Multitude

[bricolage]

What does Negri mean by this? How does it differ to the idea of class?

Thank you.

[Искра]

To be honest i think that multitude is almost the same as proletariat.

I hope that this will help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitude#Reiteration_by_Negri_and_Hardt

Negri describes the multitude in his The Savage Anomaly as an unmediated, revolutionary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary), immanent, and positive collective social subject which can found a ‘nonmystified’ form of democracy ( p. 194). In his more recent writings with Michael Hardt, however, he does not so much offer a direct definition, but presents the concept through a series of mediations. In Empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_%28book%29) it is mediated by the concept of Empire (the new global constitution that Negri and Hardt describe as a copy of Polybius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius)'s description of Roman government):

New figures of struggle and new subjectivities are produced in the conjecture of events, in the universal nomadism […] They are not posed merely against the imperial system—they are not simply negative forces. They also express, nourish, and develop positively their own constituent projects. […] This constituent aspect of the movement of the multitude, in its myriad faces, is really the positive terrain of the historical construction of Empire, […] an antagonistic and creative positivity. The deterritorializing power of the multitude is the productive force that sustains Empire and at the same time the force that calls for and makes necessary its destruction. (Empire, p. 61)
They remain however vague as to this 'positive' or 'constituent' aspect of the Multitude:

Certainly, there must be a moment when reappropriation [of wealth from capital] and selforganization [of the multitude] reach a threshold and configure a real event. This is when the political is really affirmed—when the genesis is complete and self-valorization, the cooperative convergence of subjects, and the proletarian management of production become a constituent power. […] We do not have any models to offer for this event. Only the multitude through its practical experimentation will offer the models and determine when and how the possible becomes real. (Empire, p. 411)
In their sequel Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitude:_War_and_Democracy_in_the_Age_of_Empire) they still refrain from a clear definition of the concept but approach the concept through mediation of a host of ‘contemporary’ phenomena, most importantly the new type of postmodern war they postulate and the history of post-WWII resistance movements. It remains a rather vague concept which is assigned a revolutionary potential without much theoretical substantiation.
Sylvère Lotringer has criticized Negri and Hardt's use of the concept for its ostensible return to the dialectical dualism in the introduction to Paulo Virno's A Grammar of the Multitude (see external links).

[bricolage]

To be honest i think that multitude is almost the same as proletariat.

Hmmm yeah I thought so but I was on another forum where someone wrote;

"Negri explicitly separates classes from the multitude, on the basis that classes are created by the constituted power and the multitude, being the productive force, creates the constituted power."

I don't really get what he's on about though.