Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 04:13:28 +0100 (BST)
From: Jon Beasley-Murray <Jon.Beasley-Murray-AT-man.ac.uk>
Subject: AUT: Re: aut-op-sy-digest V1 #341


On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, aut-op-sy-digest wrote:

> aut-op-sy-digest         Sunday, July 8 2001         Volume 01 : Number 341

> Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:16:21 -0400
> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
> Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Hardt-Negri "Empire": a Marxist critique, part 4 (conclusion)
> 
> >Lou, your defence of (particularly) third world national
> >self-determination and liberation struggles is obviously a key reason for
> >your disagreement with Hardt and Negri.  Here, however, you go much
> >further.  Can you explain the reasons why you say that these demands you
> >cite "are only meaningful when made on the government of a nation-state"?  
> >Surely you cannot mean that.
> >
> >Jon
> 
> Who should the demand for a "social wage" be made on, if not a government
> like the USA or Russia, for example? The UN? The Pope?

The EU?

Lou, what seems odd to me about your position is the way in which you take
only one of the three demands you paraphrase in your clarification, and
ignore both the connections between them (surely, for instance, the
constitution of a global citizenship--hardly, incidentally, something one 
could ask of any single nation-state--would make a difference as to whom
one might demand of a social wage) and the differences (citizenship, a
wage, and reappropriation are surely three quite different demands that
one might make of three quite different bodies).

Anyhow, here again is the part of your message that I quoted back to you:

> In the final pages of "Empire" you finally get a series of demands that
the
> mass movement is urged to adopt. These include:
> 
> 1. The general right [of the multitude, a bit of jargon meant to
indicate
> the new working class and its allies] to control its own movement
through
> global citizenship.
> 
> 2. A social wage and a guaranteed income for all.
> 
> 3. The right to reappropriation. This means the right of workers to have
> free access to and control the means of production of knowledge,
> communication, information, etc.
> 
> Of course, the problem with these demands is that they are only
meaningful
> when made on the government of a nation-state, particularly the demand
for
> a guaranteed income. 

And I'll ask the same question again: Can you explain the reasons why you
say that these demands you cite "are only meaningful when made on the
government of a nation-state"?

By the way, this point also illustrates what I mentioned before was a
reason you may not be getting the responses your desire from your
"crititue" of _Empire_.  I think this section of the book is one of its
weakest moments, but for quite different reasons than you: I don't see the
point of demanding the right to reappropriation; one either has a right or
one doesn't, and if one has it, one should exercise it.  But I thought
that what you said in your critique was sufficently puzzling that it
deserved clarification.

After all, what's most puzzling about your statement (and why I suggest it
goes much further than what you'd said before) is that it seems to imply
that the only politics that is meaningful is national politics, or
politics designed to impact on the nation-state.  Again, surely you can't
mean that.  However much you have poured scorn on some other forms of
politics (the refusal to work being one of your favourites), I don't
believe you're pouring similar scorn on them all.  Yet this is how your
four-part critique of _Empire_ ends.

> Louis Proyect

Take care

Jon

Jon Beasley-Murray
Spanish and Portuguese
University of Manchester
jon.beasley-murray-AT-man.ac.uk

http://www.art.man.ac.uk/spanish/jbm.html
http://www.art.man.ac.uk/lacs/



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