Behind every revolution lurks a set of heavy tomes. The frenzy of men and women of action is often fuelled by the carefully worked out thoughts of philosophers. The French Revolution can be traced back to Rousseau, international communism to Karl Marx's patient dissection of the vices of capitalism, and the rise of the 1960s New Left was partly kindled by writers like Herbert Marcuse.The past six months saw a cluster of demonstrations and occupations across Europe. Those protests, along with the uprisings of the Arab Spring, helped inspire the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street movement, which in turn is prompting solidarity actions across the continent, including Toronto and Vancouver next weekend. So who qualifies as today's Marx or Marcuse?
The one book that both predicted and helped shape the current wave of radicalism is Empire, a dense and controversial study of globalization by the Italian political philosopher and activist Antonio Negri and the American literary theorist Michael Hardt.