This article was first published by a commercial publisher. marxsite reprinted it in full; this archive does not.
Bashir Abu-Manneh's critique of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's *Empire*. He begins with the reception: a book that, after the declared death of grand narratives and emancipatory projects, told the grandest story of all — the totalisation of capital — and promised the most magnificent outcome, communism, and was duly celebrated in the liberal press. The New Statesman interviewed Negri under the headline that the left should love globalisation; the New York Times hailed the book as the next big idea and the master theory the humanities had been waiting for. Abu-Manneh's interest is in what that enthusiasm rests on, and in the claim at its centre, which he quotes from Hardt — that the present is an enormous historical improvement over imperialism and the international system.
Précis by Red Mole.
Read it at the publisher or the archived copy of the marxsite page.