The Imperialist Backlash on Empire Antonio Negri interviewed by Ida Dominijanni Translated by Arianna Bove/ Erik Empson
(full interview at: http://slash.autonomedia.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/17/1347223) Q. How do you explain it? [9/11] A. S11 occurred the moment when the conservatives were gaining ground in the U.S. through the program of safeguarding national interests that were penalised by the political economic and social process of construction of empire. The group that went to power with Bush is exquisitely reactionary, linked to a populist rather than ultra-liberalist ideology and to the maintainence of certain mega structures of American power such as control of energy and the development of the industrial military complex. These people have remained sidelined to the third industrial revolution and do not want to take it further, they are hostile to it since the new economy has gone into crisis, and they have no hypothesis of alternative in mind other than a return to reliance on tradition. REPLY: This is an amazing amount of crapola coming from somebody who has pretensions to Marxism. For Negri the Bush presidency is the class expression of some beleaguered fraction of national capital holding out against the inexorable process of globalization in a fashion that evokes the protectionist bourgeoisie around Pat Buchanan, especially textile magnate Roger Millken. In reality, there were no class differences between the Bush and Gore candidacies. They both express the agenda of Wall Street banking, big aerospace corporations, oil, steel, computer technology and all the rest. From Negri's rather quaint description, one would gather that Bush was supported by romantic reactionaries rather than firms like Goldman-Sachs that was the 11th largest contributor to his campaign. Q. Can anything happen at the electoral level? In November there will be elections for Congress in the U.S. It is not secondary whether Bush wins or loses. A. Obviously everyone hopes that the Democrats win, however weak and minimal the alternative that they would be capable of is… REPLY: Really? The revolutionary left is utterly indifferent to whether Republicans or Democrats win. Negri's hopes for Democratic victories reminds me of the late 1960s, when "peace candidate" supporters mounted some of the most outrageous ultraleft behavior in order to pressure the ruling class into accepting their favorites, especially in the streets of Chicago. Q. Last but not least. Empire is not an anti-American book even though it does not under estimate the weight of the U.S. in imperial strategies. We cannot hide though that today, also due to the stupidity of the reactionary strategy of Bush, on the left anti-americanism grows even amongst the anti-globalisation movement itself. This seems to me a confused, wrong and even dangerous position, to you? A. I completely agree as it is obvious from what I have clearly said so far, I am extremely critical of the American government and any sensical person could not be otherwise. But to think that Bush's government is America does not make any sense. Despite all that is happening, American society is still a completely open machine. Therefore even if Bush's project is monocratic and imperialist it is wrong to regard the United States as such as monocratic and imperialist. But there is more: the anti-american position coincides with a position of reevalutation and defense of the nation state as the anti-imperialist trench -- this is a temptation not extraneous to some sections of the movement of movements, as we have seen in Porto Alegre. However this would really be a wrong posture since it would prevent an understanding of how the world is made, who has got the command and who can subvert it. REPLY: How sad that our autonomist comrades would even pose the word "anti-americanism", especially since people like Todd Gitlin, Christopher Hitchens, Marc Cooper and Michael Berube use it and similar expressions regularly as a cudgel against the radical movement. Even sadder is Negri's response. Contrary to the good professor, it is completely right to regard BOTH Bush and the USA as imperialist. (I leave aside the question of whether it is 'monocratic'--this neologism does not appear in Oxford, nor can I really decipher what he means.) More to the point, imperialism is not really a policy that Bush or Gore would "carry out" after being elected. It is instead the latest stage of capitalism that can only be reversed by proletarian revolution and not by "refusal to work" nor miscegenation by the multitude. Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
