Commonwealth (review)

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have written a book that takes classical Marxism as its starting point and then crafts an argument that claims to rework its origins to address the current state of political economy and Marxist philosophy up to the global economic crisis of 2008. Commonwealth, the last in a trilogy (Empire 2000, Multitude 2004), stands alone and does not require the reading of the other two to grasp the argument. The main principle of classical Marxism upon which Hardt and Negri have based and reworked their argument is the understanding that the contradiction between the forces and relations of production (collective production and individualized consumption) provides the basis for a class struggle that has the potential to lead to revolution.

Commonwealth is divided into six parts, each acting like a chapter, with a short intermezzo between parts three and four, which divides the book into two halves. The parts, put simply, are: the multitude of the poor; altermodernity; struggles over commonwealth; empire; beyond capital; and revolution. The first half of the book is a philosophical and historical explanation of the topics, and the second half is a political and economic analysis of the topics. The intermezzo, entitled "A force to combat evil," is a brief look at human nature, and the conclusion is a reflection of the possibilities of revolution.

The stated purpose of the book is to advance an ethical project within and against Empire through the act of self-rule of the multitude and the invention of new democratic forms of social organization. The book opens with a lengthy analysis of the power of property in the world today stemming from the three modern bourgeois revolutions (English, American, and French) where the right to property was entrenched in written constitutions. The authors trace how the right to property began as a resistance to the dispossession of the poor, but then turned to an issue of security for the middle classes in the three French constitutions dated 1789, 1793, and 1795. They then contrast this with the more advanced Haitian revolution and constitution, discussion of which was suppressed in European political accounts. The defense of property became the foundation of every modern political constitution and was pitted against the real liberty of the people.

The authors define their concept of the "multitude" as a plurality of singular subjects who cannot be represented by one person such as a monarch and who are, as yet, incapable of self-rule. The multitude, therefore, is closest in Marxist terms to the "masses," but here the authors emphasize the singularity of the subjects since they form no one identity among themselves other than being part of the "poor" (without property). The poor, the authors explain, are playing an increasing role at the heart of capitalist production due to the globalization and casualization of labour, and lie at the centre of any project for revolutionary transformation. (55)

Hardt and Negri suggest that today's modes of production are not just creating commodities, but transforming human relations. They express this as the production of subjectivity through "biopolitical production." This idea has been influenced by the work of Foucault, although they differ with Foucault on some points. Freedom and resistance come both from within and without the "biopolitical moment," and the event that will rupture the continuity of history (revolution) must be understood as originating from freedom and power within the moment. It is a multitudinous strategy that links political decision-making to the bodies in struggle. (6l)

Hardt and Negri then introduce the term "altermodernity" to describe a resistance that cuts through both modernity and anti-modernity. They acknowledge that the dualism (modernity/antimodernity) has been used to describe the clash of cultures in the period of empire (e.g. the Spanish arriving in America), but suggest that within the interaction of cultures there is a node of resistance. Anti-modernity is not backwardness therefore, but a point of resistance also. The Haitian revolution is again used as an example, one they say has been written out...