Re: AUT: Negri and Charleton Heston?

[Thiago Oppermann <difference_3ngine@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 28/11/2004 3:26 PM, "Jon Beasley-Murray" <jon.beasley-murray@xxxxxx>
wrote:

> On 26-Nov-04, at 2:45 PM, Nate Holdren wrote:
>
>> TN: Yes: the multitude should have arms available. Everyone should
>> have arms freely, as happens in the United States.
>
> [snip]
>
>> -Sí: la multitud debería disponer de las armas. Que todos podamos
>> tener armas libremente, como sucede en Estados Unidos...
>>
>> -¿Habla en serio?
>>
>> -Sí. Ya sé que eso puede tener sus efectos negativos, como el caso de
>> Columbine..., ¡pero está claro que la única defensa democrática es la
>> resistencia desde la comunidad! Es la garantía de la paz, de evitar
>> guerras hechas hoy por ejércitos que, integrados por mercenarios,
>> actúan como policía mundial.
>
> Yeah, that's kinda crazy, eh?

Utterly. The problem is to think "should" as opposed to "already is"... La
comunidad is armed to the teeth. What does Negri want, three guns per adult
American, rather than two? Or a better distribution of guns in favour of
educated people who will know which way to shoot?

I think this is further evidence of what I said earlier, that Negri (and
Hardt) have very little idea of the actuality of the American working class,
or perhaps they just ignore it. I think it is the later. It's probably not
because of some stupidity on their part; it's just that they have abandoned
the actual concept of economic class in favour of an essentially culturalist
(and epistemically very conservative) concept of communal agency based on
shared values. When they speak of multitudes, they repeat the venerable
marxist trick of speaking of the true, self-realised, conscious working
class, the real workers who are the agents of history. The rest - the
millions of gun-totting capitalist crusaders - they're not really the
working class. It's almost as if they haven't figured out anything nice to
say, so they figure they'll say nothing. Polite, but useless analysis.

Thiago



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