> t was a very important book for me when it came out. It allowed me to
> break out of a very limited concept of militancy, and synthesize a
> number
> of disparate ideas together. It also returned the conversation back
> to
> the revolutionary possibility contained in communism, in a way that
> I find
> far more committed to historical materialism than say Badiou.
The idea of the "multitude" is inconsistent with historical materialism.
It ignores the latter's idea of "communism" as requiring and expressing the "powers" of "universally developed" - of, in this sense, "enlightened" - "individuals".
An essential way capitalism was claimed to work to prepare the ground for this was by contributing "to the integral development of every individual producer" and in this way "fitting" them to undertake the "revolutionary praxis" that would then further "educate" them to the degree of "universality" necessary to enable them successfully to imagine and build social, political and economic relations from which all barriers to the full development of individual "enlightenment" had been eliminated.
The degree of "superstition" and "prejudice" that remains widespread makes the "multitude" incapable of initiating this kind of "revolutionary praxis".
Ted