As announced by his daughter Anna with an Instagram post, Italian philosopher, political scientist, activist, and politician Toni Negri died today.
For his links with radical left-wing organizations like Potere Operaio and Autonomia Organizzata, the current Italian Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano – who is trying to reboot fascist hegemony in culture through exhibitions that pay respect to a Tolkien-inspired fantasyland imagined by right-wing powers – commenting upon his death, called Negri "a bad teacher".
In response to this statement, I'm republishing here a condensed version of an interview I did with Negri in 2002 for an American publication. In the interview Negri spoke about the concepts of Empire, labor, multitude, war and immigration, as tackled by him and Michael Hardt in the volume Empire.
The interview was actually subtitled "A lesson by Toni Negri" as it was conceived as a mini-essay about the principles analyzed in Empire. Readers of this site may also remember how I discussed the theme of a fashion empire in a previous post that was also inspired by Negri's writings. Negri is survived by his partner, the French philosopher Judith Revel, and by his children from previous relationships Anna, Francesco and Nina.
In the Spires of the Empire: A Lesson by Toni Negri
by Anna Battista (2002)
"He's in the foyer, doing an interview," a guy whispers to his friend beside me as he hastily takes a seat among the audience at the Michetti Theatre in Pescara, Italy. Shortly after, the man we've all been anticipating, quietly enters the theatre room, avoiding to draw attention. Behind me, a lady comments softly to a friend, "He looks older… after what he went through…" While Toni Negri's life has been marked by numerous dramatic events, tonight, those years seem lost in the folds of time, finally left behind, distant eons away. Interestingly, he harbors no resentment towards anyone, as he later asserts, "Resentment is the worst quality of a free man." Tonight, Toni Negri isn't dwelling on his past; he's here to discuss his latest book, co-authored with Professor Michael Hardt, titled Empire.
A step into the past
In the '60s, Antonio Negri was teaching State Theory at the University of Padua, in Italy. His works mainly focused on themes like labour theory and work. During these years he also joined the Marxist journal "Quaderni Rossi" and started taking part in Potere Operaio (Workers' Power), a radical left-wing Italian political group. When the latter split up, Negri moved with another one, Autonomia Organizzata (Workers' Autonomy). Italy was living then the so-called "anni di piombo" ("lead years"), an expression that defined the '70s and the violence that spawned terrorist groups like the Red Brigades. On 7th April 1979, Negri, accused of being the head of various terrorist organizations, was arrested in Milan. In the four years that followed, Negri was moved from one prison to another and was also accused of being the organizer of the murder of politician Aldo Moro. In 1983, when Negri's trial took place, the accusation of having been part of terrorist organisations was dropped and Negri was condemned on the substance of his writings.
On 25th and 26th June of the same year, Negri ran as candidate for the Italian Radical Party and, after obtaining parliamentary immunity, he came out of prison. Months passed and the Chamber of Deputies requested to withdraw parliamentary immunity from Negri. In September 1983, instead of going back to prison, Negri escaped to France where he spent fourteen years, teaching political science at the Université de Paris VIII (Saint Denis), studying and writing.
In 1997, Negri went back to Italy, where he entered Rebibbia prison in Rome to serve his sentence. Thousands of articles were published on international newspapers about Negri's case. Amnesty International studied his case and the trials that followed, that were considered unfair. In the meantime, Negri continued writing for various magazines about politics and focusing on developing with Michael Hardt a trilogy that started with Empire.
A step into the future
Marx Beyond Marx (Pluto Press, 1991), The Savage Anomaly (1991), Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State (1999; both published by the University of Minnesota Press) are listed among Antonio Negri's most studied works, but there is one essay which is at present considered as being the best one – Empire (published by Harvard University Press). The book was finished in June 1997, before Negri went back to Italy to be arrested. The last page of the book – in which the authors state that we are living in the same situation St. Francis of Assisi was in, divided between the joy of being alive and the misery created by power – was written then, and yet, the volume deals with something, an evolutionary process, which is happening right now.
Negri and Hardt, who previously published together the volume Labor of Dionysus (1994, University of Minnesota Press), theorise in Empire the death of the nation state and the rising of a new power, the result of the various capitalistic processes occurred throughout history. The book, divided in four parts, tackles issues such as the new Empire, the concepts of labor and multitude, immigration, wars and the final destruction of the Empire. Hardt and Negri do not tend to identify the Empire with a single nation, but they claim that the proper Empire is a sort of place without boundaries, which is forming right now, through a thick network of new laws and regulations. Though it is still forming, the new power is already going through a deep crisis, analysed in the last part of the book, in which, very optimistically, the two authors confide into the power of the multitude to destroy the Empire.
"The book I co-wrote with Hardt is rather old, we finished compiling it around 1997-98," Negri starts remembering, explaining, "The Empire forms when the nation state and the national space are incapable of taking proper control. The workers' struggles in the capitalistic countries, the anti-colonial struggles in the ex-colonial countries and the struggles for freedom in the socialist countries, have little by little transformed the space controlled by the modern sovereignty. As a first consequence, the capital had to establish new wider structures to contain these groups."
According to Negri, the formation of an "Empire" is in progress through attempts at regulation and rule creation. He emphasizes that sovereignty is shifting away from individual nations, raising questions about who exercises it and within what limits. Negri acknowledges the challenges of the present, asserting that reverting to the nation-state as a defense against the emerging global order is not viable due to the crisis faced by nation-states. He highlights the three characteristics of sovereignty: organizing an army, coining currency, and determining local culture. "But all these things aren't possible right now in a modern nation state," Negri states. "At present, only the Empire can organise warfare, only the world market influences currency minting and, from the cultural point of view, a nation can't really have a cultural monopoly." Negri underscores the significant and consequential nature of the Empire's formation process, describing it as a complex and impactful journey.
Among the various consequences of the process which is forming the Empire, Negri underlines one in particular, the concept of labor.
Negri emphasizes a significant consequence of the ongoing process shaping the Empire, focusing particularly on the concept of labor. Labor has undergone a transformation into the immaterial, a characteristic amplified by the third revolution that has supplied the technological means to develop labor in these forms.
"Today, for those engaged in intellectual and immaterial work, the distinction between the working day and the temporal day disappears," Negri says. "Labor evolves into a vital activity, embodying the intellectual or linguistic capacity to create new values. Now, individuals can independently generate a product. In the past, during the transition from capitalism to the era of large-scale industry, workers were provided with tools and instruments by the master or owner when they went to work. However, the dynamics have shifted: work now involves expressing intellectual and linguistic abilities, and individuals own the tools and instruments for their work. This elevates the virtues of each individual, marking the end of the class concept."
Previously, the concept of class and mass had a subordinate value, it was indeed the capital that formed a class. Today, the situation has changed and the capitalist no longer provides the tools. "Individuals possess the instruments for work because they are alive, engage in activities, cooperate with others, and produce language. Language, in turn, determines production and valorization," Negri explains, continuing, "while sovereignty expands, intellectual strength grows. This transformation reshapes the anthropological structure. When labor aligns with the individual, everything undergoes modification. The attempt to exert sovereignty faces a formidable force comprised of individuals possessing the instruments for work."
In "Empire," a new concept, that of the "multitude," is also formulated, representing all individual subjects. "The multitude is a process born out of singularity, a clear inclination to come together and find unity," explains Negri. "These singularities first and foremost constitute a multiplicity."
Negri intends the term "people" as referring to the group delegating authority to the state, while with "multitude" he defines the the reassertion of individual singularities. "When we speak of multitude, we reference a power opposing the Empire," he says, adding "today, multitudes are not obstacles but represent an inherent limit that cannot be surpassed. The multitude serves as a boundary to the world market."
But beyond the concepts of multitude and mass, another issue Negri cannot avoid discussing is war. In his view, war intervenes in the process of forming the Empire as an element that undeniably renews the control technique. However, also the definition of war has changed.
"Once, with 'war,' we indicated 'politics'; war meant making politics but with other means, a definition linked to a secular Machiavellian tradition," he states. "Is war today a continuation of politics? No, it actually stands at the foundation of politics; it is the regulating principle of the world, presenting itself as the governing element of the political reorganization of the world market. War now takes place against an enemy that isn't territorially defined. The enemy is within the Empire, a public enemy inscribed in imperial space."
"In modern history, when we spoke about an enemy within the national space, it implied that the police had to face it. The war in the Empire becomes police from a theoretical point of view. War is not the destructive conflict in which millions of men were thrown into trenches and set against each other. Before 9/11, the American army system underwent reform: it transformed so that the army became a sort of police force, divided into small units capable of surviving for long periods, transported to various parts of the world whenever and wherever needed. Intelligence and secret services are no longer considered parallel institutions to the army but are integrated into the military force. War and police do not identify with each other, but the two concepts are getting closer and closer, in a relation of continuity. Low-intensity war is identified with high-intensity police. We face such a situation in Israel, and we encountered it in Genoa. The enemy is a public enemy linked to the forms and problems of the structures. Often, the enemy is identified with immigrants, it is a mobile enemy."
Thus, Negri introduces the immigration issue, also analyzed in Empire: "The struggle against emigration, attempting to confine this workforce that moves in such an impetuous way globally, is one of the most horrible examples proving that the 'war-police' relationship is forming," he highlights.
In his opinion, the Empire's inability to control demographic and emigrating movements becomes one of the top priorities on the agenda of the 'war-police' relationship. In the emigration flux, we only see the immense sufferings of the emigrating multitude, and we feel compassion towards them. "To feel sympathetic towards these people is a good thing, a right thing to do," he comments, continuing, "but within these movements, we must also see the population's search for self-expression. Moving is a rebellious act, an extremely positive act. We must consider migrating populations as people who want to build new forms of freedom, positive elements breaking down the enclosures."
After talking about Empire, Negri moves on to talk about the journal "Posse". The name of the journal comes from Latin, it indicates the verb "to be able to", "posse" indicates what a body and a soul can do together, Negri and Hardt claim in Empire. The first issue of the journal was entitled 'Vivere nell'Impero' ('Living in the Empire') and it took into consideration a few themes developed in Empire. "We wanted to verify the things we had stated in our book and we started developing an inquiry on the job situation, observing how the multitude works in a new way, living in a condition of territorial mobility and flexibility, working in a society rather than in the factory, creating production through cooperation. We wanted to understand how the Empire functions in productive situations. What is extraordinary right now is that labor has truly changed and is returning to the center of our attention, as it was for Marx."
At the end of his presentation at the Michetti Theatre, Negri concludes his speech stating, "Once we used to say 'It is right to rebel'. Now they prefer to say 'Another world is possible'".
In Empire, Hardt and Negri draw a parallel between the new power and the Roman Empire: it can be divided into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy – the fundamental trinity at the core of the ancient Empire. The army and organizations like NATO or the G8 nations represent the monarchy, while the aristocracy is composed of multinational corporations. Finally, democracy is embodied by various non-governmental organizations and the multitude.
Like a million-footed body, the multitude moves against the Empire, confronting the new global sovereignty, ready to subvert it and tailor it to its needs. Predicting the form of government that the future multitude may attain is challenging, we might say, paraphrasing Leon Trotsky's Literature and Revolution, but it is easy to hope that, like the human beings mentioned by Trotsky, the multitude will become "immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; their bodies will become more harmonized, their movements more rhythmic, their voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human being will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge, new peaks will rise."
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