INTRODUCTION

MAURIZIO LAZZARATO
In this story, begun in 1879, finished in 1884 and published for
the first time in 1896, Tarde uses science fiction to operate a
"value reversal", a "trans-valuation" in the manner of Nietzsche.
Tarde sees the future of humanity unfolding in three phases.
The first, which he calls "Prosperity", is globalization as we know
it today. The second is an ecological "Catastrophe" during which
the sun is extinguished and the Earth becomes a desert of ice.
In it we see the signs of what awaits us. In the third phase,
"Regeneration", Tarde urges us to reflection in order to avoid the
damage caused by both globalization and the "Catastrophe".
Tarde based his fantastical story on a very concrete analysis of the
economic, social and political conditions of the end of the 19th
century. Economists agree that this was the world's first true period
of globalization.' During this period, the world economy reached
a level of integration in trade, capital flows and population mobility
which would only begin to reappear in the second half of the 1980's.
The two World Wars and, to some extent the Cold War, ended
this first great international expansion and caused a full blown
retreat to the Nation State. Technological innovation (notably in the
domains of transportation and communications), and institutional
innovation (implementation of the first forms of revenue distribution,
of social laws, of the rudiments of a provider State, of laws regulating
weekly working hours, etc.') had progressed rapidly. All of these
developments provided a glimpse of the future and Tarde drew
its romanticized portrait in the first chapter of Underground Man
(Fragment d'histoire future).

In his "savant" work, Tarde describes the social context of

"Prosperity" as "the era of the single and total market, of the global

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economy". Prosperity reaches to the ends of the earth: globalization
leads literally to "the end of the world" and to the "end of history".
In the "end of the world" there is nothing "outside" of the economy-
based world; nothing exists outside of the market economy.
The end of history corresponds to a time when there is no land
left to be conquered, no civilizations to be colonised and no more
populations to be "extensively" exploited. The exploitation and
domination of the single and total market are "post-colonial''.
"What shall we become now that we shall soon no longer have
foreign, African and Asian outlets to serve as palliatives or as
distractions from our disagreements, as outlets for our goods,
for our cruel instincts, for our plundering, as prey for our criminality
and for our excessive birthrates? How shall we manage to re-
establish relative peace at home? For many years it has allowed
us to project our conquering onto the outside world." 3 According
to Tarde, the global economy will produce a great homogeneity
of peoples and cultures. He describes the post-historic era as the
result of a process which first removes differences based on
aristocratic values, on caste, on language, on social class, etc.
then leads to general uniformity. It is a process of world-wide
homologation of usage and customs, of languages and of
institutions.

Concomitant with this general assimilation is a single worldwide

governing power which Tarde refers to as the "Empire" in the
concluding pages of his "Economic Psychology" (1 904). We see
a mellower version of this homogenization in the fantastical tale in
which he draws the portrait of the Empire. In his fictional work,
Tarde casts a disillusioned and ironic look on what socialists and
liberals refer to as "progress". Increased wealth, the development

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of the arts and sciences, a reduction in working hours, an increase
in leisure time and global universal suffrage result in both "frivolous
and superficial wealth", and a centralised political and cultural
system, a "Single State" with a "population in the billions". When
George Bush took office, Toni Negri put forth a hypothesis which
stated that the constitution of the Empire was faced with two
choices: it could either pattern itself on the model of the Roman
empire with its rights, its granting of citizenship to barbarians and its
capacity for assimilating cultures and peoples different from itself or
on the Byzantine model of violence and absolutism. Tarde did not
hesitate: the government of global prosperity did not take its cue
from the institutional and political forms or democracy or from the
Roman Empire, but from the Oriental one. 'The result was not, as
had been announced, a vast democratic republic." To underline the
absolutist character of this Empire, its capital, Constantinople, is
razed and rebuilt in an "imperial profusion of masonry on a site
vacant for three thousand years, on the ruins on ancient Babylon".

Tarde, however, does not disapprove of this "leveling out" despite

the fact that it leads to great "social, linguistic, polrtical and aesthetic"
similarity. Instead, he sees the dynamic as the pre-condition for
a major socio-political innovation. "Therefore, when this Empire
has established itself, and has propagated itself over a great part
of the world( ... ), it is possible that a new social phenomena will
appear to us"•: the subordination of social interests to individual
interests "contrary to what has been seen on Earth up until now".
The advent of the Empire is the marker of a new and unique
opportunity for humanity: socialisation and the unprecedented
accumulation of knowledge and wealth are the pre-condition for
a metamo~phosis which announces a "future history".

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"Indeed, we may ask ourselves whether this universal similarity is
the ultimate fruit of civilization or if, on the contrary, its sole purpose
and consequence isn't, in all its current forms, and as it relates
to customs, to alphabets, to language, to knowledge of the law,
etc. the flowering of individual differences which are at once truer,
more intimate, more radical and more delicate than all of the
differences destroyed. "5

This transition to another period in the History of Humanity pre-

supposes a withdrawal from the logic of progress which is shared
in different guises by socialists and democrats. When all of the
planet's activities are dominated by the global market, humanity
must radically adjust its values and its manner of evaluating the
world. For as "Prosperity" (progress) progresses, it exhausts itself.
The "universal peace" which the great Asian-American-European
federation brings to the planet exhausts the means for action and
for thinking of the modern era. The "universal peace" (probably an
ironic reference to Kant) leads politically to "an unbearable mono-
chromy, a crushing monotony, a sickening insipidity( ... )" and leads
socially to "a leveling and enervating prosperity". If humanity
continues to develop on the basis of this "progressist" inertia
and according to modern models and culture, the result will
be catastrophic. For Tarde the only possible escape is "social
experimentation on a grand scale" with population as its subject
and expressed from a "qualitative" rather than a "quantitative"
point of view. "An "extensive" human culture will be followed by
an "intensive" culture.''" The end of history is not, as suggests
Francis Fukuyama, an ideologist at the State Department of the
United States who has made Hegel's "End of History" fashionable,
the definitive victory of democracy over socialism. It is the need

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for humanity to develop a culture based neither on socialist nor on
liberal principles. According to Tarde, the universality of modernity,
represented in both traditions, although in different ways, will be
realized in the Universality of the State.

"Regeneration" (Chapter V) provides the clues needed to invent the

categories that open the way for experimentation with "intensive"
human culture. Tarde uses science fiction in his short book to
underscore the upheavals that social, Aconomic and political theory
built on the models of modernity undergo in his "savant" work.
In the last part of the story, he describes three major changes
which lead to a knowledge and application of the "intensive".
Humanity's "Regeneration" is achieved at the expense of a
Nietzschean Umvertung through a spectacular reversal of Platonism.
The sun is extinguished. Humanity, however, does not evolve
when it comes out of the Cave as we are told in the foundation
myth of Idealism. Rather, it does so by digging ever further into the
"exploitation/exploration" of telluric forces. Platonic philosophers
leave the cave t? rise up to the light of ideas: it is a movement
upwards, a flight skywards and toward asceticism. Tarde, following
the example of the pre-Socratic philosophers, is drawn down-
wards by the "differential and affective element" of the molecular
and infinitesimal bodies of the Earth. In Tarde's story, any attempt
to move upwards ends in death. The sky is synonymous with
glaciation and hibernation, i.e. with preservation and sterility.
It is this celestial and solar tradition, part of Christianity and,
after God's death, of modern idealist philosophies, that must be
re-evaluated. Miltiades the barbarian, the dissident, the bastard,
saves humanity from catastrophe by inventing new expressions
of "telluric" life. His declaration of struggle shows us the way:

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"No longer say: Up there! Say: Down there! There, down there,
very deep, is Eden, the place of deliverance and of beatitude.
In this place, and in this place only, are innumerable conquests
and discoveries still possible!" Whereas religious utopias seek
humanity's salvation in the heavens and modern political utopias
seek it on Earth, Tarde finds his underground, in the volcanic
depths of our planet.

The second change pertains specifically to modern knowledge

and to the way it bases its understanding of social relationships
on an exchange of services. Here Tarde targets political economy
and its critic, Marxism. He draws a leakage path between the
two great traditions of thought and action that result from political
economy: liberalism and socialism. He criticizes liberal theories for
their "boring" individualism. They ignore the fact that our "sociali-
zation and "individualization develop simultaneously"? He criticizes
socialist theories for encouraging political centralization which
results in "State omnipotence".

"The great question now facing us is not whether the spirit of

association will continue to develop, it will without a doubt; 1t is to
know whether it will unify, become uniform and centralized, as
predicted by Socialism or if it will diversify and become increasing
complex through a multiplicity of multicolored societies. It is this
second way that seems to me to offer itself to the free develop-
ment of association." 9

Socialism and liberalism are theoretical and political forces

which think of "humanity's elevation" in "extensive" rather than
"intensive" terms. Socialists and liberals define and measure
progress, prosperity and well-being according to a "utilitarian"

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model of society. The first group condemns individual greed and
declares that, because of it, the task of organising mutual assist-
ance cannot be left to market forces: it must be organised through
a "plan" for which responsibility is fully assumed, and through
conscious collective "economic" collaboration. The latter group
affirms that the most rational way to help one another is for every
individual to pursue his or her own self interest. It is the concept
of social relations based on "work" and utility, that is, on economic
purpose that Tarde's theory seriously challenges. Industrial activity
"represents a non-social, nearly anti-social relationship". ls the
relationship between worker and boss a truly social relationship?
"Not in the least" according to Tarde.

"Wasn't city life in earlier times, based as it was primarily on the

organic and the natural rather than on a social relationship
between consumer and producer or worker and boss, already an
impure social life, and the source of endless disagreements?" 10

Since social cooperation is based on affects rather than on the

exchange of services, it is fundamentally "non-productive" and
Tarde urges us to abandon its logic. Men exchange reflections,
wants and beliefs, desires and judgments not services. Tarde gives
an alternative definition of cooperation between men, one based
on feeling and empathy: to act is, first, to feel together. The "division
of labor", on which socialists and liberals built their models of
justice, "must be subordinated" to cooperation and to the exchange
of reflections.

"Helping one another and seeking enjoyment and self-satisfaction

alone are the old social ideal. We are substituting a new one:
helping oneself and charming one another."

IS.
Society is no longer based on an exchange of servlces but on an
exchange of admiration or criticism, of favorable and unfavorable
judgments.

The third clue that Tarde offers is his belief that relationships must
be thought of differently and social relations conceived differently.
But what is meant by "social"? It is important not to make a
distinction between social and economic, between nature and
society. Sociology draws its legitimacy and its independence
as a science from this distinction. To understand the concept of
social, beyond the separation of Nature and Society, Tarde proposes
to first "completely eliminate Nature (both its animal and vegetal
forms)" in order to bring forth the "true social bond which appears
thus in its full force and purity". The result of this purification is
a "fully human humanity" freed from other living beings and from
the component elements of nature such as rivers, oceans, etc.

The purpose of separating Nature and Society is not to grasp the

social freed of all "organic interference" but to enable questioning
of the separation itself. Tarde uses this methodology broadly in
his "savant" work to accentuate the opposites which underpin
the knowledge-base of modern and Western tradition (nature -
society, individual - group, sensitivity - intelligible, subject - object,
etc.). He tests their implications then causes them to converge
to set up a critique that opens the door to the creation of new
concepts. lri "Underground Man" Tarde provides us with a perfect
example of the impact of this methodology. Chemistry and
psychology, which embody the opposites of Nature and Society,
are completely redefined by means of this new knowledge.
"By penetrating the intimacy of molecules" (movement downwards)

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this new science of the "intensive" reveals that the constituent parts
of molecules are animated by desires and beliefs, by a will and by
a capacity for judgment. "As psychologists reveal the atomology
of "I'', I was going to say the sociology of "I", they enable us to
see, in the minutest of details, the most admirable of all societies:
the hierarchy of consciousnesses, the feudalism of vassal souls
of which our selves are the pinnacle.'"' There is no conceptual
difference between the association of elements which constitute
a molecule and those which make up a society (in fact, Tarde calls
them all "monads"). The only reason that we believe there is an
"abyss" between molecule and society is that we can know the
inside of the second but not of the first.

By making Nature disappear Tarde is in reality criticizing a passive

view of nature which legitimized the conqueror attitude of modern
man (the "subject of History") toward other human beings and all
living things. Once this distinction has been made, we can take
a fresh look at the constituent elements of Nature: "we feel the
rocks live and move, the hard metals that protect and heat us
populate fraternally. Through them, these living stones speak
to our hearts( ... )."

Tarde's sociology is not a science of the social according to the

categories of sociology. It is an understanding of "associations",
of cooperation, with no distinction made between Nature and
Society. It is the sociology of atoms, of cells and of man.
Tarde takes Durkheim's premise that the social is a fact and must
be analyzed as such and turns it on its head by affirming that
"All phenomena is social phenomena, all things a society".
The phi!osophy of History is only concerned with the great subjects:

,/-......,
/ \
17. ' '
: ;'
' ·-- . . . 'i
the Spirit of Peoples, Absolute Knowledge, the Working Class and
Capital. Sociology only takes into account the great collective actors:•
Society, the State, Parties, etc. To counteract this, all individuals
must be given freedom, independence and the power to create
with no distinction made between nature and society, between
human and non-human.

"What prodigious conquerors, these infinitesimal geITTls, capable

of subjugating to their empire, to their exiguity, a mass millions of
times superior to their own! What a treasure chest of admirable
inventions and of ingenious recipes for exploiting and leading others
emanates from these microscopic cells, whose genius and
minuteness should confound us in equal measure!""

For Tarde, the end of history spells the end of the great emanci-
pating sagas carried forth by the Subjects of History. It is the welling
up of a non-historical era, of an era of creation. The aesthetic life
of regenerated humanity is not about the production or the
consumption of works of art, the development of which, as we
have seen, leads to superficial and frivolous prosperity. It is about
invention, the creation and diffusion of possibilities. It is invention
and creation of possibilities not only in artistic activity but in all other
activities as well. This is the meaning of the aesthetic: the production
and distribution of the "sensitive", the production and distribution
of reflections, of affects.

In his preface to the first Eng1ish-language edition of Underground

Man (Fragment d'histoire future), H.G. Wells, the father of English
science fiction, speaks of this dream made reality: "The possibility
of human groups based on an attraction and a common creative

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impulse rather than on justice and the commerce of mutual
assistance and services."

"It is essential to imitate one another and, through an accumulation

of imitations, diversely combined, to create uniqueness. Mutual
assistance is merely an accessory( ... )"

It is this reversal of ideas, the fulfillment of this unfinished

theoretical-political task that may enable us to subtract ourselves
from both the Empire and the Catastrophe which threaten us.

NOTES:
1 Suzanne Berger, Notre premiere mondialisation, Seuil, 2003.
2 Ibid.
3 Gabriel Tarde, La psychologie economique, II tome, Felix Alcan, 1904, p. 418-419.
4 Ibid., p. 422.
5 Ibid., p. 422.
6 Ibid., p. 419.
7 Gabriel Tarde, Fragment d'histoire future, S(Jguier, 2000, p. 69.
8 Gabriel Tarde. Essais et melanges sociologiques, p. 191-192.
9 Gabriel Tarde, La psychologie economique, II tome, Felix Alcan, 1go4, p. 420.
10 Gabriel Tarde, Fragment d'histoire future, S(Jguier, 2000, p. 90.
11 Ibid., p. 119.
12 Monadologie et sociologie, Les Empecheurs de penser en rood, 1977, p. 99.

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