文章 - 哈特与奈格里：对大卫·哈维的回应：关于《大同世界》

　　马克思主义者对其他马克思主义者的批评之严厉是有目共睹的，他们要么扭曲对方的观点以证明自己的聪明，要么打出马克思学圈子之外的人闻所未闻的奥义般术语，并洋洋得意自以为获胜。有鉴于此，我们更要对哈维这个马克思主义同道对我们作品的细致阅读和真诚赞美而表示由衷的谢意。他指出我们之间存在诸多一致的地方，其中最为重要的就是共同性问题的核心意义以及对财产的批判，这些问题的确构成了我们论述的一个支柱。哈维也正确认识到了，我们作品有很多方面都与他的重要研究相一致——如乌托邦思想、资本主义生产不断增多的非物质性以及大都市的政治。作为地理学家，在某些领域哈维更有发言权，如区域的重要性，全球的空间差别等，我们的论述的确可以在这些方面进行拓展。而且将来我们也会就这些主题进行探讨。　　

　　哈维同时也指出他和我们在思想和政治筹划方面存在着一些差别，我们觉得有必要澄清自己对这些差别的态度以及这些差别所引起的政治后果。第一个差别就是阶级和其他斗争领域的关系问题。在以赞同的态度评论了我们关于身份政治与革命思想和实践的关系之后——我们分析了不同的身份结构（包括阶级）的斗争在过去的表现形式以及在将来可能采取的革命形式——哈维转而又重申阶级的优先性，并且赞同齐泽克的观点：“就与资本主义的延续来说，阶级比其他身份形式要更为根本。”这就意味着他和齐泽克都认为，阶级政治可以是革命性的，但种族、性别和其他身份斗争却不可能具有革命性。关于这个问题，我们和哈维与齐泽克的关键分歧就在于，我们并不认为资本是宰制的唯一轴心，因此，在我们看来，推翻资本主义统治并不是革命行动的唯一模式。事实上，我们在整本书中试图阐明现代宰制的所有轴心，其中资本是重要但非唯一一环。当哈维评论我们关于多元革命斗争形式的论述，并将这些斗争的效果限定在“资本主义的延续”上时，他似乎将重点转移了。例如，在我们作品的前半部分，我们考察了殖民和种族主义的不同形式——这些形式构成了现代性并且在当下的世界中依然以不同的模态延续着。如果只看斗争对资本主义的延续的影响，那么我们如何能够理解海地革命或者当下安第斯本土政治运动的彻底性和新颖性？在制造和维持等级制方面，资本主义宰制当然起到了一定作用，但资本主义宰制本身并不能提供全面的解释，因此我们所考察的另类现代性策略也就不能完全从挑战资本主义统治的方面来理解。问题不在于就这些宰制的轴心进行比较或者就重要程度进行排序，问题在于资本到底如何与殖民统治、种族主义、性别等机制以及其他宰制机制狼狈为奸？虽然这些轴心会有所交叉，但宰制和剥削的不同轴心也有相对自主性。这种认识就将我们带回到了女性主义、黑人激进主义及其他基于种族和身份运动（主流的马克思主义应该向它们虚心学习）的革命思想与实践的历史。　

　　我们原本希望，每一个斗争场域的重要性和具体性能够成为当下政治讨论的共识。坚持阶级对其他身份领域的优先性，并且认为其他斗争形式，如基于性别、种族和性行为的斗争，不可能具有革命性，这对我们有何好处呢？为了回应上世纪70年代马克思主义的类似观点——这种观点认为只有先完成阶级革命，然后才能去处理性别等级制问题——有些激进的女性主义者坚持认为，在历史上父权制是先于资本的，因此在政治上是首要的，女性主义斗争要优先于阶级斗争。哈维强调阶级的优先性也许是出于补偿心理，因为他感觉到与其他身份领域相比，阶级在当下有些被忽视了。我们当然同意应该更加关注阶级，但是坚持其优先性并不是很好的解决方案。相反，我们有必要去认识，宰制的每一个轴心都有其具体性，正如挑战宰制的那些斗争一样，而在这些斗争中存在无数的交叉和交流可能。

　　我们提出诸众的概念，就是要既从对权力结构的分析，又从政治行动的实际组织方面来面对问题。在这个意义上，诸众是组织诸奇异性的机制或装置，防止某一个奇异性成为核心的或排他性的。具体来说，哈维所回应的《大同世界》中关于革命思想和实践的章节中，挑战就在于如何在解放的筹划中，去组织阶级、种族、性别、性行为以及其他斗争的交叉和相遇。　　

　　哈维与我们的第二个差别看起来是关于斯宾诺莎的。他认为我们复兴了斯宾诺莎研究，这让我们受宠若惊，但也愧不敢当。当下对斯宾诺莎的广泛兴趣可以追溯至上世纪60年代，尤其是阿尔都塞的作品让斯宾诺莎和马克思之间的关联彰显了出来；还有德勒兹将斯宾诺莎与尼采视为欧洲哲学史中另类路线的代表人物。哈维非常正确的指出，没有必要相信斯宾诺莎掌握了万能钥匙，但也没有道理假设马克思或其他任何人在思想上是万能的。哈维补充说，如果我们的论述依赖对斯宾诺莎的精深理解，那么就只有很小的读者群能够理解我们，即便斯宾诺莎研究小组欣欣向荣。（事实上哈维的回应让我们很好奇，于是我们看了拙著的索引并发现，虽然斯宾诺莎的出现的次数很多，与福柯等量齐观，但却没有马克思多。）不管怎样，我们知道，如果遇到不了解的思想家，有些读者的确会感到不快，但有些读者反而会因为受到激发而想更进一步去了解。但是哈维的确让我们认识到，关键的问题在于斯宾诺莎本人论述的清晰性和有用性。　

　　哈维所强调的斯宾诺莎思想中的一个关键概念就是奇异性。但我们要指明的是，奇异性的思想并不限于斯宾诺莎，在欧洲哲学史上可以追溯至邓斯•司各脱，当代很多哲学家都非常重视这个概念，如福柯、德勒兹、巴丢和阿甘本，虽然每个人会赋予其稍有不同的内涵。哈维提到了奇异性的数学内涵，这与巴丢的思想路径有些接近，但与我们的观念有着重要差别。在我们看来，奇异性一方面与个体相对立，另一方面与同一性（identity）形式相对立，并且我们主要关注其与杂多性关系的三个方面：独一性从外部来说指向他者的杂多性；独一性就内部来说是分化的或多元的；独一性在历史中构成了杂多性，也就是说独一性是一个生成的过程（见《大同世界》，pp. 338-39）。在斯宾诺莎，以及更为普遍的在启蒙思想的重要流派那里，将人类视为奇异性意味着让其脱离所有的形而上学支撑，如灵魂，并根据欲望和理性的逻辑，将其视为由历史所定义的杂多性，并且由激情和语言的运动所构成。马克思主义的历史唯物主义传统也有着类似的观念：由宗教或先验理论所规定的个体是对主体性生产的神秘化。正如麦克弗森（C. B. Macpherson）（加拿大左翼政治哲学家，译按）所证明的，这种作为基础的个体观念在资本主义意识形态中，充当占有行为和财产的基础以及市场意识形态的核心。因此，但个体概念的批判并非意味着要提出大众的概念，这个概念意味着同质性的阶级身份。而奇异性的概念则将革命主体的构成问题视为一个事件，这种主体的的特征是异质性的杂多性。在我们看来，完全有必要提出奇异性的概念，同时还有杂多性的观念，即便这意味着我们要面对斯宾诺莎和其他哲学家，因为这个概念对我们处理某些分析性和实践性的政治问题非常关键。　

　　可以理解，让我们的论述更接近马克思时，哈维会更为自在，但是当他认为我们对马克思的理解还不够深入或者我们偏离马克思主义传统的标准阐释时，他又更加不安了。其中的一个例子就是我们没有采纳马克思虚拟资本的概念，去阐释金融在当代经济中的核心地位。在我们看来，只有在市场关系的范围内，特别是在资本家的竞争中，才能将金融资本视为是虚拟性的。从这个立场出发，很多人得出结论说，当下危机在很大程度上是因为金融和实体经济生产的分离，而与这种观念相伴随的则是社会主义者反对富豪统治（plutocracy）和寄生性金融家的修辞。但是，当我们关注的不是个体资本家，而是总体资本时，我们就会看到：金融化并非是对剩余价值和集体储蓄增长的非生产性以及/或者寄生性的偏离，而是资本积累的核心形式。另外，虽然在产业的框架内，经济生产和金融的关系看起来是现实与虚拟的关系，但是当下核心的经济形式却让这种关系呈现出不一样的性质。事实上，当下金融所表现出的形式与社会性和生命政治生产的价值之间，越来越表现出趋同化的趋势。我们在书中所关注的共同产品生产，如知识、符码、语言、图像、服务、感受和社会关系的生产，有着关键的非物质性，但无论是这些非物质产品还是金融都并非是虚拟的。就与当下的危机以及更为普遍的经济改造来说，这个分析让将我们对金融问题确立了这样的政治立场：与其批判金融或者将金融视为虚拟性的，我们的目标是，通过社会性地重新定义金融的内涵，去改造共同产品的财产权。　

　　就政治组织来说，哈维也认为我们偏离了马克思主义传统，但我们却自认是非常接近马克思的思想的。例如，哈维认为我们关于暴动和其他造反形式的论述很成问题，他援引了最近美国右翼对医改进行阻挠的案例并指出，这种政治激情和义愤的爆发没有任何进步之处。我们当然同意，并非所有的造反在政治上都是进步的。而我们的方法与其说要指导人们应该如何行动或者提出什么要求，不如说是从人们造反的契机出发，从人们的政治激情出发，从这些地方发展出政治筹划。这让我们想到了马克思在1843年给卢格那封著名的信，信中马克思指出，我们必须将现实存在的斗争作为批判的起点，但这种政治现实主义的原则不仅属于斯宾诺莎，也属于马基雅维利。政治思想的首要原则是，我们不应从想象的人民出发，而应该从真实的人民出发。

　　我们的政治现实主义意在消除所有的先锋党或“真理的意识形态”观念，我们相信,哈维也会赞同我们的这种努力。我们坚信，革命行动只能自下而上的进行，其力量或弱点则取决于其所表达的制宪权。这里制宪权意指斗争的内在动力，组织的具体模式以及斗争所表达出的计划和领导的形式。这里诸众的概念——或者说,是制造诸众的进程，通过这个进程制宪权得以表达——再度成为我们的核心。　　

　　哈维赞同我们的观点,即改良和革命的政治对立——回归伯恩斯坦和第二国际在20世纪初期的政治——不再有效。但我们并不同意哈维如下的论点，即改良可以成为革命的前奏，我们更为关注的是，改良和革命的分界失去效力的频率到底是多少。改变世界并非只有一条途径，荆棘丛中会有很多迂回的道路，我们必须找到自己的路。

　　正如哈维在文章开头中所指出的，我们并不反对夺取国家权力。关键的是夺权之后应该如何。这就是为何在本书以及其他作品中，我们极为关注玻利维亚、巴西、委内瑞拉等其他拉美国家的左翼政府的原因所在。　

　　但是，我们也认为，夺取国家权力并在单独民族国家范围内进行管理，在当下已不可能。另外，民族国家和国家主权的危机呼应的乃是现代政府理论的危机。这可以从如下事件看出端倪：美国单边主义的显著失败（证明任何单一民族国家都不可能进行单边主义统治），以及更为普遍的，所有统治的“君主式”技术都没落了，这种技术过去甚至在所谓的民主国家内也主导着外交内政。有人将这种转变概括为从政府向治理的转变，部分是为了表明新出现的统治形式所具有的多元和去中心化特征。关于全球治理的形式，我们在拙著的最后部分进行了深入的探讨，分析了等级制及其操控手段所采纳的新的同时可能更为严厉和更为暴力的形式。但是我们也认为，这种新的治理概念和结构为挑战和推翻全球的权力结构提供了手段，并且在某些方面为将来的革命组织准备了条件。　

　　在哈维文章的最后，他对我们没有提出“具体措施”表达了失望之情。对于我们的作品，我们也许有着不同的期待。当然，我们对“现实的政治组织”和“真正的行动”也很感兴趣，我们自己政治活动的历史就可以给出证明。但是我们认为，像我们这样的作品应该努力去了解放下，提出质疑，并且激发读者去发明未来。这是我们衡量拙著成败得失的标准。

Response: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

Marxists are renowned for reserving their severest criticism for other Marxists, often proving their points by twisting their opponents’ arguments or triumphantly pulling out as trump cards technical terms that those uninitiated in the arcana of Marxology find baffling. We are therefore all the more grateful to David Harvey, a fellow Marxist, for his attentive reading of, and praise for, our new book, Commonwealth. He makes clear that there are several areas of agreement between our perspectives, the most important of which is the emerging centrality of the theme of the common and the corresponding critique of property, which indeed constitute one pillar of our argument. Harvey also recognizes, rightly, that many aspects of our book are consistent with vital work he has done – on Utopian thought, the increasingly immaterial nature of capitalist production, and the politics of the metropolis, for example. And in some areas in which, as a geographer, he has great expertise, such as the importance of place and questions of spatial differences across the globe, he points in directions our argument could be extended. These are indeed themes we will pursue in the future.

Harvey also highlights a number of intellectual and political differences between his project and ours, and it is worth taking the time to clarify how we view these differences and their political consequences. The first of these involves the relation of class to other lines of political struggle. After commenting favorably on our discussion of identity politics in relation to revolutionary thought and practice, in which we analyze how the struggles of various identity formations (including class) have in the past and can in the future take revolutionary forms, Harvey pulls back to reassert the primacy of class, explaining that, in agreement with Slavoj ¿izek, he maintains that “there is something far more foundational about class than there is about all the other forms of identity in relation to the perpetuation of capitalism.” This means, following Zizek, that, whereas class politics can be revolutionary, race, gender, and other identity struggles cannot be. One central difference here between our view and those of Harvey and Zizek is that we do not consider capital to be the exclusive axis of domination, and, hence, overthrowing capitalist rule is not, in our view, the only mode of revolutionary activity. We seek throughout our book, in fact, to articulate the variety of axes of modern domination, of which capital is an important but not exclusive part. It seems to us a crucial shift in emphasis, then, when commenting on our discussion of the multiple forms of revolutionary struggle, that Harvey restricts the framework to their effect on “the perpetuation of capitalism.” In an earlier part of the book, for example, we explore the forms of coloniality and racism that constitute modernity and continue in various modalities throughout the world today. How can we understand the radi- cally and innovation of the Haitian Revolution, for example, or of the contemporary indigenous political movements in the Andes, solely in relation to their effect on the perpetuation of capitalism? Capitalist domination certainly plays a role in creating and maintaining these hierarchies but by no means accounts for them adequately on its own, and thus the strategies of altermodernity that we explore are not defined exclusively by their challenges to capitalist rule. The point is not to choose among these axes of domination or even to rank them in order of importance but rather to analyze how capital functions together with coloniality, racism, gender hierarchy, and other mechanisms of domination. Although these undoubtedly intersect in significant and complex ways, there is a relative autonomy to the different axes of domination and exploitation. This recognition points us toward the long history of revolutionary thought and practice in feminism and black radicalism, as well as in other race- and identity-based movements (from which the dominant stream of Marxism has a lot to learn).

We had hoped that the importance and specificity of each of these arenas of struggle would be by now an accepted basis for political discussion. What is to be gained by insisting that class has priority with respect to other identity domains and, moreover, that other forms of struggle, such as those based on gender, race, and sexuality, cannot be revolutionary? In reaction to similar claims by Marxists in the 1970s, often coupled with the notion that gender hierarchies would be addressed once the class revolution completed its work, some radical feminists insisted that patriarchy came before capital historically and is thus prior politically, making class struggle secondary to feminist struggle. Perhaps Harvey insists on the priority of class as a similar kind of compensatory move, feeling that class is neglected today with respect to other identity domains. We certainly agree that more attention to class is necessary, but insisting on its priority is not an adequate solution. It is necessary instead to understand that each of these axes of domination has its own specificity, as do the struggles that challenge them, and that there are nonetheless numerous possible points of intersection and communication.

We intend the concept of multitude as a means of approaching such problems in terms both of an analysis of the structures of power, and of the practical organization of political activity. Multitude in this sense is a mechanism or a dispositif for the organization of singularities that does not pose any one of them as central or exclusive. Specifically, in the section of Commonwealth on revolutionary thought and practice to which Harvey is responding, the challenge is to organize the intersections and encounters among class, race, gender, sexuality, and other struggles in a project of liberation.

A second difference between Harvey’s perspective and ours would seem to center on the figure of Baruch Spinoza. We are flattered that he attributes to us a renaissance in Spinoza studies, but we cannot really take credit. The current widespread interest in Spinoza can be traced back to the 1960s – specifically, to the work of Louis Althusser, who illuminated the connection between Spinoza and Marx; and that of Gilles Deleuze, who posed Spinoza, along with Nietzsche, as a key figure in an alternative line of European philosophy. Harvey points out, quite rightly, that there is no reason to assume that Spinoza has all the answers – but neither is there any reason to assume that Marx or anyone else has them, either. Harvey adds that if our argument relies on a deep knowledge of Spinoza, we will inevitably be understood only by a small readership, despite the boom in Spinoza study groups. (Harvey’s response, in fact, made us curious enough to check the index of our book, where we found that the entry for Spinoza is indeed substantial, about as large as that for Michel Foucault, but not as large as that for Marx.) We recognize, in any case, that some readers will be irritated by references to thinkers they do not know well, while others will be inspired to learn more. The real point, though, which Harvey’s comments help us focus on, is the clarity and utility of Spinoza’s arguments.

One crucial aspect of Spinoza’s thought that Harvey emphasizes is the concept of singularity. The idea of singularity, though, we should point out, is not limited to Spinoza but stretches back in the history of European philosophy at least to Duns Scotus, and it has been central to the thinking of many major contemporary philosophical figures, including Foucault, Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Giorgio Agamben, each of whom gives it a somewhat different definition. Harvey assumes a mathematical notion of singularity, roughly in line with Badiou’s thought, which differs significantly from ours. We instead define the concept of singularity, contrasting it to the figure of the individual on the one hand and forms of identity on the other, by focusing on three aspects of its relationship to multiplicity: Singularity refers externally to a multiplicity of others; is internally divided or multiple; and constitutes a multiplicity over time – that is, a process of becoming. (See, e.g., Commonwealth, pages 338-39.) In Spinoza, and more generally in an important stream of Enlightenment thought, conceiving of the human as a singularity serves to remove it from any metaphysical support, such as the soul, and to cast it instead as a historically defined multiplicity, constructed by the movements of passions and languages, according to logics of both desire and rationality. The Marxist tradition of historical materialism similarly maintains that the substantial individual defined by either religious or transcendental theories is a mystification of the production of subjectivity. Such notions of the individual as foundation serve in capitalist ideology as the basis for possession and property, as the political theorist C. B. Macpherson has demonstrated, and as the heart of market ideology. Critique of the individual, however, does not imply a mass, homogeneous notion of class identity. The concept of singularity, instead, poses the constitution of the revolutionary subject as an event characterized by heterogeneous multiplicities. It seems to us well worth the effort, then, to struggle with the concept of singularity, along with the allied notion of multiplicity, even if that means engaging with Spinoza and other philosophers, because it provides a key to addressing some of our central analytic and practical political questions.

Harvey is, understandably, much more comfortable when our arguments stay close to Marx’s, but he is nonetheless perplexed when we seem, in his view, not to have read Marx well enough or, really, when we diverge from the standard interpretations of the Marxist tradition. One example is our failure to deploy Marx’s notion of fictitious capital as an explanation for the centrality of finance in the contemporary economy. Finance capital can be considered fictitious, in our view, only within the bounds of market relations and, in particular, in the competition among capitalists. From this standpoint, many conclude that the current crisis is due in large part to the separation between finance and real economic production, a view often accompanied by socialist rhetoric against the plutocracy and the parasitic agents of finance. When we focus not on individual capitalists but on collective capital, though, we see a different picture: Financialization is not an unproductive and/or parasitic deviation of growing rates of surplus value and collective savings but rather the central form of the accumulation of capital. Furthermore, whereas in the industrial framework the relationship between economic production and finance might have appeared as reality versus fiction, the economic forms emerging as central today cast this relationship in a new light. In fact, increasingly today the form of finance is symmetrical to the new processes of social and biopolitical production of value. The production of common goods we focus on in our book, such as the production of knowledge, codes, languages, images, services, affects, and social relations, has significant immaterial components but neither these immaterial goods nor finance are for that reason fictional. This analysis leads us to a different political position with regard to finance, both with respect to the current crisis and, more generally, in view of transforming the economy: Rather than castigate or dismiss finance as fictional, we aim to transform the property rights of common goods by reappropriating socially what finance now possesses.

In terms of political organization, too, Harvey at times considers us to be veering away from Marxist tradition, but at these moments we see ourselves, on the contrary, as very close to Marx’s thought. Harvey, for instance, finds our analyses of jacqueries and various other forms of revolt problematic because, he maintains, citing the recent rightwing interruptions of health-care debates, there is nothing necessarily progressive about such explosions of political passion and indignation. We certainly agree that there are no guarantees that revolts will be politically progressive. Our method, though, rather than projecting what people should do and what they should want, is to start where people revolt, to start from people’s political passions, and, from there, develop political projects. Marx’s famous 1843 letter to Arnold Ruge comes to mind, in which he maintains that we must make actually existing struggles the starting point for our criticism, but this is a principle of political realism that he shares not only with Spinoza but also with Machiavelli. The first rule of political thought is that we must begin not from a version of people as we think they ought to be but from people as they are.

This stance of political realism is aimed at banishing all notions of vanguard politics or “ideologies of truth,” an effort with which we imagine Harvey would agree. We are convinced that revolutionary action is only ever made from below and that its strength or weakness depends on the constituent power it expresses. Constituent power here refers to the internal dynamics of the struggles, their specific modes of organization, and the forms of program and leadership that they express. Here again the concept of multitude – or really a process of making the multitude, through which constituent power is expressed – becomes central for us.

Harvey finds agreement with us that the old political polemics between reform and revolution – such as those referring back to Eduard Bernstein and the early-twentieth-century politics of the Second International – no longer hold. We do not conceive the relationship exactly as Harvey does when he explains that reform is the prelude to revolution, but rather we tend to note how often the division between them breaks down. There is no single straight course to changing the world, but many circuitous paths through brambles, along which we must constantly try to find our way. We have nothing against taking state power, for example, as Harvey seems to suggest early in his essay. What matters is what happens next. That is why in this book and elsewhere we have followed with such intense interest the recent experiences of Left governments in Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, and other countries in Latin America.

We are also convinced, however, that winning power and managing it in a nation-state, in a solitary way, is today impossible. Moreover, the crisis of the nation-state and national sovereignty corresponds to a crisis of the modern theories of government. This situation is illustrated by the now-obvious failures of US attempts at unilateralism (proving the impossibility of unilateral dictation by any single nation-state) as a means of managing the global system and also, more generally, by the decline of all the “monarchical” techniques of rule, which in the past dominated foreign and domestic politics even in socalled democratic states. This passage is sometimes characterized as a shift from government to governance, to indicate, in part, the plural and often decentralized nature of the emerging forms of rule. We dedicate substantial discussion in the last part of our book to such forms of global governance, analyzing the new and at times severer and more violent forms of hierarchy and control it deploys. But we also maintain that the concepts and structures of this emerging governance provide the means for destabilizing and overthrowing those same global power structures and, in some respects, suggest the terms for future revolutionary organization.

In the final paragraphs of his essay, Harvey expresses frustration that our book does not arrive at “concrete proposals.” Perhaps we have a different view as to what a book like ours should do. It is not, of course, the case that we have no interest in “actual political organization” and “real actions”; on the contrary, our own political histories are full of such engagements. Instead, we think a book like ours should strive to understand the present but also challenge and inspire its readers to invent the future. That is where we will gauge its success or failure.

Published in Artforum 48: 3 (Nov 2009): 210-221.