I guess they're finally paying attention to some of the products of the New Economy they're supporting. :-)
Solidarity,
John
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Mr. Mojo Risin'--The New Left, Again? http://www.socialdemocrats.org/notes-7-01.html#Omen The hope that the anti-globalization movement can bring a revival of the New Left has been taking shape for some years in the little magazines, in the crannies of the NGO world and in the buzz of the internet and alternative radio. But what was laughed off as mere Sixties nostalgia when it first emerged is beginning to gain the momentum of a true revival. One interesting bit of evidence for this New Left revival is the hot market for the book "Empire," to which the New York Times (July 7, 2001) breathlessly attributes "the Next Big Idea." Its authors are Duke University's Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, an Italian currently under house arrest for inciting violence in Rome during the 1970s. "Empire" has been sold out for some time in bookstores in Washington and New York, but will soon be back in print in no less than ten languages. [Readers of Notesonline can download it in Adobe Acrobat at: http://www.hup.harvard.edu//pdf/HAREMI.pdf
The thesis of "Empire" is that globalization and technology are dividing the world between "the multitude" and "the Empire," the system that organizes production. But because economic production is now based in knowledge and social interaction, the disenfranchised multitude will in due course rebel and do away with the chains of Empire. Sound familiar?
Many on the moderate left have argued that globalization needs to be shaped by a new social contract, a global New Deal, that would temper raw capitalism with some regard for social consequences. "Empire" looks on such half- measures with disdain, and presses on toward The Final Conflict.