Empire

Rating:
Summary: Will the Empire ever strike out?
Review: Classical MArxist theory is being beset from both sides. Neo-Liberal texts like _the End of History_ argue that we've tried communism and it failed. Postmodernists, beginning with Lyotard, has claimed that grand narratives, like those that underlie Marxism, have been discredited. Hardt & Negri's _Empire_ is an attempt to recover Marxism and adapt it to the postmodern condition.

Situated between two formative events, the Gulf War and the Kosovo intervention, the concept of "Empire" is used to explain how this adaptation can work. Although Lenin's classical text _Imperialis_ explains well how nation-states used the mantras of capitalism to justify expansion and domination, with the decentering of state power Lenin's explanation seems less likely. Hardt & Negri show that the transnationalization of capitalism and its attendant logics allows the death of the nation-state while preserving the logics of imperialism. In sum, there is now imperialism without an imperialist. Empire, the logic that undergirded traditional imperialism has become pre- and self-justifying.

Although Hardt & Negri make a compelling case that Empire requires a new way of conceptualizing capitalist exploitation, they provide too little in the way of resistant strategies. We are told that new informatics regimes and subjectivites allow space for resistance. Rather than being workers in a capitalist nation-state, we are worker bees (drones) that are led by a queen bee. Yet, when we reach the end of the book, there is no way for the drones to overcome or resist the queen bee's dictates.

It is almost as if the world of _Ender's Game_ has been imposed on planet earth, only with the Buggers winning this time. The proper goals of Marxist theory in the postmodern condition is to help the worker resist, as the metanarrative of classical MArxism has been discredited.

This book, while properly descriptive and normative, lacks the prescriptive action that this analysis needs to become complete. Perhaps the prescriptive action, though, is what landed Negri in prison and requires his release before we can find out what it was.

Rating:
Summary: Essential if ultimately disappointing
Review: Perhaps it's a bit late to weigh in on Empire, but so many of the posted reviews strike me as so silly that I couldn't resist: most simply denounce or praise the authors for being "Marxist" or complain about the obscurantist writing. As for the first approach: who cares one way or another? Obviously Hardt and Negri aren't just repeating what Marx said, and why should they? (On the other hand, it's ridiculous to pretend that someone could analyze contemporary capitalism without referring to Marx.) Anyway, there is no general, systematic "framework" called Marxism, that you could accept or reject wholesale. Marx himself wasn't a Marxist, as everyone knows!

As for the writing, I've been surprised by how frequently people attack its academicism: anyone familiar with Negri's previous work can tell that he's dumbed down the arguments a fair amount, which has sometimes deprived them of some of their subtlety and rigor. It's a book of political philosophy, not the latest pot-boiler from your average journalist. I don't think it's elitist to ask the general public to grapple with a difficult work--I'm sure most are quite capable of it!

As for Empire itself: I think Negri has made a major misstep. The basic argument is simple (another reason I don't see its intellectualism--everyone has at least gotten the major point). Negri has made himself look pretty foolish coming out with a book in 2000 claiming that traditional imperialism is dead (the subsequent policies of George II's administration have forced Hardt and Negri to more or less admit they got it wrong in recent interviews). He seems to have gotten taken in by the liberal/social-democratic rhetoric of the 90s, which envisioned a super-state providing global capitalism with an international law. This was never anything but a reformist utopia, which projected a welfare-state compromise at the global level--after 20 years of Reagan-Thatcherism and neoliberalism at the national level!

Theoretically, then, Negri is just expanding on his old thesis of "real subsumption" (yes, the term is Marx's but Negri has elabrated a quite original interpretation), sprucing it up with a new theory of sovereignty. The claim--surrounded by so many qualifications and caveats that Hardt and Negri clearly don't really buy the argument themselves and are hedging their bets--is that the nation-state, and hence imperialism in its old sense are rapidly declining, being replaced by an imperial sovereignty that is conceptually foggy and simply doesn't reflect empirical historical tendencies. The "nation-state" as an abstraction is as strong as ever--it's everywhere! Some actually existing nation-states are much stronger than others, however--in other words, the U.S., Western Europe, Japan, perhaps China and Russia, are still potentially (and in the case of the U.S. actually) imperialist powers. They will never coordinate themselves into a regulated global order, and even if they did, the global South would never accept such an order.

Negri used to argue back in the 80s that the form of sovereignty most appropriate to the era of real subsumption was the nuclear state, not some international social democracy. It seems to me he should have stuck with this line--if anything it's more true than ever today. The basic political unit is still the state, and there isn't a state out there that doesn't ardently desire some nukes! (By the way, as far as I can tell Hardt's main contribution to Empire is to bring in discussions of the "postmodernism" and "post-colonial" theory that is so popular in certain academic circles. An almost total waste of time.)

Overall, Empire is still fascinating in its suggestiveness and its grand syntheses. Even if you disagree with the argument, it is absorbing and thought-provoking reading.

Rating:
Summary: * So Many Weak Spots, It Undermines It's Premise *
Review: The super new "insight" this book supposedly brings to the discussion of globalization - that there are a network of aligned capitalist interests called "EMPIRE" - is completely obscured by bad writing, a poor understanding of global economics, and a failure to analyze hard factual trends. The appeal is purely emotional, playing on readers who are threatened by the warp-speed changes that are affecting life in the 21st century.

What is the real threat of EMPIRE anyway? The authors never really address thi point. By any measurement, life on this mortal coil is infinitely better than when Marx or Lenin wrote, for more people than ever before. Life expectancy is up 100% in the last 75 years, literacy rates have more than doubled, and more people live in more democracies than ever before. These trends have accelerated in the last 20 years - the years in which the authors claim that EMPIRE came to be. Take a look at Marber's book Money Changes Everything for some real facts that bury the purported evils of EMPIRE. If the consequences of EMPIRE are better living standards globally for billions, I think most readers (and workers of the world) would vote for EMPIRE over the decentralized revolution for which our naive communist writers call.

This is a shame. Because the great observation here is that EMPIRE transcends national borders; yes, this is a very valid point and more academics should delve into the withering of sovereignty. But the authors'conclusion - that EMPIRE is inherently bad - is such a miscue. What planet do they live on?

Rating:
Summary: Essential if ultimately disappointing
Review: Perhaps it's a bit late to weigh in on Empire, but so many of the posted reviews strike me as so silly that I couldn't resist: most simply denounce or praise the authors for being "Marxist" or complain about the obscurantist writing. As for the first approach: who cares one way or another? Obviously Hardt and Negri aren't just repeating what Marx said, and why should they? (On the other hand, it's ridiculous to pretend that someone could analyze contemporary capitalism without referring to Marx.) Anyway, there is no general, systematic "framework" called Marxism, that you could accept or reject wholesale. Marx himself wasn't a Marxist, as everyone knows!

As for the writing, I've been surprised by how frequently people attack its academicism: anyone familiar with Negri's previous work can tell that he's dumbed down the arguments a fair amount, which has sometimes deprived them of some of their subtlety and rigor. It's a book of political philosophy, not the latest pot-boiler from your average journalist. I don't think it's elitist to ask the general public to grapple with a difficult work--I'm sure most are quite capable of it!

As for Empire itself: I think Negri has made a major misstep. The basic argument is simple (another reason I don't see its intellectualism--everyone has at least gotten the major point). Negri has made himself look pretty foolish coming out with a book in 2000 claiming that traditional imperialism is dead (the subsequent policies of George II's administration have forced Hardt and Negri to more or less admit they got it wrong in recent interviews). He seems to have gotten taken in by the liberal/social-democratic rhetoric of the 90s, which envisioned a super-state providing global capitalism with an international law. This was never anything but a reformist utopia, which projected a welfare-state compromise at the global level--after 20 years of Reagan-Thatcherism and neoliberalism at the national level!

Theoretically, then, Negri is just expanding on his old thesis of "real subsumption" (yes, the term is Marx's but Negri has elabrated a quite original interpretation), sprucing it up with a new theory of sovereignty. The claim--surrounded by so many qualifications and caveats that Hardt and Negri clearly don't really buy the argument themselves and are hedging their bets--is that the nation-state, and hence imperialism in its old sense are rapidly declining, being replaced by an imperial sovereignty that is conceptually foggy and simply doesn't reflect empirical historical tendencies. The "nation-state" as an abstraction is as strong as ever--it's everywhere! Some actually existing nation-states are much stronger than others, however--in other words, the U.S., Western Europe, Japan, perhaps China and Russia, are still potentially (and in the case of the U.S. actually) imperialist powers. They will never coordinate themselves into a regulated global order, and even if they did, the global South would never accept such an order.

Negri used to argue back in the 80s that the form of sovereignty most appropriate to the era of real subsumption was the nuclear state, not some international social democracy. It seems to me he should have stuck with this line--if anything it's more true than ever today. The basic political unit is still the state, and there isn't a state out there that doesn't ardently desire some nukes! (By the way, as far as I can tell Hardt's main contribution to Empire is to bring in discussions of the "postmodernism" and "post-colonial" theory that is so popular in certain academic circles. An almost total waste of time.)

Overall, Empire is still fascinating in its suggestiveness and its grand syntheses. Even if you disagree with the argument, it is absorbing and thought-provoking reading.

Rating:
Summary: * So Many Weak Spots, It Undermines It's Premise *
Review: The super new "insight" this book supposedly brings to the discussion of globalization - that there are a network of aligned capitalist interests called "EMPIRE" - is completely obscured by bad writing, a poor understanding of global economics, and a failure to analyze hard factual trends. The appeal is purely emotional, playing on readers who are threatened by the warp-speed changes that are affecting life in the 21st century.

What is the real threat of EMPIRE anyway? The authors never really address thi point. By any measurement, life on this mortal coil is infinitely better than when Marx or Lenin wrote, for more people than ever before. Life expectancy is up 100% in the last 75 years, literacy rates have more than doubled, and more people live in more democracies than ever before. These trends have accelerated in the last 20 years - the years in which the authors claim that EMPIRE came to be. Take a look at Marber's book Money Changes Everything for some real facts that bury the purported evils of EMPIRE. If the consequences of EMPIRE are better living standards globally for billions, I think most readers (and workers of the world) would vote for EMPIRE over the decentralized revolution for which our naive communist writers call.

This is a shame. Because the great observation here is that EMPIRE transcends national borders; yes, this is a very valid point and more academics should delve into the withering of sovereignty. But the authors'conclusion - that EMPIRE is inherently bad - is such a miscue. What planet do they live on?

Rating:
Summary: Still Relevant
Review: Is this book still relevant? Many will argue that the current
US neoconservative rampage disproves Hardt and Negri's "Empire" thesis. I disagree with that. First of all, never did H&N posit that imperialism, nationalism, patriotism had died on, say, June 5th, 1999. They did argue that the tendancy was for capitalism to reorganize itself into Empire-a dectralized globalized capitalist network that would diminish borders in such a way as to allow the smooth flow of capital globally.

So we should ask ourselves if we are indeed returning to the age of "imperialism" or proceeeding toward "Empire". I would argue
that the current US neo-conservative policy is an attempt to return to imperialism, however, I believe that it is an aberration, an irregular moment in the unfolding of Empire. In imperialism, capital is organized around capitalists according to nation-states. And so you would have German capitalists, vying against French capitalists, etc. But the present day formation of capital is less and less organized around national groups as it is around transnational groups.

This is not to say that there do not still exist national formations of capital (after all, we saw French captialist interests in Iraq being challenged by big oil capitalists from the US)...it is to say that global capital formations are the growing tendancy and will win out over time. So, what we are witnessing right now is very complex. We can not expect that imperialism ends one day and Empire starts the next...they will coexist for some time to come.

And what about the revolutionary subject that will counter Empire? H&N call those forces, the multitudes. The notion of multitudes replaces the classical marxist notion of proleterian (in which the industrial factory worker was seen as the most revolutionary class). the multitudes includes the industrial proleteriat but it does not assign it the prominent role it once had in classical marxism. The term multitudes, as the name suggests, describes the various groups , each with its varying "desires", that counter global capitalism. Instead of a dialectical conflict betwee an proleteriat led by a so-called vanguard organization against the capitalist class, H&N project the multitudes as being composed of various groups developing life according to the diversity of their needs. This is in stark contrast to the undemocratic Vanguard Party which is "delegated" power and which decides the strategies, values and lifestyles for all that fall under its umbrella .

One problem is that Negri seems to have an almost romantic notion of the multitudes; this echos some of the naive concepts earlier marxism held about the proleteriat. Whenever Negri writes about
the multitudes, he speaks as if they were these pure revolutionary subjects. But that is not true. The multitudes
can be racist, religiously fanatic and homophobic. Given this, how can we realistically consider a stateless society. As many coming from the autonomist tradition, Hardt & Negri refuse to postulate what a future post-capitalist world might look like.The reason given for this is democratically inspired: a future world would be made up of multifarious experiments that people developed out of their being, not dictated by the vision of a vanguard party or a handful of intellectuals.

However H&N do put forward a few demands that might guide the anti-global-capital movement: (1) No borders and (2) a universal
income. It is clear that in the global economy the global multitude will need to find ways to unite. The slogan, "Workers of the world unite" can no longer be a pleasant aphorism; it is a necessity. Much chauvinism will be stirred up and nationalism will still emerge and pit workers from one country against another. However, if we suceed in uniting transnationally, not allowing capital any respite in any corner of the globe, then we can win. This is the good news, coupled with deep analysis, that Hardt and Negri bring to us in "Empire".

Rating:
Summary: A very important book for our universities
Review: This is a terribly written book in the sense that it was written for academics and by academics. I have been reading it on and off since it was recommended to me about a year ago. To understand it, you have to be well-versed in Hegel and Foucault and Said among others.

But it's a VERY important book. It calls for a return to historiography in the true sense of the word and an end to the ideal types of Foucault and Said of object/subject; colonialist/colonizer. Or, as the book itself puts it, what is needed is a study of non-ideal and non-homogenous society but a society "constituted by at least two conflicting traditions."

All our histories are far, far richer than that and to say that all we are is either one or the other (as many of our history departments do) is to do all of us an injustice. What is more, the monolithic situation of the "other" simply makes no historical sense. "The real situation in the colonies never breaks down into an absolute binary between pure opposing forces. Reality always presents proliferating multiplicities." We are not just object/subject or colizer/colonized and to call us by these ideal types alone is to do us all an injustice.

This book says that-but in very academic terms. Nonetheless, it is a very important book that should be debated in our universities.

Rating:
Summary: Very useful and at times prophetic
Review: This book is definitely neither for the critical theory neophyte, nor for those of an already hardened ideological position on globalization and identity politics. However, the close reader will be rewarded with innumerable moments of productive provocation and reflection. There are very interesting insights on the limits of all the "posts," namely postmodernism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism, none of which seem to get at the historical passage from modernity to Empire in a fashion entirely suitable to the authors' p.o.v. I must say that, in many respects, I agree with their critiques. There's also a very prophetic account of Empire's "police intervention" function that certainly makdes one think of "Operation Iraqui Freedom" in a new light, as well as a section on the rise of fundamentalism as a symptom of Empire's arrival that casts the horrors of 9-11 in a broader perspective. All in all, despite the often tortuous prose and high-fallutin' way with slogans and metaphors, a very useful book for anyone who has both a strong a critical theory background and an open-minded attitude to fresh debates.

Rating:
Summary: A clever continuation of Foucault and Marx
Review: Despite the many negative reviews of this book, I think Hardt and Negri have done an excellent job putting together a neo-Marxist and Foucauldian perspective on our current delimma of empire. With consumate patience and skill they have produced a truly novel work which appeals to both the philosopher and the political scientist. Anyone who is interested in the state of world affairs as seen through the challenging and promising developments in the past forty years will be pleased with this work.

Rating:
Summary: Halflife of a republic...?
Review: This riddling work has been the target of so many direct hits and the howls-of-protests of liberal political-sci mandarins that the only thing left (in a postmodern vein, 'these fragments have we from our ruins')is to review is the footnote on page 31, "...the thesis that the decline of Rome began with Caesar was continually reproposed throughout the historiography of the age of the Enlightenment..." That about says it. These critics must ask who gets the last laugh. The books sifts the leftist omens of capital demise with the correct foreboding, but not prophecy: It is easy to protest postmodern pastiche, but history shows every chance republics decay into empires, and their decadence begins not with the barbarians invading but with the appearance of Ceasars. Have the Caesars appeared? They may have upgraded their act, and after so much expertise with Madison-Ad you'll never know what hit you.

The question seems taken for granted in the book, but its crypto-Spenglerianism with a Foucauldian postmodern face seems unsure, or else ambivalent, or else licking it chops, if by a change of labels this decadence might do the job of failed revolution.
What an odd book. I read it twice, but was unable to get with the program, but then saw their point, better the leftist Caesars??? 'We will make you a better offer'.
In fact, the riddle of the book is solved by taking it in fragments, a puzzle to be solved, with many pieces disassembled, from Descartes to Derrida. Leftist thought is fatigued, and gets a good rolfing with a change of associations to shatter dead brain mass. Anything but more Second Internationale cliches.
However, there is no postmodern escape. The postmodern provokes the an awesome task the Russian revolution too obviously failed to resolve, actually understanding the modern so you can surpass it! That's the catch in this type of argument. You are back to the grind with schoolboy lessons ('discipline and punish') in the 'regles du jeu', with or without a Voltaire wig. The postmodern simply jacknifes against its modernism, and becomes its next outcome.
Fascinating, unnerving book. But the solution to the revolutionary problem requires a republic...