La democracia y la multitud: Spinoza contra Negri

Negri celebrates a conception of democracy in which the concrete powers of human individuals are not alienated but aggregated: a democracy of the multitude. But how can the multitude act without alienating anyone's power? To answer this difficulty, Negri explicitly appeals to Spinoza. However, in this paper, I argue that Spinoza's philosophy does not support Negri's project. On the contrary, I argue that the Spinozist multitude avoids internal hierarchy through the mediation of political institutions and not in spite of them; in the same way, these institutions do not simply emanate from the crowd as it is, but structure, contain and channel its passions. In particular, the institutions required are not those of simple and direct democracy.