Empire and Imperialism: A Critical Reading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

Empire & Imperialism

A Critical Reading of Michael HardL and Antonio Negri AnUO A BORON 'THIS MOST 1'�ENCH4""T "NO D[VASTATING CRITIQUE 01 Hardr anr1 Ne gr l ' s mlstai<en Clnd conl(JsecinOllons 01 a dcterrtlOllillt/e on d po\\el ful hOille slate political econo m\ . ana muel, elst'

the dangers of a�olrJlI'g

ThIS liook. (In a numlwr of IJInguaps), lnefuellng Stall, CapittlUsm

tJnd DDrlocrocy in Latill America (1995). His particular interat i5 the

relationship � IlatH. markets and d� durin, the prOCftS of neo-liberaI rntructuring. 10 2004 he was awarded lhto Cay de las America. Prize for 'Empirr' tlrullmp�rltlIJ.m.

ATILIO A. BORON

Empire and imperialism critical rcading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri A

lrilnslalnl by Jessica Casiro

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Contents

Acknowledgements I vill Prc£acC' I t Prologue to the English-language edition I 6 I

On perspectives, the limits of viliibility and blind spots I �3

2

Tbe constitution oftbe empire

3

I �6

Markets. transnationa1 corporations and national

economies I 42 4

Alternative visions oBhe empire

J

The nation-state and the Issue of sOllereignty I 73

6

111(' unsolved mystery of the multitude I 87

7

I 58

Notes for a sociology of revolutiona", thinking in times

of defeat I gB •

111e persistence of imperialism I 1 11

Epilogue 1111

Bibliography I 115 Index of proper names Geneml index 1136

I

130

Acknowledgements

A number of people have read all or pan of the ma nu­

script, making possible the completion of this book. Special thanks are due to Ivana Brighenti, Florencia F.nghel, Jorge Fraga, Sabrina Gonzaln, Bellina In'y, Migud Rossi, Jose Seoane, Emilio Taddei and Andrea

Vlahusic for their encouragement, comml'nl5 and criticism. Jessica Casiro did a superb job of translating the I1Ilher baroque original Spanish into an austere but Mill lively Engtish. Of cou rliC , none oflhem should be blamed for the errors and short of racist and sexist theory are the expl icit enemies of t h i s new corporate c u l tu re' (p. 1 53). Because of this, global companies are anxious to include: d i ffe rence within their realm a n d t h u s aim to maximize crea· tivi[)" free play, a n d d iversity in the corporate wo rkpl ace. People of all d i fferent races, sexes, a n d

sex u al

orientat ions should

potentially be inclu ded in the corpora t io n ; the d ai ly routine of the work place should be rej u ve n a t c d with uncxpe("led changes and an

a t m os phe re

of fu n. Break down the old boundaries and

let o n e hund red f)owers bloom! (p. 1 53) After rcading these l ines, we cannot avoid asking to what extent corporations a re home 10 the relat ionships of prod uction; are the salaried exploited or, i n contrast, are they real earthly para d i ses? I t does not seem to req uire a management expen to conclude that the rosy description given by the a ut hors bears l i ttle relationship to rea l i ty, si nce sexism, racism and homophobia are practices that still enjoy enviable health in the postmodern global corporation. Maybe this i m proved corporate atmosphere has someth ing to do with the fact tha t, as reported i n the New England}oumal of Medi·

cine, d u ring the apogee of America n prosperity, 'African·American men in Harlem had less probabil i ties of reaching t he age of 65 than men i n Bangl adesh' (Chomsky 1 99 3 : 278). Hard t and Negri consta n tly fal l against the subtle ropes of corporate l iterat u re and the free market ideologists. I f we were to accept t h e i r points of view - actually t h e points of view o f the b usi ness school gurus - the whole debate arou nd the despotism of cap i ta l within the cor· poration loses its meani ng, as it does every time more demands i n favour of the democratization of fi rms are made by theoreti·

cians of Robert A. Dah l 's statu re ( Dahl 1995: 134-5). Apparently, t he structura l tyran ny of capital va n ishes when wage-labourers go to work not to earn a living but to entertain t h e m selves in a n agreea ble c l i ma te t hat a llows them to express their des i res without restriction. Th i s portra i t hardly squares wit h the stories reponed even by the most capi tal-involved sectors of t he press about the extension of the work day in the global corpora t i on, the devastating i mpact of labo u r flexi b i lity, the degradation of work and of thc workplace, the growing frequency with which people are laid off, the precariousness of employmem, the trend toward s an aggressive concemration of salaries wi th i n the com pany, not t o mention horror stories such a s the exploitation of chi ldren by many global corporations. It seems u nnecessary to insist, before t hese two authors who idemify themselves as com m u nists and scholars of Marx, on the fact that the logic of capita l , be it global or national, has little to do with the i mage projectcd by busi ness school t h eoret icians or eclectic postmodern philosophers. Capital m oves t h rough an i ncxorable logic of profit-generation, whatcver the social or environmental costs may be. I n order to maxim ize profits a n d i ncrease security i n the long tenn, capital travels a l l ovc r the world and is capable of establishing i tself anywhere. The pOlitical condi­ t ions are a matter of maj or i m porta nce, especially i f there is a need to maintain an obedient and well-behaved labour force. Cor­ porate blac kmail is also e�t remely releva nt, given that the global firms, with ' t heir' government's su pport, seek to ga in benefits from the ext raord i n a ry concessions made by the h ungry states of the impoverished periphery. These concess ions range from generous tax exemptions of all kinds to the i m plementa tion of labou� legislation comrary to workers' imerests, or of the type that d iscourages or weakens the activism of labou r u n ions capa ble of d i s turbing the nomlal atmosphere of business. I n the developed world , i nstea d , i t is more d ifficult to d ismantle workers' advances and ach ievements, a n d the pro-labou r legiSlation sanctioned i n 49

the gol den period of the Keynesian stllte, but this is compensated for by the greater size of the markets in societies where social progress has created a pa ttern of mass consumption not usua l ly available i n the peripheral cou n t ries.

Transnational corporations and the nation-stale Cha pter 3.5 of Hard t and Negri's book is devoted to the m ixed constitution of the empire. It opens, however, with

a

s u rprising

epigraph that demonstrates the u n us ua l pe netration of bou rgeois prej udices even i n to the m inds of two in tellectuals as l ucid and cult ured as Hardt and Negri. The epigraph is a statement made not by

a

great philosopher or a distingu i shed economist, nor by

a renowned statesman or a popular leader. I t is, i nstead, a few words pronounced by B i l l Gates: 'One of the wonderfu l th ings abou t the i n formation highway is that virtual equity is fa r easier to ach ieve tha n real-world equity

We are all created equal in

the vi rtual world' lp. 304). Two brief co m me n ts . Fi rst, it is hard to u nderstand t h e reason why a chapter devoted to exa m i n i ng the problems of the m ixed constitution of the e m pire begi n s with a banal quote from B i l l Gates about the su pposed eq u i ty of the information h ighway. Maybe it is because q uoting Gates has become fashionable a mong some European and American progressive i ntel lectuals. Th e reader, even one who is well d isposed, cannot but feel i rritation before this t ri bute pa id to the richest man i n the world , someone who i s the most gen uine personification of a world order that, supposedly, Hardt and Negri fen'en t ly desi re to cha nge. Second, and even more imponant, Ga tes is wrong, deeply wrong. Not a l l of us have been created e q ual in the i n formation world a nd the fa ntastic virtual u niverse. Surely, Gates has never been in con tact with even one of the three bill ion people in the world who have never made or received a phone call. Gates and Hardt and Negri should remember that i n ve ry poor countries, such as Afgha n istan for insta nce, o n ly five ou t of a thousand 50

people have access to a te lephone. This horrifying figu re is far from being exclusive to Afghani stan . I n many a reas i n southe rn Asia, in sub-Saharan Africa, and i n some u nd e rdeveloped coun­ t ries i n Lati n Ame rica and the Caribbea n , the figures are not much better (Wresch 1996). For most o f the worl d's popu lation, Gates's com ments are a j oke, i f not � n insult to rheir miserable and i n h u mane l ivi ng cond itions. Leaving aside this u n fortu nate begi n n i ng, the chapter intro­ duces a d ivision of ca pitalist development i n to t h ree stages. The first extends throughout the eighteenth a nd n i neteenth cent u ries. It is a period o f competitive capital ism, characterized accord ing to Hardt and Negri by ' re latively l i t tle need of state i n tervention at home and abroad' (p. 305). for the a uthors, the protection­ ist policies of the UK, the USA, France, Belgi u m , Holland and Germany, and t he pol icies of colonial expa nsion promoted and i mplemented by the respective national governmen ts , do not qualify as 'state intervention ' . I n the same manner, the legisla­ tion passed, with differen t degrees of t horoughness i n all these countries over a long period and desti ned to repress the workers, would also nOt qualify as examples of state i n tervention in eco­ n omic and social l i fe. It should be taken i nto consideration that such legislation incl udes the Anti-Combination Acts of Engla nd, the Le Chappellier law i n France, the a nti·socia l ist legislation of Chancellor Bisma rck in Germany, who condem ned t housands of workers to exile, and the legal norms that made possible the b rutal repression of workers i n t he U n ited States, symbolized by the massacre of Haymarket Square, Ch icago, o n 1 May 1 886. G ramsci formulated some very precise observations about the 'Southern Question' i n which he demonstrated that the com plex system of a l l iances that made Italian u n i ficatjon possible overlay , a set of soph isticated econom ic po l icies that in fact supported the dominant coa lition. It was G ra msci who poi nted o u t the 'theoretical mistake' of the l i bera l doctrines that celebrated the supposed Iy hands-off an itude, the passivity of the state in relation 51

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to the capitalist acc umula t ion process. I n h i s Quadern;, Gramsci wrote: 'The iaisse'ljaire is also a mode of state regu lation, i n t ro­ duced a nd maintained by legislative and con s tra i n i ng means. I t is a d e l iberate pol icy, aware of i t s own obj ect ives, and not t h e spon taneous a n d automatic expres s io n of the econo mic events. Consequently, the laissezjaire l i be ralism is a political progra m ' (Gramsci 1 9 7 1 : 160). The reason for t h is gross error must be fou n d in the inability of l i beral writers to recognize the fact that the distinction between the political society a n d the civil society, between economics a n d pOli tics, ' i s made and presented a s if it we re an organ ic d i s t i nc­ tion , when it is me rely a methodological d istinct ion' (ibid.). The 'passivity' of the state when the fox en ters the henhouse cannot be conceived as the inaction proper to a neutral player. This be­ haviou r is called com pl icity or, in some cases, conspiracy. These brief exa mples are enough to prove that conve n tional knowledge is not capable of prov i d i ng adequate guidelines to explain some of the central features of t he fi rst period iden t i fied by Hard t a n d Negri. Certainly, t he passivity of the state was not one o f t h e m . I t i s t ru e � h a t , i n comparison w i t h w h a t happened in t h e period following the great depression, the levels of state i ntervention were lower. But this does not mean that there was no i n tervention, or that the need for it was weaker. On the contrary, there was a great need for state in tervention and the d i fferent bou rgeois govern ments responded adequ ately to t h i s need. Naturally, after the F i rst World War and the 1929 crisis, t hese needs increased to an extraordi n a ry degree, but t h a t should not lead us to bel i eve that before these dates the state d i d not play a primary role i n the process of capitalist accu mulat ion . The most serious problem with Hard t and Negri's interpreta­ tion e merges when they get to the ' t h i rd stage' i n the h istory of the marriage berween t he state and capital. In their own word s: 'Today a t h i rd phase o f this relationship has ful ly mature d , i n which l a rge tran snational corporations have effectively surpassed 52

the j u risdiction a n d authority of nation-states. It would seem, then, that this centu ries-long d i a lectic has come to an end: the state has been defeated and corporations now rule the ea rth!' (p. 306, em phasis i n original). This statement is not only wrong but also exposes the authors to new rebu ffs. Worried about having gone too far wi th their anti -state en thusiasm, they warn u s that it i s necessary ' to take a much more nua nced look at how the rela tionsh i p between state a n d capital has changed' (p. 307). It is at the very least perplexing that, after having written this sentence, the authors d i d not proceed with the same conviction to erase the previous se ntence. This con fi nns the suspicion tha t the fi rst one represents adequately enough what they think about the subject. For them, one of the cru cial features of the c urrent period is the displace­ ment of state fu nctions and pol itical tasks i n to other social l i fe levels and domains. Reversing the hi storical process by wh ich the nation -state 'expropriated' the political and administrative fu nc­ tions retained un ti l then by the aristocracy and local magnates, such tasks and fu nctions have been re-appropriated by somebody else in this th ird stage in the history of capital. B u t by whom'? We do not know, because i n Hardt and Negri's a rgument there is a meani ngful si lence at this poi nt. Hardt and Negri begin assuring us i n an a'\iomatic way that the concept of national sovereignty is losing its effective ness, withou t bothering to provide some type of em piri cal reference to support this thesis. The same happens with the fam ous thesis about 'the autonomy of the pol itica l ' . If evidence for the first thesis is com pletely absen t, all that can be said i s that it is a commonplace of con tem porary bou rgeois ideol­ ogy; concern i ng the second thesis, Ha rd t and Negri are completely wrong. To support their interpreta tion , they m a i n ta in : 'Today a notion of pol i t ics as an i ndependent sphere of the detennina­ tion of consensus a n d a sphere of mediation among con fl icting social forces has vc ry little room to exist' (p. 307). Question : when and where was pol i t ics r hal 'i ndepe ndent sphere' or that simple 53

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'sphere of mediation'? To this i t could be answered that what is in crisis is not so much politics - which might well be in crisis, bUI for other reasons - but a Schmittian conception of pol itics, which progressive European a nd Ameri can in tel lectuals cul tivated wi th an obsessive passion for many years. As a resu lt of that addiction, the confusing doctri nal constructions of Nazi theore tician Ca rl Sch mitt - not only an academic bUI also a lead ing ju dge in the Third Reich - we re interpreted as a great cont ri bution to poli ti cal t heory capable of prOvid i ng an escape rou te fo r the oft-proclai med 'crisis of Marxism'. But, conU'ary to Schmitt's teachings, poli tics i n capi taJ ist societies was never an au tonomous sphere. This d iscus­ sion is so wel l known, generating rivers of ink in the 1960s and 1980s, that there is no need to sum marize it now. For the p u rpose of this book, a brief reference to a cou ple of works that approach this problem i n a d i rect manner (Meiski ns Wood 1 995: 1 9-48; Boron 1997: 95-137) will suffice. In any case, our authors are closer to the truth when they write, a few lines later: 'Pol itics does not d i sappear; what d isappears is any notion of the a utonomy of the pol it ical ' (p. 307). Once again, the problem here is less wit h politics - which h a s undoubtedly changed - t h a n with the absurd notion of the auto nomy of politics and of the pol itical, nu rtured for decades by angry ant i-M arxist academ ics and intellectuals, who desire to maintain, against all t he evidence, a fragmentary vision of t he social, typical of what Gyorg Lukacs characterized as bou rgeois thought (Lu kacs 1971). In Hardt and Negri 's interpretat ion, t he decl ine experienced by the autonomy of pol itics gave place to an ultra-economicist co nception of the consensus, 'determined more sign ifica n t ly by economic factors, such as the equilibria of thc t rade balances and specu lation on the value of cu rrencies' (p . :107). I n this way, the Gramscian theorization t hat saw the consensus as the capacity of the dom i n a n t alliance to guara ntce an intel lectual and moral d i reetion that would establish it as the avan t-ga rde of the devel­ opment of n at ional e nergies, is entirely left out of the aut hors' 54

analysis of the state i n its curre n t stage. I nstead, the consensus a ppears as the mecha n ieal reflection of the economic news, a set of mercantile calculation with no room left fo r political med iations lost i n the darkness o f t ime. Its reductionism a n d econom icism com pletely distort the com plexity o f the conse n s u s cons truction p rocess i n con temporary capitalism, a n d , i n a d d i ­ t i o n , they do n o t fail t o pass t h e test that demonstra tes how o n i n n u me rable occasions sign i ficant pol itical turbulence occ u rred at moments i n which the economic variables were moving i n the ' right d i rection', as European a n d America n h istory o f the 1 960s demonstrates. Besides, times of deep economic crisis d i d no t necessarily t ranslate i nto t h e swift collapse of pre-exist i n g pol itical consensuses. Popu lar passivity and acquiescence we re noticea ble, for example, in the o m i nous decade of t h e 19 30S in France and Brita i n , someth i ng very d i ffere nt from what was oecurri ng in neighbouring Germa ny. In consequence, it is u n­ d en iable that, given that politics is not a sphere a u tonomous from social l i fe, the rc is a n int.i mate con nection berwee n econom ic factors a nd political, social, cultural a n d i nternational factors that, at a certa i n moment , crysta ll izes in the construction of a long-lasting pol i tical consensus. That is why a ny reduc t i o n i st conceptual scheme, either economicist or politicist, is i ncapa b l e of exp l a i n i ng real i ty. The co nclusion of the authors' analysis is extraord i n a ri ly im­ port a n t and can be su mmarized in this way: the decline of t h e political as an au tonomous sphere 'signals t h e decline, too, of a ny independent space where revolution cou ld emerge in t he n a tional pOl it ical regime, or where social space cou ld be t ransformed u sing the instru m e n ts of the state' (pp. 307-8). The trad i tional ideas o f b u i l d i ng a coun t e r-power or of opposing a national resistI

a nce aga inst the state have been losing more and more releva nce i n the curre n t c i rcumstances. The main fu nctions of the state have m igra ted to other sphe res a n d domains of the social l i fe, especially towards the 'mechanisms of command on the global 55

level of the transnational corporations' (p. 308). The resu l t of this process was somet h i ng l ike the destruction or suicide o f the national democratic capitaJist state, whose sovereignty frag­ mente d and dispersed among a vast collection of new agencies, groups and organizations such as 'banks, i nternational organisms of planning, and so forth [

] which all i ncreasingly refe r for

legitimacy to the transnational l evel of power' (p. 308). [n relation to the possibili ties opened before th i s nansfo rmation, t he verdict of ou r aut hors is rad ical a nd unappea l ing: 'the decl ine of the nat ion-state is not simply the resu l t o f an ideological pos i t ion that m ight be reversed by a n act of polit ical wil l : i t is a structu ra l and i rrevers i b l e process' (p. 3 36). The d ispersed fragme n ts of the state's old sove reignty and its i nherent capacity lO inspire obedience to its mandates, have been recovered and reconverted ' by a whole series of global j u ri d ico-economic bod ies, such as GATT, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and thc I MF' (ibid.). G iven that the global ization of the production and c i rculation of goods caused a progressive loss of e fficacy and effectiveness in national pol i tical and j uridical structu res which were powerless to con t rol players, p rocesses and mechanisms that greatly exceeded their possi bilities and that d isplayed their games on a foreign board, there is no sense in t rying to resurrect rhe dead nation-state. Aijaz Ah mad ( 2004: 5 1 ) provided a tim ely rem inder that it was none other than Madeleine Al brigh t who, as Secretary of State d u ring the Clinton a d m i n i stration, expou nded s i milar theses by sayi ng that both 'nat ionality' and 'sovereignty' belonged to an 'out dated repenoire of polit ical theory' u nable to accou nt for the ' new structu res of globalization and impera­ tives of " h umanitarian i n te rven tion·. .. The authors assure us that not h i ng cou l d be more negative for fu ture emanci palOT}' struggles than to fal l victim to nostalgia for a n old golden era. Still, if it were possible to resu rrect the nation-state, there i s a n even more important reason t o give u p this en terprise: th i s institu tion 'carries w i t h i t a whole series of repressive structu res

and ideologies

[

]

and a ny strategy that relies on it should be

rejected on t hat basis' (p. 336). Let us su ppose for a moment that we cons ider this argumenl val i d . In that case we should resign ourselves to contemplat i ng not only the ineluctable decadence o f the nation-stale but a lso the fall of the democra t ic order, a result of cen tu ries of popular struggles t h a t inevitably rest on the state s t ructure. Hard t and Negri do not delve very deeply i n to this subject of vital im portance. M aybe they do not do so becau se t hey assu me, m istakenly, that i t i s possible to ' democratize' t he markets or a civil society structu ra l ly divided i n to classes. This is not possible, as I have explained carefu l ly elsewhere (Boron 20oob: 7 3-132). Therefore, which is the way Out?

57

4

Alternative visions

of the empire

The ethical empire. or the postmodem mystification of the 'really existing' empire At this stage of their journey, Hardt a n d Negri have clearly gone beyond (he point of no ret urn, a nd their a n a lysis o f (he 'rea l ly ex.isti ng' e m pi re has given place to a poetic and meta­ p hysical construction that, on the one hand, maintains a distan t similari ty to rea l i ty, a n d , on the other h a n d , given precisely those characteristics, offers sca nt hel p to t he social forces i n terested in transform ing t he national and i n ternational s t ructures of world capital ism. As Charles Ti l ly (2003: 26) put it rather bluntly, t he authors 'orbit so far fro m t h e concrete rea l i ties of conte mporary cha nge t h a t their readers see l ittle but clouds. hazy seas a n d nothingness beyo n d ' . The general d iagnosis i s wrong due to fatal problems of analysis and intcrpretation tha t plague their t heoretical scheme. To this I cou ld add a series of extremely unfonunate observations a nd comment aries that a patient reader could find without grea t effort. But if t he reader were to refute them, he would be obl iged to write a work of extraordinary mag­ nitude. Since t hat is not my inten tion, I wi ll con t i nue with my anaJysis cen t red o n the weaknesses of the general interpretative t heoretical scheme. To begi n, allow me to reaffirm a ve ry elementary but extremely i m porta n t poi n t of depa rture: it is i m possible to do good political a nd social philosophy without a solid economic analysis. As I have shown elsewhere, that was exactly the path chosen by the young Marx as a pol i tical philosoph er, once he precociously understood the l i m it s of a social and pOlitical re(Jection that was not firmly anchored in a rigorous knowledge of civil society (Boron 2000a). The science thal unveiled the anatomy of civil society and the

most i nt i m ate secrets of the new econo m ic orga nization created by capitalism was politicaJ economy. This was the reason why the fou n de r of h istorical materialism devoted h i s e nergies to the new discipline, not to go from one to t he other but to anchor his reOections on cri t i q ues of the existing social orde r and his a n t icipation of a fu ture society i n the bedrock of a deep economic a nalysis. Tbis a nchorage in a good political economy, a 'regal way' to reach a t horough knowledge of capit alist society, is precisely what is m issing in Empire. [n fact, the book has very little of econom ics, and what it has is, in most cases, the convenlional version of the economic a na lysis taught in American or Europea n busi ness schools or the one boosted by the publicists of neo­ l i bera l globalization, com bined with some isolated fragm e n t s o f M a rx i s t political economy. In shon: b a d economics i s used to a n a lyse a topiC such as the i mperiaJist system that requires a rigorous t reatment of the matter appeali n g to the best of what pol itical economy could offer. As M ichael Rustin persuas ively argues, Hardt a n d Negri'S 'description of the major t re n d s of de­ velopment of both the capi ta l ist economy, and of its major fonn s of governance, is plainly in accord with much curre n t a n aJysis of gla blization' (Rus t i n 2003: 8). Conseq uen t ly, readers will find themselves with a book that at­ tempts to analyse the i nternational order, supposedly a n empire , a n d in which o n ly a couple o f times will they stu m ble across i n stitutions such as the I M F, the World Bank, the WTO a nd o ther agencies of the current world order, call it empire or i mperia lism. For example, t h e word 'neoliberalism', wh ich refers precisely to [he ideology and the econom ic-pol itical form u l a prevailing dur­ i n g the last q uarter of the twentieth ce n t u ry whe n the curren t econo Pl ic order was rebuilt fro m head t o we, merely appears throughout the book, in the sa me way as the Multila t era l Agree­ ment on I nvestments (MAl) a n d the Washi ngton Consensus. The i mpression that the reader gets as he co n t i n ues to read the book is of fi n di ng h i mself before two acade mics who a re very well 59

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i ntentioned but who are completely removed from the m u d and blood t hat constitute the daily l i fe or capital ist societies, especi­ ally i n the periphery, a nd who have launched themselves to sail across the oceans of the empire anned with defective maps and i n ferior instru ments of navigation_ Thus, bewildered as Qu ixote, they take appearances as rea l i t ies. Therefore, when t hey descri be the pyra m i d o r t h e e m pire's global const itution, Hard t a n d N egri assure us that: 'At the narrow p i nnacle of the pyram i d there is one superpower, the U nited States, that holds hegemony over the global use of force - a superpower that can act alone but prefers to act in col laborat io n with others under the u m brella or the United Nations' (p. 309). It is very hard to u n derstand such a naive comment, in which the sophistication expected o r scien tific a n alysis is completely lacking. To begin with, the reduction of the concept of hegemony to the use o r rorce is inadmissible. H egemony is much more than that. Regard i ng the themes of empire and i m periali s m , Robert Cox once wrote t h a t hegemony cou l d b e represented a s 'an adjustment among t h e material power, the ideology and the i nstitutions' (Cox 1 986: 225). To reduce the i ssue of hegemony to its m il itary aspects only, whose i mportance goes beyond all doubt, is a major m istake. American hegemony is m uch more complex than that. On the other hand, we are told that t he U n i ted States ' prerers' - surely because of its good will, i ts acknowledged generosity on international matters and its st rict adherence to the principles of the J udeO-C h ristian tradition - to act in collabora­ tion with oth ers. One cannot hel p but wonder i r the twen ty-some­ t hing pages that Empire devotes to a reflection u pon Mach iavel li's t houghts were written by the same a u thors that then p resent a n i n terpretation of the United States' i n ternational behaviou r so antithetical t o the teach i ngs o f the Flore nt ine theorist a s t he one J have q uoted . The ' prererence' of the U nited States - of course I am talking ofthe American government and its dominant classes, and not about the nation or the people o r that country 60

- for collaborative action is m e rely a mask beh ind which the imperialist policies are adequately d i sgu ised so tha t they ca n be sold to i nnocen t spirits. Through t h i s operation, whose efficacy is demonstrated once aga i n i n their book, the policies of i mperial expansion and domi nation appear as i f they were real sacrifices in the name of humanity's com mon good . It is reasonable to suppose that the American government's top officials and their numerous ideologists and publicists cou ld say something like this, someth i ng that nol even t he most subm issive and servile allies of Washi ngton would take seriously. It is entirely u n rea­ sonable for two radical critics of the system to believe these deceits. Th i s i s not the first time that such a serious m istake ap pears in the book. Al ready in Chapter 2.5 t hey had written: I n the wan i ng years and wake of the cold war, the re sponsib i l i ty of ex e rc is i n g an international police power ' fel l ' squarely o n t h e shoulders of the U n ited S ta tes. The G u l f War was t h e first t ime the U n ited States could e xerc ise this power in its full form.

Really, the war was an operation of repression ohe ry l iule interest from the point of view of the objectives, t he regi ona l in­

teresls, and the political ideologies involved. We have seen many such wars conducted d i re c t ly by the United States and i t s allies. I raq was accused of having broken i n t e rn a ti on a l law, and it thus

had t o be judged and pu n is h ed . The i mportance of the Gulf War derives rather from the fact that it presented the U nited States

not as a function of its own national motives but ill lhe /lame ofglobal as t h e only power able to manage international justice,

right. (p. 1 80, emphasis i n original) In. co nclusion, and con t rary to what the a ncest ra.1 prej udices nurtured by the i ncessa nt a n ti-American preaching of the left i ndicate, what we learn after reading Empire is that poor Uncle Sam had to assume, despite his reluctance and agai nst h is wil l , t h e responsib i l ity of exercising t h e role o f world police man after 61

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decades of u n fru it ful negotiations trying to be exem pted from

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such a distressing obligation. Therefore, the power ' fe l l i nto' his

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hands while all the diplomacy of the State Depanment was busy in the reconstruction , on gen uine democra t i c grounds, of the U nited Nations system. Meanwh ile, top waS h i ngton officials travelled around the world trying to l aunch another round of North-Sou th negotiations focused on reducing t he irrit a t i ng i nequal it i es o f the i n t ernational dis tri bu t i on of wea l t h a n d t o strengthen the languish ing governme nts of t h e periphery by teaching t hem how to resist the exactions by which t hey are subdued by the giga n t i c tra nsnational corporat ions. Those two radical scholars, l o s t i n the darkness of theoretical confusion, find someone to give [hem a hand who, in the light of t h e day, t hey discover is Thomas Fried­ man, the very conservat ive edi tori a l writer of the New York Times and spokesm a n for the opinions of the American establishment. According to Fried m a n , the i n t e rve ntion of the U n i ted Sta tes in Kosovo was legitimate (as was the one in the Gul f for other reasons) because it put an end to the e t h n i c cleansi ng practised in that region and, therefore, it was 'made in the name of global righ ts', to u�e an expression dear to H a rdt and Negri. The tru th is that, as Noam Chomsky has demonstra ted, t he ethnic cleansing of the sin ister regi m e of M ilosevic was not the cause but the consequence of the America n bom bings (Cbomsky :200 1 : 81). Let us return to the Gulf War, deplorably c haracterized by t he a u thors as a 'repressive operation of scarce i n terest' a nd l i ttle importance. first of a l l , it is convenient to remember that t h is operation was not precisely a wa r but, as C h omsky i nforms us, a slaughter: 'the term "wa r" hardly applies to a confronta tion i n w h i c h one pa rt ma ssacres the other from an u n reachable d istance, while the civil society i s destroye d ' (Chomsky 1 994 : 8). The authors a re not worried abou t this type of disquiSition. Tbeir vision of the coming of the e m pire with its plethora of libera t i ng a n d ema ncipating possi bil i ties ma kes t h e i r eyes look u p so, for that reaso n , t hey are unaware of the horrors a nd miseries that cu r-

62

ren t i m perialist pol icics produce in h i s tory's mud. If the C hrist ian theologians of the M iddle Ages had their eyes completely t urned to the con templation of God and for that reason did not real ize that hell was surrounding t h e m , the authors are so dazzled by the l u m i nous perspectives t hat open with the coming of the empire that the butchery inaugurated by this new historical era does not move them to write a single line of lamentation or compas­ sion. Masters of the art of 'deconstruct ion ', they are shown to be com pletely i n capablc of applying t h i s resource to the analysis of a war that was i n real ity a massacre. They also fa i l to recognize, let us not say denou nce, t h e enormous nu mber of civil i an victims of the bombi ng, the 'collateral damage' and the criminal e m bargo that followed the war. Only cou n t i ng the chil d ren, the n umber surpasses 1 50,000 victi ms. They also remain silent about t he fact thaI, despite his defeat, Saddam remained i n power, but with the consent of the world's boss to repress a t will the popu lar upri si ngs of the K u rds and the S h ia m i nority (ibid.). Finally, how realistic can an analysis be t hat considers the Gulf War, located i n a zone conta i n i ng the world's most important oil reserves, a matter of marginal i m portance for the U n i ted States? Should we t h i n k then that washi ngton launched its m i l i t a ry operations moved by the i m perious necessity t o ensure the pre­ dominance of 'global righ ts' and not with the goal of reaffirm i ng its i nd ispu ta ble primacy in a s t rategic region of the globe? Was President Bush's decision to raze Afghanistan while trying in vain to discover the whereabouts of one of its old partners, Osama Hin Laden, motivated by the need to m a ke poss i ble this demand for u niversal jus tice? How to describe such foolish ness? This vis ion of the e mpire's concrete functioning, a nd of some u n p l e",sa nt events such as the Gulf War, is i n l i n e with other extremely pole mic definit ions made by the authors. For example, that 'the world police forces of the United States act not with an i m perialistic bu t a n i m perial inte rest'. The grou n d i ng for this affi rmation is pretty simple and refers to other passages of the

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book: given that i mperia lism has disappeared, swallowed by the commotion that dest royed the old nation-states, an intervent ion by t he ' hegemon' makes sense only as a contri bution to the stabil­ ity of the empire. The pillage characteristic of the imperialistic era has been replaced by global rights and i nternational justice. Another issue outlined by Hard t and Negri renects with greater clari ty the serious problems that a ffect their vision of the really existing i nternational system which before their eyes becomes a type of ethical empire. Thus, referring to the ascendancy that t he Un ited States achieved i n the post-war world , the authors mai n ta i n that: With the en d of the cold war, the United States was called to serve t he role of guaranteeing and adding juridical efficacy to this eomplex p rocess of the formation of a new supranational right. Just

as in the first century of the Christian era the Roman

senators asked Augustus to assume i m perial powers of the ad· ministration for the public good , so too today the i n t ernat i o na l monetary o rgani zat i o ns ( t he United Nations, the international organizations, and even the humanitarian organizations) as k the U n i ted (p.

States to assume the central role in a new wo r l d order.

18J)

The equ ivoca l contents o f this passage o f Hard t a n d Negri's work are vel)' serious. First, they con sider analogous two situa· tions that a re completely d i ffer�nt: the one of th e Roman Empire in t h e first ce ntul)' and t he curren t one, when the world has changed a l i ttle

if not as much as we would l i ke. And the old

order that preva iled around the Mediterra nean basin based on slaveI)' does not seem to have many a ffin ities with the current i m perial ist system that today covers the enti re planet and which includes formally free populations. Second, however, i s the fact that Roman senators demanding that Augustus assume i mperial powers is one thing and the people subdued by t he Roman yoke asking lor this is another, very different, thing. Cena i n ly, there

is a consi dera ble majority of American senators who repeatedly lobby the White House on the need for acting as an a rticu lating and orga nizing axis for the benefit of the com panies and national i n terests of the U nited States, as we will see in the following chapters. Another, very d i fferent thi ng is that people, nations and states subjected to US im perialism wou ld demand such a thing. At this poi nt, Hard t and Negri 's analysis becomes muddled with American esta blishment thought because it refers to questions supposedly asked of Wash ington by the U n ited Nations. When did the General Assembly request such a thing? , because this is not a matter that can be solved by an organ as little representa­ tive and a nti-democratic as the Security Council; and even less by the ' i n ternational monetary org-a niUltions'. In this case, are they referring to the I M F, the World Bank, the WTO or the IDB as 'represe ntatives' of the people's rights? What are they talking abou t? In any case, and even when they had reclaimed it, we k now very well that such institutions are, in fact, 'informal depa nmen ts' of the American government and completely lack any u n iversal legitimacy to take up an initiative such as the one men tioned. And what can be said about the humanitarian organizatio ns? As fa r as I know, neither Amnesty or the Red Cross, neither Greenpeace or the Service of Peace and J ustice, or indeed any other known orga n­ ization has ever formulated the petition stated in the book. Maybe Hardt a n d Negri are thinking about the main role ta ken by the U n i ted States in the promotjon of a new supranational j u ridical framework, which, for reasons that will soon be u nder­ stood, has been cond ucted in secrecy by the governments i nvolved in this enterprise. Indeed, for many years, Washingto n has been syste matically working on the establishment of the Multi lateral Agrerment on Investments ( MAl) and has it as a priority on its political agenda. To move forwards wi th this proposal, the White House counts on the a lways uncond itional collaboration of i ts favourite client-state, the U n i ted Kingdom, and that of the over­ whel m i n g majority of the governments in the OECD. Among

5 .2

the rules that the USA has been t rying to i m pose to conso l i date u n iversal justice and rights - surely i n s pi red by the same l i ter· ature as the au thors - a re two epoch·making con t ri butions to legal science. The first i s a doctrinarian i n novation, thanks to which for the fi rs t time in history compa n ies and states become j uridical ' persons' enjo}'i ng exactly the same legal status. States are no l onger representatives of the popular sovereignty and the nation and have become s i m ple economic agents without a ny type of prerogative in the courts. It is not necessary to be a great legal scholar to be a ble to qualify thi s 'j u ridical advancement', zealously sought by Wash ington, as a phenomenal retrogression that neglects the progress made by modern law over the last t h ree hundred years. The second contri b u t io n : having taken i n to account the extraord i n a ry concern of the American govern ment fo r u niversal law, t he MAl p roposes the abo l i t ion of the reciprocity principle between the two p a rties sign i ng a contract. If the MAl were approve d , something that so far has not been possible thanks to tenacious opposition from humani tarian organ izations and diverse soc ial movements, one of the parties to t he cont ract woul d have rights and the other one only obl igations. G iven t he characteristics of the 'really ex.i sting' empire, it is not hard to find out who would have what: co mpanies would have the right to take states to th e courts of j ustice, but the states wou l d be debarred from doing so with investors that d id not comply with their obligat ions. Of course, given the well·known concern of the American gove rnment to guarantee un iversal democracy, it i s permitted for a state to file a law suit against a nother state, with which t h ings become more even. Thus, i f the governments of Guatemala or Ecuador had a problem with Un ited Fruit or Chiquita Banana, they wou l d not be a ble to file a suit aga i n st those compan i e s , but they would be free a n d would have a ll the guarantees in the world to do i t against the government of the Un ited States, given that, despite what H a rdt and Negri thi nk,

66

those companies are American and are registered in that country. Now we can understand the reasons why t he negotiations that ended i n a d raft MAl were conducted i n a bsolute secrecy and beyo nd any rype of democratic and popular control (Boron 2OO 1a: 3 1 -62j Chomsky 2ooo a : 259-60; Lander 1 998). Given such a huge distortion of the empire's realities, it is not surp ri s i ng that the authors conclude: In all the regional confl icts of the late twent ieth century, from Haiti to t he Persian Gulf and Somalia 10 Bosn ia, the United States is called to intervene militarily - and these calls are real and substantial, not merely publicity stunts to quell U.S. public dissent. Even if i t were reluctant, the U.S. m i l itary would have to answer the call in the name of peace a nd order. (p. 1 8 1 ) N o comment.

The empire as it is, portrayed by its organic intellectuals Hence, it seems to be sufficiently p roved that Hard t and Negri's analys i s of the contempora ry world order i s wrong. based on a seriously distorted read ing of the current transformations that are taking place in state formations and i n the world markets of contemporary capitalism. This i s not to deny that, occaSionally, here a nd there, the reader can find a few sharp reflections and observations related to some timely issues, but t he general picture that flows fro m their a nalysis is t heoretically wrong and politically self·defeati ng. A good exercise that cou ld help Hardt and Negri to descend from the structura l i st nebula in which they seem to have sus­ pended their reasoning - 'a new global form of sovereignty' (p. xii), 'a sp�cific regime of global relat ions' (pp. 45-6) - would be to read the work of some of the main organic i ntellectuals of the empire. Leo Pan i tch has ca l led attention to a mea n ingful paradox: while the term ' i m pe rial ism' has fallen i nto d isuse, the realities of im­ perialism are more vivid and i m p ressive t h a n ever. Th i s paradox is

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much more accule in Latin America, where not only the tern,

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'imperialism' but also the word 'dependency' have been ell.-p elled

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from academ ic language and public discourse, precisely at a time when the subjection of Latin American countries to transnational economic forces has reached u nprecedented levels. The reasons for this are many: among them the ideological and political defeat of the left and its consequences stand out. The adoption of the language of the victors and the inability to resist their blackmail, especially among those obsessed with preserving their careers and gaining 'public acknowledgement', reinforces this subjec· tion. This phenomenon can be verified not only in L-a tin America but also in Europe and the United States. In Europe, it is mainly evident in those countries i n which communist parties were very strong and the presence of the political left vigorous, such as in Italy, France and Spain. This is why Panitch suggests that if the left wants to face real ity, maybe 'it should look to the right to obtain a clear vision of the direction in which it should march' (Panitch 2000: 18-20). Why? Because while many on the left are i nclined

to forget the existence of class struggles and imperialism (fearful of being denounced by the prevailing neoliberal and post modern consensus as self·indulgent and absurd dinosaurs escaped from the Jurassic Park of socialism), the mandari ns of the empire, busy as they are giving advice to the dominant classes who are faced daily by class antagonists and emancipatory struggles, have no time to waste on fantasies or poetry. The pract.ical necessities of imperial administration do not allow t hem to become distracted by metaphysical lueubrations. This is one of the reasons why Zbigniew Brzezinski is so clear i n his diagnosis, and instead of talking about a phantasmagorie empire, such as the one depicted by Hardt and Negri, he goes directJy to the point and celeh rates withom shame the irresistible ascension, in his own judgement, of the United States to the condition of 'only global superpower'. Focused on assuring the long·term stability of the impe rial ist phase opened after the fal l of the Soviet Union, Bn.ezinski identi68

fies three mai n guiding principles of the American geopol itical strategy: first, to impede the collusion among, and to preserve the dependence of, the most powerful vassals on issues of security (Western Europe and Japan); second, to maintain the submission and obedience of the tributary nations, such as Latin America and the Third World in general; and third, to preve nt the unification, the overflow and eventual attack of the 'barbarians', a denomina­ tion that embraces countries from China to Russia, including the Islamic nations of Central Asia and the Middle East (Brzezinski 1998: 40). Crystal clear.

The former US National Secu rity Cou ncil chairman·s observa­ tions offer a clear vision without beating about the bush, distant from the vague rhetoric employed by Hardt and Negri and, pre­ cisely because of this, extremely i nstructive of what these authors call empire and Panitch calls 'new imperialism'. In 1989, long before Brzezinski expressed these ideas, Susan Strange, not ex­ actly a Marxist scholar, wrote an article. Had it been read by our authors, it would have saved them time and prevented them from making extremely serious mistakes. Strange said: What is emerging is, therefore, a non-territorial empire with its imperial capital in Washington DC. If the imperial capitals used to anract courtesanS of foreign provinces, Washington instead attracts 'lobbies' and agents of the international companies, representatives of minority groups dispersed throughout the empire and pressure groups organized at a global scale. [ ... J As in Rome, citizenship is not limited to a superior ra,·e and the empire contains a mix of citizens with the same legal and political rights, semi·citizens and non-citizens, such as the slave in Rome. [ . . . ] The semi-citizens of the empire are population , many and they a re spread out. [

...

] They include many people

employed by big transnational finns that operate in the trans­ national stmcture of production that assists, as they all well know, the global market. This includes the people employed 69

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in transnational banking and, very often, the members of the

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'national' armed forces, especial ly those that are trained, armed

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by, and dependent on the United States a rmed forces. It also in­ cludes many scholars in medicine, the natural sciences and the social sciences, as in business management and economy, who view the American professional associations and universities as t hose peers before whose eyes they want to shine and excel . It also includes t he people in the press and the mass media, for whom the American technology and the examples offered by the United States have shown the way, changing the established inst i tu tion s and organizations. (Strange

1989: 167)

I t i s u nquestionable t h at , despite her rejection of M a rx­ ism, Strange's d iagnosis of the inrerna tional st.ructure and the organ ization of t h e e m p i re has more i n common w i th historical materialism than the One that a ri ses from Hardt and Negri's work. This is not the fi rs t li me t h a t a rigorous and objective liberal, t h a n ks to the realism that informs her a n a lysis, provides a vision that is closer to Marxist a n a lysis t h a n that p rovided by a u t hors tacitly or outspoken ly identified with tha t theoretical tradition. I n addition to t he vibrant perspective t h a t Brzezinski a n d Strange have offered us, we have a crude diagnosis made by one of t h e most d i s t i ngu ished t h eoreticians o f American neo-conservatism, Sa muel P. Huntingt o n ; h e also h as n o doubts about the i mperial· ist ch aracter of the curren t world order. H u n tington'S concern i s w i t h t h e weakness a n d vul nerability of t h e USA a n d its cond ition as the 'lonely s h e ri ff' . This condition has obliged Washi ngton to exen a vicious i n ternational power, one of the consequences of wh ich could be the form a tion of a very broad anti-American coal i tion including not o n ly Russia and C h i na but also, though in d i ffering degrees, the Eu ropean states, which cou l d p u t the current world order i n cri s is . To refute the scepticS a n d refresh the memory of those who have forgotten what the imperial ist relationships a re , i t is convenient to reproduce in extenso the long

70

string of i nitiatives that, according 10 H u nt i ngto n , were d riven by Washington in recent years: To press other countries to adopt American values and practices on issues such as human right s and democ racy; to prevent that t h i rd countries acqu i re mil i tary capacities susceptible of i nterfering with the American military superiority; to have the American legislation applied i n other societies; to qualify t h i rd cou n tries with regards to their adhesion to American standards on human rights, drugs, terrorism, nuclear and missile proli fera­ tion and, now, religious freedom; to apply sanctions against the countries that do not conform to the American sta ndards on these issues; to promote the corporate American i n terests under the slogans of free t rade and open markets and to shape the politics of the I M F and the World Bank to serve those same i nterests; [ .

..

] to force other countries to adopt social and

economic policies that bene fi t the American economic in terests, to promote the sale of American weapons and preven t t hat other countries do the same [ . ] to categorize certain cou ntries as .

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'pariah states' or cri m i nal Slates and exclude them from the global institutions because they refuse to prostrate themselves before the American wishes. (Huntington 1 999: 48) Let us be clear, t h i s is not i n ce nd i a ry criticism by an e nemy of A merican imperia l i s m , rather it is

a

sober acco u n t written by

o n e of its most l u c i d organic i n t e l lectuals, concerned about the self-destructive trends t h a t have a risen fro m America's exercise o f its hegemony i n a u n i polar world. Given the images t h a t a rise from t h e work of the t h ree authors whose ideas we have p res­ ented, t he someti mes poetic and at other times m etaphysical d is­ cour.;e of H a rd t and Negri vanishes because of its own l ightness and its rad ical d iscon nection with what H u n ti ngton a p p ropriately cal l s the respons i b i l i l.ies of the ' lonely superpower', What emerges from Hardt a n d N egri's a nalysis is that the ass u m e d ' n ew form o f global sovereignty' exercised by t h e world ' E m pire', which woul d 71

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impose a new global logic of domination, is not a world empire but 'American logic of domination'. There is no doubt that there are supranat ional and transnational organizations, just as there is no doubt t hat beh ind them lies the American national i n terest. It is obvious that the American national i nterest does not exist in the abstract, nor is it i n the i nterests of the American people or the nation . It is in t he interests of the big corporate conglomerates which control as they please the government of the U nited States, Congress, t he judicial powers, the mass media, the major u niver· sities and centres of study and t he framework that allows them to retain a form idable hegemony over civil society. Inst i tu tions t hat are su pposedly 'intergovernmental' or i nternational, such as the I M F, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization , are at t he service of corporate America n i nterests. The intervent ions of t he USA i n other regions of the world have different motivations, but did t hey take place. as Hardt and Negri cla im. to establ ish international law? I n this sense, Brzezinski could not have been more categorical when he said t.hat the so-called s uprana t ional institu t ions are, i n fact, pa rt of the imperial system, someth i ng that is particularly t rue in the case of the international fi na ncial i nstitutions ( Brzezi nski 1998: 28-9).

5

The nation-state and the issue of sovereignty

As we have seen in previous chapters, according to Hardt and Negri, the const itution of the empire overlays t h e decadence and final, supposedly inexorable, collapse of the nation-state_ Accord­ i n g to our authors, the sovereignty t hat nation-states retained in the past has been transferred to a new global st ruct ure of domi­ nation i n which decadent state formations play an i ncreasingly marginal role. There are, we a re assured, no imperialist players or a territorial centre of powerj nor do there exist established barriers or limits or fixed identities or c rystallized hierarchies. The transition from the age of i m perialism, based on a collec t ion of bell icose states i n permanent conflict among t hemselves, to the age of the e m p i re, is signalled by the irreve rsible decl ine of the institu tional and legal fou n dations of the old order, the nation-state. It is because of this t hat Hard t and Negri plainly reject the idea that the U nited States is 'the ultimate authority that rules over t h e processes of globalization and the new world order' (p_ xiii). Both t hose who see the U nited State9 as a lonely and om nipotent superpower, a fervent defender of freedom, and those who denou nce that country as a n imperialist oppressor, are wrong, Hardt and Negri say, because both parties assume that the old nation-state's sovereignty is still in force and do not reali:te that i t is a rel ic of the past. Unaware of t h is mutation they also fail to u nderstand that i mperialism is over (ibid .)_ LFt us exa m i ne some of the problems that this in terpreta t ion poses_ In the first place, let us say that to assu me that t here can exist something l ike an authori ty able to govern 'all the processes of globalization and t h e new world order' is not an i nnocent mis­ take. Why? Because given such a requirement t h e only sensible

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answer is to deny the existence of such an authority. To say that a certain structure of power can control all thc processes that occur in its jurisdiction is absurd. Not even the most elementary forms of organization of social power, such as the ones reported by anthropologists studying 'primitive hordes', were capable of fulfilling such a requirement. Fortunately, the omnipotence o f t h e powerfu l does n o t exist. There are always loopholes and, invariably, there wil l be things that the power cannot control. Even in the most extreme cases of despotic concentrations of power - Nazi Germany or some of the most oppressive and feroci­ ous Latin American dictatorships such as Videla's in Argentina, Pinochet's in Chile, Trujillo's in the Dominican Republic and Somoza's in Nicaragua - the authorities at the time demonstrated an incapacity to control 'all the processes' unfolding in their countries. To say that there

is

no imperialism because t here is

no one who can take control at a world level

a world whose

complexity transcends the limits of our imagination - constitutes a dismissive statement. It is a question of finding out i f i n the new world order, so celebrated by George Bush Senior after the Gulf War, there are some players who hold an extraordinarily elevated share of power and whose interests prevail systematically. It is a question of examining whether the design of this new world reflects, somehow, the asymmetric d ist ribution of power that existed in the old world, and how it works. Of course, to talk about an 'extraordinarily elevated' share of power is to admit that there are others who have some power, and i f we speak of systematiC predominance it is also accepted that there may

be

some devia­

tions that, from time to time, will produce unexpected results. Th is being said, let us continue with a second problem. Hardt and Negri'S analysis ofthe issue of sovereignty is wrong. as is their interpretation of the changes experienced by social structu res in recent tjmes. Regarding the issue of sovereignty, they seem not to have noticed that in the imperialist structure there is a yardstick of evaluation, or, as Jeane Kirkpatrick, the US Ambassador to the 74

U n i ted Nat ions d u ring Ronald Reaga n 's first term , sai d , there is a double standard with which Washi ngton judges foreign gove rn­ ments and their actions. One standard is used to evaluate the sovereignty of the friends and allies of the U nited States; a nother, very d i fferent, is used to judge the sovereignty of neutral cou n tries and its enemies. The national sovereignty of the former m ust be p reserved and strengthened, the laner's should be weakened and violated without scruples or false regrets. Prisoners of their own specu lations, Hardt a nd Negri cannot perceive this d isturbing duality, believing thus that there is a 'global logic' beyond and above the national i nterest of t he superpower and u ndeniable 'centre' of the empire, the United States. For au thors so i n terested in constitu tional and j u ri dical matters, as is the case of Hardt

and Negri, the deplorable performa nce of Washington regarding the acknowledgement of i n ternational treaties a nd agreements provides a timely douche of sobriety. As is well known, the U n i ted States has repudiated any i nternational ju rid ical i nstrument that i m plies even a m i n i mal reduction of i ts sovereignty. Recently, Washington has delibera tely delayed agreeing to the constitu tion of an I n ternational Criminal Court sited i n Rome - with special competence to ju dge war crimes, c ri mes agai nst humanity and genocide - because this would mean a t ransference of sovereignty to an i n te rnational organ whose control could escape from their hands. The U n ited States actively panicipated i n all the previous delibera tions abou t se tti ng u p the cou rt, it discussed criteria, it vetoed norms and co-authored various drafts of the const itution. Bu t when the time came to approve the constitu tion of the cou n i n Rome, it decided to wa lk away. This should come as no surprise to students of imperialism, thoug-h it seems to have con fused the authors of Empire. Appar­ ently, they have ignored the fact that the Uni ted States has one of the worst world records regard i ng the rat ification of i nternational conventions and agreements, precisely because WaShington con­ siders tha t these would be detrime ntal to American national 75

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sovereignty and its interests as a superpower. Recently, the USA refused to sign the Kyoto Agreement to preserve the environment, using the argument that i t would hann the profits of American compa n ies. In the case of the Ince rnational Convention on the Rights of the Child, only two countries i n the whole world

re­

fused to sign the protocol: Somalia and the U nited States_ But as poi nted out by Noam Chomsky, actually the U n i ted States 'have not ra tified a single convention, because even in the very few cases i n which they did so, the American government managed to introduce a reserve cla use that says the fol lowing: "not appl icable to the U n i ted States without the consensus of the U n i ted States"' (Chomsky 200 1 : 63). In the neo-conse l"Jative ze nith of the 1 960s, the U n i ted S ta tes refused (and in some cases is sti l l refusing) to pay i ts fees to some of the main agencies of the U nited Nations, accusing them of having defied American sovereignty. Why pay membership fees to an institution that Washington ca nnot control a t will? A simi lar attitud e is obsel"Jed in relation to another US creation, the wro, and its preced ing agreement, the GATT. The European U nion aCCll sed the American government of damaging European companies because the embargo against Cuba violated the com­ mercial ru les previollsly agt"eed. Besides, the E u ropean U n io n s a i d , the e m bargo w a s i m mora l , i t had been unanimously con­ demned and children and the elderly were i ts main victims_ The embargo's u n favourable i m pact on heal th and nutrition policies as wel l as other similar co nsiderations were also h ighl ighte d . The response from Washi ngton was that these were not commercial or hu manitarian issues but, i nstea d , they we re matters rel ated to American national security a n d , therefore, t hey wou ld not be t ra nsferred to a ny other i n ternational agency or institution but would be exclusively managed by the d i fferent branches of the American government without allowing any, even m i nimal, foreign i mel"Jention (ibid.: 64-6). A final exa m ple will be useful to conclude this d iscu ssion. 76

D uring the offensive of the N icaraguan Contras - i l l egal ly armed, t rained. financed and organized by t he United States - the govern· ment of Managua fi led a demand i n 1985 to the I n ternational Court of J ustice accusing t he A merican government of wa r crimes against the Nicaraguan civil population. The response from Wash­ i ngton was to d is regard the cou rt ' s j u risd iction. The p rocess con t i nued anyway, and the final sentence of the court ordered Washington to stop i ts m i l i tary opera tions, retire the merce nary forces stationed in N icaragua and pay substa ntial reparations [0 compensate for the damage inflicted on the civil society. The

government of the U n i ted States simply disrega rded the sente nce, continued the war, whose results are well known, and not even when it managed to i nstal a new 'friendly' government in Nicar· agua d id it dare to sit down to talk about the reparations of war, let alone payi ng them. The same occurred with Vietnam. These are good examples of what Hardt and Negri unde rsta nd as the i mperial creation of 'global rights' and t he empire of un iversal ju stice (ibid.: 69-70). It seems clear t h a t the authors have not ma naged to appreciate the co ntinuous relevance of national sovereignty, t he national i nterest and national powe r in all its magn i tude, all of wh ich i ncurably weakens t h e central hypothesis of their argument that i nsists t here is a global and a bstract logic that presides over t he functioning of the empi re . Rega rd i ng what occurred with t he capitalist state in its cu rrent phase, i t seems that the m istakes cited before become even more serious. First of all, there is an i m portant i n itial problem that is not margi nal at all, with res· pect to the proclaimed final and irreversible decadence of the state: all the avai lable quantitative information with regard to pu bljc expenditure and the size of the state apparatus moves i n t he opposite d i rection of t h e o n e i magi ned by Hardt a n d N egri. If somet h i ng has occurred in metropolitan capitalisms in the last twen ty years, it has been precisely the noticeable i ncrease of the sizc of the state, measured as the proportion of p u blic 77

expenditu res to GOP. The i n format ion p rovidcd by a l l types of sou rces, from national governments to the U n i ted Nations De­ ve lopmen t. Program me (UNOP). and from the World Ban k to the I M F and the OECO, speak with a single voice: all the states of the metropolitan capital isms were strengthened i n the last twe nty years, despite the fact that many of the governments in those states have been veritable champions of the a n t i-state rhetoric t hat was lau nched with fury at the begi nning of the 1 980s. What happened after the c risis of Keynesian capitalism i n the middle of the 1 970S was a relative decrease i n the growth rate of public expend i tu re. Fiscal budgets cont i n ued to grow u n i nterru ptedly. althou gh at more modest l evels than before. Th at is why a special report on t h i s topic in the con se rvative British magazi ne The Economist ( 1 99 7 ) is e n titled ' Big Gove rnment is Still in Charge'.

The writer of this article cannot hide his d i sappointment at t he slates' tenacious resistance to becoming smaHer as manda ted by the neolibera l catechism. (Hardt and Negri seem not to have examined this work because t he last section of Chapter 3-6 i n t heir book i s ent itled ' B ig Gove rnmen t i s Over!', a h ead ing that clearly reflects the ext e n t of their misunderstanding of a theme so crucial to their theoretical argument.) I n any case, after a ca refu l analysi s of recent d a t a on public expenditure i n fourteen i n d us­ trialized cou nt ries of the OECO, The Economist concludes t hat, despite the neoliberal reforms i n i tiated after the proclaimed new goals of fiscal austerity and public expenditure reduction between 1 9 80 and 1 996, public expenditure in the selected cou ntries grew from 43-3 per ce nt of the GOP to 4 7 . 1 pe r cen t, while in cou n tries such as Sweden th i s figure passes the 50 per cen t t h reshold: 'in the last forty years the growth of public expend iture i n the d eveloped economies has been persistent, universal and coun ter­ productive ', and the objective so strongly p roclai med of beco ming a 'small govern men t ' apparently has been more a weapon of electoral rhero ric than a true objective of economic policy. Not even the strongest defende rs of the famous 'state reform' and

the shrinking of public expenditure, such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, managed to achieve any significa n t p rogress in this terra i n . Th us, if th i s strengthening of state orga n izations is verified i n the hea rt of developed capitalis ms, t h e h is tory of the periphery is com pletely d i fferen t . In the i n ternational reorganization of the i m perialist system under the ideological shield of neol iberal­ ism, states were radically weakened and the economies of (he periphery were su bdued to become more and more ope n , and almost with ou t any state med iation, (0 the i n flux of the great transnational companies and to the policies of the developed coun tries, mai nly the U nited States. This process was in no way a natu ral one, but ins tead was the result of initiatives adopted at the cen t re of the empire : the governme n t of the U n ited Sta tes, in its role as ruler, accompanied by its loya l guard dogs (the

IMF, the World Bank, the wro, e tc.) and su pported by the active compl icity of the cou n t rie s of the G- 7. This coalition forced ( i n many cases bru ta l ly) t h e i ndebted cou ntries of t h e Third World to apply the policies k nown as the 'Washi ngton Consensus' a n d to tra nsform t heir economies in accordance with the interests of the dom inant coalition and, espec ia l ly, of the primus inter pares, the U nited States. These pol icies favou red the practically u n l i mited penetration of American and European corporate i n terests into the domestic markets of the southern nations. For that to take place, it was necessary to d ismantle the public sector in those cou n t ries, produce a real deconstruction of the state and, with the a i m of generating surplus for the payment of these cou n t ries' foreign debt, to reduce public expenditure to the m i nimum, sacri­ ficing i n this way vital and impossible-to-postpone expenditure on h �a l th , housing and educat ion . State-owned com panies were first fi nancially drained and then sold at ridiculous prices to the big corporations of the central count ries, thereby creating a space

004 '7 CD :::s a ::r. o :::s. III

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fo r the maximum exercise of ' p rivate in itiative' . (Despite that, in

ca-

many cases, the buyers were state-owned compan ies from the

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