Re: AUT: they remember nothing and understand nothing

[Steve Wright <pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I guess you won't be surprised if I agree, Chris.

In important ways the category of the multitude seems to repeat the same mistakes of operaio sociale in the seventies - it tries to explain everything and ends up not explaining not a lot (are there parallels there with James' argument that 'everyone will be the party'?). In a way we're back to the problems of talking about 'the working class' in the sort of manner that prompted the original Italian workerists to develop their own more historically specific etymology (which admittedly brought problems of its own at times).

Maybe 'multitude' helps us understand the relationship between different circles subject to the capital relation (including some circles that are trying to dissolve that relation) - or maybe not. Seems the only time it's been used with some power in a historically specific manner is when Linebaugh and other analyse the *beginnings* of global capitalism ...

Steve

Chris Hurl wrote:

> I have always found H&N's project to be so all-encompassing that it cannot but derive broad abstract conclusions without adequately filling them in.  Since the 1970s, it seems to me that Negri has moved into an increasingly abstract and all-encompassing position.  Thus, the "multitude" of Empire strikes me as almost teleological, the final culimination point of the Enlightenment.
>
> What Negri loses, I think, is a lot of the valuable historically-specific insight coming from folks like Bologna, Alquati, and Montaldi, which provide a very detailed historical analysis of how workers struggles are developing in the workplace and how these struggles are constantly cross-cut and contained by trade union bureaucracy and Communist Party (PCI) leadership.
>
> While the multitude paints a rosy picture, capturing the zeitgeist of the anti-globalization movement, a "movement of movements", it neglects an analysis of how a constituted power develops (or already exists) and vies for control within these movements.  For instance, how has the AFL-CIO attempted to regulate protests?  Or how have more radical groups been able to secure funding?  The line between the multitude and Empire is a lot more blurry than it seems, which has been made quite clear in the conflicts arising out of the ESF, the WSF and any other attempt to consolidate a global opposition.
>
> --chris
>
>
>
> >From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> >Reply-To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> >To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> >Subject: Re: AUT: they remember nothing and understand nothing
>
> >Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 15:31:40 +0200
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >----- 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
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> > > hardt/negri being made here is that the idea of the multitude is
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> > > 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
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> > > what the response would be from people who are very critical of H&N for
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> > > 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
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> > > critique, that the multiple as a concrete subjected is still incoherent,
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> > > etc . . . that's all.
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> >
>
> >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
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> >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.
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> >This is important, as the historically the link between leaving the
>
> >centrality of class relations behind and class collaboration or
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> >reconcillation, and/or elevating onself to becoming the admini-
>
> >trative power over the working classes, is very strong. I am not
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> >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
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> >able to say anything concrete about *biopolitics'. The reduction
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> >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
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> >the understanding of determinate class relations.
>
> >
>
> >What N & H's notion of the *the multitude* often reminds
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> >me the most of is the crude and simplistic dualistic model of Maoist
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> >orthodoxy: the people versus monopoly capital. So Hardt's
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> >reference to 'the Great Mao' is perhaps not that surprising
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> >after all. This said, in one important aspect, N & H's 'multitude'
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> >is an advance over the Maoist 'Volk'; that is in bringing thought
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> >beyond nationalism.  But even the critique of nationalism is
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> >somewhat half-hearted to me, both as regards the past and
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> >the presence, where it reappears on a more modernsied form
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> >as the Magna Carta of progressive Aristocrats, from those
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> >of the European Union, France and Germany to Brazil and
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> >Venezuela, and probably Japan and China. There might be a
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> >line from Machiaevelli to Spinoza, Madison and Lenin. But I
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> >hardly think it is one I would like to travel. To that I am far
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> >too much an orthodox anarchist.
>
> >
>
> >Now, I may be wrong in all this. But I do find it problematic
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> >that is hardly even a topic of discussion. And then I am in
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> >this context of course thinking of those whose relation to
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> >'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
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> >can, and do out utmost that it will lay down for good.
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> >
>
> >What is certain however, is that N & H defines 'the multi-
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> >tude' both transhistoricially, and as an utopian political project,
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> >as a not yet existing 'multitude'. And apart from the term
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> >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
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> >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
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> >historic analogy here is the European bourgeoisie path
>
> >to dominance.
>
> >
>
> >Harald
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> >
>
> >
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> >
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> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
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