Michael Hardt's second talk was on the concept of Multitude, the focal topic of his and Antonio Negri's upcoming book, published by Penguin.
1. Multitude is suggested in contrast to the concept of the people and the social mutiplicities of the mob, masses or crowd. The later are manipulable, need a leader, and members become undifferentiated. The people is a unity, individuals set aside their differences, and can be sovereign. The multitude represents a multiplicity, it is a set of singularities, able to be an active subject, and thus to rule itself.
2. Multitude is also in contrast to the working class, which is based on exclusion of nonmembers (the unproductive labor, the unwaged classes). Under the framwork of Multitude, all forms of labor are productive. This concept gains value as the traditional working class has lost its hegemonic position over society. It has been replaced by immaterial labor and affective labor, whose product is immaterial, primarily intellectual, yet creates social life. Just as the working class was a minority when it became hegemonic, the immaterial labor is also a minority numerically, but hegemonic qualitatively, dictating trends, e.g., society has become affective, intelectual, informational, visual, etc.
3. Multitude is also an alternative to the party as a form of political organization. However, because it is all inclusive: where does it leave the issue of class struggle?
Listen to the lecture [Note - the file is over an hour and poor in sound quality]