Re: AUT: they remember nothing and understand nothing

["Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "stevphen shukaitis" <stevphen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 1:20 PM
Subject: RE: AUT: they remember nothing and understand nothing

stevphen wrote:


> the point i was making, perhaps not very well - is that the critique of
> hardt/negri being made here is that the idea of the multitude is
> incoherent, not well spelled out or discussed, etc in Empire - which is
> truthfully the case (which even H&N have admitted to). I was wondering
> what the response would be from people who are very critical of H&N for
> departing from more orthodox marxist concepts now that they have
> elaborated in greater deal what they see as the multitude - with my
> suspiscion is that they would probably just make more of the same style of
> critique, that the multiple as a concrete subjected is still incoherent,
> etc . . . that's all.

And what do you think yourself?

It is a question that need have nothing to do with being a orthodox
marxist, or a marxist at all. Apart from that, what is most of the
times referred to as 'orthodoxy' in this context is the inheritance
from Komintern, which for quite obvious reasons in all reality
never paid class relations much more than lip service, revolving
rather around 'the people', 'the nation'. the State and the Party.
This is important, as the historically the link between leaving the
centrality of class relations behind and class collaboration or
reconcillation, and/or elevating onself to becoming the admini-
trative power over the working classes, is very strong. I am not
sure if it becomes better by already in theory having done
away with even the question of middlle layers. No wonder that
N & H, unlike what actually was the case of Foucault, never are
able to say anything concrete about *biopolitics'. The reduction
of all the Other into 'the Many,' as the old greeks used to say, if
I am not mistaken, I have hard to see this being an advance in
the understanding of determinate class relations.

What N & H's notion of the *the multitude* often reminds
me the most of is the crude and simplistic dualistic model of Maoist
orthodoxy: the people versus monopoly capital. So Hardt's
reference to 'the Great Mao' is perhaps not that surprising
after all. This said, in one important aspect, N & H's 'multitude'
is an advance over the Maoist 'Volk'; that is in bringing thought
beyond nationalism.  But even the critique of nationalism is
somewhat half-hearted to me, both as regards the past and
the presence, where it reappears on a more modernsied form
as the Magna Carta of progressive Aristocrats, from those
of the European Union, France and Germany to Brazil and
Venezuela, and probably Japan and China. There might be a
line from Machiaevelli to Spinoza, Madison and Lenin. But I
hardly think it is one I would like to travel. To that I am far
too much an orthodox anarchist.

Now, I may be wrong in all this. But I do find it problematic
that is hardly even a topic of discussion. And then I am in
this context of course thinking of those whose relation to
'What is be done" is: What a tragedy that it cannot be
undone, but let us at least bury that corpse as fast as we
can, and do out utmost that it will lay down for good.

What is certain however, is that N & H defines 'the multi-
tude' both transhistoricially, and as an utopian political project,
as a not yet existing 'multitude'. And apart from the term
utopian, I am not here putting words into their mouths. If
that implies that 'the mulitude' can gain no real-life
existence within capitalism, is far from clear. With that I
mean, that while the self-emancipation of the working
classes is imagined as a swan song, 'the multitude' is assumed
to rake on real life only beyond capitalism, if going beyond
is not an end left behind then. Anyway, that is certainly
a trait it certainly shares with 'the people' of the period of
bourgeois enlightment. And it is little doubt that the nearest
historic analogy here is the European bourgeoisie path
to dominance.

Harald






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