Empire (60 page)

demonstrate one aspect ofthese new segmentations. Where the

extremes ofwealth and poverty have increased and the physical

distance between rich and poor has decreased in global cities such

as Los Angeles, Sa˜o Paulo, and Singapore, elaborate measures have

to be taken to maintain their separation. Los Angeles is perhaps

the leader in the trend toward what Mike Davis calls ‘ fortress

architecture,’’ in which not only private homes but also commercial

centers and government buildings create open and free environ-

ments internally by creating a closed and impenetrable exterior.12

This tendency in urban planning and architecture has established

in concrete, physical terms what we called earlier the end ofthe

outside, or rather the decline ofpublic space that had allowed for

open and unprogrammed social interaction.

Architectural analysis, however, can give only a first introduc-

tion to the problematic ofthe new separations and segmentations.

The new lines ofdivision are more clearly defined by the politics

oflabor. The computer and informational revolution that has made

it possible to link together different groups of labor power in real

time across the world has led to furious and unrestrained competition

among workers. Information technologies have been used to

weaken the structural resistances oflabor power, in terms ofboth the

rigidity of wage structures and cultural and geographical differences.

Capital has thus been able to impose both temporal flexibility and

spatial mobility. It should be clear that this process ofweakening

the resistances and rigidities oflabor power has become a completely

political process oriented toward a form of management that maxi-

mizes economic profit. This is where the theory ofimperial adminis-

trative action becomes central.

The imperial politics oflabor is designed primarily to lower

the price of labor. This is, in effect, something like a process of

338

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

primitive accumulation, a process ofreproletarianization. The regu-

lation ofthe working day, which was the real keystone to socialist

politics throughout the past two centuries, has been completely

overturned. Working days are often twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours

long without weekends or vacations; there is work for men, women,

and children alike, and for the old and the handicapped. Empire

has work for everyone! The more unregulated the regime of exploi-

tation, the more work there is. This is the basis on which the new

segmentations ofwork are created. They are determined (in the

language of the economists) by the different levels of productivity,

but we could summarize the change simply by saying that there is

more work and lower wages. Like God’s broom sweeping across

society (this is how Hegel described the imposition ofbarbarian

law, principally at the hands ofAttila the Hun), the new norms of

productivity differentiate and segment the workers. There are still

places in the world where poverty allows for the reproduction of

labor power at a lower cost, and there are still places in the metropo-

lises where differences of consumption force a lower class to sell

itselffor less, or really to submit itselfto a more brutal regime of

capitalist exploitation.

Financial and monetary flows follow more or less the same

global patterns as the flexible organization oflabor power. On the

one hand, speculative and finance capital goes where the price of

labor power is lowest and where the administrative force to guaran-

tee exploitation is highest. On the other hand, the countries that

still maintain the rigidities oflabor and oppose its full flexibility

and mobility are punished, tormented, and finally destroyed by

global monetary mechanisms. The stock market drops when the

unemployment rate goes down, or really when the percentage of

workers who are not immediately flexible and mobile rises. The

same happens when the social policies in a country do not com-

pletely accommodate the imperial mandate offlexibility and mobil-

ity—or better, when some elements ofthe welfare state are pre-

served as a sign ofthe persistence ofthe nation-state. Monetary

policies enforce the segmentations dictated by labor policies.

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

339

Fear ofviolence, poverty, and unemployment is in the end

the primary and immediate force that creates and maintains these

new segmentations. What stands behind the various politics ofthe

new segmentations is a politics ofcommunication. As we argued

earlier, the fundamental content of the information that the enor-

mous communication corporations present is fear. The constant

fear of poverty and anxiety over the future are the keys to creating

a struggle among the poor for work and maintaining conflict among

the imperial proletariat. Fear is the ultimate guarantee ofthe new

segmentations.

Imperial Administration

After we have seen how traditional social barriers are lowered in

the formation of Empire and how at the same time new segmenta-

tions are created, we must also investigate the administrative modal-

ities through which these various developments unfold. It is easy

to see that these processes are full of contradictions. When power

is made immanent and sovereignty transforms into governmentality,

the functions ofrule and regimes ofcontrol have to develop on a

continuum that flattens differences to a common plane. We have

seen, however, that differences are, on the contrary, accentuated

in this process, in such a way that imperial integration determines

new mechanisms ofthe separation and segmentation ofdifferent

strata ofthe population. The problem ofimperial administration is

thus to manage this process of integration and therefore to pacify,

mobilize, and control the separated and segmented social forces.

In these terms, however, the problem is still not clearly posed.

The segmentation ofthe multitude has in fact been the condition

of political administration throughout history. The difference today

lies in the fact that, whereas in modern regimes of national sover-

eignty, administration worked toward a
linear
integration ofconflicts and toward a coherent apparatus that could repress them, that is,

toward the rational normalization ofsocial life with respect to both

the administrative goal ofequilibrium and the development of

administrative reforms, in the imperial framework administration

340

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

becomes
fractal
and aims to integrate conflicts not by imposing a

coherent social apparatus but by controlling differences. It is no

longer possible to understand imperial administration in the terms

ofa Hegelian definition ofadministration, which is grounded on

the mediations ofbourgeois society that constitute the spatial center

ofsocial life; but it is equally impossible to understand it according

to a Weberian definition, that is, a rational definition that is based

on continuous temporal mediation and an emerging principle ofle-

gitimacy.

A first principle that defines imperial administration is that in

it
the management of political ends tends to be separate from the management
of bureaucratic means.
The new paradigm is thus not only different from but opposed to the old public administration model of the

modern state, which continually strove to coordinate its system of

bureaucratic means with its political ends. In the imperial regime,

bureaucracies (and administrative means in general) are considered

not according to the linear logics oftheir functionality to goals,

but according to differential and multiple instrumental logics. The

problem ofadministration is not a problem ofunity but one of

instrumental multifunctionality. Whereas for the legitimation and

administration ofthe modern state the universality and equality of

administrative actions were paramount, in the imperial regime what

is fundamental is the singularity and adequacy of the actions to

specific ends.

From this first principle, however, there arises what seems to

be a paradox. Precisely to the extent that administration is singular-

ized and no longer functions simply as the actor for centralized

political and deliberative organs, it becomes increasingly autono-

mous and engages more closely with various social groups: business

and labor groups, ethnic and religious groups, legal and criminal

groups, and so forth. Instead of contributing to social integration,

imperial administration acts rather as a disseminating and differentiating
mechanism.
This is the second principle ofimperial administration.

Administration will thus tend to present specific procedures that

allow the regime to engage directly with the various social singulari-

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

341

ties, and the administration will be more effective the more direct

its contact with the different elements of social reality. Hence admin-

istrative action becomes increasingly autocentric and thus functional

only to the specific problems that it has to resolve. It becomes more

and more difficult to recognize a continuous line of administrative

action across the set ofrelays and networks ofthe imperial regime.

In short, the old administrative principle ofuniversality, treating

all equally, is replaced by the differentiation and singularization of

procedures, treating each differently.

Even though it is difficult now to trace a coherent and universal

line ofprocedure, such as the one that characterized modern sover-

eign systems, this does not mean that the imperial apparatus is

not unified. The autonomy and unity ofadministrative action is

constructed in other ways, by means neither ofthe normative

deduction ofcontinental European juridical systems nor ofthe

procedural formalism of Anglo-Saxon systems. Rather, it is created

by conforming to the structural logics that are active in the construc-

tion ofEmpire, such as the police and military logics (or really the

repression ofpotential subversive forces in the context ofimperial

peace), the economic logics (the imposition ofthe market, which

in turn is ruled by the monetary regime), and the ideological and

communicative logics. The only way that administrative action

gains its autonomy and legitimate authority in the imperial regime

is by following along the differentiating lines of these logics. This

authorization, however, is not direct. Administration is not strategi-

cally oriented toward the realization ofthe imperial logics. It submits

to them, insofar as they animate the great military, monetary, and

communicative means that authorize administration itself.
Adminis-

trative action has become fundamentally non-strategic, and thus it is legitimated through heterogeneous and indirect means.
This is the third principle ofadministrative action in the imperial regime.

Once we have recognized these three ‘‘negative’’ principles

ofimperial administrative action—its instrumental character, its

procedural autonomy, and its heterogeneity—we have to ask what

allows it to function without continually opening violent social

342

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

antagonisms. What virtue affords this disarticulated system of con-

trol, inequality, and segmentation a sufficient measure of consent

and legitimation? This leads to the fourth principle, the ‘‘positive’’

characteristic ofimperial administration. The unifying matrix and

the most dominant value ofimperial administration lie in its
local effectiveness.

To understand how this fourth principle can support the ad-

ministrative system as a whole, consider the kind ofadministrative

relationships that were formed between the feudal territorial organi-

zations and the monarchic power structures in Europe in the Middle

Ages, or between mafia organizations and state structures in the

modern period. In both cases the procedural autonomy, differential

application, and territorialized links to various segments ofthe popu-

lation, together with the specific and limited exercise oflegitimate

violence, were not generally in contradiction with the principle of

a coherent and unified ordering. These systems ofthe distribution

of administrative power were held together by the local effectiveness

ofa series ofspecific deployments ofmilitary, financial, and ideologi-

cal powers. In the European medieval system, the vassal was required

to contribute armed men and money when the monarch needed

them (whereas ideology and communication were controlled in

large part by the church). In the mafia system, the administrative

autonomy ofthe extended family and the deployment ofpolice-like

violence throughout the social territory guaranteed the adherence to

the primary principles ofthe capitalist system and supported the

ruling political class. As in these medieval and mafia examples, the