The multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the… - Antonio Negri

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The multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude — as Marx would say, a vampire regime of accumulated dead labor that survives only by sucking off the blood of the living.

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About Antonio Negri

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri are the co-authors of Empire and Multitude. Michael Hardt (born 1960) is an American political philosopher and literary theorist and political philosopher, professor of Literature and Italian at Duke University. Antonio Negri (1 August 1933 – 16 December 2023) was an Italian Libertarian Marxist sociologist and political philosopher. Negri was accused of being the mastermind behind the far-left terrorist group The Red Brigades 1978 kidnapping of Aldo Moro, though the court was unable to conclusively tie Negri to the organization. Negri fled to France to escape prosecution, only to enter into a plea bargain in which his thirty-year prison sentence was reduced to thirteen years. During this time Negri wrote prolifically with many of his important works being written while he was incarcerated.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Toni Negri Antonio Neguri

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Additional quotes by Antonio Negri

The regular rhythms of factory production and its clear divisions of work time and nonwork time tend to decline in the realm of immaterial labor. Think how at the high end of labor market companies like Microsoft try to make the office more like home, offering free meals and exercise programs to keep employees in the office as many of their waking hours as possible. At the low end of the labor market workers have to juggle several job to make ends meet. Such practices always existed, but today, with the passage from Fordism to post-Fordism, the increased flexibility and mobility imposed on workers, and the decline of the stable, long-term employment typical of factory work, this tends to become the norm. At both the high end and low ends or labor market the new paradigm undermines the division between work time and the time of life.

this is not to say, we repeat, that the conditions of labor and production are becoming the same throughout the world or throughout the different sectors of the economy. The claim is rather is that many singular instances of labor processes, productive conditions, local situations, and lived experiences coexist with a "becoming common", at a different level of abstraction, of the forms of labor and the general relations of production and exchange - and that there is no contradiction between this singularity and commonality.

Even when labor is subjugated by capital it always necessarily maintains its own autonomy, and this ever more clearly true today with respect to the new immaterial, cooperative and collaborative forms of labor. This relationship is not isolated to the economic terrain but, as we will argue later, spills over into the biopolitical terrain of society as a hole, including military conflicts. In any case, we should recognize here that even in asymmetrical conflicts victory in terms of complete domination is not possible. All that can be achieved is a provisional and limited maintenance of control and order that must constantly be policed and preserved. Counterinsurgency is a full-time job.

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