Empire - Hardcover

Stretching back nearly twenty years, Antonio Negri's work has been until recently one of the best-kept secrets of Marxist theory in the United States...["Empire"] is the culmination of Negri's lifework and a major contribution to Marx's uncompleted work on capitalism's international phase. Beyond its inherent scholarly merit, however, "Empire" provides a critical tool for understanding what the events following September 11th mean as history and politics.--Curtis White"Bookforum" (06/01/2002)

Imperialism as we knew it may be no more, but empire is alive and well. It is, as the authors demonstrate in this work the new political order of globalisation. It is easy to recognise the contemporary economic, cultural, and legal transformations taking place across the globe but difficult to understand them. Hardt and Negri contend that they should be seen in line with our historical understanding of empire as a universal order that accepts no boundaries or limits. Their book shows how this emerging empire is fundamentally different from the imperialism of Europe dominance and capitalist expansion in previous eras. Rather, today's empire draws on elements of US constitutionalism, with its tradition of hybrid identities and expanding frontiers. This book identifies a radical shift in concepts that form the philosophical basis of modern politics, concepts such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri link this philosophical transformation to cultural and economic changes in post-modern society -to new forms of racism, new conceptions of identity and difference, new networks of communications and control, and new paths of migration. They also show how the power of transnational corporaitons and the increasing predominance of post-industrial forms of labour and production help to define the new imperial global order. More than analysis, "Empire" is also an utopian work of political philosophy, a new Communist Manifesto. Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterise today's world order, it seeks an alternative political paradigm - the basis for a truly democratic global society.