1

J. Moufawad-Paul
2011

Deterritorialization and Imperialism
Capitalism is not at all territorial, even in its beginnings.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

Imperialism has been an intrinsic part of capitalist expansion right from the beginning.
Samir Amin, Obsolescent Capitalism


In Capitalism In The Age of Globalization, Samir Amin lists Gilles Deleuze as a
postmodernist, dismissing him in a general polemic against Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida, and their
ilk.
1
It is regretful that Amin, who has also been misread and dismissed as a dependency
theorist, would categorically overlook Deleuzes possible contributions to the marxist canon.
What is most regretful, though, is the fact that Deleuze, together with Felix Guattari, have
developed a theorization of imperialism that partially accords with Amins own theories. Rather
than simply serv[ing] some useful purpose [by] exposing the metaphysical nature of post-
Enlightenment bourgeois discourse,
2
as Amin claims, Deleuze and Guattari provide a useful,
though theoretically dense, analysis of capitalism an analysis that is not, simply, postmodern.
The purpose of this paper, then, is to demonstrate how the concepts of Deleuze and
Guattari can be connected to the work of marxist political economists such as Samir Amin. I
have chosen as my focus their concept of deterritorialization that I argue connects to Amins
theorization of imperialism. I believe that connecting Deleuze and Guattari to Amin is important
for two reasons: one, Deleuze and Guattaris concept of deterritorialization illuminates Amins
theory of imperialism as actually existing capitalism; and, two, Amins theory reasserts a more
sophisticated reading of Deleuze and Guattaris formulation of deterritorialization.
The latter point is important due to the fact that the concept of deterritorialization was
most recently popularized due to its use in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negris Empire. Since
2
Deleuze and Guattari claim that capitalism is the exterior limit of all societies [because]
capitalism for its part has no exterior limit,
3
and is not at all territorial,
4
Negri and Hardt take
this to mean that global capitalism lacks a national centre and that empire has replaced
imperialism. If this is how deterritorialization should be understood (and I argue that it is not),
then connecting Deleuze and Guattari to Samir Amin, who is perhaps the most important living
theorist of imperialism, would seem entirely wrong-headed. In both volumes of Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, however, Deleuze and Guattari cite Amin when they explain deterritorialization,
which indicates a different understanding of the concept than the one maintained by Hardt and
Negri. Although Empire has become less influential since its release in 2000, its claim that a
deterritorialized empire has replaced imperialism is still popular. The idea that capitalism lacks
national centres is common to various anti-globalization and pro-globalization discourses
Thomas Friedman's recent The World Is Flat (2005) being an example of the latter interpretation
of a centreless capitalism.
What I mainly hope to demonstrate by connecting Deleuze and Guattari to Amin,
however, is that the concept of deterritorialization is extremely useful in understanding
capitalism because it unites three important dimensions of capital: primitive accumulation,
imperialism (not empire), and ruling class ideology. Thus, it not only articulates capitalism at
both a basic and global level, it also demonstrates how capitalism is understood by capitalism
itself.

Deterritorialization and Primitive Accumulation
In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari write:
At the heart of Capital, Marx points to the encounter of two principal elements: on one
side, the deterritorialized worker who has become free and naked, having to sell his labor
capacity; and on the other, decoded money that has become capital and is capable of
buying it.
5

3

Thus, although Deleuze and Guattaris concept of deterritorialization can be used to describe
the freeing of schizophrenic libido from pre-established objects of investment,
6
I am
concerned here with the subject matter of the above quote. In other words, I am interested in the
concept of deterritorialization that, according to Eugene Holland, designates the freeing of
labor-power from the seigneurial plot of land, the assembly line, or other means of production.
7

In this sense, deterritorialization is meant to explain what Marx called primitive accumulation,
an accumulation not the result of the capitalist mode of production, but its starting point.
8

Although discussing deterritorialization in relation to representation and desire is
important (and this is often how analyses of this concept proceed) I am more interested in the
concrete discussion of deterritorialization as primitive accumulation, in examining the concept in
connection with a concrete socio-historical rather than an abstract psychoanalytical (or even
schizoanalytical) context. This is not to say that the latter is not importantindeed, I am
aware that the concept of deterritorialized desire and representation are intrinsically connected to
the social. My point, however, is that I believe it is important to examine deterritorialization in
light of what Samir Amin calls actually existing capitalism. That is, I want to demonstrate how
the concept is useful for understanding how capitalism exists and functions as a mode of
production and a global system.
Moreover, I recognize that the concept of deterritorialization is not, for Deleuze and
Guattari, simply associated with capitalism. As Holland explains, [c]apitalism is not the only
mode of socio-libidinal production that deterritorializes; all power societies do so.
9
In this
paper, however, I want to focus on deterritorialization as it connects to capitalismboth as a
mode of production and a world system. I believe that, deterritorialization and
reterritorialization of despotic power notwithstanding, the concept is most appropriate when
4
applied to capitalism. In other power societies deterritorialization is a process of over-coding
via representation, whereas capitalism, because its power is economic, axiomatizes: it joins the
deterritorialized and de-coded flow of pure liquid wealth (invested as capital in a means of
production) with another deterritorialized and de-coded flow: pure labor-power.
10
Eugene
Holland compares the process of deterritorialization to Marx and Engels notion of the constant
revolutionizing of production intrinsic to capitalism.
11
Capitalism spills over all limits, codes
and borders; it is not at all territorial.
12
In order to understand why capitalism is not territorial,
one has to begin with the concept of primitive accumulation.
In the first volume of Capital, Marx explains primitive accumulation in the following
manner:
The capitalist system pre-supposes the complete separation of the labourers from all
property in the means by which they can realise their labour. [] The process, therefore,
that clears the way for the capitalist system, can be none other than the process which
takes from the labourer the possession of his means of production; a process that
transforms, on the one hand, the social means of subsistence and of production into
capital, on the other, the immediate producers into wage-labourers. The so-called
primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing
the producer from the means of production.
13


The above statement reveals what Deleuze and Guattari mean, in the quote beginning this
section, regarding the principal elements at the heart of Marxs Capital. According to Marx, in
order to produce the free wage-labour necessary for the capitalist mode of production, the pre-
capitalist labourers are separated from the land and transformed into an army of free (as in ripped
free) labourers. Instead of working the land for themselves (and their feudal lord, of course),
they are driven from this means of production and forced to sell their labour power. The
completion of this process is historically most evident in the England land enclosures where
peasants were deterritorialized from the land only to be reterritorialized onto textile looms in the
nascent garment industry.
14

5
Thus it can be said that the process of primitive accumulation is a process of
deterritorialization because the labourer is divorced from the territory that formed his or her
initial means of production, and then cast into the free labour market:
Capitalism is not at all territorial, even in its beginnings: its power of
deterritorialization consists in taking as its object, not the earth, but materialized labor,
the commodity. And private property is no longer ownership of the land or the soil, nor
even of the means of production as such, but of convertible abstract rights.
15


Here Deleuze and Guattari remind us that deterritorialization is meant to describe something that
is basic to capitalismsomething that produces and regiments desire or consciousness. Thus, to
use the hackneyed marxist lingo, Deleuze and Guattari use deterritorialization to discuss the
base of capitalism rather than, simply, the superstructure. Capitalism as a mode of
production rests on the class polarization created by primitive accumulation where the owners
of money, means of production, means of subsistence are in conflict with free labourers, the
sellers of their own labour-power.
16

The concept of deterritorialization, then, not only explains primitive accumulation, but
the accumulation/reproduction of capital. As Marx reminds us, [t]he expropriation of the
agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process [of
capitalism].
17
Furthermore, the capitalist mode of production pre-supposes parcelling of the
soil, and scattering [or deterritorializing] of the other means of production.
18

This is why, in the quote I used to begin this section, Deleuze and Guattari claim that the
two principle elements that describe capitalism are free labour and capital; deterritorialization is
meant to explain both. On the one hand, deterritorialization indicates the emergence of the free
worker through the deterritorialization of the soil through privatization.
19


On the other hand,
deterritorialization indicates capital itself:
the deterritorialization of wealth through monetary abstraction; the decoding of the flows
of production through merchant capital; the decoding of States through financial capital
6
and public debts; the decoding of the means of production through the formation of
industrial capital; and so on.
20


This second principle element is the concern of the following section.
Marxists who come from an anti-imperialist marxist tradition (such as myself) are usually
occupied with the reality of global capitalism, or imperialism, and Deleuze and Guattaris use of
deterritorialization to explain capital is something that dovetails with this traditioneven if it is
not entirely intentional on their part. Actually existing capitalism, as I shall examine in the
following two sections, is not simply a mode of production but also a world system. There are
nations in this world that, though not properly capitalist in and of themselves (feudalism and
semi-feudalism, for example, still persist), are still part of the global capitalist market. Deleuze
and Guattaris concept of deterritorialization, I believe, beautifully connects the concept of
primitive accumulation with imperialism.


Deterritorialization and Global Capitalism
For those of us who study the transition to capitalism from the point of view of its global victims,
it is important to connect free labour and independent capital to the hegemony of merchant
capital in the dominant Atlantic centres, and [to] the creation of the peripheral zones (the
Americas) whose function involved their total compliance with the logic of accumulation of
merchant capital.
21
In other words, rather than examine the rise of capitalism simply by
focusing on the enclosure of the commons in England (and the subsequent creation of free and
exploitable labour), we take the view that this internal class polarization is also connected to the
world-wide polarization produced by modern colonialism and slavery that affected
the feudal sectors of [Europe], hastening the breakup of feudal relations. In order to
obtain the new goods [derived from colonial plunder], the feudal lords were obliged to
modernize their methods of exploitation, extracting a larger surplus and converting this
7
into money. This modernization led them to drive off the land the excess population, as
happened in the English enclosures.
22


Marx, of course, has also noted the link between primitive accumulation in England and the
institutions of colonialism and slavery. In the first volume of Capital, for instance, he explains
that the emergence of wage labour in England was, according to the manner in which capitalism
actually developed, dependent on slavery pure and simple in the new world.
23

My point here is not to contribute to the debate on the transition to capitalism, but to
highlight that Deleuze and Guattaris concept of deterritorialization can also be read in this larger
context of primitive accumulation. That is, while deterritorialization, in a very basic sense, is
meant to theorize independent capital, it is also meant to theorize independent capitals global
dimension. When marxists such as Amin focus on the colonial development of capitalism, they
do so in order to give an historical materialist explanation for the current era of global
capitalismfor the development of monopoly capitalism, that is, imperialism. Thus, the class
polarization that marks the capitalist mode of production possesses a global resonance, and
Deleuze and Guattaris concept of deterritorialization is meant to express this fact. In A
Thousand Plateaus they write that capitalisms
power of deterritorialization marks a mutation in worldwide ecumenical organizations,
which now take on a consistency of their own: the worldwide axiomatic, instead of
resulting from heterogeneous social formations and their relations, for the most part
distributes these formations, determines their relations, while organizing an international
division of labor. From all these standpoints, it could be said that capitalism develops an
economic order that could do without the State. And in fact capitalism is not short on
war cries against the State, not only in the name of the market, but by virtue of its
superior deterritorialization.
24


Here, Deleuze and Guattari are emphasizing capitalisms tendency to develop a world
market system that, in the words of Marx and Engels, batters down all Chinese walls.
25
What
makes the concept of deterritorialization insightful is that Deleuze and Guattari connect the
separation of value from the physical territory of the earth, as discussed in the previous section,
8
with the separation of value from national territory. In a single word they indicate the
framework within which the law of globalized value operates.
26

At the same time, however, the concept of deterritorialization becomes tricky. In the
above quote, Deleuze and Guattari speak of capitalism developing an economic order that could
do without the State. Indeed, the most rabid capitalist ideologues are always complaining about
state intervention. Even from the early days of capitalism, the ruling class intelligentsia were
attacking reforms such as universal suffrage, public sanitation, and libraries as state interference
with the natural forces of the market.
27
Since the flows of the capitalist market spill beyond
the borders of the nation-state, it is argued that the state is antiquated and an obstruction to
capital. In the final section of this paper I plan to return to this problem in more detail. At this
point, I am merely highlighting how Deleuze and Guattaris concept of deterritorialization can be
read to make the claim that capitalism, because it deterritorializes, leads to the obsolescence of
state power. In Empire, for example, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri make use of the concept
of deterritorialization to argue just this. Their reading, in my opinion, is misguided.
According to Hardt and Negri, capitalism is no longer mediated through state power.
Where global capitalism was once articulated by powerful central states that exported capital to
the peripheries, and thus locked these peripheries into imperialist dependence, global capitalism
has now moved beyond the centre-periphery relationship of imperialism. State power has
stopped mediating world capitalism because capitalism is ultimately deterritorializing; its flows
have gone beyond the limits of the nation-state. The capitalist market, therefore, mediates the
power of every state. Hardt and Negri call this new global articulation of capitalism Empire.
They write:
The concept of Empire is characterized fundamentally by a lack of boundaries: Empires
rule has no limits. First and foremost, then, the concept of Empire posits a regime that
effectively encompasses the spatial territory, or really that rules over the entire civilized
world. No territorial boundaries limit its reign.
28

9

Thus, for Hardt and Negri, deterritorialization is a process that ultimately annihilates territorial
power. In contrast to imperialism, they explain, Empire establishes no territorial center of
power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentered and deterritorializing
apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open,
expanding frontiers.
29

While it is true that Hardt and Negris use of deterritorialization is probably their own
development of the concept, rather than a faithful reading of Deleuze and Guattari, I believe it is
important to investigate the original concept itself, and compare it with the theories of
imperialism established by political economists such as Samir Amin, to demonstrate that the
original conceptualization was far more complex than its use in Empire. Such an analysis will
not only demonstrate the depth of the concept of deterritorialization, but also reveal the
ahistorical nature of Hardt and Negris appropriation.
Deleuze and Guattaris original conceptualization, however, explains the complexities of
imperialism rather than the simplicity of empire. In A Thousand Plateaus, they write:
When the flows reach this capitalist threshold of decoding and deterritorialization (naked
labor, independent capital), it seems that there is no longer a need for a State, for distinct
juridical and political domination, in order to ensure appropriation which has become
directly economic. The economy constitutes a worldwide axiomatic Today we can
depict an enormous, so-called stateless, monetary mass that circulates through foreign
exchange and across borders, eluding control by the States, forming a multinational
ecumenical organization, constituting a de facto supranational power untouched by
governmental decisions.
30


It is tempting to interpret the above claim as meaning that the state form has been subordinated
to the power of a pure international capital. As Hardt and Negris use of deterritorialization
indicates, the fact that capital lacks a specific territoryand goes so far as to penetrate other
state territories by subordinating national economies to an international economy could lead
one to believe that capitalism is ultimately above state power. Therefore, since the movement of
10
capital constitutes a supranational power, it lacks the direction of a single state. No state or
states act as the central power behind worldwide capitalism, Hardt and Negri claim, because
capitalism has deterritorialized every state and locked them, more or less equally, into one
worldwide axiomatic.
Such an intepretation, however, is grossly misleading. First of all, Deleuze and Guattari
claim that this statelessness is so-called, and that it seems as if there is no reason for the
persistence of state power. Secondly, in the paragraph preceding the one cited above, Deleuze
and Guattari foreground their discussion of a new threshold of deterritorialization by quoting
Arghiri Emmanuels Unequal Exchange.
31
This is important because Emmanuels theory of
worldwide capitalist exchange is also a theory that, with qualifications, was defended by Samir
Amin in a statement that parallels Deleuze and Guattaris claims about deterritorialization:
The essential contribution made by Emmanuel is undoubtedly the discovery of the
preeminence of international values. Our world no longer consists of juxtaposed national
system carrying on external relations with each other (even if these are important)
Rather it constitutes a unity, a wholethe world capitalist system the system is defined
in the abstract by the great mobility of goods and capital and by a relative immobility of
labor. This means that commodities are not first of all national commodities and then,
exceptionally and marginally, international. On the contrary, it means that commodities
are worldwide.
32


Therefore, for Amin, the world is not defined by competing territories but by the larger dynamics
of global capitalism. At the same time, however, the fact that commodities are worldwide does
not mean that the state form has been neutralized by their deterritorializing movement. Both
Amin and Emmanuel believed that the movement of these international commodities could only
be understood within the context of imperialism. That is, the worldwide market is mediated by
the ruling class at the center of capitalismby the worlds most powerful states. This is why,
for Emmanuel, the nature of the world market is one of unequal exchange. The central powers
11
set the terms of the exchange and the peripheries, lacking their own economic and political
power, are forced to concede to these terms.
Deleuze and Guattari share the above position; their concept of deterritorialization does
not mean that worldwide capitalism is some nebulous and stateless system. In Anti-Oedipus, in
fact, they explicitly connect deterritorialization to Amins theory of imperialism:
As Samir Amin has shown, the process of deterritorialization here goes from the center to
the periphery, that is, from the developed countries to underdeveloped countries, which
do not constitute a separate world, but rather an essential component of the world-wide
capitalist machine.
33


In other words, while there is a world-wide capitalist machine, or a world capitalist
system, global capitalism is also defined by central and peripheral nations. The former nations
(capitalist modes of production such as America, the European states, Japan, etc.) control the
world market; the latter (capitalist social formation marked by the preponderance of other modes
of production) are the victims of this market. Deleuze and Guattari further explicate the
imperialist dimension of deterritorialization when they write:
as capitalist deterritorialization is developing from the center to the periphery, the
decoding of flows on the periphery develops by means of a distarticulation that ensures
the ruin of traditional sectors, the development of extraverted economic circuits, a
specific hypertrophy of the tertiary sector, and an extreme inequality in the different areas
of productivity and in incomes.
34


That is, as I shall examine at the conclusion of this section, the peripheral nations are mutilated
by the exported capital controlled by the central nations of world capitalism.
Thus, when Deleuze and Guattari write that capitalism is not at all territorial
35
they are
not making the point that Hardt and Negri would make in Empire. They are not claiming that
some nebulous and supranational market replaces the state (or that the world market constitutes
one giant mode of production, a concept touted by some Trotskyists). Rather, they are claiming
that there is something about capitalism that defies territorial valuethat is not bound to land,
12
soil, or national bordersand that transforms the world structure of nation-states. Or, in Marx
and Engels words, [a]ll old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily
being destroyed.
36

In capitalism, materialized labor is the commodity and not the earth tilled by the
peasant; and private property is no longer ownership of the land or the soil but of convertible
abstract rights
37
such as the right to sell ones labor on the capitalist market. More importantly,
however, is the fact that the commoditya value not tied to the soil, to territorycan be
plugged into the worldwide market created by capitalism. Deleuze and Guattaris claim that
capitalism was not territorial from its very beginning can thus be likened to Amins claim that
imperialism, loosely defined, has been an intrinsic part of capitalist expansion right from the
beginning.
38

Deterritorialization, then, has nothing to do with the obsolescence of the nation-state.
Rather, it has to do with the axiomatic of capitalism within which the state (or states) is locked.
Deleuze and Guattari claim:
we can join Samir Amin in saying that the axioms of the periphery differ from those of
the center. And here again, the difference and independence of the axioms [of differing
states] in no way compromise the overall axiomatic [of the capitalist world system].
39


In global capitalism, the different national territories are united and, to some extent,
homogenized by the logic of the world market. This is the meaning of deterritorialization in this
global sense: the coding of a specific culture, while still present in a specific nation, is ultimately
subordinate to the decoding of capitalism. Or, to use traditional marxist terminology, use-value
is subordinated to exchange-value. The latter lacks any specific meaning or code except for what
is commanded by profit. If culture can exist only where there is the direct, complete
apprehension of all use-values, material and immaterial, in their simultaneous totality, writes
13
Amin, then capitalism [in an abstract sense] has no culture. The destruction of culture spreads
from one sector to another, the commodity gradually debasing the non-commodity.
40

This homogenization, though, spreads from centre to periphery, mediated by the interests
of those states that command capital. Therefore, every peripheral nations culture, while still
persisting in the national formation (with the residue of past modes of production), is dominated
by the imperialist market that often renders cultural values insignificant in comparison to
exchange-value. What does it matter, for example, if a landmark possesses an important
historical or cultural significance for a nation if there is a wellspring of oil beneath? The
territorial importance of the landmark will be subordinated to the interests of capital that are
shared by the ruling classes of world capitalisms imperial centres, and the comprador classes of
the dominated peripheries.
The reason why deterritorial homogenism is not even near the extent indicated by Empire
is due to the persistence of the state formations that make up the capitalist world system. Amin
notes that [d]espite powerful tendencies of capitalism to shape everything, everywhere, to the
same mold [or to deterritorialize], complexities continue to exist.
41
Furthermore, Amin notes
that this complexity of the world systemor, to borrow from the Deleuze and Guattari lexicon,
of the lines of flight that escape deterritorializationprovides people, especially in the
peripheral states where the contradictions are obvious, opportunities for resistance and revolt.
42


Deterritorialization and Imaginary Capitalism
Hardt and Negris interpretation of deterritorialization, though, can be used to illustrate another
aspect of Deleuze and Guattaris concept. Deterritorialization not only explains primitive
accumulation and imperialism, but it is also the logic of capitalist ideology. As mentioned
earlier, apologists for capitalism demand deterritorialization; Deleuze and Guattari remind us that
14
capitalism is not short on war cries against the State.
43
Therefore, the term
deterritorialization explains the way capitalists conceptualize capitalism: a pure
deterritorialization, where all state interference bows to the natural laws of the market, is the
permanent dream of every capitalist. Or, to borrow again from the Deleuze and Guattari's
terminology, the belief in a completed deterritorialization is the delirium, the true
consciousness of a false reality, of the capitalist. Therefore, Hardt and Negris concept of empire
is, in many ways, simply a presentation of an ideal-type capitalism, not capitalism as it actually
exists. They have used deterritorialization in order to theorize the capitalist world system in the
way, though from a different position, capitalist ideologues theorize capitalism.
Once again, the work of Samir Amin is useful for understanding this aspect of
deterritorialization by drawing on his distinction between imaginary capitalism and actually
existing capitalism. The former represents Adam Smiths theory of the invisible hand where
an imaginary system governed by economic laws (the market) would tend, if left to
themselves, to produce an optimal equilibrium.
44
Imaginary capitalism, then, is an idealist,
and thus unreal, view that capitalism is nothing but economic lawsthat capitalism possesses an
economic telos resulting in a fully capitalized world system where governments have been
transcended by the mystical force of the market, and where no nation-state can possibly form an
economic centre.
To examine capitalism as actually existing capitalism, however, is to look beyond
capitalism as pure economics and view it as a social-historical formation composed by human
beings. In Amins analysis of imperialism, this point possesses another significance:
real-world capitalism is the opposite of the imaginary market capitalism does not
actually function through systematic competition on the part of those who hold the
monopoly of property but requires the intervention of a collective authority
representing capital as a whole. The state, then, cannot be separated from capitalism.
The policies of capital, and hence of the state in so far as it represents capital, are driven
by distinctive [social] logics.
45

15

The view that capitalism can transcend its state form, becoming completely deterritorialized, and
exist as a pure system of economic competition between individuals and corporations is the
ideology of the system itself. But capitalism, if it is to continue to exist, requires a political
form. This political form, according to Amin, is imperialism, the permanent state of
capitalism.
46
Capitalism, then, is not the invisible hand, as Smith would have it, but the
sometimes visible, sometimes invisible gun.
Neither, however, is capitalism empire. Although Hardt and Negri do not wish to claim
that the capitalist market leads to equilibrium, they still reduce capitalism to the market and thus
confuse the world market with capitalism:
As the world market today is realized ever more completely, it tends to deconstruct the
boundaries of the nation-state. In a previous period, nation-states were the primary actors
in the modern imperialist organization of global production and exchange, but to the
world market they appear increasingly as mere obstacles.
47


While a fanatical apologist of the free market would, indeed, claim that national borders are
obstacles to the pure, economic laws of the market, this does not mean that this market is
actually some supranational force that is doing what the capitalist ideologue desires. To claim,
as Hardt and Negri do, that capitalism is developing ever more completely towards national
transcendence is to not only make the same claim as the capitalist, but to misunderstand the class
nature of capitalism.
Hard and Negris capitalism-as-empire is an imaginary capitalism because it imagines a
capitalism without people. If the market is not controlled by an organization of capitalist class
power (that is, a state) then what enforces capitalism? Hardt and Negri would argue that the
ruling class is everywhere, captaining the world from their transnational ships. And yet the
world market is not at all some deterritorializing deluge upon which the deterritorialized
bourgeoisie sail.
16
[O]ur conception of capitalism, writes Amin, does not reduce it to a generalized
market but locates its very essence in powers beyond the market.
48
This conception of
capitalismactually existing capitalismis imperialism. Capitalism does not exist as a pure
system of individual competition where the market becomes a natural force. Rather, the market
is managed by nation-states and their ruling classes. The Hardt and Negri world of pure
deterritorialization, however, is an imaginary and ahistorical world where the market has the
supernatural power to mediate states. Amins critique of their position is apt:
In order to justify their thesis, Negri and Hardt need to give a strictly political definition
of the imperialist phenomenon (the projection of national power beyond its frontiers),
without any relation to the requirements for the accumulation and reproduction of capital.
This definition, which stems from vulgar university political science, particularly of the
North American variety, eliminates from the start the true questions. Their discourse
deals with a category empire placed outside of history and thus happily makes no
distinction among the Roman, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, British colonial, and
French colonial empires. No care is taken to consider the specificities of these historical
constructions without reducing them to one another.
49

Actually existing capitalism, then, is inseparable from state power, and it has articulated
itself historically through state power. Moreover, the nation-states that compose world
capitalism are organized in a system where central states require the dependency of peripheral
states. As Deleuze and Guattari point out,

"central capitalism needs the periphery constituted by
the Third World, where it locates a large part of its most modern industries."
50
For Deleuze and
Guattari, the persistence of nation-states does not contradict their theory of deterritorialization.
Indeed, they explicitly claim the States, in capitalism, are not canceled out but change form and
take on a new meaning: models of realization for a worldwide axiomatic that exceeds them.
51

The nation-state does not disappear, even if the market is deterritorializing. In some ways this
market exceeds the nation-state, but this excess is realized by the nation-state itself. The state,
then, becomes the motor of deterritorialization.
17
Thus, on one hand capitalism is a world system because the deterritorializing logic of its
market is extended everywhere, battering down all Chinese walls. On the other hand, though,
the culture of consumption and wealth, the manic technological progress, and the liberalism
promoted by capitalism is exclusive to the centre (with the exception of those classes in the
peripherygangsters, warlords, dictators, compradoriwho help with the exploitation of their
own people). The exploited periphery, therefore, is unable to develop its own autonomous
economy as long as it remains part of world capitalism. Complete, autonomous capitalism is
impossible in the periphery.
52

Since capitalism possesses a deterritorializing identity, however, the ideology that it is
actually a pure force of deterritorialization makes sense. Typically lacking an historical class
analysis, apologists for capitalism misunderstand the transnational characteristic of the world
market as being, by itself, the fundamental logic of capitalism. From their emergence as the
ruling class, the bourgeoisie, in its analysis of market forces, easily makes the assumption that
the market by itself is self-regulating.
53

This is because, as Deleuze and Guattari have pointed out, it seems that there is no
longer a need for a State.
54
Therefore, the surface and ahistorical seeming of capitalismthe
reduction of capitalist social relations to the marketresults in a mystification of capitalism.
The process of deterritorialization that describes primitive accumulation, imperialism, and their
connection, is also a process that produces a false consciousness (or a delirium) of
deterritorialization. Unfortunately, this consciousness of deterritorialization has also
profoundly penetrated the historical left,
55
as is evident in Hardt and Negris Empire.

Reading Deleuze and Guattari in connection with Samir Amin is not without its
difficulties. At the beginning of this paper I indicated that Amin dismissed Deleuze as a
18
postmodernist. Conversely, Deleuze and Guattari, despite their use of Amins centre-periphery
distinction, also severely misread Amins theory of de-linking as a revival of the fascist
economic solution.
56
Furthermore, while in both volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
Deleuze and Guattari are relatively cautious of Leninism and Maoism,
57
Amin is the type of
marxist who believes that any marxist analysis that does not accept the theoretical developments
of Lenin and Mao is dogmatic.
58

At the same time, as this paper has argued, the fact that Deleuze and Guattari referenced
Amin in the context of their theory of deterritorialization should not be ignored. Their explicit
citation of Amin should lead us to read deterritorialization in connection with his theories. Such
a reading, I think, both provides a further layer of comprehension to Amin and allows us to
understand deterritorialization in a more concrete manner.
By reading Deleuze and Guattari against marxist theorists such as Amin, we can
appreciate the marxist depth of many of their conceptssomething that is all too often ignored
due to their incorporation into the so-called postmodern canon. We can come to a better
understanding of Deleuze and Guattari, therefore, if we deterritorialize their theory,
reterritorializing it with the codes of the marxist canon.
19


End Notes

1
Samir Amin, Capitalism in the Age of Globalization (London: Zed Books, 1997), 136.
2
Ibid.
3
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 231.
4
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1998), 454.
5
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 225.
6
Eugene W. Holland, "Deterritorializing 'Deterritorialization': From the 'Anti-Oedipus' to 'A Thousand Plateaus',"
SubStance 20, no. 3-66 (1991): 55-65, 57.
7
Ibid.
8
Karl Marx, Capital, volume 1(New York: International Publishers, 2003), 667.
9
Holland, 57.
10
Ibid., 58. In order to explain how deterritorialization functions in a non-capitalist sense, Eugene Holland gives the
example of despotic Christianity that over-codes ritual pagan observances of the winter solstice and the vernal
equinox with celebrations of Christs birth and resurrection. (58)
11
Ibid.
12
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 454.
13
Marx, 668.
14
Holland, 57.
15
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 454.
16
Marx, 668.
17
Ibid., 669.
18
Ibid., 713.
19
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 225.
20
Ibid.
20

21
Amin, Capitalism in the Age of Globalization, 1.
22
Samir Amin, Unequal Development, trans. Brian Pearce (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1976), 34.
23
Marx, 711.
24
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 454.
25
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Penguin Classics, 2002), 224.
26
Amin, Capitalism in the Age of Globalization, 5.
27
Jeff Noonan, Democratic Society and Human Needs (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press,
2006), 31-42.
28
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), xiv.
29
Ibid., xii.
30
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 453, emphasis added.
31
Ibid.
32
Samir Amin, Imperialism and Unequal Development, trans. Alfred Ehrenfeld and Joan Pinkham (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1977), 181.
33
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 231.
34
Ibid., 232.
35
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 454.
36
Marx and Engels, 223.
37
Ibid.
38
Samir Amin, Obsolescent Capitalism (London: Zed Books, 2003), 57.
39
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 465.
40
Amin, Imperialism and Unequal Development, 79-80.
41
Ibid., 80.
42
Ibid.
43
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 454.
44
Samir Amin, The Liberal Virus, trans. James H. Membrez (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), 13.
45
Amin, Obsolescent Capitalism, 153.
21

46
Ibid., 57.
47
Hardt and Negri, Empire, 150.
48
Amin, Obsolescent Capitalism, 2.
49
Amin, The Liberal Virus, 23.
50
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 465.
51
Ibid., 454, emphasis added.
52
Samir Amin, Class and Nation, trans. Susan Kaplow (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980), 131.
53
Amin, The Liberal Virus, 41.
54
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 453.
55
Amin, The Liberal Virus, 41.
56
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 239.
57
see, for example, Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 375.
58
see Amin, Class and Nation, 206.