Empire & Imperialism A Critical Reading of Michael HardL and Antonio Negri

AnUO A BORON

'THIS MOST 1'�ENCH4""T "NO D[VASTATING CRITIQUE 01 Hardr anr1 Negrl ' s

mlstai<en Clnd conl(JsecinOllons 01 a dcterrtlOllillt/e<l and dect!lltcfcc1 Emptfc

con'es from one of tile moM creatllie ancl cOJnlllllted socialist ,!ltL'lIectual" In

tnc conli nent that has llilO lhe most flfstnano expel1ence of the dctual

worklflgs 01 Amcllean ImDt.!naiism Boron not anI', contront!> Hard! amJ Ne�fI � ab5\r£lCtlon5 w l!11 'thl� prosaic L.,tHl Amencan eonlQnJporar) I calll) hul

subleels Iht'li work to d Dfotounrl theorcilcilt amI cmpilitill r.:t,Jlalton Wllltt'n

wllh N.ccplloncil �el �e and olten bltmg hUlllour. this IS il hoo" ;n.1: cleser\les

10 be ",lclCI) read.

LEO PANITCH CoEOltor. SOClill151 Register. D,sllllgUished Rescilfch Professor of POhllcal Sc.(!nce. Yorl< Unlvt'ISlt�. CanadiJ

THE SCOPE o r lHIS LUCID .\·�D Co\R[rl:L DISSECTION 01 1\llJt'I� lIel(l !Jel""s olJOUI !lIe emerging \�ortcJ 010"1 e .1tmth . .... ell Q�'I()no tile IlIl111lmtlil! stud� thar

IS Its Illlrn._'clltilr. turge!. Boron SIIlPS a .... il�· lil�t!r after la)er of 1ll15Ulider

!'.!ilrldlng concefOlOg . DIll Imperialism' ilflfj I!S CllfI('rl! \'arlant� He 1t."'lev.." lilt' P(!rSISlence of tile dll\e to cuntrol n"lurill ft!SOllrcc!> Ih,' rchanc!:! 01 transnil!.onill fIlm!> on d po\\el ful hOille slate the dangers of a�olrJlI'g

political econo m\. ana muel, elst' ThIS li<tlUdule sllJd� UI�\·{.'lops ill I Ifllportanl �rSPt'C;I,\e on oresent rCilh1tes and \',11.11 must be lJone to Cel"" for WflfO OilSI (JCIII(!Vt..'lllenIS on l'flltlflClp.lllon from InJustice. oPP'CSSIOII dl1U

degradatIon

NOAM CHOMSk'l'

'BEYOND HIS mE/I,CH"NT ENC.\GEM!:NT \,;1111 the argument!'. of !-Iardt cilIa

Negr •. Boron otter" nls o .... n 1I1SIghifui ami eloquent anill',5IS of locla\ s 'glollillo,ed worfd ;,n(1 Ih£' pOSSllll"!'!?S 01 lis trallsformatlon The frUitful

COllllJrrlilltOn ul Ireorelicai flgour dnl1 Cli""�. ('mplriCal ilnall�I'" ollll political

passIon 'S Just 1I11� ImlLl 01 thmg we need 011 the left

ElLE'" M£ISKIJ4§ WOOD Authol 01 [llIp.,e vI CalJltiJl

ISBN 1 84277 577 4

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About this book

Harvard acholar Mic:hael Hardt and Italian 1�l'twing intelJ«tuaJ Toni

NelJrl's major book, Emplrr, quickly became 0 huge bestseller wh�n it WH publlahed in the United States. It W85 widely lauded by or­

gans, such a' the NN York TiIJlt:s, not usually known for their think·

ing in terms of empi� and Imperialism. But many intellectuals in

other parts of the world - among them Atillo Boron - �re deepl)'

disturbed by the book, reeling that It was analytically misconceived,

undermiMCI poUlkai resistance to imperialism, and igaomllhe

concme experience and inteUmual analysis of the Third World.

Alilio Boron argues that Hardt and Negri's concept of 'imperial­

ism without an address', however well intentioned their commit­

ment to buman emancipation and a Muer world, Ignora the

fundamental parametrrs of modern imperialilm. Professor Boron

unpicks thrir argumenl5 and confronts them wim me social, «a­

nomic and political �alides of intensified capi:talm exploitation in

today's world. Among Ihe trenchant prunts he makes:

The nation Illite, rar trom being weak�ned, remaiM a crucial

ag.:nt of th� capltallll! core, deploying a la� anenal of eco­

nomic weaponry to protect and extend its position, and actively

promoting globalization in hs own interests. It is only the state

in the periphery thaI has �n dramllrlcally wukC'ned - in frla·

lion both 10 transnational corporations and to l-ore states and

supranalional enlitie5like the US and the EU.

Hardt and Negri are also wrong, he argues. in picturing produc·

lion under globalization 115 disregarding nalional frontiers, This

does nOI apply to labour. nor to cutting-ed� t«hnology.

And their substltulion or a nebulous 'mullitude' for identiftable

social forces lind antagonistic social groups merely confuses

political reality, as does the'lr curious depktion or Ihe' super­

rxploiled Third World migrant worker as II postmodem hem who

is changing Ihe world.

Boron conclud� that Empirt is • libertarian pessimist product

of thtl defeat of th� socialist left in the 11)805 and 1990S. Ics authof5

have ablUldoned social theory In favour of a poetic abstraction

which rovers up the reality of a globalization process whose more

cynical apologists do nOI helltale in p�senllng as a proJ«tion of

American power,

Critical prflUeforthu book

'11Ii5 i51 a pGWI!rful polemic, in the best RnH of the word, ap.inst

a t'uneatly fashionable book. But it I. also mont than tbaL Bt)'ond

his lRnchant enpguuent with lbe arpnnen15 of Marcil and Negri,

Boron offen. In acceuibJe prolllC, his own insightful and eloquent

IInalyais of today" "globalized" world and the posaibilities of Its transformation. lhe fruitful rombinadan of theoretical ripr and

clarity, empiriaal analysis and polldcal passion is jlUt tIw kind 01 thingW'e need on the lelL' EU.n /rIeiHitU Wood, alllho,ofEmp� orCaplw

'Atillo Boron moantl a �re, but neceauy, critidam of the

poslllolU put forward by Hardt and Negri, who ... have aligned

themselva with the anempt by IntelllJent rigbcwingel1l to neutral·

iu the potential for popular mobJUaadon on the part of mO¥mlentl

supportive of a different Idnd of gJobalhation.' SamJr A min

''nIe IiCOpe oflhis lucid and careful disSft'tion of widely held beliefs

about the emerging world order extends well beyond lf1tt inftuential

study that is Ita immediate targft.. Boron strips away layer after layer

of mlrrundentanding concerning "old imperialism" and its cumnt

variants. He reviews the penlstence of the drive to conllOl natural

resoun:cs, the reliance of transnational firms on a powerful home

state, the dangers of a\'Oiding political economy, and much else. He

brlnp out clearly tbe need for "an adequate s�ial canoeraphyof

1M fteld" where an -emanC'lpatory bame" must be waged If It iii to

havt' any hope of success. In a critique of common illusions about

contemporary aociety. Boron Identifies and strelsn the significance

of social ron:cl thaI have eme� and are enp� In the c1usic: ItNggtes that ronstantly take new forms, but �f1ect much the same

duper institutional factors and conOicling Imerests. 'nib valuable

study develops an Imponanl penpec:tive on present realities and on

what must be done to carry forward .,..t ach�menlJ In emancipa­

tion from Injustl�, opprasion, and degradation: NOlI'" C"OIftIkJ

'It is highly appropriate that the IDOl! mnchant and devastating

critique oC Hardt and Negri's mlstakrn and oonfuse'CI notions of a

deterrltorialized and decenacred Empire sbould have come from

one of the most crea� and committed sodali..: intdJcctuals in the

continent that hal had the most 8nt-hand experience of the artUaI workinll of American Impertallam.. Writing in the tradition of-and

in the procca doing much to � - 1M Latin American debates

on dependency, neo-c:olonlalism and imperialism oflhe 19']01, Boron not only confronts Hardt and Nqri's abatraL'rions with .�

prosaic Latin American contemporary mality', but aubj«ts melt

work to a profound th�retical and empirim refutation. Writtrn

\\ith ocepdonal WM and often biting hUmour, this is a book that

especially desenres to be rud by all those ac:tlviIU who, a. Boron

aptly notes in the preface to this new English edition, haw been

Influenced by Hardt and Negri's 'aevere mlatakea of diagnosis and

interpretation, which. il8ccepted by tM group. and orpnlzations

that today are tIyinglo defeat imperialism, could become the cause

or new and long-luting defelts.' Uo Ptmitch. C�Editor, SOCiaUst

Regisler; Carulda R�turh Chair in ComparrzUw Politiclll Economy

and DininpJ.h«J Re.eatrh PrrJ/rllor of Polirica/ SciMC�, York Uniw,.. sity. Canada

Abouc the author

AliIlo A. Boron is Exec:utiw SecrWlry of the Latin American Council

of Social Sciences (Cl.I\CSO) and Professor of Political Theory at the

Unlftnil)' of Buenos Aires. He we. educ:ated In .vpntina and Chile,

before doing his doctoral depft at H8J\IlIJ'd in the United S1ate5.

He ha. taught at some of the mOld important academic IRltlhl­

tiona in Argentina. Bra.il, Chile, Mexico and Pueno Rico. In the

Unhed States he has bftn a vilirilll profeBSOl' at the universities of

Columbia, Mrr, Notre Dame and UCLA, and in Britain hu ledUred

at Wuwlck and Bradford u.rtiwnities. He is the author or editor or nint' t>ook. (In a numlwr of IJInguaps), lnefuellng Stall, CapittlUsm tJnd DDrlocrocy in Latill America (1995). His particular interat i5 the

relationship � IlatH. markets and d� durin, the prOCftS of neo-liberaI rntructuring. 10 2004 he was awarded lhto

Cay de las America. Prize for 'Empirr' tlrullmp�rltlIJ.m.

ATILIO A. BORON

Empire and imperialism

A critical rcading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

lrilnslalnl by Jessica Casiro

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Contents

Acknowledgements I vill Prc£acC' I t

Prologue to the English-language edition I 6

I On perspectives, the limits of viliibility and blind spots I �3

2 Tbe constitution oftbe empire I �6

3 Markets. transnationa1 corporations and national economies I 42

4 Alternative visions oBhe empire I 58 J The nation-state and the Issue of sOllereignty I 73

6 111(' unsolved mystery of the multitude I 87

7 Notes for a sociology of revolutiona", thinking in times of defeat I gB

• 111e persistence of imperialism I 1 11

Epilogue 1111

Bibliography I 115

Index of proper names I 130

Geneml index 1136

Acknowledgements

A number of people have read all or pan of the manu­

script, making possible the completion of this book.

Special thanks are due to Ivana Brighenti, Florencia

F.nghel, Jorge Fraga, Sabrina Gonzaln, Bellina In'y,

Migud Rossi, Jose Seoane, Emilio Taddei and Andrea

Vlahusic for their encouragement, comml'nl5 and

criticism. Jessica Casiro did a superb job of translating

the I1Ilher baroque original Spanish into an austere but

Mill lively Engtish. Of cou rliC , none oflhem should be

blamed for the errors and short<.'Omings of the book,

caused entirely by the stubbornness of its author.

Preface

First, a little bit or histol)'. (n september 1001, one of the editors

of New L�ft Rt1I;ew invited me to contribute a chapter to a col­

lection of essays to be published by Verso in London. The book

was to contain a series or critical commentaries about Emp;n by

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000); their �pon� wouJd

be added laler) Given that my contribution rrached Inordinate

proponions, it was clear that it could not be included in that

book. Far from being discoura�d, I realized that the work I had

already done. considering the importance of the theme, deserved

a fresh start, so, after broadening some analyses, enlarging on a

few commenlS, adding new data and new refiections, the result

wall thlB book.

What is related in the previous paragraph is the fesuh of his­

lOry and circumstances. '[bere �re also more important reasons

Ihat inspired me to write my book. First, th� was the need to

consider vel)' seriously the work of two scholars of the intellectual

calibre of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Their In�lIectual and

politil.'81 trajectories, so broad and proliflc, es�dally in the case

of the latter, make them deserving of respect and for that reason

1 t'lUlmined vel)' carefully the assenions they made throughout

Empin, 0 polemic that had such a strong public impact. second,

Ihe subject matterofthis book is of great importance: the empire,

or, to use a definition that seems to me more appropriate, the

imperialist system in its current phase.

Th� difficulties in undC'rtaking such a task are many. I sha� the

authors' critical view or capitalism and neoliMral globalization,

, "1"Iw book a�. aftrr rol\5i�Rblt drily. in 100J without thr final rhllprrr by Hardt and Negri. Seor Balakri.bnan (1003).

" and applaud th�ir courage in examining such a crucial topic. \I

.2 In Cart, DO matt� how deeply I disagree with Hardt and Negri'. !

� interp�18tions, I must admit that their nvision and update of

the subject were necessary both because the deficiencies of con­

ventional analyses of the left with regard to the transformations

coxperienc:ed by bnperla1ism over the last �nry-fM: years had

become impossible to igno� and needed lII'gmt updating, and

because the shortcomings of the 'pemh unique' on this matter

- spread urbi rt orb; by the lMF, the World Bank and the ideo­

logical agencies of the imperiaJ system - to which the neoliberal

theory of globalization gives expression, are even gRater. For

those like t.he writer of this book, to whom the fundamental

mJIsion of both philosophy and political theory is to change the

world aDd not just to interpret it (to dte the weU-known 'Thesl.a

on Feuerbach' by Marx), a correct theoryconstltutet an invaluable

tool with which the popular movements that resist neoliberal

globalization can navigate, with a reasoMble amount of accuracy,

through the lrOubled waten of contemporary eapiblJism. One of

the main factors inspiring this book Is my sttong beUef th.t Hardt

and Negri's reapon� to this chaUenge i, bighly unsatisfactory,

and that it could lead to new political defeats.

It is mdent that a phenomenon such as toclay's imprrialism

- its structure, its logic of functioning, its consequences and

its conuadlctJona - cannot be adequately understood from a

close reading of classic texts by Hilferding, Lenin, Bukharin and

Rosa Luxemburg. Thit is not because they were wrong, a. the

right lOYd to claim, but because capitalism is a changing and

dynamic Jystem that, as Marx and EnpJswrote in the Communist

MQniJ�stD, 'constantly rrvolutionlzes itst"lr. Therefo�, we cannot

understand early nftnry-Hrlt-antury imperialism by mcling only

those authors, but nclth� can we undel'lltalld It without them.

The goal Is to mOft forwards in a reformulation that, depaning

from the Copernican rn'Olution produced by Man's work. which

provides us with an interpretatift due that is essential for explain·

ing capitalist society, will mnlt'rpret with audadty and creativity

the clusic:al heritap of studies on imperialism in the Upt of

the transformations of the prnenL Today's imperialism is not

the same as the one that existed thirty �ars ago; it has changed,

and In some ways the chan� has b�n ftry imponanl, but it

has not changed into iu opposite, as neollberal mystification

suggestl, giving rise 10 a 'global' economy in which we are aU

·interdependent'.lt still exisbl, and it stUi oppresses peoples and

nations and creates pain. destruction and death. In spite of the

changes, il stiD keeps its identity and structure, and it still plays

the same historical role in the logic of the global accumuJation

of capital. Its mutadons. its volatile and dangerous combinadon

of persistence and innovation, require the construction of a new

framework t:lutt will allow us to capture its present nature.

This Is not the place to examine different theories about

Imperialism. Let us say. to sum up, that the fundamental featurn

of imperialism, pointed out by the clu.aicall1uthon at the time

of the Fint World War, remain unchangrd In their esscntW.

given that imperiaU.sm is not an ancillary future of contemporary

capitalism or a policy implemented by some It'tes, but a new

stage in the development of this mode of production whose

fundamental tmlts have persisted to the p�sent day. This new

stage is characterized. now even more than In the past, by the

concentration of capital, the owrwhelmlng predominance or

monopolies, the incmasingiy important role p�d by financial

capital, the expo" of capital and the division of the world into

different 'spheres of InOuence', The acceleration of globalization

Ihat took place in the tlnal quarter of the hut century, inslt'ad of weakening or dissolving the imperialist structures of the world

ecoqomy, mapifled the ItnaC'tural asymmetries that define the

insenion of the different countries in it. While a handful of deftl·

oped capitalist n.tiom increased their capacity to control. at least

panially, the productive proc:eaes at a global level, the financial­

iUlion of the international economy and the growing circulation

3

, a a " II

" of goods and services. the great majority of countries witnessed '"

i the growth of their external dependency and the widening of

a. the gap that separated them from the centre. Globalization, in

shon, consolidated the imperialist domination and deepened the

submission of peripheral capitalism" which became more and

more incapable of controlling their domestic economic proct'S5eS

even minimally. The continuity of the fundamental parameters

of imperialism, nOl so much of its phenomenology, is ignored

throughout Hardt and N�'s work, and this negation is what they

have called 'empire'. What I seek to demonstrate here is that. in

the same way that the walls of Jericho did not collapse because

of the sound of Joshua and the priests' trumpets, the reaJity of

empire does not fade awny when confronted by the fantasies of

philosophers.

The fact that Hardt and Negri's work appeared at a time when

the periphery's dependency and the imperialist domination have

grown to levels previously unknown in history is nolo minor

detail. This is why the need to h8� a renovated theoretical toolbox

with whieh to understand imperialism and fight against it is more

urgent than ever. It will be very bard to win this battle without

a clear understanding of the nature of the phenomenon . It is

precisely because of this need to know that Empin has had 5lK'h

an extraordinary impact on the large masses of young, and not

so young, people who from Seattle on have mobilized throughout

the world to put an end to the systematic genocide that imperial­

ism is committing in the countries of the capitalist periphery, to

social regression, and to the disenfranchisement that is taking

place to a similar extent in both the most advanced and the most

backward socirties, to the criminal destruction of the environ­

ment, to the degradation of demOC'ratic regimes rntrained by the

tyranny of markets and the militarism that, following the attacks

on the World Trade Center and the �ntagon, has permeated

the White House and other privil�d places in which decisions

affecting the lives of millions of people a� made. Despite the

4

nobll' intentions nnd intl'lIectual and political honesry of our

authors, about which I have no doubt, their book - regarded by

man}' as the 'Twenty-first Century's Communist Manifesto' or

a'i a revived 'Little Red Book' for (he slN,'alled 'globalphobics'

'" contains Sl'rious mistakes In terms of diagnosis and interprr­

tation which, if accepted by groups and organizations uying to

defeat imperialism, could become the intellectual cau� of new

and long-lasting de frats, and not only in the theoretical arena.

This is why I have attempted to put forward my critiques and to

face the costs and risks entailed in criticizing a book which, for

several reasons, has become an important theoretical reference

for the movements critical of neoliberal globali7.ation. I believe

that a sincere debate about the theses developed in Empire can

be a powerful antidote to such worrying pMsibilities.

BIIl.'nl>sAirt's. March 2002

Prologue to the English-language edition

Thii book srcks to debate, bolh from a theoretical 5t4ndpoint

and in the light of the lessons provided by historical and con­

temporary experience, the theses that Michael Hardt and Antonio

N� drvelop in Emp;rr(lOOO), While in previous editions I have

chosen not to examine some events that were both momentous

and spectacular, such as the atrocious 9/11 attacks in New York

and Washington - although tbf)' seriously challenged the core

of Hardt and Negri'S theoretical argument - at present such an

altitude is not only impossible but also undesirable. [ndt'ed,

the Iraq war has had the same effect on the analysis proposed

In Emplr� as the collapse of the Twin Towers had on American

self-confidence.

Much water has Howed under the bridge and much blood has

been shed as a consequence of the persistence of imperialist

policies since the original pUblication of Empirt QI.d Imptrialism

in Spanish in 1001. It hi necessary. therefore, to render an account

of these new realities, If, In writing it, my original idea had been

to creale a 'living text', to employ Antonio Gramsci's felicitous

expression, the book could hardly remain impervious to the vicis­

situcks of. period like ours. charactcrized by InHnile horror and

terror dealt against defenceless populations - an inftnite war

or, as Gore Vidal suggested, I perpetual war waged allegedly in

pursuit of pe�tual peace - and b)' the unrestrained aggression

against human society and nature perpetrated in the name of

corporate profits and stock (!xchan� prices. These villainies are

called, with unparalleled cynklsm, 'humanitarian wars' fought

[0 build a more secure, peacerul and just worid by characters 8ll

notorious as the Bushes, Aznars, Blairs and Berlu5conis who today

command tM heights of the core capltall .. states. Through me

macabre manipulation of worcb and the systematic misinfonna­

tion incessantly reproduced by the mass media, almost all of

which is under the steely control of capital, their technologicaUy

ultra-sophisdcated terrorism appears 15 regrettable but unavoid­

able 'collateral damap' and their wars of pillalf and conquest

become noble cruadea in fllYOUr of fRedom and dem�racy.

The objeci or this Prologue, therefore, is to present some

theories rqarding the characterization of the current phase of

imperialism in the light of the lessons arising flOm the new epoch

inaugurated by the events of 9111 and, In partic:uJar, by the Iraq

war. Such a revision is essential not only to foil the propaganda

orchesltRted by Washington and projected worldwide In relation

to the us military occupadon of that country, but bei:ause, as we

shaU see in the foUowing pages, even within the ranks of the left

an unfortunate confusion prevails with reprd to imperialism and

the forms in which it currently manirest5 itselt A confusion that

is made WOIW by the malignant trend among a stuable majority

oC progressive intellectual. to be 'poUtie'eUy correct' Of, as the

Spanish playwright Alfonso Sanre said, to be �11 thinking', that

is, to abstain from challenging the dominant sUent premilSt's of

our age which, as Marx and Enpls diacowred in their early texts.

ore none other than the Ideas of the dominant class.

Given that without an accurate analysis of rulity there cannot

be a correct political line Cor combating the s.coulps or imperial­

Ism, clearing up this matter turns into an issue of the greatest

importance. This Prologue seeks to add its humble contribution

to that undertaking.

Tht :harsh IYbuttals' oftht war in Iraq

Let us begin by paraphrasing an expression employed by

Norbeno Bobbio, 'the harsh rebuttals of history'. to refeT to the

refutation, according to his analyses, of the Marxist theory of the

state' owing to the changes ellperienced by democratic capital-

7

II isms during the twentieth century. The military occupation of �

r Iraq. declared by Washington with the suppon of its main client

l goftmment. the Uniled Kingdom. and of its luckily short·li�

Spanish lackey, Jose M . .unar, has in due course generated an

extremely harsh refutation of the ambitious theorizations of

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri thai are the object of this book.

The �nu that unfolded in the international arena after the

publication of Empire in 1000 have incontrovertibly refuted, with

the fottefulness of historical fact, the rash theories they propose

in their book. The latter not only proved itself incapable of ad­

equately interpreting the history of imperialism and its current

structure, but also of accounting for the defining features of the

new phase begun after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the

end of the post-war world order.

An examination of some of the main 'theoretical vicdms' of

recent epoch-making events would include the following items.

1 Hardt lind Nevi's conception ofth� role ofth� United Nations

and international law. As pointed out in txtelUo in this book,

the authOR of Empir� grossly exaggerate the Importance of the

United Nations and International law. Lacking the theoretical

instruments necessary to allow them to perceive all the nuances

and complexities of the structure of the imperialist system

- since such instruments are not to be found in the 'toolbox' of

French postmodem philosophy, Italian politics and US economic

scienl.'t!. the authors' three acknowledged &Ources of inspiration

- they naively take for granted the 'democratic' appearance of

multilaterallsm and of the Unitc-d Natjoru system. They conse­

quently confuse the empty formalities of the empire with its con­

stitutive matter. thus mistaking fonn for substance. The contrast

between lhislma� and �aJity is evident even to beginneR in the

study of international �lation6. Blinded by the inadequacies of

their faulty theoretical framework, once again transformed into

a veritable prison for thought, Hardt and Negri an unable to

see what was evident to evnybody else: the invasion unilaterally

8

decreC!d by Pr�sident George W. Bush caused the contradiction

between their th�orization and reality to �come as glaring as it

was unsustainabl�. Violaling th� alleged ord�r �mbodied in the

United Nations and intemational law, the United States decickd

- as official policy rather than as a position paper circulating

surreptitiously in Washington, written by some paranoid hawk

in the Pentagon - to ignore any resolution to the contrary that

the Security Council might adopt, not to mention the General

Assembly, nnd invade Ira.q. Faithful to Lbat attitude, me White House did not hesitate to move to the defence or its supposedly

threatened national security. ignoring both the need to build

laborious political agreements as required by the United Nations

Chaner and the need to submit to the dictalC1i oC international

legislation that it had always considered to be a men: tribute

to demagogy and thai needed to be obeyed only in so rar as It

did not affcct Washington's inlerests. This position was adopted

�n despite its high political COlts, such as the ruptun: or the

North Atlanlic conRnsus, the crisis in NATO and the serious

altrrcation with France and Germany, the after-efTects or which

will M visible for a long lime. Afler the aggteuion apin. .. t Iraq

had been carried out. the Security Council unanimously adopted a

resolution in October 1003 calling for the democratic and shared

reconstruction of that country, but this wu merely a post MI­

lum legi timization of imperialist aggrHSion that had destro)-ed

the tottering remnants of the post-war order. As Petty Anderson

poignantiy observed, this unanimoU8 vote to which the Security

Coun"U soLemnly welcomed the puppet government Htablished

by the White House in Iraq as the incarnation of Imqi sovereignty,

whUe calling on the patriotic resistance movements against the

invasion to cease their activities, �stowed the official blessing , of the united Natioru;' highesl auLhority on the American take-

over of Iraq (Anderson zOO4= 51-Z). This resolution, however, was

wrongiy interpreted by Antonio Negri in a recent interview IS

proof of Us capitulation to the United Nations, when it was exactly

9

J the opposite: the impotent resignation of the UN in the race of

the brutal outrage �mmiltcd by washington (Clrdoso 1003).

Yet, the absurdity of this interpretation - admittedly, always

difficult - of the current situation is 1150 repeated throughout

Empirr in its interpretation of the put. This dangerous tendency

to confuse rhetoric and reality led the authors, for example, to

cull the "gure or President Woodrow Wilson tn accordance

with the most conventional ideological elements of America's

establishment creed that present him as an 'idealist', an amialble

and tireless builder of peace and a man inspired by the noblest

Kantian idea oC universal community. In their own warda, Wilson

'adopted an internationalist ideology of peace as an expansion

of the con5titutioDal conception of network power' (p. 174). This

vision ignores, among other things, the acid remarks made by

John Maynard Keynes about the duplicity and bypocrisy that

Wilson exhibited at the Paris Peace Conference after the First

World War, which led the English economist to conclude that the

American president was 'the palest fraud on earth' (Pan itch and

GLndin 1004= 1:&). Or to disregard the fact, in no way trivial, that

it was during Wilson's pruidency that Ill8..rines OttUpied the Mex­

ican port oCVeracruz and imaded Nicaragua and the Dominican

Republic, surely to help the locals gain a Ruer understanding of

Kant', hrpetual P�ace.

1 Th� connption of the sup�dly th'luntoriJJliutl and de­

centrrd character of imp�rialism. Another of the victims of the

Iraq war has been the proposition that d��d the obsolrscenc:e

oC territorial - and to a pat extent material - issues in favour

of the virtual, symbolic: and immaterial. This volatilization of the

territorial elements of imperialism (and of capitalism) alkgedly

results in s�ral inevitable consequences: first, the irrever5iblr

displacement of ancient sove�igntles, based on archaic ter­

ritorial nation-statt'S, by a 'smooth', supposedly supranational

space, a place where a new im�riaI sowmgnty would be �id

of any vestiges of links with national stales and. therefore, of

10

any territorial or geographical rderen�. Second, the gradual

disappearance of. territorially located centre lhat 'organizes'

the international structure of domination. Given the former,

the classic distinction between centte and periphery, North and

South, vanishes into thin air. Instead ofthis, what would aJlegedly

characterize the empire would be the primacy of a global logic

of domination overcoming traditional national interests whose

bellicose reaffirmation caused innumerable 'imperialist' wars in

the past. Thank God, this period is now ovtrl

If one thing was demonstrated by the aggression unleashed

against Inq, and before that in Afgh4nisran, it was the merely

illusory character of these conceptions so dear to the authors of

Empirr, which Bush refuted with the rude manners of a Texas

cowboy. One of the Orst readings that we caD make of the events

in Iraq is that (pace Hardt and Negri) the United States has ful1y

assumed its condition as the imperialist superpower, and not

only does not attempt to hide that condition, as happened in the

past, but even boasts of it. It intervened militarily in Iraq. as it

will surely do elsewhere, serving the grossest and pettiest defence

of the interests of the conglomerate of gigantic oligopolies that

form the dominont clus In the USA, iDternts which, thanks to the

alchemy of bourgeois h�mony, have been miraculously trans­

Formed into the national Interests of the Untted Stateti. It would

be possible now to paraphrase the old motto of General Motors

by saying that, In the current imperialist phase, 'What Is good for

the US corporations is good too for the Unit� States'. The oilmen

who today fe�1 at home in the Oval OffIce pounded, with absurd

pretexts, a country to take pos..'iession of the enormous �aJth it

harbours in its subsoil. Plainly put, the military occupation of

Iraq-is essentially a lrnitorial conque5t for plunder carried out by the main actor or the imperialist structure of our time under the

pretext of preventing the deployment of yet unfound weapons of

mallis destruction and of �nging the eftn less Hkrly collabora­

tion of the Saddam regime with the former US mercenary Osama

11

II Bin Laden. "0 conclude: there is nothing 'd�trrritorialized' or ::I

f immaterial there, Ills the old practice of conquHt and plunder

1 repeatrd for the umpteenth time by t.he same old actors wearing

new costumes and showing some technical innovations. Essen­

tially, it is the samr tim�honoured imperialist 6tOI)'.

Nothing, therefore, can be more inaccurate than the image

evoked by Hardt and NrgrIln their book in which Washington

becomes militarily Im'Olved all over the world in response to II

universal clamour for the imposition of international justice and

legality. A plethora oHar-right publicists - especially Robert Kagan

and Charles Krauthammer - ha� eme� into public view to

juslify this reaffirmation of an imperialist unilateralism which

cares little or nothing for International justice and 1�lity, join­

ing forces with other authors such as Samuel P. Huntington and

Zbigniew Bnezinski. who some �ars ago had already outlined tM

strategic imperatives of the 'lonely superpower' and the urgent

need to take up the challenges posed by its role as 1M focal point

of a vast territorial empire. One of those challenges, certainly

not the only one, is the right - actually the duly. by vinue of the

'manifest destiny' that turns the United States Into the all�dly

uni�rsal carrier of the freedom Dnd happiness of peoples - to

go to war as often as necessary to prevent the fragile and highly

unstable 'New World Order' proclaimed by Gf'Ol'g1! Bush Sr at the

end of the first Gulf War from collapsing like a house of cards.

And none of this can be done without considerably reinforcing

the state-based national sovereignty of the USA and its effective

organs orintemational operations, mainly its armed forces. This

is why the United States' militaJy expenditure has grown to almost

half the planet's entire milital)' outlay_ More�r. it should be

borne in mind that. as Noam Chomsky has rightfully o�rvtd,

the new American strategic doctrine announced by the Bush ad­

ministration in September 1001 entails a plan to rule the world

by force dUll has nol btt'n heard since Adolf Hitler made similar

announcements in the mid-19.10s. certainly nol a minor detail

11

(Chomsky 1003a). In this way, the idyllic idea poRd by Hardt and

Negri - the United StaIn giving up the defence of its national

interesL'I and the exercise of imperialist power, and tran.sCecring

its sovereignty to a chimerical empire, for the sake of which the

White House magnanimously responds to international requests

for global justice and law - was buried under an avalanche of

'5man bombs' unleashed on Iraqi territory.

J A healthy imperialist detul body. Another of the lessons of

the Iraq war baa b�n the updating of some of the fealures that

characterized the 'old imperialism'. In the authors' version, the

emphasis placed on virtual elements established an unbruch­

able frontier between the 'old imperialism' and the supposedly

new empire, the former being understood as that system of inter­

nalional relations which fiued, approximately, within the canons

established in Lenin's analysis and which to a great extent was

shared by some classical authoni on the subject such as Bukbarin

or Rosa Luxemburg. One such feature was, precisely, the terri­

torial occupation and the pillaging of the natural resowces of

the countries colonized or subjected to imperialist a�5Sjon.

From a reading of Empirt there emerges a theoretical conception

indifferent to the iuue of access to slIategic resources for the

world of production and the sustainabUity of capitalist civiliza­

tion itself, explained by the strong emphasis the authors place

on the (nowadays undoubtedly important) immaterial aspects of

the process of creation of value and the transformations of the

modem capitalist corporation. Yet, the Iraq war, starting with

its tragi·comical groundwork, demonstrated how inaccurate

this conception was. We have only to recall President Geo� W.

Bush, whh his quirky pathetic smile barely disguised, exhorting

Iraqi, not to destroy their oil wells and to refrain from KIting

them on fire, to understand the crucial importance of access

to, and control of, strategit: natural h.'sources in the allegedly

current world imperialist structure. Oil constitutes, at this time,

the central nervous system of internalional capitalism. and its

13

"II a 0-ca c CD

! importance is even greater than that of the world of finance.

S' The latter cannot function without the former: the entire edi fice

! of what Susan Strange has correctly labe l led 'casino capitalism' A.

would collapse within minutes i f oi l d isappeared. And the latter,

we know, wi l l be exhausted in no more than two or three genera­

t ions. It would constitute unforgivable naivery to suppose that

French dissidence in the face of US outrages in Iraq is fou nded

on the democratic and anti-colon ial ist convictions of Jacques

Chirac or on the unquenchable desi re of the French right to

ensure for the Iraq i people the full enjoyment of the del ights of

a democratic order. What prompted French intransigence was.

on the contrary, something far more prosaic: t he permanence

of that country's oil companies in a territory that conta ins the

world's second-largest oil reserves. Aga inst what Hardt and Negri

induce us to believe in their subl i mated - and hence complacent

- view of the e mpi re, one of the possible future scena rios of the

international systcm is that of a heightened inter-imperial ri valry

in which the sacking of strategic resources, such as oi l and water,

and the stmggle for a new carve-up of the world could wel l lead

to an outburst of new wars of pillaging, analogous in their logic

although different in their appearances to those which we have

known over the course of the twentieth century, in the days when

i m peria l ism enjoyed enviable health and was not dead, as they

want us to believe is the case today.

4 A nother victim: the view developed in Empire oj the en-one­

ously labelled t.ransnational corporations. I ndeed, Hardt and Negri

endorse - unconsciously, I assume - the vision of the capi talist

world assiduously cult ivated by the main US and European busi­

ness and manage ment schools and the theorists of neoliberal

'globalization'. As is wel l known, in the thinking of the right the

i rresistible rise of globalization is a natura l phenomenon as un­

controllable as the movement of the stars , and one tha t gives rise

to a new world of i nterdependent economies, Economic agents

therefore operate on a level field free of the obstacles previously

14

set up by powerful nat ion-states. In this space, free competition

reigns, and the old asymmetries, with their hateful distinctions

between metropolis and colonies, are a th ing of the past. evoked

only by left ists nostalgic for a world that no longer exists.

According to this in terpretation, not only has there been a

decli ne in the 'national' economies, devoured by the farrago of

globalization, but large corporations have entirely sloughed off

the last vestiges of their national ascript ion . Now they are all

t ransnational and global , and what they require to operate effi­

ciently is a worldwide spacc freed from the old 'national' hurd les

and restrictions that might h inder their movements. With i n a

supposedly a nti-capitalist reading this space would be the em­

pire, precisely as i t is characterized in the work of Hardt a nd

Negri. As I shall demonstrate i n the following pages, the reality is

l ight-years away from this vision. There is an elementary distinc­

tion (completely ignored in the work under review) between the

theatre of operations of the compan ies and tJle territorial space

in which thei r ownership and cont rol materialize. Even in the

case of modem corporate Leviathans - a smal l proportion of the

total number of companies existing i n the world - whose scale

of operations is clearly planetary, ownershi p and cont rol a lways

have a national base: compan ies are legal entities incorporated

in a specific country and not merely registered at the U nited

Nations in New York. They have headqua rters i n a given city,

obey a specific national legal framework that protects them from

potential expropriations, pay taxes on their income and profits in

[he country where their headquarters are loca ted, and so on.

The New York Times's conservative columnist Thomas Fried­

man scorned the Sil icon valley execut ives who like to say:

We are nOt an American company . . . We arc IBM Canada, IBM

Australia, IBM China . . . Then, the next lime IBM China gets in

trouble in China, call Jiang Zemin for help. And the next t ime

Congress closes another military base in Asia, call Microsoft

1 5

" a I c •

11/ navy [0 secure [he sea l ines in the Pac ific. And the next t ime :::t

f Congress wants to close more consulates and embassies, call

e Amazon_com to order a new passport. (Friedman, 1999) IlL

I n case this argu ment does not look persuasive enough to dis­

pel the myth of the 'transnational' nature of the modern capitalist

enterprise, the conduct o f the White House in Iraq and its brutal

insi stence, with the u ncultured manners of Texas ranchers, that

the beneficiaries of the war undertaken in the name of freedom

and democracy (a nd of the need to free the world from the threat

of a dangerous monster like Saddam) must be restricted to US

corporations (especially but not only Hall iburton) demonstrate

the mistakes made in the theses developed in Empire. Not only

that. It is no longer simply an issue of US corporations obtain­

i ng the l ion's share of t he spoils of the I raq operation; the very

manner in which these privileges were d istributed among com­

panies al l l inked to the governing US gang rcca l ls the methods

employed by the fami l ies of the New York Mafia to d ivide up

control over business in the ci ty. What relation is there between

this imperialist carve-up and the i dyllic theorizations found in

Empire? Absolu tely none.

S Social movements opposed to neoliberal globalization. Lastly,

a few paragraphs are needed to examine the role performed by

those movements opposed to neol iberal globalization that the

capital ist press, and this is no coincidence, cal ls 'non-global' or

'anti -globalization'_ The hardly innocent pu rpose of this semantic

choice is more than evident: to t ransform the critics of neoliberal

globalization into antediluvian monsters who seek to halt the

march of h istory and of technological progress. 'Non-global '

activists thus appea r before the eyes of world publ ic opinion

as a mult ifarious set o f melancholy seekers after Utopia in a

world that, as Francis Fukuyama and George SOlOS have said .

dances to the tune of the markets. Thrown together are soeial­

ists, communists, ana rchists, ecologists, pacifists, human rights

1 6

militants, feminists, aborigi.nal organizations and al l sorts of sects

and tribes, who wilfully ignore the fact that for the first time in

h istory the world has been 'universalized' fol l owing an American

pattern, and for that reason the end has been decreed for a l l

k inds of mi llenarianis ms and particu larisms. Yel , contrary 10 this

biased opinion, the m ovements that resist the markets' tyranny

believe that another globalizat ion is possible (and u rgently neces­

sary), that the current one is the product of the, u nti l recently,

u ncontested pred ominance of large corp orations_ Then, there

is nothi ng natura l about the current shape of gl obalizat i on; i t

i s the producl of the defeat suffered by popular, left-wing and

dem ocratic forces i n the 1 970S and 1980s. History, far from having

ended , is just at its begi nning, and the current situat ion can and

must be reversed.

The vigorous emergence of such movements contra d icts some

central planks in H ardt and Negri 's book. The 'n on-globals' have

earned the huge merit of having launched a large pacifist move-

ment even before t he beginning of operat i ons in Iraq. Wh ile,

as N oam Ch omsky reca lls, pacifism in relation to the Vietnam

War did n ot appear, and then t imidly, unt il more than five years

after the beginning of the mil i tary escalation in South Vielnam,

in the case of lhe recent war on I raq this m ovement managed

t o a rticulate massive protests of u nprecedented vigou r weeks

before the beginning of h ostilities. It is calculated that some 15

mil l ion people demonstrated for peace i n maj or cit ies through out

the world. In Britain and Spain , countries ruled by governments

complicit in US imperia list aggression, street dem onstrations

reached an unprecedented size. The governments of Blair and A:z.-

nar provided an exemplary less on on the l i mitations of capitalist

dem9cracy by ignori ng, with absolute cynicism, what the dem os,

the supp osed sovereign of an al legedly dem ocratic pol itical order,

demanded \vith its mobilizations and its answers to nu merous a public opin i on surveys. As 1 have argued elsewhere, i n demo- f cratic capitalisms what matters is the 'capi tal ism' component i

17

GI of the formula; the 'democrat ic' part is merely an accessory to :l

8' be respected as long as i t does not affect anything considered

1 fu ndamental (Boron 2002). This imperial pil laging was decided by

the 'rul ing ju nta' that cu rrently governs the United States. Let us

recal l , with Gore Vida l , t hat Bush is the first US president to reach

the White House through an institutional coup perpetrated by

that country's Supreme Court - there was no need to be bothered

by democratic 'formalit ies' (Vidal 2002: 158-9). The petty despots

did what (hey wan ted and continued with the plan drawn up by

White House hawks, despite i ts overwhelming repudiation by

the public. (n Spain, over 90 per cent of those interviewed were

agai nst going to war, despite which the government of the Popular

Party continued with its policy. The terrorist attack of 11 March

2004, and the shameful l i es of the Aznar government, prompted

his resound ing electoral defeat. Noam Chomsky is right when he

observes that, for Bush, Rumsfeld and their friends, 'Old Europe,

the bad Europe, were the countries where the governments lOok

the same posi tion as the overwhelming majority of their popula·

t ion. New Europe were t he countries where the governments over'

ruled a n even larger proportion o f their population. The criterion

was absolutely explicit - you could n't say more dramat ically ' )

hate and despise democracy' (Chomsky 2003b: 29).

All the above is to the point because, in Empire, the authors

celebrate as the real 'hero' of the struggle against the empire

the anonymous and uprooted migrant , who abandons his or

her homeland in the Third World to penetrate the belly of the

beast and , from there and along with others who l ike him or

her constitute the famous 'mull itude', fights the masters of the

universe. Without diminishing the importc1nce which these social

actors may have, the tru th is that what has been seen in recent

years - and especially in the demonstrations against the war in

early 2003 - is the vigour of a social movement that has solid

roots in the social structures of metropol i tan capitalism and

that attracts n umerous supporters, especia l ly a lthough not only

La

among t he young, from large social sectors that are su ffering an

accelerated process of decay by virtue of neol iberal global ization.

This is not (0 deny the participation of groups of immigrants in

such mobi l izations, but the fact is that the social com position of

these movements suggests that the presence of the latter is , more

than anything, marginal . In any case, because of its complexity

and radical nature, its original innovation as regards the strategic

organization of collective subjects, its discursive models, its style

of action and, lastly, i ts mil i tant ant i -capit.alism, the 'non-global'

movement represents one of the most serious challenges that

the empire has to face . This l ikewise const itutes a new aspect

that raises serious doubts abOllt the theses d rawn up by Hardt

and Negri regard ing the subjects of social confrontation and the

uncertain sociological physiognomy of t.he ' mult i tude'.

To recapitulate

We are living at a very special moment in the history of im­

perialism: the transit ion from one phase ( let us call i t 'classical')

to another whose detai ls are only just beginning to be sketched out

but whose general ouu ine is a l ready clearly discernible. Nothing

could be more mistaken than to posit, as Hardt and Negri do

in their book, the existence of s uch an implausible entity as an

empire \vithout imperial ism - a paralysing pol it ical oxymoron.

Hence the need to argue against their theses, since, given the

cxceptional gravity of the current situation - a capita lism increas­

ingly reactionary in the social, economic, political and cultural

spheres, one that criminalizes social protest and mi l i tarizcs inter·

nationa l pol i t ics - only an accurate d iagnosis of the structure

and operat ion of the international imperialist system wil l a l low

those social movements, political parties, labour unions and ,

popula r organizations of al l types that want to overthrow the cur-

rent s i tuation to face new journeys of struggle with any chance

of success. An accurate d iagnosis is also needed to identify the

empire's enemies. To consider, as Negri does, that Lula in Brazi l

1 9

a .r c CD

! and Kirchner in Argentina represent a species of resolute 'empire

f fighters'; or judging as 'absolutely positive' the first year and a hat(

1 of Lula's government i n Brazi l , turning a deaf ear to the deepening

of the neoliberal course of the economic policy implemented since

his accession to the presidency; or assuring his readers that the

Kirchner government has refused to pay the debt, an astonishing

discovery for the Argentinians who every day read in the press the

i nordinate amou nt of dollars be i ng punctual ly paid to foreign

creditors - these are certain ly not the best ways for intellectuals

to help defeat the empire (Duarte-PIon 2004: 1 ).

The i l lusion that we can u ndertake the st ruggle withou t a

precise knowledge of the terrain in which the major ballies of

hu manity will be fought can only lead to new and overwhelming

defeats. Dear Don Quixote is not a good example to be imitated

in poli t ics; confusing windmil ls with powenu l knights with lances

and armour was not the best path towards the real ization of his

dreams. Nor wil l St Francis of Assisi , another figure exalted in

Hard t and Negri 's text, serve as a model for inspira tion. I n fact,

no emancipatory struggle is possible withou t an adequate social

cartography to describe precisely the theatre of operations, and

the social natu re of the enemy and its mechanisms of domination

and explOi tation.

The d is tortions that result from a mista ken conception, such

as is maintained by Hardt and Negri, can be astoniShing. I t is

sufficient here to quote the latter when he states, among other

things, that 'the war in I raq was a coup d 'e tat by the Uni ted S tates

against the em pire' (ibid . ). I would l ike to conclude by quoting

extensively from a n interview granted by Negri to [he Argenti ne

newspaper Clarl'/I d ur i ng his visit to Buenos Aires, whose elo­

quence is u nsurpassable. In it Negri avers that the current United

S tates occupation of Iraq does not constitute a case of

colonial adm i n istration , but rather a classical case of nat ion

building. And therefore it is a transformation in the direction

20

of democracy. This is the pretext of the United States. Ir is a

milita r)' occupation that toppled a regime, but afterwards the

problem is nation building, in other words an attempt at a

transition, not at colonization. I t would be l ike saying that the

fac t of turn i ng from dictatorship to democracy in Hungary or

Czechoslovakia is a colonization. There is no attitude of that

type in the Un ited States administration. These Americans want

to seem nastier than they are. (Cardoso 200))

It is convenient to ask ourselves, in the face of this incredible

confusion, i n which a war of pillage and territorial occupation

appears to have been sweetened into an altru istic operation of

nat ion-bu ilding and the expon of democracy: wil l i t be poss ible

to advance in the concrete st ruggle against the ' really existing'

imperial ism a rmed with such crude t heoretical instru m e n ts

as are proposed by these authors and that lead them to such

nonsensical conclusions? Ul t imately, to philosophize is to make

d ist inctions. A phi losophy incapable of differentiat ing between

a war of conquest and the process of nation-building is a bad

philosophy.

To advocate carefully the features of a new society will be to

l i ttle avail without a realistic knowledge of the physiognomy of

the current soc iety that must be overcome. A post-eapi ta l ist and

post-imperialist world is possi ble. More than that: I would say i t is

essen tia l , because, if i t continues to operate under the predatory

logic of capital ism, mankind is head ing lOwards self-destruction.

But before bui lding this new society - more humane, just , free

and democratic than the preeedi ng one - it wil l be necessary to

employ all our energies to overcome the one that today oppresses,

explojts and dehumanizes us, and that condemn s almost half the

world's population to subsist miserably on less than two dollars

a day_ And this t rue emancipa tory epic has, as one of i ts most

imponant enabling conditions, the existenee of a real istic and

precise knowledge of the world we seek to transcend_ If instead of

'V a I c II

u this we are the prisoners of the i l lusions and mystifications that :I

f are so efficiently manufactured and spread by the ideological ap-

1 paratuses of the bou rgeoisie, our hopes of build ing a better world

will ineluetably sink. This book seeks to be a modest contribution

towards avoiding such a sad and cruel outcome.

Buenos A ires, September 2004

1 On perspectives, the limits of visibility and blind spots

Something that may surprise the reader of Hardt and Negri is the

seant a tten tion that Empire pays to the li terature abou t imperial­

ism_ In contrast with Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, who made a

careful review of the numerous works on the topie, our authors

have opted to ignore a great part of what has been written a bou t

the issue. The l i terature with which they deal is a eombination of

North American social science, especially international pol itical

economy and international re lations, mixed with a strong dose

of French philosophy. This theoretical synthesis is packaged in

a clearly post modern style and language, and the fi nal product

is a theoretica l mix that, despite the authors' in tentions, is

unl ikely to d isturb the serenity of the moneyed lords who year

after year gather in Davos. Due to th is, a lmost a l l the citations

are taken from books or a rticles pu blished within the l imits of

the French-American academic establishment. The considerable

l i terature concerning imperia lism and the functioning of the

imperial system produced in Lat in America, I ndia, Africa and

other parts of the Third World does not even merit a footnote.

Discussions within classical Marxism - Hilferding, Luxembu rg,

Len in, Bukharin and Kautsky - about the topic are al located a

brief chapter, while the con troversies of the post-war period oe­

cupy a n even smaller space. Names such as Ernst Mandel, Pau l

Baran, Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, James O'Con nor, Andrew

Shonfield, Ignacy Sachs, Paul Matlick, Elmar Altvater and Maurice ,

Dobb are conspicuous absences in a book that pretends to shed

new light on an entirely novel stage of the history of capital. It

is not surp rising, thus, that this enterprise offers a vision of the

empire viewed from above, from its dominant s trata . A partial

II and uni lateral vision, t herefore, unable to perceive the totality of c

o the system and to accou nt for its global manifestations beyond

what, presumably, occurs on the North Atlantic shores. Thus, the

resu h i ng vision is particula rly narrow, and the blind spots are

n umerous and important , as I wil l demonstrate throughout the

pages that follow. In short, Empire offers a vision that wants to be

a critical examinat ion going to the root of the problem, but given

the fact that it cannot ema ncipate itsel f from the privi leged place

from where it observes the social scene of its time - the opposite

of what occurred with Marx who, from London, knew how to

detach himsel f from that fate - i t is trapped in the ideological

nets of the dominant classes.

How can the n egation of the rol� played by two crucial in­

st i tut ions that organize, monito r and su pervise the day-to-day

operation of the empire - the I n ternational Monetary Fund and

the World Bank - barely mentioned i n the almost five hundred

pages of the book, be u nderstood if not from t he limitations of

a North Atlantic perspective? Barely six pages a re reserved for

an analys is of transnational corporations, strategic players in

t h� world economy, only half of the amount devoted to issues,

presuma bly so crucial and urgent, such as the ' non-place of

power'. The eleven pages d evoted to Baruch Spinoza's contribu­

t ions to political philosophy, or the s ixteen d�voted to exploring

the mea ndcri ng of Foucault 's thought and its relevance to u nder­

standing the imperial order, can hardly be considered sensible

for those who see the world not from the imperial system's vertex

but (rom its base.

For th is and many other reasons, Empire is an in trigu ing

book that combines some i ncisive i l luminat ions a bout old and

new problems with monumental mistakes of a pprec iation and

interpret ation_ There is no doubt that the authors a re strongly

1 The page references are taken from Ihe original E nglish-language

cdil ion : F:lnpire (Cam bridge , MA: Ha rvard University Press . 100 1) .

24

comm i t ted to the construction of a good soc iety and, specifi­

ca lly, a communist society. Th is com m i tment appears many times

throughout the book and d eserves enthusiastic s upport. Sur­

prisi ngly, however, the a rgument of Empire has noth i ng to do

with the great trad ition of historical materialism. The audacity

exhi bited by the authors whe n , swi mming ag-ainst the t ide of

established prej ud ices and the neoli beral commonsense of our

l i mes, they d eclare their loyalty to commu nist ideals - 'No, we

are not a narchists bur com munists' (p. 350); ' the irrepressible

l ight ness and joy of being com m u ni st' (p. 413) - collapses like a

house of cards when they need to explain and analyse the i m perial

order of today.' At that pOi nt, theoretical and polit ical indecisive­

ness take the place of decla matory concl usiveness. In th is sense,

i t is impossible to ignore the contrast with other works about the

same topic, such as Samir Am in's Accumulation on a World Scale

( 1974), Empire of Chaos (1992) and, the most recent, Capitalism

ill the Age of Globalization ( 1997); or Tile Long Twentieth Century

by Giovanni Arrigh i (1995); or Year SOl . The Conquest Continues

( 1 993) a nd world Orders, Old and New (1994) by Noam C homsky;

or Production, Power, and World Order by Robert Cox ( 1987); and

the works of Im manuel Wallerstein, The Modern world System

( 1 974-88) and After Liberalism (1995). And the results of such a

comparison a re extremely unfavoura ble for Hardt and Negri .

2 The constitution of the empire

Empire begi ns with a section devoted to 'the pol itica l constitution

o f the present' , which fol lows a Preface in wh ich the authors

introd uce the main thesis of the book: an empire has emerged

and imperialism has ended (pp. xi-xvii). I n the fi rst part of the

book, the analysis of the world order begins in a surprisingly

formalistic mode, at least for a Marxist, since the constit ution

of the empire i s laid out in narrowly jurid ical terms. Thus, the

world order, far from being conceived as the h ierarchical and

asym metrical organization of states, markets and nations under

the general d i rection of an i nternat ional domi nant bloc, is

misrepresen ted in Hardt and Negri's analysis as a proj ect ion of

the U n ited Nations' formal orga nizat ion. This surprise is then

i n tensified when the intrigued reader real izes that the conceptual

i nstru ments used by Hardt and Negri to examine the world order

problem are borrowed from such un prom ising toolboxes as the

ones used by a group of authors so foreign to hi storical material·

ism - and of such little use for a deep analysis of thi s type of issue

- such as Hans Kelsen, Niklas Luhmann, Joh n Rawls and Carl

Schmitt . Supponed by authorities such as these, it comes as no

surprise that the results of this init ial incursion into the subject

matter are far from satisfactory. For example, the U n ited Nations'

role i n the so-called worl d order is grossly over-esti mated: 'one

should also recognize that the notion of right defined by the

UN Charte r also points toward a new positive sou rce of j uridical

prod uction, effective on a global scale - a new center of normat ive

production tha t can play a sovereign j u rid ical role' (p. 4).

Hardt and Negri seem to ignore the fact that the U n ited

Nat ions is not what it appears to be. In fact, because of its bureau­

cracy and elitism, the UN is an organ izat ion destined to support

the interests of the great imperia l is t powers, especially the United

States. The effect ive UN 'juridical production' has l i ttle substance

or impact when it concerns matters that contradict the interests

of the Uni ted States and its a l lies. The authors over-estimate

the very marginal role played by the United Nations General As­

sembly, where the votes of Gabon and Sierra Leone are equal

to those of the United S tates and the United Kingdom_ Most of

the General Assembly's resolutions are reduced to dead letters

unless they are actively supponed by the hegemonic power and

its panners. The 'humanitarian war' in Kosovo, for example, was

carried out in the name of the United Nations but completely

bypassed the authority of the Security Counci l and the General

Assembly. Washington decided that a mi l i tary intervent ion was

necessary and that is what happened. Years later, George W. Bush

Junior invaded and devastated Iraq without the authorization of

the Security Counci l , not to mention the approval of the General

Assembly. Naturally, that bears no relationship to the production

of a universal law or, as Kelsen trusted, with the emergence of a

' transcendental schema of the val idity of right situated above the

nation·state' (p. 6). The imperia l istic nature of the ' really existing'

United Nations, not the one imagined by our authors, is sufficient

to prove the weakness of the fol lowing affi rmation: 'This is rea l ly

rhe point of depanure for our study of Empire: a new notion of

right, or rather, a new inscription of authority and a new design

of the production of norms and legal instruments of coercion

that guarantee contracts and resolve conflicts' (p. 9).

This fantastic and childish vision of a supposedly post-colon ial

and posl -imperialist international system reaches its clima.'I( when

they conclude that 'All interventions of the imperial armies are

solici'ld by one or more of the parties involved in an already

existing conflict' (p. 1 5); or when they hold that the 'first task of

Empire , then, i s to enlarge the realm of the consensuses that sup­

port its own power' (p. 15); or when they assure a lready astonished

readers that the intervention of the empire is ' legitimated not by

27

o

� right bu t by consensus' in order to ' in tervene in the name of any

type of emergency and superior ethical pri nciples' such as 'the

appeal to the esse n tial values of j ustice' (p. 18). Is i t the ' hu man­

itarian' intervention in the former Yugoslavia that our authors

have in m i nd ? Indeed, as wi ll soon become clear. This i ncred ible

nonsense allows them to conclude that, under the empire , 'the

right of the police is legit imated by universal values' (ibid.). I t is

telling that such a radical thesis i s supported by evidence provided

by two bibliogra phic references that all ude to the conventional

literature of international relations and whose right-wing bias is

eviden t to even the least- informed reader. The vol uminous Lat in

American bibl iography about i mperialistic intervention produced

by authors such as Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, Agustin Cueva, RUy

Mauro Mari n i , Gregorio Seiser, Gerard-Pierre Charles, Ed uardo

Galeano, Theoto n io dos Santos, Juan Bosch, Helio Jaguaribe,

Manuel Maldonado Denis, is ignored_!

The second chapter of Part 1 is devoted to biopolitica l prod uc­

tion. It opens with a laudable statement of intent: to overcome the

l imitatio ns of the j urid ical fonnaJism with which they began t heir

i n tellectual course, descendi ng, i n t heir own words, to the mat­

erial cond itions that susta in the legal a nd i nst i tutional framework

of t he empi re . Their obj ect ive is to 'discover t he means and forces

of the produ(·tion of social reality along with the subjectivities

that animate it' (p. 22). U n fo rtunately, such beautifu l intent ions

re main mere declamations, as thc i nvoked materialistic condi­

t ions 'vanish into thin air', to use the wel l-known metaphor by

Marx and E ngel s in the Manifesto, and some venerable ideas

from the social sciences are prese nted as if they were the latest

I When Ihi5 work was practically fi n ished, a n exccllenl book by Saxe­

Fernandl"'I:, Petras, Vcltmcyt'r and Nuilez \\':lli givcn 10 mc bUi I was able to

rake only margi nal advantage of i ls empirical and interpretalive ric h ness

(S3xe'Femandcz et al. 200 1 ). In any calie, the reader is reco m m ended to

consult t hat (ext in order 10 expand some of the analyses unden .. ken in this

book.

2 8

'discovery' by the Parisian rive gauche or New York's Greenwich

Village. Fou cault's theorization a bout the tra nsit jon to the sociecy

of control, for example, revolves round the supposedly new notion

t hat 'Biopower is a form of power that regulates social l ife from its

interior' , or that 'Life has now become [ . . . ] an object of power'

(pp. 23, 24)·

It wo uld not take long to find in the extended western po litical

tradition, that begins at least in t he fifth cen tury Be in G reece,

ideas surprisingly similar to what today, with the fanfare that

supposedly celebrates great scientific accomplishments, is called

the 'biopower'. A q uick look at the l iterature would show dozens

of citations from authors such as Plato, Rousseau, de Tocquevi lle

and Marx, to mention only a few of the most obvious, that refer

precisely to some of the 'great novelties' produced by the social

sciences at the end of the twentieth century, Plato's insistence

on the psychosocial aspects - summarized in the phrase 'the

individual's character' - that regulated the social and polit ical l ife

of the Athenian pol is is wel l known , as is t he young Marx's em·

phasis on the subject of the 'spiri tualization of the domination' of

the bourgeoisie by the exploited classes. I t was Rousseau who

stated the importance of the process by which the dominated

were induced to be lieve t hat obedience was a moral ducy. This

made d isobedie nce and rebel l ion a calise for serious conflict

within ind ivid ual consciences. In short, for Hardt and Negri,

who are dazzled by Foucault's (an author who deserves our res·

pect) t heoretical in novations, it could be highly educational to

read what \\las written a century and a half ago, for instance, by

Alexis d e Tocqueville: 'Formerly cyranny used the clumsy weapons

of chains and hangme n; nowadays even despotism, t hough i t

see"1ed to have noth ing more to learn , has been pe rfected by

civilization: And d e Tocquevi l le continues, saying ancient cyran­

n ies 'to reach the soul, clumsily struck at the body, and the soul,

escaping from such blows, rose gloriously above it ' . Instead, mod­

ern 'democratic' tyranny ' leaves t he body alone and goes straight

2 9

.. o ::I

�, ::1'. o ::I o -

o

l for the soul' (de Tocqueville 1969: 255). Th is step from chains and

hangmen to individual manipu lation and cont rol of ideology and

behaviour h as been christened by Foucault the t ransit ion from

the discipl inary society to the society of con trol. But, as we know,

to name something is completely diffe rent from d i scovering it .

I n this case, the creature had a lready bee n d iscovered and h ad a

name. What Foucault with his renowned abi l i ty d id was to give i t

a new, and very attractive, name, different from the one everybody

knew. Nevertheless, it cannot be said t hat we are in the presence

of a fu nda mental theoretical i n novation.

The first part of the book concl udes with a chapter devoted

to alternatives withi n the e m p i re . It begi ns with a statemen t as

perplexing as it is radical : 'The multitude called the Empire i nto

being' (p. 43). Contra ry to most common i nte rpretat ions within

the left, Hard t and Negri be lieve t hat the empire is not the crea­

tion of a world capital ist coal ition under the A merican bourgeois

hegemony but the (defensive?) response of capital to the class

st ruggles against conte mporary forms of domination and oppres­

sion nurtured by 'the mult i tude's desire for l iberation' (ibid .). At

th is point, H ard t and Negri enter a terra i n plagued with cont ra·

dictions. They i nsist that the e m pire is good si nce i t represents a

'step forward ' in overcom ing colonialism and i m perial ism. They

insist on this even a fter assu ring us, with the help of Hegel, that

the fact that the empi re 'is good in i tselr does not mean that it is

good 'for itselr ( p. 42). They continue: 'We claim that Empire is

better in the same way that Marx insists that capital ism is better

than the forms of society and modes of prod uction that came

be fore it' (p. 43). However. a few l ines earlier, the authors say that

the empire ' constructs its own relat ionsh ips of power based on

explo itation that are in many respects more b ru tal than those it

destroyed' ( ibid.). Despite this, the empire is ' better' because, they

assert, it enhances the potential for l iberation of the m u l ti tude, an

assu m ption that has not been confirmed by experience and that,

i n Hardt and Negri 's case, is surrounded by a dense m e taphysical

30

and, in certain ways, religious halo, as I shall show in the final

pages of this work. Where that bl issfu l l iberating poten tial is

and how such possibil ities could be realized is somet hing the

authors explain, in a s impl istic and u nsatisfactory way, i n the

last chapter of their book.

On the other hand, to say that the empire is 'better' means

that the real capi tal ist world order - and this is precisely the

empire - is something d i fferent from capital ism. Marx's argu­

rnent referred to two d i ffe ren t modes of prod uction and com­

pared the possibi l it ies and perspectives opened by capitalism to

the ones offered by the decay of feudalism. Are the au thors t ryi ng

to say that the empire means the overcoming of capitalism? Is

it that we have tra nscended i t without anybody not ic i ng such

a fabulous h i storical cha nge? Are we now in a new and better

society with renewed poss ibi l i t ies for l i bera t ing and emancipa­

ting practices?

It seems that Hard t and Negri have bui l t a straw man, an ir­

rational and im mutable leftist who, in the face of the challenges

posed by global ization, i nsists on opposing local res ista nce to

a process that is global by na ture . Local means, in most cases,

' na tional' , bu t t h is d istinction is irrelevant in their analys is. They

say that the strategy of local resistance ' misident i fies and thus

masks the enemy' (p. 45). Since Hardt and Negri wa nt to talk

pol i t ics seriou sly - and without this being a formal concession

to Schmit t but to Clausewitz, Leni n and Mao - who is the enemy

then? The answe r to this very concrete question could not be

more disappoi nting since we are told that 'The enemy is not a

subj ect but, rather, is a specific regime of global relat ions that

we call Empire ' (pp. 45-6) . N ational struggles conceal the view of

the r�al mechanisms of empire , of the existing altematives, and

of the l ibe rating potentials that agitate in its wom b. H ence, the

oppressed and exploi ted masses of the world are convened for a

final battle against a regime of global relat ions. The beloved Don

Quixote appears once again, afte r several centuries, to t i l t at new

� � II " o ::I III 2' • .. C .. ii" ::I

� ;. II ., 3

"

�.

wi ndmil ls while the sordid mi l lers, ignoring the multitude's rage ,

continue with business as usua l , rul ing their countries, exploiting

the masses and manipulating the culture.

Hardt and Negri view the empire as the historic overcoming of

modernity, a period for which they supply a somewhat distorted

vision. Indeed, modernity left a legacy of ' fratricidal wars, devas­

tating "development, " cruel "civil ization," and previously u n im­

agined violence' (p. 46). The scenario that modernity presents is

one of tragedy, signified by the presence of 'Concentration camps,

nuclear weapons, genocidal wars, slavery, apartheid' (ibid.) . And

from modernity, Hardt and Negri deduce a straight l ine that leads

to the nation-state without mediation. The nation-state is noth ing

but the ' ineluctable condition for imperialist domination and

innumerable wars' . And if now such an aberration 'is d isappear­

ing from the world scene, then good riddance!' (ibid.).

There are several problems with this pecul iar interpretation of

modernity. I n the fi rst place, i t is a mistake to offer an extremely

uni latera l and biased reading of it. Hardt and Negri are right when

they enumerate some of the horrors produced by modernity (or

perhaps in modernity and not necessarily because of it), but whi le

doing so they forget some other results of modernity, such as the

nowering of individual l iberties; the relative equality establ ished

in the economic, pol itical and social terrains, at least in the de­

veloped capital isms; u niversal suffrage and mass democracy; the

coming of socialism despite the frustration generated by some of

its concrete experiences, such as the Soviet Union; secularization

and the lay state that emancipated the masses from the tyranny of

tradi tion and religion; rationality and the scientific spirit; popular

education; economic progress; and many other accomplishments.

These too are part of modernity's inheritance,and many of these

accomplishments were achieved thanks to popular struggles and

in stren uous opposit ion to the bourgeoisie. Second, do Hardt

and Negri really believe that before modernity none of the social

evi l s and h uman aberrations that p lagued the modern world

32

was already there? Do they by any chance believe that the world

was inhabited by Rousseau's noble savages? Do they not situate

themselves in the same position as the critics of Niccoli:> Machi­

avel l i who denounced the Florentine theoretician for being the

' inventor' of political crimes, treason and fraud? Have they not

heard about the Punic or Peloponnesian wars, the destruction of

Carthage, the sack of Rome and, more recently, the conquest and

occupation of the American continent? Do they bel ieve that before

modernity there were no genocides, apartheid or slavery? As Marx

did wel l to remind us, we are victims of both the development of

capital ism and its lack of development.

Once Hardt and Negri have asserted the substantive and

historical continu ity between modernity and the na tion-state,

they rush to reject the antiquated 'proletarian internationalism'

because i t presupposes an acknowledgement of the nation-state

and i ts crucial role as an agent of capital ist exploi tation. G iven

the ineluctable decadence of the nation-state's powers and the

global nature of capital ism, this type of internationalism is both

anachronistic and technica l ly reactionary. But thi s is not a":

together with t he 'proletarian internationalism', the idea of the

existence of an ' i nternational cycle of struggles' disappears. The

new battles, whose paradigmatic examples a re the Tiananmen

Square revolt, the Palestin ian Intifada, the 1992 race riots i n

Los Angeles a n d th e South Korean strikes of 1996, a.re specific

and motivated by ' immediate regional concerns in such a way

that they could in no respect be l inked together as a global ly

expanding chain of revolt. None of these events inspired a cycle

of struggles, because the desires and needs they expressed could

not be translated into d ifferent contexts' (p. 54).

F�om t h is categorica l assertion, for which i t would req u ire

considerable effort to provide supporting evidence, ou r authors

announce a new paradox: ' in our much celebrated age of com­

munication, struggles have become all bu t incommunicable' (p. 54,

emphasis in original). The reasons for this incommunicabi l ity

33

remai n shadowy, but we should not lose hopc in the face of the

impossibil ity of horizontal communication among the rebels

because, in real ity, i t is a blessing. Under the logic of the empire,

Hardt and Negri tell their i mpat ient readers, the message of these

battles wi l l travel vertically on a global scale, auacking the imperial

constitution in its n ucleus - or, what they call with a mean ingful

slip, j umping vert ically 'to the virtual center of Empire ' (p. 58).

Here, new and more formidable problems besiege their argu­

ment_ In the first place, those that derive from the very dangerous

confusion between axiomatic assu mptions and empi rical obser­

vations. To say that the popul a r battles are incommunicable is

an extremely important assert.ion_ Unfortunately, Hardt and Negri

do not offer any evidence to demonstrate whether this is mere

supposition or the rcsu lt of a historical or empirical investigation.

Faced with th is s ilence, there are abundant reasons for suspecting

that this problemalique reflects the less than healthy influence

of Niklas Luh mann and Jtirgen Habermas over Hardt and Negri.

A quick exploration of the nebulous concepts put forward by

t hese German scholars is enough to con firm the scan t uti l i ty

that their constructions have when i t comes to anal)'sing popular

struggles. This, though, does not prevent either of t hem from be­

ing extremely popular among the ranks of the disoriented Ital ian

left. In this sense, the Luhmannia n theses on social incommen­

surabi l i ty and Habermas's proposals concerning communicative

action seem to have gready influenced Hardt and Negri , at l east

to a greater extent than they are wil l ing to recognize. But leaving

aside this b rief excursus towards the sociology of knowledge, if the

incommun icabil ity of the struggles prevents them from inflaming

the desires and needs of people from other countries, how can

we expla i n the speed with which the erroneously named 'anti ·

global ization ' movement spread all over the world? 00 Hard t and

Negri really bel ieve that the events i n Ch iapas, Paris and Seoul

were t ru ly i ncommunicable? How can they ignore the fact that

the Zapatistas, and especially sub-commander Marcos, became

34

international icons for the neoli beral globalization critics and for

the anti-capitalist battJes i n five continents, influencing i mpor­

tant developments i n t hese con flicts waged at local and national

levels?

Second, Hardt and Negri mainta in that one of the main

obstacles preven ting the communicability of the battles is the

'absence of a recognition of a common enemy against which the

struggles are d i rected ' (p_ 56). We do not know whether or not

th is was the case among the French or South Korean strikers, but

we suspect that they had a clearer idea than our a uthors regard­

ing the identity of their antagonists. Concerning the Zapat.istas'

experience, Hardt and Negri's thesis is completely wrong. From

the beginning of their battle, the Chiapanecos had no doubts

and knew perfectly well who their enemies were. Aware of this

real ity, they organized an extraordinary event in the depths of

the Lacandona jungle - an internatjonal conference against neo­

l iberal globalization , attended by hundreds of panicipants from

around t he world who discussed some of today's most burning

problems. The abi l ity of the Zapatistas to convoke a conference

of this type refutes, in practice, another of Hardt and Negri's

theses - the one that bemoans the lack of a suitable com mon

and cosmopolitan language into which to t ranslate the languages

used in d iverse nat ional struggles (p. 57). The successive confer­

ences that took p lace in the Lacandona jungle, togerher with the

demonstrations against neolibera l globalization and the world

social forums held in Porto Alegre , Brazi l , show that, contrary to

what is said in Empire, there is a common language and a com­

mon understanding among the different social forces fighting

the d ictatorship of capita l .

If,the old battles are no longer relevant - Marx's o ld mole

has d ied, to be replaced by the ' infin ite u ndu lations' of the

modern snake, according to Hardt and Negri - the strategy of

the anti-capita l ist jou rneys has to change. National conf1icts a re

not communicated horizontally but jump d irectly to the vi rtual

35

� • ,. o :I

�, ::t. o :I o -

o

� centre of the empire, and the old 'weak l inks' of the impe rialist

chain have d isappeared. The articulations of the global power that

exh ibited a particular vulnerabil ity before the action of insurgen t

forces n o longer exist . The refore, 'To ach ieve sign i fi cance, every

struggle must attack at the heart of the Empire, at i ts strengt h '

( p . 58). Surprisingly, after having argued in the book's Preface

that the empire ' is a decentered and deterritorial izing apparatus

of rule' (p. xi i), the reader stumbles across the novelty that local

and nat ional battles must rise at the centre of the empire, though

our authors rush to explai n that they are not referring to a terri·

torial centre bu t to a (supposedly) virtual one. Given that the

empire includes all the components of the social orders, even

the deeper ones, and knowing that it has no l imits or front iers,

the notions of 'outside' and ' inside' have lost their mea ning. Now

everything is i nside the empire, and its n ucleus, its heart, can be

attacked from a nywhere. If we are to believe Hardt and N egri ,

the Zapat ista uprising in Chia pas, the i nvasion of land by the

La ndless Workers' Movement i n Brazil (MST) or the pot· banging

protesters and pickets in Argentina a re no differe nt from the 1 1

September attacks i n New York and Wash ington. I s i t i ndeed l ike

this? J udgi ng from the different types of reactions to all these

events, it would seem that this is nOl the perception held by those

at the 'Empire'S heart'. On the other hand , what mean i ng should

we assign to this expression? Are we talking of the capital ist

nucleus, the centre, t h e i mperialist coalit ion with i ts wide ning net

of concentric circles revolving round American capitalist power,

or what? Who are the concrete subjects at the 'Empire's heart'?

Where are t hey? What is thei r art iculation with the processes of

production and circulation of the i nternational capitalist econ·

omy? Which institutions normatively and ideologically crystallize

t hei r domination? Who are their polit ical represen tat ives? Or is

it just a set of im material rules and procedures? The book not

only does not offer any answers to t hese q uestions, but does not

even formu late t he q uest ions.

At this stage, Hard t and Negri's theorization makes its way to

a real disaster. By asserting that everything is i nside the empire,

thei r theory completely removes from our horizon of visibility

the fact that structural hierarchies a nd asym metries exist pre·

cisely there, and that such d i fferences do not disappear s imply

because someone h as decla red that everything is inside the

empire a nd noth i ng is left outside. Studies undertaken by La tin

American scholars and writers over decades do agree, beyond

the d i ffe re nces, on the fact that the categories of 'centre' and

'pe riphery' e njoy a cerlai n capacity, a t least a t fi rst , to produce

a mo re refined portrait of the inte rnational system. Everything

seems to indicate that such a disti nction is more useful than

ever i n the current circu mstances, because, among other thi ngs,

t he growing economic margi nal ization of the South has sharply

accentuated pre-existing asymmetries. In order to confirm this

assertion i t is enough to remind ourselves of what the United

Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) annual reports poin t

o u t with regard t o h u m a n development: if a t t h e begin n i ng of the

1960s the ratio between the rich est 20 per cent a nd the poorest

20 per cen t of t h e world population was 30 to 1, at the end of

the twen tieth ce ntury this ratio had grown to almost 75 to 1.

I t is true tha t Bangladesh and Hait i are i nside the empire, but

are they because of this i n a pOSi tion compa ra ble to that of the

United States, France, Germany or Japan? Hardt and Negri claim

t hat even though they arc not identica l from the production and

circulat ion point of view, between 'the United States a nd B razil,

Britain and I ndia [ ] are no d iffe rences of nature, only differ·

ences of degree' (p. 335).

This categorical conclusion cancels the last forty years of

debates and research t hat took place not only in Lat i n America

but also i n the rest of the Third World, and it brings us back to

the American theories in vogue in the 19 50S and at the begi n­

ning of the 1960s, when authors such as Wa lter W. Rostow, Bert

Hosel itz and many ot hers elaborated their ahistorical models

37

� • " o ;:, III ::r. C ::r. g

of econom ic development_ Accord ing to these const ruc tions,

in both ni neteenth-century Europe and the U nited Sta tes and

in the historical processes that took place i n the middle of the

twentieth century in Latin America, Asia and Africa, economic

growth fol lowed a l i near and evolutionist path, begi n ning in

underdevelopment and concluding in development_ This type of

reasoning was based on two false assumptions: first, that societies

located at either extreme of the continuum share the same nature

and that they are essentially the same. Their d i fferences, when

existent, were only in tenns of degree, as Hardt and Negri would

later say, an assenion that was, and stil l is, completely false. The

second assumption: the organization of i nternational markets

has no st ructural asymmetries that could affect the chances of

deve lopment fo r nations in the periphery. For those au thors

mentioned above, tenns such as 'dependency' o r ' i mperialism'

were not useful when d escribing the real i t ies of the system and

they were more than anything else a t ribute to political - and

hence not scientific - approaches, with which an understa nding

of economic develop ment was sought. The so-called 'obstacles'

for development lacked structural foundations. Instead they were

the product of clumsy polit ical decis ions, u nfortunate and poorly

informed choices made by the ru le rs, or easily removable inertial

factors. In Hardt and Negri's terms, al l the cou nt ries were ' insidc'

the s}'stem.

In this imaginary return to the past, it i s i mponant to remem­

ber the fol lowing: at the begi nning of the 1970s, the Lat in Amer­

ican debate about dependency, i mperia lism and neo-colonialism

had reached its apogee, and its resonance deafened the Academy

and American political circles. Its impact was of such magni­

tudc that Henry Kissinger, then chief of the National Seeurity

Cou ncil and on his way to becoming Seeretary of State under

R ichard N ixon, considered i t necessary to intervene on more

than one occasion in the discussions and debates caused by

the Latin Americans. Hardt and Negri ' s thesis about the non-

differemiation of the nations within the empire calls to mind the

cynical comments made by Kissinger about this topic. Expressing

his rej ection of the idea of Third World econom ic dependency

a n d question ing the extension and i m portance of the structural

asymmetries in the world economy, Kissinger observed: ' today

we a re a l l dependent. We live in an i n terdependent world . The

United States depend on the Honduran bananas as much as

Honduras depends on the American computers. ' 2 As can be easily

concluded, some of the sta tements expressed with such fi n al ity i n

Empire - for in stance, that there are no more diffe rences between

the centre and the periphery of the system, that there is no longer

an 'outs ide' , that the players merely differ in degree, etc. - are

far from new. These affi rmations began to circu latc through the

words of theoreticia ns clea rly affiliated to the right, who opposed

a theory of ' interdependence' and i m perialism, and who refused

to accept that the international economy was characterized by t he

radical asym metry that separated the nations in the centre of t he

system from those a t the peri phery.

H a rd t and Negri conclude this section of the book by intro­

ducing the two-headed eagle , the emblem of the old Austro­

H u ngarian Empire, as a convenient sym bol for the curren t

empire. However, i t i s necessary t o i ntroduce a litt le reworking

of this image si nce the two head s would have to look i nwards,

as if they were abou t to a ttack each other. The first head of t.he

i m perial eagle represents the jurid ical structure - not the eco­

nomic foundations - of the empire. As we have said, there is very

little pol it ical economy in this book and the absence of the most

elementary men tion of the economic structure of the empire i n

what i s outli ned a s its emblematic i mage reveals the strange paths

through which ou r authors have ventured and on which they have

2. Henry Kissinger is considered by the nove-list and playwright Gore­

Vidal to be 'the most conspicuous criminal orwar loose around the- world'

(c(, Saxe·Femandt"l et 31 . 200 1 : 25).

39

o completely lost their way. That is why the eagle's second head,

� sta ri ng at the one that represe nts the empire's juridical order,

symbolizes 'the plural mult itude of p roductive, creative subjectiv­

i t ies of global ization' (p. 60). This m ultitude is the true

absol utely posit ive force that pushes the dom inating power

toward an abstract and empty unification, to which it appears as

the d istinct alte rnarive. From this perspective, when the const i ·

tuted power o f Empire appears merely a s privation of being and

production, as a si m ple abstract and empty t race of the constitu­

ent power of the multitude, then we will be able 10 recognize the

real stand point of our analysis. (pp. 62-3)

In short: those interested i n exploring the alternatives to the

empire will find very l ittle help in t his section of the book. What

they will find is a death certificate for the archaic 'proletarian

international ism ' (without a ny mention of the new in ternational­

ism that e ru p ted strongly from Seattle);J a petj tion of p rinci ples

in the sense that the popular st.ruggles are i ncommunicable and

laek a eom mon language; an embarrassing silence regard i ng the

rela tionship with a concrete enemy whom the omnipotent mul­

titude faces or, in the best case, an immobilizing vagueness ('a

regi me of global relationsh ips'); the d isappearance of the 'weaker

l inks' and the d isti nction between centre and periphery; and

that the old dist inction between s trategy and tactics has disap­

peared because now there is only one way of ba uling against the

empire and it is strategic and tactical at the same time. This way

is the rising of a constituent coun ter·power that emerges from

i ts womb, something hard to u nderstand in light of Hardt and

Negri's rejection of dialectics. The only lesson that can be learn t is

3. For more on this, I suggesl looking at thc compilation prepared by the

Observatorio Social de I\meric-a Lalina of CLACSO in an issue devoted 10 ule

'new intern:llionalism' with lexts by Noam Chomsky. Ana F.st11er Ceceiia, Christophe Aguilon, Rafael Freire, Walde n Be l lo, Jaime ElOlay and Francisco

Pi n eda (OSAL, 6, January 2002).

that we must trust that the multitude wi ll fi nally assume t he tasks

assigned them by Hardt and Negri. How and when this will occur

cannot be found in the book's contents. There is no d i scussion

about the ways of fighting; the organizational models (assuming,

as the authors do, that the parties and labour u nions are illustri­

ous corpses)j the mobil ization strategies and the confro ntational

tacticsj the a rticulation among the economic, pol itica l a nd ideo-

10gicaJ confl icts and oppositionsj the long-te rm objectives and

revolutionary agendaj the political instruments used to put an

end to the iniquities of global capital ism; i nternational a ll iances;

the mi l itary aspects of subversion promoted by the multitudc;

and many other topics of similar t ranscendence. Neither is there

any attempt to relate the current postmodern d iscuss ion about

the subversive impulse of the mult itudes to previous debates

about the labour movement and a nti-capitalist forces in general,

as if the pbase in which we are now had not e merged from the

unfolding of past social struggles but had erupted, instead. from

the phi losophers' heads.

What we do find in this part of the book is a vague exhortation

to trust in the transformational potential of the multi tude. who.

in a myste rious and unpredictable way, wil l some day overcome

all resistance and blocks, and subdue its enemies to To do

what? To build what type of society? Its i ntellectual mentors stil l

do not say.

41

3 Markets, transnational corporations and national economies

A Recurrent Confusion

Hard and Negri's naive acceptance of a crucial aspect of world

market ideology clearly i l lustrates the consequences of their rad­

ical i ncomprehension of contemporary capitalism_ I nexpl icably

stubborn in maintain ing the not very in nocent myth that nation­

states are c lose to d isappearing completely, the authors make

their own, as if it were a t ruth revealed by a prophet, the opinion

of the fo rmer US Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, who wrote:

as almost every fa('tor of production - money, technOlogy,

factories, and equipme nt - moves effortlessly across borders,

the very idea of a [national) economy is becoming meaningless,

In the fut ure ' there wi l l be no national products or technologies,

no nat ional corporations, no national industries, The re will

no longer be nat ional economies, at least as we have come to

un derstand that concept.' (p, 1 5 1)

It is hard to bel ieve [hat an i nte l lectual of Toni N egri 's cal­

i bre, who i n the past has shown a strong in terest in the study of

econom ics, cou ld cite an opinion such as the one above, First of

al l , Reich shrewdly speaks of 'almost every factor of production',

a n e lega nt way of avoiding the emba rrassing fact that there is

a nother crucial factor of production, the labour force, which does

not 'move effortlessly across borders' _ This belief in the free mo­

b i l i ty of productive fac tors is to be fou nd at the hean of corporate

American ideOlOgy, determi ned as it is to e m bel l ish the assumed

virtues of the free market at the same time as i t condemns a ny

type of state i nterve n t ion that does not favou r monopolies or

ol igopol ies or that int roduces at least a m i n i m u m level of popular

or democratic control over economic processes. From their s trat­

ospheric platfonn, Hardt and Negri seem to ignore the fact that

Reich was the Secretary of Labor in a government that presided

over one of the most dramatic periods of wealth and income

concentration in the history of the United States, It was a time

when waged labou r saw some of the most important pieces of

labour legislation dismantled and when precarious ness reached

unprecedented levels not only in the rural districts of Alabama

and California but also in the Upper West Side of Manhattan ,

where hundreds of elegant stores recrui ted i I Ieg-dl immigrants

to assist their clients, paying them salaries well below the legal

minimum. Perhaps the authors refused to acknowledge that none

of these workers would have crossed American borders without

cons iderable effort. The h istory of these m igrants is one of vio­

lence and death, pain and m isery, su ffering and humil iation, And

it is a history in which the crucial player is the nation-state that

Hardt and Negri describe as 'decl in ing', Before writ ing about

such issues, it would have been appropriate had the authors inter­

viewed a n undocumented worker from Mexico, EI Salvador or

Haiti to ask him what the expression ' [a migra' means, a term used

to refer to the U nited States' immigration police, the very mention

of which terrifies the immigrants. Or maybe the authors could

have asked how much the worker had to pay to enter the U nited

States i llegally, how many of his friends died in the a ttempt and

what the word 'coyote' means on the Cal i fornian border. Have

they not heard about the unsuccessful m igrants who died in the

desert under a baking sun (bu t comfo rted by Reic'h's words)?

Can they ignore the fact that every year the Mexican-American

fron tier takes more human l ives than the infamous Berl in Wal l

throughout its entire existence? I t would also be appropriate to

ask similar questions of il legal immigrants in France and the

rest of Europe. A quick look at UNOP or the International Labor

Organ ization (ILO) repons would have saved them from making

major mistakes such as as the one mentioned above.

43

f i-& a i :::I a ::r. o :::I a

It o :::I o :i i· '"

It is not thei r only m istake. Our authors seem to believe that

money, technology, factories and equipment a re a lso subject

to unl imited mobi l ity. Money is, no doubt, the most mobile of

the four, but even so i t i s t ied to certain restrictions, albeit not

extremely strict ones. But what about technology and the rest ?

D o they real ly bel ieve that technology and t h e other factors of

production ci rculate as freely across borders as Reich proclaims?

Which technology anyway? Do they mean last generation techno­

logy? This is something that even a primary school child al ready

knows. Obviously, technology and i ts p roducts circulate, but the

ones thaI move more freely are su rely not the latest or the best.

Th i rd World countries know that they can have access without

problems to obsolete or semi-obsoletc technologies, relics already

abandoned by the nations at the forefron t of the planet's techno­

logical development. I f the best technologies c irculate freely as

corporate-speak assures us, why is it that we wi tness so many

cases of industrial espi onage in al l the developed countries? How

can we explai n i ndustrial p iracy, i l legal copying and im itations

of al l types of tech nologi<.'s and products·?

That Hardt and Negri accept some of the central assumptions

of the ideologues of globa l ization i s a matter of extreme concern.

Their belief in the disappearance of nat ional products, com panies

and industries is absolu tely indefensi ble in the l ight of dai ly evi­

dence that shows the vital ity, especially in developed cou ntries, of

customs taxes, non-tariff barriers and spccial su bsidies through

which governments seek to favour their national products, com­

panies and economic act ivi ties. The au thors l ive in countries

where protect ionism has an extraordinary strength and can be

ignored only by those who insist on denying its existence s i mply

because it has no place in their theory. The American govern­

ment protects its i nhabita n ts from foreign competit ion from

Mexican strawberries, Brazi l ian cars, Argentine seam less steel

pipes, Salvadorian texti les, Chi lean grapes and Uruguayan meat ,

while on t h e other side o f the Atlantic, t h e European citizens are

44

safely prolected by 'Fortress Europe' which, while hypocritical ly

proclaiming the virtues of free trade, seals i ts doors against the

' Ih real' posed by the vibrant economies of Africa, Lat in America

and Asia.

Regardi ng the declared d isappearance of national companies,

a simple test would be enough to demonstrate this mislake. For

ex.ample, Hardt and Negri should tl)' to convince a friendly gov­

ernmenl 10 expropriale a local branch of a 'global' finn (and,

therefore, supposedly unatlached to any national base) such as

Microsoft, McDonald's or Ford; or, i f they prefer, I hey could tl)'

to do Ihis wi lh Deulsche Bank, Siemens, Shell or Uni lever. Then

we would have only to wait and see who would step forward to

demand that the decision be revoked . If the companies were

truly global , it would be the job of Kofi Annan, or of the general

d irector of the World Trade Organization (WfO), to appear i n

front of the government involved i n order 10 put pressure o n it

in the name of global markets a nd the world economy. However,

it is more l ikely that, instead of those characters, an am bassador

from the United States, Germany or the U ni led Kingdom would

lum up to demand, wi lh their usual rudeness and i nsolence, the

immediale reversal of the decision under the threal of punishing

the country wil h al l types of sanctions and penal ties. If this hypo·

thetical example seems too compl icated , Hardt and Negri should

ask themselves, for example, who was Ihe Boeing representative

in t he tough negotiations with European Un ion officials for the

commercial competition with Airbus. Do they bel ieve that the

interests of the former were defended by a CEO from Bangladesh

who had received his M BA from the Universi ty of Chicago or

instead by top American government officials with the help of

Iheir a� bassador in Brussels and aCling logelher with the While

House? In Ihe real world, and not i n the nebulous republic i m·

agined by philosophers, the latter is what really occurs. This i s

someth ing Ihat any student of economics learns only two weeks

into classes.

4S

� D .. Jr"

! D :::I G. :::I 3, o

! It o :::I o 3 ii' '"

I Can Hardt and Negri ignore the fact that the 200 mega-corpora-

l: l ions that prevai l in the world markets register a combined total �

of sales that is greater than the GNP of a l l the countries i n the

world combined except for the nine largest? Their total annual

income reaches the $7, 1 00 tril l ion threshold and they are as big

as the combi ned wealth of 80 per cent of the world population,

whose income barely reaches S3,900 tril l ion. Despite this, these

Leviathans of the world economy employ less than one-third of

1 per cent of the world population (Barlow 1 998). The neolib­

eral global ization ideologists' rhetoric is not enough to disguise

the fact that 96 per cen t of those 200 global and transnational

companies have their headqua rters in only eight countries, are

legally registered as incorporated companies of eight countries;

and their board of directors s i t in eight cou ntries of metropol­

iran capitalism. Less than 2 per cent of their board of directors'

members are non-nationals, while more than 85 per cent of al l

their technological developments have originated with i n their

'nat ional frontiers'. Their reach is global , but their property and

their owners have a clear national base_ Their earnings now from

al l over the world to their headquarters and the loans necessary

to finance their operations are conveniently obtained by their

headquarters in the national banks at interest rates i mpossible

to find in peripheral capita l isms, thanks to which they can easily

displace their competi tors (Boron et al 1 999: 233; Boron 20oob:

1 1 7-23).

Noam Chomsky, for instance, c ites a study by Winfried Ruig·

rock and Rob Van Tulder on the top 100 corporat ions of the

1993 Fortune l i st according to which 'virtually all of the world 's

largest corporations have experienced a decisive support from

govern ment policies and trade barriers to make t hem viable. '

In addition, these authors also noted that at least 20 companies

would not have survived by themselves have their governments

not ' intervened by e ither socia l ising losses or by simple takeovers

when the companies were in trou ble' (Chomsky 1 998, Kapste in

1991/92, Ru igrock and Van Tulder 1995). I n short, despi te what

the a u thors of Empire assert, nation-states still are crucial players

in the world economy, and national economies sti l l exist.

The postmodern logic of global capital

In l i ne with the argument developed in the previous section,

Hardt and Negri state that a profound change in the logic with

which global capital operates has taken place with the constitu­

tion of the empi re . The predom i nant logic these days is that of

post modernism, with its e mphasis on exalt ing the instantaneous,

the always cha nging profiles o f desires, the cult of individual

e lection , the ' pe rpetual shopping and the consu mption of com­

m odities and commodi fied i mages [ . . _ ] difference and m u lti plic­

ity [ ] fet ishism and simulacra, i ts contjnued fascinat ion with

the new and with fashion' (p. 1 52). Al l t hese lead ou r aut hors to

conclude that market i ng strategies fol low a postmodem logic,

s ince marketing is a corporate p ractice i ntended to maxi mize

sales from the com mercial recogni tion and exploitation of d i ffe r­

ences. As populations become increasi ngly hybrid, the possibility

for creating new ' target markets' is e n hanced. The consequ ence

is that m arketing u n folds an endless array of commercial strat­

egies: 'one for gay Latino males between the ages of eighteen and

twenty-two, another for Chinese-American teenage girls, and so

forth ' (po 152).

Aware that, by pre tending to i nfer the global logic of capital

from marketing strategies, they are on a sl ip pery slope, Hardt and

Negri take a step forwards to assure us that the same post modern

logic also prevails at the heart of t he capital i st economy: t h e

sphere of p rod uction. For th is, they recal l some recent develop­

ments in the management field, where it is stated t hat corpora-l

tions must be ' mobile, flexible, and able to deal wit h difference'

(p. 1 53). As could have been foreseen, the naive acceptance of

these assu med advances of 'managemen t science' - in truth,

stra tegies to strengthen the extraction of surplus value - led Hardt

47

and Negri to a completely ideal ized vision of contemporary global

corporations. These appear as 'much more diverse and fluid cui'

tural ly than the parochial modern corpora t ions of previous years' .

A con sequence of th is greater diversi ty and fluidity is eviden t in

the fact that, according to the authors, 'the old modernist forml>

of racist and sexist theory are the expl icit enemies of this new

corporate cul tu re' (p. 1 53). Because of this, global companies are

anxious to include:

diffe rence within their realm and thus aim to maximize crea·

tivi[)" free play, and d iversity in the corporate workplace. People

of all d ifferent races, sexes, and sexual orientat ions should

potentially be inclu ded in the corpora t ion; the daily routine of

the work place should be rejuve na t cd with uncxpe("led changes

and an atmosphere of fu n. Break down the old boundaries and

let one hund red f)owers bloom! (p. 1 53)

After rcading these l ines, we cannot avoid asking to what extent

corporations a re home 10 the relat ionships of prod uction; are the

salaried exploited or, i n contrast, are they real earthly paradises?

I t does not seem to req uire a management expen to conclude that

the rosy description given by the aut hors bears l i ttle relationship

to reality, si nce sexism, racism and homophobia are practices that

still enjoy enviable health in the postmodern global corporation.

Maybe this i m proved corporate atmosphere has someth ing to do

with the fact tha t, as reported in the New England}oumal of Medi·

cine, d u ring the apogee of America n prosperity, 'African·American

men in Harlem had less probabil i ties of reaching t he age of 65

than men i n Bangladesh' (Chomsky 1 993: 278). Hardt and Negri

consta n tly fal l against the subtle ropes of corporate l iterat ure and

the free market ideologists. If we were to accept their points of

view - actually the points of view o f the busi ness school gurus

- the whole debate arou nd the despotism of capital within the cor·

poration loses its meani ng, as it does every time more demands

in favour of the democratization of fi rms are made by theoreti·

cians of Robert A. Dah l 's stature ( Dahl 1995: 134-5). Apparently,

t he structural tyran ny of capital va nishes when wage-labourers

go to work not to earn a living but to entertain themselves in

an agreea ble c l ima te t hat a llows them to express their desires

without restriction. Th i s portra i t hardly squares wit h the stories

reponed even by the most capi tal-involved sectors of t he press

about the extension of the work day in the global corpora tion, the

devastating i mpact of labour flexi bi l ity, the degradation of work

and of thc workplace, the growing frequency with which people

are laid off, the precariousness of employmem, the trend toward s

an aggressive concemration of salaries wi thin the com pany, not

to mention horror stories such as the exploitation of chi ldren by

many global corporations.

It seems u nnecessary to insist, before t hese two authors who

idemify themselves as communists and scholars of Marx, on the

fact that the logic of capita l , be it global or national, has l itt le

to do with the i mage projectcd by busi ness school theoret icians

or eclectic postmodern philosophers. Capital moves through

an i ncxorable logic of profit-generation, whatcver the social or

environmental costs may be. In order to maxim ize profits and

i ncrease security in the long tenn, capital travels al l ovc r the world

and is capable of establishing i tself anywhere. The pOlitical condi­

t ions are a matter of maj or importa nce, especially if there is a

need to maintain an obedient and well-behaved labour force. Cor­

porate blac kmail is also e�t remely releva nt, given that the global

firms, with ' their' government's su pport, seek to ga in benefits

from the ext raord inary concessions made by the h ungry states

of the impoverished periphery. These concess ions range from

generous tax exemptions of all kinds to the implementa tion of

labou� legislation comrary to workers' imerests, or of the type that

d iscourages or weakens the activism of labou r u n ions capa ble of

disturbing the nomlal atmosphere of business. I n the developed

world , i nstead, i t is more d ifficult to d ismantle workers' advances

and ach ievements, and the pro-labou r legiSlation sanctioned i n

49

the gol den period of the Keynesian stllte, but this is compensated

for by the greater size of the markets in societies where social

progress has created a pattern of mass consumption not usual ly

available i n the peripheral cou ntries.

Transnational corporations and the nation-stale

Chapter 3.5 of Hardt and Negri's book is devoted to the mixed

constitution of the empire. It opens, however, with a surprising

epigraph that demonstrates the unusual penetration of bourgeois

prejudices even i n to the m inds of two intellectuals as lucid and

cultured as Hardt and Negri. The epigraph is a statement made

not by a great philosopher or a distinguished economist, nor by

a renowned statesman or a popular leader. I t is, i nstead, a few

words pronounced by Bi l l Gates: 'One of the wonderfu l th ings

about the information highway is that virtual equity is far easier

to achieve than real-world equity We are all created equal in

the vi rtual world' lp. 304).

Two brief comments. Fi rst , it is hard to u nderstand the reason

why a chapter devoted to examining the problems of the mixed

constitution of the empire begins with a banal quote from Bi l l

Gates about the supposed eq uity of the information h ighway.

Maybe it is because quoting Gates has become fashionable among

some European and American progressive i ntel lectuals. The

reader, even one who is well d isposed, cannot but feel irritation

before this t ribute paid to the richest man in the world, someone

who is the most gen uine personification of a world order that,

supposedly, Hardt and Negri fen'ent ly desi re to change.

Second, and even more imponant, Ga tes is wrong, deeply

wrong. Not a l l of us have been created equal in the information

world a nd the fa ntastic virtual universe. Surely, Gates has never

been in con tact with even one of the three bill ion people in the

world who have never made or received a phone call. Gates and

Hardt and Negri should remember that i n very poor countries,

such as Afghanistan for instance, only five ou t of a thousand

50

people have access to a te lephone. This horrifying figu re is far

from being exclusive to Afghanistan . I n many areas i n southern

Asia, in sub-Saharan Africa, and i n some underdeveloped coun­

tries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the figures are not

much better (Wresch 1996). For most of the worl d's population,

Gates's comments are a joke, i f not �n insult to rheir miserable

and inhumane l ivi ng conditions.

Leaving aside this unfortunate beginning, the chapter intro­

duces a d ivision of capitalist development into three stages. The

first extends throughout the eighteenth and n ineteenth centuries.

It is a period of competitive capital ism, characterized according

to Hardt and Negri by ' re latively l i t tle need of state intervention

at home and abroad' (p. 305). for the authors, the protection­

ist policies of the UK, the USA, France, Belgium, Holland and

Germany, and the pol icies of colonial expansion promoted and

implemented by the respective national governments, do not

qualify as 'state intervention' . In the same manner, the legisla­

tion passed, with differen t degrees of thoroughness in al l these

countries over a long period and destined to repress the workers,

would also nOt qualify as examples of state intervention in eco­

nomic and social l ife. It should be taken i nto consideration that

such legislation incl udes the Anti-Combination Acts of Engla nd,

the Le Chappellier law i n France, the a nti·socia l ist legislation of

Chancellor Bismarck in Germany, who condemned thousands

of workers to exile, and the legal norms that made possible the

brutal repression of workers in the United States, symbolized

by the massacre of Haymarket Square, Chicago, on 1 May 1886.

Gramsci formulated some very precise observations about the

'Southern Question' in which he demonstrated that the complex

system of a l l iances that made Italian uni ficatjon possible overlay ,

a set of soph isticated econom ic pol icies that in fact supported

the dominant coa lition. It was G ramsci who pointed out the

'theoretical mistake' of the l ibera l doctrines that celebrated the

supposed Iy hands-off an itude, the passivity of the state in relation

5 1

� a .. 1r'

! a :::s a. :::s a �o o :::s !. It o :::s o 3 iO VI

to the capitalist acc umulation process. I n his Quadern;, Gramsci

wrote: 'The iaisse'ljaire is also a mode of state regu lation, intro­

duced a nd maintained by legislative and constra i n i ng means. I t

is a del iberate pol icy, aware of i ts own obj ect ives, and not t h e

spon taneous and automatic expressio n of the econo mic events.

Consequently, the laissezjaire l iberalism is a polit ical progra m '

(Gramsci 1 9 7 1 : 160).

The reason for t h is gross error must be found in the inability

of l iberal writers to recognize the fact that the distinction between

the polit ical society and the civil society, between economics a n d

pOli tics, ' i s made and presented a s if it we re an organ ic dist inc­

tion , when it is me rely a methodological distinct ion' (ibid.). The

'passivity' of the state when the fox en ters the henhouse cannot

be conceived as the inaction proper to a neutral player. This be­

haviou r is called compl icity or, in some cases, conspiracy. These

brief exa mples are enough to prove that conve n tional knowledge

is not capable of providing adequate guidelines to explain some

of the central features of t he fi rst period iden tified by Hard t a n d

Negri. Certainly, t he passivity of the state was not one o f them.

I t is t rue �hat , i n comparison with what happened in the period

following the great depression, the levels of state i ntervention

were lower. But this does not mean that there was no in tervention,

or that the need for i t was weaker. On the contrary, there was

a great need for state in tervention and the different bou rgeois

govern ments responded adequ ately to th is need. Naturally, after

the F i rst World War and the 1929 crisis, t hese needs increased

to an extraordinary degree, but that should not lead us to bel ieve

that before these dates the state did not play a primary role in

the process of capitalist accu mulat ion .

The most serious problem with Hard t and Negri's interpreta­

tion emerges when they get to the ' th ird stage' in the history of

the marriage berween t he state and capital. In their own word s:

'Today a third phase of this relationship has ful ly matured, in

which large tran snational corporations have effectively surpassed

52

the j u risdiction and authority of nation-states. It would seem,

then, that this centuries-long dia lectic has come to an end: the

state has been defeated and corporations now rule the earth!'

(p. 306, emphasis i n original) .

This statement is not only wrong but also exposes the authors

to new rebu ffs. Worried about having gone too far with their

anti -state en thusiasm, they warn u s that i t i s necessary ' to take

a much more nuanced look at how the rela t ionsh ip between

state and capital has changed' (p. 307). It is at the very least

perplexing that, after having written this sentence, the authors

d id not proceed with the same conviction to erase the previous

sentence. This confinns the suspicion that the fi rst one represents

adequately enough what they think about the subject. For them,

one of the crucial features of the c urrent period is the displace­

ment of state functions and pol i tical tasks into other social l i fe

levels and domains. Reversing the historical process by wh ich the

nation-state 'expropriated' the pol i t ical and administrative fu nc­

tions retained unti l then by the aristocracy and local magnates,

such tasks and fu nctions have been re-appropriated by somebody

else in this th ird stage in the history of capital. But by whom'? We

do not know, because i n Hardt and Negri's a rgument there is a

meaningful si lence at this poi nt. Hardt and Negri begin assuring

us i n an a'\iomatic way that the concept of national sovereignty is

losing i ts effectiveness, withou t bothering to provide some type

of empiri cal reference to support this thesis. The same happens

with the famous thesis about 'the autonomy of the pol it ical ' . If

evidence for the first thesis is completely absent, all that can be

said is that i t is a commonplace of con temporary bou rgeois ideol­

ogy; concerning the second thesis, Ha rd t and Negri are completely

wrong. To support their interpretation , they mainta in : 'Today a

notion of pol i t ics as an independent sphere of the detennina­

tion of consensus and a sphere of mediation among con fl icting

social forces has vcry little room to exist' (p. 307). Question : when

and where was pol i t ics rhal ' i ndepe ndent sphere' or that s imple

53

� a ;. CD � 1/1 a � � :I a :t. o � e.. � o & 3 ii' 1/1

e 'sphere of mediation'? To this i t could be answered that what is in

� crisis is not so much politics - which might well be in crisis, bUI t-

for other reasons - but a Schmittian conception of pol itics, which

progressive European a nd American intel lectuals cul tivated wi th

an obsessive passion for many years. As a resu lt of that addiction,

the confusing doctrinal constructions of Nazi theore tician Carl

Sch mitt - not only an academic bUI also a lead ing judge in the

Third Reich - were interpreted as a great contribution to poli tical

theory capable of prOviding an escape rou te for the oft-proclaimed

'crisis of Marxism'. But, conU'ary to Schmitt's teachings, poli tics in

capi taJ ist societies was never an autonomous sphere. This d iscus­

sion is so wel l known, generat ing rivers of ink in the 1960s and

1980s, that there is no need to summarize i t now. For the purpose

of this book, a brief reference to a couple of works that approach

this problem in a direct manner (Meiski ns Wood 1 995: 19-48;

Boron 1997: 95-137) will suffice. In any case, our authors are

closer to the truth when they write, a few lines later: 'Pol i t ics does

not disappear; what d isappears is any notion of the autonomy of

the pol it ical ' (p. 307). Once again, the problem here is less with

politics - which has undoubtedly changed - than with the absurd

notion of the autonomy of polit ics and of the pol itical, nu rtured

for decades by angry ant i-M arxist academ ics and intel lectuals,

who desire to maintain, against al l the evidence, a fragmentary

vision of the social , typical of what Gyorg Lukacs characterized

as bou rgeois thought (Lukacs 1971).

In Hardt and Negri 's interpretat ion, t he decl ine experienced

by the autonomy of pol itics gave place to an ultra-economicist

conception of the consensus, 'determined more sign ificant ly by

economic factors, such as the equi l ibria of thc trade balances and

specu lation on the value of cu rrencies' (p . :107). In this way, the

Gramscian theorization that saw the consensus as the capacity

of the dominant al l iance to guarantce an intel lectual and moral

d ireetion that would establish it as the avant-garde of the devel­

opment of nat ional energies, is entirely left out of the aut hors'

54

analysis of the state i n its current stage. I nstead, the consensus

appears as the mecha n ieal reflection of the economic news,

a set of mercantile calculation with no room left fo r political

med iations lost i n the darkness o f t ime. Its reductionism a n d

econom icism com pletely distort the com plexity o f the consensus

cons truction p rocess i n con temporary capitalism, and, i n addi­

t ion, they do not fail to pass the test that demonstra tes how on

innumerable occasions sign i ficant pol itical turbulence occurred

at moments i n which the economic variables were moving i n

the ' right d i rection', as European a n d America n history o f the

1 960s demonstrates. Besides, times of deep economic crisis d i d

no t necessarily t ranslate i nto t h e swift collapse of pre-exist i n g

pol itical consensuses. Popu lar passivity and acquiescence we re

noticea ble, for example, in the omi nous decade of t h e 19 30S

in France and Britain, something very differe nt from what was

oecurri ng in neighbouring Germa ny. In consequence, it is u n­

d en iable that, given that politics is not a sphere autonomous from

social l i fe, therc is a n int.i mate con nection berwee n econom ic

factors a nd political, social, cultural and i nternational factors

that, at a certa i n moment, crysta ll izes in the construction of a

long-lasting pol i t ical consensus. That is why a ny reduction i st

conceptual scheme, either economicist or politicist, is i ncapable

of explaining real ity.

The co nclusion of the authors' analysis is extraord inarily im­

portant and can be su mmarized in this way: the decline of the

political as an au tonomous sphere 'signals the decline, too, of a ny

independent space where revolution cou ld emerge in t he national

pOl it ical regime, or where social space cou ld be transformed

u sing the instruments of the state' (pp. 307-8). The traditional

ideas o f bui ld ing a counter-power or of opposing a national resist-I

a nce aga inst the state have been losing more and more releva nce

i n the current c ircumstances. The main fu nctions of the state

have m igra ted to other sphe res and domains of the social l ife,

especially towards the 'mechanisms of command on the global

55

level of the transnational corporations' (p. 308). The resu l t of

this process was something l ike the destruction or suicide of

the national democratic capitaJist state, whose sovereignty frag­

mented and dispersed among a vast collection of new agencies,

groups and organizations such as 'banks, i nternational organisms

of planning, and so forth [ ] which all increasingly refer for

legitimacy to the transnational l evel of power' (p. 308). [n relation

to the possibil i ties opened before th is nansfo rmation, the verdict

of ou r aut hors is rad ical and unappeal ing: 'the decl ine of the

nat ion-state is not simply the resu l t of an ideological posi t ion

that m ight be reversed by a n act of polit ical wil l : i t is a structu ra l

and i rreversible process' (p. 336). The d ispersed fragments of

the state's old sovereignty and its inherent capacity lO inspire

obedience to i ts mandates, have been recovered and reconverted

'by a whole series of global jurid ico-economic bodies, such as

GATT, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and thc

I MF' (ibid.). G iven that the global ization of the production and

circulation of goods caused a progressive loss of efficacy and

effectiveness in national pol i t ical and juridical structu res which

were powerless to control players, processes and mechanisms

that greatly exceeded their possi bi l i ties and that d isplayed their

games on a foreign board, there is no sense in trying to resurrect

rhe dead nation-state. Aijaz Ah mad ( 2004: 5 1 ) provided a timely

reminder that it was none other than Madeleine Albright who, as

Secretary of State during the Clinton administration, expou nded

s imilar theses by sayi ng that both 'nat ionality' and 'sovereignty'

belonged to an 'outdated repenoire of polit ical theory' unable

to accou nt for the ' new structu res of globalization and impera­

tives of " h umanitarian i n terven tion· . . . The authors assure us

that noth ing cou ld be more negative for future emancipalOT}'

struggles than to fal l victim to nostalgia for an old golden era.

Sti l l , if it were possible to resurrect the nation-state, there i s

a n even more important reason t o give up this enterprise: th is

institu tion 'carries wi th i t a whole series of repressive structures

and ideologies [ ] and any strategy that relies on it should be

rejected on that basis' (p. 336). Let us suppose for a moment that

we consider this argumenl val id . In that case we should resign

ourselves to contemplat ing not only the ineluctable decadence

of the nation-stale but a lso the fall of the democrat ic order, a

result of centu ries of popular struggles that inevitably rest on

the state s tructure. Hard t and Negri do not delve very deeply in to

this subject of vital importance. M aybe they do not do so because

they assume, m istakenly, that i t i s possible to ' democratize' the

markets or a civil society structu ra l ly divided into classes. This

is not possible, as I have explained careful ly elsewhere (Boron

20oob: 73-132). Therefore, which is the way Out?

57

4 Alternative visions of the empire

The ethical empire. or the postmodem mystification of the

'really existing' empire

At this stage of their journey, Hardt and Negri have clearly

gone beyond (he point of no ret urn, a nd their analysis o f (he

'rea l ly ex.isti ng' empi re has given place to a poetic and meta­

p hysical construction that, on the one hand, maintains a distan t

similari ty to reality, a n d , on the other h a n d , given precisely those

characteristics, offers sca nt help to the social forces i n terested in

transform ing t he national and international structures of world

capital ism. As Charles Ti l ly (2003: 26) put it rather bluntly, t he

authors 'orbit so far fro m the concrete rea l i ties of conte mporary

cha nge that their readers see l ittle but clouds. hazy seas and

nothingness beyond'. The general d iagnosis i s wrong due to

fatal problems of analysis and intcrpretation tha t plague their

t heoretical scheme. To this I cou ld add a series of extremely

unfonunate observations a nd comment aries that a patient reader

could find without grea t effort. But if t he reader were to refute

them, he would be obl iged to write a work of extraordinary mag­

nitude. Since t hat is not my inten tion, I wi ll continue with my

anaJysis centred o n the weaknesses of the general interpretative

t heoretical scheme.

To begi n, allow me to reaffirm a ve ry elementary but extremely

important poi n t of depa rture: it is impossible to do good political

a nd social philosophy without a solid economic analysis. As I have

shown elsewhere, that was exactly the path chosen by the young

Marx as a pol i tical philosoph er, once he precociously understood

the l imits of a social and pOlitical re(Jection that was not firmly

anchored in a rigorous knowledge of civil society (Boron 2000a).

The science thal unveiled the anatomy of civil society and the

most i ntimate secrets of the new economic orga nization created

by capitalism was politicaJ economy. This was the reason why

the foun de r of historical materialism devoted his e nergies to the

new discipline, not to go from one to t he other but to anchor

his reOections on crit iques of the existing social orde r and his

anticipation of a fu ture society i n the bedrock of a deep economic

a nalysis. Tbis anchorage in a good political economy, a 'regal way'

to reach a thorough knowledge of capit alist society, is precisely

what is m issing in Empire. [n fact, the book has very little of

economics, and what it has is, in most cases, the convenlional

version of the economic a na lysis taught in American or Europea n

busi ness schools or the one boosted by the publicists of neo­

l i bera l globalization, com bined with some isolated fragments

of Marxist political economy. In shon: bad economics i s used

to analyse a topiC such as the imperiaJist system that requires a

rigorous t reatment of the matter appealing to the best of what

pol itical economy could offer. As M ichael Rustin persuas ively

argues, Hardt and Negri'S 'description of the major t rends of de­

velopment of both the capi ta l ist economy, and of its major fonn s

of governance, is plainly in accord with much curre n t anaJysis of

gla blization' (Rustin 2003: 8).

Conseq uen tly, readers will find themselves with a book that at­

tempts to analyse the i nternational order, supposedly an empire ,

a n d in which only a couple o f times will they stumble across

institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO a nd o ther

agencies of the current world order, call it empire or imperia lism.

For example, the word 'neoliberalism', wh ich refers precisely to

[he ideology and the econom ic-political form ula prevailing dur­

ing the last q uarter of the twentieth ce ntury whe n the curren t

econoPlic order was rebuilt fro m head t o we, merely appears

throughout the book, in the sa me way as the Multilatera l Agree­

ment on I nvestments (MAl) and the Washi ngton Consensus. The

impression that the reader gets as he co ntinues to read the book

is of fi n di ng h i mself before two acade mics who a re very well

59

� i ntentioned but who are completely removed from the mud and

: blood that constitute the daily l i fe or capital ist societies, especi­

ally i n the periphery, and who have launched themselves to sail

across the oceans of the empire anned with defective maps and

inferior instru ments of navigation_ Thus, bewildered as Quixote,

they take appearances as real i t ies. Therefore, when they describe

the pyramid or the empire's global const itution, Hardt and Negri

assure us that: 'At the narrow pinnacle of the pyramid there is

one superpower, the United States, that holds hegemony over the

global use of force - a superpower that can act alone but prefers

to act in col laborat ion with others under the umbrella or the

United Nations' (p. 309).

It is very hard to understand such a naive comment, in which

the sophistication expected or scientific analysis is completely

lacking. To begin with, the reduction of the concept of hegemony

to the use o r rorce is inadmissible. Hegemony is much more

than that. Regardi ng the themes of empire and imperialism,

Robert Cox once wrote that hegemony could be represented as

'an adjustment among the material power, the ideology and the

i nstitutions' (Cox 1986: 225). To reduce the issue of hegemony

to its mil itary aspects only, whose i mportance goes beyond al l

doubt, is a major m istake. American hegemony is m uch more

complex than that. On the other hand, we are told that the United

States ' prerers' - surely because of its good will, i ts acknowledged

generosity on international matters and its strict adherence to the

principles of the J udeO-C h ristian tradition - to act in collabora­

tion with others. One cannot hel p but wonder i r the twen ty-some­

thing pages that Empire devotes to a reflection upon Machiavel li 's

thoughts were written by the same authors that then present

an interpretation of the United States' international behaviou r

so antithetical t o the teach ings o f the Flore ntine theorist a s the

one J have q uoted . The 'prererence' of the U nited States - of

course I am talking ofthe American government and its dominant

classes, and not about the nation or the people or that country

60

- for collaborative action is merely a mask behind which the

imperialist policies are adequately disguised so that they can be

sold to i nnocent spirits. Through this operation, whose efficacy is

demonstrated once again in their book, the policies of imperial

expansion and domi nation appear as if they were real sacrifices

in the name of humanity's common good. It is reasonable to

suppose that the American government's top officials and their

numerous ideologists and publicists could say something like

this, something that nol even the most submissive and servile

allies of Washi ngton would take seriously. It is entirely u n rea­

sonable for two radical critics of the system to believe these

deceits.

This is not the first time that such a serious mistake appears

in the book. Already in Chapter 2.5 they had written:

I n the wan i ng years and wake of the cold war, the responsibil ity

of exercising an international police power 'fel l ' squarely on

the shoulders of the United States. The Gulf War was the first

t ime the United States could exercise this power in its full form.

Really, the war was an operation of repression ohery l iule

interest from the point of view of the objectives, the regional in­

teresls, and the political ideologies involved. We have seen many

such wars conducted directly by the United States and i ts allies.

I raq was accused of having broken i nternat ional law, and it thus

had to be judged and pun ished . The i mportance of the Gulf War

derives rather from the fact that it presented the United States

as t he only power able to manage international justice, not as a function of its own national motives but ill lhe /lame of global right. (p. 1 80, emphasis i n original)

In. conclusion, and contrary to what the a ncestra.1 prejudices

nurtured by the incessant anti-American preaching of the left

i ndicate, what we learn after reading Empire is that poor Uncle

Sam had to assume, despite his reluctance and agai nst h is wil l ,

t h e responsib i l ity of exercising t h e role o f world policeman after

61

.. decades of unfru itful negotiations trying to be exem pted from :::I .f such a distressing obligation. Therefore, the power ' fel l into' his

hands while all the diplomacy of the State Depanment was busy in

the reconstruction , on gen uine democratic grounds, of the United

Nations system. Meanwh ile, top waShington officials travelled

around the world trying to l aunch another round of North-Sou th

negotiations focused on reducing t he irritating inequal it ies of

the international dis tribution of wealth and to strengthen the

languish ing governme nts of the periphery by teaching t hem how

to resist the exactions by which t hey are subdued by the gigantic

tra nsnational corporat ions. Those two radical scholars, lost i n the

darkness of theoretical confusion, find someone to give [hem a

hand who, in the light of the day, t hey discover is Thomas Fried­

man, the very conservat ive edi torial writer of the New York Times

and spokesman for the opinions of the American establishment.

According to Friedman, the interve ntion of the United Sta tes

in Kosovo was legitimate (as was the one in the Gul f for other

reasons) because it put an end to the ethnic cleansi ng practised

in that region and, therefore, it was 'made in the name of global

righ ts', to u�e an expression dear to Hardt and Negri. The tru th is

that, as Noam Chomsky has demonstrated, t he ethnic cleansing

of the sin ister regi me of Milosevic was not the cause but the

consequence of the America n bom bings (Cbomsky :2001 : 81).

Let us return to the Gulf War, deplorably c haracterized by t he

authors as a 'repressive operation of scarce interest' a nd l i ttle

importance. first of a l l , i t is convenient to remember that this

operation was not precisely a wa r but, as Chomsky i nforms us,

a slaughter: 'the term "wa r" hardly applies to a confronta tion

in which one pa rt ma ssacres the other from an u n reachable

distance, while the civi l society i s destroyed' (Chomsky 1 994 : 8).

The authors a re not worried abou t this type of disquiSition. Tbeir

vision of the coming of the em pire with its plethora of l iberat ing

and ema ncipating possi bil i ties ma kes their eyes look u p so, for

that reason, t hey are unaware of the horrors a nd miseries that cu r-

62

ren t imperialist pol icics produce in history's mud. If the C hrist ian

theologians of the M iddle Ages had their eyes completely t urned

to the con templation of God and for that reason did not real ize

that hell was surrounding them, the authors are so dazzled by the

luminous perspectives t hat open with the coming of the empire

that the butchery inaugurated by this new historical era does

not move them to write a single l ine of lamentation or compas­

sion. Masters of the art of 'deconstruct ion ', they are shown to be

completely incapablc of applying this resource to the analysis of a

war that was i n real ity a massacre. They also fa i l to recognize, let

us not say denou nce, the enormous nu mber of civil ian victims of

the bombi ng, the 'collateral damage' and the criminal embargo

that followed the war. Only cou nting the children, the n umber

surpasses 1 50,000 victi ms. They also remain silent about t he fact

thaI, despite his defeat, Saddam remained in power, but with the

consent of the world's boss to repress a t will the popu lar upri si ngs

of the Kurds and the Shia m i nority (ibid.).

Finally, how realistic can an analysis be t hat considers the Gulf

War, located in a zone containing the world's most important oil

reserves, a matter of marginal i m portance for the United States?

Should we think then that washi ngton launched its mil i tary

operations moved by the imperious necessity to ensure the pre­

dominance of 'global righ ts' and not with the goal of reaffirming

its ind ispu ta ble primacy in a strategic region of the globe? Was

President Bush's decision to raze Afghanistan while trying in vain

to discover the whereabouts of one of its old partners, Osama Hin

Laden, motivated by the need to make poss i ble this demand for

universal jus tice? How to describe such foolish ness?

This vis ion of the empire's concrete functioning, a nd of some

unple",sa nt events such as the Gulf War, is in l ine with other

extremely pole mic definit ions made by the authors. For example,

that 'the world police forces of the United States act not with an

i m perialistic bu t a n imperial interest'. The grou nding for this

affi rmation is pretty simple and refers to other passages of the

� book: given that imperia lism has disappeared, swallowed by the

:. commotion that destroyed the old nation-states, an intervent ion

by the ' hegemon' makes sense only as a contribution to the stabil­

ity of the empire. The pillage characteristic of the imperialistic era

has been replaced by global rights and international justice.

Another issue outlined by Hardt and Negri renects with greater

clari ty the serious problems that a ffect their vision of the really

existing international system which before their eyes becomes

a type of ethical empire. Thus, referring to the ascendancy that

the United States achieved in the post-war world , the authors

maintain that:

With the end of the cold war, the United States was called to

serve t he role of guaranteeing and adding juridical efficacy to

this eomplex process of the formation of a new supranational

right. Just as in the first century of the Christian era the Roman

senators asked Augustus to assume i mperial powers of the ad·

ministration for the public good , so too today the internat ional

monetary organizat ions ( the United Nations, the international

organizations, and even the humanitarian organizations) ask the

United States to assume the central role in a new world order.

(p. 1 8 J )

The equivocal contents o f this passage o f Hardt a n d Negri's

work are vel)' serious. First, they consider analogous two situa·

tions that a re completely differ�nt: the one of the Roman Empire

in t h e first centul)' and the current one, when the world has

changed a l i ttle if not as much as we would l ike. And the old

order that prevailed around the Mediterranean basin based on

slaveI)' does not seem to have many affinities with the current

imperial ist system that today covers the entire planet and which

includes formally free populations. Second, however, is the fact

that Roman senators demanding that Augustus assume i mperial

powers is one thing and the people subdued by the Roman yoke

asking lor this is another, very different, thing. Cenainly, there

is a considerable majority of American senators who repeatedly

lobby the White House on the need for acting as an articu lating

and organizing axis for the benefit of the companies and national

interests of the United States, as we will see in the following

chapters. Another, very different thi ng is that people, nations and

states subjected to US imperialism wou ld demand such a thing.

At this point , Hard t and Negri 's analysis becomes muddled with

American esta blishment thought because it refers to questions

supposedly asked of Wash ington by the United Nations. When

did the General Assembly request such a thing? , because this is

not a matter that can be solved by an organ as little representa­

tive and a nti-democratic as the Security Council; and even less

by the ' international monetary org-aniUltions'. In this case, are

they referring to the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO or the IDB

as 'representatives' of the people's rights? What are they talking

abou t? In any case, and even when they had reclaimed it, we k now

very well that such institutions are, in fact, ' informal depa nments'

of the American government and completely lack any universal

legitimacy to take up an initiative such as the one men tioned. And

what can be said about the humanitarian organizations? As far as

I know, neither Amnesty or the Red Cross, neither Greenpeace or

the Service of Peace and Justice, or indeed any other known organ­

ization has ever formulated the petition stated in the book.

Maybe Hardt and Negri are thinking about the main role ta ken

by the United States in the promotjon of a new supranational

juridical framework, which, for reasons that will soon be u nder­

stood, has been conducted in secrecy by the governments involved

in this enterprise. Indeed, for many years, Washington has been

systematically working on the establishment of the Multi lateral

Agrerment on Investments (MAl) and has it as a priority on its

political agenda. To move forwards with this proposal, the White

House counts on the a lways uncond itional collaboration of i ts

favourite client-state, the United Kingdom, and that of the over­

whelming majority of the governments in the OECD. Among

5 the rules that the USA has been t rying to impose to consolidate

.2 un iversal justice and rights - surely inspired by the same l i ter·

ature as the au thors - are two epoch·making contri butions to

legal science. The first is a doctrinarian in novation, thanks to

which for the first time in history compa n ies and states become

j uridical ' persons' enjo}'i ng exactly the same legal status. States

are no l onger representatives of the popular sovereignty and the

nation and have become simple economic agents without a ny

type of prerogative in the courts. It is not necessary to be a great

legal scholar to be able to qualify this 'j u ridical advancement',

zealously sought by Wash ington, as a phenomenal retrogression

that neglects the progress made by modern law over the last t h ree

hundred years.

The second contribution: having taken into account the

extraordinary concern of the American govern ment fo r universal

law, t he MAl p roposes the abolit ion of the reciprocity principle

between the two parties sign i ng a contract. If the MAl were

approved, something that so far has not been possible thanks

to tenacious opposition from humanitarian organ izations and

diverse soc ial movements, one of the parties to t he cont ract

would have rights and the other one only obl igations. Given the

characteristics of the 'really ex.i sting' empire, it is not hard to

find out who would have what: co mpanies would have the right

to take states to th e courts of j ustice, but the states would be

debarred from doing so with investors that d id not comply with

their obligat ions. Of course, given the well·known concern of

the American gove rnment to guarantee un iversal democracy, it

is permitted for a state to file a law suit against a nother state,

with which things become more even. Thus, i f the governments

of Guatemala or Ecuador had a problem with Un ited Fruit or

Chiquita Banana, they would not be a ble to file a suit against

those companies, but they would be free and would have a ll the

guarantees in the world to do i t against the government of the

Un ited States, given that, despite what Hardt and Negri thi nk,

66

those companies are American and are registered in that country.

Now we can understand the reasons why t he negotiations that

ended in a d raft MAl were conducted in absolute secrecy and

beyond any rype of democratic and popular control (Boron 2OO1a:

3 1 -62j Chomsky 2oooa: 259-60; Lander 1 998).

Given such a huge distortion of the empire's realities, it is not

surp ris ing that the authors conclude:

In all the regional conflicts of the late twent ieth century, from

Haiti to t he Persian Gulf and Somalia 10 Bosnia, the United

States is called to intervene militarily - and these calls are real

and substantial, not merely publicity stunts to quell U.S. public

dissent. Even if i t were reluctant, the U.S. mi l i tary would have to

answer the call in the name of peace and order. (p. 1 8 1 )

N o comment.

The empire as it is, portrayed by its organic intellectuals

Hence, it seems to be sufficiently proved that Hardt and Negri's

analysis of the contemporary world order is wrong. based on a

seriously distorted read ing of the current transformations that

are taking place in state formations and in the world markets of

contemporary capitalism. This i s not to deny that, occaSionally,

here and there, the reader can find a few sharp reflections and

observations related to some timely issues, but t he general picture

that flows from their a nalysis is t heoretically wrong and politically

self·defeating.

A good exercise that could help Hardt and Negri to descend

from the structuralist nebula in which they seem to have sus­

pended their reasoning - 'a new global form of sovereignty' (p. xii),

'a sp�cific regime of global relat ions' (pp. 45-6) - would be to read

the work of some of the main organic i ntellectuals of the empire.

Leo Pan i tch has ca l led attention to a meaningful paradox: while

the term ' imperial ism' has fallen into d isuse, the realities of im­

perialism are more vivid and impressive than ever. This paradox is

• i 3 a �. � < iii·

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l f It 3

'V

�.

.. much more accule in Lat in America, where not only the tern, :J .f ' imperia lism' but also the word 'dependency' have been ell.-pelled

from academic language and public discourse, precisely at a time

when the subjection of Latin American countries to transnational

economic forces has reached unprecedented levels. The reasons

for this are many: among them the ideological and political defeat

of the left and its consequences stand out. The adoption of the

language of the victors and the inabil ity to resist their blackmail,

especial ly among those obsessed with preserving their careers

and gaining 'public acknowledgement' , reinforces this subjec·

tion. This phenomenon can be verified not only in L-atin America

but also in Europe and the United States. In Europe, it is mainly

evident in those countries in which communist parties were very

strong and the presence of the polit ical left vigorous, such as in

Italy, France and Spain. This is why Panitch suggests that if the left

wants to face real ity, maybe 'it should look to the right to obtain

a clear vision of the d irection in which it should march' (Panitch

2000: 18-20). Why? Because while many on the left are incl ined

to forget the existence of class struggles and imperialism (fearful

of being denounced by the prevail ing neoliberal and post modern

consensus as self· indulgent and absurd dinosaurs escaped from

the Jurassic Park of socialism), the mandarins of the empire , busy

as they are giving advice to the dominant classes who are faced

dai ly by class antagonists and emancipatory struggles, have no

time to waste on fantasies or poetry. The pract.ical necessities of

imperial administration do not a l low them to become distracted

by metaphysical lueubrations. This is one of the reasons why

Zbigniew Brzez inski is so clear i n his diagnosis, and instead of

talking about a phantasmagorie empire , such as the one depicted

by Hardt and Negri, he goes directJy to the point and celehrates

withom shame the irresist ible ascension, in his own judgement,

of the United States to the condition of 'only global superpower'.

Focused on assuring the long·term stabil ity of the imperial ist

phase opened after the fal l of the Soviet Union, Bn.ezinski identi-

68

fies three main guiding principles of the American geopol itical

strategy: first, to impede the collusion among, and to preserve the

dependence of, the most powerful vassals on issues of security

(Western Europe and Japan); second, to maintain the submission

and obedience of the tributary nations, such as Latin America and

the Third World in general ; and third, to prevent the unification,

the overflow and eventual attack of the 'barbarians', a denomina­

tion that embraces countries from China to Russia, including the

Islamic nations of Central Asia and the Middle East (Brzezinski

1998: 40). Crystal clear.

The former US National Security Council chairman·s observa­

tions offer a c lear vision without beating about the bush, distant

from the vague rhetoric employed by Hardt and Negri and, pre­

cisely because of this, extremely instructive of what these authors

call empire and Panitch calls 'new imperialism'. In 1989, long

before Brzezinski expressed these ideas, Susan Strange, not ex­

actly a Marxist scholar, wrote an article. Had it been read by our

authors, it would have saved them time and prevented them from

making extremely serious mistakes. Strange said:

What is emerging is, therefore, a non-territorial empire with its

imperial capital in Washington DC. If the imperial capitals used

to anract courtesanS of foreign provinces, Washington instead

attracts 'lobbies' and agents of the international companies,

representat ives of minority groups dispersed throughout the

empire and pressure groups organized at a global scale. [ ... J

As in Rome, citizenship is not l imited to a superior ra,·e and

the empire contains a mix of citizens with the same legal and

polit ical rights, semi·citizens and non-citizens, such as the slave

population in Rome. [ . . . ] The semi-citizens of the empire are ,

many and they a re spread out. [ . . . ] They include many people

employed by big transnational finns that operate in the trans­

national stmcture of production that assists, as they all well

know, the global market. This includes the people employed

69

• i .. :2 D i' " < iii' 0' :2 III o -

:J-et CD 3

'U

:i"

.. in transnational banking and, very often, the members of the :t .e 'national' armed forces, especial ly those that are trained, armed

by, and dependent on the United States a rmed forces. It also in­

cludes many scholars in medicine, the natural sciences and the

social sciences, as in business management and economy, who

view the American professional associations and universities as

those peers before whose eyes they want to shine and excel . It

also includes the people in the press and the mass media, for

whom the American technology and the examples offered by

the United States have shown the way, changing the established

institution s and organizations. (Strange 1989: 167)

I t is u nquestionable that , despite her rejection of Marx­

ism, Strange's d iagnosis of the inrerna tional st.ructure and the

organ ization of the empire has more i n common with historical

materialism than the One that arises from Hardt and Negri's work.

This is not the fi rs t li me that a rigorous and objective liberal,

thanks to the realism that informs her analysis, provides a vision

that is closer to Marxist analysis than that p rovided by aut hors

tacitly or outspoken ly identified with tha t theoretical tradition.

I n addition to the vibrant perspective that Brzezinski and Strange

have offered us, we have a crude diagnosis made by one of the

most distinguished t h eoreticians of American neo-conservatism,

Sa muel P. Huntington; h e also h as n o doubts about the imperial·

ist ch aracter of the curren t world order. Hun tington'S concern is

with the weakness and vul nerability of the USA and its cond ition

as the 'lonely sheri ff' . This condition has obliged Washi ngton

to exen a vicious international power, one of the consequences

of wh ich could be the formation of a very broad anti-American

coalit ion including not only Russia and China but also, though

in d i ffering degrees, the Eu ropean states, which could put the

current world order in crisis . To refute the scepticS and refresh

the memory of those who have forgotten what the imperial ist

relationships a re , i t is convenient to reproduce in extenso the long

70

string of i nitiatives that, according 10 H u ntingto n , were d riven by

Washington in recent years:

To press other countries to adopt American values and practices

on issues such as human rights and democ racy; to prevent

that third countries acqu i re mil i tary capacities susceptible of

i nterfering with the American military superiority; to have the

American legislation applied in other societies; to qualify third

coun tries with regards to their adhesion to American standards

on human rights, drugs, terrorism, nuclear and missile prolifera­

tion and, now, religious freedom; to apply sanctions against

the countries that do not conform to the American sta ndards

on these issues; to promote the corporate American interests

under the slogans of free t rade and open markets and to shape

the politics of the I M F and the World Bank to serve those same

i nterests; [ . . . ] to force other countries to adopt social and

economic policies that bene fi t the American economic in terests,

to promote the sale of American weapons and preven t t hat other

countries do the same [ . . . ] to categorize certain cou ntries as

'pariah states' or criminal Slates and exclude them from the

global institutions because they refuse to prostrate themselves

before the American wishes. (Huntington 1 999: 48)

Let us be clear, this is not i n ce ndiary criticism by an e nemy

of A merican imperial ism, rather it is a sober acco u n t written by

one of its most lucid organic intel lectuals, concerned about the

self-destructive trends that have a risen fro m America's exercise

of its hegemony i n a u n i polar world. Given the images that a rise

from the work of the t h ree authors whose ideas we have p res­

ented, the someti mes poetic and at other times m etaphysical d is­

cour.;e of Hardt and Negri vanishes because of its own l ightness

and its radical discon nection with what Hunti ngton appropriately

cal ls the respons ibi l i l.ies of the ' lonely superpower', What emerges

from Hardt a n d N egri's a nalysis is that the assumed ' n ew form of

global sovereignty' exercised by the world 'Empire', which woul d

7 1

!i impose a new global logic of domination, is not a world empire

.e but 'American logic of domination'. There is no doubt that there

are supranat ional and transnational organizations,just as there is

no doubt that behind them lies the American national interest.

It is obvious that the American national interest does not exist in

the abstract, nor is it in the interests of the American people or the

nation . It is in t he interests of the big corporate conglomerates

which control as they please the government of the U nited States,

Congress, the judicial powers, the mass media, the major univer·

sities and centres of study and the framework that allows them to

retain a formidable hegemony over civil society. Inst i tu tions t hat

are supposedly ' intergovernmental' or i nternational, such as the

IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization , are at

t he service of corporate American i nterests. The intervent ions of

t he USA in other regions of the world have different motivations,

but did they take place. as Hardt and Negri cla im. to establ ish

international law? In this sense, Brzezinski could not have been

more categorical when he said t.hat the so-called supranational

institut ions are, in fact , part of the imperial system, something

that is particularly t rue in the case of the international fina ncial

insti tut ions (Brzezinski 1998: 28-9).

5 The nation-state and the issue of sovereignty

As we have seen in previous chapters, according to Hardt and

Negri, the const itution of the empire overlays the decadence and

final, supposedly inexorable, collapse of the nation-state_ Accord­

ing to our authors, the sovereignty t hat nation-states retained in

the past has been transferred to a new global st ruct ure of domi­

nation i n which decadent state formations play an i ncreasingly

marginal role. There are, we a re assured, no imperialist players

or a territorial centre of powerj nor do there exist established

barriers or limits or fixed identities or crystallized hierarchies.

The transition from the age of imperialism, based on a collect ion

of bell icose states i n permanent conflict among t hemselves, to

the age of the empire, is signalled by the irreve rsible decl ine

of the institu tional and legal foun dations of the old order, the

nation-state. It is because of this that Hard t and Negri plainly

reject the idea that the United States is 'the ultimate authority

that rules over the processes of globalization and the new world

order' (p_ xiii). Both those who see the United State9 as a lonely

and om nipotent superpower, a fervent defender of freedom, and

those who denou nce that country as an imperialist oppressor, are

wrong, Hardt and Negri say, because both parties assume that the

old nation-state's sovereignty is still in force and do not reali:te

that i t is a rel ic of the past. Unaware of th is mutation they also

fail to understand that i mperialism is over (ibid .)_

LFt us examine some of the problems that this in terpreta t ion

poses_ In the first place, let us say that to assu me that t here can

exist something l ike an authori ty able to govern 'all the processes

of globalization and the new world order' is not an i nnocent mis­

take. Why? Because given such a requirement the only sensible

., answer is to deny the existence of such an authority. To say that .� ... a certain structure of power can control all thc processes that

occur in its jurisdiction is absurd. Not even the most elementary

forms of organization of social power, such as the ones reported

by anthropologists studying 'primit ive hordes' , were capable of

fulfi l l ing such a requirement . Fortunately, the omnipotence of

the powerfu l does not exist. There are always loopholes and,

invariably, there wil l be things that the power cannot control .

Even in the most extreme cases of despotic concentrations of

power - Nazi Germany or some of the most oppressive and feroci­

ous Latin American dictatorships such as Videla's in Argentina,

Pinochet's in Chile, Truji l lo's in the Dominican Republic and

Somoza's in Nicaragua - the authori ties at the time demonstrated

an incapacity to control 'a l l the processes' unfolding in their

countries. To say that there is no imperialism because there is

no one who can take control at a world level a world whose

complexity transcends the limits of our imagination - constitutes

a dismissive statement. It is a question of finding out i f in the new

world order, so celebrated by George Bush Senior after the Gulf

War, there are some players who hold an extraordinarily elevated

share of power and whose interests prevail systematical ly. It is

a question of examining whether the design of this new world

reflects, somehow, the asymmetric d ist ribution of power that

existed in the old world, and how i t works. Of course, to talk about

an 'extraordinarily elevated' share of power is to admit that there

are others who have some power, and i f we speak of systematiC

predominance it is also accepted that there may be some devia­

t ions that, from time to time, wil l produce unexpected resu lts.

Th is being said, let us continue with a second problem. Hardt

and Negri'S analysis ofthe issue of sovereignty is wrong. as is their

interpretation of the changes experienced by social structures in

recent tjmes. Regarding the issue of sovereignty, they seem not to

have noticed that in the imperia l ist structure there is a yardstick

of evaluation, or, as Jeane Kirkpatrick, the US Ambassador to the

74

United Nat ions during Ronald Reagan's first term, said , there is

a double standard with which Washington judges foreign govern­

ments and their actions. One standard is used to evaluate the

sovereignty of the friends and al l ies of the U nited States; another,

very different, is used to judge the sovereignty of neutral cou ntries

and its enemies. The national sovereignty of the former m ust be

p reserved and strengthened, the laner's should be weakened and

violated without scruples or false regrets. Prisoners of their own

speculations, Hardt a nd Negri cannot perceive this d isturbing

duality, believing thus that there is a 'global logic' beyond and

above the national i nterest of t he superpower and u ndeniable

'centre' of the empire, the United States. For authors so interested

in constitutional and j u ri dical matters, as is the case of Hardt

and Negri, the deplorable performance of Washington regarding

the acknowledgement of i n ternational treaties a nd agreements

provides a timely douche of sobriety. As is well known, the United

States has repudiated any i nternational jurid ical i nstrument that

implies even a minimal reduction of i ts sovereignty. Recently,

Washington has deliberately delayed agreeing to the constitu tion

of an International Criminal Court sited in Rome - with special

competence to judge war crimes, c ri mes against humanity and

genocide - because this would mean a t ransference of sovereignty

to an international organ whose control could escape from their

hands. The United States actively panicipated i n all the previous

delibera tions about setting u p the court, it discussed criteria, i t

vetoed norms and co-authored various drafts of the const itution.

Bu t when the time came to approve the constitu tion of the cou n

i n Rome, it decided to wa lk away.

This should come as no surprise to students of imperialism,

thoug-h i t seems to have con fused the authors of Empire. Appar­

ently, they have ignored the fact that the Uni ted States has one of

the worst world records regarding the rat ification of international

conventions and agreements, precisely because WaShington con­

siders that these would be detrimental to American national

75

� sovereignty and its interests as a superpower. Recently, the USA

ii: refused to sign the Kyoto Agreement to preserve the environment,

using the argument that i t would hann the profits of American

companies. In the case of the Incernational Convention on the

Rights of the Child, only two countries in the whole world re­

fused to sign the protocol: Somalia and the United States_ But as

pointed out by Noam Chomsky, actually the United States 'have

not ratified a single convention, because even in the very few

cases in which they did so, the American government managed to

introduce a reserve clause that says the fol lowing: "not appl icable

to the United States without the consensus of the United States"'

(Chomsky 2001: 63).

In the neo-consel"Jative zenith of the 1 960s, the United States

refused (and in some cases is sti l l refusing) to pay i ts fees to

some of the main agencies of the U nited Nations, accusing them

of having defied American sovereignty. Why pay membership

fees to an institution that Washington cannot control at wil l? A

simi lar attitude is obsel"Jed in relation to another US creation,

the wro, and its preceding agreement, the GATT. The European

U nion aCCllsed the American government of damaging European

companies because the embargo against Cuba violated the com­

mercial ru les previollsly agt"eed. Besides, the European Union

said, the embargo was immoral , i t had been unanimously con­

demned and children and the elderly were i ts main victims_ The

embargo's unfavourable impact on heal th and nutrition policies

as wel l as other similar considerations were also highl ighted. The

response from Washington was that these were not commercial

or humanitarian issues but, i nstead, they were matters related

to American national security and, therefore, they wou ld not

be transferred to any other international agency or institution

but would be exclusively managed by the d i fferent branches of

the American government without allowing any, even minimal,

foreign imel"Jention (ibid.: 64-6).

A final example will be useful to conclude this d iscu ssion.

76

During the offensive of the N icaraguan Contras - i l legal ly armed,

t rained. financed and organized by t he United States - the govern·

ment of Managua fi led a demand in 1985 to the I n ternational

Court of J ustice accusing the A merican government of war crimes

against the Nicaraguan civil population. The response from Wash­

i ngton was to d isregard the court's jurisd iction. The process

continued anyway, and the final sentence of the court ordered

Washington to stop i ts mil i tary operations, retire the mercenary

forces stationed in N icaragua and pay substantial reparations

[0 compensate for the damage inflicted on the civil society. The

government of the Uni ted States simply disrega rded the sentence,

continued the war, whose results are well known, and not even

when it managed to i nstal a new 'friendly' government in Nicar·

agua d id it dare to sit down to talk about the reparations of war,

let alone paying them. The same occurred with Vietnam. These

are good examples of what Hardt and Negri unde rstand as the

i mperial creation of 'global rights' and t he empire of universal

justice (ibid. : 69-70).

It seems clear that the authors have not ma naged to appreciate

the continuous relevance of national sovereignty, the national

i nterest and national power in al l its magni tude, all of which

i ncurably weakens the central hypothesis of their argument that

i nsists t here is a global and a bstract logic that presides over the

functioning of the empire . Rega rding what occurred with the

capitalist state in its cu rrent phase, i t seems that the mistakes

cited before become even more serious. First of all, there is an

important in itial problem that is not margi nal at all, with res·

pect to the proclaimed final and irreversible decadence of the

state: all the avai lable quantitative information with regard to

publjc expenditure and the size of the state apparatus moves i n

t he opposite direction of t h e o n e imagi ned by Hardt a n d Negri.

If something has occurred in metropolitan capitalisms in the

last twen ty years, i t has been precisely the noticeable increase

of the sizc of the state, measured as the proportion of public

77

expenditu res to GOP. The informat ion p rovidcd by al l types of

sou rces, from national governments to the United Nations De­

ve lopment.Program me (UNOP). and from the World Ban k to the

I M F and the OECO, speak with a single voice: all the states of the

metropolitan capital isms were strengthened in the last twenty

years, despite the fact that many of the governments in those

states have been veritable champions of the anti-state rhetoric

t hat was lau nched with fury at the begi nning of the 1980s. What

happened after the crisis of Keynesian capitalism in the middle

of the 1970S was a relative decrease in the growth rate of public

expenditu re. Fiscal budgets continued to grow uninterruptedly.

although at more modest levels than before. That is why a special

report on this topic in the con servative British magazine The

Economist ( 1 997) is entitled ' Big Government is Still in Charge'.

The writer of this article cannot hide his disappointment at the

slates' tenacious resistance to becoming smaHer as mandated

by the neoliberal catechism. (Hardt and Negri seem not to have

examined this work because the last section of Chapter 3-6 i n

their book i s ent itled 'Big Governmen t is Over!', a heading that

clearly reflects the extent of their misunderstanding of a theme so

crucial to their theoretical argument.) In any case, after a careful

analysi s of recent data on public expenditure in fourteen indus­

trialized cou ntries of the OECO, The Economist concludes that,

despite the neoliberal reforms initiated after the proclaimed new

goals of fiscal austerity and public expenditure reduction between

1980 and 1 996, public expenditure in the selected cou ntries grew

from 43-3 per cent of the GOP to 47.1 per cen t, while in cou n tries

such as Sweden this figure passes the 50 per cent threshold:

'in the last forty years the growth of public expenditure in the

developed economies has been persistent, universal and counter­

productive ', and the objective so strongly proclai med of becoming

a 'small govern ment' apparently has been more a weapon of

electoral rheroric than a true objective of economic policy. Not

even the strongest defenders of the famous 'state reform' and

the shrinking of public expenditure, such as Ronald Reagan and

Margaret Thatcher, managed to achieve any significant progress

in this terrain.

Thus, if th is strengthening of state organizations is verified in

the hea rt of developed capitalisms, the h istory of the periphery

is com pletely different . In the i n ternational reorganization of

the imperialist system under the ideological shield of neol iberal­

ism, states were radically weakened and the economies of (he

periphery were subdued to become more and more open, and

almost withou t any state med iation, (0 the influx of the great

transnational companies and to the policies of the developed

coun tries, mai nly the United States. This process was in no way

a natu ral one, but ins tead was the result of initiatives adopted at

the centre of the empire : the government of the United States,

in its role as ruler, accompanied by its loyal guard dogs (the

IMF, the World Bank, the wro, etc.) and supported by the active

compl icity of the countries of the G-7. This coalition forced ( in

many cases bru tal ly) the indebted cou ntries of the Third World to

apply the policies known as the 'Washi ngton Consensus' and to

transform their economies in accordance with the interests of the

dominant coalition and, especia l ly, of the primus inter pares, the

U nited States. These pol icies favou red the practically unl imited

penetration of American and European corporate interests into

the domestic markets of the southern nations. For that to take

place, it was necessary to d ismantle the public sector in those

cou ntries, produce a real deconstruction of the state and, with

the a im of generating surplus for the payment of these countries'

foreign debt, to reduce public expenditure to the mi nimum, sacri­

ficing in this way vital and impossible-to-postpone expenditure

on h�alth , housing and educat ion . State-owned companies were

first financially drained and then sold at ridiculous prices to the

big corporations of the central countries, thereby creating a space

for the maximum exercise of 'private in itiative' . (Despite that, in

many cases, the buyers were state-owned companies from the

79

004 '7 CD :::s a ::r. o :::s . III a if a :::I a. III o � ;; ca-:::I -<

� industria lized cou ntries.) Another policy imposed on these coun-

� tries was the u n ilateral opening up of the economy, faci l i tating

an i nvasion of imported goods produced in other countries wh i le

the u nemployment rates increased exponentially. It is pertinent

to state that while the periphery was forced to open up commer­

cially, protectionism in the North became more sophisticated.

The deregulation of markets, especially the fi nancial one, was

another of the objectives of the 'capita list revolut ion' in the 1 980s.

Al l together, t hese policies had the result of d ramatically weaken­

ing the states of the peri phery, while fu I fil ling the capitalist dream

of having markets operating without state regulation, as a result

of which the strongest corporate conglomerates actually took

charge of 'regulating' the market, obviously in their own i nterests.

As I said before, these policies were not fortuitous or accidental,

given that the d ismantl ing of t.he states increased s ignificantly

the abi l i ty of i mperialism and foreign companies and nations

to control not only the economic l ife but a lso the pol i t ical l ife

of the cou ntries of the periphery. Of course, we find nothing of

this in Empire. What we do find, instead, are reiterative passages

claiming that imperialist relat.ionships have ended, despite the

fact that the visi bil ity they have acquired in recent decades is so

striking that even the least rad ical sectors of our societies have

no trouble in recognizing them.

A concrete example of the conseque nces of this acute weaken­

i ng of the state in the capitalisms of the periphery has been

stressed by Hondu ran h istorian Ramon Oqueli. Referring to his

country in the m id-1 980s, wit.h its well-established democrat ic

regime, OqueJi observed:

The importance of the president ial elections, with or without

fraud, is relative. The decisions that affect Honduras are first

made in Washington; then in t.he American mil itary com-

mand in Panama ( the Southern Command); afterwards in the

American base command of Palmerola, Honduras; immediately

80

after in the American Embassy in Tegucigalpa; in the fifth place

comes the commander-in-chief of the Honduran armed forces;

and the president of the Republic only appears in sixth place.

We vote, then, for a Sixth-category official in tenns of decision

capacity. The president's functions are limited to managing

m isery and obtaining American loans_ (Cueva 1 986: 50)

Replace Honduras with almost any other Latin American coun­

t l)' and a similar picture wi l l emerge. Obviously, the predominant

mil i tary situation i n those years assigned the a rmed forces a very

special role_ For the coun tries that do not face a serious military

crisis, that central role today fa lls i nto the hands of the Treasury

and the I M F, and the president can, in such a case, move up

the decision ladder to the th ird or fourt h rung, but no further

than that. Regarding the president's main functions - managi ng

misery and obtaining American loans - th ings have not changed.

The Argenti ne case is a shining example of a l l th is .

Continu ing with the probJemalique of the state, our authors

do not seem able to d istinguish between s tate forms and func­

tions and the tasks of states. There is no doubt that the form

of the capitalist state has changed in the last quarter of a cen­

tury. Since the state is not a metaphysical entity bu t a historical

c reature, continually formed a nd reformed by class struggles,

its forms can hardly be i nterpreted as immanent essences float­

ing above the h istorical process. Consequently, the forms of

the democratic state in the developed capitalist countries have

changed. How? There has been real democratic degeneration:

a progressive loss of power formerly i n the hands of congresses

a nd parliaments; the growing u naccountability of governments,

whicl;l goes hand-in-hand with the i ncreasing concentra tion of

power i n t he hands of executives; the proliferation of secret areas

of decision-making (see, for example, the aborted negotiations

of the MAl , the accelerated approval of the NAITA, the current

negotiations behind closed doors to create the Free Trade Area of

8 t

� the Americas); decl i ning levels of governmental response to rhe

i&: claims and demands of civil society; a drastic reduction of com­

petit ion among pOlit ical parties because of increasing simi larities

between the majori[)' pol it ical parties, fol lowing the bipart isan

American model; the tyranny of the markets - in fact, of the

ol igopol ies that control them - that vote every day and capture the

permanent artention of the governments whi le the public votes

every two or three years; related to the aforemcntioned, logical

t rends towards pOl i t ical apathy and individual ist ret raction; the

growing predominance of the big oligopol ies in the mass media

and the cul tural industry; and, lastly, an increasing transference

of the right to make decisions from popular sovereign[), to the

admin istrative and polit ical agencies of the empire, a process that

exists both in the empire's 'exterior provinces' and in its centre.

In the Lat in American case this means that popular sovereign[)'

has been deprived of almost a l l its attributes, and that no strat­

egic decision on economic or social mat ters is adopted in these

countries without previous consultation with, and the approval of,

the relevant agency in Washington. As we can sec, a si tuation l ike

this cannot but contradict the essence of the democratic order,

and popular sovereign[)' is reduced to a mere dead let ter.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos has examined the changes experi­

enced by states under neoliberal globalization and his analysis

confirms that ' there is by no means an overal l crisis of the state,

let alone a terminal crisis of the state, such as suggested by the

mOSI extreme theses of globalizatjon scholars' (de Sousa Santos

1999: 64). The Hobbesian repressive fu nctions of the slate enjoy

thei r vigour both in the periphery and in the centre of the sysrem.

In the former, because the implementation of strongly repressive

pol icies has become necessary to prop up an increaSingly unjust

and unequal capitalist organization, where the numbers of the

exploited and the excluded increase incessantly. In the centre,

on the other hand, because th is occurs especially in the United

States, a Significant proportion of their social problems is dealt

82

with by channell ing people towards the prison syste m, though

this situation also occurs, but less acutely, in other countries. I t

is estimated that today the total number of p ri soners in A merica

a mounts to a figure only surpassed by the populations of the

three major cities of that country, New York, Chicago and Los

A ngeles, and that the overwhelming majority of the convicts

are black or Latino_ As de Sousa Sa ntos correctly notes, in the

social apartheid of contem porary capitalism the state conti nues

to pe rform a crucial role: it is the Hobbesian Leviathan in the

gheuos and the margi nal neigh bourhoods while it guarantees

t he benefits of the social Lockean contract for those who inhabit

the opulent suburbs. Consequently, this state supposedly on the

way to becoming extinct, according to the obfuscated vision of

Hardt and Negri, continues on its way as a divided s tate, almost

schizophre nic: for the poor and the excluded, a fascist state; fo r

the rich, a democratic state. But the vitality of the nation-state is

not measured only in t hese temls; it can also be proved by the role

it plays i n several other fields, such as supranational un ification,

the l iberalization of t he economy, the commercial open ing u p,

the deregulation of the fi nancial system and the elaboration of

an institutional-jurid ical fra mework adequate for the protection

of private companies and the new economic model inspired by

the 'Washi ngton Consensus' . 'What is in c risis is the function of

pro moting non-merca ntile exchanges among citizens,' concludes

de Sousa San tos (ibid_: 64).

As Ellen Meiskins Wood (2000: 1 1 6) demonstrates, the nation­

state con t inues to be the main agent of globa lization. In the

global markets, the need that capital has for the state is even

more pronounced than before. A recent analysis shows that in

the processes of economic restructuri ng, the national states of

metropOl i tan capitalisms, fa r from being the 'victims' of global­

ization, were its main promoters. The international expansion

of the fina ncial, industrial and commercial capital of the United

States, the European countries, Ja pan , South Korea, Si ngapore

� and Taiwan 'was not a macroeconomic phenomenon born inside

� the companies' but, instead, was the product of a political strategy

directed at improving the relative position of those cou ntries

in the changing international economic scene. In this strategy,

actors such as the US Treasu ry, the MITI of Japan, the European

Commission and a group of national state agencies played a

central role (Weiss 1997: 23). This is why Peter Drucker, one of

the most prestigious US gurus, calls our attention to the amaz·

ing persistence of states despite the great changes t hat occurred

i n the world economy and he concludes that they wil l , for sure,

survive the globalization of the economy and the information

technology revolution (Drucker 1997: 1 60).

It seems appropriate to quote what one of the major advocates

of US imperialism has written on these issues, ratifying the key

role played by the capitalist states, and very especially the Ameri­

can state, in globaJization. 'As the country that benefits most from

global economic integration, we have the responsibility of making

sure that this new system is sustainable [ . . . ] Sustaining globaliza·

t ion is our overarching national interest,' says Thomas Friedman.

And the implications of the fact that 'global ization·is·US' the New

York Times columnist does not fa il to notice that 'because we

are the biggest beneficiaries and drivers of global ization, we are

unwittingly putting enormous pressure on the rest of the world'

( Fried man 1 999).

To sum up: the global markets strengthen competi tion be·

tween the giant corporations that dominate the global economy.

Since these companies are transnational in t heir reach and the

range of their operations while still possessing a national base,

in order to succeed in this relentless battle they require the sup·

port of 'their governments' to keep their commercial rivals in

l ine. Aware of this , the national states offer ' their companies' a

menu of alternatives which i nclude the following: the concession

of direct subsidies for national companies; the gigantic rescue

operat ions of banks and com panies, paid in many cases through

taxes applied to workers and consumers; the imposition of fiscal

austerity policies and structural adjustment programmes directed

towards guaranteeing greater profit rates for the companies; the

devaluation or appreciation of the local cu rrency, in order to

favour some fractions of capital while placing the bu rden of the

crisis on other sectors and soc ial groups; the deregulation of

markets; the i mplementation of ' labour reforms' i ntended to

accentuate the submission of workers, weakening both their

capacity to negot iate their wages and their labour unions; the

enforcement of the international immobil ity of workers while

faci l i tating the i nternational mobility of capital; the guarantee

of ' law and order' in societies that experience regressive social

processes of wealth and income re-concentration and mass ive

processes of pauperization; the creat ion ofa legal framework cap­

able of ratifying favou rable terms and opportunities that compa­

nies have enjoyed in the current phase; and the establishment of

a legislation that ' legalizes', in the cou ntries of the periphery, the

imperialist suction of surplus-value and that al lows for the great

profits of the transnational companies to be freely remitted to

their headquarters. These are some of the tasks that the national

states perform and that the 'global logic of the Empire', so exalted

in Hardt and Negri'S analysis, can guarantee only through the

sti l l indispensable mediation of the nation-state (Meiskins Wood

2000: 116-17). That the most prominent and i nfluential members

of the capitaJist class are actively working to destroy such a useful

and formidable instrument as the nation-state can be understood

only by assuming that the capi talist class is made up of id iots

(I must state right away, to clear up possible doubts, that the

capitalist state is not only an instrument of the bourgeoisie but

also m�ny other things, which do not prevent i t from also being

an i ndispensable instrument in the process of capital accumula­

tion).· In l ight of this, Ellen Meiskins Wood concludes:

1 I have examined [ his issue i n detail i n Boron ( 1995).

85

• Of course, it is possible for the state to change its form, and .� � for the traditional nation-state to give room, on the one hand,

to most strictly local states and, on the other hand, to wider

regional political authorities. But regardless of its shape, the

state will still be crucial, and it is likely that for a long time even

the old nation-state will continue to play its dominant role.

( Meiskins wood 2000: 1 17)

6 The unsolved mystery of the multitude

Obsessive denial of the realit ies of the nation-state leads Hardt

and Negri to a political dead-end. Let uS review, therefore, a pas­

sage from Empire that ' analysed from another perspective in

Chapter 5. In that chapter I said that, together with the terminal

crisis of the state, Hardt and Negri a lso observed 'the decline

] of any i ndependent space where revolut ion could emerge

i n the national poli t ical regime, or where social space could be

transformed using the instruments of t he s tate' (pp. 307-8).

Consequently, withou t the oxygen provided by that space, the

name of revolution is extinguished. I f th is is true, how can one

break t he iro n cage of the empire? The answer offered by the

authors is s i lence. The word ' revolution' is mentioned only five

or six t imes in the thick volume u nder analysis, and the subject

occu pies a lot less space than the ten pages assigned to the study

of population mobility or the eleven pages devoted to a discussion

of republ icanism. How can such noisy silence be u nderstood?

The vague references to 'the mult i tude' in the final chapter

of Empire do not offer any clues as to how th is oppressive world

order - much more oppressive than the preceding one, it should

be remembered - may some day be transcended. The problem is

not only that the references to the mult i tude are vague. M ichael

Hardt acknowledged in a recent i nterview that, ' in our book the

concept of mult i tude works as a poetic concept rather tha n as a

factual one' (Cangi 2002: 3). Hard t is right about that , because ,

such a notion i s, sociologically speaking, empty, t hough it is

necessary to recognize that i t has a considerable poetic force

which makes it extremely attractive. We are told that the mult i ­

tude is the totality of the creative and productive subject ivities

that 'express, nourish, and develop positively t heir own constitu­

ent projects' and that they 'work toward the l iberation of l iving

labor, creating constel lations of powerful singularities' (p. 61).

Thus, with a stroke of the pen, social classes disappear from

the scene a nd the distinction between exp loiters and exploited

and between the weak and the powerful evaporates. What is left

after this shadowy operation is an amorp hous mass of h ighly

creative singularities that, if existent, would put t he t hesis of

the alienat ing character of labour and da i ly l i fe in capitalist

societies i n serious trouble. If we appl ied Hardt and Negri's

work to the prosaic rea lity of contem porary Lat in America, we

should ask ourselves if the para mil ita ries and death squads that

razed C h iapas and a good part of Centra l America , sowing ter­

ror and death, are i ncluded in the multitude; or the landowners

who organize and finance a great pa rt of the private repreSSion

exened in those countries against peasa n ts and aborigi nal com­

mu nities; or the financial speculators and t he bou rgeoisie who

supponed mil itary regimes in the past and who today undermine

the languishing democracies. Does t h is category include those

who, in the name of capital, control the cul tural ind ustry of Latin

America at their pleasure? Do h umil iated and exploited peasan ts,

blacks, I ndians, cholos and mestizos form pa n of the m u l t itude

too? And what a bout the urban 'proletaria t ' sunk i n excl usion

a nd misery, the workers and the u ne mployed, the single mothers

and overexploi ted women, the sexual minorities, the ch ildren

of the streets, the paupe rized elde rly, public employees and the

impoverished middle classes? If t hey are not in t h is ca tegory,

where can this vast conglomerate be placed socially? And if they

indeed share their place in the mult itude with the social agents

of exploita tion and repression, wh at sense is there in using such

a category? What is i t t hat i t describes, to say nothing of what

i t could explain? Empire does not offer any such expla nations.

I t is, as Hard t said i n the interview mentioned above, a poetic

concept. But poetry is not always useful for explain ing reality, or

88

for cha nging i t . Sometimes, good poetry makes bad sociology,

and this seems to be the case here.

Leaving aside these disagreeable observations, the progra mme

proposed for the multi tude is explai ned in the fi na l chapter of the

book. The combi nation of the basic precepts o f the neoliberal

theory of globa lization and a sociologically amorphous concept

such as that o f the 'm uhitude' results in a cautiously reform·

ist poli t ical programme and, to make things worse, not a very

realistic one. An 'abstract internationalism' permeates it and th is

resul ts i n what t he a uthors cal l thc 'first element of a poli t ica l

program for the global mult i tude, a first political demand: global

citizenship' (p. 400, emphasis in original). I ca n not d isagree with

this claim, an old aspi rat ion a l ready proposed by Kant and that

Marx a nd Engels recovered a nd redefined within the framework

of the i nternationalism proclaimed with so m uch vigour in the

Manifesto. But Cit izenship has a lways i nvolved a set of rights and

prerogatives as well as req u iring the creation of adequate chan·

nels of polit ical participation that, to be effect ive and not i l lusory,

must be realized wit h i n a legal and i nstitutional framework such

as, in recent h istory, was provided by the nation·state. Whoever

speaks of citizenship, speaks of power, relationshi ps of force, a nd

the state as the basic framework within which a j u ridical order i s

elaborated a n d su pponed. S i nce, accordi ng to Hard t a n d Negri,

t he state faces an irreversible decl ine, with i n what fra mework is

the emancipating and panicipative poten tial of the cit izenship to

be realized? 'Abstract internationalism' believes that the solution

for most of our problems l ies i n the empowerment of civil society

and the construction of a global and cosmopol itan ci tizenship.

The problem is that , in its arroga nt a bstraction, this i nterna·

tionalism rel ies on 'an abstract and l itt le real istic notion of an ,

i nternational civil society or global citizenship' and on the i l lusion

that the world can be cha nged if t he representation of the left a nd

the popular movements - let us say for a moment, the mult i tude

- are strengthened within the la rge transnational organ izations

89

such as the I M F (Meiskins wood 2000: u8). Though the argu·

ment developed in Empire is not very c lear about this, it seems,

however, to be in l ine with a certain type of reason ing that in

recent years has aequired great popularity thanks to the efforts of

a wide range of intellectuals and ·experts' connected to the World

Ban k and other international financial i nstilutions. The proposals

out l ine, especial ly in the framework of national societies, t he

begi n n i ng of a process of 'devolution' to civi l soeiety functions

that had been improperly appropriated by the state. Obviously.

these pol icies are · the other side of the coin' of the privatizations

a nd the dismantl ing of the public sector that the interna tional

financial institut ions have promoted over the last twenty years.

Such changes seek to provide a solution to the crisis triggered

by the state's desertion of its responsibil it ies in the provision of

public welfare - providing social assistance, ed ucation, heal thcare

and so on - transferring to civil society the task of deal ing with

these issues whiJe incidental ly preserving a balanced fiscal budget

and, eventually, guaranteeing the existence of a surplus in the

fiscal aceounts in order to fund the foreign debt. If this pol icy of

empowerment of civil society is u nreal istic at the national level ,

i ts transference to the international level deepens the cracks ap­

parent in its own foundations. The so-cal led global civil society,

far from bei ng liberated from class l i mitations that make impos­

si ble the fu l l expansion of ci tizens' rights in national societ ies,

suffers from these same l imitations even more acutely, riddled

as it is by abysmal economic and soc ial inequalities and by the

oppressivc features inscribed in its structures, norms and ru les of

operation. If democracy and citizenship have proved to be such

elusive and praetical ly ungraspable objectives in the capitalisms

of the periphery, why should we expect them to be obtainable in

the even less unfavou rable terrain of the internat ional system?

The price that Hardt and Negri pay for ignoring this i s the

extreme naivety of their proposal , c loser to a religious exhor­

tation than to a rea l istic socia l-democra tic demand . According

90

[0 i t , capi talists should acknowledge that capital is created by

rhe workers and, therefore, accept 'in postmodernity [ ] the

fu ndamental modem const itutional principle that links right and

labor, and thus rewards with citizenship the worker who creates

capital' (p. 400). The mult itude's emaneiparion, conseq uently,

seems to ru n along t he following course: ' If in a first moment

the mult itude demands thaI each state recogn ize juridieally the

migrations that a re necessary to capital , in a second moment i t

must demand control over the movements themselves' (p. 400).

Conseq uently, our a uthors conclude: 'The general right to control

its own movement is tile multitude 's ultimate demand for global

citizenship' (p. 400, emphasis in original). It is of no use to search

the book for a discussion of the reasons why large n umbers o f our

people have to emigrate, desperately seeking to be exploited in the

metropolitan capitalisms, since the destru ction - sometimes the

silent genocide - practised in the periphery a nd the deterioration

of every form of civil ized life under the rise of neoliberalism a re

completely a bsent from the pages of Empire. Sim ila rly useless

would be the search for a serious d iscussion about the reach and

l i mitations that migntion and a nomad ic way of l ife would have

in a (revolut ionary?) project that wou ld al low the mult itudes to

take control of their lives; putting an end to the slave ry of waged

labour and of nom i mally 'free' subjects throughout the world.

Because of th is, the equation between migrat ion/nomadism and

li berat ion/revolution acquires i l lusory characteristics.

The second component of the supposedly emancipating pro­

gra mme of the multitude in its effon to defeat the empire is t he

right to a soc ial wage and a guara nteed minimum income for

everybody. This demand goes one step beyond the fa mily wage,

puttipg an end to the unpaid labour of workers' wives a nd fam i ly

m em bers. The distinct ion betwecn productive and reprod uctive

la bour fades in t he biopolit ical context of the empire, si nce it is

the mul titude in i ts totaliry that produces and reproduces the

social l ife. Th us, 'The demand for a social wage extends to the

9 1

entire population the demand that al l activity necessary for the

prod uction of capital be recognized with an equal compensation

such that a social wage is real ly a guaranteed income' (p. 403).

Once again, fine intentions with which everybody can agree. But it

i s pertinent to formulate some questions: fi rst, is not t h is second

component of the emanCipating programme extremely similar

to the 'citizens' wage' that, with some restrictions i t is true, has

been conceded in some of the most advanced industria l ized

democracies of the North? Is i t so different from the moderate

social-democrat reformism in place in some of the Scandinavian

countries, especially Sweden? It does not seem so. Instead, i t

appears that th is would be the deepening of a trend going back

almost half a century wi thout, at least as seen fTom here, having

checkmated the capitalists or neutral ized the exploitative charac­

ter of the bourgeois relationShips of production. Authors such as

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, for example, thoroughly ex­

a m ined different intemational experiences with what they called

'the citizens' wage' without being able to infer from their analysis

a conclusion that al lows us to support the thesis that in states in

which such a wage has been establ ished - with greater or lesser

rad ical ism - the multitude has been emancipated (Bowles and

Gintis 1982, 1986). Second: how would the capitalist class respond

to the implementat ion of a measure sllch as the aforementioned,

which, despite its l imi tat ions, has an enormous distributive cost?

Would they accept it without ferocious resistance? This leads,

obviously, to a discussion that postmodern thinkers abhor but

which imposes itself with the same u navoidable power as the

universal law ofgravity. We are talking, with Machiavel l i , about the

problematic of power and how i t i s obta ined, exerted a nd lost.

The third political demand of the mult i tude is the right to

reappropriation. I t i s a right that conta ins diverse d imensions,

from language, communication and knowledge to machines,

and from biopolitics to the conscience. This last component is

partieu larly problematic because i t 'dea ls d i rectly with the con-

92

stituent power of the multi tude - or really with the prod uct of

the creative imagination of the multitude that configures i ts own

constitution' (p. 406). On this point, which covers as we know a

crucial topic i n Negri 's thought, such as the constituent power,

the authors i ncessantly t ravel between the constitution of (he

mult i tude as a social actor - and here a wide space opens in which

to discuss to what extent this process can be i nterpreted as the

only resul t of its 'creative imagination' - and the consti tution of

the U nited States as it appears, in a particu larly ideal ized fash­

ion and, for a moment, naively interp reted , by the authors. This

becomes evident when, for example, they say: 'the postmodern

multitude takes away from the US Constitution what allowed it

to become, above and against a l l other constitutions, an i mperial

const itution : its notion of a boundless frontier of freedom a nd

its defini tion of a n open spatiality and temporality celebrated i n

a constituent power' (p. 406).

There are a few l i ttle problems with this interpretation. First,

the belief that the so-ca lled postmodern mu ltitude knows the

American constitution or somethi ng l ike it, its debates and its

lessons; in the best of all possible worlds th is is sti l l a remote pos­

sibility. If u nder the label of 'multitude' Ha rdt and Negri i nclude

the more than two bil l ion people who barely survive on one or

two dollars a day and without access to potable water, sewerage

systems, electricity and telephones, without food or housing, i t

is somewhat hard to understand how they manage to imbibe the

marvellous emancipating teachings of the US constitution . If, on

the cont ra ry, the authors are referring to the graduate students

of Duke or Paris, then the chances improve, though not greatly.

But these are minor details. The serious issue is their idealization

of the America n const itution . Noam Chomsky has a rgued repeat· I

edly that this document, so admired by the authors of Empire,

was conceived 'to keep the ra bble in l ine ' a nd to prevent them

from, even by accident or by mistake, having the idea (let a lone

the practical possibi l ity) that they m ight want to rule the destiny

93

of the United States or even govern themselves. The American

const itution is decisively and consciously a nt i·democratic and

anti-popular, in accordance with what i ts most important original

architects repeatedly declared. For James Madison, the main task

of the constitution was that of 'assuring the supremacy of the

permanent in terests of the country, that are no others than the

property rights' . This opinion from one of its wri ters probably

went un noticed by Hardt and Negri, but i ts force obl iges us seri­

ously to redefine the role that they assign to the US constitu­

t ion, especially when we consider that Madison's words were

pronounced in a country that at the time had a great part of its

territory organ ized as a slave economy, a nd tha t the idea of the

incipient constitution becoming a beacon for the emancipation of

the multitude of the day, mainly slaves, apparently d id not enter

his thoughts_ M oreover, to avoid attacks on the righ ts of property,

Madison shrewdly designed a pol i t ical system that d iscouraged

popular participation (something that persists today, with a very

low t um-out for e lections which, on top of evel)1hing else, are

held on working days), and fragmented the process of decision­

making, while he reaffirmed the i nstitutional balances tha t would

guarantee that power would remain fi rmly i n the hands of those

who controlled the wealth of the cou ntry. As Chomsky obsclVes,

these opinions of Madison in the constitut ional debate of Phila·

delphia are less well known than those expressed in the famous

Federalist Papers, but they may be more revealing of the true

spiri t of the constitution than the formal declarat ions voiced to

the general public. It is no coincidence that, as the bri l l iant M IT

l inguist remarks, i n a country where the publish ing i ndustry is

so dynamic, the most recent edi tion of those debates dates from

1 838. The American people was not supposed to know about

the ideas t hese gen tlemen discussed in the convention (Boron

20oob: 2 28). In short, the constitu tion of the United States cou ld

hardly be an i nvitation 10 travel through ' the infinite front iers

of freedom', as the authors nai\'eiy proclaim, since sti l l today,

94

and despite successive reforms (one of which prohi bi ted the con­

sum ption of a lcoholic beverages), it prevents t.he American multi­

tude from directly electing their president. Thanks to the norms

and procedures established in this much-adm i red constitut ion ,

during t h e last presidential elect ion t he candidate who came sec­

ond in terms of the number of votes cast by the citizenship could

legal ly become president. Apparently, the authors had not noticed

the dangers lurking within the constitutional text . Malcolm Bull

(2003: 85) is surely right when he assens that : 'Although hai led by

Slavoj Zizck as "the Communist Manifesto for our t ime", Empire

is more Jeffersonian than MaIXist. ' I would add that the book is

much more Jeffersonian than Marxist.

Another serious problem emerging from the issue of the rights

of appropriat ion is the fol lowing: Hardt and Negri stand on solid

ground when they write: 'The right to reappropriation is first of

al l the right to the reappropriation of the means of production'

(p. 406). The old social ists and communists, they say, demanded

that the proletariat should have free access to the machines and

materials needed in the production process. But s ince one of

the d ist inctive signs of post moderni ty i s the coming of what

Hardt and Negri ca l l 'the immaterial and biopolit ical produc­

tion', the concrete contents of the old left and the labour unions'

demands have been transformed . Now the m u l ti tude not only

uses machines for production but, according to the authors, i t

'also becomes increasingly machinic itself, as the means of pro­

duction are increasingly inregrated into the m inds and bodies of

the multitude' (p. 406). The consequence of this mutat ion is that

a genuine reappropriation requires free access and control over

not only machines and equ ipment but also over ' knowledge, in­

forrQation, communications, and affects - because these are some

of the primary means of biopol i t ical product ion' (p- 407). Now,

let us analyse two not very trivial inconveniencies that emerge

from the precedi ng argument. Fi rst, how do the knowledge, the

information, the commun ication and the affects relate to the

95

.!! VI

'classic' material means of product ion and the materials that are

still required to produce most of the goods necessary to sustain

l ife on this planet? Or are we in the presence of autonomized

segments of the postmodem biopol it ical production? Are those

segments or instruments avai lable for anyone? Are the know­

ledge, the information and the communication capable of circu­

lating freely through all classes, social strata and groups of the

em pire'? How can the growing monopolistic features acquired by

the informat ion and mass commu nication industries all over the

world be explained? And regard ing knowledge, what can be said

about patents and the crucial issue of intel lectual property rights,

a new method of pi l lage in the hands of the main transnational

companies of the industrialized countries that are looting entire

continents with the active support of their governments?

Second, do we have to assume that the owners and/or those

who control these new and very complex and expensive means

of production will peaceful ly and gently yield their property and

i ts control , t hrowing overboard the basis of their wealth and

poli tical domination itself? Why would they act in such a way,

unprecedented in the mil lenary history of class struggles? Wou ld

they be led to do th is because their hearts woul d become ten­

der before the shining vision of the self-constitu ted multitude

marching jubilantly towards i ts l iberation? I f this is not the case,

which recommendation would our authors make regarding the

unavoidable intensificat ion of class st ruggles and the poli t ical

repression that wou ld surely fol low as a response to the emanci­

pating in i tiatives of the multi tude?

The fourth di mension of the political programme of the multi­

tude is the organization of the mult i tude as a pol i tical subject, as

posse. The au thors i ntroduce here the Latin word posse to refer to

power as a verb, an activity. Thus, posse 'is what a body and what

a mind can do' (p. 408). In the postmodern society, the constitu­

ent power of labour can be expressed as the egal itarian right of

citizensh ip in the world or as the righ t to communicate, construct

96

languages and con trol the communication networks; and also as a

political power, which is to say, 'as the constitution of a society in

which the basis of power is defined by the expression of the needs

of al l ' (p. 4 10). Due to the latter, Hardt and Negri conclude with

a surp risi ngly triumphant tone, 'The capacity to constru ct places,

temporalit ies, migra tions, and new bodies already affirms its

hegemony through the actions of the multitude against Empire'

(p. 4 1 1). They wa rn, though, that a small difficu lty still persists:

'The only event that we are sti l l awaiting is the construction, or

rather the insu rgence, of a powerful organization' (p. 41 1). Sens­

ibly t hey recognize that they have no model to offer regarding this

organiza tion, but they are confident that ' the multitude through

i ts practical experimentation wi ll offer th e models and determi ne

when and how the possible becomes real ' (p. 411). Some clues,

however, were provided in an earlier chapter where we read that

'The real heroes of the l iberation of the Third world today may

really have been the em igrants and the flows of population that

have dest royed old and new bou ndaries. Indeed, the postcolonial

hero is the one who con tinually t ransgresses territorial and racial

bou ndaries, who destroys part icu lari sms and points toward a

common civil ization' (pp. 362-3). Th is is an enigmatic statement

because it obl iquely i nd uces us to t hink, first, that the Third

World has already ach ieved its l iberation; second, that the mul·

titudes of the Third world have also succeeded in their attempt

to l iberate themselves (an amazing revelation for four-fifths of

the world popu lation); th ird, tha t the hero of such a great deed

is the migra nt who abandons his native land to enter Europe or

the Uni ted S tates, in most cases i l legally, in search of a better l ife .

The a lchemy of theory h a s converted emigra t ion t o revol ution.

97

7 Notes for a sociology of revolutionary thinking in times of defeat

Empire concludes with a political programme for the multitude,

whose most i m portant features h ave bee n outlined i n the previ­

ous chapter. Once again, the fragi l ity of the a nalysis m anages to

debunk both their very good inten tions and their noble goals. The

appendix at the end of the last chapter is extraordi narily eloquent,

since it d iscusses the issue of political act.ivism and fin ishes with

a hal luci nat ory reference to St Francis.

This brief eXClirsus begi ns very nicely, wi t h the a ssertion that

today's pol itical act ivist is in no way similar to the 'sad, ascetic

agcnt of the Third International whose soul was deeply penneated

by Soviet state reason' (p. 4 1 1 ). On the contrary, today's activi st is

inspired by the imagc of the 'com munist and l i bera tory co m bat­

ants of the twentie th-century revol utions' (p. 4 1 2), a mong whom

we must include those inteUectuals who were persecuted a nd

exiled during the fascist era, the republ icans of the Spanish civil

war, the mem bers of the anti-fascist res istance, a nd those who

fough t for freedom i n the anti-colo n ia l ist and anti- i mperia l ist

wars. The mission of the poli tical activist has always been, and

today more than ever, to orga nize and act, and n ot to represent . I t

is precisely t h e i r co nstitu tive act ivity a n d n o t their represen tat ive

act ivity that characte rizes t hem. ' M i l i tancy today is a positive,

constmctive, and i n novative a(;livi�' ( ] M i l itants re sist imp erial

command in a creative way' (p. 4 1 3). The culm ination of this

l ine of reasoni ng, nevertheless, d oes not lead the reader to Che

Guevara o r Fidel Cast ro, nor to Nelson Ma ndela . Ho Chi M i n h ,

M a o Zedong o r Den Bel la, b u t t o S [ Fra ncis o f Assisi . Accord i ng

to H ardt and Negri , St Fra ncis denounced the poverty that was

strik ing the multitude of his t imc, and he adopted it as one of the

rules of the begging o rder thai he would later fou nd , d i scovering

in poverty

the ontological power of a nt.'w society. The communist militant

does the same, ident ifying in the common cond ition of the

muitilllde its enormous wealth. Francis in opposition to nascent

capitalism refused evet}' type of instru mental discipline. and i n

opposition t o the mortification of t h e flesh ( in poverty a n d in the

constituted o rder) he posed a joyous l i fe, includ ing all of being

and nature, the animals. sister moon, brother sun, the birds of

the field, the poor and exploited humans. together aga inst the

will of power and corruption . (p. 41 3)

I n t he post modern world . H ardt and Negri co ntin ue. 'we find

ourselves i n Fra ncis's s i tuat ion, p os i ng aga i n st t he misery o f

power t h e joy of bei ng' (ibid.) . T h e outcome of t h i s m isplaced,

and dangerous, analogy can only be a very pecu l iar u ndersta nding

of t he meaning o f revolution in our t ime, 'a revolution t hat no

power will conrrol - because biopower and communism, coopera­

tion and revolution remai n together, in love, simplicity, a nd a lso

i nnocence. This is the i rrepressible l igh tness and joy of being

commun ist' ( ibid.) .

So wha t is i t that H ardt and Negri suggest? That the multitude

within the e m pi re, i nsp i red by the example set by 5t Francis,

should play gentle melodies on the i r viol ins to pacify the Levia·

t h a n s of neoli bera l globa lization, just as St fra ncis d id with the

wild anim als i n t he woods? Or that the i n noce n t songs to l i fe

sung by the p roduct ive m u lt itude will convi n ce the masters of

t he world of their u nworthiness and gu ilt, and henee they will

give up their p rerogat ives, wealth a n d p rivilege? For the sake of

h u m.a n i ty, we can only hope that these new postmodern com­

muni st activists will be somewha t more successful i n defea ting

capitalism than the fra nciscan order, and that t he outcome of

their activism will be more productive both in terms of the eradi­

cation of pove rty and of the ema ncipation of mankind than that

99

c obtained long ago by the prayers and sacrifices of 5t Francis.

j A carefu l reading of Empire allows us to conclude that the

authors' goal of displaying a sophist icated analysis of the world

order ends in fai l u re. How can we explain the b l ind ness of

these [\Yo communist academics to the inherently i mperialist

nature of the intemationaJ system? Throughout th is book, I have

mentioned some factors that I feel need to be taken i nto account

in order to explain the authors' fa il ure to achieve their goal: the

extremely formalist and legalistic point of departure; the weak·

ness of the instru ments used to analyse polit ical economy; the

lack of very basic economic data; the naive acceptance of several

neoliberal and postmodern axioms; the con fusing heritage of

structuralism and its visceral rejection of the subject; and, last

but not least, the unsett l ing effects o f a radically mistake n theory

of the state.

Given the formidable intellectual calibre of Hardt and Negri,

especial ly in the case of the Italian academic wi th his strong

experience in the fields of Marxist social and political philosophy,

how can we explain such d isappointing results? In an outstanding

piece of work, Terry Eagleton provides some hints that might

help us solve the puzzle. In order to faci l i tate comprehension of

his argument. Eagleton invites us to i magine the impact that an

overwhelming defeat would have on a radical d issident move'

ment. assuming that this defeat seems to erase from the public

agenda the topics and proposals of the movement not only for

the l i fetime of i ts members but probably for ever. As time goes

by, the movement's central theses become more characterized

by their i rrelevance than by their falseness. The movement's op'

ponents no longer bother to debate or refute them, but i nstead

they contemplate these theses with a strange combination of

indifferent curiosity, 'of the same type that one can have towards

the cosmology of Ptolemy or the scholastics of Thomas Aquinas'

(Eagleton 1997: 17)·

What are the pract ica l alternatives that these antagonists face,

100

given the aforemen tioned political and ideological catastrophe,

i n which a world of seemi ngly u nmoving and obj ective certain­

ties, of determ inant structures, o f 'laws of motion' and efficient

causes, has suddenly van ished l i ke morn i ng fog, giving place to

a colourful galaxy of social fragments, hazardous contingencies

and brief circumsta nces whose endless com bi nations have led

to t he bankru ptcy not only of Marxism but also of the whole

theoretical heritage of the Enlightenment? Eagleton asserts t hat,

for a 'post modern sensibility', the central Marxist ideas are more

often ignored than fough t agai nst: it is no longer about their

wro ngness, but i nstead, i t is a bout t heir i rreleva nce. The Berl i n

Wall has already fallen; the Soviet Union has su ffe red a gigantic

implosion, and for many today it is a blu rred memory; capital ism,

markets and liberal democracy seem to wi n everywhere, accord i ng

to Francis Fukuyamaj the old work i ng class has been atomized by

post-fordism ; t he nation-states seem to be undergoing a messy

withd rawal, kneeling l ike serfs i n front of the strength of global

markets; the Warsaw Pact has been d issolved in embarrassm entj

social democracies shamelessly embrace neoliberalism; China

opens up to fo reign capital a n d becomes part of the wro; and

the former 'socia list camp' disappears from the i nternational

arena. What should we do?

Eagleton proposes some i n teresting alternatives that i l lumi·

nate not only the rou tes probably walked by the au thors, but

also the i t ineraries covered by many o f those who, in the La tin

American context of the 1960s and 1970s, extolled the im mine nce

of the revolution and awaited wi th their arms ready the arrival

of t he 'decisive day'. We can find, on the one hand, t hose who

either cynica l ly or sincerely moved to the right. On the other

hand there a re those who stayed o n t he left, but who did so wi th

resignation a nd nostalgia , given the i nexorable d issolution of

their identity. There are stil l others who have closed their eyes

i n delusional triumphalism, recognizing in the weakest traces

of a street demonstration or a strike clear signs of the imminent

101

,. .. o " o·

{ o -

� o C �. o :::I D � ;. 5· lIr" !i"

ca

c outbreak of revolution. Final ly, there are those who keep their

j radical impu lse al ive, but who have had to redirect it to regions

other than the pol it ical arena ( ibid.).

Hard t and N egri lind themselves, we could argue, within the

complex field that defines th is fourth a lternative. They have not

moved to the right, as Regis Debray or ( in Latin America) M ario

Vargas L10sa have done. Nor have they remained in the deep and

pai n fu l perception of the defeat of a set of ideas in wh ich they

st i l l be l ieve, nor have they bl indfolded themselves by pretending

that nothing has occu rred and search the planet for signs that

forecast the return of the revolution. Their a ttitude has been

healthier: open ing, search ing, reconstruction . Needless to say, a

process of t his type carries with it the inevitable risk of involuntar·

i1y accepting a premise that , in the long run, can frustrate the

renovating project: the idea 'that the system is, at least for the time

being, unbeatable' (ibid .). From here, a series of theoretical and

practical conseq uenccs emerge that, as r will explain below, are

neatly reflected in the postmodem agenda. On the one hand , an

almost obsessive in rerest i n the exami nation of the social forms

that grow in the margins or in the interst ices of the system; on

the other hand, the search for those social forces that at least for

now could commit some sort of t ransgression against the system,

or could promote some type of l imited and ephemeral subversion

against it. The celebration of the marginal and the ephemeral , the

prejud ice that 'minori ty' is a synonym for l iberation (bl urring the

role played by a vel)' special minority, namely the bourgeoisie),

wh i le the mass ive and central , the non-marginal , i s demonized,

has become pa rt of th is new poli t ical and cultural ethos. I f the

system appears to be not only inexpugnible but a lso oppressive,

the abandonment of a 'modern' t heorization such as the Ma rxist

one leaves no escape other than its purely imaginary neg-a tion.

In this way ' the other' , the different, arises as the supposed an·

tagon ist of the existing order, And it is precisely its 'otherness'

that guarantees the radical ism of i ts antagon ism, when it lurn�

102

it into someth ing i m possible to assimilate and therefore i n to t.he

only ( i l lusory) al te rn ative to the system.

The ou tcome of a product ion that is consistent with its poi nt

of departure, the i nvinci b i l ity of the system, is what Eagleton

ca lls ' l ibertarian pessimism' ( ibid. : 19). Pessim ism, because the

system prese nts itself as omn ipotent and ove rbeari ng; l i bertarian,

because i t al lows u S to dream about mult iple subversions a nd the

overcom i ng of the system, withou t im plying the ident i fication

of flesh and blood agents ca pable of turning those dreams into

reality. The system is everywhere a n d it cancels the distinction

between 'inside' and ·outside': wha tever is i n side is part of its

machinery and is therefo re an accom plice; whatever is outside

is un able to defeat it . This is the main source of the rad ical

pessimism that permeates this line of thought, regard less of i ts

proclaimed revolutionary i ntentjons.

Eagleton 's work is extraord inarily suggestive and - written at

the same ti me that Hardt and Negri were working on the writing

of Empire - i t a n t ic ipates with outstand ing sharpness some of the

general fea tures prese n t i n that theorization. Like the system, the

empire is omni present, and although the authors by no means as­

sert that the empire is invincible, the tonc used in their argu ment

culm i nates with a pessim istic re mark that st.rongly resem b les

capi tu la t io n . Throughout the book , t.he conserva tive forces of

order are i n fi n itely m ore powerful and e ffective than t hose al­

legedly called upon to destroy the empire. Aga i nst the powers

of the bom b , t he money, language a n d i mages, there a rises a

Th ird World 'hero' wh o i nstead of em bracing rcvolution selects

em igrat ion . Moreover, l he empire recognizes no 'outside' and

' inside'; we are al l ' inside' and, even though t h is is not expl icitly

menSioned, we are a l l subjected to its arbitrary modes and its

oppression. The one thing that can brea k i t down is the unforesee­

able act jon of the ideal ized 'other', the m ult i tude, marked as it

is by an in finite com bination of inexha ustible singu l a ri ties. The

classes and the people, categories of i nclusion at a time when

1 03

c there were stil l 'national' capital ism and nation-states, become

j volatile in the work of Hard t and Negri and they leave space for the

hopeful negativity of the multitude. And some features that the

authors identify as carrying a radical answer to the system - 'dif·

ference', 'hybridation', heterogeneity a nd inexhausti ble mobility

- are, as specified once again by Eagleton, 'native to the capitalist

mode of production and therefore t hey are i n no way inherently

rad ical phenomena' (ibid.: 21 ).

In a ny case, this syndrome is far from being unique i n the

history of Marxism and revolutionaty thought. Perry Anderson

detected this with his habitual shrewdness in a relevant piece

of scholarship published at a very special point in t ime, 1 976,

when Keynesian capitalism and the social-democratic strategy

(fol lowed by both socialist and communist parties, especia l ly

in Italy, France and Spain) were decl in ing and when the first

s igns of the neolibera.l coun ter-revolu tion were starting to show.

I am referring, of course, to Considerations on Western Marxism, a

book that was conceived to examine a different h istorical process,

that of the 1920S and early 1 930s, a period that was a lso deeply

characterized by defeat. However, it is not my purpose here to

try to reconstruct an imaginary dia logne between Eagleton and

Anderson, though I bel ieve i t would be very enlightening. given

the chal lenge that u nderstanding the theoretical mess presemed

in Empire entai ls .

Defeat duri ng the 1920S, defeat once again during the 1980s;

a l ine of thought characteristic of that which Hannah Arendt

would portray with extraordinary subtlety in her revision of the

hard times undergone by the brigh t men and women who lived

during the t imes that Bertolt Brecht called t he 'dark ages'. A

look at the l ives of Rosa Luxemburg, Walter Benjamin or Bertoli

Brecht h imself, just to mention some of those who dedicated

their l ives to socialist ideals, reveals some extremely i nteresting

teachings_ For exa mple, the fact that unt i l the moment at which

the catastrophe took place, the truth was h idden behind a thick

104

fog of d iscourses, double d iscourses and various mechanisms

that effectively concealed the ugly facts and d issipated the most

reasonable doubts. Such concealment was possible thanks to

the work of both public servants and good·hearted intellectuals.

Then , all of a sudden, tragedy emerged (Arendt 1 968: viiil. Isn't

it possible, then, that Hard t and Negri have become victims of

[he way in which i ntellectual product ion is undertaken by those

who live during dark ages? There is no way for us to know. [n any

event , Eagleton has pro\'ided us with some clues that wil l help u s

understand t h e difficulties faced by left·wing intellectuals t rying

to explain the most abominable aspects of our t ime. Anderson

adds some other clues that mesh very smoothly with those sug·

gested by Eagleton. This Marxism of defeat 'has paradoxically

reversed the trajectory of Marx's own intellectual development'

(Anderson 1 976: 52). If the founder of historical materialism

turned from philosophy to politics and from poli t ics to pol itical

economy, the 'Western Marxist' t radition reversed this path and

quickly searched for a place to h ide - both from revolutionary

defeat at the hands of fascism and from the frustration ariSing

from i ts 'triumph' and consolidation i n the USSR - i n the most

abstruse areas of philosophy. The path of the young Marx from

philosophy to pol i t ics was based on the conviction that 'the

radical character of social criticism requires for us to go to a

deeper level of analysis than tha t of the abstract man, and that

in order to u nderstand the man i n context we need to delve into

the anatomy of the civil society' (Boron 2oooa: 302). In walking

backwards in Marx's steps i nstead of goi ng forwards, phi losophi'

cal and epistemological thought have once agai n been put at the

centre of the scene, overshadowing the pol it ical, economic and

historical worries of the founder. This reorientation towards the ,

philosoph ical and the metaphysical, clearly reflected i n Empire,

goes hand·in·hand wilh a second feature recognized by Anderson

as one of the d istinctive marks of West em Marxism in the period

between the two world wars (Anderson 1976: 5). As he explains,

105

c this brand of Marxism was characteri2ed by its esoteric language � JI and its inaccessibil i ty to anyone not already immersed i n the

field: 'The excess above and beyond the necessary verbal com­

plexity was a sign of its d ivorce from any popular pract ice: This

conceptual prol iferat ion becomes manifest i n some symptoms

that are also apparent in Hardt and Negri 's work: the language

is unnecessarily d ifficult; the syn tax is, at times, impenetrable,

and there is a needless lise of neologisms that only contributes

to a more hermetic work. Finally, there is one last element t.hat

chara(·teri2es this theoretical regress ion : 'Due to the lack of mag­

netism that the existence of a class-based social movement can

provide, t he Marxist tradition has leaned more and more towards

the contemporary bourgeois culture: And, Anderson suggests,

'the original relat ionship berween M arxist theory and proletari an

practice was swiftly but fi rmly substi tuted by a new relationship

between Marxist theory and bourgeois theory' (ibid_ : 55). The

truthfulness of this assertion can be confirmed rather easi ly, j ust

by ta ki ng a look at the list of aut hors discussed by Hardt and

Negri. very few of whom have had a ny sort of participat ion in

a ny of the big fights led by the classes a nd the popular sectors

of society in t he last twenty years.

In an i nterview that took place recently, M ichael H ardt offered

some interesting clues rega rding the reasons for the astonishing

theoretieal involution that beeomes apparent throughout Empire.

During the interview, he observed that, in Marx's t ime, revolution­

ary thought recognized three main sources of inspiration: Ger­

man phi losophy, British political economy and French pol itics:

' Nowadays [ . . . ) the orientations have changed and revolutionary

thought is guided by French phi losophy, North Ameriean eco­

nom ic science, and I tal ian polities' (Hard t 2001)_ Hardt is right,

as long as he is referring to the orientation that guided h is own

work and not to the sources that inspire revolutionary t hought.

I n fact. both French philosophy and the economie theories that

are t aught in most business schools t.hroughout the United States

106

play a predomi nant role i n Empire. Of course, nothing al lows us

to assume that these new theoretical avenues wil l either represent

a step forwards in terms of i mproving and developing a theory of

capital ism's i m perial ist stage, or, even less, that they wi ll cont ri­

bute to the elaboration of a 'guide for action' that wil l i l luminate

for us the path that the social forces of transformation and change

should fol low. ConlTiuy to Hegelian dialectics, with its empha·

s is on the h istoric and transi tory character of all institutions

and socia l practices, and the contradictory cha racter of social

existence, contemporary protest seeks to update i ts theoretical

arsenal in such u n reliable sources as structural ism and post·

structu ral ism, semiology. lacanian psychoanalysis, and a whole

series of philosophical currents characterized by their adherence

to post modernism. O n the other hand, it is i m possible to view

the crowding·out of political economy and i ts replacement by

North American economic science - whose narrowness, pseudo·

mathematic formalism and superficial ity are today universally

recognized - as a step forwards towards a better understanding of

the econom ic real i t ies of our t ime. To suggest that the d isplace­

ment of figures of the stature of Adam Smith or David Ricardo

by pygmies such as Mi lton Fried man or Rudiger Dornbusch can

be an encouraging sign in the consrruetion of a leftist l ine of

thought is , to say the least, a monumental mistake. Lastly, to say

that the Ital ian pol itical system, onee home to the largest com­

munist party in the western hemisphere a nd nowadays governed

by a repulsive creature, Silvio Berl usconi, is a renewed source of

inspiration that can be compared to n ineteenth-century France,

"",ith its great popular uprisings and the wonderful experience of

the Paris Commune, the fi rst government of the working class i n

world history, demonstrates dearly the extent o f t his mistake, that

could have d isast rous consequences for both praetieal pol i t ics as

well as in the domain of theory.

Stil l taking into account the aforementioned considerat ions,

] cannot refrain from asking how i t was possible for Antonio

107

Negri , who has written some of the most imponant books and

ankles within the Marxist tradit ion over the last quarter of a

centu ry, to write a book i n which it appears as if he has forgotten

everyth i ng that he had previously though t. There is no doubt that

Negri has been one of the most important Marxist theorists. I Born

in Padua, ltaly, in 1933, he graduated in Phi losophy from his natal

city's u niversity, and in the 1 960s was appoi nted Professor of

Theory of the State in the Polit ical Science department in Padua.

At the same time, his practical i nvolvement in I tal ian pol i t ical l ife

tu rned him i nto one of the leaders of the Potere Opcraio and one

of the most outstandi ng figures of the Italian left, very critical of

the poli tical and theoretical line fostered by the Italian Commu­

nist Party, PCI. In 1979 Negri was arrested and sent to prison after

a faulty legal process. He was accused of being the intellectual

mentor of the terrorist anions of the Red Brigades, i ncluding

the assassination of Italian Prime Min ister Aldo Moro. In 1983

the Italian Rad ical Party, a moderate combination of l ibe ral ism

and social democracy, sponsored h is candidacy to parliament, in

order to pressu re the Ital ian government into reviSing t he legal

sentence. After being elected member of parliament by popular

vote, parliamentary immunity allowed him to get out of prison.

Shortly after, the ml ing pany with a majority in parliament - with

the infa mous complicity of PCI MPs, i n a scandalous pol i t ical

act - revoked his immunity, and, as many other anti-fascists

had done before, Negri departed for exile in France. The a lready

entirely corrupt Italian judicial system declared Negri a rebel and

he was condemned to thirty years in prison, accused of 'armed

insurrection against the state' with an additional sentence of four

a nd a half years because of h is 'moral responsibi l ity' for violent

confrontations between the police, students and workers that

took place in Milan between 1973 and 1 977.

I A 5ublle analysis or Negri·s intelleclual and political l rajeelOl)' is to be ruund in Callin icos (ZOO)).

108

Imprisonment d id not prevent Negri from writing; among texts

written in prison, La Anomalia Sa/vaje, published in 1981 , is worth

mentioning. By this time he had a lready published some of his

main contributions to Marxist theory: Opera; e Stato. Fra Rivolu·

zione d'ollobre e New Deal ( 1 972), Crisi dello stato'piallo (1974),

Proletari e Stato (1976),LaForma Stato. Per la Critica deU'Economia

Politica della Constituzione ( 1977), Marx oltre Marx ( 1 979), and a

seminal article abou t capitalist restructuring after the great de·

pression, 'Keynes and t he Capital ist theory of the State', origi nally

published in Italy and later transla ted into several languages and

reprinted in Labor of Dionysus, a book that Negri wrote years later

wi th M ichael Hardt. Negri remained in France for fou rteen years,

between 1983 and 1 997. Fran�ois Mi t terrand's government's

protection was decisive i n terms of dissuad ing the I tal ian secret

service from its original intention of kidnapping Negri. During

his years in France, Negri taught at the famous Ecole Normale

Superieure and at the University of Paris VIII and, together with

other distinguished 1-'Tench colleagues, he founded a new theoret·

ical magazine: FI/Cur Anterieur. It is obvious that during h is stay

in France Negri shelved his i nterest in Germ a n philosophy a nd

acquired a great familiarity with French philosoph ical debates

marked by the presence of intel lectuals such as Louis Althusser,

Alain Badiou, Et ienne Bal ibar, jean lIaudri llard , Gil les Deleuze,

j acques Derrida, M ichel Foucault, Felix Guauari, jacques Lacan ,

jean'Fran�oise Lyotard , jacques Ranciere and many others. His

stay in France was a period of intense theoret ical production and

profound intellectual, a nd to some extent polit ica l , reorientation.

Among rhe most imponant books published during that period

it is won h mentioni ng Les nouveaux espaces de liberlfi, in col·

labo�ation with Fel ix Guattari ( 1<)8s); Fabbriche del soggetto ( 1 987);

1 'he Politics of Subversion ( 1 989); II potere constituente ( 1 992); a nd

Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the Statclonn, co·authored with

M ichael Hardt ( 1994). In 1997, after the scandalous collapse of

the Italian slate institutions and the crises of Christian Democracy

109

c and the I talian Social ist Party, Negri returned to I ta ly where his � � previous sentence had been revoked. He spent a short period in

the Rebibbia prison and. afterwards, was permitted to serve a new,

shorter a nd more benign sentence that entails living at home in

Trastevere during the d ay and spending the nights in prison. I t

is in th is context that Negri co-au thored Empire. with Michael

Hardt

8 The persistence of imperialism

'The United States seem to bc destined by Providence to plague

the Americas with misery in the name of freedom' Simon Bolivar

The radical goa l repeatedly deela red th roughou t Empire - to con­

t ribute to the c reation of a 'general theoretical structure and for

that structure to constitute a set of conceptual tools al lowing us

to theorize and act i n the E m pire and against i t' - falls to eart h as

a result of the i ncurable weakness of the analysis. U n fortun ately,

the tool box is l acking some of the most basic i n struments for

theorizi ng abo u t the empire a n d , more seriously, for fight ing

against i t . Th is final critique could be su m marized by saying

tha t t he book's most crucial fau l t is its serious d iagnostic m is­

takes. There is no con nection between a t heoretical backgrou nd

that is u narguably conservative i n nature - o r whose nature is a t

best confusing - and which derives mainly from eonven tional

neol i beral knowledge that extols globalization and 'natu ra lizes'

capitalism on one hand, and the blurry vision of a new society

and a new in ternational order to be built over radica lly d i fferen t

premisses o n the other. I f t he d iagnosis is i naccu ra te, t h e new

social a n d political construction is doomed to failure. The fragil ity

of the ana lysis is appa rent as ea rly as the Preface of the book. The

authority cited in order to define the fundamenta l concept that

gives the book its name is not Len i n or Bukha ri n or Luxemburg

or, more recently, Sa m i r Amin, And re Gunder Frank, Immanuel

Wa llerstein, Eric Hobsbawm, Samuel Eisenstadt, Pa blo Gonzalez

Casa nova, Agu st i n C ueva, Alonso Agui la r, Helio Jagua ribe, John

Saxe-Ferna ndez, James Petras or a ny of the many other scholars

who have contribute d to our u ndersta n d i ng of the topic. No.

I n stead, the au thors mention Mau rice Duverger, a French poli-

.l: t ical scient ist comfortably installed in the most conventional at

iii currents within the discipline and an academic who has never

been associated with any of the critical schools of thought. These

l imitations are even more conspicuous when it becomes clear

how easily the au thors prese n t as their own the conventional

definitions used hy business school professors who conceive

globalization as an ' i rresistible and i rreversi ble' process before

which the democratic states should kneel. We can recogn ize i n

this formulation t he old trap o f t h e bourgeOis ideologists for

whom capital ism is nothing but the ' natural ' manifestation of

our human acquisi t ive and egoistic impu lses, and every system

other than capitalism is viewed as 'artificial ' or as the imprudent

product of polit ical will. Hardt and Negri appear to have paid no

attent ion to the sensible comments made by a genuine American

li beral not too long ago: John K. Galbraith, who sharply argued

that 'global ization is not a serious concept. Us, Americans, have

invented it in order to h ide our pol icies of economic penetration

in the rest of t.he world ' (Galbraith 1997: 2). This argument comes

very close to admitt i ng that capita lism's i rresisti bil ity and irrevers'

ibil ity leave no alternative options, an argument deeply engrai ned

in the heart of neoliberal thought . El len Meiskins Wood (2003:

63) is right when she observes that if ' there is no material point

at which the power of capital can be challenged , and wi th al l

forms of pol i tical action effectively disabled, the ru le of capital

is complete a nd eternal ' .

The clamorous i nconsistency between the au t hors' analysis

and their pol it ical goals is also revealed when the reader asks

to what extent the system's 'global logic' is overlaid by contra'

dictions that could eventually lead to its col lapse and to the

preparation of the material and cultural bases needed to build

an alternative system. This is partinllarly serious when we realize

that the authors seem not to be aware of the fundamental con­

ti nuity that exists between the supposedly 'new' emp i re's global

logic, its fu ndamental actors, its institutions, norms, rules and

1 1 2

procedures, and the logic that exis ted i n thc al legedly dead phase

of i mperialism. Hardt and Negri seem not to have realized that the

strategic actors are the same, the large transnational companies

but with a national base, on one hand, and the governm ents of

industrial ized cou ntries, on the other hand; that the decisive insti·

tutions are still those that characterized the imperialist phase they

cla im is now fi nished, such as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO,

and other simila r organizations; and that the rules of the game of

the internat ional system are still the ones dictated mainly by the

United States and global neoliberalism , and that were imposed

by force during the climax of the neolibe ral cou nter-revolution

through the 1980s and the begi nn ing of the 1990S. Given their de·

sign , purpose and fu nctions, these rules do nothing hut continuo

ously reproduce and perpetuate the old i mperial ist structu re in a

new guise. We would be much closer to the truth if, paraphrasing

Lenin, we say that the empire is the 'superior stage' of imperial­

ism and nothi ng else. Its functioning logic is the same, and so

are the ideology that justifies its existence, the actors that make

its dynamics, and the unfair results that reveal the persistence of

relations of oppression and exploitation. I n Marx's analyses, the

contradictions in the development of bou rgeois society would

lead it to its own destruction. The logic of social development was

presided over by class struggles and contradict ions between the

forces of production and the social relations of production, The

problem with Hardt and Negri's analyses is that the new global

logic of rule that al legedly prevails in the empire as imagi ned by

the authors lacks any structural or inherent cont radictions.'

The only cont radiction that is p resent is that of the potential

threat posed by the multitude if i t ever abandoned the lethargy

I For a penetrating analysis of the shoncomings of the '('(assie thcorics of imperial i:;m' and the new challenges posed by today's new facets of

i mperial ism, see Panitch and Gindin (2004) and, in general , the ;\nic1es

i ncluded in Socialist Register 2004 (Panitch and Lcys 1004), See also John

Bellamy Foster (2002),

1 1 3

� It

" CI ... III

j. :::I 1'1 CI

!1. �" 1 �" 2-iii" 3

� in which it is kept by the mass media and the bourgeois cultural Q)

iii industry. Even if th is happened, though, there is noth ing in the

book to convince the reader of the existence of structural - and

hence impossible to overcome - contradict ions between the

empi re and the mul t i tude. On the contra ry, it would be possible

to extend the a uthors' argument (0 say that i f the rulers behave

wisely, they are in a very good posit ion to absorb the demands

of the mu ltitude by means of relaxing migratory norms or pro·

gressively establ ish i ng a guarantced minimum i ncome. Episodcs

d ur i ng which the dominant classes have been forced to adopt

progressive policies so as to hold back popular t ides or in order

to co-opt potential adversaries have not been infrequent in the

political history of the twentieth century, and the two measu res

mentioned above are in no way i ncompatible with the su rvival of

the capital ist relations of prod uction nor are thcy i ncompatible

\\oith the con tinu ity of imperial ism.

During the 1980s, neol iberal ism won a strategic batt le for

the meanings of words used in everyday speech, pan ic'ularly i n

t h e public sphere, Throughout the globe t h e word 'reform' was

successful ly used to refer to events that a somewhat rigorous

analysis would have undoubtedly classified as 'counter·reform ',

The aforementioned 'reforms' were material ized i n not too reo

formist policies such as the dismantl ing of social securi ty, the

reduction of social provisions, the cuts in public spending

on ed ucation, health and hous ing, and the legalization of the

ol igopol istic control of the economy. The word 'deregulat ion'

was actively promoted by the neol iberal and managcrial ideo·

logists c i ted throughou t Empire to refer to a process through

which governmental i n tervention in economic matters was

suppressed in order to restore the ' natural sel f-regulation' of

e('onomic processes. In fact, what 'deregulation' means is that

the previous regulations establ ished by democrat ic' governments

- and which led, i n some way, to a certa i n degree of popular

sovereignty - were banished, and after this happened the capacity

1 1 4

to regulate the functioning of markets was left in the hands of

the most powerfu l actors, the oligopol ies. Governmental capacity

to regulate was privatized and transferred to large companies. As

Samir Amin wrote, 'al l the markets are regulated, and they only

function u nder that condition . The essential thing is to know

who regulates them and how' (Amin ZOO l : z6). To conclude: the

commonsense of the last two decades of the previous century has

been satura ted by the contents of neoliberal ideology. Further

proof of this fact is the ready acceptance of the dogma claiming

that state-owned companies were by definition i nefficient and

produced low-q uality goods and services; that the state was a

bad administrator: that private companies sat isfy the demands

and requirements of consumerSj that ol igopolies promote social

progress through unrestricted market freedomj and, finally, that,

as argued i n the ' t rickle-down' theory, i f the rich get richer, the

wealth concentrated at the top of the social pyramid soons spills

over to reach the least advantaged sectors of the population.

Nowadays, al l those stories face a terminal crisis of cred i bi l i ty.

For a long time, the hegemony of neoliberalism was nOI only

economic and ideologieal but also pol i tica l . I n that field too we

observe a backwards movement . Economies do not respond as

predicted and, after more than twenty years of painful experi­

ments, the results are dire. Argentina isjust the most recent case,

but in no way the only one, that demonstrates once more the final

result of the policies promoted by the Washi ngton Consensus.

The pol i tica l formulas of a successful neoliberal ism, whose arche­

types are st i l l the sinister figures of Carlos S. Menem in Argentina,

Carlos Salinas de Gortari in Mexico and Al berto Fujimori i n Peru,

have demonstrated their inabil i ty to remain in power and their

inabil ity to establish a new structure of domination in accordance ,

with the needs of the empire's dominant classes. The ideologi-

cal hegemony of neoli beral ismj its capacity to ascribe new and

contradictory meanings to old words, is be ing rapid ly eroded.

Empire could perfectly be thought of as a late chapter of that

1 1 5

.... � II

1 ... '" ;' if � " • o -

3' 1 :2, e. iii' :I

� history. The book was published in 2000 and its real function

-r - I concede this was not the intention of the au thors - seems

to have been to make a l i t tle bit more palatable the increas­

i ngly atrocious and despicable features of the imperial ism of

the end of the century. Probably nothing could haye been more

convenient for the imperialist powers, gu ided not without friction

and contradictions by the Uni ted States, than this representation

of the imperialist order metamorphosed i n to a phantasmagoric

system, without identifiable dominators and beneficiaries, and,

above all , inspired by the most elevated legal not ions of Kantian

l ineage that only the enemies of freedom and justice would dare

to criticize. While the authors were giving the last touch to their

metaphysical empire, the i mperial ists were eager to launch the

Colombia Plan with its declared goa l of stabilizing the polit ical

and mi l i tary situation in that country and of control l ing d rug

traffic in the area, whose funds are careful ly lau ndered in fiscal

havens th roughou t the region that survive thanks to Washington's

i ndulgence. Another of the aforementioned project's objectives is

the establishment of a strategic base in the heart of South America

as a means to monitor the advances of the popular movement in

Brazil, a country which , by chance, is the home of two of the most

important popular organizations of the western world, the PT and

the MST. Another important imperial ist in i t iat ive is the Pueblal

Panama Plan i ntended to 'solve· the (apparently iccommunicable,

accord ing to Hardt and Negri) conflict in Chiapas and, in addi­

tion, to set u p an establishment in the largest Mexican reservoir of

fresh water in order to provide Southern California with that vital

l iqu id . Moreover, it was imperialism that launched a 'humanitar­

ian intervention' in the former Yugoslavia; it constantly sabotages

the construction of Mercosur so as to faci l itate the rapid formal

' integration' of the Lat in American economies into American

hegemony through the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA);

and it works without ceasi ng to ensure the collaboration of some

regional governments, such as those of Argentina, Costa Rica

1 1 6

and Uruguay, in imposing sanctions on Cuba for alleged human

rights violations and to make i t pay an exorbitant price for its lack

of docility towards American imperialism. In other latitudes, its

activism leads i t to support i ts al l ies in Tu rkey when they commit

genocide against the Kurdish minori ty without fear, and to sup­

port similar actions by Indonesia against East Timor, and by the

fascist Israeli government of Ariel Sharon against the PaJestinians.

A few years earlier, the empire, al legedly in the name of universa l

law, invaded Panama, kill ing thousands of innocent civil ians with

the goa l of capturing President Noriega, a former collabora tor of

the CIA and the DEA, and put in power by Washington; i t caused

more than )0,000 deaths in its offensive against the Sand inista

government in Nicaragua; and it started the Gulf War. In the

economic terrain, im perial ism was again active, promoting the

approval of thc Multi latera l Agreement on I nvestments, i n order

to legalize the tyranny of markets, especially in the Third World ,

and it made strong efforts to ensure that the I M F and the World

Bank would not lend a n ickel to those cou ntries that d id not ac­

cept the 'conditional ities' imposed by the market's international

financial institutions. In this way, a recent loan to Ecuador in­

cluded arou nd a hundred and forty requirements of this type

- among them, massive dismissals of public servants, cuts in

public social spending, an end to su bsid ies - and more than

two hundred 'conditionali ties ' were reported in several loans to

su b-Saharan Africa, a l l of which were oriented to consol idate the

presence of 'market forces' in the economy. On the other hand,

imperialism has been constantly imposing economic pol icies

that severely u ndermine the economic sovereignty of cou ntries

in the periphery and dimi nish their l ikel ihood of being able to

devel9P their economies, consol idate their democracies, a nd

respond posit ively to their popu lations' expectations of material

and spiritual progress (Stigl itz 2000)_ Leo Panitch claims, with

regard to th is issue, that a report by the World Bank demonstrates

that on the same year in wh ich the M lA was aborted 'there were

\ 1 7

� at least as many as 1 5 1 changes in the regulations that govern

: direct foreign investments in 76 cou ntries, and 89% of them

were favorable to fore ign capital ' (Panitch 2000: 1 6)_ Meanwh ile,

Pablo Gonzalez Casanova has developed a methodology for the

study of the surplus l Tansferences from the Th ird World towa rds

metropoli tan capita lism. In the twenty-three years from 1972 to

1995, the vol u me of those transfers hoovered u p by the empire's

dom inant classes reached the astonishi ng amount of$4.5 tri l l ion;

the calc ulatio ns made using this same methodology excl usiYely

for La tin America by Saxe-Fern andez and N unes show that the

figure 'surpasses the 2 t ri l l ion dol lar threshold paid in two dec­

ades of globalizing neo-I iberalism, a magn i tude that is eq ual to

the combined GDPs of all the countries in Latin America and the

Caribbean i n 1997' (Gonzalez Casanova 1998; Saxe Fernandez et

al . 2001: 105, 1 1 1).

I n a word, imperialist oppression contin ues to exist wh ile a lost

patrol of radical scholars proclai m� that the age of i m perialism

has concluded and exalts the figure ofSt Francis as the pa rad igm

of the renovated mil i tancy against the spectre of an empi re that

is impossible to seize, define or fi nd , and hence impossible to

beat . That which is openly recogn ized by scholars of im perial­

ism such as nrlezinski and Huntington, magically disappears

from the ' radical critical ' vision of rhe e m pire. Meanwhile, ap­

proximately 100,000 people die each day in the periphery d ue

to h u nger, ma lnutrit ion and curable d iseases, because of the

unin terrupted continuity of the exactions of this 'smooth space

across which subject ivi ties gl ide', which the authors call empire,

a non-i m perialist regi me that day a fter day prod uces a s i lent

bloodbath that the bourgeois media take pains to concea\. These

people d ie without receiving the most elementary medical care.

Each year a country of the size of Spain, Argentina or Colombia

is wi ped off the face o f the ea rth i n the name of the despicable

'new i nternational economic order', an order that, i f we are to

believe in Hard t and Negri , has ceased to be i mperial ist .

1 1 8

Ha rdt and Negri 's stubborn ness in defending their m istaken

concept ions has become st ronger since the fi rst publication of

their book, In an inte rview with Le Monde Diplomatique, Negri

insisted on his view that the em pire lacks any national base and

that i t is the expression of the i n ternational order created by

'collective capi tal ' once it emerged victorious from the long civil

war waged against the workers throughout the twentieth centul)',

'Contrar), to what the last supporters of national ism susta in, the

em pire is not NortJ, American; in add ition, th roughout the histol)'

of the U nited States they have been much less i mperialist than

the British, the French, the Russians, or t he Dutch' (Negri 2001 :

13 ) , According t o N egri, the empi re's beneficiaries a r e cenainly

American capitalists, but also their European counterpans, those

magnates who bui l t their fonu nes with i n the Russian Mafia and

all the wealthy in the Arab world , Asia, Africa or Latin America,

who send their chi ldren to Harvard and thei r money to Wal l

St reet. Clearly, in this pseudo-totality of t h e empire a n d in i ts

u n bearable emptiness, not only is there no theoret ical space in

which to dist inguish between exploiters and explOi ted but also

there is no room to conceive the dominant coal i t ion as anyt h i ng

d i fferent fro m an undifferen tia ted gang of capitalists, In this

way, and d eparti ng from this anal}'lical ster i l ity, 'collect ive cap­

ital ' prod uces the miracle of control l ing the world economy (the

reader should be reminded that only 200 t ransnational mega­

corpo rations, 96 per cent of which have their headquaners i n

j ust eigh t count ries, have a combi ned volume of sales that i s

higher than the G D P of a l l t h e countries i n the globe except the

nine largest ones) without st ructu res, organizations, instit utions,

h ie ra rchies, agents, rules or norms,l I n addition, if a ny con niet

, 2 We add: the annual i ncome of Exxon is al most equal to Australia'S

GOP; thaI of Ford is simil:lr to Denma rk's GOP; that oftne British' Dutch oil

company Shell is almos! double thc G OP of one of the largest oil producers in

the world. Venezuela. General MOlors has an annual in come thai cxcceds the combined GOP of Ireland, New Zealand and Hungary (Res!ivo 2002: 24-5).

� lOok place with in it , such a conflict would be merely accidental

-! or circumstantial , and i t would be easily solved by appealing to

the good-will of the parties concerned. All of a sudden the world

order created by North American hegemony d uring the post-war

era disappears in front of our eyes, and the magnates of the

Russian Mafia seem to have the same weight and relevance as

their North American counterparts. The main institutions which

model the international i mperialist order - the IMf, the World

Bank, the WTO, NATO, the OECD and ot her similar institut ions

- seem to bear no more relation to Washington than they do to

Osama Bin Laden's family or to any other Arab magnate, a l though

the organic i ntellectuals of the empire i nsist on characteriz ing

them as an informal part of the Nort h American government . In

this phantasmagoric view of the e mpire, the 'conditionalit ies' of

the international financial institutions would be dictated by an

Arab mil l ionaire, a Portuguese banker, a Japanese whaler, a Latin

American oligarch and, of course, a n American busi nessman. In

the same way, the errat ic movements of the United Nations are

the result of a fight between the aforementioned subjeets. It is not

necessary to be an international relations expert to demonstrate

t he falsehood of th is argument. Recent events in Venezuela (the

fai led coup d 'etat agai nst Hugo Chavez in April 2002) d issipate

any doubt regardi ng the persistent oppressive presence of im­

perialism. A coup that the CIA had been preparing for more than a

year, and which was blessed , in a sign of arrogance close to sheer

stupidity, hours after i ts occurrence by thE' presidential spokes­

man at the White House (violating thc Organizat ion of American

States' resolut ions that Washington had promoted when it had

been convenient for it to do so), and which immediately had the

'disinterested' collaboration of the I M F that, surprisingly and

without anybody having to ask for i t , offered its help to the new

government at a t ime when it had been recognized only by the

United States and its European footman , Jose M. A2:nar, the situ­

ation still not having been resolvE'd. This behaviour by the IMF

120

proves once again that thi s 'multilateml organization' is, in reality,

a minor department inside the Whi te House.

This record completely invalidates Negri's statement made

d u ring a recent i nterview in which he expanded on the issues

developed in Empire: 'We think that there is no centralization

place within the empire. and that it is necessary to speak of a

non-place. We are nOI claiming that Washington is nol impor­

tant: Washington has the bomb. New York has the dollar. Los

Angeles has the language and the means of commu nication'

(A1biac 2002: 2).

No further comment.

1 2 1

... 7 It

1 .. �, '" , :::I " •

So �' 1 �, !. iii' 3

Epilogue

Fame and celebrity have rarely gone hand-in -ha nd with critical

thinking. The history of political philosophy teaches us that

adversarial spirits have usually been persecuted and silenced by

the dominant classes. In most cases, this has been ach ieved by

means of more or l ess brutal coercion. Antonio Negri has been,

for almost thirty years, a victim of this methodology: his m ilitancy

in Italian social struggles, as well as his signi ficant contributions

to both political theory and political philosophy - two fields also

marked by the ups and downs of class struggles - brought down

on him the fury of the Italian bourgeoisie and its political rep­

resentatives, and it also brought persecution, incarceration and

exile. On other, less frequent, occasions, those who contest the

existing social order are faced only with the i ndifference of the

powerful. This occurs when the dominant groups find themselves

in such a safe position a nd are so confident of the stability of

their own supremacy that they allow the mselves the luxury of

practising the an of tolerance. Needless to say, this exercise is

practised only on condition that the dissident voices can be heard

only by a small circle of harmless followers who lack any organic

l ink with civil sociery, and who, for that reason, are incapable of

becoming a serious threat to the dominant classes. Given this,

how can we explain the 'unlimited pra ise' that, according 10

John Bellamy Foster, was heaped on two leftist scholars - namely

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri - in some of the most select

intellectual bastions of the bou rgeoisie, such as the New York

Times, Time magazine and the Observer or London, to which I

could add a newspaper l inked to the most reactionary fat·tions of

Argentine capitalism, La Nacion (Bellamy Foster 2001).

I n co ncluding this examination the answer seems to be clear:

the favourable reception give n by the esta blishment's mandarins

to Empire shows that they read the book carefully, that they cor­

rectly understood its most profound message, and that they ac­

cu rately concluded that there was nothing within the book that

could be considered incompatible with the dominant ideology or

with the self-image that the powerful like to exhibit. Although the

metaphysical rad icalism of its narrative and its abstruse allusions

to the contrad ictions of capitalism did not cease to i rritate the

most intolerant and na rrow-minded intellectuaJs of the empire,

the main argu m ent shows a surprising and welcome similarity to

the main thesis that the ideologists of 'globalization ' have been

promoting around the world since the 1 980s, namely: that the

nation-state is practically dead, that a global logic rules the world,

a nd that defyi ng this abominable structure, whose concrete

bene ficiaries as well as its victims and oppressed are lost in the

shadows, there is a new and amorphous entity, the ' multitude',

no longer the people, let alone the workers or the proletariat. Re­

gardless of the repeated invocations to co mmunism and the good

society that make the imperial energumens shiver, Empire leaves

the reader without answers as to why the men and women of the

empire should rebel, agai nst whom, and how to create a new type

of society. Although Empire formally criticizes capital ism as an

inhuman, oppressive, exploitative and unfair mode of production,

it vanishes in the translucent air of postmodernity. It becomes, in

a manner of speaki ng, invisible, just l ike American imperialism,

and in this way both are ' naturalized '. Hunger, poveny, death,

wars, diseases and the whole catalogue of hu man miseries that

were observed throughout the twentieth century are rhetorically

transformed in dull and almost impenetrable phraseolOgy that,

in spite of the manifest intentions of its creators, hides the most ,

despicable features of neoliberal globalization and or contem-

porary capitalism.

For the reasons displayed throughout my book, I find it highly

unl ikely that the anti-imperialist fighters of the world will find

1 23

III 'E. I !i

• in Empire any realistic and persuasive argument to illu minate :t

J their path or to help them understand what is happening in the

1- world. More l ikely, a 'counsel of surrender would be the message

of a manifesto on behalf of global capital. Jt is also, l ike it or

not, the message of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire'

(Meiskins Wood 2003: 63). Given its mista kes and confusions,

it is easy to u nderstand why the book was acclaimed as a true

revelation by some of the world 's most i mponant mass media

tightly associated with the imperialist structure that overwhelms

us. In any case, it is good to know that, as Hannah Arendt re­

minded us, 'even in the da rkest n ight we still have the right to

wait for some illumination', and that this will probably come not

from a colou rful conceptual and theoretical apparatus but from

the smaJl lights that will ema nate from the initiatives that men

and women adopt in order to put an end to, in Marx's words,

this pai nful and barbarian 'pre-history' of humanity finally to

enter a superior stage of civilization (Arendt 1968: ix). I want to

believe, going back to Hardt and Negri's work, that (he mistakes

that we have ide ntified in Empire will be rectified in a new study

u ndenaken by these authors. I n N egri's case I am inclined to

think that the mistakes detected in this book could be due to

distortions produced by a long exile, even if it is i n Paris; to the

lack of ability to travel around the world and to confirm, with his

own eyes, the sinister realities of imperialism; and finally, to the

rarefied intellectual Parisian atmosphere, whose provincialism

and splendid self-reference were repeatedly underlined by notable

French intellectuals such as J ean-Paul Sartre, or others residing

in France l ike Nicos Poulantzas. Negri's contributions to the de­

velopment of social and political Marxist theory do not deserve

such a disappointing ending. I hope with all my heart to have,

in the short term, the satisfaction of commenting, in completely

differe nt terms, on a new book in which Negri's extraordinary

talent meets again with his own history.

12.4

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1 19

Index of proper names

Accumulation on a World Scale; 15 AfghaniSlan; 1 1 , So, 51 , 63 Afriea; lJ, J8, 45, 1 19 After Liberalism; 15 Aguilar, Alonso; 1 1 1 Ahmad, Aijaz; 56 Alabama; 4J Albright, Madeleine; 56 A1thusser, Louis; 1 09 Altvater, Elmar; 13 Amin, Samir; 15, 1 1 1, 1 1 5 Amnesty; 65 Anderson, Peny; 9, 104, 105, 106 Annan, Kofi; 45 Aquinas, Thomas; 100 Arendt, Hannah; 104, 1 05, 1 24 Argenlina; 20, J6, 74, l l 5, 1 1 6, I 1 R Arrighi, Giovanni; 25 Asia; 1 5, 38, 45, 5 1 , 69, 1 1 9 Australia; I S, l l9 Austro-Hungarian Empire; J9 Aznar,jose Maria; 8, 1 7, 1 8 , 1 20

Badiou, Alain; 109 Balibar, Etienne; 109 Bangladesh; 37, 45, 48 Baran, Paul: 2J Baudrillard, jean; 109 Uclgium; 5 1 Ilen Bella , Ahmed; 98 Benjamin, Waller; 104 nerlin Wall; 4J, 1 0 1 Berluseon i , Si lvio; 107 'Big Government is St ill in Charge';

78 Bin Laden, Osama; I I , 6J, 1 20 Bismarck. Olto von; 5.1 Bobbio, Norbeno; 7 Boeing Corporalion; 45 Iloiivar, Sim6n; I I I

Boron, Atllio A. ; 18 , 46. 54. 57, 58. 67, 85, 94, 105

Bosch. juan; 28 Bosnia; 67 Bowles, Samuel; 92 Brazil: 1 9. 20, J5, 36. 37, 1 16 Brechl. Benoll; 104 Brilain: 1 7. J7. 55 B russels; 45 Bn.ezinski, Zbigniew; 1 1 . 68, 69. 70,

72. 1 1 8 Bukharin, Nikolai; 2 , 13. 23, 1 1 1 Bull, Malcolm; 95 Bush, George Sr.; 1 1. 74 Bush, George W.; 9, 1 1 . 1 2 , I J, 1 8 ,

17. 6J

California; 43, 1 1 6 Capitalism in the Age of

Globaliwtion; 25 Cardoso, Oscar Raul; 10, 1 1 Caribbean; 5 1 . l l 8 Carthage; 33 Castro, fidel: 98 Central Intelligence Agency (elA);

1 1 7 , 1 10 Charles. Gerard·Pierre; 28 Chavt'"Z, Hugo; 120 Chiapas; 34, ]6, 8R, 1 16 Chicago; 5 1 , 8J Chile; 74 China; 1 5 , 69, 70, 1 0 1 Chiquita Banana; 66 Chirac, jacques; 1 4 Chomsky, Noam: 1 1 , I J , 1 7, 18. 25,

40, 46, 49, 62, 67. 76, 93, 94 Christian Democracy Pany (CUP);

109 Clan"n; 20 Clausewitz. Carl von; J I

Climon. Bill; 56

Colombia; 1 18

Colombia Plan; 1 1 6

Common Market or the South

lMERCOSUR)j 1 1 6 Comnlllnisl Manifesto; 2 , 5 , 28. 89, 95 Considerations on Western Marrism;

104

Copernican; 2

Costa Rica; 1 16

COlt. Roben; 25, 60 Crisi dello slato-pinno; 109

Cuba: 76, 1 1 7

Cueva, Agustin; 28, 8 1 , 1 1 1

Czechoslovakia: 2 1

Dahl, Robert A.; 48

Davos; 23 Debray, Regis; 102

DeleuU", Gilles: 109

Denmark; 1 1 9

Derrida. Jaeques: 109 Deutsche Bank; 45

oabb, Maurice; 23

Dominican Republic; 1 0. 74 Don QULrOle: 20. 3 I Dornbusch, Rudiger; 1 07 Dos Santos, Theolonio; 28

Drucker. Peter; 84 Drug Enforcement Administration

(OEA); 1 1 7

Duke University; 93

Duverger, Maurice: 1 1 1

Eagleton, Terry; 100, 101, 103. 104, 105

East Timor; 1 1 7 Economist. The: 78

Ecuador; 66. 1 1 7 Eisenstadt, Samuel: I I I EI SaiYador; 43 Empire o/Chaos; 25

Empire: 1 . 4, 5, 6. 8, 1 0, 1 1 . 13. 14.

16, 1 8. 2J. 24. 25. 26. 35. 39, 47, 59. 60. 6 1 , 75. 80, 87, 88, 90, 9 1 • 93. 95. 98, 100. 103. 1 04, 105.

106. 1 07, 1 10, I l l . 1 14, l l5. 121 , 1 23, 1 24

Engtls, Friedrich: 2. 7. 28, 89

European Union: 45. 76 Europe: 18, 38, 43. 45, 68, 69, 97

ElU(on; 1 19

Fabbriche del soggetto; 109

Federalist papers; 94

Feuerbach, Ludwig; 2

First World War: 3, 10, 52

Ford; 45, 1 19

Fortunej 46

Foucault, Michael; 24, 29. 30, 1 09

France; 9, 37, 43, 51 , 55, 68, 104, 1 07. 108, 109, 1 24

Free Trade Area of the Americas

(FTAA): 8 1 . 1 1 6

Friedman, Millon; 1 07

F riedman, Thomas: 15, 1 6, 62. 84

Fujimori. Albeno: 1 1 5 Fukuyama. Francis: 16, 101

FulUr AlIlerieur; 109

Gabon: 27 Galbraith.John K . ; 1 1 2

Galeano, Eduardo; 28 Gates, Bill; 50, 51

General Agreemem on Tariffs and

Trade (GATT): 56, 76 General Motors: 1 1 , 1 1 9 Gennan)'; 9, 37, 45. 5 1 , 55

Gindin, Sam: 10, I I 3

Gi ntis. Herbert; 92 Gonzalez Casanova, Pablo; 28, I l l .

1 1 8 Gortari, Carlos Salinas de; 1 1 5 Gramsci, Amonioj 6. 5 1 , 52 Greece; 29

Greenpeaee; 65 G reenwich Village; 29 Group of Seven (G-7); 79 Guatemala: 66 Guattari, Felilt: 109 Guevara. Emesto 'Che': 98 Gulf War; 1 2, 6 1 . 62, 63. 74, 1 1 7

131

Habermas, Ji.lrgen; 34

Haiti; 37, 43, 67

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri;

1 , 2, 4, 6, 8, 1 1 , 1 2, 1 3, 14, 1 5, 1 7,

19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 3 1 , 32,

33 , 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 4 1 ,

42 , 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 5 1,

52, 53 , 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 64,

65, 66, 67, 68, 6g, 70, 7 1 , 72, 73,

74, 75, 77, 78, 83, 85, 87, 88, 89,

90, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100,

101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 1 10, I l l,

1 13, 1 16, 1 18, 1 1 9, 1 22, 124

Hardt, M ichael; 87, 88, 106. log, 1 10

Harlem; 48

Hegel. Georg Wilhelm Fried rich; 30

Hilferding. Rudolf; 2, 23

Ho Chi Minh; 98

Hobbesian; 82, 83

Hobsbawm, Eric; 1 1 1

Holland; 5 1

Honduras; 39, So, 8 1

Hoselitz, Bert; 3 7

Hungal)'; 2 1 . 1 19

Hunlington. Samuel P.; 1 2, 70, 7 1 ,

1 18

Hussein, Saddam; 1 1 , 16, 63

11 potere consliluente; log India; 23 , 37

International Convention on the Rights of the Child; 76

I nternational Coun of justice; 77

International Criminal coun; 7 5

International Labor Organization (JLO); 43

International MonetaI)' Fund ( J M F); 2, 24, 56. 59, 65, 7 1 , 72, 78, 79, 8 1 ,

go, 1 1 3. 1 17. 1 20

Iraq; 6, 7, 8, 9. 10, 1 1 , 13, 14, 1 6, 1 7 ,

20, 17, 6 1

Italian Communist Party (PC)); 108

Ita l ian Radical Party; 108

Italian Socialist Party; 1 10

Italy; 68, 104, 108, log, 1 1 0

Jaguaribe, Hclio; 28, I I I japan; 37, 69. 83, 84

jericho; 4

Kagan, Robert; 12

Kant. Im manuel; 10, 89

Kapstein, Ethan; 46

Kaulsky, Karl; 23

Kelsen, Hans; 26, 27

Keynes, john Maynard; 10, 109

Kirkpatrick,jeane; 74

Kissinger, Henry; 38, 39

Kosovo; 27, 62

Krauthammer, C harles; 1 2

Kyoto Agreemenlj 76

La Anomalia Saillaje; log La Forma Stalo. Per la Critica

dell 'Economia Polilico della

ConslilUzionej log La Nacion; 1 22

Labor of Dionysus. A Critique of Ihe

Slole-form; 109

Lacan,jacques; log Lacandonajungle; 35 Landless Workers' Movement, Brazil

(MST); 36, 1 16

Latin America; 23. 37, 38, 45, 5 1 , 68,

69, 88, 102, 1 18, 1 19

Lenin, Vladimir Jl ich; 2, 13, 23, 3 1 ,

1 1 1 , 1 1 3

Les noulleoux espaces de liberte; 109

Lockean; 83

Lang Twentiet/l Century, The; 25 Los Angeles; 33, 83, 1 2 1

Luhmann, Niklas; 26. 34 Lukacs, Gyorg; 54 Luxemburg, Rosa; 1, 13, 23, 104, 1 1 1

Lyotard, Jean·Fran'iOise; 109

Machiavelli, Niccolo; 33, 60, 92

Madison, james; 94 Magdoff, Hany; 23

Maldonado Denis, Manuel; 28

Managua; 77

Mandel, Ernst; 23

132

Mandela, Nclson; 98

Mao Zedong; 3 1 . 98

Marini, Ruy Mauro; 28

Marx olrre Marx; 109

Marx, Karl; 2. 7. 24. 28. 29. 30, 3 1 . 33.

35. 49, 58, 89. 105. 106. 1 13, 1 24

Marxism; 23. 54. 70. 10 1 . 104. lOS, 106

Massachusetts Institute or

Technology (MIT); 94

Matlick, Paul; 23

May 1 , 1886 Haymarket Square.

Chkago; 5 1

McDonald's; 45

Medherranean; 64

Meiskins Wood. Ellen; 54. 83. 85, 86.

90. 1 12. 1 24

Menem. Carlos Saul; 1 1 5 Mexico; 43. 1 1 5

Microsoft; 15. 45

Middle East; 69 Milan; 108 Minisuy of Intcrnational Trade and

IndusUY. Japan (Min); 84

Modem World System, The; 25 Monde Diplomat;que, Le; 1 19

Moro, Aldo; 108

Multilateral Agreement on

Investments (MAl): 59, 65, 66. 67,

8 1 , 1 1 7

National se-c:urity Council; 38, 69

Negri, Antonio; 9. 19, 20. 42. 93. 108,

log, t lO. 1 1 9. 1 2 1 , 1 22. 1 24 New Ellgland Journal of Medicine; 48

NfilJ Left Revir.w; I

New York Times; 15. 62. 84. 1 2 2 New York; 6, 1 5 . 16. 29, 3 6 , 8 3 , 1 2 1

New Zealand; 1 19 Nicaragua; 10. 74. 77, 1 1 7

Nicaraguan Contras; 7 7 Nixon, Richard; 3 8 Noriega. Manuel Antonio; 1 1 7 Nonh America; 1 19

North American Free Trade

Agreement (NAFTA); 8 1

North Atlantic Treaty Organi2:3tion

(NATO); 9. 1 20

North Atlantic; 9. 24

Nuftez. Omar; 28

O'Connor, James; 23

Obsenler; 122

Opera; e Stalo. Fra Rilloluzione

d'ottobre e New Deal; 109

Oqueli. Ramon; 80

O rganization ror Economk Co­

operation and Development

(OECD); 65, 78, 1 20

Organization or American States

(OAS); 120

Palestinian Intifada; 33

Palmerola; 80 Panama; 80. 1 1 7

Panitch. Leo; 10. 67, 68. 69. 1 1 3. 1 1 7.

1 18

Paris Commune; 107

Paris Peace Confe�nce; 10

Paris; 34. 93, 124 Peloponnesian war; 33

Pentagon; 4. 9

Persian Gulf; 67

Peru; l i S Petras.James; 28, 1 1 1 Philadelphia; 94 Pinochet, Augusto; 74

Plato; 29 Polirics ofSubllersiOIl. The; 109

Popular Parry, Spain (PP); 1 1 8

Pono Alegre; 35 Poulant7.as, Nicos; 1 24 Production. POUler, and World Order;

25 Proletar; e Scato; 109 Ptolemy; 1 00

PueblaJPanama Plan; 1 16 Punic war; 33

Quademi del carcere; 52

Ranciere. Jacques; log

1 33

Rawls,john; 26

Reagan, Ronald; 75. 79

Red Brigades; l oB Red Cross; 65

Reich. Roben; 42, 43. 44

Restivo, Nestor; 1 1 9

Ricardo, David; 107

Rome; ]3, 69. 75

Rosto\\,. Walte r W.; 37

Rousseau, jean jacques; 29, 33

Russia; 6<), 70

Sachs, [gnney; 23

Sandinista; 1 1 7

Sastre, A l fonso; 7

Saxe· Fernandez, joh n; 2B. 39, 1 1 1 ,

l i B

Schmin, Carl; 26, 3 1 . 54

Seattlr; 4, 40

Seiser, Gregorio; 2B

Seoul; 34

September 1 1 ; 6, 7, 36

Service of Peace and justice; 65

Sharon, Ariel; 1 1 7

Shell; 45, 1 1 9

Shonfie[d, Andrew; 2J Siemens; 45

Sierra Leone; 27

Singapore; 83

Smith, Adam; 107

Socialist Register 2004; 1 13

Somalia; 67, 76

Som01.a, Anastasio; 74

Soros, George; 1 6

Sousa Samos. Boaventu ra de; 82. 8 3

South America; 1 16

South Korea; 33, 35, B3

Soulhern Command; Bo Soviet Union; B, 32, 68, 101, 105

Spain; 17, 68. 18, 104, l I B

Spi noza. Baruch; 24

St Francis of As�isi; 20, 9B. 99, 1 00,

l l8

Stiglitz, Joseph; 1 17

Strange, Susan; 14, 69, 70

Sub-commander Marcos; 34

Sub-saharan Africa; 5 1 , 1 1 7

Sweden; 78, 92

Sweezy, Paul; 23

Tajwan; 84

Teguciga lpa; 8 1

Thatcher, Ma rgaret; 79

Third International; 98

Third Reich; 54

Third World; 18, 23, 37, 39, 44, 69,

79. 97, 103, 1 1 7, 1 18

Tinnanmen Square; 33

Time Magazine; 1 22

Tocqueville, Ale)[is de; 29, 30

Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas; 74

Tu rkey; 1 1 7

Twin Towers; 6

Uililever; 45

United Fruit; 66

United Ki ngdom; 8. 27, 45, 5 1 , 65

United Nations (UN); 8, 9. 1 5. 26, 27,

60, 62, 64, 65, 75. 76, 1 20

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); 37, 43, 78

United State Treasury; 8 1 , 84

Un.ited States; 9. 1 1 , 1 2 , lJ, 18, 20,

2 1 , 27, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 5 1, 60, 6 1 , 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70,

71, 73, 75, 76, 77. 79, 82, 83, 84, 93, 94, 97, 1 06, 1 1 1. 1 1 3, 1 1 6, 1 19. 1 20

University of Paris VIII; 109

Upper West Side; 43

Uruguay; 1 17

Vargas Llosa, Mario; 102

Veltmeyer, Henry; 28

Venezuela; 1 19, 1 20

Veracruz; 10

Vida.!, Gorc; 6, I B, 39

vidrla, jorge Rafael ; 74

Vietnam War; 1 7, 77

Wallerstein, Imma nuel; 25, 1 1 1

WarSaw Pact; 101

1 3 4

Washington Consensus; 59, 79. 83,

1 1 5 Wash ington; 6, 7, 8, 9. 10, 1 1. 2 7.

36. 61 . 62, 63 , 65, 66, 69, 70, 71 ,

75, 76, 77, 80, 82, 1 16, 1 1 7. 1 20, I I I

While House; 4. 9, 1 3, 1 6, 18, 45. 65,

1 20. 1 2 1

Wilson, Woodrow; 10

Workers' Pany, Bra2il (Pl1; 1 1 6 World Bank (WB); 2, 24. 56, 59, 65,

7 1 , 72, 78, 79, 9°, 1 13. 1 17, 120

World Ordtr$, Old and New; "15

World Trade Center; 4 World Trade Organization (W1'O);

45, 56, 59. 65, 72, 76. 79, 101 , 1 1 3. 1 10

WreSl'h, William; 5 1

Year 501. The Conquest Continues; 15

Yugoslavia; 28. 1 1 6

Zapatislas; 34. 35, 36 Zi2l'k, Slavoj ; 95

135

General index

aboriginal communities; 88

aboriginal organizations; 17

accumulation; 3. 85

actOr\S); 1 1 . 12. 18, 84, 93 . 1 12 , 1 1 3,

1 1 5

alliancelsl; 41 • 5 1 . 54 anarchisl(s); 16. 25

anti- socialist; 5 1

anti-capitalism(s): 19

ami-capitalist(s); 15 . 35. 4 1

anti-colonialist(s); 14, 98

anti-democratic; 65. 94

ami-fascist resistance; 9B

anti-globalization; 1 6. 34

anti-imperialist; 98. 1 2]

anti-popular; 94

ant i-socialist; 5 1

anti-Slate; 53. 78

apartheid; 32, ]3. 83

aristocracy; 53

anned forces; 1 2. 70, 8 1

authority; 9. 26, 27, 5]. 73, 74. 86, 1 1 1

autonomy; 53. 54

banks; 46, 56, 84

biopolitic; 92

biopolitical; 28, 91 , 95, 96

biopolitics; 92

biopower; 29, 99 black; 8J bourgeois (bourgeoisie); 1 1 , 22. 29,

]0, 3 2. 50, 52. 5]. 54, 85, 88. 92•

101. 106, 1 1 1, I I J. 1 14. 1 1 8. 122

business; 14. 1 6, ]2. 48. 49. 59, 70.

106. 1 1 2

capilal; 3, 7. 13, 30, 35. 47. 48. 49. 52. 53, 69, 83. 85, 88, 9 1 . 92, 101 . 1 1 2. 1 1 8. 1 19

capilalism(s); 1 . 2 . 3. 4, 1 0, 1 3, 14, 1 7,

18, 19. 2 1 • 25. ]0. J l, J2. 3 3. 4 1 ,

42. 46. 5 1 . 55. 58, 59. 67. 77. 78,

79. 80. 83. 90, 9 1 , 99. 101 . 1 04,

1 07, 1 1 1 . 1 12 . 1 1 8, 1 22. 12J

capilalist accumulation; 51

capilalist class; 85, 92

capitalist e)(ploit�tion; 33

capitalist relations of production;

1 14

capitalist revolution; 80

capitalist society (ies); J, 54. 59. 60. 88

capitalist stare(s); 7, 56. 77. 8 1 . 84. 85

capitalist(s); 3 , 4. 7 , 1 ]. 14. 16. 1 7. 30,

31 , 33. 36. 47, 5 1 . 52. 54. 56. 59.

60. 8 1, 82. 9 1 , 92. 104, 109. 1 1 9

casino capitalism; 1 4

centre; 4, 1 1 . 36. 37. J9, 40, 73, 75.

79. 82, 105 cholos; 88

citizen(s); 44. 69. 83. 90

dt izens rights; 90 citi:.:ens wage; 92

citizenship; 69. 89. 90. 9 1 , 95. 96 civil society; 52. 57. 58, 62, 72, 77. 82,

89, 90• 122

civilizalion; 1 3. 29. ]2. 97. 1 24

class st ruggles; 30, 68, 8 1 , 96, 1 13 . 122

class(es); 19. 45. 57. 60. 68. 90, 96. 10J. 106

coaJition; 30, 36. 51, 70. 79, 1 19

roerciOOj 27. 122

collect.ive subjects; 19

colonialism; 30 colonies; 15

coloni7-3tlon; 2 1

communication(s); 33, 34, 92, 95. 96,

97. 1 2 1 communist society: 25

communiSI(s); 1 6, 15, 49. 68, 95. 98. 99. 1 00. 104. 107

company(ies); 14. 1 5. 16. 44. 45. 46.

48. 49. 65. 66, 67. 69. 76. 79. 80.

84, 85, 1 13, 1 1 5, 1 19

complcxity(ies); 8, 19. 55. 74. 106

concentration camps; 32

conflict(s); 27. 29. 35. 41 , 67. 73. 1 1 6• 1 19. 1 20

confrontation; 19. 62

conquest; 7, 1 1 . 1 2 . 2 1 . 33

consensuS; 9, 28. 53, 54. 55. 68 . 76

conservative; 1 5. 62, 78, 103, 1 1 1

constituent power; 40• 93, 96

consume r(s); 85, 1 1 5

contract(s); 27. 66. 83

corporation(s); 1 1 . 13. 14. IS, 16, 1 7. 24, 4'1, 46. 47. 48, 49. 50. 51 . 53. 56. 62. 79, 84

counter-power; 40. 55

counter-revolution; 1 04. 1 1 3

countries colonized; 1 3

coup d'�tat; 10. 120

coyote; 43

cuhural; 19. 55. 82. 88. 101, 1 1 2. 1 14

debate(s); 5. 6, 37. 38, 4 1 . 48. 93. 94,

100, 109 decentred; 1 0

democracy; 7. 1 6 . 1 7. 1 8, 2 1 . 32. 66.

7 1 . 88. 90. 92. 101 . 1 1 7

democralic order; 14, 82

democratic slate; 81 . 83

democraLic; 4. 7. 8. 9. 1 4. 1 7. 18, 2 1 .

80. 8 1

demonSl'ralion(sl; 1 7. 18, 35, 101

dcpendenCY; 4, 38. 39, 68

deregulation of market(s); 80. 85

despotism; 29. 48

delerrilorialized; 10

developlllcnt; 3 , 32, 33, 35. 37, 38.

44. 46. 47. 5 1 . 54. 59. 1 05, 1 1 3.

1 14 dialectic; 40, 53. 107

dictatorship; 2 1 . 35

d isciplinary sociery; ;1o

doclrine(s); 12, 5 1

dominant class(es); 7. 1 1 . 14. 68.

1 14, 1 1 5, 1 1 8, 1 22

domination; 4, 1 1 , 20. 29. 30, 31, 36.

6 1 . 72. 73. 96. 1 1 5

drug(s); 7 1 . 1 16

ecologists; 1 6

economy(ies); 3 . 1 4 . 15. 23. 24. 36.

39. 42. 45. 46, 47. 59, 70, 78. 79.

80, 83 , 84, 94, 100, 105. 106, 1 07,

1 1 4, l i S, 1 16. 1 17, 1 19

education; 32, 79. 90. 1 14

emanCipation; 9 1 • 94. 99 emancipatory; 20, 2 1 . 56, 68

empire; 1 , 4. 8, 1 1 , 12 , 13 . 15. 16. 18.

1 9. 20, 23. 26. 27, 28. 30. 3 1, 31, 34. 36. 37. 39. 40, 47. 50 .58. 59.

60 .6 1 . 62. 63, 64. 66• 67. 68. 69,

70 . 7 1 , 73. 75, 77. 79. 82, 87. 91 • 96. 97, 99. 103. I l l ! 1 1 3. 1 14.

1 1 6, 1 1 7, 1 1 8. 1 1 9, 1 20, 1 2 1. 1 23

empowerment; 89. 90

enem)iies); 19. 20. 3 1 , 35. 40. 4 1 , 48.

7 1 . 75. 1 1 6 equal ity; 32

cstabl ishment; 10, 24. 62, 65. 85. 1 1 6

exploitalion; 20, 30, 47. 49. 88. 1 1 3

exploited; 29. 3 1 , 48. 82. 88. 9 1 , 99. 1 19

feminists; 1 7 feudalism; 3 1

finance; 14, 46. 88

financial; 3 . 72. 80. 8], 88. 90, 1 1 7.

1 20

financ:ialization: 3

forces of production; 1 1 3

forces; 1 2. 1 7, 28. 36. 4 1 , 6]. 68 , 77,

103. 107, 1 1 7 rree markets. 42. 48

freedom; 7. 1 2, 16, 7 1 . 73, 93. 94.

98, 1 1 1

ghettos; 83 global market(s); 45, 69, 83. 84. 101

1 3 7

: .,. oS

global; 3. I I . 13 . 1 5. 24. 26. 3°. 3 1 .

13 , 34. 36. 4°. 4 1 . 45. 46. 47. 48 • 49, 55, 56. 60. 6 1 . 62. 63. 64. 67. 68, 69, 7 1 . 72. 73. 75. 77 . 84. 85.

89. 90. 91 , 1 1 2. 1 13 . 1 23. 1 24 global ization ; 1 . 2 . 3. 4. 5. 14. 1 5. 16.

1 7. 1 9. 31 . 35. 4°. 44. 46. 56. 59. 73. 82. 83. 84 . 89. 99. I I I . 1 12 . 1 23

'globalphobics'; 5 goods and services; 4. 1 1 5

health; 14. 48. 76. 79. 1 14

hegemon; 64 hegemony; 1 1 . 3°. 60. 7 1 . 72. 97. 1 15.

1 16. 1 20 historical materialism; 25. 26. 59.

70, 105

hisLOry; 1 . 4, 7. 8. 16. 17 . 19. 23. 43,

52. 53, 55. 63. 66. 79, 89. 96. 104.

107. 1 14. 1 16. 1 19. 1 22 . 1 24

housing; 79. 93. 1 1 4 human rights; 16. 7 1 , 1 1 7

humanitarian; 6, 27 . 28. 56. 64, 65.

66. 76, 1 1 6 humanity; 20. 75. 99. 1 24

identity; 3. 35. 73. 10 I

ideologist(s); 46. 48. 6 1 . I 1 2. I 14. 1 23

ideology; 30. 43. 53. 59. 60. 1 10. 1 1 3 , 1 1 5. 123

immigrants; 19. 43

imperialism: 2 . 3. 40. 5. 7. 10. 1 3. 14.

19. 2 1 . 24. 23. 26. 3°. 38. 39. 59.

60 .64. 65. 67, 68. 69. 7 1 . 73. 75.

80. 84. 1 1 2. 1 1 3. 1 14. 1 1 6. 1 1 7. J J8. 1 20. 1 23. 1 24

imperia.list(s); I . 3. 4. 6, 8. 9. 1 1 . 1 2 .

1 3. 1 6. 17. 1 9. 27. 32. 36. 59, 6 1 .

63. 64. 68. 7°. 73. 74. 79. 80. 85. 100. 107. 1 13. J l 6. 1 18. 1 19. 1 20. 1 24

i mperialistic; 27. 28. 63. 64

income; 1 5. 43. 46. 85. 9 1 . 92. 1 1 4. 1 1 9

Indians; 88 individual consciences; 29

individual libenies; 3 2

individualist; 8 2

industrialized countries; 78. 80. 96.

1 1 3 information; 50. 77. 78. 84, 95, 96

insurgence; 97

insurgent forces; 36

i ntellectuals; 7, 20, 50, 54. 67. 7 1 , 90,

98. 105, 1 09, 1 20, 1 23, 1 24 imer-imperial rivalry; 14

international; 3, 8. 9. 1 1 • 1 2• 13, 14,

1 9. 23, 26. 27, 28. 33. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 4 1 . 55, 56. 58. 59, 60. 6 1 ,

62, 64. 65, 69. 70, 72, 75, 76. 79. 83, 84. 89, 90. 925. LOO. 101. 1 1 1 , 1 1 3, 1 1 7, 1 1 8, J l9. 1 20

internationalism; 33, 40. 89

internationalist ideology; 10

justice; 1 2, 1 3. 28, 6 1 , 63. 64, 65. 66,

77. 1 16

labour foree; 4J. 49

labour legislation; 43, 49 labour reforms; 85

labour unions; 19, 4 1 . 49. 85, 95

labour; 4 1 . 49, 88. 9 1 . 96

laiss�-faire; 52 landowners; 88

latina; 47. 83 legality; J 2

Leviathans; 15. 46. 83, 99 l iberal(s}; 5 1 , 52. 70. 1 0 1 , 1 1 1 l iberalism; 52, 108

l ibenarian pessimism; 103

mafia; 16. 1 1 9. 1 20 mandarins; 68, 123

market freedom; 1 1 5 market(s); 16, 26. 38. 42. 45, 46, 47,

50, 57, 67. 69. 7 1 . 79. 80, 82. 83. 84, 85. 101 . J l 5. J l7

markets' tyranny; 4. 17 , 82. 1 17 Marxist tradition; 1 05, 106. 108

138

mass m�dia; 7, 70. 72. 82. 1 14. 1 24

material conditions; 28

means of production; 95. 96

mestizos; 88

metropolis; 1 5 metropolitan capitalism; 18, 46. 77,

78, 8], 9 1 , 1 1 8

middle classes; 88

migrants; 18, 43, 97

mil itant(s)j 17. 19, 98, 99

military occupation: 7, 8, 1 1 , 21

m ilitary; 1 2 , 1 5. 1 7, 27, 4 1 , 60, 63, 67,

7 1 , 77, 80, 8 1 . 88, 1 16

mobilization: 1 7 . 19. 4 1

mode ofproducrion: 3. 1 04. 1 23

modern; 13, 15 , 16, 29. 32. 35. 48. 66.

9 1 • 102

modernist; 48

moderniry; 32. 33

multilatenllism; 8

multitude(s); 1 8, 1 9. 30. 32. 40. 4 1 , 87. 88. 89. 9 1 . 92. 93. 94. 95. 96• 97. 98. 99, 10]. 104, 1 1 3. 1 14, 1 23

nation (s); 3. 26, 38. 39. 44. 60. 62,

65. 66, 69, 72, 79. 80

nation building; 20. 2 1

national; 9. 10, I I . 12 , 1 3. 1 4, 1 5, 3 1 ,

35, 36. 42, 44, 45, 46. 47, 49, 5 1 ,

53 . 54, 55. 56, 58, 6 1 , 65, 70. 72•

75. 76, 77, 78, 83, 84, 87. 90, 104, 1 1 3, 1 19

nationalism; 1 1 9

natjonalirYi 56 nation-slatej 10, 1 5, 27, 32. 33, 42,

43, 47, 50. 53. 56, 57. 64, 73. 8]. 84, 85. 86. 87, 89. 1 0 1 , 104, 123

natural resources: 13

nco-colonialism; 38

neo-conservative: 76

neo-liberal: 1 . 2 , 3. 5. 14. 1 6, 19. 20,

25. 35 , 46, 59, 68. 78, 82, 89, 99, 100, 104, 1 1 1 , 1 1 2 , 1 1 3. 1 14. 1 1 5,

1 18. 1 23

neo-liberalism: 59. 79, 9 1 . 10 1 , 1 13,

1 1 4. 1 1 5, 1 1 8

non-cit izens; 69 non-global(s); 16, 1 7. 19

non-imperialist; 1 18

non-national; 46

non-place: 24, 1 2 1

non-territorial; 69

nuch:ar weapons; 32

oil : 13, 14, 63. 1 19

oligopolist ic; 1 1 4

ownership; 1 5

pacifism; 1 7

pacifisls; 1 6. 1 7

para militaries; 88

peace: 6, 10. 1 7, 65. 67

peasants; 88

periphery; 4, 1 1 , 37. 38. 39, 40, 49, 60,

62, 79, 80, 82, 85, 90. 9 1 , 1 1 7. 1 18 pickets: 36

planet: 64. 96, 102

policy(ies); 3,6. 9, 1 8, 20, 46, 5 1 . 52,

6 1 . 63. 7 1 . 76. 78, 79. 80, 82, 85, 90. 1 1 2. 1 1 4. 1 1 5. 1 1 7

polilical: 1 , 2, 5. 9. 1 7, 1 9. 23, 24. 25,

26. 29. 32. 33. 36, 38. 39, 4 1 , 49,

52, 53. 54. 55, 56, 58, 59. 6 1 , 65 , 68. 69, 80. 82, 84, 86, 87, 89, 92•

94, 96, 97. 98. 100, 10 1 , 102, 105.

106, 107, 108, 1 1 2. 1 1 4. 1 15, 1 1 6.

1 22, 1 24

politics; 8, 19. 20, 3 1 , 52. 53. 54, 55.

7 1 , 1 05. 106, 107

population(s)j 6. 18. 2 1 , 37. 46. 47.

5 1 , 64. 69, 7 7, 83, 8 7. 92. 97. 1 1 5.

1 1 7 post-capitalisl; 21 post-colonial: 27, 97 posl-ford ism: 1 0 1

posl-imperiaJisl; 2 1 , 2 7

post-modern society; 96

posl-modernity; 9 1 . 95, 123 post-structuralism: 107

post-war: 23. 64, 89, 1 20

pOI-banging protesters: 36

poverty; 98, 99, 1 23

1 39

power; 13. 24. 27. 19. 30. 33. 36. 40.

56, 60. 6 1 . 62. 63. 64. 70. 72. 73.

74. 77. 8 1 . 89. 92. 93. 94. 96. 97.

99. 103. 1 1 2. 1 15. 116. 117

privatc companies; 83. 1 1 5

profits; 6. 15. 49. 76. 8 5

progress: 16. 32. 50. 66. 79. 1 1 5. 1 1 7

progressive policies; 1 1 4

proletariat; 88. 95. 1 23

propeny; 46. 94. 96

public agenda; 100

public employees; 88

public expenditure: 77. 78. 79. 1 14.

1 1 7

public opinion: 16. 1 7

public sector; 79. 90 public sphere; 1 14

racism: 48

reaclionary; 19. 33. 123

reappropriation; 92. 95

reform(s); 78. 85. 95. 1 14

regime; 4. 1 1 . 21. 31 . 40. 55. 62. 67. 80. 87. 88. 1 1 8

regulation(s); 51. 80. 1 1 4. 1 1 8

relationships of force; 89

repression: 5 1 . 6 1 . 88. 96

republicanism: 87

republicans; 98

resistance movemenls; 9

revolution; 1. 55. 80. 84, 87. 9 1 • 97.

98. 99. 101. 101. 10]

revolutionary: 4 1 . 91 . 98. 103. 104.

105. 106

secularization: 32 semi·cilizens: 69

sexism: 48

sexual minorities: 88

slavery: 32. 33. 64, 91

social classes: 88 social democracy; 90. 1 08

social forces; 35. 53, 58. 102. 1 07

social movement(s): 16, 18. 19. 66.

106 social ordeJ{s): 36. 59. 1 23

social relotions of production: 1 1 3

social science: 13. 28. 29. 7 0

social struggles: 4 1 . 12 2

social wage: 9 1 . 91

socialism; 32. 68

socialist(s); 1 6. 95. 1 0 1 . 104

sociery of comrol: 29. 30

sociery: 6. 21 . 15. 30. 31. 4 1 , 52. 59.

97. 99. 106. 1 1 1 . 1 13. 1 23

sovereignry (sovereignties): 9. 10. 12 ,

13. 53. 56• 66. 67. 71, 73. 74. 75, 76. 77. 82. 1 1 4, 1 1 7

state: 3. 7, 10. 26, 42, 49. 50, 5 1 . 52• 53. 55, 56. 5;. 60. 65. 66, 67. 70•

7 1 . 73. 77. 78. 79, 80, 81 . 82. 83,

84. 85. 86, 87, 89, 90. 91 . 92, 98. 100. 109. 1 1 2• 1 1 5. 1 20

state·owned companies: 79. 1 1 5

strike(si: 33. 1 0 I

structuralism: 100

structure; 2, 3. 8. 1 1. 13. lB. 19. 39.

56. 57. 58. 69. 70. 73, 74. 90. 1 0 1 .

1 1 1 . 1 1 3. 1 15. 1 19, 1 13. 1 24

subsidies; 44. 84. 1 I 7

subversive: 4 1

superpower: I I , 12, 60. 68. 7 1 . 73.

75. 76

supranational: 10. 64. 65. 72. 83

surplus-value; 47, 85

system(s): 1 , 2. 8. 13. 1 4, 19, 23, 24,

27. 37. 38. 39, 59. 61 . 64, 72, 79.

82. 83. 84. 90. 94. 100. 102. 103.

104, 107. 108. 1 12, 113, 1 16

taxes; 15. 44, 85

technology: 42. 44. 70, 84

territorial occupation: 1 3, 2 1

territorial; 10, 1 1 , 12, 1 5, 36, 69, 73.

97

territory; 14, 94 terrorism; 7. 71

Texas ranchers; 16

theory: 2. 7. 37. 39. 44, 48. 54. 56.

89. 97. 100, 1 06, 107. 109. 1 1 5.

1 22. 1 Z4

tradition: 25. 29. 32, 60. 70

tribes; 1 7

trickle-down theory; 1 15

unaccountabilil)'; 8 1

unemployment; 80

unification; 40. 5 1 . 69. 83

unilateralism; 1 2

universal community; 10

unsustainable; 9

value; 1 3. 54

victim(s); 8. 10. 33. 56. 63. 76. 8 3. 105. 122. 1 23

waged labour; 43. 9 1

wllr crimes; 75. 77

walis); 6. 7, 10. I I . u. 1 3, 14. 16. 17.

1 8. 20. 21, 2 7. 32. 39. 6 1 , 62, 6],

64. 98, 1 05, 1 1 9, 1 23 w8telis); 2 . 6, 14. 93, 1 16

wealth; 1 1, 43, 46, 62, 85. 94, 96, 99.

1 1 5 women; 88, 104 . 123, 1 24

workelis); 43. 49, 5 1 , 85. 88, 9 1 , J08,

J 1 9, 1 23

working class; 1 0 1 , 107

world economy; 3, 24, 39, 45. 46, 47,

84, 1 19 world order; 8, 1 2, 26, 3 1 , So, 59. 64,

67, 70. 73. 74, 87. JOO. 1 20 world population; 21 , 37. 46, 5 1 , 97

world records; 7 5