RE: AUT: An interesting critique of Negri

[Project / Advocate Officer <project@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Personally I was glad to see article partly written in Spanglish. These are
my comments to John's critique of Negri

One of the usual arguments against autonomists is that they wrongly consider
the relation between capital and labour as external to each other. In his
critique of Negri's concept of constituent power (potentia), John once again
repeats this argument.

I agree with the idea that power to and power over are interrelated, but to
asserti this is simply to walk half a road.  I think what Negri argues is
not that the relationship between constituted power or potestas (Capital,
the State, Empire) and constituent power (multitude, labour)  is external to
each other, but that the ontological status of each category are different.
In other words, it is the multitude's strength the one that primarily
constitutes the basis of capital's power and therefore constituted power.
The multitude as an autonomous subject is not confronted by another
autonomous subject such as capital or the State. What I think Negri is
saying is the latter is dependant on the first, that all its political power
appears as an independent force but it is ultimately powerless before the
antagonism posed by the multitude.  This argument is nothing new, but simply
rehashing good old autonomism in the register of a Spinozian/Deleuzian/and
perhaps Foucaudian perspective.

This may sound a very optimistic, if not naive, conception of the struggle
for someone who has suffered State repression. Coming from Chile and being
studying the experience of Chile during Pinochet, I think Negri and Hardt
argument is extremely powerful. The process of collective self-activity
among the "multitude" caused the reaction of the State and capital. This
reaction was not, however, a return to the past. Despite the degree of
repression, the process of neo-liberal reform implemented by the military
took as its immediate point of ontological reference the struggle of the
multitude.The working class failed to carry out a revolution, but pushed the
ruling class negatively into a massive process of capitalist modernisation.

In Empire Negri and Hardt move away from "classical" autonomism (and also
from Deleuze and Foucault)when they emphatically state that under the
imperial system of globalisation "there is no outside", there is no
externality to Empire. All process of social transformation emerges from
within, capitalism has reached its highest form of development. Here my
problem with Negri and Hartd's argument is not that they are
anti-dialectical, but too dialectical. In Empire Hegel is everywhere. The
concept of totality, evolutionary notion of change seems to be rejected, on
the one hand,to enter silently throughout the back door on the other.

Negri's rejection of dialectic has always being about stressing a process of
becoming that is open ended, that is not resolved within the a totalising
synthesis where both terms of the contradiction are contained within a new
third term. For Negri, the antagonism should be resolved in further
multiplicity. In Empire, he seems -at least implicitly- to move away from
this position, not develop it. Empire is a new totality, and there is no
escape from it. And in fact, multiplicity is regarded as a major ortological
featiure of the system itself. This does not mean that Negri has ceased to
believe in radical transformation, but radical change has ceased to be a
transcendental revolution from where we move beyond capitalism.

Negri and Hardt never explain this really well to be able to comment
further. I suppose that, as against messianic revolution, social change
would come by implosion, not explosion. This meaning to create a
multiplicity of interconnected spaces (or singularities) of struggle and
constitution that militantly undermines the system from within until it
disappears. This hardly resemble the Leninist conception of the party.

What is the significance of this position for political practice? The fact
that there the nation/state, the party or the autonomous localism cannot be
used as independent instruments of social change anymore. The instrument of
change are entirely constituted within the global system. The cybernetic
fabric of the struggle is a good example. We are an active part of the
spectacle, and to struggle is to manipulate the language and symbol of that
spectacle and give it a new meaning and create new values, not simply stand
against.

Cheers

Sergio






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