Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 21:38:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Michael Hardt <hardt at duke.edu> X-Sender: hardt at godzilla5.acpub.duke.edu To: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> cc: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com, Michael P Hardt <hardt at acpub.duke.edu> Subject: Re: Life under Empire by Michael Hardt In-Reply-To: <v04011726b374b4479a63@[166.84.250.86]> Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.990528204242.24506A-100000 at godzilla5.acpub.duke.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Dear Doug,
once again you don't have the patience to understand new ideas. You only manage to fit them, however uncomfortably, into your few narrow categories and positions. You only recognize familiar enemies and make all others into them, just like the old cold-warriors used to do.
You take my ideas out of context so that you can rehearse one of your standard arguments without having to question your ready-made positions. Do you know the context for which this article was written? It was written for an Italian newspaper, Il manifesto, and in response to Rossana Rossanda's position that Italian anti-war sentiment should be directed against Italian politicians because the nation-State is still the only terrain for politics. In the context of contemporary Italian movements, her position is effectively a caution to the militants who attack the US air bases at Aviano and elsewhere, which is meant to redirect their energies toward elector arenas. I have great respect for Rossana Rossanda but my intervention is meant to displace her response.
I suspect that, with patience, we could have a useful discussion on three points where we do seem to disagree. First, you object when I say that force can only rule up to a point and that consent is necessary. You say that "the US has run a very successful empire for over 50 years using massive amounts of force." Yes indeed. But you seem to ignore the need for consent. Hegemony is never won exclusively through force. It may be easier for you to understand and be indignant about the use of force, but creating consent is really the central operation and that is principally what we who oppose the war must understand and attack.
Second, I am trying to understand how there is today some form of supranational power that extends beyond the power of the nation-States and is ultimately sovereign. Anytime someone suggests a limit to the power of the nation-States, you immediately say, aha!, he's saying the nation-State has no power. It serves nothing to mischaracterize the argument in that way. I agree that nation-States have a great deal of power, some more than others, but I think we need also to recognize the limits to their power. In the old imperialist model, which you seem stuck in, European nation-States did rule predominantly through force. But that old model is strained beyond its limits trying to account for the contemporary global hegemony.
Finally, you don't read any of the irony in my treatment of human rights. You cast me as if I were an apologist for the notion of war for human rights, but I know you don't believe I think that. Perhaps it's the only comfortable way for you to dismiss my ideas. My purpose is to understand what is really behind the discourse on human rights. My point in this essay is that the only right that is acted on here is not any economic, political, or social right, but merely the right to life. One of the things to understand about this is that guaranteeing the right to life acts as a cover for the campaign to deny other rights, economic, political, and social.
Certainly it's difficult to express these ideas adequately in a newspaper article. Toni Negri and I struggled with them for several years, writing a book on Empire. Rather than dismissing my ideas out of hand, perhaps you too could help in trying to understand how the present situation is in fact new and requires new tools and concepts for understanding.
In solidarity, Michael