More on Hardt & Negri from Brennan

[Chris Burford]

At 09/01/03 11:10 -0500, you wrote:
>Thomas Seay wrote:
>
>>Now what do you think that this means?  I have never
>>read any such thing from Michael Hardt or Antonio
>>Negri.  It certainly cant mean that Hardt and Negri
>>dont support strikes, etc or that Hardt and Negri dont
>>support workers struggles against capital,  Because
>>that isn't true.  So what does it mean?
>
>Yeah, I'm wondering just what's so evil about Empire. You can find it 
>wrong or silly or beside the point or otherwise icky, but why the intense 
>hostility? Did anyone ever read the book and then decide, "Oh, I'll stop 
>organizing against the war and read Spinoza instead," or "I think I'll 
>quit my union now and just sit on my couch and disengage from labor"?
>
>Doug

I think the hostility is is from the books failure to talk about the 
movement in polarised terms. It is weak on the old rhetoric of class 
struggle and against US hegemonism. Truth is described in an associational 
rather than an oppositional way.

And it was written at the time of the rise in street protests against 
globalisation, largely non-violent, and before 9-11 changed the whole 
climate. Therefore it had the feeling of the Prague spring, and brought to 
mind their memorable allusion in the final words to the   "incredible 
lightness of being communist".

To claim that they are pre-marxist communists is a nibble conceit, 
seductive for some, offensive for others.

Can the world really be changed by such narcissistic frivolity?

I think these are some of the roots of the hostility.

What counteracts all that in my opinion is the scrupulously careful way 
they re-examine Lenin's arguments over ultra-imperialism, and argue that 
the ultra-imperialist tendencies have become stronger, and must be addressed.

Chris Burford

London