The primary forces that have guided the history of modern resistance
struggles and liberation movements, along with the most productive resistance
movements of today, we will argue, are driven at base not only by
the struggle against misery and poverty but also by a profound desire for
democracy—a real democracy of the rule of all by all based on relationships
of equality and freedom. This democracy is a dream created in the
great revolutions of modernity but never yet realized. Today, the new
characteristics of the multitude and its biopolitical productivity give powerful
new avenues for pursuing that dream. This striving for democracy
permeates the entire cycle of protests and demonstrations around the issues
of globalization, from the dramatic events at the WTO in Seattle in
1999 to the meetings of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
This desire for democracy is also the core of the various movements and
demonstrations against the 2003 war in Iraq and the permanent state of
war more generally.

...

We should note, before moving on, that some of the basic traditional
models of political activism, class struggle, and revolutionary organization
have today become outdated and useless. In some ways they have been undermined
by tactical and strategic errors and in others they have been neutralized
by counterinsurgency initiatives, but the more important cause of
their demise is the transformation of the multitude itself. The current
global recomposition of social classes, the hegemony of immaterial labor,
and the forms of decision-making based on network structures all radically
change the conditions of any revolutionary process.

...

The people's army had either to take power itself (as was most often the
case) or delegate a civilian government for the new nation, which in the
postcolonial world often had to be done without the aid of any historical
precedent. The centralized formation of a people's army looks like a
victorious strategy up until the point when the victory is won, when
the weakness of its unified and hierarchical structure become painfully
clear. Democracy is far from guaranteed by the people's army.

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