Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri on Politics

"The refusal of work and authority, or really the refusal of voluntary servitude, is the beginning of liberatory politics."

"Our claim is that a common political project is possible. This possibility of course will have to be verified and realized in practice. … We are capable of democracy. The challange is to organize it politically."

"The political program of nation building in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq is one central example of the productive project of biopower and war. Nothing could be more postmodernist and antiessentialist than this notion of nation building."

"We are by no means opposed to the globalization of relationships as such—in fact, as we said, the strongest forces of Leftist internationalism have effectively led this process. The enemy, rather, is a specific regime of global relations that we call Empire."

"Every identity, such critics say, even the multitude, must be defined by its remained, those outside of it, call them exluded, the abject, or the subaltern. … There can certainly be points or nodes outside a network but none are necessarily outside. Its boundaries are indefinite and open. … None is necessarily exluded but theis inclusion is not guaranteed: the expansion of the common is a practical, political manner."