war machine: Nomadism against the state', Millenium: Journal of International Studies, vol. 32, no. 1.