Re: AUT: Negri and Charleton Heston?

[Nate Holdren <nateholdren@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Thiago-

I think I agree with the bulk of what you're saying, but one thing: as
I read it, Negri wasn't saying the US working class should have guns
but rather he was saying that the working class elsewhere should have
access to guns just like US folks have. Which sounds crazy to me, too.
There's a quote from Bologna somewhere about Negri seeing increasing
violence and saying 'recomposition of the class'. I think this is in
line with that.

I've been thinking a lot about Negri lately, about the two version of
the multitude -  'the multitude is the whole proletariat' vs 'the
multitude is the revolutionary subject'. I think there's a way that
this can be made consistent with itself.

Negri writes in the essay '20 theses on Marx' that material changes in
the technical composition make it such that class consciousness
doesn't matter anymore. (The corollary of course is that it used to,
ie, Lenin was right in his time a la Hardt's remarks that Lenin would
use networks if he was around today.) The way I understand this, it's
like production (for Negri) at its most advanced point requires a
laboring subject that is also a political subject (not necessarily one
with 'class consciousness' because this doesn't matter anymore). In
other words, 'class-in-itself' at the highest point of production is
tendentially 'class-for-itself', that is, value accumulation requires
the multitude in all its saintly glory. Thus, the folks in reactionary
USA who refuse to collaborate are not part of the multitude (as Hardt
says on one of Doug Henwood's radio shows) - they're not politically
subject and they're economically backward (and culturally too).

This is the only way I can think to square the circle of the two
multitudes, and one that I think is internally consistent. It sounds
like older ideas dressed up in new clothes - one class figure acting
as subject, a figure operating in the most productive and advanced
sectors, the venerable trick you mentioned. It doesn't seem touch the
ground very much, ends up sounding catastrophist/messianic ("the
kingdom is at hand, the time is nigh".)

take care,
Nate

ps- I put links to spanish language Negri interviews on the wiki at
Tom's site, if anyone's interested:

http://www.endpage.com/wiki/index.php?NegriInterviewsInSpanish

I think Negri's a lot clearer in interviews (sometimes almost
disappointingly so, like in the one we're talking about here...)


On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 16:22:22 +1100, Thiago Oppermann
<difference_3ngine@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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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>


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