The novelty of the current conjuncture -- the significance of which Hardt & Negri labor to obfuscate -- is that the present global hegemon, i.e. the U.S. government, has no effective political and military challenger. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there existed competing imperial powers, which led to two World Wars, out of which the USA emerged as "the leader of the free world." During the Cold War, the USSR presented a political and military challenge to the newly emergent American hegemony, especially by its support of anti-colonial struggles. With the end of violent inter-imperialist competition and then the dissolution of the USSR, the USA now has no enemy in the form of other states in possession of comparable political, economic, and military capacities. At the very moment when U.S. imperialism is exercising its power most freely, with fewer hindrances than ever (aside from occasional terrorists and sporadic diplomatic inconveniences), in today's unipolar world, Hardt & Negri declare that imperialism is no more, rejecting "any idea that the United States can be described as an imperialist power. For Empire in the upper-case sense, with no definite article, excludes any state-based imperialism. Although they acknowledge that the US is at the top of the international power hierarchy, they conjure away the significance of this fact with a series of dubious assumptions: a denial that the 'metaphysical' concept of sovereignty has any purchase in the postmodern era of Empire, coupled with a claim that a political system without a centre of decision may be plausibly called an empire; and finally, a declaration of faith that, contrary to all appearances, the constituent power of Empire, the force that brought it into being, and empowers its manifold networks of control, is the 'multitude', that is to say, the wretched of the earth" (Gopal Balakrishnan, _New Left Review_ 5, September-October 2000, at <http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR23909.shtml>). Given an enormous gap between self-perceptions of Americans and others' perceptions of the USA, the "multitude," if asked, would likely reject the idea that Hardt & Negri's Empire is more progressive than what Hardt & Negri dismissively call "the poisoned gift of national liberation." -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>