Balibar Spinoza the Anti-Orwell

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SPINOlA. THE ANTI-ORWELL

The Fear of the Masses

° For EmiliaoGiancotti

With this intentionally untimely litle. I shall attempt to formulate theproblem on the basis of which it would be possible to understand and discuss what makes Spinoza's political thought (or better, if we share on thispoint the conception brilliantly put forth by Negri, Spinoza's thought,inasmuch as it is thorougWy political)l indispensable for us today, howeveraporetic it might appear. In fact, I believe that it is impossible to reduce thepositions of the "renegade Jew" from the Hague, de~ite their deductiveappearance, to a smgle ifefimtion, even if considered as--;tendency~would progressively prevail over others in his ini:ellec~al itinerary. Its~sto ~-~,' ~nth~-~~~t;~-~y~th;rt -~hat-h~ i~'h~;~ii~g-t~~~~d, ~o~ ~h~t ~e head

toward when we undergo the experience of reading him and attempt tothink in the concepts he offers us, is a complex of contradictions without agenuine solution. But, not only can the problems he posesnotb-e-rehtrned

to a time ir;;;trievably past; ~t i~.p!-e.£i~ly!his_c.?mplex of contradicti~sthat makes them unavoidable for us_!Q~ confe~;iIigonllls-metapliySfcs a

Singular cr~}~I.p._~~~!~~~~~~~~~~l!£!!~_!.heor~~~c2!.o£§J~~.!J' Perhaps this

shill

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OllEMMAS OF CLASSICAL POLITICS SPINOlA. THE ANTI-ORWElL

is the sign by which we can recognize a great philosopher.2

As a result, there is no question of fictitiously resolving these contradictions by taking a position beyond the point reached by Spinoza in hisinquiry, or the place that he OCcupies in a histoncaI evoluhon whose meaning we believe we possess. In this respect, the demonstration produced byPierre Macherey in his Hegel ou Spinoza 3 seems decisive to me. E.v~~:Lre,!diI1g.

is certainly a transformation. But the only effective (and the~efore instructIVe) transformation is one'that rejects the eas~~E::dudWs.n't,which refuses to project on.!? Spjn~:S contradictions a schema (dialecticalorOlli~~h~ himse!f"'wouldhav~~-;;;~;:; a result, it is

l~the invers.e t~at is i~portant: to bring to the fore, if ossible, contradiction_scharacterIstIC ofhIs thought that turn out to be at the same time entirely,..current, and in this way enable us to understand both what there is for us tothink in Spinoza's concepts, and how the Jatter,· in their turn, can be activein our own inquiry, without any pre-established soluti~n.

French translators, although often less than rigorous on this'point, haverendered Spinoza's multitudo, in certain contexts, as "mass." They havesought neither to emphasize systematically the relationship that bringstogether different uses of multitudo, nor to clarify the successive or simultaneous utilization of notions which interfere with it, such as vulgus, plebs,turba, and ilio populus (to which I shall return). But they have been sensitiveto that which, in the use that Spinoza makes of i't,Ca1fSfor'-acontrontatlo~with much more recent problematics-crossing over at least a cen~-al14:: .

-;'=-half;-f'~n-divi~;fut" philosophy-which have been formulated inwfi;itli~b~~·~;.uedthe age of masses or crowds, and of mass mo~~~e~~.On the condition that all the nuances of Spinozist argumentation and terminology are taken seriously-which will lead to the perception that it isnot a m.att~r()f~Jh!i~h~~ ~oncept but of a persistent problem, reformul;tlecf'seve~~i ~es-this compari~~~i;}~stifi~;r~~~nif~;I;,~~ti;:;g~'

Spinoza is centrally inscribed in the context of a period in which the

V lt~mations of the state, the formation ofthe modern "absolutist" state\ in the midst of revolutIOnary troubles and violence, caused the emergence

Ofthe problem ofmass movements as such, and hence ~ftheir-control~ theIr~ization, or theirErev~~!!~.e;~pi~~~~:N;ith~';'thi~-~~o·ccupatTon,n;rthe corresponding reference to the theoretical pair imperiumlmultitudobelongs to Spinoza alone: it is enough to read Hobbes to see that. But

The Ambivalence of the "Mass Standpoinf \

Spinoza's originality appears from the outset in the fact that for him the/ 'i'ffiiSS''''iSitsefftlieRF@Ciparo15jectofmvesugatlOn, reflection, anaolstorical

, an.alYSiS .. In this se..nse, one ca..n.. say that S.Pin.oza.i.s,.!? h.is tim._~-!~~.?..ey~~!l\D: ,,1C

'

~>ne of the very fewpolitical theorists who does not tak~iscentral prob- "1 ,

lem the constitution of the state (or ofthe state_o.E~,c:.:~!_~venof~te 1,';'(" , .•.

apparatus) and!hus reduc:, the existence of mass movements to a pre-~~~- if

tenf"natilre" or ho;;Zonwfilcllih~sthe securi!y and stabilitl.of the .\// §I<:: Spfn-;;-;"~~eks-ili()ve--;ir;!l!;pi;-,;;;tion of the cau-;~gic p70-Per -~~_

/CT to mass movements. This goes well beyond the fact of conferring on the ~multitudo a symbo~-p-ositivity, in order to make it the other name for the"people" or for "civil society;' and to proclaim in it the foundation of politica} and juridical order. In Spinoza the "mass;' or to put it better, the masses,become an explicit theoretical object, because in the last analysis it is their

1\different modalities of existen::e, accordirIg to historical conjunctures an?accordmg to economIes or.regImes of aSSlOn, diat determine the chancesof orienting a political ractice toward a given solution.

IS IS why we mus~each the point of inquiring, problematically,whether or not the originality, the irreducibLx subversive aspect ofSpinoza'sth()ugr;t;7onfirmedDYtii;;;;-;ctTOristh.rtitp~·rightlroIi1the·t;egrn~

.........................00:0-...",.,......._..,.,.._.....-0='-.., ..... _ . - -"" • .

~g in sh(jn, 10,borr9w N~g~(s strikirIg expression, the "savage anomaly"of Spinozism-consis!s in_the fact iJf havirIg adoeted in theory the "stand- -kpointo~mass;' o~ the "mass standpoint;' on politics and the state. This I

standp;;IntiS-ncithe~tthat ofti'ie'State i'tselfin its differeiit'variantsiior a v~

popular or democratic standpoint, nor, strictly speakin!&..~ class standp~~- ['1 'Ifwe must nevertheless adopt a deliberately ambivalent formulation, it is

also for another reason. "The fear of the masses" should be understood inthe double sense of the geiiftive, objective and subjective. It is the fear thattb,e masses fte,L.But it i.uili9..E!.d~Ul!~masses 'inse;;;J;"~splaced in the position ofgoverning or acting politically, hence in the state assuch. So that, arising in the context of the power (puissance)-~Tth~-;;;; :;;'''A~~''~\''

~ their movements, the problem of the constitu..llim~~Q!!!l..Qf.th.e..s.tateis first posed in the context of that fear-which may be as extreme as panico~ may r~ai~7;;tlon~rrY;;;-Jer'ateJ: but which never purely and simplydisappears. We must try to understand how this r~iprocal fear might bebalanced, so as to I11ake room for other, more constructive forces (those oflove, adrriirat;o~, devotion, as;clf;;those of ~o~-;;;~~:-ratT~'i1arIYp'~;~~p~!&i;:Yiilify'};o;~lse~;{'the c~~tr~y~~~~it-;Jft~~--po};;t:'

2f.!h~...g..t.htgi~olutionof the social body. For the masses a!!~.the more frightening and uncontrollable the more they are terrorized by----....:;----....;;.:..-_---~----~,----~

DILEMMAS OF CLASSICAL POLmCS

Qatura!. for!=es or by the violence they suffer, and this violenc:e in its turn is~.!.he~~.>re immoderate in that tyrannical power, in fact, feels secretlydisarmed before them.'-~'T;'o'ob;;rvationsmay thus be formulated.

First, by taking as his object the very dynamic of the fear felt and inspiredby the masses, with its possible reversals, Spinoza did not fail to conceptualize the affective ambivalence that characterizes it. Neither fear withouthope nor hope without fear: this proposition is deduced immediately fromthe primitive division (joy and sadness) to which the concept of "qesire" iss~tte-d..as_the-:"ie.L)!~ence of the human." Now, it is this c~ep't"oT

L7

L',p;> desire---complex from the start-that ~ the Ethics becomes the explanatorytr" I?rinciE,le of all emotional life. ---~--- .--.----.--..-..,.-,~

·~..Spin~";;;-;h;;]~-;;-ffort certainly tends to define a "path" which permits

this life, individually or collectively, to be oriented toward increasing

the power of acting, t2.~~::~the .Ere.!?ondera~ceo0.-oyous"p.~!..ons,thusreducing as much as possible the emE!re of sadness, fear, and hate~et it IS

., ~ that, at least at the collective level, a completer;~~ of psychic~ conflict would ever be possible, bringing an end to the f/uctuatio animi in

the soul of the masseJ. This redu~ti~~"is·.ilw~ys~~~ethi~g \\,~'stri';~'f~'r, a

\~ cona~, as Spinoza puts it. ~~~j):j§..Q.lliy jQ'!.li!!1it~!t.u~..ti().~~.~~ti:~YJ?:?~~

~~r~~~~I~:;OO~:a~t;;~~;"~~, AnclYei":'::"'thisIS' ilie"second observation-it is not any more possible toignore everything in Spinoza's text that evokes the ideal, or at least the model(exemplar) of the neutralization of the passions, and strives to define itsconditions in relation to both the individual and the collectivity. This is thecase each time Spinoza traces theprogtiim ~f institutions conforming to

~e,i!2.~hi~'2...eac'l.£~p~de~futo con~lE.~~~~~.~~~<~~~~_~tb_e.~~.re:'Ere~sed in a rational recognition of the collec~~~~e~.This isalso the case in the figure of Christ. "-

Further, we cannot help but notice another ambivalence, all the moreremarkable in that it can in certain respects be formulated in Spinozist

jcategories, and as such thereby authorizes a sort of self-criticism of thesystem itself. I mean the ambivalence betrayed bl.Spinoza's attitude, his own

position regarding the "masses." Let us recall how it is m~nifesteaTriSome

decisive moments of Spinoza's writings.First there are the scholia of proposition 37, part IV of the Ethics, which

are echoed by chapte; IV of the Theologico-Politicaz' Treatise, and which

SPINOZA. THE ANTI-ORWEll

formulate the hypothesis of a city directly constituted by persons "living

according to the g£l<i1!!l~£Lreason:'5who are consequently free from thedesir~s and fears that the vUlgu;=th~t is, the vulgar or the crowd-obey~who are capable~f rcling themselves dir~ctiy by 'thePerceptlcinof the "c~~.?21 no!;,ions" ofall h~anity. Witfioutentering here mto the never-en<ITilgdiscussion regarding the exact nature of the "wisdom" defined in the Ethics

by the third kind ofknowledge and hy the "intellectual love of God:' we maynevertheless pose the following question: once it is possible to fmd a path,however arduous it might be, to free oneselffrom-the passions, that is, tocombat sad passions not only by: reinf~ng joyous passions ~yt by developing active affections, which would immediately result from an adequateknowledge of causes, does'-;ott'he h~~is posed one moment but justas-quickly rejected"\slnce "men'; in general d;;;;nTv~according to theguidance of reasonfbecome1i1t~7;.;·';~ilitY;citlieras-tlie<';eii(Fo1histo;y

or as the P;~J0~T~-~~Zi~2[ft~:~i~~~h~;,,,~~~~;{~~i~!~e~'by'fa~nd~hipand by the common. enterprise of knowledge and living toge'ihe'i: wIthoutI;;Te;;:;ror-~ternarconJTIct:rn'the';;;'Idst;rth~~~~;~rof'others?"B'utsucha society would thu'~ r~~~~~'trt~~;;hether~ornotone wiSh~s-it, a "state

within the state (imperium in imperiE,)." This is true even without taki~g~t~'account that by projecting a pure exercise of intelligence for a small numberthat would coincide with a retreat from the collectivity, or at least with a

/neutralization or negation of the effects of society on the individual,j Spinozist "wisdom" would once again become the watchword of an asceti. . ciS-m, of anabsolute autoiiomyoftheIiiaJ.Vi'alla1;lns1io;t,-th~··fant;yof a'

"self-mastery" lliat compLetely contradicts Spino~~.JY;Ts-;{th~ooIieatenation of natural c;i:ises ana i:li'e'Clevelop~t of the pow~r of bodies. '

More pfaiiiIy stilI, the guiding~;;-fth;;~ent o{the Theologico

Political Treatise leads to a definition of a regime by which antagonisticpassions-essentially the religious passions that are generated by theinevitable difference of opinions regarding the divinity (that is, thesupreme subject from whom the moral commandments oflove and justiceseem to emanate), and which thus transform this love into mutual hatemay be neutralized. But this neutralization, which is indeed at this pointexplicitly a reduction of the ''mass'' as a form of SOCI31 eXlstence, IS equiilIyproblematic.

It leads Spinoza to define-not only regarding Mosaic theocracy, but alsoregarding Dutch democracy such as it is or should be-a modality ofobedience to the law in which love and the conscious choice of the lesser~il would be entirely sUbstiWtedi~~~;~p~-~;sh~'llt.Must we,

.'DILEMMAS OF CLASSICAl. POLmCS

then, represent such obedience as the resurgence of the limit case that weevoked a moment ago (as Ethics IV, proposition 73 moreover suggests), and

~~.i~~,we~,gh!.9$.J~Jl!Il~C;4J9A!.§,!?:~1.~~~~£qj!!g,~~ialecticthat is,h~~dIySpinozist, as an "obedience/nonobedience," a "sta:i:el~,;)ri.st~t~1i1a;IeIti~

would later sax), ,~!i~~~~~'::~!~~_~itE!_~\2.!!i.~~3J_~f..~!l~tats~~the ~lfiil-ment of its eni? Or must we generalize the surprising formula of chapterXVII, which evokes the "constant practice of obedience" of the Hebrews("by reason of habit it must have no longer seemed like servitude to them,but freedom"), while combining it with the initial thesis of the same chapter,and thus approaching the idea of a political freedom which consists essentially in the imagination (hence the illusion) of freedom-called love (or

obedience through love?6 In other words, ~:r.~_~~:.E~S.t?J~~t;.S£~~~~~n~

of the classic theorists of "voluntary servitude"? .-------.....,--;-:---....",---,-:.--,.-.--We know that this neutralization of antagonism is concentrated in the

statement of the "doctrines of universal faith" and of their practical function(since they must permit everyone to practice justice and charity in his works,whatever his opinions, and thus institute a sort of eguivalenceof theologiCall1ypotheses under the control ofpubii~-pow;;)~'B~th~;~;;~'~-thiclcof these dogmas ~emselves? Are they an outward appearance common todifferent religious conceptions and, as a result, immanent in imaginarythought? AIe they in this sense accepted by everyone by virtue of the collective practice ofmen who communicate amongst themselves in spite of theirdifferences, and thus themselves produce the conditions of their coexistencer and their mutual commerce? Or on the contrary, do they result from an idea

f of the understanding that thepnuosopJier proaucesal'larrfronnh'e-ctowd,

l' bY abstractmg himself from its conflic~ and by aE£lying to it ; method ;;f. historical critique based on scientific axioms, and which he proposes to the

state (thatis, to its magistrates or regents) to impose on the crowd and onitself, in the pe~specti~e-~fan'arbitrage (jus circa sacra) and of a reasoned-progress,as'It will be envisageaoy11le'Auj1cUirung? , -- The very meaning of Spmozist theology and e~lesiologyclearly dependson this alternative, At the limit, it is either a radical, popular version of theImitation ofJesus Christ in the tradition of the medieval Devotio modernaand of all "libe:.~.!iQnJh.eologies:' or a bourgeois, pre-Rousseauian and preKantian "natural religion,"

Certainly the sterility of this sort of alternative is in one sense preciselywhat the Theologico-Political Treatise seeks to displace. But it is doubtful thatits final chapter produces in this regard anything but an aporia to the extent~hat it is led back to a double interpellation, directed toward both the

""SPINOlA. THE ANTI-ORWElL "

citizens and the state, so as to ask them to recognize the interest they would \'have in making these doctrines the ,limiting rule of their behavior. The \acknowledgment of this' aporia can be read clearly in the note that figures~hDthe end of the preface: SpinOla reserves this book-intended and com12osed' \ J\ ~as a direct intervention in the political conjuncture of the crisis of the

Ikpublic, in order to defend a certain form of state given as democratic, byhelpi~g'Tt to reform itself-for philosophers and dissuades "others" fromfei(fj~tl:latiSl1etearsseem it reaa by the vul us, the man of the crow ,

/ "from whom nothing is to be hoped:' because superstition and fear cannotbe extirpaied1roiTi1iis soul.

Doubtless these are at bottom the very difficulties that pervade the useSpinoza makes in the Theologico-Political Treatise of the concept of "common notions:' about which the text of the work never clearly permitsUStOcfecide-if they are defined theoretically as axioms of natural reason, or if they " \.,~::,

are defined practically as the perception of utility, similar for all men, at ~'l~the heart of the imagination. This is perhaps-we must, ?.e!~..~!:,5;?E-.t~!.!o t

formulate this as a hypothesis"=-ilic·iD."dex·oTille(acttfiat; by transplanting I P<---" ~v

the thesis of the Ethics, according to which inadequate ideas themselves have I~' .a reality and a truth in relation to those who think them, to the terraiiioT \ ,\;l>~<.\~onc:~~~~SiS and politiCal inte~ention~ ~e The~lo~-pOl~ti:,al Tre~!~~ 1\ \,--.j>(\.t.- .is led m practice to modifY the apparently ngld and mtellectualist de~~~,' ~ r:',r'of the first two kinds of knowledge (hence implicitly of the third as well, I~("moving even further away from the intellectual elitism that characterized tl!eJ '- U'

T~tiseon the Improvement ofthe Undirstanding, to which, as Deleuze clear- -'\~Iy explains, the theory of "common notions" is opposed),7

But these difficulties are also quite obviously those derived from Spinoza'sposition on the movement of the religious mass described in the TheologicoPolitical Treatise and in the Ethics, and through it, of the religious mass thatthreatens the Dutch Republic from within at the moment that Spinoza iswriting: For this mass is at the same time the" rce that must be dissolved morder to deprive the' monarchist subversion f its "mass base" and the for<:,ethat must be constituted in order to enlarge the democratic base of theRepublic~~ps {t'is';~n the force that would have to be developed, onaccount of the vigor of its faith in the Gospel and its morality, while beingpurged of its superstitions and its intolerance.

Death in the life of the People

Before going further, it is necessary to look at the quite striking evolution of

DILEMMAS OF CLASSICAL POLITICS

Spinoza's terminology, which eventually leads to the concept of the "masses"getting its name: multitudo.8

It is no accident that the term is completely absent from the Ethics. Moreprecisely, it appears only once, in the sense of the numerical indefinite: "in

multitudine causarum" (Ethics, V, scholium to proposition 20). But even inthis sense, which is as important in the characterization of the relation of themodes to substance as it is in exposing the physics of the "agreement" (con

venientia) and "disagreement" of bodies, everywhere else Spinoza uses otherformulations: mult~ plures, plurimi, and so on. A fortiori the Ethics does not

~ designate as multitudo the sum ofthe individualSwho constitute the humanspecies or a definite communi . As we shall see, this absence signifies thatthe I'roblem of the human "mass' IS present in t e tiCS under another~itywhi~~oreindirect (or mc;rec<;m~T~~e7s";;':----------~.~~,.;_.-- . ""'"'""-. ".'-""-~._._.

tial than numerical determination.---..-.-..

j No less significant, however, is the constant reference in the Ethics to theUku-,) vulgus, which is generally translated in an indefinite way as "the vulgar:' but

which always also designates the crowd. This reference is present only in thescholia (whose strategic function Deleuze has shown), beginning in part II.

!1.!(t~e.~P2..e.~!~i~J9...P3!.!.I had}1r£.~4Y.J:.t;.fefl:.ed iq.Q1i!>~~~ to the~nari("the ignorant"). The Ethics combines two correlative approaches: first, to~~oli.~yst~~antnr6portrdFphtC<fffd"Teleo1ogi'CarmUSiOi1s,whicIl;;turallY rescltfr~-;;Ign~';:;:;;~;~;T;aturalcauses, to the standpgintof'ihe'"~Tga'r";and second, to explain the necessity of this standpoint in an

.~Y.troEol~!cal way.

/The term vulgus is obviously derogatory, which would reinforce our sus

picion that t~ escape ignorance is also to extricate oneself from the crowd.However, it can be given an analytical and not merely a polemical significa-tion, since the imagination is simultaneously a kind ofknowledge and a kindof life to which everyone's affective forces contribute. Ignorance is!J?.ositive- .fy~afirstfd'ii(roT(in~dequate) knowl.~ge, whose sources ~~thj_~~di,!!~~-~xpe~ie;:;~~ ~;'d "hears;.i:"",..!:?-at is, the process of circulation of the si~~_~

~ra"ii".i.ill.i!'a-.~~~~~~ct~~e.. '.r.. uf!lors. But the content of the imagination'<lI1pears from the outset as having a political connotation, smce It associatesthe illusion of human free will with the representatIOn of God as "master"

~ ~(r<'Kri1g"·ornatiire-:or"asl~gi~f~~.Such a representation implies thatliUinariity'perCelVe~-it~~ir;;'God's"people," as a set of individuals who enterinto a personal relation of love and hate (devotion, divine reward,vengeance, etc.) with him. At the same time that it elicits an inadequateidea of individuality, it has already come to constitute an anticipation, an

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SPINOZA, TIlE ANTI-ORWELl

inverted guarantee of the representation which submits the crowd toarmonarchical political power by con~r~this power the appearance of

"divine ri8!!t:'It is only in the Theologico-Political Treatise that a strict connection

among plebs, vulgus, and, for the first time, multitudo is established. But thisconnection remains very ambivalent, as we shall see.

At first glance, all these terms are reserved for the aspect that is negative,antagonistic, and "violent"--destructive ofsocial life, as opposed to the positive aspect of natural right designated by the populus, the collection of thecives. In chapter XVI in particular,which is quite remarkable in comparisonwith the Political Treatise, S!i.noza never speaks either of multitudo or plebs

O'r vulgus, not even in relation to democracy, which he presents as "the most-;-tural" state-that is, both as one form~tate among others (the imperi~

-U;;y;;puTaref'"a:"lld ~~-the ~rigina-;ytr~1..!,I.!.L4if.f.~.i:~t constitutions. Butalthough ~(~hi~h-;;;~~tially'ha'~~~"epistemologicalconn~ it isthe ignorant, if not backward, crowd, characterized by its prejudices) andplebs (which has a sociopolitical connotation: it is the mass of the people inoppQ'sition to those wh,o govern, and thus, whether by right or merely infact, "inferiors"). are'present from beginning to end in the Theologico-

Political Treatise, multitudo, which represents the unity of the two aspects, ~intervenes only atth;~~~;t~;;~;i~-;;;i~;;-;hi~h';;;~orthexamining more ? \closely.The first occurrence is in the preface, in the <inalysis of the mechanism ofpopular superstition. Here it is a question, as w~;;-oTa syStem,"or better,of a politicaland ideological apparatus for the subjugation of thought:

...-.~_._....._~IT"!'!i'_ '-.- '-_.._~~.........._.-----

The cause that engenders, preserves, and fosters superstition is therefore fear.. ..All men are by nature subject to superstition....As thecrowd (vulgus) always remains at the same level of misery, so it isnever long contented....T~is inconsta~.been.!!lc:..~!~.s!.5)iE.1~_

upheavals and terrible war~.~~~2!h.i!!ll is as effec!i~e in~emasses a~~stit!~,(ni~il effi.~~i'::!.!!::.ultitudinem regit, .q~msuperstltio) ....The greatest carenasoeen,faKen fo mvest rehglOn,Wflether true 9·r false, with pomp and circumstance (cultu etapparatu) to give it more weight than any other motive.. ..No one hassurpassed the Turks in the use of such measures....The greatest interest and the reatest secret of the monarchical\re ime is to deceivmen. (preface to TP

These indications will later be confirmed by the description of theHebrew state and by references to the catastrophic history of the Englishmonarchy. Exploiting a natural fear in each individual, the monarchical and

( ---"--._--..._--_._-'1

DIlEMMAS OF CLASSICAL POLITICS

ecclesiastical apparatus of superstition reproduces it and so expands it as amass phenomenon,-thus rendering it uncontrollable. The monarchi~;;j

regime, for this reason, is a r;;gression to the initial barbarism of humanity,

or, more precisely, it is a production of the only barbarism that seems trulywithout hope: Ultimi barbarorum!

Men, then, "fight for slave as if for salvation, and count it not shame

but e highest honor to risktheir blood and their lives for the vainglory ofone man" (ibid.). This is a surprising thesis onSpinoza'spart, since tliis

inversion of the natural conatus'l of individuals goes so far as to give sub

stance, in the fury of mass movements, to the desire for their own'death, to

self-destruction. In fact, this extreme, in which nature seems to contradictitself qua ins;i~ct of self-preservation, must be connected to the veritablecircle of death described later by SpirlOza when he analyzes th7concatena"':-'tion of tyrannical monarchies and popular revolutions:

It is no less dangerous to overthrow a monarch even if itis established by all means that he is a tyrant, ...For how will[the new king] be able to endure the sight of citizens whosehands are stained with the blood of the murdered king ana yetrejoice in this parricide as a sood deed that tnef cannot fail to~,?E.~~.er ~.~~r hi~ ...He will not be able easily toavenge the death of the tyrant by executing those citizensunless he defends the cause of the tyrant he has succeeded.thus approving of his actions and consequently following inhis footsteps.S~~ that the "eople (populus) have.~~~~een able ~tyrants but.n!ver to re~~ tyra2,nx:.or cliaIli!'etlie monarchical government (imperium) intoaiiOther form. The English peop e have rnisne a at example of this impossibility....After much bloodshed'they coulddo no better than to salute a new monarch under anothername (as if the question were simply the name given to thesovereign)....Toolate. t~~..2~kP.erceiv,ed that they had donenothing for thegoOd oCtile nation but violate the rights of tht1egmn;:ate-lGng and Change t~';ing order into something~;.se. (TPT, XVIII)

The revolution devours its own children and leads to restoration.H'ereSpirtot;r"isnatUralfitlllDkng about Cromwell, and more generally

about the contemporaneous controversy over regicide. What is significantis not only that he does not adopt the theocratic perspective (illustrate4, fo;~I!U2Je~his contemporary Racine in Athaliel, but that he shows thatsu~~,: perspective is i~terna.! to the affective mechanism that encloses the

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SPINoZA. THE ANTI-ORWEll

monarch!: and the people within a circle of death. Nor, consequently, is it

7 question ofa "war ofall against all" in Hobbes's sense, that is, of ~n essen: Jtialist anthropolo~y. The violence and the threat of death that civil or exter-nal wars imply do not express a "primitive." originary condition. situatedprior to the civil state and ;;;ore or les~~ell!:.epressed by its constitutio~. The

negativity they introduce is not the antithesis of the rule of law, each term texcluding the other by definition, but rather th.!.extreme consequence of its \own history, the effect ofan inversion ofhuman desire brought about bits

immanent antagonisms, in determinate con ·tions. We are-I shall return '

to this-poles apart from Hobbes.After this overture, multitudo appears agaill only in chapters XVII and

mIl of the Theologico-Political Treatise:

All. those who govern as much as those who are governed, aremen. and as such are ~pclined to abandon work and seek Eleasure (ex lahore proclives ad libldinem). Whoever has experi~ced the inconstant temperament of the multitude will be~air by it:For iti;g;wemediiOtbi~b:?th the affects al~ (TPT, XVII)

Such is the danger and the problem that every state must confront bycombining affective means (piety, patriotic devotion) with rational ones

(utility, hence private property).But at the end ofpolitical corruption the danger arises again, uncontrol

lably:

In a state of this sort. it is the wrath of the people that rulesover all. Pilate, by giving in to the anger of the Pharisees,ordered the crucifixion of Christ....Following the example ofthe Pharisees. the vilest hypocrites. moved by the same rage,everywhere began to persecute men of signal intelligence andstriking virtue, whose very qualities made them odious to themob (plebi invisos), by denouncing their opinions as abominable and inflaming the anger of the ferocious mob againstthem. (TPT. XVIII)

These passionate, if not themselves "passional" formulations are at theheart of the political and historical argumentation of chapters XVII andXVIII of the Theologico-Political Treatise, which alone provides the completemeaning of the contract theory explained in chapter XVI, a~ confers on itafter the fac,.t~!~erlrdialectical functi~n. 10 It is, ill fact, exactly the same

13

In other words,.jt is the natural conditions of the civitas, ofthe constitution of a people in and by the state (since there is no "people"outsi~

State) that imply the tendency to civil war. Whence comes the necessIty. (taken over from Machiavelli) of arming the people, who themselves

. / c.,!\>·-'represent the principal ~anger, on the condition of being able ~~~~~_~)'''' ~., gevotion and a discipline which become for them like a second nature.

~ Wh~~c:t; .~~!TI~_~~.9veall th~ necessity of limiting the violence of the state,~st individuals so thatJ.!.!!9~e.~ot 1~.~Lt~.the....c:~unterviolence 0.!.0e~~s.

!_h.e!efo.~!:_th~2...El,<: (p,opulus) and the multitudo are not somethingessentially different: a historical processmakes the people exist as multt7i;;::"

;!J1_thi!.t'»,"A.~j!§.ap.Ra.tW! negation, t~~ ';<;!:~:~.d~; a_n..!L~.f£rta{ii prag}:~econtrols its evolution. But the conclusion remains entirely aporetic: from the

,§ith~ttS-~~u.:.~.of r~.~.~~_are al"':..ay~.in~e:.~, SpinOla con~5!~ that ewy~--JV revolution IS by nature detrimentar.11le Torm of the existing state, whatever

.·it might be, must above all be pre~erved~iththe habits of thought that ithas implanted in the popular soul (populi animus) and tQ..which the di~po

sition (ingenium) of each is,adapted. Every mass movement is s~_onymo,:!s

----p

/


system of causes that, under new conditions, explains first the remarkablestability of the Hebrew state (in particular, ~nstitutionalization of patriotic hate, "stronger than any other feeling, a hate born ofaevotion, or piety,believed to be pious--the strongest and most persistent kind" [TPT, XVII]),and later its progressive and total ruin. This is why such a ruin can onlyappear to those who provoke and suffer it as the anticipated, alreadyforeseen "vengeance" of the divine legislator. This is also why its genuin;explanation requires a history of the Hebrew people, in particular of theevolution of institutions toward a conflict of political and religious powers.The concept of multitudo becomes, then, par excellence, the element thatallows Spinoza's politicaItnougnt to movelTOiila'bStractlOri1o-~cte

UnIty of theory and practice, as the beginning of chapter XVII indicates.We thereby come to the most important aspect of his demonstration: to

show that, in all cases, the princip'al danger for the state is always internal,

~ways constituted by the people itself.

It has never come to the point that the security of the state wasless threatened by its citizens (cives) than by external enemies(hastes) and that those in power (qui imperium tenent) fearedthe former less than the latter. The Roman Republic is testimony to this. (TPT, XVII)

SPINOZA, THE ANTI·ORWELL

with internal slavery and can lead only to replacing one tyranny withanother. It is, in this sense, already internally "monarchical" by nature. Nocollective means or political practice corresponds to the practical taskthat is imposed on the citizens: to conserve o~ develop for themselves theconstitution, the form of agreement or mutual relation which J1tjerates themi: the greatest degree from fear and violenSf. Democracy is desirable, butit/'is unarmep.

The Return to the Mass

After the tragic event of 1672 (the Orangist Revolution) that "verifies" hisforesight while contradicting his efforts, Spinoza, consistent with himself,will not modify this conclusion. But he will try to reconsider the whQ}$woblem of the state's' "foundation?"in a ~..!hat is both more radical (bymaking muititudo the very concept of the people who must begoverned~aiiCl"1TOm whom tile govern~" chosen) and less "sav~g~:i!}y dis~~he~aii~tii'imaginarYprocesses to juridical institutions and ~administrative statistics). The aporia will not disappear, but the multitudo

will become the fUnJamental concept of his political theory, as Negri has

brilliantly demonstrated.In fact, we may see in the Political Treatise a genuine explosion of the

concept of "mass" which now covers all aspects of the political problem,both at the "theoretical" level of natural right and at the "practical" level ofthe regulation of each political regime. This innovation in relation to theEthics and even to the Theologico-Political Treatise (both of which Spinozarefers to as presupposed by the Political Treatise) reflects the fact that natural right is now, for the fIrst time, thou ht explicitly as the power of the mas~

(potentia multitudinis), hence as the "right of number' since jus - poten·

tia), not, of course, in the sense of an arithmetic sumbut in the sense of a~

c::o:::m~b:.::in:.:a:::t:::io:::n:.:.,~o::r:.-:.:ra::th=e:;r,~..:·a:7n~.I:::.;·n!!:~.sti~~of~.f,_~r_·c0he different forms of thestate are so many modalities of this interaction, which permits Spinoza,while preserving their traditional distinction, to go beyond arithmeticformalism (power of one, of several, of all) and to;;;~em.accordingto-the·(ii~l~~ti~~fP;;~sTc;~-;T;-~-;;;~fundam!:!l!~•.Sl!!&S.t.jg~f"~bsolute p~wer" (imperium absolutum). Let us say more explicitly that whatis at stake is the question of the absoi;;teness ofpower. to what extent it isabsolute, and under what conditions. The connection between multituqo

and imperium, between modalities ofthe e'xistence ofthe "mass" and modal-iti~ of the functioning of the "s"i:it"e,"therefore, constitutes the'Trlternal"- ~,,_.. - .~~ -

14 15


workings of all E~!itics'~!1~ i~_~~,;:s th.e guiding thread of the argument o.fthe Political Treatise. ----..------,--.-.--...----

-The dive~g;~~between Hobbes and Spinoza appears in its greatestclarity here, as does the reason for which Spinoza finally renounced the use~!h.econcep.t of an original contract, even under the already very differentform that he had given to it in the Theologico-Political Treatise (sincethis form was not purely juridical, or metajuridical, but from the outsethistorical, and included an analysis of the imaginary "guarantees" thatoverdetermine the pact and make it effective).

Hobbes no less than Spinoza, of course, is a theorist haunted by the fe<I:Lof the masses and merr natural tendency to subversion. His entire organization of the state, including the way in which the distinction between the

~ public and the private spheres operates, can be understood as a system ofI preventive defense against the mass movements that form the b;i;;;{a;il

wars (of classes and of religions) and of revolutionJ,JU§in.!.':!.~~.:;'Slth~tthe multitudo becomes in his writings the initial concept in the definition..Qfth.e contract (see De Cive, cha ter VI and Leviathan, chapters XVII andXVIII), in order to constitute the system juridically, and establish it i eo ogically (on equality). B~t inlli/;b;7s';ritings it is only a question oj a pomt

ofdeparture, which is immediately left behind. Hobbes carefully separatesthe two elements that Spinoza wants to bring together (thus intimatelycombining democratism and Machiavellian realism). For Hobbes the "multitude" that establishes the contract is not the concept of the "mass"; it

\f/7 IS the conce t ("methodolo..cally" individualist, as current Anglo-American

~\o \~o~~~!.?~~s_t~_~~y~-.:P..tQ.pl~~s. already de<;:omposed, re~uce m~~~i advanceJp_~ve~_~.:!rl~_the su~its S.2.9:stituent atoms (people in the

y state of nature), and capable of entering one~ tlie contract,TI~to-the new i~stitl.itional relationship of civil society. It is this Hobbesian-"mUItltua:e:'Tetus-;:ema~,whose concept Locke-the' philosopher of "tolerance" in a sense diametrically opposed to Spinoza, despite certain verbal

,oeJP n SiIDiiantiiis:=.Wi1lTt"limfiffininclrrlpiffvIII of the Secona Treatise, 10 order

~\J}~~~~~§~~Lape~~~ctal<es._~p..!.~c~!.acf~f au, or of una..:-... nimity, both by right and in fact. d

Spinoza, on the other hand, immediately combines these two elements.He speaks from the outset of the role of the "multitude" in the constitutionof the state, understanding it ;;ot as the abstraction of the people, but as thehi-;t~~;;rarurpoIitiCai reality of the mass and of crowds in movement. ThisisWhy the role of the concept in his case IS not that ofan abstract presupposition immediately denied, superseded in a teleological dialectic, but that of

16

SPINOlA. THE ANTI-ORWELL

~E.0.9Ek of concrete analysis, which proceeds by expanding continuouslywithin a constructive dialectic. This is why, above all, the question ofunanimity, which is no less central for Spinoza than for Hobbes, acquires adiametrically opposite significance. F2!1iobbes, unanimity is the essence ofthe political machine, implied logically in its very apparatus. For Spinoza~i~ity is a pro~.-n;existence of the state is that of an individual of individuals that cannot exist without forging for itself a "quasi-soul;' that is, the analogue of anindividual will: "the body of the state (imperii corpus) must be directed as ifby a single soul (una veluti mente duCl), and this is why the will of the commonwealth (civitatis voluntas) must be taken for the will ofall (pro omnium

VOluntate)" (PT, III, 5). But this unanimity is not acquired automaticallyra fortiori it is not guaranteed a priori as in Rousseau, in the metaphYligl'i3ea of the gen~rwilr,atTheiis1COfseeing the initi~~ds eetero 'fractions" an particular societies" re-elll~~,:fterward on the terrain.of practice).1l It must be constructed as a function of the constraints thatconstitute the movements of the minds or souls of the mass (PT, VIII, 41:multitudinis animas movere) and of the greater or lesser knowledge or information about the commonwealth that their own instruction and the formof institutions procure for different individuals. The problem of unanimityis identical to that of the material conditions of obedience, hence to that ofthe conditions that make possible a representation of the multitude in thestate, and to iliat onhe condition 91 an effective l'_~~r ~f~cision'::'J!l~g.

And yet the constitutive role of the multitudo very much risks, in spite ofeverything, appearing as purely theoretical, in the bad sense of the term, inthe sense of a theory which remains irreducibly inadequate to practice. It isclear that this is a permanent preoccupation in the Politic~l Treatise~c:~~pter

X constitutes in my eyes the proof and practically the admission of this-dlf=ficulty: before evel2£oming to the apOrIa characteristic of democracy, it isthe very construction of the aristocratic state, the stabili!y"(the "absolute"character) of which is after th"e fact once again put to the test and is foundto~b~ inadequate in-its own kind. Anew moral pr~ciple which confers onthis construction the "supple;;;ent" of a necessary stability must then beinvoked: Q.vic virtue, the love of laws after the Roman manner, "for lawsare the state's soul. As long as they are preserved, the state is necessarilypreserved. But the laws cannot remain inviolate unless they are under theprotection cl'both reason and affects _common to all men" (PT, X, 9).

Now, the heart of the argument of the Political Treatise (and of its ownparticular "realism") had been on the contrary the principle posed at the

17

beginning, according to which:


19

SPINOlA, THE ANTI-ORWELL

the multitude of individuals, into the advance guarantee of the final "discovery," namely that the democratic state is by nature the best, the most"natural" or most stable state, according to the line of thought characteristicof all bourgeois liberalism.

Let us say things differently. The constitutive relation between the masses and the state (multitudo and imperium) is thought in a rigorous way fromthe outset by Spinoza as an internal contradiction. The argument of thePolitical Treatise is thus the most explicitly dialec~ical ofhiswritings: explor.:ingth~aystO;:esoi~e a contradictionmeans first of alI developing its terms..

The thesis that appeared in the Theologico-Political Treatise as a statementof historical fact this time becomes the very principle of analysis (andSpinoza rereads Machiavelli in order to search the latter's work for everything that already reflects the implications of this thesis): ''is.is certain thatthe commonwealth is always threatened by citizens more than by externafenemies, for good citizens are rare" (PT, VI, 6). I will return later to theessential correlate of this thesis: that the dissolutio~t~ stat~ under theeffect of its internal contradictions is never total.- By the same token, the following political thesis is reaffirmed (after 1672):changing the form of the state by a revolution or counterrevolution is alwaysthe worst solution (whkh is why it is important to show that every form o~the state can be stable, "absolute" in its kind, or, if I may be permitted theexpression, "relatively absolute" or historically viable).

. the fear of the masses, in its ambivalence, is more than ever the funda

mental question: th;, entire inquiry ofthe Political Treatise is devoted, there-fore, to the attempt ti!.fi!:!E~ointofegyilibrium (or points of equilibrium2..between the power of the mass and the power ofthose who govern, it being.understood that it j's a qm;stjon precisely; of the sam,!WJ~\;r..$a~p-in a process of division and combinat~n.J.h~~5:.~.21th_:...~~imeone or~oncentrated,and~~£S!sed,~~~e_din~~!h_~ed1.~~(orrebellion) and decision (or indecision). Or again: this inquiry seeks the

~ofequilib;i~~;P;;~litT;;rj;isce,"tl.latP.H.IEits ,both tns ma.!'s \\ \and those who govern~o. rii~.e.r the t:rr~r~~they reciprocally in_.sPir::. '/J'instead of~owingthemselves iOfJe'}~r.!~~~ool~Thenthe concept of a Libera multitudo (a free mass or a mass "in freedom") canno longer designate only an external political datum (the fact that a stateis constituted by itself and not by conquest), but would express the intrin-sic quality of a social existence which has the "cult of life" (PT, V, 6).

Since I cannot follow here in detail the paths of this inquiry from onechapter to another of the Political Treatise, according to its unfinished

If human nature were so constituted that men most desiredwhat is most useful, no art would be needed to maintain harmon and trust. But as it is certain that human nature is <rtherwise constituted, the stjlte must be so ordered that all, t osewho govern as well and tbose who are governed, willingly orunwillingly, act to benefit the common good; that all, whetherby their own will or by force or necessity, are compelled to liveaccording to the dictates of reason. (PT, VI, 3)

18

~;,f~

f1:

!..i:fIi

Stated at the opening of the analysis of the monarchy, this principle ~

none~eleSSbhasa gend~firaldscope. We mdust therefore assume that it has in the ~.'.meantime een mo 1 Ie or correcte . It remains the case that chapter X ~

ends with what can only appear as a pious wish: *,ced with the critical situ- rations in which the mass is terrorized b ers it must confront, and in ~.which it t!:!!..-2~!E..!!:!:£.'.:0!~lfinto the arms of a providential man, "it would !be necessary to return to pre-established laws, accepted by everyone" (PT, iiX, 10). But what, if not a petition of principle, proves that we will not instead 'I:...•see the state sink into an inexpiable civil war? .

If one is willing to consider the Political Treatise not as the execution ofaVpre-established, perfectly coherent plan, already certain of its conclusions, ,:p

but as ~ experiment in thought, or better yet, a theoretical experiment •fraught with its own internal difficulties, then the absence of a theory of ~democracy, which has always aroused the irritation of exegetes and which rhas given rise to occasiQ.'l\!!!YJ.IJ$!':.!I~.attempts to supply what is missing, Ie. iwill appear to us in a new light. We shall not be able to remain content with J. ) t

.~he accident that th~ de~th of t~e author constitutes, still less with propos-~~h~Img to put ourselves ID his place ID order to deduce this theory from the gen-v~ p

erallines of the initially posed principles. We should indeed ask ourselves V iwhat, in the very defi~iti?n ofcon££~ finally leads to theoretical block~ !ano.-makes the constitutIOn of a coherent theory of "democracy" impossi- t

ble, in~sm~c;h as its conceE!.would be fundamenta lyeqUlvoca. uc a ireading would not constitute-far from it-a "refutation" of Spinoza or a rdisqualification of his standpoint, of which there have been so many. It fmight on the contrary reveal the power of this standpoint even more, ifocl; !b&ause it would f~isL2HLflndingl~2-kinaof ClrcuI~ thought m twhk~~.!Lal theoreticalp~inciples are never anything but the abstract antic- ju:.ation of th;'~<>'n"cruSi;;s~i;:;'·this-c~se-sucilacfrcle·woUJ.a·IDaketheffiifiaI )'

definiti~'ii'of nat;-~~' right, the foundation of the state on the agreement of ~i,~

D1~MMAS OF CLASSICAL POLITICS

dialectical progression, I wish only to recall what can clearly be seen in theinsistence ofa characteristic theme introduced in relation to monarchy: that

of ~~.~:~_e!'J.!ll_.t.2,the mass," the risk aE~Y$JLtb_ejll.~yi~!?J~..9f£IJJ.J;,l:nce.~ofwhich is implied by the nature of a state.J&h.ic.b..mnstruct§ its "~.~epresenting all wills by the will of a single mortal individual:

The form of the state must remain the same, and thus theremust be only one king, always of the same sex, and sovereigntymust be indivisible. As to my saying that the king's oldest sonshould succeed him." it is clear that the election of the king bythe mass (quae a multitudine fit) should be, if possible, eternal.Otherwise, it will necessarily happen that sovereign ower willpass on to the mass 0 e 0 ul ' reatest ossiblechange and for that reason an extremely' ga.llgg,ou~ne" .. lnthe civil state everyone maintains the same right aft~~death

that he had in his lifetime, not by his own power but by thepower of the commonwealth, which is eternaL The case (ratio)of the king is completely different: the king's will is the civillaw itself, and the king iS~£Q.!W!!9-iiweal!f[ilii!CWfien-ihe'

KIng dies, the commonwealth also, in a sense, dies, and sover-

eIg':J'-0~~!...~)},~tttrr):!;!);1I9.L~L;i~QJiH;,.rp~2.~",{i~!!!i!apotestas ~t!!!:!dt.!!!m naturallter ~~.lJhichl.~!ll!iLt!!.~

_~,~8Ji_t,!Q:p',~.~~,1l~~ la~L!!!2.d !~-(),!i~LoJ~p~E:~~ (PT, VII, 25; theentire paragraph is essential) . - ._'0{' f A little further on (chapter VIII, section 3), Spinoza summarizes his

,,,,,.,t . argument by writing: "kings are mortal, assemblies are eternal; power once

~ L (,'>: ~ transferred t~,.:a,:.fficieEtlylar~e ,!ss,J;m~ly_will therefore never return to the

\,-,[~6jl: mass (nunquam ad mUltlt~dmemr.edit)~. ..,We conclude, ~erefore, th~.r . .£.2.~E',J;9.nfl:lJ.~g,Q!LUY.ffi.I=J..~U!Jy'la~~mbl~is.ahs~r come~

l close to being absolute." '

-=~t us pause here for a moment. Such is indeed the thread of the argument that seeks a stable equilibrium which would confer a kind of eterni!Jon the state: to find the construction that will prevent forever, insofar as it

is humanlythiIikabk~th~~by making the representatiol).

o£~~!:"'Il?~g!t£h~icai and i~d!.vjdualbut juridical and collective.But Spinoza continues: "If there exists an absolute power, this can only

be that which is possessed by the entire people (quod integra multitudo

tenet)." One more step, after monarchy and aristocracy, according to thelogic of this political calculus, and we would have the democratic solutionto the problem. But this final step is a contradiction in terms: what indeed,

~ . _ . _~.....-......... ~.....t.J_......."...,...=~ld be the concept oraji(;wer~ae7i'iiTtiveiYr;;;"oved fr;~ the risk of the

20

SPINOZA, THE ANTI-ORWEll

"return to the mass" because it would always already have belonged to this

e~tire mass? Or perhaps: if the mass is by nature "fri htenin to thos ---<ower (multitudo imperantibus ormidolosa est:' (PT, VIII, 4), which

means at in practice power iS,not absolu~i:!~~!.~nt can the w-;:h::n~:;:~~;:e~emocraeYj-1uarant~_~:..!?!..~~~.0.'2J!2,,,:!!r will not be f

Let us go even further, Seeking progressively to construct the conditionsof unanimity (hence the obedienceof the social body to the law that is "like

a soul" for it), the Political Treatise weaves together several threads, it pursues several unequally developed ideas.

One of these ideas, which remains secondary, echoes the interest of theTheologico-Political Treatise in the life of the imagination, by examining theconditions under which the government will not provoke "th;I'ndignationof the largest part ofthe population (maximae p~rtis multit-;;a-;is)" (PT, III,

'9;VII, 2; etc.), whether because the king or the aristocracy seduce the crowd,or because theysurround their own figure with prestige, or because a combination of tolerance and state religion is established in the state.

But the main idea is henceforth quite different: it concerns the recogIlition of the "common notions" that express both public utility an~ th!;.

interest of each person.:,-that is, the very pres<:rvatiop of theso~spinoza's thought here divides once again according to antithetical

"affective" postulates.On the one hand, a series of texts (in which, significantly, plebs and

vulgus, indeed turba, once again come to connote multitudo) states a "pes

simistic" thesis;'~~rding to which the crowd is incapable oi..&,overning

itself, ofmoderat~rltJ9Ll,~di'isions inits mi~ from which seditio.E.§arise are always being reborn:-----'-----~""~~<

It is obvious that the whole mass (multitudo integra) will nevertransfer its rigb.UQ..U~_meii(;;:~Q!Qne if it could'ji;inagreement with itself and if the contr~els.ie~thaU>nen occuriiilarge asseinblie~ tex C;;ntroversiis quae plerumque in magnisconciliis excitantur) did not lead to sedition. (PT, VII, 5)

---.,.- .... ~

And again:

21


ed that most aristocratic states used to be democracies. (PT.VIII. 12)

And finally:

This thesis therefore leads us tendentially toward a Platonizing logic of thedegradation of the political "absolute" or of the power of states.

But on the other hand Spinoza rediscovers the "optimistic" postulatealready stated by the Theologico-Political Treatise (XVI): "It is almost impossible for the majority of a single assembly, if it is a large one;-to~~--;;;}

absurdity:~~~itudethre~~!:s (PT, VI,.1),.~hentheitY.i.i4linterest is aL

stake, a large number of individuals cannot err in the majority; better yet, themultitude as such cannotJ.ecome absolutely delirious (see, for example, PT,IV, 4; VII, 4 and 7): "human nature is so constituted that each man ardentlySeeKS what is u'Se""ful to himself...and defends another's ~a~e to the extent0at he thinks by this to improve his o~n situation.... Although a councilcomposed of a great number of citizens will necessarily include ignorantmen i.~!.s nonetheless certain that ... the majority of this assembly will neverwant to wage war, but will always love and pursue peace."" Referringwnmer exphcItly or not tOffilsthesis--which is not so much "utilitarian" asvitalist-Spinoza constructs a model ofthe equilibrium of powers, a hierarchical system of "councils"o~ent whIch maxImize the possibilitiss!!!deliberati.?n and of rational decision. Whence this astonishing sentence:"the number of patricians can be much greater than that of the mass. It isg,nlyln their too small number that peril lies" (PT, VIII,13). -

Here we are at the heart of the endeavor of the Political Treatise. The constructions it proposes to us are not so much juridical as numerical or, ifyouwill, statistical (preserving for the term its initial double meaning, whichSpinoza could have received from mercantilism, and which he seeks toelaborate in a constitutional sense). These functional relations (rationes)

22

SPINOZA. THE ANTI-ORWEU

between parts of the multitude, between the leaders and the led, betweenexecutive power, deliberative power, and power of oversight, always have ...simultaneously ~riple function: first, to fix the state's structure or to individualize its form; second, to decompose the existing multitude in order torationally recompose it with resp'ect to existing conditions ("economic" co~- Iditions such as commerce, wealth an~ pove.!!B,?r example, are evoked In \

passing, but especially imp~~.p.!E~~~:s..1.!!tural" conditions ofknowledg~J~ ignol '.n.ce );.f\.n.~~I.IY~ t.? .~~t out the .co.nd.itions ..o~ an. e. ff.,t;. C.tI'.ve. POli~ica.1decision-making (for example compelhng the patrIcIans to form a umque

b;~tedbY-~~Zc,'7n~o'ntho~;i-id~.:?ps~it·ut~!~)nsta~. .~~.~'._=-~c._.=--=,"T,"~__'

charged with~Ki!~~l0l!aJ.ity.Spinoza's "statistics" must be able to be read both as a "science of the

state" and as a "science of the population;' both from the standpoint of theimperium (securitx, regulation of obedience and of deliberation) and fro~

that of the multityda!df~_gecisioI1.-making, concentration of its powerto act). It is a sort of political version of double-entry bookkeeping. Several~t interpreters have seen the importance and the originality of thisenterprise: for example, Mugnier-Pollet speaks of a "veritable political

metrics," which is still too Platonic a term. ~heron p.uts into play andbrilliantly develops the calculations indicated by SEinoza, seeking a passage'from "static equilibrium" to the "dynamic equilibrium" of the social body.On this point Negri is wrong, in my view, to argue that the Spinozist notionof "constitution," insofar as it represents the development of the power ofthe multitude, does not leave any room for the idea of mediation. CertainlySpinoza challenges the juridical mediation of the contractual type as the realor imaginary foundation of sovereignty.~ this is in order better to develop, in the Political Treatise, an analysis of institutional mediation. I..~~makeshim one of th~ first theorists of the modern state apparatus (I'agree on fhis'~int with Pierre-Fran£ois Moreau's interpreta'hon), wHereas MachIavellI:notwithstanding his reflection on the organization of the army, limitedhimself to an analysis of state power as a source or object of political strategy;-and Hobbes, as we have said, limited himself to the distinction betweenthe public and the private spheres (in order to determine which "societies,"distinct from the state itself, can legitimately exist without constitutIng,"fiefdoms" or "states within the state").13

But once again the resclt is th~oreti;;-ally aporetic, just as it is politicallyequivocal (in particular in the use of the notion of absolute). How does thisconstruction, however significant it may be from the historical point ofview,actually respond to the question posed?

23

DIlEMMAS DF CLASSICAL PDlmCS

To organize numerically the relationship imperiumlmultitudo (state or

state power/masses) is indeed to introduce into each form of the state a prin

ciple which is in fact democratic. This would not be an ideal foundation of

sovereignty, but a regulative mechanism and a natural tendenc!: Even amonarchy is stable or "absolute" only if-repudiating the tyrannical prac

tices that, under the apparent omnipotence of a single person, in fact hide a

disguised aristocracy and the ferment of anarchy (PT, VI, 5)-it becomes

not only a constitutional monarchy-limiting itselfby imposing constraints,

like Ulysses before the Sirens (PT, VII, 1)-but a monarchy which makes

maximum room in its midst for the democratic element (if only Williamof Orange could under;t~;;~:sPinoza perhaps ;'~s·t:h~.The same is true, a fortiori, for aristocracy: whence the emonstration thatestablishes the superiority of urban "federative" aristocracy (PT, IX) overcentralized aristocracy (the domination of a city over its "countryside")

in which the subjects remain foreigners (PT, VIII, 9-12)-which perhaps

reveals the causes of the collapse of the republican regime in 1672, to

the extent that federalism tended to deteriorate into Dutch centralism (PT,1X,2). - .

But, once again, ~I:.a~ is d.~J!l.£cra~ !!It;,1f. if it must finally be defined asa fully functioning regime, a concept in its own right, and not only as an

"element" or a stabilizihg "tendency" at work within the institutions ofother

regimes? ~E9..IE.. th~~~~nt that S.£inoza _ wi~inp to link t~eory to practice-begins to reflect on institutions, democracy is no more than the limit

~~eperfecti~~tocracy,a~cordmg~same "statistical" princiEleofdecompoSitIOn and recomposition of the multitudo. As a result, paradox[;ny, democracy is never able to find its own principle.

The aporia is once again inevitable. from the moment that the very

nature of the concepts used implies both the necessity of multiplying the

institutions that fix the aristocracy by incorporating into its hierarchy of

"councils" the entire multitudo, and the necessity of radically transforming

its principle, which is always based on external control, still prisoner of therule expressed by the "terrere, nisi paveant": the mass terrorizes if it is notafraid! 14 The initial definition of aristocracy already entirely contained it:

It thus appears that the best condition (conditionem optimam) ofsuch a state will be if it is as close as possible to an absolute state,that is, by makin the mass as little to be feared as possible, and~anting it no other freedom than that necessarily accor e It y~e constitution of the state. This freedom is less the right of the

24

Iir:

~r


mass than that of the state as a whole (non tam multitudinis,quam totius imperii jus), which only the nobility (Optimates) candemand and maintain as their own. (PT, VIII, 5)

And Spinoza adds: "It is in this way that practice will best agree with the

ory... as is self-evident." Perhaps, but how can this affirmation be reconciled

with the perspective of an identification of the sovereign assembly and the

entire people without the fundamental definition ofnatural right as potentiamultitudinis, "power of the mass:' quite far from being "conserved in the

civil state itself:' being emptied of its effective content?Every state is "absolute" to the extent that its structure realizes the demo

cratictende~.But democracy itself can never be defined except as a p;;}ict aristocracy: an intrinsically comradictQ'!:y' conceEt; Or to put it anotherway, th~..t.o(a.Jl.oncoJ.:l~~dicto~te (and correlatively ofa noncon

tradictory mass) is itself contradictory. Commentators have not ceased to

turn in this circl;-From tHis follows the extreme importance of the troubling formula that

specified the meaning of these terms with regard to the selection of patri

cians from the outset:

We have named aristocratic the form of state power(imperium) which is held not by one man but by a certainnumber of individuals chosen from the mass (ex multitudineselecti) whom we shall from now on refer to as patricians. I saydeliberately: a certain number of individuals who are chosen;£~o~r~t~h.::is:...:i~s,;th~e ..1:"~n~'n~c~.l~-"-,,,i",e~r",en""c~e,jJ~ent~l;....~!&e afl(.rm'~

emocratic sta..tt,.c:.:J11~~.l.!~!:..~~the case2r,;..~~~.:"s.~t~.,;.t!Iat the entire multitude (integra multituaprwere admitted jp

the ranks of the patricians, provided that this admittance ~enot a hereditary right.... the state woUld nonetheless remain a~

adstocracy in the strict sense that no one was admitted to theranks of the patrician without having been expressly c!ios~n

(nisi expresse selectl). (PT, VIII, I)

Here once more the old ideal makes itself heard, the old utopia of a government which would be "best" because it is (and to the extent that it is) thegovernment "of the best:' even if it is a question of demonstrating that it is

the majority that must be this "best." How can we avoid confronting these

formulations with the toughdraft ofchapter XI concerning the democratic.

-"absohitelyabsolute" (omnino ·absolutUm) staterThis is indeed the crucial

moment in which this dialectic, like others, however different they may

25

, (

~

'. DILEMMAS OF CLASSICAL POLITICS

be, must turn to face its own intellectual challenge. Hic Rhodus, hic salta!Here we see Spinoza renoun,ce giving an initial definition of democracyas a particular form of the imperium/multitudo relation as he had done forprevious regimes. The very fact that it would be tautological (which, III

Rousseau, for example, would give it foundational value) obviously constitutes for him an insurmountable obstacle, a sign of the r~turn of the longdeferred utO.1?~' Thus, the evasive maneuvers, the appeal to preli~inary

considerations: first we must distinguish "various kinds of democracy." Y:ftsee him!nally-bogged dO~!ll~H.~~\lr.Eh..,fQ~_the"natural" criteria ofcitizen-~-,j!!§.!ifTI!lK~~-~,Rr.~.i;~~lSfl-l:l~,i,<;>~f this o;'~h~t'~'~l~~~;;-( ~~~~';;K;-o~n,whose seductive weakness, the final refuge of the passions of the multitude,iiways poses a morJal danger tothe state).15 And, if I dare say it, we watchhim die before this blank page.

Individuality and Communication

I said above that it is not a question here ofclaiming to "refute" Spinoza, butof~ to disengage that which constitutes the singular power of histhought, by trying to rescue hiin from the retrospective confusions that seekby any means to make him the "precursor" of Rousseau, Marx, or Nietzsche.It is a question of trying to understand how, animated contradictorily by hisown fear of the masses and by the hope ofa democracy understood as massliberation, Spinoza was able to end up conferring on this concept an importance and a complexity unequaled among his contemporaries or his successors, in historical conditions which, in any case, condemned him to acomplete theoretical solitude. This is why, to conclude, I would like to return~?~~tswhichJ.n adv~~e exp"iicit naming of this proolemli1tI'iePolitical Treatise, express this ori~inality and this actuality in the dearest

manner. It is indeed in the Ethics a~d in the Theologico-~Treatisethatwe'~l;allfind them, on the condition that we do not attempt to find in themthe coherence ofa definitive political or philosophical "solution."

It is not enough to remark, as has already been said, that the theory of thepassions in the Ethics rests on the development of their ambivalence, fromthe initial division of the conatus to the analysis of the fluctuatio animi. Againwe must ask ourselves what the "object" of this analysis is.

This object is not the individual but individuality or, better, the form ofindtvlduaLtty: how it is constituted, how it tries to preserve Its own form,fiowif IS composed With others according to relations of agreement anddisagreement or of activity and passivity. If it is well known that Spinozist\. ---------26

SPINOZA. THE ANTI-ORWELL

individuality is not at all "substance," it is no less important to recall that itis no more "consciousness" or "person" in the juridical or theological sense.Men, finite singular modes. are conscious of their desires and unconscious0'1 the causes that produce them; that is;they "think," ~hich is something~quite different. All huma'il'individuality is caught up in this way in thein-between of the inferior forms of individuality that are composed in itbut which are not for all that dissolved in it-and of the superior forms ofindividuality into which it can enter-a gradation which could be expressedmetaphorically in the language of mathematics by recalling that the "powe.r"ofan (infinite) set and that of the set of~ts" arealways incommensurable. This is why, if the soul (the set of thoughts) must be defined as the"ide~ of the b~dy; individuality~;t--;;cl~~~~do~th a "union.of the soul and the body," it com.eletely exclup,es this mystical representation. l •

~e return, then, to the analysis of the passions, or to the life of theimagination, we see that the vacillation of the mind is explained both by thecomplexity or multiplicitY of th~'b;dY;;~dby that of external relations /'~th~;;-;~bi:;?(G~eroultjbodies: it is in the encounter of these twoilUiTtIPlicities~which it i;uueriYimpossible for man to know adequately,but of which he always perceives a part-that the conflict of affectionsemerges.

Still more remarkable is the analysis of the mechanism of this encounter:men-,--who try to preserve themselves and increase their power of actin -

~~iatei-;~;-;;;r.F~;'§-quoa~i:. E!.I!~~i.mJ.EL~£.s~~?..n..sJ2.:lZ1 that is,.1§]iiJr-4.itgi reslJ...n:1bla'!E.~ ~t:....~,:r.£~;;~~e b~~lL!!}emselves and exter~'~.:whidttur~2!:o}!1eEE}gbJn other words, love and hate arenot relationships of "recognition" between subjects: they are concatenationsofaffects which are always partia~ which are reinforced by the repetition ofencounters, by the collision of words and images, and which separate orreunite individuals III the Imagmation. These concatenations by similaritybetween parts (which Lacan woul'(fC;ll "morceIees") are not a modality ofthe relationship between "ego" and "others." They are transversal (no.!.-tomention transferential) relationships which pass from one object to anoth-er, below the threshold of corporeal individuality and beyond it. They arenot the product of a "con;ciousness" but rather produce the effect of consciousness, that is, an inadequat~~:2!jur f~rporeal multielicity, )fwhich is inseparabl~ l!oJD.£ksin~jtself! therefore from joy~nd sa.?ness, fearand hope, and so forth.

Doubtless the most astonishing illustration of this principle of the analy-

27


sis of the mechanism ofaffective identification (and of its ambivalence) is tobe found in the following definition of jealousy:

If someone imagines that a thing he loves is united withanother by as close, or by a closer (arctiore), bond of friendship than that with which he himself, alone, possessed thething, he will be affected with hate toward the thing he loves,and will envy the other...because he is forced to join the imageof the thing he loves to the image of him he hates. This latterreason is found, for the most part, in love toward a woman.For he who imagines that a woman he loves prostitutes herselfto another (alteri sese prostituere) not only will be saddened,because his own appetite is restrained (ipsius appetitus coercitur). but also will be repelled by her, because he is forced tojoin the image of the thing he loves to the shameful parts andexcretions of the other (rei amatae imaginem pudendis et excrementis alterius jungere cogitur). (Ethics, III, proposition 35 andscholium, 1:514)

From that moment it is not arbitrary to affirm that the Ethics (essentiallyin the third and fourth parts) performs a genuine reversal of point of view(anti-Copernican, by anticipation). The process that it studies appears atfirst to refer to and to be supported by an individual-who is certainlycomplex but relatively autonomous, indeed isolated-considered abstractlyas exemplary of the human species, who would be affected from the outsidein diverse and contradictory ways, by both similar and dissimilar things,which it does not master and which in that sense threaten its integrity.In reality, without the idea of individuality (that is, of the stability of acompOslterdfsapp;;rTng,~1tl1oirt-WliiCli"t11er'e~beilerther desire~r

~o.!.".~i:0n~f;:I~~t is_~~I}JJI2E!.!~..i~!E~_aff~.ctiv~ network cullin&..across eachindividual, which soon becomes the true "object" (or the true "subject").E;~r;;~~'e;~hi;d~id~;C;-;;~~gul~-i';;'T~aysbothsimilar anddissimilar to himself and to others, and his subjective isolation is only afiction. This fiction culminates in the imagination of others' freedom, from~I imagine a certain assistance or obstacle to my own and which carries the passions oflove and hate to an extreme (see Ethics, III, scholium to

P;O~?~.!~~?2 .The constitution ofindividuality and that of the multitude in the imagi-

nari~~.;nd the san;e problem, one an~ the-;<ime process:~.za8;!E.Eft.ectuumirnitatio. This is why it is not abusive to maintain that theobject ofSpinozist analysis is, in fact, a system ofsocial relations, or of mass

28


relations, which might be called "imagination;' and the concrete example,or better the singular historical form of which, for Spinoza, has always beenconstituted by religion (and morality). The concept that he proposes for itescapes both "psychologism" and "sociologism." It is not reducible either tothe idea of an original intersubjectivity (such ascan be found, for example,in Ficiitef,~~ to the idea ofa conditioningof individuals by their social con-cliti~~~-~f~;ds~;(;-~-;;;di4~~~P!l...----,.~.---._...,,-_..-- It is on this basis that Spinoza can demonstrate how passions that are badin themselves are nonetheless necessary for the commonwealth to disciplinethe mob (vulgus). For, once again, "the mob is terrifying, if unafraid" (Ethics,IV, scholium to proposition 54,1:576). The ambivalence here is in full play,since the esteem (gloria) on which the knowledge of power rests, if it candraw its origin from reason, is most often only a "self-esteem (acquiescentiain se ipso) that is encouraged only by the opinion of the multitude ... andsince the struggle is over a good thought to be the highest, this gives rise to amonstrous lust ofeach to crush (opprirnendi) the other in any way possible"(Ethics, IV, scholium to proposition 58, 1:578).

It is on this basis, finally, that Spinoza can examine in detail the contradictory consequences that continually result from the way in which, identifying others with "representatives" of a general idea of man, each individualalways "wants the others to live according to his own temperament" (Ethics,III, proposition 31, 1:512) as if it were the condition of his own existence,from which result these practical universals, "vulgar" par excellence, that arethe ideas of ~4..Q.fE.tYjgn(see Ethics, II, scholium I to proposition 40;

III, proposition 46).

In other words, Spinoza's object is the relationship through which affectscommunicate between themselves, and tneretore the reI.arionslrip~t:ltfough

which individuals communicate through their affects. In this sense, affectivecommunication is the very concept oithe mass. But the effort that traversesthis communication from the desire of every person to the desire of allin the commonwealth, signifies that it is always necessary to analyze itaccording to a polarity. At one of the poles, corresponding to superstition,communication is governed entirely by a process of identification, that is, amisrecognition of real singularities. At the other pole, corresponding to theaffirmation of the "common notions" that, like all ideas, are practicalactions, communication is the unity ofadequate kinds ofknowledge and.ofjoyous affects which multiply the strength of individuals. The difficulty--oraporia, it seems to me-of Spinozism comes from the fact that, having fromthe beginning thought the imagination and the weakness of the "ignorant"

29


human being as an always already social process of collectivization and notas the imperfection or original sin of a "subject," it appears, however, incapable of thinking in its own concepts the knowledge and the mastery of theconditions of existence that the process procures for human beings as anequally collective practice. The crowd vacillates; it does not truly transformitself in order to ass from one "kind ofknowledge" to another (or when one

effects this passage according to the "path" descri ed by Spinoza). Thecrowd's "history;' however requisite from the origin, remains problematic.And this is so in spite of the fact that the Spinozist conception ofthe objectivityof the idea (the ic.!.entity of the order and the connection of thingsand the order and connection of ideas) had posed from the outset thatknowledge is not subjective: neither a "becoming-conscious" nor a "~ill

to know;' but a process that~ immanent in the real itsel(.I?However, if there is on this point an aporia, it is only the counterpart of

an idea 'of immense riovelty, not only for its time, but perhaps for our owntime: that of aco~m..!:Lnicatiofl which, insofar as it is a contradictory relationship, no longer has.anY.!h!!l[to. d..Q,with the idea of communion (whetherIn its mechanistic or organicist variants). Not only doe~ the r~ality ofbodies, and their internal/external multiplicity, thus definitively replace thefantasy of the "mystical body;' but the analysis of the affective ambivalencethat structures their reciprocal relationship, on the othe~'side, preve~ts us'from ending up in a mysticism of the body. ~:...may appre:!.ate,jn pass~,

that the violence of excommunication, initially''i"iii(iOSed on Spinoza,

h.!~!.husJ?_een_2Y£I£QmL~.La..~~.t~!1~(;~~~~he~~fcommunication. And it can be established that, under these conditions, theqi7~ti;r;-~;fhi;-historicity rebounds one more time.

The imaginationqf the masses is the very field within which the argument of the Theologico-Political Treatise is inscrib~d~;sentiaily unde;the form of proph~!!sm, which is entirely governed by the mechanisms oftransference, of identification,'lll~mi]ht be called the anticipated

response of the "12ro(2het" t.Q_t~£!!1~~d i~~~h the "te~.@i§Iit.:'~~peo£le is expressed. This is only a way of saying that those who are recog

"iiTzed as prophets ~re.individualswhose imagination reproduces tpeCollusion ofwords and images within which a nation lives its identity. This iswhy the whole history of nations, as Spinoza understands it, is inscribedwithin tpe contradiction of a convergence, both necessary and improbable,of religion and the stat:.:..2fpr~phe;ism and r1ili~malcommuni~ation.But ifthat is so, the final aporia of the Theologico-Political Treatise can be read in away that, at least theoretically, has nothing purely negative about it.

30


Doubtless the Theologico-Political Treatise culminates in the pious wishfor a society within which the governors and the governed would hear atthe same time the reasonable voice that explains their common interest tothem; doubtless the "pact" th~t is thus proposed to them has as its content a"universal faith" ~ich appear~.Lfirst to differ l!!!kfrom a "natural reli-gr~:' which wo~Tdonly lead us back to the ideology of the Enlightenment., . ...;...~ .""'.""""."'" ....,.;;::c .. __~

But tfilSls onlY a secondary aspect. The principal aspect is, on the contrary,the fact that S inoza never stopped analyzing the historicity of religion (andof "superstition"). Therefore the "univers faith;' whose practical functionis whatrSTIiip~rt;nt here, has to be produced on the basis of a mass practis.eand a mass theologicalJraditiqn.In~=~rewe are not onlu.g!~s~part from the ideology of the Enlightenment, birt~pp~'toits posi

~~~~..P2~~~~~~~.2j';.~~lar;' "~~ialist," if ey!.i'2~~!l~!:!i~~~:=~pj!l<!"~.h!ld"!~:._~da31~l~to i.\lstify_.tp~tical1Uheproject of a collective transformation ofreligion, from the inside, as a funda-

!?~,n.lii1.EE.li!icgl tas1il~~~9.0re ':lnd~~~~~cond.i.!!.o'";is;uc!:~ problemmight have a rational meaning.

It may be rec;;rl~'dthat bn7of the sensitive points in the reasoning of theTheologico-Political Treatise, in which its aporia is best demonstrated, is tobe found in the difficulty of giving a precise meaning to the final "solution"concerning the freedom of thought, which is, however, the very objective ofthe entire book. In fact, ~inoza says to u~ tha!!ll m!;1st agrt,e to "le<!vehuman beings the freedom to judge;' while denying them the "right to ac!.by (their) own decree," which must be entirely transferred to the sovereignin the interest of all, leaving i! uE tothe sovereign to cedeback a part ~~such right if he judges it Eossible. Hence, this solution consists-or shouldconsist-in drawing a line ofdemarcation between "private freedom" and"public right" which coincides with the division between thought and qction.

However-a~d Spinoza's own text is enough to show it-the drawing ofsuch a line has never occurred except in theory, and in reality it is not rigorously thinkable in Spinozist terms. IWs._~herefore out of theq~n~"individuals" and "the state" should ever manage '0 rea£!ian ag,reement ontlle'~odalities-~rsucha crelilar"ca~ The disti~ction b~tW~en "thought"and "actions" is immediately called back into question, in fact, both byexcess and by default. It is called into question by excess, for the freedom tothink (to reason, to judge) is nothing without the freedom to communicateone's opinions: no one, in practice, can think all alone, without expressinghis_~2,ns,~i,~~;~;~U:ni£'ating, ~f onixwith a circleoffriend~.:. The"place" of thought is not the "private" individual or the "secrecy of con-

31

DILEMMAS OF CLASSICAL POuncs

science" which is its philosophical hypostasis; it is communication itself,~ha:tever its limits or its extension. (We can understand why the Ethics doesnot postulate that "I think" but that "man thinks," and goes on to show that

~~e__~hi~.s,,~~~.gt.<;>~~~ his notions become more "common notions:')On the other hand, the distinction postulated is just as untenable by

default for, even when it is not "corrupted," the state cannot not pose (and

neither can S12inoza) the question of "seditiou"iOeinions": "which opinionsare seditious in the commonwealth? ThQ_~e that cannot be posited withoutnullifying the pact" (TPT, XX). Ofcourse; Spinoza tells us that "the one whothinks thus is seditious not on account ofhis judgment and his opinions inthemselves, but on account of the action that such a judgment implies(propter factum, quod talia judicia involvunt)" (ibid.). But in prac,tice, fromthe moment that the problem no longer concerns merely isolated individuals but the crowd-or the mass-by what means (other than grace ... ) can

a division be carried out,? F?~,I!L~alitr."~i!?~1~2!::!duals-g;nerally "nonphilosophers:' and even if they are philosophers-li;;T~~~e

crowd, they do not ~av.lf..itin t~~~~J1.f!J.!:..E!!'fE!:!!zitywith theiropinions, or to "restrain" the actions that they "imply." The state,>th~

Cannot be content to "define" logically which opinions are subversive; itJ!1ust still seek out who thinks subversively, in order to take precautio~

against them. That is, unless it recognizes that the criterion is inapplicableor insufficient. Spinoza moreover said it clearly: "obedience doesn't concernexternal action as much as it does the soul's internal action (animi internam

actionem)" (TPT, XVII), and it is on this internal action that the recognition-or lack of it-of the necessity of the commonwealth's laws depends.

It is not difficult to see that, in every case, these difficulties are not sophistical objections but result from what is strongest, most original, and in asense, most liberaEng in Spin~~~~ thougl.!.~~ The reasons for this are to befound in the Ethics, as I have indicated in passing. If the individual cannotthink without acting insome way(taking accountzlfthe fact that i; theterminol~gy~f the Ethics certain actio~~.l;'';passi~-;s-;;-but also thatevery passion, even inadequate1y,~~~e";anr~ffirmation,t~~

~tion), it is.>~.e.s~u~!2..~1!!l~Ir2..r...!!2.t! it is 0!:..0.e essence of the individual-!P af!i!!D i!~"~~~.Rfmg· The individual is by na'h;e d~srre andth~e1~~'"conatu5. It is moreover this same term that Spinoza uses in the TheologicoPolitical Treatise:

The crime of treason can only be committed by citizens orsubjects....A subject is said to have committed this crime when

32

SPINOZA. THE ANTI-ORWELl

he has attempted for whatever reason to seize the sovereignpower or to transfer it to another. I say when he has attempted(dieD conatus est), f!?r if the condemnation were only to followthe commission of the crime, the commonwea:Ith woUld be toolate, the nghts of sovereignty baving already been seized o~

transferred to another.... Whatever the reason for the attempt(eonatus"est)7tTeasOilhas been committed, and he has beenjustly convicted. (TPT, XVI)

The "attempt" to act (for good or evil) begins always already "within"thought; it is "implied" in it. That is, in no way is there, as Spinoza neverceases to demonstrate, a "decision to act:' a "will" coming to be added after

the fact to the proper act of understanding, in order either to execute or tosuspend it. This is a proposition which, once more, takes on its full significance only by recognizing the proper object of the Ethics: neither theCartesian nor the empiricist "subject" but the process or the network of thecirculation of affects and ideas. I8

With respect to the impossibility of thinking outside of the process ofcommunication-even if it implies some remarkable difficulties for Spinozaregarding language-I have already recalled how it is based on the very waythe Ethics conceptualizes "thought." But the meaning of these difficulties,then, is reversed: they deliver a lesson and a positive knowledge. On this precise point I, for my part, would take the risk of proposing that we can try toread Spinoza by transforming him, against his own "conservative" theses,but in close conjunction with his own transformational tendency. We cantry to read him, then, not as a failed attempt to define the democratic state,but as an unequaled effort rigorously to think democracy as the transforma

tion ofthe state. And the latter, again, not in its imaginary "chronology" butin its conditions and its objects.

The Incompressible Minimum

If that which makes the "solution" proposed by the Theologico-Political

Treatise impossible-from the moment that we seek to think of it as a fixed(indeed, codified) reciprocal limitation-is the expansivity of the conatus

itself, is it not really because such a juridical solution, or such a juridicalunderstanding of the solution, is entirely heterogeneous to the problematicin which it appears? Spinoza, it should not be forgotten, summarizes hisanalysis by showing that it is impossible and dangerous for the state to seekentirely to abolish citizens' or subjects' freedom ofthought and to claim that

33

DILEMMAS OF CLASSICAL POlITICS

it is identical with the thought and opinions of the sovereign-not only in

its verbal expression but within the images it forges-thus becoming indiscernible from its own. It is as if the state were truly only a single individual in

the anthropomorphic sense (a Leviathan) and not an individual ofsuperiorstrength, complexity, or multiplicity. Rejoining the themes of the Preface,Spinoza is here thinking especially, but not exclusively, of "absolute" monarchy, with its murderous dream of a politico-religious uniformity in thenational space:

Whoever seeks to regulate everything by laws irritates men'svices rather than correcting them. What cannot be prohibitedmust necessarily be permitted, even ifharm often results fromit .... But let it be granted that freedom may be suppressed(opprimi) and that men may become so subservient that theydare not utter a word except on the bidding of the sovereign;nevertheless, they will never be made to think as the sovereignwants, and so as a necessary consequence (necessaria sequeretur)men would everyday think one thing and say another; the goodfaith that is necessary to government will thus be corrupted....Men as they are generally constituted resent more than anythingelse the labeling of the opinions that they believe to be true ascriminal and the branding as wicked that which inspires themto feel piety towards God and man (ipsos... movet). This leadsthem to detest the laws and to conspire against the authoritiesand judge it not spameful but the highest honor to plot seditionin the name ofsuch a cause, and to attempt any act of violence.Given that such is human nature, it is obvious that laws concerning opinions do not threaten criminals but independentthinkers (non scelestos, sed ingenuos) ...and cannot thus be maintained without great danger to the state. (TPT, XX)

This is a causal change that strongly merits being compared to the one

that Thomas More put forth in Utopia (from private property to oppression,from oppression to crime, from crime to sedition and civil war): each has itsimplication and its theoretical posterity.

Hobbes, it should be remembered, maintained the contrary: that mencan believe whatever they want provided they move their lips in the same

movement as the sovereign, and this opinion appeared scandalously cynical, even and especially to the defenders of the established ordeL

"Now

Spinoza does not attack this from a moral standpoint. He shows that it isdangerous because it is physically impossible: that means that everyattempt-and God knows they have not been lacking-to identify opinions

34


absolutely, can only turn against itself and provoke an explosive reaction.For it ignores the fact that individuality is not a simple totality which couldbe circumscribed in a unique discourse, a unique way of life; there alwaysremains an indefinite multiplicity of "parts;' relationships, and fluctuationswhich exceed such an imaginary project, and wind up subverting it.

Here we see Spinoza applying, in full agreement with his theory ofhuman nature, a principle of the minimum of individuality or of the maximum of compressibility of the individual, which is really the opposite of

classical individualism.20

This principle has other equivalents in his writings. For example, inchapter VII of the Theologico-Political Treatise, which is concerned with theminimum ofsignification oflanguage ("no one, in fact, has ever been able toprofit (ex usu esse) from changing the meaning of a word, whereas there isoften profit in changing the meaning of a text"), this principle is deducedfrom the fact that the use oflanguage, which determines the meaning ofwords, is not individual or "private" but common: "language is preserved byboth the vulgar and the learned" (TPT, VII).

But this principle especially joins the one that, in the Political Treatise,states the limits of a possible dissolution of the state, which we have alreadyencountered as the counterpart of the theses bearing on civil war:

Since all men fear solitude, because in solitude none of themhas the power to protect himself or to procure what is necessary to sustain life, it follows that men naturally desire the civilstate, and they can never entirely destroy it. The conflicts andseditions that break out in the commonwealth never result inits dissolution (as often happens in the case of other societies)but simply in a passage from one form to another, if dissentcannot be diffused without changing the form of the commonwealth (servata civitatis facie). (PT, VI, 1-2)

Just as there is an incompressible minimum of individuality, there is alsoa minimum of social and even political relationship, equally incompressible,even under the effect of the most anarchic popular revolutions. Contrary towhat the abstract individualism of theories oforiginal social contract imply,Spinoza, while searching for the stability of the state as an "absolute;' thinksthat there is always a politics beyond its instability.

Our age is itself haunted by a "fear of the masses;' which joins together the

35


images of state absolutism-indeed of electronic control of opinions-andthose of revolutionary violence or terrorism. In the mythical figure of "totalitarianism"-resting on some real enough but quite heteroc1ite facts-thisfear has given substance to the fantasy ofa "total" mass movement, arousedfrom inside or outside by a threat of death, by a radical negativity, andcap;ibTeOITmpoSlng'anabsOiiite"~~indiv1duals:in this way th..s

multitude is identified vvith.§.oli.1llii!: wilhou.!Jeaving any space for th~

"~." Hannah Arendt has proposed its metaphysi~;ht;"t George Or~ell(in 1984: we are already there!) has given it a much more effective presentation in fiction (hence, fiction on a fiction), whose relevance history neverstops intimating. The literary genius of this fiction consists, in particular, inthe fact of having pushed the idea of domi~.~,~2E_to the point of absoluteconditioning and, simultaneously, the idea of political propaganda to thepomt of the creahon of an artificiallanguage~Whos~eryw(;rdsannul freedom of thought.

Spinoza is the anti-Orwell. A reduction and absolute control of themeaning ofwords is not thinkable for him, any more than either an absolute

r!ducti~nd~~~ali.!Y~~L!!:~I!1~~~~,?r ?!~Tass bta!>so!Etro;;:-rn~~dividualityin power. These extreme ;ases, wiii~h would be radical negations or figures ofdeath present in life itself, are also fictions which are physically impossible and, as a result, intellectually useless and politicallydisastrous.

It is true that Spinoza, ifhe retreated before the idea of an absolute delirium of a crowd capable of preferring death to its own utility and its ownpreservation, encountered, but without exploring it on account of fear offalling himself into "superstition," the problem of a delirium of the individual:

No reason compels me to maintain that the body does not dieunless it is changed into a corpse. Indeed, experience seems tourge a different conclusion. Sometimes a man undergoes suchchanges that I would hardly have said he was the same man. Ihave heard stories, for example, of a Spanish poet who sufferedan illness: though he recovered, he was left so oblivious to hispast life that he did not believe the tales and tragedies he hadwritten were his own. He could surely have been taken for agrown-up infant if he had also forgotten his native language.(Ethics, IV, scholium to proposition 39, 1:569)

But would this question, if he had examined it, have led him toward a

36

SPINoZA. THE ANTI-ORWELL

more psychological and juridical individualism? Would it not rather havedistanced him even further from the mirror-games of consciousness (or

freedom) and conditioning (or necessity)?By showin that individuality and the multitude are inseparable, Spinoza 'I

shows also in advance the absurdity 0 theories of "totalitarianism:' which I'

~ss movements only the figure of a radical historical evil and know .

how to oppose to it onl~ faith in the eternal refounding of "human con- J-;ci~~-;;~" and its capacity toinstit~!reign ?f..!!1e "ri~~ of m@."Quite fa~ from being a "democrat" in the sense that we could give to thatterm, Spinoza finds himself perhaps furnishing :hereby for our own timesome ways ofth~~jectionwhich are more durable than if!:!~~"in describing the institutions ofdemocracy. His fear of themasses is not tii";t totally ir;~ti~-;;:J7;ar that paralyzes the intelligence and

serves only to stupefy individuals. T~~:~<:,~.!?.,':~~e.rstand tha~ ~iv~n him /'is enough to help us to resist, to struggle, and to transform poht1~s.~ ._. -.m_~_._. _~ ________

37

NOTES TO PREFACE

ments for a preestablished thesis.6. See Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities,

trans. Chris Turner (London:Verso, 1992).7. The seminal importance of the Addresses for the whole history of nationalist discourse up

to today can hardly be overestimated: every day you find evidence of its direct influence,from France to Japan, and from Arab to Latin American nationalism.

8. As distinct from ancient, platonic idealism, which is not a theory of the realization ofmoral (or human) ends, but a theory of the beautiful order of the world.

9. To combine the discussion of teleology with the discussion of the ambivalent recognitionof the role of the masses in history is therefore the main "original" idea of this book. Itinvolves studying "ideas" (in the sense of ideologies) as the "element" in which massesevolve, and the "element" in which teleologies are constructed (be they religious, juridical,socialist, etc.). Teleology could be called the great "complexity reducing" pattern in thelife of the "masses," provided one understands that the masses themselves are this "complexity" which has to be reduced (in a sense this is exactly Spinoz.s analysis of "imagination," a representative process which is both individual and collective, and projects"order" where in reality there is complexity). It strikes me that, although the concept of"mass" (admittedly not a very univocal one!) has been persistent in contemporarythought (to the point that a whole "discipline" was founded only to study "mass phenomena" and their impact on politics: namely "social psychology"), a precise and comprehensive history of the concept "mass"-starting with the Greek to pIerhos or hoi polloiand Latin multitudo, and extending to the modern conflicting notions of "the masses"(which is rather positive in revolutionary discourse) and "crowd" (which is rather negative, in the conservative discourse)-does not exist.

10. To the same sequence also belong the various entries I wrote for the Dictionnaire critiquedu marxisme, ed. Georges Labica and Georges Bensussan, 2nd ed. (Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France, 1985): apparei/, classes, contre-n!volution, critique de I'economiepolitique, dictature du proletariat, lutte des classes, pouvoir, droit de tendances.

II. Of course it is even less challenged by "analytical Marxism," in spite of its professionalskill, since it is not primarily interested in the real text, but only in the arguments whichcan be "found" in it (i.e., abstracted from it), therefore it is constantly guided by the idealof the system.

12. This, of course, is likely to produce a new insistence, both "from above" and "from below,"on the necessity of usmashing violence.))

13. "From Class Struggle to Struggle without Classes?" in Balibar and Wallerstein, Race,Nation, Class, 153-84.

14. It is perhaps a paradox, but also a major historical achievement, of socialism, and particularly Marxism, with all its insistence on the "class character" of politics and the uniquemission of the "proletariat," that it was more effective than any other modern ideology inbringing together individuals and groups from different classes (including the bourgeoisie,~articularly intellectuals), and allowing them to "make politics" collectively, beyond theossified structures of the division of labor and education, of professional and culturalhierarchies.

Chapter 1• Spinoza. The Anti-Orwell: The Fear of the Masses

I. Antonio Negri, The Savage Anomaly: The Power ofSpinoza's Metaphysics and Politics,trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). See also thecommentaries published in Cahiers Spinoza 4 (Winter 1982-83). I regret not having beenable to take account of the book by Andre Tosel, Spinoza ou Ie crepuscule de la servitude:

228

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

Essai sur Ie Traite theologico-politique (Paris: Aubier, 1984), which appeared after the composition of this essay, and whose different perspective is equally stimulating. Several questions raised below could have been clarified.

2. This study takes up again and develops some ideas which I had presented at a colloquium at Urbino, Spinoza nel 350' Anniversario della Nascita, October 19B2. The proceedings of that colloquium have been published as Proceedings of the First ItalianInternational Congress on Spinoza, ed. Emilia Giancolti (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1985). I want

to thank, in turn, Olivier Bloch, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe for having provided me with the opportunity to return to this work in their respective seminars.

3. Pierre Macherey, Hegel ou Spinoza (Paris: Maspero, 1979).4. In the Political Treatise Charles Appuhn (Oeuvres [Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966])

translates multitudo as masse, multitude, population, peuple, masse du peuple, etc., which ishardly rigorous, but illustrates the polymorphism ofthe notion. Sylvain lac (Traite politique [Paris: Vrin, 1968J) generally translates multitudo as multitude but also as population. Madeleine Frances (Oeuvres completes, ed. Roland CaiUois [Paris: Gallimard,Biblioth~uede la Pleiade]) translates multitudo as la masse (and on rare occasions as population). Pierre-Fran<;oi~_Mor~_auJ1TaiM politique [Paris: Editions Replique, 1979]) system atica1IY tr~ri~iates .",ultitudo as';;iultitude; 'eX'c~pt-i; Chapter-lx;TI;'ii1Wlilainere;nark~that"tthe~iermhas-'amOr~';i~ii~ti~;;riii~~'p;'liti~~-;;:;~a;;lng:;T'~Qi-~~tumina'

moment to the posslbllityOIr'educing this last distinction.5. Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, in The Collected Works ofSpinoza, trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1985), 1:567. I have returned to this crucial proposition-thevery core ofSpinoza's political anthropology, in my opinion-and dealt at length with theremarkable structure of its twofold demonstration, in my book Spinoza et la politique(Paris: P.U.F., 1985),91-105.

6. See Theologico-Political Treatise, XVII: "However, in order to correctly understand theextent of the sovereign's right and power, it should be observed that its power is not limited to the use ofcoercion based on fear, but includes every means by which it can inducemen to obey its commands. It is obedience, not the motive for obedience, that makes one~ sul1ject.... Obediencedoe:sp<1tconcerI,l external action as much"SiT~cl';in·t~~naiaction." . ¥." .'. - " •• ' - - _ •••• - ---_... '.--"~-_.~......_-_.~-_.

7. CilllesDeleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York:Zone Books,1992), 273-301.

B. For an inventory of multitudo in Spinoza and the evolution of the contexts in which itappears, see Emilia Giancotti-Boscherini, Lexicon Spinozanum (The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1970),2 vols., 2:728-29.

9. The central concept of conatus has no simple and satisfactory French (or English) equivalent. See the Ethics, part III, propositions 6 and following (1:498): "Each thing, as far as itcan by its own power, strives to persevere in its being (unaquaeque res, quantam in se est,in suo esse perseverare conatur)." 1 would like to try below to clarify indirectly the reasonswhy there is no such equivalent. Borrowed from pre-Newtonian dynamics, but reworkedby Spinoza in an attempt to construct an analytic of psychic conflict, conatus connotesindividuality but not subjectivity (thus the ambi wty of translatin it as«;ifurt;,rpo;;;;;Gu_t not finiilTty'"(tfius e am iguity of translating it as "tendency"). "EnergY" would notbe a bad translation, by paradoxically bringing togetlierb~two antithetical significations that this term has historically assumed.

10. Several recent commentators have corrected the error that consists in -including Spinozaamong "contract theorists," hence amonftlie1l1eoriSlsOr"'riifuf31rlgfir'-iiilli'~seTni

tiateCl by HobDe5. hence among the founders of modern legal ideology, and have shownwhat confusions follow from this error. See Alexandre Matheron, lndividu et communaute

229

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

chez Spin?z~JP.~r,i~:>M~\~!I~.~e 'l1!nuit, 1969), 28?=-~Deleuze, Expressionism, 255-72;and esp~':~~!Y..!::l~,gri,The Savage Anoma'ly;'iiJY=-21 0, 'ri obvi,iuslyaoes not follow f;;';inisHiat Spinoza's tholigliilsa"matter'o{,iriiilfc;s;:;,-;or that the use of the term "pact" inthe Theologico·Political Treatise only has the significance ofan atavism or an incoherence;on the contrary, it plays a central role in the analYjis.of the ov,erc:!eJ~rminationof the politica~ relation by the religious imaginary:'See-ihe very illuminating ~;;;~;ofSylvainzac,'Phdosopn1e,":theii/;fgii;'polifiqueiJalisl;oeuvre de Spinoza (Paris: Vrin, 1979), 145-76 and203-14, I have lrkdJfL§!!§.t~i.'l.~nd elfPLa!.I1,!!le -':Ii~e,ctic of.that overdetermination in my~~Jui=Pact:!!!!!:L_~~!:,!_!a constitution du sujet dans letraiil tlieiiliigico:PiJlitiqiIe;"~ia.S)1i.!!~~!J.1,~8_5):, I05-42,~"----"" '-'.' .---.

I I. On this aporia of Rousseau's'ilieory; 'see Louis Althusser, "Rousseau: The Social Contract(The Discrepancies);' in Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx: Politics and History, trans, BenBrewster (London: Verso, 1982), I II~O.

12. These formulas concerning the deliberative capacity of the multitude echo a long tradition that goes back to Aristotle (Politics, III, I281b). But they above all evoke directly certain arguments put forward by Macbia>'eUi (Di'oouu" t, 47, and 57-58, in which theconce t of e multitude arises precisely as another name of the people) which have alwayssustained the "democratic" rea lOgO 1S wor . t1S to e extent at pmoza both in irectJy reconsiders the question of the imaginary structure of the multitude, and beyondthat poses the problem of its organization, that he can go beyond the restrictionMachiavelli placed on his own thesis. See the commentaries of Leo Strauss, Thoughts onMachiavelli (Glencoe, Ill,: The Free Press, 1958), and aaude Lefort, Le travail de l'oeuvreMachiavel (Paris: Gallimard, 1972),520-31.

13. Lucien Mugnier-Pollet, La philosophie politique de Spinoza (Paris: Vrin, 1976),226 (seealso chapters 4 and 18); Matheron, Individu et communauti, 465-502; Pierre-Fran~oisMoreau, "La notion d'Imperium dans Ie Traite politique," in Proceedings ofthe First ItalianInternational Congress on Spinoza, 35~6. To be convinced that, behind this speculation,there is a tradition and a precise historical problem (which is not only fiscal but has to dowith the organization of social hierarchies in the monarchies and oligarchies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), read the pages Fernand Braudel devotes to the scalesof wealth and power in Venice, Genoa, and England in The Wheels ofCommerce, voL 2 ofCivilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, trans. SiAn Reynolds (New York: Harperand Row, 1982),466--70. See also later in the book (546--48) his clarification concerningthe modalities of Dutch mercantilism, often denied. On this point, see ImmanuelWallerstein, The Modern World System II; Mercantilism and the Consolidation of theEuropean World Economy, 1600-1750 (New York: Academic Press, 1980), chapter 2, "ThePeriod of Dutch Hegemony;' 36--71. On statistics as "state science" and "science of thestate;' see Jacqueline Hecht, 'Tidee de denombrement jusqu'a la Revolution;' in Pour unehistoiTe de la statistique, vol. I, ed. Jacques Mairesse (Paris: LN,S.E.E., 1977), 21-81, whichemphasizes the direct role of Jan de Witt and Christian Huyghens,. close friends ofSpinoza, in the development ofDutch statistics.

14. Political Treatise, VII, 27. The fact that this maxim (which comes from Tacitus, Annals. I,29) figures here in the context of a refutation by Spinoza of antidemocratic arguments,generally' prompts commentators to remark that Spinoza does not share the view itexpresses. This is to erase all the ambivalence that, precisely, I seek to explain. The same

, formula, we shall see, figures in the Ethics under a hardly different form (terret vulgus, nisimetuat), assumed this time by the author.

15. The necessary exclusion of women from citizenship, under the same heading as foreignersand slaves, is of course a commonplace of political philosophy which goes back at least toAristotle and is deeply rooted in the very history of institutions. But the Political Treatise is

230

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

"unfinished" precisely on this point, or, let us say, precisel at the point where the fear ofwomen, a veritable metonymy of the fear of the masses, come c anal sis an toIe.;e the theoreti~e ~sition unfinished, and this cannot be considered a simp e contingency, It is a supplementary in ex In support 0 e ypo eSls at I advanced abovewith respect to the final aporia characteristic of the Political Treatise and the death of itsauthor.

16. See Martial Gueroult, Spinoza, II; L'ame (Ethique II) (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1974),110-15,135-42,165-70, and Macherey, Hegel au Spinoza, 208-25. On all of this,Deleuze's discussion in Expressionism, 204-12, is obviously essential.

17. Naturally this critique, if that is what it is, has no meaning except to the extent thatSpinoza himself--<1efining the good as essentially communicable (that is, as form ratherthan as object of collective communication) and wisdom as a practical affirmation-isobliged to ask himselfwhat it has to do with collective practia. This is why, before any particular critique, Negri must be recognized as the first writer who has, on this point, systematically compared Spinoza with the history and exigencies of his own problematic.See my own interpretation in Spinoza et la politique, 114-18.

18. On the impossibility of distinguishing between "will" and "intellect" and on the absurdity of the voluntarist idea ofa "free power to suspend judgment," see Ethics, II, propositions 48 and 49, with their scholia, which cannot be reproduced here. Spinoza's thesis isdirected against Descartes but also, on the other hand, against Calvin. See Institution de lareligion chretienne, chapter II (1541 ed.l, "De la connaissance de l'homme."

19. See Hobbes, Leviathan, chapters XXXIII and XLIII, and De Cive, chapter XVIII, 12-13.See also the invaluable commentary by Matheron, "Politique et religion chez Hobbes etSpinoza," in Anthropologie et politique au XVIIe siecle: Etudes sur Spinoza (Paris: Vrin,1986),123-53.

20. Deleuze sketches a formulation of this principle, precisely regarding the way in which, inthe finite mode, there is implied or expressed "a multitude exceeding any number.Spinoza suggests that the relation that characterizes an existing mode as a whole is endowedwith a Idnd of elasticity. Here we see the full significance of the passages of the letter toMeyer which allude to the existence of a maximum and a minimum" (Expressionism,. )2-203 and 222-223, emphasis added). Earlier in the book he writes, "Individuation inSpinoza is neither qualitative nor extrinsic; it is quantitative and intrinsic, intensive))(197).

Chapter 2• "Rights of Man" and "Rights of the Citizen"

I. Cf. Etienne Balibar, "Citizen Subject," in Who Comes after the Subject? ed. Eduardo Cadavaetal. (New York: Routledge, 1991l, 33-57.

2. Marcel Gauchet, La Revolution des droits de l'homme (Paris: Gallimard, 1989).3. Now collected in Florence Gauthier, Triomphe et mort du droit naturel en Rivolution,

1789-1795-1802 (Paris: P.U.F.,1992l.• 4. Balibar, "Citizen Subjece'

5. A similar view is held by Lucien Jaume, Hobbes et l'Etat reprisentatif moderne (Pa~is:P.U.F.,I986).

6. The eclipse of the contract in the final draft of the Declaration, a major index of its separation from any origins in the doctrine of natural right, is closely linked with the (provisional) abandonment of the idea of a declaration of rights and duties. In fact "duties" arethe counterpart of "rights" if it is imagined that there is a "reciprocal engagement"between contracting parties, whether between individuals and "themselves," or betweenindividuals and the "community,lI <Csociety," or "the state."

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Balibar Spinoza the Anti-Orwell