Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 05:47:00 +0000 (GMT)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Richard=20Bailey?= <redrich2000-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Fw: [PEN-L:19140] "Historical Materialism" and "Empire"


If transcripts or more detailed notes on this meeting
become available good please be posted to the list.

Thanks




 --- Michael Pugliese <debsian-AT-pacbell.net> wrote: > 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Chris Burford cburford-AT-gn.apc.org
> To: pen-l-AT-galaxy.csuchico.edu
> Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2001 9:23 AM
> Subject: [PEN-L:19140] "Historical Materialism" and
> "Empire"
> 
> 
> I will start posting some notes from the interesting
> meeting at SOAS last
> night and see how far I get.
> 
> Brunei main lecture theatre perhaps 2/3 full, maybe
> 150-200 people.
> 
> Chaired by China Mieville for HM, fairly informally.
> Michael Hardt plus
> Empire propped up on the table by the chair.
> Alex Callinicos Prof Politics York University, and
> SWP (UK), Simon Bromley,
> Open University
> 
> [His URL
>
http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/staff/sbromley/info.html
>  ]
> 
> Hardt in jeans, very informal, a few quiet
> muscle-stretching movements while
> waiting for the meeting to start, as if he has just
> got off the plane. No
> grand dramatic entrance.
> 
> He spoke first for 10 minutes with the agreement
> that the two others would
> respond and take things in a fairly conversational
> way.
> 
> [Caveat: Hardt's style is so subtle and unfamiliar
> to my ear, that these
> notes should not be taken in as definitive of his
> position - not that he
> claimed a definitive positon - he said that he
> always has a certain distance
> between what he writes and how he feels about it
> subsequently. The meeting
> was being recorded and presumably someone may do a
> labour of love on it.]
> 
> One of the ideas behind E was a disatisfaction with
> the adequacy of concepts
> of US imperialism and of anti-Americanism.
> 
> E approaches the questions through the concept of
> sovereignty in a world in
> which the authority of nation states has declined.
> There is now a new form
> of sovereignty 'which we named "Empire"'.
> 
> He took up two statements in E that have caused
> difficulty:-
> 
> 1 "Empire has no centre" Here he elaborated on the
> idea that E has a mixed
> constitution analogous to monarchy (eg IMF)
> aristocracy (transnationals),
> and The Many. Power resides not in just one place
> but in a network. For
> example it is not possible just to abolish the IMF
> and think that things
> will automatically change.
> 
> 2 "There is no outside" - Empire is unlimited ie it
> has no outside.
> Similarly there is no outside to capital. There is
> also the historical sense
> that Empire is outside history. [My hunch here was
> that he was referring to
> a Spinozan approach for analysing the total system -
> if not the universe
> religiously, at least the whole world.]
> 
> Multitude - Hardt acknowledged there is less about
> the multitude than about
> Empire in E,  but here he referred to it as 'the
> productive subject that
> exists within and against this structure [of
> Empire]'
> 
> 
> Callinicos sitting next to Hardt, opened with
> courtesies to the importance
> of the book that seemed unforced. He noted that the
> book has brought Marxism
> to the centre of the debate about globalisation. He
> referred to it as a
> highly coherent book, and later to it as a subtle
> book.
> 
> C. argued that the main philosophical framework was
> that of Deleuze and
> Guattari, as shown in works like Mille Plateaux.
> 
> His main specific reservations:
> 
> 1) it is close to the extreme globalisation claims
> associated with the
> concept of hypercapitalism. However the state is
> more than just an
> instrument of capitalism. Global capitalism needs
> states to protect itself.
> 
> He referred to H & N's "rejection of the classical
> marxist theory of
> imperialism" [but did not make clear to my
> satisfaction what he meant by
> this criticism.]
> 
> He said E ignores the economic and military strength
> of the USA and
> dismisses the importance of inter-imperialist
> rivalries. [C's expansion on
> inter-imperialist rivalries that underlie the
> Coalition against Terror, was
> the part of his contribution I found most
> convincing.]
> 
> Although Hardt has assumed that we would get round
> to Genoa and September
> 11th, it was C who first made this explicit. He
> argued that the greatest
> importance of S11 was the symbolic attack on US
> power which was more
> damaging to it than anything else, and which it had
> to redress symbolically
> in turn.
> 
> C (whose critique in the latest "International
> Socialism" is of Negri rather
> than specifically, of Hardt) asserted that Negri
> emphasises class relations
> but not inter-imperialist rivalry.
> 
> 
> Simon Bromley from the Open University spoke with
> less obvious gestures
> towards specific political struggles, and more
> reference to work he has
> apparently pursued on US imperialism. He too started
> with apparently sincere
> respectful courtesies about Empire.
> 
> In his critique he suggested that Hardt's picture of
> the Empire having no
> centre was one in which the glue is provided by the
> society of the
> spectacle. B suggested that this slights the
> importance of territorial and
> political power.
> 
> B agreed that there is much greater coordination of
> capitalist powers than
> before but that it is still anchored in territorial
> states.
> 
> He was also unhappy with the suggestion in E that
> its formation is in part a
> response to the power of the multitude. He felt that
> this was a dangerous
> confusion of the fact in his opinion that
> globalisation has undermined the
> ability of democratic forces to press their states
> to do things. He said
> this new form of rule has been built on the defeat
> of oppositional
> movements.
> 
> Hardt's first round of responses started with a
> disarming apparent
> confession. He declared himself a bad debater, in
> that he usually has a
> tendency to agree. So he agreed with almost
> everything that had been said,
> he said. [Amiable laughter]
> 
> He agreed therefore that the nation state remains
> important but suggested
> that this is now in the context of globalisation. He
> was assertive enough to
> say what I think is actually a verbatim sentence:
> "There needs to be a
> global regulatory system" although it was not said
> in any sort of
> declamatory or programmatic way.
> 
> 
> More later.
> 
> Good night.
> 
> Chris Burford
> 
> London
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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