From: "Lowe Laclau" <lowelaclau-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Is A New Magna Carta Kautskyist? Prescriptive or Descriptive
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 09:29:16 -0400



 



>Lowe and Martin may defend Negri and Hardt's right to 'speak as they 

>please', but I suspect that we are within our right to argue that their 

>words have a meaning with which we might disagree, a political content in 

>line with its form, one which hopes that the aristocracies take their lead 

>from the (non-?) aristoratic states of 'the South'. 




Chris, don't misunderstand my objections. I don't defend anyone's right to speak as they please. I'm not some radical "postmodernist" --all difference should be tolerated and accepted as equal truths---or anything like that. I was only saying, if one doesn't take the time to understand why someone says something then you've not REALLY read them, nor understood them. This is something that happens in conversations as much as in reading, the difference being that the person or persons being read aren't before you to say, "no... u've not understood what I've said", so they always rely upon "close" readers. If you divorce this article from the breadth of other writings that Negri has done over the past 15 years, or if you didn't absorb anything of their content and purpose, then it will have a very very different color and tone than it will if you don't. That's the only thing that I'm saying. If you put it in the context of direct interpersonal communication and you're discussing something with someone you don't know very well, then there will of course be tons of things said which you won't know why its being said until you come to know that person better, you've read the history and experiences and wisdoms (or ignorances) gathered through their years of living. This is by no means saying that everything that they say is of use to us or is necessarily valid. I just argue that "positions" and "points" be made and critiqued on the basis of their what is really being said (which requires a bit of contextualization and struggling with at times) and not things divorced from their larger picture.

>And then dragging Marx's corpus in, out of context, still fresh from rolling 


>over in his grave!  122 years after Marx's death, one might well recognize 

>that there is little that needs to be done by way of fostering the growth of 

>the proletariat or of overcoming pre-capitalist social relations impeding 

>the development of revolutionary forces.  Marx's arguments stemmed from 

>considerations of what might best lead to the end of class society at the 

>hands of the proletariat.  There seems scant trace of that in this, 

>unless... unless... you can find a basis to argue that Negri and Hardt are 

>secretly saying (because it is not explicit here or in earlier discussions 

>of this same sort) that this is necessary for a global recomposition of 

>labor. 

> 

>If that is the case, it is an interesting point.  The question still remains 

>if it is up to us to foster that growth.  Is it the task (hmmm, 'job'?) of 

>communists to revive capital's productive exploitation of labor?  But in the 

>current situation, is not such a turn around important to a new sense of 

>strength?  Or does this simply involve typically positivist notions of 

>class? 




The Marx case is entirely relevant from how I see it. Marx did not just write to and for the proletariat. Marx also spent a great deal of his time critiqing fellow "revolutionaries" who he saw as promoting silly ideas and hasty judgments. Hardt & Negri aren't arguing for a revival of productive exploitation of labor, as they see the conditions for it as being in transition. What they are arguing for is for this moving beyond of the current situation. Why? Not because they're apologists for Capital and the NWO but because it is their hypothesis that in these ever-present transitions the "multitude" increase their means of autonomization, their productive singularity and not their productive exploitation. Its thus that I see most of the criticisms of it here as resulting from people's belief of H&N not being "radical" or "communist" enough. If thats the case, then I would say the same was true for Marx. Assuming all of us know the complexity of Marx's great life. 

>In any case, whether or not this is a new Kautskyism is less interesting. 


>Also, what the Leninists say is even less than less interesting.  Who cares? 

>One version of state capitalism calling another state capitalism. 

> 

>But that is more important, maybe.  Is this not what Negri and Hardt are 

>calling for?  A new kind of state capitalism?  For it will not be the 

>corporate cuerpo which will engender such a project.  Nay, it is a call for 

>that new sovereignty to assert itself and that risks its consolidation into 

>a more unified state power, into a consolidation of capitalist power at a 


>more global level in the form of a globalized welfare state. 

If a new sovereignty is being asserted or is to be asserted, it is not one of the State. I think that H&N would say that the State is a bad (inadequate) model for Empire. 


>Are we then wrong to ask why we should support such goals? 




If you go back and look at Il Potere Constituente or any of Negri's other writings on material constitution you understand the sense in which simple opposition to Capital is kinda ridiculous. If one accepts the hypothesis of real subsumption then it is not enough to say "worker this... worker that...!". You are also fighting constituted forms of power, constituted forms of Capital. You are and must be in favor of Capitals evolution. This is why Deleuze & Guattari in 1970 kept iterating that Capital has not been taken far enough. One can't simply discard with something that has taken hold of Life itself. Thus you are not supporting this Magna Carta as a "goal" so much as a tactical stopping point.  Its "practicality" is not a good basis for criticizing it, but I understand what you're saying. But I don't think that they have in mind something that will somehow halt political regression. The State-Capital relationship always operates as such: capital takes a step, the State in response might take two back. The question is rather whether such a realigning of the global aristocracy will in the long run open further doors to communist strength than is availbale in the present? I'm sorry but I just can't see how holding on to the present constitution of global relations would be better that what they are driving for. 

Anyway, hope this clarifies a bit better why objected to the critiques before,

Cheers 

Lowe

>I mean, it certainly seems more practical, but that kind of practicality is 


>always the basis of a severe political regression.  When the night is 

>darkest, one does not dim the fire but stoke it to burn brighter.  More than 

>ever, a refusal of such chilly 'pragmatism' seems incumbent upon us. 

> 

>cheers, 

>Chris 

> 

> 

> 

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