> [via nettime]
>
> this is an interview that first appeared in Le Monde and then in La
> Stampa. I have quickly translated it into English. See what you think.
> The original french and the italian translation with links to the papers
> below. -- Arianna
[My hat's off to Arianna for getting this out so quickly because otherwise I wouldn't have read it. And then as I was forwarding it to a friend, and double-checking a couple of sentences, I ended up restoring several sentences that were probably dropped from the original in the interest of speed and editing some of the rest so it read more smoothly. So here is a slightly improved version. If anyone would like to continue in this stone-soup tradition of serial editing and improve on my version, be my guest. I think it's true to both the spirit of the original and of its first translator.]
[The links to the French original and the Italian translation are retained below. The added sentences are from the original French version.]
Toni Negri, Philosophe
The author of the favorite book of "contestaires" everywhere, the Italian philosopher Toni Negri explains how the movement must truly become a counter-power at the global level.
Remarks collected by Stephane Mandard
Numerous representatives of the movement against neo-liberal globalization movement have turned Empire, the book you wrote with Michael Hardt, into their 'little red book'. Do you agree with them?
"Porto Alegre is not the Paris Commune! However, the World Social Forum is an important moment, a place where an extraordinary generosity and militant abilities are about to meet. I am in agreement with the spirit and the objectives of the movement: to construct, at a global level, an opposition to neo-liberalism and to develop a possible alternative, within the framework of globalisation. It is a fundamental stage in the construction of a counter-Empire. The anti-neoliberal movement, on the other hand, gives expression to many different positions. And I don't agree with all of them."
Are you referring to the anti-Americanism that tempts some parts of the movement?
"My impression is that these associations are made by the adversaries of the movement. To be anti-American is completely idiotic. One needs to overcome the false view that makes of the American government the sole enemy. The American government is the most important amongst the powers that need to be contested, but it isn't the only one. It wouldn't exist if the ruling classes of world capitalism didn't give it their complete support. The problem of mobilizing American workers is one of the most important battles facing the anti-neoliberal movement.
What positions do you distance yourself from?
"If there is one thing we really need to break with it's Third Worldism, and Porto Alegre has to undertake this in earnest. Third Worldism is a pernicious illusion. It hasn't ever been a real struggle against capitalism because it's never conceived of it as a unity at the global level. The problem is to identify, throughout the world, the same adversary: those who exploit workers in all hierarchies and systems of unequal exchange. If we want to set a real world forum and a real world workers' organisation in motion we need to be very conscious of this. There is no longer is a North-South divide, because there is no longer a geographical differance among nation-states."
How do you explain then the presence of a trend that supports national sovereignty, and its representation at Porto Alegre by Jean-Pierre Chevenement?
"I think that this is precisely the weak point of the movement. It is a weakness that cultivates the illusion that we can go back to the pre-globalisation era. The nation-state has been surpassed. Globalisation was not caused by the will of American power. And the main source of anti-Americanism are these "sovereignists." Empire, aka globalisation, derives from exactly those things that nation-states can no longer control within their borders: the movements of capital, and struggles.
For three or four centuries the nation-state was an extraordinarily fruitful place for the development of capital and the regulation of society. But this historical situation has now passed; not even the Americans have been able to preserve the nation-state form.
We find ourselves in the paradoxical situation where the US president is elected with foreign financing. The capital of Saudi oil barons is so completely integrated into the mangement of American affairs that we can really no longer say that the nation-state still functioning. And Chevenement himself is unable to restrain the appetite of the Corsican people for autonomy. Nationalism is a form that is no longer functional. And sovereignty is a dangerous illusion."
Is there a risk that the the war undertaken by the west against terrorism risk might criminalize the anti-globalisation movement?
"I'm quite afraid of that. What's happening at this moment is neither a war nor a police operation. It might turn out to be a new form of exercising force at the imperial level. It is a war that is becoming less and less destructive and increasingly regulative and constituative. Members of the military are transforming themselves into judges and prosecutors, into constituent parts of the social order. The great danger is that the miliary will begin to absorb even non-governmental functions. It is obvious that there will be an extension of illegitimate and liberticidal laws. But having said that, I am fairly optimistic, because there is a resistance to organise, and there are counter-powers that oppose this phenomenon. It has been years since I've seen a social movement with such intelligence, and such a capacity to comprehend the violence of power, and to continually come up with new and inventive and completely unforeseen strategies to stop it."
Will the struggle of the "contestairs" at Porto Alegre inaugurate what you call 'a new phase in the struggle of the exploited against the power of capital'?
"I believe so, and in any case I hope so. But the problem is never only the battle against capital. It is also arriving at a new form of organization. I hope that Porto Alegre will help to make that possible. The struggle against capital is a social problem. It's the political organization of the social. It is the comprehension of biopolitical and sociopolitical innovations in such a way as to define them into new forces of opposition and resistance. We must say that we don't want to live in a world like this, we must imagine an escape from the control of a power that tries to control even our lives, our emotions and our desires. Today the exploited are not just the manual laborers, the workers, but also the social multitudes: the workers, certainly, but also the students, those who live precariously on the edge of society, the unemployed, the immigrants, the women, the illegal workers, the interns. It is important to be able to organize the needs and desires of these multitudes, and to be clearly conscious that what now faces us is a new political subject. This is why a new left can only emerge from the anti-neoliberal movement."
Why?
"Take Italy, for example. There the renaissance of the left can only come from the movement. More and more people who were once part of the communist party are turning towards it. It is only the movement, for example, that would have a chance of reconquering the mayoralty of Bologna, which was for a long time a red city, but which has recently fallen into the hands of Berlusconi's people."
But by and large the anti-globalization movement, as represented for example by Attac, refuses to become a political movement.
"I believe the movement has no intention of limiting itself to contestation. It is a counter-power movement. It is certainly not a movement that is fascinated by power, and the liberation from this fascination has been a painful process. Nonetheless power must be overturned. How? Once upon a time we distinguished several stages: first a workers and unionist resistance, then an insurrectional phase and finally the constituent one. Nowadays there is no distinction between the phrases, there is no transition, there is simply the movement. The new political subject that the movement embodies is simultaneously a subject that resists and a constituent subject, a subject that struggles and a creative subject. It is in proposing alternatives that it opposes, it is in choosing to withdraw from power that it designs another world. That world is possible, but the multitude needs to get organised. The current transformation is taking place through the exercise of counter-power and the capacity for antagonism. The struggle, that is to say the act of becoming conscious of how new are today's real political cadres is a fundamental change. It is a path that will lead this great movement from exodus to establishing itself in the social body."
The movement is almost co-substantial to the Internet. Is that its best weapon?
"The internet is a tool, certainly a precious one but it can fall under the control of the capitalist system. On this terrain, today, the conflict is evident. But it is not only a question of control, there is that of property, in the case of Internet that of patents and intellectual copyrights. Amongst the militants I know the problem is increasingly not only that of private or public property, but also the definition of a new common good. People are starting to think that all services -- education, health and transports, social welfare -- have to be treated as collective goods, and that includes those linked to intellectual labour. It is important to defend the ability of the Internet to function as a tool of the movement, but that is also the material problem of organising a new society."
-----------
Italian philosopher of '68 and former guru of the Italian radical left in 1970, Antonio (aka Toni) Negri is benefitting from a regime of semi-liberty after having been sentenced to 13 years in prison for "armed insurrection against the state." His book _Empire_, co-written with the American Michael Hardt, was enough to get him saluted in the New York Times as the author of "the first grand theoretical synthesis of the new millenium."
http://www.lemonde.fr/recherche_articleweb/1,6861,260198,00.html http://www.lastampa.it/EDICOLA/cultura/463575.htm
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com