Capitalism & U.S. Imperialism are transnational; so are toxic fallouts from them. In the face of the transnational reality of the Empire & the atomized Multitude, "a tightly focused multilateral response" is impossible. What's the point of bombs, commandos, & even ground troops in Afghanistan, when confronted by Anthrax in Florida, Kenya, & everywhere?
Hardt & Negri write in _Empire_ (p. 391):
***** If capitalism is by definition a system of corruption, held together nonetheless as in Mandeville's fable by its cooperative cleverness and redeemed according to all its ideologies on right and left by its progressive function, then when measure is dissolved and the progressive telos breaks down, nothing essential remains of capitalism but corruption....Here corruption touches on the biopolitical realm, attacking its productive nodes and obstructing its generative processes. This attack is demonstrated...when in the practice of imperial government the threat of terror becomes a weapon to resolve limited or regional conflicts and an apparatus for imperial development.... *****
Terrors, by they practiced by the Empire or atomized & ruthless fragments of the Multitude, originate in the breakdown of the progressive telos of both capitalism and the now virtually non-existent organized Left. To overcome our impotence, we must rebuild the Left first -- the task of the 21st century, on whose success our very survival depends.
-- Yoshie
* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Anti-War Organizing in Columbus Covered by the Media: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/media.html>