Empire (48 page)

plished by controlling social mobility and fluidity. The repressive

use oftechnology, including the automation and computerization

of production, was a central weapon wielded in this effort. The

previous fundamental technological transformation in the history

ofcapitalist production (that is, the introduction ofthe assembly

line and the mass manufacturing regime) involved crucial modifica-

tions ofthe immediate productive processes (Taylorism) and an

enormous step forward in the regulation of the social cycle of

reproduction (Fordism). The technological transformations of the

268

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

1970s, however, with their thrust toward automatic rationalization,

pushed these regimes to the extreme limit of their effectiveness, to

the breaking point. Taylorist and Fordist mechanisms could no

longer control the dynamic ofproductive and social forces.13 Re-

pression exercised through the old framework of control could

perhaps keep a lid on the destructive powers ofthe crisis and the

fury of the worker attack, but it was ultimately also a self-destructive

response that would suffocate capitalist production itself.

At the same time, then, a second path had to come into play,

one that would involve a technological transformation aimed no

longer only at repression but rather at
changing the very composition

of the proletariat,
and thus integrating, dominating, and profiting from its new practices and forms. In order to understand the emergence of

this second path ofcapitalist response to the crisis, however, the

path that constitutes a paradigm shift, we have to look beyond the

immediate logic ofcapitalist strategy and planning. The history of

capitalist forms is always necessarily a
reactive
history: left to its own devices capital would never abandon a regime ofprofit. In other

words, capitalism undergoes systemic transformation only when it

is forced to and when its current regime is no longer tenable. In

order to grasp the process from the perspective of its active element,

we need to adopt the standpoint ofthe other side—that is, the

standpoint ofthe proletariat along with that ofthe remaining non-

capitalist world that is progressively being drawn into capitalist

relations. The power ofthe proletariat imposes limits on capital

and not only determines the crisis but also dictates the terms and

nature ofthe transformation.
The proletariat actually invents the social
and productive forms that capital will be forced to adopt in the future.

We can get a first hint ofthis determinant role ofthe proletariat

by asking ourselves how throughout the crisis the United States

was able to maintain its hegemony. The answer lies in large part,

perhaps paradoxically, not in the genius ofU.S. politicians or capital-

ists, but in the power and creativity ofthe U.S. proletariat. Whereas

earlier, from another perspective, we posed the Vietnamese resis-

tance as the symbolic center ofthe struggles, now, in terms of

R E S I S T A N C E , C R I S I S , T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

269

the paradigm shift of international capitalist command, the U.S.

proletariat appears as the subjective figure that expressed most fully

the desires and needs ofinternational or multinational workers.14

Against the common wisdom that the U.S. proletariat is weak

because ofits low party and union representation with respect to

Europe and elsewhere, perhaps we should see it as strong for pre-

cisely those reasons. Working-class power resides not in the repre-

sentative institutions but in the antagonism and autonomy ofthe

workers themselves.15 This is what marked the real power ofthe

U.S. industrial working class. Moreover, the creativity and conflic-

tuality ofthe proletariat resided also, and perhaps more important, in

the laboring populations outside the factories. Even (and especially)

those who actively refused work posed serious threats and creative

alternatives.16 In order to understand the continuation ofU.S. he-

gemony, then, it is not sufficient to cite the relations of force that

U.S. capitalism wielded over the capitalists in other countries. U.S.

hegemony was actually sustained by the antagonistic power ofthe

U.S. proletariat.

The new hegemony that seemed to remain in the hands of

the United States was still limited at this point, closed within the

old mechanisms ofdisciplinary restructuring. A paradigm shift was

needed to design the restructuring process along the lines ofthe

political and technological shift. In other words, capital had to

confront and respond to
the new production of subjectivity of the proletariat.
This new production ofsubjectivity reached (beyond the strug-

gle over welfare, which we have already mentioned) what might

be called an ecological struggle, a struggle over the mode oflife, that

was eventually expressed in the developments ofimmaterial labor.

TheEcology of Capital

We are still not yet in a position to understand the nature ofthe

second path ofcapital’s response to the crisis, the paradigm shift

that will move it beyond the logics and practices ofdisciplinary

modernization. We need to step back once again and examine the

limitations imposed on capital by the international proletariat and

270

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

the noncapitalist environment that both made the transformation

necessary and dictated its terms.

At the time ofthe First World War it seemed to many observ-

ers, and particularly to the Marxist theorists ofimperialism, that the

death knell had sounded and capital had reached the threshold of

a fatal disaster. Capitalism had pursued decades-long crusades of

expansion, used up significant portions ofthe globe for its accumula-

tion, and for the first time been forced to confront the limits of its

frontiers. As these limits approached, imperialist powers inevitably

found themselves in mortal conflict with one another. Capital de-

pended on its outside, as Rosa Luxemburg said, on its noncapitalist

environment, in order to realize and capitalize its surplus value and

thus continue its cycles ofaccumulation. In the early twentieth

century it appeared that the imperialist adventures ofcapitalist accu-

mulation would soon deplete the surrounding noncapitalist nature

and capital would starve to death. Everything outside the capitalist

relation—be it human, animal, vegetable, or mineral—was seen

from the perspective of capital and its expansion as nature.17 The

critique ofcapitalist imperialism thus expressed an ecological con-

sciousness—ecological precisely insofar as it recognized the real

limits ofnature and the catastrophic consequences ofits de-

struction.18

Well, as we write this book and the twentieth century draws

to a close, capitalism is miraculously healthy, its accumulation more

robust than ever. How can we reconcile this fact with the careful

analyses ofnumerous Marxist authors at the beginning ofthe century

who pointed to the imperialist conflicts as symptoms ofan impend-

ing ecological disaster running up against the limits ofnature? There

are three ways we might approach this mystery ofcapital’s continu-

ing health. First, some claim that capital is no longer imperialist,

that it has reformed, turned back the clock to its salad days of free

competition, and developed a conservationist, ecological relation-

ship with its noncapitalist environment. Even iftheorists from Marx

to Luxemburg had not demonstrated that such a process runs counter

to the essence ofcapitalist accumulation itself, merely a cursory

R E S I S T A N C E , C R I S I S , T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

271

glance at contemporary global political economy should persuade

anyone to dismiss this explanation out ofhand. It is quite clear that

capitalist expansion continued at an increasing pace in the latter

halfofthe twentieth century, opening new territories to the capitalist

market and subsuming noncapitalist productive processes under the

rule ofcapital.

A second hypothesis might be that the unforeseen persistence

ofcapitalism involves simply a continuation ofthe same processes

ofexpansion and accumulation that we analyzed earlier, only that

the complete depletion ofthe environment was not yet imminent,

and that the moment ofconfronting limits and ofecological disaster

is still to come. The global resources ofthe noncapitalist environ-

ment have indeed proved to be vast. Although the so-called Green

Revolution has subsumed within capitalism a large portion ofthe

world’s noncapitalist agriculture, and other modernization projects

have incorporated new territories and civilizations into the cycle

ofcapitalist accumulation, there still remain enormous (if, ofcourse,

limited) basins oflabor power and material resources to be subsumed

in capitalist production and potential sites for expanding markets.

For example, the collapse ofthe socialist regimes in the Soviet

Union and Eastern Europe, along with the opening ofthe Chinese

economy in the post-Mao era, has provided global capital access

to huge territories of noncapitalist environment—prefabricated for

capitalist subsumption by years ofsocialist modernization. Even in

regions already securely integrated into the world capitalist system,

there are still ample opportunities for expansion. In other words,

according to this second hypothesis, noncapitalist environments

continue to be subsumed formally under capital’s domain, and thus

accumulation can still function at least in part through this formal

subsumption: the prophets ofcapital’s imminent doom were not

wrong but merely spoke too early. The limitations ofthe noncapital-

ist environment, however, are real. Sooner or later the once abun-

dant resources ofnature will run out.

A third hypothesis, which may be seen as complementary to

the second, is that today capital continues to accumulate through

272

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

subsumption in a cycle ofexpanded reproduction, but that increas-

ingly it subsumes not the noncapitalist environment but its own

capitalist terrain—that is, that the subsumption is no longer
formal

but
real.
Capital no longer looks outside but rather inside its domain, and its expansion is thus intensive rather than extensive. This passage

centers on a qualitative leap in the technological organization of

capital. Previous stages ofthe industrial revolution introduced

machine-made consumer goods and then machine-made machines,

but now we find ourselves confronted with machine-made raw

materials and foodstuffs—in short, machine-made nature and

machine-made culture.19 We might say, then, following Fredric

Jameson, that postmodernization is the economic process that

emerges when mechanical and industrial technologies have ex-

panded to invest the entire world, when the modernization process

is complete, and when the formal subsumption of the noncapitalist

environment has reached its limit. Through the processes ofmodern

technological transformation, all of nature has become capital, or

at least has become subject to capital.20 Whereas modern accumula-

tion is based on the formal subsumption of the noncapitalist environ-

ment, postmodern accumulation relies on the real subsumption of

the capitalist terrain itself. This seems to be the real capitalist response to the threat of‘‘ecological disaster,’’ a response that looks to the

future.21 The completion ofthe industrialization ofsociety and

nature, however, the completion ofmodernization, poses only the

precondition for the passage to postmodernization and grasps the

transformation only in negative terms, as
post-
. In the next section we will confront directly the real processes of postmodernization,

or the informatization of production.

Assault on theDisciplinary Regime

To understand this passage more deeply, we have to touch somehow

on its determinant foundation, which resides in the subjective trans-

formations of labor power. In the period of crisis, throughout the

1960s and 1970s, the expansion ofwelfare and the universalization

ofdiscipline in both the dominant and the subordinate countries

R E S I S T A N C E , C R I S I S , T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

273

created a new margin of freedom for the laboring multitude. In

other words, workers made use ofthe disciplinary era, and above

all its moments ofdissent and its phases ofpolitical destabilization

(such as the period ofthe Vietnam crisis), in order to expand the

social powers oflabor, increase the value oflabor power, and

redesign the set ofneeds and desires to which the wage and welfare

had to respond. In Marx’s terminology, one would say that the

value ofnecessary labor had risen enormously—and ofcourse most

important from the perspective of capital, as necessary labor time

increases, surplus labor time (and hence profit) decreases corres-