"Empire" As A Book Of Revelation:21St Century Capitalist World Order,Production And Rebellion

《Empire》 is a political philosophy work published in2000, co-authored by Italian philosopher Antonio Negri and his companion, the American scholar Michael Hardt. The publication of this work caused great stir among Chinese and international academic circles. In their work N&H analyzed the structure of21st century capitalistic order, and defined it in terms of an "Empire" which is overtly different from the traditional imperialist notion. As the manifestation of a new historical trend,"Empire"’s basic characteristics are the absence of boundaries, the "Empire" is an apparatus of power with no centre and no end. Imperial culture is characterized by post-modernistic production of heterogeneity within the framework of capitalistic logic, moreover, an important feature of the political structure of Imperial political structure is the power of transnational organizations and multinational companies (by means of official or informal representation) and their overstepping predominance over the traditional national sovereignty.In addition to relying on traditional means, the system of imperial rule is more dependent on the control of the media industry. The dominant economic system of the "Empire" is in fact mainly based on immaterial production. Besides, in N&H’s opinion, the "Empire" phase of capitalist oppression and exploitation on the multitude is more intensive than ever, in respect of this issue, N&H refuse the use of traditional violent modes of social resistance against capitalism can no longer work, traditional labor struggle on the contrary will increase "Empire" strength.Therefore, N&H advocate the abandonment of traditional class struggles, and aim to discover a new potential for revolutionary subject in the miscellaneous multitudes of immigrants, in order to forge it in the form of a new subject of revolutionary tight through the guidance of the "Existentialist theory of Revolution" In the book, N&H formulated the goals of struggle against "Empire"" in terms of "global citizenship","universal social reward" and the re-possession of knowledge, information and emotional world.My dissertation aims to sort out and analyze various concepts and ideas stressed above, offering a comprehensive and thought-provoking interpretation of the "Empire".During the process of analysis, I also took issue with some theories discussed by Negri, such as the classical theory of Marxism, Lukacs’ theory of class consciousness, Gorz’s eco-marxist theory, Mc Luhan’s media theory, Debord’s theory of the society of spectacle, Jameson’s postmodern cultural theory of capitalism, Althusser’s theory of ideology, Laclau&Moffe’s post-marxist theory, Hegel’s master and slave dialectic theory, Lazzaratto’s theory of immaterial production, Foucault’s micropower theory, etc.I deem that an open-visioned analysis not only would allow us to better understand N&H’s "Empire", it would also be conducive to the re-understanding of Marxism and the context of21st century historical background, in addition, it would let us to make a proper evaluation of the new developmental trends of Western Marxism.