Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to McGill University - PalgraveConnect - 2011-09-05 Global ...

Author: Gary K. Browning

48 downloads 888 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to McGill University - PalgraveConnect - 2011-09-05

Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_01_prex.indd i

6/14/2011 12:11:35 PM

International Political Theory Series

The Palgrave International Political Theory Series provides students and scholars with cutting-edge scholarship that explores the ways in which we theorise the international. Political theory has by tradition implicitly accepted the bounds of the state, and this series of intellectually rigorous and innovative monographs and edited volumes takes the discipline forward, reflecting both the burgeoning of IR as a discipline and the concurrent internationalisation of traditional political theory issues and concepts. Offering a wide-ranging examination of how international politics is to be interpreted, the titles in the series thus bridge the IR–political theory divide. The aim of the series is to explore international issues in analytic, historical and radical ways that complement and extend common forms of conceiving international relations such as realism, liberalism and constructivism. Titles in the series include: Keith Breen and Shane O’Neill (editors) AFTER THE NATION Critical Reflections on Nationalism and Postnationalism Gary Browning GLOBAL THEORY FROM KANT TO HARDT AND NEGRI Mihaela Neacsu HANS J. MORGENTHAU’S THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Disenchantment and Re-Enchantment Raia Prokhovnik and Gabriella Slomp (editors) INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL THEORY AFTER HOBBES Analysis, Interpretation and Orientation Huw Lloyd Williams ON RAWLS, DEVELOPMENT AND GLOBAL JUSTICE The Freedom of Peoples International Political Theory series Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–20538–3 hardcover 978–0–230–20539–0 paperback (outside North America only)


Series Editor: Gary Browning, Professor of Politics, Department of International Relations, Politics and Sociology, Oxford Brookes University, UK.

You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_01_prex.indd ii

6/14/2011 12:11:35 PM

Gary Browning Professor of Political Theory, Oxford Brookes University, UK



10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_01_prex.indd iii

6/14/2011 12:11:35 PM

© Gary Browning 2011

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–52473–6 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Browning, Gary K. Global theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri / Gary K. Browning. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978–0–230–52473–6 (hardback) 1. International relations—Philosophy—History. 2. Cosmopolitanism—History. I. Title. JZ1305.B77 2011 327.101—dc22


All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

2011011748

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_01_prex.indd iv

6/14/2011 12:11:36 PM


For Conal

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_01_prex.indd v

6/14/2011 12:11:36 PM

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to McGill University - PalgraveConnect - 2011-09-05 10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_01_prex.indd vi

6/14/2011 12:11:36 PM

Contents viii

1

Introduction

1

2

Kant: Cosmopolitan Reason, Progress and Global Responsibility

22

3 Hegel: Global Theory and Recognition

42

4

61

Marx and Modernity

5 Global Theory: Transformation

82

6 Global Cosmopolitanism

108

7

Radical Global Theory

130

8

Conclusion: Deconstructing Modern and Global Theory

159

Notes

180

Index

201


Preface

vii

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_01_prex.indd vii

6/14/2011 12:11:36 PM

Over the past 30 years global theory has played a significant role in connecting the issues of the day and the academic world. Its distinctive contribution has been to report on how the borders of social analysis have been transformed so as to include what lies beyond all particular borders. Theory and practice are intertwined so that global theory mirrors and influences the public life of politicians, corporate strategists and social actors, who invoke global issues, diagnose global problems and offer global excuses for their own failures. Nowadays, the world is standardly taken to be the ultimate frame of reference for public life. While political rhetoric rehearses familiar ideological themes, these themes are extended and transformed by global references. Academics either trail in the wake of politicians or lead from the front, and the problems and possibilities of social and political practice inform the writings of influential global theorists, such as Giddens, Sassen, Held, and Hardt and Negri. Globalisation and global transformation are framed as constituting new concerns for theorists and practical life. The performative force of global rhetoric announces something novel in the world, and the identification of a global condition that supersedes preceding forms of political, social and economic organisation is seen as demanding a new form of normative engagement. Global theory maintains many forms in its relations to the present and past. It frames historical perspectives on the development of globalisation; it analyses the conceptual conditions of global activity; it speculates on the causes of global changes; it identifies the contours of a global era; and it maintains particular attitudes towards the phenomena of globalisation. The complex and divergent forms of global theory tend to be submerged by the impact of what global theories commonly presuppose, namely that there has been a radical transformation of the world and that this change constitutes the emergence of a global condition. The common thread which theories of globalisation share is that the contemporary world is radically different from preceding eras, and it is this difference that global theory examines and explains. What goes along with this assumption is that modern


Preface

viii

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_01_prex.indd viii

6/14/2011 12:11:36 PM

ix

theoretical predecessors and modern forms of life are quite distinct from and dated by the rise of global theory. The dichotomy that this gap between the modern and the global creates underlies the claims to novelty on the part of global theorists and lends itself to the reification of global phenomena. The particular claims and concepts employed by theorists as diverse as Hardt and Negri, Klein, Castells, Giddens and Held may differ, but these theorists tend to converge in their dishing of modern theory in the interest of proclaiming the epochal significance of their own claims. This study questions the assumption that modernity and modern theory are sharply separated from globalisation and contemporary global theory. As a relatively short and focused analysis, this study does not claim to exhaust what can be said about modern theory or global theory. Instead, it focuses on a number of global theorists who have undertaken general analyses of global developments and a particular form of modern theory – and an abridgement of one of its traditions at that. It traces connections between Kant, Hegel and Marx and notable global successors. In so doing, it observes a variety of ways in which their standpoints may be seen as informing contemporary global theories. Kant, for instance, looms large in contemporary discussions of global cosmopolitanism, while Hegel’s conception of the state is rehearsed by opponents of strong forms of global cosmopolitanism. Marx’s critique of capital informs many of the claims by radical theorists who are critical of global neo-liberalism. Connecting global theories to modern predecessors allows for a recognition of the ways in which contemporary global theories differ in that, just as modernity is understood in distinctive ways by modern theorists, so the global condition is comprehended differently by particular global theorists. Kant, Hegel and Marx are modern theorists who review modernity differently from one another, and their standpoints inform distinctive perspectives on the contemporary world. At the same time Kant, Hegel and Marx share general assumptions about modernity which overlap with fundamental concepts that are standardly employed by contemporary global theorists. In reviewing past and present theorists, this study disturbs current orthodoxies about global theory and allows new perspectives on Kant, Hegel and Marx. In developing this account of global theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, I am happy to acknowledge if not discharge some of my many debts. I have been thinking about Kant, Hegel and Marx for a long


Preface

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_01_prex.indd ix

6/14/2011 12:11:36 PM

Preface

time, and there have been many who have helped me to read them along the way, notably Tony Coats, Nick Hewlett, Kim Hutchings, Andrew Kilmister and Joe McCarney. The ways in which I read them also owes much to the legacies of Oakeshott, Collingwood, Gadamer and Gillian Rose. My understanding of Marx reaches back to lectures on his work that I gave at the City of London Polytechnic during the winter of discontent, where I explored multiple possibilities of Marx interpretation to the frustration of my students and at the expense of my own peace of mind. I am also indebted to students of my MA class in Global Theory for their enthusiasm and sharpness and to colleagues at Oxford Brookes University who have reflected upon global theory, notably Barrie Axford, who embraces global theory in interesting ways that I would not. This book was written while my son, Conal, was acutely ill, and he died before I completed its last iteration. He led a difficult and troubled life, but he had one important and rare virtue. He was an honest person, who was determined to be true to himself.


x

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_01_prex.indd x

6/14/2011 12:11:36 PM

1

A misleading dichotomy Global theory provides the mood music of contemporary academic and political commentary.1 The formulas of global theory are as ubiquitous as their purported global content. It is, though, difficult to identify and to appraise global theory, even though, or perhaps because, it constitutes the Zeitgeist. Global theory is not one thing. Neither what is meant by ‘the global’ nor its theoretical framing are things, and putting the two together does not make one big thing. They are concepts that function differently insofar as they are related variously to other concepts. Theoretical understandings of the world can take many forms, embracing causal analysis, historical periodisation, ethical and ideological appraisal and conceptual clarification. The term ‘globe’ can stand for the planet Earth, the totality of things and the myriad relations that compose Earth. Global theory can focus on the goal of future development or point to contingent possibilities that lie ahead, and may also signify the ways in which people might and should identify themselves and relate to one another and to their environment. To envisage global theory as univocal is misleading, given the variety of ways in which it can function. The tendency to essentialise global theory neither begins nor ends with the contemporary situation. While contemporary global theory represents a diversity of ways of understanding the world, it would also be a mistake to accept the prevailing presumption that preceding theories either ignore the global context or lack the conceptual means to explore global connections. To deprecate preceding


Introduction

1

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_02_cha01.indd 1

6/14/2011 12:11:40 PM


theories for failing to conceive of global developments distorts both the understanding of contemporary global theory and the conceptual range and empirical reach of preceding theories. As the dust settles on the profusion of theories which focus on the global in the twenty-first century, it is evident that there are as many divisions between global theorists as there are between the proponents and opponents of globalisation.2 The multiplicity of the concerns, styles and claims of global theorists tends to be underplayed, not only by global theorists, but also by their detractors. Rosenberg’s The Follies of Globalisation Theory is a thoughtful and radical critique of global theory, emphasising how its dismissal of classical modern sociology is both unjustified and misleading, and highlighting how the causal claims of key global theorists, such as Scholte and Giddens, are unsubstantiated.3 In The Follies of Globalisation Theory and in subsequent essays, Rosenberg is an acute critic of aspects of global theory, and yet it is not altogether clear that global theorists standardly make causal claims on behalf of globalisation.4 Global theorists without exception canvass the significance of a global perspective, maintaining that a global reference point is a necessary feature of theories of contemporary society, but they do so from a variety of vantage points and for numerous reasons. Likewise, they converge on a common critique of preceding theories, which they disparage for a variety of reasons. These reasons tend to converge upon perceived inadequacies in content and form. The content of preceding theories is held to neglect the global context of social and individual development; their form is criticised for confusing contingency and necessity by taking the course of contingent historical events to represent a necessary development and by presuming that the ideological commitments which inform their accounts of historical development are incontestable rather than fallible judgements. The focus of global theorists’ critique of predecessors is on the modern theorists, who review, theorise and evaluate modern society, for global theorists tend to distinguish global society from preceding modern developments. The self-image of the modern world is framed by theories that reflect upon it, distinguish its characteristic features, and formulate a normative basis for its further development. Conceptions of modernity are products of modern theorists’ theoretical explorations of its character. Global theory in part defines itself via a critique of modernity. Global theorists are united in their


2


6/14/2011 12:11:40 PM

assumption that the process of globalisation has constituted a break from preceding social formations. The ways in which this break is formulated reflect the distinct modalities of global theory. Giddens, for instance, takes globalisation to constitute a distinct form of modernity, namely late modernity. Albrow and Beck conceive of globalisation as ushering in a new postmodern global age; whereas Hardt and Negri, after associating global developments with postmodernism, appear to have settled for adopting the language of altermodernity to characterise the age in which they frame their radical critique of contemporary global power.5 The common assumption entertained by global theorists, however, is that preceding modern theories fail to recognise the global character of the social world. Global theorists also tend to agree that theory is not to be conducted in the guise of modern predecessors. Global theorists’ critiques of the form and content of modern theory are inter-related in that modern predecessors are disparaged for misrepresenting the mobile and malleable character of social structures by exaggerating the independence and stability of such entities as the industrial proletariat, the nuclear family and the nation-state. From the global theorists’ perspective, these structures are misconstrued if they are identified and presented as being fixed and durable outside an informing global context. The moral universe of modern theorists is also perceived to be partial because of their adherence to the perspectives of particular peoples, nations and classes, and because of their failure to embrace a universal worldwide standpoint. The limits of modern theorists are also detected in their presumption of a teleological pathway that circumscribes the directions along which the course of history is imagined to proceed. Global theory indicts preceding theory for its foreclosure on the possibilities of the future. In preceding theory, technological, economic and political forms of global inter-action are unrecognised and unanticipated because of a blinkered vision in which present social and political arrangements are mapped on to the future. Global theory indicts modern theorists for overriding contingency and difference in their obsession with sketching grand narratives of progress which project the future in the light of a contemporary admiration of rational liberal regimes or disciplined communist utopias. Global theory follows postmodernism in its negative and essentialised reading of predecessors, and thus commits a performative


Introduction 3


6/14/2011 12:11:40 PM


contradiction in offering a general critique of modern theory that is itself overly general and indiscriminating.6 It sets up a misleading image of preceding theorists and their correlative images of modernity. This misconstrual lends itself to a correspondingly essentialised and misleading self-image of global theory itself, which serves as the as the dichotomously opposing progressive force to regressive modern theory. What this book aims to do is to challenge the general assumptions about modern theory that are entertained by global theorists. It questions the rigidity of the opposition between modern perspectives on society and contemporary global ones. In doing so, it opens up for critical discussion received notions of modernity and self-images of global theory. Modernity is constituted by the various perceptions of it that appear in theories of modernity, and given the complexity and multiplicity of these perceptions, the upshot is that modernity must be recognised to be complex and perspectival. At least some perspectives of modern theory imagine a global context for social and political practice; hence modern theory cannot be demarcated neatly from contemporary global theory. The divergent ways in which modernity is theorised allows for a variety of links between modern theories and contemporary global theories and thereby alerts us to the multiplicity of ways in which the global is conceptualised in contemporary theories. Moreover, global theorists’ disparagement of modern predecessors for framing illicit teleological theories of history ignores the subtle ways in which modern theorists qualify their general readings of history. Global theory’s overly general reading of modern theory is part of a wider failing on its part, for global theorists tend to adopt an overly general reading of all of history. Ironically, contemporary global theorists tend to commit themselves to progressive, highly general readings of history that are akin to the teleological models of history that they impute to their predecessors.

Modernity and the global


4

The dichotomy between modernity and the contemporary global era that is maintained by global theorists is disturbed in this book. A critique of the dichotomy is designed to achieve two important but related goals. It corrects an overly simplified and essentialised conception of modern theory, and it qualifies the self-proclaimed novelty of


6/14/2011 12:11:40 PM

global theory. The general force of global theorists’ claims to significant novelty derives from their dismissal of the continuing relevance of preceding forms of theory. If those claims are questioned, then the status and meaning of classic modern theories can be reassessed, and further questions relating to the links between global and modern theories can be raised. Answers to these questions, rather than confirming contemporary global theory’s break from the past, indicate distinctive ways in which particular global theories connect with preceding ones. Standardly, global theory is preoccupied with the future and the onward direction of processes of globalisation, whereas re-connecting global theory with antecedent theorists reveals how its images of the future arise out of its connections with the past. Re-reading classic modern theorists in the light of present preoccupations may seem like a recipe for distorting the past to fit a Whiggish conception of history, but Gadamer, amongst others, highlights how the past and the present can be reciprocally illuminating.7 The meaning of texts, as Derrida and others argue persuasively, is not univocal, and the significance of a text’s treatment of a topic or the distinctiveness of its language might only be appreciated when succeeding discourses allow a particular conceptual frame or specific language to be recognised.8 Hence, regarding past theorists via the preoccupations of contemporary global theory permits a reading of past theories that highlights the particular ways in which they imagine the world and the development of a global perspective, even if these aspects have been underplayed hitherto. ‘Modernity’ and ‘modern theory’ are, like ‘globality’ and ‘global theory’, highly generic terms, and it is a mistake to essentialise them so as to exclude the multiple ways in which modernity is explored and understood. Likewise, key component terms of modernity, such as the Enlightenment, reason and cosmopolitanism are interpreted in various ways. Labelling thinkers and theorists allows for general and summative judgments and renders approval and repudiation relatively straightforward, but the generality of the terms comes at a price. Reason is not one thing; differing styles of reasoning are practised in the modern world, for instance, instrumental and critical forms of reason. Habermas may endorse the Enlightenment because of its identity as a rational project, but the several ways in which reason is invoked and used by modern thinkers raises questions over the supposed unity of reason and the Enlightenment project.9


Introduction 5


6/14/2011 12:11:40 PM


In attending to how modern theories anticipate and shape the agenda of contemporary global theory, I do not attempt a general survey of modernity and its multiple theories in the succeeding pages of this book. Rather, three key modern thinkers, namely Kant, Hegel and Marx are examined. They develop connected but distinct theories, and may be said to develop the path of the Enlightenment in distinctive and critical ways. They will be shown to highlight global connections between persons in establishing a conceptual framework in which to review and evaluate society, and to frame theories that invoke notions of the world in identifying its key component parts. Their theories have also been invoked, considered and critiqued by contemporary global theorists, though the impact of their theories is also exerted in ways that are not reflected in express commentary on the part of global theorists.10 Kant, Hegel and Marx developed dense and concentrated theories covering a wide range of areas, including religion, aesthetics and natural science. Their thought is examined in this book with a view to invoking its specific relevance for theories of globalisation; and hence the focus upon them will be partial. In reviewing the thought of Kant, Hegel and Marx, this book concentrates on five aspects of their thinking. These five dimensions bear upon contemporary global theories in the distinctive terms with which each of them develops his theories. First, their constructivist standpoints are highlighted. In distinctive ways, they all take the world to be shaped and constructed by human beings. Second, in adopting constructivist positions, they also emphasise the rational, reflexive character of human agents, which enables them to go beyond their immediate environments in understanding and shaping their destinies. Third, all three theorists understand the world in terms of its intelligible general directionality, and their assumption of a form of teleology is condemned as the application of an illicit teleology to human conduct by subsequent global theorists. Fourth, they evaluate the directionality of human development in relation to normative standpoints and appraise contemporary practices and circumstances accordingly in distinctive ways. Fifth, what Kant, Hegel and Marx undertake is conceptual analysis in that they review the situation of human beings, including their economic, political and historical circumstances, and conceptualise the experiential conditions. This conceptual enterprise is at times aligned with causal analysis, and subsequent global theorists tend to assume that


6


6/14/2011 12:11:41 PM

they prioritise general causal analysis of historical developments, condemning them for the styles in which they execute this largescale causal analysis. Contemporary global theorists standardly and problematically criticise Kant, Hegel and Marx for employing general external teleological causes to explain the complex contingent circumstances of historical development. These criticisms by contemporary global theorists are not softened by their own tendency at times to have recourse to the language of general and implicitly teleological causal analysis in explaining processes of globalisation. The world is not simply a natural object or a thing in the theories of Kant, Hegel and Marx. The meaning of the world is shaped via human activity, notably through reflective activity. They attribute constructive powers to human beings and take the distinctiveness of these powers to be crucial in distinguishing the human world from that of the rest of the animal kingdom. Likewise, all three recognise the critical reflexive powers of human beings. Not only do human beings make their worlds, they remake the worlds that they have formed in the light of critical reflection on the intended and unintended consequences of their activities. The upshot of this stress upon critical constructivism is that all three theorists take history to be of crucial importance in deciding humankind’s collective destiny. History becomes a record of the worlds that human beings have created, and the point of ethics and politics is to act reflexively upon the prevailing context of world history to render it more rational and accommodating. All three bring to bear upon historical events and prospects for the future a kind of teleological perspective by which they appraise the constructed worlds that are encountered in historical analysis. All three acknowledge, though, that the reflective agency of human beings renders this form of teleology distinct from an Aristotelian naturalistic teleology, and they envisage history to be in important senses open and undetermined.11 Kant, Hegel and Marx see the constructive potential of human beings as unlimited, so that there are neither natural nor artificial limits on human world-making activities. The world is constituted by and consists in the borders of the processes of self-creation; but the world is constantly remade in humanity’s transformative selfimages. These theorists are explicit on this aspect of the developing character of global history. The world has a history; and it is a history of the record of a process of self-creation. They all concur in


Introduction 7


6/14/2011 12:11:41 PM


perceiving this process to constitute a form of teleology. Kant’s theory of history is expressly teleological, taking its bearings from the regulative presumption that the end of history is to be compatible with a rational end-making creature. He imagines that this end will consist in a universalisation of respect for humanity’s rational capacity, which is realised in a cosmopolitan regime whereby all human agents receive and bestow respect from and to one another. Kant, though, appreciates the cognitive limits of any holistic theoretical enterprise. A teleological explanation of the totality of history surpasses empirical limits; hence this enterprise, in superseding corrigible limits on its truth value, possesses only a regulative value. Hegel emphasises the recognitive aspect of the phenomenology of human and world identity formation. Without mutual recognition, self-consciousness lacks the means to understand itself via the mirror of others; hence recognition plays a vital role in establishing human identity, and this process of recognition extends throughout all aspects of social life, state formation and international relations. To recognise oneself as an individual and to belong to a distinctive state, one has to distinguish one’s own person from that of others, and one’s state has to be acknowledged to be distinct from other states. World history is the process whereby states and their associated distinctive political cultures are recognised to be paradigmatic vehicles of world development. For Marx, world history is the story of humanity’s cultivation of its productive powers to shape the world in a literal as well as a metaphorical sense. At specific stages of its development the world appears differently, so that moral and political judgments cannot be universal in pronouncing upon such issues as what constitutes a just wage or a reasonable distribution of resources. Marx imagines that conceptions of the individual and notions of distributive justice depend upon how the processes of production and the relations of production are organised in particular forms of society. For the most part, Kant, Hegel and Marx, in tracking historical developments, do not offer supervening causal explanations of the course of world history. They presuppose the prior work of diverse empirical histories and interpret what is revealed in these specific histories by reflecting on the conceptual presuppositions of the historical developments that are traced in these empirical histories. This reading of their approaches to history and the ways in which they


8


6/14/2011 12:11:41 PM

understand the historical development of the modern world is evidenced in Kant’s epistemological caution over a holistic historical enterprise. Likewise, Hegel’s distinction between his own practice of philosophical world history and other reflective histories of various sorts, and Marx’s intermittent care to distinguish his own analysis of the general conditions of historical development from specific causal accounts of empirical events, indicate that Hegel and Marx do not imagine that their reflections on history constitute first-order causal explanations of events. Kant, Hegel and Marx take care not to engage in prophecy and see themselves as primarily providing retrospective conceptual readings of developments, rather than as offering causal analyses of the past and detailed predictions of the future. Marx’s analysis of successive production regimes, however, lends itself to a causal model of historical development, and on occasions, he uses causal language to express his analysis of what is involved in historical developments. Kant, Hegel and Marx are united in relating their conceptual understandings of human beings and the development of the world to distinctive normative standpoints. Their affinity to subsequent global theory is evident in the commitments of contemporary global theorists, whose divergent ideological standpoints are influenced by the distinct moral and political goals of their modern predecessors. For Kant, republican government fits with the emerging rational capacities of human beings, and he envisages an extension of the pacific, liberal character of republicanism in the prospective achievement of a form of cosmopolitanism in which war and repression will be superseded. Hegel imagines embryonic modern rational states as responding to the chronic problems generated by the rise of individualism and modernity’s ensuing moral uncertainty by establishing practices and institutions which are commensurate with human freedom. Marx challenges the liberal assumptions evident in the normative standpoints of Kant and Hegel by diagnosing the deep-seated social and economic problems of modernity. He reads its forms of exploitation, alienation and inequality as demanding a revolutionary transformation of society, which can achieve a new and radically distinct form of social organisation. The conceptions of modernity maintained in the works of Kant, Hegel and Marx anticipate aspects of contemporary global theory rather than recede from view so as merely to frame a dichotomous


Introduction 9


6/14/2011 12:11:41 PM


contrast to an entirely novel way of conceiving and acting upon society and the world. Kant, Hegel and Marx remain of relevance to contemporary theory in articulating in distinctive and subtle idioms how the world is susceptible to modes of construction, and they provide pertinent ways of conceptualising the reflective powers of human beings, who are engaged in constituting and re-constituting the world. They also provide continuing models of relevance to contemporary ethical and political thought in showing how these human reflective powers can be invoked to monitor and improve upon the world’s rationality. If contemporary global theorists do not always acknowledge the pedigree of their thinking, like Kant, Hegel and Marx, they tend to highlight constructive, reflexive powers of human beings in their readings of the course of world history. Their ways of construing and exploring the historical processes of globalisation vary, and occasionally, they adopt a causal language that rehearses similar problems to those associated with a model of technologically driven development to which Marx himself was attracted intermittently, and which is evidenced in some of his writings on history.12 Particular contemporary theories of globalisation also employ arguments evocative of Marx’s construal of capital as an engine of expansive and reproductive development which is driven to colonise all parts of the globe for its purpose of maximising returns on investment. Notwithstanding their affinities with preceding modern theories, contemporary global theorists condemn the alleged teleology of modern theorists such as Kant, Hegel and Marx. In so doing, though, they tend to assume that these predecessors provide imperious historical narratives that obey an external teleological logic, while failing to provide persuasive detailed interpretive readings of their texts. The ensuing hollowness of their claims even applies to the critique of Marx that is elaborated by Hardt and Negri, whose own standpoint emerges out of the Marxist tradition and is evidently informed by a reading of Marx’s texts.13


10

Contemporary global theory This book analyses contemporary global theory thematically so as to allow for its incorporation of a range of theories and theorists and to facilitate analysis of the multiple ways in which current global theory is connected with preceding modern theory. While many


6/14/2011 12:11:41 PM

theorists are discussed, the book focuses on those who articulate major ideological and theoretical standpoints, rather than those whose work is devoted to particular aspects of global processes and does not involve a first-order engagement with the meaning and general development of globalisation. Hence, Albrow, Giddens, Held, Beck, Ohmae, Castells, Scholte, Sassen and Hardt and Negri receive recurrent attention, though a number of ancillary or more specific studies of global issues are also discussed. Reference is also made to such theorists as Rawls, Benhabib and Habermas, who presume or highlight a global context in developing theories that are defined primarily in non-global normative terms, for example, by specifying a theory of justice or democracy, but which make an interesting contribution to the interpretation of that global context.14 The themes of the subsequent chapters are global transformation, global cosmopolitanism and radical global theory. These chapters show how global theory engages with the five aspects of the thought of Kant, Hegel and Marx, to which we have referred and which are highlighted in the chapters that are devoted to those thinkers. The discussion of the theme of global transformation includes analysis of how global theory emphasises the historical changes that globalisation has produced. Globalisation is standardly construed as a process of transformation which succeeds and departs from modernity. If globalisation is perceived as succeeding modernity, global theorists are keen to separate their readings of the process of global transformation from how modern thinkers perceive historical change. Notwithstanding their determination to review historical change in ways that are distinct from modernist notions of teleology, global theorists assign a clear directionality to historical change, and this directionality is often referred to in implicitly teleological terms. Moreover, global transformation is aligned to the constructive powers of human agency, and the construction of a global context for human activity tends to be seen as highlighting and accentuating the rational and reflexive powers of human beings. Global theory’s attribution of constructive rational and reflexive powers to humanity is redolent of the theories of Kant, Hegel and Marx, who take the development of these powers to be emblematic of modernity. Global theorists’ accounts of the processes of global transformation tend to include evaluations of the processes and their normative commitments, which influence their readings of globalisation, testify to the


Introduction 11


6/14/2011 12:11:41 PM


impact of modern theory in the guises of Kant, Hegel and Marx. Central to the task of analysing global theory is identifying exactly what kind of theory it constitutes and specifying the ways in which the processes of global transformation are understood by global theorists. Contemporary global theorists tend to concentrate upon providing conceptual analysis of its conditions, though in the language of some global theorists, causal analysis is also implied. Analysis of the notion of global transformation exhibits the ways in which global theorists, while separating the contemporary global age from a preceding modernity, nonetheless deal with themes that are central to Kant, Hegel and Marx, namely historical directionality, human constructionism, the rational and reflexive powers of human agency, normative commitments, and conceptual and causal analysis. Similarly, the chapters on global cosmopolitanism and radical global theory also show how global theorists engage with these themes and in so doing highlight the influence of modern predecessors on global theory. Cosmopolitanism features prominently in contemporary discussions of global issues, and these discussions invariably reflect upon Kant’s formulation of cosmopolitanism. Debate about contemporary cosmopolitanism often deals with issues that are analysed by Hegel and Marx, whose theories were framed in the light of Kant’s preceding cosmopolitanism. Contemporary cosmopolitans invoke notions of human creativity, rationality and reflexivity in framing moral and political theories that are designed to be inclusive of all humanity. They also tend to see cosmopolitanism as arising out of determinate historical conditions, even though they are expressly critical of the teleology of modern precursors, such as Kant. The succeeding analysis of radical global theory shows how global theory involves ideological controversy because global radicals oppose alternative globalisation ideologies by urging revolution and a fundamental transformation of prevailing orthodoxies. A striking aspect of contemporary global radicalism is that it aims to break from, not merely opposing contemporary views, but also from preceding radicalism, and in so doing, the contemporary radical globalists identify their position by distancing themselves from Marxism. The ghost of Marx, though, does not rest easily, and radical globalists incorporate critiques of the economic operations of globalisation that are inspired by Marx’s arguments.15 Moreover, radicals envisage a directionality to the historical process that is redolent


12


6/14/2011 12:11:41 PM

of the grand historical narratives of modernity. Again, global radicals espouse a moral and political egalitarianism that constitutes a form of cosmopolitanism which both expresses and responds to preceding modern discussions of cosmopolitanism. Global theorists are paradoxical in the ways they relate to modern predecessors and to modernity as a phenomenon. On the one hand, in their zeal to establish the global present as distinct from what has gone before, they deny connections with modernity and modern theorists; on the other hand, their characterisation of globalism and their styles of theorising owe a debt to modern precursors and their images of modernity. The characterisation of the transformation effected by globalisation exemplifies this paradox. Global theorists of whatever ideological and theoretical brand tend to conceive of globalisation as process of social transformation and to perceive the present as constituting a novel historical epoch replete with new possibilities and problems. In so doing, they are keen to distance themselves from preceding modern theorists in at least two ways. First, modernity is distinguished sharply from the present global age. Albrow makes it the defining feature of his conception of globalisation that it post-dates a preceding modern age.16 Even Giddens, who identifies the contemporary global world as constituting a form of late modernity rather than a completely new epoch, nonetheless maintains that late modernity represents a distinct radicalisation of modernity, which departs notably from the lines drawn by modern theorists.17 Second, in conducting their analyses of the contemporary world, global theorists critique what they take to be the illicit forms of analysis conducted by modern predecessors such as Kant, Hegel and Marx, and certify the validity of their own intellectual style by avoiding expressly what they take to be teleological and determinist errors of predecessors. Global theorists themselves, however, standardly frame highly synoptic narratives of the growth of global society, which they combine with analysis of the underlying conceptual conditions underpinning a putative global transformation of social life. In so doing, they attend to human powers and refer to aspects of social practices that enable the expression and cultivation of global connections. Distinctive human powers such as creativity, universality and reflexivity are foregrounded as crucial factors in the transformation of society via their role in constructing and developing such paradigmatic global


Introduction 13


6/14/2011 12:11:41 PM


structures and practices as networks; empire; common, fluid, informal long-distance relationships; and technologically sophisticated channels of communication, and in an ensuing reflexive realisation of a heightened sense of calculable risk. While there are differences which mark out these practices and conditions from those formerly construed by preceding modern theorists as being essential features of modernity, there is a discernible continuity between the terms of analysis employed by current global theorists and by their predecessors. Moreover, contemporary global theorists resemble modern predecessors in adopting summative general perspectives on historical development, in ascribing a directionality to the movement towards a transformed globalised world and in identifying globalisation as the defining aspect of contemporary history. This directionality to history which is assumed by global theorists is endowed with heightened significance by associated normative commitments, which are adopted to appraise the past and present and to shape the future. This combination of evaluation and general historical analysis tends to promote a reading of the past in quasiteleological terms that conflict with the proclaimed methodological principles of global theorists. While a normative reading of history is neither in itself absurd, nor even evidently mistaken, given the emergence of norms in history and the relevance of historical trends and structures to the realisation of normative goals, the dangers of largescale readings of history motivated by normative assumptions are significant. The list of factors that are selected as advancing historical change may be determined by ideological approval rather than by the available evidence. This is all the more problematic when the normative influence is unacknowledged. Contemporary global theory impugns the alleged misuse of history on the part of preceding modern theorists, but global theorists themselves neglect to clarify the presumptions of their own perspectives on history, which interweave conceptual and causal analysis, facts and values and firstorder explanations of the past and second-order reflection on the periodisation of events into epochs. In their analyses of the processes of globalisation contemporary global theorists also incorporate specific features of modern theorists’ historical accounts of progress and societal development. The general Enlightenment emphasis upon the role of ideas and reason, which is evident in Kant and expressed in idiosyncratic form by


14


6/14/2011 12:11:41 PM

Hegel, informs contemporary analyses of global society, which identify a progressive realisation of cosmopolitan institutions and forms of reason and cumulative improvements to forms of political organisation.18 Global theorists, ranging from neo-liberal apologists for corporate development to anti-capitalist critics of global corporations, owe a particular and often unacknowledged debt to Marx’s reading of the inherently expansionist and reproductive tendencies of capital. Marx’s reading of the transformation of the world that is effected by capital is evidenced in a host of empirical features invoked by global theorists to explain the transformation to a global age. The extension and intensification of processes of commodification, the impact of new technologies, changing work patterns and the spread of market forces are factors that are analysed by Marx, which are invoked in narratives of global transformation. The tendency of global theorists to insinuate causal claims into their accounts of the historical processes of globalisation also reflects an affinity between them and Marx, whose ambiguous explanations of the development of modes of production and society appear at times to be causal in nature. The very slippage between explanans and explanandum, evident, for instance, in Scholte’s causal conception of globalisation, rehearses the slippage between productive forces and productive relations and between the economic structure of society and the ideological and political superstructure that occurs in some of Marx’s historical writings.19 The mix of normative and empirical elements in global theorists’ accounts of global transformation reveals a semi-concealed normative dimension in global theory, which is exposed and highlighted in debates about global cosmopolitanism. This express normative dimension is focused upon in Chapter 6 of this study of global theory. Cosmopolitanism is a disputed concept, but a primary meaning of contemporary global cosmopolitanism is that normative judgments, rights and moral duties are to be assigned to individuals without reference to their specific ethnic, cultural and political allegiances. This strong form of cosmopolitanism is held by a number of contemporary global theorists, as well as by theorists who are influenced by the paradigms of global theory without themselves being notable theorists of globalisation.20 Contemporary global cosmopolitans tend to take their bearings from Kant but distinguish themselves from his standpoint, mostly due to their post-Kantian readings of the


Introduction 15


6/14/2011 12:11:42 PM


circumstances of the present. They reckon that the development of a global civil society and the institution of forms of global governance transform the context in which cosmopolitanism is to be discussed. They also react against what they see as the teleological trappings of Kant’s Third Critique. Aspects of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, such as his reliance upon the public reason of intellectuals rather than the associations of international civil society are deprecated, along with his express faith in the reasonable expectation of progress.21 This critique of Kant is unfortunate, notwithstanding the problems surrounding Kant’s formulation of cosmopolitanism, for these very problems continue to dog its contemporary formulations in unacknowledged ways. The wider the remit of reason in the regulation of public affairs, the more problematic becomes its operational legitimacy. Extending the remit of rules stretches the viability of their application and raises questions about the provision and impact of local forms of interpretation. The development of global civil society and global political institutions may renew the prospects of cosmopolitanism but they also intensify problems over the application of universal norms to particular circumstances. The picture becomes ever more complicated, for a multiplicity of actors, including powerful elites and numerous populist, voluntary and official economic, political and cultural organisations vie to influence the ways in which moral principles are to be interpreted and enacted. Contemporary proponents of a strong form of global cosmopolitanism tend to rely upon an unstated adherence to a notion of historical progress to support their moral and political commitments, which recalls without resolving the problems arising out of Kant’s standpoint. The tricky question of political practice, the resolution of how we get from a non-cosmopolitan present to a cosmopolitan future, is as seemingly intractable in contemporary formulations of cosmopolitanism as it is in Kant’s. More critical or straightforwardly antagonistic contemporary assessments of cosmopolitanism identify a continuing role for nation-states in mobilising resources, exerting power and providing ideological support on behalf of their members. 22 Some critics of a strong form of cosmopolitanism maintain a global and cosmopolitan perspective, but in doing, so they continue to recognise, in ways evocative of Hegel’s support for the modern state, the continuing and positive contribution of nation-states to ethical and political developments. Both adherents to a mild form


16


6/14/2011 12:11:42 PM

of cosmopolitanism and its outright critics consider politics to be an irreducible form of activity, dealing with particular events and individuals, and they maintain that it is not to be reduced to the requirements of a universalistic morality. Kant and Hegel remain highly relevant to contemporary debates over the prospects for global cosmopolitanism, even if they do not provide all the answers and indeed even if there is not one single answer to resolve the contestability of its questions. The differing styles of cosmopolitanism and debates over its forms and possibilities point to the complexities of contemporary global theory, reinforcing the sense of its multidimensional character, which is evident in the several ways in which historical development is construed by contemporary global theorists. Global cosmopolitanism, as a label, is usually reserved for theorists who review politics from a moral point of view and who presume that moral principles can be formulated so as to be universal in scope and applicability. Contemporary radicals such as Naomi Klein and Hardt and Negri, maintain ideological commitments which are related primarily to social and political structures, though they can be seen to reflect support for the moral principle that all peoples and persons in the world should be treated equally. Despite their support for the basic ideas of cosmopolitanism, they tend not to be construed as cosmopolitan, because, like Marx before them, their focus is upon confronting thick forms of economic power and overturning corporate capital and its associated political support mechanisms.23 The emergence of these radical critics of globalisation, like Klein and Hardt and Negri, who advocate alternative, radical global agendas is significant and is reviewed in a separate chapter of this book. The emergence of a radical global movement underlines the diversity of global politics and global theory. Autobiographical remarks of notable members of the radical movement, such as Klein and Monbiot, attest to a surprise at recognising themselves to be contributing to a dissenting global movement as opposed to an anti-global or anti-capitalist movement.24 The alternative global movement highlights how global theory incorporates distinct and contrasting ideological claims about, and propositions for the development of, the global economy and politics. In so doing, it reflects the links between global theories and the multiple theories of modernity that precede them. The radical global movement and its partisans


Introduction 17


6/14/2011 12:11:42 PM


are divided amongst themselves, uniting only on their claims to originality and on their departure from preceding modes of political radicalism. The radical global movement contains a variety of dissenting voices: socialists, post-socialists, anarchists, feminists and ecologists, to mention the most prominent ones. They are at one in breaking from what they deem to be the disciplined, hierarchal and dated preceding regimes of radicalism. Party unity, hierarchy and disciplined agendas are exchanged for participative pluralism and anarchic dissidence. Subsequently, this book focuses upon Hardt and Negri’s radical global theory as an outstanding example of global radicalism. Hardt and Negri articulate the radicalism of the radical global movement, expressly reflecting and appealing to the anti-capitalist sentiments of protesters at meetings of the global elite and those of assorted radical movements across the globe. They devise an expressly novel conceptual vocabulary to capture what they take to be the radically distinct character of the present. They argue for the redundancy of the nation-state and traditional patterns of colonialism and international relations. What takes their place are empire, a global imperial power radiating to all corners of the globe; the common, the collective bio-political webs of social connection; and the multitude, the global resistance movement, which is composed of a multiplicity of forces of discontent. Hardt and Negri cast aside the radical vocabulary and conceptual world of Marx, replacing the image of the male industrial proletariat with the polymorphous multitude, whose resistance outstrips the confines of disciplined centralised revolt. They insist on their alternative modern, post-Marxist credentials, urging that the world is organised today on novel global lines that demand correspondingly novel lines of flight on the part of the oppressed. They counterpose a global participative democracy, composed of a multiplicity of singularities, to the ubiquitous and disciplined control of a repressive capillary empire. The contrast between contemporary global radicals and their modern predecessors is as overdrawn as the more general dichotomous presentation of global and modern theory. Hardt and Negri protest their innocence of preceding forms of dialectical critique that they construe to be reductive in their assimilation of historical events to a pre-formulated logic, but their projected supersession of empire does not simply translate repression into freedom but exploits empire’s


18


6/14/2011 12:11:42 PM

global qualities in imagining its incubation of a universal, supraspatial multitude, which will assume self-direction of an alternative world. Their manifest use of dialectical forms of intricate conceptual argument rehearse the past, just as their reliance on aspects of Marx’s theoretical reading of capital informs their conception of the interrelated characters of empire and capital. The influence of Hegel’s and Marx’s argumentative style upon Hardt and Negri is a token of the continuities between global radicalism and its preceding forms. While aspects of global radicalism traverse new territories, the figure of Max’s critique of capital informs anti-capitalist protests and the contemporary radical aspiration to rework production in a global setting. Even the commitments to participative democracy and global environmental responsibilities reflect Marx’s notions of radical democracy and Marx and Hegel’s sense of the interrelations between nature and the world-making qualities of humanity.

Global theory and reflexivity Contemporary global theory makes much of the concept of reflexivity, the capacity to reflect on the processes and consequences of reflection. Reflexivity denotes a distinguishing feature of human beings which is expressed and developed in the global age. It is held to capture a distinguishing characteristic of a globalised world because human beings now contend with the results of their own reflective activities rather than engage with nature, which is taken to be external to their activities and identities. Leaving to one side the contestable claims that reflexivity defines a novel global age, it is by no means clear that global theorists themselves comprehend reflexively the influences upon their own work and hence appreciate its mediated identity.25 There tends to be an inverse relationship between theorists’ claims to originality and their admission of influences upon their work.26 Hence, it is unsurprising that global theorists tend to underplay or deny the impact of preceding modern theorists upon their work and to claim a countervailing originality of perspective. This dichotomous representation of a contrast between global theory and preceding modern theory is symptomatic of a tendency to engage in theoretical generalisations that reduce complex relationships to those of simple opposition. Consequently, terms such as the Enlightenment, ‘modernity’, ‘reason’, ‘teleology’,


Introduction 19


6/14/2011 12:11:42 PM


‘globalisation’, ‘cosmopolitanism’, ‘empire’ and ‘multitude’ are not discriminated so as to show their multiple uses and the comprehensive range of their applications. It is an argument of this book that the dichotomy between the global and modern worlds needs to be challenged, just as the tendency of global theorists to define themselves in terms of their opposition to modern theorists requires deconstruction. Observing the several ways in which global theories are influenced by preceding modern theories opens up global theory to historical and explanatory analysis. Global theory, as its name implies, is global in scope, and this very range inhibits its undertaking a fine-grained discrimination of the concepts that it employs. Investigation of its points of contact with specific preceding modern theories allows for analytic judgments on some of its particular features and claims. Global theories offer causal analysis, summary reviews of the directionality of historical development, periodisation of history so as to identify the global age, clarification of the conceptual conditions of global society, analysis and evaluation of political and international conditions, and ideological commitment to and justification of particular forms of global politics. Hay and Marsh suggest that ‘... it seems imperative that we consider the independent role that ideas about globalization may have in shaping the social, political and economic contexts we inhabit.’27 This judgment signals that attention should be paid to ideas about globalisation especially as it cannot be assumed, as Hay and Marsh imply, that there can be a clear-cut separation between the material and ideational aspects of globalisation.28 The significance of examining the multiplicity of ideas about globalisation is, as Hegel recognised, that the material world is not something fixed, against which we can measure our concepts. There are many global perspectives on the world which imply distinct notions of how the world is to be understood, and this study focuses upon historical connections between global theories and selected modern theories in order to highlight the continuing influence of theories of modernity and the multidimensionality of global theory. The differences between global theories are evident in the alternative ideological visions of the world maintained by radicals, neo-liberals and global social democrats. These intricacies of global perspectives are currently being taken further in more specific studies of


20


6/14/2011 12:11:42 PM

Introduction 21


global developments that focus upon specific ways and situations, for example specific sites of post-colonial contention, where complexities arising out of dissonant perspectives are exhibited, and by studies that examine interrelations between global and sub-global scalar categories.29


6/14/2011 12:11:42 PM

2

Introduction Kant’s social and political theory is now recognised to be a significant component of his philosophy, with continuing relevance, particularly to contemporary cosmopolitanism and analytic theories of politics and global theory.1 Kant’s political philosophy is framed within a conception of humanity’s freedom and its moral responsibility for the value and dignity of all human beings. He proposes a cosmopolitanism which widens the orbit of moral and political concern from a prevailing concentration on members of one’s community to include all rational creatures. His cosmopolitanism is founded upon an Enlightenment notion of the universality of reason, the physical limits of the globe, and the possibility of achieving a practical realisation of a cosmopolitan respect for mankind via the publicity afforded to enlightened ideas. It might be said to represent the progressive fusion of the universality of reason with the physical, spatial limits of the globe. Kant’s social and political perspective is evidently global in its implications in terms of his sense of the spatial interconnections between politics, progressive recognition of belonging to a shared world and normative commitment to the respect that is owed to the freedom of all human beings. He expressly recognises the globe to instantiate the ultimate, determinate limit on human conduct, necessitating a moral respect for all persons who inhabit its surfaces, and who interact with one another via trade, travel and colonisation. Kant’s cosmopolitanism is a paradigmatic yet specific global


Kant: Cosmopolitan Reason, Progress and Global Responsibility

22


6/14/2011 12:11:46 PM

23

perspective, and its commitments to reason, progress and mutual respect for persons are reflected in subsequent rhetorical and theoretical formulations of global theory. Humanity for Kant and for subsequent rationalist and cosmopolitan global theorists is constituted by a mutual respect for the reason of persons, whereby particular borders and local circumstances are so many ways to itemise a fundamentally single identity for humanity. It is instructive to consider Kant’s cosmopolitanism for a variety of reasons. He provides a well-formulated, clearly argued defence of its moral validity, urging that it avoids the baleful consequences of states operating discretely and violently in pursuit of particular interests. It is a political and international standpoint that demands and deserves respect. It takes the consequences of war seriously and reckons the worth and moral value of individuals in terms of their capacity to reason rather than in terms of their place of birth or national identity. It takes the global setting to be an equalising as well as a limiting condition for mankind, and its clear moral sense of what it means to be a citizen of a shared human and moral world imparts a defining moral sense of what it might mean to be a global citizen. Its global reach is not determined by enumerating all of the points on the globe or itemising global transactions but by the universality of reason, and this generic character of humanity informs paradigmatic formulations of global cosmopolitanism.2 Kant’s cosmopolitanism, however, raises a distinctive set of problems pertinent to his own times and situation, which nonetheless bear upon more contemporary projects. Its rationalism appears to offer a single, supervening solution to global problems of political differences and conflict, but it runs into local difficulties in squaring prevailing circumstances with the universal requirements of reason. A single resolution of particular local problems might offer the prospect of a disarming economy of salvation, but salvation rarely comes without a price. The price in this case is that conflicts between groups and nations may be resolved on paper, but only at the expense of ignoring endless practical questions and problems arising out of the need to harmonise the diverse identities and countless organisations and structures with which individuals are involved. A Kantian unificatory conception of reason must address the practical issues arising out of the diversification of humanity. In a world in which nation-states pursue their own interests and resort to wars to resolve


Kant: Cosmopolitan Reason and Global Responsibility


6/14/2011 12:11:46 PM


their disputes, how does a pacific republican such as Kant get us to a world of peace and rational harmony? What are the practical steps along the way? Kant has to identify the path towards peace and universalism, and he does so by imagining their realisation through the on-going progress of reason. Progress is enabled by the openness of intellectual debate, and is certified by humanity’s historical telos. In effect, Kant’s cosmopolitan commitment is underscored by a teleological conception of historical development, which in turn appears to be problematic and at odds with his commitment to the critical form of reason inscribed in his Critique of Pure Reason.3 Kant explains the progress of cosmopolitanism via a teleological conception of the supervening directionality of history. A total explanation of the development of history supersedes the specific empirical limits of the viable operation of reason that are conceptualised in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant’s resort to teleology, however, is not a capitulation to an unsustainable and uncritical notion of reason. He is at pains to recognise that the summative rationality imputed to the historical process is not to be accepted uncritically. For it is constituted by a regulative rationality, which is suggested by evidence drawn from history but is not thereby proved in the way that empirical observations and scientific laws may be seen as determined.4 Kant is highly self-conscious over the status of his general conception of history; the rationality of progress is regulatory rather than necessary. There are, nonetheless, reasons to support its adoption as a principle; reflection on what has happened and the signs of rational progress exhibited in the present conduce to the theory’s plausibility. Reflection on the nature of reason and the efficacy of its free communication provide grounds for imagining the onward development of republicanism and world peace. Kant’s resort to teleology, which assumes a directionality to history, is problematic, but he adopts it for regulative reasons, and it consorts with the kinds of goals that are pursued in history. It is nonetheless an unfashionable move in contemporary political argument, shunned by analytic theorists and global cosmopolitans who are otherwise inclined to recognise a kinship with Kant.5 Notwithstanding the critique of the Kantian conception that historical progress is maintained by contemporary global cosmopolitanism, it is by no means clear that contemporary cosmopolitans either dispense with a supervening sense of historical directionality


24


6/14/2011 12:11:46 PM

25

or refine the theory and practice of operating with notions of historical development and directionality. The very designation ‘global age’ presupposes that the global is the defining element of the historicity of the present, and the end of preceding development and cosmopolitanism, in seeing itself as a progressive form of political morality, is inclined to recognise its own form as itself constituting a sign of progress.6 Contemporary variants of Kant’s cosmopolitanism have not overcome the problems associated with the Kantian model. Contemporary global idioms of cosmopolitanism take the universal reach of morality to be the arbiter of issues of war and peace, intervention and autonomy, as well as of fairness and citizenship. This resort to cosmopolitanism, though, re-invokes questions to which the Kantian model was subject, notably over the balance to be struck between the particular and the universal. Proposed global interventionism in the pursuit of global justice must contend with the particular interests and autonomy of states as well as with subsidiary forms of political association. Moreover, leaving issues of moral rectitude to one side, the interplay between politics and morality raises questions about the practical viability of cosmopolitan solutions. Are political questions and practicalities to be negotiated or swept aside? Is it feasible to imagine a cosmopolitan global political regime? These issues resemble those with which Kant contended. His resort to the practical agency of public reason and a supervening historical destiny may be anachronistic insofar as the style of public reason to which he appealed and the openness of his reliance upon historical teleology are no longer fashionable, but their invocation reminds us that theories of cosmopolitanism require means of advancing the cause in the context of practical and historical obstacles. Contemporary theorists and political activists can neither ignore nor sidestep gritty practical issues relating to the establishment and maintenance of cosmopolitanism. The persistence of these issues underlies the relevance of Kant to contemporary forms of global theory.



Kant’s cosmopolitanism Kant’s cosmopolitanism embraces two distinct but defining features: a normative, non-empirical universalism and a countervailing recognition of the global constraints on space in the empirical world.


6/14/2011 12:11:46 PM


Moral theory respects no boundaries to its remit in that particular feelings of empathy or value are to be overruled by the rational perspective of respect for universal laws. Likewise, no person or nation in the world of sense experience is immune from the prospect of social interaction, given the ultimate physical constraints of the globe. Sense and reason combine to determine global responsibilities, for the limits of space intersect with the unlimited reach of moral duty to entail global and cosmopolitan political obligations. Kant refers expressly to this combination – moral universality and recognition of the globe’s spatial limitations – in setting out the third definitive article of a Perpetual Peace, namely that of cosmopolitan ‘right’. He begins by remarking, ‘We are here concerned not with philanthropy, but with right.’ He goes on to observe, ‘Since the earth is a globe, they (men) cannot disperse over an infinite area, but must necessarily tolerate one another’s company.’7 While sense and reason intersect in Kant’s specification of a global cosmopolitanism, the spheres of sense and reason remain distinct and preclude the assimilation of one into the other. Kant’s critical project, as he announced in Critique of Pure Reason, is to draw the epistemological limits of reason, which preclude direct apprehension of things in themselves and general reasoning about empirical phenomena that is not linked to direct observations.8 A combination of sense and reason is required to understand the phenomenal world of sense experience, but reason itself can and must be applied directly in establishing and maintaining moral laws in practical life. The moral law represents the universality of reason in its application to the conduct of human agents, prohibiting their partial treatment. While Kant may well recognise the role of anthropological experience in suggesting the moral laws and codes by which humanity lives, experience in itself should not supply the motivation and rationale of moral obligations.9 The purity of moral life is guaranteed by its autonomy and its disengagement from the experiential goals and feelings of its agents. And agents, in attending to and maintaining the moral rules by which they live, are moral to the extent that they respect the universal demands of duty and insulate themselves from particular self-interested or goals and projects. Politics, for Kant, resembles morality insofar as it is likewise a formal and disinterested normative practice which does not serve as an instrument for realising the contingent goals of particular sets


26


6/14/2011 12:11:46 PM

27

of people. The formal universality of the conditions of a rightly ordered political association is encapsulated in the following formula, expressed in The Metaphysics of Morals: ‘In its “strict” Sense, Right can also be envisaged as the Possibility of a general and reciprocal Coercion consonant with the Freedom of Everyone in accordance with Universal Laws.’10 Kant imagines the rules of political life as arising out of a social contract, which establishes the necessity of curtailing violence and coercion within and beyond the borders of particular states. The rational rules of social and political interaction prescribe a republican regime in which members of a political association are to be treated equally under the law in being granted freedom from interference by others, so that they can cultivate their moral freedom and practical independence by adhering to the moral law. The formal, universal demands of reason are underlined by Kant’s recognition that they imply a trans-national rather than a merely national setting. The social contract for Kant is neither historical nor contingent; rather, it is a metaphorical register of the logical prerequisites of a rational community that allows its citizens the freedom to practise morality. It is an idea of reason, superseding empirical circumscription.11 It is a misleading aspect of the metaphor of the social contract that it might appear to rest on contingent agreement and to precede the formation of a state and hence seem to serve as an instrumental device for achieving the determinate interests of particular agents. It is rational and moral rather than contingent and historical, demanding recognition and compliance because of its inherently rational character. Without the formation of a civil association all rights would be provisional, for a pre-political condition would be ‘a state devoid of justice’ in which rights would not be secured by the conditions of public law.12 Likewise, the international sphere is liable to be a site for coercion and violence, without the institutionalisation of right order, either through establishing a cosmopolitan state or through the offices of an evolving and enlarging federation of like-minded republics. Reason demands that peace must be instituted at the expense of violence; hence the remit of states must be superseded by the rational imperatives of universal respect for all persons. Kant expresses a preference for the development of cosmopolitan principles through a federation of republics rather than a global state. The rationale for the former is not developed, but it is




6/14/2011 12:11:47 PM


motivated by his concern over the prospective concentrated force of a cosmopolitan state and the greater practicality of a developing federation.13 Kant sees republican government and a concomitant cosmopolitan order as constituting forms of rationality which supersede the vagaries of particular agreements and attitudes. Kant’s standpoint is rationalist in separating the pure form of republicanism and the supervening cosmopolitan republican international order from the preceding historical practice of actual states, where war, violence and Realpolitik highlight the dichotomy between the real and the ideal. The formal character of Kant’s theorising, adheres to the formal priority of pure reason, but his estimate of actual practice calls into question the realisation of a rational political order and the practical achievement of peace in the international arena. How will individuals be motivated to develop cosmopolitan institutions, given prevailing assumptions? Granted the prevalence of wars and humanity’s pursuit of particular interests, how will a global order of cosmopolitanism be achieved? Kant resolves the tension between theory and practice by invoking an optimistic reading of the prospective historical achievement of a peaceful, rational international community to support his formal specification of a rational polity and the requirements of cosmopolitanism. Kant’s reading of history is an expressly teleological one, in which the normative requirements of a rational political regime and a peaceful international order furnish the criteria for determining the rationale for the overall development of the historical process. The end of history is the achievement of peace, mutual respect for persons and express subscription to the requirements of reason. In turn, this putative end of history justifies and explains the directionality of the historical process to be the progressive advance of the cause of reason. In Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, Kant indicates how his cosmopolitan reading of history allows for a reconciliation with the messy particular events of history and an anticipation of a forthcoming realisation of reason. He observes, ‘... what strikes us in the actions of individuals as confused and fortuitous may be recognised, in the history of the entire species, as a steadily advancing but slow development of man’s original capacities.’14 Kant’s historical perspective is as problematic as it is suggestive. To maintain radical cosmopolitan ideas against the grain of accepted


28


6/14/2011 12:11:47 PM

29

practice is to imagine that the prospects of cosmopolitanism are supported by aspects of the present and of the past from which it has emerged. Kant, in his universal history, provides a credible justification of why the current situation and its development are conducive to cosmopolitanism, notwithstanding its clash with the prevalent self-interested conduct of states. It is problematic, however, because general histories tend to read the past through a telescope, focusing upon an object determined by present preoccupations and ignoring any intervening items that might obscure it. The history of humanity may be recounted in countless ways, and a single perspective is liable to misrepresent this variety. Universal histories abstract from the multiplicity of particular events and homogenise historical time, whereby distinct stretches of time, encompassing diffuse cultures and activities, are assessed according to a single yardstick: their contribution to achieving progress towards an end state. History, for Kant, is a process that is susceptible to a general and unilinear perspective, so that the multifarious activities and constructed practices of agents can be measured according to the criteria generated by a designated rational end of history. The generality of Kant’s reading of history, in which an end state defines the terms by which preceding states of affairs are to be interpreted, licenses him to envisage a variety of historical events and patterns as conducing to the ultimate goals of republicanism and peace. On the one hand, notably in the Critique of Judgement, the unsociability of man is seen as covertly developing his rationality; for the competitive behaviour of individuals, the hardships of nature and the propensity of states to resort to war are held to generate the unintended consequence of promoting rational qualities and technological progress.15 On the other hand, the Enlightenment, and the rational public discourse of philosophers entrenching Enlightenment values and waves of republican sympathy, are read as positive signs of impending progress.16 In Kant’s teleological history, however, this very amenability of apparently distinct and discordant forces to the designated course of moral progress and universal peace derogates from its plausibility. If sociability and unsociability are both construed as signs of progress, then it might appear that nothing can count against progress and if that is the case, then the value of what counts for a general historical theory of progress is questionable.




6/14/2011 12:11:47 PM


Kant’s teleological reading of history does not provide a clear-cut and manifestly valid understanding of historical development. But if this much can be said against Kant’s reading of history, then it must also be owned that Kant himself is alert to the uncertainties of its status. Kant, after all, develops a critical philosophy, and its critical character derives from its rigorous critique of the claims of reason. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant recognises that causal explanations of empirical phenomena can be justified, given the categorical role of reason in understanding empirical phenomena, but he takes holistic causal judgements of reason, such as a general explanation of nature or history, where cause and effect do not qualify discrete phenomena, to be subject to the dialectical uncertainties of reason. The practice of holistic reasoning is only to be allowed in terms of its heuristic or regulative value in promoting the scientific project of tracing specific causal connections. In Critique of Judgement, Kant aims to provide a bridge between the limits of scientific knowledge outlined in the First Critique and the practical claims of reason to dictate the moral law in practical life, and so to establish a realm of freedom and reason.17 The bridge, however, does not change the terrain; limits to reason remain, and a teleological view of historical progress is a peculiar kind of judgement, lacking demonstrable criteria.

History, progress and teleology The Critique of Judgement develops by way of an investigation of judgement in art. Aesthetic judgement operates by combining aspects of the procedures of reason analysed in the first two critiques. An object, scene or artifice, for example, is judged to be beautiful via an indeterminate judgement. The indeterminacy of the judgement distinguishes it from the standard operations of the empirical judgements analysed in Critique of Pure Reason, where determinate concepts are brought to bear upon a product of sensibility.18 Aesthetic judgements of beauty do not appraise phenomena in terms of their consonance with standard qualities; rather, they represent the common sense occasioned by a free movement between the productive imagination and rational conceptualisation, whereby an object is judged to be beautiful because of a feeling of appropriateness or fit between the terms of the judgement. Sensibility and conceptualisation harmonise,


30


6/14/2011 12:11:47 PM

31

and the objectivity of the harmony is occasioned by this sense of the fit between the component parts of the judgement rather than by a demonstrable inclusion of a phenomenon under a determinate class of objects. Aesthetic judgement is indemonstrable, and yet is held to be objective, common sense. Kant remarks, ‘This indeterminate norm of a common sense is, as a matter of fact, presupposed by us, as is shown by our presuming to lay down judgements of taste.’19 A counterpart to judgements of beauty is the sublime, where an occurrence or scene overwhelms the rational capacity of humanity to frame it conceptually. A storm, for instance, is so overwhelming as to excite but frustrate its comprehension. The occurrence acts a stimulant to the capacities of reason, and hence, like the recognition of beauty, testifies to the scope and force of reason.20 The nature of aesthetic judgement provides a template for Kant’s subsequent analysis of holistic and teleological judgements in which phenomena, routinely explained mechanistically and deterministically, are held to be susceptible to holistic treatment when they are also understood as realising an overall purpose, for instance the flourishing or development of an organism. This fit between overall purpose and specific phenomena or component parts is grasped as a feeling rather than as a determinate categorical judgement and is related to the teleological conception of an ultimate end to nature. All ends or purposes are presumed to contribute to the final end of nature, which, for Kant, must be related to the rational end-setting capacities of humanity.21 The teleological end of humanity is exhibited by a summative understanding of history, where apparent vicissitudes, hardships and malevolences are re-read as necessary steps in the achievement of reason in human affairs.22 Kant sees large-scale historical developments as admitting of two kinds of explanation, namely ‘efficient’ and ‘final’ forms of causation. A final judgement constitutes a teleological judgement which is akin to an aesthetic judgement in that historical events are experienced as rational in conducing to the overall normative purposes of reason. Hence history, and its otherwise disorienting record of diverse and discordant forms of social interaction, can largely be seen to conform to the requirements of reason. Kant recognises, however, the circumscribed limits within which his general theory of history operates; it constitutes a regulative form of reason that is not licensed epistemologically by the phenomenal terms under which




6/14/2011 12:11:47 PM


ordinary judgements of cause and effect are to be justified. Kant highlights the limits within which teleological judgement operates by remarking, ‘We are right, however, in applying the teleological estimate at least problematically to the investigation of nature; but only with a view to bringing it under principles of observation and research by analogy that looks to ends, while not pretending to explain it by this means.’23 Kant’s teleological theory of history is suggestive and carefully constructed. It operates differently from the pure legislative rationality of practical reason and the limits within which empirical phenomena are to be standardly understood. Cavallar maintains that its perspective is and should be distinguished sharply from those of practical reason and the understanding, but while Kant distinguishes between types of judgement, the proposed unifying role of Critique of Judgement and its analysis of reflective judgement should not be underestimated.24 Critique of Judgement plays a key role in linking aspects of his critical philosophy and serves the purpose of connecting his ideal of republican government and perpetual peace to the perceived realities of historical events. Kant’s historical perspective, as expressed in his Critique of Judgement in particular, provides a frame of reference for understanding the present and the significance of historical development and gives a sense of how normative judgements may be seen to fit with the world and human conduct. Kant takes humanity’s rationality to be the primary characteristic of human development because human beings invoke reason to frame ends that are unconstrained, and these rational ends are of a piece with the notion of a summative rational end to historical and natural processes. The very contemporary confidence in reason exhibited by Kant’s enthusiasm for the cause of the Enlightenment, the evidence of the cultivation of human rational powers and the force of reason in public argumentation combine to give credibility to Kant’s teleological arguments. Kant’s sense of the world and its rational development, which constitute a sort of global theory, is a reading of the world that highlights humanity’s rational capacities, taking these capacities to underpin historical development, contemporary events, moral norms and political conduct. The rational, universal powers of human beings are the essential aspects of how the world is to be understood, and they are seen as uniting the inhabitants of the globe.


32


6/14/2011 12:11:48 PM


33

While Kant’s cosmopolitanism is impressive in its integration of assorted elements, notably history, human capacities and the possibilities of the epoch, it is far from unproblematic. A recognition of these problems informs the commentary of contemporary global cosmopolitans on Kant, who criticise his formula for dealing with contemporary obstacles to cosmopolitanism. Kant’s projection of the progressive development of cosmopolitanism is rightly judged to be questionable. To read history, as Kant does, from its projected normative end backwards entails a form of tunnel vision in which relieving light is provided by an imagined end. It is a restrictive illumination. What does not fit with the moral vision is either jettisoned or redescribed so as to assume a proto-cosmopolitan identity. The project of interpreting the course of history in terms of an independently defined agenda lends itself to reification, as is reflected in Kant’s reading of the projected deepening of the Enlightenment and its values. For Kant’s notion of the Enlightenment is but a shorthand formula for numerous particular events and practices which differ from one another and do not necessarily constitute a concerted force in history. Kant, though, imagines the Enlightenment to represent one essential thing and to contribute to a single end of progress, and in so doing, he imparts to his essentialist construction a directing role on the course of future developments.25 Kant’s very resort to history to support a theory of moral cosmopolitanism is problematic, for the thrust of his theory is universalist, which runs counter to the particularity of history. History is a sphere of contingency and change, where a universal standpoint is to be tempered by a countervailing, and hence uneasy, respect for specific circumstances, but if these circumstances are relied upon to play a significant role, then universalism itself may be compromised. The specific contemporary contingencies on which Kant drew to justify his optimism over the achievement of cosmopolitanism, appear to be overly contextual and to lack credibility for validating cosmopolitanism in a succeeding age. For contemporary versions of global cosmopolitanism, the problem of relating the specificity of history to a universal goal remains. The recent increase in global interconnections, the development of global corporations and the profusion of agencies constituting a more populist and energetic international


Kant’s legacy


6/14/2011 12:11:48 PM


civil society make the post-Kantian world different from that envisaged and relied upon in Kant’s cosmopolitan speculations but do not in themselves guarantee cosmopolitan outcomes.26 Contemporary cosmopolitans tend to distance themselves from Kant’s specific historical assumptions and political agenda. His advocacy of a patriarchal, non-democratic republican regime is out of step with today’s circumstances, just as his projected achievement of the cosmopolitan ideal via nation-states aligning themselves in an evergrowing federation of republics is unconvincing. A deeper and more radical legal and democratic framework for global governance is now on the cosmopolitan agenda.27 A critique of Kant that is undertaken by contemporary global cosmopolitans, however, should not be conducted lightly, for it is a reminder that the universalist rationalist form of cosmopolitanism is likely to be compromised by time-bound practical circumstances. To point up the historically situated and dated aspect of Kant’s enterprise is at the same time to expose and raise questions about the historically specific aspects of contemporary global cosmopolitanism. Moreover, while post-Kantian critiques of Kant’s philosophy of history are credible given the contingency of historical events and contexts, all moral and political theory, not least global theory, must deal with practical exigencies and circumstances. Global theory interprets its own historical emergence, and its normative claims and ideological assumptions must negotiate the complexities of practical and historical contingencies. The practical and normative viability and desirability of cosmopolitan institutions are contestable, and their contestability arises acutely in relation to their reflection of contingent local contexts rather than their exhibition of universal judgements on which all parties can readily agree. The gap in cosmopolitanism between the universalism of theory and the concrete demands of practice is the problem addressed by Hegel’s critique of the categorical imperative. Hegel’s critique focused upon what he took to be its emptiness, its inability to generate particular concrete prescriptions. Contemporary commentators sympathetic to Kant dismiss the relevance of Hegel’s critique, observing how Kant relates his categorical imperative to his anthropology and how the forms of the categorical imperative function as a critical way of reviewing moral practice rather than dictating to it.28 Kersting, for instance, points to the criterial nature of the principles of Kant’s practical philosophy, highlighting how the universality of practical


34


6/14/2011 12:11:48 PM

35

reason plays its role in assessing practical organisational and distributional formulas, rather than in generating them.29 Consonant with this understanding, Kersting urges a revision of Kant’s political theory in the light of succeeding circumstances, recommending a more compensatory extension of welfare-state measures than Kant allows for, so as to promote equality of right in the context of the marketplace.30 Kersting’s recommendation has substantive merit, but it raises questions about the operation of Kantian criteria in moral and political practice. It points to an indeterminacy and contingency in deciding upon how principles are to be interpreted and prioritised. It problematises the universalism of Kant’s political and international theories. In Critique of Practical Reason, Kant is parsimonious in providing examples of maxims that can be assessed by the categorical imperative, but he does cite the manifest inappropriateness of suicide.31 The very notion of agency and its implications in today’s world, however, are contestable. The divide between the human and non-human worlds is queried, and the extent to which agency invokes the obligation to help another person to die is an object of discussion. If the very notions of who an agent is or under what conditions agency can be endured are debatable, then the cosmopolitan imperative of providing a clear-cut, non-contingent framework for moral and political judgement is compromised. Kant’s advocacy of republicanism and a developing federation of republican regimes is bound up with contingent, defeasible practical judgements about the present and its historical emergence. Kant’s advocacy of cosmopolitanism exhibits its ambiguous and contestable character. It relies upon contingent historical events and yet aims to transform them into necessary stages in the fulfilment of a universal project. The Kantian reading of the Enlightenment as a unified project, which presages the fulfilment of rationalist aspirations in the realisation of cosmopolitanism, abstracts from the differences between its exponents and underplays the ambiguities associated with central figures such as Rousseau or Hobbes. The cosmopolitan project of developing and realising a universal set of moral rules to guide social practice, neatly packaged in terms of human rights, requires a practical implementation that in turn calls upon its interpretation in particular contexts. General rules are susceptible of multiple interpretations. Kant’s cosmopolitan successors cannot rid themselves of the practicalities of interpretive complexity, for cosmopolitan democracy




6/14/2011 12:11:48 PM


specifies neither the agents who will participate in its practices nor the degree and style of their participation. The rhetoric of universality can obscure the range and significance of the interpretive complexity involved in enacting cosmopolitanism. Contemporary formulations of cosmopolitanism, predicated on theories of globalisation, follow Kant in yoking together a formal expression of a universal moral standpoint with practical schemes for its empirical realisation. Kant’s republicanism, which he sees as the basis for a developing cosmopolitan regime, rests upon his formulation of the social contract, which is not an empirical historical event but a formal idea of reason. It purports to provide a formal specification of the universal terms of a rational and moral political association by establishing the necessary rights and duties of a republican regime of equal citizens. The Kantian project of a social contract, setting formal moral limits to the terms of political association, assumes, like its Rawlsian successor, that analyses of form and content can be conducted independently. Hegel’s critique of Kant’s formalism, however, highlights the contestability of all aspects of political morality and points to the retrospective role of reason in assessing actual historical and cultural developments, rather than setting criteria independently of empirical references. The meaning of agency and the specification of an agent’s powers and rights are constructed, not in the sense of a Rawlsian or Kantian abstract thought experiment, but because human qualities are only revealed and developed in the context of cultural development. The ways in which men, women, children and people with disability are to be considered agents and citizens are not easily and incontestably determinable, but depend on the historical development of a variety of practices. This historical content affects form and complicates the practice of reasoning about politics and international affairs. Rawls’s conception of international justice points to the contestability of applying norms in the actual experiential world and the continuing relevance of Kantian and Hegelian arguments in the context of global theories of international rights. Rawls opts for a mild form of cosmopolitanism, urging the achievement internationally of a basic moral minimum for human rights, which should be encouraged by supporting a Kantian model of a federation of like-minded states rather than establishing trans-national governmental mechanisms to effect global justice.32 Rawls’s adherence to a gradualist and


36


6/14/2011 12:11:48 PM

37

statist approach to cosmopolitanism is motivated by his recognition of practicalities, rather than being a principled appreciation of the virtues of the nation-state. Like Kant, however, he appears merely to assume the practical argument, which jars with his formal style of reasoning. Rawls, like Kant, is criticised for his easy adjustment to historical circumstances.33 The coherence of Kant’s enterprise is defended by Cavallar, who maintains that in Kant’s international theory there are no ambiguities or tensions in his advocacy of the continuation of states, for a cosmopolitan or world-state would not be a direct analogue of the state vis-à-vis the state of nature. On this reading, Kant recognises that states already represent a rational and moral universe.34 Granted that there is a disanalogy between nationstates and a world-state on the one hand, and the state of nature and the nation-state on the other; it still remains true that the interrelations between cosmopolitan principles, republican politics and historical developments are complex and not susceptible to a neat formal resolution. This complexity is part of the Kant legacy and the critique of his political formalism that informs contemporary debates on cosmopolitanism.

Conclusion Kant’s international political theory is global in orientation. Kant takes the physicality of the globe to impose limits on the spatial operations of politics, and he adopts a cosmopolitan morality to encompass the world in the duties that this morality specifies. Humanity is composed of rational persons, interacting over time and space. The globe is the limit of their spatial interactions, world history is the sphere of their temporal interactions, and the global morality of cosmopolitanism is to be achieved in world history’s development. The universality of morality underpins Kant’s global perspective, which takes precedence over sub-global standpoints. Contemporary global theory, in many of its idioms, follows Kant in taking the interactions of human beings in time and space to culminate in a global identity. The very language of globalisation tends to assume that history possesses a directionality, which is to culminate in the transformation of the world into a global unity.35 Global social transactions and events are prioritised, and sub-global developments are either integrated in or subordinated to world-wide developments. Critics




6/14/2011 12:11:48 PM


and proponents of globalisation tend to presume a monistic standpoint. This global standpoint is articulated in differing idioms, but significant idioms and accents of contemporary global theory tend to reflect Kant’s language. Notwithstanding a tendency on the part of global theorists of the present to critique Kant’s teleology, they share with Kant a sense of the directionality of history that is reinforced in quasi-teleological terms by their commitment to the normative value of global cosmopolitanism, which serves as an end or resolution to historical development. If contemporary successors tend to play down their adherence to a quasi-teleological conception of history, they are also less reflexive than Kant on the epistemological status of their reflections on history. Their lack of reflection on the epistemological limits within which their readings of history operate is ironic given the emphasis that a number of global theorists place upon the powers of reflection of human beings and the reflexivity of reasoning agents. In specifying the underlying conditions of globalisation, global theorists recognise how global development is shaped by the capacity of human being to abstract from concrete involvement in practices and institutions to make connections across spatial and temporal horizons. Kant’s focus upon the rational capacities of human beings, the identification of humanity with what is universal in their constitution, is of a piece with this identification of the conditions of global society that are highlighted by contemporary global theorists. Kant is also a highly influential figure on contemporary idioms of global cosmopolitanism. Global cosmopolitanism is a distinct idiom of contemporary global theory, though its normative commitments inform more general narratives of global development. Like Kant, contemporary global cosmopolitans take the universality of reason and a concomitant respect for the rational capacities of all human beings to be central to their project. They see their distinctiveness as residing in their formulating the project in a distinctly global context. They face problems in relating global norms to the specificities of multiple local contexts which rehearse the practical difficulties that are encountered in Kant’s development of cosmopolitanism. While Kant’s moral and political standpoint is approached standardly via his formal conception of the universality of reason and the general obligatoriness of moral rules, Kant’s aesthetic theory highlights his sensitivity to questions of judgement and suggests an


38


6/14/2011 12:11:49 PM

39

alternative aesthetic response to the complexities of how political and international theory and practice may be related. Kant’s aesthetic theory allows for recognition of the universality of aesthetic judgements, but this objectivity is held to be insusceptible to clear-cut demonstration. This lack of demonstrability underlies Kant’s theory of history and is invoked by the postmodern theorist Lyotard to explain his own sense of the indemonstrable nature of differends and is the subject of his posthumously published, Enthusiasm: The Kantian Critique of History.36 Burnham, in his commentary on Critique of Judgement, highlights how Kant takes the disinterested, universal character of aesthetic judgements to be mutually recognised by persons in being worked over in communication.37 Although individuals cannot directly communicate the objectivity of reflexive judgements, a community of agents, sharing and discussing their aesthetic judgements, allows for a sympathetic probing and discriminating of their interests and prejudices, which cloud judgements. Openness to the disinterestedness of aesthetic judgement is enabled by engagement with a community of like-minded individuals sharing and debating tastes within a common practice. Kant thereby recognises that the promotion of aesthetic taste may contribute to the development of disinterested morality in ways insusceptible to rational demonstration.38 Relatedly, Habermas, in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, argues that Kant’s commitment to the value of publicity and free argumentation links the phenomenal practical sphere of actual communities to the requirements and interpretation of formal reason.39 Kant’s recognition of the efficacy of free, rational public discussion, in tandem with his perception that taste is promoted by cultural debate and practice, points to what can be construed as the positive but indemonstrable moral value of sub-global communities. These communities can maintain and develop cultural and discursive practices, which enable the skills of evaluating and interpreting moral and political rules to be sharpened. The relevance of Kant’s notion of aesthetic judgement to political theory might be pressed further. By ideas of reason, via the social contract and cosmopolitan respect for persons, Kant provides the rules for public life, but perhaps more crucial for the flourishing of politics is the judicious exercise of political judgement, whereby particular judgements prioritising and applying rules and assessing the




6/14/2011 12:11:49 PM


role of institutions and frameworks are determined and framed. The exercise of judicious judgements in this regard is akin to the play of judgement that Kant takes to be symptomatic of aesthetic judgement. While the terms and criteria of political judgement, for Kant, are standardly presented as being formally rational, their articulation and discrimination belong to a practical form of reason, which involves discernment of historical bearings, an identification of agency and citizenship, and the prioritisation of differential rules. These skills are of a piece with the reflexive indemonstrable objectivity of aesthetic judgement. If Kant’s international and political theory is standardly taken to be rationalist, concerned with the formal elaboration of rules, the presence of a less rationalist, aestheticised notion of the political is highlighted by Lyotard and Arendt.40 In Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights, Anderson-Gold develops an historical understanding of the idea of cosmopolitanism and reviews what she sees to be the developing force of an international humanrights regime. She links globalisation and cosmopolitanism. She perceives contemporary globalisation as strengthening a commitment to the universal provision of human rights and invokes Kant as the principal historic architect of the idea of cosmopolitan right. She observes, ‘I will use Kantian theory as an interpretative guide to show how cosmopolitan association is prefigured in the constitution of the human species and the natural condition of the “world”. Because universal association is implicit in the moral foundations of “outer freedom”, cosmopolitan right is an intrinsic feature of Kant’s conception of public law. This connection is derived from the finitude inherent to the globe. Globalization brings universal association to its completion and with it the need for cosmopolitan right.’41 Kant is taken by Anderson-Gold to support a contemporary movement in theory and practice to strengthen the universal reach of cosmopolitan governance and a human-rights regime. She recognises Held’s projection of developing global governance and sees the priority that is assigned to the universal reach of rights over their local interpretation by contemporary international rights’ theorists, such as Donnelly, as attesting to Kantian ideas on cosmopolitanism.42 Kant’s ideas, however, can be interpreted in differing ways. Hutchings’s Kant, Critique and Politics indicates the several ways in which Kant informs contemporary philosophy and political theory.43 While Kant’s ideas influence the strong commitment to universal


40


6/14/2011 12:11:49 PM

41

norms found in Habermas and Held, his ideas can also be seen in the thinking of subsequent theorists, who emphasise particular interpretation over the authority of universal rules. In The Differend Lyotard recognises that incommensurable judgements are called for in continuing and connecting differing phrase regimes.44 Likewise, Arendt, in Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, invokes Kant’s Third Critique to focus upon what is involved in political judgement, when political actors must face a situation in which mere rules cannot be relied upon.45 Kant is relevant to contemporary notions of globalisation and cosmopolitanism. His fallibilist and normative reading of history as tending towards a cosmopolitan regime of peace and right is criticised and yet rehearsed in contemporary studies. His commitment to the principles of cosmopolitanism influences strong versions of moral and political cosmopolitanism, which prioritise the global jurisdiction of moral principles. Yet Kantian notions of the unfounded art of aesthetic judgement influence such theorists as Lyotard, Arendt and Derrida, who point to the undecidability of political judgements.46




6/14/2011 12:11:49 PM

3

Introduction Hegel tends to be ignored or condemned by contemporary exponents of globalisation. His thought is disdained for celebrating the outdated sovereignty of nation-states, and for practising a fraudulent and one-dimensional essentialist dialectical teleology.1 It is certainly true that Hegel develops an audacious perspective on world history that plots a line of development encompassing its numberless currents within a supervening story of progress towards the establishment of a rational nation-state. He also refers to the state in apparently hyperbolic terms, emphasising its spirituality and rationality. 2 Hegel’s appreciation of the social harmony provided by the state and his confidence in an overall directionality that he imputes to the course of world history stretches credulity, but his thought remains instructive for its way of conceiving the world and its constituents. Hegel is a complex, ambiguous figure who aims to incorporate multiple cross-cutting aspects of the world in his philosophy. Indeed, he takes this form of his philosophy to fuse with the content of modernity, for he imagines modernity to supersede previous ages in incorporating seemingly discordant aspects of psychical and social life within the organisation of states. If globalisation represents a further step in incubating complex and apparently discordant aspects of social, political and international affairs, set in train by modernity, then Hegel’s reading of modernity offers an insightful guide to how globalisation might be best conceived.


Hegel: Global Theory and Recognition

42


6/14/2011 12:11:53 PM

Hegel’s concern to capture multidimensional aspects of reality renders his designation as a statist theorist problematic. While he does recognise the merits and possibilities of association within states, he is alive to the significance of individuality, social pluralism and the international context within which states must operate. Hegel is far from what is generally taken to be a cosmopolitan, but cosmopolitanism is a disputed term, and the ultimate context of Hegel’s social ethics is the world. Hegel’s philosophy of history is expressly identified with the development of the world, and he perceives the emergence of a rational state, accommodating the rights of its citizens with a publicly articulated legal framework, to be of paradigmatic value to the world as a whole. Hegel, then, sees a role for the particularity of an ethical state within a wider recognitive framework of mutual global recognition. His intricate analysis of how states play a role in establishing rational normative relations between individuals, a role that is significant for all inhabitants of the globe, bears upon the perspectives of contemporary cosmopolitans and global theorists. Those contemporary theorists who perceive the global framework of politics and morality as requiring the relative independence and activity of states, and who temper cosmopolitan principles of justice with a recognition of the demands of peoples and groups to frame their own sense of how these principles are to be developed, are continuing the Hegelian enterprise, rather than abandoning his way of conceiving of modernity, for a postHegelian global project.3 While Hegel’s conception of world history is ambitious to the point of recklessly disregarding the claims of pre-statist traditional forms of social organisation and of the haplessly dislocated victims of modernity, it, too, bears upon contemporary global theory.4 Global theory, just as much as Hegelianism, maintains that the global has emerged in time and that its meaning has changed during its process of emergence. Global theorists, though, tend to regard the transformation effected by the process of globalisation to represent either a deepening of the meaning of what is global or a quickening of its pace of development.5 They do not attend to the possibilities of radical change in the global’s conceptualisation. Hegel meets this challenge squarely. There is no world, for Hegel, without meaning, and meanings change. Global theorists tend not to recognise dislocations in the meaning of the global, though they do identify its emergence


Hegel: Global Theory and Recognition 43


6/14/2011 12:11:53 PM


in time, and it is this dynamic feature of its conceptualisation that imparts a directionality of history to their readings of social life.6 The directionality of history is embedded in notions of globalisation just as much as the dialectic of concepts informs Hegel’s views that modern freedom represents the end of history. In his account of world history Hegel is careful to distinguish the ways in which philosophical history differs from empirical history. He does not presume that the philosopher can explain the causes of historical change. He proposes that the empirical historians are to explain how developments have occurred; whereas the philosopher is to explain the meaning of this change. In so doing, Hegel points to how particular features of the world can change in many ways and from a variety of largely unpredictable causes; but the meaning of the overall set of changes is susceptible to reflexive conceptual analysis. Conceptualising historical change, for Hegel, is a different enterprise from explaining empirical changes, and this distinction can be invoked to make sense of some contemporary global theorists’ claims. To regard globalisation as a causal engine of change, incubating global effects, is akin to regarding the freedom of modernity as causing the various changes in the modern world that brought about a world that can be conceptualised as free. Hegel recognises freedom to be expressed in the emergence of Protestantism, the practice of romantic art and the provision of individual rights, but he does not imagine that a general notion of freedom is the cause of the development of these activities. Hegel’s philosophical conception of history is more akin to what Albrow designates the periodisation of history, though Hegel highlights the philosophical character of the process of conceptualisation, which warrants the designation of the distinctiveness of periods of history.7 Central to Hegel’s conceptualisation of distinct stages of history is his notion of freedom: the self-directedness of agents. His argument is that there has been a development of freedom through the ages, and that the modern state establishes the most complete and worked-out system of freedom for its individual members that the world has witnessed. Hegel’s conceptions of modernity and of the state are not designed to be novel or idiosyncratic. The role of the philosopher, for Hegel, is to conceptualise events, practices and institutions in light of standardly defined and developed concepts. The various events and institutional developments since the


44


6/14/2011 12:11:53 PM

Renaissance, for Hegel, add up to a profound change in the overall organisation of social and individual life, so that individuals are freer than they were hitherto. The freedom of modern individuals is qualitatively and quantitatively different from that of preceding ages. For one thing, more people are free, as the modern state institutes the rule of law, allowing all its members to pursue their self-chosen objectives under its protection. On the other hand, the modern state, for Hegel, allows individuals to recognise and reflexively appreciate their freedom. Freedom for Hegel has to be more than the endless pursuit of desires, for such a pursuit has neither an end nor a supervening rational control; it proceeds in an infinite way and does not admit of closure. However, if individuals recognise that they belong to and help to constitute a free association of individuals, the raison d’être of which is to enable its members to be free, then they can appreciate the content of their activities to be consonant with freedom; hence there is an end to their activities, and the end is the rational expression and recognition of their freedom. Hegel’s philosophical conceptualisation of the state, then, makes freedom and its recognition central to his claims that the state expresses and completes the freedom of its members. Of course, these Hegelian claims do not of themselves ensure that there is an end to history. Hegel imagines an end to history because, if all members of a state can recognise and express their freedom, there seems to be no impetus to create a new paradigm of reason. For a rational state which instantiates the freedom of its members is a reflexive expression of the freedom that is integral to the conception of a human being, and there seems to be no further development that can enhance or modify this understanding. But Hegel’s notion of the end of history, and his recognition of the freedom of individuals that is constituted by their adhesion to a rational state, is complicated by tensions that are evident amongst the elements of the unity constituted by the state. Hegel’s very concern to incorporate factors that militate against the harmonic qualities of the state render these tensions explicit. Above all, Hegel perceives the economy and civil society to work against the achievement of a simple unity of the state. More than this, he sees a modern economy as incubating and advancing particular and selfish interests and desires that militate against the expressive recognition of the common good and mutual freedom.8




6/14/2011 12:11:54 PM


Moreover, the pursuit of economic interests is instrumental and admits of no self-limitation of activity. The pursuit of welfare and profit does not respect borders, and economic activity has an inherent impetus to go beyond the state. Hegel mixes a worldly acceptance of imperfection with a readiness to utilise a number of expedients to offset the dangers to social unity arising out of the expansion of egoistical interests in the modern economy. He accepts that poverty is a structural feature of modern society that undermines the identity of those whom it entraps; for it denies them access to the commodities that are bought and sold via the social processes of wealth creation and to the satisfaction of their desires. On the one hand, Hegel is prepared to accept the imperfection associated with poverty, but he also looks to a variety of expedients to mitigate its adverse effects, including intervention by corporations and civil servants acting on behalf of the state and the economic activities of overseas colonists, which might counteract downturns in the home economy. The rise of individualism in art and the decline in religious practice also alert Hegel to the dangers of an increasingly individualistic and materialist modern society. Hegel’s own conception of the modern state recognises the problems within its composition, but it also reflects strains within his overall philosophical reading of history. For Hegel, there is an end to history, as he imagines that the complete achievement of freedom, the fulfilment of the nature of humanity, can be realised in a set of rational social and political institutions.9 But can history be said to come to an end? There are pessimistic notes of caution in Hegel’s lectures and texts, and he alludes to the future as being unknown.10 Moreover, notwithstanding Hegel’s own reading of the past and present as following a discernible logic of development that can be encapsulated in a single narrative of progress, an appreciation of the seemingly endless constructions of identity in practices and institutions casts doubt on any summative overall reading of history. Poststructuralist interpretations of past and present texts and discourses highlight the counterpoints to any essential and express forms of meaning.11 It is also by no means clear that the traditional non-statist organisations of tribal communities can be dismissed out of hand as immature expressions of human identity.12 Moreover, Hegel’s reading of contemporary politics and ethics, like Kant’s, consigns women to a subordinate role, excluded from civil society and political life.


46


6/14/2011 12:11:54 PM

Hegel’s ideal rational state reflects the times in which he lives, and its patriarchal character is symptomatic of its more generally hierarchical, non-democratic character. Although Hegel’s view of the state is a good deal more subtle than the overheated critiques that presume it to be neo-fascist and warmongering, it is not the last word on political developments.13 If its exclusion of the many from decision-making seems unwarranted by the master categories of Hegel’s philosophy, which recognise all human beings to be free, rational agents, then the subsequent growth of international civil society and transnational economic and political organisations and networks casts doubt on the exclusivity of forms of ethical life within nation-states. Hegel himself observed that history is world history in which political and ethical paradigms assume a world historical significance. He also recognised the interplay between states; but subsequent forms of global theory identify how ethics and politics are implicated in activities that extend beyond national frontiers. What remains of continuing value in Hegel’s account of ethics and politics is its assertion of the need to develop credible practices and frameworks through which individuals can identify and secure norms. Individuals cannot merely imagine or reason themselves into community with others; they have to be able to recognise and value the institutions and practices with which they are associated. Frameworks of recognition, however, do not have to be national in orientation. They can and should be pitched at a variety of levels, and the global is now a frame of reference for individuals and groups to challenge and debate, if not to institute, norms

Hegel, recognition and globalisation Hegel is a theorist of recognition. Recognition is perhaps most commonly associated with contemporary theorists, such as Taylor, Honneth and Fraser, who relate identity politics to the distribution of goods and rights.14 Their aspiration to situate normative theory in a human context of social interaction betrays a debt, acknowledged or unacknowledged, to Hegel and the Hegelian dialectical tradition, whose raison d’être is to avoid the abstractions that disunite elements of concrete practical situations, such as form and content and subject and object. Hegel’s most famous expression of the significance of recognition




6/14/2011 12:11:54 PM

is presented in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and Pinkard is not alone amongst commentators in making this section of the Phenomenology of Spirit crucial to the integrity and spirit of the work.15 Phenomenology of Spirit is a grandiose and imposing work, presented by Hegel as an introduction to his system, and it is an unsettling, bewildering introduction, brim full of references to literature, history, politics, religion and philosophy.16 What holds the work together is the sense that truth is to be examined via the phenomena of consciousness, the ways in which consciousness appears and handles the truths that it registers. The reason the story of consciousness unfolds into the dramas of social and spiritual life is that consciousness, in coming to know itself as an active participant in establishing truth, reflects upon the conditions that enable it to become self-aware. Hegel follows its pathway by imagining a series of struggles with other consciousnesses; for in establishing itself, a consciousness demands recognition, and it does so by being prepared to enter a life and death struggle. The consciousness that wavers and backs down is defeated, but its defeat makes the victor’s victory Pyrrhic because nothing can be gained from an abject defeated consciousness. What would support a self-aware self-consciousness is recognition from a respected other, rather than obedience elicited from a submissive subordinate. It is this impulse to establish a world of mutually acknowledging persons that motivates the argument of Phenomenology of Spirit to follow the pathways of social, political and religious life.17 The crucial social dimension of consciousness and of the world is established by Hegel’s dialectic of recognition. Recognition, then, emerges in Phenomenology of Spirit as being pivotal to the operation of consciousness and its truths, for truth depends upon recognising the role of consciousness in framing and evaluating its conditions. This process of recognition is a social one in which there must be mutual recognition between agents. To establish recognition as important is also to recognise that the world of truths, in the guises of epistemology, normative principles and religious faith, are all forms of construction in which individuals recognise themselves and one another. To establish the mutual relationships that are integral to recognition, the world of truth, and the truth about the world is to intimate the crucial contribution that Hegel can make to debates about globalisation. Hegel theorises about


48 Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri


6/14/2011 12:11:54 PM

both the world and recognition, and he takes them to be correlative because the world for Hegel is a constructed one in which human beings, in establishing a truthful and harmonious perspective on the world, recognise their own mutual relations in constituting that world. The express interplay between ways of conceiving the world and recognition is evident throughout Hegel’s philosophical work. His mature system consists of the interlocking moments of logic, nature and Spirit.18 This interlocking system indicates that the natural world is not independent of human beings and their recognition of and response to it . It might be possible to consider logical and natural relations to be independent of human engagement, but in practice, logic and nature are only conceived of by human beings, who develop their ways of considering logic and nature over time. Hence, the natural environment, for Hegel, is a humanly inflected environment. The crucial part of Hegel’s system is, therefore, his Philosophy of Spirit, which involves an express theory of recognition, operating at various levels and styles, notably in the struggle for recognition, which is reprised from the earlier, introductory Phenomenology of Spirit, and which again establishes how individual identity and selfawareness turn upon mutual recognition. The rest of Hegel’s mature analysis in Philosophy of Spirit, which tracks the nature and development of human beings in various guises, can be read as plotting the crucial stages by which this mutual recognition of human beings is achieved. In analysing human beings and their self-development, Hegel examines objective Spirit after subjective Spirit, and this move is sanctioned by the interdependence of human beings established in the phenomenological struggle for recognition. Recognition is expressly addressed when Hegel considers the ascription of property rights, which he examines in the most detail in the Philosophy of Right, where the sphere of politics dealt with in the analysis of objective Spirit in the Philosophy of Spirit receives elaborated treatment. Again, in the Philosophy of Right’s analysis of the role of estates and corporations, Hegel’s political philosophy observes that human beings develop their identities by recognising their affiliations to one another. In a significant anticipation of current globalisation theories, Hegel takes individual states to interact with one another, registering their identities via this mutual recognition, and in doing so, he identifies how a sense of the world in the historical




6/14/2011 12:11:54 PM


process develops. Hegel’s notion of this sense of the world renders it dependent upon its historical and recognitive conceptualisation. It seems on the face of it counter-intuitive to attribute a concept of globalisation to theorists who, like Hegel, do not formulate an express theory of globalisation. But the relevance of a concept or theory to particular theorists is not exclusively determined by their express use of it. In respect of Hegel, for instance, his understanding of the differences obtaining between the character and status of men and of women has been invoked, plausibly, to justify the ascription of the concepts gender and patriarchy to his work, when he did not expressly develop a gendered reading of social life.19 Recognition, that is, the notion of reciprocal awareness amongst individuals, accompanies all Hegel’s concepts and underlies his historical reading of human identity. Human beings become what they are, and they do so in history, and history functions as a form of human awareness. History is the past insofar as human beings recognise the past to be important. Hegel imagines social life as developing in a spiritual, as opposed to a naturalistic, way because human beings are conscious agents who develop the meaning of their world, and their spiritual identities are expressed in history. He observes, ‘There is nothing new under the sun, but this is not so with the sun of Spirit.’20 Hence, interpreting social life, for Hegel, demands recognition of the agency of human beings, an agency that is evidenced in the changing purposes and cultural meanings of human agents, rather than via the unvarying laws to which natural processes are subject. Hegel takes history itself, the series of important events of the human past, as arising with the study of history, just as the recognition of the agency of human beings emerges with the development of political life outside the naturalistic confines of family life.21 There is reciprocity between history and the study of history because history does not merely happen; it occurs when the political cultures in which free public actions arise become self-conscious of their characters and recognise their significance in recording them. There is a reflexivity between the form and object of historical knowledge that is observed by both Hegel and Collingwood.22 For Hegel, the narratives of human history are concerned with the record of the development and progress of so many forms of political life; for political cultures have an interest in recording the public


50


6/14/2011 12:11:54 PM

actions of their members. Those political cultures which are dominant in particular epochs in developing significant political cultures and in appreciating the historical significance of those cultures, constitute world history, which is the historical documentation of the progressive development of political cultures. Hegel understands this progress to be the development of freedom. The very notion of political action assumes the capacity for freedom on the part of political actors, but Hegel observes that freedom has not yet been universally recognised in the course of human history. The end of world history resides in the promotion of freedom and in the progress that is made in and by its recognition. Necessarily, this notion of world history is framed retrospectively because human action is free and insusceptible to prediction according to naturalistic laws. The notions of freedom and of the world are articulated progressively but understood retrospectively, and philosophical history as the register of this progress is likewise progressively and regressively determined. In each epoch a political culture emerges as dominant and progressive in respect of its promotion of freedom, and Hegel urges that the contemporary Germanic state is pre-eminently rational in developing an organisational form in which all its members exercise freedom. The judgement of world history and the progressive development of the world are thereby revealed to consist in the freedom of citizens in states. Hegel’s theory of history links the notion of the world and its development to recognition. History develops as historical actors recognise their capacities as historical agents, and the end of history, comprehended by a retrospective philosophical perspective on history, is the achievement of political freedom by citizens in the modern state. The rational form of a free modern state serves as paradigm for all political actors who have not yet achieved the status of free citizen. It is a recognition of the purpose of world history via retrospective philosophical reflection on the nature of historical action. Hegel’s philosophical history, insofar as it is a reflexive undertaking reflecting on the significance of human activities, is a form of recognition. Hegel employs various senses of the notion of recognition in his social and political philosophy, and he links them to the philosophical recognition of the significance of the development of world history. These links are not accidental, for Hegel takes all concepts to be interrelated due to their dialectical character in shaping and explaining the self-related freedom of Spirit.




6/14/2011 12:11:55 PM

52


Hegel’s interweaving of concepts pertaining to politics, international relations and world history is intricate, and recognising the role of recognition in the interplay of these concepts is central to its understanding. The struggle for recognition, as famously depicted in the Phenomenology of Spirit, is crucial in setting out the significance of the role of recognition in human experience. The life and death struggle dramatises the existential dimension of recognition. Recognition is worth dying for; indeed, it must be worth risking death for. It also signposts political consequences for the immediate outcome of the struggle, for recognition is deeply dissatisfying for both parties, pointing to the need for a resolution whereby individuals can cooperate with one another in a mutually acknowledging society. There is also an epistemological dimension of the figure in that it arises out of the need for consciousness to establish its credentials in cognising objects, and the upshot intimates that epistemological truth depends upon equilibrated relations between self-conscious individuals.23 The mutual recognition of free individuals is what underlies Hegel’s articulation of a rational, free state in which all members are recognised to be free. The state, in turn, depends upon being recognised by other states. Individual awareness, political association and international relations are all forms of recognition, and Hegel’s philosophical conceptualisation of world history recognises the significance of these forms. Hegel’s political philosophy, which elaborates his notion of a free, ethical community, incorporates a number of express references to differing styles of recognition. The Philosophy of Right begins with the very notion of the free will, and from this notion the abstract right of the will to property is derived. Rights, however, are shown to be abstract outside a social context and the concrete institutions and practices of a state, which recognises, legitimates and enforces rights.24 Philosophy of Right is a work of philosophical construction, whereby initial abstractions are concretised via the development of entailments, so that the initial discussion of property rights proceeds by observing that property can only function as an institution on the basis of express contracts and the mutual recognition of the parties to a contract. Contract, in turn, is seen to be abstract


The political, historical and global aspects of recognition


6/14/2011 12:11:55 PM

and incapable of establishing itself outside an organised state, for contracts need to be recognised and their rules enforced. The state is necessary because the moral demands of individuals, which aim to enable rightful forms of life to be secure, are insufficient to achieve the conditions of right, for individual moral agency cannot guarantee its own efficacy. The Philosophy of Right argues for the insufficiency of individual agency and morality outside a social context of ethical practices worked out and practised in the family, civil society and political life. Individuals, according to Hegel, require the positive affirmation of love in family life, the mutual recognition of their ties in the practices of civil society, and their express recognition of their role as citizens in the institutions of politics. The recognitive practices of ethical life articulated by Hegel are not egalitarian, for they do not allow for symmetrical forms of recognition on the part of members. Families are hierarchical, with men possessing legal authority. The estates of civil society are allowed unequal access to political representation and are undemocratic in their organisation. All members of the state, however, are taken to recognise the universality of its laws and the civic orientation of the civil service, even if the latter’s recruitment based on merit ensures its distinctness from other classes of society. Ultimately, the state is rational for Hegel because it recognises the freedom of all its members in its articulation of rights and ethical practices, which in combination allow individuals to recognise their mutual obligations as citizens. Modernity, for Hegel, is complex and conflictual in that it is bound up with the individual’s assertion of personal interests and rights. This assertiveness threatens to unravel social ties, so the modern state has to be multidimensional, allowing for individualism but also enabling the development of social, civic sentiments. The state is inwardly selfrelated for Hegel, in respect of its articulation of various formative conditions of freedom and in respect of its members’ recognition of their shared and reciprocal ties. But for Hegel, the state, in realising an integral identity, must be recognised by other states, and sovereignty involves the mutual recognition of states by one another. Hegel observes, ‘Individuality is awareness of one’s existence as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It manifests itself here in the state as a relation to other states, each of which is autonomous visà-vis the others.’25




6/14/2011 12:11:55 PM

Individual identity, for Hegel, as the figure of the master-slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit exemplifies, involves the willingness to face death in a recognitive encounter with another. Likewise, in discussing an individual’s internal commitment to the state, he maintains that the willingness to risk one’s life in war to defend the integrity of the state vis-a vis another state is a vital element underlying the credentials of citizenship. He remarks, ‘This relation and the recognition of it is therefore the individual’s substantive duty, the duty to maintain this substantive individuality, i.e. the independence and sovereignty of the state, at the risk and sacrifice of property and life.’26 Hegel perceives an ethical moment in war, but he does not take war to override all norms of international conduct, for he identifies a rationale of international law arising out of states’ mutual recognition of their situation vis-à-vis one another. He envisages a role for international law, observing that ‘international Law springs from relations between autonomous states – its actuality depends on different wills each of which is sovereign.’27 Hence, international law testifies to the mutual recognition of otherwise asymmetrical states, for all states are entitled in the first place and without qualification to be sovereign from their point of view (state and neighbours), that is, to be recognised by one another as sovereign.28 Hegel observes that a state is as little an actual individual without relations to other states as an individual is actually a person without rapport with other persons.29 Hegel’s understanding of the recognitive international context in which states operate underpins his reading and endorsement of international law, but he is critical of any attempt to advance the claims of international law or of a federation of states above the concrete defeasible recognitive claims of actual states. The idea that international law supersedes the concrete operations of actual states is as unrealistic and abstract as are claims that morality is purely individualistic. The status of international law is endorsed by a recognition on the part of states that treaties ought to be kept, but its limits are exhibited by the realities of state sovereignty whereby individual states determine their own actions and are unconstrained in practice. For Hegel, the prospect of a prospective league of nations is undermined by the sheer contingency of how states actually act in international affairs. States, unlike individuals, have a multitude of needs and goals, so there are equally a multitude of ways in which




6/14/2011 12:11:55 PM

conflicts can arise.30 According to Hegel, individuals are constituted by their rational discrimination between and prioritising of goals and needs, whereas a state is constituted by a plurality of individuals and its rational pursuit of a variety of needs and goals relating to those individuals, which are not to be superseded by the decisions of an overarching authority. And if states disagree, for Hegel, war can always result.31 The welfare of states is not analogous to the welfare of individuals because the welfare of individuals is subject to alignment with the holistic ethical arrangement of the state. But states are wholes that pursue a variety of concrete welfare claims that might clash with other states’ needs.32 Hegel’s defence of a state’s pursuit of its welfare is plausible, but it threatens to ignore principled support for international forms of justice, and while supranational norms do not automatically trump national ones and lack firm foundations for their articulation, they nonetheless express a recognitive concern for human beings who reside outside of particular borders. Recognition, for Hegel, remains a multi-layered concept, and if international recognition supports the claims of individual states, it also reflects their common acknowledgement of an international context of recognition. Hence, states are seen to reciprocally recognise each other as states even in war, and war itself is characterised as something which ought to pass away. The presumption of peace is recognised in the customs that are respected in war, notably that war is not to be waged against domestic institutions, such as the family and private life, and that conventions are to regulate the taking of prisoners. International affairs, however, are subject to the contingencies of events, with the sovereignty of states existing alongside international treaties and the concern for peace. The ethical life and political sovereignty of a state are not to be surrendered to an international agreement when a contingent dispute arises between states. The gap between state sovereignty and international accords, though, is not Hegel’s last word on how a framework of recognition negotiates between states. Ultimately a reconciliation between contingency and what is rational is effected by the historical emergence of rational principles exhibited in the organisation of actual states. The modern state is seen by Hegel as enshrining rational principles of freedom, and it is the judgement of world history, delivered by philosophical reflection on history, that the end of history, the achievement of a complex and extensive world of freedom, is articulated within the




6/14/2011 12:11:55 PM


modern state.33 Hence, for Hegel, world history, the development of the globe, allows for recognition of the principles of right, which are indicators of what the world has achieved and should develop further. If states are sovereign in that they ultimately determine their own affairs, they do so in the context of world history, and within world history certain paradigms of rational political organisation emerge and indicate the path that all states should follow.

Hegel: global theory and recognition Hegel is an intricate thinker of modernity. His intricacy matches what he persuasively analyses to be the intricacy of modernity itself. His philosophy makes a virtue out of its combination of different and, on the face of things, discordant elements. He takes the relationship between the individual and society to be central to politics, and he aims to allow for both individualism and social unity, for he sees both as vital to the functioning of a modern society. He unites the two because he understands social recognition to be integral to individual identity. Likewise, individual freedom is completed when individuals conceive of the state and its laws as conducive to and expressive of the freedom of reciprocally related individuals. Similarly, Hegel sees states and their sovereignty as related to an international order of mutual recognition between states, whereby the sovereignty of individual states turns upon the recognition of their sovereignty by other states. Hegel’s notion of the mutual recognition of states does not preclude the prosecution of particular interests, for states’ particular interests are taken to encompass the general interests of its members The general interest, for Hegel, only exists within determinate concrete states in which individuals recognise and legitimate the processes by which the policies and practices of states express their coordinated interests.. Hegel’s dialectical method is predicated upon his sense that concepts are constructed and interrelated, and his synoptic position on the relation between sovereign states and the international context reflects this conception. The fortunes of states and the principles on which they are founded wax and wane over time. History is the record of these fortunes; certain political cultures emerge as dominant in particular epochs, and their principles are likewise taken to be dominant in world history. Political cultures and world history


56


6/14/2011 12:11:55 PM

are reciprocally related and constructed, reflecting Hegel’s understanding of the constructed and interrelated character of concepts and of the notions of the world to which they are related. Hegel considers that his philosophical perspective provides a summative overview of historical concepts; his philosophical world history shows the overall development of the human race by tracing the development of freedom. The paradigm of political culture developed by modern Germanic European states provides for the freedom of all members of the state and so completes the development and expression of freedom. It represents a global achievement in that it sets a paradigm for the world, and it is an achievement in that it is a construction and one that is recognised by the philosophical reconstruction of the principles underlying the rationality of the world. Hegel’s philosophy of world history represents a considered combination of the concepts of the world and of recognition. Although Hegel does not coin or expressly use the concept of globalisation, he takes the world or the globe to be subject to processes of construction and reconstruction insofar as historical actors and theorists recognise themselves to be a part of a world historical process. The merit of Hegel’s reflections on world history is that they recognise how conceptions of the global are transformed over time. Current global theorists, under pressure from sceptics, admit that globalisation has a history, but they tend to see this history as representing the development of a constant object – the world – and processes of globalisation are held to be susceptible of differing forms of change only to the extent that they occur at different tempos.34 For Hegel, the world itself is to be understood via the ways it is constructed and represented, so that, although he understands it via a developing notion of freedom, the worlds, say, of oriental despotisms or of the aestheticism of the Ancient Greeks represent very different ones from the Protestant, individualistic world of modern Europeans. If Hegel’s notion of the world is significant, so is his notion of recognition. For Hegel, the world and its constituent aspects cannot be appreciated without reference to human recognition. Hence, individuals are not self-sufficient but depend upon their reciprocal recognition. Human rights are important for Hegel, and are included in his Philosophy of Right, but he maintains that they are abstract outside a social context which recognises and institutionalises them.




6/14/2011 12:11:55 PM


To exemplify a sense of mutual responsibility and to express their ethical character, human beings also need to develop relationships in groups and associations, such as corporations. Above all, human beings, if they are to be free and not simply succumb to an endless stream of desires, must recognise their affinity with other human beings in an ethical political community which expresses freedom rationally by articulating the conditions whereby a rational state can establish a cooperative association, exhibiting interlocking freedoms. The character of such a state can also serve as a recognitive example to the world at large via its place in history, which is recognised in a philosophical perspective on world history. For Hegel, the world does not simply exist, it is recognised; just as human beings only understand themselves to be free and human by recognising their shared social character. The dialectical recognitive interrelations between the individual, society, the political, the international and the global which Hegel traces may also serve as a model for contemporary global theorists. Far from the Hegelian dialectic serving as an outmoded, external way of relating various forms of social relationships, as Hardt and Negri would have it, Hegel actually provides a thoughtful reading of the inter-constitutive and non-causal relations between differing forms of social and political life.35 Hegel’s political and social philosophy reveals and combines notions of the world and recognition. Hegel is a global theorist to the extent that he provides a frame of world-historical development to judge states and the principles they exhibit, and he is a theorist of recognition because he deploys notions of recognition to develop a nuanced view of how the individual develops via the recognition of others and of institutions and practices within an ethical state. This state promotes a sense of community, while allowing for individual freedom, and operates in an international context in which it recognises and is recognised by other states. The ultimate worth and validity of the principles enshrined in states is delivered by the philosophical reading of world history, so that notions of recognition and world historical development are fused in Hegel’s philosophical sense of reason in history. Hegel’s fusion of the notions of world history and recognition points to his identification of inter-constitutive reflexive forms of recognition, which anticipates contemporary global theories that invoke the reflexive capacities of human beings in their explanations of the conditions of globalisation.


58


6/14/2011 12:11:55 PM

Hegel’s anticipation of the subsequent emphasis upon reflexivity in explanations of global development signals that his standpoint remains instructive and plausible. In modern history the state has played a significant role in providing, interpreting, prioritising and securing rights, and in maintaining practices and developing institutions in which individuals can trust and can recognise to be social supports for their own identities and principles. The significance of the state in providing an ethical frame for individual development is highlighted in contemporary political and international theories that are sceptical of strong versions of cosmopolitanism. Miller, for instance, critiques strong forms of cosmopolitanism by pointing to the motivating force and binding quality of a national community that is orchestrated by the nation state.36 Moreover, international identities continue to be framed and secured via processes of the mutual recognition of particular identities in an international context, as Hegel suggests, rather than by moving to a supervening and external global identity. Moreover, forms of contemporary cosmopolitanism tend to reiterate Kant’s contentious formal universalism, ignoring cultural forms of identity. Against this abstract formalism, Hegel is surely right to observe that the meaning of individuality, and what is to be respected in persons depends on how individuals recognise themselves and others. Hegel’s relevance for contemporary global theory is evidenced in the continuing role of the state and in the complex, inter-constitutive forms of recognition that are operative in framing and re-framing identities. While there are increasing mechanisms of international and global governance, such as the United Nations, the European Union and global economic summits, these fora and institutions tend to rely upon rather than to supersede the inclusion and recognition of states. The burgeoning groups of global civil society are actively involved in advancing the claims of various hitherto subordinate identities, such as women, cultural minorities within states and the global poor. In so doing, they are making claims for recognition, a process that can be explained via Hegel’s recognitive conception of human beings. The challenge to dominant forms of globalisation that is developed by global radicals, notably by radical environmentalists, turns upon their recognition of alternative views of the world and of nature, which harmonise with Hegel’s recognitive social philosophy.




6/14/2011 12:11:55 PM


Hegel’s social and political philosophy remains relevant and plausible, but it was contestable when it was conceived, and intervening developments present further challenges to its authority. Reflection on world history can be conducted in a variety of ways, and Hegel’s assessment of the world’s progress is but one way of construing it. Hegel’s assumption that political cultures can be summarised and assessed as unities is a case in point. Subordinate cultures within states might be seen to require more substantive recognition, and in the context of increasing awareness of a global frame for social intercourse, the cosmopolitan demands for the entrenchment in law of global human rights and for securing those rights through international political action serve as counterpoints to the Hegelian celebration of the ethical autonomy of states. The drawback to cosmopolitanism and what is positively valued in Hegel’s thought is that moral principles require sites and agencies for application that agents can recognise as their own. How the lines of authority are to be drawn between supranational, national, and sub-national forms of political organisation, however, are issues of judgement, and Hegel’s contention that there is an objective logic to how these issues are to be decided is questionable. Moreover, his own particular way of articulating a political community in which the patriarchal family, corporations, the civil service and the monarchy play distinctive roles is equally questionable. Its questionability surely shows that there is a more intensive sense of contestability attaching to issues of political organisation and articulation than is acknowledged by Hegel. What Hegel offers which remains of value in a global age is a reasonable defence of the recognitive value of the state for citizens, particularly if it is upheld in tandem with his notion of the inter-constitutive character of the social, political and international spheres and with his reading of world history, which endorses a rational paradigm of political development. This paradigm of global political development can be used to judge states in the present and to direct energies for future development and in so doing can contribute to a refusal to endorse the existence of malfunctioning states that are inimical to human freedom. This notion of critical rational judgements arising out of reflection on the paradigms of political articulation in world history is valuable if the quality of rational reflection is held to be one of corrigible, contestable judgement rather than one of objective necessity.


60


6/14/2011 12:11:56 PM

4

Marx is a theorist of modernity, but modernity has many interpretations. A line of interpretive development can be drawn between Kant, Hegel and Marx, not least because Hegel’s philosophical system arises out of his critical reflections on Kant, and Marx’s thought, in turn, is sharpened by his critical engagement with Hegel. All three share a critical standpoint, taking theory to operate as critical reflection upon standard modes of thinking rather than to be an instrument that can be used without reference to its implication in other activities and forms of thinking. Bentham and the utilitarian school perceive reason to be such an instrument, which can be accessed and used readily to promote overall utility, the general welfare, arising out of the interests and desires of human beings. Kant, Hegel and Marx, however, adopt a critical perspective whereby ways of life, and the principles by which they are understood and adjusted, are revealed by critical analysis to have been misaligned so as to mask problems and to dissemble tensions. Kant is a constructivist who imagines that a critical review of reason can be undertaken so as to enlighten humanity on how things must appear and on what ought to be done. Hegel revises these constructivist premises by identifying construction as a dynamic and self-defining process for human beings in construing reality, forging social cooperation and developing cultural affiliations. The constructed forms of social, political and cultural life, which are constituted via a process of world historical development, are not simply right or wrong, for there is no external standard against which they can be judged. Reason cannot impose a singular test


Marx and Modernity

61


6/14/2011 12:12:02 PM

for establishing truth or falsity, but rather must review the internal tests of coherence and non-contradiction that these constructivist projects themselves set. Hegel concludes that a summative philosophical perspective can be constructed that harmonises with the generic constructive character of human beings. Marx is a reconstructive constructivist who reworks Hegel to imagine human beings as having hitherto framed many forms of construction that are so distorted as to constitute misconstructions. For Marx, the theorist’s role is to uncover critically aspects of the world that are exhibited by the contradictions which undermine the apparent integrity of appearances, and which signpost the reversal of contemporary forms of social misconstruction that misalign human identity. Marx is a thorough-going constructionist who attends to history on account of its record of human construction, which in fact reveals so many modes of misconstructed social life. For Marx, as for Hegel, there is neither an external nor a universal yardstick by which to measure the world or humanity. There is simply a series of social formations framing, demolishing and constructing social architecture. Marx is a critical theorist precisely because he takes there to be no external or unvarying standard by which to judge social constructions. The critical theorist must interrogate social constructions, both at the level of social formations themselves, analysing closely their key productive conditions, and at the level of their correlative theoretical formulations, which purport to comprehend them, but in fact, by disguising their contradictions tend to reinforce them. There are many aspects of Marx’s engagement in critical theory, but three stand out as being of particular relevance to current global theory. These consist in Marx’s early formulation of the generic character of human beings, their species identity, which he takes to be definitively constructionist in character, rendering human nature a social reflective construction; his theory of history, in which he sets out the constructed social formations that precede the achievement of communism and diagnoses the contradictions that indicate the mutability of the present; the self-expanding character of capital, which assumes the aspect of the Dr Frankenstein monster by generating forms beyond the control of its creators; and the radical figure of communism that is to effect the complete overturning of preceding social forms.




6/14/2011 12:12:02 PM

Marx and Modernity 63

In his early writings, notably the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx formulates a conception of human nature that is specified in his analysis of species-being. His notion of human nature is a formal specification of humanity’s form-constructing character, rather than a stipulation of the fixed content of humanity’s repertoire of activities. Marx refuses to specify determinate features of the species, but rather frames a conception of how human beings may be interpreted as constructing the possibilities of their own form-making identity. In so doing, he highlights the constructivist nature of human beings. He remarks, ‘Man is a species-being, not only because he practically and theoretically makes the species – both his own and those of other things – but also – and this is simply another way of saying the same thing – because he looks upon himself as the present, living species, because he looks upon himself as a universal and therefore free being.’1 Humanity’s capacity for construction is universal and free, rendering the content of human activities formally limitless. Marx, however, is sufficiently Aristotelian to allow for a dialectical interaction between the form of species-being and the content of human society and human identity; hence, just as, for Aristotle, the form of the mean can shape the content of practical ethics, so the formal universality of species-being ensures that human beings become ever more social and ever more extended in their transformative activities.2 Marx’s understanding of human nature allows for the possibility that the formal configuration of humanity’s universal constructivist character can set limits on how society should be organised. The universality of constructive world-making is taken to be applicable to all human beings, and this egalitarianism is matched by the normative expectation that human beings will cooperate with one another in sharing their universal self-developing identities. Marx observes, ‘Man’s individual and species-life are not two distinct things, however much – and this is necessarily so – the mode of existence of individual life is a more particular or a more general mode of the species-life, or species-life a more particular or more general individual life. As species-consciousness man confirms his real social life and merely repeats in thought his actual existence; conversely, speciesbeing confirms itself in species-consciousness and exists for itself in


Marx and species-being


6/14/2011 12:12:02 PM


universality as a thinking being.’3 Marx’s emphatically social reading of human beings relates the individual and society and renders it axiomatic that human beings will extend the reach of their powers to embrace all of humanity. Marx employs a formal conception of human constructive powers, while at the same time taking these generic formative capacities to configure the prospective construction of human identity and the corresponding human world in a co-operative spirit. Marx’s attribution of universality to humanity represents a strong conception of the sociality of human beings. His generic conception of the universal possibilities of development possessed by all human beings underlies his commitments to social cooperation and to equality. Partialities arising out of local commitments and sub-universal identities, such as kinship, family life, ethnic solidarity and national loyalty are superseded by generic ties of identity. This generic reading of human identity harmonises with a global perspective that views all humanity to constitute an ultimately limiting unity. The global aspect of Marx’s reading of humanity is reinforced by the productive and transformative potential he imagines human beings to possess. These powers are unrestricted by the world in which human beings are situated at any determinate time, for human beings constantly remake their world. Indeed, Marx recognises that a defining feature of human beings is their capacity to make and remake their worlds. Nature, for Marx, functions neither as an external limit nor a reductive foundation for humanity. Human beings are a part of nature, and it is their nature to treat nature as something to be worked upon and transformed. For Marx, nature and humanity are in a dialectical relationship. On the one hand, humanity has a physical, organic aspect and inhabits a natural environment, where capacities are employed and needs are met. On the other hand, humanity develops its powers and needs by working on its environment, and is socialised in the process, along with the identity of humanity. The developmental constructive character of human beings pertains to all aspects of their situation, their environment and their identities. Marx observes, ‘Species-life, both for man and for animals, consists physically in the fact that man, like animals, lives from inorganic nature; and because man is more universal than animals, so too is the area of inorganic nature from which he lives more universal. Just as plants, animals, stones, air light etc theoretically form a part


64


6/14/2011 12:12:03 PM

of human consciousness, partly as objects of science and partly as objects of art – his spiritual inorganic nature, his spiritual means of life – which he must first prepare before he can enjoy and digest them – so too in practice they form a part of human life and human activity ... The universality of man manifests itself in practice in that universality which makes the whole of nature his inorganic body, (i) as a direct means of life and (ii) as the matter, the object and the tool of his life activity.’4 Marx’s conception of human nature, therefore, takes human beings to be world creators, and he imagines that the world-creating capacities of human beings are crucial to defining their nature. He notes, ‘The practical creation of an objective world, the fashioning of inorganic nature, is proof that man is a conscious species-being, i.e. a being which treats the species as its own essential being or itself as a species-being.’5 For Marx, there is a dialectical relationship between human powers and human needs. He dismisses the idea that there are fixed needs, limited by the natural situation of human beings. The idea of the natural is transformed by Marx’s recognition of the peculiar nature of human nature, which is constructive and transformative. In the concluding section of Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx is critical of Hegel’s standpoint in Phenomenology of Spirit, which he imagines to suffer from postulating abstracted conceptions of consciousness and humanity that do not identify human needs and powers as arising in an environment that is real and external to the formulations of consciousness.6 Marx’s critique of Hegel relies upon Feuerbach’s preceding materialist criticisms and assumes too easily that Hegel’s philosophical review of consciousness reduces human beings to the terms of abstract philosophical speculation.7 Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature makes clear that he recognises the objectivity of the natural world, and that he conceives of human agency within a material setting.8 Marx, however, does not allow his critical reading of Hegel to lead him to underestimate the ways in which human beings affect their environments. He sees the agency of humanity acting upon and transforming its environment. He remarks, ‘But man is not only a natural being; he is a human natural being ... Consequently, human objects are not natural objects as they immediately present themselves, nor is human sense in its immediate and objective existence, human sensibility and human objectivity. Neither objective nor subjective nature is




6/14/2011 12:12:03 PM


immediately present in a form adequate to the human being. And as everything natural must come into being, so man also has his process of origin in history.’9 Humanity renders the world historical, and so the world is not an unchanging object, operating as a given constraint upon or a projected teleological goal external to human activity, but is in dynamic relation and tension with anthropological creativity. The human species is not to be defined and thereby confined by specific, supposedly enduring characteristics, either of its own species identity or of its environment. They are in a continual process of being coconstituted and transformed by one another. The objective world is changed by the impact of human agents, whose own subjectivity responds to the objectivity of their environment. Human needs are related to human powers and their mutual development is correlative and transformative.10 Marx imagines that the human senses themselves are processes rather than fixed attributes. They enable human beings to orient themselves to the world and are themselves transformed in the orientation processes with which they establish and operate within a human world. They are transformed as human perceptions alter in the light of the changing world that they contribute to shaping.11 The distinguishing feature of human beings is their capacity to produce universally, which denotes an ability to produce by transforming the world in multiple ways that are not confined by the particularities of place and time.12 While a non-human animal might display physical dexterity and alter its immediate surroundings to maximise its food supply or its defences against predators, human beings can and do transform the very nature of their environment. Indeed, they do so on a world scale, for according to Marx, they construct and reconstruct their own world. Marx’s reading of humanity’s generic species-being offers a perspective that is germane to current global theory. For Marx, the world is not given in advance of human activity. Rather humanity is always situated within a world; but this world is maintained and transformed by human activity, so that human identity is global in the literal sense that the construction of the world determines the nature of human needs, powers, sensation and thinking. Central to this world-making identity is the peculiar capacity human beings possess to produce on a scale that is universal in scope. Marx interprets human society and history on a world scale, and he does so


66


6/14/2011 12:12:03 PM

because he recognises that human beings’ impact on the planet and on one another is exhibited by their sociality, which is extended continually and becomes global, and this sociality is supported by their constructivist and reflexive powers, which allow them to imagine and redesign their world. Insofar as contemporary global theorists speculate about generic human identity, they tend to do so in ways that resume Marx’s standpoint, highlighting the reflexivity and transformative powers of human beings.13 The normative agenda of contemporary global radicals aims at responding to the reflexive consequences of human nature and overturning the restrictions on human creativity imposed by the controls exerted by corporate capital. At the same time, these radicals aim to transform the disturbing consequences of human activity on the natural world, which threaten to render the world inhuman, and which ignore the non-human in their pursuit of narrow self-interested goals. Marx allows for an appreciation of the interplay between the human and the non-human in the construction of human and environmental identities. Likewise, the normative goals of cosmopolitans highlight the need to release or to supersede the barriers to global development maintained by the particular interests of states and corporations by accenting what human beings have in common and responding to this common identity by securing global rights. Marx has a critical sense of why and how all particular blocks on cooperative interchange between human beings should be overcome. Marx might be said to harbour a cosmopolitan perspective that differs from Kant’s in supplying a frankly developmental account of how cosmopolitanism may be seen to emerge. The relevance of the early Marx’s notion on nature and humanity to contemporary radicalism is evidenced in Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth. Hardt and Negri assign the multitude a radical developmental cosmopolitan agenda, where nature is transformed along with social life. They observe that the constitution of the multitude is not to be conceived of in natural terms. The civil or political state is to be considered neither distinct from nor opposed to the natural. There is an interaction between the two, so that the multitude resists incorporation into the natural or any specific designation of the political; its transformative potential is realised in its work nature and within the political or civil realm. They conclude, ‘... we see the metamorphosis of nature at work in the constitution of the multitude.’14




6/14/2011 12:12:03 PM

68


In writings subsequent to the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx adopts an increasingly historical perspective, in which discussion of the generic capacities of humanity recedes, to be replaced by more specific analyses of historical developments, specifically of the social relations and technological forces deployed in historic modes of production. In so doing, Marx focuses upon the transition from feudal to capitalist modes of production and upon the intensification of productive forces under capitalism. The German Ideology is taken to be seminal in Marx’s development of a theory of history. It highlights the role of the mode of production as the site for incubating historical change and identifies large-scale historical change as arising out of the contradictions obtaining at critical conjunctures between the forces and relations of production.15 There is ambiguity in Marx’s elaboration of a theory of history and differing interpretations of its meaning. Analytic Marxist theorists, such as Cohen and Elster, rehearsing ideas canvassed by Marxists of the Second International, urge that Marx elaborates a causal theory, in which a scientific account of historical development is detachable from his early, more philosophical exploration of humanity and society, though they disagree on the plausibility of the functionality they take Marx to attribute to the causal processes.16 Cohen famously takes the ‘Preface’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy to encapsulate a programme of causal explanation, where productive forces are separated from the relations of production and the economic structure or economic base of society, constituted by the sum total of production relations. Cohen argues that the technological development of the forces of production is the ultimate explanation of the affiliated functional development of production relations and the superstructural arrangements of politics and culture.17 There is a case for interpreting Marx as holding a causal theory of history, by which he explains empirical developments via general presumptions about production and technology. Cohen warms to the plausibility of the project, observing that the assumption of continuous technological innovation harmonises with the ascription of rationality to human beings and the evident priority humanity must give to improving productive capacity to satisfy human needs.18 The theory allows for the impact of the unintended consequences of


Marx on history


6/14/2011 12:12:03 PM

large-scale technological change upon a variety of social activities. Innovations in transport and communications, for example, can be readily understood to exert an unforeseen impact upon political and cultural life in facilitating the spread of ideas and the forms of control exerted by power holders. It also harmonises with express comments that are made in sections of Marx’s historically oriented writings. In several of his analyses of the transition from feudalism to capitalism and of the intensification of capitalism, for example, Marx highlights the growth of productive forces, including industrial machinery, transportation and wage labour. There are, however, at least two problems in ascribing to Marx a technological theory of historical development. On the one hand, it is an unconvincing interpretation of Marx, who does not clearly maintain this theory, and on the other hand, its logic is questionable. Marx certainly makes a number of observations on a priority to be assigned to technological change, ranging from dramatic epithets to considered analysis of the developmental role of productive forces in pre-capitalist and capitalist society. He also highlights, however, the significance of relations of production, notably at the outset of the Communist Manifesto, and persistently takes relations of production themselves to constitute a productive force.19 Again, his identification of the determining role played by the economic structure of society must be read in tandem with his emphasis on the reciprocal actions of various elements of society upon one another.20 Furthermore, notably in The German Ideology, he emphasises that any abstract structural specification of the operation and development of modes of production should not be construed as a grand historical theory, bypassing the detailed work of empirical investigation. General comments about the course of historical development are clearly intended merely to elaborate retrospective summaries of the course of historical events and are not to be mistaken for first-order laws of scientific development. Marx and Engels observe, ‘When the reality is described, a self-sufficient philosophy loses its medium of existence. At the best, its place can only be taken by a summing up of the most general results, abstractions which are derived from the observation of the historical development of men. Divorced from real history, these abstractions, in themselves have no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by




6/14/2011 12:12:03 PM


no means afford a recipe or scheme, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history.’21 The context in which Marx and Engels developed their ideas on history was the repressive yet philosophically febrile atmosphere of mid-nineteenth-century Germany. They were engaged with and reacting against the portentous and apocalyptic historical sermonising of Young Hegelians like Stirner, whom they see as obfuscating history by imposing upon its empirical surfaces grandiose schemes of teleological and spiritual development.22 The rhetorical force of Marx’s critique of Young Hegelian notions should not be taken unambiguously as a sign that in his later writings he has renounced a former philosophical commitment to a generic conception of human beings in favour of an alternative causal, structural analysis of history. Althusser’s structuralist reading of The German Ideology is more a testament to the specific political circumstances in which he himself was writing, than an objective survey of breaks in Marx’s epistemological development. The prevalence of structuralist analysis in the discourses of French social science, and the political capital to be maximised in separating Marxism as a science from rival doctrines motivates, Althusser’s reading of the later Marx as a social scientist free of his earlier humanist anthropology.23 Marx, in the light of his gathering distaste for the philosophical baggage that was cramping the style of fellow Young Hegelians, dropped, at least in published work, Feuerbachian references to species-being and alienation. Nonetheless, he maintained a commitment to humanity’s unity, universality and productiveness, and continued to interpret capital as alienating humanity from these essential qualities.24 Marx’s use of history is multidimensional and perceptive. He is sensitive to the vulnerability of historical understanding to the language of teleology and to an excess of philosophical baggage. At times, he also shows himself to be aware that technological reductivism is beset with problems.25 The presumption that technology can be conceptually isolated from such other factors as political and cultural discourse is problematic and runs counter to Marx’s own profound sense of the dialectical, non-determined interplay amongst aspects of society. Technology has developed prodigiously under capitalism and explaining this development would seem to necessitate reference to the relations of production that individuate the capitalist mode of mode of production. The idea that labour power,


70


6/14/2011 12:12:03 PM

the primary force of production, can be treated as an essentialised property operating in the same way under distinct forms of production appears wrong-headed and is unsupported by Marx’s writings. Likewise, an economic structure cannot be isolated from political and cultural connections so that fundamental economic causes may be severed from contaminating interaction with cultural and political developments, such as the Enlightenment, nationalist agitation and the political pursuit of class interests. Current global theory exhibits affinities with Marxist historical explanation in a number of ways. Just as Marx offers a philosophically inflected perspective on history, providing a retrospective way of reading historical development and anticipating future prospects, so the idioms of contemporary global theory read history as exhibiting evidence of global progress and project this development into the future. Global theory today also has an ambiguous relationship to the provision of a causal, historical explanation. Global theorists are often assumed, and sometimes, like Scholte, assert themselves, to provide a causal explanation of historical events.26 A global, causal account of history, though, runs into the same problems as those found in reading Marx as providing a technological theory of history. It is at least disputable whether or not the putative causes of the explanation, the explanans, can be distinguished from what is being explained, the explanandum. Just as the forces of production cannot be separated from relations of production, and the later cannot be separated neatly from cultural relations, so globalisation cannot operate as a cause of historical change, when what counts as its effects are implicated in the meaning of globalisation itself. Rosenberg’s complaints against global theory focus upon the assumption that it claims to operate as a causal theory of historical change. He assumes that, if globalisation is to be an effective theory for social study, it must operate as a general explanation of social and political change. He is critical of global theorists for offering purported causal explanations, which actually only provide tautologies. Equally, he is dismissive of global theorists who back off from claiming general causal explanations and instead rely on summarising empirical developments, or else deploy Marxist or Weberian forms of historical explanation. In his article ‘Globalization Theory: A PostMortem’, he not only rehearses his former critique of global theory but also proposes an alternative Marxist historical sociology.27 On




6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM


the one hand, he recognises the difficulties in the way of large-scale causal analysis, and he urges that Marx’s general theories should be mediated by specific temporal historical factors constituting a historical conjuncture. On the other hand, he maintains that the combination of general theory and specific factors allows for holistic causal explanation of historical change. He observes, ‘Thus, concretizing the abstraction via a reconstruction of the conjuncture need not dissolve a general theory into multi-factor indeterminacy; on the contrary, done well, it unlocks its potential for real historical explanation.’28 Rosenberg’s express endeavour to replace global theory with Marxist historical explanation shows an affinity between the two, and his own mediation of general theory by contingent factors shows awareness of the problems posed by any general causal theory of history. These problems are exemplified by his own explanation of the 1990s in this article, when he relies massively upon contingent factors, such as the fall of the Soviet Union. When combined with contingent factors, Marxist general theory proves incompatible with ‘real historical explanation’ because it not only relies upon contingent factors but also because the relationship between general theory and contingent factors is itself contingent; it varies from time to time and does not provide a general causal account.

Capital and the bad infinite of its expansion The mature Marx develops a theory of the self-expanding, illimitable nature of capital. It is this synoptic reading of capital as a social practice that reproduces its conditions of development and expansion which enables Marx to highlight the global dynamics of capital. For Marx, individual capitalists and their intentions are of no great significance because capital forms a social practice, in which the conduct of individuals is variously constrained and enabled. Insofar as human beings subscribe to markets and accept the rules of market behaviour, there is a tendency for capital to develop, and the institutional rules of capital prescribe limits to appropriate behaviour regarding its deployment, accumulation and deployment. Marx maintains that the social practices connected with capital prescribe that money circulates, and that on its return to its source, there is an increased supply of money. This increase in money enables its further expansion on the redeployment of an expanded fund of money,


72


6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM

which yields a further increase on its return. There is no limit on this activity, for the deployment of capital is an instrumental device that adheres neither to an end nor to a limit, save that of its own maintenance. Marx’s reading of the expansionist tendencies of capital is subtle and extended. It analyses the prodigious growth of capitalism and the manifest and insidious effects of capital on the contemporary economic and social world. Landscapes and townscapes are quite literally transformed by capital, for the opportunities for capital’s employment intensify, and its grip on activities and areas previously untouched by its remit tightens. Physical appearances, human social and sexual relationships, sport, education and culture are today treated as commodified services to be bought and sold, and all nations and parts of the world are absorbed into global capital markets. Marx provides a considered logical commentary on the nature of capital’s dynamic as a practice, and this analysis is akin to Hegel’s review of the logic of conceptual relationships. Hegel sees the logic of logical relations as being that of self-mediation. Thought, in order to conceive of itself, thinks the relations of itself and other forms of thought, and it is this reflexive, relational aspect of thought that Hegel takes to be a mark of the notion, the reflexive conceptualisation of thought that is rational and free; it is rational because it knows itself to be thought, and free because it only relates to itself and is not determined externally. Hegel takes the reflexive circuit of thought in thinking its own conditions or aspects to represent the infinity of thought. Thinking, in returning to itself, constitutes a good infinite, one which describes and meets with its own trajectory. This self-determining circle of thought is a good infinite insofar as it develops and maintains its character, as opposed to the bad infinite, constantly demanding one more addition to its repertoire, which is evident in the bad infinite of quantity or the utilitarian calculation of pleasure-seeking.29 In the Grundrisse Marx describes how money and capital follow circuits of infinity, which are both bad infinites in that they display self-determining qualities but only partially. The process of money supplying investment, which returns at a profit to allow for more investment, forms a self-developing and expanding unity but it is vitiated by its insatiable character. The circulation of money is depicted as an infinite process in the Grundrisse. Marx observes, ‘The circulation of money, like that of




6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM


commodities, begins at an infinity of different points, and to an infinity of different points it returns.’30 The process is infinite in the sense of being endless, but it is a ‘bad infinite’ because the process does not determine all the elements involved in the conversion of money into and out of the commodity form.31 The circuit of exchanges between the commodity form and money (CMMC) neither produces nor explains its own conditions. However, when money is deployed to make money through the purchase and sale of commodities, thereby generating more money to acquire commodities so as to render making money a continuous infinite process, then, for Marx, the logical basis of capitalism has arrived.32 Capital exhibits the self-mediating character of the good infinite by acquiring in commodity form fixed and variable capital, which it uses to generate the conditions of its own realisation. Marx observes, ‘The immortality which money strove to achieve by setting itself negatively against circulation, by withdrawing from it, is achieved by capital which preserves itself precisely by abandoning itself to circulation.’33 Capital in setting in motion self-determining circuits of expansion has an aspect of the ‘good infinite’, whereby development is continuous and progresses along a self-directed pathway. But Marx is at the same time critical of its trajectory. Its trajectory turns crucially upon the exploitation of the use value of labour, which is at once integral to the generative creative conditions of the production and reproduction of capital, and yet is alienated, exploited and declines as a proportion of capital in its processes of transformation. Marx observes, ‘The creative power of his [proletarian] labour establishes itself as an alien power confronting him.’34 The ‘bad’ aspects of the infinity of capital are exhibited in its denial of the infinite creativity of labour by its constant yet sterile pursuit of endless streams of more quantitative profit in which the sociality of free labour is disregarded. Marx’s Hegelian reading of capital highlights the self-moving dynamic of capital as a social force. In doing so it registers the capacity for capital to develop and to impose itself both intensively on all activities within a particular society and extensively across territorial borders. Capital’s dynamic is infinite in its demanding ever more sites for its restless pursuit of burgeoning profit streams. Marx’s conceptualisation of capital fits with the empirical record of its investment in an ever increasing number of fields such as the body, sport, personal relationships, with its manufacture of ever more refined desires and


74


6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM

with its development of the world as a whole as the site for its operations. Marx’s analysis of capital affords a paradigm for globalisation and contemporary forms of global theory that stress the role of markets and capitalism in the expansion of transnational connections.35 Marx’s critical reading of the operations of capital also prefigures ideological critiques of globalisation, in observing the simultaneous dependence upon and indifference to the creativity and sociality of labour on the part of capital and corporations.

Communism and radical transformation Marx’s espousal of communism is clear, dramatic and a puzzle. It is a constant presence in his work from the outset. The drama and resolution of Marx’s commitment to communism is announced in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, in which he declares, ‘It (communism) is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be the solution.’ 36 It is dramatic because it constitutes the decisive and radical break in historical development, breaking with private property, the division of labour, money, exchange value, exploitation and alienation. Marx’s radicalism is assured by communism’s negativity to what precedes it.37 Its prospective achievement promises a sharp divergence from the operations of capital and its associated social and political landscape. It is radical because it has no truck with ameliorating or reforming capitalism but aims to break with capital entirely. It is against capital, as Smith observes, on a conceptual basis rather than disputing specific empirical aspects of its system of distribution, exchange and production.38 Though Marx recognises the unfairness of capitalism’s distribution of resources, he takes its distribution to depend upon how its form of production is organised. A reform of capitalism’s system of distribution would merely be a palliative rather than the thorough-going transformation that is required. Late in his career as a political campaigner and social theorist, Marx, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, is critical of German socialists, who frame a political programme based upon principles of fair and equal, ‘bourgeois’ right. He concludes by insisting that only in developed communism, ‘can society wholly cross the narrow horizon of bourgeois right.’39 Marx is against an agenda for social reform that is imbued with the prevalent concepts and practices of capital.




6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM


Like Hegel, he is a holist, who recognises that capital maintains and reproduces itself in inter-linked circuits of development and that to break with capital entails repudiating an entire network of concepts. Hence, for Marx, communism must recognise itself to be an entirely new and radically different social system, in which the very notion of exchange between separately conceived individuals and an equalisation of distribution between such separately conceptualised individuals is overturned along with the entire gamut of accessories demanded by capital, such as money and private property. Marx’s radicalism is clear and its conceptual distinction from capital and its division of labour marks its radicalism. This radicalism is aligned with Marx’s constructivism in that he conceives of humanity as being able to reconstruct society on a novel and radically different basis. However Marx, like Hegel, reckons on taking account of the world as it is, or rather as it has been constructed. His critique of contemporary utopian socialists is that they focus merely on how the world ought to be and ignore the actual conditions of the world and how change is to be related to those conditions.40 If Marx’s radicalism is guaranteed to ensure that the communism project is not compromised by associations with capital, then Marx, to adhere to his theoretical commitment of locating the ideal in the real must nonetheless identify the determinants of the radically new social form in the contours of current historical developments. He fulfils this agenda by identifying in aspects of current social practices both what he takes to be the destructive tendencies at work in the processes of capital and the positive intimations of a new social construction of reality. Marx takes continuing negative features of capitalism, such as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, exploitation, alienation, the sub-optimal deployment of productive forces and the periodic crises engendered by overproduction, to highlight the internal weaknesses of capital. Likewise, the development of co-operatives and joint-stock companies alongside workers’ intensifying political organisation and activity serve as signs of immanent and imminent social and political transformation. From today’s vantage point, many commentators identify Marx’s commitment to the radical overturning of capital in favour of a wholly distinct form of society as problematic. Contemporary global theorists tend to disparage Marx’s adherence to an alternative economic and social system on a variety of grounds. The fall of communism


76


6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM

in Eastern Europe is read as an historical closure on a failed experiment in economic planning and the dystopic consequence of utopian experimentation. Likewise, reflection on the experience of communism in Eastern Europe tends to engender a reaffirmation of political commitments to markets, liberal values and tried and tested constitutional arrangements, even if recent financial and economic failures render these commitments acts of homage to a capricious deity.41 Doubts over the feasibility and desirability of economic growth, fatigue over conventional forms of radical politics, and disaffection with the old images and shibboleths of revolt, such as male manual labourers, industrial trade unionists, the party line and class loyalty, coalesce in a yearning for something new and a break with nostalgic reminiscence.42 Marx’s radicalism, though, resists easy dismissal by contemporary radicals because it is underpinned by radical idealism and empirical realism. The realism is sustained by thorough and incisive historical and sociological analysis, and the radical idealism is inspired by a considered appraisal of preceding and prospective forms of social organisation. The challenge for contemporary radicals who plan to break from contemporary social forms is to match or supersede Marx’s combination of realistic insight and imaginative conceptualisation of alternatives. Hardt and Negri conceive the revolutionary multitude to be incubated by contemporary global conditions and to incarnate the prospect of radical transformation, and yet their faith in what they take to be the burgeoning exploration of common resources and techniques on the part of the multitude tends to downplay the continuing controls exerted by capital on the experience of labour and social interaction under the conditions of capitalism. They critique what they take to be Marx’s narrow productivism in imagining that value is created in a circumscribed sphere of production, and celebrate what they take to be common spheres of creative social energy and invention enjoyed by the multitude in social interactions outside specific sites of production.43 While Marx at times slides towards a reductionist focus upon technology and production, the Grundrisse testifies to his analytical commitment to the dialectical over-determination of inter-related social spheres, so that consumption and production and labour and wider social relations cannot be neatly separated from one another. He is aware of the productive possibilities of social relations outside a delineated sphere of




6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM

78


production, but he is also mindful of impact of capital on all aspects of capitalist society.44

Marx is a modern thinker, who is a radical critic of Enlightenment orthodoxies. Economic theory, philosophical rationalism and apologetic liberalism incur his radical critique. Likewise, the liberal states of his lifetime are castigated for their hypocrisy, injustice and one-sided promotion of class interests. The energy and industry of Victorian England is a distorted tribute to its productive forces; its family values serve as a mask for patriarchal domination, and its exhibition of creative endeavour trades on the exploitation of child labour and the widespread alienation and exploitation of the workforce in a system that is controlled by the dynamics of capital operating to an internal quantitative logic of reproduction. He is critical of Hegel, from whom he derived his characteristic ways of analysing the inter-connected aspects of social and historical development. From Hegel he derives his developmental, constructive conception of human agency which makes history and society according to its own self-constituting images. Marx’s elaboration of a comprehensive constructivist interpretation of social organisation renders his thinking relevant to current forms of global theory. The world for Marx is not static. Its character turns not upon given physical characteristics but upon what is made of it. The world is constituted by human beings and the modes of production, which they fashion. Humanity, the generic identity of human beings, is forged by the ways in which human beings organise and develop techniques to foster production. Production in the world transforms the world. Nature is always being reconstituted via social production, and the world appears differently as human beings apply themselves to working within it. Human identity and the human environment are correlative and dynamic configurations. The ways in which human beings sense the world changes as the world of production changes. Human sensation, for Marx, is not fixed; its quality is transformed by changes in human powers and a humanised environment. Marx’s conception of construction allows for the world, the globe, to represent distinct things at different epochs. Global theory maintains a sense of global development, but it is not decisively committed to


Conclusion


6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM

conceiving of this development as involving changes in the ways in which the world is experienced and understood, as well as in terms of quantitative measures of its productivity and levels of trade. Marx’s notion of an evolving series of notions of the world and a developing reality of differing modes in which production is organised in the world captures the interpretive complexity of the notion of world history. Global theory tends to caricature and deprecate Marx’s notion of historical development, just as its attribution to him of a misplaced optimism misreads his reading of the world.45 Marx is a theorist of misconstruction as much as he a theorist of construction, and he diagnoses significant ways in which human development distorts aspects of human identity. The very form of human identity, its universal form-imparting capacity, by which the world itself may be freely and co-operatively shaped, is misshapen spectacularly by the alienation endemic to capitalism. Marx’s standpoint is instructive for global theory because he conceives of the world as being constantly in the process of construction, so that it makes no sense to inquire whether globalisation is a good or bad thing, because it is a continuous process of development and how it develops is the crucial question to answer. Hence Marx’s thought does not lend itself to a standard form of cosmopolitanism, whereby universal principles and rights are taken to be unchanging. What matters, for Marx, is to understand the processes at work in making the world and to promote those forces that will enable humanity to maximise its form-constructing co-operative potential. Marx’s historical perspective on constructionism and globalism remains instructive. He is sensitive to the dangers of brandishing a teleological history that depends upon a generalised conception of humanity, which abstracts from concrete empirical events of history. A final cause of teleological development does not trump particular contingent empirical causes of change.46 Yet he simultaneously resorts to generalisations that imply a determinist, technological view of history. The contradictory aspects of Marx’s engagement with history underline his recognition of its significance for assessing directional tendencies of economic and social life. It would be nonsensical for a serious study of economic, social and political institutions and practices to ignore evidence of the directions in which these social forms are heading, because they are constituted by their historical emergence and development. But it is important to be clear




6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM


on what kind of historical analysis is being undertaken in any specific study. Contemporary global theory follows Marx unwittingly in offering historical observations and formulations that are not clearly identified as being, for example, either explanatory scientific forms of explanation or conceptual reviews of developments allowing for periodisations of history. Marx’s interpretive assessment of capital as a misdirected practice, reproducing itself by drawing continuously upon resources to renew ever expanding activities, conceptualises the dynamism of capital that is recognised in so many studies of globalisation. Globalisation is standardly seen as driven by economic and technological forms of expansion and transformation, but Marx’s theory of capital has the merit of providing an explanatory rationale for the emphatic role assigned to capitalism in contemporary global studies even if it is less clear, pace Rosenberg, that it can supply the mechanics of particular historical causal chains.47 Marx’s radicalism is perceptive and productive, and yet it exhibits questionable features. The latter contributed to the waning of his relevance for contemporary radicals. The Messianic images in his rhetoric of social and political transformation may constitute productive apparitions for Derrida, but they also appear as distant reminders of a superseded agenda.48 The industrial proletariat, the concentration of historical energy in the party and the inevitable downfall of capital appear as rhetorical tropes from another age, offering essentialised homilies to the force and future of productive, organised labour when the twenty-first century confronts the decline of unions, the ubiquity of disorganised labour, and the proliferation of cultural identities. Notions and nostrums of culture, sexuality, nation and class have been subject to critique and reconstruction, unravelling the purported unities of class identity. But while Marx and Marxism may appear dated and superseded by events and their own appropriations of history, Derrida is surely perceptive in reminding readers of the insinuating power of Marxist critique, which acts as a critical ghost haunting the development of today’s global society. Derrida invokes and distinguishes, ‘... this spirit of the Marxist critique, which seems to be more indispensable than ever to day, at once from Marxism as ontology, philosophical or metaphysical system, as “dialectical materialis”, and from Marxism incorporated in the apparatus of party, state or workers’ international.’49 Again, Derrida is shrewd in urging that this Marxist


80


6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM

critique should not be reduced to an abstract form of critical deconstruction but should operate by informing and working against the systemic commitments of Marx’s thought.50 The idea is that Marx offers a continuing critique due to his theory’s combination of an engaged reading of political economy’s entanglement in contradictions of misfiring reproduction with a historical sense of possibilities. The spectre of Marx provides an alternative paradigm for notions of internationalism and global development.51 Radical forms of global theory and the practice of the alternative globalisation movement owe a largely unacknowledged debt to Marx. Radical environmentalism focuses upon the capacity of human beings and their social activities to transform the environment, and in particular they critique the misdirection of human activities that threatens to undermine the very capacity of the environment to protect and serve human interests. Marx’s dialectical reading of nature and human identity is relevant to an appreciation of the interplay between humanity and its environment. His conception of the self-expanding character of capital and his conceptualisation of a reordering of the economic system, whereby money and the endless commodification of planetary resources yield to social co-operation so as to maximise common human powers harmonises with the transformative radicalism of the contemporary alternative globalisation movement. Marx and contemporary global radicals are also connected by the dialectical intimations of the reciprocity between agency and the objects of contemporary protest. Just as Marx detects the engine of capital’s destruction in its own mode of operating, so global radicals aim to turn corporate sloganising against itself. These affinities are exemplified in the inter-connections between Hardt and Negri’s notions of the multitude, the common and empire on the one hand, and the unremarked affinity between these notions and the conceptual vocabulary of Marx on the other.




6/14/2011 12:12:04 PM

5

Global transformation Global theory is diverse; its proponents canvass a variety of ideological, political and explanatory causes. General theories of globalisation, however, tend to imagine the phenomenon of globalisation to be relatively novel and to decisively transform the world. Indeed, transformation constitutes the conceptual dynamism of global theory, of its theoretical claims and its ideological agendas. Transformation sets global theory apart from preceding modern theory and lends globalisation an epochal significance. Global theory, in assuming the guise of a decisive transformative project, tends to underrate the diverse ways in which the world can be conceived, because the theory and practice of a global society are identified as distinctive and epochal rather than varied and mutable. Global theory, like the world itself, is constructed, and yet the very energy of its construction as an innovative project deflects from it seeing its links to preceding conceptions of the world and of transformation. In reality, new concepts are mapped on to old ones, for the meaning of terms derives from historical associations and disassociations, even when those terms are presented as spatial rather than temporal. The global does not merely locate points on a map of the present because the current idea of the world is defined in part by preceding notions of the world. The old and the new are not simply rivals jostling for a position of pre-eminence, but co-operative elements of an on-going enterprise of construction. Global theory is paraded as breaking sharply from preceding theories, and this break is part


Global Theory: Transformation

82


6/14/2011 12:12:09 PM

of a wider notion of a global transformation of identity, whereby sub-global markers of cultural identity are subsumed under a global configuration. This chapter contests the dichotomous reading of a global break from preceding theory and practice by concentrating on those global theories that offer paradigmatic and distinct readings of global transformation. It reflects theoretically on the meaning and nature of the transition that is posited as obtaining between global society and preceding forms. In so doing, it focuses upon the claims advanced on behalf of a major break occurring between past and present, attending to the conceptualisation of the posited transformative processes. This is undertaken in two stages. First, global theorists’ assumptions about humanity’s identity in a global age will be reviewed; and second, the nature of their judgements about history and historical change will be assessed. In undertaking this critical review of the conceptualisation of the transformation that is purported to be exhibited in the process of globalisation, we concentrate on large-scale theories of global society rather than specific studies, which are devoted, for instance, to the particular ways in which a culture, country or industry are implicated in global patterns of interaction. Similarly, we do not focus upon accounts of global transformation, which presume rather than develop notions of global change, and which trade upon the currency of global change circulating uncritically in the everyday world of practical political, cultural and economic life. The general circulation of ideas about globalisation has been stimulated by the neo-liberal discourse and policies that were adopted and canvassed by leaders of Western governments, international institutions and global corporations in the wake of the downfall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This neo-liberalism of what has been dubbed the Washington Consensus consists in a combination of neo-classical economics and a rhetorical appreciation of individual liberty, which inspires and limits the ideological imagination of global policy-making and hard-headed trading in global financial markets. This consensus urges the value of global markets and competition, though its ascendancy is under challenge via the combination of the recent near collapse of the global financial system and the election of a US president, who is not a neo-liberal. The neo-liberal version of global transformation in informing and stimulating the practical development of global discourse and


Global Theory: Transformation 83


6/14/2011 12:12:09 PM


practice, puts globalisation in the ideological picture, just as the Soviet Union put socialism on the agenda, even if it assumed a distorted and brutal form. Its conceptual implications tend not to receive a considered review, though its mix of ideology and theory, partisan support for contemporary business interests and breathless invocations of historical destiny are documented in Ohmae’s The Borderless World. Ohmae’s experience as a Japanese corporate strategist working for an American corporation enabled him to experience the growth of global business at close quarters, and encouraged his strategic endorsement of a market-led globalisation of trade and economics. His stripped-down moral, economic and political standpoint is that utility is maximised by markets; and the wider the markets, the greater the utility. Hence global markets are to be promoted for their efficiency and morality, because they maximise the welfare of consumers and in doing so maximise profits for corporations. There are no losers in this globalisation of welfare. All it takes is for governments to have the courage to allow market forces off the leash of government protection and subsidy. Ohmae’s analysis of globalisation is a mix of sociology and history which identifies an overriding logic to the growing development of trade and business. This development is led by major corporations from the triad of the United States, Asia and Europe. He observes the underlying logic of the situation, ‘We are finally living in a world where money, securities, services, options, futures, information and patents, software and hardware, companies and know-how, assets and memberships, paintings and brands are all traded without national sentiments across traditional borders.’1 His historical sense of a global destiny for business is combined with a moral imperative to rein back government to curtail national and nationalist restraints on business. ‘The globalisation of consumer tastes and its effects on fixed costs, the rapid dispersion of technology, the explosive growth of the FX empire (foreign exchange empire) – in short, the cumulative, relentless flow of information around the globe – has taken years to alter the landscape long familiar to corporate strategists ... .Today, if you look closely at the world Triad companies inhabit, national borders have effectively disappeared and, along with them, the economic logic that made them useful lines of demarcation in the first place.’2 Ohmae plays down the entire concept of national interest outside a shared global interest in maximising the scope and intensity


84


6/14/2011 12:12:09 PM

of markets. In The End of the Nation the Rise of Regional Economies, he urges, ‘If allowed global resources will flow to where they are needed without the intervention of nation-states.’3 He maintains that a global market is benign and that natural regional forms of trade will emerge if the partisanship of nation-states can be dismissed as an historical relic. Ohmae’s global theory is charged by the ideology of corporate capital, urging the case for capital as much as recording historical progress. It combines normative commitment with a sense of a supervening historical destiny, whereby the rational and functional will supersede outmoded forms of organisation and belief, such as national governments and sentiments of nationality. Along the way, Ohmae argues the case for the originality of his position and points out the anachronism that is maintained by opposing traditionalists, who resist globalisation in the name of national interests and cultural particularity. Ohmae’s rhetoric blurs his arguments’ dependence on former ones, for his ideas derive from preceding modern forms of utility and neo-classical economics, and revisit in uncritical form Marx’s analysis of the reproductive global dynamic of capital. Ohmae’s version of globalisation is instructive for the more intensive conceptual investigations of global theory, which will be reviewed subsequently in this chapter. His perspective on globalisation combines such various elements as sociological analysis, historical narrative, economic theory and business strategy and runs together normative commitment and empirical observations. The more elaborated conceptual studies of global development, which are to be reviewed subsequently, tend to mix normative and empirical analysis, to insist upon their originality and to fail to provide clarity in the style of analysis that they are conducting.

Reflexivity and late modernity In a review of the ways in which studies in global theory highlight a transformation in society, requiring new conceptual formulations of social identity, the identification of global society in terms of its heightened expression of the reflexive powers of humanity stands out. Major theorists of globalisation highlight how globalisation involves the constructive powers of human beings to remove themselves from local, concrete contexts and to reflect back on their own




6/14/2011 12:12:10 PM


identities and constructions. This movement away from sub-global registers of identity is seen as rational and to define a new epoch. On the one hand, reason is held to enable the liberation of individuals from the particularities of place. Instead of being subsumed by contingent, particular locations, individuals are envisaged as being enabled by a variety of social developments to step back from localised identities. At the same time reflection on this reflective capacity to detach themselves from particularities of the moment allows human beings to reflect on their own rationality, and hence reflexivity emerges as the crucial determinant of identities and human capacities. These reflective capacities to supersede spatial limitation are held to be defining in terms of humanity’s global identity in a new age. Ironically, in presuming a break in historical development whereby theory and practice shift so as to reflect heightened rational powers and reflexivity, these global theorists tend to overlook links between their own reflections and those of modern predecessors. Giddens’s The Consequences of Modernity is a formative work in global theory; it highlights how humanity’s powers to abstract from the concrete aspects of the present and to reflect back on their own thinking are defining aspects of global identity.4 As the title indicates, Giddens relates his conception of globalisation to that of modernity. He perceives globalisation to be the latest stage of modernity. He observes, ‘We have not moved beyond modernity but are living precisely through a phase of its radicalization.’5 In so doing, Giddens emphasises the innovative, radical character of modernity, observing it to be transformative in its conception and its operation. He contrasts modernity with preceding ‘traditional’ forms of social organisation. In considering modernity, Giddens emphasises its destabilising disorienting character. Traditional modes of social life are shaped by their adherence to merely customary values and orientations. They lack what is distinctive about modernity, the determination to question settled ways of operating by applying rational thinking to questions and problems. Giddens highlights the distinctively transformative aspect of a modern mentality in noting, ‘The modes of life brought into being by modernity have swept us away from all traditional types of social order, in quite unprecedented fashion.’6 Modern modes of living assume change to be the norm both intensively and extensively.7 The ascription of a detraditionalising character to modernity is not


86


6/14/2011 12:12:10 PM

in itself a reworking of the notion of modernity, for virtually all modern theorists are aware of its disruptive character.8 But for Giddens, the transformative aspect of modernity has been understated, and his formal identification of its character reinforces the recognition of its disruptive tendencies. Traditional societies, for Giddens, are concerned to maintain roots because of their identification of individuals with place and their organisation of time around repetitive rituals that locate individuals in particular roles in specific places. These attachments to the particulars of time and place are broken by the forces of modernity, and Giddens identifies the radical, nontraditional form of modernity to be definitive of its character in a way that is insufficiently acknowledged in standard accounts of modernity. Giddens analyses the nature and dynamic of modernity in terms of how it relates time and space, which differs fundamentally from that of traditional societies. Modern societies are to be understood as organising relations of space and time in a novel and transformative way. Whereas traditional societies experience space and time as local and concrete phenomena, exemplified in express rituals and repetitive performances, modernity abstracts space and time from their concrete associations with place and specific occasions. Giddens observes, ‘In conditions of modernity, the level of time-space distanciation is much greater than in even the most developed of agrarian civilisations.’9 Time-space distanciation represents a disembedding of space and time from the particular and contingent, so that space and time are no longer attributed to or measured by their links to particular things or places. Whereas in traditional societies work and pleasure and their spatial, temporal organisation depend on a mix of natural factors such as light and heat, and social legitimation occurs via the repetition of activities under socially authorised conditions, modern societies allow for individuals to abstract from particular natural and social conditions of place and time to undertake activities on their own initiative. The disembedding of space and time from merely local conditions and forms of legitimation conduces to a global frame that Giddens perceives as gathering force in contemporary society. This double process of disembedding time and space from, say, their immersion in rituals and their reinsertion into social life via a reflective awareness of, and engagement with, differential space and time configurations




6/14/2011 12:12:10 PM


in other parts of the globe, represents the radical modernity of globalisation. Giddens notes, ‘By disembedding I mean the lifting out of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space.’10 Giddens identifies globalisation with a radicalisation of this process of disembedding, and in so doing provides a conceptual analysis of its character which sees it as responding to and accentuating the potential of modernity. He maintains, ‘In the modern era the level of time-space distanciation is much higher than in any previous period, and the relations between local and distant social forms and events become correspondingly stretched. Globalisation refers essentially to that stretching process, in so far as the modes of connection between different social contexts or regions become networked across the earth’s surfaces. Globalisation can thus be defined as, ‘the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.’11 To the extent that Giddens identifies globalisation with a heightening of the forces at work in modernity, he might be expected to locate the provenance of his ideas in the classic theories of modernity. But Giddens claims to break from the discourse of preceding modern theorists, just as he takes its radicalisation under conditions of globalisation to represent a distinctive phase of historical development.12 Giddens, in The Consequences of Modernity, is keen to dissociate himself from the classical modern sociologists Weber, Durkheim and especially Marx. In so doing, he is motivated by reservations over what he takes to be their overly optimistic reading of the present and by what he imagines to be their ascription of an evolutionary logic to historical development.13 Giddens ignores or plays down associations of his thought with Marx’s notions of humanity as self-creating and as possessing the power to transform rather than be confined by the merely given circumstances of nature. Moreover, he also misperceives Marx’s reading of the distortion of these powers under capital. Giddens argues that his own sense of the ambiguities of humanity’s creative potential, its creative and destructive possibilities, renders his standpoint distinct from preceding modern ones. In Runaway World: How Globalisation Is Affecting Our Lives, Giddens emphasises his detachment from Marx, Marxism and the thrust of modern thought. He observes, ‘Karl Marx ... put the notion very


88


6/14/2011 12:12:10 PM

simply. We have to understand history, he argued, in order to make history. Marx and Marxism had a massive influence in the twentieth century under the guidance of this notion. According to this view, with the further development of science and technology, the world should become more stable and ordered. Even many thinkers who opposed Marx accepted such an idea ... The world in which we find ourselves today, however, doesn’t look or feel much like they predicted it would. Rather than being more and more under our control, it seems out of our control.’14 A distinctive aspect of late modernity for Giddens is the centrality of risk. Previous forms of society have tended to take for granted the way things are and have not seen the prospects for the future as susceptible of calculation. But when the reflexivity if human beings is to the fore, as it is in late modernity, then the future is a product of human manipulation and of risks that can be calculated, even if, or rather because, these global risks are generated by human initiatives. In Modernity and Self-Identity Giddens maintains ‘To live in the universe of high modernity is to live in an environment of chance and risk, the inevitable concomitants of a system geared to the domination of nature and the reflexive making of history.’15 The omnipresence of risk, for Giddens, is a novel aspect of late modernity, reflecting the heightened reflexivity characteristic of globalisation. Likewise, self-identity is transformed by reflexivity in the novel conditions of late modernity. A theme of Modernity and Self-Identity is that the self has become a reflexive project, removed from absorption in such traditional social groupings as the family and state, and is free to liaise with whatever identities it might choose to connect. The epitome of a relationship for a late-modern self is the pure relationship of choice, which turns upon reflective commitment rather than prescribed or inherited loyalties.16 And late-modern selves, because of their capacities for reflexively shedding particular identities, can identify with the pure notion of self in all parts of what duly becomes a cosmopolitan world. Reflexivity also impacts upon politics of late modernity. The politics of emancipation is transformed into a life politics, whereby the very nature of nature itself is open to radical transformation as well as contingent social scenes. When the possibilities of radical reorientation to the world are on the agenda, a third way of global issues and lifestyle identities replaces typically modern political ways of establishing productive or fair social and




6/14/2011 12:12:10 PM


economic conditions for individuals, who are presumed to possess relatively fixed identities in a stable environment.17 Giddens’s reading of globalisation, which emphasises its expression of transformative rational and imaginative human capacities and enables heightened powers of reflexivity, of perspective, is linked to a number of other conceptual explorations of globalisation. Giddens’s work bears affinities with and draws upon Beck’s ground-breaking study of late modernity, The Risk Society, in which the configuration of society is held to be transforming, as relatively fixed cultural structures and identities tied to the family, class and the state yield to a more reflexive and global individualism. In The Risk Society Beck observes, ‘Just as modernization dissolved the structure of feudal society in the nineteenth century and produced the industrial society, modernization today is dissolving industrial society and another modernity is coming into being.’18 Beck highlights the central role of reflexivity in late-modern society, as it is dissolving fixed frameworks and saturates the world with human constructivism. He urges, ‘... modernization has consumed and lost its other and now undermines its own premises as an industrial society along with its functional principles. Modernization within the horizon of experience of pre-modernity is being displaced by reflexive modernization.’19 In ‘The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernization’ Beck, like Giddens, links existential reflexivity to what he imagines to represent a new politics of life and death.20 For Beck, the late modern world is one in which risk is paramount because humanity has post-dated the alien fate which seemed to constitute its destiny and has replaced it with the on-going calculation of risks arising out of the unintended consequences of human reflective action. Nature is no longer separate from humanity, because humanity remakes the world, with attendant risks and possibilities. Beck imagines the creative, transformative and reflexive powers of humanity to constitute a new age, which he categorises as a global one that abandons the limits of traditional allegiances, such as nation, class and family.21 In what he designates the global age Albrow, like Giddens and Beck, identifies a qualitative shift to a more universal form of rationality, and he anticipates how the instrumentality of modernity, in which nature was merely exploited as a resource, will be transformed into a more flexible form of rationality, allowing for a more holistic treatment of the natural world. He remarks, ‘The technical reason of


90


6/14/2011 12:12:10 PM

modernity will no longer occupy the prime place in the moral ordering of social relations.’22 He imagines a more thoroughly reflected set of discourses on global living, ‘Indeed as global forces impel change at unprecedented rates, there will be ever increasing demand for new discourses on individual and collective ways of living.’23 Castells, too, interprets global developments as exhibiting a radical transformation of space and time. His theory focuses upon a transformation in perceptions of and orientations towards time due to the onset of new reflexive social procedures. He understands the transformation to be engendered by highly reflexive operations of informational flows, allowing for a developing human capacity to manipulate time, which is enabled by electronically connected networks. Castells perceives informational communication to facilitate and to be facilitated by networks. Networks are seen as the form of organisation that realises the potential of new modes of electronic communication. A network allows for informational flows between heterogeneous social actors, who can operate flexibly and effectively in ways precluded in hierarchical arrangements.24 The elements of an interacting and inter-defining can constitute and reconstitute their own purposes and in so doing create their own modes of time via the flows with which they link their changing elements. Castells observes, ‘the mixing of times in the media, within the same channel of communication and at the choice of the viewer/interactor, creates a temporal collage, where not only genres are mixed but their timing becomes synchronous in a flat horizon, with no beginning, no end, no sequence.’25 Flows of time and space are removed from linear channels to operate within distinct forms, constituted by specific networks. Real time is transformed, serving as merely one mode of experiencing time, which can be slowed or quickened according to the purposes of a network. The radical contemporary theorists Hardt and Negri conceptualise global society in novel terms, employing the category of empire to represent the decentred repressive controlling force of politics, allied to capital and the concept of the multitude to stand for all those resisting the power of empire. They imagine that the universal, ubiquitous power of empire is matched by the universal powers of construction exemplified by the multitude, whose identity is to be distinguished from previous candidates for revolt by its assumption of bio-political universal powers of creativity.26 Along with Giddens,




6/14/2011 12:12:11 PM


Castells, Beck and Albrow, Hardt and Negri share a perception of the current age as a transformative one, in which heightened and distinctive powers of reflective and reflexive human creativity and imaginative construction are in evidence. Giddens takes the reflective capacity of human beings to rework their relations to space and time to mark a radical shift in social relations. Castells sees the flows of information in the network society of a globalised world as transforming space and time, allowing for patterns and flows of time and space which are not limited by the borders which have defined lives in previous epochs. Beck takes preceding patterns of social organisation to have been fixed and limited, but now relishes the prospect of a new reflexive game that opens up novel global categories of connectedness. Albrow defines the global age as superseding a preceding modern world, due to heightened human powers of reflection and reflexivity extending beyond the confining borders of modernity. Hardt and Negri’s image of resistance to imperial global power puts a radical ideological gloss on the projected powers of rational construction in a global age, but in doing so they call attention to the general ideological inflection of global theory by highlighting and valuing reflection across borders and a reflexivity that removes selves from immersion in traditional communities. The great global transformation presumed to be ushered in by heightened powers of construction and reflexivity assumes a gap between contemporary global theory and the theories of its modern predecessors, such as Hegel, Marx and Kant. Admittedly, there are differences, and the latter adhere to contingent and in some cases superseded organisational forms, such as the hierarchical patriarchal family, corporations, the Party and the proletariat, but in differing idioms they also define human and global identity in terms of human reflexivity and constructionism. Humanity for Kant, Hegel and Marx is defined in terms of reason and reflexivity, and all three maintain a thoroughly constructivist account of human and indeed global identity. Hegel and Marx are reflexive over the meaning of global identities, for they insist upon the highly specific notions of the world that are maintained by particular cultural constructions. To imagine, with Giddens, that modern theorists ignored or underplayed the negative aspects of constructionism is to ignore or underplay the dialectical side of Hegel and Marx, and to do so is to patently absurd. For Hegel, the positive is inherently related to the negative,


92


6/14/2011 12:12:11 PM


and being without reference to nothing is exposed as being indeterminate.27 For Marx, human achievement and community only have meaning in overcoming alienation and exploitation.

In framing transformational conceptions of the nature and impact of globalisation, global theorists operate with theories of history. Their language of transformation highlights the dramatic nature of the historical change associated with globalisation. Global theorists, then, maintain conceptions of radical historical change that presume large-scale general change can be distinguished from and related to particular and piecemeal changes, but the actual character and status of their notions of historical change are ambiguous. Theories of history can be conducted in a variety of idioms; for instance, causal theories, which explain past events by invoking prior causal determinants of the events in question, teleological theories that explain events based on the final goals or ends that they are presumed to be achieving; summaries of general large-scale rather than small-scale, unimportant forms of historical change; periodisations of history that divide up periods of historical time according to specified criteria, and evaluative forms of historical analysis that review changes in terms of their progressive or regressive tendencies. Global theories are often assumed to be causal in character and are praised or blamed on that basis.28 However, it is at the least arguable that global theorists are not aiming primarily to provide causal explanations of historical change. Indeed, a more telling criticism of their work is that they tend neither to identify nor to clarify the form of historical analysis that they conduct. Giddens’s commentary on the historical development of globalisation is a case in point. He identifies his own position on history indirectly via a critique of preceding modern theorists such as Marx, and against what he takes to be their resort to overly general evolutionary historical explanations. Giddens observes, ‘The long-standing influence of social evolutionism is one of the reasons why the discontinuist character of modernity has often not been fully appreciated. Even those theories which stress the importance of discontinuist transitions like that of Marx, see human history as having an overall direction, governed by general dynamic principles. Displacing


History and historical change


6/14/2011 12:12:11 PM


the evolutionary narrative, or deconstructing its story line, not only helps to clarify the task of analyzing modernity, it also refocuses part of the debate about the so-called postmodern. History does not have the “totalized” form attributed to it by evolutionary conceptions.’29 Giddens’s critique of classical modern theory is shaped in part by an acceptance of a postmodern critique of grand historical claims on the part of modern theorists, but he deprecates postmodernism for overplaying its own hand in itself making grand theoretical claims and for failing to identify its critical spirit with Enlightenment reason and the rational temper of modernity.30 Giddens’s critique of evolutionary grand theory, however, does not clarify how he himself construes the historical emergence and development of globalisation. Rosenberg, for instance, imagines that Giddens operates with an unjustifiable causal theory of history. Rosenberg’s The Follies of Globalisation Theory criticises Giddens for affecting to supply a novel theory of social change, which purports to be predicated upon transformations in perceptions of time and space, while actually relying upon the very causal factors that modern theorists such as Marx had employed. Rosenberg takes Giddens’s global theory to be at odds with its ostensible critique of modern theory because, in explaining the development of globalisation, Giddens invokes the very causal factors that had been deployed by modern predecessors, such as the onset of industrialisation, capital and rational organisation, rather than deploying his notion of space-time distanciation as a supervening causal factor.31 Rosenberg criticises Giddens for purporting to provide a distinctive historical explanation of global transformation, while in fact relying on typically modern explanations, such as the impact of technological, economic and political forces to explain the change.32 Rosenberg has a point insofar as Giddens does invoke standard factors such as industrialisation and capital accumulation in explaining the development of globalisation. Giddens, however, is only to be condemned on this score if his actual intention was indeed to provide a distinctive causal explanation of historical development. Giddens is suspicious of grand historical explanations of the kind he castigates in classic modern theories, but he is willing to draw on aspects of their explanations of modernity. He is happy to do so because, pace Rosenberg, he himself is not offering a novel causal


94


6/14/2011 12:12:11 PM

explanation of historical change. Giddens’s understanding of modernity and its radicalisation via globalisation in terms of space-time distanciation represents, rather, a conceptual analysis of the factors involved in developing and accelerating globalisation. This analysis should be seen as conceptual rather than causal because it is primarily concerned with explaining what is involved in empirical processes rather than substituting for those activities an account of the essential factors promoting change. The capacity to abstract from specific and concrete locations in time and space is integral to human activities, in which reason is employed to achieve outcomes. It is involved, for instance, in industrialisation, political organisation and communications technology, so that it is a category mistake to envisage space-time distanciation as a causal factor in historical development operating additionally and externally to those processes. Beck, like Giddens, points to the reflexivity of the present as one of the defining conceptual aspects of globalisation, and again akin to Giddens, he does not divorce reflexivity from the activities that exhibit reflexive characteristics. However, Beck, like Giddens, muddies the waters by occasionally referring to globalisation as a factor promoting historical change, when generally he, like Giddens, conceives of it as a concept that is ascertainable within processes of change, like reflexivity or space-time distanciation, rather than operating as their cause.33 Albrow, in The Global Age is unusual amongst global theorists in delineating carefully the kind of historical enterprise on which he and global theorists generally should be engaged. He is suspicious of overly general historical surveys of global change, for the large-scale changes that are identified tend to be construed as following a teleological form of development. He observes, ‘The problem with sociological accounts of globalization is not their appeal to history but their historicism, history as “Grand Narrative”, globalization as the culmination of modernity.’34 Albrow is explicit in disavowing a deterministic, teleological view of globalisation, which he sees as following the pattern of explanation rehearsed by outmoded modern thinkers such as Hegel and Marx.35 He urges that the term globalisation should be reserved for a conceptual overview of the aggregate changes that constitute or are in the process of constituting a global world. He notes, ‘If we use “globalization” to refer to the aggregate of historical changes over a determinate period of history, this is quite different from referring to some determinate logic. In




6/14/2011 12:12:11 PM


this sense we address a phenomenon equivalent to the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment or the Age of Imperialism.’36 Castells’ identification of global society as primarily a network society, reworking concepts of time and place via a network of flows, appears to assume the aspect of a grand theory of global change, but it is a theory which eschews large-scale causal analysis of the emergence and operation of global society. In line with the flexibility and reflexivity he attributes to the transactions of networks, he neither perceives a foundational role for any particular form of network nor imagines that all networks are to be explained as conforming to an underlying causal model of explanation. Instead, he sees history and society as being shaped by the informal reflexive operations of a variety of networks, in which the technologies of communication and information play significant but not foundational roles. Networks precede and enable technology just as technology supports networks.37 Castells reviews recent large-scale historical social developments as establishing what he terms a network society, and he analyses conceptually what is involved in the operation of networks, but he does not offer a supervening causal explanation of the factors that constitute a network society. The interaction between technology and other forms of social intercourse poses questions that are not novel. They are at the heart of Marx’s theory of history, and just as technological determinism is suggested but not consistently assumed in Marx’s writing, so the impact of technology is recognised by Castells but social change is not reduced to it. Sassen, like Castells, undertakes a review of historical developments that are associated with globalisation, and in a series of studies highlights how the transformation wrought by globalisation shifts the focus of economic and social life away from the nation-state. She observes an increase in global connections but also identifies new and increasingly important roles for major cities. She perceives that these cities are assuming a greater strategic economic, social and political importance in the context of increasing supranational global transactions. In Globalization and Its Discontents she observes, ‘Introducing cities into an analysis of economic globalisation allows us to reconceptualize processes of economic globalisation as concrete economic complexes situated in specific places. A focus on cities decomposes the national economy into a variety of sub-national components, some profoundly articulated with the global economy


96


6/14/2011 12:12:11 PM

and others not.’38 Sassen, in interpreting global transactions in a variety of styles and sectors, including economics and finance, technology and immigration, identifies the potential for certain cities to operate as crucial junctions in the global economy, linking capital and labour in intensive ways. Sassen’s specific focus on particular cities as offering specific examples of intensive supranational transactions is an exercise in detailed reflection on historical change and is distinct from the general focus of global theory, which tends to review history in broad and generic terms. Global theorists’ interest in history is characteristically focused upon reviewing historical developments so as to highlight trends and to convey the meaning of events that they take to be of supervening historical importance, that is the onset of globalisation. Authors such as Giddens, Beck, Albrow and Castells identify a major shift in historical circumstances in observing what they take to be the development of global society, and they also undertake a conceptual analysis of its characteristic elements. Held and his collaborators for the most part concentrate on reviewing the empirical developments that they take to constitute global society, while offering general commentary upon its meaning. In Global Transformations, Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton highlight the impact of globalisation upon economics and finance, though they also recognise the global dimensions of political and cultural practices.39 In assessing the overall meaning of globalisation, Held generally points to the generic character of its impact, noting ‘the accumulation of links across the world’s major regions and across many domains of activity.’40 He takes care, though, to respond to criticisms of presentations of globalisation that overplay its impact. He is mindful of the force of the critique of globalisation theory maintained by Hirst and Thompson, who point to the prevalence of regional concentrations of trade rather than worldwide trading, the national affiliations of multi-national corporations and the continuing role of nation states.41 Held and McGrew in Globalization/ Anti-Globalization recognise that arguments in favour of globalisation may indeed be overblown and insufficiently nuanced.42 They observe that globalisation operates at differing tempos in differing sectors, and like other authors considered in this chapter, they are keen to disassociate their synoptic transformationalist account of globalisation from a deterministic teleological narrative of its emergence. Held and McGrew note, ‘Transformationalist accounts do not imbue




6/14/2011 12:12:11 PM

globalization with any particular telos, neither an inevitably more prosperous or peaceful world, nor an inevitable emergence of a singular world or a coming anarchy.’43 Notwithstanding Held’s care to distinguish his overview of the contingent development of globalisation from the deterministic and teleological readings of its historical inevitability, he tends to see globalisation, despite its complexities, as an overarching process, subsuming more limited historical developments in its course, and in doing so he uses language, which lends itself to its essentialisation. This essentialisation of the term is heightened by Held’s normative commitment to political intervention at the global level to restrain and qualify global market activity, for this commitment is presented in general terms that are of relevance to all inhabitants of the globe.44 Held and his various collaborators struggle to restrain their essentialisation of the notion of globalisation. Held and his co-authors in Global Transformations are keen to provide a nuanced, considered review of globalisation, which avoids the pitfalls of mono-causal analysis and teleological speculation. They emphasise a concern to avoid, ‘... both the simplicity of sceptical and hyperglobalist accounts and also the pitfalls of more speculative analysis about the direction of global trends.’45 On the other hand, their narrative of globalisation assumes it to be a single process of historical development, even if this development is divided into distinct epochs. They refer to, ‘four great epochs of globalization: the premodern period; the early modern period of western expansion; the modern industrial period and the contemporary period from 1945 to the present.’46 To imagine and frame a single conception of globalisation that spans several centuries is to downplay the distinctive forms of recognition of the world and its meaning that have been entertained by distinct historical actors and to obfuscate the differing ways in which the global may be explored historically. It lends itself to essentialise and to reify globalisation so that it is construed as exerting an impact upon historical actors rather than the reverse. Taylor in his perceptive study of the way rhetorical processes of essentialisation can obfuscate social developments, ‘Izations of the World’, points incisively to the dangers associated with nouns in English that are constructed out of verbs, due to the tendency of those nouns to combine processes of development and end-states, so the notion of globalisation, for instance, assimilates distinctive aspects of a putative process to a single notion.47




6/14/2011 12:12:11 PM

Held’s identification of globalisation as maintaining a continuity of meaning and transformative impact across centuries highlights its susceptibility to essentialisation and to assuming an inflated historical role that is at odds with the caution about historical determinism and teleology that is simultaneously proclaimed. If, like other global theorists, Held is ostensibly cautious of imputing expressly causal claims to the process of globalisation, then Scholte offers no apology for his causal claims. In Globalization: A Critical Introduction, Scholte makes a bold claim for the causal role of globalisation in the historical process and in so doing is vulnerable to Rosenberg’s critique. Rosenberg’s characteristic complaint against global theory is that it attempts to square the circle by maintaining that globalisation functions as both the explanans and the explanadum of historical and sociological explanation, whereby its purported explanations are revealed to be disguised forms of descriptive tautology rather than causal explanation.48 In the second edition of Globalization: A Critical Introduction Scholte rehearses, while qualifying, the claims of the first edition. He is careful to recognise the continuation of the nation state, the relevance of geographical situations and the maintenance of patterns of modernity. Scholte, however, sticks to his thesis that globalisation is exerting a decided causal impact upon events, observing, ‘Globalization is simultaneously an effect and a cause. It is both an explanadum (something to be explained) and an explanans (something that partly explains).49 The circular argument with which Scholte is happy to run consists in seeing a set of events and factors as bringing about globalisation; yet in turn, globalisation is seen to exert an impact upon those events and factors. This will only work, however, as Rosenberg notes, if globalisation can be separated conceptually from the forces which it is deemed to impact. Scholte accepts the challenge and opts for a definition of globalisation that is more than a rehearsal or re-description of the events to which it is related. His approach identifies, ‘globalization as the spread of transplanetary – and in recent times also more particularly supraterritorial – connections between people.’50 Scholte’s revised edition of Globalization: A Critical Introduction, however, remains problematic and susceptible to Rosenberg’s critique. Scholte at the outset declares the inadequacy of any definition of globalisation that is mired by association with institutions and practices that have long been operative, for example, the notion




6/14/2011 12:12:12 PM


of international society, which invokes relations between separately conceived nation-states and has been in operation throughout the modern period.51 Scholte defines globalisation in terms of emerging transplanetary phenomena and, in particular, in terms of what he takes to be the emergent notion of supraterritoriality. This definition is novel in taking its bearings from emerging rather than recessive phenomena and hence allows for a notion of globalisation, which represents a set of processes that are distinct from familiar ones and so might be supposed to explain causally the emergence of new phenomena. This notion of globalisation and its functionality as a causal concept, however, remain problematic. Supraterritoriality is a concept without a referent if it is taken as superseding the specificities of place. Supraterritoriality is presented as being synonymous with an instantaneity of communication that is intimated by the alacrity and ease of jet transport, which renders the meaning and impact of place redundant. Supraterritoriality, however, is a concept that requires discrimination, even if it aims to defy being pinned down. Even granted that communication can be instant across the globe and that transport between places can be rapid and untroubled (if not ecologically neutral), aspects and ambiences of particular spaces in which communication or transport take place will always matter. Imagine David Cameron on the one hand, receiving an email in the city of Westminster London, and on the other hand, perusing it in the serenity of his home in the Cotswolds. Supraterritoriality is not to be invoked to dismiss space or place but only, if at all, to qualify it. Hence superterritoriality is not to be conceived as being external to and causally operative on other concepts and occurrences upon which it is dependent. Scholte’s reading of globalisation as a causal factor in explaining contemporary society and future developments is undermined by its conceptual inadequacies; its defining concept cannot bear its assigned explanatory weight. Scholte is distinct from other global theorists who have been reviewed in this chapter, for they tend to forbear from imputing causal qualities to globalisation and to disavow unduly speculative and teleological readings of its emergence. They do not, however, clarify the status of their historical observations, often mixing normative comments and political injunctions with generalisations about the processes they are reviewing. The upshot is an indeterminacy and confusion over how global theory is


100


6/14/2011 12:12:12 PM

related to the study of history and the analysis of historical change. An index of the consequent confusion is provided by the work of Giddens. He does not make explicit the status and point of his review of the emergence of globalisation. Rosenberg, in The Follies of Globalisation Theory, takes global theory generally to ascribe causal power to globalisation, and he imagines Giddens’s The Consequences of Modernity purportedly and erroneously to endow globalisation with causal properties.52 He rehearses this reading of global theory and of his particular reading of Giddens in his subsequent, avowedly retrospective reading of global theory in ‘Globalization Theory: A Post Mortem’, where he identifies globalisation as operating as a causal theory, which ascribes causal power to its categories of time and space.53 Giddens in The Consequences of Modernity can best be interpreted as focusing upon a conceptual interpretation of what is involved in, rather than upon causing the large-scale transformation of social life that has been effected in the process of globalisation in late modernity. His analyses of space and time are meant to illuminate the character of global social practices rather than to explain them causally, and this procedure of conceptual clarification appears to be consistent with the practice of other global theorists. However, Giddens’s enterprise is not unambiguous. In his subsequent populist lectures, Runaway World, Giddens’s rhetoric attributes strong causal properties to globalisation. For instance, he observes, ‘Globalisation not only pulls upwards, but also pushes downwards, creating new pressures for local autonomy.’54 Giddens’s rhetorical attribution to globalisation of dynamic causal properties is doubtless a concomitant of his normative commitment to a cosmopolitan ethic that he perceives to harmonise with processes underlying globalisation, so that his endorsement of the processes is translated into a commitment to its causal efficacy. In his introduction to The Global Third Way Debate, he emphasises what he takes to be the political implications of globalisation by noting, ‘Third way politics must have a global reach.’55 A similar slippage between descriptive and evaluative registers informs the work of Held and Beck, who, in turn, reflect the practical normative worlds of business and politics. Ohmae’s ideological endorsement of a business perspective on globalisation represents a consummate example of this combination of ideologist and empirical analyst. Hardt




6/14/2011 12:12:12 PM


and Negri’s simultaneous support for radical resistance to empire and large-scale sociological theory shows a similar combination of registers. The ambiguity of contemporary global theory’s engagement with the historical emergence of globalisation is at odds with its decisive rejection of modern theoretical predecessors. Global theorists highlight the significance of the historical transformation that they impute to globalisation, and this notion of transformation is taken to mark a break with preceding modes of theory. This applies even to Giddens’s conceptualisation of globalisation as a late radicalisation of modernity, rather than as a completely new phenomenon, for this radicalisation is taken to entail a break with preceding theory. The identification of globalisation with a long-term process of historical generation still accommodates a perception of its acceleration in recent years, which distinguishes the contemporary era from preceding periods. This transformative aspect of globalisation is captured in its conventional categorisation as defining an historical epoch and is reinforced in the putative break between contemporary global theorists and preceding modern theory. Global theorists critique what they take to be the unwarranted teleology of their predecessors. Kant, Hegel and Marx are modern predecessors who self-consciously employ teleological notions of historical development in reflective theories of history. All three, however, exercise caution in adopting a teleological perspective, which refuses to see the end of history as pre-determined. All recognise that history provides the context for practical action and hence they engaged in reflection on largescale historical development, and they retrospectively construed this development in teleological terms. In doing so, they acknowledge debts to empirical forms of history and are reluctant to see their categories of ordering world history as trumping or replacing more specific explanations of historical change. The categories by which they conceive of the general development of history are for the most part highly general, and illuminate the conceptual character of human agency and social practices, rather than reduce events and practices to the requirements of a causal rubric. Kant and Hegel were clear that they were providing a summative conceptualisation of what is involved in historical development rather than a causal analysis of change. Marx, like some contemporary global theorists was ambiguous on the nature of his historical analysis, and on the possibility of


102


6/14/2011 12:12:12 PM


Conclusion: the dialectic of human development Global theorists are generally agreed that globalisation denotes a process or sets of processes that constitute a radical transformation in the social world. Its major theorists are characteristically concerned to capture what is involved in processes of globalisation. Giddens’s reading of late modernity and the development of globalisation conceptualises its character as involving the disassociation of space and time from the specifics of place. No longer are time and space, and the activities to be undertaken under their schema, dominated by specific locales as they were in traditional societies. This abstraction of time and space from the concrete is an idealised tendency that testifies to human powers of creativity and reflective construction. Social life is no longer to be seen as bowing under the weight of traditional and ritualised ways of acting. Human beings are rational and free, possessing the capacity to self-consciously direct their activities and to reflect upon their own capacities for construction. Reflecting on human reflectiveness constitutes reflexivity, and Giddens is not alone amongst global theorists in identifying reflexivity, along with the creative powers of universalising rational thought and action, as constitutive forces of globalisation in the contemporary world. His analysis of humanity’s freedom to detach itself from the concrete locations of space and time and to reflect upon the consequences of its own reflective action in the late modern world can be seen in the work of Beck, Held and in distinctive idioms by Castells and Hardt and Negri. These imputed powers of creativity, construction and reflexivity are also exemplified in the theories of Kant, Hegel and Marx. The centrality of these categories to the imaginative self-images of these theorists of modernity, though, casts doubt on the claims of originality and of radical transformation that are pressed in contemporary theories of global society. Kant is a critical theorist, whose very project of critiquing reason signals a commitment to reflexivity. His


identifying technology as a general causal determinant of historical development. Marx’s very ambiguity, though, is instructive for subsequent theory in anticipating the overlapping and ambiguous ways of understanding historical developments that are entertained by current global theorists.


6/14/2011 12:12:12 PM


Critique of Pure Reason registers the inescapability of human categories and of constructive reason in shaping experience, and hence imagines human construction to be at the very core of humanity’s sense of its situation. Hegel takes the world to be a constructed one, and the processes of construction are recognised in his philosophical phenomenological reconstruction of humanity’s experience of the world in its practical social relations and in its own inwardness. Humanity recognises its possibilities for construction to represent the creativity of Geist. In his Logic, Hegel maintains that the ego represents pure thinking, the capacity to abstract from all determinations and to determine itself absolutely.56 For Hegel, even the individual’s self-destructive capacity for suicide testifies, in distorted fashion, to powers of self-authentication, and this establishes his credentials as a radical constructivist theorist. Hegel’s standpoint on the freedom of the ego and a phenomenological appreciation of humanity’s constructive and recognitive powers, prefigures Giddens’s conceptualisation of late modernity as exemplifying freedom of thought from the hold of concrete locations in space and time. Global theorists’ standard perception of the permeability of all borders, given the capacities of humanity to think beyond the confines of particular places and times, is anticipated in modernity’s self-image of unlimited reflection. For Hegel, humanity’s powers of self-creation are reflected in the constructed character of the world, so that notions of world history register changing formulations of the world. This establishes a foundation for appreciating differing ways in which the world might be conceived in global theory. Global theory tends to employ rhetorical tropes which envisage globalisation as a process that affects the world in various ways, whereas the very processes of globalisation may best be seen as multiple, so that the world and relations with the world are in dialectical interaction. The ideological variety manifest in the differing ways in which globalisation is currently construed, and the variety of political routes mapped onto visions of the world, reflect this multiplicity. Hegel’s sense of the reciprocity between recognition and the world provides a conceptual basis for appreciating the multiplicity involved in contemporary conceptions of the world and global development. The dialectical relations between humanity and the world, and between construction and recognition, that are conceptualised by Hegel also inform Marx’s reading of the inter-relations between


104


6/14/2011 12:12:12 PM

humanity and nature, and capital and labour. This dialectical style of thinking tends to be frowned upon by express commentary of contemporary global theorists, but it might be said that the continuity between Kant, Hegel and Marx and their global successors is evidenced by the dialectical connections between activities in the world that is posited by the actual practice of global theorists.57 In Modernity and Self-Identity Giddens highlights how personal identity may be shaped by events and practices far removed in space and time from the individual, and how, at the same, time questions and issues of personal identity impact upon wider events.58 Hardt and Negri see empire as being enacted in events and in the policies undertaken by nation states or capitalist organisations, and they identify an overdetermination between the behaviour of particular organisations and nation states and wider matrices of power which may be construed as constituting dialectical relationships, even though the theorists themselves are at pains to deny their kinship with preceding modern theorists. The preoccupation with risk outlined by Beck and Giddens, amongst others, arises out of what they take to be an environment that is increasingly transformed by human constructive powers. The dangers in the world to which humanity is exposed are constituted by the very powers that are exerted to render the world manageable in ways that are reminiscent of Marx’s reading of nature and humanity as being in a co-constitutive dialectical relationship. Notwithstanding the affinities between contemporary global theorists and their modern predecessors, the global theorists’ critique of modern theory is not to be dismissed. It is motivated in part by a reaction against what is taken to be the unduly speculative and far-reaching teleological visions of historical development maintained by modern theorists such as Kant, Hegel and Marx. This critique is not fanciful in that any historical overview of the world and its development, such as those undertaken by Kant, Hegel and Marx, is liable to misconstrue or underplay particular aspects of its development. Kant’s commitment to rational progress, Hegel’s reading of the development of freedom and Marx’s identification of the sources of communism in the contradictions of capitalism overlook or undervalue the factors at work in the historical process. Nazism, Auschwitz, nationalism, feminism, identity politics, global warming and a recognition of cultural diversity, for instance, postdate their philosophies of history and exert powerful influences for good and




6/14/2011 12:12:12 PM


ill on the course of history. The difficulties of providing an overall, summative reading of history, however, affect global theorists as much as their modern predecessors. Sub-global factors such as nationalism, regionalism and the particularities of post-colonial situations tend to be underplayed in general readings of global transformation. Moreover, Kant, Hegel and Marx in their distinctive ways sound notes of caution in their approaches to the philosophy of history. Kant is clear that the status of his teleological theory of history can only be regulative, and Hegel sees his philosophical history as depending upon prior empirical studies and does not see it as capable of predicting future developments. Marx, too, is for the most part cautious over the reach of his historical analyses, allowing their dependence on prior empirical studies and exercising caution over formulating detailed predictions, even if at times he writes as if he has a supervening causal theory based on technological determination of events. The ambiguity of his theory of history is matched by the ambiguities of contemporary global studies, which also tend to use language that at times commits them to a causal reading of the transformation to global society. Although Kant, Hegel and Marx are careful to avoid the excesses of a teleological reading of history for which they are criticised by their global successors, they nonetheless intertwine their conceptual readings of history with evaluative language. Kant detects the progress of reason in history and sees a regulative and normative point in encouraging this tendency. Hegel perceives freedom to be central to the narrative of historical development and supports a developing rational political paradigm of freedom. Marx identifies the contradictions of capitalism and envisages communism as overcoming the exploitation and alienation of capital. Their evaluative reviews of world history are justified via their dialectical readings of the inter-relations between facts and values. They see the norms, which they support, as emerging from history, and they take the norms they advocate as bearing upon the outcome of historical events. Contemporary global theorists operate with a similar mix of descriptive and evaluative commentary, but tend to neglect its justification, so that it is part and parcel of a relatively unconsidered and generalised treatment of historical and contemporary events. The normative aspect of global theorists’ accounts of global transformation can be seen vividly in Ohmae’s neo-liberal version of global change and in


106


6/14/2011 12:12:12 PM



Hardt and Negri’s radical support for global resistance, but it informs Held’s support for global social democracy, Giddens’s adherence to non-traditionalist values and Beck’s denigration of the zombie values of the nation-state. This normative aspect of contemporary global theory is worth focusing upon, and the next chapter reviews the debate about global cosmopolitanism.


6/14/2011 12:12:12 PM

6

Introduction Cosmopolitanism predates globalisation and has no necessary connection with it, and yet the two concepts are currently mutually influential. In his influential and exoteric Runaway World: How Globalisation Is Reshaping Our Lives, Giddens, for instance, conveys a sense of their inter-connectedness and of how global change is delivering a novel type of cosmopolitan society, one that is in conflict with forces of reaction, such as traditionalism and fundamentalism. He remarks, ‘As the changes I have described in this chapter [on globalisation] gather weight, they are creating something that has never existed before, a global cosmopolitan society. We are the first generation to live in this society, whose contours we can as yet only dimly see. It is shaking up our existing ways of life, no matter where we happen to be.’1 Contemporary forms of cosmopolitanism tend to be driven by their perceived consonance with globalisation. Though they take their bearings from Kantian moral universalism, they advertise themselves as novel and post-Kantian due to how they connect with wider aspects of contemporary globalisation. Leading contemporary cosmopolitans such as Habermas, Benhabib and Held acknowledge the provenance of their ideas in Kant. Like Kant, they urge the universality of morality, the moral significance of an individual and the duties arising out of the moral claims of all individuals upon us that are neither to be mediated nor compromised by particular cultural and political affiliations. The universality of moral reasoning underlies the justification of and subscription to


Global Cosmopolitanism

108


6/14/2011 12:12:18 PM

109

moral rights and political obligations. Contemporary cosmopolitans, though, turn away from Kant in dumping what they take to be his metaphysical baggage, and in framing their versions of cosmopolitanism to respond to issues arising out of contemporary aspects of globalisation, and in so doing, they characteristically extend scope of the political institutionalisation of cosmopolitanism. The nationstate is seen to be receding in significance both in practice and in terms of moral legitimacy. Contemporary cosmopolitans standardly take the nation-state to be an embodiment of an outdated form of modernity and look to trans-national institutions to develop and embed a cosmopolitan perspective.2 In so doing, they rely on an historical and sociological reading of the present that highlights what they take to be a global transformation of social and political forms, whereby trans-national economic and social issues demand responses from trans-national political organisations. Notions of cosmopolitanism are multiple and ambiguous. They are neither without critics nor without challenges. A paradigmatic notion of cosmopolitanism is moral and universal in outlook and contains an express and underived commitment to treat all persons with moral respect and to acknowledge the universal moral obligations arising out of this respect. Cosmopolitanism, however, can be construed as deriving from economic or political ways of viewing events and processes. Ohmae’s neo-liberal and neo-classical way of perceiving the overall utility of a developing global market implies a cosmopolitan moral expectation that all inhabitants of the globe should receive equal consideration in welfare terms.3 Similarly, Hardt and Negri’s radical political reading of the global present makes resistance to empire a political priority, but they sometimes acknowledge an implied cosmopolitan sentiment.4 Standardly, however, contemporary global cosmopolitanism maintains an expressly moral and Kantian-inflected standpoint, taking political, economic and cultural affiliations of peoples to be secondary to the moral imperatives arising out of a cosmopolitan consideration of individuals’ rights and welfare. Cosmopolitanism, however, neither necessarily consigns nationstates to the dustbin of history nor deprives them of a role in assessing and delivering these obligations. A cosmopolitan orientation does not in itself rule out valuing particular sets of political institutions and cultural affiliations. Miller argues against radical cosmopolitans




6/14/2011 12:12:19 PM

that belonging to a specific political community, notably the nationstate, remains of importance in establishing and demanding particular obligations of its members The very prospect of individuals acting as members of specific communities is construed as representing a mild form of cosmopolitanism.5 Miller’s arguments complicate the picture of contemporary cosmopolitanism, and in evoking a Hegelian sense of the significance of the nation-state in the wider context of world history, point to a wider sense of cosmopolitanism, to which Hegel himself might be seen as subscribing. Miller’s scepticism over more radical notions of cosmopolitanism deflects from an undifferentiated universalism by acknowledging the role of nation-states in generating and delivering norms. Rawls, likewise, in The Law of Peoples, maintains that the principles of justice that he constructs in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism apply to particular political associations and cannot be seen as constituting supra-national forms of justice; for just conduct between peoples should allow for nonliberal states and practices.6 The universalism of cosmopolitanism can be questioned on grounds other than those relating to the continued relevance of nation-states. It can be questioned more squarely in terms of the inherent disputability of norms, and post-structural and agonistic moral and political standpoints press this critique of standard forms of cosmopolitanism.

The global politics of cosmopolitanism: Held, Habermas and Benhabib Held is a prolific author on globalisation, and along with associated authors such as McGrew, he is an influential advocate of a political form of cosmopolitanism that is framed so as to tackle issues arising out of processes of globalisation. His political cosmopolitanism is aligned to his reading of globalisation. He sees globalisation as effecting a profound transformation of the ways in which social life is organised and conducted. He is mindful that relentless economic and financial expansion has taken place and that the political and cultural landscapes of the world are in the process of undergoing radical change. He diagnoses these changes as posing problems insofar as the pace and scope of economic and financial expansion threatens to overpower political control and to prevent the observation of moral limits that might qualify economic interests. At the same




6/14/2011 12:12:19 PM

111

time, he is clear that the historical developments that are in train are neither determined by an external goal or telos, nor constrained to follow an inevitable course. The upshot is that Held’s understanding of globalisation sets out a context of global transformation which poses problems and possibilities and thereby establishes an agenda for political action on a world scale. At the same time, his sense of the scope of human agency and the openness of history allows for his optimistic invocation of a new form of politics, namely one of cosmopolitan governance via a deepening of democracy at all levels, including within trans-national political frameworks. In Globalization/Anti-Globalization, co-written by Held and McGrew, a transformationalist conception of globalisation is set out, which highlights the imperative need to establish a global political response to contingent but pressing developments so as to align global conditions to cosmopolitan moral standards. Held and McGrew, in developing their argument in favour of an interventionist transformationalist political cosmopolitanism, advertise their perception of the indeterminacy of future developments. They remark, ‘... the transformationalist position makes no claims about the future trajectory of globalization; nor does it evaluate the present in relation to some single, fixed ideal-type “globalized world”, whether a global market or a global civilization.’7 While Held and McGrew steer clear of a deterministic or an overtly essentialised reading of globalisation, they nonetheless provide a strong reading of the dominant trends in contemporary historical development. They interpret history as departing from trademark norms of an earlier modernity and as heading towards an economic and cultural future in which rigid boundaries recede before technologies and organisations that operate beyond the traditional borders of the nation-state. This interpretation of the directionality of historical development is held to necessitate the construction of an ethical and political global framework to review and control its consequences. Held and McGrew focus upon the need to develop political institutions and procedures to deal with current and prospective situations. They are clear that the nation-state can neither supply the requisite global perspective nor furnish the capacity of effective executive action to deal with global problems. They adhere to a purposeful vision of democracy in which the people can exert control over events, and they argue that this vision can only be realised




6/14/2011 12:12:19 PM

in forms of democracy that augment local and national forms of democracy with trans-national frameworks. For Held and McGrew, cosmopolitanism demands a new formula for politics so that it is capable of dealing with novel trans-national forces of globalisation. They urge, ‘The contemporary phase of global change is transforming the very foundations of world order by reconstituting traditional forms of sovereign statehood, political community and international governance.’8 They offer an inter-related reading of global development and cosmopolitan politics that emphasises what they take to be their multi-layered and correlated characters. They observe, ‘As a result the contemporary world order is best understood as a highly complex interconnected and contested order in which the interstate system is increasingly embedded within an evolving system of multi-layered regional and global governance.’9 Notwithstanding Held’s criticisms of Kant’s teleological view of history and his dismissal of the contemporary relevance of Kant’s schemes for practice action, Held and McGrew present their views of cosmopolitan democracy as harmonising with developing historical trends and envisage their practical proposals as fitting with a general directionality of history. Their standpoint follows Kant in aligning cosmopolitan practice with a general reading of history, whereby an on-going process of burgeoning trans-national connections between individuals and groups demands political intervention at a variety of levels. Like Kant, they frame their concrete proposals as practical steps that are consonant with pragmatic and ideal considerations, in that they derive from a cosmopolitan moral vision, and at the same time fit with the practical circumstances. Relating political proposals to contingent circumstances, though, is an art, which is a highly demanding political art. Contingencies have to be recognised and respected, while objectives and affiliated practical measures must be credible and realisable. Held and McGrew highlight the problems that global developments pose, notably the unaccountability of trans-national actors, who can create disorder and act unjustly without being susceptible to a countervailing global political authority. Held, in Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus depicts his conception of a global cosmopolitanism as a social democratic vision. He observes, ‘This book ... seeks to unfold a programme – a programme I call global social democracy – which might help weave together the processes of globalization,




6/14/2011 12:12:20 PM

113

the bonds of social integration, and the priorities of social solidarity and justice. Only a new global covenant, I argue, based on global social democracy, can succeed in developing these links.’10 Held in his writings on political cosmopolitanism sees global cosmopolitanism as succeeding national social democracy. Just as social democracy in Western countries during the twentieth century succeeded in responding to the injustices, inequalities and malfunctioning of capitalism by organising a series of interventions into the market, so social democracy today should be organised on a global footing to deal adequately with the trans-national operations of contemporary global capital. Multi-national corporations, so the argument goes, resist the efforts of national governments to trammel their operations so as to accord with ideals of social justice and to pay the taxation necessary to finance transfers of money to the needy and indigent across continents but would be unable to deny the social and democratic agenda of supra-national forms of governance. If Held paints a picture of contemporary capitalism as being in urgent need of supervisory governance, which is inadequate at national level, he is at pains to show that the reformatory schemes of global governance that he advocates are feasible and consonant with historical developments. Hence, the directionality of history is assumed to be at once dangerous and in need of significant global regulation, and at the same time to be incubating regulatory practices that can be enhanced so as to achieve a feasible and benign form of global cosmopolitanism. Held sees a range of democratic developments as prefiguring a global cosmopolitan solution to the travails of global capitalism. He takes note of the sources in international civil society, evidenced by the activities of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international non-government organisations (INGOs), which agitate for more democracy and more recognition of political actors, who are not traditional institutional political actors. The demands for and stirrings of a deeper democracy provide a discernible source for an enlargement of democracy at a number of levels; local, regional, nation-state and trans-national. Likewise, a commitment to global cosmopolitanism can be identified in the attitudes of individuals affected by the burgeoning of international civil society and the deepening of trans-national ties at a variety of social and cultural levels.11 Trans-national institutions of governance are also observed to be in operation, for example the United Nations and




6/14/2011 12:12:20 PM

the World Bank, even if they have hitherto been organised on lines that are not democratic. Their presence, however, is seen as testimony to the possibilities of global institutions, and the process of democratisation is considered to be a feasible one. In Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities, Held observes, ‘Cosmpolitan principles are not principles for some remote utopia, for they are at the centre of significant post–Second World War legal and political developments ...’12 Held and affiliated authors are keen to retain but transpose contemporary institutions so as to establish a cosmopolitan scheme of multi-layered governance that achieves a deepening of democracy, an impartial administration of global law, universal human rights, global social justice, and the public management of global economic and financial flows to secure the provision of public goods such as environmental security and amelioration. They envisage the progressive development of global institutions, supervening upon but not replacing national governments, whereby democratic forms of global governance are established. The UN is envisaged as being democratised in its modes of operation, and global institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, suitably democratised, are projected as overseeing the regulation of the world economy to secure global economic justice. Global institutions are imagined as developing in tandem with the flourishing of regional trans-national organisations, such as a democratically reconstructed EU. Specific steps along the way would include the establishment of minimum conditions of human security and rights in international law; a reform of the UN Security Council procedures to allow for a globally acceptable handling of armed interventions, which in turn, presupposes wider representation in the UN Security Council and an extension of its remit; as well as the establishment of a World Environmental Organisation. Held and associated authors project a future consisting of overlapping forms of governance aimed at securing a global social democratic covenant whereby a universal and intensive scheme of democracy is developed and world economic and social flows are regulated so as to ensure the security and well-being of all agents. This project is recognised as demanding global regulation and intervention while allowing forms of local autonomy and so avoiding the pitfalls of excessive particularism, overweaning universalism and unbridled assertiveness on the part of individuals, nation-states and global institutions. In




6/14/2011 12:12:20 PM

115

Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities, Held highlights how the recent global financial crisis points to the failure of Anglo–American light regulatory regime of capitalism. Greater regulation at the global level, however, is working alongside and not overriding local forms of autonomy and democracy.13 In Globalization/Anti-Globalization, Held and McGrew stigmatise communitarianism for valuing thick, particular commitments amongst nations and groups, whereas global cosmopolitanism is presented as non-exclusionary in seeking to connect individuals, groups and nations.14 In Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities, Held urges that his commitment to cosmopolitanism steers a course between thick and thin forms of cosmopolitanism by arguing, on the one hand, for the significance of general moral principles to which all peoples should adhere, but on the other hand, allowing local forms of political association the scope to interpret and develop these principles.15 Held presents his cosmopolitanism, as a layered cosmopolitanism that mediates between global and sub-global institutions. Held, however, insists upon the determining role of supervening principles and global political institutions, and in so doing he underplays the practical difficulties and contestability of implementing cosmopolitanism.16 Overlapping frames of democratic authority are seen to fit neatly into an overall frame, but the nature of the frame and the authoritativeness of any proposed distribution of roles are under-examined. Practical questions also loom. It is one thing to anticipate a world in which powerful nations and corporations cede power to the powerless, but it is another thing to achieve this goal, and the steps along the way might lead to chaos or resistance. The ideal of cosmopolitanism may appear a less realistic prospect than Held assumes, but its desirability is also questionable. A thorough-going commitment to democracy is projected and highlighted, but democratic deliberations can encompass self-interested and narrow perspectives as well as a disinterested global standpoint. The ways in which issues are interpreted by particular people in particular fora and in specific contexts are contingent and turn upon forms of judgement that resist the requirements of a neat schematic model. To reduce questions of global politics and its component parts to the question of morality and its demands of universal respect for reason and persons is to rehearse a Kantianism that abstracts form the contingent aspects of political organisation and the circumstances in which political reasoning takes place. Kant’s hopes for the overall




6/14/2011 12:12:20 PM

historical deliverance of emancipation and reason are questioned by his global successors, and yet the political theory of Held and associated theorists relies on a sense of the directionality of history. Miller points to the practical problems obstructing the achievement of political cosmopolitanism and to its misrecognition of the motivating force of the nation-state in a moral cosmopolitanism that reduces the political to the moral.17 Held’s project of revising Kant to establish a reasonable and practical critical standpoint which allows for ways in which to enact and deliberate the universal moral standpoint of cosmopolitanism in multi-layered associations and frameworks, is matched by Habermas in a series of works on constitutional patriotism, Europe and global politics. Habermas has made clear the Kantian inspiration for his cosmopolitanism and his revisionary relationship to Kant’s cosmopolitanism. He remarks, ‘Kant’s idea of a cosmopolitan order must be reformulated if it is not to lose touch with a world situation that has changed fundamentally.’18 He is critical of what he takes to be Kant’s monological moral standpoint, whereby universal duties may be ascertained by the dictates of reason, available to the free, unconstrained reasoning of an individual. Habermas imagines that rational procedures and frameworks of law depend upon dialogical deliberative engagement. He is also critical of Kant’s reliance on a supervening theory of history, guaranteeing universal peace. Habermas eschews an extra-deliberative conception of historical development and an extra-discursive exercise of moral reason. As Habermas declares unequivocally in his laborious analysis of law and democracy, Between Facts and Norms, consideration of issues in political theory must be conducted under ‘the conditions of postmetaphysical thinking – for which no plausible alternatives exist.’19 Habermas highlights what he takes to be the development of global inter-dependence between states and peoples over the last century, and he takes the rise of interstate institutions such as the United Nations to signal that a cosmopolitan politics can and should be entertained, which moves beyond the restrictive confines of the narrow nationalism traditionally maintained by nation-states. He envisages cosmopolitanism to be underpinned by a trans-national legal framework on which all peoples can agree, providing worldwide basic rights and a greater role for regional groupings of states. In developing his conception of a cosmopolitan politics, Habermas




6/14/2011 12:12:21 PM

117

lays emphasis on refashioning the order of solidarity that is exemplified in states. He aims to replace a restrictive and antagonistic nationalism with a constitutional patriotism by which members of states recognise their identity with non-state members by adhering to the principles of rights and popular sovereignty that will be held by other states, but construct their solidifying and affective forms of patriotism around distinctive interpretations of those principles. He notes, ‘A “constitutional patriotism” based on these interpretations can take the place originally occupied by nationalism.’20 Habermas recognises the possibilities involved in regional associations of nation-states operating as vehicles for realising generic principles while avoiding particularistic nationalist sentiments. In particular, Habermas identifies the European Union as a regional political association possessing the potential to achieve a solidaristic commitment amongst EU citizens to its constitutional realisation of general principles, perceiving the development of Europe-wide associational groups as supplying the democratic framework for deliberating constitutional principles. Habermas’s cosmopolitanism is motivated by his continued commitment to the Enlightenment project of modernity, his reaction against a postmodern critique of reason and his revulsion against nationalist sentiments that contributed to the catastrophic rise to power of the Nazis in Germany.21 While inspired by a commitment to reason and a responsible suspicion of nationalism, Habermas’s standpoint is by no means uncontroversial. His cosmopolitanism is as problematic as Held’s in that he imagines unity between states, regions and trans-national legal orders, and harmony between legal and political principles, where possibilities of disunity and conflict may be expected. He tends to presume rather than justify the ends to which he is committed. Fine, in Cosmopolitanism, points to the lack of convincing argumentation in Habermas’s cosmopolitanism, and notwithstanding Habermas’s express commitment to a post-metaphysical discursive establishment of principles, urges that Habermas’s assumption of an underlying harmony between divergent constitutional settlements resembles a natural law position. He observes, ‘To my mind, this form of reasoning (Habermas’s) not only irons over the creases of the modern state: it also plays down the difficulties of cosmopolitan judgment in a world which, to say the least, is only partially cosmopolitan.’22




6/14/2011 12:12:21 PM

Habermas and Held are exponents of a tradition of critical theory who depart from Hegelian and Marxist paradigms in a context of a revived liberalism, a defeated communism and a repudiation of dialectical thinking. They return to Kant, even if their Kantianism is a critical Kantianism. The critical aspect of their Kantianism is evident in their re-reading of historical events in the light of post-Kantian developments. They critique Kant’s historical teleology and his reflection of an early modern sensibility, but they remain Kantian in their commitment to reason and universality, and in their faith that circumstances and history are moving in the direction of an enlightened cosmopolitanism. Their post-Kantian standpoint is shared by Beck, who like Habermas and Held, aims to update Kant by basing his cosmopolitanism squarely on what he takes to be distinctive features of a post-Kantian late modernity. In his seminal The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Beck argues that modernity itself represents a series of transformational processes, incubating new social forms. Beck’s takes humanity’s rationality to be saturating the world in the present age, so that everywhere humanity confronts a new reality, which represents the reflexive realisation that its own creativity marks everything. The upshot, for Beck, is that morality is not to be restricted to the mere maintenance of traditional norms and forms. There has to be a switch to accommodate the realisation of mankind’s transformational and reflexive identity. For Beck, cosmopolitanism is the rational formula for a new age, one that accepts reflexivity as dissolving traditional elements of the game; the game representing the conceptual horizon of the world, encompassing but limiting life and its politics and morality, encompassing nation-states and the family. Cosmopolitanism is the aspiration and outcome of engaging in a reflexive meta-game that realises how humanity itself makes and is able to remake the rules of the game. As the game encompasses and constitutes the world, cosmopolitanism is the appropriate moral perspective to address the problems and risks associated with life and death issues that are constituted by human reflexivity. Cosmopolitanism is the moral and political shift occasioned by mankind looking in the mirror and reflecting upon its own identity and world, and its attendant risks. He observes, ‘Along with the growing capacity of technical options grows the incalculability of their consequences.’23 In Power in the Global Age Beck contrasts preceding logical and normative processes in modernity with




6/14/2011 12:12:21 PM

119

that of the meta-game of late modernity, whereby all unexplained givens of behaviour and identity are subject to reflexive challenge. He imagines that there is a movement towards a new global form of identity and an affiliated cosmopolitanism arising out of a profound reflexivity that supersedes such preceding attitudes and practices as nationalism. He maintains, ‘The reflexive meta-game raises in reality, the question of the extent to which the very foundations of state power themselves become the object of global political and economic strategies of power. Yet this means that it is globalisation and not ‘the state’ that defines and changes the arenas of collective action. A second-order transformation becomes the key issue: the Great Transformation of the state-centre order per se!24 For Beck cosmopolitanism is a lesson that must be learnt if humanity is to adapt to the transformative processes unfurling in late modernity. The relatively stable forms of ethics that were practiced in the previously stable domains of family, class and nation-state have given way to the realisation that we all live in a world of our own making and that we are constantly remaking it so as remove the illusion of givenness and to undercut the familiarity of structures such as class and state. Flexibility becomes desirable but also necessary and a reflexive monitoring of human capacities and transformations of the environment is required to enable an effective reflexive control over human practices and hence the world. Beck urges that a reflexive and global critique of the practices of science and technology in international civil society should be encouraged, so as to counter the unregulated development of a rational society harbouring unwanted and unintended risks that threaten the entire globe. He pleads the necessity of global mechanisms of governance to counteract the global consequences of a risk society and contrasts the projected and appropriate cosmopolitan forms of governance with what he stigmatises as the zombie categories of nationalism, which he sees as hopelessly outdated.25 Beck’s apocalyptic sociological analysis is arresting and captures the fast-moving character of modern society, but its rhetoric is inflated and its tone is admonitory and emotional, and it offers warnings and aspirations rather than justificatory argument. Power in the Global Age proclaims, ‘... there is no longer any such thing as Germany, or France, or Italy, or Britain, and so on, as these exist in people’s heads and in the picture book accounts of the historians. This is because the borders, responsibilities and exclusive




6/14/2011 12:12:21 PM

experiential spaces on which this nation-state world was based no longer exists.’26 If this reading of the present is skewed by a faith in global political initiatives, then Beck’s assessment of the nature of and prospects for cosmopolitanism are equally speculative and unrealistic. Beck, Held and Habermas share a critical standpoint on Kant’s reading of history, while offering an alternative blend of large-scale historical analysis and normative endorsement of a cosmopolitan project. Contemporary theorists, such as Pogge and Caney, who are aligned with an analytical tradition that sticks rigidly to abstracted forms of analysis, frame cosmopolitan conceptions of justice and equality which do not allow for specific political arrangements and exigencies to alter or compromise the moral principles underlying cosmopolitanism. Caney, for instance, reasons from egalitarian premises about individuals and arrives at conclusions that demand an equalising of opportunities across the world. In so doing, he criticises Rawls for muting his commitment to principles of liberal justice in an international context. For Caney, the politics of implementation must be subordinated to the moral principles of justice.27 The moral and universalist standpoint of these theorists, though, is problematic for their Enlightenment assumptions are questionable. Even Nussbaum, who draws upon an Aristotelian form of virtue ethics to justify a cosmopolitan commitment to the global fulfillment of human needs and capacities, frames a very thin notion of the virtues and their correlative human needs. The abstract character of her formulation of human capacities and needs informs her endorsement of Kantian formal scheme of cosmopolitanism.28 The Enlightenment assumptions of standard theories of cosmopolitanism are questionable. The historical and sociological side of Kant’s cosmopolitanism tends to be undervalued, and the emphatic historical perspectives of Hegel and Marx are worth pursuing in relation to contemporary debates on cosmopolitanism on two counts. For one thing, the politics of cosmopolitanism has to engage with concrete questions and issues, and these questions and issues are historical in character. Second, the reducibility of politics and culture to a morality that informs contemporary versions of cosmopolitanism is itself questionable. Like Habermas and Held, Benhabib is a contemporary cosmopolitan who has a background in critical theory and develops her




6/14/2011 12:12:21 PM

121

standpoint via critical reflection upon Kant. She is alert to issues and questions arising out of the cosmopolitan project. She focuses upon a major problem for contemporary global forms of cosmopolitanism, which she identifies as the paradox of bounded communities. She expresses the problem in the following way, ‘A shared feature of all norms of membership including, but not only, norms of citizenship is that those who are affected by the consequences of these norms and, in the first place, by criteria of exclusion, per defintionem cannot be a party to their articulation.’29 The crux of the paradox is one of mediating political norms with moral ones, where the moral norms are decided by political procedures; but those procedures, in turn, depend upon moral norms. In exploring the mediation between moral and political cosmopolitanism, Benhabib looks to Kant. Kant is held to invoke a triple designation of right: political right, international right and the right of hospitality.30 Benhabib recognises the way Kant conceptualises cosmopolitan right, a right which supersedes merely specific entailments of civil republican law and the rights attributed to states via a process of mutual recognition. But she also recognises the uncertain status of this right in Kant, its practical vulnerability, given the prevalence of a state-centric order, to which Kant himself bowed in his prescription of an international federation rather than a global state. A right superseding the state must, somehow, operate without restrictions pertaining to the statehood of states. Benhabib responds to Kant’s uncertain but morally enriching legacy.. In conceptualising the dilemmas and possibilities of cosmopolitanism in a global age, Benhabib points to the emergence of an international human rights regime, developed since the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. She describes this regime as, ‘one of the most promising aspects of contemporary globalization processes.’31 She highlights the impact of this regime on significant aspects of contemporary international politics: crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes, humanitarian interventions and the trans-national migrant. The life and death issues of international politics are seen as susceptible to international action; world problems invoke a global responsibility. She notes, however, that these cosmopolitan norms, superseding the scope of nation-states, depend in fact on nation-states to incorporate them in various conventions. The dependence of supra-national norms on the norms




6/14/2011 12:12:22 PM

of nation-states identifies the tension in contemporary cosmopolitanism. It recalls the uneasy Kantian reliance upon nation-states to achieve trans-national justice. Nation states remain the bounded associations through which the representation of peoples and the negotiation of trans-national rights conventions of are conducted. Benhabib identifies and links two paradoxes relating to democracy and rights with which contemporary cosmopolitanism has to contend. The first is the paradox of the bounded community in that the bounds of the community cannot be specified by moral reasoning; the second is the paradox between liberalism and democracy, aired in the myths of an original contract entertained by Rousseau and Locke, whereby the terms of democracy, the legitimating procedure of modern states, are limited by a supposed original contract. Benhabib sees the contemporary human rights regime as solving these paradoxes. She proposes a solution by way of iterations, taking the concept of iteration from Derrida, with a nod to Butler and Honig.32 She accepts how repetitions maintain differences from an original performance, so that the originary is ever mythic and unattainable. Hence, she identifies the procedures of a human rights regime and its development in a variety of fora as constituting an iterative engagement in which moral principles and political deliberation inspire an on-going process, without end or beginning, of maintaining and defining rights. The contemporary world, for Benhabib, is one in which there is a disaggregation of citizenship, whereby collective identity, the privileges of political membership and entitlements of social rights and benefits have become unbundled. The upshot is a fluidity which marks the process of realising rights; for nation-states, through various reiterations of their schedule of rights, may grant rights to outsiders, and even enable them to be represented in the processes of generating rights. She observes how processes complicating the issue of rights and the holding of rights emerge. She observes that in the European Union privileges of political membership are accorded to residents who are members of the European Union, rather than being restricted to those of a requisite nationality. Again, she notes how resident aliens are acquiring rights, which, in some cases, extend to participative rights. Benhabib posits neither a fixed procedure nor an endpoint whereby human rights will be rolled up in a coherent schedule; the provision of rights will depend on the processes of




6/14/2011 12:12:22 PM

123

iteration, which happen continuously and cannot be abridged. She concludes by observing that the authority of cosmopolitan norms lies in this process of iteration within global polities. She urges, ‘... as to the authority of cosmopolitan norms, my answer is the power of democratic forces within global civil society.’ 33 Benhabib’s reading and justification of contemporary global cosmopolitanism is acute and is alert to contemporary empirical developments. She avoids the crassness of assuming an easy fit between universal rights and their enactment in particular bounded communities. She offers a more subtle reading of the relationship between general principles and particular expressions of those principles than is offered in Held’s notion of the layering of principles in a variety of institutions. She recognises the genuine problems in designating and justifying the terms under which bounded communities operate. But she should not be read as retreating from a cosmopolitanism which is predicated upon the objectivity of a universal scheme. She sets cosmopolitan norms apart from the processes by which they are judged and enacted, observing, ‘In contrast to enacted legislation, the validity of cosmopolitan norms is not dependent on jurisgenerative and democratic iterations. This validity is based on independent normative grounds.’34 Benhabib may be said to be a strong cosmopolitan insofar as she is committed to a moral framework of general universal rights that constitute a cosmopolitan commitment to human beings in all parts of the globe. This Kantian formula of cosmopolitanism is maintained by Habermas, Benhabib, Beck and Held notwithstanding the latter’s self-image as an advocate of a more moderate cosmopolitanism. It derives support from empirical developments that are promoting supra-national perspectives, but it has been challenged on at least two counts. On the one hand, positive and special commitments attaching to belonging to and participating in a particular nation-state have been advanced. On the other hand, the particularities of judgement in establishing and developing normative commitments have been seen to problematise a privileging of general schemes of rights.



Cosmopolitanism: from Hegel to agonism Global cosmopolitanism is one expression of contemporary global theory. Cosmopolitanism predates globalisation theories, and yet its


6/14/2011 12:12:22 PM

universalism is of a piece with the purported explanatory reach of globalisation. Both reflect recent real-world developments and the rhetoric of official and unofficial theorists and protagonists caught up in world events. A cosmopolitan perspective, however, generates critics as well as supporters and controversies over cosmopolitanism highlight the disputable character of global theory as well as its links with preceding theories. Cosmopolitans standardly tend to develop their theories as moral guides to a global world, prescribing basic rights and procedures on a universal basis via a critical reading of Kant, aiming to incorporate post-Kantian developments in the guise of trans-national institutions and revisions to Kantian notions of republicanism and personhood. They also subscribe to a non-deterministic and non-teleological view of history, even if their theories assume a directionality to the historical process that is evocative of the general theories of history framed by Kant, Hegel and Marx. In post-dating Kant, cosmopolitans tend to pass over Hegel and Marx, who maintain distinct views on how nation-states and economic actors contribute to a sense of the development of a world history, while also imparting a complex and conflictual character to the notion of the world and its development. Hegel’s reading of the role of the state in fostering an ethical perspective amongst its citizens, and in providing the inter-subjective conditions that allow individuals to develop their capacities within an accommodating set of ethical practices, remains of relevance to contemporary discussions of cosmopolitanism. A strong form of cosmopolitanism privileges the abstract universal over the concrete particular insofar as it urges a global range for a scheme of rights. Benhabib is a sophisticated theorist who recognises the problems besetting the universalism presumed in a cosmopolitan perspective. While she points to the significance of a continual iterative examination of principles, she endorses the notion of the objective justifiability of a universal regime of rights and tends to underplay the attenuation of its demonstrable objectivity due its dependence upon an on-going process of interpretation and specification in diverse and particular fora, such as states’ legislatures and regional assemblies. There are critics of cosmopolitanism and milder cosmopolitans who dispute Benhabib’s privileging of universality over particularity. These criticisms can be discussed under three heads: some theorists of global culture point to the singularities of the ways in which global culture is interpreted




6/14/2011 12:12:22 PM

125

locally; some political theorists, such as Miller and Rawls, point to the enduring role of nation-states in fostering social co-operation; and some theorists, who are influenced by post-structural currents of thought, point to the intractability and particularity of interpretation as militating against the forms of universalism espoused by advocates of global cosmopolitanism. The relativity of the interpretation and reception of cultural goods and identities is evident in a number of particular studies of the negotiation of global cultural products by small-scale communities and cultures, who resist the dominance of imposed universals and allow for differentiated ways of receiving and interpreting cultural forms. products.35 In suggesting how cultural differences inform some studies of the globalisation of culture, Dirlik remarks, ‘The effort to overcome Eurocentrism and to bring into modernity the voices, experiences and cultural legacies of others have driven discussions of modernity in fields that range from postcolonial studies to more conventional studies of modernization in sociology and political science.’ 36 Post-colonialists dispute the supposed even terrain of the globe, which obfuscates the historical legacies of colonialism and misrecognises subordinate cultures. Young remarks, ‘It (postcolonialism) asserts not just the right of African, Asian and Latin American peoples to access resources and material well-being, but also the dynamic power of their cultures, cultures that are now intervening in and transforming the societies of the west.’37 The problems cultural disparities and a recognition of post-colonialism pose to a universalist cosmopolitanism question the unity of form assumed in cosmopolitan theory and in affiliated global theory. It links with criticisms of the abstractness of cosmopolitanism raised by political theorists, who point to the positive value of particular states in providing distinctive frameworks for motivating, nurturing and debating legal, ethical and ideological commitments. While recognising the impact of new technologies in connecting states and peoples across the globe, Gray is sceptical of the possibility of a universal regime of liberalism presiding over all communities in the world. He appreciates how differing forms of political and economic articulation are viable in the contemporary world and opposes the universalist liberalism of Rawls and the general presumptions of Anglo–American liberal analytic theory.38 Rawls, himself a target of Gray’s critique of liberal rationalism, turns against




6/14/2011 12:12:22 PM

abstract universalism in The Law of Peoples. He maintains that comprehensive liberal principles of justice should not be insisted upon in dealing with other societies, for realism demands a recognition of how decent, reasonably well-ordered societies might not sign on to all the details of liberal democracy. Well-ordered societies with basic rights can be accepted as overlapping with liberal democratic societies, which embrace schemes of social co-operation that are fostered by the form of public reason that is developed in a liberal democracy.39 For Rawls, nation-states are the mechanisms by which societies are organised, and moral principles cannot dictate forms of state organisation and the allegiances of distinctive sets of citizens. He admits the possibility that a reasonably well-ordered but hierarchical society should be respected by the international community of like-minded liberal states, even if full democracy is not realised within it or if social and economic arrangements do not allow for its provision of a comprehensive range of equal opportunities.40 Miller, in National Responsibility and Global Justice, argues that belonging to and participating in nation-states are positive experiences for individuals, constituting a significant dimension of their sense of identity and promoting their acceptance of moral responsibilities and obligations. Miller observes, ‘There exist national communities made up of people whose understanding of their place in the world is conditioned by the particular national identities they have.’41 Miller urges that peoples who form national communities owe special obligations to those who co-operate with them in framing the democratic principles and mutual obligations by which they live. Individuals, according to Miller, cannot be held so accountable to those whose fate is not so intricately entwined with their own. He distinguishes between a ‘cosmopolitan minimum’, a set of basic human rights establishing a decent human life, which should be recognised as a goal to be achieved across all global societies and a more extensive set of rights and principles that individuals should work for in their own political communities.42 Miller sees a positive value in the solidarity engendered in particular national communities that are intent upon securing particular sets of principles, a solidarity that is unlikely to be achieved by attempting to collaborate with those from radically different cultures and traditions across the globe.43 Miller’s endorsement of the continuing role of nation-states rehearses aspects of Hegel’s critique of Kant, and revisits Hegel’s




6/14/2011 12:12:22 PM

127

positive articulation of the value of nation-states in developing ethical communities, by situating, ordering and motivating the morality of citizens. Likewise, Hegel can be seen to be relevant to the taxing questions that are posed for contemporary cosmopolitan universalists due to the paradoxes identified by Benhabib. The paradoxes, which Benhabib skilfully articulates, turn upon the need for nation-states to be ordered morally for citizenship to be effective; yet their moral ordering in turn depends upon the citizens of states committing themselves to principles of moral order. Hegel’s analysis of the modern state highlights that abstract right and moral principles alone cannot effect a positive and viable moral universe. What is required in reality are concrete practices within bounded states which are recognised reciprocally in international diplomacy. These concrete patterns of well-ordered citizenship allow for their condensation into a rational paradigm, which can be articulated in philosophical world history. Hegel’s dialectical exhibition of the reciprocal dependence of a rights regime on a bounded but representative community can be said to anticipate Benhabib’s review of the situation. It differs in that Hegel, unlike Marx, can be held to undervalue the ways in which political questions can reach out beyond the confines of any particular bounded community. This tendency for politics to stretch beyond borders is highlighted in global theories which point to the interconnected questions and problems affecting citizens and noncitizens of international civil society, and which signal a role for the allocation of trans-national rights. In the dialectic between universal principles and particular communities, Hegel, unlike Benhabib, may be said to accent the role of the bounded community of the nationstate over a universal scheme of rights. For Benhabib, the accent in the dialectical ebbing and flowing between the universal and the particular is on the universal, and on a supervening scheme of universal rights. Butler questions an emphasis on the universal over the particular because the universal cannot be said to be comprehensively articulated so as to mimimise the significance of particular interpretations. She observes, ‘The contingent and cultural character of the existing conventions governing the scope of universality does not deny the usefulness or importance of the term universal. It simply means that the claim of universality has not been fully or finally made and that it remains to be seen whether and how it will be further




6/14/2011 12:12:22 PM

articulated.’44 Honig, in responding specifically to Benhabib’s Another Cosmopolitanism, highlights and critiques Benhabib’s stress on universality and the imagined coherence of and concordance between the various elements involved in the democratic iterations of cosmopolitanism. Honig remarks, ‘And although she treats both (universality of principle and democratic self-determination) as two moments in a dialectic, the two are not equal. Universality represents a principle; democratic self-determination an exigency. And universality provides the perspective from which the claims of particularity are judged.’45 She goes on to observe that behind Benhabib’s account of the dialectic of cosmopolitanism in today’s global world lies a familiar modern story of progress, whereby there is an imputed expansion of inclusiveness, by which democratic regimes interpret rights in an expanding and inclusive fashion.46 Honig argues that we should not see cosmopolitanism in linear terms in which the dialectic of differing elements in the determination of citizenship and rights is to be seen as unconflicted progress. Any particular iteration in the process whereby principles of inclusivity and rights are determined will lead to remainders that disturb the coherence and justice of what has been achieved. Honig recommends an agonistic cosmopolitanism whereby elements contend in arguing for and enacting determinations of how universal principles will be put into practice. Honig’s reading of cosmopolitanism in the current global circumstances of proliferating groups and agencies in global civil society and states and regional and global institutions allows for contention and contestation. Her take on cosmopolitanism is part of her wider reading of the paradox of politics. In Emergency Politics she observes, ‘The irresolvable paradox of politics commits us to a view of the people, democratic actors and subjects as also always a multitude. The paradox of politics posits democracy as always embedded in the problem of origins and survival: how to reshape the multitude into a people daily.’47 Global politics, in being subject to paradoxes, precludes a fixed register of the universal excluding remainders and assuring benign outcomes. While politics must traverse borders, then its understanding should be more consonant with a postmodern Lyotardian reading of Kant, rather than a liberal post-dating of Kant’s universalism to fit the circumstances of a conflicted global society. The aesthetic arguments of the Third Critique can be seen as paradigmatic for a postmodern reading of the inherent




6/14/2011 12:12:22 PM

129

contestability of political action and justification. This accenting of the contestability of cosmopolitanism is suggested by the sheer ideological divide between global theorists and the ways in which the very nature of cosmopolitanism itself is contestable. Hardt and Negri differ profoundly from Ohmae. Their visions of global society are dichotomous. On the one hand, markets are forever clearing to maximise welfare, and on the other hand, the power of empire is ubiquitous in its bio-political control over the conditions of life. They share, however a common global perspective and at least bear upon the contested terrain of cosmopolitanism. Similarly, Beck and Held see the nation-state as weakening under the strain of global forces, and as engendering the need for global political institutions to deliver upon cosmopolitan moral formulae. Miller, alternatively, endorses the continuing positive value of nation-states in nurturing moral and political identities for citizens and in enabling a global cosmopolitan minimum to be secured. Cosmopolitanism is a disputed term and its ancestry is equally disputable. Kant is a recognised forerunner to contemporary cosmopolitans, though his resort to history is seen as problematic. Kant’s turn to history, though, is symptomatic of his appreciation of the difficulties facing the project. Hegel’s historical and political sensitivity render him an acute critic of an abstract formulation of cosmopolitanism, and his identification of the positive role of states in promoting ethical practices which allow for the articulation of rights is redolent of contemporary forms of mild cosmopolitanism that retain a role for states. Marx’s radicalism, his antagonism to the very conceptual conditions of capital, anticipates the radicalism of contemporary global theorists such as Hardt and Negri, whose thinking can be construed as cosmopolitan, though in a form that recognises the impact of social structures upon moral principles and demands the radical overhaul of those structures. This very diversity of conceptions of cosmopolitanism opens up the prospect of radical ideological forms of globalism, which are discussed in the ensuing chapter. It also reinforces the plausibility of Honig’s agonistic cosmopolitanism, which recognises the contestability and remainders associated with principled expressions of cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is perhaps best described as a problem or a challenge. As Appiah suggests, ‘There’s a sense in which cosmopolitanism is the name not of the solution but of the challenge.’48




6/14/2011 12:12:22 PM

7

Introduction Global theory has many different manifestations and takes many different directions. This should not surprise us. The world is both a substantive whole and a reflecting image for the many self-identities of the human beings who construct worlds. ‘Radical global theory’ is a name to stand for all those who aim to achieve a radical change in the ways social practices across the globe are currently conducted. There are other names that might have been invoked, such as ‘the movement,’ ‘the movement of movements’ and ‘the anti-globalisation movements.’ El-Ojeile and Hayden suggest ‘the alternative globalization movement’; Hardt and Negri in Commonwealth refer to ‘alterglobalisation’ as a better designation of what motivates protestors against current global power; and Monbiot explains that he now sees the movement as supporting a different kind of globalisation rather than its rejection.1 What these authors recognise is that the term ‘anti-globalisation movement’ is problematic because the various groups whom the label signifies are not, in fact, antagonistic to globalisation as such. Protest against the Group of Eight (G8) or other incarnations of global power should not be mistaken for antagonism to globalisation. What the label ‘radical global theory’ represents in this chapter is an antagonism to current modes of globalisation, but not a rejection of the global in itself. We will discuss the currents belonging to this radical standpoint, which are various and tend to avoid an express and definitive theoretical focus, as its adherents are hostile



130


6/14/2011 12:12:28 PM

131

to hierarchy and traditional forms of theory and practice. A number of common attitudes, themes and ways of operating are evident in radical global movements. Della Porta, in reviewing research on global social movements concludes, ‘They (new global social movements) express a conflict defined as “global”, allowing new collective identities to emerge; they employ protest repertoires in transnational campaigns innovating on the margins of forms already widespread in the past; and they construct transnational networks.’2 Radical global movements operate in relatively novel transnational ways and they focus upon global issues in ways that are disconnected from past forms of protest and agitation. Theorists and campaigners such as Klein and Monbiot express aspects of the movement’s attitudes in campaigning texts that are reviewed subsequently. The focus of this chapter, though, will be upon the work of Hardt and Negri, who distance themselves from previous forms of radicalism and identify themselves as operating as ideological theorists of the radical wing of global theory or alter-globalisation.3

Global radicals The radical wing of globalisation maintains a sense of its novelty by engaging in making a new world and in throwing off the template of past forms of radicalism. Its emergence is bound up with novelty of global conditions in the aftermath of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and in the proliferation of INGOs and global civil society groups at the end of the twentieth century.4 This radical wing of globalisation is concerned with a “bottom-up” approach to the world order.5 The emphasis is not upon exerting influence or in mediating and perhaps accelerating existing trends but in activist populist participation in global developments. The radicals are anti-globalisation in so far as they see globalisation, till now, to have been driven by capital and the Washington Consensus – a consensus between business interests as interpreted by major corporations, the US government and global institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF.6 What the radicals press for is an alternative globalisation, which responds to and is directed by activist forces that hitherto were excluded. Their antipathy is focused upon corporate and conservative global institutions, which control the global economy and enforce top-down, unfair forms of trade and employment and deny a




6/14/2011 12:12:28 PM


global equality in human rights. Radicals have co-ordinated protests against the assorted institutions of current world economic governance at meetings of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the IMF, the World Bank, the G8 and the World Economic Forum. Radicals’ antipathy to the powerful and the oligarchic is matched by their rejection of traditional Leftist methods and of former allegiances radicals have maintained. They repudiate hierarchical models of representation in favour of direct local forms of activism, and they break with statist solutions to problems, repudiating any subscription either to reformist or revolutionary Soviet styles of socialism. A determination to avoid incorporation into existing top-down patterns of control entails their hostility either to gradualist paradigms of cosmopolitan reform or to preceding counter-hegemonic forces such as Marxist-Leninist parties, which demand discipline and the maintenance of the party line via democratic centralism. The radical movement accommodates a variety of perspectives and holds a commitment to participative democracy that departs from models of democratic centralism and liberal representative democracy. This political standpoint distinguishes radical globalists from social democratic reformers, such as Held, who aim to work with the grain of existing institutions to establish a fairer and more representative pattern of global governance. For radicals, to compromise with capital, with multi-national corporations and with political elites in global and national institutions would be to abandon the possibility of radical, revolutionary transformation. As a counter to the World Economic Forum, dissident groups established the World Social Forum, which met for the first time in 2001, in Porto Allegre, Brazil. At this and subsequent meetings a plurality of attitudes and standpoints were in evidence, ranging from relatively moderate advocacy of reform to a revolutionary and violent rejection of the status quo. A significant element of the radical camp is a critical non- Leninist, autonomous form of Marxism or post-Marxism, which works with or reworks elements of Marxist thought and practice. ‘Autonomous Marxism’ is a name that qualifies Marx, but it could be said to represent one of the most authentic expressions of Marxist theory. Marx himself was neither a Leninist nor a Bolshevik. He did not set up a dictatorship of the proletariat and was not complicit in Stalinist tyranny. His Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts is liberationist and perceives the world to represent the creation or


132


6/14/2011 12:12:28 PM

133

construction of humanity, anticipating the emancipatory and freewheeling atmosphere of May 1968 and the post-Soviet-inspired forms of communism that shape the current Marxist influences on the radical wing of globalisation activists. One such influence is Toni Negri, whose writings both reflected and helped to shape autonomous Marxism in Italy. Critical or autonomous Marxism widens the sites of struggle against capital beyond those maintained by established Communist parties, and follows Marx’s example in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts by imagining the working class to include a variety of non-industrial and non-male workers and family members. It favours decentralised modes of operation and organisation, and it takes history, as Marx does in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, to be an open rather than a closed, deterministic book. Anarchist elements within the radical global movement harmonise with the anti-authoritarianism of critical Marxism and look optimistically to a future in which human nature can allow social co-operation to flourish without the intrusion of state mechanisms of control. Tormey in Anti-Capitalism identifies a strong current of anarchist idealism and autonomy in radical global movements. He observes, ‘... some of the most positive aspects of the contemporary anti-capitalist resistance have a largely anarchistic character. One thinks here of the nature and form of the large-scale discussions of the first World Social Forum.’7 Deep ecologists, radical environmentalists are significant constituents of contemporary global movements. Their radicalism is evident in a number of ways. Groups such as Earth First! recognise the holistic value of the world to supersede specific anthropological interests and do not prioritise human over non-human identities. Lovelock’s ‘Gaia’s hypothesis’, which perceives the world as a gigantic and selfregulating eco-system, subordinates the role of the human and in doing so encourages ecologists to pose demanding questions to corporations bent on maximising returns on commodities sold to stimulate and satisfy ephemeral but expanding human desires. Radical ecologists paradoxically enable humanity to construct images of the world in which human beings participate in a unifying system that supersedes the reach of human beings. They are aware of the unintended consequences of human action and take into account the role of non-human factors in the making and unmaking of the




6/14/2011 12:12:28 PM


world. Greens recognise the role of global capitalism in accelerating the greenhouse effect and in exhausting the world’s resources with its constant drive to generate profits via economic activity and the deployment of resources.8 Radical ecologists challenge the economic organisation of capital on a number of levels, critiquing standard forms of discourse, which assume that quantitative growth constitutes the benchmark for measuring progress. Greens consider that alternative forms of economic organisation and regulation will replace the market and state forms of direction, such as co-operatives or a commons regime, where common land and materials are used, rather than divided for personal gain. Wall recognises the influence of standard Marxist economic analysis upon Green thought and urges the salience of a green critique of the current global economic order in observing, ‘We live in a world dominated by and increasingly being destroyed by economic rationality, thus green economics provides a powerful critique of what drives ecological destruction and fuels injustice.’9 An exemplary radical movement, one which resists global and national forces of order and provides a paradigm of a novel form of resistance to traditional power holders, is the Zapatista movement in Mexico. The Zapatista rebellion began in 1994 in the south of Mexico and was inspired by a reaction to the signing of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and to the prevailing policies of neo-liberalism, which were diagnosed as being inimical to native peasants in the area. The Zapatistas, mostly Indian peasants, established self-governing areas in the zones over which they presided. Their resistance and mode of operation have exerted a global impact, which mirrors and subverts the impact of global capital on their situation. Their global impact upon radical global movements is also due in part to the virtuoso communication campaign directed by their nominal leader Subcommandante Marcos. It has been conducted via an exploitation of new technologies to co-ordinate activities and communicate their cause to the wider world. The Brazilian landless movement (MST), like the Zapatista movement, has exerted an exemplary influence upon the radical wing of globalization with its campaign of reaction to corporate control, by which it enables landless peasants to develop skills, unused land and cooperative endeavours. The Zapatista and the MST highlight resistance to current forces of order which matches the aims and


134


6/14/2011 12:12:29 PM

135

rationale of the radical global movement. Their actions are directed against corporate power and capital and they work with the grain of local indigenous groups to maintain and enhance their traditional ways of life by employing advanced technical instruments of communication and organisation. Both movements maintain and symbolise local forms of democratic self-management against a univocal global capitalism, and hence harmonise with the wider self-image and ideology of the radical global movement. Their activities combine disparate elements; focusing upon acute issues of poverty and exploitation while employing high technology to enable worldwide publicity for their causes. The campaigners and writers Naomi Klein and George Monbiot are prominent figures in the radical global movement. They combine a gift for writing in clear campaigning terms with a political motivation to bring about radical change. Their hostility to corporate capital rehearses aspects of a Marxist critique of capital, and they are committed to an open participative form of democracy to counter the exploitation and injustice perpetrated by capital. Klein’s No Logo is directed against designer corporate capitalism, and its seemingly endless commodification of desire, slick packaging and branding of products, which masks the exploitation in real processes of production.10 She contrasts a positive notion of a global village, where global exchanges promote wealth and choice, to the realities of exploitation and unfairness of existing capitalist production. She observes, ‘This is a village (global) where some multinationals, far from levelling the playing field with jobs and technology for all, are in the process of mining the planet’s poorest back country for unimaginable profits, This is the village where Bill Gates lives, amassing a fortune of $55 billion while a third of his workforce is classified as temporary workers, and where competitors are either incorporated into the Microsoft monolith or made obsolete by the latest feat in software bundling.’11 She inspires and is inspired by popular campaigns which draw upon the slickness and hipness of branding itself to rebrand multinationals as exploiters of the world’s poor. She imagines the world to be facing a stark choice: on the one hand blanket consumerism and oligarchic control; on the other hand, participative citizenship. Her remedy for the lack of control that people experience in their commerce in the world is a more intensive and extensive form of global citizenship. Just as rebranding reuses rather than discards the notion of brands,




6/14/2011 12:12:29 PM


so Klein advocates a form of globalisation, but one which moves on from the oligarchy and exploitation of the present.12 In Fences and Windows, a collection of her journal articles, Klein contrasts the ‘fences’ of corporate globalisation by which people are restricted and controlled to the ‘windows’ of opportunity and communication that are offered by an alternative form of globalization, one based on global citizenship. The book celebrates radical protest as a learning experience whereby the people learn how to interact and communicate positively across the globe and how to recognise the fences that are erected by corporations and states restricting popular participation. She observes that the current global economy presumes and sustains inequality, injustice and exploitation, fencing in poverty and hope and spawning ecological and humanitarian crises. But she celebrates the alternative globalisation movement’s highlighting of the repressive and exploitative operations of capital, which recognises how a neo-liberal, top-down form of globalisation represents a particular manifestation of the global that needs to be combated and countered by an alternative ideological vision. She notes, ‘Now, thanks to a surge in cross-border information swapping, such problems were being recognized as the local effects of a particular global ideology, one enforced by national politicians but conceived of centrally by a handful of corporate interests and international institutions, including the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.’13 She observes, ‘For years we in this movement of movements have fed off our opponents’ symbols, their brands, their office towers,. their photo-opportunity summits.’14 She sets out what still needs to be done in the aftermath of the declaration of the war on terror, ‘After September 11, the task is even clearer: the challenge is to shift a discourse around the vague notion of globalization into a specific debate about democracy.’15 In The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism she continues her radical critique of corporate capitalism by advancing the thesis that the ideological agenda of neo-liberals, who aim to deliver free markets in the interests of capital and big corporations, has been advanced in the last fifty years by their manipulation of disasters.16 The idea is that, in the aftermath of the shocks induced by disasters such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Pinochet coup in Chile, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the Iraqi war, a radical dose of neo-liberal economic policy has been introduced.


136


6/14/2011 12:12:29 PM

137

Monbiot’s writings deal with the various causes taken up by the alternative global movement. Like Klein, he identifies the unjust and unrecognised power exerted by global corporations. He also highlights the imminent dangers posed by ecological neglect and develops the possibilities of an alternative reading of globalisation, one that prioritises social justice, ecological concern, democratic engagement and resistance to corporate capital. In Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, he analyses corporate power as representing a form of alienation of power, from the people to a minority set of interests. He follows Marx in seeing the institutional forms of democracy as so many smokescreens for the power of capital. He observes, ‘Corporations, the contraptions we invented to serve us, are overthrowing us. They are seizing powers previously invested in government, and using them to distort public life to suit their own ends.’17 He urges that multi-national corporations should be forced to comply with a human rights regime and that a global regulatory regime should enforce codes of conduct and trans-national taxation on such firms.18 While recognising the power of global corporations, he maintains that there is a remedy to hand, the formal power of democracy should be realised in the actual popular control of the people of Britain and of the peoples of the world.19 In The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order, Monbiot proposes an elaborated set of proposals for revamping governance, so that a global democracy can be established to secure global justice and to replace the partiality of nationalisms and the exploitation of corporate capital. He urges four key proposals: a democratically elected world parliament, a democratised UN General Assembly to substitute for the self-serving Security Council, an International Clearing House discharging trade deficits and the accumulation of debt, and a Fair Trade Organization, committed to ensuring that the terms of trade are not advantageous to the economically powerful nations.20 He imagines that such a commitment to global democracy is a plausible, justifiable and realistic means of redressing global problems by tilting the balance of global power away from the advantaged and the powerful. He reasons that it is both necessary and realistic to assume that merely national allegiances and antagonisms can be superseded.21 In Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, Monbiot highlights the global predicament posed by on-going climate change




6/14/2011 12:12:29 PM


and proposes a series of requisite practical steps, including extensive regulation, to avoid impending global catastrophe. At the outset he likens climate change to Faust, imagining, ‘Faust is humankind, restless, curious, and unsated. Mephistopheles, who appears in the original English text as “a fiery man”, is fossil fuel. Faust’s miraculous activities are the activities fossil fuel permits. Twenty-four years is the period – about half the true span – in which they have enabled us to live in all voluptuousness. And the flames of hell – well, I think you’ve probably worked that out for yourself.’22 Monbiot writes a regular newspaper column for the Guardian, and Bring on the Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice incorporates a selection of them in an edited book. The articles reflect his populist, strident style and his determination to press for radical change and popular forms of democratic control to counteract corporate power, abuse of the natural world, the resort to war and violence and the reduction of culture to material interests.23 Global radicals consist of a variety of groups and individuals who are committed to an alternative agenda for more global political society than that promoted by a globally unregulated capital. They imagine that the non-hierarchal form of their activities, and their stress on participation over determinate goals distinguishes them from preceding radicals. They prescribe an agenda, comprising a constellation of elements, which they take to be motivated by the novelty of their situation. This agenda, however, draws heavily upon Marxian economics in its critique of corporate power and in its hostility to global consumerism and environmental degradation. It also reflects Enlightenment notions of humanity’s capacity to make and remake itself and in so doing to redraw global possibilities while being reluctant either to prescribe a particular substantive goal or to constitute a disciplined party to take humanity in a designated direction. A Kantian focus upon peace, reason and persuasion informs the radical agenda. An openness to the future and a commitment to participative democracy are key aspects of the radical global agenda. El-Ojeili and Hayden identify the alternative global movement’s orientation to be postmodern socialist. In so doing they recognise that it combines implacable resistance to capital with a commitment to an open participative democracy alongside a rejection of a disciplined centrally organised orchestration of the agenda.24


138


6/14/2011 12:12:29 PM


139

Hardt and Negri are radical theorists, whose conceptualisation of the present harmonises with the wider radical movement. They aim to supply a dense theoretical justification for the latter’s identity and strategy. Their theory of global order is avowedly radical, and contrasts conceptually with the neo-liberal and reformist notions. Their agenda is to theorise the demise of the repressive imperial global order and to signpost the way for the people, the multitude, to assume power. They aim to break with grand narratives of teleological progress, which they see as impairing and marking the obsolescence of former radical creeds.25 Their break with modernity and embrace of postmodernism or an alternative modernity is emphasised in recent works of Negri and Hardt and Negri, such as Goodbye Mr. Socialism, The Porcelain Workshop, Empire and Beyond and Commonwealth26 In the concluding chapter of The Porcelain Workshop, Negri affirms a commitment to a postmodern rupture with modernity, signalling the advent of a creative process that departs from a regimental organisation of history and of a critical assembly of progressive forces. The postmodern is identified with the creative tension inspiring the multitude to recreate the world. He remarks, ‘If we speak of temporality today, we invoke two different meanings, both completely new in relation to the ontological determinations of modernity. The first dimension of temporality is that of history: time is present there as an internal, centripetal rupture, or as a transition, a sort of democratic “Old Regime.” But time is also a tension towards this absolute democracy that must be constructed in life, in the biopolitical experience of our present existence.’27 In Commonwealth, Hardt and Negri opt for the designation ‘altermodernity’ to characterise the ways in which the present age differs from classic accounts of modernity, and yet at the same time, they aim to distinguish their reading of its development and to open up possibilities from a narrative that imagines historical development to be determined, so that it excludes what is deemed the anti-modern from exerting continuing influence and imagines the postmodern to supersede modern and pre-modern forms of theory and practice.28 Hardt and Negri’s alternative radicalism is designed to dish preceding radical doctrines, notably Marxism. Hardt and Negri discard former emancipatory slogans, strategies and concepts, identifying


Hardt and Negri: empire and multitude


6/14/2011 12:12:30 PM


neither nation states nor the proletariat as playing dramatic roles in the continuing narrative of the struggle for and resistance to progressive emancipation. Classes can no longer be clearly distinguished from one another, for production no longer performs a secluded role. Empire presides over a biopolitical order, in which production is enmeshed in wider social and affective activities constituting all of life. The centrality of a class of paradigmatically male industrial workers slips out of the historical picture. The prospect of economic breakdown, the claims of a disciplined revolutionary party and adherence to programmes for revolutionary action are redundant in the face of the pervasive control exerted by empire and the development of the multitude, the pluralistic worldwide forces of resistance to worldwide power. The distance between Hardt and Negri and traditional revolutionaries and radicals is measured according to their perception of the novelty of the current situation. Hardt and Negri’s standpoint harmonises with the wider radical movement, which likewise disassociates itself from previous radical theory and practice. The originality of their standpoint is highlighted by its elaboration as a purely immanent reading of the present, which eschews the presumption of radicals to act as disinterested critics, operating outside the forces they diagnose as constituting the present. Power in Empire is neither separated from its expressions nor traced to a source, such as the state or a capitalist corporation. Instead, there are a series of interconnecting flows. Just as Deleuze figures reality as processes of repetition and difference, which have no fixed points by which they can measured, so empire is an indeterminate repetition of different forms of control.29 Empire represents a novel global topography of power, ordering processes that are decentred and operating flexible apparatuses of rule, exemplifying Deleuze and Guattari’s non-dialectical reading of unity and multiplicity.30 These processes have neither beginning nor end and neither inside nor outside, hence the notion of external critique is rendered redundant. There is no external space available to formulate and extend critique. Rather, the projected demise of empire and imperial power is traced to the multiple forms of immanent resistance that are enacted by the multitude, and the multitude is itself constituted as a global force by its own differing but non-hierarchal forms of resistance.


140


6/14/2011 12:12:30 PM

141

The multitude is indeterminate in that it is not constituted, as are proletarians or serfs, by the occupation of a structural position within the labour process. Labour is insusceptible of analysis that delimits its operations and produces a determinate value, for activity of labour, the knowledge and affects expressed in and enhancing its processes, operates outside of specific temporal and spatial limits. As a result, the multitude is as delimited as its progenitor, empire. The enabling aspect of this constitution of the multitude as an engine and creator of social and global change is that the future is not to be circumscribed by the dictates of a revolutionary programme. While Marxists have assumed that the proletariat has to take on the guise of a dictatorship to effect a transfer of the forces of production to public ownership, the world will be transformed by the multitude in unforeseen, open and democratic ways. Hardt and Negri reflect a contemporary radical mood, in which utopian creativity is prized over predetermined and detailed plans. The prospective future is only shaped by the openness emerging in the indeterminate alternatives of the present. The multitude is the biopolitical creation of the global reach of empire, so the multitude will operate throughout the world, and given the infinite mobility of its terrain and constitution, will operate as an infinitely plural creative subject of singularities.31 The multitude, immanent resistance to empire, is a monstrous form in its plurality and singularity. It is not conceived to be a modern subject, possessing a unified and structured subject. As Negri maintains in Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitudo, ‘The postmodern multitude is an ensemble of singularities whose life-tool is the brain and whose productive force consists in co-operation. In other words, if the singularities that constitute the multitude are plural, the manner in which they enter into relations is co-operative.’32 In Negri on Negri, Negri identifies the multitude to be a ‘multiplicity of subjects.’33 In Empire and Beyond, he declares the multitude to be monstrous in the sense that its form is not structured or predetermined. It is monstrous in being unlimited in itself and in its projected transformation of the world. Negri observes, ‘What we do know is that this great transformation is taking place in life, and that it is in this life that it expresses new figures: figures without measure, a lack of formal measures. Monsters.’34 The notion of the common, like empire and multitude, is designed to disentangle contemporary radicalism from the shades of the past.




6/14/2011 12:12:30 PM


The common represents the processes of love, creativity, productivity and truth that are developed in collective social practices. Hardt and Negri imagine the productivity of the common to avoid the false dichotomies of the universal and particular, the transcendent and the merely experiential, and objectivity and subjectivity. The common assumes that creativity, love and truth will underpin alternatives to empire and capital and will be common productions from below rather than being determined by the Party or science.35 The concepts of multitude, common and empire are disconnected from the tropes of modern theory such as dialectics and grand historical narratives, just as the contemporary radical movement is disconnected from intermediary vehicles of representation and compromising negotiation with forces of imperial power such as the IMF and the WTO. This radicalism transforms the meaning of globalisation. It is a reminder that the globe and global theory are not univocal in meaning. The globe is a conceptual field rather than simply a determinate of things. It can and does possess a radical ideological meaning to suit radical practice. Hardt and Negri’s radical conception of globalisation captures aspects of the present situation and aspirations for its transformation that are unavailable to alternative conceptions. Empire and multitude function so as to fit emerging notions of sovereignty and anti-capitalist global protest. The depiction of empire as without limits or frontiers harmonises with the prevailing sense of the limits of state sovereignty and the profusion of trans-national organizations with which states are involved, and the dynamic of capital as an expanding and self-perpetuating force. A transnational reading of empire works with the grain of the prevalence of a mixture of supranational, national and non-national institutions and authorities currently supplying global order.36 The notion of the multitude tracks the popular imagination of current radicalism, connecting apparently dissonant phenomena such as revolutionary and populist action by the Zapatistas in Mexico, resistance to the operations of multinationals in India and violent protest against the meetings of the G8 and G20 in Seattle, Washington, and Edinburgh in the UK. For Hardt and Negri, particular protests against corporations in differing parts of the world, regional initiatives in self-government, and generalised dissent against the leaders of global economic and financial order are all connected by the processes of


142


6/14/2011 12:12:30 PM

143

intersecting imperial power and common forms of resistance undertaken by the multitude.37 Notwithstanding Hardt and Negri’s determination to avoid devising blueprints for the future, Empire also sets out three claims, elaborated as being immanent to the very conditions of the emergence of the multitude, which resonate with contemporary populist concerns. The claims are for global citizenship, a social wage for all, and the right to the re-appropriation of property. These claims arise out of the nature of empire, in that present global conditions promote immigration while denying citizenship rights to immigrants; the inequalities of the market mask the social and global inter-dependence of the production of wealth, and the common involvement of all in the production of wealth also licenses the elimination of private property in all spheres.38 Hardt and Negri press the claims for a global, egalitarianism in which all can share citizenship. This aspiration towards global citizenship is rehearsed in Negri’s Empire and Beyond, and it is to be achieved by the commitment to popular, participative democracy evident in the radical global movement, which is emphasised in Multitude and in Commonwealth.39

Globalisation, essentialism and grand narratives Notwithstanding the appeal of Hardt and Negri’s conceptualisation of contemporary global power and resistance, their understanding of empire, common and multitude depends upon the generality of the terms, which appear to be highly plastic and susceptible of subsuming all particularities within their embrace. What allows Hardt and Negri to establish a general narrative to encompass the historical emergence of the present and the sociological dispositions of contemporary global operations of power is the normative and rhetorical force of their abstractions. Hardt and Negri’s invocation of empirical phenomena to support their arguments is suggestive, but it is not convincing evidentially. The omnipresence empire renders it impervious to clear-cut empirical specification. On the one hand, it evidently includes the military and economic operations of the USA government and multinational corporations and on the other hand it incorporates apparently recalcitrant phenomena, such as irruptions of local or regional forces antagonistic to generalised hegemony, for these are reappraised as being functional for the maintenance of empire.40




6/14/2011 12:12:30 PM


Hardt and Negri’s resort to empirical data is problematic. While the end of the bi-polar world of the Cold War, like all historical contexts, is unique, its break with preceding dualities is insufficient in itself to herald the advance of a fundamentally new mode of global hegemony.41 Hardt and Negri’s highly general conceptual reading of empire allows for the inclusion of unilateral operations by the United States, and the operations of a regime of multifarious multi-national organisations42 In Multitude they urge that the prosecution of the interests of a nation state and empire can be undertaken simultaneously, just as actions can simultaneously register differing motivations. Contemporary modes of war, for instance, allow for the simultaneous prosecution of USA national interests and the co-ordination of global, avowedly humanitarian concerns such as the promotion of human rights. They argue that the conceptual behaviour of nation states and empire should not be seen as operating in the same way so that identification of an event in terms of the one should exclude the influence of the other. They observe, ‘We should not get caught up here in the tired debates about globalization and nation states as if the two were necessarily incompatible.’43 Hardt and Negri are right to insist that operations of contemporary sovereignty are complex, but the devil surely is in the details, and a plausible account of the complexity of multiple and overlapping sources of power would need to examine the details of specific situations and to highlight the justifications for simultaneous but distinctive attributions of influence on the part of a state and empire and to indicate why, in differing circumstances, the national or transnational aspect of the situation requires highlighting. Negri’s suggestion in Empire and Beyond that the relative failure of the United States’ intervention in Iraq underlines the ineffectiveness of unilateral national operations is unconvincing because it is unsupported by a detailed empirical review of the military strategy and operations.44 The notion of empire lacks empirical authentication and relies fundamentally upon its essentialised and indeterminate suggestive conceptual specification. A similar generality and lack of convincing empirical specification applies to the notion of the multitude. While the multitude is a concept that avoids exclusionary aspects of such proposed revolutionary agencies as the proletariat or the nation, it appears indiscriminatingly inclusive. The diverse empirical realities with which


144


6/14/2011 12:12:30 PM

145

differing victims of oppression must contend, and the diverse forms of resistance that are generated, are subsumed into their general classification as pertaining to the broad, amorphous entity of the multitude.45 The upshot is that Hardt and Negri provide no sense of the specific politics that diverse members of the multitude must pursue and the difficulties involved in the prospective co-ordination of diverse political strategies undertaken by the multitude. In Deleuze, Marx and Politics, Thoburn contrasts Deleuze’s pragmatic sense of the real difficulties of political composition with the undifferentiated, affirmative optimism of Hardt and Negri.46 Empire and multitude act as essentialised subjects in Hardt and Negri’s narrative, and their modes of operation are never particularised convincingly. The plurality of the multitude is merely assigned a common universal character, just as empire’s universality is assumed rather than demonstrated.47 Likewise, the elaboration of the notion of the common in Commonwealth tends to essentialise its functioning. Hardt and Negri invoke Wittgenstein’s notion of language games and his identification of truth with its production in social practice as constituting a paradigmatic exhibition of the operations of the common. Wittgenstein’s language games, though, are observed to highlight multiplicity over commonality, for language games are multiple, as are the meanings of the terms operating within them. Wittgenstein does not construct an essential paradigm for political and economic revolution from the multiplicity of ways in which social practices operate.48 Hardt and Negri stirred activists and intellectuals by widening the theoretical horizons of global theory and highlighting its ideologically inflected character. Their avowed aim is to break with modern predecessors, who worked with unconvincing grand narratives, so as to represent the operations of empire and identify its immanent democratic transformation. It is not merely in the margins of their account of global order and its prospective transformation, however, that traces of a grand narrative can be discerned. The contemporary global order is presented as the general outcome of a linear narrative. Empire subsumes the forces of order into its operations without remainder, and the multitude is to enact a total emancipation. If Enlightenment narratives of progress presume that reason and unreason are dichotomous concepts excluding a middle ground where differences complicate the picture, then empire and multitude reduce




6/14/2011 12:12:30 PM


history to the dramatic tension exerted by essentialised opposites notwithstanding Hardt and Negri’s protestations that they allow for alternative pathways that might have been followed in the past and may be pursued in the present. Hardt and Negri distance themselves from the dialectical standpoints of Hegel and Marx, critiquing what they take to be their imposition of an external dialectical teleological form upon history. Their own reading of history, however depends upon a general reading of the inter-dependence of general concepts, in which the telos of revolutionary transformation appears to be assumed in their normative reading of the nature of the dichotomous relations between empire and multitude and the essentialist possibilities of the common. While appearing to operate with a dialectical and teleological scheme of thought, Hardt and Negri’s conceptualisation of contemporary global developments suffers from its denial of its Hegelian–Marxist provenance in that its dialectical and Marxian character is under-explored.

Hardt and Negri and post-Marxism Hardt and Negri are expressly post-Marxist in that they affect to supersede Marx in a number of ways. They abandon core concepts of the projected Marxist revolutionary transformation, notably the (male) industrial proletariat and its transitional dictatorship. Crucially, they take themselves to be post-dating Marx’s analysis of capitalism, by seeing capital as subsuming production, allowing for no measure of value outside the framework of capitalism. Capitalism goes beyond any framework of critique linked to the generic use value of labour, for labour under a biopolitical socialisation of production is immaterial, insusceptible of measure according to what may be determined in restricted productive working hours, and capital is linked to development of universal biopower rather than a delineated sphere of production. They urge that a sphere of material production can no longer be separated from an immaterial social and cultural world. Mediation constantly absorbs all processes in a unifying global economy in which there is an ‘informational colonization of being.’49 They propose an immateriality to the process of production in post-Fordist capitalism, for production is not constrained to simply produce goods whose value can be measured in material terms.


146


6/14/2011 12:12:30 PM

147

In preceding works, Negri had paradoxically drawn on the systemic reading of capital in Grundrisse to point to the redundancy of traditional Marxist economic analysis. In Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse, Negri critiques what he takes to be Marx’s narrow conception of labour, commenting, ‘In fact, the Marxist definition of productive labour is a reductive definition, which is linked to the socialist axiology of manual labour.’50 Negri disavows a Marxist critique which purports to isolate value from the conditions of capitalist production. Use value is not to be counterposed to exchange value, for there is no generic use value of labour power operating outside of the sphere of the capitalist determination of exchange value. Negri develops this conception of capitalism in The Constitution of Time where he observes, ‘Here use-value cannot appear except under the guise of exchange-value. There is no longer an external vantage point upon which use-value can depend. The overcoming of capitalism occurs on the basis of needs constructed by capitalism. But in that case, time-as-measure of value is identical to the value of labour, to time of labour as substance.’51 This critique of the labour theory of value informs Empire’s reading of capital, where Hardt and Negri urge that the sphere of material production can no longer be separated from an immaterial social and cultural world. They envisage the disunities of space and time as being closed by the unifying economic operations of production and consumption, in which mediation itself becomes an aspect of a continuous economic process, the operation of universal biopower. They contrast the immateriality of their conception of production with Marx’s materialism. For Hardt and Negri, the post-Marxist notion of immaterial production implies what they describe in Multitude as a blurring of time divisions, notable in post-Fordist production.’52 If production is no longer trammelled by producing merely material things, then the activity of production itself is not to be encapsulated by specific designated periods of production time. Ideas, for instance, are generated at odd times, during and outside working hours. This illimitable character of producing allows also for the affective and imaginative sides of the human psyche to be brought to play in the productive process. In Commonwealth Hardt and Negri expatiate upon how common social practices outside the immediate power of capital provide the impetus for significant productive developments. They observe, ‘The capitalist ensures cooperation,




6/14/2011 12:12:30 PM


Marx imagines like the general on the battlefield or the conductor of the orchestra. In biopolitical production, however, capital does not determine the cooperative arrangement, or at least not to the same extent. Cognitive labour and affective labour generally produces cooperation autonomously from capitalist command, even in some of most constrained and exploited circumstances, such as call centres or food services.’53 The specific criticisms of Marx’s theory of value motivate a wider critique of Marx’s conception of revolution and the demise of capital. Hardt and Negri, in assuming that contemporary capital aims to expropriate and subsume all aspects of the biopolitical world under its control, recognise that there can be no privileging of the proletariat in the revolutionary process. For Hardt and Negri, capital and empire are mutually reinforcing and all-subsuming agencies of biopolitical production that precludes critique via the labour theory of value or by any transcendental or universal perspective. They deny a supposed Marxist critical reading of the present, which orders history and projects the future according to the dynamic of a critique of the labour process that unlocks the prevailing system of power. They perceive the conditions of the present as precluding the ascription of an essential agency of radical change that is resistant to and independent of prevailing hegemonic forces. Negri, in Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitudo, underlines the pitfalls of formulating such a critique, remarking, ‘The critiques of constitutive power that play on the “instituting-instituted” opposition, whether they are of dialectical or vitalistic inspiration are false. For in postmodernity, constituent power knows nothing of that opposition, in as much as it exists in accordance with the direction that urges the common to constitute itself against the void, on the edge of time.’54 In pressing the originality of their ostensibly post-Marxist immanent reading of empire, Hardt and Negri maintain a reading of Marx that is, at the least, controversial. Marx’s materialism, his productivism and the status of his critique of capital are controversial. A productivist reading of Marx is reductive and abstracts from his references in Grundrisse and in The German Ideology to the pervasively relational and social character of reality. Marx’s identification of labour power as the key force production is accompanied by a recognition that the sphere of production is not to be separated conceptually from the social relations in which it operates.55 The


148


6/14/2011 12:12:31 PM

149

Grundrisse’s mode of investigating its object, capital, is to abstract systemically from the concrete, inter-connected social world, so that its abstractions are methodological rather than ontological and should not be seen as not deflecting from the primacy of capitalist social relations of production. Marx is aware that the social relations of production in turn cannot be separated from wider webs of social practice, hence his references to the reciprocity obtaining between conceptually designated aspects of society.56 If Hardt and Negri’s reading of Marx on production and critique is questionable, then their own reading of the complete socialisation of production and its immateriality is equally problematic. Their conception of the non-quantifiable, non-delimitable nature of production under contemporary conditions of production tends to overplay the extent to which the multitude is able to express its creative, affective qualities under capital. Hardt and Negri’s utopian optimism over the prospects for the supersession of empire appears to rely on the positive aspects of relational creativity that are developed in common collective practices, but this tends to neglect their continuing real subsumption by capital.57 Hardt and Negri’s criticisms of Marx’s critique of capital plays down their debt to his conception of the infinite dynamic of capital, while revealing their own tendency to overstate the creative possibilities for the multitude to develop under the conditions of capital. The tensions within Hardt and Negri’s critique of Marx on production and the analysis of capital are magnified in their more general critical review of past dialectical theory. Their critique of the operation of dialectic in Hegel and Marx makes questionable assumptions about how Hegel and Marx conceived of and practised dialectic, and their critique is also compromised by their own reliance upon tracing inter-connections between concepts in what can be described as a dialectical procedure in their own writings. Notwithstanding the ambiguities that can be discerned within their argumentative practice regarding dialectic, Hardt and Negri are uncompromising in their programmatic identification of dialectic as a relic of past, a discredited argumentation. They stigmatise dialectic as a means of disguising history as the teleological development of an external end that is presumed from the outset of analysis. They urge, ‘We aren’t repeating the schema of an ideal teleology that justifies any passage in the name of a promised end.




6/14/2011 12:12:31 PM

On the contrary, our reasoning here is based on two methodological approaches that are intended to be non-dialectical and absolutely immanent: the first is critical and deconstructive – subvert dominant languages, revealing an alternative ontological basis that resides in the multitude; the second is constructive and ethicopolitical – production of subjectivity to alternative forms.’58 The upshot is that Hardt and Negri depict their analysis of empire and multitude to be sui generis and decisively new by advertising its conceptual demarcation from previous formulations of hegemony. They emphasise their distinctness from dialectical predecessors by asserting the novelty of their approach to history, insisting, ‘This approach breaks methodologically with every philosophy of history insofar as it refuses any deterministic conception of historical development and any rational celebration of the result. Philosophy is not the Owl of Minerva – subjective proposition, desire and praxis that are applied to the event.59 Hardt and Negri’s claim for the distinctness of their standpoint is itself susceptible to dialectical critique. On the one hand, their repudiation of dialectics is at odds with non-metaphysical interpretations of Hegel and non-teleological readings of Marx. A reasonable case can be made for understanding Hegel and Marx as reflecting upon historical development to conceive of an immanent dynamic between its terms rather than as a theatre for an external logic of development. If Hegel and Marx can be conceived as theorists of immanence then the putative contrast between their methods and Hardt and Negri’s is undermined. Hardt and Negri’s protest against an external standpoint is encapsulated in their refrain, ‘We should be done once and for all with the search for an outside, a standpoint that imagines purity for our politics.’60 But Hegel’s notion of freedom and Marx’s notion of the proletariat can be seen as being generated internally by historical development. Moreover, Hardt and Negri’s reading of empire involves an overlapping conceptual recognition of the development of the prospective liberation of the multitude, which implies a teleological, dialectical reading of history, which they repudiate rhetorically. Their deconstruction of empire is not divorced from their constructive conceptualisation of the multitude. The positive possibilities of technology and the actual practice of the repression of space and creativity under empire invoke and are revealed to be repressive by the emancipatory potential of




6/14/2011 12:12:31 PM

151

the multitude. The creativity and productivity of the common grows while capital aims at its restriction and expropriation. Hardt and Negri’s reading of empire is informed by a highly generalised and normative interpretation of the logic of historical development. Altermodernity supersedes the modern just as the immateriality of biopower, under conditions of new informational and communicative technologies, outstrips directly productive practices and a materialist view of labour, while accommodating the expressive supersession of empire. Likewise, the power of empire outstrips the modern sovereignty of the nation-state, which, in circumscribing the operation of hegemony, is as post-dated as Old Europe. Hardt and Negri observe, ‘If modernity is European, postmodernity is American.’61 Unsurprisingly, in Multitude Hardt and Negri show sensitivity to the criticism that they are reworking rather than repudiating a dialectical style of theorising. Here, they recognise that their style of immanent critique of empire might be designated an unacknowledged reworking of dialectical thinking. They urge that such a critique is misplaced because rather than merely working with the reciprocity of concepts that define the past and present, they see themselves as allowing for the emergence of what is distinct and different.62 Hardt and Negri’s protestations against a dialectical teleological reading of history assume that Hegel and Marx did not allow for the emergence of new forms in the historical process. Hegel and Marx, however, do recognise that new social forms, such as civil society, the market, and the proletariat emerge, but these new forms are connected with past phenomena and with one another, just as Hardt and Negri’s approach to history is dialectical in that the meaning and unfolding of new events and concepts is revealed by their interrelations and by their relations with preceding developments. To assume that the modern is superseded neatly by empire lends itself to a reading of history in which progress is anticipated and politics becomes the art of operating strategically in relation to an already identified course of events – the revolutionary assumption of power by the multitude. Hardt and Negri’s reliance on a teleological reading of history is encapsulated in the logical and practical dependence of empire and its development upon the emancipatory potential of the multitude. The notion of the multitude, for Hardt and Negri, performs many roles. The multitude is the object of historical imperial




6/14/2011 12:12:31 PM

development, and the deterritorialising mass of creative sociality responsible for, and subject to, the power of empire. Its post-national, post-industrial character distinguishes rebellion against empire from a Marxist, modernist proletarian revolution. At the same time, the multitude’s line of flight provides a narrative ending that completes the story of imperial rule. The goal of worldwide emancipation frames an interpretive scheme whereby the concepts of empire, multitude, the common, capital, and altermodernity form intersecting elements of a grand narrative of historical development. Hardt and Negri’s dialectical, teleological style mirrors as much as postdates Marxism in seeing the limitations of past and present as being revealed and redeemed in a complete prospective emancipation from the fetters imposed upon social enactment in the conditions of time and space. Hardt and Negri at times recognise that their claims to radical originality are partially subverted by their immanent recognition of the alternatives to empire inscribed in the global system.63 They even conceive of their work as, perforce, following a teleological logic, but they deflect from the significance of this by designating it a retrospective teleology. They observe, ‘A teleology of sorts is constructed only after the fact, post festum.’64 This latter admission of their adoption of a teleological perspective which is distinguished by its post festum character, however, intensifies questions about Hardt and Negri’s reading of Hegel and Marx. For Hegel, the essence of history and the inspiration generating its study within the political community is the free activity of individuals that supersedes the merely naturalistic ties of family and tribe. Teleology, for Hegel, is necessarily retrospective; it does not override the freedom of historical actors. It is not a causal theory that can predict the future.65 Likewise, Marx and Engels in The German Ideology are at pains to distance themselves from contemporary Young Hegelians, such as Stirner, who falsify history by construing its development in a priori ideological terms. They make clear that their materialistic reading of history is a retrospective, post festum categorisation of historical development that does not foreclose on the openness of historical events.66 Empire’s claim to be a novel critique of society depends crucially upon the supposed originality of its conceptual scheme. Its acknowledged post festum teleological reading of history highlights its conceptual affinity with Hegel and Marx rather than marking a decisive




6/14/2011 12:12:31 PM

153

postmodern break from dialectical predecessors. In effect, Hardt and Negri advance their own claims to novelty by misreading past theory and misapprehending their own theorising so as to identify and exaggerate difference between past and present standpoints. In so doing, they accentuate the externality of the dialectical teleology at play in Hegel and Marx and play down their own commitment to a form of teleology. In Multitude Hardt and Negri consider possible criticisms of their methodological standpoint, expressly considering the charge that, far from abandoning dialectics, they are continuing the dialectical method of Marx and Hegel. In refuting this charge, they argue unconvincingly that their explanation of terms does not assume their mutual implication. In relating their position to traditional philosophical doctrines, they disavow the reciprocity of the One and the Many, and they profess to read identity and difference in non-dichotomous terms.67 Hegel, however, drew inspiration from Plato’s Parmenides and Plato’s reading of the one and many as being both inter-connected and entirely separate.68 Hardt and Negri’s claim to be post-dialectical is compromised, however, in that they do assume a reciprocity between terms, notably between empire and multitude. Ironically, in doing so, they neglect the sensitivity that Hegel and Marx in fact show to the problematic character of conceptual relationships. Hegel and Marx avoid onedimensional readings of concepts and their relations. Hegel in his Logic, which can be read as a purely immanent reading of concepts, expressly takes the one and the many to be distinct as well as intertwined. Hegel does not oppose identity and difference in dichotomous terms, and he is careful to define identity in terms of the unity between identity and difference.69 Likewise, Marx’s notion of communism and the supersession of capitalism are not to be understood simply in dichotomous terms, for the global universality of communism mirrors as well as displace the intensification and extensification of social connections under capital. Hardt and Negri’s partial reading of the discontinuity between past and present forms of conceptualisation is significant because their argument for empire and its supersession depends upon conceptual connections between terms which mirror the inter-relations between concepts that is evident in the dialectical methods of Hegel and Marx. Empire, for Hardt and Negri, is a paradigm of political power that is both systemic and hierarchical; a construction of norms




6/14/2011 12:12:31 PM


and legitimacy that dominates world space.70 The values to which it is directed and to which everything is attuned, are the promotion of order and the cessation of conflict.71 The character of empire turns on the features of universality and order that are to be resumed and displaced by the multitude and its conceptual reflection of the operations of capital that are to be overturned. Just as, for Marx, changing state forms reflect the operational requirements of economic interests, so the absolute hegemony which empire exercises over subordinate identities mirrors and depends upon global capital. Global capital, in turn, orders economic and cultural exchanges that incorporate industrial, communicative, co-operative and affective labour. Hardt and Negri’s notion of the illimitable force of empire accords with their reading of the unremitting power of global capital. They assert, ‘... the increasingly intense relationship of mutual implication of all social forces that capitalism has pursued throughout its development has now been fully realized.’72 Hardt and Negri also follow Marx and Hegel in arguing for the dynamic inter-relations between social practice and nature. They invoke the feminist, Butler, to highlight the inflected nature of nature. In imagining how the multitude is created, they argue against stateof-nature arguments that would set the common in opposition to political formations that alter or abolish natural common relations. They urge that it is a mistake to see the political as dichotomously opposed to the natural. The multiple common social practices are precisely the sites for the transformational production of the multitude, the development of subjectivity and the metamorphosis of nature. In Commonwealth, Hardt and Negri observe, ‘The biopolitical production of ideas, codes, images, affects, and social relationships directly treats the constituent elements of human subjectivity: this terrain is precisely where subjectivity is born and resides. One might still conceive of economic production as an engagement of the subject with nature, a transformation of the object through labour, but increasingly the “nature” that biopolitical labour transforms is subjectivity itself.’73 Hardt and Negri’s reading of nature and society and objectivity and subjectivity rehearses the inter-relations between these terms that Marx and Hegel had urged. Marx, after all, takes human needs and powers to be developed via humanity’s engagement with nature, just as nature is metamorphosed via human transformational activity. For Hegel objectivity is a mode of subjectivity and vice versa, just as nature and Geist are correlative terms.


154


6/14/2011 12:12:31 PM


155

Global radicalism is one of the expressions of global theory. There is no summative and generalised movement of globalisation, and radical global theorists and activists testify to its ideological inflections. The phrase ‘alternative globalisation movement’ in itself generalises a variety of dissident standpoints, which resist orchestration into a single order. This plurality reflects a continuity with the ideological variety constitutive of modernity, where anarchists, liberals, and socialists contested the right to incarnate its progressive character, and conservatives and fascists resisted and heightened its dynamism. The ideological heterogeneity of global radicalism in turn complicates the picture of global theory’s relations with ideological and theoretical predecessors. Global radicals resemble other global theorists in affecting to break decisively with theoretical predecessors. Global radicals reject the Party, the proletariat, political representation, markets and top-down forms of economic planning as inelegant figures from another age, while high-technology communication facilitates flexible diverse projects with low centres of gravity. Deep ecology, anarchism and post-Marxism coalesce loosely in coalitions of protestors, who probe problems and explore possibilities that are engendered by a multiplicity of cross-cutting connections in a global world that resists reduction to an overarching integrative standpoint. The radicalism of the project implies a rejection of current economic, political and cultural values. Hardt and Negri’s aim of providing a theoretical core for the movement is supported by their uncompromising rejection of the current conceptual architecture of globalisation. Empire and capital, the twin pillars of the system of global power, are rejected, just as the alternative nostrums cherished by preceding forms of revolt are abandoned. New concepts are traded for old, and the supposedly emerging social forms of the multitude and radical unmediated democracy are canvassed as progressive forces. Hardt and Negri break from the past as well as from the present, and in so doing they catch the mood of contemporary radicalism if not the reality of its connections with the past. Their claim to originality is linked to a denial of influences from the past. They are decidedly post-Marxist, with the emphasis upon the prefix. The novelty and status of their post-Marxism is canvassed in particular due to its mooted non-dialectical and immaterial character. In an interview conducted for Theory and Event in 2000, Hardt maintains that he and


Conclusion


6/14/2011 12:12:31 PM

Negri prefer to refer to their orientation as communist rather than Marxist because the latter is more constrictive and would derogate from the substantive criticisms that they have of Marx.74 Radical global theory, however, is in denial over its links with the past. Influences abound. One of the canvassed names for the movement is anti-capitalism, and the focus of much of the movement’s critique of contemporary global structures is predicated upon a critical reading of capital, which echoes past forms of critique even where it is inflected by ecological ideas. This focus upon capital and critique of its modes of operations revisits Marxist analysis of capital, which remains the most considered and comprehensive of critiques, recognising the dynamism of capital in its reproductive cycles while highlighting its exploitative and dehumanising aspects. More generally there is an overlap between the dialectical form of explanation and critique practised by Hegel and Marx and the argumentative and confrontational style of the global radicals. The determination by global protestors to turn the tables on the system, to use the very weapons of corporate and global power against the powerful and the repressive, exhibits a dialectical spirit. Klein’s critical review of global capital via the very labels hyped by corporate capital is a case in point. The elasticity of the concept of empire and the conceptual fecundity of the notion of the multitude mirror rather than supersede classic Marxist notions of class and proletarian universality. The elasticity of the concept of empire is exhibited in its accommodation of myriad forms of resistance to and acquiescence in hegemony. Empire accommodates a plurality of empirical practices. It intersects conceptually with other affiliated concepts and its internal relations with countless other concepts continue rather than break the conceptual world of Marx’s Grundrisse and Hegel’s Logic. Its conceptual behaviour harmonises with the logic of dialectical conceptual interpretations of Geist and capital. Marx’s introductory methodological credo in the Grundrisse prefigures the theoretical practice of Empire in specifying a method and a perception of the world that are decidedly immaterial in acknowledging the dialectical inter-relations between concepts. Marx conceives of the world as thoroughly social, shaped by social relations that can only be captured by concepts.75 Hardt and Negri’s insistence on the post-Marxist status of their radicalism turns in part upon their biopolitical reading of global capitalism but




6/14/2011 12:12:31 PM

157

there is a decided continuity between their adherence to immaterial aspects of social production in the common and Marx’s reading of the social, relational character of production. Moreover, Hardt and Negri’s identification of the present universality of contemporary biopower assumes a general retrospective reading of historical development, which reflects the diachronic reach of the classical grand narratives of Hegel and Marx. The identification of the universality of biopower as progressive and as implicitly emancipatory presupposes a dialectical reading of historical concepts, as well as a problematic identification of the positive possibilities of technology under capitalism. Empire is the heart of a heartless world, the sigh of oppressed biopower, which serves as a singular yet revealing mirror for contemporary radical global theory as well as for the persistence of standard Marxist themes within speculation that advertises a post-Marxist break from its outmoded dialectical provenance. Hardt and Negri are in tune with contemporary events and the determination of global radicals to announce a new project. Their work radicalises prevalent contemporary notions of globalisation, and they make sense of the radical opposition to dominant orders in Brazil, Mexico and great power global summitry. The currency of their work is enhanced by their formulation of new terms, such as empire, common and multitude, and their dumping of old concerns over nation states and hierarchical, disciplined parties. But their critique of dialectical and historical theory and their distancing of themselves from Hegel and Marx appear unconvincing and problematic. Fitzpatrick observes how their general conceptual framework involves inter-relations between empire and multitude, noting, ‘With some wariness, then, the objection to Hardt and Negri’s Empire pursued here is that its founding ontology of liberation is ultimately at one with the very imperium it is so resolutely directed against.’76 The conceptual connections diagnosed in Empire and Multitude and their general schematic readings of history suggest that if there is genuine novelty in Hardt and Negri’s theorising, it is a novelty that should not be exaggerated. As Carver suggests, ‘The book (Multitude) invokes Marx throughout, both explicitly and by implication. It would be quite fair to say that it is written under the sign of Marx and in tribute to him, though of course many other revolutionaries, philosophers, writers, poets, playwrights, movements, and ideas are mentioned along the line.’77




6/14/2011 12:12:32 PM



Global radicals more generally, in aiming to break with present and past political and economic forms, do not sever ties with preceding theorists, for their invocation of reason, their critique of capital, their longing for peace and their reading of history as a narrative of progress continue rather than post-date the modern.


6/14/2011 12:12:32 PM

8

Derrida reads texts against the grain of an author’s self-interpretation. In so doing, he does not simply disavow an author’s views on what his own texts are about. He takes an author’s standpoint as a point of departure for his own discursive investigations, questioning the concepts that are employed to evaluate how their proposed oppositions and appositions harmonise with how they are used. He eases concepts away from the rigidities and dichotomies that are assumed in the conceptual demarcations that authors strive to maintain, and in so doing releases the fluidity of texts and their conceptions. In his discussion of Rousseau in Of Grammatology, Derrida deconstructs the overt logic of Rousseau’s expressly critical reading of modern society and culture. Rousseau presents his critique via an orchestrated procession of demarcated concepts. An originary natural innocence, unencumbered by otherness and the sophisticated duplicities of modern civil society is contrasted with the latter’s complexities and hierarchies. Derrida, however, observes, how an author (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) can always say ‘more, less, or something other than what he would mean or want to say.’1 Lost innocence is not to be recaptured by a direct return to a natural world without resort to the sophisticated techniques of modernity. For a start, the intricacies and indirection of writing are invoked to imitate the supposed directness of speech. Rousseau’s writings are artful in their intimation, not of what is natural and dichotomously opposed to modernity, but in their modernist critique of the present via an imaginary naturalism that is never to be possessed. The concept of nature is neither natural nor primitive but bears traces of a multiplicity of concepts to which it


Conclusion: Deconstructing Modern and Global Theory

159


6/14/2011 12:12:36 PM


is related. Nature and civilisation may be dichotomously presented, but they intimate one another, rendering their meaning ambiguous and undecidable, rather than firm and oppositional. If modernity is a figure without an originary point of contrast, which would supply a dichotomous ordering of its meanderings, and if modern theorists are implicated in multiple identities, embracing but not reducing to affirmation and denial, then the global is equally indeterminate. Conceptions of global order exhibit a multiplicity and plasticity of terms, which inhibit their deployment as frontier guards, guarding a new and distinctive conceptual terrain against retrogressive contamination by erstwhile vocabularies. Derrida’s deconstructive techniques alert readers to how concepts may be interpreted in ways that disturb the hierarchies and exclusions that are advertised and rehearsed by authors, who are set upon imagining a message that is clear and distinct. Derrida’s deconstructions of textual authority are sceptical rejoinders to the mythological pursuit of a dialogical truth that has been conducted by the Platonic tradition in philosophy and in Western semantics.2 The very concern of authors to impose a univocal meaning upon their works exerts a strain within their texts, subverting overt and apparent glosses on terms and relations. Authorial professions of truth constitute tell-tale signs of tensions that undermine their presumed order to reveal an underdetermination of meaning and a persisting irresolution. Rousseau’s studied excoriation of Enlightenment sophistication and cultivation, and his lavish endorsement of the simplicity and uncultivated unities of nature rehearse performative contradictions, signals of discursive disturbance, which undermine the aspiration to demarcate decisively the present from its past.3 Meanings cannot be sealed off from countervailing expressions, as if adroit and tight packaging can ensure that a gift is received as intended by its donor. Differences of meaning turn upon multiple and ineliminable traces of reciprocity between terms. A proclamation of an unambiguity is to kick against their traces, but ambiguities cannot be resolved by authorial fiat. Global theory is a case in point. In the very act of denying preceding modern theory, global theory is enmeshed in its concepts, and to be in denial is to deny yourself the resources for self-recognition. Global theory is suffused in unacknowledged ambiguities, whereby the generic identity of the


160


6/14/2011 12:12:36 PM

global masks multiplicities of style and ideology and a profusion of claims and counterclaims over its past. An index of the strains within its self-defining, self-denying identity is its emphatic and universal proclamation that it represents a clean break from predecessors. Its profession of theoretical novelty supports its claims to provide a novel substantive content in its reading of the present. Its claims to originality are inversely related to its denial of influences. Modernity is to be abrogated so that the neologism of global theory can be celebrated. Yet the claim to originality is dubious if originality represents spontaneous self-creation.4 A slash and burn attitude to the past is a recipe for its repetition rather than its elimination. Just as the meaning of a text is not the preserve of an author’s resolve, so the contextual influences upon a theory are not to be reserved by an author in advance of investigation. The style and content of global theory is imbued with the ideological and explanatory conceptions of modern predecessors. Global theory follows many pathways in imagining themes of social and historical construction, transformation, and political engagement, and it draws upon a variety of forms of reflective critical progress devised by its modern predecessors. Derrida is a persuasive guide in suggesting ways in which texts and theories can be read against their authors’ express avowals of meaning. His practice of deconstruction intimates how contemporary global theory’s abrogation of modern predecessors may be read as suggesting a series of connections. His own reading of Marx shows specifically how the presiding dogmas of global theory may be disturbed by invoking the ghosts of modern predecessors. In Specters of Marx, he observes that the ghostly presence of Marx disturbs and interrogates the proclamations of a new global order. He notes, ‘At a time when a new world disorder is attempting to install its neo-capitalism and neo-liberalism, no disavowal has managed to rid itself of all Marx’s ghosts.’5 The spectral language of ghosts is favoured by Derrida because it complicates the simplicity of the opposition between past and present, and the quick and the dead.6 Marx is neither alive nor dead; his thought persists beyond his lifetime. Marx remains at one with Hamlet in declaring that the time is out of joint, and Derrida, following Marx, recognises the contemporary world to be a time out of joint. The new internationalism refuses to countenance the shade of Marx, for such recognition casts doubt


Conclusion 161


6/14/2011 12:12:36 PM


upon the new global masquerade of peace and democratic plenitude; but the spirit of Marx objects.7 Marx is the untimely presence, the unwelcome guest at the banquet, who questions ‘... the imperturbable thoughtlessness that consists in singing the triumph of capitalism or of economic and political liberalism, the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the endpoint of human government.’8 Derrida invokes the ghost of Marx to serve as the radical critique of ‘... the presumed autonomy of the juridicial and to denounce endlessly the de facto takeover of international authorities by powerful Nationstates, by concentrations of techno-scientific capital, symbolic capital, and financial capital, of State capital and private capital.’9 In his interview in Philosophy in a Time of Terror, Derrida observes globalisation to represent ‘... a series of contradictions’ because he diagnoses its profession of the completion of human rights and democracy to disguise the actual power of corporate interests and American hegemony.10 Neo-liberalism and Western triumphalism serve as disguises for capital and Western interests, which are challenged by a confrontation with Marx’s ghost.

Kant, Hegel and Marx Derrida’s invocation of Marx to confront the partiality of contemporary global theory recognises the possibilities of interplay between global theory and modern predecessors. Present and past interact via the stage management of Derrida, whose spectre of Marx transmits ideas from past to present and hence trespasses in a post-Marxist global terrain. This passage between past and present, which opens up global theory to its modern predecessors, forms the rationale of this book. Modernity and modern theory are not to be summarily dismissed as irrelevant to the concerns of the present and the preoccupations of global theory. Modern theory and contemporary global theory should not be insulated from one another, for their styles and concerns can be clarified by observing the connections between them. The multiplicity of ideas of modernity is reflected in the multiplicity of global conceptions and the variety of ways in which global theories reflect the influences of their modern predecessors. Global theory defines itself by breaking from modernity and modern predecessors, and to show the connections between global theory and modern predecessors is to qualify its claims to novelty


162


6/14/2011 12:12:37 PM

and to highlight the provenance of ideas of the global. If the self-image of global theory is to be revised in the light of its relations with preceding theories, then modern theories appear differently when seen in relation to succeeding global theories. This study has focused upon a particular tradition of modern theory, the critical theories of Kant, Hegel and Marx, which constitutes an abridgement of a particular tradition of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought. It is a tradition which can be understood without reference to succeeding global theorists. Kant is preoccupied by reason, articulating the limits of sense within which reason operates, promoting its historical development and identifying its role in enabling the moral and political freedom of human agents. Hegel reacts against the Kantian impetus to examine and formulate the claims of reason outside the thick phenomenological forms of inter-subjective experience, and Marx, in turn, critiques Hegel’s own situated conception of reason by highlighting the historical force of the sphere of production in shaping and distorting claims to rationality. This critical tradition, however, conceives of humanity in terms of its relations with the world, and Kant, Hegel and Marx develop their critical theories by framing distinct but related conceptions of the world. The significance of these conceptions of the world is highlighted by relating them to the standpoints of contemporary global theorists, who criticise them while also incorporating aspects of them into their own ways of imagining the world. If the critiques of modern predecessors offered by global theorists are one-sided, they nonetheless focus attention upon disputable aspects of modern theory. In consigning preceding modern theories to the dustbin of history, global theorists point to what they take to be superseded aspects of their form and content. Kant, Hegel and Marx frame distinctive theories of history but global theorists tend to perceive each one as suffering from similar and fatal defects. The teleological form of the theories is condemned for presuming that contingent developments are to be explained by their contribution to an independently specifiable end of history. The charge is that a deterministic account of history is substituted for the openness of historical events. Criticisms of the teleological form of preceding modern theories of history are combined with observations on the limitations of the contents of these theories. Kant’s conception of


Conclusion 163


6/14/2011 12:12:37 PM


the prospective impact of elites in international civil society is seen to provide scant evidence for an emerging cosmopolitanism, just as Hegel’s preoccupation with the autonomy of nation-states is taken to confirm his limited anticipation of the direction of future global developments.11 Likewise, Marx’s image of the fate of capitalism as residing in the problems of heavy industry and the emancipatory potential of an industrial proletariat is seen as linking him to a bygone age, now superseded by the radical transformation of family, economic and global structures.12 The limitations of the content of modern theories of history are seen as reflecting back on the hubris of their formal claims to interpret the overall goals of the historical process.13 This critique of the theories of history of Kant, Hegel and Marx is partial and misleading insofar as all three theorists are conscious of the limits that must be respected in any large-scale reading of history. They are also careful to frame their theories so as to respect the openness of historical events, by recognising that they are not to be deployed so as to predict the future or to constitute causal theories of historical development. The partiality of the critique offered by contemporary global theorists is compounded by their own resort to large-scale theorising about history, which tends to presume that contemporary global conditions provide a teleological norm for preceding events. Nonetheless, global theorists’ critiques of preceding presumptions about history on the part of modern predecessors do have the merit of emphasising the limits with which their theories of history operate. Kant, Hegel and Marx offer insightful readings of history, but general reviews of historical development necessarily maintain blind spots and culminate in end points that become staring points for unanticipated developments. All three, for instance tend either to minimise the significance of gender as a social category or to assume the permanence of patriarchal society.14 Likewise, they do not anticipate the variety of forms of global governance, which contemporary global theorists include in their reflections on historical development. Moreover, notwithstanding the circumspection with which Kant, Hegel and Marx undertake their teleological reviews of past events, general theories of historical development tend to abridge the complexity of the past and hence to distort aspects of past and present. This tendency is more pronounced in Marx’s intermittent use of language which assumes


164


6/14/2011 12:12:37 PM

that technology plays a causal role in determining the course of history, which deflects from human agency and inflates technology’s role. In critiquing modern predecessors and maintaining that they break from the assumptions guiding preceding theories, contemporary global theory fails to recognise how modern predecessors such as Kant, Hegel and Marx frame conceptions of the world that bear upon subsequent notions. In the light of current global theory, the references of Kant, Hegel and Marx to world history, and the capacities of human beings to contribute to construction of world history, appear more salient and relevant to subsequent developments and theory. Kant, Hegel and Marx in distinctive ways anticipate the conceptual language of subsequent such global theorists as Albrow, Giddens and Castells by imagining human powers to be creative, transformative and reflexive rather than fixed and continuous. They also imagine these capacities for reflective transformative construction to be significant in establishing the global identity of humanity. They share a conception of modernity in which its dynamism is linked to the capacity of human beings to supersede the physical aspects of their environment by thinking and acting outside its limits, and to develop by reflecting upon and reacting to their own constructive actions. All three point to the significance of world history as a record of human creativity and imaginative, transformative self-development. Kant imagines the combination of a circumscribed globe and the developing appreciation of humanity’s common rationality as leading, via intended and unintended actions, to a progressively cosmopolitan international society in which the coercive activities of nation-states cede to an ever-growing republican federations of like-minded states. Marx understands human beings as constructing their environments, as humanity interacts dialectically with the natural environment in developing its productive powers and in satisfying its needs. The universality of human powers, like the universality of reason presumed by Kant, underpins the developing impact upon the world of human social productive forces, which culminates in a communist global society. In framing an affiliated constructivist account of world history, Hegel emphasises the multiple roles of the concept of recognition. He traces the inspiration for historical action and the recording of it to humanity’s break from


Conclusion 165


6/14/2011 12:12:37 PM


the naturalistic routines of family and to its entrance into the recognitive arena of politics. The impetus to recognise and record creative political action explains the genesis of historical narratives, and reflection upon the significance of these narratives for the world is the reflexive project of philosophical world history. The upshot is that the non-naturalistic historical construction of political worlds, via reflective activity and reflexive philosophical understanding, depends crucially upon human forms of human recognition. The world, for Hegel, is not a natural one. He urges, ‘There is nothing new under the sun, but this is not true of the sun of Spirit.’15 (Hegel’s reading of world history is framed via continuous reflection upon distinct but connected forms of human construction. Its emphasis upon the role of the recognitive guards against interpreting globalisation as a linear process and serves as a useful antidote to contemporary rhetoric, which standardly assumes a unitary notion of a process of processes of globalisation. In the light of the subsequent emergence of global theory, then, there are generic ways in which Kant, Hegel and Marx may be styled global theorists. This global label is neither misleading nor anachronistic, even if the concept of globalisation post-dates their thought, for their theories incorporate notions of the world and its development in ways that are significant for their thought, and which overlap with the concepts employed by subsequent global theorists. Their relationship to global theory is akin to that of many theorists whose theories predate a self-conscious deployment of the term ‘gender’, and yet divide women from men on a range of issues in a way that is consonant with subsequent conceptions of gender difference. If Kant, Hegel and Marx share a claim to be regarded as global theorists, then the specific ways in which they conceive of the world and its development sets them apart from one another. Kant recognises all human beings to be rational, and on account of their rationality, maintains a cosmopolitan moral and political philosophy. The world is to be subject to the same moral order because its remit is universal, covering the limits of physical space and all rational persons. The inspiration for Kant’s global perspective is the universality of reason and moral duty, which admits of no qualification for the benefit of particular nations and individuals. The pressing political problem is to ensure that practice aligns with theory, and to this end,


166


6/14/2011 12:12:37 PM

Kant invokes an optimistic but avowedly heuristic theory of history and a normative reading of contemporary events. Hegel’s conception of the world is infused by his sense of history. The world is what humanity becomes, and he bestows ethical and political significance upon distinctive forms of state that emerge and decline in the course of history. Given the intractability of moral reasoning, Hegel looks to the nation-state’s social and political practices to provide a concrete setting for the formation of a rational ethical disposition. Hence, he is critical of implementing a universal scheme of cosmopolitan principles, valuing particular states and an international system of mutually recognising states as providing a paradigm of reason for world history. Marx critiques Hegel’s endorsement of nation-states as enshrining rational principles, emphasising instead the particular interests that are tied to economic structures in modern society. Like Hegel, he recognises that world history develops in ways which preclude easy comparison across time, for the content and form of social formations are transformed as connections between human beings widen and transcend particular limits of place and time. Marx advocates a radical break from the relationships and categories that constitute modern capitalist society. His radicalism is underscored by his distinctive conceptualisation of a different form of society, though one that he imagines to be developing within the old society. Communism breaks with the instrumentalism of capitalism and establishes a world in which the universalising powers of human beings are to be nurtured and enhanced so that their needs and capacities are not limited by the particularities of merely local environments.

Global theory The differences between Kant, Hegel and Marx exhibit the plurality of ways in which modernity can be viewed. Modernity is a conceptual construction rather than one thing to which an incontestable essence can be ascribed. There is no essence to modernity to which all theorists of the modern world must subscribe. Overlapping standpoints and common features inform rival conceptualisations. The variety of ways in which Kant, Hegel and Marx anticipate contemporary global theory, and the distinct styles in which they exert an on-going influence, reinforce appreciation of how global theory, like


Conclusion 167


6/14/2011 12:12:37 PM


modern theory, does not consist in an essential set of doctrines to which theorists subscribe. The different forms of influence exerted by Kant, Hegel and Marx reflect the variety of ways in which globalisation and the world are viewed in contemporary global theory. This should not surprise us, for the world, after all, is not a natural phenomenon but a recognitive horizon within which phenomena are discriminated. An influential strand of recent global theory urges the normative case for cosmopolitanism and the contemporary debate over its status reflects preceding contrasts between the standpoints of Kant and Hegel. The contemporary revival of cosmopolitanism derives in part from the current global political context in which INGOs, nationstates, global institutions and ideologues press the case for instituting a regime of universal of rights. On the one hand, contemporary cosmopolitanism takes its bearings from a transformed global scene, encompassing increasing international contacts, facilitated by technological advances in communication. As Anderson-Gold observes, ‘... the principle of cosmopolitan right must be understood to have evolved in response to the greater density and intensity of international inter-dependence.’16 It is equally true, however, that Kant exerts a decided influence over contemporary speculation. Again, Anderson-Gold notes, ‘I believe that Kant’s idea of a federation of nations based upon principles of international right remains highly relevant to contemporary aspirations or global justice.’17 This Kantian influence is reflected in Archibugi’s identification of the contemporary cosmopolitan project in ‘... the philosophy of history of the age of the Enlightenment.’18 Kant’s appeal to reason as a universal standard by which to measure moral conduct continues to function as a global arbiter of moral and political rights and duties. In the contemporary cosmopolitan frameworks articulated by Held, Habermas and Caney and others, the universality of reason is seen as underpinning the reconstruction of global political practice so that cultural particularities and the interests of nation-states no longer subvert moral principles. If contemporary cosmopolitanism admits of the twin influences of recent historical developments and the exemplary model of Kant’s philosophy, it can be added that Kant himself offers a similar way of combining his own moral universalism with a reading of historical development so as to imagine a route to the political achievement of cosmopolitanism.


168


6/14/2011 12:12:37 PM

If Kant anticipates and exerts an influence on global cosmopolitanism, which offers moral principles as guide to political practice, then more conservative voices of the present, who continue to acknowledge a role for nation-states in articulating distinctive and motivating ethical practices, exhibit an affinity with Hegel’s reading of the modern national and international contexts. Theorists of varying ideological and epistemological allegiances, such as Rawls, Miller, Gray and Hirst and Thompson (and latterly Bromley), express scepticism over a projected supersession of the nation-state by a global cosmopolitanism, for they perceive the state to play an on-going role in enabling individuals to associate as peoples, framing collective identities and undertaking economic and social initiatives in the context of a global world.19 Their conception of a continuing role for the nation-state, in a globalising world, rehearses aspects of Hegel’s appreciation of the role to be played by nation-states in the context of modernity. Hegel diagnoses modernity to be complex, admitting of a problematic divisiveness and fragmentation, which he imagines may be mitigated by a rationally structured nation-state. The affinity between state-centric conceptions of politics in what is taken to be the contemporary global world and Hegel’s perception of the role of the nation-state in modernity is heightened by Hegel’s identification of world history as the ultimate court of judgement on the success, rationality and viability of forms of state. The world, for Hegel, represents a complex intersection of forms of recognition, ranging from an individual’s existential confrontation with an other, via forms of contract and representation at the corporate and national levels, to the reciprocal inter-dependence of nation-states in the international system. Hegel’s interprets the modern nation-state as establishing a viable and rational form of recognition in the context of world history, and in so doing he resists the Kantian move to reduce politics to morality, and cultural diversity to the demands of a unidimensional reason, and anticipates contemporary resistance to a generalised and supervening conception of global development. Marx differs from Hegel significantly. The difference is seminal for Marx’s construction of a distinctive view of global development. He shifts focus from the state to social and economic forms of activity, which he takes to provide the foundations for power in society and the direction of historical development. In particular, Marx identifies the restless activity of capital and markets as constituting the


Conclusion 169


6/14/2011 12:12:38 PM

dynamic of modernity, a dynamic that admits no rest and spreads throughout the globe, while intensifying market instrumentalism in an ever-growing range of social practices. Marx’s texts provide a model for subsequent accounts of global development, which highlight capital’s capacity to reproduce itself expansively as being crucial to globalisation. From contrasting ideological perspectives, Ohmae and Hardt and Negri testify to the dynamic of capital in promoting intensive and extensive networks that deliver continuing global expansion as well as political and moral inflections and allegiances in their wake. Marx also anticipates and exerts an influence upon the radical wing of the global movement. This movement derives its radical anti-capitalism from forms of post-Marxism, which owe, in turn, a significant debt to Marx’s radical and conceptual critique of capital. Moreover, the ecological side of the radical global movement exhibits an affinity with Marx, who is mindful of the dialectical relations between humanity and nature, for both good and evil. The distinctive ways in which Kant, Hegel and Marx influence global theory highlights diverse currents of contemporary global theory. The tendency to regard global theory as both novel and uniform is disturbed by a recognition of its affinities with modern predecessors. Global theory is inflected ideologically, and the variety of ideological standpoints is as pronounced as the so-called heyday of ideology, in modernity. Statism versus cosmopolitanism, nationalism versus internationalism, neo-liberalism versus anti-capitalism, ecologism versus hyper-capitalism and socialism are contemporary forms of ideological contestation that express the ideological force within current forms of global theory and practice. Ideological conflict informs conceptual contestation over the global terrain, with old and new concepts such as networks, nation-states, cosmopolitan principles, global civil society, empire, multitude and regional and global forms of governance vying for inclusion in descriptive forms of contemporary global sociology. The diversity of ideological and conceptual vocabularies indicates the range and presence of global standpoints, and the designation ‘global’ depends upon its conceptual and ideological qualification because ‘the global’ is a disputed term. Just as ‘modernity’ is an ambiguous and controversial term, receiving multiple descriptions and spawning various normative ideals, so the global should be seen




6/14/2011 12:12:38 PM

in plural rather than uniform terms. Moreover, the designation global is like modern in describing and assessing manifold constitutive events and processes; it is not an abbreviation which dispenses with questions of normative assessment and richer descriptions of events. The term modernity does not reduce the language of, say, Montesquieu, Nietzsche, de Tocqueville and Mill as well as Kant, Hegel and Marx to an essential common denominator. The temptation to imagine globalisation as a causal concept is a category mistake akin to imagining that modernity can substitute for the various historical events and forces, such as the growth of individualism in religious and cultural affairs, the industrial revolution and the emergence of the nation-state. To follow proponents and opponents of global theory, like Scholte and Rosenberg, and to deploy language that assumes globalisation to represent a causal term, is to misconstrue a generic review of the conditions underlying a set of events for its causes. 20 Ironically, the tendency to presume a causal role for globalisation is related to the critique of modern theory by global theorists. Contemporary global theorists are tempted to essentialise global theory and to distinguish it sharply from preceding theories of modernity. The temptation, then, is to capture this difference in neat, causal terms or to positively endorse the perceived movement away from the modern, which lends historical description a normative embellishment that assumes the aspect of a final or defining telos for humanity, which, in turn, is depicted in causal terms. Global theory, at every turn, appears to be entangled in contradictory positions vis-à-vis preceding modern theory, which lends itself to a deconstructive reading that recognises its antimonies. Modern precursors such as Hegel and Marx are critiqued on account of their teleological discourse, which is held to be a relic of a bygone era, while liberal and post-Marxist globalists perceive the future in emancipatory or redemptive terms. Global theorists follow the intricate pathways of modern predecessors, while denying their influence and assuming that the ideological self-images of modernity can be reduced to an essentialist template. The failure to attend to the qualifications which these modern predecessors attach to their teleological conceptions of history rehearses a similar failure on the part of contemporary global theorists to discriminate between their own diverse intellectual agendas. In attending to history, global theorists


Conclusion 171


6/14/2011 12:12:38 PM


observe how there is a developing trend of more extensive and intensive forms of connection between diverse areas of the world. They also review events and processes that have led in this direction, examine their underlying conditions of agency and social practice, and assume normative standpoints in regard to these changes. They undertake a conceptual mapping of historical processes involving all these forms of analysis, but the lines of the map are neither clearly marked nor followed, and this confusion informs and follows their failure to discriminate between the various dimensions of the historical perspectives of modern theorists. Kant is criticised for his resort to an untenable teleological form of history, whereas Kant himself was circumspect and careful to highlight the epistemological limits of his historical narrative of progress. Likewise, Hegel is dismissed for assuming an essentialist idealism which is burdened by a teleological view of history, and Marx is relegated to the scrapheap of post-dated intellectuals due to his commitment to an alleged teleology warping his narrative of the past to fit an imagined end state of communism. These critiques of Hegel and Marx are unfounded, for they ignore how Hegel and Marx take pains to avoid the determination of the historical past by the imposition of an external logic or end. Where Kant, Hegel and Marx should be interrogated is on the limits and defeasibility of their synoptic overviews of world history. Highly general accounts of the past are liable to be partial and to overlook or underplay standpoints and perspectives not fitting with their conceptual schemes. There may, of course, be more to be said about the past than what fits with general schemes of analysis undertaken by speculative world historians such as Hegel and Marx. Hegel, for instance, dismisses traditional and primitive cultures in the name of modernity and progressive forms of reason. The rationale of this dismissal may be challenged, not least from the perspective of traditional cultures, and this challenge might, at the least, require that more attention be directed towards cultures and regimes unaligned to the path of progress leading to European civilisation.21 Again, Marx’s focus upon production tends to skip over issues of gender, political organisation and cultural forms of recognition. Global theorists, though, tend not to interrogate their predecessors on these issues. Indeed, they follow their lead by framing highly general histories of the present, which skip over questions and issues pertaining to the relative but continuing importance of sub-global


172


6/14/2011 12:12:38 PM

Conclusion 173

developments, such as nationalism and regional concentrations of power and culture.

Modernity is a debated term and modern theory is controversial. Postmodernism, after all, defined itself by breaking from modernity and modern theory, and while post-structural theorists, like Foucault and Derrida, might resist the label postmodern, they, too, are critical of modernity and the rationalism of modern theorists. The postmodern and post-structural critiques of modern theory are distinct from the critical perspective of global theory. Lyotard’s postmodern declaration of the redundancy of grand narratives targets preceding modern theories, even if the declaration itself smacks of a performative contradiction.22 Modernity is defined by Lyotard in terms of its commitment to grand and foundational frames of knowledge, and his critique of that project rehearses Nietzsche’s challenge to modernity, whereby humanity is dared to live without a consoling and illegitimate truth. God is dead and so are the forms of transcendence with which God is associated.23 Morality and humanism masquerade as essential qualities prescribing conduct for a dutiful humanity, adhering to principles laid down on metaphorical tablets of stone. Lyotard’s postmodernism continues Nietzsche’s critique of the transcendence with which modernity masks its own questions. Knowledge claims for Nietzsche and for Lyotard are perspectival, and rehearse so many expressions of power. Lyotard observes the irreducibility and incommensurability of different forms of discourse. To negotiate a path through distinct genres of discourse and phrase regimes is to pose intractable questions. Discourses do not admit of a common formula; there is no meta-discourse revealing a fundamental and isomorphic set of truths, but only differends, which admit of no resolution.24 Lyotard traces intimations of his position in the paradoxes that are embraced by the sophists, and he draws on Wittgenstein to allude to the variety of ways in which meanings are implicated in distinct forms of life and language games.25 Lyotard’s critique of universalism and the modern presumption of a grand, summative way of ordering conflictual discourses and perspectives harmonises with Derrida’s drift of in resisting claims that


Grand narratives of globalisation


6/14/2011 12:12:38 PM


authors are to be accepted as authorities in establishing determinate, fixed meanings for their texts. The discursive operations, in which authors are implicated, impart an intractable indeterminacy to their texts and defer endlessly the prospect of final, summative resolutions of meaning.26 Derrida, like Lyotard, questions the authority of philosophers, who affect to furnish determinate truths, which allow of no remainders.27 Likewise, Foucault modifies a Kantian reading of the atemporal transcendental conditions of truth so as to identify the genealogies of modern truth regimes that ignore their own historicity and power in enveloping individuals in discursive entanglements.28 Grand narratives, for Lyotard, are an expression of the hubris of modernity, declarations of an enlightenment whose quest for truth metamorphoses into a repressive closure to alternative questions. Hegel and Marx are the grand strategists of a failed grand strategy, whose nets are spread too wide to trap the diversity of forms with which they are occupied. The postmodern turn harmonises with a cultural turn, in which distinct and vulnerable cultural identities resist incorporation into generalising social practices and norms by asserting their claims for recognition.29 The rise of global theory sidesteps postmodernism and post-structuralism in critiquing the ambitions of modern theory, but in their determination to frame what they take to be a novel general theory; contemporary global theorists tend to ignore the problems that are posed by the generality of their perspectives. Global theorists are happy to turn against modern theory, without subscribing to the postmodern turn. Indeed, global theory articulates grand claims for understanding history and society without pausing to consider their justification. Hardt and Negri gesture in the direction of Foucault and historical openness in envisaging empire to exert a multi-valent form of power and in taking the multitude to be capable of constructing a world from a multiplicity of common social practices, but they undercut these moves towards indeterminacy and openness by assigning a directionality to historical and social processes.30 In global theory, ideological commitments are canvassed, norms are espoused and generic causes are implied in ways that are at odds with the postmodern turn. Again, the generality of the doctrines of global theory conflicts with the cultural turn, for global theorists imagine that differences between constituent


174


6/14/2011 12:12:38 PM

members of states, regions, and, indeed, the world are to accommodate the regulation of distinctive communities by supervening moral principles. Global theorists do not allow for a hermeneutics of suspicion whereby the authority of principles and texts is to be questioned, and they underplay ambiguities and gloss over the traces of discordance in the meanings of phrases in their subscription to an order in which the global is to be distinguished from, and prioritised over, the sub-global. The upshot is that the claims of global theory are disturbed by the twists and turns of cultural hybridity, post-colonial conflict and a hermeneutic suspicion of authorial omniscience. On the one hand, global theorists set aside the grand narratives of Hegel and Marx or consign them to the dustbin of modernity. On the other hand, globalisation is presumed to operate on auto-pilot, directing the course of history, and underpinning a normative agenda by which nationalism and the nation-state are served notice of redundancy. The antimonies of global theory indicate the unfinished business of modernity. The spectres of Marx haunt both Marx’s texts and his contemporary global critics.31 Derrida urges that Marx’s dismissal of spectres should be deconstructed so as to retain the spectral as an indeterminate critical agency, interrogating the claims and postures of a new global order.32 One direction for global theory to take so as to recognise the predicament posed by its generality and the particularity of the phenomena with which it deals is to negotiate the possibilities by returning to Kant. This return, however, should not revisit the Kant of cosmopolitan right and the quest for a determinate cosmopolitanism. The Kant to which it might turn is the Kant of the Third Critique, who frames the possibility of aesthetic judgement without determinate criteria, and who interprets history in the light of an aestheticised teleology which operates in a regulative, fallibilist style. Kant’s analysis of indeterminate judgement in Critique of Judgement is an inspiration for seminal and intriguing works of postmodernism, notably Lyotard’s The Differend and Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime.33 In The Differend Lyotard intimates that the way phrases are linked is radically indeterminate, and similarly, he takes the subscription of phrase regimes to genres of discourse to be under-determined, so that there is no determinate way to shape


Conclusion 175


6/14/2011 12:12:38 PM


or control interpretive acts. Lyotard invokes Kant’s critical review of reason and the separation between discursive styles to intimate a lack of a meta-language whereby language can be codified, compared and assimilated to some common purpose.34 Lyotard identifies an intractable incommensurability between scientific, aesthetic, moral and political criteria, but suggests an indeterminate Kantian way of judging between them.35 In Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime he concentrates on Kant’s aesthetic of the sublime to indicate how what resists rational discrimination may be susceptible to an aesthetic sense that reaches beyond words.36 Global theory tends to deal in generalities and to gloss over how its general explanations and cosmopolitan commitments raise issues of judgement, whereby demands of different orders are to be invoked in distinctive contexts, which are indeterminate and akin to the aesthetic judgements that are analysed by Kant and Lyotard. In his discussions of the contemporary world order following the fall of communism and in the aftermath of 9/11, Derrida critiques the rigidities of contemporary ideology in ways that invoke a Kantian sense of the critical limits to reason. In Rogues Derrida challenges the rhetorical designation of some states as being rogue because of its misleading binary separation of paradigmatic democratic states from their designated unprincipled opposites. The motivating assumption behind the formulation is identified to reside in its celebration of the forms of order and democracy, which are maintained by dominant Western global powers. But for Derrida, democracy is not completed in the current international global order. The human rights regime, which constitutes the ideological force of the current international order, is neither to be decried nor held to be paradigmatic. Derrida, maintains that there is ‘a freedom of play, an opening of indetermination and indecidability, in the very concept of democracy, in the interpretation of democracy.’37 In ‘The Force of Law: “The Mystical Foundations of Authority” ’, Derrida invokes the metaphorical ghost that reappears in Specters of Marx to suggest the undecidability of law and its lack of closure. He observes, ‘The undecidable remains caught, lodged, at least as a ghost – but an essential ghost – in every decision. Its ghostliness deconstructs from within any assurance of presence, any certitude or supposed criteriology’.38 In deconstructing law, justice, democracy and the promise of finality that is maintained in a neo-liberal world order, Derrida points


176


6/14/2011 12:12:39 PM

to the indeterminacy of these orders and promises. In so doing he refers to a democracy to come, a promise which is always beyond any determinate form. In imagining this endless process of interpretation that forestalls the fulfilment of democracy, which forms the false prospectus of the new global order, Derrida invokes Kant’s notion of a regulative idea; an idea that is postulated on he horizon of thinking so as to order its judgements. The regulative idea is operative in Kant’s Third Critique in order to allow for indeterminate judgements. Derrida, like Lyotard, is attracted to the Kantian device of a regulative idea, but resists its appeal because of his reservations over its imitation of completeness.39 As Beardsworth notes in a perceptive review of Derrida’s critique of predecessors, ‘The Derridean promise of democracy amounts to both the affirmation of the Idea and the acknowledgement of the violence in this very affirmation.’40 Derrida’s references to Kant show how he is alert to the possibilities of bringing modern ghosts to bear upon contemporary global ideology. His invocation of Kant is equivocal, just as his invocation of Marx does not imply an uncritical acceptance of Marx’s ideas, but he recognises how past theorists may disturb contemporary assumptions.41 In deprecating their connections with modern predecessors, global theorists mask aspects of their own theoretical identity. Marx’s name is not even whispered, and yet his ideas are everywhere. Hegel is rejected as an antiquated, hapless logician, and yet the Hegelian conception of recognition remains of unrecognised relevance to global theory. On the one hand, global theorists do not recognise the provenance of their ideas in preceding theory, and on the other hand, they tend to reify their object of study, in imagining a world that is innocent of recognitive cultural frameworks. Postmodern and post-structural theorists are right to question and to highlight the contestability of modern theories, and yet as Derrida shows, modern theorists such as Kant and Marx can disturb and complicate contemporary assumptions. Global theory is too quick to dispense with modern thought. Global theory itself replicates many of the features of modern thought, notably its synoptic social perspectives, its general schemes of historical development and its constructivist reading of human identity. Moreover, the particular standpoints of Kant, Hegel and Marx offer exemplary yet distinctive normative positions on the roles of moral principles, nation-states and economic forces


Conclusion 177


6/14/2011 12:12:39 PM


in global development that remain relevant to contemporary discussions of global political possibilities. The theories of Kant, Hegel and Marx offer constructive synoptic readings of modern society which prefigure contemporary global theories. The scale of their theories maps the intensive and extensive relations between human activities in a world that is continually being constructed and reconstructed. Kant, Hegel and Marx offer conceptual models for the mapping of contemporary global processes, and their identification of humanity’s constructive and reflexive powers informs the schemes of contemporary global theorists. Global theorists, however, also share with their modern predecessors a tendency to gloss over refractory phenomena. In his interview with Jean-Louis Houdebine and Guy Scarpetta in Positions, Derrida explains how his approach differs from Hegel’s. He observes, ‘If there were a definition of differance, it would precisely be the limit, the interruption, the destruction of the Hegelian releve wherever it operates.’42 Derrida emphasises how his deconstructive operations undermine the developmental inclusive aspects of dialectical thinking. Deconstruction constitutes a valuable counter to the generality and inclusiveness of Hegel, and more generally, it serves as a reminder of the pitfalls of modern theory. The holistic accounts of the world of Kant, Hegel and Marx, however, should not be abandoned. As Derrida himself intimates, they can be deployed in dissonant ways, upsetting and reconfiguring aspects of the present, for instance, global theory. Judgements on the present should allow for multiple and dialectical ways of connecting forms of recognising global relations. Kant, Hegel and Marx offer readings of modernity that bear upon the ways in which contemporary global issues are to be interpreted. Derrida’s reading of neo-liberal global order welcomes the haunting presence of Marx because it disturbs the closure of that order. As Dillon observes, ‘Derrida’s messianic – affirmatory promise –fundamentally contests, for example, the ‘to come’ of global liberal capitalism; it also opens up, even if it does not much pursue, the fundamental difficulty that Islam has with the political economy and cultural entailments of the modern promise.’43 Contestation of the global present involves dialogue with modern predecessors, but there can and should be no closure, for democracy or justice are not to be completed. It is the


178


6/14/2011 12:12:39 PM

Conclusion 179


aporetic condition of justice that the law demands and resists the particularities with which it is associated in time.44 The particular ways in which the current global order is to be conceived or challenged are enhanced by invoking Kantian, Hegelian and Marxist idioms, even if these idioms do not foreclose on a global future.


6/14/2011 12:12:39 PM

Notes

1. For short introductions to the range and impact of global theory see, A. Appadurai (ed), Globalization (Durham NC and London, Duke University Press, 2001); M. Steger, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003); D. Zolo, Globalisation: An Overview (Totton, Hampshie, ECPR, 2007); D. Held and A. McGrew, Globalization Theory (Cambridge UK, Polity, 2007), and R. Robertson, Globalization, Social Theory and Global Culture (London, Sage, 1992) 2. This book will deal with these divisions. Ideologically, distinct versions of globalisation theory include neo-liberal, social democratic and radical variants. See K. Ohmae The Borderless World (London, Harper Collins, 1992); D. Held, Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus (Cambridge UK and Malden MA, Polity Press, 2004.), and M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (Cambridge MA and London, Harvard University Press, 2000). Global theorists differ in other ways than their ideological orientation, for example on how they periodise the global and on the extent to which global developments are susceptible of causal analysis. 3. J. Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory (London and New York, Verso, 2000). 4. Ibid., Chs. 2 and 3. Later articles by Rosenberg include J. Rosenberg, ‘Globalization theory: a post-mortem,’ International Politics, 42(1), 2005 and J. Rosenberg, ‘Why is there no international historical sociology,’ European Journal of International Relations, 12 (3), 2006. 5. See M. Hardt, and A. Negri Empire; A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1990); M. Albrow, The Global Age (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1996); U. Beck, Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy translated by Kathleen Cross (Cambridge UK and Malden MA, Polity Press, 2005). 6. Lyotard is the most notable postmodern critic of modernity and modern theory, and it can be argued that he presents a sketch of modern theory that is as general and sweeping as the grand narratives of modernity that he indicts. See J-F, Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi (Manchester, UK, Manchester University Press, 1984). For a subsequent discussion, see J-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982–1985, trans. D. Barry, B. Maher, J. Pefanis, V. Spate and M. Thomas, ed. J. Pefanis and M. Thomas (London, Turnaround, 1992). For criticism of Lyotard, see G.K. Browning, Lyotard and the End of Grand Narratives (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2000).


1 Introduction

180

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_10_not.indd 180

6/14/2011 12:12:44 PM

7. See H-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, translation revised by J. Weinschamer and D. G. Marshall, (London, Sheed and Ward, 1975), pp. 438–474. 8. In Of Grammatology Derrida observes that an author can always say, ‘more, less, or something other than what he would mean or want to say.’ J. Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 144 9. See J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity trans. F. Lawrence (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987) 10. The thinking of Kant, Hegel and Marx has permeated subsequent theoretical discourse. Aspects of their impact are so fundamental that they are seldom focused upon. For instance, Kant’s critical review of metaphysics establishes a critical standpoint that remains of importance in all critical thinking, and Marx’s critique of capital influences all subsequent critical discourse on capitalism. 11. For the continued impact of Aristotelianism, see K. Knight, Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre (Cambridge UK and Malden MA, Polity Press, 2007). 12. The most distinguished recent account of Marx as framing a technological theory of history is that developed by Cohen. See G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1978). 13. See M. Hardt and A. Negri Empire. 14. See M. Hardt and A. Negri Empire; A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, M. Albrow, The Global Age; M. Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Oxford and Cambridge MA, Blackwell, 1996–2004). Volume 1 The Rise of the Network Society (1996, 2nd edition 2000); Volume 2: The Power of Identity (1997, 2nd edition 2004). Volume 3 The End of Millennium (1998, 2nd edition 2000); J. Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave/Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2005); D. Held and A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt and J. Perraton, Global Transformations (Cambridge UK, Polity Press 1999); D. Held and A. McGrew, ‘The great globalization debate’ in The Global Transformations Reader (Cambridge MA, Polity Press, 1990); S. Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York, The New Press, 1998). See also J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1999) and J. Habermas, ‘Kant’s idea of perpetual peace with the benefit of two hundred years’ hindsight’, in J. Bohman and M. Lutz- Bachman (eds) Perpetual Peace; Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (Massachussets Institute of Technology, MIT Press, 1997) 15. See J. Derrida, Specters of Marx (New York and London, Routledge, 1994). 16. See M. Albrow, The Global Age. 17. See A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity. 18. For a Kantian-inspired account of the possibilities of deepening forms of cosmopolitanism and improvements to democratic institutions, see D. Held, Cosmopolitanism: Issues and Realities (Cambridge UK and Malden MA, Polity Press, 2010)


Notes 181


6/14/2011 12:12:44 PM

Notes

19. See J. Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction. For a classic, and to my mind convincing, account of the conceptual interrelations between base and superstructure in Marx, precluding effective causal analysis, see S. Lukes, ‘Can the base be distinguished from the superstructure?’, in D. Miller and L. Siedentop, The Nature of Political Theory (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986). 20. Strong forms of cosmopolitanism are advocated by M.C. Nussbaum, ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’ in J. Cohen (ed), For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Boston, Beacon Press, 1996) and B. Barry, ‘International society from a cosmopolitan perspective’ in D. Mapel and T. Nardin (eds) International Society: Diverse Ethical Perspectives (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998). Held professes to take a middle position between thick and thin forms of cosmopolitanism, but he puts allegiance to principles applying to all humanity above cultural interpretations of those principles, and so he is to be regarded as a strong cosmopolitan, on my reading of cosmopolitanism. See, D. Held, Cosmopolitanism: Issues and Reality, Chapter 2. 21. See J. Habermas, ‘Kant’s idea of perpetual peace with the benefit of two hundred years’ hindsight’ and D. Held, ‘Cosmopolitan democracy and the global order: the new agenda in, in J. Bohman and M. Lutz-Bachman (eds) Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal 22. See, for instance, D. Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), and D. Miller, ‘Against global democracy’ in K. Breen and S. O’Neill (eds) After the Nation? Critical Reflections on Nationalism and Postnationalism (Basingstoke UK and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). See also M. Moore, ‘National commitments and universal duties: on the interrelationship between domestic and global justice’, in K. Breen and S. O’Neill (eds) After the Nation? Critical Reflections on Nationalism and Postnationalism (Basingstoke UK and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 23. See G. Monbiot, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order (London, Harper Perennial, 2003, and N. Klein, No Logo (London, Flamingo, 2000). 24. See G. Monbiot, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order, Ch. 1.25. On reflexivity, see the work of Beck and also the essays in U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge MA, Polity Press, , 1994); U. Beck, The Risk Society; U. Beck, Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk, (Cambridge MA, Polity, 1995) 26. See C. Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts: An Essay on Political Theory, Its Inheritance and the History of Ideas (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 92–142. 27. See C. Hay and D. Marsh, ‘Introduction: demystifying globalization’ in C. Hay and D. Marsh (eds) Demystifying Globalization (Basingstoke and New York, Macmillan, 2000), p. 8. 28. Ibid., p.9


182


6/14/2011 12:12:44 PM

29. See B. Axford, ‘In at the death? Reflections on Justin Rosenberg’s “postmortem” on globalization’, Globalizations, vol. 4, No. 2, June 2007. In this review article Axford critiques Rosenberg’s critique for relying on a problematic Marxist perspective and for abstracting from the complexity and variety of studies of globalisation, such as the focus on networks and relational scales in P. Dicken, P. Kelly and H. Yeung, ‘Chains and networks, territories and scales: towards a relational framework for analyzing the global economy’ Global Networks 1, 2001. This review is considered and thoughtful, though questions remain about large-scale theories of globalisation as well as about Rosenberg’s own standpoint.

2 Kant: Cosmopolitan Reason, Progress and Global Responsibility 1. The introductory essay, ‘Kant’s cosmopolitan ideal in “Toward perpetual peace”: Historical reconstructions’ by J. Bohman and M. Lutz-Bachman in their edited volume Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal sets out the significance and contemporary relevance of Kant’s political theory. See J. Bohman and M. Lutz-Bachman (eds), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1997). 2. The extent to which a turn towards Kant is at the same time a turn away from Hegel and Marx and historicised or postmodern accounts of social and political life is evident in Cavallar’s Kant and the Theory and Practice of International Right, where he portrays Kant as a historical and practical theorist but still separates him sharply from postmodernism and Hegel and Marx by dint of his commitment to reason. See G. Cavallar, Kant and the Theory and Practice of International Right (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1999). 3. See I. Kant, Critique of Judgement trans. J. C. Meredith (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1969). 4. See I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason trans. P. Guyer and A. Wood (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997). 5. The later Habermas aims to continue the Enlightenment inheritance by repudiating postmodernism and mature Hegelianism and by developing Kantian cosmopolitanism in the context of globalisation. Held develops in tandem theories of cosmopolitanism and globalisation, where he signals the significance of Kant. See D. Held, ‘Cosmopolitan democracy and the global order: A new agenda’, and J. Habermas, ‘Kant’s idea of perpetual peace, with the benefit of two hundred years hindsight’ in J. Bohman and M. Lutz-Bachman (eds), Perpetual Peace – Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal 6. See M. Albrow, The Global Age (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1996). 7. I. Kant, ‘Perpetual peace: A philosophical sketch’ in Kant’s Political Writings ed. H. Reiss, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 105–106.


Notes 183


6/14/2011 12:12:45 PM

Notes

8. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. 9. For discussion of the relationship between Kant’s theory of morals and his anthropology see T. Brooks, Hegel’s Political Philosophy – A Systematic Reading of the Philosophy of Right (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ch. 4; K. Westphal, ‘Hegel’s critique of Kant’s moral world view’ Philosophical Topics, 19, 1991, pp. 133–176; K. Westphal, ‘Kant, Hegel and determining our duties’, Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik/Annual review of Law and Ethics, 13, 2005 pp. 335–354. 10. I. Kant, ‘The metaphysics of morals’, in Kant’s Political Writings, p. 134. 11. Ibid., p.132. 12. Ibid., p. 137. 13. Ibid., p.171. 14. I. Kant, ‘Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose’, in Kant’s Political Writings, p. 41. 15. I. Kant, Critique of Judgement, pp. 96–98. 16. I. Kant, ‘An answer to the question: “What is Enlightenment?” ’ in Kant’s Political Writings. 17. I. Kant, Critique of Judgement, pp. 15–18. 18. Ibid., p. 54. 19. Ibid., p. 85). 20. Ibid., p. 91. 21. Ibid., p. 94. 22. Ibid., pp. 92–98. 23. Ibid., particularly pp. 11 and 4. 24. See G. Cavallar, Kant and the Theory and Practice of International Right, pp. 61–80. 25. See I. Kant, ‘An answer to the question: “What is Enlightenment?” ’ 26. See D. Held, ‘Cosmopolitan democracy and the global order: A new agenda’, and J. Habermas, ‘Kant’s idea of perpetual peace with the benefit of two hundred years hindsight.’ 27. See D. Held, ‘Cosmopolitan democracy and the global order: A new agenda’, and J. Habermas, ‘Kant’s idea of perpetual peace with the benefit of two hundred years hindsight.’ 28. See T. Brooks, Hegel’s Political Philosophy – A Systematic Reading of the Philosophy of Right (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ch. 4; K. Westphal, ‘Hegel’s critique of Kant’s moral world view’ Philosophical Topics, 19, 1991, pp. 133–176; K. Westphal, ‘Kant, Hegel and determining our duties’ Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik/Annual review of Law and Ethics, 13. 29. W. Kersting, ‘Politics, freedom and order: Kant’s political philosophy’ in P. Guyer (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 347. 30. Ibid., p. 357. 31. I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason trans. and ed. L. Beck (Oxford, Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993), p. 61. 32. J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1999).


184


6/14/2011 12:12:45 PM

33. See S. Caney, Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory) Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005). 34. See G. Cavallar, Kant and the Theory and Practice of International Right. 35. R. Steger, Globalisation – A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 6. 36. J-F. Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime trans. E. Rottenberg (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1994). 37. D. Burnham, An Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Judgement (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2000), pp. 122–142. 38. See D. Burnham, An Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Judgement, pp. 140– 142 and I. Kant, Critique of Judgement, p. 40. 39. J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993), p. 43. 40. See J-F. Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. 41. S. Anderson-Gold, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2001), p. 8. 42. Ibid., pp. 80–81. See also J. Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1989). 43. Hutchings traces the influences of Kant’s thought on Habermas, Foucault, Arendt and Lyotard as well as exploring its impact on contemporary international relations theory and feminism. Her message is that Kant cannot be pigeon-holed easily, for his thought aims to recognise and resolve its own limits. K. Hutchings, Kant, Critique and Politics (London and New York, Routledge, 1996). 44. J-F. Lyotard, The Differend – Phrases in Dispute trans. G. Van Den Abeele (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1989). 45. H. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (Brighton, Harvester Press, 1982). 46. In his later work on ethics and politics, Derrida invokes Kant’s notion of a regulative idea to guide conduct, to imagine a way of aligning conduct with what is assumed to be right and proper without a fixed rule or idea to guide it. There is no exhaustion of possible ways of acting and yet we must act and the Kantian assumption of a regulative idea is tempting for Derrida. See his discussion in the interview, ‘Autoimmunity: Real and symbolic suicides – a dialogue with Jacques Derrida’ in G. Borradori (ed.) Philosophy in a Time of Terror – Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 134–135.

3 Hegel: Global Theory and Recognition


Notes 185

1. For the variety of ideological positions that can be maintained, see K. Ohmae, Borderless World (New York, Free Press, 1990); D. Held, Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004); J. Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (New York, Norton, 2002); and M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2000).


6/14/2011 12:12:45 PM

Notes

2. See M. Albrow, The Global Age (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1996). 3. See D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1995). 4. See U. Beck, Power in the Global Age (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2002) and D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. 5. See J. Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2000). 6. For critical commentary on globalisation see C. Hay, Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2002) and C. Hay and D. Marsh (eds), Demystifying Globalization (Basingstoke and New York, Macmillan Press, 2000). 7. See D. Held, A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt and J. Perraton, Global Transformations. (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1999). 8. See D. Held et al., Global Transformations; D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance, chs 1 and 2. 9. See D.Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance and U. Beck, Power in the Global Age. 10. See M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire. 11. G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit ed. James Baillie (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1949). 12. See A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995) and J. Habermas, ‘Struggles for recognition in the democratic constitutional state’ in A. Gutmann (ed.) Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994). 13. See, for instance, C. Taylor, ‘The politics of recognition’ in C. Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1995) and A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. 14. See C. Taylor, ‘The politics of recognition’, pp. 249–250 and S. Thompson, The Political Theory of Recognition (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2006), ch. 3. 15. C. Taylor, ‘The politics of recognition’, p. 248. 16. N. Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition (London, Routledge, 1997), pp. 11–41. 17. I. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990). 18. See N. Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the’Postsocialist’ Condition. See also G. Browning and A. Kilmister, Critical and Post-Critical Political Economy (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2006), ch. 8. 19. See R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1945). 20. G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History trans. Leo Rauch (Indianapolis and Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Company, 1988), p. 6. 21. Ibid.


186


6/14/2011 12:12:45 PM

22. See, R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History and G. Browning, Rethinking R. G. Collingwood: Philosophy, Politics and The Unity of Theory and Practice (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2004). 23. T. Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000). 24. G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 37–74. 25. Ibid., pp. 322–323. 26. Ibid., p. 210. 27. Ibid., p. 212. 28. Ibid., pp. 212–216. 29. Ibid., p. 212. 30. Ibid., p. 214. 31. Ibid., p. 212. 32. Ibid., pp. 214–215. 33. Ibid., pp. 216–223. 34. See D.Held et al., Global Transformations. 35. See M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire. 36. See D. Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007).

4

Marx and Modernity

1. K. Marx, ‘Economic and philosophical manuscripts’, in K. Marx, Early Writings (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1975), p. 327. 2. Ibid., pp. 300–330. 3. Ibid., pp. 351–352. 4. Ibid., pp. 327–328. 5. Ibid., pp. 328–329. 6. Ibid., pp. 370–400. 7. For a helpful account of Marx’s reliance upon Feuerbach at this stage of his intellectual career, see D. McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (New York, F.A. Praeger, 1969). See also D. McLellan, Karl Marx (New York, Harper Row, 1973) and M. McIvor, ‘The young Marx and German idealism: Revisiting the doctoral thesis’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 46(3), 3, July 2008. 8. See Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, trans. A.V. Miller, foreword by J.N. Findlay (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1970). 9. K. Marx, ‘Economic and philosophical manuscripts’, p. 391. 10. See I. Fraser, Hegel, Marx and the Concept of Needs (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1998); C. Berry, ‘Need and egoism in Marx’s early writings’ in M. Cowling and L. Wilde (eds) Approaches to Marx (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia, Open University Press, 1980). 11. K. Marx, ‘Economic and philosophical manuscripts’, p. 329. 12. Ibid., pp. 320–380. On Marx’s notion of human identity, see also C.J. Arthur, The Dialectics of Labour (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1986).


Notes 187


6/14/2011 12:12:46 PM

Notes

13. See, for instance, A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1990). 14. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge MA, The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2009) p. 170. 15. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1976). 16. See G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978) and J. Elster, Making Sense of History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985). 17. G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, pp. 63–88. 18. See Cohen’s discussion of functional explanation in ibid., pp. 249–288. 19. Miller provides an informed and informative account of how there is a discrepancy between Marx’s generalised statements about the course of history and his detailed accounts of historical change. See R. Miller, Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power and History (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1984). 20. For a strong statement seemingly supporting a technological theory of history see K. Marx, The Holy Family. See also The German Ideology where there are countervailing statements. On the one hand Marx and Engels appear to separate forces of production from relations of production or forms of social intercourse and assign causal priority to the former. On the other hand, they envisage relations of production/ forms of social intercourse as themselves constituting forces of production. They also indicate that all elements of social life may be seen as interacting with one another. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 43. 21. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 43. 22. For analysis of Marx’s relations to young Hegelians and how these relations shape the expression of Marx and Engels’ views on a variety of subjects, see The German Ideology; see also G.K. Browning, ‘The German Ideology: The theory of history and the history of theory’ History of Political Thought, xiv(3), 1993). 23. See L. Althusser, trans. B. Brewer, For Marx (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1960). 24. For convincing accounts of the unity between the early and late expressions of Marx’s thought, see D. McLellan, Karl Marx, S. Avineri, Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1968) and C.J. Arthur, The Dialectics of Labour. 25. See K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 142. For a balanced account of Marx’s theory of history and a reasoned assessment of its status, which recognises its ambiguities, see S.H. Rigby, Marxism and History – A Critical Introduction (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987). 26. J. Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). 27. J. Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory (London and New York, Verso, 2000). 28. J. Rosenberg, ‘Globalization theory: A post-mortem’ International Politics, 42(1), 2005. J. Rosenberg, ‘Why is there no international


188


6/14/2011 12:12:46 PM

48. 49. 50. 51.

historical sociology?’ European Journal of International Relations, 12(3), 2006, p. 33. G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic trans. A.V. Miller (London, George, Allen and Unwin, 1976), p. 139. K. Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974). The Hegelian character of Marx’s argument is well brought out by Uchida in F. Uchida, Marx’s Grundrisse and Hegel’s Logic (London, Routledge, 1993). K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 102. Ibid., p. 216. Ibid., p. 261. Ibid., p. 301. Ibid., p. 270. K. Marx, ‘Economic and philosophical manuscripts’, p. 348. See ibid., ‘Communism is the act of positing as the negation of the negation ...’ p. 358. See A. Smith, The Logic of Marx’s Capital: Replies to Hegel’s Criticisms (New York, State University of New York Press, 1991). K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1971). K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1970). For the classic text in the dishing of communism after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, see F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1992). Amongst other examples of this transformation in tone, see the opening chapter in A. Negri, Goodbye Mr. Socialism. Negri in conversation with Raf Scelsi and translated from the Italian by Peter Thomas (New York, Seven Stories Press, 2008). M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA, Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 131–189. In the Grundrisse Marx qualifies his materialism by observing that social reality is relational and hence is to be grasped by the use of concepts. See K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 164. For insightful commentary see also B. Ollman, Dialectical Investigations (London, Routledge, 1993). A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 142. J. Rosenberg, ‘Globalization theory: A post-mortem’; J. Rosenberg, ‘Why is there no international historical sociology?’ J. Derrida, Specters of Marx (New York and London, Routledge, 1994), p. 33. Ibid., pp. 85–86. Ibid., pp. 32–33. Ibid., p. 107.

5

Global Theory: Transformation

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44.

45. 46. 47.


Notes 189

1. K. Ohmae, The Borderless World (London, Harper Collins, 1992), p. 171. 2. Ibid., p.172.


6/14/2011 12:12:46 PM

Notes

3. K. Ohmae, The End of the Nation-State: The Rise of Regional Economies (New York, The Free Press, 1995), p. 4 and for general indictment of the continued partisanship of nation-states, see also K. Ohmae, The Borderless World, p. 182. 4. A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1990). Notwithstanding his critique of Giddens, Rosenberg emphasises the centrality of Giddens’s work to the discourse of globalisation. See J. Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory (London and New York, Verso, 2000). 5. A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, p. 51. 6. Ibid., p. 4. 7. Ibid. p. 4. 8. See, for instance, M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London, Allen and Unwin, 1930); E. Durkheim, Suicide (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952); F. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994); M. Heidegger, Being in Time (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967). See also the writings of Kant, Hegel and Marx referred to in preceding chapters. 9. A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, p. 14. 10. Ibid., p. 21. 11. Ibid., p. 64. 12. Ibid., p. 64. 13. Ibid., pp. 72 and 76. 14. A. Giddens, Runaway World (London, Profile Books, 2002), p. 2. 15. A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991), pp. 10–35. 16. Ibid., pp. 70–109. 17. See A. Giddens, ‘Introduction’ in A. Giddens (ed.) The Global Third Way (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2001), pp. 1–23. 18. U. Beck, Risk Society – Towards a New Modernity (London and New York, Sage, 1992), p. 10. 19. Ibid., p. 10. 20. U. Beck, ‘The reinvention of politics: Towards a theory of reflexive modernization’ in U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash, Reflexive Modernization – Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994), pp. 44–47. 21. U. Beck, Power in the Global Age – A New Global Political Economy trans. Kathleen Cross (Cambridge and Malden MA, Polity Press, 2005). 22. M. Albrow, The Global Age (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1996), p. 78. 23. Ibid., p. 79. 24. M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Malden MA, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000). 25. Ibid., p. 492. 26. See A. Negri, ‘The time of common freedom’ in A. Negri, The Porcelain Workshop – For a New Grammar of Politics trans. Noura Waddell (Los Angeles CA, Semiotext(e), 2007).


190


6/14/2011 12:12:46 PM

27. G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic trans. A.V. Miller (London and New York, George, Allen and Unwin, 1969), pp. 109–157. Hegel takes determinate being as the outcome of the dialectical oscillation between the categories of being and nothing, so that particular determinate things are always positively something and negatively not something else. 28. J. Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory, pp. 87–157. 29. A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, p. 5. 30. Ibid., p. 170. 31. Ibid., p. 63. 32. J. Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory, pp. 132–157. 33. See A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity; U. Beck, Power in the Global Age – A New Global Political Economy. 34. M. Albrow, The Global Age, p. 108. 35. Ibid., p. 55. 36. Ibid., p. 98. 37. See F. Stalder, Manuel Castells (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2006). 38. S. Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York, The New Press, 1998), p. ix. 39. D. Held, ‘Globalization, corporate practice and cosmopolitan social standards’ Contemporary Political Theory, 1(1), 2002, p. 61. 40. D. Held and A. McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization (Cambridge and Malden MA, Polity Press, 2007), p. 170. 41. P. Hirst and G. Thompson, Globalization in Question (Cambridge and Malden MA, Polity Press, 1996). 42. D. Held and A. McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization, pp. 160–180. 43. Ibid., p. 170. 44. See D. Held, Global Covenant (Cambridge and Malden MA, Polity Press, 2004) and D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State To Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1995). 45. D. Held and A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt and J. Perraton, Global Transformations (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1999), p. 26. 46. Ibid., p. 26. 47. P. Taylor, ‘Izations of the world: Americanization, modernization and globalization’ in C. Hay and D. Marsh (eds) Demystifying Globalization (Basingstoke and New York, Macmillan), 2000, pp. 50–51. 48. See J. Scholte, Globalization – A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 4. For a note on the change in tone if not in substance, see the Preface to the Second Edition, pp. xiii–xv) and J. Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory, pp. 17–45. 49. J. Scholte, Globalization – A Critical Introduction, p. 122. 50. Ibid., p. 59. 51. Ibid., pp. 54–56. 52. J. Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory, pp. 3–9. 53. J. Rosenberg, ‘Globalization theory: A post-mortem’ International Politics, 42(1), 2005. 54. A. Giddens Runaway World, p. 13. 55. A. Giddens, The Global Third Way Debate, p. 17.


Notes 191


6/14/2011 12:12:46 PM

Notes

56. G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic, pp. 557–595. 57. See M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude-War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London and New York, Penguin Press, 2004). In this book and elsewhere Hardt and Negri repudiate expressly their links with dialectical predecessors while operating with arguments that can be termed dialectical. 58. A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity – Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991).

6


1. A. Giddens, Runaway World – How Globalisation is Reshaping Our Lives (London, Profile Books, 2002), p. 19. 2. See the collection of papers in K. Breen and S. O’Neill, After the Nation – Critical Reflections on Nationalism and Postnatonalism (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2010). 3. K. Ohmae, The Borderless World – Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy (London, Harper Collins, 1994). 4. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (Cambridge MA and London, Harvard University Press, 2000). 5. D. Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007). Miller also highlights the practical difficulties in establishing democratic and hence legitimate means of global governance. See D. Miller, ‘Against global democracy’ in K. Breen and S. O’Neill (eds) After the Nation? Critical Reflections on Nationalism and Postnationalism (Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 6. J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2000). 7. D. Held and A. McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007), p. 213. 8. Ibid., p. 216. 9. Ibid., p. 216. 10. D. Held, Global Covenant – The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus (Cambridge and New York, Polity Press, 2004), p. 3. 11. For Held’s most considered account of the range of global connections maintained in contemporary society, see D. Held, A.G. McGrew, D. Goldblatt and J. Perraton, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1999). 12. D. Held, Cosmopolitanism – Ideals and Realities (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010), p. 142. See also D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order –From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995). 13. D. Held, Cosmopolitanism – Ideals and Realities, p. 144. 14. D. Held and A. McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization, p. 176. 15. D. Held, Cosmopolitanism – Ideals and Realities, p. 92. 16. Ibid., pp. 67–93. 17. See D. Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice.


192


6/14/2011 12:12:46 PM

18. J. Habermas, ‘Two hundred years hindsight’ in J. Bohman and M. LutzBachman, Perpetual Peace – Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge MA and London, MIT Press, 1997), p. 126. 19. J. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge and New York, Polity Press, 1996), p. 443. 20. J. Habermas, Inclusion of the Other – Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge and New York, Polity Press, 1998), p. 118. 21. See J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity trans. F. Lawrence (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987). 22. R. Fine, Cosmopolitanism (London and New York, Routledge, 2007), p. 58. 23. U. Beck, Risk Society – Towards a New Modernity (London and New York, Sage, 1992), p. 22. 24. U. Beck, Power in the Global Age – A New Global Political Economy (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2005), p. 5. 25. Ibid., pp. 1–25. 26. Ibid., p. 5. 27. See, for instance, S. Caney, ‘Cosmopolitan justice and equalizing opportunities’ in T. Pogge (ed.) Global Justice (Oxford and New York, Blackwell, 2001). See also ‘T. Pogge, ‘An egalitarian law of peoples’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, 23(3), pp. 89–22. 28. M. Nussbaum, ‘Patriotism and cosmopolitanism’ in M. Nussbaum (ed.) For Love of Country – Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Boston MA, Beacon Press, 1996), p. 13. See also M. Nussbaum, ‘Kant and cosmopolitanism’ in J. Bohman and M. Lutz- Bachmann (eds) Perpetual Peace – Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge MA and London, MIT Press, 1997). 29. S. Benhabib, ‘Another cosmopolitanism’ in S. Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism with J. Waldron, B. Honig and W. Kymlicka (ed.) R. Post (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 19. 30. Ibid., pp. 21–22. 31. Ibid., p. 27. 32. See J. Derrida, ‘Signature, event, context’ in J. Derrida, Limited Inc. (Evanston IL, Northwestern University Press, 1988). 33. S. Benhabib, ‘Another cosmopolitanism’, p. 45. 34. Ibid., p. 71. 35. See, for instance, A. Appadurai (ed.), Globalization (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2001), in particular the essay by A. Appadurai, ‘Grassroots globalization and the research imagination.’ 36. See A. Dirlik, Global Modernity – Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, CO, Paradigm Publishers, 2007), p. 50. 37. R.J.C. Young, Postcolonialism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 4. 38. J. Gray, False Dawn – The Delusions of Global Capitalism (London, Granta Books, 2002). 40. J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples. 41. D. Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, p. 264. 42. Ibid., p. 266. 43. Ibid., p. 268.


Notes 193


6/14/2011 12:12:47 PM

Notes

44. J. Butler, ‘Universality in culture’ in M. Nussbaum (ed.) For Love of Country – Debating the Limits of Patriotism, p. 46. 45. B. Honig, ‘Another cosmopolitanism? Law and politics in the New Europe’ in S. Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism with J. Waldron, B. Honig and W. Kymlicka (ed.) R. Post, p. 110. 46. Ibid. p. 116. 47. B. Honig, Emergency Politics – Paradox, Law, Democracy (Princeton NJ and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2009), p. xvii. 48. K. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism – Ethics in A World of Strangers (London and New York, W.W. Norton and Company Inc., 2006), p. xv.

7


1. See G. Monbiot, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order (London, Harper Perennial, 2003), ch. 1; C. el-Ojeili and P. Hayden, Critical Theories of Globalization (Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and M. Hardt and A Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass, Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 102 2. D. Della Porta, ‘The Global Justice Movement: An Introduction’, in D. Della Porta (ed) The Global Justice Movement: Cross-National and Transnational Perspectives (Boulder, Col., Paradigm Publishers, 2007), p. 17 3. See M. Hardt and A. Negri. Empire (Harvard, Harvard University Press, 2000) and M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York, Penguin Press, 2004) 4. M. Kaldor, ‘Global Civil Society’, in D. Held and A. McGrew (eds) The Global Transformations Reader (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2003) 5. D. Held and A. McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization- Beyond the Great Divide (Cambridge, Malden MA., Polity Press, 2007), p. 201 6. J. Stiglitz, ‘The Global Economy: Interview with Stiglitz’ in N. Shaikh (ed.) The Present as History: Critical Perspectives on Global Power (New York, Chichester, Columbia University Press, 2007) pp. 54–67 7. S. Tormey, Anti-Capitalism: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford, Oneworld Publications, 2004), p. 122 8. See M. Woodin and C. Lucas, Green Alternative to Globalisation: A Manifesto (London, Pluto Press, 2004) 9. D. Wall, ‘Green economics: an introduction and research agenda’, in International Journal of Green Economics, Vol. 1, Nos. 1 and 2, 2006, p. 212 10. N. Klein, No Logo (London, Flamingo, 2000) 11. Ibid., p. xvii 12. Ibid., p. 446 13. N. Klein, Fences and Windows- Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (London, Flamingo, 2002, p. xiv 14. Ibid., p. 246 15. Ibid., p. 243


194


6/14/2011 12:12:47 PM

16. N. Klein, The Shock Doctrine- The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York, Metro Books, 2008) 17. G. Monbiot, Captive State- the Corporate Takeover of Britain (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000), p. 4 18. Ibid., p. 355 19. Ibid., p. 356 20. G. Monbiot, The Age of Consent- A Manifesto for a New World Order, p. 5 21. Ibid., p. 4 22. G. Monbiot, Heat – How to Stop the Planet Burning (London and New York, Allen Lane, 2006), p. 2 23. See G. Monbiot, Bring on the Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice (Canada, Anchor Canada, 2008) 24. C. el-Ojeili and P. Hayden, Critical Theories of Globalization (Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 33–37 25. See M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Boston and London, Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 64–65 26. See A. Negri, Empire and Beyond, trans. Ed Emery (Cambridge and Malden Ma, Polity Press, 2006); A. Negri, Goodbye Mr. Socialism- In conversation with Raf Valvola Scelsi trans. Peter Thomas (New York and London, Seven Stories Press, 2006); A. Negri, The Porcelain Workshop- For A New Grammar of Politics trans. Noura Wedell (Cambridge Mass. And London, MIT Press, 2008) and M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth 27. A. Negri, The Porcelain Workshop- For A New Grammar of Politics, p. 172 28. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 67–130 29. G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York, Columbia Press, 1994) 30. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari A Thousand Plateaus (London, Athlone Press, 1988), p. 32 31. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude – War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York, The Penguin Press, 2004) 32. A. Negri , Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitudo (2000) in Negri, A. (2003) Time for Revolution (New York and London, Continuum), pp. 233–234 33. A. Negri, Negri on Negri (London and New York, Routledge, 2000), p. 111 34. A. Negri, Empire and Beyond, p. 66 35. Se M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 119–131 36. Ibid., p. 224 37. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude – War and Democracy in the Age of Empire 38. See M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire, pp. 393–415 39. See A. Negri, Empire and Beyond pp. 33–37, M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude – War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, and M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 381–383 40. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire 41. Ibid. 42. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 240–243 43. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude – War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, p 60 44. A. Negri, Empire and Beyond, pp. 126–127


Notes 195


6/14/2011 12:12:47 PM

Notes

45. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude – War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, p. 62; for a critique see M. Bull, ‘You Can’t Build a New Society With a Stanley Knife’, in G. Balakrishnan Debating Empire (London, Verso, 2003), pp. 88–89 46. N. Thoburn, Deleuze, Marx and Politics, (London and New York: Routledge, 2005, p. 45. 47. See the following critics; T. Barkawi and M. Laffey, ‘Retrieving the Imperial: Empire and International Relations’, Millennium 31, no. 1; E. Laclau, ‘ Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles?’, in P. A. Passavant, J. Dean, Empire’s New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri, (New York and London, Routledge, 2004) p. 26 48. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 121–122 49. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire p. 59 50. A. Negri, Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse trans. H. Cleaver, M. Ryan and M. Viano (New York, Autonomedia, 1991), p. 183 51. A. Negri, The Constitution of Time (1997) in Negri, A. Time for Revolution (New York and London, Continuum, 2003), p. 29 52. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude – War and Democracy in the Age of Empire p. 146 53. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth, p. 140 54. A. Negri, Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitudo (2000) in A. Negri, Time for Revolution p. 234 55. See T. Carver, The Postmodern Marx (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1998), ch. 3; K. Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974) and K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976) 56. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 56 57. See N. Thoburn, Deleuze, Marx and Politics, and N. Dyer-Witheford, ‘Negri: General Intellect and Immaterial Labour’, in T. Murphy and A.-K. Mustapha, The Philosophy of Antonio Negri, (London, Pluto Press, 2005) 58. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire p. 44 59. Ibid., p. 49 60. Ibid., p. 44 61. Ibid., xiii 62. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude – War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, p. 240 63. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire p. 65 64. Ibid., p. 44 65. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (London, Dover Books, 1956) 66. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology. 67. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude – War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, p. 225 68. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy trans. E. S. Haldane and F. H. Simpson London, Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1892), vol. 2, p. 49 69. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic (London, George, Allen and Unwin, 1976) 70. M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire, p. 13


196


6/14/2011 12:12:47 PM

Notes 197

Ibid., p. 38 Ibid., p. 25 M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth, p. 172 M. Hardt. (2000) Interview with Thomas Dumm, ‘ Sovereignty, Multitudes, Absolute Democracy’, Theory and Event 4(3). 75. K. Marx, Grundrisse, ch. 1 76. A. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Immanence of Empire’, in Passavant, P.A. and J. Dean, Empire’s New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri, (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), p. 31 77. T. Carver, ‘Less Than Full Marx ...’, Political Theory, vol. 34, Number 2, June, 2006, p. 351

8 Conclusion: Deconstructing Modern and Global Theory 1. J. Derrida, Of Grammatology trans. and Introduction by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 144. 2. For an acute discussion of the problems of renouncing writing in favour of the spoken word, see J. Derrida, ‘Plato’s pharmacy’ in J. Derrida, Dissemination trans. and Introduction by Barbara Johnson (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1981). 3. J. Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 141–164. 4. See my discussion of influence and originality in the article, Gary Browning, ‘Agency and Influence in the History of Political Thought: The Agency of Influence and the Influence of Agency.’ Vol. xxxi. No. 2 Summer 2010. 5. J. Derrida, Specters of Marx – The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York and London, Routledge, 1994), p. 46. 6. Ibid., p. 45. 7. Ibid., p. 40. 8. Ibid., p. 97. 9. Ibid., p.105. 10. ‘Autoimmunity: Real and symbolic suicides – A dialogue with J. Derrida’ in G. Barradorri (ed.) Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 123. 11. For criticisms of Kant, see J. Bohman and M. Lutz-Bachman (eds), Perpetual Peace – Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge MA and London, MIT Press, 1997). For criticism of Hegel, see M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2000. 12. See M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge MA and London, Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 131–165. 13. See M. Hardt and A. Negri Empire and M. Albrow, The Global Age (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1996). 14. For a good critical discussion of Hegel’s patriarchy, see K. Hutchings, Hegel and Feminist Philosophy (Cambridge and Malden MA, Blackwell,


71. 72. 73. 74.


6/14/2011 12:12:47 PM

15. 16. 17. 18. 20.

21.

22.

23. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37.

Notes

2003). For Marx, see S. Himmelweit, ‘Reproduction and the materialist conception of history: A feminist critique’ in T. Carver (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Marx (Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1991). G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History. S. Anderson-Gold, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2001), p. viii. Ibid., p. vii. D. Archibugi, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Towards Cosmopolitan Democracy (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 213. See J. Scholte, Globalization – A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and J. Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory, (London and New York, Verso, 2000). For an interesting critique of Hegel, which focuses upon his dismissal of traditional or primitive cultures, see W. Conklin, Hegel’s Laws – The Legitimacy of a Modern Legal Order (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 2008). J-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1984). See F. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality ed. K. Ansell-Pearson, trans. C. Diethe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994). See J-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition; A Report on Knowledge and L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations trans. By G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1976). See the selection of writings, J. Derrida, A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds ed. with an Introduction and Notes by Peggy Kamuf (New York, Columbia University Press, 1991). See, J. Derrida, Specters of Marx. See the selection of writings in M. Foucault, The Foucault Reader ed. P. Rabinow (London, Penguin Books, 1986). For an informed and classic discussion of the cultural turn and its consequences, see N. Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on The ‘Postsocialist’ Condition (London, Routledge, 1997). M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth. J. Derrida, Specters of Marx, pp. 85–86. Ibid. p. 97. J-F. Lyotard, The Differend – Phrases in Dispute trans. G. Van Den Abbeele (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988) and J-F. Lyotard, Lessons on the Sublime trans. E. Rottenberg (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1994). J-F. Lyotard, The Differend – Phrases in Dispute. Ibid. J-F. Lyotard, Lessons on the Sublime. J. Derrida, Rogues – Two Essays on Reason (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 2005).


198


6/14/2011 12:12:47 PM

38. J. Derrida, ‘Force of law: The “mystical foundation of authority” in D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld and D Carlson (eds) Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (New York and London, Routledge, 1992), p. 24. 39. J. Derrida, Rogues – Two Essays on Reason, p. 25. 40. R. Beardsworth, Derrida and the Political (London and New York, Routledge), p. 68. 41. See ibid., chapter 2 for an incisive and critical discussion of Derrida’s reading of Kant, Hegel and Marx. 42. J. Derrida, Positions trans. Alan Bass (London, Continuum, 2002), interview with Jean-Louis Houdebine and Guy Scarpetta, p. 38. 43. M. Dillon, ‘Force [of] transformation’ in M. Fagan, L. Glorieux, I Hašimbegovic and M. Suetsugu (eds) Derrida: Negotiating the Legacy (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 84. 44. Beardsworth highlights the role of the aporia of time in Derrida’s deconstruction; see R. Beardsworth, Derrida and the Political. For discussion of the aporia of justice, see M. Dillon, ‘Force [of] Transformation’.


Notes 199


6/14/2011 12:12:47 PM

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to McGill University - PalgraveConnect - 2011-09-05 10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_10_not.indd 200

6/14/2011 12:12:47 PM

aesthetic(s) 30–31, 39, 40–41, 57, 128, 175 Africa 125 agency 12, 26, 29, 35, 38, 50, 53, 65, 66, 78, 111–112, 114, 128 agonism 10, 123, 128, 129 Albrow, Martin 3, 11, 44, 90, 92, 95, 97, 165 works: The Global Age 5 alienation 9, 70, 75–76, 79, 93, 107, 137 alterglobalisation 131 altermodernity 139, 151 Althusser, Louis 70 anarchist(s) 18, 98, 133 Ancient Greek 57 Anderson-Gold, Sharon 40, 168 works: Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights 40 animal(s) 64 anthropology 70 anti-capitalism 19, 133, 143, 170 anti-globalisation 130–131 Appiah, Kwame Anthony 129 Archibugi, Daniele 168 Arendt, Hannah 40–41 Works: Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy 41 Aristotle 63 Aristotleianism 63, 120 art 46, 65, 112 Asia 84, 125 Auschwitz 105 Autonomous Marxism 132–133 Axford, Barrie x Beardsworth, Richard 176 beauty 30–31 Beck, Ulrich 3, 11, 90, 92, 95, 97, 101, 105, 107, 118–120, 123, 129

works: Power in the Global Age 118, 119; The Risk Society; Towards a New Modernity 90, 118 Benhabib, Seyla 11, 108, 110, 120–124, 127, 129 works: Another Cosmopolitanism 128 Bentham, Jeremy 61 bio-political 18, 141, 148, 154 bourgeois 75 Brazil 157 Britain 119, 137 Bromley, Simon 169 Burnham, Douglas 39 business 84–85 Butler, Judith 122, 126 Cameron, David 100 Caney, Simon 120, 168 capital(ism) viii, 10, 17, 20, 69–70, 72–76, 78–80, 97, 105, 107, 113, 115, 135, 137–138, 147–149, 151–152, 154–157, 162, 168, 170, 178 Carver, Terrell 157 Castells, Manuel viii, 11, 91–92, 96, 97, 103, 165 causal analysis 1–2, 7–9, 12, 14–15, 30–32, 68, 70, 72, 79–80, 82, 94–96, 98–101, 103, 171 Cavallar, Georg 32, 37 Citizen(ship) 40, 53, 121–122, 126–128, 135, 144 city 96, 97 civil society 16, 46, 53, 59, 113, 119, 123, 127, 164, 170 civilisation 11 class 3, 53, 90, 119, 133, 140, climate change 137–138 Cohen, Gerald 68 Collingwood, R. G. x, 50 colonialism 18, 46


Index

201

10.1057/9780230308541 - Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri, Gary Browning 9780230_524736_11_ind.indd 201

6/14/2011 12:12:53 PM

Index

colonisation 22 commodification 135 commodity 74, 133 common, the 18, 142–143, 146, 148 communication 14, 23, 91, 100, 134, 154, 168 communism 62, 75–76, 83, 153, 167 community 28, 47, 58, 60, 92, 110, 121–123, 125 concept(ual) 2, 6, 8–10, 12–14, 18, 20, 24, 30, 44–45, 50, 52, 55, 57, 73. 83, 85, 95–96, 100, 102, 104, 121, 146, 156, 167, 172 consciousness 49, 65 constitution(al) 116–117 constructivis(t)m 6, 61–63, 78, 90 constructionism 12, 33, 57, 62, 66, 79, 85, 92, 161, 166 consumerism 135, 123 consumption 7 contingency 26–27, 33, 35, 54–55, 72, 79, 87, 112, 115 contract 52, 128 corporation 33, 46, 49, 60, 75, 81, 84, 97, 115, 131, 137–138, 156 type of: multi-national corporations 97, 113, 135, 137, 144 cosmopolitanism viii, 6, 9–13, 15–17, 20, 22–25, 27–29, 33–38, 40–41, 44, 60, 67, 79, 108–113, 115–120, 122–126, 128–129, 164–166, 168, 170 Cotswolds, the 100 critical theory 62, 103 critique 18, 30, 34, 47, 75–77, 81, 94, 97, 110, 118–119, 125, 134, 138, 140, 146–147, 149, 157, 164, 173 de Tocqueville, Alexis 171 deconstruction 20, 94, 150, 159–161, 176, 178 della Porta, Donatella 131 Deleuze, Gilles 140, 145 Derrida, Jacques 5, 41, 80, 122, 159–162, 173–178 ‘The Force of Law:“The Mystical Foundations of Authority”’ 176

works: Of Grammatology 159; Philosophy in a Time of Terror 162; Positions 178; Rogues 176; Specters of Marx 161, 176 democracy 10, 19, 34–35, 47, 53, 111–117, 122–123, 126, 128, 132, 137–138, 141, 176, 178 determinism 13, 70, 95–98, 133, 150 dialectical 18, 30, 42, 44, 47–48, 54, 56, 58, 63, 65, 70, 80–81, 92, 103–104, 107, 118, 127, 128, 140, 146, 149–153, 156, 165 dichotomy 1, 4, 9, 20, 28, 83, 146, 153–154, 159 dictatorship of the proletariat 132 difference 178 Dillon, Michael 178 Dirlik, Arif 125 discourse 173–174 disembedding 87–88 distanciation 88, 94–95 Durkheim, Emile 88 Earth 1, 26 Earth First 133 Eastern Europe 76, 83 ecologism 18, 134, 136 economic(s) 3, 15, 17, 20, 46, 59, 69, 71, 73, 76, 78, 79, 83–85, 96, 97, 110, 114, 119, 126, 134, 138, 157, 164, 169 Edinburgh 143 egalitarianism 13, 53, 63, 120, 144 El-Ojeile, Chamsy 130, 138 emancipation 89, 151, 164 empire 14, 18–20, 84, 91, 102, 139, 140–141, 143–146, 150, 153, 155–156, 170 empirical 8, 25, 27, 30, 69, 101, 102, 107, 144 Engels, Friedrich 69, 152 Enlightenment, the 5, 14, 19, 22, 29, 32–33, 78, 96, 117, 120, 138, 145, 160, 163, 168 environmental 19, 49, 64, 65, 66, 78, 114, 119, 133, 138, 165


202


6/14/2011 12:12:54 PM

epistemology 9, 38, 48, 52, 169 equality 36, 132 essentialism 98, 144, 146, 172 ethics 7, 43, 47, 52–54, 58, 119, 124, 169 ethnicity 64 Eurocentrism 125 European 57, 84, 116–117, 151, 172 European Union 59, 117, 122 evolution 93 exchange 74–75, 147 exchange-value 75, 147 explanandum 15, 71 explanans 15, 71 exploitation 9, 74–76, 93, 107, 135 fair trade 137 Faust 138 family 3, 53, 55, 60, 64, 90, 92–93, 165, 166 federation 27, 28, 34–35, 165 feminist(s) 18, 105 feudalism 69 Feuerbach, Ludwig 65 Feuerbachian 70 finance 110 Fine, Robert 117 Fitzpatrick, Tony 157 Foucault, Michel 173–174 France 119 Dr. Frankenstein 62 Fraser, Nancy 47 freedom 9, 18, 22, 27, 44–46, 51–52, 57, 60, 103, 105, 107 functionalism 68 Gadamer, Hans-Georg x, 5 Gates, Bill 135 G8 130, 143 Geist 104, 154, 156 gender 50 Germanic 51, 57 Germany 117, 19 Giddens, Anthony vii, viii, 2, 11, 13, 86, 88–94, 97, 101–105, 107–108, 165 works: The Consequences of Modernity 88, 101; The Global

203

Third Way Debate 101; Modernity and Self-Identity 89, 105; Runaway World: How Globalisation is Affecting Our Lives 88, 101, 108 global age 19, 20, 25, 83, 90, 121 global civil society 131 global economy 131 global governance 59, 132 global theory vii, viii, 1–7, 9–16, 19–20, 23, 25, 37, 39, 43, 57–58, 67, 71–72, 78–79, 82–83, 85, 93, 95, 97, 102–105, 107, 130, 160–164, 166, 170, 174, 176, 179 globalisation vii, viii, 2–5, 10–15, 17, 20, 36–38, 40–44, 47–48, 50, 57–59, 71, 75, 79, 80, 82–86, 88–90, 93, 95–102, 104, 108–109, 111–112, 119, 123, 132–133, 136, 142–144, 162, 175 global governance 112–113 global movements 133–135 global warming 105 globe 10, 18, 22, 26, 57, 98, 100, 109, 126, 143, 165 Goldblatt, David 97 grand narratives 3, 95, 139, 144, 173–175 Gray, John 126, 169 Greens, the 134–135 Guattari, Félix 140 Habermas, Jürgen 5, 11, 39, 41, 108, 110, 116–117, 120, 123, 168 works: Between Facts and Norms 116; The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere 39 Hardt, Michael vii, viii, 11, 17–19, 58, 77, 81, 91–92, 101, 103, 109, 129–131, 139–140, 142–154, 156, 170, 174 writings: (with Antonio Negri): Commonwealth 67, 130, 139, 144–146, 154–156; Empire 140, 144, 147, 156–157; Multitude 144, 151, 153, 157


Index


6/14/2011 12:12:54 PM

Index

Hay, Colin 20 Hayden, Patrick 130, 138 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich viii, 6–7, 9–11, 13, 16–17, 19–20, 34, 36, 42–59, 61–62, 65, 73, 76, 78, 92, 95, 102–105, 107, 109, 120, 123–124, 127, 129, 146, 149–150, 152–153, 156–157, 162–172, 174–175, 177–178 works: Logic 104, 156; Philosophy of Nature 65; Philosophy of Right 49, 52–53, 57; Philosophy of Spirit 49; Phenomenology of Spirit 48–49, 54, 65 aspects of his philosophy: philosophical history 51; system 49, 61 Hegelian 43, 47, 74, 179 Held, David vii, viii, 11, 40–41, 97–99, 101, 103, 107–108, 110–112, 114–117, 120, 123, 129, 132, 168 works: Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities 114–115; Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus 112–113; Global Transformations 97–98 Globalization-AntiGlobalization 97, 111, 115 hermeneutics 175 hierarchy 18, 47, 53, 91–92, 132, 140, 153 Hirst, Paul 97, 169 histor(y)ical 4–5, 7–14, 20, 24–25, 27–35, 39, 42–44, 46, 50, 51, 57, 61–62, 66, 68–69, 77, 79, 80, 82, 89, 93, 96, 98, 101–103, 105, 112, 120, 129, 139, 146, 150, 157, 161, 163, 172, 174 forms of historical understanding: historical sociology 71; end of history 44, 46, 51, 163 Hobbes, Thomas 35 Honneth, Alex 47 Honig, Bonnie 122, 128–129 works: Emergency Politics 128

human nature 62–63, 67 human rights 122, 126 humanitarian intervention 121 Hurricane Katrina 136 Hutchings, Kimberly 40 works: Kant, Critique and Politics 40 identity 8, 23, 46–47, 49–50, 53, 56, 59, 62–64, 67, 79–80, 83, 86, 92, 118–119, 122, 126, 153, 177 identity politics 105 ideology(y)ical 1–2, 10–14, 16, 20, 75, 82–84, 92, 101, 129, 131, 136, 143, 145, 155, 161, 169–171, 174, 177 immigration 97, 121 industry 83, 90, 94, 98, 133, 164 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 114, 132, 136, 142 imperial 18, 96 indeterminacy 30–31, 35, 72, 111, 141, 160, 174–176 India 134 Individual(ism) 9, 43, 46–47, 52–55, 57, 64, 76, 87, 90–91, 109, 110, 120, 126 inequality 9, 53, 113 infinity 72, 73, 74 INGOs (International NonGovernmental Organisations) 113, 131, 168 Injustice 13, 134 Iraqi War 136 Italy 119 international law 54 international relations 8, 18, 52 internationalism 81, 100, 119, 127, 171 justice 8, 10, 27, 36, 110, 113–114, 120, 138, 168


204

Kant, Immanuel viii, 6–17, 22–41, 46, 59, 61, 67, 78, 92, 102–103, 105, 107, 108, 112, 115, 116, 118, 120–121, 124, 126, 128–129, 162–172, 175–178


6/14/2011 12:12:54 PM

Kant, Immanuel – continued aspects of his thought: categorical imperative 34, 35 works: Critique of Judgement (Third Critique) 16, 29, 30, 32, 39, 128, 175, 177; Criique of Pratical Reason 35; Critique of Pure Reason 24, 30, 104; Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose 28; The Metaphysics of Morals 27 Kantian 109, 115, 118, 120, 123, 138, 169, 174, 176, 179 Kersting, Wolfgang 35 kinship 64 Klein, Naomi viii, 17, 131, 135–136, 156 Works: Fences and Windows 136; No Logo 135; The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism 136 labour 70, 74, 77–78, 97, 141, 147–148, 154 Latin America 125 Leninist 132 liberal(ism) 10, 120, 122, 126, 128, 132, 155, 171, 178 liberal democracy 126, 162 literature 48 Locke, John 122 logic 49, 60, 73, 152 Lovelock, James 133 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 39, 40–41, 173–177 works: Enthusiasm: The Kantian Critique of History 39; The Differend 41, 175; Lesons on the Analytic of the Sublime 175–176 Lyotardian 128 market(s) 72–73, 83, 84, 109, 134, 169 Marsh, David 20 materialism 148 Marx, Karl viii, 6–13, 15, 18–19, 61–68, 70–77, 80, 85, 88–89, 92–93, 95–96, 102–105, 107, 120, 124, 127, 129, 132–133,

137, 145, 147–149, 150, 152–153, 156–157, 161–169, 170–175, 177–178 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 68 Critique of the Gotha Programme 75 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts 63, 65, 75, 132–133 The German Ideology 68, 70, 148, 152 The Grundrisse 73, 77, 147, 148–149, 156 Marxism 80, 88–89, 132–133, 139, 152 Marxist 1, 72, 134–135, 138, 141, 145, 147, 151, 178 Marxist-Leninist 132 McGrew, Anthony 97, 110–112, 115 media 91 Mephistopheles 138 Mexico 134, 143, 157 Mill, John Stewart 171 Miller, David 109, 110, 116, 125, 126, 129, 169 Works: National Responsibility and Global Justice 126 misconstruction 61, 79 misrecognition 116 modern(ity) vii, viii, 2–6, 9–11, 13–14, 17, 19–20, 42–46, 51, 53, 59, 61, 82, 85–86, 88, 90, 92–95, 98–101, 103, 105, 111, 117–118, 139, 143, 151, 159, 161–163, 167, 169–171, 173, 175, 177–178 modernisation 90 monarchy 60 Monbiot, George 17, 130–131, 135, 137–138 works: Bring on the Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice 138; Captive State: the Corporate Takeover of Britain 137; Heat: How to Stop Burning the Planet 137; The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order 137 money 73, 74 Montesquieu, Baron de 171


Index 205


6/14/2011 12:12:55 PM

Index

moral(ity) 9, 17, 23, 26–27, 41, 43, 108, 111, 115–116, 120, 126, 129, 166, 170, 173 moral law 26 MST (Brazilian landless movement) 134 multitude 18, 20, 77, 91, 128, 138–139, 140–141, 143, 145–146, 150–151 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association) 134 nation 3, 23, 26, 47, 60, 84, 96, 113–115, 126, 136 nationalism 105, 107, 116–117, 119, 138 nationality 122 nation-state 3, 16, 18, 23, 34, 37, 42, 47, 85, 96, 100, 108–111, 116–119, 121–122, 126, 140, 164, 167–171, 177 natural law 117 nature 49, 64–65, 67, 105 Nazism 105, 117 needs 6 Negri, Antonio vii, viii, 11, 17–19, 58, 67, 77, 81, 91–92, 102, 109, 129, 130–131, 133, 139, 140–141, 144–148, 150–151, 153–157, 174 works: Empire and Beyond 139, 141, 144; Goodbye Mr. Socialism 139; Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitudo 141, 148, 170; Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse 147; Negri on Negri 141; The Constitution of Time 147; The Porcelain Workshop 139 neo-classical economics 85, 109 neo-fascist 47 neo-liberalism viii, 20, 83, 107, 109, 139, 161–162, 170 network(s) 14, 91, 96 Nietzsche, Friedrich 171, 173 NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) 113

New Orleans 136 normative 6, 9–12, 14, 25, 28, 31, 43, 47, 63, 67, 85, 108–109, 140, 177 Nussbaum, Martha 120 Oakeshott, Michael x Ohmae, Kenneth 11, 84, 85, 101, 107, 109, 170 works: The Borderless World 84; The End of the Nation and the Rise of Regional Economies 85 oligarchy 135 Oriental Despotism 57 paradox of politics 128 Party, the 92 patriarchy 34, 50, 60, 78, 92, 164 patriotism 116 peace 24, 26, 28–29, 32, 55, 116 Perraton, Jonathon 97 phenomenology 8, 49 philosophical 9, 29, 32, 34, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48–49, 52, 58–59, 61, 63, 70–71, 105, 150, 157 Pinkard, Terry 48 Pinochet, General 136 Plato 153 writings: Parmenides 153 Platonic 160 political 7, 49–50, 52, 55–56, 58, 61, 70, 75, 79, 82–83, 89–91, 94, 96, 109–111, 115–116, 118, 121, 125–126, 129, 132, 157 Porto Allegere, Brazil 132 post-colonial 21, 125 post-dialectical 153 post-Fordist 146 post-Kantian 34 post-Marxist 18, 146–147, 155, 170 postmetaphysical 116–117 postmodern(ism) 3, 39, 94, 128, 138–139, 148, 174, 177 postsocialism 18 post-structuralism 46, 110, 126, 174, 177 production 8, 64, 68, 70–71, 75–77, 80, 135, 141, 148–149, 154, 165


206


6/14/2011 12:12:55 PM

Index 207

radical(ism) 10, 12–13, 17–20, 59, 67, 75–77, 80–81, 86, 88. 91, 102–103, 109–110, 130–133, 138, 140–142, 155–157, 167, 170 Rawls, John 11, 36, 37, 110, 120, 125–126, 169 works: A Theory of Justice 110; Political Liberalism 110; The Law of Peoples 110 realism 77 Realpolitik 28 reason 5, 19, 22–25, 27–28, 31, 35, 38–39, 61, 86, 115–116, 118, 168 recognition 8, 27, 43, 45, 47–49, 52–60, 98, 104, 125, 152, 168–169, 177 reductionism 77 reflexiv(e)ity 7, 10–13, 19, 38, 45, 50, 51, 58, 67, 73, 89, 92, 103, 118–119, 166 Reformation, the 96 religion 6, 46, 48, 171 remainders 129 Renaissance, the 45, 96 representative democracy 132 republican(ism) 9, 24, 27–29, 32, 34–36, 121, 124, 165 revolution 9, 77, 132, 145, 151, 157 right 26–27, 40, 56, 75, 121, 127 rights 27, 36, 40, 44, 52, 57, 60, 109, 114, 121–124, 126–129, 144 risk 89 Rose, Gillian x Rosenberg, Justin 2, 71, 72, 80, 94, 99, 101, 171 works: Follies of Globalisation Theory 2, 94, 101

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 35, 122, 159, 160 Sassen, Saskia vii, 11, 96–97 works: Globalization and Its Discontents 96 Scholte, Jan-Aart 2, 11, 15, 71, 99, 100, 171 works: Globalization: A Critical Introduction 99 science 6, 65, 89 scientific 24, 30, 69, 80 security 114 Smith, Tony 75 social democrat(s) 20, 112–113, 132 Social justice 113–114, 137 socialist(s) 18, 84, 138 sociology 2, 94, 102, 119 solidarity 114, 117, 126 sovereignty 54–56, 112, 117, 142 Soviet Union, the 72, 83–84, 132 space 87–88, 91, 94–95, 100, 103–104, 150, 154 species-being 62–64, 66, 70 Spirit 49, 51 Stalinism 132 state 8, 16, 28, 44–46, 49, 51–52, 54–56, 58–60, 80, 90, 110, 112, 116–117, 119, 121, 124–125, 134, 142, 167, 169 Stirner, Max 152 Subcommandante Marcos 134 sublime 31 supranational 110, 113 supraterritoriality 100 Taylor, Charles 47 Taylor, Peter J. 98 Tautology 99 technolog(y)ical 3, 10, 29, 68–71, 77, 79, 84, 89, 95–96, 111, 135, 150, 157 teleolog(y)ical 3, 4, 6–8, 10–14, 19, 24, 25, 30–32, 42, 70, 79, 93, 95, 97, 102, 107, 112, 118, 139, 146, 149, 150–152, 164, 175 telos 24, 98, 146


progress 3, 22, 24, 28–29, 42, 51, 134, 139, 151, 155 poverty 46, 59 profit 76, 84, 135 proletariat 3, 74, 80, 92, 140–141, 150, 164 property 52, 54, 144 Protestantism 44, 57 public reason 25


6/14/2011 12:12:55 PM

Thompson, Graeme 97, 169 Thorburn, Nicholas 145 Works: Deleuze, Marx and Politics 145 time 87–88, 91, 94, 95, 103–104, 139 Tormey, Simon 133 works: Anti-Capitalism 133 trade 97 traditional 87, 92, 103, 111, 113, 163 trans-national 110–114, 117–118, 121–122, 124, 127, 131, 138, 142 transplanetary 100 United Nations, the 59, 113–114 statements and components: United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights 121; UN General Assembly 138; UN Security Council 114, 138 United States, the 83, 131, 144, universal 27, 29, 32, 36, 40, 63, 91, 114–116, 118, 123, 125, 127–128 universalism 25, 33–34, 59, 108, 110, 114, 162, 173 universality 13, 22, 34, 38, 53, 63, 65 utility 61 utilitarianism 61, 73 utopian socialism 76 value(s) 107, 108, 147–148 violence 28 Wall, Derek 134

war 28, 29, 55 Washington 143 Washington Consensus 83 Weber, Max 88 Weberian 71 welfare 61, 109 welfare-state 35 Western 160, 162 Whiggish 6 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 145, 173 concept: language games 145, 173 world, the 7–10, 24, 34–35, 44, 49–51, 57, 62, 65–66, 73, 78, 89, 92, 98, 103–104, 118, 122, 126, 154, 169, 176 organisations: World Bank 114, 131, 136; World Economic Forum 132; World Environmental Organisation 14; World Parliament 137; World Social Forum 132; World–State 37; World Trade Organisation 132, 136 concepts: world-creating 65; world history 42–43, 51, 55, 56, 58, 66, 104, 107, 110, 165, 169 Young, Robert J. C. 125 Young Hegelians 152 Zapatistas 134, 143 Zeitgeist 1


208 Index


6/14/2011 12:12:55 PM

Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri

Empire's New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri

From Kant to Hilbert

From Kant to Hilbert

Philosophy and Temporality from Kant to Critical Theory

Judgment and Proposition. From Descartes to Kant

From Kant to Levi-Strauss

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

Cainii negri

From Kant to Hilbert Volume 2

Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant

Problems from Kant

The Development from Kant to Hegel

Negativity and Politics: Dionysus and Dialectics From Kant to Poststructuralism

From History to Theory

Religion and the Enlightenment: From Descartes to Kant

Metaphor and Continental Philosophy- From Kant to Derrida

Religion and violence: philosophical perspectives from Kant to Derrida

Enlightenment and Action from Descartes to Kant: Passionate Thought

Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida

Zece Negri Mititei

Introduction to German Philosophy: From Kant to Habermas

Negri on Negri: in conversation with Anne Dufourmentelle

Economic Theory and Global Warming

Antennas: From Theory to Practice

From number theory to physics

Anarchism: From Theory to Practice

MIMO: From Theory to Implementation

Antennas: From Theory to Practice

Psychoanalysis: From Practice to Theory

Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri

Empire's New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri

From Kant to Hilbert

From Kant to Hilbert

Philosophy and Temporality from Kant to Critical Theory

Judgment and Proposition. From Descartes to Kant

From Kant to Levi-Strauss

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

Cainii negri

From Kant to Hilbert Volume 2

Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant

Problems from Kant

The Development from Kant to Hegel

Negativity and Politics: Dionysus and Dialectics From Kant to Poststructuralism

From History to Theory

Religion and the Enlightenment: From Descartes to Kant

Metaphor and Continental Philosophy- From Kant to Derrida

Religion and violence: philosophical perspectives from Kant to Derrida

Enlightenment and Action from Descartes to Kant: Passionate Thought

Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida

Zece Negri Mititei

Introduction to German Philosophy: From Kant to Habermas

Negri on Negri: in conversation with Anne Dufourmentelle

Economic Theory and Global Warming

Antennas: From Theory to Practice

From number theory to physics

Anarchism: From Theory to Practice

MIMO: From Theory to Implementation

Antennas: From Theory to Practice

Psychoanalysis: From Practice to Theory

Recommend Documents