Have Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Rewritten the Communist Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century?

Abstract:

Comments on Marxism and cyber-capitalism as they inform Hardt and Negri's Empire (2000), which is suggested as an updating of the Communist Manifesto for the postmodern age, with globalization subsuming Marx's industrial capitalism but maintaining the same self-destructive mechanisms. The book also revises the conventional Leftist suspicion of globalization and nostalgia for the welfare state. Its limitations derive chiefly from the reliance on theoretical Deleuzean language at the expense of concreteness, and the absence of practical, viable modes of achieving the emancipatory goals that the authors exhort. Because Hardt and Negri's emulation of Marx falls short of revising his explanation of how the mechanisms for revolutionary change will come about, a reconsideration of Lenin, as a reinventor of Marxism despite his ultimate failure, is proposed. 2 References. K. Coddon.

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