Empire (45 page)

aligned perspective gave a first glimpse ofa new and generalized

desire.

The question what to do after liberation so as not to fall under

the domination ofone camp or the other remained unanswered.

What were clear and full of potential, by contrast, were the subjectiv-

ities that pushed beyond modernity. The utopian image ofthe

Soviet and Chinese revolutions as alternatives for development

vanished when those revolutions could no longer go forward, or

rather when they failed to find a way to go beyond modernity.

The U.S. model ofdevelopment appeared equally closed, since

throughout the postwar period the United States presented itself

more as the police force of the old imperialisms than the agent of

a new hope. The struggle ofsubaltern populations for their liberation

remained an explosive and uncontainable mixture. By the end of

the 1960s the liberation struggles, whose influence had come to be

felt in every interstice of world space, assumed a force, a mobility,

and a plasticity ofform that drove the project ofcapitalist moderniza-

tion (in both its liberal and its socialist guises) out into an open sea,

where it lost its bearings. Behind the fac¸ade ofthe bipolar U.S.-

Soviet divide they could discern a single disciplinary model, and

against this model the enormous movements struggled, in forms

that were more or less ambiguous, more or less mystified, but

nonetheless real. This enormous new subjectivity alluded to and

made necessary a paradigm shift.

The inadequacy ofthe theory and practice ofmodern sover-

eignty became evident at this point. By the 1960s and 1970s, even

though the model ofdisciplinary modernization had been imposed

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251

across the world, even though the welfarist policies set in motion by

the dominant countries had become unstoppable and were naively

championed by leaders in the subordinated countries, and even

in this new world ofcommunicative media and networks, the

mechanisms ofmodern sovereignty were no longer sufficient to

rule the new subjectivities. We should point out here that as the

paradigm of modern sovereignty lost its effectiveness, so too the

classical theories ofimperialism and anti-imperialism lost whatever

explanatory powers they had. In general, when these theories con-

ceived the surpassing ofimperialism, they saw it as a process that

would be in perfect continuity with the paradigm of modernization

and modern sovereignty. What happened, however, was exactly

the opposite. Massified subjectivities, populations, oppressed classes,

in the very moment when they entered the processes ofmoderniza-

tion, began to transform them and go beyond them. The struggles

for liberation, in the very moment when they were situated and

subordinated in the world market, recognized insufficient and tragic

keystone ofmodern sovereignty. Exploitation and domination

could no longer be imposed in their modern forms. As these enor-

mous new subjective forces emerged from colonization and reached

modernity, they recognized that
the primary task is not getting into

but getting out of modernity.

Toward a New Global Paradigm

A paradigm shift in the world economic and political order was

taking place. One important element ofthis passage was the fact

that the world market as a structure ofhierarchy and command

became more important and decisive in all the zones and regions

in which the old imperialisms had previously operated. The world

market began to appear as the centerpiece ofan apparatus that could

regulate global networks ofcirculation. This unification was still

posed only at a formal level. The processes that arose on the conflic-

tual terrain ofliberation struggles and expanding capitalist circulation

were not necessarily or immediately compatible with the new struc-

tures ofthe world market. Integration proceeded unevenly and at

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different speeds. In different regions and often within the same

region, diverse forms of labor and production coexisted, as did also

different regimes of social reproduction. What might have seemed

like a coherent central axis ofthe restructuring ofglobal production

was shattered into a thousand particular fragments and the unifying

process was experienced everywhere singularly. Far from being

unidimensional, the process ofrestructuring and unifying command

over production was actually an explosion of innumerable different

productive systems. The processes ofthe unification ofthe world

market operated paradoxically through diversity and diversification,

but its tendency was nonetheless real.

Several important effects follow from the tendency toward

the unification ofthe world market. On the one hand, the wide

spread ofthe disciplinary model ofthe organization oflabor and

society outward from the dominant regions produced in the rest

of the world a strange effect of proximity, simultaneously pulling

it closer and isolating it away in a ghetto. That is, liberation struggles

found themselves ‘‘victorious’’ but nonetheless consigned to the

ghetto ofthe world market—a vast ghetto with indeterminate

borders, a shantytown, a favela. On the other hand, huge populations

underwent what might be called
wage emancipation
as a result of

these processes. Wage emancipation meant the entrance ofgreat

masses ofworkers into the disciplinary regime ofmodern capitalist

production, whether it be in the factory, the fields, or some other

site ofsocial production, and hence these populations were liberated

from the semi-servitude that imperialism had perpetuated. Entry

into the wage system can be bloody (and it has been); it can repro-

duce systems offerocious repression (and it has done so); but even

in the shacks ofthe new shantytowns and favelas, the wage relation

does determine the constitution ofnew needs, desires, and demands.

For example, the peasants who become wage workers and who are

subjected to the discipline ofthe new organization oflabor in many

cases suffer worse living conditions, and one cannot say that they

are more free than the traditional territorialized laborer, but they

do become infused with
a new desire for liberation.
When the new

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253

disciplinary regime constructs the tendency toward a global market

oflabor power, it constructs also the possibility ofits antithesis. It

constructs the desire to escape the disciplinary regime and tenden-

tially an undisciplined multitude ofworkers who want to be free.

The increasing mobility oflarge portions ofthe global proletar-

iat is another important consequence ofthe tendential unification

ofthe world market. In contrast to the old imperialist regimes

in which the currents oflabor mobility were primarily regulated

vertically between colony and metropole, the world market opens

up wider horizontal paths. The constitution ofa global market

organized along a disciplinary model is traversed by tensions that

open mobility in every direction; it is a transversal mobility that is

rhizomatic rather than arborescent. Our interest here is not only

in giving a phenomenological description ofthe existing situation,

but also in recognizing the possibilities inherent in that situation.

The new transversal mobility ofdisciplined labor power is significant

because it indicates a real and powerful search for freedom and the

formation of new, nomadic desires that cannot be contained and

controlled within the disciplinary regime.22 It is true that many

workers across the world are subject to forced migrations in dire

circumstances that are hardly liberatory in themselves. It is true,

too, that this mobility rarely increases the cost oflabor power; in

fact, it most often decreases it, increasing instead the competition

among workers. The mobility does carry for capital a high price,

however, which is the increased desire for liberation.

Some significant macroeconomic effects follow from the new

mobility introduced by capital’s global disciplinary paradigm. The

mobility ofpopulations makes it increasingly difficult to manage

national markets (particularly national labor markets) individually.

The adequate domain for the application of capitalist command

is no longer delimited by national borders or by the traditional

international boundaries. Workers who flee the Third World to

go to the First for work or wealth contribute to undermining the

boundaries between the two worlds. The Third World does not

really disappear in the process ofunification ofthe world market

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but enters into the First, establishes itselfat the heart as ghetto,

shantytown, favela, always again produced and reproduced. In turn,

the First World is transferred to the Third in the form of stock

exchanges and banks, transnational corporations and icy skyscrapers

ofmoney and command. Economic geography and political geogra-

phy both are destabilized in such a way that the boundaries among

the various zones are themselves fluid and mobile. As a result, the

entire world market tends to be the only coherent domain for the

effective application of capitalist management and command.

At this point the capitalist regimes have to undergo a process

ofreform and restructuring in order to ensure their capacity to

organize the world market. This tendency emerges clearly only in

the 1980s (and is established definitively after the collapse of the

Soviet model ofmodernization), but already at the moment ofits

first appearance its principal features are clearly defined. It has to

be a new mechanism ofthe general control ofthe global process

and thus a mechanism that can coordinate politically the new dy-

namics ofthe global domain ofcapital and the subjective dimensions

ofthe actors; it has to be able to articulate the imperial dimension

ofcommand and the transversal mobility ofthe subjects. We will

see in the next section how this process was realized historically,

and thus we will begin to address directly the processes ofthe

constitution ofa global apparatus ofgovernment.

Real Subsumption and the World Market

Before we move on, the expository development of our study

demands that we look more closely at the relationship between

this tendency toward the realization ofthe world market and the

paradigm ofdisciplinary production and government. How does

the spread ofdisciplinary regimes throughout the world represent

a fundamental genealogical moment of Empire? We can give one

explanation why this is the case by linking Marx’s description of

the phases ofthe capitalist subsumption ofsociety together with

his analyses ofthe tendency toward the world market. The two

movements actually coincide at a certain point, or really the capitalist

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255

subsumption ofsociety tends to be completed in the construction

ofthe world market.

Earlier we saw that the practices ofimperialism involve capital’s

internalization ofits outside and are thus processes ofthe
formal

subsumption
oflabor under capital. Marx uses the term ‘ f

ormal

subsumption’’ to name processes whereby capital incorporates under

its own relations ofproduction laboring practices that originated

outside its domain.23 The processes offormal subsumption are thus

intrinsically related to the extension ofthe domain ofcapitalist

production and capitalist markets. At a certain point, as capitalist

expansion reaches its limit, the processes offormal subsumption

can no longer play the central role. The processes ofthe
real subsump-

tion
oflabor under capital do not rely on the outside and do not

involve the same processes ofexpansion. Through the real subsump-

tion, the integration oflabor into capital becomes more intensive

than extensive and society is ever more completely fashioned by

capital. There are certainly processes ofreal subsumption without

a world market, but there cannot be a fully realized world market

without the processes ofreal subsumption. In other words, the

realization ofthe world market and the general equalization or at

least management ofrates ofprofit on a world scale cannot be the

result simply offinancial or monetary factors but must come about

through a transformation of social and productive relations. Disci-

pline is the central mechanism ofthis transformation. When a new

social reality is formed, integrating both the development of capital

and the proletarianization ofthe population into a single process, the

political form ofcommand must itselfbe modified and articulated in

a manner and on a scale adequate to this process, a global quasi-

state ofthe disciplinary regime.

Marx’s intuitions ofthe processes ofreal subsumption do not