Empire by Antonio Negri, Professor Michael Hardt Page B

really the new
    biopolitical structuring ofthe world.20
    The most complete figure ofthis world is presented from the
    monetary perspective. From here we can see a horizon ofvalues
    and a machine ofdistribution, a mechanism ofaccumulation and
    a means ofcirculation, a power and a language. There is nothing,
    no ‘‘naked life,’’ no external standpoint, that can be posed outside
    this field permeated by money; nothing escapes money. Production
    and reproduction are dressed in monetary clothing. In fact, on the
    global stage, every biopolitical figure appears dressed in monetary
    garb. ‘‘Accumulate, accumulate! This is Moses and the Prophets!’’21
    The great industrial and financial powers thus produce not
    only commodities but also subjectivities. They produce agentic
    subjectivities within the biopolitical context: they produce needs,
    social relations, bodies, and minds—which is to say, they produce
    producers.22 In the biopolitical sphere, life is made to work for
    production and production is made to work for life. It is a great
    hive in which the queen bee continuously oversees production and
    reproduction. The deeper the analysis goes, the more it finds at
    increasing levels ofintensity the interlinking assemblages ofinter-
    active relationships.23
    One site where we should locate the biopolitical production
    oforder is in the immaterial nexuses ofthe production oflanguage,
    communication, and the symbolic that are developed by the com-
    munications industries.24 The development ofcommunications net-
    works has an organic relationship to the emergence ofthe new
    world order—it is, in other words, effect and cause, product and
    producer. Communication not only expresses but also organizes
    the movement ofglobalization. It organizes the movement by multi-
    plying and structuring interconnections through networks. It ex-
    presses the movement and controls the sense and direction ofthe
    imaginary that runs throughout these communicative connections;
    B I O P O L I T I C A L P R O D U C T I O N
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    in other words, the imaginary is guided and channeled within the
    communicative machine. What the theories ofpower ofmodernity
    were forced to consider transcendent, that is, external to productive
    and social relations, is here formed inside, immanent to the produc-
    tive and social relations. Mediation is absorbed within the productive
    machine. The political synthesis ofsocial space is fixed in the space
    ofcommunication. This is why communications industries have
    assumed such a central position. They not only organize production
    on a new scale and impose a new structure adequate to global space,
    but also make its justification immanent. Power, as it produces,
    organizes; as it organizes, it speaks and expresses itselfas authority.
    Language, as it communicates, produces commodities but moreover
    creates subjectivities, puts them in relation, and orders them. The
    communications industries integrate the imaginary and the symbolic
    within the biopolitical fabric, not merely putting them at the service
    ofpower but actually integrating them into its very functioning.25
    At this point we can begin to address the question ofthe
    legitimation ofthe new world order. Its legitimation is not born of the previously existing international accords nor ofthe functioning
    ofthe first, embryonic supranational organizations, which were
    themselves created through treaties based on international law. The
    legitimation ofthe imperial machine is born at least in part ofthe
    communications industries, that is, ofthe transformation ofthe new
    mode ofproduction into a machine. It is a subject that produces
    its own image ofauthority. This is a form oflegitimation that rests
    on nothing outside itselfand is reproposed ceaselessly by developing
    its own languages ofself-validation.
    One further consequence should be treated on the basis of
    these premises. Ifcommunication is one ofthe hegemonic sectors
    ofproduction and acts over