Imperialism may be closer to globalization than one might think. Although imperialism as we know it no longer exists, the idea of empire lives on. And it is—as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri analyze in EMPIRE—the new political order of globalization. This book shows how the emerging empire is not so different from the European imperialist domination and capitalist expansion that occurred in the early 19th and 20th centuries, respectively. Only today's "empire" brings elements of American constitutionalism, with its multicultural tradition of border expansion. Hardt and Negri analyze the cultural, economic, and legal changes that have occurred in recent decades and show how they are easier to identify than to grasp. And they go further: they insist that these changes only make sense if dissected linearly and compared to our own definition of empire throughout the ages, a universal order that knows no limits or boundaries. EMPIRE identifies a sudden shift in the concepts that form the very philosophical basis of modern politics—such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri relate this philosophical shift to economic and cultural upheavals in postmodern society—the new form of racism, new concepts of identity and difference, new technologies of information, communication, and control, and new immigration routes. The authors also demonstrate the power of transnational corporations and the growing predominance of recent forms of labor and production. More than a simple analysis, EMPIRE is a work of political philosophy that examines regimes of exploitation and control in our world order, seeking a new, truly democratic political paradigm. Michael Hardt is a professor of literature at Duke University. He is the author of *Gilles Deleuze - An Apprenticeship in Philosophy* and co-author, with Antonio Negri, of *Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State-form*. He edited *Radical Thought in Italy* with Paolo Virno and *The Jameson Reader* with Kathi Weeks. He is currently researching the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Antonio Negri, an Italian social scientist and philosopher, was born in Padua in 1933. Sentenced to 13 years in prison, he exiled himself to Paris for 14 years. He returned to Italy and, since 1997, has been serving his sentence in Rebibbia Prison in Rome—currently in a semi-open regime. He is the author of *The Savage Anomaly—Power and Potency in Spinoza*; *The Politics of Subversion: A Manifesto for the 21st Century*; *Communists Like Us*, with Felix Guatarri; and *Constituent Power and the Modern State*.
