Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 23:53:40 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: AUT: Putting Negri to the Test (My Response)


Scott,  the first suggestion I would make to your
buddies...and you for that matter...is to go back and
actually read that interview....I translated it and it
took a lot of effort on my part to do a good job.  The
least you guys could do is read it closely or not read
it at all.  I have no problems with your trying to
verify or discredit Negri's points...but first, you
need to try and understand them.
> 
> Lou P:
> > The Russians are "succeeding"? Okay, sure, why
> not.
> And right behind them the Saudis and any other third
> world country that is barely managing to stay
> afloat,

Of course Negri was not talking about the Russian
people, who are destitute.  He is talking about the
Russian power brokers.  We can see that post 9/11
Russia has really come out the winner.  You want me to
name the reasons:

1)Jackson-Vannik is going to be repealed
2)Russia will get accelerated entrance to WTO
3) Germany is on the verge of writing off Soviet era
debt
4) Strengthened influence over Central Asian countries
5) Taliban and Al Qaeda, who were funding the Chechen
militants have been totally dismantled in the first
instance and suffered a huge setback in the second.


> > 
> The US is unquestionably the dominant global player,
> like Lou noted.  How anyone can say there is just
> some
> amorphous 'empire' not based on a nation-state would
> be unbelievable,

First of all, Negri does not deny that the US is in a
privleged position.  However, I suspect that you and
your pals might want to read a book on International
Finance, if you still believe that there is not a lot
of money that is subject to no state intervention. 
It's a bit dated but check out Howard Wachtel's "The
Money Mandarins".  

 except for the fact that it comes
> out
> of the mouth of a university professor.  If you're a
> university professor you can say anything and some
> easily impressed people will believe you.

Well, I can see that your friend is as obsessed with
University Professors as Lou Proyect.  One suspects
that Lou (and maybe his epigone, your friend Phil)
is suffering from some kind of inferiority complex in
regards to University Professors.  I mean, Lou's main
argument, when challenging an academic, is to say that
the person in question would have no legitimacy, if it
were not for the fact that he was a Professor.

It is true that sometimes Professors get groupies that
will accept anything they say.  My suspicion is that
Lou is just super jealous of that power and prestige. 
Apparently he does have a few sychophants though.  I
suspect Phil may be one of them.

Also, let's not forget, no matter where we stand on
Negri's theories, that he did not just spend his time
in some lofty ivory towers, but took part in building
a
political movement in Italy, taught courses on Capital
to factory workers, and has been railroaded by the
Italian "Justice" System.  I wonder if Lou and Phil
can claim as much.
> 
> It is also crap to say that the Europeans always
> march
> in step with Washington.  This has generally been
> true
> *only* of Britain, and only then in relatively
> recent
> times. 


If Phil had read the interview, he would not have
quoted this out of context.  Here is the quote:

<<Since the early 70s, every time Europe-and I am not
talking about the BIG EUROPEAN capitalists who always
march in step with their American peers, but rather
the EUROPEAN CLASS OF LEADERS-every time Europe tries
to build up, as it sometimes does, its institutions
(monetary or military), it gets systematically dragged
down into an international crisis >>

So,  Negri here admits that european governments
(EUROPEAN CLASS OF LEADERS) sometimes do not march in
line with America.  It is the BIG EUROPEAN CAPITALISTS
and the American big capitalists that he says march in
step.  Of course
Lou, and I assume Phil, think that there is an
identity between government and capital, so they fail
to see the nuances in the above quote.

> 
> Negri, it seems to me, is blind to the *key
> features*
> of the whole world order.

Perhaps, but Phil is obviously blind to what was said
in the interview.  The above quotation proves that.


> As for his stuff about the multitide, this is just
> vulgar bourgeois sociology - vulgar because more
> sophisticated bourgeois sociology actually
> understands that it is useful to use the category of
> class.
> 

First of all, I find the use of the word "vulgar" by
an acolyte of Lou Proyect to be like the "pot calling
the kettle black".  Second of all, "multitude" might
sound like political babble to them, but it is
actually a rather nuanced term.  Unable to define it
properly in a short space, but it has to do with
recognizing fine distinctions in the movements against
capitalism and allowing those distinctions to exist
autonomously...rather than subsuming all of those
groups under the narrow umbrella of a vanguard party.

Of course, I guess that Phil made no attempt to
research what Negri, Virno and others mean by
"Multitude".  But because he hadn't read the word
in one of his Marxist-Leninist primers, he decided it
was just "sophisticated bourgeois sociology".

Now, Scott, I am sending you a Word formatted copy of
the Negri interview.  It's a lot easier to read than
the email version or even the autonomedia website
version.  I am sending it to you because it is
apparent that neither of you three have bothered to
read it.  I will also try and pass on a short lexicon
of words...and I think there is a definition of
"Multitude" therein.  

Ciao,

Thomas

===="The tradition of all the dead generations
 weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living"

-Karl Marx

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