Society at a structural level imposes a kind of violence on us and into our ideological practice. Human subjectivity itself, independent of social norms, has a structure that sets us up for antagonism, although I think that is something that could be ameliorated to a large degree in a different society. I think successfully addressing such an antagonism of subjectivity is found in sublimation, which can range from participation in sports, to taking up poetry, or to becoming involved in activities that are much more mundane. If we were to each bring to the surface and obey capital’s ideological commands, we would all start murdering each other.

Capitalism and class society inevitably for most will frame a kind of violence in thought around its practices. We would be led to violence if not for social conscience, and for sublimation. Even in our fractured society, we manage a strained socialization that, in areas where people are actually trained to live and struggle alongside one another, can point all towards the more civil, socially conscientious act. This will of course change drastically in a social environment where everyone explicitly survives off the exploitation of others.

I think at the highest levels of power, we have a total failure of sublimation. The system itself lays down what is interpreted as a command for abuse, and the deranged bourgeois pervert takes it most literal. Capitalism thrives off alienation and atomization, and the bourgeoisie, depending on where they find themselves as exploiters, are left with no place of sublimation, and no social environment that can seclude itself from capital’s harshest logic. I think this is something you may see in the underground economy, too, where the logic of the system is so forceful and hard to hide from, that the social space around it is generally without space for sublimation. Rich and poor alike are forced to take capital’s logic as literal command in all spheres of life.

The one who overcomes this kind of violence is the one who succeeds at sublimation. They are the one who understands how to gain distance from the violent commands, and can transform that violent energy into an affirmation of life and of the social. When you attach directly to power, sometimes you will end up with the kind of fetish seen among our bourgeois now. That fetish must deny life as valuable because of the system’s incentives. They must prove themselves invulnerable to the violence in order to continually carry it out. When they commit the greatest sins against society, they still never escape from the fact that to commit the evil is to protect yourself from vulnerability.

While not exactly possible, escaping vulnerability would amount to not being affected by the commands of the violent order one way or the other. You could never prove yourself invulnerable, but it is possible to take some other matter as a higher priority than the system’s commands. The deranged bourgeois pervert cannot do that. The demiurge of capital issues commands that they cannot psychically get beyond, because its incentives control every aspect of their life’s meaning. Whereas, an ordinary lower middle-class person may gain distance from capital’s raw logic enough to perhaps find a higher god, because the socialized work they participate in, while still ultimately framed by capital, allows for a space of social sublimation.

Capital remains a kind of “satanic” paternal function for capitalists. They offer sacrifices in its honor to protect themselves from the pain of vulnerability. They think the sacrifice itself is the proof of invulnerability, when it is the opposite. It is them continually affirming that they desire a kind of perverse love, and exploit only to save themselves from being denied that love. That love can never come, but the exploitation of others works like a system of delay, from a confrontation that would deny them love officially, or prove their god false.

If others are exploited through their practices, they feel assured that they’re stronger and more invulnerable, but have also spared themselves the great beast’s violent rejection. You would not continually try to prove how strong you are if you truly weren’t affected by vulnerability. They seek the love of a god who not only cannot ask for anything but violence, but one who isn’t actually real, either. They worship the structural logic of an unconscious society’s activity, that only inadvertently disavows the social in its collective manifestation as a matter of historical complication. They worship a false god, whether explicit in their “Satanism” or not. Some of the bourgeoisie may not even sacrifice babies, but their practice is still ideological worship of the false god of capital.