Michael Hardt, "Rather Barbarism Than Socialism!"

An Interview with Sweden's Arbetaren

A conversation with Michael Hardt about immaterial labor, the role of labor unions, barbarism vs. socialism, and how to formulate "actively pedagogical" demands, from this week's issue of the Swedish Syndicalist weekly Arbetaren.

It's really not too common that a brick-sized, theory-filled communist book gets so widely discussed as Empire – a globalization-bible turning many traditional conceptions of what the left "should" think about globalisation, the state and socialism upside-down. The book has received both praise and criticism from unexpected directions. Arbetaren met Michael Hardt, one of the authors, for a talk about Empire and multitude, barbarism and socialism, immaterial labor and the role of unions.

It was in the mid-80's that Michael Hardt, now professor in literature at Duke University in New York, started his cooperation with Italian Marxist Antonio Negri. Their common writings didn't get too much attention outside small leftist circles, but with the publication of Empire, something completely different happened.

The book sold out several times and sparked long discussions about the declining role of national states and about how imperialism has been replaced by "Empire". But that's just one part of its message.

Empire's big synthesis of autonomist marxism and poststructuralist philosophy, with references to everything from early christian movements, via Spinoza, to the syndicalist labor union IWW, is hardly something that can be summed up in a couple of sentences.

But the book has apparently filled an empty space. Maybe because it's one of few works seriously trying to grasp and name the approaching world order, not as "post"-something but as something new -- and this from a left-perspective that consistently refuses to nostalgically look backwards for something that was before, but instead views globalization as something opening up new possibilities to abolish capitalism. Instead of regarding people as passive victims of the whims of capital, Hardt and Negri turns things the other way around: it is the working class that gives rise to all society's dynamic and through its acting creates all new phenomena that capital then tries to turn to its advantage.

Empire starts dryly with discussing the role of the UN and 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes' ideas about the state -- but then heats gradually during its 400 pages and at the end appears more like a bubbling optimistic visionary anthem with the famous concluding phrase: "This is the irrepressible lightness and joy of being communist".

"I'm really surprised that Empire has become so popular in the USA, not just in the left but also in the mainstream media, since it's an outspoken communist book," Michael Hardt says.

That communist books get praised by the New York Times as well as the editorial page of Expressen [a Swedish liberal tabloid] is definitely not usual. But the message that Empire's spreading is maybe not what one could expect. Apart from the many new terms introduced, some other expected words are completely absent in the book. "Revolution" is one of them.

"I don't regard the revolution / reform distinction as too useful. Maybe that's why we don't use the word. But of course liberation must include some kind of revolutionary process, even though we cannot predict aforehand how such a process will look," says Hardt.

Another non-word in Empire is "socialism", which amongst orthodox marxists normally means a stage following capitalism and leading to communism. Michael Hardt is sceptical of such stageism, and also of seeing a strong state as a mean for liberation. "Socialism usually means a strengthening of the state's power and state property, while communism is at least a process aiming for abolishing the state. Traditionally, socialism has been compatible or allied with national sovereignty, while the communist project, as we understand it, is antagonistic towards state power."

"So what about the working class seizing the means of production?"

"The goal remains but today it means something different, richer and more complicated than before."

According to Michael Hardt, the means of production today more and more tends to be about the workers' own ability to communicate and produce knowledge and affects. But this does not mean that capitalist alienation has disappeared, but on the contrary, it has became more treacherous.

The border between worktime and leisure time is dissolving, while the whole society turns into a "social factory". More and more of what's produced are things that cannot be weighed, measured or quantified, and work itself is beginning to be something "beyond measure".

"Immaterial labor" is a central concept in Empire. It can easily be misunderstood as referring to mainly programmers, advertising guys and cultural workers, but should according to Michael Hardt be viewed in a larger perspective.

A fast-food worker at McDonalds does not only produce burgers but also has to smile and make the customer feel good. But many people do not understand the immaterial aspects of their labor, and therefore have problems with specifying the exploitation they're experiencing.

Michael Hardt is reasoning in the same way as when Marx tried to understand industrial capitalism during an epoch when most people still worked in agriculture. Today, Hardt says, immaterial labor represents the dominant sector of the economy.

"We don't say that it's dominating in quantitative terms, as numbers of people employed, but in qualitative terms. In each historical period there is one dominating sector that colours the others. Today its information production that forces industry and even agriculture to "informatize".

"But is the significance of immaterial labor really something new? Activities dominated by women, such as medical care and upbringing, have always been about producing an immaterial product."

"Absolutely. Much of our work draws inspiration from the important feminist debates in the 70's about unwaged homework. What's new is the dominant position of immaterial labor in society."

All the changes in the organization of work should mean that unionist struggle has to investigate new territories. But in Empire the authors instead point at the syndicalist union IWW, with its golden days in the early 20th century, as a model for today's activists.

"We chosed IWW because they tried to organize around new forms of labor, cause they tried to work at an international level and cause they organised mainly immigrants talking lots of different languages."

"What should today's unions pay attention to?"

"One task is to find an organising form suiting the new forms of labor, like precarious and informal labor. Another challenge is to become active at an non-national level, both by organizing immigrants talking other languages than the native workers and by not only solidarize with workers in other parts of the world but also directly organize with them."

Michael Hardt mentions alternative unions, like the French SUD and Italian Cobas, as positive examples.

Despite the interest in unionist struggle, "working class" is also one of the words that the reader of Empire has to search in vain for. Instead, Hardt and Negri write about "the multitude" [which, by the way, is almost impossible to translate into swedish; but it seems like the best term is "myllret", meaning something like "the swarm"]. That term is used to describe the multiplicity of all the people exploited by capital, not only the white, male factory workers that, according to Michael Hardt, the word "working class" has come to signify.

"The multitude is not only about fragmentation, it is a subject acting in common. We're not trying to invent something that's not already existing. Unions in particular have for a long time tried to account for the multiplicity of working people."

Another label for some of the Empire's opponents is "the new barbarians". Michael Hardt explains that it has to do with the fact that the fall of the Roman empire is typically used as a metaphor in Empire (for example, the universalist ambition of the early christian movement is compared to that of the IWW!) "Barbarian" originally meant someone whose language wasn't understandable, and Michael Hardt think that's a useful term when writing for example about subcultures.

"Today there's many manifestations of revolt that the traditional left cannot understand. "Who are these punks. What are those anarchists doing?" Usually they're rejected with phrases like "that's just cultural, not political", says Michael Hardt, who doesn't think that the marxist distinction base-superstructure is very relevant today.

"So what's your answer to the classical question 'socialism or barbarism'?"

"Barbarism! Absolutely barbarism!" (laughing).

The language in Empire has been criticised for being extremely vague and indistinct.

"Empire as analysis of the contemporary form of global power was relatively well-articulated in the book, while the other concept, the Multitude, remained at a kind of poetic level. Therefore Antonio Negri and I are now working on a book dealing with more concrete questions of resistance, organizing and alternatives. The preliminary title is just 'Multitude'."

When Empire was discussed in the Swedish press almost all papers -- from Svenska Dagbladet [a right-wing daily] to Flamman [left-wing weekly] -- chose to focus on the parts of the book dealing with national sovereignty, completely bypassing the chapters about work and resistance. Both amongst Empire's critics and praisers, most people seem to have read it as a work of political science, rather than as a political and philosophic manifesto.

Michael Hardt claims that it's inevitable that books take a life of their own after publishing, but strongly dislikes the attempts to use Empire against the movement that he sees himself as a part of. At the time of the demonstrations in Genoa, some people tried to attack alleged "anti-globalists" by referring to the book's positive attitude to globalisation.

"The book messes up some traditional conceptions about what it means to be left or right in the globalisation debate. One chapter, warning against confidence in a strong state, is named after a neo-liberal slogan: 'Big government is over!' I see a distinction in the left of today. Some want to rebuild the kind of welfare we've seen before, while others look forward, outside the state, for more autonomous forms of community production.

"What's your opinion on a movement like ATTAC, that wants to give back some power over financial flows to the nation-states?"

"Such a demand can be a good pedagogic tool. It's about what Fredric Jameson calls 'cognitive mapping'. But the Tobin tax does not solve any problems at all, and I don't think it's the most important for ATTAC's members. As I've understood it, the French leadership of ATTAC stands really close to nationalism, while the grassroots members are closer to the globalisation movements."

Michael Hardt talks about how it can be a danger for radical movements to accept the media pressure to deliver ten-point programs with demands about, for example, how the WTO should be reformed.

Empire gives us three rather abstract demands: a "global citizenship" with free movement across the borders, the right to a "social wage" independent of work and the "reappropriation of the means of production"-- which accordingly more and more has become a part of the workers' own minds.

"Should these three demands also be seen as merely pedagogical tools?"

"Yes, but at the same time as goals to fight for, with the knowledge that we maybe cannot achieve them in a way that we can anticipate today. All demands have to be not only pedagocical in a passive way, but actively pedagogical, so that the struggle for them reveals the nature of the powers that stand in the way of their realization, allow us to see what kinds of changes that are needed, and makes us understand the radicality of the problem.

Interview by Rasmus Fleischer (rasmus.fleischer@arbetaren.se)

With reservation for fatal translation errors (English editing by Jim Fleming)

Originally published in Arbetaren 12/2002.

Arbetaren is a swedish weekly, published by the revolutionary syndicalist union SAC