Empire (61 page)

autonomy oflocalized administrative bodies does not contradict

imperial administration—on the contrary, it aids and expands its

global effectiveness.

Local autonomy is a fundamental condition, the sine qua non

ofthe development ofthe imperial regime. In fact, given the mobil-

ity ofpopulations in Empire, it would not be possible to claim a

principle oflegitimate administration ifits autonomy did not also

march a nomad path with the populations. It would likewise be

impossible to order the segments ofthe multitude through processes

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343

that force it to be more mobile and flexible in hybrid cultural forms

and in multicolored ghettos ifthis administration were not equally

flexible and capable ofspecific and continuous procedural revisions

and differentiations. Consent to the imperial regime is not something

that descends from the transcendentals of good administration,

which were defined in the modern rights states. Consent, rather,

is formed through the local effectiveness of the regime.

We have sketched here only the most general outlines of

imperial administration. A definition ofimperial administration that

focuses only on the autonomous local effectiveness of administrative

action cannot in itselfguarantee the system against eventual threats,

riots, subversions, and insurrections, or even against the normal

conflicts among local segments ofthe administration. This argu-

ment, however, does manage to transform the discussion into one

about the ‘‘royal prerogatives’’ ofimperial government—once we

have established the principle that the regulation ofconflict and

the recourse to the exercise oflegitimate violence must be resolved

in terms ofself-regulation (ofproduction, money, and communica-

tion) and by the internal police forces of Empire. This is where

the question ofadministration is transformed into a question of

command.

Imperial Command

Whereas modern regimes tended to bring administration increas-

ingly in line with command to the point ofmaking the two indistin-

guishable, imperial command remains separate from administration.

In both the modern and the imperial regimes, the internal contradic-

tions along with the risks and possible deviations ofa non-centralized

administration demand the guarantee ofa supreme command. The

early theorists ofthe juridical foundations ofthe modern state con-

ceive ofthis as an originary appeal to a supreme power, but the

theory of imperial command has no need for such fables about its

genealogy. It is not the appeals ofa multitude perpetually at war

that demand a pacifying supreme power (as in Hobbes), nor the

appeals ofa commercial class that demand the security ofcontracts

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(as in Locke and Hume). Imperial command is rather the result of

a social eruption that has overturned all the old relationships that

constituted sovereignty.

Imperial command is exercised no longer through the disci-

plinary modalities ofthe modern state but rather through the modal-

ities ofbiopolitical control. These modalities have as their basis and

their object a productive multitude that cannot be regimented

and normalized, but must nonetheless be governed, even in its

autonomy. The concept ofthe People no longer functions as the

organized subject ofthe system ofcommand, and consequently the

identity ofthe People is replaced by the mobility, flexibility, and

perpetual differentiation of the multitude. This shift demystifies and

destroys the circular modern idea ofthe legitimacy ofpower by

which power constructs from the multitude a single subject that

could then in turn legitimate that same power. That sophistic tautol-

ogy no longer works.

The multitude is governed with the instruments ofthe post-

modern capitalist system and within the social relations ofthe real

subsumption. The multitude can only be ruled along internal lines,

in production, in exchanges, in culture—in other words, in the

biopolitical context ofits existence. In its deterritorialized auton-

omy, however, this biopolitical existence ofthe multitude has the

potential to be transformed into an autonomous mass of intelligent

productivity, into an absolute democratic power, as Spinoza would

say. Ifthat were to happen, capitalist domination ofproduction,

exchange, and communication would be overthrown. Preventing

this is the first and primary task ofimperial government. We should

keep in mind, however, that the constitution ofEmpire depends for

its own existence on the forces that pose this threat, the autonomous

forces of productive cooperation. Their powers must be controlled

but not destroyed.

The guarantee that Empire offers to globalized capital does not

involve a micropolitical and/or microadministrative management of

populations. The apparatus ofcommand has no access to the local

spaces and the determinate temporal sequences oflife where the

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administration functions; it does not manage to put its hands on

the singularities and their activity. What imperial command seeks

substantially to invest and protect, and what it guarantees for capital-

ist development, are rather the general equilibria ofthe global

system.

Imperial control operates through three global and absolute

means: the bomb, money, and ether. The panoply ofthermonuclear

weapons, effectively gathered at the pinnacle of Empire, represents

the continuous possibility ofthe destruction oflife itself. This is an

operation ofabsolute violence, a new metaphysical horizon, which

completely changes the conception whereby the sovereign state

had a monopoly oflegitimate physical force. At one time, in moder-

nity, this monopoly was legitimated either as the expropriation of

weapons from the violent and anarchic mob, the disordered mass

ofindividuals who tend to slaughter one another, or as the instru-

ment ofdefense against the enemy, that is, against other peoples

organized in states. Both these means oflegitimation were oriented

finally toward the survival ofthe population. Today they are no

longer effective. The expropriation of the means of violence from

a supposedly self-destructive population tends to become merely

administrative and police operations aimed at maintaining the seg-

mentations ofproductive territories. The second justification be-

comes less effective too as nuclear war between state powers be-

comes increasingly unthinkable. The development ofnuclear

technologies and their imperial concentration have limited the sov-

ereignty ofmost ofthe countries ofthe world insofar as it has taken

away from them the power to make decisions over war and peace,

which is a primary element ofthe traditional definition ofsover-

eignty. Furthermore, the ultimate threat ofthe imperial bomb has

reduced every war to a limited conflict, a civil war, a dirty war,

and so forth. It has made every war the exclusive domain of adminis-

trative and police power. From no other standpoint is the passage

from modernity to postmodernity and from modern sovereignty

to Empire more evident than it is from the standpoint of the bomb.

Empire is defined here in the final instance as the ‘‘non-place’’ of

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life, or, in other words, as the absolute capacity for destruction.

Empire is the ultimate form of biopower insofar as it is the absolute

inversion ofthe power oflife.

Money is the second global means ofabsolute control. The

construction ofthe world market has consisted first ofall in the

monetary deconstruction ofnational markets, the dissolution of

national and/or regional regimes ofmonetary regulation, and the

subordination ofthose markets to the needs offinancial powers.

As national monetary structures tend to lose any characteristics of

sovereignty, we can see emerging through them the shadows ofa

new unilateral monetary reterritorialization that is concentrated at

the political and financial centers ofEmpire, the global cities. This

is not the construction ofa universal monetary regime on the basis

ofnew productive localities, new local circuits ofcirculation, and

thus new values; instead, it is a monetary construction based purely

on the political necessities ofEmpire. Money is the imperial arbiter,

but just as in the case ofthe imperial nuclear threat, this arbiter has

neither a determinate location nor a transcendent status. Just as the

nuclear threat authorizes the generalized power ofthe police, so

too the monetary arbiter is continually articulated in relation to the

productive functions, measures of value, and allocations of wealth

that constitute the world market. Monetary mechanisms are the

primary means to control the market.13

Ether is the third and final fundamental medium of imperial

control. The management ofcommunication, the structuring of

the education system, and the regulation ofculture appear today

more than ever as sovereign prerogatives. All ofthis, however,

dissolves in the ether. The contemporary systems ofcommunication

are not subordinated to sovereignty; on the contrary, sovereignty

seems to be subordinated to communication—or actually, sover-

eignty is articulated through communications systems. In the field

ofcommunication, the paradoxes that bring about the dissolution

ofterritorial and/or national sovereignty are more clear than ever.

The deterritorializing capacities ofcommunication are unique:

communication is not satisfied by limiting or weakening modern

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territorial sovereignty; rather it attacks the very possibility oflinking

an order to a space. It imposes a continuous and complete circulation

ofsigns. Deterritorialization is the primary force and circulation

the form through which social communication manifests itself. In

this way and in this ether, languages become functional to circulation

and dissolve every sovereign relationship. Education and culture

too cannot help submitting to the circulating society ofthe spectacle.

Here we reach an extreme limit ofthe process ofthe dissolution

ofthe relationship between order and space. At this point we cannot

conceive this relationship except in
another space,
an elsewhere that cannot in principle be contained in the articulation ofsovereign acts.

The space ofcommunication is completely deterritorialized.

It is absolutely other with respect to the residual spaces that we

have been analyzing in terms ofthe monopoly ofphysical force

and the definition ofmonetary measure. Here it is a question not

ofresidue but of
metamorphosis:
a metamorphosis ofall the elements

ofpolitical economy and state theory. Communication is the form

ofcapitalist production in which capital has succeeded in submitting

society entirely and globally to its regime, suppressing all alternative

paths. Ifever an alternative is to be proposed, it will have to arise

from within the society of the real subsumption and demonstrate

all the contradictions at the heart ofit.

These three means ofcontrol refer us again to the three tiers

ofthe imperial pyramid ofpower. The bomb is a monarchic power,

money aristocratic, and ether democratic. It might appear in each

ofthese cases as though the reins ofthese mechanisms were held

by the United States. It might appear as ifthe United States were

the new Rome, or a cluster ofnew Romes: Washington (the

bomb), New York (money), and Los Angeles (ether). Any such

territorial conception ofimperial space, however, is continually

destabilized by the fundamental flexibility, mobility, and deterritori-

alization at the core ofthe imperial apparatus. Perhaps the monopoly

offorce and the regulation ofmoney can be given partial territorial

determinations, but communication cannot. Communication has

become the central element that establishes the relations ofproduc-

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tion, guiding capitalist development and also transforming produc-

tive forces. This dynamic produces an extremely open situation:

here the centralized locus ofpower has to confront the power of

productive subjectivities, the power ofall those who contribute to

the interactive production ofcommunication. Here in this circulat-

ing domain ofimperial domination over the new forms ofproduc-

tion, communication is most widely disseminated in capillary forms.

B IG G OVERNMENT I S O VER!

‘‘Big government is over’’ is the battle cry of conservatives and neoliberals
throughout Empire. The Republican Congress of the United States, led

by Newt Gingrich, fought to demystify the fetish of big government by

calling it ‘‘totalitarian’’ and ‘‘fascist’’ (in a session of Congress that wanted
to be imperial but ended up being carnivalesque). It appeared as though
we had returned to the times of the great diatribes of Henry Ford against
Franklin D. Roosevelt! Or rather to the much less grand times of Margaret
Thatcher’s first administration, when she frenetically, and with a sense of
humor that only the British can muster, sought to sell off the public goods
of the nation, from communications systems to the water supply, from the
rail system and oil to the universities and hospitals. In the United States,
however, the representatives of the most avid conservative wing finally went
too far, and in the end everyone recognized it. The bottom line and brutal
irony was that they sounded the attack on big government just when the