The Washington Post publishes a mournful account (Adams, Lorraine, 'A Global Theory Spins On an Altered Axis,' 9/29/01) of the disappointment of one of the authors of this book, Michael Hardt, in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attack on America. "Michael Hardt found himself a little bit famous last month, a creation of hype, some said, or co-author of the next Big Idea. But just after 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, that is all nothing, and Hardt finds himself sitting on a couch in his New York apartment, unable to watch television, unable to stop watching."

       "So the co-author of the book, 'Empire,' - the acclaimed and controversial work on globalization - goes down from his fifth-floor walk-up and joins the New Yorkers heading north, unusually quiet and seemingly numb, to give blood...His hair is mussed. His shirt is a rumple. It doesn't matter that the book he co-wrote with Italian political philosopher Antonio Negri had been a summer sensation. That clerks at Borders were debating its ideas. That college kids were reading it on the beach. That Lingua Franca, the highly respected journal of academia, featured a story on Negri and their ideas."

       "Hardt and Negri's book - a dense 500 pages - offered a theoretical framework for the new globalized world, and its popularity was propelled by a protest movement that was following the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings from one country to another. Over the summer it had been hard to find 'Empire' in New York bookstores. It was back-ordered for months on Amazon.com and did a stint on The Washington Post's bestseller list. Translation rights were sold in 10 countries, and it even inspired a new political journal in France."

       "But now all the media appearances from the United States to Holland to Brazil don't matter. Nor does the ongoing Web discussion in South Africa. And it is immaterial that the New York Times gushed, 'Scholars are wondering if the latest contender for academia's next master theorist is Michael Hardt."

       What is it about this book that has inspired such widespread admiration in the modern liberal media and academia? Srdja Trifkovic, writing in the February 2001 issue of 'Chronicles,' discerns the key message of the book. "When the ideas [of the Frankfurt School -- see link at bottom of page] first gained credence in the 1970s New Left, they had a utopian ring. The critical mass required to make [their revolution] possible could not be found within the West, while the revolutionary potential of the Third world proved repeatedly disappointing. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the outlook seemed pretty grim from the Marxist perspective, but - as Hardt and Negri point out - the end of the Cold war has cleared the way for the rise of global Empire, and with it the new hope that all may turn out well in the end."

       "Hardt and Negri are true revolutionaries who want to move beyond the Gramscian 'long march,' which has yielded ample results but cannot deliver the coup de grace. In the apparent defeat of revolutionary struggle - epitomized by the triumph of liberal capitalism over bolshevism - they find the seeds of future victory for revolutionary Marxism, which Empire makes possible by eradicating traditional structures capable of making one last stand. Empire admittedly introduces new forms of capitalist command and exploitation, but it is 'objectively' an ally of the revolution ('liberation') not only because it destroys the remnants of the old order but because it contains the germ of another form of globalization: the counter-Empire of global communism that will be made possible by demographic change."

       "The 'political subjectivity' that emerges within this phase of history is the most expansive and fundamental political subject of all: The multitude is about to come into its own. In summary, Hardt and Negri rejoice in all that we abhor. Read Empire to understand why Karl Marx is alive and well and supports the emerging global order of Albright, Blair, and Gates."

       Indeed, other critics of the book call it (Ibid, Wash. Post) "...nothing less than a re-writing of 'The Communist Manifesto' for our time." In an attempt to deflect such criticism, Hart and Negri resort to the subterfuge of vague phrases. "The new terrain of political power...holds a great possibility for equality, freedom, and justice. And the U.S. Constitution, Hardt points out, is what he and Negri hold up for the world as a possible model." Of course, the buzz-words of the world's socialists are in this description. Democracy to these people is a word that describes their socialist order. Says Hardt, "I don't know what a global democracy would look like and how to do it. But that doesn't mean that it's not the most  important  thing to work towards."

       Hardt and Negri are supporters of recent anarchist demonstrations in Seattle, Washington D.C., and Genoa, Italy. In a New York Times article ('What the Protesters in Genoa Want,' 7/20/01), "Genoa has been transformed into a medieval fortress of barricades with high-tech controls. The ruling ideology about the present form of globalization is that there is no alternative. And strangely, this restricts both the rulers and the ruled."

       "Those demonstrating against the summit in Genoa, however, are not distracted by these old-fashioned symbols of power. They know that a fundamentally new global system is being formed. The world can no longer be understood in terms of British, French, Russian or even American imperialism. The many protests that have led up to Genoa were based on the recognition that no national power is in control of the present global order. Consequently, protests must be directed at international and supranational organizations like the G-8, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The movements are not anti-American, but they are aimed at a different, larger power structure."

       The authors are, in effect, saying that the nation-state no longer exists. "It is not national but supranational powers that rule today's globalization, however, we must recognize that this new order has no democratic institutional mechanisms for representation, as nation-states do: no elections, no public forum for debate." The authors are, here, moving toward their own utopian view, a view that uses the word 'democratic,' and 'democracy' as euphemisms for their socialist agenda to impose a world-wide socialism on the new world order of their own 'enlightened imagination.'

       "The rulers are effectively blind and deaf to the ruled. The protesters take to the streets because this is the form of expression available to them. The lack of other venues and social mechanisms is not their creation."

       "Antiglobalization is not an adequate characterization of the protesters in Genoa (or Goteborg, Quebec, Prague, or Seattle). The globalization debate will remain hopelessly confused, in fact, unless we insist on qualifying the term globalization. The protesters are indeed united against the present form of capitalist globalization, but the vast majority of them are not against globalizing currents and forces as such; they are not isolationist, separatist or even nationalist."

       "The protests themselves have become global movements, and one of their clearest objectives is the democratization [don't they mean 'socialization'] of globalizing processes. This should not be called an antiglobalization movement. It is pro-globalization, or rather it is an alternative globalization movement - one that seeks to expand the possibilities of self-determination." Ah, yes, a socialist world globalization. One that would be several orders of magnitude larger than the terrible, destructive, yes, evil socialist movements of the 20^th century - German national socialism, Russian Bolshevic socialism, and China's Maoist socialism.

       "Protest movements are an integral part of a democratic society, and for this reason alone we should all thank those in the streets in Genoa, whether we agree with them or not. Protest movements, however, do not provide a practical blueprint for how to solve problems, and we should not expect that of them. They seek rather to transform the public agenda by creating political desires for a better future."

       "We see seeds of that future already in the sea of faces that stretches from the streets of Seattle to those of Genoa. One of the most remarkable characteristics of these movements is their diversity: trade unionists together with ecologists together with priests and communists.

       "We are beginning to see a multitude emerge that is not defined by any single identity, but can discover commonality in its multiplicity." Yes, in the eyes of the authors, they are beginning to see a globalization that is controlled by socialists with the same agenda as Hitler's, Lenin's, Stalin's and Mao's. But there is one thing that is different in Hardt and Negri's grand plan, their hope for our next 'Big Idea.' They are anarchists, nihilists. And one of them, Negri, was an organizer for the terrorist group, the Red Brigade, in Italy some decades ago.

       "The two co-authors have been friends since Hardt, a reader of Negri, sought him out in the 1980s. Hardt, 41, is the Rockville [MD] - born son of a Congressional Research Service specialist on the Soviet economy. A graduate of Winston Churchill High School in Potomac [MD], he has a bachelor of science degree in engineering from Swarthmore College and a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Washington. He taught at the University of Southern California briefly in 1992 and became a tenured professor at Duke University in 1995."

       Alan Wolfe wrote a devastating critique of Hardt and Negri's book in The New Republic ('The Snake,' 10/01/01). They go into some detail on Negri's life. "Negri, when not in prison, has been a political philosopher, and he is the author of numerous books, manifestos, and theses on subjects ranging from Spinoza's metaphysics to the nature of insurgency under contemporary capitalism." Wolfe questions whether or not Negri, himself, is a 'violence prone' terrorist. "The question of whether Negri was himself a violence prone terrorist is still open. In April 1979, Negri, who was then a professor at the University of Padua, was arrested and charged with armed insurrection. He was not convicted on the most serious charges, which amounted to the accusation that, as the leader of the Red Brigades [an Italian terrorist organization in the late1970s and early 1980s], he was responsible for the assassination of Christian Democratic politician Aldo Moro; but he was found guilty of lesser charges and sentenced to preventive detention. (Among other things, the judge in the case quoted from a letter written by Negri in which he said that 'without  weapons, the mass struggle does not exist.')"

       "Determined not to go to jail, Negri won a seat in parliament, which gave him immunity; but the Italian Chamber of Deputies stripped him of it, and he fled to France in 1983. In 1997, he voluntarily returned to Italy and was incarcerated. He took the action, he said, in order to clarify the situation of other New Leftists who were in exile. He is still a prisoner, a feature of his biography that is prominently displayed by Harvard University Press on the back of Empire. So as not to detract from the dramatic flair of their author, the publishers neglect to mention that Negri is released during the day to live in his apartment in Rome with his girlfriend, spending only his nights in jail."

       "As is the case with so much of the violence associate with the New Left, it is difficult to know exactly what Negri did. We do know that Italy, like Germany, experienced considerable political violence in the 1960s and 1970s, and that many radical groups, distrustful of the cautious conservatism of the Community Party, created ultra-leftist sects such as Autonomia Operaia that either engaged directly in criminal acts or sought to justify them as a necessary stage in the destruction of capitalism. Negri, who was closely associated with these splinter groups as a member and a theorist, has had many opportunities since then to revisit his past and to reflect on whether the violence of the times was wrong. He has chosen not to do so. Instead he has argued that violence is built into all the institutions and all the practices of capitalism, as if to conclude that because society itself is so violent, one can hardly be surprised that its opponents tend in that direction as well. Empire is merely the latest of a series of books in which a completely unrepentant Negri defends himself. No wonder that efforts to win his full release from prison - efforts that will surely escalate now that Negri has received the imprimatur of America's most prestigious academic press - have failed."

       Wolfe goes on to unmask the authors. "For Hardt and Negri, Marxism is simply a given. This does not mean that it is sacrosanct: on the contrary, much of this book is devoted to moving beyond just about everything Marx had to say about modern capitalism. Yet all these exertions are made in the name of Marxism, including the choice of language and metaphor, the reliance on ponderous theory, and the weakness for the issuance of manifestos. Whereas Marx separated these tasks, producing an all-time best-seller as well as long volumes of historical and economic analysis, Hardt and Negri throw it all together in one meandering, wordy, and incoherent book."

       "Marx developed the metaphor of the mole to portray the ways in which movements of workers would bore through tunnels hidden from sight, only to emerge from time to time to make themselves seen and heard. The appropriate metaphor for the conditions in which protest movements now find themselves, in Hardt and Negri's view, is the snake. Slithering around at the edges of the new global order, these movements 'are immediately subversive in themselves and do not wait on any sort of external aid or extension to guarantee their effectiveness.' The are capable instead of coiling themselves up to 'strike directly at the highest articulations of the imperial order."

       "The authors of Empire see no reason to exclude explicit reactionaries, including religious fundamentalists, from the catalogue of...movements that they admire. Fundamentalists, they write, are often portrayed as anti-modernist, but this is Western propaganda. 'It is more accurate and more useful...to understand the various fundamentalism (sic) not as the re-creation of a pre-modern world, but rather as a powerful refusal of the contemporary historical passage in course.' Neglecting to mention the Taliban's treatment of women, Hardt and Negri go out of their way to reassure readers of the genuinely subversive nature of the Islamic version of fundamentalism. These movements are motivated not by nostalgic attempts to reconstruct the past, but by 'original thought.' They are anti-Western, which means that they are anti-capitalist. Properly understood, they are postmodern rather than premodern, since they engage in a refusal of Western hegemony, with the proviso that fundamentalism speaks to the losers in the globalization project and postmodernism to the winners. Hardt and Negri even leave the impression that, if they had to choose between the postmodernists in Western universities and the fundamentalists in Iran, they would prefer the latter: 'The losers in the process of globalization might indeed be the ones who give us the strongest indication of the transformation in process.'"

       Power, raw absolute power is a theme in Empire. "Power is expressed as a control that extends throughout the depths of the consciousness and bodies of the population - and at the same time across the entirety of social relations. Hardt and Negri call this process of total control  'bio-power,' which they define as 'a form of power that regulates social life from its interior, following it, and rearticulating it.' By transforming Marx's economic determinism into a form of biological determinism, Hardt and Negri manage to remove every last shred of humanism in Marxism. For all his insistence that his criticism of capitalism was motivated by considerations of science rather than by considerations of morality, Marx never fully abandoned the anthropocentric character of the romantic movements out of which he emerged. He was, for one thing, persuaded that human beings possessed an irreducible nature; inspired by Prometheus, Marx took it for granted that they came equipped with a drive to create. It was precisely this productive capacity - this determination on the part of human beings to create value - that drove capitalists to expropriate from workers their human essence, their 'species being.'"

       We are reminded of Peter Singer and his bioethics movement in some of Hardt and Negri's writings. According to Alan Wolfe, "Hardt and Negri will have none of this talk of human nature, or use value, or labor power. Capital will exploit wherever and whatever it can. With bio-power in command, our bodies are no longer irreducibly ours. Our bodies have instead turned against themselves; they are the very instruments by which we are controlled by forces external to us. We therefore have to 'recognize our posthuman bodies and minds' and see ourselves 'for the simians and cyborgs we are' before we can begin to unleash whatever creative powers we may have left over."

       Wolfe finally makes clear the personal motivation for Hardt and Negri's book. They are of the professoriat - the new masters of history, the new global Empire. "Although Empire is not controlled by anyone, it does require coordination, and therefore it also requires communication. Communication is to Hardt and Negri what production was to Marx: the central activity of society without which nothing else is possible. And, like production, communication requires workers, or immaterial labor, as the authors call those people who do not produce goods but instead deliver services. It thus follows that 'the central role previously occupied by the labor power of mass factory workers in the production of surplus value is today increasingly filled by intellectual, immaterial, and communicative labor power.' So professors have a purpose after all: they can 'develop a new political theory of value that can pose the problem of this new capitalist accumulation of value at the center of the mechanism of exploitation (and thus, perhaps, at the center of potential revolt).' All those demonstrators out there who fail to communicate with each other require someone to communicate for them, and who better to do the communication than those who make the production of words central to their existence?



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