Re: Hardt & Negri on Genoa

First, I'd like to thank K J Khoo for finally saying a few wise words
about this whole hullabaloo.  Although his post obviates a few choice
zingers I had in response to this post, but I'm grateful to him
nevertheless.

> >Those demonstrating against the summit in Genoa, however, are not distracted
> >by these old-fashioned symbols of power. They know that a fundamentally new
> >global system is being formed. It can no longer be understood in terms of
> >British, French, Russian or even American imperialism.
> 
> It is presumptuous for Hardt and Negri to speak of the demonstrators as
> "knowing" that "it" can no longer be understood in terms of imperialism. 

Do the demonstrators gather on the DC Mall (erstwhile center of US
imperial power), or do they coverge on the various meeting sites of the
new institutions of global governance?  If it's presumptous to note that,
isn't that dumbing down just a bit more that postmodernists are accused of
doing?

> >The many protests that have led up to Genoa were based on the recognition
> >that no national power is in control of the present global order.
> 
> To the contrary. It is the United States and its junior partners that
> control the present global order. The fact that Time Magazine, and now the
> NY Times op-ed pages, lend credence to this postmodernist obfuscation
> should indicate whose class interests Hardt and Negri serve.

The point about Marx's appearance in the Herald Tribune has already been
well made (Marx also used to smoke cigars and wear suits, I hear). 

As for the point about the US and its junior partners, the very fact that
they find (to this point) so little serious geopolitical opposition and
flaunt the institutions of the interstate system and the global balance of
power should certainly put one on notice that we no longer live in the
same world as Lenin, Hobson or Hilferding.  Secondly, just because the new
world order is no longer neatly parcellized into sovereign territorial
units doesn't mean it is non-hierarchical.  In fact, Negri and Hardt make
this argument quite explicitly.  To them, the US represents the first tier
of Empire (with fundamentalisms and various NGOs filling out the lower
tiers).  The belief that decenteredness is a good in itself (because now
anything goes, and so resistance is futile) is never espoused in _Empire_,
which in fact condemns the sorts of postmodernisms which make this
argument.

> >If it is not national but supranational powers that rule today's
> >globalization, however, we must recognize that this new order has no
> >democratic institutional mechanisms for representation, as nation-states do:
> >no elections, no public forum for debate.

> This is not Marxism. It is the most banal form of "globaloney" that people
> like Roger Burbach, David Korten and Naomi Klein have presented in a less
> obscure fashion.

I'm not much concerned about what sort of "ism" that is above, but does
the labelling of it as "globaloney" (a term taken, I believe, from the
Chicago Tribune of the 1950's - that paragon of socialist virtue) imply
that the authors have committed a factual error in their claim, or that 
the problem of global democratic representation doesn't exist?

> >Antiglobalization is not an adequate characterization of the protesters in
> >Genoa (or Göteborg, Quebec, Prague, or Seattle). The globalization debate
> >will remain hopelessly confused, in fact, unless we insist on qualifying the
> >term globalization. The protesters are indeed united against the present
> >form of capitalist globalization, but the vast majority of them are not
> >against globalizing currents and forces as such; they are not isolationist,
> >separatist or even nationalist.
> 
> What other "globalizing currents" are there besides MTV, Macdonalds,
> Coca-Cola and the Chase Manhattan Bank? What planet are these guys living
> on? I'd like to visit it some day.

This point has also been addressed - I can only add that the protestors
themselves constitute a globalized current which is distinct from (and
generally opposed) to the series listed above.  Oh - and that would be
planet Earth - and we'd love to have you. 

> >But those in the streets today are foolish enough to believe that
> >alternatives are possible — that "inevitability" should not be the last word
> >in politics. A new species of political activist has been born with a spirit
> >that is reminiscent of the paradoxical idealism of the 1960's — the
> >realistic course of action today is to demand what is seemingly impossible,
> >that is, something new.
> 
> Right. The 1960's. This was the glorious era of "refusal to work" when
> hippies took LSD and "shiftless" black people got up at noon. You can read
> all about it in Abby Hoffman, the American Negri.

Ah - the good old dumping on the 60's.  It's good to see that Marxists and
conservatives are still in agreement on that one.


-- 
Boris Stremlin
bstremli@binghamton.edu