Multitude is a term of Spinoza's taken up by political theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in the international best-seller Empire (2000) and expanded upon in their recent War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004). Adopted in polemic opposition to the term "the people," (as well as to related figures of political subjectivity such as "class") which is associated by Hardt & Negri (and by other Italian and French political thinkers associated with Autonomist Marxism and its sequelae, including Sylvère Lotringer, Paolo Virno, and thinkers connected with the eponymous review Multitudes) with the work of Thomas Hobbes. The term refers to the population of the world who Hardt and Negri believe are increasingly networked and as such have the potential of overthrowing "Empire" and establishing genuine democracy.

See also

• Multitudes
• War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

External links

• Approximations: Towards an Ontological Definition of the Multitude by Antonio Negri
• Class or Multitude article by Michael Albert.
• Proletariat or Multitude? A Postanarchist Critique of Empire article by Jason Adams
• Marx or the multitude? Joseph Choonara's review of Hardt and Negri's book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire