Commonwealth
Michael Hardt
Language: English
Pages: 448
ISBN: 0674060288
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
When Empire appeared in 2000, it defined the political and economic challenges of the era of globalization and, thrillingly, found in them possibilities for new and more democratic forms of social organization. Now, with 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.
Drawing on scenarios from around the globe and elucidating the themes that unite them, Hardt and Negri focus on the logic of institutions and the models of governance adequate to our understanding of a global commonwealth. They argue for the idea of the “common” to replace the opposition of private and public and the politics predicated on that opposition. Ultimately, they articulate the theoretical bases for what they call “governing the revolution.”
Though this book functions as an extension and a completion of a sustained line of Hardt and Negri’s thought, it also stands alone and is entirely accessible to readers who are not familiar with the previous works. It is certain to appeal to, challenge, and enrich the thinking of anyone interested in questions of politics and globalization.
x indicated from formal to real subsumption. It the future is what has to be composed to make the multitude. should be clear, though, that the construction o f borders and the movement to formal subsumption do not simply mark a return to Geographies of Rebellion old hierarchies, as i f the division between peasant or craft labor and After having analyzed some o f the temporal dimensions o f the b i o - industrial labor or that between capitalist societies and colonial ter- political
close proximity, among different neighborhoods from the perspective o f capital but rather from that o f the m u l t i - and w i t h i n each. This is a geography o f intensities and thresholds, tude. Capital, i n fact, is not able to organize joyful encounters i n the like those maps o f the heat o f the earth's surface as seen from space. metropolis but can only capture or expropriate the c o m m o n wealth A l l contemporary metropolises are pathological i n the sense produced.The
rights is deeply embedded i n the sagas o f slave property but also be- are the ones w h o i n broad daylight clean the houses, care for the cause the rights to o w n and dispose o f property are racialized, both children, produce the goods, and i n general sustain the lives o f the w i t h and w i t h o u t the aid o f legalized schemes o f segregation. S i m i - dominant. A n initial task o f insubordination, then, w h i c h is the most larly, throughout the w o r l d male property
tations from w h i c h the structures o f political mediation can produce does not i n general function through fixed structures. It is instead an (schematically) a formal unity. (The concept o f the people is one aleatory f o r m o f government that rules over contingency through such formal unity.) O n the other hand, the logic o f representation legal processes w h i c h G u n t h e r Teubner describes as "constitutional- requires that identities remain static and separate: we are
h is clearly linked to the mechanisms o f exploitation, is to pro- ternal to the productive process and the generation o f wealth. In vide cooperation, that is, b r i n g workers together i n the factory, give other words, biopolitical labor is increasingly autonomous. Capital is them the tools to w o r k together, furnish a plan to cooperate, and predatory, as the analysts o f neoliberalism say, insofar as it seeks to enforce their cooperation. T h e capitalist ensures cooperation, M a r x