As Tampio (2009) says in ‘Assemblages and the Multitude: Deleuze, Hardt, Negri, and the Postmodern Left’ (direct link here), Deleuze has three issues with Hardt and Negri’s political endorsements.

Tampio claims that Hardt and Negri have reinterpreted Deleuze and his many concepts (the multitude, rhizomatic networks, nomadology, organs without bodies, war machines) for their own ends. In doing so they have obscured Deleuze’s ‘distinct contributions to the contemporary left’ (385). So, those three issues below:

1. The concept of the proletariat. Not because they don’t exist per se, but that categorizing people as proletarians risks preserving a rather outdated opposition between capitalism and communism (bourgeoisie and worker). The left needs to work beyond these distinctions.

2. The concept of revolution. Every revolution ‘almost always’ (390) ends badly and rarely changes people’s minds. This is in opposition to what Deleuze calls ‘revolutionary becoming’ (Transformations 1995: 171) – a kind of experimentation of political change. It goes beyond thinking about revolution as a requirement for political change and supposes that change can be brought about through smaller interventions.

3. The desire for an end to sovereignty. Deleuze wants to ‘strike [an] optimum balance’ (391) between the state (order) and the war machine (chaos). In calling for an end to sovereignty we risk damaging individual and collective life. ‘It is far better to use a ‘very fine file’ to open up the political body to new possibilities than to wield a sledgehammer to obliterate its contours’ (391).