Chapter 1: Subjective Figures of the Crisis ... - Negri in English

struggles part of the same cycle
It is true that these struggles confront the same enemy,
characterized by the powers of debt, the media, the security
regime, and the corrupt systems of political representation.
However, the primary' point is that their practices, strategies, and
objectives, although different, are able to connect and combine
with each other to form a plural, shared project. The singularity
of each struggle fosters rather than hinders the creation of a
common terrain.
Earlier we explained that these movements were born in
something like a communicative laboratory', and indeed, the glue
that holds them together seems initially to be linguistic,
cooperative, and network based (like many forms of cognitive
labor). We also noted that this cooperation is constructed in the
movements, and their common language is spread widely
according to an autonomous temporality, which is often very
slow but also self-controlled, self-limiting, and self-managed.
The horizontal decision-making processes of the multitude
require temporal autonomy. The communication of slogans and
militant desires often begins slowly in small community and
neighborhood groups, but then at a certain point spreads virallv.
Some of the Israeli indignados camped on Tel Aviv boulevards
thought of themselves as renewing the spirit and the political
form of the kibbutz tradition, based in such community
relationships. Drawing on their antifascist traditions, the Spanish
indignados demonstrated, in the tents of their encampments and
the working groups that developed elements of a political
program, how a constituent discourse can—from below and from
the simple, local communication of affects, needs, and ideas in
urban neighborhoods—rise up to form general assemblies and a
decision-making system.
These movements have thus tended to find support and
inspiration in federalist models. Small groups and communities
find ways to connect with one another and to create common
projects not by renouncing but by expressing their differences.
Federalism is thus a motor of composition. Clearly, few elements
remain here of the theory' of the state and federalist sovereignty,
but instead at the microlevel reside the passions and intelligence
of a federalist logic of association. Many of the weapons deployed