Assembly
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
In recent years "leaderless" social movements have proliferated around the globe, from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe, the Americas, and East Asia. Some of these movements have led to impressive gains: the toppling of authoritarian leaders, the furthering of progressive policy, and checks on repressive state forces. They have also been, at times, derided by journalists and political analysts as disorganized and ineffectual, or suppressed by disoriented and perplexed police forces and governments who fail to effectively engage them. Activists, too, struggle to harness the potential of these horizontal movements. Why have the movements, which address the needs and desires of so many, not been able to achieve lasting change and create a new, more democratic and just society? Some people assume that if only social movements could find new leaders they would return to their earlier glory. Where, they ask, are the new Martin Luther Kings, Rudi Dutschkes, and Stephen Bikos?
With the rise of right-wing political parties in many countries, the question of how to organize democratically and effectively has become increasingly urgent. Although today's leaderless political organizations are not sufficient, a return to traditional, centralized forms of political leadership is neither desirable nor possible. Instead, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue, familiar roles must be reversed: leaders should be responsible for short-term, tactical action, but it is the multitude that must drive strategy. In other words, if these new social movements are to achieve meaningful revolution, they must invent effective modes of assembly and decision-making structures that rely on the broadest democratic base. Drawing on ideas developed through their well-known Empire trilogy, Hardt and Negri have produced, in Assembly, a timely proposal for how current large-scale horizontal movements can develop the capacities for political strategy and decision-making to effect lasting and democratic change. We have not yet seen what is possible when the multitude assembles.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Political theorists Hardt and Negri return with their latest installment in a series reimagining Marxism for the present. In this hopeful study, they extend their concept of the multitude (a nonhegemonic group of people) in order to develop a dynamic concept of assembly defined as "the power of coming together and acting politically in concert." The book is nominally organized as a "call-and-response" in which Hardt and Negri reappropriate concepts familiar from neoliberalism, such as those concerning production, leadership, and entrepreneurship, to instead describe features of a radically democratic, noncapitalist society. For example, in their analysis, the concept of a leader is transformed from the "one who decides" to a person holding a temporary office beholden to the multitude's needs. In order to arrive at these reappropriated and subverted concepts, the authors unpack principles and practices central to capitalism, such as private property and political sovereignty. The "commons" becomes an idealized space in which freedom and equality can be achieved. The book is a smart and in-depth examination of Marxist politics for a new century, but will definitely have its critics, even from the left, for its break with tradition and far-reaching claims. This work is a fascinating, challenging theoretical journey into a future beyond capitalism.
