1.

Assignment for next class with key ideas outlined

a. Read Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” pp. 46-69
b. Focus primarily on Marx’s critique of the egoistic theory of human nature and how “political emancipation” (Bauer) differs from
genuine “human emancipation” (Marx’s goal)
c. The issue of Marx’s purported anti-Semitism (see the second half of the essay) is one that we will touch on only briefly; but
we’ll return to it in reading Empire; it’s best to address the issue once we have more understanding of Marx’s project
d. The essay has some strange sections in it and some stilted writing; but don’t let it bog you down! Keep reading and you’ll see
some remarkable moves on Marx’s part

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

c. Second half of the course:

i. The main text is Hardt and Negri’s Empire
ii. This is available all over the place for free in pdf form
iii. The recommended texts are all linked in the syllabus
iv. Be prepared to read more material in the second half of the course—the reading is generally easier, though, so you’ll be
fine

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

7. General approach to reading Marx

a. We are reading Marx in the context of a philosophy department course on his work, but we will not read him as a philosopher
(or economist, etc.)
b. We will do Marx the honor of reading him how he wanted to be read: as someone who was trying to arm the working class with
weapons to revolt against capitalism
8. Harry Cleaver offers a nice statement of this kind of approach in Reading Capital Politically

“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

1. Assignment for next class

a. Read Marx, “Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” (KMSW, 71-80)
i. We’ll be focusing on:
1. Marx’s critique of religion and . . .
2. His “discovery” of the proletariat as a universal, revolutionary class

2. “On the Jewish Question”

a. Background
i. Marx studied law first and then philosophy, and eventually did a dissertation on post-Aristotelian Greek philosophy
ii. He was unable to find a teaching post due to his academic associations, political views, and anti-religious views
iii. The lack of a university position led him toward journalism (his unstable economic situation and lack of a secure income
was an issue throughout his life; Engels will be instrumental here)
iv. The pieces you are reading for today and next class were both published in the German-French Yearbooks, a periodical that
was the joint product of several of Marx’s friends and associates (Arnold Ruge being the chief financial force)
v. In searching around for a more amenable place to live and produce the journal (the group’s atheist and radical views were
not welcome in Germany), they settled on Paris
vi. At the time, there were many radical underground groups writing and organizing in Paris—they found the environment
more hospitable for their work
vii. The group was also experimenting with some communal living models at the time
viii. Marx is 25-26 years old when he is working on these texts and looking for a place to live and establish himself

b. The historical situation for Jews

i. The situation for Jews in Germany and Prussia at the time is horrific; there is everyday bigotry coupled with structural
discrimination (outright denial of opportunity to work in certain industries; restrictions on commercial activities)
ii. Bauer’s essay is trying to address this situation and offer a solution
iii. Marx’s own father suffers from this kind of discrimination (he had to convert to Protestantism to gain access to the bar and
practice law)
iv. This should make it clear that Marx’s purported anti-Semitism in the second half of the essay is not a straightforward matter
—Marx is no fan of this kind of discrimination
v. The real question for Marx is: How to solve discrimination and have a truly just society? And is such discrimination the
byproduct of a more fundamental cause?

c. Bauer’s solution to the Jewish issue

i. Don’t get bogged down here—make it clean and simple
ii. Like Marx, Bauer is emphatically against discrimination against Jews—he is a “Left Hegelian” interested in social justice
and a freer society
iii. Bauer thinks that the way to get social justice and genuine emancipation is by becoming fully atheist, i.e., by renouncing
religion and its alienating tendencies and placing society on a secular humanist basis
iv. For Bauer, Jews arguing for emancipation wanted essentially to be treated like Christians—but this simply means more
religion, more servility to God, more alienation from immanent human powers
v. We’ll discuss this in more detail next time when we look at Marx’s views on religion
d. The main point is this:
i. While Marx is all for renouncing religion, he doesn’t believe that religious alienation is the key issue here, the chief obstacle
to emancipation
ii. The fact that people are drawn to the illusions of religion is the consequence of something more basic, another kind of
alienation (socio-economic, in brief)
iii. So Bauer’s work does not offer a full solution to the problem of emancipation for Jews and other disenfranchised groups
iv. Let’s see how Marx makes the case

3. Marx’s case against Bauer

a. The US as counter-example
i. Marx is studying US and French economics and politics at the time and invokes that material here
ii. The point is simple: nation states can allow people to be religious and still give them political equality: the US is a prime
example (religious freedom with no sanctioned state religion)
iii. So Bauer’s notion that you have to give up religion to have political equality misses the mark

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 . . .”

Rights of Citizen and Man

 c. In brief, political equality entails granting (narrowly) all individuals the rights of citizen
i. These are the rights that allow people to engage in the political arena (rights to free speech, vote, and so on)
d. Political equality also entails granting (more universally and broadly) all individuals the rights of man
i. These are what all human beings are supposed to have by birth, in principle
ii. Equality, security, liberty, property
e. So, what does political equality, what do these two sets of rights amount to when they are offered and protected by the state in
capitalist societies?
i. At first glance, sheer contradiction
1. At the level of the state, we are supposed to see each other as full political equals, as citizens and human beings—
beings worthy of respect and admiration!
2. In everyday life, we are supposed to pursue our own individual, private, self-interested desires on the market,
jealously guard our property, compete with people and try to take advantage of them within the rule of law, etc.—
beings for whom I have no special affection!
ii. But look closer . . .
1. The capitalist nation-state and everyday life are actually interested in maintaining the exact same thing
2. The political sphere (where we have our “rights” established and protected) is actually designed to protect our
petty, egoistic desires
3. My property, my security, my freedom (to make money), my equality (of opportunity in the marketplace)
4. The state and everyday life encourage me to view my fellow human being as a tough competitor (at best) and a
hostile enemy (at worst)
5. There is no shared social life, no community, no rich, shared, communal existence
6. There are just hostile atoms, little monads competing against each other with a state there to ensure the competition
doesn’t erupt into total violence
7. See p. 61, “Thus, none of the so-called rights of man . . .”
f. So, if Bauer gets his way with political emancipation via renunciation of religion, all we’ll get is more people gaining access to
monad-ville
i. We need to move ourselves out of monad-ville toward a way of life that emancipates our faculties and lets us fully develop
our shared social natures and existence

g. So, does Marx want to end discrimination against Jews?

i. Absolutely; Marx definitely believes that discrimination against Jews and other groups is wrong
ii. And fixing these issues in the state through political emancipation (a la Bauer) would be a genuine advance (p. 54, “Political
emancipation is of course a great progress”)
iii. But he does not believe that addressing these forms of discrimination via the state is really what is at stake here
iv. At stake is genuine human emancipation
h. So, what does genuine emancipation look like?
i. At the very least, it means becoming fully aware of and recovering our social, communal natures
ii. Capitalist society encourages and ensures that we remain isolated monads in hostile relationships with each other
iii. Radicals interested in genuine human emancipation cannot settle for grating more and more people the “privilege” of having
the right to be egoistic monads
iv. Marx believes we can and desire to do better
v. And better means creating the conditions for a richer, more communal, more social life
vi. Read p. 64, “The actual individual man . . .”

i. What will that look like exactly? Hold on to that question—we’ll get to it soon

4. Assignment for next class

a. Read Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts” (KMSW, 83-95)
i. We’ll be focusing on:
1. in general, the concept of alienation, and . . .
2. more specifically, the concept of alienated labor

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 . . .

7. The Universal Revolutionary Class

a. The middle section of Marx’s piece focuses on the differences between the French Revolution of 1789 and the current German
situation
b. The bottom line for us is that Germany is theoretically advanced (owing to Hegel’s philosophy) and politically backward
c. So, Marx wonders: How will the two line up? When will practice become revolutionary? When will practice become as radical as the
critique?
d. Recall that at this time, Marx is in Paris and is hanging around revolutionary intellectuals and workers; and he is also witnessing
firsthand the radicalization and communization of German immigrant workers in Paris
e. Notice the massive impression this situation had on his thought:
“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 appears 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” (EPM)

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.”

11. Assignment for next class

a. Read Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts” (KMSW, 95-104)
i. These brief pages are considered among the very best Marx has written by those who like the more “humanist” Marx
(certain existentialists, Frankfurt School, Lukács, Marcuse, Feenberg, etc.)
ii. Anti-humanist readers of Marx, like Althusser, consider these pages mistaken starting points for Marx that he later corrected
(much of the stuff on species-being will come in for critique; we’ll look at Althusser more when we discuss ideology)
iii. Either way, the pages make for some interesting reading

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

19. Non-alienated life and labor

a. Marx is never as explicit about these positive points and positions as we might like
b. But we can gather from multiple texts some clues on a non-alienated life (and we’ll have plenty more on this next time)
c. In brief, Marx emphasizes the idea that human beings are social, co-autonomous creators; we work together to transform the world
and find our way in and through it
i. The point, ideally, is to develop rich, rewarding, shared social lives
d. This process of working and finding our way in the world should be ours, collectively and individually
i. But under capitalist societies, we workers no longer work for ourselves or even for the well-being of the collective
ii. We are working for forces and individuals who are foreign to ourselves and our collective well-being
e. Marx uses two key words for alienation: Entäusserung and Entfremdung, the former meaning something like dispossession and the
latter referring to something strange or alien
i. The basic idea here is that, under capitalist societies, we are dispossessed of things that our properly our own (labor,
species-being) . . .
ii. and the things we produce, the fruits of our labor return to us in an unrecognizable form
20. So, let’s lay out briefly and quickly the four main ways labor is alienated in capitalist societies of the sort Marx is analyzing
a. First, labor under the conditions of capitalist society does not produce a rich, rewarding existence for the worker
i. The worker barely survives on her pay, while the wealthy get to enjoy the fruits of her labor
ii. See p. 88: “Political economy hides the alienation . . .”
b. Second, labor under the conditions of capitalist society is miserable, essentially unrewarding in and of itself
i. There is no joy in the activity of work—it is drudgery and misery that is avoided like the plague as soon as one punches the
clock at the end of the shift
ii. Our distinctly human “nature” as workers and creators is alienated from us; we only feel like ourselves in our animal
functions (eating, drinking, etc.)
iii. See p. 88: “Firstly, that labour is exterior to the worker . . .”
c. Third, labor under the conditions of capitalist society alienates us from our essence, our species-being (#1: loss of freedom)
i. We do not labor creatively but blindly, forced to labor according to the necessity of market forces (much like animals are
forced to labor by instinctual necessity)
ii. When we lose our creativity, our potentiality, our freedom in labor, we lose our “essence,” our species-being
d. Fourth, labor under the conditions of capitalist society alienates us from our species-being (#2: loss of sociality)
 i. Here we lose the sense of being part of the larger human condition part of a larger collective, that lives together and
produces together
ii. Instead, we work as isolated egos, competing with other workers, rather than being part of cooperative collective
iii. The best summary of these two latter points, and of alienated labor as a whole are found on pp. 125-6; see “Since human
nature is the true communal nature of man . . .”
iv. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/index.htm

21. Assignment for next class

a. Read Marx and Engels, The German Ideology (KMSW, 175-208)
i. This text contains much more than we could ever cover in a single class, so we’ll have to focus on a couple of key themes
b. In particular, we will focus on the concept of ideology and its connection with Marx’s materialist view of history (this will extend
into our analysis of the Manifesto)
i. This discussion will also allow us to delve into Althusser’s concepts of ISAs and interpellation very briefly
ii. So, if you are short on time, focus on pp. 180-81, 192, and 199-202
iii. If you’d like to read the (very influential) essay by Althusser, it’s up on Blackboard for you as a pdf under course
documents
iv. It’s not required, just recommended

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)

23. EPM, continued

a. In the second portion of EPM, we get the early Marx’s most explicit statements on what non-alienated life, i.e., communism would
look like
b. He contrasts genuine, full communism with “crude communism” and other inadequate forms that are unable to fully abolish private
property
i. Note: This material is not polished, and he is responding to various ideas about non-capitalist life that are floating around at
the time in France and elsewhere—don’t worry about them for now (we’ll discuss other kinds of communism in CM and
elsewhere)

c. Here, under genuine communism, antagonism comes to an end . . .

i. both the antagonism between the human and the natural world (the labor process involved in working in and through the
natural world we talked about last time)
ii. and inter-human antagonism (the class struggle ends)
1. Kojève and others refer to this realization of communism as the “end of history,” because as we’ll see in CM, once
such antagonisms cease, there is no “motor” to drive history along

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. Strong human nature:

1. Some readers of Marx (e.g., Norman Geras) want to place him in the tradition of the “great thinkers” of human
nature (Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, etc.)
2. They see this text as confirmation that Marx wants to recover and take back the human nature that has been
alienated under capitalism
3. This sees human nature as something that is relatively historically fixed and stable; and certain political and
economic institutions are more or less befitting this nature

ii. Communism as existentialism

1. Under the influence of the 18th Brumaire (see p. 329) as well as the early texts, Kojève, Sartre, Marcuse, and others
argue that Marx is not giving us traditional account of recovering our human nature under communism
2. Rather, he is providing us with a theory and practice of existentialist freedom as emerging out of historical
conditions
a. On this account, we do not choose all aspects of our facticity (e.g., the historical and institutional
conditions under which we become subjects) . . .
b. but we nevertheless remain capable of transcendence (we are not fully or simply determined by history
but retain a certain freedom and creativity that is enabled by our cultural and historical situation)

iii. Early Marx as a mistake to be corrected in the next set of texts

1. This is the position defended by Althusser and his followers (most of the French post-structuralist scene; Badiou,
Rancière, Balibar, etc.)
2. This position is heavily influenced by Heidegger’s critique of humanism
3. Humanism remains “metaphysical” (uncritically repeating the dominant concepts and thought of Being in the
West) for Heidegger inasmuch as it relies upon a human subject/agent
4. Strong theories of human nature and even Sartrean existentialism are guilty of remaining trapped within the
subject-agency-freedom metaphysics of the West
5. Heidegger himself was convinced that Marx remains fully trapped within metaphysics
6. But Althusser tries to rescue Marx from this critique by showing that the post-1845 Marx is in fact a radical anti-
humanist who displaces and decenters human subjectivity

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?

24. Assignment for next class

 a. No class Tuesday; furlough day
b. The Communist Manifesto (KMSW, 245-55)
i. Our focus will be (a) extending our discussion of the materialist conception of history that we’ll start today, and (b) trying to
gain a better understanding of the proletariat and bourgeoisie (origins, struggle, etc.)

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)

26. How to read the shifts

a. Whether you read Marx in terms of rupture or continuity, it is clear that Marx’s primary focus changes in 1844-45
i. The primary emphasis shifts more toward the ways in which economic forces deeply and thoroughly shape human life,
culture, and subjectivity
ii. The question that needs to be kept in mind here is: What do we mean by shape? Determine? Constrain? Influence?
Alienate?
iii. These are decisions about how to read Marx that you have to make, decisions about how to appropriate him, and even about
whether you think he is useful at all for understanding and contesting the status quo . . .

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 . . .

37. Assignment for next class

a. The Communist Manifesto (KMSW, 255-71)
i. We’ll finish up CM and discuss the tricky issues of
1. The transition to communism (and defenses of it against critics)
2. Marx’s attitude toward other socialists, communists, and anarchists
ii. Recommended readings: Critique of Gotha Program and the brief response to Bakunin

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.)?

39. Finishing Althusser

a. For Althusser, the main point he wants to drive home is that we should be wary of understanding revolution as hinging on the
freedom and agency of individual subjects
i. The latter conception, which he finds in traditional and existentialist readings of Marx, is itself ideological
ii. How so? As individuals, we are called into being, that is, we are recognized and confirmed as existing human beings by the
established social and economic order as individual subjects
iii. Being hailed, or interpellated, (Hey you!) is a demand to answer and present oneself as one-self, that is, as a self-same
subject who works, who produces, who consumes, who is responsible, who is reliable
iv. We are constantly being hailed, interpellated by capitalist society, and through our response (i.e., by answering correctly, by
becoming competent in institutions, and so on) we become subjects of capital
v. So freedom and revolutionary potential do not belong to such subjects—such subjects are the consequence and effect of
ISAs, RSAs, and the economic base
vi. This means that new subjects will emerge through the structural seizing and transformation of the economy, RSAs, and
ISAs

40. So, the question that remains is:

a. When Marx conceives of revolution, does he see this as taking place through impersonal developmental shifts in the economy?
b. Or does revolution require individual, personal freedom coupled with class consciousness and awareness?
c. In other words: How does the transformation away from capitalism take place? Is it necessary and inevitable? Or does it require
active intervention from free subjects?
d. Or perhaps there are other ways to conceive of agency and resistance (we’ll see another in Empire) . . .
e. We’ll keep an eye on these questions as we continue to read Marx

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)

43. The opening statement on class struggle

a. We’ve already seen elements of the developmental thesis on economic relations of production (primitive communism, slavery,
feudalism, capitalism, communism)
b. Without delving into the teleological and Eurocentric problems here, let’s look at the main players under capitalism

44. The Bourgeoisie

a. people whose dominant concern is the development of commercial and industrial interests
b. they employ wage laborers and own the chief forces of production (factories, technologies, resources)

45. The Proletariat

a. the working class
b. industrial workers who lack their own means of production and must sell their own labor in order to live

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

48. The chief characteristics of bourgeoisie rule

a. Make self-interest the ground of relations between human beings
b. Turn all workers into wage-laborers (wage laborers get paid for 12 hours of work, but the value of the work is worth much more than
what worker gets paid; employer gets a profit; worker makes enough to survive and that’s all)

49. Productive forces determinism

a. What role does technology play in bourgeoisie rule?
b. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production (competition for profit drives
innovation in production and development of consumer products)
c. Rapid improvements in the instruments of production force all to comply with the demands of bourgeoisie culture
d. Very invasive and powerful technologies help them to expand and maintain power
e. Note also that capitalist technologies turn human beings themselves into mere artifacts, appendages of machines

50. Assignment for next class

a. Capital, volume I (KMSW, 452-72)
i. Our main topic will be commodity fetishism and its subsequent reception/acceptance/rejection among various strands of
theory and activism

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

52. What we have left to do:

a. For today, from CM and related texts we need to look at:
 i. How the antagonism between B and P leads to revolution
ii. What role the State plays once the transition to communism begins and is eventually completed
iii. How Marx envisions future communist society
b. For the following two classes:
i. We’ll move into Capital
ii. We have two things to do there:
1. Analysis of commodity fetishism as . . .
2. Entry point into the economic logic of capital
c. Your first exam will be a straightforward quiz on these main concepts and issues
i. I’ll provide you a review sheet and will hold extra office hours before the exam if you wish to have additional help
ii. More on that next week

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

54. The State

a. Marx’s attitude toward the capitalist State in CM is the same attitude we saw in OJQ
i. He believes it is but a front group for the ensuring and maintaining the interests of capitalists, “a committee for managing
the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”
b. But what happens to the State in the transition to communism? Is there a workers/communist State?
c. Marx uses the phrase dictatorship of the proletariat a couple of times in his writings to indicate the transitional phase that takes place
in moving from capitalism to communism
i. “Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other.
Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship
of the proletariat” (CGP)
ii. The chief idea here is that with communist revolution, the functions of the State are turned over to the entire working class
and are structured according to their interests (rather than bourgeoisie)
1. Here he seems to have in mind everything that we were talking about with RSAs in Althusser
2. It is State force and power that Marx thinks needs to be seized in order to achieve revolution
iii. Given that the State in Marx’s time was quite far removed from anything like a “welfare state,” he envisions the State
eventually being transcended and abolished
1. It is primarily a repressive (and ideological) set of institutions designed to maintain the smooth functioning of the
market, so it has little or no place in a classless and propertyless society
2. He seems to think military, police, and prisons will have no place in an actualized communist society
3. Now, if centralized organization and states are in fact required to make sure that communal life run well, then Marx
will have a different attitude toward “the State”—we’ll discuss this later
 iv. But something like a State is definitely needed on Marx’s account in order to set up and carry out the transition to
communism
1. This can be seen quite clearly in the discussion of the list of demands that the Communist League is setting forth in
CM
2. And the point is made with particular force against anarchists, like Bakunin, who distrust State power per se
3. Marx believes that State force and power, temporarily seized by workers with the revolutionary aim of
overthrowing the bourgeoisie, is nothing to be feared but is in fact a necessary and irreducible component of
revolution
v. Keep this discussion of the state and dictatorship of the proletariat in mind as we turn to Empire and the Zapatistas
1. The latter are often criticized by Marxists for their failure, and lack of desire, to seize State power
2. We’ll try to determine where Negri and Hardt come down on this issue (see their Labor of Dionysus too on this
issue)

55. Future Communist Society

a. We saw in EPM that genuine communism is presented as:
i. a dialectical, economic, historical advance over capitalism
ii. a means for allowing us to recover our social natures, and
iii. a means for opening up new worlds, new relations, a means for unleashing our natural human potential
b. Regardless of the “uncritical,” “humanist,” and ideological tendencies of these passages (how Althusser would have us read them),
Marx never abandons this kind of language
i. It is always on display when he describes the society he is striving for
ii. There is an ethical, aesthetic flavor to these moments in his writings
c. Much like Nietzsche, Marx refused to write “recipes for the cook shops of the future”
i. But . . . he hinted at recipes . . .
ii. He has a very existentialist idea concerning not being locked into one’s identity as a worker under communist society
1. The basic idea is that individuals will be freed up to engage in various kinds of activities and passions
2. See quotation at end of notes
iii. Likewise, society will be structured to maximize the richness and communal nature of social life and unlock individual
potentiality
1. See CGP, “In a higher phase . . .”
2. And CM, after the list of demands, “in place of the old bourgeois society”

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.”

56. Assignment for next class

i. Finish Capital selections
ii. This material is going to be somewhat technical and difficult, but it is absolutely essential for understanding Marx
iii. The lecture on Tuesday should be helpful for understanding the material

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

58. What you have accomplished:

a. From the standard philosophical viewpoint, you are now equipped with a basic conceptual toolkit for understanding Marx
b. From Marx’s revolutionary viewpoint, you are equipped with some of the more important critical and conceptual weapons needed to
understand, resist, and transform capitalist society
i. From Marx’s perspective, the ultimate stakes of his work lie here—and, to be charitable to him, his work should at least be
initially read and assessed from here
ii. Reducing his work to an analytic philosophical project (are his concepts clear and consistent? are his arguments and
positions true and empirically correct?) will allow the reader to . . .
1. skate right past the central stakes of his work
2. take a very dangerous thinker and reduce him to a philosophical and historical curiosity
 iii. The more charitable way to read him would be to ask: Are the weapons Marx offers his readers sharp and powerful enough?
Are they helpful for understanding and resisting capitalism?
iv. If not, then the charitable approach is: Let’s construct sharper and more powerful weapons!
v. Remember, the ultimate point for Marx is not simply to make better arguments, or understand the world more fully, but to
change it

59. What you have left:

a. What is missing from Marx’s perspective, at this point, is a more complete picture of the actual economic functioning of capitalism
b. Why do we need this information?
i. Remember that we have been stressing how important the economic base (i.e., the forces and relations that make up
production) is:
1. to the development of history,
2. to the constitution of human subjectivity,
3. and to the possibilities for carrying out a revolution and creating a better society
c. Marx has all along (from some of his earliest writings) stressed this primacy of the economy (materialist concept of history), and
has repeatedly tried to illuminate the inner workings of the capitalist economic base
i. But after the failings of the revolutionary uprisings of the late 1840s, Marx believes he needs to go back into the economics
and explain it and understand it more fully—both for his own sake and for the sake of the revolutionaries
ii. Capital is the result of that effort, a massive work; and the first volume (the material you’re reading) was written and re-
written over the course of the course of nearly two decades
iii. The project: “to lay bare the economic laws of modern [European, capitalist] society”
iv. He wants to explain fully its origins, development, and eventual decline
v. He resolutely believes that the internal tensions and contradictions that are inherent to contemporary capitalism will lead to
its demise and transcendence

60. The entry point: the commodity

a. How to enter into a full understanding of capitalism? Not with history, not with consequences, not with revolution, but with the
commodity
i. Why here? Because, as we’ll see, the hidden, inner essence of capitalism is to be found starting from here . . .
b. So, what is a commodity
i. Something that is produced for exchange on the market rather than something produced for immediate use or consumption
by the producer
1. The meal I make for myself and eat right away is not a commodity
2. The meal I (help to) make at work at the Stouffer’s frozen food plant that is then packaged and sold in the store is a
commodity
ii. In the absence of markets, in the absence of exchanges going on, there are no commodities for Marx
iii. All that we would have without markets/exchange are things that we produce that are useful for those who consume them
iv. This means that the commodity contains something over and beyond the values associated with use
61. Use Value and Exchange Value
a. Marx is here implying that, when capitalism arises on the scene, the things we use and consume have an extra something added on to
them
i. Prior to, or in the absence of capitalism, we relate to the products we use in terms of simple utility—call this “use value”
ii. Use value=df.: the power of a given product to satisfy some human want, what the product is used for
iii. But when capitalism is the primary mode of arranging our production, the products we make becomes commodities . . .
iv. . . . inasmuch as they take on an additional value in terms of how they are exchanged on the market—call this “exchange
value”
v. Exhange value=df.: that which a given commodity can be exchanged for, its power to command other commodities for itself
in a particular ratio (10lbs of coffee is worth, or can be exchanged for 60lbs of bananas)
62. And right there you have the entire “problem”—how did exchange value “get into” the commodity
a. Classical economists (such as Smith and Ricardo) and the general capitalist public (we dupes) actually believe that the commodity
has exchange value built into it—i.e., built into it inherently, as part of its inner being or essence
i. In this sense, we believe the commodity has extraordinary value—it carries an additional, magical value beyond being
simply useful
ii. But economists and we the people simply assume it’s there—we can’t explain how that value got in there
iii. It’s magic!

63. The Fetishism of Commodities

a. Marx says this is a fetishistic relationship to commodities, and you find it on display in massive amounts under capitalism
i. In other words, under capitalism we develop strange ideas about commodities
ii. What is more, we develop an unusual devotion toward commodities, and we come to believe they have inherent value
beyond simple utility
1. Consequently, we start to relate to commodities themselves, and define ourselves in terms of them
2. We begin increasingly to value commodities more than people
 a. I relate to a brand (I AM Nike!) not my community
3. And we begin increasingly to value people only inasmuch as they have the ability to purchase commodities
a. Can you pay my bills, can you pay my automobile? If so, maybe we can chi-hill!
4. We begin to see the world more and more “stupidly,” reductively, fetishistic-ally, through commodities-only eyes
iii. Classical economists and the general public are entirely wrapped up in this fetishism, according to Marx, and as such they
miss what is hidden behind the commodity form and its supposed inherent value:
1. They miss the vast social network that gives the commodity its value through the labor that produced it (and
through constructed cultural agreements on the conditions of exchange)
iv. In short, Marx is pulling the classical Kantian and phenomenological gesture: he is inquiring into the conditions of
possibility for a given phenomena
v. But rather than looking for conceptual or cognitive structures as conditions of commodities, he wants to show us the
material conditions under which commodities take on their supposedly inherent values and magical powers
b. In brief: “From the taste of wheat it is not possible to tell who produced it”
i. From the look of that T-shirt in the store, it is not possible to tell who produced it (likely a grossly underpaid sweatshop
worker)
1. The silliness of the sweatshop debate can be found right here—we catch a glimpse of the hidden reality and look
for justifications for sweatshops or band-aid fixes . . .
ii. From the look of that burger patty, it is not possible to see who produced it (the underpaid slaughterhouse worker who had
to kill and cut up the cow, the underpaid driver who transported the cow to the slaughterhouse, the underpaid worker who
cooked it; and then repeat that process for everything that goes on and into the burger
1. Marx would mention the cow and the land itself and admit they add value in a certain way, but this is a complex
issue; he is not particularly worried about the exploitation of the land or animals, though
2. His primary concern is the exploitation of human labor
3. See Carol Adams on “the absent referent” in SPM
iii. The key point here for Marx, is the underpaid portion
1. The workers are contributing a greater share of the value than they are being paid
a. There are other, related points too—for this entire process not only exploits workers, it constrains our
potentiality and changes our fundamental modes of sociality (as we saw last time)
c. What is hidden under capitalism, then, is the nature of commodities
i. They and their value are the result of a specific set of human relationships
ii. Their value does not derive from a relationship between things (the so-called inherent exchange value of bananas and
coffee) but from human relationships, from a vast social network

64. Assignment for next class

i. No Class Thursday
ii. I’ll be on campus during office hours if you’d like to stop by for review
iii. Review today in class in just a bit
iv.
65. Recap
a. Recall that we used the commodity as an entry point into the larger, more general “logic of capital” (the way that capitalists function
within the capitalist economy)—our topic for today
b. Why start here with the commodity? Because there are two things extremely remarkable about capitalist society related to
commodities
i. At first glance, they are noticeable for their “immense accumulation of commodities”
ii. But, no one seems to understand why commodites come to have the power they do
c. We learned that commodities combine use value (their utility) and exchange value (what they cost, what they can be
traded/exchanged for)
i. Economists start with commodities but they are unable to explain how this added, seemingly magical value is added to the
commodity
ii. This occurs because they, like the general public, have an unusual devotion to commodities
iii. We all miss the vast social network that goes into producing commodities
d. This vast social network is comprises two main elements
i. The capitalist language game, i.e., the form of life or social setting that sets up and agrees upon rules of exchange, and so on
1. This is a narrow, myopic way of organizing society that alienates us from each other and from human potentiality
(the existentialist critical point)
ii. The exploitation of labor power that gives capitalists the ability to make profits off of commodities
1. It is this exploitation that makes capitalism unworkable in the long run (the critical economic, Althusserian point)
iii. It is this latter theme that we have to analyze today
66. The logic of capitalism
a. Two aspects:
i. how it “works,” that I how capitalists make a profit
ii. and how it ultimately undermines itself
b. We have to tell this story in a rather quick form just to get it under our belts—we’ll complicate it as the class moves along
Part I
c. Take a simple worker in a simple economy first
i. This is where someone makes something in order to sell it and buy what one needs to get by on (I make a table and sell it to
get enough money to eat; or I work to get money to eat)
ii. That is C-M-C, Commodity (table I made, or my labor) sold to get Money to get more Commodities
iii. This is paycheck-to-paycheck living
d. The capitalist looks at the world a bit differently—I’ve got the basics and some extra cash (capital), now how can I make more
money with the extra money I’ve got?
i. I’ll use that capital to buy stuff (machines, materials, and workers) to make stuff (say, cars) so that I can sell that stuff and
get more money
ii. That is M-C-M’—Money used to make commodities that I can sell at a profit to make more money
iii. But where in the hell does the more, the profit come from? Where was the value created? Out of thin air?
iv. That’s what Marx thinks he is the first to explain (rather than simply assume)
e. Marx, following the capitalist logic laid out by Smith and Ricardo, subscribes to the labor theory of value
i. The labor theory of value=df.: The value of any given commodity is based on the socially necessary labor time (under
average conditions, with average skills, intensity, etc.) to produce it
f. So, labor creates value (machines, land, animals, etc. do too, in a certain way—but that is a complicated topic, let’s set it aside for a
moment)
g. The capitalist pays the worker just enough to survive, subsist
h. But the worker produces twice (possibly more or a bit less) the value that the worker is paid (I produce $30 worth of stuff, but get
paid $15)
i. That is exploitation, in the non-moral sense of the term; it is by underpaying workers that extra value is added to the ballgame; the
capitalist profits off of exploitation
i. This is called the theory of surplus value (there is a surplus in the value that labor produces in relation to the value the
laborer is paid)
ii. And those are the basics of how capitalists make profits—they exploit workers (whether this theory needs to be complicated
or even tossed is something we’ll set aside for now)

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

c. Our topic will be alternatives within Empire;

i. and we’ll go a bit more into the idea of a control society/biopower (Deleuze and Foucault; we’ll start that today)
ii. and also look at one current form of resistance to Empire (Zapatistas) that resonates with and also differs from H&N’s
project
iii. The Marcos piece describes “The Other Campaign” launched in 2006 by the Zapatistas
iv. Several of you have expressed an interest in this material
1. Writings: Our Word is Our Weapon
2. Marcos bio: Subcommander Marcos: The Man and the Mask, by Henck
3. Long interview: Beyond Resistance: Everything, with EL KILOMBO INTERGALÁCTICO—now online
http://www.elkilombo.org/documents/beyondresistance.pdf
4. Zapatista secondary materials: The Fire and the Word, Ramírez, The Zapatista Reader, Hayden
5. Don’t want to read?: A Place Called Chiapas (google vid)
6. If you read Spanish, there is tons more stuff

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

70. For today:

a. From the reading, you get an overview of the entire project (Preface), then a snapshot of the legal and political superstructure of
globalization (1.1), then a snapshot of the material base of globalization (1.2)
b. Let’s get that stuff down and then we’ll be ready for another quick snapshot of resistance to/alternatives within globalization (1.3)
next time
c. The successive sections of the book then unpack these snapshot ideas/themes in more detail

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

73. And yet . . .

a. Empire and globalization is not all bad
i. Even though it threatens to bring us all to ruin, it also creates avenues and channels that make global resistance and global
democracy possible in unprecedented ways
ii. It links humans and their productive powers in ways that previous economies (even classical capitalism) could not
iii. Empire, then, (potentially) creates its own gravediggers
b. Like Marx, H&N seem to admire Empire in certain ways
i. and, like Marx, they are glad that certain regressive ideas (petty nationalisms, localist prejudices, old economic hierarchies,
etc.) and practices have been (essentially) wiped out by Empire

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

74. Empire’s Superstructure (1.1)

a. We’ll talk about the new ISAs later (when we talk about Debord), but for now, H&N are analyzing the new RSAs . . .
b. . . . i.e., the new legal, political, military, police, and “biopolitical” (more on this in a second) structures that maintain and protect
Empire/global capitalism’s smooth functioning
c. Hence, the discussion of the “constitution” of the new world order and its “juridical” form (legal and political structure)
i. United Nations, NATO, trade organizations, NGOs, etc.
d. The main thing to note here is that Empire institutes a permanent state of emergency—the old nation-State rule of law is everywhere
suspended, at least in principle, in the name of transnational/Empire sovereignty
 e. Interventions of the old “sovereign” nations based on principles of new trans-/inter-national “justice,” “humanitarianism,” and
“democracy” can happen at any time and with little or no justification (e.g., the global “war on terror”)
i. One possible problem: There may well be a relative “center” to Empire’s RSA superstructure (viz., US
military/police/security)
ii. H&N are writing under the assumption that international police forces of various sorts are going to become increasingly
important—this is ambiguous at present

75. Empire’s Material (Economic and Physically Embodied) Base (1.2)

a. Two key things we’ll talk more about next time
i. The first: The economic and material aspects of society are today better understood in terms of a “control” society rather
than a “disciplinary” society
1. This means that power should be understood as being carried more and more in and through human bodies and
practices (biopower) . . .
2. . . . and less and less in institutions (prisons, educational systems, etc.)
3. This is a Foucaultian-Deleuzian point about the flows of power, subjectivity, production, exchange, etc.
ii. The second: The big players and big industries through which capital/Empire flows have shifted
1. The big players have moved more and more out of the factories (material labor) and into the knowledge economy
(immaterial labor)
2. And the big players are not capitalists from nation-States but increasingly M/TNCs with no national allegiance
b. The charitable reading: H&N are not describing an end to disciplinary society or an end to factory work
i. They’re just describing the overarching tendency of the dominant flows of sovereignty and capital within Empire

1. Assignment for Next Class

a. No additional reading—just get up through 1.3 for now
b. We’re not going to make it through much of 1.3 today and the stuff from 1.2 is important for understanding the overall argument
c. If you’re caught up, you could always use this time to start thinking in more depth about your paper

2. Last time, we took a quick glimpse at:

a. The notion of Empire, which denotes:
i. A decentered, deterritorialized system of economic and legal/political power
ii. A system with apparently no limits and a “smooth world” at its disposal
iii. But that ironically digs its own grave by creating new avenues of connection and possibilites for revolt among the
“multitude”
iv. The way beyond Empire is through it
b. We looked in some detail at key aspects of the “juridical” (legal and political superstructure) mechanism of Empire
i. From international military and police forces to international legal and trade agreements
c. We also suggested that there was a corresponding shift in the economic base (the technologies and relations/modes of
production) within Empire
i. The latter shift is explained in part using the concepts of “control society” and “biopower”—our topics for today

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

76. Assignment for next class

a. Please read Empire, 69-92
b. Recommended: Donna Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto”
c. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
d. We will discuss the “plane of immanence” as described by H&N and interrogate it using Haraway’s work (cited by H&N toward the
end of the section)
i. The plane of immanence and Haraway’s work has to do with how we conceive of identity as such and human identity in
particular
ii. In a couple of weeks, we will also interrogate these ideas about identity and immanence (and H&N’s larger project) from a
decolonial perspective

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

86. Assignment for next class

a. Empire, 93-136
b. Recommended: Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet”
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/065.html
c. Our topic will be revolutionary, “subaltern” nationalisms and whether they represent genuine advances beyond/against Empire or
whether they are merely nationalist “localisms” that need to be moved beyond

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

89. The Revolutionary Plane of Immanence

a. H&N’s story starts with the discovery of this plane of immanence in the 13th-15th centuries
i. For them the story of modernity is the story of the dialectical interplay between the ontologically basic, affirmative,
constituent forces of human potentiality/vitality/productive powers on the one hand . . .
 ii. And the constituted, reactive, secondary, capturing, but also productive powers of sovereignty/authority on the other
b. What sovereignty wants us not to see is our collective human potentiality, that we are the ones who create “worlds” and produce our
own form of social and political life
i. The discovery of the plane of immanence is precisely a rediscovery of our collective potentiality
ii. It is a re-appropriation of creative powers and potentialities that we once thought to be divine
1. See p. 73: “What is revolutionary . . .”
iii. H&N track this discovery across several thinkers and fields (from philosophy to politics) in order to illustrate that, with the
advent of modernity, theoretical and political immanence is regained and revolutionary forces and ideas are unleashed
iv. When human beings see themselves as productive, creative, and overflowing with potential and vitality, they get rebellious
and start building radical democracy in various arenas (intellectual, political, economic)
v. And so the counter-revolutionary crack-down begins . . .

c. First, two potential problems here:

i. Is this really immanence in the radical sense of the term, or even in the Deleuzean sense of the term?
1. Are all life and non-life forms, desires, flows, etc. really on the same plane for H&N?
2. Placing humans and their powers in this world contests religious transcendence, but it leaves anthropocentric
transcendence (the notion that our human vitality and potentiality is somehow primary) untouched
3. In their story of Empire’s functioning and possible demise, the entire non-human world goes missing
4. Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze, and others are far more careful here—H&N’s blindspot derives from their Marxist
inheritance
5. See Nicole Shukin’s Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times, p. 9 (below)
ii. Also, aren’t similar, and perhaps more fruitful and more radical, notions of immanence already found and more fully
developed outside of Europe and modernity?
1. There are literally hundreds of examples of radical immanence in indigenous cultures, and I brought you but two of
them from tribes who lived right under your feet (Tongva and Cahuilla examples)
2. If that is the case, then why is it important to tell the story in the Eurocentric way they do?
3. Why does it matter if European modernity has (avowedly minor and limited) resources for critique and resistance if
equal or superior resources are available across the globe?
4. We’ll return to this question when we examine Castro-Gomez’s essay

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

Now, the bigger picture:

93. Humanism After the Death of Man

a. What this entire sketch is trying to do is to tie anti-humanist critiques of the subject from the 1960s (Althusser, Foucault, Descartes,
etc.) with the discovery of the revolutionary plane of immanence in the 13th-15th centuries
i. In other words, the revolutionary struggle has come full circle back to the discovery of human potentiality and vitality with
the anti-humanists
ii. The anti-humanists were not trying to kill agency or subjectivity but to show us that as individuals we emerge from out of
the collective social structures (institutions, languages, cultures) that we have collectively produced
iii. Anti-humanism, then, is located on the revolutionary plane of immanence that places humans back in the natural world with
their potentiality and vitality
b. They cite Haraway to this effect
 i. Haraway insists on contesting all human-other dualisms and places us squarely in this world
ii. The two dualisms that she is best at undercutting are the human-machine distinction (fluid cyborg ontology) and the human-
animal distinction (fluid simian ontology)
iii. See p. 151 of SCW
iv. See also p. 171 for a nice summary of the limits of the Marxist approach and the dualisms that plague Western thought
c. But here is the key difference between the work of someone like Haraway and H&N
i. The discovery of the plane of immanence for Haraway is the discovery of the co-constitution of subjectivity among human
and non-human others of many sorts
ii. And this discovery calls into question, from top to bottom, the basic structures of Western culture
iii. She calls for a radical change in our ontologies, epistemologies, ethics, and politics, both intra-human and extra-human
d. For H&N, this discovery of the plane of immanence is the re-discovery of a primarily human potentiality and productive power
i. How that power emerges from out of our engagement with the entire non-human world is left to the side
ii. Likewise, the anthropocentric transcendence (i.e., human desires and productive power above all else) that figures heavily in
our ethics and politics goes largely unchallenged by H&N
iii. This limited perspective is one of the key problems that plague H&N as they seek to discover resistance and alternatives to
Empire

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.

1. Assignment for Next Class

a. Please read H&N, Empire, 137-59
b. Recommended: Edward Said, “Orientalism”
c. http://books.google.com/books?
id=zcpiQwtw4hMC&pg=PA24&dq=edward+said+postcolonial+reader+orientalism&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
d. This is just a brief excerpt from the book; if you want the entire book, you know where to go . . .
e. This is a key section of Empire and worth reading carefully
2. Paper Assignment: send me a reminder to put it up on BB!
a. You could get started on that over the break, if you’re bored or have time

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)

Delving into Sections 2.2 and 2.3

1. In these sections of the book, we are examining how various constituted powers throughout history (monarchical sovereignty, nation-
State, and eventually Empire) have “captured” and channeled the vital powers of the multitude
a. Remember, H&N are describing a battle of constituted (secondary) vs. constituent (primary, ontological) powers
2. We are examining this story, according to H&N’s way of seeing things, in order to
a. learn the emergent (in other words, historical, developmental, but jumping off and away from what precedes it) logic of Empire
i. It emerges out previous economic structures but also emerges out of the multitude’s creative powers
b. and also the emergent struggles against this logic that must take place on the terrain of Empire if it is to be displaced
i. The struggles take place on the terrain of Empire, use many of its tools, but are not identical to its modes of sovereignty
3. H&N see the “abstract machine” of the modern nation-State and national forms of sovereignty in general primarily as machines of
capture of the multitude’s vitality
a. The nation-State captures and then channels/subordinates our collective productive powers to the well-being of the capitalist
ruling class (instead of to the collective well-being of the multitude)
b. As such, there is little in the logic or practice of the capitalist nation-State worth maintaining
4. But what about the ways in which the nation-State and nationalism can work for “the good” (in other words, what about the nation-State
when it is used to contest Empire’s or capital’s destructive powers)?
a. Think for example of the socialist State (Europe), or the communist State (e.g., Russia or China), or the welfare State (e.g., the
U.S. under FDR)
b. Is the nation-State model inherently problematic and inherently anti-multitude, or just contingently so depending upon who has
power?
5. H&N’s answer, in brief, is YES to both aspects of that question
a. They spend the end of 2.2 discussing the inherently totalitarian (which is to say, the fundamentally anti-multitude nature)
nature/potential of the nation-State
b. In this argument, they are close to anarchists and also post-Statist thinkers like Agamben
c. The various “barbarisms” that are to be found wherever progressive nationalisms are tried are examined at the end of 2.2
i. Nazism, imperialism of “progressive” socialist European nations, Bolshevism and Russian nationalism with Stalin, etc.
d. These failures alone would be enough to make them question the nation-State model and nationalism as such
i. In brief, “the concept of the nation-state . . . is constructed to oppose every tendency on the part of the proletariat to
reappropriate social spaces and social wealth” (111)

6. But what about “subaltern nationalism”?

a. Subaltern is a term borrowed from Gramsci and is used to refer to those groups of people who are:
i. marginalized within society
ii. subjected to the hegemony of the ruling classes
iii. but nevertheless remain resistant to those dominant powers
b. Subaltern nationalism thus refers to those forms of nationalism that are used by “minority” groups or dispossessed peoples to:
i. defend themselves,
ii. regain autonomy, and
iii. revolt against and resist the powers of the ruling class

7. H&N applaud the progressive aspects of subaltern nationalism, specifically:

a. its ability to protect dispossessed people from external domination
b. its effort to re-value and recuperate identities and autonomous forms of life and practices that have been denigrated by the
dominant society (think of Black nationalism, or militant lesbian separatism, or native/tribal sovereignty)
8. Despite their admiration for such movements, they think these versions of national liberation are “poisoned gifts” (132)
a. They argue that not only do they tend toward reactionary, in-group identity politics (a politics of racial, sexual, etc. purity)
b. but when they are actually carried out successfully at the national level, they end up back in the world capitalist market and the
economic revolution never comes
i. The latter problem stems from the failure of representational politics as such, and this is why they are not particularly
enamored of constitutional republics or parliamentary democracies
ii. See p. 134: “The entire logical chain . . .”

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)

10. The Malcom X approach

a. H&N applaud Malcolm X and his version of Black nationalism for providing a powerful defensive gesture against racist and
state violence (creating the space to speak as an autonomous and separate people, with their own means of self-defense and
organization)
i. Malcolm’s remarks on “the great controversy over rifles and shotguns” in “The Ballot or the Bullet” speak to this issue
of violent self-defense; note also the famous Life photo
b. They have profound respect for the autonomous and creative practices of Black nationalism (everything from building new
forms of community to building new meaning structures to providing for basic material needs)
i. This is similar to their admiration for the Zapatista model we discussed last time
c. They also applaud Malcolm’s attempt to place Black nationalism in the context of a broader struggle outside the purview of the
US nation-State (civil rights) and in the arena of international human rights
i. See Malcolm: “When we begin to get in this area, we need new friends, we need new allies”
d. H&N’s worry arises when Black nationalism functions oppressively to crush heterogeneity within marginalized communities
i. See p. 108: “In the case of black nationalism . . .”
ii. There is no doubt that the specific version of Black nationalism (and other separatist nationalisms and identity politics)
they are describing has sometimes fallen prey to this kind of marginalizing logic
iii. And in Malcolm’s years with the NOI, he was caught up in some of the problems that attend this kind of logic

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!

4. Assignment for Next Class

a. Please read H&N, Empire, 183-204 (NB: This is different from the syllabus! We’re passing over the U.S. sovereignty issue for
now, but we’ll come back to it)
b. Recommended: Guy Debord, “Comments on the Society of the Spectacle,” esp. I-X
c. http://www.notbored.org/commentaires.html
d. The entire version of this book is available on that site as well as the original CSS (which is a bit denser and more difficult to
read)
e. These pages will allow us to examine some more of the ways in which it is no longer possible to speak of an outside to Empire,
according to H&N
f. And it will also provide us an opportunity to return to the issue of race and racism (which was treated rather quickly in the
previous section)

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

7. Postmodernism and Postcolonialism

a. Much as they did with SRN, H&N are trying to distance themselves from postmodernism and postcolonialism
b. Why so? Remember the “race for theory”
 i. In Continental circles, the tendency is to displace and overcome the previous dominant theoretical and critical
framework rather than have a multiple framework
ii. Despite H&N’s close alignment with SRN, postmodernism, and postcolonialism, they try to show that these other
movements have fundamentally misunderstood the enemy, its power its modes of production, resistance to the enemy, etc.
c. So, let’s see what the problem with postmodernism is

8. The Problem with Postmodernism

a. The chief characteristics of postmodernism for H&N are:
i. The deconstruction of binaries (man/woman, self/Other, West/East, human/animal, etc.)
ii. And the critique of the Enlightenment/modernity
b. On the latter point, postmodernists are too quick in the rejection of modernity for H&N’s taste
i. As we have seen, H&N believe that European modernity is not simply about sovereignty and transcendent power
ii. It is also about the multitude discovering their immanent potential and productive power
iii. To discard European modernity too quickly is to miss the multitude’s discovery of immanence and all of those
associated resources (Spinoza, etc.)
iv. They align Derrida, Lyotard, and Baudrillard with this general trend within postmodernism
v. But even a simple reading of their texts suggests that this “critique” is a caricature at best (See Derrida’s The Other
Heading, Lyotard’s Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, Baudrillard’s early work, etc.)
c. On the former point (deconstruction of binaries), postmodernists are unleashing “differences”—as if this were by itself
revolutionary (H&N want to add, sarcastically)
i. But the modern economy loves “difference”—it markets it and markets to it
ii. More consumers, more producers, more markets . . .
iii. Again, though, this critique is a caricature and it suffers from equivocation regarding the concept of difference
iv. The deconstruction of binaries is not about sheer difference as such—it is about difference that makes a difference to, a
difference that interrupts, the smooth functioning of the system
v. In other words, it is about the ways in which the Other resists easy subsumption within the system (intellectual,
cultural, economic, etc.)
vi. Empire is predicated upon either covering over or annihilating such radical Otherness; this is what Dussel calls the
“living flesh” of the human Other that lies behind the commodity (e.g., the sweatshop worker; the “First world” version is
the insecure, anxious, and depressed consumer behind the wheel of his shiny new Hummer)
d. To help H&N out, and to be charitable to both groups at the same time:
i. What postmodernists are doing is teasing out the ontological opening in Western metaphysics—the beginning of that
Western ‘world’—that paved the way for “Empire” (the dominant form of life that is sweeping the globe and annihilating
all others)
ii. They are doing this in the name of trying to open the space for another form of life, indeed many other forms of life
(much like the Zapatistsas)
iii. The real limit in this discourse (poststructuralism/postmodernism) is that it has a difficult time articulating a theory of
resistance—it hasn’t caught up in practice to the radicality of its theoretical critique

9. H&N’s Problem with Postcolonialism

a. Postcolonialist theory, inspired heavily by Fanon’s work (BSWM and WE) and Said’s Orientalism, suffers from a similar kind of
problem according to H&N
b. Let’s look quickly at Said (and Bhabha, since H&N focus on him) to get a sense of what H&N see as the chief limit to this
critical framework
c. First, what does Said mean by “Orientalism”?
d. It is a series of discourses, institutions, and epistemological/ontological frameworks (Foucault) that help Western Europeans to
make sense of and justify the colonization of various Others (the so-called Asian East, the Islamic countries and cultures, the pre-
contact Americas, and so on)
e. Orientalism proceeds by way of:
i. Creating sharp binary differences between the West and its Others
ii. Making non-empirical, fabricated claims about the customs and practices of non-Western cultures
iii. Legitimating the domination and oppression of these non-Western cultures
iv. Portraying the non-Western world as timeless (think of the “ahistorical” peoples), exotic (these people belong to a
“dark,” “incomprehensible” world), belonging to other “races” or “breeds” (think of Kant’s racial categories), having
stereotypical gender traits (submissive females, but also feminized males), and degenerate (lazy, stupid, lustful,
promiscuous)
v. Such a people are clearly in need of “our” help!
f. Now, Said is trying to delimit the “discourse” of Orientalism and show how it functions
i. But much as with H&N’s Empire, it end up looking like a behemoth with no outside
ii. How does one resist the imposition of Orientalism and its institutions and practices on a culture?
10. This is where Bhabha’s work comes in
a. He agrees with Said’s general description of colonialism and Orientalism:
i. “The objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of
racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction” (LC, 70)
 b. But Bhabha believes that resistance is not difficult to understand here
i. Orientalism is an impossible project—it is as impossible as the project of achieving one’s gender once and for all
ii. What the West hopes to find in the East and in its various others, it never quite finds
iii. What it actually finds is concrete Others who resist its hegemony and imperialism, who live alternative forms of life
that are quite remarkable, who can learn (with astonishing rapidity!) Western languages and practices and yet still reject the
Western way of life
iv. In other words, Orientalism has always already failed due to massive resistance . . . hence its constant performativity of
its hierarchical and binary identity categories and its constant violence
11. So, much like the postmodernists are showing us the ontological framework that opens the West, Bhabha and Said are showing us the
ontological and institutional framework that grounds European colonialism
a. They do so because they believe that is where the real enemy lies
b. Bhabha and Said are definitely critics of global capitalism and Empire, but they would see Empire as emerging out of
colonialism and Western metaphysics
c. Marxists like H&N, by contrast, believe that Western metaphysics and colonialism emerge out of capitalism and the economy
d. Hence, they think that Bhabha’s notion of the enemy and his ideas about alternatives to Empire don’t quite get to the heart of the
matter (see p. 145)
e. H&N argue that Empire is not neo-colonialism but something new (of course, this might again be equivocation; Bhabha does
think what we have going on today is neo-colonialism, but he obviously doesn’t mean a new version of the nation-State variety of
colonialism)
12. We have a chicken and egg problem
a. Which comes first: “World” (in the Heideggerian sense, postmodernism, postcolonialism) or the economy?
b. You are supposed to pick, and H&N want you to pick the economy
c. If you pick incorrectly, you mistake effects (hybridity, difference) for causes
d. And what you think constitutes resistance to the system or lies outside of it (local cultures, hybridity, etc.) actually is within the
system and doesn’t disrupt it
e. Of course, I would suggest you don’t choose! It might be the case that world and the economy are co-constitutive . . .
f. And it might also be the case that what constitutes “world” here has not been fully fleshed out . . .

13. Assignment for Next Class

a. Empire, 240-79 (we’re moving ahead to get back on schedule)
b. Let’s skip the recommended reading, as these are some very dense and important pages to get through

14. Thus far:

a. We’re currently in the midst of working through H&N’s analysis of Empire’s power structures
b. We saw that the visible mechanisms of power (military, police, regulatory agencies—in short MNCs, the more powerful nation-
States, and their repressive apparatuses) are supplemented by a less visible, more subtle, more basic, and more insidious mode of
power: control
c. In control societies (Deleuze), subjects are constituted in relation to networks of control that infuse every aspect of social and
personal life, leaving seemingly no outside to power
d. Rather than disciplinary institutions (schools, factories, prisons, hospitals, military, etc.) that you enter and exit, you are
constantly caught up in networks of control
e. This notion of control is inspired by and builds off of the Situationist concept of the spectacle society—our main topic for today
15. Before getting there, we need to understand what H&N have been trying to demonstrate over the past several sections
a. To put it in the briefest terms possible: H&N are trying to demonstrate that other approaches to understanding contemporary
power are outmoded
i. SRN: admirable as a stand against violence but tend to reproduce some of the problems of nation-State nationalism
ii. Postmodernism: misunderstand the logic of Empire (not binary or hierarchy) and overlooks the radical underside of
Modernity (discovery of immanence) in the name of the search for a radical outside to modernity
iii. Postcolonialism: admirable for its critique of the repressive effects of colonialism, but caught up in a search for an
outside to Europe and the West
b. Given these kinds of misunderstandings of the “enemy” (Empire), it follows for H&N that their (the groups above) approaches
to resistance are equally outmoded
i. Trying to resist from a space outside of the West and outside of Empire is not the solution (this usually devolves into a
kind of localism over and against Empire’s globalizing tendencies)
ii. H&N believe the liberatory path lies in accelerating Empire’s globalizing linkages, taking the global assemblages it
forms and reorienting them around the well being of the multitude
c. Again, remember that a distinction can be made here between strategies for resistance and the development of alternative forms
of life
 i. Very few thinkers and activists in the above groups would deny the importance of globally linked resistance where it
can be accomplished
ii. One question is whether the forms of life that might emerge beyond Empire will necessarily develop along those same
circuits
iii. Another might be that the problems on the ground in particular areas might be irreducibly local and require a double
approach (on the local level and on the level of Empire)
iv. Just things to keep in mind as we proceed

16. By working through the Situationists, we can:

a. gain a better sense of how power circulates in advanced capitalist societies (a model, logic, and rhythm that is increasingly
sweeping the globe),
b. and as such we can gain a better sense of what it would take to resist power
i. The Situationists, from an H&N-style perspective, are quite helpful in understanding how power circulates but less
helpful in terms of developing strategies of resistance
c. Building off of the notions of the spectacle society and control society, H&N will show how production and consumption flow
through the spectacle and control (Part III) and then will analyze the possibilities for resistance today (Part IV)

17. The Society of the Spectacle

a. Debord’s work is representative of an influential strain of Marxism from (primarily) France called Situationism
i. It further develops the analysis of commodity fetishism we saw in Capital and Lukacs’s analysis of that topic in HCC
ii. According to Debord, no longer are our societies primarily marked by an “immense accumulation of commodities,” but
instead in advanced capitalist countries we have an immense accumulation of spectacles
iii. Yes, we have and buy commodities by the truck- and boat-loads and we still have a fetishistic relationship to them, but
what we really relate to now, where we find our most fundamental mode of being, is the spectacle
iv. So, we’ve moved from inter-human relationships, to commodity fetishism, to the spectacle society (to the attention
society perhaps?)
b. What is the spectacle?
i. Start simply: it includes the media and marketing/advertising, most obviously
ii. Now think more broadly: it is all of the mechanisms whereby consumption is directed and controlled along certain
channels
iii. This means that the spectacle is found primarily in the media and in the marketing bubble that surrounds us daily—but
it is also found in all of the ideological apparatuses that produce us as consuming subjects
1. Education (think of how marketing logic and consumption have infiltrated the university at every level)
2. Politics (brand Obama)
3. Films, TV, music—they are all built on spectacle/marketing logic and are themselves used to market products
4. Search engines, email, social networking sites, tickers along the bottom of TVs, billboards
5. Activism sold through celebrities and cool lifestyles; green consumerism
6. The list is endless
iv. The simplest way to think of the spectacle society is one in which you are caught in a marketing bubble that bedazzles
you and wherein the commodity form is nearly the only source of meaning, relation, and identity
1. Pre-spectacle societies bombarded consumers with commodities, too, but there were other competing forces
for one’s loyalty, affiliation, and attention (family, religion, news, politics)
2. But now spectacle-commodity-consumer,-marketing logic has infiltrated and taken over every sphere of
society
3. Society has become totally administered (H&A) and one-dimensional (Marcuse)
c. Now, everyone in the poorest, lower, and lower-middle classes knows that the spectacle and consumer society don’t deliver on
their promises
i. The commodities and lifestyles pushed at us aren’t available to the vast majority of people
ii. But that matters little—the genius of the spectacle society is that it allows you to be part of the spectacle anyway
iii. You can go shopping at the mall (but not buy or buy cheaply), you can go to Panera and sit and use the free Wifi (but
not eat or just pilfer the free samples), you can blog and dream of becoming widely read (while remaining unknown in your
bedroom), you can construct a phony manic personality for yourself with your FB and Twitter updates (who ever tweets
about popping Cymbalta?)
iv. If all of that fails, go deeply into debt (CCs, mortgages, HELOCs, student loans, car loans, etc.) and fake it ‘til you
make it
v. This is how the spectacle society pacifies us as consumers—consumption, celebrity status, belonging, etc. as reward for
the fortunate few or dreams and the promise of such things as future reward (if we just work hard enough)

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

23. The Ecology of Capital (269ff.)

a. Nature is what H&N call the “noncapitalist environment,” and it refers to both the “non-human” natural world and human bodies
i. Traditional political economy (from Smith and Ricardo up through Marx) has paid little attention to nature as such
ii. The economist’s traditional assumption is that:
 1. production takes place against the backdrop of scarcity of resources but . . .
2. there are no real worries that human production will lead to outright environmental catastrophe
iii. However, with exponential population growth, increased affluence, and massively increased technological impact in the
past 150 years, such catastrophe becomes possible
b. Marxists (such as Luxemburg) were fairly quick to realize that capitalism’s advanced form had ecological limits
i. And yet, despite the predictions, there has been no (worldwide) ecological collapse
ii. Capitalism seems to have found a way to continue on, even when it runs up against natural limits
c. For H&N, capital has in fact brought nearly everything natural onto the market already—there is no longer (much of) an outside
to capitalist markets
i. It has averted immediate catastrophe by learning to work intensively with that which it has captured
ii. Rather than using nature (both the natural environment and human bodies) up and throwing it away, it is learning to
work on it intensively—working it over, re-working it, squeezing ever more out of it
d. Now, this analysis is extraordinarily quick, and seems to overlook the fact that many of Empire’s wealthier “agents” would be
happy to run the economy right off the ecological cliff (IBGYBG)
i. And it also misses the fact that for many local communities, the local ecology has been changed so much that they and
their bioregions have already been run off the cliff
1. There is an entire field of “environmental justice studies” devoted to such analysis
2. It shows how capitalism and its environmental effects disproportionately and negatively affect poor and
marginalized communities, e.g., the poor in the US, minority groups, women, indigenous peoples on US
reservations
ii. And this doesn’t even take into account capitalism’s effects on the so-called nonhuman world
1. Is an economy that kills tens of billions of animals per year and that exterminates species at a rate that is 1,000
times faster than the so-called “background rate” not in serious trouble?
iii. Global capitalism accomplishes this kind of human and non-human devastation at astonishing rates today
1. So it is “miraculously healthy” (to use H&N’s terms) only in local pockets
2. It has already massively overshot ecological and human community barriers in various places throughout the
US and abroad
e. So, H&N are proposing that the contemporary, post-industrial, post-Fordist, post-factory economy becomes an information
economy because it has to find new ways to expand without massively overshooting ecological limits

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

24. New social movements

a. H&N see the “new social movements” (against racism, sexism, speciesism, homophobia, and so on) as being assaults on the
“disciplinary” regimes of the modern economic era (from the New Deal to the 1960s when they erupted)
i. We’ll talk more about the economics next time, but for now, it’s important to note that once again, with the new social
movements, people are discovering their shared, immanent productive powers
ii. The new social movements didn’t want to accede to the status quo, with its mind-numbing conformity, nuclear family
structure, 40 hour work week, bourgeois lifestyle, and so on—this was seen as a kind of living death
iii. See p. 273: “The social struggles not only raised the costs of reproduction and the social wage . . .”
b. Here, people are contesting the old ways of living and trying to develop ways of living otherwise
i. Here, as in Situationism, there was plenty of refusal, walking away, dropping out, radical exits
ii. They are experimenting with new forms of cooperation, communication, and production that are going beyond the
nation-State model of identity
iii. Trans-national linkages are being formed, and old disciplinary modes of production are being questions
c. And here is where hyper-global capitalism, Empire as we are studying it, first emerges
 i. Capitalism is in a bind—it needs our productive forces, but we are walking away from the machine of capture
(industrial, factory, disciplinary) in large numbers
ii. What is more, we are forming circuits of cooperation and production outside the flows, logic, and rhythm of capital
iii. For H&N, “the emerging counterculture highlighted the social value of cooperation and communication”
1. Leave to the side for the moment that the antagonisms (see Laclau and Mouffe) that are created here within
and between these NSMs are massive and don’t fit this narrative very well
iv. So, it is the countercultural multitude and the various international revolutionary movements of the 1960s and ‘70s that
create Empire’s “infrastructure”
v. We dug the initial trenches, we made the initial assemblages, we linked bodies more and more across boundaries and
borders in stepping away from nation-State capitalism and trying to build new worlds
vi. Empire emerges from this context as a scavenger and dominator of the immanent autonomy of the multitude:

“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

25. Assignment for Next Class

a. Empire, 325-50
b. Recommended: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium”
c. http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpdeleuze7.htm

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

27. Informatization of the economy

a. H&N are describing what is sometimes called the knowledge economy, service economy, post-industrial economy, and so on
 i. These are different names that seek to name a rupture in production and consumption, a rupture that delimits the
transition from:
1. An economy dominated by modernization (which is to say, industrial production)
a. This economy is characterized by scientific management (Taylorism), factory production (Fordism),
and heavy emphasis on manufacturing (the “golden era” of US capitalism)
2. To an economy dominated by post-modernization, or informatization
a. The key characteristics here are an increase in services as opposed to goods and the production of
knowledge/information as opposed to material commodities
ii. The informatization or postmodernization of the economy does not mean modernization/manufacturing has disappeared
or could completely disappear
1. It continues, both in the dominant and non-dominant economic countries
2. It increasingly gets outsourced to non-dominant countries
3. But the main point is that the dominant flows of global capital are sliding away from these domains
iii. The inverse is also true
1. The postmodernization of the economy is taking place primarily in the dominant countries but has a significant
presence in non-dominant countries as well
2. To attract the big flows of capital, countries need to make themselves attractive to the information economy
iv. And just as the factory/modern/disciplinary/industrial society partially produces a certain kind of subject (the
disciplined subject of Foucault’s middle works) . . .
v. . . . so the information society produces its own kind of subject
vi. See p. 289: “Just as modernization did in a previous era, postmodernization”
1. In terms of its (largely) repressive aspects, we’ve called it a control society (à la Deleuze and Foucault) and a
spectacle society (à la Debord and the Situationists)
2. In terms of its (largely) productive aspects, H&N call the postmodern subject a cyborg, a subject plugged into
informational networks and exchanges
a. Haraway being one of their main theorists on this issue; there is a whole post-humanist discourse on
this topic, with N. Katherine Hayles and Cary Wolfe as well

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

28. Sociology of immaterial labor

a. To examine the postmodern economy in a bit more detail, H&N focus on the way that market data are used
i. From supply-and-demand slow feedback loops in Fordist factory production to Toyotism with its (near instantaneous)
creation-on-demand
1. Wal-Mart’s highly technical, computerized distribution model might be an even better example today
ii. This change in dealing with market data/information is supplemented by an increasing turn to immaterial labor
1. H&N offer their definition on the bottom of p. 290
2. See: “The service sectors of the economy present a richer model of productive communication . . .”
a. This kind of labor takes the form of symbolic-analytical work (see Reich quotation on bottom of 291;
highly paid problem-solving, consulting-style work)
b. And affective labor (bottom of 292), by which they mean services that take place on and in the body
(e.g., health services)
b. So, as you look at this analysis of the info economy, we need to ask what’s at stake here?
i. The point of the analysis is to underscore that the economy has produced the material conditions for the kind of
“universal proletarian” revolution that Marx had called for
ii. Marx was, in essence, issuing an ethico-political call before the material conditions for universal revolt were actually in
place
iii. Today, with the new modes of subjectivity formation and production, the material conditions are as ripe as ever
iv. See p. 294, middle: “Today productivity, wealth, and the creation of social . . .”
v. These points are underscored in the following sections on networks and the internet—let’s save that material for next
time when we discuss D&G on capitalism

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”

30. In other words, we have a tension or struggle going on between:

a. the production of a new kind of subjectivity and common terrain
b. and its capture (in labor) and theft (via privatization) by the Imperial machine

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 . . .

33. Assignment for Next Class

a. N. B. No class Tuesday—this is one of my designated furlough days
b. For next Thursday, please read Empire, 353-69
c. Recommended: Giorgio Agamben, Means without End, Chapters 1 (Form of Life) and 4 (What Is a Camp?)
i. http://www.scribd.com/doc/22307626/Agamben-Means-Without-End
ii. We’ll use Agamben’s ζωή/βίος distinction and naked life as a contrast to H&N’s notions of general intellect and
biopower
iii. If you have read Homo Sacer, these two chapters are early versions of some of that material
 34. Thus far, we’ve seen the general outlines of the dominant forms of sovereignty and the dominant forms of the economy that have
emerged within H&N’s account of Empire
a. They argue that the dominant form of sovereignty is control, i.e., the control societies that emerge out of the disciplinary
societies that precede them
b. They argue that the dominant form of the economy is postmodern, i.e., post-industrial, or the service-informational-knowledge-
immaterial economy
i. The argument we have been examining suggests that the postmodern economy emerges in response to:
1. certain ecological limits and
2. the attempt to capture the revolutionary energies of the NSMs
ii. H&N have also suggested that the key obstacles to resistance against Empire are:
1. the neoliberal, privatizing capture of the commons
2. the near-complete capture of the political domain by spectacle logic
c. So, H&N have drawn a very mixed picture of our current situation
i. On the one hand, they are enthusiastic about the massive increase in material connections that our productive powers
have brought about
ii. On the other hand, they acknowledge that these connections are continually captured and channeled by a single logic, a
single world, a single machine: Empire
d. How to break out of, or perhaps accelerate, this Imperial logic and open up the space for additional logics, machines, and
worlds?
i. That is their question

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

37. D&G’s ontology of life and practice

a. For D&G, thought (philosophy) belongs to and is put into motion by “life,” understood as the plane of immanence that underlies
all concrete, individual subjects and institutions
b. So, thought is not about individuals or subjects or institutions—it is about the “life” that lies behind and “animates” individuals
c. Now “life” here is not life as we typically understand it
i. Rather, it is closer to what Nietzsche calls the Dionysian, the play of forces, the monster of energy (“And do you know
what ‘the world’ is to me?”)
ii. It is closer to what Derrida calls différance; what Levinas calls the il y a; what Heidegger calls “the Nothing” that lies
between Being (world) and beings (concrete entities); what Bataille calls NOTHING—just to name a few other sources
close to D&G’s context
iii. You can find parallel concepts in various registers and discourses (most of them non-“Western”)

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 . . .

39. D&G on capitalism

a. Now, how does capitalism fit into D&G’s ontology and notion of practice?
i. First off, capitalism is life, it is one slice of the flow of life that lies behind subjects and institutions
ii. Indeed, it is, from D&G’s perspective, one of the most impressive deterritorializing forces we’ve ever seen
iii. It tears everything and everyone away from their stable territories
iv. So, much like Marx and H&N, D&G marvel at capital’s machinations and its ability to get rid of petty, reactive
identities and nationalisms, etc.
v. In a related way, they marvel at the creative, connective aspects of capitalism and the way it links bodies in ever larger
networks
b. But here’s the rub—the problem with capitalism is that it’s not monstrous enough, not “life”-like enough, not de-territorializing
enough, not “capitalist” enough
i. Capitalism is a massive, vital decoding machine . . . that ends up recoding everything along a single “axiom,” logic, and
territory: the axiom of profit
ii. It makes massive connections but knows only one kind of connection—the semi-connective but also deeply toxic nexus
of profit
iii. So, capitalism as a form of life gives rise to a whole host of cooperative and connected subjects and institutions, but
then immediately codes them along the mono-dimensional lines of the capitalist logic of profit

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

40. And, now, the breaking point with H&N . . .

a. Even if there is no program for this kind of practice, there are strategies for flourishing
i. H&N’s dominant strategy is to interpret all struggles in terms of a common enemy (Empire) and to unite people around
their shared, immanent productive powers
ii. Communism is the name they give to the practices and worlds that are organized around those shared “commons” and
powers
iii. D&G take a different tack—they argue for “becomings” of various sorts, a rhizomatic linking of minoritarian
movements (that’ll make sense in a moment!)
b. Becoming-minor (minoritarian logics)
i. In general, D&G think that life can never be fully coded and captured; even in a one-dimensional socio-economic
machine like capitalism, there are lines of flight everywhere
ii. In other words, there are other worlds and openings to other worlds that constantly interrupt us (yes, even in
control/spectacle societies—that article was just one brief piece by Deleuze toward the end of his life)
iii. Joyful bodies jump on those lines of flight and explore them
iv. This means engaging the monster in different ways, connecting up with it through different eyes, bodies, and organisms
(becoming-woman, becoming-animal, becoming-ecosystem, thinking like a mountain)
 41. From D&G’s perspective, what seems to be the only hope in pushing back against capitalism (D&G will even speak of destroying it) is:
a. finding ways to link and ally these other, minor (meaning non-dominant) spaces, struggles, and worlds but not in terms of the
proletariat or class struggle
i. That kind of Marxist reductionism is dead for D&G
b. Quick side note: Laclau and Mouffe speak in similar terms as D&G, and are explicitly “post-Marxist”
i. They try to link various minor struggles (the NSMs we talked about previously) so as to “hegemonize the public
sphere”
ii. But notice that this notion of hegemony is aimed at the State and at markets—in other words, it is ultimately a State
socialism that retain markets
c. D&G have no interest in the State or markets or linking minor spaces so as to hegemonize those institutions—they want to
destroy those institutions (they are essentially capitalist)
i. But they do want to link minor struggles, and they do so in the name of engaging with and expanding “life” as much as
is possible
ii. That is their “norm,” their ethics or principle, their vision of “the Good” (if you desire one)

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

43. But what about H&N? Are they anarchists?

a. Remember that for them, too, “big government is over”
b. They seem to stand for the autonomous development of the multitude and the absolute abolition of the state (perhaps even
markets, too!)
c. But they refuse to be called anarchists and insist on the label of communism
d. Why so? Because their “norm” or guiding principle is not quite the same as most anarchists or D&G
e. It is important to note that H&N write on behalf of human beings understood as cooperative producers (remember, that is what
marks us off from the entire non-human world in Marx)
f. The whole point of their project is to take back our shared, immanent productive powers and commonly govern our own
production
g. In other words, they are good Marxists
h. H&N are refusing “work,” understood as wage labor, exploitation, and expropriation of the commons—but in the name of
producing otherwise, which is to say, in an autonomous “meaningful” fashion

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

1. Assignment for Next Class

a. Please read Empire, pp. 370-92
b. No additional readings (I was unable to dl the Gramsci text I wanted to use—plus we have too much material on tap today
anyway . . .)
c. Philosophy at Middlesex U
d. N.B.: For those of you who are concerned about the future of the Humanities and philosophy here at CSUF, there is a group of
students who have been setting up forums and engaging in various actions/discussions:
e. http://re-humanization.weebly.com/index.html

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

The various names of the Good:

More becomings, more life (D&G)
Autonomous production beyond wage labor (H&N)
Non-productive expenditure and enjoyment (Bataille)
Non-statal potentiality, play, and the irreparable (Agamben)

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 . . .

7. The Good for Agamben is:

a. human potentiality (creativity and invention, the ground of what Agamben calls a form-of-life)
b. and human relation (community, love, being-with each other in multiple modes)
c. that takes place in a world seen as irreparable (more on that in a moment) . . .
i. Agamben suggests that such relation takes place only beyond and outside of sovereignty (i.e., beyond the State and the
Law)—why so?
ii. Simply put, because sovereignty is at bottom pernicious and at odds with genuine human potentiality and relation
d. He argues that the West can best be characterized as a sovereign political machine that generates “properly” political human
beings over and against the non-human, apolitical realm
i. This machines channels us (at least those of us who are citizens of dominant nation-States) from the realm of merely
living beings (ζωη, zōē) to the realm of properly political subjects and citizens (βίος, bios)
e. This process happens by way of life coming under the sway of the sovereign—a mixed blessing (one is saved from death at the
hands of the sovereign only through massive control of one’s life, i.e., biopolitics and control society)
i. And this process is never complete or assured—certain individuals (ex- or non-citizens or nonhumans of various sorts)
always find themselves in the space of “plain” or “naked” life, outside of sovereign “protection”
f. And yet, these outsiders are still ultimately within the purview of sovereign power
i. It is sovereign power that has placed them “outside”—as such, they are labeled by the sovereign as “sacred,” or
sacrifice-able
g. So, as long as the logic of sovereignty (State, Law) holds sway, all human beings are potentially reducible to sacred life, naked
life, “mere” zōē (as viewed by sovereignty)
i. Whether you are on the “right” side of the line (remember, neither side is particularly desirable in the long run) is a
contingent matter
ii. Whether you end up in “the camp” is a contingent matter
iii. But the line and the camp themselves are necessary conditions and consequences of sovereignty and its logic of
exception
h. Thus, it is sovereignty (the State, the Law) that produces naked life—so naked life is not simply the hero of Agamben’s story
(contra H&N)
i. The heroes of Agamben’s story are those who re-appropriate their potentiality, who learn to move outside the logic of
the sovereign-anthropological machine and suspend its logic and practice
ii. The political point for Agamben is not to bring everyone under the sway of the sovereign as bios (citizenship for all!)
iii. Rather, it’s to stop sovereignty altogether, to stop the State, the Law, the anthropolgical machine, the bios-ification
process
iv. For it is beyond the sway of sovereignty, beyond the State that “the Good” comes into Being, that potentiality and “the
coming community” form and re-form
i. There are three key concepts at work for Agamben here: potentiality, play, and the irreparable
 i. Potentiality you know from existentialism—it is the search for and affirmation of relation, exposure, creation,
invention, elbow room
ii. Play is a way of putting potentiality into practice, moving in, through, and outside the machine, beyond production,
beyond ends (means without end)
1. Recall Fielding’s paper on artwork in airport—but not for the establishment of a public sphere! Much as with
D&G, we already have too much “communication” for Agamben . . .
2. Rather the task for art/philosophy/resistance is the creation of a space for play beyond ends/production . . .
and nothing more from Agamben’s perspective
iii. Play suspends the logic of sovereignty (sacred, sacrifice) through rendering things profane
1. See quotations #4 and #5
iv. Play is supplemented by a new ontology and experience of the world as irreparable, beyond repair (work, production,
domesticating to suit our needs)
1. The world is encountered as being outside of and beyond any human world, beyond meaning (whether human
or divine), beyond the commodity
2. See “The Irreparable” from The Coming Community
v. Agamben uses religious language to describe this irreparable world; we encounter it only “after the Messiah returns”—
but he is referring to this world here
1. The problem is that is difficult to accomplish the ontological and practical shift in perspective required to see
this world
2. It is the same world we inhabit now, just a little different
3. Nietzsche glimpsed this slightly different world, in a spirit of cheerfulness and overwhelming gratitude, the
“morning after” the death of God in #343 of The Gay Science
4. Agamben helps us catch a glimpse of it with the assistance of a rabbi and a revolutionary; see “Halos” from
The Coming Community, p. 52
j. In brief, Agamben is describing a “coming” human community that inhabits the world in its irreparable form, that finds ways to
play in it beyond sovereignty (State) and beyond production (work, whether autonomous or not)
i. This is summed up nicely in ME, pp. 8-9 (bottom, “A political life . . .”)

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?

Supplementary Quotations for Lecture

4/29/2010

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)

1. Assignment for Next Class

a. Please finish Empire
b. Recommended: The Invisible Committee, “Introduction to Civil War”
c. http://tarnac9.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/introcivilwar1.pdf
i. It’s a booklet, so you have to hop from side to side and follow the numbers (only fragments—not complete)
ii. If you’d like, we can also briefly discuss The Coming Insurrection
iii. http://tarnac9.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/thecominsur_booklet.pdf
iv. I’d suggest focusing on the sections “Get Going!” and following to see an alternative to H&N’s response to Empire

2. Recap
a. Last time we distinguished between three distinct aspects of H&N’s project:
i. Empireresistance to Empirethe 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)

4. Resistance for H&N

a. Parts 1-3 of the book have suggested that Empire is an inescapable behemoth that captures the multitude’s vitality and channels it
according to a single imperative (profit maximization, the logic of global capital, etc.)
i. The imperial powers of sovereignty are described in extraordinarily frightening and repressive terms (a global menace that
cannot be outgunned and that has penetrated our bodies and minds)
ii. And the imperial production of human subjectivity is described in equally frightening and repressive terms (control,
spectacle, etc.)
iii. We have also been told ad nauseam that there is no clean “Outside” to Empire, no space uncontaminated by its
machinations to which we can escape and rebuild ourselves and our worlds
b. So, the prospects for resistance look very bad indeed
i. “But where the danger is, grows/The saving power also” (Hölderlin)
ii. “Where there is power there is resistance” (Foucault)
c. Much like Foucault, H&N think that power is not univocal—Empire’s power homogenize us . . . but not fully successfully
i. Foucault tends to find resistance “everywhere” because he thinks power is both repressive and productive; moreover, we are
constituted through multiple vectors of power than can be played off and against each other
ii. H&N would certainly buy portions of that analysis
iii. This is why they talk about Empire constantly being in crisis because it is subject to constant antagonisms of various sorts
iv. See bottom of p. 385: “Antagonisms to exploitation”
 d. But the problem is that Empire is becoming more and more the only “force” or power we encounter
i. So they take a different route for theorizing resistance: following D&G, they argue that resistance is ontologically basic
ii. You have to descend to the ontological level of production to see that Empire is second, the creation and production of the
multitude is first
e. The multitude is always producing, creating, innovating, cooperating, sharing, and so on—Empire would shut down without the
multitude’s production
i. And . . . resistance is nothing more than doing these same things otherwise
ii. The question, then, is not: What about our capacity (agency) to resist? Hell, we’re overflowing with that capacity! It just
gets captured and channeled
iii. The question, rather, is: What, precisely, is standing in the way of us producing otherwise? That is, what is standing in the
way of us re-appropriating our agency, our autonomy and our creative, vital, productive powers?
iv. Two things stand in the way:
1. TINA attitudes
2. Benjamin/Agamben/neo-Situationists and their messianism, mystical withdrawal, and quietistic refusal of the status
quo
a. Both seem to admit powerlessness in the face of Empire
v. The antidote: starting from the ontological perspective of the creativity and productive juices of the multitude! (this is
Negri’s central point in his response to Agamben)
1. This is explained (in H&N-speak) on p. 387: “We can answer the question of how . . .”
vi. There is hardly a more important passage in the book for understanding H&N’s perspective than p. 388, middle: “When our
analysis is firmly situated . . .”

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?

6. Assignment for Next Class

a. 5/11 is a furlough day, so no class
b. 5/13 we’ll review for the final exam
c. If someone sends me a reminder, I’ll put all of the notes up this weekend
d. Papers are due on the last day of finals

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 . . .

9. The Invisible Committee

a. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyi2qNskJc
b. The group is anonymous, but what we know about them is that they are mostly French philosophy grad students who have left the
academy, formed a commune, and have freeshares of various sorts (we’ll be respectful and leave them to their anonymity)
c. They have been accused of some minor sabotage and have been targeted by the police and defended by major intellectuals (Agamben
being the most prominent)

10. Introduction to Civil War

a. Like H&N, the IC argue that Empire annihilates difference through a process of “omnivorous immanentization”
i. In short, it takes all forms of actual relations and differences between and among people and subjects them to Empire’s
immanent logic and rhythm
b. But the IC have a slightly different set of ideas on the ontological basis for resisting Empire and the Good that lies on the other side
of Empire
 i. They begin with the idea that small communes, groupings, collectives, ensembles are the basic modes of existence for
human beings (very different vision than the global multitude)
ii. We come to be within a particular form-of-life, to borrow Wittgenstein’s turn of phrase that Agamben and the IC employ
iii. This is their ontological starting point (their version of H&N’s vital, productive multitude)
c. And rather than seeking a linked, unified global multitude that recovers its shared, creative powers, the IC call for a re-establishment
of ethics and politics, friendship and enmity, love and antagonism between forms of life
i. What capitalism does is link all forms of life on the same immanent plane of production-consumption (thereby eliminating
both friendship and enmity)
ii. What the IC argue needs to occur is a flourishing of differences between and among worlds
iii. Sometimes this flourishing will happen by way of communes and forms of life being linked in friendship
iv. Sometimes this flourishing will occur through antagonism, where groups go their separate ways
v. In other words, like Laclau and Mouffe (and Agamben), the IC think antagonisms are basic to the human condition—and it
is learning how to deal with them without annihilating each other that is the political task
vi. The ethical task is learning to link communes, link forms of life, form alliances, allowing worlds to jointly flourish
d. So, the Good here is the forming of community and linking of forms of life through friendship
i. Forms of life, remember, are already the whole package of things we talked about in Agamben (a human being who lives
through potentiality, playing in an irreparable world)
ii. So, the Good for the IC is the expansion of human potentiality and community

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)

12. There is no happy ending or grand synthesis with the IC

a. They do not seek to end all antagonisms between human beings
b. And they do not think there is any way to make the State go away quietly and non-violently
c. They put their trust in friendships, communes, and creative ways of resisting Empire and sharing the commons and let the rest fall
where it may

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