<nettime> Zagreb interview with Michael Hardt

[Ognjen Strpic <ognjen@mi2.hr>]

Zagreb interview with Michael Hardt
by Ognjen Strpic

[broadcast on Croatian Radio, Third Program,  12. 5. 2002]

While we wait for publishing of Croatian translation of Hardt-Negri's 
Empire, Michael Hardt visited Zagreb, where he gave two lectures, organized 
by past.forward (theory module of net-club mama) and performing arts 
magazine Frakcija. Between the lectures, we talked about some of the less 
discussed aspects of their work in Empire.

OS: How do you think the theory you and Toni Negri proposed in the book 
relates to protestors in Genoa or Porto Allegre? They seem to have embraced 
your theory as their own. At the same time, you are, say, very sympathetic 
towards the protestors' efforts.

MH: The way I see it, these globalization movements and our book have 
proceeded on sort of parallel paths, in fact they've both been interpreting 
the same questions and reality and coming to the same conclusions. And this 
is at least in two regards: one central aspect of our concept of empire is 
that there is no center to power or rather that form of global power has 
changed, that it's no longer based on dominant nationstate on its own and 
that it is now composed of a network of powers. This is our notion of empire.

I think similarly these movements have not been organized around, say, a 
notion of US imperialism. Had they thought that, all of these protests 
should have been at the White House, or at the Pentagon, or on Wall Street. 
Rather, the way I think is that they've been experimenting with the new 
form of power. In other words, they've targeted international organizations 
like the G8, and supernational organizations like the WTO, or the IMF, or 
the World Bank. So in this way they've been trying to understand the new 
form of power, the way a movement understands something, which is some kind 
of experimental form. I think that in fact none of these organizations that 
they have targeted with the protests is itself the center of global power. 
In other words, IMF is not in control of globalization, in itself. And if 
we were to destroy the IMF tomorrow, it wouldn't make the world immediately 
a better place, in fact, probably worse. So I think that one shouldn't try 
to read the protesters as they've identified the new sources of power, 
rather, it's a much more distributed and therefore seemingly amorphous 
system of power that they are trying to confront. So in a way each protest 
is sort of an adding experiment to that. It's in that sense I think that 
our analysis of the new form of power as empire and the movement's analysis 
of the new form of power is proceeding along the parallel path.

The other way in which our argument seems to me very similar to these 
movements' is that one of the political results of our analysis is that we 
think that the only adequate way to confront, say, the problems of 
globalization, or the forms of global domination under which we suffer now, 
is not by creating isolated local zones of protection, or even re-enforcing 
the powers of nationstates, we think that rather an alternative have be 
proposed at an equally global level.

I think that's also true of at least what I understand as the dominant 
elements within these globalization movements. I don't think that the 
dominant elements are the ones that are properly anti-globalization. 
Rather, the movements themselves have been globalizing, constructing global 
relationships. In that sense, it doesn't make sense to call them 
anti-globalization movements, they're more properly understood as 
alternative globalization movements. In other words, they are protesting 
against the current forms of globalization, but in the name of, or in the 
desire for, alternative forms of globalization. So I think that in those 
two regards our argument which is conducted in a very philosophical plane, 
and the workings of these movements, which is obviously conducted both 
theoretically and practically in a different register, that they've been 
moving on parallel paths, and that's why they in a way agree well with each 
other.

OS: Your idea of empire, at least in my reading, doesn't bear any 
particular ideological baggage by itself. It's reception however, perceives 
it as distinctively Leftist. How do you see it in this respect?

MH: Well, OK. The book _is_ primarily an attempt of the analysis of 
contemporary form of power, and in that way it can in simply naming the 
forms of power today, which is I think the primary object of the book, it 
could be appreciated by people of many different ideological formations. We 
conceive it as a communist project, we present it as a communist project, 
thinking here of "communist" in the tradition, let's say of democratic 
globalization, the communist tradition that is not oriented towards 
formation of states and even of national control, but as a movement of 
increasing non-national democracy.

In any case, there is a certain ideological position that defines our own 
efforts, but I think that such a book is not restricted to those of that 
ideological position. And in fact, what seems to me interesting about the 
reception of the book, is that it runs counter many of assumptions about 
Left and Right, and that's why it has been a useful analysis for many to, 
say, disrupt what had seemed like the commonplace assumptions about 
globalization. Just for instance, many have assumed in the US that those 
who are on the Left are necessarily against globalization. Any in many, 
sort of basic or profound ways, our perspective is completely _for_ 
globalization. But the problem with our contemporary world in many ways is 
not that we have too much globalization, the problem is we have not enough. 
That really we need to globalize equal relationships, democratic 
relationships, the problems with our contemporary form, say, the control of 
dominant corporations, the control of the US military, of various other 
forms that constitute this imperial power, the problem is that in many 
regards that it blocks globalization, it blocks the possibility of 
constructing democratic relationships across the globe. So, in that sense I 
think it's not … the first moment, I think, of a Left, or I would say 
democratic position, should not be against globalization, what interest me 
much more are the possibilities of globalization. I just presented it in 
one way which I think the perspective of the book has run counter to what 
people thought were necessary Left and Right positions, and that has 
allowed them to appreciate the argument even without of course agreeing 
with our perspective, which I think is not necessary for a book like this.

OS: In what respect, then, it is a communist project?

First of all, one should say that the much of the European modern 
Enlightenment thought, but especially communist tradition, especially 
certain element of the communist tradition, have been the first and most 
vocal proponents of globalization. Think of the slogans of First 
International, for instance, not only "Workers of the world, unite", but 
"Proletariat has no country, its county is the entire world", there are at 
least elements of the communist tradition, ones that most interest me, that 
have always been interested in globalizing relationships as a potential for 
liberation. This is not also exclusive for the communist tradition, it's 
also part of other elements of modern European political thought. So, there 
are certain ways in which, and we argue that there are certain points that 
it's in fact not capital, or it's not the forms of liberal national 
governments, but in fact it's the force of liberation and in some sense the 
communist tradition that has been leader in globalization.

The other way in which it is a communist book is that is argues for an 
absolute democracy, for democracy founded on relations of equality, 
freedom, and social solidarity. I mean, I think that those three … code 
words belong to the French Republican tradition, but also belong, in my 
mind, to the best elements of the communist tradition. So, that also seems 
to me that it's the way it's a communist book, but it's demanding an 
absolute democracy.

Then, the most fundamental way would be that it's the analysis insists on 
the fact that while capital has historically brought many possibilities for 
liberation, that finally the operation of capital prevents the realization 
of democratic relationships. In other words, that it's not an accident that 
the capitalist relations perpetuate poverty and wealth, disparities of both 
the wealth and power, and that they prevent democratic social 
constructions. It's in fact intrinsic to capital and therefore the project 
for democracy will ultimately have to be anticapitalist and develop a 
social form that is noncapitalist in that sense. That at least is 
recognizable as the communist project.

OS: Isn't it Braudelian notion of capital as antimarket, as opposed to 
market, the one you really object?

MH: I don't think that any capital functions without state regulation. I 
mean, this is just a factual, historical claim. All of the propositions of 
free market, and of capital based on free market, have been … false. I 
think that free markets are always constructed by political regimes. I 
think this is true in the nineteenth century hayday of the ideology of free 
market, and that this is equally true in our contemporary neoliberal phase, 
that it's not, say, the autonomy of the economic, it's not that the forces 
of capital or economic forces, or market forces, function freely. That they 
always require state, or say, regulatory forms. In the academic framework, 
the general reference for this argument I have just made is Polany's book 
"The Great Transformation", which argues precisely that. I would rather 
pose it differently; I think it's right to say, at least as an analytical 
tool it's useful to think of different elements of the current form of 
power, or elements of capitalist rule, some of which are potentially 
positive and some of which are clearly negative.

I would rather say that other elements that capital has brought 
historically are potentially positive, the one I already mentioned is this 
extension in that sense of globalization of relationships. Another is what 
one could call socialization of production or the organization of social 
cooperation. I mean, capital has historically operated the function of 
bringing together workers, classically in the factory, bringing them 
together and having them cooperate together and proposing the terms for 
that cooperation. And that social cooperation is, it seems to me, has an 
incredibly liberating human potential. What I would say then is that 
capital, well … creating and in certain sense historically proposing social 
cooperation, also limits social cooperation, and that one could imagine 
pushing social cooperation further beyond the bounds which capital can 
tolerate.

So, the same way I think with globalization in certain respects. There are 
certain aspects of globalization that capitalist relations create 
globalization, but finally restrict it, and that pushing them further might 
be the way to move. The same thing with social cooperation, the capital 
even obliges us to cooperate socially in certain ways, but then blocks the 
fuller pursuit of that cooperation.

OS: I'm now interested in two issues you you don't write about in the book. 
One is contemporary discourse on justice in political theory. Another is 
multiculturalism. Do you think those two topics relevant to your proposal? 
I'm talking about the authors such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, James 
Scanlon, Brian Barry…

MH: I should start by saying that for us, or for me, the concept of 
democracy is much more central than the concept of justice. That said, I 
think it's not an either/or alternative. I think that much of the work that 
is done under the rubric of liberalism and therefore the framework of 
justice, and therefore the framework of right, and that's the way it's 
posed in authors you mentioned, their general project is oriented towards a 
notion of right rather than a notion of good, and that's what defines it's 
liberalism in their general estimation. I think that entire project can be 
translated in something that resembles our project, I think that they're 
not in different universes. When on thinks of the original Rawls framework 
of his first book, A Theory of Justice, it is a procedural investigation, 
but it is also oriented towards, let's say, tendency toward equality in 
terms of both decisionmaking and also distribution. I think it's an attempt 
at the constructing the basis of democratic relations. And in that regard 
that I would try to say that two perspectives, one that focuses on 
democracy, which is ours, and other, which focuses on justice, are not 
totally separate.

It seems to me that there's a certain amount of confusion with the term 
multiculturalism, and that very different things are included under that 
term. Because there are ways in which the term is used in entire tradition 
of critical race studies and also therefore race struggles, in addition to 
gender studies and therefore feminist struggles, are included under the 
term multiculturalism and are thought of as streams or currents within 
multiculturalism. I think that they are central to our attempts of 
analyzing forms of power, especially within a cultural framework of the 
empire, but not only cultural, I think the problem with multiculturalism is 
that it is often assumed, by people using the term both for and against it, 
that we can separate the cultural from the economic and the political, I 
think that none of these are merely cultural, both fields of analysis or 
fields of political activity. In other words, I don't think that struggles 
or studies about and sexuality, gay and lesbian studies, for instance, or 
feminist studies about sexism, or race studies, I don't think that any of 
these are cultural in a limited sense, I think that they are all always 
already also economic and political questions.

What I'm trying to do is to distinguish certain conception of 
multiculturalism from another; there's one conception of it which I think 
is not accurate, that it's true our analysis our analysis doesn't deal 
with. But there's another, which is very important to our kind of analysis. 
How so? Just for instance, part of analysis is trying to recognize, say, 
the new forms of racism that are implied within this new imperial 
structure. In other words, that there is a certain paradigm of racial 
oppression and therefore racial antiracist struggle that served as a 
paradigm in previous stage, what might be called a stage, of imperialism 
and that also functioned in the United States throughout much of twentieth 
century, we think that the form of racial oppression has changed now and 
therefore requires different kinds of antiracist struggles. Here we're 
drawing directly on work that's done in race studies, in critical race 
studies, antiracist movements. So, if that's what is meant by 
multiculturalism, than it's certainly central to our analysis.
As a more practical, movement question, it has to do with our concept of 
the multitude: there was, especially in the US, but also in Western Europe 
and probably elsewhere, there seemed to be a choice between two kinds of 
political organizing, an exclusive choice. The one that I experienced in 
1980's in the US, see if it resonates with you elsewhere, is that there 
were two choices of political organizing:  on unity model, or on difference 
model. The unity model is really the one that seemed more traditional; 
party structures often function this way. There was really one central 
access to political organizing, and it could include different elements, 
but they were all subordinated. For instance, one could say class politics 
is central political struggle, and then we could have people interested in 
sexism and racism, and other social problems, but they were all secondary 
to one unity  so that's the unity model.

In reaction to that was formed, very powerful in the US, especially growing 
out in the sixties, developing in the eighties, what is often called 
identity politics, is really organized around differences, in other words, 
we need a separate movement for black lesbians, separate movement for 
Central American gay men, so the difference of one's identity would 
determine the difference of one's struggles. Now I think that there was a 
kind of dead end of political organizing between these two models, and one 
could, I think, easily see the limitations of each. And both of them, 
although in a way they formed polar opposites, they were both fundamentally 
based on the notion of the alternative, of the exclusive alternative, of 
identity and difference.

Our attempt with this concept of the multitude is to recognize the 
possibility of a different kind of political organizing. Rather than been 
based on, say, alternative between identity and difference, it's based on 
continuity between multiplicity and commonality. In other words, multitude 
is meant to name a possible form of political organization that is 
internally differentiated, in other words it's always a multiplicity, and 
yet it can act in common, which seems to me to be at least conceptually a 
different access to these two previous notions. And I think, moreover, that 
these globalization protest movements have functioned on this model of the 
multitude, rather then on models of identity and difference, because for 
instance groups that we have thought of in a previous way were objectively 
antagonistic, even contradictory to each other, say, trade unions and 
environmentalists, suddenly, starting in Seattle, function together, and 
the contradiction doesn't play out. One could say, as we often say, that in 
network structure that every opposition is displaced, or is triangulated by 
third term, and then a fourth, in the web of relationships. So, this seems 
to me again a way the conception of multiculturalism as based on a logic of 
difference in identity as the primary organizational conception of politics 
isn't exactly the way that it's functioning today, in our analysis. If 
that's what one thinks by multiculturalism, then we're thinking of 
something very different.

OS: What exactly do you mean by multitude, and what is its role as a second 
central concept of your book?

MH: The book proposes two concepts, empire as a form of power, and 
multitude names both the subject that is exploited by empire, that is 
controlled by empire, the subject whose labor and activity supports empire, 
but it also is the subject that has the potential to create an alternative 
society. Now, it seems to me that the concept of multitude in our book is 
used in at least two ways  that itself constitutes one of contradictions in 
our book. In certain ways it's a very selfcontradictory book, which is a 
good thing, I think.

In one sense, multitude is used to name the multiple human force of 
liberation that has always existed. In certain ways, it names that almost 
ontological force of human creativity and liberation that has certainly 
existed throughout the modern era, but even previously. It's the force that 
always refuses domination. This is one of, say, principles of our analysis 
that we propose as almost an axiom that we ask others to accept, but I 
think most accept this, which is that humans always eventually, and this is 
one of wonderful things about humanity, refuse authority, refuse 
domination, rebel against forms of oppression. And that is in a way the 
primary force of the multitude that we use, reading as a sort of guide to 
history. It is the continual revolt of the multitude against forms of 
slavery, exploitation, and other forms of oppression. So, that multitude 
always has existed and will always exist, in that sense.
In another, in a very different sense, the multitude functions in our 
discourse as something that has never yet existed and it's a project to 
construct now. And what multitude means in this sense is this is a 
political subject capable of creating a new society. In a way one could put 
the two together and say that seeds of human creativity, of a democratic 
humanity, of a liberated humanity have always existed and they've always 
been manifest in this continual revolt against forms of authority.

So, the second notion of multitude is really a realization of those seeds, 
you now, the realization of those potentials that have always existed. What 
that means, slightly more concretely, this project of construction of the 
multitude is possible today, what multitude would mean in this sense, what 
the construction of the multitude would mean is what I would call a 
becoming communal struggles. In other words, rather that seeing the various 
forms of liberation as separate form one another, or even sometimes 
antagonistic to, or contradictory to each other, recognize how they can 
become common. Just in a way we were talking of traditional language of 
multiculturalism, that struggles against racism, struggles against sexism, 
struggles against class structures, could be posed not as irrevocably 
different and separate, but recognize their common project. I guess what 
multitude as fundamental concept is asking is that difference can exist 
within a society, even within a political subject, and that political 
subject can nonetheless act, without being unified, that it can remain a 
multiplicity, and still govern itself and that's what I think fundamentally 
democracy and freedom require, that we can find a way to govern ourselves 
without reducing the differences among us.

OS: One more issue remains to be addressed: the question of terrorism, 
political violence in its standard usage as killing or harming someone, 
probably innocent, as a means to express political views.

MH: I think another element of terrorism in a standard usage, which equally 
should be criticizes, I mean, I perfectly agree with you that one should 
condemn the use of violence against innocent persons out of frustration or 
inability of political expression, that is certainly for one. The other 
thing I think is characteristic of terrorism as it's commonly conceived, 
and equally should be opposed, which is symbolic acts of violence, because 
this seems to me characteristic of both Right and Left terrorism through 
the last twenty or thirty years. It's not just violence, it's that the 
violence is highly symbolic, and I think that those symbolic acts, violent 
and nonviolent ones too, first of all have very dangerous implications, 
because they are really not directed at the act, they are directed at a 
symbol. And also they don't construct anything, they're completely negative 
acts in that sense. In both of those ways I think you're right, if I 
understand your suggestion, that one should in unreserved and fullhearted 
way oppose to terrorism.

One should also say, however, that we  I think I speak with the vast 
majority in this  we are not opposed to political violence. Political 
violence, is seems to me, it's not so simple that we can say in a 
categorical or principled way, that we are against political violence, 
because there are times, historically, in which political violence is 
necessary, not just justified. The struggle against fascism during the 
Second World War, for instance, it required the form of violence. Most of 
the modern revolutions, revolution in the US, French Revolution, the 
Chinese Revolution, Algerian Revolution, these required, I think, political 
violence. I would in such situations advocate use of violence and I think 
that vast majority of other would also.
The reason I point this out is that I think that the question of violence 
has to be decided in specific contexts; sometimes it's appropriate and 
useful and sometimes it's not. That's a matter of political debate, 
unfortunately   it seems it would simpler if we could answer the question 
philosophically and in a principled way, but I think rather it's always a 
political question. For example, there are many discussions within these 
globalization protest movements about use of violence. We find it's here 
the destruction of property and the purposeful confrontation with the 
police. These are the two things that those advocating use of violence in 
these protest propose or insist on. And I think it's a difficult question, 
I argue against use of violence in these cases, not because I have any 
great devotion to Starbucks or McDonald's or their windows, but because I 
think that it poses divisions between a movement that are false divisions, 
that it destroys the common projects of those involved and that's why it 
seems to me inappropriate and I argue against it.

On the other hand, those who argue for it have many convincing points. The 
first is that they argue that they should be free to do what they want, in 
other words, I or others who do not favor the violence shouldn't be able to 
tell them what to do. They should be able to do what they want as long as 
they do it in a way that doesn't endanger the others. I think one should 
remain in discussion about this, but ultimately one is free to do what one 
wants.

A more powerful and unfortunate argument they have, though, is that the 
media, mainstream media especially, is really on their side, in the sense 
that the media only reports acts of violence, this is especially true in 
the US, but it's also true elsewhere, there can be a demonstration of a 
hundred thousand people, and if it's peaceful it won't get reported in the 
US media. If there are windows broken, it will get reported. In fact, the 
great media success of these movements so far has been precisely because 
there's been violence, and even when there's been serious injury, as in 
Gothenburg or death as in Genoa, that's what the media actually reports, so 
those advocating the violence say: "Look, this is the way the system works, 
our entire struggle would be useless unless there were violence and it's 
reported." I think that's unfortunately a very convincing argument. My 
argument against it is that the representation in the media is not the most 
important aspect of these movements, that the internal construction of 
community, common projects, that their constituent aspects to the movements 
are much more important than their media representation. But in any case, I 
think that this, like many cases, in this instance the question of 
political violence, and here not violence against persons, but violence 
against property, is a complicated one and one that requires political 
discussion rather than principled objections. 


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