Pre-modern power operated intermittently while modern power infiltrates production continuously

Evidence

What was new in the nineteenth century was the nature of control. Earlier kinds of power, however centralised, were never continuous. They operated intermittently, typically in the form of levies, obligations and extortions imposed upon certain less powerful households, which in turn imposed levies on those less powerful around them, and so on. The irregular flows of revenue towards the centre were always weakened by the inevitable leakage at each juncture, the need to expand outwards, and the centrifugal tendency to disintegrate. From the nineteenth century for the first time political power sought to work in a manner that was continuous, meticulous and uniform. The method was no longer simply to take a share of what was produced and exchanged, but to enter into the process of production. By supervising each of its aspects separately and without interruption, political power attempted to discipline, coordinate and increase what were now thought of as the ‘productive powers’ of the country. The tendency of disciplinary mechanisms, as Michel Foucault has called these modern strategies of control, was not to expand and dissipate as before, but to infiltrate, re-order, and colonise. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 131 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Modern acceleration began in distribution and trade, not in production — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 453; Nineteenth-century power shifted from intermittent extraction to continuous supervision of production. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 131; Power is misimagined as exterior restriction rather than interior formation — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 25 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Nineteenth-century power shifted from intermittent extraction to continuous supervision of production. #exemplifies (0.93) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 131