Atilio A. Boron is professor of political theory at the University of Buenos Aires and executive secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). He is a political scientist and sociologist educated in Argentina and Chile, and holds a doctoral degree from Harvard University. He has taught for many years in some of the most important academic institutions of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Puerto Rico. In the United States he was visiting professor at the universities of Columbia, MIT, Notre Dame and UCLA, and in Europe he lectured at Warwick and Bradford in England. He has published widely in several languages a variety of books and articles on political theory and philosophy, social theory, and comparative studies on the capitalist development in the periphery.

A critique of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's influential book on imperialism, Empire.

Prologue to the English-language EditionPreface1. On Perspectives, the Limits of Visibility and Blind Spots2. The Constitution of the Empire3. Markets, Transnational Corporations and National Economies4. Alternative Visions of the Empire5. The Nation-State and the Issue of Sovereignty6. The Unsolved Mystery of the Multitude7. Notes for a Sociology of Revolutionary Thinking in Times of Defeat8. The Persistence of Imperialism9. Epilogue

In 2001 Harvard Unversity Press published a post-modern analysis of imperialism by the Harvard scholar Michael Hardt and the independent Italian left-wing intellectual Toni Negri. The book, Empire, quickly became a huge bestseller in the US. Many other left-wing intellectuals, however, have been deeply disturbed by the book, feeling that it is analytically deeply misconceived, has unfortunate implications for political resistance to imperialism, and that it ignores both the experience and intellectual analysis of thinkers from the South.Atilio Boron is one of those. He argues that Hardt and Negri's concept of 'imperialism without an address', though well intentioned, ignores most of the fundamental parameters of imperialism. The nation state, far from weakening, remains a crucial agent of capitalism, deploying a large arsenal of economic weaponry to protect and extend its position and actively promoting globalization in its own interests.