Using also the weakness and weak points of the international communist movement, they present their utopia as the way of emancipation. Their utopia, the Empire refuses the reality of today's world, darkens the real life, hides the source of exploitation and oppression, and satisfies only the petty-bourgeois anarchian-autonomist sectors. Negri and Hardt develop the theory of disregarding the working class under the conditions of capitalism/imperialism.

01 January 2008 / Red Dawn / Issue 12

We will not deal with a general criticism of "The Empire" written by Negri and Hardt, which is described as the "Manifest of the 21^st century". We will only discuss some of the theses put forward in the book. So, the content of this article will be limited to the role of the state, the "evolution" of labour; consequently, with the classes and the "multitude".

The theory defended in the book "The Empire" is generally defined as "post-operaismo". The theory has its roots in the operaist movement of the 60s and 70s of the last century in Italy. One of the foremost leaders of this movement was T. Negri. According to operaismo, the motive force of the capitalist development is the struggle of the working class. However, the motive force of development in the Empire is the struggle of the "multitude". According to the theory of Empire, all sectors of the society have completely been subjected to the developing structure of control of capitalism. The nation-states have lost most of their functions and the functions that they have lost have been assumed by social groups and movements. By this way, a new re-construction of the organization of oppression and exploitation has become inevitable.

Without a change in the relations of labour in comparison with the past, it is not possible for the Empire to be established and to develop further. In other words, the work in the factories, the industrial production which stands in the centre of the capitalist production must have left its place to "immaterial labour" in the Empire. In the Empire, dominant form of labour is "immaterial labour". In these relations of labour, the products are knowledge, communication, feelings and relationships.

We can formulate the theses put forward in ‘the Empire' as follows:

The nation-states are loosing their functions, their tasks are changing and their sovereignty is disappearing in favour of the Empire, which begins to contain the whole world. The nation-states can only be the components of the Empire.

The Empire is a new stage of capitalism. The characteristic of this stage is "immaterial labour", "postmodern" life style and dominance of the "society of control".

• The motive force of development or of the development of capitalism is the resistance/struggle of the "multitude", thus in this system, the capital always responds to the resistance of the "multitude" by re-organizing the conditions of production. The development of capitalism is guaranteed by this way.

• The "multitude" and the Empire represent the antagonist contradictory forces in the Empire.

• Immaterial labour forms the centre of the production process in the Empire. The collaboration which is dominant in this production process presents the elements of re-organizing itself.

This is the framework of the theses defended in ‘The Empire' in the context of this article.

Capitalism-Imperialism-Globalization-the Empire-Biopower-State

Negri and Hardt do not see the power as a centralized force. According to them, the Empire is a whole which is formed by different power structures. What keeps the Empire on its feet is not the state but an information network formed by linguistic codes. The state is an instrument of discipline, it is imposed on society from outside, its construction is national and it stands upon the society.

In the class societies, the state is an instrument of oppression. In the societies based on exploitation, the state is a mechanism in the hands of the ruling class, who use it as an instrument of exploiting and oppressing the exploited and oppressed classes. Capitalist system needs the state in order to defend the interests of the bourgeoisie. It is impossible to think of capitalism without state.

But Negri and Hardt do not think so. They present state and society as two separate things. By this way, the violence of the state on one hand and the violence of the society on the other hand are defended. According to these authors, the modern state stands "upon the society and the multitude" (The Empire, p.328. All quotations are from the same book unless another one is mentioned), just as the bourgeoisie claims, and it has the monopoly of legitimate violence.

"Postmodernization and the passage to Empire involve a real convergence of the realms that used to be designated as base and superstructure" (p. 385).

According to Negri and Hardt, the state, which is an instrument of the bourgeoisie to oppress the working class and the labouring masses, leaves its place to a type of internal instrument in the Empire. They explain this as follows: "In other words, discipline is not an external voice that dictates our practices from on high, overarching us, as Hobbes would say, but rather something like an inner compulsion indistinguishable from our will, immanent to and inseparable from our subjectivity itself." (p. 329).

In other words, we are face to face with such a situation: The prisons have no command upon the prisoners. The prisons are places where the prisoners discipline themselves. (p. 330). Such that, "Carceral discipline, school discipline, factory discipline, and so forth interweave in a hybrid production of subjectivity" (p. 330).

The claim that the state looses (!) its character of being a repressive tool upon the society and of being an instrument of internal oppression is commented by Negri and Hardt as "the decline of nation-states as boundaries that mark and organize the divisions in global rule" (p. 332).

According to these authors, "...the decline of the nation-state is ...a structural and irreversible process." (p. 336). "The decline of the nation-state" must also be commented on as a change in the tasks of it, in such a manner that the international monopolies have converted the nation-states into their secretaries. The state has been turned into the institutions which record various activities and commercial activities of the international monopolies. [1]

According to Negri and Hardt, state and nation have been declining! And the most important indicators of this decline are some international organisations of the capitalist world system. This means, GATT, the World Trade Organisation, WB, IMF and other international "juridico-economic bodies" lead the nation-states to decline! [2]

Negri and Hardt are not interested in the fact that the nation-states compete against each other mercilessly, that they defend their own interests against each other and that they even accept the risk of a war in order to get the biggest share from the world market.

These authors are not interested so much in the fact that these "juridico-economic bodies" act in the name of the imperialist "nation-states" and in the name of the capitals of these countries when plundering the dependent countries and imposing on them the neoliberal policies/programs.

The opinions of Negri and Hardt on the question of state do not correspond to the reality in any terms. They see the state as an obstacle in front of the development of the capital, without showing any reason for this. But it is the state itself that develops the capital and guarantees its hegemony. These authors see the state as the controller of the differences; they do not consider it as an instrument of oppression.

The fundamental thesis of Negri and Hardt is that capitalism evolves from the imperialist stage towards the "postimperialist" stage. The name of the new stage is "the Empire". In this stage, nation-state and national sovereignty have been passed beyond. According to these authors, what has created/formed imperialism is the nation-state. Imperialism signified the domination/command of the state upon the society within the country. And abroad, it was the exporter of everything that could be exported, including culture. [3] Of course, this includes war and occupation. At least, we guess so.

According to Negri and Hardt, this era has become history now; "Imperialism is over" (Preface, p. xiv).

It seems that, because of globalization, the borders which signify nation-states are no longer unsurpassable, they have lost their importance and the differences among the countries have become relative.[4] It seems that, because of these reasons and developments, "Imperialism is over". Have the borders of the EU or the border between the USA and Mexico lost their importance? Or have they become more unsurpassable? Or is the difference between Germany as a metropol country and Zanzibar in Tanzania is just a simple difference of degree?

One cannot claim that all the ideas put forward by Negri and Hardt are new.

In the Empire, the newest, the most modern aspects of the capitalist mode of production have spread all over the world just like couch grass and these relations have caused a new and full polarization of classes among the Empire and the proletariat. These relations have born the "multitude".

We can explain the other opinions put forward in "The Empire" as follows:

The important opinions of these authors have been formulated in the preface of the book:

"Empire is materializing before our very eyes. Over the past several decades, as colonial regimes were overthrown and then precipitously after the Soviet barriers to the capitalist world market finally collapsed, we have witnessed an irresistible and irreversible globalization of economic and cultural exchanges. Along with the global market and global circuits of production have emerged a global order, a new logic and structure of rule -in short, a new form of sovereignty. Empire is the political subject that effectively regulates these global exchanges, the sovereign power that governs the world." (Preface, p. xi)

"Our basic hypothesis is that sovereignty has taken a new form, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule. This new global form of sovereignty is what we call Empire." (Preface, p. xii)

In the Empire, national sovereignty and limitation against outside have been surmounted and thus, the hegemony of the imperialist centres begins to disappear.

"In contrast to imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial centre of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentred and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers." (Preface, p. xii)

The inevitable conclusion of this understanding is that the USA is not an imperialist centre.

"The United States does not, and indeed no nation-state can today, form the centre of an imperialist project. ... No nation will be world leader in the way modern European nations were. The United States does indeed occupy a privileged position in Empire, but this privilege derives not from its similarities to the old European imperialist powers, but from its differences." (Preface, p. xiv) These two professors claim so.

By the understandings that we have mentioned above, Negri and Hardt draw the picture of a system beyond imperialism, which they call Empire. This is a new world order and one can no longer speak of the sovereignty of the nation-states within this order. In this order, the existence of a decentred power expanded all over the world; the existence of the domination of the Empire is on the agenda. One can not speak about the dependency of the Empire on a certain place. It is everywhere, it does not have an inside and an outside; the United States, which occupies a "privileged position" but does not claim the world hegemony, stands on the top of the "pyramid of global constitution".

The pyramid, of whose construction Negri and Hardt speak, is in fact a world-state. Although they claim that the nation-states have lost their importance, they accept that a nation-state, which occupies a "privileged position", the USA stands on the top of this pyramid. So, nation-state does not loose its importance; the strong one continues to be the important one. Indeed, with this understanding, these authors give the USA the role of world-police. Maybe for this reason; for the reason that he has taken orders from Negri and Hardt, Bush plays the role of the chief police of the world-state!

In this order, military interventions, competition among the nation-states, conflicts based on interests are not seen as wars but as the detective events within the Empire.

Because of the reason that "Imperialism is over", -at least we suppose so- Negri and Hardt announce that the new world order can no longer be explained by following the analysis of Lenin on imperialism. In other words, they express that one cannot defend both Leninism and a new stage beyond imperialism at once. They are supposed to surpass Lenin, to have passed him in terms of ideas, and they try to say that there has remained no reason to be Leninist!

There is no doubt that the world has changed a lot since the analysis of Lenin on imperialism. But even despite the fact that these changes are of great importance, they have not caused capitalism and imperialism to become something else. The five characteristics of imperialism defined by Lenin are still valid; these five characteristics are still determining also today's imperialism. [5]

The development of capitalism, the increasing concentration of capital and of production, the monopolization that develops further, the hegemony of the finance capital, the hegemony of the export of capital, the share of the world among the foremost imperialist forces and the wars and competition for its re-division show how valid is the analysis of Lenin.

According to Negri and Hardt, "the globalization of economic and cultural exchanges is irresistible and irreversible." So that, "the sovereignty of the nation-states declines" and the strong international monopolies have left the phenomenon of nation-state behind. According to these authors, globalisation is a new stage of quality of the capitalist society; it is a stage beyond imperialism.

In contrast to what these authors claim, globalization is neither new nor a stage beyond imperialism. Globalization is not a new stage of quality of the capitalist society. Globalization is typical for capitalism; it is an objective law of the action of capital. Yet in 1848, Marx and Engels, in their Manifest, had evaluated the internationalization of capital and of production (or in bourgeois terms, "globalization").[6]

That is to say, the capitalist mode of production was representing an international system from the beginning; export of commodities and capital, international commerce, the formation of the entire world in accordance with the action of the capital; in other words, this phenomenon called globalization is, as we can see, as old as capitalism.

It is already a fabricated claim that the multinational monopolies do not need a national base, a national port to refuge, a state. It has nothing to do with the reality. Only a few monopolies, such as Shell, Unilever and ABB are based on more than one nation-state: Shell and Unilever are Hollandaise-British monopolies in terms of property, and ABB is a Suiss-Swedish monopoly again in terms of property. That is to say these monopolies are based on more than one nation.

According to Negri and Hardt, international monopolies "stand on the air" and the state has lost its power. This is a ridiculous interpretation which does not comprehend the role of the state in capitalism. One cannot think of capitalism which is not based on nation-state. However, forget thinking, Negri and Hardt make the theory of this in order to make the class enemy invisible. Forget the working class, they even do not show their "multitude" what their target should be. They carefully hide the state as a class enemy; as a target that should be destroyed.

The capital, the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class do need the state. In general, the state has the task of defending the bourgeoisie in face of the fight of the working class and against the other states. The one that forms the conditions to obtain the maximum profit and that guarantees its continuity is the state.

To believe that the nation-state could disappear in the capitalist system, or in fashionable terms in the neoliberal system, is just a utopia as well as to believe that there could exist liberalism without state.

Negri and Hardt claim the end of the "industrial society" and related to this, they claim that we have passed to "postmodernity". In this era, "the central role of production of surplus value" looses its importance and its place is "today increasingly filled by intellectual, immaterial, and communicative labour power". In the "postmodernity", the service sector and immaterial labour becomes determining. "Today information and communication have come to play a foundational role in production processes and they are the very commodities produced". Undoubtedly, they do not write so, so that no one can understand anything!

It goes without questioning that the basis of every economy is formed by the production of the material values. It is obvious that one cannot speak of immaterial production and of the use of immaterial labour without the existence of the production of material values. Beyond that, neither can the service sector exist without the production of material values. In fact, forming the base of every economy, the production of material values also forms the base of service sector. But these two authors defend that this is not so, and this understanding is not valid in the Empire. In other words, they say that the base of economy is not formed by the production of material values, but by service sector.

According to Negri and Hardt, the world has changed so much in structure in the globalization process that a new global form of sovereignty has arisen. We have been living in an era that goes beyond the nation-state; in the era of the Empire. And in this new order, there are no limitations/borders such as inside and outside, in contrast to the order of nation-states. For there is no inside and outside; for that the Empire signifies a whole, the politics in this order inevitable consists of only internal politics. Consequently, military interventions, wars of occupation are considered as detective acts which serve to validate the universal "values" of the Empire. So, these two sharp people explain, for example the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, not as acts in accordance with the interests of the US imperialism and with its efforts to establish its world hegemony, but as detective acts carried out in order to make the dissidents accept the universal "values" of the Empire. Remember, among the pretexts of the attack on Afghanistan and Iraq by the US imperialism was also the aim of "defending and protecting" the universal "values" in the name of "humanity" and "democracy"!

The imaginary world of Negri and Hardt is quite rich. This world rises upon a certain structure. According to Negri, "on the base of the biopoliticization of production, the Empire creates a biopolitic order". Negri and Hardt have taken the concepts "biopolitics" and "biopower" from Foucault. Biopower have the function of administering life, guaranteeing it and investing it through. This power administers, guarantees and invests life through spontaneously, automatically and without any organisation! By this way, the "highest anarchist values" are guaranteed.

In terms of their evaluation of the question of power in the capitalist system, Negri and Hardt are the students of Foucault. Foucault theorises the passage from the "disciplinary society" to the "society of control". In the "disciplinary society", domination is implemented through mechanisms. These are the mechanisms which regulate the acts and behaviours in the society. These include, for example, schools and factories.

However, in the "society of control", the mechanisms of command become continuously more democratic. These mechanisms are "distributed throughout the brains" (p.23) of those who are commanded. Control does not depend on the measures caused by external factors:

"Power is now exercised through machines that directly organize the brains (in communication systems, information networks, etc.) and bodies (in welfare systems, monitored activities, etc.) toward a state of autonomous alienation from the sense of life and the desire for creativity. The society of control might thus be characterized by an intensification and generalization of the normalizing apparatuses of disciplinarity that internally animate our common and daily practices." (p.23)

This is exactly what Negri and Hardt understand by biopolitic power.

An imaginary, untouchable and invisible power; the biopower organises and regulates the social life in all aspects! As if it is an automatically observing and regulating order!

"Biopower is a form of power that regulates social life from its interior, following it, interpreting it, absorbing it, and rearticulating it. Power can achieve an effective command over the entire life of the population only when it becomes an integral, vital function that every individual embraces and reactivates of his or her own accord." (p.23/24)

"Power is thus expressed as a control that extends throughout the depths of the consciousnesses and bodies of the population-and at the same time across the entirety of social relations." (p.24)

In the "society of control", all political, economic and cultural relations of capitalism have completely been materialised and are in accordance. Infrastructure and superstructure has combined; there has remained no difference among them; and the obstacles that divide them have been destroyed. It is no longer possible to speak of an interaction between infrastructure and superstructure; these structures have been combined; have become one single body! Marxists had discussed this issue so much! It seems that all were in vain!

Negri and Hardt base their understanding of biopower on immaterial labour. So, the changes in the production form the material essence of their concept of biopower.

According to Negri and Hardt, since the "industrial society" is over and the "informational society" has emerged, relations of labour have also changed inevitably. "The third sector" (service sector) has left behind the industrial and agricultural sectors and with all its typical branches; it has come to play a foundational role in production processes. This sector includes the fields such as education, advertising, music, transportation, finances and health. There is no doubt that neither of these authors defend that these fields are new. But what has an importance is that this sector plays a central role in the relations of labour, in production. This role is something new. In the imperialist centres, labour moves towards the service sector and physical labour moves towards the dependent countries. According to Negri and Hardt, industrial production does not cease to exist, but with the information revolution, it changes into a hybrid economy expanded throughout the world.

These authors claim that "immaterial labour" has two faces: One face consists of the increasingly extensive and continuous use of computers. To such extend that, familiarity with computers is defined as the primary qualification for work. They carry it so further that they claim that the machines become a new prosthesis integrated into our bodies and minds. We are becoming aliens or the society is alienating!

Thus, these authors have re-created on their own the understanding "machines are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand." [7] which was put forward by Marx in his "Grundrisse"

The other face of "immaterial labour" is that the human interaction and human relations between both sides have an affective face; it is the "affective labour". The products are not material, they are not physical, and they cannot be touched by hand: Relaxing feelings, to feel oneself good, excitement, passion and etc. This must be including fear and love! All these are the products of "affective labour"; "affective labour" produces social networks. Different forms of collective life and biopower are the products of "affective labour".

Then, in terms of affectiveness, what does a poor young man, who bears a great "passion", "feeling" and "excitement" towards the girl he loves, but who cannot dare to (this is also a type of excitement) open her his feelings, and who, despite this, continues to live this feeling on his mind, produce? If everybody is supposed to be productive in the Empire, then, this young man produces a commodity by his act of lack of courage (this is also a type of excitement)! He must be producing the commodity of not being able to express his feelings! Or, what do the passengers, who fear to death in the midst of a great "excitement" in a plane that has lost great altitude, produce? Or what does the person, who is about to drown in the middle of the sea, produce? Or what do the people who pray in the mosque or church produce? Are they not full of the deepest feelings in terms of religion, do they not experience very intense "feelings" and "excitement"; do they not feel as if they are flying? This means, they are in a process of production! So, what do they produce?

Who is clever enough to understand this?

Toni Negri! This is too much!

The source of the understanding that takes everything as a commodity is this piece of nonsense of Negri.

According to Negri and Hardt, immaterial labour has three types:

"In short, we can distinguish three types of immaterial labour that drive the service sector at the top of the informational economy. The first is involved in an industrial production that has been informationalized and has incorporated communication technologies in a way that transforms the production process itself. Manufacturing is regarded as a service, and the material labour of the production of durable goods mixes with and tends toward immaterial labour. Second is the immaterial labour of analytical and symbolic tasks, which itself breaks down into creative and intelligent manipulation on the one hand and routine symbolic tasks on the other. Finally, a third type of immaterial labour involves the production and manipulation of affect and requires (virtual or actual) human contact, labour in the bodily mode. These are the three types of labour that drive the postmodernization of the global economy.

We should point out before moving on that in each of these forms of immaterial labour, cooperation is completely inherent in the labour itself." (p.293/294)

This is what happens to labour power! Naturally, when it is defined in this way, the working class becomes history as we will see below, and it leaves its place to a "multitude" which corresponds to immaterial labour.

Biopower has a sense when it is considered in terms of the potential of the "new revolutionary subject"; of "multitude". Negri and Hardt claim that "multitude" is a "cooperative power". Under this power, every single subject keeps its own characteristics. Biopower, with all its ontological richness, opportunities and necessities, contains the whole life. In the Empire, "immaterial labour" creates the conditions of communist society. In this order, the productive forces carry a communist character, but only the relations of production still have a capitalist character. See! It could only be Negri and Hardt who make the productive forces communist, while leaving the relations of production as of capitalist character!

The working class and the "multitude"

These authors affirm that labour continuously becomes more and more immaterial: "The central role previously occupied by the labour power of mass factory workers in the production of surplus value is today increasingly filled by intellectual, immaterial, and communicative labour power. It is thus necessary to develop a new political theory of value that can pose the problem of this new capitalist accumulation of value at the centre of the mechanism of exploitation (and thus, perhaps, at the centre of potential revolt)." (p.29)

"After a new theory of value, then, a new theory of subjectivity must be formulated that operates primarily through knowledge, communication, and language." (p.29)

That is right; if one refuses the Marxist theories of economy politics, society, classes and of production of the values, and constructs an imaginary society on the basis of this refusal, then, one must develop a new "theory of political values" that corresponds to the functioning of the new order. Negri and Hardt do so. But it is not enough to develop these theories. After that, they have to develop a theory of subjectivity that could put these theories into function. After throwing away "the central role previously occupied by the labour power of mass factory workers in the production of surplus value", it comes to defining that "the central role is today increasingly filled by intellectual, immaterial, and communicative labour power", disregarding the fact that hundreds millions of workers produce surplus value. But this definition cannot save itself from being so abstract. Then, a subject which corresponds to this abstract theory is found: The "multitude" which takes the place of the working class!

Negri and Hardt try to integrate the three aspects of "immaterial labour": "the communicative labour of industrial production that has newly become linked in informational networks, the interactive labour of symbolic analysis and problem solving, and the labour of the production and manipulation of affects" (p.30)

According to their theory, cooperative, affective and immaterial labour prevails in the Empire. Under this order, the borders between life and production have disappeared. All labour is under the control of the capital. Thus, they mean that the composition of the proletariat has transformed in the Empire. [8]

Defining that the composition of the proletariat has transformed or that the "classic" working class is becoming history, these two authors inevitably come to the conclusion that the productive, industrial working class had formed just one moment in the evolution process of the proletariat.

"In a previous era the category of the proletariat centred on ... the industrial working class... Today that working class has all but disappeared from view. It has not ceased to exist, but it has been displaced from its privileged position in the capitalist economy... The proletariat is not what it used to be..." (p.52/53)

According to these authors, this evolution process ended right after the World War II and the industrial working class began to loose its position. Naturally, the "multitude" took its place. That is to say, the old slogan "Workers of all countries, unite!" is not valid any more. Now, it is time for the slogan "Multitudes of all countries, unite!" Do you see the propaganda of those imperialist bourgeois ideologists?! We had always thought that they were the ones who had produced the slogan "Goodbye proletariat!" For this reason, we took them as the main target. But now it seems that it is Negri, that anarchian-autonomist who has lost his hopes towards the working class at the 70s of the last century, is the one who leads this process!

Of course we will not try to refute this piece of nonsense. The main errors of these authors in their analysis of the working class have their roots in the fact that they have closed their eyes to the real world and in their erroneous understanding of labour and the character of the capital. We should also take into consideration the earlier militancy of Negri against the capitalist system.

"The lines of production and those of representation cross and mix in the same linguistic and productive realm. In this context the distinctions that define the central categories of political economy tend to blur. Production becomes indistinguishable from reproduction; productive forces merge with relations of production; constant capital tends to be constituted and represented within variable capital, in the brains, bodies, and cooperation of productive subjects." (p.385)

Thus, the characteristic concepts of the capitalist economy are made unrecognisable; the borders between constant capital and variable capital, the relationship between the productive forces and the relations of production, and the borders between various types of concrete labour are eliminated at once; the objective laws of the capitalist economy and society are disregarded. Disappointed and hopeless Negri turns capitalism into something else. But we should not humiliate him. There are many sharp people, who writhe in the midst of a great disappointment and hopelessness but who do not renounce Marxism. They also have established "the Empire" in their minds: On one hand, they claim that the working class has disappeared, on the other hand, they make the theory of "multitude" and they say: "The working class has died! Long live multitude!" It is necessary to adopt oneself to the new developments!

After bringing the end of the "industrial society" and establishing the Empire by making the service sector and "immaterial labour" prevail, and after material production becomes secondary in the whole economy, -this is their theory- after refusing the working class or refusing that it plays a central role in production, Negri and Hardt put the "social worker" or the "multitude" instead of this class. According to these authors, what a normal human being who lives on this earth understands that the working class has lost its position to play a role as a revolutionary subject. "Goodbye proletariat!" Its place has been filled by the subject called "social worker". This subject includes everybody but the capitalists. So, the society has been purified from all class differentiations in front of the capitalists; there remain no workers, labourers, engineers, doctors, bureaucrats, teachers and etc! In front of the capitalists, everybody has become subject in the same level, keeping also their differences; they have become the "multitude"!

These authors affirm that bioproduction, which also signifies the production of human life, is being developed everywhere by everyone. Negri has been defending such petty-bourgeois, anarchian dreams/understandings since the 70s of the last century.

Yet, in the middle of the 70s of the last century, Negri had begun to use the term "social worker", leaving the terms that were defining the "industrial worker", or the worker who produces material values. In his opinion, the materialisation of the capitalist exploitation was carried out through the whole society. So, the working class had lost its privilege. Now, everyone was a worker, everyone was being exploited. Yet, in those days, Negri did not see the relation of exploitation among capital and labour as a determining factor and he did not define the working class according to its place in the production process. What Negri understood under "social worker" was a student or a housewife, as well as an unemployed person, an engineer and a teacher. That is because, according to him, all of them are exploited by capitalism as "social workers".

While defining the "social worker" or the "new proletariat", these authors produce the theory of "multitude": As we have mentioned above, these two professors claim, that the class composition of the proletariat has changed. They use one more new concept instead of the proletariat: those whose labour power is exploited directly or indirectly. They put those who are subjected to capitalist norms in production and re-production in this category. That is to say, in the era of "globalisation", in the era of Empire, capitalism has turned everybody into workers; now, everybody is a part of the proletariat. It does not matter in terms of quality whether one works in the factory, the other one is a doctor or engineer, and another is a petty-producer. Now, all of us have been turned into the "multitude" as "social workers" or the "new proletariat".

You can also use the term "expanded proletariat" instead of "multitude". Senior Michael Hardt expresses his ideas as follows: "When we take the proletariat, in the most expanded meaning of the word, as all the working people, we will reach the multitude" ("Es herrscht noch zu wenig Globalisierung". Interview with Toni Negri und Michael Hardt, by the newspaper "Der Taz", 18 March 2002).

In other words, when compared with the "people" or with the political demands of the people, "multitude" is a sum of the "singular" ones; of every single subject. "Multitude" is a sum of many singulars; this means: it is a crowd consisting of singular ones. No component of the "multitude" has to draw a border between itself and the others. "Multitude" is a sum of differences; it is not homogenous; the components of it are not similar to each other. "Multitude" tries to contain those who are outside; those who are not inside the "multitude".

While the working class is the grave-digger of capitalism, "multitude" is the grave-digger of the Empire!

"Multitude" is not just a multitude! Just as the proletariat reproduces itself, this subject called "multitude" also produces itself. Since the production of the material values is secondary now, the working class is also over and the material conditions of its reproducing itself are disappearing. So, the working class is about to die in its bed! (And exactly for this reason, the Marxists are dinosaurs!). But the "multitude", which signifies "immaterial labour" does have the conditions of reproducing itself. According to these authors, the fundamental, the most important productive force in the Empire is the "multitude". The working class represents the past/the old, while the "multitude" represents the future/the new. This is a question of dialectics. And this law of the dialectics says that you must base on the new, even if it is yet just an embryo.

Negri tries to explain the "multitude's" reproducing itself as a subject, departing from the immaterial labour which is dominant in the Empire. He states the following:

"We should point out before moving on that in each of these forms of immaterial labour, cooperation is completely inherent in the labour itself. Immaterial labour immediately involves social interaction and cooperation. In other words, the cooperative aspect of immaterial labour is not imposed or organized from the outside, as it was in previous forms of labour, but rather, cooperation is completely immanent to the labouring activity itself. This fact calls into question the old notion (common to classical and Marxian political economics) by which labour power is conceived as ‘‘variable capital,'' that is, a force that is activated and made coherent only by capital, because the cooperative powers of labour power (particularly immaterial labour power) afford labour the possibility of valorising itself. ... Today productivity, wealth, and the creation of social surpluses take the form of cooperative interactivity through linguistic, communicational, and affective networks. In the expression of its own creative energies, immaterial labour thus seems to provide the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism." (p.294)

Or:

"Empire takes form when language and communication, or really when immaterial labour and cooperation, become the dominant productive force. The superstructure is put to work, and the universe we live in is a universe of productive linguistic Networks. ... Social subjects are at the same time producers and products of this unitary machine. In this new historical formation it is thus no longer possible to identify a sign, a subject, a value, or a practice that is ‘‘outside.'' (p.385)

So, from this point of view, "multitude" has already found its "International"! This is where the importance of the World Social Forum comes from. This is why this social movement led by old reformist and pacifist ideologies and leaderships is exaggerated so much.

Under the conditions where there exists no "external", nothing outside economy and the Empire, Negri socialises the productive forces completely.

"The difference between working hours -8 hours for production- and the remaining 16 hours is ever more disappearing. There exist no outside and we mean biopolitics with this. The difference among production and life disappears. ("Es herrscht noch zu wenig Globalisierung". Interview with Toni Negri und Michael Hardt, by the newspaper "Der Taz", 18 March 2002).

As a result, "multitude" can be summarised as follows: "Multitude" is different from the social subjects such as people, working class, labouring masses. "Multitude" is a mass/crowd that will never form a whole, that consist of numerous differences and that cannot be reduced to a certain identity. The differences are innumerable: ethnic, cultural, religious, sexual, social differences, difference in forms of working, differences in the points of view, difference of wants and etc. "Multitude" consists of the sum of all of these single differences.

Among the "multitude", social difference is always considerable. "Multitude" is just like a rainbow. It is typical for "multitude" to interact and act in common and at the same time, to keep all the differences! The difference among the "multitude" is a motive force to discover the commonalities and to interact and act in common.

The class character of "multitude"

Negri and Hardt affirm that there is a relation between "immaterial labour" and "multitude"; a relation in which one requires the other in order to exist. The dialectics of these two authors says so. Since the waged labour disappears and the relations/conditions of production loose its capitalist form, what remain are those who act and serve in an independent manner; this is the "multitude". We see in the understanding of Empire the social movements, the anarchian-autonomist and feminist dreamers who form the World Social Forum and who struggle to turn back to 200-300 years ago in the history, these elements of the international mass movement.

In the Empire, the character of property has lost its importance. In the Empire, the world of "immaterial labour", the production of material values has no importance. According to these authors, "immaterial labour" has a cooperative character. Cooperation is immanent to labour processes. Immaterial labour takes the necessary base for private property because of its collectivising character; it turns it into an "abstract concept" and a "juridical power". (p.302). This "juridical power" cannot have a real economic power/effect in the Empire: "Private property of the means of production today, in the era of the hegemony of cooperative and immaterial labor, is only a putrid and tyrannical obsolescence." (p.410)

"Multitude", produces what is common and what is common forms the base of the future production. This is a spiral and expanding movement. What is common appears in both two axes of biopolitic production: "Only when what is common is formed can production take place and can general productivity rise". In this biopolitic process, "multitude" establishes relationships with the other "multitudes" through thousands of links and networks. These relationships bind the production of the "multitudes" and a "multitude life" is born inevitably! We see in the Empire the anarchian-autonomist current that expresses itself within the WSF that produces in a separate manner, that puts an end to Money and competition and that reminds us Proudhon.

In the dreamworld of the imaginary Empire of Negri, every single element of the "multitude" can any moment be related to the means of production. It seems that "multitude" is not broken off with the means of production in the Empire. Every single "citizen of the Empire" who wants to work can have any moment the conditions of production, appropriately for the job he wants to do! Of course, no one would be unemployed in such a society. At most, there could be ones who take work as a trouble!

Since the conditions/means of production are in the use of every single member of the "multitude" in the Empire, they become economically independent from the beginning. Theory says so. Under these conditions, "multitude" can be oppressed and exploited by the Empire only outside the process of work. Theory says so. In other words, oppression and exploitation take place outside the direct production process. This hocus pocus has a meaning: when you put oppression and exploitation outside the direct production process, there remains no role for property to play in the process of oppression and exploitation; property looses its importance. For, when the capitalist, or the one who has got the private property of the means of production, looses his right of direct dominance upon the conditions/relations of production, he cannot use these means as a capital. By this way, capitalist looses its power upon production, and consequently, upon the living labour.

"The multitude is biopolitical self-organization." (p. 411). When they turn the character of property into an unimportant factor, there appears the conditions of production of the "multitude". Using the term "self-organization", these authors express that there is a difference in quality between the capitalist organisation of production and the "multitude's organisation of production. In the capitalist system, the capitalist or the monopoly buy labour power in the labour market; let it work as much as they need, and then throw it out onto the street. In the capitalist system, the worker works under the control of and for the interests of the capitalist and creates surplus value. But in the Empire, one cannot speak of working under somebody else's control and for somebody else's interests. The producers organise their production on their own!

The "highest" anarchism is this one! A "noble" anarchist would only be like this!

In the Empire of Negri and Hardt, the "immaterial labour" of the "multitude" is not subjected to the capital, or to the process of its validating itself. The "multitude" uses its labour for itself. It is not so important whether the very life outside is like this or not! These authors disregard hundreds of millions of people who have to sell their labour power to survive. They are like the poor young man who, with closed eyes, writes "I love you" on the sand at the shore.

Negri and Hardt say that "multitude" cannot be understood as the working class, as the proletarian masses who have to sell their labour power to survive and who are subjected to the conditions/relations of production imposed by the capital.

The means of production that are necessary for production are under the control of the "multitude". "Multitude" does not sell its labour power, but its products, services in the market. Beyond that, "multitude" buys no labour power to exploit. In this sense, the "multitude" is not a capitalist class. It does not own capitalist work places. In the Empire, the "multitude" is neither the bourgeois class nor the working class; it is neither capitalist nor worker. It has a middle position. In the Empire, the "multitude" is a mass, formed by all classes since these classes have lost their character/conditions of being a class but every single member of these classes have their personal character/differences. In fact, what is mentioned here is the petty-bourgeoisie.

It is true; there are really important similarities and differences between the "multitude" defined by Negri and Hardt and the classic petty bourgeoisie:

The petty bourgeoisie believes that it is exploited and oppressed by the state and big monopolies. It has a reaction against the system, such as an anarchist. Negri and Hardt also confirm that the "multitude" carries such feelings in the Empire; they theorise that the unilateral dissatisfaction of the "multitude" in the Empire and they theorise that there is a similarity among the classic petty bourgeoisie and the "multitude" in terms of relations of exploitation.

In the Empire, "multitude" owns de facto the means of production. In this sense, it is similar to classic petty bourgeoisie. These authors sometimes speak of the proletariat, but only as follows: according to them, since the sale of labour power, the workers' and the waged labourers' being subjected to capital are history in the Empire; since the property of the means of production plays no role, to be a "proletarian", it is enough that labour power is exploited "directly or indirectly" in any manner. In the Empire, exploitation takes place anywhere in any manner in relation with production. Everybody is somehow exploited.

There are no classes that the classic petty bourgeoisie has an antagonistic contradiction with. Or we can say, petty bourgeoisie has no concrete contradiction as it is in the antagonist contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the working class. The "multitude" in the Empire neither has a concrete contradiction. Negri and Hardt hide with great care who the contradiction is. They make it invisible and unrecognisable.

Conclusion:

What do these authors suggest?

"We must push through Empire to come out the other side. (...) Empire can be effectively contested only on its own level of generality and by pushing the processes that it offers past their present limitations. We have to accept that challenge and learn to think globally and act globally. Globalization must be met with a counter-globalization, Empire with a counter-Empire". (p.206)

In order to do that, they demand that "multitude" should act in common, keeping its differences, without integrating, and to carry out this acting in common without any certain defined centre. They say: "Establish networks! Establish networks!" The theory says so! It is understood why that "network" question is so popular and important instead of establishing parties.

This is what they suggest!

These authors tell the following to the working class: Your struggle in the past was successful. But from now on, you do not have the capacity to fulfil your historical task. Imperialism has transformed into Empire. You are over; "multitude" has taken your place. Goodbye proletariat!

In the Empire, the whole society has become productive. The difference between the productive and non-productive has disappeared. For this reason, the organisations of the working class, such as parties and trade-unions have lost their meaning in the Empire. For, the production of the material values has lost its hegemony and "immaterial labour" is now hegemonic. This is the theory.

There is no doubt that there exists hegemony in the Empire, too. The Empire distributes hegemony throughout the brains and the bodies of the "multitudes". A "society of control" is being established. Through the networks established all over the world, that is to say, throughout the whole Empire, the "multitude" is exploited. But the Empire is a more progressive process when compared with capitalism/imperialism. For, the Empire means new conditions of emancipation. This is the theory!

In the Empire, the conditions of work are totally different. "Multitude" is no longer a waged worker, a factory worker. "Multitude" consists of the elements of the creative service sector. The labour of the "multitude" is immaterial. In this type of work, the private property of the means of production plays no role. For this reason, "multitude" has provided itself an economic emancipation. What is now important is to achieve the political emancipation.

Negri and Hardt make the following call:

"Multitude"!

You can establish a "counter-Empire" step by step through the "communist networks" that you form. Now the slogan is no longer "Workers of all countries, unite!". It is now, "Globalisationists of all countries unite against the negative forces of globalisation!"

"Multitude"!

Power is not outside us, it is immanent to us, it is in our brain and body. We produce power continuously, unawarely, through our affective labour. Oh, at last we have understood. This means that the people that we had mentioned above were producing power through their actions of discourage, fear and intense feelings!

This power subjects us to itself, makes us slaves of it, independent from what our position in the society is. This biopower belongs to, is carried by and is used by no one. This power is independent from classes. It stands upon the society. It obligates us, the "multitude" to obey its order. This power has become the subject and it forces everybody, without making any difference among them, to be subjected to it.

By this way, Negri and Hardt give the "multitude" the message that there are no dominant classes in the Empire. Since they bring the end of waged labour, they have brought the end of the relations of capital, too. Thus, the owner of the capital who exploits labour is over.

"Multitude"!

Capital plays no role in the production process in the Empire. For, there is no need to waged labour. Capital does not divide the society into classes in the Empire. It does not bear the contradictions of capitalism among the society. Thus, all people are exploited to the same degree in the Empire. They all suffer from the same power.

In the Empire, capital continues to dominate without having an owner. It implements its domination upon the whole society. But there is no one who could use the power for his own interests. So, the real owners of the Empire, -if we save us from the Empire of Negri and think like we live in the real world- the capitalists are being made invisible for the "multitude" who fight for liberation from this power. Power and who is in power have a metaphysic character in the Empire. Negri and Hardt know very well who lead the power but they make them invisible in the eyes of the "multitude". So the "multitude" fights against windmills.

These authors present no strategy to liberate from the Empire. The Marxist-Leninist understanding of revolution, the Communist Manifesto, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and above all, Stalin, are history for them.

They advice us that there s is only a new alternative and to believe that, but they do not have any idea. They say that parties, trade unions and organisations do not function. They want a future where any kind of organisation is refused. "Movement is everything, conclusion is nothing", they say. This autonomist, anarchist understanding consists of a call to "establish networks". So, these networks will spontaneously unite and globalise and a world society will be born from this! The only basis they rely on is the "multitude" and the social movements. They advise us to hold many demonstrations, to cause chaos, and to implement the idea "Movement is everything, conclusion is nothing".

Negri and Hardt quickly loose the importance of the working class who works in the production of the material values, they say that it has no longer revolutionary capacity and they see a great revolutionary potential in the "multitude" that they replace with the working class. But it is interesting, that this "multitude" does not know what its opposite is. It is not organised; it does not act in a collective manner. Moreover, does not speak the "same" language. They have no "constant model" for this great power to mobilise. These authors do not even know when the "possibility" will change into "reality".

They suggest the following:

"Whereas in the disciplinary era sabotage was the fundamental notion of resistance, in the era of imperial control it may be desertion. Whereas being against in modernity often meant a direct and/or dialectical opposition of forces, in postmodernity being-against might well be most effective in an oblique or diagonal stance. Battles against the Empire might be won through subtraction and defection. This desertion does not have a place; it is the evacuation of the places of power." (p.212)

Yes, state is unnecessary; private property is unnecessary! What is to be done in order to achieve the slogan "all power to multitude" is as follows: "The refusal of work and authority, or really the refusal of voluntary servitude, is the beginning of liberatory politics. Long ago Etienne de La Boetie preached just such a politics of refusal: ‘‘Resolve to serve no more and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him." (...) Our lines of flight, our exodus must be constituent and create a real alternative. Beyond the simple refusal, or as part of that refusal, we need also to construct a new mode of life and above all a new community." (p.204)

So, the political concept consists of disobedience, run-away, abandoning!

Negri and Hardt call the world society consisting of the "multitude" to establish "anarchism". They call those who were disappointed in their struggles until now, those who have broken off with social life, whose who have broken hopes, those who put individualism above all kind of high ideals, those who run away from being organised, whose who refuse such a struggle, those who do not believe in the working class and its struggle, to follow the bourgeois "philosophists" and sociologists such as Foucault and to show of disobedience, to leave the political scene and to run away.

Using also the weakness and weak points of the international communist movement, they present their utopia as the way of emancipation. Their utopia, the Empire refuses the reality of today's world, darkens the real life, hides the source of exploitation and oppression, and satisfies only the petty-bourgeois anarchian-autonomist sectors.

Negri and Hardt develop the theory of disregarding the working class under the conditions of capitalism/imperialism.

They tell us not to form parties, not to organise. They speak of the possibility of reaching the communist conscience within the spontaneous movement and to form the nucleus of communism within this system, within the Empire ("in the expression of its own creative energies, immaterial labour thus seems to provide the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism.").

For that purpose, they act exactly like Rumi [9] and say "Come, whatever you are, come to us. It does not matter whether you are unbeliever, Mazdean or heathenish. Come. In other words, they say that everyone, no matter whether it is a worker or an unemployed, student or housewife, peasant, engineer or a doctor, everyone but the capitalists, whoever it is, from whatever class it comes, is a part of the "multitude"; they call all of them to build up networks, to expand all over the world through these networks and to form a global network by combining these networks.

And Marx takes the last word:

[for the German ideologists] "This conception is truly religious: it postulates religious man as the primitive man, the starting-point of history, and in its imagination puts the religious production of fancies in the place of the real production of the means of subsistence and of life itself." (Marx-Engels; German Idology).

Footnotes:

1. The transnational corporations "... tend to make nation-states merely instruments to record the flows of the commodities, monies, and populations that they set in motion. The transnational corporations directly distribute labour power over various markets, functionally allocate resources, and organize hierarchically the various sectors of world production. (p.32)

2. "The declining effectiveness of this structure can be traced clearly through the evolution of a whole series of global juridico-economic bodies, such as GATT, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the IMF. The globalization of production and circulation, supported by this supranational juridical scaffolding, supersedes the effectiveness of national juridical structures." (p.336)

3. "Imperialism was a creature of the nation states. (...) internally, imperialism stood alive through the sanctification of sovereignty of states and externally, it was a form of the export -naturally, a type of export that destroys the others of power, culture and economic interests." ("Es herrscht noch zu wenig Globalisierung". Interview with Toni Negri und Michael Hardt, by the newspaper "Der Taz", 18 March 2002).

4. "As the powers and boundaries of nation-states decline, however, differences between national territories become increasingly relative. They are now not differences of nature (as were, for example, the differences between the territory of the metropole and that of the colony) but differences of degree." (p.384)

5. "But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this "finance capital", of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. (Lenin: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism)

6. "The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. (...) In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible ..." (Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Frederick Engel)

7. Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand." (Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie)

It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on. (Marks, Capital I).

8. "The composition of the proletariat has transformed and thus our understanding of it must too. In conceptual terms we understand proletariat as a broad category that includes all those whose labour is directly or indirectly exploited by and subjected to capitalist norms of production and reproduction." (p.52)

9. Mawlana Jalal-ad-Din Mohammad Balkhi, known as Rumi, is a Persian poet and theologian who lived between the years of 1207-1273.