Debating Empire (New Left Review Debates)

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic essays, but they all miss the point...
Review: "Debating Empire" is dedicated to critiquing Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's noteworthy book "Empire". Editor Gopal Balakrishnan presents eleven exceptional essays from leading Leftist intellectuals who each subject "Empire" to analysis. (Please note however that there is no section in this book where "Hardt and Negri respond to their [critics'] questions and criticisms" as suggested in the description above.)

While most of the essayists credit "Empire" for pushing the debate about globalization to the fore, the critics often challenge Hardt and Negri's theories. In the Introduction, Gopal Balakrishnan writes that probably the most contentious issue is the role of the U.S. in international affairs. Hardt and Negri (who, it should be noted, wrote their book in the mid-1990s) contend that U.S. influence acts as a stablizing global force. While nearly every critic in "Debating Empire" refutes this claim -- citing as evidence the U.S. government's response to the September 11 attacks and subsequent Iraq war -- Mr. Balakrishnan suggests that Hardt and Negri are to be commended for posing the crucial question of U.S. hegemony for scrutiny.

Many contributors commend "Empire" for its historical analysis but take issue with the book's conclusions. For example, the first essay by Michael Rustin generally agrees with Hardt and Negri's "depiction...of the capitalist economy" but questions that a "universal proletariat" may have emerged. Mr. Rustin believes that Hardt and Negri's anarchist vision of a harmonious future that can exist without the need for government is premature and "unrealistically optimistic". To the contrary, Mr. Rustin thinks that Hardt and Negri may have overlooked the "darker possibilities" of unchecked U.S. economic, political and military power, including the effect that propaganda may have on mobilizing citizens to support violent state action.

On the other hand, Malcolm Bull posits that the U.S. could indeed offer a model for "a different type of totalitarianism" where the social contract might allow individuals to live freely and in a mutually supportive manner. But unlike Hardt and Negri, Mr. Bull believes that significant change must occur in the U.S. for this positive outcome to be achieved. The key, Mr. Bull suggests, is whether the U.S. might respond to the terrorist threat in the long run by offering a program of inclusiveness that eradicates global inequities and instills harmony among citizens -- which unfortunately appears not to be the case at the moment.

Hardt and Negri's somewhat abstract assertion that capitalist power is ubiquituous and therefore exists as a 'non-place' is challenged by Ellen Meiskins Wood, who asserts that the nation state remains an essential building block of globalization. Tom Mertes' essay about the many recent struggles waged against capital in Central and South America similarly stresses the importance of place, writing that "messy, mass-scale face-to-face encounters are the life-blood of any movement". Other contributors who generally concur with this critique include Stanley Aronowitz and Sanjay Seth.

Alex Callinicos discusses Negri's career in the Italian Autonomous movement in order to deconstruct Negri's thought. Mr. Callinicos concludes that "Empire" is the result of Negri's fascinating relationship with "applied postructuralist philosophy" but little more, in that it offers "no strategic guidance" for those who seek to effect change in the real world. After suggesting that the uneveness of capitalist development might define where worker struggles can be focused, Mr. Callinicos declares that Negri's abstract ideas are "an obstacle to the development of a successful movement against the global capitalism whose structures he seeks to plot in 'Empire'". In a similar vein, Charles Tilly, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin in their essays find fault with Hardt and Negri's idealism and lack of pragmatism.

Perhaps the most fundamental critique, however, is delivered by Timothy Brennan who takes issue with Hardt and Negri's research methodology. Mr. Brennan accuses the authors of "assemblage", or the technique of ripping conceptual ideas away from their historical contexts, which has resulted in a corruption of Hardt and Negri's "entire apparatus of seeing and presenting" history. Mr. Brennan challenges the "millenarian" rhetoric used by Hardt and Negri to claim that 'the multitude called Empire into being', countering that globalization is "a vast enterprise set up to encourage capital mobility while domesticating labor".

Giovanni Arrighi's essay is unique in that his own writing was cited extensively in "Empire". Mr. Arrighi compliments Hardt and Negri's work in general but corrects what he contends are misrepresentations of his thought in the book. Taking a long-term view at the rise of capitalism, Mr. Arrighi believes that Hardt and Negri may simply be premature in announcing that globalization has created a seamless world. Mr. Arrighi argues that the divide between rich and poor nations proves that boundaries still matter, and that it might take a century or longer to create a situation where all the world's people feel a sense of shared solidarity and feel compelled to rise up against capitalism.

Personally, I found Mr. Arrighi's comments to be particularly insightful, for the following reasons. It appears to me that Hardt and Negri's analysis could prove valuable to so-called "Red/Green" thinkers who theorize that the multitude's collective experience with environmental scarcity could lead to solidarity and an eventual overthrow of capitalism. Hardt and Negri's declaration that an 'outside' to capital no longer exists appears to be a prerequisite for such a shared experience to occur -- but it also makes sense, as Mr. Arrighi suggests, that this process will likely take many years to unfold.

Of course, helping to form your own conclusions about the meaning of the book "Empire" is what makes "Debating Empire" so rewarding. The high level discourse provided by the essayists helps flesh out "Empire's" arguments and provides added critical perspective for the reader. To that end, I highly recommend "Debating Empire" to anyone who has read "Empire" and wants to further explore the book's provocative, contentious and illuminating themes and ideas in greater detail.

Rating:
Summary: Erratic but Useful
Review: Hardt and Negri have clearly sparked a useful debate, especially as to the usefulness of the concepts of "the multitude" and "globalization." But while a number of these responses are promising starts (both those critical and those supportive of their reterritorializations), few have the heft of fully thought-through arguments. Others, unfortunately, are just silly. Paolo Virno's celebration of the multitude is a far more sustained engagement.

Rating:
Summary: Erratic but Useful
Review: Hardt and Negri have clearly sparked a useful debate, especially as to the usefulness of the concepts of "the multitude" and "globalization." But while a number of these responses are promising starts (both those critical and those supportive of their reterritorializations), few have the heft of fully thought-through arguments. Others, unfortunately, are just silly. Paolo Virno's celebration of the multitude is a far more sustained engagement.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic essays, but they all miss the point...
Review: I read Empire two ways: First, as a homage to Marx's "Capital" and Deluze/Guattari's "Capitalim and Schizophrenia" by way of a parody; and second as an Epic Poem. Read for solid factuality it's going to flop. Read for inspiration toward action, it's going to...inspire! Spengler's "The Decline of the West" is still being read because of it's power to inspire--even though its historical accuracy is errent and its theory is dated. I feel this book may survive it's critics-- who if you JUST read "Debating Empire" all seem to be on the left--on it's lyricism alone.

Foucault refered to his books as "Novels"-- it's that self- conscious postmodern thing of not trusting your own will-to -truth I suppose. and Deleuze /Guattari didn't take themselves as seriously as some of their critics who are always quick to point out the other guys lack of expertise when he's dipping into THEIR area of expertise. This probably arrises in the University system where each department lives inside its own little ivory tower as is guarded by its own little "specialists" (in the Ortaga y Gasset sense of the word). I believe in the spirit of fun, Hardt and Negri Parodied the over the top effusiveness of both D/G and Marx and managed to succeed in creating a highly entertaining, if not theoreticaly rigerous, work.

Finally, though Many of the essayests in this book refered to Spinoza and even Deleuze's Spinoza, I don't think they dug far enough. Had they Read Deleuze's "Spinoza: Practical Philosophy", they may not have been so quick to refer to the book's Metapysics pejorativly. Yes there is a metapysics in "Empire" perhaps but why should that be disparraged, even in Marxist theory, if it produces a praxis as it's end result. Here's a passage from Deleuze's "Spinoza" that seems lay at the core of H&G's concept of "Empire":

"The important thing is to understand life, each living individuality, not as a form, or a development of form, but as a complex relation between differential velocities, between deceleration and acceleration of particles. A composition of speeds and slownesses on a plane of immanence"

If there is nothing outside Empire's plane of immanence--if everything resides inside it then it seems that the counter-empire can begin with the individual anywhere, anytime. Hurrah!

Rating:
Summary: Fame and Folly
Review: The champions of Hardt & Negri's Empire never bother to ask why a book written in dense Deleuzian prose, and that rehearses medieval statecraft, and offers paeans to "communism" got such ecstatic reviews in the New York Times and other mainstream venues. Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that the book claims imperialism is over, that the United States is not behind "globalization," and that the revolution has already happened from below?

Debating Empire is a superb collection of essays that decodes every aspect of Empire's inexplicable fame, delving into intellectual history, contemporary European politics, and the relationship of academic writing to the media. It thoroughly goes into all the relevant intellectual precursors of the book. In a concise and generous way, the essays -- which also find things to praise in Empire -- get to the bottom of the book's claims by placing them in a larger, more sophisticated, context.

The most avid supporters of Empire like to claim that its critics just don't get it -- that the book cleverly dodges older stand-offs with power, that its utopian energies are uniquely creative, etc., and that its detractors just miss the point. Try again. A number of essays in Debating Empire shows that these objections were anticipated by its earliest critics. No one can fairly claims that the essays don't take Empire on its own terms, or don't immerse themselves in the book's own fields of reference. It is a little frightening, actually, to see the book's supporters refusing to debate these exposures, adopting a view that could be called religious.

There are other books available right now that bring together informed responses to Empire, but this is by far the best.

Rating:
Summary: An unnecessary follow-up
Review: The first work, 'Empire', was so poorly understood by American audiences that this academic follow up was felt necessary. I totally disagree.

First, the only reason the 'Empire' seemed original to so many North Americans is that hardly anyone studies philosophy anymore, especially of the continental varieties.

Second, the whole thesis of 'Empire' never really gets at the reality of the US that I would assert: basically, how does the US thrive as the dominant global political economy when its society is a libertarian funland for an economic elite, and its foreign policy amounts to fascism against anyone who gets in the way of US militarism and mercantlism.

Rating:
Summary: Mainstreaming Hardt and Negri?
Review: The reviews of Empire in the mainstream press, when it first appeared, were so harsh that few, apart from the 'Seattle left' and jargon savvy postmodernists, ever made contact with it. But after four years of Bush, and a spate of books on empire, the mood changes, enough to at least consider their text. And in fact these interesting essays are the reverse of the mainstream debunking jobs, critiques in the light of old leftist, or Marxist, viewpoints. Thus it is ironic to find this hard left critical of the placid Jeffersonian strain in Hardt and Negri's analysis. None of these need be endorsement of their views. But much of the hysterical diatribe against their redefinitions passes into what is now a certain obviousness in their effort to point to Empire.
One effect of the book is to jar loose the domination of stale Marxist theory which makes efforts to organize action difficult, as the Right knows all to well, being able to squelch anything but hemming and hawing among those confronted by the avalanche from the right. The whole thing needs more work, no doubt, but interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Debating Empire (New Left Review Debates)
Review: This text draws together all the debate surrounding Hardt and Negri's 'Empire', which has been hailed as a latter day 'Communist Manifesto' and as a turning point for the left, with the authors responding to the questions and criticisms of a range of international theorists and commentators.