Technical Machines
Even the most repressive and the most deadly forms of social reproduction are produced by desire within the organization that is the consequence of such production under various conditions that we must analyze. That is why the fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly, and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered: "Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as thought it were their salvation?" How can people possibly reach the point of shouting: "More taxes! Less bread!"? As Reich remarks, the astonishing thing is not that some people steal or that others occasionally go out on strike, but rather that all those who are starving do not seal as a regular practice, and all those who are exploited are not continually out on strike.: after centuries of exploitation, why do people still tolerate being humiliated and enslaved, to such a point, indeed, that they actually want humiliation and slavery not only for others but for themselves? Reich is at his profoundest as a thinker when he refuses to accept ignorance or illusion on the part of the masses as an explanation of fascism, and demands an explanation that will take their desires into account, an explanation formulated in terms of desire: no, the masses were not innocent dupes; at a certain point, under a certain set of conditions, they wanted fascism, and it is this perversion of the desire of the masses that needs to be accounted for.
AO29:1
^ This is a pretty important question. Group Fantasy
also known as Technical Social Machines
Technical Machines and Desiring Machines are, by nature, one and the same things. Technical Machines however serve to highlight certain aspects of Social Production that distinguish themselves from Desiring Machines. These differences are that of Régime, depending on the two's relationships in size.
When technical machines are big, you get good ol'fashioned fascist politics.
Technical machines obviously work if they are not out of order; they ordinarily stop when they wear out. Marx makes use of this simple principle to show that the régime of technical machines is characterized by a strict distinction between the means of production and the product; thanks to this distinction, the machine transmits value to the product, but only the value that the machine itself loses as it wears out.
When desiring machines are big -> revolution, usurption of the "group fantasy" through deinstitutionalization, disinvestment etc. This however when invested enough just turns back into the technical machine's régime
Desiring machines [...] continually break down as they run, and in fact run only when they are not functioning properly: the product is always an offshoot of production, implanting itself upon it like a graft, and at the same time the parts of the machine are the fuel that makes it run
