moderator from bn.com: Thank you both for joining us this afternoon. Before we sign off, do you have any final thoughts for the online audience?
AN: The concept of Empire and all the other hypotheses that we make are meant to reveal the present state of order,but this isn't what's really important. What's really important is the Augustinian idea of two cities; that is, Exodus on one hand (fleeing the corrupt city of power), but also constructing a new city. Now we're in the stage where we can't yet see its outline, we are crossing borders and haven't yet arrived.
Moderator from bn.com: Can you please explain for us the concept of Exodus as it has been discussed this and in your work?
AN: By Exodus we want to indicate the form of struggle that is based not in direct opposition but in a kind of struggle by subtraction-a refusal of power, a refusal of obedience. Not only a refusal of work and a refusal of authority, but also emigration and movement of all sorts that refuses the obstacles that block movements and desire. And thus the fact if recognising ourselves as citizens of the world. And not only that, but also to recognise ourselves as poor (in the sense of a slave leaving Egypt-Peter). <laughter> There is not only weakness in such poverty but a great strength.
Moderator from bn.com: I'd like to know what's on the horizon for both of you. What can we expect next from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri-either as a collaborative effort or solo?
AN: I just published a book entitled ALMA VENUS, which was written in prison, which is a reflection on some of the concepts that emerged in EMPIRE. Together, however, our present problematic has to do with bio-politics and how within the bio-political order, we can understand the concept of organization; that is, in what way we can understand the new social struggle or revolution. The question then is a matter of recognising the emergence of powerful organisations, and really a question in our terms of how to organise an exodus.
MH: In addition to that, I'm working on my own study of the work of Pier Paulo Pasolini.
Peter from bn.com: 4. We tend to associate empire historically with rise, decline, stability, break-up. But you seem to suggest that a true return to the local is no longer possible or desirable. Do you think that there are forms of social organisations that can be non-exploitative and yet function globally?
AN: I'm not sure I understood the question, but it seems to me that the defence or return of the local on one hand, and the proposition of a global alternative on the other, are not really contradictory. They could perhaps become contradictory,but for the moment the struggles against the centralisation of imperial power have kept this dynamic open, as Seattle demonstrated, and as also demonstrates the struggles in Italy in recent days.
MH: The demonstrations in Seattle and Washington DC were remarkable for the way they brought together what seemed previously to be unrelated or antagonistic perspectives: anarchists, environmentalist groups, organised labor. In these demonstrations we sought and perhaps haven't yet understood how the local and the global today manage to coincide. -- (Negri continues): The Chinese shouldn't be allowed to deal only with their local questions, they should be brought into the global market. When we say the Chinese, we mean the struggles of the Chinese, and to bring them to a global level.
Ken from New York: Empire is an impressive book which challenges much of what we have understood as important in postcolonial theory and a variety of critical marxisms from the third world. In your book there is little discussion of accumulation, a topic that postcolonial and third world intellectuals have insisted is important. Can you tell us about what the new dimensions of the process will become?
AN: We didn't write a treatise on political economy, but tried to grasp the general outlines of our post-colonial and post-national realities. Therefore, the concept of accumulation was not at the centre of our analysis. Certainly one can and should imagine a concept of accumulation within our framework that would be defined as the entire ensemble of social labor, both material labor and immaterial labor that is organised today. To me it seems that at this point we can only understand accumulation as a pre-em to a communist constitution of society. To be frank and clear: Empire exploits the maximum co-operation of society for accumulation; it exploits the foundation of communism.
margo from rockville: What steps would you like to see the IMF and World Bank take?
MH: There are two elements that seem most interesting to me about the demonstrations in Washing against the INS and the World Bank. The first is the new intelligence of the protesters: the fact of choosing these supranational organisms as the object of protest is something fundamentally new. While many of those unsympathetic were critical of the protesters lack of knowledge of the inner workings, I find it impressive and hopeful that such a large group of young people have identified these agencies as the object of protest. The second thing I find interesting: the protest, though not united, are by and large not about globalization, despite news reports; the protesters instead are asking for an alternative globalization, a democratic globalization. And that in fact is primary goal of our project too. So in this sense we watch the protesters with great interest.
AN: What seems to me fundamental is to make an exodus away from these institutions and to lessen their power by moving away from them in order to struggle for a different kind of relationship. The problem is not to try to make these institutions democratic but to construct democracy otherwise. Ron Day from Univ. of Oklahoma: In the section of Empire published recently in Multitudes, you write of communication guiding and channelling the imagination and modernity as a whole. I'm wondering if you can elaborate on this. Does "communication" here mean communicational devices? An ideology of communication/information? A rhetorical/aesthetic form that may be understood today as "communication" or "information." thanks for your work.
MH: Indeed, we understand communication in a very broad sense to include not only technological apparatus, but also human exchanges. One concept that is fundamental to us in considering this problematic is Marx's concept of general intellect. By general intellect we understand the social co-operation of knowledge that extends well beyond the level of the individual that is directly productive in many of today's production practices. We can understand the productivity of communication in collective and social terms.
Thomas Atzert from Frankfurt (Germany): A great hello to both of you! - Slavoj Zizek, in an essay that was published also here in Germany, wrote about your book, that it is nothing less than the Communist Manifesto for the 21st century. So do you think that the immaterial workers of today are an universal class as well as the proletarians Marx had before his eyes back in 1848?
MH: If the immaterial workers are to be conceived as a universal subject of labor today, one has to work hard to expand the notion of what it means to be immaterial labor. It refers only to the fact that for many products or many elements of products remain immaterial-not of course that labor itself has become completely immaterial. Today production takes place equally across our body, our brains, our affects, and indeed all the forces of life.
michele genchi from roma - italia: Caro Professore, essersi arresi al mercato,mi fa pensare che molte delle lotte dei nostri anni hanno avuto il sapore amaro di un annuncio triste lasciato perdere, e che molte delle cose che abbiamo gridato per strada hanno avuto un senso. l'eredit positiva e' quella di aver educato i nostri figli alla solidariet e a un'atteggiamento distaccato verso la povert intellettuale di questi tempi. Non crede, Professore, che avremmo, forse, potuto fare di pi ? Osare di pi ? (Dear Professor, many of the struggles of our years had the bitter taste of a sad announcement, and that meany of the things that we yelled in the streets had a sense. The positive heritage is that we educated our children in solidarity and an attachment toward the intellectual povery of our times. Don't you think, professor, that we could have perhaps done more? Dared to do more? )
AN: It doesn't seem to me that the question deals with Empire specifically, but one can respond. If the question is simply could one do more? Then the answer is yes, one could, and one could push Empire further. Pushing Empire further first meant making the Soviet Union fall; it means making international struggles stronger from the beginning; and it means attacking the nation-state and it's abilities to blockthe movement of people; it means opening borders, etc. etc. We have only been able to do this poartially. But at least in Europe we wer eable to bring about the collapse of the factory regime, and this was a fndamental fundamental factor driving towards globalization.
b. weber from austria: You define Empire as the universal rule of capital, without a center. But the European Union and the US still seem to be engaged in a struggle for dominance against each other, as one can tell from the introduction of the Euro as a rival international currency and the european attempts to create their own European defence body. How do you interpret this battle? (I must admit that up to now I just got to the middle of your book, so excuse me if you tackled that question anyway in your work)
MH: When we understand Empire as a global constitution that does not exclude the fact that there remains today national and international entities that control currency, economic flow and production. Our concept of Empire is based on the notion of mixed constitution that incorporates national, local and international organisms withina super-national and in fact global order. Itis still of extreme importance to struggle with and against powers of nation-state and the international entities, such at Eupropean Union. But also, wehave to recognize the ultimate sovereignty of the new order on a global scale.
franca giordano from milano: non ho letto il libro (sar tradotto in italiano?) una domanda a entrambi: sono una mamma di 45 anni e molti anni f sono stata comunista. Ha ancora senso oggi credere in una idea che ha mosso milioni di uomini e donne in tutto il mondo? (I have been a communist for many years. Does it still make sense to believe in an idea that has moved millions of men and women acroos the world?)
AN: I can't answer a question of faith or belief, but I think it is reasonable to be communist today - today more than ever. When our society lives off of a common sense-that is, a common constitution. Today relationships of labor and social relationships are more common than they were before. And that's the commonality that lives within both intellectual labor and other labor-becomes ever important.
Cynthia P. Kelly from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: How can Socialis (and Marxism in particular) help us reach a praxis of absolute democracy?
AN: We first have to mke a distiction. Socialism means simply "from each according to his capacity." And communism, in contrast, "to each "according to his needs."
MH: In this sense aboslute democracy is the foundation of communism. This is the sense in which we understand a non-representativ form of communism, or rather a communism that is of representation.
Peter from bn.com: I am struck by how eclectic, in a positive sense, the conceptual field of Empire is in terms of the multiple sources it draws on from Spinoza to Marx and A Thousand Plateaus. At the same time, it is so positive, wasting so little time on the direct critique of liberal ideology. How would you like to see others use your concepts?
AN: First the question of how the concepts would be used, we have nothing to say or dictate how readers respond. This should be left up to them. Regarding eclecticism: Eclecticism today has taken on a new critical value. It is something like what Kant described as the struggle among the faculties. And thus this struggle translates today as a struggle among the academic discipline to destroy and communication. It develops in such a way that the various disciplines-mathematics, economics-have developed boundaries so that it is impossible for them to communicate. I mean that today one has to intervene to destroy and confound the differences and distinctions among them. One example of the mathematical structure and how it has become completely detached from the ability to understand the economy, and thus our entire insistence on "bio-politics"-our concept of bio power follows strictly Foucalt's conception of Kant's conflict among the faculty. I think we need to open a new discussion about the faculties, even the academic faculties, and that all problems of bio-politics lead us toward overcoming the old academic divisions.
MH: Re; posotivity: It is certainly our intention to present a ositive critical account because we think that what contemporary discussion needs to do is not only criticque the present state of affairs but to outline an emerging alternative.
Peter from bn.com: I am interested in the process of collaboration between the two of you, especially in the light of the transcontinental connection. Is their any reason you choose to have the book come out in American English?
MH: We worked together on all of the texts in the sense that we didn't divide up chapters. What we did was exchange drafts so that all of the material in the end was written equally by both of us. Because of Toni's legal situation,this required my going to Europe several times a year. First France, and then Italy-in order to collaborate face to face.
AN: I think that the problem with collaboration is defined by the way we had already worked together, for and from the beginning, principally on American questions. Simply the fact of working on American material for a European intellectual is enriching from both perspectives. Why the book came out inEnglis, the response is very banal. American English is the most simple and direct way to have one's ideas circulate at a world.