Introduction

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault observes a historical shift of the operations of punishment. Sovereign power over life of its subjects were conducted as public events. The spectacle of the scaffold used the body as the major target of punishment. Yet, there was a paradigm shift in the 18th and 19th centuries where sovereign power was not conducted by the bloody hand of the executioner, but the body became an instrument to be used by a whole army of technicians who replaced the executioner. The condemned body on the scaffold shifted to a gentle way to punish.

This historical shift to disciplinary power focused not only on the body, but how to use the body as an instrument of control. The new technology of the body nevertheless did not stay within the grasp of sovereignty. Disciplinary power disseminated throughout the social realm. Various social institutions adopted the characteristics which controlled the body as an instrument and used it against it. The body that can be used, trained, and produce is an indispensable tool for capitalist production. Discipline essentially creates docile bodies ideal for the current mode of production for capitalism. Likewise, another pole of power developed insofar as the ability to regulate and control life itself. The power to control life through various technological mechanisms results in biopower. However, the ability to control life is confronted with resistance. Since life produces, life continually escapes its domains. Thus, in this paper I will argue that the constituent power of the multitude escapes dominant forms of power, and as a result has the potential to create an alternative world. In section one, I will show Foucault's argument of his analysis of power. In section two, I will show Negri's argument that the constituent power has the potential to create an alternative world. I will then give my conclusion.

Section One

In order to understand Negri's revolutionary turn to the democracy of the multitude, we must first begin with Foucault's analysis of power relations. Foucault warns that power is not something that one group has over another. One class does not have power over another. Power is not the conformity and subjugation of the rule of law. Power is not various institutions that demand a certain mode of behavior. This is not power itself, rather this is the forms in which power can be observed. It is local nexus of power relations.

On the other hand, power is a force which produces. Power functions as networks of immanent relations. “It seems to me that power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization, as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverse them” (Foucault, p.92). Power is that which operates in a circulation of relations which functions as part of a chain. Power is never localized, but on the contrary is constantly moving in a mobility of circuits where it is produced in each nexus of possible relations. Power is everywhere insofar it is immanent in the sphere where we are in a position to both submit and exercise it. “Power can achieve an effective command over the entire life of the population when it becomes an integral, vital function that every individual embraces and reactivates of his or her own accord” (Hardt & Negri, p. 24). Thus, power relays through individuals and is never exterior as a transcendent force.

Foucault warns that power is not determined in a binary code. Power does not operate in a neat conformity of set givens such as ruler/ruled, teacher/student, parent/child, or male/female. Power functions through a multiplicity of manifold relationships where points of tension will function in an infinitude of possibilities. Or in other words, where there is force there is resistance. There is a plurality of resistance that operate in non egalitarian relations. Resistance is not outside the relation of power. Resistance on the other hand is apart of the domain of power. Thus, its existences depends on the manifold relationships of power and resistance.

In the beginning of the 18th century, power focused on the relations of the body and life itself. Disciplinary power focusing on the body was the function “which assured the constant subjugation of its forces and imposed upon them a relation of docility-utility” (Foucault, p. 137). This age discovered that the body can be used, transformed, molded, trained and shaped in retail fashion. The docility of the body increased the probability for obedience, and utility for economic production. This discovery reached throughout the social body whereas the logic of discipline was a staple in various social institutions. Thus, the military barracks, the monastery, the school, the home, the prison, and the hospital all took on the same mechanisms for a logic of a disciplinary society.

In disciplinary society, space becomes localized, and enclosed. An individual can not moved from one disciplinary enclosure, without entering a similar disciplinary structure. The function of the hospital has its own function from a prison. However, the structural architecture is always basically the same. The disciplinary space is always basically cellular. In the hospital I might be localized in hospital walls, but likewise in the penal system I am enclosed in prison walls. The language might be particular to the institution, but nevertheless they operate both in the same manner insofar each individual has his own place which can be observed, isolated and mapped. “By assigning individual places it made possible the supervision of each individual and the simultaneously work of all” (Foucault, p. 147).

The anatomical-technological operation of disciplinary power produces the body retail. On the other hand, biopower produces and reproduces life wholesale. Whereas disciplinary power used the body as a machine, biopower is the production of life itself. Biopower operates and produces man not as a machine, but as a biological entity, or man as a living species. Biopower leads to a regulatory mechanism that controls the population. Since the body itself is life, and is the basis of biological operation, the deployment of biopower regulates the performance of various life functions. A healthy body is more productive than a sick body. Likewise, medicine, mortality, reproduction, etc can be controlled and regulated for the best possible efficiency for economic production.

Some biological functions are better than others. The function of child sexuality does not necessarily lead to any political-economic function. “The bourgeoisie is not interested in the sexuality of children, but it is interest in the system of power that controls the sexuality of children” (Foucault, p. 33). If certain biological functions are not efficient for the utility of the political economy, then it will be excluded or marginalized. Thus, the mad must be confined. Child sexuality is controlled. Unwanted pregnancy is controlled by science in the form of birth control. A contemporary example of the control of biological function is the screening of fetuses for genetic disorders. By detecting a potential genetic disease, the parents of the fetus can then have the option of destroying the fetus, and hence not burdening the state system with a potential unproductive citizen, or having the potential to pass down genetic disorders to future generations.

The regulatory function of biopower leads to an elimination of social accidents. This has dramatic effects for the political community. This was the emergence of biopolitics. “Biopolitics deals with the population, with the population as political problem, as a problem that is at once scientific and political, as a biological problem and as power's problem” (Foucault, p. 245). The emergence of biopolitics is the technological control of the nation-state to regulate, produce, and reproduce life for the highest efficiency. Or in other words, biopolitics lead to socio-political engineering.

There is no coincidence that disciplinary power and biopolitics was related to the industrial revolution. “For capitalist society biopolitics is what is most important, the biological, the somatic, the corporeal” (Hardt & Negri, p.27). Without question the three fold function of discipline, biopower, and biopolitcs had an effect in the development of capitalism. The ability to regulate bodies like a machine and produce life without accidents lead to efficient productivity. Throughout the social body where the logic of discipline spreads its domain, and society gradually adopts similar characteristics, capital becomes the sole ruler of production. Thus, disciplinary society becomes a social factory. “In this new factory-society, productive subjectivities are forges as one-dimensional functions of economic development. The figures, structures, and hierarchies of the division of social labor become ever more widespread and minutely defined as civil society is increasingly absorbed into the state” (Hardt & Negri, p. 243). The totalizing effects of the factory-society, creates a unified whole where there is no outside to the social-factory and all is encompassed for the production of capital.

The totalizing production of society is the process that each individual is produced in uniformity. The individual is passing from one disciplinary institution to another. We begin with the family, then the school. The school is disciplinary like the military. They are hierarchical with authority figures. The teacher or drill instructor has the same function: To produce complacency, to ensure obedience, to train our behavior through a long process of rewards and punishments. Likewise, the further you go up in grade levels, the less teachers and other authority figures accept disruption and independent thought. In sum, the process results in the physical and mental propagation of the working class and its preparation for the labor market insofar as to prepare fresh workers for the market and to ensure an adequate labor supply. We are born, produced, disposed.

The school runs like a factory. The school is regulated by a time table. People are systematically controlled in order to regulate their bodies (when they can, and cannot go to the bathroom). Rows are set up to be observed from an authority, be it a manager or teacher. Its compartmentalized in accord to their specific function. Be it, the philosophy department is distinct from the political science department. The process is to discipline groups of people in accord to the mode of production, which in turn strips any unique individuality and leaves only a docile body which has the function to produce, consume and obey.

The passing from the family to the factory assumes a natural sequence of development. Since individuals never ceases to pass from one disciplinary institutions to another, discipline becomes continuous. When discipline and biopower becomes continuous it ceases to be questioned. It becomes normal. In a set model of conduct where certain rules, procedures, and a code of action are plainly set forth in a coherent repetition of behavior, that is, when the individual himself has the duty or feels the obligation to perpetuate the practice of acceptable customs or habits, he regulates his own activity and the activity of others. Each individual operates in uniformity, insofar to product and reproduce the capitalist mode of production. Hence, it essentially eliminates thinking, creativity, motive, uniqueness, freedom and individuality, and creates a mass of uniform people with the same thoughts, desires, wants and needs. Thus, the constituent power of labour production becomes organized for the state.

Section Two

In classical Marxist economic theory, wealth is produced by human labour power. The more labour time the greater value it will have. The value that an article has is because of the human labour which embodied and formed it for a social good. “Like every other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous product of nature, must invariably owe their existence to a special productive activity” (Marx, p. 17). Labour creates socially necessary objects. Living labour is the form giving fire of our creative capacities. “Living labour is the fundamental human faculty: the ability to engage the world actively and create social life” (Negri, p. 146). The labour of the proletariat is the power which produces. Through the common action of labor, the creativity of intelligence, and the passion of the proletariat configures constituent power. In a word, the proletarian power is the only constituent power insofar that labour itself engages with the world and creates life, communities, society and the possibility which can order reality in a new way in terms of the political, economic and social production.

The constituent power of the proletariat must not be confused with the proletarian of only the working industrial class. Negri argues that we must reformulate the proletarian which includes all of productive life. Negri argues that we must drop the old terms of working class, the masses or the people. We must formulate the multitude.

The multitude is a class concept distinct from the tradition of the masses, working class, or the people. The people is characterized as an organized unity which strips all idiosyncratic differences and forms an identity of one. Likewise, the masses composes of different subjectivities are blended and drowned in the conceptual framework of a uniform conglomerate. In comparison with the working class, Hardt and Negri claim that the strict definition of working class only consist of industrial and agricultural workers. It is sharply distinct from other forms of labour including medical and service. Moreover, the broad definition of the working class includes all wage workers who must sell their labour to survive, but excludes the unemployed, unpaid labour, or any other who does not receive a wage.

The multitude however is a class concept where a multiplicity of singular idiosyncratic subjectivities communicate and collaborate in a common political project. The multitude is imminent and free of modern transcendence characterized by Hobbes or Rousseau. The multitude is composed of unique and singular differences which can not be reduced to a single identity such as the people or the masses. Race, ethnicity, class, gender, cultures, etc are unique and can not be stripped to form a single identity. The multitude is many which is an inclusive concept characteristic of a multiplicity of singular differences coming together under a common. Likewise, the multitude incorporates the entire global economy of social production, including the poor and those who do not receive a wage.

The multitude as a class is determined by class struggle. Class struggle is formed through collective acts of resistance to dominant forms of power. Class is not only determined by economic relations, but it is also a political concept. The unification of the proletarian struggle is coming together under common conditions against the domination of capital and exploitation. Nevertheless, Negri argue class is not simply determined by economic, or political struggle. “Class is really a biopolitical concept that is at once economic and political. When we say biopolitical, furthermore, this also means that our understanding of labour cannot be limited to waged labour but must refer to human creative capacities in all their generality” (Negri, p. 105). Thus, all forms of labour are socially productive and they all share a common resistance against dominant forms of power.

Since labour is the living fire that engages with the material conditions of the world, each form of labour is a creative act of the production of life. Life can not be contained in various institutions. Life always overflows boundaries and border and can not be contained in the social-factory. Whereas dominant forms of power essentially represses nature, instincts, a class, and individuals, constituent power refuses being constitutionalized. “Constituent Power is becoming an element of the life world. Through its appearance in the everyday, it loses the monstrous aspect which the bourgeoisie has given it: the indecency of a submergence in reality, of overflowing the institutions” (Negri, p. 177). Life can not be contained, or at least the ability to contain life is no longer possible. Constituent power as an expansive, unlimited, and unfinalized process can not be contained in the disciplinary structures of social institutions. “Labour that has broken open the cages of economic, social, and political discipline ans surpassed every regulative dimension of modern capitalism along with its state-form now appears as a general social activity” (Hardt & Negri, p. 357). Thus, constituent power is the very motor of revolution itself.

Negri uses the example of the creative productivity of the poor. The ability to create new and resourceful strategies of survival require a tremendous amount of creativity and production. The ability to produce new ways to live continually resists any forms of dominant power which undermines their creative ability. The remarkable abilities to resist institutionalization takes an enormous amount of resourcefulness. Yet, the creative tendency of the poor to resist institutionalization never ceases or reproduces in the same way. As dominant forms of power encompasses techniques of resistance, resistance will generate new forms of opposition and antagonisms. The poor despite not receiving a wage acts within the multitude insofar their unique idiosyncratic productivity resist dominant forms of power. This continual reproduction of new forms of resistance which overflows domination leads the multitude as a dangerous class. Thus, the poor are not passive and lazy, but are extremely dangerous insofar they always overflowing the boundaries of control.

As we discussed in section one, where there is dominant forms of power, there will be resistance. Resistance nevertheless will not be uniform. Resistance will not be formed as a singular mode of action. Resistance is a multiplicities of manifold antagonisms that will produce an infinitude of possible forms to resist domination. Hence, resistance will empirically observed differently. Resistance may look like getting your hands chopped off in Bolivia, or it may look like setting yourself on fire. It may look like marches or protests, or it may simply take the form of swearing at a teacher. All creative forms of resistance aggravates domination and control. It is an assault on disciplinary regimes.

A period of crisis Negri argues, was during the 1960's and 70's. The protest of the Vietnam war, the feminist movements, the student movements, all aggravated traditional forms of power “If the Vietnam war had not taken place, if there had not been worker and student revolts in the 1960's, if there had not been 1968 and the second wave of the women's movement, if there had not be the whole series of anti-imperialist struggles capital would have been content to maintain its own arrangement of power” (Negri, p. 275). Constituent power always proceeds dominant forms of power. Domination and control is more than happy to remain static. Yet, the constituent power of the multitude is always reproducing life, it does not remain static. Constituent power refuses to be constituted. Be it, the fixed conditions of rule and authority.

The above example of the multiplicity of resistance movement provides an insight of the essence of constituent power. Constituent power has its own determining relationship in time. Constituent power are immanent moments in history, insofar it is condensed in a very strong moment of social production. “From this perspective constituent power is closely related to the concept of revolution” (Negri, p. 10.1). If we are under the assumption that revolution is a relatively drastic change that may occur in the social or political institutions, or a sudden change in the culture or economic situations, then constituent power is very often fast, swift and sporadic ending by its own will. Thus, “once the extraordinary moment of innovation has ended, the constituent power has exhausted its effects” (Negri, p. 176).

Even though the multitude is multiple, it is not anarchical or incoherent. However, through the collective act of class struggle the multiplicities of singular social subjects can act under a common for the production of a political program. The collapse of dominate forms of power will not lead to an anarchist world where no one rules. Rather Negri develops a new science. A new science that replaces democratic representation with the democracy of the multitude which is the rule of all by all.

Negri claims the real drive for authentic democracy based on freedom and equality can be witnessed by modern resistance movements. The active effort of the multitude must destroy the violence that perpetuates the system of oppression along with its dominate social institutions. Modern sovereignty characterized by Hobbes has a transcendental ruler that organizes war which is found in nature, and establishes it in a coherent political order. Violence does not end, violence is simply organized. Nevertheless, as Negri rightfully observes political sovereignty has a dual relationship. A ruler is not a ruler unless he has somebody to rule. Thus, sovereignty is a dual system of power relations where there is a ruler, there are those who are ruled.

The relationship between ruler/ruled does not only mean they share a duel system of power, but they are in constant struggle. Negri argues that this relationship can only function provided they are both present. If the ruled decide to stop being ruled, or simply flee political domination, then this act will create a vacuum of power. Yet, sovereignty will not easily accept the flee of domination. “When the sovereign power cannot hold this relationship together by peaceful, political means it resorts to violence and war as its basis. The democratic project of the multitude is thus necessarily exposed to both military violence and police repression” (Hardt & Negri, p. 348).

Anytime sovereignty is threaten it uses violence to maintain order. Violence is deployed not to create, but to defend and maintain order. It is hard, but brittle. Nevertheless, Negri argues that pinning arms against arms will result in suicide. The state has a superior arsenal of weaponry at its disposal and will not hesitate to use it to maintain order. A rock is not really an effective weapon against a gun, and likewise I do not know about you – I do know how to shoot a gun, but I have no idea how to stop a tank rolling down the street. Negri argues that this kind of resistance against the superior arms of the modern military will only leave your head split open. The solution nevertheless, is something outside the order of exchange. The multitude that comes together to collapse the current mode of production is for the enjoyment of liberation and emancipation of all by all. In short, Negri argues that it is an act of love.

The democratic project of the multitude nevertheless can not be formalized in a concrete proposal. Negri argues that he does not have a crystal ball to see in the future, or any concrete proposals of what is to be done. The democratic project of the multitude as a new science of multiplicities where the creative abilities of all social singular subjects that come together can not be reduced to a single solution or outcome. The new science of the multitude Negri argues is like the new science of political representation of the 18th century, insofar we must conceptualize democracy in new forms, and conceptualize a new social reality. Hence, another world is possible.

Negri argues against the skeptics that an alternative world is possible. Negri recognizes that global proposals will be meet with skepticism, but argues that the new science of representative democracy was meet with skepticism. “We feel something like the eighteenth-century proponent of democracy who...were confronted by skeptics who charged that democracy may have been possible in the small confines of the Athenian polis, but is utterly impossible in the extensive territories of the modern nation-state” (Negri, p. 306). The challenges of this new form of democracy whereas it is the rule of all by all is a radical proposal. There must be a democratic turn away from the farce of representative pseudo democracies to the democracy where the multitude can effectively rule itself. This is a revolutionary proposal.

If I can borrow an analogy from metaphysics, then we can witness the turn towards the democracy of the multitude. Students and professors of philosophy are familiar with Kant's Copernican revolution. Kant argued that it was assumed that all our knowledge must conform to its corresponding object. This position nevertheless could not explain knowledge synthetic a priori. On this failure, Kant proposed an experiment where we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. Similarly, its been assumed that the best political form is transcendent top-down organization. On this failure, Negri proposes a political experiment where the political form is not top-down, but rather bottom and immanent.

Conclusion

To speak of constituent power is to speak of democracy. The democracy of the multitude however is not a new proposal to reform representative democracy. Tocqueville argued that the democratic revolution of representative democracy came from a multitude of unrelated series of events. The gradual spread of art, literature, and the invention of the printing press. The schisms between the monarchy and the aristocracy. The importance of the church giving equal opportunity to all classes of men. Fire-arms made all people equal on the battle field. Hence, there was an irresistible effect of many different resistance movements that toppled the various monarchies.

Yet, Tocqueville recognizes that “the social conditions and the constitution of the Americans are democratic, but they have not had a democratic revolution...there is no revolutions which do not shake existing belief, enervate authority, and throw doubt over commonly received ideas” (Tocqueville, p. 515). Nevertheless, the constituent power is the active element of all common revolutions, and from this position constituent power is the identification of the very concept of politics. As a result the constituent power of the multitude is absolute democracy that replaces representative democracy.

Negri argues that “democracy, too, resists being constitutionalized: democracy is in fact a theory of absolute government, while constitutionalism is a theory of limited government and therefore a practice of limited democracy” (Negri, p. 2.2). Representative democracy was the disjunctive synthesis of modern sovereignty. Modern democracy was a mechanism in order to keep the dangers of absolute democracy at bay. Nevertheless, Negri's democracy is not representative democracy, but absolute democracy where it is the rule of all by all. The constituent power of the multitude can not be limited by representative democracy, but it opens doors and creates revolutionary changes for the forces of the multitude.

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