This is an attempt to write out some things my friend Tzuchien and I talked about last time he and I hung out. To be clear: the past tense in the subject heading does not mean to imply those books are outmoded. That said, the initial moment of those books, especially Empire, is over. There’s a difference between the hit record that everyone has and the new record everyone is telling you to get. Empire was the latter for a time and is now more the former.
I’m curious as to why it was such a hit, which is also not to imply anything about it being undeserved. I’m going to commit some notes here, speculation more than anything else, and these won’t necessarily address much more than my perceptions in the circles I was in at the time. I do hope eventually this contributes to, at a minimum, clarifying my own thoughts on all this. I’d also like to say that I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this, regarding the US and elsewhere. I can’t say for sure, but my impression from friends who speak Spanish is that what I have to say about political anti-imperialism holds in some of their experiences for anti-americanism. I’m not positive, and I’d love to here others’ thoughts on any and all of this.
I moved to Chicago in 2001, not long after Empire had come out, just as the book was really taking off. I very quickly got involved with antiwar and other activist circles in Chicago, which included people of various political stripes and intellectual interests. One thing about that that strikes me immediately regarding Empire is that most people I know, myself included, who read the book and got turned on were not excited about the actual empire thesis. It was the multitude we were jazzed about, and, for lack of a better term, the method or just the sensibility of the book. On the other hand, everyone I knew who was strongly opposed to the book was precisely opposed to it ostensibly due to the empire thesis.
Generally and schematically, the people I can think of who were vehement about the book, either for or against, can be defined (or, at least, one possible axis along which they can be charted) is in regard to imperialism and anti-imperialism. The people I can think of who loathed Empire were (and are) people who view the world in terms of (or including) imperialism, and who define at least a part of their politics as anti-imperialism. In Chicago, this meant a lot of marxists of varying degrees of orthodoxy, for whom the story of imperialism included a politics of anti-imperialism, which meant specific types of organizational form and organizational activity. It also meant people who, for better and (mostly just) for worse, had common histories or affinities with the anti-imperialist crowd. These people didn’t like Empire, they said, because of its account of imperialism.
The people I can think of who got excited about Empire, on the other hand, were generally either anarachists or other libertarian minded leftists, either without organizational affiliations and histories (at least not with a history of positive experiences with some modes of organization, ie, parties) or involved in activities with different structures - affinity groups and collectives and so on. These folks might be called anti- anti-imperialists, which is to say, the difference was less one of disagreement over the picture of the world as imperialist or otherwise, and more one to do with the politics bound up with ‘actually existing anti-imperialism’.
To my mind, the people I’m thinking of here under the label anti-imperialists (or, put differently, the specific anti-imperialists I encountered) also tended to have the various attendant baggage of vanguardism - hierarchical organizational forms, strategies and tactics of representation, etc - and had arguments or justifications for some of those elements (all of which seem to boil down to “it’s necessary”). This is what the disagreement was really over, organizational forms and who will lead and who will follow (or if there will be leaders and followers). For those of us who were (but perhaps didn’t recognize ourselves that way) anti-anti-imperialists, Empire provided a common vocabulary for an outlook that differed in some fundamental way with the anti-imperialist (in some ways, an orthodox marxist) outlook. It was also a shared way to a version of Marx(ism), which allowed us more confidence and room to argue with the anti-imperialists, who had often functioned as gatekeepers in front of the fence around Marx(ism), who we had to pay a toll to in order to get into that space.
One of the functions of Empire was that it helped some of us scale the fence around Marx(ism) (or, more generally, a smart sounding and valued idiom to use in common), to go around the anti-imperialist gatekeepers, and without having it have to be a completely conscious action. And they knew it, or at least sensed it in some way, but didn’t come out and say it - how could they? “you can only get to Marx(ism) through us, by obeying our rules and even then you can only get to the version which we present”, who would listen to that? And besides, they often had to hide this operation from themselves.
Since they had to hide their proprietary treatment of Marx(ism) and their vested interests, the anti-imperialists spoke on the terrains they could, which was for me primarily the Empire vs imperialism question. But that didn’t convince very many people I knew, because that wasn’t what we were really doing with the book. We were doing something else, and the anti-imperialist gatekeepers didn’t know exactly what to do with that, except chase after us shouting their old ideas (just like they did with the heyday of the US ‘anti-globalization’ movement and attendant rise into visibility of anarchist movements), but it was harder for them to chase us when it came to Empire, because we were running away from them, and along the way we found all kinds of interesting material to help us run faster, to help stop and argue sometimes, and to otherwise evade and neutralize the gatekeepers-turned-pursuers.
In many ways, I’m not sure what I think about the Empire vs imperialism idea, as a world order. In either case it doesn’t change what I get up to and what I’m interested in, a list of things in which workplace organizing figures highly. To my mind, the parts of Empire and of Multitude that I like, and which I think were bound up with the excitement some of us found in those books, could still stand if Hardt and Negri recanted the Empire argument and embraced some other story about imperialism.
But maybe the effect wouldn’t have been the same without that controversial picture: the global order depicted fit in a way with aspects of ‘anti-globalization’ circles (there being a world order, embodied in institutions like the IMF etc), the effect of making imperialism problematic expressed a desire to get around the people who used that word a lot. What the book did was help some of us make certain moves to new places, and learn certain types of moves from place to place. We probably could have learned them in a book on interpreting Marx and Marxism, but who would have read that? And it wouldn’t have had the same effect of helping produce a break in modes of organization and thought. Maybe, even if it turned out false, the Empire thesis still acted as a useful fiction (or a useful truth, if its true, but one whose utility doesn’t rest in its being true so much as in the effects of the story).
In some ways some of the responses post- the event of Empire’s chart topping success have been attempts to restore certain bad habits of thought, to close up certain opening, and in some ways Negri and Hardt share too much in common with the forces of that restoration and closure. Fortunately, not everything that’s open was opened by these books - some were opened by sources which Hardt and Negri use in their books - and not everything opened by these books will be easily closed (not least because the uses of these books to create openings was done in ways that exceeded some of the actual contents of the books and perhaps of Negri and Hardt’s views).
The remaining and more interesting questions, aside from the history of these books’ reception (what happened, why, to what effect), are about how to continue to see/make openings, and to find resources for that making. In some ways, the opening-power of Empire and Multitude derive from the sources Hardt and Negri draw upon, both in books and otherwise.
as you know Nate, I was a post-9-11 convert from anarchism to anti-imperialism, and as such revile Empire, not just the thesis, but the whole book.
I agree that those who were in fans of the book were jazzed by the multitude - although there were certainly exceptions on email lists I was on at the time, people who tried, briefly, to use Empire as an analytical schema.
Anyway, the point I want ot make is that you can’t have your multitude without your Empire thesis. The multitude is only constituted as the counterpart to Empire. Since there is no Empire, only imperialism, there is no multitude, only multitudes.
I think this goes some way to explaining the relative flop of the book about the multitude. What people wanted was a book that told them that they were engaged in the same struggle as South Asian peasant farmers and Indonesian sweatshop workers. Frankly, I think this is because it salved their middle class white guilt. In the current configuration, this is pretty dangerous, or at best ineffective, since it cannot provide a way of relating to the war in Iraq. While it is quite clear for anti-imperialists that we should support the insurgency, Negrism demands that we ignore the existence of the insurgency in favour of solidarity with Iraqi workers. Of course such solidarity is wonderful and even essential, but the war is a war and its outcome will be politico-military.
Comment by mark — November 11, 2005 @ 9:03 pm
Sorry, didn’t make quite clear that I was saying that the failure of the second book was because you need a single Empire for everyone to be opposed to for this to make sense, so actually it is the Empire thesis that is of primary important, even if people are jazzed about the multitude.
Comment by mark — November 11, 2005 @ 9:05 pm
hi Mark,
I disagree with your views on some of this, but thanks for posting and I’m willing to have my mind changed. I’d really like you to say more on it (in part because you’re more credible to me than most anti-imps I’ve encountered).
All I’m trying to get at here in this post in particular is understanding the event of the book’s publishing, and where folks have gone afterward. One could quite fairly question the importance of that topic, but it’s mine and I’m keen on it. As you know, I’m into the Italian operaist stuff, a lot of people I know (probably self-selection, it’s not like there’s one cause etc etc) are excited about that aspect of it, those resonances if not that specific history and set of thinkers. I do think that’s connected to the substantive geopolitical story told as well, though, even for folks who weren’t particularly invested in it. That particular relationship is what I’m trying to tease out, which like I said I think is partially an attempt (at least it was for me) to do a run around marxist anti-imps. You may be right about guilt at least in some settings too, I don’t know, but a certain version of middle class third worldism is guilty of the same charge I think. gotta run for now.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — November 12, 2005 @ 12:10 am
You’re obviously right that Third-Worldism is another response to middle class white guilt.
If you want to understand the event that Empire was, you have to read it as a part of the late nineties upsurge in anarchism, in anti-authoritarian leftism. This is a phenomenon which desperately needs to be studied, and it’s still one which hasn’t passed. Empire I think seemed like a very good theoretical armament to a lot of leftists when it came out. However, it has a rather Marxian ambivalence towards American imperialism which in the post-2001 situation seems to me to be dangerously inappropriate.
Comment by mark — November 13, 2005 @ 4:26 am
hi Mark,
I think you’re dead right on the stuff happening in the 90s, and it does need to be addressed much more than it has been. In some ways, Empire etc may be more of an epiphenomenon of those changes. Parts of it at the time I read seemed to be saying things I and others I knew had been trying to articulate, one of those “now that you say it it seems so obvious” kind of moments. I’m interested in what functions it played in those moments, and what’s come of it since. My sense is not a whole lot, actually.
In Chicago after September 2001 a number of interesting projects around the ‘anti-globalization’ circles and other contiguous bodies were in a moment of shock and paused to look around and assess (this is I think partially because a relative routine had been established, including a tacit working relationship with NGOs, a relationship which was knocked for a loop by those airplanes - for instance, the AFL and other bodies cancelled their participation in the end of the month anti-IMF et al protests). The various marxist-ish groupuscules (who have their own relationships with sections of the NGO bureaucracies) who’d been chasing behind quickly ran around front with their banners and a series of stupid same old kinds of political formations and ‘actions’ followed suit.
My sense is that something similar happened at the level of theory, something that aspects of HN’s books may have helped along (not that this is causally related), but that could also just be projection on my part.
On a side note, I got the book Mondanita by Virno recently, the second half of which reprints material from a 1993 issue of Luogo Commune, which includes stuff on multitude and people and similar themes (this is the same journal Agamben published some of his essays which appear in the short book of political essays, I think it’s called Means Without End). The beginning of Empire says that the book’s not very original, but it’s striking how many of the themes did occur in various places prior to the book’s publication - like an issue of Futur Anterior dedicated to the idea of Empire, disobbedienti references to the term multitude, etc etc. Those are other sets of histories that need to be written and disseminated, as in some ways the Empire phenomenon is a culling and transfer of knowledges (or of idioms and outlooks) from various contexts into a general ‘movement’ and academic context (or lack of context).
take care,
Nate
ps- Mark, can you write something laying out your view of imperialism (as analysis/account) and anti-imperialism (as politics)? I’m not sure I understand it well enough to agree or disagree, and I’m certainly hesitant to get on board not least because so many other anti-imps are really annoying (by which I do not mean you, obviously).
Comment by Nate — November 13, 2005 @ 7:03 pm
If you were to read through my ACLA paper and my contretemps article, you’d probably get a pretty good idea. I plan to write a book about it called ‘bioimperialism’ when I finish my PhD. But I do essentially accept the core old Marxist imperialism thesis, which says that there is an exploitation of poor societies by rich one, i.e. capital flows from poor to rich and empoverishment of the poor.
My anti-imperialism I suspect has rather a lot in common with Rosa Luxemburg’s, in that I think that the working class in the rich countries is effectively bribed with super-profits from imperialism, which means that revolution in the third world is what is required. I do believe that revolution in the first world is possible independently, but that it would then result in egalitarian, but still imperialist, societies in the global north. As you know I support the Australian Greens, and broadly any party which I think is anti-consumption, since to my mind the only way to stop oppressing the third world is to stop being obsessed with economic growth and material goods.
Comment by mark — November 13, 2005 @ 7:42 pm
hey Mark,
I’ve read both papers but it’s been a while. I’ll have to have another look when I get more time. Is the ACLA paper online anywhere? If not, can I post it here? Maybe someone’d pick a fight with you. (Or worse, pick a fight with me for disagreeing with you.) Part of the problem for me is that I’m not particularly familiar with the old marxist idea of imperialism, as the marxists I knew who went on about it were all kind of fucks, so I avoided everything that had their scent on it except for uncle Karl. Not the wisest course in some ways, perhaps, and one I’m trying to go back now and slowly undo (read more of the ‘classics’ so to speak), at a minimum so I can do conversational power plays like accuse people of rehashing Bernstein etc. It’s good fun.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — November 15, 2005 @ 5:18 am
hey Mark,
I meant to say something about this earlier - can you expand on your anti-multitude comments, the whole “it’s not all the same struggle” idea? I’m not convinced, but I’d like to hear more. To my mind there’s clearly a sense in which “it’s all the same struggle” is not true, the fallacy of the whole “we’re all illegal” thing, no we’re not, some of us don’t face what others of us do. But, by the same token, isn’t there a sense in which imperialism is bound up capitalism and so we’re all in the same struggle (in a larger sense) against capitalists? I’m not sure that same struggle/difference struggle is a particularly helpful set of terms, though I’d be keen to hear your thoughts on the matter.
I’ve been hung up a lot lately on intra-class hierarchy, which may be a point of contact with your take on this stuff, though I don’t have a global/international perspective on it like you do (I’m too ill-informed), one of my examples of choice is a workplace like a hospital, relationships between doctors, nurses, technicians, custodial and food service workers, etc, because that line of thought is a little closer to hand for me.
take it easy,
Nate
Comment by Nate — November 15, 2005 @ 5:33 am
hmm - I really wanted to work that paper up into an article, but my PhD’s taking up all my time and the fire’s gone out of the Negri debate - still, I’m going to say no for now, just to be on the paranoid side.
The multitude? Well, in a trivial sense everyone on earth is part of a multitude, including the ruling class, etc. After that, there are obviously a lot of ways to divide things up. We can say that all workers have their workerdom, or perhaps rather their non-boss-dom, in common. This means that if there were a worldwide struggle to abolish wage-slavery, then they’d all be on the same side. However, it is difficult for me to see how such a struggle could be said to actually exist. Moreover, for the workers of the First World and the masses of the Third to really have the same interests, there’d have to be an abolition of the borders that separate the two. This is not an intrinsic part of the project of abolishing the bosses. It can be added, of course, and the revolutionary left does add it. However, I find the international contradiction to be possible more crucial than the class contradiction.
Why? Well, I agree with H&N, and indeed Marx and anyone else worth their salt, that the abolition of class relations can only be effected on a global scale. In order to this, a global working class, or ‘multitude’, would need to be constituted. In order for that to happen, the borders must be abolished. Capital may yet do this, since labour mobility is not really bad for it per se, but it hasn’t yet. One of the reasons I think is the resistance of first world populaces towards immigration. Revolution in the Third World is thus the hope of the world. Firstly,it allows anti-imperialist governments to replace pro-American oligarchies. Secondly, it might lead to a Third World in solidarity with itself which will flex its muscles and demand an end to global inequality. We’re seeing some local manifestations of this already, in Latin America and Asia.
Comment by mark — November 15, 2005 @ 10:41 pm
hi Mark,
No problem re: the paper.
Given that you identify two possible courses - abolition of borders, or third world revolution - why is only one of them the hope of the world? It seems me that border abolition is no more (un)likely. (I can’t say much more on this because everything I know about this stuff is via the Archive, though I do find it all very convincing.)
It strikes me as a odd that you talk about the constitution of a global working class or multitude as something that capital might do - is it impossible that the working classes might do this as well?
Also, it strikes me as odd that you identify first world populaces’ resistance to immigration as a contributing factor to shoring up borders. This may well be true, but it imply a relationship between state border policy and populace’s activities. Does this same relationship hold in the third world - that one reason for the absence of revolution in the third world is due to the resistance of third world populaces to revolution (also reflected in state policy)?
Finally, I get the impression when you say ‘first world’ and ‘third world’ that you are referring essentially to states. Is that correct? Thus, when you talk about third world revolution, I take this to be connected to seizure of state power in third world states (hence your reference to “anti-imperialist governments”). At the same time, I know you recognize internal divisions within the people enclosed within those states (bosses and workers, labor aristocracies, etc). Right? Are there relative internal first- and third-worlds within these states (particularly the first world ones)?
If so, how does that relate to the separation between first and third world that you posit as existing? If there are first- and third-worlds within states, then the borders between the two worlds are not totally coterminous with the borders of states. You might argue that the borders of states constitutes those world-borders (I’m thinking of Foucault’s remark that prisons etc don’t abolish crime but produce some mode of criminality - similarly borders don’t abolish mobility but produce some mode of immigration, one integral to the prevailing regime of labor relations in the US today) which I’d probably agree with, but state-border production of world-borders doesn’t mean that abolition of world-borders can only come via abolition of state-borders (the reverse seems equally plausible to me - erosion of world-borders internal to a state that might erode the borders of that state).
take it easy,
Nate
Comment by Nate — November 16, 2005 @ 2:59 pm
No, the abolition of world borders internal to a state will not erode the borders of the state, or rather they are extremely unlikely to. I think we must reasonably admit that the worlds are not quite coincident with states - i.e. that we can talk about first world layers in third world some countries, and third world layers in some first world countries. Still, I think such an analysis has its problems. I mean, the apparent ‘first world’ layer in, say, China, are really simply the local bourgeoisie. In some states they are a non-self-sufficient layer of clients of imperialism, a ‘comprador bourgeoisie’ in the Maoist terminology, and in others they are simply a local bourgeoisie.
Anyway, I simply see no reason to think that abolishing this contradiction will weaken state borders. Rather, it will tend to make the state stronger. If the contradiction is abolished by a collapse of civilization, whic has happened in some parts of Africa, while this will mean that the state effectively collapses, and the disappearance of border controls, this will simply mean that neighbouring states which remain in tact will themselves ramp up their border protection.
Now, the abolition of national borders will not by itself remove the class contradictions which exist. What it will do is remove the national contradictions which obfuscate class contradictions, and make necessary this talk of worlds. While we can talk about the bourgeoisie in India and the peasants in India, while it is a class society, it is not simply an exemplar of a global class contradiction while national borders are in place, because there are also contradictions between Indian peasants and Greek Cypriot peasants, between Indian workers and Canadian workers, etc. These contradictions would substantially evaporate in the kind of ‘level playing field’ that neo-liberalism wants to create.
Third world revolution would be the workers doing this work for themselves, by kicking imperialism where it hurts - in the super-profits.
And yes, the resistance of people in the third world to revolution is structurally similar to that of the people of the first world to immigration, although mostly these are very different phenomena.
Comment by mark — November 17, 2005 @ 11:33 pm