Description
Book SynopsisWith
Commonwealth, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri conclude the trilogy begun with
Empire and continued in
Multitude, proposing an ethics of freedom for living in our common world and articulating a possible constitution for our common wealth.
Trade ReviewEveryone seems to agree that our economic system is broken, yet the debate about alternatives remains oppressively narrow. Hardt and Negri explode this claustrophobic debate, taking readers to the deepest roots of our current crises and proposing radical, and deeply human, solutions. There has never been a better time for this book. -- Naomi Klein, author of
The Shock DoctrineCommonwealth, last and richest of the
Empire trilogy, is a powerful and ambitious reappropriation of the whole tradition of political theory for the Left. Clarifying Foucault's ambiguous notion of biopower, deepening the authors' own proposal for the notion of multitude, it offers an exhilarating summa of the forms and possibilities of resistance today. It is a politically as well as an intellectually invigorating achievement. -- Fredric Jameson, Duke University
Commonwealth [is] the latest book by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, whose
Empire and
Multitude have, arguably, been the dominant works of political philosophy of the new century...[It's] the much-anticipated final volume of the Empire trilogy. * Artforum *
Commonwealth is a timely contribution to our understanding of contemporary capitalist relations and the potential revolutionary conditions they create...Together Hardt and Negri's work is considered to be responsible for a resurgence of interest in non-orthodox Marxism and its political manifestations. Commonwealth is the final part of a trilogy that began with
Empire in 2000, a book that was published during the emergence of the alter-globalization movement.
Multitude followed in 2004, developing the ideas that had been introduced in
Empire, in particular the concept of the multitude as a new revolutionary subject.
Commonwealth is a worthy addition to the trilogy, expamnding and clarifying on the understandings in the previous books, but perhaps more significantly grounding their analysis within an extended discussion of "the common."...
Commonwealth is a book that challenges presuppositions about the utility of Marx, and introduces the possibility of combining his insights with the ideas of other significant authors such as Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, who are not traditionally associated with the radical communist project. -- Bertie Russell and Andre Pusey * Red Pepper *
Table of Contents* Preface: The Becoming-Prince of the Multitude Part 1. Republic (and the Multitude of the Poor) *1.1 Republic of Property *1.2 Productive Bodies *1.3 The Multitude of the Poor * De Corpore 1: Biopolitics as Event Part 2. Modernity (and the Landscapes of Altermodernity) *2.1 Antimodernity as Resistance *2.2 Ambivalences of Modernity *2.3 Altermodernity * De Homine 1: Biopolitical Reason Part 3. Capital (and the Struggles over Common Wealth) *3.1 Metamorphoses of the Composition of Capital *3.2 Class Struggle from Crisis to Exodus *3.3 Kairos of the Multitude * De Singularitate 1: Of Love Possessed * Intermezzo: A Force to Combat Evil Part 4. Empire Returns *4.1 Brief History of a Failed Coup d'Etat *4.2 After U.S. Hegemony *4.3 Genealogy of Rebellion * De Corpore 2: Metropolis Part 5. Beyond Capital? *5.1 Terms of the Economic Transition *5.2 What Remains of Capitalism *5.3 Pre-shocks along the Fault Lines * De Homine 2: Cross the Threshold! Part 6. Revolution *6.1 Revolutionary Parallelism *6.2 Insurrectional Intersections *6.3 Governing the Revolution * De Singularitate 2: Instituting Happiness * Notes * Acknowledgments * Index
