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The Common in Copenhagen
By Michael Hardt
The common is quickly becoming the primary terrain of political struggle in the age of globalization. I have just returned from Copenhagen, where during the past two weeks the COP15 UN Climate Summit has been the scene of intense negotiations over the management of the common. Primarily at stake is how and to what extent we will share the common wealth in this world and also how we will counter the destructive forms of the common that threaten our societies and forms of life on earth.
When I say that the common is centrally in play in the processes of globalization I refer on the one hand to the land, the forests, the sea, the atmosphere—in short, something like what was traditionally called the commons. On the other hand, the common also names a range of results of human production and creativity, such as ideas, images, code, knowledges, information, and affects. The question of climate change refers primarily to the first of these but the relation between these two notions of the common was also an important factor in Copenhagen. I will return to this briefly below.
Once we conceive of the Copenhagen summit as a struggle over the management of the common, it is useful to separate this struggle into two relatively separate scenes. One scene took place inside the official meetings at the Bella Conference Center, where admission was strictly limited to government representatives, approved NGOs, some journalists, and other select participants. I spent most of my time, however, at the second scene, outside the official meetings, among social movements and activists, whose presence represented an important encounter between the activist traditions focused on environmentalism and those relating to the various aspects of globalization.
The official meetings were the stage for a series of intense, high-level negotiations about the form and hierarchies of the emerging structures of global governance that Antonio Negri and I refer to as Empire. It is even more clear today than ten years ago, when we starting thinking in these terms, that no single nation-state, like the United States or China, can "go it alone" and rule the global system. Any attempts at unilateralism are now doomed to failure. Instead we saw at Copenhagen an example of how the emerging structures of global governance are being constructed within and among three distinct tiers.
The top tier, which has received the most press, is the site of the conflicts and alliances among nation-states. The United States and China at times present themselves as the representatives of the "developed" and "developing" parts of the world, while the European nations (sometimes together, sometimes separately) carve out a more nuanced position. Some of the most interesting positions, though, are presented by other groups, such as the G77, a wide coalition of subordinated nations represented by Sudanese Ambassador Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping. The demands of the G77 and similar coalitions make it impossible for a small group of elite leaders to craft any global agreement in private. In addition, a number of Latin American nations, most vocally Bolivia, as well as a series of African nations, demand reparations for the climate debt incurred by the wealthy countries during their centuries of industrial dominance. This is not to say that all nations are equal on this tier (or, specifically, in the proceedings of the summit) but rather to point out that the hierarchies among them constantly have to be negotiated.
A second tier of the emerging system of global governance is the site where major corporations express their power. Corporate leaders, of course, were not officially part of the UN discussions at Copenhagen, but the COP15 was nonetheless clearly also a corporate event. Although much of the official discourse about climate change involves limiting destructive practices of production and consumption, "green solutions" are conceived of as an enormous field of business opportunities. This is illustrated in an anecdotal way by one of the most visible advertising campaigns during the summit, where billboards throughout the city bore the slogan "Let's Turn Copenhagen into Hopenhagen," in a campaign sponsored by Coca Cola, SAP, and Siemens. More substantial, though, is the prospect that the creation of enormous carbon trading markets (a likely component of any eventual accord) will provide an enormous expansion of opportunity for financial investment and profit.
A third tier was represented in Copenhagen by a widely varied group of NGOs, environmental advocacy organizations, media outlets, and, most interestingly, indigenous rights organizations. Some of these groups support the efforts of the nation-states on the first tier and/or the corporations on the second, while others attempt to counter them.
In Copenhagen, then, I saw how the emerging structures of global governance require a constant process of negotiation and collaboration within and among these three tiers. This is a complex process that involves a variety of strict internal hierarchies, as well as the exclusion of a wide range of voices and populations, but it also opens the possibility of refusal and rebellion of a variety of actors. Within these structures of global governance there constantly appear forces that can reorganize the hierarchies and even, at times, create ruptures within the system.
Outside the official summit in Copenhagen, in fact, at the second scene of struggle over the common, one of the most interesting strategies of the activists and social movements was to act on a division between the powers inside the meetings. The primary concept of the "Reclaim Power" coordinated actions on Wednesday 16 December was to link "walking in" with "walking out." In other words, protesters, attempting to break the restricted perimeter, as they have at summit meetings for over a decade, were to be met by dissatisfied delegates and participants who would express their objections by walking out. Together these two groups would then hold a "people's summit." The Danish police, through mass arrests and other tactics, made sure that the two sides did not actually meet, of course, but they did get to within about 100 yards of each other, close enough to wave across the fences and police lines. The conceptual significance of the effort, however, was clear to all involved, since "walking in” / “walking out" not only opens up the decision-making process but also highlights the kinds of alliances that are possible within and outside the structures of global governance—alliances that have the potential to create real alternatives.
We should keep in mind that the basis of such alliances rests on some fundamental conceptions of the management and institution of the common. For example, the primary mechanisms to address climate change promoted by the dominant forces, such as "cap and trade," involve transforming the common into private property and, specifically, transforming carbon emissions and pollution rights into commodities and establishing markets in which they can be traded. Such strategies are indeed consistent with neoliberal ideology and its belief that privatization always leads to efficiency. The various opposition groups that can potentially form alliances advocate a variety of different solutions, but they all agree in their hostility to the neoliberal strategy and the privatization of the common.
Finally, what interested me most at Copenhagen were the dynamic conceptual developments that took place among the different components of the protest movements. Everyone was well aware that this summit took place on the ten-year anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests, and it seemed natural to reflect on where we stand. Within the protest movements, one line of division or dynamic of negotiation that seems particularly relevant to me can be expressed in terms of the two forms of the common I mentioned earlier, which imply, at least seemingly, two divergent political approaches. On the one hand, those focused on the first form of the common (including the earth, the forests, the water, and the atmosphere) tend to highlight the necessary limitations of a future politics because, in fact, this first form of the common is indeed limited. One of the most clever placards at the mass demonstration last weekend, for example, declared "There is no planet B," meaning that we have no alternative but to address the limits of this earth now. On the other hand, those perspectives focused on the second form of the common (such as ideas, knowledges, images, codes, affects, and the like) concentrate on the ways that open access can realize our unlimited potential for creativity and production, because indeed, this second form of the common is unlimited. The slogan "We want everything for everyone," a favorite of alter-globalization movements for the last decade, emphasizes such limitless possibilities.
There was thus clearly potential for conflict in Copenhagen between environmental activists urging a politics of limits (arguing, in essence, "this world is still possible, maybe") and those alter-globalization activists advocating unlimited possibilities (chanting "another world is possible"). But such a conflict did not, in fact, take place. In the end, I suspect that the conceptual dissonance I recognize between limits and limitlessness is really a false problem, and that the movements will show us before long how these are not contradictory positions. It reminds me, in fact, of another false problem that seemed to burden the protest movements ten years ago, the seeming contradiction between the global and the local. Back then, those who opposed the neoliberal corporate globalization promoted by the dominant actors in the WTO were quickly labeled anti-globalization and thus in favor of maintaining borders and closed local relations. It took time for the movements to develop a substantial notion of alter-globalization, which proved the contradiction between global and local to be a false problem. Today, my sense is that the movements will develop a politics of the common that both recognizes the real limits of the earth and fosters our unlimited creative capacities—building unlimited worlds on our limited earth. The encounters at Copenhagen, in any case, were a first step in that direction.
Michael Hardt is, with Antonio Negri, the author of Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth. See him discuss the subject of their newest book in this talk, filmed at the Henry Street Settlement in New York City on September 17, 2009.
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