Monday, April 12, 2004
(8:03 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Love at First Sight
I'll admit it: I love Hardt and Negri. That wily theoretical duo continues to rock my world in ways I could never before imagine. I'm only halfway through Empire, but I'm convinced. Sign me up to be part of the multitude. In fact, I'm going to open a new window right now and put A Thousand Plateaus on my Amazon wishlist. I realize that no one has yet availed him or herself of the wishlist function over to the right, but I just want you to know -- A Thousand Plateaus is right at the top of my list now. A lot of other cool stuff is there, too, waiting to be purchased. The gift may be impossible, but Amazon helps us to make do.
(Let us quietly note that Kill Bill, vol. 2 "hits theaters next week." Thanks again, Amazon, for selling everything. Little do they know that their unilateralist marketting cannot be sustained in our new imperial context!)
Now let's get down to business: à Gauche has used the University's quick-link technology (originally developed by me) to connect us to an article by Hardt and Negri -- Mike and Toni, as I now call them. Here's a tidbit:
The crisis of this arrangement presents the opportunity for the proposition of a new global order by the “global aristocracies” – that is to say, the multinational corporations, the supranational institutions and the other dominant nation states.
The primary challenge facing these global aristocracies is to reorganize the global system in the interest of renewing and expanding the productive forces that are today thwarted by poverty and marginalization. To do this, a new agreement is needed – a Magna Carta contract for the age, that today’s aristocracies are in the position to demand of the monarch.
What would the terms of this contract be? Mike and Toni don't say -- that's not their job. The aristocrats and the multitude will figure something out. If I had to guess what they had in mind, I'm sure debt forgiveness figures into the equation somewhere. Anyway, another random chunk:
This means that the United States cannot act independently as a global monarch and “go it alone,” dictating the terms of global arrangements in military, political, economic or financial terms.
The United States must rather collaborate with the other dominant nation states, the multinational corporations, and the supranational institutions that compose the global aristocracies. Today’s imperial sovereignty, in other words, cannot be dictated by Washington (either the Pentagon or the International Monetary Fund), but must result from the collaboration among the various dominant powers.
National sovereignty is dead, and thank God! Ours first of all! If, as Oscar Wilde says, the only way to get rid of a temptation is to succumb to it, then George W. Bush has certainly done us the dubious favor of vividly illustrating the fact that we can't go it alone -- the temptation to act as global hegemon will no longer be nearly as enticing for any future president, even (God forbid) for a second Bush Jr. administration. Our vast military apparatus, if it should continue to exist at all, should be submitted to the demands of the international community. In point of fact, for a while now it already was in most people's minds, and the worldwide protests were the global multitude saying, "Just a minute -- what the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Because -- and here's why I like Mike and Toni so much -- the multitude is an actor in history. New forms of power are produced through the productive energies of the multitude, at their demand. They say early on in the book that the new forms of power they are describing came about because of the demands of the multitude, that reforms in capitalism came about because of the very real threat posed by a multitude organized by a socialist discipline. How refreshing -- popular agitation means something, the lives people live day-to-day, the laws people ignore, all that means something. The cards are not all in the hands of the powers and principalities.
If the best model for a movement of the multitude is early Christianity, then I can now understand the cross a little bit better. If the multitude is the power from below as opposed to the history of Great Men, then it makes sense to have a movement whose leader is self-effacing in life (as in Mark) and who is killed before the movement even takes off -- it makes a whole lot of sense that no one seemed concerned to preserve a record of the great man's deeds for posterity.
(I have too much to do before the end of the semester. Hopefully this summer will provide me some space to deal with the aftershocks of all I'm reading, and hopefully some of it will be publishable.)
