The Surveillance State: A Composition in Four Movements
2019,
The central question in this book: ‘what we did/didn’t, should/cp learn from activist/movement experiences of security operations, surveillance, infiltration’ and such activities, presupposes some understanding of the architecture of power within which state surveillance operates. The architecture of power is always a concrete historical question. The world wars have formative influence on the architecture of power in the Allied states. At the turn of the twentieth century, faced with the collapse of capitalism and the world wars, the Allied states mobilized all of society to survive the existential threat to economy and state. In the process militarism became the organizing mechanism for the Allied states. Militarism integrated economic institutions, military and civilian arms of the state and civil society organizations to create a ‘warfare’ state. The warfare state forged during the world wars was not dismantled after the end of World War II. Instead the warfare state expanded to become gigantic military- industrial-technology-media complexes with global outreach and dependent on perpetual warfare.