> Not from me, comrade. One of my favorite passages from H&N's Empire
> (p. 43):
>
>> [W]e insist on asserting that the construction of Empire is a step
>> forward in order to do away with any nostalgia for the power
>> structures that preceded it and refuse any political strategy that
>> involves returning to that old arrangement, such as trying to
>> resurrect the nation-state to protect against global capital. We
>> claim that Empire is better in the same way that Marx insists that
>> capitalism is better than the forms of society and modes of
>> production that came before it. Marx's view is grounded on a healthy
>> and lucid disgust for the parochial and rigid hierarchies that
>> preceded capitalist society as well as on a recognition that the
>> potential for liberation is increased in the new situation.
But according to Marx capitalism, by destroying previous modes of production, creates circumstances more conducive to positive human development. Such development is a prerequisite for the actualization of ideal relations (which are both an essential feature of the good life and a means for developing individuals able to live it).
Hardt and Negri implicitly reject this view of human nature, don't they? How does their analysis take account of socially conditioned irrationality?
It may be that taking account of this developmental aspect of social relations wouldn't alter the conclusion. It's not obvious though that if globalization meant universalizing conditions associated with widespread belief in angels it would everywhere produce either better conditions than those currently existing or better than some other conditions that some fettering of globalization might make possible.
Ted