Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Key Terms Empire: "the new form of global sovereignty . . . [that] includes as its primary elements, or nodes, the dominant nation-states along with supranational institutions, major capitalist corporations, and other powers" (xii). Immaterial Labor: "labor that produces immaterial products, such as information, knowledges, ideas, images, relationships, and affects" (p. 65) Biopower: "a form of rule aimed not only at controlling the population but producing and reproducing all forms of social life" (p. 13) Biopolitical Production: "Biopower stands above society transcendent as a sovereign authority and imposes order its order. Biopolitical production, in contrast, is immanent to society and creates social relationships through collaborative forms of labor." (p. 94). Multitude: "an internally different, multiple social subject whose constitution and action is based not on identity or unity (or, much less, indifference) but on what it has in common. . . . The multitude is the only social subject capable of realizing democracy, that is, the rule of everyone by everyone." (p. 100) The Common: "an artificial result and constitutive basis . . . [that] configures the mobile and flexible substance of the multitude" (p. 349) In Multitude, Political theorists Hardt and Negri theorize a new form of global democracy and a new revolutionary vanguard that can bring such change about. Beginning with Marx's assumption that the mode of production determines subjectivity, Hardt and Negri argue that Marx's economic paradigm has shifted from the production of goods to the production of life itself, a process they term biopolitical production. In this new postmodern era of neoliberal capitalism, ontological warfare, supranational sovereignty, corporate transnational despondency, and the hegemonies of immaterial and affective labors have imploded modernist/dialectical thinking and established the prerequisites for a new way of thinking about revolutionary agency. To flesh out this complicated thesis it is necessary to analyze these four historical conditions in more detail and then discuss the new agential framework that Hardt and Negri term the multitude. With the signing of the antiballistic missile treaty in 1972 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there is no longer any nation/state that poses a dialectical threat to America's exceptionalism, or its ability to intervene in the production of other societies. As a result, the United States, in tandem with other European superpowers, has launched a new form of warfare called biopower, a political strategy more concerned with producing global subjectivity and maintaining global hierarchy then fending off any sovereign foreign enemy. Abstract discourses (i.e., rhetoric) such as "the war on drugs" and "the war on terror" allow the United States to implement a regime of govermentality, or a strategy of policing subjects by managing their labor

This book took me back to my schooldays in the old Soviet Empire (not a capitalist one, and yet in a perpetual state of war both internally and externally). More specifically, to my mandatory propaganda classes run by highly trained and experienced Soviet counter-intelligence officers. This book is so smartly written it would make them proud! Why? Let me quote from memory "To get people to see things your way and join your cause follow few basic but very important rules: Speak to their instincts and their hearts; not to their minds. Attempts to reason with your targets at the intellectual level are bound to trigger critical thinking, at which point you as good as lost them. So do not engage in discussions and do not state facts to advance your cause, i.e. do not follow "there is X and there is Y therefore this is A". This makes your targets focus on X and Y which they may question, they may add a Z, and challenge your arrival at A as manipulation of facts. Which it needs to be - only smarter. Therefore, present targets with statement A first and win over their hearts and instincts. Then present facts X and Y selectively "to illustrate". Trick is that by then your targets will have already bought A and will happily accept X and Y as "factual justification". Of course they are only self-rationalizing why they bought your A in the first place, but this is exactly what you need to make A stick. Always use short simple sentences, big numbers, bigh words, bright colors, make sweeping statements... It may be counter-intuitive, but your targets will always have a propensity to believe big lies than small facts. And once they belive, they will be able to explain away anything that does not fit into their belief. This is how you set in motion self-sustaining process and know that you have succeeded." And so it goes. And this is what this book does, and this is why it is so effective. Have fun reading it! And remember Fox Mulder - "I want to believe" :)

"Multitude" by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri is a follow-up to the author's widely-acclaimed "Empire". In "Multitude", Hardt and Negri discuss change and the possibility of global democracy, which they define as "the rule of everyone by everyone". The book offers a unique vision of how such a future might be developing around us and futher rewards its readers with numerous insights and top-notch analysis in a highly readable text. "Multitude" appears to have been written in part as a response to the criticisms of "Empire" as presented in the excellent book, "Empire's New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri" edited by Passavant and Dean. For example, "Multitude" takes a slightly different approach to the themes of U.S. exceptionalism, network power structures, violence and the politics of identity; all of these topics were critiqued at length in "Empire's New Clothes". Consequently, it appears that Hardt and Negri may have profited from this dialogue and it may also explain why "Multitude" is a more substantive and less theoretical book than "Empire". Section One of "Multitude" is entitled "War". Hardt and Negri discuss the perpetual state of war as a means to maintain the capitalist world order and social hierarchy. Interestingly, the authors show how insurgencies and counterinsurgencies have both taken on the characteristics of flexible, postmodern production networks. Importantly, the anti-globalization movement is lauded as an example of how such decentralized and distributed networks can support an "absolutely democratic organization" whose emerging strength might yet constitute the "most powerful weapon against the ruling power structure." Section Two is about "Multitude". The multitude is both plural and multiple, wherein people maintain their individualities but act based on common interests. Hardt and Negri posit that global production is made possible by "the commons" of language and communications and information networks. Patents, licenses and other tools to control the commons and appropriate wealth for private investors has hampered the productivity of the multitude, the authors believe, thereby creating a tension that might lead to revolution. To that end, recent events in Argentina are held out as examples of how new forms of collaborative democracy might emerge. Section Three is entitled "Democracy". Hardt and Negri explain how the ecological and economic grievances of the multitude are routinely suppressed in favor of corporate interests. The authors endorse a number of reforms that might alleviate some of the worst excesses -- such as the Tobin Tax on currency trades, the easing of copyright laws and the forgiveness of third world debt -- but they go much further, suggesting that the time may be ripe for a "new Magna Carta", or a fundamental restructuring of relations between capital and labor. To that end, the authors envision an "open-source society" of collaboration characterized by the self-rule of the multitude and using

Almost all the reviews that I read of the book "Empire" failed to recognize it as a philosophical text (e.g. they wanted charts and graphs or they wanted an easy read). But this point is important because a philosophical text is there to introduce you to a concept -- a new way of seeing and apprehending the world -- and to a new way of thinking. Fortunately this time around they say so immediately. Multitude like Empire is a very rich and complex book interweaving different types of narratives in order to present a new way of thinking about our present. What has changed is the coherence and cohesion of the text. It is much more solid. It doesn't try to cover every single thing at the cost of the readers attention. But it is every bit as audacious as the first. It is quite daring and innovative, and for all that still completely analytically solid. The major protesters are generally those who disagree that the world has changed. This is not necessarily a philosophical matter but an empirical one. Those people who disagree need to take issue with the thousands of economic, sociological and historical analyses that have charted these very changes. From there it is merely a matter of interpreting it all. The second group of protestors to these books belong to this camp, who disagree with their interpretations of the events and their significance. What does the postmodernisation and globalisation of the global economy (for example) have to do with political struggle, for the labor movement etc.? It is here that this book shines above all its peers (and I do not hesitate in using such strong language). Whereas Empire gave cursory and rather abstract presentations of the present conditions political significance, Multitude is entirely invested with this presentation. Reading this books to me seems that both Hardt & Negri took careful considerations of all the major trends of criticism and answered them in turn in a deep and very convincing fashion. It is a shame that so many readers will concentrate and criticize their writings for its difficulty and terminology. I agree that in the first book these posed a lot of problems for those unfamiliar with many of the discourses, but if one understands that both books are books of philosophy and not simply another set of tired political polemics, then one should at least be prepared to make an investment in reading them. What one stands to get in return in terms of knowledge is I think highly worth it.

If you liked Empire, you'll love Multitude. The authors and reviewers alike speak of Multitude as a follow up to Empire, but I think something very different is happening here. Hardt and Negri have pushed and pulled each other forward over a vast and forbidding territory, and in Multitude they have attained a height/depth of perception well beyond Empire. If you are attempting to learn your radicalism, or inform your progressivism, through Hardt and Negri, then you may see Multitude as continuing from and expanding Empire, and you may also join the chorus bemoaning the perceived digressiveness and discursiveness of both books. But what we actually have here are two attempts at the same fateful book: where Empire was the best try we had at the time, Multitude now succeeds. Where the digression in Empire circled around the feeling of our world-cultural hematopoiesis, the discursion in Multitude captures it. Fukuyama attempted to deal with Multitude in the July 25th NYT Book Review, and either utterly failed at, or purposefully decided to avoid, addressing the book qua philosophy. At this point in his apologizing for economists, it is hard to imagine that Fukuyama's name has ever been mentioned in the same breath as Hegel, or that he has ever actually read any of the German Idealists;- whereas with Hardt and Negri, we almost have that level of man among us again. For Fukuyama, history has indeed ended, because he has stopped feeling it and can now only move around his darkened signifiers. For Hardt and Negri, and for those who have read, listened, and felt their way into the great becoming that is world history, we are indeed not at its end, but at its very beginning. The chief problem with this book is that the English language, as a field of common meaning, is not up to handling this level of thought anymore. (E.g., the very British cheery insufficiency of George Monbiot's 'Manifesto for a New World Order'.) Hardt and Negri wrote Multitude in English, but were thinking in German, that neoplatonic lego of a language. So, if you consider yourself progressive but can't get the feeling and sweep of Multitude, then trash your TV, stop reading anything written after 1930 for a few years, then come back to it. You will find you have become allergic to CNN, but you will also find that - finally - you can *feel* what the world and her history are all about.