[Nettime-bold] A review of Negri and Hardt's Empire from an anarchist perspectiv e

[John Armitage <john.armitage@unn.ac.uk>]

[Enjoyed this -- well worth a read. The backlash against Hardt and Negri, itappears, is aleady well under way. John.]
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A review of Negri and Hardt's Empire from an anarchist perspective
IS THE EMPEROR WEARING CLOTHES?
ANDREW FLOOD
http://struggle.ws/andrew/empirereview.html
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The publication of Empire in 2000 created an intense level of discussion in
left academic circles that even spilled over at times into the liberal
press. This should please the authors, Antonio Negri, one of the main
theoreticians of Italian 'autonomous Marxism' and a previously obscure
literature professor Michael Hardt. It is clear that they see Empire as the
start of a project comparable to Karl's Marx's Das Kapital. The Marxist
Slavoj Zizek has called Empire "The Communist Manifesto for our time". 

Whether or not you think Empire will be as useful as Capital it has
certainly made an impact. The web is full of reviews of Empire from all
angles of the political spectrum. Orthodox Marxists gnash their teeth at it,
while right wing conspiracy theorists around Lyndon la Rouche see it as
confirmation [1] of the existence of a plan for globalisation that unites
the 'left and right'. After S11 numerous US liberal and conservative reviews
[2] made a big deal out of Negri's 'terrorist past' (he is under house
arrest in Italy for being an ideological influence on the Red Brigades).
They eagerly seize on Negri and Hardt's description of Islamic
Fundamentalism as post rather then pre modern and their claim that it is a
form of resistance to Empire as if this description was intended as a
justification for the attack.

Empire rapidly sold out after publication and the paperback edition I have
(bought in October 2001) is the seventh printing. Empire doesn't mention the
Seattle protests at all and one suspects that, like Naomi Klein, the authors
have had the good fortune to write a book that would be seized on to
'explain' the new movement before the movement itself had come to the
publics attention. To an extent Empire probably deserves this more then No
Logo <../rbr/rbr5/logo.html> as Negri is one of the major 'historical'
influences on the section of the movement around 'Ya Basta!'

Like Marx in Capital Hardt and Negri admit that most of what they write is
not original, indeed a lot of the book is taken up with a discussion of the
philosophical sources that have led up to it. Like Capital its strength is
in bringing together into a unified whole theories and discussion from many
different areas. As Hardt and Negri put it their "argument aims to be
equally philosophical and historical, cultural and economic, political and
anthropological" [3].
It is also an attempt to make Marxism relevant once more to the
revolutionary project, often by fundamental re-interpretation of areas of
the writings of Marx and Lenin. A lot of this is also not original, anyone
who has tried to read Negri's previous works in English, in particular Marx
beyond Marx will be aware one of his major projects is to rescue Marx from
historical Marxism.

For instance Negri spends part of a chapter explaining how although Lenin's
Imperialism may appear wrong it is in fact right because Lenin "assumed as
his own, the theoretical assumptions" of those he appears to be arguing
against [4]. Now while this may be useful for those who have an almost
religious attachment to the label of Marxism it is a big barrier for any
anarchist reading the book. But thankfully, although this is part of Empire
and indeed one of its major flaws, it is only part; Empire contains much
else besides.
Later I'll look specifically at what anarchists can gain from this book. But
let us start by looking at what it actually argues.

A criticism that has to be made right from the start is that this is not an
easy book to read; In fact large sections of it are almost unintelligible.
Empire is written in an elitist academic style that is almost designed to be
understood only by the qualified few. The subject matter and broad scope of
the book would, in any case, make it difficult but the authors also delight
in obscurity, a very simple example being the common use of Latin quotations
without any adequate translation or explanation.

This is particularly off putting because they are quite capable of writing
in a clear fashion. Indeed, their strongest arguments seem to be by far the
ones that are expressed in the clearest language. It is when they are on
their weakest ground that it becomes increasingly difficult to unwind what
is actually being said.

This elitist academic style is also part of the Italian autonomist tradition
and illustrates how their use of the word autonomy does not carry the same
meaning as that given to it by anarchists. We aim to build working class
organisations that are autonomous from the state and political parties. They
intended the working class to be autonomous only from capital. The worker
will apparently still need be led by the intellectual elite who are the only
ones, in the autonomists eyes, capable of reading the changes in strategies
needed in the battle against capitalism.

Even other Leninist commentators have attacked the "highly elitist version
of the party that emerges" [5] although given the record of the organisation
concerned (British SWP) it is easy to suspect this is based more on jealousy
of the influence of autonomous Marxism then anything else. But of course the
autonomists views are quite consistent with Lenin's insistence in 1918 that
"there are many....who are not enlightened socialists and cannot be such
because they have to slave in the factories and they have neither the time
nor the opportunity to become socialists" [6].. Autonomist Marxism is part
of a rich history of 'left-communism' in Italy which represented a break
with the reformism of the Communist Parties but only partly or not at all
with its authoritarian politics.

But enough of the background politics. What does Empire have to say? The
opening paragraph gives a good sense of the overall argument. "Empire is
materialising before our very eyes .... along with the global market and
global circuits of production has emerged a global order, a new logic of
structure and rule - in short a new form of sovereignty". Negri and Hardt
are not presenting Empire as a future plan of the ruling class or a
conspiracy of part of it. Instead they are insisting it has already come
into being.

It's important right from the start to realise Negri and Hardt are not
arguing that Empire is simply a new stage of imperialism. Imperialism they
say was all about borders and the extension of the sovereignty of the
imperialist country over specific parts of the globe. They also reject the
idea that it is a process being controlled by the United States or that it
is even centred there. Rather they argue that it is a "decentered and
deterritoralising apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the
entire global realm within its open expanding frontiers" [7].
The idea here is that there is no single institution, country, or place that
is becoming the command centre of Empire. Rather all the various global
bodies, from the ones with formal power like United Nations or those with
less formal power like the World Economic Forum alongside the corporations,
the military and, to a much lesser extent, the worlds people have interacted
to create a global network distribution of power. This network has no centre
and is not based in any country but is rather spread globally.

The internet is an obvious analogy for this sort of power distribution. No
one body controls it yet it obviously exists, decisions are made on its
future and in reality control is exercised over it though national
government, service providers and cyber-censor software. Schools restrict
access to particular web sites, employers monitor the email of their workers
and parents and sometimes libraries use cyber-censor software to prevent
access to certain types of information.

There is, however, one point where Empire does give the US a privileged
position. This is the constitutional process that is part of the formation
of Empire. The opening chapters discuss how this operates both on the formal
level of international law and the informal level of the discussion and
lobbying around these bodies. Hardt and Negri see the US constitution as
representing a historical precedent and model for this discussion. They
claim for instance that Jefferson's contributions to the original
constitution actually aimed for a network distribution of power. [8]

It is easy to make a counter argument <../ws99/imperialism58.html> that the
UN and similar bodies are not really global but dominated by the old
imperialist powers [9]. The top powers have a veto at the UN security
council and without the security council the UN takes no effective action.
Every World Bank president has been a US citizen and the US is the only
country with a veto at the IMF. Hardt and Negri answer this by saying that
this very bias is what is driving the formation of Empire forward. "In the
ambiguous experience of the UN, the juridical concept of Empire began to
take shape" [10]. It is trivial to observe that the reaction of many on the
left to the bias of the UN sanction's against Iraq for instance or the
failure to take effective action over Israel is to call for a better (and
more powerful) United Nations.

Central to Hardt and Negri's argument is the idea that interventions are no
longer taking place along the lines of national imperialist interest but
rather as global police actions legitimated by universal values [11]. They
admit that intervention is "dictated unilaterally by the United States" [12]
but insist that "The US world police acts not in imperialist interest but in
imperial interest".[13] This, they insist, is a role imposed on the US and
that "Even if it were reluctant, the US military would have to answer the
call in the name of peace and order".[14]
The idea here is that US military intervention is no longer simply taking
place for 'US national interests' (i.e. the interests of US capital) but
instead occurs in the interests of Empire. One problem with the book is it
presents no empirical evidence for any of its claims, and here is one point
where evidence is really needed. Much of Hardt and Negri's discussion is
drawn from the 1991 Gulf War. Yet even a casual glance at that war shows
that alongside the massive US military intervention went a political
intervention designed to ensure that the profits of that war, in re-building
contracts, military arms sales and oil field repair flowed to the US rather
then to any of its 'allies'.

On the other hand during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 there was no such
compulsion on the US to intervene despite the horrific scale of the
slaughter. What intervention occurred was of the old fashioned imperialist
kind. When tens of thousands was already being killed on "April 9-10, 1994
France and Belgium send troops to rescue their citizens. American civilians
are also airlifted out. No Rwandans are rescued, not even Rwandans employed
by Western governments in their embassies, consulates, etc." [15]

Hardt and Negri cite Bosnia (where again one can point to political
struggles between the US, Germany, France and Britain over their various
'national interests' in the region) but Rwanda passes without mention.
Surely this makes nonsense of any argument that we moved towards a set of
universal rights imposed/granted by Empire? The authors simply ignore this
glaring contradiction with their model.

The initial reaction of many Empire fans to S11 was that this was an almost
perfect example of the sort of struggle between an imperial police action
and a decentered resistance to Empire. But the Afghan war turned almost
instantly into a national war with the Afghan government (the Taliban)
squarely in the bombsights rather than the 'de centered' Al Quada. At the
time of writing that war it turning into yet another colonial style
occupation using a local government heavily dependent on imperialist (rather
then imperial) troops to maintain order. The treatment of the prisoners at
Guatanamo Bay briefly raised a discussion of universal values (with regards
to the treatment of prisoners). This was rapidly stamped on by George Bush
Jnr. and the US military, the very forces that we might expect from Empire
to be imposing such values.

The wider political row between the European imperialist powers and the US
over the planned attacks on Iraq, Iran and perhaps even North Korea on the
one hand and on US support for Israel on the other again points to a pattern
of intervention dictated by US 'national interests' alone. A non-military
example is found in the unilateralist tearing up of the Kyoto greenhouse gas
agreement by George Bush on his inauguration. In this case he quite openly
claimed US national interest as his justification stating "We will not do
anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people
who live in America". [16]

All of this suggests that US policy, including military policy, is still
determined by what is best for US capital rather than what is best for
Empire. This is not quite to claim Empire's argument is useless, it does
offer a convincing sketch of how a truly global capitalism might exist and
perhaps even be coming into existence. But in assuming the existence of
Empire now it leaves a lot to be explained.

Much of what I covered so far is summarised quite well in the preface of the
book. Fortunately it's also the easiest part to understand. But Empire is
not simply a description of the evolution of capitalism to a new form. It is
far wider in its aim to be a post modern 'grand narrative', providing an
overarching view of how society (dis)functions and how it can be
transformed. Now I make no claim whatsoever to expertise on post modernism
because my limited forays into it have been discouraged by the sheer weight
of academic jargon one is required to try and digest. So treat the analysis
that follows with caution!

The most obvious critique of post-modernism from an anarchist perspective is
that in its rejection of revolutionary program, the centrality of the
working class, the Enlightenment, Scientific truth etc, etc it left the
revolutionary nothing to construct and nowhere to go. It may at times offer
a powerful criticism both of life under capitalism and the traditional left
but it leaves one with no alternative. Negri and Hardt are attempting to
sketch just such an alternative in Empire.

And this is where things get tricky. As anyone who has tried to approach
post-modern political writing will know that the very language it is written
in makes the ideas very difficult to grasp. You are left with the strong
suspicion that this impenetrable form of expression is intended to disguise
the fact that there is not much in the way of real ideas present. But let us
try and have a peek.

The most obvious question that arises from the idea of de centred power is
how will control over the working class will be maintained by capital? After
all strong imperialist powers played an essential role in the development of
capitalism from the conquest of the Americas and the slave trade to
containing 'national liberation' struggles so that independence could be
granted while guaranteeing capitalist stability.

Empire essentially turns to the ideas of Foucault to explain how this will
be done. Foucault argued that we have moved from a "disciplinary society"
where discipline was imposed in the school, army, factory or jail to a
"society of control" where discipline exists everywhere, in all aspects of
life, internalised by people [17]. He used the expression biopower which "is
a form of power that regulates social life from within".

Actually the basic idea of the regulation of social life from within may be
familiar to many libertarian communists. Maurice Brinton's "The Politics of
the Irrational" (1970) which drew on the work of the German communist
Willaim Reich analysed why some workers supported Fascism or Bolshevism and
other authoritarian ideologies against their own objective interests. They
attributed this to the fact that workers have internalised the authoritarian
concept of discipline. We are controlled not just by the fascist or
Bolshevik secret police but primarily from within by the ideas formed from
everything we are exposed to.

Reich, as Foucault was later to do, placed sexual repression at the heart of
this disciplining process writing "the goal of sexual repression is that of
producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who
will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation.... The result is
fear of freedom, and a conservative, reactionary mentality. Sexual
repression aids political reaction, not only through this process which
makes the mass individual passive and unpolitical, but also by creating in
his structure an interest in actively supporting the authoritarian order."
[18]

The arguments in Empire also flow from the work of two other Focauldians,
Deleuze and Guattari, whom Empire says "present us with a properly
poststructuralist understanding of biopower that renews materialist though
and grounds itself solidly in the question of production of social being"
[19]. Hardt and Negri also argue that autonomous Marxists established the
importance of production within the biopolitical process.

This is built on the theory of the 'social factory' where the working class
is not simply composed of the industrial workers of orthodox Marxism but
also all those whose labour or potential labour creates and sustains the
industrial city (or social factory). This includes housewives, students and
the unemployed. Empire argues that what capitalism produces are not just
commodities but also subjectivities. This idea is not all that original in
itself, after all even Marx observed that the dominant ideas in any era were
those of the ruling class. What Empire seeks to do is put some of the
mechanisms which produce these subjectivities at the heart of the productive
process of capitalism.

Because they put this production of subjectivity at the centre of Empire
they argue that the old centre of the working class, that is industrial
workers, have been replaced by "intellectual, immaterial and communicative
labour power" [20]. This claim has been criticised by pointing out that even
in the US there are more truck drivers then computer programmers [21] but
Empire counters this criticism by pointing out that the industrial jobs that
exist are now governed by information technology. The Detroit car factories
may have moved to Mexico rather then simply vanishing but the Mexican based
industry does not simply re-create that of 1960's Detroit. Rather in using
the latest technology it creates a labour process that is dependant on
information workers as well as those on the assembly line.

They go beyond this argument that the centre of the working class has
shifted. They essentially drop the category of 'working class' as out dated
[22]. They see the proletariat as having grown but in their arguments shift
to using the category of multitude. Although they never clearly define what
they mean by multitude [23] it appears to mean something similar the way
sections of even the Irish trotskyist left now say 'working people' rather
then working class. The need for this new term is an artefact of Marxism and
in particular the way that Marx choose to define a working class separate
from and hostile to the peasantry on the one hand and the lumpen-proletariat
on the other. That industrial working class may now be bigger then it was
when Marx wrote but it is also often only one of a number of sections of the
proletariat in the vanguard of struggle.

This brings us back to one of the bigger flaws of the book. Many of the
better conclusions it reaches, for instance that national liberation
struggles offer no way forward, are conclusions anarchists reached 170 years
ago. Similarly anarchists have no need to redefine the working class as
'multitude' precisely because we always argued for a working class that
included those elements Marx sought to exclude. From the start anarchists
addressed both the peasantry and what is called the 'lumpen-proletariat' as
part of the working class, sometimes even as part of the vanguard of that
class rather then something outside and hostile to it.
Perhaps anarchism has now become the 'stopped clock that is right twice a
day' but I'm more inclined to argue that this demonstrates that Marxism took
a wrong turn when these arguments split the 1st International in the 1870's.
In that case much of the convoluted argument is Empire is only necessary
because the authors choose to stand within the Marxist tradition.

Many of the reviews actually call Hardt and Negri anarchists. They really
only try to address this obvious similarity with anarchist arguments at one
point, when they rejoice in the end of "big government" which "forced the
state to produce concentration camps, gulags, ghettos and the like". Here,
where there conclusions are so obviously close to anarchism, they fudge the
argument saying "We would be anarchists if we not to speak (as did
Thrasymacus and Callicles, Plato's immortal interlocutors) for the
standpoint of a materiality constituted in the networks of productive
cooperation, in other words, from the perspective of a humanity that is
constructed productively, that is constituted through the "common name of
freedom. [24]"
This sentence is also a good illustration of how the arguments and language
of the authors becomes more obscure the weaker their points are. Even
leaving aside the reference to Greek philosphy it's pretty hard to work out
what Hardt and Negri are saying. They seem to be making the ludicrous
suggestion that anarchists are not materialists, but it is hard to credit
authors who go to extraordinary lengths to demonstrate their knowledge with
such an ignorant position.

On the positive side one of the interesting and indeed most refreshing
aspects of autonomous Marxism is that they turn the traditional left
analysis of the relationship between capital and the working class on its
head. In the autonomist tradition it is the success of working class
struggle that forces changes on capital. On its own, they insist, capital
contains almost no creative power. Although they often overstate there case
there is something quite encouraging in the overall picture of capital
forced to modernise by working class struggle as opposed to a working class
always being the victim of capitalist modernisation.

In this case Hardt and Negri argue that the development of Empire is
something the working class has imposed on capital. They recognise that it
is easy it fixate on ways the development of Empire makes traditional
working class organisation weaker (e.g. removing the ability of unions to
restrict capitalism on a national basis). But they claim what is more
important is that by breaking down the barrier between first and third world
so that both come to exist alongside each other everywhere capital has lost
some of the most powerful weapons it had to divide the working class. Cecil
Rhodes is quoted in relation to class relations in Britain "If you want to
avoid civil war then you must become imperialists" [25]

So if Empire means the end of imperialism it also means the end of
capitalism ability to use third world labour to buy off sections of the
first world working class. As elsewhere, though this is an argument that you
really need to able to back up with some empirical evidence. There is no
denying that the third and first world increasingly exist yards from each
other in the great cities. Washington DC is almost as famous for its
homelessness and poverty as it is for being the capital of the richest state
in the world. Anyone visiting Mexico City or a host of other 'third world'
cities is struck by the obvious wealth and the glass skyscrapers of the few
that exist alongside the shanty towns and desperate poverty of the many. Yet
wage differentials between workers in the west and elsewhere are still
enormous.

The above is a brief survey of some of the more interesting areas of Empire.
But as I've noted it is a very dense book. Hardt and Negri say at the start
Empire is not necessarily intended to be read from start to finish, dipping
in here and there is intended to carry its own rewards. Finally let us move
onto the weakest area of Empire, the way it suggests we can move forwards.
Let us start by noting that Hardt and Negri recognise that their suggestions
here are weak but see this as inevitable at this stage. They say any new and
successful opposition will be required to define its own tactics. Returning
once again to Marx they point out that "at a certain point in his thinking
Marx needed the Paris Commune in order to make the leap and conceive
communism in concrete terms as an effective alternative to capitalist
society" [26] 
This is not a sufficient explanation for the weakness in their positive
program. Even their historical comparison with Marx's writing before the
commune is flawed. The Paris Commune (1871) did force Marx to reconsider his
ideas of revolutionary organisation and the state. But the early anarchist
movement predicted the form it took.

In 1868 they wrote;"As regards organisation of the Commune, there will be a
federation of standing barricades and a Revolutionary Communal Council will
operate on the basis of one or two delegates from each barricade, one per
street or per district, these deputies being invested with binding mandates
and accountable and revocable at all times.

An appeal will be issued to all provinces, communes and associations
inviting them to follow the example set by the capital, to reorganise along
revolutionary lines for a start and to then delegate deputies to an agreed
place of assembly (all of these deputies invested with binding mandates and
accountable and subject to recall), in order to found the federation of
insurgent associations, communes and provinces in furtherance of the same
principles and to organise a revolutionary force with the capability of
defeating the reaction" [27].

This may seem like a side issue but it is striking when reading Empire how
the history and writers of the anarchist movement are ignored even when the
conclusions reached seem so relevant to the arguments of our movement.
Perhaps this simply because anarchism neither sought nor achieved the
academic stardom sought by so many Marxist professors. But for an anarchist
reading Empire these omissions can only be described as a constant source of
annoyance. 

More importantly, the example above suggests that like the early anarchists
we can make much better 'educated guesses' at the future forms of struggle
the Hardt and Negri claim. From the European and North American struggles
against border controls to the Zapatistas of Mexico there are certain clues
that can be read. With the emergence of the globalisation movement and its
emphasis on militant action, direct democracy and diversity the probable
methods of organisation start to become clear. Empire may have been written
before all this became very clear after Seattle but even before Seattle
numerous texts had been written on the forms new movements, in particular
the Zapatistas, were taking. Given their political background Hardt and
Negri must have been aware of this discussion, it is curious they fail to
mention it.

Leaving that aside Empires strongest point is that it rejects some of the
so-called alternatives that are around, in particular any idea of
anti-globalisation or de globalisation for a return to old style national
capitalism. At the moment of writing the reformist forces in the movement
against corporate globalisation have been arguing precisely for such a de
globalisation at the World Social Forum in Porte Algre, Brasil. Instead
Hardt and Negri argue we must "push through Empire to come out the other
side" [28] 

Here, despite the flaws, Empire may have a significant role to play in
relation to the non-anarchist sections of the movement around globalisation.
Many of these sections are dependent on the theories of earlier generation
of Marxists that seem to point to a solution in the nation state and a
return to the era of protectionism. The academics pushing this idea may be
more inclined to accept correction from a couple of fellow academics then
from those they seek to dismiss as 'window breakers' out to ruin 'our
movement'.

Anarchists have generally rejected the anti-globalisation label. My
contribution to the S26 Prague counter summit demonstrates the line of the
anarchist argument: ".... the real forces of globalisation are not gathering
on Tuesday at the [Prague 2000] IMF/WB summit, rather they are gathering
here today [at the counter summit] and on Tuesday will be blockading that
summit. We are a global movement; we fight for the rights of people and not
capital and to any sane person this should be far more fundamental. The very
governments that are most pushing the idea of 'global free trade' are the
same ones that are construct massive fences along their borders and employ
tens of thousands of hired thugs to prevent the free movement of people." [
29]

In dismissing a return to localisation what alternatives do they put
forward? The initial starting point of their alternative is an unusual
choice, St Augustine and the early Christian church in Rome. They draw
parallels with the way the early Christian church transformed rather then
overthrew the Roman empire. Hardt and Negri argue that like the early church
we need a prophetic manifesto around which to organise the multitude [30].
Like Augustine they say we need to talk of constructing a utopia but our
utopia is simply an immediate one on earth. They praise the early Christian
project in the Roman Empire clearly with intended lessons for today's Empire
when they write; "No limited community could succeed and provide an
alternative to imperial rule; only a universal, catholic community bringing
together all populations and all languages in a common journey could
accomplish this".

One suspects they are chuckling at the fact that almost all the orthodox
Marxist reviews will be apoplectic over the religious imagery. The last
paragraph of the book contains what can only be intended as a deliberate
provocation of the left in holding up the legend of Saint Francis of Assisi
"to illuminate the future life of communist militancy" [31] A successful
windup as this quote is singled out again and again in left reviews!

A model that will sit happier with anarchists is the Industrial Workers of
the World (IWW); "The Wobbly constructed associations among working people
from below, through continuous agitation, and while organising them gave
rise to utopian thought and revolutionary knowledge" [32]. Here again
thought they show a real weakness in their grasp of libertarian history as
they claim that while the IWW wanted to organise the whole world "in fact
they only made in as far as Mexico" [33]. In fact the IWW also organised in
several other countries including South Africa, Australia and Chile [34]
where they reached a size and influence comparable with that reached in the
USA. And if the IWW is such a useful model it's odd that they fail to
discuss what it is doing today, perhaps they are unaware that it still
exists in several countries and see only its historical past?

Hardt and Negri move on to identify the "will to be against" [35] as central
in the struggle for counter Empire. They reckon that resistance to Empire
may be most effective by subtracting from it rather then confronting it head
on. Central to this they identify "desertion, exodus and nomadism". If you
hear an echo of Bob Black's this is probably because some of his writings
are also based on the refusal of work advocated by the autonomists in Italy
at the end of the 1970s'.

Sections of their suggested methods of struggle are quite bizarre. For
instance apparently body piercing represents the start of an important
strategy which will become effective only when we create "a body that is
incapable of adapting to family life, to factory discipline, to the
regulations of a traditional sex life, and so forth" [36].

But other suggested methods bare further investigation. They point out that
labour mobility has often been a weapon against capitalism [37]. They
acknowledge that migration often means misery for those forced to move. Yet,
they say in fleeing, for instance, low wages in one region, people are
resisting capitalism. Global capitalism wants a global world where
particular regions have low labour costs but if the people of that region
flee then capitalism fails to get its cheap labour force.

This puts the current struggles for no immigration controls into a much
clearer focus, or at least provides a useful alternative way of viewing
them. Fortress Europe for instance then has the purpose of trying to keep
workers trapped in conditions of low income and living conditions, a wall
that is keeping people in rather then keeping them out.

Consider the one clear recent example where labour mobility had
revolutionary implications. The process that brought down the Berlin wall (a
barrier to labour mobility) and then the entire state capitalist east was
triggered by thousands of East German workers fleeing to Prague and either
leaving for the west, or when the border was shut, occupying the various
embassy grounds. Today Cuba also has tightly controls emigration for similar
reasons.
Empire comes up with three key demands for the construction for a new world.
These are the right to global citizenship and "a social wage and guaranteed
income for all". To this is added the right to re-approbation which first of
all applies to the means of production but also free access to and control
over knowledge, information and communication.

Of these three demands it strikes me that the demand for global citizenship
is the one that has already created an issue that is immediately global but
also local. The right to free movement without border controls is being
fiercely contested all over the globe. In Ireland we are familiar with the
struggles within the first world for papers for all and the struggles on the
borders of Fortress Europe to gain entry. On almost every border across the
world this struggle is re-created as capital tries to control and even
profit from the migration of people. On the northern border of Mexico it is
on the US side that migrants are intercepted but on the Southern border with
Guatemala the patrols of the Mexican 'migration polices' are found on every
back road.

In this closing 'what is to be done' section one can't help but notice that
the book has not really addressed what shape this future society might take.
Avoidance of this issue is part of the Marxist tradition but given the
authors repeated calls for the construction of utopian visions and prophetic
manifestos it is a little odd here. This really is the same weakness as the
one mentioned earlier, a complete absence of discussion around the existing
movements of opposition.

I suspect the problem here is again the political tradition of Leninism from
which Empire emerges and to which Negri wishes to hold onto. Lenin in power
saw that the 'utopian experiments' of the Russian revolution were crushed in
their infancy. Self-management in the factories was replaced by
"unquestioning submission to a single will ....the revolution demands, in
the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single
will of the leaders of the labour process."[38]. It is very hard to tell
from Empire what the decision-making structures of a post-Empire society
might look like. Yet after the failure of socialism in the 20th century this
is the key question in constructing new 'utopian' visions of the future.
Is Empire worth reading? My answer to that question would really depend on
who is asking. For anarchists I would say that unless you have time on your
hands or are already familiar with post-modern jargon there is not much
point in doing anything but dipping in here and there to satisfy your
curiosity. Much that is said in Empire will already be familiar from various
anarchist texts, quite often expressed in a way that are a lot easier to
understand.

For those with limited time just read the preface, intermezzo and the last
chapter which will give you about 80% of the ideas in 12% of the pages! In
general Empire at first appears to be stuffed full of new ideas but then on
reflection you get the idea that the 'Emperor has no clothes'. In the end
through there are gems of insight buried amongst the mass of jargon.
I suspect Empire's real usefulness will be as a respectable academic Marxist
text that will be picked up by a lot of people who won't, for one reason or
another, seriously read anarchist material. There is rather a lot of
nonsense spoken by those active in the globalisation movement, often based
on Marxist orthodoxy. Empire for all its flaws is not at all orthodox and
should have the effect of forcing such people to challenge a number of their
basic assumptions. If this ends up with them coming over to one wing or
another of the libertarian, anti-state, anti-capitalist camp this can only
be a good thing.

Andrew Flood (March 2002)
-------------------------
References with just page numbers are from Empire (Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri, Harvard University Press, seventh printing 2001 ) 
1 See for instance "Toni Negri, Profile of A Terrorist Ideologue" in
Executive Intelligence Review, August 2001 
2 The most seriously argued of these is "The Snake", by Alan Wolfe, written
for The New Republic, a lot of the other ones just rip this review off,
often without attribution! 
3 Preface XVI 
4 page 229 
5 Jack Fuller, "The new workerism: the politics of the Italian autonomists",
International Socialist, Spring 1980, reprinted at
http://www.isj1text.fsnet.co.uk/pubs/isj92/fuller.htm 
6 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27 page 466 
7 Preface XII 
8 Preface XIV 
9 see for instance the authors |Globalisation: the end of the age of
imperialism?", Workers Solidarity No 58, 1999,
http://struggle.ws/ws99/imperialism58.html 
10 page 6 
11 page 18 
12 page 37 
13 page 180 
14 page 181 
15 PBS Online special on Rwanda,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/etc/slaughter.html 
16 Quoted at Financial Times Biz/Ed site in
http://www.bized.ac.uk/case/case_studies/case005-fulltext.htm 
17 page 23 
18 W. Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Orgone Institute Press, New
York, 1946, pp. 25-26 
19 page 28 
20 page 53 
21 See Left Business Observer Feb 2001 review at
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Empire.html 
22 page 56 
23 see page 103 for the closed approach to a definition 
24 page 350 
25 page 232 
26 page 206 
27 "Program and Object of the Secret Revolutionary Organisation of the
International Brotherhood" (1868) as published in "God and the State", No
Gods, No Masters Vol 1, p155 
28 page 206 
29 talk by author delivered to Prague counter summit days before we
successfully shut down the World Bank meeting there, I quote it here because
despite its wide circulation I have yet to come across any anarchist who
disagrees with the idea that we are not 'anti-globalisation'. Full text at
http://struggle.ws/andrew/prague1.html 
30 page 61 
31 page 413 
32 page 412 
33 page 208 
34 On the history of the IWW in Chile a Chilean anarchist recommend's Peter
De Shazo's "Urban Workers and Labour Unions in Chile 1903 to 1927" to me 
35 page 210 
36 page 216 
37 This was shown right from the start of capitalism in mirror image as the
slave trade forcibly moved millions of people from Africa to the Americas
with all sorts of legal and physical restrictions to retain them in place
both during the passage but also at their destination. South Africa's pass
laws also come to mind as a capitalist strategy designed to not only control
black labour but also to keep labour costs down. 
38 Quoted in M. Brinton "The Bolsheviks and workers control" page 41 

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