From the working class to the multitude: critical balance of Hardt and Negri's proposal

Abstract

After the disappearance of socialist regimes, critical thinking has attempted to explain the current transformations of capitalism by resorting to seemingly novel theoretical tools that go "beyond Marx." One of the topics addressed by the new critical readings is that of the new subject of emancipation.

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri are among the most influential theorists in the discussion about the social subject. They understand that the social transformation of class relations has been consummated and that gigantic modifications have taken place in the social body of the working class.

In essence, the proposal refers to the loss of centrality of factory and the extension of the class struggle outside its borders. It Identifies a "new proletariat", made up of all the exploited and subdued, a global "multitude" with plurality of identities, which appears as the new political subject (anti-capitalist) with the potential for struggle and resistance.

In this work we intend to make a critical reading, from a sociological and not philosophical point of view, of Hardt and Negri's proposal regarding the new proletariat or multitude, and of the controversies it raised, twenty years after the publication of Empire.