Empire (62 page)

development of the postmodern informational revolution most needed big

government to support its efforts—for the construction of information highways, the control of the equilibria of the stock exchanges despite the wild
fluctuations of speculation, the firm maintenance of monetary values, public
investment in the military-industrial system to help transform the mode of
production, the reform of the educational system to adapt to these new

productive networks, and so forth. Precisely at this time, after the Soviet
Union had collapsed, the imperial tasks facing the U.S. government were
most urgent and big government was most needed.

When the proponents of the globalization of capital cry out against

big government, they are being not only hypocritical but also ungrateful.

Where would capital be if it had not put its hands on big government and
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349

made it work for centuries in its exclusive interest? And today where would
imperial capital be if big government were not big enough to wield the power
of life and death over the entire global multitude? Where would capital be
without a big government capable of printing money to produce and reproduce
a global order that guarantees capitalist power and wealth? Or without the
communications networks that expropriate the cooperation of the productive
multitude? Every morning when they wake up, capitalists and their representatives across the world, instead of reading the curses against big government
in the
Wall Street Journal,
ought to get down on their knees and praise it!

Now that the most radical conservative opponents of big government

have collapsed under the weight of the paradox of their position, we want
to pick up their banners where they left them in the mud. It is our turn
now to cry ‘‘Big government is over!’’ Why should that slogan be the

exclusive property of the conservatives? Certainly, having been educated in
class struggle, we know well that big government has also been an instrument
for the redistribution of social wealth and that, under the pressure of working-class struggle, it has served in the fight for equality and democracy. Today,
however, those times are over. In imperial postmodernity big government
has become merely the despotic means of domination and the totalitarian
production of subjectivity. Big government conducts the great orchestra of
subjectivities reduced to commodities. And it is consequently the determination of the limits of desire: these are in fact the lines that, in the biopolitical
Empire, establish the new division of labor across the global horizon, in
the interest of reproducing the power to exploit and subjugate. We, on the
contrary, struggle because desire has no limit and (since the desire to exist
and the desire to produce are one and the same thing) because life can be
continuously, freely, and equally enjoyed and reproduced.

Some might object that the productive biopolitical universe still requires
some form of command over it, and that realistically we should aim not at
destroying big government but at putting our hands on its controls. We

have to put an end to such illusions that have plagued the socialist and
communist traditions for so long! On the contrary, from the standpoint of
the multitude and its quest for autonomous self-government, we have to

put an end to the continuous repetition of the same that Marx lamented

150 years ago when he said that all revolutions have only perfected the
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state instead of destroying it. That repetition has only become clearer in
our century, when the great compromise (in its liberal, socialist, and fascist
forms) among big government, big business, and big labor has forced the
state to produce horrible new fruits: concentration camps, gulags, ghettos,
and the like.

You are just a bunch of anarchists, the new Plato on the block will

finally yell at us. That is not true. We would be anarchists if we were not
to speak (as did Thrasymacus and Callicles, Plato’s immortal interlocutors)
from the standpoint of a materiality constituted in the networks of productive
cooperation, in other words, from the perspective of a humanity that is
constructed productively, that is constituted through the ‘‘common name’’

of freedom. No, we are not anarchists but communists who have seen how

much repression and destruction of humanity have been wrought by liberal
and socialist big governments. We have seen how all this is being re-created
in imperial government, just when the circuits of productive cooperation have
made labor power as a whole capable of constituting itself in government.

PART 4

T H E D E C L I N E A N D F A L L O F E M P I R E

4.1

V I R T U A L I T I E S

The people no longer exist, or not yet . . .
the people are missing.

Gilles Deleuze

In the course ofour argument we have generally dealt

with Empire in terms ofa critique ofwhat is and what exists, and

thus in ontological terms. At times, however, in order to reinforce

the argumentation, we have addressed the problematic ofEmpire

with an ethico-political discourse, calculating the mechanics of

passions and interests—for example, when early in our argument

we judged Empire as less bad or better than the previous paradigm

ofpower from the standpoint ofthe multitude. English political

theory in the period from Hobbes to Hume presents perhaps the

paradigmatic example ofsuch an ethico-political discourse, which

began from a pessimistic description of presocial human nature and

attempted through reliance on a transcendental notion ofpower

to establish the legitimacy ofthe state. The (more or less liberal)

Leviathan is less bad with respect to the war ofall against all, better

because it establishes and preserves peace.1 This style ofpolitical

theorizing, however, is no longer very useful. It pretends that the

subject can be understood presocially and outside the community,

and then imposes a kind oftranscendental socialization on it. In

Empire, no subjectivity is outside, and all places have been subsumed

in a general ‘‘non-place.’’ The transcendental fiction ofpolitics can

no longer stand up and has no argumentative utility because we all

exist entirely within the realm ofthe social and the political. When

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we recognize this radical determination ofpostmodernity, political

philosophy forces us to enter the terrain of ontology.

OutsideMeasure(TheImmeasurable)

When we say that political theory must deal with ontology, we

mean first ofall that politics cannot be constructed from the outside.

Politics is given immediately; it is a field ofpure immanence. Empire

forms on this superficial horizon where our bodies and minds are

embedded. It is purely positive. There is no external logical machine

that constitutes it. The most natural thing in the world is that the

world appears to be politically united, that the market is global,

and that power is organized throughout this universality. Imperial

politics articulates being in its global extension—a great sea that

only the winds and current move. The neutralization ofthe tran-

scendental imagination is thus the first sense in which the political

in the imperial domain is ontological.2

The political must also be understood as ontological owing

to the fact that all the transcendental determinations of value and

measure that used to order the deployments ofpower (or really

determine its prices, subdivisions, and hierarchies) have lost their

coherence. From the sacred myths ofpower that historical anthro-

pologists such as RudolfOtto and Georges Dumezil employed to

the rules ofthe new political science that the authors of
The Federalist
described; from the Rights of Man to the norms of international

public law—all ofthis f

ades away with the passage to Empire.

Empire dictates its laws and maintains the peace according to a

model ofpostmodern right and postmodern law, through mobile,

fluid, and localized procedures.3 Empire constitutes the ontological

fabric in which all the relations of power are woven together—

political and economic relations as well as social and personal rela-

tions. Across this hybrid domain the biopolitical structure ofbeing

is where the internal structure ofimperial constitution is revealed,

because in the globality ofbiopower every fixed measure ofvalue

tends to be dissolved, and the imperial horizon ofpower is revealed

finally to be a horizon outside measure. Not only the political

V I R T U A L I T I E S

355

transcendental but also the transcendental as such has ceased to

determine measure.

The great Western metaphysical tradition has always abhorred

the immeasurable. From Aristotle’s theory ofvirtue as measure4 to

Hegel’s theory ofmeasure as the key to the passage from existence

to essence,5 the question ofmeasure has been strictly linked to that

oftranscendent order. Even Marx’s theory ofvalue pays its dues

to this metaphysical tradition: his theory ofvalue is really a theory

ofthe measure ofvalue.6 Only on the ontological horizon ofEmpire,

however, is the world finally outside measure, and here we can see

clearly the deep hatred that metaphysics has for the immeasurable.

It derives from the ideological necessity to given a transcendent

ontological foundation to order. Just as God is necessary for the

classical transcendence ofpower, so too measure is necessary for

the transcendent foundation ofthe values ofthe modern state. If

there is no measure, the metaphysicians say, there is no cosmos;

and ifthere is no cosmos, there is no state. In this framework one

cannot think the immeasurable, or rather, one
must not
think it.

Throughout modernity, the immeasurable was the object ofan

absolute ban, an epistemological prohibition. This metaphysical

illusion disappears today, however, because in the context ofbiopo-

litical ontology and its becomings, the transcendent is what is un-

thinkable. When political transcendence is still claimed today, it

descends immediately into tyranny and barbarism.

When we say immeasurable, we mean that the political devel-

opments ofimperial being are outside ofevery preconstituted mea-

sure. We mean that the relationships among the modes ofbeing

and the segments ofpower are always constructed anew and that

they vary infinitely. The indexes ofcommand (like those ofeco-

nomic value) are defined on the basis ofalways contingent and

purely conventional elements. Certainly there are apexes and sum-

mits ofimperial power which guarantee that contingency does not

become subversive, that it is not united with the storms that arise

on the seas ofbeing—apexes such as the monopoly ofnuclear arms,

the control ofmoney, and the colonization ofether. These royal

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deployments ofEmpire guarantee that the contingency becomes a

necessity and does not descend into disorder. These higher powers,

however, do not represent a figure oforder or a measure ofthe

cosmos; on the contrary, their effectiveness is based on destruction

(by the bomb), on judgment (by money), and on fear (by communi-

cation).

One might ask at this point whether this idea ofimmeasurabil-

ity does not imply the absolute negation ofthe concept ofjustice.

The history ofthe idea ofjustice has indeed generally referred to

some notion ofmeasure, be it a measure ofequality or a measure

ofproportionality. Furthermore, as Aristotle says, taking up a line

from Theognis, ‘‘in justice all virtue is summed up.’’7 Are we thus

simply making a nonsensical nihilist claim when we assert that in

the ontology ofEmpire value is outside measure? Are we claiming

that no value, no justice, and indeed no virtue can exist? No, in

contrast to those who have long claimed that value can be affirmed

only in the figure ofmeasure and order, we argue that value and

justice can live in and be nourished by an immeasurable world.

Here we can see once again the importance ofthe revolution of

Renaissance humanism.
Ni Dieu, ni maıˆtre, ni l’homme
—no transcen-

dent power or measure will determine the values ofour world.

Value will be determined only by humanity’s own continuous

innovation and creation.

Beyond Measure (The Virtual)

Even ifthe political has become a realm outside measure, value

nonetheless remains. Even ifin postmodern capitalism there is no

longer a fixed scale that measures value, value nonetheless is still

powerful and ubiquitous. This fact is demonstrated first of all by the

persistence ofexploitation, and second by the fact that productive

innovation and the creation ofwealth continue tirelessly—in fact,

they mobilize labor in every interstice ofthe world. In Empire,