> >Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> >>>I really don't have any idea how this is relevant to Hardt and
> >>>Negri's Empire. They're not Blairites, you know.
> >>>
> >>>Doug
> >>
> >>That's the reality of the Progress of the Empire that Hardt & Negri
> >>have to address.
> >
> >You know, I think they know this. They're not stupid, either.
> >
> >Doug
>Perhaps, but given the fact that what has happened to Bosnia, Kosovo,
>East Timor, etc. is the _cutting edge_ of the Empire (& recognized as
>such by the ruling class & the governing elite), Hardt & Negri would
>have to present a sharp analysis of it, given _the audacious book
>title_ they chose.
>Politically, economically, & even culturally, the
>post-Socialist/post-Social Democratic era (ours, roughly from the
>late 70s to the present) seems to me to be an era of Regress instead
>of Progress, seen from the point of view of the working class. We've
>lost much of earlier gains, without gaining any significant new
>reforms, with an exception of the advance of gay & lesbian civil
>rights in some rich nations & entry of more women into wage labor in
>some corners of the earth (though women lost jobs & benefits in
>post-Socialist nations). The balance of forces doesn't look good,
>even a devotee to the Gramscian "optimism of the will" like yours
>truly.
Well, the below pretty much hits the nail on the head as to the general character of our times, Yoshie.
BTW, my criticism of "Empire" does not assume anything about the political strategy of H&N, nor does it intend to imply anything in this regard. No problem granting that they are looking for a revolutionary approach.
The problem I tend to have with works such as "Empire" are typically methodological in nature. With "Empire" itself, it is 1) the basically post-structuralist discursive mode and 2) the concessions to "Postiality", unacceptable to me, since I reject it as science or as a proposed historical periodization. We do live in a new era, though I date it from Reagan/Thatcher rather than, as H&N do, from the 60s-early 70s, which were actually the last big wave of the preceding series of revolutions. Those last revolutions failed (a la 1848) and the change in our reality was effected by the followers of the "Bolshevik" Thatcher. Hence the periodization.
Post-structuralism came into being, I believe, as a very efficient tool for abstraction, and there is no denying it is. It is quite powerful at abstracting from the minimum set of "data points" (for lack of a better word), weaving between these to develop a system of abstractions. But it is pretty obvious that synthesis (should that be the object) requires test of the abstract concept against different "data points", in the process squeezing out a lot of the ambiguity inherent in abstraction, as well as launching the animation of the whole system, bringing it to life.
It should be obvious to any half wit that this movement between abstract and concrete thought is unavoidable for a system with any hope in hell of launching a practice. But Althusserian poststructuralism, at least - Foucault was actually a superior practitioner of this art, although he had the luxury of not encompassing with his scope the sort of prickly political matter claimed by Althusser or, for that matter, H & N - was notorious in its deliberate refusal of this dirty task, the High Priest himself once enplaning this in terms that essentially boiled down to, "it's not my job", to put it crudely.
So we end up with considerable ambiguity, of the sort that just leapt out at me when an excerpt from "Empire" was tossed into a different context. At a certain level of abstraction it would seem quite plausible that some sort of "global (imperial or whatever) sovereignty" would be, on the face of it, "more progressive" than that of the nation-state, assuming the same class character for both. But it also could be used, more concretely, to support NATO in Kosovo, for example - and even said supporters, while arguing many things, have never represented their support as "anti-imperialist" strategy, or, in H&Ns' tems, as a move against imperial sovereignty. And, as others have noted here, this ambiguity shows it its attempts at "practical" conclusion.
In general, I view many of the products of poststructuralism - and its unfortunate child "Postality" in particular - as a typical product of the hyperactive over "production" characteristic of imperialist "economy" (an oxymoron, indeed) in the end times of capitalism. Matters have reached a point where the resultant expansion of productive force in such countries (or "networked metropoles") becomes positively destructive, and therefore not progressive but regressive, for the human race. So it can be for its intellectual products as well.
Such as those of a NATO apologist - which reminds me to attend to the "progress" of a certain troll on this subject. And, yes, the KKK in their long history often had the finesse to include a few nonwhite faces in the game of divide and conquer. They weren't all white sheets and burning crosses all the time, you know. Only sometimes, like NATO in the Balkans.
-Brad Mayer
>While I have no sympathy for mania for simple, healthy living &
>nostalgia for the bad old days in rural pastorales, it is a giant
>stretch to declare the present state of affairs to be Progress.
>Nowadays, breaking down the "parochial and rigid hierarchies" mainly
>translates into removing price controls, deregulating utilities,
>attacking the "rigidity" in the labor market, etc. Perhaps Hardt &
>Negri belong to the "worse, the better" school of leftism, seeing a
>ray of socialist hope in such deregulated messes like the California
>electricity debacle?
>Yoshie
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"Sure I was young and impulsive once--I wore every conceivable pin.
Even went to Socialist meetings and learned all those old union hymns.
Ah, but I've grown older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in. So Love Me, Love Me, Love Me--I'm A Liberal."
-Phil Ochs
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