Empire,
and the desire for beauty
I - The Obligatory
Introduction
It is fitting that Hardt and Negri's Empire
has created such a stir. As profound changes occur in the worldâs prevailing
economic and social regime, Negri and Hardt insist that the time has come to rethink our analyses
and our strategies. Pulling together many strands of postmodernist thought,
they try to redirect and remold them into a comprehensive analysis of
the new situation, and to take the first steps in conceptualizing the
new forms our political strategies should take.
We withal remember how riven the nineteenth and twentieth century Left was. Even
before major Socialist Parties were divided in the aftermath of the
Bolshevik Revolution, factional strife and splitting were commonplace.
This continued, as further divisions arose among Marxists after the
split with the Trotskyists or the various Stalinist purges. And let's not
forget anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists ... but, we all know the
stories, and we all had our favorites. (Hardt
and Negri seem to be fans of the Wobblies,
which this essayist finds commendable). One thing that all of these
movements had in common, though, was a Weltanschauung, with boundless
faith in industrial technology. It was capitalism that was exploitative
and oppressive, not industry and its technology per se. The proletariat
was a product of industrialization. The means of its liberation were
the seizure of industry, in one way or another.
Post-industrial radicalism
in the West might be said to have started with the European Greens,
the first comprehensive movement to demand that the struggle against
exploitation and oppression needed to be expressed in new ways. If previously
marginalized groups, such as gays or immigrants, could be new loci for
political struggle against the established powers, they also had to
struggle against the established Left to have their demands taken seriously.
If environmentalists had to struggle against the gobbling up of the
Commons, they also had to fight a Left which was wedded to the industrial
vision of progress and struggle.
The Leftist world view that
began to be articulated after the revolts of 1968 was post-industrial.
But it was not yet post-modern -- at least not consciously so. As the
post-industrial Left continued the struggle against capitalism and neo-colonialism,
it also waged a struggle over theory and strategy -- and inclusion --
with the industrial view of the older Left. Though it was clear that
the world had changed, it was not yet clear just how extensive a change
the information revolution and the globalization of capital would bring.
Here is where Hardt
and Negri make their positive contribution.
The break in the regime is enormous and epochal. All political, social
and economic relationships are changing in revolutionary ways that are
as potentially earth-shaking and world-molding as the Industrial Revolution
was. The necessity to grapple with these changes presses from all sides,
and everyone, including everyone on the Left, must re-examine all of
their assumptions and all of their strategies from top to bottom. The
theoretical debates between the classical and post-industrial Left was
merely a hint of the enormity of the conceptual change that had to be
wrought.
And so the challenge of Empire.
It raises these points. It calls the old categories, one by one, into
question. It offers a new conceptualization of the political reality
of the postmodern world. It gores some sacred cows and begins to open
up some new pastures.
Having attended two sessions
of the World Social Forum in 2002 in Porto Alegre
in which Michael Hardt spoke, your essayist
was impressed by the fact that Hardt's concern
was not so much to defend his specific theses. Rather, he seemed determined
to do his damnedest to make sure that the enormity of these changes
be seriously discussed. This is how engaged intellectuals are supposed
to act, yet all too rarely do.Hardt seemed
earnestly to want to see that the great new theoretical project was
engaged, and to make his contribution to it, and was less concerned
that others present recognize that he and Negri
were "right". Bravo!
II - The Expected
Dissent
It is not to laud this important
book to the skies, nor to quibble with the details that this essay is
undertaken. It is to lament some serious flaws in the approach taken
by Negri and Hardt. These flaws, unfortunately, are of a type all too often
found in leftist analyses. Since Negri and Hardt are very much path-finders,
it is even more disappointing that they perpetuate such mistakes. Okay,
I'll tip my hand early -- Good leftist critique all too often turns
into sentimental mush. And a sentimental mush which is ultimately dangerous.
It is hard work to understand
the ins and outs of economic activity, the relationship among different
capitalistic, entrpreneurial institutions
and the political ramifications of their machinations. It is also difficult
to follow the threads, see the connections, peer into the shadows in
order to understand why, for example, these workers revolted but those
did not, how these peasants achieved change but others were easily bought
off, why some movements reacting to social changes or economic exploitation
became large and inclusive while others became xenophobic and reactionary.
In doing all this, one also has to guard against oneâs own prejudices,
misunderstandings, and misreading of the evidence, not to mention deliberate
obfuscations or destruction of evidence by the bad guys themselves.
But one does this because,
presumably, one is genuinely outraged by injustice, and wants to help
establish justice. One is oppressed, or outraged by the oppression of
others, and one seeks to change the situation or overthrow the regime
which maintains the oppression. Yes, yes, yes. But what mistake do we
make over and over? We romanticize those that suffer oppression. We
buy into theories that somehow make the downtrodden necessarily
the unified bearers of justice. They have revolutionary potential. Okay,
perhaps they do, because the material and political situation is reaching
a crisis stage. But the romantic fallacy is to assume that this revolutionary
potential is not a case of some specific group having grasped
the situation, discovered a strategy, and united -- for the revolutionary
moment -- to seize the day. Oppressed people, under certain circumstances,
revolt. They put aside their other fears, suspicions, or even hatreds
(sometimes), in order to cooperate with those whom, in other circumstances,
they would never consider cooperating. They are human, after all. The
fallacy is to assume that this is more than a specific historical situation
(which, like any and all others, can be gloriously achieved, stupidly
squandered, betrayed, or simply defeated by superior forces of the dominant
power) and that it is a metaphysical certainty, with an eschatological
mission.
The Proletariat. Oppressed
and exploited. Absolutely. In ways that ought not be tolerated. Agreed.
The Proletariat has a need to revolt, even a right to revolt, and a
right to change the system, and to create a new system which allows
them to enjoy the fruits of their production. Yes. And yet there is
a problem. What is the proletariat? Is it a thing, with a will,
a desire, a mission? There is no way to get to this from the original
propositions with which we began.
After the Soviet invasion
of Hungary in 1956, Jean-Paul Sartre, like many leftist intellectuals,
felt called upon to censure the invasion at the same time justifying
his unwillingness to question Marxism-Leninism à la Stalin. As
part of this gymnastic exercise he said:
"The proletariat [of
the Soviet Union] is no longer the subject of history, it is not yet
the concrete goal of socialization: it feels itself to be the principal
object of administrative solicitude and the essential means of
socialist construction.
Even under Stalinist regimes,
all proletarians feel as one? All interpret their mission philosophically
and in the same way? All are devoted to socialist construction? According
to which blueprint of "socialist construction"? In fact, this
sort of assertion is, in the end, meaningless and self-serving. May
we cite Marx here to clinch our point?
"The premises from
which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises
from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are
the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions of
their life, both those which they find already existing and those
produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in
an empirical way."
We are supposed to be materialists.
We are supposed to see what exists, to weigh evidence, to observe history
and society. Has their ever been a time when the Proletariat, as such,
united? (At least in Marx's day, the formation of classes in England
and Germany had not yet become nearly as complex as the social systems
of the late twentieth century. So we can give him a break.) Even when
concerted, unified action was taken against the oppressors, did divisions
cease? Did all agree? Did proletarians cease to be human and become
angels? Did revolutionary leaders refrain from oppressing other revolutionaries?
(Kronstadt? Stalinist purges? The national liberation movements
rightly chastised by Negri and Hardt?
) Did the Proletariat usually live up to its metaphysically
imposed potential (World War I? The true "General Strike"
which never, ever materialized?)?
This being said, should we
be any less concerned to struggle against oppression, or fight for justice?
Of course not. We should just be on our guard against illusions that
we are creating for ourselves.
III - The Seduction
of Language
Arguments about words are
necessary. Clarification of terms, concepts, categories. How are they
related? What do they signify? Do they actually get interpreted in the
way that their author intended? What are their ramifications? All these
are legitimate questions. Dealing with such questions is a legitimate
and dignified pursuit.
But if a word, and argument,
a concept or a category is meant to convey some usable information about
the world ... ah, here's the problem, no? And an important one. How
do we know, how can we be certain that we are describing the world and
not creating it ourselves? Especially when we can demonstrate the ways
in which the language might be tainted by exploitation, repression,
racism, sexism, and a slough of other distortions?
It might be the case that
such musings paralyze us. They convince us that there is no action that
can be taken which is not subjective, distorted, molded by others with
evil intent (or even unconscious, unintended evil). So we do not act.
Well, this is a possibility.
"Such
idealism consists, not in the positing or denial of the primacy
of an ulterior material world, but in a self-generating conceptual
universe which imposes its own ideality upon the phenomenon of social
and material existence, rather than engaging in a continual dialogue
with these."
But we are called upon to act, if we take Empire seriously.
And if so, then we act despite the ambiguities. We even strive to change
these ambiguities (even if it can be argued that they will ever persist).
But if we choose to act, and we realize the pitfalls, how on earth can
we then ignore all of the lessons of the warnings about the subjectivity
of language and action? Even embrace them? This is the true absurdity,
and this is the seduction of language. For that is what embracing
metaphysics should be for materialists -- a profound mistake and misunderstanding.
We cannot avoid metaphysics -- the denial of metaphysics is a metaphysical
position (as materialists are constantly reminded, ad nauseam,
by fantasists who insist upon the reality of the hallucinations that
they've meticulously fashioned for themselves). But we can avoid embracing
it. We can avoid letting it seduce us away from our empirical focus.
And seductive it is, for what else can so easily slip past us the vagaries
of "The Proletariat"? Note too that this seduction can only
work because of a pre-existing condition, a desire, a lust, for comprehension
and for transformation. Step forward, as a witness for the prosecution:
"The Multitude". One comment by Hardt
and Negri about the multitude reads
as follows:
"The concept of the
local ... need not be defined by isolation and purity. In fact, if
one breaks down the walls that surround the local (and thereby separate
the concept from race, religion, ethnicity, nation, and people), one
can link it directly to the universal. The concrete universal is what
allows the multitude to pass from place to place and make its place
its own.ä
We might be persuaded that every group of people, however defined (race,
religion, etc.), has a concept of the universal. But that universal
is usually an extension of the values of the particular group. Why should
it be the universal that coincides with a new theory of two Western
philosophers? History more often shows us that peoples, as a rule, do
not move and make other places their own unless they are conquering
new lands for their own benefit, or they are forced to move because
of a crisis. Conquerers may try to impose
a new universalism on the conquered. Those forced to flee famine or
persecution look for mere survival, not universals.
Negri and Hardt
take the Enlightenment philosophers to task, and with some reason, for
creating the unique measure of Reason which would later be used to underpin
the Western ideology of imperialism: we are Reasonable, and we must
therefore rule and educate those who are not. Yet the principles of
the philosophes also included the potential
equality of all men qua men, because all men were potentially
Reasonable and Rational. Some of their ideals about democracy are still
with us.
In their own voyage, Hardt and Negri sail from the clear
waters of crisp social analysis into the fogs and undertows of abstruse
metaphysics seemingly without much reflection on the different purposes
each serve. But they do so unconsciously, with a spirit similar to that
of the philosophes, whom theyâve just taken to task. If the
subjects of oppression and bearers of struggle against the Empire are
now spread throughout the world, how can the categories of Western intellectuals
sensibly be imposed upon their desires? Why do Western postmodernist
philosophers better understand the objects of all oppressed peoples'
desires better than they do themselves (as if there is one match-up
between Desire and Goal -- rather than thousands, or millions)?
Hardt and Negri
abandon the proletarian ship, only to swim over to the S.S. Multitude.
If there never was any evidence of a unified proletariat in its metaphysical
meaning in the industrial capitalist world, how much more impossible
is the idea of the anti-Empire multitude, unified in their desires,
united in their goals, united in this great universal? Empirically,
can we not see that they are divided by class, experience, language,
religion, culture, and attitude? We can legitimately predict revolution,
or at least revolt against Empire -- but it will not always be the revolt
we want. Fearful of the loss of their autonomy, of their culture, traditions,
religion, or of their livelihood (and usually, all of these) people
lash out, they revolt. Sometimes the revolt is reactionary, sometimes
it is progressive. It will be more likely to have elements of both.
But most likely, it will not be perceived by the rebels themselves as
reactionary or progressive or anything else -- anything except justified.
People revolt using the tools they know. The Algerian FLN, the Viet
Minh, the Cuban 26th of July Movement, the Angolan
MPLA were not the only manifestations of revolt against capitalism or
imperialism. There were also Gandhian satyagrahi,
and the non-violent activists behind Martin Luther King. But, there
was also the Mahdi of the Sudan, the Muslim
League of Pakistan, Kenyan Mau Mau, and the right-wing populism of Vargas
and Peron. And there was the Islamic Revolution
of Iran -- perhaps the first truly anti-globalist,
anti-Empire revolution of our era. If any revolution shows the interplay
of reactionary and progressive, religious and nationalist, anti-exploitative
and exploitative impulses all combined together in a true revolutionary
moment, it was the Iranian Revolution of 1979. How do we analyze this
in terms of the multitude? In terms of universal struggle? Universal
on whose terms? Is the imposition of a western progressive ideological
metaphysic on revolts in Iran, Afghanistan, or even Mexico (where most
of us leftists are a lot more comfortable with the apparently "progressive"
nature of the EZLN -- but isn't it the same revolt? ) any less presumptuous
than the Enlightenment's imposition of the Rational measuring stick?
After all, did the peasants in Chiapas revolt because they had studied
Marx and Che? Or did they revolt because they had just had enough?
We don't want the Taliban's hyper-reactionary revolt -- but it is revolting
against Empire (which we do want). Weâre a just a tad less uncomfortable
with the Iranian Revolution, but we are uncomfortable nevertheless (as
we should be with any group that forces archaic restrictions on women,
does not tolerate religious minorities, and periodically shuts down
all political opposition. Gay rights in revolutionary Iran? Not on the
agenda, I fear.)
IV - The Obligatory Conclusion
The struggle is real. Theory is a means for trying to make sense of
the reality in which this struggle goes on. Theory is an instrument,
a tool. Somehow, we are forever confusing the instrument, the tool,
with the goal for which we are employing the tool. Why do we continue
to do this?
If we refrain from mythologizing, mystifying, and metaphysicalizing
the objects of our political Desire -- the oppressed, repressed, enslaved
and befuddled, or even the Proletariat or the Multitude.... If we refrain
from mythologizing, mystifying, metaphysicalizing
the goals of our Desire -- justice, freedom, equality, peace, love....
Does this mean that we donât care about them? That we've given up the
"good fight"? Of course not.
The world is a messy, messy place. It never, ever fits even the most finely-honed
theories, because theories are abstractions. But we want to clean up the
messy world. If we spend too much energy on manufacturing beautiful theories
that prove that we cannot possibly be defeated, then weâll be defeated
every time. Because we will have stopped dealing with the real, messy
world.
Negri and Hardt
at one and the same time call upon us to take stock of how radically
this messy world has changed, and is changing still. They do so brilliantly.
But then they plunge into a mythologizing and metaphysicalizing
project which makes a particularly important and complex part of that
world beautiful. Beautiful, and therefore unreal --- and therefore counterproductive.
There is a messy material world out there that needs straightening out,
and we must plunge ourselves into the messy material world, rather than
gaze wistfully at the beautiful print depicting the faces of the Multitude
on our office wall.
__________________________________
ENDNOTES
[1]
. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Ghost of Stalin, trans.
Martha H. Fletcher (New York: George Braziller,
1968) p. 73.
[2]
. Karl Marx, The German Ideology, in John Elster,
ed., Karl Marx: A Reader (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986) p. 25.
[3]
. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,
Empire (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2000) pp. 132-134.
[4]
. E.P. Thompson, ãThe Poverty of Theory,ä in Thompson,
The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1978) p. 13.
[5]
. Hardt and Negri, Empire,
p. 362.
