Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 19:00:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: Michael Handelman <mhandelman1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: AUT: D&N on Empire


http://www.democracynature.org/dn/vol7/takis_movements.htm#_ftnref21

"Another trend (Handt & Negri), claiming Marxist
orthodoxy, adopts a more sophisticated version of the
capitalist plot theory according to which
capital, faced with a crisis of its ability ‘to master
its conflictual relationship with labour through a
social and political dialectic’, resorted to a double
attack against labour: first, a direct campaign
against corporatism and collective bargaining and
second a reorganisation of the workplace through
automation and computerisation, thereby actually
excluding labour itself from the side of
production’.[21] The conclusion drawn by Hardt and
Negri is that ‘the neoliberalism of the 1980s
constituted ‘a revolution from above’. This
‘revolution’, as they stress in a later  book,[22] was
motivated by the
accumulation of the proletarian struggles that
functioned as the ‘motor for the crisis’ of the 1970s,
which in turn was part of the objective and inevitable
cycles of capitalist accumulation. The interesting
aspect of this analysis --that is mainly based  on
unfounded assertions about the nature of the welfare
state (which they assume still exists in neoliberal
modernity ignoring the fact that it is being replaced
everywhere by a ‘safety net’) and a confused as well
as contradictory analysis of neoliberal globalisation
-- is that it also ends up with reformist demands and
no clear vision for a future society. 

Thus, although the content of the demands proposed by
these two trends in the  Left are not exactly the
same, the former suggesting a return to a kind of
statism to control globalisation and the latter
proposing  free movement of labour, a social wage, a
guaranteed income for all, free access to sources of
knowledge, information, communication etc[23], the
reformist character of the demands of both these
trends is striking. However, whereas the first trend
assumes that the present neoliberal  globalisation is
reversible, even within the system of the market
economy, the second trend not only
assumes that globalisation is irreversible but it also
views it favourably, as an ‘objective’ basis on which
an alternative globalisation could be built
(although the meaning of this alternative
globalisation is never spelled out).[24] But, as I
attempted to show elsewhere[25], the
internationalisation of the
market economy is a process, which was set in motion
with the very emergence of the market economy itself.
Therefore, although it is true that
throughout the post-war period the
internationalisation of the market economy was
actively encouraged by the advanced capitalist
countries, in view --in
particular-- of the expansion of `actually existing
socialism' and of the national liberation movements in
the Third World, still, this internationalisation was
the outcome mainly of `objective' factors related to
the dynamics of the market economy. The ‘subjective’
factors, in the form of the social struggle,
played a passive role with respect to this
intensifying internationalisation of the market
economy; particularly so after the above mentioned
major retreat
of the labour movement. 

      In this sense, the changes in the policies of
the major international institutions (IMF, WTO, WB
etc) and the corresponding changes in national
policies that aimed at opening and liberalising
markets were ‘endogenous’, reflecting and
institutionalising existing trends of the market
economy, rather
than exogenous, as those in the reformist Left
suggest. In other words, although the creation of a
self-regulating market system in the 19th century was
impossible without crucial state support in creating
national markets, still, once this system was set up,
it created its own irreversible dynamic which led to
today’s internationalised market economy.[26]
Therefore, the emergence of the neoliberal
internationalised market economy is basically the
outcome of
this dynamic process and not the result of
conspiracies, or of the policies of evil neoliberal
parties and/or degraded socialdemocratic parties, as
reformists
in the Left assert. It represents, in fact, the
completion of the marketisation process, which was
merely interrupted by the rise of statism in the 1930s
that
however collapsed l  in the 1970s when It became
obvious that the kind of state intervention in the
market that marked the statist period of marketisation
was no longer compatible with the new
internationalisation that emerged at the same time.
This monumental event, at the political level, implied
the end of
the social democratic consensus which marked the early
post war period –i.e. the consensus involving both
conservative and socialdemocratic parties
which were committed to active state intervention with
the aim of determining the overall level of economic
activity so that a number of socialdemocratic
objectives could be achieved (full employment, welfare
state, better distribution of income etc).

   As one could expect, the fundamental changes in the
economic structure mentioned above, which mark the
shift from statist to neoliberal modernity,
had their implications at the political level. As I
pointed out elsewhere,[27] the typical form of
political structure in a modern society, which can be
shown
to be more consistent than any other form of political
structure  (theoretically as well as historically)
with the market economy, is the representative
(liberal) ‘democracy’. However, there are significant
variations between the various forms of political
structures in the era of modernity. Thus, the
representative ‘democracy’ of liberal modernity
evolved  into a political system of a much higher
degree of concentration of political power in the
hands
of the executive during  statist modernity, both in
the West and, even more so, in the East. This system
is presently being replaced by new
internationalised political structures to fit the
already internationalised economic structures,
representing an even higher degree of concentration of
political power to match the corresponding huge
concentration of economic power brought about by
globalisation. Thus, in neoliberal modernity, the old
Westphalian system of sovereign nation-states is being
replaced  by a multi-level system of
political-economic entities which at the micro-level
extends to
‘micro-regions’, world cities and up to traditional
states, whereas at the new internationalised
macro-level (where the most important decisions are
taken) 
extends to the new transnational elite[28] and its
political and economic expressions (G7+1, IMF, WTO,
World Bank etc)’. 

    However, if neoliberal globalisation is neither a
plot, nor irreversible within the market economy
system, this does not mean that it should be
welcome, as Hardt and Negri[29] do, because it
supposedly provides an ‘objective’ basis on which an
alternative globalisation could be built—reminding
one of the usual ‘objectivist’ type of analysis about
the ‘necessary evils’ supposedly created by the
process of  Progress.  One should not forget,  as I
pointed out elsewhere,[30] that the adoption of the
idea of Progress (shared by very few nowadays) implies
also the endorsement of such ‘progressive’
conclusions as the  Marxist one about the
'progressive' role of colonialism[31], or the
corresponding anarchist one that the state is  a
'socially necessary
evil'.[32] On the other hand, if we adopt the view
that there is no unilinear or dialectical process of
Progress and a corresponding evolutionary process
towards forms of social organisation grounded on
autonomy and we assume, instead, that the historical
attempts for autonomy/democracy represent a
break with the past, then, forms of social change like
colonialism and the institution of the  state can be
seen as just 'social evils', with nothing 'necessary'
about them, either as regards  their emergence in the
past, or  the form that social change has taken since,
or will take in the future."

        

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