Re: AUT: Negri and Charleton Heston?

[Nate Holdren <nateholdren@xxxxxxxxx>]

hi Thiago-

I've got (at least some) the same reservations about multitude and all
that. I think part of the issue here is in HN's two uses of the term,
as in the interview Thomas posted. The second use, 'not-yet
multitude', multitude as political project, is not an analytical
category. It's a goal. I think HN see multitude as a possibility,
something the proletariat could recompose itself into, a new
hyper-democratic subject or class figure. Hardt talks about it saying
that maybe now is the first time democracy becomes really possible.

It might be interesting to compare what HN say about multitude with
what Negri used to say about the social(ized) worker. If Steve Wright
is still here maybe he could say a little on this, or maybe Harry? I
think people back in the day responded to Negri's 'social(ized)'
worker stuff the same way you're responding to multitude: it's more of
a nice goal than an analytical tool. And the more I think about it,
the more it seems like the claims (or sometimes less of a claim than
an air, an aura about things) that multitude etc is new don't really
make sense.
The claim to novelty only seems to make sense if you think that
domestic labor didn't used to be productive, that democracy didn't
used to be possible, but that these become the case only now (or
starting around the 1970s).

There may be some kernel to the argument, though, that the old
authoritarian models don't work anymore (parties, etc) but it's
couched in a weird way which seems to imply that the authoritarian
organizational forms were a good idea before (and that they weren't
partially predicated on exterminating alternatives).

take care,
Nate


On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 07:45:58 +1100, Thiago Oppermann
<difference_3ngine@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 1/12/2004 2:35 AM, "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Thiago Oppermann wrote:
> >
> >> I want you to explain to me is why some workers are part of the
> >> multitude while others aren't
> >
> > Hardt explained to me in a September radio interview
> > <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#041007> that the
> > multitude only includes the good guys. The reactionary workers (and
> > what we used to call lumpen elements) aren't.
> >
> > Doug
>
> That was definitely my impression. But doesn't that means that the multitude
> is selected on the basis of political (and cultural) affinities? What
> economic basis is there for excluding these workers? Or: what is it about
> the structure of this part of the working class that leads it to be
> articulated in a way that would lead Hardt to make this call?
>
> I am not saying that this multitude may not be a useful instrument of
> analysis or edification in some way, but I think that precisely because this
> decision  as to what is and is not the multitude has been made, it is a poor
> instrument for the analysis of the working class. There is something fishy
> about this, it strikes me as way too convenient, arbitrary, ad hoc and
> poorly explained. You can't understand what is going on in the world if your
> unit of analysis excludes all these people you happen not to like.
>
> Thiago
>
>
>
>
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>


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