In a 2010 essay in Political Theology , Daniel Bell, Jr. offers a sharp critique of Hardt and Negri and Amgamben. He notes that, in contrast to other democratic theorists, Hardt and Negri hold out a modest hope for “democratic polities [that are] fugitive, episodic, on the run and generally overwhelmed.” Not a pep talk exactly; but Bell thinks the problem is worse: “their hope is not merely modest but impossible.”

One reason is ontological: “their univocal ontology precludes . . . an affinity that exceeds the usefulness of contract or the dominion of war.” He elaborates: “they speak of love and joy but they consistently distance what they mean by those terms from the kinds of social relations that are typically associated with them. Hardt and Negri reject any desire for community, for a social body, unity, bond. Agamben’s coming community is impersonal, established on the basis not of any particular relation but on relation in general, generic, anonymous being. We are left wondering what kind of love and joy this is.”

Only “contract or conquest” remain:

“Because being is univocal, difference can only be preserved by maintaining a kind of distance between singularities. The distance between singularities must be preserved, lest drawing too near, they are lost in the generic anonymity of univocal being. As a consequence, effectively singlarities can relate in only one of two modes, or a hybrid thereof: use/contract and capture/war.” Though they claim to reject war, they also reject any notion of love and joy that is the “fruit of the kinds of sharing, intimacy and participation that might unite human beings in a communion, a body, a friendship deeper than mere use that nevertheless does not efface real differences.” They cannot support their novel forms of democracy, since their ontology “cannot accommodate the bonds of love, which are the spring of joy and peace.” It’s remarkable, in fact, how close Hardt and Negri are, ontologically, to the Empire they oppose.

Bell is also unconvinced by Hardt and Negri’s attempt at “anthropodicy.” He asks the obvious question: “If humanity is an instantiation of a productive immanence or materialist vitality, then how could empire and the camps come to pass in the first place?” The only plausible answer they can give is “bad luck,” and Bell responds: “this is hardly grounds for hope insofar as it suggests the eternal return of the same . . . . The flux of aleatory singularities is constant. Sooner or later the tanks will always show up.”