Empire (book)

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Empire is a text written by Marxist philosophers Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The book, written in the mid 90s, was published in 2000 and immediately became a bestseller.<ref>Empire hits back. The Observer, July 15, 2001.</ref> In general, the book theorizes an ongoing transition from a "modern" phenomenon of imperialism, centered around individual nation-states, to an emergent postmodern construct created amongst ruling powers which the authors call Empire (the capital letter is distinguishing). They proceed to elaborate a variety of ideas surrounding constitutions, global war, and class. Hence, the Empire is constituted by a monarchy (the United States and the G8, and international organizations such as NATO, the IMF or the WTO), an oligarchy (the multinational corporations and other nation-states) and a democracy (the various NGOs and the United Nations).

This description of pyramidal levels is a replica of Polybius’ description of Roman government, hence the denomination ‘Empire’. Furthermore, the crisis is conceived as inherent to the Empire. Negri & Hardt are also heavily indebted to Michel Foucault's analysis of biopolitics and Gilles Deleuze's philosophy. Before that book, Negri was best known for having written The Savage Anomaly (1981), a milestone book in spinozism studies which he wrote in prison. Empire is thus, unsurprisingly, also influenced by Spinoza. The ideas first introduced in Empire (notably the concept of multitude, taken from Spinoza) were further developed in the 2004 book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, which was also written by Negri and Hardt.

It was published by Harvard University Press in 2000 as a 478-page hardcover (ISBN 0-674-25121-0) and paperback (ISBN 0-674-00671-2).

1 Opening epigraphs
2 See also
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Opening epigraphs

"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right." —Ani DiFranco

"Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and then it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name." —William Morris