Empire (21 page)

presented as mystifications of, or stand-ins for, the class subjects in

conflict. IfNazi Germany is the ideal type ofthe transformation

ofmodern sovereignty into national sovereignty and ofits articula-

tion in capitalist form, then Stalinist Russia is the ideal type of the

transformation of popular interest and the cruel logics that follow

from it into a project of national modernization, mobilizing for

its own purposes the productive forces that yearn for liberation

from capitalism.

Here we could analyze the national socialist apotheosis ofthe

modern concept ofsovereignty and its transformation into national

sovereignty: nothing could more clearly demonstrate the coherence

ofthis passage than the transfer ofpower from the Prussian monarchy

to Hitler’s regime, under the good auspices ofthe German bourgeoi-

sie. This passage, however, is well known, as are the explosive

violence ofthis transfer ofpower, the exemplary obedience ofthe

German people, their military and civil valor in the service ofthe

nation, and the secondary consequences that we can call, in a

kind ofintellectual shorthand, Auschwitz (as symbol ofthe Jewish

holocaust) and Buchenwald (as symbol ofthe extermination of

communists, homosexuals, Gypsies, and others). Let us leave this

story to other scholars and to the disgrace ofhistory.

We are more interested here with the other side ofthe national

question in Europe during this era. In other words, what really

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happened when nationalism went hand in hand with socialism in

Europe? In order to respond to this question, we have to revisit a

few central moments in the history of European socialism. In partic-

ular, we must remember that not long after its inception, between

the middle and end ofthe nineteenth century, the socialist Interna-

tional had to come to terms with strong nationalist movements,

and through this confrontation the original internationalist passion

ofthe workers’ movement quickly evaporated. The policies of

the strongest European workers’ movements, in Germany, Austria,

France, and above all England, immediately raised the banner of

national interest. Social-democratic reformism was entirely invested

in this compromise conceived in the name ofthe nation—a com-

promise between class interests, that is, between the proletariat and

certain strata ofthe bourgeois hegemonic structure in each country.

Let’s not even talk about the ignoble history ofbetrayal in which

segments ofthe European workers’ movement supported the impe-

rialist enterprises ofthe European nation-states, nor the unpardon-

able folly that brought together the various European reformisms

in consenting to the masses’ being led to slaughter in the First

World War.

Social-democratic reformism did have an adequate theory for

these positions. Several Austrian social-democratic professors in-

vented it, contemporaries ofMusil’s Count Leinsdorf. In the idyllic

atmosphere ofalpine Kakania, in the gentle intellectual climate of

that ‘‘return to Kant,’’ those professors, such as Otto Bauer, insisted

on the necessity ofconsidering nationality a fundamental element of

modernization.33 In fact, they believed that from the confrontation

between nationality (defined as a community ofcharacter) and

capitalist development (understood as society) there would emerge

a dialectic that in its unfolding would eventually favor the proletariat

and its progressive hegemony in society. This program ignored the

fact that the concept of nation-state is not divisible but rather

organic, not transcendental but transcendent, and even in its tran-

scendence it is constructed to oppose every tendency on the part

ofthe proletariat to reappropriate social spaces and social wealth.

What, then, could modernization mean ifit is fundamentally tied

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to the reform of the capitalist system and inimical to any opening

ofthe revolutionary process? These authors celebrated the nation

without wanting to pay the price ofthis celebration. Or better,

they celebrated it while mystifying the destructive power of the

concept ofnation. Given this perspective, support for the imperialist

projects and the interimperialist war were really logical and inevita-

ble positions for social-democratic reformism.

Bolshevism, too, entered the terrain ofnationalist mythology,

particularly through Stalin’s celebrated prerevolutionary pamphlet

on Marxism and the national question.34 According to Stalin, nations

are immediately revolutionary, and revolution means moderniza-

tion: nationalism is an ineluctable stage in development. Through

Stalin’s translation, however, as nationalism becomes socialist, so-

cialism becomes Russian, and Ivan the Terrible is laid to rest in

the tomb beside Lenin. The Communist International is transformed

into an assembly ofthe ‘‘fifth column’’ ofRussian national interests.

The notion ofcommunist revolution—the deterritorializing specter

that had haunted Europe and the world, and that from the Paris

Commune to 1917 in Saint Petersburg and to Mao’s Long March

had managed to bring together deserters, internationalist partisans,

striking workers, and cosmopolitan intellectuals—was finally made

into a reterritorializing regime ofnational sovereignty. It is a tragic

irony that nationalist socialism in Europe came to resemble national

socialism. This is not because ‘‘the two extremes meet,’’ as some

liberals would like to think, but because the abstract machine of

national sovereignty is at the heart ofboth.

When, in the midst ofthe cold war, the concept oftotalitarian-

ism was introduced into political science, it only touched on extrin-

sic elements ofthe question. In its most coherent form the concept

oftotalitarianism was used to denounce the destruction ofthe

democratic public sphere, the continuation ofJacobinist ideologies,

the extreme forms ofracist nationalism, and the negation ofmarket

forces. The concept of totalitarianism, however, ought to delve

much more deeply into the real phenomena and at the same time

give a better explanation ofthem. In fact, totalitarianism consists

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not simply in totalizing the effects of social life and subordinating

them to a global disciplinary norm, but also in the negation ofsocial

life itself, the erosion of its foundation, and the theoretical and

practical stripping away ofthe very possibility ofthe existence of

the multitude. What is totalitarian is the organic foundation and

the unified source ofsociety and the state. The community is not

a dynamic collective creation but a primordial founding myth. An

originary notion ofthe people poses an identity that homogenizes

and purifies the image ofthe population while blocking the con-

structive interactions of differences within the multitude.

Sieyès saw the embryo oftotalitarianism already in eighteenth-

century conceptions ofnational and popular sovereignty, concep-

tions that effectively preserved the absolute power of monarchy

and transferred it to national sovereignty. He glimpsed the future

ofwhat might be called totalitarian democracy.35 In the debate over

the Constitution ofYear III ofthe French Revolution, Sieyès

denounced the ‘‘bad plans for a re-total [
re´-total
] instead ofa republic [
re´-publique
], which would be fatal for freedom and ruinous for both the public realm and the private.’’36 The concept ofnation

and the practices ofnationalism are from the beginning set down

on the road not to the republic but to the ‘‘re-total,’’ the total thing,

that is, the totalitarian overcoding ofsocial life.

2.3

T H E D I A L E C T I C S O F

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

To Toussaint l’Ouverture

Toussaint, the most unhappy man ofmen!

Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough

Within thy hearing, or thy head be now

Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den;—

O miserable Chieftain! where and when

Wilt thou find patience! Yet die not; do thou

Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:

Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,

Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind

Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;

There’s not a breathing ofthe common wind

That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;

Thy friends are exultations, agonies,

And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.

William Wordsworth

We now need to take a step back and examine the

genealogy ofthe concept ofsovereignty from the perspective of

colonialism. The crisis ofmodernity has from the beginning had an

intimate relation to racial subordination and colonization. Whereas

within its domain the nation-state and its attendant ideological

structures work tirelessly to create and reproduce the purity ofthe

people, on the outside the nation-state is a machine that produces

Others, creates racial difference, and raises boundaries that delimit

and support the modern subject ofsovereignty. These boundaries

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and barriers, however, are not impermeable but rather serve to

regulate two-way flows between Europe and its outside. The Orien-

tal, the African, the Amerindian are all necessary components for the

negative foundation of European identity and modern sovereignty as

such. The dark Other ofEuropean Enlightenment stands as its

very foundation just as the productive relationship with the ‘‘dark

continents’’ serves as the economic foundation of the European

nation-states.1 The racial conflict intrinsic to European modernity

is another symptom ofthe permanent crisis that defines modern

sovereignty. The colony stands in dialectical opposition to European

modernity, as its necessary double and irrepressible antagonist. Colo-

nial sovereignty is another insufficient attempt to resolve the crisis

ofmodernity.

Humankind Is Oneand Many

The age ofEuropean discovery and the progressively intense com-

munication among the spaces and peoples ofthe earth that followed

have always carried with them a real utopian element. But so much

blood has been spilled, so many lives and cultures destroyed, that

it seems much more urgent to denounce the barbarity and horror

ofwestern European (and then also U.S., Soviet, and Japanese)

expansion and control over the globe. We think it important,

however, not to forget the utopian tendencies that have always

accompanied the progression toward globalization, even ifthese

tendencies have continually been defeated by the powers of modern

sovereignty. The love of differences and the belief in the universal

freedom and equality of humanity proper to the revolutionary

thought ofRenaissance humanism reappear here on a global scale.

This utopian element ofglobalization is what prevents us from

simply falling back into particularism and isolationism in reaction

to the totalizing forces of imperialism and racist domination, pushing

us instead to forge a project of counterglobalization, counter-

Empire. This utopian moment, however, has never been unambigu-

ous. It is a tendency that constantly conflicts with sovereign order

and domination. We see three exemplary expressions ofthis utopi-

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anism, in all its ambiguity, in the thought ofBartolome´ de Las

Casas, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Karl Marx.

In the first half-century after the European landing in the

Americas at Hispaniola, Bartolome´ de Las Casas witnessed with

horror the barbarity ofthe conquistadores and colonists and their

enslavement and genocide ofthe Amerindians. The majority ofthe

Spanish military, administrators, and colonists, hungry for gold and

power, saw the occupants ofthis new world as irrevocably Other,

less than human, or at least naturally subordinate to Europeans—and

Las Casas recounts for us how the newly arrived Europeans treated

them worse than their animals. In this context it is a wonder that

Las Casas, who was part ofthe Spanish mission, could separate

himselfenough from the common stream ofopinion to insist on

the humanity ofthe Amerindians and contest the brutality ofthe

Spanish rulers. His protest arises from one simple principle:
human-

kind is one and equal.

One should recognize at the same time, however, that a mis-

sionary vocation is intrinsically linked to the humanitarian project

ofthe good bishop ofChiapas. In fact, Las Casas can think equality

only in terms ofsameness. The Amerindians are equal to Europeans

in nature only insofar as they are potentially European, or really

potentially Christian: ‘‘The nature ofmen is the same and all are

called by Christ in the same way.’’2 Las Casas cannot see beyond

the Eurocentric view ofthe Americas, in which the highest generos-