Antonio Negri - A Revolt That Never Ends (1 of 5)

Over the years, few intellectuals have experienced as much admiration and hatred as Antonio Negri. His international best-selling book, Empire, a critical analysis of the new global economy coauthored with Michael Hardt, was hailed as a new manifesto for the 21st century, and turned Negri into a leading spokesperson for the international anti-globalization movement. Antonio Negri: A Revolt that Never Ends profiles the controversial life and times of this important moral and political philosopher, militant, prisoner, refugee, and so-called "enemy of the state." It traces his roots in the radical left-wing movements in Italy during the 60s and 70s, illustrated through incredible archival footage of strikes, factory occupations, terrorist actions, violent street confrontations, and government trials of dissidents. During these tumultuous decades Negri spent ten years in prison and fourteen years in Parisian exile, where he contributed to philosophical debates with authors such as Gilles Deleuze. The film features interviews with Negri (conducted following his April 2003 release from confinement), public speaking appearances, plus commentary from his coauthor Michael Hardt, and Italian and French colleagues. A Revolt That Never Ends explores this visionary theoretician's lifelong political struggle, now being expressed in works of contemporary relevance such as Empire and its sequels, Multitude and Commonwealth, which comprise a powerful intellectual project in protest of the new global order.

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Education

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• Antonio
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• Autonomous
• Marxism

[pianofolle]

@RnBramwell Kibuttzim is another good example. 'they were not political entities' -i would say: GREAT. Why would marx care if you actualize communism with political means or any other?.."as long as" it solves the problems....(alienation, poverty etc.). PS-do u have a facebook ?

[pianofolle]

@RnBramwell (same for me-as to our debate :)So,to summarize, i see communism[comm] to collectivism[coll] as a species to its genus,while u make them coincide.This explains why I dont reject ur coll.vistic description of comm,tho I judge it uncomplete: a species has evth of its genus,but not the other way around.U r free 2 put comm into the container of coll,but must pay the price of having other stuff inside:e.g. fascism.How u distinguish this from comm if u use the coll-category?

[RnBramwell]

@pianofolle [U r decent 2 debate with. Thanx.] "Phalansteres .. & parisian Commune [PC] .. didnt lead to totalitarism." I was thinking the same of the Israeli Kibuttzim, but realized they were not political entities, only cooperatives under a (relatively speaking) Rights respecting State. Participants' decisions were truly voluntary, as communism is supposed to be! PC had rifts & interestingly, Marx wanted conscription & *harsher* treatment of PC 'reactionaries' —just my point to Statism :-)

[RnBramwell]

@pianofolle I agree that he was not an explicit communist, fair enough. However, being against war is only a list item, not an essential of communism, which is why it is so widely ignored by Communists.

You are right, I don't see, b/c even the purist notions of communism are fundamentally collectivist. E.g. "Form each according to his ability to each according to his need" is a mighty fundamental of redistributionist communism, & is entirely collectivist. Is there something more fundamental?

[pianofolle]

@RnBramwell Again (my comment to your "what is the essential..") we r saying the same thing but drawing different conclusion. I contest that u can legitimately pass from communism to totalitarism via collectivism. "Leads to" doesnt mean "is equal to", a cold can lead to a fever but is not equal to it. Phalansteres of 1830's and parisian Commune of 1870 didnt lead to totalitarism.

[pianofolle]

@RnBramwell Nothing to object to all this.Moreover,Hegel would perfectly agree with it. Only it wouldnt make of him a communist.In order to be that he would need -for example-to be against war & against nationalities(2 of the basic principles of communism) which he was NOT;on the contrary these were fundamental elements of his dialectic of history.I'm afraid that u don't see that collectivism is just a necessary but no way sufficient condition for communism.

[RnBramwell]

@pianofolle To me, Popper was terrible. One cannot conduct science without induction, yet he only accepted deduction. Hypotheses had to be just made up, so science is driven by whim —I know, I did post-graduate science, & that is written everywhere but in flowery terms to hide the embarrassing truth.

The awful falsifiability principle: we can only know what is disproven, so Truth cannot be achieved. This rejects contextual facts, when all facts have context.

The best scientists cheat Popper.

[RnBramwell]

@pianofolle "Organically interconnected" is pure collectivism. Men interact, at their choice, to their benefit or peril, but such interaction is testimony to the uniqueness of individuals in society. It is patently observable, despite such claims that "no man is an island" because weall use the same  (say) market! All communism _necessarily_ leads to totalitarianism or collapse (see previous comment).

cont'd

[RnBramwell]

@pianofolle What is the _essential_ or core notion of Collectivism if not seeing the individual as morally & politically inferior to a group of humans? ~if not seeing the ideas, property & even life of an individual as subject to the wishes of the group (or their 'great' leaders)? Morally, then, the better individual serves, gives to, or sacrifices for others. Politics establishes law & policy on that basis, and enforces it with a gun. Deviate, & the gun emerges, totalitarianism.advances

[pianofolle]

@RnBramwell Popper (which I love in his view of epistemology but value little in his philosophical-political interpretations) is probably referring to Hegel's view of "total State", where each individual is organically interconnected with the other and with the whole statal structure. And this is of course a strong basis for any totalitarian conception. But the equation totalitarism=communism is absurd, though some forms of actualized communism in history have been totalitarian.