hydrarchist writes: "

This translation is the work of Ed Emery.

The following is a contribution by Toni Negri to a meeting in 2001 at
the
Literature Faculty of the La Sapienza university, organised by the
group
Laboratorio Sapienza Pirata. The Italian text was circulated on the
Multitudes-Infos discussion list. I have translated it in order to
bring it
to a wider audience.

Globalisation.... Multitude etc.

"I feel uncomfortable when people talk about the birth of the
globalised
world simply as a kind of effect, a given, an expansion of the empire
that
was left [after the disappearance of the USSR].

"Globalisation, which really begins to lift off in 1989, doesn't happen
simply by the outward spreading of one empire when another empire
disappears. It is born of far deeper roots. Globalisation is the point
of
confluence of working class and proletarian struggles which could no
longer
be regulated within the confines of the nation State. The dynamic which
consisted of struggles - creation of inflation - balancing of state
budgets - pressure on welfare - breaking of the material elements of
the
bourgeois constitution, led gradually to two things: first, a theory of
the
limits of democracy (and strangely here we find that same Huntington
who
wrote about the "clash" of civilisations in a document of the
Trilateral
Commission back in the 1970s), and then a powerful push towards going
beyond
the nation State.

"On the other hand the nation State was more than just the capacity to
contain struggles and regulate them domestically. The nation State was
also
the imperialist State, the colonialist State. Here too, in the second
half
of the twentieth century we have the definitive end of the colonial
process,
the birth of a new world (which came to be know as the "Third" World),
in
which the drive for freedom and pressures on the wage explode the
mechanism
which had controlled the prices of raw materials. Precisely in the name
of
this liberation, we begin to see these huge pressures of labour-power
on
everything, at the global level. Not to mention the crisis of the
Soviet
Union - which happens at the precise moment when it became necessary to
shift from the Fordist mode of production to the post-Fordist mode of
production: a transition which is impossible when the worker has no
freedoms. This extremely powerful movement is linked to the development
of
science, of public education within the socialist countries, where
there is
a necessity of inserting into this new world. A new world in which,
precisely, the nature of labour-power and of the productive processes
is
changing.

"At its birth, therefore, globalisation is an extremely positive
element. It
is a sign of freedom, a sign of the strength of the historical
processes
which are blowing apart the hellish cage which is the nation State. The
nation State, which for centuries has sent people to be killed in the
most
stupid wars, in the madness of the trenches. The nation State, whose
ideology leads inevitably to the gages of Auschwitz. Faced with the end
of
the nation State, and the liberation of the proletarian forces of the
Third
World, we found this remarkable moment of transition: globalisation.
Finally! Obviously the fact of claiming this transition does not mean
that
capital has been defeated. Capital takes this transition on board,
reorganises itself at that level, and it is here that the problem of
Empire
is born. Note carefully - the birth of Empire is something different
from
the pure and simple expansion of the USA as a nation State. The
Americans
are fully present in this whole story, particularly in the first phase,
but
they are present far more as a centre and apex of world capital that as
a
state-based force. It is collective capital which is involved in the
early
phases of the organisation of this world. Between the 1980s and 1990s
new
forms of government begin to be sought. The United Nations is no use
here,
because within the UN you have the paradox of the idea of world
democracy:
at the world level "one man one vote" is seen as a ridiculous notion.
It
would mean, as some theorists have jokingly observed, giving the
imperial
majority to China. Therefore the problem of organisation is resolved by
the
invention of a different form of sovereignty.

"Sovereignty, which the nation States prove incapable of organising in
a
different manner, is increasingly transferred towards a set of nascent
institutions, which gradually take shape, and gradually come to
establish
themselves at the world level: the Group of 8 (G8), the International
Monetary Fund, etc. They are basically organisations which were
invented for
the management of international Keynesianism at the end of World War
II, but
then became organisms of capitalist mediation, of capitalist regulation
at
the world level. This process obviously becomes increasingly
problematic,
because it shifts a series of conflicts from within individual
countries
onto the world stage. During the 1980s and 1990s we saw a recomposition
of
struggles on the world stage which was absolutely remarkable. There was
a
whole series of important struggles (from Tienanmen to South Korea,
from
Indonesia to Los Angeles, from Chiapas to the struggles in Paris in
1995)
which had identified world capitalist power as their adversary.
However
these were struggles in isolation. They did not constitute a cycle,
they
failed to achieve that mass thrust which only united struggles speaking
the
same language are able to generate.

"All that was created later, with the movement in Seattle, which was
able to
build opposition to imperial power at the same moment as that power was
being created. And therefore we saw a cycle of struggles which, while
still
superficial and full of limitations, was seen by international
capitalist
public opinion as a movement which was extremely dangerous to the
process of
formation of Empire. At this point a decision was required, as to what
to
do. One thing which we should avoid is to consider the American nation
as a
new imperialist State. It is not simply that! That element is also
present,
but the unity of the capitalist class today is absolutely fundamental.
There
is no longer the possibility of turning to the nation State as a way of
opposing America as the nation. The elites of the old nation States
have
been massively coopted to the upper reaches of the Empire.

"A large part of US discussions in the second half of the 1990s on the
handling of wars in the US are around the possibility that capitalist
capacity might intervene directly and powerfully in the reorganisation
of
Empire and the new world order, and initiate an acceleration of that
process. Hence the whole issue of Star Wars defence systems, which
becomes a
big mediation in relation to the need to determine the new order. As in
the
days of Byzantium there is an attempt to create a protected centre (the
USA
and the western countries) in which the accumulation of power is
demonstrated. All this - a last-ditch attempt to exclude the rest of
the
world - explodes on 11 September. And therefore it is war. But what
sort of
war? How can you make a war when there is no "outside"? So now we have
war
as "police" action. The American science of war was developing on the
one
hand around Star Wars, and on the other around the transformation of
armies
into rapid intervention forces with the ability to move instantaneously
to
any part of the world.

"The American army had to become an army of marines. Now what we face
is an
accumulation of all the technological, diplomatic, economic, financial
and
police instruments necessary for the organisation of this global world.
A
global world where, up until now, action by "big government" had seemed
to
be a thing of the past. They used to say: "big government is over", but
now
they say "big government is back". An overall function of government
process, of "governance", in other words of continuous administrative
action
which transcends within itself all preceding giuridical fixed points. A
dynamic process confuses the definition of rules and the guarantee of
rules,
which turns armies into the juridical instrument, the constitutive
instrument. That is what is happening.

"Today we are seeing the maturation of a process which already a few
years
ago could have been broadly foreseen. Obviously nobody could have
foreseen
the immediate causes of this process, but it was already fairly clear
that
the process would turn out like this, because it followed the
functional
rules of exploitation at the global level. What was required was to
invent a
model that was as effective as the nation States had been, and as the
international law of treaties had been. Other instruments needed to be
invented. If one looks at the techniques of constitutional
reorganisation
which are taking place now in order to deal with this great crisis, it
is
obvious that they have to be resisted. But how to resist? Where to
resist?
The answer is to resist from the point of view of the new world society
of
the workers, from the point of view of mobility. They will try to block
labour-power in its movements, but nobody will succeed in this. We have
to
resist the new hierarchies which will be imposed, we have to explode
them.
But is there really still the possibility of struggling in a world made
like
this, or would it not perhaps be worth deserting, in every sense?
Desert
with knowledge, desert in the army, desert in intellectual
labour-power.
That is what should be our starting point. Friends of mine are saying:
"against the art of war, the art of desertion".

"Maintaining a state based on fear, and forming it in Hobbesian terms,
as
Ferrajoli was saying, will be very difficult for them. But it will be
very
difficult only to the extent that we no longer creates ourselves as
"people"
but remain as "multitude". It is an intelligent multitude, which has
reappropriated labour to itself and which no longer has need of
capital. We
can no longer become "the people" [popolo]. People coincides with
sovereignty, which no longer makes sense at the level of globalisation.

[...]

"Desertion or conflict? I don't see the problem in terms of
alternatives.
This new form of global sovereignty brings with it an investment of
modes of
production, and above all of reproduction of life and of society. It is
for
that reason that we insist on calling imperial power biopower, and we
define
the power of life and labour as a fabric of biopolitics. Labour [work,
lavoro] has now become a social fabric, in which life, education and
training, waged labour, communication, social cooperation are all
subject to
exploitation. It is over this global exploitation of life that biopower
is
exercised. It is here that we find ourselves faced with the choice of
desertion, or better, of exodus. There is no longer the possibility of
classic sabotage, or of a Luddite refusal, because we are right inside
it.
Nowadays workers carry their instruments of labour inside their own
heads -
so how is one to refuse work, or sabotage work? Should one commit
suicide?
Work is our dignity.

"The refusal of work was imaginable in a Fordist society, but today it
becomes increasingly less thinkable. There is the refusal of command
over
work, but that is quite another thing. When we talk about exodus, we
are
trying successfully to construct new forms of life. This type of
capitalist
society will become violently institutionalised through constituent
mechanisms of war. We don't want any more of it! We can't go and
demonstrate
against the G-8 saying "another world is possible" and then not
practise, in
practical terms, an exodus. An exodus which will inevitably be
conflictual,
because they will come and try and force you to obey. But we have to
pose
the question in these terms. I understand the very fine constituent,
juridical, enlightenment idealism of Ferrajoli. But I understand it
only on
the basis of this radicality of choices. If you force me into a
reinventing
democracy for myself, I won't go along with that. I have had enough of
a
democracy which fitted perfectly with capitalism. Today it no longer
fits,
because power cannot be reproduced globally in the same form and
according
to the same criteria of profit which operated at the national level,
and
therefore they proceed to war. A war which has its effect on the
everyday.
The parable of biological warfare is a terrible parable, a metaphor of
what
Power is becoming. It is on this terrain that we ought to be talking
about
the Empire.

"Hardt and I have perhaps used a method which is a bit mechanistic in
translating the workerist (operaista) schema to the international
level, but
what was satisfying was to find the whole of post-colonial literature
aligned with our position. The whole of the great Indian school
functions in
these terms!

"The concept of multitude. From the scientific point of view it is
still
very young as a concept. We are launching it in order to see if it
works.
But when, in defining the new proletariat, we speak of multitude, we
are
speaking of a plurality of subjects, of a movement in which cooperating
singularities are at work. There is an absolutely huge difference with
the
concept of class. The multitude works, is completely exploited, but it
puts
itself together through the Net, through connections, through
cooperation
and language. The multitude has a multipicity which is productive and
constituent, all elements which can also be referred back to classical
Marxist categories: to the modification of labour-power within real
subsumption, in the passage of general intellect into production. The
concept of multitude is therefore used here as an instrument. But what
might
its political relevance be? On this terrain I think that we are living
through an enormous primitive accumulation at the world level. To give
an
image of what is happening from the point of view of subjectivity, the
best
that we have is an image taken from Lucretian primitive materialism:
there
is a great movement of particles, atoms, singularities, which are
putting
themselves together and building here and there. It is clear that this
new
flesh of the proletariat has to become body, and that it can become
body
only on the basis of a theos ["god"], on the basis of a
self-organisation
which declares that it will have nothing more to do with democracy, and
also
with socialism - in other words with the forms of democratic and
socialist
management of capital.

"The general situation in which we find ourselves is not at all
pleasant. It
seems to me that the war into which we are entering is far more similar
to
the Thirty Years War, with its massacres - a kind of state of nature.
This
engine of constitution which Empire is assuming and which it calls war
is
producing catastrophes."

Ends

[Trans note: This text may or may not have been transcribed from a live
recording of the event. I do not know. It was also translated on the
back of
a bus, so there may be translation infelicities. For which je m'excuse
en
avance.]"