Empire (72 page)

that compose it go beyond any object (
res
) and are constitutionally incapable ofbeing corralled there. On the contrary, the singularities

are producers. Like the Renaissance ‘‘posse,’’ which was traversed

by knowledge and resided at the metaphysical root ofbeing, they

too will be at the origin ofthe new reality ofthe political that the

multitude is defining in the vacuum ofimperial ontology. Posse is

the standpoint that best allows us to grasp the multitude as singular

subjectivity: posse constitutes its mode ofproduction and its being.

As in all innovative processes, the mode ofproduction that

arises is posed against the conditions from which it has to be liber-

ated. The mode ofproduction ofthe multitude is posed against

exploitation in the name oflabor, against property in the name of

cooperation, and against corruption in the name offreedom. It

self-valorizes bodies in labor, reappropriates productive intelligence

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409

through cooperation, and transforms existence in freedom. The

history ofclass composition and the history oflabor militancy

demonstrate the matrix ofthese ever new and yet determinate

reconfigurations of self-valorization, cooperation, and political self-

organization as an effective social project.

The first phase ofproperly capitalist worker militancy, that is,

the phase ofindustrial production that preceded the full deployment

ofFordist and Taylorist regimes, was defined by the figure ofthe

professional worker,
the highly skilled worker organized hierarchically in industrial production. This militancy involved primarily transforming the specific power of the valorization of the worker’s own

labor and productive cooperation into a weapon to be used in a

project of
reappropriation,
a project in which the singular figure of the worker’s own productive power would be exalted. A republic

ofworker councils was its slogan; a soviet ofproducers was its telos;

and autonomy in the articulation ofmodernization was its program.

The birth ofthe modern trade union and the construction ofthe

party as vanguard both date from this period of worker struggles

and effectively overdetermine it.

The second phase ofcapitalist worker militancy, which corres-

ponded to the deployment ofFordist and Taylorist regimes, was

defined by the figure ofthe
mass worker.
The militancy ofthe mass

worker combined its own self-valorization as a refusal of factory

work and the extension ofits power over all mechanisms ofsocial

reproduction. Its program was to create a real
alternative
to the

system ofcapitalist power. The organization ofmass trade unions,

the construction of the welfare state, and social-democratic reform-

ism were all results ofthe relations offorce that the mass worker

defined and the overdetermination it imposed on capitalist develop-

ment. The communist alternative acted in this phase as a counter-

power within the processes ofcapitalist development.

Today, in the phase ofworker militancy that corresponds to

the post-Fordist, informational regimes of production, there arises

the figure ofthe
social worker.
In the figure ofthe social worker the various threads ofimmaterial labor-power are being woven to-410

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

gether. A constituent power that connects mass intellectuality and

self-valorization in all the arenas of the flexible and nomadic produc-

tive social cooperation is the order ofthe day. In other words, the

program ofthe social worker is a project of
constitution.
In today’s productive matrix, the constituent power oflabor can be expressed

as self-valorization of the human (the equal right of citizenship for

all over the entire sphere ofthe world market); as cooperation (the

right to communicate, construct languages, and control communi-

cations networks); and as political power, or really as the constitution

ofa society in which the basis ofpower is defined by the expression

ofthe needs ofall. This is the organization ofthe social worker

and immaterial labor, an organization ofproductive and political

power as a biopolitical unity managed by the multitude, organized

by the multitude, directed by the multitude—absolute democracy

in action.

The posse produces the chromosomes ofits future organization.

Bodies are on the front lines in this battle, bodies that consolidate in

an irreversible way the results ofpast struggles and incorporate a

power that has been gained ontologically. Exploitation must be not

only negated from the perspective of practice but also annulled in its

premises, at its basis, stripped from the genesis of reality. Exploitation

must be excluded from the bodies of immaterial labor-power just as

it must be from the social knowledges and affects of reproduction

(generation, love, the continuity ofkinship and community relation-

ships, and so forth) that bring value and affect together in the same

power. The constitution ofnew bodies, outside ofexploitation, is a

fundamental basis ofthe new mode ofproduction.

The mode ofproduction ofthe multitude reappropriates

wealth from capital and also constructs a new wealth, articulated

with the powers ofscience and social knowledge through coopera-

tion. Cooperation annuls the title ofproperty. In modernity, private

property was often legitimated by labor, but this equation, if it ever

really made sense, today tends to be completely destroyed. Private

property ofthe means ofproduction today, in the era ofthe hegem-

ony ofcooperative and immaterial labor, is only a putrid and tyranni-

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cal obsolescence. The tools ofproduction tend to be recomposed

in collective subjectivity and in the collective intelligence and affect

ofthe workers; entrepreneurship tends to be organized by the

cooperation ofsubjects in general intellect. The organization ofthe

multitude as political subject, as posse, thus begins to appear on the

world scene. The multitude is biopolitical self-organization.

Certainly, there must be a moment when reappropriation and

self-organization reach a threshold and configure a real event. This

is when the political is really affirmed—when the genesis is complete

and self-valorization, the cooperative convergence of subjects, and

the proletarian management ofproduction become a constituent

power. This is the point when the modern republic ceases to exist

and the postmodern posse arises. This is the founding moment of

an earthly city that is strong and distinct from any divine city. The

capacity to construct places, temporalities, migrations, and new

bodies already affirms its hegemony through the actions of the

multitude against Empire. Imperial corruption is already under-

mined by the productivity ofbodies, by cooperation, and by the

multitude’s designs ofproductivity. The only event that we are still

awaiting is the construction, or rather the insurgence, ofa powerful

organization. The genetic chain is formed and established in ontol-

ogy, the scaffolding is continuously constructed and renewed by

the new cooperative productivity, and thus we await only the

maturation ofthe political development ofthe posse. We do not

have any models to offer for this event. Only the multitude through

its practical experimentation will offer the models and determine

when and how the possible becomes real.

M ILITANT

In the postmodern era, as the figure of the people dissolves, the militant is
the one who best expresses the life of the multitude: the agent of biopolitical
production and resistance against Empire. When we speak of the militant,
we are not thinking of anything like the sad, ascetic agent of the Third
International whose soul was deeply permeated by Soviet state reason, the
same way the will of the pope was embedded in the hearts of the knights
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of the Society of Jesus. We are thinking of nothing like that and of no one
who acts on the basis of duty and discipline, who pretends his or her actions
are deduced from an ideal plan. We are referring, on the contrary, to

something more like the communist and liberatory combatants of the

twentieth-century revolutions, the intellectuals who were persecuted and
exiled in the course of anti-fascist struggles, the republicans of the Spanish
civil war and the European resistance movements, and the freedom fighters
of all the anticolonial and anti-imperialist wars. A prototypical example of
this revolutionary figure is the militant agitator of the Industrial Workers
of the World. The Wobbly constructed associations among working people

from below, through continuous agitation, and while organizing them gave
rise to utopian thought and revolutionary knowledge. The militant was the
fundamental actor of the ‘‘long march’’ of the emancipation of labor from
the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, the creative singularity of that
gigantic collective movement that was working-class struggle.

Across this long period, the activity of the militant consisted, first of
all, in practices of resistance in the factory and in society against capitalist
exploitation. It consisted also, through and beyond resistance, in the collective
construction and exercise of a counterpower capable of destructuring the power
of capitalism and opposing it with an alternative program of government.

In opposition to the cynicism of the bourgeoisie, to monetary alienation,
to the expropriation of life, to the exploitation of labor, to the colonization
of the affects, and so on, the militant organized the struggle. Insurrection
was the proud emblem of the militant. This militant was repeatedly martyred
in the tragic history of communist struggles. Sometimes, but not often, the
normal structures of the rights state were sufficient for the repressive tasks
required to destroy the counterpower. When they were not sufficient, however,
the fascists and the white guards of state terror, or rather the black mafias
in the service of ‘‘democratic’’ capitalisms, were invited to lend a hand to
reinforce the legal repressive structures.

Today, after so many capitalist victories, after socialist hopes have

withered in disillusionment, and after capitalist violence against labor has
been solidified under the name of ultra-liberalism, why is it that instances
of militancy still arise, why have resistances deepened, and why does struggle
continually reemerge with new vigor? We should say right away that this
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new militancy does not simply repeat the organizational formulas of the
old revolutionary working class. Today the militant cannot even pretend to
be a
representative,
even of the fundamental human needs of the exploited.

Revolutionary political militancy today, on the contrary, must rediscover
what has always been its proper form:
not representational but constituent activity.
Militancy today is a positive, constructive, and innovative
activity. This is the form in which we and all those who revolt against the
rule of capital recognize ourselves as militants today. Militants resist imperial
command in a creative way. In other words, resistance is linked immediately
with a constitutive investment in the biopolitical realm and to the formation
of cooperative apparatuses of production and community. Here is the strong
novelty of militancy today: it repeats the virtues of insurrectional action of
two hundred years of subversive experience, but at the same time it is linked
to a new world, a world that knows no outside. It knows only an inside,
a vital and ineluctable participation in the set of social structures, with no
possibility of transcending them. This inside is the productive cooperation
of mass intellectuality and affective networks, the productivity of postmodern
biopolitics. This militancy makes resistance into counterpower and makes
rebellion into a project of love.

There is an ancient legend that might serve to illuminate the future

life of communist militancy: that of Saint Francis of Assisi. Consider his
work. To denounce the poverty of the multitude he adopted that common

condition and discovered there the ontological power of a new society. The
communist militant does the same, identifying in the common condition of
the multitude its enormous wealth. Francis in opposition to nascent capitalism
refused every instrumental discipline, and in opposition to the mortification
of the flesh (in poverty and in the constituted order) he posed a joyous life,
including all of being and nature, the animals, sister moon, brother sun,
the birds of the field, the poor and exploited humans, together against the
will of power and corruption. Once again in postmodernity we find ourselves
in Francis’s situation, posing against the misery of power the joy of being.