From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: empire.response to chris(BIOPOLITICS)
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 23:14:37 -0500


> > First, capital was already global and the national
> > state was already
> > defined
> > > as part of global capital,
>
> I dont think Negri would dispute thr above. However
> what differs is the biopolitical component. He says
> that:
>
> <<Capital has indeed always been organized with a view
> toward the entire global sphere, but ONLY IN THE
> SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY did multinational
> and transnational industrial corporations really begin
> to
> STRUCTURE  GLOBAL TERRITORIES BIOPOLITICALLY...
> The activities of corporations are no longer defined
> by the imposition of abstract command and simple theft
> and unequal exchange.

Capitalist corporations never simply relied on 'abstract command' (whatever
that means) or simple theft and unequal exchange.  Capital always engaged in
the direct exploitation of labor power, the pumping of surplus labor out of
people.  To put the major difference in this way of course fits with someone
who has abandoned any notion of labor power as the source of value, wherein
profit has to become theft and unequal exchange (even if these things exist
to some degree).

Rather they directly structure
> and articulate territories and populations.  They
> tend to make nation-states merely instruments to
> record the flow of the commodities, monies and
> populations that they set in motion.

What corporations would like to do and what they can actually do are not the
same.  Show me the proof.  I know that the IMF and World Bank have been
partially able to do this, but they have also had to back off in the last 7
years because this articulation of a new imposition of work has been
rejected in many places by resistance.  Negri ALWAYS assumes this process is
done, that Empire is HERE.

 The transnational
> corporations directly distribute labor power over
> various markets, functionally allocate resources and
> organize hierarchically the verious sectors of world
> production.

First, how many corporations are truly trans-national?  Read Massimo de
Angelis' work over the last 4 years (available on his web site) which
actually reckons with empirical data, with research, and you would see that
the idea of the truly transnational corporation is more of a goal to use to
bash down barriers than a really existing entity.  And corporations do NOT
directly distribute labor power.  In many cases, they have to deal with
borders, which is to say states, and that has a lot to do with access to and
distribution of labor power.

The complex apparatus that selects
> investments and
> directs financial and monetary maneuvers determines
> the new geography of the world market, or really the
> NEW
> BIOPOLITICAL STRUCTURING OF THE WORLD>>

Sounds impressive, but I think it is Foucauldian gibberish.  It is a nascent
return to scientism, really, as we return to the notion of a social
'metabolism'.  There is little novel or intriguing about this, I am afraid.
Try Victorian England and you will find linneage of this lingo.  I vastly
prefer de Angelis on these things.
> Empire pp 31-31
>
> -Thomas
>
> ====> <<The concept of Empire is presented as a global concert
>   under the direction of a single conductor, a unitary power
>   that maintains the social peace and produces its ethical
>   truths.  And in order to achieve these ends,the single
>   power is given the necessary force to conduct, when
>   necessary, "just wars" at the borders against
>   the barbarians and internally against the rebellious>> Hardt & Negri
"Empire"
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Listen to your Yahoo! Mail messages from any phone.
> http://phone.yahoo.com
>
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>



     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---