A science of foreigners

Multitudes :
In articles written before and during the war on Iraq, you describe American unilateralism as a "coup d’Etat within the global system." You contrast the regressive imperialism of the Bush administration to the multilateral negotiation favored by the elites of Empire. But what did the resistance to the war reveal about the composition of the multitudes ? Where, in what specific arenas, and through what means, do you see any chances for democratic forces to gain global agency ?

M. Hardt :
In the months prior to the Iraq War, the great ideological conflict between the dominant political forces posed a clear alternative for the form of global rule : either "unilateralism" or "multilateralism," either US domination of global politics or shared control by a plural set of nations mediated by the United Nations. During the conquest of Baghdad the United States declared loudly that its unilateralist position had been proven right. It has the military might to act independently and only its political decisiveness is able to deal effectively with the inevitable, periodic eruptions of global disorder. As the US occupation of Iraq drags on, however, as US soldiers continue to be picked off each day one by one in guerrilla actions, and as "liberated" Iraq and Afghanistan appear increasingly chaotic and ungovernable, the pyrrhic victory in Iraq seems increasingly instead to substantiate the multilateralist position. The United States cannot go it alone. Militarily, it may have the strike force to defeat an army but cannot dedicate enough troops successfully to police a long-term occupation ; culturally and political, it does not have the knowledge and means to create or impose a stable and docile national government ; and economically, it does not have the money, especially in the absence of Iraqi oil, to finance the entire endeavor. The events seem to suggest that a multilateral coalition of powers would have been more successful in dominating and transforming Afghanistan and Iraq while preserving global order and security. It does seem important to me to recognize that unilateral global rule, at least as the current rulers in Washington conceive it, is impossible to maintain. That is not to say that the United States cannot continue to embark on such adventures (which will surely bring tragedy for all involved), but rather that these will be transitory phenomena and not succeed in created a durable global order. In my view, however, the failure of unilateralism does not prove the case of multilateralism, at least in the open, pluralist form it is often imagined. The present form of world order will not be maintained by any democratic concert of nation-states, conducted, for example, within the forum of the United Nations, nor by any strategy that fails to recognize the real hierarchies within the existing global power structure. And, of course, this is not what is really meant by multilateralism in the current discourses. Multilateralism means rather the sharing of decision-making and also profits by a small set of dominant nation-states. A multilateral strategy in Iraq, for example, might not award all oil contracts to a US corporation but divide them also with a French corporation. In effect the drama between unilateralism and multilateralism resembles the old scenes in which the monarch cannot conduct his wars independently and has to appeal for financial and military assistance to the aristocracy or the condottieri. That is the kind of multilateralism that is in play today. This is merely a contest, in other words, between two strategies to rule the world, two different models to conduct global war. All of this, you are undoubtedly right to suggest, has nothing to do with resistance and the developments of the multitude. (The "resistance" of multilateralists like Chirac to Bush’s unilateralism may be significant, but it is certainly something very different than what interests us.) The field of resistance to war per se is, of course, rather limited : all we can do is say no. Nonetheless, during the Iraq war the movements of the multitude were indeed impressive. One day when we look back on our times 15 February 2003 may indeed appear the most significant date of the early millennium, the day when millions of people marched in cities throughout the world against the war. It was the first truly global protest. The demonstrations against the war, however, although large in numbers, remain merely negative expressions unless we link them to other movements. And in fact the protests against the war were intrinsically related to the protests against the current form of globalization in terms of organization and orientation. The protesters have been clear for some time that the state of global war is coextensive with the forms of global Apartheid, the regimes of inequality and poverty that divide the globe : to oppose one we must also oppose the other. And certainly 15 February and the set of massive protests against the war were made possible, materially and ideologically, by events like the World Social Forum and the entire cycle of struggles stretching from Seattle in 1999 to today against the current form of globalization, les luttes altermondialistes. This is, in any case, the most positive and promising way in which the resistance to the war has opened to democratic forms of global agency.

Multitudes :

Today, the constitutional dynamic of the multitudes appears, paradoxically, to be most visible in the social movements of "old Europe" - where it risks being instrumentalized in the service of an emerging continental power bloc. How could this kind of constitutional dynamic be extended ? Is it enough to postulate the real subsumption of labor by capital, across the entire planet ? Wouldn’t a broader constitutionalism have to begin by seeking an articulation of the global divisions of agricultural, industrial and immaterial labor ?

M. Hardt :

Here we move from the negative terrain to the positive - from how the multitude opposes global forms of domination to what the multitude is or, rather, what it can become. The multitude, after all, is not an already existing social subject but rather a political project, a mode of social organizing. Multitude is a concept of singular social subjectivities that remain different and express themselves freely and yet are able to communicate, collaborate, and act in common. Certain conditions, however, are required to make the project of the multitude possible. The multitude is composed of differences but there must be no differences of kind the prevent their collaboration or communication. The global field of labor, as you suggest, has long been fractured by hierarchies and divisions that prevent such communication : international hierarchies of laboring classes, for example, racial and sexual divisions of labor, divisions between productive and reproductive labor, between the working classes and the poor, and between the industrial working class and the agricultural labor. Socialist and communist political projects have long been based on these divisions, such that the industrial working class, for example, must lead the peasants and the other laboring classes. In order for the multitude to be possible, however, although all specific forms of labor remain singular, there must not be the kinds of divisions that divided them in the past. There must be a tendency toward a becoming-common of labor, an emerging common basis of communication and collaboration. This, of course, is largely an empirical question and requires an extensive global analysis of class composition. Consider agricultural labor, for example, which may present from this perspective one of the greatest challenges to the project of the multitude. Marx himself and the major streams of the tradition considered the peasantry not only incapable of conducting independently political projects aimed at its own liberation but also incapable of collaborating with other working classes on equal terms. The peasantry, the tradition told us, had to follow the lead of the industrial working class, which could guarantee its political interests. This political mandate was based on analysis of the class composition of the peasantry, who were separated geographically and thought to lack the tools of communication and organization that the industrial working class had. For the project of the multitude to be possible one must establish that this is no longer the case (if indeed it ever was) and that agriculture labor along with all forms of labor are able to collaborate in political projects in an equal and autonomous way. I would argue that there is a tendency today toward the becoming-common of labor and that it takes place under the hegemony of immaterial labor. By hegemony here I do not mean that the majority of labor in the world today is characterized by immaterial production - in fact, agriculture remains dominant in quantitative terms and the numbers involved in industrial labor have not declined globally. Neither do I mean that immaterial laborers should be granted political hegemony, as if Microsoft programmers could lead us on the shining path ! What I mean is that the qualities and conditions of immaterial labor tend to transform all other forms of labor, their processes, their temporalities, and their techniques. Just as in an earlier era all forms of labor and society itself were forced to industrialize, so too today they are increasingly forced to immaterialize, that is, adopt the primary characteristics of immaterial labor. Just one rather extreme example : even agriculture is being transformed to focus on the production and management of information when one considers the battles over germplasm, that is, the genetic information contained in seeds, which has been the subject of patent conflicts and occupies the daily lives of agriculturists. On the other hand, traditional knowledges or so-called indigenous knowledges that have long been an essential element of agricultural production today appear in a new light when they too become the object of patents and immaterial property. In short, I would argue that the becoming-common of labor that makes possible the project of the multitude is developing today under the hegemony of immaterial labor, but, as I said, such an argument requires extensive emprical study that is outside the bounds of our discussion here. I just want to add, finally, that Toni Negri and I insist on using the term "multitude" rather than "multitudes" as you suggest. This might seem a rather minor distinction because the concept multitude already marks a contrast with any notion of unity or identity, it is always already filled with differences, whether we write it with the singular or plural form. The singular form seems important to us, nonetheless, to mark the political capacity of the project - to signal, to use a term from a rather different context, the decision-making capacity of the multitude. The multitude is composed of differences, it has no center of intelligence, no hierarchical internal order, and yet the multitude must be able to take a decision. Or, to pose the same point differently, the multitude must be able to create a society. This is what the singular use of the term means for us.

Multitudes :

Empire is a complex synthesis, projecting theoretical innovations of the French and Italian Left through the filter of the English language. How do you evaluate the role of the American intellectual within the Imperial machinery of global distribution ? It can be argued that the recognition of "minority" languages helps foster nationalisms which are then susceptible to the most repressive forms of Imperial management. Would it be necessary to imagine some kind of internal exodus - articulated from within the United States by both white and minority intellectuals - that could overcome this co-figuration of minority recognition and Imperial nationalism ? A reorganization of the Human Sciences, such that the disciplinary divisions that reproduce the logic of sovereignty and colonialism would be eliminated, and a new Science of Foreigners be instituted ?

M. Hardt :

I like this notion of a science of foreigners, at least if I understand it correctly. It reminds of the phrase from Proust that Deleuze was so fond of repeating : we must learn to write in our own language as if it were a foreign tongue. That does seem to me a kind of exodus, an evacuation of the position of academic authority, a becoming different that opens up rich possibilities. Perhaps this could not only reorganize the disciplines, as you say, but also lead finally to finding a way out of the system of "area studies" that was developed through the logics of colonialism and the cold war and that continues to dominate the humanities and the social sciences. This seems to me a wonderful project. I would not, however, privilege or even single out US intellectuals as you seem to suggest. The internal exodus that you pose as necessary within the US intellectual sphere would certainly be necessary elsewhere too and in the same terms. Perhaps I am wary of posing any specific role for US intellectuals. You know, of course, that in contrast (and certainly in reaction) to the dominant pressures for intellectual to support the nation, many assert that anti-Americanism is the primary duty of Left US intellectuals, just as the critique of the French state is a primary duty of French intellectuals and so forth. This seems to me a kind of trap, to be always locked in such a reactive position and to conceive the political alternative always in national terms. But perhaps I am being distracted by these tired, worn-out problems and not listening closely enough to your question, because indeed the kind of internal exodus you suggest, the becoming-foreign in one’s own and every country completely displaces such old problematics. And this intellectual project of a science of foreigners, the effort to create a society of aliens, speaking all tongues, and yet communicating and acting in common to make another world possible - this is certainly another way of conceiving the project of the multitude.