Communists Like Us: New Spaces of Liberty, New Lines of Alliance

by Antonio Negri

politics after the fall.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Theory

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 1990

About the author

Antonio Negri was an Italian political philosopher known as one of the most prominent theorists of autonomism, as well as for his co-authorship of Empire with Michael Hardt and his work on the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Born in Padua, Italy, Negri became a professor of political philosophy at the University of Padua, where he taught state and constitutional theory. Negri founded the Potere Operaio (Worker Power) group in 1969 and was a leading member of Autonomia Operaia, and published hugely influential books urging "revolutionary consciousness."
Negri was accused in the late 1970s of various charges including being the mastermind of the left-wing urban guerrilla organization Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse or BR), which was involved in the May 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro. On 7 April 1979, he Negri was arrested and charged with a long list of crimes including the Moro murder. Most charges were dropped quickly, but in 1984 he was still sentenced (in absentia) to 30 years in prison. He was given an additional four years on the charge of being "morally responsible" for the violence of political activists in the 1960s and 1970s. The question of Negri's complicity with left-wing extremism is a controversial subject. He was indicted on a number of charges, including "association and insurrection against the state" (a charge which was later dropped), and sentenced for involvement in two murders.
Negri fled to France where, protected by the Mitterrand doctrine, he taught at the Paris VIII (Vincennes) and the Collège international de philosophie, along with Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. In 1997, after a plea-bargain that reduced his prison time from 30 to 13 years, he returned to Italy to serve the end of his sentence. Many of his most influential books were published while he was behind bars. He hence lived in Venice and Paris with his partner, the French philosopher Judith Revel. He was the father of film director Anna Negri.
Like Deleuze, Negri's preoccupation with Spinoza is well known in contemporary philosophy. Along with Althusser and Deleuze, he has been one of the central figures of a French-inspired neo-Spinozism in continental philosophy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, that was the second remarkable Spinoza revival in history, after a well-known rediscovery of Spinoza by German thinkers (especially the German Romantics and Idealists) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Reviews

[Amirsaman · Rating 3 out of 5]

بنظرم برنامه‌ی «کارِ» رادیوفونی بهتر از هرکسی می‌تونه ایده‌های کتاب رو تشریح بکنه!
http://asabsanj.com/asab/%D9%8Cwork/

[Bradley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really love the work of both of these philosophers. It is really too bad that this book lacks some of the intellectual rigor that I've come to expect from them. While I know that there are some key points to be digested in this text, it seems like this book is really best suited for the uninitiated undergraduate who has just read the communist manifesto, and needs an updated view of what contemporary communist theory entails. I agree with the bulk of the arguments put forward in this book. The biggest issues of the 21st century are almost always directly traceable to some form of greed (i.e. capitalism is to blame). Racism, ecological destruction, homophobia, petty crime, corporate welfare, rampant egoism, self-indulgent forms of entertainment that distract from these problems or worsen them altogether, all could be eradicated with a radical deconstruction of the way we live on a day to day basis. This book, as with most books by Guattari and Negri, deals with the 'fascism of daily life...' the fascism that seeks into our deepest, darkest, desires, saturating the way we all take for granted the colonial violence that forms the base of the capitalist economy Many a terrorist has become pissed off at this sort of rampant "Gift-Giving" (bringing the gift of Democracy, Markets, Enlightenment...and moral decline cloaked in Big Mac Special Sauce)

There are too many reasons why the non-capitalist world hates the West... reading this book is one quick way to find out why this hatred actually makes quite a bit of sense.

[Rui Coelho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good theory, terrible program. How can someone write about revolution and then propose pink reforms as better salaries?
(This book was where I first suspected that Guattari was secretly the interesting one in the D&G duo)

[Eric Phetteplace · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's something to be said for unrelenting optimism. Also, Negri's afterword was pretty useful (the socialism/communism difference, various updates). Probably was easier for me to get through cuz I'm familiar with Guattari's terms but overall a good intro/psych-up to modern-day Marxism.

[Kevin Carson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh. Fairly dated/occasional, I don't like being unable to tell how much of it's Negri and how much Guattari, and most of the main points are hit better elsewhere in Negri's body of work or by other autonomist writers like Cleaver and Holloway.

[Alex Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

It strikes me that very intelligent people can be caught up in their own analysis as to why the world is the way that it is that they forget to examine their own assumptions. I have wondered why people like Negri and Guattari could stick to being communists -- ideas from the century previous to theirs -- despite the fact that communism was not working out and that there was still oppression in the world even among communist regimes.

On the one hand it seems like they wasted their energy. Why try and philosophize and publish books about a situation in the world that does not exist but should, in your opinion, exist?

On the other hand, I am not so sure that they wasted their energy just because they fell prey to thinking about things from some biased angle. How could they not? They need some vantage from which to judge what is going on. Communism is it for them. But the fact that they can lose sight of what is going on because they are unable to disidentify with their own ideas... that seems really stupid. But then again, I wonder how much of that do I do? How stupid must I be to only see things from the same prefigured notions?

[Babak Radfar · Rating 3 out of 5]

کتاب در واکنش به سیاست‌های اقتصادی ریگان و تاچر نوشته شده و با انتقاد از خود می کوشد بگوید کمونیسم هنوز زنده است و می‌تواند کارکرد داشته باشد.  کتاب بیش از چهل سال پیش نوشته شده در زمانی که اقتصاد هنوز این قدر از اقتصاد مبتنی بر تولید به سوی اقتصاد مالی نرفته بود

[Dylan Levine · Rating 2 out of 5]

negri’s postscript was the best part

[lalala Manel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Récit prophétique de la subversion perverse du surplus idéologique de Mai 68, dûment institutionnalisé et adopté par le WIC

[javor · Rating 5 out of 5]

from guattari's side, pretty good: did actually try to forward a positive political program within the context of IWC. on negri's side: well, too negriist. wasn't a fan. had boring party politics that didn't seem to incorporate decentralization as well as it could've, and focused far too much on constituent power while ignoring the destituent power inherent in any kind of intersectionality (which can still exist as a positive force!! see tiqqun/tarì!!) felt like negri (as always) takes the nexus of Empire for granted and even sides with it (i.e. moving the terrain of resistance within its totalistic domain) rather than, you know, opposing it. felt like 'capitalism' and 'socialism' were just used as empty signifiers, even strawmen. singularization is never defined concretely. seemed to just side with heterogeneity over homogeneity without explaining how this works on larger scales. concept of 'production' became so overgeneralized that he (negri) could've used any word. wasn't well-related to marxist nor freudian conception of production. felt borderline vulgar materialist. like girl grow up