Re: empire & globalization, was... Re: AUT: Re: autonomistcrisis theory

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> there's a lot to think about here...
>
> but something that strikes me is the notion that the
> *national* ruling class is somehow united. the ruling
> class competes within nation states as well as outside
> of them (i live in west virginia... this intenral
> competition is something we know a lot about)...
Actually, that is why I said "so-called 'national' capitals".  I didn;t
really feel like fleshing it out, but I did mean to indicate that the assume
that they were national or unified in some easy sense made no sense.  And I
only used that phrase once, so I think it hardly constitutes much of a point
of contention.

> so: i don't think the fact that national capitals (or
> blocs of international capitals) compete is a good
> argument against the notion of empire. the question
> is: in what context do they compete... so my response
> to dave.
I don't think national 'capitals' compete, i think national states compete
for capital and that the capitalist class finds itself fragmented along
national lines to some extent in relation to seeking the protection of this
or that state, for cultural and linguistic reasons (even capitalists have to
live somewhere), in relation to the fact that while money is mobile,
production is less so and often existing capitalist businesses began decades
(and sometimes a century or more) ago attatched to a certain national market
(in terms of capital goods, consumer goods and labor.)  In that sense, the
formation of capitalist classes (NOT capital) as national has to be dealt
with in relation to historical formation, with some understanding that that
formation created a series of advantages, ties, etc. between "national"
capitalists and territorial states.  So while it is true that capital knows
no boundaries, no country, capitalist classes do.  They know their military,
their state apparatus, their legal system, etc.  In turn, it is not so easy
to just uproot and become a capitalist of equal power in a more developed
capitalist country, but at the same time, why go to a country where you
might be "da' man", but over a place with relatively less importance in
world capital.  In other words, the formation of and retention of national
capitalist classes is governed by complex problems (including the
nationalism of workers who might be more hostile to 'foreign' bosses, which
I have seen frequently enough.)

In other words, the capitalists do have genuine "national interests",
interests ultimately shot through with all the divisions created by their
submission to accumulation. And the process of creating a unified capitalist
class or capitalist state requires so much bargaining and bickering, would
require the destruction of so many capitalists, that many will fight tooth
and nail against it, even though it might makes sense in terms of
exploitation of labor overall.  Capital controls them, not the other way
around.  And yet they can also resist.  it is not like capitalists go broke
quietly or just say "Well, that capitalist is a better, more efficient
exploiter than me."  Hence, wars of all sorts.

Anyway, this may seem very empirical, BUT if we do not ascend to the
concrete, we will be engaged in pure theory, in philosophizing.  And that
was never Marx's approach.

> as to the ruling classes of poorer countries... while
> it is true that they are on the bottom of the
> hierarchy within the ruling class, they are still part
> of the international ruling class. esp when you
> consider that part of the mission of the wto is to
> kinda equalize power within the international ruling
> class... thus venezuela (i think) successfully
> challenged laws governing what the national ruling
> class of the us could/would import. this kind of power
> significantly challenges the notion of us ruling class
> hegemony.
The effect of the WTO is not to provide equalization between capitalists.
for example, the WTO forced India to test pharmeceuticals for 20 years
before being able to bring them to market, but the U.S. only has to test for
7 years.  Hmmm... pretty nationalistic, pretty much US capital using the WTO
to throttle a competitor.  Like many other agencies, the WTO, GATT, etc.
becomes a way for the big capitalsts to be more predatory in relation to the
poorer, smaller capitalists, via interntional bodies dominated by the
biggest states.

Think of it this way: Given the higher productivity and profitability of
labor power in the "imperialist" countries, the higher ability of developed
capital from those countries to efficiently exploit labor internationally,
equalization will reinforce national inequality and national power relations
by forcing open markets which the smaller, less developed nation states used
to use to provide a degree of protection.  But as long as the capitalists in
those countries accept capital's rules and do not have the political means
to bend the rules (which the wave of post0colonial revolutions provided for
a while), then they must submit, however unhappily.  In the past, this led a
section of the capitalists in those countries, those sections 'left out' of
the deal with "imperialism" or with the local landed rulers, amenable to
political revolutions, to national independence.  But where is that now?
Maybe what we can say is that that perspective has less and less currency as
it seems less and less possible to avoid a degree of submission to the world
market, to international capital.

That does not weaken the national state in relation to the working class,
however, or lessesn conflict between nation states, at least not
necessarily.  It could increase that hostility, especially as the pie
shrinks in a crisis of over-accumulation.  Ultimately, capitalists run into
barriers and the resolution of those barriers last time killed 40 million
people in just 6-7 years.

As such, I think Negri's notion does not hold water when it has to ascend to
the concrete and deal with all the mediations (which Negri conveniently says
no longer exists, although the abscence of mediation means the abscence of
fetishism, which means naked alienation, which means that everyone's
alienation and exploitation should become perfectly obvious to them since
nothing masks it anymore.)

Cheers commie00,
Chris
> =====
> commie00
> ---------------------------------
> http://www.geocities.com/commie00
> ---------------------------------
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices!
http://auctions.yahoo.com/
>
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>




     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---