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Title: Against “Legalization”
Author: Hakim Bey
Language: en
Topics: authority, legalization, marijuana, Peter Lamborn Wilson, spectacle
Source: Retrieved April 18th, 2009 from http://www.hermetic.com/bey/legalization.html.
Notes: No publication date found at source.

Hakim Bey

Against “Legalization”

As a writer, I am distressed and depressed by the suspicion that

“dissident media” has become a contradiction in terms — an

impossibility. Not because of any triumph of censorship however, but the

reverse. There is no real censorship in our society, as Chomsky points

out. Suppression of dissent is instead paradoxically achieved by

allowing media to absorb (or “co-opt”) all dissent as image.

Once processed as commodity, all rebellion is reduced to the image of

rebellion, first as spectacle, and last as simulation. (See Debord,

Baudrillard, etc.) The more powerful the dissent as art (or “discourse”)

the more powerless it becomes as commodity. In a world of Global

Capital, where all media function collectively as the perfect mirror of

Capital, we can recognize a global Image or universal imaginaire,

universally mediated, lacking any outside or margin. All Image has

undergone Enclosure, and as a result it seems that all art is rendered

powerless in the sphere of the social. In fact, we can no longer even

assume the existence of any “sphere of the social. All human relations

can be — and are — expressed as commodity relations.

In this situation, it would seem “reform” has also become an

impossibility, since all partial ameliorizations of society will be

transformed (by the same paradox that determines the global Image) into

means of sustaining and enhancing the power of the commodity. For

example, “reform” and “democracy” have now become code-words for the

forcible imposition of commodity relations on the former Second and

Third Worlds. “Freedom” means freedom of corporations, not of human

societies.

From this point of view, I have grave reservations about the reform

program of the anti-Drug-Warriors and legalizationists. I would even go

so far as to say that I am “against legalization.”

Needless to add that I consider the Drug War an abomination, and that I

would demand immediate unconditional amnesty for all “prisoners of

consciousness” — assuming that I had any power to make demands! But in a

world where all reform can be instantaneously turned into new means of

control, according to the “paradox” sketched in the above paragraphs, it

makes no sense to go on demanding legalization simply because it seems

rational and humane.

For example, consider what might result from the legalization of

“medical marijuana” — clearly the will of the people in at least six

states. The herb would instantly fall under drastic new regulations from

“Above” (the AMA, the courts, insurance companies, etc.). Monsanto would

probably acquire the DNA patents and “intellectual ownership” of the

plant’s genetic structure. Laws would probably be tightened against

illegal marijuana for “recreational uses.” Smokers would be defined (by

law) as “sick.” As a commodity, Cannabis would soon be denatured like

other legal psychotropics such as coffee, tobacco, or chocolate.

Terence McKenna once pointed out that virtually all useful research on

psychotropics is carried out illegally and is often largely funded from

underground. Legalization would make possible a much tighter control

from above over all drug research. The valuable contributions of the

entheogenic underground would probably diminish or cease altogether.

Terence suggested that we stop wasting time and energy petitioning the

authorities for permission to do what we’re doing, and simply get on

with it.

Yes, the Drug War is evil and irrational. Let us not forget, however,

that as an economic activity, the War makes quite good sense. I’m not

even going to mention the booming “corrections industry,” the bloated

police and intelligence budgets, or the interests of the pharmaceutical

cartels. Economists estimate that some ten percent of circulating

capital in the world is “gray money” derived from illegal activity

(largely drug and weapon sales). This gray area is actually a kind of

free-floating frontier for Global Capital itself, a small wave that

precedes the big wave and provides its “sense of direction.” (For

example gray money or “offshore” capital is always the first to migrate

from depressed markets to thriving markets.) “War is the health of the

State” as Randolph Bourne once said — but war is no longer so profitable

as in the old days of booty, tribute and chattel slavery. Economic war

increasingly takes its place, and the Drug War is an almost “pure” form

of economic war. And since the Neo-liberal State has given up so much

power to corporations and “markets” since 1989, it might justly be said

that the War on Drugs constitutes the “health” of Capital itself.

From this perspective, reform and legalization would clearly be doomed

to failure for deep “infrastructural” reasons, and therefore all

agitation for reform would constitute wasted effort — a tragedy of

misdirected idealism. Global Capital cannot be “reformed” because all

reformation is deformed when the form itself is distorted in its very

essence. Agitation for reform is allowed so that an image of free speech

and permitted dissidence can be maintained, but reform itself is never

permitted. Anarchists and Marxists were right to maintain that the

structure itself must be changed, not merely its secondary

characteristics. Unfortunately the “movement of the social” itself seems

to have failed, and even its deep underlying structures must now be

“re-invented” almost from scratch. The War on Drugs is going to go on.

Perhaps we should consider how to act as warriors rather than reformers.

Nietzsche says somewhere that he has no interest in overthrowing the

stupidity of the law, since such reform would leave nothing for the

“free spirit” to accomplish — nothing to “overcome.” I wouldn’t go so

far as to recommend such an “immoral” and starkly existentialist

position. But I do think we could do with a dose of stoicism.

Beyond (or aside from) economic considerations, the ban on (some)

psychotropics can also be considered from a “shamanic” perspective.

Global Capital and universal Image seem able to absorb almost any

“outside” and transform it into an area of commodification and control.

But somehow, for some strange reason, Capital appears unable or

unwilling to absorb the entheogenic dimension. It persists in making war

on mind-altering or transformative substance, rather than attempting to

“co-opt” and hegemonize their power.

In other words it would seem that some sort of authentic power is at

stake here. Global Capital reacts to this power with the same basic

strategy as the Inquisition — by attempting to suppress it from the

outside rather than control it from within. (“Project MKULTRA” was the

government’s secret attempt to penetrate the occult interior of

psychotropism- — it appears to have failed miserably.) In a world that

has abolished the Outside by the triumph of the Image, it seems that at

least one “outside” nevertheless persists. Power can deal with this

outside only as a form of the unconscious, i.e., by suppression rather

than realization. But this leaves open the possibility that those who

manage to attain “direct awareness” of this power might actually be able

to wield it and implement it. If “entheogenic neo-shamanism” (or

whatever you want to call it) cannot be betrayed and absorbed into the

power-structure of the Image, then we may hypothesize that it represents

a genuine Other, a viable alternative to the “one world” of triumphant

Capital. It is (or could be) our source of power.

The “Magic of the State” (as M. Taussig calls it), which is also the

magic of Capital itself, consists of social control through the

manipulation of symbols. This is attained through mediation, including

the ultimate medium, money as hieroglyphic text, money as pure

Imagination as “social fiction” or mass hallucination. This real

illusion has taken the place of both religion and ideology as

delusionary sources of social power. This power therefore possesses (or

is possessed by) a secret goal; that all human relations be defined

according to this hieroglyphic mediation, this “magic.” But

neo-shamanism proposes with all seriousness that another magic may

exist, an effective mode of consciousness that cannot be hexed by the

sign of the commodity. If this were so, it would help explain why the

Image appears unable or unwilling to deal “rationally” with the “issue

of drugs.” In fact, a magical analysis of power might emerge from the

observed fact of this radical incompatibility of the Global Imaginaire

and shamanic consciousness.

In such a case, what could our power consist of in actual empirical

terms? I am far from proposing that “winning” the War on Drugs would

somehow constitute The Revolution — or even that “shamanic power” could

contest the magic of the State in any strategic manner. Clearly however

the very existence of entheogenism as a true difference — in a world

where true difference is denied — marks the historic validity of an

Other, of an authentic Outside. In the (unlikely) event of legalization,

this Outside would be breached, entered, colonized, betrayed, and turned

into sheer simulation. A major source of initiation, still accessible in

a world apparently devoid of mystery and of will, would be dissolved

into empty representation, a pseudo-rite of passage into the

timeless/spaceless enclosure of the Image. In short, we would have

sacrificed our potential power to the ersatz reform of legalization, and

we would win nothing thereby but the simulacrum of tolerance at the

expense of the triumph of Control.

Again: I have no idea what our strategy shall be. I believe however that

the time has come to admit that a tactics of mere contingency can no

longer sustain us. “Permitted dissent” has become an empty category, and

reform merely a mask for recuperation. The more we struggle on “their”

terms the more we lose. The drug legalization movement has never won a

single battle. Not in America anyway — and America is the “sole

superpower” of Global Capital. We boast of our outlaw status as

outsiders or marginals, as guerrilla ontologists; why then, do we

continually beg for authenticity and validation (either as “reward” or

as “punishment”) from authority? What good would it do us if we were to

be granted this status, this “legality”?

The Reform movement has upheld true rationality and it has championed

real human values. Honor where honor is due. Given the profound failure

of the movement however, might it not be timely to say a few words for

the irrational, for the irreducible wildness of shamanism, and even a

single word for the values of the warrior? “Not peace, but a sword.”