Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2004). NY: The Penguin Press.
Empire is referred to as a new global sovereignty ruled by a network power, which consists of dominant nation-states as its primary nodes along with supranational institutions, major capital corporations and other smaller powers, just like the Internet, a distributed network. The combination of these elements constitutes a global order, which is characterized with unequal participation at all levels and a global state of war. Multitude, an alternative concept to this, preserves differences while seeking to communicate and act in common. Here the authors suggest two faces to globalization. One is the spread of hierarchy and conflicts spread by Empire and the other is the creation of networks for cooperation that preserves both difference and commonality (Preface). [Thus, globalization is a contemporary Janus, which has two faces looking at two different directions.]
WAR
By the global state of war, the authors mean that war is becoming a 'permanent social relation' and the 'primary organizing principle of society' (p.12). Thus, war is ubiquitous and 'indistinguishable from police activity' (p.14). The U.S. exceptionalism adds complexity to this perpetual status of exception. The current war carries out a new concept of 'just war', as seen in medieval period, and this concept is allied with evil, which implies the constant presence of an unidentifiable enemy. But this 'fleeting' enemy should illustrate 'what power saves us from' rather than 'what power is' and demonstrates the need of security. The notion shift from defense to security of the U.S. has justified U.S. preemptive wars, wars against terrorism, and legitimate the biopower of war on both destructive--built on massive death--and constructive--as seen in the notion of 'nation building'. In this discourse, nations become 'contingent' or 'accidental' such that they can be 'fabricated'. To keep the global order, nation fabrication is mandatory because the order depends on national authorities in the newly invented nations (p.23), thus security is employed in a form of biopower and the power is productive. Thus, the current post-modern wars, unlike premodern wars which sought to replace the old order, aims to reproduce and regulate the exisitng orders. In addition, the tendency that the legitimacy of violence is evaluated on a posteriori based on result (p.30) collapses distinctions between legitimate wars and illegitimate wars and other categories. BUT the only clear distinction lies between violence to preserve the global order and violence to threaten the order (p.32).[pp.3-35]
Post-modern wars, which resembles pre-modern wars, are constant, ubiquitous and small, and are conducted upon biopower, which gears toward production of the enemy through destruction and aims for full-spectrum dominance to gain consent from the dominated while keeping its sovereign power. This dilemma leaves room for insurgencies or resistance, which has a form of guerilla, polycentric network. In order to face this new form of rebellion, the U.S., imperial power, needs network power based on intelligence by connecting other dominant powers to maintain the order even in a national level, thus dominant nation-state's administrations are run on the basis of imperial interest (pp. 36-62). [Thus, disturbing the information at all levels of distributed networks will be a threat to the global order.]
The contemporary labor relations are under the hegemony of "immaterial labor", which produces information, knowledges, images, relationships and affects, and its impact on all aspects of society and network forms give birth to the "multitude," which stimulates resistance to the global state of war (p.65-67). Modern forms of resistance moved from centralized people's army through polycentric guerilla strategies to distributed network structure. In particular, the globalization movements show a democratic aspect of resistance in that different organizations act in common on the basis of what they have in common, as seen in Seattle in 1999. This distributed network structure is democratic and the most powerful tool to fight against the dominant power (p.88)." The legitimation of the global order is based fundamentally on wars"(p.90), thus resisting wars means resisting the order. [What is the global order legitimized through wars?] (pp. 63--95).
MULTITUDE
The authors pay a great attention on the political hegemonic shift from industrial workers to immaterial workers in contemporary capitalist production, because it tends to create an organization of communication and collaboration of labor and the new order of production can be the basis of multitude. The multitude, built on both singularity and commonality as a form of distributed network, is a political concept aiming to struggle against Empire and toward democracy (pp.140-153; pp.219-227). Studies of modern political forms have focused on a unified sovereignty posed on social life, and this trend continues in the study of globalization such that global political bodies, such as WTO, IMF, the World Bank, and UN, sought after a 'global constitutional order' resemble a form of the modern nation-state sovereign structure. But these global bodies have limitations in that by continuing to govern all societal elements in a political body, they necessarily reduce the singularities among subelemenets, which is against democracy (p.162). Moreover, because the fundamental puspose of these organizations is to preserve an order for capital global market, they cannot serve as a counteract against the global order (p.175). In particular the IMF, which runs based on votes propotional to monetary contributions, demonstrates this tendency most coherently by dictating a neolibral formula or Washington Consensus, such as privatization and the reduction of pubic welfare (p.172-173). The supranational economic institutions cooperate local officials and corporate leaders to maintain and reproduce the global economic order (p.176).
The contemporary transition is characterized as "denationalization", which explains the process that states act toward global power structure instead of national interests while maintaining its economical and legal state power (Sassen, Saskia, 2002, The State and Globalization, in The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance. Cambridge Univ Press; cited on p.163). The authors call the state of global exploitation and economic hierarchies "global apartheid," where global divisions of labor and power persist (p.166). In this regard, "nation building" or "democratic transition", as in Afghanistan and Iraq, is to build a regime that subordinately functions within the global economic and political system, and the current examples are fundamentally to integrate the former Soviet Union's economies into the global capital market (p.179).
Privatization of immaterial properties, such as knowledge, information, network, natural resources, and so forth, threatens the productivity of the multitude. For instance, patent [-- which seems to be governed by the U.S. court--] serves as a mechanism to brings wealth from the global south, which has wealthy natural resources, to the global north, who drives knowledge from the resource and privatizes it, because nature is considered the common heritage of mankind and thus patent is not granted to the global south who own the nature (p.183). Likewise, knowledge produced in a traditional way generation after generation is considered as the human common heritage, thus not protected, but it is only after turning the knowledge to an individual private commodity through the patent system. Today, although it is commonly agreed that knowledge is produced collectively not individually, increasing private ownership of knowledge and information, which is based on the notion that knowledge is private property produced by individual labor, thwarts, once acclaimed, the openness of the Internet and hinders innovation (p.185-188) [pp.179-188]
Immaterial labor is characterized with linguistic performance and constant adaptation to unstable context. The generic power to speak makes the labor communicative and every linguistic act forms the common (pp. 196-202). "The common does not refer to traditional notions of either the community or the public; it is based on the communication among singularities and emerges through the collaborative social processes of production. Whereas the individual dissolves in the unity of the community, singularities are not diminished but express themselves freely in the common" (p.204).
Whereas components in the economic realm tend to be privatized, in the social, everything are open to public and subject to government surveillance and control (p0.202-203). Against this dominant power, global struggles take a mobilization of the common in the form of a distributed network. The movement in Seattle in 1999 is an example, where otherwise oppositional organizations acted together for the common without any unifying structure. Another example is struggles against the economic crisis in Argentina in 2001 and continuing revolts in various forms from factory workers who decided to run the factories and political debates among citizens to the unemployed. Although the movements were at a national level, the struggles were sprung against the global exploitation system in line with the global struggles (pp.211-218).
[What about thereafter the IMF in Korea in 1997? What movements existed at a corporate/governmental/grass-root level?]
Empire is referred to as a new global sovereignty ruled by a network power, which consists of dominant nation-states as its primary nodes along with supranational institutions, major capital corporations and other smaller powers, just like the Internet, a distributed network. The combination of these elements constitutes a global order, which is characterized with unequal participation at all levels and a global state of war. Multitude, an alternative concept to this, preserves differences while seeking to communicate and act in common. Here the authors suggest two faces to globalization. One is the spread of hierarchy and conflicts spread by Empire and the other is the creation of networks for cooperation that preserves both difference and commonality (Preface). [Thus, globalization is a contemporary Janus, which has two faces looking at two different directions.]
WAR
By the global state of war, the authors mean that war is becoming a 'permanent social relation' and the 'primary organizing principle of society' (p.12). Thus, war is ubiquitous and 'indistinguishable from police activity' (p.14). The U.S. exceptionalism adds complexity to this perpetual status of exception. The current war carries out a new concept of 'just war', as seen in medieval period, and this concept is allied with evil, which implies the constant presence of an unidentifiable enemy. But this 'fleeting' enemy should illustrate 'what power saves us from' rather than 'what power is' and demonstrates the need of security. The notion shift from defense to security of the U.S. has justified U.S. preemptive wars, wars against terrorism, and legitimate the biopower of war on both destructive--built on massive death--and constructive--as seen in the notion of 'nation building'. In this discourse, nations become 'contingent' or 'accidental' such that they can be 'fabricated'. To keep the global order, nation fabrication is mandatory because the order depends on national authorities in the newly invented nations (p.23), thus security is employed in a form of biopower and the power is productive. Thus, the current post-modern wars, unlike premodern wars which sought to replace the old order, aims to reproduce and regulate the exisitng orders. In addition, the tendency that the legitimacy of violence is evaluated on a posteriori based on result (p.30) collapses distinctions between legitimate wars and illegitimate wars and other categories. BUT the only clear distinction lies between violence to preserve the global order and violence to threaten the order (p.32).[pp.3-35]
Post-modern wars, which resembles pre-modern wars, are constant, ubiquitous and small, and are conducted upon biopower, which gears toward production of the enemy through destruction and aims for full-spectrum dominance to gain consent from the dominated while keeping its sovereign power. This dilemma leaves room for insurgencies or resistance, which has a form of guerilla, polycentric network. In order to face this new form of rebellion, the U.S., imperial power, needs network power based on intelligence by connecting other dominant powers to maintain the order even in a national level, thus dominant nation-state's administrations are run on the basis of imperial interest (pp. 36-62). [Thus, disturbing the information at all levels of distributed networks will be a threat to the global order.]
The contemporary labor relations are under the hegemony of "immaterial labor", which produces information, knowledges, images, relationships and affects, and its impact on all aspects of society and network forms give birth to the "multitude," which stimulates resistance to the global state of war (p.65-67). Modern forms of resistance moved from centralized people's army through polycentric guerilla strategies to distributed network structure. In particular, the globalization movements show a democratic aspect of resistance in that different organizations act in common on the basis of what they have in common, as seen in Seattle in 1999. This distributed network structure is democratic and the most powerful tool to fight against the dominant power (p.88)." The legitimation of the global order is based fundamentally on wars"(p.90), thus resisting wars means resisting the order. [What is the global order legitimized through wars?] (pp. 63--95).
MULTITUDE
The authors pay a great attention on the political hegemonic shift from industrial workers to immaterial workers in contemporary capitalist production, because it tends to create an organization of communication and collaboration of labor and the new order of production can be the basis of multitude. The multitude, built on both singularity and commonality as a form of distributed network, is a political concept aiming to struggle against Empire and toward democracy (pp.140-153; pp.219-227). Studies of modern political forms have focused on a unified sovereignty posed on social life, and this trend continues in the study of globalization such that global political bodies, such as WTO, IMF, the World Bank, and UN, sought after a 'global constitutional order' resemble a form of the modern nation-state sovereign structure. But these global bodies have limitations in that by continuing to govern all societal elements in a political body, they necessarily reduce the singularities among subelemenets, which is against democracy (p.162). Moreover, because the fundamental puspose of these organizations is to preserve an order for capital global market, they cannot serve as a counteract against the global order (p.175). In particular the IMF, which runs based on votes propotional to monetary contributions, demonstrates this tendency most coherently by dictating a neolibral formula or Washington Consensus, such as privatization and the reduction of pubic welfare (p.172-173). The supranational economic institutions cooperate local officials and corporate leaders to maintain and reproduce the global economic order (p.176).
The contemporary transition is characterized as "denationalization", which explains the process that states act toward global power structure instead of national interests while maintaining its economical and legal state power (Sassen, Saskia, 2002, The State and Globalization, in The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance. Cambridge Univ Press; cited on p.163). The authors call the state of global exploitation and economic hierarchies "global apartheid," where global divisions of labor and power persist (p.166). In this regard, "nation building" or "democratic transition", as in Afghanistan and Iraq, is to build a regime that subordinately functions within the global economic and political system, and the current examples are fundamentally to integrate the former Soviet Union's economies into the global capital market (p.179).
Privatization of immaterial properties, such as knowledge, information, network, natural resources, and so forth, threatens the productivity of the multitude. For instance, patent [-- which seems to be governed by the U.S. court--] serves as a mechanism to brings wealth from the global south, which has wealthy natural resources, to the global north, who drives knowledge from the resource and privatizes it, because nature is considered the common heritage of mankind and thus patent is not granted to the global south who own the nature (p.183). Likewise, knowledge produced in a traditional way generation after generation is considered as the human common heritage, thus not protected, but it is only after turning the knowledge to an individual private commodity through the patent system. Today, although it is commonly agreed that knowledge is produced collectively not individually, increasing private ownership of knowledge and information, which is based on the notion that knowledge is private property produced by individual labor, thwarts, once acclaimed, the openness of the Internet and hinders innovation (p.185-188) [pp.179-188]
Immaterial labor is characterized with linguistic performance and constant adaptation to unstable context. The generic power to speak makes the labor communicative and every linguistic act forms the common (pp. 196-202). "The common does not refer to traditional notions of either the community or the public; it is based on the communication among singularities and emerges through the collaborative social processes of production. Whereas the individual dissolves in the unity of the community, singularities are not diminished but express themselves freely in the common" (p.204).
Whereas components in the economic realm tend to be privatized, in the social, everything are open to public and subject to government surveillance and control (p0.202-203). Against this dominant power, global struggles take a mobilization of the common in the form of a distributed network. The movement in Seattle in 1999 is an example, where otherwise oppositional organizations acted together for the common without any unifying structure. Another example is struggles against the economic crisis in Argentina in 2001 and continuing revolts in various forms from factory workers who decided to run the factories and political debates among citizens to the unemployed. Although the movements were at a national level, the struggles were sprung against the global exploitation system in line with the global struggles (pp.211-218).
[What about thereafter the IMF in Korea in 1997? What movements existed at a corporate/governmental/grass-root level?]
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