Empire (73 page)

This is a revolution that no power will control—because biopower and

communism, cooperation and revolution remain together, in love, simplicity,
and also innocence. This is the irrepressible lightness and joy of being communist.

N O T E S

P R E F A C E

1. On the declining sovereignty ofnation-states and the transformation of

sovereignty in the contemporary global system, see Saskia Sassen,
Losing
Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

2. On the concept ofEmpire, see Maurice Duverger, ‘‘Le concept d’em-

pire,’’ in Maurice Duverger, ed.,
Le concept d’empire
(Paris: PUF, 1980), pp. 5–23. Duverger divides the historical examples into two primary

models, with the Roman Empire on one side and the Chinese, Arab,

Mesoamerican, and other Empires on the other. Our analyses pertain

primarily to the Roman side because this is the model that has animated

the Euro-American tradition that has led to the contemporary world

order.

3. ‘‘Modernity is not a phenomenon ofEurope as an
independent
system, but ofEurope as center.’’ Enrique Dussel, ‘‘Beyond Eurocentrism: The

World System and the Limits ofModernity,’’ in Fredric Jameson and

Masao Miyoshi, eds.,
The Cultures of Globalization
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 3–31; quotation p. 4.

4. Two interdisciplinary texts served as models for us throughout the writing ofthis book: Marx’s
Capital
and Deleuze and Guattari’s
A Thousand Plateaus.

5. Ours is certainly not the only work that prepares the terrain for the

analysis and critique ofEmpire. Although they do not use the term

‘‘Empire,’’ we see the work ofnumerous authors oriented in this direction;

they include Fredric Jameson, David Harvey, Arjun Appadurai, Gayatri

Spivak, Edward Said, Giovanni Arrighi, and ArifDirlik, to name only

some ofthe best known.

1 . 1 W O R L D O R D E R

1. Already in 1974 Franz Schurmann highlighted the tendency toward a

global order in
The Logic of World Power: An Inquiry into the Origins,

Currents, and Contradictions of World Politics
(New York: Pantheon, 1974).

416

N O T E S T O P A G E S 4 – 7

2. On the permutations ofEuropean pacts for international peace, see Leo

Gross, ‘‘The Peace ofWestphalia, 1648–1948,’’
American Journal of International Law,
42, no. 1 (1948), 20–41.

3. Danilo Zolo,
Cosmopolis: Prospects for World Government,
trans. David McKie (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), is the one who expresses most

clearly the hypothesis that the paradigm ofthe project ofthe new world

order should be located back in the Peace ofVienna. We follow his

analysis in many respects. See also Richard Falk, ‘‘The Interplay ofWest-

phalia and Charter Conception ofInternational Legal Order,’’ in C. A.

Blach and Richard Falk, eds.,
The Future of International Legal Order

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 1:32–70.

4. Hans Kelsen,
Das Problem des Souvera¨nita¨t und die Theorie des Vo¨lkerrechts:
Beitrag zu einer Reinen Rechtslehre
(Tu¨bingen: Mohr, 1920), p. 205. See also
Principles of International Law,
(New York: Rinehart, 1952), p. 586.

5. Kelsen,
Das Problem des Souvera¨nita¨t,
p. 319.

6. See Hans Kelsen,
The Law of the United Nations
(New York: Praeger, 1950).

7. On the legal history ofthe United Nations, see AlfRoss,
United Nations:
Peace and Progress
(Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster Press, 1966); Benedetto Conforti,
The Law and Practice of the United Nations
(Boston: Kluwer Law International, 1996); Richard Falk, Samuel S. Kim, and Saul H.

Mendlovitz, eds.,
The United Nations and a Just World Order
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1991).

8. On the concept of‘‘domestic analogy’’ both from the genealogical point

ofview and from that ofinternational juridical politics, see Hedley Bull,

The Anarchical Society
(London: Macmillan, 1977); and above all Hidemi Suganami,
The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). For a critical and realistic perspective against conceptions ofa ‘‘domestic analogy,’’ see James N. Rosenau,

Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

9. See Norberto Bobbio,
Il problema della guerra e le vie della pace
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984).

10. For Norberto Bobbio’s position on these arguments, see primarily
Il terzo
assente
(Turin: Edizioni Sonda, 1989). In general, however, on recent lines ofinternationalist thought and on the alternative between statist and cosmopolitan approaches, see Zolo,
Cosmopolis.

11. See the work ofRichard Falk, primarily
A Study of Future Worlds
(New York: Free Press, 1975);
The Promise of World Order
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); and
Explorations at the Edge of Time
(Philadelphia: N O T E S T O P A G E S 8 – 1 3

417

Temple University Press, 1992). The origin ofFalk’s discourse and its

idealist reformist line might well be traced back to the famous initial

propositions posed by Grenville Clark and Louis B. Sohn,
World Peace

through World Law
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958).

12. In Section 2.4 we will discuss briefly the work ofauthors who challenge the traditional field ofinternational relations from a postmodernist perspective.

13. ‘‘Capitalism was from the beginning an affair of the world-economy . . .

It is a misreading ofthe situation to claim that it is only in the twentieth century that capitalism has become ‘world-wide.’ ’ Immanuel Wallerstein,
The Capitalist World-Economy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 19. The most complete reference on this point is Immanuel Wallerstein,
The Modern World System,
3 vols. (New York: Academic Press, 1974–1988). See also Giovanni Arrighi,
The Long Twentieth Century
(London: Verso, 1995).

14. See, for example, Samir Amin,
Empire of Chaos
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1992).

15. For our analyses ofthe Roman Empire we have relied on some ofthe

classic texts, such as Gaetano de Sanctis,
Storia dei Romani,
4 vols. (Turin: Bocca, 1907–1923); Hermann Dessau,
Geschichte der ro¨manischen Keiserzeit,
2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1924–1930); Michael Rostovzeff,
Social and

Economic History of the Roman Empire,
2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926); Pietro de Francisci,
Genesi e struttura del principato augusteo
(Rome: Sampaolesi, 1940); and Santo Mazzarino,
Fra Oriente ed Occidente
(Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1947).

16. See Johannes Adam Hartung,
Die Lehre von der Weltherrschaft im Mittelalter
(Halle, 1909); Heinrich Dannenbauer, ed.,
Das Reich: Idee und Gestalt

(Stuttgart: Cotta, 1940); Georges de Lagarde, ‘‘La conception me´die´val

de l’ordre en face de l’umanisme, de la Renaissance et de la Reforme,’’

in Congresso internazionale di studi umanistici,
Umanesimo e scienza politica
(Milan: Marzorati, 1951); and Santo Mazzarino,
The End of the Ancient

World,
trans. George Holmes (New York: Knopf, 1966).

17. See Michael Walzer,
Just and Unjust Wars,
2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1992). The renewal ofjust war theory in the 1990s is demonstrated

by the essays in Jean Bethke Elshtain, ed.,
Just War Theory
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992).

18. One should distinguish here between
jus ad bellum
(the right to make war) and
jus in bello
(law in war), or really the rules ofthe correct conduct ofwar. See Walzer,
Just and Unjust Wars,
pp. 61–63 and 90.

19. On the GulfWar and justice, see Norberto Bobbio,
Una guerra giusta?

Sul conflitto del Golfo
(Venice: Marsilio, 1991); Ramsey Clark,
The Fire
418

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 4 – 1 7

This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth

Press, 1992); Ju¨rgen Habermas,
The Past as Future,
trans. Max Pensky (Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1994); and Jean Bethke Elshtain,

ed.,
But Was It Just? Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War
(New York: Doubleday, 1992).

20. For the influence ofNiklas Luhmann’s systematism on international juridical theory, see the essays by Gunther Teubner in Gunther Teubner and

Alberto Febbrajo, eds.,
State, Law, and Economy as Autopoietic Systems

(Milan: Giuffrè, 1992). An adaptation ofJohn Rawls’s ethico-juridical

theories was attempted by Charles R. Beitz in
Political Theory and International Relations
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

21. This concept was introduced and articulated in James Rosenau, ‘‘Gover-

nance, Order, and Change in World Politics,’’ in James Rosenau and

Ernst-Otto Czempiel,
Governance without Government
(Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1992).

22. At one extreme, see the set ofessays assembled in V. Rittenberger, ed.,
Beyond Anarchy: International Cooperation and Regimes
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

23. See Hans Kelsen,
Peace through Law
(Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1944).

24. On Machiavelli’s reading ofthe Roman Empire, see Antonio Negri,
Il

potere costituente
(Milan: Sugarco, 1992), pp. 75–96; in English,
Insurgencies:
Constituent Power and the Modern State,
trans. Maurizia Boscagli (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1999).

25. For a reading ofthe juridical passage from modernity to postmodernity,

see Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,
Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of

the State-Form
(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1994), chaps.

6 and 7.

26. It is strange how in this internationalist debate almost the only work of Carl Schmitt that is taken up is
Der Nomos der Erde im Vo¨lkerrecht des Jus
Publicum Europaeum
(Cologne: Greven, 1950), when really precisely in this context his more important work is
Verfassungslehre,
8th ed. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1993), and his positions developed around the

definition ofthe concept ofthe political and the production ofright.

27. In order to get a good idea ofthis process it may be enough to read

together the disciplinary classics ofinternational law and international

economics, linking their observations and prescriptions, which emerge

from different disciplinary formations but share a certain neorealism, or

really a realism in the Hobbesian sense. See, for example, Kenneth Neal

Waltz,
Theory of International Politics
(New York: Random House, 1979); N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 8 – 2 3

419

and Robert Gilpin,
The Political Economy of International Relations

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

28. In order to get an initial idea of the vast and often confused literature on this topic, see Gene Lyons and Michael Mastanduno, eds.,
Beyond

Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Arnold Kanter and Linton Brooks, eds.,

U.S. Intervention Policy for the Post–Cold War World
(New York: Norton, 1994); Mario Bettati,
Le droit d’ingeŕence
(Paris: Odile Jacob, 1995); and Maurice Bernard,
La fin de l’ordre militaire
(Paris: Presses de Sciences Politiques, 1995).

29. On the ethics ofinternational relations, in addition to the propositions of Michael Walzer and Charles Beitz already cited, see also Stanley Hoff-mann,
Duties beyond Borders
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1981); and Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel, eds.,
Traditions of International

Ethics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

30. We are refering here to the two classic texts: Montesquieu,
Considerations
on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline,
trans. David Lowenthal (New York: Free Press, 1965); and Edward Gibbon,
The

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
3 vols. (London: Penguin, 1994).

31. As Jean Ehrard has amply shown, the thesis that the decline ofRome

began with Caesar was continually reproposed throughout the historiog-

raphy ofthe age ofEnlightenment. See Jean Ehrard,
La politique de Montesquieu
(Paris: A. Colin, 1965).

32. The principle ofthe corruption ofpolitical regimes was already implicit in the theory ofthe forms ofgovernment as it was formulated in the

Sophistic period, which was later codified by Plato and Aristotle. The

principle of‘‘political’’ corruption was later translated into a principle of historical development through theories that grasped the ethical schemes

ofthe forms ofgovernment as cyclical temporal developments. Ofall the

proponents of different theoretical tendencies who have embarked on

this endeavor (and the Stoics are certainly fundamental in this regard),

Polybius is the one who really described the model in its definitive form,

celebrating the creative function of corruption.

1 . 2 B I O P O L I T I C A L P R O D U C T I O N

1. The passage from disciplinary society to the society of control is not