Michael Hardt is Professor of Literature and Italian at Duke University. Antonio Negri was an independent researcher and writer. He was formerly a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Paris and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Padua.

• Preface 1. The Political Constitution of the Present 1.1 World Order 1.2 Biopolitical Production 1.3 Alternatives within Empire 2. Passages of Sovereignty 2.1 Two Europes, Two Modernities 2.2 Sovereignty of the Nation-State 2.3 The Dialectics of Colonial Sovereignty 2.4 Symptoms of Passage 2.5 Network Power: U.S. Sovereignty and the New Empire 2.6 Imperial Sovereignty Intermezzo: Counter-Empire 3. Passages of Production 3.1 The Limits of Imperialism 3.2 Disciplinary Governability 3.3 Resistance, Crisis, Transformation 3.4 Postmodernization, or The Informatization of Production 3.5 Mixed Constitution 3.6 Capitalist Sovereignty, or Administering the Global Society of Control 4. The Decline and Fall of Empire 4.1 Virtualities 4.2 Generation and Corruption 4.3 The Multitude against Empire Notes Index

Michael Hardt and Tony Negri have given us an original, suggestive and provocative assessment of the international economic and political moment we have entered. Abandoning many of the propositions of conventional Marxism such as imperialism, the centrality of the national contexts of social struggle and a cardboard notion of the working class, the authors nonetheless show the salience of the Marxist framework as a tool of explanation. This book is bound to stimulate a new debate about globalization and the possibilities for social transformation in the 21st century.