Hardt-Negri: Men of the Year?

Time Magazine, July 23 2001

Global Agenda
By Michael Elliott

The Wrong Side of the Barricades

The hot, smart book of the moment, Empire conjures up shades of Marx

THE SHARPEST DESCRIPTION OF GLOBALIZATION EVER WRITTEN is this: "Modern 
industry has established the world market. All old-established national 
industries have been destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries whose 
products are consumed in every corner of the globe. In place of the old 
wants, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of 
distant lands and climes... All fixed, fast-frozen relations are swept 
away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All 
that is solid melts into air."

Those sentiments of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels formed part of the 
Communist Manifesto, first published in February 1848, a few weeks before 
revolutions swept through Europe. The revolutions failed, and Marx fell out 
of favor; not until the 1870s did the Manifesto find a large audience. Now, 
as Genoa prepares for what may be the largest demonstration against 
globalization ever seen, the Manifesto deserves to be read again. And no, 
we're not kidding.

For Marx and Engels, globalization was a revolutionary phenomenon. The 
triumph of global capitalism had weakened the chains that held human 
potential in check. Autocratic rulers and priests had seen their power 
wither away; technology had offered the promise of plenty; great cities had 
rescued millions from the "idiocy of rural life." Trade had diminished the 
differences and antagonisms between states so that it was possible to dream 
of a true internationalism. Globalization, in other words, was potentially 
liberating.  That's not what the crowds gathering in Genoa seem to think. 
For them, globalization is bad news--the triumph of giant corporations, the 
trashing of the earth, the end of self-government. But globalization's 
positive side is, intriguingly, a message of a hot new book. Since it was 
published last year. Empire, by Michael Hardt and Antonio has been 
translated into four languages, with six more on the way. It is selling 
briskly on Amazon.com and is impossible to find in Manhattan bookstores. 
For 413 pages of dense political philosophywhose compass ranges from body 
piercing to Machiavelli--that's impressive.

Negri spoke to me last week from Rome, where he is under house arrest, 
serving the balance of a prison sentence imposed for his "moral 
responsibility" in the actions of left-wing activists in the 1970s. 
Globalization, he said, had a dual nature: subordinating men while also 
"providing them with the opportunity to rebel against capitalism." In fact, 
you don't have to endorse Empire's authors' broadly Marxist perspective (I 
don't) to find the book fascinating. For Hardt, a professor at Duke 
University, the modem world is characterized by the absence of a power 
center. The U.S. maybe mightier than any other nation, but with economic 
and political resources widely distributed, it cannot always call the 
shots-ask Jack Welch. That much has been said before; but in a new 
departure, Hardt and Negri place mobility--not just of goods and services 
but of people too--at the center of their analysis. "A specter haunts the 
world," they write, "and it is the specter of migration." In a world of 
porous borders, the ability of nations to define themselves as discrete 
entities is bound to atrophy.

Most intriguing of all, Hardt and Negri suggest that American 
constitutionalism has much to offer the new world. The American tradition 
disperses power through institutions and across geographical borders. 
Moreover, Hardt said to me last week, Americans have always been 
comfortable with "hybrid identities." The child of a Turk who moves to 
Germany may never be considered truly a German; a Pole who relocates to the 
U.S. effortlessly becomes a Polish American. In the new world, all of us 
should cherish the ability to have more than one sense of who we are.

In Genoa, the U.S. will doubtless be blamed for everything wrong with the 
world. In fact, it is the nation whose founding, ideas are most useful if 
we are to give globalization a human face. Strange that it should take a 
work of philosophy to make that point. But, then, on globalization, 
Marxists have been worth reading for 153 years.


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org