Now, with Empire , we have an attempt to think freshly about the world we live in, and the possibilities for making it better. There's a lot wrong with the book, but it's an excellent starting place. Michael Hardt teaches in the literature program at Duke. He is the leading thinker of autonomist Marxism, an approach which emphasizes the creative and revolutionary power of workers on their own, apart from state and party. Next to typical left pessimism, autonomists can seem dreamily optimistic, seeing struggle and victory where others see apathy and defeat.
Empire is an extremely ambitious attempt to theorize the economic and political world today.
Though clearly in a Marxist tradition, it's hardly orthodox. Though it pays appropriate homage to Lenin's famous pamphlet on imperialism , there's little that's Leninist about its analysis or especially its politics. Maybe the best place to start a consideration is to focus on the dispersed nature of power today, a decentered structure Hardt and Negri call Empire. Take the ownership and governance of giant corporations. Early firms were owned generally by a single capitalist or a small network of partners.