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Assembly
In recent years "leaderless" social movements have proliferated around the globe, from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe, the Americas, and East Asia. Some of these movements have led to impressive gains: the toppling of authoritarian leaders, the furthering of progressive policy, and checks on repressive state forces. They have also been, at times, derided by journalists and political analysts as disorganized and ineffectual, or suppressed by disoriented and perplexed police forces and governments who fail to effectively engage them. Activists, too, struggle to harness the potential of these horizontal movements. Why have the movements, which address the needs and desires of so many, not been able to achieve lasting change and create a new, more democratic and just society? Some people assume that if only social movements could find new leaders they would return to their earlier glory. Where, they ask, are the new Martin Luther Kings, Rudi Dutschkes, and Stephen Bikos?
With the rise of right-wing political parties in many countries, the question of how to organize democratically and effectively has become increasingly urgent. Although today's leaderless political organizations are not sufficient, a return to traditional, centralized forms of political leadership is neither desirable nor possible. Instead, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue, familiar roles must be reversed: leaders should be responsible for short-term, tactical action, but it is the multitude that must drive strategy. In other words, if these new social movements are to achieve meaningful revolution, they must invent effective modes of assembly and decision-making structures that rely on the broadest democratic base. Drawing on ideas developed through their well-known Empire trilogy, Hardt and Negri have produced, in Assembly, a timely proposal for how current large-scale horizontal movements can develop the capacities for political strategy and decision-making to effect lasting and democratic change. We have not yet seen what is possible when the multitude assembles.
With the rise of right-wing political parties in many countries, the question of how to organize democratically and effectively has become increasingly urgent. Although today's leaderless political organizations are not sufficient, a return to traditional, centralized forms of political leadership is neither desirable nor possible. Instead, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue, familiar roles must be reversed: leaders should be responsible for short-term, tactical action, but it is the multitude that must drive strategy. In other words, if these new social movements are to achieve meaningful revolution, they must invent effective modes of assembly and decision-making structures that rely on the broadest democratic base. Drawing on ideas developed through their well-known Empire trilogy, Hardt and Negri have produced, in Assembly, a timely proposal for how current large-scale horizontal movements can develop the capacities for political strategy and decision-making to effect lasting and democratic change. We have not yet seen what is possible when the multitude assembles.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
61 people are currently reading
740 people want to read
About the author
Michael Hardt
65 books177 followersMichael Hardt is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000. It has been praised as the "Communist Manifesto of the 21st Century."
Hardt and his co-author suggest that what they view as forces of contemporary class oppression, globalization and the commodification of services (or production of affects), have the potential to spark social change of unprecedented dimensions. A sequel, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, published in August 2004, details the notion, first propounded in Empire, of the multitude as possible locus of a democratic movement of global proportions.
The third and final part of the trilogy, Commonwealth, appeared in the Fall of 2009.
Hardt and his co-author suggest that what they view as forces of contemporary class oppression, globalization and the commodification of services (or production of affects), have the potential to spark social change of unprecedented dimensions. A sequel, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, published in August 2004, details the notion, first propounded in Empire, of the multitude as possible locus of a democratic movement of global proportions.
The third and final part of the trilogy, Commonwealth, appeared in the Fall of 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 2, 2023
فراخوانش (Exhortatio) به گردهمایی (Assembly) یا تجمع همان چیزی است که ماکیاولی فراخوانش به ویرتو میخواند. این ویرتو، بیش از اينکه دستوری هنجاری باشد، اخلاقی کنشگرانه است، فراشدی تأسیسی که بر مبنای ثروت اجتماعی ما نهادهایی ماندگار میآفریند و روابط اجتماعی جدید همراه با نیرویی لازم برای حفظ نهادها و روابط مزبور سامان میبخشد. هنوز ندیدهایم که آن هنگام که انبوه خلق گرد هم آید چه چیزی ممکن میشود.
July 2, 2018
I think this book will be a good source of reference and inspiration for the 21st century emancipatory politics. I will even go so far as to as say that it might be “Das Kapital” of 21st century. In the very same vein, it perfectly analyzes the new phase of financialized capitalist production (and reproduction), its changing instruments, control functions and its new methods of stealing/extracting the value out of social production in common.
Definetely a must-read for every progressively minded individual.
Definetely a must-read for every progressively minded individual.
August 11, 2020
The central question of this book is what the authors call “the leadership problem” (chapter 1) and it is today highly relevant: how can we organise social change in such a way that is both effective and lasting without it being taken over by a vanguard party, which in the long turn estranges itself from its base. In this way such a vanguard party reestablishes the distinction between the ruled and the rulers which left wing movements want to abolish. Or to put the problem differently: how can progressive movements create a thorough democratic society characterised by relationships of equality along the different social axes (economic, ethnic, sexual,...) without abandoning this goal in the process by delegating its achievement to centralised leadership.
This constitutes a fundamental problem within socialist traditions broadly understood (socialism, social-anarchism, communism,...). On the one hand ,movements that seek to change the social world tend to evolve into forms of authoritarianism, examples of this are legion: most socialist states evolved in this direction like the USSR and PRC - however, we should also stress that external factors also often contribute to this development, e.g. the USSR being the first socialist state surrounded by nations that sought its destruction is not going to foster democratic and egalitarian relationships. On the other hand, more in line with anarchist traditions, we have the movements who seek change via horizontalism. However, these movements are, certainly today, often very limited in their effectiveness: e.g. in the end Occupy Wall Street did not consolidate any real social change. These movements often lack organisational structure and are not enough instituted making them rather fleeting. According the Hardt and Negri we need to find a synthesis between on the one hand centralised leadership and on the other hand leaderless horizontalism. Consequently what we need according to Hardt and Negri is horizontalism with leadership; a form of horizontalism that still has a strong organisational structure and which is firmly instituted.
According to them we can find this synthesis by reversing the relationship between what they call “strategy” and “tactics” (chapter 2 ). Strategy denotes the long term vision and plan towards which a group wants to strive, while tactics is about the short term implementation of that plan. Whereas traditionally leadership has taken strategy to be its central task, we should assign strategy to the multitude while limiting tactics to the leaders. I think that we find a good example of this idea in the practice of populair delegacy and popular mandates in which a delegate gets an agenda from a group which it has to represent and which the delegate has to carry out, whenever the delegate acts against this agenda his/her mandate can be immediately be revoked. In this institutional set-up the multitude, or larger group which has to be represented, collectively deliberate, establish and decide on the long term course that has to be carried out, they set the agenda and assign a delegate to execute it. It is not the delegate that gathers votes for the agenda that he/she has came up with. In this way we can say that the delegate truly represents the people.
By reducing leadership to a tactical role, Hardt and Negri believe we have to move beyond the idea of sovereignty. According to the authors the problem with sovereign power is that it is absolute and univocal. They define sovereignty as “the exclusive right to make decisions”. Hence “the sovereign always stands in relation to subjects, above them, with the ultimate power to make political decisions” (p. 25). Hardt and Negri thus claim that sovereignty constitutes a relation of domination between the rulers and the ruled, moreover even the idea of popular sovereignty destroys the polyphony of the multitude: it reduces the multitude to the singular voice or will of the people. In this way it becomes a dominating force against the constituents of the multitude. This is why they repeatedly say that we not just have to take power, but that we have “to take power differently”. By reducing leadership to a tactical role the authors believe there is no longer an opposition between rulers and ruled, instead the ruled truly rule themselves. Hardt and Negri therefore belief that we have to shift from the idea of sovereign power to that of constituent power. A constituent power is a legal term and it denotes the power of those that constitute a societal order. In this way it differs from the constituted powers that derive their legitimacy from the societal order that constituent power has ushered in. Hardt and Negri believe in a kind of constituent power that continuously renews the societal order. The idea is, I think, that whenever we have a kind of constituted power that is the sovereign (like contemporary electoral parliament, kings or presidents) we create a kind of power over and above ourselves to rule us. But if we stay in the mode of constituent power it is the multitude who is governing itself (like in the case of popular delegacy, the delegate is not a kind of sovereign). However this does not meant that we do not need institutions or organisation, instead this kind of constituent power should constantly create and recreate institutions that order and give continuity to our societal actions and which allow us to make decisions together, instead of the sovereign institutions that are created to rule over us. Unsurprisingly, they call this kind of institutions “non-sovereign institutions”.
We not only need to reduce leadership to a tactical role and move beyond sovereignty, we also have to move the focus of the struggle from the political terrain to the social terrain. The reason for this is because of the nature of contemporary capitalism, which is characterised by what Hardt and Negri call “social production”. They build on the observation of Marx that capitalist production tends to become more and more social. Whereas early and petty commodity production is the production by craftsmen who oversaw the whole production process, modern commodity production is characterised by an increasingly complex division of labour in which it becomes increasingly difficult for an individual to gain oversight of the whole process of commodity production. A good way to illustrate this is the art project of Thomas Thwaites ( https://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-to... ), who, as an individual, tried to make a functioning toaster from scratch. As the end product shows, this is almost impossible. No one individual has the knowledge and means to build most of our everyday products. According to Hardt and Negri this development has even more radicalised since Marx’s time. A crucial step in understanding their argument is that Hardt and Negri implicitly endorse the idea of a shift from commodity production to a service economy and a information economy. The thing about information is, that as Steven Brand maintains it, “wants to be free” (https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-a...). Negri and Hardt maintain that in contemporary capitalism there is a tension between capitalist control and productivity. On the one hand information production works the best when people can freely and autonomously act together, on the other hand capital needs to exert control in order to extract value, which in turn endangers information production. The best example of this is research and science: science and research works best when people can act freely and have the information of others at their disposal. As history show, through this collaborative enterprises incredible things can be accomplished. However as is well known publisher companies charge vast amount of money to have access to most academic publications, which also hinders the growth of knowledge because the information is not accessible to everyone not everyone will be able to contribute. The same can be said about patents which hinder people and institutions to build on existing designs and knowledge. In this way we can also say that those information workers and the assemblages of information workers, with the expertise they have build, become “fixed capital”. They themselves are the semi-permanent assets, the infrastructure that creates information.
Because of this tension and the idea that information workers are themselves fixed capital, Hardt and Negri argue that we get spaces and opportunities of opposing capital and create post-capitalist institutions and social organisations which can claim power in a different way. However, I think we can make two big critiques here: (a) we can question to which degree there is truly a shift to a service and information economy. Sure in the heartlands of capitalism we have shift away from industry and commodity production to services, but as Ha-Joon Chang (cf. Economics the User Guide, Penguin 2014, p. 259-262) points out, it is not that industrial production has diminished it has just shifted to the global South and its productivity has increased. And although it is unmistakably that information is one of the new frontiers of capital and has become increasingly more important, it remains to be seen to which degree this is to replace industrial production and commodity production. Thus Negri and Hardt their argument seem to hold in capital’s relation to information production, but this is only one part of the economy. We cannot say the industrial workers in today's factories or the people who work in Amazon warehouses (although this is also part of the service sector) are less directly controlled and dominated by capitalist control during their work. Hence the question is to which degree their argument can be extrapolated to the economy as whole. (b) sometimes Hardt and Negri seem to underestimate the degree to which capital conditions the economy, also the knowledge economy. For example, most social media platforms are build around people wasting their time online in order to make the advertisement value of their platforms bigger. These platforms are not the result of autonomous co-working individuals, no these platforms are made and designed for you to waste your time on them so that they can make a profit out of you.
In conclusion, although I believe that Hardt and Negri have written an interesting book and I think their aufhebung of centralised leadership on the one hand and leaderless horizontalism, on the other is a valuable and plausible way out of the leadership problem, there are some remarks to be made. First, as I have explained before I am not sure if their characterisation of contemporary capitalism is generalisable. Some sectors of the economy seem to be accurately described according to their conceptualisation, but others not. However, their ideas about tactical leadership and moving beyond sovereign power can be salvaged and are interesting independently of this characterisation of the economy. Their characterisation of contemporary capitalism is also inherently interesting and valuable, even if it cannot be generalised, it is a conceptualisation that is valuable to think about certain parts of the economy.
However, a more serious problem in my opinion is that their exposition is lacking in clarity. They skip back and forth between the main issue and other interesting ideas. In this way the argument is buried under a lot of interesting noise. I believe that their book could be considerably shorter and this would make the book also better. On the other hand, there are some really interesting ideas buried in the extra clutter that are worth exploring - but which could maybe be set out in another book or separate essays. Not only is the exposition lacking in clarity, their writing style suffers the same problem. Sometimes I had the impression that they were making things unnecessary complex and that they were using unnecessary obscure language. They also did not use enough examples to illustrate their abstract and complex ideas. Nevertheless, I think this a really fascinating read, with a lot of interesting conceptual resources to which I will certainly come back to in the future.
This constitutes a fundamental problem within socialist traditions broadly understood (socialism, social-anarchism, communism,...). On the one hand ,movements that seek to change the social world tend to evolve into forms of authoritarianism, examples of this are legion: most socialist states evolved in this direction like the USSR and PRC - however, we should also stress that external factors also often contribute to this development, e.g. the USSR being the first socialist state surrounded by nations that sought its destruction is not going to foster democratic and egalitarian relationships. On the other hand, more in line with anarchist traditions, we have the movements who seek change via horizontalism. However, these movements are, certainly today, often very limited in their effectiveness: e.g. in the end Occupy Wall Street did not consolidate any real social change. These movements often lack organisational structure and are not enough instituted making them rather fleeting. According the Hardt and Negri we need to find a synthesis between on the one hand centralised leadership and on the other hand leaderless horizontalism. Consequently what we need according to Hardt and Negri is horizontalism with leadership; a form of horizontalism that still has a strong organisational structure and which is firmly instituted.
According to them we can find this synthesis by reversing the relationship between what they call “strategy” and “tactics” (chapter 2 ). Strategy denotes the long term vision and plan towards which a group wants to strive, while tactics is about the short term implementation of that plan. Whereas traditionally leadership has taken strategy to be its central task, we should assign strategy to the multitude while limiting tactics to the leaders. I think that we find a good example of this idea in the practice of populair delegacy and popular mandates in which a delegate gets an agenda from a group which it has to represent and which the delegate has to carry out, whenever the delegate acts against this agenda his/her mandate can be immediately be revoked. In this institutional set-up the multitude, or larger group which has to be represented, collectively deliberate, establish and decide on the long term course that has to be carried out, they set the agenda and assign a delegate to execute it. It is not the delegate that gathers votes for the agenda that he/she has came up with. In this way we can say that the delegate truly represents the people.
By reducing leadership to a tactical role, Hardt and Negri believe we have to move beyond the idea of sovereignty. According to the authors the problem with sovereign power is that it is absolute and univocal. They define sovereignty as “the exclusive right to make decisions”. Hence “the sovereign always stands in relation to subjects, above them, with the ultimate power to make political decisions” (p. 25). Hardt and Negri thus claim that sovereignty constitutes a relation of domination between the rulers and the ruled, moreover even the idea of popular sovereignty destroys the polyphony of the multitude: it reduces the multitude to the singular voice or will of the people. In this way it becomes a dominating force against the constituents of the multitude. This is why they repeatedly say that we not just have to take power, but that we have “to take power differently”. By reducing leadership to a tactical role the authors believe there is no longer an opposition between rulers and ruled, instead the ruled truly rule themselves. Hardt and Negri therefore belief that we have to shift from the idea of sovereign power to that of constituent power. A constituent power is a legal term and it denotes the power of those that constitute a societal order. In this way it differs from the constituted powers that derive their legitimacy from the societal order that constituent power has ushered in. Hardt and Negri believe in a kind of constituent power that continuously renews the societal order. The idea is, I think, that whenever we have a kind of constituted power that is the sovereign (like contemporary electoral parliament, kings or presidents) we create a kind of power over and above ourselves to rule us. But if we stay in the mode of constituent power it is the multitude who is governing itself (like in the case of popular delegacy, the delegate is not a kind of sovereign). However this does not meant that we do not need institutions or organisation, instead this kind of constituent power should constantly create and recreate institutions that order and give continuity to our societal actions and which allow us to make decisions together, instead of the sovereign institutions that are created to rule over us. Unsurprisingly, they call this kind of institutions “non-sovereign institutions”.
We not only need to reduce leadership to a tactical role and move beyond sovereignty, we also have to move the focus of the struggle from the political terrain to the social terrain. The reason for this is because of the nature of contemporary capitalism, which is characterised by what Hardt and Negri call “social production”. They build on the observation of Marx that capitalist production tends to become more and more social. Whereas early and petty commodity production is the production by craftsmen who oversaw the whole production process, modern commodity production is characterised by an increasingly complex division of labour in which it becomes increasingly difficult for an individual to gain oversight of the whole process of commodity production. A good way to illustrate this is the art project of Thomas Thwaites ( https://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-to... ), who, as an individual, tried to make a functioning toaster from scratch. As the end product shows, this is almost impossible. No one individual has the knowledge and means to build most of our everyday products. According to Hardt and Negri this development has even more radicalised since Marx’s time. A crucial step in understanding their argument is that Hardt and Negri implicitly endorse the idea of a shift from commodity production to a service economy and a information economy. The thing about information is, that as Steven Brand maintains it, “wants to be free” (https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-a...). Negri and Hardt maintain that in contemporary capitalism there is a tension between capitalist control and productivity. On the one hand information production works the best when people can freely and autonomously act together, on the other hand capital needs to exert control in order to extract value, which in turn endangers information production. The best example of this is research and science: science and research works best when people can act freely and have the information of others at their disposal. As history show, through this collaborative enterprises incredible things can be accomplished. However as is well known publisher companies charge vast amount of money to have access to most academic publications, which also hinders the growth of knowledge because the information is not accessible to everyone not everyone will be able to contribute. The same can be said about patents which hinder people and institutions to build on existing designs and knowledge. In this way we can also say that those information workers and the assemblages of information workers, with the expertise they have build, become “fixed capital”. They themselves are the semi-permanent assets, the infrastructure that creates information.
Because of this tension and the idea that information workers are themselves fixed capital, Hardt and Negri argue that we get spaces and opportunities of opposing capital and create post-capitalist institutions and social organisations which can claim power in a different way. However, I think we can make two big critiques here: (a) we can question to which degree there is truly a shift to a service and information economy. Sure in the heartlands of capitalism we have shift away from industry and commodity production to services, but as Ha-Joon Chang (cf. Economics the User Guide, Penguin 2014, p. 259-262) points out, it is not that industrial production has diminished it has just shifted to the global South and its productivity has increased. And although it is unmistakably that information is one of the new frontiers of capital and has become increasingly more important, it remains to be seen to which degree this is to replace industrial production and commodity production. Thus Negri and Hardt their argument seem to hold in capital’s relation to information production, but this is only one part of the economy. We cannot say the industrial workers in today's factories or the people who work in Amazon warehouses (although this is also part of the service sector) are less directly controlled and dominated by capitalist control during their work. Hence the question is to which degree their argument can be extrapolated to the economy as whole. (b) sometimes Hardt and Negri seem to underestimate the degree to which capital conditions the economy, also the knowledge economy. For example, most social media platforms are build around people wasting their time online in order to make the advertisement value of their platforms bigger. These platforms are not the result of autonomous co-working individuals, no these platforms are made and designed for you to waste your time on them so that they can make a profit out of you.
In conclusion, although I believe that Hardt and Negri have written an interesting book and I think their aufhebung of centralised leadership on the one hand and leaderless horizontalism, on the other is a valuable and plausible way out of the leadership problem, there are some remarks to be made. First, as I have explained before I am not sure if their characterisation of contemporary capitalism is generalisable. Some sectors of the economy seem to be accurately described according to their conceptualisation, but others not. However, their ideas about tactical leadership and moving beyond sovereign power can be salvaged and are interesting independently of this characterisation of the economy. Their characterisation of contemporary capitalism is also inherently interesting and valuable, even if it cannot be generalised, it is a conceptualisation that is valuable to think about certain parts of the economy.
However, a more serious problem in my opinion is that their exposition is lacking in clarity. They skip back and forth between the main issue and other interesting ideas. In this way the argument is buried under a lot of interesting noise. I believe that their book could be considerably shorter and this would make the book also better. On the other hand, there are some really interesting ideas buried in the extra clutter that are worth exploring - but which could maybe be set out in another book or separate essays. Not only is the exposition lacking in clarity, their writing style suffers the same problem. Sometimes I had the impression that they were making things unnecessary complex and that they were using unnecessary obscure language. They also did not use enough examples to illustrate their abstract and complex ideas. Nevertheless, I think this a really fascinating read, with a lot of interesting conceptual resources to which I will certainly come back to in the future.
February 6, 2021
one of the best books i have read in recent years. i thought the authors were well-tempered and honest. but here are some important considerations i can draw from my own experience. . . .
the "antiascetic" of universal basic income is a real phenomenon. the CARE act gave us a rare opportunity to tease the potential of UIB with recipients garnering $900 A WEEK in unemployment. I do not care what the statisticians say about savings . . . young people spent that money on BULLSHIT. they bought everything from clothes to cars and asked for another check as soon as it ran out. the authors touched on this fact, that UIB creates incentives to waste your money, for one paragraph. i think this is the most glaring problem with the idea.
another problem I had with this text was the presupposition of equality as the main goal of modern social movements. on the surface this may seem to be the case. the authors liked to draw ideas from WEB Dubois in this instance, when he defended the rights of the poor and ignorant to participate in democracy. BUT. Dubois has also been quoted by saying that the liberties of whites and blacks share the same grave . . . the power struggle of different races is a real phenomenon. so without confounding this argument any more. i think it is worth mentioning that common people are often EXTREMELY racist, sexist and the like. it is highly idealistic to assume that horizontal organization could occur between demographics in this socioeconomic climate.
this book really pits itself against our democracy unlike anything i have ever read. you see the structures of our political system in a new way, and it provokes you to think about experimenting with new structures. proportional representation? antitrust laws for information and data? abolishing money???????
there is definitely alot to chew on, i might need to read it twice.
the "antiascetic" of universal basic income is a real phenomenon. the CARE act gave us a rare opportunity to tease the potential of UIB with recipients garnering $900 A WEEK in unemployment. I do not care what the statisticians say about savings . . . young people spent that money on BULLSHIT. they bought everything from clothes to cars and asked for another check as soon as it ran out. the authors touched on this fact, that UIB creates incentives to waste your money, for one paragraph. i think this is the most glaring problem with the idea.
another problem I had with this text was the presupposition of equality as the main goal of modern social movements. on the surface this may seem to be the case. the authors liked to draw ideas from WEB Dubois in this instance, when he defended the rights of the poor and ignorant to participate in democracy. BUT. Dubois has also been quoted by saying that the liberties of whites and blacks share the same grave . . . the power struggle of different races is a real phenomenon. so without confounding this argument any more. i think it is worth mentioning that common people are often EXTREMELY racist, sexist and the like. it is highly idealistic to assume that horizontal organization could occur between demographics in this socioeconomic climate.
this book really pits itself against our democracy unlike anything i have ever read. you see the structures of our political system in a new way, and it provokes you to think about experimenting with new structures. proportional representation? antitrust laws for information and data? abolishing money???????
there is definitely alot to chew on, i might need to read it twice.
January 14, 2020
After starting and pretty quickly putting down Multitude (too theoretical), I did not have high hopes for this follow-up. It starts off refreshingly concrete though, so I stuck with it and am glad I did.
Hardt and Negri set out to determine how social movements, especially revolutionary ones, can best organize themselves to ensure both democracy and efficacy. If they don't exactly get to an answer it's not for lack of effort or know-how. But they do get bogged down, for my taste, in theory and jargon. And while I think it's a valuable volume for how it historically analyzes social movements and sets out a loose framework of how modern movements can learn from past mistakes, it sure takes a lot of patience to digest.
Regardless, I've tabbed dozens of pages and I'll keep it on my shelf to turn back to in the future. Even if I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to many people (unless you're really into political theory of course, or if you loved Empire), I'm glad to have read it.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
Hardt and Negri set out to determine how social movements, especially revolutionary ones, can best organize themselves to ensure both democracy and efficacy. If they don't exactly get to an answer it's not for lack of effort or know-how. But they do get bogged down, for my taste, in theory and jargon. And while I think it's a valuable volume for how it historically analyzes social movements and sets out a loose framework of how modern movements can learn from past mistakes, it sure takes a lot of patience to digest.
Regardless, I've tabbed dozens of pages and I'll keep it on my shelf to turn back to in the future. Even if I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to many people (unless you're really into political theory of course, or if you loved Empire), I'm glad to have read it.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
June 27, 2024
Neoliberalizm sadece zenginliğin biriktirilmesi ve müşterek varlıkların özel amaçlarla kullanılması için üretimi yeniden örgütlemekle kalmamış, hâkim sınıfların politik iktidarını da yeniden düzenlemiştir.
Yoksulluğu kızıştıran ve ağırlaştıran muazzam bir şiddet iktidar pratiklerinin parçası olmuştur. Kolluk kuvvetleri yoksulları, farklı etnik kökenden insanları, sefilleri ve sömürülenleri avlayan milislere dönüşmüşlerdir. Dahası buna uygun olarak savaşlar, ulusal egemenliğin veya uluslararası hukukun çok önemsenmediği küresel kolluk kuvvetlerinin pratiklerine dönüşmüştür.
(...)
Kötü dehamız, iktidardakilerin naif isyancılar karşısında beslediği tüm küstahlığı, tepeden bakışı ve hor görüşüyle “kandırılmış zavallı küçük insanlar” diye bitirir sözünü...
Yoksulluğu kızıştıran ve ağırlaştıran muazzam bir şiddet iktidar pratiklerinin parçası olmuştur. Kolluk kuvvetleri yoksulları, farklı etnik kökenden insanları, sefilleri ve sömürülenleri avlayan milislere dönüşmüşlerdir. Dahası buna uygun olarak savaşlar, ulusal egemenliğin veya uluslararası hukukun çok önemsenmediği küresel kolluk kuvvetlerinin pratiklerine dönüşmüştür.
(...)
Kötü dehamız, iktidardakilerin naif isyancılar karşısında beslediği tüm küstahlığı, tepeden bakışı ve hor görüşüyle “kandırılmış zavallı küçük insanlar” diye bitirir sözünü...
January 15, 2021
Touches on the problem of leadership without leaders, primitive accumulation and the Commons, but doesn't come to any solid conclusions about where to go-instead arriving at a series of principles for how to think about movements. Particularly liked the idea of unifying social movements and trade unions to form social unions capable of social strikes. It's comments on neoliberalism are interesting but are insights I personally have found elsewhere and I felt it perhaps detracted from some of the more original parts about leadership
April 21, 2022
Had to fight the urge to shout "Communist Avengers Assemble!" several times while reading this book. Hardt and Negri appear to be rallying what is left of the New Left. The analysis of the organizing principle of right wing populist groups is the best part of the book. The call for a New Prince is inchoate. Social action as conspiracy in the Trotskyist mold is anachronistic.
September 12, 2023
I highly recommend this book
https://youtu.be/sKmJMU0BWmA?si=UbeZT...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-FX2...
https://youtu.be/sKmJMU0BWmA?si=UbeZT...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-FX2...
March 10, 2024
Powerful!
Michael and Antonio addressing the problem of our times and offer a theoritical foundation to create a more substantial democracy.
Michael and Antonio addressing the problem of our times and offer a theoritical foundation to create a more substantial democracy.
October 2, 2024
Amazing theory book.
October 5, 2025
The technology parts are outdated already, but it had some great, and very quotable points, about activism and social change.
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