Feet Like Flowing Water

Stopping the soldiers of his (an exemplary ruler's) three armies was like cutting off their feet, (and) marching them was like flowing water. [D 281/KH 17:130]

The soldiers in unified motion toward the unified aims of the State are like water flowing down a straight and narrow channel. They melt into a liquid body, continuous and without distinguishable organs. But the moment their ordered flow is stopped, organs appear and are in the same stroke amputated.

Water, however, does not naturally conform to straight and narrow channels, but has the lice-like tendency to flow "without preference for any of the four sides" [D 316/KH 23:171]. Three of the four sides of natural water flow must have been stopped for the army to have begun its onward march. That means that feet must have already appeared-been amputated. Even at its apogee, the moment of predatory attack, the war-machine's unity is predicated on the dismemberment which prevents it (and which it is meant to prevent). Consolidated organ-ization always entails fragmentation. Maximum flow requires extreme rigidity.[19]

Abolition

"Abolish words by means of words" [ibid.].

Generation

"Govern wisely: cultivate stupidity" [D 176-77/KH 2:20].

"Inspire love through hate" [above].

"Build strength on weakness" [above].

"Generally, there is no one in the world who does not base order on the causes of disorder. Therefore, to a limited degree of order corresponds a limited degree of disorder, and to a great degree of order corresponds a great degree of disorder" [D 322/KH 25:179].

Spiral and Line

Inhabiting the Legalist project is an inescapable double-bind. The desire propelling the State designates as its only acceptable outlet an undivided outward torrent of infinite conquest. To achieve that end, however, the State must turn against itself, and foster within it what it is intent on not having. To have no laws and words, it must have them with a vengeance. To have order it must have disorder. To have unity, it must hew out disciplined organs and in so doing dismember itself. To expand its domain, it must seal its borders.

The Legalist state plays on the tension between rigidity and compartmentalization (striation), and fluidity and unity (smoothing). Striation, in the form of the law, emanates from the ruler's body, source and center of the State. Its role is to levy: the capture of energies to be channeled back to the source. Striation radiates in waves to the periphery, then bounces off the wall and returns to the center in the form of a smooth flow of goods and bodies channeled uninterruptedly into the army, which then flows out to meet the enemy. An oscillation develops between two contradictory dynamics, each of which covers the entire territory. As both dynamics are carried to their extreme and any mediation that might exist between center and periphery is progressively removed, the period of the oscillation shortens and the vigor of the outward flow increases. The interior becomes a quickening spiral of centrifugal waves of striation and centripetal smooth flows. At the center, the spiral of capture is converted into a line of fluid attack sent out in pulses. The aim is to accelerate the process to the point that the spiral melds with the line, and the pulses become continuous. At that ideal point, feet are liquid and dismemberment is wholeness.

Legalism is a blueprint for a synthesis of antagonistic social dynamics. It is not a dialectic. Although the dynamics are combined in such a way as to produce a concerted effect, their antagonism is never overcome and the mix is highly unstable. The synthesis is functional and has material limits. The only ideality involved is the virtual point of absolute synthesis that can never be attained.

The more explosively the State pushes outward, the more intensely it implodes. It is destined to self-destruct. The Legalist state is a suicide state. In this, and in the nature of the frenzied synthesis it attempts, it is quintessentially fascist.

At dead fascist center lies the ruler: source and destination of the State spiral, capturer of energies, converter of spiral to line, creator and destroyer. To the extent that virtual point of absolute dynamic synthesis can be actualized, it is actualized in the person of the emperor. The emperor embodies the generation of abolition that is State desire in its purest expression.

ACCELERATING TIMELINE. The state of Qin had its beginnings in a minor fiefdom located on the western frontier of the Zhou feudal realm in modern-day Gansu, 190 miles west of the eventual imperial capital of Xianyang (contemporary Xian). It was given to Feizi, "a petty chieftain and clever horsebreeder," in the 9th century B.C. As a reward for protecting the Zhou rulers from the Rong 'barbarians' inhabiting its region, Qin was made a principality in 770 B.C. The early years of the Qin state were primarily concerned with battles against the Rong and Di peoples. The last record of a Rong attack comes in 430. From then on, Qin was on the offensive. In 315 it captured 25 walled-towns from the Rong. Once Qin had colonized the Rong, it was able to direct its energies against the central Chinese statelets. From the seventh to the fourth centuries B.C. the capital moved eastwards into central China in five stages. It reached what was to become the imperial capital (Xianyang) in 350 B.C., simultaneous to the implementation of many of Shang Yang's reforms. Shortly thereafter, the Qin ruler declared himself to be a "king," and initiated a series of conquests against the seven principal statelets of China. Qin defeated Ba and Shu in the Sichuan region in 316. It destroyed the remnants of the Zhou state in 256. The process of conquest then began to accelerate. Qin defeated Han in 230, Zhao in 228, Wei in 225, Chu in 223, Yan in 222, and finally Qi in 221. The State was at last One. To mark the event, the "king" assumed the title of "emperor" (huangdi, literally "august god").[20] The timeline of social transformation also followed an accelerating trajectory.

A brief combined chronology:

The Qin state's accelerating time-line marks an exacerbation of the contradictory tendencies of the State discussed in the preceding section. That tension is expressed in the tasks assigned to the principal Qin general, Meng Tian, by the First Emperor as recounted by Jia Yi in his essay, "The Faults of Qin": "the First Emperor. ... cracked his long whip and drove the universe before him, swallowed up the eastern and western Zhou, and overthrew the feudal lords. ... In the south he seized the land of the hundred tribes of Yue. ... Then he sent Meng Tian to build the Great Wall and defend the borders, driving back the Xiongnu over seven hundred li, so that the barbarians no longer ventured to come south to pasture their horses and their men dared not take up their bows to vent their hatred". In other words, Meng Tian was ordered to simultaneously build the Great Wall--in order to set the boundaries of the State--and to strike against the nomads in order to expand the boundaries.[22]

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