World Order and Citizenship

Empire and Multitude For Hardt and Negri, the concepts of the "Multitude" and "Empire" share an interrelationship in terms of the world order of any era. Indeed, the concepts function in concomitance in bringing about a viable order according to which nations live during a given era in history, and also today. Historically, the concept of the multitude functioned nationally: the majority of citizens create a national empire to rule them according to their vision of what such rulership should entail.

For each country, rulership then occurred on a differential basis, with each citizenry rebelling against or accepting and thus forming the empire concept of their ideal. The empire then also responds to the demands and the needs of the multitude it rules by modifying its rulership to satisfy the multitude. An unsatisfied multitude rebels or objects, demanding further modification. It is therefore a dynamic relationship between entities, where the one satisfies the demands of the other according to the ideals and values of the culture and the time.

In Empire, however, the authors note that the multitude and empire concepts today manifest themselves on a much larger scale than had been the case to date (p.400). Indeed, the multitude and empire function on a global scale, with citizens from all countries demanding the privileges and rights of global citizenry. Specifically, this manifests itself in capital and labor structure in the globalized world. The rise of capitalist and world dominating societies have resulted in an interdependence between these societies and workers from smaller communities.

Workers migrate to large capitalist societies in order to create a more prosperous life for themselves and their families. Capitalist countries depend upon them for labor in order to create capital. In return, workers demand citizen rights in the countries where they work. As such, systems are in place to provide workers with these rights, and the empire, depending upon the workers, modifies itself accordingly (p. 400). Global citizenship comes into play with the choice of the migrating multitude.

In addition to citizenship rights within a specific country, the multitude also demands the right to make decisions regarding its own movements. It demands the right to choose where to move and the purpose for movement, as well as to remain in place if this is the preference. As such, citizenship has become a matter of choice, according to movement that occurs by choice rather than by necessity.

The above-mentioned demand for choice radically modifies the traditional structure of the national empire towards a global structure, in which the empire no longer has absolute control over production and indeed over the life of the multitude. This modification of empirical structure comes with the modification of the global citizenship structure. As citizens in individual countries are increasingly aware of their rights firstly as human beings and secondly as citizens, the phenomenon is increasingly globalized.

As such, the empire is obliged to heed the demand of the multitude in order to ensure that the needs of the empire are also met in an acceptable and continuous manner.