Two critiques: "Empire" and "new imperialism"
Download this article (pdf). It discusses the issues round “globalisation” by way of two critiques, of Negri-Hardt and of the “new imperialism” theory of John Rees, Alex Callinicos and other writers associated with the British SWP.
Both accounts have a theological taste to them. But where Negri’s and Hardt’s is enthusiastic, mystical theology, Callinicos’s is the theology of the worldly-wise, “moderate” prelate of a modern established church.
Both Hardt/Negri and Callinicos/Rees slide off the narrow and slippery path of scientific analysis — substituting speculative construction for empirical investigation in one case, dragging the ill-fitting costume of yesterday’s theory onto today’s reality so as better to be able to agitate about “imperialism — just like Lenin condemned” in the other.
Other material about "autonomist Marxismm" on this site:
Autonomist Marxism: three themes, three critiques
Autonomism, workerism, and Trotskyism in Italy;
Review of Steve Wright's book on the history of autonomism in the 1960s and 70s.
On other sites:
A compact summary of autonomism, in the form of an interview with the American autonomist Harry Cleaver by Massimo De Angelis: www.eco.utexas.edu/Homepages/facstaff/Cleaver/InterviewwithHarryCleaver.html.
Review of Hardt and Negri's Empire: Other texts, including the historic ones like Mario Tronti's "Lenin in England": www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/index.html.
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