A case in point

Modern Age, Summer, 2003 by Carl Guldager

Empire, by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. xvii 478 pp.

OUT OF HIS EXPERIENCE with the country's political turmoil, the German artist, Gerhard Richter, has come to a keen and critical judgment: "Because Marxist intellectuals refuse to own up to their own disillusionment, it transforms itself into a craving for revenge. And so they turn their own ideological bankruptcy into the utter bankruptcy of the whole world--mainly the capitalist world, of course, which they vilify and poison in their hatred and despair." There is perhaps no better explanation than this for the curious collaboration, Empire, by Michael Hardt, a young American academic, and Antonio Negri, an older Italian researcher, university lecturer, and writer.

This odd couple's work has become, according to a lengthy feature article in The New York Times (July 7, 2001), one of the current rages of academia. Following the standard journalistic ploy of discerning a dilemma for which their discovery is the news-making answer, the newspaper first describes a panic among professors since other revolutionary theories (Claude Levi-Strauss's structuralism, Jacques Derrida's deconstruction, Michel Foucault's poststructuralism, Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis) have all become a bit time-worn and, to fill the resulting void, The Times suggests Empire might just be the next big idea.

The article reports "frissons of excitement" running through campuses around the world, which is probably to be expected since this book has been heralded by some as "the first great new theoretical synthesis of the new millennia" and as "nothing less than a rewriting of 'The Communist Manifesto' for our times." Positioning neo-Marxist theory within the emerging trend of globalization has made the authors, in one reviewer's view, "the Marx and Engels of the Internet age." The success of Empire has come not only from professors eager for "the next big idea," but from intellectuals on the left who have described it is "Das Kapital of the 21st century" and those anti-globalization militants who demonstrate against the World Bank, the Group of Eight, and World Trade Organization meetings.

Heady stuff indeed, but there is more: while Michael Hardt is a newcomer to the academic stage, the older Antonio Negri has a history. At the time of publication of this book, he was an inmate of Rome's Rebibbia Prison, serving a thirteen-year sentence as, in The Times' view, a "suspected terrorist mastermind." Others might put it more accurately by stating he was convicted for inciting violence, which must have been extreme, considering the often chaotic state of Italian politics and the length of the sentence.

All this might have been viewed as titillating in certain intellectual circles before the awful events of September 11, 2001, but it now appears in a rather more sober light. However, it must be noted that the authors have been exact in dating their work. In the preface they announce: "This book was begun well after the Persian Gulf War and completed well before the beginning of the war in Kosovo," adding "The reader should thus situate the argument at the midpoint between these two signal events in the construction of Empire."

Readers must also take into account the authors' new definition of Empire: not as in the Roman Empire or the British Empire, but as standing for a new world order they see arising from the increase in globalization and the spreading electronic revolution. They see this trend not as the latest stage in the history of imperialism and the nation-state, but as an entirely new phenomenon bringing a new political system and a new form of power. This they have dubbed Empire, and, as they see it, not too surprisingly, as a new opportunity for revolt, calling to mind the Marxian dictum that in any drastic change "force is the midwife."

Considering the work, The Times describes its "broad sweep and learning," the nearly "500 pages of densely argued history, philosophy, and political theory," with all "the formal trappings of a master theory in the old European tradition." The newspaper also remarks on the quotes that serve as chapter headings, from Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hegel, Hobbes, Kant, Marx, and Foucault. However, not cited is a quote from one Jerry Rubin: "The New Left sprang ... from Elvis's gyrating pelvis." The authors also offer in the preface this helpful guide to perusing their work: "Like most large books this one can be read in many different ways: front to back, back to front, in pieces, in a hopscotch pattern, or through correspondences."

The authors further provide this description of the scope and organization of their effort: part one introduces "the general problematic of Empire." Parts two and three together relate "the passage from modernity to postmodernity, or really from imperialism to Empire," part two following "the history of ideas and culture from the early modern period to the present," while part three covers "the same passage from the standpoint of production, whereby production is understood in a very broad sense, ranging from economic production to the production of subjectivity." Between parts two and three, there is an "Intermezzo," "a hinge that articulates the movement from one standpoint to another." Having treated the realm of production "where social inequities are clearly revealed" and "where the most effective resistance and alternatives to the power of Empire arise," finally, part four presents "those alternatives that today are tracing the lines of movement beyond Empire."