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Title: Empire for Beginners Author: Rob los Ricos Language: en Topics: anti-civ, Antonio Negri, capitalism, history, Michael Hardt, neoliberalism, review Source: Retrieved on September 19, 2009 from http://www.defenestrator.org/roblosricos/writings/empire.htm
Empire by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 2000) 478 pp. $18.95 paper.
In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 1988,
Bush the Elder proclaimed that we had entered into a New World Order. I
was alarmed to hear someone drunk with power — and who knows what else —
crowing over the seemingly unlimited authority the ruling powers had
achieved. The media tried to pretend it never happened, but the concerns
of many, many people — who, like myself, were stunned into disbelief by
Bush I’s proclamation of power forced conservative political pundits to
eventually address the President’s megalomaniacal statement. Mostly,
they stressed the “fact” that the NWO had been in existence for quite a
while and was nothing new after all. Most lefty-liberals fell in line
with the conservatives and even tried to outdo them by claiming that the
NWO was just more of the same old capitalist imperialism. This isn’t so.
In Hardt and Negri’s book, Empire, they describe how the emergence of
the NWO/Empire represents a new epoch in human evolution, an event so
profound as to put an end to history, not by negating it, but by
bringing historical processes to their conclusion. This (Empire) is it:
the ultimate fulfillment of human endeavor.
To the authors, this is not necessarily a bad turn of events. To me,
however, Empire represents the triumph of the darkest aspects of human
capability and must be resisted with every bit of energy by everyone who
treasures life.
“Our basic hypothesis is that sovereignty has taken a new form, composed
of a series of national and international organisms united under a
single logic of rule. This new global form of sovereignty is what we
call Empire...”
— Hardt and Negri, from the prologue to Empire
The most important aspect of this book is its rebuke of all those who
have tried — unconvincingly, yet doggedly — to claim that the
neo-liberal era of global capitalism is merely more of the same old
capitalism. This is not the case. The era of Empire is as different from
the era of European imperialism as that time was different from the ages
of the ancient empires of Rome or Persia.
The concept of sovereignty was developed by the ancient empires. The
ruling emperor was not only a mighty king, but a god incarnate. His word
was thus more than law, but divine writ. His authority not just
unchallenged, but unchallengeable. Sovereignty is absolute authority
embodied in a single person. This concept is crucial to the processes of
historical Progress.
As Europe entered the modern era the idea of sovereignty was introduced
there. Modern sovereignty was invested in a ruler whose authority was
ordained by a single deity, who handed out royal titles as if his very
existence depended on them. With a single divinely anointed,
authoritative power established, most of what we recognize as basic
tenets of modern societies began to take shape: nationalism, capitalism
and urbanization among them.
Having been born and grown up together, capital and the state are
co-joined twins, each dependent on the other. The state created the
social crises capital required in order to move into the Industrial Age.
Capital rewarded the state with wealth. For instance, capitalists needed
desperately impoverished people to destroy in their mines and factories.
The state provided them when it confiscated common lands and thereby
reduced subsistence farmers and prosperous herdsfolk to destitution.
Even before these implementations of sovereign authority, the ruling
powers had turned their coercive forces outward to plunder the
fabulously exotic lands being discovered around the world.
Whereas the various peoples of the European states had been welded into
national identities — for example, Catalans, Castilians, Galicians and
Basques turned into Spaniards — during the era of European imperialistic
conquest, there was no real effort made to bring the conquered people
into the imperial realm as citizens. Once the discovered people had been
relieved of the riches it had accumulated over generations, it was
relieved of its lands and forced to produce trade goods and otherwise
increase the wealth of the ruling powers. Imperial power was represented
in the foreign colonies by administrators who were citizens of the
realm. Those they ruled over were not citizens, and thus were at the
mercy of the administrator’s whims.
At the beginning of the modern era, almost everyone on Earth was a
subsistence farmer, hunter, herder, fisher or forager. By the end of the
modern era, the Industrial Revolution had become the greatest force of
the historic process. Industry turned agricultural people into
proletarian masses, accelerated the urbanization of society and enabled
European empires to force their cultures upon the rest of the world.
With the concept of the nation firmly established, a sense of historic
continuity was manufactured. Instead of remembering their ancestral
heritage, the various peoples of each nation were only taught about
events and places within their national boundaries. This gave an
illusion of permanence to the state, which in reality was only a recent
innovation.
Rebellions against European imperialism in the Americas started
historical processes which eventually led the world beyond Modernism
into a new, post-modern social order.
The new American-style state was not based upon the divine right of
kings, but on the popular will of the citizenry. By the turn of the
20^(th) Century, the few nations which had not exchanged the rule of
nobility for that of elected legislatures were suffering political
turmoil. When revolutionary forces of the masses finally succeeded in
crushing the regimes of local aristocracies, a schism formed which was
to prevent the development of Empire for as long as the conflict
remained unresolved. This was the Cold War era, which began with the
Bolshevik coup in October of 1917.
The historic conditions for the emergence of Empire were created during
the modern era. People no longer identified themselves as different
ethnic or racial groups, but as nationalities. WWI was an attempt to
divide the world into permanent national entities and spheres of
Euro-American influence. The Russian Revolution upset the effort, not
only by challenging the dominant form of capitalism (liberalism) with a
socialistic one, but also by serving as an example of how even the most
backward, underdeveloped nation could rapidly industrialize and grow
into a powerful, modern state. This was not appropriate for Empire,
which requires a single world with every country appointed its specific
imperial role.
It was tragically naive of the non-Europeans to fall for the ideals
promoted by the ruling powers. The lie was that each nation could
develop its own economy along the industrial and economic paths forged
by European and American states in order to gradually develop into
societies identical to those of the First World. The reality is that the
power and wealth enjoyed by the First World is dependent upon the
exploitation of the resources and people of lesser developed places. In
order to keep those resources available to the ruling powers, lesser
developed nations must remain so.
This was one of the reasons WWI was fought — to divide the world’s
resources among the already industrialized nations. Though U.S.
President Woodrow Wilson lied that this war was fought to make the world
“safe for democracy,” its true result was to ensure that democratic rule
be reserved for those who could be trusted to look out for the interests
of the ruling powers.
The lie of progressive development is a lovely one to believe, which is
why so many people continue to believe it to this day. During the late
modern era (the 19^(th) Century), the ideologies of Progress (Manifest
Destiny, historical determinism, dialectical materialism, et al)
evolved, one from the other, in order to rationalize the horrific
“sacrifices” made to further Progress. Genocide, ecological ruin,
slavery — no crime against Earth or its inhabitants was so great as to
be unabsolvable through the anointment of wealth upon its perpetrators.
As long as enough wealth was generated through plunder, slaughter and
exploitation so that the ruling powers could benefit, all sins were
forgivable.
Such corruption isn’t a symptom of modernism, but is the cornerstone of
its very existence. Indeed, it would not have been possible for the
imperial powers to stifle development, or exploit the people and
resources of distant lands were it not for massive political and
economic corruption. Its economy would collapse without periodic
infusions of corrupt profits — dirty money.
In contrast to this corruption, the Russian Revolution was an
abomination — an attempt to create a counter-Empire. The Soviet Union
had all the attributes of the fledgling Empire, including a
nationalistic doctrine that could lead people in any country that
desired to achieve modernity through economic development, into the
Industrial Age. Unfortunately, for the communists their development was
achieved through brute force, rather than economic persuasion or liberal
Progress. Communism’s corruption was based upon coercive power more than
creation of wealth. Unable to generate vast amounts of reserve wealth
via racketeering and shadow economies, the Soviet economy was unable to
keep pace with America’s rampant militarization, which itself was fueled
by economic and political corruption.
The Soviet economy collapsed spectacularly. Suddenly, there were no more
obstacles to the final implementation of Empire — the groundwork was
complete. The project of reducing people to workers, forcing them off
their land and into ghettoes, had been a monumental success. The
urbanized masses were transformed into proletarians, powerless people
dependent upon industrial production for their survival. Even
agriculture became industrialized. Most farmers in industrial states now
work for corporations, rather than farming land they own. They would be
called peasants or campesinos in other countries, but that would be rude
to point out in an industrialized, wealthy nation like the US.
When its rival imploded, the path was cleared for the coming of the one,
true Empire. People’s lives have been reduced to monotony, their
allegiance to the ruling powers unquestioned by minds too dull to
conceive of any alternative. Loyalty to schools, corporations and states
is instilled in their minds. This is the time of the Pepsi Generation,
the culmination of the historic march of Progress.
So far, the retelling of history has been fairly predictable, a classic
Marxist rendition of the development of contemporary industrial
societies. Marx and Engels proposed faith in the proletarian masses to
one day seize control of the state and therefore the means of
production. Then we’d all live in a workers’ paradise according to their
fairy tale.
It is Hardt and Negri’s description of Empire that makes this book worth
reading, despite the Marxist fundamentalism that skews their
perspectives. In their discussions of the composition, function and
goals of Empire, the authors truly bring it into focus for all those who
are concerned with the various aspects of globalization, yet fail to
grasp its totality. The failure to see the big picture is what makes the
many critics of Empire sound naive and hopelessly foolish in their
shallow attempts at reform.
An ex-lover of mine, a Leninist, once related a story about a cab driver
she’d encountered who’d been involved with the Industrial Workers of the
World prior to the Palmer Raids. They talked at length about class
struggle, the suppression of the IWW and current events. He summed up by
saying, “You think it was bad back then, wait ‘til they have the whole
world.”
Empire’s definitive quality is its omnipotence. It is everywhere and
manifest in all our daily activities. Empire represents the triumph of
Western Civilization as embodied in capitalism. All cultures,
ethnicities and other categorizations of human beings have been
commercialized, turned into different varieties of consumers. Our
differences have been turned into marketing devices.
The nationalism that dominated the Cold War era has been forsaken for a
borderless land of opportunity for economic endeavor. Regional
differences are merely justifications for the hyper-exploitation of
workers and resources. Whereas in the postmodern era there were three
worlds, now there is one that has absorbed all three and scrambled them
in the process. Shopping centers, sports stadia, financial districts and
industrial parks are indistinguishable in any country — Canada, Vietnam,
Mexico or Nigeria. The same is true for shantytowns, homeless people’s
camps, landfills and ghettoes.
Human existence has become banalized to the point of meaninglessness,
the alternative being horrific irrelevance. The former, present and
future proletariat are offered the incentive of the shopping mall while
menaced with the specter of homeless beggars. The Third World has
migrated to the First, the First exported to the Third, while the Second
is being destroyed. The mega-wealth being generated by these processes
is being reserved for the elite, who will invest it to further increase
its own wealth, while less and less is left for the multitude to compete
over.
As factories disappear from what was once the First World, the former
members of the proletariat take their places among the multitude —
unskilled, landless workers whose financial stability is always in
doubt. The multitude has taken the place of the proletarian masses, who
still retained some distinguishing characteristics as people. The
multitude has one identity, one function — consumer.
In former times people could find fulfillment through spiritual service
to their communities, or through helping their communities become
self-sustaining. The forces of Empire will not tolerate such
alternatives. All activities by all people must serve the needs of
Empire — to increase the wealth of the wealthy. Governments,
non-governmental organizations, even religious organizations all enforce
the same omnipotence of Empire by solidifying areas where imperial
presence is weak and by sanctifying imperial power.
The historic union of twin power shared by capital and state is a thing
of the past. International capital needs no state support, unless such
support better suits its needs. Corporations are wealthier, face fewer
social or legal restrictions and are not usually held accountable for
their actions by the multitude. Their institutions — the World Trade
Organization, International Monetary Fund, etc. — shape laws and
regulate economic activity. If it weren’t for its function of protecting
Empire’s interests from the retaliatory outrage of the multitude,
government would have little justification for its continued existence.
The state must sustain itself through terroristic wars against its own
citizens. The state is the muscle backing up Empire’s demands. In
addition, the United Nations must maintain the illusion that lines on
maps have relevance, or it loses its own relevance. Current political
boundaries must be maintained, no matter how many Rwandas, Kosovos,
Kashmirs, Kurdistans. UN peacekeeping forces enforce the lies of maps in
order to keep Empire functioning smoothly. National identities must
remain intact, not because they are just, fair or even functional, but
because we have reached the post-historic era. Nation-states that exist
now have always existed and will always exist, thus says Empire.
In the preface to their book, Hardt and Negri admit they were working on
their analysis in the very earliest stages of Empire’s emergence,
between the end of the Gulf War and before the NATO invasion of
Yugoslavia. Events since then have shown that they “misunderestimated”
(in the word of Bush the Lesser) Empire’s insidious nature. Or perhaps
they chose to understate the corruption and violence inherent within the
New World Order. This is understandable, given the authors’
progressivist love of the state. To apologists for the state, atrocities
like genocide and widespread political repression are minor
inconveniences that must be tolerated in the interest of historical
development.
No matter the reason, Empire falls well short of a condemnation of its
namesake. Because Hardt and Negri believe so strongly in the progressive
nature of history, they welcome Empire’s arrival with the enthusiasm of
any fundamentalist who sees the master’s hand in every turn of events.
Hardt and Negri see within Empire the seeds of its own destruction,
though they fail to disclose upon what they base this vision.
To people who believe in destiny, fate, or historical materialism,
determinism, divine will, or other such dogma, when events of
significance occur it is proof of some sort of Grand Design.
So, the development of civilization is seen by many people as the
crowning achievement of human endeavor. However, it can also be viewed
as an abomination against life on Earth. As far as I’m concerned,
civilization represents the triumph of the worst characteristics of
human capabilities.
Hardt and Negri agree that capitalism and the state were born and grew
up together as a result of corruption and crisis. Crises helped to
establish the dominance of capitalism and were often created by the
state. From the beginning of this alliance, the state and capital have
depended on one another. If capital falters the state intervenes on its
behalf. When the state grows weak capital recreates it in a manner more
beneficial for itself and in a way that pulls the state through its
political crisis.
Capital funded the voyages of discovery and conquest that brought about
the modern world. This benefited capital, but nowhere near the extent it
benefited the aristocracies of Europe and their military agents. Whereas
the capitalists reinvested their earnings into colonial plantations and
domestic industries, the feuding aristocracies squandered vast fortunes
on senseless continental squabbles over territory. The states used these
wars to solidify their claim to legitimacy and, of course, capitalists
profited from these conflicts.
It’s very easy to see how the deliberate creation of social crises in
order to justify increased state intrusion into peoples’ lives leads to
the development of a corrupt civilization. However, Hardt and Negri
don’t look into corruption at the heart of the ancient empires. Brute
force was deployed to bring “law and order” to places destabilized by
the actions of the very same forces which later assumed power. This
strategy worked as well for Akkadian warrior-kings as it did for Persian
god-emperors, and as well for Roman caesars as it did for fascist
dictators. It’s no surprise that Hardt and Negri don’t seem to
appreciate the extent corruption infests Empire, since they don’t
acknowledge the extent it has shaped civilization from its beginnings.
Tracing the corrupt roots of civilization could have led to an
anti-civilization tendency within Marxist doctrine. That would be
heresy, though. The thought that civilization was a wrong turn in the
evolution of Homo sapiens is a blasphemy against everything
progressive-minded people believe. Western civilization is the logical,
only possible course for human development. Never mind the rivers of
blood and the spreading desertification, deforestation and
homogenization of ecosystems civilization has brought to the world.
Civilization is not only good and proper, but absolutely essential to
the lives of human beings-the ultimate achievement of life on Earth.
According to progressives, industrial society is the epitome of human
endeavor. Once the world has been properly industrialized, say the
Marxists, the proletariat shall be empowered to rise up and seize
control of industry and the state. It shall then lead the world into a
new era of material plenitude and establish an egalitarian utopia,
wherein everyone will share the fruits of industrial society, no doubt
portioned out by the tooth fairy or her flying pig.
The failure of Marxist revolutionary movements is the main indication
for Hardt and Negri’s alleged end of history. The workers did not seize
control of anything and in the Imperial Age the proletariat has become
irrelevant. If workers become uppity in one place, industry packs up and
goes elsewhere. Because of the immiseration of the vast majority of
people around the world, there will always be people willing to accept
low wages, unhealthy working conditions, atrocities against human
dignity — anything — in order to earn the right to live with a minimum
of economic security.
The only reason this arrangement is acceptable to people is because the
ability to provide for themselves has been taken away from them. The
point of contention between the masses and the state has always been
over control of and access to land. In the Russian, Mexican, Chinese,
Vietnamese — even the American — revolutions, it was the desire of
people to have land to grow crops and otherwise provide for their
families that inspired people to fight against the old imperial powers,
not the desire to control industry. Industrialism itself would never
have been possible if the imperial states had not forced people off
their communal lands and into destitution. This made them dependent on
wages in order to buy their food at markets, rather than grow it
themselves. Until the postmodern era, it was still possible for
landowning people to live with very little utilization of money if they
wished to. What their land could not provide for them, they could barter
for. This independent lifestyle is what people have fought for
repeatedly, throughout the modern and postmodern eras.
In the few instances where the proletariat has fought during a
revolution, it has, more often than not, sided with the reactionary
forces of the state against the genuinely revolutionary forces of the
rural masses and indigenous peoples. Even when the proletariat has
joined with the revolutionary masses, once the battle has been won the
workers and their communist overlords have usually suppressed the
redistribution of land and instead imposed industrialized, unsustainable
agriculture upon them, just as the capitalist states have.
An attempt to reconcile human existence with Earth’s biosystems would
put an end to the ideologies of human supremacy, whether of the secular
humanist or divinely ordained variety. To claim that people are but a
part of Earth biosystems and that we need to live accordingly is to spit
in god’s face, to turn one’s back on thousands of years of historical
progress, to forfeit mankind’s triumph over Nature, to admit that
sometimes things happen for no reason, that there is no divine plan
guiding our collective existence, and that we are responsible for the
choices we make in life.
The subjects of Empire seem to be reluctant to take responsibility for
their own lives and instead surrender them to abstract social forces.
This might be due to the hopeless impotence imperial life presents us,
with no alternatives possible, or even imaginable. Add to this the
overbearing pressure of history and it is little wonder that suicide is
rampant and loss of life so routine as to be trivial under Empire.
With no place left to expand capital is forced to return to the same
consumers time and again. New cars, new houses, new computers are sold
to the same consumers who have the old ones. With wages falling across
the globe there will be no expanding markets created through the spread
of industry to previously undeveloped lands. Each abandonment of one
country for another brings another downward movement in the global
economy. More prosperous consumers — better consumers — will be forsaken
to create lesser consumers somewhere else.
With this redundant economic system, we have not only entered a
post-historic era, but a post-capitalist one as well. Capitalism is
based on increase. Investing money to generate profits, thereby creating
more money for more investments to increase production and generate
still more profits. Where the post-capitalist economy fails this
equation is in the increase of production. Production now remains
stagnant, if it doesn’t actually decrease. Capitalism has discarded its
historical imperative to increase material abundance. The new goal of
the imperial economy is to boost stock values. Traditionally, stock
values increased when a company increased profits through increased
production and expanding markets. However, the dizzying heights reached
by stock markets at the end of the 20^(th) Century were created by
downsizing rather than expansion. Instead of building additional
factories and manufacturing new products, corporations nowadays add to
their bottom lines by firing their employees, closing old, outdated
factories and building new, updated ones in Asia. Health benefits for
the work force are cut, as are their wages. Retirement funds are robbed.
The increase in profits generated this way gives stocks a false value.
In order to keep inflating their stock values, corporations must
continue to downsize. This is not sustainable.
The movement of industry between countries may generate profits for the
ruling powers, but they leave economic ruin in the abandoned states. The
sudden loss of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in exports can
devastate most nations’ economies.
The effects of Empire upon societies take various forms according to the
level of development each society has achieved in the postmodern era.
Hardt and Negri claim that all cultural and social differences are now
irrelevant, since Empire has reduced all possible identities to one —
that of the consumer. This is simply not true. But to the believers in
Progress, anyone who does not fit Empire’s single mold will shortly
become an imperial subject of perish. For the authors it is unbelievable
that there are people who are resisting the encroachment of
civilization. The fact that some people are successfully waging war
against Empire is inconceivable to Hardt and Negri.
Rebellions in New Guinea, Chiapas and Ogoniland, by the U’wa of Colombia
as well as First Nation peoples throughout Canada: all these peoples are
struggling to maintain cultural identities outside of Empire’s domain.
These are primarily conflicts in the way people relate to land. People
dependent upon intact ecosystems for their sustenance have no interest
in “developing” the resources of their homelands, which are fully
developed already, and provide for all their needs. The idea is not to
fuck it up and to live within the limits of one’s bioregion.
Resistance to Empire is not always so noble, however. Both Somalia and
Afghanistan exemplify the horrors inherent in xenophobic hatred of all
that Empire promises. Rather than upholding strong connections to the
land, many warlords and tribal strongmen are more interested in
asserting their own authority over that of Empire’s. This distrust of
foreigners and their schemes would be a mere nuisance to Empire, except
that in the cases of both these nations, and increasingly in Indonesia,
political turmoil is preventing imperial access to natural resources.
Such xenophobic civil strife has led to tribal and nationalist warfare
in Kosovo, Rwanda, Chechnya — all across Asia and Africa. There is no
silver lining to be found in these conflicts, but one thing they display
is that ethnic and nationalist identities have not yet been supplanted
by teaming multitudes of consumers. It seems as though Empire is not
quite as omnipotent as Hardt and Negri think.
The notion that 500 years of genocidal carnage was necessary and
desirable to bring humanity into one all-encompassing social order
shaped by and in the interests of Euro-American economic interests is
nothing short of racist. Hardt and Negri would understand that if they
themselves were not Euro-Americans. To them, the bloody ascendance of
European civilization to global domination is only proper. To many
people — those of us of mixed heritage, indigenous peoples and
non-believers in Progress, it is obvious that there are serious problems
with the direction of civilization. We choose to create different
identities for ourselves, Empire be damned.
Empire’s “multitude” is a disgusting attempt to create a sort of
multicultural racism. Anyone of any race or culture is permitted to
participate in the annihilation of social and cultural differences and
share in the plunder gained. Empire buys out cultures and discards what
is unmarketable. Where it finds rich, varied cultures with lovely
folklore, obscure languages and customs, it develops plastic trinkets,
videotapes and brothels for the tourists. The local languages die out,
the old stories are forgotten and everyone becomes an American.
Hardt and Negri alike underestimate the strength, resilience and
intelligence of many peoples. They also do not take into consideration
the unexpected consequences of Empire’s actions. Worldwide climate
changes are beyond its control. This will play havoc with agribusiness,
whose frankencrops are also behaving in unforeseen ways.
And there are people within Empire who have come to the realization that
they have nothing in common with Empire’s schemes and machinations. So,
we are witness to uprisings against imperial decrees, like the
Zapatistas’ insurrection against NAFTA and the international days of
action against Empire’s administrative bodies — the WTO, G-8, IMF, WEF,
etc. Just as worldwide Empire seemed to be imminent, widespread
opposition has arisen.
Imperial sovereignty does not reside within the nation-state, but is
wielded by transnational entities — treaty organizations and financial
institutions of regional and global scope. In many instances Empire
relies upon the state to enforce its dicta over the objections of its
citizens and in contradiction to its own laws. States are becoming
increasingly unnecessary to Empire, however.
The Democratic Republic of Congo exists only on paper. In the actual
land delineated on maps as constituting the DRC the federal government
controls only a segment of the country around the capital. The rest of
this vast nation has been overrun by bandits from Uganda, Burundi,
Rwanda and even as far away as Angola. In this region, a strong,
centralized government does not suit Empire’s needs. The corruption at
the heart of capitalism has always prevented the development of DRC’s
abundant mineral resources and potential agricultural production. Most
of the people in the DRC enjoy an easy life of gardening, fishing,
foraging and hunting. They are too preoccupied by dancing and festivals
to work for wages. In short, they have lives that are rewarding and
satisfying, with little or no need for consumer goods. Any government
which has tried to change these circumstances has met with resolute
indifference or determined resistance, and failed. Unable to access the
DRC’s incredible bounty of natural resources through economic
development, Empire fell back upon tried-and-true methods to get at
them: conquest and plunder. Since the invaders are not connected to the
land and people of DRC, they have no hesitancy to clearcut the
rainforests in order to plant coffee and cocoa, or to strip-mine the
mountains and thereby poison the local water supplies. How many
Congolese have died during these past five years of carnage? Three
million? Eight million? It doesn’t matter, because these people were not
producing anything of value for Empire and were therefore as expendable
as they were irrelevant.
And where did these tiny, impoverished nations acquire the military
capability needed to invade and occupy a country five times their
combined size and at least that much more populous? There are many
billions of dollars being made through this holocaust. What Empire
wants, Empire gets. This sort of regressive behavior doesn��t fit into
the progressivists’ neat little worldview of purposeful, linear
development leading toward utopia. Unless one drops the pretension that
this is not racism, that the utopia to be achieved will be enjoyed by
the Euro-Americans and their lackeys, and created by the sweat and blood
of the rest of the world. The example of the DRC may be the most extreme
but it is hardly unrepresentative of how Empire functions.
Plan Colombia, a strategy developed by oil corporations and the US
military-industrial complex, will bring about extraordinary political
and economic chaos in Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. This plan
is based on two goals: the flow of oil through a pipeline and the flow
of funds through a cash pipeline. Political and economic conflict, like
that in the DRC, will likely never affect the flow of either cash or oil
from this region, but will prevent the overwhelming majority of the
people there from benefiting from either pipeline, or from having any
say in the matter. Cocaine production is the big money item for most
rural people in the region, the only thing that prevents many from
complete economic destitution, which makes the future of the area look
frighteningly similar to conditions in Afghanistan over the past 25
years — rival warlords fighting over control of coca fields, some
controlled by leftist guerrillas, some controlled by the local state,
some by foreign armies, some by organized criminals. Evil, evil, evil,
evil, stupid!
The willful naïveté of most of Empire’s dissidents is obscene. Their
emphasis on dialogue and education will do nothing to change Empire, or
challenge its existence. Empire understands what it is doing. All the
death and environmental ruin it causes are not a series of unfortunate
accidents that occur unintentionally. Billions of people’s lives are not
necessary for Empire. If they cannot find some way to serve Empire, or
if they somehow get in Empire’s way, they will be done away with.
Under capitalism, the creation of a postmodern, consumer-driven economy
made it seem as if we had entered a post-scarcity era of abundance. In
the post-capitalist, imperial era, economies are built around the
concept of downsizing. Economic progress in lands outside of the
Euro-American sphere of influence will not be tolerated.
Industrialization in undeveloped countries is being carried out by and
for Empire. The local people do not benefit from having their cultures,
societies, land, families, individuality and sense of dignity destroyed.
People who act in the interest of Empire are absorbed into it. However,
when industry flees from one country to a newer, more exploitable one,
the economic contractions in the abandoned country ensure Empire’s
downward spiral. There are limits to Earth’s resources. Knowing this
Empire is placing limits on the availability of privileges, granted to
ever fewer people. These select few, however, will have tremendous
wealth at their disposal.
Those who still lead cheers for economic democracy have yet to get a
clue about finite natural resources, or about imperial economics.
Argentina, a classic example of a developing state that built itself
into a First World economy during the postmodern era, had its economy
crushed by Empire. Argentinean prosperity doesn’t suit Empire’s needs,
just as Korea’s or Yugoslavia’s don’t.
Hypno-economists want people to believe that China’s entry into the WTO
will usher the world economy into a new era of expansion. But wages
there are so low, they will not support families. And to paraphrase Free
Market apostle Ross Perot, the giant sucking sound one hears these days
is that of factories being shipped off to China from every corner of
Empire. There will be no economic expansion — there’s no room left for
expansion. Capitalism isn’t dying, it’s dead already. Yet, its rotting,
bloated corpse staggers on. Capitalism is undead, sustaining itself by
feeding on the living, consuming life in all its manifestations.
Empire presents an interesting analysis of the New World Order, one
which is valuable in helping to understand the power dynamics that
define it. However, I’ve pointed out above how I think some of Hardt and
Negri’s basic precepts — progressivism, Marxism, Euro-centrism — lead
them to sad, predictable conclusions, the main one being their
enthusiasm for the arrival of this horribly dehumanizing Empire under
which we live. This isn’t the most serious problem the book presents,
though. That would be the wretchedly obtuse language the authors inflict
upon the reader. I understand that translating philosophical and
political theory can create syntactical difficulties, but some of this
is as unforgivable as it is unnecessary. Hardt and Negri also enjoy
redefining words that have recently taken on new meanings, like
“virtual” and “posse.” At least with these the authors made the effort
to explain themselves. I suppose it’s everyone’s right to use words
according to their desires, but it is rather laborious for readers to
have to constantly guess at the meanings of words, or even the same word
used for widely different purposes.
Still, the authors’ tortuous literary stylings shouldn’t deter anyone
with the patience to wade through such muck. It’s very important for us
not to treat Empire as a mere continuation of the same old capitalist
society. Empire is a different monstrosity, one that recognizes its
limitations and seeks to preserve privilege and fabulous wealth for a
very few, while discarding the bulk of humanity.
Hardt and Negri are enthusiastic about Empire containing within itself
the seeds of its own destruction. They don’t know what form this will
take and they also make the classical Marxist mistake of believing that
the multitude will overthrow Empire by subverting its global nature for
their own ends. But resistance to imperial power won’t come from within.
Anything which takes place within Empire can be recuperated for Empire’s
own needs. Anything. Everything. That’s its nature.
Resistance must come from without, which means, primarily, creating
human identities that emphasize our relationships with the biosystems we
inhabit rather than with commodities, economics, the state or
nationalities. One thing Hardt and Negri get right is that opposition to
Empire must occur worldwide, or Empire will crush it as resistance rises
in one isolated spot or another.