[This article continues from Barbarians, Part One]

GO TO WORK!

    The two emissaries describe the subjects as “multitude”, a neutral term of the quantitative sort taken from some scholars of the past that is useful for avoiding the encumbrance of using a qualitative description of sides. Their aim is to convince the subjects that although it may be true that the Empire shows many defects, it is also true that its existence is the result of a right and inevitable necessity. That if the Empire is the One that represents the Many, it is only because it expresses them in a precise arithmetical sum, not because it annihilates them inside itself. That its functioning is not something that the multitudes now suffer, but that they themselves have determined, intentionally or not. In a word, that the will of the Empire is not, in fact, opposed to the desires of the multitude, but that, on the contrary, it is their expression and realization, even if lacking -– which is why there is no reason whatsoever for wanting its destruction. Quite so!But let’s consider how the emissaries liquidate Etienne De La Boetie’s critique. They are aware that “when the boss hails you on the shop floor, or the high school principle hails you in the school corridor, a subjectivity is formed. The material practices set out for the subject in the context of the institution (be they kneeling down to pray or changing hundreds of diapers) are the production processes of subjectivity” (pp. 195-6) and that consequently “the various institutions of modern society should be viewed as an archipelago of factories of subjectivity” (p.196). But, in fact, the two emissaries do not denounce the process of the reproduction of the existent with its social division that, in everyday actions, in their serial repetition, in the daily habit that accompanies us from birth to death, day after day, without giving us a moment of autonomy, is the thing that destroys the uniqueness of the individual. Rather they hail the thing that constructs its subjectivity. The extraordinary mystifying power of words! The misunderstanding is created through the use of the concept of “subjectivity”, which they clearly prefer over that of “individuality”. In themselves, the observations of the two emissaries are accurate, but the meaning that is drawn out of them is totally distorted, since the subjects are led to look with benevolent eyes upon these “factories of subjectivity”. But ultimately, what is so bad about this? Isn’t subjectivity “the quality of one who is subjective”? And isn’t the subjective “that which is relative to the subject, that which derives from the way of feeling, thinking and deciding proper to the individual as such”? Any dictionary could testify to this without uncertainty, but let’s take our consultation further, to the bottom. What is the subject? The subject is “the person or thing taken into consideration”, but it is also “one who is subordinate, submissive, subjugated.” Indeed, these terms derive from the Latin subiectus, past participle of subicere, or to subject. To affirm that subjectivity is relative to the individual means rendering submission natural, transforming a historical event into a biological fact. So subjectivity expresses the quality of one who is underneath, subordinate, submissive, subjugated. And what is the quality of one who is subjected if not that of obeying, something that one will do so much more willingly if one thinks that this is included in the nature of the individual as such? This is how it is possible to use the persuasive force of rhetoric to push the subjects to go to work in these “factories of subjectivity”, i.e., of servitude, rather than blowing them up.

    Of course, a factory is more productive when discipline reigns among the worker-subjects, but there is a problem. Far too often, the subjects have the ugly defect of considering discipline a form of domestication. This is why throughout history they have sought to avoid it or shatter it in every way. ‘What ever for then?’ the two emissaries ask themselves, convinced that “discipline is not an external voice that dictates our practices from on high, overarching us, as Hobbes would say, but rather something like an inner compulsion indistinguishable from our will, immanent to and inseparable from our subjectivity itself” (p. 329). It is undeniable that discipline is inseparable from our subjectivity since, as we have just seen, subjectivity indicates submission. But it is the claim that the strict observance of the master’s rules by the slave is due not so much to the fear of the lash as to “an inner compulsion indistinguishable from our will” that Mr. Hardt and Mr. Negri cannot support without admitting on which side of the barricades they are to be found: on the side of those who uphold slavery. Their entire historical reconstruction of the birth and development of the Empire goes in this direction. The slave desires his chains and builds them himself. The subjects desire the Empire and have built it themselves. Its formation is inevitable because it expresses the biological outcome of human nature and the dialectical out come of the history of humanity at the same time.

    The preoccupation with legitimating imperial determinism is also manifested in the tiresome mechanistic language used by the two emissaries, ultimately persuaded that they human being must fade into the gear, that autonomy must give way to automatism, and that fantasy must surrender before functionality. What is Empire? “Empire thus appears in the form of a very high tech machine” (p. 39) or to be clearer “Empire constitutes the ontological fabric*” (p. 354). What are the subjects, the “multitude”? “The multitude not only uses machines to produce, but also becomes increasingly machinic itself, as the means of production are increasingly integrated into the minds and bodies of the multitude” (p. 406). What is desire? Desire is described as an “ontological motor” (p. 389). What is language? Unfailingly, the answer arrives: “by language we mean machines of intelligence that are continuously renovated by the affects and subjective passions” (p. 366). These are only a few examples of the technical -– and, as such, above sides -– language that fills this text.

    But presenting the evolution of civilization as the mechanism of a megamachine is not enough. In saying this one justifies resignation in the presence of the social pollution it produced, but the rage at being changed into mere cogs is not neutralized. The two emissaries must thus carry out another effort. They must make the subject understand that “In reality, we are masters of the world, because our desire and labor regenerate it continuously” (p. 388) and that consequently we have very little to complain about. We, the masters of the world?

 
THE REVERSE SIDE OF THE COIN

      In our unspeakable ignorance, we thought that the ambition of every power was to consolidate and expand itself to the point where it assumes true and proper imperial significance, but that the final realization of this depends on the relations of existing forces. And of course, this objective can only be achieved by knowing how to generate the shockwaves necessary to disperse one’s adversaries. On the contrary, the two emissaries declare: “The multitude called Empire into being” (p. 43) since “the class struggle, pushing the nation state toward its abolition and thus going beyond the barriers posed by it, proposes the constitution of Empire as the site of analysis and conflict” (p. 237).

    We thought that labor was synonymous with human activity only within capitalist society, a bit like animals in captivity are synonymous with nature only in a zoo. An equation that is decidedly repugnant to everyone except for those who think that “work makes us free”, as the Nazis announced at the entrance of concentration camps, or who hold that the bars of a cage serve to protect animals from external dangers. On the contrary, the two emissaries don’t hesitate to argue that: “Living labor… is the vehicle of possibility… labor… now appears as general social activity. Labor is productive excess with respect to the existing order and the rules of its production. This productive excess is … the force of collective emancipation…” (p. 357), which is why “The new phenomenology of the labor of the multitude reveals labor as the fundamental creative activity that through cooperation goes beyond any obstacle imposed on it and constantly creates the world” (p. 402).

    We thought the identification of human life with the production of goods was one of the most insipid advertising lies, incapable of conceiving of anything other than economic balance sheets. This is the sort of fraud that has reduced poetry to a source of inspiration for advertising. On the contrary, the two emissaries inform us that “the desire to exist and the desire to produce are one and the same thing” (p. 349).

    We thought that the hegemony conquered by the great multinationals over international economic and political life, with the consequent transformation of the world into one huge shopping center had brought about the homogenization of lifestyles as well as the disappearance of all singularity. As a noted American journalist pointed out, the choice today is between Coke and Pepsi. On the contrary, the two emissaries observe that “Far from being unidimensional, the process of restructuring and unifying command over production was actually an explosion of innumerable different production systems. The processes of the unification of the world market operated paradoxically through diversity and diversification…” (p. 252).

    We thought that the blackmail which the subjects have to undergo, working to survive or dying of hunger, was the element that forced millions of people to abandon the land of their birth to go in search of a morsel of bread. No one is so idiotic as to confuse emigration caused by lack with the spirit of adventure born from exuberance. On the contrary, the two emissaries hold that uprooting and mobility constitute “a powerful form of class struggle within and against imperial postmodernity” (p. 213) since “ through circulation, the multitude reappropriates space and constitutes itself as an active subject” (p. 397).

    We thought that for over half a century technological progress was maintained by research conducted in military experimental laboratories, and was exploited for civilian purposes as well only at a propitious moment. Through it Empire is able to reinforce its war apparatus, perfect social control and maximize economic profit. On the contrary, the two emissaries are convinced that only struggles “constrain capital to adopt ever higher levels of technology and thus transform labor processes. The struggles force capital continually to reform the relations of production and transform the relations of domination” (p.208).

    We thought that the Internet represented a kind of New World for the Empire: on the one hand the invention of yet another universe to colonize, and on the other hand a way to ease internal social pressures. Navigating in electronic limbo, the subjects can savor a virtual freedom in exchange for real obedience. On the contrary the two emissaries are moved, noting that “in the expression of its own creative energies, immaterial labor thus seems to provide the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism” (p. 294).

    We thought that through information technology the Empire had succeeded in imposing a reduced language based on technological necessity and not on the richness of meaning. The subjects are forced to give up meeting in a real plaza in direct communication, since this is replaced by a virtual plaza with mediated communication; thus, they are no longer able to discuss, expressing ideas and emotions with all their incalculable shading, but only to exchange cold facts and figures. On the contrary, the two emissaries are happy to “participate in a more radical and profound commonality than has ever been experienced in the history of capitalism. The fact is that we participate in a productive world made up of communication and social networks, interactive services, and common languages. Our economic and social reality is defined less by material objects and that are made and consumed than by co-produced services and relationships. Producing increasingly means constructing cooperation and communicative commonalities” (p. 302).

    We thought that biotechnology represented the highest point of the triumph of capital over nature, economic reason’s inroad into the organic body. The proposal for genetically reprogramming the human being, for suppressing differences in favor of the dominant normality, made a brief appearance behind the promises of eternal health and happiness (but it has now come in arrogantly). On the contrary, the two emissaries do nothing but applaud this new conquest since “Biopower –- a horizon of the hybridization of the natural and the artificial, needs and machines, desire and collective organization of the economic and the social –- must continually regenerate itself in order to exist” (p. 389).

    How many other untimely thoughts could still be expressed? If it has been noted from more than one side how Marx could not hide a certain admiration for the behavior of the bourgeoisie despite his criticisms, for their part, the two emissaries show all their unbridled enthusiasm for the world born from the planetary domination of capital, which they pass off as the planetary triumph of the subjects: “Is it possible to imagine US agriculture and service industries without Mexican migrant labor, or Arab oil without Palestinians and Pakistanis? Moreover, where would the great innovative sectors of immaterial production, from design to fashion and from electronics to science in Europe, the United States, and Asia, be without the ‘illegal labor’ of the great masses, mobilized toward the radiant horizon of capitalist wealth and freedom?” (p. 397). Even the greatness of the Egyptian pyramids could not form a valid justification for the terrible suffering endured by the slaves who built them, let’s just imagine whether transgenic corn, oil wells, the procession of fashion or the microchip could be this justification!

    But one last move is allowed to us. We thought that throughout history, subjects, faced with great imperial power and Praetorian arrogance, have always had very few alternatives: to obey or to rebel. In the moments that they obey, the subjects merely reproduce the Empire and guarantee its stability. Therefore, it is only in the times of revolt against the order of the Empire that they can cease to be subjects and determine themselves as free individuals, going to storm the heavens of their aspirations. The two emissaries know this well, but they also know that their task is really to place revolt in the service of the Empire. It’s a matter of putting the unforgotten lesson of Hegel into practice. The two emissaries themselves concede that “The Empire does not fortify its boundaries to push others away, but rather pulls them within its pacific order, like a powerful vortex” (p. 198). Thus, the dialectic shows that the thesis is the Empire and its foul* order; the antitheses are the subjects, the “multitude”, and their struggle; the synthesis is reconciliation, the overcoming of contradictions, which in reality conceals the return to the thesis: the order of the Empire enriched by the creativity expressed in the struggles of the subjects. It’s an outline that isn’t very far from Marx’s interpretation of the servant-master dialectic that is found at the origin of his concept of class struggle.

    Interpreted in this way, it is possible for the long process that led to the formation of the existent to no longer be perceived by the subjects as domestication, but rather as liberation. That which is –- that is at the same time also that which must be –- should no longer be seen as a misery, but as a richness. Given that: “The multitude is the real productive force of our social world whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude” (p. 62), one must deduce from this that “The refusal of exploitation –- or really resistance, sabotage, insubordination, rebellion and revolution –- constitutes the motor force of the reality in which we live, and at the same time its living opposition” (pp. 208-9) The final conclusion of such reasoning is imposed by itself: “The proletariat actually invents the social and productive forms that capital will be forced to adopt in the future” (p. 268). In short, it is not the Empire, through the exercise of power, but the subjects, with their struggle’s against the Empire’s power, who are creating the world that surrounds us. Thanks to their dialectical proceedings, the two emissaries overturn reality and try to make the defeats of the subjects pass for victories in perspective. Thus paradise approaches.

 THE HEADS OF THE EAGLE
 

    It is true, however, that in doing so, Hardt and Negri occasionally fall into some significant contradictions. It is not always easy to convince the subjects that “The organization of mass trade unions, the construction of the welfare state, and social-democratic reformism were all results of the relations of force that the mass worker defined and the overdetermination it imposed on capitalist development” (p. 409). Whereas earlier they maintained that “Against the common wisdom that the US proletariat is weak because of its low party and union representation with respect to Europe and elsewhere, perhaps we should see it as strong for precisely these reasons” (p. 269).

    Why would the proletariat ever have had to impose its representative forms on capital if its strength is greater without them? Starting from the conception that unions and parties were conceded by power because of the struggles carried out by the subjects, the two emissaries try to interpret this as meaning that these same struggles intentionally imposed them. Despite appearances, these two conceptions are not the same thing. In the first case, the institution of representation is a victory for power, a way to vanquish the combativeness of the rebels; in the second case, it is a conquest of the rebels, the objective attained by their battles. But if the proletariat is stronger without unions and parties, as Hardt and Negri acknowledge, then who benefits in instituting them? Clearly the one who has granted them, i.e., power, that in this way blocks the real threat brought about by a rebellion without mediation.

    The first union did not appear until the second half of the 19th century. Any idea of class struggle, of the subversion of the capitalist order, was completely foreign to it since its only purpose was to reconcile the interests of the workers with those of the bosses. By organizing workers on the level of struggles for specific demands and seeking to limit exploitation to obtain a distribution of production that was less unfavorable for the workers, the union fights to obtain increases in wages, the reduction of working hours, guarantees against arbitrariness, etc. In other words, in the best of cases, the union aims to get a new division of the goods, but without directly calling the nature of the social order itself into question. Its function consists of offering correctives to the development of capitalism, because capitalism’s ruthless search for profit renders it myopic in the evaluation of the possible social relapses provoked by its choices. This is why the nature of the union is intrinsically reformist. Any economic struggle conducted within the limits of capitalist society only permits the workers to remain workers, perpetuating their slavery.

    The tune doesn’t change when one examines the function of the party, the origin of which precedes that of the union by a few years. Both emerge in the period of the affirmation of the bourgeois class. In England, the country with the oldest parliamentary tradition, parties made their appearance with the Reform Act of 1832, which extended suffrage, allowing industrialists and business people of the country to participate along with the aristocracy in the management of public affairs; there is no need to say to whose detriment. The real function of parties appears in an even more visible manner in Germany, where they were born for the first time after the disorders of 1848. This means that it was the defeat of the revolution that gave birth to parties, not its victory. It was the fear of a possible new uprising of the masses that induced the state to loosen the chain of its subjects, “conceding” the representative institution.

    But, no matter how much it is lengthened, no matter how much more movement it allows, a chain is still a chain. In any case, the history of Germany shows how social-democratic reformism was really spread in order to prevent a revolutionary solution to the social problem: Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by the hired assassins of the social democrat, Noske, who opened the way for Hitler’s conquest of power by repressing the revolution of Councils.

    The two emissaries start from an observation that could be considered accurate, but once again they turn its meaning on its head. They have reasoned perfectly in affirming that the reality that surrounds us, the entire world in which we live carries the indelible mark of social struggles under the cloak of grey conformity that envelops it. But what they don’t mention is that this sign exists only in the negative. We are surrounded by the ruins of our defeats, not by the monuments of our victories.

    An example for all. It is beyond doubt that the revolutionary movements of 1848 pushed the French government to entrust the architect, Haussmann, with the task of redesigning the city plan of Paris, but it is equally true that the great boulevards that are traveled by crowds of enraptured tourists were not devised with the aim of facilitating “the nomadism of the multitude”, but rather the movement of troops and their cannons in the eventuality of new rebellions to repress!

    It is true that the illegal activities of the subjects stimulate the application of the results of scientific research, but our streets are filled with video cameras in order to further social control, certainly not to express the “machinic community” achieved by man through technology. Rebellion pushes domination to perpetually remodel the world, but the final result of this restructuring always corresponds to the interests of those who govern, never of those who rebel.

   If on the one hand the two emissaries exalt the rebellions of the subjects while on the other hand they maintain that their objectives are realized by the Empire itself, it is because in this way they want to create a necessary dependence, an unbreakable link between the subjects and the Empire. Even the organic metaphors that they use are indicative of this purpose: “The emblem of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an eagle with two heads, might give an adequate initial representation of the contemporary form of Empire. But whereas in the earlier emblem the two heads looked outward to designate the relative autonomy of the respective territories, in our case the two heads would have to be turned inward, each attacking the other” (pp. 59-60). As if to say that, even if the aspirations are different, the body is the same. Thus, the imperial structure doesn’t just respond to the needs of the ruling class, but also to those of the ruled. The Empire –- with its army, its police, its courts, its prisons, its factories, its commercial centers, its televisions, its expressways… –- is desired by the emperor as well as by the subjects. It is simply a question of a problem between heads. Once this concept is brought in, the subjects understand that the aim of struggle is to bring about improvements in the Empire by choosing to follow the correct head, thus leaving the body unchanged.

    The entire analysis of Hardt and Negri aims to exclude any space for autonomous revolt directed at destroying the body of the Empire as well. It is a possibility that the two emissaries don’t even take into consideration, so as not to evoke dangerous specters. When they describe the Empire as a “smooth world”, they only end up confirming the contrary so well noted by Benjamin in his time: “Celebration or defense endeavors to conceal the revolutionary moments in the course of history. The fabrication of a continuity stands at its heart. It confers value only to those elements of the operation that are already brought in to make part of its posthumous influence. The points at which tradition is interrupted get away from them, and thus the rough spots and crags that offer a hand hold to those who want to make their own way beyond it.”

 
FREEDOM’S CORRECTIONS

     The Empire is right. The Empire is necessary. But unfortunately, the Empire is not perfect. Its immense potentiality is held in check both by the survival of dogmas of the past from which some imperial functionaries have not managed to separate themselves and by the opposition without compromise carried forward by those subjects who refuse to be such with the greatest determination.

    The excess or absence of the will to power are the two obstacles that must be removed according to anyone who only aims for a just balance of power: “The first is presented by the overbearing power of bourgeois metaphysics and specifically the widely propagated illusion that the capitalist market and the capitalist regime of production are eternal and insuperable. […] The second impediment is represented by the numerous theoretical positions that see no alternative to the present rule except a blind anarchic other and that thus partake in the mysticism of the limit. From this ideological perspective, the suffering of existence cannot manage to be articulated, become conscious and establish a standpoint of revolt. This theoretical position leads merely to a cynical attitude and quietistic practices. The illusion of the naturalness of capitalism and the radicality of the limit actually stand in a relationship of complimentarity. Their complicity is expressed in an exhausting powerlessness” (pp. 386-7).

    It is the struggle against these two supposed cohabiting forms of impotence, accused of nothing less than preventing a mysterious liberatory experience of work, that the two emissaries propose to the subjects, who should certainly struggle against the Empire (i.e., against those functionaries who love it for itself), but they should also struggle in favor of the Empire (i.e., against those subjects who hate it in itself).

    In order to resolve this problem, Marx’s contribution is fundamental. Just as Marx proclaimed that the development of industry desired by the bourgeoisie would lead the proletariat to victory, in the same way Hardt and Negri maintain that the development of the Empire will lead to the victory of the “multitude”: “The teleology of the multitude is theurgical: it consists in the possibility of directing technologies and production toward its own joy and its own increase of power. The multitude has no reason to look outside its own history and its own present productive power for the means necessary for its constitution as a political subject” (p.396). This is why the best way to fight the Empire consists, paradoxically, in facilitating its growth. In fact, the two emissaries claim to be certain of the fact that: “The passage to Empire and its processes of globalization offer new possibilities to the forces of liberation. Globalization, of course, is not one thing, and the multiple processes that we recognize as globalization are not unified and univocal. Our political task, we will argue, is not simply to resist these processes but to reorganize and redirect them toward new ends. The creative forces of the multitude that sustain Empire are also capable of autonomously constructing counter-Empire, an alternative political organization of global flows and exchanges. The struggles to contest and subvert Empire, as well as those to construct a real alternative, will thus take place on the imperial terrain itself – indeed, such struggles have already begun to emerge. Through these struggles and many more like them, the multitude will have to invent new democratic forms and a new constituent power that will one day take us through and beyond Empire” (preface, p. xv).

    It is thus necessary to pass through Empire in order to overcome it. It’s not so much a question of resisting its processes as of reorganizing them, possibly entrusting such a task to the right people! Its formation is a positive event, because it offers infinite possibilities to all. To think of acting otherwise, of attaining an absolute break with the imperial universe, is an illusion born from impotence. “The only strategy available to struggles is that of a constituent counterpower that emerges from within Empire” (p. 59) the two emissaries pound out without too much imagination. Who does not recognize the notes of this song? It ultimately plagiarizes the dismal refrain of Marxist-leninism: the counter-power of the multitude in opposition to imperial power, counter-Empire in opposition to Empire, counter-globalization opposed to globalization. And yet, who can ignore how the mad conviction that the bourgeois state had to be fought and replaced by a proletarian state only led to the installation of particularly repugnant totalitarian regimes, where courts presided over farce-trials, soldiers took part in firing squads, police filled the gulags with dissidents, the ruling class formed a grotesque bureaucracy, the population suffered a tremendous oppression and misery?

    But the two emissaries don’t pay attention to such trifles, confident in the ability of the imperial model to welcome the differences expressed by the “multitude” into itself without standardizing them. It is sufficient to have the right constitutional form. It is no accident if the principle rage that troubles them is: “What does it mean to be republican today?” (p.208). The incredible aspect is that they point to this question as fundamental and urgent for anyone who intends to fight the Empire. The answer that they give doesn’t allow for a reply: “Being republican today, then, means first of all struggling within and constructing against Empire, on its hybrid, modulating terrains. And here we should add against all moralisms and all positions of resentment and nostalgia, that this imperial terrain provides greater possibilities for creation and liberation. The multitude, in its will to be-against and its desire for liberation, must push through Empire to come out the other side.” Notice that the only thing to do is to go through Empire in order to come out on another side!

    Besides, our two emissaries discreetly resort to the texts of Deleuze and Guattari who maintain that, instead of resisting capitalist globalization, it is necessary to accelerate its pace: “‘But which’ –- they ask -– ‘is the revolutionary path? Is there one? –- To withdraw from the world market…? Or might it be to go in the opposite direction?’” Hardt and Negri aggravate the matter: “Empire can be effectively contested only on its own level of generality and by pushing the processes that it offers past their present limitations. We have to accept that challenge and learn to think globally and act globally” (pp. 206-7).

    From close up, this far-seeing hope of theirs greatly resembles that of Leninists who take an oath on the temporary nature of the dictatorship exercised by the party and on the imminent extinction of the state (as soon as it has entered into their possession, of course) and perjure themselves. It was sufficient to have the correct communist program. In reality, once it has tasted power, with all the vast privilege connected to it, no ruling class will ever voluntarily renounce it. No state will ever extinguish itself on its own initiative. In the same way, no Empire will ever respect and express the multiple differences present within its borders. At most, it could engulf them and grind them down like Moloch, in order to later spit them back out in the form of substitutes (as the economic empire of McDonald’s is doing to a slight extent in its various franchises around the globe, where, along with the hamburger for which it is unfortunately famous, it presents typical local plates which share nothing with the native dishes but the name with which they are advertised).

    The Empire is not inclusive; it is exclusive. Even the history of the pre-eminent Empire, that of Rome, is significant from this perspective. No autonomy was conceded in the conquered territories. It is enough to consider that in the language of ancient Rome, the two concepts of foreigner and enemy are indicated by a single word: hostis. The conviction that the Roman Empire was only interested in the economic exploitation of subject peoples and that it was guided by cosmopolitan ideals in their treatment is completely mistaken. As soon as the Praetorian divisions extended military and political subjection, the romanization of the occupied territories was also carried out with implacable energy. The Roman Empire was nothing but a state, a state intent on building up a colossal centralization of all social energy. And annihilating difference –- through repression or homogenization –- is part of the logic of every state that must necessarily strain toward general unification in order to survive. Whatever the idea it represents, whatever the social structure it is manifested in, whatever individual or group of individuals exercises it, in every epoch and in every social context, power is always synonymous with exploitation and oppression. Since it cannot be exercised by all individuals at the same time and without distinction, equally and in conditions of absolute mutuality, power is therefore the decision-making force concentrated in the hands of the few, carried out and protected by armed force. Whether they are few or many, capable or inept, this few will end up imposing their will and making their interests prevail over all; they will end up becoming oppressors.

    This trait is so very visible in any epoch and in any human gathering, that the two emissaries take good care not to ignore it. On the contrary, they confront the problem directly, but in their own way: “In the process of the constitution of sovereignty on the plane of immanence, there also arises an experience of finitude that results from the conflictive and plural nature of the multitude itself. The new principle of sovereignty seems to produce its own internal limit. To prevent these obstacles from disrupting order and completely emptying out the project, sovereign power must rely on the exercise of control. In other words, after the first moment of affirmation comes a dialectical negation of the constituent power of the multitude that preserves the teleology of the project of sovereignty. Are we thus faced with a crisis in the elaboration of the new concept? Does transcendence, first refused in the definition of the source of power, return through the back door in the exercise of power, when the multitude is posed as finite and thus demanding special instruments of correction and control?” (p. 165).

    To the enamored eyes of the two emissaries, the virtuous exercise of power “seems” to meet with an insurmountable obstacle: the “conflictive and plural nature” of the multitude. Unable to live together with this freedom, power “must” correct and control it. An unavoidable necessity, but one that may contradict its virginal rectitude. Not wanting to escape this dead-end through an act of force, the two emissaries are constrained to have recourse to an act of faith. Through great stage tricks, they become converts –- after chewing it over a bit –- to the old illusion of an American Constitution without authority, a technical-juridical solution to the “intrinsic limits” of power. “That outcome is a constant threat, but after having recognized these limits, the new US concept of sovereignty opens with extraordinary force toward the outside, almost as if it wanted to banish the idea of control and the moment of reflection from its own constitution” (p. 165). A truly astounding conclusion if one considers the fate of the Native Americans, the Indian tribes exterminated because their way of life was incompatible with that of the young United States of America. Their genocide –- cleared away by the two emissaries as “a squalid event” –- constitutes the best example of the ability for any piece of paper to welcome, express and guarantee the desires of the “multitude”.

    It is clear that the infinite multiplicity present in the human spirit can never be solicited, developed and protected by any form of power. Chance does not love to see itself sewn onto a uniform. Fantasy dies as soon as a legal code is applied. Even all the solicitude, the prudence, the forbearance made available by a hypothetical counter-power master of tolerance are only televised chattering and academic speculation. No one can any longer ignore that in spite of its supposed best intentions, counter-power will still end up liquidating its rebels –- guillotining them in the square in Paris, cutting them down like partridges on the bastions of Kronstadt, shooting them along the roadsides of Barcelona (or denouncing them to the police in the alleys of Genoa). Excess cannot be contained in any unity of measure*, no matter how generous it may appear or be. This is why Empire is to be destroyed. Not reorganized, reoriented, redefined, remodeled –- but annihilated down to its foundation. In their own way, even the two emissaries must confront the moment of imperial decline and collapse. Having come to this point, the use of the imperial conception itself forces us to come to terms with those responsible for the end of the most famous Empire in history, the Roman Empire.

    It is time to speak of the barbarians.

   The young are reproached for the use of violence. But don’t we find ourselves in an unending state of violence? Given that we are born and raised in a prison, we know longer notice that we are in stir, with hands and feet chained and a gag in the mouth. What is it that you call legal status? A law that makes an enslaved herd of the great mass of citizens, in order to satisfy the unnatural needs of an insignificant and corrupt minority? —Georg Buchner

 
In civilization, I vegetate; I am neither happy, nor free; why then should I desire this homicidal order to be conserved? There is no longer anything to conserve of that which the earth suffers. —Ernest Coeurderoy

 We will not have demolished everything if we don’t destroy the  ruins as well.—Alfred Jarry

 BARBARIANS

    The Empire has counted the hours. Hardt and Negri nurture no doubts on this point, cherishing the certainty that “A new nomad horde, a new race of barbarians will arise to invade or evacuate Empire.” (p.213). Once the joyful tidings are announced, the only thing left then is to again propose the question already raised by Nietzsche -– where are the barbarians? A basic question, but one to which it is impossible to give an answer if one does not first confront another question –- who are the barbarians?

    At his point it becomes necessary to deepen the concept of barbarian, the definition of which contains more than one meaning. Etymologically this term indicates the foreigner who came from another country and who was unable to make him/herself understood and expressed him/herself falteringly because s/he did not know the language of the polis. Historically it points to an individual who is characterized by blind, devastating violence, by savage roughness. The barbarian is the one who does not speak the language of the city-state and also the one who breaks loose with fury. On first view, it is not easy to understand how this dual interpretation that appears illogical could exist united in one word. Why ever should one who doesn’t speak our language be a brutal savage? Why ever would one who resorts to the most ferocious violence not be able to express him/herself through the same words we use?

    In reality, there is a profound link between the lack of a common language and inexplicable violent behavior. Within a society, a common language allows the sides to know each other, to reconcile differences, to find an arrangement. In the case of a conflict, it allows the adversaries to distinguish between friends and enemies, limiting the use of force. Without this possibility of understanding, there is no place for mediation, but only for uncontrolled violence. Opposed forces can descend to pacts only if they are able to communicate with each other. In the situation in which they fight, the possibility for dialogue still places a limit on their violence. It establishes a threshold beyond which not to go so that future negotiations will not be nullified. But without this common language, without the concrete possibility of knowing any thing about the other –- the basic premise for discovering the thing that can harmonize the interests of the antagonists –- nothing remains but to fight to the last drop of blood.

    In recognizing the barbaric traits that characterize many of the most recent social struggles, the analysis of the two emissaries of the Empire allows a bit of worry over their possible development to leak out. Behind the formal flattery, the attempt to civilize the barbarians, to educate them in the language of the polis-Empire with the aim of averting their devastating and, above all, uncontrolled violence, seems obvious. Hardt and Negri are aware that “Struggles in other parts of the world and even our own struggles seem to be written in an incomprehensible foreign language”(p. 57), and that this is why they are barbaric. And they don’t notice any positive sign in this, quite the opposite.

    Not being able to admit the subversive potentiality of such extraneousness, they prefer to announce that “these struggles not only fail to communicate to other contexts but also lack even a local communication, and thus often have a very brief duration where they are born, burning out in a flash” (p. 54). The incommunicability of the barbarians -– the notorious “autism” of modern insurgents that has caused so many rivers of ink to flow from the journalistic and sociological rabble -– becomes in the final analysis a dangerous phenomenon not so much for the Empire as for the barbarians themselves, inasmuch as it would not allow their action to spread more widely in time and space. But would this be the motive that moves the two emissaries to support the necessity to “construct a new common language” (p.57), defining its realization as “an important political task” (p.57)? Or isn’t the real reason that “Perhaps, precisely because all these struggles are incommunicable and thus blocked from traveling horizontally in a cycle, they are forced instead to leap vertically and touch immediately on the global level” (p. 55), a most dangerous matter since “the more capital extends its global networks of production and control, the more powerful any singular point of revolt can be” (p. 58)?

    Bringing it down to earth, if the struggles were not manifest in such an uncontrolled way –- i.e., if they were not as irrecuperable as they are incommunicable - they would be able to extend themselves on the quantitative level, but would be qualitatively less meaningful. Here it is possible to ascertain the real interest of the two emissaries: better to spread struggle at low conflictuality, the eternal poverty of making demands, than to support struggles with radical characteristics and high conflictuality. Teaching barbarians the language of the Empire (which is only able to express itself through concepts such as state, party, constitution, politics, productivity, work, democracy and withering away), the two emissaries indeed invite them to multiply their struggles horizontally, but only because they know that, once civilized, these struggles would become impoverished vertically. They want to increase the quantity of struggle, aware that this will occur at the expense of their quality, in faithful observance of an inflexible law of capitalism.

    Let’s take the concrete examples put forward by Hardt and Negri. If the unification of markets has overcome every barrier in favor of the free circulation of goods, then it should also smash every border in favor of a free circulation of workers. Nonetheless, the “nomadism of the multitude” knows a very precise obstacle: crossing the borders may indeed be getting easier in some situations, but once one has arrived at one’s destination, how does one respond to the police who demands papers? So “global citizenship” is described as “a first element of a political program for the global multitude” (p. 400). Once every one of us has documents for residence, i.e., once we are recognized as citizen-subjects of the Empire, “all should have full rights of citizenship in the country where they live and work” (p. 400). In fact, it is necessary not to forget that for the two emissaries, as for the Nazis, it is work that makes one free, and it is really the access to work that requires a universal constitution: “In effect this political demand insists in postmodernity on the fundamental modern constitutional principle that links right and labor, and thus rewards with citizenship the worker who creates capital” (p. 400). In the battles of all the irregular workers and undocumented immigrants who work and demand to be legalized, Hardt and Negri see the just claim for compensation that is due to the slave who is obedient to the orders of the master. When it is accompanied by assent, subjection deserves citizenship. What is completely absent in their outlook is the possibility that the slave might rebel against orders and try to break the chains that imprison him/her. Certainly identification papers are to be numbered among these chains. The two emissaries are quite careful not to consider that there are two fundamentally opposed ways of obtaining freedom of movement. The first is the one that they hope for, the one that foresees documents for everyone (even complete with fingerprints*!). The second is the one that they do not consider, the one that does not foresee any documents. The first conception requires the modernization of the Empire’s bureaucracy; the second requires its destruction. Either everything is placed in order before the police, or we put an end to all orders and all police.

    The same discourse applies to the other war-horse of the two emissaries, that of the social wage and of the guaranteed income for everyone. “Once citizenship is extended to all, we could call this guaranteed income a citizenship income due each member of society” (p. 403), Hardt and Negri propose, in the poorly hidden hope that the subject will be satisfied by a social reward -– owed to them for their mere consent, quite apart from the activity carried out –- and will therefore cease rebelling as those oppressed by the Empire and put themselves to work as members of society. As opposed to those who continue to think that communism is a world without money, the two emissaries hold that it must inevitably take on the form of a waged world -– meaning a capitalistic world. This absolute inability of theirs to imagine human existence outside the orbit traced by the imperial institutions is not trivial: anyone who wants to communicate with the Empire must learn to speak like the Empire, anyone who speaks like the Empire ends up thinking like the Empire.

THE INADEQUACY OF THE NO

    The conversion of the barbarians operates on all levels. They must not only learn the language of the Empire; they must also renounce their violence. But if convincing them to go to school is relatively easy – it is enough to promise a quantitative leap -– what reasoning can be used to invite those who consider the use of force a virtue to lay down their swords? Through a game of rhetorical trickery that turns the stainless myth of the Resistance around. Quoting an antifascist partisan, the two emissaries recall that “Resistance is born of desertion” (p. 205). Strengthened by this historical truth, Hardt and Negri maintain that “Whereas in the disciplinary era sabotage was the fundamental notion of resistance, in the era of imperial control it may be desertion. Whereas being-against in modernity often meant a direct and/or dialectical opposition of forces, in post-modernity being-against might well be most effective in an oblique or diagonal stance. Battles against the Empire might be won through subtraction and defection. This desertion does not have a place; it is the evacuation of the places of power” (p.212).

    As often as they display their whole inventory as word manipulators, in this instance, the trick they use is much too shabby. Resistance is born of desertion, but it is not desertion. Desertion only consists of a non-participation, a non-collaboration in the projects of the enemy. Resistance however is direct intervention, face-to-face conflict with the enemy. At most, one could say that desertion was a form of passive resistance, while the partisan struggle was a form of active resistance. Those who become aware of living in an intolerable social situation, in a world based on the wealth of the few and the misery of the many, those who no longer want to feel responsible for the horrors committed every day, can cease to make their contribution to the continuation of the existent. For example, they can stop going to the polls or acquiring merchandise from the large multinationals. But however much one may appreciate the intentions, this choice is completely inadequate since in itself it is not able to concretely call the social order into question and ends up as a rather limited gesture of refusal. It pacifies the guilt feelings of the conscience, but it doesn’t change the surrounding reality. In order to stop the enemy, it is not enough to refuse to give your service or to abstain from associating with it. It is necessary to attack it and strike it with the intention of destroying it.

    Supporting desertion at the expense of sabotage, the two emissaries do nothing more than support the Empire. Just as Nazism continued to occupy and oppress Italy despite its deserters, in the same way, the Empire will continue to occupy and oppress the entire planet in spite of its deserters. All this rhetoric about the resistance of desertion awkwardly pursues a single aim, that of pacifying the rage of the subjects by offering them the safety valve of abandonment and denying the necessity and urgency of the direct attack against the Empire. Through these charlatans’ subterfuges, the barbarians are invited to take as an example not the determination of the deserters, which would have led them to active resistance, but rather the initial behavior, in other words, they are invited to emulate the gesture for which the deserters became famous: throwing down their arms and refusing to fight.

    It is clear that once Hardt and Negri had used the imperial metaphor, they could not do anything but await the coming of the “new barbarians”. It is enough that these barbarians simply cease to be so: yes to a comprehensible language, no to violence. The latter is no longer useful: on the one hand, “Imperial corruption is already undermined by the productivity of bodies, by cooperation, and by the multitude’s designs of productivity. The only event that we are still awaiting is the construction, or rather the insurgence of a powerful organization” (p. 411); While on the other hand, “Militants resist imperial command in a creative way. In other words, resistance is linked immediately with a constitutive investment in the biopolitical realm and to the formation of cooperative apparatuses of production and community” (p. 413). For fear of being misunderstood, the two emissaries are forced to explain themselves with a certain clarity: They do not, in fact, hope for the coming of the barbarian horde, but rather of a powerful organization of militants! They don’t appreciate those who struggle furiously, but rather those who work productively! They don’t demand that one follows one’s passions, but that one carries out one’s obligations! They don’t desire one to wreak havoc among the enemies, but to resist creatively!

    Hardt and Negri appreciate the Empire to such a degree, they are so molded by its values, worshipful of its organization, assimilated to its technology, accustomed to its language, as to conclude that militancy “knows only an inside, a vital and ineluctable participation in the set of social structures, with no possibility of transcending them” (p. 413). Here we are before yet another example of dialectical acrobatics. While they launch vibrant appeals to the subjects so that they start off on the road to exodus, at the same time they affirm many times that within the Empire there is no elsewhere, no outside with respect to an inside.

    But if the Empire is everywhere, If limits that define its territory no longer exist, where would this Promised Land toward which to lead the exodus of the “multitude” ever be found? Does a free zone exist on this planet, a place that remains uncontaminated by the logic of power and profit? Unfortunately, the world is One, and it is completely under the domination of the Empire. No substantial alternatives are permitted within it. At most, it allows us to adapt ourselves to its arrangements, giving up any existence of our own. This corresponds to extinguishing us -– the quiet life of resignation. At best, it is possible for us to survive in a way that is less bad, inserting ourselves in any of its cracks. This is why anyone who  desires to live, that is to determine for herself the content and the form of his days on this earth, has only one card to play. Before being the indispensable, preliminary condition of real freedom, the insurrection against the Empire is a question of dignity.

WITHOUT ANY REASON

     Today the barbarians no longer camp at the gates of the City. They already find themselves inside it, because they were born in it. There are no longer cold lands of the North or barren steppes of the East from which to start the invasion. It is necessary to recognize that the barbarians arise from the ranks of the imperial subjects themselves. In other words, the barbarians are everywhere. For ears accustomed to the language of the polis, it is easy to recognize them, because when they express themselves, they stammer. But there is no need to let oneself be fooled by the incomprehensible sound of their voices; there is no need to confuse the one without a language with the one who speaks a different language.

    Many barbarians really are deprived of a recognizable language, rendered illiterate by the suppression of their individual awareness -– a consequence of the extermination of meaning carried out by the Empire. If one does not know how to talk, it is because one does not know what to say, and vice versa. And one does not know what and how to speak because everything has been banalized, reduced to mere symbol, to appearance. Meaning, which was considered one of the greatest sources of revolt, a radiant fount of energy, has been eroded in the course of the past few decades by a whole company of imperial functionaries (for example, the French structuralist school so dear to the two emissaries). They have shattered, pulverized and minced it in every sphere of knowledge. Ideas that expound and incite to transformative action have been cancelled and replaced by opinions that comment and rivet in conservative contemplation. Where there was once a jungle full of danger because it was wild and luxuriant, a desert has been created. And what does one say, what does one do, in the midst of a desert? Deprived of words with which to express rage for the suffering one has undergone, deprived of hope with which to overcome the emotional anguish that devastates daily existence, deprived of desires with which to struggle against institutional reason, deprived of  dreams toward which to reach in order to sweep away the repetition of the existent, many subjects become barbaric in action. Once the tongue is paralyzed, the hands quiver to find relief from frustration. Inhibited from manifesting itself, the compulsion toward the joy of living is turned on its head, becoming its opposite, the death instinct. Violence explodes and, being without meaning, manifests itself in a blind and furious manner, against everything and everyone, overturning every social relationship. Where there is not a civil war going on, there are the rocks thrown from overpasses or the murders of parents, friends or neighbors. It is not revolution or even revolt; it is a generalized slaughter carried out by subjects who have been made barbaric by the wounds inflicted on their hides every day by a world that is without meaning because it is forced to have a single meaning. This dreary and desperate violence annoys the Empire, disturbed in its presumption of guaranteeing total tranquility, but it is not worried about this. In itself, this does nothing but feed the demand for greater public order. And yet, however easily recuperable once it is brought out to the surface, it shows all the restlessness that stirs in the depths of this society, all the precariousness of the imperial hold over the circumstances of the modern world.

    And yet there are other barbarians of a different sort. They are barbarians insofar as they are refractory against the words of command, certainly not insofar as they are deprived of awareness. If their language seems obscure, irritating, stuttering, it is because it does not endlessly conjugate the imperial Verb to the infinitive*. These barbarians are all the ones who deliberately refuse to follow the institutional itinerary. They have other paths to travel, other worlds to discover, other existences to live. To the virtuality –- understood as simulation -– of technology that originates in sterile laboratories, they oppose the viruality –- understood as possibility – of aspirations that originate in the palpitations of the heart. In order to give form and substance to these aspirations, in order to transform them from virtual into real, they must snatch the time and space necessary for their realization from the Empire by force. That is to say, they must manage to reach a total rupture with the Empire.

    These barbarians are also violent. But their violence is not blind toward those they strike, but rather toward imperial reason. These barbarians don’t speak or understand the language of the polis, and they have no desire to learn it. They have no use for the social structures of the Empire, the American constitution, the current means of production, identification papers or the social wage to which the two emissaries so much adhere. They have nothing to demand of imperial functionaries and nothing to offer them. The politics of compromise has failed from the start, not due to a ridiculous ideological process, but due to their inadequacy to this world. These barbarians only know that to realize their desires, whatever they are, they must first clear out the obstacles that they encounter on their path. They have no time to ask themselves how “capitalism is miraculously healthy, its accumulation more robust than ever” (p. 270), as the two emissaries comically slow down to do, perturbed that history refuses to function in compliance with the well-oiled mechanisms of a machine. The “mystery of capital’s continuing health” (p. 270) doesn’t manage to rouse the passion of these barbarians as much as the urgency of its death. This is why they are ready to lay waste to the metropolises -– with their banks, their shopping centers, their police-oriented city planning -– at any moment, individually or collectively, in the light of the sun or in the dark of the night. If they don’t have a single reason for doing so, it is because they have all of them.

    In opposition to the discontented subjects who want to become contented subjects, the possibility of another world does not concern these barbarians. They prefer to fight because they think that a world absolutely other is possible. They know that “another world” will be like “another day”, the empty and boring repetition of what has come before it. But a world absolutely other is a completely unknown world to dream, to create, to explore. Having been born and raised under the imperial yoke, without ever having had the possibility of experimenting with radically different ways of living it is not possible to imagine a world absolutely other except in negative terms, as a world without money, without laws, without work, without technology and without all the numberless horrors produced by capitalist civilization.

    Unable to conceive of a world without masters to serve, the two emissaries interpret this absence as a lack. It is their ridiculous belief that the Empire is the destiny of humanity that causes them to say: “The refusal of work and authority, or really the refusal of voluntary servitude, is the beginning of liberatory politics […]. In political terms, too, refusal in itself (of work, authority and voluntary servitude) leads only to a kind of social suicide. As Spinoza says, if we simply cut the tyrannical head off the social body, we will be left with the deformed corpse of a society” (p. 204). The tyrant is the head, the reason that guides; The subjects are the muscles, the strength that works. Rather than Spinoza, the two emissaries should have quoted the patricians of ancient Rome, who informed the plebeians who were on the verge of rebelling that if the subjects rise up and put the tyrant to death, they commit suicide, because there cannot be life without someone who commands.

    The eternal lie that maintains all exercise of power finds two fervent followers in Hardt and Negri, who are available to argue that that the refusal of authority is suicide and that anarchism is a form of impotence. As has been noted many times and from many sides, it is really destruction that opens the door to creation; mere refusal does nothing more than render the ground fertile for a new affirmation. Contrary to what the two emissaries think, the tyrant – and every power structure is tyrannical – is not the head of the social body, but rather the parasite that poisons its organism. Killing it is an act of liberation. The Parisian revolutionary clubs did not suffer from the beheading of king Louis XVI, nor did the Russian workers’ councils suffer from the fall of Tsar Nicholas II. Rather, the liquidation of power, i.e., the insurrectional context that brought down the ancient customs and released new energies, is what really allowed their birth and their spread. And the reintroduction of power, in Jacobin or Bolshevik form, is what really brought about the stalemate and the ruin of the process of social regeneration, bringing that which is Unknown back to that which is State*.

    Whoever does not speak with me and like me has nothing to say. Whoever does not act with me and like me is sick with impotency. Whoever does not live with me and like me desires to kill herself. This is the teaching that the Empire spreads among its enemies from the mouths of the two emissaries. But the barbarians are deaf to such foolish warnings; their ears are sensitive only to the voices that call them to the assault against the Empire, to making a clean sweep of the existent. Their fury even inspires terror in many enemies of the Empire who indeed desire to defeat it, but with good manners. As civilized cutthroats, they share the dissent but not the hatred; they understand the indignation but not the rage; they hurl protests slogans but not war cries; they are ready to shed saliva but not blood. They too –- it is clear –- desire the end of the Empire, but they wait for it to happen spontaneously, as a natural phenomenon. Pushed by the certainty that the Empire is seriously ill, its most educated enemies hope that a collapse frees humanity from its cumbersome presence as soon as possible. Besides, no one can deny that it is much less dangerous to obtain freedom after the peaceful departure of the master, like a hereditary fortune, rather than conquering it in battle. This indisputable observation leads them to sit on the banks of the river waiting to see the corpses of their enemies pass by carried by the currents.

    The barbarian nature is quite different; it doesn’t know this gentle patience. In fact, the barbarians are persuaded that it is vain to wait for the death of the Empire, which above all might not be quite so imminent as its civil enemies hope. Besides, this all leaves one to assume that at the moment of its collapse the Empire will bury everything, really everything, under its ruins. Then what is the purpose of waiting? Isn’t it better to go in search of the enemy and do everything possible to get rid of it? This barbaric determination rouses horror. The two emissaries are horrified; according to them the identification of the enemy is “the first question of political philosophy” (pp. 210-211) and as such cannot be concerned with barbarians, who in their coarseness are able at best to move “round in such paradoxical circles” (p. 211).

    But the well brought up enemies of the Empire are also horrified. Accustomed to using up their days in waiting to be able to start living, they mistake barbaric immediacy for bloodthirstiness.