Operaismo is a variegated tendency, the positions of whose main representatives have developed considerably over the years

Operaismo means ‘workerism’. In countries like France the term refers to the (over)valuation – not free of anti-intellectualism – of the industrial working class, its culture and organizations. In Italy its meaning is the converse.

a concept developed by Foucault – ‘biopower’ – which refers to the government of populations and bodies that Foucault believed had emerged in the nineteenth century

Empire is a ‘smooth space’, as Hardt and Negri put it with reference to a concept coined by Deleuze. It does not experience the ‘asperities’ that are the borders or political and/or economic inequalities characteristic of the national ancien régime.

By dint of their reticular, mobile character, transnationals therefore possess primacy in the context of Empire, reducing states to the rank of mere ‘instruments’.