not

THIS BOOK
is sequel to Empire {which described a current form of global order as networked power of nation-states (G8), institutions (WTO, NATO, IMF) and corporations, being constituted by permanent state of (civil) war}
Empire (new global form of sovereigny–empire) => Multitude (emerging global class formation–multitude) ~ reverse of Hobbes’ De Cive (1642; social body and forms of citizenship–nascent bourgeoisie which needed political power above it as abs.authority) => Leviathan (1651; future form of sovereignty–nation-state)

PREFACE
war
democracy
multitude = possibility of democracy on a global scale; also provides means to achieve it; alternative growing within Empire; is network in which all differences can be expressed freely and equally; is not identity / the people (is unitary conception; is single identity; is one); is not uniform / the masses (are indifferent; where all colors fade to gray); is not the working class (separates workers from owners who don’t work; separates industrial workers from service/agricultural workers; separates waged workers from unpaid laborers); has good model in internet (nodes are different but connected; new can always be added); internal differences of multitude must discover (or rather produce) the common that allows them to communicate/act together (while remaining different)
shifts in global economy – industrial working class no longer plays hegemonic role in global economy; production is not only in economic terms, but social production (of communications/relationships/forms of life)
the common = not the commons (refers to pre-capitalist-shared spaces that were destroyed by advent of private property); our communication/collaboration/cooperation are not only based on the common but they in turn produce the common in expanding spiral relationship; production of the common = central to every form of social production + is primary characteristic of new dominant forms of labor today
biopolitical production = newly dominant model of production; it not only involves the production of material goods in strictly economic sense but also touches on and produces all facets of social life, economic, cultural, and political; is strong pillar of multitude
“political” organization = second pillar of multitude; resistance/revolutionary orgs as not only means to achieve democracy, but to create internally the democratic relationships
Empire = new form of global order (no longer as imperialism via nation-state extending in a foreign territory)
network power = new form of sovereignty; its nodes = dominant nation-states + supranational institutions + major capitalist corporations + other powers; is “imperial”, not “imperialist”; is tendency; unilateralism (USA as dominant power) neither multilateralism (UN) are not just desirable but not even possible; perpetual war ~ state of (civil) war is inevitable in Empire and functions as instrument of rule; imperial peace (Pax Imperii) is false pretense of peace

WAR
[12-13] war si becoming permanent social relation
Clausewitz: war is a continuation of politics by other mean; today some theorists: war is becoming the primary organizing principle of society, and politics merely one of its means or guises
Mao: politics is simply a war without bloodshed
Gramsci: political strategies: either wars of position or war of maneuver
war has become regime of biopower – form of rule aimed not only at controlling population but producing/reproducing all aspects of social life
[14-15] consequences:
– limits of war are indeterminate, both spatially and temporally
– int’l relations and domestic politics become increasingly similar and intermingled
– reorientation of conception of the sides of battle or conditions of enmity (eg against terrorism)
[38-39] shift in int’l rels: not that much 1989, as 26 may 1972, when USA+USSR signed Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which regulated nuclear weapons production of 2 superpowers ~ mass bombing like @WW2 could no longer be part of art of war; war begun to be less oriented twd defending against coherent mega-threat and more focused on proliferating mini-threats; less intent on general destruction of enemy and more inclined twd transformation or even production of enemy; high-intensity police actions (~low-intensity warfare; eg US @Vietnam or Latin Am, or USSR @Afg) rather than all-out large-scale combat
[39] early 70s: 1971 delinking US$ from gold standard; 1973 first oil crisis; bgn of destruction of welfare state; bgn of shift of hegemony of econ.prod. from factory to more social/immaterial sectors
[40-41] “military-industrial complex” = simplification eliminating any real considerations of class conflict, insurgency, and movements of multitude; term was created to name a confluence of interests in imperialist phase of capitalist development bwn major corps and state military/policy apparatus (eg. Knupp steel works and German army; Dassault aviation manufacturing and Gaullist military policies; or Lloyds insurance and British imperialist projects; or Boeing and Pentagon); now rather “military-vital complex”

MULTITUDE
[196-197] flesh of the multitude produces in common in a way that always exceeds the measure of any traditional social bodies, and it doesn’t produce chaos and social disorder, but what it produces is common, and that common we share serves as the basis for future production, in a spiral, expansive relationship (eg. communication as production: we can communicate only on the basis of languages, symbols, ideas, and relationships we share in common, and in turn the results of our communication are new common languages, symbols, ideas and relationships); today this dual relationship between production and the common–the common is produced and it is also productive–is key to understanding all social and economic activity
[198] singularities interact and communicate socially on basis of the common, and their social comm. in turn produces the common; multitude is subjectivity that emerges from this dynamic of singularity and commonality
[199] shift from habit (american pragmatist philosophy) to performance as core notion of production of the common
[202] production of the common tends to displace trad.divisions bwn individual/society, subjective/objective, private/public
[203-204] WRONG: “private” = includes the rights and freedoms of social subjects together with the rights of private property, blurring the distinction between the two. this confusion results from the ideology of “possessive individualism” in modern legal theory, that conceives every aspect/attribute of subject, from its interests and desires down to its soul, as “properties” that are owned by individual, reducing all facets of subjectivity to the economic realm; “private” = subjective + material “possessions”; “public” = state control + what is held and managed in common; WE NEED alt legal strategy/framework: conception of privacy that expresses singularity of social subjectivities (not private property) and conception of public based on the common [commonality] (not state control)–one might say a postliberal and postsocialist legal theory; good example: “postsystems theory” school, which is molecular conception of law and production of norms that is based on constant/free/open interaction among singularities, which through their communication produces common norms
[204] community = often refers to moral unity that stands above population and its interactions like sovereign power
[204] the common IS NOT community; IS NOT public; it is based on communication among singularities and emerges through collaborative social processes of production
[205] neolib. legal frameworks – privatization of public goods (water, air, land, and all systems of mgmt of life: healthcare, pensions) and privatization of public services (telecom and other network industries, post, public transp., energy sys, edu); these public goods and services were very basis of modern sovereignty in hands of nation-state

/ Sylvère Lotringer has criticized Negri and Hardt’s use of the concept for its ostensible return to the dialectical dualism in the introduction to Paulo Virno’s A Grammar of the Multitude

http://burundi.sk/monoskop/log/?p=399