Re: new immanence

In a message dated 2/15/2003 11:54:16 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
j.gierus@chello.pl writes:

> Weekend protests seem to confirm the role of what Antonio Negri called 
>“multitude” acting on what he called “new plane 
> of immanence”.

What  is the difference between 'the multitude' and 'the working class'?  And 
what is the difference between 'a new plane of immanence' and 'socialist 
consciousness'? Seriously--I'm curious about how language changes and why.

Over the last weekend, the multitude wasn't just protesting imminent war--it 
was also spontaneously uprising in Bolivia (the article below is from Znet):

Working-Class Revolt In Bolivia 
  
by Forrest Hylton 
February 13, 2003 
 
 
    
BOLIVIA WATCH  
 

Dual power has come to Bolivia most suddenly: not, as expected, in the form of 
a coordinated uprising of coca growers, highland Aymara peasants, and Quechua 
speaking peasants under the direction of Evo Morales, Felipe Quispe, and the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff of the People; instead, high school students and the 
working class of La Paz and its satellite city, El Alto, rose up spontaneously 
in the largest urban insurrection since the National Revolution of 1952. 

On the afternoon of Wednesday, February 12, students from Ayacucho high school 
attacked the Presidential Palace in the Plaza de Murillo with stones, and after 
the Military Police shot and killed members of the police's Special Group, 
crowds burned the headquarters of the major neoliberal political parties (MNR, 
MIR, ADN) as well as a privately-owned television station, the vice-president's 
office, the Ministry of Labor, and the Ministry of Sustainable Development, the 
last of which was created under the first Sánchez de Lozada administration 
(1993-97). They looted supermarkets, stores, ATMs, the Central Bank, destroyed 
a café frequented by many of Bolivia's notables, and burned a car that was 
carrying the son of the leader of MIR. In El Alto, rioters burned and looted 
the water company, the power company, Banco Sol, the customs office, and the 
mayor's office, and on the morning of February 13, they took over the Coca Cola 
and Pepsi bottling plants. 

The second Sánchez de Lozada administration, teetering on the brink, has 
responded once again with a display of violence, though it does not yet control 
the proletarian areas of La Paz and El Alto that voted for Evo Morales and MAS. 
Armed with clubs, residents there have organized neighborhood watch groups to 
guard against looting and have blocked off main roads as well as selected side 
arteries to keep the military out. 

As in the National Revolution of 1952, the police are part of the popular 
revolt, though it is anyone's guess as to how long the unity will last. What 
detonated the uprising-which has since spread to Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and 
could easily reach Sucre-was the violence that the Military Police unleashed 
against the police's Special Group, which had marched peacefully on the 
Presidential Palace to protest proposed tax measures that threaten to further 
reduce their meager $105/month salaries. By the end of the Wednesday, February 
12, there were more than 100 injured, and the death toll was 18, with 13 in La 
Paz and 5 in El Alto, including a young girl. To put this figure in regional 
perspective, since Bolivia has just over 8 million inhabitants, a proportionate 
number of dead in Colombia would be roughly 95 and in Venezuela, 60. To situate 
it in national historical context, the most violent contemporary administration 
was that of former IBM executive Jorge Quiroga (2000-2001), which killed 
roughly forty peop

Since the major TV stations ceased broadcasting at 7 PM, the first night of the 
uprising was not televised, but it was atmospheric: close to midnight, with a 
dense fog covering El Alto (the Aymara city of 500,000 above La Paz), people 
met in groups of several hundred to discuss strategy, decide on appropriate 
tactics, and come up with a division of labor as rumors of an imminent coup 
circulated. Human concentrations were strongest on the bridges in La Ceja and 
at the toll that separates El Alto from La Paz. Old women, children over 12, 
young couples--nearly everyone participated. The streets, empty of traffic and 
smoking from the bonfires that rebels had set, were full of broken glass and 
large metal objects like desks, road construction signs and iron rods. In the 
hillside neighborhoods of northwestern La Paz below El Alto, the scene was much 
the same, except that certain secondary routes were deliberately kept open to 
traffic and people concentrated in smaller groups, with larger groups battling 
the mili

Because it faced the military's tanks, bullets and tear gas in the Plaza San 
Francisco, on Thursday, February 13, a march of more than 10,000 people was 
dispersed within hours. By early afternoon eight were dead and more than ten 
injured with bullet wounds from shots fired by army snipers posted on the 
rooftops of buildings and in the streets around the Presidential Palace. One of 
the dead was a nurse from the Red Cross who entered a building to help someone 
who had been shot. 

The lower and middle ranks of the police who led yesterday's revolt do not 
recognize the agreement signed by the government and the leadership of the 
police in the early morning of February 13, and have called for Sánchez de 
Lozada's renunciation-a demand first voiced by Evo Morales in January. They did 
not participate in the repression of the march or the assault on El Alto's 
barricades (though the Judicial Police rounded up looters). 

Morales, absent from the march that he and MAS had called, plans to marshal his 
forces in Joint Chiefs of Staff of the People, and though Felipe Quispe is in 
Mexico, he returns on Friday, February 14. He and Morales have agreed that the 
highland Aymara will join the coca growers in a solidarity blockade. Though it 
is impossible to predict anything more specific than a broad spectrum of 
possibilities, unless the government manages to bring the lower ranks of the 
police into line, and quickly, the extension of dual power in time and space is 
one of the possibilities. More likely, the requisite co-ordination across 
regional, ethnic, and class barriers will not materialize in time to overthrow 
the government. Whatever the short-term outcome, however, the question of dual 
power has arisen again in Bolivia, and this time not only in the countryside. 
It will not likely disappear anytime soon.