----- Original Message -----
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>There is a big problem with the analogy that Hardt & Negri make: as
>capitalism is better than feudalism, the neoliberal Empire is better
>than the world of developmental states (in the South), social
>democracy (in the West), & socialism (in the East)...the difference between
>Empire and DS/SD/S is that on balance we have lost many past gains of the
>working class (e.g., privatization), while making few new gains (e.g.
>civil rights for GLBT people in some rich nations). You can't hail
>every change _within_ capitalism as if it were the emergence of a
>brand-new mode of production with unprecedented opportunities.
>Empire is more of the same (= the ever-expanding world capitalist market).
Unless those "past gains" of the working class were built on the structuring
of global inequality that divided the world into first, second and third
worlds and on the unsustainable autarchy based on authoritarianism and
fascism bred in the Great Depression that temporarily disrupted global trade
in mid-century.
One reason the US had fewer "past gains" for the working class compared to
Europe is that, to its credit on a historical plain, it was more open to
immigration from poorer nations, which created both continual pressure to
keep wages down and problems of continually building social solidarity. In
fact, the strength of the working class in Europe was at least partially
based on the fact that the "reserve army of the unemployed" had the US to
emigrate to earlier in the century, while Europe refused immigration entry
for decades from the countries its colonialism had devastated.
The promise of globalization- Empire - whatever we call it - is the end of
the game of shuffling inequality around the global chessboard, pretending
that local autarchic versions of equality- themselves sitting on a sea of
global starvation and misery- are somehow incremental signs of
semi-socialism attained. Whites under Apartheid in their enclaves had a
quite nice social welfare system going for themselves - that didn't make it
a gain for socialism.
The promise of Empire, like Marx's view of the promise of capitalism versus
feudalism, is not based on its delivery of present or immediate gains for
working class forces; in fact, short-term disruptions and setbacks are
pervasive because global capital is quicker and more ready to organize
itself on that global basis.
HOWEVER, the promise is that as working class forces organize on that global
basis, their possible power and the likelihood of real socialist control of
capital is far greater, since capital will be less able to play nations off
against one another. An integrated global working class will address not
localized definitions of relative inequality but rather address the
fundamental global nature of inequality that has always existed under global
capitalism, even as nationalist definitions of "social solidarity" largely
excluded real solidarity with workers across borders.
Nathan Newman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.openflows.org/~nathan/
