In their book Empire1 the American literary theorist Michael Hardt and the Italian leftist activist and political scientist Antonio Negri warn us of the arrival of a new menacing but still barely visible world order gradually replacing old nation-state imperialism after the latter’s apparent demise. But is it not paradoxical to talk about post-imperialistic empire? Those who think so, they imply, have made the mistake of associating the particular oppressive techniques and logics of capitalism with capitalist oppression in general. Indeed, it is perhaps only natural to look for more sinister heirs to imperialism, for post-imperialistic globalization has obviously not turned out to be a brave new moral order (except in some Huxleyan sense). The postmodern capitalism of Empire, Hardt and Negri contend, has a lot to do with old imperialism namely as an apparatus of social oppression; what has changed (indeed a great deal) is only the form of subjugation and exploitation. The radical decentralization and informatization of production and consumption (which has duped some thinkers into believing that capitalism, together with its mechanism of exploitation theorized by Marx, is gone never to return) has bred a more merciless, imperceptible, yet less brutal and more vulnerable apparatus of control (if resistance is carefully and thoughtfully deployed).
Although the authors in general accuse postmodern philosophy of misjudging the world situation, they aspire to employ the term “postmodernism” as a designation of the corresponding historical period they try to theorize. (It would have been utterly ungrateful not to do something like that in view of their actual conscious association, collaboration, and obviously heavy debt, sometimes acknowledged but often not, to some of the main postmodernist political thinkers around—namely, Deleuze/Guattari and Foucault.) Indeed, it is inconceivable that their book should not make such references, for anyone broadly familiar with the contemporary intellectual scene has come to realize that a specter has been haunting all modernist philosophy—the specter of postmodernism. Deprecated as the dead-end of capitalism or just a new mimicry of the old modernity, or celebrated as a new progressive world with infinite creative potential, it has become clear that postmodernism just cannot be ignored either as a historical postmodernity, an ideology, or a vision for a new ethical, cultural, and social deal. Aspiring Marxists-Leninists (especially Leninists, looking for yet further stages of capitalism after its last refusal to collapse) view the postmodern as the next stage of capitalism which should be clearly identified and analyzed, and whose dehumanizing tendencies, identified by Marx long ago but now appearing in new sinister guises, can and must be opposed. But anyone (like me) who delights at any new “neo-Marxism” as a potentially viable competitor to the arrogant neo-liberal fusion of state and market cannot, after reading another brilliant analysis of capital’s triumph, fail to ask the ultimate question: is the alternative (if there is one) workable or is it just another utopia demanding too much of the intellectually enfeebled and brainwashed individual?