I'm not too sure what I mean, or for that matter, Hardt and Negri.
oh, right. I never actually read Empire. either way I find it to be a hilarious statement. also, looking at Empire's wiki, one of it's opening epigraphs is an Ani DiFranco line? wtf? that can't possibly be true - wikipedia just havin' a larf?
On the Chinese famine, if that conversation is still going on, and without going too deep into the specifics, there was a policy, the collectivisation of agriculture, which effectively allowed the state to expropriate the product of agricultural workers. This allowed them to sell at a much higher price than the cost, the profits of which would fund the industrialisation of China: "The Great Leap Forward" (which was a great leap back). The grain went to the state; the peasants starved. Resources continued to be diverted to industry; the peasants continued to starve, by their millions.
The Chinese famine occurred at the intersection of (Communist) economic policy and (Communist) political economy.
yeah I'll still have that conversation of if you or anyone else is up for it. I think it's a conversation worth having.
I understand the collectivization of agriculture & how that was supposed to pay for industrialization. what I'm not sure about is how clear the thinking was - did the Communist policymakers say "yes, we'll have to kill off tons of peasants in order to industrialize but oh well, that's the price" or did they think it was for the good of all (the two not being mutually exclusive, I guess)? or it was some unhappy medium of positive intent, bad policy & incompetence? if millions of peasants had starved but the Great Leap Forward had "succeeded" would Mao et al have considered that justified? (would Badiou et al now consider it justified?)
certainly carrying on with the policy even after it was very clear it wasn't working (which it seems also happened with the Cultural Revolution? but perhaps at a certain point once unleashed that was beyond anyone's control? unlike famine?) is inexcusable.
More generally, as a policymaker (or a policy advisor) I guess, what is your responsibility for mistakes? this also I think speaks to your question about how to solve disagreements, where the state enters into/is created in our relationships - a policymaker could be the two of us on our farm deciding how to allocate our resources.
