Free Empire by Antonio Negri, Professor Michael Hardt Page A

modern system ofsovereign nation-states. The impossibility,
    however, ofgrasping the genesis ofEmpire and its virtual figure
    with any ofthe old instruments ofjuridical theory, which were
    deployed in the realist, institutionalist, positivist, or natural right
    frameworks, should not force us to accept a cynical framework of
    pure force or some such Machiavellian position. In the genesis of
    Empire there is indeed a rationality at work that can be recognized
    not so much in terms ofthe juridical tradition but more clearly in
    the often hidden history of industrial management and the political
    uses oftechnology. (We should not forget here too that proceeding
    along these lines will reveal the fabric of class struggle and its
    institutional effects, but we will treat that issue in the next section.)
    This is a rationality that situates us at the heart ofbiopolitics and
    biopolitical technologies.
    B I O P O L I T I C A L P R O D U C T I O N
    41
    Ifwe wanted to take up again Max Weber’s famous three-
    part formula of the forms of legitimation of power, the qualitative
    leap that Empire introduces into the definition would consist in
    the unf
    oreseeable mixture of(1) elements typical oftraditional
    power, (2) an extension ofbureaucratic power that is adapted physi-
    ologically to the biopolitical context, and (3) a rationality defined
    by the ‘‘event’’ and by ‘‘charisma’’ that rises up as a power ofthe
    singularization of the whole and of the effectiveness of imperial
    interventions.35 The logic that characterizes this neo-Weberian per-
    spective would be functional rather than mathematical, and rhizo-
    matic and undulatory rather than inductive or deductive. It would
    deal with the management oflinguistic sequences as sets ofmachinic
    sequences ofdenotation and at the same time ofcreative, colloquial,
    and irreducible innovation.
    The fundamental object that the imperial relations of power
    interpret is the productive force of the system, the new biopolitical
    economic and institutional system. The imperial order is formed
    not only on the basis ofits powers ofaccumulation and global
    extension, but also on the basis ofits capacity to develop itselfmore
    deeply, to be reborn, and to extend itselfthroughout the biopolitical
    latticework ofworld society. The absoluteness ofimperial power
    is the complementary term to its complete immanence to the onto-
    logical machine ofproduction and reproduction, and thus to the
    biopolitical context. Perhaps, finally, this cannot be represented by
    a juridical order, but it nonetheless is an order, an order defined
    by its virtuality, its dynamism, and its functional inconclusiveness.
    The fundamental norm of legitimation will thus be established in
    the depths ofthe machine, at the heart ofsocial production. Social
    production and juridical legitimation should not be conceived as
    primary and secondary forces nor as elements of the base and super-
    structure, but should be understood rather in a state ofabsolute
    parallelism and intermixture, coextensive throughout biopolitical
    society. In Empire and its regime ofbiopower, economic produc-
    tion and political constitution tend increasingly to coincide.
    1.3
    A L T E R N A T I V E S W I T H I N E M P I R E
    Once embodied in the power ofthe workers’ councils, which must
    internationally supplant all other power, the proletarian movement
    becomes its own product, and this product is the producer itself.
    The producer is its own end. Only then is the spectacular negation
    oflife negated in turn.
    Guy Debord
    Now is the time offurnaces, and only light should be seen.
    Jose´ Martı´
    Flirting with Hegel, one could say that the construction
    ofEmpire is good in itself but not for itself. 1 One ofthe most powerful operations ofthe modern imperialist power structures was to drive
    wedges among the masses ofthe globe, dividing them into opposing
    camps, or really a myriad ofconflicting parties. Segments ofthe
    proletariat in the