May 30, 2014
Açık Radyo / Cuma Adlı Adamlar
Halil Turhanlı – Your undergraduate degree is at engineering then you have shifted to politics, and now you are considered one of the leading political philosophers of the 21st century. So, how this shift occured, can you tell us very briefly?
Michael Hardt: – As an 18 year- old, I thought that it was the practical course to change the world by doing practical things. So engineering seemed the most logical thing to me. In fact in the university I disliked – the students who did politics at my university at the time, they seemed to me like, just talking and not doing anything. So I thought to do something practical. It was during the energy crisis in the early 1980s and so I was at the time convinced that alternative energy was essential and important. And so that’s what I studied and how I worked afterwards with what were called photovoltaic cells, solar panels that made electricity.
Ömer Madra - And talking about the energy crisis, I think we’re right in the middle of a huge crisis and to say to use Bill McKibben’s words from his very latest, recent article in the magazine Rolling Stone, the biggest crises our civilization has ever faced. So I really would like to ask you about, you have been following all the movements in the first decade of, I mean, right after the first decade of the 21st century the mass movements all around the world starting with Tunusia maybe, and then Tahrir thing, and Indignados in Spain and the Occupy Wallstreet movement in the US. I really would like to know - it’s a sort of a one leg thing to my mind. I mean I really want to hear what you think about these two movements and there’s a growing movement for climate justice. And I really am curious about how these two movements can converge, then if they don’t actually could there be any hope of real victory so to say..
MH – I agree that there’s many ways in which the current cycle of protests are one legged as you say. Of course one leg is better than no legs, but I agree that they should be two legged in fact the first element that comes to mind which maybe we could talk about later is that I think
that the tragic Soma disaster is in some ways providing an opportunity for the Gezi spirit to link with another element of social composition to the traditional working class both those who have been involved in Gezi largely urban, well educated and young have been able to both through recognizing the plaint of the traditional working class in particular in Soma and of course some trying to go to Soma and make connections... I think this could be one opportunity for a two legged beast, a two legged monster. But perhaps we could come back to that. What you’re asking for another leg and I’m happy for three and four and five legs. I would like to centipede.
So this third leg I would say that one element is that in many of the movements in this current global cycle ecological questions and climate change in particular has been one of many different parts that have been part of it. So that questions of climate justice as you say part of Occupy in the US, in Gezi too that’s an element that’s been part of it. But I think there needs to be something much more as you’re suggesting. The way I see, here let me start at a very abstract level, I think philosophically and so then what will come to political terms. It seems to me that both the current cycle of struggles and questions of climate justice both center around the ‘common’ - In some ways from different perspectives... This is something that first became clear to me at the 2009 Kopenhagen Climate Summit. Because there was the first time that I’d experienced a kind of a negotiation between environmental activists in Europe and Anti-Capitalist Alter-Globalization activists. Both were talking about the ‘common’. The Alter-Globalization activists largely in terms of immaterial goods that we shared like music and code and ideas that was anti-privatisation but also against the regulations so that we make these common hopefuly open, freely shared, collectively managed. In ecological terms I think this comes with a recognition that neither free market solutions -- say carbon tax – you’re making environment into commodities and private property neither that would be a solution, nor are the states really able to solve it. We need to see the earth and its ecosystems as something that we all have access to and share, we need to review the earth as common and to find mechanisms of a democratic management of it. So I think both were looking at the commons – they were kind of disengaged at a conceptional level though, because you know for the anti-capitalist activists they’re really thinking about the common as something that is reproducible. The way music is, the way codes reproduced etc. And the climate justice activists are thinking about that common as something that’s limited. The earth is limited and we need to work with this limited space. So in the slogans in Kopenhagen at the legal march - there was one legal march in Kopenhagen in 2009 at the Climate Summit the slogan seemed to me to have two different meanings, like for instance the anti- capitalist activists – one of their slogans that in the last years I find the most engaging is: we want everything for everyone. It’s a lovely idea but for the climate activists it’s like mutually assured destruction. More stuff for everyone, it seems like increasing commodities. Whereas the climate activists what I saw the most charming slogan was: There is no planet B. Like there’s no Plan B, but there’s no Planet B. Like we have to work with this planet. Recognizing the limitations, and non-reproducibility of what we’re engaged with. But of course to the anti-capitalist activists that sounded like Margaret Thatcher saying ‘There is no alternative’. For the alter-globalisation crowd you know another world is always possible. Whereas for the climate activists, this world is the only world we have.
So, I guess I see this example – I’m giving a rather personal example, it just indicated to me both what the two legs could be, they could share this notion of the common. We have to organise a vision of the future based not on property – not on the rule of property which neo-liberalism might be the extreme example, nor can we trust in the states – in the nation-states... We need democratic solutions to these problems. And yet there is even at a conceptual level some kind of work to do, to think of the common in these two forms and to articulate them together. I said that in a very philosophical abstract way but I think it’s an activist problem, too. How to articulate these different notions of how to construct a common world, and how to govern it, to manage it collectively and democratically.
ÖM – To take it further to the practical side of it, there was this strange coincidence at the Gezi revolt time. Climate activists from all over the world had gathered in İstanbul all at the same time, the very same time. It was called ‘Global Power Shift’. It was organised by 350.org. and I had a chance to make a speech to the climate activists at the time and it was called connecting the dots between the two narratives of the Gezi and also the Global Climate activist movement. That of the Gezi Park protestors or the resisters as they like to call themselves and that of the young climate activists who have travelled from all around the world and of course they were esentially the two sides of the same coin and here coin would be quite apt as a metaphore I believe, and we were talking about taking a stand literally against the corporate distruction of the ecosystem. Here, there and everywhere actually. And it was a historic movement we were passing right through but I think a sort of a chance was missed. I mean although we made quite a lot of calls from the radio station, the two actually couldn’t meet and become a stronger movement at the time. But now we’re as we’re talking today making this recording there was a call to arms by Bill McKibben an invitation to come to New York city anyone would like to prove to themselves and their children that they give a damn about the biggest crises to our civilization as ever faced he says he’s talking about the Ban Ki-moon initiative on the 2oth – 21st of September. Well to my mind what would you say to this – the resistence, this has to be like that of a the resistence against Nazism and fascism in the beginning of the 2nd World War, in the 30s otherwise we will know we could simply be without a planet to make any struggle on. How would you comment on this?
MH – I agree with your analogy in the seriousness. Now of course what you don’t mean that we should take up arms in the same way
ÖM – No, of course not
MH – I know of course you don’t, but recognizing that does pose a certain pressure. Like for instance many of the left terrorist groups in the 1970s used the anti-fascist analogy or even recognititon, you know they said that since the state is still fascist the German Baader Meinhoff said this, The Red Brigades said this... Since the state is still fascist we need to have an anti-fascist resistance that needs to be a clandestine and armed movement and that’s the only option - because they can’t act politically, this is what it meant the time to say that the state is fascist, since they can’t respond with a political pressure only military pressure is required.
MH - Tell me if you think I’m taking your analogy too far I do think it’s true this analogy still goes this way that the established political mechanisms for dealing with the problem of climate change have proven ineffective. So in some ways we don’t have a political solution in the traditional political miles. But of course, and I’m certain from the beginning that you wouldn’t mean to take up arms in the way that fascist resistence did. I think it might be, at least that makes sense to me to think of the fact we need to recognize what kinds of force or arms today would be effective. So we need to find a way to do politics that doesn’t – you know if I write letters to UN, that’s not going to help. If I even tell my local politician about this I’m not convinced if that’s going to help. We need to find new ways of doing politics that could actually address this. One of the tragedies that seems to me of a climate change is that all of the existent political forces have shown themselves incapable. So we can’t rely on UN, we can’t rely on our own national governments, we can’t rely on our local governments, I mean if they would do things, it would be all the better. But I think that we’ve recognised that all of the established political channels are bankrupt or incapable. And so we need to imagine and create new political forces that are able to do what is necessary. Because it seems looking historically, as in Bill McKibben’s note I think looking historically it seems that we’re just witnessing a humanity incapable of acting. And so we need to find new mechanisms for political action because the existing ones are incapable.
ÖM – So, I mean unless we open up some space he says, then it’s now Bill McKibben says that we wouldn’t no more fine words no, more nifty websites but for example, is one of the leaders of the divestment from fossil fuel movement from all the colleges and universities starting with them and also this big meeting, if it could be a huge meeting on the 3rd week of September, it could scare the politians into action maybe. We could think think about in these terms. Also I believe Naomi Klein talked about a sort of a revolution. The climate scientists are saying that unless a real un-armed’ revolution we will be done for. I mean, really.
MH – That seems true to me. And I think one also has to think what mechanisms of force are possible. To say only that – I’m sceptical of the relying on pressure to change the actions of the existing political institutions and the political forces. Yes so let’s think of an analogy, I remember in 2003, February 15th there was a global day of action against the invasion of Iraq. And it was an enormous thing and Turkey was in February 2003 was one of the largest and most significant social movements. It seemed, and I remember the next day on feb 16th in the New York Times, the lead article said there’s a second super power now, and it’s the super power of global public opinion. That sounded very hopeful. As if just pressuring the existing politicians perhaps we could stop the war. Of course we didn’t stop the war. The noble actions of the Turkish people not withstanding, which was very important I think, but still the invasion happened, the occupation happened. The great tragedy that we forsaw beforehand what a tragedy it would be. So in this same motive there was a some kind of a disillusionment, like look at all the people that came out in Feb 2003, and yet the US invasion still happened. It was sort of like we saw tragedy before it happened, we organised and told everyone this will be a tragedy, and then it was a tragedy, and it’s suffered. My fear is that the same thing would happen here, we could have a on 20th Sep we could have a global day of action, we could have millions of people on the streets in every capital on the world. And still not transforming. I think that’s what’s needed if by revolution what Naomi Klein means is a transformation of the political process...
ÖM – Exactly
MH –That’s what’s necessary. Rather than relying on the existing political forces to respond to public opinion there has to be I think a much more substantial transformation. That’s one way in which you could say...So on the one hand we’re coming back to your two legs. There’s one way in which you say the Gezi spirit needs to recognize the severity and the desperation that we face with climate change. But I think that the one thing the Gezi spirit is really in advance of is imagining is at least helping us imagine alternative modes of decision-making and in doing collective politics. That’s the kind of thing – I wouldn’t say that the Gezi or the encampment itself is like a model for the future, something like that. No, but it opens up the kind of imagination we need to transform the existing structures of government and power. That’s one way in which I think the Gezi along with Indignados in Spain or the current struggles in Brazil are an important beacon – an important kind of lighthouse showing us the way forward.
ÖM – I’ll leave the word to our friend Halil, I’m sorry for talking too much.
HT – All those protest movements, actions that started after the financial crises of 2008, Occupy movement, the encampments in various European cities, they were against injustice of neo-liberalism but they were also against the represantational system. They practice new forms of relations, they practice maybe not on a large scale but democracy. Was it essentially similar to the democracy that you propose – their practices?
MH – Yes, and I would say that the order of causation is in some ways reversed, like the notion of democracy that Tony Negri and I proposing is benefiting from, like we’re learning from the movements. I think one of the great advances of these current cycle of struggles starting in Tunisia in 2010 and continuing through to 2011 up to Gezi and the Brazil struggles of 2013. One of the things they’ve done, is they put democracy on the agenda again. They’ve made democracy a problem. I would say they haven’t solved the problem they’ve made a problem. That’s an important thing. From my perspective on the left, in the recent years – recent decades even– it’s been, it’s very difficult to pronounce the word democracy. Democracy has become a corrupt concept that at best means elections every 4-6 years, but also from the perspective of the US that might not sound like this to a Turkish listener but from the perspective of the US you know every time a US president says democracy, it means he’s going to bomb somebody, somewhere. That’s what democracy seems to mean to them, so if that’s what democracy means we want nothing to do with it. But I think that the especially the North African insurrections in 2011, opened up the question of democracy again. So that the notion, the slogan it could seem naive at first from the Spaniards saying Democracia real YA! – The real democracy now. Which could sound naive, real democracy I think to veterans on the left that could seem like a naive slogan – we’ve heard that before – but for them it was especially I think coming with the spirit across the Mediterranean. For North Africa opening the question of democracy was for them very important and very significant for us too. Yes well I would say that these movements haven’t answered the question, they’ve renewed the questioning about democracy. The question of what democracy is and what democracy could be. That seems to me a very important aspect of their movements.
HT – Democracy is a corrupt concept now, political parties, politicians and other institutions. But we can’t abandon democracy. We have to define it, we have to make a new definition, we have to find a new foundation. What can be the new foundations? For real democracy, or for radical democracy, whatever you call it? Constitution?
MH – I agree with you that an important part of political struggle is a struggle over concepts. And the part of I think what’s going on now is a struggle over the concept of democracy and many other concepts of our political vocabulary that have been corrupted. Like it freedom would be another we could talk about, but so with democracy, one of the things that I think the experiments that have been going on in the movements, even at a very small scale, have an important affect. So the construction of the practice of forums in Turkey I think has been an extraordinarily healthy development. And having people – imagine that politics and the democracy itself is about our active participation rather than relying on others to speak in our name. So that mandate aginst others speaking in our name that goes along with the question of the refusal of representation. I think that is one important aspect that’s – it’accompanied with, or goes hand in hand with a dramatic politization like people who have stayed away from politics because of a distaste for it, for it usually or boredom with it usually have been in this last year activated. And this seems to me part of the issue of democracy, construction of democracy going on.
ÖM – Well, to turn back to what we have been discussing, again Mc Kibben says that in a rational world no one would need to march actually. But it’s not a rational world. In a rational world, policy makers would have heeded the scientists for example when they first sounded the alarm 25 years ago about global climate change. But in this world reason and science, having won the argument, has so far lost the fight. And the fossil fuel industry by virtue of being perhaps the richest enterprise in human history has been able to delay effective action almost to the point where it’s too late and we can also extend this thing to what has been going on right now in Turkey, to the Soma disaster. Talking about “clean coal” of course. So taking to the streets seems to be very much necessary but how could we organise it, or, how should we organise it?
MH – Well first it’s important as he says that we don’t think of politics as a field of rationality and interests. Politics is also and sometimes even primarily about ethics and passions. Part of what social movements are about being in the streets but also being in the tents. You know being together in encampments, it is about a training of passions. Not only anger too but also love. I think that’s another aspect of Gezi which is extremely important. About the joys of being together and discovering that. So part of what – I certainly agree with the first part which we have to recognize politics as a field of passions, a field of ethics and that’s not a – I don’t mean that as a bad thing. I would not want politics to be a field strictly of rationality and scientists.
The second thing that was – the question of rationality and interests that many of the climate scientists, including Bill McKibben, leaves out the not only the power of capital but the power of wealth. I mean it’s not a surprise to me that the existing political forces won’t act against fossil fuels. That is a primary aspect of their profits. So we can’t, it seems to me, only adress directly the primary problem here, the question of climate change, the question of reliance on fossil fuels. We have to actually adress and attack the economic system on which it’s based. That’s a much different and a broader fight and doesn’t just involve rationality. It’s about attacking their profits. It’s about attacking their wealth. I think the question of poverty and exploitation have to go hand in hand with this. So, in some ways one might say in order to adress climate change you have to take a rather long route. Which is to adress capitalist accumulation, and capitalist exploitation or capitalist profits. Put it that way. That sounds maybe, some of your listeners might think I sound old fashioned when I say that, but that seems to me ever increasingly the most important issue and enemy.
HT – My next question is about communism. It’s another corrupt concept. Another corrupt notion. How can we enjoy the irresistible lightness of communism. What kind of communism will you offer, will you propose? This is another concept that needs a redefinition…
MH – I agree with you that, I mean when I hear communism normally in the press, it generally means the exact opposite of what I understand it to be. In the press it means total control of the state over the economy and society as a whole. Which is, like I said, exactly the opposite of what I understand it to be. I thought in recent years and now thinking it from the perspective of the movements that are emerging in recent years, that it could be most useful to think of communism as based on the common. So based on the construction of common urban spaces, that is urban spaces that have open and equal acces but also democratic structures of management. I don’t mean that are just spontanously or untended but rather have democratic structures of management in the similar way that people treat music, or digital code as common. Meaning that we can share them equally, but that we also have and construct democratic mechanisms in managing them. This seems to me something that’s being promoted in the movements that could be useful way of thinking communism in a way that makes sense today. But you know also the concepts like communism if they – sometimes they carry too much baggage, or in certain social contexts, or talking to certain people it’s too difficult to rid the concept of all of its existing associations. Sometimes one has to make the choice to start something new, like to change a new name. I myself am one who generally chooses to struggle over the existing concepts. Like democracy. I don’t want to abandon the concept. I want to struggle over what it needs to mean. Freedom too I would say the same. And so for me communism fits in that category. But if some listeners feel like oh well, the meanings attached to it by the Cold War, by the anti-communist century of anti-communist struggles, it’s too strong. Then let it go, try something else.
ÖM – I’d like to ask another question, a related one. Your speach at Boğaziçi University, titled ‘Where Have All The Leaders Gone’ , you touched upon the subject of the changes in Latin America, which used to be the backyard of the US, but now there has been populist leaders and there’s some change, for the better I assume. But very lately we have been hearing about some back turns or, I wouldn’t know how to put the question but for example in Ecuador there have been some articles concerning Rafael Correa’s attack upon freedoms and so on, and also in Bolivia we see, although the first indigenous leader in the world there has ever been chosen after 500 years or so conquistador dominance, well there has been some negative changes, we could take this to Venezuela as well, Chavez and the aftermath of Chavez. Could you elaborate on this a bit?
MH – All of the progressive governments in Latin America came to power thanks to and on the backs of social movements for liberation. This is true in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, and others I’m sure I’m leaving out. In some ways the parties and leaders like Chaves and all of the others Lula, and all of the others claim to, pretended to but also really tried to represent the movements. Now I think it’s important for the social movements then have these representatives to not assume okay now an indigenous leader is in power or a leader that’s one of us is in power, now we can go home. I think that’s actually what’s happened, and I think that’s beneficial, healthy arrangement. That the same movements that created these progressive governments have maintained an antagonistic relationship with them. In other words that the government in Bolivia for instance, they came to power thanks to indigenous social movements, has through its – they say – modernising and what they call extractivist policies have in many ways met the ire of the same social movements. I think that this is a healthy relationship. But we shouldn’t assume that the government that comes to power thanks to those movements actually can represent them. Or even act in their interests. It has to be, it’s better than before, but it has to continually be contested. That’s the way I would also read the contemporary movements in Brazil. It’s not that PT, The Workers’ Party that’s in power, it’s not that PT has become a neo-liberal enemy or certainly not a tool of the US. Non of that, no. But it still needs the antagonism of the movements. This is even more true linking to our previous discussion in terms of its economic and ecological policies.
ÖM – Exactly
MH – Let me start with the economic side.The case of Correa in Ecuador is particularly striking in that the economy they relied on, even if they had contested the previous neo-liberal economic policies they’ve created a kind of state modernisation economy that’s based on extraction.This is the term that Latin Americans used. And extraction is interesting in that covers both oil – gas – and the mega mine projects and also mono-cultural agriculture. Like soy. So that these are all ecologically destructive but also socially destructive economic policies. Correa in Ecuador and many others - he’s an economist, he’s an honest economist, he’s an honest politician, too I think. And he says look, we need to feed the poor, we need to compromise, on the question of Amazonian Forests, on the question of ecological good in order to re-distribute that wealth. I think he’s wrong, but it’s an honest position and my political point is just that we need – we shouldn’t expect these governments to be saviours. I think they need to be constantly attacked. There needs to be an antagonistic engagement. Maybe put it that way, not constantly attacked. To be antagonistically engaged, to transform their policies in line with the desires of the population.
ÖM – And the term extractivism Naomi Klein uses often
MH – Yes
ÖM – Is very apt, and we should be very aware of the dangers of extractivism especially under the shadow of the great massacre of Soma, it’s almost exactly what happens when you take this extractivism to its logical limits or whatever.
MH – Yes. Right. I think that Soma is a great example of how these policies are not only ecologically disastrous, but also socially disastrous. And the kind of “accident” of Soma, -- because of course Soma wasn’t intentionally planned, but you have to put accident in quotation marks or say it with a kind of bitter irony – it’s an accident that’s actually, almost technically and socially planned. I mean in a sense that it’s made possible, but made possible by the same economic policies of privatisation and subcontracting and lack of regulations. These are all part of the same package.
HT – You lectured in prisons…You read Walt Whitman’s poetry to the prisoners. My next question, maybe the last question, is about the poetry of Wallace Stevens – another great poet. He has many poems, but most famous of them perhaps is ‘The Man With The Blue Guitar’, which encourages us to look at things from many different perspectives. He intensifies our perception. Can we say that his poetry represents pluralism – Non-liberal pluralism, and offers us a glimpse of real democracy?
MH – That’s a nice idea. It might be that, not limited to Stevens, it might be that one of the, if you could say, social utility of poetry, although poetry of course resists social utility, one of elements of social utility of poetry is, precisely it’s opening the kind of obstacles or the bars of our imagination. And forcing us to see the world differently. I do agree that prison inmates – taking their perspective does help recognise the transformations of our society. In some ways I would say the standpoint of the prison in any society is the privileged perspective for understanding what that social world is like. If you haven’t seen from the perspective of the inmate, of the incarcerated, you can’t really understand the nature of any social formation. I do teach in prisons, but I think I learn more from them than I teach them.
ÖM – Maybe one very small last question if you please. Where do you think the world is heading?
MH – In the long term we are winning. But to say, you know the old expression ‘in the long term we are all dead’? In some ways, questions of climate change actually make that a little bit more explicit. Not only you and I will be dead, but if things go in the current course we will all be dead. Humanity will be dead or transformed. So I think the fact that in the long run we’re winning is not yet enough. We need to speed up the process. We need to accelerate the demands and the imagination of democratic decision-making, of a new relationship to the earth. What I think of is a politics of the common. Of recognizing the earth as a common resource we need not only to share, but also to manage together. This isn’t happening fast enough. So I would say we need to start recognising in the long term we’re winning, and then we need to make it faster.
ÖM – Thank you very much for being with us.
MH – İt’s a pleasure to talk to you.
HT – Many thanks
Transcript by Yeşim Öztarakçı
