"Max B. Sawicky" wrote:
>
> Perhaps attacks on the Empire should be divided into four different
> categories:
>
> (1) justified and effective attacks on the Empire;
>
> (2) justified but ineffective attacks on the Empire;
>
> (3) unjustified but effective attacks on the Empire;
>
> (4) unjustified and ineffective attacks on the Empire.
> --
> Yoshie
>
> you forgot attacks on Empire that are not attacks on the Empire.
>
> helpfully,
> mbs
Your "helpfully" is delightful (a Henry Jamesian use of the adverb). But there is a certain ambiguity in your assertion: Do you mean "Empire" (as in the first clause) or "the Empire" (as in the second clause). That definite article, by its presence or absence, encompasses almost the whole of the difference between those of us who reject _Empire_ and those who insist that it somehow opens up new questions. I think everyone is in more or less agreement that the book doesn't answer any question; disagreement is over whether it asks any substantive (non-trivial) question. I don't think it does; it asks questions about a world that doesn't exist and can't exist. Thus there can be no attacks on Empire (nor did Yoshie suggest that there could be: she speaks of "the Empire").
As I have suggested in the post which Peter K. saw as a split among the "ultras," the returns are not in as to whether 911 will be a successful attack by a would-be empire (Bin Laden's) against the Empire. My own tentative position is that Bin Laden has succeeded brilliantly: the U.S. is now inextricably involved directly rather than by proxy in southern and western asia. In other words, 911 brought the U.S. within reach of one of its enemies, as it was not before. The Fish is hooked.
It is an entirely different question whether this "new" situation is more or less advantageous for the emergence of a more or less coherent leftist movment in (world, U.S., wherever). Brad & Doug assert breezily that it has made things worse, but they seem to have nothing but rather ephemeral polls to go on, which are utterly irrelevant. Doug won't discuss (or won't paraphrase accurately) the claim that the present is the past and no longer existent.
Carrol