Hardt and Weeks have compiled an excellent overview of Jameson's impressive volume of work. The excerpts from Jameson will prove thought-provoking to any student or activist who wants to maintain the critical praxis of Marxism, but wants to move away from its historic economic focus. Consequently, by expanding Marx's concept of the mode of production, and through insightful analyses of history, art, film, music, and architecture Jameson provides an insight into the value of Marxism for what Wendy Brown (and others) have called these postmodern times.

Agamben analyses the space of negativity in the thought of Hegel and Heidegger. Since Derrida,continential philosophies of language have critiqued traditional philosophy for privleging presence and treating signs as transparent conveyors of meaning. But Agamben, through exacting studies of Patristic and Medieval thought, demonstrates the tradition's awareness of the constitutive moment of absence in discourse. He contends that the deconstructionist critique of metaphysical thinking merely repeats an old problematic and fails to escape the difficulties it reveals. His corrective account of language and the place of negativity within it open a space for the human apart from reductive theories of the self as merely a social and linguistic construct.

Agamben's book Infancy and History was a superb book, and I was looking forward to reading this book. The book should be twice as big, as seemingly every other sentence calls for further elaboration. To be sure, it is esay to undersatnd that Agamben's language is inspired by the later Heidegger's unfolding of language, particularly through etymology. The grounding of the book is an elaboration of the word "whatever" (qualunque), and perhaps this was more understandable in the original Italian, the point being, for Agamben, that 'being' is not a case of "whatever being" such that it does not matter which, but "such that it always matters". This then becomes his base for human ethics. Fair enough. But who needs the exposition of "whatever" in order to argue for an ethics of understanding? His ultimate argument is that the coming community will not be one of control of the State in politrical terms, but rather a struggle between the State and the non-State. He gives the example of the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, whom, Agamben argues, did not demonstate for concrete demands, or rather, that "democracy and freedom are notions too generic and broadly defined to constitute the real object of a conflict". This is incredible! Agamben is more familiar with Italian farmers demanding foreign goods be stopped at the borders. My feeling by the end of the book, was that Agamben's Coming Community would be a community of Intellectuals who a few times a year march for people who are no longer a community, the disposessed, (whom, despite their efforts of solidarity with each other's plight, remain ultimately marginal) but after the demonstration the intellectuals return to their comfortable university-paid jobs. This book left me feeling angry.

Less an argument and more a constellation or mosaic of insights, formulas, and enigmas, The Coming Community by Giorgio Agamben is both a courageous delineation of political crisis and an intervention in thought that is both beautiful and cheerfully destructive. That is, this mosaic (inspired, I think, more by the early Heidegger of Sein und Zeit and also Walter Benjamin's Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels) saves, without naming, the potential for the uprecedented that comes out of the delineation of the astonishing: the 'whatever' which "always matters" but which is in no wise the result of a process of any kind. Composed of twenty-nine brief, dense, suggestive sections, this book opens a gateway out of the space of nihilism that currently enthralls the planet in the form of the Debordian Spectacle. The example of Tianenmen is intended to evoke a scintillating, lawless time--blasted out of history--when everything mattered exactly such as it is. Since Benjamin, no thinker has more clearly entered into the threshold of complicity that thought and politics share.

In Gilles Deleuze, Michael Hardt analyzes the development of Deleuze's thought focussing on his works in the history of philosophy. From this historical perspective, Hardt renders possible to see the very intensive forcing bettwen Hegel's dialectics and this new afirmative thougth. The original reference to Scholastic's philosophy, for example, open the horizont to a new comprenhension of the arguments used by Deleuze, no so often explained. It would be very interesting to read this book in pararel whith Vicent Descombes' La même et l'autre, a totaly oposite interpretation of Deleuze, where the battle whith Hegel is mised from the very begining.

Hardt's book on Deleuze can be applauded for two reasons: its careful reading of Deleuze's texts and its attempt to situate them critically among continental philosophy. Hardt is a clear writer, and his insights are often quite powerful and suggestive. However, like most writer on Deleuze his "deleuzian" reading seeks too much to reconfigure the texts (Bergson,Nietzsche,and Spinoza). Beyond Hardt's text stands the imposing shadow of Hegel -- perhaps my only hesitation with its analysis. There is a desire to find unity in difference however radical this difference might be. The key problem of scholarship on Deleuze seem to be precisely how to read him -- is the project Deleuze has laid out to reread his texts as he has reread others? How is one to be Deluezian? This said, Hardt's work is exceptional in most areas.

Michael Hardt's and Antonio Negri's "Empire" proports to be the next big theory in philosophy after post-modernism. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, including Hobbes, Rosseau, Hegel, Foucalt and many others, Hardt and Negri try to explain the immensely complex framework of globalization in under 600 pages in complex, almost unreadable, writing.

Hardt's and Negri's thesis starts with the notion of the expanding borders of America. Through devices such as The Marshall Plan, Hardt and Negri argue that America has spread their cultural production throughout the world. This new "empire," however, is not based on physical presence of armies of imperalist countries, like the British Empire. Rather, it is based on flooding the world with neo-liberalist beliefs and structures.

Under "Empire," people are controlled through "bio-power," which is much like Foucalt's notion that enlightenment institutions socially construct humans and the way we think and act. Hardt and Negri comment that there are two essential ways to fight the impact of "Empire." The first is that people organize into "Wobbly" (Industrial Workers of the World) like bands of anarcho-syndicalists and effectively battle "Empire" at every stage. The other is on a much more personal level, and that is to reject "Empire" and its trappings of neo-liberalism materialism by following the example of St. Francis of Assisi. Through living in self-inflicted poverty, human beings can live in an alternative paradigm which rejects "Empire" and it's rampant free-market ideology.

"Empire" is certainly not a book for the "general" reader. One would have to be entrenched in academia or be an autodidact in philosophy in order to understand what Negri and Hardt write. Indeed, if one takes "Critique of Pure Reason" as a model for fluent prose stylings, then "Empire" is the book for you.

Hardt and Negri also seem to be so entrenched in their neo-marxist framework that they forgot to write about the horrors of communism. By effectively ignoring the atrocities commited under marxism, Hardt and Negri do a disservice to the left wing and to the readers by ignoring communist atrocities. In order for the left to effectively "move on" from the painful historical recollections of communist totaliarinism, books like "Empire" must effectively deal head on with the issues and not skirt them.

"Empire" is an ambitious book. Readers who approach this work with an open mind will be rewarded with numerous insights and a keener understanding of the world in which we live.

Reading the book is like being invited to listen to a dialogue between two great thinkers. One can sense the paragraphs that may have been written by the philosopher Michael Hardt from among those by the political scientist Antonio Negri. You are fascinated by the manner in which the exchange of ideas seems to create a kind of intellectual synergy, which in turn leads us to deeper and more penetrating analyses of the subject matter. It would be interesting to learn how the authors communicated with each other (Hardt is in the U.S. and Negri was in prison in Italy) to achieve this remarkable feat.

The book is divided into four sections. It may be helpful to look at each individually to better undestand why opinions about this book seem to vary so widely.

The first section on "Political Constitution" disscuses the characteristics of the empire dominating our postmodern world. The authors discuss the declining power of nation states and the increasing power of multinational corporations along with the institutions that regulate them (such as the IMF, UN, WTO etc.). The authors contend that the requirements of capital have created juridical norms that have literally enveloped all regions of the world, meaning that there is no longer an "outside" to the globalized capitalist regime.

Importantly, the authors draw on Michel Foucault's theories to describe the transformation from the "disciplinary society" in the imperialist era to the "society of control" in the current era of globalization. The term "biopower" is used to describe how the empire's values have become internalized by the multitude, allowing control to be exercised through the self-regulating actions of individuals participating in the market economy. On the other hand, Hardt and Negri contend that biopower may hold the key to the multitude's liberation from capitalism, an idea that is introduced here but is more fully developed out later in the book.

Section two on "Passages of Sovereignty" traces the rise of modernity and the state. This section has seven chapters and could almost be regarded as an excellent book-within-the-book. The topics discussed in this section include the emergence of the state and its relationship with the Enlightenment; the state's role in mobilizing citizens for capitalist production and war; the importance of slave labor to capitalism in Europe and the New World; and much more.

Hardt and Negri's concept of "network power" that is embedded within the U.S. constitution was particularly interesting. The authors contend that by locating power within the productive capacity of the citizens, the U.S. is uniquely capable of projecting capitalist power world-wide. However, they contend that this power is "imperial" (but not "imperialist") in that it primarily serves the interests of capital but not the state and its citizens. While some may take issue with the authors on this point, I believe that the prevalence of corporate tax scams, oil wars, trade agreements with non-existant labor standards and the like suggests that the authors may be right.

The third section is titled "Passages of Production". This is another substantive section containing six chapters that could almost be read as an independent work. Here, the authors draw heavily on Marx to discuss how society has responded to changing economic conditions. I found these chapters to be extremely well-written, offering concise and powerful analyses that helped me gain a new level of understanding.

A few of the topics discussed include the importance of the New Deal in resolving the "crisis of imperialism" manifested by the Great Depression and intra-capitalist war; the socio-political dynamics that led to postcolonial resistance in Vietnam and elsewhere; the emergence of world markets; and more.

Central to the analysis is a discussion of the enormous cultural changes in the 1960s. The authors state that the desire for personal liberation and freedom from the Fordist "factory-society" led to a profound restructuring of the "social mode of production". Capital responded to the crisis by privileging information technology and implementing more flexible, decentralized and inclusive forms of management. However, the Soviet Union's inability to abandon the disciplinary regime and its rigid, centralized management structure meant that it could not successfully make this transition.

Hardt and Negri's description of the postmodern world seems familiar. Most people have economic power and productive freedom but limited political power; the media produces entertaining "spectacle" but also perpetuates "superstitution" and inculcates "fear" of poverty; pockets of wealth have appeared in poor countries but the poor are increasingly visible in wealthy nations; and so on. While much of this has been stated elsewhere, the author's ability to tie these symptoms of globalization to their root causes is masterful and makes for compelling reading.

Section four is about the "Decline and Fall of Empire". In the spirit of Marx, Hardt and Negri hope to show how the times we live in may be different from past eras and hold the potential for revolutionary change. While I think that the case was convincingly made that the empire as the authors have defined it is indeed a new phenomenon, I was not convinced that the evolution to a society that Saint Francis of Assisi might endorse will necessarilly follow.

The authors return to the concept of biopower -- which might also be understood as their updated version of Marx's concept of class consciousness -- to make their case. They believe that the unprecendented mixing of people and ideas is enabling an "ontological human dimension" of biopower that is naturally people-centered, peaceful, and loving. Biopower will eventually realize its material existence when people coopt the means of production (especially information technology) and "cast off" the the violent apparatus of empire in favor of brotherhood, or a state of non-government. In the end, Hardt and Negri have imagined a world that slightly resembles a John Lennon song: a world with no countries and with income and resources available to all.

Whether one agrees with the authors' beautiful vision of the future, I think that this book easily deserves a 5 star rating. With hundreds of pages packed with outstanding research and an uncanny ability to synthesize a variety of sources into an unique vision, this book will no doubt stimulate thinking people for many years to come.

This dense and philosophically avant-garde tome is nonetheless passionate and compulsively readable, I found that I could not put it down after I picked it up. Even more remarkable is the facility with which Negri and Hardt facilitate both the history of the west and our contemporary postmodern terrain. Their central thesis is that the form of sovereignity that has characterized modernity is ending and that that there is a new form of sovereignity forming which they term 'Empire'. In doing this they examine Machiavelli, Spinoza, the founders of the U.S. political system, Marx, Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, Bill Gates and many others in creative blend of materialism, history, radical politics and philosophy. The criticisms of post-structuralist and postcolonial theory are especially timely. If you are tired of coventional liberal politics try this book headlined by Italy's most famous living philosopher and political prisoner - Toni Negri.