Anonymous Comrade writes:
"Multitude: An Antidote to Empire"
Francis Fukuyama, New York Times
Well before 9/11 and the Iraq war put the idea in everybody's mind,
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri had popularized the notion of a modern
empire. Four years ago, they argued in a widely discussed book —
titled, as it happens, Empire — that the globe was ruled by a new
imperial order, different from earlier ones, which were based on overt
military domination. This one had no center; it was managed by the
world's wealthy nation-states (particularly the United States), by
multinational corporations and by international institutions like the
World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. This
empire — a k a globalization — was exploitative, undemocratic and
repressive, not only for developing countries but also for the excluded
in the rich West.
Hardt and Negri's new book, Multitude, argues that the antidote to
empire is the realization of true democracy, ''the rule of everyone by
everyone, a democracy without qualifiers.'' They say that the left
needs to leave behind outdated concepts like the proletariat and the
working class, which vastly oversimplify the gender/racial/ethnic/
class diversities of today's world. In their place they propose the
term ''multitude,'' to capture the ''commonality and singularity'' of
those who stand in opposition to the wealthy and powerful.
