Abstract
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri published Empire in 2000. A year later it had gone through its seventh printing. One reviewer on the book's back cover, in a quotation from the centrist journal Foreign Affairs, called the text `a sweeping neo-Marxist vision'. A second back cover reviewer from the leftist New Left Review proclaimed it had `visionary intensity'. Unfortunately, I do not `get' the `vision thing', though I do appreciate that Empire does make some claims that will be treasured by reactionaries. I find my lack of vision disturbing because, like the authors, I am of the left, and would prefer to strengthen Marxist tradition. Probably my lack of vision results from the fact that I am a simpleton, who did not `get' it because you could not get it. Permit a few paragraphs outlining the views of a simpleton, which will guide analysis of imperial visionary claims.
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