Empire

Negri, a Marxist imprisoned for his beliefs and his involvement with the Italian hard-left, and Michael Hardt, an English literature professor who had previously acted as Negri's translator (and the translator of an important, though philosophically more arcane, precursor to Empire, Giorgio Agamben's The Coming Community) have produced a key post-Marxist text (which builds on many of the arguments in Nick Dyer-Witheford's excellent Cyber-Marx) that views its world through lenses bequeathed to it by the best of the French post-structuralists. Negri and Hardt's accomplishment has been to apply the sometimes difficult work of theorists such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (especially A Thousand Plateaus) and Jacques Derrida to describe a world that has undergone a paradigm switch to a new Empire (in a way not dissimilarly than Thomas Keenan does particularly in his chapter on Marx's rhetoric in the much undervalued Fables of Responsibility). According to Negri and Hardt, this new Empire is the result of the transformation of modern capitalism into a set of power relationships we endlessly replicate that transcend the nation state (so anti-imperialism is out as a progressive politics). Vitally, the authors argue that the multitude, through their many struggles, pushed the world to this point and it is the multitude who can push through to a much better world on the other side of globalisation.

This is an optimistic, wide-ranging, defiant challenge of a book and Negri and Hardt should be commended on their erudition as much as their vision. While questions undoubtedly remain after reading the text, these should not stop the interested reader in coming to, and learning from, this profound piece of work. --Mark Thwaite

The substantive issues also recieved uneven attention. The attempt to rehabilitate Marxism really didn't work, and despite some excellent points, the central thesis is flawed, and other avenues remain unexplored. Cooper's take (The Postmodern State) is more coherent and promising.


A pompous and unsuccessful effort to explain post capitalism   December 16, 2001
rgcranmore@compuserve.com (Lancing, Sussex, UK)
19 out of 59 found this review helpful

This book is beautifully written with carefully crafted sentences, liberally sprinkled with the names of philosophers and economists. However after reading a sentence, a paragraph or a chapter, it is necessary to re-read it to try, unsuccessfully, to discern any rational meaning.
I am writing this as a person with a little education and experience of politics and economics...


This book is a scholarly work that is very challenging.   October 18, 2001
16 out of 23 found this review helpful

Empire offers a view of internationalism in the postmodern era and the onset of globalised Imperialism. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in understanding how to combat hidden forms of domination that Negri and Hardt bring to the surface. It's very dense and complicated, but definitely worth it. "Empire" allows readers to recognise current structural powers and where the world economy and foreign powers are headed. Mostly theoretical. Enjoyable.