Assembly / Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

pt. I THE LEADERSHIP PROBLEM ch. 1 Where Have All the Leaders Gone? -- "Errors" of the Communards -- False assumption: Critique of leadership =​ refusal of organization and institution -- Leaderless movements as symptoms of a historical shift -- ch. 2 Strategy and Tactics of the Centaur -- Museum of revolutions past -- First call: Strategy to the movements -- A party of movements? -- ch. 3 Contra Rousseau; or, Pour en finir avec la souverainete -- Critique of representation -- Critique of constituent power -- Second call: Invent nonsovereign institutions -- First response: Ground political projects in social life -- Against the autonomy of the political -- ch. 4 The Dark Mirror of Right-Wing Movements -- To restore the unity of the people -- Populism and racialized property -- The violence of religious identities -- Poverty as wealth -- ch. 5 The Real Problem Lies Elsewhere
Blow the dam! -- Contents note continued: Second response: -- Seek the plural ontology of cooperative coalitions -- Third call: Take power, but differently -- Marxism against Das Kapital -- pt. II SOCIAL PRODUCTION
What does "from below" mean?
ch. 6 How to Open Property to the Common -- A bundle of rights -- The social properties of labor -- Third response: The common is not property -- Fable of the bees; or, passions of the common -- ch. 7 We, Machinic Subjects -- The relation of human and machine -- The changing composition of capital -- Fourth call: Take back fixed capital ("This fixed capital being man himself") -- Machinic subjectivities -- ch. 8 Weber in Reverse -- Weber's dream and Kafka's nightmare -- Sine ira et studio -- Digital Taylorism -- Fourth response: Smash the state -- The end of Mitteleuropa -- ch. 9 Entrepreneurship of the Multitude -- How to become an entrepreneur -- Fifth call: Entrepreneurship of the multitude -- Contents note continued: Social production social union social strike -- Taking the word as translation -- pt. III FINANCIAL COMMAND AND NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE ch. 10 Finance Captures Social Value -- Finance from above and from below -- Abstraction/​extraction -- The many faces of extraction -- From social production to finance -- Logistics and infrastructure in the social factory -- Marxist debates 1: Primitive accumulation -- ch. 11 Money Institutionalizes a Social Relation -- What is money and how does it rule? -- Objektiver Geist -- On private property and its dematerialization -- Crises arise from below -- Marxist debates 2: Crisis -- ch. 12 Neoliberal Administration Out of Joint -- Neoliberal freedom -- Crisis points of neoliberal administration -- Emptying the public powers -- Fifth response: Produce powerful subjectivities -- pt. IV NEW PRINCE ch. 13 Political Realism -- Power comes second -- The common comes first -- General strike -- Contents note continued: Extremism of the center -- ch. 14 Impossible Reformism -- Fixing the system -- Instituting counterpowers -- Indignation in the fog of war -- Empire today -- ch. 15 And Now What? -- A Hephaestus to arm the multitude -- A three-faced Dionysus to govern the common -- A Hermes to forge the coin of the common -- ch. 16 Portolan -- Wealth -- Institution -- Organization -- Exhortatio.

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.