<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: Hardt: proletarian internationalism is dead</title></head><body> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Earlier this week Michael Hardt lectured at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Although he was flattered that<i> Empire</i> could be interpreted as a call for proletarian internationalism, Hardt told me he believes p.i. is no longer a realizable vision for humanity.<br> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Joseph </blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Hardt & Negri write: "Today we should all clearly recognize that the time of such proletarian internationalism is over" (_Empire_, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000, p. 50).  During the heydays of proletarian internationalism expressed "in the international cycles of struggles" (50), each nation's proletariat translated news of revolts elsewhere into their own language, recognizing the struggles as their own.  In contrast, Hardt & Negri argue, today's "most radical and powerful struggles" -- "the Tiananmen Square events in 1989, the Intifada against Israeli state authority, the May 1992 revolt in Los Angeles, the uprising in Chiapas that began in 1994, and the series of strikes that paralyzed France in December 1995, and those that crippled South Korea in 1996" (54) are their examples -- "have become all but incommunicable" (54): "Each of these struggles was specific and based on immediate regional concerns in such a way that they could in no respect be linked together as a globally expanding chain of revolt.  None of these events inspired a cycle of struggles, because the desires and needs they expressed could not be translated into different contexts" (54).  Hardt & Negri say that while it may be important to recognize a common enemy and invent a common language of struggles, "the model of the horizontal articulation of struggles in a cycle is no longer adequate for recognizing the way in which contemporary struggles achieve global significance" (57).  Making a virtue out of a sad necessity, they go so far as to maintain: "Perhaps the incommunicability of struggles, the lack of well-structured, communicable tunnels, is in fact a strength rather than a weakness -- a strength because all of the movements are immediately subversive in themselves [?!?!] and do not wait on any sort of external aid or extension to guarantee their effectiveness" (58).  I'd have to say this is a bad sign of the optimism of the intellect!</div> <div><br></div> <div>What do Hardt & Negri advocate instead of proletarian internationalism?</div> <div><br></div> <div>Grooving to the now old New Left & counter-cultural tune & giving it a mystical New Age twist, Hardt & Negri give us the buzzwords "Refusal" & "Exodus"; at the same time, they raise old Social Democratic demands: the extension of "citizenship" to all & "a social wage and a guaranteed income for all" on the _global_ terrain (396-403), without telling us how the New Age anti-statist groove gets reconciled with Social Democratic demands even in theory, not to mention in practice.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Due to their zealous anti-statism, Hardt & Negri end up with an overly optimistic assessment of the Progress of the Empire (aka the U.S.-led triumph of neoliberal capitalism worldwide = the post-Socialist & post-Social Democratic era), unable however to suggest any practical alternative.  Moreover, their conception of history is that of linear progress (very modernist of them!); the book _Empire_ is full of breathless repetitions of "no longer this" & "no longer that."  For them, the Progress of the Empire is "irresistible" and "irreversible" (xi).  Hardt & Negri declare: "Deleuze and Guattari argued that rather than resist capital's globalization, we have to accelerate the process.  'But which,' they ask, 'is the revolutionary path?  Is there one? -- To withdraw from the world market...?  Or might it be to go in the opposite direction?  To go still further, that is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization?'  Empire can be effectively contested only on its own level of generality and by pushing the process that it offers past their present limitations" (206).  Going still further in the movement of the market cannot but lead to more primitive accumulation & war, however.  I'd have to say that what Hardt & Negri offer, by default so to speak, is merely an implicit argument of "the worse, the better."</div> <div><br></div> <div>Yoshie</div> </body> </html>