Forwarded from Victor Rosado

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Translation by Victor Rosado

Half the interview with Negri

----------------------------
Interviewer: Since Empire was published, along with Michael Hardt, some 
events seem to question the thesis of that work.  Is it possible that 
the colonial occupation of Iraq on the part of United States 
contradicted Empire with its description of a phase of "Empire without 
imperialism"?

Negri:  The thesis that Empire surpassed imperialism from the point of 
view of the organization of the international system is a thesis of 
tendency.  What some call "American imperialism in Iraq" is perhaps the 
most convincing test that Empire is advancing.  The Americans failed to 
establish an administration of its own in Iraq.  They were seen obliged 
to resort again to the United Nations after it rejected to decide on the 
preventive war.  They were humiliated at the international level.  They 
cannot obtain the money to pay for this war.  They are in the situation 
in which the king of England in the Middle Ages encountered when he 
asked the aristocrats to finance his wars.  And the aristocrats, 
according to the principle "no taxation without representation", ask him 
exactly what the Americans do not want to grant today: participation in 
the government of Iraq.

I:  That is clear.  But are there not characteristics of the current 
situation that are reminiscent of the imperialism of the XIX century: 
military occupation, an authority created by the metropolis and an 
appropriation of natural resources (petroleum) and new business assigned 
arbitrarily to firms of that metropolis?

N: All those affirmations are false, from the first one to the last.

I: Why?

N:  Because, for the moment, a colonial administration is not the issue, 
but rather a classical process of “nation building”.  And therefore a 
transformation in the democratic sense.  That is the U.S. pretext.  It 
is a military occupation that knocked down a state, but later the 
problem is "nation building", that is to say an intent of transition, 
not of colonization.  It would be like saying that the act of passing 
from dictatorship to democracy in Hungary or Czechoslovakia is 
colonizing.  There is no attitude of that type in the American 
administration.  These Americans want to seem more bad than they are.

I:  Your arguments seem to accept Washington’s justification to invade 
and to occupy.

N:  Look, I am not defending the Americans.  What I am saying is that an 
American, unilateral impulse is what went on; an intent to take up again 
imperial models, that were defeated.  In the tendency of the formation 
of Empire the Americans, with their military force, could benefit 
perfectly.  But it is exactly that tendency which blocked them.  One 
must be very careful with repeating the points you made.  Repeat them to 
me one by one I will refute them one by one…

--

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