> ... refuse any
> political strategy that involves returning to that old arrangement,
> such as trying to resurrect the nation-state to protect against
> global capital.
Well, reading the last chapter of Wall Street, I know you don't believe this, Doug.
> ...We claim that Empire is better in the same way that
> Marx insists that capitalism is better than the forms of society and
> modes of production that came before it. Marx's view is grounded on a
> healthy and lucid disgust for the parochial and rigid hierarchies
> that preceded capitalist society as well as on a recognition that the
> potential for liberation is increased in the new situation"
> - Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, p. 43
Yes, but then Luxemburg and so many others taught us about a) uneven development and articulations of modes of production (by which K-ism survives by KEEPING ALIVE the worst traditionalism, racism, patriarchy and eco-destruction of the old mode) and b) we have also come to appreciate some of the collectivist values and eco-social arrangements of more virtuous `pre-capitalist' societies a bit more than such simplistic argumentation would suggest is actually `marxist.'
This celebrated book, which, albeit, I'm only halfway through now, strikes me as fundamentally unsound from a strategic point of view (which I guess is reasonable, if you're in prison, or Durham).