For The New York Times Sunday Book Review to have Francis Fukuyama review Michael Hardt and Toni Negri’s new book Multitude is like having Kenneth Starr review Bill Clinton’s autobiography. Since Fukuyama has long claimed that globalized, “free-market” capitalism is the End of History, the ultimate realization of human social and political development (albeit an achievement that is threatened by fundamentalism, narrow nationalism, and posthuman science), of course he will be blind to Hardt and Negri’s vision of an alternative to capitalist domination. I haven’t read Multitude yet, and there was a lot I found to disagree with in Hardt and Negri’s previous volume, Empire, but Hardt and Negri are profound thinkers whose ideas are a necessary starting point for anybody who wants to think about democratic alternatives to the current world order. I’m not in the least bit surprised that The Times Book Review should seek to foreclose such a discussion from the get-go, by commissioning Fukuyama’s predictable review; but it’s important to make a point of this, precisely because The Times is so influential, and so central to what passes for mainstream book and intellectual culture.
The Politics of Book Reviewing
For The New York Times Sunday Book Review to have Francis Fukuyama review Michael Hardt and Toni Negri’s new book Multitude is like having Kenneth Starr review Bill Clinton’s autobiography. Since Fukuyama has long claimed that globalized, “free-market” capitalism is the End of History, the ultimate realization of human social and political development (albeit an achievement that is threatened by fundamentalism, narrow nationalism, and posthuman science), of course he will be blind to Hardt and Negri’s vision of an alternative to capitalist domination. I haven’t read Multitude yet, and there was a lot I found to disagree with in Hardt and Negri’s previous volume, Empire, but Hardt and Negri are profound thinkers whose ideas are a necessary starting point for anybody who wants to think about democratic alternatives to the current world order. I’m not in the least bit surprised that The Times Book Review should seek to foreclose such a discussion from the get-go, by commissioning Fukuyama’s predictable review; but it’s important to make a point of this, precisely because The Times is so influential, and so central to what passes for mainstream book and intellectual culture.