Books for Burning

This essay narrates the author's experiences as a militant translator and publisher of Italian Autonomist Marxism, including many works by Antonio Negri, from the seventies to the present. He describes his recent discussions with Negri, and his personal indignation at finding the results of his labor posted free on the Internet is ironically compared with the collective indignation expressed by anticapitalist struggles in Europe, Africa, and the Arab world. The essay also assesses the contemporary value of Negri's thought, particularly the notions of the multitude and the common, for the analysis of and resistance to cognitive capitalism.