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June 15, 2004
Hardt & Negri now turn to section 3 of chapter I that they have called alternatives to Empire. I presume thsi means that they are thinking in terms of resistance to the power of Empire.
They say:
"Flirting with Hegel, one could say that the construction of Empire is good in itself but not for itself.....Saying that Empire is good in itself, however, does not mean that it is good for itself. Although Empire may have played a role in putting an end to colonialism and imperialism, it nonetheless constructs its own relationships of power based on exploitation that are in many respects more brutal than those it destroyed. The end of the dialectic of modernity has not resulted in the end of the dialectic of exploitation. Today nearly all of humanity is to some degree absorbed within or subordinated to the networks of capitalist exploitation. We see now an ever more extreme separation of a small minority that controls enormous wealth from multitudes that live in poverty at the limit of powerlessness. The geographical and racial lines of oppression and exploitation that were established during the era of colonialism and imperialism have in many respects not declined but instead increased exponentially."
Okay, so capitalism as an economic system is now universalized and we live within it. And many of us are finding that we are worse off from being downsidised, reduced welfare state, increased prices for electricity, telecommunications, water etc etc.
Many who were middle class in the 1970s and 1980s and comfortably off are now struggling. Especially those who live in the regions of the nation state. Income inequality is growing not lessening whilst the welfare state is being steadily privatised (education and health).
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But doesn't the expression "The end of the dialectic of modernity" mean that part of this universalization is the disappearance of certain contradictions of capitalism that were once thought inescapable? What, exactly, is the "dialectic of modernity"? Nationalism, imperialism, competition, monopolistic capitalism? Is post-imperialism just Kautsky’s stage of “ultra-imperialism”, but with the "dialectic of exploitation" intact? (What are the moments of the dialectic of exploitation? Those of the Hegelian Master-servent relation?)
In the ellipses, Hardt and Negri argue that the supra-national aspirations of the multitude (is this the same as the proletarian masses?) somehow "called Empire into being." Are we then to understand that the multitude somehow enabled capitalism to surpass or transcend the "dialectic of modernity"?
(Something tells me that symbolic appropriation of the genesis of Empire is going to turn out to prefigure and enable the possibility of global revolution. Maybe that's why it's important that the "dialectics of exploitation" are conserved: so that the Master-servant relationship can be reversed...)
Speaking of contradictions, I was reminded, reading H&R's evocation of the mythos of the "Internationale", of the anomalous passage from the "Communist Manifesto" that Benedict Anderson points out in the introduction to "Imagined Communities":
"The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie."
This seems to implicitly situate international communism as a post- or supra-national rather than a a-national ideology/phenomenon. If so, how was the multitude able to summon forth Empire prior to settling matters with its own bourgeoisie?
(I have to confess that I do not find Hardt and Negri's thought or style entirely pellucid.)