by Charles Mudede and Nicolas Veroli

On March 18 at Otis Cafe on First Hill, there is to be a political roundtable on the most important subject of the moment: “America as Empire.” The term “empire”–which describes the locus, order, and methods of capital in the late 20th and early 21st centuries–was promoted with great success by Marxist thinkers Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt in their book Empire. Because Hardt comes to Seattle regularly to visit friends, Nicolas Veroli and I chanced to talk to him about his book and this new planetary configuration called “empire.”

What do you think of the English-speaking left’s critical response to your work, in such outlets as Monthly Review and New Left Review?

For one thing, any book that presents a general theory like this–presents it in such confident language–expects to be critiqued. In fact we thought, when writing the book, that rather than trying to modify the arguments, a book like this is worth the value of its critiques. You create the general theory, and then people show why it’s wrong.

Many of them are probably right, but that’s what moves the discussion forward. So the fact that it’s generating critiques, especially on the left, is no surprise to us. On the other hand, there are certain critiques that I’ve now seen consistently from a certain left which don’t seem useful in the least.

For instance, one of those critiques is: “This book has pleased the mainstream press; therefore it must be a bourgeois book, and therefore it’s our enemy.” That’s not very good logic. It reveals two prejudices. One is the apparent comfort with or love of minority status. And the other is the idea that if something is right it can’t actually speak to a large audience. I think that in some regards, the book has to be thought of as widely read or popular because it is saying certain things that many people are thinking. And these things are not necessarily wrong just because a lot of people are thinking about them.

The other critique is more or less something like this: “We have perfectly good old categories; why do we need anything new?” Being against the new just because it’s new doesn’t seem very useful either. If it’s wrong, that’s fine, we can argue about it. But just saying that our old categories are perfectly good doesn’t seem like an excellent critique.

Why has your book been almost universally interpreted by the mainstream media as pro-capitalist-globalization?

I think the misconception here is (and it’s a general misconception within the topic of globalization/anti-globalization) that globalization is one thing and can only be one thing: the present form of “capitalist corporate globalization.” We call it “empire.” But anyway, whatever anyone wants to name it, the assumption is that this model is the only way that globalization can happen. Therefore, anyone who opposes it is necessarily anti-globalization.

Let me give you an example: Three weeks ago I was in Berlin, and the Economist set up this conference about globalization. I was on a panel with a journalist for the Economist who just says that globalization is wonderful, people don’t realize how wonderful it is–it’s making everybody in the world better, it’s this beautiful thing. And so my line was that, paradoxically, the so-called proponents of globalization are really the ones, I think, who most block globalization in the world. And the so-called anti-globalizers are the ones who are really for globalization. And what I mean by this is that the contemporary form of capitalist globalization blocks globalizing relationships–first of all, by limiting free movement of peoples. But moreover, in creating inequality with wealth and power, capitalist globalization is making it impossible for us to create global relationships. How can you create real relationships, meaningful relationships, with people who have lives that are so completely different from [yours]?

So I think that the people who were involved, the majority of those involved–this is a matter of interpretation, obviously–in the protests from Seattle to Genoa, say, are actually not anti-globalization at all. The protests themselves are globalizing relationships. What they’re arguing for is a democratic globalization, which seems to me a much fuller, more substantial notion of globalization than what we currently have.

We’re saying: globalization is a good thing–communists have always been for it, at least the traditional communism that we feel part of. And so we think globalization could be a wonderful future for democracy, but some people get confused when we say that and when Bill Gates and Bush also say that.

“Globalization” doesn’t really mean anything unless you attach adjectives to it.

“America as Empire,” a roundtable with writers and artists, Otis Cafe, 1005 Boren Ave, Tues March 18, 7 pm to 9 pm, free.