Empire (42 page)

the nation-state and then to the imperialist state. At each stage in

this development the state had to invent new means ofconstructing

popular consensus, and thus the imperialist state had to find a way

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233

to incorporate the multitude and its spontaneous forms of class

struggle within its ideological state structures; it had to transform

the multitude into a people. This analysis is the initial political

articulation ofthe concept ofhegemony that would later become

central to Gramsci’s thought.26 Lenin thus interpreted imperialist

populism as simply another variant ofthe proposition ofsovereignty

as a solution for the crisis of modernity.

On the basis ofthis interpretation ofimperialism as a hege-

monic element ofsovereignty, Lenin could account for the structur-

ing effects and totalitarian consequences of imperialist politics. He

understood with great clarity the centripetal dynamic ofimperialism

that progressively undermined the distinction between the ‘‘inside’’

and the ‘‘outside’’ ofcapitalist development. The standpoint of

Luxemburg’s critique ofimperialism was rooted in the ‘‘outside,’’

that is, in the resistances that could reorganize the noncapitalist use

values ofthe multitude in both the dominant and the subordinate

countries. From Lenin’s perspective, however, that standpoint and

that strategy are not tenable. The structural transformations imposed

by imperialist politics tend to eliminate any possibility ofbeing

outside, in either the dominant or the subordinate countries. The

standpoint ofcritique had to be located not outside but within

the crisis ofmodern sovereignty. Lenin believed that with World

War I, in which the imperialist stage ofmodern sovereignty had

led directly to mortal conflict among nation-states, the point of

crisis had arrived.

Lenin recognized finally that, although imperialism and the

monopoly phase were indeed expressions ofthe global expansion

ofcapital, the imperialist practices and the colonial administrations

through which they were often pursued had come to be obstacles

to the further development of capital. He emphasized the fact,

noted by many critics ofimperialism, that competition, essential

for the functioning and expansion of capital, declines necessarily in

the imperialist phase in proportion to the growth ofmonopolies.

Imperialism, with its trade exclusives and protective tariffs, its na-

tional and colonial territories, is continually posing and reinforcing

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fixed boundaries, blocking or channeling economic, social, and

cultural flows. As we saw earlier in cultural terms (in Section 2.3),

and as Luxemburg argues in economic terms, imperialism rests

heavily on these fixed boundaries and the distinction between inside

and outside. Imperialism actually creates a straitjacket for capital—

or, more precisely, at a certain point the boundaries created by

imperialist practices obstruct capitalist development and the full

realization ofits world market. Capital must eventually overcome

imperialism and destroy the barriers between inside and outside.

It would be an exaggeration to say that, on the basis ofthese

intuitions, Lenin’s analysis ofimperialism and its crisis leads directly

to the theory ofEmpire. It is true, nonetheless, that his revolutionary

standpoint revealed the fundamental node of capitalist develop-

ment—or better, the Gordian knot that had to be undone. Even

though Lenin’s practical and political proposal for world revolution

was defeated (and soon we will focus on the reasons for this defeat),

something like the transformation he foresaw was nonetheless neces-

sary. Lenin’s analysis ofthe crisis ofimperialism had the same power

and necessity as had Machiavelli’s analysis ofthe crisis ofthe medieval

order: the reaction had to be revolutionary. This is the alternative

implicit in Lenin’s work:
either world communist revolution or Empire,

and there is a profound analogy between these two choices.

TheMissing Volumes of Capital

In order to understand the passage from imperialism to Empire, in

addition to looking at the development ofcapital itself, we must

also understand the genealogy from the perspective of class struggle.

This point ofview is in fact probably more central to the real

historical movements. Theories ofthe passages to and beyond impe-

rialism that privilege the pure critique ofthe dynamics ofcapital

risk undervaluing the power ofthe real efficient motor that drives

capitalist development from its deepest core: the movements and

struggles ofthe proletariat. This motor can be very dif

ficult to

recognize, often because it is masked by the ideology of the state

and the dominant classes, but even when it appears only faintly or

T H E L I M I T S O F I M P E R I A L I S M

235

sporadically, it is nonetheless effective. History has a logic only when

subjectivity rules it, only when (as Nietzsche says) the emergence of

subjectivity reconfigures efficient causes and final causes in the

development ofhistory. The power ofthe proletariat consists pre-

cisely in this.

We thus arrive at the delicate passage through which the

subjectivity ofclass struggle transforms imperialism into Empire. In

this third part ofour book we will trace the genealogy ofthe

economic order ofEmpire so as to reveal the global nature of

proletarian class struggle and its ability to anticipate and prefigure

the developments ofcapital toward the realization ofthe world

market. We still need to identify, however, a theoretical schema

that can sustain us in this inquiry. The old analyses ofimperialism

will not be sufficient here because in the end they stop at the

threshold ofthe analysis ofsubjectivity and concentrate rather on the

contradictions ofcapital’s own development. We need to identify a

theoretical schema that puts the subjectivity ofthe social movements

ofthe proletariat at center stage in the processes ofglobalization

and the constitution ofglobal order.

There is a paradox in Marx’s thought that may be particularly

illuminating for resolving the problems we are facing here. In his

outlines for the drafting of
Capital,
Marx planned three volumes

that were never written: one on the wage, a second on the state,

and a third on the world market.27 One could say that the content

ofthe volume on the wage, insofar as it was really to be a volume

on wage earners, was in part contained in Marx’s political and

historical writings, such as
The Eighteenth Brumaire, The Class Strug-

gles in France,
and the writings on the Paris Commune.28 The situation ofthe volumes on the state and the world market, however,

is completely different. Marx’s various notes on these questions are

scattered and entirely insufficient; not even outlines of these volumes

exist. The comments Marx did make about the concept ofthe state

are directed less toward a general theoretical discussion than toward

specific analyses ofnational politics: on English parliamentarianism,

on French Bonapartism, on Russian autocracy, and so forth. The

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national limits ofthese situations are what made a general theory

impossible. The constitutional characteristics ofeach nation-state

were, in Marx’s view, conditioned by the difference in the rates

of profit in the different national economies along with the differ-

ences in the regimes ofexploitation—in short, by particular state

overdeterminations ofthe processes ofvalorization in the different

national sites ofdevelopment.
The nation-state was a singular organiza-

tion of the limit.
In these conditions a general theory ofthe state could not but be aleatory and conceived only in the most abstract

terms. Marx’s difficulties in writing the volumes of
Capital
on the state and the world market were thus fundamentally linked: the

volume on the state could not be written until the world market

had been realized.

Marx’s thinking, however, was oriented toward a moment

when capitalist valorization and the political processes ofcommand

would converge and overlap on the world level. The nation-state

played only an ephemeral role in his work. Processes ofcapitalist

development determine valorization and exploitation as functions

ofa global system ofproduction, and every obstacle that appears

on that terrain tends to be surpassed in the long run. ‘‘The tendency

to create the world market,’’ he wrote, ‘‘is directly given in the

concept ofcapital itself

. Every limit appears as a barrier to be

overcome.’’29 A Marxian theory ofthe state can be written only

when all such fixed barriers are overcome and when the state and

capital effectively coincide. In other words, the decline of nation-

states is in a profound sense the full realization of the relationship

between the state and capital. ‘‘Capitalism only triumphs,’’ as Fer-

nand Braudel says, ‘‘when it becomes identified with the state, when

it is the state.’’30 Today it is perhaps finally possible (ifone still feels the need) to draft Marx’s two missing volumes; or rather, following

the spirit ofhis method and gathering together Marx’s insights

about the state and the world market, one could attempt to write

a revolutionary critique ofEmpire.

The analyses ofthe state and the world market also become

possible in Empire for another reason, because at this point in

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237

development class struggle acts
without limit
on the organization of power. Having achieved the global level, capitalist development is

faced directly with the multitude, without mediation. Hence the

dialectic, or really the science ofthe limit and its organization,

evaporates. Class struggle, pushing the nation-state toward its aboli-

tion and thus going beyond the barriers posed by it, proposes the

constitution ofEmpire as the site ofanalysis and conflict. Without

that barrier, then, the situation ofstruggle is completely open.

Capital and labor are opposed in a directly antagonistic form. This is

the fundamental condition of every political theory of communism.

C YCLES

From imperialism to Empire and from the nation-state to the political

regulation of the global market: what we are witnessing, considered from
the point of view of historical materialism, is a qualitative passage in modern
history. When we are incapable of expressing adequately the enormous

importance of this passage, we sometimes quite poorly define what is happening as the entry into postmodernity. We recognize the poverty of this

description, but we sometimes prefer it to others because at least postmodernity
indicates the epochal shift in contemporary history.1 Other authors, however,
seem to undervalue the difference of our situation and lead the analysis back
to the categories of a cyclical understanding of historical evolution. What
we are living today, in their view, would merely be another phase in the
regularly repeating cycles of the forms of economic development or forms
of government.

We are familiar with numerous theories of historical cycles, from those
concerning the forms of government that we inherited from Greco-Roman

antiquity to those of the cyclical development and decline of civilization in
twentieth-century authors such as Oswald Spengler and JoseÓrtega y

Gasset. There are, of course, enormous differences between Plato’s cyclical
evaluation of the forms of government and Polybius’ apologia for the Roman
Empire, or between Spengler’s Nazi ideology and the strong historicism of
Fernand Braudel. We find this entire mode of reasoning completely inadequate, however, because every theory of cycles seems to laugh at the fact
that history is a product of human action by imposing an objective law that
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rules over the intentions and resistances, the defeats and the victories, the
joys and the suffering of humans. Or worse, it makes human actions dance
to the rhythm of the cyclical structures.

Giovanni Arrighi adopted the methodology of long cycles to write

a rich and fascinating analysis of ‘‘the long twentieth century.’’2 The
book is focused primarily on understanding how the crisis of United States
hegemony and accumulation in the 1970s (indicated, for example, by

the decoupling of the dollar from the gold standard in 1971 and by the

defeat of the U.S. military in Vietnam) is a fundamental turning point in
the history of world capitalism. In order to approach the contemporary

passage, however, Arrighi believes that we need to step back and situate
this crisis in the long history of cycles of capitalist accumulation. Following
the methodology of Fernand Braudel, Arrighi constructs an enormous historical and analytical apparatus of four great systemic cycles of capitalist accumulation, four ‘‘long centuries,’’ that situate the United States in line after the
Genoese, the Dutch, and the British.