Empire and International Order: Should There Be States?

Abstract

What should our future be like? Can the world order be organized along the lines of an international society, or will it dissolve into anarchy? Before attempting to answer such a big question, let us first inquire whether in the future there should be states. The phrase “transnational progressivism” was coined in 2001 by John Fonte to describe a post-modernist ideology that is a new challenge to the world order based on a system of states and to liberal democracy in particular. The transnationalists argue that in the era of globalization, the transnational connection between non-state actors increase and make obsolete the traditional paradigm of governance based on the nation-state. Perhaps there is no more sophisticated theoretical expression of this ideology, which I prefer to call “global progressivism,” than Empire of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.1 The authors do not hide their ideological preferences and compare their book to Marx’s Communist Manifesto. However, in intellectual complexity they exceed their old master. They display a comprehensive knowledge of the Western philosophical tradition and use it to deconstruct the intellectual scaffolding that supports the modern political theory of the West. They advocate political arrangements that can be described as post-modern, post-democratic, post-liberal, and even post-human. Rich in metaphor, the writing of Hardt and Negri is a proof that nowadays IR theory can be not only scientific or philosophical, but also poetic. Nevertheless, since a theory has to be evaluated in rational terms, I will apply the principle of charity and present their argument as clearly and as strong as I can. To present their work I will use a series of images, and then I will the examine the ideology of global progressivism which will thus be unveiled.