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Negri pleit voor 'ja' in referendum
Jeroen - 19.05.2005 21:02
Toni Negri shouldn't be calling for a yes vote in EU constitution referendum
by Salvatore Cannavo
This is an edited translation of a reply by the deputy editor of Liberazione, the daily paper of Italy’s Rifondazione Comunista, to Toni Negri, the anti-capitalist writer. Negri said in the French newspaper Libération that French people should vote yes to the European Constitution in the referendum on 29 May.
Tony Negri has reached the wrong political conclusion by applying the analysis of Empire, laid out in a book he co-wrote in 2001. This analysis is certainly attractive, but this shows its inadequacies and limits.
Negri’s reasoning can seem pragmatic and concrete. That's why it has been praised by the French intelligentsia, who fear a no vote in the referendum. Negri says he is a “realistic revolutionary”. This realism is dictated by his determination to prevent the rejection of the European Constitution. This rejection, he believes, would allow the interests of Empire to win.
Empire, for Negri, is the new globalised, capitalistic society. He thinks of Europe as being a brake on the ideology of economic unilateralism which is capitalist, conservative and reactionary. So Europe can become a counterweight against US unilateralism.
The brake must not be that of what Negri calls “the shitty nation state that is destined to disappear”. Instead, Europe is the political space in which the state can disappear, despite the fact that the constitution is neo-liberal and cannot be an alternative model for society.
“This isn’t the point,” says Negri, because the constitution is a “passage” towards a supranational state. If France defeats the constitution, says Negri, the whole edifice will collapse, leaving the nation state as the only counterweight to Empire. If the yes campaign wins, we have a chance to compare two models—the European and the American.
Undifferentiated
The no voter is a conservative. The yes voter is “realistically revolutionary”. A yes will strengthen the drive for Europe to become a political, economic and military power. If that is so, Negri’s analysis of Empire has problems. This states that the planet is governed by multinational networks of power that transcend nation states.
Opposition to it cannot be based on states, but by an “exodus” of the multitude of people who are held down by this power. The world is criss-crossed by a thick network of links, but this is only one part of reality. The war on Iraq demonstrated the limits of claiming there is an undifferentiated Empire. The US fell back on its traditional instruments of imperalist rule.
The war split Europe, especially the French-German alliance. This could not be explained by Empire. So Negri argued that the US had performed a U-turn and had executed a “coup” against Empire in order to push its particular interests.
Negri faces contradicting himself again. Europe should have been a component of the problem, but now it is a brake on Empire. Empire becomes the US again, downplaying the capitalist nature of the European Union. What this doesn’t take account of is that approval of the constitution would indeed be a counterweight to US power—but only because it would boost the European neo-liberal project.
This ends up mirroring something that was an option available to the workers’ movement of the 20th century, and which the movement often fell for.
This ideology leads you to support the most progressive element of capitalism. Then you realise that the workers’ movement has been sacrificed to the interests of the strongest capitalist player.
This is what is at stake in Europe today. A victory for European capitalism is not better than a victory for US capitalism. It is the anti-capitalist and anti-war movements that have created the supranational networks that we need to build up.
This workers’ movement will imagine an alternative to both British and US models, without having to look to nationalism. The victory of the no campaign in France would open up the possibility of driving forward a process of solidarity.
Negri doesn’t like the word socialism, so let’s put that to one side. But don’t make us out to be conservatives, because he is the conservative.
 Website: http://www.internationalesocialisten.org
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| supplements | | | some supplements were deleted from this article, see policy | | Capitalism with a different face | Snix - 19.05.2005 21:28
The EU can be a counter-balance for the US, but both are capitalist, all be it, they have slightly different faces. If you want to go beyond capitalism you should reject both.
| | Waarom gaat hij niet in de VS wonen | juan miguel - 19.05.2005 22:07
Waarom gaat Negri nietin VS wonen met zijn "realisme" als hij een Europa dat via deze Grondwet met dezelfde economische en militaire middelen met de VS gaat concurreren zo fantastich vindt
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