Empire

Author: Hart Yang Jianguo et al. (USA)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: The empire is materializing before our eyes. Over the past few decades, as colonialism has been abandoned and the Soviet Union's barrier to the capitalist world market has finally collapsed, we have witnessed the irresistible and irreversible globalization of economic and cultural exchanges. With the formation of the global market and the global production line, a new order of globalization, a new logic and structure of rules, in simple terms, a new form of sovereignty is emerging. The empire is a political subject that effectively controls these global exchanges; it is the supreme power governing the world. Many believe that the globalization of capitalist production and exchange means that economic relations have become increasingly autonomous, detached from political control, and as a result, political power is declining. Some claim that this new era is a liberation of capitalist economies, freeing them from the restrictions and distortions imposed by political forces. Others, however, lament this era, seeing it as the closure of the institutional path through which workers and citizens could influence or question the ruthless logic of capitalist profit. Indeed, alongside the process of globalization, the sovereignty of the nation-state, though still effective, has been continuously declining. The main factors of production and exchange—money, technology, labor, goods—have become increasingly easy to cross borders, and as a result, nation-states have less and less power to regulate the flow of these factors and impose their authority on the economy. Even the most dominant states are no longer considered supreme authorities within or beyond their own borders. However, the decline of nation-state sovereignty does not mean that the literal meaning of "sovereignty" has declined across the entire contemporary transformation. Throughout this period, political control, state functions, and management mechanisms have continued to govern the production and exchange of economic and social life. Our fundamental assumption is that sovereignty has taken on a new form, consisting of a series of national and supranational bodies integrated under a single logic of governance. This new form of global sovereignty is what we call the empire.