>>From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com>
>>
> Waiting for the barbarians
>
> By Morris Berman
> The Guardian
> October 6, 2001
>
--snipped--
>
> The contemporary American situation could be compared to that of Rome
> in the Late Empire period, and the factors involved in the process of
> decline in each case are pretty much the same: a steadily widening gap
> between rich and poor; declining marginal returns with regard to
> investment in organisational solutions to socioeconomic problems (in
> the US, dwindling funds for social security and medicare); rapidly
> dropping levels of literacy, critical understanding, and general
> intellectual awareness; and what might be called "spiritual death":
> apathy, cynicism, political corruption, loss of public spirit, and the
> repackaging of cultural content (eg "democracy") as slogans and
> formulas.
This is the Gibbons prognosis of impending death. Hardt and Negri propose that these are not symptoms of decline, but of healthy Empire. "Imperial society is always and everywhere breaking down, but this does not mean it is necessarily headed toward ruin."
Chris