Empire (65 page)

is in this sense the central terrain ofanalysis. This problematic has

been posed by authors from Lukaćs to Benjamin, from Adorno to

the later Wittgenstein, from Foucault to Deleuze, and indeed by

nearly all those who have recognized the twilight ofmodernity. In

all ofthese cases the question was posed against such tremendous

metaphysical obstacles! And we can now see how pallid their re-

sponses were with respect to the enormity ofthe question. What

is certain today is that the problematic does not risk repeating the

old models ofthe metaphysical tradition, even the most powerful

ones. In fact, every metaphysical tradition is now completely worn

out. Ifthere is to be a solution to the problem, it cannot help being

material and explosive. Whereas our attention was first drawn to

the intensity ofthe elements ofvirtuality that constituted the multi-

tude, now it must focus on the hypothesis that those virtualities

accumulate and reach a threshold ofrealization adequate to their

power. This is the sense in which we speak ofgeneral intellect and

its articulations in knowledge, affect, and cooperation; and similarly

the sense in which we speak ofthe various forms ofthe collective

exodus ofthose nomadic movements ofthe multitude that appro-

priate spaces and renew them.

Here we are dealing with two passages. The first consists in

the fact that virtuality totalizes the field of the
res gestae.
Virtuality steps forward and demonstrates that the capacity of the
historia rerum

gestarum
to dominate the active virtual singularities has definitively expired. This is the
historia
that comes to an end when the new

virtualities emerge as powerful and liberate themselves from a being

that is invested hegemonically by capital and its institutions. Today

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

369

only the
res gestae
are charged with historical capacities, or rather, today there is no history, only historicity. The second passage consists in the fact that these singular virtualities as they gain their

autonomy also become self-valorizing. They express themselves as

machines ofinnovation. They not only refuse to be dominated by

the old systems ofvalue and exploitation, but actually create their

own irreducible possibilities as well. Here is where a materialist

telos is defined, founded on the action of singularities, a teleology

that is a resultant ofthe
res gestae
and a figure ofthe machinic logic ofthe multitude.

The
res gestae,
the singular virtualities that operate the connec-

tion between the possible and the real, are in the first passage outside

measure and in the second beyond measure. Singular virtualities,

which are the hinge between possible and real, play both these

cards: being outside measure as a destructive weapon (deconstructive

in theory and subversive in practice); and being beyond measure

as constituent power. The virtual and the possible are wedded as

irreducible innovation and as a revolutionary machine.

4.2

G E N E R A T I O N A N D C O R R U P T I O N

You can not spill a drop ofAmerican blood without spilling the

blood ofthe whole world . . . [O]ur blood is as the flood ofthe

Amazon, made up ofa thousand noble currents all pouring into

one. We are not a nation, so much as a world; for unless we may

claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are with-

out mother or father . . . Our ancestry is lost in the universal

paternity . . . We are the heirs ofall time, and with all nations

we divide our inheritance.

Herman Melville

Fate has willed it that America is from now on to be at the center

ofWestern civilization rather than on the periphery.

Walter Lippmann

There is no escaping American business.

Louis-Ferdinand Ceĺine

The theory ofthe constitution ofEmpire is also a theory

ofits decline, as European theorists ofEmpire have recognized for

the last several thousand years. Already in Greco-Roman antiquity,

Thucydides, Tacitus, and Polybius all recounted the sequence of

rise and fall, as did later the Fathers of the Church and the theorists

ofearly Christianity. In none ofthese cases when speaking ofEmpire

was it simply a matter for them of repeating the classical theory of the

alternation between ‘‘positive’’ and ‘‘negative’’ forms of government,

because Empire by definition goes beyond this alternation. The

internal crisis ofthe concept ofEmpire, however, became com-

pletely clear only in the Enlightenment period and the period of

G E N E R A T I O N A N D C O R R U P T I O N

371

the construction ofEuropean modernity, when authors such as

Montesquieu and Gibbon made the problem ofthe decadence of

the Roman Empire one ofthe central topoi ofthe analysis ofthe

political forms of the modern sovereign state.1

Riseand Fall (Machiavelli)

In classical antiquity the concept ofEmpire already presupposed

crisis. Empire was conceived in the framework of a naturalist theory

ofthe forms ofgovernment; and, even though it breaks the cyclical

alternation of good and bad forms, it is not exempt from the destiny

ofthe corruption ofthe city and civilization as a whole. History

is dominated by Thyche (Fortune or Destiny), which at times

inevitably ruins the perfection that Empire achieves. From Thucyd-

ides to Tacitus and from Athens to Rome, the necessary equilibrium

between the forms of common life and command was situated in

this linear destiny. Polybius’ analyses ofthe Roman Empire broke

with this conception ofthe cyclical character ofhistorical develop-

ment whereby the human construction ofthe political constantly

shifts from the good to the bad forms of the city and power:

from monarchy to tyranny, from aristocracy to oligarchy, and from

democracy to anarchy, and then eventually begins a new cycle.

Polybius claimed that the Roman Empire broke with this cycle by

creating a synthesis ofthe good forms ofpower (see Section 3.5).

Empire is thus understood not so much as rule over universal space

and time, but rather as a movement that gathers together the spaces

and the temporalities through the powers ofthe social forces that

seek to liberate themselves from the natural cyclical character of

the time ofhistory. Surpassing the line ofdestiny, however, is

aleatory. The synthesis ofthe good f

orms ofgovernment, the

government ofcivic virtue, can defy destiny but cannot replace

it. Crisis and decline are determinations that every day must be

overcome.

During the European Enlightenment, authors such as Montes-

quieu and Gibbon rejected the naturalist conception ofthis process.

The decline ofEmpire was explained in social scientific terms as a

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result ofthe impossibility ofmaking last the historical and social

constructions ofthe multitude and the virtue ofits heroes. The

corruption and decline ofEmpire were thus not a natural presuppo-

sition, determined by the cyclical destiny ofhistory, but rather a

product ofthe human impossibility (or at least the extreme difficulty)

ofgoverning an unlimited space and time. The limitlessness of

Empire undermined the capacity to make the good institutions

function and last. Nonetheless, Empire was an end toward which

the desire and the civic virtue ofthe multitude and its human

capacities to make history all tended. It was a precarious situation

that could not support unbounded space and time, but instead

ineluctably limited the universal aims ofgovernment to finite politi-

cal and social dimensions. The Enlightenment authors told us that

the government that approximates perfection will be constructed

with moderation across limited space and time. Between Empire

and the reality ofcommand, therefore, there was a contradiction

in principle that would inevitably spawn crises.

Machiavelli, looking back at the conception ofthe ancients

and anticipating that of the moderns, is really the one who offers

us the most adequate illustration ofthe paradox ofEmpire.2 He

clarified the problematic by separating it from both the naturalizing

terrain ofthe ancients and the sociological terrain ofthe moderns,

presenting it, rather, on the field ofimmanence and pure politics.

In Machiavelli, expansive government is pushed forward by the

dialectic ofthe social and political forces ofthe Republic. Only

where the social classes and their political expressions are posed in

an open and continuous play ofcounterpower are freedom and

expansion linked together, and hence only there does Empire be-

come possible. There is no concept ofEmpire, Machiavelli says,

that is not a decisively expansive concept offreedom. Precisely in

this dialectic offreedom, then, is where the elements ofcorruption

and destruction reside. When Machiavelli discusses the fall of the

Roman Empire, he focuses first and foremost on the crisis of civil

religion, or really on the decline ofthe social relation that had

unified the different ideological social forces and allowed them

to participate together in the open interaction ofcounterpowers.

G E N E R A T I O N A N D C O R R U P T I O N

373

Christian religion is what destroyed the Roman Empire by destroy-

ing the civic passion that pagan society had sustained, the conflictual

but loyal participation ofthe citizens in the continuous perfecting

ofthe constitution and the process offreedom.

The ancient notion ofthe necessary and natural corruption

ofthe good forms ofgovernment is thus radically displaced because

they can be evaluated only in relation to the social and political

relationship that organized the constitution. The Enlightenment

and modern notion ofthe crisis ofunbounded and uncontrollable

space and time is similarly displaced because it too was led back to

the realm ofcivic power: on this and no other basis can space and

time be evaluated. The alternative is thus not between government

and corruption, or between Empire and decline, but between on

the one hand socially rooted and expansive government, that is,

‘‘civic’’ and ‘‘democratic’’ government, and on the other every

practice ofgovernment that grounds its own power on transcen-

dence and repression. We should be clear here that when we speak

ofthe ‘‘city’’ or ‘‘democracy’’ in quotation marks as the basis for

the expansive activity ofthe Republic, and as the only possibility

for a lasting Empire, we are introducing a concept of participation

that is linked to the vitality ofa population and to its capacity to

generate a dialectic ofcounterpowers—a concept, therefore, that

has little to do with the classical or the modern concept ofdemoc-

racy. Even the reigns ofGenghis Khan and Tamerlane were from

this perspective somewhat ‘‘democratic,’’ as were Caesar’s legions,

Napoleon’s armies, and the armies ofStalin and Eisenhower, since

each ofthem enabled the participation ofa population that supported

its expansive action. What is central in all ofthese cases, and in the

general concept ofEmpire, is that a terrain ofimmanence be af-

firmed. Immanence is defined as the absence ofevery external limit

from the trajectories ofthe action ofthe multitude, and immanence

is tied only, in its affirmations and destructions, to regimes of possi-

bility that constitute its formation and development.

Here we find ourselves back at the center ofthe paradox by

which every theory ofEmpire conceives the possibility ofits own

decline—but now we can begin to explain it. IfEmpire is always

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an absolute positivity, the realization ofa government ofthe multi-

tude, and an absolutely immanent apparatus, then it is exposed to

crisis precisely on the terrain ofthis definition, and not for any

other necessity or transcendence opposed to it. Crisis is the sign of

an alternative possibility on the plane ofimmanence—a crisis that

is not necessary but always possible. Machiavelli helps us understand

this immanent, constitutive, and ontological sense ofcrisis. Only

in the present situation, however, does this coexistence ofcrisis

and the field ofimmanence become completely clear. Since the

spatial and temporal dimensions ofpolitical action are no longer

the limits but the constructive mechanisms ofimperial government,

the coexistence ofthe positive and the negative on the terrain of

immanence is now configured as an open alternative. Today the

same movements and tendencies constitute both the rise and the

decline ofEmpire.

Finis Europae(Wittgenstein)

The coexistence ofthe imperial spirit with signs ofcrisis and

decline has appeared in many different guises in European dis-

course over the past two centuries, often as a reflection either

on the end ofEuropean hegemony or on the crisis ofdemocracy

and the triumph ofmass society. We have insisted at length

throughout this book that the modern governments ofEurope