Empire (59 page)

fixed in identity but hybrid and modulating. As the walls that defined

and isolated the effects of the modern institutions progressively

break down, subjectivities tend to be produced simultaneously by

numerous institutions in different combinations and doses. Certainly

in disciplinary society each individual had many identities, but to

a certain extent the different identities were defined by different

places and different times of life: one was mother or father at home,

worker in the factory, student at school, inmate in prison, and

mental patient in the asylum. In the society ofcontrol, it is precisely

these places, these discrete sites ofapplicability, that tend to lose

their definition and delimitations. A hybrid subjectivity produced

in the society ofcontrol may not carry the identity ofa prison

inmate or a mental patient or a factory worker, but may still be

constituted simultaeously by all oftheir logics. It is factory worker

outside the factory, student outside school, inmate outside prison,

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insane outside the asylum—all at the same time. It belongs to no

identity and all ofthem—outside the institutions but even more

intensely ruled by their disciplinary logics.9 Just like imperial sover-

eignty, the subjectivities ofthe society ofcontrol have mixed consti-

tutions.

A Smooth World

In the passage ofsovereignty toward the plane ofimmanence, the

collapse ofboundaries has taken place both within each national

context and on a global scale. The withering ofcivil society and

the general crisis ofthe disciplinary institutions coincide with the

decline ofnation-states as boundaries that mark and organize the

divisions in global rule. The establishment ofa global society of

control that smooths over the striae ofnational boundaries goes

hand in hand with the realization ofthe world market and the real

subsumption ofglobal society under capital.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, imperialism

contributed to capital’s survival and expansion (see Section 3.1).

The partition ofthe world among the dominant nation-states, the

establishment ofcolonial administrations, the imposition oftrade

exclusives and tariffs, the creation of monopolies and cartels, differ-

entiated zones ofraw material extraction and industrial production,

and so forth all aided capital in its period of global expansion.

Imperialism was a system designed to serve the needs and further

the interests ofcapital in its phase ofglobal conquest. And yet, as

most ofthe (communist, socialist,
and
capitalist) critics ofimperialism have noted, imperialism also from its inception conflicted with

capital. It was a medicine that itselfthreatened the life ofthe patient.

Although imperialism provided avenues and mechanisms for capital

to pervade new territories and spread the capitalist mode ofproduc-

tion, it also created and reinforced rigid boundaries among the

various global spaces, strict notions of inside and outside that effec-

tively blocked the free flow of capital, labor, and goods—thus

necessarily precluding the full realization of the world market.

Imperialism is a machine ofglobal striation, channeling, cod-

ing, and territorializing the flows ofcapital, blocking certain flows

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

333

and facilitating others. The world market, in contrast, requires a

smooth space ofuncoded and deterritorialized flows. This conflict

between the striation ofimperialism and the smooth space ofthe

capitalist world market gives us a new perspective that allows us

to reconsider Rosa Luxemburg’s prediction ofcapitalist collapse:

‘‘Though imperialism is the historical method for prolonging the

career ofcapitalism, it is also the sure means ofbringing it to a

swift conclusion.’’10 The international order and striated space of

imperialism did indeed serve to further capitalism, but it eventually

became a fetter to the deterritorializing flows and smooth space of

capitalist development, and ultimately it had to be cast aside. Rosa

Luxemburg was essentially right:
imperialism would have been the death

of capital had it not been overcome.
The full realization of the world market is necessarily the end ofimperialism.

The decline ofthe power ofnation-states and the dissolution

ofthe international order bring with them the definitive end of

the effectiveness of the term ‘‘Third World.’’ One could tell this story

as a very simple narrative. The term was coined as the complement to

the bipolar cold war division between the dominant capitalist nations

and the major socialist nations, such that the Third World was

conceived as what was outside this primary conflict, the free space

or frontier over which the first two worlds would compete. Since

the cold war is now over, the logic ofthis division is no longer

effective. This is true, but the neat closure of this simple narrative

fails to account for the real history of the term in its important uses

and effects.

Many argued, beginning at least as early as the 1970s, that the

Third World never really existed, in the sense that the conception

attempts to pose as a homogeneous unit an essentially diverse set

ofnations, failing to grasp and even negating the significant social,

economic, and cultural differences between Paraguay and Pakistan,

Morocco and Mozambique. Recognizing this real multiplicity,

however, should not blind us to the fact that, from the point of

view ofcapital in its march ofglobal conquest, such a unitary and

homogenizing conception did have a certain validity. For example,

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Rosa Luxemburg clearly takes the standpoint ofcapital when she

divides the world into the capitalist domain and the noncapitalist

environment. The various zones ofthat environment are undoubt-

edly radically different from one another, but from the standpoint

ofcapital it is all the outside: potential terrain for its expanded

accumulation and its future conquest. During the cold war, when

the regions of the Second World were effectively closed, Third

World meant to the dominant capitalist nations the remaining open

space, the terrain ofpossibility. The diverse cultural, social, and

economic forms could all potentially be subsumed formally under

the dynamic ofcapitalist production and the capitalist markets. From

the standpoint ofthis potential subsumption, despite the real

and substantial differences among nations, the Third World was

really one.

It is similarly logical when Samir Amin, Immanuel Wallerstein,

and others differentiate within the capitalist domain among central,

peripheral, and semi-peripheral countries.11 Center, periphery, and

semi-periphery are distinguished by different social, political, and

bureaucratic forms, different productive processes, and different

forms of accumulation. (The more recent conceptual division be-

tween North and South is not significantly different in this regard.)

Like the First–Second–Third World conception, the division of

the capitalist sphere into center, periphery, and semi-periphery

homogenizes and eclipses real differences among nations and cul-

tures, but does so in the interest ofhighlighting a tendential unity

ofpolitical, social, and economic forms that emerge in the long

imperialist processes offormal subsumption. In other words, Third

World, South, and periphery all homogenize real differences to

highlight the unifying processes of capitalist development, but also

and more important, they name
the potential unity of an international

opposition, the potential confluence of anticapitalist countries and forces.

The geographical divisions among nation-states or even be-

tween central and peripheral, northern and southern clusters of

nation-states are no longer sufficient to grasp the global divisions

and distribution ofproduction, accumulation, and social f

orms.

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

335

Through the decentralization ofproduction and the consolidation

ofthe world market, the international divisions and flows oflabor

and capital have fractured and multiplied so that it is no longer

possible to demarcate large geographical zones as center and periph-

ery, North and South. In geographical regions such as the Southern

Cone ofLatin America or Southeast Asia, all levels ofproduction

can exist simultaneously and side by side, from the highest levels

oftechnology, productivity and accumulation to the lowest, with

a complex social mechanism maintaining their differentiation and

interaction. In the metropolises, too, labor spans the continuum

from the heights to the depths of capitalist production: the sweat-

shops ofNew York and Paris can rival those ofHong Kong and

Manila. Ifthe First World and the Third World, center and periph-

ery, North and South were ever really separated along national

lines, today they clearly infuse one another, distributing inequalities

and barriers along multiple and fractured lines. This is not to say

that the United States and Brazil, Britain and India are now identical

territories in terms ofcapitalist production and circulation, but rather

that between them are no differences of nature, only differences of

degree. The various nations and regions contain different propor-

tions ofwhat was thought ofas First World and Third, center and

periphery, North and South. The geography ofuneven develop-

ment and the lines ofdivision and hierarchy will no longer be

found along stable national or international boundaries, but in fluid

infra- and supranational borders.

Some may protest, with a certain justification, that the domi-

nant voices ofthe global order are proclaiming the nation-state

dead just when ‘‘the nation’’ has emerged as a revolutionary weapon

for the subordinated, for the wretched of the earth. After the victory

ofnational liberation struggles and after the emergence ofpotentially

destabilizing international alliances, which matured for decades after

the Bandung Conference, what better way to undermine the power

ofThird World nationalism and internationalism than to deprive

it ofits central and guiding support, the nation-state! In other words,

according to this view, which provides at least one plausible narrative

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for this complex history, the nation-state, which had been the

guarantor ofinternational order and the keystone to imperialist

conquest and sovereignty, became through the rise and organization

ofanti-imperialist f

orces the element that most endangered the

international order. Thus imperialism in retreat was forced to aban-

don and destroy the prize ofits own armory before the weapon

could be wielded against it.

We believe, however, that it is a grave mistake to harbor any

nostalgia for the powers of the nation-state or to resurrect any

politics that celebrates the nation. First of all, these efforts are in

vain because the decline ofthe nation-state is not simply the result

ofan ideological position that might be reversed by an act ofpolitical

will: it is a structural and irreversible process. The nation was not

only a cultural formulation, a feeling of belonging, and a shared

heritage, but also and perhaps primarily a juridico-economic struc-

ture. The declining effectiveness of this structure can be traced

clearly through the evolution ofa whole series ofglobal juridico-

economic bodies, such as GATT, the World Trade Organization,

the World Bank, and the IMF. The globalization ofproduction

and circulation, supported by this supranational juridical scaffolding,

supersedes the effectiveness of national juridical structures. Second,

and more important, even if the nation were still to be an effective

weapon, the nation carries with it a whole series ofrepressive

structures and ideologies (as we argued in Section 2.2), and any

strategy that relies on it should be rejected on that basis.

The New Segmentations

The general equalization or smoothing ofsocial space, however,

in both the withering ofcivil society and the decline ofnational

boundaries, does not indicate that social inequalities and segmenta-

tions have disappeared. On the contrary, they have in many respects

become more severe, but under a different form. It might be more

accurate to say that center and periphery, North and South no

longer define an international order but rather have moved closer

to one another. Empire is characterized by the close proximity of

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337

extremely unequal populations, which creates a situation ofperma-

nent social danger and requires the powerful apparatuses of the

society ofcontrol to ensure separation and guarantee the new man-

agement ofsocial space.

Trends in urban architecture in the world’s megalopolises