Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 00:29:55 -0700 (PDT)
From: benjamin rosenzweig <lumpnboy-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Fwd: [VT_THEORY] on empire and negri


So is the point here that if Hardt was around in Lenin's time he would have supported the Bolshevik party as the model of organisation, consonant with the dominant forms of production?
 

stevphen shukaitis <stevphen-AT-greenpeppermagazine.org> wrote:
i was talking to hardt this weekend after the life after capitalism
conference - and he was making this argument that lenin, if alive, would
support the model of non-hierarchal networked models for organizing on the
basis that the organization of resistance should be consonsant with the
means of production (ie the whole thing about the rise of imaterial labor
and such). my initial response to this was a big "so what? it doesn't
really matter to me whether lenin says" - but after dropping the issue of
lenin, it seemed more intriguing, the relation between organization of
work relations and resistance to them needing to have some degree of
consonance. now such could be taking to ridiculous levels (ie that
resistance to feudalism should have taken the form of the leadership of
counter-feudal lords, or that resistance to slavery would be best
accomplished through alternatuve forms of slavery, etc . . .), but it did
strike me as being somewhat interesting - so I wanted to throw that out
there.

cheers.
stevphen



> Nate Holdren wrote:
>
>>Virno talks about the multitude as an ambivalent form, just like the
>>proletariat, and talks about 'postmodern fascism' as being a form the
>>multitude can take in addition to the radical forms Negri identifies.
>>I know Virno and Agamben and others worked on a journal called Luogo
>>Comune (sp?) dedicated, among other things, to exploring postmodern
>>fascism. Bits of the journal are around the net in Spanish, probably
>>in Italian as well. I think points about fascism can be overstated but
>>I think the idea might be helpful for understanding the religious
>>right and fascists in our country, and maybe the Lega Nord in Italy
>>etc.
>>
>>On thing that's often not clear to me is how the term multitude
>>applies (and whether Negri and Virno have different uses of the term)
>>- whether it means 'class in itself' or 'class for itself'. Sometimes
>>one, sometimes the other I think. The new Negri/Hardt is clearer on
>>some of this, but not conclusively to my mind.
>>
>>best,
>>Nate
>>
>
> This rendering of 'the multitude' seems closer to that of Balibar, who
> in _Masses, Classes, Ideas_, _Spinoza and Politics_ and a couple of
> other places tries to rethink Marx's use of 'the proletariat' as a
> 'class for itself' along the lines of Spinoza's concept of the multitude
> as he understands it. In Balibar there doesn't seem to be a multitude
> in itself, only a potentiality existing in forms of subjectivity
> inherent to the diverse practices of domination in class societies.
> Maybe the real issue is a shift in Negri's work on the multitude post
> _The Savage Anomaly_ or even _Insurgencies_? Certainly Balibar, Montag,
> Macherey et al seem to have been much more sympathetic to the 1980s and
> 1990s material than to _Empire_. See, for example, Montag's very
> appreciative comments on Negri in _Bodies, Masses, Power_ and his review
> article on _Insurgencies_ in HM a few years ago. There are also
> discussions of what seems similar to 'postmodern fascism' as you
> describe it in the books of Balibar and Mike Hill that appeared this
> year (i.e., _We, the People of Europe?_ and _After Whiteness_
> respectively). Thanks for posting the link to the Virno book, I will
> certainly read it when I find time, as what you have said here of it
> sounds very promising.
>
> I hope to publish an interview with Warren Montag (which has already
> appeared in Greek) in the next few months (in the next issue of
> borderlands) that has some critical comments on _Empire_. We will
> certainly publish an interview with Mike Hill in that issue on
> whiteness. Hopefully at some point in the future we will have some
> papers discussing _The Multitude_ if that text generates sufficient
> interest; certainly comparative discussions of that text with that of
> Virno could be interesting.
>
> David
>
>
>
> --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>


stevphen shukaitis
Guest Editor, "Life Beyond the Market" issue
www.greenpeppermagazine.org

Greenpepper Magazine
CIA Office
Overtoom 301
1054 HW
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The Netherlands
Phone: 31 020 779 4912
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