Exporting state violence abroad freed capital accumulation from economic and ethical law

Evidence

The first consequence of power export was that the state’s instruments of violence, the police and the army, which in the framework of the nation existed beside, and were controlled by, other national institutions, were separated from this body and promoted to the position of national representatives in uncivilized or weak countries. Here, in backward regions without industries and political organization, where violence was given more latitude than in any Western country, the so-called laws of capitalism were actually allowed to create realities. … Money could finally beget money because power, with complete disregard for all laws—economic as well as ethical—could appropriate wealth. Only when exported money succeeded in stimulating the export of power could it accomplish its owners’ designs. Only the unlimited accumulation of power could bring about the unlimited accumulation of capital. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 371

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This is a core mechanism in Arendt’s whole architecture: the colonial zone as law-free space where violence grounds capital. Dense enough to anchor much of the book’s later argument about totalitarianism.
• XREF: Connects directly to Agamben on the state of exception and Fanon on the colonial zone as a space of pure violence — key scaffolding for the reader’s Islamophobia toolkit. — connects to: War-torn states serve capital as plunder zones free of state duties — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2014