Ed.Note:This article was first published in the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto (Sept. 3-5, 1992) and was translated from Italian by Jack Hirschman and Csaba Polony.

by

Michael Hardt

I.

The main question raised by the burned areas of Los Angeles concerns what that rebellion foreshadows for the other racially diversified metropolises in the United States, Europe and everywhere in the world. Los Angeles, the first post-modern city, the futuristic city, or rather is it an anomaly, an aberration of capitalist development? In the events of Los Angeles do we find new socially conflicting contents, the outcropping of a development that involves all of the United States so far as anti-establishment forms are concerned; or are they rather the incoherent residue of old forms of societal conflict? The difficulty in interpreting these recent events is moreover aggravated by the difficulty in interpreting the city itself. "The definitive historic importance of Los Angeles is its eccentricity," writes Mike Davis, "resulting from its double role of utopia and distopia, which unfold from the interior of its advanced capitalism. The city of images appears particularly unconscious of the existing contradictions between the representations it offers and its material constitution — a pattern pregnant with what Guy Debord calls the integrated spectacle, both concentrated and diffuse. The events of May in Los Angeles were of course a signal of alarm, a wake up call; but from what dream and for what reality? Let us try to approach the reality of this simulacra a little in order to understand how the systems of control and the rebellion of Los Angeles can open the roads to our future.

In recent years Los Angeles has projected a "multicultural" image. In speaking of this image, the social production of the city would have to be based on a multicultural work-force no longer organized around Black-White or Black-Latino conflicts but on an inner shift into a radical harmony in which all racial conflicts would be transformed: in short, a Benetton advertisement for labor, in which social production would derive from racial co-operation on the job. It is clear that the ethnic composition of Los Angeles is ever more diverse: the White population has become the minority, like the Black population (which today represents 10% of the inhabitants) while the Latin-American population (in large part of Mexican and Central-American origin) has increased by more than 30%, and the Asians (from Korea, China and Taiwan) have easily surpassed 10% of the population. Indeed, according to some statistics, only half the inhabitants of Los Angeles speaks English.

Within a perspective of harmonious racial and ethnic co-operation, Los Angeles would consequently possess an enormous cultural abundance and an imposing productive capacity. The spectacle of multicultural production consists of a multi-racial civil flowering of society, in a free market with racial forces in dialectical relationship. In the view of a productive co-operation, ethnic forces would meanwhile open a gap between the cultural and economic spheres. Such is Los Angeles: the apex of American economic development, which has always functioned on the exploitation of racial difference and racial co-operation.

Yet, harmonious racial co-operation is not in general the real condition for the production of commodities in Los Angeles. The social and urban factory might perhaps better be conceived if one thinks of a model of enterprise as existed on the east coast at the beginning of the century and which assumed a work-force of diverse ethnic origins with an aim of impeding organization. In that epoch immigrants from European countries such as Italy, Poland, Ireland, Germany and Bohemia worked together in factories but remained separated by linguistic and cultural barriers. The racial division was integral to the control of labor and as a result productive co-operation in the factory could only pass through capitalistic work-organization. In the same way, so far as social production in Los Angeles is concerned, there is a bit of that inter-action and racial co-operation that the multicultural image would appear to provide, while sustaining obvious forms of separation and segregation. If in effect a multiracial civil society exists, it is very weak, given that it keeps a strong division of labor along ethnic lines, which collides with and conditions production. It is therefore not racial harmony which animates the productive model, but rather fear and hatred. Any dialectic, any free exchange is marginal and feeble with respect to the centralized power of the institutions of social control.

In recent years, conflicts between Korean shop owners and the surrounding Black community have perhaps resulted in episodes of more serious kinds of violence, but there have been others. American racism today does not simply operate on the basis of divisions between Blacks and Whites, but is dispersed across a real and particular rainbow of fear and hate. Nevertheless there have been relatively few conflicts and explosions by the masses, though there had been a series of small incidents and there exists in various racial and ethnic groups a generalized situation of separation throughout the diverse community.

On the whole, Los Angeles represents the paradigm itself of the main paradox of the multi-racial post-modern factory: a multi-ethnic society destined to function in the absence of a civil society and in the presence of the idea of a social production based on a racial co-operation that, in reality, disguises the conflict between different ethnic groups.

During the Los Angeles rebellion, it was possible to verify a diverse condition of multi-racial inter-action on the streets and in the looting following the not-guilty verdict for the cops involved in the King case. It would be preferable, in this panorama, to distinguish several contemporaneous revolts, tying one to another in a contingent manner. The first was a multi-colored rebellion, led by some hundreds of politicized young people from all ethnic groups (White, Blacks, Latinos, Asians), many of whom already had political experience in mobilizations against the Gulf War or with respect to US. interventions in Central America. That revolt took place in the downtown area with songs, slogans and directives: the police station, civic offices and other symbols of political power were attacked. That "radical" rainbow manifested itself very similarly in San Francisco and Seattle.

Yet a different rebellion, initiated contemporaneously in the South Central ghettoes of Los Angeles, was extended to other poor areas, even touching some rich ones. This "second" rebellion did not attack objective symbols. Not a few hundred, but seemingly thousands of the poorest inhabitants of the city sacked and burned shops, especially in their own neighborhoods: groceries, gas stations, liquor stores, electronic shops, gun stores. Youth gangs and entire families participated in the looting, often in an atmosphere more festive than furious. It was nothing but a symbolic denunciation of the police, something the Situationists had discovered in the Watts rebellion of 1965, defined as "a rebellion against the commodity, against the world of commodities and the worker-consumer hierarchically submissive to the rule of commodities."

This second rebellion was the result of events in which Blacks and Latinos were not presented together but rather separated. The media has concentrated on the Black neighborhoods, while the Latino rebellion remained invisible; even though they were equally, if not more so, participants.

This rebellion of Latinos took place not so much in Mexican neighborhoods, which are in relatively good condition (even if often in extreme poverty), but rather in areas inhabited by recent immigrants from Central America. This rebellion remained invisible and must be analyzed separately, given that it involves a part of the population that possesses a minimum of resources and rights.

A high percentage of this group lives in Los Angeles without papers or in a precarious legal situation. During and after the May events, not only did the police and national guard intervene in those areas, but immigration services as well, and there were rapid en-masse expulsions, without the people having recourse to ordinary immigration rights. So, many Blacks and Latinos occupying parallel positions in the hierarchy of production and consumption, but having different legal recourses, underwent different forms of repression. Naturally the events verified, from one group to another, that there was a kind of contagion, an infectious transmission of strategies and actions, but one which did not signify an effective unity.

So, as far as the downtown revolt has been variously interpreted as the emergence of a new multi-racial political content aimed at the state, it must however be treated as a phenomenon numerically limited and with relatively weak effects. The second revolt was much more extensive and endowed with a power veritably uncontrollable by the police, but the level of organization was weaker still and in any case did not provide a union of "exploited Ethnics against the domination of the White state." Instead, in a separate and often conflicting way, the various groups expressed their rage against institutionalized racism, rejected the exploitation of their labor and denounced their exclusion from the surrounding society of abundance. The fear and hatred between Blacks and Koreans, presented with great clarity by the media, are nothing but two of the elements of social antagonism that traverse Los Angeles: a rainbow at war. What the rebellions have expressed in an explicit way is, perhaps, the rejection of the spectacle of harmonious racial co-operation within social production. Or better: in revealing the poverty of this spectacle, they have offered a counter-spectacle, the spectacle of a city burning.

The extreme form of social separation would not be possible without the particular territorial structure of Los Angeles. The ghettoes of Los Angeles are not ghettoes in the traditional sense: they are not closed, compact, crowded like the Jewish quarters of European cities of old, originally designed to segregate the Jews. The ghettoes of Los Angeles, Watts and Compton for example are rather open and extensive. The architecture of east-coast urban centers, the big looming buildings and cramped spaces of Harlem are not found there, for example; these ghettoes rather are of little one-family houses, each with its own garden and garage, modeled after suburban neighborhoods. The poverty of the ghettoes becomes evident by noticing the bars on the windows, shops with iron-gated doors, and the continual presence of police helicopters that day and night oversee from on high. These ghettoes do not have walls, but the deserted spaces create barriers equally as effective.

On the other hand, there are rich closed off neighborhoods. In Los Angeles, the new urban model for well-off zones is the "gated community" model, an walled-off area whose every entrance has a gate controlled by a guard. Given that, for pedestrians, distances are formidable, the guards need only control the cars. Those areas that have not yet constructed gates have become societies of private control, with armed guards re-inforced by police protection. Generalized and not identifiable fear of social danger is naturally the cause of these attempts at isolation; but the immediate logic of the phenomenon is understandable above all in reference to rising costs in a stagnant market, and according to how real estate values in an area increase in relation to its isolation and to the degree of security provided.

In addition, the commercial architecture of Los Angeles has recently developed the "fortress model" — a site closed off to the general public, which permits the creation of an internal, open and private space. The social atmosphere of the city and public space in general have come to be considered as dangerous. The effort therefore consists of protecting neighborhoods of private spaces and defending them against the infiltration of a dangerous polis : that is, islands of security in a perilous sea. The urban system of the Los Angeles freeways furnish a very secure means of communication for connecting these private and isolate monads. (In fact during the rebellion one of the first pieces of advice given by the police over the radio was that of remaining on the freeway: in the South Central district, the freeway was the one safe zone).

The effect of this tendency of development is an urban politics that excludes from urban territory everybody from public spaces, or rather makes available to public access only the extensive abandoned spaces of poor neighborhoods. Across this paralyzing logic, the privatization of spaces in the city renders more concrete and extreme the segregation of the races and of the different classes, and makes more difficult every form of integration and inter-action. With the decline of public space, the concept of a civil society loses its power because the dialectic of inter-action and exchange on which it is founded can not literally have a place.

In effect the decline of public space carries within it the decline of the political arena, of the space necessary to make politics and to found some sort of discourse about belonging to society. In Los Angeles, rather, urban territory is organized to avoid the contact of different social groups. In this perspective, one of the objects of the rebellion was undoubtedly to transform the urban space of Los Angeles into an authentic political space.

The so-called "politics of evasion" inscribed in the territory of Los Angeles coincides perfectly with the liberal-postmodern line of American political thought. In articles written over the past twenty years, after the essay, A Theory of Justice, the philosopher John Rawls has elaborated the idea of a political goal that consists of an "overlapping consensus", a consensus that exists despite the social, religious, philosophical and moral differences in contemporary society. The overlapping consensus does not manifest itself through involvement or mediation or reconciliation of social differences, but rather through the separation from the ruling system of conflicting elements in the social field. To this strategy Rawls gives the name "method of evasion": a procedure through which a democratic regime can elude (but not resolve) social conflicts, maintaining thereby a stable order. Such a regime could be tolerant of confronting social differences because they would not be interfering with its functioning.

Richard Rorty, in his letter to Rawls, seems to have fully cultivated this procedure, carrying it to its extreme consequences. For Rorty, the harmony of the system does not result so much from an Aufheben (neutralization, abolition) of social forces in conflict, as it does from their separation. Expressions of social differences are simply ignored because they represent elements that do not belong to the public sphere: politics as such becomes a pragmatic and mechanistic system that maintains the necessary stability for order and its legitimazation. The system occupies all of public space but the differences appear privatized. Democracy is otherwise disinterested.

The lack of politics in liberal-postmodern theory implies that state structure be stripped to the bone, to the skeleton of a mechanical sovereignty. It is not a question of subduing social subjects to effect involvement, mediation or the organization of conflicting forces within the limits of order. The State stripped down, the "thin" State, evades such involvement, and in that is contained the essence of its "liberal" politics. From a reduced conception of the State to a reduced conception of politics, politics here does not mean involvement and mediation of conflicts and social differences but rather their evasion. Again, the decline of political space.

This politics of evasion shows how the conception of the reduced State could manifest itself as a double edge and how this version of liberal tolerance could paradoxically be transformed into a decidedly illiberal politics of exclusion.

The development of the urban zone known as Los Angeles is regulated by a regimen of separations. The police are necessary to maintain it and to guarantee the system its abstract and isolating character. The "subtle blue line" of the police institutes and oversees the limits of everything that is able to act as "input" into the mechanism of power. The method of evasion assumes a brutally excluding character when it is put to practical ends. The policing function now creates and maintains a pacified society, evading the deployment of an equilibrium that has been upset by social conflicts. The supremacy of the democracy Rorty speaks of rests on a threat of disorder coming from outside of the system, and on the continual need to keep policing functions on the rise — to that end utilizing a soviet leader, or Manual Noriega, Saddam Hussein or the young Blacks and Latinos of Los Angeles.

In the last few years, limitations on police interventions in the United States have been considerably reduced. From a formal point of view, this increase in power can be translated into an erosion of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects citizens from searches and unfounded suspicion. Today, under the flag of "war on drugs," and "war on gangs," the police have the power to stop and search all those who resemble an alleged criminal or a suspected gang-member. The definition of those "profiles" is however very generic, and it is sufficient to wear a certain brandname of tennis shoe or display a particular color to be associated with crime. In the computerized archives of the Los Angeles police, more than half of the young Blacks of an area appear on lists that concern one gang. In practice, to be young and Black is motive enough to be stopped and searched by the police. It is in this way that the police effect a preventive action against conflict, keeping the system from losing its own equilibrium.

From what position can we identify a political formation capable of contesting this urban order? Do the rebellions effectively express an emerging counter force? The situation is not very clear. Within the various Churches, Christian or Islamic, political groups are restrained and impotent. Not even community-based organizations are able to have a meaningful political role. The most important and efficacious form of organization, among the poor but also among other strata, is the gangs.

The gangs have an extensive organized network, strong recruiting power among young Blacks and Latinos, and they provide a determining role in cultural creativity, including: style of walk, gestures, jargons, modes of dress, and everything found in the rap music ambiance. Yet up to now the gangs have not been very occupied with politics as such. Even though members of gangs have been interviewed by the media and have given in-depth analyses of the nature and effects of American racism, the fact remains that the gangs have not maneuvered very much to change or fight social evil. Since the rebellions, the gangs have declared a cease-fire and established a significant program entitled, "Give us hammers and nails and we’ll rebuild the city." The author or authors of this document are unknown. Though many of the gang leaders have political connections, it cannot be said that the above position is the adopted one; but whether it comes from only a few gangs, or from many different groups, this program is unrealizable. Nevertheless is remains important, because it could represent a tendency of the gangs to politicize themselves: a reserve of unforeseen potentiality.

Yet even if the gangs were to become politically engaged, it would not constitute — given their actual composition — new models of power and culture. Today gangs are not organized for meaningful social vocations, but rather for drug sales and vendettas of honor against other gangs. And the community in which they act are the same that in the last few years have been decimated by crack and violence. The model of the gangster to which they refer to is very old. The two principal gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, are themselves split up into hundreds of "sets" — all at war among themselves. Each organized set, in its turn, comprises a rigid hierarchy. New members have to prove their worth in being initiates, and then they can climb in the hierarchy by proving their loyalty and bravery. Members at the higher level, that is the gang leaders, are given the title O.G. (Original Gangster). Women are excluded from this hierarchical structure. Often oppression and violence against women assumes the worst forms of gang-cultural expressions. Much of rap music reflects this brutal sexual hierarchy (even if today a few women who do rap could cancel this misogynist character). So it is evident that the gangs, with respect to their current natures, do not represent a new form of political contestation.

Which is not to say that they have not put forward anything. Through the potent mechanism of brotherhood, the gangs function and strongly attract young Blacks and Latinos. Even if the gangs do not represent an authentic alternative, they constitute a strong means of defense against a hostile world. Perhaps it is best to interpret the gangs as a symptom of the great potentiality for organization and affirmation that exists in a latent state in these neighborhoods, and that, perhaps, one day, they will be able to manifest themselves in a new political form.

In spite of the fact that Los Angeles presents a very specific situation, recent events there clearly presage three portentous elements of movement in our society. In the first place, the method of control inherent in the structure of Los Angeles’ geography and politics has been proposed with redoubled effort by Bush following the rebellions. The Bush program, which is called "Weed and Seed", does not propose involvement of alienated sectors or a new social contract; rather it proposes a brutal exclusion of "criminal" elements deemed a threat to the social order. Police patrols have doubled. The metaphor of "Weeding" has in it a repressive, if not fascistic, resonance. This strategy breeds fear and racial hatred and encourages divisions in the population.

After the rebellion, there was a rush to re-establish an image of social harmony in the city. While the looting and burning continued, the media was already full of images of citizens of all races smiling and united in putting out the fires. Despite everything, what presented itself as a liberal alternative to the repression in effect turned in favor of the opposite camp. The harmony and racial co-operation that are found in this context imply neither the free expression of social forces, nor an attempt at involvement or mediation. On the contrary this strategy created an abstract image of a harmony that was in reality based on a politics of evasion, a harmony that is presented only at the cost of ignoring the areas of true social conflict that have pushed up against the system.

In the third place, the revolts have to be considered as effective critiques of these political conceptions: a critique of order and a critique of harmony. The rebellion clearly, at least in part, was a reaction to the crushing power of the police and against the politics of exclusion that it sustains. During the days of looting and burning, the order maintained by the State and by the police was revealed as feeble and precarious. The image of peaceful and harmonious co-operation was irreparably shattered by the events. Despite the redoubled attempts by the media to recreate the ideal, no one really believed them. Hatred and fear, diffidence and racial antagonism will remain in the forefront for years to come. Similarly, revindication or even a proposal for racial harmony appears as a mystification of the real social conditions.

Malcolm X has noted that in a society such as ours, in which racism is profoundly rooted in institutions and culture, it would be ingenuous and politically ominous to propose a utopia of racial harmony, of perfect integration, or a society without races guided only by immediate political goals. In effect the correct answer to segregation and exclusion is not integration. What Malcolm X proposed, as an alternative to a utopian leap, is a practical politics constituted by separation: the constitution of a Black power capable not only of fighting the institutions of racism but also capable of creating an autonomous and alternative community of values, desires and needs.

This community would be constructed on the basis of an economy of authentic co-operation in social production, on brotherhood. This proposal of constitution by separation without the exacerbation of social antagonisms is to recognize the real existing situation in order to begin, from such a point in reality, a process of the subjugated constituting themselves. This is not to say that such a process was immersed in the events of May in Los Angeles: the events were very partial and ungraspable so far as allowing such a clear interpretation. When we try to understand the rebellions and their consequences we should instead try to gather the elements of that process of constitution already at work and to recognize in them a dynamic harbinger of liberty.

Michael Hardt is the co-author, with Antonia Negri, of Empire (Harvard, 2000)