At 10:29 AM -0400 6/14/01, Doug Henwood wrote:
>No turning back
>So what's to be done about Empire? A lot of thinkers and activists
>would love to recover a lost world of nation - states or
>self-sufficient localities. Hardt and Negri will have none of this:
>
><block quote>
>[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.
></block quote>
>
>This isn't a popular view. But their critique of the nation - state
>deserves serious attention. For example, though there are
>undoubtedly progressive aspects to classic national liberation
>struggles -- those directed against colonial powers -- it's a
>recurrent fact of history that once established, nation - states
>thrive on creating new hierarchies, and by excluding, to some degree
>or other, those not deemed members of the tribe. Any progressive
>political movement today should be looking beyond hierarchy and
>exclusion towards a society that's egalitarian and truly universal
>(not the counterfeit kind proffered in ads).
<snip>
>Their program, like much of their analysis, is a bit thin on
>details. They call for absolute freedom of movement and a "global
>citizenship," which is lovely but right now seems achievable only in
>the imagination. And they also call for (again in italics) "a social
>wage and guaranteed income for all," though they don't disclose how
>this would be organized in a world beyond the nation - state. Who'd
>write the checks? Would there even be money?
On one hand, anti-statist rhetoric against the "nation-state." On
the other hand, statist rhetoric for "global citizenship" & "a social
wage and guaranteed income for all." No state = no citizenship, no
social wage, no guaranteed income. Hardt & Negri have to come to
terms with the state.
Yoshie
