Hardt and Negri vs. Proletarian Internationalism

[LeoCasey at aol.com]

There could be convincing critiques of Hardt and Negri, but simply having the 
banner of "proletarian internationalism" is not one of them. Insofar as that 
slogan had any positive political meaning, it was at best acts and gestures 
of solidarity with struggles outside of one's national borders -- a mostly 
moral commitment -- which goes on today as much as it did during the heyday 
of "proletarian internationalism." You hardly need "proletarian 
internationalism" to have supported the Chinese students and workers in 
Tiananmen, for example. But insofar as it ever had any programmatic context, 
it was the rigid application of a Leninist-Trotskyist-Stalinist model party 
and revolution to other nations around the world, a complete disaster. The 
resurrection of the slogan, in the absence of any alternative programmatic 
content, will be universally seen as a call to return to that model, and 
greeted by virtually no one with open arms. One can not so quickly forget 
that it was many of those who wrapped themselves in the banner of 
"proletarian internationalism" that celebrated the bloody suppression of the 
Chinese students and workers, rather than joined in solidarity with them.

Yoshie writes:
<< What do Hardt & Negri advocate instead of proletarian internationalism?

Grooving to the now old New Left & counter-cultural tune & giving it a 
mystical New Age twist, Hardt & Negri give us the buzzwords "Refusal" & 
"Exodus"; at the same time, they raise old Social Democratic demands: the 
extension of "citizenship" to all & "a social wage and a guaranteed income 
for all" on the _global_ terrain (396-403), without telling us how the New 
Age anti-statist groove gets reconciled with Social Democratic demands even 
in theory, not to mention in practice.

Due to their zealous anti-statism, Hardt & Negri end up with an overly 
optimistic assessment of the Progress of the Empire (aka the U.S.-led triumph 
of neoliberal capitalism worldwide = the post-Socialist & post-Social 
Democratic era), unable however to suggest any practical alternative.  
Moreover, their conception of history is that of linear progress (very 
modernist of them!); the book _Empire_ is full of breathless repetitions of 
"no longer this" & "no longer that."  For them, the Progress of the Empire is 
"irresistible" and "irreversible" (xi).  Hardt & Negri declare: "Deleuze and 
Guattari argued that rather than resist capital's globalization, we have to 
accelerate the process.  'But which,' they ask, 'is the revolutionary path?  
Is there one? -- To withdraw from the world market...?  Or might it be to go 
in the opposite direction? To go still further, that is, in the movement of 
the market, of decoding and deterritorialization?'  Empire can be effectively 
contested only on its own level of generality and by pushing the process that 
it offers past their present limitations" (206).  Going still further in the 
movement of the market cannot but lead to more 
primitive accumulation & war, however.  I'd have to say that what Hardt & 
Negri offer, by default so to speak, is merely an implicit rgument of "the 
worse, the better." >>

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who 
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and 
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --

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