Abstract

The following article has its origins in a debate that took place among collaborators of the French journal Cahiers pour l'Analyse concrète concerning the book Empire, by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Among the participants in the discussion, some were susceptible to the powers of seduction created by the "revolutionary" rhetoric which the book deploys. Others, notably among the Italian collaborators of the journal, were all the more worried by the implications of its theses, as regards both historical aims and the class arrangements they implied on a global scale. These theses struck them as dangerous and in certain ways reminiscent of proto-fascist political currents of the inter-war period. They were alarmed by the powers of seduction exercised by the book, notably within Marxist milieus, and by the lack of critical responses able to counter its worldwide dissemination. In order to clarify the debate, and not to remain at the level of simple opinion, a systematic study of the text was undertaken. Pursued collectively, this work concentrated on surveying its principal notions and their various usages, and on contrasting the conceptual armor of the discourse with its rhetorical appeals. Once this decoding was done, a sound foundation for critique would be available. To provide such a foundation is the objective of the present article.