the conceptual-perception that value , price , profit and wage are ultimately relative and a matter of what an entity can get away with in the marketplace , the socio-economic objective of mass surveillance and social discipline is to sustain value , price , profit and wage determinations and stability at whatever the cost . All quantifiable values and unquantifiable values produced by creative-power , such as socio-economic confidence , which buttress the capitalist modes of production , consumption and distribution , must be protected , defended and solidified . Subsequently , a soft-totalitarian-state has developed alongside this social constructive process , i . e . a totalizing military-industrial-complex , in an effort to normalize outlandish values , prices , profits and wages , in addition to the fluctuations and the relativism of arbitrary value , price , profit and wage , produced through the social constructive process itself . As a society , socalled western democracies have moved beyond democracy into a new socio-economic formation , the political economic framework of the soft-totalitarian-state :
No longer is there the full possibility of counter-cultures and alternative-cultures [ with their individual value , price , profit and wage determinations ], operating independent and / or outside of dominant mainstream surveillance , discipline and culture . Counter-cultures and alternativecultures are now subsumed , monitored and disciplined within the parameters of the dominantculture of the soft-totalitarian-state , i . e . the [ omnipresent ] military-industrial-complex . It is softtotalitarianism in the sense that we as humans are not imprisoned , disciplined and punished akin to traditional hardline-totalitarian-states but we are monitored and under surveillance akin to traditional hardline-totalitarian-states . Like hardline-totalitarian-states , surveillance is total and continually seeks to refine its totality and its mechanisms of information gathering … but there is a litany of disciplinary and censorship mechanisms in effect that are soft in nature , capable of applying variable degrees of soft and hard disciplinary measures , depending on the situation and / or individual . What distinguishes the soft-totalitarian-state from the traditional conception of the hard-totalitarian-state is its ability to have nuances in its disciplinary measures , i . e . the ability to be as hard and as inhuman towards dissent and disobedience as hardline-totalitarian-states and the ability to be pliable , lax and nuanced towards various degrees of dissent and disobedience .[ 97 ]
The rise of this type of post-industrial , post-modern society , and its accompanying socio-economic formation , is predicated on the fact that the rational value base , that defined modern capitalism and its modern capitalist mode of production so eloquently outlined by Marx , has vanished and / or has been marginalized to the third-world factory system . With the realization that value , price , wage and profit can be positioned , given the right situation , at any level , means that those select few networks capable setting arbitrary values , prices , profits and wages at any conceivable level , need the appropriate disciplinaryapparatuses in place across everyday life so as to manufacture legitimacy , compliance and mass acceptance , pertaining to their arbitrary determinations veiled by free-standing economic laws . Consequently , the incessant broadening of the parameters of surveillance and the military-industrialcomplex , that is , the soft-totalitarian-state , across the stratums of everyday life so as to safeguard the inherent arbitrariness and relativism post-industrial , post-modern bourgeois-state-capitalism so desperately needs to progress .
The fragility of value , price , profit and wage determinations , under socially constructive modes of production , consumption and distribution , requires total surveillance , careful attention and varying degrees of discipline , due to the fact that a population , incensed enough at the arbitrariness of postindustrial , post-modern values , prices , profits and wages , can easily bring the whole house of cards crashing down on itself . As a result , within the parameters of post-industrial , post-modern bourgeoisstate-capitalism , i . e . the soft-totalitarian-state , the population is increasingly disciplined , statistically