Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire is a book by post-marxist philosophers Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, published in 2004. It is the second installment of a "trilogy" also comprising Empire (2000) and Commonwealth (2009).

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
AuthorMichael Hardt and Antonio Negri
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectPolitical Science
Marxism
Globalization
Philosophy
Postmodernism
PublisherPenguin Books
Publication date
2004
Media typePrint (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages448 pp.
ISBN1-59420-024-6
OCLC54487542
321.8 22
LC ClassJC423 .H364 2004
Preceded byEmpire 
Followed byCommonwealth 

Summary

Multitude is divided into three sections: "War," which addresses the current "global civil war";[1] "Multitude," which elucidates the "multitude" as an "active social subject, which acts on the basis of what the singularities share in common";[1] and, "Democracy," which critiques traditional forms of political representation and gestures toward alternatives.

Multitude addresses these issues and elaborates on the assertion, in the Preface to Empire, that:

"The creative forces of the multitude that sustain Empire are also capable of autonomously constructing a counter-Empire, an alternative political organization of global flows and exchanges."[2]

The rapid growth of the alter-globalisation movement, evident in the large protests in Seattle in 1999 and in Genova in 2001, along with the creation of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, also in 2001, seemed to substantiate the optimistic outlook at the end of Empire. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and subsequent rise of state-sponsored "counter-terrorism" seem, however, to have complicated this optimism.

Notes
  1. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. Penguin Books. 2009. Pg. 4. Pg. 100.
  2. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Empire. Harvard University Press. 2000. Pg 15.

Further reading
  • Welsh, John. (2016) The shadow: alter-visibility in an empire of the seen. Distinktion 17(1): 57-77. .
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