It Is not only the individual's social existence—being in the world as more than a do-nothing and a nobody—but also the individual's social importance—who or what one is in the world—that is determined by the personified power the individual wields. The unequal social importance of individuals is a direct result of representative democracy. In terms of physical and mental endowment, one individual may be twice as powerful as another, perhaps even three times as powerful, but not a million times more powerful. This imaginary possibility becomes a reality only when money becomes a representative of human productive powers and when the State substitutes itself for the community. Although it is physically impossible for one individual to wield the powers of millions, this is precisely what is possible with represented power. When money is accepted as equivalent to the productive powers of individuals, a few possessors of large sums of money are able to invest, or wield, the productive power of millions of people. When the State is accepted as the equivalent of the community, a single individual can speak for and decide for the entire community. Although the self-powers of individuals cannot be concentrated in one individual, the estranged powers can be concentrated. When the estranged powers are concentrated in Capital and the State, as embodiments, representatives of these powers, it not only becomes possible for one individual to be a million times more powerful than another, but for every individual to be more or less important than another. The so-called physical and mental inequality of human beings is small compared to the social inequality that results when their estranged unequal powers are reallocated among them in varying quantities of socially equivalent units. The democracy of represented powers is hierarchically arranged. The fragment of personified social power delegated to one individual is less than the fragment delegated to individuals on a higher rung, and more than the fragment of those on a lower rung. The more one has, the more one represents.
From this it does not follow that the more one represents the more one is. This is yet another illusion created by the fact that individuals relate to each other through the mediation of personified powers. Just as it appears that Capital and State offices perform activities which are in fact performed by human beings, it also appears that individuals who possess Capital or occupy high State offices are endowed with special capacities and powers, that they are more than other individuals. This hallucination is no longer experienced universally, largely because capitalists, the modern beneficiaries of this illusion, debunked it irreparably during their long struggle against feudal forms of personified power. When it was discovered that the magnitude of the monarch's power directly depended on the productive activity of those he ruled, and not on personal endowments bestowed on the monarch by St. Peter, the average monarch, though he might represent a great deal, was seen to be very little: perhaps an amateur golf player. … However, the
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