Contenu du sommaire : Le nouvel ordre impérial

The New Imperial Order : the Globalization of the U.
S. Empire. It took the U.S. one century to extend their « manifest destiny » from North America to the whole world. In the aftermath of the Cold War, there still seemed to be a red line that the U.S. global empire could not tread easily, represented by the former boundaries of the ex-USSR. After September 11, this red line has been wiped out: U.S. military bases have been established in the heart of the former Soviet Union. The U.S., which acts as the enforcer of capitalist globalization, has widened the gap between its military power and the rest of the world. Thus it can now envisage to establish a quasi-direct colonial rule in Baghdad in contrast with 1991 when it allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power under embargo and scrutiny for lack of an alternative suitable to its interests.

The Imperial Web and the War on Terrorism: U.S. Military Bases and Empire. The attacks of September 11,2001 and the subsequent global War on Terrorism directed by the United States have made it clear that the world is now dominated by an American Empire, which extends far beyond the British Empire of old. The extent of U.S. imperial ambitions is perhaps best understoood in terms of the history of its military bases, which are now located in around 60 countries. These bases are not to be understood as a purely military phenomenon but as part of a larger system of economic, political and military power rooted in the hegemonic position of U.S. capitalism in the world economy as a whole. [Article adapted from the March 2002 issue of Monthly Review, vol. 53, no. 10].

An Authoritarian Scenario. The long-term war against « terrorism » embarked upon by the Bush administration in the aftermath of September 11th 2001 goes far beyond its strictly military dimension. It also involves a fundamental onslaught on democratic and social rights, both in the USA and in European countries. The result of this combination between the military and a political dimension is the establishment of an architecture of control operating in the service of the most brutal sectors of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the accumulation of capital.

A World Without War. In the war which the centres of concentrated power, whether statist or private, are waging against the entire population of the world, the pretexts change, the policy remains the same. Yesterday it was communism or drugs, today it's terrorism. Through intimidation and the manipulation of information, the exponents of such warfare are reducing the entire world to silence. The only thing that matters is their interests, and to defend these they are ready to confiscate and militarise the entire planet and outer space as well. They ruin lives and communities and call the whole business « reform », « commerce », or « free-trade ». Despite this, it is to the freaks of Porto Alegre that the future belongs. It is they who are the bearers of a hope that another kind of globalisation is possible.

Neoliberalism-Neomilitarism. The new military strategy of the US responds to political motivations, but it must also be understood in relation to the economic situation. The US economy is not in a permanent crisis since the 1970, although growth rates remain comparatively low and a threat of financial crisis exists, due to domestic factors and risks of contagion from the periphery. The share of military spending in GDP is low, and the US has the capability to finance new wars. The military course must be understood as part of the overall framework of global US hegemony, given the importance of its interest abroad.

The Alternative to the Neoliberal System of Globalisation and Militarism. Imperialism today and the Hegemonic Offensive of the United States. Capitalism has entered the age of obsolescence. The new technological revolution saves both labour and capital and thus delegitimates the domination of the second over the first. The US leader of the new imperialist system does not provide capital to its peripheries ,but absorbs the surplus generated in the whole world in order to maintain its wasteful consumption .The devastating dimension of accumulation is thus reinforced ,as the case of an eventual further expansion of agricultural capitalism illustrates it . The power system responds to these features of senility by resorting to more violence ( the « american wars ») and giving up the universal values of its origins ,thus leading to a crisis of democratic legitimity

Gems and Baubles in Empire. Hardt and Negri's Empire is a welcome and often inspiring antidote to the defeatism that has infected so much of the left. Their analysis includes a number of important insights, such as the capacity of American forms of power to penetrate other states. But their political economy is crude, and the promising discussions they open drift towards an empire without any material center. At the same time, their revolutionary commitments to transformation from below refuses to engage the complexities of agency and organization. In the end we are, disappointingly, left with a virtual empire confronting a virtual proletariat.

The Empire strikes again. This article puts forward a sharp critique of Hardt and Negri's Empire. Despite the book's « post-modern » apparel, what it actually proposes is a pairing of two teleological « grand narratives». The first of these is a history of western political thought which is basically an apologia for the American constitution, whose ultimate manifestation is this hypothetical empire, the contemporary guise of an elusive political power. As for the second narrative, it sketches a history of capitalism which, by way of its incarnations in the figures of the « professional worker » and the « mass worker », at last arrives at the figures of the « social worker » and the multitude, the latter being the-equally elusive- figure in a rather curious version of French communism. Faced with an epoch marked by a series of transformations requiring the most rigorous examination, telling such « stories » is a futile exercise.

Revolutionary subjectivity: Some Reflections on Hardt and Negri's Empire. Among other issues addressed by Hardt and Negri in Empire, there is the question of the establishment of a revolutionary subjectivity respectful of the specific nature of local struggles: what they call a « community of singularities ». Our aim is to show that a revolutionary subjectivity of this kind can only operate by way of a conversion involving two dimensions. In its prophecy of the future, the book proclaims the imperative of a shift to the verticality of struggles, so that power can be directly confronted. In its genealogy of past struggles, the book invokes St. Augustine's model of the city of God. What these two dimensions together show is the need for a spiritual power which will throw light on both the intellectual production constitutive of the multitude and on the mode of writing proper to the book entitled Empire, whose aim is to produce this revolutionary subject, doing so by way of an affective strategy.

Totalitarianism, Ideology and Democracy. The coherence of the concept of totalitarianism is called into question through the contradiction between its restricted meaning (the comparison between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany) and its larger meaning, encompassing the entire history of the USSR. The coherence of the notion also suffers from the equivocal use of the concept of ideology, understood as illusion or falsehood. The popularity of the weaker (and wider) use of the concept is to be accounted for on polemical grounds, which have to do with the questionable conception of democracy which this wider and weaker conception tends to dissimulate.

An Aesthetics of « Disart ». The revival in the contemporary philosophical inquiry on art is characterised by a concentration on the aesthetic dimension (judgements of taste, reception), exclusive of other dimensions. The effect of this is to subordinate art to aesthetics, establishing aesthetics as the sole mode through which art is conceptually addressed. To counter such a reduction, the article returns to the question formulated by Lukács – works of art exist, how are they possible? The article briefly outlines a number of possible developments leading on from this question, in particular the question of the immanent and reciprocal dialectic linking the aesthetic to the artistic, and the profound changes which have occurred in the field of art and in its various practices – including aesthetics- during the twentieth century.