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July 28, 2004
Hardt & Negri end chapter one by making the turn to the materialist teleology of Spinoza, who proclaimed at the dawn of modernity that the prophet produces its own people. They say that along with Spinoza:
" ...we should recognize prophetic desire as irresistible, and all the more powerful the more it becomes identified with the multitude. It is not at all clear that this prophetic function can effectively address our political needs and sustain a potential manifesto of the postmodern revolution against Empire, but certain analogies and paradoxical coincidences do seem striking. For example, whereas Machiavelli proposes that the project of constructing a new society from below requires "arms" and "money" and insists that we must look for them outside, Spinoza responds: Don't we already posses them? Don't the necessary weapons reside precisely within the creative and prophetic power of the multitude? Perhaps we, too, locating ourselves within the revolutionary desire of postmodernity, can in turn respond: Don't we already possess "arms" and "money"? The kind of money that Machiavelli insists is necessary may in fact reside in the productivity of the multitude, the immediate actor of biopolitical production and reproduction. The kind of arms in question may be contained in the potential of the multitude to sabotage and destroy with its own productive force the parasitical order of postmodern command."
They then say that today a manifesto should aspire to fulfill a Spinozist prophetic function, the function of an immanent desire that organizes the multitude. There is not finally here any determinism or utopia: this is rather a radical counterpower, ontologically grounded not on any "vide pour le futur" but on the actual activity of the multitude, its creation, production, and power-a materialist teleology.
And, on this romantic note, so ends chapter one.
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