The Power of Metaphor: Consent, Dissent and Revolution

Erik Ringmar

Political discourse is necessarily profoundly metaphorical; the language of

politics is knee-deep in and entirely shot-through by different

metaphorical uses. This should not surprise us. Politics, after all, is the

art of using power in order to achieve social goals. While some power can

be exercised through the army and the police, far more can be

accomplished ― and more easily and cheaply ― through the power of

language. Metaphors give you power since they help to organise social

life in a certain fashion. Metaphors tell you what things are and how they

hang together; metaphors define the relationship between superiors and

subordinates and between social classes; they identify social problems

and their solutions and tell us what is feasible, laudable and true.

Perversely, metaphors make sense of things not by telling us what they

are but instead by telling us what things they are like. My love is

emphatically not a ‘red, red rose’ but there is nevertheless something

about love and about roses which makes it possible to compare the two.

What we do when making sense of this image is to draw on the meanings

which roses have in our culture; anything we have ever seen or heard

about them; the role they play in horticulture, social conventions, in art

or in poetry. The rose in question is surrounded by what we could refer to

as a ‘system of reverberations’. By comparing our love to a rose, certain

aspects of this system are highlighted; certain reverberations are picked

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out and in the process ‘my love’ becomes one certain thing rather than

another.

Compare the way in which metaphor exercise power. No one can say

what ‘society’ or ‘the state’ really are. In fact, societies and states are not

'really' anything at all. Yet they come to be something rather than

nothing as they are compared to other things which they are not. Once a

particular definition is firmly established, it will influence our thoughts

and our actions; it will guide and shape our presuppositions and our

theories; it will make some things possible and others impossible. Say,

for example, that the members of a political elite manage to convince a

sufficiently large number of people to embrace a metaphor which

identifies society as sharply hierarchical and social positions as rigidly

fixed. Once this metaphor is perfectly accepted, it will simply describe

‘the way things are’ and as a result it cannot be questioned or altered.

The more entrenched the metaphor, the more invisible the exercise of

power and the more secure the position of the elites.

In this situation a political dissenter has two basic options. The first is to

elaborate on the accepted metaphors and explore their reverberations,

looking for alternative and if possible more subversive interpretations.

This is an internal form of critique which takes the existence of a certain

world-view for granted but which seeks to explore the potentials it

contains. Such an internal critique may be limited in scope but this is not

necessarily the case. Sometimes very radical demands indeed can be

formulated from within a dominant metaphor. The second and more

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obviously subversive option is to seek to replace the dominant metaphor

with an alternative which is more congenial to the dissenter's outlook and

aims. Yet such a metaphorical replacement is necessarily difficult to

accomplish. The people who benefit from the existence of a particular

metaphor will naturally insist on its validity and inevitability. And people

at large will often defer to tradition and to the powers-that-be.

This chapter develops this understanding of metaphors. The first task is

to provide an inventory of metaphors which traditionally have been used

to create political consent. The second section discusses the ways in

which dissenters can elaborate on established metaphors in order to

create a discursive space for alternative interpretations. The third section

discusses the ways in which revolutionaries may establish radically new

metaphorical usages.

A dictionary of consent

ACTOR. This metaphor gained prominence in the Renaissance and it is

still commonly invoked today (Apostolidès, 1985; Nye, 2004; Review of

International Studies, 2004; Ringmar, 1996/2006;Strong, 1973/1984).

The state is an ‘actor’ on the ‘world stage’ ― the state is ‘playing a role’

and ‘inter-acting’ with other states. The implication is that the state is a

unified entity to whom actions can be ascribed and as such it can be

compared to a human being. Just like humans, states formulate

preferences which they act in order to satisfy. The state-as-actor has a

‘national interest’ which its foreign policy is designed to further. The

formulation of such an interest limits dissent. As political leaders never

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tire of explaining, we can only ‘defend our place on the world stage’ if we

all unite behind the official policy.

In the early modern period the state was always impersonated by the

king. This was literally the case in the plays, masques and ritual jousts

put on at court, in which the king himself would play a part. On the small

stage of the king's palace, the events on the large stage of the world

were given a theatrical form. In the persona of Pax, the king would

conclude an advantageous peace or, as Mars, he would defeat an enemy.

Much in the same way summit meetings and international conferences

are today used as stages on which political leaders can be seen acting

and interacting with each other. By watching these dramas unfold,

newspaper readers and TV viewers are taught what world politics is

about; they form allegiances to certain actors and their political goals.

BODY. In the Middle Ages the body metaphor applied above all to the

Christian church ( Cassirer, 1946; de Baecque, 1993/1997; Gierke,

1881/1996; Kantorowitz, 1951/1957; Ringmar, 2007; Tocqueville,

1840/1945). Or to be more precise, the Church had two bodies ― one

temporal and one transcendental; one which human beings belonged to

while still on earth and another which they belonged to eternally in

heaven. Jesus Christ was in charge of the eternal church and the Pope

was in charge of the temporal. With the rise of the state as a sovereign

entity in the Renaissance, this corporal language was gradually

secularised and given a political application. The state also consequently

came to be given two bodies ― one temporal and one transcendental ―

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and its subjects were simultaneously members of both. In its temporal

capacity the state was made up of institutions and agencies staffed by

officials but in addition the state was a transcendental idea. This was the

Staat as guided by the Weltgeist of history, la France éternelle or the

government enshrined in the principles of the American constitution.

The body metaphor provides a convincing solution to the problem of

social order. As the metaphor makes clear, the different parts of society

are, just like the different parts of the body, intimately related and

organically unified. Each social class corresponds to a bodily organ: the

aristocracy is the ‘arm,’ the clergy the ‘heart’ and the peasants or

merchants the ‘stomach.’ And naturally the person ruling over this ‘body

politic’ becomes the caput or the ‘head of state’. As the metaphor makes

clear, social diversity is not a problem but instead a requirement for

social order to be established. It is precisely because groups and classes

have different functions that they come to depend on each other. After

all, if we all were the same there would be no reason for us to stay

together. Equality of status leads to isolation and eventually to

indifference and to the break-up of social life.

The body metaphor is not necessarily repressive. It does not legitimate

unlimited kingship since the king in practice always will have to

investigate the condition of the heart or stomach or feet before reaching

a decision. On the other hand, the metaphor makes conflicts quite

inconceivable. Social groups and classes cannot be at war with each other

for the same reason that one hand cannot fight the other or the heart

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rebel against the stomach. Instead groups and classes depend on one

another for the proper functioning of the whole. The body metaphor, in

other words, provides little place for politics; there is nothing much for

the various body parts to discuss; there is only one head and one will.

BUSINESS CORPORATION. This metaphor is popular among some

contemporary politicians, in particular those with a business background

(BBC News, 2001; Beckett, 2000; Collins and Butler, 2003). Having made

their fortune, they come into politics promising to run the country as

‘efficiently as they ran their companies’. Most commonly this implies that

the state bureaucracy should be streamlined and ‘unprofitable’ sectors

should be cut back. People should stop wasting time on discussions and

instead subject themselves to ‘the discipline of the market place’. Not

surprisingly this metaphor is particularly attractive during times of

political stalemate or economic decline.

It is worth reminding ourselves that, although business corporations are

actors in economic markets, they are not themselves markets. Business

corporations are hierarchical systems of authority and subordination.

Bosses are not buying the services of their staff but instead ordering

them about. A corporation is emphatically not a democratic institution.

Although a good boss naturally should consult with the people working

for him, he is the one who makes the decisions. The implications for

politics should be obvious.

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CONGREGATION. This metaphor transposes the image of the religious

community onto the political community (Apostolidès, 1985; Frazer,

1890/1994; Mishra, 2004; Sergeev & Biryukov, 1995). The faithful

united in prayer come to be equated with the subjects united under the

king and the authority of the king is juxtaposed with divine authority. The

metaphorical linkage here goes through the figure of the priest, who in

Catholicism is regarded as God's representative and as a mediator to the

divine. Thus the priest-king may claim to have been chosen by God or to

have special miraculous powers such as the power to heal. His

sovereignty is the sovereignty of omnipotence; his commands are

commandments and his subjects are believers. There is obviously no

arguing with this kind of a ruler.

But there are other ways of imagining a religious community. The

imperial Russian, and later Soviet, definition of society drew heavily from

the Orthodox notion of the sobor. In the Russian church the congregation

as a whole stood before God and the priest was neither a representative

of God nor a mediator to the divine. This reduced the power of the priest

but it strengthened the demand for unity. Soviet leaders drew on this

cultural predisposition in order to silence opposition. By contrast the

Buddhist religious community – the sangha – has inspired quasi-

democratic decision-making procedures. Since Buddhism has no God,

Buddhist priests are neither representatives nor mediators. Unity is not a

requirement among Buddhist laymen since no one is tested on their

religious beliefs. The political community understood as a sangha is self-

ruling and egalitarian. And while this metaphor, as one would expect,

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often has been ignored in practice, it has nevertheless served as a source

of political dissent.'

FAMILY. The family is an obvious metaphor to apply to social life

(Englund, 1989; Lakoff, 1996; Trägårdh, 2002). Although families vary

greatly across time and space, we all have a family of some kind or

another and the interaction which takes place within it provides a basic

model for how relations in society at large should be conceived. Again we

are dealing with a metaphor which combines biological and hierarchical

principles. Rulers have often found it expedient to define themselves as

‘fathers’ of the countries they rule and their subjects as ‘children’ of

varying ages, genders and states of maturity. The father in the state, as

in all traditional families, is the one who makes decisions and other family

members are not supposed to question his judgment.

Yet fathers should not be tyrants. Their first obligation is to care for the

members of their family and to make sure that they are happy and well

fed. In addition they should educate their dependents and prepare them

for whatever challenges lie ahead. The ruler is a pater and the state

which has children as its subjects is necessarily paternalistic. The

paternalistic state thinks, plans and acts on behalf of the people; it

disciplines and regulates people in order to protect them from the

unexpected and the disastrous as well as from themselves. In the

paternalistic state, just as in the family, care is inseparable from control.

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Families live in homes and the state understood as a family lives in the

home constituted by the nation. Compare the Japanese kokka, the

‘national home’, or the Swedish folkhem, the ‘home of the people’.

Understood as a home, the state becomes an institution based on

genealogical criteria. The Japanese state was redefined on familial terms

in the 1890s and it was only as a result that it started to make sense for

Japanese soldiers to give their lives to the emperor. Similarly, the

Swedish state employed various practices of eugenics well into the

1960s. This was a socialist-national form of racism rather than a

national-socialist. The national home had no place for people who were

too obviously alien.

GARDEN. This metaphor is another early modern favourite ― compare

the obsession with gardens which spread across Europe in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Englund, 1989; Milton,

1667/2005; Schama, 1995). When applied to the state, the metaphor

expressed a desire for order combined with a stress on social hierarchy.

Social classes corresponded to trees and plants of various sizes,

appearances and degrees of rarity. Aristocrats were like old oak trees,

while peasants were like the wheat they themselves produced. Some of

this language is still with us. Compare our contemporary references to

‘grass roots’ organisations.

The king was the gardener, who planned and maintained the garden.

Plants, just like human beings, were given by nature but in order to reach

their full potential they first had to be ‘cultivated’ ― ‘watered,’ ‘pruned’

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and ‘fertilised’. The state was the greenhouse in which such cultivation

took place. In his garden the king created order and beauty and allowed

some plants the space to grow, while others were cut back. He was

particularly attentive to weeds and to plants that grew away from their

allotted place and he made sure to cut off branches or to pull up plants

that were diseased. If not, pests, mites and fungus might spread to other

parts of the garden.

MACHINE. The machine metaphor suddenly gained in popularity in the

seventeenth-century as a result of a new fascination with mechanical

gadgetry of all kinds, above all clockworks (Hobbes, 1651/1985;

Hirschman, 1977; Koselleck, 1959/1988; Mayr, 1986; Meinecke,

1957/1998; Mumford, 1964; Ringmar, 2007). If the state is a machine,

then the various parts of society become the levers, springs and

cogwheels of which the machine is constructed. This metaphor also

continues to be invoked. We still speak of ‘bureaucratic machineries’, the

‘wheels of administration’ and of ‘social engineering’.

Enlightened autocrats were particularly fond of the machine metaphor.

Just like the body, the machine combined a functional differentiation of

parts with the need for social co-operation. Since the various components

of society are radically different from each other, it is only through co-

operation that they can attain their purpose. A refusal to put the

collective interest above the individual interest is self-defeating. At the

same time not all parts are equally important. While some of the

components are easily replaced, others are unique and crucial to its

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operations. All components should fit neatly with each other and any

wheel that squeaks must be oiled or replaced.

The state-as-machine may seem to have more repressive implications

than the state-as-body. After all, machines are impossible to engage in

conversation; machines are cold and heartless. For many of those who

have confronted the state this mechanical power is only too real. Yet the

machine metaphor also implies constitutionalism. After all, machines

have to operate according to some definite and quite impersonal rules.

This means that the ruler becomes a clockmaker or an engineer whose

main job it is to oversee the operations of the machine. As such the

machine comes to work quite independently of the ruler's personal will

and whims. There are laws of statecraft, similar to laws of mechanics,

which the king has to follow in order to maintain the state in good

working order and himself in power. As the theorists of enlightened

absolutism made clear, the state and the king are both governed by

reason and this raison d'état can at least in principle be objectively

defined and calculated. In this way the machine metaphor served as a

check on absolutist power. Not surprisingly the regimes where the

metaphor was most popular ― Prussia and Austria, in particular ― were

also the states which first granted rights to their subjects. Constitutional

documents, pioneered in these Rechtsstaaten, were taken as the

blueprints for the construction of the machineries of state.

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE. In East Asia, the metaphor of harmony ― wa in

Japanese, he in Chinese ― has always played an important role (Fei,

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1947/1992; Itô, 1998; Jullien, 2000; Pocock, 1989; Watson, 1993).

Harmony is produced by the sound of instruments that are well

integrated with each other. Each instrument plays its own tune but it is

their combination which makes the music enjoyable. Harmony requires

people to co-ordinate their actions; no discordant voices or awkward

squeals should be heard. In both China and Japan the emperor was the

conductor who made sure everyone played the same tune. In Europe

similar metaphors have been invoked. Europeans too after all are

supposed to ‘keep pace’ with each other and ‘sing from the same hymn-

sheet’.

In a state organised as a musical performance adjustments will happen

more or less by themselves. It is above all other participants who notice

when someone sings out of tune or behaves gracelessly. Overt repression

is for that reason not required, instead some mild form of social

disapproval is usually sufficient to set the clumsy performer straight.

Here politics is not something that you talk about but instead something

that you do. Politics is not about discussions and no confrontations

between opposing views are possible. People can certainly object to the

music but this is always going to be an aesthetic rather than a political

judgment. Music, strikingly, has no contraries. Although you may object

to a certain tune, there is no way of contradicting it. In a society where

harmony is the highest social goal, there can be no dissent, only correct

or incorrect performances.

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SHIP. Before the nineteenth-century ships were the main vehicles of

travel, trade and geographical discovery. In the Renaissance, in

particular, the image of the intrepid sea-captain sailing off into the

unknown captured people's imagination and many contemporary authors

fancied themselves as passengers on these ships. Not surprisingly, the

ship-of-state was another early modern favourite (de Cillia, Reisgl and

Wodak, 1999; Machiavelli, 1531/1983; More, 1516/1965).

As the proponents of this metaphor made clear, the ship has a captain ―

the king ― and passengers and crew members of varying dignity and

rank. The separate decks on which they live are sealed off from each

other. The authority of the king-as-captain is absolute, he determines the

direction in which the boat is sailing and mutinies are dealt with swiftly

and mercilessly. At the same time everyone is dependent on the

contributions of all others ― they are ‘all in the same boat’ ― and this is

particularly the case if the weather is bad and the ocean stormy. As the

kings never tired of point out, it was only by following their direction that

they could ‘get off the shoals’, ‘onto an even keel’ and ‘avoid treacherous

rocks’.

TEAM. This is a contemporary metaphor invoked by politicians of a

populist streak (Semino and Masci, 1996; Russo, 2001). ‘Italy is a team,’

such a politician might say, and we all have to ‘work together’ in order to

‘win’. ‘Winning’ here is usually taken to mean ‘to be economically

successful’ or ‘to remain in the top division of successful countries’. We

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can do it, we are assured, as along as we ‘think as a team’ and ‘never

give up.’ ‘Forza Italia ― Go Italy!’

This metaphor also makes an appeal to unity and deference. Individual

efforts make a difference to the outcome but self-serving behaviour is not

allowed. Everyone has to be a ‘team player’ and co-operate for the

benefit of the team as a whole. At the same time players have different

ranks and abilities. Some are important goal scorers or play-makers,

while others are far more easily replaced. The coach ― the prime

minister ― is the one who selects the players and decides on the tactics

― although some consultations with the players certainly may take place.

A sports team, however, is not a democracy.

ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTION. There is a long-standing metaphorical

connection between political power and exotic animals (Burckhardt,

1860/1958; Foucault, 1982; Fu, 1996; Ringmar, 2006). Already in

medieval times kings used to keep rare beasts at their courts ― lions,

leopards, eagles, elephants, rhinoceroses and giraffes. The awe inspired

by such curious collections helped exalt the position of the rulers. All

European monarchies used lions in their heraldry and put up statues of

lions outside palaces and government offices. Some republics did the

same ― Finland is one example ― while other republics considered lions

to be tainted by their monarchical associations and preferred instead

large birds of prey ― compare the American bald eagle.

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Also in the animal kingdom there are differences of rank. In the popular

image, ‘the lion is the king of the animals’ and the king is for that reason

‘the lion among men’. By contrast, most ordinary people are compared to

some herding animal of little or no individuality ― most commonly sheep.

Ordinary people sound like sheep, are scared like sheep and like sheep

they let themselves be led to the slaughter. Varying the metaphor and

giving it a pastoral interpretation, the king becomes a shepherd who

looks after his sheep, protecting them from ferocious animals and finding

pastures for them. Such pastoral power of care and control is similar to

the power of the father. See FAMILY above.

In imperial China, scholars of the Legalist school compared the emperor

to a huntsman. The emperor hunted down his enemies; some he killed

and consumed immediately, others he domesticated and kept as chattel.

To assist him in these tasks he had his eagles ― the state officials and

his secret agents ― who tracked down the prey and prepared it for the

kill. A main task was to exterminate the ‘five vermin of the state’ ―

scholars, freelance politicians, independent knights, persons with

connections to senior officials and merchants/craftsmen. What these

groups had in common was the fact that they had access to independent

bases of power ― ideas, money, weapons ― and for this reason alone

they were seen as challenges to imperial supremacy.

Metaphorical elaboration

The metaphors in this short inventory describe society in a meaningful

and more or less complete manner. With their help we make the world

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make sense. The consent we give to the established social and political

order ― and to the elites who dominate it ― is merely a by-product of

this general quest for meaningfulness. Yet consent is not produced in all

cases. There will always be those who for one reason or another disagree

with the established order of things. Such dissenters may conclude that

society is unfair, that the direction of social life must be altered and its

elites overthrown. In order to be successful in these tasks the dissenters

need access to power. Organisational resources and manpower are

certainly crucial in this respect ― sometimes also soldiers and guns ―

but in addition they need power over language. A way has to be found of

replacing, or at least questioning, the entries in the official inventory of

metaphors.

One strategy here is what we could call metaphorical elaboration.

Metaphors, we said, are interpreted as one system of reverberations is

made to interact with another. Thus a word like ‘the state’ means nothing

until we confront it with the reverberations associated with some other

thing to which it is compared. Yet only parts of these systems are ever

employed. Many, perhaps most, reverberations are left unused since they

are plainly inapplicable, ridiculous or perverse. Thus we may nod

approvingly when someone identifies the state as a ‘business corporation’

but still shake our heads if they go on to talk about the ‘lunch room’ or

the ‘water-cooler’ of the state. Businesses have lunch rooms and water-

coolers but states, by common consent, do not.

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The fact that large parts of any system of reverberations remain

unemployed opens an opportunity for political dissenters. By

investigating these unused references and by making them explicit, they

can encourage people to think differently about the metaphors through

which they organise their lives. People can be invited to discover more

about their world-views and to think more creatively about themselves. If

nothing else, dissenters can make fun of the official language and

thereby seek to denaturalise it. The great advantage of this strategy is

that no fundamental shift in metaphorical commitments is required.

There is no need to radically change people's perceptions. The official

metaphors are not replaced, only tweaked, recoded and decentred.

Consider briefly the following two examples:

MUTINY ON THE SHIP OF STATE. The well-established image of the ‘ship-

of-state’ provides interesting opportunities for dissenters to explore

(Walzer, 1965). One obvious possibility here is to dispute the direction in

which the ship is going. Perhaps the king is ignoring the safest or most

direct route, missing a safe harbour or perhaps he is running the ship

onto a rocky shore. Another possibility is to make comments on the

weather. If the argument can be made that a big storm is approaching,

then maybe everyone would be better off abandoning the ship or at least

abandoning the rigidly hierarchical division of labour which characterises

interaction on-board. Another possibility is to question the unlimited

powers granted to the captain. Mutiny has of course always been

regarded as a crime and in early modern Europe it was punishable by

death. However, as the law of the seas also made clear, crew members

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and even passengers had a right to question the judgment of the captain

if they could prove that he was drunk, insane or otherwise incapacitated.

Indeed, under such circumstances it was their obligation to relieve the

captain of his responsibilities. Not surprisingly this was the precise

argument relied on by several early modern dissenters.

WEEDS IN THE GARDEN. Similar strategies can be employed in the case

of the state understood as a garden (Englund, 1989; Gernet,

1972/1999). There are different kinds of gardening after all, governed by

different aesthetic sensibilities. Like the Daoist recluses of ancient China

we could alter the value given to different plants and compare ourselves

not to stately oaks but instead to withered old pine trees clinging on to

mountain-sides. Or we could prefer the hardy grass to the frail flowers,

the indigenous flora to the exotic and the rough to the too highly

cultivated. After all, weeds have a power and a beauty unto themselves.

We could even argue that the garden should be left to its own devices.

Before long it will be completely overgrown and eventually it will revert

back to nature. Anarchists prefer anarchic gardening!

Political dissenters would also do well to explore the gardens of other

countries than their own. Comparing various European traditions we find

that there is a rough analogy between the repressive tendencies of

politicians and the repressive tendencies of gardeners. The more liberal

the regime, the more freely growing the plants. The gardens of the rulers

of autocratic regimes are more regimented, with clearer borders and

more tightly pruned hedges, than the gardens of constitutional monarchs.

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Compare the gardens of Versailles with those of Windsor. Not surprisingly

a French radical like Jean-Jacques Rousseau regarded English garden art

as a far better metaphor for social life.

Another way of creatively reimagining too-well-entrenched metaphors is

to look for ways of expanding the system of reverberations to which they

refer. Rather than being content with the existing set of possible

interpretations, we try to come up with new ones. With more and new

reverberations to chose from, new ways of conceptualizing politics

become available. Any new development can help in this respect – social,

cultural or legal changes, scientific discoveries or new technical

inventions. The role of the dissenter is to point these changes out to the

general public and to explain what political implications they have. In this

way the interpretation of society will change as the result of completely

unrelated changes taking place elsewhere. Again consider two examples.

DIVORCING THE FAMILIAL STATE. In early modern Europe the received

interpretation of the patriarchal state was profoundly undermined as a

result of changes in the definition of the family. According to the

Protestant interpretation of the Bible, marriage was not a sacrament but

instead a contract freely entered into by two independent parties. If one

of the parties violated the terms, the contract could be annulled. The

political implications of this reconceptualisation are obvious and they

were quickly identified by seventeenth-century Puritans as they rebelled

against the paternalistic English state (Walzer, 1965). Or as French

revolutionaries argued in 1789, if the father is tyrannical enough,

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‘patricide’ may indeed be justified (Koselleck, 1959/1988). Such a crime

may bring the ‘brothers’ more closely to each other and thus constitute

the basis for a new form of ‘fraternity’. Even after the father was

beheaded, in other words, the metaphor lived on.

Contemporary redefinitions have altered the meaning of the family

metaphor at least as radically (Lakoff, 1996). Families are today quite

egalitarian; their members are regarded as separate individuals with their

own wants and aspirations; they discuss things together and reach

decisions through consensual methods. Not surprisingly a contemporary

society modelled on a family will allow a great measure of debate and

dissent. The power of patriarchy has also weakened as a result of the

increase in divorce rates. Today mothers rather than fathers provide the

unifying force which keeps families together. Compare the feminisation of

the state, which is evident at least in some countries in northern Europe.

Here women constitute an ever-larger proportion of the state's workforce

as well as of its leading decision-makers.

NEW DEAL AT WORK. Business corporations have changed too, at least in

Europe. Companies are today less hierarchical, more democratic and

more participatory. One trend here is what Germans call Mitbestimmung,

or co-determination, whereby representatives of the workforce are asked

to join in crucial decisions and trade union officials are given legally

guaranteed representation on corporate boards. A political dissenter may

point to these changes and encourage people to re-evaluate the state-as-

business metaphor. A prime minister-cum-CEO who fails to understand

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these shifts may be offered a ‘severance package’ by the citizen-

shareholders.

Another contemporary trend points to the end of traditional notions of a

career (Capelli, 1999). Employees are no longer staying with their

companies as long as was the case in the 1950s or 60s; people work on

shorter contracts, they switch jobs more often and often shape their

careers outside of corporate ladders. Employees, in short, are more

demanding and more independent; if they do not like a particular

company, they leave. Compare the far more tenuous relationship which

many people have developed with the countries to which they ostensibly

belong. This trend is most obvious within the European Union. If you do

not like the country where you were born, you simply go elsewhere. As a

result you are inevitably less likely to bother with politics, to engage with

social issues and local concerns.

Metaphorical replacement

The alternative option open to a political dissenter is to try to break with

contemporary uses and come up with completely new metaphors through

which society and the state can be conceptualised (Ringmar, 1996/2006).

However, it is obviously very difficult to successfully carry out such a

metaphorical replacement. What needs to be changed are not only

people's opinions but also the basic categories in which their opinions are

lodged. Most people do not want to have their world-views undermined in

this manner ― and this resistance may often include people for whom an

alternative metaphorical conception would constitute a great

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improvement. Moreover, the people who benefit the most from the

contemporary social order are also the ones who are best placed to block

any changes. And still, despite the odds, metaphorical reversals do

occasionally happen. Consider briefly two examples.

CONSTRUCTION SITE. Modern politics began when naturalistic metaphors

were replaced by constructivist ones. That is, instead of seeing society as

a natural organism ― a body, family or garden ― or as an impersonal

mechanical device, it came to be regarded as something man-made,

something constructed, most commonly as some kind of a building

(Arendt, 1977; Becker, 1932; Lakoff and Johnson, 2003; Tully, 1980;

Vico, 1744/1986). This metaphorical switch opened up a world of exciting

new possibilities for political entrepreneurs to explore. If society is a

building made by us, we should be able to fully understand it, including

the most obscure of its nooks and crannies. And the better we

understand society, the better we will be at reconstructing it in

accordance with our preferred design. Politics, governed by this

metaphor, will be a question of drawing up ever more appealing

blueprints which can be presented to our fellow citizens. Political conflicts,

accordingly, will be a question of which among many competing plans

that should be implemented.

The rationalistic pretensions of this metaphor should be obvious. The

construction plans are drawn up by us, not by God or by tradition, and

there is in principle no limit to the kinds of projects we can decide to

embark on. Before we can start building, however, we need building

208

materials and we need machinery but above all we need an opportunity

to impose our plans on society taken as a whole. To this end we need

access to state power since only the state can coerce people into

following the instructions we give them. The state, with its monopoly on

the legitimate use of violence, is the contractor with the greatest

entrepreneurial capability. Controlling the state becomes crucial if you

want to see your plans implemented. Obviously, if the projects are

particularly ambitious, some pretty serious forms of coercion may be

required.

CYBERNETIC DEVICE. The other main metaphor of modern politics

conceptualises society as a self-organising mechanism or what we could

call a 'cybernetic device.' The idea of self-organisation gained popularity

thanks to early modern inventions like the thermostat and Watt's famous

steam engine. In Newton's cosmology the universe itself was understood

as a self-organising system. Order here, as in all cybernetic systems, was

produced through the interaction of contradictory forces whereby a push

in one direction automatically triggered a pull in the other direction,

which restored the overall balance. This was also the model famously

adopted by Adam Smith in his description of the economic system as

governed by an ‘invisible hand’, a metaphor he had initially applied to

Newtonian cosmology ― as ‘the invisible hand of Jupiter’ ― in an early

essay. The economic system, Smith explained, maintains itself in balance

as the self-serving actions of one party are counteracted through the

self-serving actions of another party.

209

The cybernetic metaphor is appealing in many respects. As it makes

clear, little central direction or repression is required. In a self-organising

society people are able to settle their differences by themselves. Diversity

is not a threat but instead a precondition for social order to be

established; the mutual antagonism of opposing interests and groups is

what keeps society in balance. Outside intervention by a ‘balancer’ such

as the state risks jeopardising this decentralised harmonisation. In a

society which regulates itself, the king can be abolished and the state

scaled back. This is the liberal idea of ‘freedom’, the freedom to pursue

one's own interests constrained only by other actors who pursue theirs.

The main problem is the distribution of resources which self-regulation

requires. If some people or groups have far less than others, their

preferences and aspirations will play no role in determining the overall

outcome. Meanwhile any redistribution of resources violates the

requirement of self-equilibration which the metaphor stipulates.

Constructivism and self-organisation are the two main metaphors of the

modern era. It is with their help more than anything that contemporary

politics has come to be conceptualised. Yet the metaphors are at the

same time incompatible with each other. For each individual this is not

immediately obvious since the plans he or she makes readily can be

combined with self-organisation on a social level (Hayek, 1988). If we let

each person build whatever buildings they like, our cities will simply

become the aggregate of all these buildings. The problem arises when

both metaphors simultaneously are taken to apply to social life in the

aggregate. If someone tries to reconstruct society as a whole, individuals

210

will have to be convinced, coerced or cajoled into contributing to the

common project.

Compare the proverbial clash between central planners and the laissez-

faire market. The old Soviet Union was a gigantic construction site on

which the Communist Party tried to erect its vision of the future; the

free-market, as described by American libertarians, is a cybernetic device

with which politicians tamper only at their peril. Although most societies

have sought to strike some balance between these two models of social

organisation, this has been notoriously difficult to do. The metaphors do

not mix very well. Rather than trying to combine them, they have been

applied sequentially ― to different sectors of society or perhaps to the

same sector over the course of time. Over the last thirty or so years, the

self-organising metaphor has gradually become more influential than the

constructivist.

Regardless of the contradictions between them, both metaphors

constituted radical breaks with previous ways of conceptualising society.

The question is how and why they came to be accepted. An obvious

answer is that the respective metaphors were backed by powerful groups

employing a powerful rhetoric. In the eighteenth century, philosophers

and radical reformers did everything in their power to convince people to

tear down the ancièns régimes, maintained only by the force of prejudice

and the inertia of tradition. Similarly the proponents of cybernetic

models, often sponsored by assorted right-wing think-tanks, have

211

recently launched campaigns against the ‘central planning’ and ‘socialism’

which the constructivist metaphor is said to imply.

Yet it is obvious that the real causes of the metaphorical revolutions are

to be found in far deeper social, economic and cultural changes. In both

cases the revolutionaries benefited from developments which they in no

way can be said to have been responsible for. Above all their success

depended on a gradual undermining of the previously dominant

metaphors. The world had changed in ways the official rhetoric had been

unable to notice. As a result society and its representation in thought had

become ever-more separated. Again this is a consequence of the logic of

metaphors. Since metaphors highlight certain aspects of reality while

hiding others, there will always be things which we fail to see; there will

be dark corners, as it were, which our concepts cannot illuminate. If

dramatic economic, social or cultural changes take place in these dark

corners, outside of the purview of the metaphor, the official

interpretations will become less and less relevant. Eventually they can

simply be brushed aside. Hence the unexpected ease with which the old

regime in France ― and in the Soviet Union ― eventually were toppled.

What really determined the success of the constructivist metaphor was

thus not the rhetoric of the eighteenth-century philosophers but rather

the dramatic social, cultural and economic changes taking place at the

time. The construction-site metaphor became believable inter alia

because of the weakening of the intellectual hegemony of the Church;

the success of rationalistic science; the commercial, financial and

212

industrial revolutions; the creation of new media, including printing

presses; and the emergence of the state as an entrepreneurial power.

Similarly, the cybernetic metaphor gained credibility above all as a result

of the all too obvious failures of constructivism. After all, the

constructivist plans rarely worked out the way they were intended. Many

of the buildings were quite impossible to realise and far too many people

died on the construction sites. The buildings, even if completed, turned

out to be impossible to live in, to alter or refurnish, and in any case the

constructivist projects always gave far too much power to the architects

and the contractors.

The making and unmaking of consent

No one lives in the world as it 'really is.' There are no such real worlds.

Instead everyone lives in a world that is interpreted, made meaningful,

and meaning is created as things are compared to things which they are

not. Meaning is made through metaphor. The metaphors applied to

social life determine how interpersonal relations are defined and how

political authority and economic resources are distributed. In this way

metaphors come to exercise power. Since different metaphors interpret

the world differently it makes a great difference which metaphors a

society has come to embrace.

For each individual the situation never presents itself in quite this

way. The world we are born into is already made meaningful for us; it is

pre-interpreted, and as we come to master the interpretative codes of

our societies we come to accept these meanings. Metaphors constitute

the conceptual furniture of our everyday lives which we use without

213

thinking too much or too deeply about. Very occasionally, however, even

the sturdiest conceptual furniture breaks; the metaphors stop making

sense if they are stretched too far. A broken, over-stretched, metaphor

has to be replaced by another. This accounts for the revolutionary shifts

that take place in the history of our societies; a political revolution is a

consequence rather than a cause of these revolutions in metaphor.

Yet such metaphorical replacements are quite impossible to

consciously bring about. Metaphorical shifts – from organic to

constructivist metaphors, say – are always deeply embedded in large-

scale social, economic and epistemological transformations. Such

transformations no individuals can carry out no matter how fervently they

try. Metaphorical revolutions are rare and if we hope to take part in one

we will almost always be disappointed.

The alternative open to dissenters is to take the world as it is

presented to them -- to accept the leading metaphors of our age as good

enough but to reinterpret them in a subversive fashion. The aim is to

explore and expand the systems of reverberations looking for ways to

undermine, recode and decentre the accepted meanings. This may

sound like a limited, reformist, agenda, and this may indeed be the case.

Yet very powerful statements can often be made in this way and since

they use rather than seek to replace existing metaphors, this is a

strategy which is far more likely to meet with success.

214

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