The left should love globalisation: ‘Opponents of globalisation may have finally met their

match. The challenge comes not from the sharp suits of the

World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary

Fund, the World Bank, or even from Clare Short, but from a

middle-aged academic who is no stranger to direct-action

techniques. He is the man accused of leading the Italian

revolutionary left in the 1970s: Antonio Negri. Thirty-odd

years after he achieved notoriety in the student revolts of

1968, his new book, Empire (published by Harvard

University Press), has been hailed as “a communist manifesto

for our times”. It is a riposte both to the Jeremiahs on the

left who see globalisation as an unalloyed evil and to the

fatalists of the right who see it as a fait accompli that we

are powerless to change.’ New Statesman