A multitude of possibilities: Daniel Leighton interviews Michael Hardt.
| Author | Leighton, Daniel |
| Position | Interview |
Remarking on the general state of the left in the early 1990s German philosopher Jurgen Habermas crisply observed that there had been 'an exhaustion of utopian energies'. It is due to their audacious attempts to reignite the left's utopian energies that post-Marxist theoreticians Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri rose from relative academic obscurity to the bestseller lists from the late 90s onwards.
Their co-authored works on emerging systems of global power (Empire) and the possibilities of radical change that inhere within contemporary society (Multitude) made them the unlikely poster boys of the 'anti-globalisation' or 'global justice' movement. However their theoretical ingenuity has yet to be fully dissected and appropriated by social democrats. This is no doubt due to the sometimes disarming theoretical complexity of their project and the unapologetically revolutionary rhetoric that characterises their writing.
Garnering praise and sometimes damning critique in equal measure, their work is distinguished by two key facets. The first is a grand theoretical synthesis of post-60s attempts to make sense of changes in economic and political power, combining post-structuralism with insights from the radical Italian marxism of the Autonomia movement. The second is a boundless and often counter-intuitive optimism about the possibilities of radical social transformation in the new world order of globalised capital and culture. Regardless of whether one shares their revolutionary outlook there is much within their work that points to how the left might become an offensive rather than defensive or reactionary political force in the twenty-first century.
The following interview with Michael Hardt was conducted to draw out his views on how changes in the meaning and scope of capitalist production are creating new possibilities for social and political action. In particular it seeks to highlight why the notion of 'the common' plays such a pivotal role in their vision of radical democratic transformation. While this concept covers very similar ground to the idea of the commons discussed in this issue, Hardt and Negri prefer to use the term in the singular to highlight the novelty of new forms of shared capacities emerging from 'immaterial production', distinguishing it from pre-capitalist shared spaces that were destroyed by the advent of private property. They attempt to show how post-Fordist production depends upon and constantly expands new forms of communication, collaboration and creation. This stock of common relationships and values is being constantly re-appropriated for profit but at the same time requires forms of sharing and openness that run counter to the exclusionary logics of private property.
Together with other analysts of the 'old' and 'new' commons, Hardt and Negri highlight how a new politics of ownership and property is challenging the understanding of the public and private that underpinned both liberal and socialist thought since the nineteenth century. These struggles, hitherto marginal in centre-left discourse, may be forming a crucial political terrain in which progressives can innovate with the grain of social change rather than the imperatives of neo-liberal privatisation.
Left nostalgia and the multitude
In Multitude you aim to develop concepts and social analysis that draw out the positive potential for radical social change within today's society. You contrast this project with what you characterise as a widespread and disabling nostalgia on the mainstream left. Before elaborating on your positive concepts could you explain your critique of left nostalgia?
Over the last decade or two we have often heard on the left voices of dissatisfaction or frustration with declining membership in various organisations, a seeming failure of the population to participate in traditional civic and community organisations. This stems from an understandable but I think misguided desire to protect or resurrect traditional social bodies that sustained the labour movement of the last two centuries. It is essentially a project of restoration. Until recently the desire to restore lost or eroding forms of community has been most associated with the right-in terms of the restoration of the family, the church and country.
This desire to resurrect of restore previous forms of social agency and community has now emerged as key them on the mainstream left, though it manifests itself in different ways in Europe and North America. Take for example Robert Putnam's social capital-based account of civic decline. With the collapse of traditional community organisations and civic membership he sees the population not simply bowling alone but increasingly isolated and atomised--a kind of end to society as such. A similar tone of nostalgia and regret for lost community dominates studies about changes in work, in that factory and craft work used to provide stable employment and a set of skills that allowed workers to develop and take pride in a coherent lifelong career--together with the social connection with fellow workers centred on their jobs. The shift from Fordist to post-Fordist labour arrangements, characterised by flexibility, mobility and instability, has destroyed traditional forms of work and the forms of life they generated. This has led some to claim that this is leading to the erosion of character, trust, and loyalty and mutual commitment. These laments for lost forms of community can be...
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