Empire (56 page)

tion. Their political action rests on a universal moral call—what is

at stake is life itself. In this regard it is perhaps inaccurate to say

that these NGOs represent those who cannot represent themselves

(the warring populations, the starving masses, and so forth) or even

that they represent the global People in its entirety. They go further

than that. What they really represent is the vital force that underlies

the People, and thus they transform politics into a question of

generic life, life in all its generality. These NGOs extend far and

wide in the humus ofbiopower; they are the capillary ends ofthe

contemporary networks ofpower, or (to return to our general

metaphor) they are the broad base ofthe triangle ofglobal power.

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Here, at this broadest, most universal level, the activities ofthese

NGOs coincide with the workings ofEmpire ‘‘beyond politics,’’

on the terrain ofbiopower, meeting the needs oflife itself.

Polybius and Imperial Government

Ifwe take a step back from the level ofempirical description, we can

quickly recognize that the tripartite division offunctions and elements

that has emerged allows us to enter directly into the problematic of

Empire. In other words, the contemporary empirical situation resem-

bles the theoretical description ofimperial power as the supreme form

ofgovernment that Polybius constructed for Rome and the European

tradition handed down to us.11 For Polybius, the Roman Empire rep-

resented the pinnacle ofpolitical development because it brought

together the three ‘‘good’’ forms of power—monarchy, aristocracy,

and democracy, embodied in the persons ofthe Emperor, the Senate,

and the popular
comitia.
The Empire prevented these good forms from descending into the vicious cycle ofcorruption in which monarchy

becomes tyranny, aristocracy becomes oligarchy, and democracy be-

comes ochlocracy or anarchy.

According to Polybius’ analysis, monarchy anchors the unity

and continuity ofpower. It is the foundation and ultimate instance

ofimperial rule. Aristocracy defines justice, measure, and virtue,

and articulates their networks throughout the social sphere. It over-

sees the reproduction and circulation ofimperial rule. Finally, de-

mocracy organizes the multitude according to a representational

schema so that the People can be brought under the rule ofthe

regime and the regime can be constrained to satisfy the needs of

the People. Democracy guarantees discipline and redistribution.

The Empire we find ourselves faced with today is also—mutatis

mutandis—constituted by a functional equilibrium among these

three forms ofpower: the monarchic unity ofpower and its global

monopoly offorce; aristocratic articulations through transnational

corporations and nation-states; and democratic-representational
co-

mitia,
presented again in the form of nation-states along with the various kinds ofNGOs, media organizations, and other ‘‘popular’’

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315

organisms. One might say that the coming imperial constitution

brings together the three good traditional classifications ofgovern-

ment in a relationship that is formally compatible with Polybius’

model, even though certainly its contents are very different from

the social and political forces of the Roman Empire.

We can recognize the ways in which we are close to and

distant from the Polybian model of imperial power by situating

ourselves in the genealogy ofinterpretations ofPolybius in the

history ofEuropean political thought. The major line ofinterpreta-

tion comes down to us through Machiavelli and the Italian Renais-

sance; it animated the Machiavellian tradition in debates preceding

and following the English Revolution, and finally found its highest

application in the thought ofthe Founding Fathers and the drafting

ofthe U.S. Constitution.12 The key shift to come about in the

course ofthis interpretive tradition was the transformation ofPolyb-

ius’ classical
tripartite
model into a
trifunctional
model ofconstitutional construction. In a still medieval, proto-bourgeois society such as

Machiavelli’s Florence or even prerevolutionary England, the Po-

lybian synthesis was conceived as an edifice uniting three distinct

class bodies: to monarchy belonged the union and force, to aristoc-

racy the land and the army, and to the bourgeoisie the city and

money. Ifthe state were to function properly, every possible conflict

among these bodies had to be resolved in the interest ofthe totality.

In modern political science, however, from Montesquieu to the

Federalists, this synthesis was transformed into a model that regulated

not bodies but functions.
13 Social groups and classes were themselves considered embodying functions: the executive, the judiciary, and

the representative. These functions were abstracted from the collec-

tive social subjects or classes that enacted them and presented instead

as pure juridical elements. The three functions were then organized

in an equilibrium that was formally the same as the equilibrium

that had previously supported the interclass solution. It was an

equilibrium ofchecks and balances, ofweights and counterweights,

that continually managed to reproduce the unity ofthe state and

the coherence ofits parts.14

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It seems to us that in certain respects the original ancient

Polybian model ofthe constitution ofEmpire is closer to our reality

than the modern liberal tradition’s transformation of it. Today we

are once again in a genetic phase ofpower and its accumulation,

in which functions are seen primarily from the angle of the relations

and materiality of force rather than from the perspective of a possible

equilibrium and the formalization of the total definitive arrange-

ment. In this phase ofthe constitution ofEmpire, the demands

expressed by the modern development ofconstitutionalism (such

as the division ofpowers and the formal legality ofprocedures) are

not given the highest priority (see Section 1.1).

One could even argue that our experience ofthe constitution

(in formation) of Empire is really the development and coexistence

ofthe ‘‘bad’’ forms ofgovernment rather than the ‘‘good’’ forms,

as the tradition pretends. All the elements ofthe mixed constitution

appear at first sight in fact as through a distorting lens. Monarchy,

rather than grounding the legitimation and transcendent condition

ofthe unity ofpower, is presented as a global police force and thus

as a form of tyranny. The transnational aristocracy seems to prefer

financial speculation to entrepreneurial virtue and thus appears as

a parasitical oligarchy. Finally, the democratic forces that in this

framework ought to constitute the active and open element of the

imperial machine appear rather as corporative forces, as a set of

superstitions and fundamentalisms, betraying a spirit that is conserva-

tive when not downright reactionary.15 Both within the individual

states and on the international level, this limited sphere ofimperial

‘‘democracy’’ is configured as a
People
(an organized particularity that defends established privileges and properties) rather than as a

multitude
(the universality offree and productive practices).

Hybrid Constitution

The Empire that is emerging today, however, is not really a throw-

back to the ancient Polybian model, even in its negative, ‘‘bad’’

form. The contemporary arrangement is better understood in post-

modern terms, that is, as an evolution beyond the modern, liberal

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317

model ofa mixed constitution. The framework ofjuridical formal-

ization, the constitutional mechanism ofguarantees, and the schema

ofequilibrium are all transformed along two primary axes in the

passage from the modern to the postmodern terrain.

The first axis oftransf

ormation involves the nature ofthe

mixture in the constitution—a passage from the ancient and modern

model ofa
mixtum
ofseparate bodies or functions to a process of

the hybridization ofgovernmental functions in the current situation.

The processes ofthe real subsumption, ofsubsuming labor under

capital and absorbing global society within Empire, force the figures

ofpower to destroy the spatial measure and distance that had defined

their relationships, merging the figures in hybrid forms. This muta-

tion of spatial relationships transforms the exercise of power itself.

First ofall, postmodern imperial monarchy involves rule over the

unity ofthe world market, and thus it is called on to guarantee the

circulation ofgoods, technologies, and labor power—to guarantee,

in effect, the collective dimension of the market. The processes of

the globalization ofmonarchic power, however, can make sense

only ifwe consider them in terms ofthe series ofhybridizations

that monarchy operates with the other forms of power. Imperial

monarchy is not located in a separate isolable place—and our post-

modern Empire has no Rome. The monarchic body is itselfmulti-

form and spatially diffuse. This process of hybridization is even

more clear with respect to the development ofthe aristocratic

function, and specifically the development and articulation of pro-

ductive networks and markets. In fact, aristocratic functions tend

to merge inextricably with monarchic functions. In the case of

postmodern aristocracy, the problem consists not only in creating

a vertical conduit between a center and a periphery for producing

and selling commodities, but also in continuously putting in relation

a wide horizon ofproducers and consumers within and among

markets. This omnilateral relationship between production and con-

sumption becomes all the more important when the production

ofcommodities tends to be defined predominantly by immaterial

services embedded in network structures. Here hybridization be-

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comes a central and conditioning element ofthe f

ormation of

circuits ofproduction and circulation.16 Finally, the democratic

functions of Empire are determined within these same monarchic

and aristocratic hybridizations, shifting their relations in certain

respects and introducing new relations offorce. On all three levels,

what was previously conceived as mixture, which was really the

organic interaction offunctions that remained separate and distinct,

now tends toward a hybridization ofthe functions themselves. We

might thus pose this first axis of transformation as a passage from

mixed constitution
to
hybrid constitution.

A second axis ofconstitutional transformation, which demon-

strates both a displacement ofconstitutional theory and a new quality

of the constitution itself, is revealed by the fact that in the present

phase, command must be exercised to an ever greater extent over

the temporal dimensions ofsociety and hence over the dimension

ofsubjectivity. We have to consider how the monarchic moment

functions both as a unified world government over the circulation

ofgoods and as a mechanism ofthe organization ofcollective social

labor that determines the conditions ofits reproduction.17 The

aristocratic moment must deploy its hierarchical command and its

ordering functions over the transnational articulation of production

and circulation, not only through traditional monetary instruments,

but also to an ever greater degree through the instruments and

dynamics ofthe cooperation ofsocial actors themselves. The pro-

cesses ofsocial cooperation have to be constitutionally formalized

as an aristocratic function. Finally, although both the monarchic

and the aristocratic functions allude to the subjective and productive

dimensions ofthe new hybrid constitution, the key to these transfor-

mations resides in the democratic moment, and the temporal dimen-

sion ofthe democratic moment has to refer ultimately to the multi-

tude. We should never forget, however, that we are dealing here

with the imperial overdetermination ofdemocracy, in which the

multitude is captured in flexible and modulating apparatuses of

control. This is precisely where the most important qualitative leap

must be recognized: from the disciplinary paradigm to the control

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319

paradigm ofgovernment.18 Rule is exercised directly over the move-

ments ofproductive and cooperating subjectivities; institutions are

formed and redefined continually according to the rhythm of these

movements; and the topography ofpower no longer has to do

primarily with spatial relations but is inscribed, rather, in the tempo-

ral displacements ofsubjectivities. Here we find once again the

non-place ofpower that our analysis ofsovereignty revealed earlier.

The non-place is the site where the hybrid control functions of