From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Imperialism (Explications of The Savage Anomaly)
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 10:53:10 -0500


> >  It is
> > therefore suprising that Negri could say that imperialism once applied
and
> > does not now.  What notion of imperialism?  Lenin's?  Luxemburg's?
>
> Negri's? Or, more appropriately,  the analysis of "reality"(always as a
> result of the behavior of the "class" and the evolution of its
> "composition". Two facets that are always seen as "one" in the traditional
> approach of operaism. That's probably the reason why you are unable to see
> the "role" of class struggle in Negri's theory. When you'll do that you'll
> see that the only theoretical reference of Negri is Marx. "We are only
> Marx's readers", he would say ) contained in "Crisis of the Planner-State:
> Communism and Revolutionary Organization" (Translation obtainable from
> "Revolution Retrieved", 1988. While the original had been written in
1971).

Thanks alessandro, though I wonder if it is this simple, since Negri not
only obviously knows Lenin but pays homage to Lenin's ideas on this in
Empire.  Pages 229-34 make it quite clear that Negri considers Lenin's work
as opening up the space for Empire.  After all, more than anything Negri
argues that Lenin's rejection of Hilferding and Kautsky is not about the
possibility of ultra-imperialism, of the reconciliation of the major
capitalist states, but that at that moment it was politically reactionary
and therefore Imperialism is a political critique.  Negri says explicitly
that Lenin poses the question: communism or empire.  Of course, you probably
are right to pose this as Negri and Hardt assessing the political importance
of Imperialism, rather than giving direct (I would say indirect) credence to
its theoretical aspect.

I will see if I have a copy of the 1971 piece anywhere, but I don't think I
do.

On this relation of composition and class struggle, I disagree that I don't
see the two as moments of the other.  I don't see Negri as consistent in
this.  That's my argument, 'our' argument.  Disagreement on these matters is
rarely only 'lack of understanding'.  Bourgeois intellectuals can almost
always show that working class people "don't understand the argument" and
therefore are 'wrong.'  That does not make the worker wrong relative to the
bourgeois intellectual, rather it only displays a certain power move, to
rule lack of comprehension of an argument which may in fact not be coherent,
as the proof of the coherence of the argument.  This is the limit of theory
and of ideas, and then we have to really see what people do.  If the
intellectual can 'prove' a theory which the worker cannot even comprehend,
but the intellectual then takes a position which defends capital while the
worker does not, I suspect that I know who has 'won' the argument.  The only
difference is that in our case, it is two of us trying to grapple with
theory which we both reasonably hope that the other can grasp if they make
the effort.  Even with that, it does not mean that we will agree.  It may
rather guarantee that other matters of our situations will lead us on, but
hopefully fruitfully.

I also wonder about the notion of class composition that sees it as
delineating stages with markable boundaries and about this search for a new
vanguard section of the class (I do not mean this in a Leninist sense,
though if Steve Wright's book is accurate, it certainly has those roots and
Negri is not at all alone on this.)  I am intrigued by a work I cannot get
in English which Steve Wright discusses, by Gisela Bock on the IWW in the
U.S.  According to Tillman Rexroth (who also is not available in English, so
I am taking this from Steve's book): 'she is interested in the more subtle
differentiations within the model of class composition, without which all
the contours of that theory collapse; she speaks of a 'permanent' or better
'periodic' restratification of the class and not a unitary development
verifying itself by degrees up to the arrival of massified labor.'

This seems like a very suggestive point and whatever problems Bock's work
might have, it would seem like a useful contribution to the discussion of
class composition.

> sorry if I'm inverting the order of your post:

Invert away!  I like to read fom the back to front sometimes and I often
find presuppositions elucidated only at the end, so make merry!

> > In a way I feel that Negri has a kind of Luxemburgian stance in relation
to
> > imperialism.  The idea of Empire as a state of perpetual crisis is
> > homologous in some ways to Luxemburg's prediction that with the end of
an
> > 'outisde'-'inside' relationship would result in 'barbarism', in
decadence
> > and collapse.
>
> of course, "we" can use Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital like the
"frame"
> of the picture we are confronted with (a simple example: how do we explain
> the impotence  of the "old" capitalist tools in solving Japan's crisis?) .
I
> don't think, however, that that's Negri's starting point.
>
Indeed, I wouldn't make too much of the formal likeness, rather that it may
or may not be suggestive of a deeper link, of a theoretical similarity, but
you may be right that it is not.  It was literally a feeling, but by no
means intended as a worked out thought.  In fact, I suspect that while Negri
might tend towards a notion of decadence, i think he would pretty much
reject the idea of capital's self-collapse and he clearly prefers Lenin's
Imperialism as working from the 'inside' rather than Luxemburg's starting
from the 'outside' (p. 233)

Cheers,
Chris




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