Empire (58 page)

destroy traditional social boundaries, expanding across territories

and enveloping always new populations within its processes. Capital

functions, according to the terminology of Deleuze and Guattari,

through a generalized decoding offluxes, a massive deterritorializa-

tion, and then through conjunctions ofthese deterritorialized and

decoded fluxes.1 We can understand the functioning of capital as

deterritorializing and immanent in three primary aspects that Marx

himselfanalyzed. First, in the processes ofprimitive accumulation,

capital separates populations from specifically coded territories and

sets them in motion. It clears the Estates and creates a ‘‘free’’ proletar-

iat. Traditional cultures and social organizations are destroyed in

capital’s tireless march through the world to create the networks

and pathways ofa single cultural and economic system ofproduction

and circulation. Second, capital brings all forms of value together

on one common plane and links them all through money, their

general equivalent. Capital tends to reduce all previously established

forms ofstatus, title, and privilege to the level ofthe cash nexus,

that is, to quantitative and commensurable economic terms. Third,

the laws by which capital functions are not separate and fixed laws

that stand above and direct capital’s operations from on high, but

historically variable laws that are immanent to the very functioning

ofcapital: the laws ofthe rate ofprofit, the rate ofexploitation,

the realization ofsurplus value, and so forth.

Capital therefore demands not a transcendent power but a

mechanism ofcontrol that resides on the plane ofimmanence.

Through the social development ofcapital, the mechanisms of

modern sovereignty—the processes ofcoding, overcoding, and

recoding that imposed a transcendent order over a bounded and

segmented social terrain—are progressively replaced by an
axiomatic:

that is, a set ofequations and relationships that determines and

combines variables and coefficients immediately and equally across

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

327

various terrains without reference to prior and fixed definitions or

terms.2 The primary characteristic ofsuch an axiomatic is that

relations are prior to their terms. In other words, within an axiomatic

system, postulates ‘‘are not propositions that can be true or false,

since they contain relatively indeterminate
variables.
Only when we give these variables particular values, or in other words, when we

substitute constants for them, do the postulates become propositions,

true or false, according to the constants chosen.’’3 Capital operates

through just such an axiomatic ofpropositional f

unctions. The

general equivalence ofmoney brings all elements together in quanti-

fiable, commensurable relations, and then the immanent laws or

equations ofcapital determine their deployment and relation accord-

ing to the particular constants that are substituted for the variables

ofthe equations. Just as an axiomatic destabilizes any terms and

definitions prior to the relations oflogical deduction, so too capital

sweeps clear the fixed barriers ofprecapitalist society—and even

the boundaries ofthe nation-state tend to fade into the background

as capital realizes itselfin the world market. Capital tends toward

a smooth space defined by uncoded flows, flexibility, continual

modulation, and tendential equalization.4

The transcendence ofmodern sovereignty thus conflicts with

the immanence ofcapital. Historically, capital has relied on sover-

eignty and the support ofits structures ofright and force, but those

same structures continually contradict in principle and obstruct in

practice the operation ofcapital, finally obstructing its development.

The entire history ofmodernity that we have traced thus far might

be seen as the evolution ofthe attempts to negotiate and mediate

this contradiction. The historical process ofmediation has been not

an equal give and take, but rather a one-sided movement from

sovereignty’s transcendent position toward capital’s plane ofimma-

nence. Foucault traces this movement in his analysis ofthe passage

in European rule between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

from ‘‘sovereignty’’ (an absolute form of sovereignty centralized in

the will and person ofthe Prince) and ‘‘governmentality’’ (a form

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

ofsovereignty expressed through a decentralized economy ofrule

and management ofgoods and populations).5 This passage between

forms of sovereignty coincides importantly with the early develop-

ment and expansion ofcapital. Each ofthe modern paradigms of

sovereignty indeed supports capital’s operation for a specific histori-

cal period, but at the same time they pose obstacles to capital’s

development that eventually have to be overcome. This evolving

relationship is perhaps the central problematic to be confronted by

any theory ofthe capitalist state.

Civil society served for one historical period as mediator be-

tween the immanent forces of capital and the transcendent power

ofmodern sovereignty. Hegel adopted the term ‘‘civil society’’ from

his reading ofBritish economists, and he understood it as a mediation

between the self-interested endeavors of a plurality of economic

individuals and the unified interest ofthe state. Civil society mediates

between the (immanent) Many and the (transcendent) One. The

institutions that constitute civil society functioned as passageways

that channel flows ofsocial and economic forces, raising them up

toward a coherent unity and, flowing back, like an irrigation net-

work, distribute the command ofthe unity throughout the imma-

nent social field. These non-state institutions, in other words, orga-

nized capitalist society under the order ofthe state and in turn

spread state rule throughout society. In the terms ofour conceptual

framework, we might say that civil society was the terrain of the

becoming-immanent ofmodern state sovereignty (down to capitalist

society) and at the same time inversely the becoming-transcendent

ofcapitalist society (up to the state).

In our times, however, civil society no longer serves as the

adequate point ofmediation between capital and sovereignty. The

structures and institutions that constitute it are today progressively

withering away. We have argued elsewhere that this withering can

be grasped clearly in terms ofthe decline ofthe dialectic between

the capitalist state and labor, that is, in the decline of the effectiveness and role oflabor unions, the decline ofcollective bargaining with

labor, and the decline ofthe representation oflabor in the constitu-

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

329

tion.6 The withering ofcivil society might also be recognized as

concomitant with the passage from disciplinary society to the society

ofcontrol (see Section 2.6). Today the social institutions that consti-

tute disciplinary society (the school, the family, the hospital, the

factory), which are in large part the same as or closely related to

those understood as civil society, are everywhere in crisis. As the

walls ofthese institutions break down, the logics ofsubjectification

that previously operated within their limited spaces now spread

out, generalized across the social field. The breakdown ofthe institu-

tions, the withering ofcivil society, and the decline ofdisciplinary

society all involve a smoothing ofthe striation ofmodern social

space. Here arise the networks ofthe society ofcontrol.7

With respect to disciplinary society and civil society, the society

ofcontrol marks a step toward the plane ofimmanence. The disci-

plinary institutions, the boundaries of the effectivity of their logics,

and their striation ofsocial space all constitute instances ofverticality

or transcendence over the social plane. We should be careful, how-

ever, to locate where exactly this transcendence ofdisciplinary

society resides. Foucault was insistent on the fact, and this was the

brilliant core ofhis analysis, that the exercise ofdiscipline is abso-

lutely immanent to the subjectivities under its command. In other

words, discipline is not an external voice that dictates our practices

from on high, overarching us, as Hobbes would say, but rather

something like an inner compulsion indistinguishable from our

will, immanent to and inseparable from our subjectivity itself. The

institutions that are the condition ofpossibility and that define

spatially the zones of effectivity of the exercise of discipline, how-

ever, do maintain a certain separation from the social forces pro-

duced and organized. They are in effect an instance of sovereignty,

or rather a point ofmediation with sovereignty. The walls ofthe

prison both enable and limit the exercise ofcarceral logics. They

differentiate social space.

Foucault negotiates with enormous subtlety this distance be-

tween the transcendent walls ofthe institutions and the immanent

exercise ofdiscipline through his theories ofthe
dispositif
and the 330

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

diagram, which articulate a series ofstages ofabstraction.8 In some-

what simplified terms, we can say that the
dispositif
(which is translated as either mechanism, apparatus, or deployment) is the general

strategy that stands behind the immanent and actual exercise of

discipline. Carceral logic, for example, is the unified dispositif that

oversees or subtends—and is thus abstracted and distinct from—the

multiplicity ofprison practices. At a second level ofabstraction, the

diagram
enables the deployments ofthe disciplinary dispositif. For example, the carceral architecture ofthe panopticon, which makes

inmates constantly visible to a central point ofpower, is the diagram

or virtual design that is actualized in the various disciplinary dispos-

itifs. Finally, the institutions themselves instantiate the diagram in

particular and concrete social forms as well. The prison (its walls,

administrators, guards, laws, and so forth) does not rule its inmates

the way a sovereign commands its subjects. It creates a space in

which inmates, through the strategies ofcarceral dispositif

s and

through actual practices,
discipline themselves.
It would be more

precise to say, then, that the disciplinary institution is not itself

sovereign, but its abstraction from or transcendence above the social

field ofthe production ofsubjectivity constitutes the key element

in the exercise ofsovereignty in disciplinary society. Sovereignty

has become virtual (but it is for that no less real), and it is actualized

always and everywhere through the exercise ofdiscipline.

Today the collapse ofthe walls that delimited the institutions

and the smoothing ofsocial striation are symptoms ofthe flattening

ofthese vertical instances toward the horizontality ofthe circuits

ofcontrol. The passage to the society ofcontrol does not in any

way mean the end ofdiscipline. In fact, the immanent exercise of

discipline—that is, the self-disciplining of subjects, the incessant

whisperings ofdisciplinary logics within subjectivities them-

selves—is extended even more generally in the society ofcontrol.

What has changed is that, along with the collapse ofthe institutions,

the disciplinary dispositifs have become less limited and bounded

spatially in the social field. Carceral discipline, school discipline,

factory discipline, and so forth interweave in a hybrid production

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

331

of subjectivity. In effect, in the passage to the society of control,

the elements oftranscendence ofdisciplinary society decline while

the immanent aspects are accentuated and generalized.

The immanent production ofsubjectivity in the society of

control corresponds to the axiomatic logic ofcapital, and their

resemblance indicates a new and more complete compatibility be-

tween sovereignty and capital. The production ofsubjectivity in

civil society and disciplinary society did in a certain period further

the rule and facilitate the expansion of capital. The modern social

institutions produced social identities that were much more mobile

and flexible than the previous subjective figures. The subjectivities

produced in the modern institutions were like the standardized

machine parts produced in the mass factory: the inmate, the mother,

the worker, the student, and so forth. Each part played a specific

role in the assembled machine, but it was standardized, produced

en masse, and thus replaceable with any part ofits type. At a certain

point, however, the fixity ofthese standardized parts, ofthe identities

produced by the institutions, came to pose an obstacle to the further

progression toward mobility and flexibility. The passage toward the

society ofcontrol involves a production ofsubjectivity that is not