Empire

Rating:
Summary: confusion
Review: To anyone considering reading this book: many of the reviewers have obviously not read the book and do not know what the hell they are talking about. I would suggest reading Hardt and Negri's Labor of Dionysus(U of Minnesota Press) before Empire, to get aquainted with the terms and concepts which they employ. In addition, a cursory reading of the introduction to LoD would render ridiculous and absurd the unfounded invectives which several disgruntled persons have carelessly tossed about.

Rating:
Summary: Falls short
Review: I've always been a big fan of Negri and the Italian autonomists, but I feel that Empire seriously sidetracks radicalism. For one thing, the political philosophy represented in this book is a bad combination of Foucault and--in my opinion--misappropriations of Deleuze and Guattari. (Yes, I know that Negri and Guattari worked together on numerous projects--and i loved "Communists Like Us"--but this doesn't excuse the hack-job Negri and Hardt have done to Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy.) The use of postmodern philosophy makes the overall theory of "Empire" retrograde and even seriously damages Negri's early ideas of "the socialized worker", which he has merely updated, and mutated, in this book.

Furthermore, Hardt and Negri's assertion that "Imperialism" has been replaced by "Empire" is semantic garbage. There is no center to Capitalism anymore? Come on!! Anyone with any sense needs only to read the newspaper to realize that Capitalism does indeed have a center--America--and, thus, Imperialism is still alive and well. How can Hardt and Negri explain away Desert Storm, or the Nato strike on Yugoslavia, or Bush's current crusade for that matter?

With this being said I still think "Empire" has a few intriguing concepts, one being that the revolutionary icon of Lenin needs to be exchanged for something like a St. Francis of Asisi. Of course this drives all the Leninists crazy and I'm sure the authors put this in just to reveal the rabid dogmatism of orthodox Socialists. I said "intriguing" but that doesn't mean that St. Francis--who took vows of poverty while still tying himself to the Catholic hegemony--is really a "revolutionary" figure...

Actually, most of the valid points of "Empire"--which you can find when you plough through the weighty over-philosophizing--have already been said in earlier works by Negri and, better yet, in "Cyber-Marx" by Nick Dyer-Witheford. In fact I would recommend "Cyber-Marx" instead of "Empire"; Dyer-Witheford not only updates and reinvents Negri's autonomist position, but he does a far better--and more accurate--job of describing the realities of advanced Capitalism.

Rating:
Summary: A leftist that hated this crap!
Review: First off, I'm a leftist. But I'm not willing to sacrifice the idea that one should argue ones political position. This book tries to find a justification for resistance to Empire. What is Empire? It is simply never defined except as "world order" which is in turn defined only negatively (IE. as what world order is NOT as opposed to what it IS). Marx was a terrible writer. But at least at the core of his ideas were concrete concepts like "class" and "capitalism". I think I have working definitions of these things. I have no definition of Empire or half the other abused terms like "ontological" and "juridical" in this piece of trash. Yes, I know what these words mean, but my definitions of them just don't do the kind of work these authors intend these terms to do for them. Go read Marx! He has some *major* problems, but at least once you decipher the prose you will be left with actual concepts.

Rating:
Summary: The Emperor's New Book
Review: Many sources say this is an "important" book. It may, indeed, contain some important new ideas. Unfortunately, the authors did not elect to share them with us. The language is simply too dense. Hardt and Negri could have performed a service by explaining their concepts to a wider audience. They chose, instead, to cloak their arguments in impenetrable jargon and ensure they could only be decyphered by those already in possession of a postmodernist code book. Was their decision from arrogance or fear? Make it their loss, not yours. Save your money.

Rating:
Summary: St. Francis?
Review: Anybody out there in academia who would like to take a vow of poverty and worship God? The last paragraph of this odd book would have you do just that. The authors appropriated St. Francis of all people and said that we should look to him as a model for the future citizen. Anybody else for hugging lepers, and running amok with stigmata and throwing away one's coat while thinking of the next kingdom?

This book was completely brilliant in how it slipped past every hard question, only to end with St. Francis.

I preferred to read Chesterton on St. Francis. At least he understood him. These upper-class elite authors are so wonderful! Hardt must make 80,000 a year at Duke. I just love to read him!

Especially when he appropriates an anarchist saint. The problem is the vow of poverty. I just can't get there. But do the authors really mean it, or do they just like to fantasize about such things as a vow of poverty, the way that aristocrats in the days of Marie Antoinette liked to dress up as peasants and play in the forests of Fontainebleau?

The Empire was built by small-town bankers who spend their Thursday nights cooking burgers for Kiwanis, and most money is still in the hands of small businessmen in local communities, not in corporate mega-entities. These authors basically support Al-Qaeda and Muslim extremism. How that fits together with St. Francis is beyond me -- but this seems to be a move beyond -- into the next kingdom, generally. It seems most unacademic, and yet the appropriation of these religious personnel seems to be done without taking on the burden of either a vow of poverty or a belief in God.

St. Francis was about God though wasn't he? It seems odd that this isn't mentioned anywhere, but whatever, how dare somebody outside the elite institutions argue, and I certainly will not!

Anybody got a spare Franciscan robe? I would like to play, too.

Rating:
Summary: a way to think about the globalizing world
Review: Negri & Hardt say the world is in the process of becoming One World (Empire), an integrated capitalist system with a legal/governmental level. As a tendency this is hardly controversial, as witnessed by the fierce protests against it that have erupted especially since "The Battle of Seattle" of late 1999. What makes this book more futuristic speculation than hard-headed reporting is 1) the authors' elaborated theory of this new world, and 2) their unsubstantiated assertion that it has already arrived.

Before addressing the people who really ought to read "Empire," a few words to those who should not:

1) CONSERVATIVES -- If you think we live in the best of all possible worlds and that the equations of neoclassical economics are actually true (a fallacy of misplaced concreteness), first you should go read Voltaire's "Candide" and meet Dr. Pangloss, and then you should go live for a year in someplace like Afghanistan or India, in poverty and/or under U.S. bombs. You'll get nothing from this book until you have a radical epiphany.

2) ARMCHAIR POSTMODERNISTS -- I know you have probably already read this and are on to some newer fad now, but if not, don't bother. Rereading Deleuze & Guattari's "A Thousand Plateaus" will be much more exciting. Yeah, H&N use Foucault and "biopower," but it doesn't add anything crucial to their argument.

3) THOSE FEW PEOPLE KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT RECENT DEBATES IN MARXISM -- Yes, I know, you're likely to have read it too, to see what the fuss was about. But if not, it's not the most profound of recent attempts to update Karl. (Take a look at Moishe Postone's "Time, Labor, and Social Domination.") If you're interested in Negri, you're better off reading "The Politics of Subversion," and watch for his lynchpin argument about the real subsumption of value -- I think he's all wrong, and it reveals his Eurocentric viewpoint.

So who SHOULD read this book? Young anti-globalization activists and anyone else who is burning with desire not only to understand the world, but to understand it so that they can more effectively CHANGE it, as the Old Moor advocated (in his 11th Thesis on Fuerbach, if you want to look it up). It's not the gospel, in fact I think it's seriously wrong-headed in many ways, but it is a serious attempt to grapple with what is changing and how, and is intended as a tool for activists. It is packed with useful information on the history of capitalism, and places assessments of the 20th century in the longer view since its complex origins -- like Marx, H&N see the ongoing dialectical development of capital as progressive, and this partly accounts for the book's positive reception in places like the New York Times.

"Empire" is relentlessly optimistic in its radical outlook, in the faith that it is "the multitude," not the elites, that has the power to reshape the world. Use it!

Rating:
Summary: Blithering Drivel
Review: Warning: this book is filled with "postmodern" drivel. There is scarcely a shred of intellectual integrity to be found in the book. Its content is impoverished at best, brain-dead at worst. Here is a random single-sentence quote, from p.139, so that you may judge for yourself: "In the context of postmodernist theories, the hybridity and ambivalences of our cultures and our senses of belonging seem to challenge the binary logic of Self and Other that stands behind modern colonialist, sexist, and racist constructions." If a binary logic of Self and Other stands behind my conception of colonialism, etc, then I will eat my computer.

When encountering such a book, it is best to avert the eyes and pass quietly by. Those who feel so inclined are encouraged to utter a prayer for the academic institutions infected with this appalling disease.

Rating:
Summary: Millenial Metaphysics
Review: Since Empire is not written for a popular audience, casual readers should avoid it like the plague. There are few concessions to the reader, even experienced ones.The verbiage is dense, some key concepts remain murky, and few examples are given. However, if you've some background in history of ideas including postmodernism, some time on your hands, and a curiosity about what the future may hold, then you may want to give the book a try. Frankly, I would read some parts more as science fiction than as valuable guide, but it does have its moments.

The authors are neo-Marxists with a heavy emphasis on the 'neo'. Because by the time their postmodern approach finishes with Marx, he's about as recognizable as a shredded medical school cadaver. That's not to say the old boy couldn't use a face lift, but this is radical surgery that eliminates the patient by removing the vital organs. Tossed into the formaldehyde is all semblance of political economy. Postmodernism has little time for anything dealing with measurables that pretend to a life beyond what we come to give them. So goodbye to M-C-M', relative surplus value, and all those other key formulations that make the Marxian paradigm powerful and scientifically appealing. Goodbye too to economic classes, though they may be granted some vague afterlife in what there is of Empire's sociology. Historical Materialism?- just another useless organ, although the authors press their own version of a global market with a relentless determinism that would do the Second Internationale proud. Needless to say, the book's least persuasive parts are those attempting to hang on to the aura at the same time the body of Marx is discarded.

Instead of laying bare capital's laws of motion or riffs on that worthy enterprise, we get extrapolations of current trends. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, except that the level of abstraction from Hardt and Negri is so extreme that at times we enter the banished realm of metaphysics where only ideas count. The paradigm here is the internet and cyberspace. Like these two postmodern icons, Empire is everywhere and nowhere, seemingly beyond any and all paticulars, omnipresent like a dark god in the ether. Similarly, the multitude (ordinary people) are stripped of determining content, becoming more like a bare idea than a true category. Such results could only be reached by abstracting out all that is historical, contextual, and conflictual from the world around us. It's like waking up in a dim room with a sinister presence hovering and not knowing how you got there. Too many of the book's other visionary results are arrived at in similarly ethereal fashion. And though the authors want to avoid an Empire of undue seamlessness by factoring in the idea of hierarchy, the result is again a bare semblance. In short, Empire is emptied of too much that is remotely particular or material in content.

More surprising is a glaring absence of concern with environmental issues. Marx had an excuse since he was pre-Rachel Carson. Hardt and Negri do not. They at least owe the reader an explanation of why no mention is made of this planet-threatening menace and its ties to profit-driven capital. Perhaps it is their assumption that Empire can finesse the conflict between profits and nature as easily as easily it digests national liberation and class struggles. However, no social theory, Marxist or not, can any longer afford not dealing with green issues as a major topic of concern. Nor can a work present itself as a paradigm for the new millenium minus this awareness. For such an egregious omission, there is simply no excuse.

On the other hand, there are solid parts to the book. Part 2, "Passages to Sovereignty", presents an historical analysis of sovereignty that is both novel and stimulating, and should appeal to those with an interest in political science. The discussion here is extremely insightful, shedding light on representative government in the First World and national liberation movements in the Third. There are other useful snippets scattered throughout, and the authors are to be commended for grappling with the contours of a post cold-war world. Nevertheless, the eclectic blending of Marx and postmodernism is both forced and unproductive, while a continuing deference to the 19th century revolutionary suggests there is far less to the "post" in post-modernism than the authors or their many acolytes intend.

Rating:
Summary: review the book not the prose
Review: sadly my review has to speak more of other reviews than "empire" itself. i really wish people would find another forum to air their grievances with the difficulties of academic discourse. it seems to go like this: to express complicated thoughts, you need a complicated VOCABULARY!!! think about the words you knew when you were 7...were they adequate to express the thoughts and feelings you have now? in the same vein, it is not possible to construct complex theoretical arguments without employing complex terms. if you dont understand the jargon (yes it is jargon) used in "empire", then read some cultural theory and learn how to throw these words around. when you go to an auto mechanic, do you have any clue what they are talking about (whatshaft? beltwhat?) why is this any different from the professional language of the academic or cultural theorist? do you accuse mechanics or engineers of locking themselves in an ivory tower? think about it. the bottom line is that if you arent the least bit familiar with hegel, kant, foucalt, deleuze, marx, etc...then this book maybe isnt for you just yet. it is an elaboration, an extension. you have to crawl before you can walk. obviously it is problematic that a book aimed towards ultimately inciting global revolution is only accessible to an academic minority. once hardt and negri have delivered their concepts in a well-formulated, academic fashion, then they can boil it down and make a pamphlet out of it that joe prolitarian can comprehend. keep your frustration and incomprehension private, or do something about it on your own rather than crowding valid, thoughtful book reviews with your griping. i have found "empire" very intriguing and enlightening, although it obviously has its utopian pitfalls. griping about it being anti-american is akin to complaining that its anti-imperialist. read and try to understand the book before you start crying in public.

Rating:
Summary: A Terrible Book
Review: This book is akin to Fukayama's End of History except it has a pretense to be leftist. The problem is that this is fairly typical middle-class analysis - it lowers the importance of national liberation struggles to a sideshow when they are still very much at the centre of struggle today. The suggestions about a network of activists sound good (in a vague, anarchistic sort of way) but will be completely unable to deliver anything verging on real social and economic change. For that, IMO, we will require an organisation with room for discussion but with firm roots in those classes at the coal-face of change. In effect, my criticisms of concepts like the centre, the multitude and empire is that they are poor copies...of the very detailed and analytic sort of work which Lenin and Bukharin produced in their 1920s analyses. Surprisingly with the fall of the Soviet Union, these texts are coming back to the forefront of left-wing literature. The processes of capitalist development, business consolidation and intertwining with the interests of Nation states (which still exist despite Empire's cries to the opposite) are still foremost in the world today. This work tends towards the Kautskian alternative of a Global Trust - however, this model gives no lee-way for the inter-imperialist rivalries which lie behind much of modern political developments - e.g. the proliferation of US bases around the Russia. The clash between EU and US capitalist blocs and the very delicate balancing of opposing imperialist pressures which define much of third world politics. As a final remark, I would point the reader back towards 'Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism' by Lenin - as it is an infinitely superior and better-researched text.