Empire (31 page)

sive era, straddling the turn ofthe century, from the imperialist

doctrine ofTheodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson’s interna-

tional reformism; a third phase moves from the New Deal and the

Second World War through the height ofthe cold war; and finally,

a fourth phase is inaugurated with the social movements of the

1960s and continues through the dissolution ofthe Soviet Union and

its Eastern European bloc. Each ofthese phases ofU.S. constitutional

history marks a step toward the realization ofimperial sovereignty.

In the first phase ofthe Constitution, between the presidencies

of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, the open space of the

frontier became the conceptual terrain of republican democracy:

this opening afforded the Constitution its first strong definition.

The declarations off

reedom made sense in a space where the

constitution ofthe state was seen as an open process, a collective

self-making.14 Most important, this American terrain was free of

the forms of centralization and hierarchy typical of Europe. Tocque-

ville and Marx, from opposite perspectives, agree on this point:

American civil society does not develop within the heavy shackles

of feudal and aristocratic power but starts off from a separate and

very different foundation.15 An ancient dream seems newly possible.

An unbounded territory is open to the desire
(cupiditas)
ofhumanity, and this humanity can thus avoid the crisis ofthe relationship

between virtue
(virtus)
and fortune
(fortuna)
that had ambushed and derailed the humanist and democratic revolution in Europe. From

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the perspective ofthe new United States, the obstacles to human

development are posed by nature, not history—and nature does

not present insuperable antagonisms or fixed social relationships. It

is a terrain to transform and traverse.

Already in this first phase, then, a new principle ofsovereignty

is affirmed, different from the European one: liberty is made sover-

eign and sovereignty is defined as radically democratic within an

open and continuous process of expansion. The frontier is a frontier

ofliberty. How hollow the rhetoric ofthe Federalists would have

been and how inadequate their own ‘‘new political science’’ had

they not presupposed this vast and mobile threshold ofthe frontier!

The very idea ofscarcity that—like the idea ofwar—had been at

the center ofthe European concept ofmodern sovereignty is a

priori stripped away from the constitutive processes of the American

experience. Jefferson and Jackson both understood the materiality

ofthe frontier and recognized it as the basis that supported the

expansiveness ofdemocracy.16 Liberty and the frontier stand in a

relationship ofreciprocal implication: every difficulty, every limit

ofliberty is an obstacle to overcome, a threshold to pass through.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific extended a terrain ofwealth and

freedom, constantly open to new lines of flight. In this framework

there is at least a partial displacement or resolution ofthat ambiguous

dialectic we saw developing within the American Constitution

that subordinated the immanent principles ofthe Declaration of

Independence to a transcendent order ofconstitutional self

-

reflection. Across the great open spaces the constituent tendency

wins out over the constitutional decree, the tendency ofthe imma-

nence ofthe principle over regulative reflection, and the initiative

ofthe multitude over the centralization ofpower.

This utopia ofopen spaces that plays such an important role

in the first phase ofAmerican constitutional history, however, al-

ready hides ingenuously a brutal form of subordination. The North

American terrain can be imagined as empty only by willfully ignor-

ing the existence ofthe Native Americans—or really conceiving

them as a different order of human being, as subhuman, part of the

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natural environment. Just as the land must be cleared oftrees and

rocks in order to farm it, so too the terrain must be cleared of the

native inhabitants. Just as the frontier people must gird themselves

against the severe winters, so too they must arm themselves against

the indigenous populations. Native Americans were regarded as

merely a particularly thorny element ofnature, and a continuous

war was aimed at their expulsion and/or elimination. Here we are

faced with a contradiction that could not be absorbed within the

constitutional machine: the Native Americans could not be inte-

grated in the expansive movement ofthe frontier as part ofthe

constitutional tendency; rather, they had to be excluded from the

terrain to open its spaces and make expansion possible. Ifthey had

been recognized, there would have been no real frontier on the

continent and no open spaces to fill. They existed outside the

Constitution as its negative foundation: in other words, their exclu-

sion and elimination were essential conditions ofthe functioning

ofthe Constitution itself. This contradiction may not even properly

be conceived as a crisis since Native Americans are so dramatically

excluded from and external to the workings of the constitutional ma-

chine.

In this first phase that runs from the founding of the democratic

republic to the Civil War, the constitutional dynamic did go into

crisis as a result ofan internal contradiction. Whereas Native Ameri-

cans were cast outside the Constitution, African Americans were

from the beginning posed within it. The conception of frontier

and the idea and practice ofan open space ofdemocracy were in

fact woven together with an equally open and dynamic concept of

people, multitude, and
gens.
The republican people is a new people,
a people in exodus
populating the empty (or emptied) new territories.

From the beginning, American space was not only an extensive,

unbounded space but also an intensive space: a space ofcrossings,

a ‘‘melting pot’’ ofcontinuous hybridization. The first real crisis of

American liberty was determined on this internal, intensive space.

Black slavery, a practice inherited from the colonial powers, was

an insurmountable barrier to the formation of a free people. The

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great American
anticolonial
constitution had to integrate this paradigmatic
colonial
institution at its very heart. Native Americans could be excluded because the new republic did not depend on their

labor, but black labor was an essential support ofthe new United

States: African Americans had to be included in the Constitution

but could not be included equally. (Women, ofcourse, occupied

a very similar position.) The Southern constitutionalists had no

trouble demonstrating that the Constitution, in its dialectical, self-

reflective, and ‘ federalist’’ moment, permitted, and even demanded,

this perverse interpretation ofthe social division oflabor that ran

completely counter to the affirmation of equality expressed in the

Declaration ofIndependence.

The delicate nature ofthis contradiction is indicated by the

bizarre compromise in the drafting of the Constitution, arrived at

only through tortuous negotiation, whereby the slave population

does count in the determination ofthe number ofrepresentatives

for each state in the House of Representatives, but at a ratio whereby

one slave equals three-fifths of a free person. (Southern states fought

to make this ratio as high as possible to increase their congressional

power, and Northerners fought to lower it.) The constitutionalists

were forced in effect to
quantify
the constitutional value of different races. The framers thus declared that the number of representatives

‘‘shall be determined by adding to the whole Number off

ree

Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years,

and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.’’17

One for white and zero for Native Americans poses relatively little

problem, but three fifths is a very awkward number for a Constitu-

tion. African American slaves could be neither completely included

nor entirely excluded. Black slavery was paradoxically both an

exception to and a foundation of the Constitution.

This contradiction posed a crisis for the newly developed U.S.

notion ofsovereignty because it blocked the free circulation, mixing,

and equality that animate its foundation.18 Imperial sovereignty must

always overcome barriers and boundaries both within its domain

and at the frontiers. This continuous overcoming is what makes

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the imperial space open. The enormous internal barriers between

black and white, free and slave, blocked the imperial integration

machine and deflated the ideological pretense to open spaces.

Abraham Lincoln was certainly right when, conducting the

Civil War, he thought ofhimselfas refounding the nation. The

passage ofthe Fourteenth Amendment inaugurated more than a

century ofjuridical struggles over civil rights and African American

equality. Furthermore, the debate over slavery was inextricably tied

to the debates over the new territories. What was in play was a

redefinition ofthe
space
ofthe nation. At stake was the question

whether the free exodus of the multitude, unified in a plural com-

munity, could continue to develop, perfect itself, and realize a new

configuration ofpublic space. The new democracy had to destroy

the transcendental idea ofthe nation with all its racial divisions and

create its own people, defined not by old heritages but by a new

ethics ofthe construction and expansion ofthe community. The

new nation could not but be the product ofthe political and cultural

management ofhybrid identities.

TheClosureof Imperial Space

The great open American spaces eventually ran out. Even pushing

Native Americans farther and farther away, into smaller and smaller

confines, was not enough. In the nineteenth and twentieth centu-

ries, American liberty, its new model ofnetwork power, and its

alternative conception to modern sovereignty all ran up against the

recognition that open terrain was limited. The development ofthe

U.S. Constitution would be from this moment on constantly poised

on a contradictory border. Every time the expansiveness ofthe

constitutional project ran up against its limits, the republic was

tempted to engage in a European-style imperialism. There was

always, however, another option: to return to the project ofimperial

sovereignty and articulate it in a way consistent with the original

‘‘Roman’’ mission ofthe United States. This new drama ofthe

U.S. political project was played out in the Progressive era, from

the 1890s to the First World War.

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173

This was the same period in which class struggle rose to center

stage in the United States. Class struggle posed the problem of

scarcity, not in absolute terms, but in terms proper to the history

ofcapitalism: that is, as the inequity ofthe division ofthe goods

ofdevelopment along the lines ofthe social division oflabor.

Class division emerged as a limit that threatened to destabilize the

expansive equilibria ofthe constitution. At the same time, capital’s

great trusts began to organize new forms of financial power, delink-

ing wealth from productivity and money from the relations of

production. Whereas in Europe this was experienced as a relatively

continuous development—because finance capital was built on the

social position ofland rent and the aristocracy—in the United States

it was an explosive event. It jeopardized the very possibility ofa

constitution in network, because when a power becomes monopo-

listic, the network itselfis destroyed. Since the expansion ofspace

was no longer possible and thus could no longer be used as a strategy

to resolve conflicts, social conflict appeared directly as a violent and

irreconcilable event. The entrance on the scene ofthe great U.S.

workers’ movement confirmed the closure ofthe constitutional

space ofmediation and the impossibility ofthe spatial displacement

ofconflicts. The Haymarket Square riot and the Pullman strike

stated it loud and clear: there is no more open space, and thus

conflict will result in a direct clash, right here.19 In effect, when

power ran up against its spatial limits, it was constrained to fold

back on itself. This was the new context in which all actions had

to be played out.

The closure ofspace posed a serious challenge to the original

American constitutional spirit, and the path to address this challenge

was treacherous. Never was the drive stronger to transform the

United States into something like a European-style sovereignty.

Our concepts of‘‘reaction,’’ ‘‘active counterrevolution,’’ ‘‘preven-