RETHINKING MARXISM Volume 13, Number 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2001) Tales from the Raj John Hutnyk What is Empire? What is not? Where is it? Where is it not? The most general back- and-forth questions to begin. We could start by asking whether there is now any- thing outside the Empire of capital. Hardt and Negri declare as their initial task “to grasp the constitution of the order being formed today” (2000, 3). It is undoubtedly helpful to see an increased arsenal of concepts available for the difficult task of nam- ing the conjuncture at which contemporary capitalism currently sits, but a deft han- dling of concepts requires careful contextualization and consideration. Notions of difference, hybridity, travel, subsumption, dialectic, multitude, and rights are, in various ways, all conjured with terms. There will be reason to examine the tricks more closely. It is also very good news to find these concepts discussed in a “postmodernist” text that does not pretend that the political heroes of the working class are never-to- be-mentioned ghosts. Stalin, Lenin, Luxemburg, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh are cited on occasion; names airbrushed out of the academy far too often are at least given recognition here. A kind of camouflage-oriented airbrushing wafted for many years throughout Western scholarship as demonic and un-American activities were reified and simplified and the notion of Marxism, and the future of Communism, became a congealed orthodoxy. Such misrepresentation is hard to dislodge, and it is welcome news that now at least some attempt to rework the terms has arrived. With these initial commendations, then, two levels of largely critical reflection are offered to animate readings of this big book Empire: the heritage of Marxism misrep- resented and deformed, and a barrage of concepts and their uses or abuses. I affirm again that this book is welcome. It releasesdiscussions that should and must be had. However, the fuse starts to burn, the theater lights dim, someone shouts action . ..