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2. Syllabus
a. Books:
b. First half of the course:
i. McLellan’s version of Marx is the best version available
ii. The complete texts of everything we’re reading are available online at Marxists.org; note that some of the translations
there are not great
iii. You can also find dozens and dozens of additional resources there
iv. If you need help with reading Marx, there are several good online resources available
v. For a quick overview, go with Wolff’s article on SEP
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
vi. Callincos’s RIKM offers a nice overview
http://www.istendency.net/pdf/revideas.pdf
vii. Balibar’s TPM is excellent—look around online and you’ll find it in pdf form
viii. Those are just a few of the better intro books; there are literally hundreds of other books you can use
3. Two exams for the course (equally weighted; final not comprehensive)
a. The first exam will focus on key concepts from Marx—we will get 1 or 2 of them per day and I’ll explain what to focus on for
the exam
4. Brief paper—I’ll give you a handout on that later
5. I’ll put the notes online before the midterm and final
a. I recommend taking thorough notes every day; files can get lost and there will be things I emphasize in class that you will
definitely want to focus on
6. I take no attendance and you can have all of my notes; that means if you don’t want to come to class, or you’d rather do something
besides class stuff while here (text, chatting, surfing online, etc.), you need not and should not come to class
“I intend to return to what I believe was Marx’s original purpose: he wrote Capital to put a weapon in the hands of workers. In it he presented a
detailed analysis of the fundamental dynamics of the struggles between the capitalist and the working classes. By reading Capital as a political
document, workers could study in depth the various ways in which the capitalist class sought to dominate them as well as the methods they
themselves used to struggle against that domination.
. . . When Capital has been read, more often than not, it has been treated by Marxists of various persuasions as a work of political economy, of
economic history, of sociology, or even of philosophy. Thus it has been an object of academic study rather than a political tool. The legacy of this
Marxist tradition has served to all but remove the book from the battlefields of the class struggle.
9. We’ll read Marx in a manner similar to how Cleaver reads him—as offering his readers tools and weapons to understand and contest
class struggle
a. We will ask of Marx:
b. Does his work help us understand the way capitalism functions, then and now?
c. And does his work help us contest capitalism and transform the way we live?
d. “On the Jewish Question” is an ideal starting point
e. It will introduce us to Marx’s ideas about what would constitute genuine human emancipation
f. As you’ll see, it won’t be gained through liberalism and gaining equality security, property and so on through the State
b. The real point, the real problem is that full political equality does not actually amount to genuine emancipation for human
beings
i. How so? What does political equality entail? What does he mean here?
ii. See p. 58, “So we do not say to the Jews . . .”
i. What will that look like exactly? Hold on to that question—we’ll get to it soon
5. Recap
a. We began with the suggestion that we should read Marx first and foremost as a writer who is trying to put weapons in the hands of
workers who are on the battlefield of class struggle
i. Recall that this is not the only way to read Marx, but it is certainly a charitable and helpful angle from which to read and
assess his work
ii. The assigned essay for today should give you a strong sense of how this particular way of reading Marx can help to
illuminate his work
b. We read “On the Jewish Question,” bracketing the complicated questions of religion (at the beginning of the essay) and money and
anti-Semitism (in the second half of the essay) in order to focus on the question of the State and emancipation
i. Marx’s first tool, the first weapon he has to offer workers is the suggestion that workers should not look to the State in
capitalist nation-states for full emancipation
ii. The only emancipation available through the State is political emancipation, which is to say the granting of various
“rights” to citizens and human beings
iii. Rights to what? Rights to egoism, which is to say, rights for atomistic individuals to pursue their self-interests on the
marketplace (as capitalists, as laborers, as police, etc.)
c. The capitalist State functions to protect the market “game”; to use Foucaultian language, it produces and maintains subjects of
Capital, subjects who ensure that the game of profit and inequality rolls on
i. Consequently, genuine human emancipation is to be found outside the purview of the capitalist State
ii. So, with regard to capitalist States and rule (arche, αρχἠ), Marx is an anarchist, against the State, as a solution to political
issues
iii. Marx’s position on States per se is a bit more complicated, and we’ll talk about that soon
iv. For now, let’s return to religion and see how it fits into our analysis of class struggle
6. The critique of religion
a. The first page of the essay sums up Marx’s (and the young Hegelians’) position on religion
i. If literalist Judeo-Christian theism is what you offer up to Marx, he is an atheist—he thinks such theism is illusory
ii. But that kind of atheism is beside the point for Marx
iii. The real point of the critique of religion is to show that religion is a symptom and a medicine
iv. The kind of religion Marx is criticizing occurs as the result of finding oneself in a cultural- and life-situation that is
unbearable (one averts one’s eyes from the Real and looks instead toward an illusory other-world)
v. It also functions as a kind of medicine and drug (opium), with numbing and euphoric short-term effects but with long-term
consequences that are ultimately harmful
b. At bottom, for Marx the criticism of religion (which he shares with Feuerbach and other left Hegelians) should lead to a critique of
the socio-economic conditions that encourage people to turn to religion
i. When people turn to religion, they turn away from the socio-economic and existential pain of everyday life
ii. But they are also, unknowingly, being turned away from their full human potential, their ability to live socially, to live well
with each other
iii. That is why Marx is committed to atheism—he is committed to creating the socio-economic conditions that allow us to
embrace existence
iv. In brief, he is committed to living immanently, in this world, in such a way that the full powers of human potentiality are
taken back from God and fulfilled within human society itself
c. This point can’t be emphasized strongly enough, as it helps to bring Marx into an interesting conjunction with the two other
“hermeneutists of suspicion” (Freud and Nietzsche)
i. Freud and Nietzsche, too, are atheists, if what is offered under the name of religion is the “infantile,” literalist version
ii. But the rejection of the illusions of atheism is here, too, not the ultimate point
iii. The ultimate point is that religion has to be critiqued (for its illusions) . . .
iv. and ultimately overcome (despite its medicinal effects) because it blocks human flourishing and potentiality
1. So, for Nietzsche the death of God signals the re-opening of the space of potentiality wherein human beings have
the elbow room to create immanently and live joyfully
2. And, for Freud leaving behind the illusions of religion is required in order to avoid the repressive effects of
religious beliefs and the insanity they produce in religious subjects
d. Now what this means for Marx is that people that have turned to religion for such reasons have to suffer a kind of violence if they are
to move beyond their condition
i. Marx’s writings are intended to enact this kind of violence on such people
ii. They are also intended to enact violence on the “masters,” the ruling class, that have put people in this horrible condition
e. Thus, Marx’s writings are weapons intended to strike and hit hard—at both the workers themselves and the ruling class;
i. See the passages on pp. 73-4 for the pain inflicted on the religious workers: “But war on the situation in Germany!”
ii. See p. 77 for the kind of violence that must be done in order to challenge the ruling class: “This is the question . . .”
iii. In brief, the religious masses of disenfranchised workers need to be shaken up (this implies the ideology is at work)
iv. And the ruling class needs to be overthrown by material force (which implies a logic and strategy of revolution)
v. More on ideology and revolution in the coming classes . . .
8. It is at this point that Marx throws in his revolutionary lot and hopes with the disenfranchised workers, the proletariat
a. The key passage here is on p. 81
b. The difficult portion to understand is how the proletariat has a “universal character”
c. Are not workers simply another identity group, much like Jews were for Marx? Or that other groups that struggle for civil rights
might be for contemporary Marxists?
d. The answer is that the workers’ struggle is revolutionary, not reformist
e. It doesn’t aim to reform the State and gain the rights to egoism—instead, it strikes right at the very heart of capitalism and its
political institutions
f. It aims to overthrow the current status quo and replace it with a way of living that is in the best interests of the vast majority of
humanity
g. That is why the proletariat is different from identity groups, such as Marx saw Jews and such as contemporary Marxists see groups
that struggle against racism, sexism, environmental destruction, animal abuse, etc.
See handouts
9. Badiou gives us a nice understanding of this distinction between universal, revolutionary political actions and the reformist “poetics” of
identity politics (see handout)
a. For Badiou, the properly Marxist understanding of “universal” here means a transformation of the political order as a whole and one
that is in the best interests of everyone, that is, the vast majority of humanity
10. Zizek underscores these same points by recalling us to the way in which the proletariat is universal inasmuch as it transforms the normal
order:
a. “The dimension of universality thus emerges (only) where the ‘normal’ order enchaining the succession of the particulars is
perturbed.”
12. Recap
a. Marx’s writings are, by and large, aimed at understanding the logic of capital and developing tools and weapons intended to:
i. hasten capitalism’s demise and . . .
ii. help establish ways of living that are more fitting of the unique nature of human beings
b. To this end, we saw Marx argue that these more fitting ways of living, the establishment of which would constitute genuine human
emancipation, are not to be found through the capitalist nation-State (OJQ)
c. We then saw Marx’s arguments for the position that critiquing the illusions of infantile forms of religion does not suffice for genuine
human emancipation (“Towards a Critique”)
i. What is required is understanding the psychological and socio-economic conditions under which people turn to infantile
religion
ii. And what is further required is transforming those socio-economic conditions so that people can be genuinely
emancipated
d. We also saw Marx suggest that the only genuinely revolutionary class in society is the proletariat, i.e., the most disenfranchised
workers (“Towards a Critique”)
i. He suggests that this class is also unique in that it has a universal character
13. The Universal and Revolutionary Character of the Proletariat
a. So . . . are not workers simply another identity group, much like Jews were for Marx? Similar to the way in which other groups that
struggle for civil rights (race, sex, etc.) might be for contemporary Marxists?
b. For Marx, the answer is an emphatic NO. The revolutionary proletariat has nothing to do with workers gaining access to the rights of
egoism or reforming certain institutions within society
c. The workers’ struggle is revolutionary, not reformist
d. It strikes right at the very heart of capitalism and its socio-political institutions
e. It aims to overthrow the current status quo and replace it with a way of living that is in the best interests of the vast majority of
humanity
f. That is why the proletariat is different from identity groups (“Jews” for Marx; groups that struggle against racism, sexism,
environmental destruction, animal abuse, etc. for contemporary Marxists)
g. Let’s delve into this just a bit more . . .
See handouts
14. Badiou gives us a nice understanding of this distinction between universal, revolutionary political actions and the reformist “poetics” of
identity politics (see handout)
a. For Badiou, the properly Marxist understanding of “universal” here means a transformation of the political order as a whole and one
that is in the best interests of everyone, that is, the vast majority of humanity
15. Zizek underscores these same points by recalling us to the way in which the proletariat is universal inasmuch as it transforms the normal
order:
a. “The dimension of universality thus emerges (only) where the ‘normal’ order enchaining the succession of the particulars is
perturbed”
16. These ideas about universality are problematic and contentious for several reasons, and we’ll return to them at length throughout the semester
17. So, now we can get a good sense of what Marx is up to as we turn to the more specific points concerning economics and post-capitalist life in
EPM
a. The capitalist State is an obstacle to genuine human emancipation
b. The critique of religion should lead to a fight aimed at transforming the socio-economic conditions that force people to turn to
religion for comfort and distraction
c. The group that will lead this fight for transformation is the proletariat, for they are the most abject (non)members of society, and their
aim is to topple the nation-State and build new ways of living (all other activist groups are presumably working within the logic of
capital)
18. Now with EPM we go one level deeper to understand the fundamentally abject, fundamentally alienated state of the proletariat within
capitalist societies
a. EPM was not fully published until 1932; it is incomplete and fragmentary, but it remains a very useful entry point into Marx’s larger
project
i. Side note on breaks and continuity in Marx’s project
b. The point of the section on alienated labor is to “correct” the analysis of labor provided by Adam Smith and other capitalists (many
of the pages preceding the selection are not reprinted here for you; they consist of long quotations from economists)
c. Before examining how a worker’s labor is alienated in capitalist society, let’s try to figure out what non-alienated life and labor
would look like
22. Recap
a. Thus far, we have seen the following key themes from Marx
i. Genuine human emancipation is to be found outside the purview of the capitalist nation-State (OJQ)
ii. The critique of religion, properly understood, calls for transformation of socio-economic conditions (“Towards a Critique”)
iii. The proletariat are the only revolutionary and (hence) only universal class in society
iv. Alienation (dispossession and becoming-foreign of what is one’s own) happens in four key ways in capitalist societies
1. Work does not allow the worker to live well (only mere survival)
2. Work does not provide any inherent joy or reward (mere drudgery)
3. Work does not befit our species-being as autonomous creators (merely obeying the blind necessity of market
forces)
4. Work does not befit our species-being as social, communal, shared creators (mere competition with other laborers,
no sense of common creative forces)
d. Key things to get in what follows: genuine communism (a) develops historically out of capitalism, (b) allows us to recover our social
natures, and (c) unleashes our natural human potential
e. Marx sees his communism as developing out of and advancing beyond the contradictions encountered in life under capitalism
i. It is not a return to older, historical forms of community
1. Influenced by Hegel, Marx’s conception of communism develops historically by overcoming the limits of the
previous economic system
2. It is the conscious result and realization of the limits of capitalism, the problems of alienated labor, and the need to
abolish private property
3. Post-colonial and indigenous critics of Marx (and Hegel) have several critical remarks to make on this issue of
historical development, and we’ll see those critiques soon when we turn to Empire
f. Marx also sees his communism as different from other forms of communism in genuinely recapturing the social nature of the human
i. As we just noted, this means that in our shared social existence under communism, we develop rich, shared, social lives and
communities
1. This is in stark contrast to the impoverished, alienated, atomized lives we lead under capitalism
ii. In addition, in our joint, collective work under communism, we are able to effectively and lastingly subdue nature to our
collective human ends
1. This provides, in effect and in essence, an end to the struggle with nature
2. We carve out our place in nature effectively and in a way that puts that fundamental struggle and anxiety to rest for
the human condition
3. Under capitalism, those who fall through the cracks of the system (the proletariat) are always in this tension and
state of anxiety with respect to nature
iii. Clearly, for radical environmentalists, this understanding of the “antagonism” between human beings and the natural world
will not suffice—more on this soon as well
g. Finally, beyond the developmental thesis and the sociality thesis, Marx’s vision of communism includes a picture of quasi-aesthetic
human potentiality being actualized on an unprecedented level
i. He argues that private property and capitalism have made us stupid, myopic, one-dimensional (to use Marcuse’s term)
1. We know only “having”—we remain unaware of the multi-faceted, rich potential of all our human faculties
ii. In brief, with communism our bodies and brains would lose or break free from a whole series of potentiality-limiters that
capitalism forces on us
1. The potentiality of our bodies and brains (senses and qualities to use Marx’s terminology) would swing wide open,
and we would link up with the world and each other in unheard-of ways
2. Those unheard-of modes would in turn generate other relations, other connections, other potentialities further
enriching our collective lives
h. Responses to Marx’s “communism with a human face”: Marx as human nature theorist, Marx as existentialist, early Marx as a
juvenile mistake
i. We’ll try to keep an eye on all of these perspectives as we continue our analysis of Marx
j. But the key issue here is not to get caught up in Marx scholarship
i. The question Marx would have us ask is: Which one of these ideas about the human makes for the best weapon on the
battlefield of class struggle?
k. And the other set of questions we want to keep in mind are:
i. Do we want to follow Marx at all here? Might it be that his theories of the human, communism, etc., remain too tied to other
aspects of Western metaphysics (androcentrism, anthropocentrism, Eurocentrism, productionism and developmentalism,
etc.) that we find problematic?
25. Recap
a. We can now squeeze all of the early Marx into a handful of key words, themes, concepts (which you can unpack on your own):
i. Human emancipation; the critique of religion; proletariat as universal, revolutionary class; alienated labor (mere survival,
drudgery, creative-autonomy-limiting, atomizing and anti-social)
ii. From last time, we learned the basics of Marx’s vision of communism (developmental advance; recovery of human social
nature; unleashing human potential)
iii. This version of “communism with a human face” has been read in three chief ways:
1. Endorsing a strong human nature theory and corresponding politics (Geras)
2. Endorsing an existentialist theory of the human and freedom (Kojéve, Lukacs, Sartre)
3. A juvenile error to be replaced by thoroughgoing anti-humanism (Althusser via “French” Heidegger)
27. Ideology
a. The concept of ideology starts us on the path toward thinking about human beings as not being fully in control of themselves or the
institutions in which they find themselves and that they sustain
b. There are two key things we need to gain from the concept of ideology:
i. Economic, material reality is basic and fundamental in an explanatory sense when trying to explain how history and
culture develop over time
1. Things like consciousness, ideas, knowledge, worldviews, laws, political institutions, belief systems, morality, etc.,
have secondary status
ii. The latter things (institutions, laws, ideas, and worldviews) become ideological when they are used to conceal economic,
material reality and justify economic inequality
c. On point #1 (i): The central insight of Marx’s account of ideology lies in the notion that economic, material reality is foundational for
understanding both the past and present
i. In other words, the most important fact about understanding human life and history is to be found in how we economically
arrange societies in order to satisfy our basic material needs (food, clothing, shelter, etc.) and wants (beyond necessity)
d. On point #2 (ii): Now, as we will see in more detail in CM, these basic economic arrangements that drive history are, for Marx,
characterized almost always in terms of class struggle and antagonism
i. So, it would seem that our “ideas” (knowledge, consciousness, beliefs, religion, etc.) and social institutions would
accurately reflect this reality, this tension and antagonism
ii. But, for Marx, the dominant ideas and institutions within capitalist culture don’t accurately reflect or explain material
realities—they obscure those realities
iii. And they do so in such a way as to guard the interests of the ruling classes
iv. So, ideas and institutions become ideological when they:
1. serve to conceal the actual, radically unequal reality of social and economic relations and . . .
2. serve to justify and maintain that inequality
28. Base and superstructure
a. One of the ways of explaining this differentiation between the economic realities and the emergent ideological institutions and ideas
is to refer to these domains in terms of (economic) “base” and (ideological) “superstructure”
i. Marx uses this language in his Preface to Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, where he speaks of an economic
base or structure upon which is founded an entire superstructure of laws, institutions, and ideas
b. The economic structure/base comprises:
i. The forces of production: human labor power (controlled by capitalist class), technology and resources (factories, land, etc.,
all owned by capitalist class), and
ii. The relations of production: specific economic arrangement of society at any given time (capitalism, for us; feudalism,
slavery, etc., in other places/times) in which we labor and make our way in the world
c. The superstructure comprises:
i. Legal and political institutions (the State) on the one hand, and . . .
ii. Ideological structures, discourses, and institutions on the other hand (e.g., morality, religion, education, family—and in our
time, mass media, celebrity culture, etc.)
d. If Marx has provided a useful interpretive tool for us here with his concept of ideology, what we would expect to find is:
i. that the State essentially functions to protect the logic and flows of capital (OJQ)
ii. and that ideological forces help to ensure that our beliefs, practices, language, and so on reinforce the interests of the
working classes (GI)
1. Some examples from today of how Marxists would frame these issues:
2. Education helps make us good little workers and middle managers; religion tells us that life will be better in the
next world and to meekly accept our economic fate here on earth; media tells us that our worth comes from
accumulating lots of plastic stuff and eventually becoming a celebrity with enough money eventually to own my
own plastic junk corporation; morality makes me believe that my atomistic rights to my egoism are paramount; we
are encouraged to believe that hard work is a virtue rather than a curse; we are encouraged to believe that non-
productive members of society are not fully human, etc.
e. Now, we also need to show how the superstructure (law, politics, and ideology) is not just an emergent set of ideal structures
determined by the material base but . . . .
f. are themselves actual, material (here in the sense of having real material reality) structures that help to reproduce and maintain the
economic base
i. This is where where Marx’s own account leaves some gaps and Althusser can help us out
29. Althusser
a. Note first that Althusser’s (Heideggerian/Lacanian) anti-humanism entails an outright rejection of humanist subjectivity
(individuality, agency, freedom, self-sameness)
i. The individual human is a metaphor—it doesn’t actually exist; it is a metaphorical personification of socio-economic forces
and relations
ii. Moreover, according to Althusser, the humanist/existentialist notion of the individual subject is itself ideological (a fiction
that belongs to the superstructure and protects the interests of the ruling class)
1. Hence, he thinks we should be wary of the concept and not extol it (as do the existentialists/Frankfurters and
human nature theorists)
2. This will become clearer in a moment
b. For now, note the central question of the essay: how do we keep reproducing the conditions of production, i.e., how do we continue
to make sure we are able to continually produce goods, services, etc., that we need/want?
i. We need to make sure we replenish the resources we use to make things as well as having the requisite supply of human
labor power
1. Resources are replenished in a fairly straightforward manner, but the reproduction and making-available of human
labor power is tricky
2. It requires that we get paid enough at least to survive
3. And it also requires that batch after batch of workers acquires the requisite skills to be good workers, managers,
etc.
4. Althusser suggests that in modern societies that corporations outsource this skills training
5. Where? To educational institutions; school and university is where we learn to become good, productive, well-
manner, well-behaved workers
c. Education belongs, for Althusser, to a whole range of ideological state apparatuses (ISAs)—see Althusser’s list on p. 143
i. These various, and sometimes conflicting, institutions discourses, practices, ideas, beliefs, etc., conceal and reinforce
dominant economic structures
ii. They work side by side with violent, repressive state apparatuses (RSAs) (courts, prisons, police, government, etc.) to
ensure that the market functions smoothly and that its conditions for continuing to function are in place
iii. But it is in the seemingly non-violent, seemingly neutral educational system that the capitalist system really assures its
continual reproduction (by numbing minds, curbing rebellious desires, etc.)
iv. See Althusser’s remarks on pp. 156-7: “Of course, many of these contrasting Virtues . . .”
30. We’ll cover interpellation when you return so we can put the final touches on how ideology is made material and carried on, in, and through
bodies
31. We now have a better sense of why Marx rails against things like the State, religion, and morality
32. All of these ideas and institutions are in place to maintain the status quo, a status quo that functions almost entirely in the interests of the
ruling classes
33. Now, one of the questions that arises is this: Is Marx against the State per se, religion per se, morality per se? Have these things always
functioned to protect ruling classes? Can they function differently in different economic circumstances? Or would they simply melt away in
communist society?
34. Secondly, we might ask: Is Marx himself, unknowingly, reproducing ideas that are in the interests of the ruling classes? After all, he is writing
(albeit critically) within the economic context of capitalist society . . .
35. Some critics argue that his Eurocentrism, his dominating attitude toward nature, his optimism concerning rationality, technology, and science,
his androcentrism, his attitude toward productivity and toward the non-productive Lumpenproletariat, and so on . . . all indicate that much of
Marx’s work remain uncritically bourgeois and ideological
36. And, using the logic of Marx’s own analysis, we should expect this, should we not? Ideas and critique can only run so far ahead of material,
economic realities . . .
38. Recap
a. Early Marx: emancipation; religion; proletariat; alienated labor; communism
b. Interpretive frameworks: strong human nature; existentialist; anti-humanist
c. Middle and Late Marx
i. Ideology:
1. Works, discursively and institutionally, to conceal and justify economic inequality
2. Implies that economic forces are more basic than, and give rise to, the ideological discourses and institutions
ii. Base and Superstructure as explanation of relation between economics and ideology
1. Base = forces of production and relations of production
2. Superstructure=law and politics and ideological structures, discourses, and institutions
iii. Althusser helps to show us that the secondary or derivative status of ideology does not mean that it is unimportant
1. Ideology is essential to the reproduction of the human labor force (at the level of the economic base), generation
after generation
2. It accomplishes its role here primarily through the vast educational ISA, in which we learn to become good
workers, good subjects of capital (skills, manners, beliefs, etc.)
iv. Lingering questions: If the superstructure (RSAs and ISAs) does indeed have a substantial material force, what to do with it
in terms of revolution and transformation? Let it wither? Seize it? Abolish it?
v. Also, is Marx himself ideological? Do his blindspots betray a kind of bourgeois, capitalist myopia (Eurocentrism,
dominionism, rationalism, scientism, androcentrism, productivism, etc.)?
41. This much is clear: in writing the “Theses on Feuerbach,” The German Ideology, and “The Communist Manifesto” that Marx is becoming
more and more enamored of a materialist conception of history and revolution
a. It is the economic and social process of making our way in and through nature, meeting our material needs, that is basic to explaining
the human condition and human history
b. This means that the economic base is the key motor of history, and thus the key place to look for revolution and transformation
c. This also means that history takes place through changes in the forces of production (technologies, materials, and labor used to make
stuff we need and want) and relations of production (the concrete economic structures of society through which we produce our
stuff)
The Manifesto
42. Marx and Engels are writing this piece in 1847-8
a. It serves as a position statement for The Communist League
i. It is meant to announce the advent of the communist revolution and the end of capitalism
ii. His optimism is not as crazy as it seems, as there are revolutionary uprisings going on all around him (their failure will be
the source of another “shift” in Marx’s writings)
46. One of the main points that Marx wants to make here is that capitalism is not a “natural state of affairs” but one that was brought about under
concrete historical and economic circumstances
a. Specifically, it corresponds with the colonization of the “New World” in the 15-17th centuries, and with the bourgeoisie who came to
the New World in the mid-19th century to govern in the name of their respective European countries
b. Engels makes it clear in a later text (40 years later, Origin of the Family) that he and Marx were not in a position to know much about
pre-contact history in the Americas
47. Marx suggests that it was during this time of colonization and increased trade that market demands back home began to grow, and that older
means of producing (viz., feudalism) were pushed aside in favor of speedier and more efficient production
a. As the bourgeoisie gained more control, and as their forms of manufacture and economic relations spread through the world, the
bourgeoisie created a sharp class schism
b. Their aims of efficiency and making a profit left little room for any other relation between those who owned the means of production
and those who produced
51. Recap
a. Early Marx: key concepts you already have
b. Interpretive frameworks: three main frameworks you already have
c. Working through Middle and Late Marx:
i. ideology, base and superstructure, materialist conception of history, historical emergence of bourgeoisie-proletariat
antagonism
53. Revolution
a. In CM, it is clear that Marx and Engels believe the antagonism between the B and P will lead to an all-out revolution
i. This would mean a drastic change not just in politics/law, but also in the economic base (economic arrangements and who
owns forces of production and property more generally)
ii. It would open up an entirely new “world,” one beyond profit and property
iii. The proletariat “have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and
insurances of, individual property”
b. When the various revolts and uprisings going on during the writing of CM failed to pan out in the end, Marx became more inclined
to suggest that economic conditions had to be fully ripe before there could be genuine revolution
i. In other words, economic crises within capitalist countries would have to be extraordinarily severe before full-scale
revolution would occur
ii. Here is where he disagrees most emphatically with anarchists like Bakunin, who argue for the possibility of revolution
wherever workers are oppressed
iii. See Bakunin essay, “Schoolboy’s asaninity!”
c. Later Marxists have tried to make Marx’s work look much more streamlined and consistent on the issue of revolution than it actually
is
i. Some have argued that revolutions can only happen under very specific circumstances (e.g., during crises that occur only in
the most advanced capitalist countries; that we’d actually have to speed up the development of other countries to get them
into this revolutionary context, etc.)
ii. But Marx’s own thought was in constant flux concerning how revolution would occur
1. Was it the mechanical result of economic laws being played out? Or was it contingent?
2. Does it require class consciousness?
3. Does it require explicit theoretical awareness linked with practice (revolutionary praxis)?
4. Does it require a revolutionary vanguard?
iii. Also, Marx was concerned with trying to justify and figure out the proper limits of physical violence in the context of
revolution
1. Terror (violent, forced) vs. Revolutionary physical force used by the proletariat State
From The German Ideology: “For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity,
which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he
does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can
become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today
and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without
ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an
objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in
historical development up till now.”
57. Recap
a. Early Marx, interpretive frameworks, middle Marx (ideology and associated concepts)
b. Middle Marx, cont. (revolution, State, future communist society)
c. Full exam review will be provided next class
d. March 4th, no class for CSU-wide Day of Action
Part 2
j. Now, how does this capitalist system of exploitation and profit undermine itself?
i. Let’s look at things from the capitalist’s perspective
ii. The assumption is: there can never be enough profit
iii. And there are other capitalists and corporations with the same mindset also pursuing their self-interests in the marketplace
—we compete fiercely
iv. In order to win this ballgame, I have to find ways to reduce costs and sell more in every possible way
1. More efficient technologies, bigger and faster production processes, more productive workers, downsizing the
workforce where possible, externalizing costs, etc.
v. My winning this ballgame in my industry (say, table making) means others can’t compete and are squeezed out of the
marketplace
vi. Capital and profit are thus naturally heading in the direction of fewer and fewer hands, fewer and fewer corporations
vii. This means that the general trend is toward downsizing the workforce and reducing its pay to rock bottom wherever
possible
viii. And it ultimately means that fewer jobs are available (more efficient corporations use technology to their advantage and
learn to squeeze more out of their fewer workers)
ix. The consequence: we have a small number of seriously wealthy people on the one hand and larger and larger numbers of
disenfranchised consumers/workers on the other
x. The more poverty, the more consumption starts to drop, and corporations can’t sell their stuff
xi. The middle classes get squeezed increasingly toward becoming the proletariat, and the proletariat get squeezed toward the
Lumpenproletariat
xii. This kind of antagonism isn’t sustainable—workers get irritated and fight back, and the system fails to do what it’s
supposed to do (produce what we need)
k. The two ways out of this mess?
i. Communist revolution (Marxist socialism/communism)
ii. Debt boom and bust cycles (corporate socialism/communism)
iii. The “non-capitalist” solution for most capitalists, of course, is colonialism, slavery, theft, fancy book-keeping, taxpayer
bailouts, etc.—but this isn’t playing according to the pure “logic” of capitalism
iv. That is one of the lingering questions here:
1. Marx is analyzing the pure “logic” of classical capitalism, but are the big players really classical capitalists?
2. Are financial capitalism and global corporate capitalism really the same as the kind of capitalism Marx is
analyzing?
3. And if not, do they necessarily generate the same kinds of antagonisms? And do they generate or offer the same
avenues for resistance?
l. Keep this basic logic of capitalism in mind and the possible need to tweak in mind as we turn to Empire
67. Assignment for next class
a. Please read Empire, 42-66
b. Recommended: Subcomandante Marcos/EZLN, “Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle”
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5922
d. Exams will be handed back no later than two weeks from when you took them
e. You might want to start thinking about your paper topic! We’ll discuss the paper in more detail soon
68. Recap
a. We started out by suggesting that the stakes of Marx’s work lie in trying to understand how capitalism functions so that workers
could . . .
i. build concepts, tools, strategies, and tactics for resisting and moving beyond it to build new ways of living and producing
ii. In short, we read Marx as a revolutionary theorist providing tools and analysis for revolution
b. Marx himself doesn’t seem to think that his analysis is timeless or that capitalism can never go through fundamental mutations that
would render his project passé
i. Of course he doesn’t anticipate such mutations (he seems to believe in the imminent demise of capitalism) . . .
ii. but he never argues that capitalism has to and can only take the precise form he analyzes (the logic of capital as it functions
under industrialism and in the theoretical works of Smith and Ricardo et al.)
c. Yet many of Marx’s contemporary followers regard his analysis as essentially still correct, and they also see capitalism and
revolutionary strategy as essentially still the same today as it was 150+ years ago when Marx was writing
i. This attitude, though, is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain
ii. Nearly all of Marx’s most serious followers and defenders feel the need to tweak his work to respond to thoroughgoing
changes in the nature of capitalism and the world scene
d. Hardt and Negri definitely belong to this latter club
i. They believe that a new form of capitalism has emerged out of the shell of the one Marx analyzed
ii. Consequently, (assuming they are right) they believe we need to update our theoretical analysis of the functioning of
capitalism (both its economic base and its superstructure) and our strategies/tools for resistance
iii. This is how their book Empire is presented to you
iv. See p. xvi
e. They could be wrong (maybe Marx already nailed it; maybe their work remains too Marxist, too Eurocentric, etc.; maybe capitalism
has already mutated yet again; maybe TINA)
i. But, read the book with those stakes (above) in mind and see what you think
ii. At the very least, by working through this book and the recommended readings, you’ll have a fairly good snapshot of the
broad range of cutting-edge anti-capitalist theories and practices
69. Negri
a. He is the driving intellectual force behind this work
b. He has been active in anti-capitalist struggles since the 1950s (his early 20s) as both a theorist and militant/organizer
c. He was arrested and imprisoned on trumped-up charges in the late 1970s and jailed for four years; he was released briefly, went to
France to live and teach for a decade and a half; eventually returned to Italy to serve out his sentence; and was finally released for
good in 2003
d. He wrote dozens of influential essays and books during these years, and become one of the founders of Italian “autonomism”
i. This movement is a confluence of all kinds of trends and practices (Marxism, anarchism, poststructuralism, Situationism,
etc.)
ii. Reading Empire will be the easiest way to understand this fairly complex approach to anti-capitalist theory and practice
e. Hardt was first an engineer (alternative energies in Central America) and then a Deleuze scholar; translated Negri’s work Savage
Anomaly into English; then wrote some shorter material with Negri and then eventually wrote Empire with Negri
f. They have since written two other mammoth books (Multitude and Commonwealth, the latter just came out)
g. Their later work mainly expands on the present material—no huge shifts, so Empire still remains a good place to go to figure out
their project and the forms of activism/resistance they are linked with
71. Preface
a. H and N argue up front that there has been a paradigm shift in the economy and culture—the popular name for this shift is
globalization
i. It is marked by the deep and rapid increase of global flows of trade and production (economy) as well as ideas, trends, etc.
(culture)
1. There have long been world markets, but the rapid increase in the global flows of capital is so massive that it can
be seen as an emergent phenomenon
b. Along with this paradigm shift, there comes a new kind of sovereignty/power and a new logic of rule
i. Coinciding with the globalization of the economy and culture, there is a globalization of sovereignty
ii. Just as there is no center to the economy or culture, there is no center to sovereignty/power—both the economy and the
power structures that maintain it have become decentralized, de-territorialized (no one center, no one geographical location)
iii. Call “Empire” this new logic of power, sovereignty, culture, and economy
c. Empire (this new logic, rhythm, power, way of living and producing) has spread to nearly every corner of the earth
i. It appears to have no limits
ii. It seems, from within its functioning, that it is entirely natural and fixed in place (necessary and natural rather than
contingent)
iii. It infects, contaminates, and eventually constitutes from within every aspect of human life (not just institutions and ideas but
bodies and practices)
72. This is a frightening and problematic development in the history of capitalism, no doubt, for H&N
a. Capitalism in the form of Empire seems to have no outside
b. You can’t leave society to avoid it, you can’t go to a new territory to avoid it, and you can’t easily shake it off of your body/mind
c. So, the way out of Empire is not backward but actually forward . . . through and beyond Empire
i. H and N are, like most Marxists, resolutely modern and forward-looking
ii. They want to accelerate revolutionary and democratic possibilities within contemporary global capitalism rather than exit it
for a previous way of living (not that those [forward and backward, stay in or exit] are the only two options, but that’s how
it’s often presented by H&N and other Marxists)
iii. Remember that what comes “before” classical capitalism and globalization for H&N is feudalism, slavery and so on—so,
there is no nostalgia for previous forms of economic hierarchy and “domination”
iv. But “before” capitalism and “beyond” capitalism mean different things inside and outside Europe . . .
1. H&N’s decolonial critics will drive this point home with particular force (Castro-Gomez, Mignolo, Quijano)
2. We’ll return to this issue soon
3. For H&N, their model of the functioning of contemporary capitalism is built on Deleuze’s notion of a “control society”
a. For H&N, the paradigm shift they locate in the economy (from classical capitalism to globalization) . . .
b. . . . mirrors a paradigm shift in the modes of sovereignty and the circulation of power (from disciplinary society to control
society)
i. These are not clean breaks, but rather deepenings and intensifications of previous economic tendencies and modes of
sovereignty
c. Deleuze (from his 1990 essay “Postscript”: an essay aimed at seeking to assess where we are at and where we’re going) himself
uses this concept of “control society” to argue that
i. we’re at the beginning of something new in terms of the way society is structured
ii. and the way human subjects are “produced” (constituted, formed, the appapratuses of interpellation and performativity;
or, for Deleuze, the ways in which what we call “humans” are formed and unformed through certain connections and
assemblages)
d. Following and also going beyond Foucault, he suggests we are moving increasingly away from the old institutions of subject
formation (institutions of discipline and confinement: prison, school, factory)
i. Of course this does not mean these disappear—it means they take on a slightly different role within the larger social
whole and are supplemented by other mechanisms of power
ii. So, don’t think of paradigm shifts here as indicating simple breaks—think of them as emergent phenomena heavily
conditioned by what precedes them
e. These “older” disciplinary institutions formed us as subjects through structuring our bodies, habits, and practices (prisoner’s
routine, education’s ideology and architecture and hierarchical power models, factory’s routine and hierarchical power structures)
f. As invasive as these institutions are, there are still insides and outsides to them
i. One has to move into them and become competent in them, and one can presumably move out of them (not to a power-
less outside, but still there is an outside to particular, individual institutions)
g. Deleuze’s notion of a “control society” suggests that there is no longer seems to be much of an outside
i. the mechanisms of power/discipline/control are becoming increasingly subtle, fluid, invisible, ubiquitous, overlapping,
and constant
ii. They infuse social life at every possible level (everything from work to school to recreation to community to family to
personal relationships)
h. Examples:
i. Education and assessment that never ends (think of workers wanting to move up in their jobs through endless
continuing education; or the continuous and never-ending assessment of K-12 students)
ii. A workplace that is always present no matter where one is (remote computers, email, cell phones, weekend training,
networkng with power players outside of “normal” work hours)
iii. Constant surveillance and monitoring of both “criminals” and society as a whole (street cams, airports, and so on)
iv. Continual monitoring of buying habits, surfing habits in order both to produce subjects and anticipate their produced
desires (why are FB and the Google suite free? the attention economy, Axciom Global Interactive Marketing Services and
their massive data banks and “70 types” of people)
i. Here, these new technologies and architectures are themselves (phones, computers, education technologies, etc.) not the sole
issue
j. What matters is how those technologies and architectures grow out of and fit within a larger social pattern aimed at micro-
control, micro-monitoring of the population
k. Deleuze thinks that these kinds of societies have made old forms of resistance next to useless
i. The old model would be attacking power from a position outside power: But who holds power here? Where is power’s
outside?
l. This does not mean he is opposed to resistance, though
i. He just warns us that we need to be both very critical and very creative with resistance; and we need to be ready to
critically assess our every move and gesture (because it has been at least partially captured by the control society)
4. H&N are trying to start from within this picture of the control society, which they believe accurately captures the dominant trends within
modern capitalist societies . . .
a. . . . and develop a theory of resistance that is up to the task of contesting the harmful aspects of control
5. As you pull back from this analysis and see what D and H&N are up to, you can see their point (whether you agree with it is another
question!)
a. What they are tying to figure out is how the economy and its associated superstructure function to keep resistance in check and
to smooth the way for the flows of global capitalism
b. You need lots of human subjects who:
i. don’t rebel and
ii. who are smoothly inserted into the global economy as workers, producers, consumers, information sources for
marketers, etc.
iii. In brief, the argument is that for globalization, to work smoothly and well, it needs a control society
6. Biopower
a. This concept, borrowed also from Foucault and updated by H&N, is closely linked to control societies—it tries to show more
explicitly how control circulates
b. In brief, bipower refers to the ways in which power/control comes to work upon, invest, and constitute from within human
bíos/life
c. There are obvious ways in which power is exercised over human lives, consciousness, and bodies: through war, through torture,
through confinement
i. These things go on constantly and affect large numbers of people, but H&N want to also underscore biopower’s
productive side
d. By controlling and constituting human life from within, control societies produce and sustain certain kinds of subjects—societies
have to keep at least some of us alive!
i. Note: For populations that are targeted solely for total annihilation by power, this analysis will likely have little
relevance
ii. And this indicates something of H&N’s, Deleuze’s, and Foucault’s shared starting point
iii. They are examining how power circulates within and through subjects the system wants to keep around—they do not
examine as much how global capitalism and its “control society” continue to simply lock up or wipe out “undesirable”
populations . . .
e. So, in a nutshell biopower for H&N refers to those aspects of the control society that work directly upon human lives (bodies
and consciousness and habits and practices) . . .
i. . . . to encourage us to fit within and produce within the confines of global capitalism
f. This is what H&N are speaking about when they invoke the move from “formal to real subsumption” of labor and social
relations by global capitalism
i. Global capitalism has infused itself into labor and social relations at almost every conceivable level
ii. And more specifically, H&N are referring to ways in which laborers get “technologized,” or “global-capitalized” (get
transformed into the productive forces of global capitalism—machinized, etc.)
7. Control society and biopower . . . this all looks very bleak! But remember, these are the reactive aspects of Empire
a. We human beings are the positive, but un-thought underside—we are more basic than control or biopower
i. This is the more fundamental, “ontological” perspective
ii. It is more basic than looking at things from their “constituted” perspective
b. We are now subjects of Empire’s “control society” and “biopower,” but our subjectivity is neither simple nor is it simply
determined by Empire
i. “Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude” (62)
ii. We have a “pre-discursive” vitality that powers and exceeds the machine’s capture
iii. And when that vitality is captured by Empire, that does not mean human vitality is identical to Empire, or that new
becomings and connections aren’t possible
iv. This is Deleuzean subjectivity . . . more later
8. General Intellect
a. Over and against the notion that the “center” of modern capitalism lies in humans as consumers and subjects-of-marketing
(human beings passively wrapped in a marketing bubble) . . .
i. H&N argue for the primacy of production
ii. From an “ontological perspective,” Empire has no force without the productive powers and energies of the multitude
iii. We are not passive consumers—or at least not just passive consumers
iv. We are the forces that sustain Empire (its wealth, its force, etc.)
b. Marx argued as much when talking about factory workers
c. But Empire, while built upon and still reliant upon factory work of various sorts, is increasingly investing in intellectual and
immaterial labor
i. This will require us to examine more closely this shift in globalization toward immaterial, communicative labor
ii. And it will also mean that we need to uncover the new avenues of resistance that are opened up by these new modes of
production
1. What kinds of subversive connections and modes of resistance are opened up by the flows of immaterial
labor?
9. Resistance
a. Next time, let’s go through 1.3 closely and look at H&N’s critique of localism and the failure of communication that
characterizes many of today’s more inspiring rebellions against global capitalism
b. We’ll also examine what they see as the more promising route: resistance within and against Empire
c. We’ll examine the Zapatistas and Chiapas revolt as a test case
77. Recap
a. We started with a quick snapshot of the logic of Empire (decentered, deterritorialized, smooth, but also vulnerable and self-
undermining)
b. We have seen a quick snapshot of its central modes of sovereignty/power/rule (international military, police, laws, trade agreements,
etc.)
c. We have also seen a quick snapshot of its central economic characteristics (globalization, communications technologies, MNCs
instead of nation-States) and the subjects it produces (control society, bipower, general intellect)
d. Today we will get a quick snapshot of current modes of resistance to Empire, both the more and less promising varieties—the
Chiapas struggle and Zapatistas will help us understand the stakes of H&N’s projects and what they envision as alternatives to
Empire
78. Resistance
a. As we saw on the first day, there is no longer any way of getting outside of, or unplugging from, Empire according to H&N
i. We (especially “First-world” subjects but increasingly every corner of the globe) are immersed in the networks and power
flows of the control society and its bio-power
ii. So, we have no choice in terms of strategy but to go through and beyond Empire
1. This means it is strategically wise to use:
a. the new tools for resistance it has unwittingly produced (and also any useful older tools it has incorporated
from previous socio-economic arrangements)
iii. But as H&N make clear, they also have no nostalgia for:
1. what comes before Empire (classical industrial capitalism and its nation-States)
2. or what comes before classical capitalism (all of the economic modes of life that Marx analyzes and rejects because
of their internal contradictions)
iv. So, Empire is a good thing inasmuch as it has torn asunder old nation-State boundaries and accelerated the demise of the
nation-State
1. Empire has helped to deepen and materialize the global links between the multitude of workers, producers, and
outcasts and their vitality and potentiality in unimagined ways
2. In brief, we now have the material (here meaning both economic and physical) conditions in place for global
democracy and universal emancipation
79. A common anti-capitalist strategy for resistance against global Empire is what H&N term “localism”
a. The way they pitch this: various groups who argue for a return to the nation-State or a return to local communities and trying to
unplug from Empire
b. They reject this strategy as “false” and “damaging”
c. They want us to see these local identities as not at all “pure” or outside Empire but as largely constituted by Empire (both present and
previous incarnations of capitalism have produced or helped to produce these “local,” seemingly original identities)
i. The damaging portion is nicely summed up on pp. 45-6: “This Leftist strategy . . .”
80. So, very much like the early Marx rejects the idea of exiting capitalism and returning to primitive forms of communism (but don’t forget the
ethnographic notebooks!), H&N recommend pushing through Empire and out the other side
81. But, besides necessity and strategy: What is to be gained by going through Empire and modernity?
a. What we are going to see next time is that they believe there are essential resources within modernity that must not, according to
H&N, be given up (in particular, the concept of immanence and the abandoning of religious other-worldliness)
82. But there are a couple of other things to be gained by pushing through Empire and modernity . . .
a. First, we can gain a glimpse of the ontological underside of modernity’s constituted legal and economic order (multitude’s power and
potentiality)
i. The development of Empire and modernity is the story of the multitude’s potentiality and its capture
ii. We don’t want to ignore the resistance and energy that forms the underside of this “monster” of Empire
b. Second, we can build on and improve upon the successes and failures of the older, nation-state models of “internationalist” resistance
(China, Soviet models, Cuba, etc.)
i. To do so, we have to come to grips with the fact that with increased globalization, we have a new “working class,” a new
“proletariat”
1. See p. 53: “The fact that under the category . . .”
ii. And we also need to recognize the fundamentally new nature of today’s radical struggles (some examples are listed on p.
54)
c. In brief, if we stay within the purview of Empire and modernity, we can see a number of important positive potentials that we’d
otherwise miss:
i. The newer, most remarkable forms of resistance are now anti-Empire
ii. The revolutionary class is no longer the factory worker but the multitude that sustain Empire
iii. The struggles have changed their form, their strategy
83. It is from within this context that we can assess the advances and limitations of these new anti-Empire struggles
a. The key limits that H&N see:
i. It is difficult to adequately theorize and name the common enemy that binds these struggles (Empire as a book is a
contribution to this project)
ii. It is difficult to help communicate these struggles to each other—they remain isolated and don’t fully appreciate their
possible, productive overlappings in terms of shared theoretical alliances and solidarities
1. Contemporary example: ecofeminism, and we’ll talk more about this with Donna Haraway
b. The other limit—and H&N are working though this and are not fully sure what to do here—has to do with how struggles are linked
and “hegemonized” at the political level (if at all)
i. Why link these struggles and try to hegemonize the political field and/or the nation-State? (se’ll see with Laclau and Mouffe
later)
ii. Traditional Marxists argue that revolutionaries need to seize State power
iii. Traditional Marxists would criticize these new, anti-Empire movements for being too anarchist and for not being aimed at
grasping State power and hegemonizing the political sphere
1. H&N are more cautious here as we’ll see . . . but first:
iv. Witness the standard Marxist critiques of the Zapatistas
1. Tariq Ali thinks the Chavez-Venezuela model is much more promising than the more non-Statist, anarchist, anti-
Empire movements:
Do you see the US Empire absorbing this anti-capitalist energy by trying to propose a softer version of neoliberalism?
I don’t think they are, at the moment, prepared to do that. They will only do that if they feel threatened. And they don’t feel threatened at the
moment. And one reason—I have to be very blunt here—they don’t feel threatened is because there is an idealistic slogan within the social
movements, which goes like this: ‘We can change the world without taking power.’ This slogan doesn’t threaten anyone; it’s a moral slogan. The
Zapatistas—whom I admire—you know, when they marched from Chiapas to Mexico City, what did they think was going to happen? Nothing
happened. It was a moral symbol, it was not even a moral victory because nothing happened. So I think that phase was understandable in Latin
American politics, people were very burnt by recent experiences: the defeat of the Sandinistas, the defeat of the armed struggle movements, the
victory of the military, etc., so people were nervous. But I think, from that point of view, the Venezuelan example is the most interesting one. It
says: ‘in order to change the world you have to take power, and you have to begin to implement change—in small doses if necessary—but you
have to do it. Without it nothing will change.’ So, it’s an interesting situation and I think at Porto Alegre next year all these things will be debated
and discussed—I hope.
v. Or, let’s look at our old friend Zizek (from the end of his Deleuze book):
The favored example of the supporters (and practitioners) of the new, dispersed counter-power of the multitude is, of course, the Zapatista
movement in Chiapas. Here is Naomi Klein's description of how its leading figure, Subcommandante Marcos, functions:
He wasn't a commander barking orders, but a subcommandante, a conduit for the will of the councils. His first words, in his new persona, were
'Through me speaks the will of the Zapatista National Liberation Army.' Further subjugating himself, Marcos says to those who seek him out that
he is not a leader, but that his black mask is a mirror, reflecting each of their own struggles; that a Zapatista is anyone anywhere fighting
injustice, that 'We are you.' Most famously, he once told a reporter that 'Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in
Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a single woman on the Metro at 10 P.M., a peasant without land,
a gang member in the slums. Meanwhile, Marcos himself - the supposed non-self, the conduit, the mirror - writes in a tone so personal and poetic,
so completely and unmistakably his own.
It is clear that such a structure can function only as the ethico-poetic shadowy double of the existing positive state power structure. No wonder
Marcos cannot show his face; no wonder his idea is to throw off his mask and disappear back into anonymity if and when the movement reaches
its goals. If the Zapatistas were to effectively take power, statements like "Through me speaks the will of..." would immediately acquire a much
more ominous dimension - their apparent modesty would reveal itself as extreme arrogance, as the presumption of one particular individual that
his subjectivity serves as a direct medium of expression for the universal will.
c. H&N are slightly more optimistic about these movements, and the Zapatistas in particular, than Ali or Zizek
d. But they do see real problems in terms of how these movements can advance their struggle
e. So , how Zapatistas and Chiapas rebels address these limits: common enemy, communication, linking?
f. The Other Campaign was started some 6 years after Empire was written (but the uprising predates it by 5 years)
i. Much (but not all) of what this campaign does is precisely the kinds of thing that H&N were hoping to see happen
ii. In their most recent work, they seem to have stopped asking any critical questions of the Zapatistas and simply align
themselves with them
iii. The Zapatistas represent a passing through modernity and Empire to its other side (alter-modernity): see p. 111 of
Commonwealth
iv. This marks a slight shift in their work toward a renewed appreciation for indigenous struggles of various sorts (they look at
Native American struggles, the water wars in Bolivia, and Chiapas/Zapatistas, among others)
84. Let’s look at how the Chiapas communities and Zapatistas frame the issue of combating Empire and linking struggles
a. Common enemy: rather than Empire, they speak of Neoliberal Globalization, a term with a long history in Latin American
revolutionary politics
i. NG “is based on exploitation, plunder, contempt, and repression of those who refuse it. The same as before, but now
globalized, worldwide” (BRE, 73)
b. Communication and linking: H&N see serious problems among the new anti-Empire movements in terms of their ability to
communicate their struggles to potential allies
i. But here is where the Chiapas rebels and Marcos himself have been far more successful than any comparable movement
ii. Not only do they make creative use of the new communications infrastructure of Empire (internet, culture jamming, reverse
marketing, imagery, etc.) . . .
iii. But they also use traditional models of sharing their struggle and communicating allies: they make the effort to go meet
people in other struggles and listen to them
c. And they do this on two distinct fronts: globally and locally at the same time
i. This is sometimes referred to as “glocalism”
ii. With worldwide struggles, they speak of forging new relationships and alliances; sending material aid when possible;
creating intercontinental meetings and encounter (see BRE, 82-3)
iii. With local, Mexico-centered struggles, they speak of their continued defense of the indigenous and dispossessed peoples; of
listening to the simple and humble Mexican people; trying to develop new ways of doing politics; and help in the struggle
for a new Constitution (see BRE, 83-4)
1. (their inventive use of traditional and developing technologies—underground organization and guerilla strategies)
d. So, contrary to the Zizekian-style critique of the Chiapas rebels/Zapatistas as simply offering a toothless withdrawal from the State,
they have a very complicated set of strategies
i. They seek to develop modes of resistance along local and global lines
ii. They seek to build alternative ways of doing politics and ways of living that are indebted to and sensitive to indigenous
traditions (and without romanticizing those traditions)
iii. They seek to engage the State, resist the State, and transform the State where possible—without becoming a new State
85. The lingering problem
a. The Alis and Zizeks might have the last word here—as we speak, the Mexican government has re-started its killing and forcible
removal of indigenous peoples in Chiapas
b. The game continues: the land is being seized for biofuel production (plam fruits are pressed for their oils and used for “green”
alternative fuels)—this is a increasingly common strategy that ruins indigenous cultures, animls species, ecosystems, and biodiversity
more generally
c. Pleas for international support for the Zapatistas are being urged right now—force of some sort against the State does seem
necessary, but what form should it take?
d. http://bio-fuel-watch.blogspot.com/2010/02/bmexico-violent-evictions-in-chiapas.html
87. Recap
a. Empire defined (smooth, ubiquitous, yet vulnerable)
b. Empire’s modes of power (sovereignty decentered and increasingly global)
c. Empire’s economic flows (globalization) and its constituted human subjects (control, biopower, general intellect)
d. Our topic from last time: resistance to Empire
i. Most powerful strategies remain within Empire, exploit universalist and global dimensions, and work against Empire’s
destructive tendencies
ii. Problems with newer, anti-Empire struggles: communication with each other, theoretical and political linkages need to be
constructed
iii. Classical Marxists view such anti-Empire struggles as well-intentioned but non-revolutionary (Ali, Zizek; they don’t seize
state power, they have no effect)
e. Zapatistas/Chiapas rebels as test case
i. They do seem to see the enemy as Empire (albeit with a more US-Europe-centered twist), and they use Empire’s tools
against it
1. But, contra H&N, they employ local and global (“glocal”) strategies of resistance
2. They also invoke indigenous modes of governance, forms of life, and ontologies/epistemologies in developing
alternative ways of living
a. H&N have themselves rethought their stance on these points a bit and try to bring the Zapatistas and
Bolivian rebels under their “altermodernity” narrative in Commonwealth
ii. They do in fact avoid taking State power
1. But contra Zizek and Ali, they do critically engage the State, even occasionally making demands of it (positively)
and fighting it head on (critically, by way of force)
a. The problem that this particular anti-Empire form of resistance runs into is precisely the overwhelming
police and military force that the State (as representative of Empire) still wields
f. So, the question of resistance remains a live one, even for the most sophisticated struggles . . .
88. In Part II of the book, we dip back into H&N’s story about Empire’s sovereignty/power at a deeper level
a. Here, they want to argue that modernity is a more complicated affair than anti-modernists (people who want to escape it altogether)
and post-modernists (people who think it has come to an end) acknowledge
There is a ton of material here, so let’s synthesize it quickly and just read through it so you can see the bigger picture:
90. Modernity as Crisis
a. The counter-revolution occurred by way of the re-emergence of theological-political mode of sovereignty . . .
b. And the economic-political expansion of Europe into the Americas (conquest and colonialism)
i. This portion of the story will be examined in more detail in 2.2 and 2.3
c. See p. 76: “Modernity itself is defined by crisis . . .”
d. As always with Negri, Spinoza plays the role of the (counter-counter) revolutionary (bottom of p. 77)
91. The Transcendental Apparatus
a. The big players of the Enlightenment and modern philosophy (Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Hobbes) in H&N’s story play the role of the
enemy
i. They are those who try to disavow human potentiality, isolate the human mind and knowledge from this material world, and
send our creative powers back to a transcendent sphere (the state, God, anywhere but in our hands)
ii. Note: of course all of these individuals could be read differently
b. To put it succinctly: “With Descartes we are at the beginning of the history of the Enlightenment, or rather bourgeois ideology” (80)
c. And: with Kant, “The world becomes an architecture of ideal forms, the only reality conceded to us” (81)
d. And: with Hegel: “that the liberation of modern humanity could only be a function of its domination, that the immanent goal of the
multitude is transformed into the necessary and transcendent power of the state” (82)
92. Modern Sovereignty and the Sovereignty Machine
a. H&N discuss Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Hegel in order to show the conjunction of sovereign political power with the State (a story
you already know plenty about through Marx)
b. Then they discuss Foucault, Weber, Heidegger, and the Frankfurt School in order to underscore how police power functions to
produce a multitude that is well ordered and non-rebellious
Shukin citation:
However, what Hardt and Negri term “the ontology of production”—namely, the immanent power of the multitude to constitute the substance of
its life world—takes on an unexpectedly metaphysical quality in its association with forms of “immaterial [social] labour” that no longer appear
contingent on animal bodies. Indeed, the “social flesh” of the multitude is conceived in Deleuzian fashion as “pure potential” or virtuality. Despite
Hardt and Negri’s attempt to move beyond the “horizon of language and communication” that contours the concept of immaterial labor in the
work of contemporary Italian Marxists (something they do by theorizing affect as the missing biopolitical link to the animal body), there are few
signs that the social flesh eats, in other words, few signs that the social bios is materially contingent upon and continuous with the lives of
nonhuman others.
3. Thus far:
a. Empire (defined, its power, its economy, its human subjects, and possible modes of resistance to its destructive aspects)
b. Last time: Modernity read as the story of the battle between the immanent and constituent forces of the multitude and its
capture by various forms of sovereignty
i. We briefly touched on a couple of limits of H&N’s concept of immanence and the constituent power of the human
multitude (somewhat anthropocentric, despite attempting not to be; somewhat Eurocentric, despite attempting not to be)
9. For the moment, let’s delve into the subaltern nationalism question a bit more carefully, especially as it concerns the recuperation and
revaluation of denigrated and marginalized groups
a. The two forms of subaltern nationalism H&N analyze most closely are (1) Black nationalism in the US via Malcolm X and (2)
the de-colonial struggles associated with Fanon and Sartre (more on this next time)
11. But here is where it is necessary to note that Malcolm X the person and Black Nationalism the movement are not always identical
a. He has his own ideas and development, and he fought against this kind of exclusionary logic on several occasions (both before
and after the Mecca pilgrimage)
b. A clip post-Mecca
c. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xXB48l-OlE&feature=related
12. Additionally, it is important to note that the critique of Black nationalism that H&N offer, while interesting and correct as far as it goes,
does not provide us with any kind of detailed analysis of how to deal with racism within Empire
a. How to negotiate these antagonisms?
b. How to deal with Empire’s differential effects in terms of racism and other forms of marginalization?
c. They know they have more work to do here, and we’ll rejoin this issue after Spring Break
d. See you then!
5. Thus far:
a. Empire (sections 1.1-3 run us through a surface analysis of all three key dimensions they want to discuss: power, economy,
resistance)
b. Part 2 takes us through the power issue in more detail
i. We saw that modernity is to be understood as a battle between the multitude’s discovery of immanence and
sovereignty’s attempt to capture the multitude’s productive power and subject it to transcendent forms of sovereignty
ii. We saw that the nation-State (a transcendent machine) has been used to capture the multitude’s immanent powers, but
that the nation-State is increasingly becoming displaced by Empire
1. H&N have no nostalgia for the nation-State as an alternative way of life or mode of resistance
2. Although they admire certain aspects of subaltern revolutionary nationalisms (SRN), they argue such
nationalisms harbor essentialist and reactionary dangers
3. In brief, inasmuch as such movements are built on identities, these identities can function to exclude and
marginalize
6. Now, whether it’s queer, Black, Asian, or aboriginal SRN we’re talking about, the picture is more complicated than H&N suggest
a. There are many forms of SRN that avoid the pitfalls they mention
b. Contra H&N, the appeal to “nation” by SRN here often has little or nothing to do with identity, essence, or the nation-State
i. These Eurocentric concepts are often projected back onto these communities (this stems from H&N not really engaging
with these groups in any sustained manner)
c. See, for example, Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee and U of Toronto prof) on SRN:
i. “Indigenous nationhood is predicated on this understanding of relationship”
ii. http://books.google.com/books?
id=Zj79HmexugcC&pg=PA150&dq="indigenous+nationhood+is+predicated+on+this+understanding+of+relationship."&ei
=vea4S87fFZTEMfjDubwK&cd=1#v=onepage&q=%22indigenous%20nationhood%20is%20predicated%20on%20this
%20understanding%20of%20relationship.%22&f=false
d. What we find among this kind of decolonial SRN is much of what goes missing in H&N’s concept of the multitude (and in most
other Marxist approaches to the “universal” proletariat)
i. A broad, relational conception of human beings within a community that goes well beyond the human
ii. There is nothing timeless, static, or essentialist here
1. Rather, this is a notion of local communities in flux that are tied in not only with all other human communities
(in flux) but with local and global geographies (in flux), local and global ecosystems (in flux), and so on
2. This is a dynamic, relational ontology and politics
iii. Indeed, many indigenous concepts of “peoples” have a hard time even discussing or theorizing about static individual
human beings (do such beings even exist?), seeing instead groups or peoples caught up in a vast and complicated series of
dynamic, relational cosmic powers
iv. Nietzschean and Deleuzean ontology as exit from Western metaphysics and entry onto plane of immnence
18. This is our “situation” in spectacle societies: caught in a marketing bubble with all of our actions, desires, and relations filtered through
marketing logic
a. The aim for Situationists is to find ways to create and invent new situations and practices on the terrain of the old situations
(viz., the spectacle) that will allow us to see and relate critically to the spectacle
b. We never notice the spectacle because we’re so deeply immersed in the spectacle and because, by and large, weas human
subjects are the spectacle
i. But not fully . . .
c. Situationists we’re at their most brilliant not just in analyzing the logic of the spectacle but in exposing it and making it light up
as such
i. Détournement, tweaking and deconstructing images and advertisements to show what the products are actually built on
ii. The urban derive in Debord’s words: “In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their
work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the
attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might
think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and
vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.”
1. We have variations on this practice today with urban acrobatics of various sorts (bikes, running, skating,
climbing, etc.)
2. The point is to render uncanny that which is domesticated in urban environments and thus to transform that
environment
iii. Constructed situations: collective effort to create alternative situations and forms of life—a kind of combination of art
(stylized invention) and politics (ways of being together)
1. Direct action of all sorts, everything from food not bombs-style food sharing to occupations to squatting
(depending on how they are done)
d. This is just a short list of the kinds of experiments that open the space required to see the spectacle as such
i. But Debord believed that full-blown revolution was required to challenge the spectacle and develop and alternative
world
ii. And, like most Marxists, he pinned his hopes on disenfranchised workers to carry out this revolt
iii. As we know, May 1968 didn’t pan out exactly as planned
e. The text you read for today bears the marks of the pessimism and despair of the failed revolution
i. Debord realized that the spectacle he was describing did not wane but only grew in strength (integrating the
concentrated, dictatorial form with the diffuse, psychological form)
f. From the perspective of H&N’s work, it appears that the Situationists were quite helpful for analysis of power and even
withdrawal from it but not for constructing new forms of social life on its terrain
i. The remarks on p. 204 about Bartleby and Michael K are no doubt written with Debord (and Agamben, who is often
considered a neo-Situationist) in mind as well
g. In other words, not even people like Debord who acknowledge the ubiquity of power and who try to develop modes of resistance
on that same terrain have been successful
i. What is needed is to move from consumption and the spectacle back down to production
ii. Part III of Empire moves back down to “common productive experience of the multitude”
iii. It is on that level that we re-find immanence and that we are able to construct the universal, social life that goes missing
with both the Situationists and all of those who seek a pure Outside (SRN, Postmod, Postcol, etc.)
iv. See pp. 217-218: “With this passage the deconstructive phase of critical thought . . .”
19. Assignment for Next Class
a. Empire, 280-324
b. Recommended: Santiago Gomez, “The Missing Chapter of Empire” (See Blackboard)
c. This is so much material that I doubt we’ll get through even half of it, but just do your best
20. Moving from Part 2 to 3 (from power qua control to the economy qua information economy)
a. After delimiting some of the outmoded theories of power and resistance (SRN, Postmodernism, Postcolonialism) . . .
b. . . . we examined the (more accurate, according to H&N) Situationist’s account of the spectacle society and how it captures
larger and larger portions of human subjectivity within its web, network
i. These ideas provide the deep background for pretty much all post ’68 French Marxism and neo-Marxism
c. The Deleuzian/Foucaultian notion of the society of control builds off of the notion of the spectacle and shares its logic
d. H&N share this logic as well, and they are of the mindset that we have to think of resistance on the same plane as
control/spectacle
i. They think the Situationists and related approaches/thinkers (Agamben, primarily) are unable to conceive of resistance
on this same plane
ii. From them we get withdrawal from and refusal of control/spectacle/consumerism but no alternative form of life or
community
e. But here is the chief difference between H&N and the Situationists
i. H&N think that we need to change terrain ontologically and look at the production processes (rather than just
consumption processes) that underlie control societies today
ii. What is needed is to move from consumption and the spectacle back down to production in postmodern times
iii. Part III of Empire moves back down to the “common productive experience of the multitude”
iv. It is on that level that we re-locate immanence and that we are able to construct the universal, social life that goes
missing with both the Situationists and all of those who seek a pure outside (SRN, Postmod, Postcol, etc.)
v. See pp. 217-218: “With this passage the deconstructive phase of critical thought . . .”
f. It is not enough to withdraw from Empire’s spectacle and control
i. The chief project, for H&N, is to withdraw from the logic and rhythm of Empire but to remain on its terrain and within
its circuits and connections
ii. Why? Because on this terrain there are “greater possibilities for creation and liberation” (218)—let’s read the whole
passage
iii. Everything in their argument hinges on this wager, so keep it in mind as you’re reading
21. The story we will be analyzing in part 3 is the story of how we have arrived at the postmodern information economy
a. Realize that the entire story will be told in the same manner as the story about Imperial sovereignty was told
i. The basic ontological starting point is always for H&N the creative productive powers of the multitude
ii. The multitude and their powers are the “ground,” the basic stuff of reality that gets captured and channeled in various
ways
b. Now, there are always admixtures of joyful (affirmative) and sad (reactive) captures, no matter the mechanism of capture and
channeling (say, socialism vs. capitalism—no purity)
i. In Deleuzean language, there are always “territorializing” and “deterritorializing” channels in any organizational
structure
1. What’s remarkable about capitalist economies from this perspective is that:
2. despite the fundamental reactivity and sadness of the underlying logic of the capitalist profit motive (Milton
Friedman is not an Ubermensch) . . .
3. . . . capitalist economies are deeply deterritorializing
a. They create relations (linkages and assemblages) among bodies on an unprecedented scale
c. So, Empire and its postmodern information economy are mechanisms of capture, a reactive machine that is trying to catch up to
the multitude’s discovery of its immanent, shared powers
22. With that perspective in mind, we have to figure out what Empire in its modern form was reacting against when it came into being
a. We need to bracket the specific economic story (the displacement of Taylorism and Fordism [as analyzed by Gramsci] by the
postmodern information economy) for the moment
i. These are the concrete forms that capital takes—we need to look behind, beyond, and before these forms . . .
ii. And look instead at the two main things that contemporary Empire is reacting against
b. The two main limits/forces that Empire is reacting against are: (1) nature and (2) the new social movements
f. Take another Marxist approach: Zizek, like most Marxists these days, has suggested that we come to grips with the fact that
Empire/global capitalism will simply run itself blindly off the ecological cliff unless stopped (in other words, the info economy is not
an acknowledgement of the limits of capital)
i. The solution for him, though, is not a return to a relation with “Mother Earth” à la Morales or radical environmentalists
—it is instead further modernization of nature done with human welfare in mind
ii. But if the circuits of production and cooperation that Empire has built are effectively running us off an ecological cliff,
how can we be sure that pushing though on that same terrain with human welfare in mind will be our salvation?
g. Where do H&N stand on these matters?
i. Do they stand for a kind of Zizekian attitude toward nature, where we continue the process of domestication and
domination with an eye toward human welfare?
ii. Or are they more like Morales, with his quasi-socialist, quasi-indigenist approach to environmentalism?
iii. Or perhaps they are more like the Guattari of Three Ecologies, with a multi-pronged approach to social, cognitive, and
ecological change?
iv. The answer is: We don’t know!
v. This is one of the serious limits of their work—and it never gets addressed in any detail in their later work
h. So, one of the big questions looming around Marxist, communist, neo-Marxist politics concerns the place of nature in their
frameworks
i. We’ll drop that issue for now, but in my estimation it is one of the questions that, if taken seriously, requires an
absolute exit from every (neo-) Marxist framework
ii. For a contrary opinion that takes ecological questions seriously, see Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology
“Capital did not need to invent a new paradigm (even if it were capable of doing so) because the truly creative moment had already taken place.
Capital’s problem was rather to dominate a new composition that had already been produced autonomously and defined within a new relationship
to nature and labor, a relationship of autonomous production.” (276)
d. So, for H&N, the emergence of the postmodern information economy takes place against the backdrop of:
i. The need to work intensively, internally on the natural world that has been effectively captured in its totality and that
has been pushed to its limits
ii. The need to re-capture the immanent productive forces of the multitude as people rediscover each other outside the
flows, logic, and channels of disciplinary regimes
e. And you can see why they want to radicalize this terrain rather than abandon it
i. The infrastructure on which Empire is built is the creation of the multitude and its joint discovery of immanence and the
creation of new assemblages/linkages/relations
26. Part 3 of Empire offers a closer look at the emergent, postmodern economy
a. As we have noted, this economy is characterized by the dominant flows of capital going increasingly in the direction of the
informational sector and toward what H&N call immaterial labor
i. That will be our topic today
b. Recall first, though, from last time that the two dominant constraints that have given rise to this economy, according to the
narrative provided by H&N
i. First, global capital has indeed become genuinely global, capturing nearly the entire natural world (human and non-
human) within its grasp
1. It has thus run up against ecological limits, and has had to turn inward and work intensively
ii. Second, global capital has indeed become genuinely global in another way, inasmuch as it connects economies and
people all over the globe
1. But the infrastructure for many of these connections were built by inter-nationalist forms of resistance and
extra-economic community-building characteristic of NSMs
c. So, the postmodern economy gets developed within and against those ecological constraints and against the NSM form of
resistance
i. The economy is here functioning primarily as a reactive, capturing machine (at least from the ontological perspective)
ii. Now, this machine is productive as well, inasmuch as it partially produces us as subjects and also shapes and
reproduces the entire biological world
iii. So, as you study the postmodern economy, H&N would have you see it as a capturing and productive machine
In brief, with increasing postmodernization we become different kinds of human subjects: we become beings constituted in and through the flows
of control, spectacles, and networked informational linkages—let’s look at bit more at this process
29. The other major point is that this creation of a commons, this creation of a set of material flows and productions that link the
multitude . . .
a. . . . can be and often is re-appropriated by capital via the logic of privatization
b. H&N understand this logic as a logic of theft—it is the stealing and transfer of what properly belongs to all (again, all who?) and
placing those commons into the hands of the wealthy few
i. This happens through the theft of land (old-fashioned colonialism)
ii. Through the creation of new lands (via natural transformation of various areas) and then transfer to agribusiness
c. In our own era of “neoliberalism” (updated classical, liberal economics), this theft of the commons increasingly takes place
through the expropriation of commonly created and shared “welfare” programs
i. Education, internet development and access, media, social security, health care, retirement, police, fire fighting, even
military . . .
ii. The logic of neoliberalism is to take these resources out of common control (whether government or other shared public
organizations) and transfer them to private hands and the vicissitudes of the market
iii. In the US, this is often considered a conservative, libertarian, Republican program; but it has become standard
bipartisan politics at this point
iv. Privatization is simply what we do—people who think we are increasingly moving toward “socialism” completely
misunderstand the logic of neo-liberalism (not to mention what “socialism” actually is)
v. Nearly every major battle going on these days in politics concerns expanding neoliberalism and fighting back against its
expansion (often with the former winning out)
d. H&N do not think going back to the welfare state (say, a new FDR, new New Deal style program) is the desirable goal
i. Rather, they seek to develop even more radical linkages and an even more profound, global commons on the terrain of
the information economy/E,pire
ii. See p. 308: “A new notion of ‘‘commons’’ will have to emerge on this terrain”
31. Why is there less explicit awareness of this tension and less fighting against Empire than we might expect?
a. Well, it depends on where you look—outside of the US and other advanced capitalist countries, all kinds of rebellions and
revolts are taking place
b. But H&N are thinking primarily of resistance within societies based on information, postmodern economies
c. Remember that these are more and more structured as spectacle societies à la Debord
d. See p. 321-2 for H&N’s description: “In effect, the glue that holds together the diverse functions and bodies of the hybrid
constitution”
e. Remember that one of the key characteristicsof spectacle societies is that there is almost no outside to the spectacle in the sense
that:
i. The spectacle (obviously apparent in marketing and media) has absorbed all major competitors for allegiance
ii. If we once found ourselves constituted in and through various “environments” (economic, political, religious, familial,
etc.), those environments have now become nearly homogenous
f. And if politics is the domain where we fight back against neoliberalism and empire, well, things look pretty dim
i. “Similarly, the notions that politicians function as celebrities and that political campaigns operate on the logic of
advertising —hypotheses that seemed radical and scandalous thirty years ago—are today taken for granted. Political
discourse is an articulated sales pitch, and political participation is reduced to selecting among consumable images” (322)
g. There is of course no single person or group of people behind the spectacle—it is decentered and decentering
i. There is instead a logic that runs through it
ii. A logic of commodification and consumerism coupled with:
iii. A logic of fear (which they don’t explain very well, but we know it all to well!)
32. In brief, for H&N resistance to the postmodern economy is currently blocked by:
a. The capture of the commons and its transfer to private hands
b. The passive-making nature of the spectacle society, where resistance is dulled through a moronic, on-dimensional, fearful
consumerism
c. And yet! Unlike Debord, H&N remain optimistic about the possibilities for resistance . . .
35. In order to answer that question and follow their argument in Section 4, it is necessary to take a step back from the text and look at the
underlying ontology and conceptual-political framework of their analysis more closely
36. As we have already seen, Deleuze and Guattari loom large in the background of Empire
a. H&N constantly make use of their work—but to their own ends (they are not loyal “Deleuzeans”)
b. So, let’s look a little closer at D&G’s ontology and their take on capitalism and see how H&N appropriate it
d. So, there is a relationship between individual subjects of various sorts (a person, a State, an institution) and the multiplicitous,
“rhizomatic” flows of life that animate those individual subjects
i. http://candidcandidacy.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/rhizome.jpg
ii. In effect, an individual subject is the partial capturing, ordering, and channeling of the monster of energy, life,
différance
iii. To use D&G’s language, there is an interplay between subjects that code and life that decodes, subjects that try to put
things in place and hold them there (territorialize) and life that pulls things away from their security, place, and identity
(deterritorialize)
iv. Or if you prefer Nietzsche, there is a constant interplay between Apollonian and Dionysian energies . . .
e. And just as is the case with Nietzsche, the task for D&G is to find a way to say “Yes” to life, to jump into life, into the monster
of energy, as much as is possible
i. But if you jump too much/fast/quickly, you become Pentheus among the Bacchants (or Treadwell among the grizzlies,
you pick)
ii. In other words, “life” will kill you if you’re not careful (you will get massively deterritorialized—but if you have a
“thirst for annihilation” . . .)
iii. To survive, you have to channel, capture, code, domesticate
iv. So, the question becomes (assuming “you” want to survive!):
What kinds of coding and coded subjects, collectives, machines, assemblages can we form that are as close to life, as joyful (not sad) and
connective (not resentful and reactive) as possible?
f. So, there can definitely be no political program in D&G—and not because they are afraid to have that discussion and not
because politics belongs outside of philosophy
i. On the contrary, they believe it is philosophy’s task to do politics (they follow Marx and his 11th thesis on this)
ii. Philosophy for them is not epistemology or metaphysics, and it does not occur through dialogue or discussion
iii. Instead, philosophy for them is nothing but politics/practice inasmuch as philosophy is aimed at the “creation of
concepts”
iv. And concepts are created in order to resist and transform the present, the current status quo
1. What is Philosophy, p.108
v. In short, philosophy’s task is to violently attack the status quo (which is always a reactive coding of life) and open up
the space for new experiments with life
1. As D&G put it, philosophy does not take place at conferences or dinner parties—it interrupts them
2. What is Philosophy, p. 144
g. So, notice that politics here becomes experimentation rather than program
i. “Life” does not come with a guide-map to ensure healthy, stable assemblages—it spontaneously helps to form
assemblages and then just as quickly tears them to shreds
ii. D&G’s politics/practice is political art not political science
38. I’ve suggested to you all along that H&N are pulling from this ontology and conception of practice rather selectively
a. H&N’s notion of the revolutionary plane of immanence, within which human beings joyfully and freely share their vital
energies, would be seen by D&G as a very partial picture of “life”
i. The human multitude is but one “slice” of the flow of life, and it abstracts out of the larger flows in which human
beings are situated and in which they become subjects
ii. Keep this point about H&N’s limited notion of immanence in mind for later . . .
c. D&G, of course, are on the side of “life” understood as a monster with infinite worlds, infinite kinds of connections
i. That leads them to reject the one-dimensional logic of capital, but not in the name of a return to safe territories (nation-
States) or less connections (provincialism and protectionism)
ii. Rather, capitalism is rejected in the name of trying to establish the conditions for the flourishing of life
iii. They are working toward practices (new codes, new subjects) that lets the monster proliferate and expand
42. Now, this is getting very close to anarchism or post-anarchism (or even left Nietzscheanism, which is the very worst!) . . .
a. Several authors (good ones, too—including May, Newman, Day, Call) argue that this is precisely what D&G are up to
b. Beyond states, beyond markets, pro-deterritorialization, experimentation in politics, acts instead of demands, and so on
c. It’s not a stretch—but at the same time, I don’t think it fully captures what D&G are up to
44. The Bataillean-Baudrillardian question floating around the edges of H&N’s project:
a. What if the guiding “norm” or the Good were to be understood as the enjoyment of not producing? The full immersion in
“drinking the glass of wine,” full immersion in the miracle . . .
b. What if production were understood as something aimed at inhibiting life rather than allowing us to immerse ourselves in life?
c. That would mean entering the plane of immanence in a very full sense; after all, do animals produce? Do plants produce? Do
ecosystems produce? Do viruses produce? Whence this insistence on the specificity of human production and taking it back?
d. The human and production are perhaps the two major dogmas of Marxism and neo-Marxism
e. In the interview, even Guattari mocks leaving production behind; it seems unimaginable
For today
2. As we move into Part IV of Empire, and we start to think about what might constitute “resistance” to Empire . . .
a. It’s important to bear in mind what the Good is for H&N, what they are fighting for (in other words, what they are affirmatively
moving toward, what they are joyously passionate about)
b. and how they are situated with respect to their neo- and post-Marxist peers and their respective visions of the Good
c. Let’s look briefly at Deleuze & Guattari, Hardt & Negri, Georges Bataille, and Giorgio Agamben on this issue
D&G
3. Recall from last time that D&G provide much of the ontological and theoretical framework for H&N’s project
a. Recall also that this ontological and theoretical framework (one that stresses seeing subjects as assemblages emerging out of the
flow of the rhizome of life, etc.) is offered by D&G in a practical, ethico-political spirit
i. Their remarks do map onto reality and can be grounded empirically to some extent (they make use of cutting edge
science where relevant)
ii. but their ontology doesn’t stand or fall based on its referential correctness, correspondence, or ομοίωσις (homoiōsis) (in
plain English, this is not M&E)
b. Rather, the charitable question for assessing their ontology should be (and the same would go for Nietzsche’s ontology as well):
is it good for life, for flourishing?
i. That is where the ultimate stakes of their project lie, where their “Good” lies
ii. Their Good is the expansion and affirmation of life, and the multiplication of assemblages and additional “worlds” such
subject-groups (every subject is many) give rise to
c. Their problem with capitalism, as we saw, is not with its deterritorializing or decoding traits but rather with its tendency to
channel all such decodings along a single line, world, and perspective (viz., profit maximization)
i. In other words, capitalism ultimately functions reactively, flattening, limiting, and coding the richness of life in a
deeply sad and reductive manner
ii. People’s productive powers get channeled into boring wage labor; the entire natural world gets reduced to various kinds
of commodities to be placed on the market, etc.; we are made stupid and one-dimensional by market logic
d. The affirmative project for D&G is to explore alternative lines of flight, explore various becomings while keeping enough
subjectivity in place to show up the next morning and explore more
i. See Thousand Plateaus, Plateau 6 here
H&N
4. For H&N, the Good is found in our shared, non-essentialist, autonomous, productive life activity beyond wage labor
a. Their vision is close to Marx’s in The German Ideology
b. See quotation #1 in handout
c. It is this autonomous productive life activity that has been captured by Empire and channeled according to a single logic and
rhythm (global capitalist production)
d. The point for H&N is to delink our common, productive life activity from Empire’s one-dimensional logic and allow it to
flourish beyond global capitalism, allow that vital power to create new worlds
i. “Value will be determined only by humanity’s own continuous innovation and creation” (Empire, 356)
ii. “By the virtual we understand the set of powers to act (being, loving, transforming, creating) that reside in the
multitude” (Empire, 357)
iii. These first two, non-productive powers have little place in neo-Marxism and even in H&N’s program; we’ll keep an
eye on them as we proceed
Bataille
5. Bataille takes certain Marxist, anti-capitalist premises and pushes them to their absolute limit
a. For Bataille, the Good is characterized as “unproductive expenditure,” or enjoyment of non-production
b. In other words, it is enjoyment of life that has no productive end, life beyond utility, or put simply: full immersion in the joys
and miracles of the moment
i. Our capitalist work ethic would have us see this kind of enjoyment variously as: indolence, extravagance, perversity,
madness, etc., depending on the context and practice of enjoyment
c. The political point for Bataille is to refuse the “limited economy” of capitalism in favor of a “general economy”
d. Limited economies (with capitalism being the most recent and most extreme example) are fearful, anxious, and overly prudent
i. They start from the principle of scarcity of resources and introduce incessant production and endless accumulation to
safeguard against scarcity
e. With his focus on unproductive expenditure, Bataille is gesturing toward a general economy that lies:
i. beyond such anxiety and fear (which is often driven death-denial)
ii. beyond work (understood both as wage labor and even production more generally as discussed by H&N above),
iii. beyond commodity fetishism and consumerism (the empty joys of buying things we don’t need),
iv. and beyond endless accumulation (to guard against scarcity)
f. A general economy certainly involves securing the basic necessities for life (and necessities would be understood as being
extremely minimal here—see Sahlins on “The Original Affluent Society” and Baudrillard’s The Mirror of Production)
i. But that minimal security is achieved only in order to live joyfully beyond the securing of necessities
ii. General economies thus aim to secure the basics of life solely with a view toward allowing us to maximally experience
the simple, miraculous moments of life (sun, wine, love, ecstasy, orgasm, etc.)
g. Limited economies, by contrast, not only denigrate these moments (we need more than a lover’s touch, or the sun on my
shoulders, or riding a wave, or watching a sunset—we need more than those things to be truly satisfied, happy, and safe in life!) .
..
i. but they work to block us from having them (either through endless work, fear, anxiety, unfulfilling consumption and
its accompanying depression, etc.)
ii. See quotation #2
iii. This vision also has a precedent in Marx’s brotherhood-as-reality passage
iv. See quotation #3
Agamben
6. In our reading for today, H&N try to differentiate their project from Agamben’s project around the question of naked life
a. They argue (on p. 366) that Agamben’s notion of naked life (which they think is the “hero” of his work) is a docile, passive,
non-productive vision of the human
b. They then contrast Agamben’s notion of naked life with their conception of the human as constituted by the vital, overflowing,
productive powers of the multitude
c. Now, they are right that Agamben’s Good and his hero are not to be found in the realm of production (he is closer to Bataille,
Walter Benjamin, and the Situationists on this issue)
i. But H&N’s limit here is that they are only able to conceive of non-productive bodies as docile and passive
ii. That is where they overreach and miss the point of Agamben’s and the neo-Situationist’s critique and alternative to
capital
iii. So, let’s look closer at Agamben . . .
8. Now we can return full circle and see the larger stakes of the final sections on resistance
a. Beyond strategies of resistance to Empire, we’ve seen various approaches to the Good, to what is positively at stake in these
various projects
b. This vision inflects what community will look like beyond global capitalism
i. If enjoyment of non-production is the Good (à la Bataille and Agamben and some neo-Situationists), then one would be
setting up living conditions to enable this Good (most likely fairly simple day-to-day living)
ii. If more life and more becomings (D&G), and autonomous production via global circuits of cooperation and
communication (H&N) are the Good, then living conditions would likely be more nomadic and technologically
advanced
c. H&N won’t outline precisely how this will take place (that would take away the autonomy’s multitude), but it is clear that they
want to accelerate the global circuits of cooperation and communication
i. This cannot take place without making use of and radicalizing Empire’s infrastructure
d. Now if one extends one’s view of “life” and the “multitude” to go beyond the human, then we have entered the ecological
domain (see Guattari’s Three Ecologies for a related environmentalist text)
i. If we looked at the joys and flourishing of the entire nonhuman world (Bataillean and Agambenian ecology),
ii. or if we took into account the enrichment of all life on its own terms (a D&G-style environmentalism), then that would
also impact how one sets up alternative forms of life
iii. Which kinds of human lives and communities enrich biodiversity? Which forms of human community allow us to
dance best with the nonhuman monster of energy?
1. As soon as the distribution of labor comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and
from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his
means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in
any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow,
to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming
hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. (Marx, German Ideology)
2. If I consider the real world, the worker's wage enables him to drink a glass of wine: he may do so, as he says, to give him strength, but he
really drinks in the hope of escaping the necessity that is the principle of labor. As I see it, if the worker treats himself to the drink, this is
essentially because into the wine he swallows there enters a miraculous element of savor, which is precisely the essence of sovereignty. . . .
Beyond need, the object of desire is, humanly, the miracle; it is sovereign life, beyond the necessary that suffering defines. This miraculous
element which delights us may be simply the brilliance of the sun, which on a spring morning transfigures a desolate street. (Something that
the poorest individual, hardened by necessity, sometimes feels.) It may be wine, from the first glass to the intoxication that drowns. More
generally, this miracle to which the whole of humanity aspires is manifested among us in the form of beauty, of wealth—in the form,
moreover, of violence, of funereal and sacred sadness; in the form of glory. What is the meaning of art, architecture, music, painting or poetry
if not the anticipation of a suspended, wonder-struck moment, a miraculous moment? (Bataille, The Accursed Share, volume III, 199-200)
3. When communist artisans form associations, education and propaganda are their first aims. But the very act of associating creates a new need
—the need for society—and what appeared to be a means has become an end. The most striking results of this practical development are to be
seen when French socialist workers meet together. Smoking, eating, and drinking are no longer simply means of bringing people together.
Company, association, entertainment which also has society as its aim, are sufficient for them; the brotherhood of man is no empty phrase but
a reality, and the nobility of man shines forth upon us from their toil-worn bodies. (Marx and Engels, CW4 [1844]: 313)
4. This means that play frees and distracts humanity from the sphere of the sacred [what we have been calling sovereignty, M.C.], without
simply abolishing it. . . . Children, who play with whatever old thing falls into their hands, make toys out of things that also belong to the
spheres of economics, war, law, and other activities that we are used to thinking of as serious. All of a sudden, a car, a firearm, or a legal
contract becomes a toy. [Play] however, does not mean neglect (no kind of attention can compare to that of a child at play) but a new
dimension of use, which children and philosophers give to humanity. [In play,] the powers [potenza] of economics, law, and politics,
deactivated . . . can become the gateways to a new happiness. (Agamben, Profanations, 76)
5. Even in nature there are profanations. The cat who plays with a ball of yarn as if it were a mouse—just as the child plays with ancient
religious symbols or objects that once belonged to the economic sphere—knowingly uses the characteristic behaviors of predatory activity (or,
in the case of the child, of the religious cult [of capitalism] or the world of work) in vain. These behaviors are not effaced, but, thanks to the
substitution of the yarn for the mouse (or the toy for the sacred object), deactivated and thus opened up to a new, possible use. . . . The activity
that results from [play] thus becomes a pure means . . . , a praxis that, while firmly maintaining its nature as a means, is emancipated from its
relationship to an end; it has joyously forgotten its goal and can now show itself as such, as a means without an end. The creation of a new use
is possible only by deactivating an old use, rendering it inoperative. (Agamben, Profanations, 85-6)
6. Here more than ever we can recognize clearly the difference Marx defined between emancipation and liberation. [Recall the material from
“On the Jewish Question” on the difference between State recognition and genuine human liberation. MC] Emancipation is the entry of new
nations and peoples into the imperial society of control, with its new hierarchies and segmentations; liberation, in contrast, means the
destruction of boundaries and patterns of forced migration, the re-appropriation of space, and the power of the multitude to determine the
global circulation and mixture of individuals and populations. The Third World, which was constructed by the colonialism and imperialism of
nation-states and trapped in the cold war, is destroyed when the old rules of the political discipline of the modern state (and its attendant
mechanisms of geographical and ethnic regulation of populations) are smashed. It is destroyed when throughout the ontological terrain of
globalization the most wretched of the earth becomes the most powerful being, because its new nomad singularity is the most creative force
and the omnilateral movement of its desire is itself the coming liberation. (Hardt and Negri, Empire, 363)
2. Recap
a. Last time we distinguished between three distinct aspects of H&N’s project:
i. Empireresistance to Empirethe Good
1. We did this in order to make some sense of what resistance to Empire might be and which forms of resistance
might or might not be desirable . . .
2. I also suggested it might be helpful to run directly to the ultimate “point” of resistance, the ultimate stakes of the
book: H&N’s vision of the Good
b. Before doing that, we looked at several competing visions of the Good from H&N’s contemporaries
i. D&G: the expansion of life and assemblages (subjects of various sorts)
ii. Bataille: the deep and radical enjoyment of non-productive expenditure
iii. Agamben: the recapturing of human potentiality through play in an irreparable world
c. We noted that H&N have their own vision of the Good
i. They talk primarily about the re-appropriation of the vital, productive powers of the multitude
1. The aim is to bring these powers back within the autonomous control of human beings, by wresting them away
from Empire’s logic and rhythm (wage labor, exploitation, nihilism, etc.)
2. This would allow the multitude to produce otherwise, to engage in freely chosen, meaningful projects and creations
3. But it would also allow the multitude simply to be/become otherwise (for example through simple love,
connection, and being with others)
4. H&N obviously put a heavy emphasis on #2, Bataille on #3, and Agamben tries to think and practice both at the
same time
d. Now, let’s return to H&N
i. If it’s autonomous human production and cooperative human autonomy that you want to fight for and allow to flourish, that
will inflect how you conceive of strategies of resistance
ii. You would not want to demolish every aspect of Empire because Empire is composed of massive circuits of connection and
cooperation
1. So, withdrawal from global Empire to localisms and primitivisms would not be a good long-term tactic or long-
term goal
2. Instead, you would want to deepen those global circuits and avenues, while simultaneously wresting control of
them away from the logic and reductionism of global capitalism
e. Quick side note: Even though H&N haven’t tried to look at things from a non-anthropocentric perspective, just imagine for a
moment what it would look like if the flourishing of both the human and nonhuman world were at stake in their analysis
i. H&N never wonder whether the establishment and further deepening of the global circuits of production within Empire are
good for the flourishing of the nonhuman world
1. (Whether that process is “good” even for human beings is an open question—especially for the groups of human
beings whose lives might be crushed by its continuation)
ii. Assume for a moment that increased production, even increased autonomous production by the multitude, would be
ultimately ruinous of the nonhuman world
1. For example, loss of biodiversity, habitat destruction, and other byproducts of human productivity—because
surely, no one can believe that 7 billion human beings can autonomously eat, shit, reproduce, and
produce/create/innovate without massive environmental impact
2. Would that matter to them? Is it even on their horizon?
3. And if we had techno-fixes that allowed us to destroy huge portions of the nonhuman world but still continue “our”
autonomous production, would they endorse that?
4. Does the nonhuman world count in and of itself at all? Or is it simply the backdrop against which the multitude
plays out its inter-human drama?
f. Such questions would be center-stage if eco-feminist, indigenous, and radical environmentalist questions were taken more seriously
by H&N
i. But this limit is truly one of the lingering blind-spots in nearly all neo-Marxisms, even the most sophisticated ones (H&N,
Badiou, Zizek, Agamben, neo-Situationism)
3. So, as we go into the sections on resistance, keep those two critical perspective in mind as they will help you to assess H&N’s project
a. There are competing visions of the Good that will inform one’s tactics
b. And there are competing visions of what is at stake in stopping Empire (anthropocentric vs. non-anthropocentric perspectives)
5. Now we can return full circle and see the larger stakes of the final sections on resistance
a. Beyond strategies of resistance to Empire, we’ve seen various approaches to the Good, to what is positively at stake in these various
projects
b. This vision inflects what community will look like beyond global capitalism
i. If enjoyment of non-production is the Good (à la Bataille and Agamben and some neo-Situationists), then one would be
setting up living conditions to enable this Good (most likely fairly simple day-to-day living)
ii. If more life and more becomings (D&G), and autonomous production via global circuits of cooperation and communication
(H&N) are the Good, then living conditions would likely be more nomadic and technologically advanced
iii. H&N won’t outline precisely how this will take place (that would take away the autonomy’s multitude), but it is clear that
they want to accelerate the global circuits of cooperation and communication
1. This cannot take place without making use of and radicalizing Empire’s infrastructure
c. But what if one extends one’s view of “life” and the “multitude” to go beyond the human? What would community look like then?
i. If we cared for the joys and flourishing of the entire nonhuman world (neo-Bataillean and neo-Agambenian
environmentalism),
ii. or if we took into account the enrichment of all life on its own terms (a D&G-style environmentalism), then that would also
impact how one sets up alternative forms of life
iii. We’d have to ask: Which kinds of human lives and communities enrich nonhuman life, biodiversity? Which forms of
human community allow us to dance best with the human/nonhuman monster of energy?
7. Recap
a. As we turn to the final section, recall what we did last time
i. We suggested that H&N’s overall project could be better understood if we thought about:
1. competing visions of the Good among their peers (Bataille, Agamben, D&G)
2. competing visions of what is at stake in stopping Empire among fields/thinkers they don’t discuss (ecofeminist,
indigenous, etc.)
b. With those critical perspectives in mind, we pushed against their project a bit in order to tease out how they specifically conceive of
resistance
i. H&N’s own approach stresses the ontologically basic character of human productive powers
1. The world does not belong to Empire, it belongs to human producers—we are masters of the world, not Empire
ii. So, the capacity for resistance is not a worry; resistance is simply producing otherwise
1. That means removing obstacles for autonomous production is the main issue
2. This requires:
a. Overcoming TINA attitudes (capitalism is contingent)
b. Overcoming mystical alternatives to capital (Benjamin/Agamben offer us only Bartleby and Michael K
withdrawals and refusals)
c. In place of this kind of powerless acceptance/powerless refusal of capitalism, H&N get properly communist and start sketching out a
political program in the final section
8. Three points
a. H&N aren’t presumptuous enough to direct the multitude in advance
b. They tell us that they can’t nail down specific practices in advance, but they can give us some of the basic parameters that will allow
the multitude to take back their productive powers
i. Global citizenship
1. The key point here is that innumerable connections, linkages, etc. between people are often blocked by the State
(unless they are favorable to the flows of capital)
2. So, this demand takes a double form: a demand aimed at the State (nation-State by nation-State, or do we ask the
MNCs for help?) to grant citizen status and freedom of movement to those who make capital flow
3. As well as the multitude eventually taking over this freedom for itself (beyond the State, presumably)
ii. Social wage and guaranteed income for all
1. The main idea here is once again that capital needs us, all of us, from actual paid workers to the unpaid workforce
who support the “world” of capital
2. All of us need to be equally and fairly compensated
3. This, too, is a demand from the State, for who else could organize this and pay it out
a. One presumes that H&N will eventually want the State to wither away, but . . .
4. And for the truly non-productive in society (there are more than a handful!), what shall we do with them?
iii. The right to re-appropriation
1. All of the machines and technologies we have developed and that capital has made use of are now returned to us
collectively
a. This means not only the actual machinery and tools but also the knowledges, infrastructure, etc.
b. This is very similar to Lyotard’s position in PC
c. Now, this all looks very reformist
i. Capital is still in place, and the multitude is simply calling for “fairness” from the State
ii. The penultimate section on “posse” (or potentiality, capacity) is meant to underscore that eventually we will have to enter
into an entirely immanent politics beyond the State
iii. They figure this as a kind of rupture with transcendence but will not outline the form it takes:
1. See p. 411: “We do not have any models for this event . . .”
2. In brief, they have outlined the limits of Empire, suggested some strategies for pushing against its limits and
breaking into a non-Statal space, and then leave the rest to the multitude
d. They close with an odd discussion of St. Francis (Negri’s got a thing for Christianity)
i. After 400 plus pages of a seemingly anthropocentric conception of politics and human vitality and productivity, we are
given an image of the communist-militant-as-St.-Francis
ii. One who lives joyously in relation to and alongside all of “being and nature”—that is what is at stake in communism, they
argue
1. Now, you could say this doesn’t link up with the rest of the book and seems contradictory;
2. or, you could read the book backwards against itself and try to show what it would mean to configure resistance to
Empire and alternatives to Empire within a radically non-anthropocentric perspective
3. This would be to read Empire against the grain . . .
11. Like Agamben, they see the State and sovereignty in all of its forms as diametrically opposed to forms of life, potentiality, play, and so on
a. So, it’s time to “Get going!,” by which they mean, “Get insurrectionary!”
b. Unlike H&N, the IC go directly—with no interim—past a politics of recognition and demands aimed at the State . . .
i. toward a politics of the act/experiment that occurs in the cracks and on the outside edges of the State
c. They expect nothing from the State in terms of helping them build alternative forms of life or linkages (that is just asking for more,
“bad”-style biopolitics and anthropological machinery)
i. Instead, they cast their lot in with extending friendships, communes, collectives and seek to avoid above-ground
organizations and major activist groups
d. This is not to say they’re arguing for being unorganized!
i. They argue that we have to get organized . . . so as not to work
ii. In other words, to escape the regime of wage labor and the machinations of sovereignty, we have to create extra-economic
ways of living together and being together
1. Given that they have no allegiance to capitalist society and think that it is built on exploitation, they are not shy
about recommending all kinds of plundering, scavenging, and even outright theft in order to meet basic needs
a. But these are only interim strategies—the IC are fairly apocalyptic about what’s coming; these kinds of
resources will not be around forever (capitalist society is on its last legs)
2. So, there is a pressing need for entirely new forms of life to be built, extra-economic ones, outside the economy
and State, where we learn to live again collectively
a. They are rightly obsessed with re-learning how to grow food, etc., and recommend experimenting with all
of the extra-economic, direct action, DIY collectives (freeshares and so on)
iii. These are the kinds of alternative worlds and communities they are imagining and also bringing into being through their
own communes and experimentation
e. Fighting back
i. In terms of the question of actual resistance against Empire and what to do when the tanks show up . . .
1. First of all, the idea is to act and live in such a way that the tanks won’t show up and so that the economy and flow
of commodities is brought to a standstill
2. The latter occurs through illegal economic sabotage of various sorts, preferably anonymously (so that the police
and the tanks never know where to go)
3. It also occurs through sabotage of surveillance mechanisms and destruction of police tracking records and
mechanisms
4. In other words, if Empire can’t see you or find you as you’re sabotaging it, then it can’t bring you back into its fold
(either through imprisonment or commodification)
ii. The IC do not have a death wish—they want to avoid direct confrontation with deadly State violence
1. But they make no secret that they think weapons need to be used on occasion and that having an armed presence is
important in order to stave off certain kinds of violence (e.g., the Zapatistas in Chiapas)
13. With those two perspectives (H&N and the IC-Agamben approach), you’ve seen what are perhaps the two most interesting attempts to think
Marx’s project through to the end in contemporary times