11.04.2003 Harman-Hardt Debate: The Working Class or the Multitude?
Debate from the Floor
First Contributor (from Florida)
I fully identify with Michael Hardts description of the multitude and I see it in practice where I live, where I see a movement away form what I call a platform based rigid organisation where after a platform has been established everybody has to follow it rigidly, a movement towards what I call issue based coalitions where the differences do exist and people coalesce around an issue dynamically, where today we may be one coalition about one issue, tomorrow we may be another coalition around another issue, and we may find ourselves on different sides so to speak from day to day.
My question to Michael is would you say that that basically is a result of our information technology. In the past we could not communicate quickly at a distance, so we had to come together once a year or every three or four years and put together a platform that had to be followed, whereas today we can communicate quickly and in five minutes exchange information in these coalitions quickly. So would you say this is primarily a result of improvement in communication?
Second Contributor (from Chicago)
I have a question principally for Michael Hardt. It is about the notion that there is a new class of immaterial workers who occupy a hegemonic position within the working class. As I understand it, for Marx industrial workers were hegemonic for two reasons.
First , all struggles of the working class were related around struggles of industrial workers.
Second the industrial working class had the capacity to inaugurate a new mode of production, and in doing so to draw other sections around it.
I want to know if the immaterial working class is hegemonic in the same sense. Do the struggles of the multiplicity articulate themselves around the struggles of the immaterial working class? Does the immaterial working class and the multiplicity gathered around it have the capacity to inaugurate a new mode of production?
Third Contributor
Ive got a couple of points Id like to open up for discussion.
Firstly, Id like to bring out the point that there is not necessarily this broad commonality of interest among the working class when you look at variations in income or working conditions among the working class, like for example, the longshoremen in the United States earn a lot while the working class people and NGOs will not make a lot of money and working conditions vary. The general point is that there are plurality of interests among the working class.
What I wanted to say was that what unites multitudes in struggle essentially is the desire for autonomy and the ability to effect a change without the mediation of a centralised state body, or a centralised body at all. People are very interested in taking the reins into their own hands and intelligent enough to be given the power to do things without some kind of authority, and especially without an authoritarian authority telling what and when they can do something
The other point I wanted to bring up was about Argentina. When Chris Harman spoke about Argentina I really didnt understand what was going on, because right now in Argentina factories are being seized by the workers. So if the working class is supposedly not engaged in the struggle, I dont see how that can be.
The fact of the matter is that things are going wrong in Argentina because theres a military imperialistic dictatorship. Its a military struggle rather than the fact that the working class is not involved. All classes are involved, well maybe not the elites, but all segments of society are participating, and the problem is how to overcome the repression, not whether or not we have the banner of the working class flying. Everyone taking part, that is what is so amazing about Argentina.
Fourth Contributor
I am from Mexico, and Zapatismo ensures that this no longer a theoretical question but a practical one. We are not in Seattle any more but we are in Porto Alegre and on the threshold of a war which may have terrible consequence for humanity as a whole. If we are going to turn this global movement into a movement against the war and if we are asking that it should be led by the working class, we cannot organise it. We need to build the widest movement so that the vast majority of humanity can express its resistance to war. As the Zapatistas have shown we can win a new world.
Fifth Contributor (from Canada)
I want to comment on the contribution of the sister from Mexico. I think the danger of war now is totally on everyones mind and it just seems to be unstoppable. What we are talking about is strategy for getting rid of capitalism. There is a global anticapitalist movement that wants to see an end to this horrible system which is inflicting harm on millions of people.
It is a misreading of Marx to see it as class trumps raise, class trumps gender, that the working class stands over your raise or your gender. What he is talking about is the question of strategy. Where are the forces that can critically attack the system at its roots. Its not a value judgement about class being primarily and standing over the other things. It is a question of who can actually shut the system down. This is the vital question for the movement today. We have a world wide movement against capitalism and imperialism We saw it on the streets here in Porto Alegre. It was fantastic. It is important not just to celebrate what is happening in Argentina, we celebrate it, but we know that the hidden fangs of imperialism and capitalism are there trying to get back on top of Argentina. We see what is going on in Venezuela. It is a crucial question: What are the forces, and what fight does there have to be in our cities and our countries to make sure this system does not recover from the blows this movement wants to inflict on it so that we can have a better world.
Sixth Contributor
I am Josefina and I come from Argentina. I want to give an opinion and also ask a question about two issues. The first relates to the question of the hegemony of the working class. I raise not a quantitative but a qualitative one, although quantity if of course as important foundation.
I see the concept of hegemony as being about whether the working class is capable of gathering about it the other forces to address the socialist solution to the capitalist crisis. In relation in Argentina in this sense there is a movement for the occupation of factories and taking production under workers control. And I am personally working with these comrades in the factories.
An important example is the case of Zanon, whether the workers are occupying the factory creating new jobs for unemployed workers. In creating their ceramic goods theyve used land given to them by the Mapuche Indian communities, and theyve used it to make goods named in honour of the Mapuche. All this is a form of production without bosses and it has been going on now for a year and more. It is a little example of what we mean by working class hegemony in which the working class, not in any corporatist way, addresses the problems of other groups in developing and seeking out solutions to the crisis. So that is the sense in which I see there is still a need for working class hegemony, not in the sense of imposing itself, but in the sense of gathering around it these other forces for a socialist solution.
As regards the movement against the war, raised by one the previous comrades as to whether it should be limited to the working class, categorically not. But would it not be wonderful if the unions in Brazil and in Italy and the other countries gathered around them and led the movement against the war, blocked the production of those factories producing arms, and turned the movement against the war into movement directly against capitalism.
Seventh Contributor
I see that the Marxist way involves going through the state. All the Communist Parties have based their work through the state. Negri, Hardt and Holloway dismiss the notion of the state. I feel that you are Communists but at the same time are resisting the notion of the state. I want to know how decision making will take place with this multitude that is not the working class alone because we do want to reach communism. I read in an interview with Toni Negri hes talking about the red zone and I dont see how you get from there to the conquest of the state
Eighth Contributor
I am from the Greek social forum. I feel that this opposition between the multitude and the working class is false. These terms do not mutually exclude each other. In the Marxist tradition the working class is a set of persons. In this society we can identify a number of people as being the working class, with the rest another class. For Poulatzas and other French writers from the 1970s we have a notion of a set of class positions. I think it is more correct to say the Marxist view is a way of functioning. Every twenty years we have this talk that the working class does not exist any more, and then we find it again.
The notion of the multitude has a certain tradition. It was used by Spinoza in the 17th century. He has this paragraph where he says that peoples minds are not able to grasp every problem but when talk to each other and listen to each other they come to solutions which did not exist in the beginning. This is the way of functioning of the multitude.
So the question has nothing to do with statistics. So it would be absurd to say we have one thousand in a multitude. It is not a question of numbers, its a mode of functioning which does not necessarily exclude the existence of the working class.
The point made by Chris Harman is correct in the sense that it is not necessarily good, we should not idealise the multitude. It is not necessarily positive. It can be negative.
Ninth Contributor
I am a South Korean. I have just one question to the speakers. It seems to me that there is another factor that has to be taken into consideration. To its not just a question of hegemony, but for me one my major concerns is this new emerging form of organisation of the multitude in terms of transformations coming from different identities. We also have difficulty in sustaining these mobilisations on a minimum common agenda precisely because there is a great desire to respect the differences and autonomy of each actor and this requires a tremendous time and effort to agree a common agenda for all the actions. We can agree what we against - against the war, against globalisation - but we have a great difficulty in agreeing strategies and visions of where we want to go. In terms of that getting more numbers, certainly the mobilisation of the working class, but in terms of sustaining adhesion to an agenda, I think there are great differences. The people we are fighting against are producing changes at great speed, and we have these difficulties in arriving at what we want to do.. I would like to hear from both speakers what you think about these factors
Tenth Contributor
I am from Buenos Aires Argentina. I remember the panel you were on last year, Michael. What I remember is how isolated you seemed in presenting the book Empire vis a vis the rest of the people on the panel. So I am happy see how this concept has been gathering more friends and supporters in the intervening year.
I want to make a critique of the critique, as it were. Many comrades still face to read it as work in progress. They see it a fallen from the sky, rather than as product of work both political and analytical over 30 years.
So I think that terms that you dealt with, `affect`, `immaterial labour` are key to understanding both the multitude and empire.
I sense almost a sense of nostalgia for what capitalism built in its development, and also a forgetfulness about the brutality of that process of development. I dont know if work is better or worse than it was a hundred years ago. It is almost certainly better in someway, worse in others. What we have to remember is the centrality of struggle, history of struggle is part of that history to, and we must not just talk about the achievements of capitalism. So I want to ask you to develop more this idea of multitude, where the concept of multitude belong within the system of exploitation and domination
updated on 09/09/2010
