Jon Beasley-Murray.Lenin in America. RM 13(3):149-154 "Comments on Hardt and Negri's Empire (2000), which inverts the current Leftist axiom that regards the ascendancy of global capitalism as a source of ""pessimism for the intellect, optimum for the will."" Their workerist perspective rejoins that all progress originates with and benefits the proletariat, and that the expansion of capitalism into globalization necessarily entails a like internationalization of working-class resistance. While the book is problematic on several grounds, particularly its privilege of formalism, the authors' cheery Americanism, and quasi-mystical invocations of Augustine, Saint Francis of Assisi, and other religious topoi, Empire nonetheless innovatively reinvigorates the arguments over globalization vs the decline of welfare-statism, and consumption vs production. 3 References. K. Coddon."