Why Hardt and Negri’s Understanding of Labour is Imprac- tical in the Field Studies on the Social Class Phenomenon?

This article examines Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s ideas on class and labour relations. Negri and Hardt sufficiently explain the change of capitalist production process in trilogy (Empire, Multitude and Commonwealth) in which how the relation between the material and immaterial labour evolves is formulated. They assert that the immaterial labour is the hegemonic labour today and the Multitude is a kind of answer which will be the main political actor against the capitalist system. Of course their discourse is charming and supported by many people. Their ideas are important to see the big picture but unadoptable to understand the details of that big picture. Eventually, the article’s main argument is that Negri and Hardt’s understanding of labour is impractical and feeble in the field studies, provided that some useful aspects in the structure of their ideas to be demonstrated for researchers interested in the field. The article suggests that post-weberian Luc Boltanski’s analysis is more useful to understand class details than Negri ans Hardt’s theory.