Editor's Introduction

Abstract:

In this issue Antonio Negri's philosophical reflections on the liberating effects of exile are elicited and engaged in an interview with Francesca Cadel (translated into English by Carin McLain). Negri and Cadel begin by distinguishing the condition of exile in the "interstitial, postmodern sense of the nomadism and métissage of the third millenium" from the linear terms of political exile of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (as experienced by, among others, Karl Marx and Giuseppe Mazzini). Negri's view is that, after 1968 - as a result of the decentering of production, and the consequent reconfiguring of the conditions of culture and identity - exile no longer means "stepping outside in order to return" but, rather, the "formation of bodies that are ontologically cosmopolitan." (The role of the United States, according to Negri, is that it refuses to accept this new reality and is engaged in a "parasitic will to dominance" over this global "non-place.") Negri interprets the post-68 condition of exile as a liberating journey based on an economy of excess and a desire for richness and fullness, leading to ethical actions - without utopia - that are capable of creating a new world. (And when Cadel reminds him of the many bodies that die in exile, Negri responds by seeing such murders as attempts to reconstruct a sense of place, which should be overcome by making the non-place produced by capitalism into a "positive force, a constructive power.") For Negri, a revolutionary process in the contemporary world needs to operate "beyond measure," beyond the boundaries of emancipation, in the sense that it creates conditions that allow the possibility of freedom for all. Taking a page from Spinoza's geometry, Negri explains that, within the current conjuncture, this revolutionary potential derives from recognizing and deploying three fundamental factors - poverty, love, and the will to cooperate - to restructure systems of organization on a global scale. Finally, when Cadel asks him to reflect on his return to Italy after 14 years of exile in France, Negri characterizes his earlier period of political activity as a radical attempt to "invent a future" and describes himself now as being neither optimistic nor pessimistic but joyful: "a joyful democracy is what we want."

For Paul Buhle, comics are one of the key places to look for an artistic expression of the radical sensibilities of young North Americans today. Buhle, in his contribution to the art/iculations series, notes an upsurge in the work of radical animators and graphic novelists in the United States, after a hiatus ushered in by the demise of Underground Comix in the mid-1970s (examples of which can be found in the Moore Collection of Underground Comix at California Polytechnic State University). Cable television programs like Trippin' the Rift (which built on the earlier success of such hits as Who Killed Roger Rabbit? and The Simpsons), and most recently Minoriteam, have revived a tradition of radical animation that had all but collapsed in the wake of Hollywood blacklisting it in the 1950s. Buhle locates the roots of contemporary radical comics in an even earlier period, in the cartoons created by the Wobblies, members of the Industrial Workers of the World, in the early twentieth century. While there is dearth of scholarship concerning the visual art that Joe Hill and others produced for IWW publications, Buhle notes that these radical cartoonists seem to have been inspired by and to have borrowed from the work going on around them - mainstream comics, editorial cartoons, and modern art. One of the results was the cartoon strip "Mr. Block," drawn by Ernest Riebe. The struggle to develop a "new popular art" has continued, in fits and starts, through projects like Rocky and His Friends, Corporate Crime Comics, Zap Comix, and World War 3 Illustrated. Buhle himself has been involved in two such endeavors: Radical America Komiks and, most recently, Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World. He sees the collection of artists whose work is included in the recently published Wobblies! as "actively rethinking Marxism, or at least intuitively reconceptualizing what a radical, class-based but also deeply vernacular art would be."

Throughout its history, Marxism has been challenged and enriched by other radical theoretical and political traditions - and they, in turn, have been transformed by their engagement with Marxism. In our own day, scholars and activists have been actively involved in rethinking the connections between Marxism and such varied movements as feminism, antiracism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism. The contributors to the symposium on Marxian sexual politics, originally organized by Marcia Klotz and Kevin Floyd as a panel for the Cultural Studies Association, focus their attention on the multiple intersections of Marxism and queer theory. As Klotz explains in her introduction, while the authors of the three essays included here invoke different understandings of sexuality, they share both an interest in the writings of the so-called "young Marx" and in the idea that "a Marxist approach to sexuality is quite compatible with that taken by queer theory."

Rosemary Hennessy begins her contribution on social reproduction by noting that, with few exceptions (such as Alexandra Kollantai and Herbert Marcuse), Marxism has largely ignored issues of sexuality. And despite capitalism's increasing colonization of the body and affect, Marxists who are actively engaged in thinking critically about sexuality are still "few and far between." The opposite is true of cultural studies, where queer theory has blossomed since the 1990s, especially in relation to studies of consumption. What Hennessy finds particularly interesting are recent texts that address sexuality in relation to the history of racialized imperialism, changing labor relations, and contemporary neoliberalism. She seeks to build on this literature by showing how, drawing from Marx's discussion in "On the Jewish Question," the reproduction of capitalist economic relations is based in important ways on culture, including ideologies of gender and economies of desire. Thus, for example, capital has traditionally been able to use the "second skin of femininity" to lower the value of labor power - of both men and women - in the maquiladora industries on Mexico's northern border. More recently, as the hiring of openly gay and lesbian workers has increased in these industries, new configurations of the relation between surplus value and sexual value have created difficult obstacles to labor organizing, as homophobia is used by capital to discipline workers. But it has also created new opportunities, as workers involved in such organizing efforts "disclose in what has been offered as the way things are an alternative story of how they can be."

Kevin Floyd's queer reading of one of the key texts of Marxist humanism - Georg Lukács's History and Class Consciousness - reveals both Lukács's indebtedness to Immanuel Kant's approach to morality and the distance that separates his work from Marx's 1844 Manuscripts. Drawing from Eric Clarke's pioneering interrogation of the heteronormativity of Kant's "sexual humanism," Floyd argues that Lukács, notwithstanding his extended critique of Kant's epistemology, ends up adopting a moral position with sexual implications similar to that of Kant. The problem arises because Lukács, in attempting to overcome the unbridgeable gap Kant posits between the subject and object of knowledge, reconceptualizes the Kantian "things-in-themselves" as the alienated objects of the subject's activity. He then uses this identification of objects and commodities both to condemn all forms of objectification as dehumanizing and to posit private property as central to the definition of what it means to be human. Floyd views Lukács's approach as heteronormative not necessarily on its own terms (since Lukács offers little in the way of a sustained discussion of sexuality) but, rather, from the perspective of a contemporary queer politics "that insists on the legitimacy, within antiheteronormative spaces, of the sexual objectification of bodies." Marx, in contrast to Lukács, is credited with a quite different understanding of the body, according to which human faculties, capacities, needs, and desires are created and recreated by an ongoing objectification through collective labor. Thus, Floyd concludes that the humanism set forth by Marx would "include an expansion of sexual practice, including the development of discourses.. .organized around the legitimacy of sexual pleasure as an end in itself."

The 1844 Manuscripts are also central to Marcia Klotz's attempt to think through the exchange between queer theory and Marxism. She finds that, in his critique of alienation, Marx not only invokes eroticism - in the image of the sexual procurer, both the sycophantic eunuch and the conniving pimp - but he does so with respect to commodities, money, and human relations. Thus, contra the marginalist thesis of Lawrence Birken, Marx focuses his sexual tropes on the realm of consumption not on production or reproduction. And, for Klotz, this is "precisely the place where a contemporary analysis of sexual alienation within the modern capitalist soci al order ought to begin." She then seeks to establish the relation between Marx's critique of alienation and, somewhat ironically, both Catherine MacKinnon's analysis of the expropriation of sexuality and the celebration of sexuality championed by queer politics and sex-positive feminism. Klotz applauds MacKinnon's analogy between sexuality and labor but criticizes her for limiting the alienation of sexuality to women. Similarly, the work of queer and other sex-positive activists to create spaces "where the creative power of sex can be celebrated on its own terms" needs to be extended, in turn, to take on the "alienating power of capitalism itself." Finally, Klotz views as central to any attempt to define a Marxian sexual politics the recognition that Marx's use of the term "human" is more nuanced than allowed for in Louis Althusser's critique of "humanist ideology" in the manuscripts of the young Marx. Insofar as Marx manages to attach "the most basic modes of bodily experience" to intersubjectivity, his work remains open to a radical sexual politics that, according to Klotz - who can "hardly think of a better place to start" - encourages us to challenge and imagine an alternative to the deep structure of capitalist ideology.

While Negri (in the interview with Cadel) argues that "Empire must be organized in a democratic manner," Mehmet Odekon directly criticizes the effectiveness of local democratizing movements in combating the effects of capitalist globalization and calls, instead, for a revitalization of the global trade union movement as the only way of freeing the working classes from the hegemony of capital. Odekon begins by noting that interest in globalization, on the part of both scholars and activists, has waned in recent years. Furthermore, in his view, the upsurge of local social movements, grouped together in such entities as the World Social Forum and the International Forum on Globalization, and oriented toward new forms of democracy and subsidiarity, has actually weakened the anti-globalization movement. Odekon believes it is possible to revise Immanuel Wallerstein's world systems theory to account for such new dimensions as inter-imperialist rivalry, the imperial hegemony of the United States, and the institutional infrastrucure of globalization and neoliberalism. He then argues that "unorganized people" cannot, by themselves, effectively challenge the power of global capital and the only alternative is a "working class organized by trade unions." Odekon sees the labor-based social movements of the "semi-periphery" - from Brazil to South Africa - as providing the leadership for a global labor movement which, under the aegis of the International Labor Organization and with a focus on restructuring at the level of the nation-state, will be able to challenge the increasing hegemony of capital.

Odekon's essay is the latest essay in the "Globalization under Interrogation" series that we launched in 2000 (in volume 12, number 4), under the editorship of Yahya Madra and Jack Amariglio. The goal of the series, as they explained in their introduction, was to interrogate the existing representations of globalization (on the Right and, especially, on the Left) and to begin the task of formulating novel theoretical and political strategies to "frontally engage with globalization." We want to thank Yahya and Jack for the energy and acumen with which they have worked with authors as diverse as Arif Dirlik, Lisa Lowe, Bob Jessop, R. Radakrishnan, J.K. Gibson-Graham, and David F. Ruccio over the past six years to push forward the rethinking of globalization. We also want to welcome Kenan Erçel, who has agreed to assume editorial responsibility for the series, and to encourage writers and artists to continue to demonstrate the vitality of Marxism in analyzing the conditions and consequences of capitalist globalization and in formulating noncapitalist alternatives.

Extending her critique of what she considers to be Jürgen Habermas's "conciliatory position towards the market economy and the paternalistic welfare state," Deborah Cook contrasts Habermas's approach with Theodor Adorno's "far more global and Marxist perspective." The divergence between their interpretations of life under late capitalism turns on their different understandings of the role of reason in self-preservation. For Habermas, preserving the self is functionally rational, in the sense that reproduction of the lifeworld - both materially, through markets and the state, and symbolically, through the conditions of communicative action among lifeworld members - has been effectively accomplished. Adorno, in contrast, warns against the objective irrationality of a "self-preservation gone wild" to the extent that, under capitalism, "we continue to be driven unconsciously and blindly by the somatically based instinct of self-preservation." The solution will only arrive when self-preservation is tamed, through recognizing that behavior is motivated and shaped by instincts and through fundamentally transforming society in order to rationally accommodate those instincts. Thus, Cook criticizes Habermas for extolling the rationality of the "invisible hand" and the welfare state and rejecting the idea of a collective subject. She sides, instead, with Adorno who decried the harmfulness of surrendering the tasks of self-preservation to the capitalist economic and political system and looked to the emergence of a "socially solidary subject" that would have as its task "the alleviation of human suffering through the satisfaction of material needs in the interest of preserving the species as a whole."

At the beginning of this year (in the first issue of this volume), we published Julian Markels's critique of the abandonment of the "historical logic of Western Marxism" in the recent work of some authors associated with the rethinking of Marxism pioneered by the Association for Economic and Social Analysis. Here, Richard Wolff responds to Markels's polemic by, first, affirming that Marxists' critical engagement with other traditions (such as postmodernism) is necessarily complex, involving neither simple dismissal nor acceptance. He then explains that rejecting a necessary historical trajectory, and stressing the openness of social - including class - transformation, need not entail a rejection of history or a "disrespect for what the past teaches." While "tilting against straw Marxisms" may be a danger, so is accepting the idea of historical inevitability that continues to live on inside (and, perhaps especially, outside) the Marxian tradition. So if, as Markels and Wolff agree, capitalism is the key issue, the challenge, as Wolff sees it, is to give up a determinist Marxism "that has outlived its historical usefulness" and not to abandon either Marxism itself or the lessons it teaches about both the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism.

As U.S. soldiers continue to enlist for and die on the battlefields of Afghanistan, Iraq, and other military adventures around the world, Graham Cassano looks back to Thorstein Veblen's thoughts on nationalist "dementia" and social solidarity for a way of making sense of workers' seeming attachment to nationalism and war. As Cassano explains in his Remarx essay, Veblen, who is perhaps best known today for his theory of conspicuous consumption and invidious comparison (not that modern mainstream economists who publish on this topic ever credit him for these ideas), also wrote about such wide-ranging topics as war and peace, nationalism, the vested interests of the "common man" in the modern industrial system, and the Wobblies. Veblen believed, on one hand, that workers were compensated for their muscle and blood by the "psychic income" of belonging to a national community of interests, and therefore subordinated their interests to those of the leisure class. On the other hand, the mechanistic outlook and logic that accompanied modern industry created new, counter-hegemonic principles of social justice and community best represented by the IWW. So, in retrospect, nationalism is a two-edged sword: it bound many workers to the ruling class during World War I but served as the patriotic cover for the successors to the Wobblies, the militants of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. What Cassano finds today is that a new labor militancy is being born, in the Service Employees International Union and UNITE-HERE, which has the potential of resisting nationalism and turning the category of class into a principle of community solidarity.

Two different kinds of revolutionaries are the subjects of the books reviewed by Esra Erdem and Jennifer Lefevre. Erdem sees strong affinities between the noncapitalist desires expressed in RM and the work of the Buenos Aires-based collective of activist intellectuals, Colectivo Situaciones, whose essays on the new economic and political subjectivities emerging out of the crisis of neoliberalism in Argentina have been published in ¡Que se vayan todos! Krise und Widerstand in Argentintien. What strikes Erdem as particularly suggestive is that the authors use the method of "militant investigation" (writing about events in which they themselves participated) to both document and help create a space of "new social protagonism." This includes innovative forms of democracy (such as neighborhood assemblies and demonstrations by the children of those who "disa ppeared" under the military dictatorship against the perpetrators of human rights violations) and noncapitalist forms of economy (such as barter networks, local currencies, and worker-run factories) that run counter to older left models of representation and struggle.

Lefevre, for her part, writes commendably of Hugh Purcell's recent biography of Tom Wintringham, The Last Revolutionary. Purcell has succeeded in resurrecting Wintringham who, while he may have played an important part in British history - as a prolific military writer, combatant in the Spanish Civil War, and organizer against the expected German invasion of England - and was once a household name, has largely been forgotten. And while the book itself contains selections from Wintringham's poetry and prose, along with numerous photographs, Lefevre believes this is only a start and that the life of the "Red Revolutionary" deserves more in-depth studies by academic historians.

We want to remind readers that Rethinking Marxism 2006 is just a few months away. The sixth in the series of international conferences we have organized in partnership with the Association for Economic and Social Analysis, RM06 will be held from 26 to 28 October at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Now is the time to submit final proposals for presentations and sessions and to preregister for the conference. Readers can go to the conference web site, www.rethinkingmarxism2006.org, to consult the official call for papers and to obtain additional information concerning the organization of the conference, local facilities, and online preregistration. Join us and hundreds of scholars, students, and activists from around the world in rethinking the past and present trajectories of Marxism and, most importantly, charting its possible futures.

The Editors

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