Commonwealth
Everyone 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 ofThe Shock Doctrine)Commonwealth, last and richest of theEmpiretrilogy, 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, whoseEmpireandMultitudehave, arguably, been the dominant works of political philosophy of the new century...[It's] the much-anticipated final volume of the Empire trilogy. (Artforum2009-10-01)Commonwealthis 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 withEmpirein 2000, a book that was published during the emergence of the alter-globalization movement.Multitudefollowed in 2004, developing the ideas that had been introduced inEmpire, in particular the concept of the multitude as a new revolutionary subject.Commonwealthis 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."...Commonwealthis 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 PuseyRed Pepper2010-04-01)