Chapter 1: Subjective Figures of the Crisis ... - Negri in English

addressed by movements to occupy unused land and structures
and to regularize people's right to stay there. In the dominant
parts of the world, the economic crisis has led to a rash of
foreclosures for people who cannot pay the mortgages owned on
their houses or cannot continue to pay the rent. Anti-eviction
campaigns must accompany projects for finding adequate
housing for those without it. Access to healthy food and water is
similarly a need, most pressing in the poorest regions of the
world but also real and urgent in the richest. Battles against the
privatization of resources such as water are essential.
Environmental and social crises are all exacerbated,
furthermore, by innumerable wars that continue across the
globe, destroying lives and landscapes. We seem to have entered
a stage of history in which the state of war is never-ending,
shifting from high to low intensity and back again. The global
security regime under which we live does not establish a state of
peace but rather makes permanent a war society, with
suspensions of rights, elevated surveillance, and the enlistment
of all in the war effort. Who will put an end to the wars and the
state of war The dominant nation-states, especially the United
States, have certainly not been willing to do so. No one believes
at this point in the old ruse of a war to end all wars. Wars only
make more and more wars. And even supranational institutions,
such as the United Nations, which were born with the dream of
peace, have no power to put an end to war.
What kinds of counterpow T ers can guarantee the continued
flourishing of humanity, the animal world, the plant world, and
the planet itself Absolutely essential in this effort is the work
that so many are doing today that use the legal means of national
and international systems as a kind of counterpow T er. Class
action suits against polluting corporations; human rights
demands against war, torture, and police abuse; and advocacy for
refugees, migrants, and inmates—these actions use the power of
the judge against that of the king, exploiting elements of the legal
system against the sovereign power. Although essential,
however, the operations of such counterpow T ers are always
limited and circumscribed by the sovereign power to which they
appeal, be they nation-states or international systems. Their
power is increasingly limited, furthermore, as the sovereign