Empire (54 page)

ofprivate property.

We do not intend here to weep over the destruction and expropriation

that capitalism continually operates across the world, even though resisting
its force (and in particular resisting the expropriation of the welfare state)
is certainly an eminently ethical and important task. We want to ask,

rather, what is the operative notion of the common today, in the midst of
postmodernity, the information revolution, and the consequent transforma-302

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tions of the mode of production. It seems to us, in fact, that today we
participate in a more radical and profound commonality than has ever been
experienced in the history of capitalism. The fact is that we participate in
a productive world made up of communication and social networks, interactive
services, and common languages. Our economic and social reality is defined
less by the material objects that are made and consumed than by co-produced
services and relationships. Producing increasingly means constructing cooperation and communicative commonalities.

The concept of private property itself, understood as the exclusive right
to use a good and dispose of all wealth that derives from the possession of
it, becomes increasingly nonsensical in this new situation. There are ever
fewer goods that can be possessed and used exclusively in this framework;
it is the community that produces and that, while producing, is reproduced
and redefined. The foundation of the classic modern conception of private
property is thus to a certain extent dissolved in the postmodern mode

of production.

One should object, however, that this new social condition of production
has not at all weakened the juridical and political regimes of private property.

The conceptual crisis of private property does not become a crisis in practice,
and instead the regime of private expropriation has tended to be applied
universally. This objection would be valid if not for the fact that, in the
context of linguistic and cooperative production, labor and the common

property tend to overlap. Private property, despite its juridical powers, cannot
help becoming an ever more abstract and transcendental concept and thus
ever more detached from reality.

A new notion of ‘‘commons’’ will have to emerge on this terrain.

Deleuze and Guattari claim in
What Is Philosophy?
that in the contemporary era, and in the context of communicative and interactive production,
the construction of concepts is not only an epistemological operation but
equally an ontological project. Constructing concepts and what they call

‘‘common names’’ is really an activity that combines the intelligence and
the action of the multitude, making them work together. Constructing

concepts means making exist in reality a project that is a community. There
is no other way to construct concepts but to work in a common way. This
commonality is, from the standpoint of the phenomenology of production,
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from the standpoint of the epistemology of the concept, and from the standpoint of practice, a project in which the multitude is completely invested.

The commons is the incarnation, the production, and the liberation

ofthe multitude.
Rousseau said that the first person who wanted a piece
of nature as his or her own exclusive possession and transformed it into the
transcendent form of private property was the one who invented evil. Good,
on the contrary, is what is common.

3.5

M I X E D C O N S T I T U T I O N

One of the wonderful things about the information highway is that

virtual equity is far easier to achieve than real-world equity . . .

We are all created equal in the virtual world.

Bill Gates

The paradigm shift of production toward the network

model has fostered the growing power of transnational corporations

beyond and above the traditional boundaries ofnation-states. The

novelty ofthis relationship has to be recognized in terms ofthe

long-standing power struggle between capitalists and the state. The

history ofthis conflict is easily misunderstood. One should under-

stand that, most significantly, despite the constant antagonism be-

tween capitalists and the state, the relationship is really conflictive

only when capitalists are considered individually.

Marx and Engels characterize the state as the executive board

that manages the interests ofcapitalists; by this they mean that

although the action ofthe state will at times contradict the immediate

interests ofindividual capitalists, it will always be in the long-term

interest ofthe collective capitalist, that is, the collective subject of

social capital as a whole.1 Competition among capitalists, the reason-

ing goes, however free, does not guarantee the common good of

the collective capitalist, for their immediate egoistic drive for profit

is fundamentally myopic. The state is required for prudence to

mediate the interests ofindividual capitalists, raising them up in the

collective interest ofcapital. Capitalists will thus all combat the

powers ofthe state even while the state is acting in their own

M I X E D C O N S T I T U T I O N

305

collective interests. This conflict is really a happy, virtuous dialectic

from the perspective of total social capital.

When Giants RuletheEarth

The dialectic between the state and capital has taken on different

configurations in the different phases of capitalist development. A

quick and rough periodization will help us pose at least the most

basic features of this dynamic. In the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries, as capitalism established itselffully in Europe, the state

managed the affairs of the total social capital but required relatively

unobtrusive powers ofintervention. This period has come to be

viewed in retrospect (with a certain measure ofdistortion) as the

golden age ofEuropean capitalism, characterized by f

ree trade

among relatively small capitalists. Outside the European nation-

state in this period, before the full deployment of powerful colonial

administrations, European capital operated with even fewer con-

straints. To a large extent the capitalist companies were sovereign

when operating in colonial or precolonial territories, establishing

their own monopoly offorce, their own police, their own courts.

The Dutch East India Company, for example, ruled the territories

it exploited in Java until the end ofthe eighteenth century with

its own structures ofsovereignty. Even af

ter the company was

dissolved in 1800, capital ruled relatively free of state mediation or

control.2 The situation was much the same for the capitalists operat-

ing in the British South Asian and African colonies. The sovereignty

ofthe East India Company lasted until the East India Act of1858

brought the company under the rule ofthe queen, and in southern

Africa the free reign of capitalist adventurers and entrepreneurs

lasted at least until the end ofthe century.3 This period was thus

characterized by relatively little need ofstate intervention at home

and abroad: within the European nation-states individual capitalists

were ruled (in their own collective interest) without great conflict,

and in the colonial territories they were effectively sovereign.

The relationship between state and capital changed gradually in

the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when crises increasingly

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threatened the development ofcapital. In Europe and the United

States, corporations, trusts, and cartels grew to establish quasi-

monopolies over specific industries and clusters ofindustries extend-

ing far across national boundaries. The monopoly phase posed a

direct threat to the health ofcapitalism because it eroded the compe-

tition among capitalists that is the lifeblood of the system.4 The

formation of monopolies and quasi-monopolies also undermined

the managerial capacities ofthe state, and thus the enormous corpo-

rations gained the power to impose their particular interests over

the interest ofthe collective capitalist. Consequently there erupted

a whole series ofstruggles in which the state sought to establish its

command over the corporations, passing antitrust laws, raising taxes

and tariffs, and extending state regulation over industries. In the

colonial territories, too, the uncontrolled activities ofthe sovereign

companies and the adventurer capitalists led increasingly toward

crisis. For example, the 1857 Indian rebellion against the powers

ofthe East India Company alerted the British government to the

disasters the colonial capitalists were capable ofifleft uncontrolled.

The India Act passed by the British Parliament the next year was

a direct response to the potential for crisis. The European powers

gradually established fully articulated and fully functioning adminis-

trations over the colonial territories, effectively recuperating colonial

economic and social activity securely under the jurisdiction ofthe

nation-states and thus guaranteeing the interests oftotal social capital

against crises. Internally and externally, the nation-states were forced

to intervene more strongly to protect the interests oftotal social

capital against individual capitalists.

Today a third phase ofthis relationship has fully matured, in

which large transnational corporations have effectively surpassed

the jurisdiction and authority ofnation-states. It would seem, then,

that this centuries-long dialectic has come to an end:
the state has

been defeated and corporations now rule the earth!
In recent years numerous studies have emerged on the Left that read this phenomenon

in apocalyptic terms as endangering humanity at the hands ofunre-

strained capitalist corporations and that yearn for the old protective

powers ofnation-states.5 Correspondingly, proponents ofcapital

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celebrate a new era ofderegulation and free trade. Ifthis really

were the case, however, ifthe state really had ceased to manage

the affairs of collective capital and the virtuous dialectic of conflict

between state and capital were really over, then the capitalists ought

to be the ones most fearful of the future! Without the state, social

capital has no means to project and realize its collective interests.

The contemporary phase is in fact not adequately characterized

by the victory ofcapitalist corporations over the state. Although

transnational corporations and global networks ofproduction and

circulation have undermined the powers ofnation-states, state func-

tions and constitutional elements have effectively been displaced to

other levels and domains. We need to take a much more nuanced

look at how the relationship between state and capital has changed.

We need to recognize first ofall the crisis ofpolitical relations in

the national context. As the concept ofnational sovereignty is losing

its effectiveness, so too is the so-called autonomy of the political.6

Today a notion ofpolitics as an independent sphere ofthe determi-

nation ofconsensus and a sphere ofmediation among conflicting

social forces has very little room to exist. Consensus is determined

more significantly by economic factors, such as the equilibria of

the trade balances and speculation on the value ofcurrencies. Con-

trol over these movements is not in the hands ofthe political

forces that are traditionally conceived as holding sovereignty, and

consensus is determined not through the traditional political mecha-

nisms but by other means. Government and politics come to be

completely integrated into the system oftransnational command.

Controls are articulated through a series ofinternational bodies

and functions. This is equally true for the mechanisms of political

mediation, which really function through the categories of bureau-

cratic mediation and managerial sociology rather than through the

traditional political categories ofthe mediation ofconflicts and the

reconciliation ofclass conflict. Politics does not disappear; what

disappears is any notion ofthe autonomy ofthe political.

The decline ofany autonomous political sphere signals the

decline, too, ofany independent space where revolution could

emerge in the national political regime, or where social space could

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be transformed using the instruments of the state. The traditional

idea ofcounter-power and the idea ofresistance against modern

sovereignty in general thus becomes less and less possible. This

situation resembles in certain respects the one that Machiavelli faced

in a different era: the pathetic and disastrous defeat of ‘‘humanistic’’

revolution or resistance at the hands ofthe powers ofthe sovereign

principality, or really the early modern state. Machiavelli recognized