Empire (70 page)

suffering, but there is also in them a desire of liberation that is not

satiated except by reappropriating new spaces, around which are

constructed new freedoms. Everywhere these movements arrive,

and all along their paths they determine new forms of life and

cooperation—everywhere they create that wealth that parasitic

postmodern capitalism would otherwise not know how to suck out

ofthe blood ofthe proletariat, because increasingly today production

takes place in movement and cooperation, in exodus and commu-

nity. Is it possible to imagine U.S. agriculture and service industries

without Mexican migrant labor, or Arab oil without Palestinians

and Pakistanis? Moreover, where would the great innovative sectors

of immaterial production, from design to fashion, and from electron-

ics to science in Europe, the United States, and Asia, be without

the ‘‘illegal labor’’ ofthe great masses, mobilized toward the radiant

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horizons ofcapitalist wealth and freedom? Mass migrations have

become necessary for production. Every path is forged, mapped,

and traveled. It seems that the more intensely each is traveled and

the more suffering is deposited there, the more each path becomes

productive. These paths are what brings the ‘‘earthly city’’ out of

the cloud and confusion that Empire casts over it. This is how the

multitude gains the power to affirm its autonomy, traveling and

expressing itselfthrough an apparatus ofwidespread, transversal

territorial reappropriation.

Recognizing the potential autonomy ofthe mobile multitude,

however, only points toward the real question. What we need to

grasp is how the multitude is organized and redefined as a positive,

political power. Up to this point we have been able to describe

the potential existence ofthis political power in merely f

ormal

terms. It would be a mistake to stop here, without going on to

investigate the mature forms of the consciousness and political orga-

nization ofthe multitude, without recognizing how much is already

powerful in these territorial movements of the labor power of

Empire. How can we recognize (and reveal) a constituent political

tendency within and beyond the spontaneity ofthe multitude’s

movements?

This question can be approached initially from the other side

by considering the policies ofEmpire that repress these movements.

Empire does not really know how to control these paths and can

only try to criminalize those who travel them, even when the

movements are required for capitalist production itself. The migra-

tion lines ofbiblical proportions that go f

rom South to North

America are obstinately called by the new drug czars ‘‘the cocaine

trail’’; or rather, the articulations of exodus from North Africa and

sub-Saharan Africa are treated by European leaders as ‘‘paths of

terrorism’’; or rather still, the populations forced to flee across the

Indian Ocean are reduced to slavery in ‘‘Arabia feĺix’’; and the list

goes on. And yet the flows ofpopulation continue. Empire must

restrict and isolate the spatial movements ofthe multitude to stop

them from gaining political legitimacy. It is extremely important

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399

from this point of view that Empire use its powers to manage and

orchestrate the various forces of nationalism and fundamentalism

(see Sections 2.2 and 2.4). It is no less important, too, that Empire

deploy its military and police powers to bring the unruly and rebel-

lious to order.3 These imperial practices in themselves, however,

still do not touch on the political tension that runs throughout the

spontaneous movements ofthe multitude.
All these repressive actions

remain essentially external to the multitude and its movements.
Empire can only isolate, divide, and segregate. Imperial capital does indeed

attack the movements ofthe multitude with a tireless determination:

it patrols the seas and the borders; within each country it divides

and segregates; and in the world oflabor it reinforces the cleavages

and borderlines ofrace, gender, language, culture, and so forth. Even

then, however, it must be careful not to restrict the productivity of

the multitude too much because Empire too depends on this power.

The movements ofthe multitude have to be allowed to extend

always wider across the world scene, and the attempts at repressing

the multitude are really paradoxical, inverted manifestations of its

strength.

This leads us back to our fundamental questions: How can the

actions ofthe multitude become political? How can the multitude

organize and concentrate its energies against the repression and

incessant territorial segmentations ofEmpire? The only response

that we can give to these questions is that the action ofthe multitude

becomes political primarily when it begins to confront directly and

with an adequate consciousness the central repressive operations of

Empire. It is a matter ofrecognizing and engaging the imperial

initiatives and not allowing them continually to reestablish order;

it is a matter ofcrossing and breaking down the limits and segmenta-

tions that are imposed on the new collective labor power; it is a

matter ofgathering together these experiences ofresistance and

wielding them in concert against the nerve centers ofimperial

command.

This task for the multitude, however, although it is clear at a

conceptual level, remains rather abstract. What specific and concrete

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practices will animate this political project? We cannot say at this

point. What we can see nonetheless is a first element ofa political

program for the global multitude, a first political demand:
global

citizenship.
During the 1996 demonstrations for the
sans papiers,
the undocumented aliens residing in France, the banners demanded

‘‘Papiers pour tous!’’ Residency papers for everyone means in the

first place that all should have the full rights of citizenship in the

country where they live and work. This is not a utopian or unrealistic

political demand. The demand is simply that the juridical status

ofthe population be ref

ormed in step with the real economic

transf

ormations ofrecent years. Capital itselfhas demanded the

increased mobility oflabor power and continuous migrations across

national boundaries. Capitalist production in the more dominant

regions (in Europe, the United States, and Japan, but also in Singa-

pore, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere) is utterly dependent on the

influx ofworkers from the subordinate regions ofthe world. Hence

the political demand is that the existent fact of capitalist production

be recognized juridically and that all workers be given the full rights

of citizenship. In effect this political demand insists in postmodernity

on the fundamental modern constitutional principle that links right

and labor, and thus rewards with citizenship the worker who cre-

ates capital.

This demand can also be configured in a more general and

more radical way with respect to the postmodern conditions of

Empire. Ifin a first moment the multitude demands that each state

recognize juridically the migrations that are necessary to capital, in

a second moment it must demand control over the movements

themselves. The multitude must be able to decide if, when, and

where it moves. It must have the right also to stay still and enjoy

one place rather than being forced constantly to be on the move.

The general right to control its own movement is the multitude’s ultimate
demand for global citizenship.
This demand is radical insofar as it challenges the fundamental apparatus of imperial control over the

production and life of the multitude. Global citizenship is the multi-

tude’s power to reappropriate control over space and thus to design

the new cartography.

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401

Timeand Body (TheRight to a Social Wage)

Many elements arise on the endless paths ofthe mobile multitude

in addition to the spatial dimensions we have considered thus far.

In particular, the multitude takes hold oftime and constructs new

temporalities, which we can recognize by focusing on the transfor-

mations oflabor. Understanding this construction ofnew temporali-

ties will help us see how the multitude has the potential to make

its action coherent as a real political tendency.

The new temporalities ofbiopolitical production cannot be

understood in the frameworks of the traditional conceptions of

time. In the
Physics,
Aristotle defines time by the measure ofthe

movement between a before and an after. Aristotle’s definition

has the enormous merit ofseparating the definition oftime from

individual experience and spiritualism. Time is a collective experi-

ence that embodies and lives in the movements ofthe multitude.

Aristotle, however, proceeds to reduce this collective time deter-

mined by the experience ofthe multitude to a transcendent standard

ofmeasure. Throughout Western metaphysics, from Aristotle to

Kant and Heidegger, time has continuously been located in this

transcendent dwelling place. In modernity, reality was not conceiv-

able except as measure, and measure in turn was not conceivable

except as a (real or formal) a priori that corralled being within a

transcendent order. Only in postmodernity has there been a real

break with this tradition—a break not with the first element of

Aristotle’s definition oftime as a collective constitution but with

the second transcendent configuration. In postmodernity, instead,

time is no longer determined by any transcendent measure, any a

priori: time pertains directly to existence. Here is where the Aristote-

lian tradition of measure is broken. In fact, from our perspective

the transcendentalism oftemporality is destroyed most decisively

by the fact that it is now impossible to measure labor, either by

convention or by calculation. Time comes back entirely under

collective existence and thus resides within the cooperation of

the multitude.

Through the cooperation, the collective existence, and the

communicative networks that are formed and reformed within the

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multitude, time is reappropriated on the plane ofimmanence. It is

not given a priori, but rather bears the stamp ofcollective action.

The new phenomenology ofthe labor ofthe multitude reveals

labor as the fundamental creative activity that through cooperation

goes beyond any obstacle imposed on it and constantly re-creates

the world. The activity ofthe multitude constitutes time beyond

measure. Time might thus be defined as the immeasurability ofthe

movement between a before and an after, an immanent process

ofconstitution.4 The processes ofontological constitution unfold

through the collective movements ofcooperation, across the new

fabrics woven by the production ofsubjectivity. This site ofontolog-

ical constitution is where the new proletariat appears as a constit-

uent power.

This is a
new proletariat
and not a
new industrial working class.

The distinction is fundamental. As we explained earlier, ‘‘proletariat’’

is the general concept that defines all those whose labor is exploited

by capital, the entire cooperating multitude (Section 1.3). The

industrial working class represented only a
partial
moment in the

history ofthe proletariat and its revolutions, in the period when

capital was able to reduce value to measure. In that period it seemed

as ifonly the labor ofwaged workers was productive, and therefore

all the other segments oflabor appeared as merely reproductive or

even unproductive. In the biopolitical context ofEmpire, however,

the production ofcapital converges ever more with the production

and reproduction of social life itself; it thus becomes ever more

difficult to maintain distinctions among productive, reproductive,

and unproductive labor. Labor—material or immaterial, intellectual

or corporeal—produces and reproduces social life, and in the process

is exploited by capital. This wide landscape ofbiopolitical produc-

tion allows us finally to recognize the full generality of the concept

ofproletariat. The progressive indistinction between production

and reproduction in the biopolitical context also highlights once

again the immeasurability oftime and value. As labor moves outside

the factory walls, it is increasingly difficult to maintain the fiction

ofany measure ofthe working day and thus separate the time of

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403

production from the time of reproduction, or work time from

leisure time. There are no time clocks to punch on the terrain of