A Selection of posts from generation-online list* after Porto- Alegre, Genova, Strasbourg 2002
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 10:42:55 -0700 (PDT) From: Thomas Seay Subject: Re: [G_O] Hardt on Porto Alegre: anti-capitalism and national sovereignty
Arianna wrote: "Does anyone share my doubts about Hardt's positing of the question of national sovereignty as the dividing line for the internal politics of the 'movement'?".I don't share your doubts. Hardt says that there is a portion of the anti-globalisation movement that advances "national sovereignty" as a means of struggle. Based upon my experience here in the US, this is undoubtedly true (at least here). I would say this (strengthening national boundaries) is the position taken by both "vanguardist" groups as well as some of the more social-democratic groups. As for which tendency- the pro national-sovereignty one or the anti-capital/decentralized one- has prevailed, I would say that since 9/11 the former has been more successful at advancing its platform & organizational form; however, I have recently detected signs that the organizations that the former have put into place are falling apart...largely because people are fed-up with being manipulated. My only question is what will be the reaction to this disillusionment with "groups"...will it be cynicism or reformation into some more effective form of revolt? ...I feel that there has been a significant change in the political climate here in the USA. There have been a number of financial scandals implicating US corporations, and the hypnotic spell- that the free-market would bring prosperity to all, if only it were allowed to function unhindered- has been lifted. In my opinion, now is an excellent time for us in the US to take action...otherwise, conventional politicians will seize the opportunity to further their careers and people will be left feeling either that "the system works" or, more likely, cynicism.
From: "Nate Holdren" Subject: Re: [G_O] Hardt on Porto Alegre: anti-capitalism and national sovereignty Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 13:16:57 -0400
Hardt rather glosses over an important issue in this latter sector of the movement(s), which is the question of resolving differences. While we don't want a party structure etc as Hardt notes it is much easier to have dialogs with and within that formation. 'Easier' isn't the right term. I mean rather that the processes are established. I know a criticism I've heard of more horizontal decentralized groups has been that goals are unclear and discussion is hard to hold. Personally I know some friends who have cut back on or ceased activity in these sectors due to what they felt was a lack of forums for discussion internal to the movement(s) and organizations, both for addressing things like goal formulation and issues like instances of sexism and other problems that arise periodically. This seems a real problem, how the parts of the multitude can communicate among/with other constituent parts without replicating old mistakes, a problem which Hardt largely leaves un-addressed in a substantive fashion (though in Empire HN do call for a new language of struggle, which I take to be a recognition of the problem and a tacit admission that they don't know how to respond, which I can respect).
I'm interested to know if there's anyone advancing a 'third way' so to speak, between the national sovereignty types on one side and the dispersed multitude of revolutionary movements on the other. I'm being unclear. What I mean is, as I see it there are 3 basic options - nation state, Empire, and Counter-Empire, which I would call the regressive capitalist, progressive capitalist, and revolutionary options, respectively. As I understand him Hardt is saying a fault-line in the movement(s) today lies between those who want the third and those who want the first. What about those who want something like the second but with a reduced role for the nation-state, a sort of powerful and benevolent social-democratic UN for instance? Does anyone know if many calls have been made for this type of position? The fight between these three positions and those who want and maintain the present order seems much more complex than Hardt represents.
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 20:11:56 -0700 (PDT) From: Thomas Seay Subject: [G_O] Wandering Between Two Worlds
...Everyone, I feel quite frustrated by this inability to communicate and organize. A line from Matthew Arnold's poem "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse" captures the moment: Wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other unable to be born. Here in the United States, we have a HUGE CRACK in the system (in my opinion). The financial scandals have destroyed many peoples' retirement chances and seriously undermined faith in an unfettered free market. This opening will not last forever. Already the democrats are seizing the moment to capitalize politically. A few CEOs will be sacrificed at the stake, at best a few structural reforms will be put in place. We are not organized to take advantage of this crack...but various reformists are organized and will take advantage of it. We'll get a few more Democrats and maybe a few Greens next election...Ho hum, God bless America... "The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living"
From: "EE" Subject: Re: [G_O] Wandering Between Two Worlds Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 19:21:08 +0100
For me the problem of communicability and the question of the multitude are one and the same. What is often seen as an inherently positive is actually a negative situation were a number of established left groups have realised that whereas previously it was expedient to emphasise the differences between them and the other movements, they now preserve their differences by a formal unity, under the auspices of coalitions and what have you. The socialist alliance election campaign in Britain was a clear example of such a commonly agreed strategy. However this side of the 'movement' is quite clearly distinguished from the other side, people in more spontaneous/ less structured groupings, more personalised conceptions of the political, non-party based activism, including too the more confrontational, autonomist and anarchist elements. The rosy view of this situation is that all these different grouplets are operating in networks, agreed on methods of engagement whilst preserving the autonomy and distinctiveness of the subjects involved.
Two things stand out clearly to me as examples of the actual lack of inclusiveness and very real divisions. The first is the all too familiar reaction against those agents using violence or destructive tactics. The refrain heard over and over again, is about a small group of troublemakers causing problems for the majority of peaceful activisms. This refrain, which you hear continuously in the media, is just as prevalent amongst activists whenever there is a large grouping of people, which has resulted in some kind of confrontation with the police. The soft left exhibit absolute distaste for these gestures of defiance, symbolic as they are, believing as they do that their tried and tested symbolisms are the only means of creating any kind of impact. The irony lies in this, whilst the established, reformist soft left want to exclude these elements, they are both quite reliant on them (for creating interest on boring Sunday strolls down the same streets, shouting the same slogans over and over again) and are ignorant of the fact that those they condemn are continuously being produced anew, by the actions of the state, by the mundane mentality of everyday life, by peoples sense of frustration and hopeless (which includes very much peoples sense of hopelessness with the traditional left). Even more ironically - in their servile braying for media attention - the reformist left use the space created by confrontational politics, in order to pose in the Bourgeois press as representatives of the movement, and in their own desires to be accepted by the spectacular machine, repeat the condemnations of the bad apples in the cart &c reinforcing the entrenched idea that the 'political' has certain rules of procedure, which call for good and appropriate behaviour. My second point is really that divisions between the traditional (trying to be hip left) and the groupings that operate on a kind of lifestyle of resistance basis, have already been largely institutionalised. Any major meet now has separate areas or blocs, for each category.... in European autonomisms, these fractions are themselves fractioned; one is of either a Pink, Silver or Black grouping according to ones principles or values. But do these blocks communicate? Do they, my arse! In many cases beyond the sharing of certain resources, beyond instrumental forms of association, there is absolutely no communication, neither side want the communication, the only ones attempting to communicate are liberals (the bleating of 'why can't we just work together'), or power hungry bureaucrats who think that the answer to everything is to set up a committee. But what is so bizarre about this situation is how depoliticised it is. There are no shared goals. One side wants to smash authority as such, the other wants to replace one authority with its own version. To talk about this situation in terms of networks can be quite misleading, because it assumes that people are working towards the same thing, I am not so sure. If we leave aside the large amount of people who are bemused by these structures and do not fall clearly into any category (and I count myself as one of this number), it would seem that networks represent contact amongst groups whose identity is pre-defined and not very prepared to adapt their organisational form nor accommodate to different types of situation. Even more ironically it seems that one need to constitute oneself as a grouplet, i.e. enact a form of closure, before one can even pretend to operate within these so called networks. Rather than forming associations in process, they are pre-established (outside of the communicative framework) which pretty much amounts to negating any fruitful results of the networking process.
Whereas the formal association between different constituted left groups, is the basis on which the political subject of 'multitude' can be identified, by all conventional standards this is failing absolutely to attract more people into political activity. The pathetic electoral fortunes of the Socialist Alliance are a good example and exhibit the extent to which these people believed their own propaganda in the face of all evidence to the contrary. More pertinent however is the failure of the left to muster any credible resistance to the recent western war-mongering in the Afghanistan and the Middle-East. Here the left fell back on all its usual traditional modes of procedure, flag waving, petitions, vying for public credibility - exactly those types of response which the counter-summits of 2000, and 2001 had been able to leave behind on the strength of its own dynamic. And here the soft-left absolutely exposed itself - despite its brief flirtation with more confrontational politics, it retreated into its shell of miserable mealy mouthed liberal politics, committing the heinous crime of re-legitimising the authority of the nation-state by collating a sack of shit (priests, do-gooders, maverick MPs, school teachers, Christians, student leaders soon to be government bureaucrats, in short all the crap our generation have been trying to avoid) to go knock on the door of power and ask them to be nice. What marks this out above all else, is this notion of being respectable, that not going to war was a viable political option for the state. In short this was not counter-establishment, but a different section of the establishment, quite possibly equivalent to the concept of 'people' that Virno and others have counterpoised to the 'multitude'. It is not just that more spontaneous confrontations did not occur in many cases they were actively suppressed, by these minorities claiming universality. In response then to why we can't take advantage of the current crisis, I'd say firstly because we have shied from confronting the intimate connection between war and capitalism. It is I imagine perfectly consistent for people to hold strong criticisms of the fat cats and corrupt corporations whilst supporting the current war-drive. The western military establishment have (through the policy of sanctions) kept the supposed threat from Iraq throbbing under the surface of the public imagination, ready to open it up, just when it is expedient for the establishment to use the war as a means of reasserting their legitimacy and indeed the establishments flailing self-belief. The particularly gun-ho attitude of the Bush administration only reflects the normality of the tendency of the crisis of the nation-state to try and resolve itself through militarisation (a tendency exacerbated by the WTC bombing). It almost goes without saying that this militarism is driven by domestic affairs rather than external factors. The point is surely this: we can't take advantage of the situation unless we can somehow push for a more total critique of the crisis, one that can attack both sides of the process at the same time; one that is not easy for a left who can only see in war, the waste of money that could be used for raising wages or building schools.
In all this one gets the distinct impression that rather than the Leninist vanguard raising consciousness, they are actually tailing behind the consciousness of the people to whom they relate. The left wants people to accept an extra step of mediation between their desires and their realisation. It is quite clear to most people, that the Trot or the Leninist requires their punters to become like them, to relate to other people as they do - to become activists like them - for the proposed project to work. That is to say beyond the rhetoric of interests, there is a long track process of constituting oneself as a political agent, which like it or not, is simply not in their interests. Because it requires a different measure of commitment to life, a commitment to a long- term goal, as opposed to the more immediate attempt to live ones life a best as one can. Moreover peoples disenchantment with 'politics' which the left constantly whinges about as apathy, is actually a more advanced form of consciousness against this kind of separation of the political that even the radical left shares with the establishment. In our atomised lives, self-interest no longer equates adequately with collective interest, collectivism just does not look like a viable option. We can only argue that it does in only particular local cases, otherwise it is only an abstract, formal and potential unity, which will always be displaced to a later date. In contrast to this, the politics of spontaneity, of doing what you want to do when you want to do it, is a far more exciting, provocative, and destabilising response. Indeed from the perspective of the establishment, who's crisis of legitimacy is partly created by the dissolution of its traditional methods of containing the working class, e.g. unions, those that refuse a dialogue with the state, or refuse to participate in the democratic imagination, are far more of a threat. Through focus groups and decentralised attempts at community building, through new media, the state is continuously attempting to establish different means of mediating their legitimacy. The left fall into these traps continuously: flattered by the morsels of recognition that the establishment confers, always disassociating themselves from their potential base by reproducing all the trappings of the proper and respectable democratic process: a process which the masses to their credit have absolutely no time for. The powers that be don't appear to have any problem with critiques of their policies that pass through the mechanisms that they have themselves put in place, predominantly because the dynamic behind any particular action is to re-affirm those structures of mediation. Far more destabilising to the establishment would be if their particular policies failing to provoke a reaction. If rather than getting all hot and bothered each time the state attempted to put itself back into the driving seat, all the Monbiots, Tariq Ali's, Klein's, Said's, and who have you, just shut the fuck up for once, then the establishment would actually fail to achieve its desired affect (unless of course one believes the actual object of foreign policy is to kill as many Iraqis or Afghanis as possible, rather than trying to reassert an accountability between the public and policy). We would then be following the lead of people on mass who are simply refusing to participate in the game itself.
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 02:50:39 +0100 From: Arianna Subject: Re: more Re: [G_O] Wandering Between Two Worlds-Genova
I agree with what was posted on autonomedia, but I think Wu Ming romanticised the event a little. I saw the same problems as last year's, in particular, the criminalisation -and marginalisation-of the so- called black bloc and generally of so-called violent direct action -which in most cases is just a misnomer for illegal action. The (official) acrimony between the 'anarchists' and the 'civil disobedients' confuses me. But it addresses the problem of 'no outside' on the one hand and the fine line between centri sociali activities within institutions and the 'capitalism with a human face' ambition of the social forums en large. But I don't mean to get into the complexities of the internal divisions. The scandal of this commemoration (in Genoa 2002) was the presence of the PDS and the CGIL's leader, paralleled by the indifference shown by Berlusconi to amnesty condemning reports, which coincided with government's generous support (millions) shown to Placanica, the alleged murderer of Carlo Giuliani. That was the symbolic politics of the platform, each side seizing the opportunity of the recurrence. But more than a hundred thousand people weren't there to bring last years abuses to the attention of the institutions and the media. I think they'd pretty much resigned on that some time ago. I'm not sure why I went back. Social forums seem to be political platforms for individuals of various kinds who share definite political ambitions. They don't interest me much in themselves, but they are attempts at 'structuring' and 'ordering' the movement that are important to observe in the light of their structural failings. Maybe they'll be short lived, maybe they'll breed the next political class. But the disobedients and the let's call them autonomous groups are doing some important work. Very crudely though, in these kinds of occasions the former are obsessed with the media, the latter with self-marginalisation. Both suffer from identity politics. Identity politics is probably the worst threat to transformation today. It is self-obsessed politics. In post PC society it means self-victimisation and the hypostasis of the category of experience in its narrowest form. It reasons in binary rejection/acceptance mode, it is a psychologisation of politics. Bifo refers to Alain Ehrenberg. La fatigue d'etre soi, when he writes:
'Depression starts emerging at a time when the disciplinary model of behavioural management, the rules of authority and conformity to the laws that assigned to social classes and sexes a destiny, fell apart in the face of norms that incite each person to individual initiative pushing her to be herself. Because of this normativity, the entire responsibility of our lives is placed upon us. Depression then presents itself as an illness of responsibility in which the feeling of inadequacy/insufficiency predominates. The depressed is not worth it; he is tired to have to become himself. (p.10).
In my view, identity politics is the 'healthy', un-fatigued response to this process. The other side of the same coin. Nourishing the 'responsible' self. Networked or not identity politics can't get anywhere beyond self assertion at the expense of some other, but its worst side effect is that it pre-empts political debate, or pretends to be having one. It is almost Habermasian in its reliance on procedure, the means that is the end in itself. Because in asserting its being it expresses all its fear of becoming. Networks are great but no end in themselves. And I agree with Erik on this strongly: identities are defined prior to these 'meetings' and it is only through state repression that they are temporarily suspended as such. In confrontations some other monstrous side of humanity comes about, the socialising force of the labour of resistance, before each returns to their respective groups to frame a post- factum mediatised and parochial stand on violence. I do believe though, that behind the banners, most people were there in search of that monster. But the police had decided it was best not to resurrect it and Erik makes a crucial point when he says that the spontaneous side of this movement is much more mature than its reflexive one.
EMPIRE, STRUGGLE AND COMMUNICATION
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:17:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Thomas Seay Subject: Re: [Generation_online] Incommunicability?
. I believe that allusion to the incommunicability of the various struggles refers to the struggles that arose in the late 80s, early 90s: The Chinese students in Tian an Min, the revolt in south-central LA, French workers struggles. As ferocious as the struggles were, they did not constitute a cycle of struggle. The LA revolt did not feed any other revolts...it was singular and seemingly isolated from the other revolts, etc. I don't have handy the translation that I did of Negri's interview with the journal "Multitudes" but it seems that there he made the statement that this incommunicability no longer holds true; that with Seattle, Quebec City, Genoa, etc, we are now in the midst of a real cycle of struggle. (Remember that Empire was written before any of those had taken place).
On a related but separate topic...I was afraid that 9/11 had brought the US "node" of the cycle of struggle to a screeching halt. I was heartened this past weekend that 30,000 were out in the streets in San Francisco and 75-100,000 were out in Washington DC to protest against Israeli aggression, the permanent war and globalisation. Of course we have also seen this HUGE demonstrations in Italy the past few weeks and a general strike. In France, 28 percent abstention from the presidential elections and a rejection of the soft Left...of course the dark side of that is a quasi fascist is in the runoffs and he managed to even get quite a few workers votes by playing on fears surrounding immigration and security issues.
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 03:33:23 +0200 From: florian schneider Subject: [Generation_online] Communicating struggles (was: Rethinking Marxism)
I don't think it's a tragedy, if struggles are "incommunicable". What has it meant, 'a communicable struggle'? Probably it referred to the case when I could state, that your struggle is mine. As far as I remember Hardt and Negri refer to the cycle of struggles in the sixties, when the concept of national liberation was communicated in a bi-polar world order, when anti-Imperialist solidarity was the synchronized expression of a worldwide movement. This has definitely not happened in the 80s and 90s. And as it seems, the fragmentation of the struggles was also not stopped by the revolt in Chiapas, which certainly marks the beginning of a new era... but is there really something that we have in common? And why? Isn't it the crucial problem of what was formerly known as the anti-globalisation movement, that there is no depth to the common? And is it really a problem? I'm afraid that I don't feel too much sympathy to the leaders of contemporary national liberation struggles from Chavez to Arafat, although indymedia may perfectly "communicate" these struggles. I'm sure that this shift is also due to the specific role of media. More or even independent information is not creating that certain surplus of left-wing compassion as in the times when the tubes were communicating. IMHO the more interesting question is, how and what we can share. And what might sharing mean, if it is not based on communication, identification, homogenisation. Can we share experiences, resources and our capabilities and maybe even struggles, just like we do it with mp3-files or in the field of software development? It may not sound as romantic as before. And truly it doesn't mean, that the revolution will be napsterized, brought to court and sold to Bertelsmann. But isn't it time to look at what comes beyond communication and how current struggles are being fought, how to bypass the dead-end nation state and how local struggles are short-cut to the global and don't need a common ground or territory?
Indeed the superiority of the shift of postmodernism and poststructuralism to boring media theory all over the 90ies may have spoiled the ground. But the two guys gave so many interviews in the last two years, that we could easily start to think about it ourselves ;)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 20:41:10 +1000 From: Steve Wright - pmargin@froggy.com.au Subject: Re: [Generation_online] Communicating struggles
I think that a 'common language' that flattens things out the (allegedly) lowest common denominator would be disastrous today, as it was in the past (the Comintern is a tragic example). And the sort of 'aping' you cite is also self-defeating, because it comes across as silly apart from anything else. Is a 'common language' the wrong way of posing the problem? Perhaps I'm naive in thinking that something different is possible from what you raise. Is there a better way of talking about means of communication that allows those in struggle to listen to each other? Maybe some examples would help - e.g. how did the wildcat form of strike circulate around Europe from the 1950s onwards?
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 10:46:11 -0400 From: Ron Day Subject: Re: [Generation_online] Communicating struggles
I'm wondering what the relationship is between this notion of a common language and H&N's (and particularly, Negri's in _Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitudo_) notion of a common concept or name. The first seems to be demanding a language that can translate, and thus, an implicit notion of a common language that precedes the actual events. The latter, however, are constitutive of the possibility for events, or at least, for their repetition. In the first, there seems to be a language that is prior to a common name, for the latter, (again, reading Negri's _Kairos_), materials, objects, non linguistically-explicit affects are prior to a common name (which, possibly (according to my reading) would come from the in-common attributes of body and thought (for humans, and possibly, with other animals sharing these attributes of substance, as well).
From: "Matteo" Subject: Re: [Generation_online] Communicating struggles Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 08:07:03 +0100
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by prior... logically prior, temporally prior, ontologically prior? It seems to me that the whole argument of the book (Kairos) is to suggest that language and being are constructed in concert through and in the commonality of the multitude - although this again risks instituting a hierarchy that Negri does his best to negate. Language is a form of the common (i.e. that expresses the common), and a form that constructs the common itself. Incommunicability on this model, would be the failure to construct in common, or to construct the common...
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 16:55:23 -0800 (PST) From: Thomas Seay Subject: Re: [Generation_online] Readings and Discussions
Since N&H begin this section with a discussion of imperialism, I would like for some of us to address a seemingly simple question: what are the differences and similarities between Empire and imperialism? And by imperialism, I mean the classical "Leninist" definition having the following characteristics: (1) The export of capital becomes of prime importance along with the export of commodities (2) Production and distribution become centralized into great trusts or cartels. (3) Banking and industrial capital become merged (4) the capitalist powers divide the world into spheres of influence (5) this division is completed, implying a future intercapitalist struggle
From: geert lovink Subject: Re: [Generation_online] Readings and Discussions Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 22:55:23 +1100
I would like to contribute a specific case, from Bosnia. The question here is: how could the behaviour of the United States be qualified in this case? There is a somewhat similar discussion in the case of America's resistance against the International Court of Justice. Is the USA Empire? Is the USA part of Empire? Or is the USA above, or rather, beyond Empire?
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 07:41:05 -0500 From: Keith Hart Subject: Re: [Generation_online] Readings and Discussions
Is the USA Empire? Is the USA part of Empire? Or is the USA above, or rather, beyond Empire?<
Or, to ask the same question in a historical way, has the Bush regime abandoned the project of collective empire undertaken by the USA after 1945? And does that make the Afghan war an act of old-style imperialism? The US has always been an imperialist power of the traditional sort in Central America and points South. It operated with racist proxies in Southern Africa. But it chose to build up Western Europe after the second world war, taught them who was boss over Suez and generally included them in Eurasian adventures up to Kosovo. Bush's unilateralism was evident before September 11th and has been even more marked since. The relationship of the USA to empire today ('administering the global society of control') is worth investigating with some conceptual clarity.
From: geert lovink Subject: Re: [Generation_online] u.s. empire Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 19:53:06 +1100
Sure. I have read the book. But Empire not the Bible, not the Answer to All your Questions. And the situation can change. Arguably Empire is a pre-1989 book, from the late cold war period (especially if you look a the theoretical constructs it uses--Negri is from that period). At best it is a book of the worry free Clinton years. Not real nineties in my taste, let alone post 911. It is for certain pre Internet and new media. In that period the situation can change. I suppose that why we discuss things here and use the book as a source of inspiration and reference. I think the relation between USA and Empire is constantly changing, highly fluid.
From: "Erik" Subject: RE: [Generation_online] u.s. empire Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 18:51:38 -0000
My instinct is to say, Hardt and Negri's comments withstanding, one conclusion of the general tendency of their analysis would be that it is increasingly less fruitful to see the USA as a distinct entity, in respect to its relations to Empire as a whole. One implication of the colonisation of its cultural capital has been that to varying degrees, other 'states' have internalised various aspects of the US culture as if it were its own. With 9/11 for example not only did various governments all want a piece of
the drama, but at various points whole sections of media were without complication handed over to direct transmission from the American media giants. The point is that aspects of America have been assimilated by the rest of the world, and does this change the nature of America? However one of the messages repeated time and time again, and reflecting for me the Bourgeoisie's own feelings of the crisis of the integrity of the nation state, was that America was now fully implicated in the affairs of the world. From the point of view of statehood and one of its characteristics being the capacity to police effectively ones own borders, this is clearly disintegrating not in spite of but because of its hegemonic agenda. America might be able to self sustain economically within its own frontiers, but the dynamic of capitalist expansion drives its capital outwards as a force that can and will be steered to suit other interests. Again one result of post-fordism that roughly correlates to Empire has been the expansion of the communications industry that has opened up innumerable portals whereby those frontiers could be breached. This is not to say that USA does and can still operate as a bloc, but this is in tension with its own needs for economic expansion. That it plays a dominant role in Empire is unquestionable, but then to return to the original questions about Lenin's imperialism, this too was an economic periodisation, and not to be understood simply as a form of militarism. I always understood America intervened in Bosnia to keep various European countries own international agendas in check. That there is a significant change with the Bush administration, I don't know, but I'd stab a guess that the current campaign of vengeance would have been conducted by the previous government with a much more nuanced collaborative face. I do remember that the Clinton government insisted that it was going to concentrate on domestic issues b4 plunging headlong into a series of international conflicts, which left a lot of people dead under the auspices of democracy, and 'restoration of hope' and the same kind of bullshit humanitarianism that comes up with pap like 'infinite justice' and 'enduring freedom' - indeed whenever non-American leaders repeat this tripe it is normally with a bit of a smirk, because they know damn well it is a kind of licence to pursue their own agendas under their own phraseology. In so far as we can theorise the USA outside of the world in which it operates, which is not just of its making, I think it is right to say the relation is a fluid one. However I don't think the authors of empire would disagree, and I would say that as an intervention in politics, the point of the book Empire was to try to give a new political shape to practice for what had previously been primarily theorised as 'politics from below'. It is a generality or an 'abstract totality' to use a Marxian phrase, yet provides a framework for shared but different labours to concretise the thesis -(it is this spirit of the book that I admire most) - though its content might or might not gel with competing conceptualisations at a different level of abstraction.
From: Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 13:33:32 GMT Subject: Re: [Generation_online] u.s. empire
Geert, in what way is it a 'pre-1989' book? Does the concept of Empire make sense in a world that is effectively divided into two blocks? A pre-internet book? Hardt would have been about 17-18 in 'pre-commercialisation of internet' time. And which particular 'theoretical construct' that Negri uses is of the 'late cold war period'? Certainly not 'Empire' or 'multitude', perhaps you could expand.
Erik, I agree on the whole with your analysis, although I think it's also important to stress that the emergence of Empire is a tendency - and though I can't remember much on this (if anything) in the book, I think a number of counter-vailing tendencies to the formation of Empire are undoubtedly at work, sometimes within the very same institutions.
For example, there are undoubtedly a number of crossovers between national military personnel and departments and those of NATO, and am sure they play different roles in respect to Empire according to their specific location within each department, and depending on the particular conflict and how the 'division of labour' of the national regimes is parcelled out ... in short I'm sure the process has a number of schizoid aspects. It will hardly be a unitary, linear process. Nevertheless, it seems to me that although the 'war on terrorism' looks, in many ways, like old style imperialism, it also seems to me evident that that the US is simply not able to cover all bases at once and needs intelligence, and support from numerous other partners... It cannot go it alone, nor does it wish to (pace old imperialism).
It is also questionable for how long global capital will accept the perpetual extension and exporting of conflict... which may be useful for the arms industry, but not many other areas of production and trade.
From: geert lovink Subject: Re: [Generation_online] Re: Generation_online digest, Vol 1 #73 - 3 msgs Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 09:51:21 +1100
With pre-1989 I mean that a lot of the fight are related to the 1968 generation and their problems. A lot of the writings of D/G, Foucault and Negri, for instance, is related to get away from homogeneous, centralized, 'Stalinist' policies of the PCF which dominated the French left for so many decades. With that came the rise of 'rhizomatic' new social movements (which have now become institutionalized, tamed NGOs). The liberating concepts of Mille Plateaux and Empire are liberating a certain generation of something. '1989' is not just a date. It is a major shift in world politics; it marks the true rise of Empire, in a globalized world 'without alternatives' (at least, that's how it is presented to us). It also marks a final liberation of the dark ages of communist party rule over a lot of social struggles worldwide and a renewed effort to redefine what radical social change could look like in the global media age. To say that my questions are closing debates seems a bit strange if you look at the lively and lengthy responses. I am writing books myself and experience at first hand how fast they can become outdated (or at least parts of them). Books summarize long periods of reflections. However, the world is speeding up at such an incredible rate that it is indeed really necessary to constantly rethink the concepts, in particular the relation between Empire and US policy. Besides recent post-911 changes in US policy there are other tensions such as the US policy towards global warming and the Kyoto agreement, the debate over the 'status aparte' for the USA related to the International Court of Justice or that tiny case in Bosnia which I referred to. These could all be case studies to reassess Empire, update it, if you wish.
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 21:42:46 -0800 (PST) From: Thomas Seay Subject: Re: [Generation_online] Re: Generation_online digest, Vol 1 #73 - 3 msgs
My understanding of Empire is that it is an EMERGING tendency. That does not mean that contradictions between the various countries do not continue to manifest themselves. Bush and Cheney are very tied politically to oil interests and this fact determines their position on the Kyoto treaty. However, has the emergent tendency to have money circulate without any state control been eclipsed by the recent events? Has the tendency to create free trade between nations, with little or no state intervention, been eclipsed?
I don't think so. Isn't the tendency towards Empire still the dominant one? What we have is a situation of extreme complexity. It is not a pure state of Empire. Yes, we have the United States govt, which wants to attack Iraq, and France who is against that for its own reasons. But, in the main, they are agreed on the need for free trade and for the need to build a strong mobile army to kick ass any where in the world, regardless of national boundaries. Bush has played on nationalist sentiment here in the US, but the language is different. His speeches are not about the US against this or that country, but of a "coalition of the freedom-loving countries" against "the terrorists" or "the axis of evil". Of course, in times of "war", countries have built coalitions before. How is the Permanent Global War, now underway, different from others?
Capital is in the main encumbered by the nation-state...but the nation-state is not like the cocoon that the Empire sheds one day like a butterfly in summer.
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