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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'
9 �1Il��l�l l�IJllIJI1
About this book
Harvard achola r Mic:hael Hardt and Italian 1�l'twing intelJ«tuaJ Toni
NelJrl's maj or book, Emplrr, quickly became 0 huge bestseller wh�n
it WH pub l lahed 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 ,
''nIe IiCOpe oflhis lucid and careful disSft'tion of widely held beliefs
about the emerging world order extends well beyond lf1tt in ftu ential
study that is Ita immediate targft.. Boron strips away layer after layer
of mlrrundentanding concerning "old i mperialism and its cumnt
"
led R(){}ks
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AIIItJItIe NrJrI" wuftnll plabl..1f .., Zed Boob 1Jd,7C)'ndl1l
Saftt, Land... 1f19JP, U. ..... 1Iamn 4ao, 175 PIftlI A_I!, Nl'W
York, NY 10010, tIM III JOO.50
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AD ripD RIaftd
Acknowledgements I vill
Prc£acC' I t
Prologue to the English-language edition I 6
Epilogue 1111
Bibliography I 115
Index of proper names I 130
Geneml index 1136
Acknowledgements
, "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 necessa ry both because the deficiencies of con
ventional analyses of the left with regard to the transformations
3
" of goods and services. the great majority of countries witnessed
'"
i
a.
the growth of their external dependency and the widening of
the gap that separated them from the centre. Globalization, in
shon, consolidated the imperialist domi nation 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 fan tasies 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 min o r
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 pheno meno n . 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 disenf ran ch isement 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. Desp i te the
4
nobll' intentions nnd intl'lIectual and political honesry of our
authors, about which I have no doubt, their book - regarded by
face the costs and risks entailed in criticizing a book which, for
temporary experi ence , the theses that Michael Hardt and Antonio
the Iraq war has had the same effect on the analysis proposed
self-confidence.
Much water has Howed under the bridge and much blood has
of these new realities, If, In writing it , my origi nal idea had been
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 confusio n that
is made WOIW by the malignant trend among a stuable majority
7
II isms during the twentieth century. The military occupation 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
8
decreC!d by Pr�sident G eo rge W. B ush caused the contrad ictio n
between their th�orization and reality to �come as glaring as it
9
the opposite: the impotent resignation of the UN in the race of
J
the brutal outrage �mmiltcd by washington (Clrdoso 1003).
Yet, the ab su rd ity of this interpretation - admittedly, always
difficult - of the cu rrent 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
World War, which led the English economist to conclude that the
American president was 'the palest fraud on ea rth ' (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
10
any territorial or geographical rderen�. Second, the gradual
South, vanishes into thin air. Instead ofthis, what would aJlegedly
in Iraq is that (pace Hardt and Negri) the United States has ful1y
form the dominont clus In the USA, iDternts which, thanks to the
who today fe�1 at home in the Oval OffIce pounded, with absurd
11
II Bin Laden. "0 conclude: there is nothing 'd�trrritorialized' or
::I
1 repeatrd for the umpteenth time by t.he same old actors wearing
'manifest destiny' that turns the United States Into the all�dly
by force dUll has nol btt'n heard since Adolf Hitler made similar
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
"II
to, and control of, strategit: natural h.'sources in the allegedly
a
current world imperialist structure. Oil constitutes, at this time, 0-
ca
c
the central nervous system of internalional capitalism. and its CD
13
i m portance is even greater than that of the world of fi nance.
!
S' The latter cannot function without t he former: the entire edi fice
!
A.
of what Susan Stra nge has correctly labe l led 'cas i no capitalism'
wou ld coll apse within m i n u tes i f oil d isappeared. And the latter,
we know, wi ll be exhausted in no more than two or three genera
t ions. It would constitute unforgivable naivery to suppose that
French d i ss idence in the face of US outrages in Iraq is fou nded
on the d e mocratic and an ti-colon ial ist convictions of Jacques
C h i rac or on the u nquenchable desi re of the French right to
ensure for the I raq i people the full enjoyment of the del ights of
a democratic order. What prompted F rench i n t ra nsigence was.
on the con trary, somet h i ng far more prosaic: t he permanence
of that co untry's oil companies in a territory that con ta ins the
world's second-largest oil reserves. Aga i nst 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
i nternational systcm is that of a heightened i n ter-imperial ri va l ry
i n which the sacking o f s t rategic resources, such as o i l and water,
and the stmggle for a new carve-up of the world could wel l lead
to an ou tbu rst of new wars of pillaging, analogous in their logic
although different in the i r appearances to those which we have
known ove r the cou rse of the twe ntieth ce ntury, in the days when
i m peria l i s m enjoyed enviable health and was not dea d , a s they
wa n t 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 N egri
endorse - unconsciously, I assume - the vision of the capi talist
world assiduously cultivated by the main US and European busi
ness and manage ment schools and the theorists of neoli beral
'globa lization'. As is wel l known, in the thi nking of the right the
i rresisti ble rise of globalization is a natura l phenomenon as un
controllable a s the movement of the s ta rs , and one tha t gives rise
to a new world of i n terdependent economies, Economic agents
therefore operate on a level fiel d free of the obstacles previously
14
set up by powerfu l nat ion-states. In this space, free competition
reigns, and the old asymmetries, with their hateful d i sti nctions
between metropolis and colonies, are a th ing of the past. evoked
only by left ists nos ta lgic for a world that no longer exists.
Accord ing to this i n terpreta tion, not o n ly h as 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 t he i r national ascript ion . Now they are all
t ransnational and globa l , and what they req u i re to operate e ffi
ciently is a worldwide spacc freed from the old ' national' h u rd les
and restrictions that migh t h inder their movements. With i n a
supposedly a nti-ca pitalist reading this space would be the em
pire, precisely as i t is cha racterized i n the work of Hardt a nd
N egri. As I shall demonstrate i n the following pages, the reality is
light-years away from this vision. There is a n elementary distinc
tion (completely ignored i n the work under review) between the
t h eatre of opera tions of the compan ies and tJle territorial space
in wh ich thei r ownership and cont rol materialize. Even in the
case o f modem corporate Leviathans - a sma l l proportion of the
total number of companies existing i n the world - whose scale
of operations is clea rly pla ne ta ry, ownershi p and con t rol a lways
have a national base: compan ies a re legal entities i ncorporated
in a specific country and not merely regis tered at the U nited
N a tions in N ew York. They have headqua rters i n a given city,
obey a specific national l egal fra mework that protects them from
potential expropriations, pay taxes on their income and profits i n
[he cou n t ry where their headquarters are loca ted, and so o n .
T h e New York Times's conservative col umnist Thomas Fried
man scorned the Sil icon va lley execut ives who li ke to say:
15
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
IlL
Amazon_com to order a new passpo rt. (Friedman, 1999)
16
militants, femi n i s ts , aborigi.n al orga n izations and all sorts of sects
and tribes, who wilfully ignore the fact that for the first time in
h istory the world has been ' u n iversalized' fol l owi ng an America n
pattern, and for that reason the end has been decreed for a l l
dem ocratic forces i n the 1 970S and 1980s. Hist ory, far from having
ended , is just at its begi n n i ng, and the curre n t situa t i o n can and
m ust be reversed.
The vigorous emergence of such m ovements contra d icts some
central planks i n H ardt and Negri 's book. The ' n on-globals' have
earned the huge merit of havi ng lau nched a large pacifist m ove-
ment even before t he begin n i n g of operat i ons in I ra q . Wh ile,
as N oam Ch omsky reca lls, pacifism in relation t o the Viet nam
Wa r did n ot appear, a n d then t i midly, u n t il m o re t h a n five years
after the begi n n i ng of the m i l i t a ry escalation in South Vieln a m ,
i n the case of lhe recent w a r on I raq t h i s m ovement man aged
t o a rticulate massive protests of u npreceden ted vigou r weeks
befo re the begi n n i ng of h ostilities. It is calcu l a ted that some 1 5
m i l l i on people demonstrated for peace i n maj or cities through out
the w orld. I n B ri t a i n and Spa i n , countries ruled by gove rnments
complicit in US i mperia list aggress i o n , s t reet dem onstrations
reached a n u n p recedented size. The governments of Blair and A:z.-
nar p rovided an exe mplary less on on the li mitations of capitalist
dem9cracy by ignori ng, with absolute cyn icism, what the dem os,
the supp osed s overeign of an allegedly dem ocratic pol itical o rder,
demanded \vith its m obilizations and its a n swers to nu merous
a
p u blic opin i on su rveys. As 1 have a rgued elsewhere, i n d e m o- f
c ratic capitalisms what matters is the 'cap i ta l i s m' component i
17
GI of the formula; the 'democrat ic' part is merely an accessory to
:l
La
among t he young, from large social sectors that are su ffering a n
accelerated process o f d ecay by virtue of neol iberal globa l iza tion.
This is not (0 deny t he pa rticipation of groups of i m m igrants in
such mob i l izations, but the fact is that the soc ial com position of
these movements suggests that the presence o f the latter i s , more
than anything, marginal. In any case, because of its complexity
and radical nature, its origi nal i n nova tion as regards the strategic
organization of collective subjects, its discursive models, its style
of action and, lastly, i ts m i l i tant a n t i -capit.alism, the ' non-global'
movement represents one o f the most serious challenges that
the empire has to face . Th is l i kewise co nst itutes a new aspect
t h a t raises serious doubts abOllt the t heses d rawn up by H a rdt
a nd Negri rega rd ing the s u bj ects o f social confrontation and t he
u ncertai n sociological physiognomy of t.he ' mu l t 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 deta i l s are only just beginni ng to be sketched out
but whose general ouu ine is a l ready clearly discernible. Nothing
co uld be more m istaken than to posit, a s Hardt and Negri do
i n their book, the existence o f s uch an implausible entity a s an
empire \vithout i m peria l ism - a paralysing pol itical oxymoron.
Hence the need to argue aga i n s t their t heses, since, given the
cxceptional gravity of the current situation - a capita lism increas
ingly reactionary in the social, econom ic, political and cultura l
spheres, o ne that crimi nalizes social protest and m i l i tarizcs inter·
nationa l pol i t ics - only an accurate d iagnosis of t he stru c t u re
and operat ion of the i nternational imperialist system wil l a llow
t hose social movements, political parties, labour unions and
,
19
and Kirchner in Argentina represent a species of resolute 'empire
!
f fighters'; or judging as 'absolu tely positive' the first year a n d a hat(
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
tra nsition, not at colonization. I t would be like saying that the
fac t of turn i ng from dictatorship to democracy in H ungary 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. (Ca rdoso 200))
Something that may surprise the reader of Hardt and Negri is the
sea nt a tten tion that Empire pays to the li terature abou t imperial
ism_ In contrast with Len i n and Rosa Luxem burg, who made a
careful review of the numerous works on the topie, our authors
have op ted to ignore a great part of what has been written a bou t
the issue. The literature with which they deal is a eombination of
North American social science, especially international political
economy and international re lations, mixed w i th a strong dose
of Fre nch philosophy. This theore tical syn thesis is packaged in
a clearly post modern style a n d language, and the fi nal prod uct
is a theoretica l mix that, despite the au thors' i n tentions, is
u n l i kely to d isturb the serenity of the moneyed lords who year
after year gather in Davos. Due to th is, a l most a l l the citations
are taken from books or a rticles pu blished within the limits of
the French-American academic establishment. The considerable
literature concern ing imperia lism and the fu nction ing of the
imperial system produced in Lat i n America, I ndia, Africa and
other parts of the Third World does not even merit a footnote.
Discussions within classical M arxism - Hilferding, Luxembu rg,
Len in, Bukhari n a n d 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
Bara n , Pa ul Sweezy, Harry M agdoff, James O'Con nor, Andrew
Shonfield, Ignacy Sachs, Paul Matlick, Elmar Altvater a n d M aurice
,
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 risi ng, thus, that this enterprise offers a vision of the
empire viewed from above, from its dominant s trata . A partial
II and u n i lateral vision, t herefore, u nable to perceive the totality of
c
o the system and to accou nt for its global manifestations beyond
t h e 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
the mea ndcri ng of Fouca u l t ' s thought and its relevance to u nder
for those who see the world not from the i mperial system's vertex
24
com m i t ted to t h e construction of a good soc iety a n d , specifi
a re not a na rchists bur com m u nists' (p. 350); ' the irrepressible
l ight ness and joy of being com m u ni st' (p. 4 13) - collapses like a
house of cards when they need to explain and analyse the i m perial
i n t rod uce the main thesis of the book: an empire has emerged
of the empire i s laid out in narrowly j u rid ical terms. Thus, the
world order, far from being conceived as the h ierarch ical and
m i s represen ted i n Hardt and Negri ' s analysis as a proj ect ion of
the U n ited Nations' formal orga nizat ion. This s u rprise is then
i n te n s i fied when the i n trigued reader real izes that the conceptual
i nstru ments used by Hardt and Negri to examine the world order
ism - and of such little use for a deep analysis of th i s type of issue
surprise that the results of this init ial incursion i n t o the subject
matter are far from satisfactory. For example, the U n ited Nations'
role i n the so-ca l led worl d order is grossly over-esti mated: 'one
production tha t can play a sovereign j u rid ical role' (p. 4).
Nat ions is not what it appears to be. In fact, because of its b u reau
27
o right bu t by consensus' in order to ' i n tervene in the name of any
� type of emergency and superior ethical pri nciples' such a s 'the
appeal to the esse n tial values of j ustice' (p. 1 8). I s i t the ' hu man
eviden t to even the least- i n formed reader. The vol uminous Lat i n
erial cond itions that susta i n the legal a nd i ns t i tutional fra mework
of t he empi re . The i r obj ect ive is to ' d iscover t he means and forces
t ions 'va n i s h into thin air', to use the wel l-known metaphor by
from the social sciences are prese nted as i f they were the latest
28
'discovery' by the Parisian rive gauche or New York's Greenwich
ideas surprisingly similar to what today, with the fan fare that
and M arx, to mention only a few of the most obvious, that refer
m a d e d isobe d ie nce and rebe l l ion a calise for serious con flict
who are dazzled by Foucault's (an author who deserves our res·
n ies 'to reach the soul, clumsily struck at the body, and the soul,
escaping from such blows, rose gloriously above it'. I n stead, mod
29
o for the soul' (de Tocqueville 1969: 255). Th is step from c h a i n s and
l hangmen to i n d ividual manipu lation and cont rol of ideology and
The first part of the book concl udes with a chapter devoted
the left, H ard t and Negri be l i eve t hat the e m p i re is not the crea
tion of a world capita l ist coa l i tion under the A merican bourgeois
insist on t h i s even a fter assu ring us, w i th the help of H egel, that
the fact that the e m pi re 'is good in i tselr does not m e a n that it is
good 'for itselr ( p. 4 2). They continue: 'We claim that Empire is
than the forms of society and modes of p rod uction that came
be fore it' (p. 43). However. a few l ines earlier, the a u t hors say that
the empire ' constructs its own relat ionsh ips of power based on
assu m ption that has not been confirmed by experience and that,
30
and, in certa i n ways, religious halo, as I shall show in t h e final
that the real capi tal ist world order - and this is precisely the
the ones offered by the decay of feudalism. Are the au thors t ryi ng
society with renewed poss i b i l i t ies for l i bera t ing and e m a n c i pa
ting practices?
posed by global iza t ion, i nsists on opposing local res ista nce to
32
was already there? Do they by any chance believe t hat the world
was inhabited by Rousseau's noble savages? Do they not sit uate
t hemse lves in the same position as the critics of Niccoli:> Machi
ave l l i who denounced the Florentine theoretician for being the
' i nventor' 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 re mind us, we are victims of both the development of
capital ism and its lack of development.
Once H a rd t and N egri have asserted the substantive a n d
historical continu ity between modernity a n d t h e na tion-state,
t hey rush to reject the a n tiquated ' proletarian i nternationalism'
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 o f capital ism, this type o f internationalism i s both
a nachron istic and techn i ca l ly reactionary. But thi s is not a":
toget her with t he 'proletarian i n ternationalism', the idea of the
existence of an ' i nternational cycle of struggles' disappears. The
new battles, whose paradigmatic examples a re the Tiananmen
Sq uare revolt, the Palesti n 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 'immed iate regional concerns i n such a way
that they cou ld in no respect be l in ked together as a globally
expanding chain of revolt. None of these events inspired a cycle
of struggles, because the desires and needs they expressed cou l d
n o t b e tra nslated into d i fferent contexts' (p. 54).
F�om t h is categorica l assertion, for which i t wou l d req u ire
considerable effort to p rovide support ing evidence, ou r a u t hors
an nounce a new paradox: ' i n our m uch celebrated age of com
mu nication, struggles have become all bu t incommunicable' (p. 54,
em phasis i n original). The reasons for this i n co m m u n icabi l i ty
33
remai n shadowy, but we should not lose hopc in the face of the
impossibility of horizontal co m m u n ication a mong the rebels
because, in real ity, i t is a blessing. Under the logic of the empire,
H a rd t and Negri tell their i mpat ient readers, the message of these
battles w i l l t ravel vertically on a global scale, auacking the i m perial
con stitution i n its n ucleus - o r, what they call with a mean ingful
slip, j umping vert ically 'to the virtual center of Empire ' (p. 58).
H e re, new and more form idable p roblems besiege their a rgu
ment_ In the fi rst pl ace, those that de rive from the very d a nge rous
confusion between axiomatic assu mptions and empi rical o bser
vations. To say that the popul a r battles a re incommu n icable is
an extremely important assert.ion_ Unfortunately, H a rdt and N egri
do not offer any evidence to demonstrate whether this is mere
supposition or the rcsu lt of a historical or empi rical investigation.
Faced with th is s ilence, there a re a bundant reasons for suspecting
that this problemalique reflects the less than healthy influence
of Niklas Luh ma n n and J ti rgen Habermas over Hardt and Negri.
A quick exploration of the nebu lous concepts put forward by
34
international icons for the neoli beral globalization critics and for
the a n ti-capitalist ba ttJes i n five contine nts, i n fl uencing i mpor
tant d evelopments i n t hese con flicts waged at local and national
levels?
Second, Hardt and Negri mainta i n that one o f the m a i n
obstacles p reven ting t h e com m u n icability of the battles i s the
'absence of a recogn ition of a common enemy against which the
struggles are d i rected ' (p_ 56). We do not know whether o r not
th is was the case among the French or South Korean strike rs , but
we suspect that they had a cleare r idea than our a uthors regard
ing the identity of their antagon ists. Concerning the Zapat.istas'
experience, H ard t and Negri's t hesis is completely wrong. From
the begi n n i ng of their battle, the Chiapanecos had no doubts
and knew perfec tly we ll who thei r enemies were. Aware of this
real i ty, t hey organ ized a n extraordinary eve nt i n the d epths o f
the Lacandona j u ngle - an i nternatjonal conference aga inst neo
l i be ral globa lization , attended by h u n d reds of pa nicipants from
arou nd t he world who discussed some of today's most burning
problems. The abi l ity of the Zapatistas to convoke a co n ference
o f this type refu tes, in practice, anothe r of Hardt and Negri's
theses - the one that bemoans the lack of a s u itable com mon
and cosmopolitan language i n to which to t ranslate the languages
u sed in d iverse nat ional struggles (p. 57). The successive confe r
ences that took p lace in the Lacandona j u ngle, togerhe r with the
d e monstra tions against neoli bera l globalization and the world
social forums held i n Porto Al egre , B raz i l , show that, contra ry to �
•
,.
what is said in Empire, there is a common language and a com o
:I
mon understa n d i ng among the different social forces fighti ng
the d ictators h i p of capita l .
�,
::t.
o
If,the old battles are no longe r relevant - Marx's o l d mole :I
o
-
has d ied, to be replaced by the ' i n fi n ite u n du lations' of the
modern snake, accord i ng to Hardt and Negri - the strategy of
the anti-capita l ist jou rneys has to change. National co nf1icts a re
not co mmunicated ho rizo ntally b u t jump d irectly to the vi rtual
35
o centre of the empire, and the old 'weak l i n ks ' of the impe rialist
� chain have d isappeared. The a rticulations of the global power that
forces n o longer exist . The refore, 'To ach ieve sign i fi cance, every
of rule' (p. xi i), the reader stumbles across the novelty that local
a n d nat ional battles must rise at the cen t re of the empire, though
our authors rush to explai n that they are not referring to a terri·
the notions of 'outside' and ' i nside' have lost the i r mea ni ng. Now
everyt h i ng is i nside the empire, and its n ucleus, its heart, can be
the Zapat ista uprising in Chia pas, the i nvasion of land by the
Where are t hey? What is thei r art iculation with the processes of
t hei r domination? Who are their poli t i cal represen tat ives? Or is
it just a set of im material rules and p rocedu res? The book not
only does not offer any answers to t hese q uestions, but does not
the d i ffe re nces, on the fact that the categories of 'centre' and
ever i n the current circu mstances, because, a mong other thi ngs,
1960s the ratio between the rich es t 20 per cen t a nd the poorest
debates and research t hat took place not only in Lat i n America g
but also i n the rest of the Third World, and it brings us back to
37
of econom ic development_ Accord ing to these const ruc tions,
later say, a n assenion that was , and still is, completely false. The
the product of clumsy polit ical deci s ions, u nfortunate and poorly
factors. In Hardt and Negri's terms, a l l the cou nt ries were 'insidc'
t h e s}'stem.
ber the fol l owing: at the begi nning o f the 1970s, the Lat in Amer
the Latin Americans. Hardt and Negri ' s t h esis about the non-
d i fferemiation of the nations wi t h i n t h e empire calls to m i nd the
Empire - for in stance, that there are no more d i ffe rences between
the cen t re and the periphery of the system, that there is no longer
an 'outs ide' , that the players m e rely d i ffer in degree, etc. - are
far from new. These affi rmations began to c i rcu latc t h rough the
of this image si nce the two head s woul d 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 j u rid ical structure - not the eco
little pol it ical economy in t h i s book and the absence of the most
wha t i s outli ned a s its emblematic i mage reveals the strange paths
t h rough which ou r a u thors have ven t u red and on which they have
39
o completely lost t h e i r way. That is why the eagle's second head,
� sta ri ng at the one that represe nts the e m p i re's juridical order,
the d istinct alte rnarive. From this perspective, when the const i ·
ism that e ru p ted strongly from Seattle);J a petj tion of p rinci ples
peared because now there is only one way of ba u ling against the
41
3 Markets, transnational corporations
a nd national economies
A Recurrent Confusion
H a rd a n d Negri's naive acceptance of a cru c i a l aspect of world
stubborn in maintain ing the not very in nocent m yth that nation
It is hard to bel ieve [hat an i nte l l ectual of Toni N egri 's cal
not ' m ove effortlessly across borders' This belief i n the free mo
_
43
It is not thei r only m istake. Our authors seem to believe that
money, technology, factories a n d equipment a re a lso s u bj ec t
extremely strict ones. But what about technology and the rest ?
ones thaI move more freely are su rely not the latest or the best.
That Hardt and Negri accept some of the cen t ra l ass u m ptions
dence that shows the vital ity, especially in developed cou n t ries, of
panies and economic act ivi ties. The au thors l ive in countries
pipes, Salvadorian texti les, Chi lean grapes and Uruguayan meat ,
44
safely prolected by 'Fortress Europe' which, while hypocritical ly
proclaiming the virtues of free trade, seals its doors aga i nst the
' Ih real' posed by the vibrant economies of Africa, Lat i n America
a nd Asia.
Regardi ng the declared d isappearance of national companies,
a simple test wou l d be enough to demonstrate t h is mislake. For
ex.ample, Hardt and N egri should tl)' to convince a friendly gov
ernmenl 10 expropriale a local branch of a 'global' finn (an d ,
therefore, supposedly u natlached t o a n y national base) s u c h a s
M icrosoft, McDonald's o r Ford ; or, i f they p refer, I hey could t l)'
t o do Ihis w i l h Deulsche Bank, Siemens, Shell o r U n i lever. The n
we would have only to wait a nd see who would step forward to
demand that t he decision be revoked . I f the compan ies were
t ru ly gl oba l , it would be the job of Kofi An nan, or of the general
d i rector of the World Trade Orga nization (WfO), to appear i n
fron t of the government i nvolved i n order 10 put pressure o n it
i n 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 U n ited States, Germany or the U ni led Kingdom wou l d
lum u p t o d e m a n d , w i l h their usual rudeness and i nsolence, the
i m mediale reversal of the decision u n der the threal of pun i s h i ng
the country wil h all types of sanctions and penal ties. If this hypo·
thetical example seems too com pl icated , H a rdt and Negri should
ask themselves, for example, who was Ihe Boe i ng representative
in t he tough negotiations with Europea n Un ion officials for t h e �
D
..
commercial competition with A i rbus. Do they bel i eve t h a t the Jr"
4S
Can Hardt and Negri ignore the fact t h a t the 200 mega-corpora-
I
l: l ions that preva i l in the world markets register a comb i ned total
�
Hardt and Negri state that a profound change i n the logic with
which global capital operates has taken place with the constitu
the new and with fash i o n ' (p. 1 52). A l l t hese lead ou r aut hors to
for creating new ' ta rget markets' is e n hanced. The consequ ence
egies: 'one for gay Latino males between the ages of eighteen and
sphere of p rod uction. For th is, they recal l some rece n t develop
47
and Negri to a completely ideal ized vision of contemporary global
the fact that, according to the authors, 'the old modernist forml>
of racist and sexist theory are the expl icit enemies of t h i s new
anxious to include:
salaried exploited or, i n contrast, are they real earthly para d i ses?
to rea l i ty, si nce sexism, racism and homophobia are practices that
consta n tly fal l against the subtle ropes of corporate l iterat u re and
- the whole debate arou nd the despotism of cap i ta l within the cor·
poration loses its meani ng, as it does every time more demands
about the extension of the work day in the global corpora t i on, the
i ncrease security i n the long tenn, capital travels a l l ovc r the world
porate blac kmail is also e�t remely releva nt, given that the global
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 pa ttern of mass consumption not usua l ly
available i n the peripheral cou n t ries.
50
people have access to a te lephone. This horrifying figu re is far
from being exclusive to Afghani stan . I n many a reas i n southe rn
Asia, in sub-Saharan Africa, and i n some u nd e rdeveloped coun
t ries i n Lati n Ame rica and the Caribbea n , the figures are not
much better (Wresch 1996). For most o f the worl d's popu lation,
Gates's com ments are a j oke, i f not � n insult to rheir miserable
and i n h u mane l ivi ng cond itions.
Leaving aside this u n fortu nate begi n n i ng, the chapter intro
duces a d ivision of ca pitalist development i n to t h ree stages. The
first extends throughout the eighteenth a nd n i neteenth cent u ries.
It is a period o f competitive capital ism, characterized accord ing
to Hardt and Negri by ' re latively l i t tle need of state i n tervention
at home and abroad' (p. 305). for the a uthors, the protection
ist policies of the UK, the USA, France, Belgi u m , Holland and
Germany, and t he pol icies of colonial expa nsion promoted and
i mplemented by the respective national governmen ts , do not
qualify as 'state intervention ' . I n the same manner, the legisla
tion passed, with differen t degrees of t horoughness i n all these
countries over a long period and desti ned to repress the workers,
would also nOt qualify as examples of state i n tervention in eco
n omic and social l i fe. 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 Bisma rck in Germany, who condem ned t housands
of workers to exile, and the legal norms that made possible the �
a
..
b rutal repression of workers i n t he U n ited States, symbolized 1r'
51
to the capitalist acc umula t ion process. I n h i s Quadern;, Gramsci
is a d e l iberate pol icy, aware of i t s own obj ect ives, and not t h e
(Gramsci 1 9 7 1 : 160).
'passivity' of the state when the fox en ters the henhouse cannot
brief exa mples are enough to prove that conve n tional knowledge
were lower. But this does not mean that there was no i n tervention,
or that the need for it was weaker. On the contrary, there was
a great need for state in tervention and the d i fferent bou rgeois
the F i rst World War and the 1929 crisis, t hese needs increased
to an extraordi n a ry degree, but t h a t should not lead us to bel i eve
that before these dates the state d i d not play a primary role i n
tion e merges when they get to the ' t h i rd stage' i n the h istory of
the marriage berween t he state and capital. In their own word s:
52
the j u risdiction a n d authority of nation-states. It would seem,
then, that this centu ries-long d i a lectic has come to an end: the
state has been defeated and corporations now rule the ea rth!'
(p. 306, em phasis i n original).
This statement is not only wrong but also exposes the authors
to new rebu ffs. Worried about having gone too far wi th their
anti -state en thusiasm, they warn u s that it i s necessary ' to take
a much more nua nced look at how the rela tionsh i p between
state a n d capital has changed' (p. 307). It is at the very least
perplexing that, after having written this sentence, the authors
d i d not proceed with the same conviction to erase the previous
se ntence. This con fi nns the suspicion tha t the fi rst one represents
adequately enough what they think about the subject. For them,
one of the cru cial features of the c urrent period is the displace
ment of state fu nctions and pol itical tasks i n to other social l i fe
levels and domains. Reversing the hi storical process by wh ich the
nation -state 'expropriated' the political and administrative fu nc
tions retained un ti 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. B u t by whom'? We
do not know, because i n Hardt and Negri's a rgument there is a
meani ngful 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 its effective ness, withou t bothering to provide some type
of em piri cal reference to support this thesis. The same happens �
a
with the fam ous thesis about 'the autonomy of the pol itica l ' . If ;.
CD
�
1/1
evidence for the first thesis is com pletely absen t, all that can be a
�
said i s that it is a commonplace of con tem porary bou rgeois ideol �
:I
ogy; concern i ng the second thesis, Ha rd t and Negri are completely a
:t.
o
wrong. To support their interpreta tion , they m a i n ta in : 'Today a �
e..
notion of pol i t ics as an i ndependent sphere of the detennina
�
tion of consensus a n d a sphere of mediation among con fl icting o
&
social forces has vc ry little room to exist' (p. 307). Question : when 3
ii'
and where was pol i t ics r hal 'i ndepe ndent sphere' or that simple 1/1
53
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-
54
analysis of the state i n its curre n t stage. I nstead, the consensus
econom icism com pletely distort the com plexity o f the conse n s u s
u sing the instru m e n ts of the state' (pp. 307-8). The trad i tional
a nce aga inst the state have been losing more and more releva nce
have m igra ted to other sphe res a n d domains of the social l i fe,
55
level of the transnational corporations' (p. 308). The resu l t of
this process was somet h i ng l ike the destruction or suicide o f
the national democratic capitaJist state, whose sovereignty frag
mente d 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 i ncreasingly refe r for
legitimacy to the transnational l evel of power' (p. 308). [n relation
to the possibili ties opened before th i s nansfo rmation, t he verdict
of ou r aut hors is rad ical a nd unappea l ing: 'the decl ine of the
nat ion-state is not simply the resu l t o f an ideological pos i 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 rrevers i b l e process' (p. 3 36). The d ispersed fragme n ts of
the state's old sove reignty and its i nherent capacity lO inspire
obedience to its mandates, have been recovered and reconverted
' by a whole series of global j u ri d ico-economic bod ies, 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
c i rculation of goods caused a progressive loss of e fficacy and
effectiveness in national pol i tical and j uridical structu res which
were powerless to con t rol players, p rocesses and mechanisms
that greatly exceeded their possi bilities and that d isplayed their
games on a foreign board, there is no sense in t rying to resurrect
rhe dead nation-state. Aijaz Ah mad ( 2004: 5 1 ) provided a tim ely
rem inder that it was none other than Madeleine Al brigh t who, as
Secretary of State d u ring the Clinton a d m i n i stration, expou nded
s i milar theses by sayi ng that both 'nat ionality' and 'sovereignty'
belonged to an 'out dated repenoire of polit ical theory' u nable
to accou nt for the ' new structu res of globalization and impera
tives of " h umanitarian i n te rven tion·. .. The authors assure us
that not h i ng cou l d be more negative for fu ture emanci palOT}'
struggles than to fal l victim to nostalgia for a n old golden era.
Still, if it were possible to resu rrect the nation-state, there i s
a n even more important reason t o give u p this en terprise: th i s
institu tion 'carries w i t h i t a whole series of repressive structu res
and ideologies [ ] and a ny strategy that relies on it should be
rejected on t hat basis' (p. 336). Let us su ppose for a moment that
we cons ider this argumenl val i d . In that case we should resign
ourselves to contemplat i ng not only the ineluctable decadence
o f the nation-stale but a lso the fall of the democra t ic order, a
result of cen tu ries of popular struggles t h a t inevitably rest on
the state s t ructure. Hard t and Negri do not delve very deeply i n to
this subject of vital im portance. M aybe they do not do so becau se
t hey assu me, m istakenly, that i t i s possible to ' democratize' t he
markets or a civil society structu ra l ly divided i n to classes. This
is not possible, as I have explained carefu l ly elsewhere (Boron
20oob: 7 3-132). Therefore, which is the way Out?
57
4 Alternative visions of the empire
cha nge t h a t their readers see l ittle but clouds. hazy seas a n d
t heoretical scheme.
shown elsewhere, that was exactly the path chosen by the young
The science thal unveiled the anatomy of civil society and the
most i nt i m ate secrets of the new econo m ic orga nization created
his reOections on cri t i q ues of the existing social orde r and his
econom ics, and what it has is, in most cases, the convenlional
velopment of both the capi ta l ist economy, and of its major fonn s
Conseq uen t ly, readers will find themselves with a book that at
[he ideology and the econom ic-pol itical form u l a prevailing dur
59
i ntentioned but who are completely removed from the m u d and
�
: blood t hat constitute the daily l i fe or capital ist societies, especi
ally i n the periphery, a nd who have launched themselves to sail
across the oceans of the empire anned with defective maps and
i n ferior instru ments of navigation_ Thus, bewildered as Qu ixote,
they take appearances as rea l i t ies. Therefore, when t hey descri be
the pyra m i d o r t h e e m pire's global const itution, Hard t a n d N egri
assure us that: 'At the narrow p i nnacle of the pyram i d there is
one superpower, the U nited States, that holds hegemony over the
global use of force - a superpower that can act alone but prefers
to act in col laborat io n with others under the u m brella or the
United Nations' (p. 309).
It is very hard to u n derstand such a naive comment, in which
the sophistication expected o r scien tific a n alysis is completely
lacking. To begin with, the reduction of the concept of hegemony
to the use o r rorce is inadmissible. H egemony is much more
than that. Regard i ng the themes of empire and i m periali s m ,
Robert Cox once wrote t h a t hegemony cou l d b e represented a s
'an adjustment among t h e material power, the ideology and the
i nstitutions' (Cox 1 986: 225). To reduce the i ssue of hegemony
to its m il itary aspects only, whose i mportance goes beyond all
doubt, is a major m istake. American hegemony is m uch more
complex than that. On the other hand, we are told that t he U n i ted
States ' prerers' - surely because of its good will, i ts acknowledged
generosity on international matters and its st rict adherence to the
principles of the J udeO-C h ristian tradition - to act in collabora
tion with oth ers. One cannot hel p but wonder i r the twen ty-some
t hing pages that Empire devotes to a reflection u pon Mach iavel li's
t houghts were written by the same a u thors that then p resent
a n i n terpretation of the United States' i n ternational behaviou r
so antithetical t o the teach i ngs o f the Flore nt ine theorist a s t he
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 o r that country
60
- for collaborative action is m e rely a mask beh ind which the
imperialist policies are adequately d i sgu ised so tha t they ca n be
sold to i nnocen t spirits. Through t h i s operation, whose efficacy is
demonstrated once aga i n i n their book, the policies of i mperial
expansion and domi nation appear as i f they were real sacrifices
in the name of humanity's com mon good . It is reasonable to
suppose that the American government's top officials and their
numerous ideologists and publicists cou ld say something like
this, someth i ng that nol even t he most subm issive 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.
Th i s i s not the first time that such a serious m istake ap pears
in the book. Al ready in Chapter 2.5 t hey had written:
I n the wan i ng years and wake of the cold war, the re sponsib i l i ty
t ime the U n ited States could e xerc ise this power in its full form.
In. co nclusion, and con t rary to what the a ncest ra.1 prej udices
nurtured by the i ncessa nt a n ti-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 police man after
61
.. decades of u n fru it ful negotiations trying to be exem pted from
:::I
hands while all the diplomacy of the State Depanment was busy in
man, the very conservat ive edi tori a l writer of the New York Times
in Kosovo was legitimate (as was the one in the Gul f for other
righ ts', to u�e an expression dear to H a rdt and Negri. The tru th is
of the sin ister regi m e of M ilosevic was not the cause but the
d istance, while the civil society i s destroye d ' (Chomsky 1 994 : 8).
a n d ema ncipating possi bil i ties ma kes t h e i r eyes look u p so, for
62
ren t i m perialist pol icics produce in h i s tory's mud. If the C hrist ian
to the con templation of God and for that reason did not real ize
sion. Masters of the art of 'deconstruct ion ', they are shown to be
war that was i n real ity a massacre. They also fa i l to recognize, let
the bombi ng, the 'collateral damage' and the criminal e m bargo
that followed the war. Only cou n t i ng the chil d ren, the n umber
surpasses 1 50,000 victi ms. They also remain silent about t he fact
thaI, despite his defeat, Saddam remained i n power, but with the
consent of the world's boss to repress a t will the popu lar upri si ngs
dominance of 'global righ ts' and not with the goal of reaffirm i ng
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 i m perial inte rest'. The grou n d i ng for this
With the en d of the cold war, the United States was called to
serve t he role of guaranteeing and adding juridical efficacy to
this eomplex p rocess 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 m perial powers of the ad·
ministration for the public good , so too today the i n t ernat i o na l
monetary o rgani zat i o ns ( t he United Nations, the international
organizations, and even the humanitarian organizations) as k the
U n i ted States to assume the central role in a new wo r l d order.
(p. 18J)
which for the fi rs t time in history compa n ies and states become
j uridical ' persons' enjo}'i ng exactly the same legal status. States
that neglects the progress made by modern law over the last t h ree
hundred years.
woul d have rights and the other one only obl igations. G iven t he
find out who would have what: co mpanies would have the right
Un ited States, given that, despite what H a rdt and Negri thi nk,
66
those companies are American and are registered in that country.
In all the regional confl icts of the late twent ieth century, from
N o comment.
68
fies three mai n 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 preve nt 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 Secu rity Cou ncil chairman·s observa
tions offer a clear vision without beating about the bush, distant
from the vague rhetoric employed by Hardt and Negri and, pre
cisely because of this, extremely i nstructive 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:
by, and dependent on the United States a rmed forces. It also in
t hose peers before whose eyes they want to shine and excel . It
also includes t he people in the press and the mass media, for
the United States have shown the way, changing the established
materialism than the One that a ri ses from Hardt and Negri's work.
the memory of those who have forgotten what the imperial ist
70
string of i nitiatives that, according 10 H u nt i ngto n , were d riven by
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
'pariah states' or cri m i nal Slates and exclude them from the
and its rad ical d iscon nection with what H u n ti ngton a p p ropriately
cal l s the respons i b i l i l.ies of the ' lonely superpower', What emerges
71
impose a new global logic of domination, is not a world empire
!i
.e but 'American logic of domination'. There is no doubt that there
are supranat ional and transnational organizations, just as there is
no doubt t hat beh ind them lies the American national i n terest.
It is obvious that the American national i nterest does not exist in
the abstract, nor is it i n the i nterests 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, t he judicial powers, the mass media, the major u niver·
sities and centres of study and t he framework that allows them to
retain a form idable hegemony over civil society. Inst i tu tions t hat
are su pposedly 'intergovernmental' or i nternational, such as the
I M F, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization , are at
t he service of corporate America n i nterests. The intervent ions of
t he USA i n other regions of the world have different motivations,
but did t hey take place. as Hardt and Negri cla im. to establ ish
international law? I n this sense, Brzezinski could not have been
more categorical when he said t.hat the so-called s uprana t ional
institu t ions are, i n fact, pa rt of the imperial system, someth i ng
that is particularly t rue in the case of the international fi na ncial
i nstitutions ( Brzezi nski 1998: 28-9).
5 The nation-state and the issue of
sovereignty
the past has been transferred to a new global st ruct ure of domi
the age of the e m p i re, is signalled by the irreve rsible decl ine
of the institu tional and legal fou n dations of the old order, the
reject the idea that the U nited States is 'the ultimate authority
order' (p_ xiii). Both t hose who see the U nited State9 as a lonely
wrong, Hardt and Negri say, because both parties assume that the
poses_ In the first place, let us say that to assu me that t here can
74
U n i ted Nat ions d u ring Ronald Reaga n 's first term , sai d , there is
a double standard with which Washi ngton judges foreign gove rn
ments and their actions. One standard is used to evaluate the
sovereignty of the friends and allies of the U nited States; a nother,
very d i fferent, is used to judge the sovereignty of neutral cou n tries
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
specu lations, 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 au thors so i n terested
in constitu tional and j u ri dical matters, as is the case of Hardt
and Negri, the deplorable performa nce of Washington regarding
the acknowledgement of i n ternational treaties a nd agreements
provides a timely douche of sobriety. As is well known, the U n i ted
States has repudiated any i nternational ju rid ical i nstrument that
i m plies even a m i n i mal reduction of i ts sovereignty. Recently,
Washington has delibera tely delayed agreeing to the constitu tion
of an I n ternational Criminal Court sited i n Rome - with special
competence to ju dge war crimes, c ri mes agai nst humanity and
genocide - because this would mean a t ransference of sovereignty
to an i n te rnational organ whose control could escape from their
hands. The U n ited States actively panicipated i n all the previous
delibera tions abou t se tti ng u p the cou rt, it discussed criteria, it
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 it 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 regard i ng the rat ification of i nternational
conventions and agreements, precisely because WaShington con
siders tha t these would be detrime ntal 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
compa n ies. In the case of the Ince rnational Convention on the
Rights of the Child, only two countries i n the whole world re
fused to sign the protocol: Somalia and the U nited States_ But as
poi nted out by Noam Chomsky, actually the U n i ted States 'have
not ra tified a single convention, because even in the very few
cases i n which they did so, the American government managed to
introduce a reserve cla use that says the fol lowing: "not appl icable
to the U n i ted States without the consensus of the U n i ted States"'
(Chomsky 200 1 : 63).
In the neo-conse l"Jative ze nith of the 1 960s, the U n i ted S ta tes
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 ca nnot control a t will? A
simi lar attitud e is obsel"Jed in relation to another US creation,
the wro, and its preced ing agreement, the GATT. The European
U nion aCCll sed the American government of damaging European
companies because the embargo against Cuba violated the com
mercial ru les previollsly agt"eed. Besides, the E u ropean U n io n
s a i d , the e m bargo w a s i m mora l , i t had been unanimously con
demned and children and the elderly were i ts main victims_ The
embargo's u n favourable i m pact on heal th and nutrition policies
as wel l as other similar co nsiderations were also h ighl ighte d . The
response from Washi ngton was that these were not commercial
or hu manitarian issues but, i nstea d , they we re matters rel ated
to American national security a n d , therefore, t hey wou ld not
be t ra nsferred to a ny other i n ternational agency or institution
but would be exclusively managed by the d i fferent branches of
the American government without allowing any, even m i nimal,
foreign i mel"Jention (ibid.: 64-6).
A final exa m ple will be useful to conclude this d iscu ssion.
76
D uring the offensive of the N icaraguan Contras - i l l egal ly armed,
t rained. financed and organized by t he United States - the govern·
ment of Managua fi led a demand i n 1985 to the I n ternational
Court of J ustice accusing t he A merican government of wa r crimes
against the Nicaraguan civil population. The response from Wash
i ngton was to d is regard the cou rt ' s j u risd iction. The p rocess
con t i nued anyway, and the final sentence of the court ordered
Washington to stop i ts m i l i tary opera tions, retire the merce nary
forces stationed in N icaragua and pay substa ntial reparations
[0 compensate for the damage inflicted on the civil society. The
government of the U n i ted States simply disrega rded the sente nce,
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 payi ng them. The same occurred with Vietnam. These
are good examples of what Hardt and Negri unde rsta nd as the
i mperial creation of 'global rights' and t he empire of un iversal
ju stice (ibid.: 69-70).
It seems clear t h a t the authors have not ma naged to appreciate
the co ntinuous relevance of national sovereignty, t he national
i nterest and national powe r in all its magn i tude, all of wh ich
i ncurably weakens t h e central hypothesis of their argument that
i nsists t here is a global and a bstract logic that presides over t he
functioning of the empi re . Rega rd i ng what occurred with t he
capitalist state in its cu rrent phase, i t seems that the m istakes
cited before become even more serious. First of all, there is an
i m portant i n 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
pu bljc expenditure and the size of the state apparatus moves i n
t he opposite d i rection of t h e o n e i magi ned by Hardt a n d N egri.
If somet h i ng has occurred in metropolitan capitalisms in the
last twen ty years, it has been precisely the noticeable i ncrease
of the sizc of the state, measured as the proportion of p u blic
77
expenditu res to GOP. The i n format ion p rovidcd by a l l types of
sou rces, from national governments to the U n i ted Nations De
a natu ral one, but ins tead was the result of initiatives adopted at
the cen t re of the empire : the governme n t of the U n ited Sta tes,
in its role as ruler, accompanied by its loya l guard dogs (the
IMF, the World Bank, the wro, e tc.) and su pported by the active
compl icity of the cou n t rie s of the G- 7. This coalition forced ( i n
79
i ndustria lized cou ntries.) Another policy imposed on these coun-
�
� tries was the u n ilateral open ing 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 i ncreased exponentially. It is pertinent
to state that while the pe riphery was forced to open u p commer
cially, p rotectionism in the N orth became more sophisticated.
The d eregulation of markets, especially the fi nancial one, was
another of the objectives of the 'capita list revolution' in t he 1 980s.
All 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 'regu lati ng' the market, obviously in their own i nterests.
As I said before, these policies were not fortuitous or accidental,
given that the d ismantling of t.he states increased s ignificantly
the ability of i mperialism and foreign companies and nations
to control not only the economic life but a lso t he pol i t ical life
of the cou nt ries of the periphery. Of course, we find nothing of
this in Empire. What we do find, instead, are reiterative passages
clai m i ng that i mperialist relat.ionships have ended, despite the
fact that the visi bility they have acq u i red 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 Hond u ran h i storian Ramon Oqueli. Referring to his
cou ntry i n the m id-1 980s, wit.h its well-established democrat ic
regi me, Oq ueJi observed:
80
after in the American Embassy in Tegucigalpa; in the fifth place
comes the commander-i n-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)
8t
the Americas); decli ning levels of governmental response to rhe
�
i&: claims and demands of civil society; a drastic reduction of com
petit ion among pOlitical parties because of increasing simi larities
between the majori[)' pol it ical parties, following the bipart isan
American model; the tyranny of the markets - in fact, of the
oligopolies that control them - that vote every day and capture the
permanent artention of the governments while the public votes
every two or three years; related to the aforemcntioned, logical
trends towards pOlitical apathy and individualist ret raction; the
growing predomi nance of the big oligopol ies in the mass media
and the cultural in dustry; and, lastly, an increasing transference
of the right to make decisions from popular sovereign[), to the
admin istrative and political agencies of the empire, a process that
exists both in the empire's 'exterior provinces' and in its centre.
In the Latin American case this means that popular sovereign [)'
has been deprived of almost all its attributes, and that no strat
egic decision on economic or social mat ters is adopted in these
cou ntries without previous consultation with, and the approval of,
the relevant agency in Washington. As we can sec, a situation like
this cannot but contradict the essence of the democratic order,
and popular sovereign[)' is reduced to a mere dead letter.
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 overall 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 e njoy
thei r vigour both in the periphery and i n the centre of the sysrem.
I n the former, because the implementation of strongly repressive
policies 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 this occurs especially i n the U nited
States, a Significant proportion of their social problems is dealt
82
with by channell i ng people towards the prison syste m, though
three major cities of that country, New York, Chicago and Los
schizophre nic: for the poor and the excluded, a fascist state; fo r
an i n stitu tional-j u rid ical fra mework adequate for the protection
global m a rkets, the need that capital has for the state is even
85
• Of course, it is possible for the state to chan ge its form, and
.�
� for the t raditional nation-state to give room, on the one hand,
state will still be crucial, and i t is likely that for a long time even
who, i n the name of capital, control the cul tural ind ustry of Lat i n
o f the streets, the paupe rized elde rly, public employees and the
indeed share their place in the m u l t itude with the social agents
i t could exp l a i n ? Empire does not offe r any such expla nations.
88
for cha nging i t . Some t i mes, good poetry m a kes bad sociology,
tionalism rel ies on 'an abstract and little real istic notion of an
,
89
such as the I M F (Meiskins wood 2000: u8). Though the argu·
ment developed in Empire is not ve ry c lear about this, it seems,
however, to be in l i ne with a certain type of reason ing that in
recent years has aeq uired great popularity thanks to the efforts of
a wide range of intell ectuals and ·experts' connected to the World
Ban k and other international financial i nstilutions. The proposals
out l ine, especially i n the framework of national societies, t he
begi n n i ng of a process of 'devolution' to civil soeiety functions
that had been improperly appropriated by the state. Obviously.
these pol icies a re · the other side of the coi n ' of the privatizations
a nd the dismantling of the public sector that the i n terna tional
financial i nstitu t 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 ities in the provision of
public welfare - providing social assistance, ed ucation, heal thcare
and so on - transferring to civil society the task of dea l i ng with
these issues whiJe incidenta l ly preserving a balanced fiscal budget
and, eventually, guara nteeing the existence of a surplus in the
fiscal aceounts i n order to fu nd the foreign debt. I f this pol icy of
empowerment of civil society is u nreal istic a t the national level,
its 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 li berated from class l i mi tations that ma ke i m pos
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 a bysmal economic and soc ial inequalities and by the
oppressivc features inscribed in its structures, norms and ru les of
operation. If democracy and c i ti zenship have proved to be such
elusive and praetica l ly u ngraspable objectives in the capitalisms
of the periphery, why shou ld we expect them to be obtainable in
the even less u n favou rable terra i n of the i nternat ional system?
The price that Hardt and Negri pay for ignoring this i s the
extreme naivety of their proposal, closer 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 c reated by
rhe workers a n d , therefore, accept 'in postmode rn i ty [ ] the
the book for a d i scussion of the reasons why large n umbers o f our
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
91
entire population the demand that a l l activity necessary for the
prod uction of capital be recognized with an eq ual compensation
such that a social wage i s real ly a guaranteed income' (p. 403).
Once aga i n , fine intentions with which everybody can agree. But it
i s pert inent to formulate some questions: fi rst, i s not t h is second
component of the ema nCipating programme extremely similar
to the 'citizens' wage' that, with some restrictions i t is true, has
been conceded i n some of the m ost adva nced industri a l ized
democracies of the North? Is i t so d i fferen t from the moderate
social-democrat reformism in place i n some of the Sca ndi navian
count ries, especially Sweden? It does n ot seem so. I nstead, i t
appears t h a t th is would b e the deepening of a tre nd going back
a lmost half a century wi thout, at least a s seen fTom here, having
checkmated the capitalists or neutral ized the exploitative charac
ter of the bourgeois relationShips of p roduction. Authors such as
Samuel Bowles and Herbert G i ntis, for example, thoroughly ex
a m ined different i ntemational experiences with what they called
'the citizens' wage' without being able to i n fer from their a na lysis
a conclusion that al lows us to support the thesis that in states i n
which such a wage h a s been established - wit h greater o r lesser
rad i ca l i sm - the m ultitude has been emancipated ( Bowles and
Gintis 1 982, 1 986). Second: how would the capitalist class respond
to the i mplementat ion of a measure sllch as the a foremen tioned,
which, desp ite its l i m i ta t ions, has an enormous distributive cost?
Wou ld they accept it without fe rocious resistance? This leads,
obviously, to a discussion that postmodern thinkers abhor but
which i m poses itself with the same u navoidable power as the
un iversal law ofgravity. We are talking, with Machiave l l i , about the
problematic of power and how i t i s obta ine d , exerted a nd lost.
The third political demand of the m u l t i tude is the right to
reappropriation. I t i s a right that conta i ns diverse d i mensions,
from language, commun ication and knowledge to machi nes,
and from biopolitics to the conscience. This last component is
partieu la rly problematic because i t 'dea ls d i rectly with the con-
92
stituent powe r of the multi tude - or really with the prod uct of
the creative i m agination of the mu ltitude that con figures i ts own
constitution' (p. 406). On this point, which covers as we know a
cruc ial topic i n Negri 's t hought, such as the co nstituent power,
the authors i ncessa ntly t ravel between t he constitution of (he
m ul t i tude as a social actor - and here a wide space opens i n which
to discuss to what exten t this process can be i n terpreted a s the
only resul t of its 'creative i magination' - 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 au thors. 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, a n i mperial
const itution : its notion of a bound less frontier of freedom a nd
its defini tion of a n open spatiality a n d temporality celebrated i n
a const i tuent power' (p. 406).
There are a few l i ttle problems with this inte rpretation. First,
the belief that the so-ca lled postmodern mu ltitude knows the
American constitution or someth i ng l i ke it, its deba tes and its
lessons; in the best of all possible worlds th is is still a remote pos
sibility. If u nder the label of ' m u l titude' Ha rdt and N egri i nclude
the more tha n two billion people who barely su rvive on one or
two dollars a day and without access to potable water, sewerage
systems, electricity and telephones, without food or housing, i t
i s somewhat h a rd to understand how they manage to i mbibe the
marvello us ema ncipating teachi ngs of the US constitution . If, on
the cont ra ry, t he authors are referring to the graduate students
of Duke or Pa ris, then the chances improve, though not greatly.
But these are minor d eta i ls. The serious issue is their idealization
of the America n const itution . Noam Chomsky has a rgued repeat·
I
93
of the U nited States or even govern themselves. The American
const itution is decisively and consciously a nt i·democratic and
anti-popular, in accordance with what its most i m portant original
a rchitects repeatedly declared. For James Madison, the main task
of the constitution was that of 'assuring the supremacy of the
pe rmanent in terests of the cou n t ry, that are no others than the
property rights'. This opinion from one of its wri ters probably
went un noticed by Hardt a n d Negri, but i ts force obl iges us seri
ously to redefine the role that they assign to the US constitu
tion, 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, apparen tly d id not enter
his thoughts_ M oreover, to avoid attacks on the righ ts of property,
Ma dison shrewdly designed a pol itical system that d iscouraged
popu lar pa rticipation (something that persists today, with a very
low t um-out for e lections wh ich, on top of eve l)1 h i ng else, are
held on working days), and fragme nted the process of decision
making, while he reaffirmed the i nstitutional balances tha t would
guarantee that power would re main fi rm ly i n the hands of those
who controlled the wealth of the cou ntry. As C homsky obsclVes,
these opinions of Madison in t he cons titu t ional debate of Phila·
delphia are less well known than those expressed in the famous
Federalist Papers, but they m ay be more revealing of the t rue
spi rit of the constitution than the formal decla rations voiced to
the general public. It is no coincidence that, as the brilliant M IT
lingu ist remarks, i n a cou n t ry where the publish i ng i ndustry is
so dynamic, t he most recent edi tion of those debates dates from
1 838. The American people was not supposed to know about
94
and despite successive reforms (one of which prohi bi ted the con
95
.!! 'classic' material means of product ion and the materials tha t a re
VI
still requ i red to produce most of the goods necessary to sustain
life on t h i s planet? Or are we i n the presence of autonomized
segm ents of the postmodem b iopol itical production? Are those
segments or i nstruments avai la ble fo r anyone? Are the know
l edge, the i n formation and the com m u n ication capable of circu
lating freely through all classes, social strata and groups of the
em pire'? How can the growing monopolistic features acq u i red by
the i n format ion and mass commu nication i ndu st ries all over t h e
world b e explained? And regard ing knowledge, w h a t c a n b e said
about patents and the crucial i ssue of i n tellectual property rights,
a new method of pi llage in the hands of the main transnational
companies of the indu strialized countries that are looting entire
conti nents with the active su pport of their gove rnments?
Second, do we have to assume that the owners and/or those
who control these new and very complex and expensive means
of prod uction will peacefu l ly and gently yield their property and
i ts control , t hrowing ove rboard the basis of their wealth and
poli tical dom ination itsel f? Why wou l d they act i n such a way,
unprecedented in the m i l lenary history of class struggl es? Wou ld
they be led to do th is because the i r hearts woul d become ten
der before the s h i n i ng vision of the self-constitu ted mu ltitude
marching jubilantly towards i ts l i beration? I f this is not the case,
wh ich reco mmendation wou l d our authors make regarding the
u navoidable i n tensificat ion of class st ruggles and the poli t ical
repression tha t wou ld surely fol low as a response to the emanci
pating i n i tiatives of the multi tude?
The fo urth d i mension of the poli tical programme of the m u l ti
tude is the orga n i zation of the multitude as a pol i tical subject, as
posse. The au thors i ntroduce h e re the Latin word posse to refer to
power as a verb, a n activity. Th us, posse 'is what a body and what
a m i nd ca n do' (p. 408). In the postmodern society, the constitu
ent power of labo u r can be expressed as the ega l itarian righ t of
citizensh ip in the world or as the righ t to commun icate, construct
96
languages and con trol the com m u n ication networks; a nd also as a
of a l l ' (p. 4 10). Due to the latter, Hardt and Negri conclude wit h
temporalit ies, migra tions, and new bodies a l ready affirms its
( p . 4 1 1). They wa rn, though, that a small d i fficu lty still persists:
when a n d how t h e possible becomes real ' (p. 4 11). Some clues,
really have been the em igrants and the flows of population that
have dest royed old and new bou ndaries. I ndeed, the postcolonial
bou ndaries, who destroys part icu l a ri sms and points toward a
the world popu lation); th ird, tha t the hero of such a great deed
97
7 Notes for a sociology of revolutionary
thinking i n times of defeat
whose most i m portant fea t u res h ave bee n outlined i n the previ
debunk both t h e i r very good i nten tions and their noble goals. The
agc n t of the Third I n terna t ional whose soul was deeply penneated
a n ts of the twentie th-ce n tury revol utions' (p. 4 1 2), a mong whom
war, t h e mem bers of the a n t i - fascist res ista n ce, a nd those who
to H ardt and Negr i , St Fra ncis denounced the poverty that was
in poverty
does the same, ident ifying in the common cond ition of the
and nature, the animals. sister moon, brother sun, the birds of
the field, the poor and exploited humans. together aga inst the
c o m m u n ist' (ibid.).
99
c obtai n ed long ago by the prayers a nd sacrifices of 5t Francis.
100
given t h e a foremen tioned political a n d ideological catastrophe,
and brief circumsta nces whose endless com bi nations have led
Wall has already fallen; the Soviet Union has su ffe red a gigantic
i m plosion, and for many today it is a blu rred memory; capital ism,
101
c outbreak of revolution. Finally, there a re those who keep their
j radical i m pu lse al ive, but who have had to red i rect it to regions
other tha n the pol itica l a rena ( i bid.).
Hard t and N egri lind themselves, we cou l d argue, wi t h i n the
complex field that defines t h i s fou rth a lternative. They have n ot
moved to the righ t, as Regis Debray or ( i n Latin America) M ario
Vargas L10sa have done. Nor have they re ma ined in the deep and
pai n fu l perception of the defeat of a set of ideas in wh ich they
s t i l l be l ieve, nor have they b l i nd folded t hemselves by pretending
that nothing has occu rred and search the planet for signs that
forecas t t h e retu rn of the revo l u tion. Their a ttitude has been
healthier: open ing, sea rch ing, reconst ruction . N eedless to say, a
process of t his type carries with it the inevitable risk of invol untar·
i1y accepting a prem ise that, i n the long run, can frustrate the
renovating project: the idea 'that the system is, at least for the time
being, u n beatable' (ibid .). From here, a series o f theoretical and
practical conseq uen ccs e merge that, as r will explai n below, a re
neatly reflected in t h e postmodem agenda. On the one hand , an
almost obsessive i n rerest i n the exami na tion of the social forms
that grow in the margins or in the i n terst ices of the syste m ; 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 coul d promote some type o f l i m ited and ephemeral subversion
against it. The celebration of the marginal and the ephemera l , the
prejud ice that 'minori ty' i s a synonym for l i be ration (bl urring the
role pl ayed by a vel)' special m inority, namely the bourgeoi sie),
wh i le the mass ive a nd cen t ra l , the non-margi na l , i s demonized ,
has become pa rt of t h is new poli t ical and cultural e t hos. I f the
system appears to be not only i nexpugn i b le 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.
I n this way ' the oth e r' , the d i fferent, ari ses as the supposed an·
tagon ist of the existing order, And it is precisely its 'otherness'
t h a t guaran tees the ra d ical ism of i ts a n tagon ism, when it lurn�
102
it i n to someth ing i m possible to a s s i milate a n d therefore i n to t.he
ca lls ' l i be rta r i a n pessim i s m ' ( i b i d . : 1 9). Pess i m ism, because the
system prese nts itself as o m n ipotent and ove rbeari ng; l i bertari a n ,
the same ti me that Hardt and Negri were working on the writing
sert that the empire is invincible, the tonc used i n the i r argu ment
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
' inside'; we a re a l l ' inside' and, even though t h is is not expl icitly
oppression. The one thing that can brea k i t down is the u n foresee
a ble act jon of the ideal ized 'other', the m ul t i tude, marked as it
1 03
c there were still 'n ational' capital ism a n d nation-states, become
j volatile in the work of Hard t a n d Negri and they leave space for the
hopeful negativity of the multitude. And some featu res that the
authors identify as carrying a radical answer to the system - ' d i f·
fe rence', '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 n o way inherently
rad ical phenomena' (ibid.: 2 1 ).
In a ny case, this syndrome is far from being u n i que i n the
history of Marxism and revolutionaty thought. Perry Anderson
detected this with his habitual shrewdness in a releva nt piece
of scholars hip published at a very special poi n t in t i me, 1 976,
when Keynesian capitalism a n d the social-democratic strategy
(fol lowed by both socialist and co m m u n ist parties, especia l ly
in Italy, France a n d Spain) were dec l i n i ng a n d when the first
s igns of the neolibera.l coun ter-revolu tion were starting to show.
I a m referri ng, of course, to Considerations on Western Marxism, a
book that was conceived to examine a d i fferent h istorical process,
that of the 1920S and early 1 930s, a period that was a lso deeply
characterized by defeat. H owever, it is not my purpose here to
try to reconstruct an imaginary dia logne between Eagleton a n d
Anderson, though I believe it would b e very enlighteni ng. given
the chal lenge that u nderstand i ng the theoretical mess presemed
in Empire e n ta i ls.
Defeat d u ri ng t he 1920S, defeat once again during the 1980s;
a l i ne of thought characteristic of that wh ich H a n nah Arendt
would portray with extraord inary s u btlety i n her revision of the
hard times u ndergone by the brigh t men and women who lived
during the t i mes that Bertolt Brecht called t he 'da rk ages'. A
look at the l ives of Rosa Luxemburg, Walter Benj a m i n or Bertoli
Brecht h imself, just to mention some of t hose who ded icated
their l ives to socialist ideals, reveals some extremely i n teresting
teachings_ For exa mple, the fact that u n t i l the moment at which
the ca tastrophe took place, the truth was h idden beh ind a thick
104
fog of d iscourses, double d iscou rses a n d various mechanisms
that effectively concealed the ugly facts and d issipated the most
reasonable doubts. Such concea lment was possible thanks to
the work of both public servants and good·hearted i ntellectuals.
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 n tellectual product ion is undertaken by those
who live during dark ages? There is no way for us to know. [n a ny
event, Eagleton has pro\'ided us with some clues that will help u s
understand t h e difficulties faced by left·wing intellectuals t rying
to explain the most abom inable aspects of our time. Anderson
adds some other clues that mesh very smoothly with those sug·
gested by Eagleton. Th i s Marxism of defeat ' has paradoxically
reversed the trajectory of Marx's own i n tellectual 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 a riSing
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 t h a t 'the
radical character of social criticism requires for us to go to a
deeper level of analysis than tha t of the abs tract 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
bac kwards 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 itical, economic and
historical worries of the founder. Th i s reorientation towards the
,
105
c this brand of Marxism was characteri2ed by its esoteric language
� and its inaccessi bility to a nyone not already immersed i n the
JI
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 pro l i ferat ion becomes ma n i fest i n some sym ptoms
that are also apparent in Hard t and Negri 's work: the language
is unnecessarily d ifficult; the syn tax is, at times, impe netrable,
and there is a needless lise of neologisms that only contribu tes
to a more hermetic work. Finally, t here 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 relationship berween M arxist t heory and proletari an
practice was swiftly but fi rmly su bsti t u ted by a new relationship
between Marxist theory and bourgeois t heory' (ibid_: 55). The
t ruthfulness of this assertion can be confirmed rat her 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 pa rt icipat 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 ard t offe red
some i nteresting clues rega rding the reasons for the astonishing
theoretieal involution that beeomes apparent throughout Empire.
During the interview, he observed that, i n Marx's t i me, revol ution
ary t hought recognized three main sources of i nspiration: Ger
man phi losophy, British political economy and French pol itics:
' Nowadays [ ... ) the orientations have changed and revol utionary
t hought is guided by French phi losophy, North Ameriean eco
nom ic science, and I talian 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 busi ness schools t.hroughout the U n ited States
106
play a p redomi na n t role i n Empire. Of course, not h i ng al lows us
to assume that these new theoretical avenues wil l either represent
a step fo rwards in terms o f i m proving and developing a theo ry of
capital i s m 's i m peri a l i st stage, or, even less, that they wi ll cont ri
bute to the elaboration of a 'guide for action' that will i l l u m i nate
for us the path that the social forces of transformation and change
should fol low. ConlTiuy to Hegelian dialectics, with its empha·
s i s o n the h i storic and transi tory character of all i nstitutions
and socia l practices, and the con tradictory cha racter of social
existence, contemporary protest seeks to u pdate i ts theoretical
a rsenal i n such u n reliable sources a s structuralism and post·
s t ructu ralism, semiology. laca nian psychoa nalysis, and a whole
series o f philosophical currents characterized by their adherence
to post modernism. O n the other hand, it is i m possible to view
the crowd i ng·out of political economy a nd i ts replace ment by
North Am e rican economic science - whose narrowness, pseudo·
mathematic formalism and superficia l i ty are tod ay u n iversally
recogn ized - as a step forwards towards a better understanding of
the econom ic rea l i t i es of our t i me. To suggest that the d isplace
ment of figures of the stature of Ada m Smith or David Ricardo
by pygmies such as Mi lton Fried man or Rud iger Dorn busch can
be a n e ncouraging sign in the consrruetion of a leftist l i ne of
thought is, to say the least, a m on umental m istake. Lastly, to say
that the Italian pol iti cal system, onee home to t he largest com
m u nist party in the western hemi sphere a nd nowadays governed
by a repulsive creature, Silvio Berl usconi, is a renewed source of
i n s p i ration that can be compared to n i netee n th-centu ry France,
"",ith its great popular u prisi ngs and the wonderful experience of
the Paris Commune, the fi rst government of the working class i n
world h istory, demonstrates dearly the extent o f t his mistake, that
could have d isast rous consequences for both praetieal pol i tics as
well as in the dom a i n of t heory.
Still taking into acco unt the aforemen tioned considera t ions,
] can not refrain from asking how i t was possible for Antonio
107
Negri , who has written some of the most i m ponant books and
ankles within the Marxist tradition over the last qua rter 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 i mportant M arxist theorists. I Born
in Padua, ltaly, in 1 933, he graduated in Phi losophy from his natal
city's u niversity, and i n 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 tical l ife
tu rned him i nto one of the leaders of the Potere Opcraio and one
of the most outsta n di ng figures of the Italian left, very critical of
the po li tical and theore tical line fostered by t he Italian Commu
nist Party, PCI. In 1979 Negri was arrested and sent to prison a fter
a faulty legal process. He was accused of being t he intellectual
mentor of the terrorist anions of the Red Brigades, i ncluding
the assassination of Italian Prime M i n ister Aldo Moro. In 1 983
the Italian Rad ical Party, a moderate combi nation of l i be ralism
and social democracy, sponsored h is candidacy to parliament, i n
order t o pressu re the Italian government into reviSing t he legal
sentence. After being elected member of parliament by popular
vote, parliamentary i m m u n ity allowed him to get out of prison.
Shortly a fter, the m l i ng pany wit h a majority in parliament - with
the i n fa mous complicity of PCI MPs, i n a scandalous political
act - revoked his i m m u n i ty, a n d , as many other anti-fascists
had done before, Negri depa rted for exile i n France. The a lready
entirely corrupt Italian judicial system d eclared Negri a rebel and
he was condem ned to t h i rty years in prison, accused of 'armed
insurrection aga i nst the state' with an additional sentence of four
a nd a half years because of h i s 'moral responsibi lity' for violent
confrontations between the police, students and workers that
took place in Milan between 1973 and 1 977.
108
I m p risonmen t d i d not preve nt Negri from writing; a mong texts
written in prison, La Anomalia Sa/vaje, published in 1 9 8 1 , is worth
mentioning. By this time he had a l ready published some of his
main contributions to Marxist t heory: Opera; e Stato. Fra Rivolu·
zione d'ollobre e New Deal ( 1 97 2), Crisi dello stato'piallo (19 74),
Proletari e Stato ( 1 9 76), L a Forma Stato. Per la Critica deU'Economia
Politica della Constituzione ( 1977), Marx oltre Marx ( 1 979), and a
se minal article a bou 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 ofDionysus, 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 M i t terra n d ' s gove rn men t's
protection was decisive i n terms of dissuad ing the I talian secret
service from its origi nal intention of kidnapping Negri. During
his years in France, Negri taught at the famous E cole Norma le
Superieure and at the U n iversity of Paris VI I I a n d , together with
other distinguished 1-'Tench colleagues, he fou nded a new theoret·
ical magazine: FI/Cur Anterieur. It is obvious t hat du ring h is stay
in France Negri shelved his i nterest in Germ a n philosophy a nd
acq u i red a great fa m i liarity with French philosoph ical deba tes
marked by the presence of i ntellectuals such as Louis Althusser,
Alain Badiou, E t ienne Bal iba r, jean lIaudri llard , Gilles Deleuze,
j acques Derrida, M ichel Foucault, Felix Guaua ri, jacq ues Lacan ,
j ean'Fra n�oise Lyotard , jacques Ranciere and many others. His
stay i n France was a period of in tense t heoret ical production and
profound i ntellect ual, a nd to some extent polit ica l , reorientation.
Among rhe most imponant books published d u ring t hat period
it is won h mentioni ng L es nouveaux espaces de liberlfi, in col·
labo �ation with Fel i x 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 Hard t ( 1 994). In 1 99 7 , after t he scandalous collapse of
the Italian slate institutions and the crises of Christian Democracy
1 09
c and the I talian Social ist Party, Negri returned to I ta ly where his
� previous sentence had bee n revoked . He spent a short period in
�
the Reb ibbia prison and. afterwards, was perm itted to serve a new,
shorter a nd more benign sentence that entails living at home in
Trastevere during the d ay a n d spending the nights in prison. I t
is i n t h i s context t h a t Negri co-au thored Empire. with M ic hael
H a rdt
8 The persistence of imperialism
The rad ical goa l repeatedly deela red th roughou t Empire - to con
the tool box i s l acking some of the most basic i n struments for
of the ana lysis is a p pa rent as ea rly as the Preface of the book. The
11 2
procedures, and the logic that exis ted i n thc al legedly dead phase
of i mperialism. Hard t and Negri seem not to have realized that the
st rategic actors are the same, the large transnational compan ies
but with a national base, on one hand, and the governm en ts of
industrial ized cou ntries, on the other hand; that the decisive insti·
tutions are still those that characterized the i mperialist phase they
cla im is now fi nished, such as the I M F, the World Bank, the WTO,
and other simila r organizations; and t hat t he 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 im posed
by force d u ri ng the climax of the neolibe ral cou n ter-revolution
through the 1980s and the begi n n ing of the 1 990S. Given their de·
sign , pu rpose and fu nctions, these rules do nothing hut continuo
ously reproduce and perpetuate the old i mperialist structu re i n 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 fu nctioning logic is the same, a nd so
are the ideology that justifies its existence, the actors that make
its dyna mics, and the unfair results that reveal the persistence of
relations of oppression a nd exploitation. I n Marx's analyses, the
con t radictions in the development of bou rgeois society wou ld
lead it to its own destruction. Th e logic of social devel opment was
presided over by class struggles and contradict ions between the
forces of production a nd the social relations of prod uction, The
problem with H ardt and Negri's a nalyses is that the new global
logic of rule that al legedly prevails in the empire as i magi ned by
�
It
"
the aut hors lacks any struct u ral or inherent con t radictions.' CI
...
III
The only cont radiction that is p resent is that of the potential
t h reat posed by the multitude if it ever a ban doned t he lethargy
j.
:::I
1'1
CI
!1.
I For a penetrating analysis of the shoncomi ngs of the '('(assie thcorics
�"
of i m perial i:;m' a nd the new challenges posed by today's new facets of
1
i m perial ism, see Panitch and G i nd i n (2004) and, in general , the ;\nic1es �"
i ncluded in Socialist Register 2004 (Panitch and Lcys 1004), See also John
2-
iii"
Bellamy Foster (2002), 3
1 13
� in which it is kept by the mass med ia a n d the bourgeois cultural
Q)
iii industry. Even if t h i s happened, t hough, there is noth ing in the
book to convince the reader of the existence of struct u ral - and
hence impossible to overcome - contradictions between the
empi re and the m u l t i tude. On the contra ry, it would be possi ble
to extend the a uthors' a rgu ment (0 say that i f the rulers behave
wisely, they a re in a very good posit ion to absorb the demands
of the mu lti tude by mea n s of relaxing migratory norms or pro·
gressively establ ish i ng a guarantced m i n i m u m i ncome. Episodcs
d ur i ng which the do minant classes have been forced to adopt
progressive policies so as to hold back popular tides or in order
to co-opt potential adversaries have not been infrequent in the
political history of the twentieth cen t u ry, and the two measu res
m entioned above are in no way i ncompatible with the su rvival of
the capitalist relations of prod uction nor a re thcy i ncompatible
\\oi th the con ti n u ity of i m perialism.
Du ring t h e 1 980s, neol i beralism won a st rategic battle fo r
the mean ings of words used in everyday speech, pan ic'ularly i n
t h e public sph ere, Throughout the globe t h e word 'reform' was
successfu l 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 disman tling of social sec uri ty, the
reduction of social provisions, the c u ts in public spending
on ed ucation, health and hous i ng, and the legalization of the
ol igopol istic control of the econ omy. The word 'deregula t 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 gove rnmental i n tervention in economic m a t ters 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 esta blished by democra t ic' governments
- and which led, i n some way, to a certa i n d egree of popular
sovereignty - were ba nished, and after t h i s happened the capacity
1 14
to regu late the function i ng of markets was left in the hands of
the most powe rfu l actors, the oligopol ies. Governmental capacity
to regu late was privatized and transferred to large companies. As
Samir Amin wrote, 'all the markets are regu lated, and they o n ly
fu nction u nder that cond itio n . The essential thing is to know
who regulates them and how' (A min ZOO l : z6). To conclude: the
commonsense of the last two decades of t he previous century has
been sa tura ted by the contents of neoliberal ideology. Further
proof of this fact is the ready acceptance of the dogma claiming
that state-owned com panies were by definition i nefficient and
p roduced low-q uality goods and services; that the state was a
bad administrator: that private compan ies sat isfy the demands
and requirements of consumerSj t hat ol igopolies promote social
progress through u n restricted market freedomj and, finally, that,
as argued i n the ' t rickle-down' theory, i f the rich get richer, the
wealth concentrated a t the top of the social pyramid soons spills
over to reach the least advan taged sectors of the popula tion.
Nowadays, all those stories face a terminal crisis of c red i bi l i ty.
For a long time, the hegemony of neoli beralism was nOI only
economic and ideologieal but also pol i tica l . I n tha t field too we
observe a backwards movemen t . 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 fi nal
result of t he policies promoted by the Washi ngton Consensus.
....
�
The pol i ti ca l formulas of a successful neoliberal ism, whose arche II
1 15
� h istory. The book was published in 2000 and its real fu nction
-r - I concede this was not the inte ntion of the au thors - seems
to have bee n to make a l i t tle bit more palatable the increas
i ngly atrocious and despicable fea tures of the im perial ism of
the end of the century. Probably noth i ng cou ld haye been more
conven ient for the imperialist powers, gu ided not without fri ction
and contrad ictions by the U n i ted States, than this represe n tation
of the imperialist order metamorphosed i n to a phan tasmagoric
system , wit hout identi fiable dominators and beneficiaries, and,
above all, inspired by the most elevated legal not ions of Kantian
l i neage that only t he enemies of freedom and justice would dare
to criticize. While the authors were giving the last touch to their
metaphysical empire, t he i mperial ists were eager to launch the
Colombia Plan with its declared goa l of stabilizing the polit ical
and m i l i tary situation in that cou n t ry and of control l i ng d rug
t raffic in the area, whose fu nds are carefu l ly lau ndered in fiscal
havens th roughou t the region that survive thanks to Washington's
i ndulgence. Another of the afore mentioned 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 i n
Brazil, a cou n try which , by chance, i s the home of two of the most
important popular organ iza tions of the western world, t h e PT and
t he MST. Another important imperi al ist i n i t iative is the Pueblal
Panama Pla n i ntended to 'solve· the (apparently iccommun icable,
accord ing to Hardt and Negri) co nflict 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
liqu id . Moreover, it was imperialism that launched a 'humanitar
ian intervention' in the former Yugoslavia; it constan tly sabotages
the construction of Mercosur so as to facil itate the rapid formal
' i ntegration' of the La t i n American econ omies into American
hegemony through the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA);
and it works witho u t ceasi ng to ensure the collaboration of some
regional governments, such as those of Argentina, Costa Rica
116
and Uruguay, in i m posing sanctions on C u ba for alleged human
rights violations and to make i t pay an exorbitant price for its lack
of docility towards American imperialism. I n other latitudes, its
activism leads it to su pport its allies i n Tu rkey when they com mit
genocide aga i nst the Kurd i sh m i nori ty wi thou t fear, and to sup
port similar actions by I ndonesia against East Timor, and by the
fascist Israeli government of Ariel Sharon against the PaJestinians.
A few years earlier, the empire, allegedly i n the name of u n iversa l
law, i nvaded Panama, killing t housands of in nocent civilians with
the goa l of capturing Preside n t Noriega, a former collabora tor of
the CIA and the DEA, a nd put in power by Was hington; i t caused
more than )0,000 deaths in its offensive agai nst the Sand inista
government i n Nicaragua; and it started the G u l f War. In the
economic terrain, im perial ism was again active, promoting the
approval of thc M u l tilatera l Agreement on I nvestments, i n order
to legalize the tyra n ny of marke ts, especially i n the Third Wo rld ,
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 i d not ac
cept the 'conditionalities' imposed by the ma rket's international
fi nancial i nstitutions. In this way, a recent loan to Ecuador in
cluded arou nd a h u ndred and forty req u i rements of this type
- among them, massive d i smissals of public servants, cuts in
public social spending, an end to su bsid ies - and more than
two h u n d red 'conditionali ties ' were reported i n several loa ns to
su b-Saharan Africa, a l l of which were oriented to consol idate the
p resence of 'market forces' i n the economy. On the o ther hand,
i m perialism has bee n con stantly imposing economic pol i cies
that severely u ndermine the economic sovereign ty of cou n tries
in the periphery and dimi nish their li kel ihood of be i ng able to
devel9P their eco no m ies, consol idate their d emocracies, a nd
respond posit ively to t heir popu lations' expectations of material
and spiritual progress (Stigl itz 2000)_ Leo Pa n i tch clai ms, wit h
regard t o t h i s issue, t h a t a report by the World B a n k demonstrates
that on the sa me year in wh ich the M lA was aborted 'there were
\17
at least as many as 1 5 1 changes in the regulations that govern
�
: direct foreign i nvestments in 76 cou n t ries, and 89% of them
were favorable to fore ign capital' ( Pan i tch 2000: 1 6)_ Meanwh ile,
study of the surplus l Tansferences from the Th ird World towa rds
metropoli tan capita lism. In the twenty-t h ree years from 1972 to
for La tin America by Saxe-Fern andez and N unes show that the
figure ' s u rpasses the 2 t ri l lion dol lar threshold paid in two dec
the combined GDPs of all the countries in Latin America and the
Caribbean i n 1997' (Gonzalez Casanova 1998; Saxe Fernandez et
has concluded and exalts the figure o f St F rancis as the pa rad igm
of the renovated m i l i tancy aga i nst the spectre of an empi re that
from the ' radical critica l ' vision of rhe e m pire. M eanwhile, a p
across which subject ivi ties gl ide', which the authors call e m p i re,
a non-i m perialist regi me that day a fter day prod uces a s ilent
bloodbath that the bou rgeois media take pains to concea\. These
is wi ped off the face o f the ea rth i n the name of the despicable
1 18
Ha rdt and N egri 's stubborn ness in defe n d i ng their m istaken
war waged aga i n s t the workers throughout the twentieth cen t u l)',
of the U nited States they have been much less i mp e rialist than
magnates who b u i l t their fonu nes with i n the Russian M a fia and
all the wealthy in the Arab worl d , Asia, Africa or Latin America,
,
2 We add: the annual i ncome of Exxon is al most equal to Australia'S
GOP; thaI of Ford is s i m i l :l r to De nma 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. Ve nezuela. General MOlors has an annual i n come thai cxcceds the
combined GOP of Ireland, New Zealand and Hungary (Res!ivo 2002: 24-5).
� lOok place with i n it, such a conflict wou ld be me rely accidental
1 20
proves once again that thi s 'mu lti lateml orga nization' is, in reality,
a m i no r department inside the Wh i te House.
This record completely i nval i d a tes Negri's state ment made
d u ri ng a rece nt i nte rview i n which he expanded on the issues
developed in Empire: 'We think t hat there is no centra lization
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 bo mb. New York has the dollar. Los
Angeles has the language and the means of commu nication'
(A1biac 2002: 2).
No fu rther comment.
...
7
It
1..
�,
'"
,
:::I
"
•
So
�'
1
�,
!.
iii'
3
121
Epilogue
Fame and celebrity have rarely gone hand-in -ha nd with critical
the dominant classes. In most cases, this has been ach ieved by
on him the fury of the Italian bourgeoisie and its political rep
existing social order are faced only with the i ndifference of the
their own supremacy that they allow the mselves the luxury of
l ink with civil sociery, and who, for that reason, are incapabl e of
how can we explain the ' u n l i m ited pra ise' that, according 10
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
with the self-image that the powerful like to exhibit. Although the
the main thesis that the ideologists of 'globalization ' have been
promoting around the world since the 1 980s, namely: that the
bene ficiaries as well as its victims and oppressed are lost in the
no longer the people, let alone the workers or the proletariat. Re
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
and in this way both are ' natu ralized '. H u nger, poveny, death,
1 23
• in Empire any realistic and persuasive argument to illu minate
:t
(Meiskins Wood 2003: 63). Given its mista kes and confusions,
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
the smaJl lights that will ema nate from the i n itiatives that men
believe, going back to Hardt and Negri's work, that (he mistakes
lack of abili ty to travel around the world and to confirm, with his
12. 4
Bibliography
1 26
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Dahl, R. A. ( 1 995) A Preface to Economic Democracy ( Berkeley and Los
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de Sousa Santos, B. ( 1 999) Reinllentar la Democracia. Reinllentar el
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Debating Empire (London: Verso), pp. 6 1 -82.
Negri, A. ( 199 1 ) 'J. M. Keynes y la teoria capitalista del estado en el 29 ,
' '
1 28
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Weiss, L. ( 1 997) 'Globalization and the Myth of the Powerless States',
New Left Review, 225, September/October.
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Age (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).
1 19
Index of proper names
A ccumulation on a World Scale; 1 5 Boron, Atllio A . ; 1 8 , 46. 54. 57, 58. 67,
AfghaniSlan; 1 1, So, 51 , 63 8 5 , 94, 105
Afriea; lJ, J8, 45, 1 1 9 Bosch. juan; 2 8
After Liberalism; 1 5 Bosnia; 67
Aguilar, Alonso; 1 1 1 Bowles, Samuel; 92
Ahmad, Aijaz; 56 Brazil: 1 9. 20, J 5 , 36. 37, 1 1 6
Alabama; 4J Brechl. Benoll; 104
Albright, Madeleine; 56 Brilain: 1 7. J7. 55
A1thusser, Louis; 1 09 B russels; 45
Altvater, Elmar; 13 Bn.ezinski, Zbigniew; 1 1 . 68 , 69. 70,
Amin, Samir; 15, 1 1 1, 1 1 5 72. 1 1 8
Amnesty; 65 Bukharin, Nikolai; 2 , 1 3 . 23, 1 1 1
Anderson, Peny; 9, 104, 105, 106 Bull, Malcolm; 95
Annan, Kofi; 45 Bush, George Sr.; 1 1. 74
Aquinas, Thomas; 100 Bush, George W. ; 9, 1 1 . 1 2 , I J, 1 8 ,
Arendt, Hannah; 104, 1 05, 1 24 17. 6J
Argenlina; 20, J6, 74, l l 5, 1 1 6, I 1 R
Arrighi, Giova n n i ; 25 California; 43, 1 1 6
Asia; 1 5, 38, 45, 5 1 , 69 , 1 1 9 Capitalism in the Age of
Australia; I S, l l 9 Globaliwtion; 25
Austro-Hungarian Empire; J9 Cardoso, Oscar Raul; 10, 1 1
Aznar,jose Maria; 8 , 1 7, 1 8 , 1 20 Cari bbean; 5 1 . l l 8
Carthage; 33
Badiou, Alain; 1 09 Castro, fidel: 98
Balibar, Etienne; 109 Central Intelligence Agency (elA);
Bangladesh; 37, 45, 48 1 1 7 , 1 10
B a ra n , Paul: 2J Charles. Gerard·Pierre; 28
Baudrillard, jean; 109 Chavt'"Z, Hugo; 1 20
Uclgium; 5 1 Chiapas; 34, ]6, 8R, 1 16
Ilen Bella , Ahmed; 98 Chicago; 5 1 , 8J
Benjamin, Waller; 104 Chile; 74
nerlin Wall; 4J, 1 0 1 China; 1 5 , 69, 70, 1 0 1
Berluseon i , Si lvio; 107 Chiquita Banana; 66
'Big Government is St ill in Charge ' ; Chirac, jacques; 1 4
78 Chomsky, Noam: 1 1 , I J , 1 7, 1 8 . 25,
Bin Laden, Osama; I I , 6 J , 1 20 40, 46, 4 9 , 62, 67. 76, 93, 94
Bismarck. Olto von; 5.1 Christian Democracy Pany (CUP);
Bobbio, Norbeno; 7 109
Boeing Corporalion; 45 Clan"n; 20
Iloiivar, Sim6n; III Clausewitz. Carl von; J I
Climon. Bill; 56 1 06. 1 07, 1 10, I ll. 1 1 4, l l 5. 1 2 1 ,
Colombia; 1 18 1 23, 1 24
Colombia Plan; 1 1 6 Engtls, Friedrich: 2. 7. 28, 89
Common Market or the South Eu ropean Union: 45. 76
l M E RCOSUR)j 1 1 6 Europe: 18, 38, 43. 45, 68, 69, 97
Comnlllnisl Manifesto; 2 , 5 , 28. 89, 95 ElU(on; 1 19
Considerations on Western Marrism;
104 Fabbriche del soggetto; 109
Copernican; 2 Federalist papers; 94
Costa Rica; 1 1 6 Feuerbach, Ludwig; 2
COlt. Roben; 25, 60 First World War: 3, 10, 5 2
Crisi dello slato-pinno; 109 Ford; 4 5 , 1 1 9
Cuba: 76, 1 1 7 Fortunej 46
Cueva, Agustin; 28, 8 1 , 1 1 1 Foucault, Michael; 24, 29. 30, 1 09
Czechoslovakia: 2 1 France ; 9, 37, 43, 5 1 , 55, 68, 104, 1 07 .
108, 109, 1 24
Dahl, Robert A.; 48 Free Trade Area of the Americas
Davos; 23 (FTAA): 8 1 . 1 1 6
Debray, Regis; 102 Friedman, M illon; 1 07
DeleuU", Gilles: 1 09 F ried man, Thomas: 15, 1 6, 62. 84
Denmark; 1 1 9 Fujimori. Albeno: 1 1 5
Derrida. Jaeques: 109 Fukuya ma. Francis: 16, 1 0 1
Deutsche Bank; 45 FulUr AlIlerieur; 109
oabb, Maurice; 2 3
Dominican Republic; 1 0. 74 Gabon: 2 7
Don QULrOle: 20. 3 I Galbraith.John K . ; 1 1 2
Dornbusch, Rudiger; 1 07 Galeano, Eduardo; 28
Dos Santos, Theolonio; 28 Gates, Bill; 50, 5 1
Drucker. Peter; 84 General Agreemem on Tariffs and
Drug Enforcement Administration Trade (GATT): 56, 76
(O EA); 1 1 7 General Motors: 1 1 , 1 1 9
Duke U n iversity; 93 Gennan)'; 9, 37, 45. 5 1 , 55
Duverger, Maurice: 1 1 1 Gindin, Sam: 10, I I 3
Gi ntis. Herbert; 92
Eagleton, Terry; 100, 101, 103. 104, Gonzalez Casanova , Pablo; 28, I l l.
105 1 18
East Timor; 1 1 7 Gortari, Carlos Salinas de; 1 1 5
Economist. The: 78 Gramsci, Amonioj 6. 5 1 , 52
Ecuador; 66. 1 1 7 Greece; 29
Eisenstadt, Samuel: I I I Greenpeaee; 65
EI SaiYador; 43 G reenwich Village; 29
Empire o/Chaos; 25 Group of Seven (G-7); 79
Empire: 1 . 4, 5, 6. 8, 1 0, 1 1 . 1 3. 14. Guatemala: 66
16, 1 8. 2J. 24. 25. 26. 35. 39, 47, Guattari, Felilt: 109
59. 60. 6 1 , 75. 80, 87, 88, 90, 9 1 • Guevara. Emesto 'Che': 98
93. 95. 98, 100. 1 03. 1 04, 105. Gulf War; 1 2, 6 1 . 62, 63. 74, 1 1 7
131
Habermas, Ji.lrgen; 34 Jaguaribe, Hclio; 28, III
Haiti; 37, 43, 67 japan ; 37, 69. 83 , 84
H ardt, Michael and Antonio Negri; jericho; 4
1 , 2, 4, 6, 8, 1 1 , 1 2, 1 3 , 1 4 , 1 5, 1 7,
19, 20, 23, 2 5, 26, 29, 30, 3 1 , 3 2 , Kagan, Robert; 1 2
3 3 , 34 , 3 5 , 36, 37, 38, 39, 40 , 4 1 , Ka nt. Im manuel; 10, 89
42 , 43, 44, 45 , 4 6, 47, 4 8, 50, 5 1 , Kapstein, Ethan; 46
5 2 , 5 3 , 54 , 5 7, 5 8, 59, 60, 62 , 64 , Kaulsky, Karl; 23
6 5 , 66, 67, 68, 6g, 70, 7 1 , 72, 73, Kelsen, Hans; 26, 27
74 , 7 5 , 77, 78, 83, 8 5 , 87, 88, 89, Keynes, john Maynard; 10, 109
90, 93, 94, 95 , 97, 98, 99, 1 00, K irkpatrick,jeane; 74
101, 103, 104, 1 0 5 , 106, 1 10, I l l, Kissinger, Henry; 38, 39
1 1 3, 1 1 6, 1 1 8, 1 1 9, 1 22, 1 24 Kosovo; 2 7 , 62
Hardt, M ichael; 87, 88, 106. l og, 1 10 Krauthammer, C harles; 1 2
Harlem; 48 Kyoto Agreemen l j 76
Hegel. Georg Wilhel m Fried rich ; 30
Hi lferding. Rudolf; 2, 23 La Anomalia Saillaje; log
Ho Chi Minh; 98 La Forma Stalo. Per la Critica
Hobbesian; 82, 83 dell 'Economia Polilico della
Hobsbawm, Eric; 1 1 1 ConslilUzionej log
Holland; 5 1 La Nacion; 1 22
Honduras; 39, So, 8 1 Labor ofDionysus. A Critique of Ihe
Hoselitz, Bert; 3 7 Slole-form; 109
H ungal)'; 2 1 . 1 1 9 Lacan,jacques; log
H u nlington. Samuel P. ; 1 2, 70, 7 1 , Lacandonajungle; 3 5
1 18 Landless Workers' Movement, Brazil
Hussein, Saddam; 1 1 , 16, 63 (MST); 36, 1 16
Latin America; 23 . 37, 38, 4 5 , 5 1 , 68,
11 potere consliluente; log 69, 88, 1 02, 1 1 8, 1 19
India; 23 , 37 Lenin, Vladimir Jl ich; 2, 1 3 , 23, 3 1 ,
International Convention on the 1 1 1, 1 13
Rights of the Child; 76 Les noulleoux espaces de liberte; 1 09
I nternational Coun ofjustice; 77 Lockean; 83
International Criminal coun; 7 5 Lang Twentiet/l Century, The; 2 5
International Labor Organization Los Angeles; 33, 83, 1 2 1
(JLO); 43 Luhmann, Niklas; 26. 3 4
International MonetaI)' Fund ( J M F); Lukacs, Gyorg; 54
2, 2 4 , 56. 59, 6 5, 7 1 , 72 , 78, 79, 8 1 , Luxemburg, Rosa; 1, 13, 23, 1 04 , 1 1 1
go, 1 1 3. 1 1 7. 1 20 Lyotard, Jean·Fran'iOise; 109
Iraq; 6, 7, 8, 9. 10, 1 1 , 1 3 , 1 4, 1 6, 1 7 ,
20, 17, 6 1 Machiavelli, Niccolo; 33, 60, 92
Italian Communist Party (PC)); 108 Madison, james; 94
Ita l ian Radical Party; 108 Magdoff, Hany; 23
Italian Socialist Party; 1 10 Maldonado Denis, Manuel; 28
Italy; 68, 104, 108, log, 1 1 0 Managua; 77
Mandel, Ernst; 23
132
Mandela, Nclson; 98 North Atlantic Treaty Organi2:3tion
Mao Zedong; 3 1 . 98 (NATO); 9. 1 20
Marini, Ruy Mauro; 28 North Atlantic; 9. 24
Marx olrre Marx; 109 Nuftez. Omar; 2 8
Marx, Karl; 2. 7. 24. 28. 2 9. 30, 3 1 . 33.
35 . 49, 58 , 89. 105. 106. 1 1 3, 1 24 O'Connor, James; 2 3
Marxism; 23. 54. 70. 10 1 . 104. lOS, Obsenler; 1 2 2
106 Opera; e Stalo. Fra Rilloluzione
Massachusetts Institute or d'ottobre e New Deal; 109
Technology ( M IT); 94 Oqueli. Ramon; 80
Matlick, Paul; 23 O rganization ror Economk Co
May 1 , 1886 Haymarket Square. operation and Development
Chkago; 5 1 (OECD); 65, 78, 1 20
McDonald's; 45 Organization or American States
Medherranean; 64 (OAS); 1 2 0
Meiskins Wood. Ellen; 54. 83. 85, 86.
90. 1 1 2. 1 24 Palestinian Intifada; 3 3
Menem. Carlos Saul; 1 1 5 Palmerola; 80
Mexico; 43. 1 1 5 Panama; 80. 1 1 7
Microsoft; 15. 45 Panitch. Leo; 10. 67, 68. 69. 1 1 3. 1 1 7.
Middle East; 69 1 18
Milan; 1 08 Paris Commune; 107
M i nisuy of Intcrnational Trade and Paris Peace Confe�nce; 10
IndusUY. Japan (Min); 84 Paris; 34. 93 , 1 24
Modem World System, The; 25 Peloponnesian war; 33
Monde Diplomat;que, Le; 1 1 9 Pentagon; 4. 9
Moro, Aldo; 1 08 Persian Gulf; 67
M ultilateral Agree ment on Peru; l i S
Investments (MAl): 59, 65, 66. 67, Petras.James; 28, 1 1 1
81, 1 17 Philadelphia; 94
Pinochet, Augusto; 74
National se-c:urity Council; 38, 69 Plato; 29
Negri, Antonio; 9. 19, 20. 42. 93. 108, Polirics ofSubllersiOIl. The; 1 09
log, t lO. 1 1 9. 1 2 1 , 1 2 2. 1 24 Popular Pa rry , Spain (PP); 1 1 8
New EllglandJournal ofMedicine; 48 Pono Alegre; 35
NfilJ Left Revir.w; I Poulant7.as, Nicos; 1 24
New York Times; 1 5. 62 . 84. 1 2 2 Production. POUler, and World Order;
New York; 6, 1 5 . 1 6. 29, 3 6 , 8 3 , 1 2 1 25
New Zealand; 1 1 9 Proletar; e Scato; 109
N icaragua; 10. 74. 77, 1 1 7 Ptolemy; 1 00
1 33
Rawls,john; 26 Sub-saharan Africa; 5 1 , 1 1 7
Reaga n , Ronald; 75. 79 Sweden; 78, 92
Red Brigades; l oB Sweezy, Pa u l ; 23
Red Cross; 65
Reich. Roben; 42, 43. 44 Tajwan; 84
Restivo, Nestor; 1 1 9 Teguciga lpa; 8 1
Ricardo, David; 107 Thatcher, Ma rgaret; 79
Rome; ]3, 69. 75 Third International; 98
Rosto\\,. Walte r W.; 37 Third Reich; 54
Rousseau, jean jacques; 29, 33 Third World; 18, 23, 37, 39, 44, 69,
Russia; 6<), 70 79. 97, 103, 1 1 7, 1 1 8
Tinnanmen Square; 33
Sachs, [gnney; 23 Time Magazine; 1 22
Sandinista; 1 1 7 Tocqueville, Ale)[is de; 29, 30
Sastre, A l fonso; 7 Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas; 74
Saxe· Fernandez, joh n; 2B. 39, 1 1 1 , Tu rkey; 1 1 7
l iB Tw i n Towers; 6
Schmin, Carl; 26, 3 1 . 54
Seattlr; 4, 40 Uililever; 45
Seiser, G regorio; 2B U n ited Fruit; 66
Seoul; 34 United Ki ngdom; 8. 27, 45, 5 1 , 65
September 1 1 ; 6, 7, 36 United Nations (UN); 8 , 9. 1 5. 26, 27,
Service of Peace and justice; 65 60, 62, 64, 65, 7 5 . 76, 1 20
Sharon, Ariel; 1 1 7 United Nations Development
Shell; 45, 1 1 9 Programme (UN DP); 37, 43, 78
Shonfie[d, Andrew; 2J United State Treasury; 8 1 , 84
Siemens; 45 Un.ited States; 9. 1 1 , 1 2 , lJ, 18, 20,
Sierra Leone; 27 2 1 , 27, 3 7 , 38, 39, 43, 45, 5 1 , 60 ,
Singapore; 83 6 1 , 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70,
Smith, Adam; 107 7 1 , 73 , 75, 76, 77. 79, 82, 83, 84 ,
Socialist Register 2004; 1 1 3 93, 94, 97, 1 06, 1 1 1. 1 1 3, 1 1 6,
Somalia; 67, 76 1 1 9. 1 20
Som01.a, Anastasio; 74 University of Paris VI I I ; 109
Soros, George; 1 6 Upper West Side; 43
Sousa Samos. Boaven tu ra de; 82. 8 3 Uruguay; 1 1 7
South America; 1 16
South Korea; 3 3 , 3 5 , B3 Vargas Llosa, Mario; 102
Soulhern Command; Bo Veltmeyer, Henry; 28
Soviet Union; B, 32, 68, 101, 105 Venezuela; 1 19, 1 20
Spain; 17, 68. 1 8 , 104, l I B Veracruz; 10
Spi noza. Baruch; 24 Vida.!, Gorc; 6, I B, 39
St Francis of As�isi; 20, 9B. 99, 1 00, vidrla, jorge Rafael ; 74
l l8 Vietnam War; 1 7, 77
Stiglitz, Joseph; 1 17
Strange, Susan; 14, 69, 70 Wallerstein, Imma nuel; 25, 1 1 1
Sub-commander Marcos; 34 WarSaw Pact; 101
134
Washi ngton Consensus; 59 , 79. 83, World Ordtr$, Old and New; "1 5
1 15 World Trade Center; 4
Wash ington; 6, 7 , 8, 9. 10, 1 1 . 2 7 . World Trade Organization (W1'O);
3 6. 6 1 . 62, 63 , 65, 66, 69, 7 0, 7 1 , 45 , 56, 59. 65 , 7 2, 76. 7 9, 1 0 1 ,
7 5, 76, 77, 80, 82, 1 16, 1 1 7. 1 20, 1 1 3. 1 10
III WreSl'h, William; 5 1
While House; 4 . 9, 1 3, 1 6, 1 8, 45. 65,
1 20. 1 2 1 Year 501. The Conquest Continues; 15
Wilson, Woodrow; 10 Yugoslavia; 28. 1 1 6
Workers' Pany, Bra2 i l (Pl1; 1 1 6
World Bank (WB); 2, 24. 56, 59, 65 , Zapat islas; 34. 35, 36
7 1 , 7 2, 7 8, 79, 9°, 1 1 3 . 1 1 7, 120 Zi2l'k, Slavoj ; 95
13 5
General index
137
global; 3. I I . 1 3 . 1 5 . 24. 26. 3°. 3 1 . Indians; 88
:
.,. 13 , 34. 36. 4 °. 4 1 . 45 . 46. 47 . 48 • individual consciences; 2 9
oS 49, 55 , 56 . 60. 6 1 . 62. 63. 64. 67. individual libenies; 3 2
68 , 69, 7 1 . 72. 73. 75. 7 7 . 84. 85. individualist; 8 2
89. 90. 9 1 , 1 1 2. 1 1 3 . 1 23. 1 24 industrialized count ries; 78. 80. 96.
globa l ization ; 1 . 2 . 3. 4. 5. 14. 1 5. 1 6. 1 13
1 7. 1 9. 3 1 . 3 5. 4°. 44 . 46. 56 . 59. i n formation; 50. 77. 78. 84, 95, 96
73. 82. 83. 84 . 89. 99. I I I . 1 1 2 . insurgence; 97
1 23 insurgent forces; 36
'globalphobics'; 5 i ntellectuals; 7, 20, 50, 54. 67. 7 1 , 90,
goods and services; 4. 1 1 5 98. 105, 1 09, 1 20, 1 23, 1 24
im er-imperial rivalry; 14
health; 14. 48. 76. 79. 1 1 4 international; 3, 8. 9. 1 1 • 1 2• 1 3 , 1 4 ,
hegemon; 64 1 9. 23, 26. 27, 28. 33. 35. 36. 37.
hegemony; 1 1 . 3° . 60. 7 1 . 7 2. 97 . 1 1 5 . 38. 39. 4 1 . 55, 56. 58. 59, 60. 6 1 ,
1 1 6. 1 20 62, 64. 65, 69. 70, 72, 75, 76. 79.
historical materia lism; 25. 26. 59. 83, 84. 89, 90. 925. LOO. 101. 1 1 1,
70, 105 1 1 3, 1 1 7 , 1 1 8, J l 9. 1 20
h isLOry; 1 . 4, 7. 8 . 16. 1 7 . 19. 23. 43, internationalism; 33, 40. 89
52. 53, 55. 63. 66. 79, 89. 96. 104. i nternationalist ideology; 1 0
107. 1 14. 1 1 6. 1 1 9. 1 22 . 1 24
housing; 79. 93. 1 1 4 justice; 1 2, 1 3. 28, 6 1 , 63. 64, 65 . 66,
human rights; 16. 7 1 , 1 1 7 77. 1 1 6
humanitarian; 6 , 2 7 . 28. 56. 64, 65.
66. 76, 1 1 6 labour foree; 4J. 49
human ity; 20. 75. 99. 1 24 labour legislation; 43, 49
labour reforms; 85
identity; 3. 35. 73. 10 I labour u n ions; 1 9 , 4 1 . 49. 85, 95
ideologist(s); 46. 48. 6 1 . I 1 2. I 14. labour; 4 1 . 49, 88. 9 1 . 96
1 23 laiss�-fa i re; 5 2
ideology; 30. 43. 53. 59. 60. 1 1 0. 1 1 3 , landowners; 88
1 1 5. 123 latina; 47. 83
imm igrants; 19. 43 legality; J 2
imperialism: 2 . 3 . 40. 5. 7. 10. 1 3. 14. Leviathans; 1 5 . 46. 83, 99
19. 2 1 . 24. 23. 26. 3 °. 38 . 39. 59. liberal(s}; 5 1 , 52. 70. 1 0 1 , 1 1 1
60 .64. 65 . 67, 68. 69. 7 1 . 73. 75. l iberalism; 52, 108
80. 84. 1 1 2. 1 1 3. 1 14. 1 1 6. 1 1 7. l i benarian pessimism; 103
J J 8. 1 20. 1 23. 1 24
imperia.l ist(s); I. 3. 4. 6, 8. 9. 1 1 . 1 2 . mafia; 1 6. 1 1 9. 1 20
1 3. 1 6. 1 7 . 1 9. 27. 32. 36. 59 , 6 1 . mandarins; 68, 1 2 3
63. 64. 6 8. 7°. 73. 74 . 7 9. 80. 85. market freedom; 1 1 5
100. 107. 1 13 . J l 6. 1 1 8. 1 1 9. 1 20. market(s); 1 6, 26. 38. 42. 45 , 46, 47,
1 24 50, 57, 67. 69. 7 1 . 79. 80, 82. 8 3 .
i mperialistic; 2 7 . 28. 63. 64 84, 85. 1 0 1 . J l 5. J l 7
income; 1 5. 43. 46. 85. 9 1 . 92 . 1 1 4 . markets' tyranny; 4. 1 7 , 82. 1 1 7
1 19 Marxist tradition; 1 05, 106. 108
1 38
mass m�dia; 7 , 70. 72. 8 2 . 1 1 4. 1 24 non-cit izens; 69
material conditions; 28 non-global(s); 16, 1 7 . 19
means of production; 9 5. 96 non-i m perialist; 1 1 8
mest izos; 88 non-national; 46
metropolis; 1 5 non-place: 24 , 1 2 1
metropolitan capitalism; 1 8 , 4 6 . 77, non-territorial; 69
78 , 8], 9 1 , 1 1 8 nuch:ar weapons; 32
midd le classes; 88
migrants; 18, 43, 97 oi l : 1 3 , 14, 63 . 1 19
m i l itant(s)j 1 7 . 1 9 , 98, 99 oligopolist ic; 1 1 4
military occupation: 7, 8 , 1 1 , 2 1 ownership; 1 5
m i litary; 1 2 , 1 5. 1 7, 27 , 4 1 , 60, 63 , 67 ,
7 1 , 77, 80, 8 1 . 88, 1 1 6 pacifism; 1 7
mobilization: 1 7 . 19. 4 1 pacifisls; 1 6. 1 7
mode o f p roducrion: 3 . 1 04. 1 23 para militaries; 88
modern; 1 3 , 1 5 , 1 6 , 29. 32. 35. 48. 66 . peace: 6, 1 0. 1 7, 65. 67
9 1 • 102 peasants; 88
modernist; 48 periphery; 4 , 1 1 , 37. 38. 39, 40, 49, 60,
moderniry; 32. 33 62 , 79, 80 , 82, 85, 90. 9 1 , 1 1 7 . 1 1 8
multilatenllism; 8 pickets: 36
m u ltitude(s); 1 8, 1 9. 30 . 32. 40. 4 1 , planet: 64 . 96, 102
87. 88. 89. 9 1 . 92 . 93. 94. 9 5 . 96• policy(ies); 3 , 6. 9, 1 8, 20, 46, 5 1 . 5 2,
9 7. 98 . 99 , 10]. 104, 1 1 3. 1 1 4, 1 23 6 1 . 63. 7 1 . 76. 78, 79. 80, 82, 85,
90. 1 1 2. 1 1 4 . 1 1 5. 1 1 7
nation (s); 3. 26, 38. 39 . 44. 60. 62, polilical: 1 , 2, 5. 9. 1 7, 1 9 . 23, 24. 25,
6 5 . 66, 69, 72, 79. 80 26. 29. 32. 33. 36, 38. 39, 4 1 , 49,
nation building; 20. 2 1 5 2 , 53. 54. 55, 56, 5 8 , 59. 6 1 , 65 ,
national; 9. 10, I I. 1 2 , 1 3 . 1 4, 1 5, 3 1 , 68. 69, 80. 82, 84, 86, 87, 89 , 92•
3 5, 36 . 4 2 , 44 , 45, 46 . 47, 49 , 5 1 , 94 , 96, 97. 98. 100, 10 1 , 102, 1 0 5 .
53 . 54, 55 . 56, 58 , 6 1 , 65, 70. 72• 106, 107, 1 08, 1 1 2. 1 1 4. 1 1 5, 1 1 6.
7 5. 76, 7 7 , 78, 83, 84, 87. 90, 104, 1 2 2, 1 24
1 1 3 , 1 19 politics; 8, 19. 20 , 3 1 , 5 2 . 5 3 . 54, 55 .
nationalism; 1 1 9 7 1 , 1 05. 106, 107
natjonalirYi 56 population(s)j 6. 1 8 . 2 1 , 3 7 . 46. 4 7 .
nation-slatej 10, 1 5, 27, 32. 33 , 42, 5 1 , 64. 69, 7 7, 83, 8 7 . 92. 97 . 1 1 5 .
43, 47, 50. 53. 56, 5 7 . 64 , 73. 8] . 1 17
84, 85. 86. 87, 89. 1 0 1 , 104, 123 post-capitalisl; 2 1
natural resources: 13 post-colonial: 27 , 97
nco-colonialism; 38 posl-ford ism: 1 0 1
neo-conservative: 76 posl-imperiaJisl; 2 1 , 2 7
neo-liberal: 1 . 2 , 3. 5 . 14. 1 6, 19. 20, post-modern society; 96
2 5. 35 , 46, 59, 68. 78 , 82, 89, 99 , posl-modernity; 9 1 . 9 5 , 1 2 3
100, 104, 1 1 1 , 1 1 2 , 1 1 3. 1 14. 1 1 5, post-structuralism: 1 0 7
1 1 8 . 1 23 post-war: 2 3 . 64, 8 9 , 1 20
neo-liberalism: 59. 79, 9 1 . 10 1 , 1 1 3, pOI-banging protesters: 36
1 1 4. 1 1 5 , 1 1 8 poverty; 98, 99, 1 23
1 39
power; 13. 24. 27 . 19. 30. 33. 36. 40. social relotions of production: 1 1 3
56, 60. 6 1 . 62. 63. 64. 70. 72. 7 3 . social science: 13. 28. 29. 7 0
74. 7 7. 8 1 . 89 . 92. 93. 94. 96. 97. social struggles: 4 1 . 12 2
99. 103. 1 1 2. 1 1 5. 116. 117 social wage: 9 1 . 91
privatc companies; 83. 1 1 5 socialism; 32. 68
profits; 6. 1 5. 49. 76. 8 5 socialist(s); 1 6. 95. 1 0 1 . 104
progress: 1 6. 32. 50. 66. 79. 1 1 5. 1 1 7 sociery of comrol: 29. 30
progressive policies; 1 1 4 sociery: 6. 21 . 15. 30. 31. 4 1 , 52. 59.
proletariat; 88. 95. 1 23 97. 99. 106. 1 1 1 . 1 1 3. 1 23
propeny; 46. 94. 96 sove reignry (sovereignties): 9. 10. 1 2 ,
public agenda; 100 13. 53. 56• 66. 67. 7 1 , 73. 74. 75 ,
public em ployees; 88 76. 77. 82. 1 1 4, 1 1 7
public expenditure: 77. 78. 79. 1 14. state: 3. 7, 10. 26, 42, 49. 50 , 5 1 . 52 •
1 17 53. 55, 56. 5;. 60. 65. 66, 67. 70•
public opinion: 16. 1 7 7 1 . 73. 77. 78. 79, 80, 8 1 . 82. 83,
public sector; 79. 90 84. 85. 86, 87, 89, 90. 9 1 . 92, 98 .
public sphere; 1 1 4 100. 1 09. 1 1 2• 1 1 5. 1 20
state·owned companies: 79. 1 1 5
racism: 48 strike(si: 33. 1 0 I
reaclionary; 19. 33. 1 2 3 structuralism: 100
reappropriation; 92. 9 5 structure; 2, 3 . 8 . 1 1. 1 3 . l B . 19. 39.
reform(s); 7 8 . 8 5 . 9 5 . 1 14 56. 57. 58. 69 . 70. 73 , 74. 90. 1 0 1 .
regime; 4. 1 1 . 2 1 . 31 . 40. 55. 62. 67. 1 1 1 . 1 1 3. 1 1 5. 1 1 9, 1 13. 1 24
80. 87. 88. 1 1 8 subsidies; 44. 84. 1 I 7
regulation(s); 5 1 . 80. 1 1 4. 1 1 8 subversive: 4 1
relationships of force; 89 superpower: I I, 12, 60. 68. 7 1 . 73.
repression: 5 1 . 6 1 . 88. 96 75. 76
republicanism: 87 supranational: 1 0. 64. 65. 72. 83
republicans; 98 surplus-value; 47, 85
resistance movemenls; 9 system(s): 1 , 2. 8. 13. 1 4, 1 9, 23, 24,
revolution; 1. 55. 80. 84, 87. 9 1 • 97. 27. 37. 38. 39, 59 . 6 1 . 64, 72, 79.
98. 99. 101. 101. 10] 82. 83. 84 . 90. 94. 100. 102. 103.
revolutionary: 4 1 . 9 1 . 98. 103. 104. 104, 1 07. 108. 1 1 2, 1 13, 1 16
105. 106
taxes; 1 5. 44, 85
secularization: 32 technology: 42. 44. 70, 84
semi·cilizens: 69 territorial occupation: 1 3, 2 1
sexism: 48 territorial; 10, 1 1 , 1 2 , 1 5, 36, 69, 73.
sexual m i norities: 88 97
slavery: 32 . 33. 64, 91 territory; 14, 94
social classes: 88 terrorism; 7. 7 1
social democracy; 90. 1 08 Texas ranchers; 16
social forces; 35. 53, 58. 102. 1 07 theory: 2. 7. 37. 39. 44, 48. 54. 56.
social movement(s): 16, 18. 19. 66. 89. 97. 100, 1 06, 107. 109. 1 1 5.
106 1 22. 1 Z4
social ordeJ{s): 36. 59. 1 23 tradition: 25. 29. 32, 60. 70
tribes; 1 7 walis); 6. 7, 10. I I. u. 1 3 , 14. 16 . 1 7 .
trickle-down theory; 1 1 5 1 8. 20. 2 1 , 2 7. 32 . 3 9 . 6 1 , 62, 6] ,
64. 98, 1 05, 1 1 9, 1 23
unaccountabilil)'; 8 1 w8te lis); 2 . 6, 14. 93 , 1 1 6
unemployment; 80 wealth; 1 1, 43, 46, 62 , 85. 94, 96, 99.
unification; 40. 5 1 . 69. 83 1 15
unilateralism; 1 2 women; 88, 104 . 123, 1 24
un iversal community; 10 wor kelis ); 43. 49, 5 1 , 85. 88, 9 1 , J 08 ,
unsustainable; 9 J 1 9, 1 23
working class; 1 0 1 , 107
value; 1 3. 54 world economy; 3 , 24 , 39, 45. 46 , 47 ,
victim(s); 8. 10. 33. 56. 63. 76. 8 3 . 84, 1 1 9
105. 1 2 2 . 1 23 world order; 8, 1 2, 26, 3 1 , So, 59. 64,
67, 70. 73. 74, 87. JOO. 1 20
waged labour; 43. 9 1 world population; 2 1 , 37 . 46, 5 1 , 9 7
wllr crimes; 7 5 . 77 world records; 7 5