Empire (7 page)

labor,’’ and the Marxian concept of‘‘general intellect.’’16 These

analyses set off from two coordinated research projects. The first

consists in the analysis ofthe recent transformations ofproductive

labor and its tendency to become increasingly immaterial. The

central role previously occupied by the labor power ofmass factory

workers in the production ofsurplus value is today increasingly

filled by intellectual, immaterial, and communicative labor power.

It is thus necessary to develop a new political theory ofvalue that

can pose the problem ofthis new capitalist accumulation ofvalue

at the center ofthe mechanism ofexploitation (and thus, perhaps,

at the center ofpotential revolt). The second, and consequent,

research project developed by this school consists in the analysis of

the immediately social and communicative dimension ofliving labor

in contemporary capitalist society, and thus poses insistently the

problem ofthe new figures ofsubjectivity, in both their exploitation

and their revolutionary potential. The immediately social dimension

ofthe exploitation ofliving immaterial labor immerses labor in all

the relational elements that define the social but also at the same

time activate the critical elements that develop the potential of

insubordination and revolt through the entire set oflaboring prac-

tices. After a new theory ofvalue, then, a new theory ofsubjectivity

must be formulated that operates primarily through knowledge,

communication, and language.

These analyses have thus reestablished the importance ofpro-

duction within the biopolitical process ofthe social constitution,

but they have also in certain respects isolated it—by grasping it in

a pure form, refining it on the ideal plane. They have acted as if

discovering the new forms of productive forces—immaterial labor,

massified intellectual labor, the labor of‘‘general intellect’’—were

enough to grasp concretely the dynamic and creative relationship

between material production and social reproduction. When they

reinsert production into the biopolitical context, they present it

almost exclusively on the horizon oflanguage and communication.

One ofthe most serious shortcomings has thus been the tendency

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T H E P O L I T I C A L C O N S T I T U T I O N O F T H E P R E S E N T

among these authors to treat the new laboring practices in biopoliti-

cal society
only
in their intellectual and incorporeal aspects. The productivity ofbodies and the value ofaffect, however, are absolutely central in this context. We will elaborate the three primary

aspects ofimmaterial labor in the contemporary economy: the

communicative labor ofindustrial production that has newly be-

come linked in informational networks, the interactive labor of

symbolic analysis and problem solving, and the labor ofthe produc-

tion and manipulation of affects (see Section 3.4). This third aspect,

with its focus on the productivity of the corporeal, the somatic, is

an extremely important element in the contemporary networks of

biopolitical production. The work ofthis school and its analysis

ofgeneral intellect, then, certainly marks a step forward, but its

conceptual framework remains too pure, almost angelic. In the final

analysis, these new conceptions too only scratch the surface of the

productive dynamic ofthe new theoretical f

ramework ofbio-

power.17

Our task, then, is to build on these partially successful attempts

to recognize the potential ofbiopolitical production. Precisely by

bringing together coherently the different defining characteristics

ofthe biopolitical context that we have described up to this point,

and leading them back to the ontology ofproduction, we will be

able to identify the new figure of the collective biopolitical body,

which may nonetheless remain as contradictory as it is paradoxical.

This body becomes structure not by negating the originary produc-

tive force that animates it but by recognizing it; it becomes language

(both scientific language and social language) because it is a multi-

tude ofsingular and determinate bodies that seek relation. It is thus

both production and reproduction, structure and superstructure,

because it is life in the fullest sense and politics in the proper sense.

Our analysis has to descend into the jungle ofproductive and

conflictual determinations that the collective biopolitical body offers

us.18 The context ofour analysis thus has to be the very unfolding

oflife itself, the process ofthe constitution ofthe world, ofhistory.

The analysis must be proposed not through ideal forms but within

the dense complex ofexperience.

B I O P O L I T I C A L P R O D U C T I O N

31

Corporations and Communication

In asking ourselves how the political and sovereign elements ofthe

imperial machine come to be constituted, we find that there is no

need to limit our analysis to or even focus it on the established

supranational regulatory institutions. The U.N. organizations, along

with the great multi- and transnational finance and trade agencies

(the IMF, the World Bank, the GATT, and so forth), all become

relevant in the perspective ofthe supranational juridical constitution

only when they are considered within the dynamic ofthe biopoliti-

cal production ofworld order. The function they had in the old

international order, we should emphasize, is not what now gives

legitimacy to these organizations. What legitimates them now is

rather their newly possible function in the symbology of the imperial

order. Outside of the new framework, these institutions are inef-

fectual. At best, the old institutional framework contributes to

the formation and education of the administrative personnel of the

imperial machine, the ‘‘dressage’’ ofa new imperial eĺite.

The huge transnational corporations construct the fundamental

connective fabric of the biopolitical world in certain important

respects. Capital has indeed always been organized with a view

toward the entire global sphere, but only in the second halfofthe

twentieth century did multinational and transnational industrial and

financial corporations really begin to structure global territories

biopolitically. Some claim that these corporations have merely come

to occupy the place that was held by the various national colonialist

and imperialist systems in earlier phases ofcapitalist development,

from nineteenth-century European imperialism to the Fordist phase

ofdevelopment in the twentieth century.19 This is in part true, but

that place itselfhas been substantially transformed by the new reality

ofcapitalism. The activities ofcorporations are no longer defined

by the imposition ofabstract command and the organization of

simple theft and unequal exchange. Rather, they directly structure

and articulate territories and populations. They tend to make nation-

states merely instruments to record the flows ofthe commodities,

monies, and populations that they set in motion. The transnational

corporations directly distribute labor power over various markets,

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T H E P O L I T I C A L C O N S T I T U T I O N O F T H E P R E S E N T

functionally allocate resources, and organize hierarchically the vari-

ous sectors ofworld production. The complex apparatus that selects

investments and directs financial and monetary maneuvers deter-

mines the new geography ofthe world market, or really the new

biopolitical structuring ofthe world.20

The most complete figure ofthis world is presented from the

monetary perspective. From here we can see a horizon ofvalues

and a machine ofdistribution, a mechanism ofaccumulation and

a means ofcirculation, a power and a language. There is nothing,

no ‘‘naked life,’’ no external standpoint, that can be posed outside

this field permeated by money; nothing escapes money. Production

and reproduction are dressed in monetary clothing. In fact, on the

global stage, every biopolitical figure appears dressed in monetary

garb. ‘‘Accumulate, accumulate! This is Moses and the Prophets!’’21

The great industrial and financial powers thus produce not

only commodities but also subjectivities. They produce agentic

subjectivities within the biopolitical context: they produce needs,

social relations, bodies, and minds—which is to say, they produce

producers.22 In the biopolitical sphere, life is made to work for

production and production is made to work for life. It is a great

hive in which the queen bee continuously oversees production and

reproduction. The deeper the analysis goes, the more it finds at

increasing levels ofintensity the interlinking assemblages ofinter-

active relationships.23

One site where we should locate the biopolitical production

oforder is in the immaterial nexuses ofthe production oflanguage,

communication, and the symbolic that are developed by the com-

munications industries.24 The development ofcommunications net-

works has an organic relationship to the emergence ofthe new

world order—it is, in other words, effect and cause, product and

producer. Communication not only expresses but also organizes

the movement ofglobalization. It organizes the movement by multi-

plying and structuring interconnections through networks. It ex-

presses the movement and controls the sense and direction ofthe

imaginary that runs throughout these communicative connections;

B I O P O L I T I C A L P R O D U C T I O N

33

in other words, the imaginary is guided and channeled within the

communicative machine. What the theories ofpower ofmodernity

were forced to consider transcendent, that is, external to productive

and social relations, is here formed inside, immanent to the produc-

tive and social relations. Mediation is absorbed within the productive

machine. The political synthesis ofsocial space is fixed in the space

ofcommunication. This is why communications industries have

assumed such a central position. They not only organize production

on a new scale and impose a new structure adequate to global space,

but also make its justification immanent. Power, as it produces,

organizes; as it organizes, it speaks and expresses itselfas authority.

Language, as it communicates, produces commodities but moreover

creates subjectivities, puts them in relation, and orders them. The

communications industries integrate the imaginary and the symbolic

within the biopolitical fabric, not merely putting them at the service

ofpower but actually integrating them into its very functioning.25

At this point we can begin to address the question ofthe

legitimation
ofthe new world order. Its legitimation is not born of the previously existing international accords nor ofthe functioning

ofthe first, embryonic supranational organizations, which were

themselves created through treaties based on international law. The

legitimation ofthe imperial machine is born at least in part ofthe

communications industries, that is, ofthe transformation ofthe new

mode ofproduction into a machine. It is a subject that produces

its own image ofauthority. This is a form oflegitimation that rests

on nothing outside itselfand is reproposed ceaselessly by developing

its own languages ofself-validation.

One further consequence should be treated on the basis of

these premises. Ifcommunication is one ofthe hegemonic sectors

ofproduction and acts over the entire biopolitical field, then we

must consider communication and the biopolitical context coexis-

tent. This takes us well beyond the old terrain as Ju¨rgen Habermas

described it, for example. In fact, when Habermas developed the

concept ofcommunicative action, demonstrating so powerfully its

productive form and the ontological consequences deriving from

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that, he still relied on a standpoint outside these effects of globaliza-

tion, a standpoint of life and truth that could oppose the informa-

tional colonization ofbeing.26 The imperial machine, however,

demonstrates that this external standpoint no longer exists. On

the contrary, communicative production and the construction of

imperial legitimation march hand in hand and can no longer be

separated. The machine is self-validating, autopoietic—that is, sys-

temic. It constructs social fabrics that evacuate or render ineffective

any contradiction; it creates situations in which, before coercively

neutralizing difference, seem to absorb it in an insignificant play of

self-generating and self-regulating equilibria. As we have argued

elsewhere, any juridical theory that addresses the conditions of

postmodernity has to take into account this specifically communica-

tive definition ofsocial production.27 The imperial machine lives

by producing a context ofequilibria and/or reducing complexities,

pretending to put forward a project of universal citizenship and

toward this end intensifying the effectiveness of its intervention