nettime's_synthesist on Wed, 12 Mar 2003 20:30:07 +0100 (CET) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
<nettime> no (america|europe) digest [holmes, terranova, .__.] |
Re: There is no America and Europe Brian Holmes <brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr> tiziana <tterra@btopenworld.com> ". __ ." <mail_box@gmx.net> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 13:16:54 +0100 From: Brian Holmes <brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr> Subject: Re: There is no America and Europe Ken Wark writes: >The vectoralization of power produces a split in the powers of empire. >Empire is not unitary. It is a dual power. Well, I'd say it's at least a triple power, to the extent that corporate interests, state interests, and popular protagonism can all be contradictory. But if we're talking about geopolitics, which the word "empire" seems to connote in just about any way you use it, then there are other factors too: interstate alliances, conflicts between different regional regulations of capital, the play of popular opinions within and between states. And I'm not entirely sure that conceiving all this as being produced or driven by "vectoralization" really adds that much. It's certainly a networked world, but that single aspect doesn't cover everything. >On the one hand, the vectoral >class has its (neo)liberal wing. It is committed to the accelerated >vectoralization of world trade, and the consolidation of its own power >through a global regime of intellectual property, aided and abetted by the >monopolization of the means of the realization of information as value -- >media and communication. Yeah. Here the word "vectoral" at least gives an idea that we're talking about people with transnational interests. Negri and Hardt say "the aristocracy," which is funnier, and I say "the transnational capitalist class" 'cause that's basically what it is. It wants all what MacKenzie says. But its committments are not always realizable. Look at the stock market. Yesterday the Dow closed at 7,568 - down 9.27% since January 1. Same trend for the European stock markets, dramatically worse for the Nikkei, which hit its lowest in 20 years. The Dow, which was above 11,000 three years ago, still has a ways to fall before the pre-bubble level, around 5,000. The falls translate as a lack of agency for businessmen: they no longer have the power to move people around that they did when money was easy to raise on the stock market. The financial press is full of businessmen proclaiming that uncertainty and war are bad for business. 'Twas ever thus, Mr. Natural used to say. Businessmen like nice little wars where they can safely sell rockets; they really dislike big nasty wars that affect the fundamental balances on which the whole economy is based. But the downward slide of the markets began long ago, before Sept. 11, and it hasn't been redressed by anything. The basic reason is that individual investors, non-institutional investors who can chose where to place their capital, have not chosen the stock market since tech stocks fell, then since Enron, WorldCom, etc. Why? Because they preceive real problems. When Davos took the theme of confidence this year, there was a reason. The transnational capitalist class is sitting on a huge failure of the financial globalization model that was promoted, and in fact, is still being promoted, by the Wall Street-Treasury complex (you have to realize that the IMF is basically controlled by its largest contributor, the US Treasury). So the businessmen, the people who respond best, in my opinion, to the word "vectoral", are fucked right now. >But the vectoral class has another faction, more dependent on the national >state, not least in its capacity as military procurer. Traditional Marxists call the state a collective capitalist. Well, maybe that's a bit simplistic. States are always attempts to bind contrary interests together, and each attempt looks distorted to those who are cut out. In the Clinton years, when the Treasury was a key department in the government, the US pursued a more-or-less multilateralist approach to foreign policy, with big steps forward both in terms of trade (the WTO, NAFTA, work on the FTAA) and in terms of military cooperation (the UN and NATO in the Kosovo war). So that was "vectorialist," if you want, or "Imperial" in the Negri and Hardt sense. The businessmen were cut in, the military too. Meanwhile, the domestic economy took care of itself during the boom, and despite the fact that terrible processes of exclusion took place all over the world, Americans who owned stock, or dreamed of doing so, increasingly acted like arrogant, short-sighted, fatuous idiots, which probably has some long-term effects on the personality, but whatever. Let's say that the Clintonian compromise looked distorted to those who were cut out of the way it managed the world economy. The problem is, you can't win on all these levels at once, and at everyone else's expense. The root of the globalization model's failure is that in a wide-open, free-market world-economy, everybody competes like madmen against everybody else, and after an untenable upward spiral in the realm of accumulation - the new-economy boom - the result is a downward spiral in terms of the real economy, i.e. deflation. In the meantime, confidence, solidarity and reciprocity collapse, while all the non-market forms of social reproduction fall apart. In the end, the businessmen and stockholders get what they deserve, but unfortunately, the rest of us get it too, because society just can't survive on purely market calculations. And at this exact point, whadda ya know? There is a change in the way that the American state seeks to bind together contrary interests. Exit the people who think that multilateralism and world trade are the way to go. Exit the people who want a balanced budget and a strong dollar. Exit the Secretary Rubins and the Labor Secretary Robert Reichs who wanted to educate the American population into high-class symbolic-analyst jobs in an infinitely expanding and peaceful world economy where Americans run all the businesses, just naturally, 'cause they're clean-shaven and they like pop music. Enter the people who think they can hold onto power by asserting direct state control over society, through military mobilization, intense propaganda, serious policing and censorship, all paid for by a new round of deficit spending that working people will eventually reimburse. The fact that culturally, these new ruling elites are, in part, Christian fundamentalists is quite coherent with their disciplinary approach. The perceived need to make this statist turn is based, unfortunately, on an historical understanding of how the US faced the crisis of the 1930s and of WW II. So US policy now bears some strange resemblance to the model of what Karl Polanyi calls "the crustacean nation." It tries to pull into a shell when the outside world becomes uncontrollable. That's the gut reaction we're looking at. The difference is that, since the situation has changed since the 1930s, the US now thinks it must extend its shell to cover large parts of the earth. Including sandy countries way out there in the Middle East. OK, so if we agree to call the above changes in the form of the American state "vectoral," just as we call the developments in the realm of transnational capitalism "vectoral" (and this is basically the condition for talking with Ken, who is quite brilliant in all other respects), then we get to this: >Now, what is significant is that these two forms of vectoral power are not >necessarily in agreement. And neither are they synonymous with 'America'. >They are, if anything, what is tearing the United States apart. They are >the forces that prevent it from becoming a 'normal' state. Yeah. Because a "normal" state tries to control the conditions for economic and social development within its "shell," i.e. its territory. But when the conditions of social and economic development depend largely on extraterritorial activity, you no longer have "normal" states. (Historians would point out that Victorian England, a world-girdling empire, was also not a "normal" state.) Instead, you have situations where states have to pursue a regulatory model beyond their frontiers. And they have to do so, in order to achieve the effects they are looking for *inside* their frontiers. This, by the way, is the case for all the major states right now, which are all involved in bloc-formation or other complex alliances, the most obvious case being the European states, which are certainly not "normal" if normal means territorial. The difference is that the shape of the consensus in the US right now - the balance of interests that the state binds together - is pushing it toward the option of regualting the social and economic conditions of its existence by military power. Set up a command economy, impose a military discipline on the population, go out and take control of a primary resource, and while doing all that, strike fear into the heart of any potential enemy whom you can't murder outright: that's US policy under the Bush crowd. It's one helluva' vector, that's for sure. >And so there is an additional reason to think the argument Franco Berardi >makes is pertinent. In his terms, not only is there no 'Europe', there is >no 'United States'. One might rather speak of the Untied States. Indeed, and on a world level. As I said, in agreement with Berardi, we're looking at a rift in Empire. But it's not the businessmen who are actually doing it, even if, in my reading, they are distantly responsible for it. They're just moaning and trying to keep a low profile since, shall we say, their credit is not so good. The rift is happening at two levels. One one hand, the alliance systems are coming unglued (UN, NATO, British-US special relationship, enlarged neoliberal EU). On the other hand, the current system of representative media-democracy, where "leaders" can make any decision they want once they engineer their elections, is being challenged by the protagonism of people engaging in non-formal politics (what Ulrich Beck calls "subpolitics," because it comes from below). My belief is that the subpolitics is one of the forces driving the rift at the level of the alliance system. The leaders are actually afraid of being held accountable by the populations on this issue. This is new, because even if the counter-globalization movement foreshadowed and laid the groundwork for this development, it didn't get near so far because the movement was never so big. Now the counterglobalization movement is the peace movement, it's the thinking, political core of the peace movement. And now I think "we" can, to a certain extent, chose the shape we want the rift to take, and thus, the future shape of a new alliance system which will emerge in one way or another, because the world can't do without it. "We" do this to the extent that we engage in collective thinking, which actually happens, as you can see by the forms of networked co-ordination across the world that are producing the peace movement. Vectors everywhere! >Rather than imagine that the new movements confront "the dynamics of a >profiteering world system", as Brian Holmes suggests, what might be more >to the point is to realize that this too is a totalizing, dialectical >figure. It too can blind us to the internal dissonance within the regime >of empire itself. Maybe. It's true that for me to uphold that specific phrase, I have to make an argument which is not a sound-bite or a logo, 'cause it has two ideas, followed by a third. It says that the model of world development via global finance in the 80s-90s led to the military crisis that opens the 21st century. In other words, it says that the agressive, statist form of empire results from the failure of the transnational capitalist form of empire. And then the argument brings in a third term, popular protagonism, in order to say this: that many many people realize the world is potentially headed to a kind of living hell, because after all, some of them lived through the 30s and 40s, they saw what it was like, and the rest of us have got the picture. The point now is to try to halt the military response to economic and social crisis. That's the crucial point. That's also where Europe can intervene in some way. But the danger that Franco Berardi alias "Bifo" points out, is that a new nationalism of the continental bloc could arise in Europe, instead of a truly viable internationalism that would take into account the inequalities and failures of human development that are at the root of the military conflicts. The point here is not to be "anti-EU." The point is to try to inflect certain developments in the EU which would make it either into a free-trade bloc (basically the English position), or into a free-trade bloc with special privileges for some (the German-French position)... We can imagine something better - and maybe even realize it. In this situation where the collective co-ordination is so important, I guess it's up to intellectuals (means: people who think, people who write) to make clear arguments which try to place recognizable names on recognizable things, and try to show where those things are going. Cause in the end, that's about all you can do with words. >It may be time to look for ways to leverage a whole series of >contradictions. Between the two aspects of the vectoral empire, for a >start. Between the vectoral class in either of its guises and the >interests of the American people. Between the vectoral class and other >states. Between these other states and their peoples... > Happy 21st century! Vectors ahoy! Brian - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 12:48:16 +0000 Subject: Re: <nettime> Re: There is no America and Europe From: tiziana <tterra@btopenworld.com> Like many others, and possibly more than most as I have been working from home for a few months, I have been following the Iraq crisis in a kind of multimedia mode. While working at the computer, I am listening to radio talk shows in london quite a lot, following the BBC and Channel 4 coverage, reading italian newspapers online and commentary and news on mailing lists and websites from all over the world. What emerges out of this cacophony of information is really the two levels that Brian and Bifo describe, which repropose at a non-geographically bound level the disagreements that are being proposed at a molar level as a old Europe/Wild West kind of opposition. If at one level, everything is about geo-political blocks, old scores to settle between the China/Russia/Europe and UK/USA axis with the body of the Middle East as battleground, at another level it is about constituted and constituent power. In all of this, I have never witnessed such a wide open display of the whole process whereby these decisions are taken. I do not think that any other decision concerning the fate of millions (certainly not the two world wars of the twentieth century, but not even the first Gulf war, the Afghani war or Kosovo) has been so openly scrutinised. As Virilio would put it, this is global politics in real time. Every bribe of minor countries in the security council, every microscopic fluctuations of the moods of ministers in Labour's cabinet, every flight and meeting held by foreign ministers and UN representatives, every report by weapons inspectors, the tensions crossing the resigned faces in the Iraqui capital is just out somewhere in the global information matrix and in real time. Underlying this whole really formal debate about resolutions and vetoes, behind all the propaganda thriving on fake resemblances between Hitler and Saddam (why do they keep calling him by his first name? It is as if they called Hitler Adolf, indulging in analogies myself now, sorry...), some pretty big questions about global democracy and governmentality are being asked. In this context the EU/USA opposition does not cut it really, not on the metaphysical and identitarian lines that Bifo is rightly eager to dismiss. The question is: if we are living in one world, if economic and cultural globalisation is a reality, and everything is connected and touches on everything else, and still such world is not immune to heavy imbalances of power, how do you deal with conflict? Is it enough to hand to the most powerful countries in the world the role of policeman, without no control over the law that police forces everywhere are bound to obey? Even according to the old divisions of powers that is the basis on which the West is trying to import democracy by way of a combination of bribes and bombs, the police function must obey the law. But the globalisation of political economy has led us to a position where Montesquieu's division of powers (legislative, executive, judiciary) is exploding all over the place. In this sense, we are glimpsing the beginning of a new conception and practice of democracy out of the implosion of the modern division of powers that was the European invention and that European states such as France are trying to uphold in the face of a new reality. In this context I am reminded of the preference that Gilles Deleuze thought we should accord to jurisprudence (as opposed to the Moral Law which is all about holding a high ground while hiding the dirty linen under the pedestal). Jurisprudence for Deleuze signaled a completely immanent conception of political power and production, which is about traversing the field of conflict and antagonisms between unequal forces in ways that adhere rather than overdetermine and transcend the eventual resolution of the crisis. That would not go down to well with the fundamentalists of all the three monotheistic religions that are running the world right now I bet. let's hope that this bifurcation leads us somewhere better.... greetings to the nettimers tiziana - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 12:39:00 +0100 From: ". __ ." <mail_box@gmx.net> Subject: Re: There is no America and Europe My two cents on this topic... Cheers, G At 16:59 11.03.03 +0100, Brian Holmes wrote: >But a rift does not necessarily mean a division into two blocs, with >a European bloc emerging to claim a kind of social-democratic >legitimacy, I would call it eco-social-capitalism >The European bloc has no legitimacy. It is in desperate lack of >legitimacy. Bifo asks: "Can we consider the great Europe [I think >that means "greater Europe," after enlargement], the Europe of the >national states and of the powerful financial capital, as a force >that is capable of imposing respect for human rights?" The answer is >no. The Europe that has been planned from the top down over the last >20 years, and increasingly since Maastricht, has become a distorted >reflection of NAFTA, a figure shaped by the kind of corporate >cooperation-in-rivalry which has been the very definition of >globalization as a state-capitalist project. >Even if the current >assertion of European difference by France and Germany were to >succeed in recomposing Europe around these two strategically >partnered nations and their "vision of the world," what would that >bring? A European hierarchy in which the established social lobbies >within the large core states (I mean, the big corporations, major >trade unions and state and military bureaucrats) impose their >priorities on the whole, creating a semblance of social democracy for >a limited sector of the working population, and a control regime of >exploitation and exclusion for the majority, especially those on the >European fringes (but you have to realize that the same kind of >inclusion/exclusion hierarchy gets reiterated in the centers too - >'cause that's where it's invented). The racism that Are Flanagan >describes in his post (The Race for War) is the natural extreme of >the inclusion/exclusion logic, which is at the very center of >capitalism. And this is obviously a dead-end future, because it will >lead further down the road of inequality and violence that has >brought us to the present moment. I just cannot agree with this. The EU, as the green Cohn-Bendit said in a recent article, is Europe's utopia. And it is definitely an emancipation of the USA. But does this lead to the conclusions above, no human rights, corporation-led decisions and capitalism in an extreme form? I would argue, no. Why? First, it is just too soon to see the direction this project will take. There are roads in a variety of directions, some of which might lead to the above mentioned directions. I would define three big phases which are necessary in the development of a common Europe, first the political, then the economical and third the phase where we are in right now, the democratic phase. We do have a basic political agreement, we do have a common voice in economic dealings but we still do not have a fully democratic structure with a constitution (work in progress) and basic rights(to full extent). We will have to see (not without taking all possible influence on the process) before we can judge. Second, the problem of legitimacy. Amongst scholars, this is a question long discussed. I will not try to recapitulate the various theories (and approaches) but instead only try to write about my personal experiences. As far as I can see, hear and feel, people start feeling more like Europeans. They feel, that this continent should work together and be a common entity, should overcome the problems of the past, they distictly feel like citiziens of Europe while they remain proud of their national country and sadly but rightly, they feel, that only a unification can help them to be respected as a parter to the US and have a say in the developments, more economic, than politic, which are threatening their way of life. To achieve this you need again some balance on the international stage, which has been lost after the fall of the CCCP. I know that this is not legitimation in the classical sense, but these are the driving motivations behind this process... and if one wants a historic connection, one can find it, easily, if one wants to do it. While the USA's legitimacy is basically defined through the lack of common history and the distinction between the US and Europe, the legitimacy of a EU is on the opposite IN the common history of the nations involved and the distinction (the search for) between the EU and the US... not so far apart, what do you think?! Third, the problem with capitalism: for me it is at the heart of the european movement. It is necessary to find a response to the US-Turbo-Capitalism in order to defend our standard of living, our approach to social problems and our duty to help those who cannot help themselves - It is the US-EU interdependence which drives the economy of the EU towards a faster, harder pace - against the will of many involved... That is the basic reason, why I called it eco-social capitalism, a vocabulary from the 80 which for me best describes the distinction between the EU and the US system of capitalism... Fourth, the problem with the fringes... logically, there are those who profit from this development. Countries, such as France, see the EU as the only possibility and a weapon to counter the US. Multis, see this development as an easier approach towards "their" favourite laws, where they have to lobby only once instead of in each of the countries... but one should not forget, that incidentially, their interests are also the interest of the EU. Why? Because the plan, as far as I see it, is to beat the US on their own field: Education, Mergers, State-Business Alliances on an European Scale and finally Military Independence as a last resort... It is certainly ironic, that, to compete, the EU is trying to be "more American than the US", thereby becoming what they fear... but if this process will be balanced against the other interests (eco and social) than this could be a great alternative and addition towards the system as it is now - if not, than this EU may well be a construct which ultimately will devour its children... Fifth, the EU Institutions: NEVER, ever underestimate the power of EU law... the ECJ eg has angered a lot of politics by deciding in a European spirit, therefore changing the course intended by politicians, with them helpless to do something about it. It is basically like the International COurt of Justice, just with real enforcement power: The recent ICJ case about Oil Platforms (US & Iran), where it seems, that the US will loose is based upon another case, where the treaty in question (Friendship, Commerce etc Treaty) has been used by the US as the legal basis for winning a case (Nicaragua, Iran Embassy). In the end, this will not change a thing, no reparations will be paid, the US will just ignore this judgement. But if it were the ECJ who would pronounce a similar judgement, then, after their own national law, countries would be oblieged to accept the judgement... and this changes everything... I would say, it is a quiet revolution ;-) this time, one for the people... Six, the People as the driving force: It was through the rivalty between the UE and the US, that NGOs could establish themselves as a power on the international stage, which traditionally is dominated only by nations... this offers some interesting possibilities... perhaps transnational NGOs and NPOs could sometimes in the future be the balance to nations - but not now... the process has just started and one needs this rivalty to continue so that it can develop at all... As one can see, there are a lot of problems, developments and forces at play. But the Eu, which is still a baby, can learn from each of the problems - and it has shown, that it sometimes can do exactly this... And never forget a basic truth: one can only live together in a lasting relationship, if there is a balance of power (will etc just insert the vocabulary in question) - some of these developments just try to do that - and this will make it easier to work together towards a multipolar world, where there is still room for freedom and people... Puh, this just went out this way... it may be overly romantic and not always consistent - and concerning the EU, it is, after all a dream for some of us ;-) Cheers again, g --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. This Anti-Virus Program seems to be very good, However, I cannot be held responsible for any damages caused by Viruses which evaded the scan. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.459 / Virus Database: 258 - Release Date: 25.02.03 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net