R: [G_O] RE: talk talk, walk walk

[matteo mandarini]

Sure Nik, I can agree with this from the point of view of an ontology of
the multitude but I'm not sure to what extent it helps delineate a
politics. By which I mean, a terrain of antagonism. Clearly the notions
of strategy and tactics undergo radical transformation here - one that
needs to be thought through and not simply junked because we've excised
any reference to a vanguard.

Nevertheless, the dichotomy of Empire\Multitude is an antagonistic one,
and how to think the multiplicity (or molecularity) of the multitude as
well as its coagulation, or focalisation in an antagonistic duality (or
molarity) needs to be thought through. Is class still useful to think
this through? What can one substitute for this? I think N&H's
problematisation of any simplistic affirmation of difference is one of
the best parts of the book. 

Arguably there is also the question of a sociology of the multitude. Has
it no empirical reality? I think Arrighi in HM 10.3 makes the important
point that while multitude and empire are given a parallel history
(sorry, that's simplistic), they are shown to emerge through the effects
of class struggle and transformations of production on a global scale,
so that it is only because of a (relative) homogeneity of conditions at
the level of production, a shift from national regimes of accumulation
to a global one that this ontology is constructed. Well if so, if one
questions this empirically (which Arrighi does), then it becomes
difficult to really accept the consistency of the concepts. To put it
simply, does the idea of a reactionary resistance to Empire (e.g. US as
counter-wait to Empire) also problematise the ontological consistency of
the multitude? I think it does. I don't think that it junks the concept,
but I think - rather like the old Marxist notion of uneven & unequal
development - I think we can talk about the uneven & unequal development
of the political ontology of Empire and multitude. If so, then the
analysis we make of the current historical conjuncture, a possible
politics (that is, political ontology), will have to be a good deal more
nuanced than it has been. 


-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: generation_online-admin@kein.org
[mailto:generation_online-admin@kein.org] Per conto di Nicholas J.
Kiersey
Inviato: giovedì 20 febbraio 2003 18.37
A: generation_online@kein.org
Oggetto: RE: [G_O] RE: talk talk, walk walk

I find the problem of the identification of the multitude raised in this
email quite provocative. In my reading, the multitude is not a category
we can apply to the likes of anti-war protestors. In fact, I think Hardt
is on the record as having said that the coincidence between the project
of the anti-globalisation protestors and that of H&N is limited (see
Zagreb interview). The same rejection could possible be levelled at the
organisers of the anti-war demonstrations - indeed, as a marcher at the
D.C. protests last autumn, I was startled by the amount of 'Free Mumia'
people who seemed to be organising it. The point is, I think
'particular' interests are not considered 'of the multitude'.

The above notwithstanding, the need to specify the precise details of
the relationship between the 'Left' and the multitude seems to be a very
important task. It is not so much that Empire is a class or that the
multitude is a class. I see the multitude as a label for an aggregate of
'schizo-subjects' - that is, subjects that are simultaneously social yet
'asystematic', or capable of self-preservation, in the fact that it is
always impossible for power to ever fully 'map' onto them. This idea is
as central to H&N as it is for Deleuze and Guatarri, is it not? We must
struggle to grasp the idea of Empire as a smooth plane - it is, I
speculate, possible to think of it as a Body Without Organs. That is to
say, something that is organised on a molecular level. The behaviour of
molecules is determined on the quantum level. They are, by nature,
chaotic -even if Empire does successfully hold them in its thrall at
times.

The essence of the idea of the multitude then is not found in the
constituent classes which are to be found in it but rather in the idea
that it is in fact something in the molecular level which has
posed/produced Empire. The schizo-nature of Empire is that it is
terrified of the fact that it is constituted molecularly - or
two-headed. Ergo the necessary reference to Debord's society of the
spectacle - the only way the body can cohere now is through the
imposition of an internal and mutating pseudo-outside. These thoughts
need elaboration - sorry - but I hope I've made a gesture towards
answering "to what extent it is useful" - comments welcome

NiK

-----Original Message-----
From: generation_online-admin@kein.org
[mailto:generation_online-admin@kein.org] On Behalf Of matteo mandarini
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 03:46
To: generation_online@kein.org
Subject: R: [G_O] RE: talk talk, walk walk

Ok David, so the factory working class still has an important role to
play. In some places maybe even a central role. Fascinating! But hardly
newsworthy. The whole 15th Feb (standing up for their democratic rights?
Is there a democratic right not to go to war? Curious description) was
actually decided first at the European Social Forum in Florence, and
then adopted by the WSF in Porto Alegre - not by representatives of
worker collectives and Leninist vanguards, although no one will deny
that in certain places, traditional vanguardist parties will have played
an important role. After all, the multitude is an open multiplicity, it
need not differentiate and exclude. 

Now don't get me wrong, I haven't bought into the whole multitude
business - apart from anything else I'm not 100% sure what it is. Virno
and Negri both (Negri's less consistent than Virno on this) both refer
to the multitude as a class concept - which I find both attractive and
perplexing. Attractive because it makes antagonism central to any
attempt to grasp reality and articulate a politics; perplexing because
I'm not yet clear how this works in practice. Can one differentiate
classes within the multitude? If not determined by different roles in
the production process to what is it tied? Is the multitude a class and
Empire a class? The questions get sillier.

At least in Italy - somewhere you'd feel Leninist tendencies would still
be strongly at the heart of the movement - there is little vanguardism
to be found, although the level of organization and militancy is
incredibly high. Practically all groups are explicitly anti-Leninist.
Negri, on the other hand, has recently tried to reclaim Lenin for a
biopolitical politics - something I've tried to discuss on the list
before, a little generally, without much success. As for Argentina, I'm
not as informed about it as yourself but I have been told that Negri's
Domination and Sabotage is very popular there at the moment.

While your talk of 'the Left' is perplexing - Blair, or the SWP, or
Globalise Resistance? Rutelli, or Cofferati, or Bertinotti, or Agnoleto,
or Casarini? I'm not entirely sure to whom you're referring. Clearly
whatever 'the Left' is it sounds amazingly well-organised. Do give me
their address and I'll see whether I can get my party card. The
advantage of a concept like 'the multitude' is that it allows one to
hold together very different realities - but for that reason I wonder to
what extent it is useful. Then again, to see 'the movement' as a working
class mass base over which 'the Left' will "reassert control" doesn't
sound anything like what's going on in Italy, Britain, the US... - maybe
in NZ. If so, good luck to you and 'the Left'.

All the best

M


-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: generation_online-admin@kein.org
[mailto:generation_online-admin@kein.org] Per conto di David Bedggood
(FOA SOC)
Inviato: mercoledì 19 febbraio 2003 0.05
A: 'generation_online@coyote.kein.org'
Oggetto: [G_O] RE: talk talk, walk walk


Man, don't we like talking about weird things on this list.
First I'm writing from NZ so my view of the world is something else
unmentionable.
Then the fact that a few million people stood up for their elementary
democratic rights to oppose war is renamed the 'multitude'. Their
currentlly
low level of political development (nevertheless to be welcomed) and
their
highly individualistic and quite creative (fucking is creative) slogans,
are celebrated while the left for all its absurdities and problems is
written off. Not only are the Empire lovers projecting onto this
movement
for human rights a totally incoherent and idealist concept of the
multitude
as a collective of singularities whatever that is, this spontaneous
resistance is supposed to work by exiting the class struggle! 

Have you people forgotten that the whole anti-war movement would not
have
happened without the leadership and debate stimulated by lefties on the
ground? And that this is a direct response to the necessity for
imperialism
to go to war to survive? Have you swallowed Empire so that you can't see
that US imperialism is not the exception to Empire but the rule? Do you
think that the millions who demonstrated for the first time would have
done
so on the basis of some pure 'spontaneity'?

What you will see from now on, is that the left will reassert control
over
this movement, and that any real development to the point of stopping
the
war will result from newly politicised people challenging the old
stereotypes and methods of the left to create a truly advanced Leninist
international party. This will be painful as old habits die hard on both
sides,but that is the only way forward. The Multitude has no
organisation
because it is no more than a collection of individuals.To deny this
collection of individuals democratic representation by fiat is
counter-revolutionary.  

It is like the Argentinazo of 2001 -a mass movement of all the elements
of
the exploited and oppressed. But by 2002 the spontaneous uprising had
become
institutionalised by two opposing class forces. On the ground the
piqueteros
and the occupied factories formed a revolutionary current for workers
power.
The madres, students, and middle class activists in the popular
assemblies
were now coordinating around the occupations. This institutionalising
was
similar to Negri's 'constitutive power' but it was nothing other than
'dual
power' or 'workers power' of old. For example the coordination around
the
occupied factory Brukman put on a Brecht play -the Mothers - and a
documentary on the life and work of Raymondo Gleyzer,  on the night of
December 21. What was being celebrated in this revolutionary cultural
event
was the role of women in the 1905 revolution and the role of
revolutionary
film making in documenting the history of class struggle. Not an exodus
in
sight.

But on the other side Duhalde representing the most politically astute
Peronist current of the bosses had bought off the labour bureaucracy
with
money for work schemes which turned December 20 2002 into a relatively
passive 'commemoration' of 2001. As a result Duhalde was able to do a
deal
with the IMF and contain popular resistance. Why because the
revolutionary
pole was still weak and unable to break more than a few thousand workers
from this popular front social peace pact. Both class poles are
contesting
state power in Argentina. 

So the case of Argentina, which Negri himself in his article with Cocco
(posted to this list in Portuguese in December) claims is a shining case
of
the Multitude at work, is in fact the opposite. Everywhere you look what
is
happening in Argentina shows that the capitalist class struggle
continues
within the framework of the dominance of US/Euro imperialism, and that
the
only way out for workers is to generalise the factory occupations, and
to
nationalise without compensation, under workers control,the bosses
property
to the point where workers can take power. That this is the way out has
been
recognised by no less than Hebe de Bonefini, leader of the Madres of the
Plaza de Mayo, who visited Zanon last year and saw that the workers
could
run Argentina without the bosses, and that this example could be taken
up
around the world. 

Lets be clear here, contra Negri and his fans, at the heart of the
Argentine
revolution are factories occupied by industrial workers whose class
struggle
has become the rallying cry for all the other sectors in struggle. Time
to
stop exodus talking exodus and take up power walking. 

-
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 08:57:48 -0500
From: m hardie <auskadi@cwpanama.net>
Reply-To: auskadi@cwpanama.net
To: generation_online <generation_online@kein.org>
Subject: [G_O] The War Word
Reply-To: generation_online@coyote.kein.org

Monday morning, a few things to passs on

1. Thomas I am getting to Wallenstien
2. I won't start making either Spart or sheep jokes but maybe the world 
looks real different from New Zealand, or maybe its a generational 
thing. But I had the impression that all those people who went out last 
Saturday who were noo a part of "left" politics or some other thing came

from a place called Multitude. If not were did they come from because I 
didnt see a party line. David B it seems old habits (of analysis) die
hard.
3. Below is a link to a page on my twiki where you can find an article 
that discccusses the use of the word war post Sept 11 2001 and the state

of exception ala Scmidtt. It is from an international lawyers point of 
view (but is not legal in style) and points again to the inadequacy of 
both international law and liberlism to deal with the (my words not the 
authors) page to Empire (as recently defined by Dr. Thomas  Seay in 
these pages). It may be an interesting addition to Erik's proposal to 
examine the role of the media (and I add language) in its creation and 
its banalization and celebration of war.

The link and a little excerpt is below.

Martin


_______________________________________________
generation_online mailing list
generation_online@coyote.kein.org
http://coyote.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/generation_online


_______________________________________________
generation_online mailing list
generation_online@coyote.kein.org
http://coyote.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/generation_online


_______________________________________________
generation_online mailing list
generation_online@coyote.kein.org
http://coyote.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/generation_online