Empire

The book Empire (2000) by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the first in a trilogy, deals with globalization and how it spreads a specific form of power throughout the world. What separates their analysis from others who study globalization, are the ways they use the idea of power, and how power is exercised. They stress how power is exercised through culture and ideas. In this regard, they are among a number of other theorists we have looked at who stress the connection between politics and culture.

Here is a link for a short film about Negri:

https://archive.org/details/AntonioNegri-ARevoltThatNeverEnds

The movie gives you an idea of the radical politics of the 1960s and 70s, both among working class movements, but other social movements that were developing at that time, into the present. It covers many aspects of Negri's life, but also his writings on the connection between ideas and power. One reason why ideas become important tools for influencing people is the growth of communications technology which we have already covered. Communications technology, and the "culture industries" that come from the uses of this technology, like movies, popular music, and television, become both enormously profitable industries (always dependent on banks though), and important means of influencing people. This connection has been realized by authoritarian movements in the past, but the paradox of modern life is how to explain how similar relationships of power can exist within the "free" institutions of the media and government. The writer Gore Vidal, once commented, although he attributes the quote to someone else, that "there is no conspiracy among the ruling class, they just all think alike," maybe speaks more to the point. The problem is not conspiracy, meaning a coordinated effort behind the scenes to influence public events, that happens to an extent, but not as much as conspiracy theorists make it seem to be, instead the problem is conformity, or a sterile, lack of imagination, definitely among elites in society, but also possibly among the electorate at large.



In this regard, culture becomes politicized, not just in terms of media, but the education system in terms of funding, as well as the curriculum itself. In Negri's world, everything becomes a site of political contestation. Negri, who is a Marxist theorist, is also reacting to the relocation of industrial manufacturing from the developed world to developing countries like China or Vietnam. On the one hand, this opens up new political struggles as an industrial working class, what Marx called the proletariat, develops in previously agricultural countries like China and Vietnam, on the other hand political struggle in developed countries shifts from movements based around the industrial proletariat and becomes focused on other social movements, but also in the service sector of the economy, for example teachers' strikes. The modern state is also sustained by a large administrative bureaucracy that also depends on communication, and a large class of public sector workers, who also fall into the service sector.

Negri comes up with his own concept, the multitude, to replace the old idea of the proletariat, but the idea is basically the same:

The multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude — as Marx would say, a vampire regime of accumulated dead labor that survives only by sucking off the blood of the living (p. 62).

The multitude is sort of a global proletariat, that exists in various sectors not just manufacturing, even the underground sectors of the economy (what Marx called the "lumpenproletariat"). Communications, although it increases political power of elites also creates the means for the multitude to communicate and develop their strength in numbers. 

Like most Marxist theorists, Negri sees the world created by global capitalism as highly unstable despite the dense networks of power that sustain it:

We are by no means opposed to the globalization of relationships as such—in fact, as we said, the strongest forces of Leftist internationalism have effectively led this process. The enemy, rather, is a specific regime of global relations that we call Empire (pp. 45-46).

Empire, in their usage of the term, does not speak any to old school empire based on the idea of one state, or one people. Empire is the global interconnected world created by capitalism, that has no real center, as they would say, but shifts from location to location based on profitability and the roles different states and regions of the world play in production. This is not the same as referring to the American empire, for example, which implies that one state dominates the rest, but even the US is secondary to the maintenance of capitalism as a global system. The US plays a privileges role in this, system, acting as a kind of geopolitical enforcer, but also as a global source of finance (mostly through NYC). Over time it is highly likely this will change and the US role on the world stage will diminish, as other states like China will play a greater role. 

The one thing lacking in most working class movements of the past, was a sense of class consciousness, a conscious awareness of an exploited class, whose individual members are acting as a class in solidarity. The constant feature of exploitation that is necessary for capital accumulation will guarantee a discontented global multitude. The failures of neoliberal policies over the last several decades speak to this. It is unclear what will happen after that. It seems unlikely conservative movements can sustain themselves, since they lack broad popular support, they can only step aside or engage in violence on their way out, and it seems violence is increasingly likely. What will replace these undemocratic movements that currently control governments throughout the world including: US, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Philippines, China, Vietnam, Hungary, Poland, and are strong minority forces in the UK, France, and Germany, and many others? Will it be moderate, centrist governments that have alternated with right-wing governments over the last few decades, even though they have a poor track record of policies that are effective in dealing with the vast and growing economic inequality that exists? Will it be a return to left-wing governments of the past, emerging in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, to the 1980s? Those governments in the US and UK, for example, had a much better record of raising the living standards of their people, but their combination of regulations on capitalism and high levels of social spending, eventually fell apart in the 1970s, and made possible the rise of people like Reagan and Thatcher. 

It might be the case that people will have to consider new alternatives and challenge themselves to make a new reality possible. Culture plays a big part in this, especially as it stimulates imagination, creativity, and our connection to other people, especially across cultures. Since fantasy plays such a big role in American culture in the present, and arguably throughout the world, it is worth mentioning that fantasy always contains a utopian element, in that it contains peoples' secret desires for a different and better world. Often this is expressed unconsciously, but if you analyze most fantasy, it either contains the desire for a better world, or fear about the world that could be, and in that case a warning.  

On the other hand, ideas, as political ideologies, are perhaps the primary mechanism for social control today. Direct, brutal use of force to maintain order is not efficient, and not feasible over large populations. It is still used, but it is not force alone, that holds up Empire. The market works far better as a means of concentrating resources with minimum use of force, but the very instability it creates as a result of concentration makes it very unstable as a means of control, revolts become increasingly common. Ideological belief systems, secular or religious, that make this kind of exploitation and instability seem normal or natural, have the greatest chance of sustaining control over large populations for an extended period of time. Maintaining ruling ideologies are also costly, since they require the "manufacture of consent," which can fairly easily be disrupted, provided there are people who voice discontent, and there are platforms for voicing discontent.