Empire

Rating:
Summary: Good statement on what's wrong on my home planet
Review: Everyone knows the present state of the free world's economical and cultural 'self-assured-ness' is under-rated and over-simplified. This book spells out our weaknesses before Darth Vader and the Empire, we can only hope that Obewon will return to bring about a new world order.

Rating:
Summary: Das Kapital, Mao Red Book and Empire
Review: For the same reasons I disliked Das Kapital, Mein Kampf and Mao Red Book, I did not like Empire either. Although the book is well built (and well explained in URF7's comment below), what is exposed is our global society as it is today but that has been hard to grasp because of its complexity. And the utopia proposed at the end is an echo from 18th century Enlightenment.

For the same reasons that communism and facism have been desastrous experiments (56 million people died with fascism and about 60-80 millions from communism especially in Russia and China), one can no longer propose universal theories without taking into account several anthropoligic discoveries made in the 19th and 20th century.

In the 19th century a French polytechnician called Le Play discovered that there existed 8 great types of family fabrics which deeply impacted social psychology. His work was further extended by Emmanuel Todd, professor at Cambridge who said that Soviet Union was ready to collapse in 1975, 24 years before the event and according the mechanisms he had discovered. His global study of family types was published in 1983/84 under the name La Diversité du Monde/The Diversity of the World.

Those 8 family types are: - The authoritarian family, elder inherits all to preserve family assets, cadets have to find a living for themselves but a long time is dedicated to their education to find a living. These are the dominants type in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea. They also exist in French Flanders, Alsace (former Holy Empire territories), Savoy, South-West France, Northern Spain, Northern Portugal and Scotland, Venice, Quebec. These are the countries of engineers, stable governments (1 or 2 changes in a century), the highest IQ and mathematical studies, relative equality in society despite fundamental inequality, massive positive trade balances (Japan $128 billion), large corporations (Konzerns in Germany, Keiretsu in Japan), high income (Switzerland, Luxemburg, Sweden, Japan). But also societies that can become extremely bloody when attacked, being destabilized or feeling materially insecure: Venice was nicknamed the violent by the Arabs (sack of Constantinople 1204), French made the mistake to remove German emperors twice (1806 by suppressing the Holy Roman Emperor and 1918 by suppressing both German and Austrian Emperor) and they paid it very dearly (1870, 1914, 1940), Israeli Mossad is not exactly friendly when Israeli are attacked, Japanese forces in Asia left souvenirs, Basque, Irish and Korean terrorists are known for their efficiency not too mention Nazi genocides. Once society is safe again, everybody becomes an obedient employee supporting a stable country where private property is sacred. But whatever situation they have a cult for differences, even those which do not exist: Jewish and Germans, Flemish and Walloons, Quebec people, Japanese and Koreans, Irish, Catholic and Protestant, etc... Despite official inequality, women have power and importance in the group (Basque, Jewish, Japanese women, European aristocracy).

-Absolute nuclear family. No equality among brothers, father can decide wether assets goes to a specific child, the buttler, the dog or a charity. This is England, the United States, Canada except Quebec, Holland, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand. Open for innovation and flexible, appeal for communism near absolute zero, universal beliefs but no requirement to have people with equal material means, indifferent to other people and cultures (live and let live mentality). Preferred international policy: Splendid isolation.

-Egalitarian nuclear family. Brothers are equal and will have same share of heritage. This is the dominant type of Northern France, Northern and Southern Italy (except Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna), Southern Spain and Portugal, Poland, Roumania, Greece, Ethiopia and Latin America except Cuba. These are the lands of universal freedom 'à la française' (Liberté, égalité, fraternité), strikes, revolutions, social protests, coups. Solidarnosc in 1980, coups in Latin America, a constitution change in Paris every 20 years, heated debates in Greece, etc...

- Communautarian exogamic. This means equal brothers living under the same roof, spouse taken outside the group. Largest human anthropoligical groups and covers China, Russia, Vietnam, Northern India, Eastern Europe except Poland, Roumania, Greece, Slovenia and Czech Republic, Cuba. Also found in Central France, French Mediterrannean seaboard, Central Italy (Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna). These are the regions were communism managed to stay for more than a generation. Once in a while they kill God, social structures and everything reminding the past, tend to be the opposite of absolute nuclear families (Holland, England, the United States) but because they generate large societies which can stand millennia (China, Russia, Vietnam, India) and mighty enemies (Vietnam, Cuba) and are world's largest group, their opinion counts.

- Communautarian endogamic. This means equal brothers living under the same roof, spouses are taken inside the group. These are all the countries of Islam, except in India, South East Asia, South East Europe and Africa. They have their own book, Quran and do not need to have a replacement, consider themselve one great family without borders (Ummah) and women tend to have a lower position in the group.

- Asymmetric communautarian families of Southern India. The difference with the other communautarian groups is that children of a same brother cannot marry but well the children of a brother and a sister. This is the founding stone of the Castes system: a world based on hierarchy that neither the Muslims nor the British could shake and which despite Northern Indian advantage still shapes the lives of 1 billion people.

- Anomic: equality among brothers is uncertain,cohabitation of parents and children discouraged but accepted, possible endogamy. Present in Ancient Egypt, South East Asia except Vietnam, Sri Lankan, the Himalayas and the Indian civilisation of Latin America. Two forces conflict in those societies: centralization-decentralisation. This explains the history process in Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Ancient Egypt. Discipline imposed by Communism or Islam never really fit in those societies.

- African type (everything south of Sahara and Ethiopia, and African communities of the Americas), where the domestic group is very unstable, both men and women allowed to have several spouses and children from each of them. A fatherless world where women are usually much more educated than men.

Huntington intuitively grasped this in his book Clash of Civilisations, although he mixed anthropoligical elements with political and religious elements. He noticed Japan was distinct from East Asia, that Latin America was different from the US like France and Italy are different from England and the Netherlands. And that East Europe + Russia formed a uniform world he called Orthodox. He also pinpointed Islam and differentiated it from Africa.

As showed by 20th century, ignoring human anthropoligical fundamentals is dangerous. You cannot raise rice like you raise corn because in one case rice would dry and in the other corn would rot.

So Empire remains a case study at best and lets hope not too many people take it seriously to avoid another bloody century with recipes for disaster like suppressing the Emperor in Japan or the King in Belgium, destroying the fabric of Japanese, Korean and German corporations (if you are a foreigner, leave the country), try to impose extensive social security on Americans or European regulations on British, ask Muslim to abandon their brothers when they are attacked, etc... Experience dictates.

So in the name of the 200 million people who died during the 20th century because some intellectually pleasant but tactically stupid ideas, please listen to the lessons learned.

Rating:
Summary: Important New Work Of Political Theory
Review: This dense and philosophically avant-garde tome is nonetheless passionate and compulsively readable, I found that I could not put it down after I picked it up. Even more remarkable is the facility with which Negri and Hardt facilitate both the history of the west and our contemporary postmodern terrain. Their central thesis is that the form of sovereignity that has characterized modernity is ending and that that there is a new form of sovereignity forming which they term 'Empire'. In doing this they examine Machiavelli, Spinoza, the founders of the U.S. political system, Marx, Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, Bill Gates and many others in creative blend of materialism, history, radical politics and philosophy. The criticisms of post-structuralist and postcolonial theory are especially timely. If you are tired of coventional liberal politics try this book headlined by Italy's most famous living philosopher and political prisoner - Toni Negri.

Rating:
Summary: The Emperor Has No Clothes! Beware.
Review: Junk! A pretentious tract that stubbornly applies verbs to abstractions, delights in pompous reification, and curses clarity of thought and word. Some of the historical commentary has limited value; most of the text is like the very worst Hegelian philosophy with few emergent insights. The infamous critisms of Hegel apply exponentially to this text.

By confining themselves inside a tangled web of abstractions the authors can say whatever they want about anything. Their subjects are compound abstract conceptualizations to which various verbs and adjectives are applied. Their elaborate word-play, however, never deigns to address the real world we live in.

Contrast their text with real philosophers and social commentators from Aristotle to Kant to Edmund Wilson to E.O Wilson and you too will feel betrayed by investing time in this worthless text. Abtractions must be grounded in realty and must have real-world referents to acquire validity.

Here the error of subjectivism becomes painfully palpable as your eyes wander amidst a fierce wreck of nouns, pronouns, adverbs and verbs strung together in every possible concatenation, until your good sense revolts and you throw the **** thing into the garbage where it belongs!

For all you read, do and think, follow this one simple rule:

Say what you mean, mean what you say, and always use the clearest and most direct language.

Rating:
Summary: A Neither Nor Book
Review: If it were really serious postmo scholarship, it would be a bit more honest about its starting points and sources (namely, Deleuze, Guattari, Baudrillard, Lyotard). Certainly an edition edited for America should have more bibliographic information. On the other hand, this book should prove largely inaccessible to the bestselling audience who have bought it and tried to read it (Michael Moore this isn't). That's because they will lack the background in philosophy and the 'superstructuralist' approach to social theory. To conclude, at least I'm honest enough about the book and with myself: having waded the whole way through the book, I'm still reluctant to give it a great review simply because I feel proud about getting through it. It actually made me, after a 20 year hiatus, start reading long works of fiction again.

Rating:
Summary: * So Many Weak Spots, It Undermines It's Premise *
Review: Is this book still relevant? Many will argue that the current
US neoconservative rampage disproves Hardt and Negri's "Empire" thesis. I disagree with that. First of all, never did H&N posit that imperialism, nationalism, patriotism had died on, say, June 5th, 1999. They did argue that the tendancy was for capitalism to reorganize itself into Empire-a dectralized globalized capitalist network that would diminish borders in such a way as to allow the smooth flow of capital globally.

So we should ask ourselves if we are indeed returning to the age of "imperialism" or proceeeding toward "Empire". I would argue
that the current US neo-conservative policy is an attempt to return to imperialism, however, I believe that it is an aberration, an irregular moment in the unfolding of Empire. In imperialism, capital is organized around capitalists according to nation-states. And so you would have German capitalists, vying against French capitalists, etc. But the present day formation of capital is less and less organized around national groups as it is around transnational groups.

This is not to say that there do not still exist national formations of capital (after all, we saw French captialist interests in Iraq being challenged by big oil capitalists from the US)...it is to say that global capital formations are the growing tendancy and will win out over time. So, what we are witnessing right now is very complex. We can not expect that imperialism ends one day and Empire starts the next...they will coexist for some time to come.

And what about the revolutionary subject that will counter Empire? H&N call those forces, the multitudes. The notion of multitudes replaces the classical marxist notion of proleterian (in which the industrial factory worker was seen as the most revolutionary class). the multitudes includes the industrial proleteriat but it does not assign it the prominent role it once had in classical marxism. The term multitudes, as the name suggests, describes the various groups , each with its varying "desires", that counter global capitalism. Instead of a dialectical conflict betwee an proleteriat led by a so-called vanguard organization against the capitalist class, H&N project the multitudes as being composed of various groups developing life according to the diversity of their needs. This is in stark contrast to the undemocratic Vanguard Party which is "delegated" power and which decides the strategies, values and lifestyles for all that fall under its umbrella .

One problem is that Negri seems to have an almost romantic notion of the multitudes; this echos some of the naive concepts earlier marxism held about the proleteriat. Whenever Negri writes about
the multitudes, he speaks as if they were these pure revolutionary subjects. But that is not true. The multitudes
can be racist, religiously fanatic and homophobic. Given this, how can we realistically consider a stateless society. As many coming from the autonomist tradition, Hardt & Negri refuse to postulate what a future post-capitalist world might look like.The reason given for this is democratically inspired: a future world would be made up of multifarious experiments that people developed out of their being, not dictated by the vision of a vanguard party or a handful of intellectuals.

However H&N do put forward a few demands that might guide the anti-global-capital movement: (1) No borders and (2) a universal
income. It is clear that in the global economy the global multitude will need to find ways to unite. The slogan, "Workers of the world unite" can no longer be a pleasant aphorism; it is a necessity. Much chauvinism will be stirred up and nationalism will still emerge and pit workers from one country against another. However, if we suceed in uniting transnationally, not allowing capital any respite in any corner of the globe, then we can win. This is the good news, coupled with deep analysis, that Hardt and Negri bring to us in "Empire".

Rating:
Summary: Essential if ultimately disappointing
Review: This is a terribly written book in the sense that it was written for academics and by academics. I have been reading it on and off since it was recommended to me about a year ago. To understand it, you have to be well-versed in Hegel and Foucault and Said among others.

But it's a VERY important book. It calls for a return to historiography in the true sense of the word and an end to the ideal types of Foucault and Said of object/subject; colonialist/colonizer. Or, as the book itself puts it, what is needed is a study of non-ideal and non-homogenous society but a society "constituted by at least two conflicting traditions."

All our histories are far, far richer than that and to say that all we are is either one or the other (as many of our history departments do) is to do all of us an injustice. What is more, the monolithic situation of the "other" simply makes no historical sense. "The real situation in the colonies never breaks down into an absolute binary between pure opposing forces. Reality always presents proliferating multiplicities." We are not just object/subject or colizer/colonized and to call us by these ideal types alone is to do us all an injustice.

This book says that-but in very academic terms. Nonetheless, it is a very important book that should be debated in our universities.