Marx and Foucault by Negri Antonio; Emery Ed; & Ed Emery

Author:Negri, Antonio; Emery, Ed; & Ed Emery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2017-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

3 The three powers in crisis

There have been attempts (and in Italy one is currently under way) to bring about new constitutional equilibria and reformist openings through the use and mobilisation of the judiciary. Such attempts have also been pursued in the United States and have sometimes succeeded: the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court in the 1930s and 1960s contributed to social reform and to libertarian and antiracist changes in the constitution. But, as I said before, this was due to exceptional conditions of economic crisis or to situations of conflict that put the social order radically in danger. Things then immediately changed, and the judiciary once again recognised itself as conservative. Leaving aside the crucial role played by the US Supreme Court in the election of George Bush in 2000, one might simply point to the recent decision to allow unlimited contributions by big business to the election campaign, on the grounds that such contributions are a protection of the constitutional right to ‘free speech’. In Europe too there are, as I said, attempts to consider the judiciary as a constituent machine. What is being renewed here is an old Jacobin utopia, never efficacious and always ambiguous. In Italy in particular, the reforming power of the judges produces a deformation of the constitutional place allotted to the judiciary: when judges operate in non-conservative ways, they do so in a way that mimics political power. And this produces no end of disasters.

It is alarming to see how the places dedicated to reforms, namely parliament and the legislature, have been gradually emptied of their functions. The crisis of democratic representation seems today to constitute the point of greatest weakness in western systems of the organisation of power. The legislature now has a very weak, almost non-existent capacity to propose social budgetary projects, and above all to be effective in the control of military affairs. Its primary role is now to build support for, or create obstacles to, the proposals of the executive. The main activity of which the US Congress is capable, it seems, is to block the initiatives of the executive and to obstruct government. In this light, when the left puts its faith in legislative power (and often this is the only space in which it is present), either it is deceiving us or it is under an illusion about its effectiveness.

As always in these cases, the sense of alienation that citizens have about the political parties (which are the backbone of parliamentary representation) continues to grow. And this distrust is particularly marked when it comes to parties of the left. Some complain that the role of parties has become extraordinarily complicated in the transition to the twenty-first century: in addition to the classic problems of the representation of civil society, the political parties have had to deal with problems of public debt, migration, climate change, energy policy, and so forth, so that within this complexity their ability to represent issues should have expanded and specialised. But in reality it tends to disappear.

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