alance or seek to democratize capital’s globalization project. The authors note how such changes have had an impact on basic laborers and common workers. Ironically, the authors argue that despite all of our communication advances, the struggles of workers are largely silenced, “In our much celebrated age of communication, struggles have become all but incommunicable” (Hardt et al., 54). Citing such incidents as Tiananmen Square, Chiapas, South Korea and others, the authors argue these struggles exhibit no communication or connection and cannot be compared. They argue “the proletariat is not what it used to be, but that does not mean it has vanished” (Hardt et al., 53).
Hardt and Negri argue that the struggles of workers are not communicated because of the changing global structures. Instead of being able to enter into a cyclical pattern on the horizontal level, workers are prevented from doing so because they have to jump up right away onto the global level. As they argue, the struggles of workers are “blocked from traveling horizontally in the form of a cycle and are forced instead to leap vertically and touch immediately on the global level” (Hardt et al., 55). The authors seem to fall short of the analysis of labor because of neglecting its social movement. It may prove to be in future that the social movement of labor will be a significant factor in a democratic move to balance globalization on the level of Empire.
The book is divided into three sections. The first analyzes the new world order and explains the new type of sovereignty (Empire) that has evolved. The main hypothesis proposed by the authors is that this sovereignty is now comprised of different elements than traditional powers. Instead, they claim that sovereignty in the postmodern global economy is “composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule” (Hardt et
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