The Failure Of The Concept...

.:The Failure Of The Concept:.

Admittedly, I haven't really been able to pore over the text to begin with, but the topic alone, “the problems with the concept of the multitude”, is almost self-explanatory to anyone who has actually read the book. You see, the first thing anyone asks themselves when reading “multitude” is rather simple: what exactly *is* the Multitude?

Throughout the book, Hardt and Negri were skirting the issue without ever making a specific stake on the nature of the Multitude, either because they're post-modernist, therefore always descriptive, never prescriptive, or because they're simply playing it safe, and would rather not make a definite statement so nobody could refute them.

The biggest problem with the concept of the Multitude is it's so vague. The fact that it's vague makes it next to impossible to really identify the Multitude when it's finally there, but gives Hardt and Negri the perfect excuse of saying “it's exactly as we described”, despite the fact that we still have next to no idea what they were trying to get at in the book.

The Multitude is supposed to be a reaction to Empire, but how is it a proper reaction? It would seem that describing the formation of the Multitude is little more than an exercise in mentioning reactions that seem to have little connection to each other in hopes of finding an underlying general movement in all of them. Is this even a valid claim or implication to make? Or is this, quite simply, just a gross assumption that may not really hold water when thought over thoroughly?

The Multitude as a concept fails because its vagueness makes it possible to label anything that topples Empire as the Multitude, even if it's not necessarily the case. It's admittedly difficult to just assume things when even the authors aren't sure what they're talking about.

Addressing The Empire

.:Addressing The Empire:.

Malcolm Bull had choice words for the assumptions made by Hardt And Negri in “Empire” regarding migration, and he has a valid point. The assumption (p.224) that there is a “zero sum” relationship between distinct groups is ridiculous because “migration is not a zero-sum matter unless there is a mechanical solidarity” (p.224) At this point, we clearly realize that migration from country to country is not necessarily as revolutionary as Hardt and Negri would point out.

While migration from country to country is indeed commonplace, what about migration within the same country, i.e. from city to city? The ramifications of this effect, mainly the fact that it is not a revolutionary motion in terms of an “uprising” of sorts against a status quo, but rather a means of fulfilling a particular desire would mean that it is rather ignorant for anyone to just assume that migration is a revolutionary reaction rather than merely an economic or pragmatic concern. In Hardt and Negri's haste to peg anything and everything as signs of the revolution (p.225), they gleefully overlook the fact that migration doesn't work that way at all.

Similarly, Jodi Dean was less than impressed by Hardt and Negri's assertions regarding the ways the multitude would communicate through the network. It was asserted that the multitude would use the network as a weapon against Empire, but as Jodi Dean was quick to point out, the persistent prevalence of politics instead of its decentralization was more than enough proof that Empire is far from being displaced (p.279) through the network of communications. That being said, Dean's doubts are rather clear-cut, albeit simplistic.

Hardt and Negri's stand on the multitude's ability to use these networks in order to combat Empire is not as unfeasible as Dean would paint it, although it's not as simple as Hardt and Negri would have us believe. The truth is, the network is there not exclusively for the prevalence of the Multitude, but for a mutually assured conflict between Multitude and Empire, one that is clearly highlighted by the usage of the network by both “factions”, as it were.

To ignore this is to ignore the fact that the Empire has put the network in place unwittingly long before the Multitude was even aware of itself.

Multitude: Finale

.:The Democracy Of The Multitude:.

For the most part, I've been rather accepting of Hardt and Negri's ideas about the Multitude in the book, and it seemed to me that despite the seeming lack of cohesiveness to their ideas, or at the very least, a unifying thread where we can glean a cause for action. Truth be told, Hardt and Negri's ideas didn't seem new at all, and merely repeats of some intelligent commentary you'd see on “The Daily Show”, sans the witty sense of humor and personality of a Jon Stewart.

Now, in this last segment of their book, “Democracy of the Multitude”, I'm utterly flabbergasted. In here, they attempt to piece together the reform suggestions they bandied about in the previous segment, and all under the guise of this being how the multitude would form their democracy. While I took most of their ideas in with little resistance, I find their ideas about a sovereignless multitude (p.330) or their attempts at reformation as a matter of using unconventional “weapons” to throw off Empire (p.347) as bordering on ravings of utter ludicrousness.

Quite bluntly, there is a huge gap between this seeming wish-fulfillment book and the reality of the situation, because the reality of the situation is that we can't expect these proposals purported in the book as even remotely “feasible”, so the picture of the Democracy of the Multitude that is being painted by this book, is unfortunately a false, blatantly, hopelessly, untenable dream envisioned by Hardt and Negri. The true democracy of the Multitude *cannot* be found in this book. All we can see are hopes and dreams that will never be met by a Multitude that is coming into reality.

The real democracy of the Multitude comes in its ability to overturn the triangle of power. As the power of the sovereigns steadily seeps more and more into the citizenry, the Multitude becomes a stable source of assurance: we no longer feel the crunch of having to worry about consolidating power in a select few. This unfortunately comes at the price of accountability, and as we see the Multitude persist and attempt to struggle against Empire, what we see, barring a revolution of Utopian proportions, the same old song and dance we've had during the other revolutions of history.

Perhaps, the Empire will no longer be the ones to drive our dignity to the ground. But one thing will always be certain, even in the democracy of the Multitude: *something* will certainly take its place, whatever it may be.

Resistance...

.:Resistance:.

Any system, when overridden with numerous flaws, will almost always meet resistance. This is true for technology, this is most certainly true for politics and governance. The ability of a government to stem these insurgencies is almost always commensurate to what kind of resistance the government is meeting. Over the course of history, there have been three forms of resistance in general, and for the most part, each of them have been a product of their times.

When one talks about a people's army, it's inevitable to conjure thoughts of the CPP-NPA if you happen to be Filipino, if only for the "PA" part of "NPA". That being said, a people's army is easily characterized by its organization, similar to a conventional army, albeit obviously often lower in numbers, and government fiat. The people's army was historically formed as a reaction to a civil dispute, such as against a tyrannical king (p.68) or sovereign, and as such, had its own hierarchy mimicking that of a conventional army. At this point, a people's army is almost cut off at the knees the moment its leaders are subdued, as was the case of the steady decline of the New People's Army since the self-imposed exile of Jose Maria Sison.

The people's army is characteristic of a reaction to a ruling paradigm, be it a civil despot, or a colonizer, and is effective insofar as its support base is concerned. Unlike guerilla warfare or network struggles, however, the success of a people's army is almost exclusively a number's game, whereas guerilla warfare has the element of surprise in its favor, and network struggles focus on coordination about as much as its numbers. The worry for the people's army is once "victory" is achieved. In being a centralized power, they are looked upon as the de facto substitute for the status quo, and this is where whatever flaws of the people's army come to the fore, oftentimes proving themselves no better than the status quo they replaced (p.72).

Guerilla warfare is similar to a people's army in that it is generally confined to one particular country, but unlike a people's army, despite a possibly large organization in total, guerilla warfare's advantage is in its numerous factions, thus all but negating the potential of an organization's collapse if its "leaders" were subdued. This is because guerilla warfare as a form of resistance is characterized by its being splintered and relatively disorganized. Almost operating as individuals, guerillas, though they may all be part of a particular organization, are certainly operating towards a goal with no attempt to fully supersede the status quo, knowing they are incapable of doing this. This is why their resistance is more disruptive or even destructive, than reconstructive, as is the case with a people's army.

A network struggle is, in contrast, one that takes place on the biopolitical terrain: it directly produces new subjectivities and new forms of life (p. 83). In place of the emphasis on numbers or the element of surprise, networks rely on "creativity, communication, and self-organized cooperation" (p. 83). This results in an overarching system of resistance that is more organized than a people's army, yet more persistent than guerilla warfare. In being an evolution of the two earlier forms of resistance we see a form of resistance greater than the sum of its parts: in its ability to coordinate and communicate, the network manages to strengthen and perpetuate itself.

Time can only tell if this form of resistance, that which seems to be the resistance in the era of the multitude, will succeed where its predecessors have failed.

How Has War Changed?

.:Multitude Has The Answer:.

While the word “war” connotes a very specific image of many different countries fighting over territory by using military force, “Multitude” by Hardt and Negri conjures a very different picture: we instead see these wars, or these state of wars, as it were, as a constant “general global state of war” that happens all over the world, not as a matter of conflict between two or more sovereign powers, but more along the lines of a civil war within only one sovereign territory, as Hardt and Negri put it.

If one were to refer to the discussion of “Empire”, it was made clear that globalization is slowly turning the entire world into one superstructure instead of a conglomeration of different structures, i.e. countries. This in turn would mean that any conflict within the world is a conflict within the workings of said superstructure, thus resulting in what could only be called “civil war”. This is especially clear when we realize that only rarely do we now have wars in order to expand territory, albeit the most high-profile war we are currently involved in, USA's “war on terror”, is, for all intents and purposes, a sliding back into the old kind of war.

Outside of this sliding back, the wars of today are radically different in purpose, and are mostly for policing purposes, instead of for expansion of territory. For an erring country to fall in line with the standard, a powerful country would declare war on it not to conquer the country, but to make it conform to a particular standard or intention, as we have clearly seen in the way the threat of war dissuades countries like North Korea and Cuba from fully exerting their will. No longer can we assume a “unilateral” or a “multilateral” approach, because any attempt by a country like the United States to muscle another country into falling in line has to intrinsically be in accordance with the desires of the rest of the superstructure. America, as Hardt and Negri put it, “cannot go it alone”. This is why the nature of war in this day and age has changed from one of a battle of political wills to an attempt at hegemony and conformity, albeit not in the strictest or most obvious sense. War has become a tool of perpetuating this so-called Empire of which countries like the United States are merely a part of, and not the be-all and end-all of.