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June 25, 2004
If Hardt and Negri say that they insist on "the tragic character of modernity" but reject "the 'tragic' philosophers of Europe, from Schopenhauer to Heidegger," what then? What is their narrative of the underside of modernity? Remember, they say that we "must cleanse ourselves of any misplaced nostalgia for the belle époque of that modernity."By that they mean good riddance to the nation-state.
Personally, I'm inclined to defend the nation state. It is the institution we citizens have to protect ourselves against those economic flows that have the effect of placing limits on democracy and squeezing the welfare state.
For instance, under the proposed Free Trade Agreement with the US, Australia is obligated to modify the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme(PBS) scheme to help out the US drug companies to obtain a higher price for their drugs. Peter Dahros says:
"The text of the Agreement is unbalanced and most of the measures increase the pricing power of US drug companies operating in Australia. It is inconceivable, based on past practice, that they will not make use of that new pricing power.
How much will this cost? American consumers, insurers and health programs pay two to three times as much for many important drugs as their Australian counterparts. Because most of the measures in the FTA apply to new drugs rather than existing ones, and because legislation will need to be enacted, regulations changed and new procedures put in place, there will be a substantial time-lag between the signing of the FTA and its full effect on prices. The full effect of the FTA on the pharmaceutical market is therefore unlikely to be felt for about five years.
By that time, however, it is plausible that the gap between US and Australian drug prices could be cut in half. We estimate, very conservatively, that Australia's PBS will have to pay at least one third more for its drugs with the FTA than without it. If the likely FTA effects are applied to 2003 figures, the extra cost to of the PBS to the government last year would have been around $1.5 billion for the same drugs at the same levels of use and with no increase in the health benefit to Australian patients. Similar pressures would be felt by other buyers of prescription pharmaceuticals, particularly hospitals."
This is a very concrete example of the way that the processes of Empire works within the nation state.
So it is important to defend the good things that we citizens have built instead of simply talking in terms of misplaced nostalgia for the nation-state.
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Hardt and Negri appear to want to redirect the energies of the anti-globalization movement away from what they see as a retreat into localism and towards another, better non-Imperial variety of globalization.
Like you, Gary, I am a little wary of what seems to be a complete disregard for localism on their part - though I will admit to a certain ambivalence regarding the nation-state. As an American, I wince every time I read the newspaper. As a European, I can see a valuable role for the nation-state as an intermediate political unit in a larger federalism.
I think generally that pluralism might be best achieved by some combination of globalism, nationalism, and localism: a sort of fractal heterogeneity. Local 'chunky' particularism risks resulting in a narrow, intolerant and exclusive homogeneity at the local level. Global 'osterized' heterogeneity risks turning into bland, rootless, eclecticism in which diversity is effectively liquidated.