>What Empire really needs is a >serious empirical and academic
>companion, more along the lines of >GW Dommhoff's, Who Rules >America?
(Spectrum, 1967). >Suggestions anybody?
>I mean an airy cultural analysis of >Empire is fine as alternative pop
>cult reading among converts, but >at the end of the day, you need >the
empirical referents--->particularly in political arguments. >Since we are in
deep Empire >Denial mode, it's important to have >something concrete to
refer to--->and a well written academic history >would be nice to have as a
>reference.
I found Parenti's 'Against Empire' more grounded in what I consider reality. But the Empire he describes i s not Negri's, and the key difference is the place of the US in the system. There may be a global, stateless empire in the making, but too many Americans are in complete denial of what their own very real empire does.
Chuck again in a later post:
>So, part of the problem with the >Empire that Hardt and Negri have
>written is that it fails to make the >explicit empirical case, which I
>seriously believe can be made, that >Empire exists. It is an
>interlocking network of political, >legal, and financial organizations,
>treaties, trade agreements, >oversight boards, committees, and >other
bureaucratic administrative >paraphernalia. As such an entity, it >can be
reformed, dismantled, >resisted, destroyed, or >deconstructed.
I can agree to this, but with US interests usually firmly at the top. BTW, I can't argue those interests are completely monolithic, but they do not represent either the entire US or the world nor are they conducive to participatory democracy in the US, if I may be allowed some understatement today--overstatement always gives the debate sophomores an easy in on lists like this.
This is where I find Parenti or even the smug, opportunistic (he predicted 9-11!!!) Chalmers Johnson's 'Blowback' more interesting (but much of his work makes me hold my nose, since it was Johnson's 'expert' analysis in part that got the whole US elite's anti-Japan train going in the late 80s, though the true hacks were van Wolferen, Prestowitz and Fallows.
I think true globalism can be a force for good (though the difficulty of cross-cultural issues are all too often underestimated) but want nothing to do with the American-led 'globalisation'. Too bad so many E. Asians and W. Europeans bought into the latter wholesale.
Charles Jannuzi