File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0106, message 271


From: "Rowan Wilson" <wilson_rowan-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: AUT: Louis Proyect's critique of negri and hardt
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 08:34:07 -0000


Dear Louis and all

Here is a response to the first part of your critique of H&N's Empire. 
Apologies to those who've received it on the H&N list, and apologies if i 
repeat points that have been covered in the past 12 hours posts (i haven't 
had time to check them yet).

>
>Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's "Empire" is best understood as a *turn*
>within the ideological/political current known as "post-Marxism". Although
>this movement has been closely identified with protests against
>globalization--albeit not within classical Marxist parameters--Hardt and
>Negri will have nothing to do with any movement that makes concessions to
>the idea that "Local differences preexist the present scene and must be
>defended or protected against the intrusion of globalization." (Empire, p. 
>45)
>
>Before turning to part one of "Empire", it would be useful to say a few
>words about the emergence of post-Marxism. As a theory, it tries to
>reconcile Marx with postmodernism. From Marx it borrows the idea that
>capitalism is an unjust system. From postmodernism it borrows the idea that
>"grand narratives" lead to disaster. While postmodernism had been around
>since the mid-80s (Lyotard's "Postmodern Condition" was published in 1984),
>the disenchantment with the traditional Marxist project reached a crescendo
>after 1990, when the Soviet bloc began to collapse and after the Central
>American revolution had been defeated.

1. It is not correct to place Negri and Hardt within the post-Marxist 
tradition. The term post-marxism refers to the school of thought pretty much 
begun by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in the mid-80s. This project was 
an explicit rejection of essentialism and the essentialism that suggested 
that the working class was THE historical agent for change.

Negri fundamentally disagrees with L&M's approach. Where they see the 
collapse of the working class subject, Negri sees transformation. Negri has 
always asserted the importance of the proletariat for change (and he does so 
again and again in Empire).

Also, Negri has never dismissed the 'grand narrative' of the conflict 
between capital and labour. In his work he has harsh words for those who do.


>
>Part of the problem in coming to terms with "Empire" is the lack of an
>economic analysis, which is surprising given the self-conscious attempt by
>the authors to position the book as a Communist Manifesto for the 21st
>century. Not only had Marx written a seminal economics treatise to anchor
>his political program, so had Lenin a generation later. When Lenin was
>gathering together the forces that would eventually constitute the 3rd
>International, he already had "Imperialism, the Final Stage of Capitalism"
>under his belt. This work not only was dense with detail about the
>emergence of corporate trusts, it was written only after Lenin had
>familiarized himself with hundreds of books and articles on economics,
>especially those written by J.A. Hobson and Rudolf Hilferding. Going
>through the notes of "Empire" you find abundant references to Baudrillard,
>Celine, Arendt, Polybius et al, but very few to economics studies.

2. You must be looking at a differenct copy of 'Empire' to the one I have 
because I can find plenty of references to economics and socio-cultural 
texts in the notes - so not really a history of ideas. There is plenty of 
discussion of struggle between labour and capital, and how this struggle has 
formed the present state of play, throughout the rest of the book.

>This failure leads the authors to make bald assertions that scream out for
>verification, but which are not forthcoming. For example, in the preface
>they state that "The United States does indeed occupy a privileged position
>in Empire, but this privilege derives not from its similarities to the old
>European imperialist powers, but from its differences." Those who expect
>those differences to revolve around investment patterns, etc. will be
>disappointed, for in fact Hardt and Negri are referring to the United
>States constitution which was inspired by an imperial (but not imperialist)
>idea going back to the Roman Empire.

3. But agreed, one would really like such bald assertions spelt out, and 
argued more painstakingly with empirical examples, rather than leaving us to 
chase the footnotes.
>
>In the absence of hard economic facts, indeed much of "Empire" devolves
>into discussion of the role of ideas in shaping history. Of particular note
>is their definition of Empire itself. While "imperialisms" were very much
>defined by place and time ("an extension of the sovereignty of the European
>nation-states beyond their borders" as they put it), Empire is timeless and
>omnipresent. "It is a *decentered* and *deterritorializing* apparatus of
>rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its
>open, expanding frontiers". While to some of us, this comes across as
>nothing more than a fancy description of U.S. imperialism's 'new world
>order', let us accept this definition on its own terms for the time being.
>
>In order to give this definition some substance, the authors unfortunately
>allow their idealist method to run away with itself. This is most
>particularly notable in their discussion of the United Nations, which is a
>lynch-pin of Empire. Although--like much of Empire--the UN has nasty
>side-effects, it is still a breakthrough in terms of pointing in the
>direction of establishing a *global* order. From this standpoint, the work
>of one Hans Kelsen is critical. As "one of the central intellectual figures
>behind the formation of the United Nations," Kelsen sought in
>"Kantian-fashion" a supreme ethical idea that could provide an organization
>of humanity.

4. N&H are certainly not fans of the UN - it's quite clear to me that they 
abhor the carnage that it generates. They are no fan of the w/c ceding power 
to any body. Negri and Hardt are surely discussing the UN theorist Kelsen as 
a way of opening up the problem of what they term Empire. One question we 
have to ask ourselves is 'Does a body of law bare a relation to the actual 
political and economic processes that take place OR is it one huge lie 
perpetrated by a shadowy cabal?'. Marx, in his discussion of the the 
commodity, labour-power and freedom, clearly thought the former. And we must 
read N&H in this way too. N&H are not endorsing the practice of the UN. But 
by examining the ways in which theorists understand its juridical right, 
they seek to highlight a tendency (ultimately not realised by any particular 
institution) to supranational, biopolitical control.
>

>
>Of course, now that the Soviet Union no longer exists, the United Nations
>is more than ever a tool of territorial and economic ambitions by the USA
>and its allies. Put in old-school Marxist terms, the UN is not an
>expression of Empire but imperialism. Power grabs by big fish in the ocean
>at the expense of smaller fish--rather than Kantian pieties--is the only
>way to understand the United Nations.

5. Power is not just about grabbing property - power is about control, and 
this is what N&H are looking at. A power that seeks to force us to aid 
capital to accumulate throughout every part of our lives. Ultimately, the 
issue is not to get a bigger piece of the pie but to make a world where i 
never have to slave for any of that pie.

'Empire' (the book) is extremely ambitious. In marxist IR theory there was a 
conflict between those that saw the key conflict as unequal exchange between 
core and peripheral states and those that saw the key conflict as the form 
of the mode of production within states. In the former approach, the 
politics suggested support for a peripheral nation-state against the 
imperial state. This has been fairly disastrous (witness the RCP(UK)'s 
support for Iraq in the Gulf War), encouraging support for rulers, whether 
bureaucratic or democratic. In the latter approach, while it had a better 
emphasis on class struggle, it missed the international dynamic. N&H are in 
effect trying to use the mode of production approach but on the whole globe, 
almost as if it were one nation. But, just as within the nation the state 
wasn't the controlling factor but was part of the capitalist social relation 
which WAS the controlling factor, so the UN doesn't control but is just one 
aspect.
>
>Of course, if one sweeps the nasty realities of the formation of the United
>Nations under the rug, it becomes that much easier to convince oneself that
>Empire might not be such a bad thing after all. Even after Hardt and Negri
>admit that globalizing tendencies involve a lot of "oppression and
>exploitation," they still maintain that the process must continue. Why?
>"Despite recognizing all this [bad stuff], we insist on asserting that the
>construction of Empire is a step forward in order to do away with any
>nostalgia for the power structures that preceded it and refuse any
>political strategy that involves returning to the old arrangement, such as
>trying to resurrect the nation-state against capital." In other words,
>socialism defended by armed working people who would sacrifice their lives
>at places like the Bay of Pigs in order to build a better future for their
>children and grandchildren is a waste of time.

6. I'm thoroughly with Negri and Hardt's rejection of the nation-state as 
any expression of resistance to capitalism. Much of Negri's work has 
focussed on the fact that capital is the sate is capital, and this to me 
seems spot on. So I'm afraid I can't concur with your defence of the Cuban 
state as a socialism worth defending.

Hardt and Negri's progressive position is in keeping with old-school 
Marxism: what we have now is always better than what we had then (as they 
explain in some detail). I'm very unhappy with this. While they argue that 
this is only a teleology 'after the fact', it still seems to suggest the 
possibility of reformism to me.

>
>Leaving no doubt whatsoever about their intentions, they declare, "Today we
>should all clearly recognize that the time of such proletarian revolution
>is over." With this declaration, they stand side-by-side with Roger Burbach
>who, as cited above, believes: "The left has to accept the fact that the
>Marxist project for revolution launched by the Communist Manifesto is 
>dead."

7. I can't find this first quote in N&H's book. I believe it is probably a 
misquote of the line on p.50 which says: "Today we should all clearly 
recognize that the time of such proletarian internationalism is over." Given 
this, and the context within which the line is said (i.e. that the 
proletariat is tendentially more global than nation-state based), this does 
not at all prove that N&H are post-marxists. On the contrary, Negri has 
always been very keen on revolution - all of his political theory has been 
about developing an absolute democracy. There rejection of a postmodern 
politics becomes even clearer in the next passage you attack them for.
>
>Unlike Burbach, Hardt and Negri have little interest in or sympathy for
>local struggles against the ravages of globalization:
>
>"We are well aware that in affirming this thesis we are swimming against
>the current of our friends and comrades on the Left. In the long decades of
>the current crisis of the communist, socialist, and liberal Left that has
>followed the 1960s, a large portion of critical thought, both in the
>dominant countries of capitalist development and in the subordinated ones,
>has sought to recompose sites of resistance that are founded on the
>identities of social subjects or national and regional groups, often
>grounding political analysis on the *localization of struggles*." (Empire,
>p. 44)
>
>Hardt and Negri now regard such local struggles as they would tainted meat
>on a supermarket shelf because they "can easily devolve into a kind of
>primordialism that fixes and romanticizes social relations and identities."
>
>Although their prose, as is universally the case, hovers ethereally above
>real people and real events, it is not too hard to figure out what they are
>referring to. They obviously have in mind struggles involving the Mayan
>people of Chiapas or, before them, the Mayans of Guatemala who looked to
>Rigoberta Menchu for inspiration and guidance.

8. N&H refer to their opposition to (as you quote) 'the localization of 
struggles'. They are not opposed to local struggles, and obviously not for 
all struggles start from a locality. They are certainly not opposed to the 
Chiapas struggle as is clear from their comments about 10 pages later. 
However, they are opposed to the 'localization of struggles', i.e. the 
practice that would restrict struggles to a local orbit rather than 
spreading and communicating beyond the locality. In one sense this is a 
rejection of post-marxist attempts to look at only particular struggles of 
identity or territory without relating them to the wider picture of class 
struggle. In another sense it is a rejection of those that see the nation as 
the best defense against capital. Closed borders (such as those that prevent 
Somalis entering the UK and Cubans from leaving Cuba), the laws of the 
nation-state, are not the way for a communist and libertarian revolution. 
Their attack on the 'localization of struggles' is against those that would 
keep a proletariat inward-looking rather than developing properly global 
conncetions. (All this is made pretty clear over the following 10-15 pages, 
so I can see why some on the aut-op-sy list reacted hostilely to your 
critique.)

However, that said I would like to know what N&H would say to activists that 
want to prevent the import of hormonally treated beef in to the UK. The rule 
of law is a double-edge sword but it can sometimes help hold back the 
excesses of capitalism. But I'm guessing they'd argue that the problem isn't 
preventing hormonally treated beef entering the UK, the problem is that 
there is such a thing as hormonally treated beef being given to those in the 
US in the first place.

To conclude, I do think you have tried to over-simplify N&H to fit them into 
boxes that they don't belong in. They are complex (often too complex for me) 
and subtle thinkers and we can't just dismiss them as postmodern nutters. 
Drop us a line if you think I've misunderstood you.

Cheers
Rowan



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