Empire (68 page)

decline and fall of Empire is defined not as a diachronic movement

but as a synchronic reality. Crisis runs through every moment of

the development and recomposition ofthe totality.

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With the real subsumption ofsociety under capital, social

antagonisms can erupt as conflict in every moment and on every

term ofcommunicative production and exchange. Capital has be-

come a world. Use value and all the other references to values and

processes ofvalorization that were conceived to be outside the

capitalist mode ofproduction have progressively vanished. Subjec-

tivity is entirely immersed in exchange and language, but that does

not mean it is now pacific. Technological development based on

the generalization ofthe communicative relationships ofproduction

is a motor ofcrisis, and productive general intellect is a nest of

antagonisms. Crisis and decline refer not to something external to

Empire but to what is most internal. They pertain to the production

ofsubjectivity itself, and thus they are at once proper and contrary

to the processes ofthe reproduction ofEmpire. Crisis and decline

are not a hidden foundation nor an ominous future but a clear

and obvious actuality, an always expected event, a latency that is

always present.

It is midnight in a night ofspecters. Both the new reign of

Empire and the new immaterial and cooperative creativity ofthe

multitude move in shadows, and nothing manages to illuminate

our destiny ahead. Nonetheless, we have acquired a new point of

reference (and tomorrow perhaps a new consciousness), which

consists in the fact that Empire is defined by crisis, that its decline

has always already begun, and that consequently every line ofantago-

nism leads toward the event and singularity. What does it mean,

practically, that crisis is immanent to and indistinguishable from

Empire? Is it possible in this dark night to theorize positively and

define a practice ofthe event?

Generation

Two central impediments prevent us from responding to these

questions immediately. The first is presented by the overbearing

power ofbourgeois metaphysics and specifically the widely propa-

gated illusion that the capitalist market and the capitalist regime of

production are eternal and insuperable. The bizarre naturalness of

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387

capitalism is a pure and simple mystification, and we have to disabuse

ourselves ofit right away. The second impediment is represented

by the numerous theoretical positions that see no alternative to the

present form of rule except a blind anarchic other and that thus

partake in a mysticism ofthe limit. From this ideological perspective,

the suffering of existence cannot manage to be articulated, become

conscious, and establish a standpoint ofrevolt. This theoretical

position leads merely to a cynical attitude and quietistic practices.

The illusion ofthe naturalness ofcapitalism and the radicality of

the limit actually stand in a relationship ofcomplementarity. Their

complicity is expressed in an exhausting powerlessness. The fact is

that neither ofthese positions, neither the apologetic one nor the

mystical one, manages to grasp the primary aspect ofbiopolitical

order: its productivity. They cannot interpret the virtual powers of

the multitude that tend constantly toward becoming possible and

real. In other words, they have lost track ofthe fundamental produc-

tivity ofbeing.

We can answer the question ofhow to get out ofthe crisis only

by lowering ourselves down into biopolitical virtuality, enriched by

the singular and creative processes ofthe production ofsubjectivity.

How are rupture and innovation possible, however, in the absolute

horizon in which we are immersed, in a world in which values

seem to have been negated in a vacuum ofmeaning and a lack of

any measure? Here we do not need to go back again to a description

ofdesire and its ontological excess, nor insist again on the dimension

ofthe ‘‘beyond.’’ It is sufficient to point to the generative determina-

tion of desire and thus its productivity. In effect, the complete

commingling ofthe political, the social, and the economic in the

constitution ofthe present reveals a biopolitical space that—much

better than Hannah Arendt’s nostalgic utopia ofpolitical space—

explains the ability ofdesire to confront the crisis.19 The entire

conceptual horizon is thus completely redefined. The biopolitical,

seen from the standpoint of desire, is nothing other than concrete

production, human collectivity in action. Desire appears here as

productive space, as the actuality ofhuman cooperation in the

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construction ofhistory. This production is purely and simply human

reproduction, the power ofgeneration. Desiring production is gen-

eration, or rather the excess oflabor and the accumulation ofa power

incorporated into the collective movement ofsingular essences, both

its cause and its completion.

When our analysis is firmly situated in the biopolitical world

where social, economic, and political production and reproduction

coincide, the ontological perspective and the anthropological per-

spective tend to overlap. Empire pretends to be the master ofthat

world because it can destroy it. What a horrible illusion! In reality

we are masters ofthe world because our desire and labor regenerate

it continuously. The biopolitical world is an inexhaustible weaving

together ofgenerative actions, ofwhich the collective (as meeting

point ofsingularities) is the motor. No metaphysics, except a deliri-

ous one, can pretend to define humanity as isolated and powerless.

No ontology, except a transcendent one, can relegate humanity to

individuality. No anthropology, except a pathological one, can

define humanity as a negative power. Generation, that first fact of

metaphysics, ontology, and anthropology, is a collective mechanism

or apparatus ofdesire. Biopolitical becoming celebrates this ‘‘first’’

dimension in absolute terms.

Political theory is forced by this new reality to redefine itself

radically. In biopolitical society, for example, fear cannot be em-

ployed, as Thomas Hobbes proposed, as the exclusive motor of

the contractual constitution ofpolitics, thus negating the love of

the multitude. Or rather, in biopolitical society the decision ofthe

sovereign can never negate the desire ofthe multitude. Ifthose

founding modern strategies of sovereignty were employed today

with the oppositions they determine, the world would come to a

halt because generation would no longer be possible. For generation

to take place, the political has to yield to love and desire, and that

is to the fundamental forces of biopolitical production. The political

is not what we are taught it is today by the cynical Machiavellianism

ofpoliticians; it is rather, as the democratic Machiavelli tells us, the

power ofgeneration, desire, and love. Political theory has to reorient

itselfalong these lines and assume the language ofgeneration.

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Generation is the
primum
ofthe biopolitical world ofEmpire.

Biopower—a horizon ofthe hybridization ofthe natural and the

artificial, needs and machines, desire and the collective organization

ofthe economic and the social—must continually regenerate itself

in order to exist. Generation is there, before all else, as basis and

motor ofproduction and reproduction. The generative connection

gives meaning to communication, and any model of(everyday,

philosophical, or political) communication that does not respond

to this primacy is false. The social and political relationships of

Empire register this phase ofthe development ofproduction and

interpret the generative and productive biosphere. We have thus

reached a limit ofthe virtuality ofthe real subsumption ofproductive

society under capital—but precisely on this limit the possibility of

generation and the collective force of desire are revealed in all

their power.

Corruption

Opposed to generation stands corruption. Far from being the neces-

sary complement ofgeneration, as the various Platonic currents of

philosophy would like, corruption is merely its simple negation.20

Corruption breaks the chain ofdesire and interrupts its extension

across the biopolitical horizon ofproduction. It constructs black

holes and ontological vacuums in the life of the multitude that not

even the most perverse political science manages to camouflage.

Corruption, contrary to desire, is not an ontological motor but

simply the lack ofontological foundation ofthe biopolitical practices

ofbeing.

In Empire corruption is everywhere. It is the cornerstone and

keystone of domination. It resides in different forms in the supreme

government ofEmpire and its vassal administrations, the most re-

fined and the most rotten administrative police forces, the lobbies

ofthe ruling classes, the mafias ofrising social groups, the churches

and sects, the perpetrators and persecutors ofscandal, the great

financial conglomerates, and everyday economic transactions.

Through corruption, imperial power extends a smoke screen across

the world, and command over the multitude is exercised in this

putrid cloud, in the absence oflight and truth.

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It is no mystery how we recognize corruption and how we

identify the powerful emptiness of the mist of indifference that

imperial power extends across the world. In fact, the ability to

recognize corruption is, to use a phrase ofDescartes’s, ‘‘la faculteĺa mieux partageé du monde,’’ the most widely shared faculty in the world. Corruption is easily perceived because it appears immediately as a form of violence, as an insult. And indeed it is an insult:

corruption is in fact the sign ofthe impossibility oflinking power

to value, and its denunciation is thus a direct intuition ofthe lack

ofbeing. Corruption is what separates a body and a mind from

what they can do. Since knowledge and existence in the biopolitical

world always consist in a production ofvalue, this lack ofbeing

appears as a wound, a death wish ofthe socius, a stripping away

ofbeing from the world.

The forms in which corruption appears are so numerous that

trying to list them is like pouring the sea into a teacup. Let us try

nonetheless to give a few examples, even though they can in no way

serve to represent the whole. In the first place, there is corruption as

individual choice that is opposed to and violates the fundamental

community and solidarity defined by biopolitical production. This

small, everyday violence ofpower is a mafia-style corruption. In

the second place, there is corruption ofthe productive order, or

really exploitation. This includes the fact that the values that derive

from the collective cooperation of labor are expropriated, and what

was in the biopolitical
ab origine
public is privatized. Capitalism is completely implicated in this corruption ofprivatization. As Saint

Augustine says, the great reigns are only the enlarged projections

oflittle thieves. Augustine ofHippo, however, so realistic in this

pessimistic conception ofpower, would be struck dumb by today’s

little thieves ofmonetary and financial power. Really, when capital-

ism loses its relationship to value (both as the measure ofindividual

exploitation and as a norm ofcollective progress), it appears immedi-

ately as corruption. The increasingly abstract sequence ofits func-

tioning (from the accumulation of surplus value to monetary and

financial speculation) is shown to be a powerful march toward

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391

generalized corruption. Ifcapitalism is by definition a system of

corruption, held together nonetheless as in Mandeville’s fable by

its cooperative cleverness and redeemed according to all its ideolo-

gies on right and left by its progressive function, then when measure

is dissolved and the progressive telos breaks down, nothing essential

remains ofcapitalism but corruption. In the third place, corruption

appears in the functioning of ideology, or rather in the perversion

ofthe senses oflinguistic communication. Here corruption touches

on the biopolitical realm, attacking its productive nodes and ob-

structing its generative processes. This attack is demonstrated, in

the fourth place, when in the practices of imperial government the

threat ofterror becomes a weapon to resolve limited or regional

conflicts and an apparatus for imperial development. Imperial com-

mand, in this case, is disguised and can alternately appear as cor-

ruption or destruction, almost as ifto reveal the prof

ound call

that the former makes for the latter and the latter for the former.