Empire (13 page)

the juridical framework we investigated earlier and recognize the

reasons for the real deficit that plagues the transition from interna-

tional public law to the new public law ofEmpire, that is, the

new conception ofright that defines Empire. In other words, the

frustration and the continual instability suffered by imperial right

as it attempts to destroy the old values that served as reference points

for international public law (the nation-states, the international order

ofWestphalia, the United Nations, and so forth) along with the

so-called turbulence that accompanies this process are all symptoms

ofa properly
ontological
lack. As it constructs its supranational figure, power seems to be deprived ofany real ground beneath it, or rather,

it is lacking the motor that propels its movement. The rule ofthe

biopolitical imperial context should thus be seen in the first instance

as an empty machine, a spectacular machine, a parasitical machine.

A new sense ofbeing is imposed on the constitution ofEmpire

by the creative movement ofthe multitude, or really it is continually

present in this process as an alternative paradigm. It is internal to

Empire and pushes forward its constitution, not as a negative that

constructs a positive or any such dialectical resolution. Rather it

acts as an absolutely positive force that pushes the dominating power

toward an abstract and empty unification, to which it appears as

the distinct alternative. From this perspective, when the constituted

power ofEmpire appears merely as privation ofbeing and produc-

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63

tion, as a simple abstract and empty trace ofthe constituent power

ofthe multitude, then we will be able to recognize the real stand-

point ofour analysis. It is a standpoint that is both strategic and

tactical, when the two are no longer different.

P OLITICAL M ANIFESTO

In an extraordinary text written during his period of seclusion, Louis

Althusser reads Machiavelli and poses the quite reasonable question whether
The Prince
should be considered a revolutionary political manifesto.1 In
order to address this question Althusser first tries to define the ‘‘manifesto
form’’ as a specific genre of text by comparing the characteristics of
The Prince
with those of the paradigmatic political manifesto, Marx and Engels’s
Manifesto of the Communist Party.
He finds between these two documents an undeniable structural resemblance. In both texts the form of the
argument consists of ‘‘a completely specific apparatus
[
dispositif
]
that establishes particular relationships between the discourse and its ‘object’ and
between the discourse and its ‘subject’ ’’ (p. 55). In each case the political
discourse is born from the productive relationship between the subject and
the object, from the fact that this relationship is itself the very point of view
of the
res gestae,
a self-constituting collective action aimed at its objective.

In short, clearly outside of the tradition of political science (either in its
classical form, which was really the analysis of the forms of government, or
in its contemporary form, which amounts to a science of management), the
manifestos of Machiavelli and Marx-Engels define the political as the

movement of the multitude and they define the goal as the self-production
of the subject. Here we have a materialist teleology.

Despite that important similarity, Althusser continues, the differences
between the two manifestos are significant. The primary difference consists
in the fact that, whereas in the Marx-Engels text the subject that defines
the standpoint of the text (the modern proletariat) and the object (the
communist party and communism) are conceived as co-present in such a

way that the growing organization of the former directly entails the creation
of the latter, in the Machiavellian project there is an ineluctable distance
between the subject (the multitude) and the object (the Prince and the free
state). This distance leads Machiavelli in
The Prince
to search for a
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democratic apparatus capable of linking subject to object. In other words,
whereas the Marx-Engels manifesto traces a linear and necessary causality,
the Machiavellian text poses rather a project and a utopia. Althusser recognizes finally that both texts effectively bring the theoretical proposal to the
level of praxis; both assume the present as empty for the future, ‘‘vide pour
le futur’’ (p. 62), and in this open space they establish an immanent act
of the subject that constitutes a new position of being.

Is this choice of the field of immanence, however, enough to define a

manifesto form that would be a mode of political discourse adequate to the
insurgent subject of postmodernity? The postmodern situation is eminently
paradoxical when it is considered from the biopolitical point of view—

understood, that is, as an uninterrupted circuit of life, production, and
politics, globally dominated by the capitalist mode of production. On the
one hand, in this situation all the forces of society tend to be activated as
productive forces; but on the other hand, these same forces are submitted to
a global domination that is continually more abstract and thus blind to the
sense of the apparatuses of the reproduction of life. In postmodernity, the

‘‘end of history’’ is effectively imposed, but in such a way that at the same
time paradoxically all the powers of humanity are called on to contribute
to the global reproduction of labor, society, and life. In this framework,
politics (when this is understood as administration and management) loses
all its transparency. Through its institutional processes of normalization,
power hides rather than reveals and interprets the relationships that characterize its control over society and life.

How can a revolutionary political discourse be reactivated in this

situation? How can it gain a new consistency and fill some eventual manifesto
with a new materialist teleology? How can we construct an apparatus for
bringing together the subject (the multitude) and the object (cosmopolitical
liberation) within postmodernity? Clearly one cannot achieve this, even
when assuming entirely the argument of the field of immanence, simply by
following the indications offered by the Marx-Engels manifesto. In the cold
placidness of postmodernity, what Marx and Engels saw as the co-presence
of the productive subject and the process of liberation is utterly inconceivable.

And yet, from our postmodern perspective the terms of the Machiavellian
manifesto seem to acquire a new contemporaneity. Straining the analogy

A L T E R N A T I V E S W I T H I N E M P I R E

65

with Machiavelli a little, we could pose the problem in this way: How can
productive labor dispersed in various networks find a center? How can the
material and immaterial production of the brains and bodies of the many
construct a common sense and direction, or rather, how can the endeavor
to bridge the distance between the formation of the multitude as subject and
the constitution of a democratic political apparatus find its prince?

This analogy, however, is finally insufficient. There remains in Machi-

avelli’s prince a utopian condition that distances the project from the subject
and that, despite the radical immanence of the method, confides the political
function to a higher plane. In contrast, any postmodern liberation must be
achieved within this world, on the plane of immanence, with no possibility
of any even utopian outside. The form in which the political should be

expressed as subjectivity today is not at all clear. A solution to this problem
would have to weave closer together the subject and the object of the project,
pose them in a relationship of immanence still more profound than that

achieved by Machiavelli or Marx-Engels, in other words, pose them in a

process of self-production.

Perhaps we need to reinvent the notion of the materialist teleology

that Spinoza proclaimed at the dawn of modernity when he claimed that

the prophet produces its own people.2 Perhaps along with Spinoza we should
recognize prophetic desire as irresistible, and all the more powerful the more
it becomes identified with the multitude. It is not at all clear that this
prophetic function can effectively address our political needs and sustain a
potential manifesto of the postmodern revolution against Empire, but certain
analogies and paradoxical coincidences do seem striking. For example,

whereas Machiavelli proposes that the project of constructing a new society
from below requires ‘‘arms’’ and ‘‘money’’ and insists that we must look
for them outside, Spinoza responds: Don’t we already posses them? Don’t
the necessary weapons reside precisely within the creative and prophetic
power of the multitude? Perhaps we, too, locating ourselves within the

revolutionary desire of postmodernity, can in turn respond: Don’t we already
possess ‘‘arms’’ and ‘‘money’’? The kind of money that Machiavelli insists
is necessary may in fact reside in the productivity of the multitude, the
immediate actor of biopolitical production and reproduction. The kind of
arms in question may be contained in the potential of the multitude to

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sabotage and destroy with its own productive force the parasitical order of
postmodern command.

Today a manifesto, a political discourse, should aspire to fulfill a

Spinozist prophetic function, the function of an immanent desire that organizes the multitude. There is not finally here any determinism or utopia:
this is rather a radical counterpower, ontologically grounded not on any

‘‘vide pour le futur’’ but on the actual activity of the multitude, its creation,
production, and power—a materialist teleology.

PART 2

P A S S A G E S O F S O V E R E I G N T Y

2.1

T W O E U R O P E S , T W O M O D E R N I T I E S

Whether you affirm infallibility and deduce sovereignty from it or

pose sovereignty first and derive infallibility from that, you are

forced either way to recognize and sanction an absolute power.

And the same result is imposed whether it be through oppression of

governments or the reason ofphilosophers, whether you make the

people or the king sovereign.

Franc¸ois Guizot

In the early twentieth-century Vienna ofRobert Musil’s

novel
The Man without Qualities,
an enlightened aristocrat, Count

Leinsdorf, puzzles out the complexities of modernity but gets stuck

on a central paradox. ‘‘What I still don’t understand,’’ he says, ‘‘is

this: That people should love each other, and that it takes a firm

hand in government to make them do it, is nothing new. So why

should it suddenly be a case ofeither/or?’’1 For the philanthropists

ofMusil’s world there is a conflict at the center ofmodernity

between, on the one hand, the immanent forces of desire and

association, the love ofthe community, and on the other, the strong

hand ofan overarching authority that imposes and enforces an order

on the social field. This tension was to be resolved, or at least

mediated, by the sovereignty ofthe state, and yet it continually

resurfaces as a question of either/or: freedom or servitude, the

liberation ofdesire or its subjugation. Count Leinsdorflucidly iden-

tifies a contradiction that runs throughout European modernity and

resides at the heart ofthe modern concept ofsovereignty.

Tracing the emerging figure ofthe concept ofsovereignty

through various developments in modern European philosophy

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should allow us to recognize that Europe and modernity are neither

unitary nor pacific constructions, but rather from the beginning

were characterized by struggle, conflict, and crisis. We identify

three moments in the constitution ofEuropean modernity that

articulate the initial figure ofthe modern concept ofsovereignty:

first, the revolutionary discovery ofthe plane ofimmanence; second,

the reaction against these immanent forces and the crisis in the form

ofauthority; and third, the partial and temporary resolution ofthis

crisis in the formation ofthe modern state as a locus ofsovereignty

that transcends and mediates the plane ofimmanent f

orces. In

this progression European modernity itselfbecomes increasingly

inseparable from the principle of sovereignty. And yet, as Count

Leinsdorflaments, even at the height ofmodernity the original

tension continually breaks through in all its violence.

Modern sovereignty is a European concept in the sense that

it developed primarily in Europe in coordination with the evolution

of modernity itself. The concept functioned as the cornerstone of