Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 22 2002 @ 11:13 AM CST

Michael Hardt is sceptical of such stageism, and also of seeing
a strong state as a mean for liberation. \"Socialism usually means
a strengthening of the state\'s power and state property, while
communism is at least a process aiming for abolishing the state.
Traditionally, socialism has been compatible or allied with national
sovereignty, while the communist project, as we understand it, is
antagonistic towards state power.\"

I was talking to a German Communist from Anti-Fascist Action, and it seems like this interpretation of Marxism is starting to be the dominant strain in Europe. It\'s not quite anarchism, because it doesn\'t reject all heirarchies outright, it\'s a sort of vulgar Marxism with anarcho-communist tendencies.

If a lot of European Communists were living in America, they would call themselves anarchists, because the former word would take too much explaining.

This is how i\'ve interpreted the situation of the revolutionary left in Europe, anyways.

Circuit

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 22 2002 @ 08:12 PM CST

There has been a bit of discussion that much of the autonomist marxism that is derived from Negri etc, doesn\'t fully break away from Leninist/Social Democratic perspective.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 22 2002 @ 09:49 PM CST

Indeed, there has been. Unfortunately, this discussion usually consists of an ill-written review that simply says that autonomous Marxism fails to break away from the Leninist/Social Democratic perspective and that the answers that autonomous Marxism already exist \"within anarchism,\" instead of actually demonstrating the intellectual support that autonomists allegedly lend to the Leninist perspective. I believe that absolutely none of the current writings in autonomous Marxism lend support to Leninism/\"Social Democracy.\" Negri\'s writings in the early seventies did indeed fail to condemn vanguard parties, but he seems to be explicitly condemning them now in Empire. Take a look at the new generation of autonomist writings by the Midnight Collective or Harry Cleaver, they\'re explicitly anti-party and anti-state. It\'s foolish to suggest otherwise.

Did you even read the review? Hardt here is explicitly condemning the \"Leninist/Social Democrat\" perspective. He\'s saying that he would much rather have barbarism (in the context of the interview, anarchism) than socialism (in this context, Marxist/Leninist and social democrat tendencies).

If you can find actual evidence in the current body of wokr to detract from my claims, please post them here. I would be deeply indebted.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 22 2002 @ 10:09 PM CST

What\'s barbarism?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 22 2002 @ 10:14 PM CST

It seems that one big element is missing out of the above replies - the anarchosyndicalist movement! Empire seems to describe the need for a sort of repeat of the Spanish anarchosyndacalist movement of the early 1900\'s. They refered to themselves as the \"International\", and they worked in autonomous groups independent of the bourgeoise State. Please check out Bookchin\'s Spanish Anarchism, it is a very enlightening book. Bakuninism, rather than Marxism, is what Hardt sems to be supporting.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 22 2002 @ 11:42 PM CST

Barbarism, literally, is what it sounds like... and no, before this turns into a 40-post-long argument, it\'s not primitivism. ;)

\"Socialism or barbarism\" (also translated as barbarity) is a slogan from Marx, who was saying that unless capitalism progressed to the \"next\" stage it\'d regress to the previous.

Here N&H are playing on barbarism in the context of empire--reclaiming the barbarian tradition? Nothing too deep, don\'t worry.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 23 2002 @ 08:13 PM CST

\"Empire gives us three rather abstract demands: a \"global citizenship\" with free movement across the borders, the right to a \"social wage\" independent of work....\"

This sounds like social democratic reformism to me.....There\'s an excellent Wildcat article on how the Guaranteed Annual Income merely promotes the illusions about the welfare state:

http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/zirkular/48/z48e_wel.htm

\"The claim that the guaranteed income has an anti-capitalist dimension because it is disconnected from waged work is based on the second illusion of the welfare state: that its benefits are income without work. For capitalist class relations, it is not so important that each and every individual is forced to work all their lives but that capital can mobilise enough work in society as a whole to meet its needs for valorisation. This societal coercion to work has always depended on the welfare state as a means of dividing the working class and establishing hierarchical differences among workers. The guaranteed income does not contradict this logic because it does not stop the alienation of our wealth but only serves as an income bottom line: \"a factual minimum wage below which nobody has to work\" (as the Co-ordination of Unemployed Groups put it in January 1999). Anyone who is not satisfied with a mere subsistence guarantee has only one choice: work!\"

And I didn\'t mean to sound like I was saying that all Autonomist Marxism fails to break from Leninism/Social Democracy.

Cleaver, Midnight Notes, and Aufheben etc are all (explicitly) anti-state, anti-party.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 24 2002 @ 10:12 AM CST

I plan to read \'Empire\'as Ive been calling for the deconstruction of the last empire for a year now.It should be remaindered soon,real soon.Judas is correct to recomend Bookchins,\"the spanish anarchists,the heroic years 1868-1936\"
That is a fine book.

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