Empire (44 page)

dollar (through the Marshall Plan in Europe and the economic

reconstruction in Japan) was the ineluctable path to postwar recon-

struction; the establishment ofthe dollar’s hegemony (through the

Bretton Woods accords) was tied to the stability ofall the standards

ofvalue; and U.S. military power determined the ultimate exercise

ofsovereignty with respect to each ofthe dominant and subordinate

capitalist countries. All the way up to the 1960s this model was

expanded and perfected. It was the Golden Age of the New Deal

reform of capitalism on the world stage.10

Decolonization, Decentering, and Discipline

As a result ofthe project ofeconomic and social reform under

U.S. hegemony, the imperialist politics ofthe dominant capitalist

countries was transformed in the postwar period. The new global

scene was defined and organized primarily around three mechanisms

D I S C I P L I N A R Y G O V E R N A B I L I T Y

245

or apparatuses: (1) the process ofdecolonization that gradually re-

composed the world market along hierarchical lines branching out

from the United States; (2) the gradual decentralization of produc-

tion; and (3) the construction ofa framework ofinternational rela-

tions that spread across the globe the disciplinary productive regime

and disciplinary society in its successive evolutions. Each ofthese

aspects constitutes a step in the evolution from imperialism to-

ward Empire.

Decolonization, the first mechanism, was certainly a bitter and

ferocious process. We have already dealt with it briefly in Section

2.3, and we have seen its convulsive movements from the point

ofview ofthe colonized in struggle. Here we must historicize the

process from the standpoint of the dominant powers. The colonial

territories ofdefeated Germany, Italy, and Japan, ofcourse, were

completely dissolved or absorbed by the other powers. By this time,

however, the colonial projects ofthe victors, too (Britain, France,

Belgium, and Holland), had come to a standstill.11 In addition to

facing growing liberation movements in the colonies, they also

found themselves stymied by the bipolar divide between the United

States and the Soviet Union. The decolonization movements too

were seized immediately in the jaws ofthis cold war vise, and the

movements that had been focused on their independence were

forced to negotiate between the two camps.12 What Truman said

in 1947 during the Greek crisis remained true for the decolonizing

and postcolonial forces throughout the cold war: ‘‘At the present

moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between

alternative ways oflife.’’13

The linear trajectory ofdecolonization was thus interrupted

by the necessity ofselecting a global adversary and lining up behind

one ofthe two models ofinternational order. The United States,

which was by and large favorable to decolonization, was forced by

the necessities ofthe cold war and the defeat ofthe old imperialisms

to assume the primary role as international guardian ofcapitalism

and hence ambiguous heir ofthe old colonizers. From both the

side ofthe anticolonial subjects and the side ofthe United States,

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decolonization was thus distorted and diverted. The United States

inherited a global order, but one whose forms of rule conflicted

with its own constitutional project, its imperial form of sovereignty.

The Vietnam War was the final episode ofthe United States’

ambiguous inheritance ofthe old imperialist mantle, and it ran the

risk ofblocking any possible opening ofan imperial ‘‘new frontier’’

(see Section 2.5). This phase was the final obstacle to the maturation

ofthe new imperial design, which would eventually be built on

the ashes ofthe old imperialisms. Little by little, after the Vietnam

War the new world market was organized: a world market that

destroyed the fixed boundaries and hierarchical procedures ofEuro-

pean imperialisms. In other words, the completion ofthe decoloni-

zation process signaled the point ofarrival ofa new world hierarchi-

zation ofthe relations ofdomination—and the keys were firmly

in the hands ofthe United States. The bitter and ferocious history

ofthe first period ofdecolonization opened onto a second phase

in which the army ofcommand wielded its power less through

military hardware and more through the dollar. This was an enor-

mous step forward toward the construction of Empire.

The second mechanism is defined by a process ofdecentering

the sites and flows ofproduction.14 Here, as in decolonization, two

phases divide the postwar period. A first, neocolonial phase involved

the continuity ofthe old hierarchical imperialist procedures and

the maintenance ifnot deepening ofthe mechanisms ofunequal

exchange between subordinated regions and dominant nation-states.

This first period, however, was a brieftransitional phase, and, in

effect, in the arc of twenty years the scene changed radically. By

the end ofthe 1970s, or really by the end ofthe Vietnam War,

transnational corporations began to establish their activities firmly

across the globe, in every corner ofthe planet. The transnationals

became the fundamental motor of the economic and political trans-

formation of postcolonial countries and subordinated regions. In

the first place, they served to transfer the technology that was

essential for constructing the new productive axis of the subordinate

countries; second, they mobilized the labor force and local produc-

D I S C I P L I N A R Y G O V E R N A B I L I T Y

247

tive capacities in these countries; and finally, the transnationals

collected the flows ofwealth that began to circulate on an enlarged

base across the globe. These multiple flows began to converge

essentially toward the United States, which guaranteed and coordi-

nated, when it did not directly command, the movement and

operation ofthe transnationals. This was a decisive constituent phase

ofEmpire. Through the activities ofthe transnational corporations,

the mediation and equalization ofthe rates ofprofit were unhinged

from the power of the dominant nation-states. Furthermore, the

constitution ofcapitalist interests tied to the new postcolonial

nation-states, far from opposing the intervention of transnationals,

developed on the terrain ofthe transnationals themselves and tended

to be formed under their control. Through the decentering of

productive flows, new regional economies and a new global division

oflabor began to be determined.15 There was no global order yet,

but an order was being formed.

Along with the decolonization process and the decentering

offlows, a third mechanism involved the spread ofdisciplinary

forms of production and government across the world. This process

was highly ambiguous. In the postcolonial countries, discipline

required first ofall transforming the massive popular mobilization

for liberation into a mobilization for production. Peasants through-

out the world were uprooted from their fields and villages and

thrown into the burning forge of world production.16 The ideologi-

cal model that was projected from the dominant countries (particu-

larly from the United States) consisted of Fordist wage regimes,

Taylorist methods ofthe organization oflabor, and a welfare state

that would be modernizing, paternalistic, and protective. From the

standpoint ofcapital, the dream ofthis model was that eventually

every worker in the world, sufficiently disciplined, would be inter-

changeable in the global productive process—a global factory-

society and a global Fordism. The high wages ofa Fordist regime

and the accompanying state assistance were posed as the workers’

rewards for accepting disciplinarity, for entering the global factory.

We should be careful to point out, however, that these specific

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relations ofproduction, which were developed in the dominant

countries, were never realized in the same forms in the subordinated

regions ofthe global economy. The regime ofhigh wages that

characterizes Fordism and the broad social assistance that character-

izes the welfare state were realized only in fragmentary forms and

for limited populations in the subordinated capitalist countries. All

this, however, did not really have to be realized; its promise served

rather as the ideological carrot to ensure sufficient consensus for

the modernizing project. The real substance of the effort, the real

take-off toward modernity, which was in fact achieved, was the

spread ofthe disciplinary regime throughout the social spheres of

production and reproduction.

The leaders ofthe socialist states agreed in substance on this

disciplinary project. Lenin’s renowned enthusiasm for Taylorism

was later outdone by Mao’s modernization projects.17 The official

socialist recipe for decolonization also followed the essential logic

dictated by the capitalist transnationals and the international agen-

cies: each postcolonial government had to create a labor force

adequate to the disciplinary regime. Numerous socialist economists

(especially those who were in the position to plan the economies

ofcountries recently liberated from colonialism) claimed that indus-

trialization was the ineluctable path to development18 and enumer-

ated the benefits ofthe extension of‘‘peripheral Fordist’’ econo-

mies.19 The benefits were really an illusion, and the illusion did not

last long, but that could not significantly alter the course ofthese

postcolonial countries along the path ofmodernization and discipli-

narization. This seemed to be the only path open to them.20 Disci-

plinarity was everywhere the rule.

These three mechanisms—decolonization, decentering of

production, and disciplinarity—characterize the imperial power of

the New Deal, and demonstrate how far it moved beyond the old

practices ofimperialism. Certainly the original formulators ofthe

New Deal policies in the United States in the 1930s never imagined

such a wide application oftheir ideas, but already in the 1940s, in

the midst ofwar, world leaders began to recognize its role and

D I S C I P L I N A R Y G O V E R N A B I L I T Y

249

power in the establishment ofglobal economic and political order.

By the time ofHarry Truman’s inauguration, he understood that

finally the old European-style imperialism could have no part in

their plans. No, the new era had something new in store.

Into and Out of Modernity

The cold war was the dominant figure on the global scene during

the period ofdecolonization and decentralization, but from today’s

vantage point we have the impression that its role was really second-

ary. Although the specular oppositions ofthe cold war strangled

both the U.S. imperial project and the Stalinist project ofsocialist

modernization, these were really minor elements ofthe entire pro-

cess. The truly important element, whose significance goes well

beyond the history ofthe cold war, was the gigantic postcolonial

transformation ofthe Third World under the guise ofmodernization

and development. In the final analysis, that project was relatively

independent ofthe dynamics and constraints ofthe cold war, and

one could almost claim,
post factum,
that in the Third World the

competition between the two world power blocs merely accelerated

the processes ofliberation.

It is certainly true that the Third World elites who led the

anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggles during this period were

ideologically tied to one or the other side ofthe cold war divide,

and in both cases they defined the mass project ofliberation in

terms ofmodernization and development. For us, however, poised

as we are at the far border of modernity, it is not difficult to

recognize the tragic lack ofperspective involved in the translation

ofliberation into modernization. The myth ofmodernity—and

thus ofsovereignty, the nation, the disciplinary model, and so

forth—was virtually the exclusive ideology of the elites, but this is

not the most important factor here.

The revolutionary processes ofliberation determined by the

multitude actually pushed beyond the ideology ofmodernization,

and in the process revealed an enormous new production ofsubjec-

tivity. This subjectivity could not be contained in the bipolar U.S.-

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USSR relationship, nor in the two competing regimes, which both

merely reproduced modernity’s modalities ofdomination. When

Nehru, Sukarno, and Chou En-lai came together at the Bandung

Conference in 1955 or when the nonalignment movement first

formed in the 1960s, what was expressed was not so much the

enormity oftheir nations’ misery nor the hope ofrepeating the

glories ofmodernity but rather the enormous potential for liberation

that the subaltern populations themselves produced.21 This non-