<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2>There could be convincing critiques of Hardt and Negri, but simply having the
<BR>banner of "proletarian internationalism" is not one of them. Insofar as that
<BR>slogan had any positive political meaning, it was at best acts and gestures
<BR>of solidarity with struggles outside of one's national borders -- a mostly
<BR>moral commitment -- which goes on today as much as it did during the heyday
<BR>of "proletarian internationalism." You hardly need "proletarian
<BR>internationalism" to have supported the Chinese students and workers in
<BR>Tiananmen, for example. But insofar as it ever had any programmatic context,
<BR>it was the rigid application of a Leninist-Trotskyist-Stalinist model party
<BR>and revolution to other nations around the world, a complete disaster. The
<BR>resurrection of the slogan, in the absence of any alternative programmatic
<BR>content, will be universally seen as a call to return to that model, and
<BR>greeted by virtually no one with open arms. One can not so quickly forget
<BR>that it was many of those who wrapped themselves in the banner of
<BR>"proletarian internationalism" that celebrated the bloody suppression of the
<BR>Chinese students and workers, rather than joined in solidarity with them.
<BR>
<BR>Yoshie writes:
<BR><< What do Hardt & Negri advocate instead of proletarian internationalism?
<BR>
<BR>Grooving to the now old New Left & counter-cultural tune & giving it a
<BR>mystical New Age twist, Hardt & Negri give us the buzzwords "Refusal" &
<BR>"Exodus"; at the same time, they raise old Social Democratic demands: the
<BR>extension of "citizenship" to all & "a social wage and a guaranteed income
<BR>for all" on the _global_ terrain (396-403), without telling us how the New
<BR>Age anti-statist groove gets reconciled with Social Democratic demands even
<BR>in theory, not to mention in practice.
<BR>
<BR>Due to their zealous anti-statism, Hardt & Negri end up with an overly
<BR>optimistic assessment of the Progress of the Empire (aka the U.S.-led triumph
<BR>of neoliberal capitalism worldwide = the post-Socialist & post-Social
<BR>Democratic era), unable however to suggest any practical alternative.
<BR>Moreover, their conception of history is that of linear progress (very
<BR>modernist of them!); the book _Empire_ is full of breathless repetitions of
<BR>"no longer this" & "no longer that." For them, the Progress of the Empire is
<BR>"irresistible" and "irreversible" (xi). Hardt & Negri declare: "Deleuze and
<BR>Guattari argued that rather than resist capital's globalization, we have to
<BR>accelerate the process. 'But which,' they ask, 'is the revolutionary path?
<BR>Is there one? -- To withdraw from the world market...? Or might it be to go
<BR>in the opposite direction? To go still further, that is, in the movement of
<BR>the market, of decoding and deterritorialization?' Empire can be effectively
<BR>contested only on its own level of generality and by pushing the process that
<BR>it offers past their present limitations" (206). Going still further in the
<BR>movement of the market cannot but lead to more
<BR>primitive accumulation & war, however. I'd have to say that what Hardt &
<BR>Negri offer, by default so to speak, is merely an implicit rgument of "the
<BR>worse, the better." >>
<BR>
<BR>Leo Casey
<BR>United Federation of Teachers
<BR>260 Park Avenue South
<BR>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
<BR>
<BR>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
<BR>It never has, and it never will.
<BR>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
<BR>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
<BR>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
<BR>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
<BR><P ALIGN=CENTER>-- Frederick Douglass --
<BR>
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