Abstract
Negri and Hardt’s success among the new political activism calls for a critical assessment of their sociology and politics. From a sociological perspective, we shall argue that a critical evaluation of the capture of the commons by late capitalism’s financial mechanisms suggests that the authors’ belief in an emancipatory potential of multitude’s cooperative production is flawed. From a political standpoint, we will examine the assumptions and effects of the utopic projection of the multitude as a revolutionary political subject whose task consists in realizing the “absolute democracy”. The authors’ anarchic fantasy reenacts classic and naive anarchist idea of purity, remaining blind to the fact that its actual realization would pave the way for anarcho-capitalism, rather than the democratic socialism they dreamed of.
Keywords:
Multitude; Democracy; Immaterial Labor; Anarchism