Empire (46 page)

furnish us with the key we need. The passage from the formal

subsumption to the real must be explained through the practices

ofactive subjective forces. In other words, disciplinarity pushed to

its extreme, imposed by the global Taylorization oflabor processes,

cannot actually determine the need for a new form of command

256

P A S S A G E S O F P R O D U C T I O N

except through the expression ofactive social subjectivities. The

globalization of markets, far from being simply the horrible fruit

ofcapitalist entrepreneurship, was actually the result ofthe desires

and demands ofTaylorist, Fordist, and disciplined labor power across

the world. In this sense, the processes ofthe formal subsumption

anticipated and carried through to maturity the real subsumption,

not because the latter was the product ofthe former (as Marx himself

seemed to believe), but because in the former were constructed

conditions ofliberation and struggle that only the latter could con-

trol. The movements ofdesiring subjectivities forced the develop-

ment to go forward—and proclaimed that there was no turning

back. In response to these movements in both the dominant and

the subordinated countries, a new form of control had to be posed

in order to establish command over what was no longer controllable

in disciplinary terms.

P RIMITIVE A CCUMULATIONS

Just when the proletariat seems to be disappearing from the world stage,
the proletariat is becoming the universal figure of labor. This claim is not
actually as paradoxical as it may seem. What has disappeared is the

hegemonic position of the industrial working class, which has not disappeared
or even declined in numbers—it has merely lost its hegemonic position and
shifted geographically. We understand the concept ‘‘proletariat,’’ however,
to refer not just to the industrial working class but to all those who are
subordinated to, exploited by, and produce under the rule of capital. From
this perspective, then, as capital ever more globalizes its relations of production, all forms of labor tend to be proletarianized. In each society and across
the entire world the proletariat is the ever more general figure of social labor.

Marx described the processes of proletarianization in terms of
primitive accumulation,
the prior or previous accumulation necessary before capitalist
production and reproduction can begin to take place. What is necessary is
not merely an accumulation of wealth or property, but a
social
accumulation,
the creation of capitalists and proletarians. The essential historical process,
then, involves first of all divorcing the producer from the means of production.

For Marx it was sufficient to describe the English example of this social
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

257

transformation, since England represented the ‘‘highest point’’ of capitalist
development at the time. In England, Marx explains, proletarianization

was accomplished first by the enclosures of the common lands and the clearing
of peasants from the estates, and then by the brutal punishment of vagabond-age and vagrancy. The English peasant was thus ‘‘freed’’ from all previous
means of subsistence, herded toward the new manufacturing towns, and

made ready for the wage relation and the discipline of capitalist production.

The central motor for the creation of capitalists, by contrast, came from
outside England, from commerce—or really from conquest, the slave trade,
and the colonial system. ‘‘The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement and murder,’’ Marx writes, ‘‘flowed back to
the mother-country and were turned into capital there.’’1 The enormous

influx of wealth overflowed the capacities of the old feudal relations of
production. English capitalists sprang up to embody the new regime of

command that could exploit this new wealth.

It would be a mistake, however, to take the English experience of

becoming-proletarian and becoming-capitalist as representative of all the
others. Over the last three hundred years, as capitalist relations of production
and reproduction have spread across the world, although primitive accumulation has always involved separating the producer from the means of production
and thereby creating classes of proletarians and capitalists, each process of
social transformation has nonetheless been unique. In each case the social
and productive relations that preexisted were different, the processes of the
transition were different, and even the form of the resulting capitalist relations
of production and especially those of reproduction were different in line with
specific cultural and historical differences.

Despite these important differences, it is still useful to group the

modern processes of primitive accumulation under two general models that
highlight the relationship between wealth and command, and between
inside and outside.
In all cases, the primitive accumulation of capital requires a
new combination of wealth and command. What is distinctive about the

first model, which Marx described for England and which applies generally
to Europe as a whole, is that the new wealth for the primitive accumulation
of capital comes from the outside (from the colonial territories) and the
command arises internally (through the evolution of English and European
258

P A S S A G E S O F P R O D U C T I O N

relations of production). According to the second model, which characterizes
most of the modern processes of primitive accumulation outside Europe, the
terms are reversed, such that the new wealth arises from within and command
comes from the outside (usually European capital). This inversion of wealth/

command and inside/outside in the two models leads to a whole series of
differences in the economic, political, and social formations of capital across
the world. Many of these differences deriving from the two models were

described adequately by theorists of underdevelopment in terms of central
and peripheral capitalist formations.2

As we pass from modernity to postmodernity, the processes of primitive

accumulation do indeed continue. Primitive accumulation is not a process
that happens once and then is done with; rather, capitalist relations of
production and social classes have to be reproduced continually. What has
changed is the model or mode of primitive accumulation. First of all, the
play between inside and outside that distinguishes the two modern models
has progressively declined. More important, the nature of the labor and
wealth accumulated is changing. In postmodernity the social wealth accumulated is increasingly immaterial; it involves social relations, communication
systems, information, and affective networks. Correspondingly, social labor
is increasingly more immaterial; it simultaneously produces and reproduces
directly all aspects of social life. As the proletariat is becoming the universal
figure of labor, the object of proletarian labor is becoming equally universal.

Social labor produces life itself.

We should emphasize the central role that informational accumulation

plays in the processes of postmodern primitive accumulation and the ever
greater socialization of production. As the new informational economy

emerges, a certain accumulation of information is necessary before capitalist
production can take place. Information carries through its networks both the
wealth and the command of production, disrupting previous conceptions of
inside and outside, but also reducing the temporal progression that had
previously defined primitive accumulation. In other words, informational
accumulation (like the primitive accumulation Marx analyzed) destroys or
at least destructures the previously existing productive processes, but (differently than Marx’s primitive accumulation) it immediately integrates those
productive processes in its own networks and generates across the different
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

259

realms of production the highest levels of productivity. The temporal sequence
of development is thus reduced to immediacy as the entire society tends to
be integrated in some way into the networks of informational production.

Information networks tend toward something like
a simultaneity ofsocial production.
The revolution of informational accumulation therefore requires
an enormous leap forward in the greater socialization of production. This
increased socialization, along with the reduction of social space and temporality, is a process that no doubt benefits capital with increased productivity,
but is one also that points beyond the era of capital toward a new social
mode of production.

3.3

R E S I S T A N C E , C R I S I S , T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

The continuity ofstruggle is easy: the workers need only them-

selves and the boss in front of them. But the continuity of organiza-

tion is a rare and complex thing: as soon as it is institutionalized it

quickly becomes used by capitalism, or by the workers’ movement

in the service ofcapitalism.

Mario Tronti

The New Left sprang . . . from Elvis’s gyrating pelvis.

Jerry Rubin

Earlier we posed the Vietnam War as a deviation from

the U.S. constitutional project and its tendency toward Empire.

The war was also, however, an expression of the desire for freedom

ofthe Vietnamese, an expression ofpeasant and proletarian subjec-

tivity—a fundamental example of resistance against both the final

forms of imperialism and the international disciplinary regime. The

Vietnam War represents a real turning point in the history ofcon-

temporary capitalism insofar as the Vietnamese resistance is con-

ceived as the symbolic center ofa whole series ofstruggles around

the world that had up until that point remained separate and distant

from one another. The peasantry who were being subsumed under

multinational capital, the (post)colonial proletariat, the industrial

working class in the dominant capitalist countries, and the new

strata ofintellectual proletariat everywhere all tended toward a

common site ofexploitation in the factory-society ofthe globalized

R E S I S T A N C E , C R I S I S , T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

261

disciplinary regime. The various struggles converged against one

common enemy:
the international disciplinary order.
An objective unity was established, sometimes with the consciousness ofthose in struggle and sometimes without. The long cycle ofstruggles against the

disciplinary regimes had reached maturity and forced capital to

modify its own structures and undergo a paradigm shift.

Two, Three, Many Vietnams

In the late 1960s the international system ofcapitalist production

was in crisis.1 Capitalist crisis, as Marx tells us, is a situation that

requires capital to undergo a general devaluation and a profound

rearrangement ofthe relations ofproduction as a result ofthe

downward pressure that the proletariat puts on the rate ofprofit.

In other words, capitalist crisis is not simply a function of capital’s

own dynamics but is caused directly by proletarian conflict.2 This

Marxian notion ofcrisis helps bring to light the most important

features ofthe crisis ofthe late 1960s. The fall ofthe rate ofprofit

and the disruption ofrelations ofcommand in this period are best

understood when seen as a
result
ofthe confluence and accumulation ofproletarian and anticapitalist attacks against the international capitalist system.

In the dominant capitalist countries, this period witnessed a

worker attack ofthe highest intensity directed primarily against the

disciplinary regimes ofcapitalist labor. The attack was expressed,

first ofall, as a general refusal ofwork and specifically as a refusal

offactory work. It was aimed against productivity and against any

model ofdevelopment based on increasing the productivity of

factory labor. The refusal of the disciplinary regime and the affirma-

tion ofthe sphere ofnon-work became the defining features ofa

new set ofcollective practices and a new form oflife.3 Second, the

attack served to subvert the capitalist divisions ofthe labor market.

The three primary characteristics ofthe labor market—the separa-

tion ofsocial groups (by class strata, race, ethnicity, or sex), the

fluidity ofthe labor market (social mobility, tertiarization, new

relations between directly and indirectly productive labor, and so

262

P A S S A G E S O F P R O D U C T I O N

forth), and the hierarchies ofthe market ofabstract labor—were

all threatened by the rising rigidity and commonality ofworker

demands. The increasing socialization ofcapital led also toward the

social unification ofthe proletariat. This increasingly unified voice

posed the general demand for a guaranteed social wage and a very

high level ofwelfare.4 Third, and finally, the worker attack was